^ji': easier instead of a harder road. The sin in these cases is not apparent, and it needs a healthy conscience, an unwarped judgment, a soul sin- cere in all its parts, to be equal to crises like these. How many followers of Christ, great in name, have failed on just such occasions. Who among the sons of men is fit to be trusted with miraculous powers without measure, which he can use when and as He will? There- fore we will forever praise our Lord, that he stood amid these insidious suggestions, when we fall before bold and obvious temptations, leading us even to acts of obvious sio. And we will pray Him to keep His people from leaving His path ; so that as He was in this world, they may have the quickest moral perception, the absence of all worldly policy, the principle to use gifts and powers not for them 40 The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. selves, not in shortening or smoothing processes of duty, but according to his divine pattern. The narrative of the temptation, finally, as thus ex- plained, shows itself to have been no myth, or invention of the early Church. The mythical theory draws its general force from an unscientific assumption that there can be no such things as miracle and revelation. In the case before us, its special arguments might be, that Jesus was tempted like Adam, that He was forty days in the wilderness as Moses was forty days on Sinai, and Elijah the same time on his journey to the same mountain chain; and that a part of the narrative. His transportation through the air, was ghostly and marvellous, rather than in accordance with the sobriety of ordinary miracles. The last argument has been already met by a difierent interpretation. As for the others, which have little intrinsic strength, it is enough to say, that if Christ was the Messiah, there are good reasons why He should be subject to trial at the outset of His work. The temptation is, indeed, no indepen- dent proof that He was what He claimed to be, but like His miraculous conception, it is in harmony with His na- ture and His office. But it is more important to remark, that the narrative is too refined and too full of a somewhat hidden, but con- summate wisdom, to grow out of the imaginings of the early Church. It is no rude picture of assaults which might befall a holy man in solitude, but an intellectual and moral struggle, which put it to the proof whether Christ would be true to the spiritual idea of the Messiah. It in- volves a conception of the Messiah's kingdom which the early Church did not entertain until some time after the death of our Lord ; how then could it be elaborated by crude Galilean disciples of Christ, whose views were full of that earthly mixture which the narrative condemns ? It contains, too, we are forced to think, a subtlety of moral discrimination which was far beyond that age, and beyond The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 41 any age, until it had become enlightened by the Light of the "Word. I should sooner say, that Christ Himself in- vented it, and gave it to some disciple as embodying in an allegorical form the results of His experience. But if He was the Messiah, the temptation is a true narrative. If He was not, He could not have devised a narrative like this, because He could not have understood what pertained to the work of a spiritual Redeemer. And now to all the tempted, to all who are inclined to gain power by questionable means, to all who can profit for the moment by a departure from the line of principle, to all Christians who are tainted with a spirit of worldly policy, and desert the Master while they profess to be doing service for Him, I commend this story of the tempta- tion. Let us all use it as a means of keeping ourselves in the path of unswerving Christian integrity, that by the help of the Master's ' trials, we may overcome, and be par- takers of His purity and of His glory. SEEMON III. CHRIST CHAEGED WITH BEING BESIDE HIMSELF. Makk iii. 21. And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him; for they said he is beside himself. It appears from the narrative, of wliicli. this verse is a part, that Jesus had already excited the malignity of the Pharisees on account of a cure performed on the Sabbath, and that they had combined with their enemies, the Hero- dians, to compass His destruction. Upon this He withdrew to a more secluded place, but could not be, hid, for His fame as a teacher and a healer of diseases had already reached beyond - Galilee ia every direction. After per- forming many cures among the multitude who pursued Him into His retirement, He withdrew again to a mountainous district, and took care that only certain persons. His disciples iu the proper sense who were drawn to Him as their spiritual teacher, should know whither He had be- taken Himself. The night, it would appear, was spent in prayer to God. The ensuing morning He organized His church by appointing the twelve apostles, and perhaps delivered the Sermon on the Mount during the same day. Descending agaia from the hill-country He entered, it is said, into a house, that is. He took up His abode for the time in the city of Capernaum. The people again throng around Him, some to be cured or have their friends cured of outward maladies, some to hear the healing words with which He accompanied His works of love. It was at this time when the court of the house, with the hall of entrance, was filled full with eager listeners and with people ill of every disease, that His friends went out to lay hold on Him, for they said, "He is beside Himself." 42 Christ charged with being beside Himself. 43 They went out, perhaps, from Nazareth, where their home was, to the neighboring city of Capernaum, for the purpose of seizing and securing Him, on the ground that, according to their judgment or their fears. He was not in His right mind. As we learn from the end of the chapter they could not on account of the crowd enter the door ; they send a messenger therefore to call Him out, that thus they may attain their object. Our Saviour knew intuitively what their design was, and reproved it as well as conveyed instruction to the bystanders by the words, " Who is my mother and my brethren? — Behold my mother and my brethren ! For whosoever shall do the wUl of Gtod, the same is my brother, and my sister and mother." The question now may fairly be asked what led His re- latives to the belief or suspicion,' that our Lord was dis- ordered in mind, and to the marvellous resolution to attempt to lay hold on Him and keep Him in confinement. The brevity of the record does not enable us to answer this question with confidence, and yet it supplies us with several answers, one or all of which may render this con- duct less remarkable.; : I^st, we may suppose that our Lord's relatives regarded His conduct as very strange and unaccountable; that He worked, or was reputed to work, miracles which drew crowds around Him, and declared that He was introducing the kingdom of heaven, while He yet shrank away from ■publicity and avoided the necessary consequences of being regarded as the Messiah. There may have been here to their minds, as yet involved in unbelief, an inconsistency in His conduct, which they could account for only on the theory that He was not what He claimed to be, but was laboring under a delusion of mind. Such are their feel- ings towards Christ, as represented to us in the seventh chapter of John's Gospel. "His brethren said irnto him," on the approach of the. feast of tabernacles, " depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the 44 Christ charged with being beside Himself. ■works that thou doest. For there is no m^ that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, show thyself to the world. For," adds the apostle, " neither did his brethren believe on him." They could not reconcile His policy with their idea of the Messiah, and of the pomp and splen- dor with which that office should be ushered in, and there- fore explained His conduct, which they knew Him too well to impute to ambition or intentional deception, by the workings of a diseased mind. Or, again, we may more rationally suppose that they thought Him beside Himself because He seemed to them to be throwing away Hb life. The Pharisees, they may have learnt as we know it, were already laying plots for His de- struction. He was moreover giving Himself up to the good of the crowds which followed Him with an assiduity and a self-sacrifice which were likely to put His life in jeo- pardy. He appeared to them unaware of His danger and madly regardless of health and safety. Or, to make one supposition more, the opinion which the Pharisees sought to diffuse, that He worked miracles by demoniac agency, may have influenced them, coming as it did from the teachers of the people. He could not be the Messiah, and yet He worked miracles. He could not be the Messiah, for how could an obscure Galilean, one of their own humble relatives, found the glorious kingdom of heaven, or take such ways to found it as Jesus was taking ? He must therefore derive His super- human power of casting out demons from Beelzebub. He must, as the Jews at Jerusalem afterwards said, have a devil and be mad. Thus we see that unbelief lay at the bottom of this conduct of Christ's relatives. And it is worthy of notice that in striving to explain His conduct in their state of unbelief, they impute it to no sinful or selfish motive, but to derangement of mind. They show herein a persua- Christ charged with being beside Himself. 45 sion, founded on acquaintance witli His character, that no such motive could be discovered in the Saviour's life. It is very remarkable, it is even startling, that among these relatives of Christ, who came to lay hands on Him as being insane. His mother is found. How shall we ex- plain this conduct on the part of one who knew His mira- culous conception, who had seen His perfect humanity in childhood and maturer years, who without question be- lieved in Him and hoped in Him ? The extreme brevity of the narrative leaves us here again to conjecture. We may suppose that what is im- puted to the kinsmen or family of Christ is spoken of them as a body from which Mary is to be excepted. She may have accompanied her unbelieving friends without participating in their feelings, rather to act as a mediator between them and Jesus than to carry out in any degree their views. But I am quite willing to concede that a cloud of un- belief flitted over her mind ; that as John the Baptist, in a moment of disheartening doubt, sent his disciples, to the Lord with the inquiry, " Art thou he that should come or do we look for another," — an inquiry which shows at once his .confidence and his want of confidence — so she, when she saw her Son taking a course unlike what she had attributed to the Messiah, may have been, for a time, overcome by her perplexities, and have not known what to think of Him. Are such doubts stray guests at times, even by the side of confirmed faith ? He will not say so who knows what conflicts are going on in many serious minds, nay, what conflicts may arise in many Christian minds, until faith has won a permanent victory. How many minds have hesitated before the amazing doctrine of the Incarnation, as if such an interposition and presence in our world were incredible; how many have modified, or rather mutilated the Bible, so as to save the supernatural, and yet reject the divine in Christ; how 46 Christ clmrged with being beside Himself. many have stumbled and fallen over Christ manifest in the flesh; how many have swum to a settled landing- place across the billowing waves of doubt which threat- ened to engulf them ! Was it strange that some kindred struggles should agitate the soul of Mary, if she were at once honest and in a degree unenlightened ? I will only add on this point, that however we explam Mary's participation in the design of her kinsmen, she is included in what is a virtual censure on the part of our Lord. He neither goes out to meet her and her com- panions, nor admits them into His presence. He exclaims, that His nearest of kin are the children of God, and asks, "Who is my mother and my brethren?" It is thus remarkable, that in the only two instances, until the cruci- fixion, where Mary figures in the Gospel — the marriage at Gana, and the passage before us— she appears, in order to be reproved by the Saviour, and to be placed, as far as- the mere maternal relation is concerned, below obedient servants of God. These passages must be regarded as protests laid up in store against the heathenish eminence which the Roman church assigns to Mary, and especially against that newly established dogma of her being without sin from her birth, which they so signaUy contradict. But while Christ was thus charged with losing the guidance of right reason, what had He been doing? As- suming that Mark follows the order of time, and confining ourselves to the events of the few hours before, we notice, first, that He had passed the whole night, before His return to Capernaum, in prayer to God. Being about, on the next day, to set on foot great measures. He separated Him- self from the crowd which His fame had gathered, and even from His own peculiar followers, in order to commune with Infinite Reason and Infinite Love. On the lonely mountain, with only the stars for witnesses, He strengthened the powers of His soul, and found a refreshment better than that of sleep, in long and close intercourse with HiS Christ charged with being beside Himself. 47 Father. Of this, indeed, His friends could have known nothing, but it was a natural expression of the piety which shone through His whole life. Was there implied in this any loss of reason ? Who would not reasonably go to the ends of the earth, if thus He might experience one hour's communion, such as Christ had in blessedness and purity, with the Father ? Next we notice, that when it was day He set apart the twelve apostles. No step was taken by him, during His ministry, more important than this in its bearings on the future progress of His kingdom. In fact, if we except the two sacraments, this was the only institution which he ever adopted. Its wisdom was demonstrated by the result. The Apostles remained, after His death, as the authority in the Church. They preached the doctrine of Christ. They testified as eye-witnesses to His resurrection. They arranged the order of the gatherings of believers. They transmitted the history of their Lord to coming ages. The consum- mate wisdom which appeared in this institution, at once so simple and so efficacious, showed the reach of mind, the foreseeing reason of its founder^ And if, in the third place, as Luke seems to declare, the Sermon on the Mount — whether a part or the whole of what Matthew gives us — was delivered the same day^ we have in this, too, a proof of the highest exercise of reason. This man, whom His kinsmen pronounced beside Himself, had just been destroying the imperfect system of morals which Jewish wisdom had erected, and had buUt up a new code, which has reigned through all the ages since ; He had announced principles which philosophers, whether believers in Him or not, have united in admiring ; and which, if we look at their influence on opinions or on practice, entitle Him to the name of a moral legislator for mankind. And if, finally, we take into view His deeds of love when He came down from the mountain, how He gave Himself up to works and words of healing, how He bore 48 Christ charged with being beside Himself. with patience tlie importunity of the throng, how He en- dui-ed fatigue and hunger for their sakes — ^not having room even to eat bread — Me have another trait of a life in which reason and goodness dwell together. Haviag thus considered the imputation cast on our Saviour by his relatives that He was out of His right mind, and shown how absurdly false it was by His conduct at the time, we proceed, iu the third place, to derive some lessons from this part of the Gospel history. I. And, first, we learn, from the fact that neither the Pharisees nor Christ's near relatives understood His charac- ter, how difficult bad men, and oftentimes imperfect good, men must find it to comprehend the aims and plans of a person of uncommon goodness. A person whose mind is not darkened by sin to a de- gree rarely occurring under the light of the Gospel, wUl readily admit, in the abstract, the leading obligations of practical religion and morality. He will confess that men ought to devote themselves to the service of God in the spirit of supreme, self-sacrificing love, and to the welfare of mankind, without looking at their own ease, comfort, or reputation. He wiU even approve or condemn persons living in a past age by such a standard. But when men come to judge of measures and of prin- ciples, as they appear in the life of men, they will be apt to fall into one of the two following faults : First, if they are low-minded and selfish themselves, they will impute the best conduct of the best men to mo- tives as base as their own. This is, in part, a simple application of the rules derived from experience to a new case. The man is conscious of nothing noble or exalted : he sees in himself no impulse, no capacity to act under the sway of the better class of motives, such as zeal for God and love to man. All his friends, with whom fellow- feeling unites him, have the same low standard, and must take the same view of the conduct of others. The opmion. Christ charged with being beside Himself. 49 in the wliole society will be, that all men have the same governing principles at bottom ; that benevolent concern for the welfare of men is either a pretense or the weakness of a character peculiarly constituted ; that the semblance of religious zeal is hypocrisy. Within the experience of the whole society no character has risen above the vulgar level of selfishness. Within their observation, no conduct has occurred which cannot somehow be accounted, for on the meanest priaciples. Thus we see that the selfish can- not comprehend disinterested goodness, that the impure cannot believe in purity and chastity, that low-minded politicians believe that all men can be bought, that un- scrupulous merchants hold that every man will violate the law of usury or the laws for the revenue, if sure of im- punity. Our judgments find it hard to rise above the level of our character. We bring men down to our own principles, if we cannot raise ourselves, in our conceit and imagination, up to theirs. This philosophy of experience, if so it may be called, commends and insinuates itself into the mind by the com^ fort it imparts. If there is no more exalted standard of character than that low one which such persons adopt, there is no occasion for self-condemnation ; they can walk • with the head erect, and look on the noblest souls as-thcir equals; they need feel no impulse to reform, and painful aspirations for something beyond their rea;ch are repressed, Such self-complacent comfort can stand the attacks of abstract moral or religious, convictions with tolerable security. But when a life shines before it, constructed on other principles, a life that commands respect, and tella " how awful goodness is," then this poor pride of character quails and feels its beggarliness, and gives place to selft reproach and self-contempt. To avoid the beginning of such a change of feeling, the life of the good must be interpreted amiss, and reduced below its real standard. Was it then to be wondered at that goodness like that 3 50 Christ charged with hdng beside Himself. of Jesus was misunderstood and maligned by Pharisees? Was it strange that they who knew of nothing within their own experience but selfishness and hypocrisy, who would have been condemned at heart by the light of divine excellence like Christ's, should seek a solution of His wonder-working power in Satanic agency, — should call " the master of the house Beelzebub ?" But again, persons like the relatives of Christ, who have no especial prejudice to warp their judgment, nay, even good men, are liable to misunderstand an exalted character. The explanation here is in part the same as in the former case. Their own deficient standard, the opinion which controls the society in which they move, supplies them with the rule of estimating, the conduct of others ; and they would be painfully reproved if they traced that conduct back to the highest principles of ac- tion. But their judgments are by no means so unjust as those of the prejudiced and the unprincipled. They do not put the worst interpretation on the best actions ; they are not apt to malign motives ; nor does their own con- sciousness carry them to the baser part of human nature, as explaining the lives of all men alike. But it is possi- ble for men, they find, to be one-sided, and to overlook considerations drawn from expediency or prudence. It is possible to seek to accomplish too much all at once without committing the seeds of eifort to future time. It is possible in attempting to gain one good to throw away another, to sacrifice quiet unduly to truth, to undertake some reform without taking into account the opposition it may excite or even strengthen. Multitudes of mistakes, of failures, of abortive enterprises which delay the cause of humanity and virtue for a generation, do actually arise from sources like these. All admit this when they criti- cise other men's measures, and weigh other men's hopes. JSTcrw is it not quite possible, when a person of exalted self-sacrifice; of godlike love, of earpest zeal, appears Christ charged w.'th being beside Himself. 51 •within the horizon of minds not in entire sympathy with him or unable to comprehend him, that they will apply these rules of judgment in his case? Does even true zeal for God of necessity exempt men from miscalcula- tions? May not such a man aim at that which is unat- tainable? May he not waste his powers with a self-consum- ing zeal ? May he not entertain hopes which are chimeri- cal, — or in short by some excess or defect may he not depart from the line of right reason ? Thus even good men may misunderstand and misinter- pret exalted virtue. But to this it should be added that our judgments eoncerning what is practicable — which must always influence our opinion of men — are in part of a subjective character ; they vary with our desires, with our feeling of the importance of the object, with our moral characteristics, as much as with our intellectual. It cannot fail then, that measures which an earnest, self- sacrificing, godly man regards as practicable, must appear to a person of an opposite nature to be just the reverse, and to indicate a want of sound judgment or even of sound reason. Thus a man needs to be thoroughly good himself, if he would comprehend and do justice to those who are truly good. It is not enough that a man has fine powers of mind and great practical discernment. His powers of mind will but quicken his ingenuity in finding causes for conduct which are not the true ones ; his discernment will discern impassable obstacles in the noblest efibrt, if he is not in sympathy with goodness. An illustration of what we have said may be found in the names of reproach which pass current among the un- thinking, and are applied oftentimes to the best of men. Christ, as we have seen, was no exception to this. The honored name of Christian was at first, it is probable, a term of contempt. Paul was a man that turned the world upside down: Puritan and Methodist were origi- 52 Christ charged with being beside Himself. nated as worcls of scorn. All new enterprises of benevo- lence are exposed to the charge of enthusiasm or of fana- ticism. Whenever, in an ungodly community, some one breaks away from the bondage of reigning sin, the slaves of it call him mad. The friends of evangelical light in a part of Switzerland are now called momiers or hypocrites. The friends of oppressed men are among us stigmatized as fanatics. In a world where light and darkness are contending, we cannot do good prudently without having such missiles cast at us by the unthinking or the malevolent ; we can- not, as we are apt to do, pass the line of prudence, without furnishing thein with a pretext for so treating us ; we cannot mingle resentment with our zeal without justifying them in their opprobrium not only of ourselves, but of our cause. But if- we would be like Christ and do good service in the world, these names which are bugbears to many of the weak and lukewarm need not disturb us. A name of reproach is a rod of terror in the eyes of him who has no opinion on great questions, or no sympathy and power of generous emotion, or no courage and self-reli- ance. But if a man can rise to a higher level, reproach will only quicken him ; he will feel that to be hated by the weak and wicked is one proof that he is right. A man, whose soul was on the side of freedom in our strug- gle for independence, was not m.uch frightened by being called a rebel; a man who is on the side of Christ will only feel the more deeply the need the world has of being made over, when he is called a fanatic. If we are misunderstood and depreciated let us remem- ber what happened to Christ. " Therefore the world know- eth us not," said the disciple of love, " because it knew Him not." If we are misunderstood because we are like Him, the better for us and the worse for them who wrongly judge us. Christ charged with being beside Himself. 53 II. Christ by His life on earth has done much to show that true enthusiasm in the cause of God is truly reason- able. We have said that men, even good men, often fail to comprehend the noblest purposes and characters. But Christ by His glorious life on earth has enlightened man- kind in this respect. It is more difficult than it once was to deny the reality and the reasonableness of Christian virtue. A higher standard of judging and of acting has been set up in the mind of the world. Our Lord has not only purified man's abstract concep- tions of virtue, but He has taught us what to admire and approve in life and action. He has lived a life, the prin- ciples of which are an everlasting protest against the mis- judgments of men arising from their low standards. He has shown us the highest human excellence misunderstood, the highest reason pronounced a derangement of reason, and thus has put us on our guard against similar mistakes. He has shown us that men with far-reaching plans with- out noise or show are too deep for worldly minds to fathom ; so that it is not safe for us to rely with confidence on the practical judgm&ts of the world. , He has shown us a plan, which in its weakness was imputed to a person beside himself, in its maturity crowned with more than human glory. In Him we see the true measure of what is right, and what is practical in conduct, of what in the end must commend itself to the rectified judgment of the world. Let us think of this, my friends, more than we do when we lay plans and pa;ss judgments concerning life. It was an inconceivably mighty undertaking to set up the king- dom' of- God, and yet an obscure, unpatronized man under- took it and did it. That is practieal and that is practicable which commends itself to a sound soul, to a calm, trustful, courageous soul in unison with Christ, which commends itself to a faith that overcomes the world, to a love that is 54 Christ cJmrged with being beside Himself. capable of self-sacrifice. Undertakings -will not suffer shipwreck, however maligned or scorned, into which men who have His spirit enter. III. It is a little matter if we are misunderstood as long as God understands us. Christ too was misunderstood, but God understood Him. For a while, the bad and the foolish in their use of names have it all their own way. The man of earnest Christian effort cannot pay them back in their own coin if he would, and he has too much to do to revile. Quietly working under God's smile he trusts to Him who is in sympathy with what worldlings hate, and despises what they highly esteem, who knows the essence and the results of things. God's own plan, which embraces those of His servants, includes immeasurable ages, and works itself out by resistless laws. What can a generation do — what can names of reproach, invented by a generation, do against God and His counsels? What can they do against those whom He favors ? Moreover time is God's minister, and this minister of God is constantly sitting in judgment on human opinions to approve or condemn. What "enormous mistakes, often condensed in terms of censure, cannot Time tell of! There was a man to whom a crazed reason, to whom Satanic agency was imputed, and He now has a name above every name. There were men called Christians in contempt, and now it is the highest honor to be called a Christian. There was a party sneered at for uncourtly faults, dis- liked for rigorous precision, against whom every quill was dipped in gall, who were called Puritans by the im- pure, and now they are a landmark of history, one pri- mary source of civil and religious freedom among men. " They are the people," said the politic Pepys in his diary, " that at last will be found wisest." * There was a sect, * Pepys' Diary under Sept. 4, 1668. Christ charged with being beside Himself. 55 or rather company of ministers who preached a warmer, truer gospel to a loose generation. They were laughed at by the witlings, were pelted with stones by the profane, were eschewed by the decorously cold ; the name Metho- dist was a name of opprobrium. And. what have they done ? They have revived the religious life of England, kept piety from going out among the poor, and are now one of the strongest bodies of Christians in two great lands. Thus good men often outlive their bad names. They conquer by God's help a place of honor for themselves in the judgment of coming times. Posterity garnishes the sepulchres of those who were reproached by the fathers. Honor is done, late indeed but long, to God's standard of principles and measures. The enthusiasts of one age may be found in the nest to have first hit upon some great secrets : and instead of idly dreaming, as they were charged with doing, to have uttered prophetic voices. The fanatics, at whom men interested in vile traffics and wrong institu- tions gnash their teeth, may turn out at last to be friends of mankind. As the heathen of the first age who called Christians the enemies of the human race were grievously rn an error, so it has been since ; the world's supposed enemies have been its true friends, and are owned as such, when the tongues that maligned them have been silenced by death, and the reputations that were built on their dis- paragement are blasted. Thus time, God's minister, corrects mistakes. But still all unjust reproaches, all depreciations are not corrected. There are especially multitudes of private persons, who die forgotten with no defender in the future against the re- proaches .of the past. Now for such as these there is still another court open. The last account will put each char- acter in its right place, and keep it there forever. For- gotten goodness will be called into notice again, misunder- stood character be commended ; men called mad, but not 56 Christ clmrged with being beside Himself. such, will be shown to have drunk at the well of infinite reason ; each wUl be restored to the rights which he had in the sight of truth and of God. It will be then no loss to have played a small part well. " Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward." Let us, my friends, in the great conflicts of opinion in which we cannot but partake, and while virulent epithets are freely applied to us, remember this great, this last re- versal of former wrong judgments. Let us live with it before our eye, and in a manner appeal to it from the sen- tence of mankind. Let it inspire us with courage, so that mockery and imputations of unworthy motives will not be able to warp us. Let it fill us with cheerful hope, for if, at the end of a reproached, calumniated life, the judge shall write upon us the name of God, and His own new name, will it not be an ample reward? SERMON IV. NEUTRALITY IS EEGAED TO CHRIST IMPOSSIBLE. •3b Matthew xii. i»S. He that is not with mo is against me. The man who uttered these words wandered up and down in Judea and Galilee, without a place where to lay His head, poor in this world's goods, indebted to the charity of His friends for a subsistence. He had no advantages of family or education : He never sought to become known, nor courted notoriety ; He came from an obscure place of a despised part of Palestine. He preached chiefly to the poor, died three years, or a little more, after He began His preachings, and made a few hundred disciples. His life, from an earthly point of view, would be called a failure. Such was the man who said. He that is not with me is against me, as if He were something, and taught something about which men could not help taking sides ; as if in spite of His lowness and insignificance in the eyes of men, they would have to form an opinion against Him or in His favor ; as if He would force Himself upon their notice and compel them, all unpretending and lonely as He was, not to be in- different to Him and to His message. Suppose one of the great thinkers of antiquity had used these words. Let Plato or Aristotle have said, " He that is not with me is against me ;" the reply of derision might have been, " There are thousands, in all generations, who will never hear of you ; there are other thousands who will be supremely indifferent to what you write, and by and by you will become a name, awakening some respect perhaps in a few minds, but lost gradually in the forgetfalnes^ which hides past ages from the view of man." 3* 5? 58 Neutrality 'in regard to Christ Impossible. And yet this strange man, who never wrote a book, never taught a scheme of philosophy, and was only half understood, while He lived, by His disciples — this strange man, I say, used no words of assumption or arrogance, when He said, " He that is not with me is against me !" Nothing is more apparent through the world's history, than that He has been pushed, if I may not already say has been pushing Himself, upon men's notice, in wider and wider circles, ever uttering through the generations the same language, so that what once was marvellous to be heard, seems to us neither strange nor unaccountable — and that now the question of questions for the world, turns on Christ, and men everywhere more and more are summoned to take His side, or to be against Him. These words of Christ were dictated by vast assumption, or by truthful consciousness. You might say that He was a deranged man, who, like many in their insanity, thought Himself God, or God's inspired messenger ; but His wisdom, His consistency, the impression He made on His disciples, the absence of all evidence of derangement show the con- trary with such force, that very few have been willing tn resort to this hypothesis. You might say that He imposed on men consciously by His assumptions, but when you find it to be psychologically certain, that false claims would have demoralized Him, and can discover no flaw in His life, you have to abandon this position. You are com- pelled to admit that He told what was true, when He said: "For judgment came linto this world, that th?y which see not might see, and that they which see might re- main blind !" And so you have to admit, also, that Ho understood Himself, and the world, and His relation to the world better than all men besides did ; that He looked down the ages with an eye of foresight which none else had. And for this, you must account as you can. But my object is not now to show that the claim of Christ implied in our text, is true, but that what He said Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 59 turned out, during liis life-time, and has been turning out ever since, to be an historical fact. Men then, men now, are forced to consider his claims, to accept" or to oppose them. The Apostle John, in a tragic sentence, says : " He came unto His own, arid His own received Him not.'' The record in His life-time was chiefly of those who sided against Him. If numbers, dignity of station, loud voices of dislike and contempt, ought to weigh in such a matter. His memory ought scarcely to have survived His life-time. Still there were a few who received and loved Him. Let us look at those who were for Him, and then at the opposite and lai^er party. In general, you find those who were for Him, and whom He, by His attractive power, forced to declare themselves His disciples, to have belonged to the least esteemed, the obscurest and humblest classes of society. But among His adherents from these classes, He sought to excite no parti- zan or class-feeling in His favor. He dreaded making friends by appeals to any popular feeling. He preferred not to present His claims, rather than to win proselytes by political and worldly hopes. When He had reason to be- lieve, that those in whose behalf He multiplied the loaves of bread, would come by force and make Him a king, lie hid Himself from their view. And when a part of the same throng met Him afterward in Capernaum, He gave them such instruction in regard to His person and work, that they deserted Him in great crowds, so as to leave only a few friends at His side. He forced multitudes thus into opposition by what a political man would have called, the most maladroit of all methods. Instead of winning them and pledging them to His person by His great miracle, after which, as one might think, He- could have schooled and purified them. He taught them such hard truth as to come into conflict with the prejudices of thousands. Thus, as might be expected, nearly all forsook Him. 60 Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. There was a noticeable quality in His preaching, which ought here to be taken into account. In the midst of His pity and kindness, He asked for no man's good opinion or adhesion to His cause, who did not give it out of love to Himself, or on some purely spiritual ground. He wanted no disciple, humble or lofty, who had any by-ends, any expectations of preferment, any hopes which were fast- ened on this world. Hence, very many, even of the com- mon people, were displeased and rejected Him; And just such treatment He expected ; He was prepared for it and was not disappointed when it came. Of those who were for Him, there were two classes, both made friends of by some peculiar attraction toward Him, both comparatively ignorant, yet differing widely in their earlier life and habits. One of these classes was composed of simple Galilean peasants, unlettered, but by no means wholly ignorant; full of the national prejudices and false opinions of their countrymen, yet moral and religious. This class, the best part of the Jewish people and the most hopeful, evidently excited the strongest interest of Christ. Around them the war between Him and His enemies was the most active, for whoever gained them gained the nation. He lodged in this clas;, wherever He preached, such impressions of His power and goodness, and of His prophetic mission, that if He had gone further even a single step, if He had humored in the least their crude earthly notions of the Messiah, He might have gained large masses from this class and moved at the head of an army to Jerusalem. But He would not. He purposely ran entirely athwart their pre- judices ; He forced them to be against Him. And thus there was left a small body of disciples drawn to Him by love rather than by intelligence, yet so loyal, with such rudiments in their souls of a life after His pattern and His wishes, that few as they were, they were th§ flt germ for the coming kingdom of God. Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 61 There was another class from which, in a very remark- able way, Christ drew friends and followers, although beyond doubt, many who belonged to it, shut — as would be natural for them — their hearts to His message. They were publicans and sinners, those who had lost their character by their unpatriotic acceptance of office as tax- gatherers under Eoman farmers of "the revenue, and those of either sex, especially of the female, who lived on the vices of society and were the most abandoned among the people. A philosopher passes by this sort of persons in contempt or in hopelessness. The laws of States only brand them with infamy and harden them. Society abhors and dreads them, regarding even to be seen in their company as a disgrace. Yet with this class Christ mingled so openly, that \Pharisees reproached Him for it, and on this low level He called for contrite and loving hearts. He made publicans and harlots choose whether they would be for Him or against Him. I will not stop to inquire why He did what seemed so out of the common rule to the Pharisees, nor to show that this wonderful approach of the purest and noblest of beings to the low- est and vilest was an attestation to His sincerity and His strength of character : it is what resulted from His ming- ling with them that interests us now. They heard Him gladly. They were, or at least, some of them were filled with wonder and awe, as He told them of a better life. They forsook their sins and loved Him, A woman that was a sinner, as she stood weeping and washing His feet with ointment, received as high an approval from Him as He ever gave to any mortal. He said to the uncivil, hard Pharisee, whose table He honored, she has had much forgiveh, and therefore she loveth much. He brought to such persons the transformation of their souls by a new love and new hopes, and into this ch^rp,eter personal atta,cb.-' jnent to Hitftself led the wajr, C2 Neidrality in regard to Christ Impossible. One of this class of persons affords us a remarkable illustration of the way in which Christ sometimes forced Himself upon men's attention, as if He were determined to make them decide whether they would be for or against Him. He sees a jaan, of wealth indeed, but of bad reputa- tion, one of those publicans, who was supposed to have got his money by extortion, watching Him from a tree, as He passed in a crowd through the streets of Jericho. At once He invited Himself to be his guest. He was taken home, and the next day the man made his profession of repentance, and Christ testified that salvation had come to this house of the sinner. And this He did amid cen- sures and evil speakings, preferring to make the acquain- tance of the publican rather than to lodge with the most immaculate Pharisee. But most of those who sought Him, or whom He sought, especially if they belonged to the more intelligent classes, were not thus affected by their interviews with Him. Whether they came indifferent, out of bare curiosity, or came with a favorable bias, it generally happened that in the end they were repelled from Him. Let us now look at the kinds of men and the particular instances of men with whom He fell into contact, and we shall find that they could not go away from Him as they camo. If they camo indifferent, they went away generally displeased or hostile; if they came hostile, they were apt to go away more hos- tile ; if they came favorably impressed, very often what Ho said altered their temper, and they passed over to the ranks of avowed enemies. The Pharisees, as a class, rejected Him, and finally pro- cured His death. Their hostile attitude is shown all along through the narratives, and He, on His part, took no pains to propitiate them, either by lowering the tone of His claims, or by looking with a venial eye on their faults, or by abating their fears of political evil from the regards of the people toward Him. At the same time He gave such evi- Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 63 dence of extraordinary power that they had to account for His works of healing on principles which both proved and increased their malignity. It is plain that they narrowly watched Him ; they sent spies to entangle Him in His talk, and members of the great council, belonging to this party, seem to have gone as far as Galilee to examine and report on His life and conduct. While He would doubtless have gladly gained them as converts on His own terms, it is strange to see how superior He stood to their patronage, and how He tried to plant truth in their minds, which made them reject Him with animosity. It is striking, too, to perceive how meanly He thought of this class of men. In His eyes they were hypocrites, covetous, blind, of hurt- ful influence on the common people, and He took pains to show by His own different views of the Sabbath and of the law how unlike His doctrine was to theirs. He thus offended the whole sect, saving some few better souls who saw greatness in His lowliness, and wisdom in His words, but who yet rather mourned for Him when He was cruci- fied than confessed Him while He lived. Nicodemus, the seeker with eyes half opened, Joseph of Arimathtea, the wealthy friend who even dared to raise a point of justice on His. behalf in the, council, will show that in this sifting and winnowing process of Christ's some few of those who were most receptive of faith in Him did yet regard Him with kindly eyes, although not courageous enough to be enrolled among His disciples. The Sadducees drew the notice of Christ to themselves less than the Pharisees, for they formed a sect which had less control over the people. But even they could not ror main indifferent to Him. Pleased as they might have been with the rebukes which He poured out against their rivals, they heard Him overthrow their own dogmas, they must have consented to His death, and they appear after- wards as the leaders of the party against the apostles. But let us leave these classes of persons and look at 64 NeuiraiUy in regard to Christ Impossible. single persons whom Christ forced to take sides for or against Him. Here the young ruler, who asked Him the great question how he. might inherit eternal life, shall head our catalogue. Another mode of treatment, a few polite words, making the yoke easy and the burden light at the first, might have attached this person to the cause of Christ. Why was such a Burden laid on him in the very beginning, as few from among the wealthy class could have borne at a maturer stage of discipleship ? Does it not seem harsh to repel him as Christ did? Why he was put to this test we may understand better at another time ; at present I seek to show that our Lord did what He knew would drive the rich young man away, unless he were willing to bear all trials and go all lengths in the good Master's service. He put such conditions before him, as, if refused, could hardly fail to make him an enemy at last. Thus He wanted positive friends or positive foes. He purposely tested characters and dispositions at their weakest point. More fearful still was the trial to which Judas was subject. I stop, not to inquire why the Master admitted this unworthy man into his nearest intimacy, why He did not drive him away in the early part of his ministry, when such words as, " Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil," show how He looked into Judas' heart. Instead of doing that He kept him by His side ; He put the common purse into the hands of the man whom covetousness might turn into a thief; He trusted him, as if ofieringhim a chance to act the traitor ; in short He treated Judas so that he could not help becoming a thoroughly good man on Christ's side, or the basest of villains. Oh, why, we may ask, as we contemplate him while he is be- coming steeped in guilt under the very eye of Christ, — Oh, why was he brought to choose between heaven and hell ; why exposed to temptation by the confidence and the purity of Christ, when his first ofiers of service might have Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 65 been rejected and he have remained in comparative Ignorance and indiiFerence? Whatever wa say to that, one thing is clear, that Judas could not help being a sure friend, or a vile and hollow enemy of the Master. And as we draw near the cross, we see the truth put into still clearer light that Christ forced people to take sides in respect to Him. First, Herod comes to view, the very man who had killed John, and whom Christ for a long time avoided. He had heard of Christ in his hall of guilty pleasures ; his remorse had suggested that John his victim had risen from the dead, and was working miracles under the name of Jesus; but he had had no personal interview, no occasion to reject the claims of the re- markable man. Now, however, at the very last, an opportunity was given to him of showing his friendship or his opposition. And how does he use it ? First to gratify a curiosity so strong that he is represented as exceed- ingly glad to see Him ; then, when he found that no miracle was to be expected, and no answer to inquisitive ques- tions to be got from Jesus, the soul of the cruel, cowardly, man turned into mockery; he set Him at nought and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe. He fell in with the vehement accusations of chief priests and scribes. Thus to him also it was given to be with Christ or against Him, and he chose in conformity with his character. Still more remarkable was the position of positive hostility into which Pilate was forced. This rapacious, unprincipled Roman moved in a sphere so unlike that of Christ, and was brought into contact with Jewish ideas at so few points, that it would have been perfectly natural for him to feel supreme indifference in the case. What could he care about the squabbles of Jews whom he despised and disliked? And, at least, no sympathy with the reigning opinion of the Jewish Council could have influenced him. But, he too, was forced to take sides for or against Christ, and that after a personal interview, in ■ 66 Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. which the words and demeanor of our Lord made a strong impression upon him. He tried, perhaps, in the first moments of the examination, to be indifierent, but could not. There are certain persons whom you cannot keep your eyes off from, who attract and yet over-awe you. Pilate seems to have seen something strange and unique in the prisoner at his judgment-seat. He became, ere long, convinced that Christ was innocent. His knowledge of men assured him of the fact. Nay, there was something great and grand about the prisoner. Surely he could be no ordinary man. Pilate was without preju- dices — ^in the best condition to intervene between the pris- oner and the party calling for his death. He wanted to take His side. But the clamors of the great men of the Jews made him afraid, and he wavered. Next he tried to avoid taking sides, by throwing the re- sponsibility on the enemies of Christ. But they told him what he knew well, that the Romans had taken away the right of life and death from the Jewish Council, so that the decision rested with him alone. Then, as if a form- ality could clear him from guilt, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person ; see ye to it. All the effect of this was to make them more deliberate, in their guilt. They took sides indeed when they said His blood be upon us and on our children. AAd he sided against Christ, when, out of policy, he stifled his own sense of justice and gave Him up. He did this when he felt that Christ actually pitied him as being put in a place by Divine Providence for which he was unequal, when the sin of the chief priest, a greater sinner, dragged him along into guilt beyond what could naturally have fallen on him. Next we have a most striking narrative of two men alike in crime, one of whom justified Christ, and the other mocked Him. The two malefactors, just before the dark- Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 67 ness of death and on the very cross of their agony, as well as on their way to the cross, observed and watched the wonderM man. The one was struck with the convic- tion that He was innocent, and true, and worthy to be trusted ; the other, jeeringly and without a particle of trust, called oa Him to save Himself and them, if He could. Strange, fearful contrast between an open soul and a closed soul at this dread hour, between the ingenuous pen- itent, who saw the light from Christ at the darkest mo- ment, and the hardened one who wanted to be saved from death, but wanted no Saviour. There was but one other occasion after this, during the life of the Lord, for taking sides. The soldiers, cruel, brutal, yet ignorant, had mocked Him, spit upon Him, took the side that such men, who believe in sin but not in good- ness, would naturally take, but there was a heathen officer appointed to watch at the cross, whose mind the scene af- fected very differently. He may have known very little of our Lord before, but when the earthquake strangely ac- companied the last breath of Christ, his awe-struck soul, no doubt prepared to admit the innocence of Christ before, took His side while He hung there as a malefactor. "Verily," said he, ""this was a righteous man; truly this was the Son of God." The method which Christ took to bring His claims before men, and to test them in manifold ways, is a subject fuU of instruction and of argument for the reality of the claims themselves. Some of this instruction I hope to be per- mitted, by Divine Providence, to lay before you at another time. At present, I will not pursue that train of thought, but confine myself to a remark which naturally follows and completes what has been said : it is, that the Gospel still carries on the same method of presenting Christ to men, and of pressing His personal claims to their love and obedience. All things else almost have changed, in the external aspect of religion, since Christ was on earth; estab- G3 Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. lished order has taken the place of a nascent church, form has succeeded to the simple oral preaching of the first teach- ers, doctrine fixed by men has interpreted, and almost stifled the unsystematic Gospel of the New Testament, but in and above all change Christ appears, pressing Himself upon our notice, demanding that we adhere to Him in per- sonal devotion, and putting it to the proof, oftentimes, by tests hard to be endured, whether we will forsake all and follow Him, or whether we will forsake Him and follow the Pharisees and the Priests, the Pilate and Herod of the New Testament, the hardened thief and the Apostle that betrayed Him. He might, as I have said before, take another way to win us. He might use fair words with us, leave out of view the hardships, the oppositions we may encounter, and tell us of nothing but flowers and smooth roads and delightful prospects. But this way of treating vs He no more adopts than He condescended to smooth the road into religion to the men of his day. Whatever there is of severity in His exclusive claim to supremacy over our hearts, He will not abate one jot of We may think Him severe, but He repeats the old message, He cleaves to the old principle. He wants disciples, but He wants such cnly as have counted the cost, and have determined to forsake everything else but Him, such as are ready to love parents and all nearest kinsmen with a love that may be called hatred, so far does it fall below the height of love to Him. He tries us perhaps at the very point where we are most tender, most likely to estimate His service a hardship. To one He says, " Let the dead bury the dead, but go thou and preach the Gospel." To another, "Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come follow me." To another, " Whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her in his heart. And if thy right eye ofibnd thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee." To another, "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it." To another, " If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father in heaven forgive Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 69 your trespasses." And to another, " Except thou be con- verted, and become as a little child, thou shalt not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Thus He approaches the de- laying, the worldly, the covetous, the lustfiil, the selfish, the unforgiving, and the proud at the very point, where sin is dearest and. conscience has been, most drugged; He says to them, I ask you to, give up that sin for My sake; other things are to be done afterwards, but that sacrifice I call for now. Oh how many poor, imbecile wUls, how many longing hearts would have been calmed for the time, if He could have consented to take another course, if He bad been willing to touch with His probe, not the sorest woundj-but the one half healed, to take the out-works, and not drive right at the citadel. And oh !. how many resist and fall away, and will have nothing to do with Christ, just because He requires so much at first. Could not — our hearts ask — could not our characters, by some other pro- cess, have gathered strength by yielding in little things to yield finally in great ? But such is not the way into the kingdom of God, and so we turn away from Christ and from His ofiers. It is remarkable, too, how now — more in fact now than for many ages — Christ forces Himself upon the notice of those who believe Him not. When they speculate about religion, when they trace human culture back through his- tory, Christ stands right in their way ; doctrines of men, claims of churches, moral codes they might pass by ; but they cannot pass Christ by; He confronts them with a re- vered, yet not welcome presence. They cannot be in- different to Him ; they must examine His pretensions ; He perplexes them like some problem hard to be solved. They say to Him, "Thou who hast killed the old religions. Thou who hast divided history in twain, and begun a new order of ages, and hast struck Thy roots into all human interests, who art Thou ? Give us more proof of Thy rights over us than Gospels, and their fruits in the world afford." Like Herod, they long to sco some miracle done by Him. But 70 Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. He keeps a dead silence, only bidding them forsake their sins. They raise this and that objection, they pare down the Gospel, they lop off myths, but still there He stands to be accounted for, and claims of them that they follow Him. And so He puts them to a hard proof, calling on them for all those works and sentiments that make up a perfect life, while yet they will not draw strength from Him for the great conflict with evil. They must be for Him or against Him ; for His side, whoever He be, is the side of all virtue. They cannot be neutral, even when they deny that He has any right over them, for whatever else He has done or not done. He has set up a kingdom of love and well-doing in the world ; every one that loveth, and doeth well, must be for Him, every one who loveth not, and doeth evil, is against Him. SEKMON V. THE SELF-PROPAGATING POWER OP SIN. Proverbs, y. 22. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holdcn with the cords of his sins. It is very common in the Scriptures to bring divine pro- vidence and the results of sin into- immediate and close connection with each other, as if the pain attendant on sin were a direct act of God. But there are other passages where sin is looked at, as bringing its own punishment with it by a law of the world analogous to the physical laws of nature. Each of these ways of stating the doctrine of retribution has its advantages : the one makes a vivid appeal to our feelings by-setting God as a person of in- finite holiness directly before us ; the other represents the punishment of sin to be such an essential part of the sys- tem of things, such an unalterq,ble law of the moral uni- verse, that nothing but divine grace, making exceptions to law, and bringing in remedies unknown to law, can pre- vent its infliction. In the text the results of sin are represented as taking place in the natural order of things. The sinner thinks that sin is over and gone when it is once committed. But wisdom says no ! It has consequences from which he can- not escape ; it throws its cords around him, and takes hold of him so that he cannot get away. If you put a divine punisher of sin out of sight, sin does the work of the exe- cutioner on the sinner. " He shall die without instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray." Among these consequences of sin certain ones are often, insisted upon, — such as bodily evils, loss of temporal ad- ■71 72 Tlie SelJ-Propagating Power of Sin. vantages, fear of the wrath of God, — ^which show the dis- pleasure of the Creator on the natural side, as connecting Bin and pain together. But there is a &r more awful view of sin, when we look at it on the moral side, as pro- pagating itself, becoming more intense, tending to blacken and corrupt the whole character, and to annihilate the hopes and the powers of the soul. It is to this aspect of sin that I invite your attention in the present discourse. It is one which is very affecting and impressive in itself* and it has to do, you will observe, not with the purpose ol God, but with facts, as old as mankind and as lasting as the soul ; with facts which any heathen sage might notice, and which Christianity does not create ; with fects as awful as any punishment of sin through the body and the sensi- tive powers of the human being. You may call these con- sequences of sin, as you like, retributive or not; you may say or deny that sin punishes the sinner by making him more and more morally corrupt. I care not for the terms used, — the fact, the dark fact, as a part of the sys- tem of things, remains unaltered. Let us now turn our minds to some of the general classes of facts or laws of character to which these consequences of sin can be reduced. I. The first of th^e laws of character which we notice, is the direct power of sin to propagate itself in the indivi- dual soul. If each act of sin stood alone by itself, and when committed brought nothing with it but its positive punishment, then half its sting would be taken away. It may be that in that case punishment would be strictly remedial, for the innocent soul, enticed into evil and speedily tasting the bitter fruits, would have ample power to return into the ways of lite, for sin, by the supposition, had made no impress on the character. The soul might recover, as the body now recovers after a scratch or a bruise. But alas it is not so. Sin is the fruitftillest of all parents; each new sin is a new ever flowing The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 73 source of borruption, and there is no limit to the issue of death. 1. The first illustration of this power of sin which we notice is that exceedingly femillar one of the law of habit, or the tendency of a certain kind of sin to produce another of the same kind. '. The law of habit, which applies alike to all our physical, mental and moral actions, must be le-r garded in its design as a truly benevolent one ; for what greater blessing could the new-made immortal have, who must at all events encounter temptation, than to be strengthened by resistance, and thus to acquire such a de- gree of virtue, that temptation at length would no longer be needed or be feared if it came nigh. But the law of habit,- when the soul yields to sin, works death to the sin- ner -.-^like the pillar of the cloud which made day to Israel, and was darkness to the Egyptians, so this law, which is bright to the well-doer, sheds night upon the path of the sinner until he is plunged into the sea of death. It reigns over every act, quality, and state of the soul, to render the sinful act easier, to intensify tbe desire, to de- stroy the impression of danger, to increase the spirit of neglect and delay. Take the internal afiection of envy for an example of the ease of sin. The soul separated from God becomes unhappy and discontented. In its discon- tent the sight of the enjoyments of others gives it pam by making it aware continually of the void within, and this is what we call envy. Now the tendency has become such that every good whatever, pertaining to another, by this revival . of the feeling of unrest will give the soul pain ; and thus it places itself at war with all the joy in the uni- verse, and this, although it bleeds under the stings of envy at every pore. Why does it not cast off this tormentor in some desperate struggle as if for eternal life ? Alas ! the law of character is ' stronger than the soul ; the soul must envy if away from God, and must envy more and more, and on less and less provocation, the farther it flees from 4 74 The Self-PropagcUing Power of Sin. its true rest. It must in the end acquire the impression that all the happiness or prosperity of others is inconsist- ent with its own. Or, take an external habit — such as some sensual appe- tite, for an example. An appetite, we are told, answers to some end for which man was made, and the pleasure at- tending it is a wise provision for fulfilling the end. Under the law of reason and of God, therefore, any appetite would be innocent and harmless ; none of them would in- terfere with the. claims of God or of man, of the soul or of the body ; none would be clamorous for instantaneous grati- fication, nor stir up an agitation in the soul, nor demand to be gratified at the wrong time or in the wrong degree. And as if to prevent the formation of evil habits, God has made the pain and the shame and the loss from excess so obvious in the world, that every new transgressor is fore- warned by the shipwrecks of others if not by the voice of conscience. When now these barriers are past, which arc placed in the way of sin by the law of God imprinted on human nature, law parts company with the sinner, and turns into his enemy — not indeed into his enemy ia this sense that it hands him over to hopeless punishment, but in this, that it shows him, by what he is now bringing on himself, what he will one day bring on himself, when all his powers of resistance to temptation are weakened, and his leaning to unlawful pleasure has grown strong. For by yielding to sinful desire he changes the current of his thought, so that a new object seizes on the trains of thought and bends them from their old direction ; he dis- covers new facilities for indulgence, and new ways of keep- ing it secret ; he invents excuses for it, which rise in their sophistry and their wide-reaching extent, until every plea- sure, however base, could be justified on the same ground ; he increases the strength of desire until it becomes his main purpose to live for its gratification ;— yes, when it has be- come so -strong that its intensity has grown into an awful ^ur!?■°r, and when nature has become so blunt that all The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 75 pleasure from it is killed out, desire rages stUl the more fiercely, and the aim now is to put an end to an ever re- turning torment, rather than to supply new pleasure to a sated soul. Oh ! ye drunkards, who drink now to still a gnawing on the vitals which you liken to the fires of hell, and who yet are so holden by the cords of your sins that you are incurable ; oh ! ye degraded libertines, who have abused your natures in the indulgence of brutish lusts, until intellect is wasted and the body is diseased all over ; oh ! ye tenants of hospitals, who in catering to some vice have not been able to stop, until the divine ray of a soul is buried in hopeless idiocy, rise up in your dreadful legions, and testify to these young souls who are forming their habits, what the tendency is of indulged sins ; bear witness if your own iniquities have not taken you and you are not holden by the cords of your sins-^bear witness if sin must not be a vast evil, when it leads to such an end. 2. But another illustration of the self-propagating power of sin is found in the tendency of a sin of one kind to produce sins of another hind. We supposed a little while since that each act of sin stood by itself, without having any fruits or results within the soul. Suppose now that each kind of sin stood alone, with no tendency to bring on any other. If this were so, how much would the poison of sin be qualified, how much of self-restorative power would be still left to the sinner. For by the sup- position he has not undermined character ; all his moral perceptions, his dispositions, his native tendencies to virtue remain unimpaired ; and it may be these will prove stronger than the rebellious desire which has risen up to destroy the peace and break the confederacy of harmonious powers within the soul. And thus perhaps the disorders caused by this one inordinate impulse, when every thing is tamed down and brought back into place again, may be a landmark in the soul's history in favor of lasting union and peace. But alas ! the supposition is a drea n relating 76 The Self-Propatjating Power of Sin. to a possible kind of nature, and does not apply to the character of man. The confederacy of powers in him admits of no separate action of any one wayward impulse, but as soon as evil in one shape appears, it tends to cor- rupt all the parts of the soul, to disorganize, to reduce other powers under its own control, to weaken those which resist, until the most harmonious of structures becomes a wreck, the fairest of temples lies on the ground, with its walls parted and its pillars broken, a hopeless ruin. And could it well be otherwise, if sin be a divorce of the soul from God ? Ought not some awful confusion naturally to ensue, when the soul, at war within, at war with the laws of its nature, must be conceived of as being at war with its God also ? The first point we notice here is, that one sort of sin puts the body or soul, or both, into such a state, thai another sort becomes more easy and natural. Thus there is an affinity between bodily lusts, they are relations who intro- duce one another into the quarter they have occupied — and, again, any one of them tends to derange the soul by a loss of inward peace. In this way, drunkenness, for in- stance, may be the forerunner, not only of other base indulgences, but even of envy, distant as their province seems ; for the loss of comfort, or of a good name, which drunkenness brings with it, may make the prosperity of another a source of anguish. By an opposite process, the loss of inward quiet, which an internal sin, like envy or inordinate worldly care occasions, may drive the man into degrading pleasures in quest of something to satisfy or stupefy the soul. Still further it will seem natural, if not necessary, that one wrong affection should render another easier, if not give birth to it, as anger may give rise to detraction, revenge, and all the hateful brood that herd with them, or pride, after blunting the edge of the sym- pathies, may open the door to the same malevolent traits of character. And even an absorbing master passion, like The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 77 covetousness or ambition, when it has grown so great as to domineer over the enslaved soul, although it may exclude some other inconsistent passion, does not reign alone, but has around and behind it a gloomy train of satellites, which are little tyrants in turn. Covetousness — let it sway the soul, and suspicion, fraud, falsehood, discontent, envy, malice, will get as firm a foothold as the master demon himself, and no power of his can afterwards drive them from his company. The miser cannot be also a prodigal, but he must have spirits of hate and death in his soul. So ambition may exclude covetousness from the throne, but it has another train of its own familiars, as greedy, if not as base, as those of covetousness. When the spirit of evil conquers a man, "it taketh to itself seven other spirits, and they enter in and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first." But, again, a more striking example of the connection between different kinds of sins is seen, when a man resorts to a new kind of sin to save himself from the effects of the first. The general explanation of this fact in character is simple enough. According to God's merciful system in this world— under which many are kept back from sins, or at least fi^om gross ones, after a warning of experience — sin is generally attended with evil consequences, which are sufficiently annoying. Now, when a soul has gone far enough on in its evil career to perceive what is coming, two paths are open to it. One is to confess its fault to God, and seek peace and union with Him ; the other is to devise some mode of concealing sin, or of supplying the wants which its commission in the past has occasioned. This last is the ordinary way, in which human nature en- deavors to avoid the cords of its sins, when they begin to hold it tight. And in this way the reign of sin is extended over the character, and reaches on through all the lengths of time. Thus let a man by vicious practice have brought him- 78 Tlie Self-Propagating Foiver of Sin. self into fear of want, he lies under a fearful temptation to i5teal or rob or peculate or commit forgery, according to his condition of life, his facility of gaining his end, and his qualities of character. I need not say that the num- ber of those comparatively innocent thieves, who " steal to satisfy the soul when they are hungry," bears a small ratio to those whom guilt drives onward into deeper guilt ; or that the plunderers and defrauders of more genteel society are almost all of them led into their new crifnes in order to repair the ruin with which old ones had threatened them. But the painfullest view of our life suggested by these considerations, is that by the pn^cess of sin just described fakehood is introduced into the world and spread to an infinite extent. Every sin needs a falsehood, some con- cealment or pretense or profession, to support it, and thus the sinner knows that in the case of each new sin he can resort" to a new lie to save himself from immediate evil. Think what a deadly fountain is opened here, which, but for previous sinning, would never have sent forth its poi- sonous waters over the world, and what an awful tempta- tion comes upon the sinner's soul from the success and ease of its past concealments and lies. Virtue needs no cloak nor borrowed garb. There never would be an act of. insincerity, or even of dissimulation in a virtuous world — not a tone or gesture or hint tending to deceive or mis- guide. All the boundless numbers of all the forms of imtruthfulness, whose very names show their frequency, insincerities, prevarications, equivocations, falsehoods, lies, concealments of truths, pretenses, hypocrisies, treacheries, peijuries, and the rest, — all these are the supports, and the resorts of sin, generated by sin, generating sin. And thus, if the sin that gave birth to the felsehood tempts the soul no longer, the falsehood still sets up its tent in the soul. In the impressive language of the prophet, " that which the palmer worm hath left, hath the locust eaten, The Sdf-Propag-jting Power of Sin. 79 and that which the locust hath left hath the canker worm eaten, and that which the canker worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten." It is as with a burning house : whom the flame consumes not the smoke sufibcates. Nor can I forbear to mention in this place that another dark shade is thrown over the malignity of sin, from the fact, that it so often makes use of innocent motives to pro- pagate its power over the soul. The fear of danger or evil is a good thing, for it quickens the mind in its efibrts to avoid danger, and lead us into the path of virtue which is the path of safety. The love of esteem is a social princi- ple most happily put into us that it may aid the virtue of the one by the approbation of the many. But see how, the moment that sin reigns within us, these innocent princi- ples become sources of temptation and ministers of death to the soul. The fear of danger or of want, impels into new crimes as an escape from the results of old ones. The love of esteem is the handmaid of all falsehood and hypocrisy. What a picture this gives of the baneful power of sin — that it can undermine and corrupt the soul by the help of the very affections which were made to be the servants of virtue — that what can be used to build up everything good, it uses only to destroy. II. Another law of character by which the propagation and strength of sin is secured, is the tendency of sin to produce moral blindness. Our Saviour has stated the leading thought herein these words: "Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, kst his deeds should be reproved." Sin freely chosen must needs s^ek for some justification or palliation ; other- wise the moral sense is aroused, and the soul is filled with pain and alarm. Such justification cannot be found in moral or religious truth, and of this the soul is more or less distinctly aware. Hence an instinctive dread of truth, and a willingness to receive and embrace plausible, unsound excuses for sin, which neutralize or destroy its 80 The SelfPropagating Power of Sin. power. And in the process, inasmuch as there is a moral if not a logical affinity between all truths, and the same between all falsehoods, wben one untruth is embraced it brings another in its train, and yet another, until a whole system is constructed, on which the mind relies the more, because it has the compactness and strength of a system. Of course, the system of truth is driven out, and a hostil- ity grows up in the soul towards it, because it is perceived to be a destroyer of present comfort and peace. " Lest his deeds should be reproved." They who know how annoying is the fault-finder, and how irritating sometimes is even the reproof of a friend given in kindness, will esti- mate what the feeling would be towards truth when it came into the soul while falsehood was building up its castle, and sought to pull it down ; what a bitter war would ensue, a war which might reach beyond truth itself to all that love it, to all that preach it, to the book which professes to contain it, to the author of it Himself. In short the opposition is fitly expressed by that great phy- sical contrast of light with darkness, which our Saviour uses in His illustration. Now the ways in which this overthrow of unperverted moral judgments, this rejection of light tends to strengthen the power of sin, are manifold. It decreases the restrain- ing and remedial power of conscience; it kills the sense of danger and even adds hopefulness to sin ; it destroys any influence which the beauty and glory of truth could put forth ; in short, it removes those checks from pru- dence, from the moral powers, and from the character of Gdd, which retard the career of sin. If sin reigned before, how much more tyrannical its reign when false- hood is become its prime minister. III. Closely connected with this blinding power of sin is another law of character — that sin tends to benumb and root out the sensibilities, — by which process again, its power over the soul is anew increased. " Who, being. The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 81 past feeling, have given themselves over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness." We may perhaps reduce such a law, if it shall be found to exist, under the general law of habit, for where there is a long- continued check on the exercise of a feeling, it loses its power by habitual neglect, or suppression, just as it gains power by exercise. Now that such a law does exist, we may almost assume : it iS acknowledged, and its workings are seen on every hand. It is seen in the acquired cruelty of men of blood. " What difference do one hundred thousand men dead or alive make to me?" said Napoleon, when an Austrian statesman urged the loss of life which his measures would involve. It is seen in the horrible want of pity of the miser ; it is seen in that deadness to conscience, produced by long sinning, to which we have alluded above ; in that sinking down below the sense of character which the drunkard carries, as it were, on his face ; in the disregard of rights which the prodigal mani- fests ; in the extinction of the family affections ; in the astonishing selfishness of the seducer ; in the destruction almost complete of the religious sense of the blasphemer. And this view of sin shows it in its true light as a perverter of nature ; an overturner of all those particular traits, the union of which under love to God makes the harmony and beauty of the soul. Sin tends to destroy even those qualities which in a brute awaken our deep interest, and to put into thei,r place a lead-colored mono- tonous selfishness, which is not properly human nature, but its wreck and overthrow. Oh ! when selfishness, ^from being an instinct, becomes a law, a reigti, a tyranny over the soul, when this corruption has absorbed and assimi- lated to itself all the feelings and affections, must not the power of sin be greatly augmented ? IV. Another of the self-perpetuating processes of sin consists in its crippling the power of the will to under- take a reform. The will itself, indeed", as a faculty, can- 3* 82 The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. not suffer extiuction, any more than the soul. It must continue through thousands of years of sinning, and may show a fearful energy against the enemies of sin : it may even consent to what looks like disinterested sacrifices, out of mere hostility to goodness. But I refer to those cases, very frequent in life, which show a will so long overcome by the strength of sin and by ill-success in op- posing it, that the purpose of reform is abandoned in de- spair. Here the infirmity of the will depends not on de- ficiency of intellect, nor on natural weakness of the faculty, nor on constitutional want of hope, but on a practical estimate of the chances of success derived from experience. The man has fallen into a bad habit and struggles like a captive to set himself free. He under- takes the task with a firm purpose, and a strong hope, but there are two things he has not taken into account — the temporary excitement and even recklessness which desire can introduce into the soul, and the fallacious pleas by which it attempts to pacify conscience. At the moment of temptation, therefore, he loses his strength and will to resist, and is again caught and claimed by the kidnappers of the soul. The power of habit, now known to him by experience, increases the probabilities of being overcome again, and he goes back to this work of resistance with less hope than before. And so, repeated failures prostrate him, he owns himself vanquished, foresees no better times ahead, and yields as a slave to sin. Must not sin now have a heavier dominion over him than at first — ^yea, if he fall into some new kind of sin, will not this sense of weakness go with him, and help on the conquests of the new master? Oh wretched man that he is, who shall deliver him from the body of this death ? Who but that very Eansomer from whom sin keeps him far away? The outcries of human nature under this bondage to sin are tragic indeed ; no scene of murdered helplessness is more lamentable. Hear how Coleridge writes during The Selj'-Propagatlng Power of Sin. 83 that part of his life when he was a slave of opium, from which at length divine grace rescued him. The words are from a letter to Mr. Cottle ; " Had I but a few hun- dred pounds, but two hundred, half to send to Mrs. Cole- ridge, and half to place myself in a private mad-house, where I could procure nothing but what a physician thought proper, and where a medical attendant could be constantly with me for two or three months (in less than that time life or death would be determined), then there might be hope. Now there is none ! God ! how will- ingly would I place myself under Dr. t'ox, in his estab- lishment ; for my case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement, an utter impotence of the volition, and not of the iutellectual faculties. You bid me rouse myself! go bid a paralytic in both arms to rub them briskly together, and that will cure him. ' Alas ! ' he would reply, ' that I cannot move my arms is my com- plaint, and my misery.' " I knew a man once, now dead, a learned lawyer and a fine Greek scholar, but a drunkard. At his death his journal was found, and there, from day to day, he re- corded his lapses, his lamentations, his hopes, or his want of hopes; and the dreary record went on until he died with- out reform. It suggested to me the analogy of an officer in a weak fortrass writing down the successes of the enemy. Now they are on the esplanade, now upon the glacis, now they have taken a bastion, now the resisting soldiers are slain, and now a half-completed sentence shows that he, too, is dead. • Oh, when sin takes our will away and our hope, what is left to resist its power ? V. Sin propagates itself by means of the tendency of men to associate with persons of like character and to avo'd the company of persons of an opposite character. The good and the bad, the farther their characters diverge^ have the less fellowship with one another, until their tastes judgments, pleasures, and purposes, become diametrically 84 The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. opposite. It is indeed a merciful provision that ten thousand ties of kindred, neighborhood, business, mutual dependence, bind men of all characters and' lives to one another. And by the constitution of this earthly being of ours, good and evil being in the germ and not having attained their full growth, cannot take the attitude of full opposition, because they cannot appear to each other as they really are. There is, moreover, a constant possibility of reform in a world of grace. But even here, in this world of confused and imperfect characters, what a sepa- ration takes place between the opposite principles, between the men of honor who shrink from the contact of the base, and the men of dishonor who dread seeing themselves in the light of noble deeds, and dread coming to a dis- covery of their own shame ; between the women of purity, and the forlorn ones who have east character and hope away ; between the servant of God, and him who believes in no God or keeps at a distance from His face. But this separation, effected by sin, is far from keeping the sinner alone. He needs company the more, the less he is able to find resources, comfort, support within himself. Thus there are, in fact, two societies in spite of the binding forces among mankind, and if each of us, my friends, could live long enough to carry out the tendencies in us to their perfection, if this world consisted of old inhabitants who had time to develop their qualities in full, then there would be as wide a separation between men of opposite lives as if they dwelt in different planets. In the operation of this law of companionship, if I may so call it, the evil have a power and an increasing power over each other. The worst maxims and the worst opinions prevail, for they are a logical result of evil cha- racters. Separated from the good, the evil have no check on their mutual influence. The older corrupt the younger. Can you doubt that every perversion of truth, every de- praved hstbit, must have full sweep in such a society ? Tlie Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 85 Can you questioa the power of sin to propagate, to inten- sify itself, -where the social principle itself is in the service of evil ? O, what a blessing it is that in this system of grace such societies are of limited dimensions, are broken up by various causes, and that remedial influences from, rejected grace shine sometimes with life-giving power into these chambers of death. Blessed be God that the full fruits of sin are not gathered in this world, for the tenden- cies, even when partially counteracted, and manifested but in their beginnings, are beyond measure appalling. In conclusion, now, I have to say that with the justice or goodness of this system, I have at present nothing to do. The Bible did not set it on foot, the Bible does not fully explain it, but only looks at it as a dark fact. Nor can I stop to discuss the question whether men who are thus under the sway of moral death, are so wholly by their own fault, or partly by their misfortune. Somehow or other mankind,' ready as they are to palliate sin, are unanimous through all their races and generations and forms of life, in feeling and owning a load of sinfulness. But suppose mankind in this wholly wrong, I ask whether it does any good, when you have the pestilence, to inquire whom you took it from, or whether you were to blame in catching it, rather than whether it can be cured? Nor finally, will I refute the unfounded suggestion, that sin may be a stage of being through which we all must pass toward a higher. At least, sin does not cure itself or pave the way toward truth and right. The question then still is, is there any cure ? There is no cure certainly in continu- ing to sin. Sin no more destroys its own sway over the soul than Satan casts out Satan. If there be -any cure it must be found outside of the region which sin governs, either from some law of character, if there be any, over, which sin has not gotten the mastery, or from some divine strength which is to be sought with all possible earnest- ness. 86 Tlie Self-Propagating Power of Sin. Tell me, then, my tearer, is sin or is it not a great evil, one which no pains to oppose or to cure, are too great ? Do you say that you are not sensible of the greatness of the evil, that the tendencies which have been told of are seen in extreme cases only ? But if the tendencies are inseparable from sin ; if it sometimes fails to work out its full task, because some influence outside of the man con- trols it in part; if you can see its devastations in all ages and climes ; if even the one -vice of drunkenness has slain more victims than pestilence and war, what then? Is it not fair to point out such inevitable tendencies, is it not wise to dread them, is it not consistent with truth to use them as the measure of the power of sin ? I call on you then to find out for yourself a cure. I offer you one, Christ and His gracious Spirit. But if you do not believe in it, or dislike it, choose for yourself some other. Be a Pharisee, or an ascetic, fight against sin, crucify it in your own fashion. Get rid of it in some new way of your own if you can, no matter how, provided only you are freed efiectually from this self-spreading and self-continuing curse. Oh, my friends, the poor self-tor- menting Hindoo Faquir may be wrong in his means, but his end is a iiobler one than you can ever reach, while you neglect your character. Yes ! all, in eve^y laud, Pagans or Christians, clowns or philosophers, who, in whatever way have fought against or wept over the grand evil, will rise up in the judgment and condemn you because you have thought so lightly of this dread malady of your soul. SEEMON VI. SIN UNNATUEAL. Jer. ii. 12, 13. Be astonished, ye heavens at this and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord. For my people have com- mitted two evils ; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. The heavens and all their host obey the law of their nature with unchanging regularity. But man, another of the works of God, commits two evils ; he forsakes the fountain of living waters, and hews out for himself broken cisterns that can hold no water. In thus deserting the waters of life he is untrue to his own nature. If the , heavens had a soul and could notice this unnatural con- duct, so unlike to their conformity to the law of their being, they would be astonished and horribly afraid. The whole universe under physical law would cry out against man's strange disobedience to moral law, his swerving from his nature, his disloyalty to the author of his nature. It is this aspect of man as a sinner and this quality of his sin, for which I bespeak your attention a"t the present time. There is something unaccountable and unnatural about sin, which,*if we were not the victims of its power every day, would startle ^t« also and make us horribly afraid. If we merely heard of it as existing in some other of God's worlds, we should doubt whether the report of it that reached our ears could be true. We should demand more than the usual amount of testimony, as in the case of a miracle, before believing so unnatural a story, and when it was proved, should not cease to 87 88 Sin Unnatural. wonder, and to ask what cause beyond our experience had brought to pass a thing so marvellous. This view of sin as being unnatural is quite unlike that which men are apt to take. It is not strange, they think, to cheat or lie or get drunk, but to lead a perfectly sober, truthful, honest life is wonderful. To remain in a state of sin is quite natural, but to become a true Christian by a hearty reception of the Gospel is regarded as so un- natural, that many who profess to believe in Christianity refuse their faith to the reality of conversion, and many others describe it as the infusion of a new nature, as if the very seeds and capabilities of goodness had been lost out of the human soul. This is explained in part by the fact that man, as fallen, is in an abnormal or unnatural state, so that he wonders, when he sees the normal condition of his nature. The very description of this state as a /all implies that it is unnatural, that it is a departure from a type or cha- racter properly belonging to mankind, a sinking down from a level where we had been placed, or a separation from God with whom we were for a time in harmony. And yet we are so removed in character and in experienco from the higher, holier life which is our birth-right, that such a life startles us as something not human. Men stare at goodness, as if it had no right to be here on earth, or suspect it as unreal. Even Christ, a practical life and not an idea of the mind, Christ all instinct with living good- ness, is a marvel in His perfection, so that some seek for flaws in His character, and others cannot believe that such goodness existed in the shape of man, and others still refer his perfection to the God within Him ; and yet He was, as a perfect man, a sample of a regular unfolding of our nature. The regular irregularity of man is the wonder. There is none like it in the material world. The asteroids, the deformities, and unwonted misgrowths of animals, and even double flowers, are strange, but tbey Sin Unnatural. 89 are exceptions. So it is also with deranged reason. But here the abnormal is the order of things, the conformity to nature is the exception almost unheard of. Among the marvels or mysteries of sin, we name as the first — That it prevents men from pursuing what they own to be the highest good. There is an often quoted passage of the poet Ovid * where a person in a conflict between reason and desire is made to say, " Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor ;" and in a like strain we hear the apostle Paul, or rather the man made aware of the bondage of sLn saying through him, " That which I do, I allow not : for what I would, tbat do I not, but what I hate, that do I." And so true to human nature such words are, that -no one ever thought of them as being, misrepresentations of the real state of man. No ! man every whe:re, by every kind of confession, uttered or unuttered, makes known that he has an idea of duty, right, good, within him to which he fails to conform, that he does this by no constraint, but prefers the known worse to the known better, that in so acting he sacrifices what he verily believes to be his highest happiness even in this world, casting another world out of account. And everywhere we see examples of this sacrifice of a higher good to a lower, of acknowledged greater happiness to less, of the improvement of the mind to the enjoyments of the body, of future hopes to present pleasure, of an ol^ject of desire felt to be praiseworthy and exalted to one which is base and low and sure to be followed by remorse. We find this cleaving to the b£st of men and to the wisest: the influences of the gospel may weaken but never remove this tendency. It belongs to mankind. But if any thing can be inferred from our nature and capacities, it is certain, that an estimate of the compara- »Metam. vii., 20, 21. 90 67(1 Unnatural. tive values of things desirable is implanted in our minds, in order that we may choose the superior good and reflise the inferior. When we fail to do this, we reproach our- Belves with folly or with sin. When we look back upon past choices and pathways in life, we feel remorse or self- approbation, or at least, respect or despise ourselves, in proportion as we have been true or false to our estimates and convictions in our choices between objects of desire. This is inevitable, whether we make the true good to con- sist in happiness, or in obedience to the law of duty, or in being like God, or under whatever aspect we view that which we believe to be the highest object of desire. Thus there is a universal preference of a lower good to a higher in the life of men, a universal power of comparing goods with tolerable accuracy, and a universal condemnation lying on the race for not being true to its estimates and standards. Is there not, now, something very strange in this fatal V)roclivity toward the low, in this constant, wide-spread, ' unalterable folly of choosing wrong within the moral sphere of action ? Suppose that we found the same obli- quity of judgment and choice elsewhere — that, for in- stance, a scholar, aware what was the right meaning of a passage according to the laws of thought and language, deliberately chose a wrong meaning ; or a merchant, ac- quainted with the laws of trade, undertook an adventure with his eyes open, from which only ruin was to be ex- pected ; or a general, patriotic and discerning, adopted a plan of battle which all his experience had condemned as sure to end in his defeat ; should we not regard such a person, if we could conceive he had thus acted, as a kiad of moral prodigy, as fit to be put away in a museum of morbid psychology among the deranged men who have believed themselves to be two persons, or that their souls had gone from their bodies ? Do you say that this is a per- verted use of freedom ? But is there nothing strange in a Sin Unnatural. 91 perversion, which sacrifices a known good ? Or do you say that it is a fatal, hopeless want of freedom ? But is there nothing strange in such fatality, if a creature of God is made to choose what he condemns ; and if there were no God, would it not be equally strange that man, the ofi"- spring of chance, should regularly condemn what he chooses? Or will you say that by some internal excitement of desire the present inferior good or even the present evil puts on fair colors, takes a false dress, and with a half conscious connivance of the soul deceives it into sin ? Very well, but why cannot the superior good which is in itself all beauty and in its fruits all enjoyment, — why cannot this take its proper place before the mind, and act with its proper strength ? Is there nothing strange in this — that falsehood should have such power of fascination, such constant power, and truth show itself so feeble, at the very time when we discern them both, and own the force of obligation ? Must we not, when we reflect what man was made for, what the law of his nature is, what his harmonies and his true life are, wonder that he should make such choices in the sunlight of truth, with great risks and threatened evils attending a wrong choice, with conscience not yet seared, with his soul craving the better portion, and often, very often, witnessing against him that he is preferring death to life ? Here then is a marvel of our nature : sin is something unnatural and monstrous ; its sway is not according to the true law of the soul's con- stitution but against it. II. Another marvel, connected with the sway of sin is, that it is not dependent on a weak capacity, but that the very highest intellects are often employed in its service. It is indeed true, that sagacity and folly will differ in their ways of sinning and of escaping detection. An ab- surd, or ill-contrived crime, will be committed by a boy or a half-witted person, and not by a man of shrewdness. Whence it may happen, that the criminals in a peniten- 92 Sin Unnatural. tiary may be, in the average, below the ordinary range of intellect. In other words, the vigor of mind will show; itself, either by abstaining from certain crimes, or by com- mitting them in such a way that they will not be brought, to light. But we do not find that the highest abilities keep men from sinning, from a life of pleasure, from deadly selfishness, from feelings which carry with them their own sting. Great minds lie like wrecks all along the course of life ; either they disbelieve against evidence, or give themselves up to monstrous pleasures, or destroy the welfare, of society by their self-will, or gnaw upon them- selves with a deadly hatred of others. If they are some- times philosophers, or great inventors, or philanthropists, they are at other times in the front ranks of wickedness. There have been great infidels, as well as great Christians. There have been great conquerors, scourges of men, as well as great philanthropists. And, on the other hand, persons of feeble capacity are oftentimes good ; better than many — if not than any — of the great men of their times. Nay, so often have intellect and morals been out of harmony, that many persons think knavery a prima fade evidence of talent, — confessing thus, that in their opinion, men are likely to employ their powers of mind in a wrong and foolish way. Now is there not something very strange in this ? We do not wonder when we hear that an idiot, or half-idiot, has committed a crime ; and a court will not punish him, because he has not mind enough to balance his native strength of passion. He will be shut up as a dangerous person, but not punished as a criminal. Ought it not to be strange, on the other hand, that intellect is used by so many, not to check desires, which end in crime, but to en- large the plans of sinning, and to purchase impunity ? And if a moderate intellect will fit a man for the business of this world, ought we not to expect, if there is not some-, thing abnormal io our condition, that the Csesars and Na- Sin Unnatural. ^ 93 poleons, that the great statesmen, and poets, and artists, should be pre-eminently the men of God; men for whose minds this world was too small, who shook off its fetters and soared away towards the Great Mind that filleth the universe ? But who among them turns his thoughts thus upward, and forms his plans on a scale as grand as his own mind ? It does not surprise us to see the very ablest men slaves of drunkenness or impurity', or to see them filled with intense hate; their intellects, so far from looking ahead and warning them against dangers, are ministering to their 'lusts, and putting fuel on the flame, like the en- gineers in a steamer, when it is running on the rocks. And, therefore, moralists have made tirades against the weakness of the human intellect, because great men have rushed into all follies to their own ruin. Whereas the io- tellect is not at fault— it can scale the heavens, and travel through eternity, it can search all depths of science, and is equal to all things with which our nature has to do ; — why should it then not mitigate, why should it carry for- ward the great malady of sin ? III. Another marvel of sin is that its existence involves the contradiction of the freedom and the slavery of the will. This is but another aspect of the truth which we have already considered — that the soul steadily chooses in some strange way an inferior good before a superior ; but it is too important a view of our nature not to be noticed by itself. Mankind in choosing the evil, have been an enigma to themselves, and to the philosophers who have studied human nature. On the one hand, duty implies power to do what is required, freedom to yield to a given tQOtive or reject it; on the other hand, the experience of the soul points to a bondage under sin, in which the free- dom natural and essential to it is obstructed, and the man is as much a slave, as if he never gave his assent. So helpless man appears, so fruitless are his unaided eiforts to escape from evil habit, and above all to yield himself 94 Sin. Unnatural. to God his rightful ruler, that the unexercised freedom seems unreal to many, and they deny its existence. Some hold that the will is swayed by laws as sure and almost as mechanical as those of the outer world. Others quiet their consciences by the plea that they are not responsible. But after all, the faith in human freedom comes back and falls into conflict with the certain awful fact of the bondage of our nature under sin. We see our nature ex- ercise its freedom in various ways — choosing now a higher good in preference to a lower, and now a lower before a higher, — doing this over and over within the sphere of earthly things, yet when it looks the supreme good full in the face unable to choose Him, unable to love Him, until, in some great crisis which we call conversion, and which is as marvellous as sin is, we find the soul acting with recovered power, acting out itself, and soaring in love to the fountain and life of its being. Oh, who can deny this to be marvellous, that all good things, save the truest good, are accepted or rejected ad libitum, while that which alone deserves to be called good, is avoided and disliked constantly. Ye philosophers, tell us if there be any marvel in nature like this. It is as if a balance should tell every small weight with minutest accuracy, and when a large weight was put on, should refuse to move at all. It is as if the planets should feel each other's attraction but be insensible to the force of the central sun. Is not sin then as unaccountable as it is deep-seated and spread- ing in our nature ? IV. But, fourthly, the same mystery of sin appears, when we consider that it has a power of resisting all knowi- motives to a better life. This, again, is only another form of the remark, that we are kept by sin from pursuing our highest good; but under this last head we view man as opposing God's plan for his salvation, while the other is more general. Here we see how causeless and unreason- able are the movements of sin, even when its bitterness Sin Unnatural. 95 lias been experienced, and the way of recovery been made known. If there had been no higher life disclosed to us in the Gospel, it would not seem so very strange that the calls of earthly prudence should be disregarded, that be- tween motives not vastly different in power, a weaker should prevail over a stronger, that earthly interests should be sacrificed to earthly pleasure ; for earth is but a point, and if we lose in the continuance of our enjoy- ment, when we are deaf to the voice of prudence and listen to pleasure, we yet gain in the intensity of it, we crowd more into a moment. But the marvel is, that the Gospel, with its mighty motives, appeals in vain to thousands who profess to have no doubt that it is from God. There is surely no such crowd of motives and reasons attendant on any other question as on that of the reception of Christianity. It is a question bfetween life and death, in which our highest interests are concerned, which appeals to our hopes and fears, Our consciences, our aspirations after a better life, our gratitude and love. It founds its appeals on thfe most remarkable facts in the universe, on the love of God to sinners, on the incarnation and death of Christ. We have the offer of pardon, peace, help, to raise us up to God, deliverance froin fear, support in death, and a blessed immortality. The way in which the Gospel comes to us is the mofet inviting possibly* — through a person who lived a life like ours on earth, and came into tender sympathy with us ; through a con- crete exhibition of everything true and good, not through doctrine'and abstract statenient. It has been the religion of our fathers, and of the holy in all time. It is venerable in our eyes. It is God's voice to us. Where else can so many motives, such power of persuasion be found; arid yet where else, in what other sphere where motivea operate, is there so little success? Even Christians who have given themselves to the Gospel, confess that all theso weighty considerations often fail to move them ; that they 96 Sin Unnatural. stand still or turn backwards a great part of their lives, rather than make progress. So marvellous is the power of sin to deaden the force of motives to virtue, even in the minds of the best persons the world contains. Nor will the force of these considerations be escaped by saying that the motives fail to act because the Gospel which presents them is not believed. If by belief is meant faith in its divine origin, thousands have that faith, and would highly resent the charge of being without it, who are as little governed by the motives to which it appeals, as the professed infidel. Or if by belief is meant such an impression of the reality of the Gospel as makes its facts and truths motives of action, that is the very marvel of which we speak, that this dread assemblage of truths can be accepted as real, without exerting a motive power upon the soul, without awaking it from its dreams of worldli- ness. And, again, if one should say that the marvel is less- ened by the consideration that man is a creature of sense, over whom spiritual, intangible realities can have no power, or that he must be educated up by a long process to a capacity for spiritual life, I reply, that as far as we admit this we see another of the marvels of sin. Here is a creature, formed in God's image, yet sunk so low that his brutish nature has almost forgotten its relationship to its author ; the noblest, most essential powers of his soul lie so latent that they seem to be extinct. Is there not something very Strange in this degradation, this locking up of the spirit, this unnatural fall ? But man is not a creature of sense with the spiritual powers wholly unexer- cised. All religions with their appeals to invisible gods, all ascetic and mystical efforts to become virtuous, the love of fame creating a world for the author or warrior after his death, all affection for the departed, all systems of philosophy, all standards of duty above that of the Epicurean, show another capacity in man, that, namely. sin Unnatural. 97 to which the Gospel speaks, when it invites the soul to a fellowship with God and an inheritance in eternal life. That this capacity is so inactive and feeble under the Gos- pel, that is the wonder. Our nature can not explain this ; it can be referred only to the unnatural state of man as a sinner. V. Another of the marvels of sin is, that it can blind the mind to truth and evidence. Of this we see number- less examples in daily life. We see men who have been accustomed to judge of evidence within the same sphere in which religion moves, that of moral and historical proof, rejecting the Gospel, and afterwards acknowledging that they were wilfully prejudiced, that their objections ought to have had no weight with a candid mind. We see prejudice against the Gospel lurking under some plausible but false plea, which the man has never taken the pains to examine, although immense personal interests are involved. We see men rejecting the Gospel unthink- ingly, repeating some stale argument scarcely worth refu- tation, as if a great matter like the welfare of the soul might be triiled with, and made light of We see men in a state of skepticism half their lives, resting on nothing, and willing so to live, rather than to make up their minds on the truth or the falsehood of Christianity. We see men claiming that they have sifted evidence with all can- dor, yet starting with an assumption to the prejudice of the Gospel which is obviously false. It is strange too, how quick the change is, when for some reason the moral or religious sensibilities are awak- ened after long slumber, how quick, I say, the change is from skepticism, or denial of the Gospel, or even hostility, to a state of belief. Multitudes of intelligent men have passed through such jl conversion, and have felt ever afterwards that truth and evidence were sufficient, but that their souls were in a dishonest state. Now how is this? Is this a new prejudice which has seized upon 5 98 Sin Unnatural. them, at their conversion, and has their candid skepticism given way to dishonest faith ; or did sin, — that which in a thousand ways, through hope and fear, through indolence, through malignity, through love of pleasure, blinds and stupefies, did sin destroy their power t)f being candid be- fore? The power of sin to prevent the force of truth seems marvellous, especially when we consider the greatness of the risk run in rejecting the truth. It is possible that belief and the favor of God may go together. It is quite possible that character and happiness forever may depend upon receiving the truth and the motives which it carries in its train; thus personal interests, welfare, the possi- bility of virtue, God's enduring smile, all may depend upon belief in the Gospel. It certainly claims so much importance for its truth. Is now the state of that mind^ which is thoughtless of its own interests for eternity, whUe it is alive to the smallest interests of time, a state of the highest candor and impartiality, or is it a state of prejudice or of lethargy so deep that nothing, not even the hazards of a future life, can shake it off ? And is not this a strange, unnatural state, when a soul that is made to watch over its own welfare a great way on ; a soul that can plan for ages after death ; a soid whose very selfish- ness ought to make it more intensely anxious to know what is the way of life ; that such, a soul can treat truth like a play-thing ; that a man of intellect can grow old without sifting the evidence of the Gospel; that many shrewd men can die with their hostility to it unquenched, as if it were the great foe of their peace ? VI. I only add, that the inconsistency of sin is mar- vellous in this respect ; that we allow and excuse in our- selves what ■we condemn in others. Men seem sometimes to have no moral sense, so open are their violations of morality, and so false their justifications of their conduct. And yet, when they come to pass censure upon others, Sin Uimaiural. 99 they show such a quickness to discern little faults, such an acquaintance with the rule of duty, such an unwilling- ness to make allowances, that you would think a new faculty had been imparted to their minds. These severe critics of others are all the while laying up decisions and precedents against themselves, yet when their cases come on, the judges reverse their own judgments. They con- demn men unsparingly for sins to which they axe not tempted, although the radical principle in their own and in other's sins is confessedly the same. They blame and hate others for heart sins, such as envy, when they feel no compunction for this, the commonest of sins, in their own hearts. They complain of detraction and evil speak- ing, when they are injuring the good name and aspersing the character of others continually. Perhaps, after they have fallen into a sin which they had condemned in others before, they become, in that particular, somewhat milder censors. There is, however,, in other cases, a very constant condemnation aiid justification, by turns, of the very same sins. Marvellous inconsistency ! Strange that the same mind balances between two standards of conduct so long. Why does not the man, whose own rules condemn himself, begin to sentence himself, or to excuse and pardon others? Is not this an unnatural state of mind ; impossible, save on the supposition that it is effected by some strange per- version of its judgments ? Such are some of the points of view from which sin looks unnatural, a breach of the order of things, a mon- strous innovation introduced into the world. But we have not exhausted the subject. If we take a view, for an instant, of some of the affections and sentiments, the same thing may be made apparent. We have the feeling of reverence within us to lead us to worship, and yet while all false and foul divinities are worshiped, man flees from the face of the infinitely holy and beautiful God. We are endowed with sympathy, that we may 100 Sin Unnatural. rejoice in the joy, and grieve at the pain of others ; yet, •what seems more natural, or is more common in the world than envy which grieves at the joy, and even malice, which rejoices at the pain of men ? It may be shown, that every sentiment under the control of principle and right reason, which are the natural condition of man, would harmonize with every other. But the social principles are all taken hold of by sin, and so disharmony seems to be written on our souls, and on society. Shame leads us to do things that are in reality shameful, and a sense of honor, things that are dishonorable. Selfishness reigning supreme, brings the individuals of society into hostility, and one society into hostility to another. Fear, covetousness, love of superiority, suspicion, and their kindred, make a state of disorder in the world seem so natural, that war, accord- ing to some thinkers, is the normal condition of man. We have thus looked at some of the phenomena which take place among men under the sway of sin, phenomena common enough — alas ! far too common — but not natural nor regular actings of our souls. And this strangeness has always been felt to exist. Some have talked of two souls with different characteristics. Some, of opposite spiritual powers, leading a soul difierent ways. Some have done violence to their primary convictions, by de- nying the existence of sin, as if man became less of an enigma on that supposition; but sin remains, and the strange perversion remains, which it brings into the sys- tem of motives and into the intellectual state ! Perver- sion ! Do not words like this, and like vjronff, that is something wrung or twisted, and many others, indicate the judgment which has been passed on sin by the makers of language, that is by human minds, as something op- posed to the right, the good, and the true ? And if sin is thus unnatural, thus strange in its work- ings, true faith in Christ, true godliness, union with God, on the other hand, is natural, is regular, is in harmony Sin Unnatural. 101 with truth and reason. "We become the followers of Christ, and in proportion as we are so, we pursue the highest good ; every good thing takes its place in our regard according to its importance ; Our wills no longer remain under bondage to sin, while conscious of freedom ; every motive has its due sway over us ; every truth is sure of admission to our hearts ; we have the same standard for ourselves and for others, only throwing something into the scale in their favor as a make-weight to our own selfishness. We are brought, in short, into harmony with God, and thus put forth our natural powers in their natural direction. Then, as we look back on the old pathway of sin, it seems a delusion, a bondage, a marvel ; we are astonished at it, and conversion seems the only reasonable, the only natural thing. And when we look at a world under the control of sin, strange, inexplicable, sad, as its mysterious introduction among us seems, its fearful, unreasonable, all perverting power is the strange thing which ought to affect us most. Redemption, too, is strange. It is marvellous. But if sin has been discovered by us to be so perverse and marvellous a thing, we shall not estimate the outlay of divine power in redemption as too great. Christ and His cross are in proportion to sin ; and when we come to think of it, we shall sometimes feel as if the incarnation of the Son of God was not more wonderfiil than that free, responsible men, to whom their own interests are so valuable, should act without regard for every thing true and good ; that above all, they should reject this very redemption which Christ has provided for them.* * Compare Augustin de Civit. Dei xi. Cap. 17. " Sine dubio, ubi esset vitium malitiEC, natura non vitiata prseoeBsit, vitium autem ita contra nafcuram est, ut non possit nisi noeere naturae. Non itaque esset vitium recedere a Deo, nisi naturae, oujus id vitium est, potius competeret esse cum Deo. Quapropter etiam voluntas mala grande testimonium est naturae bonee." And again, Lib. xii. Cap. 3 : " Naturas illae, quae ex malas voluntatis vitio vitiatas sunt, in quantum TitiosEB sunt, malee sunt ; in quantum autem naturm sunt, bonae sunt." SERMON VII. SIN NOT SELF-EEFOEMATORY. I^SAIAH i. 6. Why should ye be stricken any more? Te will revolt more and more : the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint, I HAVE lately called your attention to two aspects of sin, to its dreadful power of propagating -itself, and to its being a violence against nature. I invite your attention to-day, to a third aspect, that there is no tendency in sin to cure itself, or that sin has in itself and its consequencea no self-reforming power. It might seem, if sin can be called unnatural and mon- strous, that nature could shake it off, and return to her own law. It might seem also, that the results of sin would cure the sinner of his evil tendencies, and send him back on the path of wisdom. Do we not learn continu- ally by our mistakes ? Are not men made better by the faults they have committed and the evils they have suf- fered ? What is more common than that the beginning of a religious life proceeds from some out-breaking sin, which shows to a man for the first time his true weakness of character, and leads him in humble shame to the grace of the Gospel ? We grant that a man in a state of sin may be led to abandon some sin, or some excess of sin, from considera- tions of prudence. We grant also that affliction softens many characters which it fails to lead to sincere repent- ance, by lowering their pride, or by sobering their views of life. We have no doubt that the seeds of a better life are sown amid the storms and floods of calamity. And for the Christian it is certain that sorrow is a principal means of growth in holiness. Nay, it may even" happen 102 Sill not SelJ-ReJormatmy. 103 that a sin committed by a Christian may in the end make him a better man, as Peter, after his denial of Christ and the knowledge he thus gained of his feebleness, grew in real strength as much as he declined in self-confidence, and was able the better to strengthen his brethren. We admit, also, and rejoice to admit, that a life of sin, being a life of unrest and disappointment, cannot fail of being felt to be such, so that a sense of inward want, a longing for redemption, enters into the feelings of many hearts that are not willing to confess 'it. Many persons who have not reached the true peace of the Gospel,,sigh for it ; many feel the weakness of the' disease, without applying to the physician; many reform their lives in Pharisaicial strictness, without coming to Christ: and many come to Christ, being led to Him by this inward unrest, this inward void which a life of sin has produced. But all this does not oppose the view which we take of sin, that it contains within itself no radical cure, no real reformation. Man is not led by sin into holiness. The means of recovery lie outside of the region of sin, beyond the reach of experience,^they lie in the free grace of God, ■which sin very often opposes and rejects, when it comes with its healing medicines and its assurances of deliverance. The most which prudence can do, acting in view of the experienced consequences of sin, is to plaster over the exterior, to avoid dangerous habits, to choose deep-seated sins in lieu of such as lie on the surface. Exchanging thus Pharisaical pride for vice, respectable sin for vulgar sin, sin that does not injure for sin that in- jures body and good name, it seems to the unthinking to have worked a marvellous cure. But there is no true reformation, no giving of a new form to the soul, in the case. The physician has changed the seat of the malady, he has not driven it out of the constitution. Now that sin works out no cure of itselfj that sin by no 104 Sin not Self-Eeformatory. process, direct or indirect, can purify the character, will appear First, from the self-propagating nature of sin, to which your attention was called some time since. If sin has the nature to spread and strengthen its power, if by repetition habits are formed which are hard to be broken, if habits of indulgence in one kind of sin pave the way for other kinds, if the blindness of mind which supervenes adds to the ease of sinning, and takes away from the force of reforiii- atory motives, if discouragement and the feeling that all moral strength is gone render return upon one's step more difficult, if sin spreading from one person to another increases the evil of society, and therefore reduces tlie power of each one of its members to rise above the general corruption, do not aU these considerations show that sin provides no cure for itself, that there is, without divine intervention, no remedy for it at all? If sin at once extends its sway in the soul, and weakens the power of existing motives, whence can a cure come, unless from new motives and from influences of a divine origin ? Can any-one show that there is any maximum of strength in sin, so that after some length of continuance, after the round of experiences is run over, after wisdom is gained, its force abates, and the soul enters on a work of self- restoration ? Alas ! this does not verify itself in the life of men. Is it the nature of virtue after long persistence to chop round like the wind, and give place to vice? Can vice be shown from what we see of character to have a contrary quality? II. The same thing will appear from the fact, that the mass of the persons who are truly recovered frorn sin, ascribe their cure to some external cause, — nay, I should say to some extraordinary cause, which sin had nothing to do with bringing into existence. Ask any one who seems to you to have a sincere principle of godliness, what it was that wi'ought the change in his case, by which he for- sin not Self-Beformatgry. 105 sook his old sins. Will he tell you that it was sin leading him round, by the experience of its baneful effects, to a life of holiness ? Will he even jrefer it to sense of obliga- tion awakened by the law of God ? Or will he not rather ascribe it to the perception of God's love in pardoning sinners through His Son? Nor will he stop there; he will go beyond the outward motive of truth t j the inward ope- ration of a Divine Spirit. Somehow religious persons agree in attributing the change of their life to a cause as remote as possible from sin. Sin, by no means, wrought the transformation. Law did not. Even the unaided truth of the Gospel did not. But if sin could cure, if it did cure itself, we should find another conviction in the minds of those who were under its treatment ; we should not see this unanimity. You cannot make those who have spent the most thought, and had the deepest experience of the quality of sin, admit, that spiritual death of itself works a spiritual resurrection. Moreover, were it so, you could not admit the necessity of the Gospel. What is the use of medicine, if the disease, after running its course, strengthens the constitution, so as to secure it against maladies in the future ? Can truth, with all its motives, do as much? If, then, the expe- rience of sin, by some wonderful law of nature, is fraught with such a benign efficacy, the Gospel is officious in its offers of help ; it were better that the human race be left alone, until it find itself, through its sins, advanced to a position of superior virtue. To this it may be added, that the prescriptions of the Gospel themselves often fail to cure the soul : not half of those who are brought up under the Gospel, are truly Christians. This again shows how hard the cure of sin is. For the motives drawn from the Gospel do not operate against nature, but with it, and if nature has of itself a restorative power, they ought only to accelerate the pror cess. Why should nature reject them? Why should 5* 106 Sill not Self-Reformatory. they fail in any case ? Is it not a proof of the severity of the disease of sin, that they often have no good effect whatever ? III. We do not find that inordinate desire is rendered moderate by the experience that it fails to satisfy the soul. A most important class of sins are those of excited desire or, as the Scriptures call them, of lust. The extravagance of our desires — the fact that they grow into undue strength, and reach after wrong objects, is owing to our state of sin itself, to the want of a regulative principle of godliness. When the spirit of love and obedience is absent, something must take its place, or there will be a vacuum in the sou], which is abhorrent to ournature. Our individual natures determine what this master-passion shall be. Is it the love of money? This love, indulged, grows in strrngtli, and grasps at more than it ever possesses. But, inasmuch as no such gratification can fill the soul, inasmuch as man was made to be nourished by angels' food, and not by the husks which the swine do eat, there must come a time of dissatisfaction, a feeling of emptiness, an apprehension of coming want. How is it now with the soul which has thus pampered its earthly desires, and starved its heavenly? Does it cure itself of its misplaced affections ? If it could, all the warnings and contemplations of the moral philoso- phers might be thrown to the winds, and we should only- need to preach intemperance in order to secure temper- ance ; to feed the fire of excess, that it might the more speedily bum out ; to place temptations in the way of the youth, that he might become a roue at his prime, and so have an old age of moderation before him ? But who would risk such an experiment? Does the aged miser relax his hold on his money-bags, and settle down on the lees of benevolence ? Does the worn-out voluptuary, even when his senses are blunted, shake off his vices and become a new man ? Is this the natural process ? Is it so common as to be looked on without wonder? Or, rather, when the grace of God — a cause from without and extraordinary — mm not ISelJ-KeJormatory. 107 penetrates into the heart of such a man, do not men look on his change with suspicion, as a kind of compulsory- divorce from his vices ; or, if he is admitted to be a sincere penitent, is it not regarded as among the marvellous re- sults of Divine grace ? No! my friends, think not that nature or some law of the mind breaks the chains of desire so easily, when a life or long years of a life have hardened the bondage. Christ knew of no such thing when He said "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God." Calculate not too confidently on the moral powers of a mind which has spent all its strength on sinful desires. It is not so very easy a thing for a supremely selfish man to renounce himself, even with the oflTers of the Gospel before his eyes>. The soul must take a leap almost in the dark ; must in its own apprehension run the risk of being stripped of everything without gaining anything. " Give up my supreme good ? Why not ask me. to annihilate myself?. How do I know, who have never had it in my bosom, that this new affection, this love of God to which you call me, is not as much smoke as that old desire which has reigned in my members?" Such are some of the suspicions with which a jaded, sated soul will look on the invitations of the Gospel, even while it owns its want of inward peace. Without the gospel what promise of good is sufficient to stem or alter the desires of such a soul? IV. The pain or loss, endured as a fruit of sin, is not, of itself, reformatory. I have already said that under the Gospel such wages of sin are often made use of by the divine Spirit to ?ober, subdue, and renovate the cha- racter. Many have been enabled to say that before they were afflicted they went astray, but that now they keep God's word. And this benefit from afflictions is by no means confined to those trials which are properly the direct consequences of sin, but belongs to all the sufferings 108 Sin not Sdf-Reformaiory. of this earthly state, whatever be their source. But even under the Gospel, how many, instead of being reformed by the punishment of their sins, are hardened, embittered, filled with complaints against divine justice and human law. The tenants of prisons, under the old system of stern infliction, were rather corrupted than made better by confinement, by every display of the justice and indigna- tion of society. The Jewish system was one where justice preponderated, yet Although grace was not there ex- cluded, we find continual complaints on the part of the prophets that the people remained hardened through all the discipline of God, although it was fatherly chastise- ment, which held out hope of restoration to Ihe divine favor. " Why should you be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more," says Isaiah in the words of our text. But a passage from the prophet Amos may stand instead of all others. "I have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places, yet ye have not turned unto Me, saith the Lord. And also I have withholden the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest — ^yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. I have smitten you with .blasting and mildew; when your gardens and your vineyards and your olive trees increased, the palmer worm devoured them; yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt — ^yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a fire-brand plucked out of the burning ; yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. Therefore thus will I do to thee, Israel ; and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel." Such was a large experience of the eflacaoy of punish- ment under the Jewish economy. Turn now to a state of things where the divine clemency is wholly unknown or Sin not Self- Reformatory. 109 seen only in its feeblest glimmerings. Will naked law, will pure justice work a reform to whicli divine clemency is unequal ? V. Remorse of conscience is not reformatory. Perhaps we ought to say that remorse in its design was put into the soul as a safeguard against sin, in order to prevent the new offender from repeating his transgressions. But in the present state of man remorse has no such power for the following reasons : First, it is d&pendent for its power, and even for its exist- ence, on the truth of which the mind is in possession. Of itself it teaches nothing ; it infers no general rules of mo- rality from single instances, no law of action from separate actions; it rather obeys the truth which is before the mind at the time. If now the mind lies within the reach of any means by which it can ward off the force of truth or put falsehood in the place of truth, sin will get the better of remorse, the dread of remorse will cease to set the soul upon its guard. We say, secondly, that every sinner has such means of warding off the force of truth, and so of weakening the power of self-condemnation, at his command. The sophis- tries which a sinful soul plays off upon itsel:^ the excuses which palliate, if they do not justify transgression, are in- numerable. Admit the plea that a strong temptation renders sin venial, or that a man has no freedom to do otherwise than he has done, or that pleasure is the end of existence, or that inconsideration is an excuse for wrong- doing, and what becomes of remorse ? It has for the pre- sent lost its sting. The guilty soul learns to trifle with it. But, again, remorse according to the operation of the law of habit is a sentiment which loses its strength as the sinner continues to sin. It is benumbed like other sensi- bilities which are violated, like pity, which is blunted by acts of cruelty, or sympathy, which is undermined by the indulgence of envy: when we injure the powers of our 110 Sin not Self-Reformatory. souls in their legitimate exercise, they take a terrible re- venge upon us by neglecting to do their work ; the senti- nels have been tampered with by a traitor within, and the camp is open to the enemy. What good are you to get from the voice of conscience, if you have enfeebled its power so that it can be scarcely heard ? Will the whis- per of reproof reform you when the loud thunder could not? But, once more, suppose that all this benumbing of con- science is temporary, as indeed it may well be; suppose that through these years of sinning it has silently gathered its electric power, but, when the soul is hackneyed in sin and life is in the dregs, will give a terrible shock— will this work reform ? Will remorse then take its seat as an admonisher, and not rather as a judge and a doomster in the great criminal court of God? Will there be courage to undertake a work then for which the best hopes, the greatest strength of resolution, and the help of God are wanted ? No ! discouragement then must prevent reform. The sorrow of the world worketh deHth. The most hope- less of all persons is he who has put darkness for light, and stupefied his conscience for years with success, until some crisis, some danger of death comes. Then the ory will generally be, even under a Gospel of mercy — - It is too late." yi. Finally, the experience of sin brings the soul no nearer to religious truth. Truth is the treasury from which our active powers draw their instruments or motives for the government of the life. Now if sin, as we learned its nature and results by experience, brought us nearer and nearer to the truth which can regulate our character,- and deepened the impressions which our condition here below ought to make upon us, then the gray-haired sinner of a life-time were worthy of all envy, and sin would con- tain in itself, instead of a sting at the last, a Gospel of mercy. But it is not so, as is plain from what we see of life and know of our own selves. Sin not Sslf-Eeformatory. Ill For sin, amongst other of its effects, makes us more afraid of God or more indifferent to Him. The first inr ward change wrought by sin is to beget a feeling of separa^ tion from God ; we have, by sinning, severed our interests from those of the moral universe over which God reigns, and we know that the good of the universe cannot be sacrificed to our wishes ; — nay more, we perceive that our selfish desires oppose that good and the will of the great Ruler. We may not have reached this feeling by our rea- spn, but from the first movements of remorse it is a :Ceeling, almost a moral instinct with us. Adam and his wife, as soon as they sinned, hid themselves from God, among the trees of the garden. This being so, how are we to attain to a true knowledge of religion? Is there any method, withput taking into account God, the great factor? But the sinful soul turns from Him in fear with an instinctive feeling that He is an enemy. Must , not, then, almost of necessity, a false sys- tem concerning God and man be embraced rather than a true? And when such a system takes possession of the inind, will it not be harder to find out the truth, than it was before? Perhaps now one great point is gained, namely that the dread of God is abated :— will it be ea gathering strength for a new flight. Why not judge of sin, and especially of hatred, after the same fashion? What it can do in its unimpeded moments, when the chains are off its neck, and the fetters and manacles are cast from hand and foot, is the measure of its deranged power. It lay inactive, half asleep, until the fatal moment came, when all temptations seemed to plead at once, and all re- straining voices were silent. Now it shows what it can do, what its true strength is. Now we see it in its simple, un- checked energy, while, for the most part, it lay before in a kind of chemical union with the other principles that govern mankind. The justness of the Apostle's words is shown by the awful quickness with which resolutions are sometimes taken to com- mit great crimes. Nothing is more fearful and awful about our nature than this rapid rush of a human soul from seeming innocence to full-blown guilt. With one bound the soul leaps over all those blessed restraints that tie us to outward virtue and to the respect of mankind. We flee into crime, as if the dogs of sinful desire were on us, and we sought the outward act as a relief from the agita-' tion and- war within the soul. So strange do some such 120 Sin tneamred by the Disposition, not by the Act. historical crimes appear, that they look like the sway of destiny. A divine Nemesis, or Ate, urged the man into self-ruin. The tragedy of life was not accomplished by his own free wiU. And when the deed is done, unthinking men will ascribe it to the force of circumstances, as if cir- cumstances could have any effect, independently of the passion or selfish desire itself. And the criminal himself may think that he was hardly a moral agent in the deed ; that his own power of resistance was destroyed by tempta- tion against his will ; or, that others, the most respectable men in his society, would do the same. To all of which, we reply, that the consent of his soul was his sin ,' that his sin was weakness ; that if he had wanted strength really, and prayed for it, it would have come down out of heaven, and that whether others would have acted like him or not is a point of no importance. Perhaps they would. We do not charge him with being so much worse than others, as his murder, or his lust, is enormous beyond their acts. We charge on human nature, when it hates, the same quality of guilt it would have when its hate bursts into act. We charge this on all who hate, or do not love, in order that they may know what they are, and may come to the Divine Christ, whose love is the life of the world. I will illustrate this leap of a soul into sin by a single case, the particulars of which I may not repeat with en- tire accuracy, having to trust to a somewhat imperfect recollection. There was 4n London, a few years since, a German tailor, who was, probably, not more dissolute , than hundreds of others in such a vast city, a mild, in- offensive man, whom nobody thought capable of dark deeds of wickedness. He found himself in a car of an underground railroad, in company with a wealthy man. They were alone, and yet, as the cars had a number of stopping-places in their five or six miles' course, every few minutes a new passenger might come into their com- partment. They were alone, I say, for a passenger had Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Ad. 121 left thenij and the door was .shut. Now, in the interval of three or four minutes, this , man had murdered the wealthy man by his side, had seized his purse and watch, and in the. hurry taken his hat by mistake, and had left the train the instant it reached the next station. He fled to this country, was seized on his lauding, was found to have the dead man's hat and watch, was handed over to the English authorities, carried back, tried, and sent to his execution. How terrible was this speed of crime ! No whirlwind or water-spout, no thunder-cloud flying through mid-heaveu ;COuld represent its swiftness, and yet here there was nothing unaccountable, nothing monstrous. He himself had been no prodigy of sin, nor was he now. The crime was an epitome of his life, a cdndensed. extract of his character. We may safely say, that what took a moment to resolve and to execute, was not the growth of those moments. It lay in his soul, in its selfishness, that was all ready to sacrifice the rights, the life, of a brother man, for the gratification of a wicked desire. You or I would not have done this, my hearer, but we have that within us, perhaps, that might lead to the doing of it. We are of the tame clay. And again, the Apodk's principle is vindicated by the rapid deterioration which we often observe in the lives of particular men. There are some who seem to remain at a fixed point all their lives, growing neither worse nor better, and meeting all the demands which the laws of social life impose upon them. There are others, who, with no external change, are growing better within, are more under the sway of principle and of right emotions. There is a third class, whose lives resemble a gentle stream, that suddenly pours over rocks ; the outward manifest itions of character have become wholly new. From a life of temperance, or purity, or peace, they run over into one of intemperance, lewdness, or violence. It seems as if they had only covered up their sins before, as 6 122 Sin measured by tJie Disposition, not by the Act. if an evil life could not begin, all of a sudden, but the habits of sin must have been suppressed, perhaps, for a long period. Bid it is not so. They have not grown sud- denly worse, but some natural motives, which swayed them before, have given way to other natural motives which were for a time counteracted. Self-indulgence was coun- teracted by prudence or by conscience, hatred was kept down or shut up in the breast by public opinion. Mean- while changes of life, more liberty of action, greater means of self-gratification, new forms of society, new sen- timents and opinions, make the road of temptation leading to outward sin easier. I do not deny that an outbreak of sin also has a tendency to deteriorate character still further, as we see especially in the case of drunkards, who, losing their own respect and that of their society, become desperate and reckless, weighing the pleasure of drinking against that which they have lost, and resorting to that pleasure to still the regrets of their souls. But what I wish to say is, that the deterioration went on in silence before the act of outward sin, or was the result of a choice of sin, against known and estimated motives for right-doing. The sin, when it appeared in a palpable shape, was not of a new kind. Their characters had not become monstrous, and borne fruit, of which before they were incapable. They were not new men, as men are said to be when they put forth new love towards God, when they return to Him from a life of sin in the spirit of obedience. But all happened in the regular way of development, not by a fated pre-arranged plan which would excuse them, and take them out of the ranks of responsible beings, but by a development in which their own free choice went with the laws of character. According to this view of man, there is nothing strange when hatred culminates in murder, there is no new prin- ciple injected, there is, in reality, no sudden worsening of the character. It is natural, not monstrous or morbid. Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Act. 123 that he who indulges hatred in his heart should yield, when he is tempted to manifest it in the life. The deed is the expression of the feeling, as words are of thoughts. There may, be a long silence of passion, and the first you know of it, it may cry aloud, it may hurry into publicity as full-grown crime. I add, again, that if in any given case it were certain that sinful affections would be suppressed and be prevented from going out into sinful deeds, the apostle's principle would still be true. There are thousands of people who indulge malignant passions and commit no murder, to one who is actually led to this extremity of crime. It is wholly im- probable that the well-educated, the intelligent, the pru- dent, the compassionate, will be led into any outrageous violence towards their fellow-men, even if they_ allow malevolent emotions, such as envy and pride, to have dominion over them. But this is quite consistent with the words of John. The spirit of the extreme crime is in the unblamed malice or the unobserved envy. It is neutralized, as the oxygen of air is by nitrogen. The two in mechanical union form an innocuous atmosphere, and yet we know that oxygen alone would be a principle of death. So hate in the heart is a deadly affection al- though counteracted, and although it may be always counteracted. 1. In closing this discourse I wish to remark in the first place, that sin deceives us until it comes into manifestation. Men are apt to think that they are good enough, because no indications of a corrupt character are shown in their lives. And then, when the time of trial comes and they yield, they excuse themselves because temptation is so strong and so sudden. In neither case does their moral judgment conform to the true state of things. Principle means that which will stand the ted, when native character- istics which were on its side have turned against it. The measure of principle is the strength of resistance to 124 Sin meamred brj the Disposition, not by the Act. attacks of temptation, and if hatred or lust is a cherished feeling of the heart, there is no possibility of resistance when circumstances turn so as to favor sin. How deceit-, ful then and how false the judgments from a mere absence of outward- sin 1 And these judgments are con- tradicted by continual experience, for we are obliged to admit that characters full of open faults, and even stained by manifest sins, are often more estimable than tlwse in •aihich the fault never comes to the surface. Peter, who denied his Master and yet really loved Him, would have been less worthy of regard, if he had loved less although he never had denied. His sin was a revelation of what bin is, but not of the comparative worth of his character. So too the great crimes of David show that sin in the form of strong desire leads to enormous wickedness, even to so heinous a crime as murder, while yet in the judg- ment of God and lof man, many a person would stand far below David in character, who had lived an outwardly unspotted life. And this shows the importance of the disclosures of our character which positive acts of sin make to ourselves. We live in self-ignorance. Our selfishness or our malevolence is so calm, so constant, so quiet, that it makes no impres- sion even on ourselves who ought to be conscious of the internal temper. By and by there arrives a crisis of trial ; a storm of temptation blows down our prudence ; selfishness in one form prevails over selfishness in another — the stormy wind over the gentle steady breeze. Now we discover what we can do, and if we are wise, our weak- ness becomes manifest, our pride of character is gone ; we humble and distrust ourselves, and seek strength from that celestial source which is ever open for us. 2. Sins committed by others may fairly suggest to us what we ourselves can do, and so, in a certain sense we may be humbled by them, when we apply them as the measuring line of the deep possibilities of sin within ourselves. We Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Ad. 125 belong to the same race with the most grievous offender who has violated social law, and hurt his own soul. We have the same propensities. Circumstances, part of which he did not create for himself, have caused much, if not all of the difference between him and us. We see in him a picture of ourselves, drawn indeed in dark colors, but a veritable resemblance. Perhaps, viewed by the eyes of God, he is even better than you or I. And in the same way, all the crimes of our race, as we read of them in the history of the past, or hear from time to time of dreadful corruptions in the present, ought to be mementos to us what we are capable of doing, of what we have been saved from, not by our natural virtue, but by the restraints of a mercifiil God. We ought to have, in this direction as well as in others, a sympathy with man. As we admire him in the manifestations of his powers, his wisdom, his genius, his goodness, so we ought to follow him in his depths of ruin, with a fellow-feeling drawn from the consciousness of having the same seeds of guilt in us. As we say with exultation' in the first case " I also am a man," we should feel the sympathy of a brother, together with the hum- bling sense of a common weakness, in the other case also. It was no cant when John Bradford, the English clergy- man and martyr under Mary, said, as he saw a man going to Tyburn to be hanged for crime, " There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford." Many a Pharisee, if he had heard it, would have said that the man was making a hypocritical confession according to the formula of a certain school, in which the jplan is to make human nature as bad as possible, in order that Scriptural grace may be exalted. But Bradford died for Christ, whereas the Pharisee would doubtless have recanted. And Brad- ford was in the right of it. He knew by a proving of his own heart, which the Pharisee was a stranger to, how desire or feeling leads to sin. He knew by a sympathy with the most unworthy, vfhat was hidden from the 126 Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Ad. Pharisee, that men are alike to a greater degree than they are different. He did not magnify his sins, and liability to great sins, in order to magnify the grace of God, but he magnified the grace of God, because he felt and found within himself the same sinful nature which he saw in the unworthiest. He read himself in the history of his fallen and guilty brother. And so we see that the Apostle's words, "He that hateth his brother is a murderer," are a protest against all Fharisaism, all overvaluation of ourselves, all undervaluation of others. They cherish pity for the erring, and without some such principle as the words involve, we should de- spisfe the faults, rather than compassionate. At the same time we condemn the sin. The apostle's words are the strongest possible condemnation of hatred. Christ's words, already cited, are the strongest possible condemna- tion of lust. As soon as we receive them and make them the rule of our judgment, we bring ourselves and the open offender against morality or the rights of men to the same standard. The same hatred which lay unexpressed in us, uttered itself by an act of murder in him. Our feeling did no obvious harm as his did, but the wrong was the same. We stand then on a common level,^ie being more hardened perhaps by his career of sin than we, — we need a common redemption, and if that redemption has come to me, it has opened my mind at once to the frightful possibilities of crime within my human nature, and the glorious possibilities of even divine excellence to which divine strength enables me to attain. I do not thank God that I am not as other men are, but I own that I am like other men, except so far as power above me has lifted me above my old self. And the lifting up has consisted, if it is real, not in simply keeping me from murder or lust, but in helping me to entertain the spirit of love instead of that of self and hatred. 3. Finally, we see what an uncompromising principle Sin measured by the DUposition, not by the Act. 127 hve is. The apostle John abounds in such incisive re- marks as, " He that hateth his brother is a murderer ;" "He that loveth not his brother abideth in death;" "He that loveth not knoweth not God;" "If a man fay, I love GoiJ, and hateth his brother, he is a liar." Some seem to think that love is a state of mind in which all moral sentiment disappears, the most loving having an indiscriminate good-will towards all of every character. But a man of such a nature would be a monster whom none could respect, without strength of soul, without adap- tation for the society of mankind. He has no true love who does not feel within him the same aversion from all the forms of wickedness which Christ and His apostles showed, in their words and in their lives. He has no true love, no complacency in goodness, who does not from the soul condemn every thing that is evil. There is no be- nevolence any where in any moral being, which is not in- stinctively opposed to selfishness in all its forms. One may say with truth love hates malevolence, hates all that is opposed to itself in the feelings or the manifestations of the inner life. The conception of it as consisting in a weak good nature which is indifferent to character has no foundation in the word of God or in the lives of men ■whom we cannot help revering. Love is an element of a strong character which views men as they are in all their sins, which feels no favor towards the principles by which the worldly, the selfish, the proud are governed. And thus as it looks on moral evil in all its deformity, it can feel intense pity toward the blind in sin, the misguided, the fallen, the unworthy, and is ever ready to sacrifice its own interests for their good. This is the sign of love that it is capable of self-sacrifice. But no true self-sacrifice can exist without a sense of the misery of sin. Even the lower forms of love hardly deserve to be called by the name, when the motive is mere compassion, without' a sense of the greatest evil in human nature. He who can relieve 123 S'm measured by the Disposition, not btj the Ad. misery but is indifferent to the sin he sees around him, who only excuses it or makes light of it, he is not, to say the least, made perfect in love. The possibility is, that he has no true love at all. Let us remember then, that the love conceived of by the apostle, the love that dwelt in Christ is something more than instinctive benevolence, good nature and com- passion ; that it is a moral quality of the highest order, implying in the soul repugnance to sin, to selfishness, to malevolence, to ungodliness ; and that it is prompted, in the effort of doing away with sin and of reforming sinners, to all compassionate, self-sacrificing efforts. This -is the love that enlarged the soul of the apostle John, causing him to utter his strong language on the evil of hatred ; this is the love that made Christ at once hate sin with all intensity, and seek to redeem sinners by the highest act of pity and self-sacrifice. This is the love of God, who sent His Son to be the Saviour of the world, because sin was in His eye the greatest of evils. SERMON IX, THE BLINDNESS OF MEN, AND THE NEAENESS OP THE SPIRITUAL WOELD. 2 Kings vi. 17. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray Thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he ?aw : and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. To THE eye of unbelief, and of distrust, this visible, out- ward world is everything. Its value is the only assign- able value ; its history the only true history ; its dangers the only' dangers to be shunned; its help the only help to be sought. The. servant of Eliaha, until his eye was divinely opened, saw nothing but the hosts of the enemy sur- rounding Dothan and cutting oif escape ; but as soon as divine light fell on him, he beheld a new spiritual world. There were more on his side than against him, and mightier. He lifted up his eye, and behold the mountain around the city was full of horses and chariots of fire, sent there for the protection of Elisha. He was now the en. lightened one, the man of opened eyes ; while the Syrians, who gloried in their strength, were smitten with blindness, and led captive by a single unarmed man. His mind had drawn in a great lesson. The chariots of fire, indeed, and horses of fire, were, in one sense, unreal ; that is, they were not of flesh, nor obvious to human sense : they were un- earthly powers, who assumed a form by which they could make an impression of truth on the distrustful, fleshly mind of the prophet's servant. There were no chariots there, nor horses; but there were spiritual hosts, who showed themselves before the imagination of the young 6* • 129 130 The Blindness of Men, and the man to be more than a match for the army of besiegere. Thus a great truth from heaven, a reality as lasting and as wide as the universe, was taught him, that, beyond our eyes and ears, a majestic, spiritual world is moving on in silence; that an unseen God has infinite, unseen resources; that the causes and issue of things lie outside of the horizon of the senses ; that immense agencies may be at work in all stillness and without the slightest show, of which the worldly mind does not so much as dream. If there are hosts of foes of God, there is a God of hosts above them. If there is a throne of iniquity, which frameth mischief by a law, there is a higher throne of righteousness. " If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at tlie matter, for He that is higher than the highest rcgardeth, and there be higher than they." Let us take up the vision presented to the young man in the text, as a tebuke to distrust, and generally to unbe- lief, that worldly state of mind, content with the outside of things, from which, in an hour of danger, distrust pro- ceeds. The unbelieving maa, we are taught, is a superfi- cial man, and a blind man. There are things the most momentous in the whole world, which he cannot perceive, nor apprehend. There is a world around him, in him, larger, mightier, more enduring, than the earth's rocky base, with bearings on life and destiny of untold impor- tance, a world which meets him on every hand, follows him along while he travels through this World, into the noiseless workings of which he is unable to penetrate, the existence of which, therefore, enters not into his plans, nor affects his desires. Is he not blind in such thick unbelief? Or, if he admits into his mind the existence of such a world, and is continually falling back into distrust, so that goodness seems to him to have no power on its side, is he not still but a blear-eyed man, whose eye needs to be Nearness of the Spiritual World. 131 opened in order to see the array of spiritual forces that are under the command of God? 1. Let us apply the text first to that particular form of unbelief, namely distrust, which is especially referred to. The blindness and sinfulness of distrust ■will be apparent, when we take into view the plans and resources of the in- visible world. It is a part of the plan that this invisible world does not manifest itself by obvious interferences in the present order of things : everything which we can touch, taste, see or hear, goes on by law and process as much as if there were no God. It is another part, that, although evil has entered into the system, and although there is an everlasting conflict between evil and good, yet no act of power is put forth by Him, who must be con- ceived to side with goodness and to love it with all his heart. Such being the case, while, on the whole, and in the end, the right side will conquer, it is often depressed and defeated ; its progress is so slow that for days and years it seems to stand still. This is true of the cause of God in the world, and, to a degree, is true of the same cause in the heart of the single person. Thus it will often happen, that distrustful hearts will send up a cry like that of Elisha's servant in the text, "Alas master! what shall we do?' The distrustful good man will say with the Psalmist, "God has forgotten to be gracious^ He hath, in anger, shut up His tender mercies." Now the blindness of such distrust is made apparent, from considerations already hinted at and implied in our text. First, God is ever active, and has an intense sympathy with what is good and true. Between this and atheism, there is no middle ground, for the distrustful man of this day will not fall into the Epicurean's belief, that God is indifferent to human things, and indisposed to interfere, or into the Manichean belief, that there is an equal contest waging between light and darkness. Such being the case. 132 The Blindness of Men, and the we say secondly, that God must have a plan, and that the plan may consist partly in leaving the subordinate com- batants on the sides of good and evil to themselves, with- out divine interference in favor of what God must love, It is as if the general of an army, whose troops were raw and needed to be inui;ed by long discipline to military hardships and military skill, suffered them to undergo partial defeats until they were ripe for some great move- ments of decisive battle. Must such a general, of neces- sity, be hard-hearted, or devoid of love to his country and his cause ? So God may suffer the conflicts of this world to go on in order to fasten the hearts of His loyal people to IJimself ; He may let His cause in the world go back- ward seemingly ; He may let single souls grapple with doubt and temptation, in order at last to bring forward a well-trained army of faithful friends, and make ready for a decisive triumph. Is there anything absurd in such an explanation of God's plan? If it were only a supposition, will it not remove difficulties, and is not the distrustful man blind not to know that God's plans, which embrace boundless ages, may, like the paths of the planets, be ap- parently retrograde, while really, they are tending towards a glorious consummation ? But thirdly, the power of divine help may be nigh and ready, if an act of trust be put forth. The chariots and horses of fire are near by, but it may be that according to God's plan or according to the constitution of the mind, they will give no aid, as long as the soul or the church loses its confidence. We have put this forward as a possi- bility, but it becomes probable, if not certain, when the plan of co-operation between the spiritual powers and man here below is properly considered. Every thing moves forward on a system of partnership, if I may so call it, between divine and human agency. If the divine did everything, man would be a machine, or an idle, useless part of the universe. If man did everything, God would Nearness of the SpiriMial World. 133 disappear from His own world, and man could lay claim to everything. Such being the case, man must be nerved to action, and among the strengthening influences there must be trust in his divine partner. How without this can he undertake with courage, persevere with hope, or accom- plish with hiimility ? How can the true relation be dis- cerned between God and His finite creaturej or how can the creature keep his right position in the universe, with- out trust which recognizes at once his dependence and the presence of a helping God ? 2. But we pass on to consider the attitude which unbelief takes in regard to spiritual power and presence. There is a more radical and deadly form of doubt than distrust. Distrust believes and disbelieves at once, or passes to and fro in its various moods of courage and apprehension, from one state of mind to its opposite, but there is an un- belief which is fixed and unbroken by any fits of belief, which recognizes no spiritual agency or none affecting the conduct. Distrust catches a glimpse now and then of the horses and chariots of fire, and again loses the sight, as we lose the sight of a star or distant mountain on the horizon ; but unbelief sees and hears nothing except the sights and sounds of this material world. Let us look for the rest of this discourse at this unbelief, at its blindness; at the greatness of its blindness. I. Here we may notice first that unbelief must in fact admit, while it denies, the existence of some kind of spirit- ual world. The unbeliever, though he may be a mate- rialist and a sensualist, recognizes those immaterial forces which we call the human soul. He feels himself to be governed by desires or by reason, and to have a power of choice between the objects which he regards as being in different degrees good. He uses motives to persuade others, and cannot help making a wide distinction in his own mind between the power which gives direction to the body or confines its motion, and the power which moves 134 The Blindness of Men, and the the soul. He admi's the existence of invisible social prin- ciples, -which imply a reference of each individual to a community -life ; and the existence of a feeling of justice which seems intended to preside over such a society, dis- tributing to each of its members what is due to him, and binding the whole body together by the feeling of obliga- tion expressed in law and penalty. He beholds the nations of the world bound together by the same feeling of justice, and amid all their crimes and follies appi aling to the sense of obligation as pervading mankind. Nay more, he finds in the lives of men and in history, possibly within himself, an indelible sense of sin, a sense of ill-desert as old as the world, and with it, going through the whole course of history numberless efforts to propitiate some in- visible God above the soul, who is felt to be offended by evil doing. All this the unbeliever has to recognize, however he may account for it all ; and thus his mind must have created for itself a world full of life and move- ment, connected by many cords with the world of sight, but as different from it as possible. This world out of sight, moreover, is of exceedingly great importance, he finds, to himself. His welfare depends on i\ His happi- ness is bound up with it. Regrets for remediless evil, a sense of injury from others, their contempt or malice, has more of gall in it than anything he can taste, and the pleasures drawn from an invisib'e world, more of sweet- ness. He is thus forced to regard the external world as a mere minister to these strange forces which we call soul; and yet he is blind, it may be, to the existence of such a thing, or if he believes in soul, he lives for sense, as really as if soul were nothing. II. In this invisible spiritual world, even if we confine it to mankind, great and most remarkable events are going forward, which the unbelieving man is too blind to percpive, or to which he fails to give their true value. He reads the history of the earth's surface, of human Nearness of the Spiritual World. 135 progress, of states ia their rise or fall, but he forgets that there is another kind of history more internal, governed by spiritual ideas, and by influences most mighty although invisible. That human character should be tried, formed, improved or depraved ; that multitudes of minds with the idea of obligation and the sense of sin should be contending with sin or should have become its prostrate victims ; that a faith ia eternal realities and in a divine revelation should have become a settled principle in countless breasts ; — these certainly, unless it can be proved that the soul is to die with the body, are events of deep significance, rising in their weight beyond earthquakes or flaring comets or victories or revolutions of states. Nay more, all the external history of man is modified by these spiritual powers, so that to be blind to them is to be blind not only to one of the worlds with which our being is con- nected, but to history and to life itself. Let us look at some of these events or classes of events which belong to this spiritual kingdom, in order to esti- mate their importance, and the blindness of him who takes no account of them. We refer first to the life of a man once obscure and un- noticed in an obscure nation, who by the force of His life and of His character has swayed more souls and done, more for man's inner life than all other human beings put to- gether. What would the external manifestations of man's nature, manners, morals, law, art, science, government, be at this day apart from Jesus Christ ; and yet His peculiar province is the invisible region of the soul. Listen to the words in which a noted novelist of Germany, Jean Paul, speaks of Him : " Jesus, the purest among the mighty, the mightiest among the pure, with His pierced hand lifted kingdoms oif their hinges, the stream of centuries out of its bed, and still rules the ages on their course. An indi- vidual jDnce trod on the earth, who by moral omnipotence alone controlled other times and founded an eternity of 136 Ths Blindness of Men, and the His own ; one, wlio, soft-blooming and easily drawn as a sun-flower, burning and attracting as a sun, still, in His mild form, moved and turned Himself and nations and. centuries together towards the all enlightening primal sun : it is that still spirit, which we call Jesus Christ. If He existed, either there is a Providence, or He is that Provi- dence. Only quiet teaching and quiet dying were the notes wherewith this higher Orpheus tamed men-beasts, and turned rocks by His music into cities." * The power, then, by which this wonderful life of Jesus fed itself, was 'wholly of the spiritual world. He lived in communion with the highest conceptions of virtue ; he lived in intimacy with the infinite Father, or at least, as the unbeliever must admit, with a God who to Him was a reality ; He had a deep theory of human nature- in the ruin of its spiritual capacity, which, joined with His deeper love, moved Him to what He regarded as a life for man's redemption. And the result of His spiritual life and thinking has been the alteration of the world — changes which no laws, nor wars, nor arts could have ef- fected. And by what instruments has He worked so mightily on human hearts and characters ? By spiritual ones, by the feeling of guilt, the longing for purity and peace of soul, by offering pardon and the promises of life-giving assistance to the contrite, by a life and example of united love and holiness, by imveiling God and the soul's unend- ing life. Such are the means by which He has set up His throne over mankind, pushing His sway beyond souls into every thing which pertains to man. And yet the unbeliever sees nothing great or wonderful or spiritual in Him ; he accounts for Christ as for some natural phe- nomenon, as for a meteoric stone from the skies ; acknow- ledging perhaps that he cannot explain Him entirely, but * From the Dammerungen fiir Deutsohland, vol. 33, pp. 6, 16 of his works, Berlin, 1827. Nearness of the Spiritual World. 137 persuaded that He had no connection with a higher spiritual world. Passing away from this great, unique fact, let us look at classes of spiritual facts to which the unbeliever will give no heed, which are of continual occurrence, and which may follow one another in the life of .one and the same human beings We begin with a condition of a human soul when it is grappling with great and strong doubts concerning spirit- ual realities, or when the dark shadow of guilt has fallen upon it. How it heaves one with sorrow, and arouses all our sympathy, to see that soul struggling against billows of skepticism, willing to give up all earthly hopes to solve the great mysteries of God, sin, redemption, and eternity, crying to heaven and to man to help it on its way, crying like Ajax to give it light if only to die in. O, what out- ward events can compare in importance or interest with such passages as this in the life of a soul ! Or look at another state of a human soul, which is much more common. There is a conflict of long standing between desire on the one hand, and the voice of duty together with aspirations after an honorable and a perfect life on the other. The soul has been often bowed down to the dust by defeat ; but so intense is its conviction of the necessity of resistance, so real and practical before its eyes the great idea of duty, that it will sooner yield up its existence than forsake the struggling. The smile or frown of the world without is now nothing in its esteem. Invisible things are the forces which arouse it to action. Now, whether it shall rise or fall, is this struggle of no importance? Is the supreme worth which is attached to charoust&r in such a mind undeserving of notice ? Ray you who are worldly and unspiritual, or rather, when you es- timate the power of mind thrown into the struggle, or the possible results in the direction of hope or despair, is any 138 The Blindness of Men, and the contest of material forces, however vast, of weight enough to be placed by its side ? But there ' is another and a more advanced class of spiritual facts. Great multitudes think that they have got beyond the first and hardest encounters of such a con- flict ; and have made headway principally, because the gi;eat thoughts of a holy God and of a redemption from sin somehow threw strength into their souls, and helped them to rise out of the atmosphere of spiritual death. Henceforth they are engaged in leading a life of virtue, of intercourse with a divine and spiritual helper, of faith in an endless life. Their aim is to fit their characters for such endless life by becoming on earth as much like God as possible. And as they proceed on their way, imper- fectly indeed, but as suceessMly as is the lot of human strivings, hope of spiritual good in prospect cheers them, the favor of an invisible God brightens their path, all unseen things become more real and all seen things more unsubstantial. There is, thus, a spiritual life led by great numbers of men on earth, a life of resistance to sin, a life of love, a life of faith in those divine things, which, whether they can be proved true or not, form the most noble characters. But as we watch these persons longer, and behold them at the termination of their earthly lives, we meet with another group of spiritual facts, which are of almost hourly occurrence These persons, as they leave this world, rather grow than wane in the conviction that what has had the chief power over their lives has been a pro- found reality. Hope instead of expiring at death grows brighter. Sin, instead of seeming a small thing to be watched and striven against, seems darker and more ter- rible. God now is inefiably true, redemption inefiably valuable. They die, giving every proof that these spiritual ideas are enstamped on their souls, have moulded Nearness qf the Spiritual World. 139 their characters, and have fitted them for a spiritual, holy world, if there be any such place. Facts such as these are occurring in countless in- stances, while the unbeliever is reading his newspaper, driving his trade, enjoying life like an animal, with no inquiry whether there be a spiritual world, and with no interest in the success or disappointment of this nobler class of minds. Oh ! are there not among mankind two different kinds of worlds ? While some are acting as if right and wrong, life and soul and God are dread realities, others cleave to the dust like the serpent's brood ; while some devote their lives to the attainment of virtue, the improvement of character, the preparation for death, others eat, drink, live, think, wish, as if the earth enclosed and satisfied man. " Some, to their everlasting home this solemn moment fly," on wings of hope, while others have no more than a brute's concern about death, and a tran- sient dread of some possibility beyond it.. What a con- trast, if the vast throng of spiritual ones could be mus- tered over against the vaster throng of unbelievers. What a difference of character and of main purpose, what a difference of thoughts reigning in the intellect and over the heart. Cotild two worlds of material substance, made by the hand of God, differ so widely ? If the un- believers are enlightened, the others are benighted ; if the world of spiritual minds are in the light, the other world IS blind and in darkness, " and in love with darkness." III. These events of the spiritual world among man- kind depend on the existence and presence of a spiritual world above mankind. This is indeed obvious, and has come into view as we looked at the life of Christ and of those who followed Him in a spiritual life. If" the un- believer is on true, safe ground, there is nothing that ought to rule the life except the material earth and its laws, the desires, chiefly the animal ones, and some few of the social principles. If the spiritual man is right, there is 140 The Blindness of Men, and the a higher world, beyond the laws of matter, desire, and society. The exercise of his reason, conscience, and affec- tions has introduced him among a different set of realities which themselves involve the existence of real personali- ties above man. He now acknowledges the laws of a moral universe — ^laws made to regulate thought, and therefore emanating from a being who has planned and thought. Sin itself, felt in his conscience, conducts down upon him the justice of the universe. When once God is admitted to be a reality, there is a systom centering at His throne ; let him for a moment, in thought, conceive of God as not existing, and the spiritual world among men becomes darkly and inexplicably incomplete. Whether the process is logical or not, he finds he must deny moral and spiritual realities among men, or carry them upward until they fill the universe. Thus he cannot stop short of a personal God, of a world of real beings of which He is the centre, or he must give up everything. And so, from the opposite quarter, the unbeliever must strand on atheism. IV. If, now, there is such a world with God for its centre, it is the height of blindness not to see it. This is obvious from a great variety of considerations. If there is such a world, it must be of infinite importance compared with the world of matter ; the interests of the soul are bound up with it, and to live as if they depended upon the earth must be self-ruin. If God exists. His existence must, in various ways, b3 of boundless moment to the soul, and especially must tlie thought of God, and faith in Him, be of the greatest weight in moving and directing the character. The life passed under the power of spiiitual realities is as different from a life according to the course of this world, as Heaven is from hell. If sin is a fact, it is a very weighty, a very dreadful fact. If there be such a thing as recovery from sin possible, it is the pearl of great price. And if all this bo so, and the unbeliever Nearness of the Spiritual World. 141 shuts his eye to it, how great must be his blindness, how deserving is his state of being called a state of spiritual darkness and death! V. Such blindness needs to be overcome by a divine act of opening the eyes. Men may well pray "Lord, open his eyes that he may see." And the unbeliever him- self, if a glimmering of light falls on him, may well pray for help from the God of light. If there is such an entire contrast between the worlds of which"we have spoken, it must needs be that old habits of thought, strengthened through an unspiritual life, must render spiritual appre- hension exceedingly difficult; that the intense reality which has gathered around worldly objects must make objects of faith seem spectral and misty ; that inordinate desire, gravitating toward the ground, must make all upward movement of the soul next to impossible ; that speculative difficulties must block up the path, if the soul should try to break away from the prison of sensual things ; that the dawn of faith must be overhung with clouds of distrust ; that the soul must feel itself without strength to use faculties which have been so long asleep. How can belief grow up in a mind full of skepticism, in a soul almost without the power to trust? Can argument pro- duce belief in spiritual realities ? But where the power of appreciating moral truth is nearly gone, where con- science is blunt, and the affections almost extinct, argu- ment can have no force, for it runs back to convictions which are either dead, or too weak to arouse to action. If the unbeliever had never had his attention called to spiritual things, his slumbering powers that have a sym- pathy with the invisible might possibly be awakened; but now, long use, long love of the earth, has enfeebled and deadened him. He cannot catch hold of divine realities and lift himself upward." The hardest step is the first, and this costs almost superhuman effijrt. Is his case then hopeless? No, not hopeless, if you 142 The Blindness of Men. take into account the resources of the invisible world, but only hopeless, if you look at this world of outward things, at his present strength, at the character which a life of unbelief and worldliness has formed. Weak as he is, the spiritual world is as near him and as powerful as ever, possessed of means to awaken and enlighten him. The most interesting of thoughts in his case is that these superior powers are at work on man, as is shown by the throng who have come out of sin, have seen the light of God, and received a spiritual life. All praise be to the en- lightening Spirit which has opened so many blind eyes — he too may see. The chariots and horses of fire may present themselves to him also. Under the influences of the new spiritual sight, he may become a new man. and the Eovel things of the invisible world may fill him with joy SERMON" X. UNION OF JUSTICE AND GEACE IN GOD. BxoDtrs XXXIV. 7. Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty. Romans m. 26. That he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Theee is an agreement in the spirit of these two most important passages of scripture. The one proclaims the union in the character of God of forgiveness and holiness. The other declares that when God, in His plan of salvation through Christ, treats sinners as if they had never offended, He is at the same time just. Pie was not willing to exercise His highest act of forgiveness, without at the same time and in the same transaction showing that He has as sincere and strong an aversion to sin, as if He had not cleared the guilty but allowed the law to take its epurse. It is not my purpose at this time to treat theologically of this union of qualities that may be called opposites in the divine government, nor chiefly to seek to show how they were manifested in Christ's work and passion ; but my object is to show how the human race is prepared for such a twofold exhibition of the divine character, and how the exhibition trains men up in those excellencies of character which would be defects if they existed apart. " Behold the goodness and severity of God," says the Apostle Paul. In most cases the goodness is illustrated by one kind of events and the severity by another, but in Christ's work the same event of His death displayed the two sides of God's character alike and at once, and thus pardon was never offered to the guilty without a loud protest against sia. Now the pains taken to inculcate both these qualities 143 144 Union of Justice and Grace in God. through the entire scriptures seem to point at something in man, some conceplioi^ of character which he needs to have impressed upon him and which he ought to realize in his own life. We may go farther and say that this two-sided view of God meets man's conceptions already awakened by the actings of his own nature, and thus strikes a chord in man which is in harmony with the scriptures and espe- cially with the gospel. I. And in pursuing this subject we remark first that among men he who is capable of exercising only hard, un- relenting justice is held to be far from perfection, and carir not be loved ; while on the other hand a character in which bare kindness or goodness is the only noticeable trait secures no reject. Only where we see the two qualities united can we feel decided confidence and attachment. Let us look first at several manifestations of bare justice in character or temper, and then at mere kindness or goodness, in order to see whether this be not so. First we notice sternness, which is the attribute of one who has a strict rule of duty or of propriety in his mind, and measures the conduct of men by inflexible rules of right. He condemns and approves for good cause. He has no favorites and pays no respect to persons, but ap- proves or condemns by the same severe rule all alike, whether friends or foes. He notices all departures from the standards : a little one does not escape his penetrating eye ; a great one meets with its proportionate censure. In short, morals and manners are estimated by him with im- partiality, and deviations from the right rule are blamed as strictly as if he had no other feeling but that of justice, and were not a man. 'A^hen this character runs into ex- cess, so that a man rates defects at more than their just weight, we call him harsh or severe, and when he takes pleasure in discovering defects we call him censori- ous, and these characters we dislike by an instinct of nature. But let the man be simply stern — is he loved for Union of Justice and Grace in God. 145 this quality? Certainly not, if the trait throws others ■which are fitted to give relief to it into the shade. And this dislike, assuredly, is owing, not to the unwillingness of fallen men to be narrowly scanned, but to the distorted picture of human nature which is presented by a character, in which simple justice predominates in the temper and the life. Again, we will call up before us the quality of indigna- tion, and conceive all the manifestations of the life within to run in that channel. Indignation is the expression, especially the sudden expression, of displeasure at what is regarded as unworthy of a man. Like sternness, it implies the recognition of a standard supposed to be righteous, united to a strict judgment according to the stan- dard and to displeasure at short-comings. Indignation is a virtue of character, and no character can be perfect if it be absent. It is a sense of justice carried into the soul and kindling it up into anger. It is the resistance of human sensibility against wrong doing. In indignation there is properly no selfish element, any more than in justice, of which indignation is the hand-maid. We may add that indignation serves the sympathies of our nature ; it takes under the protection of its just wrath public wrongs, wrongs done to the defenceless and the humble. It is a generous emotion, for it breathes defiance to arbi- trary power, to whatever exalts itself against humanity ; it draws its sword against tyrannical public sentiment ; it shelters the rights of the minority and the despised under its wing. Thus there is no noble soul in which this is not found a guest. But suppose now that indignation gives the key note to character ; suppose that a man, like a mastiff at the door of righteousness, is forever growling at injustice; that his eye is sharp to see wrong which ordinary senses cannot discover ; and suppose also in its favor, that its strength is duly proportioned to the strength of the wrong perceived, so that it is neither exr 7 146 Union of Justice and Grace in God. cited on the wrong occasion nor runs over the line of justice; — even then, we ask, will such a man beloved? Certainly not. He will be respected for his fidelity to justice, but loved he cannot be. No one likes to take a storm home to his bosom, or feels gladness when the light- ning is playing before his eyes. The reformer, whose soul is continually on fire with just wrath against social or political sins, is perhaps the most useful man in a com- munity, and yet he is apt to have but few instalments of love paid to him. Even the quiet and the loving among his advocates like to stand a little way beyond the hear- ing of his denunciations. And yet he is the truest servant of justice. I mention but one more of those traits of character which partake of the quality of justice — it is dutifulness. What is more praised and honored in the world than this quality, which in its lower forms of legality constitutes the honest citizen, and in its higher the man of unshaken fidelity to conscience and to God? Moreover, dutifulness, in its wider sense, embraces the feelings and afiTections which are due to those who are near to us, so that it occupies a field from which love is not shut out. But look at it as consisting in the mere discharge of obligations, as the naked inclination of the soul to do what is com- manded by lawful authority, and you will see that it excites no love, draws no sympathy towards itself, is no bond of union between minds. And it is so with the law- giver as with the subject: maintenance of law, like loyalty to law, is a quality possessed of little attractiveness, essential as it is to the stability and welfare whether of a state or of the universe. But I pass over to the other side of the subject and remark, that a character in which bare kindness or goodness throws all other qualities into the shade secures no respect. And here we speak oitrue kindliness of nature, not of that semblance of it, which does kind acts on calculation, ia Union of Justioe and Graoe in God. 147 ol-der to get back the like from others. It is felt, when ■we observe a character where this ground color in its various shades is discernible, that it has some essential deficiency, that it is incapable of meeting any of the crises in any of the kinds of society which God has ordained, that it is unmanly and unheroie, if not often deserving of contempt. Illustrations offer themselves on every hand, from which we can pick out but one or two. The first which we notice is indiscriminate alms-giving. When the tendency to relieve distress appears in the character as an uncontrolled instinct; when a man scatters his money or good deeds without inquiring into the claims of the petitioners, who need only ask to come away full- handed ; who pronounces such an unreasoning freeness of beneficence worthy of honor from mankind ? Is it not rather felt to be an amiable weakness, an evil in the shape of good? Such a man may have a certain kind of love bestowed on him ; he may be popular ; he certainly will be popular in a community of beggars, though even they, doubtless, will discover his want of moral strength. Another form of the same one-sidedness is seen in reluctance to reprove others. Many amiable persons can never rebuke for their faults those even whom they sin- cerely love, from an unwillingness to wound their feelings. To their minds reproof is a kind of judicial act, which ought to come from a superior sitting in a trial of con- duct ; they cannot nerve themselves to the discharge of such an oiEce, much as they desire to see the fault cor- rected. Now, is it not evident, that when one intimate friend acts toward another on this principle, much of the respect which would otherwise grow up, and without which love itself cannot be deep, must fail to exist? May not even the stern, when the sting of reproof has passed away, and the benefit remains, occupy a higher place of regard. - So too, to give but one more illustration, the indulgent 148 Union of Justice and Grace in God. person, when that quality is excessive, not only does a vast amount of evil, but is unable to take a high place in other hearts. Indiscriminate or unreasoning indulgence fails in the end to secure the love which it obtains at first, and comes to be despised. The child is delighted with it, but taxes it more and more until compliance is outrun, and then complains ; the grown-up, reflecting person feels that by it his interests were sacrificed. And if we look into several of the principal employ- ments of life we shall see that a tendency to either extreme, of gentleness or of severity, is most hurtful to society. In family government the lax discipline of the father hurts the child, and the father's sternness ruiTis him. The teacher by over indulgence fosters idleness in the pupil, while by Imrshness he makes him hate study-and rouses rebellion. The military officer by slack discipline corrupts and enervates an army, as well as makes it a pest to the region where it is quartered, and by cruel rigor destroys that pride in the service, and that attachment to the leader, without which an army cannot fight well. The magistrate who out of pity pardons every convict is a foe to the state's true interest ; he who drives law to the extreme, causes law itself to lose its power. The judge must lean towards equity, or the strict letter of the statute will be an injury to society; a Draco whose laws are written in blood will arouse, by and by, such a feeling that the laws will not be enforced. In short through all the forms of life, when authority is given to some over others, the ex- istence of either of these qualities without the other destroys all sound moral government. On the contrary, where both qualities are foimd in due measure, they, insure the best government which the circumstances allow. They do not check each other, as might be supposed, but add to each other's power. The indiscriminately kind man is felt to be weak ; the harsh, rigorous nature may have intellect in abundance, Union of Justice and Oraee in God. 149 but fails to -warm the souls of men. When united they form char Oder, a character in which there is depth, the depth of intellect resting below temper and impulse on a foundation of wisdom and true excellence of heart. There can be no moral government among men without 'wisdom, for he who makes men good must look not at immediate impressions but at results : he must take long stretches of time into view, and long series and interactions of causes shaping character. When did instinctive benevolence ever fail to thwart its own wishes and to corrupt its bene- ficiaries ? The union of these opposites, where alone wisdom can be found, ensures the best government, and as every one must be in some way a governor, of a family, or a work- shop, if not of a town or state, the whole of the vast interests of mankind depend on this union. II. If God is to be honored and loved by human beings He must present himself to our minds under the same two- fold aspect. He must be seen in the light of those quali- ties which we may call by the name of justice, and of those to which we give the names of goodness, kindness, tenderness or mercy. What would be the kind of manifestations of the divine character suited to the nature of unfallen human beings, it is, perhaps, not very important to inquire. But we see no reason to suppose that they would differ from the exhibitions of God given fully in the Scriptures, and less clearly in life and history, to man in his state of sin, except that the peculiar trait of mercy would not then be called forth. Human character as such, whether innor cent or fallen, is made for moral government, for obedi- ence to the law of a superior, and for the acknowledgment of the rights of equals, as well as for the reciprocation of benevolence ; so that display of divine justice or righteous- ness and of divine goodness or kindness would be needed for the education of the race as much then as in our 150 Union of Justice and Grace in God. present fallen condition. It can hardly be supposed that the sense of justice would fade out of the minds of men in a perfectly pure society, or that righteousness and the consciousness of obligation would then find no place in the intercourse of men. There must be law so long as there are finite beings; only law would play a very subordinate part in a pure world. But, however this may be, sin, by the law of our moral nature, brings with it the sense of the displeasure of God, a sense which the heathen cannot destroy, even when they form gods to themselves with human passions and a human standard of morals. And thus in a state of sin divine justice, divine wrath, divine punishment must occupy such a foremost place that all eyes can see it. Now these principles of human nature have strong appeals made to them by feelings which lay dormant in a state of innocence, — fear of retribu- tion, a feeling that our interests are separate from those of God and His universe, remorse for sin, the desire to hide our guilt from our own eyes and to keep out of sight of God as much as possible. These are either the wounds made by the sword of justice, or the human methods to cure those wounds without looking our condition and our character in the face. Suppose now the revelations of God to man, all of them, to take this one form of severe justice or indigna: tion against sin, of stem authority or' vindication of in- ■ jured law. Man, we wUl suppose, remains as he was, and nature contains all the sources of enjoyment which it had before he fell, but the heavens of God are covered with a black cloud, out of which issue lightnings and thunderings upon human souls. Sinai itself will now re- tain only the latter part of that matchless verse from which we take our text. We hear no longer of "the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-sufiering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin ;" but Union of Justice and Grace in God. 151 the words which follow — that " God will by no means clear the guUty," that He " visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and to the fourth generations " — these words are re-echoed and reboimd continually from the angry skies. Now what is the influence of all this disclosure of unmingled justice upon temper and charac- ter ? Is there any education in it towards a life of love and of trust, towards a life of virtue growing out of these sister afleetions ? Remorse may be aroused by it. Is not remorse a paralysis of the soul, making it more helpless than before, unnerving resolution and killing hope ? Or pleasure may be sought as a relief from the burden of gloomy care. Does that bring men to God, or is not its very aim to forget Him ? Or the soul may swerve from just conceptions of its relations to God ; it may abrogate for itself, so to speak. His law of righteousness and con- struct a laxer code. Is such error any fit education for the race in righteousness and goodness? And if man should compare this unmitigated justice of God with the gentleness of human law, which allows pardons and respites, would not the awful sternness of the divine character be made so much the gloomier by the contrast? Or if, what we must regard as the truer supposition, such manifesta- tions of God were to make their impress upon human law, would that not become a law of inexorable cruelty and of bloody revenge, and would not law — if law there could be — deepen the traits in man's nature that are most fell and deadly, while the tender ones would find little room to expand ? Let those savage tribes, whose charac- ters are formed by and assimilated to the malignant beings they worship, answer. On the other hand let us think for a moment what kind of a moral training the human race would have under the one-sided exhibition of the divine goodness. And here sup- pose first, as we have done belbre, the race to be uncorrupt, and that there is no positive need, in order to aid restora- 152 Union of Justice and Grace in Ood. tion to virtue, that a disclosure should be made of forgive- ness. In this state of things would not man — ^knowing nothing of divine justice — remain a weakling in rectitude, unable to dare or resist? Could he have finy strong points of character about him ? Could he be 3, minister and interpreter of God in any high sense outside of tlie natural world, and would not the higher world pf morals be to him an unexplored, unknown kingdom ? We con- ceive of the angelic hosts as siding with God, when they see the majesty of His righteousness even in the punish- ment of sin. And in the Apocalypse Heaven is fiill of the cry, " Even so Lord God Almighty, for just and true are thy judgments." They have been educated — ^perhaps by the spectacle of sin in the universe — into indignation against sin, but the race of man in the case supposed would be little more than higher animals, undeveloped in those moral faculties which behold God in His entire character. But let us turn to the existing state of things in a race of sinners. Let this race, which has swerved from right- eousness, be educated under impressions of divine goodness and kindness, only excepting from these manifestations of God a revelation of forgiveness, for forgiveness implies ante- cedent justice which in the case! supposed is set aside. Let then all that looks like forgiveness take the form of clem- ency or rather of indulgence. " You are conscious of sin," the divine government will say to mankind, "but you need not trouble yourselves about sin ; God overlooks it ; He has no censure or penalty or prison for it that you know of So you may take your way through life with the less burden, because you can shake off the thought of divine wrath and retribution." But is this the true means of maintaining the rights of God, or of educating man for a life of virtue ? Nay, rather, is not such an exhibition of God's feelings towards sin calculated to destroy all respe»t for His character, even in the very persons who may be supposed to draw benefit from His indulgence? Union of Justice and Grace in God. 153 For how could a policy whieli would ruin a family and dissolve a state, which would make children and citizens feel that their interests had been neglected, — when ema- nating from a higher throne — be any safer or wiser ? We can see also, that God, so manifested, could secure as little affection as respect ; for the good could not put their trust in Him, the bad would be won from their sins by no evidence of love on His part; all would feel that the most essential character of a ruler was wanting. And the influence on civil order would be most disastrous ; either human government copying after the divine, would abolish its punishments, open its houses of correction and let every one do as he chose, or would make a vain attempt to maintain righteousness and order, when the whole current of religion ran against it. We cannot con- ceive of a greater disaster than such a divine adminis- tration, the very belief in which, if it had no reality, would unsettle everything man iolds dear. But when both sides of God's character and government are revealed together, every point is gained. God can be revered and felt to be worthy of reverence, can be loved and be felt to be worthy of love. The righteous can feel safe under His shelter, and the wicked can dread His dis- pleasure. The trembling sinner can look with hope toward the light which beams from His mingled justice and holiness. Man, in all the forms of society, can feel that God's known character and will is the cement which binds the family, the State, the nations of mankind to- gether by a twisted cord of justice and good-will. Man can now be educated for the offices of the world and for eternal life, for all time and all places on one plan, because the policy of the family and of the State is seen to be the policy of Heaven and of the universe. Law reigns and pardon is offered to sinners without weakening the authority or venerableness of the law-giver. " There is forgiveness with thee that thou, mayest be feared." Sin- 154 Union of Justice and Grace in God. ners are recovered and reclaimed first by a sense of sin, and tiien by a perception of divine love, and without the latter they would not think of their sins, or grow into that filial fear, that holy worship which the Psalmist in- tends. Only under this two-fold aspect of God is true religion, the religion of the soul, possible. III. We add thirdly, that it involves a very high degree of wisdom to know when to be just or severe, and when to exercise goodness or grace. The mere impulse of benevolence would, as we have seen, destroy every govern- ment from the lowest to the highest, from the government of a family to the government of the universe. Nor can a strong sense of the evils of sin determine whether sin ought, in any particular case, to be dealt with in the way of forbearance or of punishment, of grace or of wralh. The mere attribute of justice would not be a safe guide for any administration, divine or human; only it is safer- than the mere impulse of benevolence, for its object is to maintain law and right. But the presence of neither quality in the soul is any guide of conduct. If a magis- trate, invested with the pardoning power, pardons because he hates to see suffering, why should he not, with as good reason, punish because he hates to see crime f And so the attribute of justice in God renders it at least as certain that He will punish, es His goodness, that He will save. What is there theu that shall decide under any govern- ment, divine or human, whether law shall have its perfect course or shall be interrupted ? Nay, more, if the law be good, must there not be a reason for its interruption, a reason lying beyond the pity of the law-giver and tlie suffer- ings of transgressors f We come then to this result, that only wide-looking and far-looking wisdom can decide in the case' of a particular offender whether such interruption of law by pardon is possible, without hazarding the permanent good of the society in question. Feeling cannot decide, mere experi- Union oj Justice and Grace in God. 155 ence cannot decide; only a wisdom confirmed by experi- ence, acquainted with the play of motives, capable of judging how the moral education of society will be affected by different ways of administering law, only this high gift, granted in scanty measure to the best minds, is fully equal to a problem of setting law aside and yet maintain- ing its force. How much more then, would it be a problem beyond man's power to solve whether God could pardon sin, if He had not disclosed Himself in His feelings and His mea- sures? For in the case of human law, equity often de- mands exceptions, and pettier offences are beneath notice, and the sentiments of the subjects of law concerning the law are to be taken into account. But there, in the uni- versal law before the mind of God there is no divergence between strict justice and equity ; a little sin, if there be such a thing, is caught by the net of omniscient righteous- ness as surely as a great one; and the unerring truth of God is to govern, not to be governed by, the sentiment of ' the worlds. What man then, who but a peer of God, can rise to so high a seat of wisdom as to decide whether or not He can pardon sin? I marvel, when I hear men who could not decide a case aright in court, who in a chair of state might do vast mischief by unwise pardons, nay, who spoil their own children, perhaps, by indulgence or by harshness, I marvel, when I hear these men legislating for the universe, as if they "were " gods and all of them children of the most High." I marvel, when I hear their theories on sin and on retribution, as if defection from the Maker and Father of the universe were a little thing, all the dimensions of which they could ascertain by their square and compass. What ? Have not men been legisla- ting for centuries and yet with all the lights of transmitted experience unable to reach the golden mean between severity and laxity, complaining of their fathers only to be found fault with themselves by the next age, disputing 156 Union of Justlae and Grace in God. until now on the very principles of criminal law, and shall such a race that cannot govern itself sit in judgment on God? He who can comprehend th3 universe, and can fathom character and the bearings of His dealings on character, He and He alone can tell when to be for- bearing and when to smite, when to forgive and how long to hold out offers of forgiveness, -how ,to mingle aud to proportion holiness with love in His dealings with sinners. It is a ffreat problem to govern a nation ; it is a greater to govern a virtuous universe ; but a greater still is pre- sented when the element of evil is thrown into the question, and the interests of the many come into conflict with the happiness of the sinful few. Especially when we look on God as training His creatures up for a higher condition ; enlarging their powers, helping the strong to grow stronger, pitying the weak and revealing Himself as their forgiving God ; then above all . does it appear that the balances of the moral universe are exceedingly delicate, and that there is need of a hand, firm and wise beyond our thought, to hold them. No solution of the intricacies of things has been offered to man deserving of notice but that which Christ has made. The reconciliation of holiness and love in His work, its just, well-balanced training of the whole moral nature challenge our respect, our admiration, even if we will stand aloof from Christ. He is made of God unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemp- tion. The training of our race depends more on the moral im- pressions that are made upon it than on anything else, and these moral impressions depend mainly on the recog- nized character of God. With a certain character of God, law and society, family life and state life, would have no foundation to rest upon, no defence of their integrity and their sacredness : with a certain other conception of God, Union of Justice and Grace in God. 157 severity, wrath, ferocity, all the harsher qualities would be cultivated, religion would wear a malign countenance, law would be a minister of death. How vastly important then is the religious conviction concerning God for the welfare of mankind. And may we not go farther and say that other worlds besides ours, that principalities and powersdn heavenly places need a similar training ? Is there any- thing strange in the hints thrown out by our sacred writers, that the 8(3heme of God, as it culminates in Christ, should be used for the ennoblement and perfection of the heavenly host? I do not mean that sin is necessary to manifest God more fully and clearly to the higher intelli- gences, but that when once it exists, an incidental but a great good is drawn from it for those who have never offended. Conceive of them as spectators of the fall and the first measures of God for the restoration of man. Something yet remains in this world-history to satisfy their minds for which they wait in faith. At length the foil solution comes in Christ incarnate and suffering ; now they burst into rapturous joy and learn new wisdom, and become more faithfol to righteousness, as they see the mystery of grace unfolded ; now " unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places " is " made known by the church the manifold wisdom of God." And now, having brought your minds to Christ, I close with the remark that Se united the two sides of character which we have spoken of, in their due mixture, in Sis one person. There has been one man who- has shown a perfect balance of character in this respect, and He is fitted for this reason to represent God and to be a moral legislator for mankind. This is remarkable in regard to our Lord, that a person who should have become acquainted only with His traits of love, as forbearance, condescension, patience, mildness, pity, and forgiveness, would be apt to suppose that he had seen the whole framework of His char- acter ; while another person who heard His awful rebukes 153 Union of Justioe and Graze iii Ood. of the Pharisees, and saw with what zeal He defended the rights of God, and observed what He thought of sin and what were his threatenings against it, would take Him for a man made out of iron justice alone. But He united in unrivalled harmony both these aspects of character. And it is well worthy of being remarked that their uuiou proves their genuineness and their depth. He who could love so and forgive so, notwithstanding His dei'p sense of the sin, what strength of character must He have had, what a depth and truth of love, what a power of loving, wlmt an inexhaustible richness of soul ! And He who could rebuke so and show such strong displeasure against evil doing, how hard, humanly speaking, must it have been for Him to love objects so far from loveliness ; and if He loved them as He did, must not His love have been of another kind than ours, one superior to personal slights and in- juries, wholly unlike instinctive kindness of temper, par- taking of a quality of lofty wisdom ! You would think that each of these traits would check and neutralize the other, that the holy hater of sin could not bend into love, that the man ' compact ' of love must be blind to justice, but it was not so. The strength of His holiness and justice proves the depth of His love, and His love was the stronger, because it rested on the fixed rock of justice and holiness. This union of qualities, which, as in the case of the Saviour, leads not to a dead-lock of character, but to active living perfection, is allied to wisdom or raiher is itself wis- dom, for it implies moral judgment perfectly sound and rectitude unshaken. Christ then, with such a nature, would be the loving Saviour, the friend of sinners, but he would be also the' wise law-giver and the just Judge. He is thus like God and fitted to represent God ; he embodies that idea of God, which, with the help of the noblest passages of the Old Testament, our minds, in their best frames of thought and feeling, are able to form. And if, in a larger sphere, the Son of Man shall judge the world He Union of Justice and Grace in God. 159 came to save, it will be not in a new character, but only in a new office. Worthy His hand to hold the keys. Guided by wisdom and by loye ; Worthy to thIo o'er mortal life, O'er worlds below and worlds above. SERMON XI. EARTHLY THINGS MUST BE BELIEVED BEFORE HEAVENLY CAN BE. John iii. 13. If I have told you earthly things and ye believed not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things ? These words contain an argument from the less to the greater. If you disbelieve what I say in cases where human experience and consciousness give their voice in favor of my testimony, how much more wUl you dis- believe, when I declare to you that which is far beyond the rea^h of human knowledge? And if the elementary knowledge within your attainment is rejected or denied, how can you receive that superior or divine knowledge, which has no force nor meaning for the mind, unless it is brought into connection with these very earthly elements? I purpose to illustrate and unfold the words of our Lord, first, by attempting to find out what the earthly and what the heavenly things are of which He speaks, and secondly, by showing how unbelief in the heavenly things is necessarily involved in rejection of the earthly. I. First, then, the earthly things are those which it did not require a teacher from Heaven to make known. A large portion of the truth which affects the interests of our spiritual and immortal nature is of this sort. Such truth is generally admitted in civilized communities with more or less distinctness, because it reposes on primary moral convictions which are common to all men. Even through Pagan and barbarous lands, it is involved in the feelings and confessions of all the people. The office of a religious teacher or of an inspired prophet is not to dis- 160 Earthly things must be bslisved bejore Heavenly can he. 161 close these earthly things, as if they were the matter of a new revelation, but he takes them for granted, or else he reaffirms them because the minds of men, for some reason, discover them dimly and blindly. It may be, indeed, of the greatest importance that he should reaffirm them, for he needs to carry the minds of men with him when he advances to the higher and heavenly things, and doubt or disbelief at the earthly threshold would be^ a most serious impediment in his way. But we may say of Christ, at least, that He never would have come into the world to show men what their own reason could show them without His help, and that all His work about such earthly things was preparatory to a much higher work, to a revelation of that which lay beyond the eyes and ears of men, of that which He knew in His heavenly existence La the heavenly world. An illustration or two will, I hope, make all this plain. Christ had told Nicodemus that a man must be born again, or born from above, in order to see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus, after receiving his instructions on this great subject, exclaimed, how can these things be ? The Great Teacher, in reply, asks with surprise, how Nico- demus could be a master in Israel and not know these things — ^not be famUiar with the necessity of regeneration before Christ had placed it within the view of his mind. The necessity of regeneration then, as the condition of entrance into the expected kingdom of God, was one of those earthly things which Mcodemus ought to have known before ; it was a truth, discoverable without reve- lation, and needing no messenger from Heaven to unfold it, not to know which argued surprising blindness on the part of a master in Israel. Now let us look at this truth, in order to see whether it bfi an earthly thing, or whether the great Teacher did not expect too much from the educated Jew who was sitting at His feet. 162 Earthly things must he believed Was it then a new doctrine in the world, — so new, that a learned Jew might well stare when it was first pro- pound id to him ? Let the prayer of the penitent, " Create in me a clean heart God, and renew within me a right spirit," — answer. Or such a passage, again, as that in Ezekiel, " A new heart will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you ! and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you an heart of flesh." But perhaps, if not new, it was a heavenly truth, taught by inspiration first, and received on divine authority. But how is this consistent with the fact that through the Old Testament, essentially if not in so many words, it is im- plied in every exhortation to repentance, every descrip- tion of the state of men in their sins, every statement which makes of the godly or the holy a class distmct from the rest of mankind? We must admit then a natural foundation for it in the universal consciousness of sin. Was it strange that a Jew, whose sense of sin was kept alive by the moral and the ceremonial portions of the law, should feel his need of a spiritual renovation ? Was it strange, when he struggled with himself and found his fleshly appetites too strong, that he fell back on God as a helper, and admitted the presence of God's life- giving Spirit to be his great want ? Td what other con- clusion, in fact, could any one arrive, who started from the fact of sin and was earnestly bent on improving his own character ? Surely such earthly teachers as conscious- ness and experience were enough to reveal this to an earnest Jewish soul. And may we not go farther, and say that every thoughtful mind among the Greeks and Eomans who regarded the improvement of character to be of prime importance, came to the same result, — that the soul was in a state of disharmony, that life was in ruins, and that he would be man's greatest benefactor who could point out to man a better help than the dis- Before Heavenly can he. 163 cipline of philosophy. Nor is this to be argued more ■from individual confessions, than from the success of the Gospel when it went through the heathen world preaching its heavenly announcements. Men received these because they were prepared for them by a sense of want and a sense of sin which had been smouldering in their hearts. To them the necessity of a new birth seemed like an old doctrine of their own experience, with a more vivid light thrown upon it by the Gospel. And so all those decisions which our moral nature pro- nounces, when the fact of sin is honestly admitted, are earthly things which Christ needed to preach, but did not first reveal. The ill desert of sin, the anger of God against sin, the judgment which will follow sin, the help- lessness of him who is under the yoke of sin — ^these and such as these are the earthly things which conscience and life had impressed on many a Jew, yes, and on many a heathen all over the world, from the realms of Druid worship to those lands in the East where men have sought to purify the soul by the torture of the body. Such, then, are the earthly things which our Saviour has in view : they are what man could discover for him- self, or, if by reason of his blindness he could not do this, might realize to be true as soon as they were told hira. What, on the other hand, were the heavenly things ? Plainly, such as no skill of man could discover, no philos- opher could reason out, no consciousness, or experience construct, — such as needed a Divine messenger from the skies to make them known. It may be that some intima- tions of these heavenly things were conveyed to God's people by the old prophets ; it may be that God's dealings of forbearance and compassion suggested the possibility of them, or of something like them ; it may even be that hu- man nature in thoughtful heathen minds is never without hope of some light to come, some intervention or deliver- ance ; but, granting all this, still, the heavenly things 164: Earthly things rmist be believed needed to be disclosed by the same hand that had fanned these embers of hope, and had forborne to punish sin, and had inspired the prophets to promise future good. What these heavenly things were, our Lord lets us know in the verses following our text. They were such as the lifting up on the cross of the Son of man for the sins of the world, the love of Qod in sending His Son for man's salvation, and not for his condemnation. That a rescue of man in his sins was desirable — this might be freely ad- mitted ; that there was no other hope for him, this, too, experience might teach, but that God had resolved to in- terpose on man's behalf, in what way He would interpose, who was to be the deliverer, what He was to do for this end, what man would do to Him— aW this was wrapped in impenetrable darkness, except so far as prophets had caught glimpses of heavenly realities, which they them- selves imperfectly understood. Those religious truths, then, which consciousness and experience reveal to a candid spirit, are called by our Lord earthly things ; those truths, on the other hand, which lie beyond the knowledge of man, and which only a messenger from heaven can reveal. He calls heavenly things. II. In illustration of these words of Christ, I remark, that belief in the earthly things is a necessary antecedent to belief in the heavenly. It is impossible for him who rejects the first class of truths to accept the other. No man can receive Christ, as a teacher come from God, and making known what no earthly teacher could discover, and yet deny or discard that which he assumes as the very reason for which His revelation is brought to man. Nay, further, no man can receive Christ without being made ready for Him by the teachings of conscience and of reason. The root of unbelief and of skepticism lies deeper down in the soul than many a man thinks: it is not merely rejection of the supernatural, or even the closing of the Before Heavenly can he. 165 heart to God's infinite love, manifest in His dear Son, but it is shutting the ear to the very voice of nature crying within us, telling us of our immense needs, and thus bringing us to a Christ all ready for our reception. And thus unbelief takes its true place : it is not only sin against Christ, blindness to revealed glories, insensibility to love from heaven, — ^it is; also, sin agaiast nature, sin agaiust reason, siu against the soul's deepest, most universal con- victions. Observe, then, that without faith in the earthly things pointed out above, Christ's heavenly revelation can have no interest, is not a practical subject, and is altogether im- probable. God must have manifested Himself in Christ, for some good reason lying outside of the revelation itself? It was not in order to make a revelation for its own sake, that Christ was sent, but it was for some cause arising out of the nature and condition of man. It was to provide a remedy for some existing evil, and for some evil bearing a proportion in its magnitude to the grandeur of the in- tervention. But the evil, in order to be cured, must be felt and acknowledged, for there are no magical processes in God's government, there is no way of getting rid of evil in man's nature or in human society without the ef- fective co-operation of man himself. Now such co-opera- tion is prevented, not only by unbelief in the value of the remedy, but just as much by unbelief in the need of any remedy at all. How is man to discover his need of a remedy ? Not from the revelation which places it within his reach,— although the uses of this may be very great in drawing his attention to moral maladies from which his eye was turned away before — ^but from his own moral sense, his consciousness of sin, his observation of the laws of character, his study of society, and of his fellow-men. Suppose now he will not admit his sinfulness, can the revelation do him any good ? Can it even be received for 166 Earthly things must be believed true? Will he not reason that if sin is no evil, there is no need of any remedy for it, much less of a remedy so mar- vellous as the incarnation and death of the Son of God? And if his premises are true, will he not have a right so to reason? Suppose that among the multitudes preached to by the Apostle Paul, there had been one sinless man, one man utterly unconscious of having ever offended God, or suppose there had been one utterly devoid, by his nature, of a sense of good and evil. If the Apostle in his ignorance of human hearts had offered the salvation from heaven to either of these men, could either of them have received it ? Would it have been a revelation in- tended for either of them ? Was not the nature of both such that they would be obliged to reject a revelation pre-supposing sin? And so, too, all men who will not admit the great fact of their sinfulness, as discovered from their earthly experience, must reject, cannot fail to reject, a revelation from heaven which without that sinfulness can have no meaning. -> I have spoken exclusively of sinfulness in this argu- ment, because all the earthly things, all the religious doc- trines which Christ's heavenly doctrine pre-supposes, re- volve around this one fact of human sin. Our nature is such as sin makes it, our relations to God are determined by sin, our power of self-recovery is crippled by sin, the question whether God can pardon sin is an unsettled ques- tion before a positive offer is made,the future prospects of the soul are dark as long as there is sin past or present to be taken into account. Let me add too that sin itself, and sin alone makes us unwilling to admit those earthly thingb which furnish the reason why Christ came into the world, and thus prepares the way for all skepticism — ^that re- lating to our nature and obligations towards God, and that relating to the grand recoverer. Sin seeks to deny its own existence, it pretends to be dead, it succeeds in making the soul insensible to its own state, and thus in- capable of receiving Christ. Before Heavenly can he. 167 One or two illustrations will, I trust, make it plain, that the unbelief which rejects Christ has its root in the denial of those very truths which need no revelation for their es- tablishment. The philosophy called: Pantheistic denies the freedom of man, and holds that sin is a necessary stage in the pro- gress of the development of a finite' creature. Now be- tween such a view of man's moral nature and wants, and the coming of 'Christ from heaven to save him, how can there be any harmony ? If man is unfree, why call on him to believe, or complain of him for not believing ? If sin is necessary for the finite mind, if it is an unavoidable stage of being, why not let it alone, and what wisdom is there in a remedial system which assumes that it can be cured ? And indeed how could a God who is Himself bound by necessity, who is in a process of evolution over which He has no control, out of His own free love send His Son on an errand of mercy into this world ? Or if He came, since nature is subject to the same bondage, how could He work miracles, which by the theory are im-. possible ? Thus, then, there is no need of a revelation, nor any possibility of one, nor can there be any evidence for one. Is the rejection of Christ's heavenly message, then, on the part of -the Pantheist, due chiefly to its nature, or its difficulties — or, is not the conclusion in this school a foregone one, good against any possible or conceivable revelation, good against any opening of heaven to earth, and any way from earth to heaven,^good even against that fixed consciousness of sin, which cleaves to the race, ^nd which must, on Pantheistic principles, be pronounced to be a fixed illusion ? For another illustration of a more practical nature let us look at the Pharisee. Here is a man who believes in the earthly things, as it seems, for he believes in God, even in the God of Israel. He believes that there is such a thing as sin, and it troubles him, as is evident by the 168 Earthly tilings must be believed trouble lie takes to get rid of the sense of it. Now, why does he reject the Saviour's claims to he the Christ of God? It is because his view of sin, of his relation to God, of his character, is shallow. He can, by external observance, by decorum, by morality, by almsgiving, by bigoted attach- ment to the faith of his ancestors, — ^he can in these ways satisfy himself, and keep religion from invading the inner provinces of his soul. But the sacred Teacher has a battery to play upon him : He says, except a man be born again, be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the king- dom of Grod. Here Christ comes into border-land where the earthly and the heavenly meet ; He opens the world of spiritual power, and shows him that all works without the work of the Spirit are works of the flesh. This is a step beyond where he is willing to follow the Teacher come from God. This, which he ought to have found out of himself, he is not willing to admit. "How can these things be ?" But if not, how then can those other things be — those glorious announcements out of the heavens which Christ is all ready to tell him ? He must shrivel up in his skepticism. And he does not see all the while that he is passing judgment on himself. For if, with all his Jewish lore, and his access to the books of God, and his ready faith in a portion of the truth there announced, he cannot receive the doctrine of a new spiritual birth, when it is taught by Scripture and by experience, do not his blindness and unbelief show that he needs to have his eyes and his heart opened before he can enter into the kingdom of God? Not very unlike the state of the Pharisee is the state of that class of worldly men who live an easy, self satisfied life, in entire unconcern for the future interests of their souls. If they had even the convictions of Plato in regard to the lapse of souls ; or the convictions of Aristotle in re- gard to the importance of character; or the convictions of the Stoics in regard to the freedom and nobility of the vir- Before Heavenly can he. 169 tuous soul, could they think so meanly as they do of their immortal part? If then, when Christ tells them these things, which the best heathen in substance admit, and they believe not, how can they believe, when He begins to tell them of the strength of a Divine love which drew Him down into this world ? If He tells them about them- selves, and holds the mirror before them that they may look into their soiils, and they believe not, how can they believe when He tells them of Himself, of this unknown being beyond the skies ? He can have no hold on their minds. He can be of no practical interest whatever, there is no good reason which they admit for His coming into the ■world. How then can they believe when He speaks of Himself as having come from God ? Thus it appears that when the earthly things of which Christ discourses are rejected, all that He says of heavenly truth will be rejected also. On the other hand, he who receives Christ's testimony concerning the former will believe what He says of the latter. We have already seen that in the condition of human nature and its wrong relations to God, — truths within the reach of an earthly mind, — lie the reason for Christ's coming into this world. But these reasons, it is plain, must be perceived and acknowledged by each soul that hears the Gospel, otherwise the Gospel can be of no use to him whatever. And the faith which receives Christ is a faith which contemplates His coming to relieve some acknow- ledged want, to cure some felt evil, to readjust some con- troversy with God of which there is a painM conscious- ness. Suppose now, that an individual has reached this station of faith, that he believes in the sad reality of sin, that he believes in a discord between the soul and God, that he believes in the necessity of a new spiritual life, if men are to be holy or blessed ; and suppose that Christ now manifests Himself to such a person, confirming first what He was but too conscious of before, and then adding 8 170 Earthly things must be believed a revelation of love and hope which offers through a crucified Saviour reconciliation to God and eternal life. What will be this man's treatment of the new heavenly things thus disclosed to him ? The first effect will be to confirm and deepen his impressions in regard to all those soul-truths which he previously admitted. The next effect must be to receive Christ's new message, and to come into a state of harmony with God. For what is there to pre- vent this. He has no prejudice to surmount. When Christ tells him of his sin and his need of a spiritual life, it is what he has already felt. .He finds no difiiculty ia the evidences of Christ's mission. It carries with it, taken in connection with the character of its author, its own evidence. He cannot regard God's new revelation as iu itself incredible. Far from this, it is very credible. He could not, indeed, have solved the problem of what God would do, but in what God has done he sees a beauty, a glory,' a divine perfection of love and holiness, a suitar bleness for man's wants and sins, which confirm and are confirmed by the character and works of the Messenger. Thus he cannot but believe the heavenly things, the new revelation, since he believes the earthly things, the religious truths discernible by man and already known before the heavenly things are made manifest. We learn from these words of our Lord, as thus il- lustrated, that there is nothing strange in man's rejection of the Gospel. When we look at Christ's message from onfe point of view, when we take into account its offer of free grace, its promises and helps, the moral beauty of its founder, the new relations which it institutes between God and the soul, together with all the wants, the anxieties, the sorrows which it can be seen and be shown to relieve, we marvel that any one should stay away from this feast of love, and so we begin to think that there is some want of evidence for the Gospel ; that difiiculties in the Gospel, not to be explained, keep men with some show of reason Before Heavenly can be. 171 in a state of skepticism. But, my friends, Christ and ex- perience teach us something truer than. this. Skepticism or disbelief is not the marvel, but faith is the marvel. It would be more of an evidence against the Gospel that, it should be believed by men as they are, than it is an evi- dence against the Gospel that men as they are reject it. If a Gospel came offering peace and life without any mention of an inner process in the soul, if the Saviour, with the evidence of His mission which we have now, h^d distributed external gifts, and changed society by His bene- volent agency, there would have been a crowding of all men to Him, He would not have left a few half fledged, doubting disciples in this world, when He left it for the Father. No ! the Gospel is not disbelieved for what it is and for its want of evidence, but for what it pre-supposes. It is the under-pinning of the Gospel which is unsightly in the eyes of so many. Christ is beautiful enough to penetrate with a kind of joy into the hearts of un- believers, but these dreadful postulates, these sad reali- ties of man's nature and of his relation to God — ^these are the barrier and must be the barrier between Christ and souls in their sins. It is not miracles, again, or difficul- ties touching the matter of inspiration, which keep men in unbelief. Remove these and there is some other intrench- ment behind them. But let a soul receive Christ's postu- lates, and miracles or no miracles, inspiration or no in- spiration, it throws its gates open wide, and joyfully sur- renders to Christ. This is shown by those instances, not uncommon, where men who had intrenched themselves for years in some scheme of thought opposing the founda- tions of the Gospel, suddenly, in affliction or adversity, or under the unusual influences of religion, abandon their scheme altogether and go over to Christ the redeemer. Christ is where He was before. But they denied the very reason why He came into the world. Therefore they 172 Earthly things must be believed before Heavenly can be. could only disbelieve. Now they can only believe. The unbelief while it lasted was as natural, as inevitable as the faith was afterwards. Such cases show also that unbelief in the earthly things of religion is weak, so that there is hope in some favored moment of driving it from its place. Christ, when He speaks, is sustained by the deepest, most fixed things iu human nature, by its standard of character, by its ideal of perfection, by its sense of want, by its sense of guilt, by its longing for the favor of God. These and such as these are the helpers of faith, the guides to Christ. These the objector overlooks when he thinks that the Gospel must fall under his blows. These the unbeliever covers up but cannot extinguish. And if, at some blest time, the Spirit calls the soul into the presence both of these things and of Christ, so that it sees itself and its deliverer face to face, — ^then it enters into the kingdom of God. SERMON XII. IHE PLACE OF FEAE AS A MOTIVE IN RELIGION. LuEB xii, 4^5. But I say unto you, my friends, be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that hare no more that they can d