YALE UNIVERSITY •LIBRARY Gift of GLASTONBURY PUBLIC LIBRARY (prtacger* of tfy ($3* H. C. G. MOULE, M.A. /yL? u>-/:/sia-/y, /y yytiy/y- &> y^^ !>y^ CHRIST IS ALL: SERMONS FROM NEW TESTAMENT TEXTS ON VARIOUS ASPECTS OF TIIE GLORY AND WORK OF CHRIST WITH SOME OTHER SERMONS H. C. G. MOULE, M.A. PRINCIPAL OF RIDLEY HALL, AND FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 'A Te principium, Tibi desinct " NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & CO. 31, WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET LONDON I I'RINTFD BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, I.IR11TFD, STAMFORD S.TREKT AND CHAKING CROSS. PREFACE The Sermons here before the reader are a collection, from some points of view, quite miscellaneous. Only two of them were preached consecutively. In time, the earliest produced are divided from the latest by several years. As to place, they represent much variety ; some are parochial sermons, preached in two or three churches in which the writer has served ; others are sermons for College Chapel or University Church. The cast and style, accordingly, will be seen to vary not a little from sermon to sermon, and so will the length. And no attempt has been made so to remodel what was first written as to avoid all repetitions of topic or argument. The writer hopes, however, that the sermons grouped under the title, Christ is All, will be found not to be a mere accidental concourse, but to have a real coherence, bound together by those different aspects of the preacher's supreme and inexhaustible Theme of which they presume to treat. And those discourses which follow, and which have no such link in a professed common subject, will yet, it is hcped, Le found to contribute something to "the consideration of Hjm " who is our Hope, our Message, and our All. VI PREFACE If the volume, such as it is, may in the least degree, by His mercy, point the reader's faith, even in one particular, more definitely to Him, and open up however little of His glory to the reader's love and adoration, it will be to the writer occasion for deep thanksgiving. Ingleton, Kirkby Lonsdale, August 26, 1892. CONTENTS CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS ' ' My litile children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous : and He is the Propitiation for our sins : and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world."— i John ii. I, 2 Preached in London. CHRIST THE MASTER " Whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord : whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and living." — Rom. xiv. 8, 9 . , ... ... 17 Preached in the University Church, Cambridge. CHRIST THE VICTORY IN TEMPTATION " Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ."— Rom. xiii. 14 ... ... 31 Preached in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge. CHRIST THE LIBERATOR " If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." — St John viii. 36 ... ... ... ... .•• 41 Preached before the Church of England Young Men's Society, Cambridge VUl CONTENTS CHRIST THE ANSWER TO THE UNANSWERABLE PAGE "Lord, to whom else shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life."— St John vi. 68. " Yea, Lord : I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world." — St John xi. 27 55 Preached at St fohn's Church, Weymouth. CHRIST THE UNITING HOPE OF HIS PEOPLE " The love which ye have to all the saints, for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven." — Col. i. 4, 5 ... ... 67 Preached in Trinity Church, Cambridge. CHRIST ASCENDED, THE LIGHT OF THE UNSEEN " For we walk by faith, not by sight." — 2 Cor. v. 7 ... ... 81 Preached in the University Church, Cambridge ; Ascension Day. CHRIST THE YEA AND AMEN OF PROMISE "For all the promises of God in Him are Yea, and in Him Amen." — 2 Cor. i. 20 ... ... ... ... 95 Preached at Fordington, Dorchester. CHRIST REVEALED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT " But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit." — 1 Cor. ii. 9, 10 ... 107 Preached in the University Church, Cambridge. CHRIST AND HIS MEMBERS UNITED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT "^\nd I beheld, and, lo, in the midst ofthe throne and ofthe four living beings, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb CONTENTS IX PAGE as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth." — Rev. v. 6 ... ... ... ... ... 123 Preached in the University Church, Cambridge, on the Sunday ajter Ascension Day. JUSTIFICATION " Whom He justified, them He also glorified."— Rom. viii. 30 ... 139 Preached at Cambridge, before the fudge 0/ Assize. GOD IS LOVE A Trinity Sunday and Hospital Sermon "God is Love."— 1 John iv. 8 and 16 ... ... ... 149 Preached in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge. HEAVENLY REASONS FOR LIBERAL GIVING " Now concerning the collection." — 1 Cor. xvi. [ ... ... 159 Preached in Trinity Church, Cambridge. SELF-DISCIPLINE "Take heed unto thyself." — 1 Tim. iv. 16 ... ... ... 173 Preached in the University Church, Cambridge. TIIE ENNOBLING POWER OF THE GOSPEL " The Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you."— 1 Pet. iv. 14 l89 Preached in the University Church, Cambrigde. x CONTENTS SERVITUDE AND ROYALTY PAGE " His servants shall serve Him . . . and they shall reign for ever and ever."— Rev. xxii. 3, 5 ... ... ... ... 201 Preached in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, at the opening of the Academic Year. FULNESS IN THE HOLY SPIRIT ¦'But be ye filled with the Spirit."— Epii. -.-. 18 ... ... 211 Preached in Trinity Church, Cambridge. A VESSEL UNTO HONOUR " If a man purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified and meet for the Master's ire, and prepared unto every good work." — 2 Tim. ii. 21 ... ... ... 225 Preached in the University Church, Cambiidge. BlPLIOGRAniY ... ... ... ... ... ... 237 CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS B— 9 CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS Preached in London " My littlechildren, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous : and He is the Propitiation for our sins : and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." — I John ii. I, 2. Let us think together to-day concerning the Lord Jesus Christ as the believer's Righteousness. And let us do so with full remembrance of the holiness of the theme: One of the first duties, one of the deepest instincts, of the Christian, in face of any great truth concerning his Lord and Re deemer, and especially in face of such truths as pointedly remind him of his own character as a sinner saved by grace, surely is to veil the face of the soul,"to bow down in inward awe and adoration, and humbly to ask of the holy King and Master such grace and guidance as that the man may in some sense truly set Him forth. So I not only announce my subject and proceed to deal with it; I ask your prayers; I beg you to accompany me in prayer, remembering Him of whom we speak, and who looks and listens as we confer together about Him. Let me read my text again : " My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the 4 CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS Righteous : and He is the Propitiation for our sins : and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." The passage is brief, but divinely full. Within its sacred limits will move almost all the thoughts and reason ings that I shall have to put before you. In pondering the subject, I have sought to do two things — to consider its limits, and to simplify my treatment. To speak first of this last point — I desire to aim at simplicity of treatment, by aiming at the heart and centre of the subject, and not at accessories and details on which there may be room for minor variations among believers other wise thoroughly agreed. My words to you will concentrate themselves, God helping, only and wholly upon some few great facts and considerations, which to me seem to consti tute that heart and centre. And then to speak of the limits of the subject — I wish to remember, and I ask you to remember, that in the phrase, "Christ our Righteousness," as commonly understood in the Churches of the Reforma- tipn, we have not only the doctrine of the Atonement implied, we have a certain special aspect and application of that holy doctrine. Disengaged from detail, in the way I hinted at a moment ago, the truth of " Christ our Righteous ness " may, as to its centre, be stated somewhat thus : Jesus Christ in His atoning merits, Jesus Christ for me a sinner, is my immediate ground, is my one real ground, of peace with God, not only at first, but always, to the end. For His blessed sake as my sinless Sacrifice of peace, I, believ ing, am welcomed to the refuge, to the hiding-place, to the home, which is, in fact, Himself— Himself my Head and Lord. For His blessed sake, as my sinless Sacrifice of peace, I, believing, am not cast out, having entered in. I am held welcome still. I am still "owned a child." I CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS 5 come not into condemnation ; I stand in grace ; still, and always, and continuously, for His blessed sake as Christ for me. Where I fled, there I dwell. And the walls that shut me in from condemnation as I entered are as necessary this moment as they were then to keep me from condemna tion. I cannot dwell in the suburbs, or pitch my tent in all the plain. It is within the sanctuary precinct, and there alone, that I can live, and rest at peace, and work with a quiet mind. I say thus much at once on the force of the words, " Christ my Righteousness." As I proceed I trust to say more in detail. But in what I have said we touch, I think, the heart of the subject as a subject for the believer's life and death. Now look a little with me at the passage I read just now, that short, pregnant passage. It stands in one of the inner sanctuaries' of the Bible. This First Epistle of St John is very possibly the latest page of Scripture in date. Assuredly in it the Holy Spirit takes the reader into the last recesses of spiritual life and experience. He leads him into the most penetrating and searching views of holiness, and obedience, and love. He twice tells him that God is Love. He repeatedly speaks of the Christian life, as such, as a life without sinning. A tone and air of serene yet awful purity, at once most spiritual and most importunately practical, characterizes the pages. The Christian contemplated in this letter is a man of God indeed. He has fellowship with the Father and the Son. He walks in the light of God. He possesses eternal life, possessing God's own Son, who is the Life. He is a child of God now, and when his Lord shall appear he is going to be like Him, most gloriously like Him, seeing Him as He is. 6 CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS All the more remarkable it is, then, all the more significant of deep, and pregnant, and eternal principle, that in such a passage, and with relation to such a Christian, comes in the language I have read, " If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous: and He is the Propitiation for our sins." For one thing, we are here warned that the heights and depths of grace leave the liability to actual sinning there still. This blessed believer, this privileged and transfigured man, may very conceivably sin; so says St John. The whole weight, indeed, of the precious revela tions John is making is meant to act against sinning : "These things I write unto you, that ye sin not." But very conceivably the man may sin. And if he does, then, whether the sin look great or little, whether it be visible or not, whether it be deed, word, imagination, impulse, tendency — what, when the sin happens, is to be the man's thought? Is he to say, "I am sorry, I regret it; yet, after all, from some points of view, it is a ' fall upward,' a development, a realization, a something not adjusted yet, but to be corrected and harmonized soon"? Is he to say, " My true law is the realization of my deepest individual life, and a certain mysterious knowledge of evil may need to be a factor in the process " ? Is he to say, on the other hand, " I am an item in a vast total of regenerate humanity, of spiritualized human life, and all partial evil within this is universal good " ? Is he to say, in simpler thought and phrase, " God is a Father : for me the divine Fatherhood is Alpha and Omega, my Creed, and Articles, and Confession. My spiritual life is just insight into that, and sympathy with that. All other phases of religious thought, if true at all, are but broken lights of that, and CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS 7 the sooner we merge them in that great ray the better. As a man, certainly as a spiritually developed man, I am akin to God ; I am one with God ; I am in God ; there is nothing in God for me to fear ; a deviation from His ideal is indeed calamity, disease, imperfection ; but the life and love of God suffusing me must heal and restore, and the burthen of the fact is lost in the sea of love " ? Are these, or any of them, the ways in which the man is to deal with the event of his having sinned ? No, not according to St John the Apostle. The truth with which he meets the case is at once sterner, firmer, tenderer : " We have an Advocate with the Father" So the Father is thus, though a Father, yet a Judge, and a Judge who asks urgently a perfectly valid plea on the man's behalf. And our Advo cate is "fjsus Christ the Righteous ; " not now Jesus Christ the Meek and Lowly, the "altogether Lovely" with the charm of an eternal love, but Jesus Christ the Righteous, the Keeper and Horrourer and Glorifier of eternal Law ; Jesus Christ, at once the Lord and the Bondservant of everlasting Duty ; Jesus Christ, in whose eyes that sin, that small sin perhaps, is hateful and abominable beyond imagination; Jesus Christ, whose pleading for us, we may be very sure, will not palliate our sin, nor tone it down, nor talk about falling upward and development. " And He is the Propitiation for our sins." Here is the basis of the advocacy, the strength of the plea, the reason of the sinning believer's, the defective believer's, non- condemnation, non-exclusion. " He is the Propitiation for our sins." Mark the words well. First, " The Propitiation ; " we know what that is. It has but one meaning, in Greek or English. It means sacrificial pacification of an offended Power. And then, " He is the Propitiation ; " observe what 8 CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS that says. It is not " it," but " He ; " not merely a thing done, but a Person who has done it ; not merely suffering, but the Sufferer; not merely obedience, but the Obeyer; not merely death, but the Lamb of God slain. It is a phrase in which we see Merit, profound, mysterious, valid, prevail ing ; merit such that the sinner before the Father-Judge is an accepted child still, not for his own sake at all, but for this merit's sake ; a merit all the while lodged, as all merit must be, in a Person ; prevailing not merely because such and such things have been done, but because they have been done and borne by Him. It is a memorable phrase. It is doubly memorable, standing where it does, in this glorious context of life and love. We have got into the inner sanctuary here ; we are in this Epistle suffered indeed to look into the heart of God, God who is Love. Profoundly significant is it then that just in that sanctuary, just at that heart, shines the red and awful glory of that word Propitiation, as it shines again below (iv. io) in that wonderful utterance, "God loved us, and sent His Son to be " — not merely His Revealer, not merely Love Incarnate, but — " the Propitiation for our sins." Never let us forget that Propitiation is an intensely Johannine word. Theo logians have sometimes spoken as if it were a " Paulinism," or the like. If it were, I for one believe that it would be an infallible oracle none the less. But, as a fact, it is a " Johannism." It shinea with its altar-fire out of St John's deepest teaching of inmost spiritual life. " He is the Propitiation." The pacification of offended Holiness, the reconcilement of the Father-Judge in His awful consciousness and cognizance of His regenerate child's slightest sin, lies altogether here. Not in effusion of love, but in Propitiation. Not in presence of spiritual CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS 9 life, but in Propitiation. Not in general considerations about Fatherhood, but in the particular divine fact of an Advocate with the Father, an Advocate who is the Righteous, and who is the Propitiation. So is the sin met, according to St John. So does the sinner " stand," in the judgment of that dread court. So is he "in no wise cast out." So, in respect of not being cast out, is he dealt with as if he had not sinned ; as if he were the Righteous One Himself. I might say, of course, much more on the details of this mighty, tender, holy passage. I might dwell largely on the word righteous. I might dilate on the sinless obedience through which and in which Jesus Christ moved to the Cross to be the Propitiation there. I might speak about the mighty positive merit of that obedience. It was a merit due not precisely to the sacred fact of His having obeyed every iota of His Father's Law (for, of course, in the very necessity of His holiness of will, He did so), but to the divine free will with which He first accepted the position of Man in which humanly to obey it. And I might point out the deep connexion of all this with the merit of the great agonizing act of propitiation proper when, as the Lamb unspotted, as He " who knew no sin," He died (as the Scripture witnesses) "by the determinate counsel of God," and beneath the iniquity of us all, " made a curse for us." 1 But there is no precise necessity that I should go off to, these great topics now. I want to leave a few deep impressions large and plain upon your minds. And let this one be our sufficient impress from the deep- cut seal of these verses, the truth that Jesus Christ the Advocate, Jesus Christ the Propitiation, is the infinitely 1 Acts ii. 23; Gal. iii. 13 10 CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS necessary preservative of the regenerate man's acceptance, standing, peace, before the Father, in the event of his ever sinning, be it in violation or in defect. Let me press it home again and again. " Christ for us " is no mere introduction to a state in which " Christ in us " is to be all in all. " Christ for us," still less, is an element of rudimentary and imperfect Christianity, a " childish thing " to be put away as the man grows up into larger, and more genial, and more comprehensive views of re ligion. Christ for us, in the region of law, and guilt, and condemnation, and acceptance, and the merit of unique obedience and unique sacrificial suffering, is the preserva tive all along, all along, so far as the believer for a moment, or for a step, deviates from the most holy Law of God. It is to remind us of this, if I mistake not, that the Apostle adds just here the great words, "and not for us only, but also for the sins of the whole world." Sacred and blessed statement; but why here? Is.it not just to remind the awakened and penitent believer, who has been long in Christ, but to-day is conscious of wandering from the true close walk with God, that he must stand, for pur poses of acceptance, of justification, of peace, precisely on the old humbling ground? Yes, he must leave his Christian experience alone for this purpose, and kneel down at the foot of the Cross, and wrap himself in the Lord's Merit, precisely as the last, the newest, the least instructed penitent of " the whole world" has to kneel in the first moment of his first faith. But this is only by the way. A strong thinker of the past generation, Isaac Taylor, of Ongar, somewhere says that to the end of time a Vicarious Atonement (in the old evangelical sense of those words) will be assailed with objections ; and that to the CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS 1 1 end of time the awakened, the thoroughly awakened, con science will gravitate to the Vicarious Atonement as to its one possible rest. True witness; let me put my seal humbly to it in both its parts. Another great Christian of a remoter past, Count Zin- zendorf, has left on record a notice of a personal experience of his own which powerfully impressed me when I came on it a few years ago in a French memoir of his life. Let me read you the words : " About this time I met with the work of Dippel, in which the doctrine of Imputed Righteousness is attacked. Its system seemed to aim at eliminating from the idea of God the notion of His wrath ; and just so far as I sympathized with that view I liked the system. I was then in the attitude of the natural theologian ; and the 'good God' distressed me when His acts seemed to lack a sequence of mathematical precision. I sought to justify Him, at all costs, to men of reason. But when I came to think over my own conversion, I saw that in the death of Jesus, and in the word Ransom, there lay a profound mystery — a mystery before which Philosophy stops short, but as regards which Revelation is immovably firm. This gave me a new intuition into the doctrine of Salvation. I found its blessing and benefit first in the instance of my own heart, then in that of my brethren and fellow-workers (in the Moravian Church). Since the year 1734 the doctrine of the expiatory Sacrifice of Jesus has been, and will for ever be, our treasure, our watchword, our all, our panacea against all evil, alike in doctrine and in practice." True witness, I say again, and again would humbly put my seal to its terms, in regard both of experience and of principle. And the principle of Taylor's dictum and 12 CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS Zinzendorf's inner history is just as true for the progress as it is for the beginning of the believer's life. It is in point, not only in connexion with conversion, but in connexion with the lifelong needs of the Christian, and his lifelong peace and standing before God. All that I would here add to the witness of these two quotations is a brief word on one great and glorious truth which they do not explicitly mention. I mean the Union of Christ and His people, the Union of Christ and the believing soul. Deeply convinced am I that in that blessed truth, that truth of which, as you know, the New Testament is really full, there lies not, indeed, a solution for us here below of all the problems that can be stated about Atonement and Acceptance, but a most precious assistance to the believer's thoughts as he grasps the reality of Atonement and Acceptance, and looks for the light of eternity to fall upon their as yet unsolved mysteries. Union with Christ is the radiating centre, or, shall we say, the attracting, the uniting centre, of the whole range of saving truths. What is the true virtue of faith? It is faith's revealed function of bringing the man into actual vital oneness witti our glorious Head. What is the special virtue of that oneness from the point of view of our need as sinners ? It is that, in the holy unity of Head and members, the member now receives, not arbitrarily, but as in a profound and real union, the benefit of the merit of the Head on the one hand, and the influx of the life of the Head on the other. Our Advocate, our Propitiation, is also our Elder Brother, our celestial Bridegroom, our vital Root, our living and life-giving Head. In Him we " possess His possessions," won for us. Amongst them we possess His dear-bought Merit, good for us from first to last of our CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS 13 need. That merit is lodged for evermore in Him, and we are one with Him. But this I but refer to in passing, with deep reverence before its radiant mystery, and I now make haste to a close. How shall I best do so, so as to leave on our hearts and minds the impression which I long to leave, an impression at once deep and tender as before God ; an impression of awe in presence of His holiness, and peace in view of His acceptance ? My brethren in Jesus Christ, let me seek to bear a brief, earnest witness in closing to one profound need of our time. It is a far-spread need in all sections of the Christian Church ; a need which prompts me to anything in the world but - controversial acrimony ; it is rather fitted to humble and hide the face as one essays to speak of it, for it is traceable not ultimately to any special doctrinal aberrations, but to the fallen heart of man. I mean the deep, the solemn need of a keener, tenderer, profounder sense of sin. It is a trite, prosaic thing to say, looked at upon the surface. But it is a thing of literally vital importance to the Church, and to the soul. Rejoicing as I do in the manifold proofs of Christian life at this time, I must yet utter my deep conviction that we are not grow ing, on the whole, in the sense of the sinfulness of sin. And while I think this I remember with sad distinctness that most true saying, that there has never been in Church history a great error, a great deviation from Scripture, but an inadequate sense of the sinfulness of sin has had to do with it. My brethren, let us pray for an intuition, so far as we can bear it (we cannot bear very much of it), into the sinfulness of sin, into the awful wrongness and rebellion of sin, into the condemnableness of sin, into sin as "by the 14 CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS commandment " (note those words) " becoming exceeding sinful." ***• Let us pray that, while we mourn it as calamity and as disease, and loathe it as pollution, we may have some deep, some awful sense of it as guilt, as the thing which the holy Law of God, the holy perceptive and pro hibitive Law of God, must to all eternity abhor, and de nounce, and sentence. Let us pray, pray really, that such a view may be to each of us most individual and personal, not a point for disputation with our neighbour a thousandth part so much as for self-abasement and hiding in Christ Jesus for our own souls. Let us ask the Lord the Spirit to show us our little sins, " our secret sins, in the light of His countenance," 2 to let in a ray of His fiery Law upon our vanity, our pride, our temper, our unfairness, our sloth, our selfishness, our worldliness. Let us ask Him to show us what his Law says to our lack of love, our defect of love, to our neighbour, to our brother, to our " King that hath saved us." Let us ask Him, in the severity of His mercy, to take us to pieces and show us the interior of life a little as He has seen it. Let us ask Him to expound to us, for our own soul's knowledge, that word of His Book, " What soever things thS Law saith, it saith to them that are under the Law, that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world become guilty before God." 3 We need it, our modern Christendom needs it, with exceeding need. And that the prayer may be the sooner granted, what shall we do meanwhile ? We will gaze, in the glass of the Word, and asking for the Spirit's light, upon the revelation of the Holiness of God. Here too our need is extreme. The all-sacred words of love, and mercy, and Fatherhood — too often we so rend them from their divine contexts as 1 Rom. vii. 13. ' Ps. xc. 8. 3 Rom. iii. 19. CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS 15 to forget that thing without which, be sure of it, none of them would retain one gleam of glory, "the glorious and fearful Name," the " Holy, Holy, Holy," that aspect and attribute of God which fills the watchers nearest the eternal throne with an absorbing and awful adoration. Let us learn the often-forgotten use and habit of adoration, of holy fear, of that sight of God which makes the soul veil its face with its very wings while yet it sings the solemn praises of the Infinitely Holy. To see Him so is both to die- and to live ; to die to the last dream of claim or refuge, save beneath the Cross ; to live to, and in, peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, to make discovery of the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. " Mine eye seeth Thee, therefore I abhor myself." " Woe is me, for I am a man unclean ; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts." " When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. He laid His right hand on me, saying, Fear not ; I am He that liveth, and I became dead, and behold I am alive for ever more." * My treatment of this great theme ends here. God knows with what a sense of incompletion and inadequacy I close it. But at least it is to me a sacred privilege to bear humbly my personal testimony to the "reason ofthe hope" of the awakened sinner, ay, of the awakened believer, as he finds himself face to face with the claims, with the law, with the holiness of God. It is long years now since — in the morning of manhood, after many a mental wandering — the question was driven home upon my own inmost being by a 1 Job xiii. 5, 6; Isa. vi. 5 ; Rev. i. 17. 1 6 CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS power which indeed was not myself, " What must thou do to be saved ? " But that question came home in a way over which lapse of time has no power. The soul got in tuitions then which it can never lose, into self, into sin, into holiness, and — blessed be God — into the need, the reality, the eternal Tightness of the blood of the Lamb, of the right eousness of the Mediator. Long years have rolled, but these things are above time. And meanwhile, in the expe riences of time, I have seen abundantly enough to assure me, amidst a universe of mysteries, that in the living grasp of these mighty truths, in the application of them and assimilation of them into man's life, there is " a power of God unto salvation " which there is in nothing else. Christ Crucified — Christ Crucified — He is still "a stumbling-block," He is still " folly." He is still and for ever " the power of God, and the wisdom of God " too.1 My brethren, I come back after all, as my last word, to this. Let us not rest without some deep sight of the Holy One in His holiness. It will show us self. It will show us sin. But also, blessed be God, it will show us the light and wonder of the Cross, the glory of the Lamb, the peace of pardon, the "bliss of acceptance, the moral strength ofthe joy of the Lord, the joy of ceasing from our own works, to behold the fair beauty of Jehovah-Tsidkenu,- the Lord our Righteousness. 1 I Cor. i. 23, 24. CHRIST THE MASTER c— 9 CHRIST THE MASTER Preached in the University Church, Cambridge "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord : whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and living." — Rom. xiv. 8, 9. We have here, as very often in the New Testament, a supreme spiritual truth stated in intense connexion with a common and present duty. Differences of opinion and of practice on certain secondary matters have disturbed the concord of the Roman disciples. And the Apostle declines to lay down any binding rule of practice. But he is bent with all his heart upon keeping both parties and all their members perfectly loyal to the great binding rule of un selfish love and considerate mutual helpfulness. And therefore without delay, without reserve, he brings in upon them the weight of a motive perfectly supernatural, absolutely Christian. He points them to the death and to the resur rection of their Redeemer, who had died to bear their sins and was risen to be their life. And he reminds them that in virtue of those amazing facts they who have sought in Jesus Christ their salvation now belong to Jesus Christ as His property. Their redemption is from one point a release — a release into more than liberty, into an even regal power 20 CHRIST THE MASTER over old oppressors. But from another point it is an entrance, decisive and deep, into the possession of Another. Their Deliverer is now their Owner. To Him to-day, and to-morrow, and for ever, and in everything, they belong. And accordingly, in the present matter, they are to submit to Him their whole mental view and action in this con troversy about meats and about days. One all-controlling fact is to adjust and govern every man's thought and temper -towards his neighbour in the faith; it is that he belongs entirely and for ever to Jesus Christ. He has no right to a prejudice, to an animosity, no right even to a judgment or to a thought, which would be out of tune with his blessed Owner's rights upon him and presence in him. This was to temper the whole treatment of that problem at Rome. I desire by God's grace to speak a little this afternoon about that great theme of the Gospel, the Lordship of Jesus Christ over His followers, in life and death. But let me first, as we pass on, point out the testimony borne by this passage of the Apostle to a feature of great importance in the main characteristics of Christianity. What does St Paul's argument imply about New Testa ment Chris tiariity ? That in its very nature it is at once quite full of the powers of the world to come, and quite free from the " strange fire " of the fanatic. Here is a life whose every inner movement, and therefore its whole outer surface, is to be ruled from its depths by a supernatural relation to a supernatural Person. Here is a life, for Paul means not an iota less, in which the man is not to entertain an emotion, not to form a thought, regardless of the will of the slain and living Christ who reigns over him supreme. Yet on the other side here is a life in which the same man, not in spite of this supernatural relation, but CHRIST THE MASTER 21 in direct issue from it, is to throw himself into the inter course of the common day with a watchful regard for others, and a generous respect for their opinions, and the kindliest attention to all their claims. Such a temper is the precise antithesis to that of the fanatic. But it is the characteristic temper of the Religion whose other character istic is that it roots itself wholly in the supernatural, the eternal, the divine ; in nothing less than the Son of God, who loved us, and gave Himself for us, and rose and revived from the depths of that great death for us, that He might be the Lord of us dead and living. Such is the Christianity of the New Testament; per fectly supernatural (so it asserts) in its origin and secret, and perfectly sane, temperate, considerate, in its application of itself to human life. This runs all through the blessed Book. The secrets and certainties of heavenly joy and power lie there in congenial neighbourhood with the healthiest precepts of common duty. " We shall be caught up in the clouds, io meet the Lord in the air ; and so shall we ever be with the Lord ;" " Study to be quiet, atid to do your own business, and to work with your own hands." " Be ye filled with the Spirit ; filled with all the fulness of God;" "Masters, give to your servants that which is just and equal" "Believing in Him, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the salvation of your souls ; " " Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king." 1 Such are the motives of the Gospel, drawn from the bright recesses of God, of Christ, of the work of the Holy Ghost, of the hope of glory. Such are the issues of those 1 I Thess. iv. II, 17 ; Eph. iii. 19, v. 18 ; Col. iv. 1 ; 1 Pet. i. 8, 9, ii. 17. 22 CHRIST THE MASTER motives in the daylight sanity, the generous wholesomeness, of Gospel morals. In the living harmony of such character istics lies one of the strongest and most pregnant of the assurances that we who believe have not followed cunningly devised fables, but rest upon the rock. Delusion, illusion — small part had they in the genesis of a Gospel which at once and by the same act opened the heaven of heavens to the human soul, and called it to throw its energies into the unselfish service of the hour. But is that rock, then, solid? Are these motives genuine ? Is this Jesus Christ of the Cross and the Resur rection at once the supreme Fact of history, and the Way, the Truth, and the Life for the needs and experience of the man ? Then let us turn back to the text, and listen with new and definite attention to its report upon the essential and innermost relations between Christ and the Christian. How does it run ? " Whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord : whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's." And why? Because this was the great purpose of our most blessed Redeemer. " To this end He died and lived again ; to this end, that He might be Lord." You observe the point and scope of the words. Pau here does not describe a universal Christian experience; he does not say that "we" are all self-devoted to our Master. He insists upon a universal Christian law; he says that we disciples are all absolutely bound to be thus self-devoted, for we are all purchased to be our Master's property. It is this law, this constant spiritual fact, that Jesus Christ is the autocratic Owner of His followers, and then the resultant of it in His call to them to consent ex animo CHRIST THE MASTER 23 to His Possessorship, to yield themselves out and out to the Will of God in Christ, that I reverently seek to point out to you this afternoon. A more familiar tenet in the abstract I could not lay before a Christian assembly. But is it not just one of those truths which mean practically next to nothing while they are entertained, as it were, in the air and at a distance, but which for many of even convinced and devout Christians need only to be brought home, to be translated into here and now, in order to become dis coveries as of a new world, revolutions that bring in a new age in the history of the soul ? It is one thing to regard our Lord with sincere homage in a large and general sense, hold ing fast through His mercy all the great treasures of catholic belief about His glorious Person, resting the burthens of conscience on His Sacrifice and Intercession, and recog nizing the duty of at least a tacit and constructive loyalty to Him in the main outlines of life. It is another thing when the man discovers, with an insight perfectly calm and genuine, while yet it is given him from above, that what the Redeemer claims, and annexes, and appropriates, is nothing less than all the being, and all its action. It is a wonderful thing to discover that, not in figures and flights of speech, but in sober fact, " every thought is to be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ," 1 if Christ is to have His due ; that the will is to be laid in simplicity at His feet ; that all faculties of the mind, and all their growth and all their gains, are to be presented honestly to Him for His far-reaching purposes ; that reputation, when and while it is granted, is only a trust for Him;. that material posses sions are only a trust for Him ; that our time is His, all His, morning, noon, and night, wilhout interval or vaca- 1 2 Cor. x. 5, 24 CHRIST THE MASTER tion ; that our tongues are indeed His, in their every word ; that " whether we eat, or drink, or whatever we do," all of it is to be done " to the glory of God," 1 in this sense of a reference of the whole of life to Him. " For whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord. . . . For to this end He died and lived again." Deliberately and most humbly, as before Him of whom I dare to speak, I state thus, without abatement or extenu ation, the New Testament position about the claims of Jesus Christ upon the Christian. Have I overdrawn them ? I cannot present them in all the amplitude and depth, and at the same time the minuteness and precision, with which you will find them set forth in the New Testament as a whole. There, Christ is indeed all things in all His fol lowers. There the Christian is a being whose true reason and true life is altogether and always in Jesus Christ. He is slave, and his Redeemer is absolute Owner. He is branch, and his Redeemer is Root. He is limb, and his Redeemer is Head. He is vessel, and the great Master of the house is always to have full and free use of him for any purposes of his