Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) (2024)

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.

ROMANS
CORINTHIANS (To II Corinthians, Chap. V)

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.

ROMANS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE WITNESS OF THE RESURRECTION (Romans i.4, R. V.)

PRIVILEGE AND OBLIGATION (Romans i. 7)

PAUL'S LONGING (Romans i. 11, 12)

DEBTORS TO ALL MEN (Romans i. 14)

THE GOSPEL THE POWER OF GOD (Romans i.16)

WORLD-WIDE SIN AND WORLD-WIDE REDEMPTION(Romans iii. 19-26)

NO DIFFERENCE (Romans iii. 22)

‘LET US HAVE PEACE’ (Romans v.1, R. V.)

ACCESS INTO GRACE (Romans v. 2)

THE SOURCES OF HOPE (Romans v. 2-4)

A THREEFOLD CORD (Romans v. 5)

WHAT PROVES GOD'S LOVE (Romans v. 8)

THE WARRING QUEENS (Romans v. 21)

‘THE FORM OF TEACHING’ (Romansvi. 17)

‘THY FREE SPIRIT’ (Romans viii.2)

CHRIST CONDEMNING SIN (Romans viii. 8)

THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT (Romans viii.16)

SONS AND HEIRS (Romans viii. 17)

SUFFERING WITH CHRIST, A CONDITION OF GLORYWITH CHRIST (Romans viii. 17)

THE REVELATION OF SONS (Romans viii. 19)

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY (Romans viii.23)

THE INTERCEDING SPIRIT (Romans viii. 26)

THE GIFT THAT BRINGS ALL GIFTS (Romansviii. 32)

MORE THAN CONQUERORS (Romans viii. 37)

LOVE'S TRIUMPH (Romans viii. 38, 39)

THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY (Romans xii.1)

TRANSFIGURATION (Romans xii. 2)

SOBER THINKING (Romans xii. 3)

MANY AND ONE (Romans xii. 4, 5)

GRACE AND GRACES (Romans xii. 6-8)

LOVE THAT CAN HATE (Romans xii. 9, 10, R.V.)

A TRIPLET OF GRACES (Romans xii. 11)

ANOTHER TRIPLET OF GRACES (Romans xii.12)

STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET (Romans xii. 13-15)

STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET (Romans xii. 16, R.V.)

STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET (Romans xii. 17, 18, R.V.)

STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET (Romans xii. 19-21)

LOVE AND THE DAY (Romans xiii. 8-14)

SALVATION NEARER (Romans xiii. 11)

THE SOLDIER'S MORNING-CALL (Romans xiii.12)

THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY (Romans xiv.12-23)

TWO FOUNTAINS, ONE STREAM (Romans xv. 4,13)

JOY AND PEACE IN BELIEVING (Romans xv.13)

PHŒBE (Romans xvi. 1, 2, R. V.)

PRISCILLA AND AQUILA (Romans xvi. 3-5)

TWO HOUSEHOLDS (Romans xvi. 10,11)

TRYPHENA AND TRYPHOSA (Romans xvi. 12)

PERSIS (Romans xvi. 12)

A CRUSHED SNAKE (Romans xvi. 20)

TERTIUS (Romans xvi. 22, R. V.)

QUARTUS A BROTHER (Romans xvi. 23)

PART 2

THE WITNESS OF THERESURRECTION

‘Declared to be the Son of God with power, ... bythe resurrection of the dead.’—ROMANS i. 4 (R.V.).

It is a great mistake to treat Paul's writings, and especiallythis Epistle, as mere theology. They are the transcript of his life'sexperience. As has been well said, the gospel of Paul is aninterpretation of the significance of the life and work of Jesusbased upon the revelation to him of Jesus as the risen Christ. Hebelieved that he had seen Jesus on the road to Damascus, and it wasthat appearance which revolutionised his life, turned him from apersecutor into a disciple, and united him with the Apostles asordained to be a witness with them of the Resurrection. To them allthe Resurrection of Jesus was first of all a historical factappreciated chiefly in its bearing on Him. By degrees they discernedthat so transcendent a fact bore in itself a revelation of what wouldbecome the experience of all His followers beyond the grave, and asymbol of the present life possible for them. All three of theseaspects are plainly declared in Paul's writings. In our text it ischiefly the first which is made prominent. All that distinguishesChristianity; and makes it worth believing, or mighty, is inseparablyconnected with the Resurrection.

I. The Resurrection of Christ declares His Sonship.

Resurrection and Ascension are inseparably connected. Jesus doesnot rise to share again in the ills and weariness of humanity. Risen,‘He dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him.’‘He died unto sin once’; and His risen humanity hadnothing in it on which physical death could lay hold. That He shouldfrom some secluded dimple on Olivet ascend before the gazingdisciples until the bright cloud, which was the symbol of the DivinePresence, received Him out of their sight, was but the end of theprocess which began unseen in morning twilight. He laid aside thegarments of the grave and passed out of the sepulchre which was madesure by the great stone rolled against its mouth. The grand avowal offaith in His Resurrection loses meaning, unless it is completed asPaul completed his ‘yea rather that was raised from thedead,’ with the triumphant ‘who is at the right hand ofGod.’ Both are supernatural, and the Virgin Birth correspondsat the beginning to the supernatural Resurrection and Ascension atthe close. Both such an entrance into the world and such a departurefrom it, proclaim at once His true humanity, and that ‘this isthe Son of God.’

Still further, the Resurrection is God's solemn ‘Amen’to the tremendous claims which Christ had made. The fact of HisResurrection, indeed, would not declare His divinity; but theResurrection of One who had spoken such words does. If the Cross anda nameless grave had been the end, what a reductio ad absurdumthat would have been to the claims of Jesus to have ever been withthe Father and to be doing always the things that pleased Him. TheResurrection is God's last and loudest proclamation, ‘This isMy beloved Son: hear ye Him.’ The Psalmist of old had learnedto trust that his sonship and consecration to the Father made itimpossible that that Father should leave his soul in Sheol, or sufferone who was knit to Him by such sacred bonds to see corruption; andthe unique Sonship and perfect self-consecration of Jesus went downinto the grave in the assured confidence, as He Himself declared,that the third day He would rise again. The old alternative seems toretain all its sharp points: Either Christ rose again from the dead,or His claims are a series of blasphemous arrogances and Hischaracter irremediably stained.

But we may also remember that Scripture not only representsChrist's Resurrection as a divine act but also as the act of Christ'sown power. In His earthly life He asserted that His relation both tophysical death and to resurrection was an entirely unique one.‘I have power,’ said He, ‘to lay down my life, andI have power to take it again’; and yet, even in thistremendous instance of self-assertion, He remains the obedient Son,for He goes on to say, ‘This commandment have I received of MyFather.’ If these claims are just, then it is vain to stumbleat the miracles which Jesus did in His earthly life. If He couldstrip it off and resume it, then obviously it was not a life likeother men's. The whole phenomenon is supernatural, and we shall notbe in the true position to understand and appreciate it and Himuntil, like the doubting Thomas, we fall at the feet of the risenSon, and breathe out loyalty and worship in that rapturousexclamation, ‘My Lord and my God.’

II. The Resurrection interprets Christ's Death.

There is no more striking contrast than that between the absolutenon-receptivity of the disciples in regard to all Christ's plainteachings about His death and their clear perception after Pentecostof the mighty power that lay in it. The very fact that they continueddisciples at all, and that there continued to be such a community asthe Church, demands their belief in the Resurrection as the onlycause which can account for it. If He did not rise from the dead, andif His followers did not know that He did so by the plainestteachings of common-sense, they ought to have scattered, and borne inisolated hearts the bitter memories of disappointed hopes; for if Helay in a nameless grave, and they were not sure that He was risenfrom the dead, His death would have been a conclusive showing up ofthe falsity of His claims. In it there would have been no atoningpower, no triumph over sin. If the death of Christ were not followedby His Resurrection and Ascension, the whole fabric of Christianityfalls to pieces. As the Apostle puts it in his great chapter onresurrection, ‘Ye are yet in your sins.’ The forgivenesswhich the Gospel holds forth to men does not depend on the mercy ofGod or on the mere penitence of man, but upon the offering of the onesacrifice for sins in His death, which is justified by HisResurrection as being accepted by God. If we cannot triumphantlyproclaim ‘Christ is risen indeed,’ we have nothing worthpreaching.

We are told now that the ethics of Christianity are its vitalcentre, which will stand out more plainly when purified from thesemystical doctrines of a Death as the sin-offering for the world, anda Resurrection as the great token that that offering avails. Paul didnot think so. To him the morality of the Gospel was all deduced fromthe life of Christ the Son of God as our Example, and from His deathfor us which touches men's hearts and makes obedience to Him ourjoyful answer to what He has done for us. Christianity is a new thingin the world, not as moral teaching, but as moral power to obey thatteaching, and that depends on the Cross interpreted by theResurrection. If we have only a dead Christ, we have not a livingChristianity.

III. Resurrection points onwards to Christ's coming again.

Paul at Athens declared in the hearing of supercilious Greekphilosophers, that the Jesus, whom he proclaimed to them, was‘the Man whom God had ordained to judge the world inrighteousness,’ and that ‘He had given assurance thereofunto all men, in that He raised Him from the dead.’ TheResurrection was the beginning of the process which, from the humanpoint of view, culminated in the Ascension. Beyond the Ascensionstretches the supernatural life of the glorified Son of God. Olivetcannot be the end, and the words of the two men in white apparel whostood amongst the little group of the upward gazing friends, remainas the hope of the Church: ‘This same Jesus shall so come inlike manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.’ That greatassurance implies a visible corporeal return locally defined, andhaving for its purpose to complete the work which Incarnation, Death,Resurrection, and Ascension, each advanced a stage. The Resurrectionis the corner-stone of the whole Christian faith. It seals the truthsthat Jesus is the Son of God with power, that He died for us, that Hehas ascended on high to prepare a place for us, that He will comeagain and take us to Himself. If we, by faith in Him, take for oursthe women's greeting on that Easter morning, ‘The Lord hathrisen indeed,’ He will come to us with His own greeting,‘Peace be unto you.’

PRIVILEGE AND OBLIGATION

‘To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called tobe saints.’—ROMANS i. 7.

This is the address of the Epistle. The first thing to be noticedabout it, by way of introduction, is the universality of thisdesignation of Christians. Paul had never been in Rome, and knew verylittle about the religious stature of the converts there. But he hasno hesitation in declaring that they are all ‘beloved ofGod’ and ‘saints.’ There were plenty of imperfectChristians amongst them; many things to rebuke; much deadness,coldness, inconsistency, and yet none of these in the slightestdegree interfered with the application of these great designations tothem. So, then, ‘beloved of God’ and ‘saints’are not distinctions of classes within the pale of Christianity, butbelong to the whole community, and to each member of the body.

The next thing to note, I think, is how these two great terms,‘beloved of God’ and ‘saints,’ cover almostthe whole ground of the Christian life. They are connected with eachother very closely, as I shall have occasion to show presently, butin the meantime it may be sufficient to mark how the one carries usdeep into the heart of God and the other extends over the wholeground of our relation to Him. The one is a statement of a universalprerogative, the other an enforcement of a universal obligation. Letus look, then, at these two points, the universal privilege and theuniversal obligation of the Christian life.

I. The universal privilege of the Christian life.

‘Beloved of God.’ Now we are so familiar with thejuxtaposition of the two ideas, ‘love’ and‘God,’ that we cease to feel the wonderfulness of theirunion. But until Jesus Christ had done His work no man believed thatthe two thoughts could be brought together.

Does God love any one? We think the question too plain to need tobe put, and the answer instinctive. But it is not by any meansinstinctive, and the fact is that until Christ answered it for us,the world stood dumb before the question that its own heart raised,and when tortured spirits asked, ‘Is there care in heaven, andis there love?’ there was ‘no voice, nor answer, nor anythat regarded.’ Think of the facts of life; think of the factsof nature. Think of sorrows and miseries and pains, and sins, andwasted lives and storms, and tempests, and diseases, and convulsions;and let us feel how true the grim saying is, that

'Nature, red in tooth and claw,With rapine, shrieks against the creed'

that God is love.

And think of what the world has worshipped, and of all thevarieties of monstrosity, not the less monstrous because sometimesbeautiful, before which men have bowed. Cruel, lustful, rapacious,capricious, selfish, indifferent deities they have adored. And then,‘God hath established,’ proved, demonstrated ‘Hislove to us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died forus.’

Oh, brethren, do not let us kick down the ladder by which we haveclimbed; or, in the name of a loving God, put away the Christianteaching which has begotten the conception in humanity of a God thatloves. There are men to-day who would never have come within sight ofthat sunlight truth, even as a glimmering star, away down upon thehorizon, if it had not been for the Gospel; and who now turn roundupon that very Gospel which has given them the conception, and accuseit of narrow and hard thoughts of the love of God.

One of the Scripture truths against which the assailant oftenturns his sharpest weapons is that which is involved in my text, theScripture answer to the other question, ‘Does not God loveall?’ Yes! yes! a thousand times, yes! But there is anotherquestion, Does the love of God, to all, make His special designationof Christian men as His beloved the least unlikely? Surely there isno kind of contradiction between the broadest proclamation of theuniversality of the love of God and Paul's decisive declaration that,in a very deep and real manner, they who are in Christ are thebeloved of God. Surely special affection is not in its nature,inconsistent with universal beneficence and benevolence. Surely it isno exaltation, but rather a degradation of the conception of thedivine love, if we proclaim its utter indifference to men'scharacters. Surely you are not honouring God when you say, ‘Itis all the same to Him whether a man loves Him and serves Him, orlifts himself up in rebellion against Him, and makes himself his owncentre, and earth his aim and his all.’ Surely to imagine a Godwho not only makes His sun to shine and His rains and dews to fall onthe unthankful and the evil, that He may draw them to love Him, butwho also is conceived as taking the sinful creature who yet cleavesto his sins to His heart, as He does the penitent soul that longs forHis image to be produced in it, is to blaspheme, and not to honourthe love, the universal love of God.

God forbid that any words that ever drop from my lips should seemto cast the smallest shadow of doubt on that great truth, ‘Godso loved the world that He gave His Son!’ But God forbid,equally, that any words of mine should seem to favour the, to me,repellent idea that the infinite love of God disregards the characterof the man on whom it falls. There are manifestations of that lovingheart which any man can receive; and each man gets as much of thelove of God as it is possible to pour upon him. But granite rock doesnot drink in the dew as a flower does; and the nature of the man onwhom God's love falls determines how much, and what manner of itsmanifestations shall pass into his true possession, and what shallremain without.

So, on the whole, we have to answer the questions, ‘Does Godlove any? Does not God love all? Does God specially love some?’with the one monosyllable, ‘Yes.’

And so, dear brethren, let us learn the path by which we can passinto that blessed community of those on whom the fullness andsweetness and tenderest tenderness of the Father's heart will fall.‘If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father willlove him.’ Myths tell us that the light which, at thebeginning, had been diffused through a nebulous mass, was nextgathered into a sun. So the universal love of God is concentrated inJesus Christ; and if we have Him we have it; and if we have faith wehave Him, and can say, ‘Neither life, nor death, nor thingspresent, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any othercreature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which isin Christ Jesus our Lord.’

II. Then, secondly, mark the universal obligation of the Christianlife.

‘Called to be saints,’ says my text. Now you willobserve that the two little words ‘to be’ are insertedhere as a supplement. They may be correct enough, but they are opento the possibility of misunderstanding, as if the saintship, to whichall Christian people are ‘called’ was something future,and not realised at the moment. Now, in the context, the Apostleemploys the same form of expression with regard to himself in aclause which illuminates the meaning of my text. ‘Paul, aservant of Jesus Christ’ says he, in the first verse,‘called to be an Apostle’ or, more correctly, ‘acalled Apostle.’ The apostleship coincided in time with thecall, was contemporaneous with that which was its cause. And if Paulwas an Apostle since he was called, saints are saints sincethey are called. ‘The beloved of God’ are‘the called saints.’

I need only observe, further, that the word ‘called’here does not mean ‘named’ or ‘designated’but ‘summoned.’ It describes not the name by whichChristian men are known, but the thing which they are invited,summoned, ‘called’ by God to be. It is their vocation,not their designation. Now, then, I need not, I suppose, remind youthat ‘saint’ and ‘holy’ convey precisely thesame idea: the one expressing it in a word of Teutonic, and the otherin one of classic derivation.

We notice that the true idea of this universal holiness which,ipso facto, belongs to all Christian people, is consecrationto God. In the old days temple, altars, sacrifices, sacrificialvessels, persons such as priests, periods like Sabbaths and feasts,were called ‘holy.’ The common idea running through allthese uses of the word is belonging to God, and that is theroot notion of the New Testament ‘saint’ a man who isGod's. God has claimed us for Himself when He gave us Jesus Christ.We respond to the claim when we accept Christ. Henceforth we are notour own, but ‘consecrated’—that is,‘saints.’

Now the next step is purity, which is the ordinary idea ofsanctity. Purity will follow consecration, and would not be worthmuch without it, even if it was possible to be attained. Now, lookwhat a far deeper and nobler idea of the service and conditions ofmoral goodness this derivation of it from surrender to God gives,than does a God-ignoring morality which talks and talks about actsand dispositions, and never goes down to the root of the wholematter; and how much nobler it is than a shallow religion which inlike manner is ever straining after acts of righteousness, andforgets that in order to be right there must be prior surrender toGod. Get a man to yield himself up to God and no fear about therighteousness. Virtue, goodness, purity, righteousness, all thesesynonyms express very noble things; but deep down below them all liesthe New Testament idea of holiness, consecration of myself to God,which is the parent of them all.

And then the next thing to remind you of is that this consecrationis to be applied all through a man's nature. Yielding yourselves toGod is the talismanic secret of all righteousness, as I have said;and every part of our complex, manifold being is capable of suchconsecration. I hallow my heart if its love twines round His heart. Ihallow my thoughts if I take His truth for my guide, and ever seek tobe led thereby in practice and in belief. I hallow my will when itbows and says, ‘Speak, Lord! Thy servant heareth!’ Ihallow my senses when I use them as from Him, with recognition of Himand for Him. In fact, there are two ways of living in the world; and,narrow as it sounds, I venture to say there are only two. Either Godis my centre, and that is holiness; or self is my centre, in more orless subtle forms, and that is sin.

Then the next step is that this consecration, which will issue inall purity, and will cover the whole ground of a human life, is onlypossible when we have drunk in the blessed thought ‘beloved ofGod.’ My yielding of myself to Him can only be the echo of Hisgiving of Himself to me. He must be the first to love. You cannotargue a man into loving God, any more than you can hammer a rosebudopen. If you do you spoil its petals. But He can love us into lovingHim, and the sunshine, falling on the closed flower, will expand it,and it will grow by its reception of the light, and grow sunlike inits measure and according to its nature. So a God who has only claimsupon us will never be a God to whom we yield ourselves. A God who haslove for us will be a God to whom it is blessed that we should beconsecrated, and so saints.

Then, still further, this consecration, thus built upon thereception of the divine love, and influencing our whole nature, andleading to all purity, is a universal characteristic of Christians.There is no faith which does not lead to surrender. There is noaristocracy in the Christian Church which deserves to have the familyname given especially to it. ‘Saint’ this, and‘Saint’ that, and ‘Saint’ theother—these titles cannot be used without darkening the truththat this honour and obligation of being saints belong equally to allthat love Jesus Christ. All the men whom thus God has drawn toHimself, by His love in His Son, they are all, if I may so say,objectively holy; they belong to God. But consecration may becultivated, and must be cultivated and increased. There is a solemnobligation laid upon every one of us who call ourselves Christians,to be saints, in the sense that we have consciously yielded up ourwhole lives to Him; and are trying, body, soul, and spirit, ‘toperfect holiness in the fear of the Lord.’

Paul's letter, addressed to the ‘beloved in God,’ the‘called saints' that are in Rome, found its way to the peoplefor whom it was meant. If a letter so addressed were dropped in ourstreets, do you think anybody would bring it to you, or to anyChristian society as a whole, recognising that we were the people forwhom it was meant? The world has taunted us often enough with thename of saints; and laughed at the profession which they thought wasincluded in the word. Would that their taunts had been undeserved,and that it were not true that ‘saints’ in the Churchsometimes means less than ‘good men’ out of the Church!‘Seeing that we have these promises, dearly beloved, let uscleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit; perfectingholiness in the fear of the Lord.’

PAUL'S LONGING[1]

‘I long to see you, that I may impart unto you somespiritual gift, to the end ye may be established; 12. That is, that Imay be comforted together with you, by the mutual faith both of youand me.’—ROMANS i. 11, 12.

I am not wont to indulge in personal references in the pulpit, butI cannot but yield to the impulse to make an exception now, and tolet our happy circ*mstances mould my remarks. I speak mainly to mineown people, and I must trust that other friends who may hear or readmy words will forgive my doing so.

In taking such a text as this, I desire to shelter myself behindPaul, and in expounding his feelings to express my own, and to drawsuch lessons as may be helpful and profitable to us all. And so thereare three things in this text that I desire to note: the manlyexpression of Christian affection; the lofty consciousness of thepurpose of their meeting; and the lowly sense that there was much tobe received as well as much to be given. A word or two about each ofthese things is all on which I can venture.

I. First, then, notice the manly expression of Christian affectionwhich the Apostle allows himself here.

Very few Christian teachers could or should venture to talk somuch about themselves as Paul did. The strong infusion of thepersonal element in all his letters is so transparently simple, soobviously sincere, so free from any jarring note of affectation orunctuous sentiment that it attracts rather than repels. If I mightventure upon a paradox, his personal references are instances ofself-oblivion in the midst of self-consciousness.

He had never been in Rome when he wrote these words; he had nopersonal relations with the believers there; he had never looked themin the face; there were no sympathy and confidence between them, asthe growth of years. But still his heart went out towards them, andhe was not ashamed to show it. ‘I long to seeyou,’—in the original the word expresses a very intenseamount of yearning blended with something of regret that he had beenso long kept from them.

Now it is not a good thing for people to make many professions ofaffection, and I think a public teacher has something better to dothan to parade such feelings before his audiences. But there areexceptions to all rules, and I suppose I may venture to let my heartspeak, and to say how gladly I come back to the old place, dear to meby so many sacred memories and associations, and how gladly I reknitthe bonds of an affection which has been unbroken, and deepening onboth sides through thirty long years.

Dear friends! let us together thank God to-day if He has knit ourhearts together in mutual affection; and if you and I can look eachother, as I believe we can, in the eyes, with the assurance that Isee only the faces of friends, and that you see the face of one whogladly resumes the old work and associations.

But now, dear brethren, let us draw one lesson. Unless there bethis manly, honest, though oftenest silent, Christian affection, thesooner you and I part the better. Unless it be in my heart I can doyou no good. No man ever touched another with the sweet constrainingforces that lie in Christ's Gospel unless the heart of the speakerwent out to grapple the hearts of the hearers. And no audience everlisten with any profit to a man when they come in the spirit ofcarping criticism, or of cold admiration, or of stolid indifference.There must be for this simple relationship which alone binds aNonconformist preacher to his congregation, as a sine qua nonof all higher things and of all spiritual good, a real, thoughoftenest it be a concealed, mutual affection and regard. We have tothank God for much of it; let us try to get more. That is all I wantto say about the first point here.

II. Note the lofty consciousness of the purpose of theirmeeting.

‘I long to see you, that I may impart unto you somespiritual gift.’ Paul knew that he had something which he couldgive to these people, and he calls it by a very comprehensive term,‘some spiritual gift’—a gift of some sort which,coming from the Divine Spirit, was to be received into the humanspirit.

Now that expression—a spiritual gift—in the NewTestament has a variety of applications. Sometimes it refers to whatwe call miraculous endowments, sometimes it refers to what we maycall official capacity; but here it is evidently neither the one northe other of these more limited and special things, but the generalidea of a divine operation upon the human spirit which fills it withChristian graces—knowledge, faith, love. Or, in simpler words,what Paul wanted to give them was a firmer grasp and fullerpossession of Jesus Christ, His love and power, which would secure adeepening and strengthening of their whole Christian life. He wasquite sure he had this to give, and that he could impart it, if theywould listen to what he would say to them. But whilst thus he risesinto the lofty conception of the purpose and possible result of hismeeting the Roman Christians, he is just as conscious of thelimitations of his power in the matter as he is of the greatness ofhis function. These are indicated plainly. The word which he employshere, ‘gift’ is never used in the New Testament for athing that one man can give to another, but is always employed forthe concrete results of the grace of God bestowed upon men. The veryexpression, then, shows that Paul thought of himself, not as theoriginal giver, but simply as a channel through which wascommunicated what God had given. In the same direction points theadjective which accompanies the noun—a ‘spiritualgift’—which probably describes the origin of the gift asbeing the Spirit of God, rather than defines the seat of it whenreceived as being the spirit of the receiver. Notice, too, as bearingon the limits of Paul's part in the gift, the propriety and delicacyof the language in his statement of the ultimate purpose of the gift.He does not say ‘that I may strengthen you,’ which mighthave sounded too egotistical, and would have assumed too much tohimself, but he says ‘that ye may be strengthened,’ forthe true strengthener is not Paul, but the Spirit of God.

So, on the one hand, the Christian teacher is bound to rise to theheight of the consciousness of his lofty vocation as having inpossession a gift that he can bestow; on the other hand, he is boundever to remember the limitations within which that is true—viz.that the gift is not his, but God's, and that the Spirit of the Lordis the true Giver of all the graces which may blossom when His word,ministered by human agents, is received into human hearts.

And, now, what are the lessons that I take from this? Two verysimple ones. First, no Christian teacher has any business to open hismouth, unless he is sure that he has received something to impart tomen as a gift from the Divine Spirit. To preach our doubts, to preachour own opinions, to preach poor platitudes, to talk about politicsand morals and taste and literature and the like in the pulpit, isprofanation and blasphemy. Let no man open his lips unless he cansay: ‘The Lord hath showed me this; and this I bring to you asHis word.’ Nor has a Christian organisation any right to exist,unless it recognises the communication and reception and furtherspreading of this spiritual gift as its great function. Churcheswhich have lost that consciousness, and, instead of a divine gift,have little more to offer than formal worship, or music, orentertainments, or mere intellectual discourse, whether orthodox or‘advanced,’ have no right to be; and by the law of thesurvival of the fittest will not long be. The one thing that warrantssuch a relationship as subsists between you and me is this, myconsciousness that I have a message from God, and your belief thatyou hear such from my lips. Unless that be our bond the sooner thesewalls crumble, and this voice ceases, and these pews are emptied, thebetter. ‘I have,’ says, Paul, ‘a gift to impart;and I long to see you that I may impart it to you.’ Oh! formore, in all our pulpits, of that burdened consciousness of a divinemessage which needs the relief of speech, and longs with a longingcaught from Christ to impart its richest treasures.

That is the one lesson. And the other one is this. Have you, dearfriends, received the gift that I have, under the limitations alreadyspoken of, to bestow? There are some of you who have listened to myvoice ever since you were children—some of you, though notmany, have heard it for well on to thirty years. Have you taken thething that all these years I have been—God knows how poorly,but God knows how honestly—trying to bring to you? That is,have you taken Christ, and have you faith in Him? And, as for thoseof you who say that you are Christians, many blessings have passedbetween you and me through all these years; but, dear friends, hasthe chief blessing been attained? Are you being strengthened day byday for the burdens and the annoyances and the sorrows of life byyour coming here? Do I do you any good in that way; are you bettermen than when we first met together? Is Christ dearer, and more realand nearer to you; and are your lives more transparently consecrated,more manifestly the result of a hidden union with Him? Do you walk inthe world like the Master, because you are members of thiscongregation? If so, its purpose has been accomplished. If not, ithas miserably failed.

I have said that I have to thank God for the unbroken affectionthat has knit us together. But what is the use of such love if itdoes not lead onwards to this? I have had enough, and more thanenough, of what you call popularity and appreciation, undeservedenough, but rendered unstintedly by you. I do not care the snap of afinger for it by comparison with this other thing. And oh, dearbrethren! if all that comes of our meeting here Sunday after Sundayis either praise or criticism of my poor words and ways, ourrelationship is a curse, and not a blessing, and we come together forthe worse and not for the better. The purpose of the Church, and thepurpose of the ministry, and the meaning of our assembling are, thatspiritual gifts may be imparted, not by me alone, but by you, too,and by me in my place and measure, and if that purpose be notaccomplished, all other purposes, that are accomplished, are of noaccount, and worse than nothing.

III. And now, lastly, note the lowly consciousness that much wasto be received as well as much to be given.

The Apostle corrects himself after he has said ‘that I mayimpart unto you some spiritual gift,’ by adding, ‘thatis, that I may be comforted (or rather, encouraged) together with youby the mutual faith both of you and me.’ If his language werenot so transparently sincere, and springing from deep interest in therelationship between himself and these people, we should say that itwas exquisite courtesy and beautiful delicacy. But it moves in aregion far more real than the region of courtesy, and it speaks theinmost truth about the conditions on which the Roman Christiansshould receive—viz. that they should also give. There is onlyone Giver who is only a Giver, and that is God. All other givers arealso receivers. Paul desired to see his Roman brethren that he mightbe encouraged; and when he did see them, as he marched along theAppian Way, a shipwrecked prisoner, the Acts of the Apostles tellsus, ‘He thanked God and took courage.’ The sight of themstrengthened him and prepared him for what lay before him.

Paul's was a richly complicated nature—firm as a rock in itswill, tremulously sensitive in its sympathies; like somestrongly-rooted tree with its stable stem and a green cloud offluttering foliage that moves in the lightest air. So his spirit roseand fell according to the reception that he met from his brethren,and the manifestation of their faith quickened and strengthenedhis.

And he is but one instance of a universal law. All teachers, themore genuine they are, the more sympathetic they are, are the moresensitive of their environment. The very oratorical temperamentplaces a man at the mercy of surroundings. All earnest work has evertravelling with it as its shadow seasons of deep depression; and theChristian teacher does not escape these. I am not going to speakabout myself, but this is unquestionably true, that every Elijah,after the mightiest effort of prophecy, is apt to cover his head inhis mantle and to say, ‘Take me away; I am not better than myfathers.’ And when a man for thirty years, amidst all thechanges incident to a great city congregation in that time, has tostand up Sunday after Sunday before the same people, and mark howsome of them are stolidly indifferent, and note how others aredropping away from their faithfulness, and see empty places whereloving forms used to sit—no wonder that the mood comes ever andanon, ‘Then, said I, surely I have laboured in vain and spentmy strength for nought.’ The hearer reacts on the speaker quiteas much as the speaker does on the hearer. If you have ice in thepews, that brings down the temperature up here. It is hard to befervid amidst people that are all but dead. It is difficult to keep afire alight when it is kindled on the top of an iceberg. And theunbelief and low-toned religion of a congregation are always pullingdown the faith and the fervour of their minister, if he be better andholier, as they expect him to be, than they are.

‘He did not many works because of their unbelief.’Christ knew the hampering and the restrictions of His power whichcame from being surrounded by a chill, unsympathetic environment. Mystrength and my weakness are largely due to you. And if you want yourminister to preach better, and in all ways to do his work morejoyfully and faithfully, the means lie largely in your own hands. Icyindifference, ill-natured interpretations, carping criticisms, swiftforgetfulness of one's words, all these things kill the fervour ofthe pulpit.

On the other hand, the true encouragement to give a man when he istrying to do God's will, to preach Christ's Gospel, is not to pat himon the back and say, ‘What a remarkable sermon that was ofyours! what a genius! what an orator!’ not to go about praisingit, but to come and say, ‘Thy words have led me to Christ, andfrom thee I have taken the gift of gifts.’

Dear brethren, the encouragement of the minister is in theconversion and the growth of the hearers. And I pray that in this newlease of united fellowship which we have taken out, be it longer orshorter—and advancing years tell me that at the longest it mustbe comparatively short—I may come to you ever more and morewith the lofty and humbling consciousness that I have a message whichChrist has given to me, and that you may come more and morereceptive—not of my words, God forbid—but ofChrist's truth; and that so we may be helpers one of another, andencourage each other in the warfare and work to which we all arecalled and consecrated.

Footnote 1: Preached after longabsence on account of illness.

DEBTORS TO ALL MEN

‘I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to theBarbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise.’—ROMANSi. 14.

No doubt Paul is here referring to the special obligation laidupon him by his divine call to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. He wasentrusted with the Gospel as a steward, and was therefore bound tocarry it to all sorts and conditions of men. But the principleunderlying the statement applies to all Christians. The indebtednessreferred to is no peculiarity of the Apostolic order, but attaches toevery believer. Every servant of Jesus Christ, who has received thetruth for himself, has received it as a steward, and is, as such,indebted to God, from whom he got the trust, and to the men for whomhe got it. The only limit to the obligation is, as Paul says in thecontext, ‘as much as in me is.’ Capacity, determined byfaculties, opportunities, and circ*mstances, prescribes the kind andthe degree of the work to be done in discharge of the obligation; butthe obligation is universal. We are not at liberty to choose whetherwe shall do our part in spreading the name of Jesus Christ. It is adebt that we owe to God and to men. Is that the view of duty whichthe average Christian man takes? I am afraid it is not. If it were,our treasuries would be full, and great would be the multitude ofthem that preached the Word.

It is no very exalted degree of virtue to pay our debts. We do notexpect to be praised for that; and we do not consider that we are atliberty to choose whether we shall do it or not. We are dishonest ifwe do not. It is no merit in us to be honest. Would that allChristian people applied that principle to their religion. The worldwould be different, and the Church would be different, if theydid.

Let me try, then, to enforce this thought of indebtedness and ofcommon honesty in discharging the indebtedness, which underlies thesewords. Paul thought that he went a long way to pay his debts tohumanity by carrying to everybody whom he could reach the ‘Namethat is above every name.’

I. Now, first, let me say that we Christians are debtors to allmen by our common manhood.

It is not the least of the gifts which Christianity has brought tothe world, that it has introduced the new thought of the brotherhoodof mankind. The very word ‘humanity’ is a Christiancoinage, and it was coined to express the new thought that began tothrob in men's hearts, as soon as they accepted the message thatJesus Christ came to give, the message of the Fatherhood of God. Forit is on that belief of God's Fatherhood that the belief of man'sbrotherhood rests, and on it alone can it be secured and permanentlybased.

Here is a Jew writing to Latins in the Greek language. Thephenomenon itself is a sign of a new order of things, of the risingof a flood that had surged over, and in the course of ages would sapaway and dissolve, the barriers between men. The Apostle points totwo of the widest gulfs that separated men, in the words of my text.‘Greeks and Barbarians’ divides mankind, according torace and language. ‘Wise and unwise’ divides themaccording to culture and intellectual capacity. Both gulfs existstill, though they have been wonderfully filled up by the influence,direct and indirect, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The fiercestantagonisms of race which still subsist are felt to belong to adecaying order, and to be sure, sooner or later, to pass away. Isuppose that the gulf made by the increased culture of modern societybetween civilised and the savage peoples, and, within the limits ofour own land, the gulf made by education between the higher and thelower layers of our community—I speak not of higher and lowerin regard to wealth or station, but in regard to intellectualacquirement and capacity—are greater than, perhaps, they everwere in the past. But yet over the gulf a bridge is thrown, and thegulf itself is being filled up. High above all the superficialdistinctions which separate Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian,educated and illiterate, scientific and unscientific, wise andunwise, there stretches the great rainbow of the truth that all areone in Christ Jesus. Fraternity without Fatherhood is a ghastlymockery that ended a hundred years ago in the guillotine, and to-daywill end in disappointment; and it is little more than cant. But whenChristianity comes and tells us that we have one Father and oneRedeemer, then the unity of the race is secured.

And that oneness which makes us debtors to all men is shown to bereal by the fact that, beneath all superficial distinctions ofculture, race, age, or station, there are the primal necessities andyearnings and possibilities that lie in every human soul. All men,savage or cultivated, breathe the same air, see by the same light,are fed by the same food and drink, have the same yearning hearts,the same lofty aspirations that unfulfilled are torture; the sameexperience of the same guilt, and, blessed be God! the same Saviourand the same salvation.

Because, then, we are all members of the one family, every man isbound to regard all that he possesses, and is, and can do, ascommitted to him in stewardship to be imparted to his fellows. We arenot sponges to absorb, but we are pipes placed in the spring, that wemay give forth the precious water of life.

Cain is not a very good model, but his question is the world'squestion, and it implies the expectation of a negativeanswer—‘Am I my brother's keeper?’ Surely, the verylanguage answers itself, and, although Cain thinks that the onlyanswer is ‘No,’ wisdom sees that the only answer is‘Yes.’ For if I am my brother's brother, then surely I ammy brother's keeper. We have a better example. There is another ElderBrother who has come to give to His brethren all that Himselfpossessed, and we but poorly follow our Master's pattern unless wefeel that the mystic tie which binds us in brotherhood to every manmakes us every man's debtor to the extent of our possessions. That isthe Christian truth that underlies the modern Socialistic idea, and,whatever the form in which it is ultimately brought into practice asthe rule of mankind, the principle will triumph one day; and we arebound, as Christian men, to hasten the coming of its victory. We aredebtors by reason of our common humanity.

II. We are debtors by our possession of the universalsalvation.

The principle which I have already been laying down applies allround, to everything that we have, are, or can do. But its moststringent obligation, and the noblest field for its operations, arefound in reference to the Christian man's possession of the Gospelfor the joy of his own heart, and to the duties that are thereininvolved. Christ draws men to Himself for their own sakes, blessed beHis name! but not for their own sakes only. He draws them to Himself,that they, in their turn, may draw others with whose hands theirs arelinked, and so may swell the numbers of the flock that gathers roundthe one Shepherd. He puts the dew of His blessing into the chalice ofthe tiniest flower, that it may ‘share its dewdrop with anothernear.’ Just as every particle of inert dough as it is leavenedbecomes in its turn leaven, and the medium for leavening the particlecontiguous to it, so every Christian is bound, or, to use themetaphor of my text, is a debtor to God and man, to impart the Gospelof Jesus Christ. ‘Greek and Barbarian,’ says Paul,‘wise or unwise’; all distinctions vanish. If I can getat a man, no matter what colour, his race, his language, hiscapacity, his acquirements, he is my creditor, and I am defraudinghim of what he has a right to expect from me if I do not do my bestto bring him to Jesus Christ.

This obligation receives additional weight from the provedadaptation of the Gospel to all sorts and conditions of men. Alone ofall religions has Christianity proved itself capable of dominatingevery type of character, of influencing every stage of civilisation,of assuming the speech of every tongue, and of wearing the garb ofevery race. There are other religions which are evidently destinedonly to a narrow field of operations, and are rigidly limited bygeographical conditions, or by stages of civilisation. There arewines that are ruined by a sea voyage, and can only be drunk in theland where the vintage was gathered; and that is the condition of allthe ethnic religions. Christianity alone passes through the wholeearth, and influences all men. The history of missions shows us that.There has yet to be found the race that is incapable of receiving, oris beyond the need of possessing, or cannot be elevated by theoperation of, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So to all men we are bound, as much as in us is, to carry theGospel. The distinction that is drawn so often by the people whonever move a finger to help the heathen either at home or abroad,between the home and the foreign field of work, vanishes altogetherwhen we stand at the true Christian standpoint. Here is a man whowants the Gospel; I have it; I can give it to him. That constitutes asummons as imperative as if we were called by name from Heaven, andbade to go, and as much as in us is to preach the Gospel. Brethren!we do not obey the command, ‘Owe no man anything,’unless, to the extent of our ability, or over the whole field whichwe can influence at home or abroad, we seek to spread the name ofChrist and the salvation that is in Him.

III. We are debtors by benefits received.

I am speaking to men and women a very large proportion of whom gettheir living, and some of whom amass their wealth, by trade withlands that need the Gospel. It is not for nothing that England haswon the great empire that she possesses—won it, alas! far toooften by deeds that will not bear investigation in the light ofChristian principle, but won it.

What do we owe to the lands that we call ‘heathen’?The very speech by which we communicate with one another; thebeginning of our civilisation; wide fields for expanding populationand emigration; treasures of wisdom of many kinds; an empire aboutwhich we are too fond of crowing and too reluctant to recognise itsresponsibilities—and Manchester its commerce and prosperity!Did God put us where we are as a nation only in order that we mightcarry the gifts of our literature, great as that is; of our science,great as that is; of our law, blessed as that is; of ourmanufactures, to those distant lands? The best thing that we can giveis the thing that all of us can help to give—the Gospel ofJesus Christ. ‘Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdomfor such a time as this?’

IV. Lastly, we are debtors by injuries inflicted.

Many subject-races seem destined to fade away by contact with ourrace; and if we think of the nameless cruelties, and the iliad ofwoes which England's possession of this great Colonial Empire has hadaccompanying it, we may feel that the harm in many aspects outweighsthe good, and that it had been better for these men to be leftsuckled in creeds outworn, and ignorant of our civilisation, than toreceive from us the fatal gifts that they often have received. I donot wish to exaggerate, but if you will take the facts of the case asbrought out by people that have no Christian prejudices to serve, Ithink you will acknowledge that we as a nation owe a debt ofreparation to the barbarians and the unwise.

What about killing African tribes by the thousand with the vilestuff that we call rum, and send to them in exchange for their poorcommodities? What about introducing new diseases, the offspring ofvice, into the South Sea Islands, decimating and all but destroyingthe population? Is it not true that, as the prophet wailed of oldabout a degenerate Israel, we may wail about the beach-combers andother loafers that go amongst savage lands fromEngland—‘Through you the name of God is blasphemed amongthe Gentiles.’ A Hindoo once said to a missionary, ‘YourBook is very good. If you were as good as your Book you would conquerIndia in five years.’ That may be true or it may not, but itgives us the impression that is produced by godless Englishmen onheathen peoples. We are taking away their religion from them,necessarily, as the result of education and contact with Europeanthought. And if we do not substitute for it the one faith thatelevates and saves, the last state of that man will be worse than thefirst.

We can almost hear the rattle of the guns on the north-westfrontier of India to-day. There is another specimen of the injuriesinflicted. This is not the place to talk politics, but I feel thatthis is the place to ask this question, ‘Are Christianprinciples to have anything to do in determining nationalactions?’ Is it Christian to impose our yoke on unwillingtribes who have as deep a love for independence as the proudestEnglishmen of us all, and as good a right to it? Are punitiveexpeditions and Maxim guns instalments of our debt to all men? Iwonder what Jesus Christ, who died for Afridis and Orakzais and allthe rest of them, thinks about such conduct?

Brethren, we are debtors to all men. Let us do our best toinfluence national action in accordance with the brotherhood whichhas been revealed to us by the Elder Brother of us all; and let us,at least for our own parts, recognise, and, as much as in us is,discharge the debt which, by our common humanity, and by ourpossession of the universal Gospel we owe to all men, and which ismade more weighty by the benefits we receive from many, and by theinjuries which England has inflicted on not a few. Else shall we hearrise above all the voices that palliate crime, on the plea of‘State necessity,’ the stern words of the Master,‘In thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of poorinnocents.’ We are debtors; let us pay our debts.

THE GOSPEL THE POWER OFGOD[1]

‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for itis the power of God unto salvation to every one thatbelieveth.’—ROMANS i. 16.

To preach the Gospel in Rome had long been the goal of Paul'shopes. He wished to do in the centre of power what he had done inAthens, the home of wisdom; and with superb confidence, not inhimself, but in his message, to try conclusions with the strongestthing in the world. He knew its power well, and was not appalled. Thedanger was an attraction to his chivalrous spirit. He believed inflying at the head when you are fighting with a serpent, and he knewthat influence exerted in Rome would thrill through the Empire. If wewould understand the magnificent audacity of these words of my textwe must try to listen to them with the ears of a Roman. Here was apoor little insignificant Jew, like hundreds of his countrymen downin the Ghetto, one who had his head full of some fantastic nonsenseabout a young visionary whom the procurator of Syria had very wiselyput an end to a while ago in order to quiet down the turbulentprovince; and he was going into Rome with the notion that his wordwould shake the throne of the Cæsars. What proud contempt wouldhave curled their lips if they had been told that the travel-stainedprisoner, trudging wearily up the Appian Way, had the mightiest thingin the world entrusted to his care! Romans did not believe much inideas. Their notion of power was sharp swords and iron yokes on thenecks of subject peoples. But the history of Christianity, whateverelse it has been, has been the history of the supremacy and therevolutionary force of ideas. Thought is mightier than all visibleforces. Thought dissolves and reconstructs. Empires and institutionsmelt before it like the carbon rods in an electric lamp; and thelittle hillock of Calvary is higher than the Palatine with its regalhomes and the Capitoline with its temples: ‘I am not ashamed ofthe Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God untosalvation.’

Now, dear friends, I have ventured to take these great words formy text, though I know, better than any of you can tell me, how suremy treatment of them is to enfeeble rather than enforce them, becauseI, for my poor part, feel that there are few things which we, all ofus, people and ministers, need more than to catch some of theinfection of this courageous confidence, and to be fired with somespark of Paul's enthusiasm for, and glorying in, the Gospel of JesusChrist.

I ask you, then, to consider three things: (1) what Paul thoughtwas the Gospel? (2) what Paul thought the Gospel was? and (3) what hefelt about the Gospel?

I. What Paul thought was the Gospel?

He has given to us in his own rapid way a summary statement,abbreviated to the very bone, and reduced to the barest elements, ofwhat he meant by the Gospel. What was the irreducible minimum? Thefacts of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, as you will findwritten in the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to theCorinthians. So, then, to begin with, the Gospel is not a statementof principles, but a record of facts, things that have happened inthis world of ours. But the least part of a fact is the visible partof it, and it is of no significance unless it has explanation, and soPaul goes on to bind up with the facts an explanation of them. Themere fact that Jesus, a young Nazarene, was executed is no more agospel than the other one, that two brigands were crucified besideHim. But the fact that could be seen, plus the explanation whichunderlies and interprets it, turns the chronicle into a gospel, andthe explanation begins with the name of the Sufferer; for if you wantto understand His death you must understand who it was that died. Hisdeath is a thought pathetic in all aspects, and very precious inmany. But when we hear ‘Christ died according to theScriptures,’ the whole symbolism of the ancient ritual and allthe glowing anticipations of the prophets rise up before us, and thatdeath assumes an altogether different aspect. If we stop with‘Jesus died,’ then that death may be a beautiful exampleof heroism, a sweet, pathetic instance of innocent suffering, aconspicuous example of the world's wages to the world's teachers, butit is little more. If, however, we take Paul's words upon our lips,‘Brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached ...how that Christ died ... according to the Scriptures,’ the factflashes up into solid beauty, and becomes the Gospel of oursalvation. And the explanation goes on, ‘How that Christ diedfor our sins.’ Now, I may be very blind, but I venture to saythat I, for my part, cannot see in what intelligible sense the Deathof Christ can be held to have been for, or on behalf of, oursins—that is, that they may be swept away and we delivered fromthem—unless you admit the atoning nature of His sacrifice forsins. I cannot stop to enlarge, but I venture to say that anynarrower interpretation evacuates Paul's words of their deepestsignificance. The explanation goes on, ‘And that He wasburied.’ Why that trivial detail? Partly because it guaranteesthe fact of His Death, partly because of its bearing on the evidencesof His Resurrection. ‘And that He rose from the dead accordingto the Scriptures.’ Great fact, without which Christ is ashattered prop, and ‘ye are yet in your sins.’

But, further, notice that my text is also Paul's text for thisEpistle, and that it differs from the condensed summary of which Ihave been speaking only as a bud with its petals closed differs fromone with them expanded in their beauty. And now, if you will take thewords of my text as being the keynote of this letter, and read overits first eight chapters, what is the Apostle talking about when hein them fulfils his purpose and preaches ‘the Gospel’ tothem that are at Rome also? Here is, in the briefest possible words,his summary—the universality of sin, the awful burden of guilt,the tremendous outlook of penalty, the impossibility of man rescuinghimself or living righteously, the Incarnation, and Life, and Deathof Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, the hand offaith grasping the offered blessing, the indwelling in believingsouls of the Divine Spirit, and the consequent admission of man intoa life of sonship, power, peace, victory, glory, the child's place inthe love of the Father from which nothing can separate. These are theteachings which make the staple of this Epistle. These are theexplanations of the weighty phrases of my text. These are at leastthe essential elements of the Gospel according to Paul.

But he was not alone in this construction of his message. We heara great deal to-day about Pauline Christianity, with the implication,and sometimes with the assertion, that he was the inventor of what,for the sake of using a brief and easily intelligible term, I maycall Evangelical Christianity. Now, it is a very illuminating thoughtfor the reading of the New Testament that there are the three sets ofteaching, roughly, the Pauline, Petrine, and Johannine, and youcannot find the distinctions between these three in any difference asto the fundamental contents of the Gospel; for if Paul rings out,‘God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yetsinners Christ died for us,’ Peter declares, ‘Who His ownself bare our sins in His own body on the tree,’ and John, fromhis island solitude, sends across the waters the hymn of praise,‘Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His ownblood.’ And so the proud declaration of the Apostle, which hedared not have ventured upon in the face of the acrid criticism hehad to front unless he had known he was perfectly sure of his ground,is natural and warranted—‘Therefore, whether it were I orthey, so we preach.’

We are told that we must go back to the Christ of the Gospels, thehistorical Christ, and that He spoke nothing concerning all theseimportant points that I have mentioned as being Paul's conception ofthe Gospel. Back to the Christ of the Gospels by all means, if youwill go to the Christ of all the Gospels and of the whole of eachGospel. And if you do, you will go back to the Christ who said,‘The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but tominister, and to give His life a ransom for many.’ You will goback to the Christ who said, ‘And I, if I be lifted up from theearth, will draw all men unto Me.’ You will go back to theChrist who said, ‘The bread that I will give is My flesh, whichI will give for the life of the world.’ You will go back to theChrist who bade His followers hold in everlasting memory, not thetranquil beauty of His life, not the persuasive sweetness of Hisgracious words, not the might of His miracles of blessing, but themysterious agonies of His last hours, by which He would have us learnthat there lie the secret of His power, the foundation of our hopes,the stimulus of our service.

Now, brethren, I have ventured to dwell so long upon this matter,because it is no use talking about the Gospel unless we understandwhat we mean by it, and I, for my part, venture to say that that iswhat Paul meant by it, and that is what I mean by it. I plead for nonarrow interpretation of the phrases of my text. I would not thatthey should be used to check in the smallest degree the diversitiesof representation which, according to the differences of individualcharacter, must ever prevail in the conceptions which we form andwhich we preach of this Gospel of Jesus Christ. I want no parrot-likerepetition of a certain set of phrases embodied, however great may betheir meanings, in every sermon. And I would that the people to whomthose truths are true would make more allowance than they sometimesdo for the differences to which I have referred, and would show agreat deal more sympathy than they often do to those, especiallythose young men, who, with their faces toward Christ, have not yetgrown to the full acceptance of all that is implied in those graciouswords. There is room for a whole world of thought in the Gospel ofChrist as Paul conceived it, with all the deep foundations ofimplication and presupposition on which it rests, and with all the,as yet, undiscovered range of conclusions to which it may lead.Remember that the Cross of Christ is the key to the universe, andsends its influence into every region of human thought.

II. What Paul thought the Gospel was.

‘The power of God unto salvation.’ There was in thebackground of the Apostle's mind a kind of tacit reference to theantithetical power that he was going up to meet, the power of Rome,and we may trace that in the words of my text. Rome, as I have said,was the embodiment of physical force, with no great faith in ideas.And over against this carnal might Paul lifts the undissembledweakness of the Cross, and declares that it is stronger than man,‘the power of God unto salvation.’ Rome is high in force;Athens is higher; the Cross is highest of all, and it comes shroudedin weakness having a poor Man hanging dying there. That is a strangeembodiment of divine power. Yes, and because so strange, it is sotouching, and so conquering. The power that is draped in weakness ispower indeed. Though Rome's power did make for righteousnesssometimes, yet its stream of tendency was on the whole a power todestruction and grasped the nations of the earth as some rude handmight do rich clusters of grapes and squeeze them into a formlessmass. The tramp of the legionary meant death, and it was true in manyrespects of them what was afterwards said of later invaders ofEurope, that where their horses’ hoofs had once stamped nograss ever grew. Over against this terrific engine of destructionPaul lifts up the meek forces of love which have for their soleobject the salvation of man.

Then we come to another of the keywords about which it is veryneedful that people should have deeper and wider notions than theyoften seem to cherish. What is salvation? Negatively, the removal andsweeping away of all evil, physical and moral, as the schools speak.Positively, the inclusion of all good for every part of the compositenature of a man which the man can receive and which God can bestow.And that is the task that the Gospel sets to itself. Now, I need notremind you how, for the execution of such a purpose, it is plain thatsomething else than man's power is absolutely essential. It is onlyGod who can alter my relation to His government. It is only God whocan trammel up the inward consequences of my sins and prevent themfrom scourging me. It is only God who can bestow upon my death a newlife, which shall grow up into righteousness and beauty, caught of,and kindred to, His own. But if this be the aim of the Gospel, thenits diagnosis of man's sickness is a very much graver one than thatwhich finds favour amongst so many of us now. Salvation is a biggerword than any of the little gospels that we hear clamouring roundabout us are able to utter. It means something a great deal more thaneither social or intellectual, or still more, material or politicalbetterment of man's condition. The disease lies so deep, and so greatare the destruction and loss partly experienced, and still moreawfully impending over every soul of us, that something else thantinkering at the outsides, or dealing, as self-culture does, withman's understanding or, as social gospels do, with man's economicaland civic condition, should be brought to bear. Dear brethren,especially you Christian ministers, preach a social Christianity byall means, an applied Christianity, for there does lie in the Gospelof Jesus Christ a key to all the problems that afflict our socialcondition. But be sure first that there is a Christianity before youtalk about applying it. And remember that the process of salvationbegins in the deep heart of the individual and transforms him firstand foremost. The power is ‘to every one that believeth.’It is power in its most universal sweep. Rome's Empire was wellnighubiquitous, but, blessed be God, the dove of Christ flies fartherthan the Roman eagle with beak and claw ready for rapine, andwherever there are men here is a Gospel for them. The limitation isno limitation of its universality. It is no limitation of the claimof a medicine to be a panacea that it will only do good to the manwho swallows it. And that is the only limitation of which the Gospelis susceptible, for we have all the same deep needs, the samelongings; we are fed by the same bread, we are nourished by the samedraughts of water, we breathe the same air, we have the same sins,and, thanks be to God, we have the same Saviour. ‘The power ofGod unto salvation to every one that believeth.’

Now before I pass from this part of my subject there is only onething more that I want to say, and that is, that you cannot applythat glowing language about ‘the power of God untosalvation’ to anything but the Gospel that Paul preached. Formsof Christianity which have lost the significance of the Incarnationand Death of Jesus Christ, and which have struck out or obscured thecentral facts with which I have been dealing, are not, never were,and, I may presumptuously venture to say, never will be, forces oflarge account in this world. Here is a clock, beautiful, chased onthe back, with a very artistic dial-plate, and works modelledaccording to the most approved fashion, but, somehow or other, thething won't go. Perhaps the mainspring is broken. And so it is onlythe Gospel, as Paul expounds it and expands it in this Epistle, thatis ‘the power of God unto salvation.’ Dear brethren, inthe course of a sermon like this, of course, one must lay himselfopen to the charge of dogmatising. That cannot be helped under theconditions of my space. But let me say as my own solemnconviction—I know that that is not worth much to you, but it ismy justification for speaking in such a fashion—let me say asmy solemn conviction that you may as well take the keystone out of anarch, with nothing to hold the other stones together or keep themfrom toppling in hideous ruin on your unfortunate head, as take thedoctrine that Paul summed up in that one word out of your conceptionof Christianity and expect it to work. And be sure of this, thatthere is only one Name that lords it over the demons of afflictedhumanity, and that if a man goes and tries to eject them with anyless potent charm than Paul's Gospel, they will turn upon him with‘Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?’

III. What Paul felt about this Gospel.

His restrained expression, ‘I am not ashamed,’ is thestronger for its very moderation. It witnesses to the fixed purposeof his heart and attitude of his mind, whilst it suggests that he waswell aware of all the temptations in Rome to being ashamed of itthere. Think of what was arrayed against him—venerablereligion, systematised philosophies, bitter hatred and prejudice,material power and wealth. These were the brazen armour of Goliath,and this little David went cheerily down into the valley with fivepebble stones in a leathern wallet, and was quite sure how it wasgoing to end. And it ended as he expected. His Gospel shook thekingdom of the Roman, and cast it in another mould.

And there are temptations, plenty of them, for us, dear friends,to-day, to bate our confidence. The drift of what calls itselfinfluential opinion is anti-supernatural, and we all are conscious ofthe presence of that element all round about us. It tells withspecial force upon our younger men, but it affects us all. In thisday, when a large portion of the periodical press, which does thethinking for most of us, looks askance at these truths, and when, onthe principle that in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man isthe king, popular novelists become our theological tutors, and whenevery new publishing season brings out a new conclusive destructionof Christianity, which supersedes last season's equally completedestruction, it is hard for some of us to keep our flags flying. Theice round about us will either bring down the temperature, or, if itstimulates us to put more fuel on the fire, perhaps the fire may meltit. And so the more we feel ourselves encompassed by thesetemptations, the louder is the call to Christian men to castthemselves back on the central verities, and to draw at first handfrom them the inspiration which shall be their safety. And how isthat to be done? Well, there are many ways by which thoughtful, andcultivated, students may do it. But may I venture to deal here ratherwith ways which all Christian people have open before them? And I ambold to say that the way to be sure of ‘the power of God untosalvation’ is to submit ourselves continually to its cleansingand renewing influence. This certitude, brethren, may be contributedto by books of apologetics, and by other sources of investigation andstudy which I should be sorry indeed to be supposed in any degree todepreciate. But the true way to get it is, by deep communion with theliving God, to realise the personality of Jesus Christ as presentwith us, our Friend, our Saviour, our Sanctifier by His Holy Spirit.Why, Paul's Gospel was, I was going to say, altogether—thatwould be an exaggeration—but it was to a very large extentsimply the generalisation of his own experience. That is what all ofus will find to be the Gospel that we have to preach. ‘We speakthat we do know and testify that we have seen.’ And it wasbecause this man could say so assuredly—because the depths ofhis own conscience and the witness within him bore testimony toit—‘He loved me and gave Himself for me,’ that hecould also say, ‘The power of God unto salvation to every onethat believeth.’ Go down into the depths, brother and friend;cry to Him out of the depths. Then you will feel His strong, gentlegrip lifting you to the heights, and that will give power thatnothing else will, and you will be able to say, ‘I have heardHim myself, and I know that this is the Christ, the Saviour of theworld.’

But there is yet another source of certitude open to us all, andthat is the history of the centuries. Our modern sceptics, attackingthe truth of Christianity mostly from the physical side, arestrangely blind to the worth of history. It is a limitation offaculty that besets them in a good many directions, but it does notwork anywhere more fatally than it does in their attitude towards theGospel. After all, Jesus Christ spoke the ultimate word when He said,‘By their fruits ye shall know them.’ And it is so,because just as what is morally wrong cannot be politically right, sowhat is intellectually false cannot be morally good. Truth, goodness,beauty, they are but three names for various aspects of one thing,and if it be that the difference between B.C. and A.D. has come froma Gospel which is not the truth of God, then all I can say is, thatthe richest vintage that ever the world saw, and the noblest wine ofwhich it ever drank, did grow upon a thorn. I know that the ChristianChurch has sinfully and tragically failed to present Christadequately to the world. But for all that, ‘Ye are Mywitnesses, saith the Lord’; and nobler manners and purer lawshave come in the wake of this Gospel of Jesus Christ. And as I lookround about upon what Christianity has done in the world, I ventureto say, ‘Show us any system of religion or of no religion thathas done that or anything the least like it, and then we will discusswith you the other evidences of the Gospel.’

In closing these words, may I venture relying on the melancholyprivilege of seniority, to drop for a minute or two into a tone ofadvice? I would say, do not be frightened out of your confidenceeither by the premature paean of victory from the opposite camp, orby timid voices in our own ranks. And that you may not be sofrightened, be sure to keep clear in your mind the distinctionbetween the things that can be shaken and the kingdom that cannot bemoved. It is bad strategy to defend an elongated line. It iscowardice to treat the capture of an outpost as involving theevacuation of the key of the position. It is a mistake, to which manygood Christian people are sorely tempted in this day, to assert sucha connection between the eternal Gospel and our deductions from theprinciples of that Gospel as that the refutation of the one must bethe overthrow of the other. And if it turns out to be so in any case,a large part of the blame lies upon those good and mistaken peoplewho insist that everything must be held or all must be abandoned. Theburning questions of this day about the genuineness of the books ofScripture, inspiration, inerrancy, and the like, are not soassociated with this word, ‘God so loved the world ... thatwhosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlastinglife,’ as that the discovery of errors in the Second Book ofChronicles shakes the foundations of the Christian certitude. In aday like this truth must change its vesture. Who believes that theDissenting Churches of England are the highest, perfect embodiment ofthe Kingdom of God? And who believes that any creed of man's makinghas in it all and has in it only the everlasting Gospel? So do not befrightened, and do not think that when the things that can be shakenare removed, the things that cannot be shaken are at all less likelyto remain. Depend upon it, the Gospel, whose outline I haveimperfectly tried to set before you now, will last as long as men onearth know they are sinners and need a Saviour. Did you ever see somemean buildings that have by degrees been gathered round the sides ofsome majestic cathedral, and do you suppose that the sweeping away ofthose shanties would touch the solemn majesty of the mediævalglories of the building that rises above them? Take them away if needbe, and it, in its proportion, beauty, strength, and heavenwardaspiration, will stand more glorious for the sweeping away. Preachpositive truth. Do not preach doubts. You remember Mr. Kingsley'sbook Yeast. Its title was its condemnation. Yeast is not meantto be drunk; it is meant to be kept in the dark till the process offermentation goes on and it works itself clear, and then you maybring it out. Do not be always arguing with the enemy. It is a greatdeal better to preach the truth. Remember what Jesus said: ‘Letthem alone, they are blind leaders of the blind, they will fall intothe ditch.’ It is not given to every one of us to conductcontroversial arguments in the pulpit. There are some much wiser andabler brethren amongst us than you or I who can do it. Let us becontented with, not the humbler but the more glorious, office oftelling what we have known, leaving it, as it will do, to proveitself. You remember what the old woman, who had been favoured by herpastor with an elaborate sermon to demonstrate the existence of God,said when he had finished; ‘Well, I believe there is a God, forall the gentleman says.’

As one who sees the lengthening shadows falling over the darkeningfield, may I say one word to my junior brethren, with all whosestruggles and doubts and difficulties I, for one, do most tenderlysympathise? I beseech them—though, alas! the advice condemnsthe giver of it as he looks back over long years of hisministry—to be faithful to the Gospel how that ‘JesusChrist died for our sins according to the Scriptures.’ Dearyoung friends, if you only go where Paul went, and catch theinspiration that he caught there, your path will be clear. It was incontact with Christ, whose passion for soul-winning brought Him fromheaven, that Paul learned his passion for soul-winning. And if youand I are touched with the divine enthusiasm, and have that aim clearbefore us, we shall soon find out that there is only one power, onename given under heaven among men whereby we can accomplish what wedesire—the name of ‘Jesus Christ that died, yea, rather,that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, and alsomaketh intercession for us.’ If our aim is clear before us itwill prescribe our methods, and if the inspiration of our ministryis, ‘I determine not to know anything among you save JesusChrist and Him crucified,’ then, whether men will hear orwhether they will forbear, they shall know that there hath been aProphet among them.

Footnote 1: Preachedbefore Baptist Union.

WORLD-WIDE SIN AND WORLD-WIDEREDEMPTION

‘Now we know, that what things soever the lawsaith, it saith to them who are under the law; that every mouth maybe stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20.Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justifiedin His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. 21. But now therighteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessedby the law and the prophets; 22. Even the righteousness of God whichis by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe;for there is no difference: 23. For all have sinned, and come shortof the glory of God: 24. Being justified freely by His grace, throughthe redemption that is in Christ Jesus; 25. Whom God hath set forthto be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare Hisrighteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through theforbearance of God; 26. To declare, I say, at this time Hisrighteousness; that He might be just, and the justifier of him whichbelieveth in Jesus.’—ROMANS iii. 19-26.

Let us note in general terms the large truths which this passagecontains. We may mass these under four heads:

I. Paul's view of the purpose of the law.

He has been quoting a mosaic of Old Testament passages from thePsalms and Isaiah. He regards these as part of ‘the law,’which term, therefore, in his view, here includes the whole previousrevelation, considered as making known God's will as to man'sconduct. Every word of God, whether promise, or doctrine, or specificcommand, has in it some element bearing on conduct. God revealsnothing only in order that we may know, but all that, knowing, we maydo and be what is pleasing in His sight. All His words are law.

But Paul sets forth another view of its purpose here; namely, todrive home to men's consciences the conviction of sin. That is notthe only purpose, for God reveals duty primarily in order that menmay do it, and His law is meant to be obeyed. But, failing obedience,this second purpose comes into action, and His law is a swift witnessagainst sin. The more clearly we know our duty, the more poignantwill be our consciousness of failure. The light which shines to showthe path of right, shines to show our deviations from it. And thatconviction of sin, which it was the very purpose of all the previousRevelation to produce, is a merciful gift; for, as the Apostleimplies, it is the prerequisite to the faith which saves.

As a matter of fact, there was a far profounder and more inwardconviction of sin among the Jews than in any heathen nation. Contrastthe wailings of many a psalm with the tone in Greek or Romanliterature. No doubt there is a law written on men's hearts whichevokes a lower measure of the same consciousness of sin. There areprayers among the Assyrian and Babylonian tablets which might almoststand beside the Fifty-first Psalm; but, on the whole, the deep senseof sin was the product of the revealed law. The best use of ourconsciousness of what we ought to be, is when it rouses conscience tofeel the discordance with it of what we are, and so drives us toChrist. Law, whether in the Old Testament, or as written in ourhearts by their very make, is the slave whose task is to bring us toChrist, who will give us power to keep God's commandments.

Another purpose of the law is stated in verse 21, as being to bearwitness, in conjunction with the prophets, to a future more perfectrevelation of God's righteousness. Much of the law was symbolic andprophetic. The ideal it set forth could not always remainunfulfilled. The whole attitude of that system was one offorward-looking expectancy. There is much danger lest, in moderninvestigations as to the authorship, date, and genesis of the OldTestament revelation, its central characteristic should be lost sightof; namely, its pointing onwards to a more perfect revelation whichshould supersede it.

II. Paul's view of universal sinfulness.

He states that twice in this passage (vs. 20 to 24), and itunderlies his view of the purpose of law. In verse 20 he asserts that‘by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified,’and in verses 23 and 24 he advances from that negative statement tothe positive assertion that all have sinned. The impossibility ofjustification by the works of the law may be shown from twoconsiderations: one, that, as a matter of fact, no flesh has everdone them all with absolute completeness and purity; and, second,that, even if they had ever been so done, they would not have availedto secure acquittal at a tribunal where motive counts for more thandeed. The former is the main point with Paul.

In verse 23 the same fact of universal experience is contemplatedas both positive sin and negative falling short of the‘glory’ (which here seems to mean, as in John v. 44, xii.43, approbation from God). ‘There is no distinction,’ butall varieties of condition, character, attainment, are alike in this,that the fatal taint is upon them all. ‘We have, all of us, onehuman heart.’ We are alike in physical necessities, in primalinstincts, and, most tragically of all, in the common experience ofsinfulness.

Paul does not mean to bring all varieties of character down to onedead level, but he does mean to assert that none is free from thetaint. A man need only be honest in self-examination to endorse thestatement, so far as he himself is concerned. The Gospel would bebetter understood if the fact of universal sinfulness were moredeeply felt. Its superiority to all schemes for making everybodyhappy by rearrangements of property, or increase of culture, would beseen through; and the only cure for human misery would be discernedto be what cures universal sinfulness.

III. So we have next Paul's view of the remedy for man's sin. Thatis stated in general terms in verses 21, 22. Into a world of sinfulmen comes streaming the light of a ‘righteousness ofGod.’ That expression is here used to mean a moral state ofconformity with God's will, imparted by God. The great, joyfulmessage, which Paul felt himself sent to proclaim, is that the trueway to reach the state of conformity which law requires, and whichthe unsophisticated, universal conscience acknowledges not to havebeen reached, is the way of faith.

The message is so familiar to us that we may easily fail torealise its essential greatness and wonderfulness when firstproclaimed. That God should give righteousness, that it should be‘of God,’ not only as coming from Him, but as, in somereal way, being kindred with His own perfection; that it should bebrought to men by Jesus Christ, as ancient legends told that abeneficent Titan brought from heaven, in a hollow cane, the gift offire; and that it should become ours by the simple process oftrusting in Jesus Christ, are truths which custom has largely robbedof their wonderfulness. Let us meditate more on them till theyregain, by our own experience of their power, some of the celestiallight which belongs to them.

Observe that in verse 22 the universality of the redemption whichis in Christ is deduced from the universality of sin. The remedy mustreach as far as the disease. If there is no difference in regard tosin, there can be none in regard to the sweep of redemption. Thedoleful universality of the covering spread over all nations, hascorresponding to it the blessed universality of the light which issent forth to flood them all. Sin's empire cannot stretch fartherthan Christ's kingdom.

IV. Paul's view of what makes the Gospel the remedy.

In verses 21 and 22 it was stated generally that Christ was thechannel, and faith the condition, of righteousness. The personalobject of faith was declared, but not the special thing in Christwhich was to be trusted in. That is fully set forth in verses 24-26.We cannot attempt to discuss the great words in these verses, each ofwhich would want a volume. But we may note that‘justified’ here means to be accounted or declaredrighteous, as a judicial act; and that justification is traced in itsultimate source to God's ‘grace,’—His own lovingdisposition—which bends to unworthy and lowly creatures, and isregarded as having for the medium of its bestowal the‘redemption’ that is in Christ Jesus. That is the channelthrough which grace comes from God.

‘Redemption’ implies captivity, liberation, and aprice paid. The metaphor of slaves set free by ransom is exchanged inverse 25 for a sacrificial reference. A propitiatory sacrifice avertspunishment from the offerer. The death of the victim procures thelife of the worshipper. So, a propitiatory or atoning sacrifice isoffered by Christ's blood, or death. That sacrifice is theransom-price through which our captivity is ended, and our libertyassured. As His redemption is the channel ‘through’ whichGod's grace comes to men, so faith is the condition‘through’ which (ver. 25) we make that grace ours.

Note, then, that Paul does not merely point to Jesus Christ asSaviour, but to His death as the saving power. We are to have faithin Jesus Christ (ver. 22). But that is not a complete statement. Itmust be faith in His propitiation, if it is to bring us into livingcontact with His redemption. A gospel which says much of Christ, butlittle of His Cross, or which dilates on the beauty of His life, butstammers when it begins to speak of the sacrifice in His death, isnot Paul's Gospel, and it will have little power to deal with theuniversal sickness of sin.

The last verses of the passage set forth another purpose attainedby Christ's sacrifice; namely, the vindication of God's righteousnessin forbearing to inflict punishment on sins committed before theadvent of Jesus. That Cross rayed out its power in alldirections—to the heights of the heavens; to the depths ofHades (Col. i. 20); to the ages that were to come, and to those thatwere past. The suspension of punishment through all generations, fromthe beginning till that day when the Cross was reared on Calvary, wasdue to that Cross having been present to the divine mind from thebeginning. ‘The judge is condemned when the guilty isacquitted,’ or left unpunished. There would be a blot on God'sgovernment, not because it was so severe, but because it was soforbearing, unless His justice was vindicated, and the fatalconsequences of sin shown in the sacrifice of Christ. God could nothave shown Himself just, in view either of age-long forbearance, orof now justifying the sinner, unless the Cross had shown that He wasnot immorally indulgent toward sin.

NO DIFFERENCE

‘There is no difference.’—ROMANS iii.22.

The things in which all men are alike are far more important thanthose in which they differ. The diversities are superficial, theidentities are deep as life. Physical processes and wants are thesame for everybody. All men, be they kings or beggars, civilised orsavage, rich or poor, wise or foolish, cultured or illiterate,breathe the same breath, hunger and thirst, eat and drink, sleep, aresmitten by the same diseases, and die at last the same death. We haveall of us one human heart. Tears and grief, gladness and smiles, moveus all. Hope, fear, love, play the same music upon all heart-strings.The same great law of duty over-arches every man, and the same heavenof God bends above him.

Religion has to do with the deep-seated identities and not withthe superficial differences. And though there have been manyaristocratic religions in the world, it is the great glory ofChristianity that it goes straight to the central similarities, andbrushes aside, as of altogether secondary importance, all thesubordinate diversities, grappling with the great facts which arecommon to humanity, and with the large hopes which all mayinherit.

Paul here, in his grand way, triumphs and rises above all thesesmall differences between man and man, more pure or less pure, Jew orGentile, wise or foolish, and avers that, in regard of the deepestand most important things, ‘there is no difference,’ andso his Gospel is a Gospel for the world, because it deals with allmen on the same level. Now I wish to work out this great glory andcharacteristic of the Gospel system in a few remarks, and to pointout to you the more important of these things in which all men, bethey what or who they may, stand in one category and have identicalexperiences and interests.

I. First, there is no difference in the fact of sin.

Now let us understand that the Gospel does not assert that thereis no difference in the degrees of sin. Christianity does not teach,howsoever some of its apostles may seem to have taught, orunconsciously lent themselves to representations which imply the viewthat there was no difference between a man who ‘did by naturethe things contained in the law,’ as Paul says, and the man whoset himself to violate law. There is no such monstrous teaching inthe New Testament as that all blacks are the same shade, all sin ofthe same gravity, no such teaching as that a man that tries accordingto his light to do what is right stands on exactly the same level asthe man who flouts all such obligations, and has driven the chariotsof his lusts and passions through every law that may stand in hisway.

But even whilst we have to insist upon that, that the teaching ofmy text is not of an absolute identity of criminality, but only anuniversal participation in criminality, do not let us forget that, ifyou take the two extremes, and suppose it possible that there were abest man in all the world, and a worst man in all the world, thedifference between these two is not perhaps so great as at firstsight it looks. For we have to remember that motives make actions,and that you cannot judge of these by considering those, that‘as a man thinketh in his heart,’ and not as a man doeswith his hands, ‘so is he.’ We have to remember, also,that there may be lives, sedulously and immaculately respectable andpure, which are white rather with the unwholesome leprosy of diseasethan with the wholesome purity of health.

In Queen Elizabeth's time, the way in which they cleaned the hallof a castle, the floor of which might be covered with remnants offood and all manner of abominations, was to strew another layer ofrushes over the top of the filth, and then they thought themselvesquite neat and respectable. And that is what a great many of you do,cover the filth well up with a sweet smelling layer of conventionalproprieties, and think yourselves clean, and the pinks of perfection.God forbid that I should say one word that would seem to cast anykind of slur upon the effort that any man makes to do what he knowsto be right, but this I proclaim, or rather my text proclaims for me,that, giving full weight and value to all that, and admitting theexistence of variations in degree, the identity is deeper than thediversity; and there is ‘not a just man upon earth that doethgood and sinneth not.’

Oh, dear friends! it is not a question of degree, but ofdirection; not how far the ship has gone on her voyage, but how sheheads. Good and evil are the same in essence, whatever be theirintensity and whatever be their magnitude. Arsenic is arsenic,whether you have a ton of it or a grain; and a very small dose willbe enough to poison. The Gospel starts with the assertion that thereis no difference in the fact of sin. The assertion is abundantlyconfirmed. Does not conscience assent? We all admit‘faults,’ do we not? We all acknowledge‘imperfections.’ It is that little word ‘sin’which seems to bring in another order of considerations, and tocommand the assent of conscience less readily. But sin is nothingexcept fault considered in reference to God's law. Bring the notionof God into the life, and ‘faults’ and‘slips’ and ‘weaknesses,’ and all the othernames by which we try to smooth down the ugliness of the ugly thing,start up at once into their tone, magnitude, and importance, andstand avowed as sins.

Well now, if there be, therefore, this universal consciousness ofimperfection, and if that consciousness of imperfection has only needto be brought into contact with God, as it were, to flame thus, letme remind you, too, that this fact of universal sinfulness puts usall in one class, no matter what may be the superficial difference.Shakespeare and the Australian savage, the biggest brain and thesmallest, the loftiest and the lowest of us, the purest and thefoulest of us, we all come into the same order. It is a question ofclassification. ‘The Scripture hath concluded all undersin,’ that is to say, has shut all men up as in a prison. Youremember in the French Revolution, all manner of people were huddledindiscriminately into the same dungeon of the Paris prisons. Youwould find a princess and some daughter of shame from the gutters; aboor from the country and a landlord, a count, a marquis, asavant, a philosopher and an illiterate workman, all togetherin the dungeons. They kept up the distinctions of society and ofclass with a ghastly mockery, even to the very moment when thetumbrils came for them. And so here are we all, in some senseinclosed within the solemn cells of this great prison-house, andwhether we be wise or foolish, we are prisoners, whether we havetitles or not, we are prisoners. You may be a student, but you are asinner: you may be a rich Manchester merchant, but you are a sinner;you may be a man of rank, but you are a sinner. Naaman went to Elishaand was very much offended because Elisha treated him as a leper whohappened to be a nobleman. He wanted to be treated as a nobleman whohappened to be a leper. And that is the way with a great many of us;we do not like to be driven into one class with all the crowd ofevildoers. But, my friend, ‘there is no difference.’‘All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.’

II. Again, there is no difference in the fact of God's love tous.

God does not love men because of what they are, therefore He doesnot cease to love them because of what they are. His love to the sonsof men is not drawn out by their goodness, their morality, theirobedience, but it wells up from the depths of His own heart, because‘it is His nature and property,’ and if I may so say, Hecannot help loving. You do not need to pump up that great affectionby any machinery of obedience and of merits; it rises like the waterin an Artesian well, of its own impulse, with ebullient power fromthe central heat, and spreads its great streams everywhere. Andtherefore, though our sin may awfully disturb our relations with God,and may hurt and harm us in a hundred ways, there is one thing itcannot do, it cannot stop Him from loving us. It cannot dam back Hisgreat love, which flows out for ever towards all His creatures, andlaves them all in its gentle, strong flood, from which nothing candraw them away. ‘In Him we live, and move, and have ourbeing,’ and to live in Him, whatever else it may mean—andit means a great deal more—is most certainly to live in Hislove. A man can as soon pass out of the atmosphere in which hebreathes as he can pass out of the love of God. We can no more travelbeyond that great over-arching firmament of everlasting love whichspans all the universe than a star set in the blue heavens cantranscend the liquid arch and get beyond its range. ‘There isno difference’ in the fact that all men, unthankful and evil asthey are, are grasped and held in the love of God.

But there is a difference. Sin cannot dam God's love back,but sin has a terrible power in reference to the love of God. Twothings it can do. It can make us incapable of receiving the highestblessings of that love. There are many mercies which God pours‘upon the unthankful and the evil.’ These are His leastgifts; His highest and best cannot be given to the unthankful and theevil. They would if they could, but they cannot, because they cannotbe received by them. You can shut the shutters against the light; youcan close the vase against the stream. You cannot prevent itsshining, you cannot prevent its flowing, but you can prevent yourselffrom receiving its loftiest and best blessings.

And another awful power that my sin has in reference to God's loveis, that it can modify the form which God's love takes in itsdealings with me. We may force Him to do ‘His work,’‘His strange work,’ as Isaiah calls it, and to punishwhen He would fain only succour and comfort and bless. Just as a fogin the sky does not touch the sun, but turns it to our eyes into afiery ball, red and lurid, so the mist of my sin coming between meand God, may, to my apprehension and to my capacity of reception,solemnly make different that great love of His. But yet there is nodifference in the fact of God's love to us.

III. Thirdly, there is no difference in the purpose and power ofChrist's Cross for us all.

‘He died for all.’ The area over which the purpose andthe power of Christ's death extend is precisely conterminous with thearea over which the power of sin extends. It cannot be—blessedbe God!—that the raven Sin shall fly further than the dove withthe olive branch in its mouth. It cannot be that the disease shall gowider than the cure. And so, dear friends, I have to come to you nowwith this message. No matter what a man is, how far he has gone, howsinful he has been, how long he has stayed away from the sweetnessand grace of that great sacrifice on the Cross, that death was forhim. The power of Christ's sacrifice makes possible the forgivenessof all the sins of all the world, past, present, and to come. Theworth of that sacrifice, which was made by the willing surrender ofthe Incarnate Son of God to the death of the Cross, is sufficient forthe ransom price of all the sins of all men.

Nor is it only the power of the Cross which is all embracing, butit* purpose also. In the very hour of Christ's death, there stood,clear and distinct, before His divine omniscience, each man, woman,and child of the race. And for them all, grasping them all in thetenderness of His sympathy and in the clearness of His knowledge, inthe design of His sufferings for them all, He died, so that everyhuman being may lay his hand on the head of the sacrifice, andknow ‘his guilt was there,’ and may say, with astriumphant and appropriating faith as Paul did, ‘He lovedme,’ and in that hour of agony and love ‘gaveHimself for me.’

To go back to a metaphor already employed, the prisoners aregathered together in the prison, not that they may be slain, but‘God hath included them all,’ shut them all up,‘that He might have mercy upon all.’ And so, as it was inthe days of Christ's life upon earth, so is it now, and so will it befor ever. All the crowd may come to Him, and whosoever comes‘is made whole of whatsoever disease he had.’ There areno incurables nor outcasts. ‘There is no difference.’

IV. Lastly, there is no difference in the way which we must takefor salvation.

The only thing that unites men to Jesus Christ is faith. You musttrust Him, you must trust the power of His sacrifice, you must trustthe might of His living love. You must trust Him with a trust whichis self-distrust. You must trust Him out and out. The people withwhom Paul is fighting, in this chapter, were quite willing to admitthat faith was the thing that made Christians, but they wanted totack on something besides. They wanted to tack on the rites ofJudaism and obedience to the moral law. And ever since men have beengoing on in that erroneous rut. Sometimes it has been that peoplehave sought to add a little of their own morality; sometimes to addceremonies and sacraments. Sometimes it has been one thing andsometimes it has been another; but there are not two ways to theCross of Christ, and to the salvation which He gives. There is onlyone road, and all sorts of men have to come by it. You cannot leanhalf upon Christ and half upon yourselves, like the timid cripplethat is not quite sure of the support of the friendly arm. You cannoteke out the robe with which He will clothe you with a little bit ofstuff of your own weaving. It is an insult to a host to offer to payfor entertainment. The Gospel feast that Christ provides is not asocial meal to which every guest brings a dish. Our part is simplereception, we have to bring empty hands if we would receive theblessing.

We must put away superficial differences. The Gospel is for theworld, therefore the act by which we receive it must be one which allmen can perform, not one which only some can do. Not wisdom, norrighteousness, but faith joins us to Christ. And, therefore, peoplewho fancy themselves wise or righteous are offended that‘special terms’ are not made with them. They would preferto have a private portion for themselves. It grates against the prideof the aristocratic class, whether it be aristocratic byculture—and that is the most aristocratic of all—or byposition, or anything else—it grates against their pride to betold: ‘You have to go in by that same door that the beggar isgoing in at’; and ‘there is no difference.’Therefore, the very width of the doorway, that is wide enough for allthe world, gets to be thought narrowness, and becomes a hindrance toour entering. As Naaman's servant put a common-sense question to him,so may I to you. ‘If the prophet had bid thee do some greatthing, wouldest thou not have done it?’ Ay! that you would!‘How much more when He says “Wash and beclean!”’ There is only one way of getting dirt off, andthat is by water. There is only one way of getting sin off, and thatis by the blood of Jesus Christ. There is only one way of having thatblood applied to your heart, and that is trusting Him. ‘Thecommon salvation’ becomes ours when we exercise ‘thecommon faith.’ ‘There is no difference’ in oursins. Thank God! ‘there is no difference’ in the factthat He grasps us with His love. There is no difference in the factthat Jesus Christ has died for us all. Let there be no difference inour faith, or there will be a difference, deep as the differencebetween Heaven and Hell; the difference between them that believe andthem that believe not, which will darken and widen into thedifference between them that are saved and them that perish.

LET US HAVE PEACE

‘Let us have peace with God through our Lord JesusChrist.’—ROMANS v. 1. (R. V.).

In the rendering of the Revised Version, ‘Let us have peacewith God through our Lord Jesus Christ,’ the alteration is veryslight, being that of one letter in one word, the substitution of along ‘o’ for a short one. The majority of manuscripts ofauthority read ‘let us have,’ making the clause anexhortation and not a statement. I suppose the reason why, in someinferior MSS., the statement takes the place of the exhortation isbecause it was felt to be somewhat of a difficulty to understand theApostle's course of thought. But I shall hope to show you that thetrue understanding of the context, as well as of the words I havetaken for my text, requires the exhortation and not theaffirmation.

One more remark of an introductory character: is it not verybeautiful to see how the Apostle here identifies himself, in allhumility, with the Christians whom he is addressing, and feels thathe, Apostle as he is, has the same need for the same counsel andstimulus that the weakest of those to whom he is writing have? Itwould have been so easy for him to isolate himself, and say,‘Now you have peace with God; see that you keep it.’ Buthe puts himself into the same class as those whom he is exhorting,and that is what all of us have to do who would give advice that willbe worth anything or of any effect. He does not stand upon a littlemolehill of superiority, and look down upon the Roman Christians, andimply that they have needs that he has not, but he exhorts himselftoo, saying, ‘Let all of us who have obtained like preciousfaith, which is alike in an Apostle and in the humblest believer,have peace with God.’

Now a word, first, about the meaning of this somewhat singularexhortation.

There is a theory of man and his relation to God underlying it,which is very unfashionable at present, but which corresponds to thedeepest things in human nature, and the deepest mysteries in humanhistory, and that is, that something has come in to produce thetotally unnatural and monstrous fact that between God and man thereis not amity or harmony. Men, on their side, are alienated, becausetheir wills are rebellious and their aims diverse from God's purposeconcerning them. And—although it is an awful thing to have tosay, and one from which the sentimentalism of much modernChristianity weakly recoils—on God's side, too, the relationhas been disturbed, and ‘we are by nature the children ofwrath, even as others’; not of a wrath which is unloving, notof a wrath which is impetuous and passionate, not of a wrath whichseeks the hurt of its objects, but of a wrath which is the necessaryantagonism and recoil of pure love from such creatures as we havemade ourselves to be. To speak as if the New Testament taught that‘reconciliation’ was lop-sided—which would be acontradiction in terms, for reconciliation needs two to makeit—to talk as if the New Testament taught that reconciliationwas only man's putting away his false relation to God, is, as Ihumbly think, to be blind to its plainest teaching. So, there beingthis antagonism and separation between God and man, the Gospel comesto deal with it, and proclaims that Jesus Christ has abolished theenmity, and by His death on the Cross has become our peace; and thatwe, by faith in that Christ, and grasping in faith His death, passfrom out of the condition of hostility into the condition ofreconciliation.

With this by way of basis, let us come back to my text. It soundsstrange; ‘Therefore, being justified by faith, let up havepeace.’ ‘Well,’ you will say, ‘but is not allthat you have been saying just this, that to be justified by faith,to be declared righteous by reason of faith in Him who makes usrighteous, is to have peace with God? Is not your exhortation anentirely superfluous one?’ No doubt that is what the old scribethought who originated the reading which has crept into ourAuthorised Version. The two things do seem to be entirely parallel.To be justified by faith is a certain process, to have peace with Godis the inseparable and simultaneous result of that process itself.But that is going rather too fast. ‘Being justified by faithlet us have peace with God,’ really is just this—see thatyou abide where you are; keep what you have. The exhortation is notto attain peace, but retain it. ‘Hold fast that thou hast; letno man take thy crown.’ ‘Being justified by faith’cling to your treasure and let nothing rob you of it—‘letus have peace with God.’

Now a word, in the next place, as to the necessity and importanceof this exhortation.

There underlies it, this solemn thought, which Christian people,and especially some types of Christian doctrine, do need to havehammered into them over and over again, that we hold the blessed lifeitself, and all its blessings, only on condition of our owncooperation in keeping them; and that just as physical life dies,unless by reception of food we nourish and continue it, so a man thatis in this condition of being justified by faith, and having peacewith God, needs, in order to the permanence of that condition, togive his utmost effort and diligence. It will all go if he do not.All the old state will come back again if we are slothful andnegligent. We cannot keep the treasure unless we guard it. And justbecause we have it, we need to put all our mind, the earnestness ofour will, and the concentration of our efforts, into the specificwork of retaining it.

For, consider how manifold and strong are the forces which arealways working against our continual possession of this justificationby faith, and consequent peace with God. There are all the ordinarycares and duties and avocations and fortunes of our daily life,which, indeed, may be so hallowed in their motives and in theiractivities, as that they may be turned into helps instead ofhindrances, but which require a great deal of diligence and effort inorder that they should not work like grains of dust that come betweenthe parts of some nicely-fitting engine, and so cause friction anddisaster. There are all the daily tasks that tempt us to forget thethings that we only know by faith, and to be absorbed in the thingsthat we can touch and taste and handle. If a man is upon an inclinedplane, unless he is straining his muscles to go upwards, gravitationwill make short work of him, and bring him down. And unless Christianmen grip hard and continually that sense of having fellowship andpeace with God, as sure as they are living they will lose theclearness of that consciousness, and the calm that comes from it. Forwe cannot go into the world and do the work that is laid upon us allwithout there being possible hostility to the Christian life ineverything that we meet. Thank God there is possible help, too, andwhether our daily calling is an enemy or a friend to our religiondepends upon the earnestness and continuousness of our own efforts.But there is a worse force than these external distractions workingto draw us away, one that we carry within, in our own vacillatingwills and wayward hearts and treacherous affections and passions thatusually lie dormant, but wake up sometimes at the most inopportuneperiods. Unless we keep a very tight hand upon ourselves, certainlythese will rob us of this consciousness of being justified by faithwhich brings with it peace with God that passes understanding.

In the Isle of Wight massive cliffs rise hundreds of feet abovethe sea, and seem as if they were as solid as the framework of theearth itself. But they rest upon a sharply inclined plane of clay,and the moisture trickles through the rifts in the majestic cliffsabove, and gets down to that slippery substance and makes it like thegreased ways down which they launch a ship; and away goes the cliffone day, with its hundreds of feet of buttresses that have frontedthe tempest for centuries, and it lies toppled in hideous ruin on thebeach below. We have all a layer of ‘blue slipper’ inourselves, and unless we take care that no storm-water finds its waydown through the chinks in the rocks above they will slide into awfulruin. ‘Being justified, let us have peace with God,’ andremember that the exhortation is enforced not only by a considerationof the many strong forces which tend to deprive us of this peace, butalso by a consideration of the hideous disaster that comes upon aman's whole nature if he loses peace with God. For there is no peacewith ourselves, and there is no peace with man, and there is no peacein face of the warfare of life and the calamities that are certainlybefore us all, unless, in the deepest sanctuary of our being, thereis the peace of God because in our consciences there is peace withGod. If I desire to be at rest—and there is no blessedness butrest—if I desire to know the sovereign joy of tranquillity,undisturbed by my own stormy passions or by any human enmity, and tohave even the ‘beasts of the field at peace with’ me, andall things my helpers and allies, there is but one way to realise thedesire, and that is the retention of peace with God that comes withbeing justified by faith.

Lastly, a word or two as to the ways by which this exhortation canbe carried into effect.

I have tried to explain how the peace of which my text speakscomes originally through Christ's work laid hold of by my faith, andnow I would say only three things.

Retain the peace by the exercise of that same faith which at firstbrought it. Next, retain it by union with that same Lord from whomyou at first received it. Very significantly, in the immediatecontext, we have the Apostle drawing a broad distinction between thebenefits which we have received from Christ's death, and those whichwe shall receive through His life. And that is the best commentary onthe words of my text. ‘If when we were enemies, we werereconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, beingreconciled, we shall be saved by His life.’ So let our faithgrasp firmly the great twin facts of the Christ who died that Hemight abolish the enmity, and bring us peace; and of the Christ wholives in order that He may pour into our hearts more and more of Hisown life, and so make us more and more in His own image. And the lastword that I would say, in addition to these two plain, practicalprecepts is, let your conduct be such as will not disturb your peacewith God. For if a man lets his own will rise up in rebellion againstGod's, whether that divine will command duty or impose suffering,away goes all his peace. There is no possibility of the tranquilsense of union and communion with my Father in heaven lasting when Iam in rebellion against Him. The smallest sin destroys, for the timebeing, our sense of forgiveness and our peace with God. The bluesurface of the lake, mirroring in its unmoved tranquillity the skyand the bright sun, or the solemn stars, loses all that reflectedheaven in its heart when a cat's paw of wind ruffles its surface. Ifwe would keep our hearts as mirrors, in their peace, of the peace inthe heavens that shine down on them, we must fence them from thewinds of evil passions and rebellious wills. ‘Oh! that thouwouldest hearken unto Me, then had thy peace been like ariver.’

ACCESS INTO GRACE

‘By whom also we have access by faith into thisgrace wherein we stand.’—ROMANS v. 2.

I may be allowed to begin with a word or two of explanation of theterms of this passage. Note then, especially, that also whichsends us back to the previous clause, and tells us that our text addssomething to what was spoken of there. What was spoken of there?‘The peace of God’ which comes to a man by Jesus Christthrough faith, the removal of enmity, and the declaration ofrighteousness. But that peace with God, which is the beginning ofeverything in the Christian view, is only the beginning, and there ismuch to follow. While, then, there is a progress clearly marked inthe words of our text, and ‘access into this grace wherein westand’ is something more than, and after, the ‘peace withGod,’ mark next the similarity of the text and the precedingverse. The two great truths in the latter, Christ's mediation orintervention, and our faith as the condition by which we receive theblessings which are brought to us in and through Him, are bothrepeated, with no unmeaning tautology, but with profound significancein our text—‘By whom also we have access’—aswell as—‘the peace of God’—‘accessby faith into this grace.’ So then, for the initialblessing, and for all the subsequent blessings of the Christian life,the way is the same. The medium and channel is one, and the act bywhich we avail ourselves of the blessings coming through that onemedium is the same. Now the language of my text, with its talkingabout access, faith, and grace, sounds to a great many of us, I amafraid, very hard and remote and technical. And there are not wantingpeople who tell us that all that terminology in the New Testament islike a dying brand in the fire, where the little kernel of glowingheat is getting covered thicker and thicker with grey ashes. Yes; butif you blow the ashes off, the fire is there all the same. Let us tryif we can blow the ashes off.

This text seems to me in its archaic phraseology, only to need tobe pondered in order to flash up into wonderful beauty. It carries init a magnificent ideal of the Christian life, in three things: theChristian place, ‘access into grace’; the Christianattitude, ‘wherein we stand’; and the Christian means ofrealising that ideal, ‘through Christ’ and ‘byfaith.’ Now let us look at these three points.

I. The Christian Place.

There is clearly a metaphor here, both in the word‘access’ and in that other one ‘stand.’‘The grace’ is supposed as some ample space into which aman is led, and where he can continue, stand, and expatiate. Or, wemay say, it is regarded as a palace or treasure-house into which wecan enter. Now, if we take that great New Testament word‘grace,’ and ponder its meanings, we find that they runsomething in this fashion. The central thought, grand and marvellous,which is enshrined in it, and which often is buried for carelessears, is that of the active love of God poured out upon inferiors whodeserve something very different. Then there follows a secondmeaning, which covers a great part of the ground of the use of thephrase in the New Testament, and that is the communication of thatlove to men, the specific and individualised gifts which come out ofthat great reservoir of patient, pardoning, condescending, andbestowing love. Then there may be taken into view a meaning which isless prominent in Scripture but not absent, namely, the resultingbeauty of character. A gracious soul ought to be, and is, a gracefulsoul; a supreme loveliness is imparted to human nature by thecommunication to it of the gifts which are the results of theundeserved, free, and infinite love of God.

Now if we take all these three thoughts as blended together in thegrand metaphor of the Apostle, of the ample space into which theChristian man passes, we get such lessons as this. A Christian lifemay, and therefore should, be suffused with a continual consciousnessof the love of God. That would change everything in it. Here is somegreat sweep of rolling country, perhaps a Highland moor: the littletarns on it are grey and cold, the vegetation is gloomy and dark,dreariness is over all the scene, because there is a great pall ofcloud drawn beneath the blue. But the sun pierces with his lancesthrough the grey, and crumples up the mists, and sends them flyingbeneath the horizon. Then what a change in the landscape! All thetarns that looked black and wicked are now infantile in theirinnocent blue and sunny gladness, and every dimple in the heightsshows, and all the heather burns with the sunshine that falls uponit. So my lonely doleful life, if that light from God, the beam ofHis love, shines down upon it, rises into nobility, and flashes intobeauty, and is calm and fair and great, as nothing else can make it.You may dwell in love by dwelling in God, and then your lives will befair. You have access into the grace; see that you go there. Theytell us that nightingales sing by the wayside by preference, and wemay have in our lives, singing a quiet tune, the continual thought ofthe love of God, even whilst life's highway is dusty and rough, andour feet are often weary in treading it. A Christian life may be, andtherefore should be, suffused with the sense of the abiding love ofGod.

Take the other meaning of the word, the secondary and derivedmeaning, the communication of that love to us, and that leads us tosay that a Christian life may, and therefore should, be enriched withcontinual gifts from God's fullness. I said that the Apostle wasusing a metaphor here, regarding the grace as being an ample spaceinto which a man was admitted, or we may say that he is thinking ofit as a great treasure-house. We have the right of entrance there,where on every side, as it were, lie ingots of uncoined gold, andmasses of treasure, and we may have just as much or as little as wechoose. It is entirely in our own determination how much of thewealth of God we shall possess. We have access to the treasure-house;and this permit is put into our hands: ‘Be it unto thee even asthou wilt.’ The size of the sack that the man brings, in theold story, determined the amount of wealth that he carried away. Someof you bring very tiny baskets and expect little and desire little;you get no more than you desired and expected.

That wealth, the fullness of God, takes the shape of, as well asis determined in its measure by the magnitude of, the vessel intowhich it is put. It is multiform, and we get whatever we desire, andwhatever either our characters or our circ*mstances require. The onegift assumes all forms, just as water poured into a vase takes theshape of the vase into which it is poured. The same gift unfoldsitself in an infinite variety of manners, according to the needs ofthe man to whom it is given; just as the writer's pen, thecarpenter's hammer, the farmer's ploughshare, are all made out of thesame metal. So God's grace comes to you in a different shape fromthat in which it comes to me, according to our different callings andneeds, as fixed by our circ*mstances, our duties, our sorrows, ourtemptations.

So, brethren, how shameful it is that, having the possibility ofso much, we should have the actuality of so little. There is an oldstory about one of our generals in India long ago, who, when he camehome, was accused of rapacity because he had brought away so muchtreasure from the Rajahs whom he had conquered, and his answer to thecharge was, ‘I was surprised at my own moderation.’ Ah!there are a great many Christian people who ought to be ashamed oftheir moderation. They have gone into the treasure-house; stacks ofjewels, jars of gold on all sides of them—and they have beencontent to come away with some one poor little coin, when they mighthave been ‘rich beyond the dreams of avarice.’ Brethren,you have ‘access’ to the fullness of God. Whose fault isit if you are empty?

Then, further, I said there was another meaning in these greatwords. The love which may suffuse our lives, the gifts, theconsequence of that love, which may enrich our lives, should, and inthe measure in which they are received will, adorn and make beautifulour lives. For ‘grace’ means loveliness as well asgoodness, and the God who is the fountain of it all is the fountainof ‘whatsoever things are fair,’ as well as ofwhatsoever things are good. That suggests two considerations on whichI have no time to dwell. One is that the highest beauty is goodness,and unless the art of a nation learns that, its art will becomefilthy and a minister of sin. They talk about ‘Art for Art'ssake.’ Would that all these poets and painters who are tryingto find beauty in corruption—and there is a phosphorescentglimmer in rotting wood, and a prismatic colouring on the scum of astagnant pond—would that all those men who are seeking to findbeauty apart from goodness, and so are turning a divine instinct intoa servant of evil, would learn that the true gracefulness comes fromthe grace which is the fullness of God given unto men.

But there is another lesson, and that is that Christian people whosay that they have their lives irradiated by the love of God, and whoprofess to be receiving gifts from His full hand, are bound to takecare that their goodness is not ‘harsh and crabbed,’ asnot only ‘dull fools suppose’ it to be, but as itsometimes is, but is musical and fair. You are bound to make yourgoodness attractive, and to show that the things that are ‘ofgood report’ are likewise the ‘things that arelovely.’

II. And so, now, turn to the second point here, viz. the Christianattitude.

‘The grace wherein ye stand’; that word is veryemphatic here, and does not merely mean ‘continue,’ butit suggests what I have put into that phrase, the Christianattitude.

Two things are implied. One is that a life thus suffused by thelove, and enriched by the gifts, and adorned by the loveliness thatcome from God, will be stable and steadfast. Resistance and stabilityare implied in the words. One very important item in determining aman's power of resistance, and of standing firm against whateverassaults may be hurled against him, is the sort of footing that hehas. If you stand on slippery mud, or on the ice of a glacier, youwill find it hard to stand firm; but if you plant your foot on thegrace of God, then you will be able to ‘withstand in the evilday, and having done all to stand.’ And how does a man planthis foot on the grace of God? simply by trusting in God, and not inhimself. So that the secret of all steadfastness of life, and of allsuccessful resistance to the whirling onrush of temptations and ofdifficulties, is to set your foot upon that rock, and then your‘goings’ will be established.

Jesus Christ brings to us, in the gift of life in Him, stabilitywhich will check the vacillations of our own hearts. We go up anddown, we yield when pressure is brought to bear against us, we arecarried off our feet often by the sudden swirl of the stream, and thefitful blast of the wind. But His grace comes in, and will make usable to stand against all assaults. Our poor natures, necessarilychangeable, and sinfully vacillating and weak, will be uniform, inthe measure in which the grace of God comes into our hearts. Just asin these so-called petrifying wells, they take a bit of cloth, abird's nest, a billet of wood, and plunge it into the water, and themineral held in solution there infiltrates into the substance of thething plunged in, and makes it firm and inflexible: so let us plungeour poor, changeful, vacillating resolutions, our wayward, wanderinghearts, our passions, so easily excited by temptation, into thatgreat fountain, and there will filter into our flexibility what willmake it firm, and into our changefulness what will give in us somefaint copy of the divine immutability, and we shall stand fast in theLord and in the power of His might.

Further, in regard to this attitude, which is the result of thepossession of grace, we may say that it indicates not only stabilityand steadfastness, but erectness, as in opposition to crouching orbowing. A man's independence is guaranteed by his dependence upon,and his possession of, that communicated grace of God. And so youhave the fact that the phase of the Christian teaching which has laidmost stress on the decrees and sovereign will of God, on divine gracein fact, and too little upon the human side—the phase which isroughly described as Calvinism—has underlain the liberties ofEurope, and has stiffened men into the rejection of all priestly andcivic domination. ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there isliberty,’ and if a man has in his heart the grace of God, thenhe stands erect as a man. ‘Ye are bought with a price; be yenot the servants of men.’ The Christian democracy, theChristian rejection of all sacerdotal and other domination, flowsfrom the access of each individual Christian to the fountain of allwisdom, the only source of law and command, the inspirer of allstrength, the giver of all grace. By faith ye stand. ‘Standfast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made youfree.’

III. Lastly, and only a word; we have here the Christian way ofentrance into grace.

I have already remarked on the emphasis with which, both in mytext and in the preceding clause, there are laid down the twoconditions of possessing this grace, or the peace which precedes it:‘By Christ—through faith.’ Notice, too, that JesusChrist gives us ‘access.’ Now that expression is but animperfect rendering of the original. If it were not for its trivialassociations, one might read instead of ‘access,’introduction, ‘by whom we have introduction into this gracewherein we stand.’ The thought is that Jesus Christ secures usentry into this ample space, this treasure-house, as some courtofficer might take by the hand a poor rustic, standing on thethreshold of the palace, and lead him through all the glitteringseries of unfamiliar splendour, and present him at last in thecentral ring around the king. The reality that underlies the metaphoris plain. We sinners can never pass into that central glory, nor everpossess those gifts of grace, unless the barrier that stands betweenus and God, between us and His highest gifts of love, is sweptaway.

I recall an old legend where two knights are represented asseeking to enter a palace, where there is a mysterious fire burningin the middle of the portal. One of them tries to pass through, andrecoils scorched; but when the other essays an entrance the fiercefire sinks, and the path is cleared. Jesus Christ has died, and I sayit with all reverence, as His blood touches the fire it flickers downand the way is opened ‘into the holiest of all, whither theForerunner is for us entered.’ He both brings the grace andmakes it possible that we should go in where the grace is.

But Jesus Christ's work is nothing to you unless your personalfaith comes in, and so that is pointed to in the second of theclauses here: ‘By faith we have access.’ That isno arbitrary appointment. It lies in the very nature of the gift andof the recipient. How can God give access into that grace to a manwho shrinks from being near Him; who does not want‘access,’ and who could not use the grace if he had it?How can God bestow inward and spiritual gifts upon any man who closeshis heart against them, and will not have them? My faith is thecondition; Christ is the Giver. If I ally myself to Him by my faith,He gives to me. If I do not, with all the will to do it, He cannotbestow His best gifts any more than a man who stretches out his handto another sinking in the flood can lift him out, and set him on thesafe shore, if the drowning man's hand is not stretched out to graspthe rescuer's outstretched hand.

Brethren, God is infinitely willing to give the choicest gifts ofHis love to us all, to gladden, to enrich, to adorn, to make stableand erect. But He cannot give them unless you will trust Him.‘It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullnessdwell.’ That alabaster box is brought to earth. It was brokenon the Cross that ‘the house’ might be ‘filled withthe odour of the ointment.’ Our faith is the only condition; itis only the condition, but it is the indispensable condition, of ourbeing anointed with that fragrant anointing. He, and He only, cangive us the fullness of God.

THE SOURCES OF HOPE

‘We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3. And notonly so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulationworketh patience; 4. And patience, experience; and experience,hope.’—ROMANS v. 2-4.

We have seen in a previous sermon that the Apostle in theforegoing context is sketching a grand outline of the ideal Christianlife, as all rooted in ‘being justified by faith,’ andflowering into ‘peace with God,’ ‘access intograce,’ and a firm stand against all antagonists and would-bemasters. In our text he advances to complete the outline by sketchingthe true Christian attitude towards the future. I have ventured totake so pregnant and large a text, because there is a very strikingand close connection throughout the verses, which is lost unless wetake them together. Note, then, ‘we rejoice in hope,’‘we glory in tribulation.’ Now, it is one word in theoriginal which is diversely rendered in these two clauses by‘rejoice’ and ‘glory.’ The latter is a betterrendering than the former, because the original expression designatesnot only the emotion of joy, but the expression of it, especially inwords. So it is frequently rendered in the New Testament by the word‘boast,’ which, of course, has unpleasant associations,which scarcely fit it for use here. So then you see Paul regards itas possible for, and more than possibly characteristic of, aChristian, that the very same emotion should he excited by that greatbright future hope, and by the blackness of present sorrow. That isstrong meat; and so he goes on to explain how he thinks it can andmust be so, and points out that trouble, through a series of results,arrives at last at this, that if it is rightly borne, it flashes upinto greater brightness the hope which has grasped the glory of God.So then we have here, not only a wonderful designation of the objectaround which Christian hope twines its tendrils, but of the doublesource from which that hope may come, and of the one emotion withwhich Christian people should front the darkness of the present andthe brightness of the future. Ah! how different our lives would be ifthat ideal of a steadfast hope and an untroubled joy were realised byeach of us. It may be. It should be. So I ask you to look at thesethree points which I have suggested.

I. That wonderful designation of the one object of Christian hopewhich should fill, with an uncoruscating and unflickering light, allthat dark future.

‘We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.’ Now, Isuppose I need not remind you that that phrase ‘the glory ofGod’ is, in the Old Testament, used especially to mean thelight that dwelt between the cherubim above the mercy-seat; thesymbol of the divine perfections and the token of the DivinePresence. The reality of which it was a symbol is the totalsplendour, so to speak, of that divine nature, as it rays itself outinto all the universe. And, says Paul, the true hope of the Christianman is nothing less than that of that glory he shall be, in some truesense, and in an eternally growing degree, the real possessor. It isa tremendous claim, and one which leads us into deep places that Idare not venture into now, as to the resemblance between the humanperson and the Divine Person, notwithstanding all the differenceswhich of course exist, and which only a presumptuous form of religionhas ventured to treat as transitory or insignificant. Let me use atechnical word, and say that it is no pantheistic absorption in animpersonal Light, no Nirvana of union with a vague whole, which theApostle holds out here, but it is the closest possible union,personality being saved and individual consciousness beingintensified. It is the clothing of humanity with so much of thatglory as can be imparted to a finite creature. That means perfectknowledge, perfect purity, perfect love, and that means the droppingaway of all weaknesses and the access of strange new powers, and thatmeans the end of the schism between ‘will’ and‘ought,’ and of the other schism between‘will’ and ‘can.’ It means what this Apostlesays: ‘Whom He justified them He also glorified,’ andwhat He says again, ‘We all, beholding as in aglass’—or rather, perhaps, mirroring as a glassdoes—‘the glory, are changed into the sameimage.’

The very heart of Christianity is that the Divine Light of whichthat Shekinah was but a poor and transitory symbol has‘tabernacled’ amongst men in the Christ, and has from Himbeen communicated, and is being communicated in such measure asearthly limitations and conditions permit, and that these do point onassuredly to perfect impartation hereafter, when ‘we shall belike Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’ The Three could walkin the furnace of fire, because there was One with them, ‘likeunto the Son of God.’ ‘Who among us shall dwell with theeverlasting fire,’ the fire of that divine perfection? They whohave had introduction by Christ into the grace, and who will be ledby Him into the glory.

Now, brethren, it seems to me to be of great importance that this,the loftiest of conceptions of that future life, should be the mainaspect under which we think of it. It is well to speak of rest fromtoil; it is well to speak of all the negations of presentunfavourable, afflictive conditions which that future presents to us.And perhaps there is none of the aspects of it which appeals todeeper feelings in ourselves, than those which say ‘there shallbe no night there,’ ‘there shall be no tears there,neither sorrow nor sighing’; ‘there shall be no toilthere.’ But we must rise above all that, for our heaven is tolive in God, and to be possessors of His glory. Do not let us dwellupon the symbols instead of the realities. Do not let us dwell onlyon the oppositions and contradictions to earth. Let us rather risehigh above symbols, high above negations, to the positive truth, andnot contented with saying ‘We shall be full of blessedness; weshall be full of purity; we shall be full of knowledge,’ let usrather think of that which embraces them all—we shall be fullof God.

So much, then, for the one object of Christian hope. We havehere—

II. The double source of that hope.

Observe that the first clause of my text comes as the last term ina sequence. It began with ‘being justified by faith.’ Thesecond round of the ladder was, ‘we have peace with God.’The third, ‘we have access into this grace.’ The fourth,‘we stand,’ and then comes, ‘we rejoice in hope ofthe glory of God.’ That is to say, to put it into generalwords, and, of course, presupposing the revelation in Jesus Christ asthe basis of all, without which there is no assured hope of a futurebeyond the grave, then the facts of a Christian man's life are forhim the best brighteners of the hope beyond. Of course, that is so.‘Justified by faith’—‘peace withGod’—‘access into grace’; what, in the nameof common-sense, can death do with these things? How can its bluntedsword cut the bond that unites a soul that has had such experiencesas these with the source of them all? Nothing can be more grotesque,nothing more incongruous, than to think that that subordinate andaccidental fact, whose region is the physical, has anything whateverto do with this higher region of consciousness.

And, further than that, it is absolutely unthinkable to a man inthe possession of these spiritual gifts, that they should ever cometo a close; and the fact that in the precise degree in which werealise as our very own possession, here and now, these Christianemotions and blessings, we instinctively rise to the belief that theyare ‘not for an age, but for all time,’ and not for alltime, but for eternity, is itself, if not a proof, yet a very strongpresumption, if you believe in God, that a man who thus ‘feelshe was not made to die’ because he has grasped the Eternal, isright in so feeling. If, too, we look at the experiences themselves,they all have the stamp of incompleteness, and suggest completenessby their own incompleteness. The new moon with its ragged edge notmore surely prophesies its completed silver round, than do theexperiences of the Christian life here, in their greatness and intheir smallness, declare that there come a time and an order ofthings in which what was thwarted tendency shall be accomplishedresult. The tender green spikelet, pushing up through the brownclods, does not more surely prophesy the waving yellow ear, nor thebroad highway on which a man comes in the wilderness more surelydeclare that there is a village at the end of it, than do the factsof the Christian life, here and now, attest the validity of the hopeof the glory of God.

And so, brethren, if you wish to brighten that great light thatfills the future, see to it that your present Christianity is fullerof ‘peace with God,’ ‘access into grace,’ andthe firm, erect standing which flows from these. When the springs inthe mountains dry up, the river in the valley shrinks; and when theyare full, it glides along level with the top of its banks. So whenour Christian life in the present is richest, our Christian hope ofthe future will be the brighter. Look into yourselves. Is thereanything there that witnesses to that great future; anything therethat is obviously incipient, and destined to greater power; anythingthere which is like a tropical plant up here in 45 degrees of northlatitude, managing to grow, but with dwarfed leaves and scantyflowers and half shrivelled and sourish fruit, and that in the colddreams of the warm native land? Reflecting telescopes show the starsin a mirror, and the observer looks down to see the heavens. Lookinto yourselves, and see whether, on the polished plate within, thereare any images of the stars that move around the Throne of God.

But let us turn for a moment to the second source to which theApostle traces the Christian hope here. I must not be tempted to morethan just a word of explanation, but perhaps you will tolerate that.Paul says that trouble works patience, that is to say, not onlypassive endurance, but brave persistence in a course, in spite ofantagonisms. That is what trouble does to a man when it is rightlyborne. Of course the Apostle is speaking here of its ideal operation,and not of the reality which alas! often is seen when ourtribulations lash us into impatience, or paralyse our efforts.Tribulation worketh patience, ‘and patienceexperience.’ That is a difficult word to put intoEnglish. There underlies it the frequent thought which is familiar inScripture, of trouble of all kinds as testing a man, whether as therefiner's fire or the winnower's fan. It tests a man, and if he bearsthe trouble with patient persistence, then he has passed the test andis approved. Patient perseverance thus works approval, or proof ofthe man's Christianity, and, still more, proof of the reality andpower of the Christ whom his Christianity grasps. And so from out ofthat approval or proof which comes, through perseverance, fromtribulation, there rises, of course, in that heart that has beentested and has stood, a calm hope that the future will be as thepast, and that, having fought through six troubles, by God's help theseventh will be vanquished also, till at last troubles will end, andheaven be won.

Brethren, there is the true point of view from which to look, notonly at tribulations, but at all the trials, for they too bringtrials, that lie in duty and in enjoyment, and in earthly things.They are meant to work in us a conviction, by our experience ofhaving been able to meet them aright, of the reality of our grasp ofGod, and of the reality and power of the God whom we grasp. If wetook that point of view in regard to all the changes of thischangeful life, we should not so often be bewildered and upset by thedarkest of our sorrows. The shining lancets and cruel cuttinginstruments that the surgeon lays out on his table before he beginsthe operation are very dreadful. But the way to think of them is thatthey are there in order to remove from a man what it does him harm tokeep, and what, if it is not taken away, will kill him. So life, withits troubles, great and small, is all meant for this, to make ussurer of, and bring us closer to, our God, and to brace andstrengthen us in our own personal character. And if it does that,then blessed be everything that produces these results, and leads usthereby to glorying in the troubles by which shines out on us abrighter hope.

So there are the two sources, you see: the one is the blessednessof the Christian life, the other the sorrows of the outward life, andboth may converge upon the brightening of our Christian hope. Ourrainbow is the child of the marriage of the sun and the rain. TheChristian hope comes from being ‘justified by faith, havingpeace with God ... and access into grace,’ and it comes fromtribulation, which ‘worketh patience,’ and patience which‘worketh approval.’ The one spark is struck from the hardflint by the cold steel, and the other is kindled by the sun itself,but they are both fire.

And so, lastly, we have here—

III. The one emotion with which the Christian should front all thefacts, inward and outward, of his earthly life.

‘We glory in the hope,’ ‘we glory intribulation,’ I need not dwell upon the lesson which is taughtus here by the fact that the Apostle puts as one in a series ofChristian characteristics this of a steadfast and all-embracing joy.I do not believe that we Christian people half enough realise howimperative a Christian duty, as well as how great a Christianprivilege, it is to be glad always. You have no right to be anxious;you are wrong to be hypochondriac and depressed, and weary andmelancholy. True; there are a great many occasions in our Christianlife which minister sadness. True; the Christian joy looks verygloomy to a worldly eye. But there are far more occasions which, ifwe were right, would make joy instinctive, and which, whether we areright or not, make it obligatory upon us. I need not speak of how, ifthat hope were brighter than it commonly is with us, and if it weremore constantly present to our minds and hearts, we should sing withgladness. I need not dwell upon that great and wonderful paradox bywhich the co-existence of sorrow and of joy is possible. The sorrowsare on the surface; beneath there may be rest. All the winds ofheaven may rave across the breast of ocean, and fret it into cloudsof spume against a storm-swept sky. But deep down there is stillness,and yet not stagnation, because there is the great motion that bringslife and freshness; and so, though there will be wind-vexed surfaceson our too-often agitated spirits, there ought to be deeper thanthese the calm setting of the whole ocean of our nature towards GodHimself. It is possible, as this Apostle has it, to be‘sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.’ It is possible, as hisbrother Apostle has it, to ‘rejoice greatly, though now for aseason we are in sorrow through manifold temptations.’ Lookback upon your lives from the point of view that your tribulation isan instrument to produce hope, and you will be able to thank God forall the way by which He has led you.

Now, brethren, the plain lesson of all this is just that we havehere, in these texts, a linked chain, one end of which is wrappedaround our sinful hearts, and the other is fastened to the Throne ofGod. You cannot drop any of the links, and you must begin at thebeginning, if you are to be carried on to the end. If we are to havea joy immovable, we must have a ‘steadfast hope.’ If weare to have a ‘steadfast hope,’ we must have a present‘grace.’ If we are to have a present ‘grace,’and ‘access’ to the fullness of God, we must have‘peace with God.’ If we are to have ‘peace withGod,’ we must have the condemnation and the guilt taken away.If we are to have the condemnation and the guilt taken away, JesusChrist must take them. If Jesus Christ is to take them away, we musthave faith in Him. Then you can work it backward, and begin at yourown end, and say, ‘If I have faith in Jesus Christ, then everylink of the chain in due succession will pass through my hand, and Ishall have justifying, peace, access, the grace, erectness, hope, andexultation, and at last He will lead me by the hand into the gloryfor which I dare to hope, the glory which the Father gave to Himbefore the foundation of the world, and which He will give to me whenthe world has passed away in fervent heat.’

A THREEFOLD CORD

‘And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love ofGod is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is givenunto us.’—ROMANS v. 5.

We have seen in former sermons that, in the previous context, theApostle traces Christian hope to two sources: one, the series ofexperiences which follow ‘being justified by faith’ andthe other, those which follow on trouble rightly borne. Those twogolden chains together hold up the precious jewel of hope. But achain that is to bear a weight must have a staple, or it will fall tothe ground. And so Paul here turns to yet another thought, and, goingbehind both our inward experiences and our outward discipline, fallsback on that which precedes all. After all is said and done, the loveof God, eternal, self-originated, the source of all Christianexperiences because of the work of Christ which originates them all,is the root fact of the universe, and the guarantee that our highestanticipations and desires are not unsubstantial visions, but morningdreams, which are proverbially sure to be fulfilled. God is love;therefore the man who trusts Him shall not be put to shame.

But you will notice that here the Apostle not only adduces thelove of God as the staple, so to speak, from which these goldenchains hang, but that he traces the heart's being suffused with thatlove to its source, and as, of course, is always the case in theorder of analysis, that which was last in time comes first instatement. We begin at the surface, and go down and down and downfrom effect to cause, and yet again to the cause of that cause whichis itself effect. We strip off, as it were, layer after layer, untilwe get to the living centre—hope comes from the love, the lovecomes from the Spirit in the heart. And so to get at the order oftime and of manifestation, we must reverse the order of analysis inmy text, and begin where it ends. So we have here threethings—the Spirit given, the love shed abroad by that Spirit,and the hope established by that love. Now just look at them for amoment.

I. The Spirit given.

Now, the first point to notice here is that the Revised Versionpresents the meaning of our text more accurately than the AuthorisedVersion, because, instead of reading ‘is given,’ itcorrectly reads ‘was given.’ And any of you that canconsult the original will see that the form of the language impliesthat the Apostle is thinking, not so much of a continuous bestowment,as of a definite moment when this great gift was bestowed upon theman to whom he is speaking.

So the first question is, when was that Spirit given to theseRoman Christians? The Christian Church has been split in two by itsanswers to that question. One influential part, which has taken a newlease of life amongst us to-day, says ‘in baptism,’ andthe other says ‘at the moment of faith.’ I am not goingto be tempted into controversial paths now, for my purpose is a verydifferent one, but I cannot help just a word about the former ofthese two answers. ‘Given in baptism,’ say our friends,and I venture to think that they thereby degrade Christianity into asystem of magic, bringing together two entirely disparate things, anexternal physical act and a spiritual change. I do not say anythingabout the disastrous effects that have followed from such aconception of the medium by which this greatest of all Christiangifts is effected upon men. Since the Spirit who is given is life,the result of the gift of that Spirit is a new life, and we all knowwhat disastrous and debasing consequences have followed from thatdogma of regeneration by baptism. No doubt it is perfectly true thatnormally, in the early Church, the Divine Spirit was given atbaptism; but for one thing, that general rule had exceptions, as inthe case of Cornelius, and, for another thing, though it was givenat baptism, it was not given in baptism, but it wasgiven through faith, of which in those days baptism was the sequeland the sign.

But I pass altogether from this, and fall back on the great wordswhich, to me at least, if there were no other, would determine thewhole answer to this question as to when the Spirit was given:‘This spake He of the Holy Ghost, which they thatbelieve on Him should receive’; and I would ask themodern upholders of the other theory the indignant question which theApostle Paul fired off out of his heavy artillery at their ancientanalogues, the circumcisers in the Galatian Church: ‘This onlywould I know of you: Received ye the Holy Spirit by the works of thelaw, or by the hearing of faith?’

The answer which the evangelical Christian gives to this ancientquestion suggested by my text, ‘When was that Divine Spiritbestowed?’ is congruous with the spirituality of the Christianfaith, and is eminently reasonable. For the condition required is theopening of the whole nature in willing welcome to the entrance of theDivine Spirit, and as surely as, wherever there is an indentation ofthe land, and a concavity of a receptive bay, the ocean will pourinto it and fill it, so surely where a heart is open for God, God inHis Divine Spirit will enter into that heart, and there will shed Hisblessed influences.

So, dear brethren, and this is the main point to which I wish todirect your attention, the Apostle here takes it for granted that allthese Roman Christians knew in themselves the truth of what he wassaying, and had an experience which confirmed his assertion that theDivine Spirit of God was given to them when they believed. Ah! Iwonder if that is true about us professing Christians; if we areaware in any measure of a higher life than our own having beenbreathed into us; if we are aware in any measure of a Divine Spiritdwelling in our spirits, moulding, lifting, enlightening, guiding,constraining, and yet not coercing? We ought to be, ‘Know yenot that the Spirit dwelleth in you, except ye be rejected?’Brethren, it seems to me to be of the very last importance, in thisperiod of the Church's history, that the proportion between theChurch's teaching as to the work of Christ on the Cross, and as tothe consequent work of the Spirit of Christ in our hearts andspirits, should be changed. We must become more mystical if we arenot to become less Christian. And the fact that so many of us seem toimagine that the whole Gospel lies in this, that ‘He died forour sins according to the Scriptures,’ and have relegated theteaching that He, by His Spirit, lives in us, if we are Hisdisciples, to a less prominent place, has done enormous harm, notonly to the type of Christian life, but to the conception of whatChristianity is, both amongst those who receive it, and amongst thosewho do not accept it, making it out to be nothing more than a meansof escape from the consequences of our transgression, instead ofrecognising it for what it is, the impartation of a new life whichwill flower into all beauty, and bear fruit in all goodness.

There was a question put once to a group of disciples, inastonishment and incredulity, by this Apostle, when he said to thetwelve disciples in Ephesus, ‘Did you receive the Holy Ghostwhen you believed?’ The question might well be put to amultitude of professing Christians amongst us, and I am afraid agreat many of them, if they answered truly, would answer as thosedisciples did, ‘We have not so much as heard whether there beany Holy Ghost.’

And now for the second point in my text—

II. The love which is shed abroad by that Spirit.

Now, I suppose I do not need to do more than point out that‘the love of God’ here means His to us, and not ours toHim, and that the metaphor employed is but partially represented bythat rendering ‘shed abroad.’ ‘Poured out’would better convey Paul's image, which is that of a flood sentcoursing through the heart, or, perhaps, rather lying there, as acalm deep lake on whose unruffled surface the heavens, with all theirstars, are reflected. Of course, if God's love to us thus suffuses aheart, then there follows the consciousness of that love; though itis not the consciousness of the love that the Apostle is primarilyspeaking of, but that which lies behind it, the actual flowing intothe human heart of that sweet and all-satisfying Love. This DivineSpirit that dwells in us, if we are trusting in Christ, will pour itin full streams into our else empty hearts. Surely there is nothingincongruous with the nature either of God or of man, in believingthat thus a real communication is possible between them, and that bythoughts the occasions of which we cannot trace, by moments ofelevation, by swift, piercing convictions, by sudden clearilluminations, God may speak, and will speak, in our waitinghearts.

'Such rebounds the inmost ear Catches often from afar.Listen, prize them, hold them dear; For of God, of God, they are.'

But we must not forget, too, that, according tothe whole strain of New Testament thinking, the means by which thatDivine Spirit does pour out the flashing flood of the love of Godinto a man's heart is, as Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, bytaking the things of Christ and showing them to us.

Now, as I said about a former point of my sermon, that the Apostlewas taking for granted that this gift of the Spirit belonged to allChristian people; so here again he takes for granted that in everyChristian heart there is, by a divine operation, the presence of thelove, and of the consciousness of the love, of God. And, again, thequestion comes to some of us stunningly, to all of us warningly, Isthat a transcript of our experience? It is the ideal of a Christianlife; it is meant that it should be so, and should be socontinuously. The stream that is poured out is intended to run summerand winter, not to be dried up in drought, nor made turbid and noisyin flood, but with equable flow throughout. I fear me that theexperience of most good people is rather like one of those tropicalwadies, or nullahs in Eastern lands, where there alternate times ofspate and times of drought; and instead of a flashing stream, pouringlife everywhere, and full to the top of its banks, there is for longperiods a dismal stretch of white sun-baked stones, and a chaos oftumbled rocks with not a drop of water in the channel. The Spiritpours God's love into men's spirits, but there may be dams andbarriers, so that no drop of the water comes into the emptyheart.

Our Quaker friends have a great deal to say about ‘waitingfor the springing of the life within us.’ Never mind about thephraseology: what is meant is profoundly true, that no Christian manwill realise this blessing unless he knows how to sit still andmeditate, and let the gracious influence soak into him. Thus beingquiet, he may, he will, find rising in his heart the consciousness ofthe love of God. You will not, if you give only broken momentarysidelong glances; you will not, if you do not lie still. If you holdup a cup in a shaking hand beneath a fountain, and often twitch itaside, you will get little water in it; and unless we ‘wait onthe Lord,’ we shall not ‘renew our strength.’ Youcan build a dam as they do in Holland that will keep out, not onlythe waters of a river, but the waters of an ocean, and not a dropwill come through the dike. Brethren, we must keep ourselves in thelove of God.

Lastly, we have here—

III. The hope that is established by the love poured out.

I need not dwell at any length upon this point, because, to alarge extent, it has been anticipated in former sermons, but just aword or two may be permitted me. That love, you may be very sure, isnot going to lose its objects in the dust. The old Psalmist who knewso much less than we do as to the love of God, and knew nothing ofthe whispers of a Divine Spirit within his heart charged with themessage of the love as it was manifested in Jesus Christ, had risento a height of confidence, the beauty of the expression of which isoften lost sight of, because we insist upon dealing with it as merelybeing a Messianic prophecy, which it is, but not merely: ‘Thouwilt not leave my soul in Sheol, neither wilt Thou suffer Thybeloved’ (for that is the real meaning of the word translated‘thy Holy One’)—‘Thou wilt not suffer thechild of Thy love to see corruption.’ Death's bony fingers canuntie all true lover's knots but one; and they fumble at that one invain. God will not lose His child in the grave.

That love, we may be very sure, will not foster in us hopes thatare to be disappointed. Now, it is a fact that the more a man feelsthat God loves him, the less is it possible for him to believe thatthat love will ever terminate, or that he shall ‘alldie.’ In the lock of a canal, as the water pours in, the vesselrises. In our hearts, as the flood of the full love of God pours in,our hopes are borne up and up, nearer and nearer to the heavens.Since it is so, we must find in the fact that the constant andnecessary result of communion with Him here on earth is a convictionof the immortality of that communion, a very, very strong guaranteefor ourselves that the hope is not in vain. And if you say that thatis all merely subjective, yet I think that the universality of theexperience is a fact to be taken into account even by those who doubtthe reality of the hope, and for ourselves, at all events, is asufficient ground on which to rest. We have the historical fact ofthe Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have the fact that whereverthere has been earthly experience of true communion with God, there,and in the measure in which it has been realised, the thermometer ofour hopes of immortality, so to speak, has risen. ‘God islove,’ and God will not bring the man that trusts Him toconfusion.

And may we not venture to say that, contemplating the analogousearthly love, we are permitted to believe that that divine Lover ofour souls desires to have His beloved with Him, and desires thatthere be no separation between Him and them, either, if I might sosay, in place or in disposition? As certainly as husband and wife,lover and friend, long to be together, and need it for perfection andfor rest, so surely will that divine love not be satisfied until ithas gathered all its children to its breast and made them partakersof itself.

There are many, many hopes that put the men who cherish them toshame, partly because they are never fulfilled, partly because,though fulfilled, they are disappointed, since the reality is so muchless than the anticipation. Who does not know that the spray ofblossom on the tree looks far more lovely hanging above our headsthan when it is grasped by us? Who does not know that the fishstruggling on the hook seems heavier than it turns out to be whenlying on the bank? We go to the rainbow's end, and we find, not a potof gold, but a huddle of cold, wet mist. There is one man that isentitled to say: ‘To-morrow shall be as this day, and much moreabundant.’ Who is he? Only the man whose hope is in the Lordhis God. If we open our hearts by faith, then these three lines ofsequence of which we have been speaking will converge, and we shallhave the hope that is the shining apex of ‘being justified byfaith,’ and the hope that is the calm result of trouble andagitation, and the hope that, travelling further and higher thananything in our inward experience or our outward discipline, graspsthe key-word of the universe, ‘God is love,’ andtriumphantly makes sure that ‘neither death nor life, norangels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, northings to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shallbe able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesusour Lord.’

WHAT PROVES GOD'S LOVE

‘God commendeth His love toward us, in that, whilewe were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’—ROMANS v.8.

We have seen in previous sermons on the preceding context that theApostle has been tracing various lines of sequence, all of whichconverge upon Christian hope. The last of these pointed to the factthat the love of God, poured into a heart like oil into a lamp,brightened that flame; and having thus mentioned the great Christianrevelation of God as love, Paul at once passes to emphasise thehistorical fact on which the conviction of that love rests, and goeson to say that ‘the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts bythe Holy Ghost which is given to us, for when we were yetwithout strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.’Then there rises before him the thought of how transcendent andunparalleled a love is that which pours its whole preciousness onunworthy and unresponsive hearts. He thinks tohimself—‘We are all ungodly; without strength—yet,He died for us. Would any man do that? No! for,’ says he,‘it will be a hard thing to find any one ready to die for arighteous man—a man rigidly just and upright, and becauserigidly just, a trifle hard, and therefore not likely to touch aheart to sacrifice; and even for a good man, in whom austererighteousness has been softened and made attractive, and becomegraciousness and beneficence, well! it is just within the limits ofpossibility that somebody might be found even to die for a man thathad laid such a strong hand upon his affections. But God commendethHis love in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.’Now, when Paul says ‘commend,’ he uses a very significantword which is employed in two ways in the New Testament. It sometimesmeans to establish, or to prove, or to make certain. But‘prove’ is a cold word, and the expression also means torecommend, to set forth in such a way as to appeal to the heart, andGod does both in that great act. He establishes the fact, and He, asit were, sweeps it into a man's heart, on the bosom of that full tideof self-sacrifice.

So there are two or three points that arise from these words, onwhich I desire to dwell now—to lay them upon our hearts, andnot only upon our understandings. For it is a poor thing to prove thelove of God, and we need that not only shall we be sure of it, butthat we shall be softened by it. So now let me ask you to look withme, first, at this question—

I. What Paul thought Jesus Christ died for.

‘Died for us.’ Now that expression plainlyimplies two things: first, that Christ died of His own accord, andbeing impelled by a great motive, beneficence; and, second, that thatvoluntary death, somehow or other, is for our behoof and advantage.The word in the original, ‘for,’ does not define in whatway that death ministers to our advantage, but it does assert thatfor those Roman Christians who had never seen Jesus Christ, and byconsequence for you and me nineteen centuries off the Cross, there isbenefit in the fact of that death. Now, suppose we quote an incidentin the story of missionary martyrdom. There was a young lady, whomsome of us knew and loved, in a Chinese mission station, who, withthe rest of the missionary band, was flying. Her life was safe. Shelooked back, and saw a Chinese boy that her heart twined round, indanger. She returned to save him; they laid hold of her and flung herinto the burning house, and her charred remains have never beenfound. That was a death for another, but ‘Jesus died forus’ in a deeper sense than that. Take another case. A man setshimself to some great cause, not his own, and he sees that in orderto bless humanity, either by the proclamation of some truth, or bythe origination of some great movement, or in some other way, if heis to carry out his purpose, he must give his life. He does so, anddies a martyr. What he aimed at could only be done by the sacrificeof his life. The death was a means to his end, and he died for hisfellows. That is not the depth of the sense in which Paul meant thatJesus Christ died for us. It was not that He was true to His message,and, like many another martyr, died. There is only one way, as itseems to me, in which any beneficial relation can be establishedbetween the Death of Christ and us, and it is that when He died Hedied for us, because ‘He bare our sins in His own body on thetree.’

Dear brethren, I dare say some of you do not take that view, but Iknow not how justice can be done to the plain words of Scriptureunless this is the point of view from which we look at the Cross ofCalvary—that there the Lamb of Sacrifice was bearing, andbearing away, the sins of the whole world. I know that Christian menwho unite in the belief that Christ's death was a sacrifice and anatonement diverge from one another in their interpretations of theway in which that came to be a fact, and I believe, for my part, thatthe divergent interpretations are like the divergent beams of lightthat fall upon men who stand round the same great luminary, and thatall of them take their origin in, and are part of the manifestationof, the one transcendent fact, which passes all understanding, andgathers into itself all the diverse conceptions of it which areformed by limited minds. He died for us because, in His death, oursins are taken away and we are restored to the divine favour.

I know that Jesus Christ is said to have made far less of thataspect of His work in the Gospels than His disciples have done in theEpistles, and that we are told that, if we go back to Jesus, we shallnot find the doctrine which for some of us is the first form in whichthe Gospel finds its way into the hearts of men. I admit that thefully-developed teaching followed the fact, as was necessarily thecase. I do not admit that Jesus Christ ‘spake nothingconcerning Himself’ as the sacrifice for the world's sins. ForI hear from His lips—not to dwell upon other sayings which Icould quote—I hear from His lips, ‘The Son of Man camenot to be ministered unto, but to minister’—that is onlyhalf His purpose—‘and to give His life a ransom insteadof the many.’ You cannot strike the atoning aspect of His deathout of that expression by any fair handling of the words.

And what does the Lord's Supper mean? Why did Jesus Christ selectthat one point of His life as the point to be remembered? Why did Heinstitute the double memorial, the body parted from the blood being asign of a violent death? I know of no explanation that makes thatLord's Supper an intelligible rite except the explanation which saysthat He came, to live indeed, and in that life to be a sacrifice, butto make the sacrifice complete by Himself bearing the consequences oftransgression, and making atonement for the sins of the world.

Brethren, that is the only aspect of Christ's death which makes itof any consequence to us. Strip it of that, and what does it matterto me that He died, any more than it matters to me that anyphilanthropist, any great teacher, any hero or martyr or saint,should have died? As it seems to me, nothing. Christ's death issurrounded by tenderly pathetic and beautiful accompaniments. As astory it moves the hearts of men, and ‘purges them, by pity andby terror.’ But the death of many a hero of tragedy does allthat. And if you want to have the Cross of Christ held upright in itsplace as the Throne of Christ and the attractive power for the wholeworld, you must not tamper with that great truth, but say, ‘Hedied for our sins, according to the Scriptures.’

Now, there is a second question that I wish to ask, and thatis—

II. How does Christ's death ‘commend’ God's love?

That is a strange expression, if you will think about it, that‘God commendeth His love towards us in thatChrist died.’ If you take the interpretation of Christ'sdeath of which I have already been speaking, one could haveunderstood the Apostle if he had said, ‘Christ commendeth Hislove towards us in that Christ died.’ But where is the force ofthe fact of a man's death to prove God's love? Do younot see that underlying that swift sentence of the Apostle there is apresupposition, which he takes for granted? It is so obvious that Ido not need to dwell upon it to vindicate his change of persons, viz.that ‘God was in Christ,’ in such fashion as thatwhatsoever Christ did was the revelation of God. You cannot suppose,at least I cannot see how you can, that there is any force of proofin the words of my text, unless you come up to the full belief,‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.’

Suppose some great martyr who dies for his fellows. Well, allhonour to him, and the race will come to his tomb for a while, andbring their wreaths and their sorrow. But what bearing has his deathupon our knowledge of God's love towards us? None whatever, or atmost a very indirect and shadowy one. We have to dig deeper down thanthat. ‘God commends His love ... in that Christ died.’‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.’ And we havethe right and the obligation to argue back from all that is manifestin the tender Christ to the heart of God, and say, not only,‘God so loved the world that He’ sent His Son, but to seethat the love that was in Christ is the manifestation of the love ofGod Himself.

So there stands the Cross, the revelation to us, not only of aBrother's sacrifice, but of a Father's love; and that because JesusChrist is the revelation of God as being the ‘eradiation of Hisglory, and the express image of His person.’ Friends! lightdoes pour out from that Cross, whatever view men take of it. But theomnipotent beam, the all-illuminating radiance, the transforminglight, the heat that melts, are all dependent on our looking atit—I do not only say, as Paul looked at it, nor do I even sayas Christ looked at it, but as the deep necessities of humanityrequire that the world should look at it, as the altar whereon islaid the sacrifice for our sins, the very Son of God Himself. To methe great truths of the Incarnation and the Atonement of Jesus Christare not points in a mere speculative theology; they are the pulsatingvital centre of religion. And every man needs them in his ownexperience.

I was going to have said a word or two here—but it is notnecessary—about the need that the love of God should beirrefragably established, by some plain and undeniable andconspicuous fact. I need not dwell upon the ambiguous oracleswhich—

'Nature, red in tooth and claw,With rapine'

gives forth, nor on how the facts of human life,our own sorrows, and the world's miseries, the tears that swathe theearth, as it rolls on its orbit, like a misty atmosphere, war againstthe creed that God is love. I need not remind you, either, of howdeep, in our own hearts, when the conscience begins to speak itsnot ambiguous oracles, there does rise the conviction thatthere is much in us which it is impossible should be the object ofGod's love. Nor need I remind you how all these difficulties inbelieving in a God who is love, based on the contradictory aspects ofnature, and the mysteries of providence, and the whisperings of ourown consciousness, are proved to have been insuperable by the historyof the world, where we find mythologies and religions of all typesand gods of every sort, but nowhere in all the pantheon a God who isLove.

Only let me press upon you that that conviction of the love ofGod, which is found now far beyond the limits of Christian faith, andamongst many of us who, in the name of that conviction itself, rejectChristianity, because of its sterner aspects, is historically thechild of the evangelical doctrine of the Incarnation and sacrifice ofJesus Christ. And if it still subsists, as I know it does, especiallyin this generation, amongst many men who reject what seems to me tobe the very kernel of Christianity—subsists like the stream cutoff from its source, but still running, that only shows that men holdmany convictions the origin of which they do not know. God is love.You will not permanently sustain that belief against the pressure ofoutward mysteries and inward sorrows, unless you grasp the otherconviction that Christ died for our sins. The two areinseparable.

And now lastly—

III. What kind of love does Christ's death declare to us asexisting in God?

A love that is turned away by no sin—that is the thing thatstrikes the Apostle here, as I have already pointed out. The utmostreach of human affection might be that a man would die for thegood—he would scarcely die for the righteous. But God sends HisSon, and comes Himself in His Son, and His Son died for the ungodlyand the sinner. That death reveals a love which is its own origin andmotive. We love because we discern, or fancy we do, something lovablein the object. God loves under the impulse, so to speak, of His ownwelling-up heart.

And yet it is a love which, though not turned away by any sin, iswitnessed by that death to be rigidly righteous. It is no mereflaccid, flabby laxity of a loose-girt affection, no mere foolishindulgence like that whereby earthly parents spoil their children.God's love is not lazy good-nature, as a great many of us think it tobe and so drag it in the mud, but it is rigidly righteous, andtherefore Christ died. That Death witnesses that it is a love whichshrinks from no sacrifices. This Isaac was not ‘spared.’God gave up His Son. Love has its very speech in surrender, and God'slove speaks as ours does. It is a love which, turned away by no sin,and yet rigidly righteous and shrinking from no sacrifices, embracesall ages and lands. ‘God commendeth’—not‘commended.’ The majestic present tense suggests thattime and space are nothing to the swift and all-filling rays of thatgreat Light. That love is ‘towards us,’ you and me andall our fellows. The Death is an historical fact, occurring in oneshort hour. The Cross is an eternal power, raying out light and loveover all humanity and through all ages.

God lays siege to all hearts in that great sacrifice. Do youbelieve that Jesus Christ died for your sins ‘accordingto the Scriptures’? Do you see there the assurance of a lovewhich will lift you up above all the cross-currents of earthly life,and the mysteries of providence, into the clear ether where thesunshine is unobscured? And above all, do you fling back thereverberating ray from the mirror of your own heart that directsagain towards heaven the beam of love which heaven has shot down uponyou? ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He lovedus, and gave His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.’ Isit true of us that we love God because He first loved us?

THE WARRING QUEENS

‘As sin hath reigned unto death, even so mightgrace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christour Lord.’—ROMANS v. 21.

I am afraid this text will sound to some of you ratherunpromising. It is full of well-worn terms, ‘sin,’‘death,’ ‘grace,’‘righteousness,’ ‘eternal life,’ whichsuggest dry theology, if they suggest anything. When they welled upfrom the Apostle's glowing heart they were like a fiery lava-stream.But the stream has cooled, and, to a good many of us, they seem asbarren and sterile as the long ago cast out coils of lava on thesides of a quiescent volcano. They are so well-worn and familiar toour ears that they create but vague conceptions in our minds, andthey seem to many of us to be far away from a bearing upon our dailylives. But you much mistake Paul if you take him to be a meretheological writer. He is an earnest evangelist, trying to draw mento love and trust in Jesus Christ. And his writings, howeverold-fashioned and doctrinally hard they may seem to you, are allthrobbing with life—instinct with truths that belong to allages and places, and which fit close to every one of us.

I do not know if I can give any kind of freshness to these words,but I wish to try. To begin with, I notice the highly-imaginative andpicturesque form into which the Apostle casts his thoughts here. He,as it were, draws back a curtain, and lets us see two royal figures,which are eternally opposed and dividing the dominion between them.Then he shows us the issues to which these two rulers respectivelyconduct their subjects; and the question that is trembling on hislips is ‘Under which of them do you stand?’ Surely thatis not fossil theology, but truths that are of the highestimportance, and ought to be of the deepest interest, to every one ofus. They are to you the former, whether they are the latter ornot.

I. So, first, look at the two Queens who rule over human life.

Sin and Grace are both personified; and they are both conceived ofas female figures, and both as exercising dominion. They stand faceto face, and each recognises as her enemy the other. The one hasestablished her dominion: ‘Sin hath reigned.’ Theother is fighting to establish hers: ‘That Grace mightreign.’ And the struggle is going on between them, not only onthe wide field of the world; but in the narrow lists of the heart ofeach of us.

Sin reigns. The truths that underlie that solemn picture are plainenough, however unwelcome they may be to some of us, and howeverremote from the construction of the universe which many of us aredisposed to take.

Now, let us understand our terms. Suppose a man commits a theft.You may describe it from three different points of view. He hasthereby broken the law of the land; and when we are thinking aboutthat we call it crime. He has also broken the law of‘morality,’ as we call it; and when we are looking at hisdeed from that point of view, we call it vice. Is that all? He hasbroken something else. He has broken the law of God; and when we lookat it from that point of view we call it sin. Now, there are a greatmany things which are sins that are not crimes; and, with duelimitations, I might venture to say that there are some things whichare sins that are not to be qualified as vices. Sin implies God. ThePsalmist was quite right when he said; ‘Against Thee, Thee onlyhave I sinned’; although he was confessing a foul injury he haddone to Bathsheba, and a glaring crime that he had committed againstUriah. It was as to God, and in reference to Him only, that his crimeand his vice darkened and solidified into sin.

And what is it, in our actions or in ourselves considered inreference to God, that makes our actions sins and ourselves sinners?Remember the prodigal son. ‘Father! Give me the portion ofgoods that falleth to me.’ There you have it all. He went away,and ‘wasted his substance in riotous living.’ To claimmyself for my own; to act independently of, or contrary to, the willof God; to try to shake myself clear of Him; to have nothing to dowith Him, even though it be by mere forgetfulness and negligence,and, in all my ways to comport myself as if I had no relations ofdependence on and submission to him—that is sin. And there maybe that oblivion or rebellion, not only in the gross vulgar actswhich the law calls crimes, or in those which conscience declares tobe vices, but also in many things which, looked at from a lower pointof view, may be fair and pure and noble. If there is this assertionof self in them, or oblivion of God and His will in them, I know nothow we are to escape the conclusion that even these fall under theclass of sins. For there can be no act or thought, truly worthy of aman, situated and circ*mstanced as we are, which has not, for thevery core and animating motive of it, a reference to God.

Now, when I come and say, as my Bible teaches me to say, that thisis the deepest view of the state of humanity that sin reigns, I donot wish to fall into the exaggerations by which sometimes thatstatement has been darkened and discredited; but I do want to pressupon you, dear brethren, this, as a matter of personalexperience, that wherever there is a heart that loves, and leaves Godout, and wherever there is a will that resolves, determines, impelsto action, and does not bow itself before Him, and wherever there arehands that labour, or feet that run, at tasks and in pathsself-chosen and unconsecrated by reference to our Father in heaven,no matter how great and beautiful subsidiary lustres may light uptheir deeds, the very heart of them all is transgression of the lawof God. For this, and nothing else or less, is His law: ‘Thoushalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thysoul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.’ I donot charge you with crimes. You know how far it would be right tocharge you with vices. I do not charge you with anything; butI pray you to come with me and confess: ‘We all have sinned,and come short of the glory of God.’

I suppose I need not dwell upon the difficulty of getting alodgment for this conviction in men's hearts. There is no sadder, andno more conclusive proof, of the tremendous power of sin over us,than that it has lulled us into unconsciousness, hard to be broken,of its own presence and existence. You remember the oldstories—I suppose there is no truth in them, but they will dofor an illustration—about some kind of a blood-sucking animalthat perched upon a sleeping man, and with its leathern wings fannedhim into deeper drowsiness whilst it drew from him his life-blood.That is what this hideous Queen does for men. She robes herself in adark cloud, and sends out her behests from obscurity. And men fancythat they are free whilst all the while they are her servants. Oh,dear brethren! you may call this theology, but it is a simplestatement of the facts of our condition. ‘Sin hathreigned.’

And now turn to the other picture, ‘Grace mightreign.’ Then there is an antagonistic power that rises up toconfront the widespread dominion of this anarch of old. And thisQueen comes with twenty thousand to war against her that has but tenthousand on her side.

Again I say, let us understand our terms. I suppose, there are fewof the keywords of the New Testament which have lost more of theirradiance, like quicksilver, by exposure in the air during thecenturies than that great word Grace, which is always on the lips ofthis Apostle, and to him had music in its sound, and which to us is apiece of dead doctrine, associated with certain high Calvinistictheories which we enlightened people have long ago grown beyond, andgot rid of. Perhaps Paul was more right than we when his heart leapedup within him at the very thought of all which he saw to liepalpitating and throbbing with eager desire to bless men, in thatgreat word. What does he mean by it? Let me put it into the shortestpossible terms. This antagonist Queen is nothing but the love of Godraying out for ever to us inferior creatures, who, by reason of oursinfulness, have deserved something widely different. Sin standsthere, a hideous hag, though a queen; Grace stands here, ‘inall her gestures dignity and love,’ fair andself-communicative, though a sovereign. The love of God in exerciseto sinful men: that is what the New Testament means by grace. And isit not a great thought?

Notice, for further elucidation of the Apostle's conception, howhe sacrifices the verbal correctness of his antithesis in order toget to the real opposition. What is the opposite of Sin?Righteousness. Why does he not say, then, that ‘as Sin hathreigned unto death, even so might Righteousness reign untolife’? Why? Because it is not man, or anything in man, that canbe the true antagonist of, and victor over, the regnant Sin ofhumanity; but God Himself comes into the field, and only He is thefoe that Sin dreads. That is to say, the only hope for asin-tyrannised world is in the out-throb of the love of the greatheart of God. For, notice the weapon with which He fights man'stransgression, if I may vary the figure for a moment. It is onlysubordinately punishment, or law, or threatening, or the revelationof the wickedness of the transgression. All these have their places,but they are secondary places. The thing that will conquer a world'swickedness is nothing else but the manifested love of God. Only thepatient shining down of the sun will ever melt the icebergs thatfloat in all our hearts. And wonderful and blessed it is to thinkthat, in whatsoever aspects man's sin may have been an interruptionand a contradiction of the divine purpose, out of the evil has come agood; that the more obdurate and universal the rebellion, the morehas it evoked a deeper and more wondrous tenderness. The blacker thethundercloud, the brighter glows the rainbow that is flung across it.So these two front each other, the one settled in her establishedthrone—

'Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell—'

the other coming on her adventurous errand toconquer the world to herself, and to banish the foul tyranny underwhich men groan. ‘Sin hath reigned.’ Grace is on her wayto her dominion.

II. Notice the gifts of these two Queens to their subjects.

‘Sin hath reigned in death’ (as the accuratetranslation has it); ‘Grace reigns unto eternal life.’The one has established her dominion, and its results are wroughtout, her reign is, as it were, a reign in a cemetery; and hersubjects are dead. If you want a modern instance to illustrate anancient saw, think of Armenia. There is a reign whose gifts to itssubjects are death. Sin reigns, says Paul, and for proof points tothe fact that men die.

Now, I am not going to enter into the question here, and now,whether physical death passes over mankind because of the fact oftransgression. I do not suppose that this is so. But I ask you toremember that when the Bible says that ‘Death passed upon allmen, for all have sinned,’ it does not merely mean the physicalfact of dissolution, but it means that fact along with theaccompaniments of it, and the forerunners of it, in men'sconsciences. ‘The sting of death is sin,’ says Paul, inanother place. By which he implies, I presume, that, if it were notfor the fact of alienation from God and opposition to His holy will,men might lie down and die as placidly as an animal does, and mightstrip themselves for it ‘as for a bed, that longing they'd beensick for.’ No doubt, there was death in the world long beforethere were men in it. No doubt, also, the complex whole phenomenongets its terror from the fact of men's sin.

But it is not so much that physical fact with its accompanimentswhich Paul is thinking about when he says that ‘sin reigns indeath,’ as it is that solemn truth which he is alwaysreiterating, and which I pray you, dear friends, to lay to heart,that, whatever activity there may be in the life of a man who hasrent himself away from dependence upon God—however vigorous hisbrain, however active his hand, however full charged with otherinterests his life, in the very depth of it is a living death, andthe right name for it is death. So this is Sin's gift—that overour whole nature there come mortality and decay, and that they wholive as her subjects are dead whilst they live. Dear brethren, thatmay be figurative, but it seems to me that it is absurd for you toturn away from such thoughts, shrug your shoulders, and say,‘Old-fashioned Calvinistic theology!’ It is simplyputting into a vivid form the facts of your life and of yourcondition in relation to God, if you are subjects of Sin.

Then, on the other hand, the other queenly figure has her handsfilled with one great gift which, like the fatal bestowment which Singives to her subjects, has two aspects, a present and a future one.Life, which is given in our redemption from Death and Sin, and inunion with God; that is the present gift that the love of God holdsout to every one of us. That life, in its very incompleteness here,carries in itself the prophecy of its own completion hereafter, in ahigher form and world, just as truly as the bud is the prophet of theflower and of the fruit; just as truly as a half-reared building isthe prophecy of its own completion when the roof tree is put upon it.The men that here have, as we all may have if we choose, the gift oflife eternal in the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ His Son,must necessarily tend onwards and upwards to a region where Death isbeneath the horizon, and Life flows and flushes the whole heaven.Brother! do you put out your whole hand to take the poisoned giftfrom the claw-like hand of that hideous Queen; or do you turn andtake the gift of life eternal from the hands of the queenlyGrace?

III. How this queenly Grace gives her gifts.

You observe that the Apostle, as is his wont—I was going tosay—gets himself entangled in a couple of almost parentheticalor, at all events, subsidiary sentences. I suppose when he began towrite he meant to say, simply, ‘as Sin hath reigned unto death,so Grace might reign unto life.’ But notice that he inserts twoqualifications: ‘through righteousness,’ ‘throughJesus Christ our Lord.’ What does he mean by these?

He means this, first, that even that great love of God, comingthrobbing straight from His heart, cannot give eternal life as a merematter of arbitrary will. God can make His sun to shine and His rainto fall, ‘on the unthankful and on the evil,’ and if Godcould, God would give eternal life to everybody, bad and good; but Hecannot. There must be righteousness if there is to be life. Just assin's fruit is death, the fruit of righteousness is life.

He means, in the next place, that whilst there is no life withoutrighteousness, there is no righteousness without God's gift. Youcannot break away from the dominion of Sin, and, as it were,establish yourselves in a little fortress of your own, repelling herassaults by any power of yours. Dear brethren, we cannot undo thepast; we cannot strip off the poisoned garment that clings to ourlimbs; we can mend ourselves in many respects, but we cannot of ourown volition and motion clothe ourselves with that righteousness ofwhich the wearers shall be worthy to ‘pass through the gateinto the city.’ There is no righteousness without God'sgift.

And the other subsidiary clause completes the thought:‘through Christ.’ In Him is all the grace, the manifestlove, of God gathered together. It is not diffused as the nebulouslight in some chaotic incipient system, but it is gathered into a sunthat is set in the centre, in order that it may pour down warmth andlife upon its circling planets. The grace of God is in Christ Jesusour Lord. In Him is life eternal; therefore, if we desire to possessit we must possess Him. In Him is righteousness; therefore, if wedesire our own foulness to be changed into the holiness which shallsee God, we must go to Jesus Christ. Grace reigns in life, but it islife through righteousness, which is through Jesus Christ ourLord.

So, then, brother, my message and my petition to each of youare—knit yourself to Him by faith in Him. Then He who is‘full of grace and truth’ will come to you; and, coming,will bring in His hands righteousness and life eternal. If only werest ourselves on Him, and keep ourselves close in touch with Him;then we shall be delivered from the tyranny of the darkness, andtranslated into the Kingdom of the Son of His love.

‘THE FORM OFTEACHING’

‘... Ye have obeyed from the heart that form ofdoctrine which was delivered you.’—ROMANS vi.17.

There is room for difference of opinion as to what Paul preciselymeans by ‘form’ here. The word so rendered appears inEnglish as type, and has a similar variety of meaning. Itsignifies originally a mark made by pressure or impact; and then, bynatural transitions, a mould, or more generally apattern or example, and then the copy of such anexample or pattern, or the cast from such a mould. It has also theother meaning which its English equivalent has taken on veryextensively of late years, such as, for instance, you find inexpressions like ‘An English type of face,’ meaningthereby the general outline which preserves the distinguishingcharacteristics of a thing. Now we may choose between these twomeanings in our text. If the Apostle means type in the latter senseof the word, then the rendering ‘form’ is adequate, andhe is thinking of the Christian teaching which had been given to theRoman Christians as possessing certain well-defined characteristicswhich distinguished it from other kinds of teaching—such, forinstance, as Jewish or heathen.

But if we take the other meaning, then he is, in true Paulinefashion, bringing in a vivid and picturesque metaphor to enforce histhought, and is thinking of the teaching which the Roman Christianshad received as being a kind of mould into which they were thrown, apattern to which they were to be conformed. And that that is hismeaning seems to me to be made a little more probable by the factthat the last words of my text would be more accurate if inverted,and instead of reading, as the Authorised Version does, ‘thatform of doctrine which was delivered you,’ we were to read, asthe Revised Version does, ‘that form whereunto ye weredelivered.’

If this be the general meaning of the words before us, there arethree thoughts arising from them to which I turn briefly. First,Paul's Gospel was a definite body of teaching; secondly, thatteaching is a mould for conduct and character; lastly, that teachingtherefore demands obedience. Take, then, these three thoughts.

I. First, Paul's Gospel was a definite body of teaching.

Now the word ‘doctrine,’ which is employed in my text,has, in the lapse of years since the Authorised Version was made,narrowed its significance. At the date of our Authorised translation‘doctrine’ was probably equivalent to‘teaching,’ of whatever sort it might be. Since then ithas become equivalent to a statement of abstract principles, and thatis not at all what Paul means. He does not mean to say that hisgospel was a form of doctrine in the sense of being a theologicalsystem, but he means to say that it was a body of teaching, thenature of the teaching not being defined at all by the word.

Therefore we have to notice that the great, blessed peculiarity ofthe Gospel is that it is a teaching, not of abstract dry principles,but of concrete historical facts. From these principles in plenty maybe gathered, but in its first form as it comes to men fresh from Godit is not a set of propositions, but a history of deeds that weredone upon earth. And, therefore, is it fitted to be the food of everysoul and the mould of every character.

Jesus Christ did not come and talk to men about God, and say tothem what His Apostles afterwards said, ‘God is love,’but He lived and died, and that mainly was His teaching about God. Hedid not come to men and lay down a theory of atonement or a doctrineof propitiation, or theology about sin and its relations to God, butHe went to the Cross and gave Himself for us, and that was Histeaching about sacrifice. He did not say to men ‘There is afuture life, and it is of such and such a sort,’ but He cameout of the grave and He said ‘Touch Me, and handle Me. A spirithath not flesh and bones,’ and therefore He brought lifeand immortality to light, by no empty words but by the solidrealities of facts. He did not lecture upon ethics, but He lived aperfect human life out of which all moral principles that will guidehuman conduct may be gathered. And so, instead of presenting us witha hortus siccus, with a botanic collection of scientificallyarranged and dead propositions, He led us into the meadow where theflowers grow, living and fair. His life and death, with all that theyimply, are the teaching.

Let us not forget, on the other hand, that the history of a factis not the mere statement of the outward thing that has happened.Suppose four people, for instance, standing at the foot of Christ'sCross; four other ‘evangelists’ than the four that weknow. There is a Roman soldier; there is a Pharisee; there is one ofthe weeping crowd of poor women, not disciples; and there is adisciple. The first man tells the fact as he saw it: ‘A Jewishrebel was crucified this morning.’ The second man tells thefact: ‘A blaspheming apostate suffered what he deservedto-day.’ The woman tells the fact: ‘A poor, gentle, fairsoul was martyred to-day.’ And the fourth one tells the fact:‘Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for our sins.’ Thethree tell the same fact; the fourth preaches the Gospel—thatis to say, Christian teaching is the facts plus their explanation;and it is that which differentiates it from the mere record which isof no avail to anybody. So Paul himself in one of his other lettersputs it. This is his gospel: Jesus of Nazareth ‘died forour sins according to the Scriptures, and He was buried, androse again the third day, according to the Scriptures.’ That iswhat turns the bald story of the facts into teaching, which is themould for life.

So on the one hand, dear brethren, do not let us fall into thesuperficial error of fancying that our religion is a religion ofemotion and morality only. It is a religion with a basis of divinetruth, which, being struck away, all the rest goes. There is a revoltagainst dogma to-day, a revolt which in large measure is justified asan essential of progress, and in large measure as an instance ofprogress; but human nature is ever prone to extremes, and in therevolt from man's dogma there is danger of casting away God's truth.Christianity is not preserved when we hold by the bare facts of theoutward history, unless we take with these facts the interpretationof them, which declares the divinity and the sacrifice of the Son ofGod.

And on the other hand, let us keep very clear in our minds thebroad and impassable gulf of separation between the Christianteaching as embodied in the Scripture and the systems whichChristianity has evolved therefrom. Men's intellects must work uponthe pabulum that is provided for them, and a theology in asystematised form is a necessity for the intellectual and reasonablelife of the Christian Church. But there is all the difference betweenman's inferences from and systematising of the Christian truth andthe truth that lies here. The one is the golden roof that is castover us; the other is too often but the spiders’ webs that arespun across and darken its splendour. It is a sign of a wholesomechange in the whole sentiment and attitude of the modern Christianmind that the word ‘doctrine,’ which has come to meanmen's inferences from God's truth, should have been substituted as ithas been in our Revised Version of my text, by the wholesomeChristian word ‘teaching.’ The teaching is the facts withthe inspired commentary on them.

II. Secondly, notice that this teaching is in Paul's judgment amould or pattern according to which men's lives are to beconformed.

There can be no question but that, in that teaching as set forthin Scripture, there does lie the mightiest formative power forshaping our lives, and emancipating us from our evil.

Christ is the type, the mould into which men are to becast. The Gospel, as presented in Scripture, gives us three things.It gives us the perfect mould; it gives us the perfect motive; itgives us the perfect power. And in all three things appears itsdistinctive glory, apart from and above all other systems that haveever tried to affect the conduct or to mould the character ofman.

In Jesus Christ we have in due combination, in perfect proportion,all the possible excellences of humanity. As in other cases ofperfect symmetry, the very precision of the balanced proportionsdetracts from the apparent magnitude of the statue or of the fairbuilding, so to a superficial eye there is but little beauty therethat we should desire Him, but as we learn to know Him, and livenearer to Him, and get more familiar with all His sweetness, and withall His power, He towers before us in ever greater and yet neverrepellent or exaggerated magnitude, and never loses the reality ofHis brotherhood in the completeness of His perfection. We have in theChrist the one type, the one mould and pattern for all striving, the‘glass of form,’ the perfect Man.

And that likeness is not reproduced in us by pressure or by ablow, but by the slow and blessed process of gazing until we becomelike, beholding the glory until we are changed into the glory.

It is no use having a mould and metal unless you have a fire. Itis no use having a perfect Pattern unless you have a motive to copyit. Men do not go to the devil for want of examples; and morality isnot at a low ebb by reason of ignorance of what the true type of lifeis. But nowhere but in the full-orbed teaching of the New Testamentwill you find a motive strong enough to melt down all the obstinatehardness of the ‘northern iron’ of the human will, and tomake it plastic to His hand. If we can say, ‘He loved me andgave Himself for me’ then the sum of all morality, the oldcommandment that ‘ye love one another’ receives a newstringency, and a fresh motive as well as a deepened interpretation,when His love is our pattern. The one thing that will make menwilling to be like Christ is their faith that Christ is theirSacrifice and their Saviour. And sure I am of this, that no form ofmutilated Christianity, which leaves out or falteringly proclaims thetruth that Christ died on the Cross for the sins of the world, willever generate heat enough to mould men's wills, or kindle motivespowerful enough to lead to a life of growing imitation of andresemblance to Him. The dial may be all right, the hours mostaccurately marked in their proper places, every minute registered onthe circle, the hands may be all right, delicately fashioned, trulypoised, but if there is no main-spring inside, dial and hands are oflittle use, and a Christianity which says, ‘Christ is theTeacher; do you obey Him?’ is as impotent as the dial face withthe broken main-spring. What we need, and what, thank God, in‘the teaching’ we have, is the pattern brought near tous, and the motive for imitating the pattern, set in motion by thegreat thought, ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me.’

Still further, the teaching is a power to fashion life, inasmuchas it brings with it a gift which secures the transformation of thebeliever into the likeness of his Lord. Part of ‘theteaching’ is the fact of Pentecost; part of the teaching is thefact of the Ascension; and the consequence of the Ascension and thesure promise of the Pentecost is that all who love Him, and wait uponHim, shall receive into their hearts the ‘Spirit of life inChrist Jesus’ which shall make them free from the law of sinand death.

So, dear friends, on the one hand, let us remember that ourreligion is meant to work, that we have nothing in our creed thatshould not be in our character, that all our credenda are tobe our agenda; everything believed to be somethingdone; and that if we content ourselves with the simpleacceptance of the teaching, and make no effort to translate thatteaching into life, we are hypocrites or self-deceivers.

And, on the other hand, do not let us forget that religion is thesoul of which morality is the body, and that it is impossible in thenature of things that you shall ever get a true, lofty, moral lifewhich is not based upon religion. I do not say that men cannot besure of the outlines of their duty without Christianity, though I amfree to confess that I think it is a very maimed and shabby versionof human duty, which is supplied, minus the special revelation ofthat duty which Christianity makes; but my point is, that theknowledge will not work without the Gospel.

The Christian type of character is a distinct and manifestlyseparate thing from the pagan heroism or from the virtues and therighteousnesses of other systems. Just as the musician's ear cantell, by half a dozen bars, whether that strain was Beethoven's, orHandel's, or Mendelssohn's, just as the trained eye can seeRaffaelle's magic in every touch of his pencil, so Christ, theTeacher, has a style; and all the scholars of His school carry withthem a certain mark which tells where they got their education andwho is their Master, if they are scholars indeed. And that leads meto the last word.

III. This mould demands obedience.

By the very necessity of things it is so. If the‘teaching’ was but a teaching of abstract truths it wouldbe enough to assent to them. I believe that the three angles of atriangle are equal to two right angles, and I have done my duty bythat proposition when I have said ‘Yes! it is so.’ Butthe ‘teaching’ which Jesus Christ gives and is,needs a good deal more than that. By the very nature of the teaching,assent drags after it submission. You can please yourself whether youlet Jesus Christ into your minds or not, but if you do let Him in, Hewill be Master. There is no such thing as taking Him in and notobeying.

And so the requirement of the Gospel which we call faith has in itquite as much of the element of obedience as of the element of trust.And the presence of that element is just what makes the differencebetween a sham and a real faith. ‘Faith which has not works isdead, being alone.’ A faith which is all trust and no obedienceis neither trust nor obedience.

And that is why so many of us do not care to yield ourselves tothe faith that is in Jesus Christ. If it simply came to us and said,‘If you will trust Me you will get pardon,’ I fancy therewould be a good many more of us honest Christians than are so. ButChrist comes and says, ‘Trust Me, follow Me, and take Me foryour Master; and be like Me,’ and one's will kicks, and one'spassions recoil, and a thousand of the devil's servants within usprick their ears up and stiffen their backs in remonstrance andopposition. ‘Submit’ is Christ's first word; submit byfaith, submit in love.

That heart obedience, which is the requirement of Christianity,means freedom. The Apostle draws a wonderful contrast in the contextbetween the slavery to lust and sin, and the freedom which comes fromobedience to God and to righteousness. Obey the Truth, and the Truth,in your obeying, shall make you free, for freedom is the willingsubmission to the limitations which are best. ‘I will walk atliberty for I keep Thy precepts.’ Take Christ for your Master,and, being His servants, you are your own masters, and the world's toboot. For ‘all things are yours if ye are Christ's.’Refuse to bow your necks to that yoke which is easy, and to take uponyour shoulders that burden which is light, and you do not buyliberty, though you buy licentiousness, for you become the slaves anddowntrodden vassals of the world and the flesh and the devil, andwhile you promise yourselves liberty, you become the bondsmen ofcorruption. Oh! then, let us obey from the heart that mould ofteaching to which we are delivered, and so obeying, we shall be freeindeed.

‘THY FREE SPIRIT’

‘The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hathmade me free from the law of sin and death.’—ROMANS viii.2.

We have to distinguish two meanings of law. In the stricter sense,it signifies the authoritative expressions of the will of a rulerproposed for the obedience of man; in the wider, almost figurativesense, it means nothing more than the generalised expression ofconstant similar facts. For instance, objects attract one another incertain circ*mstances with a force which in the same circ*mstances isalways the same. When that fact is stated generally, we get the lawof gravitation. Thus the word comes to mean little more than aregular process. In our text the word is used in a sense much nearerthe latter than the former of these two. ‘The law of sin and ofdeath’ cannot mean a series of commandments; it certainly doesnot mean the Mosaic law. It must either be entirely figurative,taking sin and death as two great tyrants who domineer over men; orit must mean the continuous action of these powers, the process bywhich they work. These two come substantially to the same idea. Thelaw of sin and of death describes a certain constancy of operation,uniform and fixed, under the dominion of which men are struggling.But there is another constancy of operation, uniform and fixed too, amighty antagonistic power, which frees from the dominion of theformer: it is ‘the law of the Spirit of life in ChristJesus.’

I. The bondage.

The Apostle is speaking about himself as he was, and we have ourown consciousness to verify his transcript of his own personalexperience. Paul had found that, by an inexorable iron sequence, sinworked in himself the true death of the soul, in separation from God,in the extinction of good and noble capacities, in the atrophying ofall that was best in himself, in the death of joy and peace. And thisiron sequence he, with an eloquent paradox, calls a‘law,’ though its very characteristic is that it islawless transgression of the true law of humanity. He so describesit, partly, because he would place emphasis on its dominion over us.Sin rules with iron sway; men madly obey it, and even when they thinkthemselves free, are under a bitter tyranny. Further, he desires toemphasise the fact that sin and death are parts of one process whichoperates constantly and uniformly. This dark anarchy and wild chaosof disobedience and transgression has its laws. All happens thereaccording to rule. Rigid and inevitable as the courses of the stars,or the fall of the leaf from the tree, is sin hurrying on to itsnatural goal in death. In this fatal dance, sin leads in death; theone fair spoken and full of dazzling promises, the other in the endthrows off the mask, and slays. It is true of all who listen to thetempting voice, and the deluded victim ‘knows not that the deadare there, and that her guests are in the depth of hell.’

II. The method of deliverance.

The previous chapter sounded the depths of human impotence, andshowed the tragic impossibility of human efforts to strip off thepoisoned garment. Here the Apostle tells the wonderful story of howhe himself was delivered, in the full rejoicing confidence that whatavailed for his emancipation would equally avail for every captivedsoul. Because he himself has experienced a divine power which breaksthe dreadful sequence of sin and of death, he knows that every soulmay share in the experience. No mere outward means will be sufficientto emancipate a spirit; no merely intellectual methods will avail toset free the passions and desires which have been captured by sin. Itis vain to seek deliverance from a perverted will by anyrepublication, however emphatic, of a law of duty. Nothing can touchthe necessities of the case but a gift of power which becomes anabiding influence in us, and develops a mightier energy to overcomethe evil tendencies of a sinful soul.

That communicated power must impart life. Nothing short of aSpirit of life, quick and powerful, with an immortal and intenseenergy, will avail to meet the need. Such a Spirit must give the lifewhich it possesses, must quicken and bring into action dormant powersin the spirit that it would free. It must implant new energies anddirections, new motives, desires, tastes, and tendencies. It mustbring into play mightier attractions to neutralise and deadenexisting ones; as when to some chemical compound a substance is addedwhich has a stronger affinity for one of the elements, a new thing ismade.

Paul's experience, which he had a right to cast into general termsand potentially to extend to all mankind, had taught him that such anew life for such a spirit had come to him by union with JesusChrist. Such a union, deep and mystical as it is, is, thank God, anexperience universal in all true Christians, and constitutes the veryheart of the Gospel which Paul rejoiced to believe was entrusted tohis hands for the world. His great message of ‘Christ inus’ has been wofully curtailed and mangled when his othermessage of ‘Christ for us’ has been taken, as it toooften has been, to be the whole of his Gospel. They who take eitherof these inseparable elements to be the whole, rend into twoimperfect halves the perfect oneness of the Gospel of Christ.

We are often told that Paul was the true author of Christiandoctrine, and are bidden to go back from him to Jesus. If we do so,we hear His grave sweet voice uttering in the upper-room the deepwords, ‘I am the Vine, ye are the branches’; and, surely,Paul is but repeating, without metaphor, what Christ, once for all,set forth in that lovely emblem, when he says that ‘the law ofthe Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sinand of death.’ The branches in their multitude make the Vine inits unity, and the sap which rises from the deep root through thebrown stem, passes to every tremulous leaf, and brings bloom andsavour into every cluster. Jesus drew His emblem from the noblestform of vegetative life; Paul, in other places, draws his from thehighest form of bodily life, when he points to the many members inone body, and the Head which governs all, and says, ‘So also isChrist.’ In another place he points to the noblest form ofearthly love and unity. The blessed fellowship and sacred oneness ofhusband and wife are an emblem sweet, though inadequate, of thefellowship in love and unity of spirit between Christ and HisChurch.

And all this mysterious oneness of life has an intensely practicalside. In Jesus, and by union with Him, we receive a power thatdelivers from sin and arrests the stealthy progress of sin'sfollower, death. Love to Him, the result of fellowship with Him, andthe consequence of life received from Him, becomes the motive whichmakes the redeemed heart delight to do His will, and takes all thepower out of every temptation. We are in Him, and He in us, oncondition, and by means, of our humble faith; and because my faiththus knits me to Him it is ‘the victory that overcomes theworld’ and breaks the chains of many sins. So this communionwith Jesus Christ is the way by which we shall increase thattriumphant spiritual life, which is the only victorious antagonist ofthe else inevitable consequence which declares that the ‘soulthat sinneth it shall die,’ and die even in sinning.

III. The process of the deliverance.

Following the R. V. we read ‘made me free,’ not‘hath made me.’ The reference is obviously, as the Greekmore clearly shows, to a single historical event, which some wouldtake to be the Apostle's baptism, but which is more properly supposedto be his conversion. His strong bold language here does not meanthat he claims to be sinless. The emancipation is effected, althoughit is but begun. He holds that at that moment when Jesus appeared tohim on the road to Damascus, and he yielded to Him as Lord, hisdeliverance was real, though not complete. He was conscious of a realchange of position in reference to that law of sin and of death. Pauldistinguishes between the true self and the accumulation of selfishand sensual habits which make up so much of ourselves. The deeper andpurer self may be vitalised in will and heart, and set free evenwhile the emancipation is not worked out in the life. The parable ofthe leaven applies in the individual renewal; and there is nofanaticism, and no harm, in Paul's point of view, if only it beremembered that sins by which passion and externals overbear mybetter self are mine in responsibility and in consequences. Thusguarded, we may be wholly right in thinking of all the evils whichstill cleave to the renewed Christian soul as not being part of it,but destined to drop away.

And this bold declaration is to be vindicated as a propheticconfidence in the supremacy and ultimate dominion of the new powerwhich works even through much antagonism in an imperfect Christian.Paul, too, calls ‘things that are not as though theywere.’ If my spirit of life is the ‘Spirit of life inChrist,’ it will go on to perfection. It is Spirit, thereforeit is informing and conquering the material; it is a divine Spirit,therefore it is omnipotent; it is the Spirit of life, leading in andimparting life like itself, which is kindred with it and is itssource; it is the Spirit of life in Christ, therefore leading to lifelike His, bringing us to conformity with Him because the same causesproduce the same effects; it is a life in Christ having a law andregular orderly course of development. So, just as if we have thegerm we may hope for fruit, and can see the infantile oak in thetightly-shut acorn, or in the egg the creature which shall afterwardsgrow there, we have in this gift of the Spirit, the victory. If wehave the cause, we have the effects implicitly folded in it; and wehave but to wait further development.

The Christian life is to be one long effort, partial, and gradual,to unfold the freedom possessed. Paul knew full well that hisemancipation was not perfect. It was, probably, after this triumphantexpression of confidence that he wrote, ‘Not as though I hadalready attained, either were already perfect.’ The first stageis the gift of power, the appropriation and development of that poweris the work of a life; and it ought to pass through a well-markedseries and cycle of growing changes. The way to develop it is byconstant application to the source of all freedom, the life-givingSpirit, and by constant effort to conquer sins and temptations. Thereis no such thing in the Christian conflict as a painless development.We must mortify the deeds of the body if we are to live in theSpirit. The Christian progress has in it the nature of a crucifixion.It is to be effort, steadily directed for the sake of Christ, and inthe joy of His Spirit, to destroy sin, and to win practical holiness.Homely moralities are the outcome and the test of all pretensions tospiritual communion.

We are, further, to perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord, by‘waiting for the Redemption,’ which is not merely passivewaiting, but active expectation, as of one who stretches out awelcoming hand to an approaching friend. Nor must we forget that thisaccomplished deliverance is but partial whilst upon earth. ‘Thebody is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because ofrighteousness.’ But there may be indefinite approximation tocomplete deliverance. The metaphors in Scripture under whichChristian progress is described, whether drawn from a conflict or arace, or from a building, or from the growth of a tree, all suggestthe idea of constant advance against hindrances, which yet, constantthough it is, does not reach the goal here. And this is our noblestearthly condition—not to be pure, but to be tending towards itand conscious of impurity. Hence our tempers should be those ofhumility, strenuous effort, firm hope. We are as slaves who haveescaped, but are still in the wilderness, with the enemies’dogs baying at our feet; but we shall come to the land of freedom, onwhose sacred soil sin and death can never tread.

CHRIST CONDEMNING SIN

‘For what the law could not do, in that it was weakthrough the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinfulflesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.’—ROMANSviii. 3.

In the first verse of this chapter we read that ‘There is nocondemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.’ The reason ofthat is, that they are set free from the terrible sequence of causeand effect which constitutes ‘the law of sin and death’;and the reason why they are freed from that awful sequence by thepower of Christ is, because He has ‘condemned sin in theflesh.’ The occurrence of the two words‘condemnation’ (ver. 1) and ‘condemned’ (ver.3) should be noted. Sin is personified as dwelling in the flesh,which expression here means, not merely the body, but unregeneratehuman nature. He has made his fortress there, and rules over it all.The strong man keeps his house and his goods are in peace. He laughsto scorn the attempts of laws and moralities of all sorts to cast himout. His dominion is death to the human nature over which hetyrannises. Condemnation is inevitable to the men over whom he rules.They or he must perish. If he escape they die. If he could be slainthey might live. Christ comes, condemns the tyrant, and casts himout. So, he being condemned, we are acquitted; and he being slainthere is no death for us. Let us try to elucidate a little furtherthis great metaphor by just pondering the two points prominent init—Sin tyrannising over human nature and resisting all attemptsto overcome it, and Christ's condemnation and casting out of thetyrant.

I. Sin tyrannising over human nature, and resisting all attemptsto overcome it.

Paul is generalising his own experience when he speaks of thecondemnation of an intrusive alien force that holds unregeneratehuman nature in bondage. He is writing a page of his ownautobiography, and he is sure that all the rest of us have like pagesin ours. Heart answereth unto heart as in a mirror. If each man is aunity, the poison must run through all his veins and affect his wholenature. Will, understanding, heart, must all be affected and each inits own way by the intruder; and if men are a collective whole, eachman's experience is repeated in his brother's.

The Apostle is equally transcribing his own experience when in thetext he sadly admits the futility of all efforts to shake thedominion of sin. He has found in his own case that even the loftiestrevelation in the Mosaic law utterly fails in the attempt to condemnsin. This is true not only in regard to the Mosaic law but in regardto the law of conscience, and to moral teachings of any kind. It isobvious that all such laws do condemn sin in the sense that theysolemnly declare God's judgment about it, and His sentence on it; butin the sense of real condemnation, or casting out, and depriving sinof its power, they all are impotent. The law may deter from overtacts or lead to isolated acts of obedience; it may stir up antagonismto sin's tyranny, but after that it has no more that it can do. Itcannot give the purity which it proclaims to be necessary, nor createthe obedience which it enjoins. Its thunders roll terrors, and nofruitful rain follows them to soften the barren soil. There alwaysremains an unbridged gulf between the man and the law.

And this is what Paul points to in saying that it ‘was weakthrough the flesh.’ It is good in itself, but it has to workthrough the sinful nature. The only powers to which it can appeal arethose which are already in rebellion. A discrowned king whose onlyforces to conquer his rebellious subjects are the rebels themselves,is not likely to regain his crown. Because law brings no new elementinto our humanity, its appeal to our humanity has little more effectthan that of the wind whistling through an archway. It appeals toconscience and reason by a plain declaration of what is right; towill and understanding by an exhibition of authority; to fears andprudence by plainly setting forth consequences. But what is to bedone with men who know what is right but have no wish to do it, whobelieve that they ought but will not, who know the consequences but‘choose rather the pleasures of sin for a season,’ andshuffle the future out of their minds altogether? This is theessential weakness of all law. The tyrant is not afraid so long asthere is no one threatening his reign, but the unarmed herald of adiscrowned king. His citadel will not surrender to the blast of thetrumpet blown from Sinai.

II. Christ's condemnation and casting out of the tyrant.

The Apostle points to a triple condemnation.

‘In the likeness of sinful flesh,’ Jesus condemns sinby His own perfect life. That phrase, ‘the likeness of theflesh of sin,’ implies the real humanity of Jesus, and Hisperfect sinlessness; and suggests the first way in which He condemnssin in the flesh. In His life He repeats the law in a higher fashion.What the one spoke in words the other realised in ‘lovelinessof perfect deeds’; and all men own that example is themightiest preacher of righteousness, and that active goodness drawsto itself reverence and sways men to imitate. But that life lived inhuman nature gives a new hope of the possibilities of that natureeven in us. The dream of perfect beauty ‘in the flesh’has been realised. What the Man Christ Jesus was, He was that we maybecome. In the very flesh in which the tyrant rules, Jesus shows thepossibility and the loveliness of a holy life.

But this, much as it is, is not all. There is another way in whichChrist condemns sin in the flesh, and that is by His perfectsacrifice. To this also Paul points in the phrase, ‘the fleshof sin.’ The example of which we have been speaking is much,but it is weak for the very same reason for which law isweak—that it operates only through our nature as it is; andthat is not enough. Sin's hold on man is twofold—one that ithas perverted his relation to God, and another that it has corruptedhis nature. Hence there is in him a sense of separation from God anda sense of guilt. Both of these not only lead to misery, butpositively tend to strengthen the dominion of sin. The leader of themutineers keeps them true to him by reminding them that the mutinylaws decree death without mercy. Guilt felt may drive to desperationand hopeless continuance in wrong. The cry, ‘I am so bad thatit is useless to try to be better,’ is often heard. Guiltstifled leads to hardening of heart, and sometimes to desire andriot. Guilt slurred over by some easy process of absolution may leadto further sin. Similarly separation from God is the root of allevil, and thoughts of Him as hard and an enemy, always lead to sin.So if the power of sin in the past must be cancelled, the sense ofguilt must be removed, and the wall of partition between man and Godthrown down. What can law answer to such a demand? It is silent; itcan only say, ‘What is written is written.’ It has noword to speak that promises ‘the blotting out of thehandwriting that is against us’; and through its silence onecan hear the mocking laugh of the tyrant that keeps his castle.

But Christ has come ‘for sin’; that is to say HisIncarnation and Death had relation to, and had it for their object toremove, human sin. He comes to blot out the evil, to bring God'spardon. The recognition of His sacrifice supplies the adequate motiveto copy His example, and they who see in His death God's sacrificefor man's sin, cannot but yield themselves to Him, and find inobedience a delight. Love kindled at His love makes likeness andtransmutes the outward law into an inward ‘spirit of life inChrist Jesus.’

Still another way by which God ‘condemns sin in theflesh’ is pointed to by the remaining phrase of our text,‘sending His own Son.’ In the beginning of this epistleJesus is spoken of as ‘being declared to be the Son of God withpower according to the Spirit of holiness’; and we must connectthat saying with our text, and so think of Christ's bestowal of Hisperfect gift to humanity of the Spirit which sanctifies as being partof His condemnation of sin in the flesh. Into the very region wherethe tyrant rules, the Son of God communicates a new nature whichconstitutes a real new power. The Spirit operates on all ourfaculties, and redeems them from the bondage of corruption. All thesprings in the land are poisoned; but a new one, limpid and pure, isopened. By the entrance of the Spirit of holiness into a humanspirit, the usurper is driven from the central fortress: and thoughhe may linger in the outworks and keep up a guerilla warfare, that isall that he can do. We never truly apprehend Christ's gift to manuntil we recognise that He not merely ‘died for oursins,’ but lives to impart the principle of holiness in thegift of His Spirit. The dominion of that imparted Spirit is gradualand progressive. The Canaanite may still be in the land, but agrowing power, working in and through us, is warring against all inus that still owns allegiance to that alien power, and there can beno end to the victorious struggle until the whole body, soul, andspirit, be wholly under the influence of the Spirit that dwelleth inus, and nothing shall hurt or destroy in what shall then be all God'sholy mountain.

Such is, in the most general terms, the statement of what Christdoes ‘for us’; and the question comes to be theall-important one for each, Do I let Him do it for me? Remember thealternative. There must either be condemnation for us, or for the sinthat dwelleth in us. There is no condemnation for them who are inChrist Jesus, because there is condemnation for the sin that dwellsin them. It must he slain, or it will slay us. It must be cast out,or it will cast us out from God. It must be separated from us, or itwill separate us from Him. We need not be condemned, but if it be notcondemned, then we shall be.

THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT

‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit,that we are the children of God.’—ROMANS viii.18.

The sin of the world is a false confidence, a careless, complacenttaking for granted that a man is a Christian when he is not. Thefault, and sorrow, and weakness of the Church is a false diffidence,an anxious fear whether a man be a Christian when he is. There arenone so far away from false confidence as those who tremble lest theybe cherishing it. There are none so inextricably caught in its toilsas those who are all unconscious of its existence and oftheir danger. The two things, the false confidence and thefalse diffidence, are perhaps more akin to one another than they lookat first sight. Their opposites, at all events—the trueconfidence, which is faith in Christ; and the true diffidence, whichis utter distrust of myself—are identical. But there maysometimes be, and there often is, the combination of a realconfidence and a false diffidence, the presence of faith, and thedoubt whether it be present. Many Christians go through life withthis as the prevailing temper of their minds—a doubt sometimesarising almost to agony, and sometimes dying down into passivepatient acceptance of the condition as inevitable—a doubtwhether, after all, they be not, as they say, ‘deceivingthemselves’; and in the perverse ingenuity with which thatstate of mind is constantly marked, they manage to distil forthemselves a bitter vinegar of self-accusation out of grand words inthe Bible, that were meant to afford them but the wine of gladnessand of consolation.

Now this great text which I have ventured to take—not withthe idea that I can exalt it or say anything worthy of it, but simplyin the hope of clearing away some misapprehensions—is one thathas often and often tortured the mind of Christians. They say ofthemselves, ‘I know nothing of any such evidence: I am notconscious of any Spirit bearing witness with my spirit.’Instead of looking to other sources to answer the question whetherthey are Christians or not—and then, having answered it,thinking thus, ‘That text asserts that all Christianshave this witness, therefore certainly I have it in some shape orother,’ they say to themselves, ‘I do not feel anythingthat corresponds with my idea of what such a grand, supernaturalvoice as the witness of God's Spirit in my spirit must needs be; andtherefore I doubt whether I am a Christian at all.’ I should bethankful if the attempt I make now to set before you what seems to meto be the true teaching of the passage, should be, with God's help,the means of lifting some little part of the burden from some heartsthat are right, and that only long to know that they are, in order tobe at rest.

‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that weare the children of God.’ The general course of thought which Iwish to leave with you may be summed up thus: Our cry‘Father’ is the witness that we are sons. That cry is notsimply ours, but it is the voice of God's Spirit. The divine Witnessin our spirits is subject to the ordinary influences which affect ourspirits.

Let us take these three thoughts, and dwell on them for a littlewhile.

I. Our cry ‘Father’ is the witness that we aresons.

Mark the terms of the passage: ‘The Spirit itself bearethwitness with our spirit—.’ It is not so much arevelation made to my spirit, considered as the recipient of thetestimony, as a revelation made in or with my spirit considered asco-operating in the testimony. It is not that my spirit says onething, bears witness that I am a child of God; and that the Spirit ofGod comes in by a distinguishable process, with a separate evidence,to say Amen to my persuasion; but it is that there is one testimonywhich has a conjoint origin—the origin from the Spirit of Godas true source, and the origin from my own soul as recipient andco-operant in that testimony. From the teaching of this passage, orfrom any of the language which Scripture uses with regard to theinner witness, it is not to be inferred that there will rise up in aChristian's heart, from some origin consciously beyond the sphere ofhis own nature, a voice with which he has nothing to do; which atonce, by its own character, by something peculiar and distinguishableabout it, by something strange in its nature, or out of the ordinarycourse of human thinking, shall certify itself to be not his voice atall, but God's voice. That is not the direction in which youare to look for the witness of God's Spirit. It is evidence borne,indeed, by the Spirit of God; but it is evidence borne not only toour spirit, but through it, with it. The testimony is one, thetestimony of a man's own emotion, and own conviction, and own desire,the cry, Abba, Father! So far, then, as the form of the evidencegoes, you are not to look for it in anything ecstatic, arbitrary,parted off from your own experience by a broad line of demarcation;but you are to look into the experience which at first sight youwould claim most exclusively for your own, and to try and find outwhether there there be not working with your soul, workingthrough it, working beneath it, distinct from it but notdistinguishable from it by anything but its consequences and itsfruitfulness—a deeper voice than yours—a ‘stillsmall voice,’—no whirlwind, nor fire, norearthquake—but the voice of God speaking in secret, taking thevoice and tones of your own heart and your own consciousness, andsaying to you, ‘Thou art my child, inasmuch as, operated by Mygrace, and Mine inspiration alone, there rises, tremblingly buttruly, in thine own soul the cry, Abba, Father.’

So much, then, for the form of this evidence—my ownconviction. Then with regard to the substance of it: conviction ofwhat? The text itself does not tell us what is the evidence which theSpirit bears, and by reason of which we have a right to conclude thatwe are the children of God. The previous verse tells us. I havepartially anticipated what I have to say on that point, but it willbear a little further expansion. ‘Ye have not received thespirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit ofadoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father.’ ‘The Spiritit*elf,’ by this means of our cry, Abba, Father, ‘bearethwitness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.’ Thesubstance, then, of the conviction which is lodged in the humanspirit by the testimony of the Spirit of God is not primarilydirected to our relation or feelings to God, but to a far granderthing than that—to God's feelings and relation to us. Now Iwant you to think for one moment, before I pass on, how entirelydifferent the whole aspect of this witness of the Spirit of whichChristian men speak so much, and sometimes with so littleunderstanding, becomes according as you regard it mistakenly as beingthe direct testimony to you that you are a child of God, or rightlyas being the direct testimony to you that God is your Father. The twothings seem to be the same, but they are not. In the one case, thefalse case, the mistaken interpretation, we are left to this, that aman has no deeper certainty of his condition, no better foundationfor his hope, than what is to be drawn from the presence or absenceof certain emotions within his own heart. In the other case, we areadmitted into this ‘wide place,’ that all which is ourown is second and not first, and that the true basis of all ourconfidence lies not in the thought of what we are and feel to God,but in the thought of what God is and feels to us. And instead,therefore, of being left to labour for ourselves, painfully to searchamongst the dust and rubbish of our own hearts, we are taught tosweep away all that crumbled, rotten surface, and to go down to theliving rock that lies beneath it; we are taught to say, in the wordsof the book of Isaiah, ‘Doubtless Thou art our Father—weare all an unclean thing; our iniquities, like the wind, have carriedus away’; there is nothing stable in us; our own resolutions,they are swept away like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, bythe first gust of temptation; but what of that?—‘in thoseis continuance, and we shall be saved!’ Ah, brethren! expandthis thought of the conviction that God is my Father, as being thebasis of all my confidence that I am His child, into its widest andgrandest form, and it leads us up to the blessed old conviction, I amnothing, my holiness is nothing, my resolutions are nothing, my faithis nothing, my energies are nothing; I stand stripped, and barren,and naked of everything, and I fling myself out of myself into themerciful arms of my Father in heaven! There is all the difference inthe world between searching for evidence of my sonship, and seekingto get the conviction of God's Fatherhood. The one is an endless,profitless, self-tormenting task; the other is the light and liberty,the glorious liberty, of the children of God.

And so the substance of the Spirit's evidence is the directconviction based on the revelation of God's infinite love andfatherhood in Christ the Son, that God is my Father; from whichdirect conviction I come to the conclusion, the inference, the secondthought, Then I may trust that I am His son. But why? Because ofanything in me? No: because of Him. The very emblem of fatherhood andsonship might teach us that that depends upon the Father'swill and the Father's heart. The Spirit's testimony has for form myown conviction: and for substance my humble cry, ‘Oh Thou, myFather in heaven!’ Brethren, is not that a far truer and noblerkind of thing to preach than saying, Look into your own heart forstrange, extraordinary, distinguishable signs which shall mark youout as God's child—and which are proved to be His Spirit's,because they are separated from the ordinary human consciousness? Isit not far more blessed for us, and more honouring to Him who worksthe sign, when we say, that it is to be found in no out-of-rule,miraculous evidence, but in the natural (which is in realitysupernatural) working of His Spirit in the heart which is itsrecipient, breeding there the conviction that God is my Father? Andoh, if I am speaking to any to whom that text, with all its light andglory, has seemed to lift them up into an atmosphere too rare and aheight too lofty for their heavy wings and unused feet, if I amspeaking to any Christian man to whom this word has been like thecherubim and flaming sword, bright and beautiful, but threatening andrepellent when it speaks of a Spirit that bears witness with ourspirit—I ask you simply to take the passage for yourself, andcarefully and patiently to examine it, and see if it be not true whatI have been saying, that your trembling conviction—sister andakin as it is to your deepest distrust and sharpest sense of sin andunworthiness—that your trembling conviction of a love mightierthan your own, everlasting and all-faithful, is indeed the selectestsign that God can give you that you are His child. Oh,brethren and sisters! be confident; for it is not false confidence:be confident if up from the depths of that dark well of your ownsinful heart there rises sometimes, through all the bitter waters,unpolluted and separate, a sweet conviction, forcing itself upward,that God hath love in His heart, and that God is my Father. Beconfident; ‘the Spirit itself beareth witness with yourspirit.’

II. And now, secondly, That cry is not simply ours, but it is thevoice of God's Spirit.

Our own convictions are ours because they are God's. Our own soulspossess these emotions of love and tender desire going out toGod—our own spirits possess them; but our own spirits did notoriginate them. They are ours by property; they are His by source.The spirit of a Christian man has no good thought in it, no truethought, no perception of the grace of God's Gospel, no holy desire,no pure resolution, which is not stamped with the sign of a higherorigin, and is not the witness of God's Spirit in his spirit. Thepassage before us tells us that the sense of Fatherhood which is inthe Christian's heart, and becomes his cry, comes from God's Spirit.This passage, and that in the Epistle to the Galatians which isalmost parallel, put this truth very forcibly, when taken inconnection. ‘Ye have received,’ says the text before us,‘the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba,Father.’ The variation in the Epistle to the Galatians is this:‘Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Soninto your hearts, crying (the Spirit crying), Abba,Father.’ So in the one text, the cry is regarded as the voiceof the believing heart; and in the other the same cry is regarded asthe voice of God's Spirit. And these two things are both true; theone would want its foundation if it were not for the other; the cryof the Spirit is nothing for me unless it be appropriated by me. I donot need to plunge here into metaphysical speculation of any sort,but simply to dwell upon the plain practical teaching of theBible—a teaching verified, I believe, by every Christian'sexperience, if he will search into it—that everything in himwhich makes the Christian life, is not his, but is God's by origin,and his only by gift and inspiration. And the whole doctrine of mytext is built on this one thought—without the Spirit of God inyour heart, you never can recognise God as your Father. That in uswhich runs, with love, and childlike faith, and reverence, to theplace ‘where His honour dwelleth,’ that in us which says‘Father,’ is kindred with God, and is not the simple,unhelped, unsanctified human nature. There is no ascent of humandesires above their source. And wherever in a heart there springs upheavenward a thought, a wish, a prayer, a trembling confidence, it isbecause that came down first from heaven, and rises to seek its levelagain. All that is divine in man comes from God. All that tendstowards God in man is God's voice in the human heart; and were it notfor the possession and operation, the sanctifying and quickening, ofa living divine Spirit granted to us, our souls would for ever cleaveto the dust and dwell upon earth, nor ever rise to God and live inthe light of His presence. Every Christian, then, may be sure ofthis, that howsoever feeble may be the thought and conviction in hisheart of God's Fatherhood, he did not work it, he received itonly, cherished it, thought of it, watched over it, was careful notto quench it; but in origin it was God's, and it is now and ever thevoice of the Divine Spirit in the child's heart.

But, my friends, if this principle be true, it does not apply onlyto this one single attitude of the believing soul when it cries,Abba, Father; it must be widened out to comprehend the whole of aChristian's life, outward and inward, which is not sinful anddarkened with actual transgression. To all the rest of his being, toeverything in heart and life which is right and pure, the same truthapplies. ‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with ourspirit’ in every perception of God's word which is granted, inevery revelation of His counsel which dawns upon our darkness, inevery aspiration after Him which lifts us above the smoke and dust ofthis dim spot, in every holy resolution, in every thrill and throb oflove and desire. Each of these is mine—inasmuch as in my heartit is experienced and transacted; it is mine, inasmuch as I am not amere dead piece of matter, the passive recipient of a magical andsupernatural grace; but it is God's; and therefore, and thereforeonly, has it come to be mine!

And if it be objected, that this opens a wide door to all mannerof delusion, and that there is no more dangerous thing than for a manto confound his own thoughts with the operations of God's Spirit, letme just give you (following the context before us) the one guaranteeand test which the Apostle lays down. He says, ‘There is awitness from God in your spirits.’ You may say, That witness,if it come in the form of these convictions in my own heart, I maymistake and falsely read. Well, then, here is an outward guarantee.‘As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons ofGod’; and so, on the regions both of heart and of life theconsecrating thought,—God's work, and God's Spirit'swork—is stamped. The heart with its love, the head with itsunderstanding, the conscience with its quick response to the law ofduty, the will with its resolutions,—these are all, assanctified by Him, the witness of His Spirit; and the life with itsstrenuous obedience, with its struggles against sin and temptation,with its patient persistence in the quiet path of ordinary duty, aswell as with the times when it rises into heroic stature ofresignation or allegiance, the martyrdom of death and the martyrdomof life, this too is all (in so far as it is pure and right) the workof that same Spirit. The test of the inward conviction is the outwardlife; and they that have the witness of the Spirit within them havethe light of their life lit by the Spirit of God, whereby they mayread the handwriting on the heart, and be sure that it is God's andnot their own.

III. And now, lastly, this divine Witness in our spirits issubject to the ordinary influences which affect our spirits.

The notion often prevails that if there be in the heart thisdivine witness of God's Spirit, it must needs be perfect, clearlyindicating its origin by an exemption from all that besets ordinaryhuman feelings, that it must be a strong, uniform, never flickering,never darkening, and perpetual light, a kind of vestal fire burningalways on the altar of the heart! The passage before us, and allothers that speak about the matter, give us the directly oppositenotion. The Divine Spirit, when it enters into the narrow room of thehuman spirit, condescends to submit itself, not wholly, but to suchan extent as practically for our present purpose is wholly tosubmit itself to the ordinary laws and conditions and contingencieswhich befall and regulate our own human nature. Christ came into theworld divine: He was ‘found in fashion as a man,’ in forma servant; the humanity that He wore limited (if you like),regulated, modified, the manifestation of the divinity that dwelt init. And not otherwise is the operation of God's Holy Spirit when itcomes to dwell in a human heart. There too, working through man,it ‘is found in fashion as a man’; and though theorigin of the conviction be of God, and though the voice in my heartbe not only my voice, but God's voice there, it will obey those samelaws which make human thoughts and emotions vary, and fluctuate,flicker and flame up again, burn bright and burn low, according to athousand circ*mstances. The witness of the Spirit, if it were yonderin heaven, would shine like a perpetual star; the witness of theSpirit, here in the heart on earth, burns like a flickering flame,never to be extinguished, but still not always bright, wanting to betrimmed, and needing to be guarded from rude blasts. Else, brother,what does an Apostle mean when he says to you and me, ‘Quenchnot the Spirit’? what does he mean when he says to us,‘Grieve not the Spirit’? What does the whole teachingwhich enjoins on us, ‘Let your loins be girded about, and yourlights burning,’ and ‘What I say to you, I say to all,Watch!’ mean, unless it means this, that God-given as (God bethanked!) that conviction of Fatherhood is, it is not given in such away as that, irrespective of our carefulness, irrespective of ourwatching, it shall burn on—the same and unchangeable? TheSpirit's witness comes from God, therefore it is veracious, divine,omnipotent; but the Spirit's witness from God is in man, therefore itmay be wrongly read, it may be checked, it may for a time be keptdown, and prevented from showing itself to be what it is.

And the practical conclusion that comes from all this, is just thesimple advice to you all: Do not wonder, in the first place, if thatevidence of which we speak, vary and change in its clearness andforce in your own hearts. ‘The flesh lusteth against thespirit, and the spirit against the flesh.’ Do not think that itcannot be genuine, because it is changeful. There is a sun in theheavens, but there are heavenly lights too that wax and wane; theyare lights, they are in the heavens though they change.You have no reason, Christian man, to be discouraged, cast down,still less despondent, because you find that the witness of theSpirit changes and varies in your heart. Do not despond because itdoes; watch it, and guard it, lest it do; live in the contemplationof the Person and the fact that calls it forth, that it may not. Youwill never ‘brighten your evidences’ by polishing atthem. To polish the mirror ever so assiduously does not secure theimage of the sun on its surface. The only way to do that is to carrythe poor bit of glass out into the sunshine. It will shine then,never fear. It is weary work to labour at self-improvement with thehope of drawing from our own characters evidences that we are thesons of God. To have the heart filled with the light of Christ's loveto us is the only way to have the whole being full of light. If youwould have clear and irrefragable, for a perpetual joy, a glory and adefence, the unwavering confidence, ‘I am Thy child,’ goto God's throne, and lie down at the foot of it, and let the firstthought be, ‘My Father in heaven,’ and that willbrighten, that will stablish, that will make omnipotent in your lifethe witness of the Spirit that you are the child of God.

SONS AND HEIRS

‘If children, then heirs; heirs of God, andjoint-heirs with Christ.’—ROMANS viii. 17.

God Himself is His greatest gift. The loftiest blessing which wecan receive is that we should be heirs, possessors of God. There is asublime and wonderful mutual possession of which Scripture speaksmuch wherein the Lord is the inheritance of Israel, and Israel is theinheritance of the Lord. ‘The Lord hath taken you to be to Hima people of inheritance,’ says Moses; ‘Ye are a peoplefor a possession,’ says Peter. And, on the other hand,‘The Lord is the portion of my inheritance,’ says David;‘Ye are heirs of God,’ echoes Paul. On earth and inheaven the heritage of the children of the Lord is God Himself,inasmuch as He is with them for their delight, in them to make them‘partakers of the divine nature,’ and for them in all Hisattributes and actions.

This being clearly understood at the outset, we shall be preparedto follow the Apostle's course of thought while he points out theconditions upon which the possession of that inheritance depends. Itis children of God who are heirs of God. It is by union with ChristJesus, the Son, to whom the inheritance belongs, that they whobelieve on His name receive power to become the sons of God, and withthat power the possession of the inheritance. Thus, then, in thiscondensed utterance of the text there appear a series of thoughtswhich may perhaps be more fully unfolded in some such manner as thefollowing, that there is no inheritance without sonship, that thereis no sonship without a spiritual birth, that there is no spiritualbirth without Christ, and that there is no Christ for us withoutfaith.

I. First, then, the text tells us, no inheritance withoutsonship.

In general terms, spiritual blessings can only be given to thosewho are in a certain spiritual condition. Always and necessarily thecapacity or organ of reception precedes and determines the bestowmentof blessings. The light falls everywhere, but only the eye drinks itin. The lower orders of creatures are shut out from all participationin the gifts which belong to the higher forms of life, simply becausethey are so made and organised as that these cannot find entranceinto their nature. They are, as it were, walled up all round; and theonly door they have to communicate with the outer world is the doorof sense. Man has higher gifts simply because he has highercapacities. All creatures are plunged in the same boundless ocean ofdivine beneficence and bestowment, and into each there flows justthat, and no more, which each, by the make and constitution that Godhas given it, is capable of receiving. In the man there are morewindows and doors opened out than in the animal He is capable ofreceiving intellectual impulses, spiritual emotions; he can think,and feel, and desire, and will, and resolve: and so he stands on ahigher level than the beast below him.

Not otherwise is it in regard to God's kingdom, ‘which isrighteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’ The giftand blessing of salvation is primarily a spiritual gift, and onlyinvolves outward consequences secondarily and subordinately. Itmainly consists in the heart being at peace with God, in the wholesoul being filled with divine affections, in the weight and bondageof transgression being taken away, and substituted by the impulse andthe life of the new love. Therefore, neither God can give, nor mancan receive, that gift upon any other terms, than just this, that theheart and nature be fitted and adapted for it. Spiritual blessingsrequire a spiritual capacity for the reception of them; or, as mytext says, you cannot have the inheritance unless you are sons. Ifsalvation consisted simply in a change of place; if it were merelythat by some expedient or arrangement, an outward penalty, which wasto fall or not to fall at the will of an arbitrary judge, wereprevented from coming down, why then, it would be open to Him whoheld the power of letting the sword fall, to decide on what terms Hemight choose to suspend its infliction. But inasmuch as God'sdeliverance is not a deliverance from a mere arbitrary and outwardpunishment: inasmuch as God's salvation, though it be deliverancefrom the penalty as well as from the guilt of sin, is by no meanschiefly a deliverance from outward consequences, but mainly a removalof the nature and disposition that makes these outward consequencescertain,—therefore a man cannot be saved, God's love cannotsave him, God's justice will not save him, God's power stands backfrom saving him, upon any other condition than this that his soulshall be adapted and prepared for the reception and enjoyment of theblessing of a spiritual salvation.

But the inheritance which my text speaks about is also that whicha Christian hopes to receive and enter upon in heaven. The sameprinciple precisely applies there. There is no inheritance of heavenwithout sonship; because all the blessings of that future life are ofa spiritual character. The joy and the rapture and the glory of thathigher and better life have, of course, connected with them certainchanges of bodily form, certain changes of local dwelling, certainchanges which could perhaps be granted equally to a man, of whateversort he was. But, friends, it is not the golden harps, not thepavement of ‘glass mingled with fire,’ not the cessationfrom work, not the still composure, and changeless indwelling, notthe society even, that makes the heaven of heaven. All these are butthe embodiments and rendering visible of the inward facts, a soul atpeace with God in the depths of its being, an eye which gazes uponthe Father, and a heart which wraps itself in His arms. Heaven is noheaven except in so far as it is the possession of God. That sayingof the Psalmist is not an exaggeration, nor even a forgetting of theother elements of future blessedness, but it is a simple statement ofthe literal fact of the case, ‘I have none in heaven butThee!’ God is the heritage of His people. To dwell in His love,and to be filled with His light, and to walk for ever in the glory ofHis sunlit face, to do His will, and to bear His character stampedupon our foreheads—that is the glory and the perfectnessto which we are aspiring. Do not then rest in the symbols that showus, darkly and far off, what that future glory is. Do not forget thatthe picture is a shadow. Get beneath all these figurativeexpressions, and feel that whilst it may be true that for us in ourpresent earthly state, there can be no higher, no purer, no morespiritual nor any truer representations of the blessedness which isto come, than those which couch it in the forms of earthlyexperience, and appeal to sense as the minister of delight—yetthat all these things are representations, and not adequatepresentations. The inheritance of the servants of the Lord is theLord Himself, and they dwell in Him, and there is theirjoy.

Well then, if that be even partially true—admitting all thatyou may say about circ*mstances which go to make some portion of theblessedness of that future life—if it be true that God is thetrue blessing given by His Gospel upon earth, that He Himself is thegreatest gift that can be bestowed, and that He is the true Heaven ofheaven—what a flood of light does it cast upon that statementof my text, ‘If children, then heirs’; no inheritancewithout sonship! For who can possess God but they who love Him? whocan love, but they who know His love? who can have Him working intheir hearts a blessed and sanctifying change, except the souls thatlie thankfully quiet beneath the forming touch of His invisible hand,and like flowers drink in the light of His face in their still joy?How can God dwell in any heart except a heart which has in it a loveof purity? Where can He make His temple except in the ‘uprightheart and pure’? How can there be fellowship betwixt Him andany one except the man who is a son because he hath received of thedivine nature, and in whom that divine nature is growing up into adivine likeness? ‘What fellowship hath Christ withBelial?’ is not only applicable as a guide for our practicallife, but points to the principle on which God's inheritance belongsto God's sons alone. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for theyshall see God’; and those only who love, and are children, tothem alone does the Father come and does the Father belong.

So much, then, for the first principle: No inheritance withoutsonship.

II. Secondly, the text leads us to the principle that there is nosonship without a spiritual birth.

The Apostle John in that most wonderful preface to his Gospel,where all deepest truths concerning the Eternal Being in itself andin the solemn march of His progressive revelations to the world areset forth in language simple like the words of a child andinexhaustible like the voice of a god, draws a broad distinctionbetween the relation to the manifestations of God which every humansoul by virtue of his humanity sustains, and that into which some, byvirtue of their faith, enter. Every man is lighted by the true lightbecause he is a man. They who believe in His name receive from Himthe prerogative to become the sons of God. Whatever else may betaught in John's words, surely they do teach us this, that thesonship of which he speaks does not belong to man as man, is not arelation into which we are born by natural birth, that webecome sons after we are men, that those who becomesons do not include all those who are lighted by the Light, butconsist of so many of that greater number as receive Him, and thatsuch become sons by a divine act, the communication of a spirituallife, whereby they are born of God.

The same Apostle, in his Epistles, where the widest love isconjoined with the most firmly drawn lines of moral demarcationbetween the great opposites—life, light, love—death,darkness, hate—contrasts in the most unmistakable antithesisthe sons of God who are known for such because they do righteousness,and the world which knew not Christ, nor knows those who, dimlybeholding, partially resemble Him. Nay, he goes further, and says instrange contradiction to the popular estimate of his character, butin true imitation of that Incarnate love which hated iniquity,‘In this the children of God are manifested and the children ofthe devil’—echoing thus the words of Him whose pityingtenderness had sometimes to clothe itself in sharpest words, even asHis hand of powerful love had once to grasp the scourge of smallcords. ‘If God were your Father, ye would love Me: ye are ofyour father, the devil.’

These are but specimens of a whole cycle of Scripture statementswhich in every form of necessary implication, and of directstatement, set forth the principle that he who is born again of theSpirit, and he only, is a son of God.

Nothing in all this contradicts the belief that all men are thechildren of God, inasmuch as they are shaped by His divine hand andHe has breathed into their nostrils the breath of life. They who holdthat sonship is obtained on the condition which these passages seemto assert, do also rejoice to believe and to preach that the Father'slove broods over every human heart as the dovelike Spirit over theprimeval chaos. They rejoice to proclaim that Christ has come thatall, that each, may receive the adoption of sons. They do not feelthat their message to, nor their hope for, the world is less blessed,less wide, because while they call on all to come and take the thingsthat are freely given to them of God, they believe that those onlywho do come and take possess the blessing. Every man may become a sonand heir of God by faith in Jesus Christ.

But notwithstanding all the mercies that belong to us all,notwithstanding the divine beneficence, which, like the air and thelight, pervades all nature, and underlies all our lives,notwithstanding the universal adaptation and intention of Christ'swork, notwithstanding the wooing of His tender voice and theunceasing beckoning of His love, it still remains true that there aremen in the world, created by God, loved and cared for by Him, forwhom Christ died, who might be, but are not, sons of God.

Fatherhood! what does that word itself teach us? It speaks of thecommunication of a life, and the reciprocity of love. It rests upon adivine act, and it involves a human emotion. It involves that thefather and the child shall have kindred life—the fatherbestowing and the child possessing a life which is derived; andbecause derived, kindred; and because kindred, unfolding itself inlikeness to the father that gave it. And it requires that between thefather's heart and the child's heart there shall pass, in blessedinterchange and quick correspondence, answering love, flashingbackwards and forwards, like the lightning that touches the earth andrises from it again. A simple appeal to your own consciousness willdecide if that be the condition of all men. Are you, my brother,conscious of anything within you higher than the common life thatbelongs to you because you are an immortal soul? Can you say,‘From God's hand I have received the granting and implantationof a new and better life?’ Is your claim verified by this, thatyou are kindred with God in holy affections, in like purposes, lovingwhat He loves, hating what He hates, doing what He wills, acceptingwhat He sends, longing for Himself, and blessed in His presence? Isyour sonship proved by the depth and sincerity, the simplicity andpower, of your throbbing heart of love to your Father in heaven? Orare all these emotions empty words to you, things that are spoken inpulpits, but to which you have nothing in your life corresponding? Ohthen, my friend, what am I to say to you? What but this? no sonshipexcept by that spiritual birth; and if not such sonship, then thespirit of bondage. If not such sonship, why then, by all thetendencies of your nature, and by all the affinities of your moralbeing, if you are not holding of heaven, you are holding of hell; ifyou are not drawing your life, your character, your emotions, youraffections, from the sacred well that lies up yonder, you are drawingthem from the black one that lies down there. There are heaven, hell,and the earth that lies between, ever influenced either from above orfrom below. You are sons because born again, or slaves and‘enemies by wicked works.’ It is a grim alternative, butit is a fact.

III. Thirdly, no spiritual birth without Christ.

We have seen that the sonship which gives power of possessing theinheritance and which comes by spiritual birth, rests upon the givingof life, spiritual life, from God; and unfolds itself in certain holycharacters, and affections, and desires, the throbbing of the wholesoul in full accord and harmony with the divine character and will.Well then, it looks very clear that a man cannot make that new lifefor himself, cannot do it because of the habit of sin, and cannot doit because of the guilt and punishment of sin. If for sonship theremust be a birth again, why, surely, the very symbol might convinceyou that such a process does not lie within our own power. There mustcome down a divine leaven into the mass of human nature, before thisnew being can be evolved in any one. There must be a gift of God. Adivine energy must be the source and fountain of all holy and of allGodlike life. Christ comes, comes to make you and me live again as wenever lived before; live possessors of God's love; live tenanted andruled by a divine Spirit; live with affections in our hearts whichwe never could kindle there; live with purposes in our soulswhich we never could put there.

And I want to urge this thought, that the centre point of theGospel is this regeneration; because if we understand, as we are toomuch disposed to do, that the Gospel simply comes to make men livebetter, to work out a moral reformation,—why, there is no needfor a Gospel at all. If the change were a simple change of habit andaction on the part of men, we could do without a Christ. If thechange simply involved a bracing ourselves up to behave better forthe future, we could manage somehow or other about as well as orbetter than we have managed in the past. But if redemption be thegiving of life from God; and if redemption be the change of positionin reference to God's love and God's law as well, neither of thesetwo changes can a man effect for himself. You cannot gather up thespilt water; you cannot any more gather up and re-issue the pastlife. The sin remains, the guilt remains. The inevitable law of Godwill go on its crashing way in spite of all penitence, in spite ofall reformation, in spite of all desires after newness of life. Thereis but one Being who can make a change in our position in regard toGod, and there is but one Being who can make the change by which manshall become a ‘new creature.’ The Creative Spirit thatshaped the earth must shape its new being in my soul; and the Fatheragainst whose law I have offended, whose love I have slighted, fromwhom I have turned away, must effect the alteration that I can nevereffect—the alteration in my position to His judgments andjustice, and to the whole sweep of His government. No new birthwithout Christ; no escape from the old standing-place, of being‘enemies to God by wicked works,’ by anything that we cando: no hope of the inheritance unless the Lord and the Man, the‘second Adam from heaven,’ have come! He has come,and He has ‘dwelt with us,’ and He has worn this life ofours, and He has walked in the midst of this world, and He knows allabout our human condition, and He has effected an actual change inthe possible aspect of the divine justice and government to us; andHe has carried in the golden urn of His humanity a new spirit and anew life which He has set down in the midst of the race; and the urnwas broken on the cross of Calvary, and the water flowed out, andwhithersoever that water comes there is life, and whithersoever itcomes not there is death!

IV. Last of all, no Christ without faith.

It is not enough, brethren, that we should go through all theseprevious steps, if we then go utterly astray at the end, byforgetting that there is only one way by which we become partakers ofany of the benefits and blessings that Christ has wrought out. It ismuch to say that for inheritance there must be sonship. It is much tosay that for sonship there must be a divine regeneration. It is muchto say that the power of this regeneration is all gathered togetherin Christ Jesus. But there are plenty of people that would agree toall that, who go off at that point, and content themselves withthis kind of thinking—that in some vague mysterious way,they know not how, in a sort of half-magical manner, the benefit ofChrist's death and work comes to all in Christian lands, whetherthere be an act of faith or not! Now I am not going to talk theologyat present, at this stage of my sermon; but what I want to leave uponall your hearts is this profound conviction,—Unless we arewedded to Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in His mercy andHis power, Christ is nothing to us. Do not let us, my friends, blinkthat deciding test of the whole matter. We may talk about Christ forever; we may set forth aspects of His work, great and glorious. Hemay be to us much that is very precious; but the one question, thequestion of questions, on which everything else depends, is, Am Itrusting to Him as my divine Redeemer? am I resting in Him as the Sonof God? Some of us here now have a sort of nominal connection withChrist, who have a kind of imaginative connection with Him;traditional, ceremonial, by habit of thought, by attendance on publicworship, and by I know not what other means. Ceremonies are nothing,notions are nothing, beliefs are nothing, formal participation inworship is nothing. Christ is everything to him that trusts Him.Christ is nothing but a judge and a condemnation to him who trustsHim not. And here is the turning-point, Am I resting upon that Lordfor my salvation? If so, you can begin upon that step, the low one onwhich you can put your foot, the humble act of faith, and with thefoot there, can climb up. If faith, then new birth; if new birth,then sonship; if sonship, then an heir of God, and a joint-heir withChrist.’ But if you have not got your foot upon the lowestround of the ladder, you will never come within sight of the blessedface of Him who stands at the top of it, and who looks down to you atthis moment, saying to you, ‘My child, wilt thou not cryunto Me “Abba, Father?”’

SUFFERING WITH CHRIST, ACONDITION OF GLORY WITH CHRIST

‘...Joint heirs with Christ: if so be that wesuffer with Him, that we may be also glorifiedtogether.’—ROMANS viii. 17.

In the former part of this verse the Apostle tells us that inorder to be heirs of God, we must become sons through and joint-heirswith Christ. He seems at first sight to add in these words of ourtext another condition to those already specified, namely, that ofsuffering with Christ.

Now, of course, whatever may be the operation of suffering infitting for the possession of the Christian inheritance, either hereor in another world, the sonship and the sorrows do not stand on thesame level in regard to that possession. The one is the indispensablecondition of all; the other is but the means for the operation of thecondition. The one—being sons, ‘joint-heirs withChrist,’—is the root of the whole matter; theother—the ‘suffering with Him,’—is but thevarious process by which from the root there come ‘the blade,and the ear, and the full corn in the ear.’ Given thesonship—if it is to be worked out into power and beauty, theremust be suffering with Christ. But unless there be sonship, there isno possibility of inheriting God; discipline and suffering will be ofno use at all.

The chief lesson which I wish to gather from this text now is thatall God's sons must suffer with Christ; and in addition to thisprinciple, we may complete our considerations by adding briefly, thatthe inheritance must be won by suffering, and that if we suffer withHim, we certainly shall receive the inheritance.

I. First, then, sonship with Christ necessarily involves sufferingwith Him.

I think that we entirely misapprehend the force of this passagebefore us, if we suppose it to refer principally or merely to theoutward calamities, what you call trials and afflictions, whichbefall people, and see in it only the teaching, that the sorrows ofdaily life may have in them a sign of our being children of God, andsome power to prepare us for the glory that is to come. There is agreat deal more in the thought than that, brethren. This is notmerely a text for people who are in affliction, but for all of us. Itdoes not merely contain a law for a certain part of life, but itcontains a law for the whole of life. It is not merely a promise thatin all our afflictions Christ will be afflicted, but it is a solemninjunction that we seek to know ‘the fellowship of Hissufferings, and be made conformable to the likeness of Hisdeath,’ if we expect to be ‘found in the likeness of HisResurrection,’ and to have any share in the community of Hisglory. In other words, the foundation of it is not that Christ sharesin our sufferings; but that we, as Christians, in a deep and realsense do necessarily share and participate in Christ's. We‘suffer with Him’; not He suffers with us.

Now, do not let us misunderstand each other, or the Apostle'steaching. Do not suppose that I am forgetting, or wishing you toaccount as of small importance, the awful sense in which Christ'ssuffering stands as a thing by itself and unapproachable, a solitarypillar rising up, above the waste of time, to which all meneverywhere are to turn with the one thought, ‘I can do nothinglike that; I need to do nothing like it; it has been done once, andonce for all; and what I have to do is, simply to lie down beforeHim, and let the power and the blessings of that death and thosesufferings flow into my heart.’ The Divine Redeemer makeseternal redemption. The sufferings of Christ—the sufferings ofHis life, and the sufferings of His death—both because of thenature which bore them, and of the aspect which they wore in regardto us, are in their source, in their intensity, in their character,and consequences, unapproachable, incapable of repetition, andneeding no repetition whilst the world shall stand. But then, do notlet us forget that the very books and writers in the New Testamentthat preach most broadly Christ's sole, all-sufficient, eternalredemption for the world by His sufferings and death, turn round andsay to us too, ‘“Be planted together in the likeness ofHis death”; you are “crucified to the world” by theCross of Christ; you are to “fill up that which is behind ofthe sufferings of Christ.”’ He Himself speaks of ourdrinking of the cup that He drank of, and being baptized with thebaptism that He was baptized with, if we desire to sit yonder on Histhrone, and share with Him in His glory.

Now what do the Apostles, and what does Christ Himself, in thatpassage that I have quoted, mean, by such solemn words as these? Somepeople shrink from them, and say that it is trenching upon thecentral doctrine of the Gospel, when we speak about drinking of thecup which Christ drank of. They ask, Can it be? Yes, it can be, ifyou will think thus:—If a Christian has the Spirit and life ofChrist in him, his career will be moulded, imperfectly but really, bythe same Spirit that dwelt in his Lord; and similar causes willproduce corresponding effects. The life of Christ which—divine,pure, incapable of copy and repetition—in one aspect has endedfor ever for men, remains to be lived, in another view of it, byevery Christian, who in like manner has to fight with the world; whoin like manner has to resist temptation; who in like manner has tostand, by God's help, pure and sinless, in so far as the new natureof him is concerned, in the midst of a world that is full of evil.For were the sufferings of the Lord only the sufferings that werewrought upon Calvary? Were the sufferings of the Lord only thesufferings which came from the contradiction of sinners againstHimself? Were the sufferings of the Lord only the sufferings whichwere connected with His bodily afflictions and pain, precious andpriceless as they were, and operative causes of our redemption asthey were? Oh no. Conceive of that perfect, sinless, really humanlife, in the midst of a system of things that is all full ofcorruption and of sin; coming ever and anon against misery, andwrong-doing, and rebellion; and ask yourselves whether part of Hissufferings did not spring from the contact of the sinless Son of manwith a sinful world, and the apparently vain attempt to influence andleaven that sinful world with care for itself and love for theFather. If there had been nothing more than that, yet Christ'ssufferings as the Son of God in the midst of sinful men would havebeen deep and real. ‘O faithless generation, how long shall Ibe with you? how long shall I suffer you?’ was wrung from Himby the painful sense of want of sympathy between His aims and theirs.‘Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then I would fly away andbe at rest,’ must often be the language of those who are likeHim in spirit, and in consequent sufferings.

And then again, another branch of the ‘sufferings ofChrist’ is to be found in that deep and mysterious fact onwhich I durst not venture to speak beyond what the actual words ofScripture put into my lips—the fact that Christ wrought out Hisperfect obedience as a man, through temptation and by suffering.There was no sin within Him, no tendency to sin, no yieldingto the evil that assailed. ‘The Prince of this world cometh,and hath nothing in Me.’ But yet, when that dark Power stood byHis side, and said, ‘If thou be the Son of God, cast Thyselfdown,’ it was a real temptation and not a sham one. There wasno wish to do it, no faltering for a moment, no hesitation. There wasno rising up in that calm will of even a moment's impulse to do thething that was presented;—but yet it was presented, and, whenChrist triumphed, and the tempter departed for a season, there hadbeen a temptation and there had been a conflict. And though obediencebe a joy, and the doing of His Father's will was His delight, as itmust needs be in pure and in purified hearts; yet obedience which issustained in the face of temptation, and which never fails, thoughits path lead to bodily pains and the ‘contradiction ofsinners,’ may well be called suffering. We cannot speak of ourLord's obedience as the surrender of His own will to the Father's,with the implication that these two wills ever did or could moveexcept in harmony. There was no place in Christ's obedience for thatcasting out of sinful self which makes our submission a surrenderjoined with suffering, but He knew temptation. Flesh, and sense, andthe world, and the prince of this world, presented it to Him; andtherefore His obedience too was suffering, even though to do the willof His Father was His meat and His drink, His sustenance and Hisrefreshment.

But then, let me remind you still further, that not only does thelife of Christ, as sinless in the midst of sinful men, and the lifeof Christ, as sinless whilst yet there was temptation presented toit—assume the aspect of being a life of suffering, and become,in that respect, the model for us; but that also the Death of Christ,besides its aspect as an atonement and sacrifice for sin, the powerby which transgression is put away and God's love flows out upon oursouls, has another power given to it in the teaching of the NewTestament. The Death of Christ is a type of the Christian's life,which is to be one long, protracted, and daily dying to sin, to self,to the world. The crucifixion of the old manhood is to be the life'swork of every Christian, through the power of faith in that Cross bywhich ‘the world is crucified unto Me, and I unto theworld.’ That thought comes over and over again in all forms ofearnest presentation in the Apostle's teaching. Do not slur it overas if it were a mere fanciful metaphor. It carries in its type a mostsolemn reality. The truth is, that, if a Christian, you have a doublelife. There is Christ, with His power, with His Spirit, giving you anature which is pure and sinless, incapable of transgression, likeHis own. The new man, that which is born of God, sinneth not, cannotsin. But side by side with it, working through it, working in it,leavening it, indistinguishable from it to your consciousness, byanything but this that the one works righteousness and the otherworks transgression, there is the ‘old man,’ ‘theflesh,’ ‘the old Adam,’ your own godless,independent, selfish, proud being. And the one is to slay the other!Ah, let me tell you, these words—crucifying, casting out theold man, plucking out the right eye, maiming self of the right hand,mortifying the deeds of the body—they are something very muchdeeper and more awful than poetical symbols and metaphors. They teachus this, that there is no growth without sore sorrow. Conflict, notprogress, is the word that defines man's path from darkness intolight. No holiness is won by any other means than this, thatwickedness should be slain day by day, and hour by hour. In longlingering agony often, with the blood of the heart pouring out atevery quivering vein, you are to cut right through the life and beingof that sinful self; to do what the Word does, pierce to the dividingasunder of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and get rid bycrucifying and slaying—a long process, a painfulprocess—of your own sinful self. And not until you can stand upand say, ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,’have you accomplished that to which you are consecrated and vowed byyour sonship—‘being conformed unto the likeness of Hisdeath,’ and ‘knowing the fellowship of Hissufferings.’

It is this process, the inward strife and conflict in getting ridof evil, which the Apostle designates here with the name of‘suffering with Christ, that we may be also glorifiedtogether.’ On this high level, and not upon the lower one ofthe consideration that Christ will help us to bear outwardinfirmities and afflictions, do we find the true meaning of all thatScripture teaching which says indeed, ‘Yes, our sufferings areHis’; but lays the foundation of it in this, ‘Hissufferings are ours.’ It begins by telling us thatChrist has done a work and borne a sorrow that no second can ever do.Then it tells us that Christ's life of obedience—which, becauseit was a life of obedience, was a life of suffering, andbrought Him into a condition of hostility to the men aroundHim—is to be repeated in us. It sets before us the Cross ofCalvary, and the sorrows and pains that were felt there;—and itsays to us, Christian men and women, if you want the power for holyliving, have fellowship in that atoning death; and if you want thepattern of holy living, look at that Cross and feel, ‘I amcrucified to the world by it; and the life that I live in the flesh Ilive by the faith of the Son of God.’

Such considerations as these, however, do not necessarily excludethe other one (which we may just mention and dwell on for a moment),namely, that where there is this spiritual participation in thesufferings of Christ, and where His death is reproduced andperpetuated, as it were, in our daily mortifying ourselves in thepresent evil world—there Christ is with us in our afflictions.God forbid that I should try to strike away any word of consolationthat has come, as these words of my text have come, to so manysorrowing hearts in all generations, like music in the night and likecold waters to a thirsty soul. We need not hold that there is noreference here to that comforting thought, ‘In all ouraffliction He is afflicted.’ Brethren, you and I have, each ofus—one in one way, and one in another, all in some way, all inthe right way, none in too severe a way, none in too slight away—to tread the path of sorrow; and is it not a blessed thing,as we go along through that dark valley of the shadow of death downinto which the sunniest paths go sometimes, to come, amidst thetwilight and the gathering clouds, upon tokens that Jesus has been onthe road before us? They tell us that in some trackless lands, whenone friend passes through the pathless forests, he breaks a twig everand anon as he goes, that those who come after may see the traces ofhis having been there, and may know that they are not out of theroad. Oh, when we are journeying through the murky night, and thedark woods of affliction and sorrow, it is something to find here andthere a spray broken, or a leafy stem bent down with the tread of Hisfoot and the brush of His hand as He passed, and to remember that thepath He trod He has hallowed, and thus to find lingering fragrancesand hidden strengths in the remembrance of Him as ‘in allpoints tempted like as we are,’ bearing grief for us,bearing grief with us, bearing grief like us.

Oh, do not, do not, my brethren, keep these sacred thoughts ofChrist's companionship in sorrow, for the larger trials of life. Ifthe mote in the eye be large enough to annoy you, it is large enoughto bring out His sympathy; and if the grief be too small for Him tocompassionate and share, it is too small for you to be troubled byit. If you are ashamed to apply that divine thought, ‘Christbears this grief with me,’ to those petty molehills that yousometimes magnify into mountains, think to yourselves that then it isa shame for you to be stumbling over them. But on the other hand,never fear to be irreverent or too familiar in the thought thatChrist is willing to bear, and help you to bear, the pettiest, theminutest, and most insignificant of the daily annoyances that maycome to ruffle you. Whether it be a poison from one serpent sting, orwhether it be poison from a million of buzzing tiny mosquitoes, ifthere be a smart, go to Him, and He will help you to endure it. Hewill do more, He will bear it with you, for if so be that we sufferwith Him, He suffers with us, and our oneness with Christ bringsabout a community of possessions whereby it becomes true of eachtrusting soul in its relations to Him, that ‘all mine (joys andsorrows alike) are thine, and all thine are mine.’

II. There remain some other considerations which may be brieflystated, in order to complete the lessons of this text. In the secondplace, this community of suffering is a necessary preparation for thecommunity of glory.

I name this principally for the sake of putting in a caution. TheApostle does not mean to tell us, of course, that if there were sucha case as that of a man becoming a son of God, and having no occasionor opportunity afterwards, by brevity of life or other causes, forpassing through the discipline of sorrow, his inheritance would beforfeited. We must always take such passages as this—which seemto make the discipline of the world an essential part of thepreparing of us for glory—in conjunction with the otherundeniable truth which completes them, that when a man has the loveof God in his heart, however feebly, however newly, there and then heis fit for the inheritance. I think that Christian people make vastmistakes sometimes in talking about ‘being made meet for theinheritance of the saints in light,’ about being ‘ripefor glory,’ and the like. One thing at any rate is verycertain, it is not the discipline that fits. That which fits goesbefore the discipline, and the discipline only develops the fitness.‘God hath made us meet for the inheritance of the saints inlight,’ says the Apostle. That is a past act. The preparednessfor heaven comes at the moment—if it be a momentaryact—when a man turns to Christ. You may take the lowest andmost abandoned form of human character, and in one moment (it ispossible, and it is often the case) the entrance into that soul ofthe feeble germ of that new affection shall at once change the wholemoral habitude of that man. Though it be true, then, that heaven isonly open to those who are capable—by holy aspirations anddivine desires—of entering into it, it is equally true thatsuch aspirations and desires may be the work of an instant, and maybe superinduced in a moment in a heart the most debased and the mostdegraded. ‘This day shalt thou be with Me inParadise,’—fit for the inheritance!

And, therefore, let us not misunderstand such words as this text,and fancy that the necessary discipline, which we have to go throughbefore we are ready for heaven, is necessary in anything like thesame sense in which it is necessary that a man should have faith inChrist in order to be saved. The one may be dispensed with, the othercannot. A Christian at any period of his Christian experience, if itplease God to take him, is fit for the kingdom. The life islife, whether it be the budding beauty and feebleness of childhood,or the strength of manhood, or the maturity and calm peace of oldage. But ‘add to your faith,’ that ‘an entrance maybe ministered unto you abundantly.’ Remember that thoughthe root of the matter, the seed of the kingdom, may be in you; andthat though, therefore, you have a right to feel that, at any periodof your Christian experience, if it please God to take you out ofthis world, you are fit for heaven—yet in His mercy He isleaving you here, training you, disciplining you, cleansing you,making you to be polished shafts in His quiver; and that all theglowing furnaces of fiery trial and all the cold waters of afflictionare but the preparation through which the rough iron is to be passedbefore it becomes tempered steel, a shaft in the Master's hand.

And so learn to look upon all trial as being at once the seal ofyour sonship, and the means by which God puts it within your power towin a higher place, a loftier throne, a nobler crown, a closerfellowship with Him ‘who hath suffered, being tempted,’and who will receive into His own blessedness and rest them that aretempted. ‘The child, though he be an heir, differeth nothingfrom a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors andgovernors.’ God puts us in the school of sorrow under thatstern tutor and governor here, and gives us the opportunity of‘suffering with Christ,’ that by the daily crucifixion ofour old nature, by the lessons and blessings of outward calamitiesand change, there may grow up in us a still nobler and purer, andperfecter divine life; and that we may so be made capable—morecapable, and capable of more—of that inheritance for which theonly necessary thing is the death of Christ, and the only fitness isfaith in His name.

III. Finally, that inheritance is the necessary result of thesuffering that has gone before.

The suffering results from our union with Christ. That union mustneeds culminate in glory. It is not only because the joy hereafterseems required in order to vindicate God's love to His children, whohere reap sorrow from their sonship, that the discipline of lifecannot but end in blessedness. That ground of mere compensation is alow one on which to rest the certainty of future bliss. But theinheritance is sure to all who here suffer with Christ, because theone cause—union with the Lord—produces both the presentresult of fellowship in His sorrows, and the future result of joy inHis joy, of possession of His possessions. The inheritance is surebecause Christ possesses it now. The inheritance is sure becauseearth's sorrows not merely require to be repaid by its peace, butbecause they have an evident design to fit us for it, and it would bedestructive to all faith in God's wisdom, and God's knowledge of Hisown purposes, not to believe that what He has wrought us for will begiven to us. Trials have no meaning, unless they are means to an end.The end is the inheritance, and sorrows here, as well as the Spirit'swork here, are the earnest of the inheritance. Measure the greatnessof the glory by what has preceded it. God takes all these years oflife, and all the sore trials and afflictions that belong inevitablyto an earthly career, and works them in, into the blessedness thatshall come. If a fair measure of the greatness of any resultof productive power be the length of time that was taken for gettingit ready, we can dimly conceive what that joy must be for whichseventy years of strife and pain and sorrow are but a momentarypreparation; and what must be the weight of that glory which is thecounterpoise and consequence to the afflictions of this lower world.The further the pendulum swings on the one side, the further it goesup on the other. The deeper God plunges the comet into the darknessout yonder, the closer does it come to the sun at its nearestdistance, and the longer does it stand basking and glowing in thefull blaze of the glory from the central orb. So in ourrevolution, the measure of the distance from the farthest point ofour darkest earthly sorrow, to the throne, may help us to themeasure of the closeness of the bright, perfect, perpetual gloryabove, when we are on the throne: for if so be that we aresons, we must suffer with Him; if so be that we suffer, wemust be glorified together!

THE REVELATION OF SONS

‘For the earnest expectation of the creaturewaiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.’—ROMANSviii. 19.

The Apostle has been describing believers as ‘sons’and ‘heirs.’ He drops from these transcendent heights tocontrast their present apparent condition with their true characterand their future glory. The sad realities of suffering darken hislofty hopes, even although these sad realities are to his faithtokens of joint-heirship with Jesus, and pledges that if ourinheritance is here manifested by suffering with him, that very factis a prophecy of common glory hereafter. He describes that future asthe revealing of a glory, to which the sufferings of this presenttime are not worthy to be compared; and then, in our text he variesthe application of that thought of revealing and thinks of thesubjects of it as being the ‘sons of God.’ They will berevealed when the glory which they have as joint-heirs with Christ isrevealed in them. They walk, as it were, compassed with mist andcloud, but the splendour which will fall on them will scatter theenvious darkness, and ‘when Christ who is our life shallappear, then shall His co-heirs also appear with Him inglory.’

We may consider—

I. The present veil over the sons of God.

There is always a difference between appearance and reality,between the ideal and its embodiments. For all men it is true thatthe full expression of oneself is impossible. Each man's deeds fallshort of disclosing the essential self in the man. Every will ishampered by the fleshly screen of the body. ‘I would that mytongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,’ is theyearning of every heart that is deeply moved. Contending principlessuccessively sway every personality and thwart each other'sexpression. For these, and many other reasons, the sum-total of everylife is but a shrouded representation of the man who lives it; andwe, all of us, after all efforts at self-revelation, remain mysteriesto our fellows and to ourselves. All this is eminently true of thesons of God. They have a life-germ hidden in their souls, which inits very nature is destined to fill and expand their whole being, andto permeate with its triumphant energy every corner of their nature.But it is weak and often overborne by its opposite. The seed sown isto grow in spite of bad weather and a poor soil and many weeds, andthough it is destined to overcome all these, it may to-day only beable to show on the surface a little patch of pale and strugglinggrowth. When we think of the cost at which the life of Christ wasimparted to men, and of the divine source from which it comes, and ofthe sedulous and protracted discipline through which it is beingtrained, we cannot but conclude that nothing short of its universaldominion over all the faculties of its imperfect possessors can bethe goal of its working. Hercules in his cradle is still Hercules,and strangles snakes. Frost and sun may struggle in midwinter, andthe cold may seem to predominate, but the sun is steadily enlargingits course in the sky, and increasing the fervour of its beams, andmidsummer day is as sure to dawn as the shortest day was.

The sons of God, even more truly than other men, have contendingprinciples fighting within them. It was the same Apostle who withoaths denied that he ‘knew the man,’ and in a passion ofclinging love and penitence fell at His feet; but for the mereonlooker it would be hard to say which was the true man and whichwould conquer. The sons of God, like other men, have to expressthemselves in words which are never closely enough fitted to theirthoughts and feelings. David's penitence has to be contented withgroans which are not deep enough; and John's calm raptures on hisSaviour's breast can only be spoken by shut eyes and silence. Thesons of God never fully correspond to their character, but alwaysfall somewhat beneath their desire, and must always be somewhat lessthan their intention. The artist never wholly embodies hisconception. It is only God who ‘rests from His works’because the works fully embody His creative design and fully receivethe benediction of His own satisfaction with them.

From all such thoughts there arises a piece of plain practicalwisdom, which warns Christian men not to despond or despair if theydo not find themselves living up to their ideal. The sons of God are‘veiled’ because the world's estimate of them is untrue.The old commonplace that the world knows nothing of its greatest menis verified in the opinions which it holds about the sons of God. Itis not for their Christianity that they get any of the world'shonours and encomiums, if such fall to their share. They areunknown and yet well-known. They live for the most partveiled in obscurity. ‘The light shineth in darkness, and thedarkness comprehendeth it not.’ They are God's hidden ones. Ifthey are wise, they will look for no recognition nor eulogy from theworld, and will be content to live, as unknown by the princes of thisworld as was the Lord of glory, whom they slew because their dim eyescould not see the flashing of the glory ‘through the veil, thatis to say, His flesh.’ But no consciousness of imperfection inour revelation of an indwelling Christ must ever be allowed todiminish our efforts to live out the life that is in us, and to shineas lights in the world; nor must the consciousness that we walk as‘veiled,’ lead us to add to the thick folds the criminalone of voluntary silence and cowardly hiding in dumb hearts thesecret of our lives.

II. The unveiling of the sons of God.

That unveiling is in the text represented as coming along with theglory which shall be revealed to usward, and as being contemporaneouswith the deliverance of the creation itself from the bondage ofcorruption, and its passing into the liberty of the glory of thechildren of God. It coincides with the vanishing of the pain in whichthe whole creation now groans and travails, and with theadoption—that is, the redemption of our body. Then hope will beseen and will pass into still fruition. All this points to the timewhen Jesus Christ is revealed, and His servants are revealed with Himin glory. That revelation brings with it of necessity themanifestation of the sons of God for what they are—the makingvisible in the life of what God sees them to be.

That revelation of the sons of God is the result of the entiredominion and transforming supremacy of the Spirit of God in them. Inthe whole sweep of their consciousness there will in that day benothing done from other motives; there will be no sidelights flashingin and disturbing the perfect illumination from the candle of theLord set on high in their being; there will be no contradictions inthe life. It will be one and simple, and therefore perfectlyintelligible. Such is the destined issue of the most imperfectChristian life. The Christian man who has in his experience to-daythe faintest and most interrupted operation of the spirit of life inChrist Jesus has therein a pledge of immortality, because nothingshort of an endless life of progressive and growing purity will beadequate to receive and exemplify the power which can never terminateuntil it is made like Him and perfectly seeing Him as He is.

But that unveiling further guarantees the possession of fullyadequate means of expression. The limitations and imperfections ofour present bodily life will all drop away in putting on ‘thebody of glory’ which shall be ours. The new tongue willperfectly utter the new knowledge and rapture of the new life; newhands will perfectly realise our ideals; and on every forehead willbe stamped Christ's new name.

That unveiling will be further realised by a divine act indicatingthe characters of the sons of God by their position. Earth'sjudgments will be reversed by that divine voice, and the greatpromise, which through weary ages has shone as a far-offstar,—‘I will set him on high because he hath known myname’—will then be known for the sun near at hand. Manynames loudly blown through the world's trumpet will fall silent then.Many stars will be quenched, but ‘they that be wise shall shineas the brightness of the firmament.’

That revelation will be more surprising to no one than to thosewho are its subjects, when they see themselves mirrored in thatglass, and so unlike what they are here. Their first impulse will beto wonder at the form they see, and to ask, almost with incredulity,‘Lord, is it I?’ Nor will the wonder be less when theyrecognise many whom they knew not. The surprises when the family ofGod is gathered together at last will be great. The Israel ofCaptivity lifts up her wondering eyes as she sees the multitudesflocking to her side as the doves to their windows, and, half-ashamedof her own narrow vision, exclaims, ‘I was left alone; these,where had they been?’ Let us rejoice that in the day when thesons of God are revealed, many hidden ones from many dark cornerswill sit at the Father's table. That revelation will be made to thewhole universe; we know not how, but we know that it shall be; and,as the text tells us, that revelation of the sons of God is the hopefor which ‘the earnest expectation of the creature waits’through the weary ages.

THE REDEMPTION OF THEBODY

‘The adoption, to wit, the redemption of ourbody.’—ROMANS viii. 23.

In a previous verse Paul has said that all true Christians havereceived ‘the Spirit of adoption.’ They become sons ofGod through Christ the Son. They receive a new spiritual and divinelife from God through Christ, and that life is like its source. In sofar as that new life vitalises and dominates their nature, believershave received ‘the Spirit of adoption,’ and by it theycry ‘Abba, Father.’ But the body still remains a sourceof weakness, the seat of sin. It is sluggish and inapt for highpurposes; it still remains subject to ‘the law of sin anddeath’; and so is not like the Father who breathed into it thebreath of life. It remains in bondage, and has not yet received theadoption. This text, in harmony with the Apostle's whole teaching,looks forward to a change in the body and in its relations to therenewed spirit, as the crown and climax of the work of redemption,and declares that till that change is effected, the condition ofChristian men is imperfect, and is a waiting, and often agroaning.

In dealing with some of the thoughts that arise from this text, wenote—

I. That a future bodily life is needed in order to givedefiniteness and solidity to the conception of immortality.

Before the Gospel came men's belief in a future life was vague andpowerless, mainly because it had no Gospel of the Resurrection, andso nothing tangible to lay hold on. The Gospel has made the belief ina future state infinitely easier and more powerful, mainly because ofthe emphasis with which it has proclaimed an actual resurrection anda future bodily life. Its great proof of immortality is drawn, notmerely from ethical considerations of the manifest futility ofearthly life which has no sequel beyond the grave, nor from theintuitions and longings of men's souls, but from the historical factof the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and of His Ascension in bodilyform into heaven. It proclaims these two facts as parts of Hisexperience, and asserts that when He rose from the dead and ascendedup on high, He did so as ‘the first-born among manybrethren,’ their forerunner and their pattern. It is this whichgives the Gospel its power, and thus transforms a vague and shadowyconception of immortality into a solid faith, for which we havealready an historical guarantee. Stupendous mysteries still veil thenature of the resurrection process, though these are exaggerated intoinconceivabilities by false notions of what constitutes personalidentity; but if the choice lies between accepting the Christiandoctrine of a resurrection and the conception of a finite spiritdisembodied and yet active, there can be no doubt as to which ofthese two is the more reasonable and thinkable. Body, soul, andspirit make the complete triune man.

The thought of the future life as a bodily life satisfies thelongings of the heart. Much natural shrinking from death comes fromunwillingness to part company with an old companion and friend. AsPaul puts it in 2nd Corinthians, ‘Not for that we would beunclothed, but clothed upon.’ All thoughts of the future whichdo not give prominence to the idea of a bodily life open up but aghastly and uninviting mode of existence, which cannot but repelthose who are accustomed to the fellowship of their bodies, and theyfeel that they cannot think of themselves as deprived of that whichwas their servant and instrument, through all the years of theirearthly consciousness.

II. ‘The body that shall be’ is an emancipatedbody.

The varied gifts of the Spirit bestowed upon the Christian Churchserved to quicken the hope of the yet greater gifts of thatindwelling Spirit which were yet to come. Chief amongst these ourtext considers the transformation of the earthly into a spiritualbody. This transformation our text regards as being the participationby the body in the redemption by which Christ has bought us with thegreat price of His blood. We have to interpret the language here inthe light of the further teaching of Paul in the great Resurrectionchapter of 1st Corinthians, which distinctly lays stress, not on theidentity of the corporeal frame which is laid in the grave with‘the body of glory,’ but upon the entire contrast betweenthe ‘natural body,’ which is fit organ for the lowernature, and is informed by it, and the ‘spiritual body,’which is fit organ for the spirit. We have to interpret ‘theresurrection of the body’ by the definite apostolicdeclaration, ‘Thou sowest not that body that shall be... butGod giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him’; and we have togive full weight to the contrasts which the Apostle draws between thecharacteristics of that which is ‘sown’ and of that whichis ‘raised.’ The one is ‘sown in corruption andraised in incorruption.’ Natural decay is contrasted withimmortal youth. The one is ‘sown in dishonour,’ the otheris ‘raised in glory.’ That contrast is ethical, andrefers either to the subordinate position of the body here inrelation to the spirit, or to the natural sense of shame, or to theideas of degradation which are attached to the indulgence of theappetites. The one is ‘sown in weakness,’ the other is‘raised in power’; the one is ‘sown a naturalbody,’ the other is ‘raised a spiritual body.’ Isnot Paul in this whole series of contrasts thinking primarily of thevision which he saw on the road to Damascus when the risen Christappeared before him? And had not the years which had passed sincethen taught him to see in the ascended Christ the prophecy and thepattern of what His servants should become? We have further to keepin view Paul's other representation in 2nd Corinthians v., where hestrongly puts the contrast between the corporeal environment of earthand ‘the body of glory,’ which belongs to the futurelife, in his two images: ‘the earthly house of thistabernacle’—a clay hut which lasts but for atime,—and ‘the building of God, the house not made withhands and eternal.’ The body is an occasion of separation fromthe Lord.

These considerations may well lead us to, at least, generaloutlines on which a confident and peaceful hope may fix. For example,they lead us to the thought that that redeemed body is no moresubject to decay and death, is no more weighed upon by weakness andweariness, has no work beyond its strength, needs no sustenance byfood, and no refreshment of sleep. ‘The Lamb which is in themidst of the throne shall feed them,’ suggests strengthconstantly communicated by a direct divine gift. And from all thesenegative characteristics there follows that there will be in thatfuture bodily life no epochs of age marked by bodily changes. The twoyoung men who were seen sitting in the sepulchre of Jesus had livedbefore Adam, and would seem as young if we saw them to-day.

Similarly the redeemed body will be a more perfect instrument forcommunication with the external universe. We know that the presentbody conditions our knowledge, and that our senses do not takecognisance of all the qualities of material things. Microscopes andtelescopes have enlarged our field of vision, and have brought theinfinitely small and the infinitely distant within our range. Our earhears vibrations at a certain rate per second, and no doubt if itwere more delicately organised we could hear sounds where now issilence. Sometimes the creatures whom we call ‘inferior’seem to have senses that apprehend much of which we are not aware.Balaam's ass saw the obstructing angel before Balaam did. Nor isthere any reason to suppose that all the powers of the mind findtools to work with in the body. It is possible that that body whichis the fit instrument of the spirit may become its means of knowingmore deeply, thinking more wisely, understanding more swiftly,comprehending more widely, remembering more firmly and judging moresoundly. It is possible that the contrast between then and now may belike the contrast between telegraph and slow messenger in regard tothe rapidity, between photograph and poor daub in regard to thetruthfulness, between a full-orbed circle and a fragmentary arc inregard to the completeness of the messages which the body brings tothe indwelling self.

But, once more, the body unredeemed has appetites and desireswhich may lead to their own satisfaction, which do lead to sordidcares and weary toil. ‘The flesh lusts against the spirit andthe spirit against the flesh.’ The redeemed body will have init nothing to tempt and nothing to clog, but will be a helper to thespirit and a source of strength. Glorious work of God as the body is,it has its weaknesses, its limitations, and its tendencies to evil.We must not be tempted into brooding over unanswered questions as to‘How do the dead rise, and with what body do they come?’But we can lift our eyes to the mountain-top where Jesus went up topray. ‘And as He prayed the fashion of His countenance wasaltered, and His raiment became white and dazzling’; and He wascapable of entering into the Shekinah cloud and holding fellowshiptherein with the Father, who attested His Sonship and bade us listento His voice. And we can look to Olivet and follow the ascendingJesus as He lets His benediction drop on the upturned faces of Hisfriends, until He again passes into the Shekinah cloud, and leavingthe world, goes to the Father. And from both His momentarytransfiguration and His permanent Ascension we can draw the certainassurance that ‘He shall fashion anew the body of ourhumiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory,according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all thingsunto Himself.’

III. The redeemed body is a consequence of Christ's indwellingSpirit.

It is no natural result of death or resurrection, but is theoutcome of the process begun on earth, by which, ‘through faithand the righteousness of faith,’ the spirit is life. Thecontext distinctly enforces this view by its double use of‘adoption,’ which in one aspect has already beenreceived, and is manifested by the fact that ‘now are we thesons of God,’ and in another aspect is still‘waited’ for. The Christian man in his regenerated spirithas been born again; the Christian man still waits for the completionof that sonship in a time when the regenerated spirit will no longerdwell in the clay cottage of ‘this tabernacle,’ but willinhabit a congruous dwelling in ‘the building of God not madewith hands, eternal in the heavens.’

Scripture is too healthy and comprehensive to be contented with amerely spiritual regeneration, and is withal too spiritual to besatisfied with a merely material heaven. It gives full place to bothelements, and yet decisively puts all belonging to the latter second.It lays down the laws that for a complete humanity there must be bodyas well as spirit; that there must be a correspondence between thetwo, and as is the spirit so must the body be, and further, that theprocess must begin at the centre and work outwards, so that thespirit must first be transformed, and then the body must beparticipant of the transformation.

All that Scripture says about ‘rising in glory’ issaid about believers. It is represented as a spiritual process. Theywho have the Spirit of God in their spirits because they have itreceive the glorified body which is like their Saviour's. It is notenough to die in order to ‘rise glorious.’ ‘If theSpirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, Hethat raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortalbodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.’ The resurrection ispromised for all mankind, but it may be a resurrection in which thereshall be endless living and no glory, nor any beauty and noblessedness. But the body may be ‘sown in weakness,’ andin weakness raised; it may be ‘sown in dishonour’ and indishonour raised; it may be sown dead, and raised a living death.‘Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlastingcontempt.’ Does that mean nothing? ‘They that have doneevil to the resurrection of condemnation.’ Does that meannothing? There are dark mysteries in these and similar words ofScripture which should make us all pause and solemnly reflect. Thesole way which leads to the resurrection of glory is the way of faithin Jesus Christ. If we yield ourselves to Him, He will plant HisSpirit in our spirits, will guide and growingly sanctify us throughlife, will deliver us by the indwelling of the Spirit of life in Himfrom the law of sin and death. Nor will His transforming power ceasetill it has pervaded our whole being with its fiery energy, and westand at the last men like Christ, redeemed in body, soul, andspirit, ‘according to the mighty working whereby He is able tosubdue all things unto Himself.’

THE INTERCEDING SPIRIT

‘The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us withgroanings which cannot be uttered.’—ROMANS viii.26.

Pentecost was a transitory sign of a perpetual gift. The tonguesof fire and the rushing mighty wind, which were at first the mostconspicuous results of the gifts of the Spirit, tongues, andprophecies, and gifts of healing, which were to the early Churchitself and to onlookers palpable demonstrations of an indwellingpower, were little more lasting than the fire and the wind. Doesanything remain? This whole great chapter is Paul's triumphant answerto such a question. The Spirit of God dwells in every believer as thesource of his true life, is for him ‘the Spirit ofadoption’ and witnesses with his spirit that he is a child ofGod, and a joint-heir with Christ. Not only does that Spiritco-operate with the human spirit in this witness-bearing, but theverse, of which our text is a part, points to another form ofco-operation: for the word rendered in the earlier part of the verse‘helpeth’ in the original suggests more distinctly thatthe Spirit of God in His intercession for us works in associationwith us.

First, then—

I. The Spirit's intercession is not carried on apart from us.

Much modern hymnology goes wrong in this point, that it representsthe Spirit's intercession as presented in heaven rather than astaking place within the personal being of the believer. There is abroad distinction carefully observed throughout Scripture between therepresentations of the work of Christ and that of the Spirit ofChrist. The former in its character and revelation and attainment waswrought upon earth, and in its character of intercession andbestowment of blessings is discharged at the right hand of God inheaven; the whole of the Spirit's work, on the other hand, is wroughtin human spirits here. The context speaks of intercession expressedin ‘groanings which cannot be uttered,’ and which,unexpressed though they are, are fully understood ‘by Him whosearches the heart.’ Plainly, therefore, these groanings comefrom human hearts, and as plainly are the Divine Spirit's voicingthem.

II. The Spirit's intercession in our spirits consists in our owndivinely-inspired longings.

The Apostle has just been speaking of another groaning withinourselves, which is the expression of ‘the earnestexpectation’ of ‘the adoption, to wit, the redemption ofour body’; and he says that that longing will be the morepatient the more it is full of hope. This, then, is Paul's conceptionof the normal attitude of a Christian soul; but that attitude is hardto keep up in one's own strength, because of the distractions of timeand sense which are ever tending to disturb the continuity and fixityof that onward look, and to lead us rather to be satisfied with thegross, dull present. That redemption of the body, with all which itimplies and includes, ought to be the supreme object to which eachChristian heart should ever be turning, and Christian prayers shouldbe directed. But our own daily experience makes us only too sure thatsuch elevation above, and remoteness from earthly thoughts, with alltheir pettinesses and limitations, is impossible for us in our ownstrength. As Paul puts it here, ‘We know not what to prayfor’; nor can we fix and focus our desires, nor present them‘as we ought.’ It is to this weakness and incompletenessof our desires and prayers that the help of the Spirit is directed.He strengthens our longings by His own direct operation. The morevivid our anticipations and the more steadfast our hopes, and themore our spirits reach out to that future redemption, the more are webound to discern something more than human imaginings in them, and tobe sure that such visions are too good not to be true, too solid tobe only the play of our own fancy. The more we are conscious of theseexperiences as our own, the more certain we shall be that in them itis not we that speak, but ‘the Spirit of the Father thatspeaketh in us.’

III. These divinely-inspired longings are incapable of fullexpression.

They are shallow feelings that can be spoken. Language breaks downin the attempt to express our deepest emotions and our truest love.For all the deepest things in man, inarticulate utterance is the mostself-revealing. Grief can say more in a sob and a tear than in manyweak words; love finds its tongue in the light of an eye and theclasp of a hand. The groanings which rise from the depths of theChristian soul cannot be forced into the narrow frame-work of humanlanguage; and just because they are unutterable are to be recognisedas the voice of the Holy Spirit.

But where amidst the Christian experience of to-day shall we findanything in the least like these unutterable longings after theredemption of the body which Paul here takes it for granted are theexperience of all Christians? There is no more startling condemnationof the average Christianity of our times than the calm certainty withwhich through all this epistle the Apostle takes it for granted thatthe experience of the Roman Christians will universally endorse hisstatements. Look for a moment at what these statements are. Listen tothe briefest summary of them: ‘We cry, Abba, Father’;‘We are children of God’; ‘We suffer with Him thatwe may be glorified with Him’; ‘Glory shall be revealedto usward’; ‘We have the first-fruits of theSpirit’; ‘We ourselves groan within ourselves’;‘By hope were we saved’; ‘We hope for that which wesee not’; ‘Then do we with patience wait for it’;‘We know that to them that love God all things work togetherfor good’; ‘In all these things we are more thanconquerors’; ‘Neither death nor life... nor any othercreature shall be able to separate us from the love of God.’ Hebelieved that in these rapturous and triumphant words he wasgathering together the experience of every Roman Christian, and wouldevoke from their lips a confident ‘Amen.’ Where are thecommunities to-day in whose hearing these words could be reiteratedwith the like assurance? How few among us there are who know anythingof these ‘groanings which cannot be uttered!’ How fewamong us there are whose spirits are stretching out eager desirestowards the land of perpetual summer, like migratory birds innorthern latitudes when the autumn days are shortening and thetemperature is falling!

But, however we must feel that our poor experience falls far shortof the ideal in our text, an ideal which was to some extent realisedin the early Christian Church, we must beware of taking theimperfections of our experience as any evidence of the unreality ofour Christianity. They are a proof that we have limited and impededthe operation of the Spirit within us. They teach us that He will notintercede ‘with groanings which cannot be uttered’ unlesswe let Him speak through our voices. Therefore, if we find that inour own consciousness there is little to correspond to thoseunuttered groanings, we should take the warning: ‘Quench notthe Spirit.’ ‘Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God in whomye were sealed unto the day of redemption.’

IV. The unuttered longings are sure to be answered.

He that searcheth the heart knows the meaning of the Spirit'sunspoken prayers; and looking into the depths of the human spiritinterprets its longings, discriminating between the mere human andpartial expression and the divinely-inspired desire which may beunexpressed. If our prayers are weak, they are answered in themeasure in which they embody in them, though perhaps mistaken by us,a divine longing. Apparent disappointment of our petitions may bereal answers to our real prayer. It was because Jesus loved Mary andMartha and Lazarus that He abode still in the same place where Hewas, to let Lazarus die that He might be raised again. That was thetrue answer to the sisters’ hope of His immediate coming. God'sway of giving to us is to breathe within us a desire, and then toanswer the desire inbreathed. So, longing is the prophecy offulfilment when it is longing according to the will of God. They who‘hunger and thirst after righteousness’ may ever be surethat their bread shall be given them, and their water will be madesure. The true object of our desires is often not clear to us, and sowe err in translating it into words. Let us be thankful that we prayto a God who can discern the prayer within the prayer, and oftengives the substance of our petitions in the very act of refusingtheir form.

THE GIFT THAT BRINGS ALLGIFTS

‘He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Himup for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us allthings?’—ROMANS viii. 32.

We have here an allusion to, if not a distinct quotation from, thenarrative in Genesis, of Abraham's offering up of Isaac. The sameword which is employed in the Septuagint version of the OldTestament, to translate the Hebrew word rendered in our Bible as‘withheld,’ is employed here by the Apostle. And there isevidently floating before his mind the thought that, in some profoundand real sense, there is an analogy between that wondrous andfaithful act of giving up and the transcendent and stupendous gift tothe world, from God, of His Son.

If we take that point of view, the language of my text rises intosingular force, and suggests many very deep thoughts, about which,perhaps, silence is best. But led by that analogy, let us deal withthese words.

I. Consider this mysterious act of divine surrender.

The analogy seems to suggest to us, strange as it may be, andremote from the cold and abstract ideas of the divine nature which itis thought to be philosophical to cherish, that somethingcorresponding to the pain and loss that shadowed the patriarch'sheart flitted across the divine mind when the Father sent the Son tobe the Saviour of the world. Not merely to give, but to give up, isthe highest crown and glory of love, as we know it. And who shallventure to say that we so fully apprehend the divine nature as to bewarranted in declaring that some analogy to that is impossible forHim? Our language is, ‘I will not offer unto God that whichdoth cost me nothing.’ Let us bow in silence before the dimintimation that seems to flicker out of the words of my text, that soHe says to us, ‘I will not offer unto you that which doth costMe nothing.’ ‘He spared not His own Son’;withheld Him not from us.

But passing from that which, I dare say, many of you may supposeto be fanciful and unwarranted, let us come upon the surer ground ofthe other words of my text. And notice how the reality of thesurrender is emphasised by the closeness of the bond which, in themysterious eternity, knits together the Father and the Son. As withAbraham, so in this lofty example, of which Abraham and Isaac werebut as dim, wavering reflections in water, the Son is His own Son. Itseems to me impossible, upon any fair interpretation of the wordsbefore us, to refrain from giving to that epithet here its veryhighest and most mysterious sense. It cannot be any mere equivalentfor Messiah, it cannot merely mean a man who was like God in purityof nature and in closeness of communion. For the force of the analogyand the emphasis of that word which is even more emphatic in theGreek than in the English ‘His own Son,’ point toa community of nature, to a uniqueness and singleness of relation, toa closeness of intimacy, to which no other is a parallel. And so wehave to estimate the measure of the surrender by the tenderness andawfulness of the bond. ‘Having one Son, His well-beloved, Hesent Him.’

Notice, again, how the greatness of the surrender is made moreemphatic by the contemplation of it in its double negative andpositive aspect, in the two successive clauses. ‘He spared notHis Son, but delivered Him up,’ an absolute, positive giving ofHim over to the humiliation of the life and to the mystery of thedeath.

And notice how the tenderness and the beneficence that were thesole motive of the surrender are lifted into light in the last words,‘for us all.’ The single, sole reason that bowed, if Imay so say, the divine purpose, and determined the mysterious act,was a pure desire for our blessing. No definition is given as to themanner in which that surrender wrought for our good. The Apostle doesnot need to dwell upon that. His purpose is to emphasise the entireunselfishness, the utter simplicity of the motive which moved thedivine will. One great throb of love to the whole of humanity led tothat transcendent surrender, before which we can only bow and say,‘Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift.’

And now, notice how this mysterious act is grasped by the Apostlehere as what I may call the illuminating fact as to the whole divinenature. From it, and from it alone, there falls a blaze of light onthe deepest things in God. We are accustomed to speak of Christ'sperfect life of unselfishness, and His death of pure beneficence, asbeing the great manifestation to us all that in His heart there is aninfinite fountain of love to us. We are, further, accustomed to speakof Christ's mission and death as being the revelation to us of thelove of God as well as of the Man Christ Jesus, because we believethat ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world,’ and thatHe has so manifested and revealed the very nature of divinity to us,in His life and in His person, that, as He Himself says, ‘Hethat hath seen Me hath seen the Father.’ And every conclusionthat we draw as to the love of Christ is, ipso facto, aconclusion as to the love of God. But my text looks at the matterfrom rather a different point of view, and bids us see, in Christ'smission and sacrifice, the great demonstration of the love of God,not only because ‘God was in Christ,’ but because theFather's will, conceived of as distinct from, and yet harmoniouswith, the will of the Son, gives Him up for us. And we have to say,not only that we see the love of God in the love of Christ, but‘God so loved the world that He sent His only begottenSon’ that we might have life through Him.

These various phases of the love of Christ as manifesting thedivine love, may not be capable of perfect harmonising in ourthoughts, but they do blend into one, and by reason of them all,‘God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yetsinners, Christ died for us.’ We have to think not only ofAbraham who gave up, but of the unresisting, innocent Isaac, bearingon his shoulders the wood for the burnt offering, as the Christ borethe Cross on His, and suffering himself to be bound upon the pile,not only by the cords that tied his limbs, but by the cords ofobedience and submission, and in both we have to bow before theApocalypse of divine love.

II. So, secondly, look at the power of this divine surrender tobring with it all other gifts.

‘How shall He not with Him also freely give us allthings?’ The Apostle's triumphant question requires for itsaffirmative answer only the belief in the unchangeableness of theDivine heart, and the uniformity of the Divine purpose. And if thesebe recognised, their conclusion inevitably follows. ‘With HimHe will freely give us all things.’

It is so, because the greater gift implies the less. We do notexpect that a man who hands over a million of pounds to another, tohelp him, will stick at a farthing afterwards. If you give a diamondyou may well give a box to keep it in. In God's gift the lesser willfollow the lead of the greater; and whatsoever a man can want, it isa smaller thing for Him to bestow, than was the gift of His Son.

There is a beautiful contrast between the manners of giving thetwo sets of gifts implied in words of the original, perhaps scarcelycapable of being reproduced in any translation. The expression thatis rendered ‘freely give,’ implies that there is a graceand a pleasantness in the act of bestowal. God gave in Christ, whatwe may reverently say it was something like pain to give. Will He notgive the lesser, whatever they may be, which it is the joy of Hisheart to communicate? The greater implies the less.

Farther, this one great gift draws all other gifts after it,because the purpose of the greater gift cannot be attained withoutthe bestowment of the lesser. He does not begin to build being unableto finish; He does not miscalculate His resources, nor stultifyHimself by commencing upon a large scale, and having to stop shortbefore the purpose with which He began is accomplished. Men buildgreat palaces, and are bankrupt before the roof is put on. God laysHis plans with the knowledge of His powers, and having first of allbestowed this large gift, is not going to have it bestowed in vainfor want of some smaller ones to follow it up. Christ puts the sameargument to us, beginning only at the other end of the process. Paulsays, ‘God has laid the foundation in Christ.’ Do youthink He will stop before the headstone is put on? Christ said,‘It is your Father's good pleasure to give you theKingdom.’ Do you think He will not give you bread and water onthe road to it? Will He send out His soldiers half-equipped; will itbe found when they are on their march that they have been startedwith a defective commissariat, and with insufficient trenching tools?Shall the children of the King, on the road to their thrones, be leftto scramble along anyhow, in want of what they need to get there?That is not God's way of doing. He that hath begun a good work willalso perfect the same, and when He gave to you and me His Son, Hebound Himself to give us every subsidiary and secondary blessingwhich was needed to make that Son's work complete in each of us.

Again, this great blessing draws after it, by necessaryconsequence, all other lesser and secondary gifts, inasmuch as, inevery real sense, everything is included and possessed in the Christwhen we receive Him. ‘With Him,’ says Paul, as if thatgift once laid in a man's heart actually enclosed within it, and hadfor its indispensable accompaniment the possession of every smallerthing that a man can need, Jesus Christ is, as it were, a greatCornucopia, a horn of abundance, out of which will pour, with magicaffluence, all manner of supplies according as we require. Thisfountain flows with milk, wine, and water, as men need. Everything isgiven us when Christ is given to us, because Christ is the Heir ofall things, and we possess all things in Him; as some poor villagemaiden married to a prince in disguise, who, on the morrow of herwedding finds that she is lady of broad lands, and mistress of akingdom. ‘He that spared not His own Son,’ not only‘with Him will give,’ but in Him has ‘given us allthings.’

And so, brethren, just as that great gift is the illuminating factin reference to the divine heart, so is it the interpreting fact inreference to the divine dealings. Only when we keep firm hold ofChrist as the gift of God, and the Explainer of all that God does,can we face the darkness, the perplexities, the torturing questionsthat from the beginning have harassed men's minds as they looked uponthe mysteries of human misery. If we recognise that God has given usHis Son, then all things become, if not plain, at least lighted withsome gleam from that great gift; and we feel that the surrender ofChrist is the constraining fact which shapes after its own likeness,and for its own purpose, all the rest of God's dealings with men.That gift makes anything believable, reasonable, possible, ratherthan that He should spare not His own Son, and then shouldcounterwork His own act by sending the world anything but good.

III. And now, lastly, take one or two practical issues from thesethoughts, in reference to our own belief and conduct.

First, I would say, Let us correct our estimates of the relativeimportance of the two sets of gifts. On the one side stands thesolitary Christ; on the other side are massed all delights of sense,all blessings of time, all the things that the vulgar estimation ofmen unanimously recognises to be good. These are only makeweights.They are all lumped together into an ‘also.’ They are butthe golden dust that may be filed off from the great ingot and solidblock. They are but the outward tokens of His far deeper and truepreciousness. They are secondary; He is the primary. What aninversion of our notions of good! Do you degrade all theworld's wealth, pleasantness, ease, prosperity, into an‘also?’ Are you content to put it in the secondaryplace, as a result, if it please Him, of Christ? Do you live as ifyou did? Which do you hunger for most? Which do you labour forhardest? ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom and the King, and all‘these things shall be added unto you.’

Let these thoughts teach us that sorrow too is one of the gifts ofthe Christ. The words of my text, at first sight, might seem to besimply a promise of abundant earthly good. But look what lies closebeside them, and is even part of the same triumphant burst.‘Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, ornakedness, or peril, or sword?’ These are some of the‘all things’ which Paul expected that God would give himand his brethren. And looking upon all, he says, ‘They all worktogether for good'; and in them all we may be more than conquerors.It would be a poor, shabby issue of such a great gift as that ofwhich we have been speaking, if it were only to be followed by thesweetnesses and prosperity and wealth of this world. But here is thepoint that we have to keep hold of—inasmuch as He gives us allthings, let us take all the things that come to us as being asdistinctly the gifts of His love, as is the gift of Christ Himself. Awise physician, to an ignorant onlooker, might seem to be acting incontradictory fashions when in the one moment he slashes into a limb,with a sharp, gleaming knife, and in the next sedulously binds thewounds, and closes the arteries, but the purpose of both acts isone.

The diurnal revolution of the earth brings the joyful sunrise andthe pathetic sunset. The same annual revolution whirls us through thebalmy summer days and the biting winter ones. God's purpose is one.His methods vary. The road goes straight to its goal; but itsometimes runs in tunnels dank and dark and stifling, and sometimesby sunny glades and through green pastures. God's purpose is alwayslove, brother. His withdrawals are gifts, and sorrow is not the leastof the benefits which come to us through the Man of Sorrows.

So again, let these thoughts teach us to live by a very quiet andpeaceful faith. We find it a great deal easier to trust God forHeaven than for earth—for the distant blessings than for thenear ones. Many a man will venture his soul into God's hands, whowould hesitate to venture to-morrow's food there. Why? Is it notbecause we do not really trust Him for the greater that we find it sohard to trust Him for the less? Is it not because we want the lessmore really than we want the greater, that we can put ourselves offwith faith for the one, and want something more solid to grasp forthe other? Live in the calm confidence that God gives all things; andgives us for to-morrow as for eternity; for earth as for heaven.

And, last of all, make you quite sure that you have takenthe great gift of God. He gives it to all the world, but theyonly have it who accept it by faith. Have you, my brother? I look outupon the lives of the mass of professing Christians; and thisquestion weighs on my heart, judging by conduct—have theyreally got Christ for their own? ‘Wherefore do ye spend yourmoney for that which is not bread, and your labour for that whichsatisfieth not?’ Look how you are all fighting and scrambling,and sweating and fretting, to get hold of the goods of this presentlife, and here is a gift gleaming before you all the while that youwill not condescend to take. Like a man standing in a market-placeoffering sovereigns for nothing, which nobody accepts because theythink the offer is too good to be true, so God complains and wails: Ihave stretched out My hands all the day, laden with gifts, and no manregarded.

'It is only heaven may be had for the asking;It is only God that is given away.'

He gives His Son. Take Him by humble faith in Hissacrifice and Spirit; take Him, and with Him He freely gives you allthings.

MORE THAN CONQUERORS

‘Nay, in all these things we are more thanconquerors through Him that loved us.’—ROMANS viii.37.

In order to understand and feel the full force of this triumphantsaying of the Apostle, we must observe that it is a negative answerto the preceding questions, ‘Who shall separate us from thelove of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, orfamine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?’ A heterogeneous massthe Apostle here brigades together as an antagonistic army. They arealike in nothing except that they are all evils. There is no attemptat an exhaustive enumeration, or at classification. He clashes down,as it were, a miscellaneous mass of evil things, and then triumphsover them, and all the genus to which they belong, as being utterlyimpotent to drag men away from Jesus Christ. To ask the question isto answer it, but the form of the answer is worth notice. Instead ofdirectly replying, ‘No! no such powerless things as these canseparate us from the love of Christ,’ he says, ‘No! Inall these things, whilst weltering amongst them, whilst ringed roundabout by them, as by encircling enemies, “we are more thanconquerors.”’ Thereby, he suggests that there issomething needing to be done by us, in order that the foes may notexercise their natural effect. And so, taking the words of my text inconnection with that to which they are an answer, we have threethings—the impotent enemies of love; the abundant victory oflove; ‘We are more than conquerors’; and the love thatmakes us victorious. Let us look then at these three thingsbriefly.

I. First of all, the impotent enemies of love.

There is contempt in the careless massing together of the foeswhich the Apostle enumerates. He begins with the widest word thatcovers everything—‘affliction.’ Then he specifiesvarious forms of it—‘distress,’ straitening,as the word might be rendered, then he comes to evils inflicted forChrist's sake by hostile men—‘persecution,’ then henames purely physical evils, ‘hunger’ and‘nakedness,’ then he harks back again to man'santagonism, ‘peril,’ and ‘sword.’ And thuscarelessly, and without an effort at logical order, he throwstogether, as specimens of their class, these salient points, as itwere, and crests of the great sea, whose billows threaten to rollover us; and he laughs at them all, as impotent and nought, whencompared with the love of Christ, which shields us from them all.

Now it must be noticed that here, in his triumphant question, theApostle means not our love to Christ but His to us; and not even oursense of that love, but the fact itself. And his question is justthis:—Is there any evil in the world that can make Christ stoploving a man that cleaves to Him? And, as I said, to ask the questionis to answer it. The two things belong to two different regions. Theyhave nothing in common. The one moves amongst the low levels ofearth; the other dwells up amidst the abysses of eternity, and tosuppose that anything that assails and afflicts us here has anyeffect in making that great heart cease to love us is to fancy thatthe mists can quench the sunlight, is to suppose that that which liesdown low in the earth can rise to poison and to darken theheavens.

There is no need, in order to rise to the full height of theChristian contempt for calamity, to deny any of its terrible power.These things can separate us from much. They can separate us fromjoy, from hope, from almost all that makes life desirable. They canstrip us to the very quick, but the quick they cannot touch. Thefrost comes and kills the flowers, browns the leaves, cuts off thestems, binds the sweet music of the flowing rivers in silent chains,casts mists and darkness over the face of the solitary grey world,but it does not touch the life that is in the root.

And so all these outward sorrows that have power over the whole ofthe outward life, and can slay joy and all but stifle hope, and canban men into irrevocable darkness and unalleviated solitude, they donot touch in the smallest degree the secret bond that binds the heartto Jesus, nor in any measure affect the flow of His love to us.Therefore we may front them and smile at them and say:

'Do as thou wilt, devouring time,With this wide world, and all its fading sweets';

‘my flesh and my heart faileth, but God isthe strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.’

You need not be very much afraid of anything being taken from youas long as Christ is left you. You will not be altogether hopeless solong as Christ, who is our hope, still speaks His faithful promisesto you, nor will the world be lonely and dark to them who feel thatthey are lapt in the sweet and all-pervading consciousness of thechangeless love of the heart of Christ. ‘Shall tribulation, ordistress, or persecution?’—in any of these things,‘we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.’Brethren, that is the Christian way of looking at all externals, notonly at the dark and the sorrowful, but at the bright and thegladsome. If the withdrawal of external blessings does not touch thecentral sanctities and sweetness of a life in communion with Jesus,the bestowal of external blessedness does not much brighten orgladden it. We can face the withdrawal of them all, we need not covetthe possession of them all, for we have all in Christ; and the worldwithout His love contributes less to our blessedness and our peacethan the absence of all its joys with His love does. So let us feelthat earth, in its givings and in its withholdings, is equallyimpotent to touch the one thing that we need, the consciouspossession of the love of Christ.

All these foes, as I have said, have no power over the fact ofChrist's love to us, but they have power, and a very terrible power,over our consciousness of that love; and we may so kick against thepricks as to lose, in the pain of our sorrows, the assurance of Hispresence, or be so fascinated by the false and vulgar sweetnesses andpromises of the world as, in the eagerness of our chase after them,to lose our sense of the all-sufficing certitude of His love.Tribulation does not strip us of His love, but tribulation may sodarken our perceptions that we cannot see the sun. Joys need not robus of His heart, but joys may so fill ours, as that there shall be nolonging for His presence within us. Therefore let us not exaggeratethe impotence of these foes, but feel that there are real dangers, asin the sorrows so in the blessings of our outward life, and that theevil to be dreaded is that outward things, whether in their bright orin their dark aspects, may come between us and the home of ourhearts, the love of the loving Christ.

II. So then, note next, the abundant victory of love.

Mark how the Apostle, in his lofty and enthusiastic way, is notcontent here with simply saying that he and his fellows conquer. Itwould be a poor thing, he seems to think, if the balance barelyinclined to our side, if the victory were but just won by a hair'sbreadth and triumph were snatched, as it were, out of the very jawsof defeat. There must be something more than that to correspond tothe power of the victorious Christ that is in us. And so, he says, wevery abundantly conquer; we not only hinder these things which he hasbeen enumerating from doing that which it is their aim apparently todo, but we actually convert them into helpers or allies. The‘more than conquerors’ seems to mean, if there isany definite idea to be attached to it, the conversion of the enemyconquered into a friend and a helper. The American Indians had asuperstition that every foe tomahawked sent fresh strength into thewarrior's arm. And so all afflictions and trials rightly borne, andtherefore overcome, make a man stronger, and bring him nearer toJesus Christ.

Note then, further, that not only is this victory more than barevictory, being the conversion of the enemy into allies, but that itis a victory which is won even whilst we are in the midst of thestrife. It is not that we shall be conquerors in some far-off heaven,when the noise of battle has ceased and they hang the trumpet in thehall, but it is here now, in the hand-to-hand and foot-to-footdeath-grapple that we do overcome. No ultimate victory, in somefar-off and blessed heaven, will be ours unless moment by moment,here, to-day,’ we are more than conquerors through Himthat loved us.’

So, then, about this abundant victory there are these things tosay:—You conquer the world only, then, when you make itcontribute to your conscious possession of the love of Christ. Thatis the real victory, the only real victory in life. Men talk aboutovercoming here on earth, and they mean thereby the accomplishment oftheir designs. A man has ‘victory,’ as it is phrased, inthe world's strife, when he secures for himself the world's goods atwhich he has aimed, but that is not the Christian idea of theconquest of calamity. Everything that makes me feel more thrillinglyin my inmost heart the verity and the sweetness of the love of JesusChrist as my very own, is conquered by me and compelled to subservemy highest good, and everything which slips a film between me andHim, which obscures the light of His face to me, which makes me lessdesirous of, and less sure of, and less happy in, and less satisfiedwith, His love, is an enemy that has conquered me. And all theseevils as the world calls them, and as our bleeding hearts have oftenfelt them to be, are converted into allies and friends when theydrive us to Christ, and keep us close to Him, in the consciouspossession of His sweet and changeless love. That is the victory, andthe only victory. Has the world helped me to lay hold of Christ? ThenI have conquered it. Has the world loosened my grasp upon Him? Thenit has conquered me.

Note then, further, that this abundant victory depends on how wedeal with the changes of our outward lives, our sorrows or our joys.There is nothing, per se, salutary in affliction, there isnothing, per se, antagonistic to Christian faith in it either.No man is made better by his sorrows, no man need be made worse bythem. That depends upon how we take the things which come stormingagainst us. The set of your sails, and the firmness of your graspupon the tiller, determine whether the wind shall carry you to thehaven or shall blow you out, a wandering waif, upon a shoreless andmelancholy sea. There are some of you that have been blown away fromyour moorings by sorrow. There are some professing Christians whohave been hindered in their work, and had their peace and their faithshattered all but irrevocably, because they have not accepted, in thespirit in which they were sent, the trials that have come for theirgood. The worst of all afflictions is a wasted affliction, and theyare all wasted unless they teach us more of the reality and theblessedness of the love of Jesus Christ.

III. Lastly, notice the love which makes us conquerors.

The Apostle, with a wonderful instinctive sense of fitness, namesChrist here by a name congruous to the thoughts which occupy hismind, when he speaks of Him that loved us. His question has been, Cananything separate us from the love of Christ? And his answer is, Sofar from that being the case, that very love, by occasion of sorrowsand afflictions, tightens its grasp upon us, and, by thecommunication of itself to us, makes us more than conquerors. Thisgreat love of Jesus Christ, from which nothing can separate us, willuse the very things that seem to threaten our separation as a meansof coming nearer to us in its depth and in its preciousness.

The Apostle says ‘Him that loved us,’ and the words inthe original distinctly point to some one fact as being the greatinstance of love. That is to say they point to His death. And so wemay say Christ's love helps us to conquer because in His death Heinterprets for us all possible sorrows. If it be true that love toeach of us nailed Him there, then nothing that can come to us butmust be a love-token, and a fruit of that same love. The Cross is thekey to all tribulation, and shows it to be a token and an instrumentof an unchanging love.

Further, that great love of Christ helps us to conquer, because inHis sufferings and death He becomes the Companion of all the weary.The rough, dark, lonely road changes its look when we see Hisfootprints there, not without specks of blood in them, where thethorns tore His feet. We conquer our afflictions if we recognise that‘in all our afflictions He was afflicted,’ and thatHimself has drunk to its bitterest dregs the cup which He commends toour lips. He has left a kiss upon its margin, and we need not shrinkwhen He holds it out to us and says ‘Drink ye all of it.’That one thought of the companionship of the Christ in our sorrowsmakes us more than conquerors.

And lastly, this dying Lover of our souls communicates to us all,if we will, the strength whereby we may coerce all outward thingsinto being helps to the fuller participation of His perfect love. Oursorrows and all the other distracting externals do seek to drag usaway from Him. Is all that happens in counteraction to that pull ofthe world, that we tighten our grasp upon Him, and will not let Himgo; as some poor wretch might the horns of the altar that did notrespond to his grasp? Nay what we lay hold of is no dead thing,but a living hand, and it grasps us more tightly than we can evergrasp it. So because He holds us, and not because we hold Him, weshall not be dragged away, by anything outside of our own weak andwavering souls, and all these embattled foes may come against us,they may shear off everything else, they cannot sever Christ from usunless we ourselves throw Him away. ‘In this thou shaltconquer.’ ‘They overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and bythe word of His testimony.’

LOVE'S TRIUMPH

‘Neither death, nor life, nor angels, norprincipalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able toseparate us from the love of God.’—ROMANS viii. 38,39.

These rapturous words are the climax of the Apostle's longdemonstration that the Gospel is the revelation of ‘therighteousness of God from faith to faith,’ and is thereby‘the power of God unto salvation.’ What a contrast thereis between the beginning and the end of his argument! It started withsombre, sad words about man's sinfulness and aversion from theknowledge of God. It closes with this sunny outburst of triumph; likesome stream rising among black and barren cliffs, or melancholymoorlands, and foaming through narrow rifts in gloomy ravines, itreaches at last fertile lands, and flows calm, the sunlight dancingon its broad surface, till it loses itself at last in theunfathomable ocean of the love of God.

We are told that the Biblical view of human nature is too dark.Well, the important question is not whether it is dark, but whetherit is true. But, apart from that, the doctrine of Scripture aboutman's moral condition is not dark, if you will take the whole of ittogether. Certainly, a part of it is very dark. The picture, forinstance, of what men are, painted at the beginning of this Epistle,is shadowed like a canvas of Rembrandt's. The Bible is‘Nature's sternest painter but her best.’ But to get thewhole doctrine of Scripture on the subject, we have to take itsconfidence as to what men may become, as well as its portrait of whatthey are—and then who will say that the anthropology ofScripture is gloomy? To me it seems that the unrelieved blackness ofthe view which, because it admits no fall, can imagine no rise, whichsees in all man's sins and sorrows no token of the dominion of analien power, and has, therefore, no reason to believe that they canbe separated from humanity, is the true ‘Gospel ofdespair,’ and that the system which looks steadily at all themisery and all the wickedness, and calmly proposes to cast it allout, is really the only doctrine of human nature which throws anygleam of light on the darkness. Christianity begins indeed with,‘There is none that doeth good, no, not one,’ but it endswith this victorious pæan of our text.

And what a majestic close it is to the great words that have gonebefore, fitly crowning even their lofty height! One might well shrinkfrom presuming to take such words as a text, with any idea ofexhausting or of enhancing them. My object is very much more humble.I simply wish to bring out the remarkable order, in which Paul heremarshals, in his passionate, rhetorical amplification, all theenemies that can be supposed to seek to wrench us away from the loveof God; and triumphs over them all. We shall best measure thefullness of the words by simply taking these clauses as they stand inthe text.

I. The love of God is unaffected by the extremest changes of ourcondition.

The Apostle begins his fervid catalogue of vanquished foes by apair of opposites which might seem to cover the wholeground—‘neither death nor life.’ What more can besaid? Surely, these two include everything. From one point of viewthey do. But yet, as we shall see, there is more to be said. And thespecial reason for beginning with this pair of possible enemies isprobably to be found by remembering that they are a pair, thatbetween them they do cover the whole ground and represent theextremes of change which can befall us. The one stands at theone pole, the other at the other. If these two stations, so far fromeach other, are equally near to God's love, then no intermediatepoint can be far from it. If the most violent change which we canexperience does not in the least matter to the grasp which the loveof God has on us, or to the grasp which we may have on it, then noless violent a change can be of any consequence. It is the samethought in a somewhat modified form, as we find in another word ofPaul's, ‘Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether wedie, we die unto the Lord.’ Our subordination to Him is thesame, and our consecration should be the same, in all varieties ofcondition, even in that greatest of all variations. His love to usmakes no account of that mightiest of changes. How should it beaffected by slighter ones?

The distance of a star is measured by the apparent change in itsposition, as seen from different points of the earth's surface ororbit. But this great Light stands steadfast in our heaven, nor movesa hair's-breadth, nor pours a feebler ray on us, whether we look upto it from the midsummer day of busy life, or from the midwinter ofdeath. These opposites are parted by a distance to which the millionsof miles of the world's path among the stars are but a point, and yetthe love of God streams down on them alike.

Of course, the confidence in immortality is implied in thisthought. Death does not, in the slightest degree, affect theessential vitality of the soul; so it does not, in the slightestdegree, affect the outflow of God's love to that soul. It is a changeof condition and circ*mstance, and no more. He does not lose us inthe dust of death. The withered leaves on the pathway are trampledinto mud, and indistinguishable to human eyes; but He sees them evenas when they hung green and sunlit on the mystic tree of life.

How beautifully this thought contrasts with the saddest aspect ofthe power of death in our human experience! He is Death theSeparator, who unclasps our hands from the closest, dearest grasp,and divides asunder joints and marrow, and parts soul and body, andwithdraws us from all our habitude and associations and occupations,and loosens every bond of society and concord, and hales us away intoa lonely land. But there is one bond which his ‘abhorredshears’ cannot cut. Their edge is turned on it. One Handholds us in a grasp which the fleshless fingers of Death in vainstrive to loosen. The separator becomes the uniter; he rends us apartfrom the world that He may ‘bring us to God.’ The lovefiltered by drops on us in life is poured upon us in a flood indeath; ‘for I am persuaded, that neither death nor life shallbe able to separate us from the love of God.’

II. The love of God is undiverted from us by any other order ofbeings.

‘Nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,’ saysPaul. Here we pass from conditions affecting ourselves to livingbeings beyond ourselves. Now, it is important for understanding theprecise thought of the Apostle to observe that this expression, whenused without any qualifying adjective, seems uniformly to mean goodangels, the hierarchy of blessed spirits before the throne. So thatthere is no reference to ‘spiritual wickedness in highplaces’ striving to draw men away from God. The suppositionwhich the Apostle makes is, indeed, an impossible one, that theseministering spirits, who are sent forth to minister to them who shallbe heirs of salvation, should so forget their mission and contradicttheir nature as to seek to bar us out from the love which it is theirchiefest joy to bring to us. He knows it to be an impossiblesupposition, and its very impossibility gives energy to hisconclusion, just as when in the same fashion he makes the otherequally impossible supposition about an angel from heaven preachinganother gospel than that which he had preached to them.

So we may turn the general thought of this second category ofimpotent efforts in two different ways, and suggest, first, that itimplies the utter powerlessness of any third party in regard to therelations between our souls and God.

We alone have to do with Him alone. The awful fact ofindividuality, that solemn mystery of our personal being, has itsmost blessed or its most dread manifestation in our relation to God.There no other Being has any power. Counsel and stimulus, suggestionor temptation, instruction or lies, which may tend to lead us nearerto Him or away from Him, they may indeed give us; but after they havedone their best or their worst, all depends on the personal act ofour own innermost being. Man or angel can affect that, but fromwithout. The old mystics called prayer ‘the flight of thelonely soul to the only God.’ It is the name for all religion.These two, God and the soul, have to ‘transact,’ as ourPuritan forefathers used to say, as if there were no other beings inthe universe but only they two. Angels and principalities and powersmay stand beholding with sympathetic joy; they may minister blessingand guardianship in many ways; but the decisive act of union betweenGod and the soul they can neither effect nor prevent.

And as for them, so for men around us; the limits of their powerto harm us are soon set. They may shut us out from human love bycalumnies, and dig deep gulfs of alienation between us and dear ones;they may hurt and annoy us in a thousand ways with slanderoustongues, and arrows dipped in poisonous hatred, but one thing theycannot do. They may build a wall around us, and imprison us from manya joy and many a fair prospect, but they cannot put a roof on it tokeep out the sweet influences from above, or hinder us from lookingup to the heavens. Nobody can come between us and God butourselves.

Or, we may turn this general thought in another direction, andsay, These blessed spirits around the throne do not absorb andintercept His love. They gather about its steps in their‘solemn troops and sweet societies’; but close as aretheir ranks, and innumerable as is their multitude, they do notprevent that love from passing beyond them to us on the outskirts ofthe crowd. The planet nearest the sun is drenched and saturated withfiery brightness, but the rays from the centre of life pass on toeach of the sister spheres in its turn, and travel away outwards towhere the remotest of them all rolls in its far-off orbit, unknownfor millenniums to dwellers closer to the sun, but through all theages visited by warmth and light according to its needs. Like thatpoor, sickly woman who could lay her wasted fingers on the hem ofChrist's garment, notwithstanding the thronging multitude, we canreach our hands through all the crowd, or rather He reaches Hisstrong hand to us and heals and blesses us. All the guests are fedfull at that great table. One's gain is not another's loss. Themultitudes sit on the green grass, and the last man of the last fiftygets as much as the first. ‘They did all eat, and werefilled’; and more remains than fed them all. So all beings are‘nourished from the King's country,’ and none jostleothers out of their share. This healing fountain is not exhausted ofits curative power by the early comers. ‘I will give unto thislast, even as unto thee.’ ‘Nor angels, norprincipalities, nor powers, shall be able to separate us from thelove of God.’

III. The love of God is raised above the power of time.

‘Nor things present, nor things to come,’ is theApostle's next class of powers impotent to disunite us from the loveof God. The rhythmical arrangement of the text deserves to benoticed, as bearing not only on its music and rhetorical flow, but asaffecting its force. We had first a pair of opposites, and then atriplet; ‘death and life: angels, principalities, andpowers.’ We have again a pair of opposites; ‘thingspresent, things to come,’ again followed by a triplet,‘height nor depth, nor any other creature.’ The effect ofthis is to divide the whole into two, and to throw the first andsecond classes more closely together, as also the third and fourth.Time and Space, these two mysterious ideas, which work so fatally onall human love, are powerless here.

The great revelation of God, on which the whole of Judaism wasbuilt, was that made to Moses of the name ‘I Am that IAm.’ And parallel to the verbal revelation was the symbol ofthe Bush, burning and unconsumed, which is so often misunderstood. Itappears wholly contrary to the usage of Scriptural visions, which areever wont to express in material form the same truth whichaccompanies them in words, that the meaning of that vision should be,as it is frequently taken as being, the continuance of Israelunharmed by the fiery furnace of persecution. Not the continuance ofIsrael, but the eternity of Israel's God is the teaching of thatflaming wonder. The burning Bush and the Name of the Lord proclaimedthe same great truth of self-derived, self-determined, timeless,undecaying Being. And what better symbol than the bush burning, andyet not burning out, could be found of that God in whose life thereis no tendency to death, whose work digs no pit of weariness intowhich it falls, who gives and is none the poorer, who fears noexhaustion in His spending, no extinction in His continualshining?

And this eternity of Being is no mere metaphysical abstraction. Itis eternity of love, for God is love. That great stream, the pouringout of His own very inmost Being, knows no pause, nor does the deepfountain from which it flows ever sink one hair's-breadth in its purebasin.

We know of earthly loves which cannot die. They have entered sodeeply into the very fabric of the soul, that like some cloth dyed ingrain, as long as two threads hold together they will retain thetint. We have to thank God for such instances of love stronger thandeath, which make it easier for us to believe in the unchangingduration of His. But we know, too, of love that can change, and weknow that all love must part. Few of us have reached middle life, whodo not, looking back, see our track strewed with the gaunt skeletonsof dead friendships, and dotted with ‘oaks of weeping,’waving green and mournful over graves, and saddened by footprintsstriking away from the line of march, and leaving us the moresolitary for their departure.

How blessed then to know of a love which cannot change or die! Thepast, the present, and the future are all the same to Him, to whom‘a thousand years,’ that can corrode so much of earthlylove, are in their power to change ‘as one day,’ and‘one day,’ which can hold so few of the expressions ofour love, may be ‘as a thousand years’ in the multitudeand richness of the gifts which it can be expanded to contain. Thewhole of what He has been to any past, He is to us to-day. ‘TheGod of Jacob is our refuge.’ All these old-world stories ofloving care and guidance may be repeated in our lives.

So we may bring the blessedness of all the past into the present,and calmly face the misty future, sure that it cannot rob us of Hislove.

Whatever may drop out of our vainly-clasping hands, it mattersnot, if only our hearts are stayed on His love, which neither thingspresent nor things to come can alter or remove. Looking on all theflow of ceaseless change, the waste and fading, the alienation andcooling, the decrepitude and decay of earthly affection, we can liftup with gladness, heightened by the contrast, the triumphant song ofthe ancient Church: ‘Give thanks unto the Lord: for He is good:because His mercy endureth for ever!’

IV. The love of God is present everywhere.

The Apostle ends his catalogue with a singular trio ofantagonists; ‘nor height, nor depth, nor any othercreature,’ as if he had got impatient of the enumeration ofimpotencies, and having named the outside boundaries in space of thecreated universe, flings, as it were, with one rapid toss, into thatlarge room the whole that it can contain, and triumphs over itall.

As the former clause proclaimed the powerlessness of Time, so thisproclaims the powerlessness of that other great mystery of creaturallife which we call Space, Height or depth, it matters not. Thatdiffusive love diffuses itself equally in all directions. Up or down,it is all the same. The distance from the centre is the same toZenith or to Nadir.

Here, we have the same process applied to that idea ofOmnipresence as was applied in the former clause to the idea ofEternity. That thought, so hard to grasp with vividness, and notaltogether a glad one to a sinful soul, is all softened andglorified, as some solemn Alpine cliff of bare rock is when thetender morning light glows on it, when it is thought of as theOmnipresence of Love. ‘Thou, God, seest me,’ may be astern word, if the God who sees be but a mighty Maker or a righteousJudge. As reasonably might we expect a prisoner in his solitary cellto be glad when he thinks that the jailer's eye is on him from someunseen spy-hole in the wall, as expect any thought of God but one tomake a man read that grand one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm withjoy: ‘If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bedin Sheol, behold, Thou art there.’ So may a man sayshudderingly to himself, and tremble as he asks in vain,‘Whither shall I flee from Thy Presence?’ But howdifferent it all is when we can cast over the marble whiteness ofthat solemn thought the warm hue of life, and change the form of ourwords into this of our text: ‘Nor height, nor depth, shall beable to separate us from the love of God.’

In that great ocean of the divine love we live and move and haveour being, floating in it like some sea flower which spreads itsfilmy beauty and waves its long tresses in the depths of mid-ocean.The sound of its waters is ever in our ears, and above, beneath,around us, its mighty currents run evermore. We need not cower beforethe fixed gaze of some stony god, looking on us unmoved like thoseEgyptian deities that sit pitiless with idle hands on their laps, andwide-open lidless eyes gazing out across the sands. We need not fearthe Omnipresence of Love, nor the Omniscience which knows usaltogether, and loves us even as it knows. Rather we shall be gladthat we are ever in His Presence, and desire, as the height of allfelicity and the power for all goodness, to walk all the day long inthe light of His countenance, till the day come when we shall receivethe crown of our perfecting in that we shall be ‘ever with theLord.’

The recognition of this triumphant sovereignty of love over allthese real and supposed antagonists makes us, too, lords over them,and delivers us from the temptations which some of them present us toseparate ourselves from the love of God. They all become our servantsand helpers, uniting us to that love. So we are set free from thedread of death and from the distractions incident to life. So we aredelivered from superstitious dread of an unseen world, and fromcraven fear of men. So we are emancipated from absorption in thepresent and from careful thought for the future. So we are at homeeverywhere, and every corner of the universe is to us one of the manymansions of our Father's house. ‘All things are yours, ... andye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.’

I do not forget the closing words of this great text. I have notventured to include them in our present subject, because they wouldhave introduced another wide region of thought to be laid down on ouralready too narrow canvas.

But remember, I beseech you, that this love of God is explained byour Apostle to be ‘in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ Loveillimitable, all-pervasive, eternal; yes, but a love which has achannel and a course; love which has a method and a process by whichit pours itself over the world. It is not, as some representationswould make it, a vague, nebulous light diffused through space as in achaotic half-made universe, but all gathered in that great Lightwhich rules the day—even in Him who said: ‘I am the Lightof the world.’ In Christ the love of God is all centred andembodied, that it may be imparted to all sinful and hungry hearts,even as burning coals are gathered on a hearth that they may givewarmth to all that are in the house. ‘God so loved theworld’—not merely so much, but in such afashion—‘that’—that what? Many peoplewould leap at once from the first to the last clause of the verse,and regard eternal life for all and sundry as the only adequateexpression of the universal love of God. Not so does Christ speak.Between that universal love and its ultimate purpose and desire forevery man He inserts two conditions, one on God's part, one on man's.God's love reaches its end, namely, the bestowal of eternal life, bymeans of a divine act and a human response. ‘God soloved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, thatwhosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but haveeverlasting life.’ So all the universal love of God for youand me and for all our brethren is ‘in Christ Jesus ourLord,’ and faith in Him unites us to it by bonds which no foecan break, no shock of change can snap, no time can rot, no distancecan stretch to breaking. ‘For I am persuaded, that neitherdeath nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, northings present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anyother creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God,which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY

‘I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the merciesof God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy,acceptable unto God, which is your reasonableservice.‘—ROMANS xii. 1.

In the former part of this letter the Apostle has been building upa massive fabric of doctrine, which has stood the waste of centuries,and the assaults of enemies, and has been the home of devout souls.He now passes to speak of practice, and he binds the two halves ofhis letter indissolubly together by that significant‘therefore,‘ which does not only look back to the thinglast said, but to the whole of the preceding portion of the letter.‘What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’Christian living is inseparably connected with Christian believing.Possibly the error of our forefathers was in cutting faith too muchloose from practice, and supposing that an orthodox creed wassufficient, though I think the extent to which they did suppose thathas been very much exaggerated. The temptation of this day isprecisely the opposite. ‘Conduct is three-fourths oflife,’ says one of our teachers. Yes. But what about thefourth fourth which underlies conduct? Paul's way is the rightway. Lay broad and deep the foundations of God's facts revealed tous, and then build upon that the fabric of a noble life. Thisgeneration superficially tends to cut practice loose from faith, andso to look for grapes from thorns and figs from thistles. Wrongthinking will not lead to right doing. ‘I beseech you,therefore, brethren, that ye present your bodies a livingsacrifice.’

The Apostle, in beginning his practical exhortations, lays as thefoundations of them all two companion precepts: one, with which wehave to deal, affecting mainly the outward life; its twin sister,which follows in the next verse, affecting mainly the inward life. Hewho has drunk in the spirit of Paul's doctrinal teaching will presenthis body a living sacrifice, and be renewed in the spirit of hismind; and thus, outwardly and inwardly, will be approximating toGod's ideal, and all specific virtues will be his in germ. Those twoprecepts lay down the broad outline, and all that follow in the wayof specific commandments is but filling in its details.

I. We observe that we have here, first, an all-inclusive directoryfor the outward life.

Now, it is to be noticed that the metaphor of sacrifice runsthrough the whole of the phraseology of my text. The word rendered‘present’ is a technical expression for the sacerdotalaction of offering. A tacit contrast is drawn between the sacrificialritual, which was familiar to Romans as well as Jews, and the trueChristian sacrifice and service. In the former a large portion of thesacrifices consisted of animals which were slain. Ours is to be‘a living sacrifice.’ In the former the offering waspresented to the Deity, and became His property. In the Christianservice, the gift passes, in like manner, from the possession of theworshipper, and is set apart for the uses of God, for that is theproper meaning of the word ‘holy.’ The outward sacrificegave an odour of a sweet smell, which, by a strong metaphor, wasdeclared to be fragrant in the nostrils of Deity. In like manner, theChristian sacrifice is ‘acceptable unto God.’ These othersacrifices were purely outward, and derived no efficacy from thedisposition of the worshipper. Our sacrifice, though the material ofthe offering be corporeal, is the act of the inner man, and so iscalled ‘rational’ rather than ‘reasonable,’as our Version has it, or as in other parts of Scripture,‘spiritual.’ And the last word of my text,‘service,’ retains the sacerdotal allusion, because itdoes not mean the service of a slave or domestic, but that of apriest.

And so the sum of the whole is that the master-word for theoutward life of a Christian is sacrifice. That, again, includes twothings—self-surrender and surrender to God.

Now, Paul was not such a superficial moralist as to begin at thewrong end, and talk about the surrender of the outward life, unlessas the result of the prior surrender of the inward, and that priorityof the consecration of the man to his offering of the body iscontained in the very metaphor. For a priest needs to be consecratedbefore he can offer, and we in our innermost wills, in the depths ofour nature, must be surrendered and set apart to God ere any of ouroutward activities can be laid upon His altar. The Apostle, then,does not make the mistake of substituting external for internalsurrender, but he presupposes that the latter has preceded. He putsthe sequence more fully in the parallel passage in this very letter:‘Yield yourselves unto God, and your bodies as instruments ofrighteousness unto Him.’ So, then, first of all, we must bepriests by our inward consecration, and then, since ‘a priestmust have somewhat to offer,’ we must bring the outward lifeand lay it upon His altar.

Now, of the two thoughts which I have said are involved in thisgreat keyword, the former is common to Christianity, with all noblesystems of morality, whether religious or irreligious. It is acommonplace, on which I do not need to dwell, that every man who willlive a man's life, and not that of a beast, must sacrifice the flesh,and rigidly keep it down. But that commonplace is lifted into analtogether new region, assumes a new solemnity, and finds new powerfor its fulfilment when we add to the moralist's duty of control ofthe animal and outward nature the other thought, that the surrendermust be to God.

There is no need for my dwelling at any length on the variouspractical directions in which this great exhortation must be wroughtout. It is of more importance, by far, to have well fixed in ourminds and hearts the one dominant thought that sacrifice is thekeyword of the Christian life than to explain the directions in whichit applies. But still, just a word or two about these. There arethree ways in which we may look at the body, which the Apostle heresays is to be yielded up unto God.

It is the recipient of impressions from without. There is afield for consecration. The eye that looks upon evil, and by the lookhas rebellious, lustful, sensuous, foul desires excited in the heart,breaks this solemn law. The eye that among the things seen dwellswith complacency on the pure, and turns from the impure as if a hotiron had been thrust into its pupil; that in the things seen discernsshimmering behind them, and manifested through them, the thingsunseen and eternal, is the consecrated eye. ‘Art for Art'ssake,’ to quote the cant of the day, has too often meant artfor the flesh's sake. And there are pictures and books, and sights ofvarious sorts, flashed before the eyes of you young men and womenwhich it is pollution to dwell upon, and should be pain to remember.I beseech you all to have guard over these gates of the heart, and topray, ‘Turn away mine eyes from viewing vanity.’ And theother senses, in like manner, have need to be closely connected withGod if they are not to rush us down to the devil.

The body is not only the recipient of impressions. It is thepossessor of appetites and necessities. See to it that these areindulged, with constant reference to God. It is no small attainmentof the Christian life ‘to eat our meat with gladness andsingleness of heart, praising God.’ In a hundred directionsthis characteristic of our corporeal lives tends to lead us all awayfrom supreme consecration to Him. There is the senseless luxury ofthis generation. There is the exaggerated care for physical strengthand completeness amongst the young; there is the intemperance ineating and drinking, which is the curse and the shame of England.There is the provision for the flesh, the absorbing care for theprocuring of material comforts, which drowns the spirit in miserableanxieties, and makes men bond-slaves. There is the corruption whichcomes from drunkenness and from lust. There is the indolence whichchecks lofty aspirations and stops a man in the middle of noble work.And there are many other forms of evil on which I need not dwell, allof which are swept clean out of the way when we lay to heart thisinjunction: ‘I beseech you present your bodies a livingsacrifice,’ and let appetites and tastes and corporeal needs bekept in rigid subordination and in conscious connection with Him. Iremember a quaint old saying of a German schoolmaster, whoapostrophised his body thus: ‘I go with you three times a dayto eat; you must come with me three times a day to pray.’Subjugate the body, and let it be the servant and companion of thedevout spirit.

It is also, besides being the recipient of impressions, and thepossessor of needs and appetites, our instrument for working in theworld. And so the exhortation of my text comes to include this, thatall our activities done by means of brain and eye and tongue and handand foot shall be consciously devoted to Him, and laid as a sacrificeupon His altar. That pervasive, universally diffused reference toGod, in all the details of daily life, is the thing that Christianmen and women need most of all to try to cultivate. ‘Praywithout ceasing,’ says the Apostle. This exhortation can onlybe obeyed if our work is indeed worship, being done by God's help,for God's sake, in communion with God.

So, dear friends, sacrifice is the keynote—meaning therebysurrender, control, and stimulus of the corporeal frame, surrender toGod, in regard to the impressions which we allow to be made upon oursenses, to the indulgence which we grant to our appetites, and thesatisfaction which we seek for our needs, and to the activities whichwe engage in by means of this wondrous instrument with which God hastrusted us. These are the plain principles involved in theexhortation of my text. ‘He that soweth to the flesh, shall ofthe flesh reap corruption.’ ‘I keep under my body, andbring it into subjection.’ It is a good servant; it is a badmaster.

II. Note, secondly, the relation between this priestly service andother kinds of worship.

I need only say a word about that. Paul is not meaning todepreciate the sacrificial ritual, from which he drew his emblem. Buthe is meaning to assert that the devotion of a life, manifestedthrough bodily activity, is higher in its nature than the symbolicalworship of any altar and of any sacrifice. And that falls in withprevailing tendencies in this day, which has laid such a firm hold onthe principle that daily conduct is better than formal worship, thatit has forgotten to ask the question whether the daily conduct islikely to be satisfactory if the formal worship is altogetherneglected. I believe, as profoundly as any man can, that the trueworship is distinguishable from and higher than the more sensuousforms of the Catholic or other sacramentarian churches, or the moresimple of the Puritan and Nonconformist, or the altogether formlessof the Quaker. I believe that the best worship is the manifoldactivities of daily life laid upon God's altar, so that the divisionbetween things secular and things sacred is to a large extentmisleading and irrelevant. But at the same time I believe that youhave very little chance of getting this diffused and all-pervasivereference of all a man's doings to God unless there are, all throughhis life, recurring with daily regularity, reservoirs of power,stations where he may rest, kneeling-places where the attitude ofservice is exchanged for the attitude of supplication; times of quietcommunion with God which shall feed the worshipper's activities asthe white snowfields on the high summits feed the brooks that sparkleby the way, and bring fertility wherever they run. So, dear brethren,remember that whilst life is the field of worship there must be theinward worship within the shrine if there is to be the outwardservice.

III. Lastly, note the equally comprehensive motive and ground ofthis all-inclusive directory for conduct.

‘I beseech you, by the mercies of God.’ That pluraldoes not mean that the Apostle is extending his view over the wholewide field of the divine beneficence, but rather that he iscontemplating the one all-inclusive mercy about which the former partof his letter has been eloquent—viz. the gift ofChrist—and contemplating it in the manifoldness of theblessings which flow from it. The mercies of God which move a man toyield himself as a sacrifice are not the diffused beneficences of Hisprovidence, but the concentrated love that lies in the person andwork of His Son.

And there, as I believe, is the one motive to which we can appealwith any prospect of its being powerful enough to give the needfulimpetus all through a life. The sacrifice of Christ is the ground onwhich our sacrifices can be offered and accepted, for it was thesacrifice of a death propitiatory and cleansing, and on it, as theancient ritual taught us, may be reared the enthusiastic sacrifice ofa life—a thankoffering for it.

Nor is it only the ground on which our sacrifice is accepted, butit is the great motive by which our sacrifice is impelled.There is the difference between the Christian teaching,‘present your bodies a sacrifice,’ and the highest andnoblest of similar teaching elsewhere. One of the purest and loftiestof the ancient moralists was a contemporary of Paul's. He would havere-echoed from his heart the Apostle's directory, but he knew nothingof the Apostle's motive. So his exhortations were powerless. He hadno spell to work on men's hearts, and his lofty teachings were as thevoice of one crying in the wilderness. Whilst Seneca taught, Rome wasa cesspool of moral putridity and Nero butchered. So it always is.There may be noble teachings about self-control, purity, and thelike, but an evil and adulterous generation is slow to dance to suchpiping.

Our poet has bid us—

'Move upwards, casting out the beast,And let the ape and tiger die.'

But how is this heavy bulk of ours to ‘moveupwards’; how is the beast to be ‘cast out’; howare the ‘ape and tiger’ in us to be slain? Paul has toldus, ‘By the mercies of God.’ Christ's gift, meditated on,accepted, introduced into will and heart, is the one power that willmelt our obstinacy, the one magnet that will draw us after it.

Nothing else, brethren, as your own experience has taught you, andas the experience of the world confirms, nothing else will bindBehemoth, and put a hook in his nose. Apart from the constrainingmotive of the love of Christ, all the cords of prudence, conscience,advantage, by which men try to bind their unruly passions and manaclethe insisting flesh, are like the chains on the demoniac'swrists— ‘And he had oftentimes been bound by chains, andthe chains were snapped asunder.’ But the silken leash withwhich the fair Una in the poem leads the lion, the silken leash oflove will bind the strong man, and enable us to rule ourselves. If wewill open our hearts to the sacrifice of Christ, we shall be able tooffer ourselves as thankofferings. If we will let His love sway ourwills and consciences, He will give our wills and consciences powerto master and to offer up our flesh. And the great change, accordingto which He will one day change the body of our humiliation into thelikeness of the body of His glory, will be begun in us, if we liveunder the influence of the motive and the commandment which thisApostle bound together in our text and in his other great words,‘Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price, thereforeglorify God in your body and spirit, which are His.’

TRANSFIGURATION

‘Be not conformed to this world; but be yetransformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what isthat good, and acceptable, and perfect will ofGod.’—ROMANS xii. 2.

I had occasion to point out, in a sermon on the preceding verse,that the Apostle is, in this context, making the transition from thedoctrinal to the practical part of his letter, and that he lays downbroad principles, of which all his subsequent injunctions andexhortations are simply the filling up of the details. One masterword, for the whole Christian life, as we then saw, is sacrifice,self-surrender, and that to God. In like manner, Paul here brackets,with that great conception of the Christian life, another equallydominant and equally comprehensive. In one aspect, it isself-surrender; in another, it is growing transformation. And, justas in the former verse we found that an inward surrender preceded theoutward sacrifice, and that the inner man, having been consecrated asa priest, by this yielding of himself to God, was then called upon tomanifest inward consecration by outward sacrifice, so in this furtherexhortation, an inward ‘renewing of the mind’ is regardedas the necessary antecedent of transformation of outward life.

So we have here another comprehensive view of what the Christianlife ought to be, and that not only grasped, as it were, in its verycentre and essence, but traced out in two directions—as to thatwhich must precede it within, and as to that which follows it asconsequence. An outline of the possibilities, and therefore theduties, of the Christian, is set forth here, in these three thoughtsof my text, the renewed mind issuing in a transfigured life, crownedand rewarded by a clearer and ever clearer insight into what we oughtto be and do.

I. Note, then, that the foundation of all transformation ofcharacter and conduct is laid deep in a renewed mind.

Now it is a matter of world-wide experience, verified by each ofus in our own case, if we have ever been honest in the attempt, thatthe power of self-improvement is limited by very narrow bounds. Anyman that has ever tried to cure himself of the most trivial habitwhich he desires to get rid of, or to alter in the slightest degreethe set of some strong taste or current of his being, knows howlittle he can do, even by the most determined effort. Something maybe effected, but, alas! as the proverbs of all nations and all landshave taught us, it is very little indeed. ‘You cannot expelnature with a fork,’ said the Roman. ‘What's bred in thebone won't come out of the flesh,’ says the Englishman.‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard hisspots?’ says the Hebrew. And we all know what the answer tothat question is. The problem that is set before a man when you tellhim to effect self-improvement is something like that whichconfronted that poor paralytic lying in the porch at the pool:‘If you can walk you will be able to get to the pool that willmake you able to walk. But you have got to be cured before you can dowhat you need to do in order to be cured.’ Only one knife cancut the knot. The Gospel of Jesus Christ presents itself, not as amere republication of morality, not as merely a new stimulus andmotive to do what is right, but as an actual communication to men ofa new power to work in them, a strong hand laid upon our poor, feeblehand with which we try to put on the brake or to apply the stimulus.It is a new gift of a life which will unfold itself after its ownnature, as the bud into flower, and the flower into fruit; giving newdesires, tastes, directions, and renewing the whole nature. And so,says Paul, the beginning of transformation of character is therenovation in the very centre of the being, and the communication ofa new impulse and power to the inward self.

Now, I suppose that in my text the word ‘mind’ is notso much employed in the widest sense, including all the affectionsand will, and the other faculties of our nature, as in the narrowersense of the perceptive power, or that faculty in our nature by whichwe recognise, and make our own, certain truths. ‘The renewingof the mind,’ then, is only, in such an interpretation, atheological way of putting the simpler English thought, a change ofestimates, a new set of views; or if that word be too shallow, asindeed it is, a new set of convictions. It is profoundly true that‘As a man thinketh, so is he.’ Our characters are largelymade by our estimates of what is good or bad, desirable orundesirable. And what the Apostle is thinking about here is, as Itake it, principally how the body of Christian truth, if it effects alodgment in, not merely the brain of a man, but his whole nature,will modify and alter it all. Why, we all know how often a whole lifehas been revolutionised by the sudden dawning or rising in its sky,of some starry new truth, formerly hidden and undreamed of. And if weshould translate the somewhat archaic phraseology of our text intothe plainest of modern English, it just comes to this: If you want tochange your characters, and God knows they all need it, change thedeep convictions of your mind; and get hold, as living realities, ofthe great truths of Christ's Gospel. If you and I really believedwhat we say we believe, that Jesus Christ has died for us, and livesfor us, and is ready to pour out upon us the gift of His DivineSpirit, and wills that we should be like Him, and holds out to us thegreat and wonderful hopes and prospects of an absolutely eternal lifeof supreme and serene blessedness at His right hand, should we be,could we be, the sort of people that most of us are? It is not themuch that you say you believe that shapes your character; it is thelittle that you habitually realise. Truth professed has notransforming power; truth received and fed upon can revolutionise aman's whole character.

So, dear brethren, remember that my text, though it is an analysisof the methods of Christian progress, and though it is a wonderfulsetting forth of the possibilities open to the poorest, dwarfed,blinded, corrupted nature, is also all commandment. And if it is truethat the principles of the Gospel exercise transforming power uponmen's lives, and that in order for these principles to effect theirnatural results there must be honest dealing with them, on our parts,take this as the practical outcome of all this first part of mysermon—let us all see to it that we keep ourselves in touchwith the truths which we say we believe; and that we thorough-goinglyapply these truths in all their searching, revealing, quickening,curbing power, to every action of our daily lives. If for one day wecould bring everything that we do into touch with the creed that weprofess, we should be different men and women. Make of your everythought an action; link every action with a thought. Or, to put itmore Christianlike, let there be nothing in your creed which is notin your commandments; and let nothing be in your life which is notmoulded by these. The beginning of all transformation is therevolutionised conviction of a mind that has accepted the truths ofthe Gospel.

II. Well then, secondly, note the transfigured life.

The Apostle uses in his positive commandment, ‘Be yetransformed,’ the same word which is employed by two of theEvangelists in their account of our Lord's transfiguration. Andalthough I suppose it would be going too far to assert that there isa distinct reference intended to that event, it may be permissible tolook back to it as being a lovely illustration of the possibilitiesthat open to an honest Christian life—the possibility of achange, coming from within upwards, and shedding a strange radianceon the face, whilst yet the identity remains. So by the rippling upfrom within of the renewed mind will come into our lives atransformation not altogether unlike that which passed on Him whenHis garments did shine ‘so as no fuller on earth could whitethem’; and His face was as the sun in his strength.

The life is to be transfigured, yet it remains the same, not onlyin the consciousness of personal identity, but in the main trend anddrift of the character. There is nothing in the Gospel of JesusChrist which is meant to obliterate the lines of the strongly markedindividuality which each of us receives by nature. Rather the Gospelis meant to heighten and deepen these, and to make each man moreintensely himself, more thoroughly individual and unlike anybodyelse. The perfection of our nature is found in the pursuit, to thefurthest point, of the characteristics of our nature, and so, byreason of diversity, there is the greater harmony, and, all takentogether, will reflect less inadequately the infinite glories ofwhich they are all partakers. But whilst the individuality remains,and ought to be heightened by Christian consecration, yet a changeshould pass over our lives, like the change that passes over thewinter landscape when the summer sun draws out the green leaves fromthe hard black boughs, and flashes a fresh colour over all the brownpastures. There should be such a change as when a drop or two of rubywine falls into a cup, and so diffuses a gradual warmth of tint overall the whiteness of the water. Christ in us, if we are true to Him,will make us more ourselves, and yet new creatures in ChristJesus.

And the transformation is to be into His likeness who is thepattern of all perfection. We must be moulded after the same type.There are two types possible for us: this world; Jesus Christ. Wehave to make our choice which is to be the headline after which weare to try to write. ‘They that make them are like untothem.’ Men resemble their gods; men become more or less liketheir idols. What you conceive to be desirable you will more and moreassimilate yourselves to. Christ is the Christian man's pattern; isHe not better than the blind, corrupt world?

That transformation is no sudden thing, though the revolutionwhich underlies it may be instantaneous. The working out ofthe new motives, the working in of the new power, is no merework of a moment. It is a lifelong task till the lump be leavened.Michael Angelo, in his mystical way, used to say that sculptureeffected its aim by the removal of parts; as if the statue laysomehow hid in the marble block. We have, day by day, to work at thetask of removing the superfluities that mask its outlines. Sometimeswith a heavy mallet, and a hard blow, and a broad chisel, we have totake away huge masses; sometimes, with fine tools and delicatetouches, to remove a grain or two of powdered dust from the sparklingblock, but always to seek more and more, by slow, patient toil, toconform ourselves to that serene type of all perfectness that we havelearned to love in Jesus Christ.

And remember, brethren, this transformation is no magic changeeffected whilst men sleep. It is a commandment which we have to braceourselves to perform, day by day to set ourselves to the task of morecompletely assimilating ourselves to our Lord. It comes to be asolemn question for each of us whether we can say, ‘To-day I amliker Jesus Christ than I was yesterday; to-day the truth whichrenews the mind has a deeper hold upon me than it ever hadbefore.’

But this positive commandment is only one side of thetransfiguration that is to be effected. It is clear enough that if anew likeness is being stamped upon a man, the process may be lookedat from the other side; and that in proportion as we become likerJesus Christ, we shall become more unlike the old type to which wewere previously conformed. And so, says Paul, ‘Be not conformedto this world, but be ye transformed.’ He does not mean to saythat the nonconformity precedes the transformation. They are twosides of one process; both arising from the renewing of the mindwithin.

Now, I do not wish to do more than just touch most lightly uponthe thoughts that are here, but I dare not pass them by altogether.‘This world’ here, in my text, is more properly‘this age,’ which means substantially the same thing asJohn's favourite word ‘world,’ viz. the sum total ofgodless men and things conceived of as separated from God, only thatby this expression the essentially fleeting nature of that type ismore distinctly set forth. Now the world is the world to-day just asmuch as it was in Paul's time. No doubt the Gospel has sweetenedsociety; no doubt the average of godless life in England is a betterthing than the average of godless life in the Roman Empire. No doubtthere is a great deal of Christianity diffused through the averageopinion and ways of looking at things, that prevail around us. Butthe World is the world still. There are maxims and ways of living,and so on, characteristic of the Christian life, which are in ascomplete antagonism to the ideas and maxims and practices thatprevail amongst men who are outside of the influences of thisChristian truth in their own hearts, as ever they were.

And although it can only be a word, I want to put in here a veryearnest word which the tendencies of this generation do veryspecially require. It seems to be thought, by a great many people,who call themselves Christians nowadays, that the nearer they cancome in life, in ways of looking at things, in estimates ofliterature, for instance, in customs of society, in politics, intrade, and especially in amusem*nts—the nearer they can come tothe un-Christian world, the more ‘broad’ (save the mark!)and ‘superior to prejudice’ they are.‘Puritanism,’ not only in theology, but in life andconduct, has come to be at a discount in these days. And it seems tobe by a great many professing Christians thought to be a great featto walk as the mules on the Alps do, with one foot over the path andthe precipice down below. Keep away from the edge. You are safer so.Although, of course, I am not talking about mere conventionaldissimilarities; and though I know and believe and feel all that canbe said about the insufficiency, and even insincerity, of such, yetthere is a broad gulf between the man who believes in Jesus Christand His Gospel and the man who does not, and the resulting conductscannot be the same unless the Christian man is insincere.

III. And now lastly, and only a word, note the great reward andcrown of this transfigured life.

Paul puts it in words which, if I had time, would require somecommenting upon. The issue of such a life is, to put it into plainEnglish, an increased power of perceiving, instinctively and surely,what it is God's will that we should do. And that is the reward. Justas when you take away disturbing masses of metal from near a compass,it trembles to its true point, so when, by the discipline of which Ihave been speaking, there are swept away from either side of us thethings that would perturb our judgment, there comes, as blessing andreward, a clear insight into that which it is our duty to do.

There may be many difficulties left, many perplexities. There isno promise here, nor is there anything in the tendencies ofChrist-like living, to lead us to anticipate that guidance in regardto matters of prudence or expediency or temporal advantage willfollow from such a transfigured life. All such matters are still tobe determined in the proper fashion, by the exercise of our own bestjudgment and common-sense. But in the higher region, the knowledge ofgood and evil, surely it is a blessed reward, and one of the highestthat can be given to a man, that there shall be in him so complete aharmony with God that, like God's Son, he ‘does always thethings that please Him,’ and that the Father will show himwhatsoever things Himself doeth; and that these also will the son dolikewise. To know beyond doubt what I ought to do, and knowing, tohave no hesitation or reluctance in doing it, seems to me to beheaven upon earth, and the man that has it needs but little more.This, then, is the reward. Each peak we climb opens wider and clearerprospects into the untravelled land before us.

And so, brethren, here is the way, the only way, by which we canchange ourselves, first let us have our minds renewed by contact withthe truth, then we shall be able to transform our lives into thelikeness of Jesus Christ, and our faces too will shine, and our liveswill be ennobled, by a serene beauty which men cannot but admire,though it may rebuke them. And as the issue of all we shall haveclearer and deeper insight into that will, which to know is life, inkeeping of which there is great reward. And thus our apostle'spromise may be fulfilled for each of us. ‘We all with unveiledfaces reflecting’—as a mirror does—‘the gloryof the Lord, are changed ... into the same image.’

SOBER THINKING

‘For I say, through the grace that is given untome, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself morehighly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as Godhath dealt to every man the measure of faith.’—ROMANSxii. 3.

It is hard to give advice without seeming to assume superiority;it is hard to take it, unless the giver identifies himself with thereceiver, and shows that his counsel to others is a law for himself.Paul does so here, led by the delicate perception which comes from aloving heart, compared with which deliberate ‘tact’ iscold and clumsy. He wishes, as the first of the specific duties towhich he invites the Roman Christians, an estimate of themselvesbased upon the recognition of God as the Giver of all capacities andgraces, and leading to a faithful use for the general good of the‘gifts differing according to the grace given to us.’ Inthe first words of our text, he enforces his counsel by an appeal tohis apostolic authority; but he so presents it that, instead ofseparating himself from the Roman Christians by it, he unites himselfwith them. He speaks of ‘the grace given to me,’and in verse 6 of ‘the grace given to us.’ He wasmade an Apostle by the same giving God who has bestowed varying giftson each of them. He knows what is the grace which he possessesas he would have them know; and in these counsels he is assuming nosuperiority, but is simply using the special gift bestowed on him forthe good of all. With this delicate turn of what might else havesounded harshly authoritative, putting prominently forward the divinegift and letting the man Paul to whom it was given fall into thebackground, he counsels as the first of the social duties whichChristian men owe to one another, a sober and just estimate ofthemselves. This sober estimate is here regarded as being importantchiefly as an aid to right service. It is immediately followed bycounsels to the patient and faithful exercise of differing gifts. Forthus we may know what our gifts are; and the acquisition of suchknowledge is the aim of our text.

I. What determines our gifts.

Paul here gives a precise standard, or ‘measure’ as hecalls it, according to which we are to estimate ourselves.‘Faith’ is the measure of our gifts, and is itself a giftfrom God. The strength of a Christian man's faith determines hiswhole Christian character. Faith is trust, the attitude ofreceptivity. There are in it a consciousness of need, a yearningdesire and a confidence of expectation. It is the open empty handheld up with the assurance that it will be filled; it is the emptypitcher let down into the well with the assurance that it will bedrawn up filled. It is the precise opposite of the self-dependentisolation which shuts us out from God. The law of the Christian lifeis ever, ‘according to your faith be it unto you’;‘believe that ye receive and ye have them.’ So then themore faith a man exercises the more of God and Christ he has. It isthe measure of our capacity, hence there may be indefinite increasein the gifts which God bestows on faithful souls. Each of us willhave as much as he desires and is capable of containing. The walls ofthe heart are elastic, and desire expands them.

The grace given by faith works in the line of its possessor'snatural faculties; but these are supernaturally reinforced andstrengthened while, at the same time, they are curbed and controlled,by the divine gift, and the natural gifts thus dealt with become whatPaul calls charisms. The whole nature of a Christian should beennobled, elevated, made more delicate and intense, when the‘Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus’ abides in andinspires it. Just as a sunless landscape is smitten into suddenbeauty by a burst of sunshine which heightens the colouring of theflowers on the river's bank, and is flashed back from every silveryripple on the stream, so the faith which brings the life of Christinto the life of the Christian makes him more of a man than he wasbefore. So, there will be infinite variety in the resultingcharacters. It is the same force in various forms that rolls in thethunder or gleams in the dewdrops, that paints the butterfly'sfeathers or flashes in a star. All individual idiosyncrasies shouldbe developed in the Christian Church, and will be when its membersyield themselves fully to the indwelling Spirit, and can trulydeclare that the lives which they live in the flesh they live by thefaith of the Son of God.

But Paul here regards the measure of faith as itself ‘dealtto every man’; and however we may construe the grammar of thissentence there is a deep sense in which our faith is God's gift tous. We have to give equal emphasis to the two conceptions of faith asa human act and as a divine bestowal, which have so often been pittedagainst each other as contradictory when really they arecomplementary. The apparent antagonism between them is but oneinstance of the great antithesis to which we come to at last inreference to all human thought on the relations of man to God.‘It is He that worketh in us both to will and to do of His owngood pleasure’; and all our goodness is God-given goodness, andyet it is our goodness. Every devout heart has a consciousness thatthe faith which knits it to God is God's work in it, and that left toitself it would have remained alienated and faithless. Theconsciousness that his faith was his own act blended in full harmonywith the twin consciousness that it was Christ's gift, in theagonised father's prayer, ‘Lord, I believe, help Thou mineunbelief.’

II. What is a just estimate of our gifts.

The Apostle tells us, negatively, that we are not to think morehighly than we ought to think, and positively that we are to‘think soberly.’

To arrive at a just estimate of ourselves the estimate must everbe accompanied with a distinct consciousness that all is God's gift.That will keep us from anything in the nature of pride orover-weening self-importance. It will lead to true humility, which isnot ignorance of what we can do, but recognition that we, the doers,are of ourselves but poor creatures. We are less likely to fancy thatwe are greater than we are when we feel that, whatever we are, Godmade us so. ‘What hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now,if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst notreceived it?’

Further, it is to be noted that the estimate of gifts which Paulenjoins is an estimate with a view to service. Muchself-investigation is morbid, because it is self-absorbed; and muchis morbid because it is undertaken only for the purpose ofascertaining one's ‘spiritual condition.’ Suchself-examination is good enough in its way, and may sometimes be verynecessary; but a testing of one's own capacities for the purpose ofascertaining what we are fit for, and what therefore it is our dutyto do, is far more wholesome. Gifts are God's summons to work, andour first response to the summons should be our scrutiny of our giftswith a distinct purpose of using them for the great end for which wereceived them. It is well to take stock of the loaves that we have,if the result be that we bring our poor provisions to Him, and putthem in His hands, that He may give them back to us so multiplied asto be more than adequate to the needs of the thousands. Such justestimate of our gifts is to be attained mainly by noting ourselves atwork. Patient self-observation may be important, but is apt to bemistaken; and the true test of what we can do is what we dodo.

The just estimate of our gifts which Paul enjoins is needful inorder that we may ascertain what God has meant us to be and do, andmay neither waste our strength in trying to be some one else, norhide our talent in the napkin of ignorance or false humility. Thereis quite as much harm done to Christian character and Christianservice by our failure to recognise what is in our power, as byambitious or ostentatious attempts at what is above our power. Wehave to be ourselves as God has made us in our natural faculties, andas the new life of Christ operating on these has made us newcreatures in Him not by changing but by enlarging our old natures. Itmatters nothing what the special form of a Christian man's servicemay be; the smallest and the greatest are alike to the Lord of all,and He appoints His servants’ work. Whether the servant be acup-bearer or a counsellor is of little moment. ‘He that isfaithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much.’

The positive aspect of this right estimate of one's gifts is, ifwe fully render the Apostle's words, as the Revised Version does,‘so to think as to think soberly.’ There is to beself-knowledge in order to ‘sobriety,’ which includes notonly what we mean by sober-mindedness, but self-government; and thisaspect of the apostolic exhortation opens out into the thought thatthe gifts, which a just estimate of ourselves pronounces us topossess, need to be kept bright by the continual suppression of themind of the flesh, by putting down earthly desires, by guardingagainst a selfish use of them, by preventing them by rigid controlfrom becoming disproportioned and our masters. All the gifts whichChrist bestows upon His people He bestows on condition that they bindthem together by the golden chain of self-control.

MANY AND ONE

‘For we have many members in one body, and allmembers have not the same office: 5. So we, being many, are one bodyin Christ, and every one members one of another.‘—ROMANSxii. 4, 5.

To Paul there was the closest and most vital connection betweenthe profoundest experiences of the Christian life and its plainestand most superficial duties. Here he lays one of his most mysticalconceptions as the very foundation on which to rear the greatstructure of Christian conduct, and links on to one of hisprofoundest thoughts, the unity of all Christians in Christ, acomprehensive series of practical exhortations. We are accustomed tohear from many lips: ‘I have no use for these dogmas that Pauldelights in. Give me his practical teaching. You may keep the Epistleto the Romans, I hold by the thirteenth of First Corinthians.’But such an unnatural severance between the doctrine and the ethicsof the Epistle cannot be effected without the destruction of both.The very principle of this Epistle to the Romans is that thedifference between the law and the Gospel is, that the one preachesconduct without a basis for it, and that the other says, Firstbelieve in Christ, and in the strength of that belief, do the rightand be like Him. Here, then, in the very laying of the foundation forconduct in these verses we have in concrete example the secret of theChristian way of making good men.

I. The first point to notice here is, the unity of the derivedlife. Many are one, because they are each in Christ, and theindividual relationship and derivation of life from Him makes themone whilst continuing to be many. That great metaphor, and nowadaysmuch forgotten and neglected truth, is to Paul's mind the fact whichought to mould the whole life and conduct of individual Christiansand to be manifested therein. There are three most significant andinstructive symbols by which the unity of believers in Christ Jesusis set forth in the New Testament. Our Lord Himself gives us the oneof the vine and its branches, and that symbol suggests the silent,effortless process by which the life-giving sap rises and finds itsway from the deep root to the furthest tendril and the far-extendedgrowth. The same symbol loses indeed in one respect its value if wetransfer it to growths more congenial to our northern climate, andinstead of the vine with its rich clusters, think of some great elm,deeply rooted, and with its firm bole and massive branches, throughall of which the mystery of a common life penetrates and makes everyleaf in the cloud of foliage through which we look up participant ofitself. But, profound and beautiful as our Lord's metaphor is, thevegetative uniformity of parts and the absence of individualcharacteristics make it, if taken alone, insufficient. In the treeone leaf is like another; it ‘grows green and broad and takesno care.’ Hence, to express the whole truth of the unionbetween Christ and us we must bring in other figures. Thus we findthe Apostle adducing the marriage tie, the highest earthly example ofunion, founded on choice and affection. But even that sacred bondleaves a gap between those who are knit together by it; and so wehave the conception of our text, the unity of the body asrepresenting for us the unity of believers with Jesus. This is aunity of life. He is not only head as chief and sovereign, but He issoul or life, which has its seat, not in this or that organ as oldphysics teach, but pervades the whole and ‘filleth all inall.’ The mystery which concerns the union of soul and body,and enshrouds the nature of physical life, is part of the felicity ofthis symbol in its Christian application. That commonest of allthings, the mysterious force which makes matter live and glow underspiritual emotion, and changes the vibrations of a nerve, or theundulations of the grey brain, into hope and love and faith, eludesthe scalpel and the microscope. Of man in his complex nature it istrue that ‘clouds and darkness are round about him,’ andwe may expect an equally solemn mystery to rest upon that which makesout of separate individuals one living body, animated with the lifeand moved by the Spirit of the indwelling Christ. We can get nofurther back, and dig no deeper down, than His own words, ‘I am... the life.’

But, though this unity is mysterious, it is most real. EveryChristian soul receives from Christ the life of Christ. There is areal implantation of a higher nature which has nothing to do with sinand is alien from death. There is a true regeneration which issupernatural, and which makes all who possess it one, in the measureof their possession, as truly as all the leaves on a tree are onebecause fed by the same sap, or all the members in the natural bodyare one, because nourished by the same blood. So the true bond ofChristian unity lies in the common participation of the one Lord, andthe real Christian unity is a unity of derived life.

The misery and sin of the Christian Church have been, and are,that it has sought to substitute other bonds of unity. The wholeweary history of the divisions and alienations between Christians hassurely sufficiently, and more than sufficiently, shown the failure ofthe attempts to base Christian oneness upon uniformity of opinion, orof ritual, or of purpose. The difference between the real unity, andthese spurious attempts after it, is the difference between bundlesof fa*ggots, dead and held together by a cord, and a living treelifting its multitudinous foliage towards the heavens. The bundle offa*ggots may be held together in some sort of imperfect union, but isno exhibition of unity. If visible churches must be based on somekind of agreement, they can never cover the same ground as that of‘the body of Christ.’

That oneness is independent of our organisations, and even of ourwill, since it comes from the common possession of a common life. Itsenemies are not divergent opinions or forms, but the evil tempers anddispositions which impede, or prevent, the flow into each Christiansoul of the uniting ‘Spirit of life in Christ Jesus’which makes the many who may be gathered into separate folds oneflock clustered around the one Shepherd. And if that unity be thus afundamental fact in the Christian life and entirely apart fromexternal organisation, the true way to increase it in each individualis, plainly, the drawing nearer to Him, and the opening of ourspirits so as to receive fuller, deeper, and more continuous inflowsfrom His own inexhaustible fullness. In the old Temple stood theseven-branched candlestick, an emblem of a formal unity; in the newthe seven candlesticks are one, because Christ stands in the midst.He makes the body one; without Him it is a carcase.

II. The diversity.

‘We have many members in one body, but all members have notthe same office.’ Life has different functions in differentorgans. It is light in the eye, force in the arm, music on thetongue, swiftness in the foot; so also is Christ. The higher acreature rises in the scale of life, the more are the partsdifferentiated. The lowest is a mere sac, which performs all thefunctions that the creature requires; the highest is a man with amultitude of organs, each of which is definitely limited to oneoffice. In like manner the division of labour in society measures itsadvance; and in like manner in the Church there is to be the widestdiversity. What the Apostle designates as ‘gifts’ arenatural characteristics heightened by the Spirit of Christ; theeffect of the common life in each ought to be the intensifying andmanifestation of individuality of character. In the Christian idealof humanity there is place for every variety of gifts. The flora ofthe Mountain of God yields an endless multiplicity of growths on itsascending slopes which pass through every climate. There ought to bea richer diversity in the Church than anywhere besides; that treeshould ‘bear twelve manner of fruits, yielding its fruit everymonth for the healing of the nations.’ ‘All flesh is notthe same flesh.’ ‘Star differeth from star inglory.’

The average Christian life of to-day sorely fails in two things:in being true to itself, and in tolerance of diversities. We are allso afraid of being ticketed as ‘eccentric,’‘odd,’ that we oftentimes stifle the genuine impulses ofthe Spirit of Christ leading us to the development of unfamiliartypes of goodness, and the undertaking of unrecognised forms ofservice. If we trusted in Christ in ourselves more, and took our lawsfrom His whispers, we should often reach heights of goodness whichtower above us now, and discover in ourselves capacities whichslumber undiscerned. There is a dreary monotony and uniformityamongst us which impoverishes us, and weakens the testimony that webear to the quickening influence of the Spirit that is in ChristJesus; and we all tend to look very suspiciously at any man who‘puts all the others out’ by being himself, and lettingthe life that he draws from the Lord dictate its own manner ofexpression. It would breathe a new life into all our Christiancommunities if we allowed full scope to the diversities of operation,and realised that in them all there was the one Spirit. The worldcondemns originality: the Church should have learned to prize it.‘One after this fashion, and one after that,’ is the onlywholesome law of the development of the manifold graces of theChristian life.

III. The harmony.

‘We being many are one body in Christ, and every one membersone of another.’ That expression is remarkable, for we mighthave expected to read rather members of the body, than ofeach other; but the bringing in of such an idea suggests mostemphatically that thought of the mutual relation of each part of thegreat whole, and that each has offices to discharge for the benefitof each. In the Christian community, as in an organised body, theactive co-operation of all the parts is the condition of health. Allthe rays into which the spectrum breaks up the pure white light mustbe gathered together again in order to produce it; just as everyinstrument in the great orchestra contributes to the volume of sound.The Lancashire hand-bell ringers may illustrate this point for us.Each man picks up his own bell from the table and sounds his own noteat the moment prescribed by the score, and so the whole of thecomposer's idea is reproduced. To suppress diversities results inmonotony; to combine them is the only sure way to secure harmony. Normust we forget that the indwelling life of the Church can only bemanifested by the full exhibition and freest possible play of all theforms which that life assumes in individual character. It needs all,and more than all, the types of mental characteristics that can befound in humanity to mirror the infinite beauty of the indwellingLord. ‘There are diversities of operations,’ and allthose diversities but partially represent that same Lord ‘whoworketh all in all,’ and Himself is more than all, and, afterall manifestation through human characters, remains hinted at ratherthan declared, suggested but not revealed.

Still further, only by the exercise of possible diversities is theone body nourished, for each member, drawing life directly andwithout the intervention of any other from Christ the Source, drawsalso from his fellow-Christian some form of the common life that tohimself is unfamiliar, and needs human intervention in order to itsreception. Such dependence upon one's brethren is not inconsistentwith a primal dependence on Christ alone, and is a safeguard againstthe cultivating of one's own idiosyncrasies till they become diseasedand disproportionate. The most slenderly endowed Christian soul hasthe double charge of giving to, and receiving from, its brethren. Wehave all something which we can contribute to the general stock. Wehave all need to supplement our own peculiar gifts by brotherlyministration. The prime condition of Christian vitality has been setforth for ever by the gracious invitation, which is also animperative command, ‘Abide in Me and I in you’; but theywho by such abiding are recipients of a communicated life are notthereby isolated, but united to all who like them have received‘the manifestation of the Spirit to do good with.’

GRACE AND GRACES

‘Having then gifts, differing according to thegrace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesyaccording to the proportion of faith; 7. Or ministry, let us wait onour ministering; or he that teacheth, on teaching; 8. Or he thatexhorteth, on exhortation; he that giveth, let him do it withsimplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth mercy,with cheerfulness.’—ROMANS xii. 6-8.

The Apostle here proceeds to build upon the great thought of theunity of believers in the one body a series of practicalexhortations. In the first words of our text, he, with characteristicdelicacy, identifies himself with the Roman Christians as arecipient, like them, of ‘the grace that is given to us,’and as, therefore, subject to the same precepts which he commends tothem. He does not stand isolated by the grace that is given to him;nor does he look down as from the height of his apostleship on themultitude below, saying to them,—Go. As one of themselves hestands amongst them, and with brotherly exhortation says,—Come.If that had been the spirit in which all Christian teachers hadbesought men, their exhortations would less frequently have beenbreath spent in vain.

We may note

I. The grace that gives the gifts.

The connection between these two is more emphatically suggested bythe original Greek, in which the word for ‘gifts’ is aderivative of that for ‘grace.’ The relation betweenthese two can scarcely be verbally reproduced in English; but it maybe, though imperfectly, suggested by reading ‘graces’instead of ‘gifts.’ The gifts are represented as beingthe direct product of, and cognate with, the grace bestowed. As wehave had already occasion to remark, they are in Paul's language adesignation of natural capacities strengthened by the access of thelife of the Spirit of Christ. As a candle plunged in a vase of oxygenleaps up into more brilliant flame, so all the faculties of the humansoul are made a hundred times themselves when the quickening power ofthe life of Christ enters into them.

It is to be observed that the Apostle here assumes that everyChristian possesses, in some form, that grace which gives graces. Tohim a believing soul without Christ-given gifts is a monstrosity. Noone is without some graces, and therefore no one is without someduties. No one who considers the multitude of professing Christianswho hamper all our churches to-day, and reflects on the modern needto urge on the multitude of idlers forms of Christian activity, willfail to recognise signs of terribly weakened vitality. The humility,which in response to all invitations to work for Christ pleadsunfitness is, if true, more tragical than it at first seems, for itis a confession that the man who alleges it has no real hold of theChrist in whom he professes to trust. If a Christian man is fit forno Christian work, it is time that he gravely ask himself whether hehas any Christian life. ‘Having gifts’ is the basis ofall the Apostle's exhortations. It is to him inconceivable that anyChristian should not possess, and be conscious of possessing, someendowment from the life of Christ which will fit him for, and bindhim to, a course of active service.

The universality of this possession is affirmed, if we note that,according to the Greek, it was ‘given’ at a special timein the experience of each of these Roman Christians. The rendering‘was given’ might be more accurately exchanged for‘has been given,’ and that expression is best taken asreferring to a definite moment in the history of each believernamely, his conversion. When we ‘yield ourselves to God,’as Paul exhorts us to do in the beginning of this chapter, as thecommencement of all true life of conformity to His will, Christyields Himself to us. The possession of these gifts of grace is noprerogative of officials; and, indeed, in all the exhortations whichfollow there is no reference to officials, though of course such werein existence in the Roman Church. They had their special functionsand special qualifications for these. But what Paul is dealing withnow is the grace that is inseparable from individual surrender toChrist, and has been bestowed upon all who are His. To limit thegifts to officials, and to suppose that the universal gifts in anydegree militate against the recognition of officials in the Church,are equally mistakes, and confound essentially differentsubjects.

II. The graces that flow from the grace.

The Apostle's catalogue of these is not exhaustive, nor logicallyarranged; but yet a certain loose order may be noted, which may beprofitable for us to trace. They are in number seven—the sacrednumber; and are capable of being divided, as so many of the series ofsevens are, into two portions, one containing four and the otherthree. The former include more public works, to each of which a manmight be specially devoted as his life work for and in the Church.Three are more private, and may be conceived to have a wider relationto the world. There are some difficulties of construction andrendering in the list, which need not concern us here; and we maysubstantially follow the Authorised Version.

The first group of four seems to fall into two pairs, the first ofwhich, ‘prophecy’ and ‘ministry,’ seem to bebracketed together by reason of the difference between them. Prophecyis a very high form of special inspiration, and implies a directreception of special revelation, but not necessarily of futureevents. The prophet is usually coupled in Paul's writings with theapostle, and was obviously amongst those to whom was given one of thehighest forms of the gifts of Christ. It is very beautiful to notethat by natural contrast the Apostle at once passes to one of theforms of service which a vulgar estimate would regard as remotestfrom the special revelation of the prophet, and is confined to lowlyservice. Side by side with the exalted gift of prophecy Paul puts thelowly gift of ministry. Very significant is the juxtaposition ofthese two extremes. It teaches us that the lowliest office is astruly allotted by Jesus as the most sacred, and that His highestgifts find an adequate field for manifestation in him who is servantof all. Ministry to be rightly discharged needs spiritual character.The original seven were men ‘full of faith and of the HolyGhost,’ though all they had to do was to hand their pittancesto poor widows. It may be difficult to decide for what reason otherthan the emphasising of this contrast the Apostle links togetherministry and prophecy, and so breaks a natural sequence which wouldhave connected the second pair of graces with the first member of thefirst pair. We should have expected that here, as elsewhere,‘prophet,’ ‘teacher,’ ‘exhorter,’would have been closely connected, and there seems no reason why theyshould not have been so, except that which we have suggested, namely,the wish to bring together the highest and the lowest forms ofservice.

The second pair seem to be linked together by likeness. The‘teacher’ probably had for his function, primarily, thenarration of the facts of the Gospel, and the setting forth in a formaddressed chiefly to the understanding the truths thereby revealed;whilst the ‘exhorter’ rather addressed himself to thewill, presenting the same truth, but in forms more intended toinfluence the emotions. The word here rendered ‘exhort’is found in Paul's writings as bearing special meanings, such asconsoling, stimulating, encouraging, rebuking and others. Of coursethese two forms of service would often be associated, and each wouldbe imperfect when alone; but it would appear that in the early Churchthere were persons in whom the one or the other of these two elementswas so preponderant that their office was thereby designated. Eachreceived a special gift from the one Source. The man who could onlysay to his brother, ‘Be of good cheer,’ was as much therecipient of the Spirit as the man who could connect and elaborate asystematic presentation of the truths of the Gospel.

These four graces are followed by a group of three, which may beregarded as being more private, as not pointing to permanent officesso much as to individual acts. They are ‘giving,’‘ruling,’ ‘showing pity,’ concerning which weneed only note that the second of these can hardly be theecclesiastical office, and that it stands between two which areclosely related, as if it were of the same kind. The gifts of money,or of direction, or of pity, are one in kind. The right use of wealthcomes from the gift of God's grace; so does the right use of any swaywhich any of us have over any of our brethren; and so does the glowof compassion, the exercise of the natural human sympathy whichbelongs to all, and is deepened and made tenderer and intenser by thegift of the Spirit. It would be a very different Church, and a verydifferent world, if Christians, who were not conscious of possessinggifts which made them fit to be either prophets, or teachers, orexhorters, and were scarcely endowed even for any special form ofministry, felt that a gift from their hands, or a wave of pity fromtheir hearts, was a true token of the movement of God's Spirit ontheir spirits. The fruit of the Spirit is to be found in the widefields of everyday life, and the vine bears many clusters for thethirsty lips of wearied men who may little know what gives them theirbloom and sweetness. It would be better for both giver and receiverif Christian beneficence were more clearly recognised as one of themanifestations of spiritual life.

III. The exercise of the graces.

There are some difficulties in reference to the grammaticalconstruction of the words of our text, into which it is not necessarythat we should enter here. We may substantially follow the Authorisedand Revised Versions in supplying verbs in the various clauses, so asto make of the text a series of exhortations. The first of these isto ‘prophesy according to the proportion of faith’; acommandment which is best explained by remembering that in thepreceding verse ‘the measure of faith’ has been stated asbeing the measure of the gifts. The prophet then is to exercise hisgifts in proportion to his faith. He is to speak his convictionsfully and openly, and to let his utterances be shaped by theindwelling life. This exhortation may well sink into the heart ofpreachers in this day. It is but the echo of Jeremiah's strong words:‘He that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. Whatis the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. Is not my word like asfire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock inpieces?’ The ancient prophet's woe falls with double weight onthose who use their words as a veil to obscure their real beliefs,and who prophesy, not ‘according to the proportion offaith,’ but according to the expectations of the hearers, whosefaith is as vague as theirs.

In the original, the next three exhortations are alike ingrammatical construction, which is represented in the AuthorisedVersion by the supplement ‘let us wait on,’ and in theRevised Version by ‘let us give ourselves to’; we mightwith advantage substitute for either the still more simple form‘be in,’ after the example of Paul's exhortation toTimothy ‘be in these things’; that is, as our Version hasit, ‘give thyself wholly to them.’ The various gifts areeach represented as a sphere within which its possessor is to move,for the opportunities for the exercise of which he is carefully towatch, and within the limits of which he is humbly to keep. Thatgeneral law applies equally to ministry, and teaching and exhorting.We are to seek to discern our spheres; we are to be occupied with, ifnot absorbed in, them. At the least we are diligently to use the giftwhich we discover ourselves to possess, and thus filling our severalspheres, we are to keep within them, recognising that each is sacredas the manifestation of God's will for each of us. The divergence offorms is unimportant, and it matters nothing whether ‘the Giverof all’ grants less or more. The main thing is that each befaithful in the administration of what he has received, and not seekto imitate his brother who is diversely endowed, or to monopolise forhimself another's gifts. To insist that our brethren's gifts shouldbe like ours, and to try to make ours like theirs, are equally sinsagainst the great truth, of which the Church as a whole is theexample, that there are ‘diversities of operations but the sameSpirit.’

The remaining three exhortations are in like manner throwntogether by a similarity of construction in which the personality ofthe doer is put in the foreground, and the emphasis of thecommandment is rested on the manner in which the grace is exercised.The reason for that may be that in these three especially the mannerwill show the grace. ‘Giving’ is to be ‘withsimplicity.’ There are to be no sidelong looks toself-interest; no flinging of a gift from a height, as a bone mightbe flung to a dog; no seeking for gratitude; no ostentation in thegift. Any taint of such mixed motives as these infuses poison intoour gifts, and makes them taste bitter to the receiver, and recoil inhurt upon ourselves. To ‘give with simplicity’ is to giveas God gives.

‘Diligence’ is the characteristic prescribed for theman that rules. We have already pointed out that this exhortationincludes a much wider area than that of any ecclesiastical officials.It points to another kind of rule, and the natural gifts needed forany kind of rule are diligence and zeal. Slackly-held reins makestumbling steeds; and any man on whose shoulders is laid the weightof government is bound to feel it as a weight. The history of many anation, and of many a family, teaches that where the rule is slothfulall evils grow apace; and it is that natural energy and earnestness,deepened and hallowed by the Christian life, which here is enjoinedas the true Christian way of discharging the function of ruling,which, in some form or another, devolves on almost all of us.

‘He that showeth mercy with cheerfulness.’ The glow ofnatural human sympathy is heightened so as to become a‘gift,’ and the way in which it is exercised is definedas being ‘with cheerfulness.’ That injunction is butpartially understood if it is taken to mean no more than thatsympathy is not to be rendered grudgingly, or as by necessity. Nosympathy is indeed possible on such terms; unless the heart is in it,it is nought. And that it should thus flow forth spontaneouslywherever sorrow and desolation evoke it, there must be a continualrepression of self, and a heart disengaged from the entanglements ofits own circ*mstances, and at leisure to make a brother's burden itsvery own. But the exhortation may, perhaps, rather mean that thetruest sympathy carries a bright face into darkness, and comes likesunshine in a shady place.

LOVE THAT CAN HATE

‘Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which isevil; cleave to that which is good. 10. In love of the brethren betenderly affectioned one to another; in honour preferring oneanother.’—ROMANS xii. 9-10 (R. V.).

Thus far the Apostle has been laying down very general preceptsand principles of Christian morals. Starting with the oneall-comprehensive thought of self-sacrifice as the very foundation ofall goodness, of transformation as its method, and of the clearknowledge of our several powers and faithful stewardship of these, asits conditions, he here proceeds to a series of more specificexhortations, which at first sight seem to be very unconnected, butthrough which there may be discerned a sequence of thought.

The clauses of our text seem at first sight strangelydisconnected. The first and the last belong to the same subject, butthe intervening clause strikes a careless reader as out of place andheterogeneous. I think that we shall see it is not so; but for thepresent we but note that here are three sets of precepts whichenjoin, first, honest love; then, next, a healthy vehemence againstevil and for good; and finally, a brotherly affection and mutualrespect.

I. Let love be honest.

Love stands at the head, and is the fontal source of all separateindividualised duties. Here Paul is not so much prescribing love asdescribing the kind of love which he recognises as genuine, and themain point on which he insists is sincerity. The‘dissimulation’ of the Authorised Version only covershalf the ground. It means, hiding what one is; but there issimulation, or pretending to be what one is not. There are words oflove which are like the iridescent scum on the surface veiling theblack depths of a pool of hatred. A Psalmist complains of having tomeet men whose words were ‘smoother than butter’ andwhose true feelings were as ‘drawn swords’; but, short ofsuch consciously lying love, we must all recognise as a real dangerbesetting us all, and especially those of us who are naturallyinclined to kindly relations with our fellows, the tendency to uselanguage just a little in excess of our feelings. The glove isslightly stretched, and the hand in it is not quite large enough tofill it. There is such a thing, not altogether unknown in Christiancircles, as benevolence, which is largely cant, and words ofconventional love about individuals which do not represent anycorresponding emotion. Such effusive love pours itself in words, andis most generally the token of intense selfishness. Any man who seeksto make his words a true picture of his emotions must be aware thatfew harder precepts have ever been given than this brief one of theApostle's, ‘Let love be without hypocrisy.’

But the place where this exhortation comes in the apostolicsequence here may suggest to us the discipline through whichobedience to it is made possible. There is little to be done by theway of directly increasing either the fervour of love or the honestyof its expression. The true method of securing both is to begrowingly transformed by ‘the renewing of our minds,’ andgrowingly to bring our whole old selves under the melting andsoftening influence of ‘the mercies of God.’ It isswollen self-love, ‘thinking more highly of ourselves than weought to think,’ which impedes the flow of love to others, andit is in the measure in which we receive into our minds ‘themind that was in Christ Jesus,’ and look at men as He did, thatwe shall come to love them all honestly and purely. When we aredelivered from the monstrous oppression and tyranny of self, we havehearts capable of a Christlike and Christ-giving love to all men, andonly they who have cleansed their hearts by union with Him, and byreceiving into them the purging influence of His own Spirit, will beable to love without hypocrisy.

II. Let love abhor what is evil, and cleave to what is good.

If we carefully consider this apparently irrelevant interruptionin the sequence of the apostolic exhortations, we shall, I think, seeat once that the irrelevance is only apparent, and that the healthyvehemence against evil and resolute clinging to good is as essentialto the noblest forms of Christian love as is the sincerity enjoinedin the previous clause. To detest the one and hold fast by the otherare essential to the purity and depth of our love. Evil is to beloathed, and good to be clung to in our own moral conduct, andwherever we see them. These two precepts are not mere tautology, butthe second of them is the ground of the first. The force of ourrecoil from the bad will be measured by the firmness of our grasp ofthe good; and yet, though inseparably connected, the one is apt to beeasier to obey than is the other. There are types of Christian men towhom it is more natural to abhor the evil than to cleave to the good;and there are types of character of which the converse is true. Weoften see men very earnest and entirely sincere in their detestationof meanness and wickedness, but very tepid in their appreciation ofgoodness. To hate is, unfortunately, more congenial with ordinarycharacters than to love; and it is more facile to look down onbadness than to look up at goodness.

But it needs ever to be insisted upon, and never more than in thisday of spurious charity and unprincipled toleration, that a healthyhatred of moral evil and of sin, wherever found and however garbed,ought to be the continual accompaniment of all vigorous and manlycleaving to that which is good. Unless we shudderingly recoil fromcontact with the bad in our own lives, and refuse to christen it withdeceptive euphemisms when we meet it in social and civil life, weshall but feebly grasp, and slackly hold, that which is good. Suchenergy of moral recoil from evil is perfectly consistent with honestlove, for it is things, not men, that we are to hate; and it isneedful as the completion and guardian of love itself. There isalways danger that love shall weaken the condemnation of wrong, andmodern liberality, both in the field of opinion and in regard topractical life, has so far condoned evil as largely to have lost itshold upon good. The criminal is pitied rather than blamed, and amultitude of agencies are so occupied in elevating the wrong-doersthat they lose sight of the need of punishing.

Nor is it only in reference to society that this tendency worksharm. The effect of it is abundantly manifest in the fashionableideas of God and His character. There are whole schools of opinionwhich practically strike out of their ideal of the Divine Natureabhorrence of evil, and, little as they think it, are thereby fatallyimpoverishing their ideal of God, and making it impossible tounderstand His government of the world. As always, so in this matter,the authentic revelation of the Divine Nature, and the perfectpattern for the human are to be found in Jesus Christ. We recall thatwonderful incident, when on His last approach to Jerusalem, roundingthe shoulder of the Mount of Olives, He beheld the city, gleaming inthe morning sunshine across the valley, and forgetting His ownsorrow, shed tears over its approaching desolation, which yet Hesteadfastly pronounced. His loathing of evil was whole-souled andabsolute, and equally intense and complete was His cleaving to thatwhich is good. In both, and in the harmony between them, He makes Godknown, and prescribes and holds forth the ideal of perfect humanityto men.

III. Let sincere and discriminating love be concentrated onChristian men.

In the final exhortation of our text ‘the love of thebrethren’ takes the place of the more diffused and general loveenjoined in the first clause. The expression ‘kindlyaffectioned’ is the rendering of a very eloquent word in theoriginal in which the instinctive love of a mother to her child, orthe strange mystical ties which unite members of a family together,irrespective of their differences of character and temperament, aretaken as an example after which Christian men are to mould theirrelations to one another. The love which is without hypocrisy, and isto be diffused on all sides, is also to be gathered together andconcentrated with special energy on all who ‘call upon JesusChrist as Lord, both their Lord and ours.’ The more generalprecept and the more particular are in perfect harmony, however ourhuman weakness sometimes confuses them. It is obvious that this finalprecept of our text will be the direct result of the two preceding,for the love which has learned to be moral, hating evil, and clingingto good as necessary, when directed to possessors of like preciousfaith will thrill with the consciousness of a deep mystical bond ofunion, and will effloresce in all brotherly love and kindlyaffections. They who are like one another in the depths of theirmoral life, who are touched by like aspirations after like holythings, and who instinctively recoil with similar revulsion from likeabominations, will necessarily feel the drawing of a unity far deeperand sacreder than any superficial likenesses of race, orcirc*mstance, or opinion. Two men who share, however imperfectly, inChrist's Spirit are more akin in the realities of their nature,however they may differ on the surface, than either of them is toanother, however like he may seem, who is not a partaker in the lifeof Christ.

This instinctive, Christian love, like all true and pure love, isto manifest itself by ‘preferring one another in honour’;or as the word might possibly be rendered, ‘anticipating oneanother.’ We are not to wait to have our place assigned beforewe give our brother his. There will be no squabbling for the chiefseat in the synagogue, or the uppermost rooms at the feast, wherebrotherly love marshals the guests. The one cure for petty jealousiesand the miserable strife for recognition, which we are all tempted toengage in, lies in a heart filled with love of the brethren becauseof its love to the Elder Brother of them all, and to the Father whois His Father as well as ours. What a contrast is presented betweenthe practice of Christians and these precepts of Paul! We may wellbow ourselves in shame and contrition when we read these clear-drawnlines indicating what we ought to be, and set by the side of them theblurred and blotted pictures of what we are. It is a painful butprofitable task to measure ourselves against Paul's ideal of Christ'scommandment; but it will only be profitable if it brings us toremember that Christ gives before He commands, and that conformitywith His ideal must begin, not with details of conduct, or withemotion, however pure, but with yielding ourselves to the God whom*oves us by His mercies, and being ‘transformed by the renewingof our minds’ and ‘the indwelling of Christ in our heartsby faith.’

A TRIPLET OF GRACES

‘Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit;serving the Lord.’—ROMANS xii. 11.

Paul believed that Christian doctrine was meant to influenceChristian practice; and therefore, after the fundamental and profoundexhibition of the central truths of Christianity which occupies theearlier portion of this great Epistle, he tacks on, with a‘therefore’ to his theological exposition, a series ofplain, practical teachings. The place where conduct comes in theletter is profoundly significant, and, if the significance of it hadbeen observed and the spirit of it carried into practice, there wouldhave been less of a barren orthodoxy, and fewer attempts at producingrighteous conduct without faith.

But not only is the place where this series of exhortations occurvery significant, but the order in which they appear is alsoinstructive. The great principle which covers all conduct, and may bebroken up into all the minutenesses of practical directions isself-surrender. Give yourselves up to God; that is the Alpha and theOmega of all goodness, and wherever that foundation is really laid,on it will rise the fair building of a life which is a temple,adorned with whatever things are lovely and of good report. So afterPaul has laid deep and broad the foundation of all Christian virtuein his exhortation to present ourselves as living sacrifices, he goeson to point out the several virtues in which such self-surrender willmanifest itself. There runs through the most of these exhortations anarrangement in triplets—three sister Graces linked togetherhand-in-hand as it were—and my text presents an example of thatthreefoldness in grouping. ‘Not slothful in business; ferventin spirit; serving the Lord.’

I. We have, first, the prime grace of Christian diligence.

‘Not slothful in business’ suggests, by reason of ourmodern restriction of that word ‘business’ to a man'sdaily occupation, a much more limited range to this exhortation thanthe Apostle meant to give it. The idea which is generally drawn fromthese words by English readers is that they are to do their ordinarywork diligently, and, all the while, notwithstanding the cooling ordistracting influences of their daily avocations, are to keepthemselves ‘fervent in spirit.’ That is a noble andneedful conception of the command, but it does not express what is inthe Apostle's mind. He does not mean by ‘business’ atrade or profession, or daily occupation. But the word means‘zeal’ or ‘earnestness.’ And what Paul saysis just this—‘In regard to your earnestness in alldirections, see that you are not slothful.’

The force and drift of the whole precept is just the exhortationto exercise the very homely virtue of diligence, which is as much acondition of growth and maturity in the Christian as it is in anyother life. The very homeliness and obviousness of the duty causes usoften to lose sight of its imperativeness and necessity.

Many of us, if we would sit quietly down and think of how we goabout our ‘business,’ as we call it, and of how we goabout our Christian life, which ought to be our highest business,would have great cause for being ashamed. We begin the one early inthe morning, we keep hard at it all day, our eyes are wide open tosee any opening where money is to be made; that is all right. We giveour whole selves to our work whilst we are at it; that is as itshould be. But why are there not the same concentration, the samewide-awakeness, the same open-eyed eagerness to find out ways ofadvancement, the same resolved and continuous and all-comprehendingand dominating enthusiasm about our Christianity as there is aboutour shop, or our mill, or our success as students? Why are we allfire in the one case and all ice in the other? Why do we think thatit is enough to lift the burden that Christ lays upon us with onelanguid finger, and to put our whole hand, or rather, as the prophetsays, ‘both hands earnestly,’ to the task of lifting theload of daily work? ‘In your earnestness be notslothful.’

Brethren, that is a very homely exhortation. I wonder how many ofus can say, ‘Lord! I have heard, and I have obeyed Thyprecept.’

II. Diligence must be fed by a fervent spirit.

The word translated ‘fervent’ is literally boiling.The metaphor is very plain and intelligible. The spirit brought intocontact with Christian truth and with the fire of the Holy Spiritwill naturally have its temperature raised, and will be moved by thewarm touch as heat makes water in a pot hung above a fire boil. Suchemotion, produced by the touch of the fiery Spirit of God, is whatPaul desires for, and enjoins on, all Christians; for such emotion isthe only way by which the diligence, without which no Christianprogress will be made, can be kept up.

No man will work long at a task that his heart is not in; or if hedoes, because he is obliged, the work will be slavery. In order,then, that diligence may neither languish and become slothfulness,nor be felt to be a heavy weight and an unwelcome necessity, Paulhere bids us see to it that our hearts are moved because there is afire below which makes ‘the soul's depths boil inearnest.’

Now, of course, I know that, as a great teacher has told us,‘The gods approve the depth and not the tumult of thesoul,’ and I know that there is a great deal of emotionalChristianity which is worth nothing. But it is not that kind offervour that the Apostle is enjoining here. Whilst it is perfectlytrue that mere emotion often does co-exist with, and very often leadsto, entire negligence as to possessing and manifesting practicalexcellence, the true relation between these is just theopposite—viz. that this fervour of which I speak, thiswide-awakeness and enthusiasm of a spirit all quickened into rapidityof action by the warmth which it has felt from God in Christ, shoulddrive the wheels of life. Boiling water makes steam, does it not? Andwhat is to be done with the steam that comes off the‘boiling’ spirit? You may either let it go roaringthrough a waste-pipe and do nothing but make a noise and be idlydissipated in the air, or you may lead it into a cylinder and make itlift a piston, and then you will get work out of it. That is what theApostle desires us to do with our emotion. The lightning goescareering through the sky, but we have harnessed it to tram-carsnowadays, and made it ‘work for its living,’ to carry ourletters and light our rooms. Fervour of a Christian spirit is allright when it is yoked to Christian work, and made to draw what elseis a heavy chariot. It is not emotion, but it is indolent emotion,that is the curse of much of our ‘fervent’Christianity.

There cannot be too much fervour. There may be too little outletprovided for the fervour to work in. It may all go off in comfortablefeeling, in enthusiastic prayers and ‘Amens!’ and‘So be it, Lords!’ and the like, or it may come with usinto our daily tasks, and make us buckle to with more earnestness,and more continuity. Diligence driven by earnestness, and fervourthat works, are the true things.

And surely, surely there cannot be any genuineChristianity—certainly there cannot be any deepChristianity—which is not fervent.

We hear from certain quarters of the Church a great deal about thevirtue of moderation. But it seems to me that, if you take intoaccount what Christianity tells us, the ‘sober’ feelingis fervent feeling, and tepid feeling is imperfect feeling. I cannotunderstand any man believing as plain matter-of-fact the truths onwhich the whole New Testament insists, and keeping himself‘cool,’ or, as our friends call it,‘moderate.’ Brethren, enthusiasm—which properlymeans the condition of being dwelt in by a god—is the wise, thereasonable attitude of Christian men, if they believe their ownChristianity and are really serving Jesus Christ. They should be‘diligent in business, fervent’—boiling—inspirit.

III. The diligence and the fervency are both to be animated by thethought, ‘Serving the Lord!’

Some critics, as many of you know, no doubt, would prefer to readthis verse in its last clause ‘serving the time.’ Butthat seems to me a very lame and incomplete climax for the Apostle'sthought, and it breaks entirely the sequence which, as I think, isdiscernible in it. Much rather, he here, in the closing member of thetriplet, suggests a thought which will be stimulus to the diligenceand fuel to the fire that makes the spirit boil.

In effect he says, ‘Think, when your hands begin to droop,and when your spirits begin to be cold and indifferent, and languorto steal over you, and the paralysing influences of the commonplaceand the familiar, and the small begin to assertthemselves—think that you are serving the Lord.’ Willthat not freshen you up? Will that not set you boiling again? Will itnot be easy to be diligent when we feel that we are ‘ever inthe great Taskmaster's eye’? There are many reasons fordiligence—the greatness of the work, for it is no small matterfor us to get the whole lump of our nature leavened with the goodleaven; the continual operation of antagonistic forces which are allround us, and are working night-shifts as well as day ones, whetherwe as Christians are on short time or not, the brevity of the periodduring which we have to work, and the tremendous issues which dependupon the completeness of our service here—all these things arereasons for our diligence. But the reason is: ‘ThouChrist hast died for me, and livest for me; truly I am Thyslave.’ That is the thought that will make a man bend his backto his work, whatever it be, and bend his will to his work, too,however unwelcome it may be; and that is the thought that will stirhis whole spirit to fervour and earnestness, and thus will deliverhim from the temptations to languid and perfunctory work that evercreep over us.

You can carry that motive—as we all know, and as we allforget when the pinch comes—into your shop, your study, youroffice, your mill, your kitchen, or wherever you go. ‘On thebells of the horses there shall be written, Holiness to theLord,’ said the prophet, and ‘every bowl inJerusalem’ may be sacred as the vessels of the altar. All lifemay flash into beauty, and tower into greatness, and be smoothed outinto easiness, and the crooked things may be made straight and therough places plain, and the familiar and the trite be invested withfreshness and wonder as of a dream, if only we write over them,‘For the sake of the Master.’ Then, whatever we do orbear, be it common, insignificant, or unpleasant, will change itsaspect, and all will be sweet. Here is the secret of diligence and offervency, ‘I set the Lord always before me.’

ANOTHER TRIPLET OF GRACES

‘Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation;continuing instant in prayer.’—ROMANS xii.12.

These three closely connected clauses occur, as you all know, inthe midst of that outline of the Christian life with which theApostle begins the practical part of this Epistle. Now, what he omitsin this sketch of Christian duty seems to me quite as significant aswhat he inserts. It is very remarkable that in the twenty versesdevoted to this subject, this is the only one which refers to theinner secrets of the Christian life. Paul's notion of‘deepening the spiritual life’ was ‘Behave yourselfbetter in your relation to other people.’ So all the rest ofthis chapter is devoted to inculcating our duties to one another.Conduct is all-important. An orthodox creed is valuable if itinfluences action, but not otherwise. Devout emotion is valuable, ifit drives the wheels of life, but not otherwise. Christians shouldmake efforts to attain to clear views and warm feelings, but theoutcome and final test of both is a daily life of visible imitationof Jesus. The deepening of spiritual life should be manifested bycompleter, practical righteousness in the market-place and the streetand the house, which non-Christians will acknowledge.

But now, with regard to these three specific exhortations here, Iwish to try to bring out their connection as well as the force ofeach of them.

I. So I remark first, that the Christian life ought to be joyfulbecause it is hopeful.

Now, I do not suppose that many of us habitually recognise it as aChristian duty to be joyful. We think that it is a matter oftemperament and partly a matter of circ*mstance. We are glad whenthings go well with us. If we have a sunny disposition, and arenaturally light-hearted, all the better; if we have a melancholy ormorose one, all the worse. But do we recognise this, that a Christianwho is not joyful is not living up to his duty; and that there is noexcuse, either in temperament or in circ*mstances, for our not beingso, and always being so? ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway,’says Paul; and then, as if he thought, ‘Some of you will bethinking that that is a very rash commandment, to aim at a conditionquite impossible to make constant,’ he goeson—‘and, to convince you that I do not say it hastily, Iwill repeat it—“and again I say, rejoice.”’Brethren, we shall have to alter our conceptions of what truegladness is before we can come to understand the full depth of thegreat thought that joy is a Christian duty. The true joy is not thekind of joy that a saying in the Old Testament compares to the‘crackling of thorns under a pot,’ but something verymuch calmer, with no crackle in it; and very much deeper, and verymuch more in alliance with ‘whatsoever things are lovely and ofgood report,’ than that foolish, short-lived, and empty mirththat burns down so soon into black ashes.

To be glad is a Christian duty. Many of us have as much religionas makes us sombre, and impels us often to look upon the more solemnand awful aspects of Christian truth, but we have not enough to makeus glad. I do not need to dwell upon all the sources in Christianfaith and belief, of that lofty and imperatively obligatory gladness,but I confine myself to the one in my text, ‘Rejoicing inhope.’

Now, we all know—from the boy that is expecting to go homefor his holidays in a week, up to the old man to whose eye thetime-veil is wearing thin—that hope, if it is certain, is asource of gladness. How lightly one's bosom's lord sits upon itsthrone, when a great hope comes to animate us! how everybody ispleasant, and all things are easy, and the world looks different!Hope, if it is certain, will gladden, and if our Christianity grasps,as it ought to do, the only hope that is absolutely certain, and assure as if it were in the past and had been experienced, then ourhearts, too, will sing for joy. True joy is not a matter oftemperament, so much as a matter of faith. It is not a matterof circ*mstances. All the surface drainage may be dry, but there is awell in the courtyard deep and cool and full and exhaustless, and aChristian who rightly understands and cherishes the Christian hope islifted above temperament, and is not dependent upon conditions forhis joys.

The Apostle, in an earlier part of this same letter, defines forus what that hope is, which thus is the secret of perpetual gladness,when he speaks about ‘rejoicing in hope of the glory ofGod.’ Yes, it is that great, supreme, calm, far off, absolutelycertain prospect of being gathered into the divine glory, and walkingthere, like the three in the fiery furnace, unconsumed and at ease;it is that hope that will triumph over temperament, and over alloccasions for melancholy, and will breathe into our life a perpetualgladness. Brethren, is it not strange and sad that with such atreasure by our sides we should consent to live such poor lives as wedo?

But remember, although I cannot say to myself, ‘Now I willbe glad,’ and cannot attain to joy by a movement of the will ordirect effort, although it is of no use to say to a man—whichis all that the world can ever say to him—‘Cheer up andbe glad,’ whilst you do not alter the facts that make him sad,there is a way by which we can bring about feelings of gladness or ofgloom. It is just this—we can choose what we will look at. Ifyou prefer to occupy your mind with the troubles, losses,disappointments, hard work, blighted hopes of this poor sin-riddenworld, of course sadness will come over you often, and a general greytone will be the usual tone of your lives, as it is of the lives ofmany of us, broken only by occasional bursts of foolish mirth andempty laughter. But if you choose to turn away from all these, andinstead of the dim, dismal, hard present, to sun yourselves in thelight of the yet unrisen sun, which you can do, then, having rightlychosen the subjects to think about, the feeling will come as a matterof course. You cannot make yourselves glad by, as it were, layinghold of yourselves and lifting yourselves into gladness, but you canrule the direction of your thoughts, and so can bring around yousummer in the midst of winter, by steadily contemplating thefacts—and they are present facts, though we talk about themcollectively as ‘the future’—the facts on which allChristian gladness ought to be based. We can carry our own atmospherewith us; like the people in Italy, who in frosty weather will be seensitting in the market-place by their stalls with a dish of embers,which they grasp in their hands, and so make themselves comfortablywarm on the bitterest day. You can bring a reasonable degree ofwarmth into the coldest weather, if you will lay hold of the vesselin which the fire is, and keep it in your hand and close to yourheart. Choose what you think about, and feelings will followthoughts.

But it needs very distinct and continuous effort for a man to keepthis great source of Christian joy clear before him. We are like thedwellers in some island of the sea, who, in some conditions of theatmosphere, can catch sight of the gleaming mountain-tops on themainland across the stormy channel between. But thick days, with aheavy atmosphere and much mist, are very frequent in our latitude,and then all the distant hills are blotted out, and we see nothingbut the cold grey sea, breaking on the cold, grey stones. Still, youcan scatter the mist if you will. You can make the atmosphere bright;and it is worth an effort to bring clear before us, and to keep highabove the mists that cling to the low levels, the great vision whichwill make us glad. Brethren, I believe that one great source of theweakness of average Christianity amongst us to-day is the dimnessinto which so many of us have let the hope of the glory of God passin our hearts. So I beg you to lay to heart this first commandment,and to rejoice in hope.

II. Now, secondly, here is the thought that life, if full ofjoyful hope, will be patient.

I have been saying that the gladness of which my text speaks isindependent of circ*mstances, and may persist and be continuous evenwhen externals occasion sadness. It is possible—I do not say itis easy, God knows it is hard—I do not say it is frequentlyattained, but I do say it is possible—to realise that wonderfulideal of the Apostle's ‘As sorrowful, yet alwaysrejoicing.’ The surface of the ocean may be tossed and frettedby the winds, and churned into foam, but the great central depths‘hear not the loud winds when they call,’ and are stillin the midst of tempest. And we, dear brethren, ought to have aninner depth of spirit, down to the disturbance of which nosurface-trouble can ever reach. That is the height of attainment ofChristian faith, but it is a possible attainment for every one ofus.

And if there be that burning of the light under the water, like‘Greek fire,’ as it was called, which many waters couldnot quench—if there be that persistence of gladness beneath thesurface-sorrow, as you find a running stream coming out below aglacier, then the joy and the hope, which co-exist with the sorrow,will make life patient.

Now, the Apostle means by these great words, ‘patient’and ‘patience,’ which are often upon his lips, somethingmore than simple endurance. That endurance is as much as many of uscan often muster up strength to exercise. It sometimes takes all ourfaith and all our submission simply to say, ‘I opened not mymouth, because thou didst it; and I will bear what thine hand laysupon me.’ But that is not all that the idea of Christian‘patience’ includes, for it also takes in the thought ofactive work, and it is perseverance as much aspatience.

Now, if my heart is filled with a calm gladness because my eye isfixed upon a celestial hope, then both the passive and active sidesof Christian ‘patience’ will be realised by me. If myhope burns bright, and occupies a large space in my thoughts, then itwill not be hard to take the homely consolation of good John Newton'shymn and say—

'Though painful at present, 'Twill cease before long;And then, oh, how pleasant The conqueror's song!'

A man who is sailing to America, and knows that he will be in NewYork in a week, does not mind, although his cabin is contracted, andhe has a great many discomforts, and though he has a bout ofsea-sickness. The disagreeables are only going to last for a day ortwo. So our hope will make us bear trouble, and not make much ofit.

And our hope will strengthen us, if it is strong, for all the workthat is to be done. Persistence in the path of duty, though my heartbe beating like a smith's hammer on the anvil, is what Christian menshould aim at, and possess. If we have within our hearts that fire ofa certain hope, it will impel us to diligence in doing the humblestduty, whether circ*mstances be for or against us; as some greatsteamer is driven right on its course, through the ocean, whateverstorms may blow in the teeth of its progress, because, deep down init, there are furnaces and boilers which supply the steam that drivesthe engines. So a life that is joyful because it is hopeful will befull of calm endurance and strenuous work. ‘Rejoicing in hope;patient,’ persevering in tribulation.

III. Lastly, our lives will be joyful, hopeful, and patient, inproportion as they are prayerful.

‘Continuing instant’—which, of course, justmeans steadfast—‘in prayer.’ Paul uttered a paradoxwhen he said, ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway,’ as he saidlong before this verse, in the very first letter that he ever wrote,or at least the first which has come down to us. There he bracketedit along with two other equally paradoxical sayings. ‘Rejoiceevermore; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks.’ Ifyou pray without ceasing you can rejoice without ceasing.

But can I pray without ceasing? Not if by prayer you mean onlywords of supplication and petition, but if by prayer you mean also amental attitude of devotion, and a kind of sub-conscious reference toGod in all that you do, such unceasing prayer is possible. Do not letus blunt the edge of this commandment, and weaken our ownconsciousness of having failed to obey it, by getting entangled inthe cobwebs of mere curious discussions as to whether the absoluteideal of perfectly unbroken communion with God is possible in thislife. At all events it is possible to us to approximate to that ideala great deal more closely than our consciences tell us that we everyet have done. If we are trying to keep our hearts in the midst ofdaily duty in contact with God, and if, ever and anon in the press ofour work, we cast a thought towards Him and a prayer, then joy andhope and patience will come to us, in a degree that we do not knowmuch about yet, but might have known all about long, long ago.

There is a verse in the Old Testament which we may well lay toheart: ‘They cried unto God in the battle, and He was entreatedof them.’ Well, what sort of a prayer do you think that wouldbe? Suppose that you were standing in the thick of battle with thesword of an enemy at your throat, there would not be much time formany words of prayer, would there? But the cry could go up, and thethought could go up, and as they went up, down would come the strongbuckler which God puts between His servants and all evil. That is thesort of prayer that you, in the battle of business, in your shops andcounting-houses and warehouses and mills, we students in our studies,and you mothers in your families and your kitchens, can send up toheaven. If thus we ‘pray without ceasing,’ then we shall‘rejoice evermore,’ and our souls will be kept inpatience and filled with the peace of God.

STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET

‘Distributing to the necessity of saints; given tohospitality. 14. Bless them which persecute you: bless, and cursenot. 15. Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them thatweep.’—ROMANS xii. 13-15.

In these verses we pass from the innermost region of communionwith God into the wide field of duties in relation to men. Thesolitary secrecies of rejoicing hope, endurance, and prayer unbroken,are exchanged for the publicities of benevolence and sympathy. In theformer verses the Christian soul is in ‘the secret place of theMost High’; in those of our text he comes forth with the lightof God on his face, and hands laden with blessings. The juxtapositionof the two suggests the great principles to which the morality of theNew Testament is ever true—that devotion to God is the basis ofall practical helpfulness to man, and that practical helpfulness toman is the expression and manifestation of devotion to God.

The three sets of injunctions in our text, dissimilar though theyappear, have a common basis. They are varying forms of onefundamental disposition—love; which varies in its formsaccording to the necessities of its objects, bringing temporal helpto the needy, meeting hostility with blessing, and rendering sympathyto both the glad and the sorrowful. There is, further, a noteworthyconnection, not in sense but in sound, between the first and secondclauses of our text, which is lost in our English Version.‘Given to hospitality’ is, as the Revised margin shows,literally, pursuing hospitality. Now the Greek, like the Englishword, has the special meaning of following with a hostile intent, andthe use of it in the one sense suggests its other meaning to Paul,whose habit of ‘going off at a word,’ as it has beencalled, is a notable feature of his style. Hence, this secondinjunction, of blessing the persecutors, comes as a kind of play uponwords, and is obviously occasioned by the verbal association. Itwould come more appropriately at a later part of the chapter, but itsoccurrence here is characteristic of Paul's idiosyncrasy. We mayrepresent the connection of these two clauses by such a rendering as:Pursue hospitality, and as for those who pursue you, bless, and cursenot.

We may look at these three flowers from the one root of love.

I. Love that speaks in material help.

We have here two special applications of that love which Paulregards as ‘the bond of perfectness,’ knitting allChristians together. The former of these two is love that expressesitself by tangible material aid. The persons to be helped are‘saints,’ and it is their ‘needs’ that are tobe aided. There is no trace in the Pauline Epistles of the communityof goods which for a short time prevailed in the Church of Jerusalemand which was one of the causes that led to the need for thecontribution for the poor saints in that city which occupied so muchof Paul's attention at Corinth and elsewhere. But, whilst Christianlove leaves the rights of property intact, it charges them with theduty of supplying the needs of the brethren. They are not absoluteand unconditioned rights, but are subject to the highest principlesof stewardship for God, trusteeship for men, and sacrifice forChrist. These three great thoughts condition and limit the Christianman's possession of the wealth, which, in a modified sense, it isallowable for him to call his own. His brother's need constitutes afirst charge on all that belongs to him, and ought to precede thegratification of his own desires for superfluities and luxuries. Ifwe ‘see our brother have need and shut up our bowels ofcompassion against him’ and use our possessions for thegratification of our own whims and fancies, ‘how dwelleth thelove of God in us?’ There are few things in which Christian menof this day have more need for the vigorous exercise of conscience,and for enlightenment, than in their getting, and spending, andkeeping money. In that region lies the main sphere of usefulness formany of us; and if we have not been ‘faithful in that which isleast,’ our unfaithfulness there makes it all but impossiblethat we should be faithful in that which is greatest. The honest andrigid contemplation of our own faults in the administration of ourworldly goods, might well invest with a terrible meaning the Lord'stremendous question, ‘If ye have not been faithful in thatwhich is another's, who shall give you that which is yourown?’

The hospitality which is here enjoined is another shape whichChristian love naturally took in the early days. When believers werea body of aliens, dispersed through the world, and when, as they wentfrom one place to another, they could find homes only amongst theirown brethren, the special circ*mstances of the time necessarilyattached special importance to this duty; and as a matter of fact, wefind it recognised in all the Epistles of the New Testament as one ofthe most imperative of Christian duties. ‘It was the unity andstrength which this intercourse gave that formed one of the greatforces which supported Christianity.’ But whilst hospitalitywas a special duty for the early Christians, it still remains a dutyfor us, and its habitual exercise would go far to break down thefrowning walls which diversities of social position and of culturehave reared between Christians.

II. The love that meets hostility with blessing.

There are perhaps few words in Scripture which have been morefruitful of the highest graces than this commandment. What a train ofmartyrs, from primitive times to the Chinese Christians in recentyears, have remembered these words, and left their legacy of blessingas they laid their heads on the block or stood circled by fire at thestake! For us, in our quieter generation, actual persecution is rare,but hostility of ill-will more or less may well dog our steps, andthe great principle here commended to us is that we are to meetenmity with its opposite, and to conquer by love. The diamond is cutwith sharp knives, and each stroke brings out flashing beauty. Thereare kinds of wood which are fragrant when they burn; and there arekinds which show their veining under the plane. It is a poor thing ifa Christian character only gives back like a mirror the expression ofthe face that looks at it. To meet hate with hate, and scorn withscorn, is not the way to turn hate into love and scorn into sympathy.Indifferent equilibrium in the presence of active antagonism is notpossible for us. As long as we are sensitive we shall wince from ablow, or a sarcasm, or a sneer. We must bless in order to keepourselves from cursing. The lesson is very hard, and the only way ofobeying it fully is to keep near Christ and drink in His spirit whoprayed ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what theydo.’

III. Love that flows in wide sympathy.

Of the two forms of sympathy which are here enjoined, the formeris the harder. To ‘rejoice with them that do rejoice’makes a greater demand on unselfish love than to ‘weep withthem that weep.’ Those who are glad feel less need of sympathythan do the sorrowful, and envy is apt to creep in and mar thecompleteness of sympathetic joy. But even the latter of the twoinjunctions is not altogether easy. The cynic has said that there is‘something not wholly displeasing in the misfortunes of ourbest friends’; and, though that is an utterly worldly andunchristian remark, it must be confessed not to be altogether wantingin truth.

But for obedience to both of these injunctions, a heart at leisurefrom itself is needed to sympathise; and not less needed is asedulous cultivation of the power of sympathy. No doubt temperamenthas much to do with the degree of our obedience; but this wholecontext goes on the assumption that the grace of God working ontemperament strengthens natural endowments by turning them into‘gifts differing according to the grace that is given tous.’ Though we live in that awful individuality of ours, andare each, as it were, islanded in ourselves ‘with echoingstraits between us thrown,’ it is possible for us, as theresult of close communion with Jesus Christ, to bridge the chasms,and to enter into the joy of a brother's joy. He who groaned inHimself as He drew near to the grave of Lazarus, and was moved toweep with the weeping sisters, will help us, in the measure in whichwe dwell in Him and He in us, that we too may look ‘not everyman on his own things, but every man also on the things ofothers.’

On the whole, love to Jesus is the basis of love to man, and loveto man is the practical worship of Christianity. As in all things, soin the exhortations which we have now been considering, Jesus is ourpattern and power. He Himself communicates with our necessities, andopens His heart to give us hospitable welcome there. He Himself hasshown us how to meet and overcome hatred with love, and hurt withblessing. He shares our griefs, and by sharing lessens them. Heshares our joys, and by sharing hallows them. The summing up of allthese specific injunctions is, ‘Let that mind be in you whichwas also in Christ Jesus.’

STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET

‘Be of the same mind one toward another. Set notyour mind on high things, but condescend to things that are lowly. Benot wise in your own conceits.’—Romans xii. 16 (R.V.).

We have here again the same triple arrangement which has prevailedthrough a considerable portion of the context. These threeexhortations are linked together by a verbal resemblance which canscarcely be preserved in translation. In the two former the same verbis employed: and in the third the word for ‘wise’ iscognate with the verb found in the other two clauses. If we are toseek for any closer connection of thought we may find it first inthis—that all the three clauses deal with mental attitudes,whilst the preceding ones dealt with the expression of such; andsecond in this—that the first of the three is a generalprecept, and the second and third are warnings against faults whichare most likely to interfere with it.

I. We note, the bond of peace.

‘Be of the same mind one toward another.’ It isinteresting to notice how frequently the Apostle in many of hisletters exhorts to mutual harmonious relations. For instance, in thisvery Epistle he invokes ‘the God of patience and ofcomfort’ to grant to the Roman Christians ‘to be of thesame mind with one another according to Christ Jesus,’ and tothe Corinthians, who had their full share of Greek divisiveness, hewrites, ‘Be of the same mind, live in peace,’ and assuresthem that, if so, ‘the God of love and peace will be withthem’; to his beloved Philippians he pours out his heart inbeseeching them by ‘the consolation that is in Christ Jesus,and the comfort of love, and the fellowship of theSpirit—’ that they would ‘fulfil his joy, that theybe of the same mind, having the same love, being of one accord, ofone mind’; whilst to the two women in that Church who were atvariance with one another he sends the earnest exhortation ‘tobe of the same mind in the Lord,’ and prays one whom we onlyknow by his loving designation of ‘a true yokefellow,’ tohelp them in what would apparently put a strain upon their Christianprinciple. For communities and for individuals the cherishing of thespirit of amity and concord is a condition without which there willbe little progress in the Christian life.

But it is to be carefully noted that such a spirit may co-existwith great differences about other matters. It is not opposed to widedivergence of opinion, though in our imperfect sanctification it ishard for us to differ and yet to be in concord. We all know thehopelessness of attempting to make half a dozen good men think alikeon any of the greater themes of the Christian religion; and if wecould succeed in such a vain attempt, there would still be many anunguarded door through which could come the spirit of discord, andthe half-dozen might have divergence of heart even whilst theyprofess identity of opinion. The true hindrances to our having‘the same mind one toward another’ lie very much deeperin our nature than the region in which we keep our creeds. Theself-regard and self-absorption, petulant dislike offellow-Christians' peculiarities, the indifference which comes fromlack of imaginative sympathy, and which ministers to the ignorancewhich causes it, and a thousand other weaknesses in Christiancharacter bring about the deplorable alienation which but too plainlymarks the relation of Christian communities and of individualChristians to one another in this day. When one thinks of the actualfacts in every corner of Christendom, and probes one's own feelings,the contrast between the apostolic ideal and the Church's realisationof it presents a contradiction so glaring that one wonders ifChristian people at all believe that it is their duty ‘to be ofthe same mind one toward another.’

The attainment of this spirit of amity and concord ought to be adistinct object of effort, and especially in times like ours, whenthere is no hostile pressure driving Christian people together, butwhen our great social differences are free to produce a certaininevitable divergence and to check the flow of our sympathy, and whenthere are deep clefts of opinion, growing deeper every day, andseeming to part off Christians into camps which have littleunderstanding of, and less sympathy with, one another. Even thestrong individualism, which it is the glory of true Christian faithto foster in character, and which some forms of Christian fellowshipdo distinctly promote, works harm in this matter; and those who pridethemselves on belonging to ‘Free churches,’ and standingapart from creed-bound and clergy-led communities, are speciallycalled upon to see to it that they keep this exhortation, andcultivate ‘the unity of the Spirit in the bond ofpeace.’

It should not be necessary to insist that the closest mutualconcord amongst all believers is but an imperfect manifestation, asall manifestations in life of the deepest principles must be, of thetrue oneness which binds together in the most sacred unity, andshould bind together in closest friendship, all partakers of the onelife. And assuredly the more that one life flows into our spirits,the less power will all the enemies of Christian concord have overus. It is the Christ in us which makes us kindred with all others inwhom He is. It is self, in some form or other, that separates us fromthe possessors of like precious faith. When the tide is out, thelittle rock-pools on the shore lie separated by stretches of slimyweeds, but the great sea, when it rushes up, buries the divisions,and unites them all. Our Christian unity is unity in Christ, and theonly sure way ‘to be of the same mind one toward another’is, that ‘the mind which was in Christ Jesus be in usalso.’

II. The divisive power of selfish ambition.

‘Set not your mind on high things, but condescend to thingsthat are lowly.’ The contrast here drawn between the high andthe lowly makes it probable that the latter as well as the former isto be taken as referring to ‘things’ rather than persons.The margin of the Revised Version gives the literal rendering of theword translated ‘condescend.’ ‘To be carried awaywith,’ is metaphorically equivalent to surrendering one's selfto; and the two clauses present two sides of one disposition, whichseeks not for personal advancement or conspicuous work which mayminister to self-gratulation, but contentedly fills the lowly sphere,and ‘the humblest duties on herself doth lay.’ We neednot pause to point out that such an ideal is dead against thefashionable maxims of this generation. Personal ambition is glorifiedas an element in progress, and to a world which believes in such aproverb as ‘devil take the hindmost,’ these twoexhortations can only seem fanatical absurdity. And yet, perhaps, ifwe fairly take into account how the seeking after personaladvancement and conspicuous work festers the soul, and how the flowerof heart's-ease grows, as Bunyan's shepherd-boy found out, in thelowly valley, these exhortations to a quiet performance of lowlyduties and a contented filling of lowly spheres, may seem touchedwith a higher wisdom than is to be found in the arenas where mentrample over each other in their pursuit of a fame ‘whichappeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.’ What apeaceful world it would be, and what peaceful souls they would have,if Christian people really adopted as their own these two simplemaxims. They are easy to understand, but how hard they are tofollow.

It needs scarcely be noted that the temper condemned here destroysall the concord and amity which the Apostle has been urging in theprevious clause. Where every man is eagerly seeking to force himselfin front of his neighbour, any community will become a strugglingmob; and they who are trying to outrun one another and who grasp at‘high things,’ will never be ‘of the same mind onetoward another.’ But, we may observe that the surest way tokeep in check the natural selfish tendency to desire conspicuousthings for ourselves is honestly, and with rigid self-control, to letourselves be carried away by enthusiasm for humble tasks. If we wouldnot disturb our lives and fret our hearts by ambitions that, evenwhen gratified, bring no satisfaction, we must yield ourselves to theimpulse of the continuous stream of lowly duties which runs throughevery life.

But, plainly as this exhortation is needful, it is too heavy astrain to be ever carried out except by the power of Christ formed inthe heart. It is in His earthly life that we find the great exampleof the highest stooping to the lowest duties, and elevating them bytaking them upon Himself. He did not ‘strive nor cry, nor causeHis voice to be heard in the streets.’ Thirty years of thatperfect life were spent in a little village folded away in theGalilean hills, with rude peasants for the only spectators, and thenarrow sphere of a carpenter's shop for its theatre. For the rest,the publicity possible would have been obscurity to an ambitioussoul. To speak comforting words to a few weeping hearts; to lay Hishands on a few sick folk and heal them; to go about in a despisedland doing good, loved indeed by outcasts and sinners, unknownby all the dispensers of renown, and consciously despised by all whomthe world honoured—that was the perfect life of the IncarnateGod. And that is an example which His followers seem with one consentto set aside in their eager race after distinction and work that mayglorify their names. The difficulty of a faithful following of theseprecepts, and the only means by which that difficulty can beovercome, are touchingly taught us in another of Paul's Epistles bythe accumulation of motives which he brings to bear upon hiscommandment, when he exhorts by the tender motives of ‘comfortin Christ, consolation of love, fellowship of the Spirit, and tendermercies and compassions, that ye fulfil my joy, being of the samemind, of one accord; doing nothing through faction or vainglory, butin lowliness of mind each counting other better than himself.’As the pattern for each of us in our narrow sphere, he holds forththe mind that was in Christ Jesus, and the great self-emptying whichhe shrank not from, ‘but being in the form of God counted itnot a prize to be on an equality with God, but, being found infashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even untodeath.’

III. The divisive power of intellectual self-conceit.

In this final clause the Apostle, in some sense, repeats the maximwith which he began the series of special exhortations in thischapter. He there enjoined ‘every one among you not to think ofhimself more highly than he ought to think’; here he deals withone especial form of such too lofty thinking, viz. intellectualconceit. He is possibly quoting the Book of Proverbs (iii. 7), wherewe read, ‘Be not wise in thine own eyes,’ which ispreceded by, ‘Lean not to thine own understanding; in all thyways acknowledge Him’; and is followed by, ‘Fear the Lordand depart from evil’; thus pointing to the acknowledgment andfear of the Lord as the great antagonist of such over-estimate ofone's own wisdom as of all other faults of mind and life. It needsnot to point out how such a disposition breaks Christian unity ofspirit. There is something especially isolating in that form ofself-conceit. There are few greater curses in the Church than littlecoteries of superior persons who cannot feed on ordinary food, whoseenlightened intelligence makes them too fastidious to soil theirdainty fingers with rough, vulgar work, and whose superciliouscriticism of the unenlightened souls that are content to condescendto lowly Christian duties, is like an iceberg that brings down thetemperature wherever it floats. That temper indulged in, breaks theunity, reduces to inactivity the work, and puts an end to theprogress, of any Christian community in which it is found; and justas its predominance is harmful, so the obedience to the exhortationagainst it is inseparable from the fulfilling of its sister precepts.To know ourselves for the foolish creatures that we are, is a mightyhelp to being ‘of the same mind one toward another.’ Whothinks of himself soberly and according to the measure of faith whichGod hath dealt to him will not hunger after high things, but ratherprefer the lowly ones that are on a level with his lowly self.

The exhortations of our text were preceded with injunctions todistribute material help, and to bestow helpful sympathy. The tempersenjoined in our present text are the inward source and fountain ofsuch external bestowments. The rendering of material help and ofsympathetic emotion are right and valuable only as they are theoutcome of this unanimity and lowliness. It is possible to‘distribute to the necessity of saints’ in such a way asthat the gift pains more than a blow; it is possible to proffersympathy so that the sensitive heart shrinks from it. It was‘when the multitude of them that believed were of one heart andone soul’ that it became natural to have all things common. Asin the aurora borealis, quivering beams from different centres streamout and at each throb approach each other till they touch and make anarch of light that glorifies the winter's night, so, if Christian menwere ‘of the same mind toward one another,’ did not‘set their minds on high things, but condescended to thingsthat were lowly, and were not wise in their own conceits,’ theChurch of Christ would shine forth in the darkness of a selfish worldand would witness to Him who came down ‘from the highest thronein glory’ to the lowliest place in this lowly world, that Hemight lift us to His own height of glory everlasting.

STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET

‘Render to no man evil for evil. Take thought forthings honourable in the light of all men. 18. If it be possible, asmuch as in you lieth, be at peace with all men.’—ROMANSxii. 17, 18 (R. V.).

The closing words of this chapter have a certain unity in thatthey deal principally with a Christian's duty in the face ofhostility and antagonism. A previous injunction touched on the samesubject in the exhortation to bless the persecutors; but with thatexception, all the preceding verses have dealt with duties owing tothose with whom we stand in friendly relations. Such exhortationstake no cognisance of the special circ*mstances of the primitiveChristians as ‘lambs in the midst of wolves’; and a largetract of Christian duty would be undealt with, if we had not suchdirections for feelings and actions in the face of hate and hurt. Thegeneral precept in our text is expanded in a more complete form inthe verses which follow the text, and we may postpone itsconsideration until we have to deal with them. It is one form of theapplication of the ‘love without hypocrisy’ which hasbeen previously recommended. The second of these three precepts seemsquite heterogeneous, but it may be noticed that the word for‘evil’ in the former and that for‘honourable,’ in these closely resemble each other insound, and the connection of the two clauses may be partially owingto that verbal resemblance; whilst we may also discern a real linkbetween the thoughts in the consideration that we owe even to ourenemies the exhibition of a life which a prejudiced hostility will beforced to recognise as good. The third of these exhortationsprescribes unmoved persistence in friendly regard to all men.

Dealing then, in this sermon only, with the second and third ofthese precepts, and postponing the consideration of the first to thefollowing discourse, we have here the counsel that

I. Hostility is to be met with a holy and beautiful life.

The Authorised Version inadequately translates the significantword in this exhortation by ‘honest.’ The Apostle is notsimply enjoining honesty in our modern, narrow sense of the word,which limits it to the rendering to every man his own. It is aremarkable thing that ‘honest,’ like many other wordsexpressing various types of goodness, has steadily narrowed insignification, and it is very characteristic of England that probityas to money and material goods should be its main meaning. Here theword is used in the full breadth of its ancient use, and isequivalent to that which is fair with the moral beauty ofgoodness.

A Christian man then is bound to live a life which all men willacknowledge to be good. In that precept is implied the recognition ofeven bad men's notions of morality as correct. The Gospel is not anew system of ethics, though in some points it brings old virtuesinto new prominence, and alters their perspective. It is furtherimplied that the world's standard of what Christians ought to be maybe roughly taken as a true one. Christian men would learn a greatdeal about themselves, and might in many respects heighten theirideal, if they would try to satisfy the expectations of the mostdegraded among them as to what they ought to be. The worst of men hasa rude sense of duty which tops the attainments of the best.Christian people ought to seek for the good opinion of those aroundthem. They are not to take that opinion as the motive for theirconduct, nor should they do good in order to be praised or admiredfor it; but they are to ‘adorn the doctrine,’ and to lettheir light shine that men seeing their good may be led to think moreloftily of its source, and so to ‘glorify their Father which isin heaven.’ That is one way of preaching the Gospel. The worldknows goodness when it sees it, though it often hates it, and has nobetter ground for its dislike of a man than that his purity andbeauty of character make the lives of others seem base indeed. Batsfeel the light to be light, though they flap against it, and thewinnowing of their leathery wings and their blundering flight arewitnesses to that against which they strike. Jesus had to say,‘The world hateth Me because I testify of it that the deedsthereof are evil.’ That witness was the result of His being‘the Light of the world’; and if His followers areilluminated from Him, they will have the same effect, and must beprepared for the same response. But none the less is it incumbentupon them to ‘take thought for things honourable in the sightof all men.’

This duty involves the others of taking care that we have goodnessto show, and that we do not make our goodness repulsive by ouradditions to it. There are good people who comfort themselves whenmen dislike them, or scoff at them, by thinking that their religionis the cause, when it is only their own roughness and harshness ofcharacter. It is not enough that we present an austere and repellentvirtue; the fair food should be set on a fair platter. This duty isespecially owing to our enemies. They are our keenest critics. Theywatch for our halting. The thought of their hostile scrutiny shouldever stimulate us, and the consciousness that Argus-eyes are watchingus, with a keenness sharpened by dislike, should lead us not only tovigilance over our own steps, but also to the prayer, ‘Lead mein a plain path, because of those who watch me.’ To‘provide things honest in the sight of all men’ is apossible way of disarming some hostility, conciliating someprejudice, and commending to some hearts the Lord whom we seek toimitate.

II. Be sure that, if there is to be enmity, it is all on oneside.

‘As much as in you lieth, be at peace with all.’ Thesewords are, I think, unduly limited when they are supposed to implythat there are circ*mstances in which a Christian has a right to beat strife. As if they meant: Be peaceable as far as you can; but ifit be impossible, then quarrel. The real meaning goes far deeper thanthat. ‘It takes two to make a quarrel,’ says the oldproverb; it takes two to make peace also, does it not? We cannotdetermine whether our relations with men will be peaceful or no; weare only answerable for our part, and for that we are answerable.‘As much as lieth in you’ is the explanation of ‘ifit be possible.’ Your part is to be at peace; it is not yourpart up to a certain point and no further, but always, and in allcirc*mstances, it is your part. It may not be possible to be at peacewith all men; there may be some who will quarrel with you. Youare not to blame for that, but their part and yours are separate, andyour part is the same whatever they do. Be you at peace with all menwhether they are at peace with you or not. Don't you quarrel withthem even if they will quarrel with you. That seems to me to beplainly the meaning of the words. It would be contrary to the tenorof the context and the teaching of the New Testament to suppose thathere we had that favourite principle, ‘There is a point beyondwhich forbearance cannot go,’ where it becomes right to cherishhostile sentiments or to try to injure a man. If there be such apoint, it is very remarkable that there is no attempt made in the NewTestament to define it. The nearest approach to such definition is‘till seventy times seven,’ the two perfect numbersmultiplied into themselves. So I think that this injunctionabsolutely prescribes persistent, patient peacefulness, andabsolutely proscribes our taking up the position of antagonism, andunder no circ*mstances meeting hate with hate. It does not followthat there is never to be opposition. It may be necessary for thegood of the opponent himself, and for the good of society, that heshould be hindered in his actions of hostility, but there is never tobe bitterness; and we must take care that none of the devil's leavenmingles with our zeal against evil.

There is no need for enlarging on the enormous difficulty ofcarrying out such a commandment in our daily lives. We all know toowell how hard it is; but we may reflect for a moment on the absolutenecessity of obeying this precept to the full. For their ownsouls’ sakes Christian men are to avoid all bitterness, strife,and malice. Let us try to remember, and to bring to bear on our dailylives, the solemn things which Jesus said about God's forgivenessbeing measured by our forgiveness. The faithful, even thoughimperfect, following of this exhortation would revolutionise ourlives. Nothing that we can only win by fighting with our fellows isworth fighting for. Men will weary of antagonism which is met only bythe imperturbable calm of a heart at peace with God, and seekingpeace with all men. The hot fire of hatred dies down, like burningcoals scattered on a glacier, when laid against the crystal coldnessof a patient, peaceful spirit. Watch-dogs in farmhouses will barkhalf the night through because they hear another barking a mile off.It takes two to make a quarrel; let me be sure that I am never one ofthe two!

STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET

‘Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rathergive place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I willrepay, saith the Lord. 20. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him:if he thirst, give him drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coalsof fire on his head. 21. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evilwith good.’—ROMANS xii. 19-21.

The natural instinct is to answer enmity with enmity, andkindliness with kindliness. There are many people of whom we thinkwell and like, for no other reason than because we believe that theythink well of and like us. Such a love is really selfishness. In thesame fashion, dislike, and alienation on the part of anothernaturally reproduce themselves in our own minds. A dog will stretchits neck to be patted, and snap at a stick raised to strike it. Itrequires a strong effort to master this instinctive tendency, andthat effort the plainest principles of Christian morality requirefrom us all. The precepts in our text are in twofold form, negativeand positive; and they are closed with a general principle, whichincludes both these forms, and much more besides. There are twopillars, and a great lintel coping them, like the trilithons ofStonehenge.

I. We deal with the negative precept.

‘Avenge not yourselves, beloved, but give place untowrath.’ Do not take the law into your own hands, but leaveGod's way of retribution to work itself out. By avenging, the Apostlemeans a passionate redress of private wrongs at the bidding ofpersonal resentment. We must note how deep this precept goes. Itprohibits not merely external acts which, in civilised times arerestrained by law, but, as with Christian morality, it deals withthoughts and feelings, and not only with deeds. It forbids suchnatural and common thoughts as ‘I owe him an ill turn forthat’; ‘I should like to pay him off.’ A great dealof what is popularly called ‘a proper spirit’ becomesextremely improper if tested by this precept. There is an eloquentword in German which we can only clumsily reproduce, which christensthe ugly pleasure at seeing misfortune and calls it ‘joy inothers’ disasters.’ We have not the word; would that wehad not the thing!

A solemn reason is added for the difficult precept, in thatfrequently misunderstood saying, ‘Give place unto wrath.’The question is, Whose wrath? And, plainly, the subsequent words ofthe section show that it is God's. That quotation comes fromDeuteronomy xxxii. 35. It is possibly unfortunate that‘vengeance’ is ascribed to God; for hasty readers layhold of the idea of passionate resentment, and transfer it to Him,whereas His retributive action has in it no resentment and nopassion. Nor are we to suppose that the thought here is only the baseone, they are sure to be punished, so we need not trouble. TheApostle points to the solemn fact of retribution as an element in theDivine government. It is not merely automatically working laws whichrecompense evil by evil, but it is the face of the Lord which isinexorably and inevitably set ‘against them that doevil.’ That recompense is not hidden away in the future behindthe curtain of death, but is realised in the present, as everyevil-doer too surely and bitterly experiences.

‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.’ Godonly has the right to recompense the ungodly and the sinner as wellas the righteous. Dwelling in such a system as we do, how dares anyone take that work into his hands? It requires perfect knowledge ofthe true evil of an action, which no one has who cannot read theheart; it requires perfect freedom from passion; it requires perfectimmunity from evil desert on the part of the avenger; in a word, itbelongs to God, and to Him alone. We have nothing to do withapportioning retribution to desert, either in private actions or inthe treatment of so-called criminals. In the latter our objectsshould be reformation and the safety of society. If we add to theseretribution, we transcend our functions.

II. Take the positive,—Follow God's way of meeting hostilitywith beneficence.

The hungry enemy is to be fed, the thirsty to be given drink; andthe reason is, that such beneficence will ‘heap coals of fireupon his head.’ The negative is not enough. To abstain fromvengeance will leave the heart unaffected, and may simply issue inthe cessation of all intercourse. The reason assigned sounds at firststrange. It is clear that the ‘coals of fire’ which areto be heaped on the head are meant to melt and soften the heart, andcause it to glow with love. There may be also included the burningpangs of shame felt by a man whose evil is answered by good. Butthese are secondary and auxiliary to the true end of kindling thefire of love in his alienated heart. The great object which everyChristian man is bound to have in view is to win over the enemy andmelt away misconceptions and hostility. It is not from any selfishregard to one's own personal ease that we are so to act, but becauseof the sacred regard which Christ has taught us to cherish for theblessing of peace amongst men, and in order that we may deliver abrother from the snare, and make him share in the joys of fellowshipwith God. The only way to burn up the evil in his heart is by heapingcoals of kindness and beneficence on his head. And for such an end itbecomes us to watch for opportunities. We have to mark the rightmoment, and make sure that we time our offer for food when he ishungry and of drink when he thirsts; for often mal-a-proposoffers of kindness make things worse. Such is God's way. Histhunderbolts we cannot grasp, His love we can copy. Of the twoweapons mercy and judgment which He holds in His hand, the latter isemphatically His own; the former should be ours too.

III. In all life meet and conquer evil with good.

This last precept, ‘Be not overcome of evil, but overcomeevil with good,’ is cast into a form which covers not onlyrelations to enemies, but all contact with evil of every kind. Itinvolves many great thoughts which can here be only touched. Itimplies that in all our lives we have to fight evil, and that itconquers, and we are beaten when we are led to do it. It is onlyconquered by being transformed into good. We overcome our foes whenwe win them to be lovers. We overcome our temptations to doing wrongwhen we make them occasions for developing virtues; we overcome theevil of sorrow when we use it to bring us nearer to God; we overcomethe men around us when we are not seduced by their example to evil,but attract them to goodness by ours.

Evil is only thus transformed by the positive exercise of goodnesson our part. We have seen this in regard to enemies in the precedingremarks. In regard to other forms of evil, it is often better not tofight them directly, but to occupy the mind and heart with positivetruth and goodness, and the will and hands with active service. Arusty knife shall not be cleaned so effectually by much scouring asby strenuous use. Our lives are to be moulded after the great exampleof Him, who at almost the last moment of His earthly course said,‘Be of good cheer: I have overcome the world.’ Jesusseeks to conquer evil in us all, and counts that He has conquered itwhen He has changed it into love.

LOVE AND THE DAY

‘Owe no man anything, but to love one another: forhe that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. 9. For this, Thoushalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal,Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and ifthere be any other commandment it is briefly comprehended in thissaying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 10. Loveworketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling ofthe law. 11. And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time toawake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when webelieved. 12. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let ustherefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on thearmour of light, 13. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not inrioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not instrife and envying: 14. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and makenot provision for the flesh, to fulfil the luststhereof.’—ROMANS xiii. 8-14.

The two paragraphs of this passage are but slightly connected. Thefirst inculcates the obligation of universal love; and the secondbegins by suggesting, as a motive for the discharge of that duty, thenear approach of ‘the day.’ The light of that dawn drawsPaul's eyes and leads him to wider exhortations on Christian purityas befitting the children of light.

I. Verses 8-10 set forth the obligation of a love which embracesall men, and comprehends all duties to them. The Apostle has justbeen laying down the general exhortation, ‘Pay every man hisdue’ and applying it especially to the Christian's relation tocivic rulers. He repeats it in a negative form, and bases on it theobligation of loving every man. That love is further represented asthe sum and substance of the law. Thus Paul brings together twothoughts which are often dealt with as mutuallyexclusive,—namely, love and law. He does not talksentimentalisms about the beauty of charity and the like, but lays itdown, as a ‘hard and fast rule,’ that we are bound tolove every man with whom we come in contact; or, as the Greek has it,‘the other.’

That is the first plain truth taught here. Love is not an emotionwhich we may indulge or not, as we please. It is not to select itsobjects according to our estimate of their lovableness or goodness.But we are bound to love, and that all round, without distinction ofbeautiful or ugly, good or bad. ‘A hard saying; who can hearit?’ Every man is our creditor for that debt. He does not gethis due from us unless he gets love. Note, further, that the debt oflove is never discharged. After all payments it still remains owing.There is no paying in full of all demands, and, as Bengel says, it isan undying debt. We are apt to weary of expending love, especially onunworthy recipients, and to think that we have wiped off all claims,and it may often be true that our obligations to others compel us tocease helping one; but if we laid Paul's words to heart, our patiencewould be longer-breathed, and we should not be so soon ready to shuthearts and purses against even unthankful suitors.

Further, Paul here teaches us that this debt (debitum,‘duty’) of love includes all duties. It is the fulfillingof the law, inasmuch as it will secure the conduct which the lawprescribes. The Mosaic law itself indicates this, since itrecapitulates the various commandments of the second table, in theone precept of love to our neighbour (Lev. xix. 18). Law enjoins buthas no power to get its injunctions executed. Love enables andinclines to do all that law prescribes, and to avoid all that itprohibits. The multiplicity of duties is melted into unity; and thatunity, when it comes into act, unfolds into whatsoever things arelovely and of good report. Love is the mother tincture which,variously diluted and manipulated, yields all potent and fragrantdraughts. It is the white light which the prism of daily liferesolves into its component colours.

But Paul seems to limit the action of love here to negative doingno ill. That is simply because the commandments are mostly negative,and that they are is a sad token of the lovelessness natural to usall. But do we love ourselves only negatively, or are we satisfiedwith doing ourselves no harm? That stringent pattern of love toothers not only prescribes degree, but manner. It teaches that truelove to men is not weak indulgence, but must sometimes chastise, andthwart, and always must seek their good, and not merely theirgratification.

Whoever will honestly seek to apply that negative precept ofworking no ill to others, will find it positive enough. We harm menwhen we fail to help them. If we can do them a kindness, and do itnot, we do them ill. Non-activity for good is activity for evil.Surely, nothing can be plainer than the bearing of this teaching onthe Christian duty as to intoxicants. If by using these a Christianputs a stumbling-block in the way of a weak will, then he is workingill to his neighbour, and that argues absence of love, and that isdishonest, shirking payment of a plain debt.

II. The great stimulus to love and to all purity is set forth asbeing the near approach—of the day (verses 11-14). ‘Theday,’ in Paul's writing, has usually the sense of the great dayof the Lord's return, and may have that meaning here; for, as Jesushas told us, ‘it is not for’ even inspired Apostles‘to know the times or the seasons,’ and it is nodishonour to apostolic inspiration to assign to it the limits whichthe Lord has assigned.

But, whether we take this as the meaning of the phrase, or regardit simply as pointing to the time of death as the dawning of heaven'sday, the weight of the motive is unaffected. The language is vividlypicturesque. The darkness is thinning, and the blackness turninggrey. Light begins to stir and whisper. A band of soldiers liesasleep, and, as the twilight begins to dawn, the bugle call summonsthem to awake, to throw off their night-gear,—namely, the workscongenial to darkness,—and to brace on their armour of light.Light may here be regarded as the material of which the glisteringarmour is made; but, more probably, the expression means weaponsappropriate to the light.

Such being the general picture, we note the fact which underliesthe whole representation; namely, that every life is a definite wholewhich has a fixed end. Jesus said, ‘We must work the works ofHim that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh.’ Paul usesthe opposite metaphors in these verses. But, though the two sayingsare opposite in form, they are identical in substance. In both, thepredominant thought is that of the rapidly diminishing space ofearthly life, and the complete unlikeness to it of the future. Westand like men on a sandbank with an incoming tide, and every wash ofthe waves eats away its edges, and presently it will yield below ourfeet. We forget this for the most part, and perhaps it is not wellthat it should be ever present; but that it should never be presentis madness and sore loss.

Paul, in his intense moral earnestness, in verse 13, bids usregard ourselves as already in ‘the day,’ and shape ourconduct as if it shone around us and all things were made manifest byits light. The sins to be put off are very gross and palpable. Theyare for the most part sins of flesh, such as even these RomanChristians had to be warned against, and such as need to bemanifested by the light even now among many professing Christiancommunities.

But Paul has one more word to say. If he stopped without it, hewould have said little to help men who are crying out, ‘How amI to strip off this clinging evil, which seems my skin rather than myclothing? How am I to put on that flashing panoply?’ There isbut one way,—put on the Lord Jesus Christ. If we commitourselves to Him by faith, and front our temptations in His strength,and thus, as it were, wrap ourselves in Him, He will be to us dressand armour, strength and righteousness. Our old self will fall away,and we shall take no forethought for the flesh, to fulfil the luststhereof.

SALVATION NEARER

‘... Now is our salvation nearer than when webelieved.’—ROMANS xiii. 11.

There is no doubt, I suppose, that the Apostle, in common with thewhole of the early Church, entertained more or less consistently theexpectation of living to witness the second coming of Jesus Christ.There are in Paul's letters passages which look both in the directionof that anticipation, and in the other one of expecting to tastedeath. ‘We which are alive and remain unto the coming of theLord,’ he says twice in one chapter. ‘I am ready to beoffered, and the hour of my departure is at hand,’ he says inhis last letter.

Now this contrariety of anticipation is but the natural result ofwhat our Lord Himself said, ‘It is not for you to know thetimes and the seasons,’ and no one, who is content to form hisdoctrine of the knowledge resulting from inspiration from the wordsof Jesus Christ Himself, need stumble in the least degree inrecognising the plain fact that Paul and his brother Apostles did notknow when the Master was to come. Christ Himself had told them thatthere was a chamber locked against their entrance, and therefore wedo not need to think that it militates against the authoritativeinspiration of these early teachers of the Church, if they, too,searched ‘what manner of time the Spirit which was in them didsignify when it testified beforehand ... the glory that shouldfollow.’

Now, my text is evidently the result of the former of these twoanticipations, viz. that Paul and his generation were probably to seethe coming of the Lord from heaven. And to him the thoughtthat’ the night was far spent,’ as the context says,‘and the day was at hand,’ underlay his most buoyanthope, and was the inspiration and motive-spring of his most strenuouseffort.

Now, our relation to the closing moments of our own earthly lives,to the fact of death, is precisely the same as that of the Apostleand his brethren to the coming of the Lord. We, too, stand in thatposition of partial ignorance, and for us practically the words of mytext, and all their parallel words, point to how we should think of,and how we should be affected by, the end to which we are coming. Andthis is the grand characteristic of the Christian view of that lastsolemn moment. ‘Now is our salvation nearer than when webelieved.’ So I would note, first of all, what these wordsteach us should be the Christian view of our own end; and, second, towhat conduct that view should lead us.

I. The Christian view of death.

‘Now is our salvation nearer.’ We have to think awayby faith and hope all the grim externals of death, and to get to theheart of the thing. And then everything that is repulsive, everythingthat makes flesh and blood shrink, disappears and is evaporated, andbeneath the folds of his black garment, there is revealed God's last,sweetest, most triumphant angel-messenger to Christian souls, thegreat, strong, silent Angel of Death, and he carries in his hand thegift of a full salvation. That is what our Apostle rose to therapture of beholding, when he knew that the thought of his survivingtill Christ came again must be put away, and when close to the lastmoment of his life, he said, ‘The Lord shall deliver me, andsave me into His everlasting kingdom.’ What was the deliveranceand being saved that he expected and expresses in these words?Immunity from punishment? Escape from the headsman's axe? Being‘delivered from the mouth of the lion,’ the persecutingfangs of the bloody Nero? By no means. He knew that death was athand, and he said, ‘He will save me’—not from it,but through it—‘into His everlasting kingdom.’ Andso in the words of my text we may say—though Paul did not meanthem so—as we see the distance between us, and that certainclose, dwindling, dwindling, dwindling: ‘Now,’ as momentafter moment ticks itself into the past, ‘now is our salvationnearer than when we believed.’ Children, when they are gettingnear their holidays, take strips of paper, and tear off a piece aseach day passes. And as we tear off the days let us feel that we aredrawing closer to our home, and that the blessedness laid up for usin it is drawing nearer to us. ‘Our salvation,’ not ourdestruction, our fuller life, not in any true sense of the word our‘death,’ is ‘nearer than when webelieved.’

But some one may say, ‘Is a man not saved till after he isdead?’ Is salvation future, not coming till after the grave?No, certainly not. There are three aspects of that word in Scripture.Sometimes the New Testament writers treat salvation as past, andrepresent a Christian as being invested with the possession of it allat the very moment of his first faith. That is true, that whatever isyet to be evolved from what is given to the poorest and foulestsinner, in the moment of his initial faith in Christ, there isnothing to be added to it. The salvation which the penitent thiefreceived on the cross is all the salvation that he was ever to get.But out of it there came welling and welling and welling, when he hadpassed into the region ‘where beyond these voices there ispeace’—there came welling out from that inexhaustiblefountain which was opened in him all the fullnesses of an eternalprogress in the heavens. And so it is with us. Salvation is a pastgift which we received when we believed.

But in another aspect, which is also emphatically stated inScripture, it is a progressive process, and not merely a giftbestowed once for all in the past. I do not dwell upon that thought,but just remind you of a turn of expression which occurs in variousconnections more than once. ‘The Lord added to the Church dailysuch as were being saved,’ says Luke. Still more emphaticallyin the Epistle to the Corinthians, the Apostle puts into antithesisthe two progressive processes, and speaks of the Gospel as beingpreached, and being a savour of life unto life ‘to them thatare being saved,’ and a savour of destruction ‘to themthat are being lost.’ No moral or spiritual condition isstereotyped or stagnant. It is all progressive. And so the salvationthat is given once for all is ever being unfolded, and the Christianlife on earth is the unfolding of it.

But in another aspect still, such as is presented in my text, andin other parallel passages, that salvation is regarded as lying onthe other side of the flood, because the manifestations of it there,the evolving there of what is in it, and the great gifts that comethen, are so transcendently above all even of our selectestexperiences here, that they are, as it were, new, though still theirroots are in the old. The salvation which culminates in the absoluteremoval from our whole being of all manner of evil, whether it besorrow or sin, and in the conclusive bestowal upon us of all mannerof good, whether it be righteousness or joy, and which has for itsseal ‘the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body,’so that body, soul, and spirit ‘make one music as before, butvaster,’ is so far beyond the germs of itself which here weexperience that my text and its like are amply vindicated. And theman who is most fully persuaded and conscious that he possesses thesalvation of God, and most fully and blessedly aware that thatsalvation is gradually gaining power in his life, is the very man whowill most feel that between its highest manifestation on earth, andits lowest in the heavens there is such a gulf as that the wine thathe will drink there at the Father's table is indeed new wine. And so‘is our salvation nearer,’ though we already possess it,‘than when we believed.’

Dear brethren, if these things be true, and if to die is to besaved into the kingdom, do not two thoughts result? The one is thatthat blessed consummation should occupy more of our thoughts than Iam afraid it does. As life goes on, and the space dwindles between usand it, we older people naturally fall into the way, unless we arefools, of more seriously and frequently turning our thoughts to theend. I suppose the last week of a voyage to Australia has far morethoughts in it about the landing next week than the two or threefirst days of beating down the English Channel had. I do not want toput old heads on young shoulders in this or in any other respect. Butsure I am that it does belong very intimately to the strength of ourChristian characters that we should, as the Psalmist says, be‘wise’ to ‘consider our latter end.’

The other thought that follows is as plain, viz. that thatanticipation should always be buoyant, hopeful, joyous. We havenothing to do with the sad aspects of parting from earth. They areall but non-existent for the Christian consciousness, when it is asvigorous and God-directed as it ought to be. They drop into thebackground, and sometimes are lost to sight altogether. Remember howthis Apostle, when he does think about death, looks at itwith—I was going to quote words which may strike you as beinginappropriate—‘a frolic welcome’; how, at allevents, he is neither a bit afraid of it, nor does he see in itanything from which to shrink. He speaks of being with Christ, whichis far better; ‘absent from the body, present with theLord’; ‘the dissolution of the earthly house of thistabernacle’—the tumbling down of the old clay cottage inorder that a stately palace of marble and precious stones may bereared upon its site; ‘the hour of my departure is at hand; Ihave finished the fight.’ Peter, too, chimes in with his words:‘My exodus; my departure,’ and both of the two arelooking, if not longingly, at all events without a tremor of theeyelid, into the very eyeballs of the messenger whom most men feel sohideous. Is it not a wonderful gift to Christian souls that by faithin Jesus Christ, the realm in which their hope can expatiate is morethan doubled, and annexes the dim lands beyond the frontier of death?Dear friends, if we are living in Christ, the thought of the end andthat here we are absent from home, ought to be infinitely sweet, ofwhatever superficial terrors this poor, shrinking flesh may still beconscious. And I am sure that the nearer we get to our Saviour, andthe more we realise the joyous possession of salvation as alreadyours, and the more we are conscious of the expanding of that gift inour hearts, the more we shall be delivered from that fear of deathwhich makes men all their ‘lifetime subject to bondage.’So I beseech you to aim at this, that, when you look forward, thefurthest thing you see on the horizon of earth may be that greatAngel of Death coming to save you into the everlasting kingdom.

Now, just a word about

II. The conduct to which such a hope should incite.

The Apostle puts it very plainly in the context, and we need butexpand in a word or two what he teaches us there. ‘And thatknowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep, fornow is our salvation nearer than when we believed.’ To whatdoes he refer by ‘that’? The whole of the practicalexhortations to a Christian life which have been given before.Everything that is duty becomes tenfold more stringent and imperativewhen we apprehend the true meaning of that last moment. They tell usthat it is unwholesome to be thinking about death and the beyond,because to do so takes away interest from much of our presentoccupations and weakens energy. If there is anything from which a manis wrenched away because he steadily contemplates the fact of beingwrenched away altogether from everything before long, it is somethingthat he had better be wrenched from. And if there be any occupationswhich dwindle into nothingness, and into which a man cannot for thelife of him fling himself with any thoroughgoing enthusiasm orinterest, if once the thought of death stirs in him, depend upon itthey are occupations which are in themselves contemptible andunworthy. All good aims will gain greater power over us; we shallhave a saner estimate of what is worth living for; we shall have anew standard of what is the relative importance of things; and ifsome that looked very great turn out to be very small when we letthat searching light in upon them, and others which seemed veryinsignificant spring suddenly up into dominating magnitude—thatnew and truer perspective will be all clear gain. The more we feelthat our salvation is sweeping towards us, as it were, from thethrone of God through the blue abysses, the more diligently we shall‘work while it is called day,’ and the more earnestly weshall seek, when the Saviour and His salvation come, to be found withloins girt for all strenuous work, and lamps burning in all thebrightness of the light of a Christian character.

Further, says Paul, this hopeful, cheerful contemplation ofapproaching salvation should lead us to cast off the evil, and to puton the good. You will remember the heart-stirring imagery which theApostle employs in the context, where he says, ‘The day is athand; let us therefore fling off the works ofdarkness’—as men in the morning, when the daylight comesthrough the window, and makes them lift their eyelids, fling offtheir night-gear—‘and let us put on the armour oflight.’ We are soldiers, and must be clad in what will bebullet-proof, and will turn a sword's edge. And where shall steel ofcelestial temper be found that can resist the fiery darts shot at theChristian soldier? His armour must be ‘of light.’ Clad inthe radiance of Christian character he will be invulnerable. And howcan we, who have robed ourselves in the works of darkness, eithercast them off or array ourselves in sparkling armour of light? Paultells us, ‘Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make notprovision for the flesh.’ The picture is of a camp of sleepingsoldiers; the night wears thin, the streaks of saffron are coming inthe dawning east. One after another the sleepers awake; they castaside their night-gear, and they brace on the armour that sparkles inthe beams of the morning sun. So they are ready when the trumpetsounds the reveille, and with the morning comes the Captain of theLord's host, and with the Captain comes the perfecting of thesalvation which is drawing nearer and nearer to us, as our momentsglide through our fingers like the beads of a rosary. Many men thinkof death and fear; the Christian should think of death—andhope.

THE SOLDIER'S MORNING-CALL

‘Let us put on the armour oflight.’—ROMANS xiii. 12.

It is interesting to notice that the metaphor of the Christianarmour occurs in Paul's letters throughout his whole course. It firstappears, in a very rudimentary form, in the earliest of the Epistles,that to the Thessalonians. It appears here in a letter which belongsto the middle of his career, and it appears finally in the Epistle tothe Ephesians, in its fully developed and drawn-out shape, at almostthe end of his work. So we may fairly suppose that it was one of hisfamiliar thoughts. Here it has a very picturesque addition, for thepicture that is floating before his vivid imagination is that of acompany of soldiers, roused by the morning bugle, casting off theirnight-gear because the day is beginning to dawn, and bracing on thearmour that sparkles in the light of the rising sun.‘That,’ says Paul, ‘is what you Christian peopleought to be. Can you not hear the notes of the reveille? The night isfar spent; the day is at hand; therefore let us put off the works ofdarkness—the night-gear that was fit for those hours ofslumber. Toss it away, and put on the armour that belongs to theday.’

Now, I am not going to ask or try to answer the question of howfar this Apostolic exhortation is based upon the Apostle'sexpectation that the world was drawing near its end. That does notmatter at all for us at present, for the fact which he expresses asthe foundation of this exhortation is true about us all, and aboutour position in the midst of these fleeting shadows round us. We arehastening to the dawning of the true day. And so let me try toemphasise the exhortation here, old and threadbare and commonplace asit is, because we all need it, at whatever point of life's journey wehave arrived.

Now, the first thing that strikes me is that the garb for the manexpectant of the day is armour.

We might have anticipated something very different in accordancewith the thoughts that Paul's imagery here suggests, about thedifference between the night which is so swiftly passing, and is fullof enemies and dangers, and the day which is going to dawn, and isfull of light and peace and joy. We might have expected that he wouldhave said, ‘Let us put on the festal robes.’ But no!‘The night is far spent; the day is at hand.’ But thedress that befits the expectant of the day is not yet the robe of thefeast, but it is ‘the armour’ which, put into plainwords, means just this, that there is fighting, always fighting, tobe done. If you are ever to belong to the day, you have to equipyourselves now with armour and weapons. I do not need to dwellupon that, but I do wish to insist upon this fact, that after allthat may be truly said about growth in grace, and the peacefulapproximation towards perfection in the Christian character, wecannot dispense with the other element in progress, and that isfighting. We have to struggle for every step. Growth is notenough to define completely the process by which men become conformedto the image of the Father, and are ‘made meet to be partakersof the inheritance of the saints in light.’ Growth does expresspart of it, but only a part. Conflict is needed to come in, beforeyou have the whole aspect of Christian progress before your minds.For there will always be antagonism without and traitors within.There will always be recalcitrant horses that need to be whipped up,and jibbing horses that need to be dragged forward, and shying onesthat need to be violently coerced and kept in the traces. Conflict isthe law, because of the enemies, and because of the conspiracybetween the weakness within and the things without that appeal toit.

We hear a great deal to-day about being ‘sanctified byfaith.’ I believe that as much as any man, but the office offaith is to bring us the power that cleanses, and the application ofthat power requires our work, and it requires our fighting. So it isnot enough to say, ‘Trust for your sanctifying as you havetrusted for your justifying and acceptance,’ but you have towork out what you get by your faith, and you will never work it outunless you fight against your unworthy self, and the temptations ofthe world. The garb of the candidate for the day is armour.

And there is another side to that same thought, and that is, themore vivid our expectations of that blessed dawn the more completeshould be our bracing on of the armour. The anticipation of thatfuture, in very many instances, in the Christian Church, has led toprecisely the opposite state of mind. It has induced people to dropinto mere fantastic sentiment, or to ignore this contemptiblepresent, and think that they have nothing to do with it, and are only‘waiting for the coming of the Lord,’ and the like. Paulsays, ‘Just because, on your eastern horizon, you can see thepink flush that tells that the night is gone, and the day is coming,therefore do not be a sentimentalist, do not be idle, do not benegligent or contemptuous of the daily tasks; but because you see it,put on the armour of light, and whether the time between the risingof the whole orb of the sun on the horizon be long or short, fill thehours with triumphant conflict. Put on the whole armour oflight.’

Again, note here what the armour is. Of course that phrase,‘the armour of light,’ may be nothing more than a littlebit of colour put in by a picturesque imagination, and may suggestsimply how the burnished steel would shine and glitter when thesunbeams smote it, and the glistening armour, like that of Spenser'sRed Cross Knight, would make a kind of light in the dark cave, intowhich he went. Or it may mean ‘the armour that befits thelight’; as is perhaps suggested by the antithesis ‘theworks of darkness,’ which are to be ‘put off.’These are works that match the darkness, and similarly the armour isto be the armour that befits the light, and that can flash back itsbeams. But I think there is more than that in the expression. I wouldrather take the phrase to be parallel to another of this Apostle's,who speaks in 2nd Corinthians of the ‘armour of righteousnesson the right hand and on the left.’ ‘Light’ makesthe armour, ‘righteousness’ makes the armour. The twophrases say the same thing, the one in plain English, the other infigure, which being brought down to daily life is just this, that thetrue armour and weapon of a Christian man is Christian character.‘Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are lovely,whatsoever things are of good report,’ these are the pieces ofarmour, and these are the weapons which we are to wield. A Christianman fights against evil in himself by putting on good. The true wayto empty the heart of sin is to fill the heart with righteousness.The lances of the light, according to the significant old Greek myth,slew pythons. The armour is ‘righteousness on the right handand on the left.’ Stick to plain, simple, homely duties, andyou will find that they will defend your heart against many atemptation. A flask that is full of rich wine may be plunged into thesaltest ocean, and not a drop will find its way in. Fill your heartwith righteousness; your lives—let them glisten in the light,and the light will be your armour. God is light, wherefore God cannotbe tempted with evil. ‘Walk in the light, as He is in thelight’ ... and ‘the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth fromall sin.’

But there is another side to that thought, for if you will look,at your leisure, to the closing words of the chapter, you will findthe Apostle's own exposition of what putting on the armour of lightmeans. ‘Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ’—that ishis explanation of putting on ‘the armour of light.’ For‘once ye were darkness, but now are ye light in theLord,’ and it is in the measure in which we are united to Him,by the faith which binds us to Him, and by the love which worksobedience and conformity, that we wear the invulnerable armour oflight. Christ Himself is, and He supplies to all, the separate graceswhich Christian men can wear. We may say that He is ‘thepanoply of God,’ as Paul calls it in Ephesians, and when wewear Him, and only in the measure in which we do wear Him, in thatmeasure are we clothed with it. And so the last thing that I wouldpoint out here is that the obedience to these commands requirescontinual effort.

The Christians in Rome, to whom Paul was writing, were no novicesin the Christian life. Long ago many of them had been brought to Him.But the oldest Christian amongst them needed the exhortation as muchas the rawest recruit in the ranks. Continual renewal day by day iswhat we need, and it will not be secured without a great deal ofwork. Seeing that there is a ‘putting off’ to go alongwith the ‘putting on,’ the process is a very long one.‘'Tis a lifelong task till the lump be leavened.’ It is alifelong task till we strip off all the rags of this old self; and‘being clothed,’ are not ‘found naked.’ Ittakes a lifetime to fathom Jesus; it takes a lifetime to appropriateJesus, it takes a lifetime to be clothed with Jesus. And the questioncomes to each of us, have we ‘put off the old man with hisdeeds’? Are we daily, as sure as we put on our clothes in themorning, putting on Christ the Lord?

For notice with what solemnity the Apostle gives the master Hisfull, official, formal title here, ‘put ye on the Lord JesusChrist.’ Do we put Him on as Lord; bowing our wholewills to Him, and accepting Him, His commandments, promises,providences, with glad submission? Do we put on Jesus,recognising in His manhood as our Brother not only the pattern of ourlives, but the pledge that the pattern, by His help and love, iscapable of reproduction in ourselves? Do we put Him on as ‘theLord Jesus Christ,’ who was anointed with the DivineSpirit, that from the head it might flow, even to the skirts of thegarments, and every one of us might partake of that unction and bemade pure and clean thereby? ‘Put ye on the Lord JesusChrist,’ and do it day by day, and then you have ‘put onthe whole armour of God.’

And when the day that is dawning has risen to its full, then, nottill then, may we put off the armour and put on the white robe, layaside the helmet, and have our brows wreathed with the laurel,sheathe the sword, and grasp the palm, being ‘more thanconquerors through Him who loved us,’ and fights in us, as wellas for us.

THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY

‘So then every one of us shall give account ofhimself to God. 13. Let us not therefore judge one another any more:but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock, or anoccasion to fall, in his brother's way. 14. I know, and am persuadedby the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but tohim that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. 15.But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou notcharitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died. 16.Let not then your good be evil spoken of: 17. For the kingdom of Godis not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in theHoly Ghost. 18. For he that in these things serveth Christ isacceptable to God, and approved of men. 19. Let us therefore followafter the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one mayedify another. 20. For meat destroy not the work of God. All thingsindeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence.21. It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thingwhereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. 22.Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he thatcondemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth. 23. And hethat doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith:for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.’—ROMANS xiv.12-23.

The special case in view, in the section of which this passage ispart, is the difference of opinion as to the lawfulness of eatingcertain meats. It is of little consequence, so far as the principlesinvolved are concerned, whether these were the food which the Mosaicordinances made unclean, or, as in Corinth, meats offered to idols.The latter is the more probable, and would be the more important inRome. The two opinions on the point represented two tendencies ofmind, which always exist; one more scrupulous, and one more liberal.Paul has been giving the former class the lesson they needed in theformer part of this chapter; and he now turns to the‘stronger’ brethren, and lays down the law for theirconduct. We may, perhaps, best simply follow him, verse by verse.

We note then, first, the great thought with which he starts, thatof the final judgment, in which each man shall give account ofhimself. What has that to do with the question in hand? This, that itought to keep us from premature and censorious judging. We havesomething more pressing to do than to criticise each other. Ourselvesare enough to keep our hands full, without taking a lift of ourfellows’ conduct. And this, further, that, in view of the finaljudgment, we should hold a preliminary investigation on our ownprinciples of action, and ‘decide’ to adopt as theoverruling law for ourselves, that we shall do nothing which willmake duty harder for our brethren. Paul habitually settled smallmatters on large principles, and brought the solemnities of the finalaccount to bear on the marketplace and the meal.

In verse 13 he lays down the supreme principle for settling thecase in hand. No Christian is blameless if he voluntarily acts so asto lay a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall in another's path.Are these two things the same? Possibly, but a man may stumble, andnot fall, and that which makes him stumble may possibly indicate atemptation to a less grave evil than that which makes him fall does.It may be noticed that in the sequel we hear of a brother's being‘grieved’ first, and then of his being‘overthrown.’ In any case, there is no mistake about theprinciple laid down and repeated in verse 21. It is a hard saying forsome of us. Is my liberty to be restricted by the narrow scruples of‘strait-laced’ Christians? Yes. Does not that make themmasters, and attach too much importance to their narrowness? No. Itrecognises Christ as Master, and all His servants as brethren. If thescrupulous ones go so far as to say to the more liberal, ‘Youcannot be Christians if you do not do as we do’ then the limitsof concession have been reached, and we are to do as Paul did, whenhe flatly refused to yield one hair's-breadth to the Judaisers. If aman says, You must adopt this, that, or the other limitation inconduct, or else you shall be unchurched, the only answer is, I willnot. We are to be flexible as long as possible, and let weakbrethren's scruples restrain our action. But if they insist on thingsindifferent as essential, a yet higher duty than that of regard totheir weak consciences comes in, and faithfulness to Christ limitsconcession to His servants.

But, short of that extreme case, Paul lays down the law of curbingliberty in deference to ‘narrowness.’ In verse 14 hestates with equal breadth the extreme principle of the liberal party,that nothing is unclean of itself. He has learned that ‘in theLord Jesus.’ Before he was ‘in Him,’ he had beenentangled in cobwebs of legal cleanness and uncleanness; but now heis free. But he adds an exception, which must be kept in mind by theliberal-minded section—namely, that a clean thing is unclean toa man who thinks it is. Of course, these principles do not affect theeternal distinctions of right and wrong. Paul is not playing fast andloose with the solemn, divine law which makes sin and righteousnessindependent of men's notions. He is speaking of thingsindifferent—ceremonial observances and the like; and the modernanalogies of these are conventional pieces of conduct, in regard toamusem*nts and the like, which, in themselves, a Christian man can door abstain from without sin.

Verse 15 is difficult to understand, if the ‘for’ atthe beginning is taken strictly. Some commentators would read insteadof it a simple ‘but’ which smooths the flow of thought.But possibly the verse assigns a reason for the law in verse 13,rather than for the statements in verse 14. And surely there is nostronger reason for tender consideration for even the narrowestscruples of Christians than the obligation to walk in love. Ourcommon brotherhood binds us to do nothing that would even grieve oneof the family. For instance, Christian men have different views ofthe obligations of Sunday observance. It is conceivable that a very‘broad’ Christian might see no harm in playinglawn-tennis in his garden on a Sunday; but if his doing soscandalised, or, as Paul says, ‘grieved’ Christian peopleof less advanced views, he would be sinning against the law of loveif he did it.

There are many other applications of the principle readilysuggested. The principle is the thing to keep clearly in view. It hasa wide field for its exercise in our times, and when the Christianbrotherhood includes such diversities of culture and socialcondition. And that is a solemn deepening of it, ‘Destroy notwith thy meat him for whom Christ died.’ Note the almost bitteremphasis on ‘thy,’ which brings out not only thesmallness of the gratification for which the mischief is done, butthe selfishness of the man who will not yield up so small a thing toshield from evil which may prove fatal, a brother for whom Christ didnot shrink from yielding up life. If He is our pattern, any sacrificeof tastes and liberties for our brother's sake is plain duty, andcannot be neglected without selfish sin. One great reason, then, forthe conduct enjoined, is set forth in verse 15. It is the cleardictate of Christian love.

Another reason is urged in verses 16 to 18. It displays the truecharacter of Christianity, and so reflects honour on the doer.‘Your good’ is an expression for the whole sum of theblessings obtained by becoming Christians, and is closely connectedwith what is here meant by the ‘kingdom of God.’ Thatlatter phrase seems here to be substantially equivalent to the inwardcondition in which they are who have submitted to the dominion of thewill of God. It is ‘the kingdom within us’ which is‘righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’ Whathave you won by your Christianity? the Apostle in effect says, Do youthink that its purpose is mainly to give you greater licence inregard to these matters in question? If the most obvious thing inyour conduct is your ‘eating and drinking,’ your wholeChristian standing will be misconceived, and men will fancy that yourreligion permits laxity of life. But if, on the other hand, you showthat you are Christ's servants by righteousness, peace, and joy, youwill be pleasing to God, and men will recognise that your religion isfrom Him, and that you are consistent professors of it.

Modern liberal-minded brethren can easily translate all this forto-day's use. Take care that you do not give the impression that yourChristianity has its main operation in permitting you to do what yourweaker brethren have scruples about. If you do not yield to them, butflaunt your liberty in their and the world's faces, your advancedenlightenment will be taken by rough-and-ready observers as mainlycherished because it procures you these immunities. Show by your lifethat you have the true spiritual gifts. Think more about them thanabout your ‘breadth,’ and superiority to ‘narrowprejudices.’ Realise the purpose of the Gospel as concerns yourown moral perfecting, and the questions in hand will fall into theirright place.

In verses 19 and 20 two more reasons are given for restrictingliberty in deference to others’ scruples. Such conductcontributes to peace. If truth is imperilled, or Christ's name indanger of being tarnished, counsels of peace are counsels oftreachery; but there are not many things worth buying at the price ofChristian concord. Such conduct tends to build up our own andothers’ Christian character. Concessions to the‘weak’ may help them to become strong, but flying in theface of their scruples is sure to hurt them, in one way oranother.

In verse 15, the case was supposed of a brother's being grieved bywhat he felt to be laxity. That case corresponded to thestumbling-block of verse 13. A worse result seems contemplated inverse 20,—that of the weak brother, still believing that laxitywas wrong, and yet being tempted by the example of the stronger toindulge in it. In that event, the responsibility of overthrowing whatGod had built lies at the door of the tempter. The metaphor of‘overthrowing’ is suggested by the previous one of‘edifying.’ Christian duty is mutual building up ofcharacter; inconsiderate exercise of ‘liberty’ may leadto pulling down, by inducing to imitation which consciencecondemns.

From this point onwards, the Apostle first reiterates in inverseorder his two broad principles, that clean things are unclean to theman who thinks them so, and that Christian obligation requiresabstinence from permitted things if our indulgence tends to abrother's hurt. The application of the latter principle to the dutyof total abstinence from intoxicants for the sake of others isperfectly legitimate, but it is an application, not the directpurpose of the Apostle's injunctions.

In verses 22 and 23, the section is closed by two exhortations, inwhich both parties, the strong and the weak, are addressed. Theformer is spoken to in verse 22, the latter in verse 23. The strongbrother is bid to be content with having his wider views, or‘faith’—that is, certainty that his liberty is inaccordance with Christ's will. It is enough that he should enjoy thatconviction, only let him make sure that he can hold it as in God'ssight, and do not let him flourish it in the faces of brethren whomit would grieve, or might lead to imitating his practice, withouthaving risen to his conviction. And let him be quite sure that hisconscience is entirely convinced, and not bribed by inclination; formany a man condemns himself by letting wishes dictate toconscience.

On the other hand, there is a danger that those who have scruplesshould, by the example of those who have not, be tempted to do whatthey are not quite sure is right. If you have any doubts, says Paul,the safe course is to abstain from the conduct in question. Perhaps abrother can go to the theatre without harm, if he believes it rightto do so; but if you have any hesitation as to the propriety ofgoing, you will be condemned as sinning if you do. You must notmeasure your corn by another man's bushel. Your convictions, not his,are to be your guides. ‘Faith’ is used here in a somewhatunusual sense. It means certitude of judgment. The last words ofverse 23 have no such meaning as is sometimes extracted from them;namely, that actions, however pure and good, done by unbelievers, areof the nature of sin. They simply mean that whatever a Christian mandoes without clear warrant of his judgment and conscience is sin tohim, whatever it is to others.

TWO FOUNTAINS, ONE STREAM

‘That we, through patience and comfort of theScriptures, might have hope.... 13. The God of hope fill you with alljoy and peace in believing, that ye may abound inhope.’—ROMANS xv. 4, 13.

There is a river in Switzerland fed by two uniting streams,bearing the same name, one of them called the ‘white,’one of them the ‘grey,’ or dark. One comes down from theglaciers, and bears half-melted snow in its white ripple; the otherflows through a lovely valley, and is discoloured by its earth. Theyunite in one common current. So in these two verses we have twostreams, a white and a black, and they both blend together and flowout into a common hope. In the former of them we have the darkstream—‘through patience and comfort,’ whichimplies affliction and effort. The issue and outcome of alldifficulty, trial, sorrow, ought to be hope. And in the other versewe have the other valley, down which the light stream comes:‘The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,that ye may abound in hope.’

So both halves of the possible human experience are meant to endin the same blessed result; and whether you go round on the one sideof the sphere of human life, or whether you take the otherhemisphere, you come to the same point, if you have travelled withGod's hand in yours, and with Him for your Guide.

Let us look, then, at these two contrasted origins of the sameblessed gift, the Christian hope.

I. We have, first of all, the hope that is the child of the night,and born in the dark.

‘Whatsoever things,’ says the Apostle, ‘werewritten aforetime, were written for our learning, that we, throughpatience,’—or rather the braveperseverance—‘and consolation’—or ratherperhaps encouragement—‘of the Scriptures mighthave hope.’ The written word is conceived as the source ofpatient endurance which acts as well as suffers. This grace Scriptureworks in us through the encouragement which it ministers in manifoldways, and the result of both is hope.

So, you see, our sorrows and difficulties are not connected with,nor do they issue in, bright hopefulness, except by reason of thisconnecting link. There is nothing in a man's troubles to make himhopeful. Sometimes, rather, they drive him into despair; but at allevents, they seldom drive him to hopefulness, except where this linkcomes in. We cannot pass from the black frowning cliffs on one sideof the gorge to the sunny tablelands on the other without abridge—and the bridge for a poor soul from the blackness ofsorrow, and the sharp grim rocks of despair, to the smiling pasturesof hope, with all their half-open blossoms, is builded in that Book,which tells us the meaning and purpose of them all; and is full ofthe histories of those who have fought and overcome, have hoped andnot been ashamed.

Scripture is given for this among other reasons, that it mayencourage us, and so may produce in us this great grace of activepatience, if we may call it so.

The first thing to notice is, how Scripture givesencouragement—for such rather than consolation is the meaningof the word. It is much to dry tears, but it is more to stir theheart as with a trumpet call. Consolation is precious, but we needmore for well-being than only to be comforted. And, surely, the wholetone of Scripture in its dealing with the great mystery of pain andsorrow, has a loftier scope than even to minister assuagement togrief, and to stay our weeping. It seeks to make us strong and braveto face and to master our sorrows, and to infuse into us ahigh-hearted courage, which shall not merely be able to accept thebiting blasts, but shall feel that they bring a glow to the cheek andoxygen to the blood, while wrestling with them builds up ourstrength, and trains us for higher service. It would be a poor aim tocomfort only; but to encourage—to make strong in heart,resolved in will, and incapable of being overborne or crushed inspirit by any sorrows—that is a purpose worthy of the Book, andof the God who speaks through it.

This purpose, we may say, is effected by Scripture in two ways. Itencourages us by its records, and by its revelation ofprinciples.

Who can tell how many struggling souls have taken heart again, asthey pondered over the sweet stories of sorrow subdued which stud itspages, like stars in its firmament? The tears shed long ago which Godhas put ‘in His bottle,’ and recorded in ‘Hisbook,’ have truly been turned into pearls. That long gallery ofportraits of sufferers, who have all trodden the same rough road, andbeen sustained by the same hand, and reached the same home, speakscheer to all who follow them. Hearts wrung by cruel partings fromthose dearer to them than their own souls, turn to the pages whichtell how Abraham, with calm sorrow, laid his Sarah in the cave atMacpelah; or how, when Jacob's eyes were dim that he could not see,his memory still turned to the hour of agony when Rachael died byhim, and he sees clear in its light her lonely grave, where so muchof himself was laid; or to the still more sacred page which recordsthe struggle of grief and faith in the hearts of the sisters ofBethany. All who are anyways afflicted in mind, body, or estate findin the Psalms men speaking their deepest experiences before them; andthe grand majesty of sorrow that marks ‘the patience ofJob,’ and the flood of sunshine that bathes him, revealing the‘end of the Lord,’ have strengthened countless sufferersto bear and to hold fast, and to hope. We are all enough of childrento be more affected by living examples than by dissertations, howevertrue, and so Scripture is mainly history, revealing God by the recordof His acts, and disclosing the secret of human life by telling usthe experiences of living men.

But Scripture has another method of ministering encouragement toour often fainting and faithless hearts. It cuts down through all thecomplications of human affairs, and lays bare the innermost motivepower. It not only shows us in its narratives the working of sorrow,and the power of faith, but it distinctly lays down the source andthe purpose, the whence and the whither of all suffering. No man needquail or faint before the most torturing pains or most disastrousstrokes of evil, who holds firmly the plain teaching of Scripture onthese two points. They all come from my Father, and they allcome for my good. It is a short and simple creed, easilyapprehended. It pretends to no recondite wisdom. It is a homelyphilosophy which common intellects can grasp, which children canunderstand, and hearts half paralysed by sorrow can take in. So muchthe better. Grief and pain are so common that their cure had need tobe easily obtained. Ignorant and stupid people have to writhe inagony as well as wise and clever ones, and until grief is the portiononly of the cultivated classes, its healing must come from somethingmore universal than philosophy; or else the nettle would be moreplentiful than the dock; and many a poor heart would be stung todeath. Blessed be God! the Christian view of sorrow, while it leavesmuch unexplained, focuses a steady light on these two points; itsorigin and its end. ‘He for our profit, that we may bepartakers of His holiness,’ is enough to calm all agitation,and to make the faintest heart take fresh courage. With that doublecertitude clear before us, we can face anything. The slings andarrows which strike are no more flung blindly by an ‘outrageousfortune,’ but each bears an inscription, like the fabled bolts,which tells what hand drew the bow, and they come with His love.

Then, further, the courage thus born of the Scriptures producesanother grand thing—patience, or rather perseverance. By thatword is meant more than simply the passive endurance which is themain element in patience, properly so called. Such passive enduranceis a large part of our duty in regard to difficulties and sorrows,but is never the whole of it. It is something to endure and evenwhile the heart is breaking, to submit unmurmuring, but, transcendentas that is, it is but half of the lesson which we have to learn andto put in practice. For if all our sorrows have a disciplinary andeducational purpose, we shall not have received them aright, unlesswe have tried to make that purpose effectual, by appropriatingwhatsoever moral and spiritual teaching they each have for us. Nordoes our duty stop there. For while one high purpose of sorrow is todeaden our hearts to earthly objects, and to lift us above earthlyaffections, no sorrow can ever relax the bonds which oblige us toduty. The solemn pressure of ‘I ought,’ is as heavy onthe sorrowful as on the happy heart. We have still to toil, to pressforward, in the sweat of our brow, to gain our bread, whether it befood for our bodies, or sustenance for our hearts and minds. Ourresponsibilities to others do not cease because our lives aredarkened. Therefore, heavy or light of heart, we have still to stickto our work, and though we may never more be able to do it with theold buoyancy, still to do it with our might.

It is that dogged persistence in plain duty, that tenaciouscontinuance in our course, which is here set forth as the result ofthe encouragement which Scripture gives. Many of us have all ourstrength exhausted in mere endurance, and have let obvious dutiesslip from our hands, as if we had done all that we could do when wehad forced ourselves to submit. Submission would come easier if youtook up some of those neglected duties, and you would be stronger forpatience, if you used more of your strength for service. You do wellif you do not sink under your burden, but you would do better if,with it on your shoulders, you would plod steadily along the road;and if you did, you would feel the weight less. It seems heaviestwhen you stand still doing nothing. Do not cease to toil because yousuffer. You will feel your pain more if you do. Take theencouragement which Scripture gives, that it may animate you to bateno jot of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer rightonward.

And let the Scripture directly minister to you perseverance aswell as indirectly supply it through the encouragement which itgives. It abounds with exhortations, patterns, and motives of suchpatient continuance in well-doing. It teaches us a solemn scorn ofills. It, angel-like, bears us up on soft, strong hands, lest webruise ourselves on, or stumble over, the rough places on our roads.It summons us to diligence by the visions of the prize, and glimpsesof the dread fate of the slothful, by all that is blessed in hope,and terrible in foreboding, by appeals to an enlightened self-regard,and by authoritative commands to conscience, by the pattern of theMaster, and by the tender motives of love to Him to which He,Himself, has given voice. All these call on us to be followers ofthem who, through faith and perseverance, inherit the promises.

But we have yet another step to take. These two, the encouragementand perseverance produced by the right use of Scripture, will lead tohope.

It depends on how sorrow and trial are borne, whether they producea dreary hopelessness which sometimes darkens into despair, or abrighter, firmer hope than more joyous days knew. We cannot say thatsorrow produces hope. It does not, unless we have this connectinglink—the experience in sorrow of a God-given courage whichfalters not in the onward course, nor shrinks from any duty. But if,in the very press and agony, I am able, by God's grace, to endure norcease to toil, I have, in myself, a living proof of His power, whichentitles me to look forward with the sure confidence that, throughall the uproar of the storm, He will bring me to my harbour of restwhere there is peace. The lion once slain houses a swarm of bees wholay up honey in its carcase. The trial borne with brave persistenceyields a store of sweet hopes. If we can look back and say,‘Thou hast been with me in six troubles,’ it is goodlogic to look forward and say, ‘and in seven Thou wilt notforsake me.’ When the first wave breaks over the ship, as sheclears the heads and heels over before the full power of the opensea, inexperienced landsmen think they are all going to the bottom,but they soon learn that there is a long way between rolling andfoundering, and get to watch the highest waves towering above thebows in full confidence that these also will slip quietly beneath thekeel as the others have done, and be left harmless astern.

The Apostle, in this very same letter, has another word parallelto this, in which he describes the issues of rightly-borne sufferingwhen he says, ‘Tribulation workethperseverance’—the same word that is usedhere—‘and perseverance worketh’ the proof in ourexperience of a sustaining God; and the proof in our experience of asustaining God works hope. We know that of ourselves we could nothave met tribulation, and therefore the fact that we have been ableto meet and overcome it is demonstration of a mightier power than ourown, working in us, which we know to be from God, and thereforeinexhaustible and ever ready to help. That is foundation firm enoughto build solid fabrics of hope upon, whose bases go down to thecentre of all things, the purpose of God, and whose summits, like theupward shooting spire of some cathedral, aspire to, and seem almostto touch, the heavens.

So hope is born of sorrow, when these other things come between.The darkness gives birth to the light, and every grief blazes up awitness to a future glory. Each drop that hangs on the wet leavestwinkles into rainbow light that proclaims the sun. The garishsplendours of the prosperous day hide the stars, and through thenight of our sorrow there shine, thickly sown and steadfast, theconstellations of eternal hopes. The darker the midnight, the surer,and perhaps the nearer, the coming of the day. Sorrow has not had itsperfect work unless it has led us by the way of courage andperseverance to a stable hope. Hope has not pierced to the rock, andbuilds only ‘things that can be shaken,’ unless it restson sorrows borne by God's help.

II. So much then for the genealogy of one form of the Christianhope. But we have also a hope that is born of the day, the child ofsunshine and gladness; and that is set before us in the second of thetwo verses which we are considering, ‘The God of hope fill youwith all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound inhope.’

So then, ‘the darkness and the light are both alike’to our hope, in so far as each may become the occasion for itsexercise. It is not only to be the sweet juice expressed from ourhearts by the winepress of calamities, but that which flows of itselffrom hearts ripened and mellowed under the sunshine of God-givenblessedness.

We have seen that the bridge by which sorrow led to hope, isperseverance and courage; in this second analysis of the origin ofhope, joy and peace are the bridge by which Faith passes over intoit. Observe the difference: there is no direct connection betweenaffliction and hope, but there is between joy and hope. We have noright to say, ‘Because I suffer, I shall possess good in thefuture’; but we have a right to say, ‘Because Irejoice’—of course with a joy in God—‘I shallnever cease to rejoice in Him.’ Such joy is the prophet of itsown immortality and completion. And, on the other hand, the joy andpeace which are naturally the direct progenitors of Christian hope,are the children of faith. So that we have here two generations, asit were, of hope's ancestors;—Faith produces joy and peace, andthese again produce hope.

Faith leads to joy and peace. Paul has found, and if we only putit to the proof, we shall also find, that the simple exercise ofsimple faith fills the soul with ‘all joy andpeace.’ Gladness in all its variety and in full measure, calmrepose in every kind and abundant in its still depth, will pour intomy heart as water does into a vessel, on condition of my taking awaythe barrier and opening my heart through faith. Trust and thou shaltbe glad. Trust, and thou shalt be calm. In the measure of thy trustshall be the measure of thy joy and peace.

Notice, further, how indissolubly connected the present exerciseof faith is with the present experience of joy and peace. Theexuberant language of this text seems a world too wide for anythingthat many professing Christians ever know even in the moments ofhighest elevation, and certainly far beyond the ordinary tenor oftheir lives. But it is no wonder that these should have so littlejoy, when they have so little faith. It is only while we are lookingto Jesus that we can expect to have joy and peace. There is noflashing light on the surface of the mirror, but when it is turnedfull to the sun. Any interruption in the electric current isregistered accurately by an interruption in the continuous lineperforated on the telegraph ribbon; and so every diversion of heartand faith from Jesus Christ is recorded by the fading of the sunshineout of the heart, and the silencing of all the song-birds.Yesterday's faith will not bring joy to-day; you cannot live uponpast experience, nor feed your souls with the memory of formerexercises of Christian faith. It must be like the manna, gatheredfresh every day, else it will rot and smell foul. A present faith,and a present faith only, produces a present joy and peace. Is there,then, any wonder that so much of the ordinary experience of ordinaryChristians should present a sadly broken line—a bright pointhere and there, separated by long stretches of darkness? The gaps inthe continuity of their joy are the tell-tale indicators of theinterruptions in their faith. If the latter were continuous, theformer would be unbroken. Always believe, and you will always be gladand calm.

It is easy to see that this is the natural result of faith. Thevery act of confident reliance on another for all my safety andwell-being has a charm to make me restful, so long as my reliance isnot put to shame. There is no more blessed emotion than the tranquilhappiness which, in the measure of its trust, fills every trustfulsoul. Even when its objects are poor, fallible, weak, ignorant dyingmen and women, trust brings a breath of more than earthly peace intothe heart. But when it grasps the omnipotent, all-wise, immortalChrist, there are no bounds but its own capacity to the blessednesswhich it brings into the soul, because there is none to theall-sufficient grace of which it lays hold.

Observe again how accurately the Apostle defines for us theconditions on which Christian experience will be joyful and tranquil.It is ‘in believing,’ not in certain other exercises ofmind, that these blessings are to be realised. And the forgetfulnessof that plain fact leads to many good people's religion being verymuch more gloomy and disturbed than God meant it to be. For a largepart of it consists in sadly testing their spiritual state, andgazing at their failures and imperfections. There is nothing cheerfulor tranquillising in grubbing among the evils of your own heart, andit is quite possible to do that too much and too exclusively. If yourfavourite subject of contemplation in your religious thinking isyourself, no wonder that you do not get much joy and peace out ofthat. If you do, it will be of a false kind. If you are thinking moreabout your own imperfections than about Christ's pardon, more aboutthe defects of your own love to Him than about the perfection of Hislove to you, if instead of practising faith you are absorbed inself-examination, and instead of saying to yourself, ‘I knowhow foul and unworthy I am, but I look away from myself to mySaviour,’ you are bewailing your sins and doubting whether youare a Christian, you need not expect God's angels of joy and peace tonestle in your heart. It is ‘in believing,’ and not inother forms of religious contemplation, however needful these may intheir places be, that these fair twin sisters come to us and maketheir abode with us.

Then, the second step in this tracing of the origin of the hopewhich has the brighter source is the consideration that the joy andpeace which spring from faith, in their turn produce that confidentanticipation of future and progressive good.

Herein lies the distinguishing blessedness of the Christian joyand peace, in that they carry in themselves the pledge of their owneternity. Here, and here only, the mad boast which is doomed to be somiserably falsified when applied to earthly gladness is simple truth.Here ‘to-morrow shall be as this day and much moreabundant.’ Such joy has nothing in itself which betokensexhaustion, as all the less pure joys of earth have. It is manifestlynot born for death, as are they. It is not fated, like all earthlyemotions or passions, to expire in the moment of its completeness, oreven by sudden revulsion to be succeeded by its opposite. Itssweetness has no after pang of bitterness. It is not true of thisgladness, that ‘Hereof cometh in the end despondency andmadness,’ but its destiny is to ‘remain’ as long asthe soul in which it unfolds shall exist, and ‘to befull’ as long as the source from which it flows does not rundry.

So that the more we experience the present blessedness, whichfaith in Christ brings us, the more shall we be sure that nothing inthe future, either in or beyond time, can put an end to it; and hencea hope that looks with confident eyes across the gorge of death, tothe ‘shining tablelands’ on the other side, and is ascalm as certitude, shall be ours. To the Christian soul, rejoicing inthe conscious exercise of faith and the conscious possession of itsblessed results, the termination of a communion with Christ, so realand spiritual, by such a trivial accident as death, seems wildlyabsurd and therefore utterly impossible. Just as Christ'sResurrection seems inevitable as soon as we grasp the truth of Hisdivine nature, and it becomes manifestly impossible that He, beingsuch as He is—should be holden of death,’ being such asit is, so for His children, when once they come to know the realitiesof fellowship with their Lord, they feel the entire dissimilarity ofthese to anything in the realm which is subjected to the power ofdeath, and to know it to be as impossible that these purely spiritualexperiences should be reduced to inactivity, or meddled with by it,as that a thought should be bound with a cord or a feeling fastenedwith fetters. They, and death, belong to two different regions. Itcan work its will on ‘this wide world, and all its fadingsweets’—but is powerless in the still place where thesoul and Jesus hold converse, and all His joy passes into Hisservant's heart. I saw, not long since, in a wood a mass of blue wildhyacinths, that looked like a little bit of heaven dropped down uponearth. You and I may have such a tiny bit of heaven itself lyingamidst all the tangle of our daily lives, if only we put our trust inChrist, and so get into our hearts some little portion of that joythat is unspeakable, and that peace that passeth understanding.

Thus, then, the sorrows of the earthly experience and the joys ofthe Christian life will blend together to produce the one blessedresult of a hope that is full of certainty, and is the assurance ofimmortality. There is no rainbow in the sky unless there be both ablack cloud and bright sunshine. So, on the blackest, thickestthunder-mass of our sorrows, if smitten into moist light by thesunshine of joy and peace drawn from Jesus Christ by faith, there maybe painted the rainbow of hope, the many-coloured, steadfast token ofthe faithful covenant of the faithful God.

JOY AND PEACE INBELIEVING

‘The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace inbelieving, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the HolyGhost.’—ROMANS xv. 13.

With this comprehensive and lofty petition the Apostle closes hisexhortation to the factions in the Roman Church to be at unity. Theform of the prayer is moulded by the last words of a quotation whichhe has just made, which says that in the coming Messiah ‘shallthe Gentiles hope.’ But the prayer itself is not an instance ofbeing led away by a word—in form, indeed, it is shaped byverbal resemblance; in substance it points to the true remedy forreligious controversy. Fill the contending parties with a fullerspiritual life, and the ground of their differences will begin todwindle, and look very contemptible. When the tide rises, the littlepools on the rocks are all merged into one.

But we may pass beyond the immediate application of these words,and see in them the wish, which is also a promise, and like theexhibition of every ideal is a command. This is Paul's conception ofthe Christian life as it might and should be, in one aspect. Younotice that there is not a word in it about conduct. It goes fardeeper than action. It deals with the springs of action in theindividual life. It is the depths of spiritual experience here setforth which will result in actions that become a Christian. And inthese days, when all around us we see a shallow conception ofChristianity, as if it were concerned principally with conduct andmen's relations with one another, it is well to go down into thedepths, and to remember that whilst ‘Do, do, do!’ is veryimportant, ‘Be, be, be!’ is the primary commandment.Conduct is a making visible of personality, and the Scriptureteaching which says first faith and then works is profoundlyphilosophical as well as Christian. So we turn away here fromexternals altogether, and regard the effect of Christianity on theinward life.

I. I wish to notice man's faith and God's filling as connected,and as the foundation of everything.

‘The God of hope fill you ...’—let us leave outthe intervening words for a moment—‘in believing.’Now, you notice that Paul does not stay to tell us what or whom weare to believe in, or on. He takes that for granted, and his thoughtis fastened, for the moment, not on the object but on the act offaith. And he wishes to drive home to us this, that the attitude oftrust is the necessary prerequisite condition of God's being able tofill a man's soul, and that God's being able to fill a man's soul isthe necessary consequence of a man's trust. Ah, brethren, we cannotaltogether shut God out from our spirits. There are loving andgracious gifts that, as our Lord tells us, He makes to ‘fall onthe unthankful and the evil.’ His rain is not like the summershowers that we sometimes see, that fall in one spot and leaveanother dry; nor like the destructive thunderstorms, that come downbringing ruin upon one cane-brake and leave the plants in the nextstanding upright. But the best, the highest, the truly divine giftswhich He is yearning to give to us all, cannot be given except therebe consent, trust, and desire for them. You can shut your hearts oryou can open them. And just as the wind will sigh round somehermetically closed chamber in vain search for a cranny, and the manwithin may be asphyxiated though the atmosphere is surging up itswaves all round his closed domicile, so by lack of our faith, whichis at once trust, consent, and desire, we shut out the gift withwhich God would fain fill our spirits. You can take a porous potteryvessel, wrap it up in waxcloth, pitch it all over, and then drop itinto mid-Atlantic, and not a drop will find its way in. And that iswhat we can do with ourselves, so that although in Him ‘we liveand move and have our being,’ and are like the earthen vesselin the ocean, no drop of the blessed moisture will ever find its wayinto the heart. There must be man's faith before there can be God'sfilling.

Further, this relation of the two things suggests to us that aconsequence of a Christian man's faith is the direct action of Godupon him. Notice how the Apostle puts that truth in a double formhere, in order that he may emphasise it, using one form ofexpression, involving the divine, direct activity, at the beginningof his prayer, and another at the end, and so enclosing, as it were,within a great casket of the divine action, all the blessings, theflashing jewels, which he desires his Roman friends to possess.‘The God of hope fill you ... through the power of the HolyGhost.’ I wish I could find words by which I could bear in uponthe ordinary type of the Evangelical Christianity of this generationanything like the depth and earnestness of my own conviction that,for lack of a proportionate development of that great truth, of thedirect action of the giving God on the believing heart, it isweakened and harmed in many ways. Surely He that made my spirit cantouch my spirit; surely He who filleth all things according to theircapacity can Himself enter into and fill the spirit which is openedfor Him by simple faith. We do not need wires for the telegraphybetween heaven and the believing soul, but He comes directly to, andspeaks in, and moves upon, and moulds and blesses, the waiting heart.And until you know, by your own experience rightly interpreted, thatthere is such a direct communion between the giving God and therecipient believing spirit, you have yet to learn the deepest depth,and the most blessed blessedness, of Christian faith and experience.For lack of it a hundred evils beset modern Christianity. For lack ofit men fix their faith so exclusively as that the faith is itselfharmed thereby, on the past act of Christ's death on the Cross. Youwill not suspect me of minimising that, but I beseech you rememberone climax of the Apostle's which, though not bearing the samemessage as my text, is in harmony with it, ‘Christ that died,yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand ofGod, who also maketh intercession for us.’ And remember thatChrist Himself bestows the gift of His Divine Spirit as the result ofthe humiliation and the agony of His Cross. Faith brings the directaction of the giving God.

And one more word about this first part of my text: the result ofthat direct action is complete—‘the God of hope fillyou’ with no shrunken stream, no painful trickle out of anarrow rift in the rock, but a great exuberance which will pass intoa man's nature in the measure of his capacity, which is the measureof his trust and desire. There are two limits to God's gifts to men:the one is the limitless limit of God's infinitude, the other is theworking limit—our capacity—and that capacity is preciselymeasured, as the capacity of some built-in vessel might be measuredby a little gauge on the outside, by our faith. ‘The God ofhope’ fills you in ‘believing,’ and‘according to thy faith shall it be unto thee.’

II. Notice the joy and peace which come from the direct action ofthe God of hope on the believer's soul.

Now, it is not only towards God that we exercise trust, butwherever it is exercised, to some extent, and in the measure in whichthe object on which it rests is discovered by experience to beworthy, it produces precisely these results. Whoever trusts is atpeace, just as much as he trusts. His confidence may be mistaken, andthere will come a tremendous awakening if it is, and the peace willbe shattered like some crystal vessel dashed upon an iron pavement,but so long as a man's mind and heart are in the attitude ofdependence upon another, conceived to be dependable, one knows thatthere are few phases of tranquillity and blessedness which aresweeter and deeper than that. ‘The heart of her husband dothsafely trust in her’—that is one illustration, and ahundred more might be given. And if you will take that attitude oftrust which, even when it twines round some earthly prop, is upheldfor a time, and bears bright flowers—if you take it and twineit round the steadfast foundations of the Throne of God, what canshake that sure repose? ‘Joy and peace’ will come whenthe Christian heart closes with its trust, which is God inChrist.

He that believes has found the short, sure road to joy and peace,because his relations are set right with God. For these relations arethe disturbing elements in all earthly tranquillity, and like theskeleton at the feast in all earthly joy, and a man can never, downto the roots of his being, be at rest until he is quite sure thatthere is nothing wrong between him and God. And so believing, we cometo that root of all real gladness which is anything better than acrackling of thorns under a pot, and to that beginning of all truetranquillity. Joy in the Lord and peace with God are the parents ofall joy and peace that are worthy of the name.

And that same faith will again bring these two bright-wingedangels into the most saddened and troubled lives, because that faithbrings right relations with ourselves. For our inward strifes stuffthorns into the pillow of our repose, and mingle bitterness with thesweetest, foaming draughts of our earthly joys. If a man's conscienceand inclinations pull him two different ways, he is torn asunder asby wild horses. If a man has a hungry heart, for ever yearning afterunattained and impossible blessings, then there is no rest there. Ifa man's little kingdom within him is all anarchical, and each passionand appetite setting up for itself, then there is no tranquillity.But if by faith we let the God of hope come in, then hungry heartsare satisfied, and warring dispositions are harmonised, and theconscience becomes quieted, and fair imaginations fill the chamber ofthe spirit, and the man is at rest, because he himself is unified bythe faith and fear of God.

And the same faith brings joy and peace because it sets right ourrelations with other people, and with all externals. If I am livingin an atmosphere of trust, then sorrow will never be absolute, norhave exclusive monopoly and possession of my spirit. But there willbe the paradox, and the blessedness, of Christian experience,‘as sorrowful yet always rejoicing.’ For the joy of theChristian life has its source far away beyond the swamps from whichthe sour drops of sorrow may trickle, and it is possible that, likethe fabled fire that burned under water, the joy of the Lord may bebright in my heart, even when it is drenched in floods of calamityand distress.

And so, brethren, the joy and peace that come from faith will fillthe heart which trusts. Only remember how emphatically the Apostlehere puts these two things together, ‘joy and peace inbelieving.’ As long as, and not a moment longer than, you areexercising the Christian act of trust, will you be experiencing theChristian blessedness of ‘joy and peace.’ Unscrew thepipe, and in an instant the water ceases to flow. Touch the buttonand switch off, and out goes the light. Some Christian people fancythey can live upon past faith. You will get no present joy and peaceout of past faith. The rain of this day twelve months will notmoisten the parched ground of to-day. Yesterday's religion was allused up yesterday. And if you would have a continuous flow of joy andpeace through your lives, keep up a uniform habit and attitude oftrust in God. You will get it then; you will get it in no otherway.

III. Lastly, note the hope which springs from this experience ofjoy and peace.

‘The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace inbelieving, that ye may abound in hope.’ Here, again, theApostle does not trouble himself to define the object of the hope. Inthis, as in the former clause, his attention is fixed upon theemotion, not upon that towards which it goes out. And just as therewas no need to say in whom it was that the Christian man was tobelieve, so there is no room to define what it is that the Christianman has a right to hope for. For his hope is intended to cover allthe future, the next moment, or to-morrow, or the dimmest distancewhere time has ceased to be, and eternity stands unmoved. Theattitude of the Christian mind ought to be a cheery optimism, anunconquerable hope. ‘The best has yet to be’ is the trueChristian thought in contemplating the future for myself, for my dearones, for God's Church, and for God's universe.

And the truest basis on which that hope can rest is the experiencegranted to us, on condition of our faith, of a present, abundantpossession of the joy and peace which God gives. The gladder you areto-day, if the gladness comes from the right source, the surer youmay be that that gladness will never end. That is not what befallsmen who live by earthly joys. For the more poignant, precious, and,as we faithlessly think, indispensable some of these are to us, themore into their sweetest sweetness creeps the dread thought:‘This is too good to last; this must pass.’ We never needto think that about the peace and joy that come to us throughbelieving. For they, in their sweetness, prophesy perpetuity. I neednot dwell upon the thought that the firmest, most personally preciousconvictions of an eternity of future blessedness, rise and fall in aChristian consciousness with the purity and the depth of its ownexperience of the peace and joy of the Gospel. The more you have ofJesus Christ in your lives and hearts to-day, the surer you will bethat whatever death may do, it cannot touch that, and the moreludicrously impossible it will seem that anything that befalls thispoor body can touch the bond that knits us to Jesus Christ. Death canseparate us from a great deal. Its sharp scythe cuts through allother bonds, but its edge is turned when it is tried against thegolden chain that binds the believing soul to the Christ in whom hehas believed.

So, brethren, there is the ladder—begin at the bottom step,with faith in Jesus Christ. That will bring God's direct action intoyour spirit, through His Holy Spirit, and that one gift will break upinto an endless multiplicity of blessings, just as a beam of lightspilt upon the surface of the ocean breaks into diamonds in everywave, and that ‘joy and peace’ will kindle in your heartsa hope fed by the great words of the Lord: ‘Peace I leave withyou, my peace I give unto you,’ ‘My joy shall remain inyou, and your joy shall be full,’ ‘He that liveth andbelieveth in Me shall never die.’

PHŒBE

‘I commend unto you Phœbe our sister, who isa servant of the Church that is at Cenchrea: 2. That ye receive herin the Lord, worthily of the Saints, and that ye assist her inwhatsover matter she may have need of you: for she herself hath beena succourer of many, and of mine own self.’—ROMANS xvi.1, 2 (R. V.).

This is an outline picture of an else wholly unknown person. She,like most of the other names mentioned in the salutations in thischapter, has had a singular fate. Every name, shadowy and unreal asit is to us, belonged to a human life filled with hopes and fears,plunged sometimes in the depths of sorrows, struggling with anxietiesand difficulties; and all the agitations have sunk into forgetfulnessand calm. There is left to the world an immortal remembrance, andscarcely a single fact associated with the undying names.

Note the person here disclosed.

A little rent is made in the dark curtain through which we see aswith an incandescent light concentrated for a moment upon her, one ofthe many good women who helped Paul, as their sisters had helpedPaul's Master, and who thereby have won, little as either Paul or shethought it, an eternal commemoration. Her name is a purely idolatrousone, and stamps her as a Greek, and by birth probably a worshipper ofApollo. Her Christian associations were with the Church at Cenchrea,the port of Corinth, of which little Christian community nothingfurther is known. But if we take into account the hideousimmoralities of Corinth, we shall deem it probable that the port,with its shifting maritime population, was, like most seaports, asoil in which goodness was hard put to it to grow, and a church hadmuch against which to struggle. To be a Christian at Cenchrea canhave been no light task. Travellers in Egypt are told that Port Saidis the wickedest place on the face of the earth; and in Phœbe'shome there would be a like drift of disreputables of both sexes andof all nationalities. It was fitting that one good woman should berecorded as redeeming womanhood there. We learn of her that she was a‘servant,’ or, as the margin preferably reads, a‘deaconess of the Church which is at Cenchrea’; and inthat capacity, by gentle ministrations and the exhibition of purityand patient love, as well as by the gracious administration ofmaterial help, had been a ‘succourer of many.’ There is awhole world of unmentioned kindnesses and a life of self-devotionhidden away under these few words. Possibly the succour which sheadministered was her own gift. She may have been rich andinfluential, or perhaps she but distributed the Church's bounty; butin any case the gift was sweetened by the giver's hand, and thesuccour was the impartation of a woman's sympathy more than thebestowment of a donor's gift. Sometime or other, and somehow orother, she had had the honour and joy of helping Paul, and no doubtthat opportunity would be to her a crown of service. She was now onthe point of taking the long journey to Rome on her own business, andthe Apostle bespeaks for her help from the Roman Church ‘inwhatsoever matter she may have need of you,’ as if she had somedifficult affair on hand, and had no other friends in the city.Possibly then she was a widow, and perhaps had had some lawsuit orbusiness with government authorities, with whom a word from some ofher brethren in Rome might stand her in good stead. Apparently shewas the bearer of this epistle, which would give her a standing atonce in the Roman Church, and she came among them with a halo roundher from the whole-hearted commendation of the Apostle.

Mark the lessons from this little picture.

We note first the remarkable illustration here given of the powerof the new bond of a common faith. The world was then broken up intosections, which were sometimes bitterly antagonistic and at othersmerely rigidly exclusive. The only bond of union was the iron fetterof Rome, which crushed the people, but did not knit them together.But here are Paul the Jew, Phœbe the Greek, and the Romanreaders of the epistle, all fused together by the power of the divinelove that melted their hearts, and the common faith that unifiedtheir lives. The list of names in this chapter, comprising as it doesmen and women of many nationalities, and some slaves as well asfreemen, is itself a wonderful testimony of the truth of Paul'striumphant exclamation in another epistle, that in Christ there is‘neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male norfemale.’

The clefts have closed, and the very line of demarcation isobliterated; and these clefts were deeper than any of which wemoderns have had experience. It remains something like a miracle thatthe members of Paul's churches could ever be brought together, andthat their consciousness of oneness could ever overpower thetremendous divisive forces. We sometimes wonder at their bickerings;we ought rather to wonder at their unity, and be ashamed of theimportance which we attach to our infinitely slighter mutualdisagreements. The bond that was sufficient to make the earlyChristians all one in Christ Jesus seems to have lost its bindingpower to-day, and, like an used-up elastic band, to have no claspinggrip left in it.

Another thought which we may connect with the name of Phœbeis the characteristic place of women in Christianity.

The place of woman amongst the Jews was indeed free and honourableas compared with her position either in Greece or Rome, but in noneof them was she placed on the level of man, nor regarded mainly inthe aspect of an equal possessor of the same life of the Spirit. Buta religion which admits her to precisely the same position of asupernatural life as is granted to man, necessarily relegates to asubordinate position all differences of sex as it does all othernatural distinctions. The women who ministered to Jesus of theirsubstance, the two sisters of Bethany, the mourners at Calvary, thethree who went through the morning twilight to the tomb, were but theforemost conspicuous figures in a great company through all the ageswho have owed to Jesus their redemption, not only from the slavery ofsin, but from the stigma of inferiority as man's drudge or toy. Tothe world in which Paul lived it was a strange, new thought thatwomen could share with man in his loftiest emotions. Historically theemancipation of one half of the human race is the direct result ofthe Christian principle that all are one in Christ Jesus. In modernlife the emancipation has been too often divorced from its one surebasis, and we have become familiar with the sight of the‘advanced’ women who have advanced so far as to have lostsight of the Christ to whom they owe their freedom. The picture ofPhœbe in our text might well be commended to all such assetting forth the most womanlike ideal. She was ‘a succourer ofmany.’ Her ministry was a ministry of help; and surely suchgentle ministry is that which most befits the woman's heart and comesmost graciously to the woman's fingers.

Phœbe then may well represent to us the ministry of succourin this world of woe and need. There is ever a cry, even inapparently successful lives, for help and a helper. Man's clumsy handis but too apt to hurt where it strives to soothe, and nature itselfseems to devolve on the swifter sympathies and more delicateperceptions of woman the joy of binding up wounded spirits. In theverses immediately following our text we read of another woman towhom was entrusted a more conspicuous and direct form of service.Priscilla ‘taught Apollos the way of God more perfectly,’and is traditionally represented as being united with her husband inevangelistic work. But it is not merely prejudice which takesPhœbe rather than Priscilla as the characteristic type ofwoman's special ministry. We must remember our Lord's teaching, thatthe giver of ‘a cup of cold water in the name of aprophet’ in some measure shares in the prophet's work, and willsurely share in the prophet's reward. She who helped Paul must haveentered into the spirit of Paul's labours; and He to whom all servicethat is done from the same motive is one in essence, makes nodifference between him whose thirsty lips drink and her whose lovinghand presents the cup of cold water. ‘Small service is trueservice while it lasts.’ Paul and Phœbe were one inministry and one in its recompense.

We may further see in her a foreshadowing of the reward of lowlyservice, though it be only the service of help. Little didPhœbe dream that her name would have an eternal commemorationof her unnoticed deeds of kindness and aid, standing forth to latergenerations and peoples of whom she knew nothing, as worthy ofeternal remembrance. For those of us who have to serve unnoticed andunknown, here is an instance and a prophecy which may stimulate andencourage. ‘Surely I will never forget any of theirworks’ is a gracious promise which the most obscure and humbleof us may take to heart, and sustained by which, we may patientlypursue a way on which there are ‘none to praise and very few tolove.’ It matters little whether our work be noticed orrecorded by men, so long as we know that it is written in the Lamb'sbook of life and that He will one day proclaim it ‘before theFather in heaven and His angels.’

PRISCILLA AND AQUILA

‘Greet Priscilla and Aquila my helpers in ChristJesus; 4. (Who have for my life laid down their own necks: unto whomnot only I give thanks, but so all the churches of the Gentiles:) 5.Likewise greet the church that is in their house.’—ROMANSxvi. 3-5.

It has struck me that this wedded couple present, even in thescanty notices that we have of them, some interesting points whichmay be worth while gathering together.

Now, to begin with, we are told that Aquila was a Jew. We are nottold whether Priscilla was a Jewess or no. So far as her name isconcerned, she may have been, and very probably was, a Roman, and, ifso, we have in their case a ‘mixed marriage’ such as wasnot uncommon then, and of which Timothy's parents give anotherexample. She is sometimes called Prisca, which was her proper name,and sometimes Priscilla, an affectionate diminutive. The two had beenliving in Rome, and had been banished under the decree of theEmperor, just as Jews have been banished from England and from everycountry in Europe again and again. They came from Rome to Corinth,and were, perhaps, intending to go back to Aquila's native place,Pontus, when Paul met them in the latter city, and changed theirwhole lives. His association with them began in a purely commercialpartnership. But as they abode together and worked at their trade,there would be many earnest talks about the Christ, and these endedin both husband and wife becoming disciples. The bond thus knit wastoo close to be easily severed, and so, when Paul sailed across theÆgean for Ephesus, his two new friends kept with him, whichthey would be the more ready to do, as they had no settled home. Theyremained with him during his somewhat lengthened stay in the greatAsiatic city; for we find in the first Epistle to the Corinthianswhich was written from Ephesus about that time, that the Apostlesends greetings from ‘Priscilla and Aquila and the Church whichis in their house.’ But when Paul left Ephesus they seem tohave stayed behind, and afterwards to have gone their own way.

About a year after the first Epistle to the Corinthians was sentfrom Ephesus, the Epistle to the Romans was written, and we findthere the salutation to Priscilla and Aquila which is my text. Sothis wandering couple were back again in Rome by that time, andsettled down there for a while. They are then lost sight of for sometime, but probably they returned to Ephesus. Once more we catch aglimpse of them in Paul's last letter, written some seven or eightyears after that to the Romans. The Apostle knows that death is near,and, at that supreme moment, his heart goes out to these two faithfulcompanions, and he sends them a parting token of his undying love.There are only two messages to friends in the second Epistle toTimothy, and one of these is to Prisca and Aquila. At the mouth ofthe valley of the shadow of death he remembered the old days inCorinth, and the, to us, unknown instance of devotion which these twohad shown, when, for his life, they laid down their own necks.

Such is all that we know of Priscilla and Aquila. Can we gatherany lessons from these scattered notices thus thrown together?

I. Here is an object lesson as to the hallowing effect ofChristianity on domestic life and love.

Did you ever notice that in the majority of the places where thesetwo are named, if we adopt the better readings, Priscilla's namecomes first? She seems to have been ‘the better man of thetwo’; and Aquila drops comparatively into the background. Now,such a couple, and a couple in which the wife took the foremostplace, was an absolute impossibility in heathenism. They are aspecimen of what Christianity did in the primitive age, all over theEmpire, and is doing to-day, everywhere—lifting woman to herproper place. These two, yoked together in ‘all exercise ofnoble end,’ and helping one another in Christian work, andbracketed together by the Apostle, who puts the wife first, as hisfellow-helpers in Christ Jesus, stands before us as a living pictureof what our sweet and sacred family life and earthly loves may beglorified into, if the light from heaven shines down upon them, andis thankfully received into them.

Such a house as the house of Prisca and Aquila is the product ofChristianity, and such ought to be the house of every professingChristian. For we should all make our homes as ‘tabernacles ofthe righteous,’ in which the voice of joy and rejoicing is everheard. Not only wedded love, but family love, and all earthly love,are then most precious, when into them there flows the ennobling, thecalming, the transfiguring thought of Christ and His love to us.

Again, notice that, even in these scanty references to our twofriends, there twice occurs that remarkable expression ‘thechurch that is in their house.’ Now, I suppose that that givesus a little glimpse into the rudimentary condition of public worshipin the primitive church. It was centuries after the time of Priscillaand Aquila before circ*mstances permitted Christians to havebuildings devoted exclusively to public worship. Up to a very muchlater period than that which is covered by the New Testament, theygathered together wherever was most convenient. And, I suppose, thatboth in Rome and Ephesus, this husband and wife had someroom—perhaps the workshop where they made their tents, spaciousenough for some of the Christians of the city to meet together in.One would like people who talk so much about ‘theChurch,’ and refuse the name to individual societies ofChristians, and even to an aggregate of these, unless it has‘bishops,’ to explain how the little gathering of twentyor thirty people in the workshop attached to Aquila's house, iscalled by the Apostle without hesitation ‘the church which isin their house.’ It was a part of the Holy Catholic Church, butit was also ‘a Church,’ complete in itself, though smallin numbers. We have here not only a glimpse into the manner of publicworship in early times, but we may learn something of far moreconsequence for us, and find here a suggestion of what our homesought to be. ‘The Church that is in thyhouse’—fathers and mothers that are responsible for yourhomes and their religious atmosphere, ask yourselves if any one wouldsay that about your houses, and if they could not, why not?

II. We may get here another object lesson as to the hallowing ofcommon life, trade, and travel.

It does not appear that, after their stay in Ephesus, Aquila andhis wife were closely attached to Paul's person, and certainly theydid not take any part as members of what we may call his evangelisticstaff. They seem to have gone their own way, and as far as the scantynotices carry us, they did not meet Paul again, after the time whenthey parted in Ephesus. Their gipsy life was probably occasioned byAquila's going about—as was the custom in old days when therewere no trades-unions or organised centres of a specialindustry—to look for work where he could find it. When he hadmade tents in Ephesus for a while, he would go on somewhere else, andtake temporary lodgings there. Thus he wandered about as a workingman. Yet Paul calls him his ‘fellow worker in ChristJesus’; and he had, as we saw, a Church in his house. A rovinglife of that sort is not generally supposed to be conducive to depthof spiritual life. But their wandering course did not hurt these two.They took their religion with them. It did not depend on locality, asdoes that of a great many people who are very religious in the townwhere they live, and, when they go away for a holiday, seem to leavetheir religion, along with their silver plate, at home. But no matterwhether they were in Corinth or Ephesus or Rome, Aquila and Priscillatook their Lord and Master with them, and while working at theircamel's-hair tents, they were serving God.

Dear brethren, what we want is not half so much preachers such asmy brethren and I, as Christian tradesmen and merchants andtravellers, like Aquila and Priscilla.

III. Again, we may see here a suggestion of the unexpected issuesof our lives.

Think of that complicated chain of circ*mstances, one end of whichwas round Aquila and the other round the young Pharisee in Jerusalem.It steadily drew them together until they met in that lodging atCorinth. Claudius, in the fullness of his absolute power, said,‘Turn all these wretched Jews out of my city. I will not haveit polluted with them any more. Get rid of them!’ So these twowere uprooted, and drifted to Corinth. We do not know why they choseto go thither; perhaps they themselves did not know why; but Godknew. And while they were coming thither from the west, Paul wascoming thither from the east and north. He was ‘prevented bythe Spirit from speaking in Asia,’ and driven across the seaagainst his intention to Neapolis, and hounded out of Philippi andThessalonica and Beræa; and turned superciliously away fromAthens; and so at last found himself in Corinth, face to face withthe tentmaker from Rome and his wife. Then one of the two men said,‘Let us join partnership together, and set up here astent-makers for a time.’ What came out of this unintended andapparently chance meeting?

The first thing was the conversion of Aquila and his wife; and theeffects of that are being realised by them in heaven at this moment,and will go on to all eternity.

So, in the infinite complexity of events, do not let us worryourselves by forecasting, but let us trust, and be sure that the Handwhich is pushing us is pushing us in the right direction, and that Hewill bring us, by a right, though a roundabout way, to the City ofHabitation. It seems to me that we poor, blind creatures in thisworld are somewhat like a man in a prison, groping with his hand inthe dark along the wall, and all unawares touching a spring whichmoves a stone, disclosing an aperture that lets in a breath of purerair, and opens the way to freedom. So we go on as if stumbling in thedark, and presently, without our knowing what we do, by some trivialact we originate a train of events which influences our wholefuture.

Again, when Aquila and Priscilla reached Ephesus they formedanother chance acquaintance in the person of a brilliant youngAlexandrian, whose name was Apollos. They found that he had goodintentions and a good heart, but a head very scantily furnished withthe knowledge of the Gospel. So they took him in hand, just as Paulhad taken them. If I may use such a phrase, they did not know howlarge a fish they had caught. They had no idea what a mighty powerfor Christ was lying dormant in that young man from Alexandria whoknew so much less than they did. They instructed Apollos, and Apollosbecame second only to Paul in the power of preaching the Gospel. Sothe circle widens and widens. God's grace fructifies from one man toanother, spreading onward and outward. And all Apollos’converts, and their converts, and theirs again, rightaway down the ages, we may trace back to Priscilla and Aquila.

So do not let us be anxious about the further end of ourdeeds—viz. their results; but be careful about the nearer endof them—viz. their motives; and God will look after the otherend. Seeing that ‘thou knowest not which shall prosper, whetherthis or that,’ or how much any of them will prosper, let usgrasp all opportunities to do His will and glorify Hisname.

IV. Further, here we have an instance of the heroic self-devotionwhich love to Christ kindles.

‘For my sake they laid down their own necks.’ We donot know to what Paul is referring: perhaps to that tumult inEphesus, where he certainly was in danger. But the language seemsrather more emphatic than such danger would warrant. Probably it wasat some perilous juncture of which we know nothing (for we know verylittle, after all, of the details of the Apostle's life), in whichAquila and Priscilla had said, ‘Take us and let him go. He cando a great deal more for God than we can do. We will put our heads onthe block, if he may still live.’ That magnanimousself-surrender was a wonderful token of the passionate admiration andlove which the Apostle inspired, but its deepest motive was love toChrist and not to Paul only.

Faith in Christ and love to Him ought to turn cowards into heroes,to destroy thoughts of self, and to make the utmost self-sacrificenatural, blessed, and easy. We are not called upon to exerciseheroism like Priscilla's and Aquila's, but there is as much heroismneeded for persistently Christian life, in our prosaic dailycirc*mstances, as has carried many a martyr to the block, and many atremulous woman to the pyre. We can all be heroes; and if the love ofChrist is in us, as it should be, we shall all be ready to‘yield ourselves living sacrifices, which is our reasonableservice.’

Long years after, the Apostle, on the further edge of life, lookedback over it all; and, whilst much had become dim, and some trustedfriends had dropped away, like Demas, he saw these two, and wavedthem his last greeting before he turned to theexecutioner—‘Salute Prisca and Aquila.’ Paul'sMaster is not less mindful of His friends’ love, or lesseloquent in the praise of their faithfulness, or less sure to rewardthem with the crown of glory. ‘Whoso confesseth Me before men,him will I also confess before the angels in heaven.’

TWO HOUSEHOLDS

‘... Salute them which are of Aristobulus’household. 11. ... Greet them that be of the household of Narcissus,which are in the Lord.’—ROMANS xvi. 10, 11.

There does not seem much to be got out of these two sets ofsalutations to two households in Rome; but if we look at them witheyes in our heads, and some sympathy in our hearts, I think we shallget lessons worth the treasuring.

In the first place, here are two sets of people, members of twodifferent households, and that means mainly, if not exclusively,slaves. In the next place, in each case there was but a section ofthe household which was Christian. In the third place, in neitherhousehold is the master included in the greeting. So in neither casewas he a Christian.

We do not know anything about these two persons, men of positionevidently, who had large households. But the most learned of ourliving English commentators of the New Testament has advanced a veryreasonable conjecture in regard to each of them. As to the first ofthem, Aristobulus: that wicked old King Herod, in whose life Christwas born, had a grandson of the name, who spent all his life in Rome,and was in close relations with the Emperor of that day. He had diedsome little time before the writing of this letter. As to the secondof them, there is a very notorious Narcissus, who plays a great partin the history of Rome just a little while before Paul's periodthere, and he, too, was dead. And it is more than probable that theslaves and retainers of these two men were transferred in both casesto the emperor's household and held together in it, being known asAristobulus’ men and Narcissus’ men. And so probably theChristians among them are the brethren to whom these salutations aresent.

Be that as it may, I think that if we look at the two groups, weshall get out of them some lessons.

I. The first of them is this: the penetrating power of Christiantruth. Think of the sort of man that the master of the firsthousehold was, if the identification suggested be accepted. He is oneof that foul Herodian brood, in all of whom the bad Idumæanblood ran corruptly. The grandson of the old Herod, the brother ofa*grippa of the Acts of the Apostles, the hanger-on of the ImperialCourt, with Roman vices veneered on his native wickedness, was notthe man to welcome the entrance of a revolutionary ferment into hishousehold; and yet through his barred doors had crept quietly, heknowing nothing about it, that great message of a loving God, and aMaster whose service was freedom. And in thousands of like cases theGospel was finding its way underground, undreamed of by the great andwise, but steadily pressing onwards, and undermining all the toweringgrandeur that was so contemptuous of it. So Christ's truth spread atfirst; and I believe that is the way it always spreads. Intellectualrevolutions begin at the top and filter down; religious revolutionsbegin at the bottom and rise; and it is always the ‘lowerorders’ that are laid hold of first. ‘Ye see yourcalling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, notmany mighty, not many noble are called,’ but a handful ofslaves in Aristobulus’ household, with this living truth lodgedin their hearts, were the bearers and the witnesses and the organs ofthe power which was going to shatter all that towered above it anddespised it. And so it always is.

Do not let us be ashamed of a Gospel that has not laid hold of theupper and the educated classes, but let us feel sure of this, thatthere is no greater sign of defective education and of superficialculture and of inborn vulgarity than despising the day of smallthings, and estimating truth by the position or the intellectualattainments of the men that are its witnesses and its lovers. TheGospel penetrated at first, and penetrates still, in the fashion thatis suggested here.

II. Secondly, these two households teach us very touchingly andbeautifully the uniting power of Christian sympathy.

A considerable proportion of the first of these two householdswould probably be Jews—if Aristobulus were indeed Herod'sgrandson. The probability that he was is increased by the greetinginterposed between those to the two households—‘SaluteHerodion.’ The name suggests some connection with Herod, andwhether we suppose the designation of ‘my kinsman,’ whichPaul gives him, to mean ‘blood relation’ or ‘fellowcountryman,’ Herodion, at all events, was a Jew by birth. As tothe other members of these households, Paul may have met some of themin his many travels, but he had never been in Rome, and his greetingsare more probably sent to them as conspicuous sections, numerically,of the Roman Church, and as tokens of his affection, though he hadnever seen them. The possession of a common faith has bridged thegulf between him and them. Slaves in those days were outside the paleof human sympathy, and almost outside the pale of human rights. Andhere the foremost of Christian teachers, who was a freeman born,separated from these poor people by a tremendous chasm, stretches abrother's hand across it and grasps theirs. The Gospel that came intothe world to rend old associations and to split up society, and tomake a deep cleft between fathers and children and husband and wife,came also to more than counterbalance its dividing effects by itsuniting power. And in that old world that was separated into classesby gulfs deeper than any of which we have any experience, it, and italone, threw a bridge across the abysses and bound men together.Think of what a revolution it must have been, when a master and hisslave could sit down together at the table of the Lord and look eachother in the face and say ‘Brother’ and for the momentforget the difference of bond and free. Think of what a revolution itmust have been when Jew and Gentile could sit down together at thetable of the Lord, and forget circumcision and uncircumcision, andfeel that they were all one in Jesus Christ. And as for the third ofthe great clefts—that, alas! which made so much of the tragedyand the wickedness of ancient life—viz. the separation betweenthe sexes—think of what a revolution it was when men and women,in all purity of the new bond of Christian affection, could sit downtogether at the same table, and feel that they were brethren andsisters in Jesus Christ.

The uniting power of the common faith and the common love to theone Lord marked Christianity as altogether supernatural and new,unique in the world's experience, and obviously requiring somethingmore than a human force to produce it. Will anybody say that theChristianity of this day has preserved and exhibits that primitivedemonstration of its superhuman source? Is there anything obviouslybeyond the power of earthly motives in the unselfish, expansive loveof modern Christians? Alas! alas! to ask the question is to answerit, and everybody knows the answer, and nobody sorrows over it. Isany duty more pressingly laid upon Christian churches of thisgeneration than that, forgetting their doctrinal janglings for awhile, and putting away their sectarianisms and narrowness, theyshould show the world that their faith has still the power to do whatit did in the old times, bridge over the gulf that separates classfrom class, and bring all men together in the unity of the faith andof the love of Jesus Christ? Depend upon it, unless the modernorganisations of Christianity which call themselves‘churches’ show themselves, in the next twenty years, agreat deal more alive to the necessity, and a great deal more able tocope with the problem, of uniting the classes of our modern complexcivilisation, the term of life of these churches is comparativelybrief. And the form of Christianity which another century will seewill be one which reproduces the old miracle of the early days, andreaches across the deepest clefts that separate modern society, andmakes all one in Jesus Christ. It is all very well for us to glorifythe ancient love of the early Christians, but there is a vast deal offalse sentimentality about our eulogistic talk of it. It were betterto praise it less and imitate it more. Translate it into presentlife, and you will find that to-day it requires what it nineteenhundred years ago was recognised as manifesting, the presence ofsomething more than human motive, and something more than mandiscovers of truth. The cement must be divine that binds men thustogether.

Again, these two households suggest for us the tranquillisingpower of Christian resignation.

They were mostly slaves, and they continued to be slaves when theywere Christians. Paul recognised their continuance in the servileposition, and did not say a word to them to induce them to breaktheir bonds. The Epistle to the Corinthians treats the whole subjectof slavery in a very remarkable fashion. It says to the slave:‘If you were a slave when you became a Christian, stop whereyou are. If you have an opportunity of being free, avail yourself ofit; if you have not, never mind.’ And then it adds this greatprinciple: ‘He that is called in the Lord, being a slave, isChrist's freeman. Likewise he that is called, being free, is Christ'sslave.’ The Apostle applies the very same principle, in theadjoining verses, to the distinction between circumcision anduncircumcision. From all which there comes just the same lesson thatis taught us by these two households of slaves left intact byChristianity—viz. that where a man is conscious of a direct,individual relation to Jesus Christ, that makes all outwardcirc*mstances infinitely insignificant. Let us get up to the height,and they all become very small. Of course, the principles ofChristianity killed slavery, but it took eighteen hundred years to doit. Of course, there is no blinking the fact that slavery was anessentially immoral and unchristian institution. But it is one thingto lay down principles and leave them to be worked in and then to beworked out, and it is another thing to go blindly charging atexisting institutions and throwing them down by violence, before menhave grown up to feel that they are wicked. And so the New Testamenttakes the wise course, and leaves the foolish one to foolish people.It makes the tree good, and then its fruit will be good.

But the main point that I want to insist upon is this: what wasgood for these slaves in Rome is good for you and me. Let us get nearto Jesus Christ, and feel that we have got hold of His hand for ourown selves, and we shall not mind very much about the possiblevarieties of human condition. Rich or poor, happy or sad, surroundedby companions or treading a solitary path, failures or successes asthe world has it, strong or broken and weak and wearied—allthese varieties, important as they are, come to be very small when wecan say, ‘We are the Lord's.’ That amulet makes allthings tolerable; and the Christian submission which is theexpression of our love to, and confidence in, His infinite sweetnessand unerring goodness, raises us to a height from which the varietiesof earthly condition seem to blend and melt into one. When we aredown amongst the low hills, it seems a long way from the foot of oneof them to the top of it; but when we are on the top they all meltinto one dead level, and you cannot tell which is top and which isbottom. And so, if we only can rise high enough up the hill, thepossible diversities of our condition will seem to be very smallvariations in the level.

III. Lastly, these two groups suggest to us the conquering powerof Christian faithfulness.

The household of Herod's grandson was not a very likely place tofind Christian people in, was it? Such flowers do not often grow, orat least do not easily grow, on such dunghills. And in both thesecases it was only a handful of the people, a portion of eachhousehold, that was Christian. So they had beside them, closelyidentified with them—working, perhaps, at the same tasks, Imight almost say, chained with the same chains—men who had noshare in their faith or in their love. It would not be easy to prayand love and trust God and do His will, and keep clear of complicitywith idolatry and immorality and sin, in such a pigsty as that; wouldit? But these men did it. And nobody need ever say, ‘I am insuch circ*mstances that I cannot live a Christian life.’ Thereare no such circ*mstances, at least none of God's appointing. Thereare often such that we bring upon ourselves, and then the best thingis to get out of them as soon as we can. But as far as He isconcerned, He never puts anybody anywhere where he cannot live a holylife.

There were no difficulties too great for these men to overcome;there are no difficulties too great for us to overcome. And whereveryou and I may be, we cannot be in any place where it is so hard tolive a consistent life as these people were. Young men in warehouses,people in business here in Manchester, some of us with unfortunatedomestic or relative associations, and so on—we may all feel asif it would be so much easier for us if this, that, and the otherthing were changed. No, it would not be any easier; and perhaps theharder the easier, because the more obviously the atmosphere ispoisonous, the more we shall put some cloth over our mouths toprevent it from getting into our lungs. The dangerous place is theplace where the vapours that poison are scentless as well asinvisible. But whatever be the difficulties, there is strengthwaiting for us, and we may all win the praise which the Apostlegives to another of these Roman brethren, whom he salutes as‘Apelles, approved in Christ’—a man that hadbeen ‘tried’ and had stood his trial. So in our variousspheres of difficulty and of temptation we may feel that the greetingfrom heaven, like Paul's message to the slaves in Rome, comes to uswith good cheer, and that the Master Himself sees us, sympathiseswith us, salutes us, and stretches out His hand to help and to keepus.

TRYPHENA AND TRYPHOSA

‘Salute Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labour in theLord.’—ROMANS xvi. 12.

The number of salutations to members of the Roman Church isremarkable when we take into account that Paul had never visited it.The capital drew all sorts of people to it, and probably there hadbeen personal intercourse between most of the persons here mentionedand the Apostle in some part of his wandering life. He not onlydisplays his intimate knowledge of the persons saluted, but hisbeautiful delicacy and ingenuity in the varying epithets applied tothem shows how in his great heart and tenacious memory individualshad a place. These shadowy saints live for ever by Paul's briefcharacterisation of them, and stand out to us almost as clearly andas sharply distinguished as they did to him.

These two, Tryphena and Tryphosa, were probably sisters. That isrendered likely by their being coupled together here, as well as bythe similarity of their names. These names mean luxurious, ordelicate, and no doubt expressed the ideal for their daughters whichthe parents had had, and possibly indicate the kind of life fromwhich these two women had come. We can scarcely fail to note thecontrast between the meaning of their names and the Christian livesthey had lived. Two dainty women, probably belonging to a class inwhich a delicate withdrawal from effort and toil was thought to bethe woman's distinctive mark, had fled from luxury, which oftentended to be voluptuous, and was always self-indulgent, and hadchosen the better part of ‘labour in the Lord.’ They hadbecome untrue to their names, because they must be true to theirMaster and themselves. We may well take the lesson that lies here,and is eminently needful to-day amidst the senseless, and oftensinful, tide of luxury which runs so strongly as to threaten thegreat and eternal Christian principle of self-denial.

The first thing that strikes us in looking at these salutations isthe illustration which it gives of the uniting power of a commonfaith. Tryphena and Tryphosa were probably Roman ladies of somesocial standing, and their names may indicate that they at leastinherited a tendency to exclusiveness; yet here they occurimmediately after the household of Narcissus and in close connectionwith that of Aristobulus, both of which are groups of slaves.Aristobulus was a grandson of Herod the Great, and Narcissus was awell-known freedman, whose slaves at his death would probably becomethe property of the Emperor. Other common slave names are those ofAmpliatus and Urbanus; and here in these lists they stand side byside with persons of some distinction in the Roman world, and withmen and women of widely differing nationalities. The Church of Romewould have seemed to any non-Christian observer a motley crowd inwhich racial distinctions, sex, and social conditions had all beenswept away by the rising tide of a common fanaticism. In it wasexemplified in actual operation Paul's great principle that in ChristJesus ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bondnor free, but in Him all are one.’ Roman society in that day,as Juvenal shows us, was familiar with the levelling and unitingpower of common vice and immorality, and the few sternly patrioticRomans who were left lamented that ‘the Orontes flowed into theTiber’; but such common wallowing in filth led to no realunity, whereas, in the obscure corner of the great city where therewere members of the infant Church gathered together, there was thebeginning of a common life in the one Lord which lifted eachparticipant of it out of the dreary solitude of individuality, andimparted to each heart the tingling consciousness of oneness with allwho held the one faith in the one Lord and had received the onebaptism in the one Name. That fair dawn has been shadowed by manyclouds, and the churches of to-day, however they may have developeddoctrine, may look back with reproach and shame to the example ofRome, where Tryphena and Tryphosa, with all their inherited,fastidious delicacy, recognised in the household of Aristobulus andthe household of Narcissus ‘brethren in the Lord,’ andwere as glad to welcome Jews, Asiatics, Persians, and Greeks, asRomans of the bluest blood, into the family of Christ. The RomishChurch of our day has lost its early grace of welcoming all who lovethe one Lord into its fellowship; and we of the Protestant churcheshave been but too swift to learn the bad lesson of forbidding all whofollow not with us.

Another thought which may be suggested by Tryphena and Tryphosa isthe blessed hallowing of natural family relations by common faith.They were probably sisters, or, at all events, as their namesindicate, near relatives, and to them that faith must have beendoubly precious because they shared it with each other. None of thetrials to which the early Christians were exposed was more severethan the necessity which their Christianity so often imposed uponthem of breaking the sacred family ties. It saddened even Christ'sheart to think that He had come to rend families in sunder, and tomake ‘a man's foes them of his own household’; and we canlittle imagine how bitter the pang must have been when family lovehad to be cast aside at the bidding of allegiance to Him.

But though the stress of that separation between those most nearlyrelated in blood by reason of unshared faith is alleviated in thisday, it still remains; and that is but a feeble Christian life whichdoes not feel that it is drawing a heart from closest human embracesand constituting a barrier between it and the dearest of earth. Thereis still need in these days of relaxed Christian sentiment for thestern austerity of the law, ‘He that loveth father or mothermore than Me is not worthy of Me’; and there are many Christiansouls who would be infinitely stronger and more mature, if they didnot yield to the seductions of family affections which are not rootedin Jesus Christ. But still, though our faith ought to be far morethan it often is, the determining element in our affections andassociations, its noblest work is not to separate but to unite; andwhilst it often must divide, it is meant to draw more closelytogether hearts that are already knit by earthly love. Its legitimateeffect is to make all earthly sweetnesses sweeter, all holy bondsmore holy and more binding, to infuse a new constraint andpreciousness into all earthly relationships, to make brothers tenfoldmore brotherly and sisters more sisterly. The heart, in which thedeepest devotion is yielded to Jesus Christ, has its capacity fordevotion infinitely increased, and they who, looking into eachother's faces, see reflected there something of the Lord whom theyboth love, love each other all the more because they love Him most,and in their love to Him, and His to them, have found a new measurefor all their affection. They who, looking on their dear ones, can‘trust they live in God,’ will there find them‘worthier to be loved,’ and will there find a power ofloving them. Tryphena and Tryphosa were more sisterly than ever whenthey clung to their Elder Brother. ‘There is no man that hathleft brethren, or sisters, or mother, or father, for My sake, but heshall receive a hundredfold more in this time, brethren, and sisters,and mothers, and in the world to come eternal life.’

The contrast between the names of these two Roman ladies and thecharacterisation of their ‘labour in the Lord’ maysuggest to us the most formidable foe of Christian earnestness. Theirnames, as we have already noticed, point to a state of society inwhich the parents ideal for their daughters was dainty luxuriousnessand a withdrawal from the rough and tumble of common life; but thesetwo women, magnetised by the love of Jesus, had turned their backs onthe parental ideal, and had cast themselves earnestly into a life oftoil. That ideal was never more formidably antagonistic to the vigourof Christian life than it is to-day. Rome, in Paul's time, was notmore completely honeycombed with worldliness than England is to-day;and the English churches are not far behind the English‘world’ in their paralysing love of luxury andself-indulgence. In all ages, earnest Christians have had to take upthe same vehement remonstrance against the tendency of the averageChristian to let his religious life be weakened by the love of theworld and the things of the world. The protests against growingluxury have been a commonplace in all ages of the Church; but,surely, there has never been a time when it has reached a moresenseless, sinful, and destroying height than in our day. The rapidgrowth of wealth, with no capacity of using it nobly, which moderncommerce has brought, has immensely influenced all our churches forevil. It is so hard for us, aggregated in great cities, to live ourown lives, and the example of our class has such immense power overus that it is very hard to pursue the path of ‘plain living andhigh thinking’ in communities, all classes of which are moreand more yielding to the temptation to ostentation, so-calledcomfort, and extravagant expenditure; and that this is adanger—we are tempted to say the danger—to thepurity, loftiness, and vigour of religious life among us, he must beblind who cannot see, and he must be strangely ignorant of his ownlife who cannot feel that it is the danger for him. I believe thatfor one professing Christian whose earnestness is lost by reason ofintellectual doubts, or by some grave sin, there are a hundred fromwhom it simply oozes away unnoticed, like wind out of a bladder, sothat what was once round and full becomes limp and flaccid. If Demasbegins with loving the present world, it will not be long before hefinds a reason for departing from Paul.

We may take these two sisters, finally, as pointing for us thetrue victory over this formidable enemy. They had turned resolutelyaway from the heathen ideal enshrined in their names to a life ofreal hard toil, as is distinctly implied by the word used by theApostle. What that toil consisted in we do not know, and need notinquire; but the main point to be noted is that their‘labour’ was ‘in the Lord.’ That union withChrist makes labour for Him a necessity, and makes it possible.‘The labour we delight in physics pain’; and if we are inHim, we shall not only ‘live in Him,’ but all our workbegun, continued, and ended in Him, will in Him and by Him beaccepted. There is no victorious antagonist of worldly ease andself-indulgence comparable to the living consciousness of union withJesus and His life in us. To dwell in the swamps at the bottom of themountain is to live in a region where effort is impossible andmalaria weakens vitality; to climb the heights brings bracing to thelimbs and a purer air into the expanding lungs, and makes workdelightsome that would have been labour down below. If we are‘in the Lord,’ He is our atmosphere, and we can draw fromHim full draughts of a noble life in which we shall not need thestimulus of self-interest or worldly success to use it to the utmostin acts of service to Him. They who live in the Lord will labour inthe Lord, and they who labour in the Lord will rest in the Lord.

PERSIS

‘Salute the beloved Persis, who laboured much inthe Lord.’—ROMANS xvi. 12.

There are a great number of otherwise unknown Christians who passfor a moment before our view in this chapter. Their characterisationsare like the slight outlines in the background of some great artist'scanvas: a touch of the brush is all that is spared for each, and yet,if we like to look sympathetically, they live before us. Now, thisgood woman, about whom we never hear again, and for whom these fewwords are all her epitaph—was apparently, judging by her name,of Persian descent, and possibly had been brought to Rome as a slave.At all events, finding herself there, she had somehow or other becomeconnected with the Church in that city, and had there distinguishedherself by continuous and faithful Christian toil which had won theaffection of the Apostle, though he had never seen her, and knew nomore about her. That is all. She comes into the foreground for amoment, and then she vanishes. What does she say to us?

First of all, like the others named by Paul, she helps us tounderstand, by her living example, that wonderful, new, unitingprocess that was carried on by means of Christianity. The simple factof a Persian woman getting a loving message from a Jew, the womanbeing in Rome and the Jew in Corinth, and the message being writtenin Greek, brings before us a whole group of nationalities all fusedtogether. They had been hammered together, or, if you like it better,chained together, by Roman power, but they were melted together byChrist's Gospel. This Eastern woman and this Jewish man, and the manyothers whose names and different nationalities pass in a flash beforeus in this chapter, were all brought together in Jesus Christ.

If we run our eye over these salutations, what strikes one, evenat the first sight, is the very small number of Jewish names; onlyone certain, and another doubtful. Four or five names are Latin, andthen all the rest are Greek, but this woman seemingly came fromfurther east than any of them. There they all were, forgetting thehostile nationalities to which they belonged, because they had foundOne who had brought them into one great community. We talk about theuniting influence of Christianity, but when we see the process goingon before us, in a case like this, we begin to understand itbetter.

But another point may be noticed in regard to this unitingprocess—how it brought into action the purest and truest loveas a bond that linked men. There are four or five of the peoplecommended in this chapter of whom the Apostle has nothing to say butthat they are beloved. This is the only woman to whom he applies thatterm. And notice his instinctive delicacy: when he is speaking of menhe says, ‘My beloved’; when he is greeting Persishe says, ‘the beloved,’ that there may be nomisunderstanding about the ‘my’—‘the belovedPersis which laboured much in the Lord’—indicating, byone delicate touch, the loftiness, the purity, and truly Christiancharacter of the bond that held them together. And that is no trueChurch, where anything but that is the bond—the love that knitsus to one another, because we believe that each is knit to the dearLord and fountain of all love.

What more does this good woman say to us? She is an example livingand breathing there before us, of what a woman may be in God'sChurch. Paul had never been in Rome; no Apostle, so far as we know,had had anything to do with the founding of the Church. The mostimportant Church in the Roman Empire, and the Church which afterwardsbecame the curse of Christendom, was founded by some anonymousChristians, with no commission, with no supervision, with noofficials amongst them, but who just had the grace of God in theirhearts, and found themselves in Rome, and could not help speakingabout Jesus Christ. God helped them, and a little Church sprang intobeing. And the great abundance of salutations here, and thehonourable titles which the Apostle gives to the Christians of whomhe speaks, and many of whom he signalises as having done greatservice, are a kind of certificate on his part to the vigorous lifewhich, without any apostolic supervision or official direction, haddeveloped itself there in that Church.

Now, it is to be noticed that this striking form of eulogium whichis attached to our Persis she shares in common with others in thegroup. And it is to be further noticed that all those who are, as itwere, decorated with this medal—on whom Paul bestows thishonour of saying that they had ‘laboured,’ or‘laboured much in the Lord,’ are women that stand alonein the list. There are several other women in it, but they are allcoupled with men—husbands or brothers, or some kind ofrelative. But there are three sets of women, I do not say singlewomen, but three sets of women, standing singly in the list, and itis about them, and them only, that Paul says they‘laboured,’ or ‘laboured much.’ There is aMary who stands alone, and she ‘bestowed much labour on’Paul and others. Then there are, in the same verse as my text, twosisters, Tryphena and Tryphosa, whose names mean ‘theluxurious.’ And the Apostle seems to think, as he writes thetwo names that spoke of self-indulgence: ‘Perhaps these rightlydescribed these two women once, but they do not now. In the bad olddays, before they were Christians, they may have been rightly namedluxurious-living. But here is their name now, the luxurious is turnedinto the self-sacrificing worker, and the two sisters “labourin the Lord.”’ Then comes our friend Persis, who alsostands alone, and she shares in the honour that only these other twocompanies of women share with her. She ‘laboured much in theLord.’ In that little community, without any direction fromApostles and authorised teachers, the brethren and sisters had everyone found their tasks; and these solitary women, with nobody to sayto them, ‘Go and do this or that,’ had found out forthemselves, or rather had been taught by the Spirit of Jesus, whatthey had to do, and they worked at it with a will. There are manythings that Christian women can do a great deal better than men, andwe are not to forget that this modern talk about the emancipation ofwomen has its roots here in the New Testament. We are not to forgeteither that prerogative means obligation, and that the elevation ofwoman means the laying upon her of solemn duties to perform. I wonderhow many of the women members of our Churches and congregationsdeserve such a designation as that? We hear a great deal about‘women's rights’ nowadays. I wish some of my friendswould lay a little more to heart than they do, ‘women'sduties.’

And now, lastly, the final lesson that I draw from this eulogiumof an otherwise altogether unknown woman is that she is a model ofChristian service.

First, in regard to its measure. She ‘laboured much in theLord.’ Now, both these two words, ‘laboured’ and‘much,’ are extremely emphatic. The word rightlytranslated ‘laboured’ will appear in its full force if Irecall to you a couple of other places in which it is employed in theNew Testament. You remember that touching incident about our Lordwhen, being ‘wearied with His journey, He sat thus onthe well.’ ‘Wearied’ is the same word as is hereused. Then, you remember how the Apostle, after he had been haulingempty nets all night in the little, wet, dirty fishing-boat, said,perhaps with a yawn, ‘Master, we have toiled all thenight and caught nothing.’ He uses the same word as is employedhere. Such is the sort of work that these women had done—workcarried to the point of exhaustion, work up to the very edge of theirpowers, work unsparing and continuous, and not done once in someflash of evanescent enthusiasm, but all through a dreary night, inspite of apparent failures.

There is the measure of service. Many of us seem to thinkthat if we say ‘I am tired,’ that is a reason for notdoing anything. Sometimes it is, no doubt; and no man has a right soto labour as to impair his capacity for future labour, but subject tothat condition I do not know that the plea of fatigue is a sufficientreason for idleness. And I am quite sure that the true example for usis the example of Him who, when He was most wearied, sitting on thewell, was so invigorated and refreshed by the opportunity of winninganother soul that, when His disciples came back to Him, they lookedat His fresh strength with astonishment, and said to themselves,‘Has any man brought Him anything to eat?’ Ay, what Hehad to eat was work that He finished for the Father, and some of usknow that the truest refreshment in toil is a change of toil. It isalmost as good to shift the load on to the other shoulder, or to takea stick into the other hand, as it is to put away the loadaltogether. Oh, the careful limits which Christian people nowadaysset to their work for Jesus! They are not afraid of being tired intheir pursuit of business or pleasure, but in regard to Christ's workthey will let anything go to wrack and ruin rather than that theyshould turn a hair, by persevering efforts to prevent it. Work to thelimit of power if you live in the light of blessedness.

She ‘laboured much in the Lord,’ or, as Jesus Christsaid about the other woman who was blamed by the people that did notlove enough to understand the blessedness of self-sacrifice,‘she had done what she could.’ It was an apology for theform of Mary's service, but it was a stringent demand as to itsamount. ‘What she could’—not half of whatshe could; not what she conveniently could. That is themeasure of acceptable service.

Then, still further, may we not learn from Persis the spring ofall true Christian work? She ‘laboured much in the Lord,’because she was ‘in Him,’ and in union with Himthere came to her power and desire to do things which, without thatclose fellowship, she neither would have desired nor been able to do.It is vain to try to whip up Christian people to forms of service byappealing to lower motives. There is only one motive that will last,and bring out from us all that is in us to do, and that is the appealto our sense of union and communion with Jesus Christ, and theexhortation to live in Him, and then we shall work in Him. If youlink the spindles in your mill, or the looms in your weaving-shed,with the engine, they will go. It is of no use to try to turn them byhand. You will only spoil the machinery, and it will be poor workthat you will get off them.

So, dear brethren, be ‘in the Lord.’ That is thesecret of service, and the closer we come to Him, and the morecontinuously, moment by moment, we realise our individual dependenceupon Him, and our union with Him, the more will our lives effloresceand blossom into all manner of excellence and joyful service, andnothing else that Christian people are whipped up to do, from lowerand more vulgar motives than that, will. It may be of a certain kindof inferior value, but it is far beneath the highest beauty ofChristian service, nor will its issues reach the loftiest point ofusefulness to which even our poor service may attain.

Persis seems to me to suggest, too, the safeguard of work. Ah, ifshe had not ‘laboured in the Lord,’ and been ‘inthe Lord’ whilst she was labouring, she would very soon havestopped work. Our Christian work, however pure its motive when webegin it, has in itself the tendency to become mechanical, and to bedone from lower motives than those from which it was begun. That istrue about a man in my position. It is true about all of us, in ourseveral ways of trying to serve our dear Lord and Master. Unless wemake a conscience of continually renewing our communion with Him, andgetting our feet once more firmly upon the rock, we shall certainlyin our Christian work, having begun in the spirit, continue in theflesh, and before we know where we are, we shall be doing work fromhabit, because we did it yesterday at this hour, because peopleexpect it of us, because A, B, or C does it, or for a hundred otherreasons, all of which are but too familiar to us by experience. Theyare sure to slip in; they change the whole character of the work, andthey harm the workers. The only way by which we can keep the garlandfresh is by continually dipping it in the fountain. The only way bywhich we can keep our Christian work pure, useful, worthy of theMaster, is by seeing to it that our work itself does not draw us awayfrom our fellowship with Him. And the more we have to do, the moreneedful is it that we should listen to Christ's voice when He says tous, ‘Come ye yourselves apart with Me into a solitary place,and there renew your communion with Me.’

The last lesson about our work which I draw from Persis is theunexpected immortality of true Christian service. How Persis wouldhave opened her eyes if anybody had told her that nearly 1900 yearsafter she lived, people in a far-away barbarous island would besitting thinking about her, as you and I are doing now! Howastonished she would have been if it had been said to her,‘Now, Persis, wheresoever in the whole world the Gospel ispreached, your name and your work and your epitaph will go with it,and as long as men know about Jesus Christ, your and their Master,they will know about you, His humble servant.’ Well, we shallnot have our names in that fashion in men's memories, but Jesus willhave your name and mine, if we do His work as this woman did it, inHis memory. ‘I will never forget any of theirworks.’ And if we—self-forgetful to the limit of ourpower, and as the joyful result of our personal union with thatSaviour who has done everything for us—try to live for Hispraise and glory in any fashion, then be sure of this, that our poordeeds are as immortal as Him for whom they are done, and that we maytake to ourselves the great word which He has spoken, when He hasdeclared that at the last He will confess His confessors’ namesbefore the angels in heaven. Blessed are the living that ‘livein the Lord’; blessed are the workers that work ‘in theLord,’ for when they come to be the dead that ‘die in theLord’ and rest from their labours, their works shall followthem.

A CRUSHED SNAKE

‘The God of peace shall bruise Satan under yourfeet shortly.’—ROMANS xvi. 20.

There are three other Scriptural sayings which may have beenfloating in the Apostle's mind when he penned this triumphantassurance. ‘Thou shalt bruise his head’; the great firstEvangel—we are to be endowed with Christ's power; ‘Thelion and the adder thou shalt trample under foot’—all thestrength that was given to ancient saints is ours; ‘Behold! Igive you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all thepower of the enemy’—the charter of the seventy is theperennial gift to the Church. Echoing all these great words, Paulpromises the Roman Christians that ‘the God of peace shallbruise Satan under your feet shortly.’ Now, when any specialcharacteristic is thus ascribed to God, as when He is called‘the God of patience’ or ‘the God of hope,’in the preceding chapter, the characteristic selected has somebearing on the prayer or promise following. For example, this samedesignation, ‘the God of peace,’ united with the other,‘that brought again from the dead the Lord Jesus, that greatShepherd of the sheep,’ is laid as the foundation of the prayerfor the perfecting of the readers of the Epistle to the Hebrews inevery good work. It is, then, because of that great name that theApostle is sure, and would have his Roman brethren to be sure, thatSatan shall shortly be bruised under their feet. No doubt there mayhave been some reference in Paul's mind to what he had just saidabout those who caused divisions in the Church; but, if there is suchreference, it is of secondary importance. Paul is gazing on all thegreat things in God which make Him the God of peace, and in them allhe sees ground for the confident hope that His power will be exertedto crush all the sin that breaks His children's peace.

Now the first thought suggested by these words is the solemnglimpse given of the struggle that goes on in every Christiansoul.

Two antagonists are at hand-grips in every one of us. On the onehand, the ‘God of peace,’ on the other,‘Satan.’ If you believe in the personality of the One, donot part with the belief in the personality of the other. If youbelieve that a divine power and Spirit is ready to help andstrengthen you, do not think so lightly of the enemies that arearrayed against you as to falter in the belief that there is agreat personal Power, rooted in evil, who is warring against each ofus. Ah, brethren! we live far too much on the surface, and we neithergo down deep enough to the dark source of the Evil, nor rise highenough to the radiant Fountain of the Good. It is a shallow life thatstrikes that antagonism of God and Satan out of itself. And thoughthe belief in a personal tempter has got to be very unfashionablenowadays, I am going to venture to say that you may measureaccurately the vitality and depth of a man's religion by the emphasiswith which he grasps the thought of that great antagonism. There is astar of light, and there is a star of darkness; and they revolve, asit were, round one centre.

But whilst, on the one hand, our Christianity is made shallow inproportion as we ignore this solemn reality, on the other hand, it issometimes paralysed and perverted by our misunderstanding of it. For,notice, ‘the God of peace shall bruise Satan under yourfeet.’ Yes, it is God that bruises, but He uses our feet todo it. It is God from whom the power comes, but the power worksthrough us, and we are neither merely the field, nor merely theprize, of the conflict between these two, but we ourselves have toput all our pith into the task of keeping down the flat, speckledhead that has the poison gland in it. ‘The God ofpeace’—blessed be His Name—‘shall bruiseSatan under your feet,’ but it will need the tension of yourmuscles, and the downward force of your heel, if the wrigglingreptile is to be kept under.

Turn, now, to the other thought that is here, the promise andpledge of victory in the name, the God of peace. I have alreadyreferred to two similar designations of God in the previous chapter,and if we take them in union with this one in our text, what awonderfully beautiful and strengthening threefold view of that divinenature do we get! ‘The God of patience and consolation’is the first of the linked three. It heads the list, and blessed isit that it does, because, after all, sorrow makes up a very largeproportion of the experience of us all, and what most men seem tothemselves to need most is a God that will bear their sorrows withthem and help them to bear, and a God that will comfort them. But,supposing that He has been made known thus as the source of enduranceand the God of all consolation, He becomes ‘the God ofhope,’ for a dark background flings up a light foreground, anda comforted sorrow patiently endured is mighty to produce a radianthope. The rising of the muddy waters of the Nile makes the heavycrops of ‘corn in Egypt.’ So the name ‘the God ofhope’ fitly follows the name ‘the God of patience andconsolation.’

Then we come to the name in my text, built perhaps on the othertwo, or at least reminiscent of them, and recalling them, ‘theGod of peace,’ who, through patience and consolation, throughhope, and through many another gift, breathes the benediction of Hisown great tranquillity and unruffled calm over our agitated,distracted, sinful hearts. In connection with one of those previousdesignations to which I have referred, the Apostle has a prayer verydifferent in form from this, but identical in substance, when he says‘the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace inbelieving.’ Is not that closely allied to the promise of mytext, ‘The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feetshortly’? Is there any surer way of ‘bruisingSatan’ under a man's feet than filling him ‘with joy andpeace in believing’? What can the Devil do to that man? If hissoul is saturated, and his capacities filled, with that pure honey ofdivine joy, will he have any taste for the coarse dainties, the leeksand the garlic, that the Devil offers him? Is there any surer way ofdelivering a man from the temptations of his own baser nature, andthe solicitations of this busy intrusive world round about him, thanto make him satisfied with the goodness of the Lord, and conscious inhis daily experience of ‘all joy and peace’? Fill thevessel with wine, and there is no room for baser liquors or forpoison. I suppose that the way by which you and I, dear friends, willmost effectually conquer any temptations, is by falling back on thesuperior sweetness of divine joys. When we live upon manna we do notcrave onions. So He ‘will bruise Satan under your feet’by giving that which will arm your hearts against all his temptationsand all his weapons. Blessed be God for the way of conquest, which isthe possession of a supremer good!

But then, notice how beautifully too this name, ‘the God ofpeace,’ comes in to suggest that even in the strife there maybe tranquillity. I remember in an old church in Italy a painting ofan Archangel with his foot on the dragon's neck, and his sword thrustthrough its scaly armour. It is perhaps the feebleness of theartist's hand, but I think rather it is the clearness of his insight,which has led him to represent the victorious angel, in the moment inwhich he is slaying the dragon, as with a smile on his face, and notthe least trace of effort in the arm, which is so easily smiting thefatal blow. Perhaps if the painter could have used his brush betterhe would have put more expression into the attitude and the face, butI think it is better as it is. We, too, may achieve a conquest overthe dragon which, although it requires effort, does not disturbpeace. There is a possibility of bruising that slippery head under myfoot, and yet not having to strain myself in the process. We may have‘peace subsisting at the heart of endless agitation.’ Doyou remember how the Apostle, in another place, gives us the samebeautiful—though at first sight contradictory—combinationwhen he says, ‘The peace of God shall garrison yourheart’?

'My soul! there is a country Far, far beyond the stars,Where stands an armed sentry, All skilful in the wars.'

And her name is Peace, as the poet goes on totell us. Ah, brethren! if we lived nearer the Lord, we should find itmore possible to ‘fight the good fight of faith,’ and yetto have ‘our feet shod with the preparedness of the gospel ofpeace.’

‘The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet’;and in bruising He will give you His peace to do it, and His peace indoing it, and in still greater measure after doing it. For everystruggle of the Christian soul adds something to the subsequent depthof its tranquillity. And so the name of the God of peace is ourpledge of victory in, and of deepened peace after, our warfare withsin and temptation.

Lastly, note the swiftness with which Paul expects that thisprocess shall he accomplished.

I dare say that he was thinking about the coming of the Lord, whenall the fighting and struggle would be over, and that when he said‘God shall bruise him under your feet shortly,’ there layin the back of his mind the thought, ‘the Lord is athand.’ But be that as it may, there is another way of lookingat the words. They are not in the least like our experience, arethey? ‘Shortly!’—and here am I, a Christian man forthe last half century perhaps; and have I got much further on in mycourse? Have I brought the sin that used to trouble me much down, andis my character much more noble, Christ-like, than it was long yearsago? Would other people say that it is? Instead of‘shortly’ we ought to put ‘slowly’ for themost of us. But, dear friend, the ideal is swift conquest, and it isour fault and our loss, if the reality is sadly different.

There are a great many evils that, unless they are conqueredsuddenly, have very small chance of ever being conquered at all. Younever heard of a man being cured of his love of intoxicating drink,for instance, by a gradual process. The serpent's life is not crushedout of it by gradual pressure, but by one vigorous stamp of a nervousheel.

But if my experience as a Christian man does not enable me to setto my seal that this text is true, the text itself will tell me why.It is ‘the God of peace’ that is going to ‘bruiseSatan.’ Do you keep yourself in touch with Him, dear friend?And do you let His powers come uninterruptedly and continuously intoyour spirit and life? It is sheer folly and self-delusion to wonderthat the medicine does not work as quickly as was promised, if you donot take the medicine. The slow process by which, at the best, manyChristian people ‘bruise Satan under their feet,’ duringwhich he hurts their heels more than they hurt his head, is mainlydue to their breaking the closeness and the continuity of theircommunion with God in Jesus Christ.

But, after all, it is Heaven's chronology that we have to do withhere. ‘Shortly,’ and it will be ‘shortly,’ ifwe reckon by heavenly scales of duration. Weeping may endure for anight, but joy cometh in the morning. ‘The Lord will help her,and that right early.’ ‘The Lord is at hand.’ Whenwe get yonder, ah! how all the long years of fighting will havedwindled down, and we shall say ‘the Lord did help me, and thatright early,’ and though there may have been more thanthreescore years and ten of fighting, that, while we were in thethick of it, did not seem to come to much, we shall then look backand say: ‘Yes, Lord, it was but for a moment, and it hasbrought me to the undying day of Eternal Peace.’

TERTIUS

‘I, Tertius, who write the epistle, salute you inthe Lord.’—ROMANS xvi. 22 (R. V.).

One sometimes sees in old religious pictures, in some obscurecorner, a tiny kneeling figure, the portrait of the artist. SoTertius here gets leave to hold the pen for a moment on his ownaccount, and from Corinth sends his greeting to his unknown brethrenin Rome. Apparently he was a stranger to them, and needed tointroduce himself. He is never heard of before or since. For onebrief moment he is visible, like a star of a low magnitude, shiningout for a moment between two banks of darkness and then swallowed up.Judging by his name, he was probably a Roman, and possibly had someconnection with Italy, but clearly was a stranger to the Church inRome. We do not know whether he was a resident in Corinth, where hewrote this epistle, or one of Paul's travelling companions. Probablyhe was the former, as his name never recurs in any of Paul's letters.One can understand the impulse which led him for one moment to comeout of obscurity and to take up personal relations with those who hadso long enjoyed his pen. He would fain float across the deep gulf ofalienation a thread of love which looked like gossamer, but hasproved to be stronger than centuries and revolutions.

This humble and modest greeting is an expression of a sentimentwhich the world may smile at, but which, being ‘in theLord,’ partakes of immortality. No doubt the world's hate drovemore closely together all the disciples in primitive times; but theyearning of Tertius for some little corner in the love of his Romanbrethren might well influence us to-day. There ought to be an effortof imagination going out towards unknown brethren. Christian love isnot meant to be kept within the limits of sight and personalknowledge; it should overleap the narrow bounds of the communities towhich we belong, and expatiate over the whole wide field. The greatShepherd has prescribed for us the limits to the very edge of whichour Christian love should consciously go forth, and has rebuked thenarrowness to which we are prone, when He has said, ‘Othersheep I have which are not of this fold.’ We are all too proneto let identities of opinion and of polity, or even the accident oflocality, set bounds to our consciousness of brotherhood; and theexample of this little gush of affection, that reaches out a handacross the ocean and grasps the hands of unknown partakers in thecommon life of the one Lord, may well shame us out of our narrowness,and quicken us into a wide perception and deepened feeling towardsall who in every place call up Jesus Christ as theirLord—‘both their Lord and ours.’

Another lesson which we may learn from Tertius’characterisation of himself is the dignity of subordinate worktowards a great end. His office as amanuensis was very humble, but itwas quite as necessary as Paul's inspired fervour. It is to him thatwe owe our possession of the Epistle; it is to him that Paul owed itthat he was able to record in imperishable words the thoughts thatwelled up in his mind, and would have been lost if Tertius had notbeen at his side. The power generated in the boilers does its workthrough machines of which each little cog-wheel is as indispensableas the great shafts. Members of the body which seem to be ‘morefeeble, are necessary.’ Every note in a great concerted pieceof music, and every instrument, down to the triangle and the littledrum in the great orchestra, is necessary. This lesson of the dignityof subordinate work needs to be laid to heart both by those who thinkthemselves to be capable of more important service, and by those whohave to recognise that the less honourable tasks are all for whichthey are fit. To the former it may preach humility, the latter it mayencourage. We are all very ignorant of what is great and what issmall in the matter of our Christian service, and we have sometimesto look very closely and to clear away a great many vulgarmisconceptions before we can clearly discriminate between mites andtalents. ‘We know not which may prosper, whether this orthat’; and in our ignorance of what it may please God to bringout of any service faithfully rendered to Him, we had better not betoo sure that true service is ever small, or that the work thatattracts attention and is christened by men ‘great’ isreally so in His eyes. It is well to have the noble ambition to‘desire earnestly the greater gifts,’ but it is better to‘follow the more excellent way,’ and to seek after thelove which knows nothing of great or small, and without whichprophecy and the knowledge of all mysteries, and all conspicuous andall the shining qualities profit nothing.

We can discern in Tertius’ words a little touch of what wemay call pride in his work. No doubt he knew it to be subordinate,but he also knew it to be needful; and no doubt he had put all hisstrength into doing it well. No man will put his best into any taskwhich he does not undertake in such a spirit. It is a very plainpiece of homely wisdom that ‘what is worth doing at all isworth doing well.’ Without a lavish expenditure of the utmostcare and effort, our work will tend to be slovenly and unpleasing toGod, and man, and to ourselves. We may be sure there were no blotsand bits of careless writing in Tertius' manuscript, and that hewould not have claimed the friendly feelings of his Roman brethren,if he had not felt that he had put his best into the writing of thisepistle. The great word of King David has a very wide application.‘I will not take that which is thine for the Lord, nor offerburnt offerings without cost.’

Tertius’ salutation may suggest to us the best thing bywhich to be remembered. All his life before and after the hours spentat Paul's side has sunk in oblivion. He wished to be known only ashaving written the Epistle. Christian souls ought to desire to livechiefly in the remembrance of those to whom they have been known ashaving done some little bit of work for Jesus Christ. We may well askourselves whether there is anything in our lives by which we shouldthus wish to be remembered. All our many activities will sink intosilence; but if the stream of our life, which has borne along downits course so much mud and sand, has brought some grains of gold inthe form of faithful and loving service to Christ and men—thesewill not be lost in the ocean, but treasured by Him. What we do forJesus and to spread the knowledge of His name is the immortal part ofour mortal lives, and abides in His memory and in blessed results inour own characters, when all the rest that made our busy and oftenstormy days has passed into oblivion. All that we know of Tertius whowrote this Epistle is that he wrote it. Well will it be for us if thesummary of our lives be something like that of his!

QUARTUS A BROTHER

‘Quartus a brother.’—ROMANS xvi.23.

I am afraid very few of us read often, or with much interest,those long lists of names at the end of Paul's letters. And yet thereare plenty of lessons in them, if anybody will look at them lovinglyand carefully. There does not seem much in these three words; but Iam very much mistaken if they will not prove to be full of beauty andpathos, and to open out into a wonderful revelation of whatChristianity is and does, as soon as we try to freshen them up intosome kind of human interest.

It is easy for us to make a little picture of this brotherQuartus. He is evidently an entire stranger to the Church in Rome.They had never heard his name before: none of them knew anythingabout him. Further, he is evidently a man of no especial reputationor position in the Church at Corinth, from which Paul writes. Hecontrasts strikingly with the others who send salutations to Rome.‘Timotheus, my work-fellow’—the companion andhelper of the Apostle, whose name was known everywhere among theChurches, heads the list. Then come other prominent men of his moreimmediate circle. Then follows a loving greeting from Paul'samanuensis, who, naturally, as the pen is in his own hand, says:‘I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in theLord.’ Then Paul begins again to dictate, and the list runs on.Next comes a message from ‘Gaius mine host, and of the wholeChurch’—an influential man in the community, apparentlyrich, and willing, as well as able, to extend to them large andloving hospitality. Erastus, the chamberlain or treasurer of thecity, follows—a man of consequence in Corinth. And then, amongall these people of mark, comes the modest, quiet Quartus. He has nowealth like Gaius, nor civic position like Erastus, nor widereputation like Timothy. He is only a good, simple, unknownChristian. He feels a spring of love open in his heart to thesebrethren far across the sea, whom he never met. He would like them toknow that he thought lovingly of them, and to be lovingly thought ofby them. So he begs a little corner in Paul's letter, and gets it;and there, in his little niche, like some statue of a forgottensaint, scarce seen amidst the glories of a great cathedral,‘Quartus a brother’ stands to all time.

The first thing that strikes me in connection with these words is,how deep and real they show that new bond of Christian love to havebeen.

A little incident of this sort is more impressive than any amountof mere talk about the uniting influence of the Gospel. Here we get aglimpse of the power in actual operation in a man's heart, and if wethink of all that this simple greeting presupposes and implies, andof all that had to be overcome before it could have been sent, we maywell see in it the sign of the greatest revolution that was everwrought in men's relations to one another, Quartus was an inhabitantof Corinth, from which city this letter was written. His Roman namemay indicate Roman descent, but of that we cannot be sure. Just asprobably he may have been a Greek by birth, and so have had tostretch his hand across a deep crevasse of national antipathy, inorder to clasp the hands of his brethren in the great city. There waslittle love lost between Rome, the rough imperious conqueror, andCorinth, prostrate and yet restive under her bonds, and nourishingremembrances of a freedom which Rome had crushed, and of a culturethat Rome haltingly followed.

And how many other deep gulfs of separation had to be bridgedbefore that Christian sense of oneness could be felt! It isimpossible for us to throw ourselves completely back to the conditionof things which the Gospel found. The world then was like some greatfield of cooled lava on the slopes of a volcano, all broken up by alabyrinth of clefts and cracks, at the bottom of which one can seethe flicker of sulphurous flames. Great gulfs of national hatred, offierce enmities of race, language, and religion; wide separations ofsocial condition, far profounder than anything of the sort which weknow, split mankind into fragments. On the one side was the freeman,on the other, the slave; on the one side, the Gentile, on the other,the Jew; on the one side, the insolence and hard-handedness of Romanrule, on the other, the impotent, and therefore envenomed, hatred ofconquered peoples.

And all this fabric, full of active repulsions and disintegratingforces, was bound together into an artificial and unreal unity by theiron clamp of Rome's power, holding up the bulging walls that wereready to fall—the unity of the slave-gang manacled together foreasier driving. Into this hideous condition of things the Gospelcomes, and silently flings its clasping tendrils over the wide gaps,and binds the crumbling structure of human society with a new bond,real and living. We know well enough that that was so, but we arehelped to apprehend it by seeing, as it were, the very process goingon before our eyes, in this message from ‘Quartus abrother.’

It reminds us that the very notion of humanity, and of thebrotherhood of man, is purely Christian. A world-embracing society,held together by love, was not dreamt of before the Gospel came; andsince the Gospel came it is more than a dream. If you wrench away theidea from its foundation, as people do who talk about fraternity, andseek to bring it to pass without Christ, it is a mere piece ofUtopian sentiment—a fine dream. But in Christianity it worked.It works imperfectly enough, God knows. Still there is some realityin it, and some power. The Gospel first of all produced the thing andthe practice, and then the theory came afterwards. The Church did nottalk much about the brotherhood of man, or the unity of the race; butsimply ignored all distinctions, and gathered into the fold the slaveand his master, the Roman and his subject, fair-haired Goths andswarthy Arabians, the worshippers of Odin and of Zeus, the Jew andthe Gentile. That actual unity, utterly irrespective of alldistinctions, which came naturally in the train of the Gospel, wasthe first attempt to realise the oneness of the race, and firsttaught the world that all men were brethren.

And before this simple word of greeting could have been sent, andthe unknown man in Corinth felt love to a company of unknown men inRome, some profound new impulse must have been given to the world;something altogether unlike any of the forces hitherto in existence.What was that? What should it be but the story of One who gaveHimself for the whole world, who binds men into a unity because ofHis common relation to them all, and through whom the greatproclamation can be made: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek,there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, forye are all one in Christ Jesus.’ Brother Quartus’message, like some tiny flower above-ground which tells of aspreading root beneath, is a modest witness to that mightyrevolution, and presupposes the preaching of a Saviour in whom he andhis unseen friends in Rome are one.

So let us learn not to confine our sympathy and the play of ourChristian affection within the limits of our personal knowledge. Wemust go further a-field than that. Like this man, let us sometimessend our thoughts across mountains and seas. He knew nobody in theRoman Church, and nobody knew him, but he wished to stretch out hishand to them, and to feel, as it were, the pressure of their fingersin his palm. That is a pattern for us.

Let me suggest another thing. Quartus was a Corinthian. TheCorinthian Church was remarkable for its quarrellings anddissensions. One said, ‘I am of Paul, and another, I ofApollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ.’ I wonder if ourfriend Quartus belonged to any of these parties? There is nothingmore likely than that he had a much warmer glow of Christian love tothe brethren over there in Rome than to those who sat on the samebench with him in the upper room at Corinth. For you know thatsometimes it is true about people, as well as about scenery, that‘distance lends enchantment to the view.’ A great many ofus have much keener sympathies with ‘brethren’ who arewell out of our reach, and whose peculiarities do not jar againstours, than with those who are nearest. I do not say Quartus was oneof these, but he may very well have been one of the wranglers inCorinth who found it much easier to love his brother whom he had notseen than his brother whom he had seen. So take the hint, if you needit. Do not let your Christian love go wandering away abroad only, butkeep some for home consumption.

Again, how simply, and with what unconscious beauty, the deepreason for our Christian unity is given in that one word, a‘Brother.’ As if he had said, Never mind telling themanything about what I am, what place I hold, or what I do. Tell themI am a brother, that will be enough. It is the only name by which Icare to be known; it is the name which explains my love to them.

We are brethren because we are sons of one Father. So thatfavourite name, by which the early Christians knew each other, restedupon and proclaimed the deep truth that they knew themselves to beall partakers of a common life derived from one Parent. When theysaid they were brethren, they implied, ‘We have been born againby the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.’ Thegreat Christian truth of regeneration, the communication of a divinelife from God the Father, through Christ the Son, by the Holy Spirit,is the foundation of Christian brotherhood. So the name is no merepiece of effusive sentiment, but expresses a profound fact. ‘Toas many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons ofGod,’ and therein to become the brethren of all His sons.

That is the true ground of our unity, and of our obligation tolove all who are begotten of Him. You cannot safely put them on anyother footing. All else—identity of opinion, similarity ofpractice and ceremonial, local or national ties, and thelike—all else is insufficient. It may be necessary forChristian communities to require in addition a general identity ofopinion, and even some uniformity in government and form of worship;but if ever they come to fancy that such subordinate conditions ofvisible oneness are the grounds of their spiritual unity, and toenforce these as such, they are slipping off the real foundation, andare perilling their character as Churches of Christ. The true groundof the unity of all Christians is here: ‘Have we not all oneFather?’ We possess a kindred life derived from Him. We are afamily of brethren because we are sons.

Another remark is, how strangely and unwittingly this good man hasgot himself an immortality by that passing thought of his. One lovingmessage has won for him the prize for which men have joyfully givenlife itself,—an eternal place in history. Wheresoever theGospel is preached there also shall this be told as a memorial ofhim. How much surprised he would have been if, as he leaned forwardto Tertius hurrying to end his task and said, ‘Send my lovetoo,’ anybody had told him that that one act of his would lastas long as the world, and his name be known for ever! And how muchashamed some of the other people in the New Testament would have beenif they had known that their passing faults—the quarrel ofEuodia and Syntyche for instance—were to be gibbeted for everin the same fashion! How careful they would have been, and we wouldbe, of our behaviour if we knew that it was to be pounced down uponand made immortal in that style! Suppose you were to betold—Your thoughts and acts to-morrow at twelve o'clock will berecorded for all the world to read—you would be pretty carefulhow you behaved. When a speaker sees the reporters in front of him,he weighs his words.

Well, Quartus' little message is written down here, and the worldknows it. All our words and works are getting put down too, inanother Book up there, and it is going to be read out one day. Itdoes seem wonderful that you and I should live as we do, knowing thatall the while that God is recording it all. If we are not ashamed todo things, and let Him note them on His tablets that they may be forthe time to come, for ever and ever, it is strange that we should bemore careful to attitudinise and pose ourselves before one anotherthan before Him. Let us then keep ever in mind ‘those pure eyesand perfect witness of the all-judging’ God. The eternal recordof this little message is only a symbol of the eternal life andeternal record of all our transient and trivial thoughts and deedsbefore Him. Let us live so that each act, if recorded, would shinewith some modest ray of true light like brother Quartus' greeting,and let us seek that, like him,—all else about us beingforgotten, position, talents, wealth, buried in the dust,—wemay be remembered, if we are remembered at all, by such a biographyas is condensed into these three words. Who would not wish to beembalmed, so to speak, in such a record? Who would not wish to havesuch an epitaph as this? A sweet fate to live for ever in the world'smemory by three words which tell his name, his Christianity, and hisbrotherly love! So far as we are remembered at all, may the like beour life's history and our epitaph!

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D., Litt.D.

CORINTHIANS
(To II Corinthians, Chap. V)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CALLING ON THE NAME (1 COR. i. 2)

PERISHING OR BEING SAVED (1 COR. i. 18)

THE APOSTLE'S THEME (1 COR. ii. 2)

GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS (1 COR. iii. 9)

THE TESTING FIRE (1 COR. iii. 12, 13)

TEMPLES OF GOD (1 COR. iii. 16)

DEATH, THE FRIEND (1 COR. iii. 21, 22)

SERVANTS AND LORDS (1 COR. iii. 21-23)

THE THREE TRIBUNALS (1 COR. iv. 3, 4)

THE FESTAL LIFE (1 COR. v. 8)

FORMS VERSUS CHARACTER (1 COR. vii.19, GAL. v. 6, GAL. vi. 15, R. V.)

SLAVES AND FREE (1 COR. vii. 22)

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE (1 COR. vii. 24)

‘LOVE BUILDETH UP’ (1 COR. viii.1-13)

THE SIN OF SILENCE (1 COR. ix. 16, 17)

A SERVANT OF MEN (1 COR. ix. 19-23)

HOW THE VICTOR RUNS (1 COR. ix. 24)

‘CONCERNING THE CROWN’ (1 COR.ix. 25)

THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY (1 COR. x. 23-33)

‘IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME’ (1 COR.xi. 24)

THE UNIVERSAL GIFT (1 COR. xii. 7)

WHAT LASTS (1 COR. xiii. 8, 13)

THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION (1 COR. xv.3, 4)

REMAINING AND FALLING ASLEEP (1 COR. xv.6)

PAUL'S ESTIMATE OF HIMSELF (1 COR. xv.10)

THE UNITY OF APOSTOLIC TEACHING (1 COR. xv.11)

THE CERTAINTY AND JOY OF THE RESURRECTION(1 COR. xv. 20)

THE DEATH OF DEATH (1 COR. xv. 20, 21;50-58)

STRONG AND LOVING (1 COR. xvi. 13, 14)

ANATHEMA AND GRACE (1 COR. xvi. 21-24)

GOD'S YEA; MAN'S AMEN (2 COR. i. 20, R.V.)

ANOINTED AND STABLISHED (2 COR. i. 21)

SEAL AND EARNEST (2 COR. i. 22)

THE TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION (2 COR. ii. 14, R.V.)

TRANSFORMATION BY BEHOLDING (2 COR. iii.18)

LOOKING AT THE UNSEEN (2 COR. iv. 18)

TENT AND BUILDING (2 COR. v. 1)

THE PATIENT WORKMAN (2 COR. v. 5)

THE OLD HOUSE AND THE NEW (2 COR. v.8)

PLEASING CHRIST (2 COR. v. 9)

THE LOVE THAT CONSTRAINS (2 COR. v. 14)

THE ENTREATIES OF GOD (2 COR. v. 20)

PART 1

I. CORINTHIANS

CALLING ON THE NAME

‘All that in every place call upon the name ofJesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.’—1 COR. i.2.

There are some difficulties, with which I need not trouble you,about both the translation and the connection of these words. Onething is quite clear, that in them the Apostle associates the churchat Corinth with the whole mass of Christian believers in the world.The question may arise whether he does so in the sense that headdresses his letter both to the church at Corinth and to the wholeof the churches, and so makes it a catholic epistle. That isextremely unlikely, considering how all but entirely this letter istaken up with dealing with the especial conditions of the Corinthianchurch. Rather I should suppose that he is simply intending to remind‘the Church of God at Corinth ... sanctified in Christ Jesus,called to be saints,’ that they are in real, living union withthe whole body of believers. Just as the water in a littleland-locked bay, connected with the sea by some narrow strait likethat at Corinth, is yet part of the whole ocean that rolls round theworld, so that little community of Christians had its living bond ofunion with all the brethren in every place that called upon the nameof Jesus Christ.

Whichever view on that detail of interpretation be taken, thisphrase, as a designation of Christians, is worth considering. It isone of many expressions found in the New Testament as names for them,some of which have now dropped out of general use, while some arestill retained. It is singular that the name of‘Christian,’ which has all but superseded all others, wasoriginally invented as a jeer by sarcastic wits at Antioch, and neverappears in the New Testament, as a name by which believers calledthemselves. Important lessons are taught by these names, such asdisciples, believers, brethren, saints, those of the way, and so on,each of which embodies some characteristic of a follower of Jesus. Sothis appellation in the text, ‘those who call upon the name ofour Lord Jesus Christ,’ may yield not unimportant lessons if itbe carefully weighed, and to some of these I would ask your attentionnow.

I. First, it gives us a glimpse into the worship of the primitiveChurch.

To ‘call on the name of the Lord’ is an expressionthat comes straight out of the Old Testament. It means theredistinctly adoration and invocation, and it means precisely thesethings when it is referred to Jesus Christ.

We find in the Acts of the Apostles that the very first sermonthat was preached at Pentecost by Peter all turns upon this phrase.He quotes the Old Testament saying, ‘Whosoever shall call onthe name of the Lord shall be saved,’ and then goes on to provethat ‘the Lord,’ the ‘calling on whose Name’is salvation, is Jesus Christ; and winds up with ‘Therefore letall the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that sameJesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.’

Again we find that Ananias of Damascus, when Jesus Christ appearedto him and told him to go to Paul and lay his hands upon him, shrankfrom the perilous task because Paul had been sent to ‘bind themthat call upon the name of the Lord,’ and to persecute them. Wefind the same phrase recurring in other connections, so that, on thewhole, we may take the expression as a recognised designation ofChristians.

This was their characteristic, that they prayed to Jesus Christ.The very first word, so far as we know, that Paul ever heard from aChristian was, ‘Lord Jesus! receive my spirit.’ He heardthat cry of calm faith which, when he heard it, would sound to him ashorrible blasphemy from Stephen's dying lips. How little he dreamedthat he himself was soon to cry to the same Jesus, ‘Lord, whatwilt thou have me to do?’ and was in after-days to beseech Himthrice for deliverance, and to be answered by sufficient grace. Howlittle he dreamed that, when his own martyrdom was near, he too wouldlook to Jesus as Lord and righteous Judge, from whose hands all wholoved His appearing should receive their crown! Nor only Paul directsdesires and adoration to Jesus as Lord; the last words of Scriptureare a cry to Him as Lord to come quickly, and an invocation of His‘grace’ on all believing souls.

Prayer to Christ from the very beginning of the Christian Churchwas, then, the characteristic of believers, and He to whom theyprayed, thus, from the beginning, was recognised by them as being aDivine Person, God manifest in the flesh.

The object of their worship, then, was known by the people amongwhom they lived. Singing hymns to Christus as a god is nearly allthat the Roman proconsul in his well-known letter could find to tellhis master of their worship. They were the worshippers—notmerely the disciples—of one Christ. That was their peculiardistinction. Among the worshippers of the false gods they stooderect; before Him, and Him only, they bowed. In Corinth there was thepolluted worship of Aphrodite and of Zeus. These men called not onthe name of these lustful and stained deities, but on the name of theLord Jesus Christ. And everybody knew whom they worshipped, andunderstood whose men they were. Is that true about us? Do weChristian men so habitually cultivate the remembrance of JesusChrist, and are we so continually in the habit of invoking His aid,and of contemplating His blessed perfections and sufficiency, thatevery one who knew us would recognise us as meant by those who callon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ?

If this be the proper designation of Christian people, alas! alas!for so many of the professing Christians of this day, whom neitherbystanders nor themselves would think of as included in such aname!

Further, the connection here shows that the divine worship ofChrist was universal among the churches. There was no‘place’ where it was not practised, no community callingitself a church to whom He was not the Lord to be invoked and adored.This witness to the early and universal recognition in the Christiancommunities of the divinity of our Lord is borne by an undisputedlygenuine epistle of Paul's. It is one of the four which the mostthorough-going destructive criticism accepts as genuine. It waswritten before the Gospels, and is a voice from the earlier period ofPaul's apostleship. Hence the importance of its attestation to thisfact that all Christians everywhere, both Jewish, who had beentrained in strict monotheism, and Gentile, who had burned incense atmany a foul shrine, were perfectly joined together in this, that inall their need they called on the name of Jesus Christ as Lord andbrought to Him, as divine, adoration not to be rendered to anycreatures. From the day of Pentecost onwards, a Christian was notmerely a disciple, a follower, or an admirer, but a worshipper ofChrist, the Lord.

II. We may see here an unfolding of the all-sufficiency of JesusChrist.

Note that solemn accumulation, in the language of my text, of allthe designations by which He is called, sometimes separately andsometimes unitedly, the name of ‘our Lord Jesus Christ.’We never find that full title given to Him in Scripture except whenthe writer's mind is labouring to express the manifoldness andcompleteness of our Lord's relations to men, and the largeness andsufficiency of the blessings which He brings. In this context I findin the first nine or ten verses of this chapter, so full is theApostle of the thoughts of the greatness and wonderfulness of hisdear Lord on whose name he calls, that six or seven times he employsthis solemn, full designation.

Now, if we look at the various elements of this great name weshall get various aspects of the way in which calling on Christ isthe strength of our souls.

‘Call on the name of—the Lord.’ That is the OldTestament Jehovah. There is no mistaking nor denying, if we candidlyconsider the evidence of the New Testament writings, that, when weread of Jesus Christ as ‘Lord,’ in the vast majority ofcases, the title is not a mere designation of human authority, but isan attribution to Him of divine nature and dignity. We have, then, toascribe to Him, and to call on Him as possessing, all which thatgreat and incommunicable Name certified and sealed to the JewishChurch as their possession in their God. The Jehovah of the OldTestament is our Lord of the New. He whose being is eternal,underived, self-sufficing, self-determining, knowing no variation, nodiminution, no age, He who is because He is and that He is, dwells inHis fulness in our Saviour. To worship Him is not to divert worshipfrom the one God, nor is it to have other gods besides Him.Christianity is as much monotheistic as Judaism was, and the law ofits worship is the old law—Him only shalt thou serve. It is thedivine will that all men should honour the Son, even as they honourthe Father.

But what is it to call on the name of Jesus? That name implies allthe sweetness of His manhood. He is our Brother. The name‘Jesus’ is one that many a Jewish boy bore in our Lord'sown time and before it; though, afterwards, of course, abhorrence onthe part of the Jew and reverence on the part of the Christian causedit almost entirely to disappear. But at the time when He bore it itwas as undistinguished a name as Simeon, or Judas, or any other ofHis followers’ names. To call upon the name of Jesus means torealise and bring near to ourselves, for our consolation andencouragement, for our strength and peace, the blessed thought of Hismanhood, so really and closely knit to ours; to grasp the blessednessof the thought that He knows our frame because He Himself has wornit, and understands and pities our weakness, being Himself a man. ToHim whom we adore as Lord we draw near in tenderer, but not lesshumble and prostrate, adoration as our brother when we call on thename of the Lord Jesus, and thus embrace as harmonious, and notcontradictory, both the divinity of the Lord and the humanity ofJesus.

To call on the name of Christ is to embrace in our faith and tobeseech the exercise on our behalf of all which Jesus is as theMessiah, anointed by God with the fulness of the Spirit. As such Heis the climax, and therefore the close of all revelation, who is thelong-expected fruition of the desire of weary hearts, the fulfilment,and therefore the abolition, of sacrifice and temple and priesthoodand prophecy and all that witnessed for Him ere He came. We furthercall on the name of Christ the Anointed, on whom the whole fulness ofthe Divine Spirit dwelt in order that, calling upon Him, that fulnessmay in its measure be granted to us.

So the name of the Lord Jesus Christ brings to view the divine,the human, the Messiah, the anointed Lord of the Spirit, and Giver ofthe divine life. To call on His name is to be blessed, to be madepure and strong, joyous and immortal. ‘The name of the Lord isa strong tower, the righteous runneth into it and is safe.’Call on His name in the day of trouble and ye shall be heard andhelped.

III. Lastly, this text suggests what a Christian life shouldbe.

We have already remarked that to call on the name of Jesus was thedistinctive peculiarity of the early believers, which marked them offas a people by themselves. Would it be a true designation of the bulkof so-called Christians now? You do not object to profess yourself aChristian, or, perhaps, even to say that you are a disciple ofChrist, or even to go the length of calling yourself a follower andimitator. But are you a worshipper of Him? In your life have you thehabit of meditating on Him as Lord, as Jesus, as Christ, and ofrefreshing and gladdening dusty days and fainting strength by theliving water, drawn from the one unfailing stream from these triplefountains? Is the invocation of His aid habitual with you?

There needs no long elaborate supplication to secure His aid. Howmuch has been done in the Church's history by short bursts of prayer,as ‘Lord, help me!’ spoken or unspoken in the moment ofextremity! ‘They cried unto God in the battle.’ Theywould not have time for very lengthy petitions then, would they? Theywould not give much heed to elegant arrangement of them or suitingthem to the canons of human eloquence. ‘They cried unto God inthe battle’; whilst the enemy's swords were flashing and thearrows whistling about their ears. These were circ*mstances to make aprayer a ‘cry’; no composed and stately utterance of anelegantly modulated voice, nor a languid utterance withoutearnestness, but a short, sharp, loud call, such as danger pressesfrom panting lungs and parched throats. Therefore the cry wasanswered, ‘and He was entreated of them.’ ‘Lord,save us, we perish!’ was a very brief prayer, but it broughtit* answer. And so we, in like manner, may go through our warfare andwork, and day by day as we encounter sudden bursts of temptation maymeet them with sudden jets of petition, and thus put out their fires.And the same help avails for long-continuing as for sudden needs.Some of us may have to carry lifelong burdens and to fight in abattle ever renewed. It may seem as if our cry was not heard, sincethe enemy's assault is not weakened, nor our power to beat it backperceptibly increased. But the appeal is not in vain, and when thefight is over, if not before, we shall know what reinforcements ofstrength to our weakness were due to our poor cry entering into theears of our Lord and Brother. No other ‘name’ ispermissible as our plea or as recipient of our prayer. In and on thename of the Lord we must call, and if we do, anything is possiblerather than that the promise which was claimed for the Church andreferred to Jesus, in the very first Christian preaching onPentecost, should not be fulfilled—‘Whosoever shall callon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

‘In every place.’ We may venture to subject the wordsof my text to a little gentle pressure here. The Apostle only meantto express the universal characteristics of Christians everywhere.But we may venture to give a different turn to the words, and learnfrom them the duty of devout communion with Christ as a duty for eachof us wherever we are. If a place is not fit to pray in it is not fitto be in. We may carry praying hearts, remembrances of the Lord,sweet, though they may be swift and short, contemplations of Hisgrace, His love, His power, His sufficiency, His nearness, Hispunctual help, like a hidden light in our hearts, into all the dustyways of life, and in every place call on His name. There is no placeso dismal but that thoughts of Him will make sunshine in it; no workso hard, so commonplace, so prosaic, so uninteresting, but that itwill become the opposite of all these if whatever we do is done inremembrance of our Lord. Nothing will be too hard for us to do, andnothing too bitter for us to swallow, and nothing too sad for us tobear, if only over all that befalls us and all that we undertake andendeavour we make the sign of the Cross and call upon the name of theLord. If ‘in every place’ we have Him as the object ofour faith and desire, and as the Hearer of our petition, in‘every place’ we shall have Him for our help, and allwill be full of His bright presence; and though we have to journeythrough the wilderness we shall ever drink of that spiritual rockthat will follow us, and that Rock is Christ. In every place callupon His name, and every place will be a house of God, and a gate ofheaven to our waiting souls.

PERISHING OR BEING SAVED

‘For the preaching of the Cross is to them thatperish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power ofGod.’—1 COR. i. 18.

The starting-point of my remarks is the observation that a slightvariation of rendering, which will be found in the Revised Version,brings out the true meaning of these words. Instead of reading‘them that perish’ and ‘us which are saved,’we ought to read ‘them that are perishing,’ and‘us which are being saved.’ That is to say, theApostle represents the two contrasted conditions, not so much asfixed states, either present or future, but rather as processes whichare going on, and are manifestly, in the present, incomplete. Thatopens some very solemn and intensely practical considerations.

Then I may further note that this antithesis includes the whole ofthe persons to whom the Gospel is preached. In one or other of thesetwo classes they all stand. Further, we have to observe that theconsideration which determines the class to which men belong, is theattitude which they respectively take to the preaching of the Cross.If it be, and because it is, ‘foolishness’ to some, theybelong to the catalogue of the perishing. If it be, and because itis, ‘the power of God’ to others, they belong to theclass of those who are in process of being saved.

So, then, we have the ground cleared for two or three very simple,but, as it seems to me, very important thoughts.

I. I desire, first, to look at the two contrasted conditions,‘perishing’ and ‘being saved.’

Now we shall best, I think, understand the force of the darker ofthese two terms if we first ask what is the force of the brighter andmore radiant. If we understand what the Apostle means by‘saving’ and ‘salvation’ we shall understandalso what he means by ‘perishing.’

If, then, we turn for a moment to Scripture analogy and teaching,we find that that threadbare word ‘salvation,’ which weall take it for granted that we understand, and which, like awell-worn coin, has been so passed from hand to hand that it scarcelyremains legible—that well-worn word ‘salvation’starts from a double metaphorical meaning. It means either—andis used for both—being healed or being made safe. In the onesense it is often employed in the Gospel narratives of our Lord'smiracles, and it involves the metaphor of a sick man and his cure; inthe other it involves the metaphor of a man in peril and hisdeliverance and security. The negative side, then, of the Gospel ideaof salvation is the making whole from a disease, and the making safefrom a danger. Negatively, it is the removal from each of us of theone sickness, which is sin; and the one danger, which is the reapingof the fruits and consequences of sin, in their variety as guilt,remorse, habit, and slavery under it, perverted relation to God, afearful apprehension of penal consequences here, and, if there be ahereafter, there, too. The sickness of soul and the perils thatthreaten life, flow from the central fact of sin, and salvationconsists, negatively, in the sweeping away of all of these, whetherthe sin itself, or the fatal facility with which we yield to it, orthe desolation and perversion which it brings into all the facultiesand susceptibilities, or the perversion of relation to God, and theconsequent evils, here and hereafter, which throng around theevil-doer. The sick man is healed, and the man in peril is set insafety.

But, besides that, there is a great deal more. The cure isincomplete till the full tide of health follows convalescence. WhenGod saves, He does not only bar up the iron gate through which thehosts of evil rush out upon the defenceless soul, but He flings widethe golden gate through which the glad troops of blessings and ofgraces flock around the delivered spirit, and enrich it with all joysand with all beauties. So the positive side of salvation is theinvestiture of the saved man with throbbing health through all hisveins, and the strength that comes from a divine life. It is thebestowal upon the delivered man of everything that he needs forblessedness and for duty. All good conferred, and every evil bannedback into its dark den, such is the Christian conception ofsalvation. It is much that the negative should be accomplished, butit is little in comparison with the rich fulness of positiveendowments, of happiness, and of holiness which make an integral partof the salvation of God.

This, then, being the one side, what about the other? If this besalvation, its precise opposite is the Scriptural idea of‘perishing.’ Utter ruin lies in the word, the entirefailure to be what God meant a man to be. That is in it, and nocontortions of arbitrary interpretation can knock that solemnsignificance out of the dreadful expression. If salvation be the cureof the sickness, perishing is the fatal end of the unchecked disease.If salvation be the deliverance from the outstretched claws of theharpy evils that crowd about the trembling soul, then perishing isthe fixing of their poisoned talons into their prey, and theirrending of it into fragments.

Of course that is metaphor, but no metaphor can be half sodreadful as the plain, prosaic fact that the exact opposite of thesalvation, which consists in the healing from sin and the deliverancefrom danger, and in the endowment with all gifts good and beautiful,is the Christian idea of the alternative ‘perishing.’Then it means the disease running its course. It means the dangerslaying hold of the man in peril. It means the withdrawal, or thenon-bestowal, of all which is good, whether it be good of holiness orgood of happiness. It does not mean, as it seems to me, the cessationof conscious existence, any more than salvation means the bestowal ofconscious existence. But he who perishes knows that he has perished,even as he knows the process while he is in the process of perishing.Therefore, we have to think of the gradual fading away fromconsciousness, and dying out of a life, of many things beautiful andsweet and gracious, of the gradual increase of distance from Him,union with whom is the condition of true life, of the gradual sinkinginto the pit of utter ruin, of the gradual increase of that awfuldeath in life and life in death in which living consciousness makesthe conscious subject aware that he is lost; lost to God, lost tohimself.

Brethren, it is no part of my business to enlarge upon such awfulthoughts, but the brighter the light of salvation, the darker theeclipse of ruin which rings it round. This, then, is the firstcontrast.

II. Now note, secondly, the progressiveness of both members of thealternative.

All states of heart or mind tend to increase, by the very fact ofcontinuance. Life is a process, and every part of a spiritual beingis in living motion and continuous action in a given direction. Sothe law for the world, and for every man in it, in all regions of hislife, quite as much as in the religious, is ‘To him that hathshall be given, and he shall have abundance.’

Look, then, at this thought of the process by which these twoconditions become more and more confirmed, consolidated, andcomplete. Salvation is a progressive fact. In the New Testament wehave that great idea looked at from three points of view. Sometimesit is spoken of as having been accomplished in the past in the caseof every believing soul—‘Ye have been saved’ issaid more than once. Sometimes it is spoken of as being accomplishedin the present—‘Ye are saved’ is said more thanonce. And sometimes it is relegated to the future—‘Now isour salvation nearer than when we believed,’ and the like. Butthere are a number of New Testament passages which coincide with thistext in regarding salvation as, not the work of any one moment, butas a continuous operation running through life, not a point either inthe past, present, or future, but a continued life. As, for instance,‘The Lord added to the Church daily those that were beingsaved.’ By one offering He hath perfected for ever them thatare being sanctified. And in a passage in the Second Epistle to theCorinthians, which, in some respects, is an exact parallel to that ofmy text, we read of the preaching of the Gospel as being a‘savour of Christ in them that are being saved, and in themthat are perishing.’

So the process of being saved is going on as long as a Christianman lives in this world; and every one who professes to be Christ'sfollower ought, day by day, to be growing more and more saved, morefully filled with that Divine Spirit, more entirely the conqueror ofhis own lusts and passions and evil, more and more invested with allthe gifts of holiness and of blessedness which Jesus Christ is readyto bestow upon him.

Ah, brethren! that notion of a progressive salvation at work inall true Christians has all but faded away out of the beliefs, as ithas all but disappeared from the experience, of hosts of you thatcall yourselves Christ's followers, and are not a bit further on thanyou were ten years ago; are no more healed of your corruptions(perhaps less so, for relapses are dangerous) than you werethen—have not advanced any further into the depths of God thanwhen you first got a glimpse of Him as loving, and your Father, inJesus Christ—are contented to linger, like some weak band ofinvaders in a strange land, on the borders and coasts, instead ofpressing inwards and making it all your own. GrowingChristians—may I venture to say?—are not the majorityof professing Christians.

And, on the other side, as certainly, there are progressivedeterioration and approximation to disintegration and ruin. How manymen there are listening to me now who were far nearer being deliveredfrom their sins when they were lads than they have ever been since!How many in whom the sensibility to the message of salvation hasdisappeared, in whom the world has ossified their consciences andtheir hearts, in whom there is a more entire and unstrugglingsubmission to low things and selfish things and worldly things andwicked things, than there used to be! I am sure that there are not afew among us now who were far better, and far happier, when they werepoor and young, and could still thrill with generous emotion andtremble at the Word of God, than they are to-day. Why! there are someof you that could no more bring back your former loftier impulses,and compunction of spirit and throbs of desire towards Christ and Hissalvation, than you could bring back the birds’ nests or thesnows of your youthful years. You are perishing, in the very processof going down and down into the dark.

Now, notice, that the Apostle treats these two classes as coveringthe whole ground of the hearers of the Word, and as alternatives. Ifnot in the one class we are in the other. Ah, brethren! life is nolevel plane, but a steep incline, on which there is no standingstill, and if you try to stand still, down you go. Either up or downmust be the motion. If you are not more of a Christian than you werea year ago, you are less. If you are not more saved—for thereis a degree of comparison—if you are not more saved, you areless saved.

Now, do not let that go over your head as pulpit thunder, meaningnothing. It means you, and, whether you feel or think it ornot, one or other of these two solemn developments is at this momentgoing on in you. And that is not a thought to be put lightly on oneside.

Further, note what a light such considerations as these, thatsalvation and perishing are vital processes—‘going on allthe time,’ as the Americans say—throw upon the future.Clearly the two processes are incomplete here. You get the directionof the line, but not its natural termination. And thus a heaven and ahell are demanded by the phenomena of growing goodness and of growingbadness which we see round about us. The arc of the circle ispartially swept. Are the compasses going to stop at the point wherethe grave comes in? By no means. Round they will go, and willcomplete the circle. But that is not all. The necessity for progresswill persist after death; and all through the duration of immortalbeing, goodness, blessedness, holiness, Godlikeness, will, on the onehand, grow in brighter lustre; and on the other, alienation from God,loss of the noble elements of the nature, and all the other dolefuldarknesses which attend that conception of a lost man, will increaselikewise. And so, two people, sitting side by side here now, maystart from the same level, and by the operation of the one principlethe one may rise, and rise, and rise, till he is lost in God, and sofinds himself, and the other sink, and sink, and sink, into theobscurity of woe and evil that lies beneath every human life as apossibility.

III. And now, lastly, notice the determining attitude to the Crosswhich settles the class to which we belong.

Paul, in my text, is explaining his reason for not preaching theGospel with what he calls ‘the words of man's wisdom,’and he says, in effect, ‘It would be of no use if I did,because what settles whether the Cross shall look“foolishness” to a man or not is the man's whole moralcondition, and what settles whether a man shall find it to be“the power of God” or not is whether he has passed intothe region of those that are being saved.’

So there are two thoughts suggested which sound as if they wereillogically combined, but which yet are both true. It is true thatmen perish, or are saved, because the Cross is to them respectively‘foolishness’ or ‘the power of God’; and theother thing is also true, that the Cross is to them‘foolishness,’ or ‘the power of God’ because,respectively, they are perishing or being saved. That is not puttingthe cart before the horse, but both aspects of the truth aretrue.

If you see nothing in Jesus Christ, and His death for us all,except ‘foolishness,’ something unfit to do you any good,and unnecessary to be taken into account in your lives—oh, myfriends! that is the condemnation of your eyes, and not of thething you look at. If a man, gazing on the sun at twelve o'clock on aJune day, says to me, ‘It is not bright,’ the only thingI have to say to him is, ‘Friend, you had better go to anoculist.’ And if to us the Cross is ‘foolishness,’it is because already a process of ‘perishing’ has goneso far that it has attacked our capacity of recognising the wisdomand love of God when we see them.

But, on the other hand, if we clasp that Cross in simple trust, wefind that it is the power which saves us out of all sins, sorrows,and dangers, and ‘shall save us’ at last ‘into Hisheavenly kingdom.’

Dear friends, that message leaves no man exactly as it found him.My words, I feel, in this sermon, have been very poor, set by theside of the greatness of the theme; but, poor as they have been, youwill not be exactly the same man after them, if you have listened tothem, as you were before. The difference may be very imperceptible,but it will be real. One more, almost invisible, film, over theeyeball; one more thin layer of wax in the ear; one more fold ofinsensibility round heart and conscience—or else some yieldingto the love; some finger put out to take the salvation; somelightening of the pressure of the sickness; some removal of the periland the danger. The same sun hurts diseased eyes, and gladdens soundones. The same fire melts wax and hardens clay. ‘This Child isset for the rise and fall of many in Israel.’ ‘To the oneHe is the savour of life unto life; to the other He is the savour ofdeath unto death.’ Which is He, for He is one ofthem, to you?

THE APOSTLE'S THEME

‘I determined not to know anything among you, saveJesus Christ, and Him crucified.’—1 COR. ii.2.

Many of you are aware that to-day I close forty years of ministryin this city—I cannot say to this congregation, for there arevery, very few that can go back with me in memory to the beginning ofthese years. You will bear me witness that I seldom intrude personalreferences into the pulpit, but perhaps it would be affectation notto do so now. Looking back over these long years, many thoughts arisewhich cannot be spoken in public. But one thing I may say, and thatis, that I am grateful to God and to you, dear friends, for theunbroken harmony, confidence, affection, and forbearance which havebrightened and lightened my work. Of its worth I cannot judge; itsimperfections I know better than the most unfavourable critic; but Ican humbly take the words of this text as expressive, not, indeed, ofmy attainments, but of my aims. One of my texts, on my first Sundayin Manchester, was ‘We preach Christ and Him crucified,’and I look back, and venture to say that the noble words of this texthave been, however imperfectly followed, my guiding star.

Now, I wish to say a word or two, less personal perhaps, and yet,as you can well suppose, not without a personal reference in my ownconsciousness.

I. Note here first, then, the Apostolic theme—Jesus Christand Him crucified.

Now, the Apostle, in this context, gives us a littleautobiographical glimpse which is singularly and interestinglyconfirmed by some slight incidental notices in the Book of the Acts.He says, in the context, that he was with the Corinthians ‘inweakness and in fear and in much trembling,’ and, if we turn tothe narrative, we find that a singular period of silence, apparentabandonment of his work and dejection, seems to have synchronisedwith his coming to the great city of Corinth. The reasons were veryplain. He had recently come into Europe for the first time and hadhad to front a new condition of things, very different from what hehad found in Palestine or in Asia Minor. His experience had not beenencouraging. He had been imprisoned in Philippi; he had been smuggledaway by night from Thessalonica; he had been hounded from Berea; hehad all but wholly failed to make any impression in Athens, and inhis solitude he came to Corinth, and lay quiet, and took stock of hisadversaries. He came to the conclusion which he records in my text;he felt that it was not for him to argue with philosophers, or toattempt to vie with Sophists and professional orators, but that hisonly way to meet Greek civilisation, Greek philosophy, Greekeloquence, Greek self-conceit, was to preach ‘Christ and Himcrucified.’ The determination was not come to in ignorance ofthe conditions that were fronting him. He knew Corinth, its wealth,its wickedness, its culture, and knowing these he said, ‘I havemade up my mind that I will know nothing amongst you save JesusChrist and Him crucified.’

So, then, this Apostle's conception of his theme was—thebiography of a Man, with especial emphasis laid on one act in Hishistory—His death. Christianity is Christ, and Christ isChristianity. His relation to the truth that He proclaimed, and tothe truths that may be deducible from the story of His life anddeath, is altogether different from the relation of any other founderof a religion to the truths that he has proclaimed. For in these youcan accept the teaching, and ignore the teacher. But you cannot dothat with Christianity; ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and theLife’; and in that revealing biography, which is the preacher'stheme, the palpitating heart and centre is the death upon the Cross.So, whatever else Christianity comes to be—and it comes to be agreat deal else—the principle of its growth, and the germ whichmust vitalise the whole, lie in the personality and the death ofJesus Christ.

That is not all. The history of the life and the death wantsomething more to make them a gospel. The fact, I was going to say,is the least part of the fact; as in some vegetable growths, there isfar more underground than above. For, unless along with, involved in,and deducible from, but capable of being stated separately from, theexternal facts, there is a certain commentary or explanation of them:the history is a history, the biography is a biography, the story ofthe Cross is a touching narrative, but it is no gospel.

And what was Paul's commentary which lifted the bare facts up intothe loftier region? This—as for the person, Jesus Christ‘declared to be the son of God with power’—as forthe fact of the death, ‘died for our sins according to theScriptures.’ Let in these two conceptions into thefacts—and they are the necessary explanation and presuppositionof the facts—the Incarnation and the Sacrifice, and then youget what Paul calls ‘my gospel,’ not because it was hisinvention, but because it was the trust committed to him. That is theGospel which alone answers to the facts which he deals with; and thatis the Gospel which, God helping me, I have for forty years tried topreach.

We hear a great deal at present, or we did a few years ago, aboutthis generation having recovered Jesus Christ, and about thenecessity of going ‘back to the Christ of the Gospels.’By all means, I say, if in the process you do not lose the Christ ofthe Epistles, who is the Christ of the Gospels, too. I am free toadmit that a past generation has wrapped theological cobwebs roundthe gracious figure of Christ with disastrous results. For it isperfectly possible to know the things that are said about Him, andnot to know Him about whom these things are said. But the mistakeinto which the present generation is far more likely to fall thanthat of substituting theology for Christ, is the converseone—that of substituting an undefined Christ for the Christ ofthe Gospels and the Epistles, the Incarnate Son of God, who died forour salvation. And that is a more disastrous mistake than the other,for you can know nothing about Him and He can be nothing to you,except as you grasp the Apostolic explanation of the barefacts—seeing in Him the Word who became flesh, the Son who diedthat we might receive the adoption of sons.

I would further point out that a clear conception of what thetheme is, goes a long way to determine the method in which it shallbe proclaimed. The Apostle says, in the passage which is parallel tothe present one, in the previous chapter, ‘We preach Christcrucified’; with strong emphasis on the word‘preach.’ ‘The Jew required a sign’; hewanted a man who would do something. The Greek sought after wisdom;he wanted a man who would perorate and argue and dissertate. Paulsays, ‘No!’ ‘We have nothing to do. We donot come to philosophise and to argue. We come with a message of factthat has occurred, of a Person that has lived.’ And, as most ofyou know, the word which he uses means in its full signification,‘to proclaim as a herald does.’

Of course, if my business were to establish a set of principles,theological or otherwise, then argumentation would be my weapon,proofs would be my means, and my success would be that I should winyour credence, your intellectual consent, and conviction. If I werehere to proclaim simply a morality, then the thing that I would aimto secure would be obedience, and the method of securing it would beto enforce the authority and reasonableness of the command. But,seeing that my task is to proclaim a living Person and a historicalfact, then the way to do that is to do as the herald does when in themarket-place he stands, trumpet in one hand and the King's message inthe other—proclaim it loudly, confidently, not ‘withbated breath and whispering humbleness,’ as if apologising, nortoo much concerned to buttress it up with argumentation out of hisown head, but to say, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ and to whatthe Lord saith conscience says, ‘Amen.’ Brethren, we needfar more, in all our pulpits, of that unhesitating confidence in theplain, simple proclamation, stripped, as far as possible, of humanadditions and accretions, of the great fact and the great Person onwhom all our salvation depends.

II. So let me ask you to notice the exclusiveness which this themedemands.

‘Nothing but,’ says Paul. I might venture tosay—though perhaps the tone of the personal allusions in thissermon may seem to contradict it—that this exclusiveness is tobe manifested in one very difficult direction, and that that is, theherald shall efface himself. We have to hold up the picture; and if Imight take such a metaphor, like a man in a gallery who is displayingsome masterpiece to the eyes of the beholders, we have to keepourselves well behind it; and it will be wise if not even afinger-tip is allowed to steal in front and come into sight. Onecondition, I believe, of real power in the ministration of theGospel, is that people shall be convinced that the preacher isthinking not at all about himself, but altogether about his message.You remember that wonderfully pathetic utterance from John theBaptist's stern lips, which derives much additional pathos andtenderness from the character of the man from whom it came, when theyasked him, ‘Who art thou?’ and his answer was, ‘Iam a Voice.’ I am a Voice; that is all! Ah, that is theexample! We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord. We mustefface ourselves if we would proclaim Christ.

But I turn to another direction in which this theme demandsexclusiveness, and I revert to the previous chapter where in theparallel portion to the words of my text, we find the Apostle veryclearly conscious of the two great streams of expectation and wishwhich he deliberately thwarted and set at nought. ‘The Jewsrequire a sign—but we preach Christ crucified. The Greeks seekafter wisdom,’ but again, ‘we preach Christcrucified.’ Now, take these two. They are representations, in avery emphatic way, of two sets of desires and mental characteristics,which divide the world between them.

On the one hand, there is the sensuous tendency that wantssomething done for it, something to see, something that sense cangrasp at; and so, as it fancies, work itself upwards into a higherregion. ‘The Jew requires a sign’—that is, notmerely a miracle, but something to look at. He wants a visiblesacrifice; he wants a priest. He wants religion to consist largely inthe doing of certain acts which may be supposed to bring, in somemagical fashion, spiritual blessings. And Paul opposes to that,‘We preach Christ crucified.’ Brethren, the tendency isstrong to-day, not only in those parts of the Anglican communionwhere sacramentarian theories are in favour, but amongst all sectionsof the Christian Church, in which there is obvious a drift towardsmore ornate ritual, and aesthetic services, as means of attracting tochurch or chapel, and as more important than proclaiming Christ. I amfree to confess that possibly some of us, with our Puritan upbringingand tendency, too much disregard that side of human nature. Possiblyit is so. But for all that I profoundly believe that if religion isto be strong it must have a very, very small infusion of theseexternal aids to spiritual worship, and that few things more weakenthe power of the Gospel that Paul preached than the lowering of theflag in conformity with desires of men of sense, and substituting forthe simple glory of the preached Word the meretricious, and in timeimpotent, and always corrupting, attractions of a sensuousworship.

Further, ‘The Greeks seek after wisdom.’ They wanteddemonstration, abstract principles, systematised philosophies, andthe like. Paul comes again with his ‘We preach Christ and Himcrucified.’ The wisdom is there, as I shall have to say in amoment, but the form that it takes is directly antagonistic to thewishes of these wisdom-seeking Greeks. The same thing in modern guisebesets us to-day. We are called upon, on all sides, to bring into thepulpit what they call an ethical gospel; putting it into plainEnglish, to preach morality, and to leave out Christ. We are calledupon, on all sides, to preach an applied Christianity, a socialgospel—that is to say, largely to turn the pulpit into a Sundaysupplement to the daily newspaper. We are asked to deal with theintellectual difficulties which spring from the collision of science,true or false, with religion, and the like. All that is right enough.But I believe from my heart that the thing to do is to copy Paul'sexample, and to preach Christ and Him crucified. You may think meright or you may think me wrong, but here and now, at the end offorty years, I should like to say that I have for the most partignored that class of subjects deliberately, and of set purpose, andwith a profound conviction, be it erroneous or not, that a ministrywhich listens much to the cry for ‘wisdom’ in its modernforms, has departed from the true perspective of Christian teaching,and will weaken the churches which depend upon it. Let who will turnthe pulpit into a professor's chair, or a lecturer's platform, or aconcert-room stage or a politician's rostrum, I for one determine toknow nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

III. Lastly, observe the all-sufficient comprehensiveness whichthis theme secures.

Paul says ‘nothing but’; he might have said‘everything in.’ For ‘Jesus Christ and Himcrucified’ covers all the ground of men's needs. No doubt manyof you will have been saying to yourselves whilst you have beenlistening, if you have been listening, to what I have been saying,‘Ah! old-fashioned narrowness; quite out of date in thisgeneration.’ Brethren, there are two ways of adapting one'sministry to the times. One is falling in with the requirements of thetimes, and the other is going dead against them, and both of thesemethods have to be pursued by us.

But the exclusiveness of which I have been speaking, is no narrowexclusiveness. Paul felt that, if he was to give the Corinthians whatthey needed, he must refuse to give them what they wanted, and thatwhilst he crossed their wishes he was consulting their necessities.That is true yet, for the preaching that bases itself upon the lifeand death of Jesus Christ, conceived as Paul had learned from JesusChrist to conceive them, that Gospel, whilst it brushes aside men'ssuperficial wishes, goes straight to the heart of their deep-lyinguniversal necessities, for what the Jew needs most is not a sign, andwhat the Greek needs most is not wisdom, but what they both need mostis deliverance from the guilt and power of sin. And we all, scholarsand fools, poets and common-place people, artists and ploughmen, allof us, in all conditions of life, in all varieties of culture, in allstages of intellectual development, in all diversities of occupationand of mental bias, what we all have in common is that human heart inwhich sin abides, and what we all need most to have is that evil dropsqueezed out of it, and our souls delivered from the burden and thebondage. Therefore, any man that comes with a sign, and does not dealwith the sin of the human heart, and any man that comes with aphilosophical system of wisdom, and does not deal with sin, does notbring a Gospel that will meet the necessities even of the people towhose cravings he has been aiming to adapt his message.

But, beyond that, in this message of Christ and Him crucified,there lies in germ the satisfaction of all that is legitimate inthese desires that at first sight it seems to thwart. ‘Asign?’ Yes, and where is there power like the power that dwellsin Him who is the Incarnate might of omnipotence?‘Wisdom?’ Yes, and where is there wisdom, except‘in Him in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom andknowledge’? Let the Jew come to the Cross, and in the weak Manhanging there, he will find a mightier revelation of the power of Godthan anywhere else. Let the Greek come to the Cross, and there hewill find wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption.The bases of all social, economical, political reform and well-being,lie in the understanding and the application to social and nationallife, of the principles that are wrapped in, and are deduced from,the Incarnation and the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We have notlearned them all yet. They have not all been applied to national andindividual life yet. I plead for no narrow exclusiveness, but for oneconsistent with the widest application of Christian principles to alllife. Paul determined to know nothing but Jesus, and to knoweverything in Jesus, and Jesus in everything. Do not begin yourbuilding at the second-floor windows. Put in your foundations first,and be sure that they are well laid. Let the Sacrifice of Christ, inits application to the individual and his sins, be ever the basis ofall that you say. And then, when that foundation is laid, exhibit, toyour heart's content, the applications of Christianity and its socialaspects. But be sure that the beginning of them all is the work ofChrist for the individual sinful soul, and the acceptance of thatwork by personal faith.

Dear friends, ours has been a long and happy union but it is avery solemn one. My responsibilities are great; yours are not small.Let me beseech you to ask yourselves if, with all your kindness tothe messenger, you have given heed to the message. Have you passedbeyond the voice that speaks, to Him of whom it speaks? Have youtaken the truth—veiled and weakened as I know it has been by mywords, but yet in them—for what it is, the word of the livingGod? My occupancy of this pulpit must in the nature of things, beforelong, come to a close, but the message which I have brought to youwill survive all changes in the voice that speaks here. ‘Allflesh is grass ... the Word of the Lord endureth for ever.’And, closing these forty years, during a long part of which some ofyou have listened most lovingly and most forbearingly, I leave withyou this, which I venture to quote, though it is my Master's wordabout Himself, ‘I judge you not; the word which I have spokenunto you, the same shall judge you in the last day.’

GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS

‘Labourers together with God.’—1 COR.iii. 9.

The characteristic Greek tendency to factions was threatening torend the Corinthian Church, and each faction was swearing by afavourite teacher. Paul and his companion, Apollos, had been taken asthe figureheads of two of these parties, and so he sets himself inthe context, first of all to show that neither of the two was of anyreal importance in regard to the Church's life. They were like acouple of gardeners, one of whom did the planting, and the other thewatering; but neither the man that put the little plant into theground, nor the man that came after him with a watering-pot, hadanything to do with originating the mystery of the life by which theplant grew. That was God's work, and the pair that had planted andwatered were nothing. So what was the use of fighting which of twonothings was the greater?

But then he bethinks himself that that is not quite all. The manthat plants and the man that waters are something after all. They donot communicate life, but they do provide for its nourishment. Andmore than that, the two operations—that of the man with thedibble and that of the man with the watering-pot—are one inissue; and so they are partners, and in some respects may be regardedas one. Then what is the sense of pitting them against eachother?

But even that is not quite all; though united in operation, theyare separate in responsibility and activity, and will be separate inreward. And even that is not all; for, being nothing and yetsomething, being united and yet separate, they are taken intoparticipation and co-operation with God; and as my text puts it, inwhat is almost a presumptuous phrase, they are ‘labourerstogether with Him.’ That partnership of co-operation is notmerely a partnership of the two, but it is a partnership of thethree—God and the two who, in some senses, are one.

Now whilst this text is primarily spoken in regard to theapostolic and evangelistic work of these early teachers, theprinciple which it embodies is a very wide one, and it applies in allregions of life and activity, intellectual, scholastic,philanthropic, social. Where-ever men are thinking God's thoughts andtrying to carry into effect any phase or side of God's manifoldpurposes of good and blessing to the world, there it is true. Weclaim no special or exclusive prerogative for the Christian teacher.Every man that is trying to make men understand God's thought,whether it is expressed in creation, or whether it is written inhistory, or whether it is carven in half-obliterated letters on theconstitution of human nature, every man who, in any region of societyor life, is seeking to effect the great designs of the universalloving Father—can take to himself, in the measure and accordingto the manner of his special activity, the great encouragement of mytext, and feel that he, too, in his little way, is a fellow-helper tothe truth and a fellow-worker with God. But then, of course,according to New Testament teaching, and according to the realitiesof the case, the highest form in which men thus can co-operate withGod, and carry into effect His purposes is that in which men devotethemselves, either directly or indirectly, to spreading throughoutthe whole world the name and the power of the Saviour Jesus Christ,in whom all God's will is gathered, and through whom all God'sblessings are communicated to mankind. So the thought of my textcomes appropriately when I have to bring before you the claims of ourmissionary operations.

Now, the first way in which I desire to look at this great ideaexpressed in these words, is that we find in it

I. A solemn thought.

‘Labourers together with God.’ Cannot He do it allHimself? No. God needs men to carry out His purposes. True, on theCross, Jesus spoke the triumphant word, ‘It is finished!’He did not thereby simply mean that He had completed all Hissuffering; but He meant that He had then done all which the worldneeded to have done in order that it should be a redeemed world. Butfor the distribution and application of that finished work Goddepends on men. You all know, in your own daily businesses, how theremust be a middleman between the mill and the consumer. The questionof organising a distributing agency is quite as important as anyother part of the manufacturer's business. The great reservoir isfull, but there has to be a system of irrigating-channels by whichthe water is carried into every corner of the field that is to bewatered. Christian men individually, and the Church collectively,supply—may I call it the missing link?—between aredeeming Saviour and the world which He has redeemed in act, butwhich is not actually redeemed, until it has received the message ofthe great Redemption that is wrought. The supernatural is implantedin the very heart of the mass of leaven by the Incarnation andSacrifice of Jesus Christ; but the spreading of that supernaturalrevelation is left in the hands of men who work through naturalprocesses, and who thus become labourers together with God, andenable Christ to be to single souls, in blessed reality, what He ispotentially to the world, and has been ever since. He died upon theCross. ‘It is finished.’ Yes—because it isfinished, our work begins.

Let me remind you of the profound symbolism in that incident whereour Lord for once appeared conspicuously, and almost ostentatiously,before Israel as its true King. He had need—as He Himselfsaid—of the meek beast on which He rode. He cannot pass, in Hiscoronation procession, through the world unless He has us, by whom Hemay be carried into every corner of the earth. So ‘the Lord hasneed’ of us, and we are ‘fellow-labourers withHim.’

But this same thought suggests another point. We have here asolemn call addressed to every Christian man and woman.

Do not let us run away with the idea that, because here theApostle is speaking in regard to himself and Apollos, he isenunciating a truth which applies only to Apostles and evangelists.It is true of all Christians. My knowledge of and faith in JesusChrist as my own personal Saviour impose upon me the obligation, inso far as my opportunities and capacities extend, thus to co-operatewith Him in spreading His great Name. Every Christian man, justbecause he is a Christian, is invested with the power—and powerto its last particle is duty—and is, therefore, burdened withthe honourable obligation to work for God. There is such a thing as‘coming to the help of the Lord,’ though that phraseseems to reverse altogether the true relation. It is the duty ofevery Christian, partly because of loyalty to Jesus, and partlybecause of the responsibility which the very constitution of societylays upon every one of us, to diffuse what he possesses, and to be adistributing agent for the life that he himself enjoys. Brethren!there is no possibility of Christian men or women being fullyfaithful to the Saviour, unless they recognise that the duty of beinga fellow-labourer with God inevitably follows on being a possessor ofChrist's salvation; and that no Apostle, no official, no minister, nomissionary, has any more necessity laid upon him to preach theGospel, nor pulls down any heavier woe on himself if he isunfaithful, than has and does each one of Christ's servants.

So ‘we are fellow-labourers with God.’ Alas! alas! howpoorly the average Christian realises—I do not say discharges,but realises—that obligation! Brethren, I do not wish to findfault, but I do beseech you to ask yourselves whether, if you areChristians, you are doing anything the least like what my textcontemplates as the duty of all Christians.

May I say a word or two with regard to another aspect of thissolemn call? Does not the thought of working along with God prescribefor us the sort of work that we ought to do? We ought to work inGod's fashion, and if we wish to know what God's fashion is, we havebut to look at Jesus Christ. We ought to work in Jesus Christ'sfashion. We all know what that involved of self-sacrifice, of pain,of weariness, of utter self-oblivious devotion, of gentleness, oftenderness, of infinite pity, of love running over. ‘Themaster's eye makes a good servant.’ The Master's hand workingalong with the servant ought to make the servant work after theMaster's fashion. ‘As My Father hath sent Me, so send Iyou.’ If we felt that side by side with us, like two sailorshauling on one rope, ‘the Servant of the Lord’ wastoiling, do you not think it would burn up all our selfishness, andlight up all our indifference, and make us spend ourselves in Hisservice? A fellow-labourer with God will surely never be lazy andselfish. Thus my text has in it, to begin with, a solemn call.

It suggests

II. A signal honour.

Suppose a great painter, a Raphael or a Turner, taking a littleboy that cleaned his brushes, and saying to him, ‘Come into mystudio, and I will let you do a bit of work upon my picture.’Suppose an aspirant, an apprentice in any walk of life, honoured bybeing permitted to work along with some one who was recognised allover the world as being at the very top of that special profession.Would it not be a feather in the boy's cap all his life? And would henot think it the greatest honour that ever had been done him that hewas allowed to co-operate, in however inferior a fashion, with suchan one? Jesus Christ says to us, ‘Come and work here side byside with Me,’ But Christian men, plenty of them, answer,‘It is a perpetual nuisance, this continual application formoney! money! money! work! work! work! It is never-ending, and it isa burden!’ Yes, it is a burden, just because it is an honour.Do you know that the Hebrew word which means ‘glory’literally means ‘weight’? There is a great truth in that.You cannot get true honours unless you are prepared to carry them asburdens. And the highest honour that Jesus Christ gives to men whenHe says to them, not only ‘Go work to-day in Myvineyard,’ but ‘Come, work here side by side withMe,’ is a heavy weight which can only be lightened by acheerful heart.

Is it not the right way to look at all the various forms ofChristian activity which are made imperative upon Christian people,by their possession of Christianity as being tokens of Christ's loveto us? Do you remember that this same Apostle said, ‘Unto mewho am less than the least of all saints is this grace given, that Ishould preach the unsearchable riches of Christ?’ He couldspeak about burdens and heavy tasks, and being ‘persecuted butnot forsaken,’ almost crushed down and yet not in despair, andabout the weights that came upon him daily, ‘the care of allthe churches,’ but far beneath all the sense of his heavy loadlay the thrill of thankful wonder that to him, of all men in theworld, knowing as he did better than anybody else could do his ownimperfection and insufficiency, this distinguishing honour had beenbestowed, that he was made the Apostle to the Gentiles. That is theway in which the true man will always look at what the selfish man,and the half-and-half Christian, look at as being a weight and aweariness, or a disagreeable duty, which is to be done asperfunctorily as possible. One question that a great many who callthemselves Christians ask is, ‘With how little service can Ipass muster?’ Ah, it is because we have so little of the Spiritof Christ in us that we feel burdened by His command, ‘Go yeinto all the world,’ as being so heavy; and that so many ofus—I leave you to judge if you are in the class—so manyof us make it criminally light if we do not ignore it altogether. Ibelieve that, if it were possible to conceive of the duty andprivilege of spreading Christ's name in the world being withdrawnfrom the Church, all His real servants would soon be yearning to haveit back again. It is a token of His love; it is a source of infiniteblessings to ourselves; ‘if the house be not worthy, your peaceshall return to you again.’

And now, lastly, we have suggested by this text

III. A strong encouragement.

‘Fellow-labourers with God’—then, God is aFellow-labourer with us. The co-operation works both ways, and no manwho is seeking to spread that great salvation, to distribute thatgreat wealth, to irrigate some little corner of the field by somelittle channel that he has dug, needs to feel that he is labouringalone. If I am working with God, God is working with me. Do youremember that most striking picture which is drawn in the versesappended to Mark's Gospel, which tells how the universe seemed partedinto two halves, and up above in the serene the Lord ‘sat onthe right hand of God,’ while below, in the murky and obscure,‘they went everywhere preaching the Word.’ The separationseems complete, but the two halves are brought together by the nextword—‘The Lord also,’ sitting up yonder,‘working with them’ the wandering preachers down here,‘confirming the words with signs following.’ Ascended onhigh, entered into His rest, having finished His work, He yet isworking with us, if we are labourers together with God. If we turn tothe last book of Scripture, which draws back the curtain from theinvisible world which is all filled with the glorified Christ, andshows its relations to the earthly militant church, we read no longerof a Christ enthroned in apparent ease, but of a Christ walkingamidst the candlesticks, and of a Lamb standing in the midst of theThrone, and opening the seals, launching forth into the world thesequences of the world's history, and of the Word of God charging Hisenemies on His white horse, and behind Him the armies of Godfollowing. The workers who labour with God have the ascended Christlabouring with them.

But if God works with us, success is sure. Then comes the oldquestion that Gideon asked with bitterness of heart, when he wasthreshing out his handful of wheat in a corner to avoid theoppressors, ‘If the Lord be with us, wherefore is all this comeupon us? Will any one say that the progress of the Gospel in theworld has been at the rate which its early believers expected, or atthe rate which its own powers warranted them to expect? Certainlynot. And so it comes to this, that whilst every true labourer has Godworking with him, and therefore success is certain, the planter andthe waterer can delay the growth of the plant by theirunfaithfulness, by not expecting success, by not so working as tomake it likely, or by neutralising their evangelistic efforts bytheir worldly lives. When Jesus Christ was on earth, it is recorded,‘He could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief,save that He laid His hands on a few sick folk and healedthem.’ A faithless Church, a worldly Church, a lazy Church, anunspiritual Church, an un-Christlike Church—which, to a largeextent, is the designation of the so-called Church of today—can clog His chariot-wheels, can thwart the work, canhamper the Divine Worker. If the Christians of Manchester wererevived, they could win Manchester for Jesus. If the Christians ofEngland lived their Christianity, they could make England what itnever has been but in name—a Christian country. If the Churchuniversal were revived, it could win the world. If the singlelabourer, or the community of such, is labouring ‘in theLord,’ their labour will not be in vain; and if they thus plantand water, God will give the increase.

THE TESTING FIRE

‘Now if any man build upon this foundation gold,silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble: 13. Every man's workshall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because itshall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work ofwhat sort it is.’—1 COR. iii. 12, 13.

Before I enter upon the ideas which the words suggest, myexegetical conscience binds me to point out that the originalapplication of the text is not exactly that which I purpose to makeof it now. The context shows that the Apostle is thinking about thespecial subject of Christian teachers and their work, and that thebuilders of whom he speaks are the men in the Corinthian Church, someof them his allies and some of them his rivals, who weresuperimposing upon the foundation of the preaching of Jesus Christother doctrines and principles. The ‘wood, hay, stubble’are the vapid and trivial doctrines which the false teachers wereintroducing into the Church. The ‘gold, silver, and preciousstones’ are the solid and substantial verities which Paul andhis friends were proclaiming. And it is about these, and not aboutthe Christian life in the general, that the tremendous metaphors ofmy text are uttered.

But whilst that is true, the principles involved have a much widerrange than the one case to which the Apostle applies them. And,though I may be slightly deflecting the text from its originaldirection, I am not doing violence to it, if I take it as declaringsome very plain and solemn truths applicable to all Christian people,in their task of building up a life and character on the foundationof Jesus Christ; truths which are a great deal too much forgotten inour modern popular Christianity, and which it concerns us all veryclearly to keep in view. There are three things here that I wish tosay a word about—the patchwork building, the testing fire, thefate of the builders.

I. First, the patchwork structure.

‘If any man build upon this foundation gold, silver,precious stones, wood, hay, stubble.’ In the originalapplication of the metaphor, Paul is thinking of all these teachersin that church at Corinth as being engaged in building the onestructure—I venture to deflect here, and to regard each of usas rearing our own structure of life and character on the foundationof the preached and accepted Christ.

Now, what the Apostle says is that these builders were, some ofthem, laying valuable things like gold and silver and costlystones—by which he does not mean jewels, but marbles,alabasters, polished porphyry or granite, and the like; sumptuousbuilding materials, which were employed in great palaces ortemples—and that some of them were bringing timber, hay,stubble, reeds gathered from the marshes or the like, and filling inwith such trash as that. That is a picture of what a great manyChristian people are doing in their own lives—the same manbuilding one course of squared and solid and precious stones, andtopping them with rubbish. You will see in the walls of Jerusalem, atthe base, five or six courses of those massive blocks which are thewonders of the world yet; well jointed, well laid, well cemented, andthen on the top of them a mass of poor stuff, heaped together anyhow;scamped work—may I use a modernvulgarism?—‘jerry-building.’ You may go to somemodern village, on an ancient historic site, and you will find builtinto the mud walls of the hovels in which the people are living, amarble slab with fair carving on it, or the drum of a great column ofveined marble, and on the top of that, timber and clay mixedtogether.

That is the type of the sort of life that hosts of Christianpeople are living. For, mark, all the builders are on the foundation.Paul is not speaking about mere professed Christians who had no faithat all in them, and no real union with Jesus Christ. These builderswere ‘on the foundation’; they were building on thefoundation, there was a principle deep down in theirlives—which really lay at the bottom of their lives—andyet had not come to such dominating power as to mould and purify andmake harmonious with itself the life that was reared upon it. We allknow that that is the condition of many men, that they have whatreally are the fundamental bases of their lives, in belief and aimand direction; and which yet are not strong enough to master thewhole of the life, and to manifest themselves through it. Especiallyit is the condition of some Christian people. They have a real faith,but it is of the feeblest and most rudimentary kind. They are on thefoundation, but their lives are interlaced with the mostheterogeneous mixty-maxty of good and evil, of lofty, high,self-sacrificing thoughts and heavenward aspirations, of resolutionsnever carried out into practice; and side by side with these thereshall be meannesses, selfishnesses, tempers, dispositions allcontradictory of the former impulses. One moment they are all fireand love, the next moment ice and selfishness. One day they are allfor God, the next day all for the world, the flesh, and the devil.Jacob sees the open heavens and the face of God and vows; to-morrowhe meets Laban and drops to shifty ways. Peter leaves all and followshis Master, and in a little while the fervour has gone, and the firehas died down into grey ashes, and a flippant servant-girl's tongueleads him to say ‘I know not the man.’ ‘Gold,silver, precious stones,’ and topping them, ‘wood, hay,stubble!’

The inconsistencies of the Christian life are what my text, in theapplication that I am venturing to make of it, suggests to us. Ah,dear friends! we do not need to go to Jacob and Peter; let us look atour own hearts, and if we will honestly examine one day of our lives,I think we shall understand how it is possible for a man, on thefoundation, yet to build upon it these worthless and combustiblethings, ‘wood, hay, stubble.’

We are not to suppose that one man builds only ‘gold,silver, precious stones.’ There is none of us that does that.And we are not to suppose that any man who is on thefoundations has so little grasp of it, as that he builds only‘wood, hay, stubble.’

There is none of us who has not intermingled his building, andthere is none of us, if we are Christians at all, who has notsometimes laid a course of ‘precious stones.’ If yourfaith is doing nothing for you except bringing to you a beliefthat you are not going to hell when you die, then it is no faith atall. ‘Faith without works is dead.’ So there is amingling in the best, and—thank God!—there is a minglingof good with evil, in the worst of real Christian people.

II. Note here, the testing fire.

Paul points to two things, the day and the fire.

‘The day shall declare it,’ that is the day on whichJesus Christ comes to be the Judge; and it, that is ‘theday,’ ‘shall be revealed in fire; and the fire shall testevery man's work.’ Now, it is to be noticed that here we aremoving altogether in the region of lofty symbolism, and that themetaphor of the testing fire is suggested by the previous enumerationof building materials, gold and silver being capable of being assayedby flame; and ‘wood, hay, stubble’ being combustible, andsure to be destroyed thereby. The fire here is not an emblem ofpunishment; it is not an emblem of cleansing. There is no referenceto anything in the nature of what Roman Catholics call purgatorialfires. The allusion is simply to some stringent and searching meansof testing the quality of a man's work, and of revealing thatquality.

So then, we come just to this, that for people ‘on thefoundation,’ there is a Day of revelation and testing of theirlife's work. It is a great misfortune that so-called EvangelicalChristianity does not say as much as the New Testament says about thejudgment that is to be passed on ‘the house of God.’People seem to think that the great doctrine of salvation, ‘notby works of righteousness which we have done, but by Hismercy,’ is, somehow or other, interfered with when we proclaim,as Paul proclaims, speaking to Christian people, ‘We must bemanifested before the judgment seat of Christ,’ and declaresthat ‘Every man will receive the things done in his body,according to that he has done, whether it be good or bad.’ Paulsaw no contradiction, and there is no contradiction. But a great manyprofessing Christians seem to think that the great blessing of theirsalvation by faith is, that they are exempt from that futurerevelation and testing and judgment of their acts. That is not theNew Testament teaching. But, on the contrary, ‘Whatsoever a mansoweth that shall he also reap,’ was originally said to achurch of Christian people. And here we come full front against thatsolemn truth, that the Lord will ‘gather together His saints,those that have made a covenant with Him by sacrifice, that He mayjudge His people.’ Never mind about the drapery, the symbolism,the expression in material forms with which that future judgment isarranged, in order that we may the more easily grasp it. Rememberthat these pictures in the New Testament of a future judgment arehighly symbolical, and not to be interpreted as if they were plainprose; but also remember that the heart of them is this, that therecomes for Christian people as for all others, a time when the lightwill shine down upon their past, and will flash its rays into thedark chambers of memory, and when men will—to themselves if notto others—be revealed ‘in the day when the Lord shalljudge the secrets of men according to my Gospel.’

We have all experience enough of how but a few years, a change ofcirc*mstances, or a growth into another stage of development, give usfresh eyes with which to estimate the moral quality of our past. Manya thing, which we thought to be all right at the time when we did it,looks to us now very questionable and a plain mistake. And when weshift our stations to up yonder, and get rid of all this blindingmedium of flesh and sense, and have the issues of our acts in ourpossession, and before our sight—ah! we shall think verydifferently of a great many things from what we think of them now.Judgment will begin at the house of God.

And there is the other thought, that the fire which reveals andtests has also in it a power of destruction. Gold and silver willlose no atom of their weight, and will be brightened into greaterlustre as they flash back the beams. The timber and the stubble willgo up in a flare, and die down into black ashes. That is highlymetaphorical, of course. What does it mean? It means that some men'swork will be crumpled up and perish, and be as of none effect,leaving a great, black sorrowful gap in the continuity of thestructure, and that other men's work will stand. Everything that wedo is, in one sense, immortal, because it is represented in our finalcharacter and condition, just as a thin stratum of rock willrepresent forests of ferns that grew for one summer millenniums ago,or clouds of insects that danced for an hour in the sun. But whilstthat is so, and nothing human ever dies, on the other hand, deedswhich have been in accordance, as it were, with the great stream thatsweeps the universe on its bosom will float on that surface and neversink. Acts which have gone against the rush of God's will throughcreation will be like a child's go-cart that comes against the engineof an express train—be reduced, first, to stillness, all themotion knocked out of them, and then will be crushed to atoms. Deedswhich stand the test will abide in blessed issue for the doer, anddeeds which do not will pass away in smoke, and leave only ashes.Some of us, building on the foundation, have built more rubbish thansolid work, and that will be

'Cast as rubbish to the voidWhen God has made the pile complete.'

III. So, lastly, we have here the fate of the two builders.

The one man gets wages. That is not the bare notion of salvation,for both builders are conceived of as on the foundation, and both aresaved. He gets wages. Yes, of course! The architect has to give hiscertificate before the builder gets his cheque. The weaver, who hasbeen working his hand-loom at his own house, has to take his web tothe counting-house and have it overlooked before he gets his pay. Andthe man who has built ‘gold, silver, precious stones,’will have—over and above the initial salvation—in himselfthe blessed consequences, and unfold the large results, of hisfaithful service; while the other man, inasmuch as he has not suchwork, cannot have the consequences of it, and gets no wages; or atleast his pay is subject to heavy deductions for the spoiled bits inthe cloth, and for the gaps in the wall.

The Apostle employs a tremendous metaphor here, which is masked inour Authorised Version, but is restored in the Revised. ‘Heshall be saved, yet so as’ (not ‘by’ but)‘through fire’; the picture being that of a mansurrounded by a conflagration, and making a rush through the flamesto get to a place of safety. Paul says that he will get through,because down below all inconsistency and worldliness, therewas a little of that which ought to have been above all theinconsistency and the worldliness—a true faith in Jesus Christ.But because it was so imperfect, so feeble, so little operative inhis life as that it could not keep him from piling up inconsistenciesinto his wall, therefore his salvation is so as through the fire.

Brethren, I dare not enlarge upon that great metaphor. It is meantfor us professing Christians, real and imperfect Christians—itis meant for us; and it just tells us that there are degrees in thatfuture blessedness proportioned to present faithfulness. We beginthere where we left off here. That future is not a dead level; andthey who have earnestly striven to work out their faith into theirlives shall ‘summer high upon the hills of God.’ One man,like Paul in his shipwreck, shall lose ship and lading, though‘on broken pieces of the ship’ he may ‘escape safeto land’; and another shall make the harbour with full cargo ofworks of faith, to be turned into gold when he lands. If we build, aswe all may, ‘on that foundation, gold and silver and preciousstones,’ an entrance ‘shall be ministered unto usabundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour JesusChrist’; whilst if we bring a preponderance of ‘wood,hay, stubble,’ we shall be ‘saved, yet so as through thefire.’

TEMPLES OF GOD

‘Know ye not that ye are the temple ofGod?’—1 COR. iii. 16

The great purpose of Christianity is to make men like JesusChrist. As He is the image of the invisible God we are to be theimages of the unseen Christ. The Scripture is very bold and emphaticin attributing to Christ's followers likeness to Him, in nature, incharacter, in relation to the world, in office, and in ultimatedestiny. Is He the anointed of God? We are anointed—Christs inHim. Is He the Son of God? We in Him receive the adoption of sons. IsHe the Light of the world? We in Him are lights of the world too. IsHe a King? A Priest? He hath made us to be kings and priests.

Here we have the Apostle making the same solemn assertion inregard to Christian men, ‘Know ye not that yeare’—as your Master, and because your Masteris—‘that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit ofGod dwelleth in you?’

Of course the allusion in my text is to the whole aggregate ofbelievers—what we call the Catholic Church, as being collectivelythe habitation of God. But God cannot dwell in an aggregate of men,unless He dwells in the individuals that compose the aggregate. AndGod has nothing to do with institutions except through the people whomake the institutions. And so, if the Church as a whole is a Temple,it is only because all its members are temples of God.

Therefore, without forgetting the great blessed lesson of theunity of the Church which is taught in these words, I want rather todeal with them in their individual application now; and to try andlay upon your consciences, dear brethren, the solemn obligations andthe intense practical power which this Apostle associated with thethought that each Christian man was, in very deed, a temple ofGod.

It would be very easy to say eloquent things about this text, butthat is no part of my purpose.

I. Let me deal, first of all, and only for a moment or two, withthe underlying thought that is here—that every Christian is adwelling-place of God.

Now, do not run away with the idea that that is a metaphor. It wasthe outward temple that was the metaphor. The reality is that whichyou and I, if we are God's children in Jesus Christ, experience.There was no real sense in which that Mighty One whom the Heaven ofHeavens cannot contain, dwelt in any house made with hands. But theTemple, and all the outward worship, were but symbolical of the factsof the Christian life, and the realities of our inward experience.These are the truths whereof the other is the shadow. We use words towhich it is difficult for us to attach any meaning, when we talkabout God as being locally present in any material building; but wedo not use words to which it is so difficult to attach a meaning,when we talk about the Infinite Spirit as being present and abidingin a spirit shaped to hold Him, and made on purpose to touch Him andbe filled by Him.

All creatures have God dwelling in them in the measure of theircapacity. The stone that you kick on the road would not be there ifthere were not a present God. Nothing would happen if there were notabiding in creatures the force, at any rate, which is God. But justas in this great atmosphere in which we all live and move and haveour being, the eye discerns undulations which make light, and the earcatches vibrations which make sound, and the nostrils are recipientof motions which bring fragrance, and all these are in the oneatmosphere, and the sense that apprehends one is utterly unconsciousof the other, so God's creatures, each through some little narrowslit, and in the measure of their capacity, get a straggling beamfrom Him into their being, and therefore they are.

But high above all other ways in which creatures can lie patent toGod, and open for the influx of a Divine Indweller, lies the way offaith and love. Whosoever opens his heart in these divinely-taughtemotions, and fixes them upon the Christ in whom God dwells, receivesinto the very roots of his being—as the water that tricklesthrough the soil to the rootlets of the tree—the very GodheadHimself. ‘He that is joined to the Lord is onespirit.’

That God shall dwell in my heart is possible only from the factthat He dwelt in all His fulness in Christ, through whom I touch Him.That Temple consecrates all heart-shrines; and all worshippers thatkeep near to Him, partake with Him of the Father that dwelt inHim.

Only remember that in Christ God dwelt completely, all ‘thefulness of the Godhead bodily’ was there, but in us it is butpartially; that in Christ, therefore, the divine indwelling wasuniform and invariable, but in us it fluctuates, and sometimes ismore intimate and blessed, and sometimes He leaves the habitationwhen we leave Him; that in Christ, therefore, there was no progressin the divine indwelling, but that in us, if there be any trueinhabitation of our souls by God, that abiding will become more andmore, until every corner of our being is hallowed and filled with thesearching effulgence of the all-pervasive Light. And let us rememberthat God dwelt in Christ, but that in us it is God in Christ whodwells. So to Him we owe it all, that our poor hearts are made thedwelling-place of God; or, as this Apostle puts it, in other wordsconveying the same idea, ‘Ye are built upon the foundation ofthe Apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chiefCorner-stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth... for a habitation of God through the Spirit.’

II. Now then, turning from this underlying idea of the passage,let us look, for a moment, at some of the many applications of whichthe great thought is susceptible. I remark, then, in the secondplace, that as temples all Christians are to be manifesters ofGod.

The meaning of the Temple as of all temples was, that there theindwelling Deity should reveal Himself; and if it be true that weChristian men and women are, in this deep and blessed reality ofwhich I have been speaking, the abiding places and habitations ofGod, then it follows that we shall stand in the world as the greatmeans by which God is manifested and made known, and that in atwo-fold way; to ourselves and to other people.

The real revelation of God to our hearts must be His abiding inour hearts. We do not learn God until we possess God. He must fillour souls before we know His sweetness. The answer that our Lord madeto one of His disciples is full of the deepest truth. ‘How isit,’ said one of them in his blundering way, ‘how is itthat Thou wilt manifest Thyself to us?’ And the answer was,‘We will come and make Our abode with him.’ You do notknow God until, if I might so say, He sits at your fireside and talkswith you in your hearts. Just as some wife may have a husband whomthe world knows as hero, or sage, or orator, but she knows him asnobody else can; so the outside, and if I may so say, the publiccharacter of God is but the surface of the revelation that He makesto us, when in the deepest secrecy of our own hearts He pours Himselfinto our waiting spirits. O brethren! it is within the curtains ofthe Holiest of all that the Shekinah flashes; it is within our ownhearts, shrined and templed there, that God reveals Himself to us, asHe does not unto the world.

And then, further, Christian men, as the temples and habitationsof God, are appointed to be the great means of making Him known tothe world around. The eye that cannot look at the sun can look at therosy clouds that lie on either side of it, and herald its rising;their opalescent tints and pearly lights are beautiful to dim vision,to which the sun itself is too bright to be looked upon. Men willbelieve in a gentle Christ when they see you gentle. They willbelieve in a righteous love when they see it manifesting itself inyou. You are ‘the secretaries of God's praise,’ as GeorgeHerbert has it. He dwells in your hearts that out of your lives Hemay be revealed. The pictures in a book of travels, or the diagramsin a mathematical work, tell a great deal more in half a dozen linesthan can be put into as many pages of dry words. And it is not booksof theology nor eloquent sermons, but it is a Church glowing with theglory of God, and manifestly all flushed with His light and majesty,that will have power to draw men to believe in the God whom itreveals. When explorers land upon some untravelled island and meetthe gentle inhabitants with armlets of rough gold upon their wrists,they say there must be many a gold-bearing rock of quartz crystal inthe interior of the land. And if you present yourselves, Christianmen and women, to the world with the likeness of your Master plainupon you, then people will believe in the Christianity that youprofess. You have to popularise the Gospel in the fashion in whichgo-betweens and middlemen between students and the populacepopularise science. You have to make it possible for men to believein the Christ because they see Christ in you. ‘Know ye not thatye are the temples of the living God?’ Let His light shine fromyou.

III. I remark again that as temples all Christian lives should beplaces of sacrifice.

What is the use of a temple without worship? And what kind ofworship is that in which the centre point is not an altar? That isthe sort of temple that a great many professing Christians are. Theyhave forgotten the altar in their spiritual architecture. Have yougot one in your heart? It is but a poor, half-furnished sanctuarythat has not. Where is yours? The key and the secret of all noblelife is to yield up one's own will, to sacrifice oneself. There neverwas anything done in this world worth doing, and there never will betill the end of time, of which sacrifice is not the centre andinspiration. And the difference between all other and lessernobilities of life, and the supreme beauty of a true Christian lifeis that the sacrifice of the Christian is properly asacrifice—that is, an offering to God, done forthe sake of the great love wherewith He has loved us. As Christ isthe one true Temple, and we become so by partaking of Him, so He isthe one Sacrifice for sins for ever, and we become sacrifices onlythrough Him. If there be any lesson which comes out of this greattruth of Christians as temples, it is not a lesson of plumingourselves on our dignity, or losing ourselves in the mysticisms whichlie near this truth, but it is the hard lesson—If a temple,then an altar; if an altar, then a sacrifice. ‘Ye are built upa spiritual house, a holy priesthood, that ye may offer spiritualsacrifices, acceptable to God’—sacrifice, priest,temple, all in one; and all for the sake and by the might of thatdear Lord who has given Himself a bleeding Sacrifice for the sinsof the whole world, that we might offer a Eucharistic sacrifice ofthanks and praise and self-surrender unto Him, and to His FatherGod.

IV. And, lastly, this great truth of my text enforces the solemnlesson of the necessary sanctity of the Christian life.

‘The temple of God,’ says the context, ‘thetemple of God is holy, which (holy persons) ye are.’ The plainfirst idea of the temple is a place set apart and consecrated toGod.

Hence, of course, follows the idea of purity, but the parent ideaof ‘holiness’ is not purity, which is the consequence,but consecration or separation to God, which is the root.

And so in very various applications, on which I have not time todwell now, this idea of the necessary sanctity of the Temple is putforth in these two letters to the Corinthian Church. Corinth was acity honeycombed with the grossest immoralities; and hence, perhaps,to some extent the great emphasis and earnestness and even severityof the Apostle in dealing with some forms of evil.

But without dwelling on the details, let me just point you tothree directions in which this general notion of sanctity is applied.There is that of our context here ‘Know ye not that ye are thetemple of God? If any man destroy the temple of God, him shallGod destroy, for the temple of God is holy, and such yeare.’

He is thinking here mainly, I suppose, about the devastation anddestruction of this temple of God, which was caused by schismaticaland heretical teaching, and by the habit of forming parties,‘one of Paul, one of Apollos, one of Cephas, one ofChrist,’ which was rending that Corinthian Church into pieces.But we may apply it more widely than that, and say that anythingwhich corrupts and defiles the Christian life and the Christiancharacter assumes a darker tint of evil when we think that it issacrilege—the profanation of the temple, the pollution of thatwhich ought to be pure as He who dwells in it.

Christian men and women, how that thought darkens the blackness ofall sin! How solemnly there peals out the warning, ‘If any mandestroy or impair the temple,’ by any form of pollution,‘him’ with retribution in kind, ‘him shall Goddestroy.’ Keep the temple clear; keep it clean. Let Him comewith His scourge of small cords and His merciful rebuke. YouManchester men know what it is to let the money-changers into thesanctuary. Beware lest, beginning with making your hearts‘houses of merchandise,’ you should end by making them‘dens of thieves.’

And then, still further, there is another application of this sameprinciple, in the second of these Epistles. ‘What agreementhath the temple of God with idols?’ ‘Ye are the temple ofthe living God.’

Christianity is intolerant. There is to be one image in theshrine. One of the old Roman Stoic Emperors had a pantheon in hispalace with Jesus Christ upon one pedestal and Plato on the onebeside Him. And some of us are trying the same kind of thing. Christthere, and somebody else here. Remember, Christ must be everything ornothing! Stars may be sown by millions, but for the earth there isone sun. And you and I are to shrine one dear Guest, and one only, inthe inmost recesses of our hearts.

And there is another application of this metaphor also in ourletter. ‘Know ye not that your body is the temple of the HolyGhost which is in you?’ Christianity despises ‘theflesh’; Christianity reverences the body; and would teach usall that, being robed in that most wonderful work of God's hands,which becomes a shrine for God Himself if He dwell in our hearts, allpurity, all chastisem*nt and subjugation of animal passion is ourduty. Drunkenness, and gluttony, lusts of every kind, impurity ofconduct, and impurity of word and look and thought, all these assumea still darker tint when they are thought of as not only crimesagainst the physical constitution and the moral law of humanity, butinsults flung in the face of the God that would inhabit theshrine.

And in regard to sins of this kind, which it is so difficult tospeak of in public, and which grow unchecked in secrecy, and areruining hundreds of young lives, the words of this context are grimlytrue, ‘If any man defile the temple of God, him shall Goddestroy.’ I speak now mainly in brotherly or fatherly warningto young men—did you ever read this, ‘His bones are fullof the iniquities of his youth, which shall lie down with him in thedust’? ‘Know ye not that ye are the temple ofGod?’

And so, brethren, our text tells us what we may all be. There isno heart without its deity. Alas! alas! for the many listening to menow whose spirits are like some of those Egyptian temples, which hadin the inmost shrine a coiled-up serpent, the mummy of a monkey, orsome other form as animal and obscene.

Oh! turn to Christ and cry, ‘Arise, O Lord, into Thy rest,Thou and the ark of Thy strength.’ Open your hearts and letChrist come in. And before Him, as of old, the bestial Dagon will befound, dejected and truncated, lying on the sill there; and all thevain, cruel, lustful gods that have held riot and carnival in yourhearts will flee away into the darkness, like some foul ghosts atco*ck-crow. ‘If any man hear My voice and open the door I willcome in.’ And the glory of the Lord shall fill the house.

DEATH, THE FRIEND

‘... All things are yours ... death.’—1COR. iii. 21, 22.

What Jesus Christ is to a man settles what everything else is toHim. Our relation to Jesus determines our relation to the universe.If we belong to Him, everything belongs to us. If we are Hisservants, all things are our servants. The household of Jesus, whichis the whole Creation, is not divided against itself, and thefellow-servants do not beat one another. Two bodies moving in thesame direction, and under the impulse of the same force, cannot comeinto collision, and since ‘all things work together,’according to the counsel of His will, ‘all things work togetherfor good’ to His lovers. The triumphant words of my text are nopiece of empty rhetoric, but the plain result of twofacts—Christ's rule and the Christian's submission. ‘Allthings are yours, and ye are Christ's,’ so the stars in theircourses fight against those who fight against Him, and if we are atpeace with Him we shall ‘make a league with the beasts of thefield, and the stones of the field,’ which otherwise would behindrances and stumbling-blocks, ‘shall be at peace with’us.

The Apostle carries his confidence in the subservience of allthings to Christ's servants very far, and the words of my text, inwhich he dares to suggest that ‘the Shadow feared of man’is, after all, a veiled friend, are hard to believe, when we arebrought face to face with death, either when we meditate on our ownend, or when our hearts are sore and our hands are empty. Then thequestion comes, and often is asked with tears of blood, Is it truethat this awful force, which we cannot command, does indeed serve us?Did it serve those whom it dragged from our sides; and in servingthem, did it serve us? Paul rings out his ‘Yes’; and ifwe have as firm a hold of Paul's Lord as Paul had, our answer will bethe same. Let me, then, deal with this great thought that lies here,of the conversion of the last enemy into a friend, the assurance thatwe may all have that death is ours, though not in the sense that wecan command it, yet in the sense that it ministers to our highestgood.

That thought may be true about ourselves when it comes to our turnto die, and, thank God, has been true about all those who havedeparted in His faith and fear. Some of you may have seen two verystriking engravings by a great, though somewhat unknown artist,representing Death as the Destroyer, and Death as the Friend. In theone case he comes into a scene of wild revelry, and there at his feetlie, stark and stiff, corpses in their gay clothing and with garlandson their brows, and feasters and musicians are flying in terror fromthe cowled Skeleton. In the other he comes into a quiet churchbelfry, where an aged saint sits with folded arms and closed eyes,and an open Bible by his side, and endless peace upon the weariedface. The window is flung wide to the sunrise, and on its sillperches a bird that gives forth its morning song. The cowled figurehas brought rest to the weary, and the glad dawning of a new life tothe aged, and is a friend. The two pictures are better than all thepoor words that I can say. It depends on the people to whom he comes,whether he comes as a destroyer or as a helper. Of course, for all ofus the mere physical facts remain the same, the pangs and the pain,the slow torture of the loosing of the bond, or the sharp agony ofits instantaneous rending apart. But we have gone but a very littleway into life and its experiences, if we have not learnt thatidentity of circ*mstances may cover profound difference ofessentials, and that the same experiences may have wholly differentmessages and meanings to two people who are equally implicated inthem. Thus, while the physical fact remains the same for all, thewhole bearing of it may so differ that Death to one man will be aDestroyer, while to another it is a Friend.

For, if we come to analyse the thoughts of humanity about the lastact in human life on earth, what is it that makes the dread darknessof death, which all men know, though they so seldom think of it? Isuppose, first of all, if we seek to question our feelings, thatwhich makes Death a foe to the ordinary experience is, that it islike a step off the edge of a precipice in a fog; a step into a dimcondition of which the imagination can form no conception, because ithas no experience, and all imagination's pictures are painted withpigments drawn from our past. Because it is impossible for a man tohave any clear vision of what it is that is coming to meet him, andhe cannot tell ‘in that sleep what dreams may come,’ heshrinks, as we all shrink, from a step into the vast Inane, the dimUnknown. But the Gospel comes and says, ‘It is a land ofgreat darkness,’ but ‘To the people that sit in darknessa great light hath shined.’

'Our knowledge of that life is small,The eye of faith is dim.'

But faith has an eye, and there is light, andthis we can see—One face whose brightness scatters all thegloom, One Person who has not ceased to be the Sun of Righteousnesswith healing in His beams, even in the darkness of the grave.Therefore, one at least of the repellent features which, to thetimorous heart, makes Death a foe, is gone, when we know that theknown Christ fills the Unknown.

Then, again, another of the elements, as I suppose, whichconstitute the hostile aspect that Death assumes to most of us, isthat it apparently hales us away from all the wholesome activitiesand occupations of life, and bans us into a state of apparentinaction. The thought that death is rest does sometimes attract theweary or harassed, or they fancy it does, but that is a morbidfeeling, and much more common in sentimental epitaphs than among theusual thoughts of men. To most of us there is no joy, but a chill, inthe anticipation that all the forms of activity which have sooccupied, and often enriched, our lives here, are to be cut off atonce. ‘What am I to do if I have no books?’ says thestudent. ‘What am I to do if I have no mill?’ says thespinner. ‘What am I to do if I have no nursery orkitchen?’ say the women. What are you to do? There is only onequieting answer to such questions. It tells us that what we are doinghere is learning our trade, and that we are to be moved into anotherworkshop there, to practise it. Nothing can bereave us of the forcewe made our own, being here; and ‘there is nobler work for usto do’ when the Master of all the servants stoops from HisThrone and says: ‘Thou hast been faithful over a few things, Iwill make thee ruler over many things; have thou authority over tencities.’ Then the faithfulness of the steward will be exchangedfor the authority of the ruler, and the toil of the servant for ashare in the joy of the Lord.

So another of the elements which make Death an enemy is turnedinto an element which makes it a friend, and instead of theseparation from this earthly body, the organ of our activity and themedium of our connection with the external universe being thecondemnation of the naked spirit to inaction, it is the emancipationof the spirit into greater activity. For nothing drops away at deaththat does not make a man the richer for its loss, and when the drossis purged from the silver, there remains ‘a vessel unto honour,fit for the Master's use.’ This mightier activity is thecontribution to our blessedness, which Death makes to them who usetheir activities here in Christ's service.

Then, still further, another of the elements which is convertedfrom being a terror into a joy is that Death, the separator, becomesto Christ's servants Death, the uniter. We all know how that functionof death is perhaps the one that makes us shrink from it the most,dread it the most, and sometimes hate it the most. But it will bewith us as it was with those who were to be initiated into ancientreligious rites. Blindfolded, they were led by a hand that graspedtheirs but was not seen, through dark, narrow, devious passages, butthey were led into a great company in a mighty hall. Seen from thisside, the ministry of Death parts a man from dear ones, but, oh! ifwe could see round the turn in the corridor, we should see that thesolitude is but for a moment, and that the true office of Death isnot so much to part from those beloved on earth as to carry to, andunite with, Him that is best Beloved in the heavens, and in Him withall His saints. They that are joined to Christ, as they who pass fromearth are joined, are thereby joined to all who, in like manner, areknit to Him. Although other dear bonds are loosed by the bony fingersof the Skeleton, his very loosing of them ties more closely the bondthat unites us to Jesus, and when the dull ear of the dying hasceased to hear the voices of earth that used to thrill it in theirlowest whisper, I suppose it hears another Voice that says:‘When thou passest through the fire I will be with thee, andthrough the waters they shall not overflow thee.’ Thus theSeparator unites, first to Jesus, and then to ‘the generalassembly and Church of the first-born,’ and leads into the cityof the living God, the pilgrims who long have lived, often isolated,in the desert.

There is a last element in Death which is changed for theChristian, and that is that to men generally, when they think aboutit, there is an instinctive recoil from Death, because there is aninstinctive suspicion that after Death is the Judgment, and that,somehow or other—never mind about the drapery in which the ideamay be embodied for our weakness—when a man dies he passes to astate where he will reap the consequences of what he has sown here.But to Christ's servant that last thought is robbed of its sting, andall the poison sucked out of it, for he can say: ‘He that diedfor me makes it possible for me to die undreading, and to passthither, knowing that I shall meet as my Judge Him whom I havetrusted as my Saviour, and so may have boldness before Him in the Dayof Judgment.’

Knit these four contrasts together. Death as a step into a dimunknown versus Death as a step into a region lighted by Jesus;Death as the cessation of activity versus Death as theintroduction to nobler opportunities, and the endowment with noblercapacities of service; Death as the separator and isolatorversus Death as uniting to Jesus and all His lovers; Death ashaling us to the judgment-seat of the adversary versus Deathas bringing us to the tribunal of the Christ; and I think we canunderstand how Christians can venture to say, ‘All things areours, whether life or death’ which leads to a better life.

And now let me add one word more. All this that I have beensaying, and all the blessed strength for ourselves and calming in oursorrows which result therefrom, stand or fall with the Resurrectionof Jesus Christ. There is nothing else that makes these thingscertain. There are, of course, instincts, peradventures, hopes,fears, doubts. But in this region, and in regard to all this cycle oftruths, the same thing applies which applies round the whole horizonof Christian Revelation—if you want not speculations butcertainties, you have to go to Jesus Christ for them. There were manymen who thought that there were islands of the sea beyond the settingsun that dyed the western waves, but Columbus went and came backagain, and brought their products—and then the thought became afact. Unless you believe that Jesus Christ has come back from‘the bourne from which no traveller returns,’ and hascome laden with the gifts of ‘happy isles of Eden’ farbeyond the sea, there is no certitude upon which a dying man can layhis head, or by which a bleeding heart can be staunched. But when Hedraws near, alive from the dead, and says to us, as He did to thedisciples on the evening of the day of Resurrection, ‘Peace beunto you,’ and shows us His hands and His side, then we do notonly speculate or think a future life possible or probable, orhesitate to deny it, or hope or fear, as the case may be, but weknow, and we can say: ‘All things are ours ...death’ amongst others. The fact that Jesus Christ has diedchanges the whole aspect of death to His servant, inasmuch as in thatgreat solitude he has a companion, and in the valley of the shadow ofdeath sees footsteps that tell him of One that went before.

Nor need I do more than remind you how the manner of our Lord'sdeath shows that He is Lord not only of the dead but of the Deaththat makes them dead. For His own tremendous assertion, ‘I havepower to lay down My life, and I have power to take it again,’was confirmed by His attitude and His words at the last, as is hintedat by the very expressions with which the Evangelists record the factof His death: ‘He yielded up His spirit,’ ‘He gaveup the ghost,’ ‘He breathed out His life.’ It isconfirmed to us by such words as those remarkable ones of theApocalypse, which speak of Him as ‘the Living One,’ who,by His own will, ‘became dead.’ He died because He would,and He would die because He loved you and me. And in dying, He showedHimself to be, not the Victim, but the Conqueror, of the Death towhich He submitted. The Jewish king on the fatal field of Gilboacalled his sword-bearer, and the servant came, and Saul bade himsmite, and when his trembling hand shrank from such an act, the kingfell on his own sword. The Lord of life and death summoned Hisservant Death, and He came obedient, but Jesus died not by Death'sstroke, but by His own act. So that Lord of Death, who died becauseHe would, is the Lord who has the keys of death and the grave. Inregard to one servant He says, ‘I will that he tarry till Icome,’ and that man lives through a century, and in regard toanother He says, ‘Follow thou Me,’ and that man dies on across. The dying Lord is Lord of Death, and the living Lord is for usall the Prince of Life.

Brethren, we have to take His yoke upon us by the act of faithwhich leads to a love that issues in an obedience which will becomemore and more complete, as we become more fully Christ's. Then deathwill be ours, for then we shall count that the highest good for uswill be fuller union with, a fuller possession of, and a completerconformity to, Jesus Christ our King, and that whatever brings usthese, even though it brings also pain and sorrow and much from whichwe shrink, is all on our side. It is possible—may it be so witheach of us!—that for us Death may be, not an enemy that bans usinto darkness and inactivity, or hales us to a judgment-seat, but theAngel who wakes us, at whose touch the chains fall off, and who leadsus through ‘the iron gate that opens of its own accord,’and brings us into the City.

SERVANTS AND LORDS

‘All things are yours; 22. Whether Paul, orApollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or thingspresent, or things to come; all are yours; 23. And ye areChrist's.’—1 COR. iii. 21-23.

The Corinthian Christians seem to have carried into the Churchsome of the worst vices of Greek—and English—politicallife. They were split up into wrangling factions, each swearing bythe name of some person. Paul was the battle-cry of one set; Apollosof another. Paul and Apollos were very good friends, their admirersbitter foes—according to a very common experience. The springslie close together up in the hills, the rivers may be parted by halfa continent.

These feuds were all the more detestable to the Apostle becausehis name was dragged into them; and so he sets himself, in the firstpart of this letter, with all his might, to shame and to argue theCorinthian Christians out of their wrangling. This great text is oneof the considerations which he adduces with that purpose. In effecthe says, ‘To pin your faith to any one teacher is a wilfulnarrowing of the sources of your blessing and your wisdom. You sayyou are Paul's men. Has Apollos got nothing that he could teach you?and may you not get any good out of brave brother Cephas? Take themall; they were all meant for your good. Let no man glory inindividuals.’

That is all that his argument required him to say. But in hisimpetuous way he goes on into regions far beyond. His thought, likesome swiftly revolving wheel, catches fire of its own rapid motion;and he blazes up into this triumphant enumeration of all the thingsthat serve the soul which serves Jesus Christ. ‘You are lordsof men, of the world of time, of death, of eternity; but you are notlords of yourselves. You belong to Jesus, and in the measure in whichyou belong to Him do all things belong to you.’

I. I think, then, that I shall best bring out the fulness of thesewords by simply following them as they lie before us, and asking youto consider, first, how Christ's servants are men's lords.

‘All things are yours, Paul, Apollos, Cephas.’ Thesethree teachers were all lights kindled at the central Light, andtherefore shining. They were fragments of His wisdom, of Him thatspoke; varying, but yet harmonious, and mutually complementaryaspects of the one infinite Truth had been committed to them. Eachwas but a part of the mighty whole, a little segment of thecircle

'They are but broken lights of Thee,And Thou, O Lord! art more than they.'

And in the measure, therefore, in which menadhere to Christ, and have taken Him for theirs; in that measure arethey delivered from all undue dependence on, still more from allslavish submission to, any single individual teacher or aspect oftruth. To have Christ for ours, and to be His, which are only theopposite sides of the same thing, mean, in brief, to take JesusChrist for the source of all knowledge of moral and religious truth.His Word is the Christian's creed, His Person and the truths that liein Him, are the fountains of all our knowledge of God and man. To beChrist's is to take Him as the master who has absolute authority overconduct and practice. His commandment is the Christian's duty; Hispattern the Christian's all-sufficient example; His smile theChristian's reward. To be Christ's is to take Him for the home of ourhearts, in whose gracious and sweet love we find all sufficiency anda rest for our seeking affections. And so, if ye are His, Paul,Apollos, Cephas, all men are yours; in the sense that you aredelivered from all undue dependence upon them; and in the sense thatthey subserve your highest good.

So the true democracy of Christianity, which abjures swearing bythe words of any teacher, is simply the result of loyal adherence tothe teaching of Jesus Christ. And that proud independence which someof you seek to cultivate, and on the strength of which you declarethat no man is your master upon earth, is an unwholesome anddangerous independence, unless it be conjoined with the bowing downof the whole nature, in loyal submission, to the absolute authorityof the only lips that ever spoke truth, truth only, and truth always.If Christ be our Master, if we take our creed from Him, if we acceptHis words and His revelation of the Father as our faith and ourobjective religion, then all the slavery to favourite names, all thetaking of truth second-hand from the lips that we honour, all thepartisanship for one against another which has been the shame and theruin of the Christian Church, and is working untold mischiefs in itto-day, are ended at once. ‘One is your Master, evenChrist.’ ‘Call no man Rabbi! upon earth; but bow beforeHim, the Incarnate and the Personal Truth.’

And in like manner they who are Christ's are delivered from alltemptations to make men's maxims and practices and approbation thelaw of their conduct. Society presses upon each of us; what we callpublic opinion, which is generally the clatter of the half-dozenpeople that happen to stand nearest us, rules us; and it needs to besaid very emphatically to all Christian men and women—Take yourlaw of conduct from His lips, and from nobody else's.

‘They say. What say they? Let them say.’ If we takeChrist's commandment for our absolute law, and Christ's approbationfor our highest aim and all-sufficient reward, we shall then be ableto brush aside other maxims and other people's opinions of us, safelyand humbly, and to say, ‘With me it is a very small matter tobe judged of you, or of man's judgment. He that judgeth me is theLord.’

The envoy of some foreign power cares very little what theinhabitants of the land to which he is ambassador may think of himand his doings; it is his sovereign's good opinion that he seeks tosecure. The soldier's reward is his commander's praise, the slave'sjoy is the master's smile, and for us it ought to be the law of ourlives, and in the measure in which we really belong to Christ it willbe the law of our lives, that ‘we labour that, whether presentor absent, we may be pleasing to Him.’

So, brethren, as teachers, as patterns, as objects of love whichis only too apt to be exclusive and to master us, we can only takeone another in subordination to our supreme submission to Christ, andif we are His, our duty, as our joy, is to count no man necessary toour wellbeing, but to hang only on the one Man, whom it is safe andblessed to believe utterly, to obey abjectly, and to love with allour strength, because He is more than man, even God manifest in theflesh.

II. And now let us pass to the next idea here, secondly, Christ'sservants are the lords of ‘the world.’

That phrase is used here, no doubt, as meaning the externalmaterial universe. These creatures around us, they belong to us, ifwe belong to Jesus Christ. That man owns the world who despises it.There are plenty of rich men in Manchester who say they possess somany thousand pounds. Turn the sentence about and it would be a greatdeal truer—the thousands of pounds possess them. They are theslaves of their own possessions, and every man who counts anymaterial thing as indispensable to his wellbeing, and regards it asthe chiefest good, is the slave-servant of that thing. He owns theworld who turns it to the highest use of growing his soul by it. Allmaterial things are given, and, I was going to say, were created, forthe growth of men, or at all events their highest purpose is that menshould, by them, grow. And therefore, as the scaffolding is sweptaway when the building is finished, so God will sweep away thismaterial universe with all its wonders of beauty and of contrivance,when men have been grown by means of it. The material is less thanthe soul, and he is master of the world, and owns it, who has gotthoughts out of it, truth out of it, impulses out of it, visions ofGod out of it, who has by it been led nearer to his divine Master. IfI look out upon a fair landscape, and the man who draws the rents ofit is standing by my side, and I suck more sweetness, and deeperimpulses, and larger and loftier thoughts out of it than he does, itbelongs to me far more than it does to him. The world is his who fromit has learned to despise it, to know himself and to know God. Heowns the world who uses it as the arena, or wrestling ground, onwhich, by labour, he may gain strength, and in which he may doservice. Antagonism helps to develop muscle, and the best use of theoutward frame of things is that we shall take it as the field uponwhich we can serve God.

And now all these three things—the contempt of earth, theuse of earth for growing souls, and the use of earth as the field ofservice—all these things belong most truly to the man whobelongs to Christ. The world is His, and if we live near Him andcultivate fellowship with Him, and see His face gleaming through allthe Material, and are led up nearer to Him by everything around us,then we own the world and wring the sweetness to the last drop out ofit, though we may have but little of that outward relation to itsgoods which short-sighted men call possessing them. We may solve theparadox of those who, ‘having nothing, yet have all,’ ifwe belong to Christ the Lord of all things, and so have co-possessionwith Him of all His riches.

III. Further, my text tells us, in the third place, that Christianmen, who belong to Jesus Christ, are the lords and masters of‘life and death.’

Both of these words are here used, as it seems to me, in theirsimple, physical sense, natural life and natural death. You may say,‘Well, everybody is lord of life in that sense.’ Yes, ofcourse, in a fashion we all possess it, seeing that we are all alive.But that mysterious gift of personality, that awful gift of consciousexistence, only belongs, in the deepest sense, to the men who belongto Jesus Christ. I do not call that man the owner of his own life whois not the lord of his own spirit. I do not see in what, except inthe mere animal sense in which a fly, or a spider, or a toad may becalled the master of its life, that man owns himself who has notgiven up himself to Jesus Christ. The only way to get a real hold ofyourselves is to yield yourselves to Him who gives you back Himself,and yourself along with Him. The true ownership of life depends uponself-control, and self-control depends upon letting Jesus Christgovern us wholly. So the measure in which it is true of me that‘I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,’ is themeasure in which the lower life of sense really belongs to us, andministers to our highest good.

And then turn to the other member of this wonderful antithesis,‘whether life or death.’ Surely if there isanything over which no man can become lord, except by sinfully takinghis fate into his own hands, it is death. And yet even death, inwhich we seem to be abjectly passive, and by which so many of us aredragged away reluctantly from everything that we care to possess, maybecome a matter of consent and therefore a moral act. Animals expire;a Christian man may yield his soul to his Saviour, who is the Lordboth of the dead and of the living. If thus we feel our dependenceupon Him, and yield up our lives to Him, and can say, ‘Livingor dying we are the Lord's,’ then we may be quite sure thatdeath, too, will be our servant, and that our wills will be concernedeven in passing out of life.

Still more, if you and I, dear brethren, belong to Jesus Christ,then death is our fellow-servant who comes to call us out of thisill-lighted workshop into the presence of the King. And at His magiccold touch, cares and toils and sorrows are stiffened into silence,like noisy streams bound in white frost; and we are lifted clean upout of all the hubbub and the toil into eternal calm. Death is oursbecause it fulfils our deepest desires, and comes as a messenger topaupers to tell them they have a great estate. Death is ours if we beChrist's.

IV. And lastly, Christ's servants are the lords of time andeternity, ‘things present or things to come.’

Our Apostle's division, in this catalogue of his, is rhetoricalrather than logical; and we need not seek to separate the first ofthis final pair from others which we have already encountered in ourstudy of the words, but still we may draw a distinction. The wholemass of ‘things present,’ including not only thatmaterial universe which we call the world, but all the events andcirc*mstances of our lives, over these we may exercise supremecontrol. If we are bowing in humble submission to Jesus Christ, theywill all subserve our highest good. Every weather will be right;night and day equally desirable; the darkness will be good for eyesthat have been tired of brightness and that need repose, the lightwill be good. The howling tempests of winter and its white snows, thesharp winds of spring and its bursting sunshine; the calm steady heatof June and the mellowing days of August, all serve to ripen thegrain. And so all ‘things present,’ the light and thedark, the hopes fulfilled and the hopes disappointed, the gains andthe losses, the prayers answered and the prayers unanswered, theywill all be recognised, if we have the wisdom that comes fromsubmission to Jesus Christ's will, as being ours and ministering toour highest blessing.

We shall be their lords too inasmuch as we shall be able tocontrol them. We need not be ‘anvils but hammers.’ Weneed not let outward circ*mstances dominate and tyrannise over us. Weneed not be like the mosses in the stream, that lie whichever way thecurrent sets, nor like some poor little sailing boat that is at themercy of the winds and the waves, but may carry an inward impulselike some great ocean-going steamer, the throb of whose power shalldrive us straight forward on our course, whatever beats against us.That we may have this inward power and mastery over things present,and not be shaped and moulded and made by them, let us yieldourselves to Christ, and He will help us to rule them.

And then, all ‘things to come,’ the dim, vague future,shall be for each of us like some sunlit ocean stretching shorelessto the horizon; every little ripple flashing with its own brightsunshine, and all bearing us onwards to the great Throne that standson the sea of glass mingled with fire.

Then, my brother, ask yourselves what your future is if you havenot Christ for your Friend.

'I backward cast mine eye On prospects drear;And forward though I cannot see, I guess and fear.'

So I beseech you, yield yourselves to JesusChrist, He died to win us. He bears our sins that they may be allforgiven. If we give ourselves to Him who has given Himself to us,then we shall be lords of men, of the world, of life and death, oftime and eternity.

In the old days conquerors used to bestow upon their followerslands and broad dominions on condition of their doing suit andservice, and bringing homage to them. Christ, the King of theuniverse, makes His subjects kings, and will give us to share in Hisdominion, so that to each of us may be fulfilled that boundless andalmost unbelievable promise: ‘He that overcometh shall inheritall things.’ ‘All are yours if ye areChrist's.’

THE THREE TRIBUNALS

‘But with me it is a very small thing that I shouldbe judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine ownself. 4. For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified;but he that judgeth me is the Lord.’—1 COR. iv. 3,4.

The Church at Corinth was honeycombed by the characteristic Greekvice of party spirit. The three great teachers, Paul, Peter, Apollos,were pitted against each other, and each was unduly exalted by thosewho swore by him, and unduly depreciated by the other two factions.But the men whose names were the war-cries of these sections werethemselves knit in closest friendship, and felt themselves to beservants in common of one Master, and fellow-workers in one task.

So Paul, in the immediate context, associating Peter and Apolloswith himself, bids the Corinthians think of ‘us’as being servants of Christ, and not therefore responsible to men;and as stewards of the mysteries of God, that is, dispensers oftruths long hidden but now revealed, and as therefore accountable forcorrect accounts and faithful dispensation only to the Lord of thehousehold. Being responsible to Him, they heeded very little whatothers thought about them. Being responsible to Him, they could notaccept vindication by their own consciences as being final. There wasa judgment beyond these.

So here we have three tribunals—that of man's estimates,that of our own consciences, that of Jesus Christ. An appeal liesfrom the first to the second, and from the second to the third. It isbase to depend on men's judgments; it is well to attend to thedecisions of conscience, but it is not well to take it for grantedthat, if conscience approve, we are absolved. The court of finalappeal is Jesus Christ, and what He thinks about each of us. So letus look briefly at these three tribunals.

I. First, the lowest—men's judgment.

‘With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged ofyou,’ enlightened Christians that you are, or by the outsideworld. Now, Paul's letters give ample evidence that he was keenlyalive to the hostile and malevolent criticisms and slanders of hisuntiring opponents. Many a flash of sarcasm out of the cloud like alightning bolt, many a burst of wounded affection like rain fromsummer skies, tell us this. But I need not quote these. Such acharacter as his could not but be quick to feel the surroundingatmosphere, whether it was of love or of suspicion. So, he had toharden himself against what naturally had a great effect upon him,the estimate which he felt that people round him were making of him.There was nothing brusque, rough, contemptuous in his brushing asidethese popular judgments. He gave them all due weight, and yet hefelt, ‘From all that this lowest tribunal may decide, there aretwo appeals, one to my own conscience, and one to my Master inheaven.’

Now, I suppose I need not say a word about the power which thatterrible court which is always sitting, and which passes judgmentupon every one of us, though we do not always hear the sentencesread, has upon us all. There is a power which it is meant to have. Itis not good for a man to stand constantly in the attitude of defyingwhatever anybody else chooses to say or to think about him. But thedanger to which we are all exposed, far more than that other extreme,is of deferring too completely and slavishly to, and being far toosubtly influenced in all that we do by, the thought of what A, B, orC, may have to say or to think about it. ‘The last infirmity ofnoble minds,’ says Milton about the love of fame. It is aninfirmity to love it, and long for it, and live by it. It is aweakening of humanity, even where men are spurred to great efforts bythe thought of the reverberation of these in the ear of the world,and of the honour and glory that may come therefrom.

But not only in these higher forms of seeking after reputation,but in lower forms, this trembling before, and seeking to conciliate,the tribunal of what we call ‘general opinion,’ whichmeans the voices of the half-dozen people that are beside us and knowabout us, besets us all, and weakens us all in a thousand ways. Howmany men would lose all the motive that they have for livingreputable lives, if nobody knew anything about it? How many of you,when you go to London, and are strangers, frequent places that youwould not be seen in in Manchester? How many of us are hindered, incourses which we know that we ought to pursue, because we are afraidof this or that man or woman, and of what they may look or speak?There is a regard to man's judgment, which is separated by the verythinnest partition from hypocrisy. There is a very shadowydistinction between the man who, consciously or unconsciously, does athing with an eye to what people may say about it, and the man whopretends to be what he is not for the sake of the reputation that hemay thereby win.

Now, the direct tendency of Christian faith and principle is todwindle into wholesome insignificance the multitudinous voice ofmen's judgments. For, if I understand at all what Christianity means,it means centrally and essentially this, that I am brought intoloving personal relation with Jesus Christ, and draw from Him thepower of my life, and from Him the law of my life, and from Him thestimulus of my life, and from Him the reward of my life. If there isa direct communication between me and Him, and if I am deriving fromHim the life that He gives, which is ‘free from the law of sinand death,’ I shall have little need or desire to heed thejudgment that men, who see only the surface, may pass upon me, andupon my doings, and I shall refer myself to Him instead of to them.Those who can go straight to Christ, whose lives are steeped in Him,who feel that they draw all from Him, and that their actions andcharacter are moulded by His touch and His Spirit, are responsible tono other tribunal. And the less they think about what men have to sayof them the stronger, the nobler, the more Christ-like they willbe.

There is no need for any contempt or roughness to blend with sucha putting aside of men's judgments. The velvet glove may be worn uponthe iron hand. All meekness and lowliness may go with this wholesomeindependence, and must go with it unless that independence is falseand distorted. ‘With me it is a very small thing to be judgedof you, or of man's judgment,’ need not be said in such a toneas to mean ‘I do not care a rush what you think aboutme’; but it must be said in such a tone as to mean ‘Icare supremely for one approbation, and if I have that I can bearanything besides.’

Let me appeal to you to cultivate more distinctly, as a plainChristian duty, this wholesome independence of men's judgment. Isuppose there never was a day when it was more needed that men shouldbe themselves, seeing with their own eyes what God may reveal to themand they are capable of receiving, and walking with their own feet onthe path that fits them, whatsoever other people may say about it.For the multiplication of daily literature, the way in which we areall living in glass houses nowadays—everybody knowingeverything about everybody else, and delighting in the gossip whichtakes the place of literature in so many quarters—and thetendency of society to a more democratic form give the many-headedmonster and its many tongues far more power than is wholesome, in theshaping of the lives and character and conduct of most men. The evilof democracy is that it levels down all to one plane, and that ittends to turn out millions of people, as like each other as if theyhad been made in a machine. And so we need, I believe, even more thanour fathers did, to lay to heart this lesson, that the direct resultof a deep and strong Christian faith is the production of intenselyindividual character. And if there are plenty of angles in it,perhaps so much the better. We are apt to be rounded by being rubbedagainst each other, like the stones on the beach, till there is not asharp corner or a point that can prick anywhere. So society becomesutterly monotonous, and is insipid and profitless because of that.You Christian people, be yourselves, after your own pattern. Andwhilst you accept all help from surrounding suggestions and hints,make it ‘a very small thing that you be judged of men.’And you, young men, in warehouses and shops, and you, students, andyou, boys and girls, that are budding into life, never mind whatother people say. ‘Let thine eyes look right onwards,’and let all the clatter on either side of you go on as it will. Thevoices are very loud, but if we go up high enough on the hill-top, tothe secret place of the Most High, we shall look down and see, butnot hear, the bustle and the buzz; and in the great silence Christwill whisper to us, ‘Well done! good and faithfulservant.’ That praise is worth getting, and one way to get itis to put aside the hindrance of anxious seeking to conciliate thegood opinion of men.

II. Note the higher court of conscience.

Our Apostle is not to be taken here as contradicting what he saysin other places. ‘I judge not mine own self,’—yetin one of these same letters to the Corinthians he says, ‘If wejudged ourselves we should not be judged.’ So that he does notmean here that he is entirely without any estimate of his owncharacter or actions. That he did in some sense judge himself isevident from the next clause, because he goes on to say, ‘Iknow nothing against myself.’ If he acquitted himself, he mustpreviously have been judging himself. But his acquittal of himself isnot to be understood as if it covered the whole ground of his lifeand character, but it is to be confined to the subject inhand—viz. his faithfulness as a steward of the mysteries ofGod. But though there is nothing in that region of his life which hecan charge against himself as unfaithfulness, he goes on to say,‘Yet am I not hereby justified?’

Our absolution by conscience is not infallible. I suppose thatconscience is more reliable when it condemns than when it acquits. Itis never safe for a man to neglect it when it says, ‘You arewrong!’ It is just as unsafe for a man to accept it, withoutfurther investigation, when it says, ‘You are right!’ Forthe only thing that is infallible about what we call conscience isits sentence, ‘It is right to do right.’ But when itproceeds to say ‘This, that, and the other thing is right; andtherefore it is right for you to do it,’ there may be errors inthe judgment, as everybody's own experience tells them. The inwardjudge needs to be stimulated, to be enlightened, to be correctedoften. I suppose that the growth of Christian character is verylargely the discovery that things that we thought innocent are not,for us, so innocent as we thought them.

You only need to go back to history, or to go down into your ownhistories, to see how, as light has increased, dark corners have beenrevealed that were invisible in the less brilliant illumination. Howlong it has taken the Christian Church to find out what Christ'sGospel teaches about slavery, about the relations of sex, aboutdrunkenness, about war, about a hundred other things that you and Ido not yet know, but which our successors will wonder that we failedto see! Inquisitor and martyr have equally said, ‘We areserving God.’ Surely, too, nothing is more clearly witnessed byindividual experience, than that we may do a wrong thing, and thinkthat it is right. ‘They that kill you will think that they doGod service.’

So, Christian people, accept the inward monition when it is sternand prohibitive. Do not be too sure about it when it is placable andpermissive. ‘Happy is he that condemneth not himself in thething which he alloweth.’ There may be secret faults, lying allunseen beneath the undergrowth in the forest, which yet do prick andsting. The upper floors of the house where we receive company, andwhere we, the tenants, generally live, may be luxurious, and sweet,and clean. What about the cellars, where ugly things crawl and swarm,and breed, and sting?

Ah, dear brethren! when my conscience says to me, ‘You maydo it,’ it is always well to go to Jesus Christ, and say to Him‘May I?’ ‘Search me, O God, and ... see if there beany wicked way in me,’ and show it to me, and help me to castit out. ‘I know nothing against myself; yet am I not herebyjustified.’

III. Lastly, note the supreme court of final appeal.

‘He that judgeth me is the Lord.’ Now it is obviousthat ‘the Lord’ here is Christ, both because of thepreceding context and because of the next verse, which speaks of Hiscoming. And it is equally obvious, though it is often unnoticed, thatthe judgment of which the Apostle is here speaking is a present andpreliminary judgment. ‘He that judgethme’—not, ‘will judge,’ but now, atthis very moment. That is to say, whilst people round us are passingtheir superficial estimates upon me, and whilst my conscience isexcusing, or else accusing me—and in neither case with absoluteinfallibility—there is another judgment, running concurrentlywith them, and going on in silence. That calm eye is fixed upon me,and sifting me, and knowing me. That judgment is not fallible,because before Him ‘the hidden things’ that the darknessshelters, those creeping things in the cellars that I was speakingabout, are all manifest; and to Him the ‘counsels of theheart,’ that is, the motives from which the actions flow, areall transparent and legible. So His judgment, the continual estimateof me which Jesus Christ, in His supreme knowledge of me, has, atevery moment of my life—that is uttering the final wordabout me and my character.

His estimate will dwindle the sentences of the other two tribunalsinto nothingness. What matter what his fellow-servants say about thesteward's accounts, and distribution of provisions, and management ofthe household? He has to render his books, and to give account of hisstewardship, only to his lord.

The governor of a Crown Colony may attach some importance tocolonial opinion, but he reports home; and it is what the people inDowning Street will say that he thinks about. We have to report home;and it is the King whom we serve, to whom we have to give an account.The gladiator, down in the arena, did not much mind whether thethumbs of the populace were up or down, though the one was the signalfor his life and the other for his death. He looked to the placewhere, between the purple curtains and the flashing axes of thelictors, the emperor sate. Our Emperor once was down on the sandHimself, and although we are ‘compassed about with a cloud ofwitnesses,’ we look to the Christ, the supreme Arbiter, andtake acquittal or condemnation, life or death, from Him.

That judgment, persistent all through each of our lives, ispreliminary to the future tribunal and sentence. The Apostle employsin this context two distinct words, both of which are translated inour version ‘judge.’ The one which is used in these threeclauses, on which I have been commenting, means a preliminaryexamination, and the one which is used in the next verse means afinal decisive trial and sentence. So, dear brethren, Christ isgathering materials for His final sentence; and you and I are writingthe depositions which will be adduced in evidence. Oh! how little allthat the world may have said about a man will matter then! Think of aman standing before that great white throne, and saying, ‘Iheld a very high place in the estimation of my neighbours. Thenewspapers and the reviews blew my trumpet assiduously. My name wascarved upon the plinth of a marble statue, that my fellow-citizensset up in honour of my many virtues,’—and the name wasillegible centuries before the statue was burned in the lastfire!

Brother! seek for the praise from Him, which is praise indeed. IfHe says, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant,’ itmatters little what censures men may pass on us. If He says, ‘Inever knew you,’ all their praises will not avail.‘Wherefore we labour that, whether present or absent, we may bewell-pleasing to Him.’

THE FESTAL LIFE

‘Therefore let us keep the feast, not with oldleaven ... but with the unleavened bread of sincerity andtruth.’—1 COR. v. 8.

There had been hideous immorality in the Corinthian Church. Paulhad struck at it with heat and force, sternly commanding theexclusion of the sinner. He did so on the ground of the diabolicalpower of infection possessed by evil, and illustrated that by thevery obvious metaphor of leaven, a morsel of which, as he says,‘will leaven the whole lump,’ or, as we say,‘batch.’ But the word ‘leaven’ drew up fromthe depths of his memory a host of sacred associations connected withthe Jewish Passover. He remembered the sedulous hunting in everyJewish house for every scrap of leavened matter; the slaying of thePaschal Lamb, and the following feast. Carried away by theseassociations, he forgets the sin in the Corinthian Church for amoment, and turns to set forth, in the words of the text, a very deepand penetrating view of what the Christian life is, how it issustained, and what it demands. ‘Wherefore,’ says he,‘let us keep the feast ... with the unleavened bread ofsincerity and truth.’ That ‘wherefore’ takes usback to the words before it, And what are these? ‘Christ ourPassover is sacrificed for us’; therefore—because of thatsacrifice, to us is granted the power, and on us is laid imperativelythe obligation, to make life a festival and to purge ourselves. Now,in the notion of a feast, there are two things included—joy andplentiful sustenance. So there are three points here, which I havealready indicated—what the Christian life is, a festival; onwhat it is sustained, the Paschal Sacrifice; what it demands,scrupulous purging out of the old leaven.

I. The Christian life ought to be a continual festival.

The Christian life a feast? It is more usually represented as afight, a wrestle, a race; and such metaphors correspond, as it wouldappear, far more closely to the facts of our environment, and to theexperiences of our hearts, than does such a metaphor as this. But themetaphor of the festival goes deeper than that of the fight or race,and it does not ignore the strenuous and militant side of theChristian life. No man ever lived a more strenuous life than Paul; noman had heavier tasks, and did them more cheerily; no man had asterner fight and fought it more bravely. There is nothing soft,Epicurean, or oblivious of the patent sad facts of humanity in thedeclaration that after all, beneath all, above all, central to all,the Christian life is a glad festival, when it is the life that itought to be.

But you say, ‘Ah! it is all very well to call it so; but inthe first place, continual joy is impossible in the presence of thedifficulties, and often sadnesses, that meet us on our life's path;and, in the second place, it is folly to tell us to pump up emotions,or to ignore the occasions for much heaviness and sorrow ofheart.’ True; but, still, it is possible to cultivate such atemper as makes life habitually joyful. We can choose the aspectunder which we by preference and habitually regard our lives. Allemotion follows upon a preceding thought, or sensible experience, andwe can pick the objects of our thoughts, and determine what aspect ofour lives to look at most.

The sky is often piled with stormy, heaped-up masses of blackness,but between them are lakes of calm blue. We can choose whether welook at the clouds or at the blue. These are in the lowerranges; that fills infinite spaces, upwards and out to thehorizon. These are transient, eating themselves away even whilst welook, and black and thunderous as they may be, they are there but fora moment—that is perennial. If we are wise, we shall fix ourgaze much rather on the blue than on the ugly cloud-rack that hidesit, and thus shall minister to ourselves occasions for the noble kindof joy which is not noisy and boisterous, ‘like the cracklingof thorns under a pot,’ and does not foam itself away by itsvery ebullience, but is calm like the grounds of it; still, like theheaven to which it looks; eternal, like the God on whom it isfastened. If we would only steadfastly remember that the one sourceof worthy and enduring joy is God Himself, and listen to the command,‘Rejoice in the Lord,’ we should find it possible to‘rejoice always.’ For that thought of Him, Hissufficiency, His nearness, His encompassing presence, His prosperingeye, His aiding hand, His gentle consolation, His enabling help willtake the sting out of even the bitterest of our sorrows, and willbrace us to sustain the heaviest, otherwise crushing burdens, andgreatly to ‘rejoice, though now for a season we are inheaviness through manifold temptations.’ The Gulf Stream rushesinto the northern hemisphere, melts the icebergs and warms the Polarseas, and so the joy of the Lord, if we set it before us as we canand should do, will minister to us a gladness which will make ourlives a perpetual feast.

But there is another thing that we can do; that is, we can clearlyrecognise the occasions for sorrow in our experience, and yetinterpret them by the truths of the Christian faith. That is to say,we can think of them, not so much as they tend to make us sad orglad, but as they tend to make us more assured of our possession of,more ardent in our love towards, and more submissive in our attitudeto, the all-ordering Love which is God. Brethren, if we thought oflife, and all its incidents, even when these are darkest and mostthreatening, as being what it and they indeed are, His training of usinto capacity for fuller blessedness, because fuller possession ofHimself, we should be less startled at the commandment,‘Rejoice in the Lord always,’ and should feel that it waspossible, though the figtree did not blossom, and there was no fruitin the vine, though the flocks were cut off from the pastures, andthe herds from the stall, yet to rejoice in the God of our salvation.Rightly understood and pondered on, all the darkest passages of lifeare but like the cloud whose blackness determines the brightness ofthe rainbow on its front. Rightly understood and reflected on, thesewill teach us that the paradoxical commandment, ‘Count it alljoy that ye fall into divers temptations,’ is, after all, thevoice of true wisdom speaking at the dictation of a clear-eyedfaith.

This text, since it is a commandment, implies that obedience toit, and therefore the realisation of this continual festal aspect oflife, is very largely in our own power. Dispositions differ, some ofus are constitutionally inclined to look at the blacker, and some atthe brighter, side of our experiences. But our Christianity is worthlittle unless it can modify, and to some extent change, our naturaltendencies. The joy of the Lord being our strength, the cultivationof joy in the Lord is largely our duty. Christian people do notsufficiently recognise that it is as incumbent on them to seek afterthis continual fountain of calm and heavenly joy flowing throughtheir lives, as it is to cultivate some of the more recognisedvirtues and graces of Christian conduct and character.

Secondly, we have here—

II. The Christian life is a continual feeding on a sacrifice.

‘Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Wherefore let uskeep the feast.’ It is very remarkable that this is the onlyplace in Paul's writings where he articulately pronounces that thePaschal Lamb is a type of Jesus Christ. There is only one otherinstance in the New Testament where that is stated with equalclearness and emphasis, and that is in John's account of theCrucifixion, where he recognises the fact that Christ died with limbsunbroken, as being a fulfilment, in the New Testament sense of thatword, of what was enjoined in regard to the antitype, ‘a boneof him shall not be broken.’

But whilst the definite statement which precedes my text thatChrist is ‘our Passover,’ and ‘sacrificed forus’ as such, is unique in Paul's writings, the thought to whichit gives clear and crystallised expression runs through the whole ofthe New Testament. It underlies the Lord's Supper. Did you ever thinkof how great was the self-assertion of Jesus Christ when He laid Hishand on that sacredest of Jewish rites, which had been established,as the words of the institution of it say, to be ‘a perpetualmemorial through all generations,’ brushed it on one side, andin effect, said: ‘You do not need to remember the Passover anymore. I am the true Paschal Lamb, whose blood sprinkled on thedoorposts averts the sword of the destroying Angel, whose flesh,partaken of, gives immortal life. Remember Me, and this do inremembrance of Me.’ The Lord's Supper witnesses that Jesusthought Himself to be what Paul tells the Corinthians that He is,even our Passover, sacrificed for us. But the point to be observed isthis, that just as in that ancient ritual, the lamb slain became thefood of the Israelites, so with us the Christ who has died is to bethe sustenance of our souls, and of our Christian life.‘Therefore let us keep the feast.’

Feed upon Him; that is the essential central requirement for allChristian life, and what does feeding on Him mean? ‘How canthis man give us his flesh to eat?’ said the Jews, and theanswer is plain now, though so obscure then. The flesh which He gavefor the life of the world in His death, must by us be taken for thevery nourishment of our souls, by the simple act of faith in Him.That is the feeding which brings not only sustenance but life.Christ's death for us is the basis, but it is only the basis, ofChrist's living in us, and His death for me is of no use at all to meunless He that died for me lives in me. We feed on Him by faith,which not only trusts to the Sacrifice as atoning for sin, but feedson it as communicating and sustaining eternallife—‘Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, whereforelet us keep the Feast.’

Again, we keep the feast when our minds feed upon Christ bycontemplation of what He is, what He has done, what He is doing, whatHe will do; when we take Him as ‘the Master-light of all ourseeing,’ and in Him, His words and works, His Passion,Resurrection, Ascension, Session as Sovereign at the right hand ofGod, find the perfect revelation of what God is, the perfectdiscovery of what man is, the perfect disclosure of what sin is, theperfect prophecy of what man may become, the Light of light, theanswer to every question that our spirits can put about the loftiestverities of God and man, the universe and the future. We feed onChrist when, with lowly submission, we habitually subject thoughts,purposes, desires, to His authority, and when we let His will flowinto, and make plastic and supple, our wills. We nourish our wills bysubmitting them to Jesus, and we feed on Him when we not only say‘Lord! Lord!’ but when we do the things that He says. Wefeed on Christ, when we let His great, sacred, all-wise, all-giving,all satisfying love flow into our restless hearts and make themstill, enter into our vagrant affections and fix them on Himself.Thus when mind and conscience and will and heart all turn to Jesus,and in Him find their sustenance, we shall be filled with the feastof fat things which He has prepared for all people. With that breadwe shall be satisfied, and with it only, for the husks of the swineare no food for the Father's son, and we ‘spend our money forthat which is not bread, and our labour for that which satisfiethnot,’ if we look anywhere else than to the Paschal Lamb slainfor us for the food of our souls.

III. The Christian life is a continual purging out of the oldleaven.

I need not remind you how vivid and profoundly significant thatemblem of leaven, as applied to all manner of evil, is. But let meremind you how, just as in the Jewish Ritual, the cleansing from allthat was leavened was the essential pre-requisite to theparticipation in the feast, feeding on Jesus Christ, as I have triedto describe it, is absolutely impossible unless our leaven iscleansed away. Children spoil their appetites for wholesome food byeating sweetmeats. Men destroy their capacity for feeding on Christby hungry desires, and gluttonous satisfying of those desires withthe delusive sweets of this passing world. But, my brother, yourexperience, if you are a Christian man at all, will tell you that inthe direct measure in which you have been drawn away into palteringwith evil, your appetite for Christ and your capacity for gazing uponHim, contemplating Him, feeding on Him, has died out. There comes akind of constriction in a man's throat when he is hungering afterlesser good, especially when there is a tinge of evil in the supposedgood that he is hungering after, which incapacitates Him from eatingthe bread of God, which is Jesus Christ.

But let us remember that absolute cleansing from all sin is notessential, in order to have real participation in Jesus Christ. TheJew had to take every scrap of leaven out of his house before hebegan the Passover. If that were the condition for us, alas! for usall; but the effort after purity, though it has not entirely attainedits aim, is enough. Sin abhorred does not prevent a man fromparticipating in the Bread that came down from heaven.

Then observe, too, that for this power to cleanse ourselves, wemust have had some participation in Christ, by which there is givento us that new life that conquers evil. In the words immediatelypreceding my text, the Apostle bases his injunction to purge out theold leaven on the fact that ‘ye are unleavened.’ Ideally,in so far as the power possessed by them was concerned, theseCorinthians were unleavened, even whilst they were bid to purge outthe leaven. That is to say, be what you are; realise your ideal,utilise the power you possess, and since by your faith there has beengiven to you a new life that can conquer all corruption and sin, seethat you use the life that is given. Purge out the old leaven becauseye are unleavened.

One last word—this stringent exhortation, which makesChristian effort after absolute purity a Christian duty, and thecondition of participation in the Paschal Lamb, is based upon thatthought to which I have already referred, of the diabolical power ofinfection which Evil possesses. Either you must cast it out, or itwill choke the better thing in you. It spreads and grows, andpropagates itself, and works underground through and through thewhole mass. A water-weed got into some of our canals years ago, andit has all but choked some of them. The slime on a pond spreads itsgreen mantle over the whole surface with rapidity. If we do not ejectEvil it will eject the good from us. Use the implanted power to castout this creeping, advancing evil. Sometimes a wine-grower has goneinto his cellars, and found in a cask no wine, but a monstrous fungusinto which all the wine had, in the darkness, passed unnoticed. Ifear some Christian people, though they do not know it, havesomething like that going on in them.

It is possible for us all to keep this perpetual festival. To livein, on, for, Jesus Christ will give us victory over enemies, burdens,sorrows, sins. We may, if we will, dwell in a calm zone where notempests rage, hear a perpetual strain of sweet music persistingthrough thunder peals of sorrow and suffering, and find a tablespread for us in the presence of our enemies, at which we shall renewour strength for conflict, and whence we shall rise to fight the goodfight a little longer, till we sit with Him at His table in HisKingdom, and ‘eat, and live for ever.’

FORMS VERSUS CHARACTER

‘Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision isnothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God.’—1COR. vii. 19.
‘For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything,nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh bylove.’—GAL. v. 6.
‘For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, buta new creature.’—GAL. vi. 16 (R. V.).

The great controversy which embittered so much of Paul's life, andmarred so much of his activity, turned upon the question whether aheathen man could come into the Church simply by the door of faith,or whether he must also go through the gate of circumcision. We allknow how Paul answered the question. Time, which settles allcontroversies, has settled that one so thoroughly that it isimpossible to revive any kind of interest in it; and it may seem tobe a pure waste of time to talk about it. But the principles thatfought then are eternal, though the forms in which they manifestthemselves vary with every varying age.

The Ritualist—using that word in its broadest sense—onthe one hand, and the Puritan on the other, represent permanenttendencies of human nature; and we find to-day the old foes with newfaces. These three passages, which I have read, are Paul'sdeliverance on the question of the comparative value of externalrites and spiritual character. They are remarkable both for theidentity in the former part of each and for the variety in thelatter. In all the three cases he affirms, almost in the samelanguage, that ‘circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision isnothing,’ that the Ritualist's rite and the Puritan's protestare equally insignificant in comparison with higher things. And thenhe varies the statement of what the higher things are, in a veryremarkable and instructive fashion. The ‘keeping of thecommandments of God,’ says one of the texts, is theall-important matter. Then, as it were, he pierces deeper, and inanother of the texts (I take the liberty of varying their order)pronounces that ‘a new creature’ is the all-importantthing. And then he pierces still deeper to the bottom of all, in thethird text, and says the all-important thing is ‘faith whichworketh by love.’

I think I shall best bring out the force of these words by dealingfirst with that emphatic threefold proclamation of the nullity of allexternalism; and then with the singular variations in the triplestatement of what is essential, viz. spiritual conduct andcharacter.

I. First, the emphatic proclamation of the nullity of outwardrites.

‘Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision isnothing,’ say two texts. ‘Circumcision availeth nothing,and uncircumcision availeth nothing,’ says the other. Itneither is anything nor does anything. Did Paul say that becausecircumcision was a Jewish rite? No. As I believe, he said it becauseit was a rite; and because he had learned that the one thingneedful was spiritual character, and that no external ceremonial ofany sort could produce that. I think we are perfectly warranted intaking this principle of my text, and in extending it beyond thelimits of the Jewish rite about which Paul was speaking. For if youremember, he speaks about baptism, in the first chapter of the FirstEpistle to the Corinthians, in a precisely similar tone and forprecisely the same reason, when he says, in effect, ‘I baptizedCrispus and Gaius and the household of Stephanas, and I think theseare all. I am not quite sure. I do not keep any kind of record ofsuch things; God did not send me to baptize, He sent me to preach theGospel.’

The thing that produced the spiritual result was not the rite, butthe truth, and therefore he felt that his function was to preach thetruth and leave the rite to be administered by others. Therefore wecan extend the principle here to all externalisms of worship, in allforms, in all churches, and say that in comparison with theessentials of an inward Christianity they are nothing and they donothing.

They have their value. As long as we are here on earth, living inthe flesh, we must have outward forms and symbolical rites. It is inHeaven that the seer ‘saw no temple.’ Our sense-boundnature requires, and thankfully avails itself of, the help ofexternal rites and ceremonials to lift us up towards the Object ofour devotion. A man prays all the better if he bow his head, shut hiseyes, and bend his knees. Forms do help us to the realisation of therealities, and the truths which they express and embody. Music maywaft our souls to the heavens, and pictures may stir deep thoughts.That is the simple principle on which the value of all external aidsto devotion depends. They may be helps towards the appreciation ofdivine truth, and to the suffusing of the heart with devout emotionswhich may lead to building up a holy character.

There is a worth, therefore—an auxiliary and subordinateworth—in these things, and in that respect they are notnothing, nor do they ‘avail nothing.’ But then allexternal rites tend to usurp more than belongs to them, and in ourweakness we are apt to cleave to them, and instead of using them asmeans to lift us higher, to stay in them, and as a great many of usdo, to mistake the mere gratification of taste and the excitement ofthe sensibilities for worship. A bit of stained glass may be glowingwith angel-forms and pictured saints, but it always keeps some of thelight out, and it always hinders us from seeing through it. And allexternal worship and form have so strong a tendency to usurp morethan belongs to them, and to drag us down to their own level, evenwhilst we think that we are praying, that I believe the wisest manwill try to pare down the externals of his worship to the lowestpossible point. If there be as much body as will keep a soul in, asmuch form as will embody the spirit, that is all that we want. Whatis more is dangerous.

All form in worship is like fire, it is a good servant but it is abad master, and it needs to be kept very rigidly in subordination, orelse the spirituality of Christian worship vanishes before men know;and they are left with their dead forms which are onlyevils—crutches that make people limp by the very act of usingthem.

Now, my dear friends, when that has happened, when men begin tosay, as the people in Paul's time were saying about circumcision, andas people are saying in this day about Christian rites, that they arenecessary, then it is needful to take up Paul's ground and to say,‘No! they are nothing!’ They are useful in a certainplace, but if you make them obligatory, if you make them essential,if you say that grace is miraculously conveyed through them, then itis needful that we should raise a strong note of protestation, anddeclare their absolute nullity for the highest purpose, that ofmaking that spiritual character which alone is essential.

And I believe that this strange recrudescence—to use amodern word—of ceremonialism and aesthetic worship which we seeall round about us, not only in the ranks of the Episcopal Church,but amongst Nonconformists, who are sighing for a less bare service,and here and there are turning their chapels into concert-rooms, andinstead of preaching the Gospel are having ‘Services ofSong’ and the like—that all this makes it as needfulto-day as ever it was to say to men: ‘Forms are not worship.Rites may crush the spirit. Men may yield to the sensuous impressionswhich they produce, and be lapped in an atmosphere of aestheticemotion, without any real devotion.’

Such externals are only worth anything if they make us grasp morefirmly with our understandings and feel more profoundly with ourhearts, the great truths of the Gospel. If they do that, they help;if they are not doing that, they hinder, and are to be foughtagainst. And so we have again to proclaim to-day, as Paul did,‘Circumcision is nothing,’ ‘but the keeping of thecommandments of God.’

Then notice with what remarkable fairness and boldness and breadththe Apostle here adds that other clause: ‘and uncircumcision isnothing.’ It is a very hard thing for a man whose life has beenspent in fighting against an error, not to exaggerate the value ofhis protest. It is a very hard thing for a man who has been deliveredfrom the dependence upon forms, not to fancy that his formlessness iswhat the other people think that their forms are. The Puritan whodoes not believe that a man can be a good man because he is aRitualist or a Roman Catholic, is committing the very same error asthe Ritualist or the Roman Catholic who does not believe that thePuritan can be a Christian unless he has been‘christened.’ The two people are exactly the same, onlythe one has hold of the stick at one end, and the other at the other.There may be as much idolatry in superstitious reliance upon the bareworship as in the advocacy of the ornate; and many a Nonconformistwho fancies that he has ‘never bowed the knee to Baal’ isas true an idol-worshipper in his superstitious abhorrence of theritualism that he sees in other communities, as are the men who trustin it the most.

It is a large attainment in Christian character to be able to saywith Paul, ‘Circumcision is nothing, and my own favourite pointof uncircumcision is nothing either. Neither the one side nor theother touches the essentials.’

II. Now let us look at the threefold variety of the designation ofthese essentials here.

In our first text from the Epistle to the Corinthians we read,‘Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, butthe keeping of the commandments of God.’ If we finished thesentence it would be, ‘but the keeping of the commandments ofGod is everything.’

And by that ‘keeping the commandments,’ of course, theApostle does not mean merely external obedience. He means somethingfar deeper than that, which I put into this plain word, that the oneessential of a Christian life is the conformity of the will withGod's—not the external obedience merely, but the entiresurrender and the submission of my will to the will of my Father inHeaven. That is the all-important thing; that is what God wants; thatis the end of all rites and ceremonies; that is the end of allrevelation and of all utterances of the divine heart. The Bible,Christ's mission, His passion and death, the gift of His DivineSpirit, and every part of the divine dealings in providence, allconverge upon this one aim and goal. For this purpose the Fatherworketh hitherto, and Christ works, that man's will may yield and bowitself wholly and happily and lovingly to the great infinite will ofthe Father in heaven.

Brethren! that is the perfection of a man's nature, when his willfits on to God's like one of Euclid's triangles superimposed uponanother, and line for line coincides. When his will allows a freepassage to the will of God, without resistance or deflection, aslight travels through transparent glass; when his will responds tothe touch of God's finger upon the keys, like the telegraphic needleto the operator's hand, then man has attained all that God andreligion can do for him, all that his nature is capable of; and farbeneath his feet may be the ladders of ceremonies and forms andoutward acts, by which he climbed to that serene and blessed height,‘Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, butthe keeping of God's commandments is everything.’

That submission of will is the sum and the test of yourChristianity. Your Christianity does not consist only in a meresomething which you call faith in Jesus Christ. It does not consistin emotions, however deep and blessed and genuine they may be. Itdoes not consist in the acceptance of a creed. All these are means toan end. They are meant to drive the wheel of life, to build upcharacter, to make your deepest wish to be, ‘Father! not mywill, but Thine, be done.’ In the measure in which that is yourheart's desire, and not one hair's-breadth further, have you a rightto call yourself a Christian.

But, then, I can fancy a man saying: ‘It is all very well totalk about bowing the will in this fashion; how can I do that?’Well, let us take our second text—the third in the order oftheir occurrence—‘For neither circumcision is anything,nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.’ That is to say, if weare ever to keep the will of God we must be made over again. Ay! wemust! Our own consciences tell us that; the history of all theefforts that ever we have made—and I suppose all of us havemade some now and then, more or less earnest and more or lesspersistent—tells us that there needs to be a stronger hand thanours to come into the fight if it is ever to be won by us. There isnothing more heartless and more impotent than to preach, ‘Bowyour wills to God, and then you will be happy; bow your wills to God,and then you will be good.’ If that is all the preacher has tosay, his powerless words will but provoke the answer, ‘Wecannot. Tell the leopard to change his spots, or the Ethiopian hisskin, as soon as tell a man to reduce this revolted kingdom withinhim to obedience, and to bow his will to the will of God. We cannotdo it.’ But, brethren, in that word, ‘a newcreature,’ lies a promise from God; for a creature implies acreator. ‘It is He that hath made us, and not weourselves.’ The very heart of what Christ has to offer us isthe gift of His own life to dwell in our hearts, and by its mightyenergy to make us free from the law of sin and death which binds ourwills. We may have our spirits moulded into His likeness, and newtastes, and new desires, and new capacities infused into us, so asthat we shall not be left with our own poor powers to try and forceourselves into obedience to God's will, but that submission andholiness and love that keeps the commandments of God, will spring upin our renewed spirits as their natural product and growth. Oh! youmen and women who have been honestly trying, half your lifetime, tomake yourselves what you know God wants you to be, and who areobliged to confess that you have failed, hearken to the message:‘If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things arepassed away.’ The one thing needful is keeping the commandmentsof God, and the only way by which we can keep the commandments of Godis that we should be formed again into the likeness of Him of whomalone it is true that ‘He did always the things thatpleased’ God.

And so we come to the last of these great texts: ‘In ChristJesus, neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision,but faith which worketh by love.’ That is to say, if we are tobe made over again, we must have faith in Christ Jesus. We have gotto the root now, so far as we are concerned. We must keep thecommandments of God; if we are to keep the commandments we must bemade over again, and if our hearts ask how can we receive that newcreating power into our lives, the answer is, by ‘faith whichworketh by love.’

Paul did not believe that external rites could make men partakersof a new nature, but he believed that if a man would trust in JesusChrist, the life of that Christ would flow into his opened heart, anda new spirit and nature would be born in him. And, therefore, histriple requirements come all down to this one, so far as we areconcerned, as the beginning and the condition of the other two.‘Neither circumcision does anything, nor uncircumcision, butfaith which worketh by love,’ does everything. He that trustsChrist opens his heart to Christ, who comes with His new-creatingSpirit, and makes us willing in the day of His power to keep Hiscommandments.

But faith leads us to obedience in yet another fashion, than thisopening of the door of the heart for the entrance of the new-creatingSpirit. It leads to it in the manner which is expressed by the wordsof our text, ‘worketh by love.’ Faith shows itselfliving, because it leads us to love, and through love it produces itseffects upon conduct.

Two things are implied in this designation of faith. If you trustChrist you will love Him. That is plain enough. And you will not loveHim unless you trust Him. Though it lies wide of my present purpose,let us take this lesson in passing. You cannot work yourself up intoa spasm or paroxysm of religious emotion and love by resolution or byeffort. All that you can do is to go and look at the Master and getnear Him, and that will warm you up. You can love if you trust. Yourtrust will make you love; unless you trust you will never loveHim.

The second thing implied is, that if you love you will obey. Thatis plain enough. The keeping of the commandments will be easy wherethere is love in the heart. The will will bow where there is love inthe heart. Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the ironobstinacy of a creature's will. The will cannot be driven. Strike itwith violence and it stiffens; touch it gently and it yields. If youtry to put an iron collar upon the will, like the demoniac in theGospels, the touch of the apparent restraint drives it into fury, andit breaks the bands asunder. Fasten it with the silken leash of love,and a ‘little child’ can lead it. So faith works by love,because whom we trust we shall love, and whom we love we shallobey.

Therefore we have got to the root now, and nothing is needful butan operative faith, out of which will come all the blessed possessionof a transforming Spirit, and all sublimities and noblenesses of anobedient and submissive will.

My brother! Paul and James shake hands here. There is a‘faith’ so called, which does not work. It is dead! Letme beseech you, none of you to rely upon what you choose to call yourfaith in Jesus Christ, but examine it. Does it do anything? Does ithelp you to be like Him? Does it open your hearts for His Spirit tocome in? Does it fill them with love to that Master, a love whichproves itself by obedience? Plain questions, questions that any mancan answer; questions that go to the root of the whole matter. Ifyour faith does that, it is genuine; if it does not, it is not.

And do not trust either to forms, or to your freedom from forms.They will not save your souls, they will not make you moreChrist-like. They will not help you to pardon, purity, holiness,blessedness. In these respects neither if we have them are we thebetter, nor if we have them not are we the worse. If you are trustingto Christ, and by that faith are having your hearts moulded and madeover again into all holy obedience, then you have all that you need.Unless you have, though you partook of all Christian rites, thoughyou believed all Christian truth, though you fought againstsuperstitious reliance on forms, you have not the one thing needful,for ‘in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything,nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love.’

SLAVES AND FREE

‘He that is called in the Lord, being a servant, isthe Lord's free man: likewise also he that is called, being free, isChrist's servant.’—1 COR. vii. 22.

This remarkable saying occurs in a remarkable connection, and isused for a remarkable purpose. The Apostle has been laying down theprinciple, that the effect of true Christianity is greatly todiminish the importance of outward circ*mstance. And on thatprinciple he bases an advice, dead in the teeth of all the maximsrecognised by worldly prudence. He says, in effect, ‘Mind verylittle about getting on and getting up. Do God's will wherever youare, and let the rest take care of itself.’ Now, the worldsays, ‘Struggle, wriggle, fight, do anything to betteryourself.’ Paul says, ‘You will better yourself bygetting nearer God, and if you secure that—art thou a slave?care not for it; if thou mayest be free, use it rather; art thoubound to a wife? seek not to be loosed; art thou loosed? seek not tobe bound; art thou circumcised? seek not to be uncircumcised; artthou a Gentile? seek not to become in outward form a Jew.’Never mind about externals: the main thing is our relation to JesusChrist, because in that there is what will be compensation for allthe disadvantages of any disadvantageous circ*mstances, and in thatthere is what will take the gilt off the gingerbread of anysuperficial and fleeting good, and will bring a deep-seated andpermanent blessing.

Now, I am not going to deal in this sermon with that generalprinciple, nor even to be drawn aside to speak of the tone in whichthe Apostle here treats the great abomination of slavery, and thesingular advice that he gives to its victims; though theconsideration of the tone of Christianity to that master-evil of theold world might yield a great many thoughts very relevant to pressingquestions of to-day. But my one object is to fix upon the combinationwhich he here brings out in regard to the essence of the Christianlife; how that in itself it contains both members of the antithesis,servitude and freedom; so that the Christian man who is freeexternally is Christ's slave, and the Christian man who is outwardlyin bondage is emancipated by his union with Jesus Christ.

There are two thoughts here, the application in diverse directionsof the same central idea—viz. the slavery of Christ's free men,and the freedom of Christ's slaves. And I deal briefly with these twonow.

I. First, then, note how, according to the one-half of theantithesis, Christ's freed men are slaves.

Now, the way in which the New Testament deals with that awfulwickedness of a man held in bondage by a man is extremely remarkable.It might seem as if such a hideous piece of immorality werealtogether incapable of yielding any lessons of good. But theApostles have no hesitation whatever in taking slavery as a clearpicture of the relation in which all Christian people stand to JesusChrist their Lord. He is the owner and we are the slaves. For youmust remember that the word most inadequately rendered here,‘servant’ does not mean a hired man who has, of his ownvolition, given himself for a time to do specific work and get wagesfor it; but it means ‘a bond-slave,’ a chattel owned byanother. All the ugly associations which gather round the word aretransported bodily into the Christian region, and there, instead ofbeing hideous, take on a shape of beauty, and become expressions ofthe deepest and most blessed truths, in reference to Christian men'sdependence upon, and submission to, and place in the household andthe heart of, Jesus Christ, their Owner.

And what is the centre idea that lies in this metaphor, if youlike to call it so? It is this: absolute authority, which has for itscorrelative—for the thing in us that answers toit—unconditional submission. Jesus Christ has the perfect rightto command each of us, and we are bound to bow ourselves,unreluctant, unmurmuring, unhesitating, with complete submission atHis feet. His authority, and our submission, go far, far deeper thanthe most despotic sway of the most tyrannous master, or than the mostabject submission of the most downtrodden slave. For no man cancoerce another man's will, and no man can require more, or can everget more, than that outward obedience which may be rendered with themost sullen and fixed rebellion of a hating heart and an obstinatewill. But Jesus Christ demands that if we call ourselves Christianswe shall bring, not our members only as instruments to Him, inoutward surrender and service, but that we shall yield ourselves,with our capacities of willing and desiring, utterly, absolutely,constantly to Him.

The founder of the Jesuits laid it down as a rule for his Orderthat each member of it was to be at the master's disposal like acorpse, or a staff in the hand of a blind man. That was horrible. Butthe absolute putting of myself at the disposal of another's will,which is expressed so tyrannously in Loyola's demand, is the simpleduty of every Christian, and as long as we have recalcitrating wills,which recoil at anything which Christ commands or appoints, and perkup their own inclinations in the face of His solemn commandment, orthat shrink from doing and suffering whatsoever He imposes andenjoins, we have still to learn what it means to be Christ'sdisciples.

Dear brethren, absolute submission is not all that makes adisciple, but, depend upon it, there is no discipleship worth callingby the name without it. So I come to each of you with His message toyou:—Down on your faces before Him! Bow your obstinate will,surrender yourselves and accept Him as absolute, dominant Lord overyour whole being! Are you Christians after that pattern? Beingfreemen, are you Christ's slaves?

It does not matter what sort of work the owner sets his householdof slaves to do. One man is picked out to be his pipe-bearer, or hisshoe-cleaner; and, if the master is a sovereign, another one is sentoff, perhaps, to be governor of a province, or one of his council.They are all slaves; and the service that each does is equallyimportant.

'All service ranks the same with God:There is no last nor first.'

What does it matter what you and I are set to do?Nothing. And, so, why need we struggle and wear our hearts out to getinto conspicuous places, or to do work that shall bring some revenueof praise said glory to ourselves? ‘Play well thy part; thereall the honour lies,’ the world can say. Serve Christ inanything, and all His servants are alike in His sight.

The slave-owner had absolute power of life and death over hisdependants. He could split up families; he could sell away dear ones;he could part husband and wife, parent and child. The slave was his,and he could do what he liked with his own, according to the cruellogic of ancient law. And Jesus Christ, the Lord of the household,the Lord of providence, can say to this one, ‘Go!’ and hegoes into the mists and the shadows of death. And He can say to thosewho are most closely united, ‘Loose your hands! I have need ofone of you yonder. I have need of the other one here.’ And ifwe are wise, if we are His servants in any real deep sense, we shallnot kick against the appointments of His supreme, autocratic, and yetmost loving Providence, but be content to leave the arbitrament oflife and death, of love united or of love parted, in His hands, andsay, ‘Whether we live we are the Lord's, or whether we die weare the Lord's; living or dying we are His.’

The slave-owner owned all that the slave owned. He gave him alittle cottage, with some humble sticks of furniture in it; and a bitof ground on which to grow his vegetables for his family. But he towhom the owner of the vegetables and the stools belonged owned themtoo. And if we are Christ's servants, our banker's book is Christ's,and our purse is Christ's, and our investments are Christ's; and ourmills, and our warehouses, and our shops and our businesses are His.We are not His slaves, if we arrogate to ourselves the right of doingwhat we like with His possessions.

And, then, still further, there comes into our Apostle's picturehere yet another point of resemblance between slaves and thedisciples of Jesus. For the hideous abominations of the slave-marketare transferred to the Christian relation, and defecated and cleansedof all their abominations and cruelty thereby. For what immediatelyfollows my text is, ‘Ye are bought with a price.’ JesusChrist has won us for Himself. There is only one price that can buy aheart, and that is a heart. There is only one way of getting a man tobe mine, and that is by giving myself to be his. So we come to thevery vital, palpitating centre of all Christianity when we say,‘He gave Himself for us, that He might acquire to Himself apeople for His possession.’ Thus His purchase of His slave,when we remember that it is the buying of a man in his inmostpersonality, changes all that might seem harsh in the requirement ofabsolute submission into the most gracious and blessed privilege. Forwhen I am won by another, because that other has given him or herwhole self to me, then the language of love is submission, and theconformity of the two wills is the delight of each loving will.Whoever has truly been wooed into relationship with Jesus, byreflection upon the love with which Jesus grapples him to His heart,finds that there is nothing so blessed as to yield one's self utterlyand for ever to His service.

The one bright point in the hideous institution of slavery was,that it bound the master to provide for the slave, and though thatwas degrading to the inferior, it made his life a careless,child-like, merry life, even amidst the many cruelties andabominations of the system. But what was a good, dashed with a greatdeal of evil, in that relation of man to man, comes to be a pureblessing and good in our relation to Him. If I am Christ's slave, itis His business to take care of His own property, and I do not needto trouble myself much about it. If I am His slave, He will be quitesure to find me in food and necessaries enough to get His tale ofwork out of me; and I may cast all my care upon Him, for He carethfor me. So, brethren, absolute submission and the devolution of allanxiety on the Master are what is laid upon us, if we are Christ'sslaves.

II. Then there is the other side, about which I must say,secondly, a word or two; and that is, the freedom of Christ'sslaves.

As the text puts it, ‘He that is called, being a servant, isthe Lord's freedman.’ A freedman was one who was emancipated,and who therefore stood in a relation of gratitude to his emancipatorand patron. So in the very word ‘freedman’ there iscontained the idea of submission to Him who has struck off thefetters.

But, apart from that, let me just remind you, in a sentence ortwo, that whilst there are many other ways by which men have sought,and have partially attained, deliverance from the many fetters andbondages that attach to our earthly life, the one perfect way bywhich a man can be truly, in the deepest sense of the word and in hisinmost being, a free man is by faith in Jesus Christ.

I do not for a moment forget how wisdom and truth, and noble aimsand high purposes, and culture of various kinds have, in lowerdegrees and partially, emancipated men from self and flesh and sinand the world, and all the other fetters that bind us. But sure I amthat the process is never so completely and so assuredly effected asby the simple way of absolute submission to Jesus Christ, taking Himfor the supreme and unconditional Arbiter and Sovereign of alife.

If we do that, brethren, if we really yield ourselves to Him, inheart and will, in life and conduct, submitting our understanding toHis infallible Word, and our wills to His authority, regulating ourconduct by His perfect pattern, and in all things seeking to serveHim and to realise His presence, then be sure of this, that we shallbe set free from the one real bondage, and that is the bondage of ourown wicked selves. There is no such tyranny as mob tyranny; and thereis no such slavery as to be ruled by the mob of our own passions andlusts and inclinations and other meannesses that yelp and clamourwithin us, and seek to get hold of us and to sway. There is only oneway by which the brute domination of the lower part of our nature canbe surely and thoroughly put down, and that is by turning to JesusChrist and saying to Him, ‘Lord! do Thou rule this anarchickingdom within me, for I cannot govern it myself. Do Thou guide anddirect and subdue.’ You can only govern yourself and be freefrom the compulsion of your own evil nature when you surrender thecontrol to the Master, and say ever, ‘Speak, Lord! for Thyslave hears. Here am I, send me.’

And that is the only way by which a man can be delivered from thebondage of dependence upon outward things. I said at the beginning ofthese remarks that my text occurred in the course of a discussion inwhich the Apostle was illustrating the tendency of true Christianfaith to set man free from, and to make him largely independent of,the varieties in external circ*mstances. Christian faith does so,because it brings into a life a sufficient compensation for alllosses, limitations, and sorrows, and a good which is the reality ofwhich all earthly goods are but shadows. So the slave may be free inChrist, and the poor man may be rich in Him, and the sad man may bejoyful, and the joyful man may be delivered from excess of gladness,and the rich man be kept from the temptations and sins of wealth, andthe free man be taught to surrender his liberty to the Lord who makeshim free. Thus, if we have the all-sufficient compensation whichthere is in Jesus Christ, the satisfaction for all our needs anddesires, we do not need to trouble ourselves so much as we sometimesdo about these changing things round about us. Let them come, letthem go; let the darkness veil the light, and the light illuminatethe darkness; let summer and winter alternate; let tribulation andprosperity succeed each other; we have a source of blessednessunaffected by these. Ice may skin the surface of the lake, but deepbeneath, the water is at the same temperature in winter and insummer. Storms may sweep the face of the deep, but in the abyss thereis calm which is not stagnation. So he that cleaves to Christ isdelivered from the slavery that binds men to the details andaccidents of outward life.

And if we are the servants of Christ, we shall be set free, in themeasure in which we are His, from the slavery which daily becomesmore oppressive as the means of communication become more complete,the slavery to popular opinion and to men round us. Dare to besingular; take your beliefs at first hand from the Master. Never mindwhat fellow-slaves say. It is His smile or frown that is ofimportance. ‘Ye are bought with a price; be not servants ofmen.’

And so, brethren, ‘choose you this day whom ye willserve.’ You are not made to be independent. You must serve something or person. Recognise the narrow limitations within which yourchoice lies, and the issues which depend upon it. It is not whetheryou will serve Christ or whether you will be free. It is whether youwill serve Christ or your own worst self, the world, men, and I wasgoing to add, the flesh and the devil. Make your choice. He hasbought you. You belong to Him by His death. Yield yourselves to Him,it is the only way of breaking your chains. He that doeth sin is theservant of sin. ‘If the Son make you free, ye shall be freeindeed,’ and not only free; for the King's slaves are princesand nobles, and ‘all things are yours, and ye areChrist's.’ They who say to Him ‘O Lord! truly I am Thyservant,’ receive from Him the rank of kings and priests toGod, and shall reign with Him for ever.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

‘Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called,therein abide with God.’—1 COR. vii. 24.

You find that three times within the compass of a very few versesthis injunction is repeated. ‘As God hath distributed to everyman,’ says the Apostle in the seventeenth verse, ‘as theLord hath called every one, so let him walk. And so ordain I in allthe churches.’ Then again in the twentieth verse, ‘Letevery man abide in the same calling wherein he is called.’ Andthen finally in our text.

The reason for this emphatic reiteration is not difficult toascertain. There were strong temptations to restlessness besettingthe early Christians. The great change from heathenism toChristianity would seem to loosen the joints of all life, and havingbeen swept from their anchorage in religion, all external thingswould appear to be adrift. It was most natural that a man should seekto alter even the circ*mstances of his outward life, when such arevolution had separated him from his ancient self. Hence would tendto come the rupture of family ties, the separation of husband andwife, the Jewish convert seeking to become like a Gentile, theGentile seeking to become like a Jew; the slave trying to be free,the freeman, in some paroxysm of disgust at his former condition,trying to become a slave. These three cases are all referred to inthe context—marriage, circumcision, slavery. And for all threethe Apostle has the same advice to give—‘Stop where youare.’ In whatever condition you were when God's invitation drewyou to Himself—for that, and not being set to a‘vocation’ in life, is the meaning of the word‘called’ here—remain in it.

And then, on the other hand, there was every reason why theApostle and his co-workers should set themselves, by all means intheir power, to oppose this restlessness. For, if Christianity inthose early days had once degenerated into the mere instrument ofsocial revolution, its development would have been thrown back forcenturies, and the whole worth and power of it, for those who firstapprehended it, would have been lost. So you know Paul never said aword to encourage any precipitate attempts to change externals. Helet slavery—he let war alone; he let the tyranny of the RomanEmpire alone—not because he was a coward, not because hethought that these things were not worth meddling with, but becausehe, like all wise men, believed in making the tree good and then itsfruit good. He believed in the diffusion of the principles which heproclaimed, and the mighty Name which he served, as able to girdlethe poison-tree, and to take the bark off it, and the rest, the slowdying, might be left to the work of time. And the same general ideaunderlies the words of my text. ‘Do not try to change,’he says, ‘do not trouble about external conditions; keep toyour Christian profession; let those alone, they will rightthemselves. Art thou a slave? Seek not to be freed. Art thoucircumcised? Seek not to be uncircumcised. Get hold of the central,vivifying, transmuting influence, and all the rest is a question oftime.’

But, besides this more especial application of the words of mytext to the primitive times, it carries with it, dear brethren, alarge general principle that applies to all times—a principle,I may say, dead in the teeth of the maxims upon which life is beingordered by the most of us. Our maxim is, ‘Get on!’Paul's is, ‘Never mind about getting on, getup!’ Our notion is—‘Try to make thecirc*mstances what I would like to have them.’ Paul'sis—‘Leave circ*mstances to take care of themselves, orrather leave God to take care of the circ*mstances. You get close toHim, and hold His hand, and everything else will right itself.’Only he is not preaching stolid acquiescence. His previousinjunctions were—‘Let every man abide in the same callingwherein he was called.’ He sees that that may be misconceivedand abused, and so, in his third reiteration of the precept, he putsin a word which throws a flood of light upon the wholething—‘Let every man wherein he is called thereinabide.’ Yes, but that is not all—‘therein abidewith God!’ Ay, that is it! not an impossible stoicism;not hypocritical, fanatical contempt of the external. But whilst thatgets its due force and weight, whilst a man yields himself in ameasure to the natural tastes and inclinations which God has givenhim, and with the intention that he should find there subordinateguidance and impulse for his life, still let him abide where he iscalled with God, and seek to increase his fellowship with Him, as themain thing that he has to do.

I. Thus we are led from the words before us first to the thoughtthat our chief effort in life ought to be union with God.

‘Abide with God,’ which, being put into other words,means, I think, mainly two things—constant communion, theoccupation of all our nature with Him, and, consequently, therecognition of His will in all circ*mstances.

As to the former, we have the mind and heart and will of Godrevealed to us for the light, the love, the obedience of our will andheart and mind; and our Apostle's precept is, first, that we shouldtry, moment by moment, in all the bustle and stir of our daily life,to have our whole being consciously directed to and engaged with,fertilised and calmed by contact with, the perfect and infinitenature of our Father in heaven.

As we go to our work again to-morrow morning, what differencewould obedience to this precept make upon my life and yours? Beforeall else, and in the midst of all else, we should think of thatDivine Mind that in the heavens is waiting to illumine our darkness;we should feel the glow of that uncreated and perfect Love, which, inthe midst of change and treachery, of coldness and of‘greetings where no kindness is,’ in the midst ofmasterful authority and unloving command, is ready to fill our heartswith tenderness and tranquillity: we should bow before that Willwhich is absolute and supreme indeed, but neither arbitrary norharsh, which is ‘the eternal purpose that He hath purposed inHimself’ indeed, but is also ‘the good pleasure of Hisgoodness and the counsel of His grace.’

And with such a God near to us ever in our faithful thoughts, inour thankful love, in our lowly obedience, with such a mind revealingitself to us, and such a heart opening its hidden storehouses for usas we approach, like some star that, as one gets nearer to it,expands its disc and glows into rich colour, which at a distance wasbut pallid silver, and such a will sovereign above all, energising,even through opposition, and making obedience a delight, what room,brethren, would there be in our lives for agitations, anddistractions, and regrets, and cares, and fears—what room forearthly hopes or for sad remembrances? They die in the fruition of apresent God all-sufficient for mind, and heart, and will—evenas the sun when it is risen with a burning heat may scorch and witherthe weeds that grow about the base of the fruitful tree, whose deeperroots are but warmed by the rays that ripen the rich clusters whichit bears. ‘Let every man, wherein he is called, therein abidewith God.’

And then, as a consequence of such an occupation of the wholebeing with God, there will follow that second element which isincluded in the precept, namely, the recognition of God's will asoperating in and determining all circ*mstances. When our whole soulis occupied with Him, we shall see Him everywhere. And this ought tobe our honest effort—to connect everything which befallsourselves and the world with Him. We should see that Omnipotent Will,the silent energy which flows through all being, asserting itselfthrough all secondary causes, marching on towards its destined andcertain goal, amidst all the whirl and perturbation of events,bending even the antagonism of rebels and the unconsciousness ofgodless men, as well as the play of material instruments, to its ownpurposes, and swinging and swaying the whole set and motion of thingsaccording to its own impulse and by the touch of its own fingers.

Such a faith does not require us to overlook the visible occasionsfor the things which befall us, nor to deny the stable laws accordingto which that mighty will operates in men's lives. Secondary causes?Yes. Men's opposition and crime? Yes. Our own follies and sins? Nodoubt. Blessings and sorrows falling indiscriminately on a wholecommunity or a whole world? Certainly. And yet the visible agents arenot the sources, but only the vehicles of the power, the belting andshafting which transmit a mighty impulse which they had nothing to doin creating. And the antagonism subserves the purposes of the rulewhich it opposes, as the blow of the surf may consolidate thesea-wall that it breaks against. And our own follies and sins mayindeed sorrowfully shadow our lives, and bring on us pains of bodyand disasters in fortune, and stings in spirit for which we alone areresponsible, and which we have no right to regard as inscrutablejudgments—yet even these bitter plants of which our own handshave sowed the seed, spring by His merciful will, and are tobe regarded as His loving, fatherly chastisem*nts—sent beforeto warn us by a premonitory experience that ‘the wages of sinis death.’ As a rule, God does not interpose to pick a man outof the mud into which he has been plunged by his own faults andfollies, until he has learned the lessons which he can find in plentydown in the slough, if he will only look for them! And the fact thatsome great calamity or some great joy affects a wide circle ofpeople, does not make its having a special lesson and meaning foreach of them at all doubtful. There is one of the great depthsof all-moving wisdom and providence, that in the very self-same actit is in one aspect universal, and in another special and individual.The ordinary notion of a special providence goes perilously near thebelief that God's will is less concerned in some parts of a man'slife than in others. It is very much like desecrating andsecularising a whole land by the very act of focussing the sanctityin some single consecrated shrine. But the true belief is that thewhole sweep of a life is under the will of God, and that when, forinstance, war ravages a nation, though the sufferers be involved in acommon ruin occasioned by murderous ambition and measureless pride,yet for each of the sufferers the common disaster has a specialmessage. Let us believe in a divine will which regards eachindividual caught up in the skirts of the horrible storm, even as itregards each individual on whom the equal rays of His universalsunshine fall. Let us believe that every single soul has a place inthe heart, and is taken into account in the purposes of Him who movesthe tempest, and makes His sun to shine upon the unthankful and onthe good. Let us, in accordance with the counsel of the Apostle here,first of all try to anchor and rest our own souls fast and firm inGod all the day long, that, grasping His hand, we may look out uponall the confused dance of fleeting circ*mstances and say, ‘Thywill is done on earth’—if not yet ‘as it is done inheaven,’ still done in the issues and events of all—anddone with my cheerful obedience and thankful acceptance of itscommands and allotments in my own life.

II. The second idea which comes out of these words isthis—Such union with God will lead to contented continuance inour place, whatever it be.

Our text is as if Paul had said, ‘You have been“called” in such and such worldly circ*mstances. The factproves that these circ*mstances do not obstruct the highest andrichest blessings. The light of God can shine on your souls throughthem. Since then you have such sacred memorials associated with them,and know by experience that fellowship with God is possible in them,do you remain where you are, and keep hold of the God who has visitedyou in them.’

If once, in accordance with the thoughts already suggested, ourminds have, by God's help, been brought into something like real,living fellowship with Him, and we have attained the wisdom thatpierces through the external to the Almighty will that underlies allits mazy whirl, then why should we care about shifting our place? Whyshould we trouble ourselves about altering these varying events,since each in its turn is a manifestation of His mind and will; eachin its turn is a means of discipline for us; and through all theirvariety a single purpose works, which tends to a singleend—‘that we should be partakers of Hisholiness’?

And that is the one point of view from which we can bear to lookupon the world and not be utterly bewildered and over-mastered by it.Calmness and central peace are ours; a true appreciation of alloutward good and a charm against the bitterest sting of outward evilsare ours; a patient continuance in the place where He has set us isours—when by fellowship with Him we have learned to look uponour work as primarily doing His will, and upon all our possessionsand conditions primarily as means for making us like Himself. Mostmen seem to think that they have gone to the very bottom of the thingwhen they have classified the gifts of fortune as good or evil,according as they produce pleasure or pain. But that is a poor,superficial classification. It is like taking and arranging books bytheir bindings and flowers by their colours. Instead of saying,‘We divide life into two halves, and we put there all thejoyful, and here all the sad, for that is the rulingdistinction’—let us rather say, ‘The whole is one,because it all comes from one purpose, and it all tends towards oneend. The only question worth asking in regard to the externals of ourlife is—How far does each thing help me to be a good man? howfar does it open my understanding to apprehend Him? how far does itmake my spirit pliable and plastic under His touch? how far does itmake me capable of larger reception of greater gifts from Himself?what is its effect in preparing me for that world beyond?’ Isthere any other greater, more satisfying, more majestic thought oflife than this—the scaffolding by which souls are built up intothe temple of God? And to care whether a thing is painful or pleasantis as absurd as to care whether the bricklayer's trowel is knockingthe sharp corner off a brick, or plastering mortar on the one belowit before he lays it carefully on its course. Is the buildinggetting on? That is the one question that is worth thinkingabout.

You and I write our lives as if on one of those manifold writerswhich you use. A thin filmy sheet here, a bit of black paperbelow it; but the writing goes through upon the next page, and whenthe blackness that divides two worlds is swept away there, thehistory of each life written by ourselves remains legible ineternity. And the question is—What sort of autobiography are wewriting for the revelation of that day, and how far do ourcirc*mstances help us to transcribe fair in our lives the will of ourGod and the image of our Redeemer?

If, then, we have once got hold of that principle that all whichis—summer and winter, storm and sunshine, possession and loss,memory and hope, work and rest, and all the other antitheses oflife—is equally the product of His will, equally themanifestation of His mind, equally His means for our discipline, thenwe have the amulet and talisman which will preserve us from the feverof desire and the shivering fits of anxiety as to things whichperish. And, as they tell of a Christian father who, riding by one ofthe great lakes of Switzerland all day long, on his journey to theChurch Council that was absorbing his thoughts, said towards eveningto the deacon who was pacing beside him, ‘Where is thelake?’ so you and I, journeying along by the margin of thisgreat flood of things when wild storms sweep across it, or when thesunbeams glint upon its blue waters, ‘and birds of peace sitbrooding on the charmed wave,’ will be careless of thechangeful sea, if the eye looks beyond the visible and beholds theunseen, the unchanging real presences that make glory in the darkestlives, and ‘sunshine in the shady place.’ ‘Letevery man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.’

III. Still further, another thought may be suggested from thesewords, or rather from the connection in which they occur, and thatis—Such contented continuance in our place is the dictate ofthe truest wisdom.

There are two or three collateral topics, partly suggested by thevarious connections in which this commandment occurs in the chapter,from which I draw the few remarks I have to make now.

And the first point I would suggest is that very old commonplaceone, so often forgotten, that after all, though you may change aboutas much as you like, there is a pretty substantial equipoise andidentity in the amount of pain and pleasure in all externalconditions. The total length of day and night all the year round isthe same at the North Pole and at the Equator—half and half.Only, in the one place, it is half and half for four-and-twenty hoursat a time, and in the other, the night lasts through gloomy months ofwinter, and the day is bright for unbroken weeks of summer. But, whenyou come to add them up at the year's end, the man who shivers in theice, and the man who pants beneath the beams from the zenith, havehad the same length of sunshine and of darkness. It does not mattermuch at what degrees between the Equator and the Pole you and I live;when the thing comes to be made up we shall be all pretty much uponan equality. You do not get the happiness of the rich man over thepoor one by multiplying twenty shillings a week by as many figures aswill suffice to make it up to £10,000 a year. What is the useof such eager desires to change our condition, when every conditionhas disadvantages attending its advantages as certainly as a shadow;and when all have pretty nearly the same quantity of the raw materialof pain and pleasure, and when the amount of either actuallyexperienced by us depends not on where we are, but on what weare?

Then, still further, there is another consideration to be kept inmind upon which I do not enlarge, as what I have already saidinvolves it—namely, that whilst the portion of external painand pleasure summed up comes pretty much to the same in everybody'slife, any condition may yield the fruit of devout fellowship withGod.

Another very remarkable idea suggested by a part of the contextis—What is the need for my troubling myself about outwardchanges when in Christ I can get all the peculiarities whichmake any given position desirable to me? For instance, hear how Paultalks to slaves eager to be set free: ‘For he that is called inthe Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewisealso he that is called, being free, is Christ'sservant.’ If you generalise that principle it comes to this,that in union with Jesus Christ we possess, by our fellowship withHim, the peculiar excellences and blessings that are derivable fromexternal relations of every sort. To take concrete examples—ifa man is a slave, he may be free in Christ. If free, he may have thejoy of utter submission to an absolute master in Christ. If you and Iare lonely, we may feel all the delights of society by union withHim. If surrounded and distracted by companionship, and seeking forseclusion, we may get all the peace of perfect privacy in fellowshipwith Him. If we are rich, and sometimes think that we were in aposition of less temptation if we were poorer, we may find all theblessings for which we sometimes covet poverty in communion with Him.If we are poor, and fancy that, if we had a little more just to liftus above the grinding, carking care of to-day and the anxiety ofto-morrow, we should be happier, we may find all tranquillity in Him.And so you may run through all the variety of human conditions, andsay to yourself—What is the use of looking for blessingsflowing from these from without? Enough for us if we grasp that Lordwho is all in all, and will give us in peace the joy of conflict, inconflict the calm of peace, in health the refinement of sickness, insickness the vigour and glow of health, in memory the brightness ofundying hope, in hope the calming of holy memory, in wealth thelowliness of poverty, in poverty the ease of wealth; in life and indeath being all and more than all that dazzles us by the false gleamof created brightness!

And so, finally—a remark which has no connection with thetext itself, but which I cannot avoid inserting here—I want youto think, and think seriously, of the antagonism and diametricalopposition between these principles of my text and the maxims currentin the world, and nowhere more so than in this city. Our text is arevolutionary one. It is dead against the watchwords that you fathersgive your children—‘push,’ ‘energy,’‘advancement,’ ‘get on, whatever you do.’ Youhave made a philosophy of it, and you say that this restlessdiscontent with a man's present position and eager desire to get alittle farther ahead in the scramble, underlies much moderncivilisation and progress, and leads to the diffusion of wealth andto employment for the working classes, and to mechanical inventions,and domestic comforts, and I don't know what besides. You have made areligion of it; and it is thought to be blasphemy for a man to standup and say—‘It is idolatry!’ My dear brethren, Ideclare I solemnly believe that, if I were to go on to the ManchesterExchange next Tuesday, and stand up and say—‘There is noGod,’ I should not be thought half such a fool as if I were togo and say—‘Poverty is not an evil per se, and mendo not come into this world to get on but to getup—nearer and liker to God.’ If you, by God'sgrace, lay hold of this principle of my text, and honestly resolve towork it out, trusting in that dear Lord who ‘though He was richyet for our sakes became poor,’ in ninety-nine cases out of ahundred you will have to make up your minds to let the big prizes ofyour trade go into other people's hands, and be contented tosay—‘I live by peaceful, high, pure, Christ-likethoughts.’ ‘He that needs least,’ said an oldheathen, ‘is nearest the gods’; but I would rather modifythe statement into, ‘He that needs most, and knows it, isnearest the gods.’ For surely Christ is more than mammon; and aspirit nourished by calm desires and holy thoughts into growingvirtues and increasing Christlikeness is better than circ*mstancesordered to our will, in the whirl of which we have lost our God.‘In everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving,let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God and theGod of peace shall keep your hearts and minds in ChristJesus.’

‘LOVE BUILDETHUP’

‘Now, as touching things offered unto idols, weknow that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charityedifieth. 2. And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, heknoweth nothing yet as he ought to know. 3. But if any man love God,the same is known of him. 4. As concerning therefore the eating ofthose things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know thatan idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God butone. 5. For though there be that are called gods, whether in heavenor in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) 6. But to usthere is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we inHim; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we byHim. 7. Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some,with conscience of the idol unto this hour, eat it as a thing offeredunto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled. 8. But meatcommendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better;neither, if we eat not, are we the worse. 9. But take heed, lest byany means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock to them thatare weak. 10. For if any man see thee which hast knowledge sit atmeat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which isweak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols;11. And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whomChrist died? 12. But when ye sin so against the brethren, and woundtheir weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. 13. Wherefore, if meatmake my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the worldstandeth, lest I make my brother to offend.’—1 COR. viii.1-13.

It is difficult for us to realise the close connection whichexisted between idol-worship and daily life. Something of the samesort is found in all mission fields. It was almost impossible forChristians to take any part in society and not seem to sanctionidolatry. Would that Christianity were as completely interwoven withour lives as heathen religions are into those of their devotees! Paulseems to have had referred to him a pressing case of conscience,which divided the Corinthian Church, as to whether a Christian couldjoin in the usual feasts or sacrifices. His answer is in thispassage.

The longest way round is sometimes the shortest way home. TheApostle begins far away from the subject in hand by running acontrast between knowledge and love, and setting the latter first.But his contrast is very relevant to his purpose. Small questionsshould be solved on great principles.

The first principle laid down by Paul is the superiority of loveover knowledge, the bearing of which on the question in hand willappear presently. We note that there is first a distinct admission ofthe Corinthians’ intelligence, though there is probably a tingeof irony in the language ‘We know that we all haveknowledge.’ ‘You Corinthians are fully aware that you arevery superior people. Whatever else you know, you know that, and Ifully recognise it.’

The admission is followed by a sudden, sharp comment, to which theCorinthians’ knowledge that they knew laid them open. Swift asthe thrust of a spear comes flashing ‘Knowledge puffethup.’ Puffed-up things are swollen by wind only, and the morethey are inflated the hollower and emptier they are; and such a sharppoint as Paul's saying shrivels them. The statement is not meant asthe assertion of a necessary or uniform result of knowledge, but itdoes put plainly a very usual result of it, if it is unaccompanied bylove. It is a strange, sad result of superior intelligence oracquirements, that it so often leads to conceit, to a false estimateof the worth and power of knowing, to a ridiculous over-valuing ofcertain acquirements, and to an insolent contempt and cruel disregardof those who have them not. Paul's dictum has been only too wellconfirmed by experience.

‘Love builds up,’ or ‘edifies.’ Probablythe main direction in which that building up is conceived of astaking effect, is in aiding the progress of our neighbours,especially in the religious life. But the tendency of love to rear afair fabric of personal character is not to be overlooked. In regardto effect on character, the palm must be given to love, whichproduces solid excellence far beyond what mere knowledge can effect.Further, that pluming one's self on knowledge is a sure proof ofignorance. The more real our acquirements, the more they disclose ourdeficiencies. All self-conceit hinders us from growing intellectuallyor morally, and intellectual conceit is the worst kind of it.

Very significantly, love to God, and not the simple emotion oflove without reference to its object, is opposed to knowledge; forlove so directed is the foundation of all excellence, and of all reallove to men. Love to God is not the antithesis of true knowledge, butit is the only victorious antagonist of the conceit of knowing. Verysignificantly, too, does Paul vary his conclusion in verse 3 bysaying that the man who loves God ‘is known of Him,’instead of, as we might have expected, ‘knows Him.’ Thelatter is true, but the statement in the verse puts more strongly thethought of the man's being an object of God's care. In regard, then,to their effects on character, in producing consideration andhelpfulness to others, and in securing God's protection, love standsfirst, and knowledge second.

What has all this to do with the question in hand? This, that iflooked at from the standpoint of knowledge, it may be solved in oneway, but if from that of love, it will be answered in another. So, inverses 4-6, Paul treats the matter on the ground of knowledge. Thefundamental truth of Christianity, that there is one God, who isrevealed and works through Jesus Christ, was accepted by all theCorinthians. Paul states it here broadly, denying that there were anyobjective realities answering to the popular conceptions or poeticfancies or fair artistic presentments of the many gods and lords ofthe Greek pantheon, and asserting that all Christians recognise oneGod, the Father, from whom the universe of worlds and living thingshas origin, and to whom we as Christians specially belong, and oneLord, the channel through whom all divine operations of creation,providence, and grace flow, and by whose redeeming work we Christiansare endowed with our best life. If a believer was fully convinced ofthese truths, he could partake of sacrificial feasts without dangerto himself, and without either sanctioning idolatry or being temptedto return to it.

No doubt it was on this ground that an idol was nothing that thelaxer party defended their action in eating meat offered to idols;and Paul fully recognises that they had a strong case, and that, ifthere were no other considerations to come in, the answer to thequestion of conscience submitted to him would be wholly in favour ofthe less scrupulous section. But there is something better thanknowledge; namely, love. And its decision must be taken before thewhole material for a judgment is in evidence.

Therefore, in the remainder of the chapter, Paul dwells on lovingregard for brethren. In verse 7, he reminds the ‘knowing’Corinthians that new convictions do not obliterate the power of oldassociations. The awful fascination of early belief still exercisesinfluence. The chains are not wholly broken off. Every mission fieldshows examples of this. Every man knows that habits are not sosuddenly overcome, that there is no hankering after them or liabilityto relapse. It would be a dangerous thing for a weak believer to risksharing in an idol feast; for he would be very likely to slide downto his old level of belief, and Zeus or Pallas to seem to him realpowers once more.

The considerations in verse 7 would naturally be followed by thefurther thoughts in verse 9, etc. But, before dealing with these,Paul interposes another thought in verse 8, to the effect thatpartaking of or abstinence from any kind of food will not, in itself,either help or hinder the religious life. The bearing of thatprinciple on his argument seems to be to reduce the importance of thewhole question, and to suggest that, since eating of idol sacrificescould not be called a duty or a means of spiritual progress, the waywas open to take account of others’ weakness as determining ouraction in regard to it. A modern application may illustrate thepoint. Suppose that a Christian does not see total abstinence fromintoxicants to be obligatory on him. Well, he cannot say thatdrinking is so, or that it is a religious duty, and so the way isclear for urging regard to others’ weakness as an element inthe case.

That being premised, Paul comes to his final point; namely, thatChristian men are bound to restrict their liberty so that they shallnot tempt weaker brethren on to a path on which they cannot walkwithout stumbling. He has just shown the danger to such of partakingof the sacrificial feasts. He now completes his position by showing,in verse 10, that the stronger man's example may lead the weaker todo what he cannot do innocently. What is harmless to us may be fatalto others, and, if we have led them to it, their blood is on ourheads.

The terrible discordance of such conduct with our Lord's example,which should be our law, is forcibly set forth in verse 11, which hasthree strongly emphasised thoughts—the man's fate—heperishes; his relation to his slayer—a brother; what Christ didfor the man whom a Christian has sent to destruction—died forhim. These solemn thoughts are deepened in verse 12, which reminds usof the intimate union between the weakest and Christ, by which He soidentifies Himself with them that any blow struck on them touchesHim.

There is no greater sin than to tempt weak or ignorant Christiansto thoughts or acts which their ignorance or weakness cannotentertain or do without damage to their religion. There is much needfor laying that truth to heart in these days. Both in the field ofspeculation and of conduct, Christians, who think that they know somuch better than ignorant believers, need to be reminded of it.

So Paul, in verse 13, at last answers the question. His suddenturning to his own conduct is beautiful. He will not so much commandothers, as proclaim his own determination. He does so withcharacteristic vehemence and hyperbole. No doubt the liberal party inCorinth were ready to complain against the proposal to restrict theirfreedom because of others’ weakness; and they would bedisarmed, or at least silenced, and might be stimulated to like nobleresolution, by Paul's example.

The principle plainly laid down here is as distinctly applicableto the modern question of abstinence from intoxicants. No one candoubt that ‘moderation’ in their use by some temptsothers to use which soon becomes fatally immoderate. The Church hasbeen robbed of promising members thereby, over and over again. Howcan a Christian man cling to a ‘moderate’ use of thesethings, and run the risk of destroying by his example a brother forwhom Christ died?

THE SIN OF SILENCE

‘For though I preach the Gospel, I have nothing toglory of: for necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if Ipreach not the Gospel! 17. For if I do this thing willingly, I have areward.’—1 COR. ix. 16, 17.

The original reference of these words is to the Apostle'sprinciple and practice of not receiving for his support money fromthe churches. Gifts he did accept; pay he did not. The exposition ofhis reason is interesting, ingenuous, and chivalrous. He stronglyasserts his right, even while he as strongly declares that he willwaive it. The reason for his waiving it is that he desires to havesomewhat in his service beyond the strict line of his duty. Hispreaching itself, with all its toils and miseries, was but part ofhis day's work, which he was bidden to do, and for doing which hedeserved no thanks nor praise. But he would like to have a little bitof glad service over and above what he is ordered to do, that, as heingenuously says, he may have ‘somewhat to boast of.’

In this exposition of motives we have two great principlesactuating the Apostle—one, his profound sense of obligation,and the other his desire, if it might be, to do more than he wasbound to do, because he loved his work so much. And though he isspeaking here as an apostle, and his example is not to beunconditionally transferred to us, yet I think that the motives whichactuated his conduct are capable of unconditional application toourselves.

There are three things here. There is the obligation of speech,there is the penalty of silence, and there is the glad obediencewhich transcends obligation.

I. First, mark the obligation of speech.

No doubt the Apostle had, in a special sense, a ‘necessitylaid upon’ him, which was first laid upon him on that road toDamascus, and repeated many a time in his life. But though he differsfrom us in the direct supernatural commission which was given to him,in the width of the sphere in which he had to work, and in thesplendour of the gifts which were entrusted to his stewardship, hedoes not differ from us in the reality of the obligation which waslaid upon him. Every Christian man is as truly bound as was Paul topreach the Gospel. The commission does not depend upon apostolicdignity. Jesus Christ, when He said, ‘Go ye into all the world,and preach the Gospel to every creature,’ was not speaking tothe eleven, but to all generations of His Church. And whilst thereare many other motives on which we may rest the Christian duty ofpropagating the Christian faith, I think that we shall be all thebetter if we bottom it upon this, the distinct and definitecommandment of Jesus Christ, the grip of which encloses all who forthemselves have found that the Lord is gracious.

For that commandment is permanent. It is exactly contemporaneouswith the duration of the promise which is appended to it, andwhosoever suns himself in the light of the latter is bound by theprecept of the former. ‘Lo! I am with you alway, even to theend of the world,’ defines the duration of the promise, and itdefines also the duration of the duty. Nay, even the promise is madeconditional upon the discharge of the duty enjoined. For it is to theChurch ‘going into all the world, and preaching the Gospel toevery creature,’ that the promise of an abiding presence ismade.

Let us remember, too, that, just because this commission is givento the whole Church, it is binding on every individual member of theChurch. There is a very common fallacy, not confined to this subject,but extending over the whole field of Christian duty, by which thingsthat are obligatory on the community are shuffled off the shouldersof the individual. But we have to remember that the whole Church isnothing more than the sum total of all its members, and that nothingis incumbent upon it which is not in their measure incumbent uponeach of them. Whatsoever Christ says to all, He says to each, and thecommunity has no duties which you and I have not.

Of course, there are diversities of forms of obedience to thiscommandment; of course, the restrictions of locality and the otherobligations of life, come in to modify it; and it is not every man'sduty to wander over the whole world doing this work. But the directwork of communicating to others who know it not the sweetness and thepower of Jesus Christ belongs to every Christian man. You cannot buyyourselves out of the ranks, as they used to be able to do out of themilitia, by paying for a substitute. Both forms of service areobligatory upon each of us. We all, if we know anything of Christ andHis love and His power, are bound, by the fact that we do know it, totell it to those whom we can reach. You have all got congregations ifyou would look for them. There is not a Christian man or woman inthis world who has not somebody that he or she can speak to moreefficiently than anybody else can. You have your friends, yourrelations, the people with whom you are brought into daily contact,if you have no wider congregations. You cannot all stand up andpreach in the sense in which I do so. But this is not the meaning ofthe word in the New Testament. It does not imply a pulpit, nor a setdiscourse, nor a gathered multitude; it simply implies a herald'stask of proclaiming. Everybody who has found Jesus Christ can say,‘I have found the Messiah,’ and everybody who knows Himcan say, ‘Come and hear, and I will tell what the Lord hathdone for my soul.’ Since you can do it you are bound to do it;and if you are one of ‘the dumb dogs, lying down and loving toslumber,’ of whom there are such crowds paralysing the energiesand weakening the witness of every Church upon earth, then you arecriminally and suicidally oblivious of an obligation which is a joyand a privilege as much as a duty.

Oh, brethren! I do want to lay on the consciences of all youChristian people this, that nothing can absolve you from theobligation of personal, direct speech to some one of Christ and Hissalvation. Unless you can say, ‘I have not refrained my lips, OLord! Thou knowest,’ there frowns over against you anunfulfilled duty, the neglect of which is laming your spiritualactivity, and drying up the sources of your spiritual strength.

But, then, besides this direct effort, there are the otherindirect methods in which this commandment can be discharged, bysympathy and help of all sorts, about which I need say no morehere.

Jesus Christ's ideal of His Church was an active propaganda, anarmy in which there were no non-combatants, even although some of thecombatants might be detailed to remain in the camp and look after thestuff, and others of them might be in the forefront of the battle.But is that ideal ever fulfilled in any of our churches? How manyamongst us there are who do absolutely nothing in the shape ofChristian work! Some of us seem to think that the voluntary principleon which our Nonconformist churches are largely organised means,‘I do not need to do anything unless I like. Inclination is theguide of duty, and if I do not care to take any active part in thework of our church, nobody has anything to say.’ No man canforce me, but if Jesus Christ says to me, ‘Go!’ and Isay, ‘I had rather not,’ Jesus Christ and I have tosettle accounts between us. The less men control, the morestringent ought to be the control of Christ. And if the principle ofChristian obedience is a willing heart, then the duty of a Christianis to see that the heart is willing.

A stringent obligation, not to be shuffled off by any of theexcuses that we make, is laid upon us all. It makes very short workof a number of excuses. There is a great deal in the tone of thisgeneration which tends to chill the missionary spirit. We know moreabout the heathen world, and familiarity diminishes horror. We havetaken up, many of us, milder and more merciful ideas about thecondition of those who die without knowing the name of Jesus Christ.We have taken to the study of comparative religion as a science,forgetting sometimes that the thing that we are studying as a scienceis spreading a dark cloud of ignorance and apathy over millions ofmen. And all these reasons somewhat sap the strength and cool thefervour of a good many Christian people nowadays. Jesus Christ'scommandment remains just as it was.

Then some of us say, ‘I prefer working at home!’ Well,if you are doing all that you can there, and really areenthusiastically devoted to one phase of Christian service, the greatprinciple of division of labour comes in to warrant your not enteringupon other fields which others cultivate. But unless you are thuscasting all your energies into the work which you say that youprefer, there is no reason in it why you should do nothing in theother direction. Jesus Christ still says, ‘Go ye into all theworld.’

Then some of you say, ‘Well, I do not much believe in yourmissionary societies. There is a great deal of waste of money aboutthem. A number of things there are that one does not approve of. Ihave heard stories about missionaries being very idle, veryluxurious, and taking too much pay, and doing too little work.’Well, be it so! Very probably it is partly true; though I do not knowthat the people whose testimony is so willingly accepted, to thedetriment of our brethren in foreign lands, are precisely the kind ofpeople that should talk much about self-sacrifice and luxuriousliving, or whose estimate of Christian work is to be relied upon. Ifancy many of them, if they walked about the streets of an Englishtown, would have a somewhat similar report to give, as they have whenthey walk about the streets of an Indian one. But be that as it may,does that indictment draw a wet sponge across the commandment ofJesus Christ? or can you chisel out of the stones of Sinai one of thewords written there, by reason of the imperfections of those who areseeking to obey them? Surely not! Christ still says, ‘Go yeinto all the world!’

I sometimes venture to think that the day will come when thecondition of being received into, and retained in, the communion of aChristian church will be obedience to that commandment. Why, evenbees have the sense at a given time of the year to turn the dronesout of the hives, and sting them to death. I do not recommend thelast part of the process, but I am not sure but that it would be abenefit to us all, both to those ejected and to those retained, thatwe should get rid of that added weight that clogs every organisedcommunity in this and other lands—the dead weight of idlers whosay that they are Christ's disciples. Whether it is a condition ofchurch membership or not, sure I am that it is a condition offellowship with Jesus Christ, and a condition, therefore, of healthin the Christian life, that it should be a life of active obedienceto this plain, imperative, permanent, and universal command.

II. Secondly, a word as to the penalty of silence.

‘Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel.’ I suppose Paulis thinking mainly of a future issue, but not exclusively of that. Atall events, let me point you, in a word or two, to the plainpenalties of silence here, and to the awful penalties of silencehereafter.

‘Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel.’ If you are adumb and idle professor of Christ's truth, depend upon it that yourdumb idleness will rob you of much communion with Jesus Christ. Thereare many Christians who would be ever so much happier, more joyous,and more assured Christians if they would go and talk about Christ toother people. Because they have locked up God's word in their heartsit melts away unknown, and they lose more than they suspect of thesweetness and buoyancy and assured confidence that might mark them,for no other reason than because they seek to keep their morsel tothemselves. Like that mist that lies white and dull over the groundon a winter's morning, which will be blown away with the least puffof fresh air, there lie doleful dampnesses, in their sooty folds,over many a Christian heart, shutting out the sun from the earth, anda little whiff of wholesome activity in Christ's cause would clearthem all away, and the sun would shine down upon men again. If youwant to be a happy Christian, work for Jesus Christ. I do not laythat down as a specific by itself. There are other things to be takenin conjunction with it, but yet it remains true that the woe of alanguid Christianity attaches to the men who, being professingChristians, are silent when they should speak, and idle when theyshould work.

There is, further, the woe of the loss of sympathies, and the gainof all the discomforts and miseries of a self-absorbed life. Andthere is, further, the woe of the loss of one of the best ways ofconfirming one's own faith in the truth—viz. that of seeking toimpart it to others. If you want to learn a thing, teach it. If youwant to grasp the principles of any science, try to explain it tosomebody who does not understand it. If you want to know where, inthese days of jangling and controversy, the true, vital centre of theGospel is, and what is the essential part of the revelation of God,go and tell sinful men about Jesus Christ who died for them; and youwill find out that it is the Cross, and Him who died thereon, asdying for the world, that is the power which can move men's hearts.And so you will cleave with a closer grasp, in days of difficulty andunsettlement, to that which is able to bring light into darkness andto harmonise the discord of a troubled and sinful soul. And, further,there is the woe of having none that can look to you and say,‘I owe myself to thee.’ Oh, brethren! there is no greaterjoy accessible to a man than that of feeling that through his poorwords Christ has entered into a brother's heart. And you are throwingaway all this because you shut your mouths and neglect the plaincommandment of your Lord.

Ay! but that is not all. There is a future to be taken intoaccount, and I think that Christian people do far too little realisethe solemn truth that it is not all the same then whether aman has kept his Master's commandments or neglected them. I believethat whilst a very imperfect faith saves a man, there is such a thingas being ‘saved, yet so as through fire,’ and that thereis such a thing as having ‘an abundant entrance ministered untous into the everlasting kingdom.’ He whose life has been veryslightly influenced by Christian principle, and who has neglectedplain, imperative duties, will not stand on the same level ofblessedness as the man who has more completely yielded himself inlife to the constraining power of Christ's love, and has sought tokeep all His commandments.

Heaven is not a dead level. Every man there will receive as muchblessedness as he is capable of, but capacities will vary, and theprincipal factor in determining the capacity, which capacitydetermines the blessedness, will be the thoroughness of obedience toall the ordinances of Christ in the course of the life upon earth.So, though we know, and therefore dare say, little about that future,I do beseech you to take this to heart, that he who there can standbefore God, and say, ‘Behold! I and the children whom God hathgiven me’ will wear a crown brighter than the starless ones ofthose who saved themselves, and have brought none with them.

‘Some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship, theyall came safe to land.’ But the place where they stand dependson their Christian life, and of that Christian life one main elementis obedience to the commandment which makes them the apostles andmissionaries of their Lord.

III. Lastly, note the glad obedience which transcends the limitsof obligation.

‘If I do this thing willingly I have a reward.’ Pauldesired to bring a little more than was required, in token of hislove to his Master, and of his thankful acceptance of the obligation.The artist who loves his work will put more work into his picturethan is absolutely needed, and will linger over it, lavishingdiligence and care upon it, because he is in love with his task. Theservant who seeks to do as little as he can scrape through withwithout rebuke is actuated by no high motives. The trader who barelyputs as much into the scale as will balance the weight in the otheris grudging in his dealings; but he who, with liberal hand, gives‘shaken down, pressed together, and running over’measure, gives because he delights in the giving.

And so it is in the Christian life. There are many of us whosequestion seems to be, ‘How little can I get off with? how muchcan I retain?’—many of us whose effort is to find out howmuch of the world is consistent with the profession of Christianity,and to find the minimum of effort, of love, of service, of giftswhich may free us from obligation.

And what does that mean? It means that we are slaves. It meansthat if we durst we would give nothing, and do nothing. And what doesthat mean? It means that we do not care for the Lord, and have no joyin our work. And what does that mean? It means that our work deservesno praise, and will get no reward. If we love Christ we shall beanxious, if it were possible, to do more than He commands us, intoken of our loyalty to the King, and of our delight in the service.Of course, in the highest view, nothing can be more than necessary.Of course He has the right to all our work; but yet there are heightsof Christian consecration and self-sacrifice which a man will not beblamed if he has not climbed, and will be praised if he has. What wewant, if I might venture to say so, is extravagance of service. Judasmay say, ‘To what purpose is this waste?’ but Jesus willsay, He ‘hath wrought a good work on Me,’ and thefragrance of the ointment will smell sweet through the centuries.

So, dear brethren, the upshot of the whole thing is, Do not let usdo our Christian work reluctantly, else it is only slave's work, andthere is no blessing in it, and no reward will come to us from it. Donot let us ask, ‘How little may I do?’ but ‘Howmuch can I do?’ Thus, asking, we shall not offer as burntoffering to the Lord that which doth cost us nothing. On His part Hehas given the commandment as a sign of His love. The stewardship is atoken that He trusts us, the duty is an honour, the burden is agrace. On our parts let us seek for the joy of service which is notcontented with the bare amount of the tribute that is demanded, butgives something over, if it were possible, because of our love toHim. They who thus give to Jesus Christ their all of love and effortand service will receive it all back a hundredfold, for the Master isnot going to be in debt to any of His servants, and He says to themall, ‘I will repay it, howbeit I say not unto thee how thouowest unto Me even thine own self besides.’

A SERVANT OF MEN

‘For though I be free from all men, yet have I mademyself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. 20. And unto theJews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that areunder the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that areunder the law; 21. To them that are without law, as without law,(being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that Imight gain them that are without law. 22. To the weak became I asweak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men,that I might by all means save some. 23. And this I do for thegospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof withyou.’—1 COR. ix. 19-23.

Paul speaks much of himself, but he is not an egotist. When hesays, ‘I do so and so,’ it is a gracious way of enjoiningthe same conduct on his readers. He will lay no burden on them whichhe does not himself carry. The leader who can say ‘Come’is not likely to want followers. So, in this section, the Apostle isreally enjoining on the Corinthians the conduct which he declares ishis own.

The great principle incumbent on all Christians, with a view tothe salvation of others, is to go as far as one can withoutuntruthfulness in the direction of finding points of resemblance andcontact with those to whom we would commend the Gospel. There is abase counterfeit of this apostolic example, which slurs overdistinctive beliefs, and weakly tries to please everybody bydiffering from nobody. That trimming to catch all winds never gainsany. Mr. Facing-both-ways is not a powerful evangelist. The motive ofbecoming all things to all men must be plainly disinterested, and theassimilation must have love for the souls concerned and eagerness tobring the truth to them, and them to the truth, legibly stamped uponit, or it will be regarded, and rightly so, as mere cowardice ordishonesty. And there must be no stretching the assimilation to thelength of either concealing truth or fraternising in evil. Love to myneighbour can never lead to my joining him in wrongdoing.

But, while the limits of this assumption of the colour of oursurroundings are plainly marked, there is ample space within thesefor the exercise of this eminently Christian grace. We must get nearpeople if we would help them. Especially must we identify ourselveswith them in sympathy, and seek to multiply points of assimilation,if we would draw them to Jesus Christ. He Himself had to become manthat He might gain men, and His servants have to do likewise, intheir degree. The old story of the Christian teacher who voluntarilybecame a slave, that he might tell of Christ to slaves, has in spiritto be repeated by us all.

We can do no good by standing aloof on a height and flinging downthe Gospel to the people below. They must feel that we enter intotheir circ*mstances, prejudices, ways of thinking, and the like, ifour words are to have power. That is true about all Christianteachers, whether of old or young. You must be a boy among boys, andtry to show that you enter into the boy's nature, or you may lecturetill doomsday and do no good.

Paul instances three cases in which he had acted, and stillcontinued to do so, on this principle. He was a Jew, but after hisconversion he had to ‘become a Jew’ by a distinct act;that is, he had receded so far from his old self, that he, if he hadhad only himself to think of, would have given up all Jewishobservances. But he felt it his duty to conciliate prejudice as faras he could, and so, though he would have fought to the death ratherthan given countenance to the belief that circumcision was necessary,he had no scruple about circumcising Timothy; and, though he believedthat for Christians the whole ancient ritual was abolished, he wasquite willing, if it would smooth away the prejudices of the‘many thousands of Jews who believed,’ to show, by hisparticipation in the temple worship, that he ‘walked orderly,keeping the law.’ If he was told ‘You must,’ hisanswer could only be ‘I will not’; but if it was aquestion of conciliating, he was ready to go all lengths forthat.

The category which he names next is not composed of differentpersons from the first, but of the same persons regarded from asomewhat different point of view. ‘Them that are under thelaw’ describes Jews, not by their race, but by their religion;and Paul was willing to take his place among them, as we have justobserved. But he will not do that so as to be misunderstood,wherefore he protests that in doing so he is voluntarily abridginghis freedom for a specific purpose. He is not ‘under thelaw’; for the very pith of his view of the Christian's positionis that he has nothing to do with that Mosaic law in any of itsparts, because Christ has made him free.

The second class to whom in his wide sympathies he is able toassimilate himself, is the opposite of the former—the Gentileswho are ‘without law.’ He did not preach on Mars’Hill as he did in the synagogues. The many-sided Gospel had aspectsfitted for the Gentiles who had never heard of Moses, and themany-sided Apostle had links of likeness to the Greek and thebarbarian. But here, too, his assimilation of himself to those whomhe seeks to win is voluntary; wherefore he protests that he is notwithout law, though he recognises no longer the obligations ofMoses’ law, for he is ‘under [or, rather,“in”] law to Christ.’

‘The weak’ are those too scrupulous-consciencedChristians of whom he has been speaking in chapter viii. and whosenarrow views he exhorted stronger brethren to respect, and to refrainfrom doing what they could do without harming their own consciences,lest by doing it they should induce a brother to do the same, whoseconscience would prick him for it. That is a lesson needed to-day asmuch as, or more than, in Paul's time, for the widely differentdegrees of culture and diversities of condition, training, andassociations among Christians now necessarily result in very diverseviews of Christian conduct in many matters. The grand principle laiddown here should guide us all, both in regard to fellow-Christiansand others. Make yourself as like them as you honestly can; restrictyourself of allowable acts, in deference to even narrow prejudices;but let the motive of your assimilating yourself to others be clearlytheir highest good, that you may ‘gain’ them, not foryourself but for your Master.

Verse 23 lays down Paul's ruling principle, which both impelledhim to become all things to all men, with a view to their salvation,as he has been saying, and urged him to effort and self-discipline,with a view to his own, as he goes on to say. ‘For the Gospel'ssake’ seems to point backward; ‘that I may be a jointpartaker thereof points forward. We have not only to preach theGospel to others, but to live on it and be saved by it ourselves.

HOW THE VICTOR RUNS

‘So run, that ye may obtain.’—1 COR.ix. 24.

‘So run.’ Does that mean ‘Run so that yeobtain?’ Most people, I suppose, superficially reading thewords, attach that significance to them, but the ‘so’here carries a much greater weight of meaning than that. It is a wordof comparison. The Apostle would have the Corinthians recall thepicture which he has been putting before them—a picture of ascene that was very familiar to them; for, as most of us know, one ofthe most important of the Grecian games was celebrated at intervalsin the immediate neighbourhood of Corinth. Many of the Corinthianconverts had, no doubt, seen, or even taken part in them. Theprevious portion of the verse in which our text occurs appeals to theCorinthians’ familiar knowledge of the arena and thecompetitors, ‘Know ye not that they which run in a race runall, but one receiveth the prize?’ He would have them picturethe eager racers, with every muscle strained, and the one victorstarting to the front; and then he says, ‘Look at that pantingconqueror. That is how you should run. Sorun—‘meaning thereby not, ‘Run so that you mayobtain the prize,’ but ‘Run so’ as the victor does,‘in order that you may obtain.’ So, then, this victor isto be a lesson to us, and we are to take a leaf out of his book. Letus see what he teaches us.

I. The first thing is, the utmost tension and energy and strenuouseffort.

It is very remarkable that Paul should pick out these Greciangames as containing for Christian people any lesson, for they werehoneycombed, through and through, with idolatry and all sorts ofimmorality, so that no Jew ventured to go near them, and it was partof the discipline of the early Christian Church that professingChristians should have nothing to do with them in any shape.

And yet here, as in many other parts of his letters, Paul takesthese foul things as patterns for Christians. ‘There is a soulof goodness in things evil, if we would observantly distil itout.’ It is very much as if English preachers were to refertheir people to a racecourse, and say, ‘Even there you may pickout lessons, and learn something of the way in which Christian peopleought to live.’

On the same principle the New Testament deals with that diabolicalbusiness of fighting. It is taken as an emblem for the Christiansoldier, because, with all its devilishness, there is in it this, atleast, that men give themselves up absolutely to the will of theircommander, and are ready to fling away their lives if he lifts hisfinger. That at least is grand and noble, and to be imitated on ahigher plane.

In like manner Paul takes these poor racers as teaching us alesson. Though the thing be all full of sin, we can get one valuablethought out of it, and it is this—If people would work half ashard to gain the highest object that a man can set before him, ashundreds of people are ready to do in order to gain trivial andpaltry objects, there would be fewer stunted and half-dead Christiansamongst us. ‘That is the way to run,’ says Paul,‘if you want to obtain.’

Look at the contrast that he hints at, between the prize thatstirs these racers’ energies into such tremendous operation andthe prize which Christians profess to be pursuing. ‘They do itto obtain a corruptible crown’—a twist of pine branch outof the neighbouring grove, worth half-a-farthing, and a littlepassing glory not worth much more. They do it to obtain a corruptiblecrown; we do not do it, though we professedly have anincorruptible one as our aim and object. If we contrast the relativevalues of the objects that men pursue so eagerly, and the objects ofthe Christian course, surely we ought to be smitten down withpenitent consciousness of our own unworthiness, if not of our ownhypocrisy.

It is not even there that the lesson stops, because we Christianpeople may be patterns and rebukes to ourselves. For, on the one sideof our nature we show what we can do when we are really in earnestabout getting something; and on the other side we show with howlittle work we can be contented, when, at bottom, we do not much carewhether we get the prize or not. If you and I really believed thatthat crown of glory which Paul speaks about might be ours, and wouldbe all sufficing for us if it were ours, as truly as we believe thatmoney is a good thing, there would not be such a difference betweenthe way in which we clutch at the one and the apathy which scarcelycares to put out a hand for the other. The things that are seen andtemporal do get the larger portion of the energies and thoughts ofthe average Christian man, and the things that are unseen and eternalget only what is left. Sometimes ninety per cent. of the water of astream is taken away to drive a milldam or do work, and only ten percent. can be spared to trickle down the half-dry channel and donothing but reflect the bright sun and help the little flowers andthe grass to grow. So, the larger portion of most lives goes to drivethe mill-wheels, and there is very little left, in the case of manyof us, in order to help us towards God, and bring us closer intocommunion with our Lord. ‘Run’ for the crown as eagerlyas you ‘run’ for your incomes, or for anything that youreally, in your deepest desires, want. Take yourselves for your ownpatterns and your own rebukes. Your own lives may show you how youcan love, hope, work, and deny yourselves when you havesufficient inducement, and their flame should put to shame theirfrost, for the warmth is directed towards trifles and the coldnesstowards the crown. If you would run for the incorruptible prize ofeffort in the fashion in which others and yourselves run for thecorruptible, your whole lives would be changed. Why! if Christianpeople in general really took half—half? ay! a tenth partof—the honest, persistent pains to improve their Christiancharacter, and become more like Jesus Christ, which a violinist willtake to master his instrument, there would be a new life for most ofour Christian communities. Hours and hours of patient practice arenot too much for the one; how many moments do we give to the other?‘So run, that ye obtain.’

II. The victorious runner sets Christians an example of rigidself-control.

Every man that is striving for the mastery is ‘temperate inall things.’ The discipline for runners and athletes was rigid.They had ten months of spare diet—no wine—hard gymnasticexercises every day, until not an ounce of superfluous flesh was upontheir muscles, before they were allowed to run in the arena. And,says Paul, that is the example for us. They practise this rigiddiscipline and abstinence by way of preparation for the race, andafter it was run they might dispense with the training. You and Ihave to practise rigid abstinence as part of the race, as acontinuous necessity. They did not abstain only from badthings, they did not only avoid criminal acts of sensuous indulgence;but they abstained from many perfectly legitimate things. So for usit is not enough to say, ‘I draw the line there, at this orthat vice, and I will have nothing to do with these.’ You willnever make a growing Christian if abstinence from palpable sins onlyis your standard. You must ‘lay aside’ every sin, ofcourse, but also ‘every weight’ Many things are‘weights’ that are not ‘sins’; and if we areto run fast we must run light, and if we are to do any good in thisworld we have to live by rigid control and abstain from much that isperfectly legitimate, because, if we do not, we shall fail inaccomplishing the highest purposes for which we are here. Not only inregard to the gross sensual indulgences which these men had to avoid,but in regard to a great deal of the outgoings of our interests andour hearts, we have to apply the knife very closely and cut to thequick, if we would have leisure and sympathy and affection left forloftier objects. It is a very easy thing to be a Christian in oneaspect, inasmuch as a Christian at bottom is a man that is trustingto Jesus Christ, and that is not hard to do. It is a very hard thingto be a Christian in another aspect, because a real Christian is aman who, by reason of his trusting Jesus Christ, has set his heelupon the neck of the animal that is in him, and keeps the flesh welldown, and not only the flesh, but the desires of the mind as well asof the flesh, and subordinates them all to the one aim of pleasingHim. ‘No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairsof this life’ if his object is to please Him that has calledhim to be a soldier. Unless we cut off a great many of the thorns, soto speak, by which things catch hold of us as we pass them, we shallnot make much advance in the Christian life. Rigid self-control andabstinence from else legitimate things that draw us away from Him areneedful, if we are so to run as the poor heathen racer teachesus.

III. The last grace that is suggested here, the last leaf to takeout of these racers’ book, is definiteness and concentration ofaim.

‘I, therefore,’ says the Apostle, ‘so run not asuncertainly.’ If the runner is now heading that way and nowthis, making all manner of loops upon his path, of course he will beleft hopelessly in the rear. It is the old fable of the Grecianmythology transplanted into Christian soil. The runner who turnedaside to pick up the golden apple was disappointed of his hopes ofthe radiant fair. The ship, at the helm of which is a steersman whohas either a feeble hand or does not understand his business, andwhich therefore keeps yawing from side to side, with the bowspointing now this way and now that, is not holding a course that willmake the harbour first in the race. The people that to-day aremarching with their faces towards Zion, and to-morrow making aloop-line to the world, will be a long time before they reach theirterminus. I believe there are few things more lacking in the averageChristian life of to-day than resolute, conscious concentration uponan aim which is clearly and always before us. Do you know what youare aiming at? That is the first question. Have you a distinct theoryof life's purpose that you can put into half a dozen words, or haveyou not? In the one case, there is some chance of attaining yourobject; in the other one, none. Alas! we find many Christian peoplewho do not set before themselves, with emphasis and constancy, astheir aim the doing of God's will, and so sometimes they do it, whenit happens to be easy, and sometimes, when temptations are strong,they do not. It needs a strong hand on the tiller to keep it steadywhen the wind is blowing in puffs and gusts, and sometimes the sailbellies full and sometimes it is almost empty. The various strengthsof the temptations that blow us out of our course are such that weshall never keep a straight line of direction, which is the shortestline, and the only one on which we shall ‘obtain,’ unlesswe know very distinctly where we want to go, and have a good strongwill that has learned to say ‘No!’ when the temptationscome. ‘Whom resist steadfast in the faith.’ ‘Itherefore so run, not as uncertainly,’ taking one course oneday and another the next.

Now, that definite aim is one that can be equally pursued in allvarieties of life. ‘This one thing I do’ said one who didabout as many things as most people, but the different kinds ofthings that Paul did were all, at bottom, one thing. And we, in allthe varieties of our circ*mstances, may keep this one clear aimbefore us, and whether it be in this way or in that, we may beequally and at all times seeking the better country, and bending allcirc*mstances and all duty to make us more like our Master and bringus closer to Him.

The Psalmist did not offer an impossible prayer when he said:‘One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after,that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, tobehold the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in His temple.’Was David in ‘the house of the Lord’ when he was with hissheep in the wilderness, and when he was in Saul's palace, and whenhe was living with wild beasts in dens and caves of the earth, andwhen he was a fugitive, hunted like a partridge upon the mountains?Was he always in the Lord's house? Yes! At any rate he could be. Allthat we do may be doing His will, and over a life, crowded withvarying circ*mstances and yet simplified and made blessed byunvarying obedience, we may write, ‘This one thing Ido.’

But we shall not keep this one aim clear before our eyes, unlesswe habituate ourselves to the contemplation of the end. The runner,according to Paul's vivid picture in another of his letters, forgetsthe things that are behind, and stretches out towards the things thatare before. And just as a man runs with his body inclining forward,and his eager hand nearer the prize than his body, and his eyesightand his heart travelling ahead of them both to grasp it, so if wewant to live with the one worthy aim for ours, and to put all oureffort and faith into what deserves it all—the Christianrace—we must bring clear before us continually, or at leastwith the utmost frequency, the prize of our high calling, the crownof righteousness. Then we shall run so that we may, at the last, beable to finish our course with joy, and dying to hope with allhumility that there is laid up for us a crown of righteousness.

‘CONCERNING THECROWN’

‘They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but weare incorruptible.’—1 COR. ix. 25.

One of the most famous of the Greek athletic festivals was heldclose by Corinth. Its prize was a pine-wreath from the neighbouringsacred grove. The painful abstinence and training of ten months, andthe fierce struggle of ten minutes, had for their result a twist ofgreen leaves, that withered in a week, and a little fading fame thatwas worth scarcely more, and lasted scarcely longer. The struggle andthe discipline were noble; the end was contemptible. And so it iswith all lives whose aims are lower than the highest. They aregreater in the powers they put forth than in the objects theycompass, and the question, ‘What is it for?’ is like adouche of cold water from the cart that lays the clouds of dust inthe ways.

So, says Paul, praising the effort and contemning the prize,‘They do it to obtain a corruptible crown.’ And yet therewas a soul of goodness in this evil thing. Though these festivalswere indissolubly intertwined with idolatry, and besmirched with muchsensuous evil, yet he deals with them as he does with war and withslavery; points to the disguised nobility that lay beneath thehideousness, and holds up even these low things as a pattern forChristian men.

But I do not mean here to speak so much about the general bearingof this text as rather to deal with its designation of the aim andreward of Christian energy, that ‘incorruptible crown’ ofwhich my text speaks. And in doing so I desire to take into accountlikewise other places in Scripture in which the same metaphoroccurs.

I. The crown.

Let me recall the other places where the same metaphor isemployed. We find the Apostle, in the immediate prospect of death,rising into a calm rapture in which imprisonment and martyrdom losetheir terrors, as he thinks of the ‘crown ofrighteousness’ which the Lord will give to him. The Epistle ofJames, again, assures the man who endures temptation that ‘theLord will give him the crown of life which He has promised to allthem that love Him.’ The Lord Himself from heaven repeats thatpromise to the persecuted Church at Smyrna: ‘Be thou faithfulunto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.’ The elderscast their crowns before the feet of Him that sitteth upon thethrone. The Apostle Peter, in his letter, stimulates the elders uponearth to faithful discharge of their duty, by the hope that therebythey shall ‘receive a crown of righteousness that fadeth notaway.’ So all these instances taken together with this of mytext enable us to gather two or three lessons.

It is extremely unlikely that all these instances of theoccurrence of the emblem carry with them reference, such as that inmy text, to the prize at the athletic festivals. For Peter and James,intense Jews as they were, had probably never seen, and possiblynever heard of, the struggles at the Isthmus and at Olympus andelsewhere. The Book of the Revelation draws its metaphors almostexclusively from the circle of Jewish practices and things. So thatwe have to look in other directions than the arena or the racecourseto explain these other uses of the image. It is also extremelyunlikely that in these other passages the reference is to a crown asthe emblem of sovereignty, for that idea is expressed, as a rule, byanother word in Scripture, which we have Anglicised as‘diadem.’ The ‘crown’ in all these passagesis a garland twisted out of some growth of the field. In ancientusage roses were twined for revellers; pine-shoots or olive branchesfor the victors in the games; while the laurel was ‘the meed ofmighty conquerors’; and plaited oak leaves were laid upon thebrows of citizens who had deserved well of their country, and myrtlesprays crowned the fair locks of the bride.

And thus in these directions, and not towards the wrestling groundor the throne of the monarch, must we look for the ideas suggested bythe emblem.

Now, if we gather together all these various uses of the word,there emerge two broad ideas, that the ‘crown’ which isthe Christian's aim symbolises a state of triumphant repose and offestal enjoyment. There are other aspects of that great and dimfuture which correspond to other necessities of our nature, and Isuppose some harm has been done and some misconceptions have beeninduced, and some unreality imported into the idea of the Christianfuture, by the too exclusive prominence given to these twoideas—victorious rest after the struggle, and abundantsatisfaction of all desires. That future is other and more than afestival; it is other and more than repose. There are larger fieldsthere for the operation of powers that have been trained and evolvedhere. The faithfulness of the steward is exchanged, according toChrist's great words, for the authority of the ruler over manycities. But still, do we not all know enough of the worry andturbulence and strained effort of the conflict here below, to feelthat to some of our deepest and not ignoble needs and desires thatimage appeals? The helmet that pressed upon the brow even whilst itprotected the brain, and wore away the hair even whilst it was adefence, is lifted off, and on unruffled locks the garland isintertwined that speaks victory and befits a festival. One of the oldprophets puts the same metaphor in words imperfectly represented bythe English translation, when he promises ‘a crown’ or agarland ‘for ashes’—instead of the symbol ofmourning, strewed grey and gritty upon the dishevelled hair of theweepers, flowers twined into a wreath—‘the oil of joy formourning,’ and the festival ‘garment of praise’ todress the once heavy spirit. So the satisfaction of all desires, theaccompaniments of a feast, in abundance, rejoicing and companionship,and conclusive conquest over all foes, are promised us in this greatsymbol.

But let us look at the passages separately, and we shall find thatthey present the one thought with differences, and that if we combinethese, as in a stereoscope, the picture gains solidity.

The crown is described in three ways. It is the crown of‘life,’ of ‘glory’ and of‘righteousness.’ And I venture to think that these threeepithets describe the material, so to speak, of which the wreath iscomposed. The everlasting flower of life, the radiant blossoms ofglory, the white flower of righteousness; these are itscomponents.

I need not enlarge upon them, nor will your time allow that Ishould. Here we have the promise of life, that fuller life which menwant, ‘the life of which our veins are scant,’ even inthe fullest tide and heyday of earthly existence. The promise setsthat future over against the present, as if then first should menknow what it means to live: so buoyant, elastic, unwearied shall betheir energies, so manifold the new outlets for activity, and the newinlets for the surrounding glory and beauty; so incorruptible andglorious shall be their new being. Here we live a living death; therewe shall live indeed; and that will be the crown, not only in regardto physical, but in regard to spiritual, powers andconsciousness.

But remember that all this full tide of life is Christ's gift.There is no such thing as natural immortality; there is no such thingas independent life. All Being, from the lowest creature up to theloftiest created spirit, exists by one law, the continual impartationto it of life from the fountain of life, according to its capacities.And unless Jesus Christ, all through the eternal ages of the future,imparted to the happy souls that sit garlanded at His board the lifeby which they live, the wreaths would wither on their brows, and thebrows would melt away, and dissolve from beneath the wreaths.‘I will give him a crown of life.’

It is a crown of ‘glory,’ and that means alustrousness of character imparted by radiation and reflection fromthe central light of the glory of God. ‘Then shall therighteous blaze out like the sun in the Kingdom of My Father.’Our eyes are dim, but we can at least divine the far-off flashing ofthat great light, and may ponder upon what hidden depths and miraclesof transformed perfectness and unimagined lustre wait for us, darkand limited as we are here, in the assurance that we all shall bechanged into the ‘likeness of the body of His glory.’

It is a crown of ‘righteousness.’ Though that phrasemay mean the wreath that rewards righteousness, it seems more inaccordance with the other similar expressions to which I havereferred to regard it, too, as the material of which the crown iscomposed. It is not enough that there should be festal gladness, notenough that there should be calm repose, not enough that there shouldbe flashing glory, not enough that there should be fulness of life.To accord with the intense moral earnestness of the Christian systemthere must be, emphatically, in the Christian hope, cessation of allsin and investiture with all purity. The word means the same thing asthe ancient promise, ‘Thy people shall be all righteous.’It means the same thing as the latest promise of the ascended Christ,‘They shall walk with Me in white.’ And it sets, I wasgoing to say, the very climax and culmination on the other hopes,declaring that absolute, stainless, infallible righteousness whichone day shall belong to our weak and sinful spirits.

These, then, are the elements, and on them all is stamped thesignature of perpetuity. The victor's wreath is tossed on the ashenheap, the reveller's flowers droop as he sits in the heat of thebanqueting-hall; the bride's myrtle blossom fades though she lay itaway in a safe place. The crown of life is incorruptible. It istwined of amaranth, ever blossoming into new beauty and neverfading.

II. Now look, secondly, at the discipline by which the crown iswon.

Observe, first of all, that in more than one of the passages towhich we have already referred great emphasis is laid upon Christ asgiving the crown. That is to say, that blessed future is notwon by effort, but is bestowed as a free gift. It is given from thehands which have procured it, and, as I may say, twined it for us.Unless His brows had been pierced with the crown of thorns, ourswould never have worn the garland of victory. Jesus provides the solemeans, by His work, by which any man can enter into that inheritance;and Jesus, as the righteous Judge who bestows the rewards, which arelikewise the results, of our life here, gives the crown. It remainsfor ever the gift of His love. ‘The wages of sin isdeath,’ but we rise above the region of retribution and desertwhen we pass to the next clause—‘the gift of God iseternal life,’ and that ‘through Jesus Christ.’

Whilst, then, this must be laid as the basis of all, there mustalso, with equal earnestness and clearness, be set forth the otherthought that Christ's gift has conditions, which conditions thesepassages plainly set forth. In the one, which I have read as a text,we have these conditions declared as being twofold—protracteddiscipline and continuous effort. The same metaphor employed by thesame Apostle, in his last dying utterance, associates hisconsciousness that he had fought the good fight and run his race,like the pugilists and runners of the arena, with the hope that heshall receive the crown of righteousness. James declares that it isgiven to the man who endures temptation, not only in the senseof bearing, but of so bearing as not thereby to be injured inChristian character and growth in Christian life. Peter asserts thatit is the reward of self-denying discharge of duty. And the Lord fromheaven lays down the condition of faithfulness unto death as thenecessary pre-requisite of His gift of the crown of life. In two ofthe passages there is included, though not precisely on the level ofthese other requirements, the love of Him and the love of ‘Hisappearing,’ as the necessary qualifications for the gift of thecrown.

So, to begin with, unless a man has such a love to Jesus Christ asthat he is happy in His presence, and longs to have Him near, asparted loving souls do; and, especially, is looking forward to thatgreat judicial coming, and feeling that there is no tremor in hisheart at the prospect of meeting the Judge, but an outgoing of desireand love at the hope of seeing his Saviour and his Friend, what righthas he to expect the crown? None. And he will never get it. There isa test for us which may well make some of us ask ourselves, Are weChristians, then, at all?

And then, beyond that, there are all these other conditions whichI have pointed out, which may be gathered into one—strenuousdischarge of daily duty and continual effort after following inChrist's footsteps.

This needs to be as fully and emphatically preached as the otherdoctrine that eternal life is the gift of God. All manner ofmischiefs may come, and have come, from either of these twinthoughts, wrenched apart. But let us weave them as closely togetheras the stems of the flowers that make the garlands are twined, andfeel that there is a perfect consistency of both in theory, and thatthere must be a continual union of both, in our belief and in ourpractice. Eternal life is the gift of God, on condition of ourdiligence and earnestness. It is not all the same whether you are alazy Christian or not. It does make an eternal difference in ourcondition whether here we ‘run with patience the race that isset before us, looking unto Jesus.’ We have to receive thecrown as a gift; we have to wrestle and run, as contending for aprize.

III. And now, lastly, note the power of the reward as motive forlife.

Paul says roundly in our text that the desire to obtain theincorruptible crown is a legitimate spring of Christian action. Now,I do not need to waste your time and my own in defending Christianmorality from the fantastic objection that it is low and selfish,because it encourages itself to efforts by the prospect of the crown.If there are any men who are Christians—if such a contradictioncan be even stated in words—only because of what they hope togain thereby in another world, they will not get what they hope for;and they would not like it if they did. I do not believe that thereare any such; and sure I am, if there are, that it is notChristianity that has made them so. But a thought that we must nottake as a supreme motive, we may rightly accept as a subsidiaryencouragement. We are not Christians unless the dominant motive ofour lives be the love of the Lord Jesus Christ; and unless we feel anecessity, because of loving Him, to aim to be like Him. But, thatbeing so, who shall hinder me from quickening my flagging energies,and stimulating my torpid faith, and encouraging my cowardice, by thethought that yonder there remain rest, victory, the fulness of life,the flashing of glory, and the purity of perfect righteousness? Ifsuch hopes are low and selfish as motives, would God that more of uswere obedient to such low and selfish motives!

Now it seems to me, that this spring of action is not as strong inthe Christians of this day as it used to be, and as it should be. Youdo not hear much about heaven in ordinary preaching. I do not thinkit occupies a very large place in the average Christian man's mind.We have all got such a notion nowadays of the great good that theGospel does in society and in the present, and some of us have beenso frightened by the nonsense that has been talked about the‘other-worldliness’ of Christianity—as if that wasa disgrace to it—that it seems to me that the future of gloryand blessedness has very largely faded away, as a motive forChristian men's energies, like the fresco off a neglected conventwall.

And I want to say, dear brethren, that I believe, for my part,that we suffer terribly by the comparative neglect into which thisside of Christian truth has fallen. Do you not think that it wouldmake a difference to you if you really believed, and carried alwayswith you in your thoughts, the thrilling consciousness that every actof the present was registered, and would tell on the far sideyonder?

We do not know much of that future, and these days are intolerantof mere unverifiable hypotheses. But accuracy of knowledge anddefiniteness of impression do not always go together, nor is therethe fulness of the one wanted for the clearness and force of theother. Though the thread which we throw across the abyss is veryslender, it is strong enough, like the string of a boy's kite, tobear the messengers of hope and desire that we may send up by it, andstrong enough to bear the gifts of grace that will surely come downalong it.

We cannot understand to-day unless we look at it with eternity fora background. The landscape lacks its explanation, until the mistslift and we see the white summits of the Himalayas lying behind andglorifying the low sandy plain. Would your life not be different;would not the things in it that look great be wholesomely dwindledand yet be magnified; would not sorrow be calmed, and life become‘a solemn scorn of ills,’ and energies be stimulated, andall be different, if you really ‘did it to obtain anincorruptible crown?’

Brethren, let us try to keep more clearly before us, as solemn andblessed encouragement in our lives, these great thoughts. The garlandhangs on the goal, but ‘a man is not crowned unless he striveaccording to the laws’ of the arena. The laws are two—Noman can enter for the conflict but by faith in Christ; no man can winin the struggle but by faithful effort. So the first law is,‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,’ and the second is,‘Hold fast that thou hast; let no man take thycrown.’

THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY

‘All things are lawful for me, but all things arenot expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edifynot. 24. Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth. 25.Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question forconscience sake. 26. For the earth is the Lord's, and the fulnessthereof. 27. If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast, andye be disposed to go, whatsoever is set before you eat, asking noquestion for conscience sake. 28. But if any man say unto you, Thisis offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for his sake that shewedit, and for conscience sake: for the earth is the Lord's and thefulness thereof: 29. Conscience, I say, not thine own, but of theother: for why is my liberty judged of another man's conscience? 30.For if I by grace be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that forwhich I give thanks? 31. Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, orwhatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. 32. Give none offence,neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God:33. Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine ownprofit, but the profit of many, that they may besaved.’—1 COR. x. 23-33.

This passage strikingly illustrates Paul's constant habit ofsolving questions as to conduct by the largest principles. He did notkeep his ‘theology’ and his ethics in separatewater-tight compartments, having no communication with each other.The greatest truths were used to regulate the smallest duties. Likethe star that guided the Magi, they burned high in the heavens, butyet directed to the house in Bethlehem.

The question here in hand was one that pressed on the CorinthianChristians, and is very far away from our experience. Idolatry had soinextricably intertwined itself with daily life that it was hard tokeep up any intercourse with non-Christians without falling intoconstructive idolatry; and one very constantly obtruding difficultywas that much of the animal food served on private tables had beenslaughtered as sacrifices or with certain sacrificial rites. What wasa Christian to do in such a case? To eat or not to eat? Both viewshad their vehement supporters in the Corinthian church, and theimportance of the question is manifest from the large space devotedto it in this letter.

In chapter viii. we have a weighty paragraph, in which one phaseof the difficulty is dealt with—the question whether aChristian ought to attend a feast in an idol temple, where, ofcourse, the viands had been offered as sacrifices. But in chapter x.Paul deals with the case in which the meat had been bought in theflesh-market, and so was not necessarily sacrificial. Paul's mannerof handling the point is very instructive. He envelops, as it were,the practical solution in a wrapping of large principles; verses 23,24 precede the specific answer, and are general principles; verses25-30 contain the practical answer; verses 31-33 and verse 1 of thenext chapter are again general principles, wide and imperative enoughto mould all conduct, as well as to settle the matter immediately inhand, which, important as it was at Corinth, has become entirelyuninteresting to us.

We need not spend time in elucidating the specific directionsgiven as to the particular question in hand further than to note theimmense gift of saving common-sense which Paul had, and how sanelyand moderately he dealt with his problem. His advicewas—‘Don't ask where the joint set before you came from.If you do not know that it was offered, your eating of it does notcommit you to idol worship.’ No doubt there were CorinthianChristians with inflamed consciences who did ask such questions, andrather prided themselves on their strictness and rigidity; but Paulwould have them let sleeping dogs lie. If, however, the meat is knownto have been offered to an idol, then Paul is as rigid and strict asthey are. That combination of willingness to go as far as possible,and inflexible determination not to go one step farther, ofyieldingness wherever principle does not come in, and of ironfixedness wherever it does, is rare indeed, but should be aimed at byall Christians. The morality of the Gospel would make more way in theworld if its advocates always copied the ‘sweetreasonableness’ of Paul, which, as he tells us in this passage,he learned from Jesus.

As to the wrapping of general principles, they may all be reducedto one—the duty of limiting Christian liberty by considerationfor others. In the two verses preceding the practical precepts, thatduty is stated with reference entirely to the obligations flowingfrom our relationship to others. We are all bound together by amystical chain of solidarity. Since every man is my neighbour, I ambound to think of him and not only of myself in deciding what I maydo or refrain from doing. I must abstain from lawful things if, bydoing them, I should be likely to harm my neighbour's building up ofa strong character. I can, or I believe that I can, pursue somecourse of conduct, engage in some enterprise, follow some line oflife, without damage to myself, either in regard to worldly position,or in regard to my religious life. Be it so, but I have to take someone else into account. Will my example call out imitation in others,to whom it may be harmful or fatal to do as I can do with real orsupposed impunity? If so, I am guilty of something very like murderif I do not abstain.

‘What harm is there in betting a shilling? I can well affordto lose it, and I can keep myself from the feverish wish to riskmore.’ Yes, and you are thereby helping to hold up thatgambling habit which is ruining thousands.

‘I can take alcohol in moderation, and it does me no harm,and I can go to a prayer-meeting after my dinner and temperate glass,and I am within my Christian liberty in doing so.’ Yes, and youtake part thereby in the greatest curse that besets our country, andare, by countenancing the drink habit, guilty of the blood of souls.How any Christian man can read these two verses and not abstain fromall intoxicants is a mystery. They cut clean through all the pleasfor moderate drinking, and bring into play another set of principleswhich limit liberty by regard to others’ good. Surely, if therewas ever a subject to which these words apply, it is the use ofalcohol, the proved cause of almost all the crime and poverty on bothsides of the Atlantic. To the Christians who plead their‘liberty’ we can only say, ‘Happy is he thatcondemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.’

The same general considerations reappear in the verses followingthe specific precept, but with a difference. The neighbour's profitis still put forth as the limiting consideration, but it is elevatedto a higher sacredness of obligation by being set in connection withthe ‘glory of God’ and the example of Christ. ‘Doall to the glory of God.’ To put the thought here into modernEnglish—Could you ask a blessing over a glass of spirits whenyou think that, though it should do you no harm, your taking it may,as it were, tip some weak brother over the precipice? Can you drinkto God's glory when you know that drink is slaying thousands body andsoul, and that hopeless drunkards are made by wholesale out ofmoderate drinkers? ‘Give no occasion of stumbling’; donot by your example tempt others into risky courses. And rememberthat ‘neighbour’ (verse 24) resolves itself into‘Jews’ and ‘Greeks’ and the ‘Church ofGod’—that is, substantially to your own race and otherraces—to men with whom you have affinities, and to men withwhom you have none.

A Christian man is bound to shape his life so that no man shall beable to say of him that he was the occasion of that one's fall. He isso bound because every man is his neighbour. He is so bound becausehe is bound to live to the glory of God, which can never be advancedby laying stumbling-blocks in the way for feeble feet. He is so boundbecause, unless Christ had limited Himself within the bound ofmanhood, and had sought not His own profit or pleasure, we shouldhave had neither life nor hope. For all these reasons, the duty ofthinking of others, and of abstaining, for their sakes, from what onemight do, is laid on all Christians. How do they discharge that dutywho will not forswear alcohol for their neighbour's sake?

‘IN REMEMBRANCE OFME’

‘This do in remembrance of Me.’—1 COR.xi. 24.

The account of the institution of the Lord's Supper, contained inthis context, is very much the oldest extant narrative of that event.It dates long before any of the Gospels, and goes up, probably, tosomewhere about five and twenty years after the Crucifixion. Itpresupposes a previous narrative which had been orally delivered tothe Corinthians, and, as the Apostle alleges, was derived by him fromChrist Himself. It is intended to correct corruptions in theadministration of the rite which must have taken some time to developthemselves. And so we are carried back to a period very close indeedto the first institution of the rite, by the words before us.

No reasonable doubt can exist, then, that within a very few yearsof our Lord's death, the whole body of Christian people believed thatJesus Christ Himself appointed the Lord's Supper. I do not stay todwell upon the value of a rite contemporaneous with the fact which itcommemorates, and continuously lasting throughout the ages, as awitness of the historical veracity of the alleged fact; but I want tofix upon this thought, that Jesus Christ, who cared very little forrites, who came to establish a religion singularly independent of anyoutward form, did establish two rites, one of them to be done once ina Christian lifetime, one of them to be repeated with indefinitefrequency, and, as it appears, at first repeated daily by the earlybelievers. The reason why these two, and only these two, externalordinances were appointed by Jesus Christ was, that, taken together,they cover the whole ground of revealed fact, and they also cover thewhole ground of Christian experience. There is no room for any otherrites, because these two, the rite of initiation, which is baptism,and the rite of commemoration, which is the Lord's Supper, sayeverything about Christianity as a revelation, and about Christianityas a living experience.

Not only so, but in the simple primitive form of the Lord's Supperthere is contained a reference to the past, the present and thefuture. It covers all time as well as all revelation and allChristian experience. For the past, as the text shows us, it is amemorial of one Person, and one fact in that Person's life. For thepresent, it is the symbol of the Christian life, as that great sixthchapter in John's gospel sets forth; and for the future, it is aprophecy, as our Lord Himself said on that night in the upperchamber, ‘Till I drink it new with you in My Father'skingdom,’ and as the Apostle in this context says, ‘TillHe come.’ It is to these three aspects of this ordinance, asthe embodiment of all essential Christian truth, and as theembodiment of all deep Christian experience, covering the past, thepresent, and the future, that I wish to turn now. I do not deal somuch with the mere words of my text as with this threefoldsignificance of the rite which it appoints.

I. So then, first, we have to think of it as a memorial of thepast.

‘Do this,’ is the true meaning of the words, not‘in remembrance of Me,’ but something far more sweet andpathetic—‘do this for the remembering ofMe.’ The former expression is equal to ‘Do this becauseyou remember.’ The real meaning of the words is, ‘Do thisin case you forget’; do this in order that you may recall tomemory what the slippery memory is so apt to lose—theimpression of even the sweetest sweetness, of the most loving love,and the most self-abnegating sacrifice, which He offered for us.

There is something to me infinitely pathetic and beautiful inlooking at the words not only as the commandment of the Lord, but asthe appeal of the Friend, who wished, as we all do, not to be utterlyforgotten by those whom He cared for and loved; and who, not onlybecause their remembrance was their salvation, but because theirforgetfulness pained His human heart, brings to their hearts theplaintive appeal: ‘Do not forget Me when I am gone away fromyou; and even if you have no better way of remembering Me, take thesepoor symbols, to which I am not too proud to entrust the care of Mymemory, and do this, lest you forget Me.’

But, dear brethren, there are deeper thoughts than this, on whichI must dwell briefly. ‘In remembrance of Me’—JesusChrist, then, takes up an altogether unique and solitary positionhere, and into the sacredest hours of devotion and the loftiestmoments of communion with God, intrudes His personality, and says,‘When you are most religious, remember Me; and let the highestact of your devout life be a thought turned to Myself.’

Now, I want you to ask, is that thought diverted from God? And ifit is not, how comes it not to be? I want you honestly to askyourselves this question—what did He think about Himselfwho, at that moment, when all illusions were vanishing, and life wasalmost at its last ebb, took the most solemn rite of His nation andlaid it solemnly aside and said: ‘A greater than Moses is here;a greater deliverance is being wrought’: ‘RememberMe.’ Is that insisting on His own personality, and making theremembrance of it the very apex and shining summit of all religiousaspiration—is that the work of one about whom all that we haveto say is, He was the noblest of men? If so, then I want to know howJesus Christ, in that upper chamber, founding the sole continuousrite of the religion which He established, and making its heart andcentre the remembrance of His own personality, can be cleared fromthe charge of diverting to Himself what belongs to God only, and howyou and I, if we obey His commands, escape the crime of idolatry andman-worship? ‘Do this in remembrance,’—not ofGod—‘in remembrance of Me,’ ‘and let memory,with all its tendrils, clasp and cleave to My person.’ What anextraordinary demand! It is obscuring God, unless the‘Me’ is God manifest in the flesh.

Then, still further, let me remind you that in the appointment ofthis solitary rite as His memorial to all generations, Jesus ChristHimself designates one part of His whole manifestation as the partinto which all its pathos, significance, and power are concentrated.We who believe that the death of Christ is the life of the world, aretold that one formidable objection to our belief is that Jesus ChristHimself said so little during His life about His death. I believe Hisreticence upon that question is much exaggerated, but apartaltogether from that, I believe also that there was a necessity inthe order of the evolution of divine truth, for the reticence, suchas it is, because, whatsoever might be possible to Moses and Elias,on the Mount of Transfiguration, ‘His decease which He shouldaccomplish at Jerusalem,’ could not be much spoken about in theplain till it had been accomplished. But, apart from both of theseconsiderations, reflect, that whether He said much about His death ornot, He said something very much to the purpose about it when He said‘Do this in remembrance of Me.’

It is not His personality only that we are to remember. The wholeof the language of the institution of the ritual, as well as the formof the rite, and its connection with the ancient passover, and itsconnection with the new covenant into connection with which ChristHimself brings it, all point to the significance in His eyes of Hisdeath as the Sacrifice for the world's sin. Wherefore ‘thebody’ and ‘the blood’ separately remembered, exceptto indicate death by violence? Wherefore the language ‘the bodybroken for you’; ‘the blood shed for manyfor the remission of sins?’ Wherefore the association with thePassover sacrifice? Wherefore the declaration that ‘this is theblood of the Covenant,’ unless all tended to the onethought—His death is the foundation of all loving relationshipspossible to us with God; and the condition of the remission ofsins—the Sacrifice for the whole world?’

This is the point that He desires us to remember; this is thatwhich He would have live for ever in our grateful hearts.

I say nothing about the absolute exclusion of any other purpose ofthis memorial rite. If it was the mysterious thing that thesuperstition of later ages has made of it, how, in the name ofcommon-sense, does it come that not one syllable, looking in thatdirection, dropped from His lips when He established it? Surely He,in that upper chamber, knew best what He meant, and what He was doingwhen He established the rite; and I, for my part, am contented to betold that I believe in a poor, bald Zwinglianism, when I say with myMaster, that the purpose of the Lord's Supper is simply thecommemoration, and therein the proclamation, of His death. There isno magic, no mystery, no ‘sacrament’ about it. It blessesus when it makes us remember Him. It does the same thing for us whichany other means of bringing Him to mind does. It does that through adifferent vehicle. A sermon does it by words, the Communion does itby symbols. That is the difference to be found between them. And awaygoes the whole fabric of superstitious Christianity, and all itsmischiefs and evils, when once you accept the simple‘Remember.’ Christ told us what He meant by the rite whenHe said ‘Do this in remembrance of Me.’

II. And now one word or two more about the other particulars whichI have suggested. The past, however sweet and precious, is not enoughfor any soul to live upon. And so this memorial rite, just because itis memorial, is a symbol for the present.

That is taught us in the great chapter—the sixth of John'sGospel—which was spoken long before the institution of theLord's Supper, but expresses in words the same ideas which itexpresses by material forms. The Christ who died is the Christ wholives, and must be lived upon by the Christian. If our relation toJesus Christ were only that ‘Once in the end of the ages Heappeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself’; and ifwe had to look back through lengthening vistas of distance andthickening folds of oblivion, simply to a historical past, in whichHe was once offered, the retrospect would not have the sweetness init which it now has. But when we come to this thought that the Christwho was for us is also the Christ in us, and that He is not theChrist for us unless He is the Christ in us; and His death will neverwash away our sins unless we feed upon Him, here and now, by faithand meditation, then the retrospect becomes blessedness. TheChristian life is not merely the remembrance of a historical Christin the past, but it is the present participation in a living Christ,with us now.

He is near each of us that we may make Him the very food of ourspirits. We are to live upon Him. He is to be incorporated within usby our own act. This is no mysticism, it is a piece of simplereality. There is no Christian life without it. The true life of thebeliever is just the feeding of our souls upon Him,—our mindsaccepting, meditating upon, digesting the truths which are incarnatedin Jesus; our hearts feeding upon the love which is so tender, warm,stooping, and close; our wills feeding upon and nourished by theutterance of His will in commandments which to know is joy and tokeep is liberty; our hopes feeding upon Him who is our Hope, and inwhom they find no chaff and husks of peradventures, but the purewheat of ‘Verily! verily I say unto you’; the wholenature thus finding its nourishment in Jesus Christ. You areChristians in the measure in which the very strength of your spirits,and sustenance of all your faculties, are found in loving communionwith the living Lord.

Remember, too, that all this communion, intimate, sweet, sacred,is possible only, or at all events is in its highest forms and mostblessed reality, possible only, to those who approach Him through thegate of His death. The feeding upon the living Christ which will bethe strength of our hearts and our portion for ever, must be afeeding upon the whole Christ. We must not only nourish our spiritson the fact that He was incarnated for our salvation, but also on thetruth that He was crucified for our acceptance with God. ‘Hethat eateth Me, even he shall live by Me,’ has for its deepestexplanation, ‘He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My bloodhath eternal life.’

My friends, what about the hunger of your souls? Where is itsatisfied? With the swine's husks, or with the ‘Bread of Godwhich came down from Heaven?’

III. Now, lastly, that rite which is a memorial and a symbol isalso a prophecy.

In the original words of the institution our Lord Himself makesreference to the future; ‘till I drink it new with you in MyFather's kingdom.’ And in the context here, the Apostleprovides for the perpetual continuance, and emphasises the propheticaspect, of the rite, by that word, ‘till He come.’ Hisdeath necessarily implies His coming again. The Cross and the Throneare linked together by an indissoluble bond. Being what it is, thedeath cannot be the end. Being what He is, if He has once beenoffered to bear the sins of many, so He must come the second timewithout sin unto salvation. The rite, just because it is a rite, isthe prophecy of a time when the need for it, arising from weak fleshand an intrusive world, shall cease. ‘They shall say no more,The ark of the covenant of the Lord; at that time they shall callJerusalem the throne of the Lord.’ There shall be no temple inthat great city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are theTemple thereof. So all external worship is a prophecy of the comingof the perfect time, when that which is perfect being come, theexternal helps and ladders to climb to the loftiest shall be doneaway.

But more than that, the memorial and symbol is a prophecy. Thatupper chamber, with its troubled thoughts, its unbidden tears,starting to the eyes of the half-understanding listeners, who onlyfelt that He was going away and the sweet companionship wasdissolved, may seem to be but a blurred and a poor image of thebetter communion of heaven. But though on that sad night the Masterbore a burdened heart, and the servants had but partial apprehensionand a more partial love; though He went forth to agonise and to die,and they went forth to deny and to betray, and to leave Him alone,still it was a prophecy of Christ's table in His kingdom. Heaven isto be a feast. That representation promises society to the solitary,rest to the toilers, the oil of joy for mourning, and the fullsatisfaction of all desires. That heavenly feast surpasses indeed theantitype in the upper chamber, in that there the Master Himselfpartook not, and yonder we shall sup with Him and He with us, but isprophetic in that, as there He took a towel and girded Himself andwashed the disciples’ feet, so yonder He will come forthHimself and serve them. The future is unlike the prophetic past inthat ‘we shall go no more out’; there shall be nosequences of sorrow, and struggle, and distance and ignorance; butlike it in that we shall feast on Christ, for through eternity theglorified Jesus will be the Bread of our spirits, and the fact of Hispast sacrifice the foundation of our hopes.

So, dear brethren, though our external celebration of this rite bedashed, as it always is, with much ignorance and with feeble faith;and though we gather round this table as the first generation ofIsraelites did round the passover, of which it is the successor, withstaff in hand and loins girded, and have to eat it often with bitterherbs mingled, and though there be at our sides empty places, yeteven in our clouded and partial apprehension, and in theimperfections of this outward type, we may see a gracious shadow ofwhat is waiting for us when we shall go no more out, and all emptyplaces shall be filled, and the bitter herbs shall be changed for theasphodel of Heaven and the sweet flowerage round the throne of God,and we shall feast upon the Christ, and in the loftiest experience ofthe utmost glories of the Heavens, shall remember the bitter Crossand agony as that which has bought it all. ‘This do inremembrance of Me.’ May it be a symbol of our inmost life, andthe prophecy of the Heaven to which we each shall come!

THE UNIVERSAL GIFT

‘The manifestation of the Spirit is given to everyman to profit withal.’—1 COR. xii. 7.

The great fact which to-day[1] commemoratesis too often regarded as if it were a transient gift, limited tothose on whom it was first bestowed. We sometimes hear it said thatthe great need of the Christian world is a second Pentecost, a freshoutpouring of the Spirit of God and the like. Such a way of thinkingand speaking misconceives the nature and significance of the firstPentecost, which had a transient element in it, but in essence waspermanent. The rushing mighty wind and the cloven tongues of fire,and the strange speech in many languages, were all equally transient.The rushing wind swept on, and the house was no more filled with it.The tongues flickered into invisibility and disappeared from theheads. The hubbub of many languages was quickly silent. But thatwhich these things but symbolised is permanent; and we are not tothink of Pentecost as if it were a sudden gush from a greatreservoir, and the sluice was let down again after it, but as if itwere the entrance into a dry bed, of a rushing stream, whose firstoutgush was attended with noise, but which thereafter flowscontinuous and unbroken. If churches or individuals are scant of thatgift, it is not because it has not been bestowed, but because it hasnot been accepted.

My text tells us two things: it unconditionally and broadlyasserts that every Christian possesses this great gift—themanifestation is given to every man; and then it asserts that thegift of each is meant to be utilised for the good of all. ‘Themanifestation is given to every man to profit withal.’

I. Let me, then, say a word or two, to begin with, about theuniversality of this gift.

Now, that is implied in our Lord's own language, as commented uponby the Evangelist. For Jesus Christ declared that this was thestanding law of His kingdom, to be universally applied to all itsmembers, that ‘He that believeth on Him, out of him shall flowrivers of living water’; and the Evangelist's comment goes onto say, ‘This spake He of the Spirit which they that believe onHim should receive.’ There is the condition and thequalification. Wherever there is faith, there the Spirit of God isbestowed, and bestowed in the measure in which faith is exercised.So, then, in full accordance with such fundamental principles inreference to the gift of the Spirit of God, comes the language of mytext, and of many another text to which I cannot do more than refer.But let me just quote one or two of them, in order that I may makemore emphatic what I believe a great many Christian people do notrealise as they ought—viz. that the gift of God's Holy Spiritis not a thing to be desired, as if it were not possessed or confinedto select individuals, or manifested by exceptional and loftyattainments, but is the universal heritage of the whole ChristianChurch. ‘Know ye not that ye are the temple of the HolyGhost?’ ‘We have all been made to drink into oneSpirit,’ says Paul again, in the immediate context. ‘Ifany man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His,’ sayshe, unconditionally. And in many other places the same principle islaid down, a principle which I believe the Christian Church to-dayneeds to have recalled to its consciousness, that it may be quickenedto realise it in its experience far more than is the case atpresent.

Let me remind you, too, that that universality of the gifts of theDivine Spirit is implied in the very conception of what Christ'swork, in its deepest and most precious aspects to us, is. For we arenot to limit, as a great many so-called earnest evangelical teachersand believers do—we are not to limit His work to that which iseffected when a man first becomes a Christian—viz. pardon andacceptance with God. God forbid that I should ever seem to underratethat great initial gift on which everything else must be built. But Iam not underrating it when I say, ‘Let us prophesy according tothe proportion of faith,’ and the ‘proportion offaith’ has been violated, and the perspective and completenessof Christian truth, and of Christ's gifts, have been, alas! to a verylarge extent distorted because Christian people, trained in what wecall the evangelical school, have laid far too little emphasis on thefact that the essential gift of Christ to His people is not pardon,nor acceptance, nor justification, but life; and thatforgiveness, and altered relationship to God, and assurance ofacceptance with Him, are all preliminaries. They are, if I may recurto a figure that I have already employed, the preparing of thechannel, and the taking away of the obstacles that block its mouth,in order to the inrush of the flood of the river of the water oflife.

This life that Christ gives is the result of the gift of theSpirit. So ‘If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is noneof His.’ The life is the gift considered from our side, and theSpirit is the gift considered from the divine side. ‘Every manthat hath the Son hath life’; because the law of the Spirit oflife in Christ has made him free from the law of sin and death. Soyou see if that is true—and I for my part am sure that itis—then all that vulgar way of looking at the influences of theHoly Spirit upon men, as if they were confined to certain exceptionalpeople, or certain abnormal and extraordinary and elevated acts, isswept away. It is not the spasmodic, the exceptional, the rare, notthe lofty or transcendentally Christlike acts or characters that arealone the manifestation of the Spirit.

Nor is this gift a thing that a man can discover as distinct fromhis own consciousness. The point where the river of the water of lifecomes into the channel of our spirits lies away far up, near thesources, and long before the stream comes into sight in our ownconsciousness, the blended waters have been inseparably mingled, andflow on peacefully together. ‘The Spirit beareth witnesswith our spirits’; and you are not to expect that youcan hear two voices speaking, but it is one voice and one only.

Now, that universality of this divine gift underlies the veryconstitution of the Christian Church. ‘Where the Spirit of theLord is there is liberty,’ said Paul. It is because eachChristian man has access to the one Source of illumination and oftruth and righteousness and holiness, that no Christian man is tobecome subject to the dominion of a brother. And it is because on theservants and on the handmaidens has been poured out, in these days,God's Spirit and they prophesy, that all domination of classes orindividuals, and all stiffening of the free life of God's Church byman-made creeds, are contrary to the very basis of its existence, andan attack on the dignity of each individual member of the Church.‘Ye have an unction from the Holy One’ is said to allChristian people—and ‘ye need not that any man teachyou,’ still less that any man, or body of men, or documentframed by men, should be set up as normal and authoritative overChrist's free people.

Still further, and only one word—Let me remind you of what Ihave already said, and what is only too sadly true, that this granduniversality of the Spirit's gift to all Christian people does notfill, in the mind of the ordinary Christian man, the place that itought, and it does not fill it, therefore, in his experience. I sayno more upon that point.

II. And now let me say a word, secondly, about the many-sidednessof this universal gift.

One of the reasons why Christian people as a whole do not realisethe universality as they ought is, as I have already suggested in asomewhat different connection, because they limit their notions fartoo much of what the gift of God's Spirit is to do to men. We musttake a wider view of what that Spirit is meant to effect than weordinarily take, before we understand how real and how visible itsuniversal manifestations are. Take a leaf out of the Old Testament.The man who made the brass-work for the Tabernacle was ‘full ofthe Spirit of God.’ The poets who sung the Psalms, in more thanone place, declare of themselves that they, too, were but the harpsupon which the divine finger played. Samson was capable of his rudefeats of physical strength, because ‘the Spirit of God was uponhim.’ Art, song, counsel, statesmanlike adaptation of means toends, and discernment of proper courses for a nation, such as wereexemplified in Joseph and in Daniel, are, in the Old Testament,ascribed to the Spirit of God, and even the rude physical strength ofthe simple-natured and sensuous athlete is traced up to the samesource.

But again, we see another sphere of the Spirit's working in themanifestations of it in the experience of the primitive Church. Theseare, as we all know, accompanied with miracles, speaking with tonguesand working wonders. The signs of that Spirit in those days werevisible and audible. As I said, when the river first came into itsbed, it came like the tide in Morecambe Bay, breast-high, with a roarand a rush. But it was quiet after that. In the context we have awhole series of manifestations of this Divine Spirit, some of themmiraculous and some being natural faculties heightened, but allconcerned with the Church as a society, and being for the benefit ofthe community.

But there is another class. If you turn to the Epistle to theGalatians, you will find a wonderful list there of what the Apostlecalls ‘the fruit of the Spirit,’ beginning with‘love, joy, peace.’ These are all moral and religious,bearing upon personal experience and the completeness of theindividual character.

Now, let us include all these aspects in our conception of thefruit of the Spirit's working on men—the secular, if we may usethat word, as exhibited in the Old Testament; the miraculous, as seenin the first days of the Church; the ecclesiastical, if we may sodesignate the endowments mentioned in the context, and the purelypersonal, moral, and religious emotions and acts. The plain fact isthat everything in a Christian's life, except his sin, is themanifestation of that Divine Spirit, from whom all good thoughts,counsels, and works do proceed. He is the ‘Spirit ofadoption,’ and whenever in my heart there rises warm andblessed the aspiration ‘Abba! Father!’ it is not my voiceonly, but the voice of that Divine Spirit. He is the Spirit ofintercession; and whenever in my soul there move yearning desiresafter infinite good, child-like longings to be knit more closely toHim, that, too, is the voice of God's Spirit; and our prayers arethen ‘sweet, indeed, when He the Spirit gives by which wepray.’ In like manner, all the variety of Christian emotionsand experiences is to be traced to the conjoint operation of thatDivine Spirit as the source, and my own spirit as influenced by, andthe organ of, the Spirit of God. If I may take a very roughillustration, there is a story in the Old Testament about a king, towhom were given a bow and arrow, with the command to shoot. Theprophet's hand was laid on the king's weak hand, and the weak handwas strengthened by the touch of the other; and with one common pullthey drew back the string and the arrow sped. The king drew the bow,but it was the prophet's hand grasping his wrist that gave himstrength to do it. And that is how the Spirit of God will work withus if we will.

III. Finally, consider the purpose of all the diversemanifestations of the one universal gift.

‘To profit withal’—for his own good whopossesses it, and for the good of all the rest of his brethren.

Now, that involves two plain things. There have been people in theChristian Church who have said, ‘We have all the Spirit, andtherefore we do not need one another.’ There may be isolation,and self-sufficiency, and a host of other evils coming in, if we onlygrasp the thought, ‘The manifestation of the Spirit is given toevery man,’ but they are all corrected if we go on and say,‘to profit withal.’ For every one of us has something,and no one of us has everything; so, on the one hand, we want eachother, and, on the other hand, we are responsible for the use of whatwe have.

You get the life, not in order that you may plume yourself on itspossession, nor in order that you may ostentatiously display it,still less in order that you may shut it up and do nothing with it;but you get the life in order that it may spread through you toothers.

'The least flower with a brimming cup may stand,And share its dew-drop with another near.'

We each have the life that God's grace may fructifythrough us to all. Power is duty; endowment is obligation; capacityprescribes work. ‘The manifestation of the Spirit is given toevery man to profit withal.’

You can regulate the flow. You have the sluice; you can shut it oropen it. I have said that the condition, and the only condition, ofpossessing the fulness of God's Spirit is faith in Jesus Christ.Therefore, the more you trust the more you have, and the less yourfaith the less the gift. You can get much or little, according to thegreatness or the smallness, the fixity or the transiency, of yourdesires. If you hold the empty cup with a tremulous hand, theprecious liquid will not be poured into it—for some of it willbe spilt—in the same fulness as it would be if you held itsteadily. It is the old story—the miraculous flow of the oilstopped when the widow had no more pots and vessels to bring. Thereason why some of us have so little of that Divine Spirit is becausewe have not held out our vessels to be filled. You can diminish theflow by ignoring it, and that is what a host of so-called Christianpeople do nowadays. You can diminish it by neglecting to use thelittle that you have for the purpose for which it was given you. Doesanybody profit by your spiritual life? Do you profit much by ityourselves? Has it ever been of the least good to anybody else in theworld? ‘The manifestation of the Spirit is given to’ you,if you are a Christian man or woman, more or less. And if you shut itup, and do never an atom of good with it, either to yourselves or toanybody else, of course it will slip away; and, sometime or other, toyour astonishment, you will find that the vessels are empty, and thatthe Spirit of the Lord has departed from you. ‘Grieve not theHoly Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day ofredemption.’

Footnote 1: Whitsunday.

WHAT LASTS

‘Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail;whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there beknowledge, it shall vanish away. 13. And now abideth faith, hope,charity, these three. ...’—1 COR. xiii. 8,13.

We discern the run of the Apostle's thought best by thus omittingthe intervening verses and connecting these two. The part omitted isbut a buttress of what has been stated in the former of our twoverses; and when we thus unite them there is disclosed plainly theApostle's intention of contrasting two sets of things, three in eachset. The one set is ‘prophecies, tongues, knowledge’; theother, ‘faith, hope, charity.’ There also comes outdistinctly that the point mainly intended by the contrast is thetransiency of the one and the permanence of the other. Now, thatcontrast has been obscured and weakened by two mistakes, about whichI must say a word.

With regard to the former statement, ‘Whether there beprophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shallcease,’ that has been misunderstood as if it amounted to adeclaration that the miraculous gifts in the early Church wereintended to be of brief duration. However true that may be, it is notwhat Paul means here. The cessation to which he refers is theircessation in the light of the perfect Future. With regard to theother statement, the abiding of faith, hope, charity, that, too, hasbeen misapprehended as if it indicated that faith and hope belongedto this state of things only, and that love was the greatest of thethree, because it was permanent. The reason for that misconceptionhas mainly lain in the misunderstanding of the force of‘Now,’ which has been taken to mean ‘for thepresent,’ as an implied contrast to an unspoken‘then’; just as in the previous verse we have,‘Now we see through a glass, then face toface.’ But the ‘now’ in this text is not, as thegrammarians say, temporal, but logical. That is, it does not refer totime, but to the sequence of the Apostle's thought, and is equivalentto ‘so then.’ ‘So then abideth faith, hope,charity.’

The scope of the whole, then, is to contrast the transient withthe permanent, in Christian experience. If we firmly grasped thetruth involved, our estimates would be rectified and our practicerevolutionised.

I. I ask this question—What will drop away?

Paul answers, ‘prophecies, tongues, knowledge.’ Nowthese three were all extraordinary gifts belonging to the presentphase of the Christian life. But inasmuch as these gifts were theheightening of natural capacities and faculties, it is perfectlylegitimate to enlarge the declaration and to use these three words intheir widest signification. So understood, they come to this, thatall our present modes of apprehension and of utterance are transient,and will be left behind.

‘Knowledge, it shall cease,’ and as the Apostle goeson to explain, in the verses which I have passed over for my presentpurpose, it shall cease because the perfect will absorb into itselfthe imperfect, as the inrushing tide will obliterate the little poolsin the rocks on the seashore. For another reason, the knowledge, themode of apprehension belonging to the present, willpass—because here it is indirect, and there it will beimmediate. ‘We shall know face to face,’ which is whatphilosophers mean by intuition. Here our knowledge ‘creeps frompoint to point,’ painfully amassing facts, and thence, withmany hesitations and errors, groping its way towards principles andlaws. Here it is imperfect, with many a gap in the circumference; orlike the thin red line on a map which shows the traveller's routeacross a prairie, or like the spider's thread in the telescope,stretched athwart the blazing disc of the sun—‘but thenface to face.’ Incomplete knowledge shall be done away; andmany of its objects will drop, and much of what makes the science ofearth will be antiquated and effete. What would the hand-loomweaver's knowledge of how to throw his shuttle be worth in aweaving-shed with a thousand looms? Just so much will the knowledgesof earth be when we get yonder.

Modes of utterance will cease. With new experiences will come newmethods of communication. As a man can speak, and a beast can onlygrowl or bark, so a man in heaven, with new experiences, will havenew methods of communication. The comparison between that mode ofutterance which we now have, and that which we shall then possess,will be like the difference between the old-fashioned semaphore, thatused to wave about clumsy wooden arms in order to conveyintelligence, and the telegraph.

Think, then, of a man going into that future life, and saying‘I knew more about Sanscrit than anybody that ever lived inEurope’; ‘I sang sweet songs’; ‘I was a pastmaster in philology, grammars, and lexicons’; ‘I was agreat orator.’ ‘Tongues shall cease’; and the modesof utterance that belonged to earth, and all that holds of them, willdrop away, and be of no more use.

If these things are true, brethren, with regard even to thehighest form of these high and noble things, how much more and moresolemnly true are they with regard to the aims and objects which mostof us have in view? They will all drop away, and we shall be left,stripped of what, for most of us, has made the whole interest andactivity of our lives.

II. What will last?

‘So then, abideth these three, faith, hope, love.’When Paul takes three nouns and couples them with a verb in thesingular, he is not making a slip of the pen, or committing agrammatical blunder which a child could correct. But there is a greattruth in that piece of apparent grammatical irregularity; for thefaith, the hope, and the love, for which he can only afford asingular verb, are thereby declared to be in their depth and essenceone thing, and it, the triple star, abides, and continues to shine.The three primitive colours are unified in the white beam of light.Do not correct the grammar, and spoil the sense, but discern what hemeans when he says, ‘Now, abideth faith, hope,love.’ For this is what he means, that the two latter come outof the former, and that without it they are nought, and that itwithout them is dead.

Faith breeds Hope. There is the difference between earthlyhopes and Christian people's hopes. Our hopes, apart from therevelation of God in Jesus Christ, are but the balancing ofprobabilities, and the scale is often dragged down by the clutch ofeager desires. But all is baseless and uncertain, unless our hopesare the outcome of our faith. Which, being translated into otherwords, is just this, that the one basis on which men canrest—ay! even for the immediate future, and the contingenciesof life, as well as for the solemnities and certainties ofheaven—any legitimate and substantial hope is trust in JesusChrist, His word, His love, His power, and for the heavenly future,in His Resurrection and present glory. A man who believes thesethings, and only that man, has a rock foundation on which he canbuild his hope.

Faith, in like manner, is the parent of Love. Paul and John,diverse as they are in the whole cast of their minds, the one beingspeculative and the other mystical, the one argumentative and theother simply gazing and telling what he sees, are precisely agreed inregard to this matter. For, to the Apostle of Love, the foundation ofall human love towards God is, ‘We have known and believed thelove that God hath to us,’ and ‘We love Him because Hefirst loved us,’ and to Paul the first step is the trustingreception of the love of God, ‘commended to us’ by thefact that ‘whilst we were yet sinners Christ died forus,’ and from that necessarily flows, if the faith be genuine,the love that answers the sacrifice and obeys the Beloved. So faith,hope, love, these three are a trinity in unity, and it abideth. Thatis the main point of our last text. Let me say a word or two aboutit.

I have said that the words have often been misunderstood as if the‘now’ referred only to the present order of things, inwhich faith and hope are supposed to find their only appropriatesphere. But that is clearly not the Apostle's meaning here, for manyreasons with which I need not trouble you. The abiding of all threeis eternal abiding, and there is a heavenly as well as an earthlyform of faith and hope as well as of love. Just look at these pointsfor a moment.

‘Faith abides,’ says Paul, yonder, as here. Now, thereis a common saying, which I suppose ninety out of a hundred peoplethink comes out of the Bible, about faith being lost in sight. Thereis no such teaching in Scripture. True, in one aspect, faith is theantithesis of sight. True, Paul does say ‘We walk by faith, notby sight.’ But that antithesis refers only to part of faith'ssignificance. In so far as it is the opposite of sight, of course itwill cease to be in operation when ‘we shall know even as weare known’ and ‘see Him as He is.’ But the essenceof faith is not in the absence of the person trusted, but the emotionof trust which goes out to the person, present or absent. And in itsdeepest meaning of absolute dependence and happy confidence, faithabides through all the glories and the lustres of the heavens, as itburns amidst the dimnesses and the darknesses of earth. For ever andever, on through the irrevoluble ages of eternity, dependence on Godin Christ will be the life of the glorified, as it was the life ofthe militant, Church. No millenniums of possession, and no imaginableincreases in beauty and perfectness and enrichment with the wealth ofGod, will bring us one inch nearer to casting off the state of filialdependence which is, and ever will be, the condition of our receivingthem all. Faith ‘abides.’

Hope ‘abides.’ For it is no more a Scriptural ideathat hope is lost in fruition, than it is that faith is lost insight. Rather that Future presents itself to us as the continualcommunication of an inexhaustible God to our progressively capaciousand capable spirits. In that continual communication there iscontinual progress. Wherever there is progress there must be hope.And thus the fair form, which has so often danced before us elusive,and has led us into bogs and miry places and then faded away, willmove before us through all the long avenues of an endless progress,and will ever and anon come back to tell us of the unseen gloriesthat lie beyond the next turn, and to woo us further into the depthsof heaven and the fulness of God. Hope ‘abides.’

Love ‘abides.’ I need not, I suppose, enlarge uponthat thought which nobody denies, that love is the eternal form ofthe human relation to God. It, too, like the mercy which it clasps,‘endureth for ever.’

But I may remind you of what the Apostle does not explain in ourtext, that it is greater than its linked sisters, because whilstfaith and hope belong only to a creature, and are dependent andexpectant of some good to come to themselves, and correspond tosomething which is in God in Christ, the love which springs fromfaith and hope not only corresponds to, but resembles, that fromwhich it comes and by which it lives. The fire kindled is cognatewith the fire that kindles; and the love that is in man is like thelove that is in God. It is the climax of his nature; it is thefulfilling of all duty; it is the crown and jewelled clasp of allperfection. And so ‘abideth faith, hope, love, and the greatestof these is love.’

III. Lastly, what follows from all this?

First, let us be quite sure that we understand what this abidinglove is. I dare say you have heard people say ‘Ah! I do notcare much about Paul's theology. Give me the thirteenth chapter ofthe first Epistle to the Corinthians. That is beautiful; that praiseof Love; that comes home to men.’ Yes, very beautiful.Are you quite sure that you know what Paul means by‘love’? I do not use the word charity, because thatlovely word, like a glistening meteor that falls upon the earth, hasa rust, as it were, upon its surface that dims its brightness veryquickly. Charity has come to mean an indulgent estimate of otherpeople's faults; or, still more degradingly, the giving of money outof your pockets to other people's necessities. These are what thepeople who do not care much about Paul's theology generally supposethat he means here. But these do not exhaust his meaning. Paul'snotion of love is the response of the human love to the divine, whichdivine is received into the heart by simple faith in Jesus Christ.And his notion of love which never faileth, and endureth all things,and hopeth all things, is love to men, which is but one stream of thegreat river of love to God. If we rightly understand what he means bylove, we shall find that his praise of love is as theological asanything that he ever wrote. We shall never get further than barrenadmiration of a beautiful piece of writing, unless our love to menhas the source and root to which Paul points us.

Again, let us take this great thought of the permanence of faith,hope, and love as being the highest conception that we can form ofour future condition. It is very easy to bewilder ourselves withspeculations and theories of another life. I do not care much aboutthem. The great gates keep their secret well. Few stray beams oflight find their way through their crevices. The less we say the lesslikely we are to err. It is easy to let ourselves be led away, byturning rhetoric into revelation, and accepting the symbols of theNew Testament as if they carried anything more than images of therealities. But far beyond golden pavements, and harps, and crowns,and white robes, lies this one great thought that the elements of theimperfect, Christlike life of earth are the essence of the perfect,Godlike life in heaven. ‘Now abide these three, faith, hope,love.’

Last of all, let us shape our lives in accordance with thesecertainties. The dropping away of the transient things is no argumentfor neglecting or despising them; for our handling of them makes ourcharacters, and our characters abide. But it is a very excellentargument for shaping our lives so as to seek first the first things,and to secure the permanent qualities, and so to use the transient asthat it shall all help us towards that which does not pass.

What will a Manchester man that knows nothing except goods andoffice work, and knows these only in their superficial aspect, andnot as related to God, what, in the name of common-sense, will he dowith himself when he gets into a world where there is not a singleledger, nor a desk, nor a yard of cloth of any sort? What will someof us do when, in like manner, we are stripped of all the things thatwe have cared about, and worked for, and have made our aims downhere? Suppose that you knew that you were under sailing orders to gosomewhere or other, and that at any moment a breathless messengermight appear and say, ‘Come along! we are all waiting foryou’; and suppose that you never did a single thing towardsgetting your outfit ready, or preparing yourself in any way for thatwhich might come at any moment, and could not but come before verylong. Would you be a wise man? But that is what a great many of usare doing; doing every day, and all day long, and doing that only.‘He shall leave them in the midst of his days,’ says agrim text, ‘and at his latter end shall be a fool.’

What will drop? Modes of apprehension, modes of utterance,occupations, duties, relationships, loves; and we shall be leftstanding naked, stripped, as it were, to the very quick, and only asmuch left as will keep our souls alive. But if we are clothed withfaith, hope, love, we shall not be found naked. Cultivate the highthings, the permanent things; then death will not wrench youviolently from all that you have been and cared for; but it willusher you into the perfect form of all that you have been and doneupon earth. All these things will pass, but faith, hope, love,‘stay not behind nor in the grave are trod,’ but willlast as long as Christ, their Object, lives, and as long as we in Himlive also.

THE POWER OF THERESURRECTION

‘I delivered unto you first of all that which Ialso received, how that Christ died for our sins according to theScriptures; 4. And that He was buried, and that He rose again thethird day according to the Scriptures.’—1 COR. xv. 3,4.

Christmas day is probably not the true anniversary of theNativity, but Easter is certainly that of the Resurrection. Theseason is appropriate. In the climate of Palestine the first fruitsof the harvest were ready at the Passover for presentation in theTemple. It was an agricultural as well as a historical festival; andthe connection between that aspect of the feast and the Resurrectionof our Lord is in the Apostle's mind when he says, in a subsequentpart of this chapter, that Christ is ‘risen from the dead andbecome the first fruits of them that slept.’

In our colder climate the season is no less appropriate. The‘life re-orient out of dust’ which shows itself to-day inevery bursting leaf-bud and springing flower is Nature's parable ofthe spring that awaits man after the winter of death. No doubt, apartfrom the Resurrection of Jesus, the yearly miracle kindles sadthoughts in mourning hearts, and suggests bitter contrasts to thosewho sorrow, having no hope, but the grave in the garden has turnedevery blossom into a smiling prophet of the Resurrection.

And so the season, illuminated by the event, teaches us lessons ofhope that ‘we shall not all die.’ Let us turn, then, tothe thoughts naturally suggested by the day, and the great fact whichit brings to each mind, and confirmed thereafter by the miracle thatis being wrought round about us.

I. First, then, in my text, I would have you note the facts ofPaul's gospel.

‘First of all ... I delivered’ these things. And the‘first’ not only points to the order of time in theproclamation, but to the order of importance as well. For theseinitial facts are the fundamental facts, on which all that may followthereafter is certainly built. Now the first thing that strikes mehere is that, whatever else the system unfolded in the New Testamentis, it is to begin with a simple record of historical fact. Itbecomes a philosophy, it becomes a religious system; it is arevelation of God; it is an unveiling of man; it is a body of ethicalprecepts. It is morals and philosophy and religion all in one; but itis first of all a story of something that took place in theworld.

If that be so, there is a lesson for men whose work it is topreach it. Let them never forget that their business is to insistupon the truth of these great, supernatural, all-important, andfundamental facts, the death and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.They must evolve all the deep meanings that lie in them; and thedeeper they dig for their meanings the better. They must open out theendless treasures of consolation and enforce the omnipotent motivesof action which are wrapped up in the facts; but howsoever far theymay carry their evolving and their application of them, they willneither be faithful to their Lord nor true stewards of their messageunless, clear above all other aspects of their work, and underlyingall other forms of their ministry, there be the unfalteringproclamation—‘first of all,’ midst of all, last ofall—‘how that Christ died for our sins according to theScriptures,’ and ‘that He was raised again according tothe Scriptures.’

Note, too, how this fundamental and original character of thegospel which Paul preached, as a record of facts, makes short work ofa great deal that calls itself ‘liberal Christianity’ inthese days. We are told that it is quite possible to be a very goodChristian man, and reject the supernatural, and turn away withincredulity from the story of the Resurrection. It may be so, but Iconfess that it puzzles me to understand how, if the fundamentalcharacter of Christian teaching be the proclamation of certain facts,a man who does not believe those facts has the right to call himselfa Christian.

Note, further, how there is an element of explanation involved inthe proclamation of the facts which turns them into a gospel. Markhow ‘that Christ died,’ not Jesus. It is agreat truth, that the man, our Brother, Jesus, passed through thecommon lot, but that is not what Paul says here, though he often saysit. What he says is that ‘Christ died.’ Christ isthe name of an office, into which is condensed a whole system oftruth, declaring that it is He who is the Apex, the Seal, andultimate Word of all divine revelation. It was the Christ whodied; unless it was so, the death of Jesus is no gospel.

‘He died for our sins.’ Now, if the Apostle had onlysaid ‘He died for us,’ that might conceivably have meantthat, in a multitude of different ways of example, appeal to our pityand compassion and the like, His death was of use to mankind. Butwhen he says ‘He died for our sins,’ I take leaveto think that that expression has no meaning, unless it means that Hedied as the expiation and sacrifice for men's sins. I ask you, inwhat intelligible sense could Christ ‘die for our sins’unless He died as bearing their punishment and as bearing it for us?And then, finally, ‘He died and rose ... according to theScriptures,’ and so fulfilled the divine purposes revealed fromof old.

To the fact that a man was crucified outside the gates ofJerusalem, ‘and rose again the third day,’ which is thenarrative, there are added these three things—the dignity ofthe Person, the purpose of His death, the fulfilment of the divineintention manifested from of old. And these three things, as I said,turn the narrative into a Gospel.

So, brethren, let us remember that, without all three of them, thedeath of Jesus Christ is nothing to us, any more than the death ofthousands of sweet and saintly men in the past has been, who may haveseen a little more of the supreme goodness and greatness than theirfellows, and tried in vain to make purblind eyes participate in theirvision. Do you think that these twelve fishermen would ever haveshaken the world if they had gone out with the story of the Cross,unless they had carried along with it the commentary which isincluded in the words which I have emphasised? And do you supposethat the type of Christianity which slurs over the explanation, andso does not know what to do with the facts, will ever do much in theworld, or will ever touch men? Let us liberalise our Christianity byall means, but do not let us evaporate it; and evaporate it we surelyshall if we falter in saying with Paul, ‘I declare, first ofall, that which received,’ how that the death and resurrectionwere the death and resurrection of the Christ, ‘for our sins,according to the Scriptures.’ These are the facts which makePaul's gospel.

II. Now I ask you to look, in the second place, at whatestablishes the facts.

We have here, in this chapter, a statement very much older thanour existing written gospels. This epistle is one of the four lettersof Paul which nobody that I know of—with some quiteinsignificant exceptions in modern times—has ever ventured todispute. It is admittedly the writing of the Apostle, written beforethe gospels, and in all probability within five-and-twenty years ofthe date of the Crucifixion. And what do we find alleged by it as thestate of things at its date? That the belief in the Resurrection ofJesus Christ was the subject of universal Christian teaching, and wasaccepted by all the Christian communities. Its evidence to that factis undeniable; because there was in the early Christian Church a veryformidable and large body of bitter antagonists of Paul's, who wouldhave been only too glad to have convicted him, if they could, of anymisrepresentation of the usual notions, or divergence from the usualtype of teaching. So we may take it as undeniable that therepresentation of this chapter is historically true; and that withinfive-and-twenty years of the death of Jesus Christ every Christiancommunity and every Christian teacher believed in and proclaimed thefact of the Resurrection.

But if that be so, we necessarily are carried a great deal nearerthe Cross than five-and-twenty years; and, in fact, there is not,between the moment when Paul penned these words and the day ofPentecost, a single chink in the history where you can insert such atremendous innovation as the full-fledged belief in a resurrectioncoming in as something new.

I do not need to dwell at all upon this other thought, that,unless the belief that Jesus Christ had risen from the deadoriginated at the time of His death, there would never have been aChurch at all. Why was it that they did not tumble to pieces? Takethe nave out of the wheel and what becomes of the spokes? A deadChrist could never have been the basis of a living Church. If He hadnot risen from the dead, the story of His disciples would have beenthe same as that which Gamaliel told the Sanhedrim was the story ofall former pseudo-Messiahs such as that man Theudas. ‘He wasslain, and as many as followed him were dispersed and came tonaught.’ Of course! The existence of the Church demands, as apre-requisite, the initial belief in the Resurrection. I think, then,that the contemporaneousness of the evidence is sufficientlyestablished.

What about its good faith? I suppose that nobody, nowadays, doubtsthe veracity of these witnesses. Anybody that knows an honest manwhen he sees him, anybody that has the least ear for the tone ofsincerity and the accent of conviction, must say that they may havebeen fanatics, they may have been mistaken, but one thing is clear assunlight, they were not false witnesses for God.

What, then, about their competency? Their simplicity, theirignorance, their slowness to believe, their stupor of surprise whenthe fact first dawned upon them, which they tell not with any idea ofmanufacturing evidence in their own favour, but simply as a piece ofhistory, all tend to make us certain that there was no play of amorbid imagination, no hysterical turning of a wish into a fact, onthe part of these men. The sort of things which they say that theysaw and experienced are such as to make any such suppositionaltogether absurd. There are long conversations, appearancesappealing to more than one sense, appearances followed bywithdrawals, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening,sometimes at a distance, as on the mountain, sometimes close by, asin the chamber, to single souls and to multitudes. Fancy five hundredpeople all at once smitten with the same mistake, imagining that theysaw what they did not see! Miracles may be difficult to believe, theyare not half so difficult to believe as absurdities. And this modernexplanation of the faith in the Resurrection I venture respectfullyto designate as absurd.

But there is one other point to which I would like to turn for amoment; and that is that little clause in my text that ‘He wasburied.’ Why does Paul introduce that amongst his facts?Possibly in order to affirm the reality of Christ's death; but Ithink for another reason. If it be true that Jesus Christ was laid inthat sepulchre, a stone's throw outside the city gate, do you not seewhat a difficulty that fact puts in the way of disbelief or denial ofHis Resurrection? If the grave—and it was not a grave,remember, like ours, but a cave, with a stone at the door of it, thatanybody could roll away for entrance—if the grave was there,why, in the name of common-sense, did not the rulers put an end tothe pestilent heresy by saying, ‘Let us go and see if the bodyis there’?

Modern deniers of the Resurrection may fairly be asked to frontthis thought—If Jesus Christ's body was in the sepulchre, howwas it possible for belief in the Resurrection to have beenoriginated, or maintained? If His body was not in the grave, what hadbecome of it? If His friends stole it away then they were deceiversof the worst type in preaching a resurrection; and we have alreadyseen that that hypothesis is ridiculous. If His enemies took it away,for which they had no motive, why did they not produce it and say,‘There is an answer to your nonsense. There is the dead man.Let us hear no more of this absurdity of His having risen from thedead’?

‘He died ... according to the Scriptures, and He wasburied.’ And the angels’ word carries the onlyexplanation of the fact which it proclaims, ‘He is nothere—He is risen.’

I take leave to say that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ isestablished by evidence which nobody would ever have thought ofdoubting unless for the theory that miracles were impossible. Thereason for disbelief is not the deficiency of the evidence, but thebias of the judge.

III. And now I have no time to do more than touch the lastthought. I have tried to show what establishes the facts. Let meremind you, in a sentence or two, what the facts establish.

I by no means desire to suspend the whole of the evidence forChristianity on the testimony of the eyewitnesses to theResurrection. There are a great many other ways of establishing thetruth of the Gospel besides that, upon which I do not need to dwellnow. But, taking this one specific ground which my text suggests,what do the facts thus established prove?

Well, the first point to which I would refer, and on which Ishould like to enlarge, if I had time, is the bearing of Christ'sResurrection on the acceptance of the miraculous. We hear a greatdeal about the impossibility of miracle and the like. It upsets thecertainty and fixedness of the order of things, and so forth, and soforth. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead; and that opens a doorwide enough to admit all the rest of the Gospel miracles. It is of nouse paring down the supernatural in Christianity, in order to meetthe prejudices of a quasi-scientific scepticism, unless you areprepared to go the whole length, and give up the Resurrection. Thereis the turning point. The question is, Do you believe that JesusChrist rose from the dead, or do you not? If your objections to thesupernatural are valid, then Christ is not risen from the dead; andyou must face the consequences of that. If He is risen from the dead,then you must cease all your talk about the impossibility of miracle,and be willing to accept a supernatural revelation as God's way ofmaking Himself known to man.

But, further, let me remind you of the bearing of the Resurrectionupon Christ's work and claims. If He be lying in some forgottengrave, and if all that fair thought of His having burst the bands ofdeath is a blunder, then there was nothing in His death that had theleast bearing upon men's sin, and it is no more to me than the deathsof thousands in the past. But if He is risen from the dead, then theResurrection casts back a light upon the Cross, and we understandthat His death is the life of the world, and that ‘by Hisstripes we are healed.’

But, further, remember what He said about Himself when He was inthe world—how He claimed to be the Son of God; how He demandedabsolute obedience, implicit trust, supreme love, how He identifiedfaith in Himself with faith in God—and consider theResurrection as bearing on the reception or rejection of thesetremendous claims. It seems to me that we are brought sharp up tothis alternative—Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and wasdeclared by the Resurrection to be the Son of God with power; orJesus Christ has not risen from the dead—and what then?Then He was either deceiver or deceived, and in either case has noright to my reverence and my love. We may be thankful that men areillogical, and that many who reject the Resurrection retainreverence, genuine and deep, for Jesus Christ. But whether they haveany right to do so is another matter. I confess for myself that, if Idid not believe that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, I shouldfind it very hard to accept, as an example of conduct, or asreligious teacher, a man who had made such great claims as He did,and had asked from me what He asked. It seems to me that He is eithera great deal more, or a great deal less, than a beautiful saintlysoul. If He rose from the dead He is much more; if He did not, I amafraid to say how much less He is.

And, finally, the bearing of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ uponour own hopes of the future may be suggested. It teaches us that lifehas nothing to do with organisation, but persists apart from thebody. It teaches us that a man may pass from death and be unalteredin the substance of his being; and it teaches us that the earthlyhouse of our tabernacle may be fashioned like unto the glorious housein which He dwells now at the right hand of God. There is no otherabsolute proof of immortality than the Resurrection of JesusChrist.

If we accept with all our hearts and minds Paul's Gospel in itsfundamental facts, we need not fear to die, because He has died, andby dying has been the death of death. We need not doubt that we shalllive again, because He was dead and is alive for ever more. ThisSamson has carried away the gates on His strong shoulders, and deathis no more a dungeon but a passage. If we rest ourselves upon Him,then we can take up, for ourselves and for all that are dear to usand have gone before us, the triumphant song, ‘O Death, whereis thy sting?’ ‘Thanks be to God, which giveth us thevictory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’

REMAINING AND FALLINGASLEEP

‘After that He was seen of above five hundredbrethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present,but some are fallen asleep.’—1 COR. xv. 6.

There were, then, some five-and-twenty years after theResurrection, several hundred disciples who were known amongst thechurches as having been eyewitnesses of the risen Saviour. Thegreater part survived; some, evidently a very few, had died. Theproportion of the living to the dead, after five-and-twenty years, isgenerally the opposite. The greater part have ‘fallenasleep’; some, a comparatively few, remain ‘unto thispresent.’ Possibly there was some divine intervention whichsupernaturally prolonged the lives of these witnesses, in order thattheir testimony might be the more lasting. But, be that as it may,they evidently were men of mark, and some kind of honour andobservance surrounded them, as was very natural, and as appears fromthe fact that Paul here knows so accurately (and can appeal to Hisfellow-Christians' accurate knowledge) the proportion between thesurvivors and the departed. We read of one of them in the Acts of theApostles at a later date than this, one Mnason, an ‘originaldisciple.’

So we get a glimpse into the conditions of life in the earlyChurch, interesting and of value in an evidential point of view. Butmy purpose at present is to draw your attention to the remarkablelanguage in which the Apostle here speaks of the living and the deadamongst these witnesses. In neither case does he use the simple,common words ‘living’ or ‘dead’; but in theone clause he speaks of their ‘remaining,’ and in theother of their ‘falling asleep’; both phrases beingsignificant, and, as I take it, both being traced up to the fact oftheir having seen the risen Lord as the cause why their life could bedescribed as a ‘remaining,’ and their death as a‘falling asleep.’ In other words, we have here broughtbefore us, by these two striking expressions, the transforming effectupon life and upon death of the faith in a risen Lord, whethergrounded on sight or not. And it is simply to these two points that Idesire to turn now.

I. First, then, we have to consider what life may become to thosewho see the risen Christ.

‘The greater part remain until this present.’ Now theword remain is no mere synonym for living or surviving. It notonly tells us the fact that the survivors were living, but the kindof life that they did live. It is very significant that it is thesame expression as our Lord used in the profound prophetic words,‘If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that tothee?’ Now we are told in John's Gospel that ‘that sayingwent abroad amongst the brethren,’ and inasmuch as it was amatter of common notoriety in the early Church, it is by no means aviolent supposition that it may be floating in Paul's memory here,and may determine his selection of this remarkable expression‘they remain,’ or ‘they tarry,’ and they weretarrying till the Master came. So, then, I think if we give dueweight to the significance of the phrase, we get two or threethoughts worth pondering.

One of them is that the sight of a risen Christ will make lifecalm and tranquil. Fancy one of these 500 brethren, after thatvision, going back to his quiet rural home in some little villageamongst the hills of Galilee. How small and remote from Him, andunworthy to ruffle or disturb the heart in which the memory of thatvision was burning, would seem the things that otherwise would havebeen important and distracting! The faith which we have in the risenChrist ought to do the same thing for us, and will do it in themeasure in which there shines clearly before that inward eye, whichis our true means of apprehending Him, the vision which shone beforethe outward gaze of that company of wondering witnesses. If we buildour nests amidst the tossing branches of the world's trees, they willsway with every wind, and perhaps be blown from their hold altogetherby such a storm as we all have sometimes to meet. But we may buildour nests in the clefts of the rock, like the doves, and be quiet, asthey are. Distractions will cease to distract, and troubles willcease to agitate, and across the heaving surface of the great oceanthere will come a Form beneath whose feet the waves smooththemselves, and at whose voice the winds are still. They who seeChrist need not be troubled. The ship that is empty is tossed uponthe ocean, that which is well laden is steady. The heart that hasChrist for a passenger need not fear being rocked by any storm.Calmness will come with the vision of the Lord, and we shall abide or‘remain,’ for there will be no need for us to flee fromthis Refuge to that, nor shall we be driven from our secure abode byany contingencies. ‘He that believeth shall not makehaste.’

It is a good thing to cultivate the disposition that says aboutmost of the trifles of this life, ‘It does not muchmatter’; but the only way to prevent wholesome contempt of theworld's trivialities from degenerating into supercilious indifferenceis, to base it upon Christ, discerned as near us and bestowing uponus the calmness of His risen life. Make Him your scale of importance,and nothing will be too small to demand and be worthy of the bestefforts of your work, but nothing will be too great to sweep you awayfrom the serenity of your faith.

Again, the vision of the risen Christ will also lead to patientpersistence in duty. If we have Him before us, the distasteful dutywhich He sets us will not be distasteful, and the small tasks, inwhich great faithfulness may be manifested, will cease to be small.If we have Him before us we have in that risen Christ the great andlasting Example of how patient continuance in well-doing triumphsover the sorrows that it bears, by and in patiently bearing them, andis crowned at last with glory and honour. The risen Christ is thePattern for the men who will not be turned aside from the path ofduty by any obstacles, dangers, or threats. The risen Christ is thesignal Example of glory following upon faithfulness, and of the crownbeing the result of the Cross. The risen Christ is the manifestHelper of them that put their trust in Him; and one of the plainestlessons and of the most imperative commands which come from thebelieving gaze upon that Lord who died because He would do the willof the Father, and is throned and crowned in the heavens because Hedied, is—By patient continuance in well-doing let us commit thekeeping of our souls to Him: and abide in the calling wherewith weare called.

And, again, the sight of the risen Christ leads to a life of calmexpectancy. ‘If I will that He tarry till I come’conveys that shade of meaning. The Apostle was to wait for the Lordfrom Heaven, and that vision which was given to these 500 men sentthem home to their abodes to make all the rest of their lives onecalm aspiration for, and patient expectation of, the return of theLord. These primitive Christians expected that Jesus Christ wouldcome speedily. That expectation was disappointed in so far as thedate was concerned, but after nineteen centuries it still remainstrue that all vigorous and vital Christian life must have in it, as avery important element of its vitality, the onward look which ever isanticipating, which often is desiring, and which constantly isconfident of, the coming of the Lord from Heaven. The Resurrectionhas for its consequences, its sequel and corollary, first theAscension; then the long tract of time during which Jesus Christ isabsent, but still in divine presence rules the world; and, finally,His coming again in that same body in which the disciples saw Himdepart from them. And no Christian life is up to the level of itsprivileges, nor has any Christian faith grasped the whole articles ofits creed, except that which sets in the very centre of all itsvisions of the future that great thought—He shall comeagain.

Questions of chronology have nothing to do with that. It standsthere before us, the certain fact, made certain and inevitable by thepast facts of the Cross and the Grave and Olivet. He has come, Hewill come; He has gone, He will come back. And for us the life thatwe live in the flesh ought to be a life of waiting for God's Son fromHeaven, and of patient, confident expectancy that when He shall bemanifested we also shall be manifested with Him in glory.

So much, then, for life—calm, persistent in every duty, andanimated by that blessed and far-off, but certain, hope, and all ofthese founded upon the vision and the faith of a risen Lord. Whathave fears and cares and distractions and faint-heartedness andgloomy sorrow to do with the eyes that have beheld the Christ, andwith the lives that are based on faith in the risen Lord?

II. So, secondly, consider what death becomes to those who haveseen Christ risen from the dead.

‘Some are fallen asleep.’ Now that most natural andobvious metaphor for death is not only a Christian idea, but isfound, as would be expected, in many tongues, but yet with a greatand significant difference. The Christian reason for calling death asleep embraces a great deal more than the heathen reason for doingso, and in some respects is precisely the opposite of that, inasmuchas to most others who have used the word, death has been a sleep thatknew no waking, whereas the very pith and centre of the Christianreason for employing the symbol are that it makes our waking sure. Wehave here what the act of dying and the condition of the dead becomeby virtue of faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

They have ‘fallen asleep.’ The act of dying is but alaying one's self down to rest, and a dropping out of consciousnessof the surrounding world. It is very remarkable and very beautifulthat the new Testament scarcely ever employs the words dyingand death for the act of separating body and spirit, or forthe condition either of the spirit parted from the body, or of thebody parted from the spirit. It keeps those grim words for thereality, the separation of the soul from God; and it onlyexceptionally uses them for the shadow and the symbol, the physicalfact of the parting of the man from the house which here he has dweltin. But the reason why Christianity uses these periphrases ormetaphors, these euphemisms for death, is the opposite of the reasonwhy the world uses them. The world is so afraid of dying that itdurst not name the grim, ugly thing. The Christian, or at least theChristian faith, is so little afraid of death that it does not thinksuch a trivial matter worth calling by the name, but only names it‘falling asleep.’

Even when the circ*mstances of that dropping off to slumber arepainful and violent, the Bible still employs the term. Is it notstriking that the first martyr, kneeling outside the city, bruised bystones and dying a bloody death, should have been said to fallasleep? If ever there was an instance in which the gentle metaphorseemed all inappropriate it was that cruel death, amidst a howlingcrowd, and with fatal bruises, and bleeding limbs mangled by theheavy rocks that lay upon them. But yet, ‘when he had said thishe fell asleep.’ If that be true of such a death, no physicalpains of any kind make the sweet word inappropriate for any.

We have here not only the designation of the act of dying, butthat of the condition of the dead. They are fallen asleep, and theycontinue asleep. How many great thoughts gather round that metaphoron which it is needless for me to try to dilate! They will suggestthemselves without many words to you all.

There lies in it the idea of repose. ‘They rest from theirlabours.’ Sleep restores strength, and withdraws a man at oncefrom effort on the outer world, and from communication from it. Wemay carry the analogy into that unseen world. We know nothing aboutthe relations to an external universe of the departed who sleep inJesus. It may be that, if they sleep in Him, since He knows all,they, through Him, may know, too, something—so much as Hepleases to impart to them—of what is happening here. And it mayeven be that, if they sleep in Him, and He wields the energies ofOmnipotence, they, through Him, may have some service to do, evenwhile they wait for their house which is from heaven. But there is noneed for, nor profit in, such speculations. It is enough that thesweet emblem suggests repose, and that in that sleep there are foldedaround the sleepers the arms of the Christ on whose bosom they rest,as an infant does on its first and happiest home—its mother'sbreast.

But then, besides that, the emblem suggests the idea of continuousand conscious existence. A man asleep does not cease to be a man; adead man does not cease to live. It has often been argued from thismetaphor that we are to conceive of the space between death and theresurrection as being a period of unconsciousness, but the analogiesseem to me to be in the opposite direction. A sleeping man does notcease to know himself to be, and he does not cease to know himself tobe himself. That mysterious consciousness of personal identitysurvives the passage from waking to sleep, as dreams sufficientlyshow us. And, therefore, they that sleep know themselves to be.

And, finally, the emblem suggests the idea of waking. Sleep is aparenthesis. If the night comes, the morning comes. ‘If wintercomes, can spring be far behind?’ They that sleep will awake,and be satisfied when they ‘awake with Thy likeness.’ Andso these three things—repose, conscious, continuous existence,and the certainty of awaking—all lie in that metaphor.

Now, then, the risen Christ is the only ground of such hope, andfaith in Him is the only state of mind which is entitled to cherish*t. Nothing proves immortality except that open grave. Every otherfoundation is too weak to bear the weight of such a superstructure.The current of present opinion shows, I think, that neithermetaphysical nor ethical arguments for the future life will stand theforce of the disintegrating criticism which is brought to bear uponthat hope by the fashionable materialism of this generation. There isone barrier that will resist that force, and only one, and that isthe historical facts that Jesus Christ died, and that Jesus Christhas risen again. He rose; therefore death is not the end ofindividual existence. He rose; therefore life beyond the grave ispossible for humanity. He rose; therefore His sacrifice for theworld's sin is accepted, and I may be delivered from my guilt and myburden. He rose; therefore He is declared to be the Son of God withpower. He rose; therefore we, if we trust Him, may partake in HisResurrection and in some reflection of His glory. The old Greekarchitects were often careless of the solidity of the soil on whichthey built their temples, and so, many of them have fallen in ruins.The Temple of Immortality can be built only upon the rock of thatproclamation—Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. And we, dearbrethren, should have all our hopes founded upon that one fact.

So then, for us, the calm, peaceful passage from life into whatelse is the great darkness is possible on condition of our havingbeheld the risen Lord. These witnesses of whom my text speaks, Paulwould suggest to us, laid themselves quietly down to sleep, becausebefore them there still hovered the memory of the vision which theyhad beheld. Faith in the risen Christ is the anchor of the soul indeath, and there is nothing else by which we can hold then.

As the same Apostle, in one of his other letters, puts it, thebelief that Christ is risen is not only the irrefragable ground ofour hope that we, too, shall rise, but has the power to change thewhole aspect of our death. Did you ever observe the emphasis withwhich He says, ‘If we believe that Jesus died and roseagain, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bringwith Him?’ His death was death indeed, and faith in it softensours to sleep. He bore the reality that we might never need to knowit, and if our poor hearts are resting upon that dear Lord, then theflames are but painted ones and will not burn, and we shall passthrough them, and no smell of fire will be upon us, and all that willbe consumed will be the bonds which bind us. He has abolished death.The physical fact remains, but all which to men makes the idea ofdeath is gone if we trust the risen Lord. So that, between two mendying under precisely the same circ*mstances, of the same disease, inadjacent beds in the same hospital, there may be such a difference asthat the same word cannot be applied to the experiences of both.

My dear friends, we have each of us to pass through that laststruggle; but we may make it either a quiet going to sleep with aloved Face bending over our closing eyes, like a mother's over herchild's cradle, and the same Face meeting us when we open them in themorning of heaven; or we may make it a reluctant departure from allthat we care for, and a trembling advance into all from whichconscience and heart shrink.

Which is it going to be to you? The answer depends upon that toanother question. Are you looking to that Christ that died and isalive for evermore as your life and your salvation? Do you hold fastthat Gospel which Paul preached, ‘how that Christ died for oursins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that Herose again the third day, according to the Scriptures’? If youdo, life will be a calm, persevering, expectant waiting upon Him, anddeath will be nothing more terrible than falling asleep.

PAUL'S ESTIMATE OF HIMSELF

‘By the grace of God I am what I am: and His gracewhich was bestowed upon me was not in vain.’—1 COR. xv.10.

The Apostle was, all his life, under the hateful necessity ofvindicating his character and Apostleship. Thus here, though his mainpurpose in the context is simply to declare the Gospel which hepreached, he is obliged to turn aside in order to assert, and to backup his assertion, that there was no sort of difference between himand the other recognised teachers of Christian truth. He was forcedto do this by persistent endeavours in the Corinthian Church to denyhis Apostleship, and the faithfulness of his representation of theChristian verities. The way in which he does it is eminentlybeautiful and remarkable. He fires up in vindication of himself; andthen he checks himself. ‘By the grace of God Iam’—and he is going to say what he is, but he bethinkshimself, as if he had reflected; ‘No! I will leave other peopleto say what that is. By the grace of God I am—what I am,whatever that be. And all that I have to say is that God made me, andthat I helped Him. For the grace of God which was bestowed upon mewas not in vain. You Corinthians may judge what the product is. Itell you how it has come about.’ So there are thoughts here, Ithink, well worth our pondering and taking into our hearts andlives.

I. First, as to the one power that makes men.

‘By the grace of God I am what I am.’ Now that word‘grace’ has got to be worn threadbare, and to mean nextdoor to nothing, in the ears and minds of a great many continualhearers of the Gospel. But Paul had a very definite idea of what hemeant by it; and what he meant by it was a very large thing, which wemay well ponder for a moment as being the only thing which willtransform and ennoble character and will produce fruit that a manneed not be ashamed of. The grace of God, in Paul's use of the words,which is the scriptural use of them generally, implies these twothings which are connected as root and product—the active loveof God, in exercise towards us low and sinful creatures, and thegifts with which that love comes full charged to men. These twothings, which at bottom are one, love and its gifts, are all, in theApostle's judgment, gathered up and stored, as in a great storehouse,in Jesus Christ Himself, and through Him are made accessible to us,and brought to bear upon us for the ennobling of our natures, and theinvesting of us with graces and beauties of character, all strange tous apart from these.

Now it seems to me that these two things, which come from oneroot, are the precise things which you and I need in order to make usnobler and purer and more Godlike men than otherwise we could everbecome. For what is it that men need most for noble and pure living?These two things precisely—motive and power to carry out thedictates of conscience.

Every man in the world knows enough of duty and of right to be afar nobler man than any man in the world is. And it is not for wantof clear convictions of duty, it is not for want of recognised modelsand patterns of life, that men go wrong; but it is because there arethese two things lacking, motives for nobler service, and power to doand be what they know they ought to be. And precisely here Paul'sgospel comes in, ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.’That grace, considered in its two sides of love and of giving,supplies all that we want.

It supplies motives. There is nothing that will bend a man's willlike the recognition of divine love which it is blessedness to comein contact with, and to obey. You may try to sway him by motives ofadvantage and self-interest, and to thunder into his ears the pealingwords of duty and right and ‘ought,’ and there is noadequate response. You cannot soften a heart by the hammers of thelaw. You cannot force a man to do right by brandishing before him thewhip that punishes doing wrong. You cannot sway the will by anythingbut the heart; and when you can touch the deepest spring it moves thewhole mass.

You have seen some ponderous piece of machinery, which resists allattempts of a puny hand laid upon it to make it revolve. But down inone corner is a little hidden spring. Touch that and with majesticslowness and certainty the mighty mass turns. You know thoserocking-stones down in the south of England; tons of weight poisedupon a pin point, and so exquisitely balanced that a child's fingerrightly applied may move the mass. So the whole man is made mobileonly by the touch of love; and the grace that comes to us, and says,‘If ye love Me, keep My commandments’—is, as Ibelieve, the sole motive which will continuously and adequately swaythe rebellious, self-centred wills of men, to obedience resulting innobility of life.

The other aspect of this same great word is, in like manner, thatwhich we need. What men want is, first of all, the will to be nobleand good; and, second, the power to carry out the will. It is Godthat worketh in us both the willing and the doing. I venture toaffirm that there is no power known, either to thinkers, orphilanthropists, or doctrinaires, or strivers after excellence in theworld—no power known and available which will lift a life tosuch heights of beauty and self-sacrificing nobility, as will thepower that comes to us by communication of the grace that is in JesusChrist.

I am perpetually trying to insist, dear brethren, upon this onethought, that the communication of actual new life is the centralgift of the Gospel; and this new life it is, this nature endowed withnew desires, hopes, aims, capacities, which alone will lift the wholeman into unwonted heights of beauty and serenity. It is the grace ofGod, the gift of His Divine Spirit who will dwell with all of us, ifwe will, which alone can be trusted to make men good.

And now, if that be true, what follows? Surely this, that for allyou who have, in any measure, caught a glimpse of what you ought tobe, and have been more or less vainly trying to realise your ideal,and reach your goal, there is a better way than the way ofself-centred and self-derived and self-dependent effort. There is theway of opening your hearts and spirits to the entrance and access ofthat great power, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which will doin us and for us all that we know we ought to do, and yet feelhampered and hindered in performing.

Oh, dear friends! there are many of you, I believe, who have moreor less spasmodically and interruptedly, but with a continualrecurrence to the effort, sought to plant your feet firmly in thepaths of righteousness, and have more or less failed. Listen to thisGospel, and accept it, and put it to the proof. The love of God whichis in Christ Jesus, and the life which that love brings in its hands,for all of us who will trust it, will dwell in you if you will, andmould you into His own likeness, and the law of the spirit of lifewhich was in Christ Jesus will make us free from the law of sin anddeath.

All noble living is a battle. Can you and I, with our tenthousand, meet him that cometh against us with his twenty, thetemptations of the world and of its Prince? Send for thereinforcements, and Jesus Christ will come and teach your hands towar and your fingers to fight. All noble life is self-denial,coercion, restraint; and can my poor, feeble hands apply muscularforce enough to the brake to keep the wheels clogged, and preventthem from whirling me downhill into ruin? Let Him come and put Hisgreat gentle hand on the top of yours, and that will enable you toscotch the wheels, and make self-denial possible. All noble life is abuilding up by slow degrees from the foundation. And can you and Icomplete the task with our own limited resources, and our own feeblestrengths? Will not ‘all that pass by begin to mock’ usand say, ‘This man began to build and was not able tofinish’? That is the epitaph written over all moralities andover all lives which, catching some glimpse of the good and the trueand the noble, have tried, apart from Christ, to reproduce them inthemselves. Frightful gaps, and an unfinished, however fair structureend them all. Go to Him. ‘His hand hath laid the foundation ofthe house, His hand shall also finish it.’ He who is Himselfthe foundation-stone is also the headstone of the corner, which isbrought forth with shouting of ‘Grace! Grace untoit!’

I need not, I suppose, linger to remind you what important andlarge lessons these thoughts carry, not only for men who are tryingto work at the task of mending and making their own characters, buton the larger scale, for all who seek to benefit and elevate theirfellows. Brethren, it is not for me to depreciate any workers who, inany department, and by any methods, seek, and partially effect, theelevation of humanity. But I should be untrue to my own deepestconvictions, and unfaithful to the message which God's providence hasgiven it to me as my life's task to proclaim, if I did not declarethat nothing will truly re-form humanity, society, the nation,the city, except that which re-creates the individual: ‘thegrace of our Lord Jesus Christ’ entering into their midst.

II. And so, secondly, and very briefly, notice the lesson we gethere as to how we should think of our own attainments.

I have already pointed out that there are two beautiful touches inmy text. The Apostle traces everything that he is, in his characterand in his Christian standing and in his Apostolic work and success,to that grace that has come down upon him, and clothed his nakednesswith so glorious a garment. And then, in addition to that, hemodestly, and with a fine sense of dignity, refrains from paradinghis attainments or his achievements, and says, ‘It is not forme to estimate what I am; it is for you to do it.’ True,indeed, in the next verse he does set forth, in very lofty language,his claims to be in nothing behind the very chiefest of the Apostles,and ‘to have laboured more abundantly than they all.’ Butstill the spirit of that humble and yet dignified silence runsthrough the whole context. ‘By the grace of God I am—whatI am.’

Well, then, it is not necessary for a man to be ignorant, or topretend that he is ignorant, of what he can do. We hear a great dealabout the unconsciousness of genius. There is a partial truth in it;and possibly the highest examples of power and success, in anydepartment of mental or intellectual effort, are unaware of theirachievements and stature. But if a man can do a certain kind ofservice there is no harm whatever in his recognising the fact that hecan do it. The only harm is in his thinking that because he can, heis a very fine fellow, and that the work itself is a great work; andso setting himself up above his brethren. There is a vast deal ofhypocrisy in what is called unconsciousness of power. Most men whohave been chosen and empowered to do a great work for God or for men,in any department, have been aware that they could do it. But theless we think about ourselves, in any way, the better. The moreentire our recognition of the influx of grace on which we depend forkeeping our reservoir full, the less likelihood there will be oftouchy self-assertion, the less likelihood of the misuse of thepowers that we have. If we are to do much for God, if we are to keepwhat we have already attained, if we are to make our own lives sweetand beautiful, if we are to be invested with any increase ofcapacity, or led to any higher heights of nobleness andChristlikeness, we must copy, and make a conscious effort to copy,these two things, which marked the Apostle's estimate ofhimself—a distinct recognition that we are only reservoirs andnothing more—‘What hast thou that thou hast not received?Why then dost thou glory as if thou hadst not receivedit?’—and a humble waiving aside of the attempt todetermine what it is that we are. For however clearly a man may knowhis own powers and achievements, it is hard for him to estimate therelations of these to his whole character.

So, dear brethren, although it is a very homely piece of advice,and may seem to be beneath the so-called dignity of the pulpit, letme venture just to remind you that self-conceit is no diseasepeculiar to the ten-talented people, but is quite as rife, if not agood deal rifer, among those with one talent. They are very humblewhen it comes to work, and are quite contented to wrap the one talentup in a napkin then; but when it comes to self-assertion, or whatthey expect to receive of recognition from others, they need to bereminded quite as much as their betters in endowment—‘Bythe grace of God I am what I am.’

III. And so, lastly, one word about the responsibility for ourco-operation with the grace, in order to the accomplishment of itsresults.

‘The grace which was bestowed upon me was not invain,’ says Paul. ‘Not I, but the grace of God which waswith me, and so I laboured more abundantly than they all.’ Thatis to say, God in His giving love; Christ with His ever out-flowingSpirit, move round our hearts, and desire to enter. But the grace,the love, the gifts of the love may all be put away by ourunfaithfulness, by our non-receptivity, by our misuse, and by ournegligence. Paul yielded himself to the grace that was brought towork upon him. Have you yielded yourselves?

Paul said, ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.’ Hecould not have said that, could he, if he had known that the mostpart of what he was was dead against God's will and purpose? Has Godanything to do with making you what you are, or has it been the devilthat has had the greater share in it? This man, because he knew thathe had submitted himself to the often painful, searching, crucifying,self-restraining and stimulating influences of the Gospel and Spiritof Christ, could say, ‘God's grace has made me what I am, and Ihelped Him to make me.’ And can you say anything like that?

Take your life. In how many of its deeds has there been presentthe consciousness of God and His love? Take your character. How muchof it has been shot through and through, so to speak, by the fierydarts of that cleansing, warming, consuming grace of God? Are youdaily being baptized in that Spirit, searched by that Spirit,condemned by that grace? Is it the grace of God, or nature and selfand the world and the flesh that have made you what you are?

Oh, brethren I let us cultivate the sense of our need of thisdivine help, for it does not come where men do not know how weak theyare, and how much they want it. The mountain tops arehigh,—yes! and they are dry; there is no water there. Therivers run in the green valleys deep down. ‘God resisteth theproud, and giveth grace to the humble.’ Let us see that we openour hearts to the reception of these quickening and cleansinginfluences, for it is possible for us to cover ourselves over withsuch an impenetrable covering that that grace cannot pass through it.Let us see to it that we keep ourselves in close contact with thefoundation of all this grace, even Jesus Christ Himself, by desire,by faith, by love, by communion, by meditation, by approximation, bysympathy, by service. And let us see that we use the grace that wepossess. ‘For to him that hath shall be given, and from himthat hath not’—not possessing in any real sense becausenot utilising for its appointed purpose—‘shall be takenaway even that he hath.’ Wherefore, brethren, I ‘beseechyou that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.’

THE UNITY OF APOSTOLICTEACHING

‘Whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so yebelieved.’—1 COR. xv. 11.

Party spirit and faction were the curses of Greek civic life, andthey had crept into at least one of the Greek churches—that inthe luxurious and powerful city of Corinth. We know that there was avery considerable body of antagonists to Paul, who ranked themselvesunder the banner of Apollos or of Cephas i.e. Peter.Therefore, Paul, keenly conscious that he was speaking to someunfriendly critics, hastens in the context to remove the possibleobjection which might be made, that the Gospel which he preached waspeculiar to himself, and proceeds to assert that the whole substanceof what he had to say to men, was held with unbroken unanimity by theother apostles. ‘They’ means all of them; and‘so’ means the summary of the Gospel teaching in thepreceding verses.

Now, Paul would not have ventured to make that assertion, in theface of men whom he knew to be eager to pick holes in anything thathe said, unless he had been perfectly sure of his ground. There werebroad differences between him and the others. But their partisansmight squabble, as is often the case, and the men, whose partisansthey were, be unanimous. There were differences of individualcharacter, of temper, and of views about certain points of Christiantruth. But there was an unbroken front of unanimity in regard to allthat lies within the compass of that little word which covers so muchground—‘So we preach.’

Now, I wish to turn to that outstanding fact—which does notalways attract the attention which it deserves—of the absoluteidentity of the message which all the apostles and primitive teachersdelivered, and to seek to enforce some of the considerations andlessons which seem to me naturally to flow from it.

I. First, then, I ask you to think of the fact itself—theunbroken unanimity of the whole body of Apostolic teachers.

As I have said, there were wide differences of characteristicsbetween them, but there was a broad tract of teaching wherein theyall agreed. Let me briefly gather up the points of unanimity, thecontents of the one Gospel, which every man of them felt was hismessage to the world. I may take it all from the two clauses in thepreceding context, ‘how that Christ died for our sins accordingto the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again thethird day according to the Scriptures.’ These are the thingsabout which, as Paul declares, there was not the whisper of adissentient voice. There is the vital centre which he declares everyChristian teacher grasped as being the essential of his message, andin various tones and manners, but in substantial identity of content,declared to the world.

Now, what lies in it? The Person spoken of—the Christ, andall that that word involves of reference to the ancient andincomplete Revelation in the past, its shadows and types, itsprophecies and ceremonies, its priesthood and its sacrifices; withall that it involves of reference to the ancient hopes on which athousand generations had lived, and which either are baselessdelusions, or are realised in Jesus—the Person whom all theApostles proclaimed was One anointed from God as Prophet, Priest, andKing; who had come into the world to fulfil all that the ancientsystem had shadowed by sacrifice, temple, and priest, and was theMonarch of Israel and of the world.

And not only were they absolutely unanimous in regard to thePerson, but they were unbrokenly consentient in regard to the factsof His life, His death, and His Resurrection. But the proclamation ofthe external fact is no gospel. You must add the clause ‘forour sins,’ and then the record, which is a mere piece ofhistory, with no more good news in it than the record of the death ofany other martyr, hero, or saint, starts into being truly the goodnews for the world. The least part of a historical fact is the fact;the greatest part of it is the explanation of the fact, and thesetting it in its place in regard to other facts, the exhibition ofthe principles which it expresses, and of the conclusions to which itleads. So the bare historical declaration of a death and aresurrection is transmuted into a gospel, by that which is the mostimportant part of the Gospel, the explanation of the meaning of thefact—‘He died for our sins.’

If redemption from sin through the death of a Person is thefundamental conception of the Gospel for the world, then it is clearthat, for such a purpose, a divine nature in the Person is wanted.Your notion of what Christ came to do will determine your notion ofwho He is. If you only recognise that His work is to teach, or toshow in exercise a fair human character, then you may rest contentwith the lower notion of His nature which sees in Him but theforemost of the sons of men. But if we grasp ‘died for oursins,’ then for such a task the incarnation of the Eternal Sonof God is the absolute pre-requisite.

Still further, our text brings out the contents of this gospel asbeing the declaration of the Resurrection. On that I need not hereand now dwell at any length. But these are the points, the Person,the two facts, death and resurrection, and the great meaning of thedeath—viz. the expiation for the world's sins: these are thethings on which the whole of the primitive teachers of the ApostolicChurch had one voice and one message.

Now, I do not suppose that I need spend any time in showing to youhow the extant records bear out, absolutely, this contention of theApostle's. I need only remind you how the opposition that was wagedagainst him—and it was a very vigorous and a very bitteropposition—from a section of the Church, had no bearing at allupon the question of what he taught, but only upon the question of towhom it was to be taught. The only objection that the so-calledJudaising party in the early Church had against Paul and hispreaching, was not the Gospel that he declared, but his assertionthat the Gentile nations might enter into the Church through faith inJesus Christ, without passing through the gate of circumcision.Depend upon it, if there had been any, even the most microscopic,divergence on his part from the general, broad stream of Christianteaching, the sleepless, keen-eyed, unscrupulous enemies that doggedhim all his days would have pounced upon it eagerly, and would neverhave ceased talking about it. But not one of them ever said a word ofthe sort, but allowed his teaching to pass, because it was theteaching of every one of the apostles.

If I had time, or if it were necessary, it would be easy to pointyou to the records that we have left of the Apostolic teaching, inorder to confirm this unbroken unanimity. I do not need to spend timeon that. Proof-texts are not worth so much as the fact that thesedoctrines are interwoven into the whole structure of the NewTestament as a whole—just as they are into Paul's letters. ButI may gather one or two sayings, in which the substance of eachwriter's teaching has been concentrated by himself. For instance,Peter speaks about being ‘redeemed by the precious blood ofChrist as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot,’ anddeclares that ‘He Himself bare our sins in His own body on thetree.’ John comes in with his doxology: ‘Unto Him thatloved us, and loosed us from our sins in His own blood’; and itis his pen that records how in the heavens there echoed ‘gloryand honour and thanks and blessing, for ever and ever, to the Lambthat was slain, and has redeemed us unto God by His blood.’ Thewriter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, steeped as he is in ceremonialand sacrificial ideas, and having for his one purpose to work out thethought that Jesus Christ is all that the ancient ritual, sacerdotaland sacrificial system shadows and foretells, sums up his teaching inthe statement that Christ having come, a high priest of good thingsto come, ‘through His own blood, entered in, once for all, intothe holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.’

There were limits to the unanimity, as I have already said. Pauland Peter had a great quarrel about circumcision and relatedsubjects. The Apostolic writings are wondrously diverse from oneanother. Peter is far less constructive and profound than Paul. Pauland Peter are both untouched with the mystic wisdom of the ApostleJohn. But, in regard to the facts that I have signalised, thedivinity, the person of Jesus Christ, His death and Resurrection, andthe significance to be attached to that death, they are absolutelyone. The instruments in the orchestra are various, the tender flute,the ringing trumpet, and many another, but the note they strike isthe same. ‘Whether it were I or they, so we preach.’

II. Now, let me ask you to consider the only explanation of thisunanimity.

Time was when the people, who did not believe in Christ's divinityand sacrificial death, tortured themselves to try and make outmeanings for these epistles, which should not include the obnoxiousdoctrines. That is nearly antiquated. I suppose that there is nobodynow, or next to nobody, who does not admit that, right or wrong,Paul, Peter, John—all of them—teach these two things,that Christ is the Eternal Son of the Father, and that His death isthe Sacrifice for the world's sin. But they say that that is not theprimitive, simple teaching of the Man of Nazareth; and that theunanimity is a unanimity of misapprehension of, and addition to, Hiswords and to the drift of His teaching.

Now, just think what a huge—I was going tosay—inconceivability that supposition is. For there is nopoint, say from the time at which the Apostle who wrote the words ofmy text, which was somewhere about the year 56 or 57A.D.,—there is no point between that period, working backwardsthrough the history of the Church to the Crucifixion, where you caninsert such a tremendous revolution of teaching as this. There is notrace of such a change. Peter's earliest speeches, as recorded inActs, are in some important respects less developed doctrinally thanare the epistles, but Christ's Messiahship, death, and Resurrection,with which is connected the remission of sins, are as clearly andemphatically proclaimed as at any later time. So these points of theApostolic testimony were preached from the first, and, if inpreaching them, the witnesses perverted the simple teaching of theCarpenter of Nazareth, and ascribed to Him a character which He hadnot claimed, and to His death a power of which He had not dreamed,they did so at the very time when the impressions of His personalityand teaching were most recent and strong. It seems to me, apartaltogether from other considerations, that such a right-about-facemovement on the part of the early teachers of Christianity, is anabsolute impossibility, regard being had to the facts of the case,even if you make much allowance for possible errors in therecord.

But I would make another remark. If misapprehension came in, ifthese men, in their unanimous declaration of Christ's death as theSacrifice for sin, were not fairly representing the conclusionsinevitable from the facts of Christ's life and death, and from Hisown words, is it not an odd thing that the same misapprehensionaffected them all? When people misconceive a teacher's doctrine, theygenerally differ in the nature of their misconceptions, and splitinto sections and parties. But here you have to account for the factthat every man of them, with all their diversity of idiosyncrasy andcharacter, tumbled into the same pit of error, and that there was notone of them left sane enough to protest. Does that seem to be alikely thing?

And what about the worth of the teacher's teaching, that did notguard its receivers from such absolute misapprehension as that? Ifthe whole Church unanimously mistook everything that Jesus Christ hadsaid to them, and unwarrantably made out of Him what they did, onthis hypothesis, I do not think that there is much left to honour oradmire in a teacher, whose teaching was so ambiguous, as that it ledall that received it into such an error as that into which, by thesupposition, they fell.

No, brethren; they were one, because their Gospel was the onlypossible statement of the principles that underlay, and theconclusions that flowed from, the plain facts of the life and theteaching of Jesus Christ. I am not going to spend time in quoting Hisown words. I can only refer to one or two of them very succinctly.‘Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise itup.’ ‘As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.’ ‘My flesh isthe bread which I will give for the life of the world.’‘The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but tominister, and to give His life a ransom for many.’ ‘Thisis My body broken for you; take, eat, in remembrance of Me.’‘This is My blood, shed for many for the remission of sins;this do ye, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of Me.’What possible explanation, doing justice to these words, is there,except ‘Jesus Christ died for our sins according to theScriptures’? And how could men who had heard them with theirown ears, and with their own eyes had seen Him risen from the deadand ascending into heaven, do otherwise than eagerly,enthusiastically, at the cost of all, and with unhesitating voice ofunbroken unanimity, ‘so preach’?

I quite admit that in Christ's teaching in the gospels you willnot find the articulate drawing out into doctrinal statement of theprinciples that underlay, and the conclusions that flow from, thehistorical fact of Christ's propitiatory death. I do not wonder atthat, nor do I admit that it is any argument against the truth of thedivine revelation which is made in these doctrinal statements, toallege that we find nothing corresponding to them in Jesus Christ'sown words. The silence is not as absolute as is alleged, as thequotations which I have made, and which might have been multiplied,do distinctly enough show. Even if it were more absolute than it is,the silence is by no means unintelligible. Christ had to offer theSacrifice before the Sacrifice could be preached. He Himself warnedHis disciples against accepting His own words prior to the Cross, asthe conclusive and ultimate revelation. ‘I have many things tosay unto you, but you cannot carry them now.’ There was needthat the Cross should be a fact before it was evolved into adoctrine. And so I venture to say that the unanimity of the preachingis only explicable on the ground of that preaching in both itsparts—its assertion of Jesus’ Messiahship and of Hispropitiatory death—being the repetition on the housetop of thelessons which they had heard in the ear from Him.

III. Note, briefly, the lesson from this unanimity.

Let us distinctly apprehend where is the living heart of theGospel—that it is the message of redemption by the incarnationand sacrifice of the Son of God. There follows from that incarnationand sacrifice all the great teaching about the work of the DivineSpirit in men, dwelling in them for evermore. But the beginning ofall is, ‘Christ died for our sins according to theScriptures.’ And, brethren, that message meets, as nothing elsemeets, the deepest needs of every human soul. It is able, as nothingelse is able, to open out into a whole encyclopædia anduniverse of wisdom and truth and power. If we strike it out of ourconception of Christianity, or if we obscure it as being the verypalpitating centre of the whole, then feebleness will creep over theChristianity that is minus a Cross, or does not see in it theSacrifice for the world's sin. You may cast overboard the sails tolighten the ship. If you do, she lies a log on the waters. And if,for the sake of meeting new phases of thought, Christian churchestamper with this central truth, they have flung away their means ofprogress and of power.

Let me say again, and in a word only, that the considerations thatI have been trying to submit to you in this sermon, show us thelimits within which the modern cry of ‘Back to the Christ ofthe Gospels,’ is right, and where it may be wrong. I believethat in former days, and to some extent in the present day, weevangelical teachers have too much sometimes talked rather about thedoctrines than about the Person who is the doctrines. And if the cryof ‘Back to the Christ’ means, ‘Do not talk so muchabout the Atonement and Propitiation; talk about the Christ whoatones,’ then, with all my heart, I say, ‘Amen!’But put the Person in the foreground, the living-loving, thedying-loving, the risen-loving Christ, put Him in the foreground. Butif it is implied, as I am afraid it is often implied, that the Christof the Gospels is one and the Christ of the epistles is another, andthat to go back to the Christ of the gospels means to drop‘died for our sins according to the Scriptures,’ and toretain only the non-miraculous, moral and religious teachings thatare recorded in the three first gospels, then I say that it is fatalfor the Church, and it is false to the facts, for the Christ of theepistles is the Christ of the gospels: the difference only being thatin the one you have the facts, and in the other you have theirmeaning and their power.

So, lastly, let this text teach us what we ourselves have to dowith this unanimous testimony. ‘So we preach, and so yebelieved.’ Brother! Do you believe so? That is to say,is your conception of the Gospel the mighty redemptive agency whichis wrought by the Incarnate Son of God, who was crucified for ouroffences, and rose that we might live, and is glorified that we, too,may share His glory? Is that your Gospel? But do not be content withan intellectual grasp of the thing. ‘So ye believed’means a great deal more than ‘I believe that Christ died forour sins.’ It means ‘I believe in the Christ who did diefor my sins.’ You must cast yourself as a sinful man on Him;and, so casting, you will find that it is no vain story which iscommended to us by all these august voices from the past, but youwill have in your own experience the verification of the fact that Hedied for our sins, in your own consciousness of sins forgiven, andnew love bestowed; and so may turn round to Paul, the leader of thechorus, and to all the apostolic band, and say to them, ‘Now Ibelieve, not because of thy saying, but because I have seen Him, andmyself heard Him.’

THE CERTAINTY AND JOY OF THERESURRECTION

‘But now is Christ risen from the dead ... thefirst fruits of them that slept.’—1 COR. xv.20.

The Apostle has been contemplating the long train of dismalconsequences which he sees would arise if we only had a dead Christ.He thinks that he, the Apostle, would have nothing to preach, and we,nothing to believe. He thinks that all hope of deliverance from sinwould fade away. He thinks that the one fact which gives assurance ofimmortality having vanished, the dead who had nurtured the assurancehave perished. And he thinks that if things were so, then Christianmen, who had believed a false gospel, and nourished an empty faith,and died clinging to a baseless hope, were far more to be pitied thanmen who had had less splendid dreams and less utter illusions.

Then, with a swift revulsion of feeling, he turns away from thatdreary picture, and with a change of key, which the dullest ear canappreciate, from the wailing minors of the preceding verses, hebreaks into this burst of triumph. ‘Now’—thingsbeing as they are, for it is the logical ‘now,’ and notthe temporal one—things being as they are, ‘Christ isrisen from the dead, and that as the first fruits of them thatslept.’

Part of the ceremonial of the Passover was the presentation in theTemple of a barley sheaf, the first of the harvest, waved before theLord in dedication to Him, and in sign of thankful confidence thatall the fields would be reaped and their blessing gathered. There maybe some allusion to that ceremony, which coincided in time with theResurrection of our Lord, in the words here, which regard that onesolitary Resurrection as the early ripe and early reaped sheaf, thepledge and the prophecy of the whole ingathering.

Now there seem to me, in these words, to ring out mainly twothings—an expression of absolute certainty in the fact, and anexpression of unbounded triumph in the certainty of the fact.

And if we look at these two things, I think we shall get the mainthoughts that the Apostle would impress upon our minds.

I. The certainty of Christ's Resurrection.

‘Now is Christ risen,’ says he, defying, as itwere, doubt and negation, and basing himself upon the firm assurancewhich he possesses of that historical fact. ‘Ah!’ yousay, ‘seeing is believing; and he had evidence such as we cannever have.’ Well! let us see. Is it possible for us, nineteencenturies nearly after that day, to catch some echo of this assuredconfidence, and in the face of modern doubts and disbeliefs, toreiterate with as unfaltering assurance as that with which they camefrom his glowing lips, the great words of my text? Can we, logicallyand reasonably, as men who are guided by evidence and not by feeling,stand up before the world, and take for ours the ancient confession:‘I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, whosuffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. Thethird day He rose again from the dead’? I think we can.

The way to prove a fact is by the evidence of witnesses. Youcannot argue that it would be very convenient, if such and such athing should be true; that great moral effects would follow if webelieved it was true, and so on. The way to do is to put people whohave seen it into the witness-box, and to make sure that theirevidence is worth accepting.

And at the beginning of my remarks I wish to protest, in asentence, against confusing the issues about this question of theResurrection of Jesus Christ in that fashion which is popularnowadays, when we are told that miracle is impossible, andtherefore there has been no Resurrection, or that death is theend of human existence, and that therefore there has been noResurrection. That is not the way to go about ascertaining the truthas to asserted facts. Let us hear the evidence. The men who brushaside the testimony of the New Testament writers, in obedience to atheory, either about the impossibility of the supernatural, or aboutthe fatal and final issues of human death, are victims of prejudice,in the strictest meaning of the word; and are no more logical thanthe well-known and proverbial reasoner who, when told that facts wereagainst him, with sublime confidence in his own infallibility, isreported to have said, ‘So much the worse for the facts.’Let us deal with evidence, and not with theory, when we are talkingabout alleged facts of history.

So then, let me remind you that, in this chapter from which mytext is taken, we have a record of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,older than, and altogether independent of, the records contained inthe gospels, which are all subsequent in date to it; that thisEpistle to the Corinthians is one of the four undisputed Epistles ofthe Apostle, which not the most advanced school of modern criticismhas a word to say against; that, therefore, this chapter, written, atthe latest, some seven and twenty years after the date of theCrucifixion, carries us up very close to that event; that it showsthat the Resurrection was universally believed all over theChurch, and therefore must have then been long believed; that itenables us to trace the same belief as universal, and in undisputedpossession of the field among the churches, at the time of Paul'sconversion, which cannot be put down at much more than five or sixyears after the Crucifixion, and that so we are standing in thepresence of absolutely contemporaneous testimony. This is not a casein which a belief slowly and gradually grew up. Whether we accept theevidence or not, we are bound to admit that it is strictlycontemporaneous testimony to the fact of Christ's Resurrection.

And the witnesses are reliable and competent, as well ascontemporaneous. The old belief that their testimony was imposture isdead long ago; as, indeed, how could it live? It would be an anomaly,far greater than the Resurrection, to believe that these people,Mary, Peter, John, Paul, and all the rest of them, were conspiratorsin a lie, and that the fairest system of morality and the noblestconsecration that the world has ever seen, grew up out of a fraud,like flowers upon a dunghill. That theory will not hold water; andeven those who will not accept the testimony have long sinceconfessed that it will not. But the Apostle, in my context, seems tothink that that is the only tenable alternative to the other theorythat the witnesses were veracious, and I am disposed to believe thathe is right. He says, ‘If Christ be not risen, then, arewe’ the utterly impossible thing of ‘false witnesses toGod,’ devout perjurers, as the phrase might be paraphrased: menwho are lying to please God. If Christ be not risen, they have swornto a thing that they know to be untrue, in order to advance His causeand His kingdom. If that theory be not accepted, there is no otherabout these men and their message that will hold water for a minute,except the admission of its truth.

The fashionable modern one, that it was hallucination, ispreposterous. Hallucinations that five hundred people at once shared!Hallucinations that lasted all through long talks, spread atintervals over more than a month! Hallucinations that included eatingand drinking, speech and answer; the clasp of the hand and thefeeling of the breath! Hallucinations that brought instruction!Hallucinations that culminated in the fancy that a gathered multitudeof them saw Him going up into heaven! The hallucination is on theother side, I think. They have got the saddle on the wrong horse whenthey talk about the Apostolic witnesses being the victims ofhallucination. It is the people who believe it possible that theyshould be who are so. The old argument against miracles used to saythat it is more consonant with experience that testimony should befalse, than that a miracle should be true. I venture to say it is amuch greater strain on a man's credulity, to believe that suchevidence is false than that such a miracle, soattested, is true. And I, for my part, venture to think that thereasonable men are the men who listen to these eye-witnesses whenthey say, ‘We saw Him rise’; and echo back in answer thetriumphant certitude, ‘Christ is risen indeed!’

There is another consideration that I might put briefly. A veryvaluable way of establishing facts is to point to the existence ofother facts, which indispensably require the previous ones for theirexplanation. Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. Ibelieve in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, amongst other reasons,because I do not understand how it was possible for the Church toexist for a week after the Crucifixion, unless Jesus Christ roseagain. Why was it that they did not all scatter? Why was it that thespirit of despondency and the tendency to separation, which werebeginning to creep over them when they were saying: ‘Ah! it isall up! We trusted that this had been He,’ did not go onto their natural issue? How came it that these people, with theirMaster taken away from the midst of them, and the bond of unionbetween them removed, and all their hopes crushed did not say:‘We have made a mistake, let us go back to Gennesareth and taketo our fishing again, and try and forget our bright illusions’?That is what John the Baptist's followers did when he died. Why didnot Christ's do the same? Because Christ rose again and re-knit themtogether. When the Shepherd was smitten, the flock would have beenscattered, and never drawn together any more, unless there had beenjust such a thing as the Resurrection asserts there was, to reunitethe dispersed and to encourage the depressed. And so I say,Christianity with a dead Christ, and a Church gathered round agrave from which the stone has not been rolled away, is moreunbelievable than the miracle, for it is an absurdity.

Then there is another thing that I would say in a word. Let me putan illustration to explain what I mean. Suppose, after the executionof King Charles I., in some corner of the country a Pretender hadsprung up and said, ‘I am the King!’ the way to end thatwould have been for the Puritan leaders to have taken people to St.George's Chapel, and said, ‘Look! there is the coffin, there isthe body, is that the king, or is it not?’ Jesus Christ wassaid to have risen again, within a week of the time of His death. Therulers of the nation had the grave, the watch, the stone, the seal.They could have put an end to the pestilent nonsense in two minutes,if it had been nonsense, by the simple process of saying, ‘Goand look at the tomb, and you will see Him there.’ But thisquestion has never been answered, and never will be—What becameof that sacred corpse if Jesus Christ did not rise again from thedead? The clumsy lie that the rulers told, that the disciples hadstolen away the body, was only their acknowledgment that the gravewas empty. If the grave were empty, either His servants wereimpostors, which we have seen it is incredible that they were, or theChrist was risen again.

And so, dear brethren, for many other reasons besides this handfulthat I have ventured to gather and put before you, and in spite ofthe prejudices of modern theories, I lift up here once more, withunfaltering certitude, the glad message which I beseech you toaccept: ‘Christ is risen, the first fruits of them thatslept.’

II. So much, then, for the first point in this passage. A word ortwo about the second—the triumph in the certitude of thatResurrection.

As I remarked at a previous point of this discourse, the Apostlehas been speaking about the consequences which would follow from thefact that Christ was not raised. If we take all these consequencesand reverse them, we get the glad issues of His Resurrection, andunderstand why it was that this great burst of triumph comes from theApostle's lips. And though I must necessarily treat this part of mysubject very inadequately, let me try to gather together the variouspoints on which, as I think, our Easter gladness ought to bebuilt.

First, then, I say, the risen Christ gives us a complete Gospel. Adead Christ annihilates the Gospel. ‘If Christ be notrisen,’ says the Apostle, ‘our preaching,’ by whichhe means not the act but the substance of his preaching, ‘isvain.’ Or, as the word might be more accurately rendered,‘empty.’ There is nothing in it; no contents. It is ablown bladder; nothing in it but wind.

What was Paul's ‘preaching’? It all turned upon thesepoints—that Jesus Christ was the Son of God; that He wasIncarnate in the flesh for us men; that He died on the Cross for ouroffences; that He was raised again, and had ascended into Heaven,ruling the world and breathing His presence into believing hearts;and that He would come again to be our Judge. These were the elementsof what Paul called ‘his Gospel.’ He faces thesupposition of a dead Christ, and he says, ‘It is all gone! Itis all vanished into thin air. I have nothing to preach if I have nota Cross to preach which is man's deliverance from sin, because on itthe Son of God hath died, and I only know that Jesus Christ'ssacrifice is accepted and sufficient, because I have it attested tome in His rising again from the dead.’

Dear brethren, on the fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ issuspended everything which makes the Gospel a gospel. Strike thatout, and what have you left? Some beautiful bits of moral teaching, alovely life, marred by tremendous mistakes about Himself and His ownimportance and His relation to men and to God; but you have gotnothing left that is worth calling a gospel. You have the crossrising there, gaunt, black, solitary; but, unless on the other sideof the river you have the Resurrection, no bridge will ever be thrownacross the black gulf, and the Cross remains ‘dead, beingalone.’ You must have a Resurrection to explain the Cross, andthen the Life and the Death tower up into the manifestation of God inthe flesh and the propitiation for our sins. Without it we havenothing to preach which is worth calling a gospel.

Again, a living Christ gives faith something to lay hold of. TheApostle here in the context twice says, according to the AuthorisedVersion, that a dead Christ makes our faith ‘vain.’ Buthe really uses two different words, the former of which is applied to‘preaching,’ and means literally ‘empty,’while the latter means ‘of none effect’ or‘powerless.’ So there are two ideas suggested here whichI can only touch with the lightest hand.

The risen Christ puts some contents, so to speak, into my faith;He gives me something for it to lay hold of.

Who can trust a dead Christ, or who can trust ahuman Christ? That would be as much a blasphemy as trustingany other man. It is only when we recognise Him as declared to be theSon of God, and that by the Resurrection from the dead, that ourfaith has anything round which it can twine, and to which it cancleave. That living Saviour will stretch out His hand to us if welook to Him, and if I put my poor, trembling little hand up towardsHim, He will bend to me and clasp it. You cannot exercise faithunless you have a risen Saviour, and unless you exercise faith in Himyour lives are marred and sad.

Again, if Christ be dead, our faith, if it could exist, would beas devoid of effect as it would be empty of substance. For such afaith would be like an infant seeking nourishment at a dead mother'sbreast, or men trying to kindle their torches at an extinguishedlamp. And chiefly would it fail to bring the first blessing which thebelieving soul receives through and from a risen Christ, namely,deliverance from sin. If He whom we believed to be our sacrifice byHis death and our sanctification by His life has not risen, then, aswe have seen, all which makes His death other than a martyr'svanishes, and with it vanish forgiveness and purifying. Only when werecognise that in His Cross explained by His Resurrection, we haveredemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins, and bythe communication of the risen life from the risen Lord possess thatnew nature which sets us free from the dominion of our evil, is faithoperative in setting us free from our sins.

So, dear friends, the risen Christ gives us something for faith tolay hold of, and will make it the hand by which we grasp His stronghand, which lifts us ‘out of the horrible pit and the miryclay, and sets our feet upon a rock.’ But if He lie dead in thegrave your faith is vain, because it grasps nothing but a shadow; andit is vain as being purposeless; you are yet in your sins.

The last thought is that the risen Christ gives us the certitudeof our Resurrection. I do not for a moment mean to say that, apartfrom the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the thought, be it a wish or adread, of immortality, has not been found in men, but there is allthe difference in the world between forebodings, aspirations, wishesit were so, fears that it might be so, and the calm certitude that itis so. Many men talked about a western continent, but Columbus wentthere and came back again, and that ended doubt. Many men before, andapart from Jesus, have cherished thoughts of an immortal life beyondthe grave, but He has been there and returned. And that, and, as Ibelieve, that only puts the doctrine of immortality upon anirrefragable foundation; and we can say, ‘Now, I know thatthere is that land beyond.’ They tell us that death endseverything. Modern materialism, in all its forms, asserts that it isthe extinction of the personality. Jesus Christ died, and wentthrough it, and came out of it the same, and I will trust Him.Brethren, the set of opinion amongst the educated and culturedclasses in England, and all over Europe, at this moment, proves toanybody who has eyes to see, that for this generation, rejection ofimmortality will follow certainly on the rejection of Jesus Christ.And for England to-day, as for Greece when Paul sent his letter toCorinth, the one light of certitude in the great darkness is the factthat Jesus Christ hath died, and is risen again.

If you will let Him, He will make you partakers of His ownimmortal life. ‘The first fruits of them that slept’ isthe pledge and the prophecy of all the waving abundance of goldengrain that shall be gathered into the great husbandman's barns. TheApostle goes on to represent the resurrection of ‘them that areChrist's’ as a consequence of their union to Jesus. He hasconquered for us all. He has entered the prison-house and come forthbearing its iron gates on His shoulders, and henceforth it is notpossible that we should be holden of it. There are tworesurrections—one, that of Christ's servants, one that ofothers. They are not the same in principle—and, alas, they areawfully different in issue. ‘Some shall wake to everlastinglife, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.’

Let me beseech you to make Jesus Christ the life of your deadsouls, by humble, penitent trust in Him. And then, in due time, Hewill be the life of your transformed bodies, changing these into thelikeness of the body of His glory, ‘according to the workingwhereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.’

THE DEATH OF DEATH

‘But now is Christ risen from the dead, and becomethe first-fruits of them that slept. 21. For since by man came death,by man came also the resurrection of the dead.... 50. Now this I say,brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. 51. Behold, I shew youa mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52.In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, (for thetrumpet shall sound;) and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, andwe shall be changed. 53. For this corruptible must put onincorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54. So whenthis corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortalshall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass thesaying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 55. Odeath, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 56. Thesting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. 57. Butthanks be to God, which giveth us the victory, through our Lord JesusChrist. 58. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast,unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as yeknow that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.’—1 COR.xv. 20, 21; 50-58.

This passage begins with the triumphant ringing out of the greatfact which changes all the darkness of an earthly life without aheavenly hope into a blaze of light. All the dreariness for humanity,and all the vanity for Christian faith and preaching, vanish, likeghosts at co*ck-crow, when the Resurrection of Jesus rises sun-like onthe world's night. It is a historical fact, established by theevidence proper for such,—namely, the credible testimony ofeye-witnesses. They could attest His rising, but the knowledge of theworldwide significance of it comes, not from testimony, but fromrevelation. Those who saw Him risen join to declare: ‘Now isChrist risen from the dead,’ but it is a higher Voice that goeson to say, ‘and become the first-fruits of them thatslept.’

That one Man risen from the grave was like the solitary sheaf ofpaschal first-fruits, prophesying of many more, a gathered harvestthat will fill the great Husbandman's barns. The Resurrection ofJesus is not only a prophecy, showing, as it and it alone does, thatdeath is not the end of man, but that life persists through death andemerges from it, like a buried river coming again flashing into thelight of day, but it is the source or cause of the Christian'sresurrection. The oneness of the race necessitated the diffusionthrough all its members of sin and of its consequence—physicaldeath. If the fountain is poisoned, all the stream will be tainted.If men are to be redeemed from the power of the grave, there must bea new personal centre of life; and union with Him, which can only beeffected by faith, is the condition of receiving life from Him, whichgradually conquers the death of sin now, and will triumph over bodilydeath in the final resurrection. It is the resurrection of Christiansthat Paul is dealing with. Others are to be raised, but on adifferent principle, and to sadly different issues. Since Christ'sResurrection assures us of the future waking, it changes death into‘sleep,’ and that sleep does not mean unconsciousness anymore than natural sleep does, but only rest from toil, and cessationof intercourse with the external world.

In the part of the passage, verses 50 to 58, the Apostle becomes,not the witness or the reasoner, as in the earlier parts of thechapter, but the revealer of a ‘mystery.’ That word, sotragically misunderstood, has here its uniform scriptural sense oftruth, otherwise unknown, made known by revelation. But before heunveils the mystery, Paul states with the utmost force a difficultywhich might seem to crush all hope,—namely, that corporeity, aswe know it, is clearly incapable of living in such a world as thatfuture one must be. To use modern terms, organism and environmentmust be adapted to each other. A fish must have the water, thecreatures that flourish at the poles would not survive at theequator. A man with his gross earthly body, so thoroughly adapted tohis earthly abode, would be all out of harmony with his surroundingsin that higher world, and its rarified air would be too thin and purefor his lungs. Can there be any possibility of making him fit to livein a spiritual world? Apart from revelation, the dreary answer mustbe ‘No.’ But the ‘mystery’ answers with‘Yes.’ The change from physical to spiritual is clearlynecessary, if there is to be a blessed life hereafter.

That necessary change is assured to all Christians, whether theydie or ‘remain till the coming of the Lord.’ Paul variesin his anticipations as to whether he and his contemporaries willbelong to the one class or the other; but he is quite sure that ineither case the indwelling Spirit of Jesus will effect on living anddead the needful change. The grand description in verse 52, like theparallel in 1 Thessalonians iv. 16, is modelled on the account of thetheophany on Sinai. The trumpet was the signal of the DivinePresence. That last manifestation will be sudden, and its startlingbreaking in on daily commonplace is intensified by the reduplication:‘In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.’ With suddencrash that awful blare of ‘loud, uplifted angel trumpet’will silence all other sounds, and hush the world. The stages of whatfollows are distinctly marked. First, the rising of the dead changedin passing through death, so as to rise in incorruptible bodies, andthen the change of the bodies of the living into like incorruption.The former will not be found naked, but will be clothed with theirwhite garments; the latter will, as it were, put on the gloriousrobes above the ‘muddy vesture of decay,’ or, more truly,will see the miracle of these being transfigured till they shine‘so as no fuller on earth could white them.’ The livingwill witness the resurrection of the dead; the risen dead willwitness the transformation of the living. Then both hosts will beunited, and, through all eternity, ‘live together,’ andthat ‘with Him.’ Paul evidently expects that he and theCorinthians will be in the latter class, as appears by the‘we’ in verse 52. He, as it were, points to his own bodywhen he says, recurring to his former thought of the necessity ofharmony between organism and environment, ‘thiscorruptible must put on incorruption.’ Here‘corruption’ is used in its physical application, thoughthe ethical meaning may be in the background.

The Apostle closes his long argument and revelation with a burst,almost a shout, of triumph. Glowing words of old prophets rush intohis mind, and he breathes a new, grander meaning into them. Isaiahhad sung of a time when the veil over all nations should be destroyed‘in this mountain,’ and when death should be swallowed upfor ever; and Paul grasps the words and says that the prophet'sloftiest anticipations will be fulfilled when that monster, whoseinsatiable maw swallows down youth, beauty, strength, wisdom, willhimself be swallowed up. Hosea had prophesied of Israel's restorationunder figure of a resurrection, and Paul grasps his words andfills them with a larger meaning. He modifies them, in a manner onwhich we need not enlarge, to express the great Christian thoughtthat death has conquered man but that man in Christ will conquer theconqueror. With swift change of metaphor he represents death as aserpent, armed with a poisoned sting, and that suggests to him thethought, never far away in his view of man, that death's power toslay is derived from—or, so to say, concentrated in—sin;and that at once raises the other equally characteristic and familiarthought that law stimulates sin, since to know a thing to beforbidden creates in perverse humanity an itching to do it, and lawreveals sin by setting up the ideal from which sin is the departure.But just as the tracks in Paul's mind were well worn, by which thethought of death brought in that of sin, and that of sin drew afterit that of law, so with equal closeness of established association,that of law condemnatory and slaying, brought up that of Christ theall-sufficient refuge from that gloomy triad—Death Sin, Law.Through union with Him each of us may possess His immortal risenlife, in which Death, the engulfer, is himself engulfed; Death, theconqueror, is conquered utterly and for ever; Death, the serpent, hashis sting drawn, and is harmless. That participation in Christ's lifeis begun even here, and God ‘giveth us the victory’ now,even while we live outward lives that must end in death, and willgive it perfectly in the resurrection, when ‘they cannot dieany more,’ and death itself is dead.

The loftiest Christian hopes have close relation to the lowliestChristian duties, and Paul's triumphant song ends with plain,practical, prose exhortations to steadfastness, unmovable tenacity,and abundant fruitfulness, the motive and power of which will befound in the assurance that, since there is a life beyond, all labourhere, however it may fail in the eyes of men, will not be in vain,but will tell on character and therefore on condition througheternity. If our peace does not rest where we would fain see itsettle, it will not be wasted, but will return to us again, like thedove to the ark, and we shall ‘self-enfold the large resultsof’ labour that seemed to have been thrown away.

STRONG AND LOVING

‘Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you likemen, be strong. 14. Let all your things be done withcharity.’—1 COR. xvi. 13, 14.

There is a singular contrast between the first four of theseexhortations and the last. The former ring sharp and short likepistol-shots; the last is of gentler mould. The former sound like theword of command shouted from an officer along the ranks; and there isa military metaphor running all through them. The foe threatens toadvance; let the guards keep their eyes open. He comes nearer;prepare for the charge, stand firm in your ranks. The battle isjoined; ‘quit you like men’—strike a man'sstroke—‘be strong.’

And then all the apparatus of warfare is put away out of sight,and the captain's word of command is softened into the Christianteacher's exhortation: ‘Let all your deeds be done incharity.’ For love is better than fighting, and is strongerthan swords. And yet, although there is a contrast here, there isalso a sequence and connection. No doubt these exhortations, whichare Paul's last word to that Corinthian Church on whom he hadlavished in turn the treasures of his manifold eloquence,indignation, argumentation, and tenderness, reflected thedeficiencies of the people to whom he was speaking. They wereschismatic and factious to the very core, and so they needed theexhortation to be left last in their ears, as it were, thateverything should be done in love. They were ill-grounded in regardto the very fundamental doctrines of the faith, as all Paul'sargumentation about the resurrection proves, and so they needed to bebidden to ‘stand fast in the faith.’ Their slothfulcarelessness as to the discipline of the Christian life, and theirconsequent feebleness of grasp of the Christian verities, made themloose-braced and weak in all respects, and incapacitated them forvigorous warfare. Thus, we see a picture in these injunctions of thesort of community that Paul had to deal with in Corinth, which yet hecalled a Church of saints, and for which he loved and laboured. Letme then run over and try to bring out the importance and mutualconnection of what I may call this drill-book for the Christianwarfare, which is the Christian life.

‘Watch ye.’ That means one of two things certainly,probably both—Keep awake, and keep your eyes open. Our Lordused the same metaphor, you remember, very frequently, but with aspecial significance. On His lips it generally referred to theattitude of expectation of His coming in judgment. Paul usessometimes the figure with the same application, but here, distinctly,it has another. As I said, there is the military idea underlying it.What will become of an army if the sentries go to sleep? And whatchance will a Christian man have of doing his devoir againsthis enemy, unless he keeps himself awake, and keeps himself alert?Watchfulness, in the sense of always having eyes open for thepossible rush down upon us of temptation and evil, is no small partof the discipline and the duty of the Christian life. One part ofthat watchfulness consists in exercising a very rigid and a veryconstant and comprehensive scrutiny of our motives. For there is noway by which evil creeps upon us so unobserved, as when it slips inat the back door of a specious motive. Many a man contents himselfwith the avoidance of actual evil actions, and lets any kind ofmotives come in and out of his mind unexamined. It is all right tolook after our doings, but ‘as a man thinketh inhis heart, so is he.’ The good or the evil of anything that Ido is determined wholly by the motive with which I do it. And we area great deal too apt to palm off deceptions on ourselves to make surethat our motives are right, unless we give them a very careful andminute scrutiny. One side of this watchfulness, then, is a habitualinspection of our motives and reasons for action. ‘What am Idoing this for?’ is a question that would stop dead an enormousproportion of our activity, as if you had turned the steam off froman engine. If you will use a very fine sieve through which to strainyour motives, you will go a long way to keeping your actions right.We should establish a rigid examination for applicants for entrance,and make quite sure that each that presents itself is not a wolf insheep's clothing. Make them all bring out their passports. Let everyvessel that comes into your harbour remain isolated from allcommunication with the shore, until the health officer has been onboard and given a clean bill. ‘Watch ye,’ for yonder,away in the dark, in the shadow of the trees, the black masses of theenemy are gathered, and a midnight attack is but too likely to bringa bloody awakening to a camp full of sleepers.

My text goes on to bring the enemy nearer and nearer and nearer.‘Watch ye’—and if, not unnoticed, they come down onyou, ‘stand fast in the faith.’ There will be no keepingour ranks, or keeping our feet—or at least, it is not nearly solikely that there will be—unless there has been the precedingwatchfulness. If the first command has not been obeyed, there issmall chance of the second's being so. If there has not been anywatchfulness, it is not at all likely that there will be muchsteadfastness. Just as with a man going along a crowded pavement, alittle touch from a passer-by will throw him off his balance, whereasif he had known it was coming, and had adjusted his poise rightly, hewould have stood against thrice as violent a shock, so, in order thatwe may stand fast, we must watch. A sudden assault will be a greatdeal less formidable when it is a foreseen assault.

‘Stand fast in the faith.’ I take it that thisdoes not mean ‘the thing that we believe,’ which use ofthe word ‘faith’ is the ecclesiastical, but not the NewTestament meaning. In Scripture, faith means not the body of truthsthat we believe, but the act of believing them. This further commandtells us that, in addition to our watchfulness, and as the basis ofour steadfastness, confidence in the revelation of God in JesusChrist will enable us to keep our feet whatever comes against us, andto hold our ground, whoever may assault us.

But remember that it is not because I have faith that I standfast, but because of that in which I have faith. My feet may be wellshod—and it used to be said that a soldier's shoes were of asmuch importance in the battle as his musket—my feet may be wellshod, but if they are not well planted upon firm ground I never shallbe able to stand the collision of the foe. So then, it is not mygrasp of the blessed truth, God in Christ my Friend and Helper, butit is that truth which I grasp at, that makes me strong. Or, to putit into other words, it is the foothold, and not the foot that holdsit, that ensures our standing firm. Only there is no steadfastnesscommunicated to us from the source of all stability, except by way ofour faith, which brings Christ into us. ‘Watch ye; stand fastin the faith.’

The next two words of command are very closely connected, thoughnot quite identical. ‘Quit you like men.’ Play a man'spart in the battle; strike with all the force of your muscles. Butthe Apostle adds, ‘be strong.’ You cannot play a man'spart unless you are. ‘Be strong’—the original wouldrather bear ‘become strong.’ What is the use of tellingmen to ‘be strong’? It is a waste of words, innine cases out of ten, to say to a weak man, ‘Pluck up yourcourage, and show strength.’ But the Apostle uses a veryuncommon word here, at least uncommon in the New Testament, andanother place where he uses it will throw light upon what he means:‘Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.’Then is it so vain a mockery to tell a poor, weak creature like me tobecome strong, when you can point me to the source of all strength,in that ‘Spirit of power and of love and of a soundmind’? We have only to take our weakness there to have itstiffened into strength; as people put bits of wood into what arecalled ‘petrifying wells’ which infiltrate into themmineral particles, that do not turn the wood into stone, but make thewood as strong as stone. So my manhood, with all its weakness, mayhave filtered into it divine strength, which will brace me for allneedful duty, and make me ‘more than conqueror through Him thatloved us.’ Then, it is not mockery and cruelty, vanity andsurplusage to preach ‘Quit you like men; be strong, and be aman’; because if we will observe the plain and not hardconditions, strength will come to us according to our day, infulfilment of the great promises: ‘My grace is sufficient forthee; and My strength is made perfect in weakness.’

And now we have done with the fighting words of command, and cometo the gentler exhortation: ‘Let all your things be done incharity.’

That was a hard lesson for these Corinthians who were splittingthemselves into factions and sects, and tearing each other's eyes outin their partisanship for various Christian teachers. But the advicehas a much wider application than to the suppression of squabbles inChristian communities. It is the sum of all commandments of theChristian life, if you will take love in its widest sense, in thesense, that is, in which it is always used in Paul's writings. We cutit into two halves, and think of it as sometimes meaning love to God,and sometimes love to man. The two are inseparably inter-penetratedin the New Testament writings; and so we have to interpret thissupreme commandment in the whole breadth and meaning of that greatword Love. And then it just comes to this, that love is thevictor in all the Christian warfare. If we love God, at any givenmoment, consciously having our affection engaged with Him, and ourheart going out to Him, do you think that any evil or temptationwould have power over us? Should we not see them as they are, to bedevils in disguise? In the proportion in which I love God I conquerall sin. And at the moment in which that great, sweet, all-satisfyinglight floods into my soul, I see through the hollowness and theshams, and detect the ugliness and the filth of the things thatotherwise would be temptations. If you desire to be conquerors in theChristian fight, remember that the true way of conquest is, asanother Apostle says, ‘Keep yourselves in the love ofGod.’ ‘Let all your things be done in charity.’

And, further, how beautifully the Apostle here puts the greattruth that we are all apt to forget, that the strongest type of humancharacter is the gentlest and most loving, and that the mighty man isnot the man of intellectual or material force, such as the worldidolises, but the man who is much because he loves much. If we wouldcome to supreme beauty of Christian character, there must beinseparably manifested in our lives, and lived in our hearts,strength and love, might and gentleness. That is the perfect man, andthat was the union which was set before us, in the highest form, inthe ‘Strong Son of God, Immortal Love,’ whom we call ourSaviour, and whom we are bound to follow. His soldiers conquer as theCaptain of their salvation has conquered, when watchfulness andsteadfastness and courage and strength are all baptized in love andperfected thereby.

ANATHEMA AND GRACE

‘The salutation of me Paul with mine own hand. 22.If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be AnathemaMaran-atha. 23. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. 24.My love be with you all in Christ Jesus.’—1 COR. xvi.21-24.

Terror and tenderness are strangely mingled in this partingsalutation, which was added in the great characters shaped by Paul'sown hand, to the letter written by an amanuensis. He has beenobliged, throughout the whole epistle, to assume a tone ofremonstrance abundantly mingled with irony and sarcasm andindignation. He has had to rebuke the Corinthians for many faults,party spirit, lax morality, toleration of foul sins, grave abuses intheir worship even at the Lord's Supper, gross errors in opinion inthe denial of the Resurrection. And in this last solemn warning hetraces all these vices to their fountainhead—the defect of loveto Jesus Christ—and warns of their fatal issue. ‘Let himbe Anathema.’

But he will not leave these terrible words for his last. Thethunder is followed by gentle rain, and the sun glistens on thedrops; ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with youall.’ Nor for himself will he let the last impression be one ofrebuke or even of warning. He desires to show that his heart yearnsover them all; so he gathers them all—the partisans; the poorbrother that has fallen into sin; the lax ones who, in theirmisplaced tenderness, had left him in his sin; the misguidedreasoners who had struck the Resurrection out of the articles of theChristian creed—he gathers them all into his final salutation,and he says, ‘Take and share my love—though I have had torebuke—amongst the whole of you.’

Is not that beautiful? And does not the juxtaposition of suchmessages in this farewell go deeper than the revelation of Paul'scharacter? May we not see, in these terrible and tender thoughts thusinextricably intertwined and braided together, a revelation of thetrue nature both of the terror and the tenderness of the Gospel whichPaul preached? It is from that point of view that I wish to look atthem now.

I. I take first that thought—the terror of the fate of theunloving.

Now, I must ask you for a moment's attention in regard to thesetwo untranslated words. Anathema Maran-atha. The first thingto be noticed is that the latter of them stands independently of theformer, and forms a sentence by itself, as I shall have to show youpresently. ‘Anathema’ means an offering, or a thingdevoted; and its use in the New Testament arises from its use in theGreek translation of the Old Testament, where it is employed forpersons and things that, in a peculiar sense, were set apart anddevoted to God. In the story of the conquest of Canaan, for instance,we read of Jericho and other places, persons, or things that were, asour version somewhat unfortunately renders it,‘accursed,’ or as it ought rather to be rendered,‘devoted,’ or ‘put under a ban.’ And this‘devotion’ was of such a sort as that the things orpersons devoted were doomed to destruction. All the dreadful thingsthat were done in the Conquest were the consequences of the personsthat endured them being thus ‘consecrated,’ in a verydreadful sense, or set apart for God. The underlying idea was thatevil things brought into contact with Him were necessarily destroyedwith a swift destruction. That being the meaning of the word, it isclear that its use in my text is distinctly metaphorical, and that itsuggests to us that the unloving, like those cities full ofuncleanness, when they are brought into contact with the infinitelove of the coming Judge, shrivel up and are destroyed.

The other word ‘Maran-atha,’ as I said, is to be takenas a separate sentence. It belongs to the dialect, which was probablythe vernacular of Palestine in the time of Paul, and to which belong,for the most part, the other untranslated words that are scattered upand down the Gospels, such as ‘Aceldama,’‘Ephphatha,’ and the like. It means ‘our Lordcomes.’ Why Paul chose to use that untranslated scrap ofanother tongue in a letter to a Gentile Church we cannot tell.Perhaps it had come to be a kind of watchword amongst the earlyJewish Christians, which came naturally to his lips. But, at anyrate, the use of it here is distinctly to confirm the warning of theprevious clause, by pointing to the time at which that warning shallbe fulfilled. ‘If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, lethim be devoted and destroyed. Our Lord comes.’ The only otherthing to be noticed by way of introduction is that this first clauseis not an imprecation, nor any wish on the part of the Apostle, butis a solemn prophetic warning (acquiesced in by every righteousheart) of that which will certainly come. The significance of thewhole may be gathered into one simple sentence—The coming ofthe Lord of Love is the destruction of the unloving.

‘Our Lord comes.’ Paul's Christianity gathered roundtwo facts and moments—one in the past, Christ has come; one inthe future, Christ will come. For memory, the coming by the cradleand the Cross; for hope, the coming on His throne in glory; andbetween these two moments, like the solid piers of a suspensionbridge, the frail structure of the Present hangs swinging. In thisday men have lost their expectation of the one, and to a large extenttheir faith in the other. But we shall not understand Scriptureunless we seek to make as prominent in our thoughts as on its pagesthat second coming as the complement and necessary issue of thefirst. It stands stamped on every line. It colours all the NewTestament views of life. It is used as a motive for every duty, andas a magnet to draw men to Jesus Christ by salutary dread. There isno hint in my text about the time of the Lord's coming, no disturbingof the solemnity of the thought by non-essential details ofchronology, so we may dismiss these from our minds. The fact is thesame, and has the same force as a motive for life, whether it is tobe fulfilled in the next moment or thousands of years hence, providedonly that you and I are to be there when He comes.

There have been many comings in the past, besides the comings inthe flesh. The days of the Lord that have already appeared in thehistory of the world are not few. One characteristic is stamped uponthem all, and that is the swift annihilation of what is opposed toHim. The Bible has a set of standing metaphors by which to illustratethis thought of the Coming of the Lord—a flood, a harvest whenthe ears are ripe for the sickle, the waking of God from slumber, andthe like; all suggesting similar thoughts. The day of theLord, the coming of the Lord, will include and surpass all thecharacteristics which these lesser and premonitory judgment dayspresented in miniature. I do not enlarge on this theme. I would notplay the orator about it if I could; but I appeal to yourconsciences, which, in the case of most of us, not only testify ofright and wrong, but of responsibility, and suggest a judge to whomwe are responsible. And I urge on each, and on myself, this simplequestion: Have I allowed its due weight on my life and character tothat watchword of the ancient church—Maran-atha,‘our Lord cometh’?

Now, the coming of the Lord of Love is the annihilation of theunloving. The destruction implied in Anathema does not mean thecessation of Being, but a death which is worse than death, because itis a death in life. Suppose a man with all his past annihilated, withall its effort foiled and crushed, with all its possessionsevaporated and disappeared, and with his memory and his consciencestung into clear-sighted activity, so that he looks back upon hisformer self and into his present self, and feels that it is all wasteand chaos, would not that fulfil the word of my text—‘Lethim be Anathema’? And suppose that such a man, in addition tothese thoughts, and as the root and the source of them, had ever thequivering consciousness that he was and must be in the presence of anunloved Judge; have you not there the naked bones of a very dreadfulthing, which does not need any tawdry eloquence of man to make itmore solemn and more real? The unloving heart is always ill at easein the presence of Him whom it does not love. The unloving heart doesnot love, because it does not trust, nor see the love. Therefore, theunloving heart is a heart that is only capable of apprehending thewrathful side of Christ's character. It is a heart devoid of thefruits of love which are likeness and righteousness, ‘withoutwhich no man shall see the Lord,’ nor stand the flash of thebrightness of His coming. So there is no cruelty nor arbitrariness inthe decree that the heart that loves not, when brought into contactwith the infinite Lord of Love, must find in the touch death and notlife, darkness and not light, terror and not hope. Notice that Paul'snegation is a negation and not an affirmation. He does not say‘he that hateth,’ but ‘he that doth notlove.’ The absence of the active emotion of love, which is thechild of faith, the parent of righteousness, the condition of joy inHis presence, is sufficient to ensure that this fate shall fall upona man. I durst not enlarge. I leave the truth on your hearts.

II. Secondly, notice the present grace of the coming Lord.‘Our Lord cometh. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be withyou all.’ These two things are not contradictory, but we oftendeal with them as if they were. And some men lay hold of the one sideof the antithesis, and some men lay hold of the other, and rend themapart, and make antagonistic theories of Christianity out of them.But the real doctrine puts the two together and says there is noterror without tenderness, and there is no tenderness without terror.If we sacrifice the aspects of the divine nature, as revealed to usin the gentle Christ, which kindle a wholesome dread, we have, allunwittingly, robbed the aspects of the divine nature, which warm inus a gracious love, of their power to inflame and to illuminate. Youcannot have love which is anything nobler than facile good nature andunrighteous indifference, unless you have along with it aspects ofGod's character and government which ought to make some men afraid.And you cannot keep these latter aspects from being exaggerated anddarkened into a Moloch of cruelty, unless you remember that, side byside with them, or rather underlying them and determining them, areaspects of the divine nature to which only child-like confidence andcalm beatific returns of love do rightly respond. The terror of theLord is a garb which our sins force upon the love of the Lord, andwhen the one is presented it brings with it the other. Never shouldthey be parted in our thoughts or in our teaching.

Note what that present grace is. It is a tenderness which gathersinto its embrace all these imperfect, immoral, lax, heretical peoplein Corinth, as well as everywhere else—‘The grace of ourLord Jesus Christ be with you all.’ There were men inthat church that said, ‘I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I ofCephas, I of Christ.’ There were men in that church that haddefiled their souls and their flesh, and corrupted the community, andblasphemed the name of Christ by such foul, sensual sin as was‘not even named among the Gentiles.’ There were men inthat church so dead to all the sanctities even of the communion-tableas that, with the bread between their teeth and the wine-cup in theirhands, one was hungry and another drunken. There were men in thatchurch, whose Christianity was so anomalous and singularlyfragmentary that they did not believe in the resurrection of thedead. And yet Paul flings the great rainbow, as it were, of Christ'senclosing love over them all. And surely the love which gathers insuch people leaves none outside its sweep; and the tenderness whichstoops from heaven to pity, to pardon, to cleanse such is atenderness to which the weakest, saddest, sinfullest, foulestof the sons of men may confidently resort. Let nothing rob you ofthis assurance, that Christ, the coming Lord, is present with us all,and with all our weak and wicked brethren, in the full condescensionof His all-embracing, all-hoping, all-forgetting, and all-restoringlove. All that we need, in order to get its full sunshine into ourhearts, is that we trust Him utterly, and, so trusting, love Him backagain with that love which is the fulfilling of the Law and the crownof the Gospel.

III. And now, lastly, note the tenderness, caught from the MasterHimself, of the servant who rebukes.

This last message of love from the Apostle himself, in verse 24,is quite anomalous. There is no other instance in his letters wherehe introduces himself and his own love at the end, after he haspronounced solemn benediction commending to Christ's grace. But here,as if he had felt that he must leave an impression of himself ontheir minds, which corresponded to the impression of his Master thathe desired to leave, he deviates from his ordinary habit, and makeshis last word a personal word—‘My love be with youall in Christ Jesus.’ Rebuke is the sign of love. Sharpcondemnation may be the language of love. Plain warning of possibleevils is the simple duty of love. So Paul folds all whom he has beenrebuking in the warm embrace of his proffered love, which was thevery cause of his rebuke. The healing balm of this closing messagewas to be applied to the wounds which his keen edged words had made,and to show that they were wounds by a surgeon, not by a foe. Ineffect, this parting smile of love says, ‘I am not become yourenemy because I tell you the truth; I show my love to you by theplainness and roughness of my words.’ Generalise that, free itfrom its personal reference, and it just comes to this: There neverwas a shallower sneer than the sneer which is cast at Christianity,as if it were harsh, ‘ferocious,’ or unloving, when itpreaches the terror of the Lord. No! rather, because the Gospelis a Gospel, it must speak plainly about death and destructionto the unloving. The danger signal is not to be blamed for acollision, which it is hoisted to avert; and it is a strange sign ofan unfeeling and unsympathetic, or of a harsh and gloomy system, thatit should tell men where they are driving, in order that they maynever reach the miserable goal. ‘Knowing, therefore, the terrorof the Lord, we persuade men.’ And when people say to uspreachers, ‘Is that your Gospel, a Gospel that talks abouteverlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord at the glory ofHis coming—is that your Gospel?’ We can only answer,‘Yes, it is! Because, so to talk, may by God's mercy, securethat some who hear shall never know anything of the wrath, save thehearing of it with the ear, and may, by the warning of it, be drawnto the Rock of Ages for safety and shelter from the storm.’

Therefore, dear friends, the upshot of all that I have been feeblytrying to say is just this; let us lay hold with all our hearts, andby simple faith, of the present grace of the coming, loving Lord andJudge. You can do it. It is your only hope to do it. Have youdone it? If so, then you may lift up your heads to the throne, and beglad, as those who know that their Friend and Deliverer will come atlast, to help, to bless, to save. If not, dear friend, take thewarning, that not to love is to be shrivelled like a leaf in theflame, at that coming which is life to them that love, anddestruction to all besides. ‘Herein is our love made perfect,that we may have boldness before Him in the day ofjudgment.’

II. CORINTHIANS

GOD'S YEA; MAN'S AMEN

‘For how many soever be the promises of God, in Himis the yea: wherefore also through Him is the Amen.’—2COR. i. 20 (R. V.).

This is one of the many passages the force and beauty of whichare, for the first time, brought within the reach of an Englishreader by the alterations in the Revised Version. These are partlydependent upon the reading of the text and partly upon thetranslation. As the words stand in the Authorised Version,‘yea’ and ‘amen’ seem to be very nearlysynonymous expressions, and to point substantially to the samething—viz. that Jesus Christ is, as it were, the confirmationand seal of God's promises. But in the Revised Version thealterations, especially in the pronouns, indicate more distinctlythat the Apostle means two different things by the ‘yea’and the ‘amen’. The one is God's voice, the other isman's. The one has to do with the certainty of the divine revelation,the other has to do with the certitude of our faith in therevelation. When God speaks in Christ, He confirms everything that Hehas said before, and when we listen to God speaking in Christ, ourlips are, through Christ, opened to utter our assenting‘Amen’ to His great promises. So, then, we have thedouble form of our Lord's work, covering the whole ground of Hisrelations to man, set forth in these two clauses, in the one of whichGod's confirmation of His past revelations by Jesus Christ is treatedof, and in the other of which the full and confident assent which menmay give to that revelation is set before us. I deal, then, withthese two points—God's certainties in Christ, and man'scertitudes through Christ.

Now these two things do not always go together. We may be verycertain, as far as our persuasion is concerned, of a very doubtfulfact, or we may be very doubtful, as far as our persuasion isconcerned, of a very certain fact. We speak about truths or facts asbeing certain, and we ought to mean by that, not how we think aboutthem, but what they are in the evidence on which they rest. A certaintruth is a truth which has its evidence irrefragable; and the onlyfitting attitude for men, in the presence of a certain truth, is tohave a certitude of the truth. And these two things are, our Apostletells us, both given to us in and through Jesus Christ. Let me deal,then, with these two sides.

I. First, God's certainties in Christ.

Of course the original reference of the text is to the wholeseries of great promises given in the Old Testament. These, saysPaul, are sealed and confirmed to men by the revelation and work ofJesus Christ, but it is obvious that the principle which is good inreference to them is good on a wider field. I venture to take thatextension, and to ask you to think briefly about some of the thingsthat are made for us indubitably certain in Jesus Christ.

And, first of all, there is the certainty about God's heart.Everywhere else we have only peradventures, hopes, fears, guessesmore or less doubtful, and roundabout inferences as to Hisdisposition and attitude towards us. As one of the old divines sayssomewhere, ‘All other ways of knowing God are like the bendedbow, Christ is the straight string.’ The only means by which,indubitably, as a matter of demonstration, men can be sure that Godin the heavens has a heart of love towards them is by Jesus Christ.For consider what will make us sure of that. Nothing but facts; wordsare of little use, arguments are of little use. A revelation, howeverprecious, which simply says to us, ‘God is Love’ is notsufficient for our need. We want to see love in operation if we areto be sure of it, and the only demonstration of the love of God is towitness the love of God in actual working. And you getit—where? On the Cross of Jesus Christ. I do not believe thatanything else irrefragably establishes the fact for the yearninghearts of us poor men who want love, and yet cannot grope our way inamidst the mysteries and the clouds in providence and nature, exceptthis—‘Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that Heloved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for oursins.’

The question may arise in some minds, Is there any need forproving God's love? The question never arose except within the limitsof Christianity. It is only men who have lived all their lives in anatmosphere saturated by Christian sentiment and conviction that evercome to the point of saying, ‘We do not want historicalrevelation to prove to us the fact of a loving God.’ They wouldnever have fancied that they did not need the revelation unless,unconsciously to themselves, and indirectly, all their thoughts hadbeen coloured and illuminated by the revelation that they professthey reject. God as Love is ‘our dearest faith, our ghastliestdoubt,’ and the only way to make absolutely certain of the factthat His heart is full of mercy to us is to look upon Him as Hestands revealed to us, not merely in the words of Christ, for,precious as they are, these are the smallest part of His revelation,but in the life and in the death which open for us the heart of God.Remember what He said Himself, not ‘He who hath listenedto Me, doth understand the Father,’ but ‘He that hathseen Me hath seen the Father.’ ‘In Him isyea,’ and the hopes and shadowy fore-revelations of the lovingheart of God are confirmed by the fact of His life and death. Godestablishes, not ‘commends’ as our translation hasit, ‘His love towards us in that whilst we were yet sinnersChrist died for us.’

Further, in Him we have the certainty of pardon. Every deepheart-experience amongst men has felt the necessity of having a clearcertainty and knowledge about forgiveness. Men do not feel it always.A man can skate over the surface of the great deeps that lie beneaththe most frivolous life, and may suppose, in his superficial way oflooking at things, that there is no need for any definite teachingabout sin and the mode of dealing with it. But once bring that manface to face, in a quiet hour, with the facts of his life and of adivine law, and all that superficial ignoring of evil in himself andof the dread of punishment and consequences, passes away. I am sureof this, that no religion will ever go far and last long and workmightily, and lay a sovereign hand upon human life, which has not amost plain and decisive message to preach in reference to pardon. AndI am sure of this, that one reason for the comparative feebleness ofmuch so-called Christian teaching in this generation is just that thedeepest needs of a man's conscience are not met by it. In a religionon which the whole spirit of a man may rest itself, there must be avery plain message about what is to be done with sin. The onlymessage which answers to the needs of an awakened conscience and analarmed heart is the old-fashioned message that Jesus Christ theRighteous has died for us sinful men. All other religions have feltafter a clear doctrine of forgiveness, and all have failed to findit. Here is the divine ‘Yea!’ And on it alone we cansuspend the whole weight of our soul's salvation. The rope that is tohaul us out of the horrible pit and the miry clay had much need to betested before we commit ourselves to it. There are plenty ofeasygoing superficial theories about forgiveness predominant in theworld to-day. Except the one that says, ‘In whom we haveredemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sin,’they are all like the rope let down into the dark mine to lift thecaptives beneath, half of the strands of which have been cut on thesharp edge above, and when the weight hangs on to it, it will snap.There is nothing on which a man who has once learned the tragicalmeaning and awful reality and depth of the fact of his transgressioncan suspend his forgiveness, except this, that ‘Christ hasdied, the just for the unjust, to bring us unto God.’ ‘InHim the promise is yea.’

And, again, we have in Christ divine certainties in regard tolife. We have in Him the absolutely perfect pattern to which we areto conform our whole doings. And so, notwithstanding that there may,and will still be many uncertainties and much perplexity, we have thegreat broad lines of morals and of duty traced with a firm hand, andall that we need to know of obligation and of perfectness lies inthis—Be like Jesus Christ! So the solemn commandments of theethical side of Divine Revelation, as well as the promises of it, gettheir ‘yea’ in Jesus Christ, and He stands the Law of ourlives.

We have certainties for life, in the matter of protection,guidance, supply of all necessity, and the like, treasured andgarnered in Jesus Christ. For He not only confirms, but fulfils, thepromises which God has made. If we have that dear Lord for our veryown, and He belongs to us as He does belong to them who love Him andtrust Him, then in Him we have in actual possession these promises,how many soever they be, which are given by God's other words.

Christ is Protean, and becomes everything to each man that eachman requires. He is, as it were, ‘a box where sweets compactedlie.’ ‘In Him are hid all the treasures,’ not onlyof wisdom and knowledge, but of divine gifts, and we have but to goto Him in order to have that which at each moment as it emerges, wemost require. As in some of those sunny islands of the SouthernPacific, one tree supplies the people with all that they need fortheir simple wants, fruit for their food, leaves for their houses,staves, thread, needles, clothing, drink, everything—so JesusChrist, this Tree of Life, is Himself the sum of all the promises,and, having Him, we have everything that we need.

And, lastly, in Christ we have the divine certainties as to theFuture over which, apart from Him, lie cloud and darkness. As I saidabout the revelation of the heart of God, so I say about therevelation of a future life—a verbal revelation is not enough.We have enough of arguments; what we want is facts. We have enough ofman's peradventures about a future life, enough of evidence more orless valid to show that it is ‘probable,’ or ‘notinconceivable,’ or ‘more likely than not,’ and soon and so on. What we want is that somebody shall cross the gulf andcome back again, and so we get in the Resurrection of Christ the onefact on which men may safely rest their convictions of immortality,and I do not think that there is a second anywhere. On it alone, as Ibelieve, hinges the whole answer to the question—‘If aman die, shall he live again?’ This generation is brought, inmy reading of it, right up to this alternative—Christ'sResurrection,—or we die like the brutes that perish. ‘Allthe promises of God in Him are yea.’

II. And now a word as to the second portion of my text—viz.man's certitudes, which answer to God's certainties.

The latter are in Christ, the former are throughChrist. Now it is clear that the only fitting attitude for professingChristians in reference to these certainties of God is the attitudeof unhesitating affirmation and joyful assent. Certitude is thefitting response to certainty.

There should be some kind of correspondence between the firmnesswith which we grasp, the tenacity with which we hold, the assurancewith which we believe, these great truths, and the rock-like firmnessand immovableness of the evidence upon which they rest. It is a poorcompliment to God to come to His most veracious affirmations, sealedwith the broad seal of His Son's life and death, and to answer with ahesitating ‘Amen,’ that falters and almost sticks in ourthroat. Build rock upon rock. Be sure of the certain things. Graspwith a firm hand the firm stay. Immovably cling to the immovablefoundation; and though you be but like the limpet on the rock holdfast by the Rock, as the limpet does; for it is an insult to thecertainty of the revelation, when there is hesitation in thebeliever.

I need not dwell for more than a moment upon the lamentablecontrast which is presented between this certitude, which is our onlyfitting attitude, and the hesitating assent and half belief in whichso many professing Christians pass their lives. The reasons for thatare partly moral, partly intellectual. This is not a day which isfavourable to the unhesitating avowal of convictions in reference toan unseen world, and many of us are afraid of being called narrow, ordogmatisers, and think it looks like breadth, and liberality, andculture, and I know not what, to say ‘Well! perhaps it is, butI am not quite sure; I think it is, but I will not commitmyself.’ All the promises of God, which in Him are yea, oughtthrough Him to get from us an ‘Amen.’

There is a great deal that will always be uncertain. The firmerour convictions, the fewer will be the things that they grasp; but,if they be few, they will be large, and enough for us. These truthscertified in Christ concerning the heart of God, the message ofpardon, the law for life, the gifts of guidance, defence, andsanctifying, the sure and certain hope of immortality—thesethings we ought to be sure about, whatever borderland of uncertaintymay lie beyond them. The Christian verb is ‘weknow,’ not ‘we hope, we calculate, we infer, wethink,’ but ‘we know.’ And it becomes us toapprehend for ourselves the full blessedness and power of thecertitude which Christ has given to us by the certainties which hehas brought us.

I need not speak about the blessedness of such a calm assurance,about the need of it for power, for peace, for effort, for fixednessin the midst of a world and age of change. But I must, before Iclose, point you to the only path by which that certitude isattainable. ‘Through Him is the amen.’ He is theDoor. The truths which He confirms are so inextricably intertwinedwith Himself that you cannot get them and put away Him. Christ'srelation to Christ's Gospel is not the relation of other teachers totheir words. You may accept the words of a Plato, whatever you thinkof the Plato who spoke the words. But you cannot separate Christ andHis teaching in that fashion, and you must have Him if you areto get it. So, faith in Him, the intellectual acceptance ofHim, as the authoritative and infallible Revealer, the bowing down ofheart and will to Him as our Commander and our Lord, the absolutetrust in Him as the foundation of all our hope and the source of allour blessedness—that is the way to certitude, and there is noother road that we can take.

If thus we keep near Him, our faith will bring us the presentexperience and fulfilment of the promises, and we shall be sure ofthem, because we have them already. And whilst men are asking,‘Do we know anything about God? Is there a God at all? Is theresuch a thing as forgiveness? Can anybody find anywhere absolute rulesfor his life? Is there anything beyond the grave but mist anddarkness?’ we can say, ‘One thing I know, Jesus Christ ismy Saviour, and in Him I know God, and pardon, and duty, andsanctifying, and safety, and immortality; and whatever is dark, this,at least, is sun-clear.’ Get high enough up and you will beabove the fog; and while the men down in it are squabbling as towhether there is anything outside the mist, you, from your sunnystation, will see the far-off coasts, and haply catch some whiff ofperfume from their shore, and see some glinting of a glory upon theshining turrets of ‘the city that hath foundations.’ Wehave a present possession of all the promises of God; and whoeverdoubts their certitude, the man who knows himself a son of God byfaith, and has experience of forgiveness and guidance and answeredprayer and hopes whose ‘sweetness yieldeth proof that they wereborn for immortality,’ knows the things which othersquestion and doubt.

So live near Jesus Christ, and, holding fast by His hand, you maylift up your joyful ‘Amen’ to every one of God's‘Yeas.’ For in Him we know the Father, in Him we knowthat we have the forgiveness of sins, in Him we know that God is nearto bless and succour and guide, and in Him ‘we know that,though our earthly house were dissolved, we have a building ofGod.’ Wherefore we are always confident; and when the Voicefrom Heaven says ‘Yea!’ our choral shout may go up‘Amen! Thou art the faithful and true witness.’

ANOINTED AND STABLISHED

‘Now He which stablisheth us with you in Christ,and hath anointed us, is God.’—2 COR. i. 21.

The connection in which these words occur is a remarkableillustration of the Apostle's habit of looking at the most trivialthings in the light of the highest truths. He had been obliged, asthe context informs us, to abandon an intended visit to Corinth. Themiserable crew of antagonists, who yelped at his heels all his life,seized this change of purpose as the occasion for a double-barrelledcharge. They said he was either fickle and infirm of purpose, orinsincere, and saying ‘Yea’ with one side of his mouthand ‘Nay’ with the other. He rebuts this accusation withapparently quite disproportionate vehemence and great solemnity. Hepoints in the context to the faithfulness of God, to the firm Gospelwhich he had preached, to God's great ‘Yea!’ as hisanswer. He says in effect, ‘How could I, with such a wordburning in my heart, move in a region of equivocation anddouble-dealing; or how could I, whose whole being is saturated withso firm and stable a Gospel, be unreliable and fickle? The messagemust make the messenger like itself. Communion with a faithful Godmust make faith-keeping men; the certainties of God's“Yea,” and the certitudes of our “Amen,” mustinfluence our characters.’ And so to suppose that a man,influenced by Christianity, is a weak, double-dealing, unsteadfastman is a contradiction in terms. In the text he carries his argumenta step further, and points, not only to the power of the Gospel tosteady and confirm, but also to the fact that God Himselfcommunicates to the believing soul Christian stability by theanointing which He bestows.

So, then, we have in these words the declaration that inflexible,immovable steadfastness is a mark of a Christian, and that thisChristian steadfastness, without which there is no Christianity worththe naming, is a direct gift from God Himself by means of that greatanointing which He confers upon men. To that thought, in one or twoof its aspects, I ask your attention.

I. Notice the deep source of this Christian steadfastness.

The language of the original, carefully considered, seems to me tobear this interpretation, that the ‘anointing’ of thesecond clause is the means of the ‘establishing’ of thefirst—that is to say, that God confers Christian steadfastnessof character by the bestowment of the unction of His DivineSpirit.

Now notice how deep Paul digs in order to get a foundation for acommon virtue. There are many ways by which men may cultivate thetenacity and steadfastness of purpose which ought to mark us all.Much discipline may be brought to bear in order to secure that; butthe text says that the deepest ground upon which it can be rested isnothing less divine and solemn than this, the actual communication tomen, to feeble, vacillating, fluctuating wills, and treacherous,wayward, wandering hearts, of the strength and fixedness which aregiven by God's own Spirit.

I suppose I need not remind you that from beginning to end ofScripture, ‘anointing’ is taken as the symbol of thecommunication of a true divine influence. The oil poured on the headof prophet, priest, and king was but the expression of thecommunication to the recipient of a divine influence which fitted himas well as designated him, for the office that he filled. Andalthough it is aside from my present purpose, I may just, in asentence, point to the felicity of the emblem. The flowing oilsmoothes the surface upon which it is spread, supples the limbs, andis nutritive and illuminating; thus giving an appropriate emblem ofthe secret, silent, quickening, nourishing, enlightening influencesof that Spirit which God gives to all His sons.

And inasmuch as here this oil of the Divine Spirit is stated asbeing the true ground and basis of Christian steadfastness, it isobvious that the anointing intended cannot be that of meredesignation to, and inspiration for, apostolic or other office, butmust be the universal possession of all Christian men and women.‘Ye,’ says another Apostle, speaking to the wholedemocracy of the Christian Church, and not to any little group ofselected aristocrats therein—‘ye have an unction from theHoly One,’ and every man and woman who has a living grasp ofthe living Christ, receives from Him this great gift.

Then, notice further that this anointing by a Divine Spirit, whichis a true source of life to those that possess it, is derived from,and parallel with, Christ's anointing. We use the word‘Christ’ as a proper name, and forget what it means. The‘Christ’ is the Anointed One. And do you thinkthat it was a mere accident, or the result of a scanty vocabulary,which compelled the Apostle, in these two contiguous clauses, to usecognate words when he said:—‘He that establisheth us withyou in the Anointed, and hath anointed us, isGod’? Did he not mean to say thereby, ‘Each of you in avery true sense, if you are a Christian, is a Christ’?You, too, are anointed; you, too, are God's Messiahs. On you in ameasure the same Spirit rests which dwelt without measure in Him. Thechief of Christ's gifts to the Church is the gift of His own life.All His brethren are anointed with the oil that was poured upon Hishead, even as the oil upon Aaron's locks percolated to the veryskirts of his garments. Being anointed with the anointing which wason Him, all His people may claim an identity of nature, may hope foran identity of destiny, and are bound to a prolongation of part ofHis function and a similarity of character. If He by that anointingwas made Prophet, Priest, and King for the world, all His childrenpartake of these offices in subordinate but real fashion, and areprophets to make God known to men, priests to offer up spiritualsacrifices, and kings at least over themselves, and, if they will,over a world which obeys and serves those that serve and love God. Yeare anointed—‘Messiahs’ and ‘Christs,’by derivation of the life of Jesus Christ.

And if these things be true, it is plain enough how this divineunction, which is granted to all Christians, lies at the root ofsteadfastness.

We talk a great deal about the gentleness of Christ; we cannotcelebrate it too much, but we may forget that it is the gentleness ofstrength. We do not sufficiently mark the masculine features in thatcharacter, the tremendous tenacity of will, the inflexible fixednessof purpose, the irremovable constancy of obedience in the face of alltemptations to the contrary. The figure that rises before us is thatof the Christ yearning over weaklings far oftener than it is that ofthe Christ with knitted brow, and tightened lips, and far-off gazingeye, ‘steadfastly setting His face to go to Jerusalem,’and followed as He pressed up the rocky road from Jericho, by thatwondering group, astonished at the rigidity of purpose that wasstamped on His features. That Christ gives us His Spirit to make ustenacious, constant, righteously obstinate, inflexible in the pursuitof all that is lovely and of good report, like Himself. That DivineSpirit will cure the fickleness of our natures; for our wills arenever fixed till they are fixed in obedience, and never free untilthey elect to serve Him. That Divine Spirit will cure the wanderingof our hearts and bind us to Himself. It will lift us above theselfish and cowardly dependence on externals and surroundings, menand things, in which we are all tempted to live. We are all too likeaneroid barometers, that go up and down with every variation of afoot or two in our level, but if we have the Spirit of Christdwelling in us, it will cut the bonds that bind us to the world, andgive us possession of a deeper love than can be sustained by, or isderived from, these superficial sources. The true possession of theDivine Spirit, if I might use such a metaphor, sets a man on aninsulating stool, and all the currents that move round about him arepowerless to reach him. If we have that Divine Spirit within us, itwill give us an experience of the preciousness and the truth, thecertitude and the sweetness, of Christ's Gospel, which will make itimpossible that we should ever cast away the confidence which hassuch ‘recompense of reward.’ No man will be surely boundto the truth and person of Christ with bonds that cannot be snapped,except he who in his heart has the knowledge of Him which ispossession, and by the gift of the Divine Spirit is knit to JesusChrist.

So, dear friends, whilst the world is full of wise words aboutsteadfastness, and exalts determination of character and fixity ofpurpose, rightly, as the basis of much good, our Gospel comes to uspoor, light, thistledown creatures, and lets us see how we can besteadfast and settled by being fastened to a steadfast and settledChrist. When storms are raging they lash light articles on deck toholdfasts. Let us lash ourselves to the abiding Christ, and we, too,shall abide.

II. In the next place, notice the aim or purpose of this Christiansteadfastness.

‘He stablisheth us with you in Christ,’ or as theoriginal has it even more significantly, into or‘unto Christ.’ Now that seems to me to imply twothings—first, that our steadfastness, made possible by ourpossession of that Divine Spirit, is steadfastness in our relationsto Jesus Christ. We are established in reference or in regard to Him.In other words, what Paul here means is, first, a fixed conviction ofthe truth that He is the Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of theworld, and my Saviour. That is the first step. Men who are steadfastwithout their intellect guiding and settling the steadfastness arenot steadfast, but obstinate and pigheaded. We are meant to be guidedby our understandings, and no fixity is anything better than theimmobility of a stone, unless it be based upon a distinct andwhole-brained intellectual acceptance of Jesus Christ as theAll-in-all for us, for life and death, for inward and outwardbeing.

Paul means, next, a steadfastness in regard to Christ in our trustand love. Surely if from Him there is for ever streaming out anunbroken flow of tenderness, there should be ever on our sides anequally unbroken opening of our hearts for the reception of His love,and an equally uninterrupted response to it in our gratefulaffection. There can be no more damning condemnation of thevacillations and fluctuations of Christian men's affections than thesteadfastness of Christ's love to them. He loves ever; He isunalterable in the communication and effluence of His heart. Surelyit is most fitting that we should be steadfast in our devotion andanswering love to Him. And Paul means not only fixedness ofintellectual conviction and continuity of loving response, but alsohabitual obedience, which is always ready to do His will.

So we should answer His ‘Yea!’ with our‘Amen!’ and having an unchanging Christ to rest upon, weshould rest upon Him unchanging. The broken, fluctuating affectionsand trusts and obediences which mark so much of the average Christianlife of this day are only too sad proofs of how scant our possessionof that Spirit of steadfastness must be supposed to be. God's‘Yea’ is answered by our faltering ‘Amen’;God's truth is hesitatingly accepted; God's love is partiallyreturned; God's work is slothfully and negligently done. ‘Be yesteadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of theLord.’

Another thought is suggested by these words—viz. that suchsteadfastness as we have been trying to describe has for its result adeeper penetration into Jesus Christ and a fuller possession of Him.The only way by which we can grow nearer and nearer to our Lord is bysteadfastly keeping beside Him. You cannot get the spirit of alandscape unless you sit down and gaze, and let it soak into you. Thecheap tripper never sees the lake. You cannot get to know a man untilyou summer and winter with him. No subject worth studying opensitself to the hasty glance. Was it not Sir Isaac Newton who used tosay, ‘I have no genius, but I keep a subject before me’?‘Abide in Me; as the branch cannot bear fruit except it abidein the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in Me.’ Continuous,steadfast adhesion to Him is the condition of growing up into Hislikeness, and receiving more and more of His beauty into our waitinghearts. ‘Wait on the Lord; wait, I say, on the Lord.’

III. Lastly, notice the very humble and commonplace sphere inwhich the Christian steadfastness manifests itself.

It was nothing of more importance than that Paul had said he wasgoing to Corinth, and did not, on which he brings all this array ofgreat principles to bear. From which I gather just this thought, thatthe highest gifts of God's grace and the greatest truths of God'sWord are meant to regulate the tiniest things in our daily life. Itis no degradation to the lightning to have to carry messages. It isno profanation of the sun to gather its rays into a burning glass tolight a kitchen fire with. And it is no unworthy use of the DivineSpirit that God gives to His children, to say it will keep a man fromhasty and precipitate decisions as to little things in life, and fromchopping and changing about, with a levity of purpose and without asufficient reason. If our religion is not going to influence thetrifles, what is it going to influence? Our life is made up oftrifles, and if these are not its field, where is its field? You maybe quite sure that, if your religion does not influence the littlethings, it will never influence the great ones. If it has not powerenough to guide the horses when they are at a slow, sober walk, whatdo you think it will do when they are at a gallop and plunging?‘He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also inmuch.’ So let us see to two things—first, that all ourreligion is worked into our life, for only so much of it as is soinwrought is our religion—and, second, that all our life isbrought under the sway of motives derived from our religion: for onlyin proportion as it is, will it be pure and good.

And as regards this special virtue and prime quality ofsteadfastness and fixedness of purpose, you can do no good in theworld without it. Unless a man can hold his own, and turn anobstinate negative to the temptations that lie thick about him, hewill never come to any good at all, either in this life or in thenext. The basis of all excellence is a wholesome disregard ofexternals, and the cultivation of a strong self-reliant andself-centred, because God-trusting and Christ-centred, will. And Itell you, especially you young men and women, if you want to do or beanything worth doing or being, you must try to get your natureshardened into being ‘steadfast, unmovable.’ There is onlyone infallible way of doing it, and that is to let the ‘strongSon of God’ live in you, and in Him to find your strength forresistance, your strength for obedience, your strength forsubmission. ‘I have set the Lord always before me; because Heis at my right hand, I shall not be moved.’

There are two types of men in the world. The one has his emblem inthe chaff, rootless, with no hold, swept out of the threshing-floorby every gust of wind. That the picture of many whose principles lieat the mercy of the babble of tongues round about them, whoserectitude goes at a puff of temptation, like the smoke out of achimney when the wind blows; who have no will for what is good, butlive as it happens. The other type of man has his emblem in the tree,rooted deep, and therefore rising high, with its roots going as farunderground as its branches spread in the blue, and therefore greenof leaf and rich of fruit ‘We are made partakers of Christ ifwe hold fast the beginning of our confidence, steadfast until theend.’

SEAL AND EARNEST

‘Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest ofthe Spirit in our hearts.’—2 COR. i. 23.

There are three strong metaphors in this and the precedingverse—‘anointing,’ ‘sealing,’ and‘giving the earnest’—all of which find theirreality in the same divine act. These three metaphors all refer tothe same subject, and what that subject is is sufficiently explainedin the last of them. The ‘earnest’ consists of ‘theSpirit in our hearts,’ and the same explanation might have beenappended to both the preceding clauses, for the‘anointing’ is the anointing of the Spirit, and the‘seal’ is the seal of the Spirit. Further, these threemetaphors all refer to one and the same act. They are not threethings, but three aspects of one thing, just as a sunbeam might beregarded either as the source of warmth, or of light, or of chemicalaction. So the one gift of the one Spirit, ‘anoints,’‘seals,’ and is the ‘earnest.’ Further, thesethree metaphors all declare a universal prerogative of Christians.Every man that loves Jesus Christ has the Spirit in the measure ofhis faith,’ and if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he isnone of His.’

I. Note the first metaphor in the text—the‘seal’ of the Spirit.

A seal is impressed upon a recipient material made soft by warmth,in order to leave there a copy of itself. Now it is not fanciful, norriding a metaphor to death, when I dwell upon these features of theemblem in order to suggest their analogies in Christian life. TheSpirit of God comes into our spirits, and by gentle contact impressesupon the material, which was intractable until it was melted by thegenial warmth of faith and love, the likeness of Himself, but yet soas that prominences correspond to the hollows, and what is in reliefin the one is sunk in the other. Expand that general statement for amoment or two.

The effect of all the divine indwelling, which is thecharacteristic gift of Christ to every Christian soul, is to mouldthe recipient into the image of the divine inhabitant. There is inthe human spirit—such are its dignity amidst its ruins, and itsnobility shining through its degradation—a capacity ofreceiving that image of God which consists not only in voluntary andintelligent action and the consciousness of personal being, but inthe love of the things that are fair, and in righteousness, and trueholiness. His Spirit, entering into a heart, will make that heartwise with its own wisdom, strong with some infusion of its ownstrength, gracious with some drops of its own grace, gentle with somesoftening from its own gentleness, holy with some purity reflectedfrom its own transcendent whiteness. The Spirit, which is life,moulds the heart into which it enters to a kindred, and, therefore,similar life.

There are, however, characteristics in this ‘seal’ ofthe Spirit which are not so much copies as correspondences. That isto say, just as what is convex in the seal is concave in theimpression, and vice versâ, so, when that Divine Spirit comesinto our spirits, its promises will excite faith, its gifts willbreed desire; to every bestowment there will answer an openingreceptivity. Recipient love will correspond to the love that longs todispense, the sense of need to the divine fulness and sufficiency,emptiness to abundance, prayers to promises; the cry ‘Abba!Father’! the yearning consciousness of sonship, to the word‘Thou art My Son’; and the upward eye of aspiration andpetition, and necessity, and waiting, to the downward glance of lovebestowing itself. The open heart answers to the extended hand, andthe seal which God's Spirit impresses upon the heart that issubmitted to it, has the two-fold character of resemblance in moralnature and righteousness, and of correspondence as regards themysteries of the converse between the recipient man and the givingGod.

Then, mark that the material is made capable of receiving thestamp, because it is warmed and softened. That is to say, faith mustprepare the heart for the sanctifying indwelling of that DivineSpirit. The hard wax may be struck with the seal, but it leaves notrace. God does not do with man as the coiner does with his blanks,put them cold into a press, and by violence from without stamp animage upon them, but He does as men do with a seal, warms the waxfirst, and then, with a gentle, firm touch, leaves the likenessthere. So, brother! learn this lesson: if you wish to be good, lieunder the contact of the Spirit of righteousness, and see that yourheart is warm.

Still further, note that this aggregate of Christian character, inlikeness and correspondence, is the true sign that we belong to God.The seal is the mark of ownership, is it not? Where the broad arrowhas been impressed, everybody knows that that is royal property. Andso this seal of God's Divine Spirit, in its effects upon mycharacter, is the one token to myself and to other people that Ibelong to God, and that He belongs to me. Or, to put it into plainEnglish, the best reason for any man's being regarded as a Christianis his possession of the likeness and correspondence to God whichthat Divine Spirit gives. Likeness and correspondence, I say, for theone class of results is the more open for the observation of theworld, and the other class is of the more value for ourselves. Ibelieve that Christian people ought to have, and are meant by thatDivine Spirit dwelling in them to have, a consciousness that they areChristians and God's children, for their own peace and rest and joy.But you cannot use that in demonstration to other people; you may beas sure of it as you will, in your inmost hearts, but it is no signto anybody else. And, on the other hand, there may be much of outwardvirtue and beauty of character which may lead other people to sayabout a man: ‘That is a good Christian man, at anyrate,’ and yet there may be in the heart an all but absoluteabsence of any joyful assurance that we are Christ's, and that Hebelongs to us. So the two facts must go together. Correspondence, thespirit of sonship which meets His taking us as sons, the faith whichclasps the promise, the reception which welcomes bestowment, must bestamped upon the inward life. For the outward life there must be themanifest impress of righteousness upon my actions, if there is to beany real seal and token that I belong to Him. God writes His own nameupon the men that are His. All their goodness, their gentleness,patience, hatred of evil, energy and strenuousness in service,submission in suffering, with whatsoever other radiance of humanvirtue may belong to them, are really ‘His mark!’

There is no other worth talking about, and to you Christian men Icome and say, Be very sure that your professions of inward communionand happy consciousness that you are Christ's are verified toyourself and to others by a plain outward life of righteousness likethe Lord's. Have you got that seal stamped upon your lives, like thehall-mark that says, ‘This is genuine silver, and no platedBrummagem stuff’? Have you got that seal of a visiblerighteousness and every-day purity to confirm your assertion that youbelong to Christ? Is it woven into the whole length of your being,like the scarlet thread that is spun into every Admiralty cable as asign that it is Crown property? God's seal, visible to me and tonobody else, is my consciousness that I am His; but thatconsciousness is vindicated and delivered from the possibility ofillusion or hypocrisy, only when it is checked and fortified by theoutward evidence of the holy life which the Spirit of God haswrought.

Further, this sealing, which is thus the token of God's ownership,is also the pledge of security. A seal is stamped in order that theremay be no tampering with what it seals; that it may be kept safe fromall assaults, thieves, and violence. And in the metaphor of our textthere is included this thought, too, which is also of an intenselypractical nature. For it just comes to this—our true guaranteethat we shall come at last into the sweet security and safety of theperfect state is present likeness to the indwelling Spirit andpresent reception of divine grace. The seal is the pledge ofsecurity, just because it is the mark of ownership. When, by God'sSpirit dwelling in us, we are led to love the things that are fair,and to long after more possession of whatever things are of goodreport, that is like God's hoisting His flag upon a newly-annexedterritory. And is He going to be so careless in the preservation ofHis property as that He will allow that which is thus acquired toslip away from Him? Does He account us as of so small value as tohold us with so slack a hand? But no man has a right to rest on theassurance of God's saving him into the heavenly kingdom, unless He issaving him at this moment from the devil and his own evil heart. And,therefore, I say the Christian character, in its outwardmanifestations and in its sweet inward secrets of communion, is theguarantee that we shall not fall. Rest upon Him, and He will hold youup. We are ‘kept by the power of God unto salvation,’ andthat power keeps us and that final salvation becomes ours,‘through faith.’

II. Now, secondly, turn to the other emblem, that‘earnest’ which consists in like manner ‘of theSpirit.’

The ‘earnest,’ of course, is a small portion ofpurchase-money, or wages, or contract-money, which is given at themaking of a bargain, as an assurance that the whole amount will bepaid in due time. And, says the Apostle, this seal is also anearnest. It not only makes certain God's ownership and guarantees thesecurity of those on whom it is impressed, but it also points onwardsto the future, and at once guarantees that, and to a large extentreveals the nature of it. So, then, we have here two thoughts onwhich I touch.

The Christian character and experience are the earnest of theinheritance, in the sense of being its guarantee, inasmuch as theexperiences of the Christian life here are plainly immortal. TheResurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the objective andexternal proof of a future life. The facts of the Christian life, itsaspirations, its communion, its clasp of God as its very own, are thesubjective and inward proofs of a future life. As a matter of fact,if you will take the Old Testament, you will see that the highestsummits in it, to which the hope of immortality soared, springdirectly from the experience of deep and blessed communion with theliving God. When the Psalmist said ‘Thou wilt not leave my soulin Sheol; neither wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to seecorruption,’ he was speaking a conviction that had been floatedinto his mind on the crest of a great wave of religious enjoyment andcommunion. And, in like manner, when the other Psalmist said,‘Thou art the strength of my heart, and my portion forever,’ he was speaking of the glimpse that he had got of theland that was very far off, from the height which he had climbed onthe Mount of fellowship with God. And for us, I suppose that the sameexperience holds good. Howsoever much we may say that we believe in afuture life and in a heaven, we really grasp them as facts that willbe true about ourselves, in the proportion in which we are livinghere in direct contact and communion with God. The conviction ofimmortality is the distinct and direct result of the presentenjoyment of communion with Him, and it is a reasonable result. Noman who has known what it is to turn himself to God with a glow ofhumble love, and to feel that he is not turning his face to vacuity,but to a Face that looks on him with love, can believe that anythingcan ever come to destroy that communion. What have faith, love,aspiration, resignation, fellowship with God, to do with death? Theycannot be cut through with the stroke that destroys physical life,any more than you can divide a sunbeam with a sword. It unites again,and the impotent edge passes through and has effected nothing. Deathcan shear asunder many bonds, but that invisible bond that unites thesoul to God is of adamant, against which his scythe is in vain. Deathis the grim porter that opens the door of a dark hole and herds usinto it as sheep are driven into a slaughter-house. But to those whohave learned what it is to lay a trusting hand in God's hand, thegrim porter is turned into the gentle damsel, who keeps the door, andopens it for light and warmth and safety to the hunted prisoner thathas escaped from the dungeon of life. Death cannot touch communion,and the consciousness of communion with God is the earnest of theinheritance.

It is so for another reason also. All the results of the DivineSpirit's sealing of the soul are manifestly incomplete, and asmanifestly tend towards completeness. The engine is clearly workingnow at half-speed. It is obviously capable of much higher pressurethan it is going at now. Those powers in the Christian man canplainly do a great deal more than they ever have done here, and aremeant to do a great deal more. Is this imperfect Christianity ofours, our little faith so soon shattered, our little love so quicklydisproved, our faltering resolutions, our lame performances, ourearthward cleavings—are these things all that Jesus Christ'sbitter agony was for, and all that a Divine Spirit is able to make ofus? Manifestly, here is but a segment of the circle, in heaven is theperfect round; and the imperfections, so far as life is concerned, inthe work of so obviously divine an Agent, cry aloud for a regionwhere tendency shall become result, and all that it was possible forHim to make us we shall become. The road evidently leads upwards, andround that sharp corner where the black rocks come so near each otherand our eyesight cannot travel, we may be sure it goes steadily upstill to the top of the pass, until it reaches ‘the shiningtable-lands whereof our God Himself is Sun and Moon,’ andbrings us all to the city set on a hill.

And, further, that divine seal is the earnest, inasmuch as itselfis part of the whole. The truest and the loftiest conception that wecan form of heaven is as being the perfecting of the religiousexperience of earth. The shilling or two, given to the servant inold-fashioned days, when he was hired, is of the same currency as thebalance that he is to get when the year's work is done. The smallpayment to-day comes out of the same purse, and is coined out of thesame specie, and is part of the same currency of the same kingdom, aswhat we get when we go yonder and count the endless riches to whichwe have fallen heirs at last. You have but to take the faith, thelove, the obedience, the communion of the highest moments of theChristian life on earth, and free them from all their limitations,subtract from them all their imperfections, multiply them to theirsuperlative possibility, and endow them with a continual power ofgrowth, and stretch them out to absolute eternity, and you getheaven. The earnest is of a piece with the inheritance.

So, dear brethren, here is a gift offered for us all, a gift whichour feebleness sorely needs, a gift for every timid nature, for everyweak will, for every man, woman, and child beset with snares andfighting with heavy tasks, the offer of a reinforcement as real andas sure to bring victory as when, on that day when the fate of Europewas determined, after long hours of conflict, the Prussian buglesblew, and the English commander knew that (with the fresh troops thatcame on the field) victory was made certain. So you and I may have inour hearts the Spirit of God, the spirit of strength, the spirit oflove and of a sound mind, the spirit of adoption, the spirit ofwisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, to enlighten ourdarkness, to bind our hearts to Him, to quicken and energise oursouls, to make the weakest among us strong, and the strong as anangel of God. And the condition on which we may get it is this simpleone which the Apostle lays down; ‘After that yebelieved, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, whichis the earnest of our inheritance.’ The Christ, who is the Lordand Giver of the Spirit, has shown us how its blessed influences maybe ours when, on the great day of the feast, He stood and cried witha voice that echoes across the centuries, and is meant for each ofus, ‘If any man thirsts, let him come unto Me and drink. Hethat believeth in Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of livingwater. This spake He of the Spirit which they that believe or Himshould receive.’

THE TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION

‘Thanks be unto God, which always leadeth us intriumph in Christ and maketh manifest through us the savour of Hisknowledge in every place.’—2 COR. ii. 14 (R.V.)

I suppose most of us have some knowledge of what a Roman Triumphwas, and can picture to ourselves the long procession, the victoriousgeneral in his chariot with its white horses, the laurelled soldiers,the sullen captives, with suppressed hate flashing in their sunkeneyes, the wreathing clouds of incense that went up into the blue sky,and the shouting multitude of spectators. That is the picture in theApostle's mind here. The Revised Version correctly alters thetranslation into ‘Thanks unto God which always leadethus in triumph in Christ.’

Paul thinks of himself and of his coadjutors in Christian work asbeing conquered captives, made to follow their Conqueror and to swellHis triumph. He is thankful to be so overcome. What was deepestdegradation is to him supreme honour. Curses in many a strange tonguewould break from the lips of the prisoners who had to follow thegeneral's victorious chariot. But from Paul's lips comesirrepressible praise; he joins in the shout of acclamation to theConqueror.

And then he passes on to another of the parts of the ceremonial.As the wreathing incense appealed at once to two senses, and wasvisible in its curling clouds of smoke, and likewise fragrant to thenostrils, so says Paul, with a singular combination of expression,‘He maketh manifest,’ that is visible, thesavour of His knowledge. From a heart kindled by the flame ofthe divine love there will go up the odour of a holy life visible andfragrant, sweet and fair.

And thus all Christians, and not Christian workers only in thenarrower sense of the word, who may be doing evangelistic work, haveset before them in these great words the very ideal and secret oftheir lives.

There are three things here, on each of which I touch as belongingto the true notion of a Christian life—the conquered captive;that captive partaking in the triumph of his Conqueror; and theconquered captive led as a trophy and a witness to the Conqueror'spower. These three things, I think, explain the Apostle's thoughtshere. Let me deal with them now.

I. First then, let us look at that thought of all Christians beingin the truest sense conquered captives, bound to the chariot wheelsof One who has overcome them.

The image implies a prior state of hostility and alienation. Now,do not let us exaggerate, let us take Paul's own experience. He isspeaking about himself here; he is not talking doctrine, he is givingus autobiography, and he says, ‘I was an enemy, and I have beenconquered.’

What sort of an enemy was he? Well! He says that before he becamea Christian he lived a pure, virtuous, respectable life. He was a man‘as touching the righteousness which is in the law,blameless.’ Observant of all relative duties, sober, temperate,chaste; no man could say a word against him; he knew nothing againsthimself. His conscience acquitted him of wrong: ‘I thought Iought to do many things,’ as I did them. And yet, looking backfrom his present point of view upon a life thus adorned with manyvirtues, pure from all manifest corruption, to a large extentregulated by conscientious and religious motives of a kind, he says,‘Notwithstanding all that, I was an enemy.’ Why? Becausethe retrospect let him see that his life was barren of the deepestfaith and the purest love. And so I come to some of my friends herenow, and I say to you, ‘Change the name, and the story is trueabout you,’ respectable people, who are trying to live pure andrighteous lives, doing all duties that present themselves to you witha very tolerable measure of completeness and abominating and tryingto keep yourselves from the things that your consciences tell you arewrong, yet needing to be conquered, in the deepest recesses of yourwills and your hearts, before you become the true subjects of thetrue King. I do not want to exaggerate, nor to say of the ordinaryrun of people who listen to us preachers, that they commit manifestsins, ‘gross as a mountain, open, palpable.’ Some of youdo, no doubt, for, in every hundred people, there are always somewhose lives are foul and whose memories are stained and horrible; butthe run of you are not like that. And yet I ask you, has your willbeen bowed and broken, and your heart overcome and conquered by thismighty Prince, the Prince of Peace, the Prince of Life? Unless ithas, for all your righteousness and respectability, for all youroutward religion and real religiousness of a sort, you are stillhostile and rebellious, in your inmost hearts. That is the basis ofthe representation of my text.

What else does it suggest? It suggests the wonderful struggle andvictory of weaponless love. As was said about the first Christianemperor, so it may be said about the great Emperor in the heavens,‘In hoc signo vinces!’ By this sign thou shaltconquer. For His only weapon is the Cross of His Son, and He fightsonly by the manifestation of infinite love, sacrifice, suffering, andpity. He conquers as the sun conquers the thick-ribbed ice by rayingdown its heat upon it, and melting it into sweet water. So God inChrist fights against the mountains of man's cold, hard sinfulnessand alienation, and by the warmth of His own radiation turns them allinto rivers that flow in love and praise. He conquers simply byforbearance and pity and love.

And what more does this first part of my text say to us? It tellsus, too, of the true submission of the conquered captive; how we areconquered when we perceive and receive His love; how there is nothingelse needed to win us all for Him except only that we shall recogniseHis great love to us.

This picture of the triumph comes with a solemn appeal andcommandment to every one of us professing Christians. Think of thesem*n, dragged at the conqueror's chariot-wheels, abject, with theirweapons broken, with their resistance quelled, chained, yoked, haledaway from their own land, dependant for life or death on the capriceof the general who rode before them there. It is a picture of whatyou Christian men and women are bound to be if you believe that Godin Christ has loved you as we have been saying that He does. Forabject submission, unconditional surrender, the yielding up of ourwhole will to Him, the yielding of all our possessions as Hisvassals—these are the duties that are correspondent to thefacts of the case.

If we are thus won by infinite love, and not our own, but boughtwith a price, no conquered king, dragged at an emperor'schariot-wheels, was ever half as absolutely and abjectly bound to behis slave, and to live or die by his breath, as you are bound to yourMaster. You are Christians in the measure in which you are thecaptives of His spear and of His bow; in the measure in which youhold your territories as vassal kings, in the measure in which yousay, stretching out your willing hands for the fetters, ‘Lord!here am I, do with me as Thou wilt.’ ‘I am not mine own;be Thou my will, my Emperor, my Commander, my all.’ Loyola usedto say, as the law of his order, that every man that became a memberof the Society of Jesus was to be like as a staff in a man's hand, orlike as a corpse. It was a blasphemous and wicked claim, but it isbut a poor fragmentary statement of the truth about those of us whoenter the real Society of Jesus, and put ourselves in His hands to bewielded as His staff and His rod, and submit ourselves to Him, not asa corpse, but yield yourselves to our Christ ‘as those that arealive from the dead.’

II. Now we have here, as part of the ideal of the Christian life,the conquered captives partaking in the triumph of their general.

Two groups made up the triumphal procession—the one that ofthe soldiers who had fought for, the other that of the prisoners whohad fought against, the leader. And some commentators are inclined tobelieve that the Apostle is here thinking of himself and his fellowsas belonging to the conquering army, and not to the conquered enemy.That seems to me to be less probable and in accordance with the wholeimage than the explanation which I have adopted. But be that as itmay, it suggests to us this thought, that in the deepest reality inthat Christian life of which all this metaphor is but the expression,they who are conquered foes become conquering allies. Or, to put itinto other words—to be triumphed over by Christ is to triumphwith Christ. And the praise which breaks from the Apostle's lipssuggests the same idea. He pours out his thanks for that which herecognises as being no degradation but an honour, and a participationin his Conqueror's triumph.

We may illustrate that thought, that to be triumphed over byChrist is to triumph with Christ, by such considerations as these.This submission of which I have been speaking, abject andunconditional, extending to life and death, this submission andcaptivity is but another name for liberty. The man who is absolutelydependent upon Jesus Christ is absolutely independent of everythingand everybody besides, himself included. That is to say, to be Hisslave is to be everybody else's master, and when we bow ourselves toHim, and take upon us the chains of glad obedience, and life-deep aswell as life-long consecration, then He breaks off all other chainsfrom our hands, and will not suffer that any others should have ashare with Him in the possession of His servant. If you are Hisservants you are free from all besides; if you give yourselves up toJesus Christ, in the measure in which you give yourselves up to Him,you will be set at liberty from the worst of all slaveries, that isthe slavery of your own will and your own weakness, and your owntastes and fancies. You will be set at liberty from dependence uponmen, from thinking about their opinion. You will be set at libertyfrom your dependence upon externals, from feeling as if you could notlive unless you had this, that, or the other person or thing. Youwill be emancipated from fears and hopes which torture the men whostrike their roots no deeper than this visible film of time whichfloats upon the surface of the great, invisible abyss of Eternity. Ifyou have Christ for your Master you will be the masters of the world,and of time and sense and men and all besides; and so, beingtriumphed over by Him, you will share in His triumph.

And again, we may illustrate the same principle in yet anotherway. Such absolute and entire submission of will and love as I havebeen speaking about is the highest honour of a man. It was adegradation to be dragged at the chariot-wheels of conqueringgeneral, emperor, or consul—it broke the heart of many abarbarian king, and led some of them to suicide rather than face thedegradation. It is a degradation to submit ourselves, even as much asmany of us do, to the domination of human authorities, or to dependupon men as much as many of us do for our completeness and oursatisfaction. But it is the highest ennobling of humanity that itshall lay itself down at Christ's feet, and let Him put His foot uponits neck. It is the exaltation of human nature to submit to Christ.The true nobility are those that ‘come over with theConqueror.’ When we yield ourselves to Him, and let Him be ourKing, then the patent of nobility is given to us, and we are liftedin the scale of being. All our powers and faculties are heightened intheir exercise, and made more blessed in their employment, because wehave bowed ourselves to His control. And so to be triumphed over byChrist is to triumph with Christ.

And the same thought may be yet further illustrated. Thatsubmission which I have been speaking about so unites us to our Lordthat we share in all that belongs to Him and thus partake in Histriumph. If in will and heart we have yielded ourselves to Him, hethat is thus joined to the Lord is one spirit, and all ‘mine isThine, and all Thine is mine.’ He is the Heir of all things,and all things of which He is the Heir are our possession. ‘Allthings are yours, and ye are Christ's.’ Thus His dominion isthe dominion of all that love Him, and His heritage is the heritageof all those that have joined themselves to Him; and no sparkle ofthe glory that falls upon His head but is reflected on the heads ofHis servants. The ‘many crowns’ that He wears are thecrowns with which He crowns His followers.

Thus, my brother, to be overcome by God is to overcome the world,to be triumphed over by Christ is to share in His triumph; and heover whom Incarnate Love wins the victory, like the patriarch of oldin his mystical struggle, conquers in the hour of surrender; and tohim it is said: ‘As a prince thou hast power with God and hastprevailed.’

III. Lastly, a further picture of the ideal of the Christian lifeis set before us here in the thought of these conquered captivesbeing led as the trophies and the witnesses of His overcomingpower.

That idea is suggested by both halves of our verse. Both theemblem of the Apostle as marching in the triumphal procession, andthe emblem of the Apostle as yielding from his burning heart thefragrant visible odour of the ascending incense, convey the sameidea, viz. that one great purpose which Jesus Christ has inconquering men for Himself, and binding them to His chariot wheels,is that from them may go forth the witness of His power and theknowledge of His name.

That opens very wide subjects for our consideration which I canonly very briefly touch upon. Let me just for an instant dwell uponsome of them. First, the fact that Jesus Christ, by His Cross andPassion, is able to conquer men's wills, and to bind men's hearts toHim, is the highest proof of His power. It is an entirely uniquething in the history of the world. There is nothing the least like itanywhere else. The passionate attachment which this dead Galileanpeasant is able to evoke in the hearts of people all these centuriesafter His death, is an unheard of and an unparalleled thing. Allother teachers ‘serve their generations by the will ofGod,’ and then their names become speedily less and lesspowerful, and thicker and thicker mists of oblivion wrap them rounduntil they disappear. But time has no power over Christ's influence.The bond which binds you and me to Him nineteen centuries after Hisdeath is the very same in quality as, and in degree is often fardeeper and stronger than, the bond which united to Him the men thathad seen Him. It stands as an unique fact in the history of theworld, that from Christ of Nazareth there rays out through all theages the spiritual power which absolutely takes possession of men,dominates them and turns them into His organs and instruments. Thisgeneration prides itself upon testing all things by an utilitariantest, and about every system says:—‘Well, let us see itworking.’ And I do not think that Christianity need shrink fromthe test. With all its imperfections, the long procession of holy menand women who, for nineteen centuries, have been marching throughhistory, owning Christ as their Conqueror, and ascribing all theirgoodness to Him, is a witness to His power to sway and to satisfymen, the force of whose testimony it is hard to overthrow. And Iwould like to ask the simple question: Will any system of belief orof no belief, except the faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice, do thelike for men? He leads through the world the train of His captives,the evidence of His conquests.

And then, further, let me remind you that out of thisrepresentation there comes a very stimulating and solemn suggestionof duty for us Christian people. We are bound to live, setting forthwhose we are, and what He has done for us. Just as the triumphalprocession took its path up the Appian Way and along the side of theForum to the altar of the Capitol, wreathed about by curling cloudsof fragrant incense, so we should march through the world encompassedby the sweet and fragrant odour of His name, witnessing for Him byword, witnessing for Him by character, speaking for Him and livinglike Him, showing in our life that He rules us, and professing by ourwords that He does; and so should manifest His power.

Still further, Paul's thanksgiving teaches us that we should bethankful for all opportunities of doing such work. Christian men andwomen often grudge their services and grudge their money, and feel asif the necessities for doing Christian work in the world were rathera burden than an honour. This man's generous heart was so full oflove to his Prince that it glowed with thankfulness at the thoughtthat Christ had let him do such things for Him. And He lets you dothem if you will.

So, dear friends, it comes to be a very solemn question for us.What part are we playing in that great triumphal procession? We areall of us marching at His chariot wheels, whether we know it or not.But there were two sets of people in the old triumph. There werethose who were conquered by force and unconquered in heart, and outof their eyes gleamed unquenchable malice and hatred, though theirweapons were broken and their arms fettered. And there were thosewho, having shared in the commander's fight, shared in his triumphand rejoiced in his rule. And when the procession reached the gate ofthe temple, some, at any rate, of the former class were put to deathbefore the gates. I pray you to remember that if we are dragged afterHim reluctantly, the word will come: ‘These, mine enemies,which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither and slaythem before Me.’ Whereas, on the other hand, for those who haveyielded heart and soul to Him in love and submission born of thereception of His great love, the blessed word will come: ‘Hethat overcometh shall inherit all things.’ Which of the twoparts of the procession do you belong to, my friend? Make your choicewhere you shall march, and whether you will be His loyal allies andsoldiers who share in His triumph, or His enemies, who, overcome byHis power, are not melted by His love. The one live, the otherperish.

TRANSFORMATION BY BEHOLDING

‘We all, with open face beholding as in a glass theglory of the Lord, are changed into the same image.’—2COR. iii. 18.

This whole section of the Epistle in which our text occurs is aremarkable instance of the fervid richness of the Apostle's mind,which acquires force by motion, and, like a chariot-wheel, catchesfire as it revolves. One of the most obvious peculiarities of hisstyle is his habit of ‘going off at a word.’ Each thoughtis, as it were, barbed all round, and catches and draws into sight amultitude of others, but slightly related to the main purpose inhand. And this characteristic gives at first sight an appearance ofconfusion to his writings. But it is not confusion, it is richness.The luxuriant underwood which this fertile soil bears, as sometropical forest, does not choke the great trees, though it drapesthem.

Paul's immediate purpose seems to be to illustrate the frankopenness which ought to mark the ministry of Christianity. He doesthis by reference to the veil which Moses wore when he came forthfrom talking with God. There, he says in effect, we have a picture ofthe Old Dispensation—a partial revelation, gleaming through aveil, flashing through symbols, expressed here in a rite, there in atype, there again in an obscure prophecy, but never or scarcely everfronting the world with an unveiled face and the light of God shiningclear from it. Christianity is, and Christian teachers ought to be,the opposite of all this. It has, and they are to have, no esotericdoctrines, no hints where plain speech is possible, no reserve, nouse of symbols and ceremonies to overlay truth, but an intelligiblerevelation in words and deeds, to men's understandings. It and theyare plentifully to declare the thing as it is.

But he gets far beyond this point in his uses of his illustration.It opens out into a series of contrasts between the two revelations.The veiled Moses represents the clouded revelation of old. Thevanishing gleam on his face recalls the fading glories of that whichwas abolished; and then, by a quick turn of association, Paul thinksof the veiled readers in the synagogues, copies, as it were, of thelawgiver with the shrouded countenance; only too significant imagesof the souls obscured by prejudice and obstinate unbelief, with whichIsrael trifles over the uncomprehended letter of the old law.

The contrast to all this lies in our text. Judaism had the onelawgiver who beheld God, while the people tarried below. Christianityleads us all, to the mount of vision, and lets the lowliest passthrough the fences, and go up where the blazing glory is seen. Mosesveiled the face that shone with the irradiation of Deity. We withunveiled face are to shine among men. He had a momentary gleam, atransient brightness; we have a perpetual light. Moses’ faceshone, but the lustre was but skin deep. But the light that we haveis inward, and works transformation into its own likeness.

So there is here set forth the very loftiest conception of theChristian life as direct vision, universal, manifest to men,permanent, transforming.

I. Note then, first, that the Christian life is a life ofcontemplating and reflecting Christ.

It is a question whether the single word rendered in our version‘beholding as in a glass,’ means that, or‘reflecting as a glass does.’ The latter seems more inaccordance with the requirements of the context, and with the truthof the matter in hand. Unless we bring in the notion of reflectedlustre, we do not get any parallel with the case of Moses. Lookinginto a glass does not in the least correspond with the allusion,which gave occasion to the whole section, to the glory of God smitinghim on the face, till the reflected lustre with which it glowedbecame dazzling, and needed to be hid. And again, if Paul is heredescribing Christian vision of God as only indirect, as in a mirror,then that would be a point of inferiority in us as compared withMoses, who saw Him face to face. But the whole tone of the contextprepares us to expect a setting forth of the particulars in which theChristian attitude towards the manifested God is above the Jewish.So, on the whole, it seems better to suppose that Paul meant‘mirroring,’ than ‘seeing in a mirror.’

But, whatever be the exact force of the word, the thing intendedincludes both acts. There is no reflection of the light without aprevious reception of the light. In bodily sight, the eye is amirror, and there is no sight without an image of the thing perceivedbeing formed in the perceiving eye. In spiritual sight, the soulwhich beholds is a mirror, and at once beholds and reflects. Thus,then, we may say that we have in our text the Christian lifedescribed as one of contemplation and manifestation of the light ofGod.

The great truth of a direct, unimpeded vision, as belonging toChristian men on earth, sounds strange to many of us. ‘Thatcannot be,’ you say; ‘does not Paul himself teach that wesee through a glass darkly? Do we not walk by faith and not by sight?“No man hath seen God at any time, nor can see Him”; andbesides that absolute impossibility, have we not veils of flesh andsense, to say nothing of the covering of sin “spread over theface of all nations,” which hide from us even so much of theeternal light as His servants above behold, who see His face and bearHis name on their foreheads?’

But these apparent difficulties drop away when we take intoaccount two things—first, the object of vision, and second, thereal nature of the vision itself.

As to the former, who is the Lord whose glory we receive on ourunveiled faces? He is Jesus Christ. Here, as in the overwhelmingmajority of instances where Lord occurs in the New Testament,it is the name of the manifested God our brother. The glory which webehold and give back is not the incomprehensible, incommunicablelustre of the absolute divine perfectness, but that glory which, asJohn says, we beheld in Him who tabernacled with us, full of graceand truth; the glory which was manifested in loving, pitying wordsand loveliness of perfect deeds; the glory of the will resigned toGod, and of God dwelling in and working through the will; the gloryof faultless and complete manhood, and therein of the express imageof God.

And as for the vision itself, that seeing which is denied to bepossible is the bodily perception and the full comprehension of theInfinite God; that seeing which is affirmed to be possible, andactually bestowed in Christ, is the beholding of Him with the soul byfaith; the immediate direct consciousness of His presence theperception of Him in His truth by the mind, the feeling of Him in Hislove by the heart, the contact with His gracious energy in ourrecipient and opening spirits. Faith is made the antithesis of sight.It is so, in certain respects. But faith is also paralleled with andexalted above the mere bodily perception. He who believing grasps theliving Lord has a contact with Him as immediate and as real as thatof the eyeball with light, and knows Him with a certitude as reliableas that which sight gives. ‘Seeing is believing,’ sayssense; ‘Believing is seeing’ says the spirit which clingsto the Lord, ‘whom having not seen’ it loves. A bridge ofperishable flesh, which is not myself but my tool, connects me withthe outward world. It never touches myself at all, and I knowit only by trust in my senses. But nothing intervenes between my Lordand me, when I love and trust. Then Spirit is joined to spirit, andof His presence I have the witness in myself. He is the light, whichproves its own existence by revealing itself, which strikes withquickening impulse on the eye of the spirit that beholds by faith.Believing we see, and, seeing, we have that light in our souls to be‘the master light of all our seeing.’ We need not thinkthat to know by the consciousness of our trusting souls is less thanto know by the vision of our fallible eyes; and though flesh hidesfrom us the spiritual world in which we float, yet the only veilwhich really dims God to us—the veil of sin, the one separatingprinciple—is done away in Christ, for all who love Him; so asthat he who has not seen and yet has believed, has but the perfectingof his present vision to expect, when flesh drops away and theapocalypse of the heaven comes. True, in one view, ‘We seethrough a glass darkly’; but also true, ‘We all, withunveiled face, behold and reflect the glory of the Lord.’

Then note still further Paul's emphasis on the universality ofthis prerogative—‘We all.’ This vision does notbelong to any select handful; does not depend upon special powers orgifts, which in the nature of things can only belong to a few. Thespiritual aristocracy of God's Church is not the distinction of thelaw-giver, the priest or the prophet. There is none of us so weak, solow, so ignorant, so compassed about with sin, but that upon ourhappy faces that light may rest, and into our darkened hearts thatsunshine may steal.

In that Old Dispensation, the light that broke through clouds wasbut that of the rising morning. It touched the mountain tops of theloftiest spirits: a Moses, a David, an Elijah caught the earlygleams; while all the valleys slept in the pale shadow, and the mistclung in white folds to the plains. But the noon has come, and, fromits steadfast throne in the very zenith, the sun, which never sets,pours down its rays into the deep recesses of the narrowest gorge,and every little daisy and hidden flower catches its brightness, andthere is nothing hid from the heat thereof. We have no privilegedclass or caste now; no fences to keep out the mob from the place ofvision, while lawgiver and priest gaze upon God. Christ revealsHimself to all His servants in the measure of their desire after Him.Whatsoever special gifts may belong to a few in His Church, thegreatest gift belongs to all. The servants and the handmaidens havethe Spirit, the children prophesy, the youths see visions, the oldmen dream dreams. ‘The mobs,’ ‘the masses,’‘the plebs,’ or whatever other contemptuous name theheathen aristocratic spirit has for the bulk of men, makes good itsstanding within the Church, as possessor of Christ's chiefest gifts.Redeemed by Him, it can behold His face and be glorified into Hislikeness. Not as Judaism with its ignorant mass, and its enlightenedand inspired few—we all behold the glory of theLord.

Again, this contemplation involves reflection, or giving forth thelight which we behold.

They who behold Christ have Christ formed in them, as will appearin my subsequent remarks. But apart from such considerations, whichbelong rather to the next part of this sermon, I touch on thisthought here for one purpose—to bring out this idea—thatwhat we see we shall certainly show. That will be theinevitable result of all true possession of the glory of Christ. Thenecessary accompaniment of vision is reflecting the thing beheld.Why, if you look closely enough into a man's eye, you will see in itlittle pictures of what he beholds at the moment; and if our heartsare beholding Christ, Christ will be mirrored and manifested on ourhearts. Our characters will show what we are looking at, and ought,in the case of Christian people, to bear His image so plainly, thatmen cannot but take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus.

This ought to lead all of us who say that we have seen the Lord,to serious self-questioning. Do beholding and reflecting go togetherin our cases? Are our characters like those transparent clocks, whereyou can see not only the figures and hands, but the wheels and works?Remember that, consciously and unconsciously, by direct efforts andby insensible influences on our lives, the true secret of our beingought to come, and will come, forth to light. The convictions whichwe hold, the emotions that are dominant in our hearts, will mould andshape our lives. If we have any deep, living perception of Christ,bystanders looking into our faces will be able to tell what it is upyonder that is making them like the faces of the angels—evenvision of the opened heavens and of the exalted Lord. These twothings are inseparable—the one describes the attitude andaction of the Christian man towards Christ; the other the very sameattitude and action in relation to men. And you may be quite surethat, if little light comes from a Christian character, little lightcomes into it; and if it be swathed in thick veils from men, theremust be no less thick veils between it and God.

Nor is it only that our fellowship with Christ will, as a matterof course, show itself in our characters, and beauty born of thatcommunion ‘shall pass into our face,’ but we are alsocalled on, as Paul puts it here, to make direct conscious efforts forthe communication of the light which we behold. As the context hasit, God hath shined in our hearts, that we might give the light ofthe knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. Awaywith all veils! No reserve, no fear of the consequences of plainspeaking, no diplomatic prudence regulating our frank utterance, nosecret doctrines for the initiated! We are to ‘renounce thehidden things of dishonesty.’ Our power and our duty lie in thefull exhibition of the truth. We are only clear from the blood of menwhen we, for our parts, make sure that if any light be hid, it is hidnot by reason of obscurity or silence on our parts, but only byreason of the blind eyes, before which the full-orbed radiance gleamsin vain. All this is as true for every one possessing that universalprerogative of seeing the glory of Christ, as it is for an Apostle.The business of all such is to make known the name of Jesus, and iffrom idleness, or carelessness, or selfishness, they shirk that plainduty, they are counteracting God's very purpose in shining on theirhearts, and going far to quench the light which they darken.

Take this, then, Christian men and women, as a plain practicallesson from this text. You are bound to manifest what you believe,and to make the secret of your lives, in so far as possible, an opensecret. Not that you are to drag into light before men the sacreddepths of your own soul's experience. Let these lie hid. The worldwill be none the better for your confessions, but it needs your Lord.Show Him forth, not your own emotions about Him. What does theApostle say close by my text? ‘We preach not ourselves, butChrist Jesus the Lord.’ Self-respect and reverence for thesanctities of our deepest emotions forbid our proclaiming these fromthe house-tops. Let these be curtained, if you will, from all eyesbut God's, but let no folds hang before the picture of your Saviourthat is drawn on your heart. See to it that you have the unveiledface turned towards Christ to be irradiated by His brightness, andthe unveiled face turned towards men, from which shall shine everybeam of the light which you have caught from your Lord. ‘Arise!shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen uponthee!’

II. Notice, secondly, that this life of contemplation is thereforea life of gradual transformation.

The brightness on the face of Moses was only skin-deep. It fadedaway, and left no trace. It effaced none of the marks of sorrow andcare, and changed none of the lines of that strong, stern face. But,says Paul, the glory which we behold sinks inward, and changes us aswe look, into its own image. Thus the superficial lustre, that hadneither permanence nor transforming power, becomes an illustration ofthe powerlessness of law to change the moral character into thelikeness of the fair ideal which it sets forth. And, in opposition toits weakness, the Apostle proclaims the great principle of Christianprogress, that the beholding of Christ leads to the assimilation toHim.

The metaphor of a mirror does not wholly serve us here. When thesunbeams fall upon it, it flashes in the light, just because they donot enter its cold surface. It is a mirror, because it does not drinkthem up, but flings them back. The contrary is the case with thesesentient mirrors of our spirits. In them the light must first sink inbefore it can ray out. They must first be filled with the glory,before the glory can stream forth. They are not so much like areflecting surface as like a bar of iron, which needs to be heatedright down to its obstinate black core, before its outer skin glowswith the whiteness of a heat that is too hot to sparkle. The sunshinemust fall on us, not as it does on some lonely hill-side, lighting upthe grey stones with a passing gleam that changes nothing, and fadesaway, leaving the solitude to its sadness; but as it does on somecloud cradled near its setting, which it drenches and saturates withfire till its cold heart burns, and all its wreaths of vapour arebrightness palpable, glorified by the light which lives amidst itsmists. So must we have the glory sink into us before it can bereflected from us. In deep inward beholding we must have Christ inour hearts, that He may shine forth from our lives.

And this contemplation will be gradual transformation. There isthe great principle of Christian morals. ‘We all beholding ...are changed.’ The power to which is committed the perfecting ofour characters lies in looking upon Jesus. It is not the merebeholding, but the gaze of love and trust that moulds us by silentsympathy into the likeness of His wondrous beauty, who is fairer thanthe children of men. It was a deep, true thought which the oldpainters had, when they drew John as likest to his Lord. Love makesus like. We learn that even in our earthly relationships,where habitual familiarity with parents and dear ones stamps sometone of voice or look, or little peculiarity of gesture, on a wholehouse. And when the infinite reverence and aspiration which theChristian soul cherishes to its Lord are superadded, the transformingpower of loving contemplation of Him becomes mighty beyond allanalogies in human friendship, though one in principle with these.What a marvellous thing that a block of rude sandstone, laid downbefore a perfect marble, should become a copy of its sereneloveliness just by lying there! Lay your hearts down before Christ.Contemplate Him. Love Him. Think about Him. Let that pure face shineupon heart and spirit, and as the sun photographs itself on thesensitive plate exposed to its light, and you get a likeness of thesun by simply laying the thing in the sun, so He will ‘beformed in, you.’ Iron near a magnet becomes magnetic. Spiritsthat dwell with Christ become Christ-like. The Roman Catholic legendsput this truth in a coarse way, when they tell of saints who havegazed on some ghastly crucifix till they have received, in theirtortured flesh, the copy of the wounds of Jesus, and have thus bornein their body the marks of the Lord. The story is hideous and gross,the idea beneath is ever true. Set your faces towards the Cross withloving, reverent gaze, and you will ‘be conformed unto Hisdeath,’ that in due time you may ‘be also in the likenessof His Resurrection.’

Dear friends, surely this message—‘Behold and belike’—ought to be very joyful and enlightening to many ofus, who are wearied with painful struggles after isolated pieces ofgoodness, that elude our grasp. You have been trying, and trying, andtrying half your lifetime to cure faults and make yourselves betterand stronger. Try this other plan. Let love draw you, instead of dutydriving you. Let fellowship with Christ elevate you, instead ofseeking to struggle up the steeps on hands and knees. Live in sightof your Lord, and catch His Spirit. The man who travels with his facenorthwards has it grey and cold. Let him turn to the warm south,where the midday sun dwells, and his face will glow with thebrightness that he sees. ‘Looking unto Jesus’ is thesovereign cure for all our ills and sins. It is the one condition ofrunning with patience ‘the race that is set before us.’Efforts after self-improvement which do not rest on it will not godeep enough, nor end in victory. But from that gaze will flow intoour lives a power which will at once reveal the true goal, and braceevery sinew for the struggle to reach it. Therefore, let us ceasefrom self, and fix our eyes on our Saviour till His image imprintsitself on our whole nature.

Such transformation, it must be remembered, comes gradually. Thelanguage of the text regards it as a lifelong process. ‘Weare changed’; that is a continuous operation.‘From glory to glory’; that is a course which haswell-marked transitions and degrees. Be not impatient if it be slow.It will take a lifetime. Do not fancy that it is finished with you.Life is not long enough for it. Do not be complacent over the partialtransformation which you have felt. There is but a fragment of thegreat image yet reproduced in your soul, a faint outline dimlytraced, with many a feature wrongly drawn, with many a line stillneeded, before it can be called even approximately complete. See toit that you neither turn away your gaze, nor relax your efforts tillall that you have beheld in Him is repeated in you.

Likeness to Christ is the aim of all religion. To it conversion isintroductory; doctrines, devout emotion, worship and ceremonies,churches and organisations are valuable as auxiliary. Let thatwondrous issue of God's mercy be the purpose of our lives, and theend as well as the test of all the things which we call ourChristianity. Prize and use them as helps towards it, and rememberthat they are helps only in proportion as they show us that Saviour,the image of whom is our perfection, the beholding of whom is ourtransformation.

III. Notice, lastly, that the life of contemplation finallybecomes a life of complete assimilation.

‘Changed into the same image, from glory to glory.’The lustrous light which falls upon Christian hearts from the face oftheir Lord is permanent, and it is progressive. The likeness extends,becomes deeper, truer, every way perfecter, comprehends more and moreof the faculties of the man; soaks into him, if I may say so, untilhe is saturated with the glory; and in all the extent of his being,and in all the depth possible to each part of that whole extent, islike his Lord. That is the hope for heaven, towards which we mayindefinitely approximate here, and at which we shall absolutelyarrive there. There we expect changes which are impossible here,while compassed with this body of sinful flesh. We look for themerciful exercise of His mighty working to ‘change the body ofour lowliness, that it may be fashioned like unto the body of Hisglory’; and that physical change in the resurrection of thejust rightly bulks very large in good men's expectations. But we aresomewhat apt to think of the perfect likeness of Christ too much inconnection with that transformation that begins only after death, andto forget that the main transformation must begin here. The glorious,corporeal life like our Lord's, which is promised for heaven, isgreat and wonderful, but it is only the issue and last result of thefar greater change in the spiritual nature, which by faith and lovebegins here. It is good to be clothed with the immortal vesture ofthe resurrection, and in that to be like Christ. It is better to belike Him in our hearts. His true image is that we should feel as Hedoes, should think as He does, should will as He does; that we shouldhave the same sympathies, the same loves, the same attitude towardsGod, and the same attitude towards men. It is that His heart and oursshould beat in full accord, as with one pulse, and possessing onelife. Wherever there is the beginning of that oneness and likeness ofspirit, all the rest will come in due time. As the spirit, so thebody. The whole nature must be transformed and made like Christ's,and the process will not stop till that end be accomplished in allwho love Him. But the beginning here is the main thing which drawsall the rest after it as of course. ‘If the Spirit of Him thatraised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christfrom the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, by His Spiritthat dwelleth in you.’

And, while this complete assimilation in body and spirit to ourLord is the end of the process which begins here by love and faith,my text, carefully considered, adds a further very remarkable idea.‘We are all changed,’ says Paul, ‘into thesame image.’ Same as what? Possibly the same as webehold; but more probably the phrase, especially ‘image’in the singular, is employed to convey the thought of the blessedlikeness of all who become perfectly like Him. As if he had said,‘Various as we are in disposition and character, unlike in thehistories of our lives, and all the influences that these have hadupon us, differing in everything but the common relation to JesusChrist, we are all growing like the same image, and we shall come tobe perfectly like it, and yet each retain his own distinctindividuality.’ ‘We being many are one, for we are allpartakers of one.’

Perhaps, too, we may connect with this another idea which occursmore than once in Paul's Epistles. In that to the Ephesians, forinstance, he says that the Christian ministry is to continue, till acertain point of progress has been reached, which he describes as ourall coming to ‘a perfect man.’ The whole ofus together make a perfect man—the whole make one image. Thatis to say, perhaps the Apostle's idea is, that it takes theaggregated perfectness of the whole Catholic Church, one throughoutall ages, and containing a multitude that no man can number, to setworthily forth anything like a complete image of the fulness ofChrist. No one man, even raised to the highest pitch of perfection,and though his nature be widened out to perfect development, can bethe full image of that infinite sum of all beauty; but the whole ofus taken together, with all the diversities of natural characterretained and consecrated, being collectively His body which Hevitalises, may, on the whole, be a not wholly inadequaterepresentation of our perfect Lord. Just as we set round a centrallight sparkling prisms, each of which catches the glow at its ownangle, and flashes it back of its own colour, while the sovereigncompleteness of the perfect white radiance comes from the blending ofall their separate rays, so they who stand round about the starrythrone receive each the light in his own measure and manner, and giveforth each a true and perfect, and altogether a complete, image ofHim who enlightens them all, and is above them all.

And whilst thus all bear the same image, there is no monotony; andwhile there is endless diversity, there is no discord. Like theserene choirs of angels in the old monk's pictures, each one with thesame tongue of fire on the brow, with the same robe flowing in thesame folds to the feet, with the same golden hair, yet each aseparate self, with his own gladness, and a different instrument forpraise in his hand, and his own part in that ‘undisturbed songof pure content,’ we shall all be changed into the same image,and yet each heart shall grow great with its own blessedness, andeach spirit bright with its own proper lustre of individual andcharacteristic perfection.

The law of the transformation is the same for earth and forheaven. Here we see Him in part, and beholding grow like. There weshall see Him as He is, and the likeness will be complete. ThatTransfiguration of our Lord (which is described by the same word asoccurs in this text) may become for us the symbol and the prophecy ofwhat we look for. As with Him, so with us; the indwelling glory shallcome to the surface, and the countenance shall shine as the light,and the garments shall be ‘white as no fuller on earth canwhite them.’ Nor shall that be a fading splendour, nor shall wefear as we enter into the cloud, nor, looking on Him, shall fleshbend beneath the burden, and the eyes become drowsy, but we shall beas the Lawgiver and the Prophet who stood by Him in the lambentlustre, and shone with a brightness above that which had once beenveiled on Sinai. We shall never vanish from His side, but dwell withHim in the abiding temple which He has built, and there, looking uponHim for ever, our happy souls shall change as they gaze, and beholdHim more perfectly as they change, for ‘we know that when Heshall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as Heis.’

LOOKING AT THE UNSEEN

‘While we look not at the things which are seen,but at the things which are not seen.’—2 COR. iv.18.

Men may be said to be divided into two classes, materialists andidealists, in the widest sense of those two words. The mass care for,and are occupied by, and regard as really solid good, those goodswhich can be touched and enjoyed by sense. Theminority—students, thinkers, men of ideas, moralists, and thelike—believe in, and care for, impalpable spiritual riches.Everybody admits that the latter class is distinctly the higher. Nowit is from no disregard to the importance and reality of that broaddistinction that I insist, to begin with, that it is not theantithesis which is in the Apostle's mind here. His notion of‘the things that are seen’ and ‘the things that arenot seen’ is a much grander and wider one than that. By‘the things that are seen’ he means the whole of thisvisible world, with all its circ*mstances and relations, and by‘the things that are not seen’ he means the realitiesbeyond the stars.

He means the same thing that we mean when we talk in a much lesstrue and impressive contrast about the present and the future. To himthe ‘things that are not seen’ are present instead ofbeing, as we weakly and foolishly christen them, ‘the futurestate.’ And it makes all the difference whether we think ofthat august realm as lying far away ahead of us, or whether we feelthat it is, as it is, in very deed, all round about us, and pressingin upon us, only that ‘the veil’—that is to say,our ‘flesh’—has come between us and it. Do nothabitually think of these two sets of objects according to thatmisleading distinction ‘present’ and‘future,’ but think of them rather as ‘the thingsthat are seen,’ and ‘the things that are notseen.’

I. Now, first, I wish to say a word or two about what such a lookwill do for us.

Paul's notion is, as you will see if you look at the context, thatif we want to understand the visible, or to get the highest good outof the things that are seen, we must bring into the field of vision‘the things that are not seen.’ The case with which he isdealing is that of a man in trouble. He talks about light afflictionwhich is but for a moment, working out a far more exceeding andeternal weight of glory, ‘while we look at the things which arenot seen.’ But the principle on which that statement is made,of course, has its widest application to all sorts and conditions ofhuman life.

And the thought that emerges from it directly is that only when wetake the ‘things that are not seen’ into account, andmake them the standard and the scale by which we judge all things, dowe understand ‘the things that are seen.’ That triumphantparadox of the Apostle's about the heavy burdens that pressed uponhim and his brethren, lifelong as these burdens were, which yet hecalls ‘light’ and ‘but for a moment’ ispossible only when we open the shutter of the dungeon which wefancied was the whole universe, and look out on to the fair land thatstretches beyond. A man who has seen the Himalayas will not be muchoverwhelmed by the height of Helvellyn. They who look out into theeternities have the true measuring rod and standard by which toestimate the duration and intensity of the things that are present.We are all tempted to do as villagers in some little hamletdo—think that their small local affairs are the world'saffairs, and mighty, until they have been up to London and seen thescale of things there. If you and I would let the steady light ofEternity, and the sustaining pressure of the ‘exceeding weightof glory’ pour into our minds, we should carry with us astandard which would bring down the greatness, dwindle the duration,lighten the pressure, of the most crushing sorrow, and would set inits true dimensions everything that is here. It is for want of thatthat we go on as we do, calculating wrongly what are the great thingsand what are the small things. When, like some of those prisoners inthe Inquisition, the heavy iron weights are laid upon ourhalf-crushed hearts, we are tempted to shriek, ‘Oh, these willbe my death!’ instead of taking in that great vision which, asit makes all earthly riches dross, so it makes all crushing burdensand blows of sorrow light as a feather.

But, on the other hand, do not let us forget that this samestandard which thus dwindles, also magnifies the small, and in a verysolemn sense, makes eternal the else fleeting things of this life.For there is nothing that makes this present existence of ours soutterly contemptible, insignificant, and transitory, as to block outof our sight its connection with Eternity. And there is nothing whichso lifts the commonplace into the solemn, and invests witheverlasting and tremendous importance everything that a man doeshere, as to feel that it all tells on his condition away beyondthere. The shafting is on this side of the wall, but the work that itdoes is through the wall there, in the other chamber; and you do notunderstand the cranks and the wheels here unless you know that theygo through the partition and are doing something there beyond. If youshut out Eternity from our life in time, then it is an inexplicableriddle; and I, for my part, would venture to say that in that case,the men who answer the question, ‘Is life worth living?’with a distinct negative, are wise. It is a tale told by an idiot,‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,’ unless thelight of ‘the things not seen’ flashes and flares in uponit.

Further, this look of which my text speaks is the condition onwhich Time prepares for Eternity.

The Apostle is speaking about the effect of affliction in makingready for us an eternal weight of glory, and he says that is donewhile, or on condition that during the suffering, we are lookingsteadfastly towards the ‘things that are not seen.’ Butno outward circ*mstances or events can prepare a weight of glory forus hereafter, unless they prepare us for the glory. Affliction worksfor us that blessed result, in the measure in which it fits us forthat result. And so you will find that, only a verse or two after mytext, Paul, using the same very significant and emphatic verb, writesinverting the order of things, and says ‘He that hath wroughtus for the self-same thing is God.’ So that working thething for us, and working us for the thing, are one and the sameprocess. Or, to put it into plain English, our various duties andcirc*mstances here will prepare the glory of Eternity for us if theyprepare us for the glory of Eternity. But only in the measure inwhich these outward things do thus shape and mould our characters dothey work out for us ‘an exceeding weight of glory.’

It is often thought that a man has been so miserable here that Godis sure to give him future blessedness to recompense him. Well!‘that depends.’ If he has used his miserableness as hewill use it when he lets the light of ‘the things notseen’ in upon it, then, certainly, it will work out for him theblessed results. But if he does not, then, as certainly, it will not.Whilst there are many ways by which character is hammered and mouldedand shaped into that which is fit to be clothed upon with the glorythat is yonder, one of the foremost of these is the passing throughthings temporal with a continual regard to the things that areeternal. If you want to understand to-day you must bring Eternityinto the account, and if you want to use to-day you must use it withthe light of the eternal world full upon it. The sum of it all is,brethren, that the things seen cannot be estimated in their truecharacter, unless they are regarded in immediate connection with thethings that are unseen; and that the things seen will only prepare aneternal weight of glory for us when they prepare us for an eternalweight of glory.

II. And so, I note that this look at the things not seen is onlypossible through Jesus Christ.

He is the only window which opens out and gives the vision of thatfar-off land. I, for my part, believe that, if I might use such ametaphor, He is the Columbus of the New World. Men believed, andargued, and doubted about the existence of it across the seas there,until a man went, and came back again, and then went to found a newcity yonder. And men hoped for immortality, and believed after afashion—some of them—in a future life, and dreaded thatit might be true, and discussed and debated whether it was, but doubtclouded all minds, until One, our Brother, went away into thedarkness, and came back again, in most respects as He had gone, andthen departed once more to make ready a city in which all who loveHim should finally dwell, and to which you and I may be sure that weshall emigrate. It is only in Jesus Christ that the look which mytext enjoins is possible.

For not only has He given a certitude so that we need now not tosay ‘We think, we hope, we fear, we are pretty well sure, thatthere must be a life beyond,’ but we can say ‘Weknow.’ Not only has He done this, but also in Him and His lifeof glory at God's right hand in heaven, is summed up all that wereally can know about that future. We look into the darkness in vain;we look at Him, and, our knowledge, though limited, is blessed. Allother adumbrations of a life beyond must necessarily be cast into themetaphorical forms or the negative symbols in which the New Testamentabounds. We may speak of golden pavements, and thrones, and harps,and the like. We may say: ‘No night there, no sighing, norweeping, no burdened hearts, no toil, no pain, for the former thingsare passed away.’ But a future life which is all described inmetaphors, and a future life of which we know only that it is thenegation of the disagreeables and limitations of the present, is buta poor affair. Here is the positive truth, ‘To him thatovercometh will I grant to sit with Me on My throne.’ ‘Weshall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’ And beyondthat nearness to Christ, blessed communion with Christ, likeness toChrist, royalty derived from Christ, I think we neither know nor needto know anything about that life.

Not only is He our sole medium of knowledge and Himself therevelation of our heaven, but it is only by Him that man's thoughtsand desires are drawn to, and find themselves at home in, thattremendous thought of immortality. I know not how it may be with you,but I am not ashamed to confess that to me the idea of eternalcontinuance of my conscious being is an awful thought, ratherdepressing and bewildering than delighting and attractive. I, for mypart, do not believe that men generally do grapple to their hearts,with any gratitude or joy, that solemn belief of immortal life unlessthey feel that it is life with, and in, and like, Jesus Christ.‘To depart’ is dreary, and it is only when we can say‘and to be with Christ’ that it becomes distinctly‘far better.’ He is, if I may so say, at once telescopeand star. By Him we see Him; we see, seeing Him, that the things thatare unseen all cluster round Himself and become blessed.

III. And now, lastly, this look should be habitual with allChristian people.

Paul takes it for granted that every Christian man is, as thehabitual direction of his thoughts, looking towards those‘things that are not seen.’ The original shows that evenmore distinctly than our translation, but our translation shows itplainly enough. He does not say ‘works for us an exceedingweight of glory for,’ but ‘while’ welook, as if it were a matter of course. He took it for granted as tothese Corinthians. I wonder if he would be warranted in taking it forgranted about us?

Note what sort of a look it is which produces these blessedeffects. The word which the Apostle employs here is a more pointedone than the ordinary one for ‘seeing.’ It is translatedin other places in the New Testament, ‘Mark’ themwhich walk so as ye have us for an ensample, and the like. And itimplies a concentrated, protracted effort and interested gaze. A man,standing on the deck of a ship, casts a languid eye for a moment outon to the horizon, and sees nothing. A keen-eyed sailor by his sideshades his eyes with his hand, and shuts out cross-lights, and looks,and peers, and keeps his eyes steady, and he sees the filmy outlineof the mountain land. If you look for a minute, not much caringwhether you see anything or not, and then turn away, and get your eyedazzled with all those vulgar, crude, high colours round about youhere on earth, it is very little that you will see of ‘thethings that are not seen.’ Concentrated attention, and asteadfast look, are wanted to make the invisible visible. You have toalter the focus of your eye if you are to see the thing that is afaroff.

There has to be a positive shutting out of all other things, as isemphatically taught in the text by putting first the not looking at‘the things that are seen.’ Here they are pressing inupon our eyeballs, all round us, insisting on being looked at, andunless we resolutely avert our eyes, we shall not see anything else.They monopolise us unless we resist the intrusive appeals that theymake to us. We are like men down in some fertile valley, surroundedby rich vegetation, but seeing nothing beyond the green sides of theglen. We have to go up to the hill-top if we are to look out over theflashing ocean, and behold afar off the towers of the mother cityacross the restless waves. Brethren, unless you shut out the worldyou will never see the things that are not seen.

Now, as I have said, the Apostle regards this conscious effort atbringing ourselves into touch, in mind and heart and faith, with‘the things that are not seen’ as being a habitualcharacteristic of Christian men. I am very much afraid that thepresent generation of Christian people do not, in anything like thedegree in which they should, recreate and strengthen themselves withthe contemplation which he here recommends. It seems to me, forinstance, that we do not hear nearly as much in pulpits about thelife beyond the grave as we used to do when I was a boy. And, thoughI confess I speak from limited knowledge, it seems to me that thesegreat motives which lie in the thought of Eternity and our placethere, are by no means as prominent in the minds of the Christianpeople of this generation as they used to be. Partly, I suppose, thatarises from the wholesome emphasis which has been given of late yearsto the present day, and this-side-the grave effects of Christianity,upon character and life. Partly it arises, I think, from thehalf-consciousness of being surrounded by an atmosphere of scepticismand unbelief as to a future life, and from the most unwise,inexpedient, and cowardly yielding to the temptation to say verylittle about the distinctive features of Christianity, and to dwellrather upon those which are sure to be recognised by even unbelievingpeople. And it comes, too, from the lack of faith, which, again, ittends mightily to increase.

Oh, dear brethren! our consciences tell us what different peoplewe should be if habitually there shone before us that great, solemnissue to which we are all tending. Variations in the atmosphere therewill always be, and sometimes the distant outlines will be clearerand sharper than at others, and the colours will shine out moredistinctly. But surely it should not be that our vision of theEternal should be like the vision that dwellers amongst the mountainshave of the summits. They say that some of the great peaks of theworld are swathed in mist all day long, and that only for a fewmoments in the morning, or for a brief space in the evening, does thesolemn summit gleam rosy in the light. And that, I am afraid, is verymuch like the degree in which most of us look at ‘the thingsthat are not seen’ and so we are feeble, and we do notunderstand ‘the things that are not seen’; and we do notget the good out of them.

Dear brethren, let us turn away our eyes from the gauds that wecan see, and open the eyes of our spirits on the things that are, thethings where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Surely,surely, it is madness that when two sets of objects are before us,the one lasting for a moment, and then dying down into blacknothingness, and the other shining on for ever; and when our‘look’ settles whether we shall share the fate of the oneor of the other, we should choose to gaze with all our eyes andhearts at the perishable and turn away from the permanent. Surely, ifit is true that the things which are seen are temporal, common-sense,and a reasonable regard for our own well-being, bid us look at theeternal ‘things which are not seen,’ since only so canthe light and the momentary afflictions, joys, sorrows, orcirc*mstances, work out for us, and work us for ‘a far moreexceeding and eternal weight of glory.’

TENT AND BUILDING

‘For we know that if our earthly house of thistabernacle be dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not madewith hands, eternal in the heavens.’—2 COR. v.1.

Knowledge and ignorance, doubt and certitude, are remarkablyblended in these words. The Apostle knows what many men are notcertain of; the Apostle doubts as to what all men now are certain of.‘If our earthly house of this tabernacle bedissolved’—there is surely no if about that. But we mustremember that the first Christians, and the Apostles with them, didnot know whether they might not survive till the coming of Christ;and so not die, but ‘be changed.’ And this possibility,as appears from the context, is clearly before the Apostle's mind.Such a limitation of his knowledge is in entire accordance with ourLord's own words, ‘It is not for you to know the times and theseasons,’ and does not in the smallest degree derogate from hisauthority as an inspired teacher. But his certitude is as remarkableas his hesitation. He knows—and he modestly and calmly affirmsthe confidence, as possessed by all believers—that, in theevent of death coming to him or them, he and they have a mansionwaiting for their entrance; a body of glory like to that which Jesusalready wears.

I. So my text mainly sets before us very strikingly the Christiancertitude as to the final future.

I need not dwell, I suppose, upon that familiar metaphor by whichthe relation of man to his bodily environment is described as that ofa man to his dwelling-place. Only I would desire, in a word, toemphasise this as being the first of the elements of the blessedcertitude in which Christian people may expatiate—the clear,broad distinction between me and my physical frame. There is no moreconnection, says Paul, between us and the organisation in which we atpresent dwell than there is between a man and the house that heinhabits. ‘The foolish senses crown’ Death and call himlord; but the Christian's certitude firmly draws the line, anddeclares that the man, the whole personality, is undisturbed byanything that befalls his residence; and that he may pass unimpairedfrom one house to another, being in both the self-same person. Andthat is something to keep firm hold of in these days when we arebeing told that life and consciousness are but a function oforganisation, and that if the one be annihilated the other cannotpersist. No; though all illustrations and metaphors must necessarilyfail, the two which lie side by side here in my text and its contextare far truer than that pseudo-science—which is not science atall, but only inference from science—which denies that the manis one thing and his house altogether another.

Then again, note, as part of the elements of this Christiancertitude, the blessed thought that a body is part of the perfectionof manhood. No mere dim, ghostly future, where consciousness somehowpersists, without environment or tools to act upon an outer world,completes the idea of God in reference to man. But the old trinity isthe eternal trinity for humanity, body, soul, and spirit. Corporeity,with all that it means of definiteness, with all that it means ofrelation to an external universe, is the perfection of manhood. Todwell naked, as the Apostle says in the context, is a thing fromwhich man shudderingly recoils; and it is not to be his final fate.Let us take this as no small gain in reference to our conceptions ofa future—the emphatic drawing into light of that thought thatfor his perfection man requires body, soul, and spirit.

And now, if we turn for a moment to the characteristics of the twoconditions with which my text deals, we get some familiar enough butyet great and strengthening thoughts. The ‘earthly house ofthis tabernacle is dissolved,’ or, more correctly, retainingthe metaphor of the house, is to be pulled down—and in itsplace there comes a building of God, a ‘house not made withhands, eternal in the heavens.’

Now the contrast that is drawn here, whilst it would run out intoa great many other particulars, about which we know nothing, andtherefore had better say nothing, revolves in the Apostle's mindmainly round these two ‘earthly’ as contrasted with‘in the heavens’; and ‘tabernacle,’ or tent,as contrasted, first of all with a ‘building,’ and thenwith the predicate ‘eternal.’

That is to say, the first outstanding difference which arisesbefore the Apostle as blessed and glorious, is the contrast betweenthe fragile dwelling-place, with its thin canvas, its bending poles,its certain removal some day, and the permanence of that which is nota ‘tent,’ but a ‘building’ which is‘eternal.’ Involved in that is the thought that all thelimitations and weaknesses which are necessarily associated with theperishableness of the present abode are at an end for ever. No morefatigue, no more working beyond the measure of power, no more needfor recuperation and repose; no more dread of sickness and weakness;no more possibility of decay, ‘It is sown in corruption; it israised in incorruption’—neither ‘can theydie any more.’ Whether that be by reason of any inherentimmortality, or by reason of the uninterrupted flow into the creatureof the immortal life of Christ, to whom he is joined, is a questionthat need not trouble us now. Enough for us that the contrast betweenthe Bedouin tent—which is folded up and carried away, andnothing left but the black circle where the cheerful hearth onceglinted amidst the sands of the desert—and the stately mansionreared for eternity, is the contrast between the organ of the spiritin which we now dwell and that which shall be ours.

And the other contrast is no less glorious and wonderful.‘The earthly house of this tent’ does not merelydefine the composition, but also the whole relations and capacitiesof that to which it refers. The ‘tent’ is‘earthly’, not merely because, to use a kindred metaphor,it is a ‘building of clay,’ but because, by all itscapacities, it belongs to, corresponds with, and is fitted only for,this lower order of things, the seen and the perishable. And, on theother hand, the ‘mansion’ is in ‘theheavens,’ even whilst the future tenant is a nomad in his tent.That is so, because the power which can create that future abode is‘in the heavens.’ It is so called in order to express thesecurity in which it is kept for those who shall one day enter uponit. And it is so, further, to express the order of things with whichit brings its dwellers into contact. ‘Flesh and blood cannotinherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inheritincorruption.’ That future home of the spirit will be congruouswith the region in which it dwells; fitted for the heavens in whichit is now preserved. And thus the two contrasts—adapted to theperishable, and itself perishable, belonging to the eternal anditself incorruptible—are the two which loom largest before theApostle's mind.

Let no man say that such ideas of a possible future bodily frameare altogether inconsistent with all that we know of the limitationsand characteristics of what we call matter. ‘There is one fleshof beasts and another of birds,’ says Paul; ‘there is oneglory of the sun and another of the moon.’ And hisold-fashioned argument is perfectly sound to-day.

Do you know so fully all the possibilities of creation as that youare warranted in asserting that such a thing as a body which is thefit organ of the spirit, and is incorruptible like the heavens inwhich it dwells, is an impossibility? Surely the forms of matter aresufficiently varied to make us chary in asserting that other formsare impossible, to which there may belong, as characteristics, eventhese glorious ones of my text. The old story of the king in thetropics, who laughed to scorn some one who told him that water couldbe turned into a solid, may well be quoted in this connection. Let usbe less confident that we know all that is to be known in regard tothe sweep of God's creative power; and let us thankfully accept theteaching by which we, too, in all our ignorance, may be able to say,‘We know that ... we have a building of God ... eternal in theheavens.’

Now there is only one more remark that I wish to make about thispart of my subject; and it is this, that the teaching of my text andits context casts great light—and I think by many peoplemuch-needed light—on what the resurrection of the dead means.That doctrine has been weighted with a great many incredibilities andI venture to say absurdities, by well-meaning misconceptions andexaggerations. We have heard grand platitudes about ‘thescattered dust being gathered from the four winds of heaven,’and so on, but the teaching of my text is that the contrast betweenthe present physical frame and the future bodily environment is utterand complete; and that resurrection does not mean the assuming againof the body that is left behind and done with, but the reinvestitureof the man with another body. And so the Scriptural phrase is, not‘the resurrection of the body,’ but ‘theresurrection of the dead.’ It is a house ‘in theheavens.’ It comes ‘from heaven.’

We leave the tent. Life and thought

 ... have gone away, side by side,Leaving doors and windows wide;Careless tenants they!

And they may well be careless, because in theheavens they have another mansion, incorruptible and glorious.

We leave the ‘tent’; we enter the‘building.’ There is nothing here of some germ ofimmortality being somehow extricated from the ruins, and fosteredinto glorious growth. Or, to take another metaphor of the context, westrip off the garment and are naked; and then we are clothed withanother garment and are not found naked. The resurrection of the deadis the clothing of the spirit with the house which is from heaven.And there is as much difference between the two habitations as thereis between the grim, solid architecture of northern peoples, amidstsnow and ice, needed to resist the blasts, and to keep the lifewithin in an ungenial climate, and the light, graceful dwellings ofthose who walk in an atmosphere of perpetual sunshine in the tropics,as there is between the close-knit and narrow-windowed andnarrow-doored abode in which we now have to pass our days, and thatlarge house, with broad windows that take in a mightier sweep and newsenses that have relation with new qualities in the world then aroundus. Therefore let us, whilst we grope in the dark here, and live in anarrow hovel in a back street, look forward to the time when we shalldwell on the sunny heights in the great pavilion which God preparesfor them that love Him.

II. And now note, again, how we come to this certitude.

My text is very significantly followed by a ‘for,’which gives the reason of the knowledge in a very remarkable manner.‘We know, ... for in this we groan, earnestly desiring to beclothed upon with our house, which is from heaven.’ Now thatsingular collocation of ideas may be set forth thus—whateverlonging there is in a Christian, God-inspired soul, that longing is aprophecy of its own fulfilment. We know that there is a house,because of the yearning, which is deepest and strongest when we arenearest God, and likest what He would have us to be—theyearning to be ‘clothed upon with our house which is fromheaven.’ That is a truth that goes a long way; though toenlarge on it is irrelevant to our present purpose. It has itslimitations, as is obvious from the context, in which are humanelements which are not destined to be gratified, mingled with theyearning, which is of God, and which is destined to be satisfied. Butthis at least we may firmly hold by, that just because God will notput men to confusion intellectually, and does not let them entertainuncherished—still less Himself foster and excite—longingswhich He does not mean to gratify, a Christian yearning forimmortality is, to the man who feels it, a declaration thatimmortality is sure for him. ‘Delight thyself in the Lord, andHe shall give thee the desires of thine heart.’ Whatsoever, intouching Him, we do deeply long for may have blended with it humanelements, which will be dispersed unsatisfied, but the substance ofit is a prophecy of its own fulfilment. And as surely as the stork inthe heavens, flying southward, will reach the sunny lands which drawit from the grim northern winter, so surely may a man say, ‘Iknow that I have a house in heaven, because I long for it, and shrinkfrom being found naked.’

Of course such longing, such aspiration and revulsion are noproofs of a fact except there be some fact which changes them, frommere vague desires, and makes these solid certainties. And such afact we have in that which is the only proof that the world hasreceived, of the persistence of life through death and thecontinuance of personal identity unchanged by the grave, and that isthe Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Our faith inimmortality does not depend merely on our own subjective desires andlongings, but these desires and longings are quickened, confirmed,and certified by this great fact that Jesus Christ has risen from thedead; and therefore we know that the yearnings in us are not in vain.So we come to this certitude, first, by reason of his experience;and, second, by reason of the longings which that experience fostersif it does not kindle, within our hearts.

And let no man take exception to the Apostle's word here,‘we know,’ or tell us that ‘Knowledge is of thethings we see.’ That is true, and not true. It is true inregard to what arrogates to itself the name of science. And we arewilling to admit the limitation if the men who insist upon it will,on their sides, admit that there are other sources of certitude thanso-called ‘facts,’ by which they mean merely materialfacts. If it is meant to assert that we are less sure of the love ofGod, of immortality, than we are of the existence of this piece ofwood, or that flame of gas; then I humbly venture to say that thereis another region of facts than those which are appreciable by sense;that the evidence upon which we rest our certitude of immortalblessedness is quite as valid, quite as true, quite as able to bearthe weight of a leaning heart as anything that can be produced, inthe nature of evidence, for the things round us. It is not, ‘Wefancy, we believe, we hope, we are pretty nearly sure,’ but itis ‘We know ... that we have a building ofGod.’

III. Lastly, note what this certitude does.

The Apostle tells us by the ‘for’ which lies at thebeginning of my text, and makes it a reason for something that haspreceded, and what has preceded is this, ‘We look not at thethings which are seen, but at the things which are notseen.’

That is to say, such a joyous, calm certitude draws men's thoughtsaway from this shabby and transitory present, and fixes them on thesolemn majesties of that eternal future. Yes! and nothing else will.Take away the idea of resurrection, and the remaining idea ofimmortality is a poor, shadowy, impotent thing. There is no force init; there is no blessedness in it; there is nothing in it for a manto lay hold of. And, as a matter of fact, there is no vivid faith ina future life without belief in the resurrection and bodily existenceof the perfected dead.

And we shall not let our thoughts willingly go out thither unlessour own personal wellbeing there is very sure to us. When we knowthat for us individually there is that house waiting for us to enterinto it, when the Lord comes, then we shall not be unwilling to turnour hearts and our desires thither. We look at the things which arenot seen, for we know that we have a house eternal.

And such a certitude will also make a man willing to accept theelse unwelcome necessity of leaving the tent, and for a while doingwithout the mansion. It is that which the Apostle is speaking of insubsequent verses, on which I cannot enter now. He says—andtherein speaks a universal experience—that men recoil from theidea of having to lay aside this earthly body and be‘naked.’ But we know that we have that glorious mansionwaiting for us, and that till the day comes when we enter upon it wemay be lapt in Christ instead, and, in that so-called intermediatestate, may have Him to surround us, Him to be to us the medium bywhich we come into connection with anything external, and so cancontentedly go away from our home in the body; and go to our home inChrist. ‘Wherefore, we are always confident, and willing ratherto be absent from the body, and to be at home with theLord.’

Oh, brethren! do we think of our future thus? If we do, then letus lay to heart the final words of our teacher in this part of hisletter: ‘Wherefore we make it our aim, whether at home orabsent, to be well-pleasing unto Him.’

THE PATIENT WORKMAN

‘Now He that hath wrought us for the self-samething is God.’—2 COR. v. 5.

These words penetrate deep into the secrets of God. They assume tohave read the riddle of life. To Paul everything which we experience,outwardly or inwardly, is from the divine working. Life is to him nomere blind whirl, or unintelligent play of accidental forces, nor isit the unguided result of our own or of others’ wills, but isthe slow operation of the great Workman. Paul assumes to know themeaning of this protracted process, that it all has one design whichwe may know and grasp and further. And he believes that the clearperception of the divine purpose, and the habit of looking ateverything as contributing thereto, will be a magic charm against allsorrow, doubt, despondency, or fear, for he adds, ‘Therefore weare always confident.’ So let us try to follow the course ofthought which issues in such a blessed gift as that of a continual,courageous outlook, and buoyant though grave lightheartedness,because we discern what He means ‘Who worketh all thingsaccording to the counsel of His own will.’

I. The first thought here is, God's purpose in all His working;‘He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing isGod.’

What is that ‘self-same thing’? To understand it wemust look back for a moment to the previous context. The Apostle hasbeen speaking about the instinctive reluctance which even good menfeel at prospect of dying and ‘putting off the earthly house ofthis tabernacle.’ He distinguishes between three differentconditions in which the human spirit may be—dwelling in theearthly body, stripped of that, and ‘clothed with the housewhich is from Heaven,’ and to this last and highest state hesees that for him and for his brethren there were two possible roads.They might reach it either through losing the present body, in theact of death, and passing through a period of what he callsnakedness; or they might attain it by being‘superinvested,’ as it were, with the glorious body whichwas to come to saints with Christ when He came; and so slip on, as itwere, the wedding garment over their old clothes, without having todenude themselves of these. And he says that deep in the Christianheart there lay reluctance to take the former road and the preferencefor the latter. His longing was that that which is mortal might be‘swallowed up of life,’ as some sand-bank in the tide-waymay be gradually covered and absorbed by the rejoicing waters. Andthen he says, ‘Now He that hath wrought us for this very thing,is God.’

Of course it is impossible that he can mean by this ‘verything’ the second of the roads by which it was possible toreach the ultimate issue, because he did not know whether hisbrethren and he were to die or to be changed. He speaks in thecontext about death as a possible contingency for himself and forthem,—‘If our earthly house of this tabernaclewere dissolved,’ and so on. Therefore we must suppose that‘the self-same thing’ of which he is thinking as thedivine purpose in all His dealings with us, is not the manner inwhich we may attain that ultimate condition, but the condition itselfwhich, by one road or another, God's children shall attain. Or, inother words, the highest aim of the divine love in all its dealingswith us Christian men, is not merely a blessed spiritual life, butthe completion of our humanity in a perfect spirit dwelling in aglorified body. Corporeity—the dwelling in a body by which thepure spirit moves amidst pure universes—is the highest end ofGod's will concerning us.

That glorified body is described in our context in wonderfulwords, which it would take me far too long to do more than just touchupon. Here we dwell in a tent, there we shall dwell in a building.Here in a house made with hands, a corporeal frame derived fromparents by material transmission and intervention; there we shalldwell in a building of which God is the maker. Here we dwell in acrumbling clay tenement, which rains dissolve, which lightningstrikes, and winds overthrow, and which finally lies on the ground aheap of tumbled ruin. There we dwell in a building, God's directwork, eternal, and knowing no corruption nor change. Here we dwell ina body congruous with, and part of, the perishable earthly world inwhich it abides, and with which it stands in relation; there we dwellin a house partaking of the nature of the heavens in which it moves,a body that is the fit organ of a perfect spirit.

And so, says Paul, the end of what God means with us is not statedin all its wonderfulness, when we speak of spirits imbued with Hiswisdom and surcharged with His light and perfectness, but when we addto that the thought of a fitting organ in which these spirits dwell,whereby they can come into contact with an external universe,incorruptible, and so reach the summit of their destinedcompleteness. ‘The house not made with hands,’ eternal,the building of God in the Heavens, is the end that God has in viewfor all His children.

II. So, then, secondly, note the slow process of the DivineWorkman.

The Apostle employs here a very emphatic compound term for‘hath wrought.’ It conveys not only the idea ofoperation, but the idea of continuous and somewhat toilsome andeffortful work, as if against the resistance of something that didnot yield itself naturally to the impulse that He would bestow. Likesome sculptor with a hard bit of marble, or some metallurgist who hasto work the rough ore till it becomes tractable, so the loving,patient, Divine Artificer is here represented as labouring long andearnestly with a somewhat obstinate material which can and doesresist His loving touch, and yet going on with imperturbable andpatient hope, by manifold touches, here a little and there a little,all through life preparing a man for His purpose. The great Artificertoils at His task, ‘rising early’ and working long, andnot discouraged when He comes upon a black vein in the white marble,nor when the hard stone turns the edge of His chisels.

Now I would have you notice that there lies in this conception avery important thought, viz. God cannot make you fit for heaven allat a jump, or by a simple act of will. That is not His way ofworking. He can make a world so, He cannot make a saint so. He canspeak and it is done when it is only a universe that has to bebrought into being; or He can say, ‘Let there be light,’and light springs at His word. But He cannot say, and He does notsay, Let there be holiness, and it comes. Not so can God make manmeet for the ‘inheritance of the saints in light.’ And ittakes Him all His energies, for all a lifetime, to prepare His childfor what He wants to make of him.

There is another thought here, which I can only touch, and that isthat God cannot give a man that glorified body of which I have beenspeaking, unless the man's spirit is Christlike. He cannot raise abad man at the resurrection with the body of His glory. By thenecessities of the case it is confined to the purified, because itcorresponds to their inward spiritual being. It is only a perfectspirit that can dwell in a perfect body. You could not put a bad man,Godless and Christless, into the body which will be fit for them whomChrist has changed first of all in heart and spirit into His ownlikeness. He would be like those hermit crabs that you see on thebeach who run into any kind of a shell, whether it fits them or not,in order to get a house.

There are two principles at work in the resurrection of the dead.The glorified body is not the physical outcome of the material bodyhere, but is the issue and manifestation, in visible form, of theperfect and Christlike spirit. Some shall rise to glory andimmortality, some to shame and everlasting contempt. If we are tostand at the last with the body of our humiliation changed into abody of glory, we must begin by being changed in the spirit of ourmind. As the mind is, so will the body be one day. But, passing fromsuch thoughts as these, and remembering that the Apostle here isspeaking only about Christian people, and the divine operations uponthem, we may still extend the meaning of this significant word‘wrought’ somewhat further, and ask you just to consider,and that very briefly, the three-fold processes which, in the divineworking, terminate in, and contemplate, this great issue.

God has wrought us for it in the very act of making us what weare. Human nature is an insoluble enigma, if this world is its onlyfield. Amidst all the waste, the mysterious waste, of creation, thereis no more profligate expenditure of powers than that which isinvolved in giving a man such faculties and capacities, if this bethe only field on which they are to be exercised. If you think ofwhat most of us do in this world, and of what it is in us to be, andto do, it is almost ludicrous to consider the disproportion. Allother creatures fit their circ*mstances; nothing in them is biggerthan their environment. They find in life a field for every power.You and I do not. ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of theair have roosting-places.’ They all correspond to theircirc*mstances, but we have an infinitude of faculty lying halfdormant in each of us, which finds no work at all in this presentworld. And so, looking at men as they are with eternity in theirhearts, with natures that go reaching out towards infinity, thequestion comes up: ‘Wherefore hast Thou made all men in vain?What is the use of us, and why should we be what we are, if there isnothing for us except this poor present?’ God, or whoever madeus, has made a mistake; and strangely enough, if we were not made,but evolved, evolution has worked out faculties which have nocorrespondence with the things around them.

Life and man are an insoluble enigma except on one hypothesis, andthat is that this is a nursery-ground, and that the plants will bepricked out some day, and planted where they are meant to grow. Thehearts that feel after absolute and perfect love, the spirits thatcan conceive the idea of an infinite goodness, the dumb desires, theblank misgivings that wander homeless amidst the narrowness of thispoor earth, all these things proclaim that there is a region wherethey will find their nutriment and expatiate, and when we look at aman we can only say, He that hath wrought him for an infinite world,and an endless communion with a perfect good, is God.

Still further, another field of the divine operation to this endis in what we roughly call ‘providences.’ What is themeaning of all this discipline through which we are passed, if thereis nothing to be disciplined for? What is the good of anapprenticeship if there is no journeyman's life to come after it,where the powers that have been slowly acquired shall be noblyexercised upon broader fields? Why should men be taken, as it were,and, like the rough iron from the ground,

'Be heated hot with hopes and fears,And plunged in baths of hissing tears,And battered with the shocks of doom,'

if, after all the process, the polished shaft isto be broken in two, and tossed away as rubbish? If death endsfaculty, it is a pity that the faculty was so patiently developed. IfGod is educating us all in His school, and then means that, like somewastrel boys, we should lose all our education as soon as we leaveits benches, there is little use in the rod, and little meaning inthe training. Brethren! life is an insoluble riddle unless thepurpose of it lie yonder, and unless all this patient training of oursorrows and our gladnesses, the warmth that expands and the cold thatcontracts the heart, the light that gladdens and the darkness thatsaddens the eye and the spirit, are equally meant for training us forthe perfect life of a perfect soul moving a perfect body in a perfectuniverse. Here is a pillar in some ancient hall that has fallen intopoor hands, and has had a low roof thrown across the centre of thechamber at half its height. In the lower half there is part of apillar that means nothing; ugly, bare, evidently climbing, andpassing through the aperture, and away above yonder is the carvedcapital and the great entablature that it carries. Who couldunderstand the shaft unless he could look up through the aperture,and see the summit? And who can think of life as anything but awretched fragment unless he knows that all which begins here runsupwards into the room above, and there finds its explanation and itscompletion?

But there is the third sphere of the divine operation. As increation and in providence, so in all the work and mystery of ourredemption, this is the goal that God has in view. It was not worthChrist's while to come and die, if nothing more was to come of itthan the imperfect reception of His blessings and gifts which thenoblest Christian life in this world presents. The meaning andpurpose of the Cross, the meaning and purpose of all the patientdealings of His whispering Spirit, are that we shall be like ourDivine Lord in spirit first, and in body afterwards.

And everything about the experiences of a true Christian spirit ischarged with a prophecy of immortality. I have not time to dwell uponone point gathered from the context, that I intended to have insistedupon, viz. that the very desires which God's good Spirit works in abelieving soul are themselves confirmations of their own fulfilment.But if you notice at your leisure the verses that precede my text,you will find that the Apostle adduces the groanings of‘earnest desire to be clothed with our house which is fromHeaven,’ as a proof that we have ‘a building ofGod, a house not made with hands.’ That is to say, everylonging in a Christian heart when it is most filled with that Spirit,and most in contact with God, and which is the answer of that heartto a promise of Christ—every such longing carries with it theassurance of its own fulfilment. He that hath wrought it has wroughtit in order that the desire may fit us for its answer, and that theopen mouth may be ready for the abundant filling which His gracedesigns. He works upon us, therefore, by making us desire a gift, andthen He gives that which He desires. So let us cherish theselongings, not for the accident of escaping death, nor as choosing thepath by which we shall reach the blessed issue, but longing for thatgreat issue itself; and try to keep more distinct and clear beforeall our minds this thought, ‘God means for me the participationin Christ's glorified Manhood, and my attaining of that Manhood isthe end that He has in view in all that He does with me.’

III. So I must say one word about the last thought that is here,and that is the certainty and the confidence. ‘Therefore we arealways confident,’ says the Apostle.

‘He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing isGod.’ Then we may be sure that as far as He is concerned, thework will not be suspended nor vain. This man does not beginto build and is unable to finish. This workman has infiniteresources, an unchanging purpose, and infinite long-suffering. Hewill complete His task.

In the quarries of Egypt you will find gigantic stones,half-dressed, and intended to have been transported to some greattemple. But there they lie, the work incomplete, and they nevercarried to their place. There are no half-polished stones in God'squarries. They are all finished where they lie, and then borne acrossthe sea, like Hiram's from Lebanon, to the Temple on the hill. It isa certainty that God will finish His work; and since ‘He thathath wrought us is God,’ we may be sure that He will not stoptill He has done.

But it is a certainty that you can thwart. It is an operation thatyou can counterwork. The potter in Jeremiah's parable was making avessel upon his wheel, and the vessel was marred in his hand, and didnot turn out what he wanted it. The meaning of the metaphor, whichhas often been twisted to express the very opposite, is that thepotter's work may fail, that the artificer may be balked, that youcan counterwork the divine dealing, and that all His purpose in yourcreation, in His providence and in His gift of His Son for yourredemption, may come to nought as far as you are concerned. ‘Ibeseech you that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.’‘In vain have I smitten your children,’ wailed the DivineLove; ‘they have received no correction.’ In vain Godlavishes upon some of us His mercies, in vain for some of us hasChrist toiled and suffered and died. Oh, brother! do not let allGod's work on you come to nought, but yield yourselves to it. Rejoicein the confidence that He is moulding your character, cheerfullywelcome and accept the providences, painful as they may be, by whichHe prepares you for heaven. The chisel is sharp that strikes off thesuperfluous pieces of marble, and when the chisel cuts, not intomarble, but into a heart, there is a pang. Bear it, bear it! andunderstand the meaning of the blow of the sculptor's mallet, and seein all life the divine hand working towards the accomplishment of Hisown loving purpose. Then if we turn to Him, amid the pains of Hisdiscipline and the joys of His gifts of grace, with recognition andacceptance of His meaning in them all, and cry to Him, ‘Thymercy, O Lord, endureth for ever, forsake not the work of Thine ownhands,’ we may be always confident, as knowing that ‘theLord will perfect that which concerneth us.’

THE OLD HOUSE AND THENEW

‘We are confident, I say, and willing rather to beabsent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.’—2COR. v. 8.

There lie in the words of my text simply these two things; theChristian view of what death is, and the Christian temper in which toanticipate it.

I. First, the Christian view of what death is.

Now it is to be observed that, properly speaking, the Apostle isnot here referring to the state of the dead, but to the act of dying.The language would more literally and accurately be rendered‘willing to go from home, from the body, and togo home, to the Lord.’ The moment of transition ofcourse leads to a permanent state, but it is the moment of transitionwhich is in view in the words. I need not remind you, I suppose, thatthe metaphor of the home is one which has already been dwelt upon inthe early part of the chapter, where the contrast is drawn betweenthe transitory house of ‘this tent,’ and the‘building of God,’ the body of incorruption and glorywhich the saints at the Resurrection day shall receive. So, then, theChristian view of the act of death is that it is simply a change ofabode.

Very clearly and firmly does Paul draw the line between the manand his dwelling-place. Life is more than a result of organisation.Consciousness, thought, feeling, are more than functions of matter.No materialist philosopher has ever been, or ever will be, able toexplain within the limits of his system the strange differencebetween the cause and the effect; how it comes to pass that at theone end of the chain there is an impression upon a nerve, and at theother there is pain; how at the one end there is the throb of an inchof matter in a man's skull, and at the other end there are thoughtsthat breathe and words that burn, and that live for ever. That bringsus up to the edge of a gulf over which no materialist philosopher hasever been able to cast a bridge. The scalpel cannot cut deep enoughto solve this mystery. Conscience as well as instinct cry out againstthe theory that the worker and the tools are inseparable. For such atheory reduces human actions to mechanical results, and shatters allresponsibility. Man is more than his dwelling-place. You crush ashell on the beach with your heel, and you slay its tiny inhabitant.But you can pull down the tent, and pluck up its pegs, and roll upits canvas, and put it away in a dark corner, and the tenant isuntouched. The foolish senses crown Death as last, and lord of all.But wisdom says, ‘Life and thought have gone away side by side,leaving doors and windows wide,’ and that is all that hashappened.

Still further, my text suggests that to the Christian soul thedeparture from the one house is the entrance into the other. The homehas been the body; the home is now to be Jesus Christ. And verybeautiful and significant with meanings, which only experience willfully unfold, is the representation that the Lord Christ Himselfassumes the place which the bodily environment has hitherto held.

That teaches us, at all events, that there is a new depth andcloseness of union with Jesus waiting the Christian soul, when itlays aside the separating film of flesh. Here the bodilyorganisation, with its limitations, necessarily shuts us off from thecloseness of intercourse which is possible for a naked soul. We knownot how much separation may depend upon the immersing of the spiritin the fleshly tabernacle, but this we know, that, though here andnow, by faith which dominates sense, souls can live in Christ evenwhilst they live in the body; yet there shall come a form of union somuch more close, intimate, all-pervading, and all-encircling, as thatthe present union with Him by faith, precious as it is, shall be, asthe Apostle calls it in our context, ‘absence from theLord.’ ‘We have to be discharged,’ says an oldthinker, ‘of a great deal of what we call body, and then weshall be more truly ourselves,’ and more truly united to Himwho, if we are Christian people at all, is the self of ourselves andthe life of our lives. No man knows how close he can nestle to thebosom of Christ when the film of flesh is rent away. Just as when insome crowded street of a great city some grimy building is pulleddown, a sudden daylight fills the vacant space, and all the site thathad been shut out from the sky for many years is drenched insunshine, so when ‘the earthly house of this tabernacle’is ruinated and falls, the light will flood the place where it stood,and to be ‘absent from the body’ shall be to be‘present with the Lord.’

May we go a step further and suggest that, perhaps, in the boldmetaphor of my text, there is an answer to the questions which sooften rack loving and parted hearts? ‘Do the dead know aught ofwhat affects us here? and can they do aught but gaze on Him, andlove, and rest?’ If it be that there is any such analogy asseems to be dimly shadowed in my text, between the relation of thebody on earth to the spirit that inhabits it, and that of JesusChrist to him who dwells in Him, and is clothed by Him, then it maybe that, as the flesh, so the Christ transmits to the spirit that hasHim for its home impressions from the outside world, and affords ameans of action upon that world. Christ may be, if I might so say,the sensorium of the disembodied spirit; and Christ may be the handof the man who hath no other instrument by which to express himself.But all that is fancy perhaps, speculation certainly; and yet thereseems to be a shadow of a foundation for at least entertaining thepossibility of such a thought as that Jesus is the means of knowingand the means of acting to those who rest from their labours in Him,and dwell in peace in His arms. But be that as it may, the reality ofa close communion and encircling by the felt presence of JesusChrist, which, in its blessed closeness, will make the closestcommunion here seem to be obscure, is certainly declared in the wordsbefore us.

Then this transition is regarded in my text as being the work of amoment. It is not a long journey of which the beginning is ‘togo from home, from the body,’ and the end is ‘togo home, to the Lord.’ But it is one and the same motionwhich, looked at from the one side, is departure, and looked at fromthe other is arrival. The old saying has it, ‘there is but astep between me and death.’ The truth is, there is but a stepbetween me and life. The mighty angel in the Apocalypse, thatstood with one foot on the firm land and the other on the boundlessocean, is but the type of the spirit in the brief moment oftransition, when the consciousness of two worlds blends, and it isclothed upon with the house which is from heaven, in the very act ofstripping off the earthly house of this tabernacle.

Nor need I remind you, I suppose, in more than a sentence, thatthis transition obviously leads into a state of conscious communionwith Jesus Christ. The dreary figment of an unconscious interval forthe disembodied spirit has no foundation, either in what we know ofspirit, or in what is revealed to us in Scripture. For the one thingthat seems to make it probable—the use of that metaphor of‘sleeping in Jesus’—is quite sufficiently accountedfor by the notions of repose, and cessation of outward activity, andwithdrawal of capacity of being influenced by the so-called realitiesof this lower world, without dragging in the unfounded notion ofunconsciousness. My text is incompatible with it, for it is absurd tosay of an unconscious spirit, clear of a bodily environment, that itis anywhere; and there is no intelligible sense in which thecondition of such a spirit can be called being ‘with theLord.’

So, then, I think a momentary transition, with uninterruptedconsciousness, which leads to a far deeper and more wonderful andblessed sense of unity with Jesus Christ than is possible here onearth, is the true shape in which the act of death presents itself tothe Christian thinker.

And remember, dear brethren, that is all we know. Nothing else iscertain—nothing but this, ‘with the Lord,’ and theresulting certainty that therefore it is well with them. It is enoughfor our faith, for our comfort, for our patient waiting. They live inChrist, ‘and there we find them worthier to be loved,’and certainly lapped in a deeper rest. ‘Blessed are the deadthat die in the Lord.’

II. In the next place, note the Christian temper in which toanticipate the transition.

‘We are always courageous, and willing rather to leave ourhome in the body, and to go home to the Lord.’ Now I mustbriefly remind you of how the Apostle comes to this state of feeling.He has been speaking about the natural shrinking, which belongs toall humanity, from the act of dissolution, considered as being thestripping off of the garment of the flesh. And he has declared, onbehalf of himself and the early Christian Church, his own and theirpersonal desire that they might escape from that trial by the pathwhich seemed possible to the early Christians—viz. that ofsurviving until the return of Jesus Christ from Heaven, when theywould be ‘clothed upon with the house which is fromHeaven,’ without the necessity of stripping off that with whichat present they are invested. Then he says—and this is a veryremarkable thought—that just because this instinctive shrinkingfrom death and yearning for the glorified body is so strong in theChristian heart, that is a sign that there is such a glorified bodywaiting for us. He says, ‘we know that if our house ... weredissolved, we have a building of God.’ And his reason forknowing it is this, ‘for in this we groan.’ Thatis a bold position to say that a yearning in the Christianconsciousness prophesies its own fulfilment. Our desires are theprophecies of His gifts. Then, on this certainty—which hededuces from the fact of the longing for it—on this certaintyof the glorious, ultimate body of the Resurrection he bases hiswillingness expressed in the text, to go through the unwelcomeprocess of leaving the old house, although he shrinks from it.

So, then, Christian faith does not destroy the natural reluctanceto put aside the old companion of our lives. The old house, though itbe smoky, dimly lighted, and, by our own careless keeping, slu*ttishand grimy in many a corner, yet is the only house we have ever known,and to be absent from it is untried and strange. There is nothingwrong in saying ‘we would not be unclothed but clothedupon.’ Nature speaks there. We may reverently entertain thesame feelings which our Pattern acknowledged, when He said, ‘Ihave a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened until itbe accomplished.’ And there would be nothing sinful inrepeating His prayer with His conditions, ‘If it be possible,let this cup pass from Me.’

But then the text suggests to us the large Christian possessionsand hope which counterwork this reluctance, in the measure in whichwe live lives of faith. There is the assurance of that ultimate homein which all the transiency of the present material organisation isexchanged for the enduring permanence which knows no corruption. The‘tent’ is swept away to make room for the‘building.’ The earthly house is dissolved in order thatthere may be reared round the homeless tenant the house eternal,‘not made with hands,’ God's own work, which is waitingin the heavens; because the power that shall frame it is there. Notonly that great hope of the ‘body of His glory,’ withwhich at the last all true souls shall be invested, but furthermore,‘the earnest of the spirit,’ and the blessed experiencestherefrom, resulting even here, ought to make the unwelcome necessityless unwelcome. If the firstfruits be righteousness and peace and joyof the Holy Ghost, what shall the harvest be? If the‘earnest,’ the shilling given in advance, be so precious,what will the whole wealth of the inheritance which it heralds bewhen it is received?

For such reasons the transitory passage becomes less painful andunwelcome. Who is there that would hesitate to dip his foot into theice-cold brook if he knew that it would not reach above his ankles,and that a step would land him in blessedness unimagined tillexperienced?

Therefore the Christian temper is that of quiet willingness andconstant courage. There is nothing hysterical here, nothing morbid,nothing overstrained, nothing artificial. The Apostle says: ‘Iwould rather not. I should like if I could escape it. It is anunwelcome necessity; but when I see what I do see beyond,’ I amready. Since so it must be, I will go, not reluctantly, nor draggedaway from life, nor clinging desperately to it as it slips from myhands, nor dreading anything that may happen beyond; but alwayscourageous, and prepared to go whithersoever the path may take me,since I am sure that it ends in His bosom. He is willing to go fromthe home of the body, because to do that is to go home to Christ.

There are other references of our Apostle's, substantially of thesame tone as that of my text, but with very beautiful and encouragingdifferences. When he was nearer his end, when it seemed to him as ifthe headsman's block was not very far off, his willingness hadintensified into ‘having a desire to depart and to bewith Christ, which is far better.’ And when the end was all butreached, and he knew that death was waiting just round the next turnin the road, he said, with the confidence that in the midst of thestruggle would have been vainglory, but at the end of it was aforetaste of the calm of Heaven, ‘I have finished my course, Ihave kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown ofrighteousness.’ That is our model, dearbrethren,—‘always courageous,’ afraid of nothing inlife, in death, or beyond, and therefore willing to go from home fromthe body and to go home to the Lord.

Think of this man thus fronting the inevitable, with no excitementand with no delusions. Remember what Paul believed about death, aboutsin, about his own sin, about judgment, about hell. And then think ofhow to him death had made its darkness beautiful with the light ofChrist's face, and all the terror was gone out of it. Do you think soabout death? Do you shrink from it? Why? Why do you not take Paul'scure for the shrinking? If you can say, ‘To me to live isChrist,’ you will have no difficulty in saying, ‘and todie is gain.’ That is the only way by which you can come tosuch a temper, and then you will be willing to move from the cottageto the palace, and to wait in peace till you are shifted again into‘the building of God, the house not made with hands, eternal inthe heavens.’

PLEASING CHRIST

‘We labour that whether present or absent we may beaccepted of Him.’—2 COR. v. 2.

We do not usually care very much for, or very much trust, a man'sown statement of the motives of his life, especially if in thestatement he takes credit for lofty and noble ones. And it would berather a dangerous experiment for the ordinary run of so-calledChristian people to stand up and say what Paul says here, that thesupreme design and aim towards which all their lives are directed isto please Jesus Christ. In his case the tree was known by its fruits.Certainly there never was a life of more noble self-abnegation, ofmore continuous heroism, of loftier aspiration and lowlier servicethan the life of which we see the very pulse in these words.

But Paul is not only professing his own faith, he is speaking inthe name of all his brethren. ‘We,’ ought to includeevery man and woman who calls himself or herself a Christian. It isthis setting of the will of Jesus Christ high up above all othercommandments, and proposing to one's self as the aim that swallows upall other aims, that I may please Him—it is this, and notcreeds, forms, opinions, professions, or even a faith that simplytrusts in Him for salvation, that makes a true Christian. You are aChristian in the precise measure in which Christ's will is uppermostand exclusive in your life, and for all your professions and yourorthodoxy and your worship and your faith, not one hair's-breadthfurther. Here is the signature and the common characteristic of allreal Christians, ‘We labour that whether present or absent wemay be well-pleasing to Him.’

So then in looking together at these words now, I take threepoints, the supreme aim of the Christian life; the concentration ofeffort which that aim demands; and the insignificance to which itreduces all external things.

I. First, then, let me deal with that supreme aim of the Christianlife.

The word which is, correctly enough, rendered‘accepted,’ may more literally, and perhaps with a closercorrespondence to the Apostle's meaning, be translated‘well-pleasing,’ and the aim is this, not merely that wemay be accepted, but that we may bring a smile into His face, andsome joy and complacent delight in us into His heart, when He looksupon our doings. That pleasure of Jesus Christ in them that‘fear Him, and in them that hope in His mercy’ and do Hiswill is a present emotion that fills His heart in looking upon Hisfollowers, and it will be especially declared in the solemn, finaljudgment. We must keep in view both of these periods, if we wouldrightly understand the sweep of the aim which ought to be uppermostin all Christian people. Here and now in our present acts, we shouldso live as to occasion a present sentiment of complacent delight inus, in the heart of the Christ who sees us here and now and always.We should so live as that at that far-off future day when we shall‘all be manifested before the Judgment-seat of Christ,’the Judge may bend from His tribunal, and welcome us into Hispresence with a word of congratulation and an outstretched hand ofloving reception. Set that two-fold aim before you, Christian men andwomen, else you will fail to experience the full stimulus of thisthought.

Now such an aim as this implies a very wonderful conception ofJesus Christ's present relations to us. It is a truth that we mayminister to His joy. It is a truth that just as really as you mothersare glad when you hear from a far-off land that your boy is doingwell, and getting on, so Jesus Christ's heart fills with gladnesswhen He sees you and me walking in the paths in which He would haveus go. We often think about our dear dead that they cannot know of usand our doings here, because the sorrow that would sometimes comefrom the contemplation of our evil, or of our misfortunes, wouldtrouble them in their serene rest. We know not how that may be, butthis at least we do know, that the Man Jesus Christ, who, like thosedear ones, ‘was dead, and is alive for evermore,’ in Hishuman nature has knowledge of all His children's failures, as well assuccesses, and is affected with some shadow of regret, or with somereality of delight, according as they follow or stray from the pathsin which He would have them walk. If it be so with Him it may be sowith them; and though it be not so with them it must be so with Him.So this strange, sweet, tender, and powerful thought is a piece ofplain prose, that Christ is glad when you and I are good.

Does it need any word to emphasise the force of that motive to aChristian heart that loves the Master? Surely this is the great andblessed peculiarity of all the morality of Christianity that it hasall a personal bearing and aspect, and that just as the sum of allour duty is gathered up in the one command, ‘ImitateChrist,’ so the motive for all our duty lies in ‘If youlove Me, keep My commandments,’ and the reward which ought tostimulate more than anything besides is the one thought, not, of whatI shall get because I am good, but of what I shall give Him by myobedience, a joy in the heart that was stabbed through and through bysorrow for my sake. That we may please Him ‘who pleased notHimself,’ is surely the grandest motive on which the pursuit ofholiness, and the imitation of Jesus Christ can ever be made to rest.Oh! how different, and how much more blessed such a motive and aim isthan all the lower reasons for which men are sometimes exhorted andencouraged to be good! What a difference it is when we say, ‘Dothat thing because it is right,’ and when we say, ‘Dothat thing because you will be happier if you do,’ or when wesay, ‘Do it because He would like you to do it.’ The oneis all cold and abstract. To stand before a man and simply say:‘Now go and do your duty,’ is a poor way of setting hisfeet upon a rock and establishing his goings. Duty is not a word thatstirs men's hearts, however it may awe their consciences. It rises upbefore us like some goddess statuesque and serene, with purity,indeed, in her deep and solemn eyes, but with nothing appealing toour affections in her stern lineaments. But when the thought of‘You ought’ melts into ‘For my sake,’ andthrough the dissolving face of the cold marble goddess there shinethe beloved lineaments of Him who ‘wears the Godhead's mostbenignant grace,’ the smile upon His face becomes a motive thattouches all hearts. Transmute obligation into gratitude, and in frontof duty and appeals to self put Christ, and all the harshness anddifficulty and burden and self-sacrifice of obedience becomes easyand a joy.

Then let me remind you that this one supreme aim of pleasing JesusChrist can be carried on through all life in every varying form,great or small. A blessed unity is given to our whole being when thelittle things and the big things, the easy things and the hardthings, deeds which are conspicuous and deeds which no eye sees, areall brought under the influence of the one motive and made co-operantto the one end. Drive that one steadfast aim through your lives likea bar of iron, and it will give the lives strength andconsistency—not rigidity, because they may still be flexible.Nothing will be too small to be consecrated by that motive; nothingtoo great to own its power. You can please Him everywhere and always.The only thing that is inconsistent with pleasing Him is the thingwhich, alas! we do at all times and should do at no time, and that isto sin against Him. If we bear with us this as a conscious motive inevery part of our day's work it will give us a quick discernment asto what is evil, which I believe nothing else will so surely give. Ifyou desire life to be noble, uniform, dignified, great in itsminutest acts and solemn in its very trifles, and if you would havesome continual test and standard by which you can detect allspurious, apparent virtues, and discover lurking and maskedtemptations, carry this one aim clear and high above all else, andmake it the purpose of the whole life, to be well-pleasing untoHim.

II. Now, in the next place, notice the concentrated effort whichthis aim requires.

The word rendered in my text ‘labour’ is a peculiarone, very seldom employed in Scripture. It means, in its most literalsignification, to be fond of honour, or to be actuated by a love ofhonour; and hence it comes, by a very natural transition, to mean tostrive to gain something for the sake of the honour connected withit. That is to say, it not only expresses the notion of diligent,strenuous effort, but it reveals the reason for that diligence andstrenuousness in what I may call (for the word might almost be sorendered) the ambition of being honoured by pleasing Christ.So that the ‘labour’ of my text covers the whole ground,not only of the act but of its motive. The concentration of effortwhich such an aim requires may be enforced by one or two simpleexhortations.

First, let me say that we ought, as Christian people, to cultivatethis noble ambition of pleasing Jesus Christ. Men have all got thelove of approbation deep in them. God put it there for a goodpurpose, not that we might shape our lives so as to get others to patus on the back, and say, ‘Well done!’ but that, inaddition to the other solemn and sovereign motives for following thepaths of righteousness, we might have this highest ambition to impelus on the road. And it is the duty of all Christians to see to itthat they discipline themselves so as, in their own feelings, to puthigh above all the approbation or censure of their fellows theapprobation or censure of Jesus Christ. That will take somecultivation. It is a great deal easier to shape our courses so as toget one another's praise. I remember a quaint saying in a Germanbook. ‘An old schoolmaster tried to please this one and thatone, and it failed. “Well, then,” said he, “I willtry to please Christ.” And that succeeded.’

And let me remind you that a second part of the concentration ofeffort which this aim requires is to strive with the utmost energy inthe accomplishment of it. Paul did not believe that anybody couldplease Jesus Christ without a fight for it. His notion of acceptableservice was service which a man suppressed much to render, andovercame much to bring. And I urge upon you this, dear brethren, thatwith all the mob of faces round about us which shut out Christ'sface, and with all the temptations to follow other aims, and with theweaknesses of our own characters, it never was, is not, nor ever willbe, an easy thing, or a thing to be done without a struggle and adead lift, to live so as to be well-pleasing to Him.

Look at Paul's metaphors with which he sets forth the Christianlife—a warfare, a race, a struggle, a building up of some greattemple structure, and the like—all suggesting at the least theidea of patient, persistent, continuous toil, and most of themsuggesting also the idea of struggle with antagonistic forces anddifficulties, either within or without. So we must set our shouldersto the wheel, put our backs into our work. Do not think that you aregoing to be carried into the condition of conformity with JesusChrist in a dream, or that the road to heaven is a primrose path, tobe trodden in silver slippers. ‘I will not offer unto the Lordthat which doth cost me nothing,’ and if you do, it will beworth exactly what it costs. There must be concentration of effort ifwe are to be well-pleasing to Him.

But then do not forget, on the other hand, that deeper than alleffort, and the very spring and life of it, there must be the openingof our hearts for the entrance of His life and spirit, by thepresence of which only are we well-pleasing to Christ. That whichpleases Him in you and me is our likeness to Him. According to theold Puritan illustration, the refiner sat by the furnace until hecould see in the molten metal his own face mirrored, and then he knewit was pure. So what pleases Christ in us is the reflection ofHimself. And how can we get that likeness to Himself except byreceiving into our hearts the Spirit that was in Christ Jesus, andwill dwell in us, and will produce in us in our measure the sameimage that it formed in Him? ‘Work out your ownsalvation,’ because ‘it is God that worketh inyou.’ Labour, concentrate effort, and above all open the heartto the entrance of that transforming power.

III. Lastly, let me suggest the utter insignificance to which thisaim reduces all externals.

‘We labour,’ says Paul, ‘that whether present orabsent, we may be accepted.’ What differences of condition arecovered by that parenthetical phrase—‘present orabsent!’ He talks about it as if it was a very small matter,does he not? And what is included in it? Whether a man shall be inthe body or out of it; that is to say, whether he be alive or dead.Here is an aim then, so great, so lofty, so all-comprehensive that itreduces the difference between living in the world and being out ofit, to a trifle. And if we stand so high up that these two varietiesof condition dwindle into insignificance and seem to have melted intoone, do you think that there is anything else that will be very big?If the difference between life and death is dwindled and dwarfed,what else do you suppose will remain? Nothing, I should think.

So if we only, by God's help, which will be given to us if we wantit, keep this clear before us as the motive of all our life, then allthe possible alternatives of human condition and circ*mstance willsink into insignificance, and from that lofty summit will ‘showscarce so gross as beetles’ in the air beneath our loftystation.

Whether we be rich or poor, solitary or beset by friends, happy orsad, hopeful or despairing, young or old, wearied or buoyant, learnedor foolish, it matters not. The one aim lifts itself before us, andthey in whose eyes shine the light of that great issue are carelessof the road along which they pass. Do you enlist yourselves in thecompany that fires at the long range, and all those that take aim atthe shorter ones will seem to be very pitifully limiting theirpowers.

Then remember that this same aim, and this same result may beequally pursued and attained whether here or yonder. It is somethingto have a course of life which runs straight along, unbent aside, andnot cut short off, by the change from earth to Heaven. And thisfelicity he only has who, amidst things temporal and insignificant,sees and seeks the eternal smile on the face of his unchangingSaviour. On earth, in death, through eternity, such a life will behom*ogeneous and of a piece; and when all other aims are hull downbelow the horizon, forgotten and out of sight, then still this willbe the purpose, and yonder it will be the accomplished purpose, ofeach, to please the Lord Jesus Christ.

My dear friend, remember that in its full meaning this aim regardsthe future, and points onward to that great judgment-seat where youand I will certainly each of us give account of himself. Do you thinkthat you will please Christ then? Do you think that when that daydawns, a smile of welcome will come into His eyes, and a glow ofgladness at the meeting into yours? Or have you cause to fear thatyou will ‘call on the rocks and the hills to cover you from theface of Him that sitteth on the Throne?’

We are all close by one another; our voices are very audible toeach other. Do you learn, Christian people, that the first,—orat least a prime—condition of all Christian and Christ-pleasinglife, is a wholesome disregard of what anybody says but Himself. Theold Lacedæmonians used to stir themselves to heroism by thethought: ‘What will they say of us in Sparta?’ Thegovernor of some outlying English colony minds very little what thepeople that he is set to rule think about him. He reports to DowningStreet, and it is the opinion of the Home Government that influenceshim. You report to headquarters. Never mind what anybody else thinksof you. Your business is to please Christ, and the less you troubleyourselves about pleasing men the more you will succeed in doing it.Be deaf to the tittle tattle of your fellow soldiers in the ranks. Itis your Commander's smile that will be your highest reward.

'Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;As he pronounces lastly on each deed,Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.'

THE LOVE THAT CONSTRAINS

‘The love of Christ constraineth us.’—2COR. v. 14.

It is a dangerous thing to be unlike other people. It is stillmore dangerous to be better than other people. The world has a littleheap of depreciatory terms which it flings, age after age, at all menwho have a higher standard and nobler aims than their fellows. Afavourite term is ‘mad.’ So, long ago they said,‘The prophet is a fool; the spiritual man is mad,’ and,in His turn, Jesus was said to be ‘beside Himself,’ andFestus shouted from the judgment-seat to Paul that he was mad. Agreat many people had said the same thing about him before, as thecontext shows. For the verse before my text is: ‘Whether we bebeside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is foryour cause.’ Now the former clause can only refer to otherpeople's estimate of the Apostle. No doubt there were many thingsabout him that gave colour to it. He said that a dead Man hadappeared to him and spoken with him. He said that he had been carriedup into the third heaven. He had a very strange creed in the judgmentof the times. He had abandoned a brilliant career for a very poorone. He was obviously utterly indifferent to the ordinary aims ofmen. He had a consuming enthusiasm. And so the world explained himsatisfactorily to itself by the short and easy method of saying,‘Insane.’ And Paul explained himself by the great word ofmy text, ‘The love of Christ constraineth us.’ Whereverthere is a life adequately under the influence of Christ's love theresults will be such as an unsympathising world may call madness, butwhich are the perfection of sober-mindedness. Would there were moresuch madmen! I wish to try to make one or two of them now, by gettingsome of you to take for your motto, ‘The love of Christconstraineth us.’

I. Now the first thing to notice is this constraining love.

I need not spend time in showing that when Paul says here‘The love of Christ,’ he means Christ's love to him, nothis to Christ. That is in accordance with his continual usage of theexpression; and it is in accordance with facts. For it is not my loveto Jesus, but His love to me, that brings the real moulding powerinto my life, and my love to Him is only the condition on which thetrue power acts upon me. To get the fulcrum and the lever which willheave a life up to the heights you have to get out of yourselves.

Now Paul never saw Jesus Christ in this earthly life. Timothy, whois associated with him in this letter, and perhaps is one of the‘us,’ never saw Him either. The Corinthian believers whomhe is addressing had, of course, never seen Him. And yet the Apostlehas not the slightest hesitation in taking that great benediction ofChrist's love and spreading it over them all. That love isindependent of time and of space; it includes humanity, and isco-extensive with it. Unturned away by unworthiness, unrepelled bynon-responsiveness, undisgusted by any sin, unwearied by any, howevernumerous, foiling of its attempts, the love of Christ, like the greatheavens that bend above us, wraps us all in its sweetness, andshowers upon us all its light and its dew.

And yet, brethren, I would have you remember that whilst we thustry to paint, in poor, poor words, the universality of that love, wehave to remember that it does not partake of the weakness thatinfects all human affections, which are only strong when they arenarrow, and as the river expands it becomes shallow, and loses theforce in its flow which it had when it was gathered between straiterbanks, so as that a universal charity is almost akin to a universalindifference. But this love that grasps us all, this river that‘proceedeth from the Throne of God and of the Lamb,’flows in its widest reaches as deep and as impetuous in its career asif it were held within the narrowest of gorges. For Christ'suniversal love is universal only because it is individualising andparticular. We love our nation by generalising and losing sight ofthe individuals. Christ loves the world because He loves every manand woman in it, and His grace enwraps all because His grace hoversover each.

'The sun whose beams most glorious are Despiseth no beholder,'

but the rays come straight to each eyeball. Besure of this: that He who, when the multitude thronged Him andpressed Him, felt the tremulous, timid, scarcely perceptible touch ofone woman's wasted finger on the hem of His garment, holds each of usin the grasp of His love, which is universal, because it applies toeach. You and I have each the whole radiance of it pouring down onour heads, and none intercepts the beams from any other. So,brethren, let us each feel not only the love that grasps the world,but the love that empties itself on me.

But there is one more remark that I wish to make in reference tothis constraining love of Jesus Christ, and that is, that in order tosee and feel it we must take the point of view that this Apostletakes in my text. For hearken how he goes on. ‘The love ofChrist constraineth us, because we thus judge, that if one died forall, then all died, and that He died for all,’ etc. That is tosay, the death of Christ for all, which is equivalent to the death ofChrist for each, is the great solvent by which the love of God meltsmen's hearts, and is the great proof that Jesus Christ loves me, andthee, and all of us. If you strike out that conception you havestruck out from your Christianity the vindication of the belief thatChrist loves the world. What possible meaning is there in theexpression, ‘He died for all?’ How can the fact of Hisdeath on a ‘green hill’ outside the gates of a littlecity in Syria have world-wide issues, unless in that death He bore,and bore away, the sins of the whole world? I know that there havebeen many—and there are many to-day—who not acceptingwhat seems to me to be the very vital heart ofChristianity—viz. the death of Christ for the world's sin, doyet cherish—as I think illogically—yet do cherish aregard for Him, which puts some of us who call ourselves‘orthodox,’ and are tepid, to the blush. Thank God! menare often better than their creeds, as well as worse than them. Butthat fact does not affect what I am saying now, and what I beg you totake for what you find it to be worth, that unless we believe thatJesus Christ died for all, I do not know what claim He has on thelove of the world. We shall admire Him, we shall bow before Him, asthe very realised ideal of humanity, though how this one Man hasmanaged to escape the taint of the all-pervading evil remains, uponthat hypothesis, very obscure. But love Him? No! Why should I? But ifI feel that His death had world-wide issues, and that He went downinto the darkness in order that He might bring the world into thelight, then—and I am sure, on the wide scale and in thelong-run only then—will men turn to Him and say, ‘Thouhast died for me, help me to live for Thee.’ Brethren, Ibeseech you, take care of emptying the death of Christ of its deepestmeaning, lest you should thereby rob His character of its chiefestcharm, and His name of its mightiest soul-melting power. The lovethat constraineth is the love that died, and died for all, because itdied for each.

II. Now let me ask you to consider the echo of this constraininglove.

I said a moment or two ago that Christ's love to us is theconstraining power, and that ours to Him is but the condition onwhich that power works. But between the two there comes somethingwhich brings that constraining love to bear upon our hearts. And sonotice what my text goes on to adduce as needful for Christ's love tohave its effect—namely, ‘because we thus judge,’etc. Then my estimate, my apprehension of the love of Christ mustcome in between its manifestation and its power to grip, to restrain,to impel me. If I may use such a figure, He stands, as it were, buglein hand, and blows the sweet strains that are meant to set the echoesflying. But the rock must receive the impact of the vibrations ere itcan throw back the thinned echo of the music. Love must be believedand known ere it can be responded to.

Now the only answer and echo that hearts desire is the love of thebeloved heart. We all know that in our earthly life. Love is as mucha hunger to be loved as the outgoing of my own affection. The twothings are inseparable, and there is nothing that repays love butlove. Jesus Christ wishes each of us to love Him. If it is true thatHe loves me, then, intertwisted with the outgoing of His hearttowards me is the yearning that my heart may go out towards Him. Dearbrethren, this is no pulpit rhetoric, it is a plain, simple fact,inseparable from the belief in Christ's love—that He wishes youand every soul of man to love Him, and that, whatever else you bring,lip reverence, orthodox belief, apparent surrender, in the assay shopof His great mint all these are rejected, and the only metal thatpasses the fire is the pure gold of an answering love. Brethren! isthat what you bring to Jesus Christ?

Love seeks for love, and our love can only be an echo of His. Hetakes the beginning in everything. If I am to love Him back again, Imust have faith in His love to me. And if that be so, then the trueway by which you, imperfect Christian people, can deepen andstrengthen your love to Jesus Christ is not so much by efforts towork up a certain warmth of sentiment and glow of affection, as bygazing, with believing eyes of the heart, upon that which kindlesyour love to Him. If you want ice to melt, put it out into thesunshine, If you want the mirror to gleam, do not spend all your timein polishing it. Carry it where it can catch the ray, and it willflash it back in glory. ‘We love Him because He first lovedus.’ Our love is an echo; be sure that you listen for theparent note, and link yourselves by faith with that great love whichhas come down from Heaven for us all.

But how can I speak about echoes and responses when I know thatthere are scores of men and women whom a preacher's words reach whowould be ashamed of themselves, and rightly, if they exhibited thesame callousness of heart and selfishness of ingratitude to somehuman, partial benefactor as they are not ashamed to have exhibitedall their lives to Jesus Christ. Echo? Yes! your heartstrings are setvibrating fast enough whenever, in the adjoining apartment, aninstrument is touched which is tuned to the same key as your heart.Pleasures, earthly aims, worldly gifts, the sweetnesses of humanlife, all these things set them thrilling, and you can hear themusic, but your hearts are not tuned to answer to the note that isstruck in ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me.’ Thebugle is blown, and there is silence, and no echo, faint and far,comes whispering back. Brethren, we use no one else, in whose love wehave any belief, a thousandth part so ill as we use Jesus Christ.

III. Now, lastly, let me say a word about the constraininginfluence of this echoed love.

Its first effect, if it has any real power in our hearts andlives, will be to change their centre, to decentralise. Look what theApostle goes on to say: ‘We thus judge that He ... died forall, that they which live should not live henceforth untothemselves.’ That is the great transformation. Secure that, andall nobleness will follow, and ‘whatsoever things are lovelyand of good report’ will come, like doves to their windows,flocking into the soul that has ceased to find its centre in its poorrebellious self. All love derives its power to elevate, refine,beautify, ennoble, conquer, from the fact that, in lower degree, alllove makes the beloved the centre, and not the self. Hence themother's self-sacrifice, hence the sweet reciprocity of wedded life,hence everything in humanity that is noble and good. Love is theantagonist of selfishness, and the highest type of love should be,and in the measure in which we are under the influence of Christ'slove will be, the self-surrendering life of a Christian man. I knowthat in saying so I am condemning myself and my brethren. All thesame, it is true. The one power that rescues a man from the tyrannyof living for self, which is the mother of all sin and ignobleness,is when a man can say ‘Christ is my aim,’ ‘Christis my object.’ ‘The life that I live in the flesh I liveby the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself forme.’ There is no secret of self-annihilation, which isself-transfiguration, and, I was going to say, deification, like thatof loving Christ with all my heart because He has loved me so.

Again, let me remind you that, on its lower reaches and levels, wefind that all true affection has in it a strange power ofassimilating its objects to one another. Just as a man and woman whohave lived together for half a century in wedded life come to havethe same notions, the same prejudices, the same tastes, and sometimesyou can see their very faces being moulded into likeness, so, if Ilove Jesus Christ, I shall by degrees grow liker and liker to Him,and be ‘changed into the same image, from glory toglory.’

Again, the love constrains, and not only constrains but impels,because it becomes a joy to divine and to do the will of the belovedChrist. ‘My yoke is easy.’ Is it? It is very hard to be aChristian. His requirements are a great deal sterner than others. Hisyoke is easy, not because it is a lighter yoke, but because it ispadded with love. And that makes all service a sacrament, and thesurrender of my own will, which is the essence of obedience, ajoy.

So, dear friends, we come here in sight of the unique and blessedcharacteristic of all Christian morality, and of all its practicalexhortations, and the Gospel stands alone as the mightiest mouldingpower in the world, just because its word is ‘love, and do asthou wilt.’ For in the measure of thy love will thy willcoincide with the will of Christ. There is nothing else that hasanything like that power. We do not want to be told what is right. Weknow it a great deal better than we practise it. A revelation fromheaven that simply told me my duty would be surplusage. ‘Ifthere had been a law that could have given life, righteousness hadbeen by the law.’ We want a life, not a law, and the love ofChrist brings the life to us.

And so, dear friends, that life, restrained and impelled by thelove to which it is being assimilated, is a life of liberty and alife of blessedness. In the measure in which the love of Christconstrains any man, it makes for him difficulties easy, theimpossible possible, the crooked things straight, and the roughplaces plain. The duty becomes a delight, and self ceases to disturb.If the love of God is shed abroad in a heart, and in the measure inwhich it is, that heart will be at rest, and a great peace will broodover it. Then the will bows in glad submission, and all the powersarise to joyous service. We are lords of the world and ourselves whenwe are Christ's servants for love's sake; and earth and its good arenever so good as when the power of His echoed love rules our lives.Do you know and believe that Christ loves you? Do you know andbelieve that you had a place in His heart when He hung on the Crossfor the salvation of the world? Have you answered that love withyours, kindled by your faith in, and experience of, His? Is His lovethe overmastering impulse which urges you to all good, the mightyconstraint that keeps you back from all evil, the magnet that draws,the anchor that steadies, the fortress that defends, the light thatillumines, the treasure that enriches? Is it the law that commands,and the power that enables? Then you are blessed, though people willperhaps say that you are mad, whilst here; and you will be blessedfor ever and ever.

THE ENTREATIES OF GOD

‘Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as thoughGod did beseech ... by us: we pray ... in Christ's stead, be yereconciled to God.’—2 COR. v. 20.

These are wonderful and bold words, not so much because of whatthey claim for the servants as because of what they reveal of theLord. That thought, ‘as though God did beseech,’ seems tome to be the one deserving of our attention now, far rather than anyinferences which may be drawn from the words as to the relation ofpreachers of the Gospel to man and to God. I wish, therefore, to tryto set forth the wonderfulness of this mystery of a beseeching God,and to put by the side of it the other wonder and mystery of menrefusing the divine beseechings.

Before doing so, however, I remark that the supplement whichstands in our Authorised Version in this text is a misleading andunfortunate one. ‘As though God did beseech you’and ‘we pray you’ unduly narrow the scope of theApostolic message, and confuse the whole course of the Apostolicreasoning here. For he has been speaking of a world which isreconciled to God, and he finds a consequence of that reconciliationof the world in the fact that he and his fellow-preachers areentrusted with the word of reconciliation. The scope of theirmessage, then, can be no narrower than the scope of thereconciliation; and inasmuch as that is world-wide the beseechingmust be co-extensive therewith, and must cover the whole ground ofhumanity. It is a universal message that is set forth here. TheCorinthians, to whom Paul was speaking, are, by his hypothesis,already reconciled to God, and the message which he has in trust forthem is given in the subsequent words: ‘We then, as workerstogether with God, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace ofGod in vain.’ But the message, the pleading of the divineheart, ‘be ye reconciled to God,’ is a pleading thatreaches over the whole range of a reconciled world. I take then, justthese two thoughts, God beseeching man, and man refusing God.

I. God beseeching man.

Now notice how, in my text, there alternates, as if substantiallythe same idea, the thoughts that Christ and that God pray men to bereconciled. ‘We are ambassadors on Christ's behalf, asthough God did beseech you by us, we pray on Christ'sbehalf.’ So you see, first, Christ the Pleader, then Godbeseeching, then Christ again entreating and praying. Could any manhave so spoken, passing instinctively from the one thought to theother, unless he had believed that whatsoever things the Fatherdoeth, these also doeth the Son likewise; and that Jesus Christ isthe Representative of the whole Deity for mankind, so as that when Hepleads God pleads, and God pleads through Him. I do not dwell uponthis, but I simply wish to mark it in passing as one of theinnumerable strong and irrefragable testimonies to the familiarityand firmness with which that thought of the divinity of Jesus Christ,and the full revelation of the Father by Him, was grasped by theApostle, and was believed by the people to whom he spoke. God pleads,therefore Christ pleads, Christ pleads, therefore God pleads; andthese Two are One in their beseechings, and the voice of the Fatherechoes to us in the tenderness of the Son.

So, then, let us think of that pleading. To sue for love, to begthat an enemy will put away his enmity is the part of the inferiorrather than of the superior; is the part of the offender rather thanof the offended; is the part of the vanquished rather than of thevictor; is the part surely not of the king but of the rebel. And yethere, in the sublime transcending of all human precedent and patternwhich characterises the divine dealing, we have the place of thesuppliant and of the supplicated inverted, and Love upon the Thronebends down to ask of the rebel that lies powerless and sullen at Hisfeet, and yet is not conquered until his heart be won, though hislimbs be manacled, that he would put away all the bitterness out ofhis heart, and come back to the love and the grace which are ready topour over him. ‘He that might the vengeance best have taken,finds out the remedy.’ He against whom we have transgressedprays us to be reconciled; and the Infinite Love lowers Himself inthat lowering which is, in another aspect, the climax of Hisexaltation, to pray the rebels to accept His amnesty.

Oh, dear brethren! this is no mere piece of rhetoric. What factsin the divine heart does it represent? What facts in the divineconduct does it represent? It represents these facts in the divineheart, that there is in it an infinite longing for the creature'slove, an infinite desire for unity between Him and us.

There are wonderful significance and beauty in the language of mytext which are lost in the Authorised Version; but are preserved inthe Revised. ‘We are ambassadors’ not only‘for Christ,’ but ‘on Christ'sbehalf.’ And the same proposition is repeated in thesubsequent clause. ‘We pray you,’ not merely ‘inChrist's stead,’ though that is much, but ‘on Hisaccount,’ which is more—as if it lay very near Hisheart that we should put away our enmity; and as if in sometranscendent and wonderful manner the all-perfect, self-sufficing Godwas made glad, and the Master, who is His image for us, ‘saw ofthe travail of His soul, and,’ in regard to one man, ‘wassatisfied,’ when the man lets the warmth of God's love inChrist thaw away the coldness out of his heart, and kindle there ananswering flame. An old divine says, ‘We cannot do God agreater pleasure or more oblige His very heart, than to trust in Himas a God of love.’ He is ready to stoop to any humiliation toeffect that purpose. So intense is the divine desire to win the worldto His love, that He will stoop to sue for it rather than lose it.Such is at least part of the fact in the divine heart, which isshadowed forth for us by that wonderful thought of the beseechingGod.

And what facts in the divine conduct does this great wordrepresent? A God that beseeches. Well, think of the tears ofimploring love which fell from Christ's eyes as He looked across thevalley from Olivet, and saw the Temple glittering in the earlysunshine. Think of ‘O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! ... how often wouldI have gathered thy children together ... and ye would not.’And are we not to see in the Christ who wept in the earnestness ofHis desire, and in the pain of its disappointment, the veryrevelation of the Father's heart and the very action of the Father'sarm? ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden,and I will give you rest.’ That is Christ beseeching and Godbeseeching in Him. Need I quote other words, gentle, winning, loving?Do we not feel, when looking upon Christ, as if the secret of Hiswhole life was the stretching out imploring and welcoming hands tomen, and praying them to grasp His hands, and be saved? But, oh,brethren! the fact that towers above all others, which explains thewhole procedure of divinity, and is the keystone of the whole arch ofrevelation; the fact which reveals in one triple beam of light, God,man, and sin in the clearest illumination, is the Cross of JesusChrist. And if that be not the very sublime of entreaty; and if anyvoice can be conceived, human or divine, that shall reach men'shearts with a more piercing note of pathetic invitation than soundsfrom that Cross, I know not where it is. Christ that dies, in Hisdying breath calls to us, and ‘the blood of sprinkling speakethbetter things than that of Abel’; inasmuch as its voice is,‘Come unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of theearth.’

Not only in the divine facts of the life and death of JesusChrist, but in all the appeals of that great revelation which liesbefore us in Scripture; and may I say, in the poor, broken utterancesof men whose harsh, thin voices try to set themselves, in somemeasure, to the sweetness and the fulness of His beseechingtones—does God call upon you to draw close to Him, and put awayyour enmity. And not only by His Word written or ministered fromhuman lips, but also by the patient providences of His love He callsand prays you to come. A mother will sometimes, in foolish fondness,coax her sullen child by injudicious kindness, or, in wise patience,will seek to draw the little heart away from the faults that shedesires not to notice, by redoubled ingenuity of tenderness and ofcare. And so God does with us. When you and I, who deserve—oh!so different treatment—get, as we do get, daily care andprovidential blessings from Him, is not that His saying to us,‘I beseech you to cherish no alienation, enmity, indifference,but to come back and live in the love’? When He draws near tous in these outward gifts of His mercy, is He not doing Himself whatHe has bid us to do; and what He never could have bid us to do, norour hearts have recognised to be the highest strain of human virtueto do, unless He Himself were doing it first? ‘If thine enemyhunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him drink; for in so doing thoushalt heap coals of fire upon his head.’

Not only by the great demonstration of His stooping and infinitedesire for our love which lies in the life and death of Jesus Christ,nor only by His outward work, nor by His providence, but by many aninward touch on our spirits, by many a prick of conscience, by manya strange longing that has swept across our souls, sudden as someperfumed air in the scentless atmosphere; by many an inward voice,coming we know not whence, that has spoken to us of Him, of His love,of our duty; by many a drawing which has brought us nearer to theCross of Jesus Christ, only, alas! in some cases that we mightrecoil further from it,—has He been beseeching, beseeching usall.

Brethren! God pleads with you. He pleads with you because there isnothing in His heart to any of you but love, and a desire to blessyou; He pleads with you because, unless you will let Him, He cannotlavish upon you His richest gifts and His highest blessings. Hepleads with you, bowing to the level, and beneath the level, of youralienation and reluctance. And the sum and substance of all Hisdealings with every soul is, ‘My son! give Me thy heart.’‘Be ye reconciled to God.’

II. And now turn, very briefly, to the next suggestion arisingfrom this text, the terrible obverse, so to speak, of the coin: Manrefusing a beseeching God.

That is the great paradox and mystery. Nobody has ever fathomedthat yet, and nobody will. How it comes, how it is possible, there isno need for us to inquire. It is an awful and a solemn power thatevery poor little speck of humanity has, to lift itself up in God'sface, and say, in answer to all His pleadings, ‘I willnot!’ as if the dwellers in some little island, a merepin-point of black, barren rock, jutting up at sea, were to declarewar against a kingdom that stretched through twenty degrees oflongitude on the mainland. So we, on our little bit of island, ourpin-point of rock in the great waste ocean, we can separate ourselvesfrom the great Continent; or, rather, God has, in a fashion, made usseparate in order that we may either unite ourselves with Him, by ourwilling yielding, or wrench ourselves away from Him by our antagonismand rebellion. God beseeches because God has so settled the relationsbetween Him and us, that that is what He has to do in order to getmen to love Him. He cannot force them. He cannot prise open a man'sheart with a crowbar, as it were, and force Himself inside. The dooropens from within. ‘Behold! I stand at the door andknock.’ There is an ‘if.’ ‘If any man open Iwill come in.’ Hence the beseeching, hence the wail of wisdomthat cries aloud and no man regards it; of love that stands at theentering in of the city, and pleads in vain, and says, ‘I havecalled, and ye have refused.... How often would I have gathered ...and ye would not.’ Oh, brethren! it is an awful responsibility,a mysterious prerogative, which each one of us, whether consciouslyor no, has to exercise, to accept or to refuse the pleadings of anentreating Christ.

And let me remind you that the act of refusal is a very simpleone. Not to accept is to reject; not to yield is to rebel. You haveonly to do nothing, to do it all. There are dozens of people in ourchurches and chapels listening with self-satisfied unconcern, whohave all their lives been refusing a beseeching God. And they do notknow that they ever did it! They say, ‘Oh! I will be aChristian some time or other.’ They cherish vague ideas that,somehow or other, they are so already. They have done nothing at all,they have simply been absolutely indifferent and passive. Some of youhave heard sermons like this so often that they produce no effect.‘It is the right kind of thing to say. It is the thing we haveheard a hundred times.’ Perhaps you wonder why I should be somuch in earnest about the matter, and then you go outside, anddiscuss me or the weather, and forget all about the sermon.

And thus, once more, you reject Christ. It is done without knowingit; done simply by doing nothing. My brother! do not stop your earsany more against that tender, imploring love.

Then let me remind you that this refusing the beseeching of God isthe climax of all folly. For consider what it is,—a manrefusing his highest good and choosing his certain ruin. I am afraidthat people have been arguing and fighting so much of late years overdisputable points in reference to the doctrine of future retributionthat the indisputable fact of such retribution has lost much of itssolemn power.

I pray you, brethren, to ask yourselves one question: Is thereanything, in the present or in the future condition of a man that isnot reconciled to God, which explains God's beseeching urgency? Whythis energy and intensity of divine desire? Why this which, if itwere human only, would be called passionate entreaty? Why wasit needful for Jesus Christ to die? Why was it worth His while tobear the punishment of man's sin? Why should God and Christ, throughall the ages, plead with unintermittent voice? There must be someexplanation of it all, and here is the explanation, ‘They thathate Me love death.’ ‘Be ye reconciled toGod,’ for enmity is ruin and destruction.

And finally, dear friends, this turning away from Him thatspeaketh from Heaven, of which some of you have all your lives beenguilty, is not only supreme folly, but it is the climax of all guilt.For there can be nothing worse, darker, arguing a nature more averseor indifferent to the highest good, than that God should plead, and Ishould steel my heart and deafen mine ear against His voice. Thecrown of a man's sin, because it is the disclosure of the secrets ofhis deepest heart as loving darkness rather than light, is turningaway from the divine voice that woos us to love and to God.

Oh! there are some of you that have heard that Voice too often tobe much touched by it. There are some of you too busy to attend toit, who hear it not because of the clatter of the streets and thewhir of the spindles. There are some of you that are seeking to drownit in the shouts of mirth and revelry. There are some of you to whomit comes muffled in the mists of doubt; but I beseech you all, lookat the Cross, look at the Cross! and hear Him that hangs therepleading with you.

Before the battle there comes out the captain of the twentythousand to the King with the ten thousand, who in His loftiness isnot afraid to stoop to sue for peace from the weaker power. Mybrother! the moment is precious; the white flag may never be wavedbefore your eyes again. Do not; do not refuse! or the next instantthe clarion of the assault may sound, and where will you be then?

It is vain for thee to rush against the thick bosses of theAlmighty buckler. ‘We beseech, in Christ's behalf, be yereconciled with God.’