104 COMMON SINS NEED COMMON CONFESSION.

[SERM.

compromises failed, persecutions failed; the thing was from the Lord. And the lesson was repeated again in those separating bodies. Politic men rose up, who sought to make the division permanent and hopeless. The separate priest, and altar, and sacrifice must be introduced, that there might be no recollection of the bond which united them to those from whom they were severed. Hence the one sacrifice for mankind became lost in the notion of some special salvation for themselves. New forms of intellectual, if not sensual, idolatry appeared; the victims of them groaned under the narrowness and bondage, which they had been taught to call liberty. Are not many of them even now ready to turn for refuge from their sectarian faith and freedom, sometimes to the vaguest forms of unbelief, sometimes to the most perfect and universal despotism over conscience and will?

Oh, brethren! how intolerable would be these facts and recollections which show every party in Church and State to have been the cause of shameful scandals, which forbid us to cast stones at others because we are in the same sin, if we might not recur again and again to the words which I have quoted so often. But if the thing is of the Lord, there must be an end of all those strifes by which He has ordained that our idolatries against Him and cruelties to our brethren should punish themselves. There must be a day when all things in heaven and earth, which consist only by Christ, shall be gathered manifestly together in Him; when it shall be known and confessed that there is one king, one priest, one sacrifice;-that we have been at war with each other, because we have not done homage to that one king, drawn nigh to God through that one priest, omitted to present that one perfect sacrifice. And those

VI.]

HOPES OF A BETTER DAY.

105

who are willing before God's altar to own that their selfseeking and self-will have been rending asunder their families, the nation, the Church, the world,-may hope that God's Spirit will work in them henceforth to do all such acts as shall not retard, but hasten forward the blessed consummation for which they look. They may ask to be taught the mystery of daily self-sacrifice, how to give up their own tastes, opinions, wishes. They may ask that they may never be tempted to give up one atom of God's truth, or to dally for one moment with the falsehoods of themselves or of their brethren; because truth is the one ground of universal peace and fellowship, because falsehood and division are ever increasing and reproducing each other.

( 106 )

SERMON VII.

THE CALF WORSHIP DENOUNCED.

(Lincoln's Inn. Conversion of St. Paul.-Jan. 25, 1852.)

1 KINGS, XVI. 7.

Also by the hand of the prophet Jehu the son of Hanani came the word of the Lord against Baasha, and against his house, even for all the evil that he did in the sight of the Lord, in provoking him to anger with the work of his hands, in being like the house of Jeroboam; and because he killed him.

BAASHA occupies no very remarkable place among the kings of Israel, nor Jehu the son of Hanani among the prophets. But the narrative in the text is a compendious statement of the relations in which the kings and prophets of the ten tribes stood to each other, after the division of the kingdom. I wish to consider this subject upon the present occasion, taking it up from the time of which I spoke in my last sermon, and continuing it to the reigns which received a new character from the prophecies of Elijah and Elisha.

A man of God, who, we are told, came out of Judah by the word of the Lord unto Bethel, marks the transition point between the older history and the new. The chapter which contains the tragedy of his life and death, has been

VII.]

THE OLD PROPHET IN BETHEL.

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selected for one of our Sunday lessons, with much fearlessness, I think, as well as wisdom. For there is none which a timid, distrustful reader of the Bible would be more ready to pass over, and few which throw more real light upon its moral and method. This man of God came to Bethel while Jeroboam was standing by the altar to burn incense. "And he cried against the altar in the word of the Lord, and said, 'Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high-places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee.' And he gave a sign the same day saying, 'This is the sign which the Lord hath spoken. Behold the altar shall be rent, and the ashes that are upon it shall be poured out.' And it came to pass when king Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, that he put forth his hand from the altar, saying, 'Lay hold on him.' And his hand which he put forth against him dried up, so that he could not pull it in again to him. The altar also was rent, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of the Lord. And the king answered and said unto the man of God, 'Intreat now the face of the Lord thy God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored me again.' And the man of God besought the Lord, and the king's hand was restored him again, and became as it was before."-1 Kings xiii. 1—7.

I would at once dismiss the question, whether the name Josiah which occurs in this place, was actually pronounced by the prophet, or was introduced afterwards when the books were put together, as marking the person who accomplished the threat. That point seems to me of very little consequence indeed. I do not think the substance of

108

JEROBOAM SUPPOSED TO BE A REFORMER. [SERM.

the prophecy would derive the least weight from the presence of the name, or lose the least from the omission of it. The cases of such definite foretelling are rare in the Scriptures. I only recollect two; this and the use of the name Cyrus in Isaiah, of which I may have to speak hereafter. It is extremely rash and dangerous to deduce the nature or characteristics of prophecy from doubtful and excepted We may be sure that when we are tempted to do so, we shall overlook the points on which the Scripture most desires to fix our attention.

cases.

The great business of the prophet is evidently to denounce the altar and the sacrifices in Bethel. It has been set up as a rival altar to that in the Temple of Jerusalem; it is the beginning of a new system of sacrifices; new priests will be required to perform them. "Of course," the rationalist teacher exclaims, "these were the offences of Jeroboam. He was an intruder upon the special privileges of the Jerusalem hierarchy; he had courage to introduce priests taken from the lowest of the people; he broke through the formalities of the Levitical law. Such a man in our days would be called a reformer, or asserter of national and individual independence. Therefore he is denounced by the ecclesiastics who have compiled the Jewish records." Yes, if the establishment of visible, sensual worship be a great step in the progress of the human intellect, if the introduction of a set of priests continually at work to make that worship more visible, more sensual, more gross, be a mode of fulfilling the aspirations of those who desire moral and spiritual liberty,-if the breaking through the fetters of a law which restrained all sacerdotal inventions whatsoever, and bore witness continually that sacrifices were not offered to appease a tyrant, but to re