Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

of virtue in the world. That expedient is the Spirit of God working in the heart of believers quickening those who were dead in trespasses and sins, and bringing into action the same mighty power which raised Jesus from the grave, for raising us who believe in Jesus to newness of life and of obedience. This is the process of sanctification laid before us in the New Testament. A wonderful process it undoubtedly is; but are we who walk in a world of mystery, who have had only a few little years to look about us, and are bewildered at every step amid the variety of his works and of his counsels, are we to reject a process because it is wonderful? Must no step, no operation of the mighty God be admitted, till it is brought under the dominion of our faculties?—and shall we who strut our little hour in the humblest of his mansions, prescribe a law to him whose arm is abroad upon all worlds, and whose eye can take in, at a single glance, the unmeasurable fields of creation and providence? Be it as wonderful as it may-enough for us that it is made sure by the distinct and authentic testimony of heaven; and if, from the mouth of Jesus, who is heaven's messenger, we are told, that "unless a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom," it is our part submissively to acquiesce, and humbly to pray for it. Whatever repugnance others may feel to this part of the revealed counsels of God, those who look to a sublime standard of moral excellence, and sigh for the establishment of its authority in the world, ought to rejoice in it. It is the only remaining expedient for giving effect and reality to their own declamations, and they are fairly shut up unto it. Long have they tried to repair the disorders of a ruined world. Many an expedient has been fallen upon. Temples have been reared to science and to virtue; and from the lofty academic chair, the wisdom of this world has lifted its voice amid a crowd of listening admirers. For thousands of years, the unaided powers and principles of humanity, have done their uttermost; and tell us, ye advocates for the dignity of the species, the amount of their operation. If you refuse to answer, we shall answer for you; and do not hesitate to say, that mighty in promise, and wretched in accomplishment, you have positively done nothing-that all the wisdom of the schools, and all its vapouring demonstrations, have not had the least perceptible weight, when brought to bear upon the mass of human character, and human performance; that the corruption of the inner man has not yielded at all to your reasoning, and remains as unsubdued and as obstinate a principle as ever; that the power of depravity in the soul of man is beyond you; and that setting

aside the real operation of Christianity in the hearts of individuals and the surface dressing which the hand of legislation has thrown over the face of society, the human soul, if seen in its nakedness, would still be seen in all its original deformity-as strong in selfishness, as lawless in propensity, as devoted to sense and to time, as estranged from God, as unmindful of the obedience, and as indifferent to the reward and the inheritance of his children.

The machine has gone into disorder; and there is not a single power within the compass of the machinery itself that is able to repair it. You must do as you do in other cases; you must have recourse to some external application. The inefficacy of every tried expedient shuts you up unto the only remaining one. Every human principle has been brought to bear upon it in vain, and we are shut up unto the necessity of some other principle that is beyond humanity, and above it. The Spirit of God is that mighty principle. That Spirit which moved on the face of the waters, and made light, and peace, and beauty to emerge out of the wild war of nature and her elements, is the revealed agent of heaven, for repairing the disorders of sin, and restoring the moral creation of God to health and to loveliness. It will create us anew unto good works. It will make us again after that image in which we were originally formed. It will sanctify us by the faith that is in Jesus. And by that mighty power whereby it is able to subdue all things unto itself, it will obtain the victory over that spirit which now worketh in the children of disobedience. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the first fruit of its operation; and to him who believes it is the satisfying pledge of its future triumphs. That body, which, left to itself, would have mouldered into fragments, is now in all the bloom of immortality, at the right hand of the everlasting throne. We have tried the operation of a thousand principles in vain. Let us repair to this, so great in promise, and so mighty in performance. It has already achieved its wonders. It has wrought those miracles of faith and fortitude which, in the first ages of Christianity, threw a gleam of triumph over the horrors of martyrdom. It has given us displays of the great and the noble which are without example in history; and from the first moment of its operation in the world, it has been working in those unseen retirements of the cottage and the family, where the eye of the historian never penetrates. The admirers of virtue are fairly shut up unto the faith; for faith is the only avenue that leads to it. "To your faith add virtue," says the Apostle; and that you may be able to make the addition, the promise of the Spirit is given to them that believe.

We should now pass on to another school

the school of fine feeling and poetical sentiment. It differs from the former in thisthat while the one, in its dissertations on virtue, carries you up to the principles of duty, the other paints and admires it as a tasteful exhibition of what is fair and lovely in human character. The one makes virtue its idol because of its rectitude; the other makes virtue its idol because of its beauty; and the process of reasoning by which they are shut up unto the faith, is the same in both. Look at the actual state of the world, and you find that both the rectitude and the beauty are a-wanting. If you admire the one, and love the other, you are shut up unto the only expedient that is able to restore them-and that expedient is sanctioned by the truth of heaven, and has all the power of omnipotence employed in giving effect to the operation-the Spirit of God subduing all things unto itself-putting the law in our hearts, and writing it in our mindsand by bringing the soul of man under the influence of "whatsoever things are pure, or honest, or lovely, or of good report," creating a finer spectacle, and rearing a fairer and more unfading flower, than ever grew in the gardens of poetry.

The processes are so entirely similar, that we would not have made it the distinct object of your attention, had it not been for the sake of an argument in behalf of the faith, which may be addressed with great advantage to the literary and cultivated orders of society. There are few people of literary cultivation, who have not read a novel. In this fictitious composition, there are often one or two perfect characters that figure in the history, and delight the imagination of the reader; and you are at last landed in some fairy scene of happiness and virtue, which it is quite charming to contemplate, and which you would like to aspire after; perhaps some interesting family in the bosom of which love, and innocence, and tranquility, have fixed themselves-where the dark and angry passions never enter-where suspicion is unknown, and every eye meets another in the full glance of cordiality and affection-where charity reigns triumphant, and smiles benefi

cence and joy upon the humble cottages which surround it. Now this is very soothing, and very delightful. It makes you glad to think of it. The fancy swells with rapture, and the moral principle of our nature lends its full approbation to a scene so virtuous and so exemplary. So much for the dream of fancy. Let us compare it with the waking images of truth. Walk from Dan to Beersheba, and tell us, if without and beyond the operation of Gospel motives, and Gospel principles, the reality of life ever furnished you with a picture that is at all like the elegance and perfection of this fictitious history. Go to the finest specimen of such a family. Take your secret stand, and observe them in their more retired and invisible moments. It is not enough to pay them a ceremonious visit, and observe them in the put on manners and holiday dress of general company. Look at them when all this disguise and finery are thrown aside. Yes, we have no doubt, that you will perceive some love, some tenderness, some virtue; but the rough and untutored honesty of truth compels us to say, that along with all this, there are at times mingled the bitterness of invective, the growlings of discontent, the harpings of peevishness and animosity, and all that train of angry, suspicious, and discordant feelings, which imbitter the heart of man, and make the reality of human life a very sober affair indeed, when compared with the high colouring of romance, and the sentimental extravagance of poetry.

Now, what do we make of all this? We infer, that however much we may love perfection, and aspire after it, yet there is some want, some disease in the constitution of man, which prevents his attainment of itthat there is a feebleness of principle about him-that the energy of his practice does not correspond to the fair promises of his fancy; and however much he may delight in an ideal scene of virtue and moral excellence, there is some lurking malignity in his constitution, which, without the operation of that mighty power revealed to us in the Gospel, makes it vain to wish, and hopeless to aspire after it.

SERMON X.

On the Christian Sabbath.

"And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”—Mark ii. 27.

THE first recommendation of the Sabbath | around and without the line of demarcation. is the place which it occupies in the deca- We see no attempt whatever to violate the logue. There was much of Jewish obser- sanctity of the ground which this line envancy swept away with the ruin of the na- | closes. We no where see any express or tional institutions. There was much of it recorded incursion upon any one of the obdesigned for a temporary purpose, and servances of the decalogue. We perceive which fell into disuse among the worship-an Apostle in the New Testament making pers of God after that purpose was accomplished. A Christian of the present day, looks upon many of the most solemn services of Judaism in no other light than as fragments of a perishable ritual-nor does he ever think, that upon himself they have any weight of personal obligation. But this does not hold true of all the duties and all the services of Judaism. There is a broad line of distinction between that part of it which is now broken up, and that part of it which still retains all the authority of a perpetual and immutable law. Point us out a single religious observance of the Hebrews that is now done away, and we are able to say of it, and of all the others which have experienced a similar termination, that they, every one of them, lie without the compass of the ten commandments. They have no place whatever in that great record of duty which was graven on tables of stone, and placed within the holy of holies, under the mercy-seat. Now, how does the law of the Sabbath stand as to this particular? Does it lie within or without a limit so tangible, and forming so distinct and so noticeable a line of demarcation? We see it then standing within this record, of which all the other duties are of such general and such imperishable obligation. We meet with it in the interior of that hallowed ground, of which every other part is so sacred and so inviolable. We perceive it occupying its own conspicuous place in that register of duties, all of which have the substance and the irrevocable permanency of moral principle. On reading over the other articles of this memorable code, we see all of them stamped with such enduring characters of obligation, as no time can wear away; and the law of the Sabbath taking its station in the midst of them, and enshrined on each side of it among the immutabilities of truth, and justice, and piety. It is true, that much of Judaism has now fallen into desuetude, and that many of its dearest and most distinguished solemnities are now regarded in no other light than as the obsolete and repealed observances of an antiquated ritual. But it is worthy of being well observed that the whole of this work of demolition took place

[ocr errors]

his allusion to the fifth of these observances, and calling it the first commandment with promise; and by the very notice he bestows on the arrangement of the duties, are we given to understand, that no attempt had been made to disturb their order, or to depose any one of them from the place which had been assigned to it. We should count it an experiment of the most fearful audacity, without the intimation of any act of repeal passed in the high legislature of heaven, to fly in the face of that Sabbath law, which stands enrolled among the items of so notable and so illustrious a document; and nothing short of a formal and absolute recallment can ever tempt us to think, that the new dispensation of the Gospel has created so much as one vacancy in that register of duties, which bears upon the aspect of its whole history the impress of a revealed standard that is unalienable and everlasting. We cannot give up one article in that series of enactments which, in every one age of the Christian world, has been revealed as a code, not of ceremonial but of moral law. We cannot consent, but on the ground of some resistless and overbearing argument, to the mutilation of the integrity of this venerable record. We see throughout the whole line of the Jewish history, that it stood separate and alone; and that free from all the marks of national or local peculiarity, it bore upon it none of the frailty of the other institutions, but has been preserved and handed down to us an unchanged standard of duty, for all generations. We see, at the very commencement of the Mosaic dispensation how God himself thought fit to signalize it; for, from the place where he stood, did he proclaim the ten commandments of the law, in the hearing of the assembled multitude; while every other enactment, whether moral or ceremonial, was conveyed to the knowledge of the people, through the medium of a human legislator. And we should feel that, in dethroning any one of the perceptive impositions of the decalogue from its authority over our practice, we were bidding defiance to the declared will of the Eternal; and resisting a voice which sounds as loudly and

as impressively to our conscience, as the one that issued in thunder from the flaming top of Sinai, and scattered dismay among the thousands of Israel.

that the moral world went back again into a wild chaos of dark and disorderly rebellion; and the heart of man lost its obedience to the attractive influences of that great principle which can alone subdue it into harmonious accordancy with the law of God; and the resurrection of Christ from the grave was a mighty and essential step in the counsels of heaven for quelling all the violence of this elementary war;

not come; but if I go to my Father, I shall send him." And from the place which he now occupies, does the Spirit come down at the commission of the exalted Saviour, and he moves on the face of this spiritual chaos, and is ever and anon reclaiming some portion of a moral and renovated em

But, secondly, in the practice of the Christian world, the Sabbath has been moved forward by one day; and the remembrance to which it is now consecrated, is a different one from that of the creation of the world. For this change we can find no positive enactment; but we can quote" for unless I go away, the comforter canthe uncontrolled observation of it down from the period of the apostolic age. We are sure that a practice so early and so universal, could not have been introduced without the sanction of Heaven's inspired messengers. And, mark the limit of that liberty which has been taken with the fourth commandment. It amounts to no-pire from the rugged domain of a world thing more than the circumstantial change of a day. Had the early Christians felt themselves warranted to take more liberty, they would have taken it; for then was the time when Christianity took its determinate movement away from the practices of the old dispensation, and established all its And thus it is, that while the day of Sabdistinctions as a religion of principle, and a bath has been changed, there is a most af religion of spiritual character. But widely fecting remembrance which gives to the as the one religion departed from the other, observation of Sabbath the full import and there never, in any one age of the church, significancy of its original purpose-the has been a departure from the observance remembrance of a new creation emerging of a Sabbath, appropriated to the more so-from an old one-the animating view of lemn and peculiar exercises of piety. The life and immortality rising in splendour change in the day goes to prove that Chris-from the corruption of the grave-the contianity is not a religion of mere days. But templation of an ascended Saviour, who while it has abandoned one particular day, pours the promise of the Father on all his you find it transferring itself to another; and believing disciples-and working in them in the choice of that other it is guided by by the Spirit the graces of the new creature, the affecting remembrance of an event, the prepares them for a welcome entrance into contemplation of which is fitted to strength-those regions, where sin is unknown, and

lying in wickedness. And the time is yet to come when this ever-renovating Spirit shall fulfil its conclusive triumph, by spreading an entire aspect of worth, and piety, and moral loveliness over the wide extent of a now sinful creation.

en the faith, and to refresh the piety, and where death is swallowed up in victory. to waken the best and most religious feel- But, thirdly, in addition to the slight cirings of those who are spiritually engaged cumstantial change which has been made in it. It commemorates the rise of the upon the Sabbath, and which we are sure crucified Saviour from the grave-of him no honest and enlightened Christian can who is the first fruits of them who slept-ever construe into an entire and absolute of him who by that Spirit which is com-repeal of the whole institution-there is a mitted to him, raises all those who are dead general change affecting every one of the in tresspasses and sins, to newness of life-ten commandments, but which was never of him who is the great agent of Heaven so well understood till the new dispensafor repairing all the disorders and all the tion was fully and fairly ushered into the deformities of the moral world-of him by world. whom, as the word of God, the universe We do not mean to say, that the worwas at first created, but who has since thies of the Old Testament were utter earned a more enduring title to the memory strangers to that doctrine of grace on of Christians, by taking upon him that which the Spirit of God, working in larger great scheme, in virtue of which, there are measure on the minds of the Apostles, from to emerge out of this ruined and rebellious the day of Pentecost, has poured so clear province, a new heaven and a new earth, and so celestial a splendour. We believe wherein dwelleth righteousness. At the that many Jews were, under the shadow of first creation of the world, the Spirit moved their types and their sacrifices, trained to over the turbulence of its confused and jar- the faith, and the humility, and the affec ring elements, and awoke them all to or- tionate obedience of creatures who knew der and to harmony. When Adam fell, themselves to be incapable of perfect conwe know not what precise mischief it in-formity to the law of God-and that, in flicted on the material world; but we know the act of serving him. they stood on es

sentially the same footing of mercy to pardon and grace to help in the time of need, on which a spiritual Christian of the day now feels himself to be so firmly and so conclusively established. The change we are alluding to, then, did not take place at the first settlement of the new dispensation. It only came out at that time into more distinct exhibition; and it consists in this; that whereas the direct and natural way of taking up the promulgated law of God, is to take it up as a law of works, and to labour at the performance of it on the understood condition of "This do, and ye shall live"-and as this condition has not been fulfilled by a single son or daughter of the species, then, unless some new arrangement of the matter between God and man had been entered into, life was forfeited by every one of us, and we should just have been what the New Testament tells us we actually are, anterior to our reception of the Gospel, the children of wrath, and under the full operation of the sentence, that "the soul which sinneth it shall die." Now, it would lead us away from our subject into a most interminable excursion, did we say all that might be pertinently and substantially said on the precise turn which the Gospel has given to the obligation of the law. Eternal life is no longer the wages of perfect obedience. It is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. The man who has faith to perceive the reality of this gift, lays hold of it, and rejoices in all the enlargement of conscious forgiveness, and in all the cordialities of a secure and confident reconciliation, with the God whom he had offended. But this faith does not set him loose from any one of the duties of obedience. Had no other doctrine been proposed to the believer, than the single one of forgiveness through the redemption that is in the blood of Jesus, then we can conceive how the dawning of the Gospel faith might be a signal for the emancipation of the whole man from the restraints of moral obligation. But other doctrines have been proposed; and faith, which is neither more nor less than a reliance on the divine testimony, gives an equally honest and welcome admission to all the particulars of that testimony. It embraces all the particulars of God's communication; and such is the amplitude of its grasp, that though as a principle, it is single and undivided, and can be defined within the limits of a short sentence; yet grant us the existence of this principle, and then you grant us room enough, and provision enough for giving effect to every one of the lessons of revelation. When faith attaches itself to the doctine of reconciliation through Christ, it will make him who possesses it, to walk before God without fear. When faith attaches itself to the

doctrine, that "without holiness no man can see God," it makes him who possesses it, to "walk before God without fear, in righteousness and in holiness." When faith attaches itself to the doctrine that unless ye do such and such commandments, ye shall not inherit the kingdom of God, it makes him who possesses it, feel as constraining an urgency of personal interest in the work of keeping these commandments, as if the old covenant of works had got up again, and he behooved to ply his assiduous task for the rewards of perfect obedience. When faith attaches itself to the doctrine of every man receiving his award at the judgment-seat, according to the deeds done in the body, it makes him who possesses it just strive with as much earnestness to multiply good deeds-as if each performance done at the bidding of the Saviour, was a distinct addition to the treasure reserved for him in heaven. But faith does attach itself to every one of these doctrines, or it is no faith at all. It gives the homage of its reliance to each particular of the law and the testimony. It clears its unfettered way from among the perplexities of human arrangement; and disowning every authority but that of the one master, it sits at his feet with the docility of a little child, and appropriates to its right influence every item of his communications. And thus it is, that the man who is in simplicity and in good faith a believer, while he rejoices all the day long in the sunshine of a countenance which he knows to be friendly to him, labours all the day long at his faithful and assiduous task of doing every thing to the glory of God. There is room enough in his enlarged heart for knowing, that while the one is his offered privilege, the other is his required dutyand free as he is, from all the embroilments of a darkening speculation, he does not wait for the adjustment of any human controversy on the subject, but taking himself to his Bible, he both lives in all the security of the offered reconciliation, and without questioning the simple announcement of the Saviour, that "if ye love me, ye will keep my commandments," he also lives in all the diligence of one who is "steadfast and unmoveable, and always abounding in the work of the Lord.”

It is true, that there is a difference between being under the law, and under grace. But how does this difference affect the morality of a Christian? Let us take the deliverance of an Apostle upon the subject. "Shall we sin," says Paul, "because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid." Quite the contrary, for it is precisely because we are under grace, that sin hath not dominion over us. We must shorten this explanation, and bring it to bear on the observation of the Sabbath. The great interest

« AnteriorContinuar »