Thus I have given you these five lessons; and now, in conclusion, let me solemnly say, with all the instruction you may give to your children, you must all of you be deeply conscious that you are not capable of doing any thing in the child's salvation, but that it is God himself.who from the first to the last must effect it all. You are a pen; God may write with you, but you can not write yourself. You are a sword; God may with you slay the child's sin, but you can not slay it yourself. Be you therefore always mindful of this, that you must be first taught of God yourself, and then you must ask God to teach, for unless a higher teacher than you instruct the child, that child must perish. It is not all your instruction can save his soul: it is the blessing of God resting on it. May God bless your labors! He will do it if you are instant in prayer, constant in supplication; for never yet did the earnest preacher or teacher, labor in vain, and never yet has it been found that the bread cast upon the waters has been lost. SERMON XXIII. THE GOD OF THE AGED. "Even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you."ISAIAH, xlvi. 6. WILL you allow me to expound the doctrine of this text, and then to show you how it is carried out, especially in the time of old age? I. THE DOCTRINE OF THE TEXT I hold to be, the constancy of God's love, its perpetuity, and its unchangeable nature. God declares that he is not simply the God of the young saint; that he is not simply the God of the middle-aged saint; but that he is the God of the saints in all their ages from the cradle to the tomb. "Even to old age I am he;" or, as Lowth beauti fully and more properly translates it, "Even to old age I am the same, and even to hoary hairs will I carry you." The doctrine, then, is twofold: that God himself is the same, whatever may be our age; and that God's dealings toward us, both in providence and in grace, his carryings and his deliverings, are alike unchanged. 1. As to the first part of the doctrine, that God himself is unchanged when we come to old age, surely I have no need to prove that. Abundant testimonies of Scripture declare God to be an immutable being, upon whose brow there is no furrow of old age, and whose strength is not enfeebled by the lapse of ages; but if we need proofs, we might look even abroad on nature, and we should from nature guess that God would not change during the short period of our mortal life. Seemeth it unto me a hard thing, that God should be the same for seventy years, when I find things in nature that have retained the same impress and image for many more years! Behold the sun! same The sun that led our fathers to their daily labor, lighteth us still; and the moon by night is unchanged-the self-same satellite, glittering with the light of her master, the sun. Are not the rocks the same? And are there not many ancient trees, which remain well-nigh the same for multitudes of years, and outlive centuries? Is not the earth, for the most part, the ? Have the stars lost their light? Do not the clouds still pour their rain upon the earth? Does not the ocean still beat with its one great pulse of ebb and flow? Do not the winds still howl, or breathe in gentle gales upon the earth? Doth not the sun still shine? Do not plants grow as heretofore? Hath the harvest changed? Hath God forgotten his covenant of day and night? Hath he yet brought another flood upon the earth? Doth it not still stand in the water and out of the water? Surely, then, if changing nature, made to pass away in a few more years, and to be "dissolved with fervent heat," remains the same through the cycles of seventy years, may we not believe that God, who is greater than nature, the creator of all worlds, would still remain the same God, through so brief a period? Does not that suffice? Then, we have another proof. Had we a new God, we should not have the Scriptures; had God changed, then we should need a new Bible. But the Bible which the infant readeth is the Bible of the gray head; the Bible which I carried with me to my Sunday-school, I shall sit in my bed to read, when, hoaryheaded, all strength shall fail save that which is divine. The promise which cheered me in the young morning of life, when first I consecrated myself to God, shall cheer me when my eyes are dim with age and when the sunlight of heaven lights them up, and I see bright visions of far-off worlds, where I hope to dwell forever. The Word of God is still the same: there is not one promise removed. The doctrines are the same; the truths are the same; all God's declarations remain unchanged forever; and I argue from the very fact that God's Book is not affected by years, that God himself must be immutable, and that his years do not change him. Look at our worship-is not that the same? O hoary heads! well can ye remember how ye were carried to God's house in your childhood; and ye heard the self-same hymns that now ye hear. Have they lost their savor? Have they lost their mu sic? At times, when prayer is offered, ye remember that your ancient pastor prayed the same petition fifty years ago; but the petition is as good as ever. It is still unchanged: it is the same praise, the same prayer, the same expounding, the same preaching. All our worship is the same. And with many it is the same house of God, where first they were dedicated to God in baptism. Surely, my brethren, if God had changed, we should have been obliged to make a new form of worship; if God had not been immutable, we should have needed to have sacrificed our sacred service to some new method; but since we find ourselves bowing like our fathers, with the same prayers, and chanting the same psalms, we rightly believe that God himself must be immutable. But we have better proofs than this that God is still unchanged. We learn this from the sweet experience of all the saints. They testify that the God of their youth is the God of their later years. They own that Christ "hath the dew of his youth." When they saw him first, as the bright and glorious Immanuel, they thought him "altogether lovely ;" and when they see him now, they see not one beauty faded, and not one glory departed: he is the self-same Jesus. When they first rested themselves on him, they thought his shoulders strong enough to carry them; and they find these shoulders still as mighty as ever. They thought at first his bowels did melt with love, and that his heart was beating high with mercy; and they find it is still the same. God is unchanged; and therefore they "are not consumed." They put their trust in him, because they have not yet marked a single alteration in him. His character, his essence, his being, and his deeds are all the same; and, moreover, to crown all, we can not suppose a God, if we can not suppose a God immutable. A God who changed would be no God. We could not grasp the idea of deity if we once allowed our minds to take in the thought of mutability. From all these things, then, we conclude that even from old age he is the same, and that even to hoary hairs he will carry us." 66 2. The other side of the doctrine is this, not only that God is the same in his nature, but that he is the same in his deal ings; that he will carry us the same; that he will deliver us the same; that he will bear us the same as he used to do. And here, also, we need scarcely to prove to you that God's dealings toward his children are the same, especially when I remind you that God's promises are made not to ages, but to people, to persons, and to men. It has been recently declared by some ministers, that certain ages are more likely to be converted than other ages. We have heard persons state, that should a man outlive thirty years of life, if he has heard the gospel, he is not at all likely to be saved; but we believe a more palpable, bare-faced lie was never uttered in the pulpit; for we have, ourselves, known multitudes who have been saved at forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, and even bordering on the grave at eighty. We find some promises in the Bible made to some particular conditions; but the main, the great, the grand promises, are made to sinners as sinners; they are made to the elect, to the chosen ones, irrespective of their age or condition. We hold, that the man who is old can be justified in the same way as the man who is young; that the robe of Christ is broad enough to cover the strong, full-grown man, as well as the little child. We believe the blood of Christ avails to wash out seventy years as well as seventy days of sin; that "with God there is no respect of persons ;" that all ages are alike to him, and that "whosoever cometh unto Christ, he will in nowise cast out," and sure we are, that all the good things of the Bible are as good at one time as at another. The perfect robe of righteousness that I wear, will that change by years? The sanctification of the Spirit, will that be destroyed by years? The promises, will they shake? The covenant, will that be dissolved? I can suppose that the everlasting hills shall melt; I can dream that the eternal mountains shall be dissolved, like the snow upon their peaks; I can conceive that the ocean may be licked up with tongues of forked flame; I can suppose the sun stopped in his career; I can imagine the moon turned into blood; I can conceive the stars falling from the vault of night; I can imagine "the wreck of nature and the crash of worlds;" but I can not conceive the change of a single mercy, a single covenant blessing, a single promise, or a single grace, which God bestows upon his people; for I find every one of them in |