SERMON XXV.*

ROMANS, xiv. 17.-" The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."

THE admission of the Gentiles to the enjoyment of the same privileges with the Jews in the Christian Church gave rise to some angry debates, which it required all the wisdom and authority of the apostles to allay. These dissensions, although originating in questions not connected with the essentials of religion, proved, while they lasted, destructive of charity and peace among those who engaged in them. The most remarkable of these disputes arose out of the distinction which the Jews had been accustomed to make betwixt different kinds of food. The Jew had been instructed by the Mosaic law to regard certain meats as clean, and others as unclean, and to esteem the eating of the one to be lawful, and of the other unlawful; and not being sufficiently aware of the temporary and provisional nature of the religious institution which had taught him this distinction, and not knowing, or at least not being willing to admit, that this distinction, as well as all the other ceremonial enactments of the Levitical economy, were for ever abrogated by the

The last Sermon which the Author preached.

introduction of a better covenant, he persisted in observing the distinction with the most rigid pertinacity, and demanded that the same respect should be paid to it by those Gentiles who were admitted into the Christian Church. The Gentile, on the other hand, to whom the distinction was perfectly new, and who could not see any inherent or obvious unseemliness in those meats which his Jewish brother shunned as unclean, did not feel any obligation to lay this restraint upon his appetites; and knowing that it formed no part of the instructions delivered by the apostles to the faithful, did not choose to encumber his conscience with this frivolous and exploded distinction.

Had each party been content to follow the line of conduct which conscience dictated to them, the peace of the Church might have been preserved; and although we should have lamented that perversity which led the Jewish converts to retain so much of the yoke which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear, and to seek to graft the cumbrous ritual of Moses on the simple institute of Christ, much angry and unmeaning controversy would have been spared, and the unity of the spirit kept in the bond of peace. But, instead of this, they refused to tolerate each other's prejudices. The Jew insisted on the Gentile respecting and adopting his distinction of meats, and condemned as an error of the most alarming magnitude that indiscriminate participation of food in which the converts from Heathenism indulged; while the Gentiles reprobated this antiquated distinction as

superstitious and useless, and pronounced it an irksome and unauthorized infringement of that liberty wherewith Christ has made his people free.

This unhappy dispute had found its way into the Church at Rome; and in the chapter from which I have selected the subject of your present meditation, the apostle sets himself to reprove and to correct it. He admits that it was at least natural for the Jew to retain his partiality for the doctrine of a distinction of meats, while the Gentile could not be blamed for not perceiving any utility or sacredness in it, and was under no obligation to adopt it; and therefore he exhorts them to exercise mutual forbearance on the subject, and shows them that it was not a proper ground for reciprocal censure and condemnation. He advises them to consult their conscience, and to be guided by its dictates,-to attend to the sincere and unbiassed persuasion of their own minds, and to act accordingly. He warns them that to set themselves up as judges in matters of this kind is to usurp the authority of Him who both "died, and rose, and revived, that he might be the Lord both of the dead and of the living." As every one in this, as well as in every thing else, must give an account of himself unto God, he advises them to abstain from any discussion of the question, lest they should obstruct their common edification and improvement, or, to use his own affecting language," put a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall in a brother's way." And to show the utter insignificance of the question which had divided them, he tells them that it enters not into

the nature of true religion,-that the Gospel presents subjects of deeper interest and importance for their study and their zeal, and calls them to the culture of those graces which adorn and beautify the child of mortality here, and fit him for the society of purer spirits in a world of glory. "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."

The error which withdrew the attention of the Roman converts from the essentials of religion, and led them to exercise and exhaust on temporary and unimportant questions that zeal which ought to have been employed on the weightier matters of the Christian law, has in every age had a pernicious influence on the sentiments and conduct of the professors of the Gospel. To speculate and dispute about the outworks of Christianity is comparatively an easy exercise. It leads to no humbling discoveries of our own weakness and depravity; and, while it gratifies our pride by the display of knowledge and argumentative dexterity, it calls for no exercise of self-denial, and demands no painful or expensive sacrifice. Hence it is that so many professing Christians occupy themselves in settling questions that have little, if any, connexion with their real improvement and happiness, while they overlook the exercises which lead to the true and permanent honours of their nature. Questions which are not destined to outlive the age in which they were produced and agitated, have often engrossed and wasted that time and zeal which ought to have been devoted to the cultivation of the vir

tues which are to last for ever. It is with the sigh of pity that we think of the unhappy controversy about meats and days; but is not the same folly repeated by ourselves, when we attach to matters merely circumstantial that importance which belongs to the essentials of religion; and do we not need, as much as the converts at Rome, to be reminded that the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost? That we may be guarded against this frivolous and useless employment of our time and faculties, and may have a deep and influential impression of the real nature of vital Christianity, and thus be furnished with a test for the ascertaining of our real character and state, you will give me your attention while I endeavour to illustrate and apply this solemn and instructive statement. It will bring before us those practical views of the ultimate design and tendency of the Gospel, which cannot be too deeply impressed upon the mind; and will, I trust, send all of us home to the inspection and examination of ourselves.

I. To the right understanding of the apostle's affirmation, it is necessary, in the first place, to ascertain and fix what is meant by the phrase, “THE KINGDOM OF GOD." Although, in our language, the term "KINGDOM" has a primary reference to the scene or territory over which the sway of a monarch extends, it is well known to those who are acquainted with the New Testament that its Scriptural meaning is much more extensive. While