Early Black Church Sermons and Addresses

Sermon IV (part 2)

IT& The Rejection of Christ.

"What have we to do with Thee?" The) were con- scious in Whose presence they stood. They were well aware of the august and divine personage before whom they stood. They knew that it was " Emmanuel, God with us," to whom they were speaking; for they call Him, in the plainest, clearest words, "Jesus, thou Son of God." And they knew perfectly all the force and the whole intent and meaning of what they were saying.

And yet, with an audacity at once fearful and malig- nant, they ask, " What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God?" The idiom is indeed different from that which is common with us in the English tongue ; but its significance is evident. The question means, without doubt, " What is there common between yoil and us ? We do not want your interference. Why Hot let us alone ? There is no sympathy between us. Why, then, do you trouble us?" Just such is the cry of a sinful world whenever the Church, in Christ's name, would call it from its sins. The scoffer, the infi- del, the sceptic, the worldling, the sensualist, the mor- alist, all alike reject interference with their aims, and demand, "Jesus, thou Son of God, what have we to do with Thee?"

The disposition, in all ages, to scout and reject the Lord Jesus is one of the marvels of history. Thou- sands of men, in all the eras, have confessed His name and taken up His cross ; but tens, nay, hundreds of

The Rejection of Christ. 1 19

thousands have refused obedience to His commands and submission to His yoke. " He came unto His own, and His own received Him not." His way had been pre- pared before Him. Prophets had foretold His coming and His mission ; and so thoroughly had the Jewish mind been trained to an expectancy of the Messiah, that the whole Jewish nation was anxiously waiting, in hope and desire. Nay, more than this : they had so spread abroad their own expectation and assurance that, all through the Roman Empire and in far-off East- ern lands, even pagan nations were looking, at the time of His advent, for some grand, majestic being frcfhi the skies to visit earth, to heal its moral diseases, and to give it restored life and blessedness.

And yet, when He came among them, with every token of divinity in His life and character, they turned their backs upon and rejected Him. It was not a partial and incidental repulse of the Saviour. It was broad, sweeping, and absolute. It covered His whole life. Beginning at Bethlehem, it only ended at Calvary. In the face of His unequalled life, His wondrous teach- ing, and His marvellous acts, wrought by scores and hundreds, this people thought scorn and contempt of Him. Nothing could convince them. Thev had set their hearts against Him. They were thoroughly determined that, so far as the spiritual element of their being was concerned, they would have nothing to do with Him.

120 The Rejection of Christ.

Do we say nothing could convince them ? Convince them of what ? That He was a living being ? Why, was He not plainly and openly in their sight, going about, speaking, eating, and drinking before them ? Or, perchance, that He gave sight to the blind, healed the lepers, raised the dead ? They saw these mighty deeds with their own eyes, acknowledged the actual performance of them, and then attributed them to the power of Beelzebub ! What, then, was the point wherein they could not be* convinced ? There was no such point ! It was the old suggestion and purpose of Satan that Christ should have no control, no authority over their souls. It was the audacious question of the devils — " What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou son of God ? "

This conduct of the Jews was repeated by their kins- folk and relatives, after the Resurrection of our Lord. The Apostles went forth, according to their Master's command, proclaiming the glad tidings to the Jews throughout the Holy land, and in the distant quarters, in Asia, Greece, and the Roman Empire. They carried with them every possible evidence of His mission and of His rising again. In very many cases the news con- cerning the Messiah had preceded them, and the people had heard of the wonderful life, the miracles wrought by Him, and of His most strange death. Nay, more than this. The Apostles, in attestation of their mis-

The Rejection of Christ. 121

sion, wrought signs and wonders among the sick and diseased. Vain and fruitless were all their words and miracles. The Apostle St. Paul himself tells us how the Jews treated him and his companions. " For ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have perse- cuted us."

What led the Jews to this spite and bitterness against the Gospel ? Did they think the Apostles were endeav- oring to deceive them ? Nay, how could that be ? Many of them, that is, in Judea, had seen Christ. Many of them had witnessed His miracles. Many of them had heard of His marvellous acts and His serene and glorious life. And besides, they saw every where that the Apostles went, proofs of their divine mission in the saving, the restoring miracles which they wrought, in the name and by the power of the same Lord whose Gospel they were preaching. Could the Jews deny the evidence of their own eyes ? Could they gainsay and reject the palpable facts which appealed to their senses ?

What, then, was the difficulty with these men ? Alas, it was just the same which had proved a stumbling block to their fathers. It was the set will ; it was the stubborn determination not to yield to this spiritual Master, No further proof was needed, in their case ;

122 The Rejection of Christ.

no additional evidence. They had clear, certain, unde- niable facts immediately before their eyes. It was the Satanic self-assertion of these people that they would have no ruler over them in the realm of spirituality. So far as moral truth and spiritual ideas were concerned they were a law to themselves, and this Jesus of Naz- areth should not be their king ! It was the malignant audacity of the devils : " Incarnate God as you are, we will not submit to you ! " " What hast thou to do with us, Jesus, thou Son of God ? "

We have a further illustration of this same spirit among the philosophers in the first ages of the Chris- tian dispensation. St. Paul gives us the earliest indi- cation of their temper, in his visit to Athens. This was the seat of Grecian letters, wisdom, and philosophy. Before they heard him, certain philosophers of the Epicureans and Stoics encountered him and called him "Babbler." And* after he preached that celebrated sermon on Mars Hill some of them mocked at the doctrine of the Resurrection. This was the general disposition of the learned in primitive times, for nigh three centuries. The philosophic mind in Greece, in Rome, in Alexandria, was strongly antagonistic to the simplicity of the Gospel; and especially rejected the idea that men should seek salvation through the blood and atonement of another. Bitter as was the persecu- tion carried on by the Emperors of Rome against the

The Rejection of Christ. 1 23

Christians, their opposition was not nearly so fierce as was that of the wise men and philosophers of the Em- pire. The one now and then put Christians to death; the others sneered at, ridiculed, and scouted the Chris- tian faith. They brought the full artillery of their wit, their genius, their learning, and their wisdom, to bear against it. They unceasingly, for over two hundred years, wrote and published keen and clever works against the Gospels and the new religion. They strove in every way to set the mind, the thought, the genius of the world against the Church, and to identify the religion of Jesus with slaves and vulgar people. Indeed, they called it a "pestilent and flagitious superstition."

What was the difficulty with the philosophers of primitive times ? Did Christianity come to them with- out testimony? Did our holy religion demand their assent, unsupported by evidence ? Entirely the reverse. The earlier preachers of the Gospel came to these men with the explicit words of the older scriptures, with an historic church, with abundant testimony of heathen writers, with documentary proofs concerning Jesus drawn from the reports of Pontius Pilate and other Roman Governors, from their own national archives ; and they had the fullest light !

No. It was not the lack of evidence, not the want of testimony, not the difficulty in believing such strange tidings, even, which troubled these men. They could

124 The Rejection of CJirist,

believe in oracles. They could put faith in auguries. They could trust in a multitude of gods. They could foster and uphold, even if they did not believe in, the superstitious rites of their pagan systems. But when the religion of Jesus Christ came to them, with every possible demonstration of truth and reality, demanding their fealty and subjection, they, in the same spirit, and with the like bitterness of the Jews, refused to receive it !

What was the difficulty with these men? Was it an intellectual incapacity? Was it a strain on reason or judgment ? No. It was simply and solely a moral one. It was an obliquity in the region of the soul. It was the offence of the Cross. It was the rebellious spirit which rejected a master of the heart and the will. It was the uprising of their whole inner nature to spurn the yoke of Jesus. It was the same audacious self- assertiveness of man's sinful nature which brooks no moral and spiritual control. ''What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, thou Son of God ? "

And just so it is in our own day and time. Wrhat is the matter with the great thinkers of our age ? Why do they attempt to write down Christianity ? Why do they use such vigorous effort to disprove the truth of Holy Scripture ? Why do so many of them, while in one sense holding on to Christianity, endeavor, on the other hand, to extract from the revelation of God its

The Rejection of Christ. 1 25

very core and essence, the supernatural Presence and Power of Jesus ? The light comes, in a full blaze, upon these men. They know the history of our race. They know all the annals of human religion. They see the miraculous influence upon the nations of the Name and the truths of Jesus Christ. They see the wondrous things the Gospel has done in many quarters of the keathen world, even in a single generation. They see the lowest pagans redeemed from the grossest supersti- tions, and turned from cannibalism. They see heathen youth changed in a brief period to preachers of the Gospel; and even a bishop in the Church, himself a convert from paganism, with the very marks of his rude tribe upon his face, heralding the Gospel into the very heart of Africa.

How is it, then, that these superior intellects spurn the Cross, and reject the Lord who died for them? They will not submit to any control in the domain of the spirit ! They claim an unfettered authority over every department of their being ! They demand of the Lord Jesus, as they would of any mere man on earth, "What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, thou Son of God ? "

One caution must be given which it may be needful to state. Do not think that this proud self-confidence is confined to thinkers and philosophers alone. It is the spirit of man ! Just as common among the rude,

126 The Rejection of Christ*

illiterate, unthinking, as among their superiors in all these respects. You will find scores of youth in your streets, who, if you speak to them of Christ, will foam with rage, and curse the Lord who died for them ! Many a pitiably drunken sot vexes the soul of a pious wife who loves and prays for him. And at this moment our saloons, our restaurants, and our grog shops are crowded with men who have no more doubt of the truth of Christianity than you or I have ; who yet, if you should approach them and plead with them to lay hold of the great salvation, would turn upon you with an oath and tell you that " they did not want anything to do with your accursed religion ! "

Again, then, let us ask, " Why is it that the mind of man accords so thoroughly with the malignant scorn of Satan ? " First of all observe that it never was, neither then of old, nor now in our own day, because of the personal evil men saw in the character of Jesus. Of all trie various indictments which have been drawn up against Christianity by the infidel world, there never was one which assailed the purity of our Lord's life or the supreme excellence of His character. On the con- trary, His goodness and excellence have been universally acknowledged. The Jews, in His lifetime, railed at and persecuted Him. But why? Because of any taint or vileness they discovered in Him? Just the reverse. Their accusations give the highest testimony to the per-

The Rejection of Christ. 127

feet purity of His character, amount to the noblest eulogy on His life. They censured Him for Sabbath-breaking, because He had healed a man on that holy day. But what is this but evidence of a sacred beneficence, which bursts through cold rule and icy limitations, to bless and to save ? They charged Him with receiving sinners, and eating with them ; surely this testifies to His gra- cious condescension, His humility, and His brotherly humanity. They accused Him of casting out devils ; and this is proof of His conflict with the powers of evil, and the pure spirituality of His labors and His cures.

Nay, go through the entire catalogue of accusations which they brought against Him, and every one stands out, clearly defined, as an actual evidence of His inno- cency and spiritual goodness. This was the very im- pression these charges made upon a disinterested, cer- tainly non-partial, but gross and brutal heathen. The Jews heaped up their charges into one big, monstrous, and, as they thought, irresistible arraignment, at the court of. Pontius Pilate. And after listening, with even prejudiced attention, to it, he turns to them and declares, " I have examined Him before you and have found no fault in this man. No, nor yet Herod ; for I §ent you. unto him." Exasperated at their failure, to injure our Lord's character, they became infuriated and violent. Then Pilate turns again to them, perplexed and puzzled at their pertinacity and rage, and asks, —

128 The Rejection of Christ.

" Why, what evil hath He done ? ' / have found no cause of death in Him."

And this innocency and blamelessness have been acknowledged ever since, even by infidels and the ungodly. At this day all classes of unbelievers acknowl- edge the lofty perfection of the Man Christ Jesus.

Take up the various works which have been written concerning Him which deny His deity, and you can not find one which assails His moral worth and precious- ness. Bad as is the unregenerate heart, bitter and hateful as is the unbelieving spirit, yet who ever heard of any anti-Christian writer accusing our Lord — it seems almost profanity to utter the words — of untruth, of an immoral act, of depravity, of malignity, of cruelty ?

On the contrary, the great misbelievers, while deny- ing the deity of our Lord, are not unfrequently fore- most in extolling His moral excellency. While reject- ing with scofn the idea that He was anything more than a mere man, many of them speak with rapture of His purity and moral loftiness, (i) Take the Jews first. While almost everywhere they deny our Lord's Mes- siahship, their ablest, calmest writers speak of Him as a pure, lofty, and most superior man. (2) The Ration- alistic mind, as the Jewish, would fain strip Him of every vestige of His Godhead ; and yet Rousseau Once declared "If the death of Socrates be that of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God." One

The Rejection of Christ. 129

of the most voluminous infidel writers of our day is the French Litteratetir, M. Renan, and he, while criticising the Lord as a moral fanatic and spiritual enthusiast, yet is forced to declare Him as "the ideal of humanity."

The real ground of this aversion of the schools to the Christ of Scripture is not, and never has been, because of any personal evil in His life and character. All acknowledge His goodness and moral excellence. " Whence then," the question arises, " the antagonism everywhere and at all times manifest, against the author- ity and control which Jesus demands and requires in the Holy Word ? Why do men refuse submission to Him? Why do they question His rule and mastership over their hearts and minds ? "

The real reason, the true cause of all this opposition, is "the offence of the Cross." Man does not like to be saved by another ! Man refuses to accept the spir- itual subjection of the Christian system! Man swells with an inordinate and exaggerated independence, which will not brook the deliverance of the Cross! Man rises up with inordinate self-consciousness, and puts aside every suggestion of his deep spiritual need, although it be whispered by the voice of Jesus !

Yet, after all, it is vain to say, vain to think — "What

have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God?" The

Cross of Christ is the bright star of the universe. Nay,

rather the Cross of Christ is the sun in the celestial

9

130 The Rejection of Christ.

heavens. This religion of Jesus is the one great, mighty, marvellous thing of magnitude in all the his- tories. The Lord Jesus is the grand leading idea of all history ! Christianity two thousand years ago began its career ; it entered into the workings, policies, and movements of men and nations, and has everywhere changed the channels of their flow, and sent them run- ning anew into purer and more glorious currents. Its special function, its specific mission, was the restoration of maimed and fractured souls ; but its efficacy has been felt in every province of life, society, and enter- prise. Where but its sJiadow has fallen, there life and glory have been suddenly and lastingly evoked, to the praise of God's grace. The distinctive, the character- istic work of Jesus, was in the soul ; but see how the power and efficacy of our Lord's spirit have re-created all the art, the civilization, the laws and philosophy of mankind. These, too, at its start, denied the authority of the Cross. These, too, refused subjection to His control and moral sway. These, too, with scornful utterance, put the question of the devils— " What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, thou Son of God?"

See again the marvel of history. Christianity has driven the old brutality of paganism from the laws of Europe, and infused the spirit of the Gospel into all the codes of Christendom. The civilization of Europe, of the United States, and of every superior State in the

The Rejection of Christ. 13 1

world, is based upon the pure and elevating sentiments of the faith of Jesus. The old paganism which defiled the sculpture, paintings, and architecture of the world, has been driven into oblivion, and spiritual beauty has come to invest the highest art, and to adorn the noblest culture. Blot out the last two thousand years of the world's history, rid the annals of the race of the name and the idea of our Incarnate God, and what then would the world be ? Where, in this event, would be letters ? Where the philanthropy which has saved the serf, and freed the slave ? Where the hospitals ? What would be the condition of woman ? Where would be the missions which have converted Europe, and which are now redeeming Asia and Africa ? Where the law and order, which have given security and elevation to Christian States, society, and families ?

But aside from these broad, general considerations, there are personal aspects of this subject which show the vital, the overpowering relation of Jesus to the soul of man ; which give evidence of the fact that separation from the person and the influence of the Redeemer, is spiritual death ; proving that we cannot with safety ask the audacious, God-defying question, "What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, thou Son of God ? "

Still further, look at our large, deep, overwhelming needs in spiritual matters. We are sinners and need

132 The Rejection of Christ.

cleansing from defilement. We are guilty, and need absolution and remission. We have pains, sorrows, afflictions, and we need relief, rest, consolation. We have poverty, and need riches. We have broken hearts, that need binding up. Death comes to us all, and we need life and blessedness. And these miseries are extended world-wide. Sin has scattered them into every quarter of the globe, and among all nations, into all families. Doubtless there is a system, a vast cor- poration of evil spirits throughout the universe, active and malignant, infusing the poison of distress into myriads of souls around us and below. But, on the other hand, God has established a system and kingdom of spiritual assistances, through all the ranks of men and angels, with Christ at the head. And to whom else but Him can we go for comfort, for satisfaction, for life, for eternal blessedness ? He only has the words of eternal life. He only is "the resurrection and the life." He only is the one "that liveth and was dead ; who has the keys of hell and death."

" What have we to do with Thee, Jesus thou Son of God ? " Rather, indeed, what have we to do with any but Thee, Lord and Master ? What are the concerns, what the interests, whether for time or eternity, in which we can do without Thee ?

The presence of Jesus may excite the temper and the fears of evil spirits, and stir the opposition of unbe-

The Rejection of Christ, 133

lieving men. But we who are Christians know in Whom we have believed. We know what wonderful things He has done for us. We know our only life is hid in Him. We know already somewhat of the glory which is yet to be revealed in Him, in fulness and per- fection, for our souls ! Yes, this same Jesus Whom wicked men and evil spirits reject, is our only hope and refuge now and forever! He is our God, our Saviour, our Protector, our Guide, our only consolation, our sal- vation. Amid the darkness which bedims our feeble sight in this world He is our light. And when the shades of death film and glaze our departing sight, we know in Whom we have believed. To Thee we come, blessed, adorable Saviour ; help us, feed us, illuminate us, and with angels and archangels we will glorify Thy Name through eternal ages !

SERMON IX.

The nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, THE MOTIVES TO DISCIPLESHIP.

EPH. IV. 20, 21.

But ye have not so learned Christ ; if so be that ye have heard Himt and have been taught by Him, as the trtith is in Jesus.

The whole passage reads thus: — "This I sav there- fore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart ; who be- ing past feeling have given themselves over unto lascivi- ousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ ; if so be that ye have heard Him, and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus."

The church of Ephesus was so distinguished for piety that almost every reference to it, in the New Testament, is eulogistic. If you turn to St. Paul's address to its Elders in Acts xx, or listen to the voice of the Lord Jesus

(134)

The Motives to Discipleship. 135

in the book of Revelation, the absence of rebuke stands out in marked contrast with the admonitions which are given to well nigh every other Christian body in the New Testament. But when we open the epistle of the great Apostle, to this church, we are struck at once with a train of rich and glowing utterances, which at times rises up to the melody and the rhythm of the grandest poetry. Wilberforce (the elder) said of this epistle, that it was " seraphic ! " Farrar, in our own day, says it is "emphatically the epistle of the Ascension." And there is a heavenly elevation and a gracious spirit running through it, which are only equalled by the divine songs of the sweet singer of Israel, and the grand disclosures of the Apocalypse.

The ground of excellence in this epistle is character. The Christian life in the church of Ephesus was so pure and lofty that it thrilled the soul of St. Paul, and gave, as it were, a higher inspiration to his pen. This singu- larity, that is, of conspicuous saintship amid the dark- ness of Ephesian pagan life, was a thing as bright and brilliant to his sight, as the splendor of the midday sun. See, for instance, in this passage before us, how clearly the apostle distinguishes or notes the differences in the state and condition of Christian men and the worldly. "They," he says, "had the understanding darkened;" "they were alienated from the life of God through ignorance;" "they were past feeling, given over to lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness."

t$6 The Motives to Discipleship.

But observe the contrast, so soon as he comes to speak of disciples : — "But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be ye have heard Him, and have been taught the truth as it is in Jesus." See how the grand character- istics of the Christian life ring out, trumpet-like, in this strong and most lucid passage.

What was the ground of difference between these two classes ? What produced the great contrast between the former, pagan life of these Ephesian Christians, and their later regenerated and sanctified being? What, but the motives of existence ; the different springs of action set in motion by God the Holy Ghost ? This it was, which produced the strong contrast here spoken of by the Apostle. In the school of Christ, they had learned the true purposes of life, the grand ends and aims of being; and I wish to spend the time of instruc- tion this morning in calling your attention to those grand and sacred impulses, which led us to become dis- ciples ; and which prompt the life which we are en- deavoring to maintain. I ask, therefore: — What is the end and object of Christian life and profession, in a believer's soul ?

ist. And first of all we begin with the personal rea- sons, for the confession of Christ. It is not the high- est, noblest reason, but it is the first in order. It is impossible to escape this personal individual aspect of the matter. For, on every side, you and I, and every

The Motives to Discipleship. 137

other Christian man, is challenged for a reason for the singularity of life and bearing which marks every be- liever, who is not a ''mere sham of a Christian, or a hypocrite. And so, on the other hand, we too, if we are faithful men to the souls of others, challenge them for a reason why they live out of Christ ; under the dominion of sin and Satan. What is the answer which we are to give to this momentous question ? Putting aside all reserve, I shall speak for myself. I am a Christian (and I am speaking of the personal reasons for my profession) because I have a soul, and am anx- ious for its salvation. I am aware that to many, who look merely at the surface of things, this will imply self- ishness. They will say, that man is so absorbed in his own interests and safety, that he is led to subject himself to the control of the n a 1 Christ Jesus, and to enrol himself among His disciples. But this allegation is entirely false and misleading. Its error lies in the non-recognition of the fact that there is a very marked difference between selfishness and self-love. To care for one's own interests, to seek one's own advantage, to strive after one's own well-being, with just regard to the rights of others, is not selfishness. That is an abnor- mal and a degenerate tendency, which, in its legitimate results, sets aside the being and the rights of both God and man. But the quality of interestedness, if I may so term it, is one of the prime principles of the being of

138 The Motives to Discipleship.

both angels and men. Self-love is an attribute which belongs to our nature in its state of purity, which was planted in the original constitution of man, and which has no more an intrinsic taint of evil in it, than any other of our natural endowments. On the contrary, re- ligion, to use the words of Butler, " so far from disown- ing the principle of self-love, often addresses itself to that very principle, and always to the mind in that state when reason presides." And the basis of the appeal is that everything in the universe has a value. God has given it a value. The soul of man, far above all other created things, has a value, only second to the worth and excellence of the Deity Himself. As a spiritual being, then, I am bound to self-interest in the preciousness of the everlasting spirit within me. While not disregarding the spirits of angels or of men, I have a trust in my own soul, which I cannot make secondary to the soul of any other finite being. It is my most val- ued possession, and anxiousness for its salvation is of right the master personal aim of my existence. This salvation pertains to the two related spheres of my exis- tence. I am, first of all, in a world here, where all the forces of moral influence wage, incessantly, a deadly war- fare for my ruin. I cannot speak for others ; but for my- self, I do say, that if I were blind to the existence of evil in me or around me, if I lived oblivious to the deadly and unhallowed desires of my own nature, if I denied the

The Motives to Discipteship. 1 39

presence of riotous appetites, which, all my life long have risen up for mastery, if I ignored the impulse and the power of deadly passions, which, if unsubdued, would long ere this have consumed me ; and if, back of ; all this, I disowned the presence and the mastery of a dark and mighty being, the author of all evil, the prince of all damning mischief: — He who sets a-going every- where the inky floods of human depravity, and fills the heavens of humanity with the palpable palls of guilt and misery: — if, I say, I could live all my lifetime, thus blind, insensate, demented, and infatuated, careless of the responsibilities of time, and indifferent to the issues of eternity, then I should be the grandest fool, or the wildest madman that ever trod the earth. But by the grace of God I will be neither of these. I desire, above all other things, the salvation of this undying spirit within me ; and hence I appeal to Christ, who is the "King immortal, eternal," "to whom all power in heaven and earth is given," to give me pardon ; rescue from myself and my sins ; safety and protection from the as- saults of the Adversary. I appeal to the Lord Jesus for this great salvation; for He is "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world." "There is none other name," besides His name, " whereby we can be saved." I have no other assurance for the plucking up the roots of my moral diseases from my soul, but His grace a*id power. And therefore, as a reasonable

1 40 The Motives to Discipleship.

being, I am glad to stretch forth my hands, and to ac- cept the salvation which He graciously offers me.

Now this is the reason why I am a Christian. Christ Jesus is the only being who can save me, a miserable, wretched and sin-condemned man. I speak, this morn- ing, but for myself. Nay, I take back, at once, these words. I may, and not presumptuously, speak for others here. For every child of God here who has been washed and cleansed in the blood of the Lamb, will tell you the same tale of spiritual disaster which has over- taken my soul ; of the same utter, inner helplessness and ruin, in the domain of the spirit ; and then of the grand rescue of the blessed Redeemer, by the purchase of His blood, applied personally to his very soul. I speak then for myself; and I add thereto the testimony of saved and redeemed men and women in this church, the reason why we are disciples ; that is, we seek salva- tion from sin in this world, and everlastingly in the outer, eternal world which never ends. This is why, this morning, on bended knees, we sent up the cry — "Lamb of God, grant us thy peace!" "Lamb of God, have mercy upon us!" This appeal springs from the deepest convictions of our souls, of His willingness and His ability to save ; and the absolute knowledge that He has saved us !

Now, if there be any of you who have lived, say a score or two or more years, and yet looking ever and

The Motives to Discipleship. 141

anon in the chambers of your souls, have never made the discovery which I and my fellow Christians have made; never seen a taint of sin in your heart, never discovered the grime of guilt and iniquity; never recognized the weakness of your will; never felt the cravings of the heart for a stronger and mightier than yourselves to hold you up and give you light and bles- sedness and glory ; then all I have to say is, that you have a nature different from and loftier than heathen sage or Christian disciple ; for they both equally agree in the weakness and wretchedness of a fallen hu- manity.

2. I turn now from the personal to another reason for the confession of Christ ; and that is the salvation of men. And yet this can hardly be called a transition, for in truth it is but the overflowing of the same princi- ple which makes us seek our own personal salvation. Self-love- is soul-love. He that loves his own soul, to the reception of the great salvation, comes at once into harmony with the souls of all men, as with God Him- self. For the principle of grace, planted in the soul, is the principle of brotherhood. Thus St. Paul, in this same epistle, says : " Speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another." The divine principle received in the soul, while it does not destroy personality, does lift us up and above the isola- tion of self, into corporate unity with the saints, into

142 The Motives to Discipleship.

citizenship with the whole family of God,- and into brotherhood with the entire species of man! It is just here that self-love, sanctified, differs from selfishness. The one is monstrous absorption in self, the other is gracious generosity to others. St. Paul's first cry at Damascus was, in effect, a personal one, that is, the grasp of his soul after the personal knowledge of the Christ ; but the very next was the groping of his spirit after duty to others. And so always, the redeemed and saved soul goes out in longings for the salvation of other immortal souls. You cannot feel and know the value of your own soul without anxiousness and solici- tude for the salvation of others.

There is then, you see, in Christianity, a guardian- ship, a responsibility for souls. It makes every disciple a keeper of the spirits of men. And this springs from two principles, the one of love and the other of duty. Take the latter first, and see how it prompts to zeal for men's well-being and blessedness. Humanity is a com- mon stock, not a special personal possession. Men are our neighbors, all men. On the lowest principle we are bound to care for their bodies, for even the brute beasts show solicitude for the good of their own kind. But men have souls, souls in constant hazard and jeopardy from the assaults of the evil one, the tempta- tions of the world, and from that stolid indifference of their own souls to the things of God, which is .one of

The Motives to Disciples hip. 143

the deadliest results of sin. First of all, if they go' on in sin they are sure to meet terrible retribution in this world, and perpetual disaster and agony in the world to come. Here then, primarily, is the duty of God's people in this world, to stay the ravages of destructive sin upon human souls. If there were no hereafter, if this life were the only life, it would still be the noblest philanthropy for benevolent spirits to arrest the pro- gress of drunkenness through society ; to put a stop to the strifes, the sicknesses, the murders, the miseries and the insanity, which are its fruitful progeny; to ward off from the young and inexperienced the lust and licen- tiousness which soil the souls of men, and ruin their bodies ; to lessen the sum of human evil which is added to by habits of gambling and practices of theft; to quench out malignant passions, which generate the bickerings of families, the feuds of tribes and factions, and the wars of nationalities ; and to free the world from the poisonous influences of the principle of selfish- ness, which is the grandest instrument of the Adversary in the heart of sinful men.

These are some of the blasting fruits of sin, as we see it in this world. Every where it breeds distortion, deformity, destitution and pestilence among men. And the true and proper work of Christianity is to destroy these works of the devil here, in this world, which is his chosen field of death and disaster.

144 The Motives to Discipleship.

But the spirits of men reach over from time into eternity. These spirits, moreover, were made for the grandest purposes of the eternal world. Take the most abject of human beings, the most degraded, the most criminal. Think that he was fashioned by the Creator with a capacity which was to gauge, as far as finite com- prehension is able, the attributes of God, and to take in the vast and stupendous economy and the awful decrees of God. And see how every joint of his moral being has become unhinged, every pillar of his grand spiritual nature fractured and prostrate ! But alas ! millions of such spiritual ruins crowd the lanes and alleys of every civilized land, fill up the vast populations of heathen islands and pagan continents.

Now the work of God's Church is the restoration of these wretched immortals to original simplicity and purity through the blood of Christ and by the power of His truth. Duty to man demands solicitude for his sal- vation. It is my humanity which is degraded by sin and depravity. I am under the responsibility of a Christian soldier to join in with good men and the Divine Master to uproot the evils of the world.

Added to all this come the promptings of love. Back of all the demonstrations of depravity the Christian discerns the lineaments of a grand and noble nature, fresh, fair, lofty, and majestic, as man was when he first came from the hand of his Maker.

The Motives to Discipleship. 145

Just as an artist, when he comes upon an old and begrimed picture, the work of some grand master — what cares he for the rust, the tarnish, and the dingy smoke and dust, which hide its beauty from sight ? The beauty he knows is there ; and his soul is ravished by it, albeit it is yet undisclosed to sight. And he puts himself to zealous, delicate work to get at it. So the soul of sinful man is a beautiful, precious, and a price- less gem. It is the image of the eternal God. All his faculties were made after the fashion of the grandest model. All his capacities are fitted to the noblest ends. Every endowment, however perverted, has a latent apti- tude to all the grand conceptions and the lofty schemes which are pleasing to the Almighty, and which attract the admiration of angels. All this power is now unused, all this ability misdirected ; but Christians, like their master, have been enabled to see the exquisite fin- ish of the grand machinery of the human soul, and are zealous for its complete restoration and its perfect work- ing, not only for the relations of this life, but above all f )r the celestial spheres in which it shall engage in the same grand duties which command the zeal of the arch- angel.

3. One higher reason than all still remains why the confession of Christ is a duty and obligation. Obliga- tions are like the rings which form on the surface of waters when a pebble is thrown into the stream. They 10

146 The Motives to Discipleship.

have their natural order, from less to greater. They are at first the tiniest circles. But they expand and grow wider, until, at length, their circumferences touch the opposite banks of a river. The primal orbit of duty is the personal one; but when once the spring of the regenerate heart is touched, then all the limitations of selfish regard are broken, and the outflow of the sym- pathies and affections becomes both fervid and exhaust- less. The fulness and the nobleness of human duty is found in the motives which pertain to the Infinite. It is only when our spirits arrive at the eternal throne that they find the peace which passeth understanding.

The glory of God then is the highest end of a reason- able and a loyal existence. There are certain tenden- cies planted in our constitution which drive us onward to the highest. There is a prying, penetrating faculty in our nature which makes us restless and dissatisfied when we come to any of the supposed bounds of nature or of spirit. We wish to break beyond the confines of both sense and understanding. The impulse within us is to bound from the finite over into the infinite. God Himself has put this impulse in our nature ; and man can never reach repose and satisfaction until this upward tendency is somewhat answered and satisfied.

It is precisely the same with those loyal, reasonable creatures who encircle forever the throne of God in transcendent glory. The angels in heaven are oblivious

The Motives to Discipleship. 147

to personal regards ; they stream forth in burning ardor from their own being to the highest spiritual satisfac- tion in the service of Jehovah. All their life is spent in praise and adoration. Every glimpse we get in the Bible of their being shows that its master end is the glory of their king. Now angelic life, wherever and in whatever way it discloses itself to our sight in Holy Scripture, is a pattern and a model of what our life should be here on earth. It is one of the steps of a high ladder, by which we are to mount up to God, and show forth His glory.

Observe here that all things are to set forth the divine glory, the inanimate things of creation, and then surely all the spiritual creatures of God.

First, this visible frame of earth, with its light and beauty, the bright heavens above, the majestic sun and its surrounding luminaries, are the primal manifestations of the divine glory. They speak the praise of their Maker.

Then comes man, in his best estate — man, in his saintship and excellence, seen in the glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs. The end of this grand galaxy of purity and spiritual brightness is the majesty and glory of God.

Then, in their order, we reach the noble retinue of angels. In shining columns they surround the eternal

I48 The Motives to Discipleship.

throne ; but their everlasting theme, alike in every act and joyous song is, "Glory! glory! glory!"

Thus the whole universe is designed for one grand and lofty end, — the praise and honor of the Almighty, "that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ ! "

The train of thought brought before you this morn- ing shows the great dignity of your calling as disciples, the high prerogatives of your position. If you are true and faithful men, you are living under the control of the noblest incentives which can prompt the life and being of any spiritual existences. You are pursuing the ends which challenge all earthly rivalry. No matter how lowly your positions or how ordinary your capacity ; you are, by virtue of your lofty motives and your sacred aims, called to be kings and priests to our God. The restoration of a fallen world and the glory of the eter- nal King, set before you as the great ends of being, make you co-workers with God in all the grand schemes of His endless government. I What a noble function is this for feeble, mortal man ! What an exalted privilege ! Surely,

A Christian is the highest kind of man.

Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you are

called. Strive to be what you seem to be, what you

, profess to be. Grasp the deepest scriptural convictions,

and then strive to express them by decided holiness of

The Motives to Discipleship. I49

life. Base your religion upon the redemption of Jesus. Show it forth by the strictest morality and the sweetest cheerfulness.

So shall men see and feel that you live with the Lord, that you have learned the secret of the Lord, that you are in very deed, as well as in name, His true disciples, and His faithful followers.

SERMON X.

The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity.

THE AGENCIES TO SAINTLY SANCTIFICATION.

Col. i, 10.

That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good zvork, and increasing in the knowledge of God.

The Epistle for this Sunday is most valuable to us, this morning, as Communicants. For it contains very- rich lessons pertaining to the sanctification of saints, and this special verse is chosen from the whole para- graph, inasmuch as it presents, in a condensed form, two or three excellent injunctions bearing upon the subject. In approaching our Lord's Table, as it is our duty to be thinking how we can become better men and women, how we can "grow in grace and in the knowl- edge of God," the subject of the sanctification of our souls must be a most profitable one for every one of us duly to consider.

You all remember, no doubt, the words of the cate- chism upon this subject. The children, surely, we trust, will carry them fresh in their memories. After the recitation of the Creed, comes the question, "What

(150)

The Agencies to Saintly Sanctijication. 151

dost thou chiefly learn in these Articles of thy Belief ? " And the answer is given, " Thirdly, to believe in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me, and all the people of God."

Now in this, three things are to be noticed :

1st. The meaning of sanctification ; which is the spiritual process by which fallen men become holy.

2d. The prime agent, without whose aid there can be no possible growth in grace, which agency is the power of the Holy Ghost, who is called in the Nicene Creed "the Lord and Giver of life." But

3d. Concurrent with the Holy Ghost is another fac- tor, inferior indeed in the work of sanctity, but never- theless an indispensable power thereto, and that is our own personal wills. We cannot take a single step in the pathway of holiness without divine assistance. The Holy Ghost was sent into this world to " convince it of righteousness," to "guide us into all truth," to "take the things of Jesus and show them unto us." Without His gracious influences we can do nothing. But in order to become saintly we must do something our- selves. The Holy Ghost will never carry us to heaven, without our own wills, and our own holy actions. To be saints we must " work out our salvation with fear and trembling," relying upon God to work "within us to will and to do of His good pleasure." Such is the teaching of St. Paul in the Epistle for the day. It is an

152 The Agencies to Saintly Sanctification.

earnest exhortation to use the appointed means adapted to the sanctification of souls.

1. The Apostle enjoins, first of all, that we "walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing." The idea is that disciples should maintain a regular uniform regard to the will of God, if they would grow in grace and holiness. It is in the will of any beings that they find coincidence and unity. All the pleasure of life springs from the harmony of wills, whether it be in domestic, civil, or natural relations. And this "well pleasing" the apostle speaks of here (or, if you choose, you may call it satisfaction), is a sentiment which can only come from that chiming in of man's will with God's, which finds its truest expression in our Lord's prayer — " Thy will be done." In heaven this "well pleasing" is seen in the perfect accordance of angelic with the Divine thought and life. On earth it is only partially expressed in the lives of obedient saints. The command of the apostle, however, is based upon vows and promises. You have pledged yourselves " to keep God's holy will and commandments, and to walk in the same all the days of your life." This obedience is the point of unity between your hearts and the heart of God. Just there the little rivulets of our existence flow into the great ocean of God's eternal being. You gave your pledge to this end in Baptism. You renewed it in Confirmation. You have reasserted it over and over again at God's

The Agencies to Saintly Sanctificalion. 153

Altar in the Commemorative Sacrifice of His Son's death.

Now when the apostle says, "walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing," the idea presented is that of congruity. This is not a common word, it is true, but it is the best that can be used. Congruity means some- what that fits, agrees, or is equal with another. Thus, a picture is expected to conform to the original which it represents. If it does not, it is not a likeness. Thus, a photograph is exact and true, as it represents the face of the original. You look into a mirror; the image must conform to the reality, or else you say the glass is false. You all remember how, when we were children, we laughed at the fable of the greedy dog, his mouth full of meat, crossing a bridge, and who snatched at the piece of meat in the mouth of his own shadow, in the glassy water, and so lost his food. That glassy wrater gives the idea of a perfect mirror. Above and below, in substance and in shadow, there must be similarity, and then one gets the idea of congruity. Thus the poet sings, —

The swan, on still St. Mary's lake, Floats double, swan and shadow.

Now St. Paul calls for a like spiritual congruity in the Christian life of disciples. God is our model, and we are to be His likeness. It always was to have been so. The disasters of sin prevented it in our first

154 The Agencies to Saintly Sanctiftcation.

parents. But God never gives up His grand primal purposes. Man, from all eternity, was to be the image of God. Transgression has interfered, and endeavored to make man the image of the Evil One. But God sent His blessed Son into the world to redeem us from evil, that we may be " transformed by the renewing of our minds ; " that " we may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." The entire work of the Holy Ghost, in this dispensation, is by various divine devices to change, modify and elevate our nature, so that we may more and more conform to the divine image, and express, in our lives, the divine character.

In this process the Holy Ghost is the divine agent. But the human will is also an important factor. The sanctification of our nature into the divine likeness is no mere mechanical process. We have to shape and mould ourselves, with divine help, into the image of God. The process by which we shall do this is imita- tion. That is the grand faculty by which men are enabled to produce in themselves that gracious con- gruity, whereby they shall secure a likeness to their maker.

The great Edmund Burke says : " The second passion belonging to society is imitation or the habit of imita- ting." This is the method by which men reach to civ- ilization. They see superiority, and they copy it. It is

The Agencies to Saintly Sa/ictijication. 155

precisely the same in the domain of grace. God has revealed Himself in the person of His Son, in Whom resides "all the fulness of the Godhead bodily;" and who is declared "the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature." Here then, in our Blessed Lord, we have the standard. He is the model by which we may rise up to congruity to the divine character, and approach the beauty of holiness. Jesus is the way ; be like Him, live like Him, imitate Him. " He is the image of the invisible God," sent into this world for the express purpose, that man may follow His example, copy His life, and so reflect somewhat the likeness of the Maker.

Walk, then, worthy of the Lord; strive, first of all, to be partakers of the divine nature. For, to show forth God in your life, you must have God in you. Go to Him, live in Him. " Draw water from the wells of sal- vation." Get rid of yourself. "Give all for all ; seek nothing, require back nothing ; abide purely and with firm confidence in Christ, and thou shalt possess Him. * * * That being stript of all selfishness, thou may est with entire simplicity follow Jesus, and dying to thyself mayest live eternally to Him."

And then, next, possessed of the divine nature, show it forth. Let men see that you have been with Jesus, by an unearthly spirit ; by zeal for truth ; by holy deeds ; by a living faith, Set the Blessed Lord distinctly before

i$6 The Agencies to Saintly Sanctification.

you as your Chief, your Guide, and Leader ; and then walk in His footsteps, endeavoring in all things to do as He did, and to walk as He walked.

The result of such divine imitation is sure and cer- tain. You will so show forth in life and character, that divine pattern Who walked in perfectness the paths of life, that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ will look upon you with delight and satisfaction ; and that His voice from heaven will once again descend to earth, and penetrate to your own inner consciousness — "This too is My own beloved son in whom I am well pleased."

2. I turn now to the second injunction of the apostle : — "Beino- fruitful in everv °-ood work." Here consrruity comes forth in another form. Likeness to God is to show itself first of all, as we have seen, in similaritv. But now the apostle insists upon the show of another characteristic of the Almighty, that is, productiveness. We are to show the divine character in doing, as well as in being. The first requirement of the apostle was — be like God. This second one is, do as God does. It is laid down, too, as a means to our sanctification, and the relation of the one to the other is manifest. For as the multiplication of evil acts tends to the deepening of de- pravity in ungodly men, so does the repetition of good acts serve to develop the principle of holiness in our own hearts. This is a matter of both experience and observation. People who are given to offices of kind-

The Agencies to Saintly Sanciification. 157

ness, such as visiting the poor, or attending on the sick, or nursing little children, or caring for prisoners, at length beget a passion for such duties. At the begin- ning of such works they may, perchance, have to spur and stimulate themselves to duty. But the multiplica- tion of holy acts fixes the principle of holiness, until at length the gracious habit is formed, the love rises up with desire, and then almost imperceptibly, there is a gracious thirst in the heart for all the duties and offices of charity and kindness. Those of you who have read the life of Sister Dora, will remember that the longer she continued at the great work of her life, the more ardent became her zeal and devotedness ; until at last her holy heart was filled with the flames of a burning zealous love for the diseased, the halt, the lame, the blind and wretched.

Our great pattern, however, is the Lord Jesus Christ. This was one of the two grand ends for which He came into the world. He came to exemplify, in flesh and blood, the capability of man "to good works. And how fruitful He was in them! What a tide of generous and gracious acts ; nay, what a deep, profound, and mighty river of beneficence was that wondrous life which is our example ! Think of His condescending pity to the poor ! Think of His generous provision for the hungry ! Think of His mighty and marvellous works ; so many, that the beloved disciple declares his belief

158 The Agencies to Saintly Sanctification,

that if they were all recorded, " the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."

This fruitfulness of Jesus in good works brings to my mind that marvellous text He gives us in John v. 17. Did you ever think of this utterance of our Lord? "My Father worketh hitherto and I work."

Just look abroad through all the boundless areas of space. Think of the systems upon systems of worlds, stretching far away beyond the keenest glance of tele- scopic vision. Think of the probability of the existence of created beings from countless ages in many of these worlds. Astronomers tell us that some of these worlds are hoar with age, dating from vast epochs in the past ; and others of them of later, if not of recent origin. I sit down and am overwhelmed at the idea of God's working and weaving worlds upon worlds, through eter- nal ages ; and carrying on through infinitude grand and wonderful schemes of glory and beneficence to myriads upon myriads of creatures j restless, if I may say it with reverence, for divine and gracious activities ; coming forth spontaneously from the solicitude of His awful Being, eager to scatter everywhere through boundless space, light, and air, and heat, and glittering dews, and abounding fruitfulness ; and in the domain of the spirit — life, sense, reason, spirit, conscience, gifts, graces, and benefactions, upon the spirits of angels and men; working, working, working through vast and endless

The Agencies to Saintly Sanctification. i$C)

eternities. Here, brethren, is the pattern of your sanc- tified life: — "My Father worketh hitherto and I work." As you imitate this beneficent and all-gracious original, so will you fashion your inner nature more and more to His excellency and glory. Remember then that pro- ductiveness is a divine quality ; and in saints is a grand means of sanctification. "Being fruitful in good works;" so glorifying God, and so, too, lifting up our souls, to excellence and divine purity.

3. We come now to the third instrumentality men- tioned by the apostle for the sanctification of saints: " Increasing in the knowledge of God." This agency of divine grace is linked in, if you will notice it, with that which we have been just considering. The apostle seems to present the matter in the form of sequence; as though he would say: if you abound in righteous- ness, if you are fruitful in good works, then you shall arrive at a higher degree of divine acquaintance. This no doubt is the mind of Saint Paul. It is certainly the teaching of Scripture, and it is the result of experience. Doing always enlightens. When Christopher Columbus started out on the trackless seas in search of a new world, he knew absolutely nothing of that world ; but by doing, he grasped the grandest geographical light of all the ages. He sailed across the ocean and discovered a continent. It is precisely the same in all the spheres of knowledge. Science nowhere reveals its secrets, save

160 The Agencies to Saintly Sanctijication.

by dint of active, prying investigation. This, too, is the key to the knowledge of God. If we are fruitful in good works, the more and more shall we increase in the knowledge of God. Our blessed Lord lays this down as a law of His kingdom. "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of Myself."

What is it, my brethren, to have a knowledge of God ? Have you ever put this question to yourselves? You know what it is to know a man : say, a father or a friend, a poet or an orator, a Shakespeare or a Milton, a Webster or a Gladstone. It is, as you are aware, to explore his mind, to get a thorough acquaintance with his principles and motives, his plans and purposes, and to come into accord with his desires and aspirations. Is not this what we mean when we speak of knowing a man? What difference can there be with respect to knowing God? Is it not the like apprehension on the part of one spirit with another? To know God, as I understand it, is to look into His mind, to approach the eternal spirit of the universe, to see how God thinks and purposes, and feels and loves, to comprehend as far as we can His grand and majestic nature, to sympathize so as to be in thorough accord and submission with Him. And can you conceive of any mode easier and more effective for the increase of your piety? Will not the approach of your spirit to the eternal spirit, lift you up

The Agencies to Saintly Sanctification. 161

to ecstacy ? Will you not become fascinated by His beauty? Will not your earthiness necessarily fall off from you? Will not heaven, and heavenly things, per- force, absorb your interest and your thought? Must you not thereby become more and more weaned from temporal regards, and so enraptured with things sacred and eternal?

There can be no need to argue such a question, for the testimony of all the saints in all the ages confirms this truth. Everywhere on earth where men have lived for God, and worked for God, their souls have been ad- vanced to clearer views of His nature, and keener insight into His attributes has gradually but gloriously dawned upon their spirits. Broader apprehensions of God's plans and systems have reached their understand- ing. And then, as their knowledge of God increased, so their love grew, and their whole nature became more and more conformed to the divine. It may be affirmed as an absolute truth that only those who know not God exclaim: "Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways. What is the Almighty that we should serve Him? What profit should we have if we pray unto Him?"

On the other hand, the lofty men who have made

even the smallest advance in the knowledge of divine

things, hunger and thirst to know more. Thus the

great moral heathen of ancient times, men who had no

ii

1 62 The Agencies to Saintly Sanctification.

Holy Scripture to guide them, men whose only knowl- edge of God came from natural religion, expressed the deepest anxiousness to know more of God. Few things are so touching as their lamentations over the narrowrange of their acquaintance with the things of God. And then, still further, it is remarkable the rapture of holy men of old over their divine knowledge. Says David : "Oh, taste and see how gracious the Lord is." And you all remember the fervid exclamation of St. Paul: "Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judg- ments, and His ways past rinding out!" And this longing desire and hunger of the saints is not mere intellectual desire or astonishment. No; it is the awakening of a spiritual appetite, it is the opening of the eyes of the soul, it is the stirring up of a moral susceptibility to "comprehend with all saints the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of God which passeth knowledge, yea, and to be filled with all the fulness of God."

With two simple remarks the subject may be closed. First, let me say that the subject of discourse to-day, serves to impress us all with a deep sense of our large capacity. We have belittled ourselves by sin ; we are constantly more or less dwarfing our being by transgres- sion. But nevertheless, we are creatures of vast ability; we have natures of the noblest powers. No man here

The Agencies to Saintly Sanctificatioti. 1 63

can tell the largeness and the grandeur to which his soul can stretch. No man here can estimate the lofty excellence to which his soul may be fitted. Men do this little thing, they commit that mean act, they go down to vileness, they degrade themselves to infamy. But all this is contrary to our true nature, opposed to the design and destiny for which God made the living spirit of man. "He made him little lower than the angels," and for what ? "To crown him with glory and worship." That is the end and object of man's existence: glory and worship ; and the Holy Ghost is here, in the church, to correct and rectify the fallen spirits of men, that they may rise up to their original design.

"Behold," says the Almighty, "all souls are mine!" and He comes, He, the maker of all spirits, by Jesus Christ, with solicitude and grace, to live in the souls of men, and, by the Holy Ghost, to sanctify them with the riches of His grace, to fitness to eternal glory. And so, reciprocally, the souls of men must needs go forth and rise up to meet the divine Father, and make that gracious surrender of themselves and their all, which is salvation and eternal glory.

Into this pathway of holiness press on, without fear and without discouragement. Every possible encour- agement is given to cheer the steps of true disciples. Grand spiritual attainment attends their every footfall. The noblest acquisitions await their persistent and

164 The Agencies to Saintly Sanctification.

godly perseverance. All the promises of God are theirs. Theirs too all the resources, all the choicest influences of the heavenly powers. "All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come ; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's."

SERMON XI.

The Third Sunday in Lent. AFFLUENCE AND RECEPTIVITY.

PS. LXXXI, 10.

Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.

This is a figurative expression, and it indicates that man is a creature of vast spiritual capacity. If it were addressed to our carnal, i. e., our physical nature, we could have no difficulty whatever in understanding it. If, for instance, a friend should invite us to a breakfast party, and should say, " Come with an appetite : eat nothing at home. I know the very things you like, and I want to please and gratify you," not one of us would misunderstand him. The text, however, is addressed to a higher nature than the physical. The appetite to which it appeals is the spiritual one within us. Men are rarely in full consciousness of that deep, strong, original aptitude of human nature for the things of God. For sin has so deeply impaired our nature, that atrophy and nausea have fallen upon our spiritual faculties, and our moral perceptions have become gross and insensi- ble. But the faculties are in us. Notwithstanding the

(165)

1 66 Afflu nee and Receptivity.

inroads of guilt and depravity, they have never been extirpated ; and the aim of the whole scheme of religion is restoration of our moral being to completeness and its original beauty.

And so the voice of God is ever uplifted, even as at first to Adam in the garden, calling upon man either to know his place in the order of creation; or to awake from the dust to heavenly desires; or to rise up again to worship of God; or to participate in the new crea- tion guaranteed by the Spirit. In the text this morning the call is a very clear one to each and every spirit.

The text shows God's estimate and acknowledgment of man's spiritual capacity. It does not ignore the actual fact of man's depravity. That is constantly set before us in the sacred word. But the great Father goes back of all the demonstrations of 'sin and guilt, to that original constitution which He gave us when He breathed into man "the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Sin has impaired and sullied that divine image, which was then made the crown of man's exist- ence ; but it has not entirely extirpated it. Man is still, though sullied and defiled, still the image of God; and God, knowing all the capacity of that divine element in our nature, constantly appeals to it in His Holy Word, and strives, by His holy spirit, to bring out all its force.

In this estimate of man's spiritual capacity God can make no mistake. You can err, for instance, about your

Affluence and Receptivity. 1 6/

son's ability. You may send him to school or college intending that he shall outshine all his fellows. Exag gerating his powers, you may demand of him to stand first in his class, outrivalling all his mates. Yet he may disappoint your expectations, because he finds superiors in more than one of his companions. But there can be no such error on the part of the Almighty. He knows every faculty, and the force of every faculty in the spir- itual constitution of man ; and hence, when we light upon such a passage as the text, and come to under- stand its deep spiritual meaning, we may learn very much of the largeness and the profundity of that grand spiritual nature which God has given us. The demand, "Open thy mouth wide," is addressed to no shallow and ephemeral quality in any man here this morning. You may be vain and foolish, you may be gross and wicked ; but there are fixed and abiding elements in your being, which, though sin may overshadow, it cannot annihilate. The ideas of God and duty, the fitness for responsibil- ity, the spring of the inner nature towards immortal life, the sentiment of love, with its boundless range, — these inhere in the soul of every man. They may lie dormant in the inner caves of our personal existence, unused and encrusted by guilt, but they are integral qualities. Nothing — not guilt, not neglect, not the insane denial of these divine qualities, not even the sui- cide's hand, can cast out of our being these exalted

1 68 Affluence and Receptivity.

powers and prerogatives. There is a section of our being "which cannot, but by annihilating, die." It is a majestic fact, and it brings with it the most awful responsibility that we are beings of a constitution akin to the divine, and that we shall live forever !

Now the reference of the text, in its first section, is to this quality of our nature. When God says, "Open thy mouth wide," he refers to an actual capacity in us, latent though it be, which, quickened by the Spirit, may reach up to heaven in lofty aspirations, and take in all the things of God. So, too, the other portion of the text, for it has two terms: "open thy mouth wide," is one, and "I will fill it," the other. The promise here given us is equally as significant with regard to our nature as is the command. It is a declaration that when the immortal demands of our inner being are once quickened into life, that there is but one Being in the universe who can answer and supply them. And this is another tribute to the splendid capacity of our nature, fallen though it be.

The text implies that no man can meet this special need of the soul. Man is a creature fitted to very great helps and assistances to his fellow-man. Man supplies the bodily, the mental, even some of the spiritual needs of his fellow creatures. So, too, the angels of God. They also are grand ministers to human needs and requirements. They come to us with divine succors

Afflttence and Receptivity, 1 69

and spiritual gifts. But, both with regard to angels and men, there is one identical fact, which separates their functions and offices, by an almost infinite distance, from the secret gifts of the Almighty. The work of men and angels in our behalf is an intermediate work. They are but instrumental in their beneficence. The good they do is not from original sources in themselves, but comes indirectly from a higher being. But the text is a declaration that there is a supreme and infinite need, the supply of which is God's exclusive preroga- tive. There is a point in our nature which only the Almighty can reach. There is a substance and a gift, which no created being can furnish. They lie beyond and above finite and limited power, and are given over to the soul of man direct and immediate from the gra- cious heart of God Himself. And hence the entreaty of the text, "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it"; because God only can fill these infinite needs of the immortal soul !

Having reached this point in our consideration of the text, having learned, to some extent, what we are, and what we are capable of through grace, we can now advance to an important question suggested by the text, and that is, What is the reach you are going to make in divine holiness ? How far will you stretch forth in godly desires and aspirations ? Or will you hem your- self in by gross and carnal limitations ?

I?0 Affluence and Receptivity.

Now, unless there is some great mistake in the state- ment, there is nothing very obscure in dealing with this question. The Gospel sets this matter very clearly before us, as a most practical subject in all its aspects. The scriptural line of spiritual culture, which will serve to answer the demand made in the text, is the call of God to our internal being, "Raise yourself up to large spiritual desires ! Stretch the hands of your soul to vast spiritual acquisitions ! Lay hold of the treasures of the eternal kingdom ! Claim and gain the inexhaust- ible riches of Christ! " In what way shall we do this?

According to the relations of our common human nature, there are three special functions of the soul of man, which, properly exercised, will bring us to perfect and cordial obedience to the demands of the text : First, the attainment of a high order of morals ; second, the exercise of duty, that is, the performance of good works ; and, third, the rise of the soul to a state of lofty spirit- uality.

It is evident that this is not the natural order. The spiritual acquisition is the base, is the radical foundation of all the divine aptitudes. But, for convenience, we will approach this, the highest acquisition, in the reverse order; for, in this manner, it will, most likely, serve both your and my soul the larger advantage.

First of all, then, if you would attain to a lofty, grand preeminence of spiritual growth, fix it in your

Affluence and Receptivity, 17 1

minds to be men and women of a high order of morals. Not as though the advice be given to begin with moral- ity. God forbid ! The beginning of all true soul-life is in the spiritual; but, assuming that you are spiritual, that you have repented and believed, and that, having entered upon the Christian life, led by the Spirit of grace, you are anxious to reach the stature of perfect men in Christ. Lay the foundations of your piety deep in the purest morals ! Settle it as an axiom in religion that there is no such thing possible as true godliness without morality. If you will carefully consider the matter, you will see, at a glance, this deep necessity.

For, first of all, what is a true spiritual life in any man's soul? It is, without doubt, the forming of the divine character within. It is the approach, by as rapid stages as possible, to the image of God, by the influence of the Holy Ghost and the concurrent energy of our own wills. In this process, the moral law acts in two ways to our growth and elevation. It is a result, first of all ; and then, by reflex action, it is a cause. Moral obedience is, first of all, one of the first results of felt spiritual life within us. One of the foremost impulses of a converted soul is conformity to God's will. Nay, more and higher than this : conversion itself is the set- ting in of the tides of the human will unto the will of God. What God wills, we will. What God condemns, we reject with aversion and abhorrence. All our likes,

172 Affluence and Receptivity.

on the one hand, all our desires, all our tendencies, all our feelings, all our affections, all our loves, turn to be just the same as God's. As God loves truth and just- ice, purity and virtue, light and excellency, so do we. It is the sure and certain sign of a converted soul, that it runs in the channels, flows with the currents of the perfect will of God.

Take the aspect of the case just the reverse of this: observe the things which God rejects and discount- enances. Run down the line of the Ten Command- ments, and note the crimes which are condemned therein. Can you suppose, for a moment, a loyal, spirit- ual heart in the brotherhood of the Church, deliber- ately, wilfully, and habitually living in such sins ? Can you imagine pure spirits in Paradise contemplating with pleasure a breach of these laws ? Can you conceive the possibility of an angel in heaven looking with satis- faction upon the least infraction of the moral law ?

No ! It is the instinct of all true saintship, that the very first fruit of the spiritual soul is conformity to law. It is the immediate and direct result of the divine life in us to bring us into happy acquiescence with divine morality. The spontaneous outgrowth of the divine life is excellence.

Set it down, then, among your deepest convictions that to be lofty saints you must be sternly and severely moral. Let that truth be, as it were, the gauge of your

Affluence and Receptivity. 1 73

piety. Alas, we live in an age when we ofttimes see but little difference between the Church and the world ! We live in times when, on every side, the wide separa- tion of morality from religion is too plainly apparent ! And hence the spots and stains upon the Church of Christ, the taint in the character of so many pro- fessed disciples, the scoff of the world at the claims of the Gospel ! How glorious will be the influence of Christ's religion when the world shall see the saints everywhere in conflict with unrighteousness, and their lives "unspotted from the world." Make this the one supreme ambition of your souls. Strive to be good. Let the pitch of your sanctitude be a very high one. Harass yourselves with discontent whenever you see the deviation of your souls from the rigid line of moral rectitude. St. Paul, even before he saw the Crucified, could declare, " Touching the righteousness which is in the law — blameless!" Surely, we, having seen, by faith, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, must rise to a purer standard than his legal conformity. Let us, with strong spiritual desire, reach forth to the highest and the purest. "Open thy mouth wide!" Determine, by God's help, to live the strictest lives, and by the Spirit's aid to attain stainless holiness. " For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teach- ing us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this pres-

174 Affluence and Receptivity.

ent world, looking for that blessed hope and the glori- ous appearing of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ, Who gave himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."

But observe, next, that another stretch of the soul to high spiritual excellence is to be attained by the exer- cise of duty, that is, the doing of good works. Practi- cal goodness bears somewhat the same relation to emi- nent piety that husbandry does to the production of good crops, or the care of the gardener to the growth of beautiful flowers. It is, under God, the actual uplifting of the soul from one degree of holiness to another. It is the cultivation of the Christian graces ; and, observe, all true cultivation tends to growth and expansion.

Now there are two kinds of piety in the church ; one is your passive, inactive, undemonstrative piety, which sits in the centre and lives by itself. The other is your active, gracious, productive piety, which overflows in goodness and mercy to others. And this — you can tell it almost in the dark ; you can see it with but half-open eyes. It is visible to sight, if even you are veiled : — for it is so big a thing, it has so much magnitude, that you cannot mistake it. Do you not know people in your circle, always ready to work for Christ, to give for Christ, to sacrifice for Christ, quiet as babes in speech about holiness, active as bees and beavers in works of

Affluence and Receptivity. 175

righteousness ? What a greed there is in such people for Sunday-school work ; for relief of the sick ; for help to the needy ; for care of the orphan ; for gifts to the church ; for society labors ; and yet how unconscious of their own goodness, how unostentatious in the show of their real piety.

Now, in all such cases there has been a stretch of the soul after sanctity ; an eager reaching forth of the spirit after saintliness. In the inner chambers of such souls, there has been heard the divine demand: — "open thy mouth wide;" and the eager spirit has rushed forward for duty, in the line of good and gracious deeds. It was this quest and anxiousness put into their hearts by the Holy Ghost, which gave birth to all their holy deeds. It was perchance the sensitive living question, welling up from a soul full of gratitude for the great salvation vouchsafed it by a living Saviour : " What wilt thou have me to do ?" and then the instant obedi- ence in the Christian work, right at hand, which called for duty. From that beginning has flowed those other generous deeds and patient zealous efforts, which have glorified Christ among men. And always, in such cases, the fruit which duty yields has been a certainty. You cannot labor in charities and gracious duty for Christ without His blessing. St. Paul says in one place, "As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich ; having nothing, and yet possessing

176 Affluence and Receptivity.

all things. O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged." It was this very benefi- cence of his generous, overflowing soul enriching others, which served to enlarge his heart. Indeed, if you get out of self, if you range beyond the circumference of personal regards, greatness and nobleness are your sure reward, whether you are conscious or unconscious of it. There seems to be a capacity in the generous soul to add on other souls to its own ; to bring the tides of other lives into the reservoir of its own spirit life. This is the enlargement to which St. Paul refers. By doing good to others for Christ's sake, we expand our own being ; we multiply the force of our sympathies and affections ; we reduplicate the power of our loving energy ; we live over again, in personal experience, the saintly life of philanthropists and good Samaritans ; we chime in with the beneficence and graciousness of min- istering angels ; yea, above all, we become co-workers with Christ our Saviour, in all the invisible healing restoration and renewing of His blessed life.

And so it will follow that obedience to the text will show itself, in the purposed rise of the soul to a high spirituality. This topic is left for the last, because it is the most important ; it is the very base of all spiritual acquisition. In the domain of the spirit, spiritual things, spiritual aims, spiritual efforts, spiritual long- ings, are the foremost of all things. If you are not

Affluence and Receptivity. \JJ

spiritual, not uplifted above flesh and the world, holding both body and sense in subjection, then you can enter- tain no vast desires ; nor can you feel the motions of any large and masterful cravings of the soul, for light, for excellence, for divine beauty, as personal posses- sions. By the word spiritual is meant something plain and apparent to sense ; and in no way extravagant and fanatical. It is not, as some would suppose, to be angels or disembodied spirits, but it is to be men and women in the flesh, but above it; serving Christ by the impulses of the Spirit dwelling in us ; using the world as but an instrument ; " bringing every thought unto the obedience of Christ." See how St. Paul defines this fact of spirituality. "They," he says, "that are after the Spirit, do mind the things of the Spirit." " But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin ; but the Spirit is life, because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die ; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."

12

178 Affluence and Receptivity,

So much, then, for the ideal or principle descriptive of what is spiritual life. And now we can turn for a moment to the evidence that is to be found in ourselves that we have this principle implanted in us. That evi- dence discovers itself in those characteristic spiritual acts of the soul, into which, as sons of God, the saints are led by the Spirit of God. And here the whole field of saintly life lies spread out before us, so that we can- not err. All of its rich productiveness is the fruit of the Spirit. It brings to our sight, in exceeding bril- liancy, the faith and prayerful mightiness of Abraham; the calm meditativeness of Isaac; the crystal purity of Joseph ; the serene and unspotted godliness of Samuel ; the burning flames of Elijah; the calm constancy of David ; the stern self-sacrifice and zealous fervor of the Baptist ; the fiery ardor of holy Paul ; the loveliness of St. John the divine.

These lives, these extraordinary characters are facts. They are the productive fruit of both that spiritual longing, and that internal spiritual endeavor of living souls, which rose up in rebellion against the dominion of sense, and fought an effectual warfare with the flesh ; and so, through grace, reached forth to sanctity. Never would God's church have gained to herself the bright example of such lives, save by the fastings and watch- ings, the patience and humility, the afflictions and dis- tresses, the supplications and the prayers of earnest

Affluence and Receptivity. 179

men, who were determined to attain in some measure the divine and heavenly, even while tabernacling in the flesh. For there is verily a power given by the Spirit to saintly souls, to fasten their attention upon "the things which are not seen," and which "are eternal." The faith and love of the heart can be so uplifted that even mortal man may hunger and thirst after right- eousness. There is a state and condition reached by holy men and women,, wherein the saints watch and wait with anxiousness for the coming of their Lord. Such glorious spirits entered the kingdom of God, ex- pecting • large things. They were the violent, who seized upon the things of God with loving ardor and burning desires. They "opened their mouth wide," and God filled it. And so from small spiritual begin- nings, they reached the stature of perfect men in Christ.

The sum of what has been advanced may be stated as enforcing these two lessons. 1st. That you must avoid as though it were death, the idea of spiritual finality, in the attainments of grace. Never think you have enough of God and God's Spirit. Never be satis- fied with any successes you have reached in holiness. You will always find, if you will only seek it, somewhat higher, holier, divine and ineffable, in the heavens above, in God around you, which you need, and which by God's grace you can get hold of Never pause in your career,

i8o Affluence and Receptivity.

saying to the deceived and languid soul, "Rest and be thankful." But press on ever to higher, nobler, and more spiritual heights.

And, 2d, the other lesson taught us by this subject is that there is a law of progress implanted in our nature, which has no limitation. No man here can tell how high he can go in excellence — how far he can reach in godly purity. In the very idea of immortality is implied somewhat that is limitless and unconfined ; and so we can by God's grace, stretch out farther and farther, until we are lost in God Himself. O grand and noble acqui- sition ! O blessed and heavenly consummation ! May the Spirit of God, now present with us in holy worship, put this desire and purpose in every heart. May this be the divine gift to every soul here to-day ; but especially, for those persons who this morning have given themselves to God in Holy Baptism. All of you here this morning will join in this prayer alike, for the little maiden and the mature man, who have made their vows before men, the holy angels, and our God, at this altar; and so, too, for the other persons and the children who this evening will give themselves up to Christ, in Koly Confirmation. No better beginning could they make than this, for it is God's way. Only remember that the river on which you have embarked has no end; that the ocean on which you sail is shoreless. Carry to God the intensest desires of your spirit. " Open thy mouth wide, and He will fill it."

SERMON IX.

CHRIST RECEIVING AND EATING WITH SINNERS.

The eighteenth Sunday after Trinity.

ST. LUKE, XV : 2.

And the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying: This Man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.

Sermon IV (part 3)

This is a charge made by the Pharisees against our blessed Lord. To understand its point and signifi- cance, we must needs pause for a moment to consider the character of the men who brought the accusation.

The Pharisees were the most numerous and powerful of the different sects which, at that time, existed among the Jews. Their chief characteristic was the claim to superior moral purity. So far as the Law, in its literal outward requirement, was concerned, doubtless they were strict and rigid observers of it.

Our Lord in a parable, represents a Pharisee as stand- ing before the Almighty, and pleading in His presence his own personal purity. No truer picture could have been drawn of this self-righteous sect. Their whole mind was set upon mere outward observances ; utterly regardless of the inner spirit and purpose of the Law.

1 82 Christ Receiving and Eating with Sinners.

<i

They practised the most rigid nicety in all external matters. There was not a rite or ceremony commanded in the Law, which they did not strictly keep. They were the most thorough and fanatical legalists the world ever knew, and they were nothing more. And yet this people knew nothing of the true spirit of religion. They were the greatest extortioners of the age. They were the most grievous oppressors of the poor, the orphan, and the widow. They indulged in the most cruel, relentless, and unforgiving hate. They waged a ceaseless warfare against all real truth, all lofty sacred purity. As Jews, they subverted all the high and gracious purposes of the moral law; and as subjects of the Roman government, they were constantly plotting sedition and fomenting rebellion.

These were the men who were the fiery and malig- nant persecutors of our Lord. With minds intent upon the petty minutiae of the mere letter of the Law, they were incapable of understanding the lofty purity, and the glowing excellence of the Great Teacher, who came from God. The strong contrast of their puerile, trifling legalism, with His broad humanity and divine spirit- uality, only excited their hate. Hence, the Pharisees were constantly using every possible annoyance to bring to bear, against our Lord, all the artillery of their malig- nant opposition. No lies were too venomous for their tongues. They went everywhere, now among the Jews,

Christ Receiving and Eating with Sinners. 1 83

and now among the Romans, infusing the poison of their malice, with the ultimate purpose of compassing His destruction.

It is singular, however, that in the case before us, the Pharisees stumbled for once upon the truth. No credit, however, is due to them for their veracity, for it was unintentional. Their purpose was a bad one. Their object was to detract from our Lord's holiness, and to bring Him into such universal unpopularity, that the people, in a frenzy of violent rage, might bring about His destruction.

Their end was at last accomplished. The purpose for which they had striven with such intense desire is at length successful. He is nailed to the cross, the vic- tim of Jewish malice, mainly brought about by the Pharisees ; but their malicious charge survives and abides forever, as the crowning glory of the Redeemer : "This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them."

The accusation brought against our Lord was true. He did receive sinners, and eat with them. His disci- ples never attempted to conceal this fact ; but, on the other hand, they have again and again recorded it in Holy Scripture, and thus spread abroad through all the world this manifestation of His sympathy with those whom He came to save. Believers, in these days, have no desire to deny this charge. On the contrary, we single out this, among the divers other peculiarities of

I S4 Christ Receiving and Eating with SinnerS.

our Lord's life, as a marked and precious trait of His pure and gracious character. And this not because of the inevitable fact that in this world He could find none others but sinners with whom to associate. We fall back upon no such miserable platitude as this, in expla- nation of the charge. We acknowledge the truth of this Pharisaical libel. We admit fully the indictment which was made by these men ; nay, we recognize and avow its exact and literal truth. What they fling at the head of our Master as the most blackening calumny, we gladly accept as a token of the tenderness and com- passion of Him who came to seek and to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel. True, they meant it as a grievous charge that He companied with people who had been gross and impure in character. We accept the accusation in this, its barest sense, and hold it up as an integral and vital element in the character of our Saviour. For, first, it was one of the everlasting pur- poses of the Messiah to quit, in the fulness of the times, the glories of heaven, and to condescend to the estate and companionship of sinners. Having laid aside, as it were, His divinity, and taken upon Him our nature, He purposely chose to associate, not with the holy angels of heaven, not with glorified saints who had been purged from earthly taint and sinfulness, but with guilty men, sinful as ourselves, human beings conceived in sin and born in iniquity. Just such sinners He first of all

Christ Receiving and Eating with Simters. 185

called to Himself, to be His chosen companions and apostles, and just such He admitted to His favor and closest intimacy. And then, afterward, He gathered around Him the very outcasts of the earth ; men bruised, wounded, lacerated, both in body and soul ; beggars, cripples, lepers, publicans, harlots, those possessed with the devil ; but through His power and His aid now freed from iniquity and rejoicing in the light. This accusation, then, so far as it was a formal charge, made with all the bitterness of personal malignity, was true. We take no account, just here, of the animus which prompted it. We waive, for the moment, altogether, the hateful purpose of His accusers, and admit, without reservation, that this man, our Lord and Master, " received sinners and ate with them."

Let us see how we can account for this fact, which the Pharisees brought forward as a bitter charge against Him. Of necessity, our resort must be to character, for a satisfactory reason for this singular choice, on the part of so exalted and so pure a person as was our Lord. The Scriptures set before us the essential elements of His character, wherein we see justice and power on the one hand, truth, love, and mercy on the other. You will observe these traits are divided into two classes. In which of them resides the quality which moved our blessed Lord, as by an overpowering impulse, to minister and mingle with the vile, the wretched, the

1 86 Clirist Receiving and Eating with Smners.

miserable, bestowing upon them His tender offices and His healing love ?

Now, if justice alone had been the master attribute in His character, the world would never have seen His wondrous person, nor witnessed His saving works ; for the direct and legitimate tendency of simple justice is retribution and wrath. If power were His leading quality, it would never have discovered to our sight His gracious assiduities. Indeed, neither of these elements in the divine character, considered by itself, tends to that pitifulness which shows itself in our Lord's

reception of sinners.

■

Great and majestic as was the Lord of life, it was not these peculiarities which made Him the friend of sinners, the benefactor of the lost and wretched. No ! that stream of blessedness and restoration burst forth from the everlasting fountain of love which flows from the heart of Jesus. Mercy and pitifulness are the source, the original spring-head from which proceed that graciousness and favor which attracted men to the feet of Jesus, and held them there by the magnetic force and the irresistible attractions of His glorious person. Now love shows the brightest when bestowed upon the evil and undeserving. Mercy is essentially tenderness to the lost. It may not be bestowed upon angels, for the legitimate objects of mercy are beings who are fallen and degraded. Indeed, all the tender,

Christ Receiving and Eating with Sinners. 187

generous qualities shine more brightly, vividly, and with more burning lustre, in proportion to the degrada- tion and unworthiness of the beings upon whom they are bestowed. Generosity to the worthy, kindness to the virtuous, love to the lovable, are always pleasing, and cannot fail to give us satisfaction ; but when we see gentleness to the brutal, mercifulness to the violent and cruel, love bestowed upon the hateful and ma- lignant, then it is that our wonder is excited, and we are transported to the profoundest admiration.

This is the very characteristic of the love of Jesus. It is such exuberant, overflowing love, that it could not be confined to the circles of obedience and perfection in heaven. That the son of God should love the holy angels, that His complacency should flow out in afflu- ence to the myriad hosts that surround Him in the realms of glory, seems at once natural and legitimate to the simplest apprehension ; for it is the stream of love running in its own currents, and flowing back again into its wonted channels. And we stand and gaze upon it with delight and admiration ; but not with astonish- ment, not with surprise.

But the love of Jesus overleaps the confines of heaven. It flows out beyond the precincts of the celestial realm. It runs outside the ranks of obedient angels. It will not brook the limitations of the circles of light. It bursts beyond the height of heaven, and seeks to

1 88 Christ Receiving and Eating with Sinners.

bless the masses of the guilty and benighted men that tread the face of earth. Yes! the boundless hosts of cherubim and seraphim are too small a field for the love of Christ, and it seeks a larger sphere for its exercise ; even the mighty armies of evil, which lift up defiantly their banners of rebellion against the very maker who preserves them, and the bruised and merciful Saviour who died for them.

Here, then, is the root of the sentiment which led Jesus to receive sinners. We have only to turn to and consider the love of Christ ; how broad, how strong, how deep, how high it is ; and we have at once a full solution of the fact which excited the proud and malig- nant Pharisee, and prompted the bitter sneer : " This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them."

Again, let us look at the fact which we have already conceded, and observe its wonderful reality.

Our Lord's ministry covered the space#of three years, and the whole of this period was spent among the guilty and the lost. So lowly was the character of those who, in multitudes, gathered around Him, that at last the common saying was everywhere heard, "This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them."

At the end of three years our Lord was crucified. He rose again the third day and ascended into heaven. But the work which He began on earth did not cease. The society which He had organized before His death

Christ Receiving and Eating with Sinners. 189

went immediately to work to carry out His plans and to fulfil His purposes, and so the work of receiving sin- ners, which began during His earthly sojourn, has been carried on unceasingly on earth since His Ascension. And still Jesus is the person who Himself is ever receiving sinners ; for His church and ministry are only the agents and servants of an invisible, but mighty p 'nee, ever working in heaven and earth to save and r store the lost. When we baptize children or adults, wnen we teach and catechise and preach, when we invoke the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands in Confirmation, when we receive sinners as guests at His Holy Altar, it is all done in the name of tie Lord Jesus. We are only His instruments. The min- istry does not come from man. The ministry does not derive its authority from the people. The ministry, like the church, is from Christ, and is His agency. And He it is, Himself invisible, Who receives and blesses. And thus it is, through the ' ages all along, that He has been receiving sinners. He has gathered them in from every nation and clime and tongue and people under the sun, into that new kingdom and new citizenship which marks and distinguishes the Church of God. Never for a day, never for an hour, since He ascended from Mt. Olivet, has there been a pause in this great work. And never have there been sinners too low, too depraved, too brutal, too filthy, or too vile, for Jesus to receive them.

190 CJirist Receiving and Eating with Sinners.

What a mighty company, too, is this whole vast multitude of sinners, who have been received by Jesus I Multitudes upon multitudes ! Myriads upon myriads ! Now washed in the blood of the Lamb, and rejoicing in glory ; millions also now upon earth, passing through great tribulations, but steadily and with unswerving faith pressing on to the eternal city.

In this company wTe see a few great sinners ; men whose criminality was somewhat monstrous, whom Jesus received. They were great sinners ; but the love of Jesus was greater than their sin, and He took compas- sion on them. He drew them out of the pit of pollution and received them.

There was Matthew, the Publican, one of that large class of ruthless men who wrere the curse of the age. Jesus received him and made him an apostle. There was Mary Magdalene, out of whom were cast seven devils. There was Peter, who denied his Master with oaths and curses, which makes it probable that he had been before a coarse blasphemous fellow, and that this was one of his old sins suddenly cropping out again. There was the thief on the Cross, received in his last extremity, and privileged to accompany our Lord into Paradise.

And then there were beggars, and lunatics, and blind men, and the palsied, and lepers. Multitudes, filthy and degraded, alike in body and in soul, whom Jesus received,

Christ Receiving and Eating with Sinners. I9I

restored, and blessed while He was upon this earth, and then left them rejoicing in the Lord who saved them.

But this reception of sinners ceased not when He went up in glory into the heavens. Ever since, through His church, the same great and gracious work has been carrying on, to the glory of His grace. It began imme- diately after His ascension — three thousand of His enemies in one day, at the preaching of St. Peter. Then the Ethiopian eunuch ; soon after, Saul, the persecutor. Then the apostles went everywhere preaching ; converts were made, and the Lord received them ; Cornelius the centurion, and heathen men in Asia, in Greece, in Rome, and all through Europe. There was Augustine, a heathen profligate, and Jesus received him. There was Constantine the Emperor, a brutal, sanguinary heathen, but Jesus received him. Think of what the Romans were, cruel, domineering, bloody, and brutal. And yet in three centuries this great empire was con- verted from heathenism, and Jesus received them. Think of the Muscovites, and the Scandinavians — the original inhabitants of northern Europe — marauders, pirates, blood-thirsty savages ; but Jesus received them, and to-day they are the most Christian nations of Europe ! Think of the Sandwich Islanders, the Fejians, the New Zealanders — naked, brutal cannibals ; but Jesus has received them, and now they are clothed and in their right mind, sitting at the foot of the Cross !

192 Christ Receiving and Eating with Sinners.

There was Colonel Gardner, a lewd, riotous man ; there was Lord Rochester, gross and blasphemous ; there was John Bunyan, vile, infamous and degraded ; there was John Newton, a heartless slave-trader ; there was a Fejian chieftain, who had put father, mother, and scores of his family to death, and then eaten of their flesh ; there is Samuel Crowther, born a pagan, and now a Christian bishop. Nay, more, there are thousands of drunkards, and thieves, and murderers, and harlots, and rakes, who have been turned from sin to righteousness, who have given up iniquity, and gone in tears and sor- row and repentance to Jesus ; and He has had mercy upon them, and received them ! And here, too, are we, this morning, miserable sinners, but saved by the blood of the Cross.

And now, once more, turn to the text, and notice another feature of it. The Pharisees sneered at our Lord for another reason besides His reception of sin- ners. There was another act of His which gave them great offence. "This man receiveth sinners," was their charge; "and He eateth with them." Yes, to eat with sinners was an unpardonable sin in the sight of these self-righteous Pharisees. Contact with the wicked they thought would defile them. But the blessed Lord of life, sinless, spotless, and undefiled, He condescended to the vilest sinners ; for it was for their sakes He came into the world. To do them good was His noble pur-

Christ Receiving and Eating with Sinners. 1 93

pose; to draw them away from sin was his anxious desire ; to raise them up to purity and godliness His unceasing effort. And therefore He presented all the attractions of the Godhead to their sight, so as, by per- sonal association, to enlighten and to sanctify them.

Yes ! He ate with sinners : at one time five thousand, and at another seven — men, women, and children; and they, the common, the lowly, and the vulgar, were His guests. He ate with fishermen. He ate with people who had been possessed with devils. He ate with the despised Samaritans. He ate with Publicans and sin- ners.

Consider the significance of eating with our fellow creatures. You walk with a man ; but the act is indif- ferent, for you might walk with a horse or a dog. It does not necessarily show any community of feeling. You talk with a man ; but yet you may keep him off as a hireling or an enemy. You travel with a man, and yet hold him cheap, as though he were a nobody. But how different when you sit down at a table and eat with a man ! The act signifies equality. It recognizes the dignity of your fellow-man. It acknowledges his man- hood. It indicates respect and fellow-feeling. When you eat salt with a man, when you break bread with him, you show thereby sociality and friendship. Seat a beggar at your table, and you make him your guest. Put your servant at it, and you raise him to be your equal. 13

1Q4 Christ Receiving and Eating with Sinners'.

Just this was the purpose of our Saviour. His eat- ing with sinners was no formal, empty, and unmeaning thing. It was a transaction pregnant with significance. It was full of life and import. Our Lord received sin- ners as His friends and brethren. He ate with sinners to show them His real, hearty interest in them. He wished them to understand that He was in thorough accord with them ; that He really partook of their com- mon humanity ; that He was, in very deed, their friend and brother ; and that, as a brother, He participated in all their common interests, and in their simplest ordi- nary joys and comforts.

Our Saviour had another object in view in eating with sinners He wished to teach His followers, what no other religion but ours ever taught, that is, the brotherhood of man. That spirit of caste which then separated the nations kept men of different tribes apart, and alienated different peoples. But in the Church of God all these distinctions vanish. If men will be disci- ples of Christ, they must all come as equals in His Church and to the same table. They must all eat of the same holy food, they must drink from the same chalice. Jesus can eat at His table with any man, no matter what tribe he belongs to, what race he hails from, what blood courses his veins, what color tinges his brow. When people refuse, to any class of men, to do what Jesus has ever done, they cut themselves off

Christ Receiving and Eating with Sinners. 1 95

from their Lord and lose the brotherhood of the Christ. And so the Supper of the Lord comes clown to our day, an institution rebuking everywhere the distinction of caste, and binding all men, of all varieties and condi- tions, in Christian love and brotherhood in the Church.

Nor was our Saviour content to do this only during the days of His earthly soj.ourn ; and hence He insti- tuted a feast for perpetual observance in His Church, at: which, although invisible, He promises, and we recog- nize His perpetual presence : here He comes and eats with sinners, making Himself known in the breaking of bread.

And so, all through the ages, Jesus has continued doing what He did when on earth, and caused the fool- ish Pharisees to sneer at Him. He has been receiving sinners, and eating with them — sinners, the lowest and most wretched earth has ever produced, but who have turned from sin, and beheld, with penitent and loving eyes, "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world."

Turn back again, if but for a moment, to the noted sinners, of whom mention has already been made ; and remember that Jesus received all these sinners, and that Jesus ate with them ; for not only did He sit with sinners at His table during the days of His earthly pil- grimage, but ever since He has provided a feast, at which, although unseen, He still deigns to preside. It

196 Christ Receiving and Eating with Sinners.

is your Master who spreads the Eucharistic table. He makes the Eucharistic feast. It is your Saviour who pours the wine and gives the bread. It is in this, as well as in other ways, Jesus has been receiving sinners and eating with them in all ages of the Church. That fact, which was the sneer of the Pharisee, He makes an unchangeable ordinance in His Church. That truth He has perpetuated by living and unmistakable signs, as a memorial of His abiding love and friendship.

And so you who come here to-day to be received by Jesus, and to eat with Him, do not fail to be as cordial to your fellow-sinners, your fellow-communicants, as Christ Jesus is to you. "Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us, to the glory of God." And therefore I bid you all, coming here to this table, to put aside all animosities, all pride and self- importance, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted and forgiving. "And be at peace among yourselves," "endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit, in the bond of peace."

SERMON XIIL

THE DISCIPLINE OF HUMAN POWERS

The Twenty-first Sunday after Trifiity,

2 TIM. II: 3.

Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

There are two senses in which we can take this exhortation of St. Paul. We may understand the word hardness in the sense of suffering and tribulation ; or we may regard it as referring to trial — that general trial which is equivalent to the discipline of life in its vari- ous stages, out of which comes such vigorous strength as fits men for the changes and chances of life. The Apostle seems to refer to this latter signification rather than to the former — not indeed to the exclusion of the idea of suffering. For it was then a time when the whole Christian Church had much to endure, when dis- tress and tribulation were the universal condition of the faithful servants of God.

This address, however, to Timothy, who was then lit- tle more than a youth, would seem to be equivalent to counsel somewhat of this sort : " Resist the seductions of ease. As a Christian man and minister, put away

(197)

198 The Discipline of Human Powers.

the inducements to mere gratification. Choose rough usage in the Christian life. Task your powers with severity. Take rigidity as the rule of life, and make discipline your habit." ''Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." This exhortation is addressed to no particular section of our being. It is evidently general in its meaning, befitting every segment of our constitution, applicable to the whole apparatus of our nature. Hence the discipline of life is not merely a corrective of the body, giving license to the intellectual powers or to the spiritual faculties ; but it is to subject the whole man to rule. And so St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Thessalonians, says, "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly ; and I pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Now as St. Paul indicates hardness as an instrument to the sancti- fication of his son Timothy, it is evident that it must reach every part of his being, and that the whole man be brought under the discipline which the text implies and teaches. In this sense, and with this wide mean- ing, I propose to address you upon the text before us.

1. First of all, then, reversing the order of the text, as it is written, I wish to exhort to endurance with regard to the body. It is one of the greatest of our personal and moral needs. In the original state of man this necessity did not exist. There was then such

The Discipline of Human Powers.. 199

a correspondence, such a genial concord between the animal and the spiritual of man's being, that all his constitutional tendencies were harmonious, and beauti- ful, and free. But man's departure from original right- eousness has caused that internal disruption in his being, whereby, to use St. Paul's language, " the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit lusteth against the flesh." It is this antagonism, this aim of the fleshly desires to get the ascendency over man, which creates the duty and necessity of bodily discipline. In speaking of the flesh, it is not meant that there is any guilt in matter, any sin in our bodies. The word is a figurative expression, which signifies our carnal tenden- cies, of which the body is the master instrument. But the two are so thoroughly identified, that a single word serves to give a most distinct and unmistakable impres- sion. Everybody understands by the flesh the whole apparatus, internal and external, of gross and carnal desires.

Now we maintain that the flesh, as thus defined, and the body especially, as its agent, is to be brought under rule and into subjection to the habits of endurance.

At all times, under all circumstances, this is a duty. But the urgency of it comes especially in our day and in our country. It may be doubted if there ever was a time, since the days of degenerate and luxurious Rome, when ease, indulgence, and keen worldly self-enjoyment

200 The Discipline of Human Powers.

were such universal objects of desire. It is not of indulgence in gross sins, or of the prevalence of abom- inations that I am speaking. What I have reference to is the tendency to softness, the anxiousness we see on every side to avoid hardness and severity of duty. In every sphere of life one sees a shrinking from hardy toil, a reluctance to meet the strain and tug of tasking, physical endeavor. Then, next to this negative aspect of the case, one cannot fail to observe the ambition for all the agencies and appliances which minister to ease and delightful relaxation.

Remember, then, that our bodies are the agents and the instruments of work in this world. Man's "staff of accomplishment " in material effort is his body and its members. If it is strong and vigorous, so much the more effective can it be in the work of life. If it is im- paired and feeble, by just so much does it meet with hindrance and encounter opposition. We are not responsible for the constitution with which, in infancy, we came into this world. If that is strong, well ; if weak, that is our misfortune ; but even in that event, we are responsible for the powers we have, feeble though they be, and our duty is to use them to the best advantage, and to train them to the highest tone and vigor for the service of life. And surely nothing can be more evident than that men and women who are sluggards, people who indulge in soft, luxurious, and

The Discipline of Hitman Powers. 201

heating beds, people who shun the cares and burdens of life, the youths who want their fathers to do everything for them, whose highest ambition is to skim along the surface of existence with hands of baby softness, be- gloved and be-scented, so delicate and gentlemanly that they can neither handle a hoe, nor wield an axe ; or the girls, so refined and elegant that they lack the muscle to scrub a floor, wash their clothes, or cook, with their own dainty fingers, a meal of victuals — creatures of such a frame and with such habits, where can they get the physical energy which is needed for the work of life, in the Family, the Church, and the Nation ? The enervating habits of life cannot yield to any of us strength and bodily vigor. If you banish the cares of life and strive for ease, if you work little and play much, if you indulge in revelry, if you avoid active and healthful toil, then it is very certain that the body will grow weaker and weaker, and lassitude and feebleness will ensue, as the certain and direct result. With the physical weakness which is the result of indolence comes the mental dullness, which is its legitimate fruit. It is your strong, robust men who live. Mind, I say they live, not stay. They live, both mentally and phy- sically. A paralysed man may stay here in the world ninety years, and be nothing, and do nothing. A weak and sickly man, if he have conscience and will, may do much in the world. Such paradoxes are seen. But, as

202 The Discipline of Human Powers.

a rule, it is your strong men who perform the greatest achievements. They make the great statesmen, the great thinkers, the great preachers, the great workers of the world. Even if they live but a brief time, they crowd into a lifetime the vast and wonderful works, which tell, not only upon their own generation, bi t which go down with lasting influence through after ag^es.

The basis of life, then, is the strength and endurance which come from exercise, right living, and proper habits. If men will not, by these means, secure a sound condition of their flesh and blood, they must surely fail, as well in body as in mind. To do the work of life we must have somewhat of a sound bodily constitution. And to attain this grand advantage in the battle of life, begin first of all with the appetites and passions. Keep the body down. Bridle its lawless lusts. Avoid the heating stimulants which send the blood racing through the veins with the heat and the speed of lightning, and which sweep away the brains. No bodily endurance can be gained without these precautions, no animal strength secured without these yokes. Put the rein upon yourselves in all these outward aspects of your nature. Husband your powers, and so get strength for maturity, and preserve vigor for old age. Even if you have feeble constitutions you will find these rules of abstinence and regulation powerful tonics for the acqui*

The Discipline of Human Powers. 203

sition of physical endurance. And then, next to this, for the practical habits of life, it is well for us all to avoid luxurious and pleasing habits for the body, and to accustom ourselves to stirring employments, vigorous exercise, and. plain living. I do not say that comfort should be shunned ; rather, I say, we should seek com- fort in life. But if we would have physical endurance we must not nurse ourselves too much, nor yield to indolent tendencies. Strength comes from hardihood. Even invalids find restoration in physical severity and bodily toil. To rise betimes in the morning, to sleep on a hard bed, to eat plain food, to abstain from stim- ulants, to take robust, and even tiresome exercise, is the regimen often given to enfeebled constitutions, and even to aged men. Even the wealthy seek with eager- ness the season when they can leave the haunts of lux- ury, and rough it, like tramps, in the woods. It is the part of wisdom, of reason, and religion, so to use our bodies that we may get out of them, for as long as possible, all the effective strength and activity that nature warrants, that providence assures, that duty calls for, and that the glory of God requires.

2. But not only do we need the subjection of the body to severe discipline ; the like duty pertains to the mind. //, too, as well as the animal nature, needs the tonic of endurance ; calls for the stringency of rule and government; requires the training and the tasking

204 The Discipliiie of Human Poivers.

which are essential to sanctity. It is not merely that the fools' eyes wander to the end of the earth ; sad as it is that there are fools who give license to the eyes of the mind, and allow them to roam incontinently to every quarter of the globe. The evil of the matter is that people who are not fools, people of sense and under- standing, set up a claim to independence in the domain of intellect, and declare that they are a law to them- selves in all the habits of thought and intelligence. The idea that mind itself, mental activity, the range of thought in the spheres of acquaintance, that books, both the instruments and the agents of the thinking faculty, that these are, in any way, matters of responsibility, has never entered the thoughts of thousands. And as the fruit of such gross heresy, one sees everywhere in society, freedom to the very verge of license in the con- versation of men and women ; the handling, on the one hand, of the most delicate subjects with ignorant rude- ness, or the flippant disposal of the most mysterious and awful themes, as though they were holiday pleas- antries. So, too, in reading, one sees, on all sides, the same self-release from the sense of duty and responsi- bility. In the family, children are allowed to read what they please. The parents who would shriek, or go into convulsions if their girls should, by mistake, swallow Prussic acid, are utterly unconcerned when they see them reading, with eagerness, books which inflame the

The Discipline of Human Powers, 205

youthful imagination, and which serve to fasten the most damning principles upon the soiled surface of their souls. Youth, and young men, too, who hate the reading which tasks the mind, which demands atten- tion, which sends the soul peremptorily to sound the inward oracles of reason or of faith, run with eagerness after the trashy literature of the day, which gives un- thinking pleasure, and which is alien to every idea of truth and virtue.

Worse than all, not few are the numbers who secretly dabble in the dirty waters of impure literature, and cor- rupt the very fibres of their inward nature by the read- ing which comes from the devil, and which bears the imprint of damnation.

Now it seems the most evident of all things that we are responsible for our thoughts and for our habits of thinking. Our minds, in their several faculties, just the same as our bodies and limbs, are our instruments. As our own instruments, they are under our control and direction. In the centre is the will — king, ruler, guide. The thoughts of the soul are the generators of 'all action. As the thoughts of a man, so is his life. "As a man thinketh, so is he." If the master tendency of the mind is toward evil, then the " thoughts of the wicked are abomination." If they tend, in a man, to the excellent, then the " thoughts of the righteous are right."

2o6 The Discipline of Hitman Powers.

It is a matter, then, of the greatest concern, for men to secure rectitude in the intellectual provinces of their being ; for everything depends upon right thinking. If they seek ease in this section of their being, if they would fain avoid care and burdensome duty, if they choose to have only the things pleasant and delightful, if they would fain avoid what brings trial, toil, and per- severance, then most surely all tone and vigor will pass away from their mental faculties ; they will become dwarfed and imbecile in the next grandest element of their being.

Hence, as an effort toward that mental endurance which I maintain is an obligation, it is our duty, first of all, to aim after the regulation of the intellect. By this I mean that we should bring our minds under such rules and laws of discipline as that we may have our mine's and all their faculties under our control. You say, per- chance, that this is the business which belongs to schol- ars ; business people cannot attend, to intellectual dis- cipline. But I beg to say that if you cannot have your wits at your own command, if you do not train your- selves to interior rules of order, then you cannot do the work of life. In this, my brethren, resides all the suc- cess of life. Your successful and effective people, whether farmers, or laborers, or merchants, or me- chanics, or sailors, as well as scholars, are the men who have their powers at command. Says the Apostle St.

The Discipline of Human Powers. 207

James, " Behold we put bits in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us, and we turn about their whole body. Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm whithersoever the governor listeth." In precisely like manner every man should endeavor to put his personal self in the centre of all his powers and faculties, and regulate and dispose of them as he wills.

One great difficulty with most men is that they are possessed by their powers. Thus some men are mas- tered by prodigious memories ; but they have no judg- ment, and ply no reasoning faculty. Then there are others who are carried away by a vivid and inflamed imagination. Another class are hard and iron thinkers, but there is no illumination of fancy, no treasure-house of golden memories.

The vice of disproportion and excess is always a great hindrance to self-command. When men are controlled by any one or several master faculties, then they come into a species of slavery to themselves, and lose the freedom of their wills just as much as when they are mastered by some special vice. The true remedy is to so train and regulate ourselves by proper habits, that we can use our mental capacities when we want them, and as we will. And this, in a degree, is in the power of all men ; for as an actual fact we see this steady,

208 The Discipline of Human Powers,

constant mind in men of all classes. We see sailors, soldiers, shoemakers, and carpenters, men in all callings, in perfect self-possession, who know their own powers, know how and when to use them, and who turn them- selves, with full command, any way they wish with self- assurance and telling effect.

Besides the subjection of the intellect to rule and control, our next aim to the attainment of its strength is the use of the mental powers for the glory of Christ. It is with the intellect as with the bodily powers — by tasks you bring out its force and energy, by toil it gets hardihood and endurance. So, too, the intellect. Give it the nobler duties, and it, too, by every effort, gains to itself unusual and extraordinary might. And noth- ing in the range of the sciences, nothing in the circle of philosophy and letters, gives scope for the exercise of man's noblest powers as the religion of Christ. Hence it is that Lord Bacon declares that "theology is the prince of all the sciences": transcendent, that is in bringing out the forces of our mental manhood, and unequalled in the reflex influence which they give back to the soul as the fruit and reward of diligent spiritual study.

Now the special requirement, in this regard, is first a negative one, and that is that we guard intelligently the entrance of any intellectual poison into our minds. Do not tamper with scepticism. There is a wisdom

The Discipline of Human Powers. 209

that, in our clay, affects to hold that all true greatness calls for the intellect to deny God, the word of God, and the grand attributes of God. This wisdom, so- called, but which after all is nothing but folly, would tell us that religion is a weak and fond thing, only fitted for women and children. But then remember that t'.e weak and simple ones who adored Christ, reverenced His holy name, and who held Him precious to their souls, are, with millions of others, such historical and learned persons as Hannah More, Sarah Coleridge, Catherine Herschel, Mrs. Browning, and Florence Nightingale. And the other weak ones who have worshipped the Christ were Augustine, and Jerome, and Gregory ; and in modern times Newton, Barrow, and Pascal, Cuds- worth and Butler, Edwards and Faraday, and Coleridge and Bushnell. A fine lot of simpletons, of both sexes, who gave way to superstition, and evidenced the shal- lowest brains ! And if you will listen to the wise peo- ple of our day you will get the notion that to be intel- lectually great you must trample upon the faith of these grand persons, and take to your hearts the aid and un- belief of infidels and atheists.

Do not tamper with scepticism. It takes away sense, morality, and strength of mental being, and can only serve to bring weakness and imbecility to the intellect- ual powers.

Add to this the other grand accessory of pov/er in

2io The Discipline of Human Powers.

the domain of Intellect ; that is, to lay hold of the great truths and noble ideas of the Christian Faith. Nothing will sooner and more directly give you strength than, the grappling with lofty truth and majestic principles. Go to the fountain head. Reach up to the primary, fundamental ideas of the Christian system. Take these ideas, turn them over, look into them, study them, and try to master them. The effort will indeed try and puzzle your best brains ; but you will surely come out of the trial strong and robust men. Old Jacob, weak, tricky man as he was, when he met the mysterious man at the ford of Jabbok, grappled with him, mighty as he was, and prevailed. He came out of the tussle, it is true, with a disabled thigh; but he got power from it, and was ever after called Israel, "for as a prince he had power with God and prevailed." So, too, your intellects shall gain majestic strength by familiarity with the noble truths of the religion of Jesus. Seize, then, upon the vital principles of the Christian Faith, in all the ways and modes it can be brought home to you. Make companions of the great Christian thinkers. Stick to the great Christian books. Above all, familiarize your- selves with the deep reasonings and the exhaustive discussions of St. Paul ; and, in the private regions of the mind, store up texts and paragraphs and chapters of the revealed Word, until by such a regimen your weak nature attains tone, strength, and masculine power.

The Discipline of Human Powers. 2 1 1

" Endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." 3. We have been considering the duty and the need of discipline and hardihood in the two distinct sections of our being, that is, the body and the mind. One other higher domain of our nature calls for notice, and that is the soul or spiritual being of man. It is diffi- cult to make, in express terms, a distinction betwen the mind and the spirit. A very clever work appeared not long ago, in England, which maintained the doctrine of " The Tri-partite Nature of Man ;" that is, that man is a being with three different elements in his nature, viz., body, mind, and then a third essence called spirit. There are two or three passages in the New Testament which, on the surface, seem to warrant this opinion. One already referred to is 1 Thes., v, 23, and another is Heb., iv, 12. But I apprehend that the true doctrine both of mental science and of the Bible is that man's immaterial nature is a unit, and that soul and spirit in Scripture only refer to two distinct departments of the inward nature ; one which we commonly speak of as intellect, and the other more especially the image of God, the soul or spirit.

This soul or spirit is, as all the other sections of our being, impaired by the Fall, and needs the discipline which trains to divine rectitude. The soul, as well as the body, and just as the intellect, must needs endure hard- ness. It cannot thrive by indulgence. It cannot reach

212 The Discipline of Human Powers.

to sanctity by being pampered. On the other hand it must be brought under the subjection of rule, laid under the burden of tasks, pass the ordeal of endurance. Hence we read the commands of our blessed Lord to the duties of humility and meekness, to lowly-minded- ness and peace, to fasting and prayer, to forbearance and submission. Read the Sermon on the Mount, and observe how our Lord inculcates the precepts and the practices which serve to chasten the spirit into patience, endurance, and calm submission to man ; yea, to the evil, as well as to God. Read the inspired Epistles, and see how St. John, St. Peter, and St. Paul, in the spirit of their master, enjoined the habits which bring the soul into austerity and strict obedience. Turn to the beautiful pictures and the grand panorama of the book of the Revelation, and see how conspicuously there, tribulation is brought before us in the conflicts and the triumphs of the saints ; is set before us, as the heritage of the blessed, in all their inner spiritual expe- rience, as well as in outward circumstance. Indeed, brethren, to use the words of another, "All regulation is limitation, and regulation is only another name for reassured existence." All our life, even our spiritual life, is only a series of limitations, to the end, as St. Paul puts it, " Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obe- dience of Christ."

The Discipline of Human Powers. 2 1 3

The duty and the need of endurance unto hardness, in the three different portions or divisions of your one grand nature, have thus been brought to your notice. Two or three suggestions which may serve to fasten the train of thought that has been presented, and lead to some deep insight into the realities of life, in conclu- sion may be added.

1st. Remember that life is no toy, no jest, no dance, not a thing of mere revelry. Everywhere life — that is, in rational spiritual beings — is a grand, down- right, and active service. We begin with God Him- self ; and of Him, that august and awful Being Who fills all things, Who presides over all creatures, and decides all destinies, of Him we have that most singular and mysterious utterance of His blessed Son our Saviour — "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." It is but a glimpse, indeed, into the secrets of awful Deitv, but it is sufficient to show us the ever-weaving active spring of that infinite mind which stretches out invisible hands to every quarter of illimitable space, and touches all things and all beings, and by that touch imparts that "active principle" which moves the uni- verse. Yes ! God is the greatest worker in the universe ; carrying on multitudinous operations, in matter and in spirit, through Jesus Christ the eternal Son, by the agency of the Holy Spirit — here on ea'th, and amid the hierarchies of highest heavens. And all

2 14 The Discipline of Human Powers.

these works are deep, noble, majestic, awful, as is God Himself. Nothing of levity is, in any way, associated with them. God's work, everywhere, even in nature, to say nought of the spirit world, is sacred, earnest, absolute, beautiful and glorious though it be.

2d. With this may be joined the other reflection that the final end of all God's work, whether that work is by Himself, or through the energies of His creatures, the final end is God's own glory. The work of the uni- verse terminates in that special point, and was designed to culminate in that grand consummation. And so indeed it will. Even the wrath of men shall praise Him. But what a corrective is this grand truth, to the selfish regards which lead men to set up their own per- sonal good as the main object of existence !

0, happiness, our being's end and aim,

the exclamation of a great poet, is the creed of the Epicurean and the Bacchanal. Not so ! Happiness is not the terminal point of our being. The end of our existence is a something out of and beyond ourselves.. It is a grand fact which reaches over to another and a higher nature than our own. It is a reality in which is involved a struggle and fight to rise beyond self to a somewhat infinite and ineffable, beyond the skies. In this resides the obligation of work and high endeavor. There is an infinite goal to reach, a high mark for the soul to attain unto. And herein is no place for

The Discipline of Human Powers. 2 1 5

levity or foolish pastime. We were baptized to be sol- diers. The call of soldiers is to endurance and hard- ness in the camp and on the battle-field. And with this idea, as the central point of the morning's teaching, I can do nothing better for you and for myself than to repeat the trumpet-call of the day's Epistle— " Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness ; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace ; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God."

SERMON XIV.

JOSEPH. The Fifth Sunday after Trinity.

GEN. XLIX : 22, 23, 24.

yoseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well ; whose branches run over the wall : the archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him : but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands tvere made strong by the hands of the ??iighty God of facob.

I apprehend that you have all learned, long ago, how cheap a thing virtue is held to be in this world. Instead of being regarded as the most precious of all things, more weighty and valuable than gold, brighter and more brilliant than diamonds ; the most of men pass her by as a thing of but little worth, amid the business and policies of life and society. If you go to the marts of traffic, or enter the circles of politics, you will find a most thorough appreciation of tact, of skill, of pluck, of diligence, and of money : but ho v rare a thing is it to hear a merchant, or a trader, or a politician, extol the priceless value of virtue. The most, in general, you can get, is the cold proverb — " Honesty is the best policy " ; and even then the praise is given to the pol- icy ; men are mindless of the principle. Go into the

(216)

Joseph. 217

cabins of the poor, and what are the complaints one oft- times hears ? In nine times out of ten, men will tell you — " I have tried to live uprightly ; I pay all my honest debts ; I am as poor as a beggar. And yet see that man there, driving his coach, and living in a palace ! He never paid his debts. He robbed the bank ; he cheated widows and orphans, and yet everybody respects him for his money. What's the use of being honest ? " So, too, women tell you — " I have always lived a pure life. There is not a stain upon my reputation ; — but nobody cares for poor girls like us ! But your fast women! your brazen-faced women! they carry every thing before them ! They get the best prizes ! They have jewels and dresses and fine living! What's the use of living chaste and virtuous ? "

Now there is nothing new in all this; it is the com- plaint of ages ! Centuries ago, men and women rose up in society, with the same distrust of God, and of His providence. Go back to the book of Job. It is not a book, turned out of the press, a day or two ago. It is, without doubt, the oldest book in the world. See what he tells us of the doubters of his day : " Where- fore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power ? Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us ;

2 1 8 Joseph.

for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? and what profit should we have if we pray unto him ? " And so, too, we find precisely the same utterance in Malachi — "Your words have been stout against me, saith the

Lord Ye have said, It is vain to serve

God : and what profit is it that we have kept his ordi- nance, and that we have, walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts ? "

And thus you see that this doubt of the value of vir- tue is no new thing. It comes down some thou- sands of years, from the lips of croakers, to our day. But I beg to say that, old and long-standing as it is, it is utterly false !

I. One of the chief values of the Scripture is its en- deavor to illustrate the abiding excellence of the princi- ple of virtue. Observe that the devil opens one book to the sight of men, to illustrate the worthlessness of virtue. That book is the mere outward show of things : but it is a fair book, attractive and deceiving to the out- ward sight. And most men are persuaded by it ; for " seeing," they say (if only with half an eye), " is believ- ing." But God opens another book, which requires a sight below the surface ; which tells us a different tale ; which assures us that virtue is a real, an abiding, a divine, and an everlasting thing. And doubtless this is one of the main reasons why we have the lives of the

Joseph. 219

Saints set before us in Scripture ; that the actual expe- rience of the holy men of old, through fiery trials and almost deathly experience, may illustrate this grand fact ; serve also to show the damning lies of the devil ; and so strengthen our souls, in the things which are true and honest, just and pure, lovely and of good report. This is the special period of the Christian Year that these superior persons are brought before us. We began, on the first Sunday after Trinity, with Noah ; and now from hence to Advent, all these great personages pass in grand procession, as in a panorama, before our eyes ; the grandest illustrations of excellence the world has ever seen : Moses, Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, Isaiah and Ezekiel, Daniel, John the Baptist, holy Stephen, St. Paul, and St. John the Divine.

To-day, as the last and the following Sunday, we have the chaste and beauteous life of Joseph set before us. I shall be glad, for a few moments, to have you join me in observing the light which Joseph's life and character shed on this question of the force and value of virtue.

1. Let me, in the briefest manner, tell the story of Joseph's life. He was, as you well know, the youngest, save Benjamin, of the twelve sons of Jacob. His early, I may say, his precocious wisdom, prudence, and piety, contrasted with the recklessness of his older brothers, made him at an early age, not merely the delight, but rather the friend, the confidante, and favorite of his

220 Joseph.

father. This partiality begat a feeling of hate and envy against him, in the family ; the result of which was the memorable conspiracy to either kill, or get rid of him in some other summary manner. He was sold by his brethren to Midianite merchantmen for twenty pieces of silver ; and then his brethren represented to their father that he had been devoured by an evil beast. The Midianites took Joseph into Egypt and sold him to Potiphar, a high military officer in the court of Pharaoh.

It is evident that the superiority of Joseph was intrin- sic. It was in him. It was an elemental quality. For now, although a slave, a foreigner, in a strange land, he shoots up instantly, as ill his father's house, into imme- diate eminence. He becomes at once the overseer of his master's house ; and through his skill, prudence, and management, brings blessing and prosperity to his mas- ter's household.

But Joseph, like every other man, had to acknowledge the existence of evil in a world like this. That dark coarse thread seemed, from the start, to have been thoroughly intermingled with all the warp and woof of his chequered life.

In the midst of great success and preferment, a most calamitous providence overtook him : his mistress, a wanton and shameless woman, assails his virtue ; and be- ing repulsed by this upright and honorable youth, it curdles her violent and diseased love into deadly and

Joseph. 221

malignant hate. She turns upon him with the venom and violence of a serpent. She takes up a murderous lie and casts it in his face, charging him to her husband with an attempt upon her virtue ! Down at once again goes Joseph to infamy and punishment ! He is thrown into prison. He is made the companion of thieves and reprobates. The earth under him was as iron, and the heavens above as brass.

But "the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down." Even here, in this most unfortunate position, his light could not be hid. First of all, the Lord opened the eyes of the prison-keeper to Joseph's worth and excellence, and gave him a post in the prison of authority and management. And, second, by the prov- idential interpretation of the dreams of the butler and the baker, Joseph is brought to the notice of Pharaoh. For he too has most remarkable dreams ; and there is no magician in his court able to interpret them. Then it was that the chief butler remembered his friend Joseph, introduced him to the king, gave him the opportunity of interpretation, and so, as you have all read, over and over again, Joseph becomes the providen- tial saviour of the land of Egypt. And thus the poor cap- tive and prisoner passes out of his prison and mounts at one step, to the noble position of prime minister of the grandest empire of all antiquity.

222 Joseph.

Now let us note just here the chief marks and char- acteristics of this brief biography. What are its strong, its deep, living features and peculiarities? Here is a youth, who begins life with most decided moral convictions, with high spiritual purposes. These very tendencies bring him, at the start, into conflict and dis- aster. The adversaries of uprightness strike -him at once, and down he goes — not once, nor twice, but many times — beneath the deadly blows of hate, falsehood, and jealousy. But observe, it makes no change nor altera tion in his principles and purposes. He is as true as the needle to the pole. He stands like a beaten anvil. On he goes, in the predetermined pathway of purity and virtue ; and gradually he emerges, unstained, with full pristine power, from all his trials and misfortunes, to triumph and to honor.

How shall we account for this phenomenon ? There are people who will tell you that life in all its respects is but a lottery. Everything, they say, comes and goes by chance. They laugh at the idea that principle or truth have anything to do with the fortunes of men. There are no determinate forces in life, is their creed. Point them to the careers of Joseph, or Moses, or Dan- iel, and they affirm at once — "It was all a matter of luck ! "

I venture to oppose such a theory as this, with all the powers of my soul. I maintain, most decidedly, that

Joseph. 223

there is no such thing as haphazard; no possibility of chance in the moral government of this world. All things stand related, in their order, as fact and sequence. The principle of antecedency maintains as thoroughly in character, in individual, personal fortune, as in the flowing of streams from their sources. Just the same as in nature, we look spontaneously for fit causes ; so, too, when we behold moral purity and success, we may, if we choose, trace out clearly and distinctly the linked chain of moral events which brought them on, through Providence, from darkness into light. I say, therefore, that Joseph's successful career, despite his trials and difficulties, was not a matter of chance. It did not come forth out of the dust ; it did not spring up out of the ground. It was the fruit which sprouted forth from a tree "whose seed was in itself, after his kind." It was the true, the genuine, the sterling offspring of dis- tinct moral principles.

Virtue, then, I maintain, is a vital, productive element in life and character ; it is a grand germinant root ; it is a great mine, full of richest ore ; it is a vast, deep- laid foundation, fitted for the noblest structures. Let us see, to-day, what bearing the life of Joseph has upon these broad assertions.

Observe, first of all, the roots of Joseph's mature character, of his life's grand consummation. He began, first of all, with a pious and reverent boyhood.

224 Joseph.

And character — believe me, just like a grand house, just like a majestic cathedral, just like the magnificent Capitol which crowns this beautiful city — character, I say, is built upon solid foundations. The beginning of manhood is childhood and youth. If the boyhood is tainted and rotten, if the girlhood is base and trifling, whence comes the probability that the manhood will be strong and noble, the womanhood beautiful, blooming, and odorous ? Character is no sudden and extempora- neous affair. It does not spring up in a night like a gourd, to full maturity. There is nothing that is strong, stable, and lasting, that comes up suddenly to rapid growth. All the abiding things of the universe are slow in the processes of their begetting and develop- ment. It is so in the natural world. It is precisely so in the spiritual. The natural is the sign and symbol of the spiritual ; for all things go by doubles in God's sys- tem. And nature teaches us in all things ; in earth, sea, and air ; in the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal world ; that all the things which stay and endure, with a tough and immutable vitality, are such as pass through those tardy and gradual evolutions, which rise by graduation, through definite stages, and are brought at length to full maturity.

Even so it is with character. Nothing in the world is more cumulative in its nature. It is the aggregation of multitudinous moral atoms — thoughts, feelings, trials,

Joseph. 225

attempts, prayers, wishes, struggles, resolves, wills, and determinations ; commencing in lisping infancy ; devel- oped in boyhood and girlhood; bursting forth into fuller growth in early manhood and womanhood ; matured in manhood and womanhood ; strengthened and toughened into hardihood in age — it is all this which makes char- acter. A lengthy process, is it not ? But notice, the antecedents cannot be left out. There must be the early tendrils and sproutings. Look around in all this beautiful, leafy summer ; what full, sweet-scented rose have any of you seen, which did not have, first of all, its shoot and bud, before it burst forth into all its affluence of leaf and form and color and exquisite beauty ? So, too,

The child is father of the man.

If it is a bad child is not the danger great that the man- hood will be bad likewise ? If, however, the childhood be good, all men accept the token of something fair, bright, and beautiful in maturity : as sang the poet, going out at early dawn, and finding air, earth, and sky bright, glorious, and fresh :

This morning gives us premise of a glorious day.

Eminently was this the case with Joseph. All his beginnings were pure and clear. All of his brothers, save Benjamin, manifest a downright proclivity for the bad ! Look at their perverse and crooked lives 1

IS

226 Joseph.

" Full of all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness ! full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity ! without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful ! " Remember how they treated Joseph ; how they deceived their father ; how they lied ; committed incest, and murdered the Shechemites !

Now look on this other picture. Behold the fair and beauteous youth of Joseph. Reverent, obedient, loving, trustworthy from early boyhood. Now here I say are some of the foundation-stones of that grand superstruc- ture of character and success which Joseph's life dis- closes. This, I say, is a thing of no chance-happening. It is a result proceeding from its proper cause. It is the fruit, the growth of its legitimate seed. It is a pure and noble stream, flowing from its grand, lofty, and pellucid mountain source.

And hence I exhort you, — let no man deceive you with vain words. You will find plenty of people who will strive to deceive you ; numbers who will endeavor to beguile you with sophistry and so-called philosophy. You will find men who will try to persuade you that there is no distinction in morals. You will find old men, gray in grossness and iniquity, who will tell you that there is "no harm in sowing a few wild oats." It may, it is true, take a few blind and innocent girls out of their homes and turn them into harlots ; it may send a dozen weak and feeble young men, through gambling

Joseph. 227

and whiskey and fornication, to swift destruction. But after all "no one is the worse for sowing a few wild oats ! " Let no man deceive you with vain words ! They are liars, every one of them ; and the devil is their father !

And you who are women — young women — you, too, have your temptations and your tempters. Both will try to convince you that there is no sense in the words right and wrong ; that success in life is all a matter of luck; that the devil is as strong as God, in this world; that craft and trick and cunning yield a greater, swifter success than all the modesty and circumspec- tion of life ; that it is your artful, delusive, and mere- tricious women, your Jezebels and Herodiases of old, your Becky Sharps of modern days — who make the greatest conquests and have the finest times ! God have mercy upon every one of you, if you can possibly be brought to believe such gross falsehood ! All his- tory, the world over, disproves it. If not, why have we on the page of Scripture the names of Rebecca and Ruth, of Hannah and Esther, of Anna and Elizabeth, and far above them all, the blessed virgin Mary ? Yes, you have in Scripture your glorious and illustrious sisters, as we men our pure and unstained brothers. Why, I ask again, if virtue and piety are nothing worth, why do the names of Lucretia and Cornelia shine so resplendently in history ? The names of Jennie Deans and Rebecca and Dinah gleam so brilliantly in fiction ?

228 Joseph.

Yes, it is most thoroughly true — the grandest realities in the universe are truth and excellence and moral beauty.

The only amaranthine flower is beauty, The only lasting treasure Truth.

And this brings me to the second of the causes of Joseph's eminence and his success. It was his personal purity. What man is there here who has not heard brutal, putrid creatures, who called themselves men, sneer at the purity of Joseph ? Now it is because of just this insensibility, this lack of delicacy, that lewd- ness serves to hedge up the ways of men, and to bring them into deep and sad disaster. It is of all things a most mischievous and disturbing element. It is the antagonism of all regularity of habit. It cuts off the heads of men ; that is, it beclouds the intellect, and robs men of all clearness of vision. Saddest of all things, it corrodes the sensibilities, blunts the affections, and hardens the heart !

Perhaps no man ever lived who, both from observa- tion and bitter experience, was better fitted to testify upon this subject than the poet Burns. He had trod all the avenues of license ; he had supped at every cup of delight ; he had drunk the deepest draughts of sen- suous intoxication. But what says Burns ?

I waive the quantum of the sin,

The hazard of concealing ; But Oh ! it hardens all within,

And petrifies the feeling*

Joseph. 229

The example of Joseph is just the reverse of this. Nothing is more remarkable in his course than straight- forwardness, simplicity, and integrity. And these, I contend, are fruits of personal purity. Just listen to this exclamation : " How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God ! " Here you see, as a flash, that uprightness of brain and heart which makes a man ! There is no parleying with temptation. There is no tardy hesitancy about duty. He is at once himself, self-possessed, positive, showing forth the -conspicuous moral and mental qualities which are demanded in many of the exigencies of life.

Thus when we turn to the occasion where he inter- prets the dream of Pharaoh, you observe the same address and readiness. So clear are both his mental and moral vision, that in a moment he forecasts all the difficulties of a seven years' famine, and in the simplest manner sets before the king the policy of an empire.

Believe me, the head and the heart go together. Just in proportion as the moral nature is kept pure and ele- vated, so will the intellect have tone and clearness. A man's spiritual integrity serves to put him in full com- mand of all his other powers. Indeed, it is a remark of Coleridge that it is from the moral nature the intellect gets its power and full nourishment. Rarely in history have we so signal an instance of this truth as in the case of Joseph. Here we find a man full of governing

-3° Joseph.

power; making the completest policies of a kingdom; laying out the broadest plans ; carrying out the grand- est schemes of a whole nation ; breasting with ease the supremest necessities ; and yet always equal to the occasion and equal to himself. And the secret of it was that blending of the intellect with a high spiritual nature, and deep moral convictions.

I refer to one further element in Joseph's success and superiority. God was the great factor in all this glorious life. He it was who. by secret, silent, but most powerful influences, stimulated this noble youth in al) the ways of youthful piety and purity. He is the foun- tain of all our goodness. Virtue is a golden thing. Vir- tue is a precious, priceless jewel. Virtue is a brilliant diamond ; but virtue is based upon God, and is a divine characteristic. The virtue of Joseph was the fruit of that patriarchal piety which produced the faith of Abra- ham, the quiet saintliness of Isaac, and the spiritual apprehension of Jacob. In Joseph it burst forth into a spotless integrity which is only equalled by the holy firm- ness of Daniel, and the saintliness of St. John. You will observe, however, that this crystal purity is no mere worldly prudence, no calculating morality. It is the direct outgrowth of the religious sentiment. It is the fruit of that fear and love of God which characterized all the ancient saints. And this it was, God in him, God always set before him, God in all things, which made

Joseph. 23 1

Joseph the great man he was. Everywhere, in this most interesting narrative, this great fact discovers itself. Sold into bondage, he at once secures favor, for we are told, " The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a pros- perous man." Cast into prison, he at once got favor; for again we are told "The Lord was with Joseph, and showed him mercy, and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison." Brought by a singular provi- dence before Pharaoh, to interpret his dreams, his whole being, mind, and spirit, is illuminated with divine light; and he is enabled to scatter the darkness of a doubtful and disastrous epoch, and to penetrate it with order, safety, and blessedness.

And so I say to you, my brethren, all true virtue is evangelical ; it comes from God ; and wherever it lodges, in a soul or in a nation, it gives strength and mastery. And this is just as much an assurance to-day as it was in Joseph's time, three thousand years ago. If we only cast ourselves, simply and entirely, upon God, He will surely discover Himself to us, as our covenant God; and in His strength we shall be enabled to rise above ourselves and all the lowly tendencies of our nature. He will enable us to go from one degree of excellence to another ; gradually all our dross shall depart ; we shall reach, even in the flesh, to angelic desires ; and at last saintship shall become a lasting acquisition.

I conclude with the briefest exhortation : As Christian

v

232 Joseph.

men, root your piety in the purest righteousness, color it with the most .rigid morality. When you hear people say that they " don't want any of your morality, all they want is religion,'"' scout such senseless stuff, as you would throw decayed fruit out of your windows. Marry the simplest faith in Jesus to the most thorough observance of the Ten Commandments. Strive after the strictest honesty. Take no liberties with any one. " Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth." Make it the rule of your life, for men, to be modest as women, for women, to be simple as children. There is no danger, for any one of us, of mere legality, if we remember always John Baptist's exhortation, to ''Behold the Lamb of God"; and with Him ever in view as "our wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption," the Law can never be anything more to us than a rule of life. And with God's abiding grace within us, that rule will strip us of all selfishness ; it will raise us above all grossness ; it will help to uplift us to all sanctity of body and soul ; and so shall we reach obedience to the command : "Be ye holy as I am holy." Forget not then to showT all good fidelity; to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. Remember it is the exhortation of an inspired Apostle, and the example of the life of Joseph — " Giving all dili- gence, add to your faith virtue ! "

SERMON XV.

INFLUENCE.

The sixteenth Sunday after Trinity,

JUDGES IV: 8.

And Barak said unto her, " If thou wilt go with me, then I will go ; but if thou wilt not go with me, then I will not go"

Nothing is more common in the world than man's eagerness for power, and his pride in the -possession of it. It is a sad reflection, however, that a sense of the responsibility which comes with power is the rarest of things. Men care but little for the duties which spring from authority ; they are almost thoughtless of the responsibility which is allied to their influence.

Look at the master minds who have fought their way to thrones and dominion ; and see their after indiffer- ence to the welfare of those subjected to them! How rare the instances where honor or fame has been sought for, and then used for the good of man ! How few the noble characters who cared for the interests of society, who were anxious for the well-being of their fellow- creatures.

And yet, to live for man, to do good to man, is one

(233)

234 Influence,

*

of the grandest objects of our existence. And perhaps there is hardly anything which is so offensive to God as that selfish mode of Hving, alas too common in this world, which says, sometimes in brazen words, some- times in pretentious but vulgar conduct, " What is the world to me ? I want nothing of it ; I can take care of myself ; let the world take care of itself ; I want noth- ing to do with it." But smart as all this sounds, it is false and hollow. There is no sense or reality in it. For never, in all the world's history, has there been a man who, independent of man, was able to take care of himself. Nor, on the other hand, has there ever been so lowly, so insignificant a human being, who did not, in some way, affect society in some of its dearest interests.

The truth is, every human being lias influence ; which is a part of himself, and helps to make up his personal being. And as long as he lives it goes out from him to others, for weal or for woe. Nay, more ; it is not lim- ited to time. Once having lived, it never dies. For the individual may go down to the tomb and perish ; but the propelling wave of his influence has started, and never again shall it cease in its power ; but it shall go on evermore, touching many a shore, and lifting up or dashing down many an immortal craft journeying onward to eternity.

These suggestions have occurred to me, on consider-

Influent e. ^35

ing the words of the text, and which show, in a remark- able manner, the power held by one human being over another. The occasion was as follows :

The children of Israel were grievously oppressed by Jabin, King of Canaan. The Israelites, at this time, were governed by Deborah, a prophetess ; and the com- mand of God came to her, that she should take three thousand men to meet in deadly combat Sisera, the Captain of Jabin's army, and thus throw off the yoke of the Canaanites. To this end she goes to Barak, an eminent warrior, and commands him — " Go and draw toward Mt. Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the tribe of Naphthali and Zebulon ; and I," she says, "will draw unto thee to the river Kishon, Sisera, the Captain of Jabin's army. . . . And I will deliver him unto thine hand." Barak was evidently a man who, however valiant, could not act without a leader. In order to achieve anything, he must rest upon some other arm than his own. Hence a consider- ation of his case will enable us to understand the nature and the responsibility of that influence which we all exercise in the relations of life.

I. In speaking upon this subject, I remark, first of all, that we are accountable for our influence. I do not pause to prove that we have influence ; it is as cer- tain as that we live. And for it we are held account- able by God, and are responsible to man. This is

%$& Influetidt.

evident from the very nature of influence. What is it ? It is power; the power of one will over another. This power and authority go forth from us to others in various ways. In speech, by action, by the glance of the eye, by the expression of feeling, by the show of passion, by the play of the countenance, by the motion of the hand, by our dress, our habits, our style of living, and our conduct. These are a few of the numerous ways by which we influence the minds of men, and prompt their lives. And now I ask — if I cause a man to do an act, am I not responsible, i. e , so far forth as I lead him to do it ? Of course I am not to bear the entire burden of his conduct, for he is a man as well as I, and he is bound to think and judge for himself. But if I am the stronger, more controlling character, and use my influence to guide him astray, and start him on his way to ruin, surely I am responsible for what I do.

We see this more clearly in some of the prime rela- tions of life. We feel, for instance, that if a parent should purposely cripple a child's leg, or maim its body, the civil authority should be invoked to put a stop to such gross cruelty. For any one can see that both father and mother are responsible for both the bodily members and the physical growth of their children. So, too, with respect to the mind. Suppose, for instance, that some English or German settlers in

Influence. 237

Texas should refuse to have their children educated in the common schools, but deliberately choose that they should learn the savagery and paganism of the heathen Indians ; would not the civil authority in that State at once interfere, take those children from their parents, and have them brought up under the influences of cul- ture and civilization ? And the basis of such interfer- ence would be that the parents were responsible for the character of their children ; but having proved fa!: e to their responsibility, the St te took the place of the parents, and rescued them from ruin.

So in the marriage relation this mutual responsibility discovers itself ; and St. Paul brings it out in the case where one of the parties might be a Christian, and the other a heathen : " For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband ; or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife ? "

Now here is the principle, that we are responsible for our influence. But it is manifest that this principle is not one that is local, partial, or limited. It is a broad, general, universal principle ; pertaining to souls under all circumstances. And see how it reaches our fellow- creatures on every side, with awful significance and tre- mendous power.

I am responsible for my influence ; I am held accountable by the Almighty for the way in which I affect and prompt the souls of my fellow-men. Then I

238 Influence,

am responsible for my influence upon you. Then you are responsible for your influence upon me ; and each and every one of us is responsible for the influence we exert upon our neighbors. Then we are responsible for the channels by which our influence goes forth from us to others. Then, and you cannot resist the infer- ence, we are responsible for the very looks we have ; for the conduct we exhibit ; for the passions we mani- fest ; for the habits we have contracted ; for the style of living we have formed ; for the mode of dress we have adopted ; for the words and utterances of our speech. For these are the channels of influence ; the modes whereby we touch the minds of others, and bend them to our ways and will. They are the streams of all the strong power we possess, by which that power goes forth from us, and is made to bear, with decided effect, upon the being of our fellow-creatures.

And we are responsible for their outflowings ; and though the influence of a man differs somewhat, in kind, from his specific acts, yet the law of divine justice comes in here, with the same force and authority as in any outward deed. Influence, though invisible, is still a man's doings ; my influence is, in fact, my act. It is what I do, effect, or work out, in and through my fellow creatures. And for all I do, whether outward or inward acts, I must render my account. For all my influence, conscious or unconscious, I have got to stand at the

influence. 239

bar of Judgment. And there God is the Judge. And when my time, or your time comes, you and I, and all of us, will hear that question which fell of old upon the ears of the first-born son of man : " What hast thou done ? " Or that other that came before it : " Where is thy brother ? " And, Oh, good Lord, save us, even now, we beseech Thee, from the spirit of Cain ! May we not, ungodly, think or say, "Am I my brother's keeper ? " But grant, through grace, that we may all of us perceive the binding tie of humanity, and feel that we are the servants of our fellow men, and bound to live for their well-being and their blessedness.

2. I go on now to speak of the measure of our respon- sibility for our influence. Our accountability, it is evi- dent, is proportioned to our influence. Herein lies our stewardship. We are stewards of God in the particular item of influence. That stewardship is a light or weighty one, according as we have power, the more or less, to direct or control the souls of men.

A little girl is beloved by her schoolmate ; and so great power has she over her, that that schoolmate will do anything she wants her to do, good or bad. She is responsible for her control over that child's soul, and to God. They are both responsible for the power they possess, the one over the other. A poor widow in a little town is idolized by her children, and they believe everything she says, and will do whatever she bids

24.0 Influence.

them ; for nobody, in their opinion, is comparable with their mother. She holds the souls of those little ones in her hands, and God will call her to account for their character and conduct. Here is a man in a community, of such commanding power, whether through wealth, talent, or character, that everybody quotes him as authority, and aims to follow in his track. As sure as God liveth, He will hold him responsible for his popu- larity and his power. There is a woman of culture and refinement, whose word, style, and manner are admired and copied by all the women, both young and old, in her neighborhood. God holds her accountable for the full measure of her influence.

Now the measure of responsibility, in these cases, is in proportion to the degree of influence. The little school-girl does not bear the same burden as the popu- lar citizen ; for one may touch but one soul, while the other may guide and control thousands. Neither is the humble widow among her children as responsible as the accomplished and fashionable lady, whose position and style stir and flutter a whole community. So, like- wise, a quiet, private gentleman is not held as account- able as the great man who towers above everybody in the State, and sways the opinions, sentiments, and destiny of a Nation. But you will notice that all are responsible ; the one who inspires but one or two souls, as well as the one that quickens and inflames the minds of millions.

influence. 24 1

But there is this difference; that he or she who moulds or stimulates the lives of thousands rests under a more awful burden than he who only acts upon two or three persons. How clearly is this principle brought out in Scripture ; especially in that most solemn por- tion of it, the parable of the talents, to which your attention was called two Sundays ago. The lord of the vineyard called them all to account ; but the bur- den of responsibility fell more heavily upon him who had received five talents, than upon him who had received two, or him that had received one. For the responsibility of five talents was more than twice as great as two ; and consequently he who had received five talents had to bring five talents more ; his responsi- bility being double and more than the servant who received two talents, and five times as great as he who had received but one. And thus you see that we are responsible in proportion to the amount of our talents or influence.

You will notice, however, that the man who received one talent did not escape scrutiny because his talent or influence was small. The lord called him to account for his one ; that is, for just the measure of responsi- bility the lord had put upon him ; no more, no less. And note here the fact that the wicked and slothful servant could not evade this responsibility. He tried to evade it ; he buried his talent in the ground ; he pre- 16

242 Influence.

tended to be frightened at the great weight of his responsibility ; he affected to restore back to his mas- ter the talent that he had given him ; nay, he went so far as to cast the blame of his negligence upon the mas- ter himself ; yea, even to apply hard and reproachful terms to him. But none of these shifts availed. When God gives a man a power of usefulness it is impossible for that man to escape it. That burden remains ; that responsibility endures ! The servant with one talent could not get rid of it. It clung to him in the presence of his master. It clung to him in the outer darkness, whither the Angels of God cast him as a worthless branch !

And so it is with every one of us. You may have position, and then throw yourself back upon it. You may have learning, and may proudly withdraw yourself from the ignorant. You may have wealth, and may set yourself haughtily apart from the poor and wretched. But after all you are a man, and you have the influence of a man ; and it is a gift from God, and you must answer for it ! So has God ordered it that according to the measure of a man's influence, so is his responsibility, and for it he is required to render his account to God !

3. But I hasten on to remark, that influence is an awful, a perilous thing when it -assumes the form and proportions of mastery and control. And this is often the case. The mass of men, the world over, are gov-

Influence. 243

erned by opinion and example. Imitation, too, is a most powerful agent in deciding the convictions and habits of men. No doubt it is God's will that certain prominent men should have authoritative influence; that is their calling ; to that they are elected by the Almighty Himself, to the end that they may help to quicken inferior wills, and to decide human destinies.

Thus in the family relation the words of a father or mother go with children to mature manhood ; and may descend to children's children. How in our school-days our hearts have become knit "as with hooks of steel" to companions whom we have loved as Jonathan loved David, with a "love passing the love of women." I have myself seen men moving about through a nation, after whom millions of men flowed as with the mighty current of a torrent ; and when they spoke, momentous questions were settled, as though decisive utterances had come forth from an oracle or a God.

Sermon IV (part 4)

How awful is the position of such men ! How dread- ful their responsibility, if they but think perversely; if they but speak lightly or at random ; if their steps are crooked ; if their ways are winding ; if there is no straightforwardness or integrity in them ! Alas ! alas ! how many are the poor souls who imitate their words and ways, and follow in their footsteps to destruction and to woe !

Aye, the poison of bad influence is persistent, is abid-

244 • Influence.

ing, is undying. So there is an immortality of evil as well as that of good. Do you think that the remem- brance of the world's bad men has ever perished ? Do you think that Napoleon's burning thirst for glory ceased in its influence when he was laid in his grave ? No ! Many an ardent youth has since been fired by the same ungodly desire; and careless of man, and regardless of God, has sighed and cried for like power and opportunity to wade through slaughter to renown and empire!

But the illustrations of this controlling influence of men is as common in the lowlier spheres of life as in the higher. Sometimes a grand, noble parent serves his generation and blesses it, and then sends down the crystal purity of his honor, and the odor of his sanctity to children's children. Sometimes it is the reverse, and the alcoholic blood and the alcoholic breath of a drunkard triumphs over the dominion of the grave, and reaches over a whole generation of men to his descend- ants, poisoning the atmosphere and polluting society by the sottishness of sons and grandsons. The fragrancy of a holy ministry clings to the very pews, the roof, the pulpit of a church, for generations ; a false prophet, a bigot, a heretic, retains, if I may so express it, " a savor of death," a vitality of rottenness, centuries after his bodily decay in the graveyard. And just so it is with a school-teacher ; with a magistrate in a community ; with

Influence. 245

a superior woman in a neighborhood. In all these cases, if our manners, conduct, or opinions control ; if our word is law ; how awful is the responsibility ! How perilous is our position ! How continuous our sway ! Indeed, there is no such thing as the extirpation of evil influence, any more than of good. The. very carcasses of such wretches as Alcibiades, Byron, and Aaron Burr serve as manure to produce a further brood of repro- bates for the ruin of society.

E'en in our ashes live our wonted fires !

Whether they be the Pentecostal fires lit up in our chaste bosoms by the Holy Ghost the Sanctifier ; or whether they are the damning fires of lust, hate, or mad ambition, kindled in our souls by the inflammatory agency of the devil.

The text we are considering is one of the strongest instances of the importance and the power of influence. Barak put his soul upon Deborah's. He staked his duty upon her will. Lacking self-reliance, deficient in personal resolution, he placed himself under the domin- ion of her audacity, and resigned himself to the lead of her pluck and spiritedness. If she would go, then he would go ; if she would not go, neither would he. This was an instance of human influence. The Prophetess was to decide his duty and his destiny. Happily she knew the will of God; knew well her own duty; was fully aware of the moral force she could bring to bear

24 Influence.

upon Barak. But suppose she had been blind to these things ? What then ? You say, perchance, God would have raised up some other deliverer for Israel, or wrought some mighty miracle. But how do you know this ? Indeed, you do not know it. Deborah was God's own chosen agent, for the hour ; and failure on her part, at this critical juncture, would have brought confusion and ruin upon thousands, and possibly the serious injury of God's chosen people.

Ah, brethren, that fearful "If thou wilt-'! How many weak souls have been led to recklessness and audacity by the thoughtless challenge, " If you will do so, I will too." How many an " If thou wilt " has brought weak-minded youth to drunkenness ! How many vain and foolish girls to extravagance, and then to moral pollution, and to death ! Indeed, it is a most fearful thing to have friends and kinsfolk who are gov- erned by mere desire, and not by conscience ; who never think of moral obligation; and whose entire influ- ence upon their weaker companions is a lure to excess and riot, an enticement to dissipation and wantonness, a precipitation into profligacy and unending destruction!

We are taught most powerfully by the discussion of this morning the great truth :—

I. "That no man liveth unto himself." Isolation, disseverance, absolute divorcement from our fellow creatures, is an impossibility. We are bound up in

Influence. 247

undivided sympathy with everything human. From every one of us goes out a telling influence, which acts upon the souls of men, and women, and little chil- dren, all their life, and which will be felt throughout eternity. Every mature man -and woman here knows this, even if they do not act in accordance with its moral significance. But I wish as well to impress this fact upon the boys and girls here this morning. Dear children, everything you do or say in life tells; tells upon souls; tells in all time; tells forever and ever. All your wicked passions tell upon others and upon yourselves ; all your bitter words tell upon your younger brothers and sisters and companions; all your disobedi- ence to parents and teachers ; all your forgetfulness of God. Nothing that you do falls like leaves upon the ground ; nothing that you say drops like feathers upon the earth. Every word, every act, tells !

Every day of our life, by our speech, by our conduct, by our lightest word, by our dress, by our habits, by our example, we are either building up souls, or we are dragging them down to deepest ruin. Beware, I be- seech you, of the dread peril of the thought, if but for a moment, that you can live for yourselves ; that you are to care for nothing else but your own interests! Be careful of your influence! Mind, I entreat you, how you touch or move the souls of men about you. It bad been better that you had never been born, than that

24S Influence.

you should foster the delusion that you have nothing to do with the interest and well-being of the soul of even the humblest of your neighbors. For they are our brethren — even the lowliest of our kind; and we are in trust for them, and for their souls. We live for them, and they too live for us. Every breath of ours tells upon their being, and theirs upon ours. And we shall only be earning the deepest damnation if we have the assur- ance to look up to the great white throne, and ask the Mighty One who sits thereon: "Am I my brother's keeper ?"

2. Again I remark that the subject we have been considering teaches us as well that " no man dieth unto himself "; and that therefore we may expect to be called to account for the measure of influence we have had in this world, and for the use we have made of it. God will reckon with us at the session of the great court, at the last day. That mighty gathering is designed for the settling of all the accounts of the world. - The hus- bandman, in the Parable, who went on a long journey, and then came back and required a reckoning ; the lord of the vineyard who took his departure into a far coun- try, are types of the coming of the Son of Man to judg- ment. Our influence is among the deeds of life, which He will judge. They are our own individual, personal acts ; and for them we shall be called to account. Whether that influence "has been purposed or uncon*

Influence. 249

scious, it matters not; we are, in every way, accountable for it. The thought is enough to make the "boldest hold his breath for a time." But, weighty and solemn as it is, let us strive to meet it, seeking the help of Christ; and in all the relations of life, in all our inter- course with society, in our utterance of speech, in our walk and conversation, in our habits, our dress and man- ners, may we never forget — nay, may we always remem- ber— that there is a power going out from us which either lifts men up to God, or drags them down to hell !

And Thou, blessed and adorable Saviour, have mercy upon us, in all our weakness and infirmity! Leave us not, neither forsake us, Gracious Master, lest we fall ourselves, or ruin others. But give us all grace so to order our lives that our skirts may be free from the blood of men. Help us, strong Son of Man, that through our example, and by the impress of our charac- ter, many precious souls may be led, savingly, into the pathways of life, to enter at length the golden gates of the New Jerusalem i

SERMON XVI.

BUILDING MEN. The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity,

I COR. Ill, 10.

According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master- builder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every ma?i take heed how he buildeth thereupon.

St. Paul here calls himself a builder; and nothing could be more significant of the specific end he has in view than this word which he uses. The word " build " means work or effort fitted to set up, to strengthen and establish. In this sense we see it illustrated in all the business and varied occupations of human life. St Paul, however, transfers the meaning of the word from its usual material purport to the higher sphere of the soul and its operations. But its significance heie is as real and actual as when applied to the visible works of man. The Apostle, in his sphere as a preacher, was as much a builder as a carpenter, or a mason ; for the work of an Apostle was a most assured reality. It implied all the deep intensities of a most zealous soul in earnest activities to save and to bless. And while, in

(250)

Building Me7i. 251

other relations and for other minor ends, the mind of man is, for the most part, confined in single simple grooves, or circles in smaller circumferences, or plies but the simplest powers ; in this work of soul-building all the latent forces of the spirit are demanded for exer- cise, and must needs be used with constant and most painful effort.

Never, in any of the walks or works of life, was just such an use of human faculties to this grand specific end, seen beneath the skies, as was discovered in the life and labors of St. Paul, as a builder of God.

St. Paul then becomes a conspicuous example of the very work which he presents to our sight ; and we may refer to him, his words, and life, to illustrate the com- mon duty of disciples to build up souls in the faith of Christ.

I. What is a builder? The answer to this question will aid us very much in rightly considering the subject before us. I say then that a builder is one who brings together materials, and adjusts them properly, in order to secure symmetry, order, strength, coherence, and beauty. A spiritual builder is one whose materials are souls. The work to be done with them is their trans- ference from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ ; and then the adjustment of them in order, and precision, in beauty and coherence, into a temple of God "Ye are the temple of the living

252 Building Men.

God," he tells the Corinthian Christians. So, even as a skilful architect takes huge blocks of granite or of marble and symmetrically sets them, piece by piece, in some grand temple or some majestic hall ; so a wise mas- ter-builder in God's church seeks soul after soul ; seeks its rescue from sin, its elevation into heavenly places in Christ, its purity and sanctification by the Spirit ; so that, redeemed and purified, each godly soul may take its proper place in that grand spiritual temple of the Lord Jesus which the Holy Spirit, ever since the day of Pentecost, has been uprearing with souls, gathered in from all lands, to the praise and glory of God's grace.

This process sets before us the vocation of a spirit- ual builder. He has two aims before him. His work is first to get hold of souls, and then, second, to fix them, as permanent parts or members of the Church of God.

'ist. This getting hold of souls is a great work, and success therein is the test of a real builder for God. For so great is the subtilty and skill of Satan, and such is the hardness and grossness of the heart of man, that to effectually resist the one and to prevail with the other, is the surest proof that the preacher who can do this is sent of God, and that the words he speaks, and the spiritual cunning he plies, is attended by the Holy Spirit No one but a man who has power can do such

Building Men. 253

a work as this. But it is of a certainty divine power ; energy given by the Holy Ghost ; might which de- scends from God, working through the powers of man. No mere human learning, sense, skilfulness, or elo- quence, can make a master-builder for God. Well aid power.Vly did the great Apostle declare this truth two thcu:and years ago : "And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom." These, he declares, were not the things which gave him the saving skill of a real builder of souls. No ! He must have that spiritual magnetism, if I may so term it, by which one soul, strong in the might of God, can go out to another soul, and grapple with its guilt and hate, and overcome it by the love of Christ. This was the might which made St. Paul a "wise master-builder" ; that grand soul-converter, who swept along, with a power almost divine, from Jerusalem to Spain ; casting down idols in every land, vanquishing the Devil in many of his strongholds, and capturing many of his victims, turning them, by the power of the Holy Ghost, into true servants of the Lord, valiant sol- diers of the Cross.

But, 2d, souls, when saved, are to be fixed into the temple of God, as permanent parts or members thereof. Thus St. Paul tells the Ephesian Christians : " Ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of faith ; and are

254 Building Men.

built upon the toundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone ; in whom," adds the apostle, "all the building, fitly framed together, groweth into an holy temple in the Lord." Here we have this permanent abiding of saints, their fixedness in God's Church, graphically set forth. And the mutual internal working of the members, fitted sev- erally, as parts of the great temple, is singularly illus- trated by another passage, in the same Epistle to the Ephesians: "From whom the whole body, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint sup- plieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love."

What is that compacting power here spoken of? It is the operative spirit of sanctified souls, given them by the Holy Spirit. The children of God, like the wheels of Ezekiel's vision, go straight forward in active duty. Just in proportion to their zealous activity for Christ, so the unity of the Church is promoted. Work for God is the most concentrative of all the moral forces ; lessening all the disharmonies of minds and wills ; com- pacting alike the resources and energies of saints ; stim- ulating the largess of the rich, and the mite-giving of the poor ; staggering, by its spiritual formidableness, the kingdom of the Evil One, and so hastening on the day when a regenerated earth shall be brought into , blissful conformity with the decrees of heaven.

Building Men. 2$ 5

2. So much, then, with regard to the qualities of a builder. Let us now consider what is the obligation of being builders of souls. Surely, it is to be this, or else to be destroyers! For herein, that is, in the things of God, there is no other alternative. Every man must be either uprearing, by his influence, the souls of his fellow men, or else, on the other hand, he is dragging them down to be broken, shattered, disastrous ruins!

There are, indeed, men who seem to think that there is some middle way in morals, which shuns the heights of good, or the depths of evil. There are people who would fain convince themselves that it is possible to stand in a place of utter indifference in spiritual mat- ters ; devoid of all moral responsibility. Never was there a more deceptive error framed by Satan for human ruin. There is no neutral line between the two great principles of good and evil; no intermediate point or party between the strong hosts of goodness, on the one hand, and the leagued bands of wrong and evil, on the other. In the universe of God there are two great principles ever antagonistic, one to the other; that which conserves, and that which destroys. And so, too, there are but two great classes of beings ; God, Holy Angels, and good men on the one side ; bad men, fiends, and the Devil on the other. There are but these two classes, and no other !

And to one of these two classes every one of us

256 Building Men.

belongs. There are, indeed, differences of character and degrees of depravity. Some men, in contrast with the outrageous and abominable, are gentle and gen- erous ; but if they are not for God, if they are not build- ing for Christ and souls, if they are not aiming after God's glory, then, seemingly harmless though they be, they are nevertheless destroyers ! Quietness, genial morality, amiability of character, cannot guarantee neu- trality in the things of God. Men are either for God, or else they are against Him. "He that is not with me," says Christ, "is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." See the singular light which comes upon this point from the narrative of the rich man and Lazarus. When you examine the char- acter of Dives you can discover nothing prodigious, in immorality, nothing enormous in crime. From all that we see in Scripture, he was an easy, refined, gentle- manly man, laden with riches, perchance addicted to letters and given to the gratification of elegant tastes. There is no evidence that he was in any way monstrous in moral depravity. But during his lifetime he was not a builder for God. Self, and not God, was the main- spring of his being. There was no constructive ele- ment disclosed in his life or habits. His life work was not to save and bless. Hence he was ranked with the class of destructives in time, and sent to keep company with them in eternity !

Building Men, 257

But I beg to add to this that it is your duty not merely not to be destroyers, but to be builders, con- sciously and with purpose. Note here what God is — a Builder; ever since, as a great Architect, He laid the foundations of the universe, and built all the great fabrics of His creation : the globe, beasts, birds, fishes, and man, the crown of all ! " Every house," says St. Paul, "is built by some man; but He that built all things is God."

Such is the Lord our God, the great builder of the universe ; founding, uprearing, constructing, compact- ing all things, visible and invisible, temporal structures, and things heavenly and divine ; but, above all, the souls of men and the ethereal frames of burning angels ! And if this is the fashion of the Omnipotent being of God, what then should men be, who are His image and likeness? For the glory of children, is it not their fathers'? Ought we not be builders, as God is? How otherwise shall we show our similitude to Him ? How can we become again the image of God, in Christ? The new creation, in Christ Jesus, for what is it wrought in us, if not to make us co-workers with Him, in the magnificent operations of His grand system ?

Join to this the testimony of your own nature. Ex- amine your own internal structure. Look into your spiritual framework, and see, as you cannot but see, that, in every way, the soul of man was made and fitted in 17

258 Building Men.

every attribute to be a builder of souls. What is the power of thought but a power formative in all its activ- ities ? What is reason but a constructive force ? What imagination but a creative faculty ? Nay, not only the inner and invisible endowments, but the outer physical members, yea, the entire man, in every power, was formed and fitted for creative action.

Take one single member, the hand, and mark its wonderful adaptedness to operations creative and fash-' ioning. It can tear down and demolish. But everyone sees that that is not its special end and vocation. It was made to mould, to fashion, to construct and build. Hence, naturally from the functions of the hand, have sprung up the divers formative trades of men, in clay, wood, leather, stones, and metals.

But the hand of man, of itself, has no skilful cunning, no ingenious art. No more than the claw of a bird, or the foot of a squirrel or a rat. The hand, of itself, is nothing. But the hand is the instrument and agent of the soul. And because the soul of man is a, builder, therefore it is "that there are carpenters and wheel- wrights, blacksmiths and machinists, ship-builders, stone- masons and architects, painters and sculptors.

But what are all these functions and faculties of men, compared with the grand creative power of God ? " Let us make man in our own image, after our own like- ness"; that was the crowning act of creation. But

Building Men. 259

man fell from his high estate into woe and ruin; and then God began again the refashioning of humanity out of the ruins of the Fall. And ever since He has been building up man, by all the operations of the kingdom of grace; by the workings of the Spirit. In this work of soul-building the blood of Jesus is the main instru- mentality. But angels, and men too, are workers together with God, to the same gracious end.

Jesus died to build men. For this purpose the Holy Ghost descended on the day of Pentecost. For this the Church of God was founded on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.

So again, to build men, the ministry was commissioned, and the Scriptures were given. When we preach, it is, by the Holy Spirit, to build men. When we baptize ; when we celebrate the Holy Communion ; when we catechise little children ; when we teach God's Holy Word ; when we bring souls to Confirmation. Indeed, the whole machinery, the entire apparatus of the Gospel and the Church, is to build men. This is the work of the Lord Jesus, in the whole economy of grace. This, too, is the work of all true Christian men. As God is a builder of souls, so are all His disciples. And although ministers are set apart to special duty in this grand work of soul-building, the laity of the Church, in a subordinate way, are likewise called to the same grand and solemn vocation. The whole household of Faith is

260 Building Men.

elected to this same saving office. We are all, in our several relations, the ministers of God for the salvation of men, and the glory of God's grace ; holy men, godly and gracious women, religious youth, pious maidens, and sanctified children. Nothing can be more explicit, nothing more decisive, than the emphatic declaration of St. Peter : " Ye are a chosen generation, a holy nation, a peculiar people ; that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light."

3. And now, lastly, let us consider who, that is, the classes of persons, we should build up. First, of course, ourselves ; for the evolutions of grace, like the winds, like the windings of circles, proceed from a central point. Our principal duty, then, in the work of grace, is the assurance that we, ourselves, have been built upon the right foundation ; that our foot standeth aright upon the corner-stone. Are we, then, saved men ? . Have we, indeed, received the great salvation ?

Our souls, my friends, are given us to save. It is a great trust to have souls. Broken and impaired as are the spirits of men, they show, even in fragment- ary powers, the skill of a divine architect. All the fractured members of our inward being are so many vestiges of a once complete and celestial creation. And then when, in groping amid the ruins of our fallen nature, we light upon the manifest ends of

Building Men. 261

'<^>

spiritual being, and note the grand principle of re- sponsibility, which is universally allied to possessed powers, we see in a moment how man, as well as angels, is a being who sweeps the wide circles of duty ; who bears the burden of endless moral obliga- tion; who stands every day of his life at the bar of judgment, constantly challenged for a reckoning of his stewardship, for every faculty of his being, and for every function thereof ; for the use of every endow- ment, for the exercise of influence, for the fashioning of souls around him, for the rendering of glory to God by the flames of purest affections, and the devotedness of the noblest of his powers.

But "no man liveth to himself." We were born to save others besides ourselves. "Ye are not your own," says the Apostle St. Paul. We are " our brothers' keepers." Besides care for our own souls, we owe the duty of care and anxiousness for the souls of others ; and so, second, next to ourselves, are our kinsfolk and relatives to be built up in the faith of Jesus. It is our duty to strive to build up parents and children in the most holy faith ; by all the several means of training and teaching, by admonition, by prayer and spiritual example.

Iri the family relation it is, without doubt, the most obvious of all duties to train up our children and servants ; by catechising, in- holy prayers, in Christian

262 Building Men.

charities ; so that they may " adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things." Build them ! that is the word ; not tear them down to ruin by godly indifference to the things of God ; by carnal indulgence ; by foolish vanity ! Not give them up to the service of Satan in their childhood and youth, expecting by and by, when mature, some terrible spiritual hurricane to sweep them, of a sudden, into the kingdom of Christ; but to train them, in their tender youth, "in the nurture and admo- nition of the Lord " ; to build them up in the truth and love of Christ ; in the very freshness and glow of their childhood, and in the supple strength of their youth !

Third. But besides kinsfolk and family, there is a further outer circle of human beings separate from our- selves, for whom it is our duty to live, and our aim to build up in the temple of the Lord. There is the whole world of our fellow creatures, both near and remote, who are to be reclaimed from sin and idolatry, and brought to a knowledge of the truth..

Now I know that in the narrowness of our local spheres, and with the limited reach of our powers, it is impossible for us, individually, to touch with a holy influence Chinese, Japanese, the Islanders of the Pacific Seas, the vast hordes on the continent of Africa, the million masses in India, living in the darkness of heathenism. But remember that our mission in life is to lessen the sum of the .world's grossness and rebel-

Building Men. 263

lion, and to widen and extend the borders of the king- dom of Christ. We are to gain as many souls as possible from the empire of Satan, and to transfer as large a number as we can to the control of our King and Master. Every victory thus gained, whether directly in the sphere of our personal influence, or indi- rectly, by the distant agents we aid and succor abroad, is a real and effectual agency in the conversion of the world, and is a contribution to the future triumph of the Redeemer.

So, then, it seems quite apparent that our life-work among our fellow-men is, especially and primarily, con- structive and restorative. Christ came to seek and to save the lost. In His mission anything destructive or disorganizing was absolutely alien and foreign. Pre- cisely this is the spirit we are to carry into all the spir- itual endeavors of our life ; and hence I conclude by narrowing my exhortation to its literal spirit and utterance.

1. That utterance is, to each and every one of you, the earnest entreaty — Do not destroy ! Men and breth- ren, holy maidens and pious youth ; keep from ruining souls for whom Christ died ! Men of this Church, do not destroy other men ! Do not destroy little children ! Do not ruin women ! Do not, for Christ's sake, and for the sake of precious, priceless souls — do not destroy. Women of this church, beware of ruining souls ! Do not

264 Building Men.

destroy men nor youth by the wrong use of personal attractions ; by feminine beguilements ; by the gross prostitution of precious and wondrous gifts of your sex.

Boys and girls, baptized into Christ, do not destroy ! Nay, strive in all simplicity and gentleness, in all love and godliness, to save other boys and girls ; by sweet Christian words, by noble actions, by pure and holy lives and godly examples.

Yea, all of you, do not destroy ! Do not destroy by whiskey or by wine ! Do not destroy by cursing, nor by oaths ! Do not destroy by scoffing or by filthy speech, by lewdness or carousing. Do not destroy ! Brother man, I throw myself in your way, this day, and lay hold of you, as though you were my own flesh and blood ; and I beseech you, by the preciousness of the soul, and by the blood of Christ, do not destroy !

2. Build! Seize upon souls, and strive to mould and fashion, to compact and strengthen the immortal spirits around you, that they may become powerful for Christ, and live in Him forever ! Take little children upon your knees, and by godly lessons teach them concerning Christ; lead them to His love, and build them up in His most saving truth ! Lay hold of boys and girls. Gather them into Sunday-schools, and by catechising and instruction save them from the world, and build them up in Christ.

Remember you are your brother's keeper; that every

Building Men. 26$

man is your kinsman ; and hence the binding duty of seeking the spiritual good of all men. Strive to bring them to the Cross. Endeavor to root and ground every soul you meet in the truth. Labor to build men in the knowledge and love of Christ.

Brethren, build! Make it the aim of your life to strengthen and uphold, to stay and build immortal souls. Do not destroy ! It is the work of devils ! Seek to be "wise master-builders" for Christ; and by the power of His Spirit to aid His work of grace and salva- tion in this wicked world. Build men ! by speech, by influence, by godly example, "by pureness, by know- ledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, and by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left " ! Use every possible instrument and agency, both small and great, at all times, and in all places ; in season and out of season ; in your families ; in the world ; at the workshop ; in your stores ; on the highway or in the street ; to save men, and to glorify Christ.

The great vocation of life, my brethren, is to build men up in truth and righteousness and love. It is a work, moreover, never to cease in this world, nor in that which is to come !

For through all the eternities of our God we shall dwell in blissful accord with Him, the great Builder of

266 Building MeH.

souls ; and even as the angels, so we, through everlast- ing ages, with submissive wills, shall forever harmonize, as well in earnest act as in obedient desire, with all the multitudinous works of that God who, everywhere throughout the universe, is building, in truth, grace, and beauty — angels, and archangel, cherubim and seraphim, as well as saints in Paradise, and men on earth — through every quarter of His boundless Empire!

SERMON XVII.

CHRISTIAN CONVERSATION.

PSALM XL, 12.

/ have declared thy righteousness in the great congregation : Lo, I will not refrain my lips, O Lord, and that thou knowest. I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart ; my talk hath been of thy truth, and of thy salvation.

David is well known as one of the recognized types of the Messiah ; and hence, not infrequently, his Psalms are prophetical utterances of the will and purposes of his expected Lord. This, however, does not exclude entirely the personal element in the Psalms. It fol- lows, therefore, that in the Messianic Psalms we may descend, if we choose, from the divine to the human character, speaking in them. We may regard them, therefore, in one phase as the sayings of the Messiah ; we may receive them, in a lower sense, as the express- ions of the man David.

In this latter sense, then, the two verses just read will be used. They are veritable indications of the life and purposes of the great man who wrote them. He was a faulty man, a man of intense, nay, flashing im-

(267)

268 Christian Conversation.

pulses, which at times hurried him impetuously into shameful blunders and blinding sin. But there can be no doubt that he was right, at the centre. The magnet of his nature pointed steadily, albeit tremulously, to the pole. The master intent of his being was to glorify God ; not only with his sword, with his kingly preroga- tives, with his regal wealth, but with his glowing genius, with his rich and fertile imagination, and with his pure, his ready, his flowing and exuberant tongue. And this is the distinctive point to which your attention is directed. David not only gave personal influence in God's behalf ; he added to this the constant practice and habit of speaking for God.

There is a recluse and sequestered piety in the world, which shuns expression. It but seldom declares itself. It may walk abroad over the nation. It may cross the seas. It preserves indeed decorum and pro- priety; but it rarely speaks out for Christ. Such a character is by no means rare or exceptional. It is what we all see and know thoroughly well. We are all acquainted with praying, pious, upright people, strict observers of the moral law ; people punctilious in spiritual observances and spiritual duties; who yet, in a large number of cases, have never been heard, at any time, or in any circles, to give utterance to their religious convictions, to advocate the faith of Christ, or to stand forth in defence of the faith against its assail- ants, or in the way of exhortation to holiness. In read-

Christian Conversation. . 269

ing the Psalms, however, we discover a spontaneous tendency, an almost irresistible impulse, to speak in God's behalf, and to declare His praise. We meet in them with frequent declarations, such as these: "With my lips have I been telling of all the judgments of thy word." "I will talk of thy commandments and have respect unto thy ways." "I will always give thanks unto the Lord, His praise shall ever be in my mouth." "My tongue shall speak of thy word." And in another place (Psalm cviii), he says : "O God, my heart is ready ; I will sing, and give praise with the best member that I have." By that best member the Psalmist means his tongue.

These somewhat lengthy remarks are made as intro- ductory to a discourse on Christian conversation.

1. First of all, let me dwell for a few moments upon that common characteristic of the times, the lack of Christian conversation. In this matter the age stands in strong contrast to some former notable periods. Take, for instance, a period of one hundred years, and one sees at once the great change. In the days of Whitefield and Wesley, men everywhere and in all con- ditions made religion a matter of common converse. Then great reforms took place. The traffic in slaves was stopped : the condition of prisoners improved : Church missions and Sunday-schools were established. Then society was almost universally stirred and excited

270 Christian Conversation,

by the most glorious themes of the Gospel. Turn to a period nearer our own times ; the days of the Temper- ance and Anti-Slavery agitation, dating from 1833 to the close of the war ; what topics were more thoroughly, more earnestly canvassed, on steamboats, on railroads, in saloons, in parlors, and at dining-tables, than the bearing of Christian truth upon these great subjects. There was no hesitant utterance, no bated breath, in speaking upon these grand questions. There were deep convictions in the souls of faithful men ; and there was a free, distinct, and emphatic declaration of those convictions.

A very great change has come over society in these latter days. Not that there is any decline in common conversation. I think that this talent is more culti- vated now-a-days than heretofore. Men meet together, and talk about science, letters, manners, politics. Every possible facility is used to stimulate social talk ; magazine literature, parlor socials, literary reunions, club life, in various forms, and in all circles. Rarely, if ever, was there a time when there has been such brilliancy of conversational talent, as in our generation. In the higher walks of society there has been discov- ered a splendor and magnificence of discourse which has rivalled the palmiest day of literary society, whether in ancient or modern days. It may well be doubted whether the ears of man have ever secured any higher

Christian Conversation, 271

enjoyment than was the privilege of those who moved, in but recent times, in the circles which were charmed by the magic tongue of Margaret Fuller, of Boston ; or on the other side of the Atlantic, who were spell-bound by both the affluence and the splendors of Macauley. But the whole tone of it, in either case, was mainly secular. In the circles where these gifted persons swayed the sceptre of superiority, very little was heard of God. And it is precisely the same to-day. Nowhere do we see intellectual stagnation. The mind of man is intensely active in all the subjects of human regard. Talk and converse are rife and earnest in all classes, upon all the questions which pertain to human interests and human progress ; but religious conversation is seldom heard. We do, indeed, not seldom, hear debates upon sacred subjects. Not infrequently we listen to angry disputations upon religious topics, that remind us slightly and in degree of Milton, who represents the evil spirits' converse, who,

Reasoned high Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate ; Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute ; And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.

But it is not of discussion that I speak. The two things are distinct. That genial, intelligent interchange of thought, sentiment, and feeling, which is the oppo- site of debate, which may properly be termed conversa-

1

272 Christian Conversation.

tion, is the theme to which your attention is especially directed. The very word- tells, in its construction, of that meeting of mind with mind, in reciprocal flux and reflux ; that cordial assimilation ; where thought melts into feeling, and feeling flows back again into thought, which may justly be considered as the true interpreta- tion of the word converse ; con and verso — to turn with, to be engaged with ; and so to hold intercourse, or interchange ideas ; to talk ; to discourse with. And this, instead of being made the channel of blessedness to man, and of glory to God, is used mostly, in our day, as the glittering agency of temporal, fleeting things. Instead of being the vehicle of trifling and nonsense, or worse still, of blasphemy and profanation, it ought to be the grand organ and implement for the uplifting of souls, and the regeneration of society. The speech of man should be the noblest instrument of the Holy Ghost.

Observe, then, how desirable, in every way, is the practice of converse upon the things of God. It is desirable, first of all, for the propagation of the Chris-* tian system. For Christianity, my brethren, is not a retired and hidden thing. Christianity is no private monopoly. It is no exclusive, personal possession. It would be just as possible or wise for a man to attempt to lock up, for private use, the sunlight of heaven, or the common air of earth, as for a man, or any set of

Christian Conversation. . 273

men, to set up a special proprietorship in the Christian faith. By the grace of God that grace is made over to every human being, as a man, for his individual right and ownership ; but the condition on which it is given to him is that he will use it in trusteeship for other souls. Every divine gift made over to the soul by the Holy Spirit has allied to it the principle of participa- tion. " Freely have ye received, freely give."

The secondary principle of God's grace is diffusion. When light is given to a sin-darkened soul, the obliga- tion accompanies it to impart that light to others. The candle is not to be put under a bushel. Let it shine upon the household. Let it lighten up the neighbor- hood. The grand instrument and agency by which the Christian faith is diffused is the tongue. And speech, rightly used, is man's "best member" ; is, as David elsewhere calls it, "man's glory."

It is in just this peculiarity that we see that Chris- tianity is eminently a social religion ; and by social I mean that it is a system for human beings in all the varied relations of life. It is a system for the family ; for the public weal. It is the grand quality which is especially fitted to the needs of man in all these relations. The means for its propagation, in these relations, is speech. It is a social religion, because it is made to be talked of, and talked into every sphere of life, and to rule and govern them all. 18

274 Christian Conversation.

Just look at the matter for a few moments. Is not thi-s a wicked world in which we are living ? See how, in every quarter, it is saturated with the putrefaction of sin ! How its most cherished institutions are falling to pieces, through the virulent inroads of iniquity ! Take the State. Do not the individuals who go to make up the great commonwealth of society, do they not need the implanting of proper principles of right and integ- rity in their souls, to make them good citizens ? Can you leave this matter simply to newspapers, or preach- ing ? How do men act in matters of reform, in the cause of temperance, of politics ? Does not one man put himself beside another man, and so strive to indoc- trinate him with the truth that is precious to his own soul ? Is not conversation, genial, hearty, earnest, and persuasive, a potent factor in all political and reforma- tory action ? Take social life, in its narrower, stricter sense, that is, as including the world of entertainment and companionship. Does not society need the infusion and prevalence of higher principles than at present govern it ? Would it not be blest and elevated by the presence of some higher and diviner element than it now has ? For go where you will in our seasons of fes- tivity, how much, I ask, of God, of the love of God, of the honor of God, does one discover, in the dress, the style of dress, in the cost of dress, in the pleasures, in the viands, in the drinks, and in the conversation which

Christian Conversation. 275

is carried on in such assemblies ? Is not salt, the savory, saving salt of the Gospel needed here? VVoa'J not a few words from the godly, interposed now and then, tend to the prevention of much sinful vanity, much moral ruin, and a vast deal of godless dissipation ? Take the family. Go into a dozen households, and see how, in a large majority of them, the lawlessness of children prevails, right beside the misrule of weak and godless parents. And tell me, do not parents need the suggestion of godly rule ; and children, "the line upon line, the precept upon precept," to the end that these households may become orderly, God-fearing, and sanc- tified ? But is it not the fact that at multitudes of fire- sides, and at numberless dinner-tables, the name of God is never mentioned; the law of God is never proclaimed; the testimony of Christ is never upheld ; the worship of God is never heard of ? The children in such families hear, indeed, concerning the fashions; they talk about politics and literature; they are made adepts in all the gossip concerning their neighbors ; nay, not infrequently their memories are surcharged with all. the poisonous scandal of the town ; but alas ! from year to year they hear nothing from the lips of parents or friends con- cerning the active workings of God's Church, or the glories of the Cross of Christ. And when the day. of judgment comes the very knives and forks, the spoons and dishes of those houses will testify that they were

276 Christian Conversation.

Godless and Christless ! " Lastly, take the sick, the trou- bled, the distressed. Where are they not to be found ? Where are the communities or households free from these classes ? And what is the solace yon are going to give them ? How are their sorrows to be assuaged ? How are their griefs to be palliated ? How are their hearts to be cheered and uplifted ? Will you talk of science to the broken-hearted ? Will you discourse of literature to the bereaved and mourning ? Will you bring the wrangles of politics to women and children racked with pain, and verging to the borders of eternity? My brethren, there is but one Physician for sick souls ; but one medicine for the broken-hearted and desolate. It was Jesus — only Jesus ; no other of all the sages and prophets, of the benefactors and philanthropists, who ever taught just the converse needed and fitted for the sick, for the troubled and distressed, in mind, body, and estate. "The spirit of the Lord is upon me," are His words, "because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised." Here we see the converse which is needed for bruised hearts! Nothing but reli- gious conversation is fitted to their condition. Christ, the Consoler, must needs be brought to their bedsides ! The very words of Jesus poured into their ears. The

Christian Conversation. 277

Grace of the Lord made to reach their hearts. The comfort of the Holv Ghost to neutralize their afflictions. This is the only source of consolation to the sick and mourners. The Gospel of salvation, given through Christian conversation, is the only solace to the sor- rowful.

3. It is, then, very clearly our duty to use the faculty of speech for God's glory, for the health and strengthen- ing of human souls. "A word in season, how precious" is it, and how priceless too ! And what nobler work can there be than this, namely, by the uttered, quicken- ing word, to plant the seeds of everlasting truth in living and undying souls ? All the processes of build- ing and uprearing in this world are prized by men. All builders are esteemed as benefactors of the racet But by just so much as souls are nobler, grander structures than houses, or palaces, or bodies, so the vital energy of pure and holy speech, dropt into the outward and inner ears of men, startling, quickening, sobering, prompting, guiding, elevating, sanctifying them, to good resolves, to noble acts, to self-devotion to God and man, to purity, to excellence and heavenly-mindedness ; so the work and power of holy speech towers immeasura- bly above all the constructive work of architects and builders in this outward, visible world. And this is the true and legitimate function of speech. It is to sow the seeds of truth in the souls of men. It is to suggest

278 Christian Conversation.

virtuous principles. It is to prompt to sober, serious thought and reflection. It is to guide to noble concep- tions. It is to bring to consciousness the ideas of God and eternity. It is to beget a sense of responsibility. It is to start the springs of action. It is to excite the noblest sensibilities and warmest affections. Conversa- tion, true Christian conversation, is the parent of deep repentance; it is the germinant power of abiding faith; it is the quickener of noble resolves ; it is the prompter of heroic actions ; it is the stimulant to godlike revolu- tions from the sway of Satan, to the rule of the living God. Bear witness, ye glorious names of Moses, and Elijah, of Paul, and Augustine, and all the mighty host of apostles and reformers, who have blessed the world through speech ! What noble elevation ! What grand superiority is there not in the men who thus use the noble faculty of speech ! How gloriously do they dis- perse the largess of their intellectual riches, of their spiritual gifts ! With what spontaneous generosity scatter the pearls and diamonds of their priceless thought! Now it is the apt allusion, and now again the humorous remark, but at the same time sacred and elevating. At one time it is the sparkling sentence, brilliant with divinest meaning; and then the grand, stately utterance, like the thunderous breaking of old ocean on the seashore, suggesting the deep things of eten:^y! What a noble line of such talkers have

One volume, handsomely printed, jj4 pp., i2mo, cloth extra, $1.50.

'odern lleroes ofthe fission

By the Rt. Rev. W. Pakenham Walsh, D.D., Bishop of

Ossary, Ferns and Leighlin. Author of '' Heroes of

the Mission Field," " The Moabite Stone," etc.

CONTE1TTS:

I. Henry Martyn : India and Persia, 1805-1812.

II. William Carey: India, 1 793-1 834.

III. Adoniram Judson : Burmah, 1813-1850.

IV. Robert Morrison : China, 1 807-1 834.

V. Samuel Marsden : New Zealand, 1814-1838.

VI. John Williams : Polynesia, 1817-1839.

VII. William Johnson: West Africa, 1816-1823.

VIII. John Hunt: Fiji, 1838-1848.

IX. Allen Gardiner: South America, 1835-185 1.

X. Alexander Duff: India, 1 829-1 864.

XI. David Livingstone: Africa, 1840-1873.

XII. Bishop Patteson : Melanesia, 1855-1871.

i

" The American reading world owes a debt of thanks to the publisher for bringing out so good a book in a style of type and paper which leaves nothing to be desired. The book is one which must be read by those who would know its merits. No news- paper notice can do justice to it." — The Living Church.

"It is entitled to a place in every library, and should be • purchased and read by every one interested in the work of Foreign Missions." — Gospel in all Lands.

"A good book to have in hand if one is to keep the divine spirit of the missionary work close to his heart." — Standard of the Cross.

THOMAS WHITTAKEE, Publisher,

2 & 3 BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.

CONTENTS.

IV.

Bad Habits.

E.

V.

Strong Drink

VI.

Companions.

VII. Religion.

J..

Invigorating common-sense Talks to Young Men by a Young Man.

Ckmrmci§r Building.

Talks to Young Men. By Rev. Robert S. Barrett. i6mo, cloth, handsomely stamped in gold and ink, . . Price joe.

I. Destiny.

II. The Value of Time. III. Reading.

NEW EDITION OF AN OLD FAVORITE.

Th§ Rector of St. Bar dm

Or, Superannuated. By Frederick W. Shelton, D.D., author of " Salander and the Dragon," " Peeps from a Belfry," etc. 344 pp., i2ino, cloth extra, price %i. 25.

" It is many years since this book, now re-issued, first appeared. In the past it has accomplished not only an interesting but also a very useful task, and, for the long future, we trust it is destined to continue its mission of good- humored instruction on the relations of pastor and people. To the younger clergy, who may expect to meet just such 'snags,' and would know how to steer the sensitive bark of their personal ministry safe around and by them, we would commend a quiet evening by this winter's fireside, with 'The Rector of St. Bardolph's ' in their hands, as a friendly chart and sensible guide. Equally we recommend all those who have their eyes upon other folks that are " cantankerous," to get the book, and deal out to them gathered counsels from its pages." — The Living Church.

»J«

THIRTEENTH EDITION.

Ihort

For Families and Destitute Parishes. By John N. Norton, D.D., author of "Every Sunday," "Golden Truths," " Warning and Teaching," "Old Paths," "The King's Ferry-boat," etc., etc. 487 pp., 8vo, cloth, price %2.oo.

" The late Dr. Norton * * * had remarkable ability to interest plain people, and this collection of sermons for families and destitute parishes holds its place among the volumes of sermons useful for lay reading chiefly on the ground of the author's art of putting things. The Sermons cover a wide range, and are so interesting that one likes to read them again and again. They are probably the best of their kind." — The Standard of the Cross.

" This new issue is proof enough of the popularity and adaptedness for the purpose expressed " — The Church Eclectic.

The Bishop of Missouri says : " I have frequently, in public and in private, recommended Dr. Norton's books."

The Bishop of New Jersey says: " I always recommend them."

THOMAS WHITTAKIR, PUBLISHER, 2 & 3 BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.

Christian Conversation. 2^9

arisen in God's Church, in all the ages! Chief of these in ancient times was Solomon, whose terse and prudent sayings were doubtless taken down by his admirers, and thus handed down to our times, for our instruction and guidance. So, without doubt, that eminent man, the chief of the apostles, was full of large discourse. Every- where we see him, in the Book of the Acts, in private or in public, before a heathen court, or the Jewish San- hedrim ; at a feast of disciples, or in the midst of ship- wrecked mariners ; always ready with a golden speech for Christ and souls. In modern times tzvo transcend- ent men stand out conspicuously. The Table-Talk of Luther is like the trumpet-blast of an army; like the ponderous tread of grand battalions; like the thunder- ous sound of dread artillery! All his thought, all his v discourse, is grand, majestic, ponderous; stirring the blood, quickening the brain ; raising one to the grandest ideas of God, His kingdom, and eternity. The other distinguished person to whom I referred was, in various respects, the reverse of Luther, Samuel Taylor Cole- ridge was a scholar, poet, theologian, philosopher; but grand genius as he was, his highest aspiration was to be, and to be regarded as a Christian! And oh! how gloriously did he move, at all times, in the grandest circles ; dropping everywhere — at the well-spread board, in the chambers of nobles, in the bowers of the fashion- able, in the halls of the learned — precepts and philoso-

zSo Christian Conversation.

phies, learning and erudition, light and illumination upon all the subjects which pertain to the elucidation of God's Holy Word, and the spiritual elevation of the soul of man !

4. "But /tow," you ask, "are we to imitate such grandeur, in talk and converse ? God has given us no such gifts as they had. We have no such splendid endowments, either of brain or utterance, as they." "Every man," my brethren, in "his own order," and with his own talent ; to some it is five, to others two, to others one. The point, that is, of responsibility, is the use of the gift of speech, according to our ability and opportunity. You converse about letters, fashions, politics, persons. If you are a disciple use your speech, now and then, for Christ ! You tell me it is hard to talk about religion. You can talk about everything: else with your neighbors, but this is difficult. I under- stand you, and I can sav nothing severe of this reti- cence, this hesitation regarding sacred subjects. For many people are reluctant and unwilling to speak con- cerning this most sacred of all themes, lest they should be betrayed into a habit of cant ; which is the simula- tion of feeling when one has no feeling. Others are afraid of becoming flippant about holy things.

And, first, let me say there can be no general rule given concerning religious conversation. Perhaps the nearest approach one can make to a precept, are the

Christian Conversation. 28 r

words of • St. Paul: " Let your speech be always witfr grace, seasoned with salt." That is, our conversation should be saturate.! with pious and religious prudence flowing from the Holy Spirit. With such a habit, relig- ion is the undercurrent which regulates speech ; net, indeed, showy and ostentatious, but sufficient to indi- cate that inward principle which governs the life, and is easily apprehended by every one. Neither is there any need that we should obtrude religious topics upon peo- ple everywhere, and at all times. There are occasions, too, when dealing with the rude and irreligious, that we should remember our Lord's words, not " to cast our pearls before swine." People who jest concerning the most solemn themes, people who travesty the holy words of Scripture are undeserving religious converse. But in ordinary conversation we should talk with such a sense of sacred propriety, with such Christian cheer- fulness, with such generous courtesy for the opinions and feelings of others, that although the name of Christ be never mentioned, people may gather that we have been with Him, and that His Holy Spirit is the prompter of our life and thought.

On the other hand, there are times when our discourse should be most direct and distinct. Straightforward- ness and downrightness, in many circumstances, are the duty of Christians. When we are dealing with the sick, with people who are anxious and inquiring, with

2 $2 Christian Conversation.

indifferent and careless people, then circumlocution or indirection is a great fault. I recollect reading of the late Mr. Sumner's visit to Thiers, President of France. As he passed through the grand entrance to his parlor, Mr. Sumner said that he asked himself — "What shall I converse about to-night ? " and at once he answered himself — "Art shall be the topic." And it was only the other day, in this city, being called upon to visit and converse with an invalid, I was pleased with the sime decision of mind. I wTas hardly seated, after the usual salutation, when I was addressed by the person referred to in these words : " I wished very much to talk with you about three topics which have occasioned me much thought." The first, such and such a passage, naming the verse ; and so, with a clearness and a per- tinence which could not have been excelled by a scholar, this person went from subject to subject without hesita- tion and without reserve. And so can every one of us do, if we have it in our heart to say a word for Christ, and the purpose to say that word.

My friends, let us say a word now and then to men for Christ. They need Christian converse ; nay, they often desire it and look for it. While there are people who live daily, yearly, with no thought of God, there are, believe me, numbers of others who think about Him, and only wait some kind and friendly person to quicken their souls to life and faith, and resolve, by a

Christian Conversation. 283

timely Utterance. And because you fail to speak of the things of God, they are disappointed. Be faithful to souls, in your conversation, as well as in your walk and bearing. But bear in mind two things. (1) That no stilted, formal, unmeaning words on religion, will reach any man's soul. If you are not impelled by duty and interest in men to talk with them concerning religious matters, hold your tongue. (2) Join to this the duty of avoiding all debate and wrangling upon religion. It is, be well assured, a most profitless thing. Ofttimes it is worse than this ; it is a matter of strife, ambition, and temper; almost utterly regardless of truth as its object- ive point. Indeed, most generally the work of Christ- ians is to persuade and invite the careless ; not to dis- pute with them. If you enter into controversy, men are likely to think you care more for victory than you do for their souls, albeit a zealous warmth for the faith is always a virtue and duty, with gainsaying men.

Speak, then, to your fellow-creatures from a sense of duty, and with anxiousness for their welfare. It is only deep conviction, prompting earnest, loving speech, that will influence men. Remember that all speech, except with very deceptive people, all speech is the result of conviction. This specially is the case in relig- ious matters. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." "I believed, and therefore have I spoken," are the words of David. Elihu, in the book

284 Christian Conversation.

of Job, tells us the same truth — " I am full of matter," he says: "The spirit within me constraineth me." "Behold my belly is as wine which hath no vent; it is ready to burst like new bottles." "I will speak, that I may be refreshed ; I will open my lips and answer." The sense of these words is on the surface. The man was possessed, charged to the full with burning, all-consum- ing convictions, and he could not contain himself. So possess yourselves, my friends, with the great truths of the religion you profess. Let them color the very fibres of your being ; let them run like fire through your brains ; and then there will be no hesitant, tardy discourse from your mouths, in your intercourse with men. Deep convictions are always the parents of earnest, saving wrords. Harlan Page was so thoroughly overcome by the preciousnes-s of the salvation given by Christ to his soul, that it forced him to speak, and he began the Christian life with the resolve to say some- thing of salvation to every man he associated with. And thus, by Christian conversation, he converted, in a brief life -time, over three hundred souls. " The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies." "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver."

SERMON XVIII.

THE SOCIAL PRINCIPLE AMONG A PEOPLE: AND ITS BEARING ON THEIR PROGRESS AND DEVELOPMENT.

Thanksgiving Day, 1875.

ISAIAH xli, 6, 7.

They helped every one his neighbor, and every one said to his brrther, Be of good courage. So the carpe)iter encouraged the goldsmith, and lie that smoothelh with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the soldering ; arid he fastened it with nails that it should not be moved.

More than a month has passed away since we received the proclamation of our Chief Magistrate, appointing the 25th of November a day of public thanksgiving to Almighty God.

And, in accordance with this pious custom, we, in common with millions of our fellow-citizens, have met together this morning, to offer up our tribute of praise and thankfulness to our common Parent in heaven, for all the gifts, favors, blessings, and benefactions, civil, domestic, religious, and educational, .which have been bestowed upon us during the year ; for the blessings of heaven above ; for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun ; for the precious things of the earth and the

f2S5)

2§6 Social Principle-.

fulness thereof; for the golden harvests of peace, un- stained by blood, and unbroken by strife ; for the con- stant stream of health which has flowed through our veins and households, untainted by plague or pesti- lence ; for the babes whom the Lord has laid upon your arms and given to your hearts ; for the plentiful supply of food which has been granted us from the fields, and which has laden our boards; for the goodly instruction which trains the mind and corrects the hearts of our children, and prepares them for responsibility, for duty, and eternity; for the civil privileges and the national freedom, in which we are permitted to participate; for the measure of success which God has given His Gos- pel, and for the hope that is ours that the Cross shall yet conquer everywhere beneath the sun, and that Jesus shall rule and reign through all the world. For these and all other gifts and blessings we render our tribute of praise and gratitude to the Lord, our Maker, Preserver, and Benefactor, through Jesus Christ our Lord !

Grateful as is this theme of gratitude, and inviting as it is for thought and further expression, it is not my purpose to pursue it to-day. I feel that we should turn the occasion into an opportunity for improvement and progress.

Especially is this the duty of a people situated as we are in this country; cut loose, blessed be God, for ever-

Social Principle. 287

more, from the dark moorings of servitude and oppres- sion ; but not fully arrived at — only drifting towards, the deep, quiet waters of fullest freedom and equality. Few, comparatively, in numbers ; limited in resources ; the inheritors of prodigious disasters; the heirs of ancestral woes and sorrows; burdened with most mani- fest duties and destinies ; anxious for our children ; thoughtful for our race; culpability and guilt of the deepest dye will be ours, if we do not most seriously consider the means and instruments by which we shall be enabled to go forward, and to rise upward. It is peculiarly a duty at this time when there is evidently an ebb-tide of indifference in the country, with regard to our race ; and when the anxiety for union neutralizes the interest in the black man.

The agencies to the high ends I have referred to are various ; but the text I have chosen suggests a train of thought, in a distinct and peculiar line. It shews us that spirit of unity which the world exhibits, when it would fain accomplish its great, commanding ends.

The prophet shews us here the notable sight, that is, that God comes down from heaven to put an end to the devices of the wicked. Whatever discord and strife may have before existed among them, at once it comes to an end. A common danger awaits them ; a common peril menaces At once they join hands; immediately their hearts are united. " They helped every one his

288 Social Principle.

neighbor, and every one said to his neighbor, ■ be of good courage."

The lesson is one which we shall do well to learn with diligence ; that it comes from the wicked, does not detract from its value. The world acts on many a prin- ciple which Christians would do well to lay to heart. Our Saviour tells us that "the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light." So here, this principle of united effort, and of generous concord, is worthy of the imitation of the colored people of this country, if they would fain rise to superiority of both character and achievement. I shall speak, there- fore, of the " Social principle among a people ; and its bearing on their progress and development!'

What I mean by the social principle, is the disposi- tion which leads men to associate and join together for specific purposes ; the principle which makes families and societies, and which binds men in unity and brother- hood, in races and churches and nations.

For man, you will observe, is a social being. In his mental and moral constitution God has planted certain sympathies and affections, from which spring the desire for companionship. It is with reference to these prin- ciples that God declared of the single and solitary Adam, "It is not good for the man to live alone." It was no newly-discovered affinity of the Maker, no after- thought of the Almighty. He had formed His creature

Social Principle. 289

with a fitness and proclivity for association. He had made him with a nature that demanded society. And from this principle flows, as from a fountain, the loves, friendships, families, and combinations which tie men together, in union and concord. A wider and more imposing result of this principle is the welding of men in races and nationalities. All the fruit and flower of these organisms come from the coalescence of divers faculties and powers, tending to specific ends. For no one man can effect anything important alone. There never was a great building, a magnificent city, a noble temple, a grand cathedral, a stately senate-house which was the work of one single individual. We know of no important event in history, no imposing scheme, no great and notable occurrence which stands as an epoch in the annals of the race, which was accomplished by a single, isolated individual. Whether it is the upbuild- ing of Imperial Rome; or the retreat of the Ten Thou- sand; or the discovery of America; or Cook's or Anson's voyages around the globe ; or the conquest of India; or the battle of Waterloo; everywhere we find that the great things of history have been accomplished by the combination pf men.

Not less is this the case in those more humane and genial endeavors which have been for the moral good of men, and wherein the individuality of eminent leaders has been more conspicuous. We read of the evangeli-

290 Social Principle.

zation of Europe, from the confines of Asia to Britain ; and, in more modern times, we have the abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery, the grand efforts for the relief of prisoners, the Temperance Reformation, the Sunday-school system. These were noble schemes, which originated in the fruitful brains and sprung from the generous hearts of single individuals, and which, in their gracious results, have made the names of Howard and Wilberforce, of Clarkson and Robert Raikes, bright and conspicuous. But yet we know that even they of themselves did not achieve the victories which are asso- ciated with their names. Thousands, nay, tens of thou- sands of the good and pious were aroused by their passionate appeals to stirring energy; and only when the masses of the godly were marshalled to earnest warfare, were those evils doomed ; and they fell, never to rise again !

The application of this truth to the interests and the destiny of the colored race of America is manifest. We are living in this country, a part of its population, and yet, in divers respects, we are as foreign to its inhabit- ants as though we were living in the Sandwich Islands. It is this our actual separation from the real life of the nation, which constitutes us "a nation within a nation:" thrown very considerably upon ourselves for many of the largest interests of life, and for nearly all our social and religious advantages. As a consequence on this

Social Principle \ 29 1

state of things, all the stimulants of ambition and self- love should lead this people to united effort for personal superiority and the uplifting of the race; but, instead thereof, overshadowed by a more powerful race of peo- ple ; wanting in the cohesion which comes from racial enthusiasm; lacking in the confidence which is the root of a people's stability; disintegration, doubt, and dis- trust almost universally prevail, and distract all their business and policies.

Among a people, as in a nation, we find farmers, mechanics, sailors, servants, business men, trades. For life, energy, and progress in a people, it is necessary that all these various departments of activity should be carried on with spirit, skill, and unity. It is the cooperative principle, working in trades, business, and manufacturing, which is the great lever that is lifting up the million masses in great nations, and giving those nations themselves a more masterly superiority than they have ever known, in all their past histories. No people can discard this principle, and achieve greatness. Already I have shown that it cannot be done in the confined sphere of individual, personal effort. The social principle prevails in the uprearing of a nation, as in the establishing of a family. Men must associate and combine energies in order to produce large results. In the same way that a family becomes strong, influen- tial, and wealthy by uniting the energies of parents and

292 Social - Principle.

children, so a people go on to honor and glory, in the proportion and extent that they combine their powers to definite and productive ends.

Two principles are implied in the remarks I have made, that is, the one of mutuality, and the othei- of dependence.

By mutuality I mean the reciprocal tendencies and desires which interact between large bodies of men, aiming at single and definite ends. I mean the several sentiments of sympathy, cheer, encouragement, and combination, among any special body of people ; which are needed and required in distinct departments of labor. Solitude, in any matter, is alien to the human heart. We need, we call for the aid of our fellow- creatures. The beating heart of man waits for the answering heart of his brother.

It is the courageous voice of the venturesome soldier that leads on a whole column to the heart of the frav. It is the cheering song of the hardy sailor as- he hangs upon the shrouds, amid the fierceness of the tempest, that lifts up the heart of his timid messmates, and stim- ulates to boldness and noble daring. On the broad fields of .labor, where the scythe, the plough, and the spade work out those wondrous transformations which change the wild face of nature to order and beauty, and in the end, bring forth those mighty cargoes of grain which gladden the hearts and sustain the frames of

Social Principle. 293

millions; there the anthems of toil invigorate the brawny arms of labor; while the sun pours down its fiery rays, and the midday heat allures in vain to the shade and to rest. Deep down in the dark caves of earth, where the light of the sun never enters,' tens of thousands of men and children delve away in the coal beds, or iron mines, buried in the bowels of the earth; cheered on in their toilsome labor by the joyous voices and the gladdening songs of their companions. What is it, in these several cases, that serves at once to lighten toil, and to stimulate to hardier effort ? Several principles indeed concur; but it is evident that what I call mutuality, i. e., sympathy and unison of feeling, act upon the hearts of soldiers, sailors, laborers, and miners, and spur them on to duty and endurance.

So, likewise, we may not pass by the other motive, i. e.} the feeling of dependence. We need the skill, the energy, the achievement of our fellow-creatures. No man stands up entirely alone, self-sufficient in the entire circle of human needs. Even in a state of barbarism the rude native man feels the need of the rieht arm of his brother. How much more with those who are civ- ilized and enlightened ! If you or I determine upon absolute independencey of life and action, rejecting the arm and the aid of all other men, into how many depart- ments of labor should we not at once have to multiply ourselves ?

294 Social Principle.

It is the recognition of this principle of association, which has made Great Britain, France, the United States, Holland, and Belgium the greatest nations of the earth. There are more partnerships, combinations, trades- unions, banking-houses, and insurance companies in those countries than in all the rest of the world together. The mere handful of men in these nations, numbering but one hundred millions, sway and dom- inate all the other nine hundred millions of men on the globe. Or just look at one single instance in our own day : here are England and France — fifty-eight millions of men — who, united, only a few years ago, humbled the vast empire of China, with its three hundred millions of semi-civilized inhabitants.

The principles of growth and mastery in a race, a nation, or people, are the same all over the globe. The same great agencies which are needed to make a people in one quarter of the globe and in one period of time are needed here, at this time, in this American nation- ality. We children of Africa in this land are no way different from any other people in these respects. Many of the differences of races are slight and incidental, and ofttimes become obliterated by circumstances, position, and religion. I can take you back to a period in the history of England when its rude inhabitants lived in caves and huts, when they fed on bark and roots, when their dress was the skins of animals. When you riext

Social Principle. 295

look at some eminent Englishman, the personification, perchance, of everything cultivated, graceful, and re- fined, you may remember that his distant ancestors were wild and bloody savages, and that it has taken ten centuries to change him from the rudeness of his bru- talized forefathers into an enlightened and civilized human being.

The great general laws of growth and superiority are unchangeable. The Almighty neither relaxes nor alters them for the convenience of any people. Conformity, then, to this demand for combination of forces is a necessity which we, as a people, cannot resist without loss and ruin. We cannot pay heed to it too soon ; for if there has been anything for which the colored people of this country have been and now are noted, it is for disseverance, the segregation of their forces, the lack of the co-operative spirit. Neither in farming opera- tions, nor trades, nor business, nor in mechanical em- ployment, nor marketing, nor in attempts at grocery- keeping, do we find attempts at combination of their forces. No one hears anywhere of a company of fifty men to start a farm, to manufacture bricks, to begin a great trading business, to run a mill, or to ply a set of vessels in the coasting trade. No one sees a spontaneous movement of thirty or forty families to take possession of a tract of land for a specific mone- tary venture. Nowhere do we see a united movement

296 Social Principle.

in any State for general moral and educational improve- ment, whereby the masses may be delivered from infe- riority and degradation.* The people, as a body, seem delivered over to the same humble, servile occupations of life in which their fathers trod, because, from a lack of co-operation they are unable to step into the higher callings of business ; and hence penury, poverty, inferi- ority, dependence, and even servility is their one gen- eral characteristic throughout the country, along with a dreadful state of mortality.

And the cause of this inferiority of purpose and of action is two-fold, and both the fault, to some extent, of unwise and unphilosophic leaders. For, since, espe- cially emancipation, two special heresies have influenced and governed the minds of colored men in this nation : (1.) The one is the dogma which I have heard fre- quently from the lips of leaders, personal and dear, but mistaken, friends, that the colored people of this country shou Id forget, as soon as possible, that they are colored people : — a fact, in the first place, which is an impossibil- ity. Forget it, forsooth, when you enter a saloon and are repulsed on account of your color! Forget it when

*I am advised by an intelligent friend, that the above allegations need modification ; that some few such organizations have been made in two or three of the Southern States and in the City of Baltimore. The " Colored Educational Convention " of Virginia deserves distin- guished consideration and great commendation.

Social Principle. 297

you enter a car, South or West, and are denied a decent seat ! Forget it when you enter the Church of God, and are driven to a hole in the gallery ! Forget it when every child of yours would be driven ignominiously from four-fifths of the common schools of the country! Forget it, when thousands of mechanics in the large cities would make a " strike" rather than work at the same bench, in the same yard, with a black carpenter or brick-maker! Forget it, when the boyhood of our race is almost universally deprived of the opportunity of learning trades, through prejudice! Forget it, when, in one single State, twenty thousand men dare not go to the polls on election-c'ay, through the tyranny of caste ! Forget it, when one great commonwealth offers a new constitution for adoption, by which a man like Dumas the younger, if he were a North Carolinian, could be indicted for marrying the foulest white woman in that State, and merely because she was white! For- get that you are colored, in these United States ! Turn madman, and go into a lunatic asylum, and then, per- chance, you^ may forget it ! But, if you have any sense or sensibility, how is it possible for you, or me, or any other colored man, to live oblivious of a fact of so much significance in a land like this! The only place I know of in this land where you can "forget you are colored" is the grave !

But not only is this dogma folly, it is disintegrating

298 Social Principle.

and socially destructive. For shut out, for instance, as I am and you are from the cultivated social life of the superior classes of this country, if I forget that I am a black man, if you ignore the fact of race, and we both, ostrich-like, stick our Leads in the sand, or stalk along, high-headed, oblivious of the actual distinctions which do exist in American society, what are you or I to do for our social nature ? What will become of the mea- sure of social life among ourselves which we now pos- sess ? Where are we to find our friends ? Where find the circles for society and cheerful intercourse?

Why, my friends, the only way you, and I, and thou- sands of our people get domestic relations, marry wives and husbands, secure social relations, form good neigh- borhood and companionship, is by the very remem- brance which we are told to scout and forswear.

2. The other dogma is the demand that colored men should give up all distinctive effort, as colored men, in schools, churches, associations, and friendly societies. But this, you will observe, is equivalent to a demand to the race to give up all civilization in this land and to submit to barbarism. The cry is : " Give up your spe- cial organization." "Mix in with your white fellow- citizens."

Now I waive, for the present, all discussion of abstract questions of rights and prerogatives. I direct my attention to the simple point of practicality ; and

Social Principle, 299

I beg to say, that this is a thing which cannot be forced. Grieved, wearied and worried as humanity has been with the absurd, factitious arrangements of society in every quarter of the globe, yet men everywhere have had to wait. You can batter down oppression and tyranny with forceful implements ; not so social disa- bilities and the exclusiveness of caste. The Saxon could not force it upon the Norman. Upon this point, if everything is not voluntary, generous, gracious, and spontaneous, the repulsive will is as icy, and as obsti- nate too, as Mt. Blanc. I wonder that the men who talk in the style I have referred to, forget that nine- tenths of the American people have become so poisoned and stimulated by the noxious influence of caste, that, in the present day, they would resist to the utmost before they would allow the affiliations, however remote, that implied the social or domestic principle.

Nay, more than this: not only would they reject your advances, but, after they had repelled you, they would leave you to reap the fruits of your own folly in break- ing up your own distinctive and productive organisms, under the flighty stimulants of imaginative conceit.

And the disaster, undoubtedly, would be deserved; not, indeed, morally, for the inflictions of caste are unjust and cruel ; but because of your unwisdom ; for it is the office of common sense to see, as well the exact situation, to comprehend the real condition of things as

300 Social Principle,

they exist in this nation ; as well as to take cognizance of the pernicious and atrocious virulence of caste !

Few things, in policy are more calamitous in result than mere conceit. An unbalanced and blind imagina- tion is one of the most destructive, most disastrous of all guides. Such I believe to be the nature of the suggestions which I reprobate. But remember, I do not condemn the men who hold them. Oppression and caste are responsible for many worse things than unwis- dom, or blind speculation. How intolerable are the distinctions which hedge up our ardent, ambitious minds, on every side, I thoroughly apprehend ! How the excited mind turns passionately to every fancied and plausible mode of escape, I can easily understand ! But remember that the pilotage of a whole people, of an entire race, through the quicksands and the breakers of civil and social degradation, up to the plane of manly freedom and equality, while it is, by its very hazards, calculated to heighten the pulse, and to quicken the activity of the brain, is, nevertheless, just that 'sort of work which calls for the coolest head, and the hardest, most downright reasonableness. When you are plead- ing for natural rights, when men are endeavoring to throw off the yoke of oppression, you may indeed

— imitate the action of the tiger, Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

But a war against a gross public sentiment, a contest

Social Principle. 301

with prejudices and repulsions, is a thing of a different kind, and calls for a warfare of an opposite character. You cannot destroy caste with a ten pounder 1 - You cannot sweep away a prejudice with a park of artillery !

I know, to use the words of another, ''how difficult it is to silence imagination enough to make the voice of Reason even distinctly heard in this case; as we are accustomed from our youth up to indulge that forward and delusive faculty ever obtruding beyond its sphere ; of some assistance indeed to apprehension, but the author of all error; as we plainly lose ourselves in gross and crude conception of things, taking for granted that we are acquainted with what indeed we are wholly ignorant of";* so it seems to me the gravest of all duties to get rid of all delusions upon this subject; and to learn to look at it in the light of hard, serious, long- continued, painful, plodding work. It is work, you will observe, not abnormal disturbances, not excitement ; but a mighty effort of moral and mental reconstruction, reaching over to a majestic end. And then when that is reached and secured, then all the hindrances of caste will be forever broken down !

Nothing is more idle than to talk of the invincibility of prejudice. The Gospel is sure to work out all the issues and results of brotherhood, everywhere under the sun, and in this land; but, until that day arrives,

* Bishop Butler*

302 Social Principle.

we are a nation, set apart, in this country. As such, we have got to strive — not to get rid of ourselves ; not to agonize over our distinctive peculiarities ; but to accept the situation as Providence allows it, and to quit "ourselves as men," in, if you say so, painful and embarrassing circumstances; determined to shift the groove of circumstance, and to reverse it.

The special duty before us is to strive for footing and for superiority in this land, on the line of race y as a tem- porary but needed expedient, for the ultimate extinction of caste, and all race distinctions. For if we do not look after our own interests, as a people, and strive for advantage, no other people will. It is folly for mere idealists to content themselves with the notion that "we are American citizens" ; that, "as American citi- zens, ours is the common heritage and destiny of the nation"; that "special solicitude for the colored people is a superfluity"; that "there is but one tide in this land; and we shall flow with all others on it."

On the contrary, I assert, we are just now a "peculiar people" in this land; looked at, repulsed, kept apart, legislated for, criticised in journals, magazines, and scientific societies, at an insulting and intolerable dis- tance, as a peculiar people; with the doubt against us whether or not we can hold on to vital power on this soil ; or whether we have capacity to rise to manhood and superiority.

Social Principle. 3O3

And hence I maintain that there is the greatest need for us all to hold on to the remembrance that we are "colored men," and not to forget it!

While one remnant of disadvantage abides in this land, stand by one another! While proscription in any quarter exists, maintain intact all your phalanxes ! While antagonism confronts your foremost men, hold on to all the instincts of race for the support of your leaders, and the elevation of your people ! While the imputation of inferiority, justly or unjustly, is cast upon you, combine for all the elements of culture, wealth, and power ! While any sensitiveness or repulsion dis- covers itself at your approach or presence, hold on to your own self-respect, keep up, and be satisfied with, your own distinctive circles !

And then the "poor, forsaken ones/' in the lanes and alleys and cellars of the great cities ; in remote villages and hamlets; on old plantations which their fathers' blood has moistened from generation to generation ; ignorant, unkempt, dirty, animal-like, repulsive, and half heathen — ^brutal and degraded; in some States, tens and hundreds of thousands, not slaves, indeed, according to the letter of the law, but the tools and serfs of would-be oppressors : stand by them until the school-master and preacher reach them as well as us ; and the noble Christian civilization of the land trans- forms their features and their forms, and changes their

Sermon IV (part 5)

304 Social Principle.

rude huts into homes of beauty; and lifts them up into such grand superiority, that no one in the land will associate the word "Negro" with inferiority and degra- dation ; but the whole land, yea, the whole world shall look upon them by-and-by, multitudinous in their brood- ing, clustered masses, "redeemed, regenerated, disen- thralled," and exclaim, "Black, but comely!" But, while they are low, degraded, miserable, almost beastly, don't forget that you are colored men, as well as they; "your brothers' keepers."

Do not blink at the charge of inferiority. It is not a race peculiarity; and whatever its measure or extent in this country, it has been forced upon you. Do not deny it, but neutralize and destroy it, not by shrieks, or agonies, or foolish pretence ; but by culture, by probity, and industry.

I know the natural resource of some minds, under these painful circumstances, to cry out, "Agitate! agi- tate!" YiMt ad bono t What advantage will agitation bring? Everything has a value, according to its rela- tion to its own natural and specific end. But what is the bearing of agitation to a purpose which is almost entirely subjective in its nature. For, as I take it, the object we must needs have in view, in the face of the disabilities which confront our race in this land, is the attainment of such general superiority that preju- dice must decline. But agitation has no such force,

Social Principle. 3°5

possesses no such value. Agitation is the expenditure of force : our end and aim is the husbandry of all our vital resources.

Character, my friends, is the grand, effective instru- ment which we are to use for the destruction of caste : Character, in its broad, wide, deep, and high signifi- cance; character, as evidenced in high moral and intellectual attainments ; as significant of general prob- ity, honor, honesty, and self-restraint; as inclusive of inward might and power ; as comprehending the attain- ments of culture, refinement, and enlightenment ; as comprising the substantial results of thrift, economy, and enterprise ; and as involving the forces of combined energies and enlightened cooperation. Make this, not the exceptional, but the common, general reality, amid the diverse, wide-spread populations of the colored peo- ple in this country; and then all the theories of inferi- ority, all the assumptions of your native and invincible degradation will pass, with wonderful rapidity, into end- less forgetf ulness ; and the people of the very next, nay, multitudes, in the decline of this generation, when they look upon us, will wonder at the degrading facts of a past and wretched history. Only secure high, 'com- manding, and masterly Character; and then all the problems of caste, all the enigmas of prejudice, all unreasonable and all unreasoning repulsion, will be settled forever, though you were ten times blacker than

306 Social Principle.

midnight! Then all false ideas concerning your nature and your qualities, all absurd notions relative to your capacity, shall vanish ! Then every contemptuous fling shall be hushed, every insulting epithet be forgotten ! Then, also, all the remembrances of a servile heritage, of ancestral degradation, shall be obliterated! Then all repulsive feelings, all evil dislikes shall fly away! Then, too, all timid disconcert shall depart from us, and all cramped and hesitant manhood shall die!

Dear brethren and friends, let there be but the clear demonstration of manly power and grand capacity in our race, in general, in this country; let there only be the wide out-flashings of art and genius, from their brains; and caste will slink, at once, oblivious to the shades. But no mere self-assertion, no strong, vocifer- ous claims and clamor, can ever secure recognition and equality, so long as inferiority and degradation, if even cruelly entailed, abide as a heritage and a cancer. And I maintain we must organize, to the end that we may attain such character. The whole of our future on this soil depends upon that single fact of magnitude — char- acter. Race, color, and all the accidents thereof have but little to do with the matter; and men talk idly when they say "we must forget that we are colored men." What is needed is not that we should forget this fact, but that we should rise to such elevation that the people of the land be forced to forget all the facts

Social Principle. 3°?

and theories of race, when they behold our thorough equality with them, in all the lines of activity and attainment, of culture and moral grandeur. The great necessity in this land is that its white population should forget, be made to forget, that we are colored men ! Hence there is a work ahead for us, for the overthrow of caste, which will consume the best part of a century. He, whoever he may be, commits the greatest blunder, who advises you to disband your forces, until that work is brought to its end. It was only after the battle of Waterloo that England and her allies broke up their armies, and scattered their huge battalions. Not until we, as a people, have fully vindicated our race; not until we have achieved to the full their rights and pre- rogatives ; not until, by character, we challenge uni- versal respect and consideration in the land, can we sing the song :

—Come to the sunset tree,

The day is past and gone, The woodman's axe lies free,

And the reaper's work is done.

Until that time, far distant from to-day, should the cry be everywhere among us : " Combine and marshal, for all the highest achievements in industry, social progress, literature, and religion!"

I hasten to conclude with two brief remarks: First, then, let me remind and warn you, my friends, that we, as colored men, have no superfluity of powers

308 Social Principle.

or faculties in the work which is before us, as a race, in this country. First of all, we all start with maimed and stunted powers. And next, the work before us is so distinct, definite, and, withal, so immense, that it tolerates no erratic wanderings to out-of-the-way and foreign fields.

And yet there are men who tell us that much of our work of the day is objective, that it lies among another people. But I beg to say that we have more than we are equal to in the needs of the six millions of our ignorant and benighted people, yet crippled and para- lyzed by the lingering maladies of slavery. If we address ourselves strenuously and unitedly to their ele- vation and improvement we shall have our hands full for more than one generation, without flowing over with zeal and offices to a masterful people, laden with the enlightenment of centuries.

For one, I say very candidly that I do not feel it my special calling to wage war with and to extirpate caste. I am no way responsible for its existence. I abominate it as an enormity. Theirs is the responsibility who uphold it, and theirs is the obligation to destroy it. My work is special to my own people, and it is constructive. I beg leave to differ from that class of colored men who think that ours is a special mission, to leave our camp and to go over, as it were, among the Philistines, and to destroy their idols.

Social Principle, 306

For my part, I am satisfied that my field of labor is with my own race in these times. I feel I have no exuberance of powers or ability to spend in any other field, or to bestow upon any other people. I say, as said the Shunamite woman, "I dwell among my own people " (2 Kings : iv, 13) ; not, indeed, as mindless of the brotherhood of the entire species, not as forgetful of the sentiment of fellowship with disciples of every name and blood; but as urged by the feeling of kinship, to bind myself as "with hooks of steel" to the most degraded class in the land, my own " kinsmen according to the flesh." I have the most thorough and radical conviction that the very first duty of colored men, in this our day and generation, is in the large field of effort which requires the regeneration and enlighten- ment of the colored race in these United States.

And second, from this comes the legitimate inference suggested by the text, i. e.y of union and co-operation through all our ranks for effective action and for the noblest ends. Everywhere throughout the Union wide and thorough organization of the people should be made, not for idle political logomachy, but for industrial effort, for securing trades for youth, for joint-stock com- panies, for manufacturing, for the production of the great staples of the land, and likewise for the higher purposes of life, i. e., for mental and moral improve- ment, and raising the plane of social and domestic life among us.

310 Social Principle.

In every possible way these needs and duties should be pressed upon their attention, by sermons, by lectures, by organized societies, by state and national conven- tions; the latter not for political objects, but for social, industrial ends and attainments. I see nought in the future but that we shall be scattered like chaff before the wind before the organized labor of the land, the great power of capital, and the tremendous tide of emi- gration, unless, as a people, we fall back upon the might and mastery which come from the combination of forces and the principle of industrial co-operation. Most of your political agitation is but wind and vanity. What this race needs in this country is power — the forces that may be felt. And that comes from character, and char- acter is the product of religion, intelligence, virtue, family order, superiority, wealth, and the show of indus- trial forces. These are forces which we do not possess. We are the only class which, as a class, in

THIS COUNTRY, IS WANTING IN THES": GRAND ELEMENTS.

The very first effort of the colored people should be to lay hold of them ; and then they will take such root in this American soil that only the convulsive upheaving of the judgment-day can throw them out! And there- fore I close, as I began, with the admonitory tones of the text. God grant they may be heeded at least by you who form this congregation, in your sacred work here, and in all your other relations: "They helped

Social Principle. ^\\

every one his neighbor, and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage. So the carpenter encour- aged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the soldering; and he fastened it with nails, that it

SHOULD NOT BE MOVED I"

SERMON XIX.

THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

st. tohn, xi : 49, 50.

And one of them named Caiaphas, being the High Priest that same year, said unto thetn, Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

All through the week,* my brethren, we, in common with the people of this land, have been passing through an ordeal of suspense, of agony, of almost despair, rarely parallelled in the history of this or any other country. Pain and suffering are the common lot of all men; but it is seldom that a whole nation is called to the intense, long-lingering anxiety which has been the lot of the many millions who make up this great nation. Day by day, nay, hour by hour, this entire republic has been on the rack, fearful of a report which would have brought anguish and bereavement to unnumbered hearts and households. For the entire people of this land have felt that the dreadful deed which brought our Chief Magistrate well nigh the shades of death was per-

*Preached Sunday, July 10, 1881.

(312)

The Assassination of President Garfield. 3 * 3

sonal to themselves. When President Garfield was shot by a wild and reckless assassin, every citizen was shot at. His wounds were our wounds. His agonies were our agonies. It was not only that he, as President and Chief, stood officially before the people and the world the representative of the nation, and hence that to attack him was like an assault upon the flag of the country — an assault upon its every citizen; but, added to this, is the further fact, seen in various ways before this sad occurrence, that the genuine and intense per- sonality of this man had " bowed the heart " of its whole population, "as the heart of one man." Hence it is that a whole people have stood breathless, anxious, and appalled at his bedside ; and strong men, when they heard of this calamity, fainted, and the tender hearts of women and children gave way to uncontrollable emo- tions, and the aged, in known instances, shocked at the awfulness of this assault, lay down and died !

Such interest, such sympathy, such fellowship in suf- fering with a suffering man has never before been wit- nessed. We know somewhat how great has been his anguish. But is it too great an exaggeration to say that thousands of people in this land, have suffered well nigh as much in his suffering as he himself has suffered ? Is there any man here who can estimate the intense mental anguish, the harassing care of multitudes, as they have stood, day by day, trembling, almost despair-

314 The Assassination of President Garfield.

ing, for the life of this eminent man ? Many years ago I read a poem, "The Death-Bed/' by Thomas Hood. It is a most graphic representation of the aching anx- iousness of the soul at the dreaded death of a sufferer; but never have I so felt them in my heart as, day by day, with an anxiousness beyond expression, I have sought the bulletins from the "White House."

We watched her breathing through the night,

Her breathing soft and low, As in her breast the wave of life

Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seemed to speak, * So slowly moved about,

As we had lent her half our powers To eke her living out.

Our very hopes belied our fears,

Our fears our hopes belied — We thought her dying when she slept,

And sleeping when she died.

It is a terrible event, my brethren ! The fruit of the distempered brain and the wild will of a reckless and bloody-minded man ! But the Divine will runs right beside it, with beneficent intent, and corrective and saving ends. Just so it is in all the dark and dreadful occurrences of life. The Almighty maintains His omnipresent power amid dread disaster, as well as in benignant event.

Neither man nor devil can shut God out of the cur-

The Assassination of President Garfield. 315

rents of history. And we see that He moves, that He will move, in all the shady, murky occurrences of life, ever

— from seeming evil Still educing good.

It is this counteracting and governing will of Deity, seen everywhere, in the dark as well as in the bright histories of men, which we call Providence. We see it in this occurrence. There is a providence in this dreadful tragedy. President Garfield is not allowed, you may be sure, to suffer in vain. There are great moral uses discoverable in his sore trial. Albeit not intended by the Evil One, our great sufferer is mani- festly a sacrifice for national good. And the flippant words of Caiaphas, which were, after all, an unconscious prophecy, set forth the great principle of expiation which runs through all the relations of life ; but which reaches its highest point in the sufferings of the Cruci- fied. Although it be one of its lower senses, we may see it exemplified in our suffering Chief Magistrate.

1. See, first of all, the sudden check this event has given to the gross secularization of the American mind. The race for wealth in this country, the eager, outstretched ambitions for mere earthly good, outstrip the rivalries of all other nations. They are so absorb- ing and so immense that they allow only the most slender intrusion of things sacred and divine. They make men earthly in all the purposes of life, and create

316 The Assassination of President Garfield.

that intense thirst for mere temporal gratification which is the special temptation of the young, and proves so widely the ruin of the old. The mind of the men of this land, beyond the general mind of other civilized nations, alien, for the most part, from art, unaddicted, save in the schools, to science and philosophy, runs with an eager, almost insane, craving after mere earthly good.

And yet, in an instant, as it were, this whole nation's secularity was brought to a stop. By one single flash of the telegraph, millions of men sickened of trade, and barter, and money-making. At a single whisper of national calamity, handicraft and farming, labor and service, are given up. The busy wheel of the factory ceases its whirl, and the song of the anvil is hushed. Wall street turns with disgust from its trade in stock, and mechanism puts aside the hammer and the plane.

In this one aspect undoubtedly that is a good which serves to arrest the blind rush after mere material ends. No one can measure the benediction, almost sacred in its nature, which lifts up a people, above earth and sense, into the domain of sentiment and feeling. It is a glo- rious incident in the life of any nation, when of itself pushes out of sight the gross and carnal, and advances spontaneously and in one mighty phalanx into the sphere of sensibility.

And next observe that with this sudden collapse

The Assassination of President Garfield. 3 1 7

of the temporal, uprises, as by a divine impulse, the grand outburst of a whole nation's intense and tearful sensibility. Not only women with their tender sympa- thies, and children with their warm and ardent feelings, but millions of men, with throbbing hearts, rushed, as it were, to this man's bedside, offering sympathy, devotedness, and gifts ; nay, almost ready to tender their life-blood, to save the life of their loved and hon- ored chief. See how this nation, for well nigh a week, has been given up to tears and indignation ; alternate hope and fear ; to prayer and supplications ; and now, at the last, note the generous outpouring of riches, that the wife and children of this Chief Magistrate may not, in any event whatever, be left unprovided for and destitute !

My brethren, there is nothing fortuitous in these stirring occurrences. God's hand is manifestly visible, bright -and beneficent, amid its darkest shades. Satan, indeed, and his dark-scarred instrument, "thought evil" in this bloody deed; but "God meant it unto good"; even the sudden wresting of a nation from gross, mate- rial purposes, and the uplifting them to the highest, noblest aims of life. And this I call a blessing. It is, indeed, almost a salvation, this sudden rising tidal wave of affection and sympathy in this nation's heart. Whether its gross materialism could have been dis- turbed in any ordinary way, is doubtful. Whether its

3 1 S The Assassination of President Garfield.

dull lethargy could ha^e been galvanized even into tem- porary life, by common occurrence, is a question. It seems as though some terrible thrill was needed; as though nothing but the threatened life of a grand victim could sweep away the film from the eyes of this nation, and enable it, of a sudden, to see.

I feel, as much as any man, the horror of this mur- derous act. But when I observe this grand demonstra- tion of a nation's moral nature ; when I see the spiritual bursting forth from the caverns of a people's cold, cal- culating secularity ; I behold a providence that cannot be mistaken, and learn, besides, that it is sometimes expedient "that one man should die, that a whole nation perish not"!

2. But neither the keenness of our feelings nor the depth of our sensibilities should cause us to pass by great lessons which spring immediately from this sad event. People talk of it as a casualty. Some look at it as a mystery. But remember "that affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground." There is nothing of chance or hap-hazard in this calamity. It requires no extraordinary insight to discover in it the principle of sequence. For, unless I make the greatest of mistakes, cause and effect are as plainly evident in this tragic occurrence as in any of the other incidents which go to make the history of the times.

The Assassination of President Garfield. 319

Let me set before you some of the lessons which it seems to me that this nation is called upon, just now, to learn.

And (1) this attempted assassination brings vividly before us the intoxicating and demoralizing effects of our political system. It is a system calculated most directly to carry men beyond themselves, to taint the brains of thousands with incipient insanity, and to hurry them on to wild and irresponsible actions. We talk, in common parlance, of the wildness of money speculations and of the madness of unlawful lottery schemes. But these ventures are actual soberness com- pared with the intense and extravagant incitements which come out of our political agitations. We have, in our country, settled organisms and established modes in politics, which, in their operations, seem designed as certainly they do to produce widespread and convulsive upheavals. Why, the very caucusses of parties, and they are multitudinous, are flames. Our vast political assemblages, what are they but burning blasts ? Our national conventions, but tempests? Our tumultuous and swarming canvasses, but paroxysms? Our grand elections, what but tremendous tornadoes ? And then, when success has attended these almost frenzied parti- san efforts, what can we call the uprising and the pas- sionate pressure of the mighty army of anxious, greedy, determined office-seekers — what but blasting hurri- canes ?

3 2D The Assassination of President Garfield,

There can be no doubt, as it strikes me, that this homicidal attack has sprung directly from this exciting system. This assassin's career goes to show that he possessed that temperament and that sort of brains, fitted, most precisely, to the counter-cries and the intem- perate incitements of our recent political and partisan upheavals. His very letters, words, and utterances show that his mind for a long time had become stimu- lated to frenzy by agitations and strifes, of which you all know, but which may not be dweit upon nor too plainly spoken of in this sacred place. The anxious- ness for office was indeed an element in his conduct; and that is another feature of this deadly political inebriation. But the main characteristic of the assas- sin's motive and act, was partisan spleen and political dudgeon, chafed and inflamed to murderous purpose.

The clear-minded citizen of every name has seen somewhat, in the last ten days, the bane of this whole system. By blood, perchance — which God forbid — by death, a sudden revelation has been made of the organic but destructive system of fire, storm, and tempest which characterizes our national politics. This discov- ery, sad and humiliating as it may be, is somewhat compensatory for the prodigious evil which fathers it. And if this great lesson is thoroughly learned at this time, then, in the divine providence, it will be clearly seen how, at times, it is " expedient that one man should

The Assassination of President Garfield. 321

die, and that the whole nation perish not." For perish it will if reason, restraint, unselfishness, and sober duty are not made stronger and more conspicuous ele- ments in our political strife.

3. Turn to another lesson suggested by this dark occurrence. We may see, just now, the ignoble fact that our people hold government and governmental rule as too cheap a thing in estimation. I have the impres- sion that, outside of the thinking, cultured classes, the average American thinks that the governmental system of the land is simply his tool, the republic as only a thing for personal convenience. Allied to this notion is the other feeling, that neither nation, nor any officer thereof, must trench too much upon personal desire or individual purpose.

What is the common sentiment abroad in the land with regard to the Republic, as a nation ? Do not men declare that it is a man-made thing? Do they not vociferate that civil government is merely human ? That it is "of and by the people," with the- narrow lim- itations of the assertion which they make? Nay, are there not large masses of people in the land who would resent as an insult and an outrage, the denial that any government, that is organic in its nature, was made "by the people -' ? And is it not owing to this that we look in vain on this soil for that filial, that reverential sentiment toward government which characterized even the higher pagan nations of antiquity ?

322 The Assassination of President Garfield.

It is this cheap idea of government, an idea as false as it is puerile, which has served to demoralize the American mind, and which has produced such wide unrestraint, not only in the civil, but in all the other relations of life. For if there is one special peculiarity of our national character, it is dislike of rule and authority. It comes out in civil affairs, in .churches, in colleges, in common schools, and in families.

The notion of government most widely prevalent among us is that it is mostly a subjective thing. Peo- ple feel that they must be left to govern themselves. External authority is a grievance and an irritation. And hence it arises that not only men and women, but children, in our day, and at a very early age, chafe under rule, reject authority, and spurn control.

One of the most alarming things in the life of the nation is the perversion that we discover in all the lines of life — the perversion of liberty into license. %And when a people reach such a state that they lose sight of the magnitude of the very idea of government, and begin to eschew the principle of rule and authority, then they are rapidly verging toward anarchy, toward speedy and certain ruin.

One grand corrective to this error lies in the region of thought and principle. "People who have been entrapped by false opinions must be liberated by con- vincing truths." Hence, in these days, when the idea

The Assassination of President Garfield, 323

of obedience to constituted authority seems fading away, it is the duty of ministers of the Gospel to press upon the attention of the people the truth, that govern- ment is, per se, in itself, in idea, a grand and majestic thing. The fact must be set forth with prominence, that the nation is a creation and manifestation of God. For, my brethren, all civil power is from God Himself. When St. Paul, in one place, declares, "there is no power but of God," he asserts the magnitude of the very principle of government, and that in all relations. And when, in another, he commands, " Honor the king,' he inculcates the duty of subjection to and reverence for constituted magisterial authority.

One of the deep undercurrents of American thought, in responsible circles, has been with regard to the drift of society to lawless freedom. Everywhere it has given thinking men the greatest concern and anxiety. It comes up, in this month of July, on the very eve of Independence Day, with a force and significance never felt before since 1776. It cannot be put down now until some true, solid basis is found, not only in opin- ion, but in practice and in law, for the security of that reverence and subjection to authority which is so much needed in civil, domestic, and, indeed, in all the other relations of life. And, in this respect, grieved and heart-sore as we all are at our President's sufferings, we may be brought to see "how expedient it is that one

324 The Assassination of President Garfield.

man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.v'

3. Immediately connected with the point just con- sidered is the common irreverence among us for rulers and persons in authority. Even (so-called) great men think that they show their superiority when they stand before multitudes and proclaim the dogma, that " civil officers are only the people's servants." And, certainly, if the notion of government just attacked, be true, then this notion concerning civil officers is certainly its legit- imate inference. For, if government be the cheap thing men claim that it is, then its official representa- tives are cheap things too.

But, my friends, the notion is thoroughly false. The statement that officers are servants is only a half-truth ; and half-truths are most generally whole lies. The President is indeed to serve the people. His office is, without doubt, an office of service; and this is no new discovery of this country, because it is a republic. Kings and emperors, in the oldest dynasties of the old world have, from time immemorial, acknowledged this obligation. One of the oldest royal houses of Europe has kept, as its perpetual family motto, the words, " Ich dien" I. serve. Even pagan rulers have been awfully impressed with the idea that "they acted in trust." But the notion that, because authority is a trust, and then, because it is a trust, that rulers are only the peo-

The Assassination of President Garfield. 325

pie's servants, shows blindness to the grander factor in the constitution of authority, viz., that "the powers that be are ordained of God," and that "they are the ministers of God attending continually upon this very thing," i. e., the exercise of civil authority.

Yes, there are two factors in all civil government, and in the exercise of all civil authority ; and it is one of the gravest of all mistakes that it was not laid down thus, in the infancy of the nation, in the great charter of our freedom, the "Declaration of Independence." When Thomas Jefferson declared that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the gov- erned," and left his dogma crudely, at that point, he shut out a limitation which the pride and self-assertion of degenerate humanity is always too reluctant to yield, and too tardy to supply.

The theory of the Declaration is incomplete and mis- leading. Governments, my brethren, derive their just authority, first of all, from the will of God; and then next, from the consent of the governed. It is because of the exclusion of this prime factor in this axiom that the governments of the earth are all more or less sick and diseased. It is owing very considerably to national blindness to this truth that we have riad so many sore evils in this land, and "now, at last, a great, national dis- aster. The people of this country, in vast self-import- ance, have been accustomed to look down upon the

326 The Assassination of President Garfield.

chief magistracy of the land as a convenient instru- mentality for personal ends. The office has been too much regarded as the facile agent of grand politicians, for party objects and partisan ambitions. But in this matter they have not been the only sinners. It has been the wont of the people, as well, to regard both the office and its functions as "good for use." This, in too many cases, has been one-half the meaning of the term " availability," applied to presidential candidates. The grand authority of a ruler, the reverence due to the Chief Magistrate, have been too generally forgotten. People in other lands do not look thus upon their kings and emperors and great chieftains. "Ah!" is the rebuke I hear coming up from the pews ; " This is a Republic. Ours is a democratic country." "Well, what of that?" is my reply. Your President is as much a ruler, he is as truly a potentate as the Emperor of Russia or the Queen of Great Britain. He is your ruler and grand magistrate, and mine. And he sits in his chair of authority by the will of God, declared in governmental arrangements, as distinctly and positively as though he had been born to the office.

Alas ! instead of thus regarding the dignities of the presidency as representing the divine sovereignty in human government; instead of honoring the President as incarnating the dread sovereignty of the nation ; the habit has prevailed of regarding him as the biggest

The Assassination of President Garfield. 32?

servant in the land. And intense canvasses have been carried on, the main stimulant to which has been the disposal, as through an elected instrument or machine, of thousands of offices. And then when an election has been carried, we have seen how cheap a thing people regarded their chief ruler, in the fact that the meanest men, greedy of office, could demand an audience at the "White House," and get it, too, with a facility which would be scouted by a manufacturer at Lowell, or a merchant in Boston. Nay, and worse than this — the cases have been numerous of men, when their applications have been rejected, who have turned, with " proud and haughty wrath," from the Chief Magistrate, taken his refusal as a personal insult, and assailed him with revenge and unforgiving malice.

Almighty God, in all the histories, has spoken "in divers manners " to various peoples. He has spoken by angels, by oracles and prophets, by dreams and reve- lations, and so made known His will to nations and to men. And He still speaks to them. He speaks to them at times by providences. Just now he has spoken to this nition, through the pistol-shot of an assassin. The n s rable wretch, we know, is an execration to the Almigbuy, but He overrules his bloody deed to imme- diate good. In the flash of a murderer's pistol the whole nation sees suddenly and in glaring light the sin of its cheap estimate of the presidential office. And I

323 The Assassination of P reside?/ 1 Garfield.

venture to predict that, from this time, the office of Chief Magistrate will be withdrawn from the pressure of office-seekers; the White House will get the dignity, the reserve, the sanctity of national sovereignty; and the person of the chief ruler will henceforth be accessi- ble only to persons of character, reputation, and personal responsibility.

And thus again, ray friends, while our anguished hearts go out with tenderest sensibility and solicitude to our still endangered Presidenr, we learn "how expe- dient it is that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not!"

What I have spoken this day is nothing new. I make no pretence whatever to originality in the views I have expressed. The main truths I have brought before you have been not infrequently suggested by eminent persons; and I have been, and for a long time, so thoroughly convinced of their truth that they rush with unusual force upon my mind, at this juncture, and demand utterance. That great political prophet, Alex- ander Hamilton, predicted not a few of the evils I have pointed out, although he did not live to see them. In more recent times they have been seen and pointed out by a small body of men, called " Civil Service Reform- ers." And no body of men in the land has been more laughed at and ridiculed than they. Their publications

The Assassination of President Garfield. 329

have been numerous, and, I may add, in many cases, as fruitless as numerous. But the lightning, the lightning of disaster, has done more for them than all their books and speeches and essays. It has shivered our civil service system, as now ordered, to pieces ; and scat- tered the multitudinous swarms of office-seekers from the portals of the presidential mansion.

2. I have brought this subject before this congrega- tion in particular, because, although we colored men are not yet allowed either a large participation in politics, or governmental rule, or official patronage, I am, never- theless, anxious that my people should be ranked among conservative men in this laud, and stand among the firmest upholders of law and authority. The sudden rise to freedom, the newness of our participation in political prerogatives, above all the oscillation from extreme servitude to the right of suffrage — all naturally tend to' land us in the extreme of wild and thoughtless democratic opinion, and expose us to the danger of mis- taking license for liberty. Thank God, these dangers have been but little realized as yet. And may they never show themselves amid the black population of this country! As- in the past, so in the future may it ever be, that the blood of this race may furnish no nursing-plot for treasons, seditions, and assassinations !

A people numbering more than six millions, with a rapidly-increasing birth-rate, growing on every side in

3 30 The Assassination of President Garfield.

knowledge an 1 material power, must, from the very nature of things, become, ere long, a most formidable phalanx in t1 c multitudinous population of the country. I pray Almighty God that this race may ever be found strong and determined for pood, stable government, their influence weighty in the state for authority and order, the constant foes of revolutions, communism, and revolt ;

Zealous, yet modest, innocent, though free, Serene amidst alarms, inflexible in faith.

3. My words, this morning, have had respect, almost entirely, to the vicarious position of our Chief Magis- trate. I have dwelt all along upon the fact that this chief ruler has been called to suffering, perhaps to death, so that the nation may not die ! I have pre- ferred this line of thought, albeit the tender, sympathiz- ing aspects of the case were far more inviting to every Christian heart. I know full well that

— Tears to human suffering are due. -

And our deepest sympathies have thrilled at this awful tragedy, our hearts been faint and sickened many an hour, many a moment since its occurrence ; and our prayer and cries constantly ascend to heaven for the recovery of the great sufferer. The other aspect of the case, however, seems to me no less tender and interest- ing. Certainly, if any man in this nation must needs be a victim, for mysterious, but definite national good,

The Assassination of President Garfield. 331

no nobler offering can be laid upon the altar of a nation's sacrifice than this man. If great good is to spring from this dreadful visitation, no more exalted victim could have been chosen than he. His personal virtues have been long conspicuous. His clear, uncon- cealed, yet unostentatious piety is everywhere known and acknowledged. The fine, unequalled qualities — a rare thing in our national history — which he has brought to the reat of national authority have excited both unu- sual surprise and unusual admiration. Statesmanlike in national politics, strong in intellectual capacity, pure in life and reputation, his character and abilities would give moral fitness to his sacrifice, if it should please God that he should succumb to the assassin's bullet! . ,

SERMON XX.

THE DESTINED SUPERIORITY OF THE NEGRO. A Thanksgiving Discourse, 1877.

ISAIAH LXI, 7.

For your shame ye shall have double, and for confusion they shall rejoice in

their portion.

The promise contained in the text is a variation from the ordinary rule of the divine government. In that government, as declared in the Holy Scriptures, shame signifies the hopeless confusion and the utter destruc- tion of the wicked. But in this passage, we see an extraordinary display of God's forbearance and mercy. Shame, here, is less intense than in other places. In this case it stands, indeed, for trial and punishment, but for punishment and trial which may correct and purify character.

The allusion is supposed to refer to the Jews after their restoration, and the passage is regarded as teach- ing that, for ail their long-continued servitude and suffering, God, in the end, would make them abundant recompenes. Great shame and reproach He had given them, through long centuries; but now, whenxliscipline

(332)

The Destined Superiority of tJie Negro. 333

and trial had corrected and purified them, He promises them double honor and reward.

As thus explained, the text opens before us some interesting features of God's dealing with nations; by the light of which we may, perchance, somewhat deter- mine the destiny of the race with which we are con- nected. My purpose is to attempt, this morning, an investigation of God's disciplinary and retributive econ- omy in races and nations ; with the hope of arriving at some clear conclusions concerning the destiny of the Negro race.

1. Some peoples God does not merely correct ; He destroys them. He visits them with deep and abiding shame. He brings upon them utter confusion. This is a painful but a certain fact of Providence. The his- tory of the world is, in one view, a history of national destructions. The wrecks of nations lie everywhere upon the shores of time. Real aboriginal life is rarely found. People after people, in rapid succession, have Come into constructive being, and as rapidly gone down; lost forever from sight beneath the waves of a relentless destiny. We read in our histories of the great empires of the old world; but when the traveller goes abroad, and looks for Nineveh and Baby] on, for Pompeii and Herculaneum, he finds nought but the out- stretched graveyards which occupy the sites of departed nations. On the American continent, tribe after tribe

334 *he Destined Superiority of the Negro,

have passed from existence; yea, there are Bibles in Indian tongues which no living man is now able to read. Tbeir peoples have all perished!

When I am called upon to account for all this loss of national and tribal life, I say that God destroyed them. And the declaration is made on the strength of a prin- ciple attested by numerous facts in sacred and profane history; that when the sins of a people reach a state of hateful maturity, then God sends upon them sudden destruction.

Depravity prepares some races of men for destruc- tion. Every element of good has gone out of them. Even the most primitive virtues seem to have departed. A putrescent virus has entered into and vitiated their whole nature. They stand up columnar ruins! Such a people is doomed. It cannot live. Like the tree "whose root is rottenness," it stands awaiting the inevitable fall. That fall is its property. No fierce thunder-bolt is needed, no complicated apparatus of ethereal artillery. Let the angry breath of an Arch- angel but feebly strike it, and, tottering, it sinks into death and oblivion!

Such was the condition of the American Indian at the time of the discovery of America by Columbus. The historical fact abides, that when the white man first reached the shores of this continent he met the tradition of a decaying population.

The Destined Superiority of the Negro. 335

The New Zealand population of our own day presents a parallel case. By a universal disregard of the social and sanitary conditions which pertain to health and longevity, their physical constitution has fallen into absolute decay; and ere long it also must become extinct.

Indeed,, the gross paganism of these two peoples was both moral and physical stagnation ; was domestic and family ruin; and has resulted in national suicide! It came to them as the effect, the direct consequence of great penal laws established by the Almighty, in which are wrapped the punishment of sin. Hence, if you reject the idea of direct interference in the affairs of peoples, and take up the idea of law and penalty, or that of cause and effect, it amounts to the same thing. Whether through God's fixed law, or directly, by His personal, direful visitation, the admission is the same. The punishment and the ruin come from the throne of God!

The most striking instances of the working of this principle of ruin are set before us in the word of God. The case of Egypt is a signal one. For centuries this nation was addicted to the vilest sins and the grossest corruption. There was no lack of genius among them, no imbecility of intellect. It was a case of wanton, high-headed moral rebellion. As generations followed each other, they heaped up abominations upon the

336 The Destined Superiority of the Negro.

impurities of their ancestors, until they well-nigh reached the heavens. Then the heavens became dark- ened with direful wrath ! The earth quaked and trembled with God's fearful anger; and judgment upon judgment swept, like lava, over that doomed people, assuring them of the awful destruction which always waits upon sin. And the death of the first-born at the Passover, and the catastrophe of the Red Sea, showed that the crisis of their fate had come.

In precisely the same manner God dealt with the wicked people of Assyria, Babylon, Tyre, and Persia. Read the prophecies concerning these nations, and it seems as though you could see an august judge sitting upon the judgment-seat, and, of a sudden, putting on his black cap, and, with solemn gesture and a choked utterance, pronouncing the sentence of death upon the doomed criminals before him !

2. Turn now to the more gracious aspects of God's economy. As there are peoples whom He destroys, so on the other hand there are those whom, while indeed He chastises, yet at the same time He preserves. He gives them shame, but not perpetual shame. He disci- plines; but when discipline has worked out its remedial benefits, he recompenses them for their former igno- miny, and gives them honor and prosperity.

The merciful aspect of God's economy shines out in human history as clearly as His justice and judgment.

The Destined Superiority of the Negro. 337

The Almighty seizes upon superior nations and, by mingled chastisements and blessings, gradually leads them on to greatness. That this discipline of nations is carried on in the world is evident. Probation, that is, as designed to teach self-restraint, and to carry on improvement, is imposed upon them, as well as upon individuals. It is part of the history of all nations and all races ; only some will not take it ; seem to have no moral discernment to use it; and they, just like wilful men, are broken to pieces. Some, again, fit themselves to it, and gain all its advantages. What was the servile sojourn of the children of Israel, four hundred years, in Egypt, but a process of painful preparation for a coming national and ecclesiastical responsibility ? What, at a later period, the Babylonish captivity, but a corrective ordeal, to eliminate from them everv element of idola- try ? What was the feudality of Europe,, but a system of training for a high and grand civilization ?

Now it seems to me that these several experiments were not simply judicial and retributive. For ven- geance crushes and annihilates; but chastisement, how- ever severe, saves, and at the same time corrects and restores. • We may infer, therefore, that these several providences were a mode of divine schooling, carried on by the Almighty for great e-nds which He wished to show in human history.

But how? in what w?y does God carry on His sys- 22

338 The Destined Superiority of the Negro,

tern of restorative discipline ? The universal principle which regulates this feature of the Divine system is set forth very clearly in the Eighteenth Psalm : " With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful; with an upright man thou wilt shew thyself upright ; with the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt shew thyself froward." These words show the principles by which God carries on His government. And they apply as well to organic society as to single persons.

We have already seen that with the froward God showed Himself froward; that is, those who resist Him, God resists, to their utter shame and confusion. Their miseries were not corrective or disciplinary. They were the blows of avenging justice; the thunder-bolts of final and retributive wrath! In their case, moreover, there was a constitutional fitness to destruction, brought upon them by their own immoral perverseness. So, too, on the other hand, we may see qualities which God favors, albeit He does put the peoples manifesting them to trial and endurance. He sees in them cultivated elements of character, which, when brought out and trained, are capable of raising them to superiority. He does not see merit; and it is not because of desert that He bestows His blessings. But when the Almighty sees in a nation or people latent germs of virtues, he seizes upon and schools them by trial and discipline; so

The Destined Superiority* of the Negro. 339

that by the processes of divers correctives, these virtues may bud and blossom into beautiful and healthful maturity.

Now, when the Psalmist speaks of the merciful, the upright, and the pure, he does not use these terms in an absolute sense, for in that sense no such persons exist. He speaks of men comparatively pure, upright, and merciful. Some of the nations, as I have already pointed out, were at the lowest grade of moral turpitude. On the other hand, there are and ever have been hea- then peoples less gross and barbarous than others : peo- ples with great hardihood of soul ; peoples retaining the high principle of right and justice; peoples with rude but strong virtues, clinging to the simple ideas of truth and honor; peoples who guarded jealously the purity of their wives and the chastity of their daughters ; peoples who, even with a false worship, showed reluctance to part with the gleams which came, though but dimly, from the £ace of the one true God of heaven !

Now the providence of God intervenes for the train- ing and preservation of such peoples. Thus we read in Genesis that, because of man's universal wickedness, "it repented the Lord that he had made man"; but immediately it says that He approved "just Noah, and entered into covenant with him." So, after the deluge, God saw, amid universal degeneracy, the conspicuous piety of one man ; for obedience and faith were, without

340 The Destined Superiority of tJie Negro,

doubt, original though simple elements of Abraham's character. To these germinal roots God brought the discipline of trial; and by them, through this one man, educated up a people who, despite their faults, shed forth the clearest religious light of all antiquity, and to whom were committed the oracles of God.

The ancient Greeks and Romans were rude and san- guinary Pagans; and so, too, the Germans and the Scandinavian tribes. Yet they had great, sterling vir- tues. The Greeks were a people severely just ; the Spartans, especially, rigidly simple and religious. The Romans were unequalled for reverence for law and subjection to legitimate authority. Tacitus, himself a heathen, extols the noble and beneficent traits of Ger- man character, and celebrates their hospitality and politeness. The Saxons, even in a state of rudeness, were brave, though fierce ; truthful ; with strong family virtues, and great love of liberty.

Added to these peculiarities we find the, following characteristics common to each and all these people — common, indeed, to all strong races ; wanting in the low and degraded. The masterful nations are all, more or less, distinguished for vitality, plasticity, receptivity, imitation, family feeling, veracity, and the sentiment of devotion. These qualities may have been crude and unbalanced. Thev existed perchance right beside most decided and repulsive vices; but they were deeply

The Destined Superiority of the Negro. 341

imbedded in the constitution of these people ; and served as a basis on which could be built up a character fitted to great ends.

Archbishop Trench, in his comment upon the words of the "Parable of the Sower," — that is, that "they on the good ground are they who, in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it" — says, "that no heart can be said to be absolutely good ; but there are conditions of heart in which the truth finds readier entrance than in others." So we maintain that there are conditions of character and of society, to which the divine purposes of grace and civilization are more especially fitted, and adapt themselves. Such, it is evident, is the explanation of the providential spread of early civilization. It passed by the more inane peoples, and fastened itself to the strong and masculine. Such, too, was the spontaneous flow of early Christianity from Jerusalem. It sought, as by a law of affinity, the strong colonies of Asia Minor, and the powerful states along the Mediterranean ; and so spread abroad through the then civilized Europe.

Does God then despise the weak? Nay, but the weak and miserable peoples of the earth have misused their prerogatives, and so unfitted themselves to feel after God.

And because they have thus perverted the gifts of God, and brought imbecility upon their being, they

342 The Destined Superiority of the Negro.

perish. The iniquity of the Amorites in Joshua's day was full — as you may see in Leviticus xviii — full of lust and incest and cruelty and other unspeakable abomina- tions ; and they were swept from the face of the earth ! They perished by the sword ; but the sword is not an absolute necessity to the annihilation of any corrupt and ruined people. Their sins, of themselves, eat out their life. With a touch they go. It was because of the deep and utter demoralization of Bois Gilbert that he fell before the feeble lance of Ivanhoe; for, in the world of morals, weakness and death are ofttimes cor- relative of baseness and infamy.

On the other hand the simplest seeds of goodness are pleasing to the Almighty, and He sends down the sun- shine of His favor and the dews of His conserving care into the darkest rubbish, to nourish and vivify such seeds, and to "give them body as it pleaseth Him; and to every seed his own body." And the greatness of the grand nations has always sprung from the seeds of simple virtues which God has graciously preserved in them ; which virtues have been cultured by gracious providences or expanded by Divine grace, into true holiness.

3. Let us now apply the train of thought thus pre- sented to the history and condition of the Negro; to ascertain, if possible, whether we can draw therefrom expectation of a future for this race.

The Destined Superiority of the Negro. 343

At once the question arises : Is this a race doomed to destruction ? or is it one possessed of those qualities, and so morally disciplined by trial, as to augur a vital destiny, and high moral uses, in the future ?

To the first of these questions I reply that there is not a fact, pertinent to this subject, that does not give a most decisive negative. The Negro race, nowhere on the globe, is a doomed race !

It is now nigh five hundred years since the breath of the civilized world touched, powerfully, for the first time, the mighty masses of the Pagan world in America, Africa, and the isles of the sea. And we see, almost everywhere, that the weak, heathen tribes of the earth have gone down before the civilized European. Nation after nation has departed before his presence, tribe after tribe! In America the catalogue of these disas- trous eclipses overruns, not only dozens, but even scores of cases. Gone, never again to take rank among the tribes of men, are the Iroquois and the Mohegans, the Pequods and the Manhattans, the Algonquins and the brave Mohawks, the gentle Caribs, and the once refined Aztecs!

In the Pacific seas, islands are scattered abroad like stars in ' the heavens ; but the sad fact remains that from many. of them their population has departed, like the morning mist. In other cases, as in the Sand- wich Islands, they have long since begun their

Funeral marches to the grave I

344 The Destined Superiority of the Negro.

Just the reverse with the Negro! Wave after wave of a destructive tempest has swept over his head, without impairing in the least his peculiar vitality. Indeed, the Negro, in certain localities, is a superior man, to-day, to what he was three hundred years ago. With an elas- ticity rarely paralleled, he has risen superior to the dread inflictions of a prolonged servitude, and stands, to-day, in all the lands of his thraldom, taller, more erect, more intelligent, and more aspiring than any of his ancestors for more than two thousand years of a previous era. And while in other lands, as in culti- vated India, the native has been subjected to a foreign yoke, the negro races of Africa still retain, for the most part, their original birthright. Their soil has not passed into the possession of foreign people. Many of the native kingdoms stand this day, upon the same basis of power which they held long centuries ago. The adventurous traveler, as he passes farther and far- ther into the interior, sends us reports of populous cities, superior people, and vast kingdoms ; given to enterprise, and engaged in manufactures, agriculture, and commerce.

Even this falls short of the full reality. For civiliza- tion, at numerous places, as well in the interior as on the coast, has displaced ancestral heathenism ; and the standard of the Cross, uplifted on the banks of its great rivers, at large and important cities, and in the great

The Destined Superiority of the Negro. 345

seats of commercial activity, shows that the Heralds of the Cross have begun the conquest of the continent for their glorious King. Vital power, then, is a property of the Negro family.

But has this race any of those other qualities, and such a number of them, as warrants the expectation of superiority? Are plasticity, receptivity, and assimila- tion among his constitutional elements of character?

So far as the first of these is concerned there can be no doubt. The flexibility of the negro character is not only universally admitted; it is often formulated into a slur. The race is possessed of a nature more easily moulded than any other class of men. Unlike the stolid Indian, the Negro yields to circumstances, and flows with the current of events. Hence the most terrible afflictions have failed to crush him. His facile nature wards them off, or else, through the inspiration of hope, neutralises their influence. Hence, likewise, the pliancy with which, and without losing his distinct- iveness, he runs into the character of other people ; and thus bends adverse circumstances to his own convenience; thus, also, in a measurable degree, link- ing the fortunes of his superiors to his own fate and destiny.

These peculiarities imply another prime quality, anticipating future superiority ; I mean imitation. This is also universally conceded, with, however, a

346 The Destined Superiority of the Negro.

contemptuous fling, as though it were an evidence of inferiority. But Burke tells us that " imitation is the second passion belonging to society; and this passion," he says, "arises, from rnuch the same cause as sympa- thy." This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives. It is one of the strongest links of society. Indeed, all civilization is carried down from generation to genera- tion, or handed over from the superior to the inferior, by the means of this principle. A people devoid of imitation are incapable of improvement, and must go down ; for stagnation of necessity brings with it decay and ruin.

On the other hand, the Negro, with a mobile and plastic nature, with a strong receptive faculty, seizes upon and makes over to himself, by imitation, the better qualities of others. First of all, observe that, by a strong assimilative tendency, he reduplicates himself, by attaining both the likeness of and an affinity to the race with which he dwells ; and then, while retaining his characteristic peculiarities, he glides more or less into the traits of his neighbors. Among Frenchmen, he becomes, somewhat, the lively Frenchman; among Americans, the keen, enterprising American ; among Spaniards, the stately, solemn Spaniard; among English- men, the solid, phlegmatic Englishman,

This peculiarity of the Negro is often sneered at. It is decried as the simulation of a well-known and gro- tesque animal. But the traducers of the Negro forget

The Destined Superiority of the Negro. 347

that "the entire Grecian civilization is stratified with the elements of imitation ; and that Roman culture is but a copy of a foreign and alien civilization." These great nations laid the whole world under contribution to gain superiority. They seized upon all the spoils of time. They became cosmopolitan thieves. They stole from every quarter. They pounced, with eagle eye, upon excellence wherever discovered, and seized upon it with rapacity. In the Negro character resides, though crudely, precisely the same eclectic quality which char- acterized those two great, classic nations; and he is thus found in the very best company. The ridicule which visits him goes back directly to them. The advantage, however, is his own. Give him time and opportunity, and in all imitative art he will rival them both.

This quality of imitation has been the grand preserva- tive of the Negro in all the lands of his thraldom. Its bearing upon his future distinction in Art is not germain to this discussion ; but one can clearly see that this quality of imitation, allied to the receptivity of the race, gives promise of great fitness for Christian training, and for the higher processes of civilization.

But observe, again, that the imitative disposition of the negro race leads to aspiration. Its tendency runs to the higher and the nobler qualities presented to observation. Placed in juxtaposition with both the

348 The Destined Superiority of the Negro,

Indian and the Caucasian, as in Brazil and in this land, the race turns away from the downward, unprogrcssive Indian, and reaches forth for all the acquisitions of the Caucasian or the Spaniard. And hence wherever the Negro family has been in a servile position, however severe may have been their condition, without one single exception their native capacity has always

— glinted forth Amid the storm;

preserving the captive exiles of Africa from utter anni- hilation ; stimulating them to enterprise and aspiration ; and, in every case, producing men who have shown respectable talent as mechanics and artisans ; as sol- diers, in armies ; as citizens of great commonwealths ; not unfrequently as artists ; not seldom as scholars ; fre- quently as ministers of the Gospel ; and at times as scientific men, and men of letters.

I referred, at the beginning, and as one of the condi- tions of a Divine and merciful preservation of a people — for future uses, to the probation of discipline and trial, for the cultivation of definite moral qualities. Is there any such large fact in the history of this race ? What else, I ask, can. be the significance of the African slave- trade? What is the meaning of our deep thraldom since 1620? Terrible as it has been, it has not been the deadly hurricane portending death. During its long periods, although great cruelty and wide-spread

The Destined Superiority of the Negro. 349

death have been large features in the history of the Negro, nevertheless they have been overshadowed by the merciful facts of great natural increase, much intel- lectual progress, the gravitation of an unexampled and world-wide philanthropy to the race, singular religious susceptibility and progress, and generous, wholesale emancipations, inclusive of millions of men, women, and children.

This history, then, does not signify retribution ; does not forecast extinction. It is most plainly disciplinary and preparative. It is the education which comes from trial and endurance; for with it has been allied, more or less, the grand moral training of the religious ten- dencies of the race.

Here, then, are the several conditions, the character- istic marks which, in all history, have served to indicate the permanency and the progress of races. In all other cases they have been taken as forecasting greatness. Is there any reason for rejecting their teachings, and refusing their encouragements and inspirations, when discovered in the Negro ?

I feel fortified, moreover, in the principles I have to-day set forth, by the opinions of great, scrutinizing thinkers. In his treatise on Emancipation, written in 1880, Dr. Channing says: "The Negro is one of the best races of the human family. He is among the mildest and gentlest of men. He is singularly sus- ceptible of improvement."

350 The Destined Superiority of the Negro,

Alexander Kinmont, in his " Lectures on Man," declares that " the sweet graces of the Christian religion appear almost too tropical and tender plants to grow in the soil of the Caucasian mind ; they require a charac- ter of human nature of which you can see the rude lineaments in the Ethiopian, to be implanted in, and grow naturally and beautifully withal." Adamson, the traveller who visited Senegal, in 1754, said: "The Negroes are sociable, humane, obliging, and hospitable; and they have generally preserved an estimable sim- plicity of domestic manners. They are distinguished by their tenderness for their parents, and great respect for the aged — a patriarchal virtue which, in our day, is too little known." Dr. Raleigh, also, at a recent meet- ing in London, said : " There is in thesep eople a hitherto undiscovered mine of love, the development of which will be for the amazing welfare of the world. . . . Greece gave us beauty; Rome gave us power; the Anglo-Saxon race unites and mingles these; but in the African peo- ple there is the great, gushing wealth of love which will develop wonders for the world."

1. We have seen, to-day, the great truth, that when God does not destroya people, but, on the contrary, trains and disciplines it, it is an indication that He intends to make something of them, and to do something for them. It signifies that He is graciously interested in such a people. In a sense, not equal, indeed, to the case of

The Destined Superiority of the Negro. 351

the Jews, but parallel, in a lower degree, such a people are a "chosen people " of the Lord. There is, so to speak, a covenant relation which God has established between Himself and them ; dim and partial, at first, in its manifestations; but which is sure to come to the sight of men and angels, clear, distinct, and luminous. You may take it as a sure and undoubted fact that God presides, with sovereign care, over such a people; and will surely preserve, educate, and build them up.

2. The discussion of this morning teaches us that the Negro race, of which we are a part, and which, as yet, in great simplicity and with vast difficulties, is struggling for place and position in this land, discovers, most exactly, in its history, the principle I have stated. And we have in this fact the assurance that the Almighty is interested in all the great problems of civilization and of grace carrying on among us. All this is God's work. He has brought this race through a wilderness of dis- asters ; and at last put them in the large, open place of liberty; but not, you may be assured, for eventual decline and final ruin. You need not entertain the shadow of a doubt that the work which God has begun and is now carrying on, is for the elevation and success of the Negro. This is the significance and the worth of all effort and all achievement, of every signal provi- dence, in this cause; or, otherwise, all the labors of men and all the mightiness of God is vanity ! Nothing, believe me, on earth; nothing brought from perdition,

352 The Destined Superiority of the Negro.

can keep back this destined advance of the Negro race. No conspiracies of men nor of devils! The slave trade could not crush them out. Slavery, dread, direful, and malignant, could only stay it for a time. But now it is coming, coming, I grant, through dark and trying events, but surely coming. The Negro — black, curly-headed, despised, repulsed, sneered at — is, nevertheless, a vital being, and irrepressible. Every- where on earth has been given him, by the Almighty, assurance, self-assertion, and influence. The rise of two Negro States within a century, feeble though they be, has a bearing upon this subject. The numerous emancipations, which now leave not more than a chain or two to be unfastened, have, likewise, a deep, moral significance. Thus, too, the rise in the world of illus- trious Negroes, as Touissant L'Ouverture, Henry Chris- tophe, Benjamin Banneker, Eustace the Philanthropist, Stephen Allan Benson, and Bishop Crowther.

With all these providential indications in our favor, let us bless God and take courage. Casting aside everything trifling and frivolous, let us lay hold of every element of power, in the brain ; in literature, art, and science ; in industrial pursuits ; in the soil ; in coopera- tive association; in mechanical ingenuity; and above all, in the religion of our God ; and so march on in the pathway of progress to that superiority and eminence which is our rightful heritage, and which is evidently the promise of oar Goa !

One volume, handsomely printed, 334 pp., i2mo, cloth extra, $1.50.

'odern Heroes ofttie

By the Rt. Rev. W. Pakenham Walsh, D.D., Bishop of

Ossary, Ferns and Leighlin. Author of ' ' Heroes of

the Mission Field," "The Moabite Stone," etc.

OONTEITTS:

I. Henry Martyn : India and Persia, 1805-1812.

II. William Carey: India, 1 793-1 834.

III. Adoniram Judson : Burmah, 1813-1850.

IV. Robert Morrison : China, 1 807-1 834.

V. Samuel Marsden : New Zealand, 1814-1838.

VI. John Williams : Polynesia, 181 7-1839.

VII. William Johnson: West Africa, 1816-1823.

VIII. John Hunt: Fiji, 1838-1848.

IX. Allen Gardiner: South America, 1835-185 1

X. Alexander Duff: India, 1 829-1 864.

XI. David Livingstone : Africa, 1840-187 3.

XII. Bishop Patteson : Melanesia, 1855-1871.

" The American reading world owes a debt of thanks to the publisher for bringing out so good a book in a style of type and paper which leaves nothing to be desired. The book is one which must be read by those who would know its merits. No news- paper notice can do justice to it." — The Living Church.

"It is entitled to a place in every library, and should be purchased and read by every one interested in the work of Foreign Missions." — Gospel in all Lands.

' ' A good book to have in hand if one is to keep the divine spirit of the missionary work close to his heart." — Standard of the Cross.

THOMAS WHITTAKEK, Publisher,

2 & 3 BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.

ANDREW JUKES' NEW WORK.

Tfye New Mat) and % Eterqal Life,

Notes on the Reiterated Amens of the Son of God.

By Andrew Jukes, author of " Types of Genesis,"

' The Restitution of all Things," " The Law of

the Offerings," " Characteristic Differences of the

Four Gospels," etc.

296 pp., i2mo, cloth, . . . Price, $1.75.

"'Verily, verily!' Many times did our Lord employ these introductory terms in His discourse. * * * At twelve distinct times does Christ arouse attention to specific doctrines of the kingdom by such reiterations Our author takes up these twelve cases and develops the respective deliverances of the Saviour in the connection. He writes with intense feeling, and with a full- ness of Scripture knowledge which seems exceptional. There is much that is stimulating and suggestive, both in the conception of his work and in its execution. * * * The work is a most helpful one, and makes a worthy addition to the list of books already published by this author." — The Standard, Chicago.

" Andrew Jukes is a voluminous writer, but he is an original and profound thinker as well. His ' New Man and the Eternal Life* is one of the most original and ingenious of his works, and will have, as it ought to have, a large circulation in this country." — The Parish Visitor.

' • We have found the book suggestive and spiritually stimulat- ing. " — The Congregaiionalist.

" They who want a rich feast may herein eat and be satisfied. ' The New Man ' should be read slowly and with concentration ; thus every particle will be enjoyed." — The Living Church.

"The argument throughout the book is well sustained and intensely interesting. Entirely original, it is a book which will be read and re-read with ever-increasing pleasure and profit." — The Church Guardian, Halifax.

THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher,

3 «fc 3 BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.

5_QAYTwsO_3

1'

cclesia gBngltcana.

A History of the Church of Christ in England, from the Earliest to the Present Times. By Arthur Charles Jennings, M.A. With marginal Sum- maries of paragraphs, and full alphabetical Index.

$02 pp., i2mo, cloth, red edges, , . . Price, $2.25.

"At last we have a book on the whole history of the Church of England that will be a boon to the professor of ecclesiastical his- tory and a comfort to his students. Put together Bates' College Lectures, Carwithen, Churton, Short, and all the other books through which we used to be obliged to wade in order to acquaint ourselves, tolerably, with the history of our Church, and we should not do more than begin to approach to exact knowledge of its history which Mr. Jennings has furnished us in this single volume. * * * He follows none of the old style types of so-called his- tory, which consists mainly in hero-building. Every man, no matter who, stands or falls, by him, according to his personal worth and actual value in the Church events of his time. Alto- gether, this work is destined for long use by students of its subject, and we regard its production as one of the noticeable events of the present year." — The Living Church.

"An unusually good book." — The Am. Literary Churchman.

"One of the most needed and best written historical manuals which has appeared for a long time. " — The Standard of the Cross.

" The volume is packed with information, given generally in a clear, vivid way." — The Lndependent.

" We know of no general history of the English Church which is as likely to be as serviceable as this, and we are glad to recom- mend it to our readers." — The Churchman.

THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher,

Nos. 2 & 3 BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.

xrl} dljmi

The great meaning of the word Metanoia — lost in the old version, unrecovered in the new. By Tread well Walden.

8vo, paper, 25 cts. ; cloth, 50 cts.

" Able, excellent, truthful. * * * Has my cordial approval.

"Dr. PHILIP SCHAFF." " I cannot refrain longer to tell you how profoundly important I feel the points you make to be. * * * I am sure that many of our most disastrous failures in commending Christianity to unbelievinsr minds, especially minds of a manly character, have their cause just here. Dr. J. F. GARRISON."

"The essay has very great value. It gives the view of this term which I have long held. Dr. MULFORD."

"Scholarly, brilliant, exhaustive. * * * You have done a good service in this elegant and powerful portraiture of the great truth of Christian life.

"Dr. H. N. POWERS." From the Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D.

"I have just read 3'our 'metanoia' through from beginning to end, and I want to tell you how much I enjoyed it, and how much I thank you for sending it to me. It is full of inspiration. It makes one think of Christian faith as positive and constructive, and not merely destructive and remedial. It makes the work of Christ seem worthy of Christ. I thank you truly, both for writing it and giving it to me. Your sincere friend, PHILLIPS BROOKS.

"Boston, Mass."

-+++*-

CHEAP EDITION OF AN ENJOYABLE BOOK. A Life of Robert Stephen Hawker, M. A. By S. Baring-Gould.

312 pp., 1210, Willi portrait. Paper covers, 60c. : Cloth extra, gilt top, $1 .75.

" It is one of the most charming and characteristic biographies which has been written since Isaak Walton sharpened his pen to tell the story of Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and the other worthies of the tempestuous age which preceded him. * * * A book which contains more good stories than any other ecclesiastical biography that has been written within our memory. * * * Every bilious person ought to have a copy. It is a most enjoyable book." — The Standard of the Cross.

" All who are fond of original characters and enjoy a hearty laugh, ought to get this biography." — American Church Review.

Thomas Whittaker, Publisher, 2 & 3 Bible House, N. Y.

By Rev. George W. Shinn, Newton, Mass. 116 pp., i8mo, cloth, 50c; boards, 25c.

"A very good little manual. It gives simple and practical replies to such questions as relate to faith in a God, in the Scrip- tures, in a divine Christ, and in supernatural help." — The Inde- pendent.

"Young men, in all the varied phases of business, would be apt to think favorably if a work of this kind were put into their hands by a friend, an employer, or any one from whom such a gift could not be regarded as an impertinence." — The Church Standard.

"All Mr. Shinn's manuals are useful. This will prove more serviceable than any." — The Iowa Churchman.

"Very helpful in meeting the ignorance and shallow skepticism so prevalent." — The Church Eclectic.

"This little book will be found very interesting, not only for 'beginners in religion,' but for all who are called upon 'to give a reason for the hope there is in them.' It is especially necessary in this day, that all believers should know why they believe, for the spir't of the age is decidedly against believing what you are told simply because you are told. * * * The young have heard of the objections from those not friendly to religion, and have no answer to make because they are taken by surprise. * * * The subjects are treated with fairness; the positions taken are moderate and well sustained. * * * The form of the treatis* and the cheapness of the volume render it available as a manu?' for schools and Bible-classes." — The Living Church.

THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher,

2 & 3 BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK

Studies in the History of the Prayer Book.

[ The Anglican Reform. The Puritan Innovations. The Elizabethan Reaction. The Caroline Settle- ment.] With Appendices.

By Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D., author of "After Death."

i2?no, cloth, uncut edges, . . ... Price, $1.50.

"The Canon of Ely has already distinguished himself by his book, 'After Death.' In that publication he proved himself the possessor of a fine intellect and a well trained pen. In his new work, entitled 'Studies in the History of the Prayer Book,' he fully maintains the standard of his first treatise. His divisions have a ring about them very like the touch of that master of Eng- lish history, John Richard Green. The reader feels that in following such a teacher he has at least a living thought as the clue to guide him among the intricacies and technicalities of litur- gical study. Dr. Luckock does not seem to have reached the very highest round in the ladder of Anglican Catholicity, but is well up in that direction. He is near enough to Dean Stanley to emulate the realistic touches in ' The History of the Eastern Church,' and at the same time is near enough to Canon Liddon to preserve his clearness of statement on theological points. He has succeeded in clothing some very dry bones with flesh quite rosy and palpitating. The book is thoroughly polished and attractive, and must secure a decided success as the most readable work of its special class." — The Episcopal Register.

" It is just the book that every student of the Prayer Book has wanted." — Standard of the Cross.

"Liturgical development is becoming a matter of absorbing interest, not only within but without the Church, and the work of Canon Luckock may be regarded as a valuable contribution to the literature of the subject." — The Churchman.

Thomas Whittaker, Publisher, 2 & 3 Bihle House, N. Y.

&»

m%

1K3

Jen

^M

BWMm

v9vl

ifc ■

c;v

'"X

■

V 121

hH|

nfl mi

H ^

KnaK

rass

iVS.

■

MB