Front matter (continued 3)

If you love the Lord Jesus, you will sympathize with him in his grief for those who love him not. Over the Jews who rejected him Jesus wept upon Olivet, and for the Romans who crucified him he prayed upon his cross. And when his loving heart broke beneath the burden of its anguish, think you he ceased to grieve for a guilty and ungrateful world? As he looks down from his mediatorial throne upon the multitudes who everywhere spurn the gospel of his grace and seek death in the error of their way—despising the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God—does he not still weep and pray for the perishing neglecters of so great salvation, and seek those who can weep and pray with him, in whose tears and intercessions he can pour forth the full measure of his loving sorrow for the undone? And, loving him, will you not respond to his compassionate lamentations, feeling as he feels for the impenitent ingrates who are despising their own mercy and trampling upon the precious blood of their redemption? How is it with you, dear brethren? Am I saying what sounds strange to you, if not absurd and preposterous? Have you never wept for the wicked as Elisha did when he foresaw the cruelties of Hazael, or as St. Paul did when he told his brethren of the enemies of the cross of Christ? Have you never said with David—"I beheld the transgressors, and was grieved; rivers of waters run down mine eyes because they keep not thy law"? Tell me not that you love Christ, while you have no sympathy with his love for sinners—no self-sacrificing zeal to save them, pulling them out of the fire!

If you love the Lord Jesus, you will look for his glorious appearing and long for his eternal fellowship. This was the one great gladdening hope of the apostles and all the early Christians. Before his departure, their dear Master had promised them that he would come again, and receive them unto himself; and with perfect faith in his word, they joyfully waited and watched for his return in the clouds of heaven. And still the expectant bride is on the outlook for her absent Lord; and often we hear her from behind the lattice of her chamber-window calling—"Make haste, my Beloved! and be thou like the young hart upon the mountains of spices!" What Christian soul does not respond to the sweet words of Milton? "Come forth out of thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the earth; put on the visible robes of thy imperial majesty; take up that unlimited sceptre which thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed thee; for now the voice of thy bride calls thee, and all things sigh to be renewed!" What saint of Jesus does not thrill to the eloquent strain of Edward Irving? "Blessed consummation of this weary and sorrowful world! I give it welcome; I hail its approach with joy; I wait its coming more than they that watch for the morning! O my Lord, come away! hasten, with all thy congregated ones! My soul desireth to see the King in his beauty, and the beautiful ones he shall bring along with him!" Verily, "herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world." But were he this very day revealed from heaven in flaming fire, should we take lute and timbrel and go forth to welcome him to his ransomed world, or fly to the rocks and mountains to hide from his presence and escape from his wrath? In a great earthquake which shook a vast city, when the people said it was the day of judgment and sought where they might take refuge from their Judge, a certain poor man began to cry out—"Oh! is it so? is it so? Then whither shall I go to meet my Lord? on what mountain shall I stand to see my Saviour?" Oh! to greet the Redeemer in his glory—who that loves him does not leap for joy at the expectation? "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God;" and the saints in their redeemed bodies "shall be caught up in the clouds to meet him in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord." Again the happy bride looks forth and cries—"The voice of my Beloved! behold, he cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills!" And you, my dear brethren, if you truly love your Saviour, so far from dreading him as your judge, will hail him as your friend; when the sound of his chariot-wheels, heard from pole to pole, shall gladden the graves of his beloved; and the voice of rejoicing and praise, rising from the tabernacles of the righteous, shall roll its thunder-chant through all the realms of joy!

Take, then, these criteria, and test your love to Christ. Surely the result will be worth the examination. For what transcendent importance, everywhere in Holy Scripture, is given to this divine principle! and in all ages, especially all Christian ages, what fine things have been said and sung of love! Not to recite the sublime statements of St. John and the inspired raptures of St. Paul, with which you are all familiar; the great bishop of Hippo calls it "that sweet and sacred bond of the soul, having which the poorest is rich, wanting which the richest is poor;" while the golden-mouthed orator of Antioch declares it "the grandest mastery of the passions, and the noblest freedom of the redeemed man." The prince of schoolmen, the Angelical Doctor, writes: "Divine love surpasseth science, and is more perfect than understanding; for we love more deeply than we know, and love dwelleth in the heart, while knowledge remaineth without." The greatest military chieftain of modern times remarked to his friend in St. Helena: "I have conquered nations by the sword; Jesus Christ overcame the world by love." A more heroic spirit—St. Catherine of Sienna—says: "Love was the cord that bound the God-man to the cross; the nails could not have held him there, had not love bound him fast." The martyr-monk of Florence—Savonarola—cheering his fellow-sufferers in the kingdom and patience of Jesus, assures them that love to the dear Lord "plucks the sting of death and disinherits the grave," and that he who thus conquers Satan in his final assault upon the soul "has won the battle of life." And here is the noble testimony of Thomas à Kempis: "Nothing is sweeter or purer than love; nothing is higher, or broader, or fuller; nothing more pleasant, or more excellent, or more heroic, in earth or heaven. Weary, it is not tired; oppressed, it is not straitened; alarmed, it is not confounded; sleeping, it is ever watchful; like a living flame and burning torch, forcing its way upward and overcoming all things." Finally, Eloquence takes wing, and soars with her sister Song; chanting in the strain of Sir Walter Scott—

or with Charles Wesley from his fire-chariot at the gates of pearl—

In conclusion, let me repeat what I said in the outset. The question of our Lord is a plain matter of fact, about which there need be no uncertainty; and every one of us, with careful self-examination, may be able to answer it at once. I have heard some honest Christians sing:

Discard that verse, my brethren! Its theology is worse than its poetry. For a filial love, or a conjugal love, about which the wife or the child is uncertain, you would not give a farthing. Do not the anxious thought and the longing to know indicate at least some small degree of love? Not loving at all, you would care nothing about it, you would be quite indifferent to the question. Dim indeed the spark may be in your bosom; but bless ye the Lord that it is not utterly gone out, and answer his gracious inquiry with this better verse:

So praying, the breath of the Holy Spirit will soon blow the spark into flame; and when the Master asks once more, "Lovest thou me?" with bounding heart you will reply: "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee!"

XII.

MANIFOLD TEMPTATIONS.[1]

Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations, that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, may be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.—1 Pet. i. 6, 7.

Why is not the Christian life a perpetual joy? Why do so many sincere Christians seem often melancholy and unhappy? The human heart is easily moved, and very little is necessary to set it vibrating with pleasant emotion. The voice of a happy child, the carol of a forest bird, the beauty of an opening rose, the glory of a sunset sky, the coming of a valued friend, the visitation of a vagrant dream, the recollection of a peaceful hour, the wind that chases away the misty cloud, even a word in season fitly spoken, may fill the soul with tranquil happiness or raise it to an ecstasy of delight. Why, then, should not the believer in Jesus rejoice evermore with joy unspeakable and full of glory? With the glad tidings which the gospel brings us, the love of God in Christ which it reveals, the assurance of redemption, the remission of sins, the communion of saints, the ministry of angels, the visions of paradise restored, the anticipated epiphany of our Lord in his glory, the advent of the New Jerusalem in all its golden magnificence, the restitution and renovation of this disordered cosmos, the awakening of the body from its long sleep in the sepulchre, and the life everlasting of the just in the many mansions of their Father's house, why do we not make the valley of Baca ring with the prelude of our eternal song? Strange, indeed, that all this should have so little power to cheer, and gladden the people of God in the house of their pilgrimage—that Christian enjoyment should seem in general so feeble and so fleeting, when it ought to flow on with the constant strength and increase of a great river to its repose in the amplitude of an unsounded sea.

The apostle in the text solves for us the mystery. It is not that there is nothing in Christianity to cheer and elevate the feelings. In the great mercy of God, which hath begotten us again to a new and living hope by the certain resurrection of our crucified Lord—in the prospect of an imperishable inheritance reserved for us in heaven, and the perfect assurance of our divine preservation till that inheritance shall be revealed—we do indeed "greatly rejoice," exult with gladness, leap with exuberant joy; though now for a little while, as necessary for our spiritual discipline, we may be put to grief in "manifold temptations." Faith we have in these glorious disclosures of Christ's evangel, and that faith is genuine, efficient, sometimes quite triumphant; but at present, perhaps, the gold is in the furnace, enduring the test from which it shall soon come forth purified, beautified, fit for the coronal of our expected King.

The word temptation sometimes means enticement, and sometimes trial. We are tempted when we are enticed to evil, whether by Satan, or his servants, or our own evil hearts; and we are tempted when our faith is tried, when our virtue is tested, when our character is put to the proof, whether by the malice of men or the providence of God. Evidently, the term here is to be taken in the latter sense. The temptations of which the apostle speaks are trials, such as those of Job, Jacob, David, the holy prophets and martyrs, all in every age who live godly in Christ Jesus. "Manifold temptations" are complicated trials—trial within trial—one infolding another—one overlapping another—many involved in one—all so interlaced and bound up together that we cannot analyze them, cannot even trace the threads of the tangled skein. The grief or "heaviness" which they produce does not necessarily indicate a want of trust in God, or of submission to his holy will. The firmest believer and most steadfast disciple may sometimes, through outward affliction, walk in darkness and have no light, even while he trusts in the name of the Lord and stays himself upon his God. Christ never doubted his Father's love, nor feared the issue of his mighty undertaking; yet when the hour and the power of darkness came upon him, he "began to be sorrowful," "sore amazed," and "very heavy." "Not my will, but thine, be done"—was the language of his guiltless lips, when bowed in his baptism of blood beneath a burden which might have crushed a world. So his suffering servants patiently endure their tribulations, glorifying God in the midst of the fire, and singing with the royal psalmist—"Why art thou cast down, O my soul! and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance!"

Christianity offers us no exemption from the ills of life, but gives us grace to bear them, and sanctifies all to our highest good. It is as true now as in the days of David, "Many are the afflictions of the righteous;" and after more than eighteen centuries, the apostolic statement needs no qualification—"It is through much tribulation that we must enter into the kingdom of heaven." The thwarted scheme; the blighted hope; the ill-requited love; the frequent betrayal of confidence; the falseness or fickleness of trusted friendship; the cross of shame laid by another's hand upon the shoulder; the deep anxiety about the future, which robs the present of more than half its joys; the sudden failure of health, withering the bloom of youth, or bringing down the strength of stalwart manhood; the moral defection of one long loved and cherished, involving the irretrievable ruin of a character as dear to you as your own; the death-couch where, day by day and night by night, the mother fans the flickering spark of life in her darling child; the dear mounds in the cemetery, where affection fondly strews her memorial blossoms, and keeps them fresh and fragrant with her tears; many a secret grief, too sacred for the stranger to meddle with, and too tender to be breathed into the ear of the most familiar friend; and more than all, Christ's virgin bride weeping in sackcloth and ashes—a broken-hearted captive that cannot sing the Lord's song in the land of the idolater and the oppressor;—these are some of the fiery trials and manifold temptations by which a gracious Providence is disciplining us for our better destiny. But the ordeal is as varied as the shades of character and the aspects of human life. Now we have fears within; anon we have fightings without; then deep calleth unto deep at the noise of God's water-spouts, and all his waves and billows are gone over us. But the Lord rideth in the tempest and sitteth upon the flood; saying to the fiery steeds of the one and the angry waters of the other—"Hitherto, but no farther!" No chance is here; all is beneficent design and transcendent wisdom, restricting and controlling the agencies of our providential discipline as our spiritual interests may require. "Now," not always—"for a season," not forever—"if need be," not without the ascertained—are the Lord's beloved subjected to these terrible ordeals. The probation must precede the award. The shock of battle comes before the victor's triumph. Be not disheartened, but hold fast to your hope. The tide that is gone out will soon return. The revolving wheel that has brought you so low will soon lift you on high. But there is no rose without its thorn, nor dayspring unheralded by the darkness. Our light afflictions are but for a moment. Like summer showers they come and go, leaving the heaven brighter and the earth more beautiful. Many a sore chastening, over which we have wept with a sorrow almost inconsolable, has proved one of the greatest blessings that God ever granted us in this vale of tears. What is needful for us, he knows better than we. The refiner sits by his furnace; and the hotter the fire, the shorter the process and the more thorough the purification. The physician watches by his patient, with his hand upon the pulse, observing every symptom, and thrilling to every throb of pain. The trial cannot be too severe for his purpose, nor too long continued for our good. God wants to see how much joy, how little sorrow, he can mingle in our cup, with perfect safety to our spiritual health, and a long series of experiments may be required for the perfect solution of the problem. He is leading us through the great and terrible wilderness to a city of habitation; and as we look back from the hills of our goodly heritage upon the rough path of our pilgrimage, the whole journey may seem to us as a dream when one awaketh. Not all of the Christian's sufferings are the products of Christianity; many of his bitterest griefs are altogether of his own creation; and yet there is not an evil he endures, from which Christianity does not propose to evolve good for him—not a dark cloud which it does not glorify with its beams, nor a crown of thorns which it does not convert into a jewelled diadem.

But while the burden is mercifully lightened, it is not at once removed. The aim of our heavenly Father is not so much to take it away, as to enable us so to bear it that it may become a blessing. Thus he would test our faith, develop its strength, prove its reality and efficiency. But why should faith be thus tested? why not rather the whole Christian character? Because faith is the root of character; and as is the root, so is the tree. The test of faith is practically the test of character, and in this fact lies the obvious value of the test. It is the law of the universe, and an essential factor in the process of our salvation. Look at this mass of gold just brought from the mine. How beautiful! how precious! But there are impurities in it. The true metal must be disengaged from all baser substances. Cast it into the crucible. "See! it is melted!" Yes, but not destroyed. "Is it not welded to the alloy?" No; it is separated from it—purified—glorified! So with our faith. Too precious to be purchased, even a single grain of it, with all the gold-fields of the world, it must be purged of its dross, and made easily distinguishable from the common counterfeits which deceive mankind. God gives it to the furnace. Does it perish in the process? Nay, it is as imperishable as Christ, and as enduring as the soul. The ordeal proves its genuineness and develops its latent lustre. The principle is universal, and everywhere manifest—evolved by Nature, illustrated by Providence—testing laws, customs, institutions, civilizations—awarding due honors to the wise, the pure, the brave, the true-hearted—consigning the false, the foolish, the indolent, the pusillanimous, to merited oblivion or infamy. Over the pearl-gates of the city of God is inscribed: "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love him." Abraham's faith was tried by fire in the Plain of Mamre and on the Mount Moriah. St. Peter's faith was tried by fire in the garden, in the basilica, and at the Saviour's cross. In Eden, the first Adam's innocence was tested to our shame; in the wilderness of Judæa, the second Adam's obedience was tested to our glory. Before the birth of humanity, angelic loyalty passed through its ordeal in the heavenly places; and when the fulness of the prophetic times was come, God made proof of his love to a fallen race by a trial which shook the earth and rocked the thrones of hell. "If these things are done in the green tree, what shall not be done in the dry?" Every thing else tested, why not Christian character? For, what is Christian character? Is it not a man's protest against sin, his declaration of a new life in Christ, his assertion of a citizenship in heaven and joint heirship with the Son of God? Surely, this is a matter of sufficient moment to require a test, and no test can be too rigid that brings out the blessed reality. Think not strange, then, of the fiery ordeal. Providence is thus co-operating with grace for your sanctification. Bruised by tribulation, the flowers of Christian virtue give out more freely their fragrant odors; and the clusters of the vine of God must be trodden in the wine-press before they yield the precious juice which shall gladden the children of the kingdom. "When he hath tried me," saith Job, "I shall come forth as gold." By trial faith is transmuted into works, and by works faith shall be justified before the assembled worlds. "The Egyptians, whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall see no more forever." Courage, ye fearful saints! The clouds which are gathering over you shall rain righteousness upon you; the lightning that blinds you reveals the chariot of your King; the thunder that terrifies you assures you of his love. Courage! His glorious epiphany is at hand. Forth shall he come from the pavilions of the sky, with an escort of many angels, and anthems that wake the echoes of eternity. Then shall the tears of earth become the gems of heaven; and the tuneful sorrows of every psalmist shall rise, thrilling, into choral hallelujahs! And who will ever regret the "heaviness through manifold temptations" which hath wrought in him a meetness for the bliss immortal, or behold with aught but joy ineffable the precious gold of his faith which was tried with fire, now "found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ!"

XIII.

CONTEST AND CORONATION.[1]

I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.—2 Tim. iv. 6-8.

I go back eighteen centuries and a half into the past, and find myself in a grand old Syrian city. About midday I ride out at a western gate along a great highway looking toward a picturesque group of mountains. Straight before me towers the white head of Hermon, like that of a patriarch amidst his children. On my right and left are groves and gardens and smiling villas, a paradise of verdure and beauty, as far as the eye can reach. On this road marched Abraham two thousand years before me, and Jacob returning from Padan-Aram, and Jonah going to Nineveh, and all Israel in chains to Babylon. Enough, surely, in these objects, to stir the dullest brain and kindle the coldest heart. Thus occupied, my attention is suddenly arrested by a troop of horsemen riding briskly toward the city. Their leader is a young man, of rather low stature, with keen black eye, and stern and determined aspect. A single look is sufficient to assure me that he is no common man, and here on no common errand. It is the tiger of Tarsus, in fierce pursuit of some of the lambs of the Good Shepherd. A few Christians from Jerusalem, driven out by persecution, have come hither for refuge; and Saul, with full authority, self-solicited, is on their track, "breathing out threatening and slaughter." You know the rest. Blessed be the lightning-stroke that consecrated what it smote, and made the bold persecutor the bravest apostle of the Crucified!

Thirty years later, in the world's metropolis, I visit the Mammertine Prison adjoining the Forum. Who is this, sitting on a block of travertine, with a tablet on his knee, a stylus in his hand, and a little ewer-shaped lamp at his side? As he looks up a moment from his writing, I see something in his face that reminds me of the young officer at the head of that vengeful expedition. He is indeed the same man—the same, and yet another. Toil, hardship, privation, imprisonment, and cruel treatment of all kinds, have wrought sad changes in his physical frame. Bent, bald, almost blind, though not more than sixty-five years old, I should hardly have recognized him without a word from his warder. One of Nero's victims, he waits here calmly for the hour of his release by the sword. Already doomed perhaps by sentence of the tyrant—it is not certain—neither he nor his keeper knows—he has undertaken another letter—most likely the last he will ever write—to Timothy, his "dearly beloved son." Abounding with godly counsel and encouragement to an intrepid and zealous young bishop, it is full also of the most inspiring utterances of Christian faith and hope. Among other incentives to diligence and fidelity, he adduces his own experience and expectation, and these are his words of cheer: "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing."

Not all called to be ministers and martyrs of Christ, we are all called to be his constant and uncompromising followers; and in the humblest sphere of Christian discipleship there is demand for the utmost activity and zeal, and in many cases for the heroic martyr-spirit commended to the bishop and exemplified in the apostle. Let us see, then, what instruction we can get from the text.

The first thing here to be noted is the apostle's calm contemplation of his present position: "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand."

In a popular work of fiction two characters are taking final leave of each other. The one is full of heart and hope; the other, deeply dejected and despondent. "Farewell," is the last sad word of the latter—"Farewell! your way leads upward to happiness; mine downward—to happiness also." Such helpless resignation to the inevitable, in one form or another, we may all have witnessed. Few things are more common in human experience; and the dying, however much they have loved life or dreaded death, yield themselves at last to what cannot be averted or avoided. But in the apostle's language there is something more than this stolid and sullen submission. There is cheerful faith and buoyant hope—a conscious triumph over all the evils of life and all the terrors of death.

I had a friend very ill. For three days his life hung in doubt with his physician. When he began to recover, he said to me: "Death came and looked me in the face; but, thank God! I could look him in the face without fear." Here stands a man face to face with the last enemy in a far more terrible form. To die as a public criminal at the hand of the executioner is very different from lying down to sleep one's self into another world—very different even from falling in the field fighting for all that is dearest to the patriotic heart. Yet the apostle speaks of his fate as calmly as if he were about only to set out on a journey or embark for a voyage. The manner of his death he already knows. A Roman citizen, he cannot be burned, strangled, or crucified, like some of his brethren; and Nero, devil as he is, can do no worse than take off his head and send him to his Saviour. He is ready to be offered as a sacrifice—poured out as a libation; and the time of his departure—the loosing of the hawser—the lifting of the anchor—is at hand, when he shall sail out upon the ocean of eternity.

A good man, dying, said: "I am in the valley, and it is dark; I feel the waters, and they are cold." Not so the apostle. All with him is bright, hopeful, joyous. His last hours are the best of his life. It is not a stoical indifference to suffering, nor a disgust with the world that has misused him, nor a weariness of his holy work. Long since he learned in every state to be content. Some years ago he was in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, but willing to remain a while in the flesh for the benefit of his brethren. For him, to live is Christ, to die is gain. Living or dying, he is the Lord's, and Christ is magnified in his flesh. At peace with heaven and earth, what has he to fear from either? Knowing whom he has believed, and confident that he is able to keep that which he has committed to his custody, he is ready at the beck of the executioner to go forth from his dungeon, and his last walk on the Ostian Way shall be the triumphal march of the conqueror.

The second thing here to be noted is the apostle's pleasing review of his accomplished career: "I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith."

The reference is to the old Grecian games—the Olympian, the Isthmian, the Nemean, and the Pythian. These festivals, we are informed, originated with Pelops, were brought to perfection by Hercules and Atreus, and restored by Iphitus when they had fallen into neglect. Very popular they were, celebrated with great pomp and ceremony, and made use of to mark memorable events and public eras—that of consuls at Rome, of archons at Athens, of priestesses at Argos. From Greece they passed to Italy; and were so much in vogue at the world's metropolis, that an ancient author speaks of them as not less important to the people than their bread. With these spectacles both St. Paul and his beloved Timothy must have been well acquainted, and in the writings of the former no metaphors are more frequent than those drawn from the Grecian games.

"I have fought a good fight"—literally, striven a good strife, or agonized a good agony. The reference is to the athletic contests of the arena—wrestling, boxing, and fighting with swords. The apostle's life had been a perpetual struggle and conflict. He says he has "fought with beasts at Ephesus"—a metaphorical description doubtless of his fierce encounter there with the enemies of Christianity. Wherever he went, he met hosts of foes, marshalled under the banners of Jewish prejudice and pagan superstition. And the world assailed him with all its enginery of temptation and persecution; and the native corruption of his own heart caused him many a sore conflict, though in all these things he was more than conqueror through the victorious Captain of his salvation. As with St. Paul, so with all Christians; baptized into a warfare with the world, the flesh and the Devil; and signed with the sign of the cross in token of this consecration as Christ's servants and soldiers to their life's end. But this is "a good fight"—in a good cause, under a good captain, with good arms, good allies, good comrades, good supplies, good success, and good rewards—in all respects better than the patriot's battle for freedom, the crusader's conflict for the holy sepulchre, or any competition ever maintained in the arenas of Greece and Rome.

"I have finished my course." The figure is changed. Seated with fifty or sixty thousand spectators in the Circus Maximus, we are looking down upon the stadium, where men stripped to the waist, with eyes fixed upon the goal, are rushing along for the prize. There goes St. Paul!

Forgetting the things which are behind, and reaching forward to those which are before, how eagerly he presses toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus! With our apostle this is a favorite illustration of the Christian life—its steady aim, its strenuous action, its habitual self-denial, and patient endurance to the end. "Know ye not," he writes to the Corinthians, "that they who run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run that ye may obtain.... They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible." And in the Epistle to the Hebrews we read: "Seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and run with patience the race that is set before us." So all Christians must run, never pausing in their progress, nor for a moment relaxing their energies, till from the goal they can look back and say—"I have finished my course."

"I have kept the faith." Here seems to be a reference to the strict rules and rigid discipline to be observed in both these methods of competition. In the arena and on the stadium every thing was duly ordered and prescribed, nothing left to chance or choice, and he that strove for the mastery was not crowned except he strove lawfully. In the race, there must be no deviation from the line marked out for the runner; in the combat, no unfairness nor violation of the rules. "I therefore so run, not as uncertainly," saith the apostle; "so fight I, not as one that beateth the air; but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest after having preached to others I myself should be rejected." "Would you obtain a prize in the Olympic games?" said a pagan philosopher. "A noble design! But consider the requirements and the consequences. You must live by rule; you must eat when you are not hungry; you must abstain from agreeable food; you must habituate yourself to suffer cold and heat; in one word, you must surrender yourself in all things to the guidance of a physician." "The just shall live by his faith." Without adherence to this rule, there is no reward. "The life which I live in the flesh," saith St. Paul, "I live by the faith of the Son of God." It is faith that strengthens the Christian agonisti with might in the inner man. It is faith that unites the soul to Christ, and overcomes the world. The shipwreck of faith is the shipwreck also of a good conscience. Keep the faith, and it will keep you. St. Paul kept it, and triumphed in martyrdom.

The third thing here to be noted is the apostle's joyful foresight of his glorious coronation: "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing."

The object of the apostle's hope is no garland of withering leaves or fading flowers, such as honored the victor in the Grecian games; nor a diadem of gems and gold, such as glorified imperial brows at Rome. He had sowed righteousness, and righteousness he hoped to reap. He had wrought righteousness, and righteousness was to be his reward. The principle of the competition was the chief jewel of the expected crown. The victor's award must show the character of the conflict. And what, to such a prize, are all the splendors of royalty, with all the magnificent pageantry and subsequent privileges of an Olympian triumph? Imperishable, it is called "a crown of life," and "a crown of glory that fadeth not away." In the Convent of Sant Onofrio, I have seen the wreath intended for the living Tasso, but delayed too long, and placed by the fratti upon the brow of the dead; and, though very carefully preserved, it was all sear, and crisp, and falling to decay; but upon your heads, O ye righteous! shall your crowns flourish, when this earth and these heavens are no more.

The judge who awarded the prize to the victor at the Grecian games might decide unjustly, either through culpable partiality, or from involuntary error; but "the Lord, the righteous judge," who is to decide the fate of the Christian agonisti, is no respecter of persons, and his perfect knowledge and infallible wisdom render mistakes with him impossible. St. Paul's imperial judge was the very incarnation of iniquity; but Christ "shall judge the world in righteousness," and "reward every man according to his works."

The crown was not conferred as soon as the racer reached the goal or the gladiator gave the fatal thrust, but was reserved till the contests were all over and ended, and the claims of the several candidates were carefully canvassed and adjudicated. So the "crown of righteousness" is "laid up" to be given "at that day," when the Lord Jesus shall come to be glorified in his saints. One says, "we must die first;" St. Paul tells us we must rise first. Blessed, indeed, are the dead in Christ; but their blessedness cannot be consummated till their Lord return from heaven and they appear with him in glory.

And to whom, or how many, is the crown to be given? "To all them that love his appearing." All the contestants shall then be collected, and every victor crowned. Christ hath crowns enough for the whole assembly of his saints, and the most illustrious of his apostles would not wish to wear them all. The humblest and obscurest Christian shall have his portion in the royal inheritance. There is only one condition—that we "love his appearing." This was the chief mark of his first followers. Through all their bitter conflicts, their hope clung to the Master's promise. Have we such hope? Rejoice then, and be exceeding glad! Fight on; stretch forward; hold fast your precious faith. In the crown that glitters in the hand of your Judge, is there not sufficient indemnity for all the agony of the conflict?

To this prospect, alas! there is an appalling contrast. Some are fighting an evil fight, running a ruinous race, repudiating the only faith that can save the soul. Think you by unrighteousness to win the crown of righteousness? "Be not deceived; God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Even in the Grecian contests, the unsuccessful candidate found all his toil and struggle utterly unprofitable at the end. And you who never enter the lists, who take no part in the competition, who are mere spectators of the earnestness and the agony of others—will you dare, when the Judge cometh, to stand forth and claim the crown for which you have never striven? "Awake to righteousness!" Condemned already, dead in trespasses and sins, aliens from the Church and strangers to the covenant—what hope is there for you, but in God's regenerating grace, a thorough change of heart and life, a moral transformation of character which shall make you new creatures in Christ Jesus? Not yet is it all too late. Come and offer yourselves as candidates for the heavenly competition. Grace will accept your late repentance, and you will have nothing to regret but your long delay. We challenge you to the contest. All heaven awaits your decision. How long halt you? It is high time you were determined. Step forward, take your position, and struggle for the crown of righteousness which the righteous Judge shall give that day to all who love his appearing!

XIV.

CALVARY TOKEN.[1]

As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come.—1 Cor. xi. 26.

Between Chattanooga and Atlanta occurred some of the severest conflicts of the American Civil War. For more than a hundred miles the fields are covered with battle-scars, and every hill-top bears traces of fortifications. Near one of the most memorable places may now be seen a cemetery, where Northern and Southern soldiers, side by side, await the resurrection. Visiting it a year after the struggle was over and ended, I found an East-Tennessee farmer sitting by a grave at the head of which he had just erected a handsome marble. To my question—"Was the soldier lying here your son?" he answered: "No, sir; he was my neighbor. I was drafted for the army; my family were all sick; I knew not how to leave them; I was sadly perplexed and troubled. A young man came to me, and said: 'You shall not go; I will go for you; I have no family to care for.' Glad to remain with those who needed me so much, I accepted his generous offer. He went, but never returned. I have brought this stone more than a hundred miles, to set it at the head of his grave. Look there, stranger!" I followed with my eyes the direction of his finger, and read under the name of the noble dead: "He died for me!" And we both bowed the head, and wept.

My dear brethren, there is One far nobler who died for you and me. With a disinterestedness unparalleled in the annals of war, he took our place in a fiercer conflict than was ever waged for freedom or for empire. Fighting our battle, he fell; but falling, conquered all our foes. Triumphant he rose from the dead, and ascended on high, leading our captivity captive. At the right hand of the throne of God, in our nature redeemed and glorified, "he ever liveth to make intercession for us." All that we have or hope of good we owe to his dying love. But in an upper chamber at Jerusalem, with a few chosen witnesses present, just before he went forth to the final engagement, he instituted for us a perpetual memorial of his unexampled charity. Taking bread, he blessed, and brake, and gave to his disciples, saying: "Take, eat; this is my body, which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of me." Then, taking the cup, he gave to them, saying: "Drink ye all of this; for this is my blood of the new covenant, shed for you, and for many, for the remission of sins; do this in remembrance of me." This finished, he chanted part of the Great Hallel with the beloved twelve, as if the victory were already won; then gave them his valedictory address, and went out to die. And some twenty-four years later, the great Apostle Paul, in a letter to the Christians of Corinth, having narrated the facts just as they are recorded by the evangelists, adds these solemn words for the benefit of his brethren in all subsequent ages: "As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come."

Here, then, is the precious Calvary token bequeathed by the dear Saviour to his redeemed Church. While we contemplate it, hear we not a voice from the excellent glory bidding us take off the shoes from our feet? Approaching the altar to gaze upon the great sacrificial memorial, the ground we tread is holier than that on which Moses stood before the bush that burned in Horeb. There is more of God seen here than in all the fires of Sinai. There he made known his law; here he reveals his love. There we read his will; here we behold his heart. No other ordinance, even of the new and everlasting covenant, contains so much of majesty, so much of mystery, so much of sanctity, and at the same time so much of mercy, as the eucharistic feast; in which the Messiah stands forth to our faith at once the sacrifice and the sacrificer, in the same sacred solemnity instituting an everlasting memorial and a perpetual priesthood.

To us, more than eighteen centuries after the fact, if we have any right feeling and clear perception, the solemn transaction in the upper room,

must wear an aspect far more interesting than it wore at the moment even to the apostles themselves. For we are able to view the matter more deliberately and more dispassionately than they could, and with many additional side-lights to aid our apprehension of the divine truths involved. Certainly no act of the Saviour has laid his Church under greater obligation, none has exhibited in more attractive colors the relations he sustains to his redeemed people. Taking the bread and the cup, does he not remind us of his having taken our flesh and blood? Presenting them with solemn benediction to the Father, does he not intimate to us the offering of his humanity to Heaven as a sacrifice for our sins? Giving them to his disciples with the command to eat and drink, does he not assure us that he is ours with all the infinite benefits of his incarnation and atonement forever? Ordering the apostles and their apostolical successors as his priests to do what they have just seen him do as their Lord, does he not furnish us a perpetual commemoration of his redeeming love, and a perpetual demonstration of his quickening power, till his return in glorious majesty from heaven to rule the world he ransomed with his blood?

Under both the Hebrew and the heathen rituals, the meat-offering and the drink-offering were inseparable from every piacular sacrifice; and without the conjunctive offering of bread and wine, it is difficult to see how either Hebrew or heathen could have regarded the death of Christ as an expiation for sin. As the death of a martyr, indeed, they might well enough have taken it; but as a sacrifice for human transgression, how could they have received it, unaccompanied by the Holy Supper? Were the bread and wine the body and blood of Christ in the physical sense maintained by the Church of Rome, their perpetual presentation by personal intercession before the Father's throne would be superfluous and even impossible, while the voluntary death of our dear Lord upon the cross would be unnecessary and suicidal. Were they the body and blood of Christ in the merely emblematical sense maintained by the ultra-Protestant sects, they would constitute for us no sufficient assurance of his ever-living mediation in heaven, nor to God any effectual remembrancer of his suffering in the flesh for the expiation of our guilt. Therefore those denominations who deny the propitiatory character of his passion have little care or scruple about the due observance of this most sacred festival—

"This do," said the divine Author of the institution, "in remembrance of me"—strictly, "for my memorial;" not merely remembering me—reminding yourselves and others of me; but memorializing God the Father—reminding him of the self-presentation of his well-beloved Son as an offering and a sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savor for our salvation. In doing this, we do not repeat the once offered and forever accepted propitiation for our guilt—a thing which, indeed, we cannot do, and which no word of Holy Scripture warrants us in attempting; but we present a spiritual memorial of that propitiation, setting forth in the sight of God the perfect work and infinite merit of our personal Redeemer; we present the consecrated bread and wine, and with them we present ourselves and the whole catholic Church, to him who delivered up his own Son for us all, and accepted that Son's unknown sorrows and sufferings as a sufficient satisfaction for all human sin. This is the essence of the eucharistic oblation, the anti-typical peace-offering, the great sacrifice of the faithful. How unworthy are we of so sublime a service! and how should we cleanse ourselves to appear with such a gift at the portals of the heavenly sanctuary!

In the presence of the chosen twelve presenting to the Father the meat-offering and drink-offering of the true Paschal Lamb, the appointed High-Priest of our profession solemnly attested to heaven and earth the sacrificial character of his ensuing sufferings, and pledged himself to the speedy accomplishment of the great sin-offering once for all. Enjoining upon his apostles the perpetual continuance of the same ministration by an unfailing succession of consecrated men, he provided the Church with a proof and the world with a token of the everlasting endurance and efficacy of that sacrifice, once offered, often commemorated, and eternally acceptable to God. Instituting a memorial for all subsequent ages of the completeness and perpetuity of his personal sacrifice, he instituted also the means of appropriating its benefits; and the Christian meat-offering and drink-offering being so intimately associated with the Christian sacrifice, the partaker in faith of the one is partaker in fact of the other, truly eating the flesh and drinking the blood of God's incarnate Son. Hear the Saviour's memorable words in the Capernaum synagogue: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you; whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up in the last day; for my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed; he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him."

Hard sayings were these to some who heard them, and hard they still are to all self-blinded unbelievers; but, as St. Augustine says, they are hard only to the hardened, and incredible only to the incredulous. To us who believe, though mysterious, they are very precious. We apprehend their spiritual meaning, and rejoice in the privilege which they open to our faith. Eating and drinking at the Lord's table, we become partakers of his life, his holiness, and his immortality. Here we participate with the Eternal Father in his joy over the accomplished work of his Beloved Son, and with that Beloved Son himself in his joy over the redeemed Church—his treasure and his bride; while heaven and earth unite in the glad festival of faith—the hidden manna and the new wine of the kingdom. And if the living Christ be thus in you, dear brethren! what outward enemy is too strong for you—what duty too arduous—what ordeal too severe? Away with your doubts and fears, O ye faint-hearted disciples! Can you not trust him who, in the power of an endless life, has established his throne in your hearts? With Christ, all things are yours, and no agency of earth or hell can rob you of your regal inheritance!

Contingent upon the sacrifice of the cross, and from that sacrifice deriving all its meaning and its merit, the eucharistic sacrament itself becomes relatively sacrificial. As beforehand there was a continual sacrificial anticipation of Immanuel's atoning death, so after the event is there a continual sacramental commemoration of the accomplished purpose and prophecy. Both the Jewish passover which foreshadowed the future fact, and the Christian eucharist which to-day commemorates the fact historical, are sacrificial on the same principle and by the same rule—their relation to the cross of Calvary which gives them all their virtue and their value. The agony is over, and Christ dieth no more; the atonement once made without the walls of Jerusalem is still presented by our divine High-Priest before the mercy-seat within the vail. To all who believe, it is efficacious forever, needing no annual or even millennial repetition. But in the eucharistic sacrament, with prayers and thanksgivings, we lift up the reeking cross before the Eternal Father, and plead the sufferings of his Well-Beloved for our salvation. We say to God: "Behold this broken bread; it is the mangled flesh of thy Christ! Behold this purple cup; it is the blood which he shed for our sins! Behold at thy right hand our slaughtered Paschal Lamb, and for his sake have mercy upon us and save us!"

Thus we say the holy eucharist is relatively sacrificial—sacrificial from its inseparable connection with the Redeemer's sacrifice. But even in this sense—the only one admissible to a true faith—the holy eucharist could not be sacrificial, were not its ministers in a corresponding sense sacerdotal. As the sacrament becomes relatively sacrificial by representing the Saviour's sacrifice, so its ministers become relatively sacerdotal by representing his person and functions. Commencing in the paschal chamber an ever-during sacrifice by ministering in person its accompanying meat-offering and drink-offering, he commenced there also the order of an ever-during priesthood by empowering his apostolic ministry to perpetuate that meat-offering and drink-offering forever. And, conferring sacerdotal functions upon the apostolic ministry, he conferred them upon that ministry alone. If he did not intend to limit to the twelve and their consecrated followers the power of consecrating and dispensing the sacramental bread and wine, why were not the whole five hundred brethren, or all the vast concourse of followers from Galilee, admitted to the original celebration? The selection of the few proves the exclusion of the many, and restricts the perpetual prerogative to the ministry of apostolical succession.

The sacerdotal oblation being essential, the sacerdotal celebration is equally essential. The priest must consecrate; the priest must administer; or there is no divinely authorized memorial of the one everlasting sacrifice. No such memorial, where is the recognized bond, connecting the body on earth to its glorified Head in heaven? No such bond, what becomes of the Church, and what assurance has she of an eternal inheritance? That bond secure, the Church is invincible and immortal; the city of God stands upon a rock which no shock of colliding worlds can shake; all her happy people, instinct with the life of their Lord, walking in white robes her streets of gold. And the apostolic series of sacerdotal ministers continuing to the end of time, the conjoined memorial of consecrated bread and wine shall still bind the successive generations of the faithful to the sacrificial cross, till he who for our great and endless comfort instituted the holy mystery nearly two thousand years ago shall return with all his flaming cohorts from the skies to take us to himself forever. "As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come."

XV.

HEROISM TRIUMPHANT.[1]

Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place.—2 Cor. ii. 14.

The grandest of all human pageants was a Roman triumph. This honor was conferred only upon the emperor or the general who had conquered a province, or achieved some signal victory. The conqueror was arrayed in rich purple robes, embroidered with flowers and figures of gold. His buskins were adorned with pearls and costly gems, and a wreath of laurel or a crown of gold was set upon his head. In one hand he held a laurel branch, the emblem of victory; and in the other his truncheon, the symbol of authority and power. He was borne in a magnificent chariot, drawn generally by white horses, but sometimes by other animals. Pompey had elephants; Mark Antony, lions; Heliogabalus, tigers; Marcus Aurelius, reindeer. Musicians led the procession, playing triumphal marches; and heralds, proclaiming the achievements of the victorious hero. These were followed by young men, leading the victims, with gilded horns and garlanded heads, intended for sacrifice. Next came the wagons, loaded with the spoils and trophies of the conquered foe; succeeded by the captured horses, camels, elephants, and gayly decorated carriages; and after these, the captive kings, queens, princes, and generals, loaded with chains. Then was seen the triumphal chariot, outdoing all other magnificence; before which boys swung censers and maidens strewed flowers; while the people, as it passed, prostrated themselves and shouted, "Io triumphe!" Immediately behind marched the sentries; and the procession was closed by the priests and their attendants, with the various sacrificial utensils, and a white ox destined for the chief victim. Entering the city by the Porta Capaena, passing through the triumphal arch, and proceeding along the Via Sacra, the splendid cortége moved on toward the Capitol; at the foot of which the captives divided, some led to the Mammertine and Tullian dungeons on the right, while the others went straight forward to the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus; the former doomed to death, the latter made tributaries if not even allies of imperial Rome. Meanwhile, the temples all being open, every altar smoked with sacrificial fires, and clouds of incense filled the city and sweetened all the air.

With such spectacles the Corinthians were not unacquainted. About two hundred years before St. Paul wrote this epistle, Lucius Mummius, the Roman consul, had conquered all Achaia; had destroyed Corinth, Chalcus and Thebes; and, by order of the senate, had been honored with a splendid triumph and the surname of Achaicus. Over the same people the apostle now has a triumph, but it is a triumph of very different character—a triumph in Christ by the power of the gospel, the glory of which he ascribes to God alone. As in a Roman triumph the smoke of altars and the odor of incense filled the city with a pleasant perfume, so the name and the doctrine of Christ preached by him and his colleagues pervaded Corinth and all the surrounding country—wherever those holy men had labored—with odors as of Eden; and the apostles appeared as triumphing in Christ over idols, demons, devils—over ignorance, prejudice, scepticism, superstition, false philosophy, and all the powers of darkness; yet appropriating no praise to themselves, but attributing all to the wisdom and the mercy of God. Indeed, it is God's triumph, not theirs. He has first triumphed over them, and is now making them the partners of his triumph. Better expressing the sense of the Greek original, Trench and Alford read, "leadeth us in triumph;" and other eminent critics give us substantially the same rendering; while Conybeare and Howson, in their admirable work on the "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," thus translate the language of the text: "But thanks be to God, who leads me on from place to place in the train of his triumph, to celebrate his victory over the enemies of Christ; and by me sends forth the knowledge of himself, a stream of fragrant incense, throughout the world." A pretty free translation, it is true; but embodying, no doubt, the precise meaning of the writer. "St. Paul regarded himself," says Fausett, "as a signal trophy of God's victorious power in Christ; his Almighty Conqueror leading him about through all the cities of the Greek and Roman world, as an illustrious example of his power at once to subdue and to save." The foe of Christ was now the servant of Christ. Grace divine had subdued and disarmed him. The rebel, the persecutor, the conspirator with hell, was brought into subjection, and rejoiced in his burden as a blessing. As to be led in triumph by man is miserable degradation, so to be led in triumph by the Lord of hosts is highest honor and blessedness. Our only true triumphs are God's triumphs over us. His defeats of us are our only true victories. Near the gate of Damascus the lion is smitten into a lamb by the hand of the Crucified; and in a short time the lamb has become his bravest champion. Brought into willing obedience, he falls into Christ's triumphal train, ascends into Christ's triumphal chariot; and, in full sympathy with Christ, becomes the partner of his triumph. Bengal writes—"who shows us in triumph"—that is, not only as conquered by Christ, but as conquering with him. Our victory is the fruit of his victory over us; and the open showing of that, so far from being our shame, is our greatest glory. Therefore saith the apostle—and it is the most heroic utterance of the prince of heroes: "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." And from this evangel of the crucifixion, which he lives to preach and will die to defend, arises the fragrant odor with which he and his companions are filling the world. As the approach of the triumphal procession is made manifest by the sweet perfume scattered far and wide by incense-bearers in the conqueror's train, so the heavenly Victor makes use of his vanquished to herald the victories of his grace and diffuse like fragrant odors the saving knowledge of his name. It is the triumph of grace over sin, the triumph of truth over error, the triumph of faith over unbelief, the triumph of divine love over human selfishness. It is the right triumphing over the wrong, the pure triumphing over the impure, the heavenly triumphing over the earthly, the spiritual triumphing over the sensual, the eternal triumphing over the temporal, the true religion triumphing over all superstition. It is God by Christ triumphing in man, and man through Christ triumphing with God; who leads us in triumph as his captives, shows us in triumph as his trophies, and "maketh manifest by us the savor of his knowledge in every place."

You see, my brethren, that the apostolic work was missionary work—that the Church, as constituted by these heroic and holy men under the leadership of their divine Lord, was a missionary society—the primitive propaganda of the Christian faith. They were sent forth by the Captain of their salvation to conquer the nations for Christ, and gather captives from all countries into his triumphal procession. For this work St. Paul was added to the original number, and from his peculiar fitness by education and spiritual endowment became the most successful of them all. And the constitution of the Church is still unchanged; and our high calling in Christ Jesus has never been revoked; and your bishops and clergy to-day are but heralds and incense-bearers in the train of Immanuel's triumph; and every faithful communicant, and every baptized believer, and every humble neophyte, are triumphing with the heavenly Conqueror. Surely here is a demand for all our faith, for all our zeal, for all our moral heroism; and for an embassy like ours, "more than twelve legions of angels" might have been commissioned from the skies. Alas! where sleep our energies? where slumber the holy fires within our hearts? Calm and secure, here we sit in our Christian assemblies. With something of the Spirit we pray, with something of the Spirit we sing, and with much of the understanding we do both. With reverent delight we hear the word of grace, and with unspeakable gladness welcome its revelations of the unseen and the eternal. With our best faculties we inquire into its meaning, seek elucidations of it in ancient literature and modern criticism, and rejoice in its accumulating confirmations from history and from science. We worship with a comely ritual derived from the fathers, and celebrate the sacramental mysteries of our redemption in words that have warmed the hearts of martyrs. But while thus occupied, how little think we of the millions around us who for the same mercies are constantly invoking Heaven with the voice of all their sins and sorrows! For us, Christ "hath abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light by his gospel;" they follow their friends to the burial, and mourn for them without hope, no star gleaming over the grave, nor seraph beckoning out of the darkness beyond; they lie down to die, but above the pallid day no halo gathers, no seraph wings are hovering, no sweet familiar voices inviting to an eternal fellowship of joy. Have we no loving compassions for them, no desire to rescue and save their souls alive? Oh! look at the heathen world, where Satan holds undisputed empire, and man has never felt the power of Christian civilization. Look at the dark places of the earth, full of the habitations of cruelty; where Belial reigns supreme, and Moloch revels in fire and blood. Look at the countries that languish under the curse of the Crescent, where sense misnamed faith triumphs over reason, and strong delusion has quenched the last beam of divine knowledge, and obscured every ray of intellectual truth. Look at Jacob's heritage of milk, and honey, "destroyed by the wickedness of them that dwell therein"—the most beautiful of lands, the very garden of God, by ignorance and barbarism turned into a sterile waste and delivered up to the tenantry of noisome and noxious creatures. Look at the exiled children of Abraham, a vagabond race, roaming everywhere, and nowhere finding rest; the curse of their rejection branded on every brow, and reprobation written in every feature of an unmistakable physiognomy; their synagogues little better than Mohammedan mosques and pagan temples, their worship an empty and abrogated ceremonial, and Mammon substituted for the Messiah. Look at the villanous impostures of the Vatican, and the notorious corruptions of faith and worship wherever the Roman mystagogue holds sway; the habitual invocation of saints and martyrs; the adoration of images, pictures, and relics; the monstrous abuses and manifold abominations of the confessional; the doctrines of indulgence, purgatory, and human merit; the blasphemous dogmas of papal supremacy and infallibility, and the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin; with the legitimate and lamentable fruits—an abject and atheistic priesthood, and a thriftless and degraded people. Look at your own country, Christian though it is called—your own city, highly as it is favored of heaven; and see how far the masses lie from the living God; how his name is profaned, his altars abandoned, while every place of amusement is thronged with merry votaries of pleasure, and drunken men reel athwart the path of church-going people, and the house of her whose steps take hold on hell stands in the very shadow of the sanctuary, and libidinous songs and blasphemous oaths form the horrible counterpart to your sacred psalmody; on all sides temples of Bacchus and Beelzebub, with scenes of revelry and riot, debauchery and blood, where dissipation discards all disguise, impurity all shame, and impiety all fear. Look at your Western States and Territories—fields demanding a hundred missionaries where you have one; a numerous and constantly increasing population scattered over a vast extent of country, with only here and there a church and a school, like solitary torches a thousand miles apart struggling to dispel the deeper than Egyptian darkness of half a world; while Rome is rearing her temples and convents everywhere, everywhere establishing her brotherhoods and sisterhoods, founding orphan-asylums and educational institutes, exercising a powerful influence over the development of the youthful mind, and poisoning the wells whence the people are to draw the water of their salvation; and heresy and schism are setting up their tabernacles, and agnostic infidelity is travelling pari passu with population, and myriads of redeemed immortals are perishing for lack of knowledge. Look at your fair and sunny South-land, lately devastated by contending armies; churches in ashes, cities in ruins, fenceless plantations growing up to forests; bishops and clergymen wofully impoverished, and forced to resort to secular occupations for subsistence; earnest and anxious spirits, shipwrecked in the collision of sectarian crafts, struggling desperately in the dark waters of doubt, and longing to see the life-boats of the Church upon the billows; four million slaves in a state of semi-barbarism suddenly set at liberty like so many unfledged cagelings turned out to the wintry tempest, amidst hawks, and owls, and eagles, and every beast of prey; many of them already relapsing into their ancestral superstitions, suspecting one another as wizards and witches, practising hideous rites and abominable incantations, worshipping some exceptionally ugly old hag as a new incarnation of the Divinity, and dancing with demoniac noises over the graves of their dead. No fancy pictures are these which I present, nor overwrought descriptions of realities. Impossible were it to find language or figures to exaggerate the wretchedness of humanity unrelieved by the gracious revelations of God. In comparison of the moral ruin around us, what was the late catastrophe of a hundred South-American cities, whelming in a common destruction men, women and children to the number of forty or fifty thousand? Should some pilgrim from a distant sphere, traversing the ethereal space with wings of light, chance to cross the orbit of our fallen planet, and cast a momentary glance down at our condition, might he not hurry past with a shudder, suspecting that hell had emptied itself upon earth, and the unhappy race had been given over unredeemed to the dominion of the Devil?

But why dwell on this dismal theme? Oh! I could tell you of victories demanding another David to sing them or another Isaiah to record them, till every loving heart should leap for joy and exult in hope of millennial triumph. But I would fain stir your compassion. I am feeling for your purse-strings among your heart-strings. I want to play a tune upon your spirits which shall echo in Colorado, and make music in New Mexico, and reverberate from the heights of the Himalaya, and gladden the hills round about Jerusalem. Can we survey the valley of vision, and not prophesy to all the winds of God? Can we see millions of immortal beings crushed by the dominion of Satan, and not cry amain to the Prince of peace to come and unseat the great usurper, and establish his own universal and everlasting empire? And how shall we pray successfully, if we answer not our own prayers by pouring our offerings into the Lord's treasury? How shall we arrest the long carnival of crime, and error, and delusion, and infidelity, if we bestir not all our Christian energies, occupying every available position, evoking every beneficent agency of the Church, barricading with Bibles and Prayer-Books the teeming way to ruin, and bridging with the blessed cross the mouth of the flaming pit? Thus, my brethren! may we save souls from death, and give new joy to benevolence in other worlds, and gladden the heart that eighteen hundred years ago quivered for us upon the point of the Roman spear, and fill the reverberant universe with the shout of the apostle—"Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place!"

XVI.

FRATERNAL FORGIVENESS.[1]

So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.—Matt. xviii. 35.

When John Wesley was in Georgia, he was dining one day with Gov. Oglethorpe. A negro waiter at the table committing a careless blunder, the governor said to his guest: "See this good-for-nothing servant; he is always doing wrong, though he knows that I never forgive." "Does your Excellency never forgive?" replied Mr. Wesley; "then it is to be hoped that your Excellency never does wrong." A beautiful reproof; and the more effectual, no doubt, from its gentleness. Those who need forgiveness for their own faults, certainly ought to forgive the faults of others. "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven;" but "he shall have judgment without mercy, who hath showed no mercy." This is the lesson taught us in the gospel for the day,[2] which I shall endeavor to unfold and apply. For moral elevation, the passage is very remarkable. Found in some old Greek or Roman volume—in some parchment dug up from Herculaneum or Pompeii—on some tablet or cylinder discovered amidst the débris of Nineveh or Babylon—it would have awakened the wonder of the world, and men would never have been weary of praising its transcendent charity.

The Jewish rabbis taught that a man might forgive an injury a second or even a third time, but never a fourth. When St. Peter asked—"How oft shall my brother trespass against me, and I forgive him? until seven times?" he doubled the rabbinical measure of mercy, doubtless imagining that he had reached the ultimate limit, and that his Divine Master even could require no more. How must he and his brethren have been astonished when Jesus answered: "I say not unto thee, Until seven times; but, until seventy times seven!" What! four hundred and ninety times? But Jesus puts a definite number for an indefinite. "Count not your acts of clemency," he seems to say; "be your forgiveness of a brother as free as the air you breathe or the light you enjoy—your love as unlimited as the illimitable heaven above you." Then he puts the matter strongly before them in a parable:

A certain king calls his servants—the collectors of his taxes and revenues—to account. One of them is found frightfully in arrears—owing his lord ten thousand talents—a debt which he can never pay. The king orders the sale of the delinquent, with his family and all his effects. Falling at the royal feet, he implores patience, and promises the impossible. Touched with pity, the king forgives the debt. But the forgiven goes to a fellow-servant who owes him the small sum of a hundred pence, seizes him by the throat, and demands immediate payment. The helpless debtor falls before him, and pleads with him as he himself had lately pleaded with the king. The creditor, however, is inexorable; and into prison the poor man must go till the debt is paid. The sad matter is reported to the king, who recalls the subject of his clemency, rebukes his cruelty, revokes his own act of forgiveness, and delivers the unmerciful over to the tormentors till the last farthing shall be paid. Finally, in application of the parable, the Divine Teacher adds: "So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses."

God's mercy to man, and man's unmercifulness to his fellow, are the two principal things set forth in the parable. Let us look at them both, and see how the former enhances the latter, and enforces the duty of fraternal forgiveness.

To have any right appreciation of the master's mercy, we must know something of the amount of the servant's debt. Ten thousand talents was an enormous sum. The delinquent was a viceroy, and the amount he owed was the revenue of a province. In those days large debts were not uncommon. Julius Cæsar owed, beyond his assets, $1,425,000; Mark Antony, $2,250,000; Curio, $3,375,000; Milo, $4,125,000. An Attic talent was about $1,080; which, multiplied by 10,000, would make the debt $10,800,000. But if the Jewish talent of silver is meant, it would amount to $16,600,000; if the Jewish talent of gold, to $569,000,000. Now let each talent stand for a sin—10,000 sins! Reduce the talents to dollars, and take every dollar for a sin—569,000,000 sins! Reduce the dollars to dimes, and let every dime represent a sin—5,690,000,000 sins! Reduce the dimes to cents, and let every cent be considered a sin—56,900,000,000 sins! Perhaps, however, our dear Lord never intended by the number of talents to intimate the number of our sins, any more than by the seventy times seven he meant to say how often we should forgive an offending brother. In each case the idea is that of indefinite number, unlimited extent. But if the seventy times seven means mercy without measure, what can the ten thousand talents denote but guilt beyond all human calculation or imagination? Think you any estimate of the number and enormity of our sins can be an exaggeration? "Who can tell how oft he offendeth?" "My sins are more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart faileth me." "My sins are increased over my head so that I am not able to look up." Far better and holier than the best of us, my brethren, was the man who wrote these statements, and left them for an everlasting testimony against those who are pure in their own eyes. If David had such consciousness of sin, what must our consciousness be if we knew ourselves as well? They are the self-blinded, self-hardened, self-deceived, who fancy themselves innocent and glory in their virtue. Even the great apostle called himself "the chief of sinners," and declared that in himself dwelt "no good thing." There is no danger, then, of extravagance in any estimate of our sins of which our arithmetic is capable. So let us proceed a little farther. Take our Lord's summary of the first table of the law: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." Here is required the surrender of the whole man as a living sacrifice to his Divine Creator and Sovereign Proprietor. This is his unquestionable claim upon every moment of our existence throughout its immortal duration. A duty this which we cannot omit for a single second without robbing God; and every minute that we neglect it, comprising sixty seconds, we may be said to repeat the sacrilege sixty times; every hour, 3,600 times; every day, 86,400 times; every year, 31,536,000 times; in twenty years, 630,720,000 times; and in forty years, 1,261,440,000 times. But these are sins of omission only, and that in relation to a single phase of duty; add all the other instances, and we must multiply the sum by multiplied millions. Then we must take our positive sins—our violations of the divine law by thought, word and deed—open sins and secret, public and private, personal and social—sins defying all enumeration, and difficult even of classification; and, adding all together, we must multiply the sum by all our faculties, facilities and gracious incentives for doing God's blessed will, and aggravate all by the innumerable mercies and inestimable blessings which he has diffused over our lives as his sunbeams over the earth. And its any thing short of infinite mercy adequate to the forgiveness of such a debt?

For all this, however unwilling, we must give account to God; and how terrible the array, when conscience shall summon forth from the secret chambers of memory every sin of which we have been guilty, and every evil act and every neglect of duty shall stand out distinct and clear in the light of eternal judgment! How shall we meet the reckoning? In all the eternity to come, what satisfaction can we offer for our faults? Can we alter the facts, undo the deeds, repair the wrongs, recall the time, or efface the record? Nay, the account remains uncancelled, and the debt can never be paid. Soul and body, with all the capabilities of both, the creature belongs to the Creator; and by an original and perpetual obligation, perfect love and blameless obedience are his constant duty. Beyond this he can never go. Even though he commit no sin, neglect no duty, he can offer to the Creator no service whatever that is not justly required of him as a creature. By his utmost efforts forever, he simply renders to God what is his indisputable due. How, then, can the transgressor hope to pay the new and additional debt which he has incurred by innumerable crimes? Before he can do a single meritorious act, even his original obligation to God as his creature must be cancelled; but to cancel that is more than the Creator himself can do, the obligation being inseparable from the relation. As to human merit, therefore, the case is hopeless. What, then, is to be done? Sell the debtor, with his wife and children? Such procedure on the part of the creditor was allowed by ancient law. But in what slave-mart of the universe shall God sell the sinner? Who will want him but Satan? and Satan has him already, self-sold, and bound by indefeasible indenture. Nay, by this part of the parable our Lord presents justice as ministering to mercy. The menace of punishment opens the way for pardon, and the hopeless condition of the debtor enhances the clemency of the king. See the poor wretch, prostrate at the royal feet, imploring a little indulgence, and promising what is utterly beyond his power. So, on a bed of sickness, stung by conscience and confronted by doom, often has the most incorrigible transgressor vowed reparation for a vicious life, only to augment his guilt by disregarding the vow on the return of health and strength. But if the sinner cannot pay, God can forgive. If neither saints nor angels can wrest the culprit from the grasp of justice, yet Heaven has found a ransom to save his soul from the pit. Jesus interposes with "a price all price beyond;" the debt is overpaid in the blood of the cross; through the compassion of the King the debtor is released from his bonds; and the angels tune their harps to sing "the blessedness of the man whose unrighteousness is forgiven and whose sin is covered!"

So far the parable illustrates God's mercy to man; what remains is a sad picture of man's too frequent unmercifulness to his brother, and the just punishment of his cruelty visited upon the delinquent. Here are five points worthy of our attention; which, duly considered, may serve to impress upon our minds the duty of fraternal forgiveness.

First, we have the two creditors, with their respective claims. The king represents God in his relation to man; the first servant represents man in his relation to mankind. God has his supreme claims, as creator and sovereign lord, upon the love, worship and obedience of the whole human race; while man has his subordinate claims, as an equal and a brother, upon the justice, the kindness, the sympathy and the charity of all other men—sometimes, as patron and official superior, upon the reverence, submission and loyal service of a particular part of them.

Then, we have the two debtors, with the different amounts of debt. Both are servants, holding a like relation to the king. Both are in arrears, the one to the king, the other to his fellow-servant. Ought not a common bond and a common condition to produce in them mutual kindness and sympathy? But how great the disparity of their debts! ten thousand talents, and a hundred pence—the latter less than a millionth part of the former—if the gold talent is intended, less than a hundred millionth. Surely if the king could forgive the greater, it were a small matter with his servant to forgive the less. In comparison of our sins against God, what are our brother's sins against us? "As the small dust of the balance, lighter than vanity itself."

Next, we have the two arrests, with the opposite methods of their making. Calmly and kindly, in his accustomed way, worthy of his royal dignity, and just as he treated others, the king calls his servant to account. This proceeding was to be expected, and involves neither harshness nor severity. But when the man is found so culpably in arrears with nothing to pay—a case which could not happen without great dishonesty and wickedness—the king orders, as he has legal right to do, the sale of the culprit, with his family and effects, to satisfy some small part of the royal claim against him. Now mark the very different conduct of the criminal. No sooner is he released than he goes out—not staying a moment to express his gratitude or admire the mercy shown him—finds the man who owes him fifteen dollars: and, with a violence unprovoked and inexcusable, lays hands on him, takes him by the throat, and exclaims, "Pay me that thou owest!" Could there be a more unlovely contrast to the conduct of the king? Such is the difference between God's dealing with guilty men and man's dealing with his delinquent brother; the former all mildness and forbearance, the latter all harshness and severity.

Again, we have the two pleas, with their contrary receptions by the creditors. The two pleas are identical; the two receptions, quite opposite. The first servant falls down before the king, saying, "Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all;" so falls down the second servant before the first, with the very same words upon his lips. Not forgiveness, but merciful indulgence, is what each debtor craves of his creditor; and full payment is what each promises. The payment of a hundred denarii seems quite practicable, and not at all improbable; but the payment of ten thousand talents is beyond all power except that of royalty itself. Yet the wretched impossibility moves the royal heart to compassion; while the feasible and probable meets with stern and cruel refusal from the servile defaulter—all mercy on the one side, all implacability on the other. If, when overwhelmed with conscious guilt, you smote upon your breast and implored the divine mercy, your penitential tears moved the compassion of Heaven, how can you now harden your heart against the like plea of an offending brother? Even if he offer no plea, can you be utterly indifferent to his grief? Is this the spirit of Him who prayed for those who were nailing him to the cross? Perhaps your brother's heart is almost breaking, while he is too proud to apologize. A kind word, a look of love, might melt him into tears at your feet. Oh! give him that word, that look! It will restore to your arms a brother—to your heart a peace like that of heaven.

Finally, we have the two issues, with their consequences in impressive contrast. Great as his debt is, the king's debtor is released and forgiven; but the servant's debtor, owing so small a sum, is cast into prison till he shall pay the debt. But how shall he pay it in prison? Nay, it is not to secure payment that he is incarcerated, so much as to gratify the malignity of a wicked and revengeful heart. After so great a mercy shown to himself, the creditor cannot show the smallest mercy to his fellow-servant. And there the poor man must lie, in a private dungeon, amidst filth and darkness, his creditor his jailor, no comforts nor supplies but what are furnished him by friends without, no hope of deliverance till death comes to his release. Such is the contrast between God's dealing with man, and man's dealing with his brother. He compassionately forgives; we cruelly proceed to punish. Or if we pretend to forgive, how different is our forgiveness from his! God forgives gladly; we reluctantly. God forgives promptly; we after long delay. God forgives completely; we but partially and imperfectly. God forgives from the heart; we only with outward formalities. God forgives very tenderly; we with indifference or contempt. God forgives and forgets the crime; we cherish the bitter memory for many years. God forgives and takes the pardoned sinner to his heart; we thrust him away from our presence and our fellowship forever. God forgives so lovingly that he is said to delight in mercy and rejoice over the pardoned; we with such coldness, such hatred, such haughty disdain, that to meet the object of our clemency in heaven would spoil our joy!

That the cruel severity of the servile creditor should touch the hearts of his fellow-servants with sorrow is no matter of wonder. Stern and inexorable as were the laws of the age, no man without grief or anger could witness such inhumanity. In our day the case would have convoked an indignation meeting, if not a mob; with denunciatory resolutions, if not the prompt application of the code of Judge Lynch. The better method, however, is chosen; and the sad matter is prudently reported to the king. The king recalls the late object of his amazing clemency, in a dignified but very pointed speech remonstrates with him, and then delivers him to the tormentors till he shall pay the last farthing of the debt once forgiven. A righteous but terrible punishment! A state criminal, he goes to the public prison, the royal dungeons—perhaps, like the Mammertine and Tullian at Rome, three stories under ground. The debtor's prison, however, was ordinarily in the house of the creditor—often in his cellar; where the prisoner was kept in chains, subject to the creditor's will, to be tortured or slain as he chose. Slaves were there on purpose to torment him, and make his life as wretched as possible. They scourged him, beat him with rods, racked him with engines, pulled out his teeth, plucked out his nails, burned out his eyes, cut off his nose and ears, tore and mangled his flesh with hooks and pincers—to make him disclose his hidden treasures, to induce his friends to pay his debt for him, or simply to gratify a diabolical spirit of revenge. That all this has its counterpart in God's retribution upon the implacable, though almost too terrible for our faith, is the plain teaching of the parable. Men and angels rise up in remonstrance with Heaven against the unforgiving. And when the divine Heart-searcher calls him to judgment, what answer can he make to the dread animadversions of the angry king? Dare he now pray, as he often did on earth, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors!" Will he lift up his voice and sing, as he used to do in the church,

It was a mockery then; he will not repeat it now. Speechless as the unrobed intruder at the marriage feast, he stands trembling before his Judge. Angels of justice, take him away! Let us not see his anguish, nor hear his lamentation! Showing no mercy, he has lost all claim upon mercy. Conscience his eternal tormentor, any spot in the universe may be his dungeon of despair. Ask him now the question he has often asked with a sneer—"Is there a hell, and where is it?" He lays his hand upon his heart and answers—"There is, and it is here!" Angels of justice, take him away!

"So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses."

XVII.

CHRIST WITH HIS MINISTERS.[1]

Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.—Matt. xxviii. 20.

The agony of redemption is accomplished. The lately crucified and buried is alive forevermore. Forty days he has walked the earth in his resurrection body, instructing and comforting his disciples. The time is come for his return to the Father. He must enter into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. If he go not away, the Comforter will not come—the baptism of fire and power will not descend upon the Church. But before his departure, he renews the commission of his apostles: "All power is given unto me, in heaven and in earth; go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

Ye publicans and fishermen, what an embassy! How vast the field! How grand the work! How glorious the promise! Heaven never gave a sublimer commission; man never went forth under a mightier sanction, or on a nobler errand. To utter the words which were syllabled in thunder from out the flames of Sinai, to publish the love that was written in blood upon the cleft rocks of Calvary, to administer the sacramental mysteries of the new and everlasting covenant, to negotiate a perpetual amnesty with this revolted and ruined province of Jehovah's empire, to convert perishing souls from sin to righteousness and build them up in the blessed faith that saves,—this is to do what for ages has occupied the purest spirits and loftiest intellects of our race, and enlisted the interest and the energies of seraphim and cherubim, and furnished constant employment for all the agencies of the infinite goodness and wisdom and power. How poor in the comparison are all earthly diplomacies and royal ministries! Thrones, triumphs, the homage of the living world, and the praise of a thousand generations to come,—what were these to the office and dignity of Heaven's ambassador! How should the Christian minister tremble beneath the burden that weighs down the angel's wing, or rejoice to bear the tidings sung by celestial voices over the hills of Bethlehem! And who were sufficient for these things, but for the Master's promise appended to the command—"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world!"

"Lord, it is enough. With such assurance, we will go. With such assistance, we will preach. With such encouragement, we will baptize. With so mighty a patronage, we will summon the nations to thy feet. If thou be with us, we shall fear nothing, we can do all things. If thou aid and defend us, no enemy is invincible, no achievement is impracticable. In court or camp, in palace or prison, in temple or forum, in city or desert, to Jews or Gentiles, princes or peasants, scholars or rustics, sages or savages, we will gladly set forth thy claims and offer thy salvation." So might the apostles have answered their ascending Lord; and so, in effect, they did answer him. They went forth everywhere, and preached the kingdom of the Crucified. Mighty in spirit, they conferred not with flesh and blood. Strong in faith and hope, they consulted neither present appearances nor future probabilities. Constrained by the love of Christ, they hastened, with his message of grace, from city to city, from province to province, from nation to nation. Nothing retards them; nothing intimidates them. The word of the Lord is as fire shut up in their bones, and they are weary with forbearing. They must speak, or they will die; and though they die, they will speak. They cry aloud, and spare not. In the dungeons they lift up their voices, and in the tempests of the sea they are not silent. Before awful councils and sceptred rulers they bear witness to the precious truth. Under the crimson scourge and on the cruel rack they steadfastly maintain their testimony. Death only can effectually interdict their prophesying: and even in the agonies of death, ere yet the organs of speech are paralyzed, they offer Christ's salvation to their murderers, tenderly beseech those who are mocking their tortures, and bless with loving words the lips that are cursing them out of the world. And with what effect, let the early triumphs of the gospel testify; idols abolished; temples abandoned; cities converted; churches planted everywhere; whole provinces embracing the faith of Jesus; monarchs upon their thrones trembling before manacled preachers; Christianity spreading, even during the lifetime of the apostles, as far northward as Scythia, southward as Ethiopia, eastward as Parthia and India, westward as Gaul, Spain, and the British Isles; and a little later, assuming the imperial purple, and lifting the Labarum, glorified with the cross, as the signal of salvation to the nations; and all this, because Christ hath said, and so far hath fulfilled the saying,—"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."