SUNDAY READINGS. ————— SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

[April 1.] THE LAW OF THE HOUSEHOLD.

By E. A. WASHBURN, D.D.

“Honor thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”—Exod. xx: 12.

We open this second division of the Law with the duties of man to man; and at its head stands the commandment of the household. I must repeat here the remark of eminent scholars, that each of the original tables probably contained five statutes; and thus the maxim we now consider was directly joined with the four concerning the worship of God. Such a view gives us indeed a new insight into the Hebrew religion, which linked the first of social truths with a divine faith; it is the anticipation of his Gospel, who has taught us that the love of parent and children is the type of our holier bond in the family of Christ. But there is a yet further thought in the words of this “commandment with promise.” That “thy days maybe long in the land.” Those earlier commandments tower above us like the lonely heights, where Moses communed with God; but as we read this sentence, we see rise on the eyes of the lawgiver the landscape of far Judea, with its laughing fields, the voice of children and the home of calm old age. These words suggest the whole line of our reasoning on this subject. Filial reverence is the fountain of all affections, all duties; it flows like the river of Eden, parted into its branching heads, through every channel of human life.

It is then the family, as the institution which God has implanted in our nature, and Christianity has hallowed, that we are to consider. I know indeed no richer study than thus to trace its growth. I have no theories to offer you. It is the simplest of facts. There has been no more favorite field for our philosophers than that of the origin of human government. Some have fancied that men met together in formal compact; others have held the state of nature that of a pack of wolves, at last brought together by self-interest to choose some kingly wolf, who could keep the peace; and we have to-day our sages, so enamored of their researches into comparative anatomy, that they can pass by all the nobler facts of social history, and find the primitive man in some anthropoid ape. Yet as the grandest laws of God are revealed in the nearest example, we learn more than volumes of such theory in the life of our own households. Government began with the family. It is no artificial thing. It was not imposed by force. There is no state of nature that goes before it; but as all our discoveries in organic life lead to the primary cell, so all social formations are only the enlargement of this little human embryo. We need no other truth than that he, who gave us this moral being, made us to dwell in mutual dependence; and thus the germ of all authority lies in the relation of parent and child, in the care it calls forth, in the weakness of infancy, and the natural reverence that springs from the heart. Open the Book of the Genesis; you see the patriarch Abraham dwelling in the tent with his children; you see this household passing into tribes, linked in a bond of brotherhood, reverencing the father of them all, who is priest and head; and you trace further on a Mosaic commonwealth. History repeats the same early chapter in the Arab of the desert to-day, or in the beginnings of ancient Rome. “Society in primitive times,” it is said by one of the wisest of English jurists, in his work on Ancient Law, “was not a collection of individuals; it was an aggregation of families.” Among all early peoples the law of the household is thus supreme; it embraces all duties, and reaches to the nicest detail of courtesy. The oldest laws of China are as rich in their family wisdom as any in the world. Filial reverence was the corner-stone of the state. I well remember with what surprise I saw the son of a venerable Parsee, himself a man of fifty, wait behind his father’s chair during a long interview; it was a vestige of the stately manners of the East, strangely contrasting with our civilized rudeness. But if we will find the finest examples in the past, we must turn to those scenes in the Old Testament, where the aged patriarch lays his hands on his eldest born in token of his birth-right, or the twelve gather reverently about the bed of the dying Jacob to receive his blessing. In this household life, interwoven with all their social habits, the heart of the Hebrew was nursed; and in many a quiet home, like that of Nazareth, there grew the blossoming graces of childhood, that made this history so pure amidst all its decays.

But we must pass from this earlier view to the new life of Christianity, if we would know its nobler influence. Many pure affections and virtues grew without doubt in a heathen civilization. But the family authority was almost a despotism; the father had power of life and death over the child, and woman was little more than a slave. The one great feature of all social progress, we are told by the jurist already cited, has been the recognition of the rights of the person, instead of absolute family dependence. Here it was that the religion of the Gospel had its living power, and I ask you to study this wonderful fact in its early history. As we look back on the state of society at that time, we are struck everywhere with the decay of those fair examples of chastity, of maternal virtue, of household strength which bloomed in the old Roman commonwealth. Family life had withered, because it had not in its ancient pagan form those elements which could preserve its influence amidst the shameless sensuality of the world. The public talk of the forum, the theater, the games, the busy out-of-door existence, such as you see to-day in Southern Europe, were everything; nor was there a purer tide flowing into the great city, as from the country homes of England and America, to cleanse and freshen it. Religion was a brilliant temple pageantry. Thus, as in all pagan lands, you have the same striking facts; the degradation of woman and the degradation of man with it. This it was that the religion of Christ changed. It taught, as its first truth, that God was our Father, and all men one brotherhood in Christ. What a revelation was this beyond all that the pagan mind had known! The paternal power was no longer a despotism to the believer; the father knew that he had a Father in heaven, and that his child was no serf, but the household tie was a type of the holier family of God. Read that clear utterance of the household law in St. Paul: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord; fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.” The Gospel cherished above all else the family authority; yet it hallowed, sweetened, enlarged it. It nursed the virtues of the household. It made woman the companion of the heart and home; it hallowed marriage; it taught the love of Christ and the brethren, contentment, industry, frugality, sacrifice, and charity to the poor. What picture so fair as in the letters of that time of its fresh, healthful life; that “church in the house,” breathing the soul of the early religion? The kingdom came without observation, without noise; and a new home-born, home-bred society grew in the midst of the dying civilization.

[April 8.] THE LAW OF THE HOUSEHOLD.

In this light, then, we can understand, brethren, the place of the Christian family, as always the first of social institutions. Such is the view I wish to urge, because I believe that, far more than we suppose, this law of the family enters into the most real questions of our time as to popular education or social reform. We live in a day of theories; and in such a day we are most apt to forget the simple truths, which, in Coleridge’s words, “are so true, that they lie bed-ridden by the side of the most exploded errors.” I speak no mere sentiment; I address myself to the plain sense and Christian experience of all. It is the problem that presses on us to-day more than ever, when we look at the mingled good and evil of our modern world; when we enter one of our great cities, where wealth glitters as if there were no suffering, yet a step apart there lurks a world of beggary and crime, which our Christianity has hardly pierced, although it has sent a Livingston into the heart of Africa;—what is the hope of Christian more than pagan progress, of a Paris or New York more than a Rome? I give the answer, which I think all history as well as the Gospel gives. The purity of the household is the salt of our civilization. I know no other answer. Need I then, state the ground on which such a truth rests? The only lasting influence which can preserve or heal the social body is one that works from the root. We can not, with dreamers like Rousseau, believe the savage better than the civilized state. Art and science bring manifold vices with the good, yet we can never grapple with the sins of our day by vague railing against luxury. In the decaying age of the Roman world a Jerome retired into his cave at Bethlehem; but his idle despair did not cure the evil. We often indulge the same false humor. We speak of a London or a New York as the swollen ulcer of society, but we forget that we may as well talk of a body without its brain; that it is in mutual circulation, the country feeding the city with fresh blood, the city pouring it back enriched in its double circuit, the life is maintained; and thus while we see the vices, we should see also the enlarged activities, the myriad callings for the poor, the treasures of art and culture for all, the uncounted charities walking in every haunt of sorrow or sin. But this growth of civilization has in it no self-preserving might. A refined culture is no safeguard against our moral diseases. We repeat often that this American people is abler to keep its freedom and virtue, because of the education of all: yet it is one of those surface truths that may cover a fallacy. I believe heartily in popular education. But there is a more knowing vice as well as virtue. The mob of Paris is more intelligent than the country boor; but it is a witty and polished animal. Such training, without a deeper root, only quickens the weeds in the rank field of our time, and chokes the public conscience.

Whatever, then, the form of our civilization, it must depend on the tone of our household life for its healthy growth, because this precedes all else in its shaping power. All the germs of personal character, truth, purity, honesty, reverence of law, must be implanted in this soil. The state rests on it. The church rests on it, and its teaching is barren, unless it begin with home nurture. We may make what laws we will for the suppression of vice, what plans we will of education, what better methods of industry; but what are they without the education of the character? What is our most perfect theory of government, unless there be a self-governed people? What are commercial rules, if there be no conscience of integrity and honor? Study this truth in its widest bearings. Our time is marked by its noble efforts for reform. We hail each healthy improvement in the condition of the poor, the opening of new channels of labor, the breaking down of false monopolies.

It is thus, my friends, we are to learn the bearing of such a truth on our own land and time. We can not study the growth of society, especially in our great cities, without observing that there are many influences, such as I have already described in the old Pagan civilization, which tend to impair the purity of home. The family habits decay in the larger world of sensual splendor. It is becoming a hard thing for our young men of fashion to afford the luxury of marriage; and our young women learn that the aim of life is a rich husband, who can supply the gold for the wardrobe and the glitter of an establishment. We have imported from abroad within these few years many of the loose ideas of modern Epicurism. But there are, besides, influences peculiar to our American society, which are developing a type of precocious youth not pleasant to look upon. I know not whether it be the abuse of our free institutions, that begets our style of manners: but we are too fast losing the habits of home authority and filial reverence. It has been truly said of us, that we have as much family government as ever, but the young govern the parents. We have no children now-a-days. Our infants leap from the nursery into the drawing-room; and while abroad a son or a daughter has hardly left the retreat of home, here they are already veterans in the ways of fashion, and society is quite surrendered to them. Many of our foreign visitors have repeated the remark of De Tocqueville, that an American girl has more of self-poised ease, but is wanting in the fresh charm seen so often in the young maidens of England or France. I doubt not there is a better side to this. I would not keep them, as is too often done abroad, shut in nursery or convent without the education of the character. I love the intelligence, the generous freedom of youth, but I wish we might not lose with these the modest heart, the simple tastes of past years. It maybe the passing excess of our national childhood, but it is not to be flattered as it is too often. I know that I am very old-fashioned in my ideas, yet it may be well if we soberly reflect on these things. We may grow in wealth and all the arts of social culture, but let these fast habits of the time, this whirl of our modern life eat into the heart of our home piety, and the whole body must die of its own gangrenes.

In that conviction I urge on you, my friends, your personal obligation. Who of us can enough appreciate its meaning? Who of us, if he could keep afresh the feeling of awe and tenderness with which he looked on the face of his first-born infant, and felt what an undiscovered world was opened to him, who would ever need to learn his duty? What a work it is, how ceaseless, how growing at each step, how delicate in all its adaptations, how asking all our love, our thoughtfulness, our patience! I offer you no system of education. I repeat only the principle, which I thank God is the root of all wholesome teaching, that a Christian godliness is the growth of the whole character; and therefore it begins with the recognition of the child as a new-born member of the family of Christ; and plants its simplest truths in the moral affections, and blends them with the real duties of life. This is sound sense and piety. This, in Wordsworth’s happy line, is

Pure religion breathing household laws.

Give your offspring this training of the character; teach them to be frank and open-hearted, to hate a lie or a mean action, to be kind to the poor, to protect the weaker, to respect gray hairs, to reverence your authority from love not fear, to cherish the natural pleasures and employments of home, a book or a ramble more than the finery of modish children young or old; above all to be always constant in their Christian habits, with no affectations of a premature piety, with a child’s faults, but a child’s sweet faith; give them, I say, this training, if you will have them men and women indeed.

[April 15.] FINDING AND BRINGING.

By the Rev. WILLIAM M. TAYLOR, D.D.

It is a great thing when a man “finds” Christ. Now, in working out this thought, we must have a clear idea of what we mean by “finding” Christ. Andrew and John were in visible and bodily contact with Jesus, and it might seem, therefore, that it was an easier thing to come to Christ when he was on earth, than it is now, when he is enthroned in heaven. But that is a mistake. Many came to converse with him when he lived in the world, who yet failed to find the Savior in him. Multitudes might be pushed into contact with him that day when the poor woman timidly sought a cure by touching his clothes; but it was to her alone that he referred when he said, “Somebody hath touched me.” Therefore, the contact in her case must have been something more than physical, and could be nothing else than the application of her soul to him in simple faith for healing.

In like manner, the finding of the Messiah by Andrew and John must have been something else than their coming into conversation with him, and could be nothing less than a description of the fact that they were intellectually convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah, and were sincerely willing to accept him as their Savior and guide.

But the presence of Jesus in actual humanity before us is not essential to the exercise of such confidence as that; and so soon as a man becomes convinced that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and is willing to accept salvation at his hands, he “finds” Christ just as truly as he was found by Andrew and John, as recorded in this section of the sacred narrative. Now, when a man “finds” Christ thus, it is for him the greatest event of his life, dominating and directing every after-circumstance in his career.

How much the history of the world has been affected by the discoveries which men have made! Take a few. The discovery of America; the invention of printing; the discovery of the power of steam, and the manifold application of the steam-engine; the invention of the telegraph: who shall say how much all these have done for the progress of civilization? But put them all together, they have not done so great things for the world at large as the discovery of Christ does for every soul that “finds” him. It opens up a whole new world for his exploration; it enstamps a new name and nature upon his heart; it brings him under the influence of a motive principle which “laughs at impossibilities,” and removes mountains; and it gives him a means of communication with the unseen as real, as mysterious, and as immediate as that hidden cable whereon the messages of two hemispheres vibrate in response to each other. It relieves his conscience from the weight of guilt; it elevates his intellect; it purifies his affections; it forms his character; it gives a new aim to his life and new center to his heart, and brings him so under the constraining influence of the love of Christ, that, while retaining the great outstanding marks of his individuality, he may yet truly be said to be a new man. See how this comes out in Paul. Converted or unconverted, the man of Tarsus would still have been a leader of his fellows. But mark how, after he has found Christ, his whole being goes into a new direction, and becomes transfigured and ennobled by the change. His energy becomes sublimed, his ambition purified, his nature elevated. Behold, also, how it appears in Peter! What a contrast between the fisherman and the Apostle! And how much this discovery of Christ made by him, through Andrew’s guidance, did to give him character and influence among men! Had he never found the Messiah, who had ever heard his name. But from this hour he begins to be illustrious! Said I not truly, therefore, that it is a great thing when a man finds Christ? It is indeed the very greatest thing for safety, for happiness, for usefulness, for honor, that can be said of any man, when it is affirmed of him that he has found Christ. My hearer, can it be truly said of you?

Notice, thirdly, that when a man has found Christ, he ought to bring others to Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to tell to another the good news which had already thrilled his own heart. So Philip, as recorded in this same chapter, found Nathanael, and repeated this same news to him. Indeed, it is quite worthy of note how often this “finding” occurs in this delightful narrative. Andrew “findeth” Messiah; then he “findeth” his brother. Jesus “findeth” Philip; and Philip “findeth” Nathanael. So that, as Trench has beautifully said, in allusion to the well-known exclamation of Archimedes in connection with one of his discoveries, this “is the chapter of the Eurekas.”[I] “I have found him! I have found him!” Indeed, the promptings of one’s own nature here are in perfect accordance with the commands of the Lord; for we can not but tell to others the tidings which have made us glad; and in proportion to the happiness which they have produced in us, will be our eagerness to make others sharers with us in our delight. As Matthew Henry says here, “True grace hates all monopolies, and loves not to eat its morsels alone.” The woman of Samaria ran to tell her townspeople of the great Messiah, and the disciples who were scattered abroad by the first persecution “went everywhere preaching the Word.” The command is, “Let him that heareth say, Come!” and every Christian should become thus a missionary of the Cross. Indeed, we have not rightly heard, if there is not within us an impulse to say “Come.” If there be no enthusiasm within us for the diffusion of the Gospel, or the conversion of sinners, we make it only too apparent that we have not the spirit of Christ; but if our souls are stirred at the sight of our perishing fellow-men, and our hearts prompt us to make efforts for their salvation, we prove that we are in sympathy with those celestial beings among whom there is “joy over one sinner that repenteth,” and that the same mind is in us which was in him who died that men might be redeemed.

“As ye go, preach.” “Go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.” These are what the Great Duke once styled the “marching orders” of believers; and it is at our peril, if we refuse to carry them out. But when the word “preach” is used, let us beware of supposing that we need all the outward accessories of a crowded congregation and a modern church, in order to obey this command. The meaning simply is, that we should tell the good news as we have opportunity. We may “preach” by conversing with our friend as we walk down with him to business in the morning, or by an incidental remark introduced, not obtrusively and impertinently, but naturally and lovingly, as we talk with our fellow-traveler in the steamboat or in the railway car; or by the giving of an interesting volume that contains the truth to some ingenuous youth upon his birthday; or by repeating at the couch of some sick one the leading portions of a sermon which we have just heard in the sanctuary; or by teaching a class in the Sabbath-school; or by bringing a friend with us to church where we know that the faithful preacher will be sure to have some word that will point out the way to the Cross; or even, without a word at all, we may preach the most eloquent and powerful of all sermons, by simply living for Jesus where we are. There is a sphere for every one; and none can claim exemption from this great Gospel law, “As ye go, preach.”

But who would desire exemption when there is so great need for the exertions of all? See how earnest the apostles of evil are to allure men to destruction, through one or other of the several avenues that lead to death; and shall we be less eager to labor for their salvation? Behold how indefatigable are the endeavors of those who live to spread abroad the news of every day! What telegraphic agencies they use to bring to this one center the record of important occurrences the world over! What magnificent machinery they employ to multiply the number of impressions of their journals! And how eager they are to send forth their messengers in the gray morning twilight, to leave at every door their daily photographs of God’s providence as it reveals itself to their eyes—alas! not always clear enough to read it right. Shall they be so enthusiastic about the news of earth, and we be inactive with the better news of the Gospel? It is told of the commentator Thomas Scott that, as he went to preach in a church in Lothbury at six o’clock in the morning, he used to observe that, if at any time in his early walk he was tempted to complain, the sight of the newsmen, equally alert, and for a very different object, changed his repining into thanksgiving. So, every time we take up a newspaper let us feel reproved for our remissness in telling the good news of God’s salvation to our fellow-men; let us be stirred up to self-sacrifice and devotion in this glorious cause, and let us resolve to do our utmost in bringing others to the Savior whom we have found for ourselves.

Notice, in the fourth place, that, in seeking to bring others to Jesus, we should begin with those most intimately connected with us. Andrew first went to find Simon, his “own brother.” In like manner, Philip sought his friend Nathanael. And the Lord Jesus himself laid down the same general law when he commissioned his disciples to preach repentance and the remission of sins “among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” Now, this is a point of pre-eminent importance; for among those who really desire to be useful in the world the idea is too common, that they must go somewhere else than where they are in order to find their proper and peculiar work. They look so far away, and so high up, for a missionary field, that they overlook the work that is already waiting for them just at their feet. Thus, while professing to be eager for labor, they are standing in the market-place, “all the day idle.”

[April 22.] FINDING AND BRINGING.

In spiritual activity, as in all other matters, it is a good rule to begin at the beginning. How many, in trying to learn some of the sciences—say geology, for example—have disdained the use of hand-books for the mastering of the elements, and, plunging at once into some elaborate treatise, which presupposed familiar acquaintance with the rudiments, have felt themselves unable to understand it, and have thrown up the whole study in disgust! Now, it is just thus many do in Christian work. They begin at the wrong place, and so they speedily become discouraged. Work from the center out, and the radii of your influence will go out to every point of the circumference; but if, leaving your own proper center, you take your station somewhere on the circumference, your labor will produce very little result. Now, home is the center of every man’s sphere; and it is there he must begin to work for Jesus. Let the husband begin with the wife, and the wife with the husband; the parents with the children; and the children, where need is, lovingly and humbly, with the parents; the brother with his sister; and the sister with her brother. Then, when the home sphere is filled up, let your life’s influence flow over, and seek to benefit those with whom you are coming into daily business contact. Thus the branches of your vine will “run over the wall,” and your sphere will widen ever with your endeavors.

“Oh yes!” you will say to me, “that may be all very true. But it is far more difficult thus to begin at home than to commence abroad. I would rather teach a class in the mission-school than to speak to my own family about Jesus. I would almost sooner address a meeting than make a private appeal to my brother or my sister.” But why is this? Surely it can not be because you love those who are nearest to you less than you do those who are farther away! Can it be because you would get more prominence and honor among men, by working abroad, than you could secure by laboring at home? Or is it because you are conscious that your home conduct would destroy the influence of any teachings on which you might venture there? You know best. But whatever be its cause, let me beseech you to revise your whole procedure, and make home the headquarters of your effort. Can it be that there are here a wife and husband who have never had one hour of heart communion with each other on this all-important matter? If there be, may God himself in some way break that silence that has sealed their tongues; and let us all rest assured that the truest revival of religion will be gained when our church members are resolved to test what shall be the result of beginning to labor thus for Christ at home.

We are making far too little in these days of the Church in the house. We are waiting for our children to be converted by outside influences, when, if we were to look at the matter rightly, it should be our ambition to be ourselves the leaders of our sons and daughters to the Lord. Some years ago I read an account of the manner in which a cold church was stirred into warmth and vitality; and as it bears directly on the point to which I am now referring, I will take the liberty of introducing it here. At one of the conference meetings, a simple man, not remarkable for fluency or correctness of speech, made an appeal something to the following effect: “I feel, brethren, real bad about the people who don’t love the Lord Jesus Christ here in our own neighborhood. We’re not as we ought to be, that’s very certain, but it’s hard work rowing against the stream. We find that out when we talk to men about religion on Sunday who haven’t any religion all the week. They don’t mind us. And just so with the young folks. Their minds all seem running one way. Now, what’s to be done? Not much with the grown folks, for they aren’t controlled by us, and we can only drop a word now and then, and pray for them. But here’s our own children. I have four boys, and only one of them comes to the communion with his mother and me. And I don’t think I have done my duty to those younger boys. They love me, and God knows I love them; but I kind o’ hate to speak to them about religion. But rather than see them go farther without my Jesus for their Jesus, I’m going to ask them to join him. I’m going to pray with them; and if I can’t tell them all they want to know, why, our minister can. Brethren, I’m going to try to turn the stream for my boys. Home is the head of the river. I mean to begin to-night. Won’t some father do like me with his boys, and give me his word out?” Scarcely had he seated himself, when, one after another, some thirty people pledged themselves, saying, “I’ll do the same at my house;” and the pledge was kept. In a short time the minister’s labors began to tell as they had never done before. The influence spread, but there was no excitement. On the occasion of the communion service, from family after family, one and another came to enroll themselves among the followers of Jesus, and nearly every one that came was under twenty-five years of age. So, through revived home effort, the work of God was stimulated both in the church and in the neighborhood. My friends, this witness is true, “Home is the head of the river.” Is there no one here to-night who will join in the resolution made by that earnest man, and say, “By the grace of God I’ll do the same at my house?”

Notice, finally, that in following this plan of working for Christ we may, all unconsciously to ourselves, be the means of introducing to Jesus one who will be of far more service than ever we could have been. It was Simon Peter whom Andrew brought to Christ. We do not hear much in the New Testament of Andrew’s after-history, but if he had never done anything else than lead his brother to the Lord, it was worth living for just to do that; and when we get to heaven, we shall see that the lustre of Peter’s crown casts special radiance on Andrew’s face. When we read of the conversions on the Day of Pentecost; of the heroic protest before the council; of the conversion of Cornelius; and above all, when we peruse those two precious letters which Peter has indited, let us not forget that, humanly speaking, but for Andrew, Peter would not have been himself a Christian. Doubtless, God could have called him by some other instrumentality, but he made use of Andrew to teach us the lesson that, in doing the good that lies at our hands, we may at length really do more for the Church than we could have effected by more ostentatious effort in other places. Let the lowly and timid, therefore, take courage. They may not have shining talents or commanding position, yet by working where they are they may be honored in bringing to Jesus some who shall take foremost places in the Church, or become leaders in some missionary or evangelistic movement.

Many of the greatest men the Church has known have been converted through the agency of individuals all but unknown. A humble dissenting minister, whose name was scarcely heard of a few miles from his manse, was honored to be of signal service to Thomas Chalmers in the crisis-hour of his history; and I have heard Mr. Spurgeon tell how he was led to the Lord by a sermon preached by an unlettered man in a Primitive Methodist chapel.

Some of the greatest theologians the Church has ever seen, and some of the most useful ministers who have ever lived, have been made and molded by so common a thing as a mother’s influence. Robert Pollok, whose “Course of Time” used to be a household book throughout Scotland, said once of his poem, “It has my mother’s divinity in it.” Mother, will you take note of that? Many a time you have regretted that you could not take part in any public work for Christ, by reason of the bond that held you to your boy. Regret no more, but bring that boy to Christ, and he will live to do his own work and his mother’s too; and when the crown is placed upon his head its diamonds will flash new glory upon your countenance.

The sum of what we have been saying, then, is this: that each of us should begin to do all that he can, where he is, for Christ. But if we would succeed in that effort, we must be sure that we have already found him for ourselves. A minister had preached a simple sermon upon the text, “He brought him to Jesus;” and as he was going home, his daughter, walking by his side, began to speak of what she had been hearing. She said, “I did so like that sermon.” “Well,” inquired her father, “whom are you going to bring to Jesus?” A thoughtful expression came over her countenance as she replied, “I think, papa, that I will just bring myself to him.” “Capital!” said her father, “that will do admirably for a beginning.” This, brethren, is the true starting-point. We must be good, if we would do good. Bring yourselves to Jesus, therefore; and, as iron by being rubbed upon a magnet, becomes itself magnetic, so you, being united to Christ, will become partakers in his attractive power, and will draw men with “the cords of a man,” which are also “the bands of love.”

[April 29.] FAITH THE SOLE SAVING ACT.

By WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, D.D.

In asking their question, the Jews intended to inquire of Christ what particular things they must do, before all others, in order to please God. The “works of God,” as they denominate them, were not any and every duty, but those more special and important acts, by which the creature might secure the Divine approval and favor. Our Lord understood their question in this sense, and in his reply tells them, that the great and only work for them to do was to exercise faith in him. They had employed the plural number in their question; but in his answer he employs the singular. They had asked, “What shall we do that we might work the works of God,” as if there were several of them. His reply is, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” He narrows down the terms of salvation to a single one; and makes the destiny of the soul to depend upon the performance of a particular individual act. In this, as in many other incidental ways, our Lord teaches his own divinity. If he were a mere creature; if he were only an inspired teacher like David or Paul; how would he dare, when asked to give in a single word the condition and means of human salvation, to say that they consist in resting the soul upon him? Would David have dared to say: “This is the work of God,—this is the saving act,—that ye believe in me?” Would Paul have presumed to say to the anxious inquirer: “Your soul is safe, if you trust in me?” But Christ makes this declaration, without any qualification. Yet he was meek and lowly of heart, and never assumed an honor or a prerogative that did not belong to him. It is only upon the supposition that he was “very God of very God,” the Divine Redeemer of the children of men, that we can justify such an answer to such a question.

The belief is spontaneous and natural to man, that something must be done in order to salvation. No man expects to reach heaven by inaction. Even the indifferent and supine soul expects to rouse itself up at some future time, and work out its salvation. The most thoughtless and inactive man, in religious respects, will acknowledge that thoughtlessness and inactivity if continued will end in perdition. But he intends at a future day to think, and act, and be saved. So natural is it, to every man, to believe in salvation by works; so ready is every one to conceive that heaven is reached, and hell is escaped, only by an earnest effort of some kind; so natural is it to every man to ask with these Jews, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”

But mankind generally, like the Jews in the days of our Lord, are under a delusion respecting the nature of the work which must be performed in order to salvation. And in order to understand this delusion, we must first examine the common notion upon the subject.

When a man begins to think of God, and of his own relations to him, he finds that he owes him service and obedience. He has a work to perform, as a subject of the Divine government; and this work is to obey the Divine law. He finds himself obligated to love God with all his heart, and his neighbor as himself, and to discharge all the duties that spring out of his relations to God and man. He perceives that this is the “work” given him to do by creation, and that if he does it he will attain the true end of his existence and be happy in time and eternity. When therefore he begins to think of a religious life, his first spontaneous impulse is to begin the performance of this work which he has hitherto neglected, and to reinstate himself in the Divine favor by the ordinary method of keeping the law of God. He perceives that this is the mode in which the angels preserve themselves holy and happy: that this is the original mode appointed by God, when he established the covenant of works; and he does not see why it is not the method for him. The law expressly affirms that the man that doeth these things shall live by them; he proposes to take the law just as it reads, and just as it stands,—to do the deeds of the law, to perform the works which it enjoins, and to live by the service. This we say, is the common notion, natural to man, of the species of work which must be performed in order to eternal life. This was the idea which filled the mind of the Jews when they put the question of the text, and received for answer from Christ, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” Our Lord does not draw out the whole truth, in detail. He gives only the positive part of the answer, leaving his hearers to infer the negative part of it. For the whole doctrine of Christ, fully stated, would run thus: “No work of the kind of which you are thinking can save you; no obedience of the law, ceremonial or moral, can reinstate you in right relations to God. I do not summon you to the performance of any such service as that which you have in mind, in order to your justification and acceptance before the Divine tribunal. This is the work of God,—this is the sole and single act which you are to perform,—namely, that you believe on him whom he hath sent as a propitiation for sin. I do not summon you to works of the law, but to faith in me, the Redeemer. Your first duty is not to attempt to acquire a righteousness in the old method, by doing something of yourselves, but to receive a righteousness in the new method, by trusting in what another has done for you.”

I. What is the ground and reason of such an answer as this? Why is man invited to the method of faith in another, instead of the method of faith in himself? Why is not his first spontaneous thought the true one? Why should he not obtain eternal life by resolutely proceeding to do his duty, and keeping the law of God? Why can he not be saved by the law of works? Why is he so summarily shut up to the law of faith?

We answer: Because it is too late for him to adopt the method of salvation by works. The law is indeed explicit in its assertion, that the man that doeth these things shall live by them; but then it supposes that the man begin at the beginning. A subject of government can not disobey a civil statute for five or ten years, and then put himself in right relations to it again, by obeying it for the remainder of his life. Can a man who has been a thief or an adulterer for twenty years, and then practices honesty and purity for the following thirty years, stand up before the seventh and eighth commandments and be acquitted by them? It is too late for any being who has violated a law even in a single instance, to attempt to be justified by that law. For, the law demands and supposes that obedience begin at the very beginning of existence, and continue down uninterruptedly to the end of it. No man can come in at the middle of a process of obedience, any more than he can come in at the last end of it, if he proposes to be accepted upon the ground of obedience. “I testify,” says St. Paul, “to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law” (Gal. v: 3). The whole, or none, is the just and inexorable rule which law lays down in the matter of justification. If any subject of the Divine government can show a clean record, from the beginning to the end of his existence, the statute says to him, “Well done,” and gives him the reward which he has earned. And it gives it to him not as a matter of grace, but of debt. The law never makes a present of wages. It never pays out wages, until they are earned,—fairly and fully earned. But when a perfect obedience from first to last is rendered to its claims, the compensation follows as matter of debt. The law, in this instance, is itself brought under obligation. It owes a reward to the perfectly obedient subject of law, and it considers itself his debtor until it is paid. “Now to him that worketh, is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. If it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.”

[End of Required Reading for April.]

Translation.—A Welsh curate having preached several sermons which were considered superior to his own powers of composition, was asked by a friend how he managed? He replied: “Do you see, I have got a volume of sermons by one Tillotson, and a very good book it is; so I translate one of the sermons into Welsh, and then back again into English; after which the devil himself would not know it again.”