Redemption

In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. — COLOSSIANS i. 14.

HE who had been a great traveller, who had visited all the capitals of Europe, who had studied the most famous wonders of ancient art, and, no stranger to nature’s grandest scenery in the Old World, had filled his ear with the roar, and his eye with the foaming cataract of Niagara, once declared, in my hearing, that near by the latter and most glorious spectacle he had seen the finest sight he ever saw. He was crossing from the American to the Canadian shore; and the same boat was carrying over a fugitive slave. The slave had burst his chain, and fled. Guided northwards by the pole-star, he had threaded his way through tangled forests and the poisonous swamp — outstripping the blood hounds that bayed behind him, and followed long upon his track. Now about to realise his long-cherished and fondest hopes, to gratify his burning thirst for liberty, the swarthy negro stood in the bow of the boat, his large black eyes intently fixed upon the shore. She nears it. But ere her keel has grated on the strand, impatient to be free, he gathers up all his strength, bends for the spring, and, vaulting into the air, by one mighty bound, one glorious leap for liberty, he reaches the shore, and stands erect upon its bank — a free man.

The liberty for which that slave longed, and laboured, and braved so much, is perhaps the sweetest earthly cup man drinks. It has, indeed, been often said, that health is the greatest earthly blessing. It is a precious boon. How did the woman of the Gospels spend all she had in search of it; and how would thousands, now languishing on beds of sickness, and sinking into the grave under an incurable malady, buy this possession at as great a price ‘? Without health, what is money? what, luxury? what, rank and sounding titles? what a crown, if it sit heavy on throbbing brows and an aching head? Yonder poor and humble cottager, browned by the sun, with ruddy health glowing on his unshaven cheek, who, seated at his simple board, uncovers his head to wipe the sweat of labour from his brow, or to bless the God who feeds him and his little ones, might be an object of envy to many. In vain they court coy sleep on beds of down, and try to whet a failing appetite by costly luxuries — sighing, they say, what is money without health? That speech may come very well from those who never knew what it is to be a slave; but what is health without liberty — health in chains?

We sympathize even with the strong instinctive love of freedom which appears in the lower animals — the bounding noisy joy of the household dog when he gets off his chain; the sudden change on the weary horse, when, shaking off his fatigue with his harness, he tosses his head, and, with buoyant spirits and flowing mane, careers amid his fellows over the pasture field. It has moved our pity to see a noble eagle chained to the perch, and, as she expanded her broad sails, turn up a longing eye to the golden clouds her wing shall never more cleave, to the bright blue skies where she shall never more soar. I have felt a deeper sympathy with the free-born denizen of the air, that, pining for his native haunts, declines his food, refuses to be tamed, and, dashing against the bars, dies — strangled in struggles to escape, than with the tamed and gentle captive which takes its food from some fair jailer’s hand, and sings the song of golden moors and green woodlands within an iron cage.

Much more, of course, do we sympathise with our fellow-creatures, — with the Hebrew exiles, for instance, who hung their harps on the willows by Babylon’s sluggish streams, nor could sing the songs of Sion in a strange land; with all those, whether slaves or citizens, who have made the altars of Liberty red with their blood, preferring death to bondage. If I can judge from the interest with which I watched the progress, and, I confess it, all but wished for the escape of a man, who, with the officers of justice at his heels, was running a race for freedom, I believe that unless the offence is one which nature taught us to avenge, it would cost a struggle between one’s sense of duty as a subject, and one’s sympathy with man’s love of liberty, to arrest a runaway prisoner. But who would arrest a runaway slave? Who, that ever tasted the sweets of liberty, would not help him? What is the colour of his skin to me? He is a brother wronged; a man oppressed; nor were he a man who would not in such circumstances espouse the side of innocent weakness against tyrannous strength; and hide him, and feed him, and lodge him, and help him, from chains and stripes and slavery, on to freedom.

If so, who would be himself a slave? What value should we set on health if we had to rise to our work in the rice swamp, in the cane or cotton-field, at the sound of the horn; and were driven to it, like oxen, with the crack of the whip? Health! what value would a man set on life itself, were his children to be torn from his arms, set up to auction, and, knocked down to the highest bidder — sold before his eyes to slavery; if he must stand by and hear their mother’s piercing shrieks, as with bended knees and outstretched hands she implores — in vain implores for pity; stand by, and hear his own mother cry for mercy, as the breast that nursed him bleeds under the cutting lash; who would value life a straw, if he must stand by, nor speak a word, nor shed a tear, nor from his bursting bosom heave a groan, nor lift a hand in their defence? How sad it is to think that there are lands, governed by Christian men, and in the prostituted name of liberty, where such scenes are witnessed, and crimes so foul are done! It almost tempts one to pray that an avenging Heaven would blight and wither and blast the fields that are watered with human tears: — “Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings.” May God give a noble country grace and power to wipe from its shield so black a stain!

In these sentiments, I have no doubt you all sympathise. But 1 have to tell you of a worse and more degrading — a more cruel and dreadful slavery. There are among us many greater and more to be pitied slaves. I refer to those who, as the servants of Satan, are sold unto sin. Would to God that we set the same high price on spiritual as we do on earthly liberty! Ah, then what efforts would be put forth, what struggles would be made, what long, earnest, unwearying prayers be offered for salvation! And, when saved ourselves, how anxious should we be for the salvation of others? In the touching narrative of a fugitive slave I have read how, when he himself had escaped, the thought of his mother — a mother dear — and sisters still in bondage, haunted him night and day, embittering the sweetness of his own cup. He found no rest. Liberty to him was little more than a name, until they also were free. And surely one may wonder how Christians can give God any rest, or take it themselves, while those near and dear to them are in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity? And why is it, moreover, that when his servants appear, proclaiming through Christ liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, so few hearts leap for joy, and so many hear it — as if they needed it not, heard it not, heeded it not — with calm, cold, frigid indifference? Go, proclaim emancipation in a land of slaves, and the news shall fly like wildfire — sweep on like flames over the summer prairie. At such glad tidings how the bed-rid would leap from his couch; the lame throw away his crutches; the old grow young; the people go mad with joy. Mothers with new feelings would kiss their babes, and press them to their bosoms; brothers, sisters, friends, would rush into each other’s arms, to congratulate each the other that they were free; and, weeping the first tears of joy their eyes had ever shed, would they not make hut and hall, forest and mountain, ring with the glorious name of him who had fought their long hard battle, nor ceased, nor relaxed, his efforts till he had achieved their freedom? Jesus! with what jubilant songs, then, should we celebrate thy name, and enshrine thy memory in our best affections! What great glad tidings these, redemption through thy blood! Oh that God would inspire us with such a love of it, and give us so great enjoyment in it, that with some foretaste of the joys, we might sing this song of heaven, Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

In directing your attention to this subject, I remark —

I. That we all need redemption.

To a man nigh unto death, who is labouring under some deadly malady, and knows it, offer a medicine which has virtue to cure him, and he will buy it at any price. In his eyes that precious drug is worth all the gold on earth. But offer that, which he grasps at, to one who believes himself to be in robust arid perfect health, and he holds it cheap. Just so, and for a similar reason, the Saviour and his redemption are slighted, despised, and rejected of men. Some of you have no adequate conception of your lost state as sinners; nor do you feel, therefore, your great need of salvation. The first work, accordingly, of God’s Holy Spirit in conversion is to rouse a man from the torpor which the poison of sin — like the venom of a snake infused into the veins, produces, to make him feel his illness, to convince him of his guilt, to make him sensible of his misery. And blessed the book, blessed the preacher, blessed the providence that sends that conviction into our hearts, and lodges it, like a barbed arrow, there. For, to an alarmed conscience, to a soul convinced of sin and misery, who so welcome as the Saviour? Let a man, who fancied that he was in no danger, see himself to be in great danger, know that he is a poor, polluted, perishing sinner, lost by nature, lying under sentence of death, deserving the wrath of God, and, like one standing over a volcano, separated from hell only by a thin crust of earth, which, becoming thinner and thinner as the fire eats it away, is already bending, cracking beneath his feet, ah! he understands the import of the words, Unto you therefore which believe, he is precious. Now that Christ may be so to you, and that the grace of God which bringeth salvation

K may not come to you in vain, let me show how all of us require to be redeemed from the slavery of sin and Satan. And I remark —

1. That this slavery is the natural state of man.

We pity, how greatly do we pity, the mother, as one robbed of a mother’s best joys, who knows that the little creature which hangs on her bosom is a slave; and only smiles because unconscious of its sad estate. But this calamity is ours. The progeny of slaves are slaves themselves. And we, having sprung from parents who. in the expressive language of Scripture, had sold them selves for nought, leave our mother’s womb in bondage to sin. Accordingly, David says, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Let me recall to your recollection the testimony on this subject of one who, so far as civil liberty and Roman citizenship were concerned, was free born. You know how Paul stood on his rights as a Roman. He dared them to scourge him as they would a slave. Yet, speaking of himself, as before God, and in the eye of a holy law, he says, I am carnal, sold under sin. And — not to multiply examples — in what terms does he address his converts? “Ye were,” he says, “the servants of sin,” or, as we would express it, ye were the slaves of sin. The slaves! for observe, I pray you, that the word which is there translated servant, means not a servant simply, but a servant who is a slave; not one hired for a period, whom the next term sets free to leave or stay, but one bound, branded with the mark of a perpetual bondage; and so the apostle says, “God be thanked that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you,” “Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.” David uses stronger terms. In one of his psalms, he uses this very strong expression, “I was as a beast before thee.” And, though few of us have the deep sense of sin which that holy man had, there is no child of God who recalls the past to memory — what he was, and how he felt antecedent to his conversion, who looks back beyond that blessed day when the truth made him free, but will be ready to acknowledge that he was a man in bonds. Not master of himself, and free to follow the dictates of conscience and God’s word, he slaved in the service of the devil, the world, and the flesh — three hard taskmasters. On that ever memorable day fetters stronger than iron were struck from his -limbs.

I do riot affirm that the most advanced saint is altogether free from the bondage of sin. No. The holiest believer carries that about with him which painfully reminds him of his old condition. I have seen a noble dog which had broken loose and restored itself to liberty, dragging the chain, or some links of it, along with him. I have read of brave stout captives who had escaped from prison, but who brought away with them, in swollen joints or festering wounds, the marks and injuries of the cruel fetters. And do not old sins thus continue to hang about a man even after grace has delivered him from their dominant power? Have you not felt that these called for constant watchfulness and earnest prayer? Who does not need every day and hour to resort to the fountain of cleansing, and wash his heart in the blood of Christ oftener than he washes his hands in water? We need to be renewed day by day; converted, as it were, not once, or twice, but — every day. Surely the happiness of a child of God lies mainly in this, that sin, though it remains within his heart, has ceased to reign there, and that, made perfect at length in holiness, he shall enter by the dismal gate of death into the full and glorious liberty of the children of God.

2. This slavery is the universal state of man.

Both sacred and profane history show that slavery, as it is one of the worst, is one of the oldest human, not humane, institutions. At an early period of man’s history, in Cain, he who should have been his brother’s keeper became his murderer. And when afterwards man did become his brother’s keeper, alas! it was too often as an owner — selling, buying, oppressing him. It is long, very long since men and women, with broken hearts, turned a wishful eye on the grave as a welcome refuge — where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary be at rest. But while there might be lands that slavery never cursed, and while there were in every slave land a number who in a sense were free, the slavery of sin spared no land. There are no “free-soilers,” so far as ein is concerned. It has exempted no class. The king on his throne, as much as the beggar on his dunghill, is a slave. The loveliest woman as much as the vilest outcast, the proudest peer and poorest peasant, the man of letters and the man so ignorant as not to know the letters, Jew and Greek, bond and free, are all branded and bound; and, like the gang of miserable captives which the slave-dealer is driving to the sea-bord, they are moving on to eternity — bound in one long chain with every minor distinction sunk in the one misery, that all are sold under sin. In this, every difference of race, and rank, and colour, is merged. Every man’s heart is black — whatever his face may be.

It matters little, indeed, nothing before God, whether a man has a dark face or a pale one; but it is all important whether he has a black heart or no — whether our sin-stained souls have or have not been washed white in the blood of Jesus Christ. What avails it that you are not bound in fetters of man’s forging, if you are bound in the devil’s chain? The difference, yonder, between the white master with his lash, and the poor, trembling, crouching black, over whom he cracks it, is lost in this, that both are under bondage to sin. And I dare to say that of the two, the bigger, blacker, baser slave is he, who, boastful of his vaunted freedom, and proud of his blood and colour, holds a brother in chains. The driver is more a slave than the driven; the oppressor than the oppressed. What chain, I ask, has been forged for human limbs so strong, degrading, intensely hateful in the sight of God, as the base cupidity which breeds human beings, like cattle, for the market; and grasps at wealth, although its price be groans and tears and blood and broken hearts?

3. This slavery is the actual state of all unconverted men.

Some are slaves of one sin; some of another; and the forms of slavery are as many and varied as the sins which people are addicted to. Let me give a few examples.

(1.) Some are slaves of gold. How they drudge for it! Their tyrant, the love of money, rules them with a rod of iron. Naturally kind, they feel disposed to assist the poor; but, No, says their master; and with an iron heel he crushes the tenderest feelings of their heart. Visited occasionally with solemn thoughts, and not altogether dead to the claims of Christ, they would part with something worthy of their wealth and of his cause; but what is Christ to Mammon? Again, their master says, No; you must make more money; toil on, ye slaves; you may not trust man, and you cannot trust God; toil on; you must be as rich as that man, and leave a fortune for your heirs to quarrel about over your grave, or squander in folly and dissipation. And thus, blushing at his mean excuse, the poor wretch — for I call him poor who has money which he cannot use — sends Christ’s cause away to beg with more success at a much poorer door. Talk of slaves and slave-masters! What bondage like that which condemns a man to do what he condemns himself for doing, to harden his heart against the claims of pity, to deny his own flesh and blood, to lie, cheat, and defraud, or, if not that, every day of his life to run counter to the divine saying, What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? From such bondage, good Lord, deliver us! “Thou, 0 man of God, flee these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness;” “fight the good fight of faith;” and, like gold which a drowning man will drop to clutch the rope flung to him from ship or shore, let go the world. With thy hands set free, lay hold on eternal life.

(2.) Some are the slaves of lust. To what base society does it condemn them? To what acts of meanest treachery and blackest villany do their tyrant passions drive them? Think of a man drowning his conscience, and by that deed effacing from his soul the most distinct remaining traces of the image of God! Of all sinners, these are most like their master, the Devil, when he changed himself into a serpent, with its lying tongue and smooth glittering skin, to win a woman’s trust. They creep into the bosom which they intend to sting, and put forth their powers to fascinate some happy singing bird, who goes fluttering, but, spell-bound, cannot help going, into their open devouring jaws. Better be a slave and die heart-broken, than be a heart-breaker. The thief — the mean, sneaking, pilfering thief — that steals my money, is a man of honour compared with him who steals a woman’s virtue, and robs a household of its peace.

(3.) Some are slaves of drunkenness. Of all slavery this is the most helpless, and the most hopeless. Other sins drown conscience, but this reason and conscience too. More, perhaps, than any other vice, this blots out the vestiges of that divine image in which we were originally formed, and reduces man to the lowest degradation — lower than a beast. Smiting him with the greatest impotency, in such slavery as that of iron to a magnet is the poor besotted drunkard to his cups. He who is a slave to man, may retain his self-respect, cherish his wife, and love his children; and, raising his fettered hands in prayer to heaven, may preserve and present in his very chains the image of God; but yonder wretch, with beggary hung on his back, and dissipation stamped on his bloated face — dead to shame, or, hanging his head, and passing old acquaintances with averted eye — degraded before the world, and expelled from the communion of the church — lying in the gutter — or beating his wife, or cursing his flying children, and in his sober moments cursing himself — ah, he is a slave indeed. What hope for a mart who reels up to the bar of judgment, and staggers drunk into his Maker’s presence? Let his fate excite your fears as well as pity. I say with the apostle, “Let him that thinketh he staudeth, take heed lest he fall.” Have I not seen many, whose spring budded with the fairest promises, live to be a shame, and sorrow, and deep disgrace? And, though it were revealed from heaven that you yourself should never fall, is there nothing due to others? Does not that bloody cross, with its blessed victim, call upon every Christian to live not to himself, but to think of other’s things, as well as of his own? Every man must judge for himself; to his own master he standeth or he falleth. But when I think of all the beggary, and misery, and shame, and crime, and sorrow, of which drunkenness is the prolific mother, of the many hearts it breaks, of the happy homes it curses, of the precious souls it ruins, I do not hesitate to say that the question of abstinence deserves the prayerful consideration of every man; and that, moreover, he appears to me to consult most the glory of God, the honour of Jesus, and the best interests of his fellow-men, who applies to all intoxicating stimulants the Apostolic rule, Touch not, taste not, handle not. In regard to no sin can it be so truly said that our adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.

(4.) Some are slaves to the opinions of the world. It was the boast of the Macedonian that he had conquered the world; the world can boast that it has conquered them. Subservient to its opinions, theirs is the miserable condition of an unhappy servant, who has to bear in some ill-governed household the caprices, not of one mistress, but of many. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but the fear of man bringeth a snare. How many of the young are ruined, just because they have not the courage to say, Nay, to do what they know to be right — allowing themselves to be laughed out of their virtuous habits, and early holy training. Then, into what misery do we see parents plunge themselves and their families by a course of extravagance, into which they are drawn by the whirlpool of fashion. To sacrifice the well-being of your children to a wretched vanity, to do mean or dishonest things that you may appear genteel, to prefer the approbation of the world to that of your own conscience, to incur the wrath of God that you may win a man’s or woman’s smiles, to stand more in fear of the hiss of dying men than of the deadly serpent — this slavery, common in the world, is one to which Christ’s freemen should not yield — no, not for an hour. Hear how God asks, as in surprise, “Who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass; and forgettest the Lord, thy maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth?”

Yet see, how men of the noblest genius and proudest intellect have crouched, slave like, before the world, laying their heads in the very dust at her feet. When Byron, for instance, stood aloft on the pinnacle of his fame, he confessed that the disapprobation of the meanest critic gave him more pain than the applause of all the others gave him pleasure. Miserable confession, and miserable man! not less a slave that laurels wreathed his brow, and that a star glittered on his breast. What a contrast do we see in Paul? He was a freeman! Like some tall rock, he stands erect; unmoved from his place, or purpose, or judgment, or resolution, by the storm of a world’s disapprobation raging fiercely around him. “With me,” he says, “it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment; .... he that judgeth me is the Lord.” What moral grandeur is here! What a testimony to the elevating power of piety! What a glorious illustration of the poet’s words,

“He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves besides.”

In old times, men and women were said to have sold their souls to Satan, consenting that he should have them at death, on condition of receiving a power to com mand, in their lifetime, any wealth, any honours, any pleasure their hearts might desire. As the story goes, the devil held them to the bargain; and, when they died, the old castle shook, and the screech-owls hooted, and the dogs howled, and the lights burned blue, and the tempest roared, and people crossed themselves as they heard the shrieking spirit borne away through the black night to hell. An old superstition! True; yet fables are often less wonderful than facts; and there are things more incredible in real life than you or I have read in the wildest romance. Did Satan, according to these old legends, drive a hard bargain? With sinners, now, he drives a harder. Deluded, defrauded, cheated, the poor sinner has no lifetime, no season of profit and pleasure. He sells himself for nought. I could fill this house with living proofs of it. They swarm in our streets in their rags and wretchedness. And what though many, who are living a life of sin, are apparently happy and prosperous? If their hearts had a window whereby we could look within, and see the fears that agitate them, the gnawing of remorse, the stings of conscience, the apprehensions of discovery and impending evil that haunt the steps and cloud the path of guilt, we should conclude that, though there were neither hell nor hereafter, the way of transgressors is hard. From their way I pray all here to turn. Why will ye die? Why? when Christ is willing, wishfill, waiting to save. Sin’s is a miserable thraldom. If its wretched slaves, you are the objects of deepest compassion. Nor ever more so than when, intoxicated with the pleasant but poisoned cup, you sing and laugh and dance in chains. To men in your circumstances, and with your appalling prospects, how may we apply the words, I said of laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What doeth it? God help you! God bring you to a better mind; that, raising your fettered arms and weeping eyes to heaven for help to burst these fatal, accursed bonds, you may be free — blessed with holy liberty, and true peace, and pure pleasure, and lasting joys — redeemed and ransomed by the blood of Christ.