St Paul's Prayer in Rome for Onesiphorus

“The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain: but, when he was in Rome, he sought me out very diligently, and found me. the lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the lord in that DAY: and in how many things he ministered unto me at Ephesus, thou knowest very well.” — 2 Tim. i. 16-18.

LK Salute Prisca and Aquila, and the household of ONESIphorus.” — 2 Tim. iv. 1 9.

VII. {Preached at the Porta del Popolo, April 2, 1871.)

2 Tim. i. 16-1S.

u The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain: but, when he was in Rome, he sought me out very diligently, and found me. The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day;’

E have here another incidental glimpse given us from St Paul’s later Roman life. The Christian, whose generous and heroic kindness is in these words so gratefully recorded, has no other mention made of him in sacred story. Like a transient meteor, he shoots athwart the Apostle’s evening sky and then vanishes from sight. But this one entry has embalmed his name amid the holy memories of the Apostolic age, and given him a minor indeed, but yet abiding, place, in the Bible constellation of the great and good. So that wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that he hath done shall be spoken as a memorial of him.

At the time when St Paul wrote the words of the text, he was undergoing his second imprisonment. During his previous detention, when occupying his own hired house, with no other restriction than having a soldier of Nero’s guard to watch him, many of the brethren, waxing confident by his bonds, were “much more bold to speak the word without fear” (Phil. i. 14). Now, however, the case was altered. The indulgence which had tempered the irksomeness of that first captivity was at an end. During the intervening years, the conflagration of the city, caused by the wanton caprice of Nero, had taken place; * and to

* On account of the havoc made by this conflagration, which raged for six days and seven nights without intermission, how changed in outward aspect the city must have been, since the time St Paul entered it under guard from Puteoli! Whole streets and masses of buildings, which at that first approach hid from his view the Esquinal hill, were now swept away; and in avert from himself the odium of the crime, its guilty perpetrator had laid it to the charge of the innocent Christians. The audacious falsehood was only too successful in rousing the popular indignation against the sect of which Paul of Tarsus was the acknowledged leader. We have good reasons to infer, indeed, that he was arrested at Nicopolis on the charge of being implicated in the incendiarism, and sent by the authorities of that city to be tried at Rome. Treated no longer as an honourable state prisoner, but as a common criminal, he was subjected to a strict military custody — immured probably either in the traditional

their stead, close to the present remains of the baths of Titus, the gigantic pile was erected known as “Nero’s Golden House.” It was adorned with baths, gardens, and a lake: while his own “Colossus’’ — an enormous statue of himself — rose 120 feet high from the front of the vestibule. It is a significant comment on the transient nature of earthly glory, that in a few brief years, this gorgeous park and palace were, in their turn, completely erased, in order to make way for a still greater architectural wonder, the present Colosseum, Its builder (Vespasian) allowed nothing of all the costly magnificence of his predecessor to be recalled, save by retaining on the site of the lake the name of the “colossal” character of the statue which the new building had superseded. See Lewin, vol. ii. p. 937.

Mamertine or in some adjoining dungeon.* If the rigours of his captivity still permitted the occasional visits of former friends and associates, the allowance was made only under severe restrictions, and at the imminent personal risk of those who were impelled, for love’s sake, to make the venture. Onesiphorus, a Christian of Ephesus, was probably one of the earliest of these visitors. He had heard that his father in the faith pined in a cell in the distant capital, and, heedless of the dangers involved in such a pilgrimage, he, visits Rome to cheer the heart of the illustrious prisoner. The latter, in writing to Timothy a brief time before his own martyrdom, thus pours forth the language of a grateful heart, —” The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain: But when he was in Rome, he sought me out very diligently, f and found me. The Lord

* See Introduction, p. J2.

f There is much implied in this strong expression of the Apostle’s (crirovdcuoTepov ery7]<jiv). It denotes alike the difficulty and danger which beset the mission, and the assiduous pains and

FOR ONESIPHORUS. 2Z*J

grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day.”

This prayer of the Apostle is a striking and solemn one. Let us, with the divine blessing, seek to gather from it a few of those thoughts and lessons with which it is replete.

I. Learn, as a general truth, — that which also was suggested in the subject of last Sabbath, but which is still more forcibly brought before us here; — the power and value of hitman Sympathy. Who knows it not? What heart has not kindled under its tender offices? — who has not felt how it soothes, and braces, and gladdens? Take that desolate moment, doubtless well-known, in some one of its varied phases, to most who hear me, — when one of the cherished earth-bowers of happiness has been suddenly and unexpectedly bared and blighted; one of the bright stars expunged from life’s firmament; — the saddest feature, perhaps, in the

perseverance the affectionate disciple displayed in accomplishing it. “Sought me out with extraordinary diligence.” So rendered by Alford.

sorrow, being the quenching of that very sympathy of which we speak; — prompting the lines so familiar to bereft hearts, because so true to their deepest yearnings, —

11 Oh for the touch of a vanished hand And the sound of a voice that is still!” —

many can recall how the unutterable anguish of that bereavement was assuaged and solaced, by the timely visit (like a messenger from the upper sanctuary), of some beloved and congenial earthly friend, into whose trusted ear the sorrow was unburdened, the secret and sacred heartache confided. How even the mute sympathy of look and presence, when words failed in their utterance, helped to dry the tears and staunch the bleeding wounds!

Or, to take a different experience, also not unfamiliar. In those terrible seasons, perhaps the saddest of the human soul, when overtaken by spiritual darkness, — called to grapple with fierce inward temptation, “the aching misery of earnest doubt;” — how many, by the strong hand of Christian sympathy, have been helped up their “Hill Difficulty!” When some thievish doubts have been robbing them of their peace; when (like the Prophet of the desert, as his brave heart in the hour of loneliness failed him, and in a paroxysm of weakness and despair he lay down longing to die), — they have felt themelves driven from their old moorings, and drifting unpiloted on a midnight sea, — how sustaining and reassuring, amid the moanings of the blast, were the accents of human friendship heard uttering “Peace, be still;” exorcising the foul spirit of the storm, — rebuking the winds and the waves, and restoring the great calm! How often has sickness, in its hours of weariness and depression, or old age in the midst of its infirmities, been cheered and tranquillised by the loving hand and loving voice, — the thousand nameless offices of considerate human affection, soothing the aching head, and the trembling, fainting heart! Blessed is every such Barnabas: Blessed every such “son of consolation:” — the world has no nobler inmate. In having such, it is “entertaining Angels unawares.” -

More than this, — with all reverence we say it, — did not He, who was the great Ideal of perfect

29O ST PAUL S PRAYER IN ROME

Humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, manifest the affinities of His spotless soul with this same holy emotion? Again and again, during His adorable Life on earth, and specially towards its close, we are called to note His yearning for human (yes, human) sympathy. What was the Mount of Transfiguration, but a scene of exalted sympathetic communion; representatives, alike from the Church militant and the Church triumphant, gathered to solace and sustain Him in the dread anticipation of His awful trial-hour? As that hour approached, and the shadows were more densely falling, His longings for personal fellowship with His disciples seemed to deepen and intensify also: “With desire have I desired to eat this passover with you, before I suffer.” In the climax of His woe in Gethsemane, He sought to alleviate its unimagined bitterness by having, close at His side, the sympathy of those earthly friends He deemed most reliable: — “Tarry ye here and watch with Me” While a new ingredient of sorrow was poured into His cup, when the sympathy, on which He might well have calculated as being unfaltering in its constancy, gave way like a brittle reed; — the sheep scattered as the Shepherd was smitten, and the blood-stained warrior of Edom was left to “tread the winepress ALOXE” (Isa. lxiii. 3).

St Paul was, in this, as in other respects, endowed with all the nobler and finer feelings of human nature. He opened his magnanimous soul to the same genial influence, as the flower does its closed petals to the sunlight. Every now and then, we discover these longings for congenial and sustaining fellowship. See how he mourns being “left at Athens alone!” What a new man he was, when rejoined by Timothy and Silas! How a former visit to the city of Troas was damped and saddened, because an expected fellow-labourer and friend had not been found; — “My spirit had no rest because I found not Titus my brother.” When the brethren came to meet him at Appii Forum, how his soul revived! He “thanked God and took courage.” If he felt thus dependent on human support, even in the hour of manly vigour; how genial and gladdening must such sympathy have been to him at this period of his history, when that buoyancy and gladness, we have previously noted as characterising the period of his first imprisonment, must necessarily, from various causes, have undergone diminution. His energies could not possibly have been what they once were, now that threescore winters were whitening his locks and furrowing his brow; and the lonely exile was left to encounter the privations of a dungeon home. Others in his case, too, as with his Lord before him, had grown faithless. A Demas-throng — his a summer friends,” — smiling on him in his prosperity, when his missionary bark was sailing over summer-seas — borne on with propitious breezeshad turned cowards in his adversity. One after another, they had left the sinking ship to its fate, as the storm-clouds were gathering! Not, however, all. A few tried and trusted ones (and Onesiphorus among them), had planted themselves by the side of the venerable Pilot as he resigned himself to a hero’s death, and were willing, if need be, to go down with him in the waters. As the ivy clings kindliest around the old, furrowed, battered ruin, so St Paul could discover who his true friends were, when he had become such an one as ‘Paul the aged, Onesiphorus brought him no offerings that we know of. But the tear in his eye, the kind word, the warm grasp of his hand, were like cold water to that thirsty soul. We may think of the two in this Roman prison: what deathless ties, sympathetic cords, linked them to one another! What glorious themes warmed their hearts, tuned their lips, and evoked their prayers and praises! Their Master’s name, His cause, His kingdom, His matchless love, His upholding grace,, His coming glory, the Church on earthy the Church in heaven! Their own common trials, perplexities, solaces, hopes! When Onesiphorus came to leave Rome for Ephesus, the remembrance of his visit lingered in the Apostle’s heart, like the music of home voices in the midnight sea. The unbefriended prisoner dwells on it, as a bright spot in his captivity. And as he now writes a letter to his best beloved Timothy, asking from him a similar boon — that he would hasten to see him before he dies, — he cannot

294 *>T PAUL S PRAYER IN ROME

resist telling, in a parenthesis, of this ray of kindness that had shot across his darkened sky; how that, while all they of Asia had turned from him, one of the citizens of its great capital had proved a noble exception, for he had Si oft refreshed him, and was not ashamed of Jus chain.”

II. Let us note, as a second lesson, the sublime recompense of Prayer. St Paul could not in any wise remunerate his friend. Silver and gold he had none. Even if such had been a befitting acknowledgment, he possessed it not. What had he to give, who was himself so destitute of needful comforts, as to write Timothy in Asia Minor — as we specially noted when speaking of that strongest and fondest of his friendships — to bring with him the old cloak he had left at Troas, that it might aid to shelter his aged frame from the chill damps of his dungeon? But one recompense he has. Yes; he can restore Onesiphorus a hundredfold. He can carry his case to the great Recompenser. He can plead God’s own promised benediction — “Blessed is he that considereth the poor, the Lord shall deliver him in the time of trouble.” As we found in the case of St Paul and Philemon regarding Rome and Colosse; so was it also with Rome and Ephesus. These were geographically far distant. The Great Sea lay between them. But a wire and electric fluid, more wondrous than science and ocean in our day have dreamt of, united the two. It connected together the two cities on earth, and both with the Throne of God. The memory of his friend’s sympathising visit flits before the eye of the Apostle; and as he is narrating the fact to his son in the faith, he must interrupt for a moment the;thread of his Epistle, to breathe a passing prayer — “The Lord give mercy to the house of Onesiphorus. The Lord grant that he may find mercy of the Lord on that day.” That prayer, doubtless, ascended not unanswered. There would be blessings innumerable, though we are told not of them, which fell on the distant household.

It is striking to observe that it is “the house of Onesiphorus” (not Onesiphorus personally), for which the prayer is offered. The question naturally occurs, What are we to understand from this? It may be, that no more is intended but that the Apostle’s large heart would embrace the whole household of his friend; that as the house of Obededom was blessed on account of the Ark, or as the family of Saul were dealt with kindly for Jonathan’s sake, so does he pray, regarding small and great in that distant Ephesus home, that God would surely bless them! But we may assign to it, as some commentators have done, a different interpretation. The name of Onesiphorus is mentioned by St Paul once more, in the close of this Epistle. It is mentioned among the salutations to individual friends. But again, as here, it is “the household of Onesiphorus” of which he makes mention, not of himself: “Greet Aquila and Priscilla and the household of Onesiphorus.” Does not this give a strong probability to the surmise, that that self-denying disciple, so lately ministering to a suffering member of the Church below, had, when the Apostle wrote, been admitted a glorified member of the Church above? In other words, that he had predeceased his beloved spiritual Father — won before him the martyr’s crown. It gives an affecting interest and beauty to this touching Bible incident. St Paul’s kind visitor was beyond the need and reach of his prayers. But the sepulchre had not closed over the memories of that visit. The dark tomb or the martyr’s axe had not cancelled the obligations of Christian gratitude. If the grass of Ephesus be waving over his friend’s grave, or if his martyr-ashes have been strewn in insult on the waters, he can claim for the orphaned “household” the blessing of the Father of the fatherless. Long after the Apostle’s own dust was laid in its resting-place, that dungeon-prayer, uttered from a full heart, may have proved to one home in Ephesus, amid the whirlwind of persecution (as the scarlet thread of Rahab at Jericho), an unknown spiritual heirloom, — entailing mysterious blessings (temporal and spiritual) upon children’s children.

Be this as it may; here, at all events, is a recompense which every one can bestow; the noblest and best of all returns for earthly kindness. You can give this, when you can give no other — the recompense of prayer. Ay! and prayer, too, can fetch down blessings on the absent: it annihilates space; it knows nothing of distance. That friend, that brother, the companion of your youth, is far separated from you, — out on the perilous ocean, away in the distant colony. The sound of the Sabbath-bell falls no more on his ear; you can go with him no longer to the house of God in company; his place is vacant in the pew; his chair is empty at the table; his voice is missed at the home-hearth! But you can be present with him. Prayer can bring you to his side. Prayer can whisper a father’s blessing over him. Prayer can sprinkle him with better than a mother’s tears. Prayer can fetch the angels of God around him as a guard; his shield in danger, his defence in trouble. Far off in her cottage-home, a thousand miles away, a mother, all unconscious at the moment of the danger of her sailor-boy, is uttering her midnight intercession for the wanderer. It has ascended at the very crisis of destruction. The cry of the trembling form kneeling by her lonely couch has rocked the waves to rest. It is a mother’s “effectual fervent prayers” that have turned the storm into a calm!

Prayer is still the golden key by which we can unlock for others as well as for ourselves the treasury of Heaven and “move the arm of Omnipotence.” What we owe, on the other hand, to the prayers which have hovered over our cradles, followed us into the world, grappling for us in our strong temptations, and which, like Jacob wrestling with the Angel, have prevailed, will never be known until that Day when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed!

III. Observe next, the special boon desired. It is Mercy. “The Lord give mercy!9 “The Lord grant that he may find mercy oi the Lord.” Mercy is a sinner’s word. It is the pity which God shows to the undeserving. Goodness is the term we use when we speak of His kindness as displayed to His unsinning creatures; mercy is His kindness in its manifestation to the miserable and lost. When our souls were lying like stranded vessels on the beach, the tide of this ocean-mercy set them again floating on the waters. Mercy is the highest type and expression of the divine Goodness. In Heaven, the ascription of the unredeemed angels is — “God is Love.” When they think of their own rebel hosts and the penalty of apostasy, their cry is — “God is Holy.” When they think of redeemed man, it is — “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious.” Mercy is the offended Sovereign proclaiming amnesty to rebels — lifting the beggar from the dunghill, and setting him among princes. Mercy- — “the mercy of God.” It is a brief sentence. It can be lisped by a child; but what seraph can fathom the depths of its meaning? An inspired Apostle, baffled in the attempt, seems only able to shadow forth its wonders by thus heaping together superlatives: “God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins” (Eph. ii. 4, 5). Amazing thought! God’s mercy stooping over us, and His love loving us, when we were morally and spiritually dead. Did you ever hear of one loving the dead?

i Yes! ’ a hundred lips reply; ’ we have loved the dead! We have wept and sobbed over the cold marble; — we have loved to gaze on those rayless eyes, although the light of life has faded from them for ever here; — with an unutterably sacred affection have we loved the broken, mutilated casket, even when the bright jewel had departed, But this is not the case in point, in estimating the marvels of the mercy of God. Let us ask rather — Did you ever love the dead outcast on the street? Did you ever love the beggar found, wrapped in rags for his shroud, lying on the open highway? No! though you may have pitied him, compassionated him; though you may have shuddered at the spectacle — no tear of love could bedew your cheek. But if human compassion is unable to tell so wondrous a tale, “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He hath redeemed out of the hand of the enemy,” God has done this. God’s mercy has reached the point of loving the dead outcast — ay! more — loving the dead enemy: “Even when we zvere dead in sins! “That mercy of God in Christ embraces, too, the vilest and most miserable. None stand beyond its pale. No gate — no veil — no flaming sword of cherubim bar the way to the mercy-seat. Our sins may have reached unto the clouds, but the heights of the divine mercy are loftier still:” As the heavens are hih above the earth, so great is His mercy towards them that fear Him.” Appropriately surely the inspired comment and exhortation seems to follow —” Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy T

It is this “mercy. of the Lord” which St Paul here invokes for his sympathising visitor. There is something, perhaps, at first sight, strange in the Apostle’s prayer in relation to him who was the object of it. It is not what we would have looked for in the circumstances. Onesiphorus had come on an errand of self-denying love — a noble episode in that age of spiritual heroism. When the Apostle prays for him, we almost look for some such petition as this — ‘The Lord reward him for his deeds! Lord! there is much that this man hath done for me. Great has been his faith, his devotion, his unselfishness, his considerate sympathy to me, Thy prisoner. He has braved perils of the sea, and perils of the city, and perils of false brethren, in order to cheer me in my hour of loneliness and sorrow. Let not the cup of cold water given to Thy disciple, go without the promised blessing. Recompense his kindness according to its deserts. Let it be returned a thousandfold into his own bosom! ‘No! he remembers him only as a sinner: “The Lord have mercy on him!”

St Paul would remind us here, of the one only ground of hope and confidence and trust we have in the sight of a holy God. He was indeed the last to undervalue the precious fruits of the Spirit, as manifested in the heart and the life of the true believer. In the soul that has been divinely sanctified and purified, there is much to love and admire; — those Christian graces — holy affections and holy deeds — flowers in the Beloved’s garden, which, like so many incense-censers, are sending up their fragrant perfume to heaven. These, doubtless, are regarded with divine complacency now; and at the Great Day, they will draw from the lips of the Righteous Judge the divine approval and encomium — “Well done, good and faithful servant!” But what would all these (the best of them) avail, when we come to regard them as forming the sinner’s plea at that bar of unswerving rectitude and equity? A poor instalment, verily, in the discharge of an infinite debt. To use the words of a writer, it would be “an attempt to pay off that debt at one end by pence, which has been accumulating by talents at the other.” If the Apostle himself once indulged some such dreams of personal merit and sufficiency, the further he advanced in the divine life, — the more maturely he grew in grace and holiness and purity; in a word, the nearer he approached to God, the more deeply did he feel his need of mercy. Hear the estimate he gives of his own character and spiritual worthiness, and that too not in his earlier, but in his closing and riper years: — “Less than the least of all saints;” — “Sinners, of whom I am the chief.” In writing to Timothy from Rome, the most joyful word he can utter when he thinks of himself, as “before a blasphemer and persecutor and injurious,” is this — “But I obtained MERCY.” It is the same boon he seeks for Onesiphorus, to which he clings, as his own — his only, unfailing anchorage. Yes! come and learn from this giant in grace, when standing on the borders of the grave, the alone foundation of a sinner’s, or rather a believer’s hope. With all the memories of his apostleship behind him, a thousand battles of the faith, in which, as a spiritual champion, he had fought and bled and conquered: with the remembrance of Jewish hate and Gentile scorn; the stocks and stripes of Philippi; the buffeting of winter tempests he had braved by land and sea; the moral intrepidity that made him stand amid Athenian philosophers, in the streets of Imperial Rome, and amid the merchant princes of Corinth, pleading the injured cause of his Great Master; the sacrifice of home, country, friends, religion, for a life of untiring and perpetual exile from most of the world’s amenities

and joys, — like a weary bird having no rest for

U the sole of his foot, and seeking none; and now with the flash of the executioner’s sword before him, to close the mighty drama of a consecrated existence: Yet hear his final plea, — “I obtained MERCY;” hear his final prayer, — it is mercy for himself, mercy for his friend — “The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day!” Could we follow St Paul and Onesiphorus now, among yonder bright martyr-multitude before the throne, we might listen to their joint-song. The dungeon-prayer has been caught up in Paradise: it is the song of Eternity — “O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever!”

IV. Once more, let us observe the Great Day of recompense, on which the Apostle’s thoughts and prayers are centred: “The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day!’ “That day.” We look for some antecedent in the verse, or in some preceding one. We can find none. How is this? Ah! it is beautifully significant. It tells us of some time — some era in this illustrious man’s mind — which outpeered, in solemn importance and interest, all others; some vast epoch with which he was so familiar, that unconsciously, in writing to another, he does not name it. Timothy would need no interpreter as he read his letter. It was the Great Day of God; that luminous, radiant day, when Christ would appear in the glory of His Father and of the holy angels, as the Judge both of quick and dead.

This is not the only passage where St Paul makes a similar indirect reference to the Day of final reckoning. In the 1 2th verse, which we shall afterwards more specially consider, he says, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day’’ Again, in the 4th chapter and 8th verse (it is striking, these occurring in his last letter, as if the Great white Throne were in view),” Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day!’ It was a glorious beacon-light in the haven of Eternity, which had gladdened his spirit during many a midnight on earth’s tempestuous sea; but it was shining clearer and brighter as he was nearing the heavenly shore.

Need we wonder that he and the members of the suffering, struggling Church in that early age, regarded the Advent of Christ on His Throne of Judgment, as their most “blessed hope,” and made it the object of their constant and longing prayers? that it was looked forward to as the birthday of the Church-triumphant; the day when the wrongs of earth would be righted; when sin would be expelled, and Satan bound; when their living, loving Lord would be crowned with many crowns; “the day of His espousals; the day of the gladness of His heart.” To St Paul it had other peculiar features of attractiveness. It was the true antitype of the “Feast of Ingathering” — the harvest-home of Heaven; the day on which many, like him, who had gone forth “weeping, bearing precious seed,” would come again with rejoicing, bringing their sheaves with them. Was it strange, that the day uppermost in his thoughts — the day of days, — that which was so familiar in his forecast of the future, that he need give it no other distinctive appellation — was the one which would not only permit him thus to witness the public coronation and enthronement of his Redeemer before an assembled world, as Lord of all, but which would usher him also into the presence of the Saints he had been honoured to save. “Without fault before the throne” they would “that day” stand, clothed in the full and final glory of their resurrection bodies. “What,” says he, “is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming” (1 Thes. ii. 19).

That day! — The chained, lonely captive in his gloomy ward, with the tear of gratitude in his eye, could picture Onesiphorus among the crowd who are then represented as thus disavowing the good deeds with which the Great Judge had credited them: “When saw we thee in prison, and came unto thee?” He could listen in thought, to the gracious reply, identifying him with his friend, and making a blissful memory of earth, a memory of heaven, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”

To what can we urge all here present, in preparation for that day and its solemn verities, but to seek that mercy, that same rich mercy which St Paul sought for Onesiphorus; to take the publican’s place, and, with the tear of penitence in your eye, and the prayer for pardon on your lips (looking too, as he did, to the Altar of Sacrifice,*) to utter the cry of the broken spirit, “God be merciful to me, a sinner! “We believe there is no bound or barrier to that ocean of mercy in Christ, save what is erected by the pride, or indifference, or unbelief of man. It laves and washes the rockiest shores of the rockiest heart. St Paul tells us for our encouragement, why that rich mercy was exercised towards him.” Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me, first “(first, not in point of time, but in point of guilt), “Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on Him to

* IXdadrjTi, implying reconciliation through sacrifice.

life everlasting “(i Tim. i. 16). But remember, it must be mercy sought now, to be mercy found on that day. We can pray for you now, as St Paul did for his friend; you can pray for yourselves; but “that day” once come, Omnipotence itself cannot undo a neglected past!

Nor let any venture to trust in the vain delusion, that the mercy to be extended then, is the exercise of God’s sovereign attribute; that He will be too kind and too gracious to deal out the full measure of His threatenings; that He will relax the severity of His law; that He will suffer “them that fell” to taste only His “goodness,” not His “severity.” — Say, would the cross of Calvary have been erected; would His own dear Son have had poured upon Him the vials of redundant suffering and anguish, if, after all (independent of these sufferings), Mercy could thus finally triumph over Justice? No! God is “not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man, that He should repent.” While His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting on them that fear Him, it is a mercy founded on everlasting Truth and everlasting

Righteousness. God too merciful to punish! That august tribunal will overturn this, along with every other false confidence. Those who cling to the illusion will find it a rope of sand in riding out the final storm.

Oh! when that momentous crisis-hour shall come, when the Lord shall arise in the glory of His majesty, the centre and focus of a congregated world; when that Throne shall be set, before whose sapphire brightness sun and moon will grow pale; when the whirlwind of His wrath will be sweeping down every refuge of lies; when the heavens shall be folded together as a scroll, — passing away with a noise, compared with which the loudest thunder would be but as an infant’s cry; when the earth shall be the sport of devouring flames, its forests charred into blackness, and its hills become as chafif; when the graves of centuries shall be rifled, and the tramp shall be heard of gathering millions marching to the Great Assize — The Lord grant unto us, that we may find mercy of the Lord on that day!