On the Distinction between Knowledge and Consideration

“The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.”

It would appear, from this verse, that the children of Israel neither knew nor considered — but still there is a distinction suggested by it between these two things. And in the book of the prophet Malachi, we have a similar distinction, when the Lord says to the priests, “If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart.” It is, in fact, possible for a man to do one of these things, and not to do the other. He may know the truth, and yet he may not consider it. He may hear, and yet not lay to heart. Nay, he may have heard of a particular doctrine so often as to have got it by heart, without ever laying it to heart And this, we hold, to be the just and the applicable complaint that may be uttered of many proiessing Christians in our day.

And thus it is, that we may gather the difference which there is between knowledge and wisdom. The one is a speculative acquirement. The other is a practical faculty or habit. By the latter, we turn to its right and profitable use the former. Thus it is, that there may be great folly along with great scholarship — and, on the other hand, may an unlettered mind be illustrious in wisdom. You have, perhaps, seen when there was great wealth, and yet, from the want of judicious management, great want of comfort in a family — and what stands in fine and beautiful contrast with this, you may have witnessed the union of very humble means, with such a skill and consideration in the guidance of them, as to have yielded a respectable appearance, and a decent hospitality, and the sufficiency of a full and regular provision. And so, with the treasures of intellect, the acquisitions of the mind, whereof one may be rich, being possessed of most ample materials in all knowledge and information, and yet have an ill-conditioned mind notwithstanding; and another destitute of all but the most common and elementary truths, may yet, by a wise application of them, have attained to the true light and harmony of the soul, and be in sound preparation both for the duties of time, and for the delights of eternity.

All have so learned to number their days as to know the extreme limit of human life upon earth — yet all have not so learned to number their days as to apply their hearts unto wisdom. They are aware of their latter end, but they consider not their latter end.

I. This distinction between knowledge and wisdom, is abundantly realized even on the field of earthly and of sensible experience. The man of dissipation may have his eyes open to the ruin of character and of fortune that awaits him, yet the tyranny of his evil desires constrains him to a perseverance in the ways of wretchedness. The man of indolence may foresee the coming bankruptcy that will ensue on the slovenly management of his affairs, yet there is a lethargy within that weighs him down to fatal inactivity. The man of prone and headlong irritation, may be able to discern the accumulating mischief that he raises against himself in the hostility of those who are around him, and may even look forward to the time when, deserted by the friendship of all, he shall live a neglected outcast from all human companionship; yet, continue as before to be hurried away by the onward violence that seizes him. In all these instances, there is no want of knowledge in possession. But there is a want of knowledge in use, or knowledge in application. The unhappy man has the truth of the matter in his head. But he does not lay it with the authority of a commander upon his practice. The present urgency carries it over all thought of the future consequences. He has received the truth, but he does not give heed unto the truth. He does not charge it upon his attention, or give effectual warning of it to his fears, or to his sense of prudence and of interest. It is not of his ignorance that we complain, but of his inconsideration. And thus, apart from the things of spiritual contemplation altogether, and on the mere ground of every day life, with its passions and pursuits in this world, may the distinction to which we now advert, be abundantly exemplified.

n. But what we have now affirmed, even of those events and consequences that take place along the journey of this world, is still more strikingly apparent of that great event which marks its termination. There is not a human creature of most ordinary mind, and who hath overstepped the limits of infancy, that does not know of death, and with whom it does not rank among the most undoubted of the certainties that await him. And it is not only that of which he is most thoroughly assured — but it is that of which, in the course of observation and history, he is most constantly reminded. And many are the aids and the accompaniments which might serve to deepen his impression of it. The horror of every death that he witnesses; and the pathos of every death which he deplores; and the distress, even unto the measure of tragic sensibility, which is felt when some tie of near and affecting relationship is broken; and every act of attendance on those last obsequies, when acquaintances meet to carry one of their number to his grave; and the aspect of seriousness that gathers upon every inquiring neighbourhood, when the word spreads that some one of their friends is dying; and the frequency of those funeral processions that pass along our streets, and so mingle the business of death with the moving throng of the people and the carriages, which the business of life has pressed into its service — these are the remembrancers that ever and anon hold up the lesson of our mortality, and, one might think, should effectually keep it from sinking for a single hour into oblivion. But how is it truly and experimentally? That death of which we all know so well, is scarcely ever in our thoughts. The momentary touch of grief, and of seriousness, wherewith we are at times visited, speedily goeth into utter dissipation. With as cheerful and assured footsteps, do we tread the face of this world, as if it were the scene of our immortality — and the latter end of life is totally unseen in the obscure and undefined distance at which we have placed it, on the field of our contemplations. It argues for the strength of that recoil with which nature shrinks from the thought of its own dissolution, that all these loud and repeated demonstrations pass so unheeded by — and that walking though we be, over the accumulated ruins of so many generations, we nevertheless will talk as merrily, and lift up our heads as securely, as though beings who were to live for ever. It seems not to work the slightest abatement in the eagerness of man after this world’s interests, that a few years will sweep them utterly away — and when we look to the busy engrossment of all his faculties with the plans and the pursuits of earthliness, it Is but too manifest, that it is one thing to know of death, and another to consider of it.

This heedlessness of our latter end, is of a character still more obstinate and incurable than any such heedlessness as we have already quoted, of reputation or fortune in the world. It needs no impetuous appetite to overbear the thought of death; for in the calm equanimity of many a sober and aged citizen, you will find him as profoundly asleep to the feeling of his own mortality, as he is to any of the feelings or instigations of licentiousness. It needs no overweighing indolence of temperament to be all listless and unmoved by the fears of our coming death-bed; for many are to be found, who consume every hour in the activities of business and of daring adventure, without one emotion of seriousness on the awful catastrophe that awaits them. It needs no imprudence, or unguarded violence, to betray a man into the forgetfulness of death; for many is the cool and practised calculator, and many is the sage of tranquil philosophy, and many is the crafty politician, who can look far into consequences, and is skilled in all the expedients of his vocation — and of whom it may be said, that the mind of each is steeped in the oblivion of death. We are heedless of much that is before us, even in this world; but as to its last and closing scene, there is a peculiar inveteracy of heedlessness that we do not have as to any of the other futurities of our earthly existence. Death is the stepping-stone between the two worlds; and so it somewhat combines the palpable of matter, with the shadowy and the evanescent of spirit. It is the gateway to a land of mystery and of silence, and seems to gather upon it something of the visionary character which the things of faith have to the eye of the senses. It is not a thing unseen; but being an outlet to the region of invisibles, there settles upon it a degree of that faintness and obscurity wherewith the carnal eye regards all that is told of the matters of eternity. And so, amid all the varieties of temperament in our species, there is a universal heedlessness of death. It seems against the tendency of nature to think of it. There is an opposite bias that ever inclines us away from this dark contemplation, towards the warm and living realities of the peopled world around us. The mind refuses to dwell on that dreary abode of skulls and of sepulchres, and makes its willing escape from all this hideous imagery, to society, and to business, and to the whole interest and variety of life. Instead of some mighty impulse being required to dispossess us of the thought, it costs an effort of unnatural violence to uphold it in our bosoms. The thing is known, but it is not considered: and the giddy dance of life is carried onwards, as if there were no destroyer upon the way — the tide of human existence is borne as restlessly along, as if there were no grave to absorb it.

This might serve to convince us, how unavailing is the mere knowledge, even of important truth, if not accompanied by the feeling, or the practical remembrance of it. The knowledge, in this case, only serves to aggravate our folly, and to bring, on the utter heedlessness of our lives, a more full and emphatic condemnation. And on the subject of death, we would ask, how is it that your fatal insensibility can be justified? Has God left this matter without a witness? Has he not strewed the whole path of your existence in the world with the mementos of its affecting termination? Has he not pointed the eye of your experience to the agonies of many a death-bed, and brought it irresistibly down upon your convictions, that these are the very agonies through which you have to pass? In every death of an acquaintance does he not lift a voice of warning unto yourselves — and when that acquaintance is a relative or a friend, does he not seek to grave upon your softened heart the lesson of mortality in characters of deeper remembrance? Has he not tried to find access for the truth, through the varied avenues of feeling, and of observation, and of conscience? And living, as you do, in the land of dying men, have you not seen enough of this world’s changes to make the history of your life one continued sermon upon the grave? God has not been wanting in those demonstrations of Providence, which should have rivetted a seriousness upon your hearts, and transformed you out of the careless, and gay, and worldly creature that you still are. We protest, by the many sick-beds over which you have hung, and by the deaths which you have witnessed, and by the tears which you have shed over them, that you have long ago had enough to loosen your hold upon earth, and to break that accursed spell by which you are so bound to its lying vanities. You have enough to dislodge from your bosom the spirit of the god of this world; and O! therefore, that you were wise, that you understood these things, that you considered your latter end.

There is no topic on which the distinction that there is between knowledge and consideration stands more palpably before us, than that of death. All are assured of its coming, yet how few so bethink, or so bestir themselves, as to be prepared for its coming. The position which this event occupies in the line of our existence, gives to it a peculiar advantage for illustrating the distinction in question. It stands on the extreme horizon of what is sensible, and beyond it lie the dimness and the mystery of an untrodden land. On this side of it are the matters of experience. On the other side of it are the matters of faith. Now, it partakes with the one in the certainty wherewith all must regard it; and it partakes with the other in the nullity of its practical influence, over the vast majority of our species. As an object of knowledge, there belongeth to it the assurance of a most unquestioned truth; as an object of consideration, there belongeth to it the airy lightness of a vain and visionary fable. It is believed, but it is not minded; and while, on the one hand, it ranks among those experimental realities which are most assuredly known, it, on the other hand, ranks among those illusions of the fancy which are practically and habitually disregarded. It stands forth to the eye in all the plainness of ocular demonstration, and yet with as little power as if it were a tale of necromancy. It is quite obvious, that in the things of faith, there is a want of ascendant power over the life of man; and, to justify man, this has been ascribed to their want of evidence. But where is the want of evidence in death? This is not a thing of faith, but a thing of observation; and makes it as clear as day, that even when the evidence is complete and irresistible, the effect may be as utterly unsubstantial, as if it were a thing of nought. This ought to alarm us. It should lead us to apprehend, that there was enough of argument, on the side even of what is spiritual and unseen, to condemn our indifference to it. If the certainty of death do not move us, it may not be the uncertainty of what is on the other side of death, that can account for the sluggishness of our obstinate and unmoved carnality. One thing is certain, that we can see an acquaintance fall into his grave, and yet continue to live here, as if this were our eternity. And does not this make it probable, that though that acquaintance were to rise again, and to tell us of the world of spirits upon which he had entered, we should be unaffected as before by the real eternity that is awaiting us? Christ says to us himself, that if we believe not Moses and the prophets, neither should we believe though one rose from the dead. This is the way in which we meet the demand of infidelity, for more of proof, and more of information. The fact is, that thousands have died before us, and are still dying around us, and yet the heart of man remains unvisited by any practical sense of his mortality. And the presumption, therefore, is, that though one of these thousands were to revive, and to re-appear amongst us, fraught with the tidings of heaven’s glory, and hell’s unutterable despair, we should still keep our ground against him, and the heart of man be unvisited as before, by any practical sense of his immortality. It is not more of evidence that we want. There is as much as ought to convince us now — and if not convinced, there is as much as will condemn us afterwards. The cause of our irreligion is not that we could not know, but that we do not, and will not consider.

This is a great practical use to which our insensibility about death is capable of being turned. It proves, that our insensibility about eternal things, may be due to something else than to the defect of that evidence by which they are accompanied. It causes us to perceive, that a truth may be surely known, and yet not be pondered, or not be proceeded upon. Surely to know it is one thing — seriously to reflect upon it

Dd is another — and thus it may be, that the irrehgion of the world is due not to the want of a satisfying demonstration on God’s part, for this might have excused us; but, to the want of right consideration on ours, and this is inexcusable.

III. Let us now pass onwards, then, to the invisibles of faith — to those things which do not, like death, stand upon the confines of the spiritual region, but are wholly within that region, and which man hath not seen by his eye, or heard by his ear — to the awful realities that will abide in deep and mysterious concealment from us, so long as we are in the body, and which not till the body is dissolved, will stand in direct manifestation before us. This character of unseen and spiritual, is not confined to things future. There are things present which are spiritual also. There is a present Deity, who dwelleth in light, it is true, but it is light inaccessible — who is encompassed with glory, but it is glory which we, in the body, cannot approach unto — who stands revealed to angels and adoring spirits; but whom no man hath seen, neither can see. He is the King eternal and immortal, but he is also the King invisible — who, though not far from any one of us, is remote as infinity itself, from the ken of our earthly senses

—and shrouded in the obscurity of his own unfathomable nature, is he so veiled and darkened from all human contemplation, that we cannot behold him.

And yet, even of this great Spirit we may be said, in one sense, to know, however little it is that we may consider him. There are averments about God which we have long recognized, and ranked among our admitted propositions, though we seldom recur to them in thought, and are never adequately impressed by them. We know, or think we know, that God is; and that all other existence is suspended upon his will; and that, were it not for his upholding arm, the whole of Nature would go into dissolution; and that while he sits in high authority over all worlds, there is not one individual member of his vast family, that is overlooked by him — and, more particularly, that he looks with the eye of a wise and a watchful judge, into every heart, and every conscience; and that he claims a right and a property in the services of all his creatures; and that he is more absolutely the owner and the master of them all, than is man of the machine that he hath made, and to whose touch all its movements are subordinate; and that he is a God of august and unviolable sacredness, in

Dd2 whose presence evil cannot dwell, and between the sanctity of whose nature and sin, there is a wide and implacable enmity; and that he does not sit in lofty and remote indifference to the characters of his children, but takes deep, and perpetual, and most vigilant concern in them all — loving their righteousness, hating their iniquity, treasuring their thoughts, and their purposes, and their doings, in the book of his remembrance; and that, with a view to the manifestation of them, on that day, when time shall be no more, and each of his accountable offspring shall have their condition awarded to them through eternity — when the mystery of God shall be finished, and the glory of his attributes shall be made to shine forth at the close and the consummation of all things.

Now, most of these things you know, or profess to know. They are recognized by you as true propositions, and not to have them among the articles of your creed, would be deemed by you as monstrous and revolting infidelity. Most of you would shudder at the thought of an atheism, which could deny the existence of God, or of a blasphemy that could disown his government, or of a heresy that could profane his character by stripping it of its truth, and justice, and holiness. So dear, in fact, are your long-established notions of the Divinity, that you could not bear them to be meddled with — and would hold that man to be the enemy of your repose, who should offer to violate them. So that, there do exist in your mind certain positions which regard a Deity, the affirmative of which carries your consent, and the denial of which would be painfully offensive to you — and thus far may you be said to know God, and to believe in him.

Now, as a proof how distinct this knowledge of God is from the consideration of him, I will venture to say, that even the first and simplest of all these propositions is, by many, unthought of for days and weeks together. The truth, that God is, which all here present would shudder to deny, is out of habitual regard, and habitual remembrance. It lies like a forgotten thing in some deep and latent depository — and as to its being brought forth of its hiding-place, for hourly use and meditation, this we never meet with, but among a saintly and selected few, who are indeed a very peculiar people. When God is acknowledged, we cannot lift the charge of theoretical atheism; but when, along with this, God is unminded, surely then may we lift the charge of practical atheism. Now this is the very charge that we prefer against the vast majority of our world. They have a knowledge of God; but this, so far from extenuating their thoughtlessness, brings upon it its most fearful aggravation. It is just because they stand pre-eminent among the creatures of our world, in the faculty of understanding God, that they also stand pre-eminent in the crime of their ungodliness. It is for this, that they suffer in the comparison with” the ox that knoweth his owner, and the ass that knoweth his master’s crib*’ — and what they have learned of God, or are capable of learning, will bring upon their heedlessness of him, and of his ways, its severest condemnation.

It is, indeed, one of the most fearful mysteries of the human spirit, that a truth which, of all others, most intimately concerns us, should yet, of all others, be the most gladly bidden away into oblivion — that, as rid of an unwelcome visitor, the mind of man is never more at ease, or in its kindred and rejoicing element, than when God is not in all his thoughts — that then it is, when, as broken loose from imprisonment, the heart revels in its own desires, and securely blesses its deliverance from the hateful presence of one who constrained and overawed it — that the creature should thus hide itself, as it were, from the Creator, and in virtue of his perpetual recoil from the Being who formed, and who upholds him, should so keep up a perpetual distance from God — that wholly given over to the idolatry of the things that are made, the Maker should, to him, be little better than a nonentity, or a name — this is the marvel of the strange and wayward nature that belongs to us, and may well lead us to apprehend the visitation upon it of some sore leprosy, the shock of some great and total derangement.

For what truth of weightier import to us all than simply that there is a God — that all the busy and unceasing movements around us are suspended on the will of a living Sovereign — that those mighty forces which constantly uphold the play and the mechanism of things, are not the random energies of a Nature that is unconscious; but that one sitteth above, and wieldeth them all at his pleasure — that a powerful and a presiding intelligence hath originated all, and overrules all — and that while our only converse and concern are with the near and the visible, that are on every side of us, there is an unseen Spirit, to whom belongeth the mastery, and with whom alone it is that we have mainly and substantially to do?

Now, how is it that man practically responds to this real condition of his being? Tell me, from the intimate assurances of your own conscience, or tell me, from the broad and palpable character that sits upon the doings of your acquaintances, whether God hath the ascendency over them. Is there, all the day long, a felt solemnity on your spirits, because of God, which follows you whithersoever you go, and causes you to walk with him in the world? Or, are you familiarized with the habit of submitting your will to his will? Or, have you ever, for an hour together, looked upon yourselves in the light of being the servants of another, and have accordingly run and laboured as at the bidding of that other? Or, utter strangers to this, do you not walk in the counsel of your own heart? Do you not move as independently, as if in yourself it was that you lived, and moved, and had your being? In the work that you prosecute, and the comforts that you enjoy, and even the obligations of which you acquit yourselves to relatives, and to friends, is there any fear of God before your eyes? — and is not the fear of disgrace from men, a far more powerful check upon your licentiousness, than the fear of damnation from him who is the judge and the discerner of men? The mind is ever crowded with thoughts, and wishes, and purposes, that pass, in busy succession, through its chambers of imagery, and minister the food of its unremitting contemplations. Tell me how much of God and of godliness there is in them all. Turn the inward survey upon yourselves, and report to us how much of this heavenly fruit groweth and flourisheth there. O you have but spied the nakedness of the land — God is unto you a wilderness, and your heart is to him a spiritual desolation!

This emptiness of a man’s heart as to the recognition of God, runs throughout the whole of his history. He is engrossed with what is visible and secondary, and he thinks no farther. The sense of a present and presiding Deity, is habitually absent from his soul — and just because he will not stir himself up to consideration, that he may lay hold of God, is he bounded, as if by an impassable limit, to earth and to earthliness. It needs a force of thought and of reflection, to bear him across this barrier, which, whether from indolence, or carnality, or a misgiving conscience, he does not choose to put into operation — and thus, does he live without God in the world. “When he enjoys, it is without gratitude. When he labours, it is without the impulse of an obedient loyalty. When he admires, it is without carrying the sentiment upwardly unto heaven, whence all that is lovely on the face of our world, was strewn for its embellishment, and the delight of its beholders. And thus, may a traveller on his tour of recreation, through some goodly land, be carried forward from scene to scene, till the whole landscape of an empire shall have passed behind him like a shifting panorama — and, as he eyes the beauteous succession of verdant fields, and massy foliage, and the many pictures of comfort or elegance in human habitations, and the rapid variety wherewith, in the speed and the turning of his movements, he is, at one time, closed upon by the limits of a sweet and sequestered valley, and, at another, breaks out in full and open perspective, on the glories of half a province — why, may all the ecstacy he feels be lavished on the spectacles before him, without one thought of that master hand, which spread out the whole of this magnificence, and poured the tide of lustre over it. No piety may mingle with this contemplation — and not for the want of knowledge, but the want of thought, may there be as little of God in the eye of this raptured enthusiast, as in the brute unconscious gaze of the creature that hath no understanding.

Now, this is God’s controversy with man in the text. He there complains of our heedlessness. He feels himself slighted, that we so seldom think of him, and that he should be thus neglected and set at nought, by his own offspring. And this inconsideration of ours, is matter of blame, just because it is a matter of wilfulness. Man has a voluntary control over his thoughts. He can turn and transfer them from one object of mental contemplation to another. He may think of God when he chooses. He may recal his scattered imaginations, and summon all that is within him to an act of attendance upon God. He may bid his mind cease from its rambles, and its reveries, and lift itself up to the abode of the Eternal. He may lay an arrest on the processes of the inner man, and say to it, with authority, that now is the moment for an aspiration, or a solemn feeling towards God. He may repeat and multiply this effort into a habit of seriousness. It may mix itself in with his ordinary business. It may accompany him on his walk, even through the streets of the crowded city. It may season the hours of his social fellowship; and what, at first, is difficult, and irregular, and rare, may thus, by dint of perseverance, settle down into an habitual tendency. He may, at length, be familiarized to the thought of God, as his master and his owner — and, at length, putting on the attitude of a daily and hourly obedience, as the eye of a servant looketh towards his master, so may his eye be ever towards God. This is not the attitude of nature, but it may be tried and practised, and, at length, effectually learned. But you will never reach it, unless you begin; you will never succeed in it, unless you persevere. And, therefore, my plain advice to you is, that you now set to it in good earnest. Lay a mandate upon your thinking faculty, and send it heavenward to God. There is many a useless moment that may thus be turned to account — many an idle waste in our existence, that may thus be reclaimed to sacredness. This is true spiritual education — the practice of godliness, instead of the theory — the way of going about it — and by which the soul may, at length, be disciplined to the habit of setting God always before it.

It is the absence of this habit which constitutes the ungodliness of man. There cannot be a foLiller provocation than that man should be satisfied to do without God — and this is the provocation inflicted by all who have other cares and other pleasures, which take up the whole of their hearts, and have no room there for God or for godliness. Each of you can best tell whether you fall under this description of habit and of character. Is it not the truth now, that God is scarcely in all your thoughts? — that you feel no encouragement in any of his promises, neither do you tremble under the fearfulness of his denunciations? that you are otherwise employed than in the prosecution of your interest with him? and are busied with plans, and objects, and anticipations of your own, wherewith his will, and his glory, have nothing to do? This is your guilt. This, in the estimation of Heaven’s jurisprudence, is the very essence of sinfulness. Quite consistent, we do admit, with much to soften and much most honourably to signalize you — but involving you in the direct charge, that none of you understandeth, and none of you seeketh after God.

IV. But the distinction between those who only know, and those who also consider, is never more strongly marked than in the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. And fearful is the hazard, lest knowledge, and it alone, should satisfy the possessor; lest he should settle down into a treacherous complacency, because he has made a right adjustment of the articles of his creed; lest he count it enough, that he has acquiesced, at all points, in the orthodoxy of the question; and so come forth with a flaming Christianity, that lies more in dogmatism than in devotion, more in a sturdy intolerance of error, than in a true and tender sincerity of heart. And the very controversies of the church have served to foster this delusion. The very quantity of debate and of argument that has been expended on theology, leads to a most hurtful misconceiving of this matter. You know, that the design of argument is to carry you onward to a set of just and accurate convictions. This, in fact, is the landing place to which it brings you, and at which it leaves you — and the danger is, that having brought you there, you go no further — and this place of arrival becomes your place of rest, and stationary residence. It is the pride, and the ambition, and the zeal of every intellectual combatant, to carry the understanding of his reader — and having done this, he is apt to sit down and be satisfied with the triumphs of his gotten victory; and the scholar himself, seized with the very same infection, may sit down, too.

as if he had attained an ultimate good, in which he may rejoice, and where he may now securely and fearlessly repose. And yet, the whole amount of his acquisition may be a mere notional Christianity — a list of doctrines that are settled and set by — that are as much within the grasp of his knowledge as many other articles of human speculation and science — but are just as little reiterated upon as they by a habit of frequent and feeling consideration. And hence a familiar exhibition to all who live in this our scholastic land, where a people, fresh from their catechisms, are primed and charged with orthodoxy, and all whose articles stand before you in well-marshalled and metaphysical array — who have a religion in their heads, but that has there an almost exclusive occupancy — whom many a stout defender of the faith would rejoice in as his own, but in whom the Author and the Finisher of faith, finds little of that love or that obedience which to him are the alone tests of discipleship — a people whom none can challenge for ignorance, but whose still unmortified tempers, and still unabated worldliness, may prove, that though they do know, yet they do not consider.

It were well, if such a people could be extricated from the strongholds of their yet impregnable antinomianism. It were well to alarm their conscience with the saying, that no knowledge and no belief will give them justification, which does not give sanctification also. All their doctrinal acquirements are precisely of as little avail as is the knowledge of death, if they think not of dying — or, as their knowledge of a God, if they give no earnest heed to him. It is well that they know; but the blessing is turned into a condemnation and a curse, if, while they know, they do not consider.

There are no topics on which there has been so much of controversy, or that has given rise to so many an elaborate dissertation, as the person and offices of Christ. And, doubtless, the scholarship has been well employed, that rescued from the entanglements of sophistry, the precious truth of the divinity of our Saviour. And well may England rejoice in those lettered ecclesiastics, who have put down, as far as argument could do it, the infidelity that decried the truth of his high and heavenly apostleship. And worthier far, than all the revenue of all her colleges, is the return of criticism and of demonstration that they have made in behalf of his great sacrifice, and of his unchangeable and ever-diiring priesthood. Yet, let it not be disguised, that the knowledge of all these credenda is one thing, and the serious, the practical consideration of them, is another — that many a commentator has mastered the difficulties of the question, who has not been solemnized by the thought of its urgent and affecting realities — that stalled orthodoxy, with her clear understanding, but untouched heart, has often launched upon heresy her mighty fulminations, and manfully asserted the truth which she never felt — that the peasant may catch direct from his Bible, what the dignitary has gathered by wading through the erudition of distant centuries; and this veriest babe in literature may outstrip the literary giant, because he not only knows the truth, but wisely and duteously considers it.

Let us, in like manner, look unto Jesus with the eye of a plain Christian, instead of looking to him with the eye of a profound critic, or commentator. For this purpose, let us lay hold of things that are palpably and unambiguously told of him, and see whether, without learning of him that which we do not know, much might not be made by considering of him that which we do know — and whether, out of such mate-E e rials of thought as are within reach of all, there might not a far more solemn impression come upon the heart, and a far more powerful influence upon the character, than are to be witnessed even among the most zealous and declared professors of our day.

First, then, he is the Apostle of our profession, or we profess him to be our Apostle. Let us consider him as such. Let us bethink ourselves of all which this title implies. It means one who is sent. The twelve were called apostles, because sent to preach the Gospel unto every creature. And, in like manner, he too is an Apostle, because sent by his Father into the world. He came to us from a place of deep and unknown mystery — he traversed that domain which separates the land of spirits from the peopled and familiar land in which we dwell — he burst upon our senses from a region where all is invisible — and far more wonderful than if he had been a visitor from another planet than our own, did he light upon our world from the dwelling-place of him who is the uncreated source of all worlds, from the very abode and sanctuary of the Eternal. How it ought to move us with awe at the approach of such a messenger, when we think of the glory and the sacredness of his former habitation! — of those ineffable communions that he had with the Father before the world was — and deep insight into all those mysteries of God, that are to us unsearchable! How it ought to fasten upon it the gaze of every mortal eye, that on the shore of our world there has been an arrival from the dark and the shrouded infinity which lies beyond it — that, at length, out of realms which are afar, a traveller hath come; and that, though veiled from everlasting in the obscurity of a remote and lofty nature, he hath now stood revealed to the observation of human senses, and poured forth an utterance that can be taken up by human ears!

And what ought to fasten upon him a still more intense regard, he comes with a message to our world — he comes straight from the Divinity himself, and charged by him with a special communication — God had broken silence, and this great Apostle of our profession was the bearer of that voice which speaketh from heaven unto the children of men. It was a thing of mighty import, indeed, that there should have been an actual errand to us from the pavilion of the Almighty’s residence — that one familiarly acquainted there should have come to taberna-Ee2 cle here, and to enter upon converse and companionship with men — that he did announce himself, and on satisfying credentials, to have been sent amongst us from the upper paradise, with tidings that he had to deliver, and on a work that had been given him to do. And it ought, at least, to make no diiference, that now he has returned to the place from whence he came. For he left behind him the records of his wondrous embassy — and the authentic and the authoritative voice of heaven still speaketh to us there — and with our hands upon the Bible, we are in contact with the very materials of a communication from the Deity. In the breast of the Godhead, there was a motion and a desire towards our species, and here is the expression of it — the very transcript of that message which our Apostle brought, and which our Apostle left amongst us — the word that actually came from the secret place of the Eternal, and is fraught with those revealed things, which now belong to us and to our children. I declare not a novelty in your hearing. It is not a matter of which you are ignorant, and which you need to know. But it is a matter of which you are woefully heedless, and which you need to consider. We do not need to teach you what is new. But we need to arrest you by the sense of what is old and forgotten. We charge your neglect of the Scriptures of our faith upon your neglect of that great Apostle, who is the Author and the Finisher of our faith. By your daily indifference to the word that is written, you inherit all the guilt, and will come under the very reckoning of those, who, in the days of the Saviour, treated with neglect and indifference, the word that was spoken. Our challenge against you is, that the Bible is to you a thing of insipidity — that it is not desired by you as the aliment of your souls — that though unread for days together, you miss no necessary food, you feel no vacancy, you are visited with no hunger, you can do very well without this nourishment of the spiritual life, and so give reason to fear, that within you there is no spiritual principle to sustain. And looking unto that of which this written document is the memorial, do we charge upon all who slight the perusal of it, that they trample into insignificance a formal embassy from heaven — that they treat with contumely the messenger who came thenceforth unto our world — that God by him has spoken, and they have disregarded — that the daily spectacle of the Bible before their eyes, is a daily solicitation on the part of Christ to be heard, and by their continued heedlessness to which.

they, all their lives, set his character as an Apostle, utterly to scorn.

The way to repair this treatment, is forthwith to give your diligence unto the book — and to press upon your moral sense, as you open it, that now you are about to enter into converse with God — and thus to fix and solemnize your attention, while you read those words of which Christ may be called the Apostle or the messenger. The act of reading the Bible, is the act of holding conference with the Deity — and while this is what all know, this is what few consider.

There is one topic which stands connected with the apostleship of Christ, and that stamps a most peculiar interest on the visit which he made to us from on high. He is God manifest in the flesh. In the character of a man, hath he pictured forth to us the attributes of the Divinity. He is the brightness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of his person — yet, in virtue of the humanity wherewith he is invested, hath he offered, even to the eye of sense, a palpable representation of the Godhead. “He who hath seen me, hath seen the Father” — and we, by fastening our attentive regards upon his person and history, may gather the very aspect and lineaments of the King invisible. That Being, who had been so long wrapt in profoundest secrecy from our world — that Being, whom none could apprehend, for no eye of mortal could carry him through that dark and untrodden interval, by which the two regions of sense and of spirit stand apart from each other — the Being, who ever since the entrance of sin, had laid his jealous interdict on the approaches of our species, and withdrawn himself by a remote and lofty separation away from us — he, at length, broke out from this veil of deepest mystery, and in the person of him who is at once his representative and his Apostle, does he now stand before us in visible manifestation. And we, by considering this Apostle, learn of God. By looking unto him, we look unto the likeness of our Creator, and we become acquainted with him. In the purity, and the gentleness, and the simple majesty of Christ, do we read the characteristics of the Deity. And O how it concerns us to know, from this narrative of unwearied well-doing, that there is so much of benevolence in heaven — that the Sovereign who sits in high authority there, is as good as he is great — that there is a meekness to soften the majesty of his nature, and a compassionate longing after those men whom the hand of justice was lifted up to destroy — that even in the holy of holies, there dwells a tenderness for our degraded species — and could the securities of heaven’s throne only be upholden, that there were a good-will and a mercy on high, ready to burst forth upon our world, and to circulate, at large, over all its families.

But this leads us to another topic of consideration, the priesthood of Christ. The atonement that he made for sin has a foremost place in orthodoxy. It is reiterated in all our catechisms. It forms the burden and the argument of many a ponderous dissertation. And to the popular mind, too, is it fully as familiar as to the accomplished scholar in theology. Insomuch, that scarcely an individual can be met with, even in the humblest walks of society, who does not know, and who could not tell, that Christ died for the world. But as we have often said, there is a knowledge without consideration. A truth may be acquired, and then cast, as it were, into some hidden corner of the mind, may it lie forgotten, as in a dormitory. And thus it fares with many a precious doctrine of the Bible. We learn it most readily from the question-book. We give the vote to it oi” our most prompt and zealous affirmative. We enlist it among the articles of our creed — and espousing it as our own belief, do we become partizans, or even advocates in its favour. And yet all this may consist with an entire practical heedlessness — with a deep torpor and unconcern about that truth which may have come to us most abundantly in word, though not at all in power. The soul may be habitually inadvertent to that as a principle, which is most zealously professed, and even contended for as an opinion. And accordingly, we are told by the apostle, of this very doctrine, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, how possible it is for men to receive it, yet not to remember it — that they may have once committed it to their understanding, as an article of faith, without having charged it upon their memory as an article of hourly and habitual recurrence — that it may have been consented to by the mind, without being dwelt upon by the mind — in which case, says Paul, you have believed in vain; and just because you keep not in memory, or, rather, consider not, and call not up to memory, that which I have preached unto you.

And, therefore, would I again bid you consider him who is the High Priest of your profession. I call upon you ever and anon to think of his sacrifice — and to ward off the legality of nature from your spirits, by a constant habit of recurrence, upon your part, to the atonement that he hath made, and to the everlasting righteousness that he hath brought in. Without this, the mind is ever lapsing anon into alienation and distrust — and the habitual jealousy of guilt, when not met, at all times, by a sense of that blood which washeth it away, will throw us back again to our wonted distance from God — and instead of breathing the free air of confidence in him, or rejoicing in the sunshine of his reconciled countenance, there will be a flaw of suspicion in all our intercourse, and instead of loving him as a friend, we shall still stand in dread of him as an accuser. There may be the occasional recognition of Christ, and, perhaps, along with it a gleam of light and of liberty. But the general state will be, that of a mind which is overcast. And, therefore, to keep all clear, and habitually clear, would I advise a regular forthgoing of your believing thoughts, to the great decease that was accomplished at Jerusalem. I would have you to look unto Jesus Christ, and unto him crucified, and be lightened thereby. Forget not that for guilt there has been an appropriate remedy provided in the Gospel — and the way tor you to stand delivered from all your fears of its vengeance and its agony, is to think of the vengeance that has already been poured out, and of the agony that has already been endured for it. Be very sure, that when justice is satisfied, then mercy set at large from this obstruction, is free to rejoice over you. And justice is satisfied. The sufferings of the garden and the cross, have absorbed it all — nor after Christ hath poured out his soul unto the death for you, will it seek, in the horrors of your condemned eternity, for a double redress, and a double vindication. O come out then from the prison-house of despondency — and when you think of your sins, think also of the ransom which has been paid for them. On the strength of this, do make your resolute stand against the spirit of bondage — and looking, and looking hourly unto the victim who has already bled a full expiation, do uphold yourself in the confidence, that sin is made an end of, that transgression is finished, that reconciliation for iniquity is made, and that now the believer, released from captivity, may walk before God in the security and the triumph of an everlasting righteousness.

In other sacrifices, the priest is distinguishable from the victim. Here they are the same. He was the victim when dying. He is the High Priest, now that he is risen again. And thus does he still plead, in the ear of God, the offering that was once made, and the power of which endureth continually. That incense, with the savour of which, God was well pleased, he is at all times well pleased to be reminded of — and only consider him who fills his mouth with this argument in behalf of all who repair to him, who can argue his sacrifice as an adequate redemption for the chief of sinners, and whose glory as a physician and a Saviour, is most illustrated, when the most desperate of offenders come unto him, and are healed. It is not enough, that you have, at one time, imported this into your understanding, and given it a place there among the articles of your belief. It is by keeping it in memory — it is by renewing upon it your mental acts of faith and of dependance — it is by again and again repairing to it — and looking habitually unto him as your Intercessor and High Priest, even as the children of Israel looked daily to Jerusalem, ‘at the times of their morning and evening sacrifice. It is thus, that peace is kept up in the heart — it is thus, that instead of coming upon us at starts, and in the shape of a momentary visitation, it maintains the continuous flow within us, of a river that is at once mighty and inexhaustible. It is thus, that this doctrine of our faith, instead of having only once made its entrance into our creed, is used by us at all times as a cordial — and the thought of Christ, as our acceptable and all-prevailing High Priest, is often present to the mind, and always felt to be precious.

And never forget that the way to maintain peace of conscience, is also the way to maintain purity of character. This is a mystery of the Christian life which the world apprehendeth not — and yet so realized, we think, by universal experience, that never do we reckon, in the history of the church, or in any of its members, had wilful sin place at the same time along with a full exercise of faith on the testimony of God. It is peace in the conscience, in fact, that keeps up love in the heart. It is this which, by putting joy, and hope, and confidence in the bosom, furnishes the soul with the most powerful springs of obedience. It is this which awakens gratitude in the bosom, that erenow was beset with the cold distractions of legality; and under the constraining influence of the love of Christ, is it ever found, that the most joyful believer is also the most fruitful believer, living no longer to himself, but to Christ who died for him, and who rose again.