The Power of the Gospel to Dissolve the Enmity of the Human Heart against God

Epnes. 1. 16.

«“Having slain the enmity thereby.”

Il. We shall now consider how it is that the gospel of Jesus Christ, suits its application to this great moral disease.

. The necessity of some singular expedient, for restoring the love of God to the alienated heart of man, will appear from the utter impossibility of bringing this about by any direct application of authority whatever. For, do you think that the delivery of the law of love, in his hearing, as a positive and indispensable enactment coming forth from the legislature of heaven, will do

it? You may as well. pass a law, making it imperative upon him to delight in pain, and to feel comfort on a bed of torture? Or, do you think, that you will ever give a practical establishment to the law of love, by surrounding it with accumulated penalties? This may irritate, or it may terrify, — but for the purpose of begetting any thing like.attachment, one may as well think of lashing another into tender regard for him. Or, do you think, that the terrors. of the coming vengeance will ever incline a human being to love the God who threatens him? Powerful as these terrors are, in-persuading man to turn from the evil of his ways, — they most assuredly do not form the artillery by which the heart of man can be catried: ‘They draw not forth a single affection, but’ the ‘affection’ of fear. They never can charm the human bosom into a feeling of attachment to God. And it goes to prove the necessity of some singular expedient, for restoring man to fellowship with his Maker; that the only obedience on which this fellowship can be perpetuated, is an obedience which no threatenings can force, — to which no Warnings Of displeasure can reclaim, — which all the solemn proclamations of Jaw and justice cannot carry, — and all the terrors and. severities of a sovereignty resting on power, as its only foundation, can never subdue. The utterance of the words, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, or perish everlastingly, can no more: open the shut and alienated heart’ of man, than it can open a gate of iron. Multiply these arguments of terror as you may, — arm them with tenfold energy, and make them to fall in thunder on the sinner’s ears, — tell him of the God of judgment, and manifest to him the frown of his an — ‘gry countenance, — lay before him the grim aspect of his impending death, ‘and spread a deeper mantle of despair over the: vast field of that eternity which is on the other side of it; — You may disquiet him, and right that he should be so, — you may prevail on him to give up many evil doings, and right that the whole urgency ’ be -,. a jl ay t of the ‘coming wrath should be employed to make him give them up immediately, — you may set him a trembling at the power of God, and better this than spending his guilty career, in thoughtlessness and unconcern, about the great Lawgiver; — but where, in the midst of all this, shall we find obedience to the very first and greatest commandment of the Jaw? Has this obedience been yet so much as entered on? Has love to God so much as reached the infancy of its existence, in that heart which is now beginning to be agitated by its terrors? Amid all the bitterness of remorse, and all the fearful looking for of judgment, and all the restless anxieties of conscious guilt, and anticipated vengeance, tell: us, if a single particle of tenderness towards God, has any place in this restless and despairing bosom? ‘Tell us, if it act as an element at. all, in this wild war of turbulence and disorder? Or, has it yet begun to dawn upon the mind, and spread its salutary and composing charm over that dark scene of conflict, under which many a sinner has to sustain the burden of the wearisome nights, that are appointed to him? You may seek for love to God throughout all the chambers of his heart, and seek in vain. The man may be acting such reformations as he is driven to, and may be clothing’ himself in’ such visible decencies, as he feels himself compelled to put on, and may be labouring away at the drudgery of such observances as he thinks will give him relief from the corrosions of that undying worm, which never ceases to goad him with its. reproaches ;. but as to the love of God, there is as grim and determined an exclusion of this principle as ever, — that “26* avenue to his heart, has never been unlocked, through which it might be

made to find its way, — every former argument, so far from having dissolved the barrier, has only served to rivet and to make it more unmoveable. And.the difficulty still lies upon us, — how are we to deposit.

in the heart of man, the only fight principle of obedience to God, — and to lead him onward in the single way of a pure, and spiritual, and substantial repentance? ais This, then, is a case of difficulty, and, in the Bible, God is said to have lavished all the riches of his unsearchable wisdom on the business of managing it. No wonder that to his angels it appeared a mystery, and that they desired to look into it. It appears a matter of direct: and obvious facility to intimidate man, — and to bring his body into a forced subordination to all the requirements. But the great matter was, how to attach man, — how to work in him a liking to God, anda relish for his character; — or, in other words, how to communicate to human obedience, that principle, without which, it is no obedience at all, — to make him serve God, because he loved him; and to run in the way of all his commandments, because this was the thing in which he

greatly delighted himself. .To lay upon us the —

demand of satisfaction for his violated law, could not do it. ‘To press home the claims of justice upon any sense of authority within us, could not doit. ‘To bring forward, in threatening array, the terrors of his judgment, and of his power against us, could not do it. To unveil the glories of that throne where: he sitteth in equity, and manifest to his guilty creatures the awful inflexibilities of his truth and righteousness, could not do it... To look out from the cloud of vengeance, and trouble our darkened souls as he - did those of the Egyptians of old, with the aspect of a menacing Deity, could not do it. To spread the field of an undone eternity before ‘us, and tell us of those dreary abodes where each criminal hath his bed in hell, and the cen- ‘turies of despair which pass over him are not counted, because there no seasons: roll, and the unhappy victims of the tribulation, and the wrath, and the anguish, know, that for the mighty burden of the sufferings which weigh upon them, there is no end, and no mitigation; this prospect appalling as it is, and coming home upon’ the belief with all the characters. of the most immutable certainty, could not do it. The affections of the inner man remain as unmoved as ever, under the successive and repeated influence of all these dreadful applications. ‘There is not one of them, which, instead of conciliating, does not stir up a principle of resistance; and, subject any human creature to the treatment of them all, and to nothing else, and he may tremble, at God, and shrink from the contemplation of God, and feel an overpowering awe at the thought of God, when that thought visits him; — but we maintain, that not one particle of influence has been sent into his heart, to make him love God.. Under such applications as these, we can conceive the creature, gathering a new energy from despair, and mustering up a stouter defiance than ever, to the God who threatens him. Strange contest between the thing formed and him who formed it; — but. we see it exhibited among the determined yotaries of .wickedness in life; and it is the very contest which gives its moral aspect to hell throughout all eternity. There, God reigns in vindictive majesty, and there, every heart of every outcast, sheathed in impenetrable hardness, mutters its blasphemies’ against him. O hideous and revolting spectacle! and how awful to think, that the unreclaimed sons of profligacy, who pour along our streets, and throng our markets, and form the ‘fearful majority in almost every chamber of business, and in every workshop of industry, are thither speeding their infatuated way! What a wretched field of contemplation is around us, when we see on every side of it the mutual encouragement, — the ever-ply- -ing allurements, — the tacit, though effectual and well understood, combination, sustaining, over the whole face of this alienated world, a firm and systematic rebellion against God! We are not offering an exaggerated picture when we say, that within reach of the walk of a single hour, there are thousands, and thousands more, who have cast away from them the authority of God; and who have been nerved by all his threatenings into’a more determined attitude of wickedness; and who glory in their unprincipled dissipations; and who, without one sigh at the moving ‘spectacle of ruined innocenee, will, in the hearing of companions younger than themselves, scatter their pestilential levities around them, and care not though the hope of parents, and the yet unvitiated delicacy ot youth, shall wither and expire under. the contagion of their rufian example; and will patronize every step of that progress which leads from one depravity to another, till their ill fated proselyte made as much the child of hell as themselves, shall must,clear his

intrepid way, in spite of. all its painfulness..;, We will not pursue it at, present, but. neither will..we..count. the. digression out of place — should a single parent among you be led, from what we have now uttered, to have over his children with a godly jealousy, and not to suffer those, for whose eternity he is so deep: jE eae to take their random direction throughsociety,just where the prospects of business, and of worldly advantage, may chance to carry them; to calculate on the possibilities of moral corruption, as well as on the possibilities of lucrative employment; to look-well to expo- “sures and acquaintances, and.hours of social! entertainment, as well as to the common-place object of a situation in the world. And when you talk of a good line for your children, just. think a little more of the line that leadeth to eternity, and have a care lest you be the instrument of putting them on such a path of danger, that it shall only be by the very rarest miracle of grace, that your helpless young can be kept from falling, or be renewed again into repentance. we ee

But the difficulty in question still remains unresolved. How then is this regeneration to be wrought, if no threatenings can work it, — if no terrors of judgment can soften the heart into that love of God, which forms the chief feature of repentance, — if all the direct applications of law and of righteous authority, and of its tremendous and immutable sanctions, so far from attaching man in tenderness to his God, have only the effect of impressing a violent recoil upon all his affections, and, by the hardening influence of despair, of stirring up in his bosom a more violent antipathy than ever-? Will the high and solemn proclamations of a menacing Deity not do it?’ This is not the way in which the heart of man can be carried. He is so constituted, that the law of love can never never be established within him by the engine of terror; and here is the barrier to this regeneration on the part of man. But if a threat of justice cannot do it, will an act of forgiveness do it? This again is not the way in which God can admit the guilty to acceptance. He is so constituted, that his truth cannot be trampled upon, and his government cannot be despoiled of its authority, and its sanctions cannot, with jmpu-. nity, be defied, and every solemn utterance of the Deity cannot, but find its accomplishment, in such a way as may vindicate his glory, and make the whole creation he has formed stand in awe of its Almighty Sovereign. And here is another barrier on the part of God; and that economy of redemption, in which a dead and undiscerning world see no skilfulness to admire, and no feature of graciousness to allure them, is so planned, in the upper. counsels of heaven, that it maketh known, to principalities and power, the manifold wisdom of Him who devised it.. ‘The men of this: infidel generation, whose every faculty is so bedimmed by the grossness of sense, that they cannot lay hold of the realities of faith, and cannot appreciate them, ito them the barriers we have now insisted on which lie in the way of man, taking God into his love, and of God taking man into his acceptance, may appear to be so many faint and shadowy considerations, of which they feel not the significancy; but, to the pure and. intellectual eye. of angels, they are substantial obstacles, and. are Mighty to Save had to travel in the greatness of his strength, in order to move them away. “The Son of God descended from heaven, and he took upon him the nature of man, and: he suffered in his’stead, and he. consented that the, whole burden of offended justice should fall upon him, and he bore in his own body on the tree, the weight of all those accomplishments by which his Father behoved to. be. glorified, and after having magnified the law, and made it honourable, by pouring out his soul unto the death for. us, he. went up on high, and by. an arm of everlasting strength, he has levelled, that wall of partition which lay, across the path of acceptance; and thus it is that the barrier on the part of God is done away, and he, with untarnished glory, can dispense forgiveness over the whole, extent of a guilty creation, because he can be just, while he is the justifier of them who believe in Jesus.

.And if the barrier, on the part of God, is thus moved aside, why not the barrier on the part of man? Does not the wisdom of redemption shew itself here also? Does it not embrace some skilful contrivance, by which it penetrates .those mounds that beset the human heart, and ward the entrance of the principle of love away from it, and which all the direct applications of terror and authority, have only the effect of fixing more’ immoveably upon their basis? Yes it does, — for it changes the aspect of the Deity towards man; and were man only to have faith in the announcements of the gospel, so as to see God with the eye of his mind under this new aspect, — love to God would spring up in his heart, as the unfailing consequence. “Let man see God as he sets himself forth in this wonderful revelation; and let him believe the reality of what he sees; and he cannot but love the Being he is employed in contemplating. “Without this gospel, he may see him to be a God of justice; but he cannot do this without seeing the frown of severity directed against himself, as a wretched offender ‘With this gospel, he sees ‘the full burden of violated justice borne away from him; ‘and ‘God ‘stands before him unrobed of all his severities; and tenderly inviting him to draw near through that blood of atonement which was shed, the just for the unjust, to bring the sinner unto-God.’ “With out this gospel, he may ‘see the trath of (God; but he-sees it’ pledged, to the fulfilment’of the most awful! threatenings agamst him? With this gospel, he sees the full weight ‘of all’these accomplishments, resting’ on the head»of the’great sacrifice; and God’s truth is now fully embarked on the. most cheering assurances of pardon, on the most ‘liberal invitations of good will, on the most exceeding great and precious promises.’ Without: this gospel; he may see the government of God leaning on the pillars/of that immutability which upholds: it; ‘but: this “very v2 7

Va imnmutability 18’to him the sentence of despair: and how can he love that face, on which are. stamped the characters of a stern and vindictive majesty? With this gospel, the face of God. stands legibly revealed to him in other characters. ‘That law which, resting on the solemn authority of its firm and unalterable requirements, demanded a fulfilment, up to the last ‘jot and tittle of it, has been magnified, and has been made honourable, by one illustrious sufferer, who put forth the greatness of his strength, in that’ dark hour of the travail of his soul, when he bore the burden of all its penalties... That. wrath which should have been discharged on the guilty millions he died for, was all concentred upon him, who took upon himself the chastisement of our peace, and on that day of mysterious agony, drank, to the very dregs, the cup of our expiation. And God, who planned the whole work of this wonderful redemption, — who in love to a guilty world sent his Son amongst us to accomplish it, — God, who rather than lose his alienated creatures, as he could not strip his eternal throne of a single attribute that supported it,awoke the sword of vengeance against his fellow, that on him the truth and the justice of the Deity might receive their most illustrious vindication — God, who, out of Christ, sits surrounded with all the darkness of unapproachable majesty, is now God in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, and not im+ puting unto them their trespasses; his tender mercy is now free to rejoice amid all the glory of his other bright and untarnished perfections, and he pours the expression of this tenderness with an unsparing hand, over the whole extent 27; of his sinful creation — and he lets himself down to the language of a beseeching supplicant, praying that each and every one of us might be reconciled unto him — and putting on a winning countenance of invitation to the guiltiest of us all, he tells us, that if we only come to him through the appointed mediator, he will blot out as with a thick cloud, our transgressions — and that, as if carried away to a land that was not inhabited, he will make no more mention of them.: And thus it is, that the goodness of God destroyeth the enmity of the human heart. When every other argument fails, this, if perceived by the eye of faith, finds its powerful and persuasive way through every barrier of resistance. Try to approach the heart of man by the instruments of terror and of authority, and it will disdainfully repel you. ‘There is not one of you skilled in the management of human nature, who does not perceive, that though this may be a way of working on the other principles of our constitution, — of working on the fears of man, or on his sense of interest, this is -not the way of gaining by a single hair-breadth on the attachments of his heart. Such a way may force, or it may terrify, but it never, never can endear; and after all the threatening array of such an influence as this, is brought to bear upon man, there is not one particle of service it can extort from him, but what is all rendered in the spirit of a painful and reluctant bondage. Now, this is not the service which prepares for heaven. This is not the service which assimilates men to angels. This is not the obedience of those. glorified spirits, whose every affection harmonizes with their every performance; and the very essence of whose piety consists of delight’ in’ God; and the love they bear to him. To bring up man to such an obedience as this, his heart behoved to be approached in a peculiar way; and no such way. is to be found, but within the limits of the Christian revelation. ‘There alone you see God, without injury to his other attributes, plying the heart of man with the irresistible argument of kind-~ ness. There

alone do you see the great Lord of heaven and of earth, setting ‘himself forth to the most worthless and the most wandering of his children, — — putting forth — his own hand to the work of healing the breach which sin had made between them, — telling him that his word could not be set aside, and his threatenings could not be mocked, and his justice could not be defied and trampled on, and that it was not possible for his perfections to receive the slightest taint in the eyes of the creation he had thrown around him; but that all this was provided for, and not a single creature within the compass of the universe he had formed, could now say, that forgiveness to man was degrading to the authority of God, and that by the very act of atonement, which poured a glory over all the high attributes of his character, his mercy might now burst forth without limit, and without controul, upon a guilty world, and the broad flag of invitation be unfurled in the sight of all its families.

Let the sinner, then, look to God through the medium of such a revelation; and the sight which meets him there, may well tame the obstinacy of that heart, which had wrapped itself up in impenetrable hardness against the force of evry oer consideration. Now that the storm of the Almighty’s wrath hasbeen discharged upon him who bore the burden: of the world’s atonement, he has turned his throne of glory into a throne of grace; and cleared away from the pavilion of his residence, all the darkness which encompassed it. ‘The God who dwelleth there, is God in Christ; and the voice he sends from it, to this dark and rebellious province of his mighty empire, is a voice of the most beseeching tenderness. Good will to mén is the announcement with which his messengers come fraught to a guilty world; and, since the moment in which it burst upon mortal ears from the peaceful canopy of heaven, may the ministers of salvation take it up, and go round with it among all the tribes and individuals of the species. — Such is the real aspect of God towards you. He cannot bear that his alienated children should be finally and everlastingly away from him. He feels for you all the longing of a parent bereaved of his offspring..’lo woo you back again unto himself, he scatters among you the largest and the most liberal assurances, and with a tone of imploring tenderness, does he say to one and to all of you, “Turn ye, turn ye, why will you die?” He has no pleasure in your teath. He does not want to glorify himself by the destruction of any one of you. “Look to me all ye ends of the earth, and be saved,” is the wide and the generous announcement, by which he would recal, from the very outermost limits of his smful creation, the most worthless and polre

oe luted of those who have wandered away from him. Now give us a man who perceives, with the eye of his mind, the reality of all this, and you give us a man in possession of the principle of faith. Give usa man. in possession of this faith; and his heart shielded, as it were, against the terrors of a menacing Deity, is softened and subdued, and resigns its every affection at the moving spectacle of a beseeching Deity; and thus it is that faith manifests the attribute which the Bible assigns to it, of working by love. Give us a man in possession of this love; and animated as he is, with the living principle of that obedience, where the willing and delighted consent of the inner man goes along with the performance of the outer man, his love manifests the attribute which the Bi-’ ble assigns to it, where it says, ‘This is the love of God, that ye keep his commandments.” And thus it is, amid the fruitlessness of every other expedient, when power threatened to crush the heart which it could not soften, — when authority lifted its voice, and laid on man an enactment of love which it could not carry, — when terror shot its arrows, and they dropped ineffectual from that citadel of the human affections, which stood proof against the impression of every one of them, — when wrath mustered up its appalling severities, and filled that bosom with despair which it could not fill with the warmth of a confiding attachment, — then the kindness of an inviting God was brought to bear on the heart of man, and got an opening through all its mysterious avenues. Goodness did what the nakedness of power could not do. It found o7* its way through all the intricacies of the human

constitution, and there, depositing the right principle of repentance, did it establish the alone effectual security for the right purposes; and the right fruits of. paren ie