The Mysterious Aspect of the Gospel to the Men of the World

‘* Then said I, Ah, Lord God! they say of me, Doth he not speak parables?””

iy parables, the lesson that is meant to be conveyed is to certain degree shaded in obscurity. They are associated by the Psalmist with dark sayings — “I will open my mouth in a parable, I will utter dark sayings of old.” We read in the New Testament of a parable leaving all the effect of an unexplained mystery upon the understanding of the general audience to which it was addressed; and the explanation of the parable given to a special few was to them the clearing up of a mystery: “It is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven; but to them it is not given!”

The prophets of old were often commissioned to address their countrymen under the guise of symbolical language. This threw a veil over the meaning of their communications; and though it was a veil of such transparency as could be seen through by those who looked earnestly and attentively, and with a humble desire to be taught in the will of God, — yet there was dimness enough to intercept all the moral, and all the significancy, from the minds of those who wanted principle to be in earnest; or who wanted patience for the exercise of attention; or who wanted such a concern about God, as either to care very much for his will, or to feel that any thing which respected him was worth the trouble of a very serious investigation. seh esd deeeht os.

. They who wanted this concern and this principle, from them was taken away even that which they had. God at length ceased from his messages, and the Spirit of God ceased from his warhings. They who had the preparation of all this docility, to them more was given. Their honest desire after knowledge was rewarded by the acquirement of it. They continued to look, and to inquire, and at length. they were illuminated; and thus was fulfilled the - saying of the Saviour, that “whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly, — but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.”

It is not difficult to conceive how the obscure intimations of Ezekiel would be taken by the careless and ungodly men of his. generation. It is likely that even from the naked denunciations of vengeance they would have turned contemptuously away. And it is still more likely that they would refuse the impression of them, when offered to their notice, under a fig- “urative disguise... It is not at all to be supposed

4*
ie?

4a. SERMON Il.

‘that they would put forth any activity of mind in quest of that which they nauseated, and of that which, if ever they had found, they would have found to be utterly revolting to all their habits of impiety. They are the very last men we should expect to meet with at the work of a pains-taking search after the interpretation of these parables. Nay, they would gladly fasten upon the obscurity of them both as a circumstance of reproach against the prophet, and as.an apology for their own indifference. And thus it is, that to be a teacher of parables might at length become a scoff and a by-word; and the prophet seems to have felt the force of it as an opprobrious designation, seems to be looking forward to the mixture of disdain and impatience with which he would be listened to, when God charged him with an allegorical communication to his countrymen, and he answered, “Ah, Lord God! they say of me, Doth he not speak parables?”

Now the question we have to put is — Is there no similar plea of resistance ever preferred against the faithful messengers of God m the present day? It is true, that in our time there is no such thing as a man coming amongst you, charged with the utterance of a direct and personal inspiration. But it is the business of every minister truly to expound the record of inspiration; and is it not very possible that. in so doing he may be reproached, not for preaching parabolically, but for preaching mysteriously? Have you never heard of a sermon being called mystical; and what shall we think of it, if, in point of fact, this imputation falls most ee 4 SERMON II, bade

readily and most abundantly on the sermon that is most pervaded by the spirit, and most overrun with the phraseology of the New Testament? In that composition there are certain terms which recurincessantly, and which would therefore appear to represent certain very leading and prominent ideas. Now, whether are these ideas clearly and promptly suggested to your mind, by the utterance of the terms? What are the general character and effect which in your eye is imparted to a sermon, when, throughout the whole of it, the words of the apostolic vocabulary are ever and anon obtruded upon your hearing — and the whole stress of the argument is made to lie on such matters as sanctification; and the atonement; and the blood of the everlasting covenant; and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, who takes up his habitation in the soul of the believer; and salvation by grace; and the spirit of adoption poured forth on the heart, and filling it with all. the peace and joy of a confident reconciliation; and the exercise of fellowship with the Father, and the Son; and the process of growing up unto Christ; and the habit of receiving out of his fulness, and of beholding with open face his glory, so‘as to be changed into’ the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. We are not at present asking, if you feel the disgust with which unsubdued nature ever listens to these representations; or in what degree they are offensive to your taste, and painfully uncongenial with the whole style and habit of your literature. But we ask, if such terms and such phrases as i“. SERMON IL

have now been specified, do not spread before the eye of your mind an-aspect of exceeding dimness over the preacher’s demonstration? Does he not appear to you as if he wrapped himself up in the obscurity of a technical language, which you are utterly at a loss to comprehend? When the sermon in question is put by the side of some lesson of obvious morality, or some exposition of those principles which are recognised and acted upon in erdinary life, does it not look to you as if it was shrouded from common observation altogether; and that ere you could be initiated. into the mystery of such language and of such doctrine, you would need to describe a mighty and still untrodden interval from all your present habits of conception? And yet, what if it be indeed the very language and the very doctrine of the New Testamentr — if all the jargon that is charged on the interpretation of the word be the actual word itself? — and if the preacher be faithfully conveying the message of the Bible, at the very time that the hearer is shielding himself from the impression of it, by the saying, that he preacheth mysteries? But to keep the two parties at.a still more hopeless distance from each other, — the message of such a preacher, incomprehensible as many of its terms and many of its particulars may be, evidently bears a something upon it that is fitted to alarm the fears, and utterly to

See se

thwart the strongest tendencies of nature. Let —

him be just a faithful expounder of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and let the blindness of the natural man be what it may, still there is

SERMON II. a;

scarcely a hearer who can fail to perceive, that, anterior to the reception of this Gospel, the preacher looks upon him as the enemy of God, — and strongly points at such a controversy between him and his Maker, as can only be made up through an appointed Mediator — and requires of him such a faith as will transform his character, ard as will shift the whole currency of his affections and desires — and affirms the necessity of such a regeneration, as that all old things shall be done away, and all things shall become new; — and lets him know, that to be a Christian indeed he must die unto sense, he must be crucified unto the world, and, renouncing its charms and its predilections, must learn to have his conversation in heaven, and to choose God as the strength of his heart and his portion for evermore. All this flashes plainly and significantly enough, through that veil of mysticism which appears .to overspread the general doctrine of the preacher; and imparts a forbidding character to it in the eyes of those to whom we are alluding; and they will be glad of any pretence to shun a painful and a revolting contemplation; and they will complain of him on the: very ground on which the Jews of old complained of Ezekiel, as a dealer in parables — and while much of their antipathy is founded upon his. being so strict and so spiritual, and so unaccommodating to the general tone of society, one of the charges which will be most frequently and most loudly preferred against him, is that he is so very mysterious. In the prosecution of the following discourse, ign SERMON IL.

we shall endeavour in the first place to state

shortly the ground on which. the religion of the New Testament looks so mysterious a thing to the men of the world, and then conclude with a short practical remonstrance upon this subject. yews

I. There are certain experiences of human life so oft repeated, and.so familiar to ail our recollections, that when we perceive, or think we perceive, an analogy between them and the matters of religion, then religion does not appear to us to be mysterious. There is not a more familiar exhibition in society than that of a servant who performs his allotted work, and who obtains his stipulated reward — and we are all servants, and one is our master, even God. There is nothing more common than that a son should acquit himself to the satisfaction of his parents; — and we are all

the children of an universal parent, whom it:

is our part to please in all things. Even when that son falls under displeasure, and is either visited with compunction or-made to receive the chastisement of his disobedience, there is nothing more common than to witness the relentings of an earthly father, and the readiness with which forgiveness is awarded on the repentance and sorrow of the offender, — and. we, in like manner, hable to err from the pure law of heaven, have surely a kind and indulgent Father to deal with. And, lastly, there 1s nothing more common than that the loyalty of a zealous and patriotic subject should be rewarded by the patronage, or, at least, by the protection, of the civil magistrate — — and that an act of transgression against the laws should be visited by an act of vengeance on the part of him who is a terror to evil doers, while a praise to such as do well. And thus it is too, that we are under a lawgiver‘in heaven who is able both to save and to destroy. Now so long as the work of religious instruction can be upheld by such analogies as these, — so long as the relations of civil or of domestic society can be employed to illustrate the relation between God and the creatures whom he has formed, — so long as the recollections of daily experience can thus be applied to the method of the divine administration, — a vein of perspicuity will appear.to run through the clear and rational exposition of him who has put all the mist and all the, technicals of an obscure theology away from him. All his lessons will run in an easy and.direct train. Nor do we see how it is possible to be bewildered amongst such explanations, as are suggested by the most ordinary doings and concerns of human society; — and did the preacher only confine himself to such doctrine, as that God rewards the upright, and punishes the rebellious, and upon the impulse of that compassion which belongs to him, takes ‘again the penitent into acceptance, and in the’ great day of remuneration, will give unto every man according to his works, — -did he only confine himself to traths so- palpable, and build upon it applications so obvious, as just to urge us to the performance of duty by the promised reward, and deter us from the infraction of it by the severities of the threatened punishment, ee eg er ee en a ee ee ae aS ba oAt ‘ heh he es.

and call us to reformation by affectionately pleading with us the mercies of God, and warn us with all his force and- all ‘his fidelity, that should we persist in obstinate impenitence we shall be cut off from happiness forever, — there might be something to terrify, — but there would at least be nothing to darken or to perplex us in these interpretations, — nothing that would not meet common intelligence, and be helped forward by all the analogies of common. observation, — and should this therefore prove the great burden of the preacher’s demonstration, we should be the last to reproach him, as a dealer in parables, or as a dealer in mysteries. To attach us the mere to this rational style of preaching, we cannot but perceive that it obtains a kind of experimental countenance from the actual distinctions of character which are realized in the peopled world around us. Can any thing be more evident than that there is a line of separation between the sensual and the temperate, between the selfish and the disinterested, between the sordid and the honourable; or if you require a distinction more strictly re- ,ligious, between the profane and the decent keeper of all the ordinances? Do not the former do what, in the matter of it, is contrary to the law of God, and the latter do. what, in the matter of it, is agreeable to that law? Here then at once we witness the two grand divisions of human society, ina state of real and visible exemplification — and, what more is necessary than just to employ the most direct and intelligible motives of conduct; for persuading men to withdraw irgm one of these divisions, and pass over to the other of them? Surely it is just as we occupy the higher and the lower places in the scale of character, that we shall be found on the right and on the left hand of the judge on the day of reckoning: And what more obvious way than of preparing a people for eternity — than just to point our urgency to the one object of prevailing upon men to cross the line of separation, to cease from the iniquities which abound on the one side of it, and to put on the reformations which are practised on the other side of it? For this purpose, what else is to be done than plainly to tell the whole amount of the interest and obligation which lies on the side of virtue, and. as plainly to tell of the ruin and the degradation both of character and of prospect which lie on the side of vice, — to press the accomplishments of a good life on the one hand, and to denounce the falsehoods and the dishonesties, and the profligacies of a bad life on the other, — in a word, to make our hearers the good subjects of God, much im the same way, as you would propose to make them the good servants of their master, or the good subjects of their government; and thus by the simple and direct enforcements of duty, to shun all the difficulties of a scholastic theology, and to keep clear of all its mysteriousness.

It is needless to say how much this process is reversed by many a teacher of Christianity. It is true, that they hold out most prominently the need of some great transition — but it is a transition most mysteriously different from the act of crossing that line of separation, to which

5

‘thes oe Satie a

SERMON It.

we have just been adverting. Without referring at allin fact to any such line, do they come forth from the very outset with one sweeping denunciation of worthlessness and guilt, which they carry round among all the varieties of character, and by which they affirm every individual of the human race, to be an undone sinner in the sight of God. Instead of bidding him look to other: sinners less deformed by - blemishes, and more rich in moral accomplishments, than himself, and then attempt-to recover his distance from the divine favour by the imitation of them, they bid him think of the awful amount of debt and of deficiency ‘that lies between the lawgiver m heaven, and a whole world guilty before him. ‘They speak of a depravity so entire, and of an alienation from God so deep, and so universal, as positively to obliterate that line of separation which is supposed to mark off those, who, upon the degree of their obedience, are rightful claimants to the honours of eternity, from those, who, upon the degree of their disobedience, are the wretched outcasts of condemnation. They reduce the men of all casts and of all characters, to the same footing of worthlessness in the sight of God; and speak of the

evil of the human heart in such terms, as will

sound to many a mysterious exaggeration, and, like the hearers of Ezekiel, will these not be able to comprehend the argument of the preacher, when he tells them, though in the very language of the Bible, that they are the heirs of wrath; that none of them is righteous, no not one; that all flesh have corrupted their

Po an

SERMON Ee Bi

ways, and have fallen short of the glory of God; that the world at large is a lost and a fallen world, and that the natural inheritance of all who live in it, is the inheritance of a temporal death, and a ruined eternity:

When the preacher goes on in this strain, those hearers whom the Spirit has not convinced of sin will be utterly at a loss to understand him, — nor are we to wonder, if he seem to speak to them ina parable, when he speaks of the disease, — that all the darkness of a parable should still seem to hang over his demonstrations, when, as a faithful ‘expounder of the revealed will and counsel of God, he proceeds to tell them of the remedy. For God hath not only made known the fearful magnitude of his reckoning against us, but he has prescribed, and with that authority which only belongs to him, the way of its settlement; and he has told us that all the works and all the efforts of unrenewed nature are of no avail, in gaining us acceptance, and that he has laid the burden of our atonement on him who alone was able to bear it; and he not only invites, but he commands, and he beseeches us, to enter into peace and pardon on the footing of that expiation which Christ hath made, and of that righteousness which Christ hath wrought out for us; and he further. declares, that we have come into the world with such a moral constitution, as will not merely need to be repaired, but as will need to be changed or made over again, ere we be meet for the inheritance of the saints; and still for this object does he point our eyes to the great Mediator who has undertaken, not merely for the forgiveness, but who has undertaken for the sanctification of all who put their trust in him; and he announces that out of his fulness there ever come forth supplies of strength for the new obedience of new creatures in Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, it is when the preacher is unfolding this scheme of salvation, — — it is when he is practically applying it to the conscience and the conduct of his hearers, — it is when the terms of grace, and faith, and sanctification, are pressed. into frequent employment for the work of these very peculiar explanations, — it is, when instead of illustrating his subject by those analogies of common life which might have done for men of an untainted nature, but which will not do for the men of this corrupt world, he faithfully

unfolds that economy of redemption which God

hath actually set up for the recovery of our destill in darkness, the whole argument sounds as strangely and as obscurely, as if it were conveyed to him m an unknown language, — it is then, that the repulsion of his nature to the truth as it is in Jesus, finds a willing excuse in the utter mysteriousness of its articles, and its terms; and gladly does he put away from him the unwelcome message, with the remark, that he who delivers it, 1s a speaker of parables, and there is no comprehending him. aa

It will readily occur as an observation upon —

all that has been delivered, that by the great majority of hearers, this imputation of mysterioushess is never preferred, — that in fact, they —

are most habituated to this style of preaching,

generate species, — it is then, that toa hearer —

-~and that they recognise the very thing which they value most, and are best acquainted with, when they hear a sermon replete with the doctrine, and abounding in the terms, and uttered -in the cadence of orthodoxy. Of this we are perfectly aware. The point to carry with the great bulk of hearers is, not to- conquer their disgust at the form of sound words, but to conquer their resistance to the power of them; to alarm them by the consideration, that the influence of the lesson is altogether a distinct matter from the pleasantness of the song, — that their ready and delighted acquiescence in the preaching of the faith, may consist with a total want of obedience to the faith, — and that with all the love they bear to the phraseology of the gospel, and all their preference for its ministers, and all their attendance upon its sacraments, the kingdom of God, however much it may have come to them in word, may not at all have come to them in power. This is a distinct error from the one we have been combating, — a weed which grows abundantly. in another quarter of the field altogether, — a peryerseness of mind, more deceitful than the other, and perhaps still more unmanageable, and against which, the faithful minister has to set himself amongst that numerous class of professors, who like to hear of.the faith, but never apply a single practical test to the question, Am in the faith? who like to hear of regeneration, but never put the question, Am I really regenerated? who like to hear that without Christ they can do nothing, but may be enabled to do all things through him strengthening them,

5*
ih SERMON II.

but never enter into the important personal inquiry, Is he really strengthening me, and am J, by my actual victory over the world, and my actual progress in the accomplishments of personal Christianity, bearing evidence upon myself that [have a réal part and interest in these things?

There can be no doubt as to the existence of such a class, — and under another text, there could be no difficulty in finding out a scriptural application, by which to reach and to reprove them. But the matter suggested by the present text is, that if a minister of the present day should preach as the Apostles did before him, — if the great theme of his ministrations be Jesus Christ, and him crucified, — if the doctrine of the sermon be a faithful transcript of the doctrine of the New Testament, — there is one class, we have every warrant for believing, from whom the word will not return unto’ him void, — and there is another class who will be the willing hearers, but not the obedient doers of the word: But there is still a third class, made up of men of cultivated literature, and men of polished and respectable society, and men of a firm secular intelligence in all the ordinary matters of busmess, who, at the same time, possessing no sympathies whatever with the true spirit and design of Christianity, are exceedingly shut up, in all the avenues both of their heart and understanding, against the peculiar teaching of the gospel. Like the hearers of Ezekiel, they feel an impression of mysteriousness. ‘There isa certain want of adjustment .between the truth as it is in Jesus, and the prevailing style of their conceptions. All their views of human life, and all the lessons they may have gathered from the school of civil or classical morality, and all their preferences for what they count the clearness and the rationality of legal preaching, and all the predi-Jections they have gotten in its favour, from ‘the most familiar analogies in human society, — all these, coupled with their utter blindness to the magnitude of that guilt which they have incurred under the judgment of a spiritual law, enter as so many elements of dislike in their hearts, towards the whole tone and character of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. And they go to envelop the subject in such a shroud of mysticism to their eyes, that many of the preachers of the gospel are, by them, resisted on the same plea with the prophet of old, to whom his contemptuous countrymen meant to attach the ridicule and the ignominy of a proverb, when they said, — he is a dealer in parables. We mistake the matter, if we think that the offence of the cross has yet ceased from the land. We mistake it, if we think .that the persecution of contempt, a species of persecution more appalling to some minds than even direct and personal violence, is not still the appointed trial of all who would live godly, and of all who would expound zealously and honestly the doctrine of Christ Jesus our Lord. We utterly mistake it, if we think that Christianity is not even to this very hour the same very peculiar thing that it was in the days of the Apostles, — that it does not as much signalize and separate us from a world lying in wickedness, — that the reproach cast upon Paul, that-he

was mad, because he was an intrepid follower °

of Christ, is not still ready. to be preferred against every faithful teacher, and every consistent disciple of the faith, — and that, under the terms of methodism, and fanaticism, and mysticism, there is not ready to be discharged

upon them from the thousand batteries of a

hostile and unbelieving world, as abundant a shower of invective and .contumely as in the first ages.

Il. Now, if there be any hearers present who feel that we have spoken to them, when we spoke of the resistance which is held out against peculiar Christianity, on the ground. of that mysteriousness in which it appears to be concealed from all ordinary discernment, — we should like to take our leave of them at present with two observations. We ask them, in the first place, if they haye ever, to the satisfaction of their own minds, disproved the Bible, — and if not, we ask them. how they can sit ‘at ease, should all the mysteriousness which they

charge upon Evangelical truth, and by which —

they would attempt to justify their contempt for it, shall be found to attach to the very language, and to the very doctrine ef God’s own communication? What if it be indeed the truth of God? What if it be the. very language of the offended lawgiver? What if they be the only overtures of reconciliation, upon the acceptance of which a sinner can come nigh unto

him? Now he actually. does say that no man ° cometh unto the Father but by the Son, — and that his is the only name given under heaven whereby men can be saved, — — and that he will be magnified only in the appointed Mediator, — and that Christ is all in all — and that there is no other foundation on which man can lay, and that he who believeth on him shall not be confounded. He further speaks of our personal preparation for heaven — and here, too, may his utterance sound mysteriously in your hearing, as he tells that without holiness no man can see God, — and that we are without strength while we are without the Spirit to make us holy = — and that unless a man be born again he shall not enter into the kingdom of God, — and that he should wrestle m prayer for the washing of regeneration, — and that he should watch for the. Holy Ghost with all perseverance, — and that he should aspire at being perfect through Christ strengthening him, — and that he should, under the operation of those great provisions which -are set up in the New Testament for creating us anew unto good works, conform himself unto that doctrine of grace by which he 4s brought to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present evil world. We agam ask them, if all this be offensive to their taste, and utterly revolting to their habits and inclinations, and if they turn with disgust from the bitterness of such an application, and can behold no strength to constrain them in any such arguments, and no eloquence to admire.in them. With what discernment truly is your case taken up in this very Bible, whose phraseology and whose doc-Ba ee a Np a on; ee Be h “At a Vy. ’

trine are so unpalatable to you, when it tells us of the preaching of the cross being foolishness, — -but remember that it says it is foolishness to. those. who perish; when it tells of the. natural man not receiving of the things of the Spirit, — but remember that it says, if ye have not the Spirit of God, ye are none of his; when it tells of the gospel being hid, — but hid to them who are lost: “In whom the God of this world hath blinded the. minds of those which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gos- — pel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” Maas

Secondly, let us assure the men, who at this

moment bid the stoutest defiance to the message of the gospel, — the men whose natural taste appears to offer an invincible barrier against the reception of its truths,-the men who, upon the plea‘of mysteriousness, or the plea of fanaticism, or the plea of. excessive and unintelligible peculiarity, are most ready to repudiate the whole style and doctrine of the New Testament, — -let us assure them-that the time may yet come, when they shall:render to this very gospel the most striking of all acknowledgments, even by sending to the door of its most faithful ministers, and humbly cra — ving from them their explanations and their prayers. It indeed offers an affecting contrast to all the glory of earthly prospects,.and to all the vigour of confident and rejoicing health, and to all the activity and. enterprise of business, when the man who made the world his theatre, and-felt his mountain to stand strong on the fleeting foundation of its enjoyments

. SERMON If. 59

and its concerns, — when he comes to be bowed down with infirmity, or receives from the trouble within, the: solemn intimation that death is now looking to him in good earnest: When such a man takes him to the bed of sickness, and’he knows it to be a sickness unto death, — when, under all the weight of breathlessness and pain, he distens to the man of God, as he

yoints the way that leadeth to eternity, — what, would ask, is the kind of gospel that is most fitted to charm the sense of guilt and the anticipations of vengeance away from him? Sure we are, that we never in theseaffecting circumstances — through which you have all to pass — we never saw the man who could maintain a stability, and a hope, from the sense of his own righteousness; but who, if leaning on the righteousness of Christ, could mix a peace and an elevation with his severest agonies. We never saw the expiring mortal who could look with an undaunted eye on God as his lawgiver; but often has all its languor been lighted up with joy at the name of Christ as his Saviour. We never saw the dying acquaintance, who, upon the retrospect of his virtues and of his doings, could prop the tranquillity of his spirit on the expectation -of a legal reward. O no! this is not the element which sustains the tranquillity of death beds. It is the hope of forgiveness. It is a believing sense of the efficacy of the atonement. It is the prayer of faith, offered up in the name of him who is the Captain of all our salvation. It is adependence on that power which can alone impart a meetness for the in- heritance of the saints, and present the spirit holy, and unreproveable, and unblameabie, in the sightofGod-.

Now, what we have to urge is, that if these be the topics, which, on the last half hour of your life, are the only ones that will possess, in your judgment, any value or substantial importance, why put them away from you now? You will recur to them then, and for what? that you may get the forgiveness of your sins. But there is a something else you must get, ere you can obtain an entrance into peace or glory. You must get the renovation of that nature, which is so deeply tainted at this moment with the guilt of ingratitude and forgetfulness towards God. This must be gone through ere you die; and say if a change so mighty should be wantonly postponed to the hour of dying? — when all your refusals of the gospel have har- ‘dened and darkened the mind against it; when a demonstration of the Spirit then, is surely not to. be counted on, as the return that you will experience for resisting all his intimations now; when the effects of the alienation ofa whole life, both in extinguishing the light of your conscience, and in riveting your distaste for holiness, will be accumulated into such a barrier in the way of your return to God, as stamps upon death-bed conversions, a grievous unlikelihood, and should give an imperious force to the call of “To-day, while it is called to-day, harden not your hearts, seeing that now is your accepted time, and now is your day of salvation.” NS ad ine

=”