The Preparation Necessary for Understanding the Mysteries of the Gospel

‘ He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath,

-to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even. that he hath.” -;

‘r is of importance to mark the principle of listribution on which it is given to some to know he mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and it 3 not given to others.. Both may at the outset e equally destitute of a clear understanding f these mysteries. But the former may have yhat the latter have not. With the former here may be a desire for explanation; with he latter there may be no such desire. The ormer may, in the earnest prosecution of this esire, be praying earnestly, and reading diliently, and striving laboriously, to do all that hey know to. be the will of God. With the. utter, there may be neither the habit of prayer, or the habit of inquiry, nor the habit of obe- 6

62 SERMON IIL. eae,

dience. To the one class will be given what they have not. From the other class what they have shall be taken away. We have already attempted to excite in the latter class a respectful attention to the truths of the gospel, and shall now confine ourselves chiefly to the object of encouraging and directing those who feel the mysteriousness of these truths, and long for light to arise in the midst of it ; — shall address ourselves to those who have an honest anxiety after that truth which is unto salvation, but find the way to it beset with many doubts and many perplexities, — to those who are impressed with a general conviction on the side of Scripture, but in whose eyes a darkness impenetrable still broods over its pages, — to those who are haunted by a sense of the imperious necessity of religion, and at the same time cannot escape from the impression, that if it is any where to be found, it is to be found within the records of the Old and New Testament, but from whose heart in the reading of these records the veil still remains untaken away.

In the further prosecution of this discourse, let us attempt, in the first place, to explain what it is that we ought to have, in order to attain an understanding of the mysteries of the gospel; and, in the second place, how it is that in many cases. these mysteries are evolved upon the mind in a clear and convincing manifestation.:

I. First, then, we ought to have an honest desire after light, and if we have this desire, it will not remain-unproductive. There is a connexion repeatedly announced to us in Scripture between. desire upon this subject, and its accomplishment. He that willeth to do the will of God shall know of my doctrine. He who hungereth and thirsteth shall be filled. He who lacketh wisdom and is desirous of obtaining it, let him vent his desire in prayer, — and if it be the prayer of confidence in God, his desire shall be given him. There are thousands to whom the Bible is a sealed book, and who are satisfied that it should remain so, who share in the impetuous contempt of the Pharisees against a doctrine to which they are altogether blind, who have no understanding of the matter, and no wish that it should be otherwise, — and unto them it will not be given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. They have not, and from them therefore shall be taken away even that which they have. There are others, again, who have an ardent and unquenchable thirst after the mysteries of the gospel; who, like the prophet in the Apocalypse, weep much because the book is not opened to them; who complain of darkness, like the Apostles of old when they expostulated with their Teacher because he spoke in parables, and, like them, who go to him with their requests for an explanation. These shall find that what they cannot do for’themselves, the Lion of the tribe of Judah will do for them. He will prevail to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof. There is something they already have, even an honest wish to be iluminated, and to this more will be given. They are awake to the desirableness, they are

64 SERMON JUL

awake to the necessity of a revelation, which — they have not yet gotten — and to them belongs’ the promise of, Awake, O sinner, and — Christ shall give thee light) Secondly, We ought to have a habit of pray- — er conjoined with a habit of inquiry; ‘and to — this more will be given. We have already adverted to the circumstance, that it. is in the Bible, and not out of the Bible, where this light is to be met with. It is by the Spirit of God, shining upon the word.of God, that his truth is reflected with clearness upon the soul. — {t is by his operation that the characters of this book are made to stand as visibly out to the eye of the understanding, as they do to the eye of the body; and therefore it is evident that it is not in the act of looking away from the written revelation, but in the act of looking towards it, that the wished-for illumination — will at length come into the mind of an in- — quirer. Let your present condition then be that of a darkness as helpless and as unattainable as can possibly be imagined, there still remains an obvious and practicable direction which you can be doing with in the mean time. — You can persevere in the exercise of reading — your Bible. ‘There you are at the place of meeting between the Spirit of God and your own spirit. You may have to wait, as if at the pool of Siloam; but the many calls of the Bible to wait upon God, to wait upon him with patience, to wait and to be of good courage, all prove that this waiting is a frequent’and a familiar part of that process by which a sinner

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finds his way out of darkness into the marvellous light of the gospel. And we have also adverted already, though ina very general way, to the difference in point of result between the active inquiries of a man who looks forward to the acquisition of saving truth as the natural and necessary termination of his inquiries, and of a man who mingles with every personal attempt after this object, the exercise of prayer, and a reverential sense of his dependence on God. The latter is just as active, and just as inquisitive as the former. The difference between them does not lie in the one putting forth diligence without a feeling of dependence, and the other feeling dependence, without a putting forth of diligence. He who is in the right path towards the attainment of light, combines both these properties. It is through the avenues of a desirous heart, and of an exercised understanding, and of sustained attention, and of faculties in quest of truth, and labouring after the possession of it, that God sends into the mind his promised manifestations. All this exercise on the one hand, without such an acknowledgment of him as leads to prayer, will be productive of nothing in the way of spiritual discernment. And prayer, without this exercise, is the mere form and mockery of an acknowledgment. He who calls upon us to hearken diligently, when he addresses us by a living voice, does in effect call upon us to read and to ponder diligently when he addresses us by a written message. To ask truth of God, while we neglect to do 6*

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for this object what he. bids us, is in fact not — to recognise God, but to insult him... It is to hold out the appearance of presenting ourselves before him, while we are not doing it at — the place of meeting, which he has assigned — ‘for us. Itis.to address an imaginary Being, whom we have invested with a character of — our own conception, and not. the Being who — bids us search his Scriptures, and incline unto — his testimonies, and stir ourselves up that we may lay hold of him. Such prayer is utterance, — and nothing more. It wants all. the substan- — tial characters of prayer. It may amount to the seeking of those who shall not be able to enter the strait gate. It falls short of the striving of those who take the kingdom of hea- — ven by force, and of whom that kingdom suf- — fereth violence. He who without prayer looks confidently for- — ward to success as the fruit of his own inyesti- — gations, is not walking humbly with God... if he were humble he would pray. But whether is he the more humble who joins with a habit — of prayer, all those accompanying circumstances which God hath prescribed, or he who, in neglect of these circumstances, ventures — himself into his presence in the language of — supplication? There may be the show of humility in confiding the whole cause of our spiritual and saving illumination to the habit of praying for it teGod. But if God himself tell — us, that we must read, and seek, and meditate, then it is no longer humility to keep by the solitary exercise of praying, [tis in fact, keeping pertinaciously by our own way, heedless

SERMON IIL “ia

of his will and his way altogether. It is approaching God in the pride of our own understanding. It is detaching from the whole work of seeking after him some of those component parts which he himself hath recommended. In the very act of making prayer stand singly out as the alone instrument of success, we are in fact drawing the life and the spirit out of prayer itself; and causing it to wither into a thing of no power and no significancy in the sight of God. It is not the prayer of acknowledgment, unless it comes from him who acknowledges the will of God in other things as well as in prayer. It is not the prayer of submission unless it comes from the heart of a man who manifests a principle of submission in all things.

Thirdly, We ought to do all that we know to be God’s will, and to this habit of humble earnest desirous reformation more will be

iven.

We trust that what has been said will prepare you for the. reception of another advice besides that of reading or praying for the attainment of that manifestation which you are in quest of, — and that is, doing. There is an alarm raised in many a heart at the very sug- -gestion of doing for an inquirer, lest he should be misled as to the ground of his juséification; lest among the multitude or the activity of his works, he should miss the truth, that a man is accepted, not through the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ; lest by every one performance of duty, he should just be adding another stone to the fabric of a delusive confi-

68 SERMON Ill.

dence, and presumptuously try to force his own way to heaven, without the rocognition of the gospel or any of its peculiarities. Now, doing stands precisely in the same relation to prayer that reading does. Without the one or the other it is the prayer either of presumption or hypocrisy. If he both read and pray, it is far

more likely that he will be brought unto the

condition of a man being justified through faith in Christ, than that he will rest his hopes before God in the mere exercise of reading. If — he both do and pray, it is far more likely that he will come to be established in the righteousness of Christ, as the foundation of all his trust, than that he will rest upon his own righteousness. For a man to give up sin at the outset, is just to do what God wills him at the

outset. For a man at. the commencement of

his inquiries, to be strenuous in the relinquishment of all that he knows to be evil, is just to enter on the path of approach towards Christ, in the very way that Christ desires him. He who cometh unto me must forsake all. For a man to put forth an immediate hand to the doing of the commandments, while he is groping his way towards a firm basis on which he might rear his security before God, is not to deviate or diverge from the Saviour. He may do it. with an eye of most intense earnestness towards the Saviour, — and while the artificial interpreter of Christ’s doctrine holds him to be wrong, Christ himself may recognise him to be one of those who keep his sayings, and to whom therefore he stands pledged to manifest himself. The man in fact by strenuously doing, is just the more significantly and the more energetically praymg. He is adding one ingredient to the business of seeking, without which the other ingredient would be in God’s sight an abomination. He is struggling against all regard to iniquity in his heart, seeing that if he have this regard God will not hear him. To say, that it is dangerous to tell a man in these circumstances to do, lest he rest in his doings and fall short of the Saviour, is to say, that it would be dangerous to place a man on the road to his wished-for home, lest when he has got updn the road, he should stand still and be satisfied. The more, in-fact, that the man’s conscience is exercised and enlightened -. (and what more fitted than wilful sin to deafen — the voice of conscience altogether?) the less will it let him alone, and the more will it urge him onward to that righteousness which is the only one commensurate to God’s law, and in which alone the holy and inflexible God can look upon him with complacency. Let him humbly betake himself, then, to the prescribed path of reading, and prayer, and obvious reformation, — and let us see if there do not evolve upon his mind, in the prosecution of it, the worthlessness of all that man can do for his meritorious acceptance with the Lawgiver — and the deep ungodliness of character which adheres to him — and the suitableness of Christ’s atonement to all his felt necessities, and all his moral aspirations — and the need in which he stands of a regenerating influence, to make him a willing and a spiritual subject of God. Let us see whether, though the light which he at length receives be marvellous, the way is not plain which leads to it; — and whether though nature be compassed — about with a darkness which no power py int i can dissipate, — there is not a clear and obvious procedure, by the steps of which the most alienated of her children may be carried onwards to all the manifestations of the kingdom of grace, and to the discernment of all its mysteries. ad Though, to the natural eye, the doctrine of Christ be not- plain, the way is plain by which we arrive at it. ‘Though, ere we see the — things of Christ, the Spirit must take of them and show them unto us, — yet this Spirit deals out such admonitions to all, that, if we follow them, he will not cease to enlarge, and to extend his teaching, till we have obtained a saving illumination. He is given to those who obey him. He abandons those who resist him. When conscience tells us to read, and to pray, and to reform, it is he who is prompting this faculty. It is he who is sending through this

. organ, the whispers of his own voice to the ear

of the inner man. If we go along with the movement, he will follow it up by other movements. He will visit him who is the willing subject of his first influences by higher demonstrations. He will carry forward his own work in the heart of that man, who, while acting upon the suggestions of his own moral sense, is in fact acting in conformity to the warnings of this kind and faithful monitor. So that the Holy Spirit will connect his very first impulses on the mind of that inquirer, who under the reign of earnestness, has set himself to read his Bible, and to knock with importunity at the door of

heaven, and to forsake the evil of his ways, and to turn him to the practice of all that he knows to be right, — the Spirit will connect these incipient measures of a seeker after Zion, with the

acquirement of wisdom and revelation in the

knowledge of Christ.

Let it not be said, then, that because the doctrine of Christ is shrouded in mystery to the general eye of the world, it is such a mystery as renders it inaccessible to the men of the world. Even to them does the trumpet of invitation blow a certain sound. They may not yet see the arcana of the temple, but they may see the road which leads to the temple. If they are never to obtain admission there, it is not because they cannot, but because they will not, come to it. “Ye will not come to me,” says the Saviour, “thatye might have life.” Reading, and prayer, and reformation, these are all obvious things; and it is the neglect of these obvious things which involves them in the guilt and the ruin of those who neglect the great salvation. This salvation is to be found of those who seek after it. The knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, which is life everlasting, is a knowledge open and acquirable to all. And, on the day of judgment, there will not be found a single instance of a man condemned because of unbelief, who sought to the uttermost of his opportunities; and evinced the earnestness of his desire after peace with God, by doing all that he might have done, and by being all that he might have beeny

Be assured, then, that it will be for want of pee SERMON IIL.

seeking, if you do not find. It will be for want of learning, if you are not taught. [t wall be for want of obediencetothe movements of yourown conscience, if the Holy Ghost, who prompts and who stimulates the conscience to all. its movements, be not poured upon you, in one large and convincing manifestation. It may still be the day of small things with you — a day despised by the accomplished adepts of a systematic and articled theology... But God will not. despise it. He will not leave your longings for ever unsatisfied. He will not keep you standing always at the threshold of vain desires and abortive endeavours. That faith, which is the gift of God, you have already attained in a degree, if you have obtained a general conviction of the importance and reality of the whole matter. He will increase that faith. Act up to the light that you have gotten by reading earnestly, and praying importunately, and striving laboriously, — and to you more will be given. You will at length obtain a clear and satisfying impression of the things of God, and the things of salvation. Christ will be recognised in all his power and in all his preciousness. You will know what it is to be established upon him. The natural legality of your hearts will give way to the pure doctrine of acceptance with God, through faith iv the blood of a crucified Saviour. The sanctifying influence of such a faith will not merely be talked of in word, but be experienced in power; and you will evince that you are God’s workmanship in Christ Jesus, by your abounding in all

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those fruits of righteousness which are through him, to the praise and glory of the Father.

IL We shall now attempt to explain, how it is that the mysteries of the gospel are, in many cases, evolved upon the mind in a clear and convincing manifestation.

And here let it be distinctly understood, that the way in many cases may be very far from the way in all cases. The experience of converts is exceedingly various, — nor do we

know a more frequent, and at the same time a more groundless cause of anxiety, than that by which the mind of an inquirer is often harassed,

when he attempts to realize the very process by which another has been called out of darkness to the marvellous light of the gospel.

Referring, then, to those grounds of mysteriousness which we have already specified in a former discourse, — God may so manifest himself to the mind of an inquirer, as to convince him, that all those analogies of common life which are taken from the relation of a servant to his master, or of a son to his father, or of a subject

- to his sovereign, utterly fail in the case of man, as he is by nature, in relation to his God. A servant. may discharge all his obligatious; a son may acquit himself of all his duties, or may, with his occasional failures, and his occasional chastisements, still keep his place in the instinctive affection of his parents; and a subject may, persevere inunseduced loyalty to the earthly government under which he lives. But the glaring and the demonstrable fact with regard to man, viewedasacreature, is, that the habit of his heart

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) SERMON UL.

is one continued habit of dislike and resistance. to the Creator who gave him birth. ‘The earthly master may have all those services rendered to which he has a right, and so be satisfied. The earthly father may have all the devotedness, and all the attachment, from his family, which he can desire, and so be satisfied. ‘The earthly sovereign may have all that allegiance from a loyal subject, who pays his taxes, and never transgresses his laws, which he expects or cares for,and sobesatisfied. But go upward from them to the God who made us, — to the God who keeps us. — to the God in whom we live, and move, and have our being, — to the God whose care and whose presence are ever surrounding us, who, from morning to night, and from night to morning, watches. over us, and tends us while we sleep, and guides us in our waking moments, and follows us to the business of the world, and brings us back. in safety to our homes, and never for a single instant of time withdraws from. us the superintendence of an eye that never slumbers, and of.a hand that is never weary: Now, all we require isa fair estimate of the claims of such a God. Does he ask too much, when he asks the affections of a heart that receives its every beat, and its every movement, from the impulse of his power? Does he ask too much, when he asks the devotedness of a life, which owes its every hour and its every moment to him, whose right hand preserves us continually? Has he no right to complain, when he knocks at the door of our hearts, and, trying to possess himself of the love and the confidence of his. own creatures, he finds that all their thoughts, and all their pursuits, and all their hkings, are utterly away from him? Is there no truth, and no justice, in the charge which he prefers against us, — when surrounded as we are by the gifts of nature and of -providence, all of which are his, the giver is meanwhile forgotten, and, amid the enjoyments of his bounty, we live without him in the world. If it indeed be true, that it is his sun which lights us-on our path, and his earth on which we tread so firmly, and his air which circulates a freshness around our dwellings, and his rain which feeds all the luxuriance that is spread around us, and drops upon every field the smiling promise of abundance for the wants of his depend —

ent children, — if all this be true, can it at the same time be right, that this all-providing God should have so little a place in our remembrance? that the whole man should be otherwise engaged, than with a sense of him, and the habitual exercise of acknowledgment to him? that in fact the full play of his regards should be expended on the things which are formed, and through the whole system of his conduct and his affairs, there should be so utter a neglect of him who formed them? Surely if this be the true description of man, and the character of his heart in reference to God, then it is a case of too peculiar a nature to be illustrated by any of the analogies of human society. It must be taken up on its own grounds; and should the injured and offended Lawgiver offer to make it

the subject of any communication, it is our part -

humbly to listen and implicitly to follow it. And here it is granted, that amongst the men

eee OM “who are utter strangers to this communication, you meet with the better and the werse; and that there is an obvious line of distinction

which marks off the base and the worthless amongst them, from those of them who are the valuable and the accomplished members of society. And yet do we aver, that one may step over that line and not be nearer than he was to - God, — that, between the men on either side of it, and-Him who created them, there lies an untrodden gulf of separation, — that, with all the justice which rules their transactions, and all the honour which animates their bosoms, and all the compassion which warms their hearts, and streams forth either in tears of pity, or in acts of kindness, upon the miserable, — with all these virtues which they do have, and which serve both to bless and to adorn the condition of humanity, there is one virtue, which, prior to the reception and the influence of the gospel of Christ, they most assuredly do not have, — they are utterly devoid of godliness. They have no desire, and no mclination towards God. There may be the dread of him, and the oceasional remembrance of him; but there is no affection for him. This is the charge which we carry round amongst all the sons and daughters of Adam, who have not submitted themselves to the only name that is given under heaven whereby men can be saved. We are not denying that the persons of some of them are dignified by the more respectable attributes of character; and that, from the persons of others of them, there are beauteously reflected the more amiable and endearing attributes of character. But

SERMON UL. a

we affirm, that with all these random varieties of moral exhibition which are to be found — the principle of loyalty to God has lost the hold of a presiding influence over all the children of our degraded and undone nature. We ask you to collect all. the scattered remnants of what is great, and of what is graceful in accomplishments that may have survived the fall of our fitst parents; and we pronounce, of the whole assemblage, that they go not to alleviate, by one iota, the burden of that controversy which lies between God and their posterity, — that throughout all the ranks and diversities of character which prevailinthe world, there is one pervading affection of enmity to him; that the man of talents forgets that he has nothing which he did not receive, and so, courting, by some lofty enterprise of mind, the gaze of this world’s admiration, he renounces his God, and makes an idol of his fame, — that the man of ambition feels not how subordinate he is to the might and the majesty of his Creator, but turning away. all his reverence from him, falls down to the idol of power, — that the man of avarice withdraws all his trust from the living God, and, embarking all his desire in the pursuit of riches, and all his security in the possession of them, he makes an idol of wealth, — that, descending from these to the average and the every-day members of our world’s population, we see each walking after the counsel of -his own heart, and in the sight of his own eyes, with every wish directed to the objects of time, and every hope bounded by its anticipations: And, amid all the love they bear to their families, and all the diligence they 7%

- give to their business, and all the homage of praise and attachment they obtain from their friends, are they so surrounded by the influences of what is seen and whats sensible, that the invisible God is scarcely ever thought of, and his character not at all dwelt on with delight, and his will never admitted to an habitual and a practical ascendency over their conduct, so as to make it true of all, and of every one of us, that there is none who understandeth, and none who seeketh after God.

Now, if a mando not see this case made out against himself in all its enormity, he will feel that the man who talks of it, and who proposes the gospel application to it, talketh mysteriously. If the Spirit have not convinced him of sin, and he have not learned to submit his charac-. ter to the lofty standard of a law which offers to subordinate to the will of God, not merely the

whole habit of his outward history, but also the whole habit of his inward affections, both the disease and the remedy are alike unknown to him. His charactermay be fair and respectable in the eyes of men; but it will not carry upon it one feature of that spirituality and holiness, and relish for those exercises that have God for their immediate object, which assimilate men to angels, and make them meet for the joys of eternity. His morality will be the morality of life, and his virtues will be the virtues of the world; and all the mystery of a parable, or of a dark saying, will appear to hang over the terms and the explanations of that gospel, against the hight of which, the god of this world blindeth the minds of those who believe not. ry

Let us therefore reflect that. the principle on which the peculiarities of the gospel look so mysterious, is just the feeling which nature has of its own sufficiency; and, that you may renounce this delusive feeling altogether, we ask you to think, how totally destitute you are of that which God chiefly requires of you. He requires your heart, and we venture to say of every. man amongst you, who has heretofore lived in neglect of the great salvation, that his heart, with all its objects and affections, is away from God, — that it is not a sense of obligation to him which forms the habitual and the presiding influence of its movements, — that therefore every day and every hour of your history in the world, accumulates upon you the guilt of a disobedience of a far deeper and more offensive character than even the disobedience of -your more notorious and external violations. There is ever with you, lying folded in the recesses of your bosom, and pervading the whole system both of your desires and of your doings, that which gives to sin all its turpitude, and all its moral hideousness in the sight of God. There is a rooted preference of the creature to the Creator. There is a full desire after the gift, and a listless ingratitude towards the giver. There in an utter devotedness, in one shape or other, to the world that is to be burnt up, — and an utter forgetfulness, amid all your forms, and all your decencies, of him who endureth for ever. There’is that univers4l attribute of the carnal mind — enmity against God; and -we affirm that, with this distaste in your hearts towards him, you, on every principle of a spiritual and intelligent morality, are as chargeable with rebellion against your Maker, as if some apostate angel had been your champion, and. you warred with God, under the.waving standards of defiance. It was.to clear away the guilt of this monstrous iniquity that Christ died. It was to make it possible for God, with bis truth unviolated, and his holiness untarnished, and all the high -attributes of his eternal and unchangeable nature unimpaired, to hold out forgiveness to the world, — that propitiation was made through the blood of his own Son, even that God might be just, while the justifier of them who. believe in Jesus. It is to make it possible for man to love the Being whom nature taught him to hate and to fear, that God now lifts, from his mercy-seat, a voice of the most beseeching tenderness, and smiles upon the world as God in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, and not imputing unto them their trespasses. It was utterly to shift the moral constitution of our -minds, — an achievement beyond any power of humanity, — that the Saviour, after he-died and rose again, obtained the promise of the Father, even that Spirit, through whom alone the fixed and radical disease of nature can be done away. And thus, by the ministration of the baptism of the Holy Ghost, does he undertake not: only to improve but to change us, — not only to repair but to re-make us, — — not only to amend our evil works, but to create us anew unto good works, that we may be the workmanship of God in Christ Jesus our Lord., These are the leading and essential peculiarities. of the New Testament:

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This is the truth of Christ; though to the ge-

~neral mind of the world it is the truth of Christina mystery. These are the ‘parables which the-commissioned messengers of grace are to deal out to the sinful children of Adam, — and dark as they may appear, or disgusting as they may sound in the ears of those who think that they are rich, and have need of nothing, they are the very articles upon which hope is made to beam on the heart of a converted sinner — and peace is restored to him, — and acceptance with God is secured by the terms of an unalterable covenant, — and the only effective instruments of a vital and substantial reformation are provided; so that he who before was dead in trespasses and sins is quickened together with Christ, end made alive unto God, and renewed again after his image, and enabled to make constant progress in all the graces of a holy and spiritual obedience.

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