Bible Commentaries

The Teachings of Nature

1 Corinthians 11:14

The Apostle is speaking about a particular subject; it is of no interest to us: but the principle which he lays down is of perpetual value and application. I wish to lure you into two or three simple admissions. The church in which we assemble built itself. I want you to admit that simple statement to be true. No human hand touched it; whether it came down, or whether it rose up from the earth, it is impossible to say; but precisely as it now stands it was found by those who occupy it. No man built it, no man touched it, no man charged for it; the whole edifice came to earth just as we see it. Do you receive the statement with a smile? Why should you do so? There may be more in the admission or supposition than you expect. Be careful how you admit anything at any time. Things are so connected one with another that, in talking the commonest speech, you may be committing yourselves to the most subtle and complicated scheme of metaphysics. Let me then make a less demand upon your imagination, and get you to admit that, if the church did not build itself, the pulpit did. That is a much smaller area, and therefore will tax, in proportionate degree, much less of your credulity and imagination. The pulpit came up out of the earth or descended from the roof, we cannot tell which; but here it is: no man touched it, no tool fashioned it, no fingers polished it; but just as you see it, it came to be. Do you still smile? Do you think I would lead you into fooldom, and tease and torture you with your own folly? Then let me circumscribe still more, and say that if the church did not build itself, or the pulpit did not build itself, the glass in one of the windows made itself. Let us circumscribe still further and say one of the panes; let us still further circumscribe and say, the Very smallest pane of glass in this building made itself. Now how do we stand? Just as badly as ever; I cannot get any one to assent to these propositions. If you think it worth while to condemn them you simply dismiss them with a sneer, or turn aside from them with most suggestive indifference.

You have a theory, which has sometimes led you into trouble. Your theory is to believe nothing that transcends the circle of positive human experience. Within the four corners of that theory you are prepared to believe largely, but beyond the four corners of that theory you will not go one inch. So you exclude miracles, supernaturalism, inspiration, the unseen universe, God. You take rank with those philosophers who are experiental; they subject every theory, suggestion, proposition to the test of actual human experience, saying, Has man ever known anything like this? Does this thing come within our experience and observation? Can we subject it to the test of our hands? Will it confine itself within the bounds of our reason? If not, we dismiss it; therefore we take up all books of divinity, according to Hume's suggestion, and we simply commit them to the flames. Our theory, say you, is the theory of experience. So you will not believe that the church built itself, that the pulpit built itself, or that the smallest pane of glass in the windows of the church made itself; you have never known any such self-making in any department of life; the very suggestion of self-making in these directions excites the resentment of your reason. So be it. Let us go away from the church altogether.

Above us, around us, beneath us, there is a great structure called the universe: I propose that we say it made itself. What do you say in reply to that suggestion? Let us circumscribe and say, If the whole universe of the telescope did not make itself, our own little world is self-made. Again you pause, again I cannot get you to assent to my suggestion; then let us try within more circumscribed limits to get some assent to this theory of self-creation, let us pluck a blade of grass from the meadow and say, This one blade is its own creator. You will not even admit so small a proposition as that; you are as consistent in your denials with regard to the universe, the earth, and the grass as you were with regard to the church, the pulpit, and the window pane. What do you know about nature? That is a very common word in the books of the day. Suppose a man should come to the city and write a book about it, and suppose that he should state in the preface of the book that he has only stood at one street-corner of the city, and has seen nothing of the city beyond what he could see from that position; and he has written an elaborate treatise about the metropolis. He has never seen its libraries, its galleries of art; he has never walked through its museums, or inspected its historical and monumental buildings; he has simply stood at one street-corner, and taken in as much as he could by glancing round from right to left, and he has written a large book upon the metropolis of England. What would you think of him? Would you buy the book? You would not even borrow it. Yet this is very much more than anybody has done in relation to God's great city of the universe. We have not even stood at one little street-corner in it; yet we tell what the universe 1 Corinthians 11:23

These words were used by the Apostle Paul. There is a word put in—"The same night in which he was betrayed": omit the word "same"—"The night in which he was betrayed." Events make time memorable. Our sufferings are our birthdays, or our burial-days, or our resurrection-days, according to the view we are enabled to take of them whilst we tarry beside the all-engulfing and all-sanctifying woe of Christ. There is a subtle music in the very words. We could not have read—"The morning in which he was betrayed: the glorious summer noontide in which he was betrayed." It is better thus: the night, the darkness, the gloom, the midnight involved in midnight, in which he was betrayed. But this is only one view, and it is only our view. We are shocked with a great surprise. Even the verbal fitness of things adds to our soul's disquiet. What view did Jesus Christ himself take of the night in which he was betrayed? What did he do? That is the very point. How did he use that darkness? Did he accept it as a signal of despair, and say, I have failed, and must return whence I came? Properly read, these words are the beginning of the sublimest revelation of Christ's character. "The same night in which he was betrayed"—he was overwhelmed? No. He yielded himself to the malign spell of despair? No: He "took bread." He was always taking bread that he might give it. He would be great in darkness; the tragedy shall but reveal his majesty. What did Jesus Christ do the same night in which he was betrayed? He founded a sacrament; the simplest of feasts, a memorial banquet; and he said, As often as ye gather around this table ye gather around your Lord; and as oft as ye do this simple deed you do it in remembrance of me." Is that all? No,—"in remembrance" takes us back away over the stony road of our yesterdays when we did all the sin, and committed all the folly; and this sacrament is intended to do more—it is to show forth the Lord's death till he come. There is the future, the road we have never travelled, the unstained, unsullied path, the road of sunbeams and flowers, without a footprint but his own. This he did on the same night in which he was betrayed. He thought of his Church, he arranged the feast, suiting his own simplicity, he set up a memorial beautiful as love, and simple as the thought of a child; he condescended to poverty, so that any man who has one crumb of bread can eat the Lord's body. This was no feast for kings of wealth, for sons of splendour and children of luxury; it was the world's simple but ample board. Wherever there is bread—and there is bread wherever there is life—the Lord's death can be set forth till he come. Then he was not overwhelmed? Contrariwise, he was prophetic, poetic, victorious; the only quiet, noble, royal heart in the midst of the gathering gloom.

Not only did he take bread, he "gave thanks." He looked up where he was always looking. It is the upward look that saves you; the upward look is the cure for dizziness, the upward look shows the vastness of things; what you want is never down, it is always up and beyond, the stars being a mere trellis-work through which you catch gleamings of the splendour which is fitted for your soul's vision alone. Never was Jesus so great as on the night in which he was betrayed. He took the simple wine of the supper table, and made it blood, and called it the new covenant. Whoever can take a draught of water from the spring can drink Christ's blood. The man cannot turn the water into wine, but Christ can. Whatever you have, if you take it in the right spirit, it is the right thing; and whatever luxury you may have, if you take it in the wrong spirit, it is poison. If you cannot afford one mouthful of milk, take one mouthful of water, and in that water you will find the Lord's blood. Do not be led away by prosaic minds, those fools that spoil the garden, and say, How can this be so? Say, Art thou a master in Israel, and knowest not these things? art thou a rational being, and art thou degrading all God's poetry into this mean prose? The thing is what it is made by the thought, the motive, the spirit, the love. There are those who find great things in things that are small. Even the child finds the baby in her doll. There are those who see great sights in flowers that are burning but not consumed; there are minds that halt in all their urgency and forget all their need in the presence of a dawning day. "Things would be greater if we greater deemed them." If we said, "There is nothing common or unclean in God's house, all the universe is his, and there is nothing in it that is not pure," we should find more purity than we should ever find through the medium of our criticism and pedantry. To the pure all things are pure; to the good, true, honest heart all bread is sacramental, all water is symbolic of the blood of Christ, and every day is an opening into the eternity out of which all days come, as rain-drops fall from the rain-clouds. Thus the Lord set in that darkness a glowing star, whose solemn splendour shall rule the thought of men till stars are needed no longer, until the face of the Lord shall become the one light and the one glory of creation.

Is this all that he did on the night in which he was betrayed? No. What more did the Lord do on that memorable night? He sang a hymn. That proved him to be Lord. No other soul could have sung that night; that darkness would not have brought music into any other heart; that black curtain would have shutout God from any eyes but Christ"s. The Lord and the little Church sang together. To have heard that hymn!—minor, low, pensive, tremulous, grand because of self-suppression, saying more to the ear of the imagination than could be said to the ear of flesh. "They had sung an hymn." That old English suits the occasion better than your new-made grammar would ever do. It makes the occasion venerable and tender with a subtle melancholy. Old age lingers around the scene; this grey moss makes the table old as eternity. We sing our hymns at midday, our psalms are all retrospective; the trouble we came out of, the rivers we were taken across, the seas that were divided as we approached them,—these are the subjects of our modern psalmody; but to be singing while the gathering darkness is descending is really to praise God. The doxology should be an intermediate as well as a final act of worship; when the stroke falls the tongue should sing,—"I will sing as long as I live: my song shall be of mercy and judgment: unto thee, O Lord, will I sing." We are greater in gratitude—and we are never very great in that—than we are in trust. Give us to feel that not a feather has been taken away out of our nest, and we are willing to sing a doxology: give us to feel that the nest is being torn up and scattered on the winds, and where is our hallelujah? What shall be said concerning us when we think of the night in which we were ruined?

On that solemn occasion, after the Lord had discoursed about his betrayal, the disciples said one to another and to the Lord, "Is it I?" Yes, it is every one of us. Who betrayed the Lord? Everybody. There must always be one hand objective and concrete that does the deed, but it is only done representatively: it is a question of agency. It was not the hand of Iscariot that did it, else Christ had fallen a prey to a plot: it was Man that did it; therefore Christ submitted to the sacrifice. Jesus was not worsted by a gang of murderers: all the men that ever lived, and that ever are to live, gathered together in that one infernal representation, and betrayed the Lord when Iscariot kissed him. Iscariot is nobody; Iscariot is but a speck of dust that could have been cast off; but the Lord would not cast off" Hebrews 6:4-6

1 Corinthians 11:27, 1 Corinthians 11:29

There are some few passages of Scripture which have caused a great deal of difficulty and heartache. There are others which have kept away from the altar, yea, from the Cross itself, many a young, timid, reverent spirit. The question is whether there is any need for this? I think not. I do not know of any passage of Scripture that ought to keep any soul from God, from God's house, from God's ordinances. We are so differently constituted that some of us can only be nursed for heaven. We want continual encouragement; we are soon made afraid by shadow, by unexplained and sudden sound, by incidents uncalculated and unforeseen. We must take care of that section of society; they must be encouraged, consoled, stimulated, comforted; whatever lies in their way of progress towards the Kingdom of heaven must be resolutely removed. Others are very courageous by nature: are extremely robust, words of encouragement are misspent upon them; they have a fountain of encouragement within their own hearts. Whether they are physically so strong, or intellectually so robust, or spiritually so complete, we need not stay to inquire; suffice it to say that they have no shadows, no spectres, no doubts, no difficulties.

There are two passages of Scripture which seem to have kept a good many men in a state of fear and in a state of apparent alienation from the Church. It may be profitable to look at these passages. If the difficulty can be taken out of them by fair reasoning, and by established laws of grammar, and the philosophy of language, a great point will have been gained. One of them is that remarkable passage already quoted in the text—"It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." This has been a great battleground; innumerable Calvinists have slain innumerable Arminians within the four corners of this most solemn declaration. There was no need for the fray. All the energy was misspent All the high debate about election, reprobation, apostasy, was utterly in vain, so far as this particular text is concerned. There is nothing here to cast down the heart of any man who wants to come back again. One version of the Bible has put in the word "difficult" instead of the word "impossible." This little contribution of clemency we have received from the sternest of all languages, the Latin. We do not need the contribution. The word "impossible" is better than the word "difficult" in this connection. It is clearer, more to the point: it comprehends the case more entirely; let it therefore stand in all its tremendous import. There can be no doubt as to the characters represented by Apollos or Paul, whoever the writer may have been. He is urging the great doctrine and duty of progress; he wants the Church to get on—"Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith towards God," and many other things. The Apostle was a man of progress. Speaking thus of baptism, he says, "It is impossible for those who were once enlightened"—literally, for those who were really baptised: we say really baptised, because he is not referring to water-baptism, he is referring to the inner, the spiritual baptism, the chrism of fire, the visitation of the Holy Ghost upon the soul. It is impossible for those who have been baptised by the Holy Ghost, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and who were not only baptised by the Holy Ghost, but have been made partakers of the Holy Ghost,—it is impossible for them if they fall away, to renew them again unto repentance. What construction can we put upon these words but that if we once leave Christ for one moment we can never get back again? If having been in Christ we do wrong, we commit one sin, we must commit a thousand more, for we are on the downward road, and we cannot be arrested in the infinite descent. There is no such reading in the text. We cannot stop the text at a given point, and say, "That is the doctrine, and certainly it would appear to be such."

But the text proceeds to give a reason why it is impossible to renew certain persons again to repentance, and that reason is this—"Seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." Is not that a final reason? Yes, it is: but it is not a correct representation of the Apostle's reasoning. The English is to blame for the ruin it has brought. Over this false grammar have men fallen into despair. The Revisers were timid, because they were conservative. I blame them distinctly for want of courage. They had learning enough, prestige enough; they could have encountered momentary prejudices in a dignified and successful manner: but who ever got twelve or twenty Christian scholars together without their devouring one another, so courteously as sometimes perhaps in some degree to fall short of the point of courage? The tense changes in the latter part of the statement. "Seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame" should read thus:—"It is impossible for those who"—then read the description—"If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance, whilst they are crucifying the Son of God afresh, and putting him to an open shame." The latter tense is present, it indicates an immediate and continuous action, something that is going on now, at this very moment; and the Apostle says, Brethren, if you continue to crucify the Son of God afresh, you can never get back again to your original state of acceptance, you can never recover your sense of adoption; the very act you are doing is fatal. Why then, should you be discouraged, if you really want to come back to Christ, and if you are endeavouring to lead a good life? If you are bethinking yourself, and trying to say the old sweet prayer, and if it be really your heart's desire to be recovered from your backslidings, there is nothing in this passage to hinder you coming home now.

The passage thus rendered is supported by all the experience of life. It is impossible for any man who has fallen from sobriety to be renewed again to temperance, so long as he is debauching himself night and day with the drink which overcame him; if he will set it down, and retire from it, he shall yet be a sober Hebrews 6:9

IT is quite right to be interested in a salvation that is central; that is essential, but salvation is not solitude. Salvation represents a great sociality. Salvation is the heart of a noble fellowship. Many writers and preachers have, no doubt, set forth the text as conveying the idea of a procession; salvation red as blood, bright as light, tuneful as embodied music, at the head, and then all the retinue, a thousand or ten thousand strong, following, their very march music, their very look an expectation and a prophecy. It is a beautiful picture. Every man's life is to be such. If we have regarded salvation as monasticism, loneliness, one little or great idea dissociated from other thoughts, and especially dissociated from active and expressive character, we have done injustice to its first, midst, and last idea and purpose.

There may be too much said about salvation when that term is too narrowly interpreted. No selfishness is so selfish as pious selfishness. No cruelty is so cruel as Christian cruelty. The bite of the wolf is nothing to the lie of the soul. What if your salvation and mine are of infinitely less consequence than we have supposed? If we have been looking on that term as simply expressive of that comfort, individual certainty of going higher and higher, and doing less and less, and enjoying the indolence of doing nothing, some strong man may one day arise who will tear that idea of salvation to rags and tatters. It is not true, therefore it is not healthy, therefore it ought to be put down. "Are you saved?" may be a wicked inquiry. Some will not understand how this can be, because some are only at the alphabet, and some have not begun to study their letters. There are children in the world who have never heard of the existence of the alphabet. We do not consult them upon higher statesmanship or the higher mathematics. In another sense there is no greater question than, "Are you saved? are you a new creature, a liberated soul, a mind on which there shines the whole heaven of God's light? Are you a soldier, a servant, a helper of the helpless, a leader of the blind? Are you akin to the soul of Christ?" It is impossible for us to get at Christ in any sense of acceptance, assurance, and identification, except through one gate. Can we not climb up, pierce the roof, and enter by a way of our own making? No. What is the name of the only gate that opens upon the presence-chamber of the Saviour? The name is the Cross. Have you ever heard it? That you have heard it as a name, we know, but there is hearing and hearing. The Cross may be a word, or it may be a sacrifice; a literal fact, or a suggestion infinite in its resources as the heart of God. It is in the latter larger, truer sense that the Cross is a gate, the one gate and the only gate to the presence and favour of the King.

Many men are saved who do not know it. I have known Hebrews 6:4-6

1 Corinthians 11:27, 1 Corinthians 11:29

There are some few passages of Scripture which have caused a great deal of difficulty and heartache. There are others which have kept away from the altar, yea, from the Cross itself, many a young, timid, reverent spirit. The question is whether there is any need for this? I think not. I do not know of any passage of Scripture that ought to keep any soul from God, from God's house, from God's ordinances. We are so differently constituted that some of us can only be nursed for heaven. We want continual encouragement; we are soon made afraid by shadow, by unexplained and sudden sound, by incidents uncalculated and unforeseen. We must take care of that section of society; they must be encouraged, consoled, stimulated, comforted; whatever lies in their way of progress towards the Kingdom of heaven must be resolutely removed. Others are very courageous by nature: are extremely robust, words of encouragement are misspent upon them; they have a fountain of encouragement within their own hearts. Whether they are physically so strong, or intellectually so robust, or spiritually so complete, we need not stay to inquire; suffice it to say that they have no shadows, no spectres, no doubts, no difficulties.

There are two passages of Scripture which seem to have kept a good many men in a state of fear and in a state of apparent alienation from the Church. It may be profitable to look at these passages. If the difficulty can be taken out of them by fair reasoning, and by established laws of grammar, and the philosophy of language, a great point will have been gained. One of them is that remarkable passage already quoted in the text—"It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." This has been a great battleground; innumerable Calvinists have slain innumerable Arminians within the four corners of this most solemn declaration. There was no need for the fray. All the energy was misspent All the high debate about election, reprobation, apostasy, was utterly in vain, so far as this particular text is concerned. There is nothing here to cast down the heart of any man who wants to come back again. One version of the Bible has put in the word "difficult" instead of the word "impossible." This little contribution of clemency we have received from the sternest of all languages, the Latin. We do not need the contribution. The word "impossible" is better than the word "difficult" in this connection. It is clearer, more to the point: it comprehends the case more entirely; let it therefore stand in all its tremendous import. There can be no doubt as to the characters represented by Apollos or Paul, whoever the writer may have been. He is urging the great doctrine and duty of progress; he wants the Church to get on—"Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith towards God," and many other things. The Apostle was a man of progress. Speaking thus of baptism, he says, "It is impossible for those who were once enlightened"—literally, for those who were really baptised: we say really baptised, because he is not referring to water-baptism, he is referring to the inner, the spiritual baptism, the chrism of fire, the visitation of the Holy Ghost upon the soul. It is impossible for those who have been baptised by the Holy Ghost, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and who were not only baptised by the Holy Ghost, but have been made partakers of the Holy Ghost,—it is impossible for them if they fall away, to renew them again unto repentance. What construction can we put upon these words but that if we once leave Christ for one moment we can never get back again? If having been in Christ we do wrong, we commit one sin, we must commit a thousand more, for we are on the downward road, and we cannot be arrested in the infinite descent. There is no such reading in the text. We cannot stop the text at a given point, and say, "That is the doctrine, and certainly it would appear to be such."

But the text proceeds to give a reason why it is impossible to renew certain persons again to repentance, and that reason is this—"Seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." Is not that a final reason? Yes, it is: but it is not a correct representation of the Apostle's reasoning. The English is to blame for the ruin it has brought. Over this false grammar have men fallen into despair. The Revisers were timid, because they were conservative. I blame them distinctly for want of courage. They had learning enough, prestige enough; they could have encountered momentary prejudices in a dignified and successful manner: but who ever got twelve or twenty Christian scholars together without their devouring one another, so courteously as sometimes perhaps in some degree to fall short of the point of courage? The tense changes in the latter part of the statement. "Seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame" should read thus:—"It is impossible for those who"—then read the description—"If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance, whilst they are crucifying the Son of God afresh, and putting him to an open shame." The latter tense is present, it indicates an immediate and continuous action, something that is going on now, at this very moment; and the Apostle says, Brethren, if you continue to crucify the Son of God afresh, you can never get back again to your original state of acceptance, you can never recover your sense of adoption; the very act you are doing is fatal. Why then, should you be discouraged, if you really want to come back to Christ, and if you are endeavouring to lead a good life? If you are bethinking yourself, and trying to say the old sweet prayer, and if it be really your heart's desire to be recovered from your backslidings, there is nothing in this passage to hinder you coming home now.

The passage thus rendered is supported by all the experience of life. It is impossible for any man who has fallen from sobriety to be renewed again to temperance, so long as he is debauching himself night and day with the drink which overcame him; if he will set it down, and retire from it, he shall yet be a sober Hebrews 6:9

IT is quite right to be interested in a salvation that is central; that is essential, but salvation is not solitude. Salvation represents a great sociality. Salvation is the heart of a noble fellowship. Many writers and preachers have, no doubt, set forth the text as conveying the idea of a procession; salvation red as blood, bright as light, tuneful as embodied music, at the head, and then all the retinue, a thousand or ten thousand strong, following, their very march music, their very look an expectation and a prophecy. It is a beautiful picture. Every man's life is to be such. If we have regarded salvation as monasticism, loneliness, one little or great idea dissociated from other thoughts, and especially dissociated from active and expressive character, we have done injustice to its first, midst, and last idea and purpose.

There may be too much said about salvation when that term is too narrowly interpreted. No selfishness is so selfish as pious selfishness. No cruelty is so cruel as Christian cruelty. The bite of the wolf is nothing to the lie of the soul. What if your salvation and mine are of infinitely less consequence than we have supposed? If we have been looking on that term as simply expressive of that comfort, individual certainty of going higher and higher, and doing less and less, and enjoying the indolence of doing nothing, some strong man may one day arise who will tear that idea of salvation to rags and tatters. It is not true, therefore it is not healthy, therefore it ought to be put down. "Are you saved?" may be a wicked inquiry. Some will not understand how this can be, because some are only at the alphabet, and some have not begun to study their letters. There are children in the world who have never heard of the existence of the alphabet. We do not consult them upon higher statesmanship or the higher mathematics. In another sense there is no greater question than, "Are you saved? are you a new creature, a liberated soul, a mind on which there shines the whole heaven of God's light? Are you a soldier, a servant, a helper of the helpless, a leader of the blind? Are you akin to the soul of Christ?" It is impossible for us to get at Christ in any sense of acceptance, assurance, and identification, except through one gate. Can we not climb up, pierce the roof, and enter by a way of our own making? No. What is the name of the only gate that opens upon the presence-chamber of the Saviour? The name is the Cross. Have you ever heard it? That you have heard it as a name, we know, but there is hearing and hearing. The Cross may be a word, or it may be a sacrifice; a literal fact, or a suggestion infinite in its resources as the heart of God. It is in the latter larger, truer sense that the Cross is a gate, the one gate and the only gate to the presence and favour of the King.

Many men are saved who do not know it. I have known so-called bad men whose disposition I have coveted. I have known them more largely than they have known themselves, though their breath is burned with unholy suggestion. I have known that their souls have been fruitful in noble and kindly thoughts. Let God say who is saved. "Lord, are there few that be saved?" No answer. Christ takes the statistics, but he does not publish them. He says in reply, rather than in answer, "Strive to enter in at the strait gate; do not be inquiring so much whether there be few or whether there may be many that be saved. Strive ye yourselves to enter in at the strait gate." We may be asking questions about others when we should be executing duties on our own behalf. There is nothing meaner in all God's universe, so far as we know it, than a pious miser, a miser by self-thought, self-condolence, self-flattery, self-regard, as though he should shut himself into his own garden and his own banqueting-hall, and should say, "What a wicked world it is, and how few that attend to religious ordinance and ceremony, and how much men are to blame themselves for the evil they are in and for the suffering they endure!" Talk of a man so, he is the devil's hired servant.

What are the things that accompany salvation? To the youngest, let me say, to accompany is to go with—as we should say, "Are you walking to-day in the field? If so, I will go with you." Things that accompany salvation are things that go with salvation, keep it company, belong to it, have a right by kindred and by quality to be there. But what things can accompany salvation when salvation is interpreted in its higher and deepest sense? Is it a virgin beautiful with ineffable loveliness? Oh! were it not better she should walk in her fine linen alone on the green hills, in the flowering gardens, in the laden orchards? No. She will have with her a thousand little children, multiplied by ten thousand more, and cubed up into an unimaginable number. That virgin is social, friendly, a great housekeeper, and she goes forth, not in vanity, but in a natural expression of kindliness accompanied by others akin to her own soul.

Sometimes you see a procession and not the head of it. Did that sight ever deceive you? Never. Beholding the retinue, the procession, you say, Who is this? Not, Who are these? but, What is this? as if it were a single and not a plural explanation. Who is it? One soul. What is it? One event, yet not a soul alone, not an event dissociated from a common history. Are you satisfied to look upon the procession, upon the retinue, to see nothing besides? You know you are not. You want to see the leading figure, the main idea, the life of which these are the lives. Is the child satisfied to see the tail of the kite? The dear little child rounds his eyes and looks for the kite itself, and with joy he points it out, saying, "There, I see it." Dear little child, was it not enough to see the floating tail of the kite? No! the child will see the chief image itself. In that little figure, homely enough, and therefore all the better, we see the whole idea of this conception of a procession, a retinue.

"Things that accompany salvation." That word "accompany" might be made much larger and much more vital. Sometimes the procession is abreast of the king. It so happens that in this march sometimes the things do not accompany in the sense of following behind, but in the better and the excellent sense of going along with, as if arm in arm, placed so that it shall be difficult to say who leads so far as the mere stepping is concerned, and yet not difficult to say who leads so far as the larger life and regnacy of will are concerned. Some men make places for themselves. You say there is no room, these men soon find room enough. They do not claim it, it is conceded to them. There may be momentary opposition or envious interpretation, but all things give way before sovereign power, before supreme and noble character. At the last, confidence is promoted, integrity is crowned, but who has the deepest, clearest, largest, best ideas will always lead the empire and make republics into sovereignties.

What are the "things that accompany salvation"? There are some things that would not accompany it. There are some things that through the very force of shame would decline to be in the retinue. Can a poor, tattered, ragged, dishonoured, self-discredited vagrant join the procession of the king? He says, "No, it is not my place, put me out of sight, let me die in darkness." Among the "things that accompany salvation," we find first of all purity of character. But does purity of character mean perfection? It does not. There is no perfect man. This cold space, this cage of time, could not hold him. Perfect man can only bloom in heaven, where the climate is pure and where the day has no night. By purity of character let us mean a real, honest motive, a just and noble desire, a wish to be, not in heaven, but heavenly in mind, thought, life, speech. This definition enables me to include a great number of persons in the Church who do not include themselves. It is sad to see how things are always placed in the Christian kingdom. There are some pedants who will not come in, and therefore ought always to be outside. Pedantry has no status in the New Jerusalem. There are some conceited persons who think they have attained all that is desirable; they do not come in, and in very deed they ought to be kept out. Self-complacency is not a virtue anywhere; in the New Jerusalem it is a blasphemy.

There, are, however, men who are getting wrong seven times a day who ought to be in the Church. They are Christlike and do not realise the fact. I have seen in their eyes tears which must have travelled to their eyes by way of the heart. Yet they blunder; I know it well; they fall flat down in the devil's mire. I have seen them many times; they are inflammable, passionate, wanting in self-control. Surely. But they are pressed and driven by five hundred ancestors who were worse than they are. The five hundred ancestors are smiting them as with scorpions. Blessed be God, it is not ours to judge. Christ will shut out no one that he can bring in, and he must be a son of perdition whom Christ cannot bring into his own feast of love and eternal fellowship.

Among the "things that accompany salvation" I give a foremost place to unselfishness of service; the service that never looks at itself in the Church mirror; that never dresses itself to go out to be seen ostentatiously in public; the service that is crowned with self-unconsciousness; that does good things by stealth and blushes to find them fame; the service that does things as a monarch does them, not knowing that they are being done, without any sense of taxation, and sacrifice, and painfulness. There is a doing that would rather do than not do. There is an action that must take place because the suppression would be not only unreasonable but intolerable. Love must serve. Many are working in that way who have no earthly fame. The Apostle recognised all such in the very text in which we find the words on which we are discoursing, for he says, "God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love." Here is one of the things, therefore, which accompany salvation. Doing, always doing; doing simply, doing kindly, doing lovingly, doing in the Christly spirit. There are some actions that are oppressive to the very individuals for whom they are performed. Why? Because the manner of doing them is burdensome, aggressive, oppressive. Some people help you and therefore hinder you. Some people do for you things little or great with such self-effusiveness and self-display and with such an unreasoning expectation of gratitude, that the receiver of such services would gladly dispense with them. There is an action subtle as the atmosphere, silent as the night, always operating, never displaying, or demonstrating, or self-magnifying.

What shall we say of charity of heart? Does not that also accompany salvation? That is the larger love, that great mother-love which says, "If the house will not hold you, we must add another wing to it." Great love never takes out a two-foot rule and says, "There will only be room at this table for thirty," but love says, "You must find another table." But the room will not hold it. "Then take down the wall, and go into the garden." Love keeps pace with necessity. When the great feast was spread those who went out to call in the unfamiliar guests said, "Lord, it is done as thou hast said, and yet there is room." It was Christ who spoke that parable. He is great in finding room, but never was prevented from doing anything because there was nothing, or because there was little to begin with. "Five loaves" would do to begin with. The prodigal said, "There is bread enough in my father's house and to spare." All the evangelists who went out to call the hungry people to the supper said, "Lord, we have searched everywhere, and brought in everybody we can find from hedge and ditch and hole and rock, and still there is room." Who ever exhausted God? Who ever overthronged his heaven?

This must be the spirit of the individual Christian also. But here is a poor heretic who does not see his way clear to several of the dogmas of the Church. Oh! tell him to speak nonsense no longer, but to come in at once. Here is a soul greatly troubled because his experience is different from other experience that he has heard of. Tell him to come in this very instant, for there is a chair set on purpose for him at the corner of the table. Here is a man who rather revels in his infidelity, and gets drunk on his unbelief. Then keep him out. If a man is proud of his scepticism, we do not want him inside the Church, or out of it. He is not wanted anywhere. But if a poor soul should come in and say, "Oh, sirs, it is so dark; which is the way? Will a little child take hold of my hand; and if any wise man is here, will he kindly tell me where I ought to begin, what I ought to do, and how I ought to begin?" make room for him. You need not make room for him; the King, in drawing up his list of wedding guests, set a chair for him next himself.

Where there is this charity, Christ is. Where, then, charity does not exist, there is no Church. Unutterably do I hate a man and the disposition that would keep out of the Church any poor, maimed, bruised soul that wants to be in it. "But he does not think as we do." And who are we that should do the superior thinking and set up a standard theology? I will not be one of the number. I was born yesterday; to-day I am groping and struggling and wandering and stumbling in prayer; and tomorrow I shall not be here. Does the poor soul want to love Christ? If so, here is a seat for him at the Lord's table. "Is not the Lord's table set up for perfect people?" By no means. For then would it be a banquet in a wilderness far from any human heart.

There is another accompaniment to salvation which must not be forgotten; let it be named as final in the list, but only as initial in its suggestions. And it is evangelistic zeal. What is the meaning of evangelistic? It means that some soul has a truth, a gospel, which he says he must go and tell everybody all over the world. That is the meaning of evangelistic. The truth burns him until he tells it. The gospel that fills his soul is the gospel for every creature. And he must talk about it; propagate it, publish it, circulate it. He must breathe it on every wind, and send it to every sea to be carried to every golden shore. What did the Apostle mean when he said he was a debtor to the barbarians? This has often been misinterpreted, and the Apostle Paul has been represented as a very humble person, because he confessed his obligations to everybody, to the Jew, to the Gentile, to the Greek, to the barbarian, to the bond, and to the free. And the favourite pulpit idea has been that Paul was so willing to acknowledge that everybody had been favourable to him, and kindly disposed towards his life, and had contributed something towards his service. Nothing of the kind. Paul's idea was the evangelistic idea. What I hold, said Paul, belongs to the very first man I meet, and the man beside me, and the man behind me, and all the world, Jew, Gentile, Greek, barbarian, bond, free. Wherever there is a man, I am his debtor. "Oh, Sir, come, I know this truth, and therefore I owe it to you"—that is the Cross of Christ in eloquent action. Not, "I have received something from you, poor barbarian, and therefore I must give something back." "I never received a thing from you in my life, but I know a truth that would make a man of you, I know a gospel that would serve you, therefore I am your debtor. Come, and I will pay it. This truth I do not hold as mine only, but as yours also." Fly abroad, thou mighty gospel, go forth, thou queen of truth and love, and be thy retinue more in number than the sands upon the seashore, brighter than the stars that beam in the diadem of night!

Prayer

Almighty God, we have heard that thy mercy endureth for ever. All the great houses of history have said this. We know it of a truth; we take up the great song and sing it with our whole heart; for we have tasted and seen and handled of the Word of life. Thou hast saved us. Thy mercy has been near us all the day and all the night; thou hast come to us in the darkness of our despair and in the humiliation of our weakness, and thou hast breathed great gospels into our sinking hearts. Oh, how loving is thy voice, how majestic and tender in music! Behold, thou canst speak a word in season to him that is weary, and thou canst order the armies of heaven. We rejoice in thy love; we draw near to thy pity; because there are tears in thine eyes and thou didst look upon sinful men, we dare come quite close to thee and say, Have mercy upon me! Thy mercy endureth for ever; this we will say in the morning and in the evening; when we awake in the night-watches we will say, Thy mercy endureth for ever. Teach us that we live in thy mercy; because thy love faileth not, our life is permitted to add to its days. We do not live because of thy greatness or thy justice, thy power or thy majesty, but because of thy tenderness and love, and pity and gentleness, and fatherly-motherly care. What are these great, sweet words thou hast sent unto us to live upon, to hide in our hearts, and turn into daily life?—Like as a father pitieth his children;—casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you; last of all he sent his Son;—God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son:—these are thy words; we cannot mistake them; these voices are not earthborn; behold these great utterances fall from heaven, and bring all heaven with them. Help us to answer their grand appeal, that we may be broken in heart, humble in spirit, meek of disposition, obedient in will, and abounding alway in the fruits of the Spirit. Amen.