The British Pulpit: A Collection of Sermons by the Most Eminent Divines of ...

God, seeing the amazing majesty of the Almighty, and his own utter ruin. What can fill the gap? What can stand in the distance? What can unite him to God, beaten down as he is under a sense of sin, and looking up to that glory —that bright, and brilliant, and holy glory which he has discovered in Jehovah? What can stop the gap? What can fill the immense abyss? Where is the object that can make that man meet that God? Jesus, God and man; Jesus, full of the tenderness of human compassion for the prostrate sinner-full of the majesty of Jehovah for the glory of his Father; Jesus is just what we want. Then the man sees that, only for this, he would be beaten down into absolute wretchedness, into despair and death. A view of the majesty of God, without one corresponding view of Jesus, would beat a sinner down to despair and ruin. But with trembling transport the man looks to Jesus, to Gethsemane, to Calvary. There, on that bended head-there, on that anguished bosom-there, in that piercing cry-there, in that deadly agony-there is my hope, there my assurance that God will receive me into his own bosom. There I find just what my necessities need; and God can demand no more-I can require no more; God is satisfied, and my heart is satisfied. O my Lord, my Life, my gracious Saviour, my Rock, the Horn of my Salvation, and my High Tower! the love of Christ constrains me.

Now, my dear brethren, this is what it is to be in Christ Jesus: and the man that is not in Christ Jesus is in Adam, and is on the brink of being in hell fire.

If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, not only with regard to the views he takes of his own character, and the views he takes of Jesus, but in his feelings and desires also in other respects, and in his conduct. The man has experienced, further, deadness to the world. He sees that the world is lying in wickedness; he sees that the friendship of the world is enmity with God; that if any man will be a friend of the world he is an enemy of God: and therefore he concludes with the Apostle, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom the world is crucified to me, and I unto the world." He is crucified to the wickednesses of the world; he has no heart for them: he cannot sit in the seat of the scornful: he recoils from the ways of the ungodly: he walketh not in the company of sinners: there is something revolting about it to him; there is something in him which is offended by it: the seed of God is in him, and he cannot walk in the way of sinners; he cannot live in sin, because he is born of God.

He is careful to avoid a prevailing attachment even to the lawful pursuits of the world. You heard this night in our second lesson, that they who are Christ's "have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts"—even the natural affections, which in themselves are lawful, are brought into a state of subjugation in the truly Christian man; so that his chief affection, his constraining affection, the master-key that touches every tone of his character, and makes all vibrate in harmony with God, is, the love of Christ. It is not the love of money, it is not the love of distinction, it is not the love of fame, it is not the love of his brother, or his sister, or his father, or his mother, or his child. O great God! grant thy people this crucifixion of the flesh more and more, that our prevailing affections, our constraining motives, may, in all things, be the love of Jesus.

This the Christian has; but the degree that he desires he has not: this is what he pants after; this is what he prays to have increased; this is what he

wishes; this is what he reads for; this is what he hears for; this is what he joins in Christian fellowship and communion for-seeking more and more to be" filled with all the fulness of God." This is much deeper than what men generally call good works; this is making the tree good that the fruit may be good. That was an admirable saying of Luther, and well in accordance with his Master's saying " Good works do not make a good man, but a good man makes good works. Make the man good, and the works will be good; or else, if you leave the man evil, his works will be evil, though they may have a good outside upon them." "Give me your heart," says God. If the heart be not changed, all the good works outside are but the paint upon the harlot's cheek.

If any man be in Christ, he has new resolutions, and new determinations for God. Now brethren, the natural man sometimes resolves against sin; the natural man sometimes resolves against some particular sin which has alarmed him, which has awakened his conscience, which has made him uneasy; and he determines not to commit that sin again. But the Christian man's resolve is universal; it extends not to that sin, or this sin, which has caused temporary alarm, but to all sin, as hateful to God; and his resolution is, to keep all the commandments of God; and his language is, in truth and honesty, “I esteem ali thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way.' And as his resolutions are thus universal, so they are also immediate. The unconverted man sometimes resolves, frequently indeed, to be better, but not yet he postpones it to a more convenient season: he desires to have more enjoyment of the flesh: and then, but not before, he will turn. How most striking is that history of the celebrated St. Augustine, who records of himself this confession that, under the convictions of his conscience, he prayed to God to convert him, but not yet. He had the awful audacity to enter into such a bargain with God as to ask him to convert him, but not yet, because (he said) he knew after his conversion he must break off his sins, and he loved them so much that he wished to enjoy them a little longer: and he had the humility to confess it, and to hand it down to posterity. But the man that is in Christ has his resolutions immediate, as well as universal; and he desires, from this present moment, without yielding again, even once, to the indulgence of evil passions -from this very moment his heart's desire and prayer before God is, never, never to sin again.

If any man be in Christ, his apprehensions respecting sin are altered. The unconverted man's apprehension regards detection; he is afraid of being found out: but the Christian's apprehensions regard the sin itself. He fears the sin because it is opposed to God; and therefore he distrusts himself; he is unwilling to trust himself in the way of temptation, knowing his own weakness; and instead of being willing to plead the strength of temptation as an excuse for the commission, he turns it into a fresh accusation against himself that he ran into the way of temptation: so jealous is he against himself for God.

And his resolutions, further, are new in this respect-that, whereas they were formerly made in his own strength, and, being made in his own strength, were broken through that very recurrence of the temptation-now they are made in the strength of the Lord. He distrusts himself altogether; he knows that left to himself for a moment, he would fall into utter ruin; and his language is,

Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe. Keep thou my footsteps, and they wil not slide." This keeps him prayerful, watchful, humble.

Time would fail me to expand this character over the details of his outward conduct. I can but just say, that if any man be in Christ, all his occupations are new to him, although they may wear the same aspect in his neighbour's eyes he may travel through the same details of business; he may be engaged in the same transactions of domestic life; but all are newly done-new in their motives, and new in their object. They are now consecrated to God: they are done as God's appointment, for him, and not for his own amusement, or for his own aggrandizement in the world: they are done in obedience to God; they become part of his religion, instead of being snares to him and drawing him away from his religion. The universal view that he takes of God's providence -the liberty that he has in Jesus to use all the creatures of God that are good, when they are used for God's glory and sanctified by his word and prayer -this enlarges his view: he sees that a man may be as truly a Christian upon 'Change as upon his knees; that a man may be as truly a Christian crossing the sea in a merchant vessel, as in reading his Bible in his own room. All these things are of God, and all are consecrated in the Christian's view; he believes them all to be of divine appointment: and so even the very drudgeries of life become means of grace. Union with Jesus supplies him with a better than the feeble power of him who could turn all he touched into gold: the Christian has received from God a consecrated, legitimate, and spiritual power, which turns all he handles into spiritual life and health for himself in the service of his God.

Beloved brethren, ask your own souls how this description accords with your characters, with your experience, with your pursuits, with your views of the world. Ask yourselves whether, if you take this view of things, you would sneer at the enthusiasm of true religion; whether, if you took this view of things, you would haunt the scenes of intemperate amusement with which this world abounds; whether, in your hours of recreation, you would show the tendency of your heart, by yielding to even the idle pursuits, to the mere embellishments of life, or to the amusements that are provided so continually by the timewasting works that imaginative dispositions are ever producing, racking their ingenuity to provide inventions of dissipation-if you would cultivate them; whether you would make it their interest to provide such things, or whether you would not forbear, that they might feel their occupation gone, as regards yourselves, you being dead to them, crucified with Christ from the rudiments of the world, even to a holy walk with God.

But I must forbear. The blessing of God be amongst you, and sanctify all your doings, and all your engagements, through this coming week, and enable us to meet again in this place in holy love. Grace, mercy, and truth, be multiplied to you, and every one amongst you.