like Himself. Facts concerning both He has graciously revealed. These
we must admit upon the credit of His own testimony; with these we must
satisfy our wishes and limit our inquiry. To intrude into those things
which he hath not seen because God has not disclosed them, whether
they relate to His arrangements for this world or the next, is the
arrogance of one vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind. There are
secrets in our Lord's procedure which He will not explain to us in
this life, and which may not perhaps be explained in the life to
come. We can not tell how He makes evil the minister of good; how He
combines physical and moral agencies of different kind and order, in
the production of blessings. We can not so much as conjecture what
bearings the system of redemption, in every part of its process, may
have upon the relations of providence in the occurrences of this
moment, or of the last. Such knowledge is too wonderful for us: it is
high, we can not attain it. Our Sovereign's way is in the sea, and
His path in the deep waters; and His footsteps are not known. When,
therefore, we are surrounded with difficulty, when we can not unriddle
His conduct in particular dispensations, we must remember that He is
God--that we are to "walk by faith"; and to trust Him as implicitly
when we are in the valley of the shadow of death, as when His candle
shines upon our heads. We must remember that it is not for us to
be admitted into the cabinet of the King of kings; that creatures
constituted as we are could not sustain the view of His unveiled
agency; that it would confound, and scatter, and annihilate our little
intellects. As often, then, as He retires from our observation,
blending goodness with majesty, let us lay our hands upon our mouths
and worship. This stateliness of our King can afford us no just ground
of uneasiness. On the contrary, it contributes to our tranquillity.
2. For we know that if His administration is mysterious, it is also
wise. "Great is our Lord, and of great power; his understanding is
infinite." That infinite understanding watches over, and arranges,
and directs all the affairs of His Church and of the world. We are
perplexed at every step, embarrassed by opposition, lost in confusion,
fretted by disappointment, and ready to conclude, in our haste, that
all things are against our own good and our Master's honor. But "this
is our infirmity"; it is the dictate of impatience and indiscretion.
We forget the "years of the right hand of the Most High." We are slow
of heart in learning a lesson which shall soothe our spirits at the
expense of our pride. We turn away from the consolation to be derived
from believing that tho we know not the connections and results of
holy providence, our Lord Jesus knows them perfectly. With Him there
is no irregularity, no chance, no conjecture. Disposed before His eye
in the most luminous and exquisite order, the whole series of events
occupy the very place and crisis where they are most effectually to
subserve the purposes of His love. Not a moment of time is wasted, nor
a fragment of action misapplied. What He does, we do not indeed know
at present, but, as far as we shall be permitted to know hereafter, we
shall see that his most inscrutable procedure was guided by consummate
wisdom; that our choice was often as foolish as our petulance was
provoking; that the success of our own wishes would have been our
most painful chastisement, would have diminished our happiness, and
detracted from His praise. Let us study, therefore, brethren, to
subject our ignorance to His knowledge; instead of prescribing, to
obey; instead of questioning, to believe: to perform our part without
that despondency which betrays a fear that our Lord may neglect His,
and tacitly accuses Him of a less concern than we feel for the glory
of His own name. Let us not shrink from this duty as imposing too
rigorous a condition upon our obedience.
3. A third character of Messiah's administration is righteousness.
"The scepter of his kingdom is a right scepter." If "clouds and
darkness are around about him, righteousness and judgment are the
habitation of his throne." In the times of old, His redeemed "wandered
in the wilderness in a solitary way; but, nevertheless, he led them
forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation."
He loves His Church and the members of it too tenderly to lay upon
them any burdens, or expose them to any trials, which are not
indispensable to their good. It is right for them to go through
fire and through water, that He may bring them out into a healthy
place--right to endure chastening, that they may be partakers of His
holiness--right to have the sentence of death in themselves, that they
may trust in the living God, and that His strength may be perfect
in their weakness. It is right that He should endure with much
long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction; that He
should permit iniquity to abound, the love of many to wax cold, and
the dangers of His Church to accumulate, till the interposition of His
arm be necessary and decisive. In the day of final retribution, not
one mouth shall be opened to complain of injustice. It will be seen
that the Judge of all the earth has done right; that the works of His
hands have been verity and judgment, and done, every one of them, in
truth and uprightness. Let us then think not only respectfully but
reverently of His dispensations, repress the voice of murmur, and
rebuke the spirit of discontent; wait, in faith and patience, till
He become His own interpreter, when "the heavens shall declare his
righteousness, and all the people see his glory."
You will anticipate me in enumerating the means which Messiah employs
in the administration of His kingdom:
1. The gospel, of which Himself, as an all-sufficient and
condescending Savior, is the great and affecting theme. Derided by the
world, it is, nevertheless, effectual to the salvation of them who
believe. "We preach Christ crucified: to the Jews a stumbling-block,
and to the Greeks foolishness; but to them who are called, both Jews
and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God." The
doctrine of the cross connected with evangelical ordinances--the
ministry of reconciliation; the holy Sabbath; the sacraments of His
covenant: briefly, the whole system of instituted worship--is the rod
of the Redeemer's strength, by which He subdues sinners to Himself,
rules even in the midst of His enemies, exercises His glorious
authority in His Church, and exhibits a visible proof to men and
angels that He is King in Zion.
2. The efficient means to which the gospel owes its success, and the
name of Jesus its praise, is the agency of the Holy Ghost.
Christianity is the ministration of the spirit. All real and
sanctifying knowledge of the truth and love of God is from His
inspiration. It was the last and best promise which the Savior made
to His afflicted disciples at the moment of parting, "I will send the
Comforter, the Spirit of Truth; he shall glorify me, for he shall take
of mine and shall show it unto you." It is He who convinces the world
of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment: who infuses resistless
vigor into means otherwise weak and useless. For the weapons of our
warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God, God the Spirit, to the
pulling down of strongholds. Without His benediction, the ministry of
an archangel would never convert one sinner from the error of his way.
But when He descends with His life-giving influence from God out of
heaven, then "foolish things of the world confound the wise; and weak
things of the world confound the things which are mighty; and base
things of the world, and things which are despised, yea, and things
which are not, bring to naught things which are." It is this
ministration of the Spirit which renders the preaching of the gospel
to men dead in trespasses and sins a reasonable service. When I am set
down in the valley of vision, and view the bones, very many and very
dry, and am desired to try the effects of my own ability in recalling
them to life, I will fold my hands and stand mute in astonishment and
despair. But when the Lord God commands me to speak in His name, my
closed lips shall be opened; when He calls upon the breath from the
four winds to breathe upon the slain that they may live, I will
prophesy without fear, "Oh, ye dry bones, hear the words of the Lord";
and, obedient to His voice, they shall come together, bone to His
bone--shall be covered with sinews and flesh--shall receive new life,
and stand up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. In this manner,
from the graves of nature, and the dry bones of natural men, does the
Holy Spirit recruit the "armies of the living God," and make them,
collectively and individually, a name, and a praise, and a glory to
the Captain of their salvation.
3. Among the instruments which the Lord Jesus employs in the
administration of His government, are the resources of the physical
and moral world.
Supreme in heaven and in earth, "upholding all things by the word of
his power," the universe is His magazine of means. Nothing which acts
or exists, is exempted from promoting in its own place the purposes of
His kingdom. Beings rational and irrational, animate and inanimate;
the heavens above, and the earth below; the obedience of sanctified,
and the disobedience of unsanctified men; all holy spirits; all damned
spirits; in one word, every agency, every element, every atom, are but
the ministers of His will, and concur in the execution of His designs.
And this He will demonstrate to the confusion of His enemies, and the
joy of His people, in that great and terrible day when He shall sit
upon the throne of His glory, and dispense ultimate judgment to the
quick and the dead.
Upon these hills of holiness the stability of Messiah's throne, and
the perfect administration of His kingdom, let us take our station,
and survey the prospects which rise up before the Church of God.
When I look upon the magnificent scene, I can not repress the
salutation, "Hail, thou that art highly favored!" She has the prospect
of preservation, of increase and of triumph.
The long existence of the Christian Church would be pronounced, upon
common principles of reasoning, impossible. She finds in every man a
natural and inveterate enemy. To encounter and overcome the unanimous
hostility of the world, she boasts no political stratagem, no
disciplined legions, no outward coercion of any kind. Yet her
expectation is, that she shall live forever. To mock this hope and
blot out her memorial from under heaven, the most furious efforts of
fanaticism, the most ingenious arts of statesmen, the concentrated
strength of empires, have been frequently and perseveringly applied.
The blood of her sons and her daughters has streamed like water; the
smoke of the scaffold and the stake, where they won the crown of
martyrdom in the cause of Jesus, has ascended in thick volumes to
the skies. The tribes of persecutors have sported over her woes and
erected monuments, as they imagined, of her perpetual ruin. But where
are her tyrants, and where their empires? The tyrants have long since
gone to their own place; their names have descended upon the roll of
infamy; their empires have passed, like shadows over the rock--they
have successively disappeared, and left not a trace behind.
But what became of the Church? She rose from her ashes fresh in beauty
and in might. Celestial glory beamed around her; she dashed down the
monumental marble of her foes, and they who hated her fled before her.
She has celebrated the funeral of kings and kingdoms that plotted
her destruction; and, with the inscriptions of their pride, has
transmitted to posterity the record of their shame. How shall this
phenomenon be explained? We are, at the present moment, witnesses of
the fact; but who can unfold the mystery? This blest book, the book of
truth and life, has made our wonder to cease. The Lord her God in the
midst of her is mighty. His presence is a fountain of health, and his
protection a wall of fire. He has betrothed her, in eternal covenant,
to Himself. Her living head, in whom she lives, is above, and His
quickening Spirit shall never depart from her. Armed with divine
virtue, His gospel, secret, silent, unobserved, enters the hearts of
men and sets up an everlasting kingdom. It eludes all the vigilance,
and baffles all the power of the adversary. Bars and bolts, and
dungeons are no obstacle to its approach. Bonds, and tortures, and
death can not extinguish its influence. Let no man's heart tremble,
then, because of fear. Let no man despair, in these days of rebuke and
blasphemy, of the Christian cause. The ark is launched, indeed, upon
the floods; the tempest sweeps along the deep; the billows break over
her on every side. But Jehovah-Jesus has promised to conduct her in
safety to the haven of peace. She can not be lost unless the Pilot
perish. Why, then, do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a
vain thing? Hear, O Zion, the word of thy God, and rejoice for the
consolation. "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper,
and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt
condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their
righteousness is of me, saith the Lord."
Mere preservation, however, tho a most comfortable, is not the only
hope of the Church; she has the prospect of increase.
Increase--from an effectual blessing upon the means of grace in places
where they are already enjoyed; the Lord saith, "I will pour water
upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour
my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offering; and they
shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the watercourses."
Increase--from the diffusion of evangelical truth through pagan lands.
"For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness
the people; but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be
seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to
the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see:
all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall
come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side. Then
thou shalt see and flow together, and thy heart shall fear, and be
enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto
thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee."
Increase--from the recovery of the rejected Jews to the faith and
privileges of God's dear children. Blindness in part has happened
unto Israel; they have been cut off, for their unbelief, from the
olive-tree. Age has followed age, and they remain to this hour spread
over the face of the earth, a fearful and affecting testimony to the
truth of God's word. They are without their sanctuary, without their
Messiah, without the hope of their believing ancestors. But it shall
not be always thus. They are still "beloved for the father's sake."
When the "fulness of the Gentiles shall come in," they too shall be
gathered. They shall discover, in our Jesus, the marks of the promised
Messiah; and with from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto
God; it must make you meet for the inheritance of the saints, or it
shall fearfully aggravate your condemnation at last. You pray, "Thy
kingdom come." But is the "kingdom of God within you?" Is the Lord
Jesus "in you the hope of glory?" Be not deceived. The name of
Christian will not save you. Better had it been for you not to
have known the way of righteousness; better to have been the most
idolatrous pagan; better, infinitely better, not to have been born,
than to die strangers to the pardon of the Redeemer's blood and
the sanctifying virtue of His Spirit. From His throne on high He
calls--calls to you, "Look unto me, and be ye saved; for I am God, and
there is none else. Seek ye the Lord while he may be found; call ye
upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the
unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and
he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly
pardon."
On the other hand, such as have fled for refuge to lay hold on the
hope set before them, are commanded to be joyful in their King. He
reigns, O believer, for thee. The stability of His throne is thy
safety. The administration of His government is for thy good; and the
precious pledge is, that He "will perfect that which concerneth thee."
In all thy troubles, and in all thy joy, commit thy way unto Him. He
will guard the sacred deposit. Fear not that thou shalt lack any good
thing. Fear not that thou shalt be forsaken. Fear not that thou shalt
fall beneath the arm of the oppressor. "He went through the fires of
the pit to save thee." Sing, then, thou beloved, "Behold, God is my
salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my
strength and my song; he also is become my salvation."
And if we have "tasted that he is gracious"; if we look back with
horror and transport upon the wretchedness and the wrath which we
have escaped, with what anxiety shall we not hasten to the aid of our
fellow men, who are sitting in "the region and shadow of death." What
zeal will be too ardent, what labor too persevering, what sacrifice
too costly, if, by any means, we may tell them of Jesus, and
the resurrection, and the life eternal? Who shall be daunted by
difficulties, or deterred by discouragement? If but one pagan shall be
brought, savingly, by your instrumentality, to the knowledge of God
and the kingdom of heaven, will you not have an ample recompense? Is
there here a man who would give up all for lost because some favorite
hope has been disappointed, or who regrets the wordly substance which
he has expended on so divine an enterprise? Shame on thy coward
spirit and thine avaricious heart! Do the holy Scriptures, does the
experience of ages, does the nature of things justify the expectation
that we shall carry war into the central regions of delusion and
crime, without opposition, without trial? Show me a plan which
encounters not fierce resistance from the prince of darkness and his
allies in the human heart, and I will show you a plan which never came
from the inspiration of God. If missionary effort suffer occasional
embarrassment; if impressions on the heathen be less speedy, and
powerful, and extensive than fond wishes have anticipated; if
particular parts of the great system of operation be, at times,
disconcerted; if any of the ministers of grace fall a sacrifice to the
violence of those whom they go to bless in the name of the Lord--these
are events which ought to exercise our faith and patience, to wean us
from self-sufficiency, to teach where our strength lies, and where our
dependence must be fixt; but not to enfeeble hope nor relax diligence.
Let us not "despise the day of small things." Let us not overlook,
as an important matter, the very existence of that missionary spirit
which has already awakened Christians in different countries from
their long and dishonorable slumbers, and bids fair to produce, in due
season, a general movement of the Church upon earth. Let us not, for
one instant, harbor the ungracious thought that the prayers, and
tears, and wrestlings of those who make mention of the Lord, form no
link in that vast chain of events by which He "will establish, and
will make Jerusalem a praise in the earth." That dispensation which
is most repulsive to flesh and blood, the violent death of faithful
missionaries, should animate Christians with new resolution. "Precious
in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." The cry of
martyred blood ascends the heavens: it enters into the ears of
the Lord of Sabaoth. It will give Him no rest till He rain down
righteousness upon the land where it has been shed, and which it
has sealed as a future conquest for Him who "in his majesty rides
prosperously because of truth, and meekness and righteousness."
For the world, indeed, and perhaps for the Church, many calamities and
trials are in store, before the glory of the Lord shall be so revealed
that all flesh shall see it together. "I will shake all nations," is
the divine declaration--"I will shake all nations, and the desire of
all nations shall come." The vials of wrath which are now running, and
others which remain to be poured out, must be exhausted. The "supper
of the great God" must be prepared, and his "strange work" have its
course. Yet the missionary cause must ultimately succeed. It is the
cause of God and shall prevail. The days, O brethren, roll rapidly on,
when the shout of the isles shall swell the thunder of the continent;
when the Thames and the Danube, when the Tiber and the Rhine, shall
call upon Euphrates, the Ganges, and the Nile; and the loud concert
shall be joined by the Hudson, the Mississippi, and the Amazon,
singing with one heart and one voice, "Alleluia, salvation! The Lord
God omnipotent reigneth."
Comfort one another with this faith and with these words.
Now, "Blest be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doth wondrous
things. And blest be his glorious name forever: Let the whole earth be
filled with his glory. Amen and amen."
END OF VOL. III.