in any man's earthly life so true as they will be at the day of
judgment. The hardest heart, the most obdurate in sin, the most closed
against all repentance, is yet more within the reach of grace, we should
imagine, whilst he is alive and in health, than he will be at the day of
the resurrection. We can admit, then, that the words of the text may be
true, in a greater or less degree; that they will be more entirely true
at the last day, than at any earlier period, but yet that they may be
substantially true, true almost beyond exception, in the life that now
is. Now carry this same principle a little farther, and we come to our
very own case. The words of the text will be more true at the day of
judgment, than they ever are on earth; and yet on earth they are often
true substantially and practically. And even so, they may be more true
to each of us a few years hence, than they are at this moment; and yet,
in a certain degree, they may be true at this moment; true, not
absolutely and entirely, but partially; so true as to give a most solemn
earnest, if we are not warned in time, of their more entire truth
hereafter,--first, in this earthly life; then most perfectly of all,
when we shall arise at the last day.
It may be, then, that the words of the text, although not applicable to
us in their full and most fatal sense, may yet be applicable to us in a
certain degree: the evil which they speak of may be, not wholly future
and contingent, and a thing to be feared, but present in part, actual,
and a matter of experience. This is not contradiction: it is not
impossible; it _may be_ our case. Let us see whether it really is so,
that is, whether it is in any degree true of us, that when we call upon
God he will not answer; that when we seek him, we shall in any manner be
unable to find him.
It is manifest that, in proportion as Christ's words "Seek, and ye shall
find," are true to any man, so are the words of the text less true to
him; and in proportion as Christ's words are less true to any one, so
are the words of the text more true to him. Now, is Christ's promise,
"Seek, and ye shall find," equally true to all of us? Conceive of
one--the thing is rare, but not impossible,--of one who had been so kept
from evil, and so happily led forward in good, that when arrived at
boyhood, his soul had scarcely more stain upon it than when it was first
fully cleansed, and forgiven, in baptism! Conceive him speaking truth,
without any effort, on all occasions; not greedy, not proud, not
violent, not selfish, not feeling conscious that he was living a life
of sin, and therefore glad to come to God, rather than shrinking away
from him! Conceive how completely to such an one would Christ's words be
fulfilled, "Seek, and ye shall find!" When would his prayers be
unblessed or unfruitful? When would he turn his thoughts to God without
feeling pleasure in doing so; without a lively consciousness of God's
love to him; without an assured sense of the reality of things not seen,
of redemption and grace and glory? Would not the communion with God,
enjoyed by one so untainted, come up to the full measure of those high
promises, "It shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer,
and while they are yet speaking, I will hear?" Would it not be plain,
that God was as truly found, by such a person, as he was sought in
sincerity and earnestness?
But now, take the most of us: suppose us not to have been kept carefully
from evil, nor led on steadily in good; suppose us to have reached
boyhood with bad dispositions, ready for the first temptation, with
habits of good uncultivated; suppose us to have no great horror of a
lie, when it can serve our turn; with much love of pleasure, and little
love of our duty; with much, selfishness, and little or no thought of
God: suppose such an one, so sadly altered from a state of baptismal
purity, to be saying his prayers as he had been taught to say them, and
saying them sometimes with a thought of their meaning and a wish that
God would hear them. But does God hear them? I ask of your own
consciences, whether you have had any sense that he has heard you?
whether death and judgment, Christ and Christ's service, have become
more real to you after such prayers? If not, then is it not manifest,
that you have sought God, and have not found him; that you have called
upon him and he has not heard? You know by experience, that you are not
as those true children who are ever with him, who listen to catch the
lightest whisper of his Spirit, for whom, he, too, vouchsafes to bless
the faintest breathing of their prayer.
Or, again, in trying to turn from evil to good, have you ever found your
resolutions give way, the ground which you had gained slide from under
your feet, till you fell back again to what you were at the beginning?
Has this ever happened to us? If it has, then in that case, also, we
sought God, but failed to find him; the victory was not yours, but the
enemy's; the Spirit of Christ did not help you so as to conquer.
Take another case yet again. Has it ever happened to any of you, to have
done a mischief to yourselves which you could not undo? It need not be
one of the very highest kind; but has it ever happened, that, by
neglect, you have lost ground in the society in which you are placed,
which you cannot recover; that your contemporaries have gained an
advance upon you, while you have not time left to overtake them? Does it
ever happen that, from neglecting some particular element of learning in
its proper season, and other things claiming your attention afterwards,
you go on with a disadvantage, which you would fain remove, but cannot?
Does it, in short, ever happen to any, that his complete success here is
become impossible; that whatever prospects of another kind may be open
to him elsewhere, yet that he cannot now be numbered amongst those who
have turned the particular advantages here afforded them to that end
which they might and ought to have done?
To whomsoever this has happened, the truth of the words of the text is
matter of experience, not in their full and most dreadful extent, but
yet quite enough to prove that they are true; and that just as he now
feels them in part, so, if he continues to be what he is, he will one
day feel them wholly. He feels that it is possible to seek God, and not
to find him; he has learnt by experience that neglected good, or
committed evil, may be beyond the power of after-regret to undo. It is
true, that as yet, to him, other prospects may be open: prospects which,
probably, he may deem no less fair than those which he has forfeited.
This may be so; but the point to observe is, that one prospect was lost
so irretrievably by his own fault, that afterwards, when he wished to
regain it, he could not. Now God gives him other prospects, which he may
realize: but as he forfeited his first prospect beyond recovery, so he
may do also with his last: and though ill-success at school may be made
up by success in another sphere, yet what is to make up for ill-success
in the great business of life, when that, too, has been forfeited as
irrecoverably; when his last chance is gone as hopelessly as his first?
Now, surely there is in all this an intelligible lesson. I am not at all
exaggerating the importance of the particular prospect forfeited here:
but I am pressing upon you, that this prospect may be, and often is,
forfeited irrecoverably; that when you wish to regain it, it is too
late, and you cannot. And I press this, because it is a true type of the
whole of human life; because it is just as possible to forfeit salvation
irrecoverably, as to forfeit that earthly good which is the prize of
well-doing here, with this infinite difference, that the last forfeit is
not only irretrievable, but fatal; it can no more be made up for, than
it can be regained. Here, then, your present condition is a type of the
complete truth of the text: but there are other points, to which I
alluded before, in which it is more than a type; it is the very truth
itself, although, happily, only in an imperfect measure. That unanswered
prayer, of which I spoke, those broken resolutions,--are they not
actually a calling on God, without his hearing us; a seeking him,
without finding him? We remember who it was that could say with truth to
his Father, "I know that thou nearest me always." We know what it is
that hinders God from hearing us always; because we are not thoroughly
one in his Son Christ Jesus. But this unanswered prayer is not properly
the State of Christ's redeemed: it is an enemy that hath brought us to
this; the same enemy who will, in time, make all our prayers to be
unanswered, as some are now; who will cause God, not only to be slow to
listen, but to refuse to listen for ever. Now we are not heard at once,
we must repeat our prayers, with more and more earnestness, that God, at
last, may hear, and may bless us. But if, instead of repeating them the
more, we do the very contrary, and repeat them the less; if, because we
have no comfort, and no seeming good from them, we give them up
altogether; then the time will surely come when all prayer will be but
the hopeless prayer of Esau, because it will be only the prayer of fear;
because it will be only the dread of destruction that will, or can, move
us:--the love of good will have gone beyond recall. Such prayer does but
ask for pardon without repentance; and this never is, or can
be, granted.
So then, in conclusion, that very feeling of coldness, and unwillingness
to pray, because we have often prayed in vain, is surely working in us
that perfect death, which is the full truth of the words of the text. Of
all of us, those who the least like to pray, who have prayed with the
least benefit, have the most need to pray again. If they have sought
God, without finding him, let them take heed that this be not their case
for ever; that the truth, of which the seed is even now in them, may not
be ripened to their everlasting destruction, when all their seeking, and
all their prayer, will be as rejected by God, as, in part, it has
been already.
LECTURE XIII.
* * * * *
MARK xii. 34.
_Thou art not far from the kingdom of God_.
Whoever has gone up any hill of more than common height, may remember
the very different impression which the self-same point, whether bush,
or stone, or cliff, has made upon him as he viewed it from below and
from above. In going up it seemed so high, that we fancied, if we were
once arrived at it, we should be at the summit of our ascent; while,
when we had got beyond it, and looked down upon it, it seemed almost
sunk to the level of the common plain; and we wondered that it could
ever have appeared high to us.
What happens with any natural object according to the different points
from which we view it, happens also to any particular stage of
advancement in our moral characters. There is a goodness which appears
very exalted or very ordinary, according as it is much above or much
below our own level. And this is the case with the expression of our
Lord in the text, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." Does this
seem a great thing or a little thing to be said to us? Does it give us a
notion of a height which we should think it happiness to have readied;
or of a state so little advanced, that it would be misery to be forced
to go back to it? For, according as it seems to us the one or the other,
so we may judge of the greater or less progress which we have made in
ascending the holy mountain of our God.
But while I say this, it is necessary to distinguish between two several
senses, in which we may be said to be near to the kingdom of God, or
actually in it. These two are in respect of knowledge, and in respect of
feeling and practice. And our Lord's words seem to refer particularly to
knowledge. The scribe to whom he used them, had expressed so just a
sense of the true way of pleasing God, had so risen above the common
false notions of his age and country, that his understanding seemed to
be ripe for the truths of that kingdom of God, which was to make the
worship of God to consist in spirit and in truth. Now as far as the
knowledge of the kingdom of God is concerned, although, undoubtedly,
there are many amongst us who are deficient in it, yet it is true also,
that a great many of us are in possession of it; we are familiar enough
with the truths of the kingdom of God, and our understandings fully
approve them. But we may be near to or far from the kingdom of God, in
respect also of feeling and practice; and this is the great matter that
concerns us. It is here, then, that we should ask ourselves what we
think of our Lord's words in the text; and whether he to whom they were
spoken appears to us an object of envy or of compassion; one whom we
envy for having advanced so far, or pity for not being advanced further.
"Not far from the kingdom of God." Again, if we take the words Kingdom
of God in their highest sense, then the expression contains all that we
could desire to have said of us in this life; hope itself on this side
of the grave can go no higher. For as, in this sense, the kingdom of God
cannot be actually entered before our death; so the best thing that can
be said of us here, is, that we are not far from it; but we are in the
land of Beulah, so happily imagined in the Pilgrim's Progress; all of
our pilgrimage completed, save the last act of crossing the river; with
the city of God full in sight, and with hearts ready to enter into it.
In this sense, even St. Paul himself, when he wrote his last epistle
from Rome, could say no more, could hope for, could desire no more, than
to be not far from the kingdom of God.
Yet again, take the words "Kingdom of God" in their lowest sense, and
then it is woe to us all, if the expression in the text is all that can
be said of us; if, in this sense, we are only not far from the kingdom
of God. For take the kingdom of God as God's visible Church, and then,
if we are not Christians at all, but only not far from becoming so; if
we have not received Christ, but are not far from receiving him; this is
a state so imperfect, that he who is in it, has not yet reached to the
beginning of his Christian course; and we need not say how far he must
be from its end, if he have not yet come as far as its beginning.
Thus, in one sense, the words express something so high that nothing can
be higher; in another, something so low, that, to us, nothing can be
lower. We have yet to seek that sense, in which they may afford us a
useful criterion of our own several states, by appearing high, perhaps,
to some of us, and to others low.
The sense which we seek is given by our Lord, when he declares that the
kingdom of God is within us; or by St. Paul, when he tells us, that it
is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. And now it is no
more a thing which we cannot yet have reached, or, on the other hand,
which we all have reached: there is now a great difference in us, some
are far from it, some are near it, and some are in it; and thus it is,
that they who are near it, seem in it to those who are afar off, and
far from it to those who are in it.
Now, first, do they seem far from it? Then, indeed, ours is a happy
state, as many of us as can truly feel that they live so constantly in
holy and heavenly tempers, in such lively faith and love, so tasting all
the blessings of God's kingdom, its peace, and its hope, and its joy,
that they cannot bear to think of that time, when these blessings were
not enjoyed except in prospect; when they rather desired to have faith
and love, than could be said actually to have them; when their tempers
were not holy and heavenly, although they were fully alive to the
excellence of their being so, and had seen them already cleansed from
the opposites of such a state, from ill-nature, and passion, and pride.
If any such there be, in whom good resolutions have long since ripened
into good actions, and the continued good actions have now led to
confirmed good habits, how miserable will they think it to be only "not
far from the kingdom of God!" How ill could they bear to go over again
the struggle which used to accompany every action, when it was done in
defiance of habits of evil; or to be called back to that condition when
resolutions for good were formed over and over again, because they were
so often broken, but had as yet rarely led to any solid fruit! How
thankful will they be to have escaped from that season when they were
seeking, but had not yet found; when they were asking of God, but had
not yet received; when they were knocking, but the door had not yet been
opened! They were then, indeed, not far from the kingdom of God, but
they were still without its walls; they were still strangers, and not
citizens. It had held out to them a refuge, and they had fled to it as
suppliants to the sanctuary; but they had not yet had the word of peace
spoken, to bid them no more kneel without, as suppliants, but to enter
and go in and out freely; for that all things were theirs, because they
were Christ's.
I have dwelt purposely somewhat the longer upon this, because the more
that we can feel the truth of this picture, the more that we can put
ourselves into the position of those who are within the kingdom of God,
and who, living in the light of it, look back with pity upon those who
are only kneeling without its gates,--the more strongly we shall feel
what must be our condition, if those who are without its gates appear to
us to be objects of envy rather than pity, because they are so near to
that place from which we feel ourselves to be so distant. Or, to speak
without a figure, if we could but understand how persons advanced in
goodness would shrink from the thought of being now only resolving to be
good, then we shall perceive how very evil must be our condition, if
this very resolving to be good seems to us to be an advance so
desirable; if we are so far from being good actually, that the very
setting ourselves in earnest to seek for good strikes us as a point of
absolute proficiency in comparison of our present degradation.
Yet is not this the case with many of us? Do we not consider it a great
point gained, if we can be brought to think seriously, to pray in
earnest, to read the Bible, to begin to look to our own ways and lives?
We feel it for ourselves, and others also feel it for us: it is natural,
it is unavoidable, that we feel great joy, that we think a great deal is
done, if we see any of you, after leading a life of manifest
carelessness, and therefore of manifest sin, beginning to take more
pains with himself, and so becoming what is called somewhat more steady
and more serious. I know that the impression is apt to be too strong
upon us: we are but too apt to boast for him who putteth on his armour
as for him who putteth it off; because he who putteth on his armour at
least shows that he is preparing for the battle, which so many never do
at all. We observe some of these signs of seriousness: we see perhaps,
that a person begins to attend at the Communion; that he pays more
attention to his ordinary duties; that he becomes more regular. We see
this, and we are not only thankful for it,--this we ought to be,--but we
satisfy ourselves too readily that all is done: we reckon a person,
somewhat too hastily, to be already belonging to the kingdom of God,
because we have seen him turning towards it. Then, if he afterwards does
not appear to be entered into it; if we see that he is not what we
expected, that he is no longer serious, no longer attentive to his
common duties, we are overmuch disappointed; and, perhaps are tempted
too completely to despair for him. Is it not that we confounded together
the beginning and the end; the being good, and the trying to become so:
the resolution with the act; the act with the habit? Did we not forget
that he is not at once out of danger who begins to mend: that the first
softening of the dry burning skin, the first abating of the hard quick
pulse, is far removed from the coolness, and steadiness, and even vigour
of health restored, or never interrupted?
But what made us forget truths so obvious? What made us confound things
so different that the most ignorant ought to be able to distinguish
them? Cannot we tell why it is? Is it not because there are so many in
whom we cannot see even as good signs as these,--of whom we cannot but
feel that it would be a great advance for them, a matter of earnest
thankfulness, if we could only see that they were not far from the
kingdom of God,--nay, even that their steps were tending thither? Let us
look ever so earnestly, let us watch ever so carefully, let us hope
ever so charitably, we cannot see, we can scarcely fancy that we see,
even the desire to turn to God. We do not see gross wickedness; it is
well; we see much that is amiable; that is well also: but the desire to
turn to God, the tending of the steps towards the kingdom of
heaven,--that we cannot see. But this is a thing, it may be said, that
man cannot see: it may exist, although we cannot perceive it. Oh, that
it might and may be so! Yet, surely, as out of the abundance of the
heart the mouth speaketh, so a principle so mighty as the desire of
turning to God cannot leave itself without a witness: some symptoms must
be shown to those who are eagerly watching for them; some ground for
hope must be afforded where hope is so ready to kindle. If no sign of
life appears, can the life indeed be stirring? And if the life be not
stirring; if the disorder is going on in so many cases, raging, with no
symptom of abatement; is it not natural, that when we do see such
symptoms, we should rejoice even with over-measure, that we should
forget how much is yet to be done, when we see that something has
been done.
To such persons, it would be an enviable state, to be not far from the
kingdom of God. But what, then, must be their state actually? A hopeful
one, according to many standards of judgment; a state that promises
well, it may be, for a healthy and prosperous life, with many friends,
perhaps with much distinction. We know that all this prospect may be
blighted; still it exists at present;--the healthy constitution, the
easy fortune, the cheerful and good-humoured temper, the quickness and
power of understanding; all these, no doubt, are hopeful signs for a
period of forty, or fifty, or perhaps sixty years to come. But what is
to come then? what is the prospect for the next period, not of fifty, or
sixty, not of a hundred, not of a thousand, years; not of any number
that can be numbered, but of time everlasting? Is their actual state one
of hopeful promise for this period, for this life which no death shall
terminate? Nay, is it a state of any promise at all, of any chance at
all? Suppose, for a moment, one with a crippled body, full of the seeds
of hereditary disease, poor, friendless, irritable in temper, low in
understanding; suppose such an one just entering upon youth, and ask
yourselves, for what would you consent that his prospects should be
yours? What should you think would be your chance of happiness in life,
if you were beginning in such a condition? Yet, I tell you that poor,
diseased, irritable, friendless cripple has a far better prospect of
passing his fifty, or sixty, years, tolerably, than they who have not
begun to turn towards God have of a tolerable eternity. Much more
wretched is the promise of their life; much more justly should we be
tempted, concerning them, to breathe that fearful thought, that it were
good for them if they had never been born. And now if, as by miracle,
that cripple's limbs were to be at once made sound, if the seeds of
disease were to vanish, if some large fortune were left him, if his
temper sweetened, and his mind became vigorous, should not we be
excused, considering what he had been and what he now was, if we, for a
moment, forgot the uncertainty of the future; if we thought that a
promise so changed, was almost equivalent to performance? And may not
this same excuse be urged for some over-fondness of confidence for their
well-doing whom we see so near to the kingdom of God, when we consider
how utter is the misery, how hopeless the condition of those who do not
appear to have, as yet, stirred one single step towards it?
LECTURE XIV.
* * * * *
MATTHEW xxii. 14.
_For many are called, but few are chosen_.
The truth here expressed is one of the most solemn in the world, and
would be one of the most overwhelming to us, if habit had not, in a
manner, blunted our painful perception of it. There is contained in it
matter of thought more than we could exhaust, and deeper than we could
ever fathom. But on this I will not attempt to enter. I will rather take
that view of the text which concerns us here; I will see in how many
senses it is true, and with what feeling we should regard it.