and stern integrity of the father; then the exuberant tenderness of
the mother. And then one is brave and enthusiastic, another
thoughtful, and another tender. One is remarkable for being full of
rich humour, another is sad, mournful, even melancholy. Again, besides
these, there are diversities of condition in life. First, there is the
heir, sustaining the name and honour of the family; then perchance the
soldier, in whose career all the anxiety and solicitude of the family
is centred; then the man of business, to whom they look up, trusting
his advice, expecting his counsel; lastly perhaps, there is the
invalid, from the very cradle trembling between life and death,
drawing out all the sympathies and anxieties of each member of the
family, and so uniting them all more closely, from their having one
common point of sympathy and solicitude. Now, you will observe that
these are not accidental, but absolutely essential to the idea of a
family; for so far as any one of them is lost, so far the family is
incomplete. A family made up of one sex alone, all brothers and no
sisters; or in which all are devoted to one pursuit; or in which there
is no diversity of temper and dispositions--the same monotonous
repeated identity--a sameness in the type of character--this is not a
family, it is only the fragment of a family.
And precisely in the same way all these diversities of character and
condition are necessary to constitute and complete the idea of a
Christian Church. For as in ages past it was the delight of the Church
to canonize one particular class of virtues--as for instance, purity
or martyrdom--so now, in every age, and in every individual bosom,
there is a tendency to canonize, or honour, or reckon as Christian,
only one or two classes of Christian qualities. For example, if you
were to ask in the present day where you should find a type of the
Christian character, many in all probability would point you to the
man who keeps the Sabbath-day, is regular in his attendance upon the
services of the Church, who loves to hear the Christian sermon. This
is a phase of Christian character--that which is essentially and
peculiarly the _feminine_ type of religion. But is there in God's
Church to be found no place for that type which is rather masculine
than feminine?--which, not in litanies or in psalm-singing does the
will of God, but by struggling for principles, and contending for the
truth--_that_ life, whose prayer is action, whose aspiration is
continual effort?
Or again, in every age, amongst all men, in the history of almost
every individual, at one time or another, there has been a tendency
towards that which has been emphatically named in modern times
_hero-worship_--leading us to an admiration of the more singular,
powerful, noble qualities of humanity. And wherever this tendency to
hero-worship exists there will be found side by side with it a
tendency to undervalue and depreciate excellences of an opposite
character--the humble, meek, retiring qualities. But it is precisely
for these that the Church of Christ finds place. "Blessed are the
meek, blessed are the merciful, blessed are they that hunger and
thirst after righteousness, blessed are the poor in spirit." In God's
world there is a place for the wren and the violet, just as truly as
there is for the eagle and the rose. In the Church of God there is a
place--and that the noblest--for Dorcas making garments for the poor,
and for Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, just as truly as there is
for Elijah confounding a false religion by his noble opposition; for
John the Baptist making a king tremble on his throne; or for the
Apostle Paul "compassing sea and land" by his wisdom and his heroic
deeds.
Once more, there are ages, as well as times in our own individual
experience, when we set up charity as if it were the one only
Christian character. And wherever this tendency is found there will be
found at the same time, and side by side with it, a tendency to admire
the spurious form of charity, which is a sentiment and not a virtue;
which can sympathize with crime, but not with law; which can be tender
to savages, but has no respect, no care for national honour. And
therefore, does this principle of the Apostle Paul call upon us to
esteem also another form or type of character, and the opposite one;
that which is remarkable for--in which predominates--not so much
charity as _justice_; that which was seen in the warriors and prophets
of old; who perchance, had a more strong recoil from vice than
sympathy with virtue; whose indignation towards that which is wrong
and hypocritical was more intense than their love for that which is
good: the material, the character, out of which the reformer and the
prophet, those who are called to do great works on earth, are made.
The Church of Christ takes not in one individual form of goodness
merely, but every form of excellence that can adorn Humanity. Nor is
this wonderful when we remember Who He was from whom this Church was
named. It was He in whom centred all excellence--a righteousness
which was entire and perfect. But when we speak of the perfection of
righteousness, let us remember that it is made not of one exaggerated
character, but of a true harmony, a due proportion of all virtues
united. In Him were found therefore, that tenderness towards sinners
which had no sympathy with sin; that humility which could be
dignified, and was yet united with self-respect; that simplicity which
is ever to be met with, side by side with true majesty; that love
which could weep over Jerusalem at the very moment when He was
pronouncing its doom, that truth and justice which appeared to stand
as a protection to those who had been oppressed, at the same time that
He scathed with indignant invective the Pharisees of the then existing
Jews.
There are two, only two, _perfect_ Humanities. One has existed already
in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, the other is to be found only
in the collective Church. Once, only once, has God given a perfect
representation of Himself, "the brightness of the Father's glory, and
the express image of His person." And if we ask again for a perfect
Humanity, the answer is, it is not in this Church or in that Church,
or in this man or in that man, in this age or in that age, but in the
collective blended graces and beauties, and humanities, which are
found in every age, in all churches, but not in every separate man.
So, at least, Paul has taught us, "Till we _all_ come"--_collectively_
not separately--"in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of
the Son of God, unto a perfect man"--in other words, to a perfect
_Humanity_--"unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of
Christ."
3. The last thing which is taught us by this definition is, that the
Church of Christ is a society which is for ever shifting its locality,
and altering its forms. It is the _whole_ church, "the _whole_ family
in heaven and earth." So then, those who were on earth, and are now in
heaven, are yet members of the same family still. Those who had their
home here, now have it there.
Let us see what it is that we should learn from this doctrine. It is
this, that the dead are not lost to us. There is a sense in which the
departed are ours more than they were before. There is a sense in
which the Apostles Paul, or John, the good and great of ages past,
belong to this age more than to that in which they lived, but in which
they were not understood; in which the common-place and every-day part
of their lives hindered the brightness and glory and beauty of their
character from shining forth. So it is in the family. It is possible
for men to live in the same house, and partake of the same meal from
day to day, and from year to year, and yet remain strangers to each
other, mistaking each other's feelings, not comprehending each other's
character; and it is only when the Atlantic rolls between, and half a
hemisphere is interposed, that we learn how dear they are to us, how
all our life is bound up in deep anxiety with their existence.
Therefore it is the Christian feels that the family is not broken.
Think you that family can break or end?--that because the chair is
empty, therefore he, your child, is no more? It may be so with the
coarse, the selfish, the unbelieving, the superstitious; but the eye
of faith sees there only a transformation. He is not there, he is
risen. You see the place where he was, but he has passed to heaven. So
at least the parental heart of David felt of old, "by faith and not by
sight," when speaking of his infant child. "I shall go to him, but he
shall not return to me."
Once more, the Church of Christ is a society ever altering and
changing its external forms. "The _whole_ family"--the Church of the
Patriarchs, and of ages before them; and yet the same family.
Remember, I pray you, the diversities of form through which, in so
many ages and generations, this Church has passed. Consider the
difference there was between the patriarchal Church of the time of
Abraham and Isaac, and its condition under David; or the difference
between the Church so existing and its state in the days of the
apostles; and the marvellous difference between that and the same
Church four or five centuries later; or, once again, the difference
between that, externally one, and the Church as it exists in the
present day, broken into so many fragments. Yet diversified as these
states may be, they are not more so than the various stages of a
family.
There is a time when the children are all in one room, around their
mother's knee. Then comes a time, still further on, when the first
separation takes place, and some are leaving their home to prepare for
after life. Afterwards, when all in their different professions,
trades, or occupations, are separate. At last comes the time when some
are gone. And, perchance, the two survivors meet at last--an old,
gray-haired man, and a weak, worn-out woman--to mourn over the last
graves of a household. Christian brethren, which of these is the right
form--the true, external pattern of a family? Say we not truly, it
remains the same under all outward mutations? We must think of this,
or else we may lose heart in our work. Conceive for instance, the
feelings of a pious Jew, when Christianity entered this world; when
all his religious system was broken up--the Temple service brought to
a violent end; when that polity which he thought was to redeem and
ennoble the world was cast aside as a broken and useless thing. Must
they not have been as gloomy and as dreary as those of the disciples,
when He was dead who they "trusted should have redeemed Israel?" In
both cases the body was gone or was altered--the spirit had arisen.
And precisely so it is with our fears and unbelieving apprehensions
now. Institutions pass--churches alter--old forms change--and
high-minded and good men cling to these as if _they_ were the only
things by which God could regenerate the world. Christianity appears
to some men to be effete and worn out. Men who can look back upon the
times of Venn, and Newton, and Scott--comparing the degeneracy of
their descendants with the men of those days--lose heart, as if all
things were going wrong. "Things are not," they say, "as they were in
our younger days." No my Christian brethren, things are not as they
then were; but the Christian cause lives on--not in the successors of
such men as those; the outward form is altered, but the spirit is
elsewhere, is risen--risen just as truly as the spirit of the highest
Judaism rose again in Christianity. And to mourn over old
superstitions and effete creeds, is just as unwise as is the grief of
the mother mourning over the form which was once her child. She cannot
separate her affection from that form--those hands, those limbs, those
features--are they not her child? The true answer is, her child is not
there. It is only the form of her child. And it is as unwise to mourn
over the decay of those institutions--the change of human forms--as it
was unwise in Jonah to mourn with that passionate sorrow over the
decay of the gourd which had sheltered him from the heat of the
noontide sun. A worm had eaten the root of the gourd, and it was gone.
But he who made the gourd the shelter to the weary--the shadow of
those who are oppressed by the noontide heat of life--lived on:
Jonah's God. And so brethren, all things change--all things outward
change and alter; but the God of the Church lives on. The Church of
God remains under fresh forms--the one, holy, entire family in heaven
and earth.
II. Pass we on now, in the second place, to consider the name by which
this Church is named. "Our Lord Jesus Christ," the Apostle says, "of
whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named."
Now, every one familiar with the Jewish modes of thought and
expression, will allow here, that _name_ is but another word to
express being, actuality, and existence. So when Jacob desired to
know the character and nature of Jehovah, he said--"Tell me now, I
beseech thee, thy _name_". When the Apostle here says, "Our Lord Jesus
Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is _named_," it
is but another way of saying that it is He on Whom the Church
depends--Who has given it substantive existence--without Whom it could
not be at all. It is but another way of saying what he has expressed
elsewhere--"that there is none other name under heaven given among
men, whereby we may be saved." Let us not lose ourselves in vague
generalities. Separate from Christ, there is no salvation; there can
be no Christianity. Let us understand what we mean by this. Let us
clearly define and enter into the meaning of the words we use. When we
say that our Lord Jesus Christ is He "of whom the whole family in
heaven and earth is named," we mean that the very being of the Church
depends on Christ--that it could not be without Him. Now, the Church
of Christ depends upon these three things--first, the recognition of a
common Father; secondly, of a common Humanity; and thirdly, of a
common Sacrifice.
1. First, the recognition of a common Father. That is the sacred truth
proclaimed by the Epiphany. God revealed in Christ--not the Father of
the Jew only, but also of the Gentile. The Father of a "whole family."
Not the partial Father, loving one alone--the elder--but the younger
son besides: the outcast prodigal who had spent his living with
harlots and sinners, but the child still, and the child of a Father's
love. Our Lord taught this in His own blessed prayer--"_Our_ Father;"
and as we lose the meaning of that single word _our_, as we say _my_
Father--the Father of _me_ and of _my_ faction--of _me_ and _my_
fellow believers--_my_ Anglicanism or _my_ Judaism--be it what it
may--instead of _our_ Father--the Father of the outcast, the
profligate, of all who choose to claim a Father's love; _so_ we lose
the meaning of the lesson which the Epiphany was designed to teach,
and the possibility of building up a family to God.
2. The recognition of a common Humanity. He from whom the Church is
named, took upon Him not the nature merely of the noble, of kings, or
of the intellectual philosopher--but of the beggar, the slave, the
outcast, the infidel, the sinner, and the nature of every one
struggling in various ways. Let us learn then brother men, that we
shall have no family in God, unless we learn the deep truth of our
common Humanity, shared in by the servant and the sinner, as well as
the sovereign. Without this we shall have no Church--no family in God.
3. Lastly, the Church of Christ proceeds out of, and rests upon, the
belief in a common Sacrifice.
* * * * *
There are three ways in which the human race hitherto has endeavoured
to construct itself into a family; first, by the sword; secondly, by
an ecclesiastical system; and thirdly, by trade or commerce. First, by
the sword. The Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman, have
done their work--in itself a most valuable and important one; but so
far as the formation of mankind into a family was the object aimed at,
the work of the sword has done almost nothing. Then there was the
ecclesiastical system--the grand attempt of the Church of Rome to
organize all men into one family, with one ecclesiastical, visible,
earthly head. Being Protestants, it is not necessary for us to state
our conviction that this attempt has been a signal and complete
failure. We now come to the system of commerce and trade. We are told
that that which chivalry and honour could not do--which an
ecclesiastical system could not do--personal interest _will_ do. Trade
is to bind men together into one family. When they feel it their
_interest_ to be one, they will be brothers. Brethren, that which is
built on selfishness cannot stand. The system of personal interest
must be shivered into atoms. Therefore, we, who have observed the ways
of God in the past, are waiting in quiet but awful expectation until
he shall confound this system as he has confounded those which have
gone before. And it may be effected by convulsions more terrible and
more bloody than the world has yet seen. While men are talking of
peace, and of the great progress of civilization, there is heard in
the distance the noise of armies gathering rank on rank: east and
west, north and south, are rolling towards us the crushing thunders of
universal war.
Therefore there is but one other system to be tried, and that is the
Cross of Christ--a system that is not to be built upon selfishness,
nor upon blood, nor upon personal interest, but upon Love. Love, not
self--the Cross of Christ, and not the mere working-out of the ideas
of individual humanity.
One word only in conclusion. Upon this, the great truth of the
Epiphany, the Apostle founds a prayer. He prays, "For this cause I bow
my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole
family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you,
according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by
His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by
faith." This manifestation of joy and good to the Gentiles was,
according to him, the great mystery of Love. A Love, brighter, deeper,
wider, higher than the largest human heart had ever yet dreamed of.
But the Apostle tells us it is after all, but a glimpse of the love of
God. How should we learn it more? How should we comprehend the whole
meaning of the Epiphany? By sitting down to read works of theology?
The Apostle Paul tells us--No. You must love, in order to understand
love. "That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to
comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length, and depth
and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge."
Brother men, one act of charity will teach us more of the love of God
than a thousand sermons--one act of unselfishness, of real
self-denial, the putting forth of one loving feeling to the outcast
and "those who are out of the way," will tell us more of the meaning
of the Epiphany than whole volumes of the wisest writers on theology.
XVI.
_Preached January 25, 1852._
THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.
"Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some, with
conscience of the idol, unto this hour, eat it as a thing offered
unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is denied. But meat
commendeth us not to God: for neither if we eat are we the better;
neither if we eat not are we the worse. But take heed lest by any
means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that
are weak. For if any man see thee which hast knowledge, sit at
meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which
is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to
idols; and through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for
whom Christ died? But when ye sin so against the brethren and
wound their weak conscience ye sin against Christ. Wherefore if
meat make my brother to offend I will eat no flesh while the world
standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."--1 Corinthians viii.
7-13.
We have already divided this chapter into two branches--the former
portion of it containing the difference between Christian knowledge
and secular knowledge, and the second portion containing the apostolic
exposition of the law of Christian conscience. The first of these we
endeavoured to expound last Sunday, but it may be well briefly to
recapitulate the principles of that discourse in a somewhat different
form.
Corinth as we all know and remember, was a city built on the sea
coast, having a large and free communication with all foreign nations;
and there was also within it, and going on amongst its inhabitants, a
free interchange of thought, and a vivid power of communicating the
philosophy and truths of those days to each other. Now it is plain,
that to a society in such a state, and to minds so educated, the
gospel of Christ must have presented a peculiar attraction, presenting
itself to them as it did, as a law of Christian liberty. And so, in
Corinth the gospel had "free course and was glorified," and was
received with great joy by almost all men, and by minds of all classes
and all sects; and a large number of these attached themselves to the
teaching of the Apostle Paul as the most accredited expounder of
Christianity--the "royal law of liberty." But it seems, from what we
read in this epistle, that a large number of these men received
Christianity as a thing intellectual, and that alone--and not as a
thing which touched the conscience, and swayed and purified the
affections. Thus this liberty became to them almost _all_--they ran
into sin or went to extravagance--they rejoiced in their freedom from
the superstitions, the ignorances, and the scruples which bound their
weaker brethren; but had no charity--none of that intense charity
which characterized the Apostle Paul, for those still struggling in
the delusions and darkness from which they themselves were free.
More than that, they demanded their right, their Christian liberty of
expressing their opinions in the church, merely for the sake of
_exhibiting_ the Christian graces and spiritual gifts which had been
showered upon them so largely; until by degrees those very assemblies
became a lamentable exhibition of their own depravity, and led to
numerous irregularities which we find severely rebuked by the Apostle
Paul. Their women, rejoicing in the emancipation which had been given
to the Christian community, laid aside the old habits of attire which
had been consecrated so long by Grecian and Jewish custom, and
appeared with their heads uncovered in the Christian community. Still
further than that, the Lord's Supper exhibited an absence of all
solemnity, and seemed more a meeting for licentious gratification,
where "one was hungry, and another was drunken"--a place in which
earthly drunkenness, the mere enjoyment of the appetites, had taken
the place of Christian charity towards each other.
And the same feeling--this love of mere liberty--liberty in
itself--manifested itself in many other directions. Holding by this
freedom, their philosophy taught that the body, that is the flesh, was
the only cause of sin; that the soul was holy and pure; and that
therefore, to be free from the body would be entire, perfect,
Christian emancipation. And so came in that strange, wrong doctrine,
exhibited in Corinth, where immortality was taught separate from, and
in opposition to, the doctrine of the resurrection. And afterwards
they went on with their conclusions about liberty, to maintain that
the body, justified by the sacrifice of Christ, was no longer capable
of sin; and that in the evil which was done by the body, the soul had
taken no part. And therefore sin was to them but as a name, from which
a Christian conscience was to be freed altogether. So that when one of
their number had fallen into grievous sin, and had committed
fornication, "such as was not so much as named among the Gentiles," so
far from being humbled by it, they were "puffed up," as if they were
exhibiting to the world an enlightened, true, perfect
Christianity--separate from all prejudices.