Sivut kuvina
PDF
ePub

[SERM. 13. evidenced to you. Plead his promises. All the promises, yea "all things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." Be earnest then for fresh supplies of faith and love, out of Christ's fulness, that you may be enabled to enjoy the communion of saints. Your zealous indignation against sin, spoken of in my last discourse, is not a more sure token that you are delivered from the tyranny of sin, than your love of the Brethren is a proof that you are a Brother, an heir of God, and a joint heir with Christ. Though you should be deceived sometimes, and take those for Brethren who are not living members of Christ, this alters not at all the evidence of conversion, since your love for them was on account of a supposed relation to the common Saviour, the head of the Church. Rejoice then, O lovers of the Brethren, and take care lest, by a false humility, you stifle the evidences of divine love already afforded. You should labour to be clear in the tokens of grace received, else how can you be thankful,-as, surely, you ought to be,-for the mercies of your God? It well becomes the just to be thankful.

2d. And now let me address those who have their portion in this life. In vain do you pretend to this love of the Brethren, as an evidence of your real Christianity, who never experienced, nor sought after, that mighty change, expressed in the text, of passing from death unto life. This you understand not, and in your ignorance you despise it. There needs no other proof that you abide still in death. It is one property of men, in a state of nature, not to be sensible of the misery of their condition. This

mark, alas! suits you too well. You are Satan's bond slaves, without either love of the Brethren or any other Christian quality; and you are willingly deluded so as to think that all is well with you.

But what think you of this passing from death unto life? is it not as necessary now as formerly? Are not men still born in sin? Can the ceremony of external baptism avail, when we see the subjects of it too generally growing in wickedness, as they grow in years? Can this change pass on any persons without a change of dispositions? Must not there be a sense of the misery of the natural state, before men will desire to be delivered from it? What a condition then are you in, who have always thought well of yourselves? Oh! pray for a right knowledge of your state, that you may seek to Christ for this change. To suppose you have any such evidences of real Christianity, as love of the Brethren, till this change has taken place, would be as absurd, as for a man to pretend he has got in his harvest before the seed is sown.

And here, beware how you expect to procure this change on account of the value which you affix to the performance of any duties whatsoever. Do not suppose you can MERIT it by acts of love to your fellow-creatures. This is mistaking evidences for conditions of salvation,-the grand fundamental error of modern Divinity. I will once more repeat the true manner of passing from death unto life, laid down by our Lord." Verily, verily, I unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from

I say

death unto life." John v. 24.

Go self-abased to

this Saviour, and make haste to perform the first duty of the Gospel, by believing in him for all your salvation. Then shall you find its happy effects in causing you to love the Brethren.

And now consider seriously what has been not only asserted, but, I think, proved, concerning the nature of this love of the Brethren. Have your only motives hitherto been such as these that follow?" I relieve the distressed, because I pity them as fellow-creatures; it gains me a good character; it will be a step to procure me heaven; it will atone for my sins."--Alas! then you have not a grain of Christian charity. Pity and humanity are motives innocent and amiable; but if ALONE, they are ruinously defective. The other motives of self-interest, either for this life or the next, are fundamentally wrong in themselves. Did you ever know what it was to relieve any man from such motives as these, namely, "He belongs to Christ, therefore I love him. I cannot do too much for my Saviour, who has freely saved me. I love the man; for he has in his disposition the lovely image of my Saviour; he is a man of real holiness." Pretend not to any love of the Brethren till you begin to be influenced by these Scriptural motives.

But further you not only do not love the Brethren, but you HATE them. There is no other term which so exactly expresses your temper of mind towards them. Your humanity, it is true, may prompt you to do them a kindness in distress, and your good sense may teach you to respect their social good qualities, but you may still discover your

hatred of them by this mark: There is something within you, ever prompting you to censure their strictness, their singularity, or their faults; so that you are continually inclined to blame them as carrying matters too far. If you could adjust the account truly, even you who have a partial respect for the children of God, you would find your love of them was only the love of them as men, and to be accounted for from motives of humanity, and that enmity still remains in your heart against them as Christians.

A

How easy then is it to show that you have not this evidence of conversion, the love of the Brethren, who hate and persecute them altogether! million of benevolent acts to your fellow-creatures may prove you to be humane, generous men. Your contempt and aversion to God's people proves you, notwithstanding, to abide in death, and to be the slaves of sin. May you see yourselves by these marks, and learn to repent and believe the Gospel, that iniquity may not be your ruin!

SERMON XIV.

THE DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE.

Mat. x. 29, 30.

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

THE directions and encouragements which our Lord, through this chapter, gives to his disciples, are plainly meant to be of a far more extensive nature and influence than the particular occasion on which they were delivered, which was the sending forth of his twelve disciples to preach in the cities of Judea. This, their first commission, was only temporary; and in the execution of it they were, probably, exposed to no very extraordinary sufferings. Their Master was well acquainted with the infirmities of human nature, and in his compassion judged it expedient that his Apostles should gradually be inured to hardships in his service.— We are, therefore, always to remember, that the rules of loving their Lord above all things; of denying themselves and following Christ; and the consequences of the Gospel in setting men at variance one against another, so that a man's foes should be those of his own household; and other thoughts of the same kind, do plainly extend the meaning of

« EdellinenJatka »