SERMON XV.

2 CORINTHIANS v. 16.

Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.

THAT is to say, "Henceforth know we him no more after the flesh." We are no longer to think of him as in the days when he was compassed with infirmity, despised and rejected of men, full of sorrows and patient sufferings. The Son of Man is declared to be the Son of God; his season of humiliation is passed away; he is seated at the right hand of God, and we shall see him no more till he comes in the clouds of heaven, and the throne of judgment is set, and the dead are called up from their graves to appear before him. The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son, that all men may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.

There is nothing in the whole world that so much concerns every one of us here assembled, as that great day of which I am going to speak. It is our hope and our warning, and should be borne in mind by us every day of our lives, that we may

be each the fitter to meet it. Whether it is far or near we know not; but this we do know, that it is unavoidable; and that to each one of us it is for all practical purposes near enough; as death is to each of us the same as judgment. Now certainly the things which I am going to say must be known already by all, nor can any words add to the inexpressible solemnity of the description which Christ himself hath given us of the judgment. I would but recall your minds and my own, to what we know indeed, but too often forget, and consider some of the particular points connected with the great day, that we may gain a clear and a lively notion of it, and observe what it is that we are daily venturing to despise. Whatever may be our state between our death and the end of the world, it will clearly be a very imperfect one; our sense of happiness and misery will be like the feeling of a pleasant or a frightful dream, which makes our recollection of the night either comfortable or painful, but which is as nothing when compared with the solid good and evil of our waking hours. The Scripture tells us very little of this period, but leads us to think chiefly of the resurrection, when we shall again be clothed with bodies, and shall begin to enter on our everlasting portion. We shall rise then, and shall be assembled before the judgment-seat, all of us who have ever lived in the world from Adam to that very hour. And

we shall rise doubtless with hearts that shall tell us at once, with perfect certainty, what sentence we shall receive from the Judge. It is remarkable, that in the Revelation of St. John, the fearful are put first amongst a long list of sinners, who have their part in the second death. Now by the fearful, he certainly does not mean those who fear God in this world, but those who will fear him in the next. Then it will be impossible to keep him out of our thoughts, as so many do here; he will be present to us, so that we cannot turn away to the right nor to the left; and therefore every one will either love him or fear him. Those who love him will do so from the consciousness of all that he has done for them, and of their own desire in their lifetime to please him. Those who fear him will do so, because they have never loved him, nor tried to do his will in sincerity; and therefore they regard him as a hard master, reaping where he has not sown, and gathering where he has not strawed; and finding nothing in themselves wherewith to answer his demands, they naturally are afraid of his coming. So that, anxious to escape from his eye, they will fly from him with those who are full of all kinds of sin, and are therefore desirous to shrink from his presence.

But their fear will then be too late; they and all the rest of the children of Adam must come

before the judgment-scat; there to be judged for

the whole course of their lives. We shall be questioned there for our thoughts, our words, and our deeds. Our Judge is one who searcheth the reins and the heart; and as he has told us that evil thoughts are sins, so they will not be forgotten in our trial. So that we have great need to say with David, "Who can tell how oft he offendeth? Lord, cleanse thou me from my secret faults!" Our sins of this kind we forget almost as soon as they are committed: but they are kept in remembrance in the sight of God. Nor can we say that

keep watch over our

we have not been warned to thoughts. We have been told that he who hateth his brother is a murderer; that he who looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart: and the law itself has not thought it enough to say, Thou shalt not steal, without adding another commandment to say, Thou shalt not covet. And it is plain, that not only in these three things, but in every other sin, where the act is evil, the thought or inclination must be evil too. But there is more to be said than this. Much of the lives of every one of us must be passed alone; and when we are so alone, our minds are constantly at work, or rather, I should say, they are doing themselves good or doing themselves harm; they are either gaining purity and strength, or they are corrupting themselves by imaginations absolutely evil, or they are

weakening themselves by not thinking at all; and thus are carried down the stream whilst they are only neglecting to make head against it. What I have said wants some little allowance, but not enough to lessen its truth generally: there are times in our lives when it is absolutely good for us to think of nothing at all, to give our minds if possible an entire rest, that they may be the stronger for their work to come. But still we have all of us so much time in which we ought to think, and in which we naturally do so, that it is of great consequence to us how and what we think. It is of great consequence to us to avoid certain thoughts, which, perhaps, are of all evil thoughts the most common: thoughts of lust, and thoughts of pride. It is in men's lonely and silent hours that those thoughts are often entertained, which keep alive the fire of lustful desires within them, and in a wonderful manner, but yet most certainly, looser and lower the general tone of our principles, and remove us farther and farther from the love of the most pure God. And it is also in this same season of solitude, that we feed ourselves with high and vain imaginations, increasing our self-love, and so lessening our reverence to God our Father, and our gratitude to his Son Jesus Christ our Saviour. We do not willingly call back humbling recollections, but we dwell with pleasure on anything that exalts us in our own eyes; on any