Wisdom continues still to cry unto men with the affectionate authority of a parent. The incarnation of the Son is God’s grand utterance to mankind. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. He came to make known the Father. “No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared him.”
There are two extremes into which professing Christians of the present day are very apt to fall. While one class adopt a system of doctrinal sentiments without any practical regard to their influence on the heart and on the life, another satisfy themselves with the simple performance of social duties. Into the religious scheme of the former, there enter few, if any, of those holy affections, and little of that sublime practical virtue which the gospel requires. Into the scheme of the latter, there enter few of the leading principles of the Christian revelation, and a very small portion of that spirituality of sentiment and of feeling, which constitutes the very essence of vital godliness.
We are much concerned at the continuance of your gloomy apprehensions, which, though your own power cannot remove, yet it is your duty to oppose to the uttermost. When God clothes the heavens with blackness, and makes sackcloth their covering, and shuts up in the prison house where no light can be perceived, it is natural to take a kind of pleasure in yielding to despondency, and in defending it by many arguments. But to resist this tendency requires self-denial, and is the path of duty, however difficult.
In Brown of Wamphray’s ministrations, we have not obtruded on our famishing souls that oily sentimentalism, or that iced intellectualism, which so abound in this epicurean age of the church—but we have the true bread, just as it has been gathered, wholesome and nutritious. Oh, that amidst the multitude of our popular and evangelical preachers and writers, we had but a phalanx of godly and spiritual men like him—men of heart, men of business, who would, in right earnest, negotiate between the Prince of Life and dying men, and not merely transact between a dead doctrine and a blind intellect; men who will not ever be substituting the vague idea of “religion” for the living person of the Son of God, or “moral influence” for the personal operation of the Holy Ghost!
This is the expression, you observe, not only of sincere love to the law, but of ardent love to the law. It is an appeal to God about an ardent love to the law: “O how love I thy law.” I would, entreating the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, think for a little with you on the grounds why the psalmist and why the saints do love God’s law, do love God’s law so ardently. Why do they love? Now, all that is rightly moral is founded on the fitness of things; therefore this love, as moral—as indeed it is the sum of all morality—is founded on the amiableness of the law. Love to the law is proper, and right, and fitting, just because the law is amiable. But let us inquire a little deeper into those circumstances about the law on which the amiableness of the law is grounded.
1. That such as will live godly in the world must and will suffer persecution, for the trial and exercise of their faith and patience, purging away of their dross, and for weaning their hearts from a present world, and for confirmation of the truth, 2 Tim. 3:12; 1 Pet. 4:12; John 15:3.
In the year 1644, a very interesting book was imprinted by Robert Bryson, and sold at his shop, at the sign of Iona, in Edinburgh, entitled, A Historie of the Church of Scotland. This book records a curious incident which occurred “a little before the death of George Wischard” (Wishart), the martyr. We give this incident as contrasting the shrewdness of a Scottish farmer with the duplicity of a Romish preacher who came selling relics for physical and spiritual healing.
Public actions and public men have always afforded abundant material for conversation. How prime ministers govern or misgovern, how men of business make fortunes or waste them, by what means one person has succeeded and for what reason another has failed—all the characters and all the doings of everyday life are discussed more or less wisely everywhere. Men claim the right to speak about persons and things, and to criticize and pass judgment according to their own wisdom or standard. At the corners of the streets, in clubrooms and in drawing rooms, precisely the same thing goes on. Over and above what concerns all, however, each class or gathering has matters to discuss that more or less worthily and more or less frequently interest themselves.
The Word of God strongly enforces the duty of Christian benevolence, by promises on the one hand, and alarming threatenings on the other. The subject is at all times worthy of our serious consideration, but especially at this inclement season, when we are called upon to open our hearts and hands to one-fifth of our countrymen, upon whom famine—that fearful judgment of God—has fallen with deadly severity.
What has befallen the Jews, since they rejected Jesus of Nazareth, is that which will happen to all despisers of the gospel. What is to happen to Israel in the latter days, when they shall repent of their unbelief and embrace the true Messiah, is the same which every repenting sinner will experience at the hands of a merciful God. Here is the description of that grace which God will show to such sincere penitents—“They shall serve the LORD their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them.”
