THE PARTING BENEDICTION.1

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all." 2 CORINTHIANS

xiii. 14.

THE life and ministry of the noble Apostle who sends this gracious message to his brethren in Corinth was itinerant and missionary. He had no certain dwelling-place. "In journeyings often," "the care of all the churches," is the story of his life. And so his spiritual children were found everywhere. After them his letters are flying here and there, over the mountains, across the seas, from Corinth to Rome, from Ephesus and Macedonia to Corinth, from Corinth to Galatia, from Rome to Colosse and Ephesus and Philippi, from Asia Minor to his young students and helpers, Timothy and Titus, his love, his thought, his doctrine and counsel circulating far as the name of Christ had gone. And though the Apostle died, his letters survive. They are not lost. They fly on from church to church, from one disciple to another, from farapart lands and ages, read to-day in wild woods of Oregon, under the shadow of Indian pagodas, in all strange tongues. They introduce letters and printing among barbarous tribes; societies and presses forever multiply and spread them; Christendom resounds with what was once but a single folded parchment borne in a single traveler's hand. These letters belong, not to Rome and Corinth, but to the universal Church of God; the legacy, not of Paul only, but of Christ speaking through him to his Church, and to whomsoever hath an ear to hear.

1 Preached at the close of his ministry in Providence, September 7, 1873.

And wherever these letters go, you notice that they go with a blessing; they close with a benediction. And it is a peculiar one; not personal, — the love and blessing of Paul, or the fellowship of Christian brethren,

but pe culiar to the gospel, such blessing as is included in that, a Christian benediction. And this one, which concludes Paul's second letter to Corinth, seems to be a summary of Christianity itself, gathering up into one the whole contents of the Christian system, of God's redeeming love and work; pouring into one short yet comprehensive sentence all there is of spiritual, eternal blessing, the whole sum of mercy and good possible for lost men; stretching out his ample prayer and benediction to cover with it all his brethren, every one to whom he ministered in spiritual things, to whom he had declared forgiveness and eternal life. Truly, eternally blessed are all they who come under it, and receive it into their souls.

And so this benediction of the Apostle is hallowed and vital in the Church forever. It stopped not with the Christians at Corinth, but ever since, along the lengthening line of centuries, through the spreading kingdom of Christ, among the multiplying disciples, it has lengthened and spread and multiplied itself, till every pulpit repeats it; it closes the worship of every Christian congregation; and were it to descend not in word only but in power into desiring, receiving hearts, then indeed would the salvation of God come out of Zion. Thus there is something, not in the benediction only, in a moment we will see how full, inexpressibly full, that is, — but in the very associations of it, as an apostolic and venerable usage. It animates us, makes us feel our fellowship with all Christ's people, links us to the Apostle and the churches to which he wrote, to all ages and disciples of the Christian faith. Amidst all varying creeds and worships, this remains. From Sunday to Sunday it is spoken, in cathedral and chapel. The Roman pontiff, amidst salvos of artillery

and with pompous ceremonial, bestows it on kneeling multitudes; while thousands of humble pastors breathe it out upon their waiting flocks, and every assembly of saints from the beginning, even as it shall be to the end, retires under the shadow of its lifted palm.

Shall I try very briefly to develop the contents of this hallowed and perpetual benediction, to draw out the meaning of what perhaps has been to you generally unmeaning, a mere signal for retiring from God's house? Three things it asks, it offers for all, the grace of Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. In it, as I said, is the sum of Christianity itself; the blessing, all the blessing, it has to bestow; including, gathering up in one, all there is of spiritual and everlasting good for a lost race. On this sublime mystery of the Trinity, on this revelation of God, on the grace of Christ, the eternal Son, on the love of God, the eternal Father, on the communion of the Holy Ghost, the Eternal Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, the Church is built; on it the faith, the hopes, the salvation of all saints rest. These are the three radical articles of our Christian faith, repeated in every baptism, repeated in every benediction, the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, the powers and gifts it brings from above to sinners who will believe.

The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. "For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich." This is his grace, that He entirely changes our position and state; that by what He does and suffers, by his incarnation and atonement, by the offering and sacrifice of himself, He reconciles, restores, unites, so that we are no longer under law, but under grace; through Him and faith in Him made one with God in his forgiving, redeeming love. This is the grace of Christ, that out of love He takes the sinner's

place; answers for him to the violated law, the broken moral order of God's realm; maintains, reinforces, keeps forever high and honorable, and even more glorious, the holy law and government of God, while the criminal is released and let freely out from condemnation and retribution. This is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He mediates by the sacrifice of himself, bridges that long, infinite chasm between the alienated, guilty soul and the pure law, the holy government of God; that He offers forgiveness, peace, full remission, even eternal rescue, to sinners inexcusable, otherwise hopelessly imprisoned in the condemnations of conscience and an inexorable law; yet forgiveness, freedom, so guarded by his own blood that the very pardon becomes mightier even than the law in its authority over the soul. This is the mystery of his grace, that it is not simply remission, release, a prisoner discharged, all charges blotted out and swept away, but such remission, granted in such spirit and through such sufferings even unto death of the innocent and holy Son of God, that the law is not let down, but exalted; that God's government and authority is not dishonored and lowered, but reinforced in its claims upon the reverence and obedience of all moral beings; so that pardon through Christ's blood is more potent than the penalty in the law to break the bond and doom of sin, to bring back the sinner to the peace and the rule of the holy God. Surely I do not mean that this is all, that this exhausts the grace of Christ, his atonement, the reconciling, justifying, clearing work. This is the first aspect of it to a sinner under guilty conviction, suffering the pangs of accusing conscience, feeling upon his soul the awful, inexorable weight of the holy, unbending law. This first he desires, needs, — escape, release, remission. And this first Christ brings and offers. But, after that, the sinner reconciled, restored, finds it but the beginning and preliminary of an unsearchable, infinite riches of grace; that in Christ is all fullness,

the fullness of God, fullness of love, righteousness, wisdom, of all which the world, the soul, the universe, has lost by sin; sufficiency for all thirstings of the soul, for its endless and growing spiritual want, for all souls in this world, in coming worlds, a grace as broad as the soul's capacity, as its existence. So that we can go to Him for nothing spiritually good and fail of finding. Light inexhaustible as the sun; nay, the sun shall go out while Jesus shall shine on in widening glory through eternal ages, through universal realms of being. Not light only, but power, freedom, purity, wings for all holy progress, knowledge, mounting beyond creation to God himself; love, resting in God, in his society and approbation : in one word, by this grace of Christ, all disability, every obstacle taken away, just as if sin had never intervened between God and his child. This is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out! For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things; to whom be glory forever. Amen.

The Love of God. In the order of nature this comes first, as the foundation and origin, the source and beginning, of the grace which is in Christ. But it comes second in the Apostle's thoughts and benediction, for this reason, I imagine, that thus only, through Christ, do we know and believe the love God hath towards us. God is love, eternally love. But who knows it, what guilty soul can believe it, what else can teach and assure it, till it is seen here in Christ and his Cross? Herein is love. Not in nature, though there is love, divine love, there. There is love in the boundless, endless benefit of the world. But not the love which speaks to a sinner's heart, which melts the sin off his guilty conscience. He may go out into nature, as into some garden of God; his soul may diffuse itself with a poetic joy into the light and beauty of the day,