SERMON XVI.

COLOSSIANS II. 6.

"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him."

NOTHING can be clearer from both the doctrine and examples of the New Testament, than that a man changes the course of his life on his becoming, in the true sense of the term, a Christian. There is no such thing as receiving Christ, and after that walking just as you were wont to do. Paul tells us in the beginning of this epistle, that he was thankful to God when he heard of the faith of the Colossians. In the verse preceding the text he tells us that he joyed when he beheld their order. There was a method or line of proceeding which a man who adopts the faith of Christ must necessarily observe, and it was from their observance of this method indeed that he inferred the steadfastness of their faith in Christ. There is such a thing as learning Christ differently and receiving Him differently; and according to the way in which we receive Him will be the way in which we shall feel it our duty to walk in Him. Some receive Him as a dispenser of forgiveness only, and they walk securely on in the commission of sin; others add to His former capacity that of a teacher, but overlooking the doctrine of being able to do nothing without Christ, they satisfy themselves with such decencies of conduct as they can observe such proprieties of civil and social life as they can act up to even on other principles than that of submission to the authority of Christ; and as for the more spiritual obedience

of the devoted Christian, they make no attempt after it, but just do as they can in their own strength, and make over the mighty burden of all their deficiencies on the atonement of the Saviour. Others again receive Him both as their Sanctifier and Saviour, and they never stop short at any one point of attainment under the feeling that they can get no farther; they do not rest satisfied with the civil and social proprieties of life under the impression that their nature is incapable of higher or larger measures of obedience. They know that the believing Christian is backed at all times by the promised aids of the Spirit of God, with the dispensation of which Christ their Saviour is entrusted, who has become Christ their Sanctifier also; and therefore counting on this mighty accession of strength to all their endeavours, they do not strike the low aim of lukewarm decency, but they devote themselves to the obedience of the gospel in all the extent and spirituality of its requirement— their aim is to be perfect, even as their Father in heaven is perfect. From the more obvious right things which they begun with, and which in my last discourse I urged you to begin with immediately-such as fidelity and plain-dealing and courteousness, and the avoiding of all that is plainly wrong, and such other moral accomplishments as the world can admire, and as worldly men with the profession of Christianity can practise and think they do enough-I say from all these moral accomplishments they proceed onward to higher and greater things than these. I know that at this point they are looked upon by the men that are without to have entered into the borders of fanaticism. They are abandoned by the respect and sympathy of neighbours; they are looked upon as having got into a visionary region of feelings and spiritualities and devotional sentiment; they are at one time accused of indifference to good works, not because they neglect them, but because with every diligence in the doing of them, they aspire after still higher and better accomplishments; they are at another time charged with attempting a pitch of obedience far too strict and elevated and holy for the feeble powers of humanity, and so they readily allow it to be; but they have received Christ

part of that very system by which they think they are doing honour to the Saviour. Their walk in all ordinary matters then will just be the same after they have so received Christ as before they received Him. There may be a change in some of those easier and more practicable things by which they think they do more direct honour to the Saviour and more openly testify their faith and their attachment to Him-such as more frequent attendance on His express ordinances—more exclusive association with people who think as they do themselves more decided separation from those who think differently. All this is very easy, and it is acted up to; but as to gentleness in domestic life, or honesty in social life, or usefulness in public life, or any one thing which costs them a struggle with their taste or temper or inclination, this they do not look upon as forming any part of their calling; and it is grievous to think how at the very moment that they are dividing Christ, or worshipping a Christ of their own, or taking away from the Christ of the New Testament a number of His revealed characters, and shutting out from their conscience altogether the impressiveness of His solemn remonstrance-" Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say"-it is truly grievous to think that all the time they look upon themselves as doing Him honour, and that Christ is magnified by them, in no one part of their conduct do they ever think of living to His will but to their own.

II. But there is another class of professing Christians who are so far scandalized at the errors and abuses of those I have already noticed as to receive Christ for a teacher as well as for an atonement. I think I am quite sure that there is a very numerous set of people who neither discard from them the notion that Christ's death is an atonement for sin, nor the notion that Christ's will has a binding authority over the conduct of all His disciples; but who think at the same time that as they have carried their own natural understanding to the doctrine of the atonement and acquiesce in it, so they may carry their own natural strength to the performance of the duties, and be able

to accomplish them in such a way as to secure their acceptance with God. Now, what is the effect of this? In their own strength they are able to do many things without any sense of God's will urging them to the performance at all. Is it not quite competent, for example, to a man without any reference. to Christ or religion whatever in his heart, to feel a movement of compassion at the sight of distress and to relieve it-to feel a movement of indignation at the meanness of dishonesty and be upright-to feel an animating glow of cordiality in the discharge of civil and friendly attentions, and be courteous-to feel all the delight of occupation in the bustle of active and useful employment, and have a public-spirited readiness to all good works? Now, it so happens that the first days of professors are often wofully destitute of all these social accomplishments, and when urged to them by the will of Christ, they bring their wrong-headed orthodoxy in resistance to them, and bring a most lamentable discredit on the faith which they profess, by a most unlovely and revolting exhibition of all that is sour and repulsive in ordinary conduct, combined with a system of religious opinions, staunch, intolerant, flaming, and obstinately adhered to. This puts the second class upon high vantage ground, and much may be learned from what each of them is heard to say of their dislike or opposition to the other. You are men of works, say those of the first class; but we have Scripture on our side, for by faith is a man saved, and not by the works of the law. Our confidence is as much better grounded than yours as the purity of Christ's righteousness exceeds the purity of man's righteousness; and this, combined with many texts of Scripture, gives these people the appearance of some reason and a great weight of Bible authority on their side. On the other hand, ye are men of faith, say those of the second class, and ye dislike works, and that very thing of which the Bible requires us to be zealous you discard from your system altogether. Nay, you go so far as to fasten the brand of heterodoxy on our zeal for morality; but we have Scripture on our side as well as you, and by the correctness of our conduct and the native claims of our system-which befriends virtue-on the

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admiration of men, we are quite sure that we are going more scripturally about the business of our religion than you who despise what the Saviour taught, and put away from you all that is practical in the writings of His apostles. This is what each can and does say of the other, and I call upon you to mark the defects of each. The first are most egregiously wrong by the want of a zealous and hearty concurrence in the duties of the Christian life, and they do not see afar off, and they forget that every true Christian is purged from his old sins; and they are blind to this truth, that to put off the deeds of the old man, and to put on the new man and his works, forms a most essential part of their calling as the disciples of the Lord Jesus. And the second are also most egregiously wrong, for they are blind to another most essential truth-they do not acknowledge their natural inability for any good thing—they profess to receive Christ as their teacher, but it is only as a teacher of those things which they can do without Him strengthening them— they strike the low aim of such duties and such accomplishments as man can arrive at by his own strength-they may and they do admit the use of Christ as an atonement, for they allow that they have their infirmities, and that he by His death wrought out an expiation for them; but they do not seem to think that there is any use for Christ as the purifier of a degenerate world from that corruption which the world cannot, with all the force of its natural principles, shake off. There is one sense in which they allow Him to be a purifier, and that is by the tendency of His sublime and excellent precepts to reform and exalt and purify the whole man. And so they would if they were obeyed. But here lies the very point of their defectiveness. They think it is enough if they just yield such an obedience to the precepts and such a conformity to the example of Christ as they find themselves able to compass and to make out in their own strength. They are blind to the truth, that in order to these precepts taking effect upon them, there must not merely be a voice without-calling upon them to do, but a power within-enabling them to perform. Now, this power is not in them by nature; and they think it enough if they just yield