such a degree of obedience as nature can accomplish, or in other words no spiritual obedience at all. The power must be put in them by grace, and must be earnestly prayed for, and must go along with every one exercise of duty, and thus it is that Christ acts as the purifier of a corrupt and degenerate world, not merely by the delivery of excellent rules, but by the dispensation of strength for acting up to them. And these men who feel not the necessity of this strength-why they will often be more decent and orderly and kind and upright and honourable than their neighbours around them. There are natural principles in the constitution of man which secure a certain measure of all these virtues in many individuals of the race; but as to that obedience which no other strength but the might conferred by the Spirit on the inner man can accomplish-the obedience of the heart-the obedience of love to God-the obedience of self-devotion and self-denial-the obedience of not being conformed to the world, and the setting our every affection on the things which are above-the obedience to which the constraining love of Christ can alone prompt us, and which the grace of Christ can alone enable us to yield, even that of living no longer to ourselves, but to Him who died for us, and who rose again,why, my brethren, this is an obedience which, with all their decencies and proprieties, they never think of aspiring afterthis is an obedience, the very attempt at which many wo deride as fanatical and visionary and enthusiastic. This is obedience which the first class put away from them; for occup as they are with the single sentiment of dependence on the rig eousness of Christ, they are for no personal obedience of their own at all. And this is an obedience which the second class equally put away from them, for there is a something else at which they stop short and with which they rest satisfied-even that humble measure of decency and propriety and social virtue and civil accomplishment which any man of any fortune and good education can attain, though he never apply for the strengthening influence of the Spirit, nor pray in the name of Christ, nor avail himself of that peculiar provision which the gospel has instituted for redeeming us from all iniquity, and purifying us unto the Son of God a peculiar people zealous of good works. With both the one and the other of these classes, there is a something which stands in the way of their vigorously pursuing that line of new and spiritual obedience which every honest Christian aims sincerely to make progress in. With the first, it is the sentiment that Christ has already wrought out a righteousness for them-and it is true that He has wrought out a righteousness for them who believe; but how can they be said to believe if they put not faith in all His sayings, and if one of the most solemn and authoritative of these sayings, "Without holiness no man shall see God," has no impression upon them. With the second class, it is the sentiment that no more obedience can be exacted from me than that which I can yield; and thus while Paul says our salvation must be altogether of works or altogether of grace, they eke out what is wanting in the one by what they have done in the other, and as there is no saying with how small a portion of each they will satisfy themselves, their obedience will be no more than the strength of nature can yield-that nature which the Bible tells us is corrupt and alienated from God. III. But it is not enough that you receive Christ for the single object of forgiveness, or as a priest who has wrought out an atonement for you; for Christ offers Himself in more capacities. than this one, and you do not receive Him truly unless you receive Him just as He offers Himself. Again, it is not enough that you receive Christ only as a priest and a prophet; for all that He teaches will be to you a dead letter unless you are qualified to understand and to obey it; and if you think that you are qualified by nature, you in fact refuse His teaching at the very time that you profess Him to be your teacher, for He says, "Without me ye can do nothing." You must receive Him for strength as well as for forgiveness and direction; or, in other words, you must submit to Him as your King, not merely to rule over you by His law, but to rule in you by His Spirit. You must live in constant dependence on the influences of His grace, and if you do so, you never will stop short at any one point of obedience, but knowing that the grace of God is all-powerful, you will suffer no difficulties to stop your progress; you will suffer no paltry limit of what unaided human nature can do, to bound your ambition after the glories of a purer and a better character than any earthly principle can accomplish; you will enter a career, of which you at this moment see not the end; you will try an ascent of which the lofty eminence is hid in the darkness of futurity; the chilling sentiment that no higher obedience is expected of you than of yourself you can yield, will have no influence upon you, for the mighty stretch of attainment that you look forward to, is not what you can do, but what Christ can do in you; and with the all-subduing instrument of His grace to help you through every difficulty, and to carry you in triumph over every opposition, you will press forward conquering and to conquer; and while the world knoweth not the power of those great and animating hopes which sustain you, you will be making daily progress in a field of discipline and acquirement which they have never entered; and in patience and forgiveness, and gentleness and charity, and the love of God and the love of your neighbour-which is like unto the love of God, you will prove that a work of grace is going on in your hearts, even that work by which the image you lost at the fall is repaired and brought back again-the empire of sin within you is overthrown-the subjection of your hearts to what is visible and earthly is exchanged for the power of the unseen world over its every affection-and you are filled with such a faith, and such a love, and such a superiority to perishable things, as will shed a glory over the whole of your daily walk, and give to every one of your doings the high character of a candidate for eternity. Christ is offered to all of you for forgiveness. The man who takes Him for this single object must be looking at Him with an eye half-shut upon the revelation He makes of Himself. Look at Him with an open and a steadfast eye, and then I will call you a true believer; and sure I am, that if you do so, you cannot avoid seeing Him in the earnestness of His desire that you should give up all sin, and enter from this moment into all obedience. True, and most true, my brethren, that faith will save you; but it must be a whole faith in a whole Bible. True, and most true, that they who keep the commandments of Jesus SERMON XVII. [IN September, 1815, a series of sermons was preached in the Tron Church, Glasgow, on the text, Luke i. 74. One of them, devoted to the drawing out of the distinction between the fear of terror and the fear of reverence, was moulded afterwards into the form in which it is presented in Dr. Chalmers' Works, vol. x. p. 195. The substance of the succeeding sermon is given in the discourse which follows.] LUKE I. 74. That he would grant unto us, that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, WE have already spoken of that fear which has God for its direct and personal object, and regarding which the Bible appears to exhibit a set of contradictory passages that we have endeavoured to reconcile. But there is another fear distinct from that which we entertain towards God as a person, though it stands connected with one of the fixed and irreversible ordinations of His government-even that by which the holiness of man in time is made indispensable to his happiness in eternity. This must be admitted by a Christian disciple, even after he, by the faith of the gospel, has entered into reconciliation with God, and so exchanged the fear of terror for the fear of reverence. There is a host of scriptural testimonies to the necessity of holiness, which no fair inquirer into the truth as it is in Jesus can possibly withstand; and indeed the very same faith in the general veracity of the Bible which leads to the assurance of an efficacy in the blood of Jesus to deliver from the punishment of sin, leads co-ordinately to the assurance that without deliverance also from the power of sin there is no meetness for heaven, and can be no entrance into the delight or the glory of its everlasting habitations. Now the fear is lest we should fall short of this heaven just by falling short of this holiness-a fear which remains, and ought to remain with you, even after having accepted of Christ as your Saviour. "Let us therefore fear," says the apostle, "lest a promise being left us of entering into His rest any of you should seem to come short of it." He states before what the grounds were of such an apprehension. One of them is an evil heart-"Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God." Another of them is the insidious power of sin-"Lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." And in support of this very lesson of heedfulness and fear he quotes in another place the instances of those who, after having performed to all appearance their great and initiatory act of reconciliation with God, fell away, and were destroyed of Him. They, he tells us, who were baptized unto Moses, and eat and drank of that spiritual Rock, that was Christ-even with those of them who suffered themselves to be overcome by temptation, God was not well-pleased, and overthrew them in the wilderness. And these things are written for our admonitionfor in like manner still may we be overthrown; "wherefore," he concludes, "let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." Now the things which move us, and which should move us to fear, are the likelihoods of such a fall whereby we are surrounded. All nature and experience might well minister to our apprehensions upon this subject. Did we but think of our hearts, and of their constant and cleaving ungodliness-did we we look back upon our history, and reflect how little it has been guided by the principle, or adorned by the fruits of new obedience-did we take account of our affections, and of their still abiding earthliness, so like unto that carnality wherewith the Bible has associated death-did we even take account of VOL. VI. X |