SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

[March 4.]

THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE.

By Rev. WM. ARNOT, D.D.

The first of these two verses tells how a man goes wrong, and the second how he may be set right again. He is led into error by doing what pleases himself; the rule for recovery is to commit the works to the Lord, and see that they are such as will please him. If we weigh our thoughts and actions in the balances of our own desires, we shall inevitably go astray; if we lay them before God, and submit to his pleasure, we shall be guided into truth and righteousness.

Such is the purport of the two verses in general; attend now to the particulars in detail: “All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes.” To a superficial observer this declaration may seem inconsistent with experience; but he who wrote these words has fathomed fully the deep things of a human spirit. As a general rule, men do the things which they think right, and think the things right which themselves do. Not many men do what they think evil, and while they think it evil. The acts may be obviously evil, but the actor persuades himself of the contrary, at least until they are done. There is an amazing power of self-deception in a human heart. It is deceitful above all things. It is beyond conception cunning in making that appear right which is felt pleasant. Some, we confess, are so hardened, that they sin in the face of conscience, and over its neck; but for one bold, bad man, who treads on an awakened conscience in order to reach the gratification of his lust, there are ten cowards who drug the watcher into slumber, that they may sin in peace. As a general rule, it may be safely said, if you did not think the act innocent, you would not do it; but when you have a strong inclination to do it, you soon find means to persuade yourself that it is innocent. After all, the real motive power that keeps the wheels of human life going round is this:—Men like the things that they do, and do the things that they like. In his own eyes a man’s ways are clean: if he saw them filthy, he would not walk in them. But when he desires to walk in a particular way, he soon begins to count it clean, in order that he may peacefully walk in it.

In his own eyes: Mark the meaning of these words. Be not deceived; God is not mocked. Eyes other than his own are witnessing all the life-course of a man. The eyes of the Lord are in every place. He does not adopt our inclination as the standard of right and wrong, and he will not borrow our balances to determine his own judgment in that day. “The Lord weigheth the spirits.” Not a thought, not a motive, trembles in the breast which he does not weigh; more evidently, though not more surely, are the gross and palpable deeds of our life open before him! He has a balance nice enough to weigh motives—the animating soul of our actions; our actions themselves will not escape his scrutiny.

Before we proceed to any “work” we should weigh it, while yet it is a “spirit” unembodied, in the balances which will be used in the judgment of the great day. Letters are charged in the postoffice according to their weight. I have written and sealed a letter consisting of several sheets; I desire that it should pass; I think that it will; but I know well that it will not be allowed to pass because I desire that it should, or think that it will; I know well it will be tested by imperial weights and imperial laws. Before I plunge it beyond my reach, under the control of the public authorities, I place it on a balance which stands on the desk before me—a balance not constructed to please my desires, but honestly adjusted to the legal standard. I weigh it there, and check it myself by the very rules which the government will apply. The children of this world are wise for their own interests. We do not shut our eyes, and cheat ourselves as to temporal things and human governments; why should we attempt to deceive where detection is certain and retribution complete? On the table before you lies the very balance in which the Ruler of heaven and earth will weigh both the body of the act and the motive, the soul that inspires it. Weigh your purposes in this balance before you launch them forth in action. The man’s ways are unclean, although, through a deceitful heart, they are clean in his own eyes; by what means, therefore, “shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word” (Ps. cxix:9).

A most interesting practical rule is laid down as applicable to the case—“Commit thy works unto the Lord;” and a promise follows it—“Thy thoughts shall be established.” It is a common and a sound advice, to ask counsel of the Lord before undertaking any work. Here we have the counterpart lesson equally precious—commit the work to the Lord, after it is done. The Hebrew idiom gives peculiar emphasis to the precept—Roll it over on Jehovah. Mark the beautiful reciprocity of the two, and how they constitute a circle between them. While the act is yet in embryo as a purpose in your mind, ask counsel of the Lord, that it may either be crushed in the birth or embodied in righteousness. When it is embodied, bring the work back to the Lord, and give it over into his hands as the fruit of the thought which you besought him to inspire; give it over into his hands as an offering which he may accept, an instrument which he may employ. Bring the work, when it is done, to the Lord; and what will follow?—“Thy thoughts shall be established.” Bring back the actions of your life to God, one by one, after they are done, and thereby the purposes of your heart will be made pure and steadfast; the evil will be chased away like smoke before the wind, and the good will be executed in spite of all opposition; for “when a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.”

A boy, while his stock of experience is yet small, is employed by his father to lend assistance in certain mechanical operations. Pleased to think himself useful, he bounds into the work with heart and hand; but during the process, he has many errands to his father. At the first he runs to ask his father how he ought to begin; and when he has done a little, he carries the work to his father, fondly expecting approval, and asking further instructions. Oh, when will the children of God in the regeneration experience and manifest the same spirit of adoption which animates dear children as an instinct of nature toward fathers of their flesh! These two rules, following each other in a circle, would make the outspread field of a Christian’s life sunny, and green, and fruitful, as the arching of the solid system brightens and fertilizes the earth.

Perhaps this latter hemisphere of duty’s revolving circle is the more difficult of the two. Perhaps most professing Christians find it easier to go to God beforehand, asking what they should do, than to return to him afterward to place their work in his hands. This may in part account for the want of answer to prayer,—at least the want of a knowledge that prayer has been answered. If you do not complete the circle, your message by telegraph will never reach its destination, and no answer will return. We send in earnest prayer for direction, and thereafter go into the world of action; but if we do not bring the action back to God, the circle of the supplication is not completed. The prayer does not reach the throne; the message acknowledging it comes not back to the suppliant’s heart. To bring all the works to the Lord would be in the character of a dear child: it would please the Father. A young man came to his father, and received instructions as to his employment for the day. “Go work in my vineyard,” was the parent’s command. “I go, sir,” was the ready answer of the son. Thus far, all was well; but the deed that followed was disobedience. The son went not to work in the father’s vineyard; but we do not learn that he came back in the evening to tell his father what he had done. To have done so would either have kept him right, or corrected him for doing wrong.

But some of the works are evil, and how could you dare to roll these over on the Lord? Ah! there lies the power of this practical rule. If it were our fixed and unvarying practice to bring all our works and lay them into God’s hands, we would not dare to do any except those that he would smile upon. But others, though not positively evil, may be of trifling importance, and the doer may decline to bring them to the King, not because they are impure, but because they are insignificant. The spirit of bondage betrays itself here, and not the spirit of adoption. They are small; they are affairs of children; trouble not the Master. Ah! this adviser is of the earth, earthy: he knows not the Master’s mind. The Master himself has spoken to the point: “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not.” Be assured, little children, whether in the natural family of man or the spiritual family of God, act in character. There is no hypocrisy about them. The things they bring are little things. Children speak as children, yet he does not beckon them away: he rebukes those who would. He welcomes and blesses the little ones. Nay, more; he tells us plainly that we must be like them ere we enter his kingdom. Like little children without hypocrisy bring all your affairs to him, and abandon those that he would grieve to look upon. Bring to him all the works that you do, and you will not do any that you could not bring to him.

“When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him” (ver. 7). There is, it seems, such a thing as pleasing God. If it could not exist on earth, it would not be named from heaven. Even to try this is a most valuable exercise. There would be more sunlight in a believer’s life if he could leave the dull negative fear of judgment far behind as a motive of action, and bound forward into the glad positive, a hopeful effort to please God. “Without faith it is impossible to please him” (Heb. xi: 6); therefore with faith it is possible. “They that are in the flesh cannot please God;” therefore they that are in the Spirit can. In this aspect of a believer’s course, as in all others, Jesus has left us an example that we should follow his steps: “I do always those things that please him” (John viii: 29). The glad obedience of the saved should not be thought inconsistent with the simple trust of the sinful. A true disciple is zealous of good works; it is a spurious faith that is jealous of them. Those who, being justified by faith, are most deeply conscious that their works are worthless, strive most earnestly to do worthy works.

This, like that which enjoins obedience to parents, is a commandment “with promise.” When your ways please God, he will make even your enemies to be at peace with you. This is one of two principles that stand together in the word, and act together in the divine administration; its counterpart and complement is, “If any man will live godly in Christ Jesus, he must suffer persecution.” They seem opposite, yet, like night and day, summer and winter, they both proceed from the same God, and work together for good to his people. It is true that the mighty of the earth are overawed by goodness; and it is also true that likeness to the Lord exposes the disciple to the persecution which his Master endured. Both are best: neither could be wanted. If the principle that goodness exposes to persecution prevailed everywhere and always, the spirit would fail before him and the souls which he has made. Again, if the principle that goodness conciliates the favor of the world prevailed every where and always, discipline would be done, and the service of God would degenerate into mercenary self-interest. If the good received only and always persecution for their goodness, their life could not endure, and the generation of the righteous would become extinct: if the good received only and always favor from men, their spiritual life would be overlaid, and choked in the thick folds of worldly prosperity. A beautiful balance of opposites is employed to produce one grand result. It is like the balance of antagonist forces, which keeps the planets in their places, and maintains the harmony of the universe. Temporal prosperity and temporal distress, the world’s friendship and its enmity, are both formidable to the children of God. Our Father in heaven, guarding against the danger on either side, employs the two reciprocally to hold each other in check. Human applause on this side is a dangerous enemy, and it is made harmless by the measure of persecution which the godly must endure: on the other side, the enmity of a whole world is a weight under which the strongest would at last succumb; but it is made harmless by the opposite law,—the law by which true goodness conciliates favor even in an evil world. A Christian in the world is like a human body in the sea,—there is a tendency to sink and a tendency to swim. A very small force in either direction will turn the scale. Our Father in heaven holds the elements of nature and the passions of men at his own disposal: his children need not fear, for he keeps the balance in his own hands.

[March 11.]

THREE DISPENSATIONS IN HISTORY AND IN THE SOUL.[G]

By Bishop F. D. HUNTINGTON, D.D.

The spiritual growth of mankind has proceeded through three great stages. Each of these has been marked by the evolution of one predominating element, or salient principle of religious action. On examination, we shall be able to discover an impressive correspondence between these successive epochs in the history of humanity at large, and the process of life in a well-disciplined, Christianized individual. This analogy is so thickly set with points of interest, as well as so fruitful of practical suggestions touching right religious ideas, and right living, that I shall let it fix the form, and be the subject of the discourse. That subject is: The threefold discipline of our spiritual experience, as compared with the threefold order in the expanding nurture of the human family.

The three Biblical dispensations are types of three great principles of conduct, or rather three schools of religious culture, under which we must pass as persons, just as the race has passed in history, before we can be built up into the symmetrical stature of a Christian maturity.

I. First, was the dispensation of natural religious feeling. The race was in childhood. It acted from impulse. It obeyed no written code of moral regulations, but, so far as its life was right, it either followed some free religious instincts, or else depended on direct intimations from the Deity, directing or forbidding each specific deed. The man chosen as the representative of this period was Abraham. The record of it is the book of Genesis. That writing is the first grand chapter in the biography of man; and its very literary structure—so dramatic in contents, and so lyrical in expression, so careless of the rules of art, so abounding in personal details, and graphic groupings of incident; so like a child’s story in its sublime simplicity—answers to the spontaneous period it pictures. “The patriarchal age” we call it. The term itself intimates rude, unorganized politics; the head of each family being the legislator for his tribe. But, in the absence of systematic statutes, every man, by a liberty so large as to burst often into license, was likely to do very much what was right in his own eyes. If he had strong passions, he would be a sensualist, like Shechem, or a petty tyrant, like Laban. If he were constitutionally gentle, he would be an inoffensive shepherd, like Lot. Such were the first two brothers. Cain’s jealousy made him a murderer; Abel was peaceable, kept sheep, and the only voice he lifted up against outrage, was when his blood cried from the ground. Some of these nomadic people, having devout temperaments, “called upon the name of the Lord,” we are told, like Enoch and Noah. Others were bloated giants, mighty men in animal propensities, gross and licentious, given to promiscuous marriages; so that presently God saw that the wickedness was so great, and the imaginations of men’s hearts were so evil, that he must wash the unclean earth with a deluge. But there was no permanent restraining power; no fixed standard of judicial command; and so, when the flood dried, the tide of sin set in again, streaked only with some veins of nobleness. On the plains of Shinar pride fancied that it could build a tower that should overtop the All-seeing Providence; and it had to be humbled by a confusion of tongues, scattering the builders. Even Noah, a just man for his times, so pure in that comparison, that he was carried over on the waves from a drowned generation, to install a new one, had scarcely seen the many-colored splendors of the promise in the rainbow, before he was drunken of overmuch wine. Abraham himself, so full of trust that his trust finally saved him; strong enough in the power of it to lay his son on an altar; at an earlier age stained his tongue with a cowardly falsehood, calling his wife his sister for safety’s sake—first pattern of politicians of mere expediency—and was rebuked for it by a Pharaoh, who had seen less of the heavenly visions than he. Sodom, with its indescribable pollutions, was not far from Beth-el—house of God. Jacob received a revelation from opened heavens; yet he over-reached his brother to appropriate the family blessing, and defraud his father-in-law.

Throughout the whole of this patriarchal era, reaching from Adam to Joseph, and covering, by the common computation, twenty-three hundred years, there were beautiful virtues, flowering into the light by the spontaneous energy of nature, but poisoned in many spots by the slime of sensuality. The human stock threw out its forms of life with a certain negligence, as the prodigal force of nature does her forests—as a boy swings his limbs in the open air. There were heroic acts; but they were dispersed over intervals, with dismal contrasts of meanness and cowardice between. There were ardent prayers; but foul passions often met and put to flight the descending hosts of the angels of God. Character needed a staunch vertebral column to secure its uprightness. No permanent sanction lent impregnability to good impulses. Even the saint, whose spirit rose nearest to heaven, walked on the verge of some abyss of shame. For though Abraham believed, Moses had not yet legislated, nor Christ died.

Corresponding, now, to this impulsive religious age of the race, is the natural state of the individual. It is the condition we are born into, and the multitudes never pass beyond it, because they are never renewed, or made Christian. Morally they are children all their lives. Bad dispositions mix with good; one moment holy aspirations; the next a flagrant immorality. What is wanting is a second birth of spiritual conviction. Conduct is not brought to the bar of a governmental examination, and judged by an unbending principle. Temptation is too much for this feeble, capricious piety. Nature, true enough, is always interesting; and spontaneous products may be beautiful. But man, with his free agency, beset before and behind by evil, is not like a lily growing under God’s sun and dew, with no sin to deform its grace or stain its coloring; he is not like the innocent architecture of a cloud, shaped by the fantastic caprices of the summer wind; nor yet like the aimless statuary of the sea-shore, sculptured by the pliant chisel of the wave. He has to contend, struggle, resist. He is tried, enticed, besieged. Satan creeps anew with every new-born child into the Eden of the heart, and flaming swords are presently planted on its gates, proclaiming—no return that way to innocence. The natural religion, of which modern mystics are so fond, and modern peripatetics prattle, is not enough for him. It might possibly answer in the woods, unless this feeble pantheism would substitute artistic ecstacy for worship, and moonlight for the sun, that flashes down the glories of revelations; or in some solitary cell, though even there monk and hermit have often found the snare of impure imaginations spread too cunningly for it. But let the boy go to the shop, and the girl to school; let the young man travel to the city, and the young woman lend her ears to the flatteries of that silver-tongued sorceress, Society; and all this natural piety is like a silken thread held over a blazing furnace. We may put ourselves at ease, fancy we shall fare well enough under so kind a Father; come out comfortably at last; there is such tender pity in the skies. But the dispelling of that delusion will be the sharp word out of the throne of judgment—“Depart from me, I never knew you.” No Babel of refuge will be built to the top. No friendly intervention will avert the perdition of the Sodom in the heart. No Tamar of custom will cajole with her coquetry the ancient and everlasting justice. No thrifty leagues of a low commercial instinct, postponing conscience to the arithmetic of traffic—no corrupt political majorities, subscribing patriotic manifestoes as stock for party or private dividends, though they be as eleven against one, and though they piously profess to be sons of Israel by church subscriptions, shall buy national prosperity by their brother Joseph’s blood.

There is often a vague assumption that certain principles of natural right, evolved and compacted by ethical science, might save our social state. But, remember that society, without Christ, in its philosophy, its literature, its art, its morals, obeyed a law of deterioration and decay. Without him, it would have been sinking still. Instead of the Christian justice that hangs its balances over our seats of lawful trade to-day, we should have not even Punic faith; but something more treacherous than that—not even the hesitating Roman honesty, but a zone of restraint more dissolute than the Corinthian, and principles looser than the Spartan’s. Instead of a respected merchant, or a steady mechanic, going out to his business to-morrow, amid a public order that Christ has organized, might have been seen a barbarian, with the concentrated falsity of a hundred Arabs, waking into a world convulsed with perpetual anarchy, or skulking away to transact his base affairs in a worse than Circassian mart. We may baptize the interesting displays of our intermittent virtue with a Christian name; but they may yet contain no quality of Christ’s peculiar sanctity. They may leave human life quite untouched by that unrivaled glory, however bright their transient beam. They are not redolent of the New Testament. Their uprightness does not bear the sanction of the Sermon on the Mount. Their slender rectitude is not the principle that treats men justly because they are God’s children, which was the law of Christ’s great honesty. Their kindness is not the sweet charity of the beatitudes. Their moderation is not guarded by those majestic warders, reverence for God, and a Savior’s love. Nor is their worship, if they adore at all, fervent with the prayers of Olivet and Gethsemane.

And as the first dispensation ended in a slavery in Egypt, or broods darkly over pagan nations waiting to be brought nigh by the blood of Christ to this hour, so the lawless motions of every self-guided will end in a servitude to some Pharaoh in the members that cries aloud for emancipation—a settled alienation from the household of the good.

[March 18.]

THREE DISPENSATIONS.

Next after this impulsive or spontaneous period, which is the period of childhood, comes the legal or judicial—a second stage in the history of the religious consciousness. Moses, the law-giver, is its representative. From this crisis, the chief significance of the world’s religious experience is concentrated, for some sixteen hundred years, in Judea, and human progress runs on through the channel of Hebrew nationality. Other families have wandered off into hopeless idolatries. The religion of instinct has found its appropriate termination in a degraded Egyptian priesthood, mixing civil despotism with the incantations of an impure mythology.

And now, God calls up Moses out of his miserable oppression into the summit of Sinai, and appoints him the head of the second august human epoch. A period of laws, after instinct, begins. Instinct must be curbed, for it has done mischief enough. Impulse must be subjected to principle, for it has proved itself insufficient alone. There must be positive command, controlling wayward inclinations. “Thou shalt,” and “Thou shalt not,” are the watchwords. It is an age of obedience. Ceremonies and ordinances are set up to bring the wild will under discipline. And the better to secure exact obedience, a visible system of formal observances is announced—so many sacrifices every day, and so many meat-offerings, drink-offerings, cattle, doves, fruits, cakes, for every sacrifice. To withstand the surrounding seductions of nations still steeped in the vices of their natural propensities, a scheme of coercive restraints comes in. The people must have multiplied festivals, jubilees, national gatherings, regularly kept, and by divine appointment. To draw them, there is a gorgeous temple with an imposing altar, a tabernacle, a covenant, a shekinah lighted from heaven, a priesthood clad in the splendid garments, and all the superb apparatus of a magnificent ritual. Even the daily habits, materials of common dress, qualities of food and kinds of flesh, are all to be regulated in detail by specific statutes. Law reaches down to determine the most minute particulars—the cleansing of houses, the shape of the beard, the sowing of the field—all having reference to neighboring idolatrous usages, of which these twelve tribes must, by all means, be kept clear. And for the breach of every law, from greatest to least, there must be penalty. That part of human nature, that terror and dread appeal to, is addressed. On the transgressor woe is denounced. There is a Mount Ebal, full of menacing curses, as well as a Gerizim pledged to blessings. Smoke, earthquakes, thunders and lightnings, marshaling their awful pageant about Sinai when the law was given, only prefigured punishments that should always torment the disobedient. And, accordingly, down through all the Hebrew fortunes, while prophets were set to admonish and call back the rebellious, the great staple of Israelitish history was, the divine chastisement that followed violations of law, and the prosperity that rewarded its observance. Sieges and campaigns, conquests and captivities, judges and kings, Joshua, Gideon, and Ezra, David, Saul, and Rehoboam—all were of less consequence, as events, or as individuals, than as instruments of that mighty, organized power lying behind them—Moses and the law.

So with all of us; there comes a time when we feel that we cannot act by inclination, but must follow law. The principle of duty is that law. Babyhood is past, and its instincts suffice us no longer. To do as we like, would still be pleasant; but it is dangerous and false. We become stewards and must give account of our stewardship. Life has put its harness upon us, and we must work in it. Passions have sprung up, and conflicts have commenced within us, that make impulse an unsafe guide. We find a meaning in that hard word must. We are free to do as we will, and yet we feel somehow bound under God’s necessity. It begins to be evident that as sure as a stone falls or fire burns, sin will bring trouble; indulgence, pain; impiety, remorse; dissipation, disease; dishonesty, infamy. The spendthrift must be pinched, the fraudulent bargainer lose his soul though he gain the world, and the false professor be spiritually damned. Here are laws—laws of the Almighty’s ordaining—laws that bring retribution. If we would live peaceably, we must come under them and obey.

Very often it happens that by obeying a law, we acquire superiority to it. Voluntarily submitting to certain rules for a time, our virtue is strengthened and finally becomes independent of them, so that it can go alone. The inebriate binds himself by a pledge, and thus regains his freedom. The disciple appoints specific hours for praying, and by that means gains the devout spirit which breathes a perpetual aspiration, at last inaugurating a silent converse of the soul with heaven, as natural as the pulse in the veins. The methodical division of time for business is only a form of law, coercing industry and efficiency. Many a man has to spur his sluggishness, by definite tasks; and many more would bring nothing to pass, but for fixed methods and seasons. Without a morning and evening sacrifice, forgetful worldliness would render poor service to God; and memories, like Martha, so careful and troubled about many things, would fail of Mary’s one thing needful. The laying apart of exact sums for charity has been all that stood between some men and the doom of avarice; benevolence had to be put out to school, and philanthropy be drilled into promptitude like a cadet. Let us not despise law, for every day practical proofs are scattered before us, that it is a school-master to lead us to Christ.

Even fear, though fastidious nerves are apt to discredit it as a lower sentiment, has its office in disciplining thoughtless and stubborn wills, breaking down pride and prompting insensibility, till it is ready to hand us over to motives of a nobler order. There is a meaning in a tradition of an ancient German prince, who, in early life, was bidden by an oracle to search out an inscription on a ruined wall which should prefigure his mortal fate. He found the Latin words, signifying after six. Supposing they revealed the number of days he was to live, he gave himself for the six days following to his hitherto neglected soul, preparing himself to die. But finding death did not come, he was still held to his sober resolutions by supposing six weeks were the interpretation; and then he prolonged his holy life to six months, and six years. On the first day of the seventh year, by reason of the excellent manhood into which he had thus formed his character, he had gained the confidence of the people, and he found the fulfillment of the ambiguous prophecy, by being chosen Emperor of Germany. Here is a figure of common experience. We may conceive it to have been a mere “spiritual” process, that the prince should have been drawn to piety, by loving goodness for its own sake. But it was the timid dread of dying that drew him, and the royal benefactions of a truly Christian monarch justified the agent. Have you never known a fever, or an accident, or the incipient symptoms of a consumption to be the determining cause that bent the whole current of a life from earthward to heavenward? Have you never known that a mere dread of punishment or pain, of hell or disgrace, has stopped the erring feet of lust, silenced profanity, driven back the Sabbath-breaker? God is not ashamed to take into the sublime economy of his purposes these stimulants to virtue; and let not us, in our puerile conceit, venture to pronounce them unworthy. Outgrow them if you will, and can; but take care that you are not found, after all, below, instead of above the plane of their influence.

For be assured, though we have read the New Testament, named the name of Jesus, and quite looked down on the Jews, some of us have not yet climbed up so far as to Moses and his Jewish law. In the Bible’s older Testament there are needed examples for us yet. Not all of us have learned that majestic, unchangeable fact, that God is Sovereign; nor those related facts that, if we will perpetrate the wrong, we must suffer the penalty; that we can not dodge the consequences of what we do; that indolence must sap our strength; that selfishness must end in wretchedness; that falsehood is a mint, coining counterfeits that must return upon our hands; that hypocrisy to-day is disgrace to-morrow. This is law, everlasting, unrepealable law; and our poor attempts to resist, or nullify it, avail not so much as a puff of mortal breath against the gulf stream in the Atlantic. Blessed will it be for our peace, when we accept it, and bow to it, turning it into a law of liberty.

Remember that the grandest examples of sainthood, or spiritual life, that the ages have seen, have been souls that recognized this truth—the firm, Puritanical element, in all valiant piety; and without it mere amiable religious feeling will be quite sure to degenerate into sentimentality. We need to stand compassed about with the terrible splendors of the mount, and with something of the somber apparatus of Hebrew commandments, to keep us from falling off into some impious, Gentile idolatries of the senses. Holy places, and holy days, and solemn assemblies, still dispense sanctity. Our appetites have to be hedged about with almost as many scruples of regimen for Christian moderation’s sake, as the Jew’s for his monotheism. “We wish,” says some one, “that it was not so difficult to be good. We wish that we could be self-indulgent, and yet be good for all that; that we could idle off our time, and yet be wise for all that.” The worldling wishes that he could combine his worldliness now with a heaven hereafter; the voluptuary, that he could have “the clear eye and the steady hand of the temperate;” the vain, ambitious, capricious woman, that she could exhibit the serenity that comes of prayer. But Sinai stands unmoved, at the outset of every life-journey through the wilderness; and at the further end, beyond the river, Ebal with his curses, and Gerizim with its blessings. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

[March 25.]

THREE DISPENSATIONS.

But there is a third dispensation, profounder and richer than that of statutes; and, at the head of it, one greater than Moses. The period of literal commandments was insufficient; humanity outgrew it. It became a dead profession, a school of foolish questions, a shelter of hideous hypocrisies. Lo! the enlarging soul of the race asks a freer, more sincere, more vital nurture, and it comes. If the simple religious instincts of Abraham had been accepted for righteousness; if the law had been given by Moses; grace and truth enter in by Jesus Christ; grace for the heart, truth for the understanding; favor for man’s stumbling feet, and light for his eyes. Christ does not abrogate law, but by his own life and sacrifice first satisfies its conditions. He says expressly, “Think not that I came to destroy Moses, but to fulfill.” The cross does not unbind the cords of accountability, but tightens and strengthens them rather. The gospel affords no solvent to disentegrate the commandments; it only lets “the violated law speak out its thunders” in the tones of pity. Divine laws never looked so sacred as when they took sanctity from the redemption of the crucified.

Witness now a new light, “lighting every man that cometh into the world.” It is the deliverance of the heart. It is the purifying of the life. It is the sanctification of the spirit. The law, by which no man living can be justified, because no man ever yet kept it inviolate; which makes no allowance for imperfect obedience, and yet never was perfectly obeyed—which, therefore, is a rule of universal condemnation when standing alone—this stern, unrelenting law gives place to a gospel—gladder tidings—a voice that comes not to condemn but to save, a ministry of mercy, asking only a penitent spirit that it may offer forgiveness, and only inward faith changing the motives that it may confer eternal life.

Law and prophets, then, are not annulled; what they lacked is supplied. They are absorbed by evangelists. The gospel takes up all their contents, recasts them, and quickens them with the vitality of a fresh inspiration. Moses remains, but only as a servant to Christ. The decalogue still stands; but the cross stands on a higher pedestal, invested with a purer glory. Humble Calvary is the seat of a loftier power than towering Horeb. We must still be under discipline; but the Lawgiver is lost in the Redeemer. What was a task is transfigured into a choice. The drudgery of obedience is beautified into the privilege of reconciliation. Love has cast out fear. Man no longer cowers before his sovereign with terror, but pours out his praises to a Father. The soul is released from the bondage of a thrall into the liberty of a child. Out of the plodding routine of mechanical sacrifice, it ascends into spiritual Joy, where the handwriting of ordinances is done away; the Great High Priest has ascended once for all into the heavens, and suffering is willingly borne because it makes the disciple like the Lord.

Thus the word spoken by the third epoch of religious culture is not, “Act thy nature out and follow thy lawless impulses”—nor yet, “Do this circle of outward works, and then come and claim salvation for thy merits”—but, believe, first, and then out of thy faith do the righteous works which thou then canst not but do. Repent of thy short comings, and be forgiven. Lean on Christ, thy Savior. Love God, thy Father. Help men, thy brethren. And come, inherit thy immortal kingdom!

Now, at last, if it only keeps on in the path divinely marked for it, the soul emerges into that wide fellowship of Christ—that open hospitality of spiritual freedom, where the impulse of nature is only guided, not stifled, by law; where law is ripened and fulfilled into faith. The highest victory of goodness is union with God. The union comes only by a Mediator. For reconciliation between finite and infinite, there must be a Reconciler combining both. The way to peace lies by Calvary. Humanity realizes its complete proportions, only by inward membership with him who fills all the veins of his living body with his blood, and the chambers of his church with the glory of his presence to-day. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”

For, observe, by all means, this striking condition pertaining to the doctrine; that neither of these three stages, whether of the general or the personal progress, denies, or cuts off, its predecessor. Nature prepares the way for law—making the heart restless, by an unsatisfying experiment, without it. Abraham saw more glorious ages coming than his own, and the promise given to him and his seed, Emmanuel accomplished. The law disciplined wayward, uncultured man, making him ready for the Church that was to descend “like a bride out of heaven.” Every ordinance in its ritual was a type; every statute was a prophecy.

All Judaism was prospective. Moses looked forward to the Messiah. So, in the heart of childhood, there are expectations, vague and yet brilliant, of the responsible second stage of manhood; it is too thoughtless yet to look beyond, to the age of mature Christian holiness. But see, again, when that second age of stern command and strict obedience comes, it grows sober and reflective. It feels heavily that it is not sufficient to itself. It must look longingly forward for the consolations of the cross. Nature does not comprehend law, nor law gospel; Abraham Moses, nor Moses Messiah; but the Son of God understands all, and the gospel, in its majestic orbit, while embracing law and nature, transcends them both.

Remember, also, for its practical fruit’s sake, this fact, that each stage requires fidelity in the preceding. You must have been true to the better impulses of youth, that you may be, to the best advantage, a servant of the law of maturity. You must be faithfully obedient to duty, before you are fit to be a subject of grace. Do not imagine you can glide over into the favor of heaven, without first keeping the commandment. It is a strait gate, and a narrow way that leads to life. I must be a cheerful servant, before I can know the joy of adoption, and cry, “Abba, Father.” Willing to be constrained by the positive precept, I may hope, by-and-by, for the freedom of a child and heir. Many things that I would rather not do—irksome to the sluggish will, hard to the love of ease, offensive to pride, bitter to selfish pleasure—I must do, before I can ascend to that sublime self-mastery with Christ, where I shall desire to do only what I ought. You have seen a seabird, which in rising from the waves has to run some way with difficulty upon the water, striking the surface laboriously with its pinions; but when it has once lifted itself into the upper air, it balances its flight with a calm motion, and enfranchised into the freedom of the sky, the slow beat of its wings are imperceptible. It is by pain and toil under the commandments, that the soul gets the liberty of its faculties; but when it has been taken up out of itself by love and trust, it moves in harmony with God. The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might “be justified by faith.” But “after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.” “All things are yours, and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” No longer at Gerizim, nor yet at Jerusalem, but everywhere, we may worship the Father!

You have seen the religionist of mere passion. That impulsive temperament is doubtless capable of good services to the master. But, to that end, the master must have the reforming of it. That unsteady purpose must be made steadfast through a thoughtful imitation of the constancy that said, “Behold, I go up to Jerusalem to be crucified.” That fluctuating wing of worship must be poised by some influence from those hills, where whole nights were not too long for a Redeemer’s prayers. That inexpert swimmer in the sea of life, now rising, now sinking, and now noisily splashing the waters, must be schooled by sober experience to glide onward with a firmer and stiller stroke. Ardor must be matched with consistency. You are not to be carried to heaven by a fitful religion, periodically raised from the dead at seasons of social exhilaration; not by a religion alive at church, but stagnant in the streets and in the market-places; not by a religion kindling at some favored hour of sentimental meditation, only to sink and flicker in the drudgery of common work. It is to little purpose that we read, and circulate, and preach the Bible, except all our reading and all our living gain thereby a more biblical tone. And it is quite futile that our breasts glow with some fugitive feeling in the house of God, unless that feeling dedicates our common dwellings to be all houses of God.

So have you seen the religious legalist. In business, in the street, in sanctuaries, at home, you have seen him. In business, measuring off his righteousness by some sealed measure of public usage, as mechanically as his merchandise, and making a label or a dye-stuff his cunning proxy to tell the lie that some judicial penalty had frightened from his tongue; disowning no patent obligation, but cheating the customer, or oppressing the weak, in secret. In the street, wearing an outside of genial manners, with a frosty temper under it, or a cloak of propriety with a heart of sin; in the sanctuary, purchasing, with formal professions, one day, the privilege of an untroubled self-seeking the other six, or possibly opening the pew door and the prayer-book here to-day, with the same hand that will wrong a neighbor to-morrow; and at home, practicing that reluctant virtue that would hardly give conjugal affection but for the marriage-bond, and that, by being exported to another continent, would find a Parisian atmosphere a solvent of all its scruples. Not descending, at present, to the depth of depravity, he certainly never rises to a pure piety. Whatever respectable or admirable traits you see in him, you miss that distinctive mark which every eye takes knowledge of as a spiritual consecration.

Engraft, now, on that “wild olive” stock, the sweet juices of Christian love, drawn from their original stock in Bethlehem, “of the seed of David and the root of Jesse;” soften that hard integrity by Christian charity; in place of duty done from sheer compulsion, put duty done from a willing, eager, and believing heart. Do this, and thou shalt live.

Abraham, Moses, Christ; impulse, discipline, faith; nature, law, gospel; instinct, obedience, grace; Mamre, Sinai, Calvary; this is that divine order—not bound by rigid rules of chronological succession, but having the free play and various intershadings of a moral growth—to which we are to conform our lives. When the “Thus saith the Lord” shall have controlled our impatient will, our hearts will be ready to say, “Our Father, who art in heaven!” Seek, first, after that indwelling goodness that has its fountain in the center of the soul, and good works will be the constant stream. Be children of light. Live by the spirit, not the letter; by faith, not by fear. For you are called to be disciples of Jesus. Henceforth the Christian is to be known, and to be saved, not by the hand so much as by the heart; not by a righteousness that is legal, but spiritual. Let not your piety be the occasional piety of Rabbinical Sabbaths, with ghastly intervals of worldliness between, like isolated springs in a desert of sand; but a piety, whose perennial influence, like the river that keeps the meadows always green, shall penetrate and fertilize the whole soil and open field of your being, and thus make glad the city of your God. No rich, or beautiful, or excepted life can be had by us, except Christ be its inspiration. Hope will not reach up to immortality, except it climb by the cross. Let not your lives be dead shapes of outward decency—the carved and gilded wood of an ark and a tabernacle deserted by the Spirit—but vital branches, filled with leaping and vigorous currents of holy feeling, on the living vine! “For if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”