SELECTED BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

[March 1.]

Repose now in thy glory, noble founder. Thy work is finished; thy divinity is established. Fear no more to see the edifice of thy labors fall by any fault. Henceforth beyond the reach of frailty, thou shalt witness from the heights of divine peace, the infinite results of thy acts. At the price of a few hours of suffering, which did not even reach thy grand soul, thou hast bought the most complete immortality. Banner of our contests, thou shalt be the standard about which the hottest battle will be given. A thousand times more alive, a thousand times more beloved since thy death than during thy passage here below, thou shalt become the corner-stone of humanity so entirely, that to tear thy name from this world would be to rend it to its foundations. Between thee and God there will no longer be any distinction. Complete conqueror of death, take possession of thy kingdom, whither shall follow thee, by the royal road which thou hast traced, ages of worshipers.

The essential work of Jesus was the creation around him of a circle of disciples in whom he inspired a boundless attachment, and in whose breast he implanted the germ of his doctrine. To have made himself beloved “so much that after his death they did not cease to love him,” this was the crowning work of Jesus, and that which most impressed his contemporaries. His doctrine was so little dogmatical that he never thought of writing it or having it written. A man became his disciple, not by believing this or that, but by following him and loving him. A few sentences treasured up in the memory, and above all, his moral type, and the impression which he had produced, were all that remained of him. Jesus is not a founder of dogmas, a maker of symbols; he is the world’s initiator into a new spirit.… To adhere to Jesus in view of the kingdom of God, was what it was originally to be a Christian.

Thus we comprehend how, by an exceptional destiny, pure Christianity still presents itself, at the end of eighteen centuries, with the character of a universal and eternal religion. It is because in fact the religion of Jesus is in some respects the final religion. The fruit of a perfectly spontaneous movement of souls, free at its birth from every dogmatic constraint, having struggled three hundred years for liberty of conscience, Christianity, in spite of the fall which followed, still gathers the fruits of this surpassing origin. To renew itself it has only to turn to the Gospel. The kingdom of God, as we conceive it, is widely different from the supernatural apparition which the first Christians expected to see burst forth from the clouds. But the sentiment which Jesus introduced into the world is really ours. His perfect idealism is the highest rule of unworldly and virtuous life. He has created that heaven of free souls, in which is found what we ask in vain on earth, the perfect nobility of the children of God, absolute purity, total abstraction from the contamination of this world, that freedom, in short, which material society shuts out as an impossibility, and which finds all its amplitude only in the domain of thought. The great master of those who take refuge in this ideal kingdom of God is Jesus still. He first proclaimed the kingliness of the spirit; he first said, at least by his acts, “My kingdom is not of this world.” The foundation of the true religion is indeed his work. After him there is nothing more but to develop and fructify.

“Christianity” has thus become almost synonymous with “religion.” All that may be done outside of this great and good Christian tradition will be sterile. Jesus founded religion on humanity, as Socrates founded philosophy, as Aristotle founded science. There had been philosophy before Socrates and science before Aristotle. Since Socrates and Aristotle, philosophy and science have made immense progress; but all has been built upon the foundation which they laid. And so, before Jesus, religious thought had passed through many revolutions; since Jesus it has made great conquests; nevertheless it has not departed, it will not depart from the essential condition which Jesus created; he has fixed for eternity the idea of pure worship. The religion of Jesus, in this sense, is not limited. The church has had its epochs and its phases; it has shut itself up in symbols which have had or will have their day; Jesus founded the absolute religion, excluding nothing, determining nothing, save its essence.…

Whatever may be the transformations of dogma, Jesus will remain in religion the creator of its pure sentiment; the Sermon on the Mount will never be surpassed. No resolution will lead us not to join in religion the grand intellectual and moral line at the head of which beams the name of Jesus.—Renan.[1]

[March 8.]

Were you ever made to see and admire the all sufficiency of Christ’s righteousness, and excited by the spirit of God to hunger and thirst after it? Could you ever say, my soul is athirst for Christ, yea, even for the righteousness of Christ? Oh, when shall I come to appear before the presence of my God in the righteousness of Christ; oh, nothing but Christ! nothing but Christ! Give me Christ, O God, and I am satisfied! My soul shall praise thee forever. Was this, I say, ever the language of your hearts? And after these inward conflicts, were you ever enabled to reach out the arm of faith and embrace the blessed Jesus in your souls, so that you could say, My beloved is mine, and I am his? If so, fear not, whoever you are—hail, all hail, you happy souls! The Lord, the Lord Christ, the everlasting God is your righteousness. Christ has justified you, who is he that condemneth you? Christ has died for you, nay, rather is risen again, and ever liveth to make intercession for you. Being now justified by his grace, you have peace with God, and shall ere long be with Jesus in glory, reaping everlasting and unspeakable redemption both in body and soul. For there is no condemnation to those that are really in Christ Jesus. Whether Paul or Apollos or life or death, all is yours if you are Christ’s, for Christ is God’s! … Oh think of the love of Christ in dying for you! If the Lord be your righteousness, let the righteousness of your Lord be ever in your mouth.… Think of the greatness of the gift, as well as of the giver! Show to all the world in whom you have believed! Let all by your fruits know that the Lord is your righteousness, and that you are waiting for your Lord from heaven! Oh, study to be holy, even as he who has called you, and washed you in his own blood, is holy! Let not the righteousness of the Lord be evil spoken of through you. Let not Jesus be wounded in the house of his friends; but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ day by day. Oh, think of his dying love! Let that love constrain you to obedience! Having much forgiven, love much.—Whitefield.[2]

[March 15.]

But in proportion to the exaltation of the soul, and also in proportion to its purity and spirituality—the very opposite extreme or condition; in proportion to the impressibleness and moral sensibility of a man’s spiritual nature, he has direct communion with God, as friend with friend, face to face. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” There are thousands of instances—they occur in every church where there are eminent Christians—of men and women who come to such a state of spiritual purity and spiritual openness that they talk with God as friend with friend. There is the direct operation of the Spirit of God upon their soul. Not that they less than any others are blessed by the spirit that applies the Word; not that they less than any others are subject to the indirect operations of nature and society; but there is, over and above these, also, for those that are able to take it, this direct inspiration of God’s soul. Whether it be by thought, I know not; or whether it be by moral feeling, I know not. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the spirit.” I do not know the mode of divine agency; but of the fact that the human soul in its higher spiritual relations is open; that there is nothing between it and God, as it were; that it palpitates, as it were, under the conscious presence of God, and is lifted up to a faith and a truth that are not possible to it in its lower realms—of that fact I have no more doubt than I have of my own existence.

There is such a thing yet as walking with God; there is such a thing yet as being under direct divine inspiration. I do not think there is such a thing yet as authoritative inspiration. Apostles are over and gone. Prophets have had their day. It is individual inspiration that exists now. It is authoritative only for the soul to which it comes, not lifting that soul up into authority, and enabling it to say “Thus saith the Lord” to any other soul. But I believe that still the divine Spirit works upon the individual heart, and teaches that individual heart as a father teaches a child.

Blessed are they that need no argument; and blessed are they whose memories take them back to the glowing hours of experience, in which they have seen the transfigured Christ; in which to them the heavens have been opened; in which to them the angels of God not only have descended upon the ladder, but have brought the divine and sacred presence with them. Many a couch of poverty has been more gorgeous than a prince’s couch; many a hut and hovel has been scarcely less resplendent to the eye of angels than the very battlements of heaven. Many that the world has not known; who had no tongue to speak, and no hand to execute, but only a heart to love and to trust—many such ones have had the very firmament of God lifted above them, all radiant. There is this truth in the Spirit of God that works in the hearts of men directly, and in overpowering measure. Blessed be God, it is a living truth; and there are witnesses of it yet.—Beecher.

[March 22.]

Jesus Christ, in his dying discourse with his eleven disciples, in the 14th, 15th, and 16th chapters of John (which was, as it were, Christ’s last will and testament to his disciples, and to his whole church), often declares his special and everlasting love to them, in the plainest and most positive terms, and promises them a future participation with him in his glory in the most absolute manner, and tells them, at the same time, that he does so to the end that their joy may be full. John xv:2: “These things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” See also, at the conclusion of the whole discourse, chapter xvi:33: “These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Christ was not afraid of speaking too plainly and positively to them; he did not desire to hold them in the least suspense. And he concluded that last discourse of his with a prayer in their presence, wherein he speaks positively to his Father of those eleven disciples, as having all of them savingly known him, and believed in him, and received and kept his word; and that they were not of the world; and that for their sakes he sanctified himself; and that his will was that they should be with him in his glory; and tells his Father that he spake these things in his prayer, to the end that his joy might be fulfilled in them: verse 13. By these things it is evident that it is agreeable to Christ’s designs, and the contrived ordering and disposition Christ makes of things in his church, that there should be sufficient and abundant provision made, that his saints might have full assurance of their future glory.

The apostle Paul, through all his epistles, speaks in an assured strain; ever speaking positively of his special relation to Christ, his Lord, and Master, and Redeemer; and his interest in, and expectation of, the future reward. It would be useless to take notice of all places that might be enumerated. I shall mention but three or four. Gal., ii:20: “Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Phil., i:21: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” II. Tim., i:12: “I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.” II. Tim., iv:7,8: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at that day.” … It further appears that assurance is not only attainable in some very extraordinary cases, but that all Christians are directed to use all diligence to make their calling and election sure; and are told how they may do it. II. Peter, i:5-8. And it is spoken of as a thing very unbecoming of Christians, and an argument of something very blamable in them, not to know whether Christ be in them or no. II. Cor., xiii:5: “Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you except ye be reprobates?” And it is implied that it is an argument of a very blamable negligence in Christians, if they practice Christianity after such a manner as to remain uncertain of the rewards, in I. Cor., ix:26: “I therefore so run, not as uncertainly.” And to add no more, it is manifest that for Christians to know their interests in the saving benefits of Christianity is a thing ordinarily attainable, because the apostles tell us by what means Christians (and not only apostles and martyrs) were wont to know this. I. Cor., ii:12: “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things which are fully given to us of God.” And I. John, ii:3: “And hereby do we know that we know him if we keep his commandments.” And verse 5: “Hereby know we that we are in him.” Chapter iii:14: “We know that we have passed from death unto life.” … Verse 19: “Hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him.” Verse 24: “Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the spirit which he hath given us.” So chapter iv:13, and chapter v:29, and verse 19.—President Edwards.[3]

[March 29.]

Who has an understanding so exalted, so richly gifted, as to be able to say what love is! Should I say it is a dew, I merely describe its refreshing power. Should I say it is a star, I but describe its loveliness. Should I say it is a storm, I but describe the impossibility of restraining it. Should I say it is a ray of the sun, then I but describe its hidden source. Should I say it is produced in the utmost depths of the soul, when the breath of heaven unites with the heart’s blood of the new man, that it is the breath of the soul, still I should not have represented it, for I should but have said what it is in itself, not what it is to others. Should I say it is the light of the sun, that gives life and color to all creatures, still I should not have truly set it forth, for I should but have said what it is for others, not what it is in itself. Should I say it is a ray of the seven colors in a pure drop of water, still I should not have described it, for it is not so much a form as an odor, and a savor, in the depths of the human heart. Who has such a lofty understanding, such deep thoughts, as to be able to say what love truly is! The Scripture says—it is a flame of the Lord.[I] Yes it is a flame, steady, bright, and pure; a flame which lights up and warms, and shines through the heart into which it has entered, and then falls on other hearts, and the more light and warmth it gives to others, the brighter and stronger it burns in our breast.

But love, says the apostle, is greater than faith and hope, for beyond that limit where faith and hope depart, love still remains.… For as the door in this poor temporal life was but a little gate that did not always stand open, but was often shut by a strong gust of wind; in eternity the poor little gate will become a mighty portal, whose doors stand open night and day, which no storm-wind will ever close, through which the soul will freely pass into the heart of God and all his creatures. O, since in this life love has made us so rich, though but a little brook, which, when the sun shone fiercely, was almost dried up, how rich will it not make us when the little brook has become the stream, yea, the ocean, when it flows forth from the heart of God, in full spring-tide, and sin no more builds a barrier in the heart of the creature, and there will be a free and sacred giving and receiving between heaven and earth, and among all that is in heaven and upon earth! O, who has so exalted an understanding that he can truly say what love is!—Tholuck.[4]

[I] Canticles, viii:6, German version.