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

[May 3.]

The heart here, the Father yonder, and the universe of man and matter as the meeting place between them, is the whole scope and the whole poetry of the Sermon on the Mount. The preacher shears off all the superfluities and externals of worship and of action, that he may show, in its naked simplicity, the communion which takes place between the heart as worshiper and God as hearer. The righteousness he inculcates must exceed that “of the Scribes and the Pharisees.” The man who hates his brother, or calls him “Raca,” is a murderer in deed.… Oaths are but big sounds; the inner feelings are better represented by “yea, yea, nay, nay.” That love which resides within will walk through the world as men walk through a gallery of pictures, loving and admiring, and expecting no return. The giving of alms must be secret. The sweetest prayer will be solitary and short. One must fast, too, as if he fasted not. The enduring treasures must be laid up within. Righteousness must be sought before, and as inclusive of all things; life is more precious than all the means of it. The examination and correction of faults must begin at home. Prayer, if issuing from the heart, is all powerful. The essence of the law and the prophets lies in doing to others as we would have others do to us. Having neglected the inner life, the majority have gone to ruin, even while following fully and devotedly external forms of faith and worship. The heart must, at the same time, be known by its fruits. It is only the good worker that shall enter the heavenly kingdom. These truths, in fine, acted upon, these precepts from the Mount, heard and kept—become a rock of absolute safety, while all beside is sand now, and sea hereafter.

Such is, in substance, this sermon. It includes unconsciously all theology and all morals, and is invested, besides, with the beauty of imagery—theology, for what do we know, or can we ever know, of God, but that he is “our Father in heaven,” that he accepts our heart worship, forgives our debts, and hears our earnest prayers—morals, for all sin lies in selfishness, all virtue lies in losing our petty identity in the great river of the species, which flows into the ocean of God; and as to imagery, how many natural objects—the salt of the sea, the lilies of the valley, the thorns of the wilderness, the trees of the field, the hairs of the head, the rocks of the mountain, and the sand of the seashore—combine to explain and beautify the deep lessons conveyed! Here is, verily, the model—long sought elsewhere in vain—of a “perfect sermon,” which ought to speak of God and of man in words and figures borrowed from that beautiful creation, which lies between, which adumbrates the former to the latter, and enables the latter to glorify at once the works and the author.—Gilfillan.[1]

[May 10.]

The Hebrew poet was nothing if not sacred. To him the poetical and the religious were almost the same. Song was the form instinctively assumed by all the higher moods of his worship. He was not surprised into religious emotion and poetry by the influence of circumstances, nor stung into it by the pressure of remorse.… Religion was with him a habitual feeling, and from the joy or the agony of that feeling poetry broke out irrepressibly. To him, the question, “Are you in a religious mood to-day?” had been as absurd as “Are you alive to-day?” for all his moods— … whether wretched as the penitence of David, or triumphant as the rapture of Isaiah—were tinged with the religious element. From God he sank, or up to him he soared. The grand theocracy around ruled all the soul and all the song of the bard. Wherever he stood, under the silent starry canopy, or in the congregation of the faithful—musing in solitary spots, or smiting, with high, hot, rebounding hand, the loud cymbal—his feeling was, “How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” In him, surrounded by sacred influences, haunted by sacred recollections, moving through a holy land, and overhung by a heavenly presence, religion became a passion, a patriotism, and a poetry. Hence the sacred song of the Hebrews stands alone, and hence we may draw the deduction that its equal we shall never see again, till again religion outshine the earth with an atmosphere as it then enshrined Palestine—till poets, not only as the organs of their personal belief, but of the general sentiment around them, have become the high priests in a vast sanctuary, where all shall be worshipers, because all is felt to be divine. How this high and solemn reference to the Supreme Intelligence and Great Whole comes forth in all the varied forms of Hebrew poetry! Is it the pastoral? The Lord is the shepherd. Is it elegy? It bewails his absence. Is it ode? It cries aloud for his return, or shouts his praise. Is it the historical ballad? It recounts his deeds. Is it the penitential psalm? Its climax is, “Against thee only have I sinned.” Is it the didactic poem? Running down through the world, like a scythed chariot, and hewing down before it all things as vanity, it clears the way to the final conclusion, “Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” Is it a burden, “tossed as from a midnight mountain, by the hand of lonely seer, toward the lands of Egypt and Babylon?” It is the burden of the Lord; his the handful of devouring fire flung by the fierce prophet. Is it apologue, or emblem? God’s meaning lies in the hollow of the parable; God’s eye glares in the “terrible crystal” over the rushing wheels. Even the love-canticle seems to rise above itself, and behold! a greater than Solomon, and a fairer than his Egyptian spouse, are here. Thus, from their poetry, as from a thousand mirrors, flashes back the one awful face of their God.—Gilfillan.

[May 17.]

They say it is an ill mason that refuseth any stone; and there is no knowledge but in a skillful hand serves, either positively as it is, or else to illustrate some other knowledge, … because people by what they understand, are best led to what they understand not.

But the chief and top of his knowledge consists in the Book of books, the storehouse and magazine of life and comfort, THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.… In the Scriptures he finds four things: precepts for life, doctrines for knowledge, examples for illustration, and promises for comfort. These he hath digested severally.

But for the understanding of these, the means he useth are: First, A HOLY LIFE; remembering what his Master saith, that if any do God’s will he shall know of the doctrine (John viii), and assuring himself that wicked men, however learned, do not know the Scriptures, because they feel them not, and because they are not understood but with the same spirit that writ them. The second means is PRAYER; which, if it be necessary even in temporal things, how much more in things of another world, where the well is deep, and we have nothing of ourselves to draw with! Wherefore he ever begins the reading of the Scripture with some short ejaculation, as Lord, pen mine eyes, that I may see the wondrous things of thy law. The third means is A DILIGENT COLLATION of Scripture with Scripture. For, all truth being consonant to itself, and all being penned by one and the self-same Spirit, it can not be, but that an industrious and judicious comparing of place with place must be a singular help for the right understanding of the Scriptures. To this may be added the consideration of any text with the coherence thereof, touching what goes before and what follows after; as also the scope of the Holy Ghost. When the apostles would have called down fire from heaven, they were reproved as ignorant of what spirit they were. For the law required one thing and the gospel another; yet as diverse, not as repugnant; therefore the spirit of both is to be considered and weighed. The fourth means are COMMENTERS AND FATHERS, who have handled the places controverted; which the parson by no means refuseth. As he doth not so study others as to neglect the grace of God in himself, and what the Holy Spirit teacheth him; so doth he assure himself, that God in all ages hath had his servants, to whom he hath revealed his truth, as well as to him; and that as one country doth not bear all things, that there may be a commerce, so neither hath God opened, or will open, all to one, that there may be a traffic in knowledge between the servants of God, for the planting both of love and humility. Wherefore he hath one comment, at least, upon every book of Scripture; and, plowing with this and his own meditations, he enters into the secrets of God treasured in the holy Scripture.—Herbert.[2]

[May 24.]

It is exceedingly important, therefore, that all the Christian gifts and graces should be possessed in purity of spirit, uncontaminated by any unholy mixtures of an earthly nature. The mere suggestion that they have merit of themselves and separate from the God who gives them, if it be received with the least complacency, necessarily inflicts a deep wound. They are accordingly held in purity of spirit, and with the divine approbation, only when their tendency is to separate the soul from everything inward and outward, considered as objects of complacency and of spiritual rest, and to unite it more closely to God.… We do not find the parent, who has that degree of affection for his child which may be called entire or perfect love, making his love a distinct object of his thoughts, and rejoicing in it as such a distinct object; that would not be the genuine operation of perfect love. If his love is perfect, he has no time and no disposition to think of anything but the beloved object toward which his affections are directed. His love is so deep, so pure, so fixed and centered upon one point, that the sight of self, and of his own personal exercises, is lost. It ought to be thus in the feelings which we exercise toward God; and undoubtedly such will be the result, when the religious feeling has reached a certain degree of intensity; that is to say, when the feeling is perfect, the mind is not occupied with the feeling itself, but with the object of the feeling. The heart, if we may so express it, seems to recede from us; it certainly does so as an object of distinct contemplation; and the object of its affections comes in and takes its place. O, the blessedness of the heart, that, free from self and its secret and pernicious influences, sees nothing but God; that recognizes, even in its highest gifts and graces, nothing but God; that would rather be infinitely miserable with God, if it were possible, than infinitely happy without him!

In connection with these remarks we are enabled to understand and appreciate the state of mind which is described in some primitive writers as a state of cessation from “reflex acts.” By REFLEX ACTS, as we employ the phrase here, and as it appears to be employed by the writers referred to, we mean those acts of the mind in which the soul turns inward upon itself, and, ceasing for a time to regard the mere will of God as the only good, takes a self-conscious satisfaction in its own exercises. Such acts, when they are indulged in, stand directly in the way of the highest results of the religious life. On the other hand, he who has entirely ceased to put forth acts of this kind, and loves God to the entire forgetfulness of self, losing sight even of his own exercises, in consequence of being fully occupied with an infinitely higher object, has reached the broad and calm position of spiritual rest, the region of inward and abiding peace—a region where there is no noisy clamor, no outcries and contests of the passions; no contrivances of prejudice, interest, and ambition; no rebellious sighing and tears of the natural spirit; but all is hushed and lost in the one deep conviction that there is nothing good, nothing permanently true, nothing desirable—no, not heaven itself—but pure and everlasting union with the will of God.—Prof. Upham.[3]

[May 31.]

All science is simply a perception of the laws of God—a discovery of what he designed when he spread out the heavens and gemmed the infinity of space with its myriad of worlds. The laws of light are simply the power with which the Creator invested it. All we can do is to find what he has written on its wings. The law of magnetism is the subtle power and the mode of action with which God has touched the loadstone. The laws of astronomy, what are they but the thoughts of God, as he projected worlds into space, and gave to them their orbits and their periods?… Of nature in all its expanse, of all created powers, visible and invisible, hath not God said, “All are yours?” Are we not “heirs of God and joint heirs of Jesus Christ?”

I can accord the scientist nearly all he can claim, without in the slightest degree affecting the foundations of my faith.… There are many things which are claimed in evolution, to which I must give the verdict of the Scotch jury, “Not proven.” Yet were I to admit them all, they would not affect my faith in the wisdom and skill and power of the great Father. I admire the skill of the watch-maker who produces an accurate timepiece; but how much more would I admire his skill if he so made one watch that it was capable not only of keeping time, but also of evolving a series of watches, each keeping better time than that which produced it, so that from the plainest, simplest form of a watch there should be eventually evolved a magnificent chronometer, with jeweled holes, whose time would not vary from the true time a second in a million of years! If the great Creator created but a germ, but in that germ were all possibilities of form, and motion, and magnitude, of atoms and of worlds, with their laws of motion so impressed on each that it should take its place in due time, my admiration for his wonderful skill would be only enhanced.… These men who talk of evolution claim an infinity of time. I ask, how long since this protoplasm developed into a turtle, the turtle into a monkey, the monkey into a man? They admit there is no positive record anywhere. Since human history began there is no instance of any animal ascending in the scale of man. If at all, it must have been far back in the distant ages. Then, I ask, why not give Christianity similar time? She is changing the face of creation; she is transforming sinners into saints, savages into enlightened men. She took them naked, rude and uncultured, and has clothed, taught, and refined them. She has taken man that bowed down to stocks and stones, and has elevated him until he uses the world as a workshop, and all elements as his instruments, until he feels that he is a son of God, and his vicegerent upon earth. Why shall Christianity be called a failure, because it has not yet reached all the sons of men, or transformed them into sons of science? Give her at least as much time to change millions of savages into enlightened humanity, millions of sinners into saints, as, according to their own asking, it takes to change one species into another. We promise that the whole world shall be brought to the foot of the cross before the evolutionist shall find even a single monkey transformed into a man.—Bishop Simpson.