Part 9 (1/2)

The next thing we observe respecting this peace is, that it is the manifestation of power--it is the peace which comes from an inward power: ”Let the peace of G.o.d,” says the Apostle, ”rule within your hearts.” For it is a power, the manifestation of strength. There is no peace except there is the possibility of the opposite of peace although now restrained and controlled. You do not speak of the peace of a grain of sand, because it cannot be otherwise than merely insignificant, and at rest. You do not speak of the peace of a mere pond; you speak of the peace of the sea, because there is the opposite of peace implied, there is power and strength. And this brethren, is the real character of the peace in the mind and soul of man. Oh! we make a great mistake when we say there is strength in pa.s.sion, in the exhibition of emotion. Pa.s.sion, and emotion, and all those outward manifestations, prove, not strength, but weakness. If the pa.s.sions of a man are strong, it proves the man himself is weak, if he cannot restrain or control his pa.s.sions. The real strength and majesty of the soul of man is calmness, the manifestation of strength; ”the peace of G.o.d” ruling; the word of Christ saying to the inward storms ”Peace!”

and there is ”a great calm.”

Lastly, the peace of which the apostle speaks is the peace that is received--the peace of reception. You will observe, throughout this pa.s.sage the apostle speaks of a something received, and not done: ”Let the peace of G.o.d rule in your hearts.” It is throughout receptive, but by no means inactive. And according to this, there are two kinds of peace; the peace of obedience--”Let the peace of G.o.d rule” you--and there is the peace of gratefulness--”Be ye thankful.” Very great, brethren, is the peace of obedience: when a man has his lot fixed, and his mind made up, and he sees his destiny before him, and quietly acquiesces in it; his spirit is at rest. Great and deep is the peace of the soldier to whom has been a.s.signed even an untenable position, with the command, ”Keep that, even if you die,” and he obediently remains to die.

Great was the peace of Elisha--very, very calm are those words by which he expressed his acquiescence in the divine will. ”Knowest thou,” said the troubled, excited, and restless men around him--”Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head to-day?” He answered, ”Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace.” Then there is the other peace, it is the peace of gratefulness: ”Be ye thankful.” It is that peace which the Israelites had when these words were spoken to them on the sh.o.r.es of the Red Sea, while the bodies of their enemies floated past them, destroyed, but not by them: ”Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.”

And here brethren, is another mistake of ours: we look on salvation as a thing to be done, and not received. In G.o.d's salvation we can do but little, but there is a great deal to be received. We are here, not merely to act, but to be acted upon. ”Let the peace of G.o.d rule in your hearts;” there is a peace that will enter there, if you do not thwart it; there is a Spirit that will take possession of your soul, provided that you do not quench it. In this world we are recipients, not creators. In obedience and in gratefulness, and the infinite peace of G.o.d in the soul of man, is alone to be found deep calm repose.

XII.

_Preached January 4, 1852._

THE CHRISTIAN AIM AND MOTIVE.

”Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”--Matthew v. 48.

There are two erroneous views held respecting the character of the Sermon on the Mount. The first may be called an error of worldly-minded men, the other an error of mistaken religionists.

Worldly-minded men--men that is, in whom the devotional feeling is but feeble--are accustomed to look upon morality as the whole of religion; and they suppose that the Sermon on the Mount was designed only to explain and enforce correct principles of morality. It tells of human duties and human proprieties, and an attention to these, they maintain, is the only religion which is required by it. Strange my Christian brethren, that men, whose lives are least remarkable for superhuman excellence, should be the very men to refer most frequently to those sublime comments on Christian principle, and should so confidently conclude from thence, that themselves are right and all others are wrong. Yet so it is.

The other is an error of mistaken religionists. They sometimes regard the Sermon on the Mount as if it were a collection of moral precepts, and consequently, strictly speaking, not Christianity at all. To them it seems as if the chief value, the chief intention of the discourse, was to show the breadth and spirituality of the requirements of the law of Moses--its chief religious significance, to show the utter impossibility of fulfilling the law, and thus to lead to the necessary inference that justification must be by faith alone. And so they would not scruple to a.s.sert that, in the highest sense of that term, it is not Christianity at all, but only preparatory to it--a kind of spiritual Judaism; and that the higher and more developed principles of Christianity are to be found in the writings of the apostles.

Before we proceed further, we would remark here that it seems extremely startling to say that He who came to this world expressly to preach the Gospel, should, in the most elaborate of all His discourses, omit to do so: it is indeed something more than startling, it is absolutely revolting to suppose that the letters of those who spoke _of_ Christ, should contain a more perfectly-developed, a freer and fuller Christianity than is to be found in Christ's own words.

Now you will observe that these two parties, so opposed to each other in their general religious views, are agreed in this--that the Sermon on the Mount is nothing but morality. The man of the world says--”It is morality only, and that is the whole of religion.” The mistaken religionist says--”It is morality only, not the entire essence of Christianity.” In opposition to both these views, we maintain that the Sermon on the Mount contains the sum and substance of Christianity--the very chief matter of the gospel of our Redeemer.

It is not, you will observe, a pure and spiritualized Judaism; it is contrasted with Judaism again and again by Him who spoke it. Quoting the words of Moses, he affirmed, ”So was it spoken by them of old time, but _I say unto you_--” For example, ”Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths.” That is Judaism. ”But I say unto you swear not at all, but let your yea be yea, and your nay nay.” That is Christianity. And that which is the essential peculiarity of this Christianity lies in these two things.

First of all, that the morality which it teaches is _disinterested_ goodness--goodness not for the sake of the blessing that follows it, but for its own sake, and because it is right. ”Love your enemies,” is the Gospel precept. Why?--Because if you love them you shall be blessed; and if you do not cursed? No; but ”Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of”--that is, may be like--”your Father which is in Heaven.”

The second essential peculiarity of Christianity--and this, too, is an essential peculiarity of this Sermon--is, that it teaches and enforces the law of self-sacrifice. ”If thy right eye offend thee pluck it out; if thy right hand offend thee cut it off.” This, brethren, is the law of self-sacrifice--the very law and spirit of the blessed cross of Christ.

How deeply and essentially Christian, then, this Sermon on the Mount is, we shall understand if we are enabled in any measure to reach the meaning and spirit of the single pa.s.sage which I have taken as my text. It tells two things--the Christian aim and the Christian motive.

1st. The Christian aim--perfection. 2nd. The Christian motive--because it is right and G.o.dlike to be perfect.

I. The Christian aim is this--to be perfect. ”Be ye therefore perfect.” Now distinguish this, I pray you, from mere worldly morality. It is not conformity to a creed that is here required, but aspiration after a _state_. It is not demanded of us to perform a number of duties, but to yield obedience to a certain spiritual law.

But let us endeavour to explain this more fully. What is the meaning of this expression, ”Be ye perfect?” Why is it that in this discourse, instead of being commanded to perform religious duties, we are commanded to think of being like G.o.d? Will not that inflame our pride, and increase our natural vainglory? Now the nature and possibility of human perfection, what it is and how it is possible, are both contained in one single expression in the text. ”Even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.” The relations.h.i.+p between father and son implies consanguinity, likeness, similarity of character and nature. G.o.d _made_ the insect, the stone, the lily; but G.o.d is not the Father of the caterpillar, the lily, or the stone.

When therefore, G.o.d is said to be our Father, something more is implied in this than that G.o.d created man. And so when the Son of Man came proclaiming the fact that we are the children of G.o.d, it was in the truest sense a revelation. He told us that the nature of G.o.d resembles the nature of man, that love in G.o.d is not a mere figure of speech, but means the same thing as love in us, and that divine anger is the same thing as human anger divested of its emotions and imperfections. When we are commanded to be like G.o.d, it implies that G.o.d has that nature of which we have already the germs. And this has been taught by the incarnation of the Redeemer. Things absolutely dissimilar in their nature cannot mingle. Water cannot coalesce with fire--water cannot mix with oil. If, then, Humanity and Divinity were united in the person of the Redeemer, it follows that there must be something kindred between the two, or else the incarnation had been impossible. So that the incarnation is the realization of man's perfection.

But let us examine more deeply this a.s.sertion, that _our_ nature is kindred with that of G.o.d--for if man has not a nature kindred to G.o.d's, then a demand such as that, ”Be ye the children of”--that is, like--”G.o.d,” is but a mockery of man. We say then, in the first place, that in the truest sense of the word man can be a creator. The beaver _makes_ its hole, the bee _makes_ its cell; man alone has the power of _creating_. The mason _makes_, the architect _creates_. In the same sense that we say G.o.d created the universe, we say that man is also a creator. The creation of the universe was the Eternal Thought taking reality. And thought taking expression is also a creation. Whenever therefore, there is a living thought shaping itself in word or in stone, there is there a creation. And therefore it is, that the simplest effort of what we call genius is prized infinitely more than the most elaborate performances which are done by mere workmans.h.i.+p, and for this reason: that the one is produced by an effort of power which we share with the beaver and the bee, that of _making_, and the other by a faculty and power which man alone shares with G.o.d.

Here however, you will observe another difficulty. It will be said at once--there is something in this comparison of man with G.o.d which looks like blasphemy, because one is finite and the other infinite--man is bounded, G.o.d boundless; and to speak of resemblance and kindred between these two, is to speak of resemblance and kindred between two natures essentially different. But this is precisely the argument which is brought by the Socinians against the doctrine of the incarnation; and we are bound to add that the Socinian argument is right, unless there be the similarity of which we have been speaking.

Unless there be something in man's nature which truly and properly partakes of the divine nature, there could be no incarnation, and the demand for perfection would be a mockery and an impossibility.

Let us then endeavour to find out the evidences of this infinitude in the nature of man. First of all we find it in this--that the desires of man are for something boundless and unattainable. Thus speaks our Lord--”What shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Every schoolboy has heard the story of the youthful prince who enumerated one by one the countries he meant to conquer year after year; and when the enumeration was completed, was asked what he meant to do when all those victories were achieved, and he replied--to sit down, to be happy, to take his rest. But then came the ready rejoinder--Why not do so now? But it is not every schoolboy who has paused to consider the folly of the question. He who asked his son why he did not at once take the rest which it was his ultimate purpose to enjoy, knew not the immensity and n.o.bility of the human soul. He could not _then_ take his rest and be happy. As long as one realm remained unconquered, so long rest was impossible; he would weep for fresh worlds to conquer. And thus, that which was spoken by our Lord of one earthly gratification, is true of all--”Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again.” The boundless, endless, infinite void in the soul of man can be satisfied with nothing but G.o.d.

Satisfaction lies not in _having_, but in _being_. There is no satisfaction even in _doing_. Man cannot be satisfied with his own performances. When the righteous young ruler came to Christ, and declared that in reference to the life gone by, he had kept all the commandments and fulfilled all the duties required by the Law, still came the question--”What lack I yet?”