ページの画像
PDF
ePub

trust in Christ for acceptance in another world when you doubt his good promise in this? Do you mean to say, that you believe that he is able and willing to raise your vile body at the last day, and that he is not able and willing to support you under any spiritual sacrifice that you may make for his sake-that he is not able to change and purify your old heart? Do Do you really believe the one without the other?

But the grand difference between the Christian and the man of the world is, that the burden of the one is gathering as he proceeds, while that of the other is becoming lighter and more easy: the man of carnal mind and worldly affections clings more and more to his beloved earth, and new cares thicken around his deathbed;-his burden is collecting as he advances, and when he comes to the edge of the grave it bears him down to the bottom like a mill-stone. But the Blessed Spirit, by gradually elevating the Christian's tempers and desires, makes obedience become more easy and delightful, until he mounts into the presence of God, where he finds it "a service of perfect freedom."

SERMON XI.*

Preached at St. Werburgh's Church, for the Parochial School of St. Audeon, 27th June, 1818.

ROMANS, V. (part of the 12th Verse.)

By one man sin entered into the world.

It is a gloomy thought, that we were once better than we are: many a generous spirit has had life embittered by such a recollection; and a similar feeling is naturally excited when we consider that we are degraded beings in the scale of creation, and that we have lost the attitude which we were intended to maintain among the works of God.

It is indeed easily said, with a sigh, that we are fallen beings,—and it is easily forgotten

* This was one of the author's earliest sermons: it has been transcribed for the press from several detached fragments of paper, and it is supposed that parts of it have been lost, which accounts for some apparent incoherency in the plan. However, imperfect as it is, it may not appear unworthy of a place in this Collection, as a specimen of the author's first addresses from the pulpit.--EDITOR.

again. But when this humiliating truth has once taken possession of the mind; when it ceases to be a mere verbal admission, and becomes a living and habitual principle, it is surprising what a powerful ascendancy, and what a purifying influence it exercises over the heart and the faculties; how it quenches the fiery and restless spirit within us; how it subdues much of what is bold and daring in the disposition; how it hangs like a dead weight upon many a haughty and aspiring thought; how it crushes many a proud and ambitious purpose in the dust!-and it is well that it should be so. It is no great proof of courage to carry a higher spirit in the sight of God while we are moving through life, than we expect to sustain when we are stretched faint and powerless upon our death-beds; or to tread with a firmer step and a loftier port upon the face of the earth, than when we are advancing to the throne of God at the day of judgment.

But if a sense of our degeneracy represses all the proud and rebellious principles of our nature, it is calculated to draw forth in a peculiar manner all that is humble, and kind, and amiable, and affectionate ;-it teaches us to look upon others with a pity inspired by our

own experience;-it calls upon us loudly to make common cause against the misfortunes of our common situation; for it is a grand principle insinuated into our nature by the Deity, that we are more intimately linked together by a sense of common danger than by a state of common security. Humility is the true source of Christian benevolence; humility, that reads its own lot in that of a fellow-creature,-that reminds us "that all have sinned," and that therefore we are all strangers and pilgrims on the earth. It does not, like the benevolence of the world, seat you upon an eminence, from which, like some superior being, you may fling a scanty and occasional pittance to the wretches whom you see struggling beneath; but it places you with them, side by side, toiling onward the same way, only better furnished for the journey, and called on by the voice of God and all the charities of the human heart to reach forth your hand to your weaker and more helpless fellow-travellers.

The fall of man, and the consequent deterioration of our nature, has been ridiculed by many of the enemies of Christianity as fabulous and unphilosophical; but it should be recollected, that we cannot indulge a single hope of ever

rising to a higher state of being, without admitting an equal probability, in the nature of things, that we have fallen from it: we must give up our hopes of a more spiritualised and glorious existence, and condemn the human race to utter annihilation, upon the same principle on which we deny the possibility of our corruption and degeneracy: and if we attentively observe the features of the nature to which we belong, we shall perceive a struggle between different principles, and a discordance of feeling in the same person at different periods, that we often unconsciously regard as the conflict of two contending natures.

We have, indeed, but a slight account of the state from which we fell: perhaps it would have been useless to have described it more circumstantially-we might not be capable of understanding it. The prophet seems to have exhausted description when he tells us, that we were "made in the image of God; so that, if we wish to ascertain what we were, it would seem we must look to the Deity himself. This would be a bold task, even though we undertook it for the purpose of humbling ourselves to the dust. But there is one circumstance re

« 前へ次へ »