Part 10

No, clearly, distinctly, positively rings out God's command: "Search the Scriptures." He bids us do it. He points to each and every one of us, as if to say, "Thou do it." Does it not lie in the very nature of the Book? For whom did He cause it to be written? For the clergy, that the ministers might have some texts to preach on? No more so than He gave the Ten Commandments only to the clergy. They are the universal possession, they are for all the laity as well as the clergy. And to whom, as you examine the Inspired Volume, are most of its contents directed? There are the fourteen letters, or epistles, of St. Paul. A few of them, like those to Timothy and Titus, are addressed to a clergyman, but the greater majority are addressed to the congregations at Rome, at Ephesus, at Philippi, at Thessalonica, and so forth, to the members accordingly. Moreover, the direction in many places is, that the hearers should examine what the preachers say, lest they preach something contrary to the Scriptures. How could the hearers do this if they were prohibited from reading the Bible? Away, then, with this opinion that is gaining ground, that the Bible is a professional clergyman's text-book, and let the personal application strike home in your own case, Thou shalt search the Scriptures.

And one other reason does God furnish us in the text why we should read it. He says, "For in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me." Those are deep, wonderful words; they tell what Bible reading benefits, brings us, _viz._, eternal life. That this present life is not all there is to life, that there is a life besides and after this, that all men in all ages and in all countries have conjectured; that life is dependent upon a right relation to God, this, too, an inward monitor, called conscience, however unwelcome may be its voice, tells every one with greater or less distinctness; but how man is to get into right relations with his God, to that problem one book, the Bible, and it alone, holds the key. What is that key? The text says it: "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think we have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me." "Me," is the speaker, Jesus Christ, and doing what the text directs, we find that everywhere does it link "life" with Christ. "I," says Jesus, "am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life." "I am the Resurrection and the Life." "I am come that ye might have life." The writings of the Apostles are full of the same thought: "In Him was life." "He that hath the Son hath life." "He that believeth not the Son shall not see life." "This is life eternal to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent."

Would we, then, have life, life that is life indeed, spiritual life, life that passes over into eternal life, then must we find it in Christ, and this is the teaching of the text, and its application to us; to find Christ you must read your Bible. Outside of what the Bible tells us there is no salvation, no hope, no life. Let that thought, I pray you, sink down indelibly into your minds. There are some certain truths which men may know without the Bible,--that there is a God; that this God has certain attributes; that He is almighty, all-knowing, holy, just, gracious; for it is only an almighty Being that could have created, only an all-wise Being that could so adequately have fitted up this universe. Men also know without the Bible that there is a difference between good and evil, and that the one is to be done and the other left undone. Likewise they have a strong notion that man is immortal, and that there is a future state. These few things men may know without the Scriptures, and these few even only imperfectly. But when it comes to the questions: Who is God? What is His will? What His purposes toward us men, purposes of damnation for offenses and sins committed against His holiness? What guarantee have you that there is a life beyond this? And what sort of a life is it? Who has ever brought us information regarding it? What can afford me peace against a conscience that convicts me of wrong and offense against the holy God? When, as stated, it comes to deal with such and innumerable other questions, there is only one source of information, one book that can enlighten and instruct us, and that is this Book which God Himself has inspired to be written; in which He has revealed Himself, according to His person and His attributes; in which He proclaims His plan of salvation for the sinful and condemned race of men, and opens out to them with divine assurance the gates of immortality and life. There is none equal to it, nothing like it, it stands in a class all to itself,--it is not man's book, but God's.

Wouldst thou, then, my dear hearer, know these things that affect thy soul, thy salvation, thy everlasting destiny, then take this volume and read. So much as to the first concern, why we should read it. Because God commands it. Because of what it brings us. And now let us regard: How should we read it?

Here I would say, first, regularly, with pious consistency. It is well enough for a person to come to church on Sunday. As long as he does that, and attends to what is going on there, his soul is not left altogether without spiritual nourishment. But church comes only once a week, and if the soul gets no spiritual food beyond what it may pick up there, I leave you to judge whether it is likely to shoot up into a strong and healthy growth of godliness. The First Psalm describes the godly man as delighting in the Law of the Lord, and in His Law doth he meditate both day and night. Time, indeed, for the most of us may be very limited; but none of us--I say that without fear of challenge--but can, if he wishes and so wills, find a few minutes to read a verse or two when he comes home in the evening, or before he goes to work in the morning, or while going to work, and a couple of verses well thought over will do a person more good than whole chapters swallowed without thought. Resolve to do but this little, my dear hearers, and God, who judges us according to our means, and who looked with greater favor on the two mites of the poor widow than on all the golden offerings of the rich, will accept your two verses and enable your souls to grow and gain strength by this their daily food. The doctors tell us that our health is largely determined by the regularity of our habits, and this is as true of our spiritual health as of our bodily. There is none of us who fails to take a glance at the daily paper,--why not at the Bible? Be regular.

Then, again, as you have time, read it carefully. That is the direction of the text. The word "search" in the original is a very strong one, much stronger than "read." It may be rendered "ransack." Turn up and down,--bring all your industry to bear upon the quest. One trouble with our hearers is that they imagine that they are pretty well familiar with all the Bible has to tell them, and the result is that they miss the wealth of its hidden treasures. But there is no royal road to Bible knowledge. It calls for thought, earnest research, and thorough investigation. For that reason every one, to become right practical, every member of the family should have a Bible of his or her own, of clear type and good paper, and of substantial binding. On the margin that Bible ought to have the marginal references of which I spoke to you at length in a former service. In the rear of your Bible have a concordance; there you will find a large number of passages on a certain topic, for instance, prayer. Look them up in your Bible, compare them, and you will learn what the Bible has to say regarding prayer. So of other subjects, such as faith, charity, redemption, and the like. It is profitable and delightful work. It is like digging out gold. You will not mind the labor in the fascinating charm it has for you. And to this you may add as a most helpful guide a good commentary written by some sincere lover of God's Word. What other devout and learned students of God's Word have written it is well for us to profit by in our understanding of the precious volume.

Not a charm or an ornament to keep on our shelves or to lock up in our closets, not a story-book to read for amusement, is the Bible, but, as the text tells us, the means of giving us eternal life in Christ Jesus; and so we ought to make use of it.

There, then, it is--Holy Bible, Book Divine, our chief treasure in this sin-darkened world, giving strength, comfort, and salvation. Ah! who should not prize it, read it, search it? God make us ministers and our members Bible students; how much better ministers, how much better members we would then be!

May God bless the words of our lips and the meditation of our hearts! Amen.

QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY.

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.--_Rom. 3, 23._

A few days more, and we shall have entered upon Lent. What is Lent? Lent is a time of several weeks which for ages has been set apart among Christians for a period of more than usual seriousness. As observed in our Church, it is a time marked out from the rest of the year as more especially devoted to the contemplation of those vital truths on which our Christian religion is founded. To be brief, Lenten time with us is Passion time. Passion, in simple English, means suffering, more particularly, the suffering of Christ. Accordingly, Passion time, or Passion tide, is the season when we are more especially called upon to commemorate, and call to mind, and ponder, and think over the suffering of our Savior, Christ, those scenes announced in the Gospel when He was betrayed into the hands of wicked men, and by them was falsely accused, reviled, mocked, scourged, crowned with thorns, and at last crucified.

In order that we might do that in the proper manner, as we ought to do, the Church, from the earliest period, has appointed the forty days of Lent, just as it has appointed the four Sundays in Advent, to be a preparation for Christmas. For there are two great seasons in the year which it behooves every Christian to conscientiously observe, if he wishes to pay dutiful honor to his Savior.

The first season is Christmas, in memory of His loving kindness in coming down from heaven, putting on the nature of man. The other season is Lent, to commemorate His dying love. Both these seasons are so important, of such moment to the welfare of the soul, that the Church has set apart the four Sundays which come before Christmas and the forty days which come before Easter as a time of preparation. The wisdom of such an arrangement no one can doubt. Just like the early bell on Sunday is meant to call us to get ready for church, the service of God's house, so Advent and Lent call us to get ready for Christmas and Good Friday. When a musical instrument has been laid by for a while, it needs tuning, or it will make but sorry music. The minds and hearts of most Christians, too, require to be gotten into tune before they can bear their part fitly and harmoniously in the services by which the Church commemorates the death and resurrection of her Lord. And how? What is the best way to prepare for a profitable and advantageous Lent? That is conditioned by another question: What was it that delivered our blessed Lord into the hands of those wicked men, that caused Him that shameful treatment, mockery, and finally nailed Him to the cross? The malice of the chief priest, the treachery of Judas, the cowardice of Pontius Pilate? Deeper, my beloved, deeper; they were but the instrumental, not the procuring cause. The real cause, you know it, was something else,--sin. To do away with, to secure the pardon of that, Christ died. Then it is plain, that in order to understand the value of His suffering, to observe that season aright, we must begin with being convinced of the evil, of the exceeding hatefulness and danger of sin.

Here is the first elementary truth which meets us at the threshold of Lent, without which it will be of no more value to you than a lock without a key, a mine without a shaft; herein consists its best preparation, to secure a right conviction of sin. That, God blessing the effort, shall be the intent of our sermon.

When the ostrich, scouring along the sandy desert, finds that it cannot escape the huntsman, it is said to thrust its head into a bush, and fancying that the danger which it ceases to see has ceased to exist, it remains there, quite tranquil, to receive the death-blow of the huntsman. Poor, senseless, stupid bird! Yet not one degree more so than is the folly of many who are not birds, but possessed of reason and soul. Plenty there are who, shutting their eyes to the evil, burrowing their heads in the sand-heap of excuses and false peace, thus hide until the fatal stroke of death puts an end to their earthly career, and opening their eyes in a place where there is no repentance, as the rich man in the parable, they realize that it is too late.

If we turn to the Bible, it teaches that there are two great classes or kinds of sin; and if we turn to the witness within and the evidence without, we shall find what the Bible tells us everywhere corroborated and borne out. The one kind of sin is the Original or Birth Sin, that all men are naturally engendered, are conceived and born in sin; that is, they are all, from their mother's womb, full of evil desires and propensities, and that this is the fountainhead of all other, or actual, sins, such as evil thoughts, words, and deeds. There are many who reject this doctrine; they contend that when man is born into this world, his soul is as pure as the snow that comes down in beautiful flurries from the sky, and as perfect as the vessel that passes from the potter's hand; they tell us that we are God's favorite creatures, that He has made us lords of the creation and heirs of eternal life, and that, therefore, it is quite impossible that we should be so prone to sin, as our Church, setting forth the doctrine of the Bible in her confession, declares us to be. But they are willfully ignorant. The question whether we are prone to sin from our cradles upward is a mere question of fact. One has only to look into one's own heart, and what do you find there, good or evil? You will say, a little of both. Be it so; but tell me, or rather tell yourselves, honestly and truly, which of the two cost you the most trouble to learn, and which of the two comes the easier? Is there a doubt? Does one contract good habits easier than bad, or the reverse? Is it easier for a sober man to become a drunkard than for a poor, miserable, besotted drunkard to trace his steps back and to become sober? Or, another point of view. Ask mothers, accustomed to watch their children from earliest infancy, whether every child that has come under their observation had not something to learn that was good, and something to unlearn that was evil. Now, whence did this evil come from? It cannot have been taught to the child, for the evil showed itself at a time before all teaching; it had it naturally. And so it is in other things. The good wheat must be sown and looked after, or it will never amount to much. The weeds sprout up and spread of themselves, and it is as great a labor to keep them down as to get the good wheat up. The truth is, "Like begetteth like." "In Adam's fall we sinned all." The fountain was polluted, so is the stream; sin is born in the bone, as it were, and without God's help we can no more mend it than a sick man can mend and cure himself without the help of a physician.

But this original sin is not the only kind. Though men deny that, they cannot deny the other, what our Catechism calls Actual Sin. Like trees in the forest does it surround them. Where is the man that dares affirm that he has never been guilty of doing what he should never have done, or guilty of not doing what he should have done? Lives there a person so happy as to look back on the past and feel no remorse, or forward to the future and feel no fear? What? Is there no page of your history that you would obliterate, no leaf that, with God's permission, you would tear from the book of life's story? To David's prayer, "Lord, remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions," have you no solemn and hearty Amen? If you could be carried back to the starting-post, and stood again at your mother's knee, and sat again at the old school desk with companions that are now changed, or scattered, or dead, or gone, were you to begin life anew, would you run the selfsame course, would you live over the selfsame life? Is there no speech to unsay, no act to undo, no day, Sunday, or evening to spend better? No one among those with whom you are now living or among those that have gone before--to whom you would bear yourself otherwise than you have done? Where is there a breathing man that can say: "I am pure in my heart. I am clear from all sin"? If he does, he deceives himself, the truth is not in him. As well deny your existence as deny the existence of actual sin.

But what men will not deny they will seek to excuse. It were amusing, if it were not a matter so serious, to observe with what palliation and apologies defenses are thrown up by which, after all, men's sins do not look so exceedingly sinful. Thus there be those who say: If we are naturally born to evil, as the Bible says and our experience testifies, we cannot help it, and how can it be a fault of ours if we do wrong? And how can God blame and punish us for not being better than He made us? It is thus that Scotland's famous poet, Burns, sings:

Thou knowest that Thou hast formed me With passions wild and strong, And listening to their witching voice Has often led me wrong.

In other words, I am a sinner, but the fault is not mine, but God's.

Or, again, they ascribe the blame to the power of temptation. "The serpent beguiled me," was the excuse of the first sinner; it is still, in a more or less measure, the excuse of every sinner. Temptation came upon them so suddenly and with such stealth and vehemence that it swept them off their feet before they were aware of it. Or (once more), like the original sinner, they lay their blame upon their fellow-man. "The woman that Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." What parent or mother has not discovered, in correcting a disobedient boy, that he is uniformly punishing the wrong one? It was always the other boy who brought about the evil act, and so, invariably, it is the bad company, evil influences, peculiar surroundings, locality, that make people to sin.

Whatever the palliatives and excuses, my beloved hearers, the thing will not do; it is vain and ignoble, and, in part, what has been said is blasphemy. In the first place, whatever prompted, tempted the act, the act was done by the sinner himself, and not by another; he knew of it, he consented to it, he gave his members and body to it. It is also useless to say that he was swept away by temptation. The same excuse might the suicide plead who seeks the river, stands on its brink, and, leaping in, is swept off to his watery grave. We go down like Samson to Delilah; we stand in the way of sinners, we frequent the places of guilty pleasures, and then, falling, complain about the strength of temptation. Away with all such subterfuges and opiates that simply drug the conscience!

What is sin? Sin, says God's Word, is the transgression of the Law, the most terrible and abominable thing in this world. Sin is that which drove man out of Paradise garden, robbed him of the divine image, severed the happy relation between him and his Creator, and plunged him into accursedness and misery. Sin is a disease which turns all moral beauty into rottenness, causes all grief and distress, breaks hearts, and fills our cemeteries, man's worst, man's most ruinous and most formidable enemy, that dogs his every footstep in this life, and calls down upon his body and soul the wrath and eternal damnation from a God who hates and who punishes sin.

What greater comfort, then, than to know how and where to receive deliverance and remedy from it. It has been stated before among the excuses that man is born a sinner, and because born so, he cannot be blamed for sinning, any more than a sick person for dying. He cannot help it. That seems very plausible, indeed. It would be very unjust to blame a sick person for dying, provided there were no remedies; but in a country where there are plenty of physicians and the sick have only to send for them,--if in such a country a sick man is obstinate, and will not send for a physician, nor take the means of being made well, he is to blame, and if he dies, he is guilty of his own death. And suppose now that the physician does not wait to be sent for, that he comes of his own accord to the sick man's bedside, that he brings a medicine of rare herbs in his hand, and says to the sick man: "My friend, I heard you were very sick, and so I came to see you and fetch you a medicine which is a certain cure if you take it. Never mind your poverty, I ask no payment." But the sick man refuses it; he does not like its look, or he finds it is bitter to take, or a neighbor has told him not to heed the physician, and he dies. Who is to blame? That's our case precisely. We have a soul's sickness. But a great Physician is come to us. He has a dear remedy, a specific, made of the most precious ingredients, _viz._, His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death. He brings that medicine to our doors. Shall we refuse to take it? Shall we say that we will have none of it? We may do so; there is no compulsion; this heavenly Physician foists Himself on none. But whose shall be the blame, who be the loser? Be wise, then. Lenten time is repenting time. May we, as it says in the Collect, so pass through this holy time of our Lord that we may obtain the pardon of our sins. May we enter this incoming season with a solemn earnestness toward spiritual things, with a resolve to spend its days in sacred devotion under the cross, and with sorrow over our past failures set ourselves to a better and more consecrated life. And to this may the good Lord graciously incline the hearts of every one of us! Amen.

FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT.

Then came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men, and go out, fight with Amalek; to-morrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in mine hand. So Joshua did as Moses had said to him and fought with Amalek; And Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands were heavy; and they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat thereon: and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side: And his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.--_Exodus 17, 8-13._

An impressive picture of modern art is that which has for its scene the Evil One, the devil, sitting at a table playing a game of chess. Bending over the board, with the self-possession of a master, reclines the adversary of man. At the opposite side is a young man. There is a look of diabolical glee upon the dark brow of Satan, whilst the features of his playmate wear the signs of deepest agony; for, alas! that which the youth has staked on the results of the game seems hopelessly lost--his immortal soul. Back of the young man, unseen by him, the artist has painted a calm, benignant figure. It is his guardian angel, or better still, the Angel of the Covenant, the Lord, whose heavenly skill at last checkmates the destroyer.