Chapter 15

Let us see what it is that we should learn from this doctrine. It is this, that the dead are not lost to us. There is a sense in which the departed are ours more than they were before. There is a sense in which the Apostles Paul, or John, the good and great of ages past, belong to this age more than to that in which they lived, but in which they were not understood; in which the common-place and every-day part of their lives hindered the brightness and glory and beauty of their character from shining forth. So it is in the family. It is possible for men to live in the same house, and partake of the same meal from day to day, and from year to year, and yet remain strangers to each other, mistaking each other's feelings, not comprehending each other's character; and it is only when the Atlantic rolls between, and half a hemisphere is interposed, that we learn how dear they are to us, how all our life is bound up in deep anxiety with their existence. Therefore it is the Christian feels that the family is not broken. Think you that family can break or end?--that because the chair is empty, therefore he, your child, is no more? It may be so with the coarse, the selfish, the unbelieving, the superstitious; but the eye of faith sees there only a transformation. He is not there, he is risen. You see the place where he was, but he has passed to heaven. So at least the parental heart of David felt of old, "by faith and not by sight," when speaking of his infant child. "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me."

Once more, the Church of Christ is a society ever altering and changing its external forms. "The _whole_ family"--the Church of the Patriarchs, and of ages before them; and yet the same family. Remember, I pray you, the diversities of form through which, in so many ages and generations, this Church has passed. Consider the difference there was between the patriarchal Church of the time of Abraham and Isaac, and its condition under David; or the difference between the Church so existing and its state in the days of the apostles; and the marvellous difference between that and the same Church four or five centuries later; or, once again, the difference between that, externally one, and the Church as it exists in the present day, broken into so many fragments. Yet diversified as these states may be, they are not more so than the various stages of a family.

There is a time when the children are all in one room, around their mother's knee. Then comes a time, still further on, when the first separation takes place, and some are leaving their home to prepare for after life. Afterwards, when all in their different professions, trades, or occupations, are separate. At last comes the time when some are gone. And, perchance, the two survivors meet at last--an old, gray-haired man, and a weak, worn-out woman--to mourn over the last graves of a household. Christian brethren, which of these is the right form--the true, external pattern of a family? Say we not truly, it remains the same under all outward mutations? We must think of this, or else we may lose heart in our work. Conceive for instance, the feelings of a pious Jew, when Christianity entered this world; when all his religious system was broken up--the Temple service brought to a violent end; when that polity which he thought was to redeem and ennoble the world was cast aside as a broken and useless thing. Must they not have been as gloomy and as dreary as those of the disciples, when He was dead who they "trusted should have redeemed Israel?" In both cases the body was gone or was altered--the spirit had arisen.

And precisely so it is with our fears and unbelieving apprehensions now. Institutions pass--churches alter--old forms change--and high-minded and good men cling to these as if _they_ were the only things by which God could regenerate the world. Christianity appears to some men to be effete and worn out. Men who can look back upon the times of Venn, and Newton, and Scott--comparing the degeneracy of their descendants with the men of those days--lose heart, as if all things were going wrong. "Things are not," they say, "as they were in our younger days." No my Christian brethren, things are not as they then were; but the Christian cause lives on--not in the successors of such men as those; the outward form is altered, but the spirit is elsewhere, is risen--risen just as truly as the spirit of the highest Judaism rose again in Christianity. And to mourn over old superstitions and effete creeds, is just as unwise as is the grief of the mother mourning over the form which was once her child. She cannot separate her affection from that form--those hands, those limbs, those features--are they not her child? The true answer is, her child is not there. It is only the form of her child. And it is as unwise to mourn over the decay of those institutions--the change of human forms--as it was unwise in Jonah to mourn with that passionate sorrow over the decay of the gourd which had sheltered him from the heat of the noontide sun. A worm had eaten the root of the gourd, and it was gone. But he who made the gourd the shelter to the weary--the shadow of those who are oppressed by the noontide heat of life--lived on: Jonah's God. And so brethren, all things change--all things outward change and alter; but the God of the Church lives on. The Church of God remains under fresh forms--the one, holy, entire family in heaven and earth.

II. Pass we on now, in the second place, to consider the name by which this Church is named. "Our Lord Jesus Christ," the Apostle says, "of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named."

Now, every one familiar with the Jewish modes of thought and expression, will allow here, that _name_ is but another word to express being, actuality, and existence. So when Jacob desired to know the character and nature of Jehovah, he said--"Tell me now, I beseech thee, thy _name_". When the Apostle here says, "Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is _named_," it is but another way of saying that it is He on Whom the Church depends--Who has given it substantive existence--without Whom it could not be at all. It is but another way of saying what he has expressed elsewhere--"that there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we may be saved." Let us not lose ourselves in vague generalities. Separate from Christ, there is no salvation; there can be no Christianity. Let us understand what we mean by this. Let us clearly define and enter into the meaning of the words we use. When we say that our Lord Jesus Christ is He "of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named," we mean that the very being of the Church depends on Christ--that it could not be without Him. Now, the Church of Christ depends upon these three things--first, the recognition of a common Father; secondly, of a common Humanity; and thirdly, of a common Sacrifice.

1. First, the recognition of a common Father. That is the sacred truth proclaimed by the Epiphany. God revealed in Christ--not the Father of the Jew only, but also of the Gentile. The Father of a "whole family." Not the partial Father, loving one alone--the elder--but the younger son besides: the outcast prodigal who had spent his living with harlots and sinners, but the child still, and the child of a Father's love. Our Lord taught this in His own blessed prayer--"_Our_ Father;" and as we lose the meaning of that single word _our_, as we say _my_ Father--the Father of _me_ and of _my_ faction--of _me_ and _my_ fellow believers--_my_ Anglicanism or _my_ Judaism--be it what it may--instead of _our_ Father--the Father of the outcast, the profligate, of all who choose to claim a Father's love; _so_ we lose the meaning of the lesson which the Epiphany was designed to teach, and the possibility of building up a family to God.

2. The recognition of a common Humanity. He from whom the Church is named, took upon Him not the nature merely of the noble, of kings, or of the intellectual philosopher--but of the beggar, the slave, the outcast, the infidel, the sinner, and the nature of every one struggling in various ways. Let us learn then brother men, that we shall have no family in God, unless we learn the deep truth of our common Humanity, shared in by the servant and the sinner, as well as the sovereign. Without this we shall have no Church--no family in God.

3. Lastly, the Church of Christ proceeds out of, and rests upon, the belief in a common Sacrifice.

* * * * *

There are three ways in which the human race hitherto has endeavoured to construct itself into a family; first, by the sword; secondly, by an ecclesiastical system; and thirdly, by trade or commerce. First, by the sword. The Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman, have done their work--in itself a most valuable and important one; but so far as the formation of mankind into a family was the object aimed at, the work of the sword has done almost nothing. Then there was the ecclesiastical system--the grand attempt of the Church of Rome to organize all men into one family, with one ecclesiastical, visible, earthly head. Being Protestants, it is not necessary for us to state our conviction that this attempt has been a signal and complete failure. We now come to the system of commerce and trade. We are told that that which chivalry and honour could not do--which an ecclesiastical system could not do--personal interest _will_ do. Trade is to bind men together into one family. When they feel it their _interest_ to be one, they will be brothers. Brethren, that which is built on selfishness cannot stand. The system of personal interest must be shivered into atoms. Therefore, we, who have observed the ways of God in the past, are waiting in quiet but awful expectation until he shall confound this system as he has confounded those which have gone before. And it may be effected by convulsions more terrible and more bloody than the world has yet seen. While men are talking of peace, and of the great progress of civilization, there is heard in the distance the noise of armies gathering rank on rank: east and west, north and south, are rolling towards us the crushing thunders of universal war.

Therefore there is but one other system to be tried, and that is the Cross of Christ--a system that is not to be built upon selfishness, nor upon blood, nor upon personal interest, but upon Love. Love, not self--the Cross of Christ, and not the mere working-out of the ideas of individual humanity.

One word only in conclusion. Upon this, the great truth of the Epiphany, the Apostle founds a prayer. He prays, "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." This manifestation of joy and good to the Gentiles was, according to him, the great mystery of Love. A Love, brighter, deeper, wider, higher than the largest human heart had ever yet dreamed of. But the Apostle tells us it is after all, but a glimpse of the love of God. How should we learn it more? How should we comprehend the whole meaning of the Epiphany? By sitting down to read works of theology? The Apostle Paul tells us--No. You must love, in order to understand love. "That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length, and depth and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge." Brother men, one act of charity will teach us more of the love of God than a thousand sermons--one act of unselfishness, of real self-denial, the putting forth of one loving feeling to the outcast and "those who are out of the way," will tell us more of the meaning of the Epiphany than whole volumes of the wisest writers on theology.

XVI.

_Preached January 25, 1852._

THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.

"Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some, with conscience of the idol, unto this hour, eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is denied. But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither if we eat are we the better; neither if we eat not are we the worse. But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak. For if any man see thee which hast knowledge, sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols; and through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died? But when ye sin so against the brethren and wound their weak conscience ye sin against Christ. Wherefore if meat make my brother to offend I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."--1 Corinthians viii. 7-13.

We have already divided this chapter into two branches--the former portion of it containing the difference between Christian knowledge and secular knowledge, and the second portion containing the apostolic exposition of the law of Christian conscience. The first of these we endeavoured to expound last Sunday, but it may be well briefly to recapitulate the principles of that discourse in a somewhat different form.

Corinth as we all know and remember, was a city built on the sea coast, having a large and free communication with all foreign nations; and there was also within it, and going on amongst its inhabitants, a free interchange of thought, and a vivid power of communicating the philosophy and truths of those days to each other. Now it is plain, that to a society in such a state, and to minds so educated, the gospel of Christ must have presented a peculiar attraction, presenting itself to them as it did, as a law of Christian liberty. And so, in Corinth the gospel had "free course and was glorified," and was received with great joy by almost all men, and by minds of all classes and all sects; and a large number of these attached themselves to the teaching of the Apostle Paul as the most accredited expounder of Christianity--the "royal law of liberty." But it seems, from what we read in this epistle, that a large number of these men received Christianity as a thing intellectual, and that alone--and not as a thing which touched the conscience, and swayed and purified the affections. Thus this liberty became to them almost _all_--they ran into sin or went to extravagance--they rejoiced in their freedom from the superstitions, the ignorances, and the scruples which bound their weaker brethren; but had no charity--none of that intense charity which characterized the Apostle Paul, for those still struggling in the delusions and darkness from which they themselves were free.

More than that, they demanded their right, their Christian liberty of expressing their opinions in the church, merely for the sake of _exhibiting_ the Christian graces and spiritual gifts which had been showered upon them so largely; until by degrees those very assemblies became a lamentable exhibition of their own depravity, and led to numerous irregularities which we find severely rebuked by the Apostle Paul. Their women, rejoicing in the emancipation which had been given to the Christian community, laid aside the old habits of attire which had been consecrated so long by Grecian and Jewish custom, and appeared with their heads uncovered in the Christian community. Still further than that, the Lord's Supper exhibited an absence of all solemnity, and seemed more a meeting for licentious gratification, where "one was hungry, and another was drunken"--a place in which earthly drunkenness, the mere enjoyment of the appetites, had taken the place of Christian charity towards each other.

And the same feeling--this love of mere liberty--liberty in itself--manifested itself in many other directions. Holding by this freedom, their philosophy taught that the body, that is the flesh, was the only cause of sin; that the soul was holy and pure; and that therefore, to be free from the body would be entire, perfect, Christian emancipation. And so came in that strange, wrong doctrine, exhibited in Corinth, where immortality was taught separate from, and in opposition to, the doctrine of the resurrection. And afterwards they went on with their conclusions about liberty, to maintain that the body, justified by the sacrifice of Christ, was no longer capable of sin; and that in the evil which was done by the body, the soul had taken no part. And therefore sin was to them but as a name, from which a Christian conscience was to be freed altogether. So that when one of their number had fallen into grievous sin, and had committed fornication, "such as was not so much as named among the Gentiles," so far from being humbled by it, they were "puffed up," as if they were exhibiting to the world an enlightened, true, perfect Christianity--separate from all prejudices.

To such a society and to such a state of mind, the Apostle Paul preached in all its length, breadth, and fulness, the humbling doctrines of the Cross of Christ. He taught that knowledge was one thing--that charity was _another_ thing; that "knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up." He reminded them that love was the perfection of knowledge. In other words, his teaching came to this: there are two kinds of knowledge; the one the knowledge of the intellect, the other the knowledge of the heart. Intellectually, God never can be known. He must be known by Love--for, "if any man love God, the same is known of Him." Here then, we have arrived in another way, at precisely the same conclusion at which we arrived last Sunday. Here are two kinds of knowledge, secular knowledge and Christian knowledge; and Christian knowledge is this--to know by Love.

Let us now consider the remainder of the chapter, which treats of the law of Christian conscience. You will observe that it divides itself into two branches--the first containing an exposition of the law itself, and the second the Christian applications which flow out of this exposition.

I. The way in which the apostle expounds the law of Christian conscience is this:--Guilt is contracted by the soul, in so far as it sins against and transgresses the law of God by doing that which it believes to be wrong: not so much what _is_ wrong as what _appears_ to _it_ to be wrong. This is the doctrine distinctly laid down in the 7th and 8th verses. The apostle tells the Corinthians--these strong-minded Corinthians--that the superstitions of their weaker brethren were unquestionably wrong. "Meat," he says, "commendeth us not to God; for neither if we eat are we the better, neither if we eat not are we the worse." He then tells them further, that "there is not in every man that knowledge; for some with conscience of the idol, eat it as a thing offered unto an idol." Here then, is an ignorant, mistaken, ill-informed conscience; and yet he goes on to tell them that this conscience, so ill-informed, yet binds the possessor of it: "and their conscience being weak, is defiled." For example,--there could be no harm in eating the flesh of an animal that had been offered to an idol or false god; for a false god is nothing, and it is impossible for it to have contracted positive defilement by being offered to that which is a positive and absolute negation. And yet if any man thought it wrong to eat such flesh, to him it _was_ wrong; for in that act there would be a deliberate act of transgression--a deliberate preference of that which was mere enjoyment, to that which was apparently, though it may be only apparently, sanctioned by the law of God. And so it would carry with it all the disobedience, all the guilt, and all the misery which belongs to the doing of an act altogether wrong; or as St. Paul expresses it, the conscience would become denied.

Here then, we arrive at the first distinction--the distinction between absolute and relative right and wrong. Absolute right and absolute wrong, like absolute truth, can each be but _one_ and unalterable in the sight of God. The one absolute _right_--the charity of God and the sacrifice of Christ--this, from eternity to eternity must be the sole measure of eternal right. But human right or human wrong, that is the merit or demerit, of any action done by any particular man, must be measured, not by that absolute standard, but as a matter relative to his particular circumstances, the state of the age in which he lives, and his own knowledge of right and wrong. For we come into this world with a moral sense; or to speak more Christianly, with a conscience. And yet that will tell us but very little distinctly. It tells us broadly that which is right and that which is wrong, so that every child can understand this. That charity and self-denial are right--this we see recognised in almost every nation. But the boundaries of these two--when and how far self-denial is right--what are the bounds of charity--this it is for different circumstances yet to bring out and determine.

And so, it will be found that there is a different standard among different nations and in different ages. That for example, which was the standard among the Israelites in the earlier ages, and before their settlement in Canaan, was very different from the higher and truer standard of right and wrong recognised by the later prophets. And the standard in the third and fourth centuries after Christ, was truly and unquestionably an entirely different one from that recognised in the nineteenth century among ourselves.

Let me not be mistaken. I do not say that right and wrong are merely conventional, or merely chronological or geographical, or that they vary with latitude and longitude. I do not say that there ever was or ever can be a nation so utterly blinded and perverted in its moral sense as to acknowledge that which is wrong--seen and known to be wrong--as right; or on the other hand, to profess that which is seen and understood as right, to be wrong. But what I do say is this: that the form and aspect in which different deeds appear, so vary, that there will be for ever a change and alteration in men's opinions, and that which is really most generous may seem most base, and that which is really most base may appear most generous. So for example, as I have already said, there are two things universally recognised--recognised as right by every man whose conscience is not absolutely perverted--charity and self-denial. The charity of God, the sacrifice of Christ--these are the two grand, leading principles of the Gospel; and in some form or other you will find these lying at the roots of every profession and state of feeling in almost every age. But the form in which these appear, will vary with all the gradations which are to be found between the lowest savage state and the highest and most enlightened Christianity.