Parochial and Plain Sermons

HAT the l'salmist desired, we Christians enjoy to the fifll,—the liberty of holding communion with God in ttis Temple all through our life. Under the Lady, the presence of God was but in one place; and therefore could be al)proached and enjoyed only at set times. For far the eater part of their lives, the chosen people were in one sense "cast out of the sight of His eyes;" 1 and the periodical return to if which they were allowed, was a privilege highly coveted and earestly expected. Much more precious was the privilege of continually dwelling in ttis sight, which is spoken of in the text. "0ne thing," says the Psalmist, "bave I desired of the Lord.... that I may dwell in the bouse of the Lord ai1 the days of my life, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, and to visit His Temple." He desired to hure continually that commmon vith God in prayer, praise, and meditation, to which His presence  Psalm xxxi. 24.

admits the soul; and this, I say, is the portion of Christians. Faith opens upon us Christians the Temple of God wherever we are; for that Temple is u spiritual one, and sois everywhere present. "YTe bave access," says the Apostle,—that is, we have adlnission or introduction, "by faith into this graee wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." And hence he says elsewhere, "Pejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say, Rejoice." "I:,ejoice evermore, pray without ceasbg; in every thing give thanks." And St. James, " Is any aftlicted? let him pray: is any mcrry? let him sing Psalms. ''s t'rayer, praise, thanksgiving, contemplation, are the peculiar privflege and duty of a Christian, ad that for their own sakes, from the exceeding comfooE and satisfaction they afford him, and without reference fo any definite results to which prayer tends, without reference to the answers which are promised fo it, from a general sense of the blessedness of being under the shadow of God's throne. I propose, then, in what follovs, to nmke some remarks on communion with God, or 1)rayer in a large sense of the word; hot as regards ifs external conseqmnces, but as it may be considered to affect our own minds and hearts. \\hat, then, is prayer? If is (if if may be said reverently) convcrsing with God. We converse with onr fel]ow-men, and then we use familiar langnage, because they are our fellows. We converse with God, and then we use the lowliest, awfullest, cahnest, concisest language we can, because He is Goal. Prayer, then, is divine con- " 1Rom. v. 2. Phil. iv. 4. 1 Thess. v. 16-18. James v. 13.

  8.M-ara! E.«ct« af verse, differing fl-oln human as God differs from man. Thus St. Pul says, " Out conversation is in heven," — hot iudeed t.herely mea.ning couverse of words ouly, but intercourse aud manner of livig generaHy; yet stfll in an especial way converse of words or prayer, becuuse language is the spccial mcans of all iutercourse. Our iutercour8e with out fçlh, w-men gt,es on, n«,t by sight, but by souud, hot by eyes, but 1,y eum. Hcaring is tbe social sense, and lnnguage is the social bond. In like Chrlstmu s conversation is in heuven, us it. is his duty, with Euoch aud other,_ amts, to wallz with Uod, so his voice is in lwavcn, his heart "inditing of a good matt.er," of 1,rayers uml praises. Prayers and pra.ises are the mode of his intercourse xvith the uext world, as the converse of business or recreatiou is the mode in which this wofld is carried on in all its separate courses. tIe who does noç pray, does hot claire his citizenship xvith heaven, but lires, though un heir of the kingdom, us if he xvere u child of eaoE.h. Now, it is hot surprising if that duty or privflege, which is the charucteristic token of our heavenly inheritance, should also have an especial iufluence upon our fitness for claiming it. He who does hot use u giff, loses it; the man xvho does uot use his voice or limbs, loses poxve.r over them, aud becomes dislualified for the state of lire to xvhich he is clled. Ii like nmnner, he who neglects to pruy, hot only suspends the enjoyment, but is in a way to lose çle possession, of his dive citizenship. We ure members of another world; we lmve bee severed from the companionship of devfls, and brought  Phil. iii. 20.

into that invisible kingdom of Christ which fait.h al,me diseerns,—that lnysterious Presenee of (lod which encompasses us, whieh is in us, and around us, whieh is in out heart, whieh enfolds us as though wit.h a robe of light, hiding out searred and diseç)loured souls froln the sight of I)irine Purit.y, and making them shiniug as t.he Angels; and which flows in upoll ilS too by mea.ns of all forms of heaut.y and gra.ee whieh this visible world contains, in a st.arry host or (if I may so say) a milky way of divine companions, the inhM»itants of M)un Zion, where we dweH. Faith, I say, alone apprchends all this; but yet there is something which is hot let fo faith,— out own t.astes, likings, lnotives, and hal-,its. Of these we are eonseious in our degree, and we ean lnake ourselves more and more eonseious; and as conseiousness tells us what they are, reason ells us whether they are sueh as beeome, as correspond xth, that heavenly wofld ino which we have been translated. I say flen, if is plain fo eommon sense tha.t, the lnan who has hOt aecustomed himself to the language of heaven w be no fit inhabitant of it when, in fle Last Day, it is peeptibly revealed. The case is ke tiret of a langua.ge or st.yle of speaking of this world; we know weH a foreigner from a native. Again, we know those who bave been used to kings' eomoEs or edneated soeiety from others. By t.heir voiee, accent, and language, and hot only so, by their gestures and gait., by their usages, by their mode of eonduefing themselves and their rineiples of eonduct,, we know well what a vast difl5rence there is between those who bave ved in good soeiety and those who hare hOt. What indeed is eaHed "good

society" is offert very worthless society. I ara hot speaking of if fo praise if; I only mean, that, as the manne's which lnell call refined or courtly are gained only by intercourse with courts and polished ch'cles, and as the influence of the words there used (that is, of the ideas which those words, striking again and again on the ear, convey fo the mind), extends in a lnost subtle way over all that men do, over the turn of their sentences, aud the tone of their (lUeStions and replies, and their general bcaring, and t.he spontaneous flow of their thoughts, and their mode of viewing things, and the general maxilns or heads to which they refer theln, and the motives which determiue theln, and their likings and dislikings, hopes and fears, aud their relative estiluate of persons, and the intensity of thcir perceptions towards particlflar objects; so a habit of prayer, the practice of tunaing fo God and the unseen world, in eve W season, in every place, in every emergency (let alone its supernatural effect of prevafling with God),prayer, I say, has what may be called a 9talural eflct, in spiritualizhg and elevuting the sorti. A man is no longer what he was before; gradu.lly, ilnperceptibly fo himself, he hs imbibed a new set of ideas, and become imbued with fresh principles. tIe is as one coming groin kings' courts, with a grace, a deliccy, a diguity, a propriety, a justness of thought and faste, a clearness and firmness of principle, all his own. Such is the power of God's seclt grace acting through those ordinances which He has enjoined us; such the evident fitness of those ordinances fo produce the results which they set before us. As speech is the organ of hUlnan society, and the means of hulnan civilization, so is prayer the instrument of divine fellowship and divine training. I will give, for the sake of illustration, some instances in detail of one particular fault of mind, which among others a habit of prayer is calculated to cm'e. For instance; many a man seems to have no grasp at ail of doctrinal truth. He cannot get himself to think it of importance what a man believes, and what hot. He tries to do so; for a time he does; he does for a rime think that a certain faith is necessary for salvation, that certain doctrines are tobe put forth and maintained in charity to the souls of men. Yet though he thinks so one day, he changes the next; he holds the truth, and then lets if go again. He is filled with doubts; suddenly the question crosses him, "Is if possible that such and such a doctrine/s necessary?" and he relpses into an uncomfortable sceptical state, out of which there is no outlet. Reasonings do not convince him; he canhot be convinced; he has no grasp of truth. Why? Because the next world is hot a reality to him; it only exists in his mind in the form of certain conclusions from certain reasonings. If is but an inference; and never can be more, never can le present to his mind, until he acts, instead of arguing. Let him but act as if the next world were before him; let him but give himserf to such devotional exercises as we ought to observe in the presence of an Ahnighty, All-holy, and Allmercifnl God, and it wfll be a rare case indeed if his difficulties do not vanish. Or again: a man may have a natural disposition towards caprice and change; he may be apt to take up

 3  l"ora [ .z,.,fec/s of first one fancy, then another, from novelty or other reson; he may take sudden likings or dislikings, or be tempted fo form  scheme of reUgiou for himself, of what he thinks best or most beautiful out of ail the systems which divide the wtrld. Again: he is troulled perhaps with a variety of unbecomiug thoughts, which he wou]d faiu keep out of his mind if he could. ][e finds himself unsettled and uneasy, dissatisled with his conditiou, easily excited, sorry at Sil one momeut, 5wgetting it the next, fcelle-minded, unalle to rulc himse]f, tempted fo dote npm trifles, apt to lc caught aud influenced by valities, and fo abandon himself to langu)r or iudç, leuce. çnce m«re: he bas hot a clear perception of the tath of truth and duty. This is an especial fault anmng us now-a-days: men are tctuated perhaps l»y the best feelings and the most amiable motives, and are not fairly chaeable with insincerity; and yet there is a want of straightforwardness in their conduct. They allow themse]res fo be guided by expediency, and defend themselves, and perhaps so plausibly, that though you are not convinced, you are silenced. They attend to what others think, nmre than to what God says; tbey look at Scril oture more as t gift to man thau as a gift from God; they consider themselves af liberty to modify its loltin precepts by a certain discrètiona T rule; they listen to the voice of great nmn, and allow themselves to be swayed by them; they make comparisons and strike the balance between the imtracticability of the whole that God conmmnds, and the t)racticabi]_ity of effecting a loto% and think they may consent to give UlO something, if they ean seeure the rest. They shift about in opinion, going first a little this way, then a little that, according to the loudness and positiveness with which others speak; they are at the mercy of the last speaker, and they think they observe a safe, judicious, and middle course, by always keeping a certain distance behind those who go furthest. Or they are rash in their religious projects and undertakings, and forget that they may be violating the lines and fences of God's law, while they more about freely at their pleasure. Now, I will hot judge another; I will hot say that in this or that given case the fault of mind in question (for any how it is a fault), d)es certainly arise from solne certain cause which I choose to guess at: but at least there are cases where this wavering of mind does arise from scantiness of prayer; and if so, it is worth a man's considering, who is thus unsteady, timid, and dimsighted, whether this scantiness be not perchance the true reason of such infirmities in his own case, and whether a " continuing instant in prayer,"—by which I mean, hot merely prayer norning and evening, but some thing suitable to his disease, sonething extraordinary, as medicine is extraordinary, a "redeeming of tilne" fron society and recreation in order to pray more,—whether such a change in his habits would hot remove them? For what is the very promise of the New Covenant but stabflity? what is it, but a clear insight into the truth, such as will enable us to aow how to walk, how to profess, how to meet the circumstances of life, how to withstand gainsayers? Are we buflt upon a rock or upon the sand? are we after al1 tossed about on the sea of opinion, when Christ has stretched out His hand to

-" 34 _/l[oral Effects of us, fo help and neonrage us? "Thou wilt kep him in prfet pae whos mind is stayd on The, beeaus h trusteth in The. '' Sueh is th word of lwomis. Can we possibly have apwehensions about what man will do fo us or say of us, can we fl«tter the great ones of eaoEh, or timidly yield fo the nlany, or be dazzled by talent, or drawn ide by interest, who are in the habit of divine conversations? " Ye have an mctiou from the ]toly One," says St. John, "and ye know all things. I have hot written unto you because ye know hOt the truth, but because ye know if, and that no lie is of the truth. The anointing which ye bave 'eceived of Him abideth in you, and ye need hot that any man teach you..... Whosoever is born of Goal, doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him; and he canhot sin, because he is born of God."  This is that birth, by which the baptized soul hot on]y enters, but actally embraces and realizes the kingdom of God. This is the true and efl'ectual regeneration, when the seed of hfe takes 'oot in man and thrives. Such men have accustomed themselves to speak fo God, and God has ever spoken to them; and they feel " the powers of the world to corne" as trttly  they feel the presence of this world, because they have been accustonled fo speak and act as if if were real. All of us must rely on something; all nmst look up fo, admire, court, make themselves one with something. Most men cast in their lot with the visible world; but true Christians with Saints and Angels. Such men are little understood by the wor]d because they are hot of the world; and hence if sometimes happens  Is. xxvi. 3.  1 John il. 20, 21, 27; iii. 9.

tiret even the better sort of men are often di8eoneered and vexed by them. I emmo be otherwise; they move forwrd on prineiple8 8o diflren from wh are eommonly assumed as true. They take tbr granted, as first principles, what the wofld wishes fo have proved in dctail. They have become familiar with the sights of the next wofld, tfll they talk of them as if aH men admitted them. The immortality of truth, its oneness, the impossibility of falsehood coalescing with it, what truth is, what if should lead one to do in particular cases, how if es in the detafls of fe,all these points are mere matters of debate in the world, and men go through long processes of argument, and pride themselves on their subtleness in defending or attacking, in making probable or improbable, ideas which are assmned without a word by those who have lived in heaven, as the very gromd fo start from. In conse(tuence, such men are called bad disputants, inconsecutive reasoners, strange, eccentric, or perverse thinkers, merely because they do hot take for granted, nor go fo prove, what others do,because they do hot go about fo defiue and determine the sights (as if were), the mountains and rivers and plains, and sun, lnoon, and stars, of the next world. And hence in turn they are counnonly unable to enter into the ways of thought or feelings of other men, having been engrossed with God's thoughts and God's ways. Hence, perhaps, they seem abrupt in what they say and do; nay, even make others feel constrained and uneasy in their presence. Perhaps they appear reserved too, because they take so mueh for granted which might be drawn out, and beeause they cannot bring themselves fo tell all their thoughts from

236 _/Ua-«l..cct« af" their sacredness, and because they 8re drawn off fYOlll i'ee conversat, ion to the flmught of he8ven, on which their minds rest. Nay, perchance, they appear severe, because their motives are hot understood, nor their sensitive jealousy for the honour of God 8nd their charitable concern for the good of their fellow-Christians duly a.ppreci8ted. Iii short, to t.he world they seem like foreigncg. We know how fi)reignem strike us; they are often to o«r notions strange and unple8sing in their mnuers; why is this? merely bccal«se flmy are of a difforent country. Each courir« T bas its own nmnners,one lnay hot he better than other; but we naturally like our own ways, 8nd we do hot underst8nd other. We do hot see their lne8ning. We nfisconstrue them; we think they lnean someflfing unpleasant, something rude, or over-free, or haughty, or unrefined, when they do hot. And iu like nmnner, the world at la.rge, hot on]y is hot Christian, but cannot discern or understand the Christian. Thus our ]llessed Lord Himself was hot recognized or honoured by His relatives, and (as is plain to every reader of Scripture) tIe often seems fo speak abnptly and severely. So too St. Paul was considered by the Corinthians as contemptible in speech. And hence St. Jolm, speaking of "what ranimer of love the Father bath bestowed upon us that we shuld be called the sons of God," adds, " flerefore t, he wofld t'nO.l«eth us hot, because it knew Him hot. '' Such is the eflct of divine medit, ations: admitting us into the next world, and withdrawing us from flis; nlaking us children of God, but withal "strangers unto our brethren, even aens unto our  1 John iii. 1.

mother's children. ''7 Yea, though the true servants of God increase in meekness and love day by day, and to those who know them vill seem what they really are; and though their good works are evident to all me, tnd cannot be denied, yet such is the eternal law which goes between the ç',hurch and the world—we cannot be friends of both; and they vho take their portion vith the Church, will seem, except in some remarkable cases, unamiable to the world, for the "world knoweth them hot,," and does nç, t like them though it cuu hardly tell why; yet (as St. Jolm proceeds) they have this blessing, that "vhen He shail appear, they shall be like Him, for they shail see Him as He is. ''s And if, as it vofld seeln, we must choose between the two, sure, ly the world's frieldship may be better parted svith than our feilowship with our Lord and Saviour. What indeed have we to do vith courting men, vhose faces are turned towards God? We know how men feel and act when they corne to die; they discharge theh" worldly affairs from their minds, and try to realize the unseen state. Then this world is nothing to them. It may praise, it nlay blame; but they feel it not. They are leaving their goods, their deeds, their sayings, their vritings, their names, behind them; and they care hot for it, for they wait for Christ. To one thing alone they are alive, His coming; they watch against it, if so be they lnay then be found without shame. Such is the conduct of dying lnen; and what ail but the very hardened do at the last, if their senses fail not and their powe hold, that does the true Christian all life long. z Ps. lxix. 8. s I John iii. 2.

- 38 3[oral tffccts of Comtiot, .c. He is ever dying while he lives; he is on his hier, and the prayers for the sick are saying over him. I[e has no work but that of making his peace with God, and 1)reparing for the judgment. He bas no aire but that of being found worthy to escape the things that shall corne to pass and to stand before the Son of man. And therefore day by day he unlearns the love of this wofld, and the desire of its praise; he can bear to belong to the nameless family of God, and to seem to the world strange in it and out of place, for so he is. And when Christ cornes at last, blessed indeed will be his lot. conquering side; he has risked tbe present against the future, prcferring the chance of eternity to the certainty of rime; and then his reward wi]l be but beginning, when that of the children of this world is corne to an end. In the words of the vise man, "Then shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before the face of such as have afiticted him, and ruade no account of his labours. When they see it they shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the strangeness of His salvation, so far beyond all that they ]ooked for. And they, repenting and groaning for angnish of spirit, shall say within themselves, This is he whom we had sometimes in derision and a proverb of reproach; we fools eounted his life madness, and his end tobe without honour. How is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints!" 9 Wisd. v. 1-5.