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Jeremiah
Chapter Six
Jeremiah 6
Chapter Contents
The invasion of Judea. (1-8) The justice of God's
proceedings. (9-17) All methods used to amend them had been without success.
(18-30)
Commentary on Jeremiah 6:1-8
(Read Jeremiah 6:1-8)
Whatever methods are used, it is vain to contend with
God's judgments. The more we indulge in the pleasures of this life, the more we
unfit ourselves for the troubles of this life. The Chaldean army shall break in
upon the land of Judah, and in a little time devour all. The day is coming,
when those careless and secure in sinful ways will be visited. It is folly to
trifle when we have eternal salvation to work out, and the enemies of that
salvation to fight against. But they were thus eager, not that they might
fulfil God's counsels, but that they might fill their own treasures; yet God
thereby served his own purposes. The corrupt heart of man, in its natural
state, casts out evil thoughts, just as a fountain casts out her waters. It is
always flowing, yet always full. The God of mercy is loth to depart even from a
provoking people, and is earnest with them, that by repentance and reformation,
they may prevent things from coming to extremity.
Commentary on Jeremiah 6:9-17
(Read Jeremiah 6:9-17)
When the Lord arises to take vengeance, no sinners of any
age or rank, or of either sex escape. They were set upon the world, and wholly
carried away by the love of it. If we judge of this sin by God's word, we find
multitudes in every station and rank given up to it. Those are to be reckoned
our worst and most dangerous enemies, who flatter us in a sinful way. Oh that
men would be wise for their souls! Ask for the old paths; the way of godliness
and righteousness has always been the way God has owned and blessed. Ask for
the old paths set forth by the written word of God. When you have found the
good way, go on in it, you will find abundant recompence at your journey's end.
But if men will not obey the voice of God and flee to his appointed Refuge, it
will plainly appear at the day of judgment, that they are ruined because they
reject God's word.
Commentary on Jeremiah 6:18-30
(Read Jeremiah 6:18-30)
God rejects their outward services, as worthless to atone
for their sins. Sacrifice and incense were to direct them to a Mediator; but
when offered to purchase a license to go on in sin, they provoke God. The sins
of God's professing people make them an easy prey to their enemies. They dare
not show themselves. Saints may rejoice in hope of God's mercies, though they
see them only in the promise: sinners must mourn for fear of God's judgments,
though they see them only in the threatenings. They are the worst of revolters,
and are all corrupters. Sinners soon become tempters. They are compared to ore
supposed to have good metal in it, but which proves all dross. Nothing will
prevail to part between them and their sins. Reprobate silver shall they be
called, useless and worthless. When warnings, corrections, rebukes, and all
means of grace, leave men unrenewed, they will be left, as rejected of God, to
everlasting misery. Let us pray, then, that we may be refined by the Lord, as
silver is refined.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Jeremiah》
Jeremiah 6
Verse 1
[1] O ye
children of Benjamin, gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem,
and blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and set up a sign of fire in Bethhaccerem: for
evil appeareth out of the north, and great destruction.
Benjamin —
Judah, when the ten tribes fell off, the tribe of Benjamin adhered to Judah,
and was incorporated into them; if it be asked why the prophet rather speaks to
Benjamin than to Judah, the reason probably may be, because he being of
Anathoth was of that tribe, and therefore mentions them as his own countrymen.
Gather —
Gather yourselves together by the sound of the trumpet at Tekoa, one of those
fenced cities twelve miles from Jerusalem that Rehoboam built.
A sign —
Fire a beacon.
Beth-haccerem —
Signifies the house of the vineyard, probably some high tower built among the
vineyards for the keepers of them to watch them.
Verse 3
[3] The shepherds with their flocks shall come unto her; they shall pitch
their tents against her round about; they shall feed every one in his place.
The shepherds —
The Chaldean princes, with their armies, as so many flocks, shall come into
this pleasant land.
In his place —
Each one in his quarter or station.
Verse 4
[4]
Prepare ye war against her; arise, and let us go up at noon. Woe unto us! for
the day goeth away, for the shadows of the evening are stretched out.
Prepare —
These seem to be the words of God calling them to this work.
Arise —
This shews how ready they will be to obey God's call.
The day goeth — We
delay, and tarry too long, and the day spends apace.
The shadows —
They were so eagerly set upon it, that they watched the lengthening of the
shadow, which shews the approach of the evening.
Verse 5
[5]
Arise, and let us go by night, and let us destroy her palaces.
This night —
They would lose neither day nor night; which shews that, they were
extraordinarily stirred up by God in this expedition.
Verse 6
[6] For thus hath the LORD of hosts said, Hew ye down trees, and cast a mount
against Jerusalem: this is the city to be visited; she is wholly oppression in
the midst of her.
Said — To
the Chaldeans: God would have the Jews to know, that they have not so much to
do with the Chaldeans as with him; that they are his rod to scourge them for
their sins. And thus God is said to hiss for such whom he will employ in such
work, Isaiah 5:26; 7:18. And he styles himself the Lord of hosts,
to shew that it is in vain to contend in battle with them, whom he sends forth.
Trees —
Such as you may have need of to raise up works against the strong places.
Cast a mount —
Throw up one continued trench, as a mount round about it.
Oppression —
There are found in her all kinds of oppression and injustice.
Verse 8
[8] Be
thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from thee; lest I make thee
desolate, a land not inhabited.
Be thou instructed — I
would yet willingly spare them if it might be.
Depart —
Heb. be disjointed, a most emphatical metaphor, whereby God would express how
great grief it is to him to withdraw himself from them, even like the
separating one limb from another.
Verse 9
[9] Thus
saith the LORD of hosts, They shall throughly glean the remnant of Israel as a
vine: turn back thine hand as a grapegatherer into the baskets.
Glean —
Judah shalt be gleaned over and over, 'till there be a full end, none left.
Turn back — As
much as to say, they should not be content with one spoiling, but they should
go back a second and a third time, to carry away both persons and spoil.
Verse 10
[10] To
whom shall I speak, and give warning, that they may hear? behold, their ear is
uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken: behold, the word of the LORD is unto
them a reproach; they have no delight in it.
Their ear — An
uncircumcised ear, signifies the rejecting of instruction; an uncircumcised
heart, an obstinate and rebellious will.
They cannot —
They had brought themselves under that incapacity by their obstinacy and
wilfulness.
A reproach —
They laugh at it, and scorn it.
Verse 11
[11]
Therefore I am full of the fury of the LORD; I am weary with holding in: I will
pour it out upon the children abroad, and upon the assembly of young men
together: for even the husband with the wife shall be taken, the aged with him
that is full of days.
I am full — I
am, as it were, filled with the fire of God's wrath, which I am forced to
discharge myself of.
Abroad —
The streets being the places where children are wont to sport.
The husband —
One sex as well as the other, shall be a prey to the enemy.
Full of days —
Such as had filled up the number of their days, as were at the edge of the
grave.
Verse 13
[13] For
from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to
covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth
falsely.
Falsely —
Heb. doing falsehood, as if that were their whole work, the proper sin of the
priests and prophets, to deceive the people, and to flatter them by false
visions.
Verse 14
[14] They
have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace,
peace; when there is no peace.
They have —
This refers peculiarly to the prophets; making light of these threatenings,
daubing over the misery and danger that was coming on the people, by persuading
them, that it should not come, or if it did, it would be easily cured.
Verse 15
[15] Were
they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all
ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that
fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD.
Committed —
Both by encouraging the people, and joining with them in their idolatries.
Verse 16
[16] Thus
saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where
is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But
they said, We will not walk therein.
Stand — He
now turns his speech to the people, and gives them counsel; by a metaphor taken
from travellers, that being in doubt of their way, stand still, and consider,
whether the direction they have received from some false guide, be right or
not.
Verse 17
[17] Also
I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they
said, We will not hearken.
Trumpet —
The voice of his prophet, intimating his loud crying upon the account of
eminent danger.
Verse 18
[18]
Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them.
Nations — He
calls upon the nations round about to be spectators of his severity against
Judah.
What —
The greatness of their punishment, as the effect of the greatness of their
sins.
Verse 20
[20] To
what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a
far country? your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet
unto me.
Sheba — A
country in Arabia Faelix, to which country frankincense was peculiar.
The sweet cane —
The same that is mentioned as an ingredient in the holy oil, Exodus 30:23. To what purpose art thou at this
trouble and charge to fetch these ingredients for thy incense.
Verse 21
[21]
Therefore thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will lay stumblingblocks before this
people, and the fathers and the sons together shall fall upon them; the
neighbour and his friend shall perish.
I will say — I
will suffer such things to be laid in their way, as shall be the occasion of
their destruction.
The neighbour — Men
of all sorts and conditions.
Verse 22
[22] Thus
saith the LORD, Behold, a people cometh from the north country, and a great
nation shall be raised from the sides of the earth.
Behold —
God shall stir up the Chaldeans like a great storm.
The sides —
The uttermost parts of the Babylonian territories.
Verse 24
[24] We
have heard the fame thereof: our hands wax feeble: anguish hath taken hold of
us, and pain, as of a woman in travail.
We — The prophet
personates the peoples affections.
Verse 25
[25] Go
not forth into the field, nor walk by the way; for the sword of the enemy and
fear is on every side.
Go not forth —
Expressing the great danger that there would be everywhere.
Verse 26
[26] O
daughter of my people, gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes:
make thee mourning, as for an only son, most bitter lamentation: for the
spoiler shall suddenly come upon us.
Gird thee —
The prophet calls upon them to mourn in the deepest manner.
Verse 27
[27] I
have set thee for a tower and a fortress among my people, that thou mayest know
and try their way.
I have set thee —
Here God speaks by way of encouragement to the prophet, and tells him, he had
made him a fortified tower, that he might be safe, notwithstanding all the
attempts against him.
And try — As
refiners do metals; hereby be is encouraged to reprove them more freely, God
will give him prudence to see what is amiss, and undauntedness to oppose it.
Verse 29
[29] The
bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire; the founder melteth in
vain: for the wicked are not plucked away.
The bellows —
The prophet prosecutes his metaphor taken from refining of metals, intimating,
that the prophets had spent their breath to no purpose, and their strength was
consumed by their labour.
The lead —
The judgments which were heavy, as lead upon them, are all wasted, and do no
good.
In vain —
Let the artist use his greatest skill and industry, yet is it all in vain.
Verse 30
[30]
Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the LORD hath rejected them.
Refuse — Such
as will be rejected in payments.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Jeremiah》
"ASK FOR THE OLD PATHS" Jeremiah 6:16
INTRODUCTION
1. The Old Testament is filled with many lessons for the Christians... a. It was written for our learning - Ro 15:4 b. It was written for our admonition - 1 Co 10:11 2. One such lesson is that found in the days of Jeremiah... a. A time of religious and social turmoil b. The nation of Israel [The Lord wanted to offer them rest for their souls (Jer 6:16). Usingthe imagery of travelers who have lost their way, the Lord calls forthem to...] I. ASK FOR THE OLD PATHS
A. THE LORD MAKES HIS PLEA... 1. "Stand in the ways and see" - Jer 6:16 a. There is not just one path b. There are many directions one might follow 2. "Ask for the old paths" - Jer 6:16 a. The 'old way' is often the best way b. Such is certainly the case here 3. "Where the good way is" - Jer 6:16 a. Not all paths lead to the 'good way' b. In this case, the old paths led back to the Law of Moses - cf. Jer 7:22-24 B. JESUS MAKES A SIMILAR PLEA TODAY... 1. To strive to enter the right path - Lk 13:24 a. With a gate that is narrow, and not easily entered b. Where there is only one way to the Father - cf. Jn 14:6; Ac4:12
2. For there are other, broad, ways that one might follow - Mt7:13
a. A way that many follow b. A way that leads to destruction 3. Yet the way Jesus offers is a 'good way' a. One that likewise offers rest for our souls - Mt 11:28 b. In this case, the way leads back to words of Jesus - Mt11:29
[The words of Jesus are relatively "old" by today's standards. Whathappened to Israel in Jer 18:15, they had stumbled...] II. FROM THE ANCIENT PATHS, TO WALK IN PATHWAYS
A. ISRAEL 1. Why? Because they had forgotten God - Jer 18:15 2. Though God had revealed Himself and His will long before 3. He had established a "highway" for them to follow 4. Instead, they had turned to many of the side "pathways" B. GOD'S PEOPLE FACE SIMILAR DANGERS TODAY... 1. Jesus established a "highway" for us to follow a. His words, doctrine, commandments - cf. Mt 11:29 ('learn from Me') b. Communicated through His apostles - cf. Mt 28:20 c. Aided by the Holy Spirit - Jn 16:12-13 d. Which the early disciples were careful to follow - Ac 2:42 e. Which the Christians were commanded to follow - 2 Th 2:15;3:6
2. Yet there are man "pathways" that would lead us astray a. Such as doctrines of men - Mt 15:9 b. Such as philosophies of men - Co 2:8 [Often packaged as "new!" and "improved!", such doctrines andphilosophies fail to deliver what only the Lord truly offers ("rest foryour souls"). To ensure that we are not led astray, we need to...] III. SET UP SIGNPOSTS, MAKE LANDMARKS
A. THIS WAS THE SOLUTION FOR ISRAEL 1. To set up road marks which would direct them back to the right way - Jer 31:21 2. For them, these 'signposts' and 'landmarks' was the Law of Moses a. To which they were not to add or take way - Deu 4:1-2 b. Which they were to teach every generation - Deu 4:9 B. THIS IS THE SOLUTION FOR US TODAY... 1. To set up road marks which lead us to the right way 2. For us, these 'signposts' and 'landmarks' are found in: a. The apostles' doctrine, received as God's Word - Ac 2:42;1 Co 14:37; 1 Th 2:13
b. For they contain the doctrine of Christ, without which we cannot have God - 2 Jn 9 CONCLUSION
1. Do you desire to have rest for your soul...? a. Freedom from sin, freedom from guilt? b. With inner peace and tranquility in the midst of outward turmoil? 2. The path to such rest is an old path... a. Found only in Him who lived and died for our sins nearly 2000 years ago b. Whose doctrine has been faithfully preserved by His apostles in the New Testament If you are stumbling around in life, then "Ask For The Old Paths" thatwill lead you back to God...!
－－《Executable
Outlines》
06 Chapter 6
Verses 1-30
Verses 1-9
Arise, and let us go up at noon.
Christian effort
That spirit-stirring call of the text, so needful to arouse the
Chaldeans on their march to the ancient, is as needful for us on our pilgrimage
to the new, Jerusalem.
1. In other passages, the early years of childhood and youth are
pointed out as the special time for God’s service. While the heart is warm and
pliant. Ere the hardening influence of a selfish world, having closed it to the
Saviour’s call, has swept and garnished it for tenantry of evil.
2. “Arise, and let us go up at noon.” It is midday with you, to whom
the text is speaking. It is the period for active endeavour. Now the calls of
the world are dinned most loudly into your ears. In the earlier hours, and at
the close of your passing day, you were and will be alike incapable of
prolonged toil. Now the requirement is made of you, and to what behests does it
bid you attend? Make the most of your time. Are you poor? Strive for
independence. Are you rich? Strive for place and power. Are you intellectual?
Seek a sphere for display, a stage for self-glorification. Thus speaks the
world, and were some of its directions pursued in moderation, pursued
subordinate to higher and nobler motive, there might be wisdom in our chastened
regards. But, alas! how many go to extreme in these observances, and become the
slaves of time and sense. Apply those misdirected energies to a nobler cause.
The rewards of time are not worth such care as this. In themselves, they are of
scarce more value than the withered leaves which crowned the victor in the
ancient games. Arise, and go up at noon to seek the incorruptible crown. Ye are
soldiers engaged in warfare. The sword is drawn. The banner is spread. Its
emblem is the Cross. Your weapons are not carnal. The din of military music
shall not spur you to the dangerous assault; but strains of sweetest melody
shall speak to you of peace, peace on earth, goodwill to men; peace which the
world can neither give nor take away.
3. But have you passed that period of activity, and in your
retrospect of its busy hours do you feel how prodigally your energies have been
wasted? Have ungodly habits become so confirmed, that now at your journey’s
end, being dead to the enticements of the present, you are not alive to the
requirements of the future? Shall an appeal, which might impress a heart yet
warm and flexible, fall coldly on the worn and weary conscience of the aged?
The gracious and long-suffering Master has still this call to summon you,
“Arise, and let us go by night.” Ye have heard and disregarded the call
throughout the day, and therefore may not be as those who, having never been
hired earlier, received every man a penny, but whatsoever is right, that shall
ye receive. Go by prayer and penitence, by sought and found spiritual guidance,
or soon the light of life will be extinguished in outer darkness.
4. But ye have been watchful and faithful. Ye arose, and went up at
noon. It is not woeful to you that the day goeth away. It is no cause of regret
that the shadows of evening are stretched out. “Behold! I come quickly,” the
Saviour says to you; and joyfully ready is your reply, “Even so, come, Lord
Jesus.” All things are yours: love and reverence from all without, peace
unspeakable from all within. Ye shall arise and go. The shadows stretched
before you shall be dispelled forever, and the brightness of that noon which
shall fade no more shall rest upon you. (F. Jackson.)
Verse 4
Woe unto us! for the day goeth away.
“Woe unto us!”
The Babylonians are represented by the prophet as coming to
plunder the Holy City, like flocks being led to their feeding ground. They
hurry to the work of destruction, yet they are not speedy enough, for work
takes time, and time flees fast away. “Prepare ye war against her: arise, and
let us go up at noon. Woe unto us! for the day goeth away,” etc. “Arise, and
let us go by night, and let us destroy her palaces.” We have no city to
destroy, and it is morning; yet, standing, as we do, almost on the threshold of
another year, these words are worthy of consideration. The day of opportunity
that tills year contained is going away, the shadows of the evening are
stretched out. And with the departure of the day and the deepening of the
shadows of the night, some among the bravest hearts may well exclaim, “Woe unto
us!” For all who are Christ’s servants, as they grow in grace, more clearly
come to see the great issues of life, the vast importance of the days and
months and years which God has given them to spend to His glory. With this
clearer sight comes the consciousness of the awful waste of time for which men
are answerable, a waste which can never be repaired. True, that the blood of
Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin; but only if there he true repentance. As
you really understand the cleansing and accept it, so you will grow most
earnest in guarding the gift of time.
1. Save time in your work. Surely it is “woe unto us” that we have
been so half-hearted often in our time of work; so ready to lay down the task
that is difficult, or so ready to do it lazily and badly. The great characters
in history are mostly the indefatigable, who, while they worked, worked hard.
2. Save time in your leisure. Do not spend it all in amusement, which
excites, but does not profit. If you have your evenings free, use some to the
glory of God, by helping children, by showing acts of kindness, by improving
your own knowledge.
3. Again, save time on Sundays. How can men’s religion be real and
true if they spend Sunday mornings in bed? (W. R. Hutton, M. A.)
Opportunities for self-rescue
I. Heaven granted
these men of Judah an opportunity for escaping a great evil; so it has to all
unconverted men. The evil to which the Jews were exposed was very great: it was
captivity, slavery, utter destruction of the country. But this was only a
shadow of the moral dangers to which every unconverted man is exposed. He is in
danger of losing his soul. To lose a soul is to lose all true liberty, pure
sympathies, harmonious affections, real friendships, self-approving conscience,
true hopes, and means of improvement. And when these are gone, the worth of
existence is gone, for it becomes an intolerable curse.
II. The opportunity
which these men of Judah had for escaping their danger was now drawing to a
close; so is the opportunity of all unconverted men. The whole day of life
scarcely opens before it begins to close.
1. This opportunity is constantly departing to return no more.
2. This opportunity is constantly departing though the work be not
done.
III. The closing of
the opportunity of these men of Judah was fraught with terrible calamity; so it
will be with all unconverted men. “Woo unto us,” exclaims the doomed Jew in
bitter anguish. “Woe unto us”; we have not only lost our country and become the
slaves of a heathen despot, bug we have shamefully neglected the merciful
opportunities with which providence has favoured us. These words remind us of
the language of Christ (Luke 19:41-44). Conclusion--“Now is the
accepted time.” Today is “the day of salvation.” (Homilist.)
The old and the new year
The old year is dying, the new year is about to commence. And
whether the past has been wasted, or redeemed and used for God; whether the
work of the past has been done or left undone, still there is a work for all of
us. Each day and each year brings its own proper duties, and our conscience
needs to be awakened and stirred to the right performance of them. The day
goeth away. And you feel that there is something solemn about this passing from
one year to another.
1. Some of you are anxious about your spiritual condition. Take the
past year as a whole, and perhaps you may be able to hope that some progress
has been made. But it has not been all progress. The picture has its dark side.
You have had your temptations, you have had your troubles and annoyances; and
you have been forced to see how weak your strength is, how poor your best
resolutions, how much you have fallen short of what you had intended a year ago.
The day goeth away. But if the past has not been what you wished, must you
therefore give up in despair? Nay, you may be thankful if you have advanced at
all. You could have made no way whatever but for the grace of God. Believe that
He who has been with you hitherto will enable you to live more and more to your
Master’s glory.
2. Again, the close of the year may suggest its thoughts to those
who, as our fellow labourers in the schools, or among the sick and destitute,
are trying to do the Lord’s work, and to be a blessing to their neighbours in
their generation. You look back over the year that is gone, and there are
abundant reasons for regret. Opportunities for good have been lost which never
will come back again. Some one was lying ill, and you knew of the illness, but
you delayed your visit. You would go tomorrow: you had other things to do
today. And tomorrow you went, but it was too late. Death had come before you.
Or again, you might have taken a bolder and firmer course, had your zeal for
God been stronger. You saw some evil done, and you did not protest against it.
You heard ill-natured words, and you did not try to check them. You might have
spoken for God, and you cowardly held your peace. Yet all has not been failure.
Feel as painfully as we may our weakness and want of faith, still we may see
and thankfully acknowledge the evident signs of God’s presence with His people
here. (Canon Nevill.)
A New Year’s sermon
I. The fact here
indicated. The day glides imperceptibly away, from morning to noon, from noon
to eve. Does not this strikingly typify our life in this world? Do not our
years glide on like the minutes and hours of the natural day? And, ere ever we
are aware, do we not perceive that the shadows are lengthening? Are we not
reminded of the flight of time by many things which we see around us? The old
men, with whose slow step we were familiar, are disappearing from the scene;
those whom we knew in their prime now bear the marks of age. But does not this
suggest to us one particular in which the analogy between the natural day and
our human life signally fails? We know the very hour, we can ascertain the very
minute, when the sun will set. But how different is it with the life of man?
Who can tell when, in any individual case, that life shall end? Who but He who
knows the end from the beginning, and who is the God of our lives and the
length of our days? But whether the period of our sojourn upon earth be brief
or protracted, it is quickly passing away. Whether we are to be cut down when
the shadows have stretched out far, or while they are yet comparatively short,
in the case of every one of us they are lengthening; and in the case of not a
few, it approaches eventide, and their sun declines to its setting. But surely
there arises here another question. When the day declines and nightfall comes,
what then? “After death the judgment.” Death does not reduce us to nothingness,
but detaches us from time to land us in eternity. It places us before the
tribunal of the Most High to receive the sentence which is to fix unchangingly
our final doom. “We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.”
II. What effect the
consideration of this fact should have upon us.
1. It should have this effect, to impress us with the solemn and
abiding conviction that it is a fact. We are ever prone to take it for granted
that though the end of life is no doubt approaching, it is still distant from
us; that though the duration of life is very uncertain to men generally, and to
our friends and neighbours around us, we are much less likely to be suddenly
removed, and may reassuredly count upon a protracted span being afforded to us
is a strange and subtle delusion of the human heart, and sedulously fostered by
the enemy of souls, the father of lies. How needful to learn and lay to heart
the lesson here taught; how needful to be thoroughly persuaded that it is a
solemn fact that our life is a vapour which appears for a little time and then
vanishes away; that not with respect to our fellow men merely, but with respect
to ourselves also, the days of earth are drawing to a close, and that to any
one of us the end may come very soon and very suddenly!
2. But, further, it is of the last importance that we not only really
believe this fact, but that we give practical effect to the belief. What are
your resolutions for the future? Will you be stirred up to greater diligence
and devotedness ere your sun go down! And if you, if any of you, are still far
from God, living in carelessness and unbelief, will you not take warning by the
lengthening shadows to make your peace with God ere it be too late? (P.
Hope, B. D.)
Difficulties of old age
I. The appointed
period of grace is coming rapidly to a conclusion. “The day goeth away.” It has
been enjoyed in the fulness of its privileges. It has been for some, far
protracted. But while unimproved, it has tended only to increase the guilt and
danger of the soul. For fifty years the Redeemer has called upon some now aged
sinner to turn to Him and live. How difficult is it to arouse him to a consciousness,
or belief, of the privileges which are yet remaining, and of the duty which yet
rests upon him! The recollection of wasted opportunities drives him to despair.
II. The short
period of grace now remaining. He set out early in the morning to go astray
from God. Through the whole day, he has been pressing forward in his course,
with unabating rapidity. And now, when the shadows of the evening are stretched
out, and exhausted nature is asking for repose; alas, is this an hour in which
to commence the journey of a day? Death now stands at the door. The line which
separates him from eternity, has dwindled to a hair. And he is tempted to yield
to total despair of escaping at all from the ruin which is so close upon him.
The difficulty which his own heart presents as thus arising from his shortened
remaining period of probation, Satan employs as a temptation to him, to be
quiet and careless under his conscious load of sin.
III. The increased
hardness of his own heart. When young, conviction of sin impressed his mind.
His eyes could weep under the preaching of the Gospel. He then often felt
strongly excited towards a life of holiness and piety. But now he has no such
feelings. The rain which descends to refresh others, seems rather to hasten his
decay. The summer and the harvest have passed without advantage, and every
succeeding day of autumn seems only to dry, and harden, and seal up the earth
against the arrival of a frost-bound and cheerless winter.
IV. The pride of
character which is always an attendant upon advanced periods of life. The heart
may be often moved, the conscience awakened, and the emotions aroused, in the
bosom of an aged transgressor, and a strong desire be felt, to lay down his
burden, and find peace in believing in Jesus. But an assumed dignity and
coolness of manner are drawn over a broken, bleeding spirit, because an
acknowledgment of these awakened feelings will be so humiliating to the age and
station of the individual concerned. But there remains no other course of
safety. To this humbling ground, sinful man must be brought, or he will
assuredly perish. (S. H. Tyng, D. D.)
Opportunities lost
The opportunity for success was lost; the day of action had been
misspent, and the result was, captivity and slavery. The day of action was
going away; the shadows of the evening which was to cover them with its
darkness and sorrow, were already stretched out. Just so it is with multitudes
now in reference to the work of their salvation. The Gospel of the Son of God
has been preached in their ears, until it has become stale and powerless. They
listen to it, but take no heed to its requirements.
1. Look at the opportunities which the Church affords to all
attendants on her service, not only of learning their duty, but also of
practising it to the glory of God.
2. Then, again, look at the opportunities for repentance and faith
which God has given you in the daily providence of life. You have been rich,
perhaps, and He has made you poor--Why? That He may give you spiritual riches,
which moth and rust can not corrupt. You have been poor and He has made you
rich--Why? That you might “remember the Lord thy God, for it is He that giveth
thee power to get wealth.” You have been well, and He has laid you on a bed of
sickness--Why? That you might consider your latter end. You have been sick and
He has made you well--Why? That you should love your Divine Healer, and seek
for your spiritual healing. Your life is full of the echoes of God’s voice
speaking to you in His daily providence, as well as in the inspired Word and
through the ministry of His Church. Yet hour after hour has glided away, and
you have hesitated, procrastinated, put off to a more convenient season. Shall
life’s sun go wholly down, shall the night of death wrap you in its starless
mantle, without one honest effort on your part to secure your soul’s salvation?
(Bp. Stevens)
.
An inch of time
“Millions of money for an inch of time,” cried Elizabeth--the
gifted but ambitious Queen of England, upon her dying bed. Unhappy woman!
reclining upon a couch--with ten thousand dresses in her wardrobe--a kingdom on
which the sun never sets, at her feet--all now are valueless, and she shrieks
in anguish, and she shrieks in vain, for a single “inch of time.” She had
enjoyed threescore and ten years. Like too many among us, she had devoted them
to wealth, to pleasure, to pride, and ambition, so that her whole preparation
for eternity was crowded into a few moments! and hence she, who had wasted more
than half a century, would barter millions for an inch of time.
The shadows of the evening
are stretched out.
The setting sun
There is something at once grand and solemn in a setting sun. It
is the sinking to rest of the great king of day; the withdrawing from the busy
world the light that has called out its activity, and the covering up with the
veil of darkness the scenes that glistened with the radiance of noon. There is,
however, in the setting of the sun of life, that which is equally grand, still
more solemn, and surpassingly sublime.
1. The sun, when it sets, has run a whole day’s circuit; his pathway
has apparently traversed an entire are of the heavens, and slowly, patiently,
but surely, it has done its allotted work. And so the aged Christian, when he
dies, is described as having “run his race,” as having “finished his course.”
He has toiled a whole day of life, and has come to his grave in a “good old
age,” having “finished the work which was given him to do”; and though all his
labours have been imperfectly done, though he himself feels more deeply than he
can express his unprofitableness before God, yet he looks for acceptance, not
to any merit of his own, but only for Christ Jesus sake, who of God and by
faith is made unto him “wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and
redemption.” We can contemplate with satisfaction, then, the aged disciple,
having “borne the burden and heat of the day,” patiently waiting for the
stretching out of the evening shadows and the hour of his own sunset.
2. Another point to be considered is, the fact that the setting of
the sun is not always like the day which it closes. The morning may have been
bright, and the evening hour dark with tempests; or the rising may have been
obscured by clouds and mists, which gradually faded away and left a clear sky
at sunset. So the sunset hour of Christian life does not always correspond to
his previous day. We have seen the last hours of the believer shrouded in
impenetrable gloom, and we have seen them gilded with hope and radiant with the
forecast glories of the upper world. The way in which a Christian dies is not
always an index of his spiritual condition. He is to be judged by his life, not
by his death. Self-denial, the mortification of our passions, the resisting of
earthly temptations, the putting into active exercise, and amidst opposing
difficulties, the whole class of Christian affections which flow out from the
simple principle of loving our neighbour as ourselves, and the manifestation of
that life of faith, of prayer, of holiness, of zeal, which necessarily results
from the constraining love of Christ in the heart all these qualities and tests
of character scarcely find a place on a dying bed, so that persons thus
situated have few opportunities to develop the true evidences of the work of
grace. The varieties of Christian experience are literally innumerable; but
whatever their nature, we must not judge of the validity of one’s hope, or the
genuineness of one’s conversion, by his dying hour. Yet, when that dying hour
accords with a long life of piety, or a true profession maintained in health
and strength; when it is but a concentrating within itself of the glories which
have been more or less visible in the whole track of his experience, then is it
eloquent in its revelations of the riches, and peace, and joy which God
generally gives to those who are faithful unto death: and though we cannot
order when or how our lives shall close upon earth, yet it should be our aim so
to live as to secure, if God pleases, a serene, if not a triumphant exit, that
our setting sun may, like the sun in the firmament, grow larger and more
resplendent as it declines, until passing away it shall leave behind a trail of
glory spread all over the place of our departure.
3. Another interesting thought connected with this subject is, that
the sun is not lost or extinguished when it sets. This may seem a very trite
remark concerning the natural sun, but it is not so trite when we speak of the
soul set in death. For are we not apt to grieve over the going down of our
friends to the grave, as if they were to be forever hidden in its dark
chamber--as if the bright spark of their immortality had been suddenly
quenched?
4. And this leads us to make one final observation, namely, that when
we see the sun set, we know that it will rise again; and so when we see the body
of our friends borne to the voiceless dwelling of the tomb, we know that they
also shall rise again. (Bp. Stevens.)
Verse 8
Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest My soul depart from thee.
The way to prevent the ruin of a sinful people
I. The infinite
goodness and patience of God towards a sinful people and His great
unwillingness to bring ruin and destruction upon them. How loath is He that
things should come to this extremity?
II. The only proper
and effectual means to prevent the misery and ruin of a sinful people. If they
will be instructed, and take warning by the threatenings of God, and will
become wiser and better, then His soul will not depart from them, He will not
bring upon them the desolation which He hath threatened.
III. The miserable
case and condition of a people, when God takes off His affection from them and
gives over all further care and concernment for them. Woe unto them, when His
soul departs from them! For when God once leaves them, then all sorts of evil
and calamities will break in upon them. (Archbishop Tillotson.)
A warning to the nation
I. The caution.
1. Whereby are we to be instructed? By the state of affairs, and by
the reason of things, or the right of cases.
2. Wherein are we to be instructed?
3. What is it to be instructed?
II. the
enforcement.
1. An argument of love and goodwill, “lest My soul depart from thee.”
2. An argument from fear, “lest I make thee desolate,” A double
argument is as a double testimony, by which every word is established (2 Corinthians 13:1).
3. This double argument shows us two things.
Verse 10
They have no delight in it.
The impediments to the right celebration of religious ordinances
You will readily admit, that the feeling of delight accompanying
the performance of anything is, for the most part, a sign and measure of its
profitable accomplishment; that that is usually well done which is done
cheerfully and with the heart; and that nothing, on the contrary, is more
commonly deteriorated in the performance of it, than what is entered on with
the apprehension of its being a piece of drudgery, and gone through as a mere
task. How true does this remark hold in the department of religion! If we
approach the exercises of religion, whether reading or hearing the Word, or the
sacraments, or prayer, as formalists come to them--if we take no lively
interest in them--if we are actuated merely by the force of custom, the power
of example and other motives of expediency, how can they ever profit us? Are we
not changing the sources of heaven’s blessings into empty and broken cisterns?
I. In attending to
the circumstances that operate to take away from us delight in Christian
ordinances, we observe, that an unfavourable change in the frame of mind, as
persons are engaged In religious exorcises, often occurs, at least at times
occurs, unavoidably, however our desires and endeavours may be set against it.
At one time we will be attending with deep earnestness, at another time
listening with cold indifference. There is now a great acuteness in receiving
instruction, at another time almost a deadness that blunts the edge of the best
directed observations. Now, all such changes as these are still, in so far as
they are traceable to constitutional temperament, to be ranked among the class
of what the Bible calls our infirmities, and when they are met by meditation on
the Word of God, and by prayer, in order that we may be cured, they are not
charged as criminalities against us. At the same time, take good heed lest you
ascribe to those things over which you think you have no control, what all the
while springs from sinful negligence.
II. First, the
state of mind I have described, shows that there has not been with us due
consideration before we have come to the public ordinances of religion. We do
not consider that the services of the sanctuary relate to God in our adoring,
or praising, or supplicating Him whom the universe celebrates as its Maker,
whom angels, principalities and powers reverently worship--we do not consider
that the services of the sanctuary are the appointed means through which the
soul is called to discourse with its own original, with Him who is the source
of bliss. We do not consider that the services of the sanctuary present the
sublimest objects for the exercise of the understanding, the most splendid for
attracting the imagination, the most engaging for affecting the heart.
Accordingly we do not in our petitions implore that fixedness of heart which is
required in the true and spiritual worshipper; we do not enter the sanctuary
cherishing the serious thought that we come hither to seek the blessings which
the mercy of the Saviour gives to every one who feels his need of them, and
asks them. On the contrary, we come to the sanctuary altogether unconcerned; we
sit down without offering in our minds one preparatory petition; we possess a
frame of mind that is akin to levity; we are chargeable at least with
indifference, which can only be excusable in our waiting on an empty
ceremonial. Even allowing that the individual still possesses some desire to
receive the benefits of religious ordinances in the sanctuary, they are
rendered quite impracticable to him, except where the devotional exercises of
every day are preparatory to those of the Sabbath. The want of serious
consideration before we come to engage in religious ordinances, leads directly
to want of due reflection when engaged in the performance of them; for such
trains of thought as we have been cherishing, are not easily broken down, and,
in fact, we cannot authoritatively dismiss them--they have fastened themselves
by innumerable links to the mind, and though many of these links may from time
to time be detached by us, still numbers are left which are quite sufficient to
rivet the objects of our affectionate concern to our memories and our hearts.
Such objects, through long usage, become great favourites with the mind, and
hence, it not only attends to them in the season of disengagement from other
things, but strives to get back to them, even when occupied in the ordinances
of religion. Then when we think how base and degraded our natural dispositions
are, surely it is a most unreasonable expectation that we are prepared for the
spiritual exercises of the Sabbath, if we have had no preparatory devotional
exercises for such a day.
III. Most serious
and grievous is the evil of which I am now speaking. Whatever degree of it
adheres to us its tendency is to destroy utterly the capacity of religious
feeling, and to increase that searedness of conscience which is the forerunner
of open profligacy. Let us then be roused to consideration. Let us come to
religious ordinances with serious thoughts on their nature, their
reasonableness, their awful sanctions, and their inestimable utility; and,
having especially in view the example of the serious worshipper who prays for the
spirit of prayer, and who is a suppliant in private for the grace of
supplication which is to be employed by him in public, let us endeavour when we
join in religious ordinances to preserve seriousness of mind. Let us for this
purpose devoutly consider the object we have in view, whether engaged in the
Word, in sacrament, or in prayer. Let us not give a single moment’s
encouragement to thoughts upon other subjects. Let us withstand the inroads of
such thoughts--let us cast them out as of Satan, when they enter, and let us
try to prevent them entering at all. Let there be prayer, consideration and
serious concern; and thus entering into the great truths, into the sweetness of
religion, there will be no longer felt the weariness with which we set out. The
satisfaction and delight, so conducive to our improvement, will then take the
place of the fatigue and irksomeness of the mere bodily worshipper. The Sabbath
will be the most acceptable of all refreshments, the Psalms of the sanctuary
will be the sentiments of gratitude and joy, the prayers offered will be as the
flame which first ascended in holy ardour to its origin, and the Word will be
the principal vehicle of calling into action every good resolution. Religion
will then become that very privilege it is intended to be; the elements, set
upon the table, will appear as the memorials of all that is dear and precious
to our souls; the sentiments of holy love will be awakened in commemorating the
blessed Friend who gave His soul for us sinners; and thus the sanctuary and its
services will become the pledge to us of the noblest benefits, the scene of the
most glorious hopes, and an incitement to devoted obedience. (W. Muir, D. D.)
The Gospel unappreciated
Alphonse Kerr heard a gardener ask his master’s permission to
sleep for the future in the stable. “For,” said he, “there is no possibility of
sleeping in the chamber behind the greenhouse, sir; there are nightingales
there which do nothing but guggle and keep up a noise all the night.” The
sweetest sounds are but an annoyance to those who have no musical ear;
doubtless the music of heaven would have no charm to carnal minds, certainly
the joyful sound of the Gospel is unappreciated so long as men’s ears remain
uncircumcised.
Verse 14
They have healed also the hurt . . . slightly, saying, Peace,
peace; when there is no peace.
Healing our wounds slightly
I. What need we
all have of healing.
1. Asserted in Scripture.
2. Confirmed by experience.
II. Who they are
that heal their wounds slightly.
1. They who rely on the uncovenanted mercy of God, fatally deceive
their souls by expecting mercy contrary to Gospel.
2. They who take refuge in a round of duties; no attainments can
stand in place of Christ.
3. They who rest in a faith that is unproductive of good works; but
the faith that apprehends Christ will “work by love,” “purify the heart,”
“overcome the world.”
III. How we may have
them healed effectually.
1. The Lord Jesus has provided a remedy for sin (Isaiah 53:5).
2. That remedy applied by faith shall be effectual for all who trust
in it.
Address--
1. Those who feel not their need of healing.
2. Those who, after having derived some benefits from Christ, have
relapsed into sin.
3. Those who are enjoying health in their souls. (C. Simeon, M. A.)
False teachers
How mischievous is that false kindness which is afraid of telling
you honestly the state of the case, if it happen to be dangerous or desperate!
Now, in regard of their eternal concerns, men have a willingness to be
deceived, though in regard of their temporal concerns, they are keenly alive to
attempts at imposition, and eager to resent them. They commonly prefer the
moral physician who will make light of their vices, and not startle them by
faithfully exposing their danger, though, were they similarly beguiled by one
whom they consulted on a bodily malady, they would denounce him as guilty of
the most hateful perfidy. And it may be for your profit, if we look into some
of the more ordinary cases. First, we would remind you that, if there be truth
in the statements of Scripture, there is a distinction the very strongest
between the people of the world and the people of God. Yet, here is the respect
in which, perhaps, the danger is the greatest of the moral hurt being only
slightly healed, and peace prophesied when there is no peace. The worldly are
well pleased to have the differences between themselves and the religious made
as few and unimportant as possible, inasmuch as they are thus soothed into a
persuasion that after all they are in no great danger of the wrath of the
Almighty. On the other hand, those who profess a concern for the soul are often
still so much inclined to the pursuits and the pleasures of earth, that they
have a ready ear for any doctrine which seems to offer them the joys of the
next life, without requiring continued self-denial in this life. Thus it is an
unpopular thing, opposed to the inclinations of the majority of hearers, to
insist upon the breadth of separation between the worldly and the religious, to
represent, without qualification or disguise, that the attempting to serve two
masters is the certain serving of only one, and that the master whose wages is
death. But if we would be faithful in the ministry, this is what we must do. To
do otherwise, would be to play with your souls--to lead you into delusion,
which, if continued, must leave you shipwrecked for eternity. Take another case,
the case of those in whom has been produced a conviction of sin, whose
consciences after a long slumber have been aroused to do their office and have
done it with great energy. It is no uncommon thing for conviction of sin not to
be followed by conversion. Hundreds who have been stirred for a time to a sense
of guilt and danger, in place of advancing to genuine penitence have lapsed
back into former indifference. Ah, this is amongst the most alarming of moral
phenomena. The signs and earnest, as we thought of life, give a melancholy and
mysterious interest to death. Let the ministers of religion take heed that they
be not accessory to so disappointing an occurrence, and they easily may be. The
spiritual physician may be too hasty in applying to the wounded conscience the
balm of the Gospel; and thus he may arrest that process of godly contrition
which seemed so hopefully begun. It is no time to speak of free forgiveness
till the man exclaims in the agony of alarm and almost of despair, “What must I
do to be saved?” Then display the Cross. Then expatiate on the glorious truth,
that “the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.” Then point
to the unsearchable riches of Christ, and meet every doubt, oppose every
objection, and combat every fear by exhibiting the mighty fact of an atonement
for sin. But the case suggested by our text is that of a too hasty
appropriation of the consolations of Christianity, and this case we cannot
doubt is of frequent occurrence. Not, indeed, that whenever conviction of sin
is not followed by conversion, the cause is to be found in the premature use of
the mercies of the Gospel. We know too well that in many instances the
conscience which had been mysteriously aroused is as mysteriously quieted; so
that, without a solitary reason, men who had manifested anxiety as to their
souls, and apparently been earnest in seeking salvation, are soon again found
amongst the careless and indifferent, as busy as ever with chasing shadows, as
pleased as ever with things that perish in the using. For a moment they have
seemed conscious of their immortality and have risen to the dignity of
deathless beings, and then the pulse has ceased to beat, and they have again
been creatures of a day in place of heirs of eternity. Still, if there be many
instances in which we may not fairly ascribe to a too hasty appropriation of
the mercies of the Gospel, the failure of what seemed hopefully commenced, we
may justly say that such an exhibition is likely to produce so disappointing a
result, and that the probability is that it frequently does. We have further to
remark, that the peculiar doctrines of Christianity are strongly offensive to
the great body of men, and that on this account chiefly it is that there is so
much reluctance to the bringing them forward, and so much readiness to explain
them away. You cannot fail to be aware that the offence of the Cross has not
ceased, you must be sufficiently aware that these are not days when men are
called to join the noble army of martyrs, yet there is an opposition to the
peculiar doctrines of the Gospel, an opposition which gives as much cause now
as there was in earlier days for the Saviour to exclaim, “Blessed is he
whosoever shall not be offended in Me.” So that here is a precise case in which
the known feelings of the generality of men place the teacher under a
temptation to keep back truth, or of stating it so equivocally that its full
force shall not be felt, He cannot be ignorant that if he set forth without
reserve, or disguise the corruption and helplessness of man, insist on the
perfect gratuitousness of salvation, and refer to God’s mercy and
distinguishing grace as first exciting the desire for deliverance, and then
enabling us to lay hold upon the provided succours, he will have to encounter
the antipathies of perhaps a majority of his hearers; and he is consequently
and naturally moved to the concealing much, and the softening down more; and if
he yield to the temptation, then we have that mixed and diluted theology which
does not, indeed, exclude Christ, but assigns much to man, which without
denying the meritorious obedience and sufferings of the Mediator soothes our
pride with an assurance that by our good works we contribute something towards
the attainment of everlasting happiness. By encouraging the opinion that men
are not very far gone from original righteousness, that notwithstanding the
fall, they retain a moral power of doing what shall be acceptable to God, and
that their salvation is to result from the combination of their own efforts and
the merits of Christ, we maintain that by encouraging such opinions as these,
the teacher flatters his hearers with the most pernicious of all flattery,
hiding from them their actual condition, and instructing them, how to miss, at
the same time that they think they are securing deliverance. Probably enough
has been advanced to certify you not only of the possible occurrence but of the
grievous peril which must lie in the substituting in religion what is
superficial for what ought to be radical. It is on this that we are most
anxious to fix your attention. We want to have you satisfied that there can be
no falser kindness than that which should hide from men their real condition,
and that it is the very extreme of danger when those who are tottering believe
themselves secure. It needs no small courage--we ought rather to say, it needs
no small grace--to be willing to know the worst; not to be afraid of finding
out how bad we are, how corrupt, how capable of the worst actions, if left to
ourselves. This is a great point gained in spiritual things, it is a great
point gained to be able to pray with David, “Search me, O God, and try me, and
see if there be any wicked way in me.” We call it a great point gained to be
willing to know the worst; for so long as we stop short of this, we shall
always be trying half measures, healing the hurt slightly, and therefore never
reaching the root of the disease. We counsel you then to be honest with
yourselves, honest in observing the symptoms of spiritual sickness, honest in
applying the remedies prescribed by the Bible. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
False peace
I. A false peace,
what is it? We do not mean, in describing a false peace, to depict the state of
those who are utterly indifferent to religious claims and obligations. We are
speaking of another class, in whose minds there has been at some time an
anxiety concerning their state in the sight of God. They have felt that sin is
within them, that sin is working out terrible results, and, unless some remedy
be applied, must work their ultimate ruin. This anxiety has increased upon
them; and at length they have found the anxiety soothed; its pressure has been
alleviated, and at length it has departed. But it has been soothed by
unsuitable means. To be in a state of false peace is to be in a state of
composure--not of indifference, but of composure and satisfaction, in a belief
that all is well when all is not well. And this may arise from various causes.
1. It may be that some are lulled into this false peace from the fact
of never having had clear and scriptural notions of the true nature of sin.
They have had their attention perhaps drawn rather more to sins and to sinning
than to sin; and in their cases it may have happened that the course of sinning
has not been a very atrocious course--that the habitude has never manifested
itself in any very formidable way. Now, so long as our attention is fixed upon
sins, and so long as our minds are drawing distinctions between the greater and
the lesser amount of actual transgressions against God, we overlook the
scriptural view of sin, as that fatal principle in the nature of man which
taints every faculty, and which renders it utterly impossible that man should
live in the light of God’s countenance.
2. But suppose men do entertain scriptural views of sin, as a deadly
principle within them, still they may have very inadequate views of the justice
of God and of His perfect holiness. Many minds are very apt to measure God, as
it were, by a human standard, as if God’s mode of procedure would be governed
on the same principles on which man’s mode of procedure is usually governed;
and the consequence is, that they invest God with a kind of mercy which is
altogether unscriptural. If the sinner views God merely as a God of goodness
and tenderness and mercy, and thinks His justice is not to have its full and
unrestricted exercise, then we ask, what are we to do with those passages of
God’s Word which exhibit all His attributes in their just proportions, and
their relations one to another?
3. False peace may also be produced by having obscure notions of the
Gospel. If we could sum up the whole Gospel message, the whole of the rich
provision of God’s mercy and justice in Christ Jesus, in one sentence, we
should say, it is a remedy for sin; but multitudes hear the Gospel, in all its
simplicity and fulness, and yet come to the conclusion that the Gospel system
only calls us into a greater familiarity of relation to God, that it sets
before us a more spiritual walk than the people who lived under the Jaw were
accustomed to, that it calls upon us for a higher moral bearing, and that if we
do in the main adhere to that, as if it were a second form of law exhibited to
us, then all shall be well; but they overlook the fact that there is in the
Gospel a remedy for sin--that it contains a provision for the healing, the true
healing of the wound which sin has made.
4. This false peace may arise, moreover, out of an imperfect
reception of the true Gospel. The doctrines may be received; the matters of
fact upon which the doctrines are based may be received; the economy of the
Gospel may be received, as far as the intellect goes; but there may be no
surrender of the soul to the Gospel--there may be no yielding up of all the
perversity of the natural man to the sweet and precious operations of the
Spirit of God, seeking to establish His truth in the heart as a remedy for sin.
Now we believe, that wherever these four, or any one of these four causes
exist, the result is a false peace. And let it be borne in mind, that most men
are very much disposed to be satisfied with a false peace. When the testimony
of conscience has been stirring, when the burden of sin has been felt to be a
heavy burden, there is a disposition to embrace the first offer of peace that
presents itself. And why is it so? Because the burden is heavy to be borne, and
the anxiety it occasions is a distressing anxiety, which is to be got rid of in
any way. Anything, therefore, that can silence conscience, or that can lessen
the severity of its testimony, will be resorted to, and will be regarded as
peace.
II. The real nature
of that only peace which can be relied upon. Let it be remembered, that true
peace has relation both to God and to man; that is, it must be a peace on both
sides--on the side of a just and holy God, and on the side of man with his
“carnal mind” which is “enmity against God.” There must be peace on both sides;
and the peace on God’s side must be a peace that shall be in the highest degree
honourable to Himself; and in order to be strictly honourable to Him, it must
be a peace that shall have magnified His justice, as well as given Him a just
occasion for the exercise of mercy. It is plain, therefore, that man himself
cannot make and establish such a peace, either by sacrifice or by service. Then
the truth is, that God has taken the whole matter into His own hands. He
regards man as altogether helpless in this respect; and God undertakes for the
establishing a peace that shall be in the highest degree honourable to Himself,
and in the utmost degree suitable to man. In graciously revealing Himself,
then, in Christ, God has come forth from the light and glory in which He has
dwelt from all eternity, and in the person of Jesus, the Eternal Word, has
manifested Himself in an attitude of peace--is at peace. “God was in Christ,
reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.”
In that declaration we “see the attitude of peace. God comes not forth, in the
Gospel of His dear Son, as an avenger, but He comes honourably forth as a
peacemaker. He comes forth, manifesting the strength and severity of His
justice, and magnifying the perfection of His justice. He spared not His own
Son.”
III. The danger of a
false peace. There is present danger, and there is future danger. So long as a
false peace is soothing our anxieties in regard to our state as sinners before
God, this helps to deaden conscience; it does not always satisfy, but it
subdues the activity of conscience, and opens a way for the subtle workings of
Satan. Moreover, this false peace disinclines the mind of the deluded one for
the definiteness of the Christian state and the Christian character--makes all
the peculiarity that marks the Christian and the Christian’s walk
distasteful--makes it regarded as too exact, as too minute, as going too far in
its restraints upon the natural freedom of man; and the consequence is, that it
is said, as it is sometimes said of some ministers of the Gospel, that their
views are a great deal too high, that they expect a great deal more of people
than they ought, that they are always raising a standard which makes religion
appear so impracticable. Lastly, there is the danger of indisposing us to study
the depths of the written Word, and to listen to those depths when they are
brought out in the public ministry of the Word. So long as the imagination is
pleasantly exercised, and the ministry of the preacher is like the song of one
who hath a pleasant voice, and playeth well upon an instrument, there is
contentedness; but when the depths of God’s truth are brought forth, then it is
regarded as a dry matter--a matter in which they have but little concern; and
whilst this state of mind exists, the false peace makes the sinner to lie in a
perilous abode, like a man whose roof is on fire, and who is pressed down by
the weight of slumber. But the danger is also future. If we die in a false
peace, then in the day of resurrection and in the judgment we meet God as an
avenger, and an avenger during all eternity. (G. Fisk, LL. B.)
Foundation of peace
There is a very true sentence of Lord Macaulay’s, in which he
says, “It is difficult to conceive any situation more painful than that of a
great man condemned to watch the lingering agony of an exhausted country, to
tend it during the alternate fits of stupefaction and raving which precede its
dissolution, and to see the symptoms of vitality disappear, one by one, till
nothing is left but coldness, darkness, and corruption.” It was just such a
situation that the prophet Jeremiah was at this time condemned to fill. We feel
that there is real agony in the sentence of doom he is compelled to utter. What
aggravated his own personal grief was that he saw the remedy that alone could
save them, the thorough, searching, radical treatment of their ease that
contained their only hope, and they refused it, and with the very grip of death
upon them they turned for comfort to those who had the mildest treatment to
prescribe, and who cried, “Peace, peace, when there was no peace.”
I. The prophet
here lays his finger on the essential error--the formalist has no adequate idea
of the significance of sin. To suppose you have healed the corruption of a
man’s nature by the sacrifice of a turtle dove is the merest folly. To suppose
that you remove the enmity of a man’s heart against God by crying “Peace,
peace” is an incredible mockery. Peace with God is the will, and the heart, and
the conscience at one with Him.
II. This ignorance
of the priests as to the very nature of the sin they professed to cure reminds
us of the truth of Lord Bacon’s saying, that that is a false peace which is
grounded upon an implicit ignorance, just as all colours agree in the dark. You
may cherish the ignominious ambition to have peace at any price. You may escape
the problems of thought by declining to think. You may avoid the responsibility
of freedom by voluntary slavery; you may escape the pain of repentance by
ignoring the reality of sin; yes, you may refuse to acknowledge the obligations
of the light by dwelling ever in the darkness; you may prefer to be the victim
of error and superstition to being their victor; you may prefer the cowardly
acquiescence of surrender to the glad triumph of conquest; but you will surely
not delude yourselves into the belief that you have settled anything, healed
any hurt, or that the peace you enjoy is a worthy one, with any elements of
desirability at all. For let us be quite sure that true peace--moral or
mental--is based upon an honest facing of the truth. It was old Matthew Paris,
the last of the old monastic historians, who complained somewhat pathetically
that the case of historians was hard, because if they told the truth they
provoked men, while if they wrote what was false they offended God. The
historian’s art, it appears, must have in it something of the photographer’s,
whose bounden duty is well known to be to make men better looking than they
are. It has been urged, that if you can persuade a man that he is better than
be really is, he will try to live up to the new revelation. Overlook his
faults, and explain his errors away, and he will take heart and grow better.
The question comes back to an old one that has been asked and discussed again
and again, “Can there ever be any moral uses in a lie?” Do we believe in that
religious homoeopathy that proposes to cure one immorality by another, conceal
corruption by falsehood, and cover sinfulness by lying? Can any possible good
come out of such a practice? Can there ever be any moral uses in a lie? I think
you will agree with me, that even if it were possible to obtain a satisfactory
peace by the suppression of conviction on the one hand, or a misrepresentation
of fact on the other, we are not at liberty to take it on such terms. To obtain
a worthy peace we must face the facts. (C. S. Horne, M. A.)
A blast of the trumpet against false peace
It is no uncommon thing to meet with people who say, “Well,
I am happy enough. My conscience never troubles me. I believe if I were to die
I should go to heaven as well as anybody else.” I know that these men are
living in the commission of glaring acts of sin, and I am sure they could not
prove their innocence even before the bar of man; yet will these men look you
in the face and tell you that they are not at all disturbed at the prospect of
dying. Well, I will take you at your word, though I don’t believe you. I will
suppose you have this peace, and I will endeavour to account for it on certain
grounds which may render it somewhat more difficult for you to remain in it.
1. The first person I shall deal with is the man who has peace because
he spends his life in a ceaseless round of gaiety and frivolity. You have
scarcely come from one place of amusement before you enter another. You know
that you are never happy except you are in what you call gay society, where the
frivolous conversation will prevent you from hearing the voice of your
conscience. In the morning you will be asleep while God’s sun is shining, but
at night you will be spending precious time in some place of foolish, if not
lascivious, mirth. If the harp should fail you, then you call for Nabar’s
feast. There shall be a sheep shearing, and you shall be drunken with wine,
until your souls become as stolid as a stone. And then you wonder that you have
peace. What wonder! Surely any man would have peace when his heart has become
as hard as a stone. What weathers shall it feel? What tempests shall move the
stubborn bowels of a granite rock? You sear your consciences, and then marvel
that they feel not. Oh, that you would begin to live! What a price you are
paying for your mirth--eternal torment for an hour of jollity--separation from
God for a brief day or two of sin!
2. I turn to another class of men. Finding that amusement at last has
lost all its zest, having drained the cup of worldly pleasure till they find
first satiety, and then disgust lying at the bottom, they want some stronger
stimulus, and Satan, who has drugged them once, has stronger opiates than mere
merriment for the man who chooses to use them. If the frivolity of this world
will not suffice to rock a soul to sleep, he hath a yet more hellish cradle for
the soul. He will take you up to his own breast, and bid you suck therefrom his
own Satanic nature, that you may then be still and calm. I mean that he will
lead you to imbibe infidel notions, and when this is fully accomplished, you
can have “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.”
3. I shall come now to a third class of men. These are people not
particularly addicted to gaiety, nor especially given to infidel notions; but
they are a sort of folk who are careless, and determined to let well alone.
Their motto, “Let tomorrow take care for the things of itself; let us live
while we live; let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” If their conscience
cries out at all, they bid it lie still. When the minister disturbs them,
instead of listening to what he says, and so being brought into a state of real
peace, they cry, “Hush I be quiet I there is time enough yet; I will not
disturb myself with these childish fears: be still, sir, and lie down.” Oh! up
ye sleepers, ye gaggers of conscience, what mean you? Why are you sleeping when
death is hastening on, when eternity is near, when the great white throne is
even now coming on the clouds of heaven, when the trumpet of the resurrection
is now being set to the mouth of the archangel?
4. A fourth set of men have a kind of peace that is the result of
resolutions which they have made, but which they will never carry into effect.
“Oh,” saith one, “I am quite easy enough in my mind, for when I have got a
little more money I shall retire from business, and then I shall begin to think
about eternal things.” Ah, but I would remind you that when you were an
apprentice, you said you would reform when you became a journeyman; and when
you were a journeyman, you used to say you would give good heed when you became
a master. But hitherto these bills have never been paid when they became duo.
They have every one of them been dishonoured as yet; and take my word for it,
this new accommodation bill will be dishonoured too.
5. Now I turn to another class of men, in order that I may miss none
who are saying, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” I do not doubt but that
many of the people of London enjoy peace in their hearts, because they are
ignorant of the things of God. If you have a peace that is grounded on
ignorance, get rid of it; ignorance is a thing, remember, that you are
accountable for. You are not accountable for the exercise of your judgment to
man, but you are accountable for it to God.
6. I now pass to another and more dangerous form of this false peace.
I may have missed some of you; probably I shall come closer home to you now.
Alas, alas, let us weep and weep again, for there is a plague among us. It is
the part of candour to admit that with all the exercise of judgment, and the most
rigorous discipline, we cannot keep our churches free from hypocrisy. Oh! I do
not know of a more thoroughly damnable delusion than for a man to get a conceit
into his head, that he is a child of God, and yet live in sin--to talk to you
about sovereign grace, while he is living in sovereign lust--to stand up and
make himself the arbiter of what is truth, while he himself contemns the
precept of God, and tramples the commandment under foot.
7. There remains yet another class of beings who surpass all these in
their utter indifference to everything that might arouse them. They are men
that are given up by God, justly given up. They have passed the boundary of His
long suffering. He has said, “My Spirit shall no more strive with them”;
“Ephraim is given unto idols, let him alone.” As a judicial punishment for
their impenitence, God has given them up to pride and hardness of heart. (C.
H. Spurgeon.)
False security
I. How is it
persons reach this state of easy confidence?
1. There is a disposition to acknowledge in a general way that they
are sinners, though also to palliate the enormity of sin, and to gloss it over
with the gentle epithet of an infirmity.
2. Then, to make all right, secure, and comfortable, the sentiment is
cherished that God is merciful and will overlook our infirmities. But this
mercy, so vaguely trusted in, is not the mercy which has been made the subject
of an actual offer from God to man. He has stepped forth to relieve us from the
debt of sin.
II. The evils of
such a false confidence.
1. It casts an aspersion on the character of God.
2. It is hostile to the cause of practical righteousness, since it
tends to obliterate all restraints, on the specious plea of all-availing mercy,
and leaves every man to sin just as much as he likes. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)
Peace, when there is no peace
The value of these Old Testament prophecies for us is that they
hold up the mirror to nature. Under different guises we see men grappling with
the same problems, encountering the same fears, wrestling with the same
difficulties, meeting the same joys and the same disappointments. History is
ever repeating itself.
1. The same oppression, the same sin, the same corruptions which are
causing so much anguish in our midst, were at work there, and from many a heart
there went up the cry, “How long, O Lord, how long?” The means they adopted
were not sufficient for the end, and that is just the point at which these
Israelites join hands with many reformers in our days. There are fashions in
these things as in everything else. With the crowd and with the priests in
these far-off days it was sacrifice and burnt offering. With us the favourite
nostrums are somewhat different. Let us look at some of them.
2. There is much truth in a great deal of what has been said by the
advocates of each of these different systems, and within certain limits they
are right. That they will ever reach the root of the matter is another thing.
They are no new doctrines. Long have men tried them. And what has been the
result where they have had freest play? A perfect cure? An approach to an ideal
State? Alas, no. In some cases one or other of them, or all of them together,
may have contributed to render life easier, or more comfortable to individuals
here and there; but none of them, nor all of them together, have been able to
heal the hurt of humanity. They are but the purple patches with which men seek
to hide the festering sores. The trouble is in the heart, in the blood, in the
innermost centre of our being, and till it is expelled from that citadel, there
can be no hope for us, or the world. They who cherish the supposition that man
at bottom is a lover of truth and light, of purity and goodness, fondle a vain
conceit. Is there no cruelty, is there no lust in upper circles of society? Is
there no impurity, no degradation, no oppression among the learned? Is there no
misery, no broken hearts in the homes of the wealthy? Are there no tears, no
sighs, no wrinkled brows where intemperance is unknown? (R. Leggat.)
Useless doctoring
In China they have some queer ways of doctoring sick people, and
in Pekin, it is said, they have a brass mule for a doctor! This mule stands in
one of their temples and sick people flock there by the thousands to be cured.
How can a brass mule cure anybody? do you ask. Sure enough, how can he? and yet
these poor ignorant people believe it. If you lived there, instead of in this
country, it is likely that when you had a toothache your father would take
you--to a dentist? Oh no! That is what they do in this country. In Pekin you would
probably be taken to the temple where the brass mule stands, and be lifted up
so that you could rub his teeth, then rub your own, and then think the pain
ought to go away. If you fell down and hurt your knee, you would go and rub the
mule’s knee, and then your own, to make it well. They say so many have rubbed
the mule that they have rubbed the brass off in many places, so that new
patches had to be put on, and his eyes have been rubbed out altogether. But a
brand new mule stands waiting to take the place of the old one when that
finally falls to pieces. It seems a very simple way to cure pains and aches,
but, I fear, the pain is not very much better after the visit to the mule; and
I am sure all boys and girls who read of the “brass doctor” will be glad they
live in this land, even if dentists do sometimes pull out teeth that ache, and
doctors often give medicine that is not pleasant to take.
False peace
Your peace, sinner, is that terribly prophetic calm which the
traveller occasionally perceives upon the higher Alps. Everything is still. The
birds suspend their notes, fly low, and cower down with fear The hum of bees
among the flowers is hushed. A horrible stillness rules the hour, as if death
had silenced all things by stretching over them his awful sceptre. Perceive ye
not what is surely at hand! The tempest is preparing, the lightning will soon
cast abroad its flames of fire. Earth will rock with thunder blasts; granite
peaks will be dissolved; all nature will tremble beneath the fury of the storm.
Yours is that solemn calm today, sinner. Rejoice not in it, for the hurricane
of wrath is coming, the whirlwind and the tribulation which shall sweep you
away and utterly destroy you. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Verse 15
They were not at all ashamed.
Shamelessness in sin, the certain forerunner of destruction
He who has thus sinned himself past feeling, may be justly
supposed to have sinned himself past grace.
1. Extraordinary guilt. “Committed abomination.”
2. Deportment under guilt. “Not at all ashamed,” etc.
3. God’s high resentment of their monstrous shamelessness. “Were they
ashamed?”
4. The consequent judgment. “Therefore shall they fall,” etc.
I. What shame is
and what influence it has upon the government of men’s manners.
1. Shame is a grief of mind springing from the apprehension of some
disgrace brought upon a man. And disgrace consists properly in men’s knowledge
or opinion of some defect, natural or moral, belonging to them. So that when a
man is sensible that anything defective or amiss, either in his person,
manners, or the circumstances of his condition, is known, or taken notice of,
by others; from this sense or apprehension of his, there naturally results upon
his mind a certain grief or displeasure, which grief properly constitutes the
passion of shame.
2. From this, that shame is grounded upon the dread man naturally has
of the ill opinion of others, and that chiefly with reference to the turpitude
or immorality of his actions, it is manifest that it is that great and powerful
instrument in the soul of man whereby Providence both preserves society and
supports government, forasmuch as it is the most effectual restraint upon him
from the doing of such things as more immediately tend to disturb the one and
destroy the other.
3. He whom shame has done its work upon, is, ipso facto, stripped
of all the common comforts of life. The light is to him the shadow of death; he
has no heart nor appetite for business; his very food is nauseous to him. In
which wretched condition having passed some years, first the vigour of his
intellectuals begins to flag and dwindle away, and then his health follows; the
hectic of the soul produces one in the body, the man from an inward falls into
an outward consumption, and death at length gives the finishing stroke, and
closes all with a sad catastrophe.
II. By what ways
men come to cast off shame and grow impudent in sin.
1. By the commission of great sins. For these waste the conscience,
and destroy at once. They are, as it were, a course of wickedness abridged into
one act, and a custom of sinning by equivalence. They steel the forehead, and
harden the heart, and break those bars asunder which modesty had originally
fenced and enclosed it with.
2. Custom in sinning never fails in the issue to take away the sense
and shame of sin, were a person never so virtuous before. First, he begins to
shake off the natural horror and dread which he had of breaking any of God’s
commands, and so not to fear sin; next, finding his sinful appetites gratified
by such breaches of the Divine law, he comes to like his sin and be pleased
with what he has done; and then, from ordinary complacencies, heightened and
improved by custom, he comes passionately to delight in such ways. Finally,
having resolved to continue and persist in them, he frames himself to a
resolute contempt of what is thought or said of him.
3. The examples of great persons take away the shame of anything
which they are observed to practise, though never so foul and shameful in
itself. Nothing is more contagious than an iii action set off with a great
example; for it is natural for men to imitate those above them, and to
endeavour to resemble, at least, that which they cannot be.
4. The observation of the general and common practice of anything
takes away the shame of that practice. A vice a la mode will look virtue
itself out of countenance, and it is well if it does not look it out of heart
too. Men love not to be found singular, especially where the singularity lies
in the rugged and severe paths of Virtue.
5. To have been once greatly and irrecoverably ashamed renders men
shameless. For shame is never of any force but where there is some stock of
credit to be preserved. When a man finds that to be lost, he is like an undone
gamester, who plays on safety, knowing he can lose no more.
III. The several
degrees of shamelessness in sin.
1. A showing of the greatest respect, and making the most obsequious
applications and addresses to lewd and infamous persons; and that without any
pretence of duty requiring it, which yet alone can justify and excuse men in
it.
2. To extenuate or excuse a sin is bad enough, but to defend it is
intolerable. Such are properly the devil’s advocates.
3. Glorying in sin. Higher than this the corruption of man’s nature
cannot possibly go. This is publicly to set up a standard on behalf of vice, to
wear its colours, and avowedly to assert and espouse the cause of it, in
defiance of all that is sacred or civil, moral or religious.
IV. Why it brings
down judgment and destruction upon the sinner.
1. Because shamelessness in sin always presupposes those actions and
courses which God rarely suffers to go unpunished.
2. Because of the destructive influence which it has upon the government
of the world. It is manifest that the integrity of men’s manners cannot be
secured, where there is not preserved upon men’s minds a true estimate of vice
and virtue, that is, where vice is not looked upon as shameful and opprobrious,
and virtue valued as worthy and honourable. But now, where vice walks with a
daring front, and no shame attends the practice or the practisers of it, there
is an utter confusion of the first dividing and distinguishing properties of
men’s actions; morality falls to the ground, and government must quickly
follow. And whenever it comes to fare thus with any civil State, virtue and
common honesty seem to make their appeal to the supreme Governor of all things,
to take the matter into His own hands, and to correct those clamorous
enormities which are grown too big and strong for law or shame, or any human
coercion.
V. What those
judgments are.
1. A sudden and disastrous death; and, indeed, suddenness in this can
hardly be without disaster.
2. War and desolation.
3. Captivity. (R. South, D. D.)
The shamelessness of sinners
The legend says that, a sinner being at confession, the devil
appeared, saying, that he came to make restitution. Being asked what he would
restore, he said, “Shame; for it is shame that I have stolen from this sinner
to make him shameless in sinning; and now I have come to restore it to him, to
make him ashamed to confess his sins.”
Neither could they blush.
Blushing
(with Ezra 9:6):--“Just fancy,” said Tom, who
had been doing a bit of word study by the aid of his newly-acquired Skeat, “to
blush is, in its origin, the same word as to blaze, or to blast, and a blush in
Danish means a torch.” “And a very good origin too,” said his sister, who got
red in the face and hot all over on the slightest provocation. Yes, youth is
the blushing time of life. Said Diogenes to a youth whom he saw blushing:
“Courage, my boy, that is the complexion of virtue.”
I. There is the
blush of guilt. Who broke the window? All were silent; but one boy looked
uneasy. His blush was the blast of his red-hot conscience, condemning the dumb
tongue.
II. There is the
blush of shame. It was such a mean thing to tell that lie to one’s own father.
It was a shabby trick I played my chum. And that nasty word I spoke yesterday
to a girl, too, it makes me sick-ashamed of myself to think of it. Yes; you
ought to think shame. But “the man that blushes is not quite a brute.”
III. There is the
blush of modesty. Tom said nothing about his splendid score at the match, until
his sister read aloud at breakfast next morning the flattering report given in
the newspaper, at which Tom blushed like a girl. He had his revenge, however,
when more than one letter came to Shena from Dr. Barnardo, and Tom protested
that he knew now why she had no money to spend on sweets, and poor Shena got
very red in the face and went out of the room.
IV. There is the
blush of honest indignation at the meanness of the cheat, the cruelty of the
bully, the greed of the glutton, and the indifference of selfish souls. This
blush of virtuous anger must have come into the meek face of Christ, when He
rebuked the disciples for keeping the mothers from bringing their children to
Him.
V. Just twice, I
think, do we read of blushing in the Bible, and the solemn thing is that the
blush in both cases is not before men, but under the eye of God.
1. One of the most remarkable prayers in the Bible is the prayer of
Ezra, the scribe--the brave, good, holy man who led a company of his Israelite
brethren from Babylon to Jerusalem. It rises hot and passionate out of his very
heart; for, like all priestly souls, he makes all the sins of the people his
own. “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to Thee, my God.” He
loved his people so dearly that their faults seemed to be his own, and he
blushed before the Holy God for shame of them.
2. Quite at the opposite pole of feeling is the other place in the
Bible where blushing is spoken of. For Jeremiah, the broken-hearted prophet of
the Lord, uses it when he has to describe the utter callousness of the people,
in spite of all their sins and sorrows. “They were not at all ashamed, neither
could they blush.” That is surely the most hopeless state of all, when one has
lost the very power to feel shame and sorrow before God. The Florentines used
to point to Dante in the street, whispering, “There’s the man who has been in
hell.” But hell has come into the heart of the man who cannot blush. Oh, it is
better, as Mahomet said in his old age, to blush in this world than in the
next. St. John of the eagle eye and loving heart tells us that in the great day
of judgment we shall either have the boldness or liberty and confidence of
children, or we shall shrink away with shame “like a guilty thing surprised.” (A.
N. Mackray, M. A.)
Verse 16
Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is
the good way, and walk therein.
The good old way
Were you called together to listen to the present preacher only,
courtesy might demand at your hands an attentive hearing for him; but if an
apostle of our Lord Jesus Christ were the preacher, he would have far higher
claims; and if one of the ancient prophets were the speaker, or at any rate,
could an angel or an archangel be permitted now to address you, we think you
would all admit that to be inattentive to his words would be highly unbecoming:
how much more so to be inattentive if the God of the whole earth were addressing
you! And is He not? “Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see,” etc.
I. To the way
recommended in the text. “Ask for the old paths, where is the good way.” The
words of the text are metaphorical, and represent true religion under the aspect
of a pilgrimage or a journey. If, then, you ask me, “What is the way to
heaven?” I refer to the words of the Lord Jesus when speaking to Thomas. “I,”
said He, “am the way.” “No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” Christ is the
way. He is the way from sin to holiness,--from darkness to light,--from bondage
to liberty,--from misery to happiness,--from the gates of hell to the throne of
heaven. But how is He the way? By His example: for “leaving us an example, we
should follow His steps.” By His doctrine: for “we know that He is true, and
teaches the way of God in truth.” By His sacrificial death: for “we have
boldness to eater into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living
way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His
flesh.” By His Spirit: when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you
into all the truth. How, then, are we to walk in the way? By “repentance
towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ.” “Except ye repent ye
shall all perish.” Believe m the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. “He
that believeth shall not perish.” But what are the epithets by which the way is
described in our text? The way is not “the broad way” that leadeth to
destruction; nor “the hard way,” pursued by transgressors; nor the way that
only seemeth right to a man, while the end thereof is death; but it is the good
way, and the old path.
1. It is an old way. True, there are persons who more than insinuate
that the way, as just described to you, is a new thing. They say the way to
heaven is not now what it formerly was, if our definition is correct. But what
have we said? Have we not affirmed that salvation is by Christ, and through Him
only? Have we not said that repentance and faith are the conditions of obtaining
it from Him? And is this new doctrine? Why, this doctrine is as old as the days
of Wesley and Whitfield, for they proclaimed it in England, Wales, Ireland,
Scotland, and America. But go a step further back. What were the leading
doctrines of the illustrious Reformers? For what were they traduced, slandered,
excommunicated, and martyred, but for this? They asserted that penance was a
human prescription--that works of supererogation were a delusion--that images,
beads, holy water, crucifixes, and relics were but “sanctified nonsense”--that
Christ was the only mediator between God and man. But we go further still. What
did our Lord and the apostles themselves teach? They preached “repent and
believe!” Nor do we stop here. What did the prophets--Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Micah, Malachi, and the rest--who flourished from seven hundred to a
thousand years anterior to the Christian era teach? Did not they speak of the
promised seed, the Messiah, the Redeemer, in whom men should believe, and by
whom they should be saved? Go to that splendid treasury of ecclesiastical
biography--the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and look at the
fourth verse: “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than
Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his
gifts: and by it he being dead, yet speaketh.” Well, then, some three thousand
years elapsed between the time of Abel’s believing and that of Jeremiah’s
preaching, and the way had been tried during the whole of that long period, and
was therefore properly called by the prophet “the old path.” Oh no; we bring no
new doctrine to your ears, no new way before your eyes. We grant you that some
of the circumstantials of religion have been changed since the days of Abel; but
the essentials have remained the same. A Saviour, a mediator, a sacrifice, an
atonement; repentance, faith, prayer, and holy living--thane all abide ever.
The way is called new by the apostle, in reference to that fuller and clearer
development of it furnished by the life and death of the Lord Jesus; and even
when contrasting it with those ritualistic observances on which the Jews had
long laid more than sufficient stress: but in all ages Christ has been the
Saviour of men, and faith in Him the prime condition of salvation.
2. The text speaks of this way as a good one. “Where is the good
way?” It is not only a good way, but the good way--good emphatically; the only
good way, therefore, par excellence, the good way. God is the author of it, and
He is good. He is the good Being: His name God implies this, as it is a
contraction of the adjective “good.” Christ is the way, and He is good.
Pilate’s question, “What evil hath He done?” remains still unanswered. The Holy
Spirit recommends this way; and He would not recommend anything evil. The Bible
is a good book--all insinuations by scoffers to the contrary
notwithstanding,--and it strongly urges us to pursue this way. There have
been--and, thank God! still are--some good men in the world, bad as it is; and
they have travelled, or are travelling in this way. However vile they may have
been ere entering this way, they became virtuous and happy when they began to
travel on this path. Men have said the way of salvation by faith in the merits
of another is not good, for it will lead to licentiousness--to
latitudinarianism. But such men speak without experience. The faith that saves
us is not a nominal thing--not merely speculative, but practical, evangelical
faith. “Show me thy faith without thy works,” O objector, “and I will show thee
my faith by my works.” Ah, there it is. This faith of ours works, and has
works; “it works by love, and purifies the heart.” While we repose on the
merits of the Saviour, we copy the example of the Saviour; while we believe He
died for us, we exhibit the genuineness of our belief by a holy life.
II. The duty the
text enjoins. “Stand ye in the ways,” etc.
1. “Stand in the ways, and see.” These words seem to refer to the
position of a traveller on foot, who, in prosecuting his pilgrimage, has
reached a point where there is a junction of several roads; and who is
perplexed by this circumstance, and at a loss which way to pursue. What can he
do in this case? The text says, “Stand,” halt, ere you go astray, and try to
ascertain the proper direction, or you may lose time in losing your way, and
perchance may haw to retrace your steps, amid the jeers of witnesses, and under
the self-inflicted penalty of regretful reproach. He takes from his pocket a
book and a map, from which he learns that the road to the right goes to one
place, that to the left to another, but the one straight on to the place of his
destination. He then, after due examination, prosecutes his pilgrimage with
pleasurable satisfaction; having no tormenting doubts as to his course, but a
strong assurance of reaching, by and by, the desired end. Now, the traveller to
eternity--the man in search of “the path of life”--has been graciously provided
with an “itinerary”; that is, God’s own road book, the Bible. Hence, says the
Saviour, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and
they are they which testify of Me.” Go, then, fellow traveller, to the
ever-blessed book; pore over its lessons; study its precepts; imitate its
examples; and realise its promises.
2. “Ask for the way.” See that man with his map and book; he is still
perplexed somewhat; he wants counsel; he needs a guide; let him ask advice of
those who know by experience what he has yet to learn. Ah! up comes a person
who knows the road intimately, who has travelled along it these many years, and
who loves to give his best practical advice to all inquirers. Well, ask him. He
is a Gospel minister, or some old weather-beaten pilgrim, who has borne the
heat of many a summer, and the stormy blasts of many a winter; he will be right
glad to tell thee the way thou shouldst go. And, if he fail, there is a Guide
who never will; for, “when the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into
all the truth.”
3. “Walk therein.” Yes, it avails not what we read, how much
information we acquire, with whomsoever we converse, or even how often we pray,
unless we “walk in the way.” John Bunyan tells us of a Mr. Talkative, who was
very ready and fluent in religious discussions and conversations; but who left
the practical part of religion to others. Alas! that the descendants of that
personage are not extinct. Remember that no man can get to heaven by looking at
maps of the road, or conversing with those who are journeying thitherward; we
must all “walk in the way.”
III. To the blessing
promised. “Ye shall find rest for your souls.” The word “rest” is one of the
sweetest monosyllables in our language. Robert Hall said he could think of the
word tear till he wept; I could think of the word rest till I smiled. After a
paroxysm of pain, how delicious is ease and rest after a hard day’s toil, how
delightful to retire to rest! And if rest of the body be sweet, sweeter still
is rest for the soul. “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmities, but a
wounded spirit who can bear?” Rest for the soul we all long to find; we cannot
help it. We must be in quest of rest do what we may. Peace, happiness, mental
quietude, rest, every man of all things desiderates. But where may it be found?
Secularists and quondam socialists say in gratifying our animal passions; the
miser--significant name, literally miserable--hopes to find it among golden
gains; the ambitious climbs up the rugged heights of power and fame, and hopes
to descry it there; but the Christian is the only man who can exclaim with the
exulting Greek, Eureka! Eureka! I have found it! (W. Antliff, D. D.)
The ancient paths
Transition is easy from an outward physical path to a moral
meaning: roads men walk with their feet suggest the road men’s thoughts
habitually walk in, the path in which their feelings are accustomed to move,
the way in which their conduct naturally flows. In this secondary sense, use
text to point out the necessity, in all who would go right, of keeping upon the
old ways, the ascertained ways, which, in the experience of mankind, have been
proved beneficial.
I. Our boast of
novelty, our glorying in our newness, as if we were in advance of everybody and
everything else, is a fanciful mistake. Our thoughts, and all the channels of
our thoughts, are the result of the thought and experience of thousands of
years that are gone by. Political habits and customs, knowledge of right and
equity, have been gradually unfolded from ages past. Combinations are new,
elements are old.
II. The present
time is noticeable for an extraordinary outbreak of activity along new lines of
thought and belief.
1. Men are inclined to doubt generally the social and moral results
of past experience, to repudiate long-accepted social maxims and customs.
2. General distrust is being thrown upon religions teachings: not
positive unbelief, but uncertainty. And by having confidence in religion its
real power is destroyed. Thus thousands are abandoning old paths--old thoughts,
usages, customs, habits, convictions, virtues.
III. There are
certain great permanencies of thought, character, and custom, especially
necessary in our time.
1. Moral and social progress can never be so rapid as physical
developments. Men cannot be changed in their principles, feelings, and inner
life in the same ratio as external changes go on.
2. There is danger in giving up any belief or custom which has been
entwined in our moral sense. Regard as sacred the first principles of truth.
3. In the transition from a lower to a higher form of belief there is
peril. Hence, we are not to think it our duty in a headlong way to change men’s
beliefs simply because they are erroneous. As if changing from one mode of
belief to another was going to change the conscience, reason, moral
susceptibility, and character.
IV. The
relinquishment of trust or of practice should always be from worse to better.
If you want a traveller to have a better road, make that better road, and then
he will need no argument to persuade him to walk in it. If you are teaching
that one intellectual system is better than another, and that one religious
organisation, church, or creed, is better, prove it by presenting better fruit
than the other, and men will need little argument beyond. If a Church breeds
meekness, fortitude, love, courage, disinterestedness; if it makes noble
men--uncrowned but undoubted princes,--then it is a Church, a living epistle
which will convince men.
V. All new truths,
like new wines, must have a period of fermentation.
1. All truths are at first on probation; must be scrutinised,
ransacked, vindicated.
2. Guard against wild and unseasonable urgency in throwing off
traditional faiths and truths, for those you can discover for yourselves.
Accept what other men construct for you. We are so related, by the laws of God,
one to another, that no man can think out everything for himself.
VI. We do well to
look cautiously at new truths and those who advocate them. There is a conceit,
a dogmatism, a bigotry of science, as really as there is of religion.
Application--
1. All the tendencies which narrow the moral sense and enlarge the
liberty of the passions are dangerous.
2. All tendencies which increase self-conceit are to be suspected and
disowned.
3. Those tendencies which extinguish in a man all spiritual elements,
such as arise from faith in God, in our spirituality and immortality, must
inevitably degrade our manhood.
4. All tendencies which take away your hope of and belief in another
world, take away your motive for striving to reach a higher life. Without this
hope men will have a weary pilgrimage in a world of unbelief. (H. W.
Beecher.)
The old paths
I. The old paths
are to be distinguished from theological creeds and dogmas. Lifted upon the
shoulders of many generations, with opportunities for interpreting the Bible in
the light of a developing Christianity, it would be strange if our horizon had
not increased. Think as those men thought--not necessarily what they thought.
II. A return to the
“old paths” does not call us away from vigorous life. Wherever human thought,
in obedience to its best nature, essays to got wherever desire for higher and
better things reaches out, there are the paths of the Lord. They are as “the
shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” Treading them,
“every power finds sweet employ.”
III. Some of the
characteristics of the old paths.
1. They are plain. True, the fogs sometimes hang low upon them as
upon worldly ways; but we can always, in the darkest hour, see one step before
us, and that taken, we can see another. The engineer cannot see his track all
the way from New York to Albany, but in the heaviest night he trusts his
headlight and keeps on his way. So let the Christian do.
2. They are unchanging. God’s paths, like Himself, are “the same
yesterday, today, and forever.”
3. They are paths of righteousness (Psalms 23:3). Old coins lose their royal
stamp by much handling. So with some of our grandest words. Righteousness is
one of them. It is not formalism, it is not morality. It is right living, with
a pure heart as its source.
4. They are paths of mercy (Psalms 25:10).
5. They are paths of plenty (Psalms 65:11). What a struggle men have
for mere existence! They rise early and sit up late and eat the bread of
affliction. They have left the paths of the Lord. They have chased phantoms.
They must endure for the time the fruit of their doings. Yet, notwithstanding
these seeming exceptions, the precious promise abides (Psalms 37:3).
6. They are paths of life (Proverbs 2:19). What a path that where
Christ is the support of our steps, guide of our way, and the crown of our
journey’s end!
7. They are paths of peace (Proverbs 3:17; Isaiah 26:3). There is no peace but in
the narrow way where God gives pardon and reconciliation.
8. They are His paths (Isaiah 2:3). It is not possible, in a
spiritual sense, that God should give us anything and not give us Himself.
Without Himself the graces of the Spirit are only names.
IV. How to find
these paths.
1. By standing. How hard it is to stop and stand still and think and
search!
2. By seeing. With open eyes we may see whether the path be an old
path, whether it is macadamised with living truth, whether they who are upon it
wear the livery of the Great King.
3. By asking. Men are ever ready to ask counsel in worldly things.
Why not of God and His servants in regard to heavenly things? “Ask, and ye
shall receive.”
4. By walking. Having used sight and tongue and thoughts, we are then
to act. God has united faith and works, prayer and activity.
V. The promise to
those who obey. “Rest.” (E. P. Ingersoll, D. D.)
Novelty in religion exploded
Novelty is a term which, when applied to man, always involves a
degree of previous ignorance. The astronomer finds out new stars, the botanist
new plants, the linguist new tongues, the geometrician new modes of proof and
illustration, the politician new laws, the geographer new islands, the
navigator new creeks, anchorages and havens, the tradesman new articles of
commerce, the artificer and mechanic new methods of accomplishing the work of
their hands. Each successive generation, in a civilised country especially,
makes advancement on the experiments of the former. In religious matters,
however, it is different. We am to expect no new Bible, no new ordinances, no
new Messiah, no new discoveries in the substance of truth and piety, any more
than we look for a new sun, moon, and seasons, in the institutions of nature.
We allow, indeed, that in ourselves, as we pass from a state of unregeneracy to
that of renewal, “old things pass away, and all things become new”; that in the
progress of sanctification, there is a succession of discoveries, as we grow in
knowledge and grace; that in the pursuit of schemes of usefulness, new modes of
operation may be struck out; but as to all the rest, it is established by the
Great Head of the Church to be subjected to no alteration until the time of the
restitution of all things, when there shall be a “new heaven and earth,” etc.
I. Trace the good
old way.
1. There is the way of theory. This will be found in its grand and
essential elements in the Word of truth; for this is the chart or map in which
the path is laid down in which the pious have walked from the beginning.
2. There is the way of experience, or the application of these truths
to the mind by such an influence and in such a way as to render them living
principles of activity and enjoyment. Repentance for sin, dependence, devotion,
etc.
3. There is the way of practice; and this with regard to God and our
fellow creatures.
II. Show what is
your duty with respect to the path which has been described.
1. Primarily, to institute a serious, a deliberate and cautious
inquiry, that you may ascertain whether you are in the right way. One grand
reason why many who profess to make the inquiry “What is truth?” do not
succeed, is, that they indulge in a light, trifling temper of mind, quite
unsuited to the character of their avowed engagement, and highly offensive to
God.
2. Steadily pursue the path you have ascertained to be right. Aim to
be established, strengthened, settled on your most holy faith, and guard
against that versatility which will be an effective preventive to
sanctification, comfort, and usefulness. With walking we always connect the
idea, not of habit only, but of progress. Your knowledge, your sacred virtues,
your practical obedience should be always on the advance.
Conclusion--
1. The lamentable consequences of a refusal to walk in this way.
2. The inestimable advantages of walking in the good old way. (John
Clayton.)
The old paths
Perhaps the chief danger attending modem progress is the neglect
of antiquity. This does not apply to literature and art, but to science and
religion. A man who aspires to excellence in letters or art must go on
pilgrimage to the old paths, and having found them must abide in them. Take the
single example of sculpture. What has been gained for this art in the
advancement of later times? Nothing has been gained, but much lost which can
never be recovered. The most celebrated work of recent artists in stone is
little more than an imitation of the masterpieces of Athens executed between
two and three thousand years ago. The hope of the learner in this profession is
to stand in the old paths. With some qualifications the same is true of
literature. The Greek and Roman classics are still our teachers; and there is
no prospect of the immediate declension of their authority. No liberal
education is supposed to be possible without the languages of antiquity and the
compositions that adorn them. Scientific culture has been repaid by abundant
fruit in recent years: but the losses sustained by science through our
ignorance of antiquity are inconceivable. Students in science will be the first
to acknowledge and deplore this loss. But while literature cannot neglect the
old paths, and science is devoutly engaged in retracing her lost ways, religion
is in imminent danger of drifting from her ancient landmarks. The peril I
desire to point out is not new in the history of the Christian faith. There is
something in his nature which makes a human being feel after a God; and this
act of search would be far more likely to touch the object sought when the race
was young, when the impressions received were new, uncorrupted by speculation,
unfettered by tradition, than at this time when the race is old and our
impressions of the self within us, and of surrounding nature, are unconsciously
weighted and often made false by hereditary influences, and by misleading ideas
that swarm about us in childhood and are the spring of errors which it is the most
difficult task of education to discover and correct. This invariable tendency
to look for truth and wisdom and goodness, not to the possibilities of the
present, not even to the lessons of the immediate past, but to the records and
traditions of a remote age, is a striking confirmation of the biblical history
of mankind. That wistful looking back on the part of the nations is a pathetic
sign that something is missing which once was ours when heaven and truth were
nearer to this earth than they are now. When I bring these problems to the
ancient ways of God that, setting out from the creation of man and following
the race, converge upon Christ, I discover the clue that leads to their
interpretation. The old paths ran into Christ. His attitude towards the men who
flourished before Him was neither hostile nor independent. He spoke of them
with reverence; He quoted their teaching in support of His own claims; He
proved that that teaching when divided from Himself was not only incomplete,
but in some cases had no meaning; that He, in fact, was the complement of the
older wisdom. He dwelt not only with contemporaries, but in the old paths as
the Illuminating Presence of the past. “Before Abraham was, I am.” He lighted
up the parables of the sages; He harmonised prediction with history, and type
with the fulfilling event or person. And as the old paths met in Christ--as He
was the “Way” to which all other paths and ways led the traveller, not only
thoroughfares defined and laid down in systems of law and belief, but irregular
tracks made by earnest but wandering feet in search of the Highway; as He was
the “Truth,” in which all moral intimations, ideas, and aspirations found their
fulfilment and satisfaction; as He was the “Life,” in which all the nobler
elements of the heart attained their highest purity and their perfect
expression--so He is now the centre and resting place of all doctrine, of all
inquiry, and of all faith. What will be the result of the attempt to make the
New Testament a modern publication? We smooth a hardness here, we read in a
meaning there, we hide the significance of this doctrine behind the assumed
importance of that, on the plea of keeping the Book in touch with a scientific
age. There will be no end to this recasting until we end the Bible itself. We
share the conquests of science, and partake the renown of scientific men; but
theirs is the truth of research, ours is the truth of revelation. Their
conclusions are necessarily subject to revision; many of them perish outright;
but the Word of our God abideth, and shall stand forever. (E. E. Jenkins,
LL. D.)
The old paths
I. Excellent
general advice. “Stand, and see, and ask.” I take these words to be a call to
thought and consideration. Now, to set men thinking is one great object which
every teacher of religion should always keep before him. Serious thought, in
short, is one of the first steps towards heaven. There are but few, I suspect,
who deliberately and calmly choose evil, refuse good, turn their back on God,
and resolve to serve sin as sin. The most part are what they are because they
began their present course without thought. They would not take the trouble to
look forward and consider the consequences of their conduct. By thoughtless
actions they created habits which have become second nature to them. They have
got into a groove now, and nothing but a special miracle of grace will stop
them. There are none, we must all be aware, who bring themselves into so much
trouble by want of thinking as the young. Too often they choose in haste a wrong
profession or business, and find after two or three years, that they have made
an irretrievable mistake, and, if I may borrow a railway phrase, have got on
the wrong line of rails. But the young are not the only persons who need the
exhortation of the text in this day. It is preeminently advice for the times.
Hurry is the characteristic of the age in which we live. On every side you see
the many driving furiously, like Jehu, after business or politics. They seem
unable to find time for calm, quiet, serious reflection about their souls and a
world to come. Men and brethren, consider your ways. Beware of the infection of
the times.
II. A particular
direction. “Ask for the old paths.” We want a return to the old paths of our
reformers. I grant they were rough workmen, and made some mistakes. They worked
under immense difficulties, and deserve tender judgment and fair consideration.
But they revived out of the dust grand foundation truths which had been long
buried and forgotten. By embalming those truths in our Articles and Liturgy, by
incessantly pressing them on the attention of our forefathers, they changed the
whole character of this nation, and raised a standard of true doctrine and
practice, which, after three centuries, is a power in the land, and has an
insensible influence on English character to this very day. Can we mend these
old paths? Novelty is the idol of the day. But I have yet to learn that all new
views of religion are necessarily better than the old. It is not so in the work
of men’s hands. I doubt if this nineteenth century could produce an architect
who could design better buildings than the Parthenon or Coliseum, or a mason
who could rear fabrics which will last so long. It certainly is not so in the
work of men’s minds. Thucydides is not superseded by Macaulay, nor Homer by
Milton. Why, then, are we to suppose that old theology is necessarily inferior
to new? I ask boldly, What extensive good has ever been done in the world,
except by the theology of the “old paths”? and I confidently challenge a reply.
There never has been any spread of the Gospel, any conversion of nations or
countries, any successful evangelistic work, excepting by the old-fashioned
distinct doctrines of the early Christians and the reformers.
III. A precious
promise. “Ye shall find rest to your souls.” Let it never be forgotten that
rest of conscience is the secret want of a vast portion of mankind. The
labouring and heavy laden are everywhere: they are a multitude that man can
scarcely number; they are to be found in every climate and in every country
under the sun. Everywhere you will find trouble, care, sorrow: anxiety,
murmuring, discontent, and unrest. Did God create man at the beginning to be
unhappy? Most certainly not. Are human governments to blame because men are not
happy? At most to a very slight extent. The fault lies far too deep to be
reached by human laws. Sin and departure from God are the true reasons why men
are everywhere restless, labouring, and heavy laden. Sin is the universal
disease which infects the whole earth. The rest that Christ gives in the “old
paths” is an inward thing. It is rest of heart, rest of conscience, rest of
mind, rest of affection, rest of will. (Bishop J. C. Ryle.)
Standing in the old paths
I. The dangers of
judging of religion, without long and diligent examination. Happy would it be
for the present age if men were distrustful of their own abilities.
II. The
reasonableness of searching into antiquity, or of asking for the old paths.
With regard to the order and government of the primitive Church, we may
doubtless follow their authority with perfect security; they could not possibly
be ignorant of laws executed, and customs practised, by themselves; nor would
they, even supposing them corrupt, serve any interests of their own, by handing
down false accounts to posterity. Nor is this the only, though perhaps the
chief use of these writers; for, in matters of faith, and points of doctrine,
those, at least, who lived in the ages nearest to the times of the apostles,
undoubtedly deserve to be consulted. The oral doctrines, and occasional
explications of the apostles, must have been treasured up in the memory of
their audiences, and transmitted for some time from father to son.
III. The happiness
which attends a well-grounded belief and steady practice of religion. Suspense
and uncertainty distract the soul, disturb its motions, and retard its
operations; while we doubt in what manner to worship God, there is great danger
lest we should neglect to worship Him at all. There is a much closer connection
between practice and speculation than is generally imagined. A man disquieted
with scruples concerning any important article of religion, will, for the most
part, find himself indifferent and cold, even to those duties which he
practised before with the most active diligence and ardent satisfaction. Let
him then ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and he shall find rest
for his soul. (S. Johnson, LL. D.)
On the appeal to antiquity in matters of religion
The appeal to antiquity is worth your closest observation, as one
which may as well be made in our own days as in those of the prophet Jeremiah.
The paths which are to be sought for are “the old paths,” and it is their age
which seems represented as giving them safety. Now it were quite idle to assert
that this is in all cases a sound view, or that it will necessarily hold good
when applied to the businesses and sciences of life. If we attempted, for
example, to introduce into natural philosophy, the principle that the old paths
are the best, we should only be urging men to travel back to a broad waste of
ignorance, and to settle themselves once more in the crudest and most erroneous
of opinions. We are quite ready with the like admission, in matters of civil
polity. We hold unreservedly that nothing human can come to its perfection at
once; and that whilst there are certain fundamental principles which can never
be swerved from with safety, the determination of the best form of government
for a community demands many successive experiments; so that one generation is
not to hand down its institutions to the next, as not to be violated because
not to be improved. The legacy of the fathers should be their experience, and
that experience should be carried by the children as a new element into their
political competitions. But the principle which applies not to sciences or
governments may be applicable, without reservation, to religion. Religious
truth is matter of revelation, and not therefore left to be searched out and
determined by successive experiments; whereas truth of any other description is
only to be come at by painful investigation; and until that investigation has
been carried to the farthest possible limit, we have no right to claim such a
fixedness for our positions, that those who come after us must receive them as
irreversible. Yet we would not have it thought, that even in matters of
religion, we yield unqualified submission to the voice of antiquity. We hold
that there is room for discovery, strictly and properly so called in theology,
as well as in astronomy or chemistry. We ourselves must necessarily be more
advantageously circumstanced than any of our fathers, when the matter in
question is the fulfilment of prophecy. Prophecy is of course nothing but
anticipated history; and the further on, therefore, we live, in the march of
those occurrences which are to make up the story of our globe and its tenants,
the more power have we to find the foretold in the fulfilled, and thus to
lessen the amount of unaccomplished prediction. Now when this exception has
been made, we do not hesitate to apply our text to the disclosures of
revelation, and to assert that in all disputes upon doctrines, and in all
debates upon creeds, it is the part of wise men to appeal to antiquity.
1. When we speak of antiquity, we refer to Christianity in its young
days, whilst the Church was still warm with her first love, and her teachers
were but little removed from those who had held intercourse with Christ and His
apostles. It is in this manner, for example, that we introduce the authority of
antiquity into the question of infant baptism. Unless apostles baptised
infants, and unless they taught that infants were to be received into the
Church, it seems well-nigh incredible that those who lived near their times,
and must have obtained instruction almost from their very lips, should have
adopted the custom of infant baptism. We would advance another illustration of
the worth of the witness of antiquity, and we fetch it from a fundamental
matter of doctrine. We believe, undoubtedly, that the Bible is adapted to all
ages of the world and all ranks of society; and that the Spirit which indited
it, is as ready now, as in the early days of Christianity, to act as its
interpreter and open up its truths. We are assured, therefore, that the sublime
doctrine of the Trinity, if it, indeed, be contained in the Word of
inspiration, will be made known to every prayerful and diligent student; and
that there will need no acquaintance with the creeds or the commentaries of primitive
Christians, in order to the apprehending of this grand discovery of the nature
of Godhead. But, at the same time, when all kinds of opinions are broached,
diametrically at variance with the doctrine of the Trinity, and men labour to
devise and support interpretations of Scripture which shall quite overthrow
this foundation stone of Christianity, we count it of no mean worth, that in
writings which have come down to us from days just succeeding the apostolic, we
can find the Trinity in unity as broadly asserted, and as clearly defined, as
in any of the treatises which now professedly undertake its defence. Now you
will understand, from these instances, the exact use of antiquity, in matters
of religion; and the sense in which it may fairly be expected that the old
paths are the right. “Where was your religion till Luther arose?” is the
question broached in every dispute between the Romish Church and the Reformed.
The Romish Church prides itself on being the old Church, and reproaches the
Reformed with being the new. And we admit, in all frankness, that if the Romish
Church made good its pretensions--if it could win for itself the praise of
antiquity, and fix fairly on the Protestant newness, Popery would gain an
almost unassailable position; for we are inclined to hold it as little less
than an axiom in religion, that the oldest Christianity is the best. But we are
quite ready to meet the Roman Catholic on the ground of antiquity; and to
decide the goodness by deciding the oldness of our paths. We contend, that
whatever is held in common by the two Churches may be proved from Scripture,
and shown to have been maintained by the earliest Christians; but that
everything received by the Romish and rejected by the Protestant, can neither
be substantiated by the Bible, nor sanctioned by the practice of the primitive
Church.
2. There is not one amongst you, who ought not to know something of
this appeal to antiquity. We may make the like assertion in regard to the
Christian Sabbath. If asked for our authority for keeping holy the first day of
the week, in place of the seventh, you cannot produce a direct scriptural
command; but we are in possession of such clear proof, that the apostles and
their immediate successors made the first day their Sabbath, that we may claim
to the observance all the force of Divine institution. This, however, we must
all see, is employing the practice of antiquity where we have not a distinct
precept of Scripture; in other words, we prove the right paths by proving the
old paths. We are not, indeed, able to appeal to primitive Christians, and to
show you this union of Church or State as being sanctioned by apostolical
practice. Of course, until the rulers of the kingdom embraced the faith of
Christ (and this was not of early occurrence), Christianity could not become
established. But, as Milner observes, from the earliest ages of patriarchal
government, when holy men were favoured with a Divine revelation, governors
taught the true religion, and did not permit their subjects to propagate atheism,
idolatry, or false religion. There was, as under the Jewish constitution, an
unquestionable authority which the magistrates possessed in ecclesiastical
regulations: so that union between Church and State, in place of being novel,
can be traced up almost from the beginning of the world. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
The old paths
I. The
denomination.
1. “Old paths.” Way of--
2. “Old,” because--
II. The despot.
“Good way.”
1. A path may be “old,” yet not “good”; this is both.
2. When may a path be called “good”?
III. The directions.
They who seek this path should bell.
1. Cautious in their observations.
2. Earnest in their inquiries.
3. Prompt in entering thereon.
IV. The
destination.
1. In the journey many blessings of rest will be enjoyed, as
contentment, satisfaction, cheerfulness, security.
2. Afterwards there will be fulness of rest: the path leads to
eternal repose, happiness, glory. (Sermon Framework.)
The good old path
Men are travellers. No continuing city here; no rest. Days upon
earth but a shadow; none abiding. Must go on--from earth, with its cares and
sorrows and privileges and joys--either to heaven or hell.
I. A solemn
exhortation.
1. We should ascertain what path we are walking in. Men do not think
enough about spiritual things. Many a poor misguided traveller would enter the
right path and obtain eternal life if he gave heed to the things which make for
his peace.
2. We must not only ascertain if our way be wrong, but inquire for
the right path.
3. Having found the right path, we are to walk in it. Knowledge alone
is not sufficient; there must be practical application of it.
II. A gracious
promise.
1. The rest promised is of the highest kind. For the soul. The soul
requires it. Burdened with sin; filled with feverish anxiety; like a ship
tossed on a troubled sea.
2. This rest can be bestowed by God alone. It is the fruit of our
union with Him, the result of our being His dear children.
3. In what does it consist? In our being forgiven; in our being
conscious of the Divine favour; in our having the Spirit of Christ in our
souls; in our dependence upon the promises. (H. B. Ingrain.)
The good old way
I. The nature of
the old way from which adam so fatally swerved, and all his descendants with
him.
1. The way of self-denial. As this principle involves resistance to
temptation, control of temper and overthrow of natural inclinations and habits,
it is necessarily an important ingredient of true religion; from the nature of
the case, from the bare fact of its being amenable to the superior will of the
Almighty, an indispensable requisite of finite perfection in all instances
whatsoever.
2. The way of implicit dependence upon God. Until the foul spirit of
restless discontent took possession of his breast Adam was sufficed to rest and
rely for everything upon the wisdom, power, love and benignity of Him who
created him content to know no more than what He taught him, and to exercise
his mental faculties and reasoning powers in entire subordination to his
Superior’s wish, questioning nothing, but taking everything as perfect that
came from Him. The knowledge, service and worship of God were the objects of
all he thought, saw, or did. Beyond them there was nothing he eared to desire
or know.
3. The way of humility. “Knowledge” says St. Paul, “puffeth up, but
charity edifieth.” What knowledge? Not the chastened, subdued, heaven-taught
and heaven-tempered wisdom which guided the soul and enlarged the understanding
of Adam before he fell, but that meretricious counterfeit of it--that now
delusive light, whose pride-awakening, man-flattering beams, brought first to
bear on his foolish heart by the arch destroyer at the fall, allured him to his
destruction.
II. How we may obey
the command of the text in returning to this way. Whoever in earnest desires to
recover his lost innocence, and the forfeited favour of his Creator, and to
return to that better land, that state of ineffable bliss and purity, which was
the original birthright of us all, are taught in the Gospel of the grace of God
that the first step in that direction is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the
Saviour of sinners; which is nothing else than that filial trust or confidence
we have already mentioned as displayed by Adam before he fell.
III. The necessity
and advantage, as well as duty, of obeying the advice given in the text. (S.
H. Simpson.)
The respect due to antiquity
It has been well said by Lord Bacon, that the antiquity of past
ages is the youth of the world--and therefore it is an inversion of the right
order, to look for greater wisdom in some former generation than there should
be in our present day. “The time in which we now live,” says he, “is properly
the ancient time, because now the world is ancient; and not that time which we
call ancient, when we look in a retrograde direction, and by a computation
backward from ourselves.” There must be a delusion, then, in that homage which
is given to the wisdom of antiquity, as d it bore the same superiority over the
wisdom of the present times, which the wisdom of an old does over that of a
young man. It is in vain to talk of Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle. Only
grant that there may still be as many good individual specimens of humanity as
before; and a Socrates now, with all the additional lights which have sprung up
in the course of intervening centuries to shine upon his understanding, would
be a greatly wiser man than the Socrates of two thousand years ago. But however
important thus to reduce the deference that is paid to antiquity; and with
whatever grace and propriety it has been done by him who stands at the head of
the greatest revolution in philosophy.
we shall incur the danger of running into most licentious
waywardness, if we receive not the principle, to which I have now adverted,
with two modifications. Our first modification is, that though, in regard to
all experimental truth, the world should be wiser now than it was centuries
ago, this is the fruit not of our contempt or our heedlessness in regard to
former ages, but the fruit of our most respectful attention to the lessons
which their history affords. We do right in not submitting to the dictation of
antiquity; but that is no cause why we should refuse to be informed by her--for
this were throwing us back again to the world’s infancy, like the second
childhood of him whom disease had bereft of all his recollections. And so,
again, in the language of Bacon, “Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men
should make a stand thereupon, and discover what is the best way; but when the
discovery is well taken then to make progression.” But there is a second
modification, which, in the case of a single individual of the species, it is
easy to understand, and which we shall presently apply to the whole species. We
may conceive of a man, that, after many years of vicious indulgence, he is at
once visited by the lights of conscience and memory; and is enabled to contrast
the dislike, and the dissatisfaction, and the dreariness of heart, which now
prey on the decline of his earthly existence, with all the comparative
innocence which gladdened its hopeful and happy morning. As he bethinks him of
his early home, of the piety which flourished there, and that holy atmosphere
in which he was taught to breathe with kindred aspirations, he cannot picture
to himself the bliss and the beauty of such a scene, mellowed as it is by
distance, and mingled with the dearest recollections of parents, and sisters,
and other kindred now mouldering in the dust, he cannot recall for a moment
this fond, though faded imagery, without sighing in the bitterness of his
heart, after the good old way. Now, what applies to one individual may apply to
the species. In a prolonged course of waywardness, they may have wandered very
far from the truth of heaven. And after, perhaps, a whole dreary millennium of
guilt and of darkness, may some gifted individual arise, who can look athwart
the gloom, and descry the purer and the better age of Scripture light which
lies beyond it. And as he compares all the errors and the mazes of that vast
labyrinth into which so many generations had been led by the jugglery of
deceivers, with that simple but shining path which conducts the believer unto
glory, let us wonder not that the aspiration of his pious and patriotic heart
should be for the good old way. We now see wherein it is that the modern might
excel the ancient. In regard to experimental truth, he can be as much wiser
than his predecessors, as the veteran and the observant sage is wiser than the
unpractised stripling, to whom the world is new, and who has yet all to learn
of its wonders and of its ways. The voice that is now emitted from the schools,
whether of physical or of political science, is the voice of the world’s
antiquity. The voice emitted from the same schools, in former ages, was the
voice of the world’s childhood, which then gave forth in lisping utterance the
conceits and the crudities of its young unchastened speculation. But in regard
to things not experimental, in regard even to taste, or to imagination, or to
moral principle, as well as to the stable and unchanging lessons of Divine truth,
there is no such advancement. For the perfecting of these, we have not to wait
the slow processes of observation and discovery, handed down from one
generation to another. They address themselves more immediately to the spirit’s
eye; and just as in the solar light of day, our forefathers saw the whole of
visible creation as perfectly as we--so in the lights, whether of fancy, or of
conscience, or of faith, they may have had as just and vivid a perception of
nature’s beauties; or they may have had as ready a discrimination, and as
religious a sense of all the proprieties of life; or they may have had a
veneration as solemn, and an acquaintance as profound, with the mysteries of
revelation, as the men of our modern and enlightened day. And, accordingly, we
have as sweet or sublime an eloquence, and as transcendent a poetry, and as
much both of the exquisite and noble in all the fine arts, and a morality as
delicate and dignified; and, to crown the whole, as exulted and as informed a
piety in the remoter periods of the world, as among ourselves, to whom the
latter ends of the world have come. In respect of these, we are not on higher
vantage-ground than many of the generations that have gone by. But neither are
we on lower vantage ground. We have access to the same objects. We are in
possession of the same faculties. And, if between the age in which we live, and
some bright and bygone era, there should have intervened the deep and the
long-protracted haze of many centuries, whether of barbarism in taste, or of
profligacy in morals, or of superstition in Christianity, it will only
heighten, by comparison, to our eyes, the glories of all that is excellent; and
if again awakened to light and to liberty, it will only endear the more to our
hearts the good old way. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)
Steadfastness in the old paths
In what respect should we follow old times? Now here there is this
obvious maxim--what God has given us from heaven cannot be improved, what man
discovers for himself does admit of improvement: we follow old times then so
far as God has spoken in them; but in those respects in which God has not
spoken in them, we are not bound to follow them. Now knowledge connected merely
with this present world, we have been left to acquire for ourselves. How we may
till our lands and increase our crops; how we may build our houses, and buy and
sell and get gain; how we may cross the sea in ships; how we may make “fine
linen for the merchant,” or, like Tubal-Cain, be artificers in brass and iron:
as to these objects of this world, necessary indeed for the time, not lastingly
important, God has given us no clear instruction. Here then we have no need to
follow the old ways. Besides, in many of these arts and pursuits, there is
really neither right nor wrong at all; but the good varies with times and
places. Each country has its own way, which is best for itself, and bad for
others. Again, God has given us no authority in questions of science. If we
wish to boast ,bout little matters, we know more about the motions of the heavenly
bodies than Abraham, whose seed was in number as the stars; we can measure the
earth, and fathom the sea, and weigh the air, more accurately than Moses, the
inspired historian of the creation; and we can discuss the varied inhabitants
of this earth better than Solomon. But let us turn to that knowledge which God
has given, and which therefore does not admit of improvement by lapse of time;
this is religious knowledge. God taught Adam how to please Him, and Noah, and
Abraham, and Job. He has taught every nation all over the earth sufficiently
for the moral training of every individual. In all these cases, the world’s
part of the work has been to pervert the truth, not to disengage it from
obscurity. The new ways are the crooked ones. The nearer we mount up to the
time of Adam, or Noah, or Abraham, or Job, the purer light of truth we gain; as
we recede from it we meet with superstitions, fanatical excesses, idolatries,
and immoralities. So again in the case of the Jewish Church, since God
expressly gave them a precise law, it is clear man could not improve upon it;
he could but add the “traditions of men.” Lastly, in the Christian Church, we
cannot add or take away, as regards the doctrines that are contained in the
inspired volume, as regards the faith once delivered to the saints. Other
foundation can no man lay, than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 3:11). But it may be
said that, though the Word of God is an infallible rule of faith, yet it
requires interpreting, and why, as time goes on, should we not discover in it
more than we at present know on the subject of religion and morals? But this is
hardly a question of practical importance to us as individuals; for in truth a
very little knowledge is enough for teaching a man his duty: and, since
Scripture is intended to teach us our duty, surely it was never intended as a
storehouse of mere knowledge. Little knowledge is required for religious
obedience. The poor and rich, the learned and unlearned, are here on a level.
We have all of us the means of doing our duty; we have not the will, and this
no knowledge can give. We have need to subdue our own minds, and this no other
person can do for us. Practical religious knowledge is a personal gift, and,
further, a gift from God; and, therefore, as experience has hitherto shown,
more likely to be obscured than advanced by the lapse of time. But further, we
know of the existence of an evil principle in the world, corrupting and
resisting the truth in its measure, according to the truth’s clearness and
purity. Our Saviour, who was the truth itself, was the most spitefully
entreated of all by the world. It has been the case with His followers too. The
purer and more valuable the gift which God bestows, far from this being a
security for the truth’s abiding and advancing, rather the more grievously has
been the gift abused (1 John 2:18; 2 Timothy 3:13). Such is the case as
regards the knowledge of our duty,--that kind of knowledge which alone is
really worth earnest seeking. And there is an important reason why we should
acquiesce in it;--because the conviction that things are so has no slight
influence in forming our minds into that perfection of the religious character
at which it is our duty ever to be aiming. While we think it possible to make
some great and important improvements in the subject of religion, we shall be
unsettled, restless, impatient; we shall be drawn from the consideration of
improving ourselves, and from using the day while it is given us, by the
visions of a deceitful hope, which promises to make rich but tendeth to penury.
On the other hand, as we cease to be theorists we shall become practical men;
we shall have less of self-confidence and arrogance, more of inward humility
and diffidence; we shall be less likely to despise others, and think of our own
intellectual powers with less complacency. It is one great peculiarity of the
Christian’s character to be dependent; to be willing to serve, and to rejoice
in the permission; to be able to view himself in a subordinate place; to love
to sit in the dust. To his ears the words of the text are as sweet music: “Thus
saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths,” etc.
The history of the old dispensation affords us a remarkable confirmation of
what has been argued; for in the time of the law there was an increase of
religious knowledge by fresh revelations. From the time of Samuel especially to
the time of Malachi, the Church was bid look forward for a growing
illumination, which, though not necessary for religious obedience, subserved
the establishment of religious comfort. Now, observe how careful the inspired
prophets of Israel are to prevent any kind of disrespect being shown to the
memory of former times, on account of that increase of religious knowledge with
which the later ages were favoured; and if such reverence for the past were a
duty among the Jews when the Saviour was still to come, much more is it the
duty of Christians. Now, as to the reverence enjoined and taught the Jews
towards persons and times past, we may notice first the commandment given them
to honour and obey their parents and elders. This, indeed, is a natural law.
But that very circumstance surely gives force to the express and repeated
injunctions given them to observe it, sanctioned too (as it was) with a special
promise. But, further, to bind them to the observance of this duty, the past
was made the pledge of the future, hope was grounded upon memory; all prayer
for favour sent them back to the old mercies of God. “The Lord hath been
mindful of us, He will bless us”; this was the form of their humble
expectation. Lastly, as Moses directed the eyes of his people towards the line
of prophets which the Lord their God was to raise up from among them, ending in
the Messiah, they in turn dutifully exalt Moses, whose system they were
superseding. Samuel, David, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah,
each in succession, bear testimony to Moses. Oh, that we had duly drunk into
this spirit of reverence and godly fear. Doubtless we are far above the Jews in
our privileges; we are favoured with the news of redemption; we know doctrines,
which righteous men of old time earnestly desired to be told, and were not. Yet
our honours are our shame, when we contrast the glory given us with our love of
the world, our fear of men, our lightness of mind, our sensuality, our gloomy
tempers. What need have we to look with wonder and reverence at those saints of
the old covenant, who with less advantages yet so far surpassed us; and still
more at those of the Christian Church, who both had higher gifts of grace and
profited by them! (J. H. Newman, D. D.)
Religion an ancient path, and a good way
I. The instructive
view given of religion.
1. It is an ancient path. The Gospel is coeval with the Fall. All the
Mosaic rites and ceremonies were typical of the blessings of the Gospel
dispensation, and taught the faithful worshipper to look forward to the
Saviour.
2. It is a good way.
II. The duty
enjoined.
1. We are to use every endeavour to become acquainted with the ways
of religion.
(a) The way therein marked out is a way of holiness and purity.
(b) The superior excellence of the Scriptures, as a rule of life, will
be still further evident if we consider their high authority.
2. Our knowledge must be reduced to practice; when we have found the
good way, we must walk in it.
3. It is our duty to persevere in a religious course, it will not
answer a traveller’s purpose, who has a necessary journey before him, to
proceed a little way in it, and then give over, or take a different path that
leads a contrary way. So, in the ways of religion, he, and he only, who holds
out to the end shall be saved.
III. The import of
the gracious promise, by which the duty here enjoined is recommended and
enforced. The rest here promised consists--
1. In our being delivered from those uneasy doubts and anxieties of
mind which arise from an uncertainty as to the way in which we ought to go.
2. Those who walk in the good way of religion find rest to their
souls, as they are thereby delivered from the great cause of inward uneasiness--the
sense of unpardoned guilt; or, in other words, from the terrors of an accusing
conscience.
3. They who walk in the ways of religion find rest to their souls, as
they are thereby delivered from those sources of disquietude which spring from
sinful and unruly passions.
4. This good way infallibly conducts those who walk in it to
uninterrupted and everlasting happiness in the world to come. (James Ross,
D. D.)
Reverence for the old things
Jeremiah was the most unpopular of the prophets. First because he
was somewhat of a pessimist, uttering predictions which the events proved true
enough, but which were painted in too gloomy colours to suit the tastes of the
people. Secondly, because he never flattered. And a third, and even greater,
reason for the dislike, was that they regarded him as old-fashioned, out of
date, an antiquated, obsolete old fogey, with his eyes behind. He was always
harping on the old times when people lived simple lives and feared God. And the
people sneered at him as a sort of fossil, as a man who had been born a century
too late. The people had a disease upon them which might be called Egyptomania.
They wanted to form a close alliance with Egypt, and to adopt all their modes
of life, their dress, furniture, luxuries, self-indulgences, political ideas,
military system, laws, morals, and religion. There was to be a clean sweep made
of all that Israel had loved and believed in and by taking heathen Egypt as a
model they would speedily attain to Egypt’s greatness and splendour. This was
the craze against which the prophet set himself, and protested in vain. For
there are times when a people are determined to destroy themselves. Are the old
paths always Divine, and the new ways always as dangerous as this prophet
thought them? The answer has to be qualified, and there are more answers than
one. The Bible does not always speak in the same voice about it. If Jeremiah
looked back with lingering affection, St. Paul, who had seen the higher truth
in Christ, had his eyes in front, and advised us to forget the things which are
behind. And a greater than Paul has told us that every wise man will bring out
of his treasury things new and old. The man who sneers at everything which is
old, and fancies that wisdom always wears a brand new face, has precious little
of the latter article himself. The alphabet and the simple rules of arithmetic
are as ancient as an Egyptian mummy, but they are not out of date yet. We still
need some of the things which Noah and Abraham prized. On the other hand, the man
who sets his face against everything new is shutting his eyes to the light.
I. To bind
ourselves to the old paths is, for us at least, in many things impossible. We
live in the midst of rapid movement and change, and we are carried along by it
in spite of ourselves. And if we could do it, it would be paralysing. It would
be the end of all healthy life and action. It is the distinguishing feature of
Christian nations to be forever casting off the old and putting on the new. It
is a dead religion which stands still and makes men stand still. The spirit of
life in Christ Jesus urges the world on, away from a dead past nearer to the
golden age which is to be. I hardly dare bring before you the things which are
going on in China. And it all comes from a blind, brutal, obstinate clinging to
the old paths. The world moves on, and the Chinese refuse to move. God in His
mercy has brought us out of all that, and given us eyes to see that through the
ages one unceasing purpose runs, and the minds of men are widened with the
process of the suns. There are a hundred things in nearly every department of
life which we do and know and understand better than our fathers. We should
never dream of going back in science, machinery, politics, government, freedom
of thought and speech, or in religion.
II. To forsake all
the old paths is a folly quite as blind and self-destructive as to cling to
them all. Wisdom was not born in the present century. It dwelt with God before
the foundation of the world, and He gave some of it to men who lived thousands
of years before our time. We are cleverer than the ancients in some things, but
not in all. The Greek thinkers were superior to the best thinkers of today. We
could not now produce such books as Plato wrote, and the Hebrew prophets and psalmists
put all our cleverest writers into the shade. We cannot build temples as the
men of old built. We cannot paint pictures or carve statues or create things of
beauty as they did. We have no Homers and Virgils, Dantes, Miltons,
Shakespeares, Bunyans. In moral and religious things many of those greatest men
were far in advance of our best, and we can only reach some of their excellence
by learning of them and treading in the old paths. In fact, in the greatest
things of life the old ways are the everlasting ways, and the only ways of
safety. They have stood the test of time. For the momentous questions of
morality and righteousness, worship and reverence, sin and human need, God and
immortality, spiritual mysteries and things unseen, we have still to sit like
children at the feet of those giants of faith, those great souls from Moses to
St. Paul, who walked with God and spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
We cannot dispense with the Ten Commandments yet. And as for the Sermon on the
Mount, its very perfection is our despair. If you want to find the highest
types of manhood, you will stand rather in the old paths than the new; you will
look back rather than around you. If we want to know what sin is, we must go to
the Bible and the Cross of Jesus Christ, and not to the modem ideas, which
often make light of sin and treat it as irresponsible disease. If we want to
learn the depth of penitence we must go to the soul-stricken David or the
weeping Peter. And if we would see light beyond the grave we must go all that
way back and stand with the women and the disciples before an open sepulchre.
Yes, and perhaps above all things, if we would learn how to live and love, to
endure and to hope, to suffer and to die, it is only in the old Bible paths
that we can get the lesson. The new lights will show us how to get money
faster, and to make life smoother and more comfortable, but they will not help
us to be brave in difficulties, patient in cross bearing, and fearless in the
hour of death. (J. G. Greenhough, M. A.)
The Jesus way
“You must not be discouraged,” said a Kiowa Indian, “if we Indians
come slow. It is a long road for us to leave our old Indian ways, and we have
to think a great deal; but I am sure that all the Indian people will come into
the Jesus road for I see that these white Jesus people are here to help us, and
I thank them for coming. Tell the Christian people to pray for us. We are
ignorant, but we want to be led aright, that we may come into the Jesus road.”
The quaint Indian expressions are very suggestive. It is indeed a “long road”
to leave our old ways; and when we feel that we are safe in the “Jesus road,”
we should take time to ask ourselves if we are sure we are treading it as we
should, if we are sure we are not walking in some path that seems to run
parallel with it, but which in reality is leading us farther and farther away.
(Christian Age.)
Ye shall find rest for
your souls.--
Soul rest
It is the distinguishing mark of the “good” and “old” way that in
it men find rest for their souls. You may judge between the true Gospel and the
false, between that which is of God and that which is of man, by this one test.
As “by their fruits ye shall know them,” so by this one fruit among the rest:
Does it bring rest into the soul? If not, it is not of God; but if it brings a
clear, sure, true, honest rest into the soul, then it cometh of standing in the
good way. Remember that rest was the promise of the Saviour. “Come unto
Me”--not to anything else, but “unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I”--Myself personally--“will give you rest” But what next? “Take My yoke
upon you and learn of Me, and ye shall find rest”--that is another rest, still
deeper, which you find in service. Oh, what a blessed Saviour we follow, who
everywhere giveth us rest! Rest is enjoyed by believers now. But you will never
find it anywhere else; as in no other form of religion, so in no other form of
pursuit. If you follow wealth you will not find rest there. I spoke some time
ago with a gentleman whom I believed to own more than a million, and I ventured
to say that I should think after a man had got a million, it would not be worth
while to have any more, because he could not get through that lot. “Ah,” he
said, “I did not know”; and, truly, I did not know; but yet I knew enough to
perceive that if a man had a million millions he would not be content. And if
you go in for health and pursue that with all diligence, as you might readily
do, yet even in the best health there is no rest. It is a noble gift; they who lose
it know how precious it is; but there is no rest in that. And as in honour, or
any earthly thing, of themselves they are the occasion of disquiet; they often
are a seed plot wherein thorns grow that pierce us. But there is rest in Jesus,
there is rest in a solid, simple faith in Him, but there is no rest anywhere
else.
I. In thy good way
we find rest, if we walk therein.
1. There is the way of pardon by an atonement. What a rest that
brings to the conscience! A crushed conscience is but an echo of a truth. There
is that in the nature of God and in the necessity of things, of which the
conscience is but a faint echo, and when your conscience tells you sin must be
punished, it tells you the truth; there is no escape from that necessity, and
because Jesus suffered in our room and stead here is a glorious gate of
salvation, but there is no other. So the way of pardon by an atonement gives
rest to the conscience.
2. The way of believing the Word of God as being inspired of God, and
being our authoritative guide, is a great rest to the understanding, “But do
you understand it all?” No, sir, I do not; I do not want to. I want to love a
great deal more, but I do not care so much about growing in that particular
direction of finding out riddles and being able to thread the spheres. But if I
could love my Lord better, and be more like Him, I would be happy. “Well, but
you do not understand it, and yet you believe it.” Yes, I do; I find it is such
a great thing to move my little bark side by side with a great rock, so high
that I cannot see the top of it, because then I know I shall be sweetly
sheltered there. Well, it is almost as good not to know as it is to know about
a great many things, and sometimes better not to know, because then you can
adore and consider that when faith bows before the majesty of an awful mystery
she pays to God such homage as cherubim and seraphim pay Him before His throne.
3. There is a way which Christians learn of trusting their affairs
with God which gives a general rest to their minds. You see, if you are truly a
Christian you have not got anything, you have given it all to the Lord. Cannot
you therefore trust Him with it? And pray which part of your business would you
like to manage yourself? Mark it off and then make a black mark against it, for
you will have no end of mischief and trouble there. Oh, happy is that man who
leaves everything, soul and body, entirely in the hands of God, and is content
with His Divine will.
4. The way of obedience to the Lord gives rest to the soul. He that
believes in Jesus obeys Jesus. Oh, if you do right and stand fast in your
integrity you shall wear that little herb called “heart-ease,” and he that
weareth that is more happy than a king! and if you can go home at night, and
that little bird in your bosom, called conscience, can sweetly sing to you that
you have done a right thing, you shall rest in peace. And, mark you, even as to
temporal things in the long run you shall be no loser; but if you should be,
you will count it an honour to lose for Christ’s sake and for the right, and in
the end, if you lose silver you shall gain gold. The way of obedience to Divine
command gives rest to the soul.
5. The way of close communion with Christ is a way of profound rest
unto the soul. Once get to be in Him, and to abide in Him, let your communion
with Him be unbroken day after day, month after month, and year after year, and
ye shall find rest unto your soul.
II. The rest which
is found by walking in the good way is good for the soul.
1. There is a rest which rusts and injures the soul; but Gospel rest
is of a very peculiar kind; it brings satisfaction, but it never verges on
self-satisfaction. Oh, to be satisfied in Christ Jesus! Full, and therefore
craving to be fuller; fed, and therefore hungering to have more.
2. Next, the rest that comes with Christ is a sense of safety, but it
is not a sense of presumption. The man that is most safe in Christ is just the
man that would not run any risks whatever. Secure, but not carnally secure; in
safety, but not presumptuous.
3. This blessed rest creates content, but it also excites a desire of
progress. The man that is perfectly content to be saved in Christ Jesus is also
very anxious to grow in grace.
4. He that rests in God is also delivered from all legal fears, but
he is supplied with superior motives for holiness. The fear of hell and the
hope of heaven are poor motives to effort; but to feel “I cannot be lost; the
blood of Christ is between me and the everlasting fire; I am bound for the
everlasting kingdom, and by the certainties of the Divine promise as a believer
I shall never be ashamed.”
III. Rest of this
kind ought to be enjoyed now by every Christian. It is enjoyed by many of us,
and it is a grievous error when it is not the case with all real Christians.
Some of you say: “I trust I am a Christian, but I do not get much of this
rest.” It is your own fault. I will tell you one thing, though--you would find
more rest if you walked in the middle of the way. The best walking to heaven is
in the middle of the road; on either side where the hedges are there is a ditch
as well. I do not care to go to heaven along the ditch, on the outside of the
road. Have you never heard the American story of a gentleman who invited a
friend up to his orchard to come and eat some of his apples--he had such
exquisite apples? But though he invited his friend several times, he never
came. At last he said: “I wish you would come and taste my fruit--it is
wonderful, just in perfection now.” He said: “Well, to tell you the truth! have
tasted it, and I was ill after it.” “Well,” said he, “how came that about?”
“Well, as I was riding along I picked up an apple that fell over into the
road.” “Oh, dear,” he said, “you do not understand it. I went miles to buy that
peculiar sort of apple to put round the edge of the orchard; that was for the
boys, so that after they had once tasted that particular apple they might not
think of coming any farther. But if you will go into the orchard you will find
I have a very different sort of fruit inside.” Now, do you know that round the
margin of religion the trees of repentance and so forth grow--that fruit not
over sweet to some palates. Oh, but if you would come inside, but if you would
come into the very centre, what joy you would have! Surely, Christians, you have
reason enough for delight. What a happy religion that is in which pleasure is a
precept! “Rejoice in the Lord always” is as much a command as “Thou shalt keep
the Sabbath day.” Remember that, and do pray God that you may get into the very
middle of the road, know you are there, and keep there year after year by
Divine grace, for then you shall find rest unto your souls. Well, then, this
rest ought to be enjoyed now. We ought to throw aside these anxious cares of
ours; if we do not, in what respect are we better than worldlings? An excursion
to heaven is the best relief from the cares of earth, and you may soon be
there. Last night a friend living in Colombo, Ceylon, said, “Oh, it is a
beautiful place to live in. Although it is very hot where we live, yet in a few
hours we get up in the eternal snows where we shall be as cool as we wish.”
That is just what we are here. It is very hot: the cares and trials of life
often parch us, but in five minutes we can be up there in the hill country, and
behold the face of Him we love. Why do we not oftener go there? (C.
H. Spurgeon.)
The bugle call to rest
In nothing has God consulted economy less than in the provision He
has made to guard us from danger; and the Divine solicitude to rescue us from
ruin is strongly contrasted with our perpetual propensity to rush into it. In
the moral constitution of the mind, also, the safeguards against danger are no
less remarkable than the provisions for enjoyment. Why is conscience made so
acutely wakeful and sensitive, but with a view to guard us against the first
approaches of sin? Why is memory made so tenaciously to treasure up the results
of past experience and failure, but to repress that inconsiderate eagerness
which would hurry us on to ruin? In the Bible God has preeminently placed the
strongest guards on the side of danger.
I. The attractive
view of religion furnished in this one word “rest.” God might have made
religion a state of penance and bondage, and it would still have been such had
we been suffered to “escape so as by fire.” Instead of this, tie clothes His
religion with attractiveness and tenderness.
1. It brings rest to the understanding by the truths it reveals.
2. It brings rest to the conscience by the pardon it imparts.
3. It brings rest by revealing an adequate object on which the
affections can repose. The tendency of irreligion is to dishonour and degrade
our nature, by confining us to the world and to time; that of real religion is
to exalt and ennoble the mind by connecting us with God and eternity. The one leaves
us to mourn, with orphaned heart; the other brings God before us as the object
most worthy of our affections, and able to meet and satisfy the vast capacities
of happiness which His own kindness has originated.
II. Causes of the
rejection of religion by the worldly and inconsiderate.
1. A false estimate of themselves and of the evil and danger to
which, in consequence of sin, they are exposed.
2. The unsuspected influence of evil habits, and the progressive and
hardening tendency of uurepented sin. As Jeremy Taylor puts it: “Vice first is
pleasing, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed; then
the man is impenitent, then he is obstinate, then he resolves never to repent,
and then he dies.”
3. The injurious and delusive results of a false and formal
profession of religion. Despair is a near neighbour of presumption. The system
which is founded in fraud must end in delusion. It fails to satisfy, as it
fails to sanctify.
4. Because the period is extremely short in which the voice of God,
as a Saviour, can be heard at all. “Mercy is like the rainbow which God set in
the clouds to remember mankind. It shines here as long as it is not hindered;
but we must never look for it after it is night.” (Homiletic Magazine.)
Verse 20
Your burnt offerings are not acceptable.
Waste worship
I. The manifest
failure of these Jewish offerings.
1. By these their consecration was to be furthered. But they were
foul.
2. By these their repentance was to be awakened. But they sinned
shamefully.
3. By these their minds were to be directed to the Messiah. But, in
their arrogance and care for mere externals, they lost sight of spiritual
lessons.
4. By these God was to be pleased and propitiated. The text indicates
their complete miscarriage in this respect.
II. The indignant
question and repudiation.
1. God thrusts from Himself the offensive temple offerings. He
demands the heart. Nothing is sweet to God without love.
2. God stigmatises them as purposeless and waste.
3. Worship that offends God is waste, but also something more. Heart
hardening. Judgment. Punishment.
Lessons--
1. The most important matter about our spiritual things is their
acceptableness with God.
2. Our best energies are needed, not for externals, but internals. (W.
B. Haynes.)
Ostentatiousness of hypocrisy
Drones make more noise than bees, though they make neither honey
nor wax. (J. Trapp.)
Verse 29-30
The bellows are burnt.
The bellows burnt
Apply to--
I. The prophet
himself. The prophet was exhausted before the people were impressed. So also
with Noah, Isaiah, John the Baptist, Jesus Himself. Nor since, by apostles,
confessors, zeal-consuming preachers, has the iron-hearted world become melted;
but they themselves have suffered and perished amid their work.
1. It is the preacher’s business to continue labouring till he is
worn out.
2. The Gospel he preaches is the infallible test between the precious
and the vile.
II. The afflictions
which God sends upon ungodly men. Sent to see if they will melt in the furnace
or not. But where there is no grace in affliction the afflictions are sooner
exhausted than the sinner’s heart is made to melt under the heat caused
thereby--e.g., Pharaoh, not softened by all the plagues. Ahaz, “when he
was afflicted, he sinned yet more and more.” Jerusalem, often chastised, yet
incorrigible. Sinners, upon whom God’s judgments exert no melting power.
III. The
chastisements which God sends upon His own people. The great Refiner will have
His gold pure, and will utterly remove our tin. Do not let it be said that the
bellows are used till they are worn out before our afflictions melt us to
repentance and cause us to let go our sins.
IV. The time is
coming when the excitement of ungodly men will fail them. Many activities are
kept up by outward energies inciting men.
1. Excitement in pursuit of wealth. Yet how little will the joys of
wealth stimulate you in your last moments!
2. Excitement in pursuing fame. Alas! men burn away their lives for
the approbation of fellow creatures; and these fires will die down into
darkness.
3. Living for pleasure; but satiety follows, and the flame of joy
goes out.
4. Hypocrisy is with some their “bellows”; but this feigned zeal and
pretended piety will end in black despair.
V. Those
excitements which keep alive the Christian’s zeal. In certain Churches we have
seen great blazings of enthusiasm, misnamed “revivals,” mere agitations.
Genuine revivals I love, but these spurious things are fanaticism. Why was it
the fire soon went out? The man who blew the bellows left the scene of
excitement, and darkness ensued. Our earnestness is worthless which depends on
such special ministrations. Is the fire in our soul burning less vehemently
than in years past? Our obligations to live for Christ are the same; our
Master’s claims on our love are as strong; the objects for which we served God
in the past are as important. Should we grow less heavenly the nearer we come
to the New Jerusalem? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The prophet’s consuming zeal and the people’s unresponsiveness
He likens the people of Israel to a mass of metal. This mass of
metal claimed to be precious ore, such as gold or silver. It was put into the
furnace, the object being to fuse it, so that the pure metal should be
extracted from the dross. Lead was put in with the ore to act as a flux (that
being relied upon by the ancient smelters, as quicksilver now is in these more instructed
days); a fire was kindled, and then the bellows were used to create an intense
heat, the bellows being the prophet himself. He complains that he spake with
such pathos, such energy, such force of heart, that he exhausted himself
without being able to melt the people’s hearts; so hard was the ore, that the
bellows were burned before the metal was melted--the prophet was exhausted
before the people were impressed; he had worn out his lungs, his powers of
utterance; he had exhausted his mind, his powers of thought; he had broken his
heart, his powers of emotion; but he could not divide the people from their
sins, and separate the precious from the vile. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The lead is consumed of
the fire.
Refining fire
We mean precisely the same thing as the Hebrew prophet meant when
we say, as nowadays we are so apt to say, that life is a school. People still
are puzzled by the punishments of life. The discipline is strict. The rules are
rigid. Oftentimes we suffer. It is not by any means all play. But there are
lessons to be learned, and forbearance to be used, and suffering to be borne.
It seems to us narrow and foolish of Jeremiah to have fancied that the Lord
raised up those great Assyrian and Babylonian nations simply for the purpose of
trying and testing the Jewish people. It was narrow also of the Jews to fancy
themselves the “chosen people,” whom God particularly loved and wished to save.
Yet all of us today are similarly narrow in one sense, and we have to be. We
cannot free ourselves, you and I and others like us, from the conviction that
we, as men and women, by virtue of the very life that is in us, are the centre
and meaning of this entire universe. Believe this in some degree we must. Doubt
it, and the very heavens are bleak and bare. Every system in philosophy, every
article of religious faith, every discovery in science, is based, more or less
directly, upon the supposition of this distinct relationship between the outer
universe and the life of man. Let us use, for convenience’ sake, the analogy of
the prophet. We will suppose that we are placed here as the crude ore is thrown
into the furnace, in order to be refined. Along what lines should the process
of refinement work? Nothing is more familiar than the claim that sorrow
chastens us, and hardships strengthen, and trials test. As Goethe said, “Talent
is perfected in retirement, but character only in the stream of life.” They
tell this concerning Wendell Phillips. Whenever the great orator tended to
become a little prosy in his speeches, and to lose some of his customary fire,
certain young Abolitionists used to get together near the door and start a
hiss. The note of disapproval never failed to arouse the lion in the speaker,
and he was electrified at once into matchless eloquence. The world’s agencies
of trial and toil and difficulty are indeed in vain, the bellows of life are
consumed most uselessly, if you and I are not made more courageous and calm and
self-reliant by the process. And yet the hard things of this world ought not to
be the only ones to have this refining influence. We are weak and ungrateful,
and made of anything but precious metal, if we are not purified by the
privileges of life, hallowed by its happiness, humbled by success. In everyday
life most of us are not deficient in gratitude. We appreciate the kindness and
generosity of our friends. But how few of us in comparison fall to our knees in
an hour of newborn joy, or reverently think of life’s higher meaning, and
resolve on a rigider performance of our duties, when success has bathed us in
its golden sunshine! There is no much surer test of character than this: What
effect has good fortune had? If the person is innately weak to whom some power
or privilege has come, he answers it by pride and selfishness and vain indulgence.
He feels himself exalted; and, instead of looking up in reverence and humility
to his God, he looks down with coldness on his fellow men. Shall I tell you
what is to me one of the most inspiring, beautiful sights in all the wide range
of human activity and character? It is to see and know of anyone truly great
who has been humbled by success, and touched into infinite modesty by the
consciousness of superlative ability. It is to find people refined into
simplicity and gentle devoutness by the world’s blandishments and distinctions
and honours. And this has been the refining influence to which the noblest and
the truest ones have answered. You all know, too, the saying of the
distinguished, world-honoured discoverer, Sir Isaac Newton,--that he was nothing
but a helpless child gathering pebbles on a boundless shore, with the great
ocean of undiscovered truth stretching away beyond him. I have spoken of sorrow
and of joy--the two extremes of existence--as having properly this purifying
influence on life. Let, me now speak broadly of certain phases of refinement
which ought to appear as the result of the world’s great processes.
1. First, there is the refining fire of glory, which is so abundant
in the outward world. It is for us to answer it by what is known as reverence.
We have not the pure metal which is sought, if we are not so refined by the
wonders of the world as to kneel in worship, and uplift our souls in awe. “This
world is not for him who does not worship,” said an ancient Persian sage; and
our kindred souls give back the truth across the centuries, “This world is not
for him who does not worship.”
2. Again, there is the burning fact of law. All things around us are
done with persistency. Everything is regular. The smallest function is precise.
Surely the knowledge of such constancy should have its influence on us. It
should take what is pure within us. It should appeal to the clear metal of our
better selves, and make us trust.
3. Finally, the fire of utter impartiality surrounds us. The world is
laid at each one’s feet. The Divine bounty is not given to this person, and
denied to that one; but all of us receive. And the answering refinement which
should come from receptive human beings, who may doubt its nature or its need?
A suggestive legend comes to us from Mohammedan writings. Abraham, it is said,
once received an old man in his tent, who, in sitting down to eat, neglected to
repeat a “grace.” “My custom,” he said, in explanation, “is that of the fire
worshipper.”--Whereupon the Jewish patriarch in wrath undertook to drive him
from his door. But suddenly God appeared to him, and, restraining the churlish
impulse, cried: “Abraham, for one hundred years the Divine bounty has flowed
out to you in sunshine and in rain; and is it for you to deny shelter to this
man because his worship is not thine?” Even thus does nature speak a silent yet
severe rebuke to our narrowness, our lack of sympathy, our petty distinctions
and rivalries in social life. “Be broad,” she cries. “Let love control your
acts; to those who need, extend a helping hand.” (P. R. Frothingham.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》