his holy doctrines, his spiritual kingdom, the work of his Spirit, the ways of divine providence, what God does, and what he does not do, all these are repulsive to the carnal mind; but they are attractive to the spiritual mind; all light to the one; all darkness to the other; all harmony and beauty to the one; all jargon and deformity to the other. This fact is not always brought out clearly to view. The good man is not perfectly good. His heart is pure, but not entirely so. Divine things are presented before him, but their excellence are seen only'in part, because he is purified only in part. He has not all the holy thoughts and emotions which proceed from a perfectly holy mind. And it is a fact also, that the repugnance of the unsanctified man to divine things is not always apparent, and, in this world, never perfectly so, because he is never free from checks and hinderances, and never has a perfectly clear view of divine things. But there is a time at hand, when divine objects will be seen as they are, and when the alienation and enmity of the unsanctified heart will be fully acted out. At the judgment day Christ will sit upon the throne of his glory, and all nations stand before him. Then the infinite perfections of God, the glory of Christ, the wonders of grace in redemption, the excellence of divine truth, the holiness and blessedness of heaven, the whole range of spiritual objects will be presented in a light above the brightness of noon-day. How pure, how lovely, how glorious will the august scene be to those who are pure in heart! How will they hail the happy day! What holy raptures will the sight of those objects kindle in their souls! What a heaven will it be to them to see Christ as he is, and to be with him, and to know that they shall be with him forever. Oh! what Oh! what a home will this be to those who have been strangers and pilgrims on earth! What perfect rest will they find in the bosom of God! But what will be the condition of those who come to that great day with an unregenerate, unholy heart? In all that bright scene, there will be no bright spot to them. In all that display of divine excellence and glory, no excellence or glory will strike their eyes. A universe of spiritual beauty and loveliness is before them, and every holy heart beats high with love and delight. But they see no beauty, and feel no delight. Let them be brought to the very gate of the heavenly Jerusalem, and let them look in upon that heavenly light before which the sun is ashamed to show his face. That glorious light of heaven is all dark, dark, dark to them. They have no eyes to see the light which shines there. They have no heart to love the God who reigns there. They have no taste for the joy that fills the holy there. Let them be thrust into the heavenly Jerusalem. They would find nothing to love; nothing to enjoy. The happiness of heaven would be misery to them. They would choose to die, rather than to live. And if they must live, they would choose to live any-where on the earth, or under the earth, or to be carried away swiftly beyond the bounds of God's creation, rather than dwell there, amid the praises and joys of heaven, so uncongenial and painful to their feelings. My hearers, we have now turned our thoughts upon some of the interesting objects and movements of this probationary state, and to the developments here made of the holy and the unholy heart; and we have come to the final result of the present life, a result so happy, and so miserable, that language is too poor to describe it. And now as I close, I entreat you to look seriously at two things. First, look at sin; and see what it is, and what it does. Men in general think sin has but little evil in it, and that it does little or no hurt. They even love it and cherish it, as though it were excellence itself. But it is immeasurably evil in itself, and is the source of all other evils. There is nothing in the universe so hateful, — nothing so pernicious. Indeed, there is nothing else, which is either hateful or pernicious. All that is vile, abominable and destructive lies in the bosom of sin. All those plagues which have come upon the world from age to age, tell you of the evil there is in sin. But they do not tell you all its evil. The miseries of hell will tell this, and will be telling it forever. Look seriously upon this hateful thing, which the Apostle tried to describe, but could do no more than to call it "exceedingly sinful." This is the evil which has seized upon man, and has diffused its deadly poison through his soul. It has blinded his eyes to spiritual beauty. It has made his heart dead to holy joy. Were it not for sin, it would be heaven everywhere, because God is everywhere. But sin has changed the scene, so that the glorious presence of God causes misery instead of happiness, to the alienated heart. This is the plague, which in an evil hour entered Paradise, and which reigned from Adam to Moses, and from Moses to Christ, and from Christ to the present day; an evil which has bred all other evils; an evil so powerful in mischief, that it has required a mighty effort of omnipotence itself to restrain its malignant power, and to prevent it from destroying all the good in the universe. Look now at one thing more. You have seen what is that evil which dwells in man; how it defiles his spiritual nature, hardens his heart, turns light into darkness, purity into impurity, and alienates the soul from God and from heaven. Now why do not all, who have this evil dwelling in them, feel the wretchedness of their condition; and why do they not inquire, with the deepest solicitude, whether there is any effectual remedy? And if there is, why do they not desire and seek it with all their heart? My hearers, a merciful God has provided a remedy, and the gospel sets it before you. It is "the renewing of the Holy Ghost.' He who came to save sinners, says: "Ye must be born again." The regenerating work of the Spirit, who can describe its worth? It takes away pollution, and makes the heart pure. It renders the character and the supreme dominion of God, and all the ways of his providence, welcome and joyful. It prepares man to be happy in any place, where God is. "Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God." This will be the consummation of their blessedness. Their pure heart will be filled with all the fulness of God. Oh! the preciousness of this renewing, cleansing, sanctifying Spirit! The wealth of worlds has no value compared with it. And Christ and heaven will be no joy to us without it. Let all then, with one accord, hasten to the throne of grace, and there prostrate themselves before God in humble, earnest prayer for the precious gift of the Holy Spirit, to cleanse them from the defilement of sin, and to make them pure in heart. A SERMON DELIVERED IN THE CHAPEL OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, ANDOVER, John 14: 28.-IF YE LOVED ME, YE WOULD REJOICE BECAUSE I SAID, I GO WHEN the time drew near, in which the Saviour was to finish his work on earth and return to the Father, and when he had distinctly told his disciples that he was about to go away from them; it is no wonder that sorrow filled their hearts. How grievous must have been the thought, that their Lord was soon to depart from them, and to leave them alone, poor and powerless, and exposed to dangers on every side. He apprised them of the trials. and sufferings which they were to encounter. On the other hand, he took care to guard them against excessive sorrow and dejection. How encouraging and consoling were the instructions he gave them, first, in the upper room, where he instituted the sacred Supper; and then, in the garden, where he had so often met them, and where he then met them for the last time. There were two points which he distinctly suggested to them, for the express purpose of reconciling them to his approaching departure. In the first of these, he appealed to their love for him; in the second to their regard to their own good. It was a so poor First; to reconcile his disciples to his absence, Jesus appealed to their affection for him. "If ye loved me," i. e. if "i. e. if ye loved me with an enlightened and consistent love, "ye would rejoice because I said, I go to the Father; for my Father is greater than I." The argument is, that Christ's going to the Father would raise him to a condition of higher glory and blessedness, than what belonged to him on earth. In coming to this world, he had divested himself of the glory which he had with the Father before the world was. His state on earth was a state of dishonor; for he was despised and rejected of men. state of poverty. He was made poor for our sakes; that he had not where to lay his head. It was a state of suffering. Through his whole life, and especially at its close, he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Such, and more than I can describe, was the dishonor, the degradation and the suffering, to which Jesus was subjected in his earthly state. And if his disciples loved him as they ought, they must have sympathized with him while he endured so many sufferings, and must have rejoiced that he was soon to be delivered from them, and to be exalted to a state of unspeakable honor and blessedness at the right hand of God. The Father's being greater than the Son, seems evidently to refer to his being in that higher state, that state of superior glory, into which Jesus was to enter when he should leave the world and go to the Father. The happy change which was to take place in the condition of Jesus- change from a lower to a higher state-from ignominy to glory - from pain. and sorrow to celestial blessedness, must have been a matter of heart-felt joy to all his friends. How do Christians now rejoice when they consider that their Saviour has been delivered from all the evils he endured here below, and that he is highly exalted, and has received a name which is above every name. You cannot * The Greek word μɛilwv, rendered "greater," has this meaning in some other places; and in this place such a sense of the word is required in order to give consistency and intelligible force to the passage. |