Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

1

and sorrow, and which culminated in a death of shame, of obloquy, and of anguish, we are drawn into the full-orbed splendour of God's love. We see love, eternal, unconquerable, sovereign love, devising the most extraordinary means (the incarnation of the Eternal Son), sustaining the most amazing sacrifice (the most cruel and ignominious death of that Son), and employing the most potent energy (the influence of his Spirit) to save and to redeem guilty and rebel men. It is here that “God commendeth his love toward us." "Christ, the life of Christ, but especially the death of Christ, is the heart of God laid open, that in it we may almost hear the unutterable throbbings of his love, and almost feel the rush of its mighty pulsations of mercy." It is in Christ that we get at the secret of God's love. (4.) It is in Christ that we reach and dwell in the secret place of God's purpose. The redemption of men from the curse and power of sin by the bloodshedding of the cross"the bringing of many sons unto glory," by that perfect obedience which braved death rather than yield, is the grand solution of God's providential government over our world. Dark and mysterious as it appears when viewed alone, when viewed in the light of that great design, it becomes luminous and clear. In its consummation every event will be absorbed; every circumstance will find its goal, and every act its end. Christ--the triumph of Christ the exaltation of Christ the eternal glorification of Christ with his people, is the one grand ultimate purpose of God. The salvation of souls, the cleansing, purifying, elevating of souls from the guilt, the defilement, the pollution, and the death of sin, is the design upon which God's heart has been set from all eternity, the one object towards which everything has been directed, which He has done. When, then, we comprehend the grand meaning of the cross, and so enter into the work and the ministry of Christ as to become partakers of his thoughts and sufferings, we reach and dwell in the secret place of God's purpose.

[blocks in formation]

7

"Shall abide under the

shadow of the Almighty." What intelligible and practical meaning can we attach to these words that will be of service to us in the conflict and labour of life? We shall illustrate the line of thought already pursued. We conceive these words to mean that he that attains to the position indicated shall enjoy God's special protection, security, and serenity.

First: We have indicated what it is to dwell in the secret place of God's word. In that position we get our ininds furnished and filled with God's thoughts about things-God's ideas concerning things-God's principles relating to things. With minds thus furnished and filled we are under their protection. The world's thoughts, and ideas, and principles of things may assail us, but they cannot do much with us; we know better; we have received a higher education, our minds are fortified with God's thoughts, guarded with God's ideas, protected with God's principles. As we have said, we look at things from the same point of view as God. We have the secret of God, and that will enable us quickly to detect the fallacy, the error, and the evil that lie concealed in that which the world presents. The man of science is not to be imposed upon by the tricks, legerdemain, and deception that the thoughtless multitude gaze at, and receive with amazement and simple credulity. He is under the protection and shadow of science. His knowledge of scientific laws enables him to detect at once the imposition and fraud. So with the man that dwells in the secret place of God's word; he abides under its shadow and protection. And the higher and supe rior and truer views of things which that word gives him enable him to detect and to refuse the juggleries and deceptions and frauds that are leading the multitude down the road to destruction and perdition. The words of God, the thoughts of God, keep out, repulse, and drive back the thoughts of the world and the falsehoods of sin.

Secondly: We have indicated what it is to dwell in the secret place of God's communion. In that position we get our whole nature fired and animated with holy and heavenly impulses, sympathies, tastes, and dispositions. We get our

whole nature magnetised with the nature of God. With our whole nature thus infused, fired, animated, and magnetised with the very impulses and inspirations of God's nature, we are under their protection. We are lifted into a higher sphere of life. The man of cultivated taste and mind can' never be allured or imposed upon by the coarse, rude, sensual enjoyments and pleasures of the country clown. He is protected, and under the shadow of the higher and superior tastes, sensibilities, and influences of education. So with the man that dwells in the secret place of God's communion; he is under the protection and shadow of God's presence and friendship, fortified and guarded with the very nature of God.

Thirdly We have indicated what it is to dwell in the' secret place of God's love. In that position we get our best, strongest, and supreme affections impregnated and energised with the love of God. We live under its shadow and protection. By its high and holy and potent influence we are preserved from the love of low, base, temporal, inferior things. God holds our heart, and like a garrison fortified with soldiers, so it is protected and defended because filled with the love of God. The love of God is a force superior far, mightier far, than any the world can ever command or muster. Against the heart protected and defended by the love of God, therefore, the love of the world can make no advance.

Fourthly: We have indicated what it is to dwell in the secret place of God's purpose. In that position our energies, our sympathies, our interests, our intentions, and our pursuits are all enlisted and engaged in co-operating with God in bringing about the desire of his heart and the great pleasure of his will. In our labours and toils, our efforts and struggles to destroy sin and to establish holiness, whether it be in our own hearts, in the lives and conduct of our children, or in the spirit and practice of the world, we are under the protection and shadow of the most High, because we are identified with God's purpose. The same protection, there

fore, which God extends over it He must extend over us. To assail us is to assail that which has the mighty energies of God engaged and employed for its protection and defence.

We see, then, that the security and protection of him that dwells in the secret place of the most High is no arbitrary, contingent, uncertain sort of thing. It has all the certainty: of fixed, positive, unfailing law. Let this, then, be our aîm, our prayer, our one desire, to get into the secret of God-the secret of God's word-God's friendship God's love and God's purpose, so as to get our minds filled with God's thoughts our spirits animated with God's disposition, our hearts possessed with God's affections, and our souls filled with God's aims and God's purposes, and nothing can harm us. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God' in Christ Jesus, which we shall then have. Our minds will be "kept in perfect peace, because stayed on God." The Lord will be the strength of our life. Joar za god hromoLE (NOT a Poplar. pintoje, roɔ caW OF BENJAMIN PREECE.⠀ *

it is bas ghondells 909- vuit 2008 9H

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

91 % 1# elval draft molestnos silt dưority oken. 9.Ĵ SUBJECT: The Supernatural Unfolding, and Man under

Delusion.

sea, they were

"And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear."-Matt. xiv. 26.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Analysis of Homily the Seven Hundred and Forty-Eighth.g I. THE ALLEGED MIRACLE.^

1

First Look at its reality. And perhaps we shall best see this by considering what can be said against it. (1.) Some would have us believe that the whole thing is a conscious and deliberate fabrication. But, First-There is no conceivable motive to induce such an invention. The disciples knew that to magnify Jesus was to rouse against themselves either scorn or vengeance. Secondly-The character of the men is against the imputation. Whatever they were during the lifetime of Jesus, after the resurrection there was not one

of them that betrayed a spirit so mean and base as the supposition involves. Thirdly-There are none of the marks of fabrication in the narrative. You cannot help feeling that. the man believed what he wrote, whether others believe it or not. (2.) Some would have us believe that the incident. grew out of the disposition of the disciples to see their Lord. a wonder-worker. But just the reverse was the case.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

t

On

this occasion they never thought of Jesus coming to them, and when He did come they thought it was a spirit. If it is said that they were afterwards changed, let me ask, what) can so well account for the change as the reality of the miracles? (3.) Some would have us believe that we owe the miraculous part of the incident to the time that elapsed, before the circumstance was recorded. But if anything in their lives was likely to be well remembered by the disciples, and accurately related, was it not that night on the sea when every moment they expected would be their last? There is internal evidence that there was no confusion in the writer's mind. He sees the scene distinctly, and all the detail of it. Secondly: Look at its greatness. You cannot allow the miracle without the confession that Jesus was more than

man

II. THE SUPPOSED APPARITION.

First: An acknowledgment of the existence of a spiritworld is here made, and the belief of the race in it is suggested.

(1.) All the faiths of the world suggest it. Of all the religions of the past and the present, there is not one that does not assume a spirit-world.

(2.) The greatest poets of the nations suggest it, Read, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare, &c., and a spiritworld is hovering around you at once. Even some of the greatest sceptics have been unable to write poetry without bringing spirits upon the scene.

(3.) The superstitions of peoples suggest it. See how the consciousness of a spirit-world came out in the Hebrew. So

« ÎnapoiContinuă »