LECTURE LIX
ROMANS,viii, 28.
'And we know that all things work together for good to
them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.'
HE recurs again in this verse to the topic that he
introduced in the eighteenth verse, even to the sufferings of the present time;
and, after having contrasted them with the glory and the enlargement of their
future prospects, and having adverted not merely to the hope that will be
realised then but also to the help that is administered now, he, as a last
argument for reconciling his disciples to all the adversities of their earthly
condition, affirms that they all work together for their good; that even the
crosses and disasters of life are so many blessings in disguise; and that the
whole machinery of Providence, in fact, is at work for the accomplishment of a
great and beneficent purpose towards them. It, in the first place, is
abundantly obvious of many a single adversity - that a great and permanent good
may come out of it. This is often verified on the ground even of everyday
experience - when the disease brought on by intemperance hath been known to
germinate a course of determined sobriety; and the loss by a daring speculation
hath checked the adventurer on his hazardous path, and turned him into the walk
of safe though moderate prosperity; and the felt discomfort of a quarrel hath
made him a far more patient and pacific member of society than he else would
have been; and many other visitations, unpalatable on the instant but
profitable afterwards, have each turned out to have in it the wholesomeness of
a medical draught as well as its bitterness.
Apart from Christianity,
or from the bearings which our history on earth has on our preparation. for
heaven - Man has often found that it was good for him to have been afflicted -
that, under the severe but salutary discipline, wisdom has been increased, and
character has been strengthened, and the rough independence of human wilfulness
has been tamed, and many asperities of temper have been worn away; and he, who
before was the boisterous and implacable and unsafe member of society, has been
chastened down into all the arts and delicacies of pleasing companionship. And
so of many a single infliction on the man who is viewed, not as a citizen of
the world that is below, but as a candidate for the world that is above. The
overthrow of his fortune has given him a strong practical set for eternity. The
death of his child has weaned him from all the idolatries of a scene - whereof
the family, the home, the peace and shelter of the domestic roof, formed the
most powerful enchantments. Even the dreariness of remorse hath given a new
energy to his spiritual frame, and made him both a more skilful and a more
vigilant warrior on the field of contest than before. The tempests of life, if
so withstood that they have not overthrown him, will have fastened him more
stedfastly to the hold of religious principle. It is thus that the traveller
through life is nurtured for the immortality beyond it. He is made perfect by
sufferings. He sits more loose to the world, in proportion as he finds less in
it to fascinate and detain him. Its very disappointments have the effect of
throwing him upon other resources; and, casting away the desires and the
delusions of the hope that perisheth, he clings as to the alone anchor of his
soul by the hope that abideth for ever. On the scale of infinite duration, a
present evil becomes a future and everlasting benefit; and we are at no loss to
perceive, how even a calamity, that to the eye looks most tremendous and would
overwhelm one of the children of this world in despair - how it may work for
the good of one of the children of light, by working out for him a far mole
exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
But these adverse visitations do
not always come singly. The apostle supposes otherwise, as may be gathered from
the phrase of all things working together. He supposes in the text, not one
single influence from one event alone; but he supposes the mutual or the
concurrent influence of two or more events, all verging however towards the one
result of good for him to whom they have befallen. It has often been said that
misfortunes seldom come by themselves; and there is no doubt that it often
occurs, when one passage of our history is signalised by an accumulation of
ills - when, instead of being called upon to measure our strength with one
calamity, our attention is shared and distracted among several - when the
boding dread of disaster and distress lowrs upon us from more than one quarter
of that visible sphere by which we are surrounded - and when we are made the
subjects, not of one, but of manifold tribulations.
It has often been
alleged that the pressure of each distinct calamity is lightened, when the
anxiety is thus dispersed and divided among several. I do not think so. I hold
it easier to meet with the summoned intrepidity of the bosom one great and
nearly overwhelming misfortune, - than it is to have a constant tumult kept up
in the spirits, by the ceaseless play of so many petty yet interminable
harassments. I hold it a less ineligible condition, to have all the energies of
the soul collected and prepared for a mighty shock of adversity, than to have
them wasted in the skirmishes of a lighter yet more complicated warfare. I hold
it not only an occasion of greater glory, but positively an occasion of greater
ease, when one tremendous combatant approaches on whom there hang the fearful
issues of life, or of that which than life is dearer - than when doomed by the
stings of an insect tribe to die by inches, or to spend in perpetual annoyance
the remainder of your days. And therefore it is well, that, for the comfort of
exercised humanity, deliverance is promised out of six and of seven troubles;
and when we are told that the afflictions of the just are many, but that God
will extricate out of them all; and when we are bidden to count it all joy,
though we should fall not into one but into manifold temptations; and lastly,
when we are assured by the apostle that, not merely one, but that all things
work together for good unto them who love God. For it is the compounding of one
evil thing with another that aggravates so much the distress of each of them;
and the sensation of plague or of perplexity increases in a much faster
proportion, than their number; and, like the problem of the three bodies, one
additional element of distress more might make the line of prudence far more
difficult, and every plan and every prospect far more inscrutable than before:
And thus though each of his cares might be easily provided for, could
one meet each with undivided, strength, and bend upon it the whole force of his
anxiety - yet, from the very rnultitude of them, might there ensue a general
helplessness, that needs to have the precise consolation which is now before
us. The mechanism of Providence is made up of so many parts, as often to baffle
the comprehension of man - yet all is clear to the eye, and under the sovereign
hand of Him who works it; and when we are lost in the bewilderments of a
history that we cannot scan, when we are entangled among the mazes of a
labyrinth that we cannot unravel, it is well to be told that all is ordered and
that all worketh for good. I should imagine that I now speak to the experience
of those, who, manifold in the adventures of business, have a very extended
circumference around them, from every quarter of which fears and mischances and
the arrivals of disastrous intelligence might bring fresh and frequent
disquietudes into the soul; and who therefore may have felt what it was to be
visited with one plague after another - perhaps agonised in all the moral
sensibilities of your nature, -by some aggravated wrong of injustice; and ere
you have recovered this shock, told of some menacing fluctuation in that market
where the main bulk of your interest lies; and furthermore waiting on the rack
of anxiety for the appearance of that richly-laden vessel, which some recent
storm must have put in jeopardy, and that with the eye of midnight fancy you
conceive to be fearfully rocking amid the surges of an angry ocean: And all
this mixed up with the rumoured bankruptcy of customers and correspondents,
with bills unanswered and the swift approaches of that time when payments that
far exceed your present strength shall be imperiously required.
These
are the foreign invaders of your peace, and should they meet unhappily with the
broils and the miseries of a distempered home - should these days of vexation
be followed up by evenings of discontent and discordancy; or, what is also
grievous, should there be peace and love in your dwelling, but its dearest
inmate be laid on the couch of irrecoverable sickness - should one child of the
family be dying, or another by his vice and his wilfulness minister a grief as
heavy to the hearts of his parents - should the burden upon his spirit, which
this sorely agitated man brings with him daily from abroad, have nought to
alleviate its pressure within the door of his own habitation - What a noble
faith it would require to bear him up under the weight and accumulation of all
these evils; and is there ought within the compass of nature so suited to his
weary and heavy-laden spirit, as - the assurance of my text that all of them
shall work and work together for his good? You must often have been sensible,
in the course of your own history, how big and how important the consequences
were, that emanated from one event, which in itself was insignificant - how on
the slightest accidents the greatest interests were suspended - how, moving
apparently at random, you met with people or with occasions that gave rise
perhaps to far the most memorable passages in your life - how the very street
on which you chanced to move, brought you into contact with invitations or
appointments or proposals of any sort, which brought results of magnitude along
with them - Insomuch that the colour and direction of your whole futurity have
turned on what, apart from this mighty bearing, would have been the veriest
trifle in the world.
It is thus that the great drama of a nations
politics may hinge on the veriest bagatelle, that could modify or suggest some
process of thought in the heart of a single individual. The most remarkable
instance of this which I at present recollect, is, when the pursuers of Mahomet
who followed hard upon him with a view to take his life, were turned away from
the mouth of the cave in which he had the moment before taken shelter, by the
flight of a bird from one of the shrubs that grew at its entry - inferring
that, had he recently passed that way, the bird must have been previously
disturbed away and would not now have made its appearance. It is a striking
remark of the historian, that this bird, by its flight upon this occasion,
changed the destiny of the world - instrumental as it was in perpetuating the
life of the false prophet, and, along with him, the reign of that superstition
which to this day hath a wider ascendancy over our species than Christianity
itself.
And such indeed are the links and concatenations of all
history. A word, a thought, an unforeseen emotion, an event of paltriest
dimensions in itself, may be the germ of an influence wide as a continent and
lasting as a thousand years; and thus it is that the polities of man are
baffled in the mystery of that higher polities, by which the government of the
Supreme is conducted, and whereby the minutest accidents and the mightiest
results interchange all have equal efficacy the one upon the other.
It
is well that God has the management; and that what to man is a chaos, is in the
hands of God a sure and unerring mechanism. Man is lost and wilders in the
multiplicity of things, and their diverse operations; and he staggers and is at
his wits end; and therefore it is well that all things are under the
control of that great and presiding intelligence which is above, and that God
maketh all things work together for good unto those who love Him.
To
conclude then for the present. Do you not peceive that at this rate God would
be divested of His sovereignty, if His superintendence were not universal? Is
not the historical fact, that what is most minute often gives rise to what is
most momentous, an argument for the theological doctrine of a providence
that-reaches even to the slightest and most unnoticeable varieties? If God did
not number all the hairs of our head - if His appointments did not include the
fall of every sparrow to the ground - then, from the observed relation of
events to each other, empires might have fallen, and the faith of whole nations
been subverted, and the greatest evolutions been made in the progress of human
affairs, all the time that the will of God and the authority of God were
elements of utter insignificance. Should He let go as it were one small
ligament in the vast and complicated machinery of the world, it might all run,
so to speak, into utter divergency from the purposes of the mind that formed
it. As things are constituted, the influence of littles carries along with it
an experimental demonstration, that the power and direction of the Godhead
extend even unto littles.
From it we argue, that there is no
alternative between a providence so particular as to embrace all, or an atheism
so universal as to exclude all, from the guidance and the guardianship of a
Divinity. In such a world, where all are so bound together in the way of
influence or, unvarying succession, there is need of such a providence. And
even from this contemplation, may be gotten something that should reconcile us.
to the idea of a predestinating God. In the following verses the apostle passes
onwards to this conception; and we shall be more prepared to go along with him,
when we only think, that, by shutting out the ordination of God from any event
in nature or in history, we, in fact, shut Him out from that lengthened train
of events, whereof it only formed one of the stepping-stones - that by breaking
one link, however small, we in fact wrest the chain out of that hand from which
it waa suspended - that, by refusing Him the supreme and directing agency over
the least incidents, we in fact depose Him. from all government of men or of
things, even in the. greatest passages of their story - In a.word tbat we
cannot disjoin God from one particle of the universe, without desolating the
universe of its God.
To them that love God. We have
already spoken of His providence; and of the sureness wherewith He works out
His own purposes by a mechanism far too complex for our apprehension; and of
the way in which He intermingles the little with the great in the history of
human affairs; and of the need that there is for a constant superintendance by
Him - seeing that on the minutest incidents of life its mightiest and most
abiding interests are often made to turn; and of the support which a sound
experience renders to a most important doctrine of sound theology - even that
God, instead of sitting in remote and lofty unconcern to our world, save in the
noblest and grandest passages of its history, busies Himself in fact with the
operations of every atom, and bears a microscopic regard to the most trivial of
events and of things - even while He sits in heavens high throne, and
casts a directing eye over space and its immeasurable regions. This we have
already attempted to make as palpable to your discernment as we could; and we
are now led by the clause that is before us, to bethink ourselves of the
character of those to whom it is that God maketh all things work together for
their good - even that they love God. We seldom meet with so much of
earnestness among those who are intent on their preparation for heaven, as that
which is excited by the question whether or not they really do love God. It is
indeed a trying question on which few adventure themselves; and on which most
of those who do, have to record that marvellously little satisfaction is to be
found.
It forms one of the most anxious topics of self-examination; and
the thing which the enquirer is in search after, even the affection for the
Godhead that exists in his own bosom, may be either so dull and undiscernible
of itself, or lie so buried in the multitude of other things that crowd and
confuse the receptacles of the inner man, as to elude the investigation
altogether. And then the question comes, how am I to he assured of my interest
in the declaration that all things shall work together for my good? The promise
here is not unto all in the general, but to those who harbour within them a
certain feeling, and are stamped upon their moral or spiritual nature with a
certain character. It is unto those who love God.
Now I may not be sure
that I love Him. I may desire to love Him; but to desire is one thing and to do
is another. I may have a wish for the affection - of this I should suppose that
many of you are conscious; but to have a wish for the affection is not to have
the affection itself, and the question recurs - what title have I to
appropriate the comforts of this passage, or to presume on the strength of an
affirmation that is evidently restricted to the possessors of a certain grace,
even of love to God - what title have I to imagine, that the power and the
providence of Heaven are wholly upon my side? Now it does not follow, that you
are altogether destitute of love to God, because it stirs so languidly within
you, that you are not able very distinctly or decidedly to recognise it. Your
very desire to love Him is a good symptom - your very grief that you love Him
not bodes favourably for you. The complaint that you utter of a heart hard and
ungrateful, and that hath been very much unmoved by the claims, which God hath
to all the affections of it is one which has been re-echoed by the disciples
and the saints of all ages; and which, if you feel as you ought, will to the
end of life be the subject of your humiliation and your prayers.
Love
to God is a heavenly aspiration, that is ever kept in check by the drag and the
restraint of an earthly nature; and from which you shall not be unbound till
the soul by death has made its escape from the vile body, and cleared its
unfettered way to the realms of light and life and liberty. In very proportion
to the desirousness wherewith you now soar aloft, will you be galled - by the
tenticle that holds you; and, feeling with the Psalmist of old how your soul
cleaves unto the dust, will you pray that God might quicken you. Where there is
a complaint of hardness, there is in fact a beginning of tenderness. Where
there is an honest wish for affection, there is in fact the embryo affection
itself, struggling for a growth and, an establishment in the aspiring bosom.
Where there is a feeling of sad insensibility, the sensibility hath begun; and
that good seed, which one can with difficulty see among the still vigorous and
unbroken elements of carnality, is already deposited, and will rise into a tree
that might overspread with its droppings the whole mass of our then regenerated
nature.
Meanwhile it is most desirable that the germ should ex pand -
that the precious element should be fostered into a more visible magnitude -
that the affection of which you are now so fruitlessly in quest, should so grow
as to announce itself - that the flame should brighten and break forth out of
its present dull and lambent obscurity: And the question is, how shall this be
brought about? Never we affirm by the exercise of self-inspection alone - never
in the mere employment of inwardly brooding on the characters that are already
graven upon the tablet of the heart - never by looking to oneself as the
subject, at the time when you are called to look unto the Saviour as the
object. The eye is not a luminary. It sheds no light on the field of its,
contemplation. It diffuses no heat over it. It only witnesses the splendour,
but can in no way create it. It may discover that whibh is visible, hut it does
not make it visible; and, therefore, if you complain that you cannot see the
love of God within you, it is not by poring and penetrating among the arcana of
your moral constitution that this love is to be inspired.
To
those who are the called. This new clause may be turned to some
practical account in the resolving of the difficulty. They who love God are
described by another and a distinct characteristic. They are the called, by
which we understand not those who have merely had the call or invitation of the
gospel sounded in their ears; but those who have felt the power of the call
upon their hearts, and have compliedwith it accordingly. In the well-weighed
language of our Shorter Catechism, it magnifies those who are effectually
called. There has not merely been a call on the part of the gospel, but there
has been a compliance with it on the part of their souls - and that just
because the gospel hath come to them, not in word only, but in power and in the
Holy Ghost and with much assurance. Their eyes have been opened to behold the
reality of the gospel overtures. They recognise the death of Christ as an
effective propitiation for sin. They perceive that the benefit of this
propitiation is held out in offer to them individually. They hear the
beseeching voice of God accompanied with such terms as any and all and
whosoever; and they understand this to be as good as a voice addressed
specifically to each of themselves; and they regard a message, so couched and
so worded, to be a message from Heaven to their own doors; and as the message
is neither more nor less than an entreaty on the part of God that they will be
reconciled to Him, they respond to it with the full consent and confidence of
their hearts; and by so doing they in fact enter upon reconciliation. Their
faith in the offer constitutes their acceptance of it. By meeting Gods
assurance with their trust, they will find, that, according to this trust, so
shall it be done unto them. By simply regarding the transaction of the
sacrifice for sin as a real and honest transaction, they shall have a full
share in it, and be absolved from their sin.
Many are outwardly called;
but, turning a deaf and listless ear thereunto, they come not under the
designation of my text. They are not the called - a designation reserved for
those, who have not only heard the call, but who have perceived its honesty and
worth, and have proceeded upon it. You see then the connection that there is,
between the two characteristics of those for whose good God maketh all things
to work together. The two characteristics are that they love God, and that they
are the called. The second of these in the order of enumeration, is the first
in the order of succession. It is only upon our entertaining the call of the
gospel and consenting thereunto, it is only upon this transition taking place
in our minds - that there ensues a transition of the heart to the love of God,
from that indifference or even hatred which we formerly bore unto Him. Anterior
to this, the thought of God stood associated with feelings of jealousy and
insecurity and alarm. The conscience, if ,at all faithful, could not fail to
reproach us for our delinquencies. The law of God, and more especially if
regarded in its pure and lofty and uncompromising character, could not but
suggest the disturbing imagination of many accounts that were unsettled, and
many violations for which no recompence. to its outraged dignity had been made.
The character of God, as being that of august and unapproachable
sacredness, offered no asylum from the disquietudes that haunted us; nor could
we ever, with our eyes open to the incommutable attributes of His holiness and
His justice and His truth, could we ever find any solid repose in that fancied
indulgence of His nature, which forms at once the refuge and the delusion of a
meagre and sentimental piety. Those imaginations of the Godhead, which make up
a religion of poetry, are not enough for a religion of peace; and, in these
circumstances, He, to all practical accounts, is regarded by the eye of nature
with that dread and that disquietude, which are inspired by the sight of an
enemy. It is a sense of guilt that has so alienated us from God; and it is
under the latent yet powerful conviction of His displeasure, that we stand
before Him with our hearts in chill and torpid apathy, and our countenances
fallen.
It is this which stands as a wall of iron between heaven and
earth; and wholly debars the intimacies either of confidence or of regard, with
Him who dwelieth in the high and the awful sanctuary. And the only way, we
repeat it, by which this else impregnable barrier can be scaled, and we can
draw nigh in kind affection to the Father who made us, is by accepting the only
authentic offer that He ever held out to us of reconciliation. It is by
beholding Him in the face of Christ. It is by rejoicing in that mercy which
flows so copiously on all who will, through the channel of His consecrated
priesthood - and that not at the expence of His other attributes, but with
their fullest and noblest vindication. It is this alone which by quelling the
suspicions and the fears of guilty nature, at the very time that it presents
the attractive exhibition of a God whose graciousness hath not impaired but
illustrated His glory - it is this alone that can achieve the great moral
revolution in the character of man; and by rending the enmity of nature, can
soften the before sullen and intractable heart of man, for the impression of
that new character in virtue of which it now loves God.
Now it is by
the recurrence of the mind to that truth which first conveyed to it the love of
God, that this affection is upholden - just as to rekindle your admiration of a
beautiful scene or picture, you would return again to gaze upon it. It is on
this principle that so much stress is laid on keeping the truths which we
believe in memory - insomuch, that, if not so recalled and dwelt upon, we are
said to have believed them in vain. The doctrines of the gospel are intended
for a further purpose than that of merely making up a creed. One main design of
them is to move the affections; and, more especially, to reawaken that
affection to which nature, when oppressed with fears or weighed - down with the
lethargies of sense, is wholly incompetent - even the love of God. And that
this love be perennial in our hearts, there must be a constant reference to the
truth which first inspired it. The way to keep our hearts in the love of God,
is to build ourselves up on our most holy faith. To recall the emotion when it
hath vanished from our heart, we must recall the truth which hath vanished from
our remembrance. .The way to aliment and perpetuate the one, is to detain the
other, and let it be the habitual topic of our fondest contemplation. You
complain of your love to God being so exceedingly dim as to be beyond the reach
of your discernment. I know of no other way to brighten it, than simply to
think of Him as He is, and more especially as He stands forth to the
believers eye in the glass of His own revelation - as abundant in mercy,
but mercy shrined as it were in the immutabilities of truth and holiness - as
longing for the approaches even of the guiltiest of His children, but laying
His firm and authoritative interdict on that approach in any other way than by
the appointed mediatorship as turning His throne into a throne of grace, but
without undermining the eternal props of judgment and of righteousness by which
it is upholdcn - as mingling in His own character the tenderness of a friend,
with the venerable dignity of a Sovereign - as blending at once in that economy
which He hath set up over us erring creatures, the meekness of a paternal
government with the majesty of its power.
The man who is groping for
the discovery of an affection towards God among the secrecies of his own
inscrutable bosom, I would bid him cast an upward eye to the revealed
countenance of the Godhead; and this will do something more than discover the
affcction, - it will create it. Ere it can be made manifest, it must be made to
exist; and, most assuredly, it is not by downwardly probing and penetrating
among the mysteries of your own moral constitution, that you will summon it
into being. Ere you can love God, you must see Him to be lovely; and this is a
vision which the terrors of unexpiated guilt, and the sense of a controversy
with God that has not yet been satisfactorily or intelligibly made up, are sure
to scare away. It is the gospel, and it alone, that resolves this obstruction -
nor am I aware of any expedient by which the first and the greatest law can
again be established within us, than by accepting the call of that gospel
wherein He is propounded as a just God and a Saviour.
According to his purpose - or according to His
previous design. We now tread on the borders of what is deemed by many to he a
great mystery; and though we have no great respect for that Theology which
loves to grapple with the incomprehensibles of lofty speculation - yet we must
not shrink from ought that Scripture lays across our path. There is an ambition
on the part of some to be wise above that which is written; but that is no
reason why, in avoiding this, we should not attempt at least to be wise up to
that which is written. You may remember that a few chapters ago, which, from
the exceeding tardiness of our progress, makes it nearly as many years ago - we
came to an encounter with the very formidable doctrine of original sin, and
found the task so ponderous that it took several successive Sabbaths ere we did
acquit ourselves thereof. The few succeeding verses present us with a similar
exercise on the doctrine of predestination; and we most assuredly would not
embark on so arduous an undertaking, did we not hold it right to follow
fearlessly wherever the light of revelation may carry us; and did we not
further believe, that, like all other Scripture, this too is profitable, and in
most entire harmony with the interests of truth - and virtue in our world. The
purpose then signifies a previous design; and this in so far previous, as to be
even anterior to the existence of those who are the objects of it. In the
second epistle to Timothy there is an allusion to this very purpose of our
text, and where it stands associated too with the very call that is now under
consideration. 'God hath saved us,'says the apostle, 'not according to our
works but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given in Christ
Jesus before the world began.' The purpose then is the prior determination in
the mind of the Divinity, that such a one should be converted from the error of
his ways - should be called from darkness unto light - should make that
transition by which he passes from a state of condemnation to a state of
acceptance; and the call, which we have already supposed to be an effectual
one, is just as distinguishable from this previous determination, as the
execution of a purpose is from the purpose itself - or as a design entertained
and resolved upon long ago is from its fulfilment, that may only take place
this very day, or at some distant and indefinite futurity before us.
Moreover whom he did predestinate them he also
called. By the one He makes the decree - by the other, He carries it
into effect. And we again repeat, that it is not in the daring spirit of an
adventurer we would have you to enter this field, or on a game of strength or
of skill with the difficulties of human argument; but in the simple and lowly
spirit of genuine disciples would we have you to submit yourselves to the
Divine testimony. It is quite obvious that the being called here means
something totally different, from what it does in the verse where it is said
that many are called but few are chosen. In that verse the call of the gospel
is supposed to be heard by many, but complied with by few. But in the verse
before us they who are the called have not only heard the call, but they have
responded to it. In the one sense all who are here present, may be made to pass
among the called, simply by sounding forth among you the offers and the
invitations of grace - simply by bidding, as we are fully warranted to do, each
and all to put his confidence in the blood of Christ, and so have
his sins washed away - simply by coming forth with the assurance, which we cast
feartessly abroad in the hearing of the people, that there is no man, be his
guilt what it may, whom God will not welcome into peace with Him, would he only
draw nigh in the name of that great propitiation which has been rendered for
the sins of the world.
In this sense every one of you is called. But it
must be clear to your own experience, that there is the widest possible
difference between one class and another as to their reception of this call -
that on some it falls in downright bluntness, and moves them not out of the
deep unconcern and lethargy of nature - -whilst others recognise it as a voice
from Heaven; and are awakened thereby to a sense of reconciliation; -and feel a
charm and a preciousness in the doctrine of that cross, whereon the enmity
between God and a sinful world was done away; and through the faith which they
are enabled to put in the word of this testimony, are translated into a felt
peace and friendship with that God, who turns away His displeasure from them on
the moment that they turn away their distrust from Him: And thus, while you all
in one sense of the word are called, they are the latter class alone who are
the called of my text - because,- called eternaily, they have not only heard
the call but answered it.
Here then is a palpable difference between
two sets of hearers, that falls to be accounted for; and the account every
where given of it in Scripture is, that the Spirit, who bloweth where He
listeth, hath carried the message with power to the listeners heart in
the one case, and hath not gone along with it in the other - that He hath
inclined the one to Gods testimonies, and left the other to his own
waywardness - that wherever a saving impression has been made, there the Holy
Ghost has been at work, who, operating not without the word but by the word,
hath fulfilled on the person of the new believer, that purpose which God
conceived in his favour before the foundation of the world.
But let not
any feel himself thrown at a distance from salvation, by thus connecting it
with the antecedent decree of God respecting it. We are sure that none ought,
who feel a true moral earnestness on the subject, and are honestly and
desirously embarked on the pursuit of their immortal wellbeing. For though the
Spirit bloweth where He listeth, yet He listeth so to do on all who court and
who aspire after Him; and though by His work upon a human soul He is fulfilling
a design that hath been conceived from eternity, yet it is not with this past
design but with the present fulfilment that you have to do: And the matter in
hand, the matter with which you should feel yourself urged and occupied, is,
that by the operation of that Spirit you may indeed be enlightened in the truth
of God, and made wise unto your own salvation. For this purpose let me assure
you of His readiness to help and to visit all who ask Him - let me entreat your
attention to that Bible, which with Him is the mighty instrument, whereby the
understanding and the heart and all the faculties of man are gained over to
that truth, which is able at once to sanctify and to save us - let me press you
to awake and be active in the work, putting forth all the strength that is in
you, and confident that if you really do so more strength will be given - So
that if the whole force which you have now be honestly and heartily directed to
the object, by - force the kingdom of heaven will be carried.
Go to Lecture 60
Go back to Romans index
Home |
Biography |
Literature |
Letters |
Interests |
Links |
Quotes |
Photo-Wallet