Thomas
Chalmers
Lectures on Romans
LECTURE LXVII,
ROMANS, viii, 35 - 39.
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or
sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are
accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than
conquerors, through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death
nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor
things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to
separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord."
To have the precise understanding of this passage, you should
remember that the love of Christ in ver. 35, and afterwards the love of God in
ver. 39, may be understood in two senses - either as signifying His love to us,
or our love to Him. The whole context seems to decide for the first of these
meanings - as in that part of it which goes before, it is of Gods
dealings with, and regards to His elect; it is of His being upon their side; it
is of the surrender that He made in their behalf, when He gave up His Son unto
the death, and with Him shall freely give them all things; it is of Christ
dying and interceding for our good; it is of the love that is felt in heaven
and is pointed downwardly to earth, and not of the love that is felt on earth
and is pointed upwardly to heaven - that the argument is held: And in that part
of the context which follows, it is still of Him who loved us that he speaks.
Notwithstanding however, we shall find, I think, on a narrower examination of
the whole passage, that our love to Him is embraced therein, though it be His
love to us that is more directly and obviously expressed by it.
You
will observe that there is nothing in all the adversities which Paul
enumerates, that would in the first instance tend to effect a separation
between Christs love to us and our own persons. The tribulation and the
distress and the persecution and the famine and the nakedness and the peril and
the sword, to all of which the Christians of that day lay so peculiarly exposed
- there was nought in these that could of themselves alienate the regard of the
Saviour from those who had enlisted themselves as His followers and friends;
but every thing, on the contrary, to enhance the interest and the tenderness
which He felt for them. But though they did not effect such a separations yet
they might indicate it. At least, they who were weak in the faith might be
discouraged into such a conclusion. They might be led to infer, that, as the
ills and adversities of life were the portion of those who embraced the
Saviour, there could be little love on His part towards those whom He had the
power to rescue from these, but did not choose to put it forth. When they saw
that it was for His sake they were so pursued even unto the death, their
courage and their confidence might have given way, and they have stood in doubt
of there being any regard on Heavens part towards them. The terrors and
trials of that distressing period might have prevailed against them; and they,
trusting no longer to the affection of Christ for their persons or their
interests, might have renounced their faith and along with this their affection
for the Saviour.
Now St. Paul in the passage before us, is bearing up
his own mind, and that of his converts, against the despondency of this
unbelief. He, as as it were, is not suffering himself to think, that all these
dark and lowring adversities manifest either the decay or the dissolution of
any love for them on the side of their merciful High Priest. He comes, in fact,
to the very opposite conclusion. "Nay in all these things, we are more than
conquerors through him that loved us. He looks back to the great fight of
afflictions that they had formerly been involved in. He recalls the manifold
escapes, or, what is more characteristic of victory, the occasions on which
they had been armed with intrepidity for the contest, and were enabled to face
all the hostilities and hardships of the Christian profession and to endure
them. And he connects the inspiration of all that courage by which they had
been upholden so nobly, with Him from whom it descended. They were conquerors,
only through Him that loved them. It was He who nerved them for the conflict.
It was He who gave them either wisdom to overcome argument, or strength to
suffer under the inflictions of personal violence. It was a moral warfare in
which they were engaged, and in this He enabled them to conquer. It was a
struggle between pain and principle; and He so succoured and sustained the
latter, as that they could bid defiance to the fiercest assaults of the former
- causing the spiritual to prevail over the animal nature; and between these
two elements, the infused heroism of the new man and the creeping fearfulness
of the old, enabling the grace to make head in this internal conflict against
the corruption and to carry it.
And here it is of great practical
importance to remark, that the way in which God often manifests His protecting
and fatherly care of us, is, not by obtaining for us the safety of a flight;
but, better and nobler than this, the triumph of a victory. In plainer words,
he may neither withdraw the calamity from us, nor us from the calamity; but,
leaving it to bear with full weight upon our spirits, He pours a strength into
our spirits which enables them to bear up under it. It is in this way
frequently, that He makes good the promise of not suffering us to be tried
beyond what we are able to bear. He does not lighten the suffering, but He adds
to the strength; and, as it were, cradles us, by the education of a severe
spiritual discipline, into a state of spiritual maturity. After that the
apostles had been threatened by the Jewish rulers to desist from preaching,
they did not pray that no more threats might. be uttered, or that the power of
executing their menaces should be taken away. They did not pray for a
deliverance from the outward trial; but for a supply of inward resolution, that
they might he upheld against it. "And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and
grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word.
And so with Christians of all ages. They estimate the kindness of God towards
them by His spiritual, rather than by His temporal blessings. They count not
that God has separated or withdrawn Himself, because His earthly comforts have
abandoned them. The most distressing. separation to them were to be abandoned
by the aids of His grace. That they fell into suffering, were to them no
indication of His faded or expiring regards for them; but, should they fall
into sin, this were the sad and sorrowing evidence of an angry or of a
withdrawing God. When He puts some dark adversity to flight, this may prove
that He has made them to be safe. But higher far when He discharges this
adversity upon them, and they come out, of erect and unhurt spirit, from the
onset and the uproar of its violence - this proves that He maketh them to
conquer, and to be more than conquerors.
The great object in fact with
every true Christian, is, not that the life of sense shall be regaled with
pleasures or protected from annoyance; but, above this and ulterior to this,
that the life of grace shall flourish and advance under all the varieties
whether of sensible pain or sensible enjoyment. In the prosecution of what may
be termed this higher game, there is at least secured to him that which
according to Lord Bacon forms one chief ingredient of human happiness - even
heroic feelings or heroic desires. The man you will observe whose heart is thus
set, has a loftier aim than those of an every-day character, and he may be said
to expatiate in a loftier region. They are certain moral and spiritual points
that he tries to win; and that, in the face of certain hurts or hazards to
which they are exposed - and in this higher walk of profit and loss, you will
at once see, how wholly dissimilar his engrossments are from those who travail
in the ordinary pursuits and speculations of merchandise.
It is most
true that he may so travail and yet be a Christian; but there is all the
distance in the world between him who diligently labours after riches as the
ultimate landing-place on which his heart does terminate, and him who while not
slothful in business yet fervent in spirit labours to keep that heart with all
diligence. They look wholly different ways; and must be variously affected by
the same events, according to what that is which mainly occupies them. Now a
man is never overset, never plunges into helpless and irrecoverable despair,
but on the giving way of that which he holds to be his main interest; and hence
you will perceive, that the same visitation of calamity which should make one
man feel that he is undone, might give to another a sense of noblest
independence - in that he has met the poverty or the pain with a spirit unhurt,
if not bettered by the collision; and that, in the triumph of a faith which
looks onward and ahead of all that is visible, he can rise superior to the
disaster and trample it beneath him.
Ver. 38, 39. Before taking
our conclusive leave of this subject, I should like to unfold if I could, how
it is that our love to God and Gods love to us act and react the one upon
the other. There is an ambiguity in the general expression - the love of God -
that causes it to be significant of either of these two affections; and we do
think, that, in order to arrive at the full spirit and meaning of the passage
which is before us, reference must be made to both of them. For, in the first
place, our persuasion of Gods love to us, is of all other things the most
fitted to keep alive within us our love to God. It is just in fact the
spiritual process of faith working by love. We believe in the love that God has
to us, and we love Him back again. It is His good-will to us acting upon our
gratitude to Him - a good-will however which must be perceived and trusted in,
ere the responding emotion is awakened in our hearts. Apart from the view of
Christ, and apart from the conviction of Gods good-will to us in Christ,
we could not possibly love Him. The heart would be preoccupied with another
affection, which should keep love from entering; for if it be true that love
casts out fear, it is just as true that fear keepeth out love. Now while the
view of God in Christ awakens love, the view of God out of Christ awakens
terror. We then see Him as a lawgiver armed to destroy us - a God of sacredness
whose hostility against sin is unappeased and unappeasable - a judge sitting in
the high state of His affronted dignity, and roused by the jealousies of His
holy nature to an act of vengeance on the creatures who had renounced His
authority, and cast despite and defiance upon His throne. It is thus that the
thought of God tirs up images Qf dread and disturbance in the bosom, amid which
the love of God most assuredly cannot dwell; and it is not till this dark
imagery gives place to another view and another aspect of the Divinity - it is
not till the Mediator steps between, and we see that economy of wisdom and
grace by which the Law has been disarmed yet the Lawgiver has been pacified -
it is not till we behold Him as God in Christ, through whom truth and mercy
have met together, and good-will to men has been made most firmly and
harmoniously to unite with glory to God in the highest - It is then, and not
till then, that the great moral revolution is brought about in the
sinners heart, of a love for that Being whom he before stood afraid of;
and of kindest regard for that awful but now amiable Deity, who, in the gospel
of Jesus Christ, stands forth in all the graces of His manifested kindness
towards a guilty world.
Let but this persuasion find entrance into the
bosom; and it will clear away the distrust and the alienation, and I will add
the hatred, that had before the possession and the mastery therein. It is the
exprest persuasion of the apostle in our text. He believed the love of God in
Christ towards him; and, retaining this belief in the midst of disasters and of
trials which would have shaken the confidence of other men - just as he kept by
the persuasion that these dark and lowring appearances did not indicate any
separation of Gods love from him, so neither did they effectuate any
separation of his love from God. It was the strength of his persuasion in
Gods love to him, that so settled and secured his love to God. It was
because his persuasion in the love of God did not give way, that his love to
God did not give way. It was a persuasion brought to the trial and that stood
its ground against it - and just by the very force of that sentiment which made
Job say, that "though He slay me yet will I trust in Him." There was a storm
that might well have made his conidence to falter. There were, in those days, a
desertion and a dreariness in the profession of the gospel, by which God meant
to discipline the spirit of its converts; but which by the eye of sense might
well have been interpreted into the manifestation of His displeasure. And it
was because faith prevailed over sense - it was because the persuasion of
Gods love to him availed the heart of Paul, like an anchor of hope that
kept him attached and steady amid the conflicts and fiercest agitations of this
worlds violence - it was because, like Abraham of old, he staggered not
out of his belief, for all that seemed menacing in the persecutions and cruel
sufferings of that tempestuous age - it was because, notwithstanding of these,
he still held by the confidence that Gods love was not separated from him
- that neither was his love separated from God. There was nothing, I have
already said, in all these adversities, that could effect the separation of
Gods love from Paul and his disciples. The very most which they could do,
would be to indicate or to make them fancy such a separation - after which, and
when driven from their trust, they would lose their hold of the very principle
by which their love was alimented; and thus although there was nought in this
worlds fortunes which could have any immediate effect in separating
Gods love from them, they might be of powerful effect in separating their
love from God.
It is not to be imagined indeed, that the creature can have
such influential operation on the mind of the Creator, as to detach His
affections from those to whom they had been given; but it may have influence
enough upon their mind to detach their affections from Him - after which, no
doubt, He ceases His regards from those who have thus cast Him off. Their
prayers for aid in the hour of temptation lose all efficacy, because no longer
raised with the faith of those who utter them. The love of God in Christ will
never fail those who keep a firm and confiding hold of it. But they let go
their hold, and so fall away; and thus, not because of the power which this
worlds fortunes have over the mind of God, but because of the power which
they have over the minds of men, there may come to be between these two parties
a complete and conclusive separation. It is on these considerations, that we
deem it the best practical way of closing our lengthened elucidations upon this
passage, shortly to urge upon you the tendency which there is in the world and
in its fluctuations to separate you from God; and how, making head against this
tendency, you should retain the love of Him in your hearts, and so retain His
love towards you, under all the varieties whether prosperous or adverse of this
present scene. For you will observe, that, in Pauls enumeration of those
influences which he stood determined to resist, but which certainly exposed to
hazard the steadfastness of his love to God, there is room allowed, not for the
assaults of adversity alone, but for the wiles and the blandishments of
prosperity. He says that neither life nor death should separate him from the
love of God - that neither things present nor things to come should do it -
that no creature of any kind whatever should do it - All giving reason to
believe that he had in his eye, what was agreeable to the life of sense and
which might seduce our love from God, as well as what was painful or terrifying
and which might cause that love to perish in a storm of calamity. And what we
now propose is, to attend a little to each of these distinct influences, that
you may beware alike of both, and suffer neither the joys nor the griefs of
your earthly pilgrimage to separate you from God.
First then as to the
effect of that which regales and satisfies the life of sense, in withdrawing
our hearts from their love to God. There is nothing, we admit, in it, that
should induce the suspicion of Gods unkindness or hostility against us -
or that should make us cease to be persuaded of Gods love to us, and so
to uphold the love of our gratitude to Him back again. We may continue to
believe as before; and, in as far as faith worketh by love, it may be thought
that there is every security we shall love as before. But in regard to the
operation of faith upon the character, there is a most important principle laid
down by the apostle in one of his epistles to the Corinthians. He there speaks
of our believing in vain, unless we keep the truth so believed in our memory.
The use of our faith in any truth, is that we may ever be recurring in thought
and in remembrance to that truth, for the purpose of our ever and anon keeping
its appropriate moral influence close upon the heart. Without this, it would
appear, that the faith is of no use to us. There are a thousand things which we
at one time believed, and which we would believe again were they called up to
the remembrance, but which now he as forgotten things in the minds
dormitory. Our faith in them is of no further use. There are many events,
through the years that have gone by, of private and personal history, which we
believed at the time on the testimony of others - many of which we have read,
and read with conviction, in books of public and political information - many
propositions of science so demonstrated as to carry our firm assent to their
truth, and all of which have now faded and escaped from the memory for ever. We
once believed in them, and, were they recalled into the minds presence,
we should believe in them again. But ceasing to be thought of, all their
practical influence has ceased also; and the very same holds, and is indeed
expressly affirmed by the apostle, of the truths of Christianity. It is of no
use that on some one day they have been acquiesced in - if day after day they
are not adverted to. Even the death of Christ it would appear loses its
efficacy for salvation, if it be not kept in remembrance. And even though we
should have once believed the love which God has to us - this, if not dwelt
upon in thought and cherised as our habitual recollection, is of no effect to
perpetuate or keep alive our love to Him back again.
You will hence
understand the hazard to which this affection is exposed from prosperity. It
does not make us cease to believe that God has a yet unseparated love to us;
but it makes us cease to think of it. Ye are satisfied with things present, and
we look no farther. Or we dwell on the bright and golden hopes of the things
that are to come, and the mind so occupied ceases to have God in its habitual
contemplation. It is thus that both things present and things to come, neither
of which the apostle was determined should separate his love from God, do in
point of fact separate and withdraw the affections of many from Him, who is the
fountain of all that they have and all that they hope for. The mind is
otherwise engaged than with the thought of Him. The heart is otherwise engaged
than with the love of Him. It is taken up with sensible things, and forgets the
unseen God on whom they all are suspended. The apostle, by way of contrasting
two habits of the soul which are opposite and incompatible, says of one set of
men that their conversation is in heaven, and that thence they look for the
Saviour; and of another set of men, that they mind earthly things. Now the
effect of our prosperity is to engross the mind with earthly things; and to
withdraw its conversation and its lookings from Heaven, and from all the
benevolence which is there. We cease to love the God whom we have forgotten. He
is out of mind, and so out of heart. He is dispossessed as an object of
thought, and so is dispossessed as an object of affection. What is not present
to our view, is not of power to stir up our emotions; and, not because
prosperity has shaken us out of any belief that we ever had in Gods love
to us, but because it hath stolen us away from the thought of it, therefore oar
love to Him waxeth cold.
This effect of prosperity in making us forget
God and His love, by fastening our regards upon other objects, is palpably
evinced by the state and tendencies of almost every heart throughout the winged
hours of a free and festive holiday - when we give ourselves wholly up to the
fascination of things present; and, amid the glee and bustle and vivacity of
our successive enjoyments, not the futurities alone of an eternal world, but
even all the futurities of our earthly pilgrimage are forgotten. We just ask
you to compute how much or how little of God there is in the bosom that is thus
animated - whether it is not really true, that the exhilarations of such a day
banish all thought of Him; and though the lake or the landscape on which you
make delighted excursion be of His workmanship; and the happy faces by which
you are surrounded be lighted up by a life and a spirit that He has breathed
into every moving creature; and all the luxuries by which your various senses
are regaled to the uttermost have been scattered from the hand of Him, who hath
opened it wide, and poured them liberally forth on the face of a world, which
He hath most bountifully stocked and most beauteously adorned - Yet we ask you,
on your own recollection of the joyous party and all that gladdened them in the
shape of natures brilliancy without, or the music and the dance and the
plenteous hospitality and the costly decorations and the ring of merry
companionship within - we would just ask, if, amid the turmoil of all these
bright and busy images which are then made to occupy the heart, there has been
room during one short minute of the whole protracted gratification for the
thought of God as your reconciled Father, of God as the friend to whom all the
glory and the gratitude should arise
Now the life of a prosperous man
is one lengthened holiday. His business is the game, and the successful game at
which he plays. His rapidly succeeding centages are the stakes that have been
won by him, and which lead him onward to bolder adventures than before. His
bills and his bargains and his lawsuits, are the moves and the checks wherewith
he carries the enterprise to a fortunate termination. In launching a
speculation, there are felt by him the sport and the high-blown spirit of the
race; and, in its run and prosperous return laden with spoils and with profits,
there is felt by him all the exultation of victory. Between the gains of the
counting-house and the hours of evening enjoyment with his family - between the
calls of his urgent business and the delights of his summer recreation -
between the season at which he hardly and heartily labours, and the season at
which he relaxes amid the beauties of his magnificent retreat arid the
blandishments of expensive luxury - We see nought in the life of a thriving
citizen, but that still its reigning character is that of a busy and protracted
holiday - a life taken up to the full with the interest and the urgency of
present things - where that which is seen dispossesses the heart of all regard
to that which is unseen - where, in the hurry and the splendour and the
successive evolutions of one thing to delight and occupy the heart after
another, the thoughts of God and of His love are kept at a wide and habitual
distance from the bosom; and, without once caring whether the love of God be
separated from you, you have, abandoned your feelings to the force and
ascendancy of things present, and so separated yourselves from all love to God.
And in such a life there are not only things present, but things to come,
that withdraw our hearts from the love of God. Man lives in futurity. The
desire which stretches forth to a distant good has far greater mastery over the
heart, than the delight wherewith it regales itself in the good which is
actually realised. The charm of a coming prosperity, has more power to
fascinate and detain the heart from every other object, than even all the joys
of our existing prosperity. The mind is still more engrossed with the prospects
of a speculation that is yet afloat, than with the actual proceeds of a
speculation that is now terminated. And it is this, I imagine, which must
constitute the main hazard to your souls, of that walk on which many who now
hear me are to be found - hasting perhaps with too much eagerness after the
wealth that perisheth - giving, it may be, every affection and energy within
you, to some fancied sufficiency that you have not yet attained, and the
possession of which you hold to be enough for happiness - fastening all your
thoughts and regards on this object which is placed below, and so of necessary
consequence shifting them away from every object that is above - occupying the
mind with that which is earthly, and in that very proportion withdrawing the
mind from that which is heavenly.
We do not suppose that you have
admitted a wrong belief all the while into your understanding. If you once gave
credit to Gods testimony of His love to you in Christ Jesus, the
likelihood is that on the question being put, you will profess the same credit
still. You are not sensible of any such revolution in your opinions on this
subject, as should either change or in any way impair the orthodoxy of your
creed. The thing is credited as before, hut it is not attended to as before.
When the mind does come into contact with the doctrine, it just entertains it
as it wont, and judges of it as it wont; but then it is not so habitually in
contact with it as it wont. We do not complain that now you think of it
erroneously, but we complain that now you seldom or never think of it at all.
The love to you of God in Christ is seldom present to the eye of the mind,
because the eye is elsewhere directed; and so it is that your love back again
waxes cold. When the good-will ceases to be seen - the gratitude ceases to be
felt. The object is not kept in the memory, and so the affection which that
object is fitted to awaken is not kept in the heart. When the one disappears
the other dies away; and it is this which explains the decline and at length
the utter extinction of Christianity with many, whose notions were all
evangelical and even continue to be so - but whose zeal, fervent and declared
as it may at one time have been, is now scarcely ever felt, just because the
things which awaken zeal are now scarcely ever thought of.
The man does
not understand the things differently from before, but he does not look to it
so frequently as before. He is otherwise taken up. The engagements of business
have gotten the entire hold of him. The multitude of his prospects and affairs
and brooding speculations wields an entire and absolute mastery over his
spirit. He lives under the power of things that are to come, but they are not
he things of faith and eternity. They are altogether the things of a perishable
world - the coming profits of some goodly adventure - the coming result of some
keen and busy negotiation - the coming market, whose sales might elevate his
fortune to that of the most affluent and honourable among the citizens. In the
turmoil of such engrossments as these, the man has never changed his creed - he
has had no time for it. He is every way as sound and evangelical as ever - and
if one time the professor of a strict and serious orthodoxy, may he still have
name to live, while in spirit and in reality he is altogether dead. And thus we
have not to go back to the apostles days - that we may witness the power
either of present or future things to separate the heart from the love of God.
We see the vivid exemplification of it around us; and as much we fear on the
walks of peaceful and prosperous merchandise, as in any bygone age of
persecuting violence - as much in the seduction of this worlds good, as
in the terrors of this worlds dark and menacing adversity.
But we
mistake the matter, if we think that sensible things derive their power to
alienate the heart from God, only from the deceit and the blandishment which be
in prosperity, It should never be forgotten, that there is no other way in
which we can be made to love God than by our looking to His love for us - no
other way by which we can keep ourselves loving Him habitually, than by our
looking at Him habitually. Whatever then withdraws the eye of our mind from
Him, will withdraw the regards of our heart from Him; and we just ask you to
think, whether the things that distress or terrify the spirit, have not to the
full as great a mastery over the attention, as the things that satisfy and
regale it. Have not grief for some actual adversity, and fearful anxiety for a
coming one, have not these as great a power of engrossment as either the
present delight or the bright and joyful anticipations of prosperity? They
affect the mind differently it is true; but each may in its turn take up the
mind wholly and exclusively, and so be alike mischievous in keeping the
thoughts at a distance from God. And it argues an enlightened discernment by
Scripture of the human spirit and all its mysteries, that, while it pronounces
of this worlds riches how they beset the entrance of the kingdom of
heaven, it also affirms that there is a sorrow of this world which worketh
death; and you do well to notice that in the parable of the sower, where the
heart of an engrossed and overcrowded man is compared to the ground that is
overrun with thorns, and on which the vegetation of the good seed is stifled
and destroyed - you do well to notice, that they are not merely the riches and
the pleasures, but also the cares of this life, which choke and hinder from
ever coming to maturity the good seed of the word of God.
Such then
being the effect of crosses and adversities on your spiritual condition - is it
the safe plan for you as Christians to lengthen out or to contract the line of
your exposure to them? Ought you not to pause ere you comply with the
invitations for some new enterprise, that shall bring along with it a train of
hazards and anxieties and fearful misgivings, ere the termination be arrived
at; and perhaps after all a termination of defeat and disaster that may utterly
overwhelm you? We know little of the details of your merchandise; but we know
enough to affirm, in the general, that, if your means be limited, the field of
your operations ought proportionally to be moderate and manageable - that what
is true in the business of other things is also true in the business of trade,
you ought not to meddle with matters too high for you - that every risk which
you cannot meet with your own property, and every daring adventure by which
that of others is brought to hazard, should be avoided as unlawful. This much
we know; and that nevertheless there is an insidious temptation that is
perpetually operating, and by which the ambitious and the unwary are led into a
higher game than they are adequate to all the chances of - that oft there is a
floating vision which dances before their eyes in the shape of some goodly or
gainful speculation, and by which they suffer them selves to be lured into a
sea of troubles - that thus their cares and their concerns are greatly
multiplied; and the ground on which they stand, now become more precarious than
before, is felt as if it tottered under them; and in expedients for putting off
the evil day, and shifts for temporary credit, and devices and disguises
innumerable, they flounder from one difficulty to another - with a heart wholly
oppressed and overcharged.
Even had fortune smiled on their aerial
voyage, there would, as we have already endeavoured to show, have been, in the
prosperity that crowned it an influence to war against their souls. But in the
calamity which crosses it, there may be a tenfold hostility; and when we look
to the sadly beset and bewildered man, as he writhes in secret under the
necessities that encompass, or ruminates on the sad explosion of disgrace that
is before him - when we think of the way in which his heart is occupied, and
that positively there is not room in it for any thoughts of God - when we
consider thought as the aliment of affection, and that we can only love our
Maker in as far as we have time and space for the leisurely and undisturbed
contemplation of His love to us, when we compute the manifold distractions of
such a misguided individual, and the constant weight or agitation that he upon
his spirits, then we can no longer wonder, that, in reference to the things of
faith and of an eternal world, his soul should have been utterly dispossessed
as if by the violence of fierce invaders, that other thoughts and other
feelings should wholly monopolize him; and that, with an outset perhaps of
seemly professorship, he should at length, because pierced through with many
sorrows, have separated between himself and all sacredness, and become an alien
and an. apostate from his God.
There is danger to your soul from the
abundance of this worlds cares, as well as from the abundance of this
worlds comforts; and therefore it is that you should avoid all wanton or
unnecessary exposure to the former, even as you ought to be vigilant and sedate
and sober-minded amid the blandishments of the latter. That there is a power in
earthly sadness, as well as in earthly joy, to dispossess the heart of its love
for God, may be exemplified by what we sometimes see in a case of forlorn
widowhood. It has occurred that the sufferer under such a bereavement has been
irrecoverably woe-struck, and so abandoned herself to helpless and hopeless
melancholy - wholly unable to lift her spirits up from their dejection, and,
with a determination somewhat like impracticable sullenness, utterly refusing
to be comforted. That under a grief so immeasurable and absorbing there are
very many things which now cease to interest her, is not marvellous; but what
most indicates the dispossessing power of this affection, is that now she
should cease to love her own children - that even to those whom nature had so
powerfully endeared to her, her heart has become cold and alienated; and,
immovably fixed as it is on the departed object of her tenderness, all its
affinities with present objects have been broken. This is rare we admit; but it
proves what force of separation there is in grief, if, even once or at any
time, the strong parental attachment has been thereby discovered: And much more
does it prove how possible it is, that an affection at all times so slender as
that of love to the unseen Deity, should give way under the power of a similar
visitation - how in grief for the loss of fortune, there might be a force at
least equivalent to that of separating us from the love of God - how that which
though rarely is the cause of a literal suicide inflicted upon the person, may
frequently be the cause of a moral and spiritual suicide inflicted upon the
soul; and so, by hasting to be rich, have many fallen into teniptation and a
snare and erred from the faith; and, just because they pierced themselves
through with many sorrows, have they also drowned themselves in destruction and
perdition.
If then there be danger to the soul, both from success in
business and from its crosses and misfortunes - what, it may be asked, should
they who are immersed in the prosecution of it do? Not withdraw from their
callings certainly; but so regulate and restrain and rectify, as that their
callings shall not withdraw them from the love of God. There must be a way of
being not slothful in business, and yet of being fervent in spirit; and, lest
we should be charged for having dealt in this important question with
generalities alone, let me conclude with one plain and practical direction to
you. The thing which separates your love from Christ, is, that, with so much of
the earthly to think of, you think but little and perhaps never of His love to
you. What I hold to be indispensable for the preservation within you of
spiritual life, is that you clear out for yourselves a season, and that too a
frequently recurring season, of contemplation and prayer. In the constant
appliance of sensible objects and sensible interests to your heart, all the
grace that is in it must wither and decay; and, unless you take up the
sentiment of the apostle, and desire with him, that neither things present nor
things to come, neither the pride and prosperity of life nor the death of all
our worldly hopes, nor any creature whatever shall have power to separate you
from the love of Christ - your religion may perish, amid the many urgencies by
which you are surrounded. What I hold to be your peculiar necessity is, that
you so arrange as frequently to escape from these urgencies. It were well that
you had many a breathing time, and for this purpose it is not enough that your
Sabbaths be hallowed to the exercises and the studies of sacredness - you
should have many a hallowed moment through the week - you should have a morning
and an evening sacrifice - you should train your spirit to the work of oft
retiring within itself, and oft raising up its faculties that it may lay hold
of God. Even in the heat and bustle of the day there might be room for
the occasional aspiration; and though nought more disparaging to Christianity
than to fancy it a religion of days and forms and stated punctualities, yet,
beset and occupied as many of you are, I hold that the highest principle, as
well as the highest prudence, is involved in your set and regular observations
of sacredness.
The soul might else move adrift among the countless
influences that are ever and anon bearing upon it; and such is the actual
opposition between all the things which are in the world and the love of the
Father, that the drift is away from God. To recover those thoughts of God and
Christ which the world would dissipate - along with the stray thoughts to
recall the stray affections, and so maintain and constantly renew a fellowship
of heart with the Father and the Son to light again and again the flame of
sacredness within, and so to keep it from expiring utterly - to lift yourselves
from the deadness and degradation of the things that are beneath - I am aware
of no better expedient than that you have your times of communing through the
Bible and prayer with the things that be above, and that you determinedly
adhere to them. Let not the urgencies of business separate you from those
precious minutes, which you should give to the remembrance of Gods love
to you in Christ Jesus; and then the fortunes of business, whether prosperous
or adverse, shall not be able to separate your hearts from that love which you
owe to God in Christ Jesus back again. Pray unceasingly for His grace to
overcome the, world, and you shall be more than conquerors through Him that
loved you.
It is high time to break away from this worlds
entanglements - to dispossess your heart of things present, and turn them to
the things that are to come; and that not to the coming things of your earthly
pilgrimage, but, overleaping these and the death which is beyond them, to look
onward to the awful realities which lie upon the other side. If you have not
yet made the movement from the habit of walking by sight to that of walking by
faith, it is a movement which must be made ere you die - else the life eternal,
which is only to those with whom all old things have been done away and all
things have become new, you shall never never realise. And it concerns you all
to understand, that, by every day of postponement, you are getting more
helplessly implicated in the slavery of sense and of sin than before - that if
you seek not first the kingdom of God, every other thing which you seek and set
your affections upon just widens your distance from Him the more - that the
love of all which is in the world separates and alienates the heart the more
irrecoverably from Him who made the world - that thus in every footstep you
make, there is a farther departure from the Being whose favour is life, but
whose frown is endless and irremediable destruction: And, more particularly,
may every fresh speculation in which you engage, and that constant trooping of
successive cares and hopes and interests from one mercantile engrossment to
another, so multiply the ties by which you are rooted and fastened down to a
perishable scene - that wheu at length overtaken and torn forcibly away from it
by the last messenger, you shall be found to be wholly of the earth and
altogether earthly - overrun with carnality, and having a full part in the
saying that the carnal mind is death.
I ask you, not to be hermits and
to abandon either the world or its business, but I ask you to be aware of the
evil of it. I ask your instantaneous and habitual recurrence to the objects of
faith, that the objects of sight may no longer have the ascendant over you. I
ask you so to retire and separate yourselves from the love of things present,
that you may not be separated from the love of God - not to give up the use of
the world, but so to use it as not to abuse it - not to cast away from you the
good things of this life, but, by your habitual regard to the better things of
another life, to strip them of their power, so as that they shall not be able
to separate you from the high interests of an accountable and imperishable
creature.
Go to Lecture 68
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