The wise and holy do not expect to find it otherwise--would not wish it otherwise; their wisdom consists in disbelieving its promises. To develope this idea would be a glorious task; for to justify G.o.d"s ways to man, to expound the mysteriousness of our present being, to interpret G.o.d,--is not this the very essence of the ministerial office? All that I can hope however to-day, is not to exhaust the subject, but to furnish hints for thought. Over-statements may be made, ill.u.s.trations may be inadequate, the new ground of an almost untrodden subject may be torn up too rudely; but remember, we are here to live and die; in a few years it will be all over; meanwhile, what we have to do is to try to understand, and to help one another to understand, what it all means--what this strange and contradictory thing, which we call Life, contains within it. Do not stop to ask therefore, whether the subject was satisfactorily worked out; let each man be satisfied to have received a germ of thought which he may develope better for himself.
I. The deception of life"s promise.
II. The meaning of that deception.
Let it be clearly understood in the first place, the promise never was fulfilled. I do not say the fulfilment was delayed. I say it _never_ was fulfilled. Abraham had a few feet of earth, obtained by purchase--beyond that nothing; he died a stranger and a pilgrim in the land. Isaac had a little. So small was Jacob"s hold upon his country that the last years of his life were spent in Egypt, and he died a foreigner in a strange land. His descendants came into the land of Canaan, expecting to find it a land flowing with milk and honey; they found hard work to do--war and unrest, instead of rest and peace.
During one brief period, in the history of Israel, the promise may seem to have been fulfilled. It was during the later years of David and the earlier years of Solomon; but we have the warrant of Scripture itself for affirming, that even then the promise was not fulfilled. In the Book of Psalms, David speaks of a hope of entering into a _future_ rest. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, quoting this pa.s.sage, infers from it that G.o.d"s promise had not been exhausted nor fulfilled, by the entrance into Canaan; for he says, "If Joshua had given them rest then would he not have spoken of another day." Again in this very chapter, after a long list of Hebrew saints--"These _all_ died in faith, not having received the promises." To none therefore, had the promise been fulfilled. Accordingly writers on prophecy, in order to get over this difficulty, take for granted that there must be a future fulfilment, because the first was inadequate.
They who believe that the Jews will be restored to their native land, expect it on the express ground that Canaan has never been actually and permanently theirs. A certain tract of country--300 miles in length, by 200 in breadth--must be given, or else they think the promise has been broken. To quote the expression of one of the most eloquent of their writers, "If there be nothing yet future for Israel, then the magnificence of the promise has been lost in the poverty of its accomplishment."
I do not quote this to prove the correctness of the interpretation of the prophecy, but as an acknowledgment which may be taken so far as a proof, that the promise made to Abraham has never been accomplished.
And such is life"s disappointment. Its promise is, you shall have a Canaan; it turns out to be a baseless airy dream--toil and warfare--nothing that we can call our own; not the land of rest, by any means. But we will examine this in particulars.
1. Our senses deceive us; we begin life with delusion. Our senses deceive us with respect to distance, shape, and colour. That which afar off seems oval, turns out to be circular, modified by the perspective of distance; that which appears a speck, upon nearer approach becomes a vast body. To the earlier ages the stars presented the delusion of small lamps hung in s.p.a.ce. The beautiful berry proves to be bitter and poisonous: that which apparently moves is really at rest: that which seems to be stationary is in perpetual motion: the earth moves: the sun is still. All experience is a correction of life"s delusions--a modification, a reversal of the judgment of the senses: and all life is a lesson on the falsehood of appearances.
2. Our natural antic.i.p.ations deceive us--I say _natural_ in contra-distinction to extravagant expectations. Every human life is a fresh one, bright with hopes that will never be realized. There may be differences of character in these hopes; finer spirits may look on life as the arena of successful deeds, the more selfish as a place of personal enjoyment.
With man the turning point of life may be a profession--with woman, marriage; the one gilding the future with the triumphs of intellect, the other with the dreams of affection; but in every case, life is not what any of them expects, but something else. It would almost seem a satire on existence to compare the youth in the outset of his career, flushed and sanguine, with the aspect of the same being when it is nearly done--worn, sobered, covered with the dust of life, and confessing that its days have been few and evil. Where is the land flowing with milk and honey?
With our affections it is still worse, because they promise more.
Man"s affections are but the tabernacles of Canaan--the tents of a night; not permanent habitations even for this life. Where are the charms of character, the perfection, and the purity, and the truthfulness, which seemed so resplendent in our friend? They were only the shape of our own conceptions--our creative shaping intellect projected its own fantasies on him: and hence we outgrow our early friendships; outgrow the intensity of all: we dwell in tents; we never find a home, even in the land of promise. Life is an unenjoyable Canaan, with nothing real or substantial in it.
3. Our expectations, resting on revelation, deceive us. The world"s history has turned round two points of hope; one, the _first_--the other, the _second_ coming of the Messiah. The magnificent imagery of Hebrew prophecy had described the advent of the Conqueror; He came--"a root out of a dry ground, with no form or comeliness; and when they saw Him there was no beauty in Him that they should desire Him." The victory, predicted in such glowing terms, turned out to be the victory of Submission--the Law of our Humanity, which wins by gentleness and love. The promise in the letter was unfulfilled. For ages the world"s hope has been the second advent. The early church expected it in their own day. "We, which are alive, and remain until the coming of our Lord."
The Saviour Himself had said, "This generation shall not pa.s.s till all things be fulfilled." Yet the Son of Man has never come; or rather, He has been _ever_ coming. Unnumbered times the judgment eagles have gathered together over corruption ripe for condemnation. Times innumerable the separation has been made between good and bad. The promise has not been fulfilled, or it has been fulfilled, but in either case antic.i.p.ation has been foiled and disappointed.
There are two ways of considering this aspect of life. One is the way of sentiment; the other is the way of faith. The sentimental way is trite enough. Saint, sage, sophist, moralist, and preacher, have repeated in every possible image, till there is nothing new to say, that life is a bubble, a dream, a delusion, a phantasm. The other is the way of faith: the ancient saints felt as keenly as any moralist could feel the brokenness of its promises; they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims here; they said that they had here no continuing city; but they did not mournfully moralize on this; they said it cheerfully, and rejoiced that it was so. They felt that all was right; they knew that the promise itself had a deeper meaning: they looked undauntedly for "a city which hath foundations."
II. The second inquiry, therefore, is the meaning of this delusiveness.
1. It serves to allure us on. Suppose that a spiritual promise had been made at first to Israel; imagine that they had been informed at the outset that G.o.d"s rest is inward; that the promised land is only found in the Jerusalem which is above--not material, but immaterial.
That rude, gross people, yearning after the fleshpots of Egypt--willing to go back into slavery, so as only they might have enough to eat and drink--would they have quitted Egypt on such terms?
Would they have begun one single step of that pilgrimage, which was to find its meaning in the discipline of ages?
We are led through life as we are allured upon a journey. Could a man see his route before him--a flat, straight road, unbroken by bush, or tree, or eminence, with the sun"s heat burning down upon it, stretched out in dreary monotony--he could scarcely find energy to begin his task; but the uncertainty of what may be seen beyond the next turn keeps expectation alive. The view that may be seen from yonder summit--the glimpse that may be caught perhaps, as the road winds round yonder knoll--hopes like these, not far distant, beguile the traveller on from mile to mile, and from league to league.
In fact, life is an education. The object for which you educate your son is to give him strength of purpose, self-command, discipline of mental energies; but you do not reveal to your son this aim of his education; you tell him of his place in his cla.s.s, of the prizes at the end of the year, of the honours to be given at college.
These are not the true incentives to knowledge, such incentives are not the highest--they are even mean, and partially injurious; yet these mean incentives stimulate and lead on, from day to day and from year to year, by a process the principle of which the boy himself is not aware of. So does G.o.d lead on, through life"s unsatisfying and false reward, ever educating: Canaan first; then the hope of a Redeemer; then the millennial glory.
Now what is remarkable in this is, that the delusion continued to the last; they _all_ died in faith, not having received the promises; all were hoping up to the very last, and all died in faith--not in realization; for thus G.o.d has const.i.tuted the human heart. It never will be believed that this world is unreal. G.o.d has mercifully so arranged it, that the idea of delusion is incredible. You may tell the boy or girl as you will that life is a disappointment; yet however you may persuade them to adopt your _tone_, and catch the language of your sentiment, they are both looking forward to some bright distant hope--the rapture of the next vacation, or the unknown joys of the next season--and throwing into it an energy of expectation which only a whole eternity is worth. You may tell the man who has received the heart-shock which in this world, he will not recover, that life has nothing left; yet the stubborn heart still hopes on, ever near the prize--"wealthiest when most undone:" he has reaped the whirlwind, but he will go on still, till life is over, sowing the wind.
Now observe the beautiful result which comes from this indestructible power of believing in spite of failure. In the first centuries, the early Christians believed that the millennial advent was close; they heard the warning of the apostle, brief and sharp, "The time is short." Now suppose that, instead of this, they had seen all the dreary page of Church history unrolled; suppose that they had known that after two thousand years the world would have scarcely spelled out three letters of the meaning of Christianity, where would have been those gigantic efforts,--that life spent as on the very brink of eternity, which characterize the days of the early Church,--and which was after all, only the true life of man in time? It is thus that G.o.d has led on His world. He has conducted it as a father leads his child, when the path homeward lies over many a dreary league. He suffers him to beguile the thought of time, by turning aside to pluck now and then a flower, to chase now a b.u.t.terfly; the b.u.t.terfly is crushed, the flower fades, but the child is so much nearer home, invigorated and full of health, and scarcely wearied yet.
2. This non-fulfilment of promise fulfils it in a _deeper_ way. The account we have given already, were it to end there, would be insufficient to excuse the failure of life"s promise; by saying that it allures us would be really to charge G.o.d with deception. Now life is not deception, but illusion. We distinguish between illusion and delusion. We may paint wood so as to be taken for stone, iron, or marble; this is delusion: but you may paint a picture, in which rocks, trees, and sky are never mistaken for what they seem, yet produce all the emotion which real rocks, trees, and sky would produce. This is illusion, and this is the painter"s art: never for one moment to deceive by attempted imitation, but to produce a mental state in which the feelings are suggested which the natural objects themselves would create. Let us take an instance drawn from life.
To a child a rainbow is a real thing--substantial and palpable; its limb rests on the side of yonder hill; he believes that he can appropriate it to himself; and when, instead of gems and gold hid in its radiant bow, he finds nothing but damp mist--cold, dreary drops of disappointment--that disappointment tells that his belief has been delusion.
To the educated man that bow is a blessed illusion, yet it never once deceives; he does not take it for what it is not, he does not expect to make it his own; he feels its beauty as much as the child could feel it, nay infinitely more--more even from the fact that he knows that it will be transient; but besides and beyond this, to him it presents a deeper loveliness; he knows the laws of light, and the laws of the human soul which gave it being. He has linked it with the laws of the universe, and with the invisible mind of G.o.d; and it brings to him a thrill of awe, and the sense of a mysterious, nameless beauty, of which the child did not conceive. It is illusion still; but it has fulfilled the promise. In the realm of spirit, in the temple of the soul, it is the same. All is illusion; "but we look for a city which hath foundations;" and in this the promise is fulfilled.
And such was Canaan to the Israelites. To some doubtless it was delusion. They expected to find their reward in a land of milk and honey. They were bitterly disappointed, and expressed their disappointment loudly enough in their murmurs against Moses, and their rebellion against his successors. But to others, as to Abraham, Canaan was the bright illusion which never deceived, but for ever shone before as the type of something more real. And even taking the promise literally, though they built in tents, and could not call a foot of land their own, was not its beauty theirs? Were not its trellised vines, and glorious pastures, and rich olive-fields, ministers to the enjoyment of those who had all in G.o.d, though its milk, and oil, and honey, could not be enjoyed with exclusiveness of appropriation? Yet over and above and beyond this, there was a more blessed fulfilment of the promise; there was "a city which had foundations"--built and made by G.o.d--toward which the antic.i.p.ation of this Canaan was leading them.
The Kingdom of G.o.d was forming in their souls, for ever disappointing them by the unreal, and teaching them that what is spiritual, and belongs to mind and character alone can be eternal.
We will ill.u.s.trate this principle from the common walks of life. The principle is, that the reward we get is not the reward for which we worked, but a deeper one; deeper and more permanent. The merchant labours all his life, and the hope which leads him on is perhaps wealth: well, at sixty years of age he attains wealth; is that the reward of sixty years of toil? Ten years of enjoyment, when the senses can enjoy no longer--a country seat, splendid plate, a n.o.ble establishment? Oh, no! a reward deeper than he dreamed of. Habits of perseverance: a character trained by industry: that is his reward. He was carried on from year to year by, if he were wise, illusion; if he were unwise, delusion; but he reaped a more enduring substance in himself.
Take another instance: the public man, warrior, or statesman, who has served his country, and complains at last in bitter disappointment, that his country has not fulfilled his expectations in rewarding him--that is, it has not given him t.i.tles, honours, wealth. But t.i.tles, honours, wealth--are these the rewards of well-doing? can they reward it? would it be well-doing if they could? To _be_ such a man, to have the power of _doing_ such deeds, what could be added to that reward by having? This same apparent contradiction, which was found in Judaism, subsists too in Christianity; we will state it in the words of an apostle: "G.o.dliness is profitable for all things; having the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come."
Now for the fulfilment: "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, then are we of all men most miserable."
G.o.dliness is profitable; but its profit it appears, consists in finding that all is loss: yet in this way you teach your son. You will tell him that if he will be good all men will love him. You say that "Honesty is the best policy." yet in your heart of hearts you know that you are leading him on by a delusion. Christ was good. Was he loved by all? In proportion as he--your son--is like Christ, he will be loved, not by the many, but by the few. Honesty is _not_ the best _policy_; the commonplace honesty of the market-place may be--the vulgar honesty which goes no further than paying debts accurately; but that transparent Christian honesty of a life which in every act is bearing witness to the truth, that is not the way to _get on_ in life--the reward of such a life is the Cross. Yet you were right in teaching your son this: you told him what was true; truer than he could comprehend. It _is_ better to be honest and good; better than he can know or dream: better even in this life; better by so much as _being_ good is better than _having_ good. But, in a rude coa.r.s.e way, you must express the blessedness on a level with his capacity; you must state the truth in a way which he will inevitably interpret falsely. The true interpretation nothing but experience can teach.
And this is what G.o.d does. His promises are true, though illusive; far truer than we at first take them to be. We work for a mean, low, sensual happiness, all the while He is leading us on to a spiritual blessedness--unfathomably deep. This is the life of faith. We live by faith, and not by sight. We do not preach that all is disappointment--the dreary creed of sentimentalism; but we preach that _nothing_ here is disappointment, if rightly understood. We do not comfort the poor man, by saying that the riches that he has not now he will have hereafter--the difference between himself and the man of wealth being only this, that the one has for time what the other will have for eternity; but what we say is, that that which you have failed in reaping here, you never will reap, if you expected the harvest of Canaan. G.o.d has no Canaan for His own; no milk and honey for the luxury of the senses: for the city which hath foundations is built in the soul of man. He in whom G.o.dlike character dwells, has all the universe for his own--"All things," saith the apostle, "are yours; whether life or death, or things present, or things to come; if ye be Christ"s, then are ye Abraham"s seed, and heirs according to the _promise_."
VII.
_Preached June 23, 1850._
THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST.
"For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that He died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again."--2 Corinthians v. 14, 15.
It may be, that in reading these verses some of us have understood them in a sense foreign to that of the apostle. It may have seemed that the arguments ran thus--Because Christ died upon the cross for _all_, therefore all must have been in a state of spiritual death before; and if they were asked what doctrines are to be elicited from this pa.s.sage they would reply, "the doctrine of universal depravity, and the constraining power of the grat.i.tude due to Him who died to redeem us from it." There is, however, in the first place, this fatal objection to such an interpretation, that the death here spoken of is used in two diametrically opposite senses. In reference to Christ, death literal--in reference to all, death spiritual. Now, in the thought of St. Paul, the death of Christ was always viewed as liberation from the power of evil: "in that he died, he died unto sin once," and again, "he that is dead is free from sin." The literal death then in one clause, means _freedom_ from sin; the spiritual death of the next is _slavery_ to it. Wherein then, lies the cogency of the apostle"s reasoning? How does it follow that because Christ died to evil, all before that must have died to G.o.d? Of course that doctrine is true in itself, but it is _not_ the doctrine of the text.
In the next place, the ambiguity belongs only to the English word--it is impossible to make the mistake in the original: the word which stands for _were_, is a word which does not imply a continued state, but must imply a single finished act. It cannot by any possibility imply that before the death of Christ men _were_ in a state of death--it can only mean, they became dead at the moment when Christ died. If you read it thus, the meaning of the English will emerge--"if one died for all, then all died;" and the apostle"s argument runs thus, that if one acts as the representative of all, then his act is the act of all. If the amba.s.sador of a nation makes reparation in a nation"s name, or does homage for a nation, that reparation, or that homage, is the nation"s act--if _one_ did it _for_ all, then _all_ did it. So that instead of inferring that because Christ died for all, therefore before that all were dead to G.o.d, his natural inference is that therefore all are now dead to sin.
Once more, the conclusion of the apostle is exactly the reverse of that which this interpretation attributes to him: he does not say that Christ died in order that men might _not_ die, but exactly for this very purpose, that they _might_ die; and this death he represents in the next verse by an equivalent expression--the life of unselfishness: "that they which live might henceforth live not unto themselves." The "dead" of the first verse are "they that live" of the second.
The form of thought finds its exact parallel in Romans vi. 10, 11.
Two points claim our attention:--
I. The vicarious sacrifice of Christ.
II. The influence of that sacrifice on man.
I. The vicariousness of the sacrifice is implied in the word "for". A vicarious act is an act done for another. When the Pope calls himself the vicar of Christ, he implies that he acts for Christ. The vicar or viceroy of a kingdom is one who acts for the king--a vicar"s act therefore is virtually the act of the princ.i.p.al whom he represents; so that if the Papal doctrine were true, when the vicar of Christ _pardons_, Christ has pardoned. When the viceroy of a kingdom has published a proclamation or signed a treaty, the sovereign himself is bound by those acts.
The truth of the expression _for all_, is contained in this fact, that Christ is the representative of Humanity--properly speaking, the representative of human nature. This is the truth contained in the emphatic expression, "Son of Man." What Christ did _for_ Humanity was done by Humanity, because in the name of Humanity. For a truly vicarious act does not supersede the princ.i.p.al"s duty of performance, but rather implies and acknowledges it. Take the case from which this very word of vicar has received its origin. In the old monastic times, when the revenues of a cathedral or a cure fell to the lot of a monastery, it became the duty of that monastery to perform the religious services of the cure. But inasmuch as the monastery was a corporate body, they appointed one of their number, whom they denominated their vicar, to discharge those offices for them. His service did not supersede theirs, but was a perpetual and standing acknowledgement that they, as a whole and individually, were under the obligation to perform it. The act of Christ is the act of Humanity--that which all Humanity is bound to do. His righteousness does not supersede our righteousness, nor does His sacrifice supersede our sacrifice. It is the representation of human life and human sacrifice--vicarious for all, yet binding upon all.
That He died for all is true--
1. Because He was the victim of the sin of all. In the peculiar phraseology of St. Paul, he died unto sin. He was the victim of Sin--He died by sin. It is the appalling mystery of our redemption that the Redeemer took the att.i.tude of subjection to evil. There was scarcely a form of evil with which Christ did not come in contact, and by which He did not suffer. He was the victim of false friendship and ingrat.i.tude, the victim of bad government and injustice. He fell a sacrifice to the vices of all cla.s.ses--to the selfishness of the rich and the fickleness of the poor:--intolerance, formalism, scepticism, hatred of goodness, were the foes which crushed Him.
In the proper sense of the word He was a victim. He did not adroitly wind through the dangerous forms of evil, meeting it with expedient silence. Face to face, and front to front, He met it, rebuked it, and defied it; and just as truly as he is a voluntary victim whose body opposing the progress of the car of Juggernaut is crushed beneath its monstrous wheels, was He a victim to the world"s sin: because pure, He was crushed by impurity; because just and real and true, He waked up the rage of injustice, hypocrisy, and falsehood.