LECTURE VII.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

THE FAILURES OF THE CHURCH IN THE BATTLE WITH THE GODS.

The Bible

a guide to

the history

of the

second

WE have lost the guidance of Scripture as to the LECT. VII. facts of our story; we have not lost it at all as to the principle by which we are to judge of the facts. The history of the called people in its earliest stages is the interpretation of its history in the latest. What century. we are told of Jews after they entered Canaan, may The Jews in teach when we are to look for victories, when for Canaan. defeats, to the Church after it had got a footing in the Roman world.

and con

trasts.

The cases were, indeed, widely different. The Differences Church was to conquer for itself no special land; the one in which the Jewish capital and temple had stood was given up to the heathen world. It was not to expel the old inhabitants of the world into which it came; it had a message of peace and deliverance to them. Its power lay in its weakness; it was to subdue by enduring. But in spite of these differences, -in spite of those other mighty differences between the new Covenant and the old, the revelation by prophets and angels, and the revelation by a Son, which every day of conflict between the Church and the Synagogue

Resemblance in

principles

and dangers.

LECT. VII. brought into stronger light,-the underground was the same. If the members of the Church forgot that they were a called body,-called out to do a work, called by God, they became powerless, just as the members of the Nation became from the same cause. If they did not think that their work was to be a blessing to all the families of the earth, they contracted precisely the habits which had led the Jews to reject the Son of Man, to anathematise the Apostles of the Gentiles, to be rejected and anathematised themselves.

Sympathy with Hea thens.

These two evils-the forgetfulness of their calling and covenant, the fancy that they were possessors, not stewards of the blessings they had received-had gone through all periods of the history; sometimes the tendency to idolatry, sometimes the tendency to despise and hate idolaters, being more conspicuous. Each implied the other. They were fain to fall into superstition, if they did not feel they were sent to deliver the earth from it, by fighting for the living and true God. They were sure to contract hardness and Hatred of exclusiveness, and dislike of mankind, if they ever supposed that Judaism was a special religion which they were to uphold against other religions. In the language of the Psalmist, they forgot God's counsel; they dwelt among the heathen, and learned their works. In the language of the Apostles, they became enemies to God, and contrary to all men.

Heathens.

Duty of the
Church

Amidst the noble and beautiful records of the Historian. second century, it behoves us, if we would follow the light which Scripture gives us, and not choose a way

of our own, to notice these same causes of disap- LECT. VII. pointment, that we may be more thankful for the successes, that we may be less surprised when we see the seeds of evil and of good, the wheat and the tares, multiplying and growing together in after generations. We shall be preserved from a great many blunders, a great many acts of injustice, a great many unfaithful complainings, if we do not frame to ourselves the notion of a golden age in this century or any other; if we believe that the good men of that day deserve to be contemplated, precisely because they were men prone to all the evils to which we are prone, prone to the particular evils of their own age and country, great in God, paltry in themselves; heroic examples, therefore, when they trusted in God and forgot themselves; beacons when they trusted in themselves and forgot God.

How to

think of

this period.

condemning

the acts of

good men.

Nor is it impossible or over bold, as some would Fear of persuade us, to declare when we are to admire them, and when we are to shun them. If that is so, history is a delusion; God has not written it; we are left to crawl before any idols whom our forefathers may have set up, or whom we may set up. up. We We may easily call it reverence to do this, but it is no such thing. It is irreverence towards God; it is unbelief in Him, and in the word He has given us. No doubt we may make The a thousand mistakes in interpreting His words and the cowardly signs of His providence, as well as in estimating the the safe one. characters of His servants. But we shall make far fewer mistakes, if we desire earnestly and faithfully to honour whatever is true and honest, and just and

course not

acknow

ledging a

higher

wisdom

them.

site course leads to injustice and insincerity.

LECT. VII. lovely, because we are sure that it is of God, and to hate whatever is contrary to this, when it appears in the best man or the worst, in Christian or heathen Necessity of we shall make far fewer mistakes if we act upon this principle, hoping for the Spirit of truth to make us see the truth every day more clearly, than if than man's, we feign to admire deeds or words which directly if we would appreciate contradict and counteract each other, and have evidently produced the most opposite effects, because we are afraid of seeming to condemn what better men than we have done or approved. I do not find that those who profess this principle act upon it. I see The oppo- them applying it one moment very strictly, when a set of favourites of their own are in peril-deserting it when they are sitting in judgment upon those whom they dislike. I find great censoriousness and harshness mixed with this boast of humility. Therefore I would once for all discard those maxims which it seeks to canonise. If God teaches us to judge ourselves, He will not allow us to judge other men harshly; He will not permit us even to call anything evil, till we have seen and worshipped the good to which it is opposed, or which it is counterfeiting. But He will enable us,-if we desire to be purged of the evil ourselves, and not to be betrayed by the counterfeit,—to see how those whose steps we would follow have yielded to the one, and been led astray by the other. Cultivate love and admiration all you can; the more you cultivate them, the less will you endure falsehood, the more able will you be to detect it. Fear God; and then you will not fear, when His

truth demands it, to speak boldly about the ways in LECT. VII. which some even of His most faithful servants have thwarted His purposes.

tion.

about the

If what I said in the last Lecture is true, the work of the Christian Church in the second century was as wonderful a one as it is possible for us to think or dream of. We use the word to regenerate Regenerasometimes dogmatically, sometimes carelessly. Now we argue, whether the blessing of regeneration is Debates communicated by God in a certain ordinance to individual men; now we speak, as if we might by some plans of ours regenerate society. If we would meditate a little upon the war of the world and the Church at this time, we might clear our minds on both these topics; we might begin to understand one another better.

word.

Think of any set of men undertaking to reform such a society as the Roman empire! Think of such a set of men undertaking it as those I have described to you,―a handful of people, brought up in the very system they would have to contend with, infected with all its worst notions and corruptions! But think of any one of these men undertaking to reform himself; to get down to the root of his own evil, and to extirpate it! One here and one there makes the experiment. He has done his best, or thinks he has, and he is in despair. Then he hears the message - God Himself gives you a new and diviner birth; He takes you to be His children.' Supposing Reformaa man to believe this news, and to be baptized, Regeneraand to find himself one of a family which believes tion.

tion and