Plain Sermons, preached at Archbishop Tenison's Chapel, Regent Street. Second Series

by James Galloway Cowan

Once more. When we discourse from the pulpit, on a living and near Saviour, an indwelling Sanctifier, a surrounding spiritual tempter, on heaven or hell, on enduring as seeing Him who is invisible, on having our conversation in heaven, on the evidence of things unseen, on the feeling and grasping, so to speak, as though they were substantial and at hand, of things hoped for—oh! then, how many there are who hear us as though we were dreamers or narrators of fables, speakers who should be allowed some poetic license; who, to make their speech attractive, or perhaps from the spontaneous dictation of their enthusiasm, use figures of rhetoric and speak parables! I do not mean that these persons wilfully take up this position, that they are intentionally, or in desire, gainsayers of the truth, but merely that they do not enter into its conception, and cannot rise to its height. They lag behind, they are earthy, they see only the visible, feel only the tangible to bodily senses. The temporal to them is real; the spiritual, not through unbelief, nor obstinacy, nor moral blindness, but from infirmity, and earthly-mindedness, and unspirituality, is regarded too nearly as unreal; and, therefore, when it is discoursed upon, they seem to be listening to empty dreams, and the preacher to be displaying flights of fancy.

Dear brethren—I speak to such—I know that many of you wish it were otherwise; you would that your mind could conceive, and that your heart could feel, these truths. In your best moments, you more than suspect that the preacher is right after all, and you are wrong; that you are dreaming, and not he; that his words are a parable only to those who will not see and hear. It is not in man to afford you much help, in coming to a right state. If I refer you to the Bible, which we do but echo from the pulpit, you will still say, Ah! but does not this, too, speak parables? If I bid you go and exercise your reason, or consult others who have done so, it is more than possible that you will come away from the consultation—alas! many do—more convinced than before that we do speak parables, that each one is a God to himself, that there is no other devil than a man’s own evil passions, that there is no hell but in a remorseful conscience, that eternity does not mean “for ever!” No; there is no help for you in man, in yourselves, or in others. You must, indeed, purify and elevate your affections, so that they may wish for better things; you must bring down your reason from the high seat where it sits, and speculates, and dictates; you must try to accept the truth that the natural man cannot receive nor judge of spiritual things; but, then, you must go to God Himself, and humbly, teachably, earnestly ask for that spiritual discernment which alone can see, and feel, and love the things of God. Do this, not once, but often; not negligently or hastily, but earnestly and perseveringly; and presently, if not all at once, yet gradually, most surely, your spiritual eyes shall be opened, you shall see God, you shall love Christ, you shall perceive the motions of the Holy Spirit. The invisible world shall be unveiled, and shall be found to contain all the beauties, all the horrors, and to hold out all the hopes and fears, to be as real, as near, as sure to be ours, for weal or woe, according as we are, or are not, Christians, as the preacher or the Bible, of which he is the expounder, asserts. Thenceforth you will not complain of spiritual teaching that it is parabolic, of strong assertions of the obligation of Christian graces, that they are immoderate, too exacting, too severe. No! heart and mind will testify, and life will approve, “Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb.” Yes; and knowing somewhat of God, and your relation to Him, and desiring to know more, whenever in your private reading of the Bible a difficulty meets you, or whenever the preacher discourses, as it seems, in parables, you will give the most earnest and interested heed, to see if you cannot divine the mystery; and failing that, instead of remaining in willing ignorance, you will use all the means placed within your reach, the comparing of parallel places, your commentaries, and the private instructions of your clergyman, pleading all the while with Christ, and urgently beseeching of Him, “Lord, thou knowest all things, declare unto me this parable.”

Thus doing, you will soon find that to you it is given to know the mysteries of religion; and the knowledge, sanctified by the Spirit, will assuredly work in you a greater love of God, a more consistent and more successful pursuit of holiness, a growing taste and eagerness for that better state, whence ignorance, in all its degrees, shall be banished for ever, and where we shall know even as now we are known.

SERMON XVII.
LIVING AND DYING UNTO GOD.

II. Corinthians, v., 8, 9.

We are confident and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of Him.

The apostle had been speaking, in the preceding chapter, of the troubles and persecutions which he daily endured, and of the hopes and consolations—the life by faith rather than by right—which made their endurance easy. Having touched upon the theme, he could not but enlarge upon it; and doing so, his ardent expectations carried him out of the present, and made him covet and attempt to grasp the future. Before his enlightened eye and spiritualised heart, his affliction was light and its continuance brief; the present state was but as a tent, quickly to be taken down, and then in its place should be digged the deep foundation and reared the abiding edifice of a building of God eternal in the heavens. Outstretched, then, were his thoughts, and desires, and earnest were his prayers, not so much to get rid of what he had, as to attain what he hoped for and was promised. He knew indeed that the tabernacle must be removed; that his present state must cease—either by actual death or by a change, which the quick at Christ’s coming must undergo, much the same as death; he felt the burthen which was upon him; he yearned and groaned to be rid of it; but looking to the end he disregarded the way; dwelling, not upon the change but what was to come after it, he sought not death, but life. He longed, not to be unclothed, but clothed upon. Nay, recognising the good, and so the desirableness of this life, shrinking too naturally from the thought of dissolution, he would keep the present till he had the future, he would have what he wanted added to what he possessed, rather than substituted for it. Present life was in many respects dear to him; he would that the evil were purged away from it, and the good left; and then that the good were augmented, enfolded, absorbed by the transcendent, satisfying perfect blessedness which God had promised, and for the attaining whereof He had bestowed His effectually working Spirit.

At this point he seems to have sobered himself, or perhaps rather to have designedly exhibited the latent soberness and contentedness which had guided him all along. “We are confident,” he says, that is, of good cheer, well comforted, easily bearing what is, patiently waiting for the future; preferring, indeed (if a preference be allowed), to be absent from the body and fully present with the Lord; but still chiefly animated, not by a selfish yearning for the quickest attainment of peace and glory, but by the noble, God-adoring ambition, of being and doing that which is divinely approved. “Wherefore, in view of all that is and shall be, we make it our chief aim, we devote ourselves, not so much to reach heaven, to gratify self, as whether on earth or in heaven, to enjoy the approval and favour of God.” “Be silent,” he would say, “ye groans for deliverance; check yourselves, ye eager aspirations for glory; let principle rule rather than desire, and let the principle be, whether we live let us live unto the Lord, whether we die let us die unto the Lord. Let not dying or living be the engrossing thought, but that whether we live or die we may be the Lord’s.”

In this, as in so many other respects, our bright exemplar, Paul, shows us both what we may allow and what we should aim at.

And first he shows us that even the saint—the approved of God—may shrink from the thought of dissolution. “We groan, being burthened, because” (this is the right translation) “we would not be unclothed,” we would not die. I envy not the man—there is something unnatural, yea, and unspiritual, too, in him—who does not shrink from the first thought of death coming to himself or to those whom he loves. For death, in its best form, is a remembrancer of the wrath of God against the sinner, and it is in a sense a triumph—no matter that it is short—it is a defiling and withering touch—no matter that it shall soon be wiped away, and its blasting undone—of the foul and fierce enemy of God and holy man. It is that, too, which cuts asunder the ties which we are allowed and encouraged to fasten here between ourselves and loved friends and delightful pursuits and pleasing possessions. It is that, too, which abruptly closes the period of probation and preparation for heaven; which stays all cleansing and perfecting, which says imperatively to us, “No more shall you remove, no more shall you acquire—as you are shall you face God—stereotyped are you for eternity.” It is that, too, which enthrals and deadens the one half of us, though it liberates and quickens the other, which separates the body from God, while it joins the spirit to Him, which, while it exalts the latter to Paradise, consigns the former to the grave, to corruption, to temporary annihilation. Terrible is death to many, awful to all—undesirable even to the saint—and only tolerable because not so much of the soul’s immediate gain as of the body’s future hope. For if it were proposed to us to choose for eternity between perfect disembodied bliss, and very imperfect bliss in the body, there is no one, I conceive, who knows the capabilities of the body, both of rendering to God and receiving of Him, who would not prefer, and I think rightly, life in the flesh to life out of it.

The words of St. Paul exhibit in himself, and seem to allow in others, this shrinking from dissolution, this desire to keep the body, albeit changed, perfected, caught up into the heavens; to be spared the pulling down of the earthly tabernacle, even to make way for the heavenly eternal building.