Old Wine and New: Occasional Discourses

by Joseph Cross

Trusting in him who thus pleads for his disciples, and seconding his gracious intercession with our own supplications, what have we to fear? Shall Jesus pray in vain for his redeemed? Shall he fail those who have committed their all to his advocacy? Will not the Father hear the petitions offered in the name of the Son with whom he is ever well pleased? Coming boldly through his merit and mediation to the throne of grace, shall we not certainly obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need? Will God leave to the lion and the wolf the sheep for whom the divine Shepherd cares so lovingly and pleads so earnestly? "Fear not, little flock! it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." And "if God be for us, who can be against us?" What evil agency or influence shall harm those who "dwell in the secret place of the Most High and abide under the shadow of the Almighty?" Are not the redeemed of his dear Son his jewels, his segulla, his peculiar treasure? Will he not hide them in the hollow of his hand, and guard them as the apple of his eye? "Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died; yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. 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 counted 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." Such is St. Paul's confidence, and such should be ours. But such confidence requires our hearty co-operation with Him who is always praying for our preservation from evil. We must steadfastly resist all temptations to sin. We must stand firmly and fight bravely against the world, the flesh, and the Devil. We must avail ourselves constantly of all the helps which the Church offers us in her services and her sacraments. God's grace is for those who ask it earnestly and use it faithfully. It is not in the power of Omnipotence to save from sin and Satan those who endeavor not to save themselves. You must be workers together with God, my dear brethren; and then all his attributes and resources are pledged to your success, and neither earth nor hell can do you any harm. Suffer, then, the word of exhortation, and forget not that the kingdom is taken by force and held by continual struggle. Especially important are these counsels and cautions to you who have just ratified your covenant with God in confirmation. Your rector assures me he never knew a more pleasant task than that which he enjoyed in preparing you for the hands of the bishop. As you sat before him in the lecture-room, he felt it a sweet privilege to talk to you so freely of Christian duty and responsibility. And when a new name was added to the list of candidates, he said in his heart—"Here is another gem for my Master's crown, another guest for his table, another chorister for his choir!" and he passed the new-comer over into the hands which were spiked for him to the cross, and his faith heard the angels rejoicing over one more sinner that repented. And many a time, no doubt, returning from the lecture to the privacy of his chamber, he knelt and commended you all, with tears of love and joy, to him who gathereth the lambs with his arms and carrieth them in his bosom. And often, during that sweet Lenten season, I know, he wrestled for you with the angel of the covenant through the livelong night, and ceased not till the blessing came upon the wings of the morning. Shall all his labor be lost upon you? Shall the fruit be blasted in the bud? Shall Satan and his servants triumph over the grace of God? Shall souls over which seraphs have sung hallelujahs excite the mirth and mockery of fiends by their fall? "Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation." Observe daily your closet devotions. Never deny your Saviour by forsaking the holy eucharist. Cleave to your Church whatever may be her fortunes. Let no uncharitableness in the family drive you from your Mother's bosom. Let no wound that bleeds in your own breast imbitter you against any of her children. Oh! how painful it is, to see people who are angry at others wreaking their revenge upon themselves! out of malice to their brethren murdering their own immortal souls! spurning the bread of life and the wine of the kingdom because they have a quarrel with the hand that offers them! refusing to take another step toward heaven, and plunging incontinently back toward the gulf of hell, because they have conceived a dislike to some person who was travelling in their company! "If angels weep, it is at such a sight!" Oh! do ye not so, beloved! Hold fast whereunto ye have attained. Let no man take your crown. Most heartily "I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to save your souls, and to give you inheritance with them that are sanctified through faith in Christ Jesus." And in all my petitions for you at "the throne of the heavenly Grace," I repeat the loving words of "the chief Shepherd" for his little flock—"I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil."

[[1]] Preached, immediately after a confirmation, at a parochial mission, Illinois, 1873.

XIX.

CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH.[[1]]

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.—Jude 3.

And if such exhortation were needful then, when prophecy and miracles and the gift of tongues were still in the Church, authenticating the mission of the apostles, confirming the doctrines which they taught, and commending the common salvation to all who heard them; much more now, when all these signs and wonders have long since disappeared, and those holy men of God have been for eighteen centuries enjoying their repose in Paradise—now, when the predicted perilous times of the last days are come, and heresies and schisms everywhere abound, and human reason is exalted above divine revelation, and religion is denuded of all that is supernatural, and Omnipotence is subjected to the laws of science, and answers to prayer are pronounced impossible, and Christ is robbed of his essential glory, and man is become his own redeemer, and every article of the ancient creeds is called in question, and the authority of the Church in matters of faith is scoffed at as an exploded absurdity, and the old dogmatic formulas of Christian theology are consigned to oblivion and the bats, and every one's private judgment is worth more to him than the decisions of all the œcumenical councils, and there are not wanting those in every community who deem it wiser to make a religion for themselves than to accept that which has been given to them from heaven. Surely, now, if ever, might some faithful and uncompromising servant of Jesus Christ, inditing an epistle to his Christian brethren, assert the necessity of exhorting them to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.

What, then, is this faith? and why and how must we contend for it? These questions allow me to answer.

As you all probably know, the word faith is used in different senses. Suffice it at present to say, there is a subjective faith, and there is an objective faith. The former is the act and habit of believing, which characterizes the Christian life; the latter is the divine truth believed, comprehending the whole body of Christian doctrine. When it is said we are justified by faith, we are saved by faith, we walk by faith, we live by faith, it is manifestly the habitual act of Christian believing that is intended—of relying upon Christ and trusting in him, as our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; when St. Paul speaks of holding the mystery of the faith, exhorts the Corinthians to stand fast in the faith, encourages Timothy to fight the good fight of faith, testifies of himself that he has kept the faith, it is evidently the system of Christian truth that he refers to—the doctrine that Christ came to reveal, sent his servants to proclaim, and established his Church on earth to maintain. This objective faith, being at once for all time and for all people authoritatively delivered to the saints—in the primitive creeds by apostolic tradition, in the Christian Scriptures by inspiration of God—admits of no alteration or addition, and needs none to adapt it to the ever-changing circumstances of men. What it was eighteen hundred years ago it is to-day; and what it is to-day it will be eighteen hundred years to come. Mutation is the law of all things earthly; but heavenly truth is immutable and eternal. Science is progressive, developing gradually by the slow process of induction; but the faith was delivered all at once, during the lifetime of our Lord on earth and the ministry of his inspired apostles, and can never be made more perfect than it was in the beginning. There are no new revelations in religion, no new discoveries of Christian truth. We must take the gospel as it comes to us, without attempting to improve or presuming to mutilate the system. The Church, in her militant probation, may pass through many successive phases; but the faith, like its divine Author, is "the same yesterday and to-day and forever." And for this Christians are called to contend—not for progress, not for science, not for freedom, not for glory, not for life itself; but for what is more precious than any or all of these—"the faith once delivered to the saints."