Old Wine and New: Occasional Discourses

by Joseph Cross

Let us drop the figure. Never before the incarnation was there another people so highly favored as the Hebrews. God chose them for his own, and established his covenant with them, and talked with them from heaven, and dwelt in their midst upon the mercy-seat, and led them forty years with a pillar of cloud and fire in the wilderness, and smote every enemy that rose up against them, and exterminated mighty nations to make room for them in Canaan, and brought them into the goodly land which he had promised to their fathers—a land flowing with milk and honey, which he gave them for a perpetual inheritance. But how often they forgot his covenant, and forsook his ordinances, and turned aside after other gods, and provoked him to anger with their inventions! Then he hewed them by the prophets and chastised them by the heathen, but they would not return from their evil ways. He permitted their cities to be sacked, their young men to be slain in battle, their virgins to be carried away captive, and their kings to serve in chains at the tables of the uncircumcised. When they returned to him with weeping and supplication, he returned to them with loving-kindness and tender mercies. "Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a pleasant child? For since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still. Therefore my heart is troubled for him. I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord."

But after all, when Christ came, he found only fruitless foliage upon his long-cherished fig-tree. Mint, anise, and cummin were scrupulously tithed; but the weightier matters of the law—judgment, mercy and faith—were altogether neglected and forgotten. The phylacteries were large, the prayers were loud and long, the chief seats in the synagogue were always occupied, and no poor man in vain stretched forth his hand for alms; but the religion of the Jew ran all to superstitious observances and ostentatious formalities, divine precepts were sacrificed to human traditions, a nation of hypocrites could not produce the fruits of righteousness; and, given up at last to the grossest self-delusion, they rejected their King and crucified the Lord of glory. How graciously he had labored! how anxiously he had watched and waited! and yet there was no grateful return for all his arduous toil and loving care. But is he willing to cut down the worthless tree, or blast it with his curse? See! he is crossing the ridge of Olivet on his way to Jerusalem, riding in triumph amidst the acclamations of the multitude who have witnessed his miracles and confessed his Messiahship, his path carpeted with their garments and covered with branches of the palm. Reaching the brow of the hill, he looks down upon the beautiful city, lying like a jewelled crown before him. He thinks of all his labor for her children, and all their base ingratitude and suicidal unbelief. He knows that those who are now shouting him on his way with hosannahs will soon be clamoring for his crucifixion and mocking around his cross. Full well he knows that the chosen race will shortly have filled up the measure of their guilt, and wrath will come upon them to the uttermost. And as the vision of their ruin rises upon the eye of his spirit, with the long ages of unparalleled tribulation and despair which must succeed the catastrophe of the beloved city, he weeps as only Infinite Compassion can weep, and laments as only an incarnate God can lament:—"Oh that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes; for the days shall come upon thee, when thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and shall keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee, and shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." In about sixty years all is fulfilled—the temple burned, the streets heaped with the dead, the plough driven over the ruins, and the hopeless remnant of a reprobate race scattered in isolated exile over the face of the earth. The curse has fallen, and "how soon is the fig-tree withered away!"

And we, my brethren—shall we not take warning from the fate of the unfaithful people? "Dried up from the roots," the old Jewish tree has been torn from the soil and cast into the fire; and we—alien shoots from without the enclosure—have been transplanted into the vineyard of the Lord. Disinherited and undone, the murderers of God's Messiah are strangers and fugitives to-day over the face of the planet; but we have succeeded to their inheritance, glorified with new revelations of grace and truth. Baptized into a better covenant, with a better Mediator than Moses, we rejoice in the mercies and immunities of a better theocracy than Israel ever knew. In the midst of our camp Jehovah has pitched his tabernacle; and by the more glorious ministration of the Spirit, through the word and sacraments of an everlasting testament, he is seeking to make us fruitful in righteousness and true holiness. Brought nigh to God by adoption and regeneration, we become heirs of his kingdom and joint-heirs with his first-born—partakers of his life and expectants of his immortality. And now we have enjoyed another season of merciful visitation, and the daily services of Lent have been like vernal sun and shower to the fig-tree. Have we borne fruit, or only leaves? Has our penitential humiliation been real and effectual, or only feigned and perfunctory? Have these thirty-six days in the holy mount deepened our communion with God and intensified our love of holiness? Are we purer and wiser than we were on Ash-Wednesday—stronger to resist evil and do good—more like Christ in meekness and charity and self-denial? Be assured, my dear brethren, that your privileges bring with them a fearful responsibility. If you have received the grace of God in vain, your Lent has been a curse, and not a blessing; and the mercies by which you have failed to profit have enhanced unspeakably your condemnation. "He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes;" and "he that, being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." Ah! how many of us have no heart for the service of God—no pleasure in that which enraptures the seraphim! Conscience impels them one way, but inclination draws them more powerfully the other; and duty is constantly sacrificed to carnal gratifications, worldly interests, and vain ambitions. They fear God, but love him not; and though they cannot sin without a tremor, the tremor is not strong enough to repress the sin. Generally at church, they do all they can to support the public worship and encourage the heart of the clergy; but here ends their all of duty, their all of practical religion, their all of gratitude for the unspeakable love of Christ—mere foliage without any satisfying fruit.

And what can the end be but a blasting malediction from the Master? Long, indeed, may he continue his merciful efforts to make such Christians fruitful; but when his grace is habitually rejected or perverted—when his Holy Spirit is forced to strive in vain with an obdurate heart and a will obstinately set on evil—he will withhold his favors, or grant them less frequently and in inferior measure. Meanwhile sins multiply, bad habits grow stronger, the roots of vice strike deeper, and its branches grow broader and higher; till at length comes the hot wind from the desert, beneath which every green thing becomes crisp and sear. Christ rejected, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, and he who has lived in impenitence dies in despair. Oh! when conscience presents the long catalogue of uncancelled crimes, and only a few moments of wasted life remain, what can the dying sinner do? When his broken vows, abused mercies, and neglected opportunities, through all the corridors of memory come trooping up like the vengeful ghosts of the murdered, whither will he fly for refuge? Or the advent of the last enemy may be a sudden surprise, unexpected as the crash of a ship under full sail upon some sunken rock; launching the poor soul, all unprovided, with a shudder and a shriek into an unsounded sea. Or if a little space be given the delinquent, yet through the violence of his disorder the mind may be quite incapable of a rational repentance, drifting like the wrecked mariner upon a spar at the mercy of wind and wave. But in whatever form and with whatever circumstances Death may come, he comes ever to the impenitent as an avenger—avenger of God's neglected mercy—avenger of Christ's insulted love; and a fearful thing it is—fearful beyond all power of language to express—to die without hope in Christ and unreconciled to God. Oh! to be forced out at midnight, amidst howling tempests and roaring billows—no compass to guide nor star to cheer—on the eternal voyage! Beware, then, beloved, lest that come upon you which our blessed Lord foretold of those who rejected his mission: "Ye shall die in your sins, and where I am ye cannot come."

With only two exceptions, Christ's recorded miracles are all works of mercy, wrought for the relief of suffering and the consolation of sorrow; and even these exceptions, which may be called miracles of judgment—performed, the one upon irrational animals, and the other on an insensible tree—show the aversion of his tender heart to severity and vengeance. He is long-suffering, unwilling that any should perish, desiring that all should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. He smites only where he cannot cure. As long as there is any hope of reformation, he spares the unthankful and the evil; and never, till all possibility of salvation is past, does he visit the incorrigible with punishment. Justice must have its claim as well as mercy; and, mercy rejected, justice must avenge. The terribleness of the retribution makes nothing against its righteousness; and though it send a tremor through all the worlds of God, the obstinate transgressor shall not go unpunished. Very terrible indeed it is, and imagination staggers beneath the apprehension of the wrath of the Lamb; but terrible also was the deluge, and the fate of Sodom, and the slaughter of the Egyptian first-born, and the overthrow of Pharaoh and his host, and the end of Korah and his mutinous company, and the destruction of seventy thousand Israelites at a stroke, and the death of a hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians in a single night, and the sudden catastrophe of Nineveh and Babylon with all their pomp and their power, and the wrath which fell in its manifold final infliction upon the chosen people when the day of their merciful visitation was over and ended; but the terribleness of the vengeance did not stay the avenging hand of Justice, when Mercy, with broken heart, retired and left the guilty to their fate. And the dawn of the last day will be terrible, and the coming of the Son of man will be terrible, and the destruction of the Antichrist will be terrible, and the conflagration of the universe will be terrible, and terrible beyond all precedent the punishment of reprobate impenitence when the Lord Jesus with his holy angels shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire! The tree may long lift its green boughs to the sun and toss its gay blossoms to the breeze; but when the Master comes for fruit and finds nothing but a deceitful promise, smitten with his curse it shall quickly wither away.

Let us make haste to avert the vengeance. In this our gracious day—this clement mediatorial hour—let us invoke the Holy Spirit to aid us in bringing forth fruit meet for repentance. Think not that the work will be easier in coming years, when passion is weakened, and temptation is lessened, and coercive grace comes to conquer the rebel will and reclaim the alien heart. Alas! by every hour's delay you are riveting the fetters of evil habit, and multiplying and consolidating the barriers to your salvation; and the special grace for which you wait will never come till God shall revise his evangel and Christ change the whole economy of his kingdom. Now is your time for conversion, and a better moment will never occur between this and eternity. Hark! it is the voice of the Master: "Cut it down! why cumbereth it the ground?" Hark! it is the voice of the Vine-dresser: "Lord! let it alone till another Lent! I will renew my efforts; I will redouble my endeavors; I will try some new expedients; peradventure next year will reward thy forbearance with the long-expected fruit!" Oh! prayer of crucified compassion! shall it not be answered? Oh! prophecy of ill-requited mercy! shall it not be fulfilled? Beloved, it is for you to say. God hath spoken, and uttered all his heart. Henceforth all depends upon yourselves. Answer your Saviour's prayer, fulfil your Saviour's prophecy, and so avert the judgment of unfruitfulness; or else prepare for the unutterable alternative—your Saviour's blighting curse!

[[1]] Preached at a parochial mission in Memphis, Tenn., 1876.

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