And for those who do answer to this call, how really true is it that they do soon become dead, in great measure, to the law of the place where they are living! How little do they generally feel its restraints, or its tasks, burdensome! How very little have they to do with its punishments! Led on by degrees continually higher and higher, their relations with us become more and more relations of entire confidence and kindness; and when at last their trial is over, and they pass from this first life, as I have ventured to call it, into their second life of manhood, how beautifully are they ripened for that state! how naturally do all the restraints of this first life fall away, like the mortal body of the perfected Christian; and they enter upon the full liberty of manhood, fitted at once to enjoy and to improve it!
But observe, that St. Paul does not suppose even the best Christian to be without the law altogether: there will ever be some points in which he will need to remember it. And so it is unkindness, rather than kindness, and a very mischievous mistake, to forget that here, in this our preparatory life, the law cannot cease altogether with any one; that it is not possible to find a perfect sense and feeling of right existing in every action; nay, that it is even unreasonable to seem to expect it. Little faults, little irregularities, there always will be, with which the law is best fitted to deal; which should be met, I mean, by a system of rules and of punishments, not severe, certainly, nor one at all inconsistent with general respect, kindness, and confidence; but which check the particular faults alluded to better, I think, than could be done by seeming to expect of the individual that he should, in all such cases, be a law to himself. There is a possibility of our over-straining the highest principles, by continually appealing to them on very trifling occasions. It is far better, here, to apply the system of the law; to require obedience to rules, as a matter of discipline; to visit the breach of them by moderate punishment, not given in anger, not at all inconsistent with general confidence and regard, but gently reminding us of that truth which we may never dare wholly to forget,--that punishment will exist eternally so long as there is evil, and that the only way of remaining for ever entirely strangers to it, is by adhering for ever and entirely to good.
This applies to every one amongst us; and is the reason why rules, discipline, and punishments, however much they may be, and are, kept in the background for such, as have become almost wholly dead to them, must yet continue in existence, because none are, or can be, dead to them altogether. But now, suppose that we have a nature to deal with, which, cannot answer to a system of kindness, but abuses it; which, when punishment is kept at a distance, rejoices, as thinking that it may follow evil safely; a nature not to be touched by the love of God or man, not to be guided by any perception of its own as to what is right and true. Is the law dead really to such as these? or should it be so? Is punishment a degradation to a nature which, is so self-degraded as to be incapable of being moved by anything better? For this is the real degradation which we should avoid; not the fear of punishment, which is not at all degrading, but the being insensible to the love of Christ and of goodness; and so being capable of receiving no other motive than the fear of punishment alone. With such natures, to withhold punishment, would be indeed to make Christ the minister of sin; to make mercy, that is, lead to evil, and not to good. For them, the law never is dead, and never will be. Here, of course, in this first life, as I have called it, punishment indeed goes but a little way: it is very easy for a hardened nature to defy all that could be laid upon it here in the way of actual compulsion. Our only course is to cut short the time of trial, when we find a nature in whom that trial cannot end in good. Still there may be those in whom this life here, like their greater life which shall last for ever, will have far more to do with punishment than with kindness; they will be living all their time under the law. Continue this to our second life, and the law then will be no less alive, and they will never be dead to it, nor will it be ever dead to them. And however a hardened nature may well despise the punishments of its first life,--punishments, whose whole object is correction, and not retribution,--yet, where is the nature so hard as to endure, in its relations with God, to feel more of his punishment than of his mercy; to know him for ever as a God of judgment, and not as a Father of love?
LECTURE XI.
ST. LUKE xxi. 36.
Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be
accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall
come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.
This might be a text for a history of the Christian Church, from its foundation to this hour, or to the latest hour of the world's existence. We might observe how it Lad fulfilled its Lord's command; with what steadiness it had gone forward on its course, with the constant hope of meeting Him once again in glory. We might see how it had escaped all these things that were to come to pass: tracing its course amidst the manifold revolutions of the world, inward and outward. In the few words, "all these things that shall come to pass," are contained all the events of the last eighteen hundred years: indistinct and unknown to us, as long as they are thus folded up together; but capable of being unrolled before our eyes in a long order, in which should be displayed all the outward changes of nations, the spread of discovery, the vicissitudes of conquest; and yet more, the inward changes of men's minds, the various schools of philosophy, the successive forms of public opinion, the influences of various races, all the manifold elements by which the moral character of the Christian world has been affected. We might observe how the Church had escaped all these things, or to what degree it had received from any of them good or evil. And then, stopping at the point at which it has actually arrived, we might consider how far it deserves the character of that Church, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing," which should be presented before the Son of Man at his coming again.
This would be a great subject; and one, if worthily executed, full of the deepest instruction to us all. But our Lord's words may also be made the text for a history or inquiry of another sort, far less comprehensive in time and space, far less grand, far less interesting to the understanding; yet, on the other hand, capable of being wrought out far more completely, and far more interesting to the spiritual and eternal welfare of each of us. They may be made the text for an inquiry into the course hitherto held, not by the Church as a body, but by each of us individual members of it; an inquiry how far we, each of us, have watched and prayed always, that we might be accounted worthy to escape all the things which should come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man. And, in this view of the words, the expression "all these things which shall come to pass" has reference no longer to great political revolutions, nor to schools of philosophy, nor to prominent points of national character; but to those humbler events, to those lesser changes, outward and inward, through which we each, pass between our cradle and our grave. How have we escaped these, or turned them to good account? Have earthly things so ministered to our eternal welfare, that if we were each one of us, by a stroke from heaven, cut off at that very point in our course to which we have severally attained this day, we should be accounted worthy to stand before the Son of Man?