HOW gently, yet how earnestly, does he call upon us to "watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation." To watch and to pray: for of all those around him some were sleeping, and none were praying; so that they who watched were not watching with him, but against him. In our careless state of mind the call to us is to watch; in our over-busy state the call to us is to pray; in our hard state there is equal need for both. And even in our best moods, when we are not hard, nor careless, nor over-busy, when we are at once sober and earnest and gentle, then not least does Christ call upon us to watch and to pray, that we may retain that than which else no gleam of April sunshine was ever more fleeting; that we may perfect that which else is of the earth, earthly, and when we lie down in the dust will wither and come to dust also.
Jesus Christ brought life and immortality, it is said, to light through the gospel. He brought life and immortality to light:--is this indeed true as far as we are concerned? What do we think would be the difference in this point between many of us--who will dare say how many?--and a school, I will not say of Jewish, but even of Greek or Roman or Egyptian boys, eighteen hundred, or twenty-four hundred, or three or four thousand years ago? Compare us at our worship with them, and then, I grant, the difference would appear enormous. We have no images, making the glory of the incorruptible God like to corruptible man; we have no vain stream of incense; no shedding of the blood of bulls and calves in sacrifice: the hymns which are sung here are not vain repetitions or impious fables, which gave no word of answer to those questions which it most concerns mankind to know. Here, indeed, Jesus Christ is truly set forth, crucified among us; here life and immortality are brought to light. But follow us out of this place,--to our respective pursuits and amusements, to our social meetings, or our times of solitary thought,--and wherein do we seem to see life and immortality more brightly revealed than to those heathen schools of old? Do we enjoy any worldly good less keenly, or less shrink from any worldly evil? Death, which to the heathen view was the end of all things, is to us (so our language goes) the gate of life. Do we think of it with more hope and less fear than the heathen did? Christ has risen, and has reconciled us to God. Is God more to us?--God now revealed to us as our reconciled Father--do we oftener think of him, do we love him better, than he was thought of and loved in those heathen schools, which had Homer's poetry for their only gospel? We talk of light, of revelation, of the knowledge of God, while verily and really we are walking, not in light, but in darkness: not in knowledge of God, but in blindness and hardness of heart.
"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." How great is the loving-kindness of these words,--how gently does Christ bear with the weakness of his disciples! But this thought may be the most blessed or the most dangerous thought in the world; the most blessed if it touches us with love, the most dangerous if it emboldens us in sin. He is full of loving-kindness, full of long-suffering; for days, and weeks, and months, and years he bears with us: we grieve him, and he entreats; we crucify him afresh, yet he will not come down from the cross in power and majesty; he endures and spares. So it is for days, and months, and years; for some years it may be to most of us,--for many years to some of the youngest. There may be some here who may go on grieving Christ, and crucifying him afresh, for as much as seventy years; and he will bear with them all that time, and his sun will daily shine upon them, and his creatures and his word will minister to their pleasure; and he himself will say nothing to them but to entreat them to turn and be saved. This may last, I say, to some amongst us for seventy years; to others it may last fifty; to many of us it may last for forty, or for thirty; none of us, perhaps, are so old but that it may last with us twenty, or at the least ten. Such is the prospect before us, if we like it: not to be depended upon with certainty, it is true, but yet to be regarded as probable. But as these ten, or twenty, or fifty, or seventy years pass on, Christ will still spare us, but his voice of entreaty will be less often heard; the distance between him and us will be consciously wider. From one place after another where we once used sometimes to see him, he will have departed; year after year some object which used once to catch the light from heaven, will have become overgrown, and will lie constantly in gloom; year after year the world will become to us more entirely devoid of God. If sorrow, or some softening joy ever turns our minds towards Christ, we shall be startled at perceiving there is something which keeps us from him, that we cannot earnestly believe in him; that if we speak of loving him, our hearts, which can still love earthly things, feel that the words are but mockery. Alas, alas! the increased weakness of our flesh, has destroyed all the power of our spirit, and almost all its willingness: it is bound with chains which it cannot break, and, indeed, scarcely desires to break. Redemption, Salvation, Victory,--what words are these when applied to that enslaved, that lost, that utterly overthrown and vanquished soul, which sin is leading in triumph now, and which will speedily be given over to walk for ever as a captive in the eternal triumph of death!
Not one word of what I have said is raised beyond the simplest expression of truth; this is our portion if we will not watch with Christ. We know how often we have failed to do so, either sleeping in carelessness, or being busy and wakeful, but not with him or for him. Still he calls us to watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation; to mark our lives and actions; to mark them often; to see whether we have done well or ill in the month past, or in the week past, or in the day past; to consider whether we are better than we were, or worse; whether we think Christ loves us better, or worse; whether we are more or less cold towards him. I know not what else can be called watching with Christ than such a looking into ourselves as we are in his sight. It is very hard to be done;--yes, it is hard--harder than anything probably which we ever attempted before; and, therefore, we must pray withal for his help, whose strength is perfected in our weakness. And if it be so hard, and we have need so greatly to pray for God's help, should we not all also be anxious to help one another? And knowing, as we do from our own consciences, how difficult it is to watch with Christ, and how thankful we should be to any one who were to make it easier to us, should we not be sure that our neighbour is in like case with ourselves; that our help may be as useful to him as we feel that his would be to us? This is our bounden duty of love towards one another; what then should be said of us if we not only neglect this duty, but do the very contrary to it; if we actually help the evil in our brother's heart to destroy him more entirely; if we will not watch with Christ ourselves, and strive to prevent others from doing so?
LECTURE XXIV.
GOOD FRIDAY.
ROMANS v. 8.