Old Wine and New Part 9

Between Chattanooga and Atlanta occurred some of the severest conflicts of the American Civil War. For more than a hundred miles the fields are covered with battle-scars, and every hill-top bears traces of fortifications. Near one of the most memorable places may now be seen a cemetery, where Northern and Southern soldiers, side by side, await the resurrection. Visiting it a year after the struggle was over and ended, I found an East-Tennessee farmer sitting by a grave at the head of which he had just erected a handsome marble. To my question--"Was the soldier lying here your son?" he answered: "No, sir; he was my neighbor. I was drafted for the army; my family were all sick; I knew not how to leave them; I was sadly perplexed and troubled. A young man came to me, and said: 'You shall not go; I will go for you; I have no family to care for.' Glad to remain with those who needed me so much, I accepted his generous offer. He went, but never returned. I have brought this stone more than a hundred miles, to set it at the head of his grave. Look there, stranger!" I followed with my eyes the direction of his finger, and read under the name of the n.o.ble dead: "He died for me!" And we both bowed the head, and wept.

My dear brethren, there is One far n.o.bler who died for you and me. With a disinterestedness unparalleled in the annals of war, he took our place in a fiercer conflict than was ever waged for freedom or for empire. Fighting our battle, he fell; but falling, conquered all our foes. Triumphant he rose from the dead, and ascended on high, leading our captivity captive. At the right hand of the throne of G.o.d, in our nature redeemed and glorified, "he ever liveth to make intercession for us." All that we have or hope of good we owe to his dying love. But in an upper chamber at Jerusalem, with a few chosen witnesses present, just before he went forth to the final engagement, he inst.i.tuted for us a perpetual memorial of his unexampled charity. Taking bread, he blessed, and brake, and gave to his disciples, saying: "Take, eat; this is my body, which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of me."

Then, taking the cup, he gave to them, saying: "Drink ye all of this; for this is my blood of the new covenant, shed for you, and for many, for the remission of sins; do this in remembrance of me." This finished, he chanted part of the Great Hallel with the beloved twelve, as if the victory were already won; then gave them his valedictory address, and went out to die. And some twenty-four years later, the great Apostle Paul, in a letter to the Christians of Corinth, having narrated the facts just as they are recorded by the evangelists, adds these solemn words for the benefit of his brethren in all subsequent ages: "As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come."

Here, then, is the precious Calvary token bequeathed by the dear Saviour to his redeemed Church. While we contemplate it, hear we not a voice from the excellent glory bidding us take off the shoes from our feet? Approaching the altar to gaze upon the great sacrificial memorial, the ground we tread is holier than that on which Moses stood before the bush that burned in h.o.r.eb. There is more of G.o.d seen here than in all the fires of Sinai. There he made known his law; here he reveals his love. There we read his will; here we behold his heart. No other ordinance, even of the new and everlasting covenant, contains so much of majesty, so much of mystery, so much of sanct.i.ty, and at the same time so much of mercy, as the eucharistic feast; in which the Messiah stands forth to our faith at once the sacrifice and the sacrificer, in the same sacred solemnity inst.i.tuting an everlasting memorial and a perpetual priesthood.

To us, more than eighteen centuries after the fact, if we have any right feeling and clear perception, the solemn transaction in the upper room,

"On that sad memorable night,"

must wear an aspect far more interesting than it wore at the moment even to the apostles themselves. For we are able to view the matter more deliberately and more dispa.s.sionately than they could, and with many additional side-lights to aid our apprehension of the divine truths involved. Certainly no act of the Saviour has laid his Church under greater obligation, none has exhibited in more attractive colors the relations he sustains to his redeemed people. Taking the bread and the cup, does he not remind us of his having taken our flesh and blood?

Presenting them with solemn benediction to the Father, does he not intimate to us the offering of his humanity to Heaven as a sacrifice for our sins? Giving them to his disciples with the command to eat and drink, does he not a.s.sure us that he is ours with all the infinite benefits of his incarnation and atonement forever? Ordering the apostles and their apostolical successors as his priests to do what they have just seen him do as their Lord, does he not furnish us a perpetual commemoration of his redeeming love, and a perpetual demonstration of his quickening power, till his return in glorious majesty from heaven to rule the world he ransomed with his blood?

Under both the Hebrew and the heathen rituals, the meat-offering and the drink-offering were inseparable from every piacular sacrifice; and without the conjunctive offering of bread and wine, it is difficult to see how either Hebrew or heathen could have regarded the death of Christ as an expiation for sin. As the death of a martyr, indeed, they might well enough have taken it; but as a sacrifice for human transgression, how could they have received it, unaccompanied by the Holy Supper? Were the bread and wine the body and blood of Christ in the physical sense maintained by the Church of Rome, their perpetual presentation by personal intercession before the Father's throne would be superfluous and even impossible, while the voluntary death of our dear Lord upon the cross would be unnecessary and suicidal. Were they the body and blood of Christ in the merely emblematical sense maintained by the ultra-Protestant sects, they would const.i.tute for us no sufficient a.s.surance of his ever-living mediation in heaven, nor to G.o.d any effectual remembrancer of his suffering in the flesh for the expiation of our guilt. Therefore those denominations who deny the propitiatory character of his pa.s.sion have little care or scruple about the due observance of this most sacred festival--

"Rich banquet of his flesh and blood."

"This do," said the divine Author of the inst.i.tution, "in remembrance of me"--strictly, "for my memorial;" not merely remembering me--reminding yourselves and others of me; but memorializing G.o.d the Father--reminding him of the self-presentation of his well-beloved Son as an offering and a sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savor for our salvation. In doing this, we do not repeat the once offered and forever accepted propitiation for our guilt--a thing which, indeed, we cannot do, and which no word of Holy Scripture warrants us in attempting; but we present a spiritual memorial of that propitiation, setting forth in the sight of G.o.d the perfect work and infinite merit of our personal Redeemer; we present the consecrated bread and wine, and with them we present ourselves and the whole catholic Church, to him who delivered up his own Son for us all, and accepted that Son's unknown sorrows and sufferings as a sufficient satisfaction for all human sin. This is the essence of the eucharistic oblation, the anti-typical peace-offering, the great sacrifice of the faithful. How unworthy are we of so sublime a service! and how should we cleanse ourselves to appear with such a gift at the portals of the heavenly sanctuary!

In the presence of the chosen twelve presenting to the Father the meat-offering and drink-offering of the true Paschal Lamb, the appointed High-Priest of our profession solemnly attested to heaven and earth the sacrificial character of his ensuing sufferings, and pledged himself to the speedy accomplishment of the great sin-offering once for all. Enjoining upon his apostles the perpetual continuance of the same ministration by an unfailing succession of consecrated men, he provided the Church with a proof and the world with a token of the everlasting endurance and efficacy of that sacrifice, once offered, often commemorated, and eternally acceptable to G.o.d. Inst.i.tuting a memorial for all subsequent ages of the completeness and perpetuity of his personal sacrifice, he inst.i.tuted also the means of appropriating its benefits; and the Christian meat-offering and drink-offering being so intimately a.s.sociated with the Christian sacrifice, the partaker in faith of the one is partaker in fact of the other, truly eating the flesh and drinking the blood of G.o.d's incarnate Son. Hear the Saviour's memorable words in the Capernaum synagogue: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you; whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up in the last day; for my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed; he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him."

Hard sayings were these to some who heard them, and hard they still are to all self-blinded unbelievers; but, as St. Augustine says, they are hard only to the hardened, and incredible only to the incredulous. To us who believe, though mysterious, they are very precious. We apprehend their spiritual meaning, and rejoice in the privilege which they open to our faith. Eating and drinking at the Lord's table, we become partakers of his life, his holiness, and his immortality. Here we partic.i.p.ate with the Eternal Father in his joy over the accomplished work of his Beloved Son, and with that Beloved Son himself in his joy over the redeemed Church--his treasure and his bride; while heaven and earth unite in the glad festival of faith--the hidden manna and the new wine of the kingdom. And if the living Christ be thus in you, dear brethren! what outward enemy is too strong for you--what duty too arduous--what ordeal too severe? Away with your doubts and fears, O ye faint-hearted disciples! Can you not trust him who, in the power of an endless life, has established his throne in your hearts? With Christ, all things are yours, and no agency of earth or h.e.l.l can rob you of your regal inheritance!

Contingent upon the sacrifice of the cross, and from that sacrifice deriving all its meaning and its merit, the eucharistic sacrament itself becomes relatively sacrificial. As beforehand there was a continual sacrificial antic.i.p.ation of Immanuel's atoning death, so after the event is there a continual sacramental commemoration of the accomplished purpose and prophecy. Both the Jewish pa.s.sover which foreshadowed the future fact, and the Christian eucharist which to-day commemorates the fact historical, are sacrificial on the same principle and by the same rule--their relation to the cross of Calvary which gives them all their virtue and their value. The agony is over, and Christ dieth no more; the atonement once made without the walls of Jerusalem is still presented by our divine High-Priest before the mercy-seat within the vail. To all who believe, it is efficacious forever, needing no annual or even millennial repet.i.tion. But in the eucharistic sacrament, with prayers and thanksgivings, we lift up the reeking cross before the Eternal Father, and plead the sufferings of his Well-Beloved for our salvation. We say to G.o.d: "Behold this broken bread; it is the mangled flesh of thy Christ! Behold this purple cup; it is the blood which he shed for our sins! Behold at thy right hand our slaughtered Paschal Lamb, and for his sake have mercy upon us and save us!"

Thus we say the holy eucharist is relatively sacrificial--sacrificial from its inseparable connection with the Redeemer's sacrifice. But even in this sense--the only one admissible to a true faith--the holy eucharist could not be sacrificial, were not its ministers in a corresponding sense sacerdotal. As the sacrament becomes relatively sacrificial by representing the Saviour's sacrifice, so its ministers become relatively sacerdotal by representing his person and functions.

Commencing in the paschal chamber an ever-during sacrifice by ministering in person its accompanying meat-offering and drink-offering, he commenced there also the order of an ever-during priesthood by empowering his apostolic ministry to perpetuate that meat-offering and drink-offering forever. And, conferring sacerdotal functions upon the apostolic ministry, he conferred them upon that ministry alone. If he did not intend to limit to the twelve and their consecrated followers the power of consecrating and dispensing the sacramental bread and wine, why were not the whole five hundred brethren, or all the vast concourse of followers from Galilee, admitted to the original celebration? The selection of the few proves the exclusion of the many, and restricts the perpetual prerogative to the ministry of apostolical succession.

The sacerdotal oblation being essential, the sacerdotal celebration is equally essential. The priest must consecrate; the priest must administer; or there is no divinely authorized memorial of the one everlasting sacrifice. No such memorial, where is the recognized bond, connecting the body on earth to its glorified Head in heaven? No such bond, what becomes of the Church, and what a.s.surance has she of an eternal inheritance? That bond secure, the Church is invincible and immortal; the city of G.o.d stands upon a rock which no shock of colliding worlds can shake; all her happy people, instinct with the life of their Lord, walking in white robes her streets of gold. And the apostolic series of sacerdotal ministers continuing to the end of time, the conjoined memorial of consecrated bread and wine shall still bind the successive generations of the faithful to the sacrificial cross, till he who for our great and endless comfort inst.i.tuted the holy mystery nearly two thousand years ago shall return with all his flaming cohorts from the skies to take us to himself forever. "As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come."

[1] Preached at Porto Bello, Edinburgh, Scot., 1866. For much of the thought contained in this discourse the author is indebted to the Christology of the Old Testament, by the honored rector of his childhood, the Rev. Joseph Stephenson, A.M., late of Lympsham, Somersetshire, Eng.

XV.

HEROISM TRIUMPHANT.[1]

Now thanks be unto G.o.d, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place.--2 Cor. ii. 14.

The grandest of all human pageants was a Roman triumph. This honor was conferred only upon the emperor or the general who had conquered a province, or achieved some signal victory. The conqueror was arrayed in rich purple robes, embroidered with flowers and figures of gold. His buskins were adorned with pearls and costly gems, and a wreath of laurel or a crown of gold was set upon his head. In one hand he held a laurel branch, the emblem of victory; and in the other his truncheon, the symbol of authority and power. He was borne in a magnificent chariot, drawn generally by white horses, but sometimes by other animals. Pompey had elephants; Mark Antony, lions; Heliogabalus, tigers; Marcus Aurelius, reindeer. Musicians led the procession, playing triumphal marches; and heralds, proclaiming the achievements of the victorious hero. These were followed by young men, leading the victims, with gilded horns and garlanded heads, intended for sacrifice. Next came the wagons, loaded with the spoils and trophies of the conquered foe; succeeded by the captured horses, camels, elephants, and gayly decorated carriages; and after these, the captive kings, queens, princes, and generals, loaded with chains. Then was seen the triumphal chariot, outdoing all other magnificence; before which boys swung censers and maidens strewed flowers; while the people, as it pa.s.sed, prostrated themselves and shouted, "_Io triumphe!_"

Immediately behind marched the sentries; and the procession was closed by the priests and their attendants, with the various sacrificial utensils, and a white ox destined for the chief victim. Entering the city by the Porta Capaena, pa.s.sing through the triumphal arch, and proceeding along the Via Sacra, the splendid _cortege_ moved on toward the Capitol; at the foot of which the captives divided, some led to the Mammertine and Tullian dungeons on the right, while the others went straight forward to the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus; the former doomed to death, the latter made tributaries if not even allies of imperial Rome. Meanwhile, the temples all being open, every altar smoked with sacrificial fires, and clouds of incense filled the city and sweetened all the air.

With such spectacles the Corinthians were not unacquainted. About two hundred years before St. Paul wrote this epistle, Lucius Mummius, the Roman consul, had conquered all Achaia; had destroyed Corinth, Chalcus and Thebes; and, by order of the senate, had been honored with a splendid triumph and the surname of Achaicus. Over the same people the apostle now has a triumph, but it is a triumph of very different character--a triumph in Christ by the power of the gospel, the glory of which he ascribes to G.o.d alone. As in a Roman triumph the smoke of altars and the odor of incense filled the city with a pleasant perfume, so the name and the doctrine of Christ preached by him and his colleagues pervaded Corinth and all the surrounding country--wherever those holy men had labored--with odors as of Eden; and the apostles appeared as triumphing in Christ over idols, demons, devils--over ignorance, prejudice, scepticism, superst.i.tion, false philosophy, and all the powers of darkness; yet appropriating no praise to themselves, but attributing all to the wisdom and the mercy of G.o.d. Indeed, it is G.o.d's triumph, not theirs. He has first triumphed over them, and is now making them the partners of his triumph. Better expressing the sense of the Greek original, Trench and Alford read, "leadeth us in triumph;"

and other eminent critics give us substantially the same rendering; while Conybeare and Howson, in their admirable work on the "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," thus translate the language of the text: "But thanks be to G.o.d, who leads me on from place to place in the train of his triumph, to celebrate his victory over the enemies of Christ; and by me sends forth the knowledge of himself, a stream of fragrant incense, throughout the world." A pretty free translation, it is true; but embodying, no doubt, the precise meaning of the writer. "St. Paul regarded himself," says Fausett, "as a signal trophy of G.o.d's victorious power in Christ; his Almighty Conqueror leading him about through all the cities of the Greek and Roman world, as an ill.u.s.trious example of his power at once to subdue and to save." The foe of Christ was now the servant of Christ. Grace divine had subdued and disarmed him. The rebel, the persecutor, the conspirator with h.e.l.l, was brought into subjection, and rejoiced in his burden as a blessing. As to be led in triumph by man is miserable degradation, so to be led in triumph by the Lord of hosts is highest honor and blessedness. Our only true triumphs are G.o.d's triumphs over us. His defeats of us are our only true victories. Near the gate of Damascus the lion is smitten into a lamb by the hand of the Crucified; and in a short time the lamb has become his bravest champion. Brought into willing obedience, he falls into Christ's triumphal train, ascends into Christ's triumphal chariot; and, in full sympathy with Christ, becomes the partner of his triumph.

Bengal writes--"who shows us in triumph"--that is, not only as conquered by Christ, but as conquering with him. Our victory is the fruit of his victory over us; and the open showing of that, so far from being our shame, is our greatest glory. Therefore saith the apostle--and it is the most heroic utterance of the prince of heroes: "G.o.d forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."

And from this evangel of the crucifixion, which he lives to preach and will die to defend, arises the fragrant odor with which he and his companions are filling the world. As the approach of the triumphal procession is made manifest by the sweet perfume scattered far and wide by incense-bearers in the conqueror's train, so the heavenly Victor makes use of his vanquished to herald the victories of his grace and diffuse like fragrant odors the saving knowledge of his name. It is the triumph of grace over sin, the triumph of truth over error, the triumph of faith over unbelief, the triumph of divine love over human selfishness. It is the right triumphing over the wrong, the pure triumphing over the impure, the heavenly triumphing over the earthly, the spiritual triumphing over the sensual, the eternal triumphing over the temporal, the true religion triumphing over all superst.i.tion. It is G.o.d by Christ triumphing in man, and man through Christ triumphing with G.o.d; who leads us in triumph as his captives, shows us in triumph as his trophies, and "maketh manifest by us the savor of his knowledge in every place."

You see, my brethren, that the apostolic work was missionary work--that the Church, as const.i.tuted by these heroic and holy men under the leadership of their divine Lord, was a missionary society--the primitive propaganda of the Christian faith. They were sent forth by the Captain of their salvation to conquer the nations for Christ, and gather captives from all countries into his triumphal procession. For this work St. Paul was added to the original number, and from his peculiar fitness by education and spiritual endowment became the most successful of them all. And the const.i.tution of the Church is still unchanged; and our high calling in Christ Jesus has never been revoked; and your bishops and clergy to-day are but heralds and incense-bearers in the train of Immanuel's triumph; and every faithful communicant, and every baptized believer, and every humble neophyte, are triumphing with the heavenly Conqueror. Surely here is a demand for all our faith, for all our zeal, for all our moral heroism; and for an emba.s.sy like ours, "more than twelve legions of angels" might have been commissioned from the skies. Alas! where sleep our energies? where slumber the holy fires within our hearts? Calm and secure, here we sit in our Christian a.s.semblies. With something of the Spirit we pray, with something of the Spirit we sing, and with much of the understanding we do both. With reverent delight we hear the word of grace, and with unspeakable gladness welcome its revelations of the unseen and the eternal. With our best faculties we inquire into its meaning, seek elucidations of it in ancient literature and modern criticism, and rejoice in its acc.u.mulating confirmations from history and from science. We worship with a comely ritual derived from the fathers, and celebrate the sacramental mysteries of our redemption in words that have warmed the hearts of martyrs. But while thus occupied, how little think we of the millions around us who for the same mercies are constantly invoking Heaven with the voice of all their sins and sorrows! For us, Christ "hath abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light by his gospel;" they follow their friends to the burial, and mourn for them without hope, no star gleaming over the grave, nor seraph beckoning out of the darkness beyond; they lie down to die, but above the pallid day no halo gathers, no seraph wings are hovering, no sweet familiar voices inviting to an eternal fellowship of joy. Have we no loving compa.s.sions for them, no desire to rescue and save their souls alive? Oh! look at the heathen world, where Satan holds undisputed empire, and man has never felt the power of Christian civilization. Look at the dark places of the earth, full of the habitations of cruelty; where Belial reigns supreme, and Moloch revels in fire and blood. Look at the countries that languish under the curse of the Crescent, where sense misnamed faith triumphs over reason, and strong delusion has quenched the last beam of divine knowledge, and obscured every ray of intellectual truth.

Look at Jacob's heritage of milk, and honey, "destroyed by the wickedness of them that dwell therein"--the most beautiful of lands, the very garden of G.o.d, by ignorance and barbarism turned into a sterile waste and delivered up to the tenantry of noisome and noxious creatures. Look at the exiled children of Abraham, a vagabond race, roaming everywhere, and nowhere finding rest; the curse of their rejection branded on every brow, and reprobation written in every feature of an unmistakable physiognomy; their synagogues little better than Mohammedan mosques and pagan temples, their worship an empty and abrogated ceremonial, and Mammon subst.i.tuted for the Messiah. Look at the villanous impostures of the Vatican, and the notorious corruptions of faith and worship wherever the Roman mystagogue holds sway; the habitual invocation of saints and martyrs; the adoration of images, pictures, and relics; the monstrous abuses and manifold abominations of the confessional; the doctrines of indulgence, purgatory, and human merit; the blasphemous dogmas of papal supremacy and infallibility, and the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin; with the legitimate and lamentable fruits--an abject and atheistic priesthood, and a thriftless and degraded people. Look at your own country, Christian though it is called--your own city, highly as it is favored of heaven; and see how far the ma.s.ses lie from the living G.o.d; how his name is profaned, his altars abandoned, while every place of amus.e.m.e.nt is thronged with merry votaries of pleasure, and drunken men reel athwart the path of church-going people, and the house of her whose steps take hold on h.e.l.l stands in the very shadow of the sanctuary, and libidinous songs and blasphemous oaths form the horrible counterpart to your sacred psalmody; on all sides temples of Bacchus and Beelzebub, with scenes of revelry and riot, debauchery and blood, where dissipation discards all disguise, impurity all shame, and impiety all fear. Look at your Western States and Territories--fields demanding a hundred missionaries where you have one; a numerous and constantly increasing population scattered over a vast extent of country, with only here and there a church and a school, like solitary torches a thousand miles apart struggling to dispel the deeper than Egyptian darkness of half a world; while Rome is rearing her temples and convents everywhere, everywhere establishing her brotherhoods and sisterhoods, founding orphan-asylums and educational inst.i.tutes, exercising a powerful influence over the development of the youthful mind, and poisoning the wells whence the people are to draw the water of their salvation; and heresy and schism are setting up their tabernacles, and agnostic infidelity is travelling _pari pa.s.su_ with population, and myriads of redeemed immortals are perishing for lack of knowledge. Look at your fair and sunny South-land, lately devastated by contending armies; churches in ashes, cities in ruins, fenceless plantations growing up to forests; bishops and clergymen wofully impoverished, and forced to resort to secular occupations for subsistence; earnest and anxious spirits, shipwrecked in the collision of sectarian crafts, struggling desperately in the dark waters of doubt, and longing to see the life-boats of the Church upon the billows; four million slaves in a state of semi-barbarism suddenly set at liberty like so many unfledged cagelings turned out to the wintry tempest, amidst hawks, and owls, and eagles, and every beast of prey; many of them already relapsing into their ancestral superst.i.tions, suspecting one another as wizards and witches, practising hideous rites and abominable incantations, worshipping some exceptionally ugly old hag as a new incarnation of the Divinity, and dancing with demoniac noises over the graves of their dead. No fancy pictures are these which I present, nor overwrought descriptions of realities. Impossible were it to find language or figures to exaggerate the wretchedness of humanity unrelieved by the gracious revelations of G.o.d. In comparison of the moral ruin around us, what was the late catastrophe of a hundred South-American cities, whelming in a common destruction men, women and children to the number of forty or fifty thousand? Should some pilgrim from a distant sphere, traversing the ethereal s.p.a.ce with wings of light, chance to cross the orbit of our fallen planet, and cast a momentary glance down at our condition, might he not hurry past with a shudder, suspecting that h.e.l.l had emptied itself upon earth, and the unhappy race had been given over unredeemed to the dominion of the Devil?

But why dwell on this dismal theme? Oh! I could tell you of victories demanding another David to sing them or another Isaiah to record them, till every loving heart should leap for joy and exult in hope of millennial triumph. But I would fain stir your compa.s.sion. I am feeling for your purse-strings among your heart-strings. I want to play a tune upon your spirits which shall echo in Colorado, and make music in New Mexico, and reverberate from the heights of the Himalaya, and gladden the hills round about Jerusalem. Can we survey the valley of vision, and not prophesy to all the winds of G.o.d? Can we see millions of immortal beings crushed by the dominion of Satan, and not cry amain to the Prince of peace to come and unseat the great usurper, and establish his own universal and everlasting empire? And how shall we pray successfully, if we answer not our own prayers by pouring our offerings into the Lord's treasury? How shall we arrest the long carnival of crime, and error, and delusion, and infidelity, if we bestir not all our Christian energies, occupying every available position, evoking every beneficent agency of the Church, barricading with Bibles and Prayer-Books the teeming way to ruin, and bridging with the blessed cross the mouth of the flaming pit? Thus, my brethren! may we save souls from death, and give new joy to benevolence in other worlds, and gladden the heart that eighteen hundred years ago quivered for us upon the point of the Roman spear, and fill the reverberant universe with the shout of the apostle--"Now thanks be unto G.o.d, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place!"

[1] Preached at a missionary meeting in New York, 1868.

XVI.

FRATERNAL FORGIVENESS.[1]

So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespa.s.ses.--Matt.

xviii. 35.

When John Wesley was in Georgia, he was dining one day with Gov.

Oglethorpe. A negro waiter at the table committing a careless blunder, the governor said to his guest: "See this good-for-nothing servant; he is always doing wrong, though he knows that I never forgive." "Does your Excellency never forgive?" replied Mr. Wesley; "then it is to be hoped that your Excellency never does wrong." A beautiful reproof; and the more effectual, no doubt, from its gentleness. Those who need forgiveness for their own faults, certainly ought to forgive the faults of others. "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven;" but "he shall have judgment without mercy, who hath showed no mercy." This is the lesson taught us in the gospel for the day,[2] which I shall endeavor to unfold and apply. For moral elevation, the pa.s.sage is very remarkable.

Found in some old Greek or Roman volume--in some parchment dug up from Herculaneum or Pompeii--on some tablet or cylinder discovered amidst the _debris_ of Nineveh or Babylon--it would have awakened the wonder of the world, and men would never have been weary of praising its transcendent charity.

The Jewish rabbis taught that a man might forgive an injury a second or even a third time, but never a fourth. When St. Peter asked--"How oft shall my brother trespa.s.s against me, and I forgive him? until seven times?" he doubled the rabbinical measure of mercy, doubtless imagining that he had reached the ultimate limit, and that his Divine Master even could require no more. How must he and his brethren have been astonished when Jesus answered: "I say not unto thee, Until seven times; but, until seventy times seven!" What! four hundred and ninety times? But Jesus puts a definite number for an indefinite. "Count not your acts of clemency," he seems to say; "be your forgiveness of a brother as free as the air you breathe or the light you enjoy--your love as unlimited as the illimitable heaven above you." Then he puts the matter strongly before them in a parable:

A certain king calls his servants--the collectors of his taxes and revenues--to account. One of them is found frightfully in arrears--owing his lord ten thousand talents--a debt which he can never pay. The king orders the sale of the delinquent, with his family and all his effects. Falling at the royal feet, he implores patience, and promises the impossible. Touched with pity, the king forgives the debt.

But the forgiven goes to a fellow-servant who owes him the small sum of a hundred pence, seizes him by the throat, and demands immediate payment. The helpless debtor falls before him, and pleads with him as he himself had lately pleaded with the king. The creditor, however, is inexorable; and into prison the poor man must go till the debt is paid.

The sad matter is reported to the king, who recalls the subject of his clemency, rebukes his cruelty, revokes his own act of forgiveness, and delivers the unmerciful over to the tormentors till the last farthing shall be paid. Finally, in application of the parable, the Divine Teacher adds: "So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespa.s.ses."

G.o.d's mercy to man, and man's unmercifulness to his fellow, are the two princ.i.p.al things set forth in the parable. Let us look at them both, and see how the former enhances the latter, and enforces the duty of fraternal forgiveness.

To have any right appreciation of the master's mercy, we must know something of the amount of the servant's debt. Ten thousand talents was an enormous sum. The delinquent was a viceroy, and the amount he owed was the revenue of a province. In those days large debts were not uncommon. Julius Caesar owed, beyond his a.s.sets, $1,425,000; Mark Antony, $2,250,000; Curio, $3,375,000; Milo, $4,125,000. An Attic talent was about $1,080; which, multiplied by 10,000, would make the debt $10,800,000. But if the Jewish talent of silver is meant, it would amount to $16,600,000; if the Jewish talent of gold, to $569,000,000.

Now let each talent stand for a sin--10,000 sins! Reduce the talents to dollars, and take every dollar for a sin--569,000,000 sins! Reduce the dollars to dimes, and let every dime represent a sin--5,690,000,000 sins! Reduce the dimes to cents, and let every cent be considered a sin--56,900,000,000 sins! Perhaps, however, our dear Lord never intended by the number of talents to intimate the number of our sins, any more than by the seventy times seven he meant to say how often we should forgive an offending brother. In each case the idea is that of indefinite number, unlimited extent. But if the seventy times seven means mercy without measure, what can the ten thousand talents denote but guilt beyond all human calculation or imagination? Think you any estimate of the number and enormity of our sins can be an exaggeration?

"Who can tell how oft he offendeth?" "My sins are more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart faileth me." "My sins are increased over my head so that I am not able to look up." Far better and holier than the best of us, my brethren, was the man who wrote these statements, and left them for an everlasting testimony against those who are pure in their own eyes. If David had such consciousness of sin, what must our consciousness be if we knew ourselves as well? They are the self-blinded, self-hardened, self-deceived, who fancy themselves innocent and glory in their virtue. Even the great apostle called himself "the chief of sinners," and declared that in himself dwelt "no good thing." There is no danger, then, of extravagance in any estimate of our sins of which our arithmetic is capable. So let us proceed a little farther. Take our Lord's summary of the first table of the law: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." Here is required the surrender of the whole man as a living sacrifice to his Divine Creator and Sovereign Proprietor. This is his unquestionable claim upon every moment of our existence throughout its immortal duration. A duty this which we cannot omit for a single second without robbing G.o.d; and every minute that we neglect it, comprising sixty seconds, we may be said to repeat the sacrilege sixty times; every hour, 3,600 times; every day, 86,400 times; every year, 31,536,000 times; in twenty years, 630,720,000 times; and in forty years, 1,261,440,000 times. But these are sins of omission only, and that in relation to a single phase of duty; add all the other instances, and we must multiply the sum by multiplied millions. Then we must take our positive sins--our violations of the divine law by thought, word and deed--open sins and secret, public and private, personal and social--sins defying all enumeration, and difficult even of cla.s.sification; and, adding all together, we must multiply the sum by all our faculties, facilities and gracious incentives for doing G.o.d's blessed will, and aggravate all by the innumerable mercies and inestimable blessings which he has diffused over our lives as his sunbeams over the earth. And its any thing short of infinite mercy adequate to the forgiveness of such a debt?