218 KING UPON THE HILL OF ZION. [SERM. XVII. slothful, thou unfaithful servant! Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion. You may band yourselves together to disregard or to dethrone Him: you may leave Him out of sight in your plans, you may modify or annul His laws, you may say, Where is the promise of His coming? you may begin to doubt whether indeed He ever died for you or ever rose, you may treat His word with irreverence, with suspicion, or with contempt: BUT He that sitteth in the heavens is above your reach-His foolishness is wiser than your wisdom, and His weakness stronger than your strength-He will be when you are forgotten, He will still reign when you are dust. And then, at last, the sign of the Son of God shall be seen in heaven, and the light of His presence, shining from the one end of the earth even to the other, shining into the graves of the righteous and into the graves of the wicked, shall be the answer, decisive and final, alike to the misgivings of doubt and to the gainsayings of unbelief. God grant to each one of us who are now present before Him, that we may so humble ourselves before His truth while the day of grace lasts, that we may see Him with joy and not with grief when He exchanges the throne of mercy for the throne of judgment! O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in Him. FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, SERMON XVIII.' THE FALL AND THE RISING. ST LUKE XXII. 61, 62. And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out, and wept bitterly. SUCH, my brethren, is the after-taste of sin. Such is the awakening from that sleep of the soul, to which the tempter has successfully presented one of his bright seductive visions. I wish you to ponder with me this evening an example of the process of temptation, as it has been witnessed ten thousand times in every generation since the fall of man. We shall have to notice three things: the sleep, the dream, and the awakening: or, to speak more plainly, the state of the soul before the sin, during the sin, and after the sin: the condition of which the tempter avails himself, the mode of his operation, and the condition in which he leaves us. God grant, not only that the subject may be (as I am sure it 1 Preached on the Sunday before the Races. 220 THE FALL AND THE RISING. [SERM. XVIII. is) seasonable; but also that our consideration of it may be serious, earnest, and profitable to many! I. What I have called the sleep of the soul, or its condition before the sin, may be briefly described as a state of security. Not of safety, but of security; that is, of supposed safety, of imagined strength. When our Lord, at the last Supper, so mercifully warned His disciples of the approach of danger, it was Peter, you remember, who repelled the warning by an eager assertion of his own resolution and constancy. Take the account of what passed from the Gospel now before us. We have to look but a few verses back from the text itself. In the 31st verse we read: And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, or, more exactly, Satan begged for you, demanded you, that he might sift (winnow) you as wheat. Observe, the pronoun you here, as elsewhere in Scripture, is plural: it includes all the disciples: then it turns to the singular. But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith might not fail: and, when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. The words are a little more precise: and thou at some time having turned, or, and thou having at length turned, strengthen thy brethren. These words, coming from their Lord Himself at so solemn a crisis, ought surely to have startled the disciples; and especially that disciple to whom they were addressed. Only consider for a moment what was contained in them. Was not their purport plainly this? "A great danger is before you. It is as if Satan himself, the great enemy of souls, whose work it is to ruin men, and whose joy it is when he can succeed in doing so, had asked God for you; had begged you of SERM. XVIII.] THE FALL AND THE rising. 221 God; had made a special request that your souls might be put into his hand for a season, even as the body of one of God's servants in old time, the patriarch Job, was consigned to him, when the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life. The object of Satan, in making that request, was to sift the very heart and soul of that good man. He wanted to show that Job's obedience was all self-interest. Doth Job, he said, fear God for nought? Hast not Thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth Thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse Thee to Thy face. And then, afterwards, when the loss of all that he had, and of all that he loved, had failed to produce this effect, Satan said again, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth Thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse Thee to Thy face. Thus he desired to have him that he might sift him as wheat; that he might probe every secret of his soul, every principle of his life, and bring to light his real unsoundness, his deep hidden falseness and worthlessness. Even so it is now. Satan would fain try his whole power, by God's permission, upon you. He will do so. But for one of you, in particular, I have made an earnest prayer to my Father in heaven. I have prayed that his faith may not fail, may not utterly vanish and disappear, in that fearful encounter. If it must fail for the time, yet may there be a reawakening and a recovery, a conversion and a turning back to God. And when this, in answer 222 THE FALL AND THE RISING. [SERM. XVIII. to my prayer, is so, let him make it thenceforth his life's work to strengthen his brethren; to feel for their dangers from the experience of his own, and to strive by word and act to keep them in their integrity and in their stedfastness." My brethren, if our Saviour had addressed these remarkable words to any one of us, might we not have expected that we should hear them at least with alarm? What then was Peter's answer? It is given in the 33rd verse: And he said unto Him, Lord, I am ready to go with Thee, both into prison, and to death. He spoke earnestly, but he scarcely spoke humbly. He knew that he had love, and he knew that he had zeal, and he thought those two things must suffice for constancy. He made no allowance for altered circumstances. He remembered not how differently things appear in prospect, while they are at a distance, and in experience, when they are close upon us. And, therefore, however sincerely-and he was entirely sincere-he yet spoke ignorantly, rashly, in that spirit of self-confidence which is always utter weakness. And our Lord answered yet once more, and said to him, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me. Peter was silenced, but he was not convinced. His Master had spoken plainly, but he still thought that he knew better. My brethren, the same sort of security, of selfreliance, of false confidence, is our chief bane also. Even Christian people are liable to it. Even persons who call themselves miserable sinners, and say in their prayers, as we all said last Sunday, The frailty of man without Thee cannot but fall, are exposed to the same |