SERM. XIX.] OF THE WORLD. 243 use this world greedily; giving ourselves to its enjoyments in excess, intemperately, or sinfully. Let us not use it selfishly; catching all for ourselves, and thinking nothing of the wants, in soul and body, of those around us. Let us not use it unthankfully; seizing the gifts, and forgetting the Giver. Let us not use it blindly; having all our attention fixed on the near, the present object, and losing sight altogether of the higher and better, the enduring and the heavenly. In all these ways we may use or we may abuse the world. Thoughts such as these, my brethren, common in themselves and obvious, could not but be strongly impressed upon Christian people by the events of the week just ended. Amidst the noisy and exciting scenes which have affected, in one way or another, our whole population, and from which it is too much to hope that no evil consequences will have resulted to any lives and souls, there is just one thing which has not altogether stood still: the course of sickness has not been arrested the hand of death has not been stayed. I know nothing more impressive, more painfully impressive, than the contrast, at such times, between the street and the chamber of sickness. It is not the sight of health which is shocking to one ministering to sickness; not the sight of health, not the sight of activity, not the sight of childish play or of manly relaxation; but the sight, in any sense or in any form, of sin. The sight of the drunkard, the hearing of the profane oath, the loud laughter of the abandoned woman driving shamelessly through our streets-these are the things which make a thoughtful man sick at heart, as they 244 USE AND ABUSE [SERM. XIX. force upon his notice the bitter contrast, on God's earth, between sin in its triumph and that suffering which is its curse. It happened to me, on one of those days of thronging crowds and abounding excitements, to visit the deathbed of a Christian man, known by name and sight to most of you, and now closing a long life of integrity, of industry, of honour, and of piety, by a death full of immortality. There he lay in his still tranquil chamber; and not a sound from the noisy neighbouring town could reach him through the open window which admitted in all their sweetness the bright cheering light and the fresh fragrant air of heaven. There he lay, calm, cheerful, thankful, loving; his work finished, his race run, his rest at hand. What a picture of the righteous man entering into peace; resting in his bed, as the same Prophet writes, still walking in his uprightness; yet trusting, not in himself or in his own blamelessness, piety, or charity, but only in the merits of his Lord and Saviour, whose name, even in moments of wandering and unconsciousness, was still and ever upon his lips! O, to return from that chamber of peace and blessedness, through quiet lanes and amidst the gathered fruits of an abundant harvest, to meet again, at the very entrance of our town, those who are dishonouring God by profaneness, by drunkenness, by temptation of others; to see the Saviour Himself crucified afresh here, as He is glorified and honoured there; this indeed is a sad and painful contrast, awakening anxious thought and summoning to deep contrition! SERM. XIX.] OF THE WORLD. 245 Which of all us, my brethren, if spared, like that dying man, to the age of fourscore years, will have (to judge by the present) his retrospect of earthly life? first the discharge of every duty towards a father and a widowed mother: then a long and patient struggle with life's difficulties; those difficulties bravely encountered, and God remembered and honoured amidst all: then the promise well fulfilled, Them that honour me I will honour and lastly, an old age spent in the firm yet humble maintenance of every Christian principle, and in efforts, as opportunity was given, for the spread of God's Word and of Christ's Gospel? O, my brethren, such a deathbed is not an isolated, separate, sudden thing it is the result of such a life: and O suffer me to ask each one of you, Are you so living as to have any reasonable expectation of such a death? It comes of so using the world, as not abusing it: it comes of walking with God, of bearing the cross bravely, of living the life that now is by faith in Christ Jesus. : He of whom I have thus spoken belonged not outwardly in life to our communion: but such a man is not of a sect, he is of the Church of Christ; the Church, one and indivisible, now militant, soon to be triumphant. Such faith and such love are given to be our example. We, call ourselves what we may, need them for our own salvation: O have we found them? Little will it avail us, in the great reawakening, to have worshipped in the most beautiful of churches, to have used the most perfect of liturgies, or to have held and professed the most orthodox of creeds, unless we have also possessed that Spirit of Christ which is limited within no one com 246 USE AND ABUSE [SERM. XIX. munion, but works in the hearts of all those who seek the Lord Jesus Christ with earnestness and love Him in sincerity. And if in some respects we can see blemishesblemishes, as we venture to think, of an obvious and a serious kind—in the particular body of Christians of which he was one; yet let us confess, on the other hand, that to some Christian principles that body has sought to bear a bold and a consistent testimony: they have aimed in some points at a literal obedience, where others have been contented to follow more vaguely or more distantly: they have reproved the multiplication of needless and useless oaths: they have remonstrated against the wanton perpetuation of war: they have set an example of moderation and truthfulness of speech above all, they have strongly maintained the need of a spiritual life and the reality of a spiritual presence, and have been able, in many instances, to say, not as the confession only of a true doctrine, but as the expression of a living faith, I believe in the Holy Ghost! : For these things we would thank them: for these things, so far as they have been consistently held, we would glorify God in them. Even from what we deem their excess of literalness, even from what we count their needless and unwise singularity, we can yet learn a lesson of self-humiliation, or self-correction, and of self-reproof. Most of all, when we see, in one of a communion not our own, such manifest tokens of a renewed heart and a devoted life, we can give thanks, beside his deathbed or his open grave, for the SERM. XIX.] OF THE WORLD. 247 approach of that promised day when Christ shall gather together in one all the children of God who are here scattered abroad, and enable us to comprehend, with a clearness now impossible, what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, THE END. CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M. A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. |