SERMON I. INFLUENCE OF FAMILIARITY WITH RELIGIOUS A PROPHET IS NOT WITHOUT HONOR, SAVE IN HIS OWN COUNTRY, AND IN HIS OWN HOUSE.-Matthew 13: 57. THAT must have been an impressive scene, when Jesus first stood up to teach in the synagogue of his native city. Nearly a year before, he had left his kindred to go up to Jerusalem. During that absence, he had received the seal of water from the hand of the Baptist, and witnessed the descent of the Heavenly Dove with its voice of confirmation. He had met Satan in the wilderness, and achieved a victory never before accomplished by man. In the spirit and power of a prophet, he had purged the temple at Jerusalem of its impurities. He had journeyed through Samaria dispensing his miraculous favors, and by his wisdom and his eloquence bringing multitudes to the truth. Allured by those social attachments to which his heart was by no means a stranger, he comes back to revisit the scenes of his childhood. He had left them a poor man's son; he returns in the power of the Holy Ghost. Pale and worn with his spiritual conflicts, yet animated by the success of his past labors, and enthusiastic in the consciousness of his divine mission," he stands up in the synagogue for to read." "And the eyes of all them that were in the house were fastened on him." What now was the question with which this impressive silence was broken? What could they say to rid themselves of the impression of his short but thrilling discourse? "Is not this Joseph's son ?" And supposing that there was arrogance in his pretensions, they thrust him out of the city. After a career of successful benevolence, he appears a second time in the neighborhood of his early home. Again the truth of his sayings is pressed upon their hearts and consciences. Again they take refuge from its power by pointing to his former occupation, and to his brothers and sisters who were all with them. Again the Saviour of mankind is constrained to crucify the sympathies of his humanity, and turns his back on the friends of his childhood with the sentiment of the text, "A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house." What was the chief circumstance which contributed to this rejection? No doubt the envy of an equal, or the contempt of an inferior may have had part in it; but chiefly it was their familiarity with the person of the prophet. Had a stranger appeared to them with these high pretensions, even though his garb had been humble and his mien lowly, he could not have been so contemned. No doubt the multitude would have turned scornfully away from the meek one; but, who can doubt that some expectant mother or daughter in Israel, some veteran waiting for the promises, would have hailed him as the Messiah? But now, not one comes forward to receive his benediction, or to bid him God speed in his glorious enterprise. He was too well known to receive the honor that he merited. Other illustrations of the principle of the text are of constant occurrence. There is hardly a period in history, or a family that does not testify to its truth ;-be it the discoverer of a new continent, compelled to seek patronage from a foreign court, or the child of genius, nowhere less flattered and less honored than beneath his father's roof. The voice of the preacher, that is as music to the ears of a stranger, falls unheeded upon the slumberers of his own flock; and he whom great men revere as an oracle shall find many a familiar to doubt, and to scoff at his counsels. The wonders of nature also are nowhere so little revered as among those who were born and nurtured under their very shadow. Who thinks of pausing to wonder at the precipice which hung over his cradle in infancy, or at the cataract whose thunder was the music of his boyhood? How many live indifferent and careless amid natural splendors that multitudes are compassing sea and land to behold! Even truth itself—how valueless does it often become to those who have drawn it in with their earliest being! And it sometimes seems, as if Jesus Christ coming to visit this land of his peculiar residence, this land where he has made himself most familiar in the ordinances of his gospel and in the blessings of his grace, comes to find that the Son of Man is most despised "in the house of his friends." It seems as if his Holy Spirit, driven away by our coldness and indifference, is now seeking some less enlightened regions for his abode; and we hear the sad lament as he departs from us," Verily a prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house." Let me invite your attention then to an illustration of this principle: Familiarity with religious truths sometimes tends to make men insensible of their value and their power. And I shall endeavor to point out some important truths, which, from the very frequency and clearness with which they are revealed to us, we are prone to pass by with coldness and neglect. There is indeed in many minds a pride of scepticism which revolts at a truth so plain that the way-faring man may comprehend it, and if they cannot find new avenues of evidence, they prefer to show their superiority by adopting error. But it is not my purpose at the present time to expose this arrogant unbelief, so much as the indifference with which many who believe are prone to regard the truth. I. The effect of familiarity is illustrated in respect to the existence and providence of God. The evidence for these glorious doctrines is written everywhere. We see it in glowing characters upon the universe about us, and the universe within us. We read it in the multiplied and variegated lessons of external nature, and on the clear and lucid pages of our own consciousness. Every man has his own system of natural theology, but with how many is it matter of scientific rather than of experimental interest. How few are there who carry about with them a habit of realizing the Deity they can so easily reason out in their closets, and whose whole lives are one constant and glowing treatise on the reality of a God. Every man by the aid of an anatomist can analyze the mechanism of the human eye, or the human hand, and study out the marks of a wise and supreme contriver; but who thinks of this contriver as picturing each gratification for the sight, or regulating each motion of the limb? And how many thousand times a day we use each faculty, and never think of the goodness or the greatness of our Father! Every one can admire the sun by day and the stars by night, or meditate on the uniformity of nature, and the beneficent arrangements everywhere made for the comfort and happiness of God's creatures. But who thinks the more of God that the sun rises with regularity on each succeeding day, or that the seasons come round in their turn bringing their varied blessings. My brethren, we are good theologians in the closet and the study, and over the speculations of some profound philosopher; but when we go forth to breathe the fresh air and gaze upon the green hills, though the truth is just as real and just as beautiful in nature as it is in books, we are prone to lay by the student; and we fail to look upward. The very multitude of evidence which surrounds us, the very frequency and uniformity of the blessings we receive, render us forgetful of Him who teaches the lesson and bestows the gift. We have been drinking in this light, we have been nourished by this bounty, from the first dawn of our being. To us Jehovah is indeed "dark with excessive bright," veiled behind the richness and multiplicity of his own favors. We are not like those who have been groping for ages in darkness or in blindness, and to whom suddenly the sun appears shining in his strength, or to whose cleared vision are revealed at once the beauties of earth and sky. We were not placed in the midst of the universe as Adam was, with full maturity of powers. The idea of God does not force itself upon us as it did upon him with instantaneous, delightful, irresistible power. We have the same daylight of evidence but it has come gradually upon us, and our long familiarity has made us personally indifferent. "But if we entered the world with the same reason which we carry with us to an opera the first time that we enter a theatre, and if the curtain of the universe were to be rapidly drawn up, struck with the grandeur of everything which we saw, and all the obvious contrivances exhibited, we should not" as even a French atheist has confessed, "be capable of refusing our homage to the eternal power which had prepared for us such a spectacle. But who thinks of marveling at what he has seen for fifty years? What multitudes are there who wholly occupied with the care of obtaining subsistence, have no time for speculation; the rise of the sun is only that which calls them to toil, and the finest night in all its softness is mute to them, or tells them only that it is the hour for repose." II. The same principle is illustrated in respect to our familiarity with the character of Jesus Christ. It is a most perfect and delightful embodying of all that is great and good, which is furnished to us in the author of the New Testament dispensation. It commends itself to our highest moral tastes. The world in the brightest periods of its history has produced nothing like it. The dispensation of the law with its sword of terror affrighted none into such perfect obedience. Philosophy in all its strugglings after ideal |