CHURCH DOCTRINE, A WITNESS AGAINST WORLDLY TIMES. BY THE REV. FREDERICK W. FABER, M.A. FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD. The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit.-Acts xxiii. 8. LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. G. F. & J. RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL. 1840. Price Fourpence. CHURCH DOCTRINE, A WITNESS AGAINST WORLDLY TIMES. We live in very worldly times. No one can doubt this who hears or reads ever so little of what is going on around him. The times are very worldly. We are wiser than our forefathers, but only in the ways of getting riches. Trade and noise, ships, railways, roads, changes here and changes there, all sorts of wild plans and dreams, we hear of continually, we hear of nothing else. The world speaks of nothing else, thinks of nothing else. Men of business, from sunrise to sunset, are making money. Their hours are all spent in writing letters, in keeping accounts, in going to public meetings and so on. Men in power are struggling to keep their enemies out of power; planning, scheming, debating, toiling continually. Then for people who have less to do, there are theatres, races, balls, gambling-houses, and a hundred other sinful pleasures. All these are the sort of things newspapers are so full of. We might almost think the world was going to last for ever, and that people never died: only we read there the names of people who have just died, and thus the world in its own newspapers witnesses against itself. Now when we read or hear of all these things, of all this early rising and taking late rest, and eating the bread of carefulness, it must sometimes come across us, "When do these people find time to save their souls? when do they pray? when do they repent? when do they hate the world? when do they despise its honours? when do they neglect its gold and silver, or sell all they have and give unto the poor? when do they find time to be Christians? How strange to be sure it all seems-I wonder what the end of it all will be !"-Or in another way, we may fancy an Angel looking down upon London or one of our great cities, and seeing the ways of living among the people, their greediness and avarice, and worldliness and sin, would he be easily brought to believe that all those men were in the middle of a hot battle, of a deadly fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil? Really it is fearful to see how the world goes on, so high, so careless, so proud, so antichristian, as if were there no Holy Trinity, no Heaven, no Cross, no Angels, no Dead Men, no Churches. It is fearful. But there will be an end of it all; and that end will be more fearful still.-God give us grace to hate it with deep and perfect hatred! It is His enemy. This is the world then, which we see. It wishes to be seen. It does not hide itself. It is proud of itself. It thinks itself fair and beautiful, and glorious and wise, like Jezebel with her painted face. But there are other people, a few at any rate, perhaps many, God only knoweth, who do not live in this world, in the devil's world, but in Christ's Church: people who cluster quietly around the Cross of Christ in prayer and repentance. They go to their daily labour in the fields, or in the counting-house, or at the manufactory, just as other people do, nay, more regularly, more industriously, more soberly than others. But their hearts are not there. They are set on things above. They |