Now, when an earthly physician is called in, what is the first thing required of the patient? A perfect reliance upon the skill and the good-will of the physician. What should we think of that patient who felt a disease rioting in his vitals, and should begin to analyse the medicines that were administered, and to demand an account of the particular mode in which they were to effect his cure? Should not the physician be obliged to give him all the information he himself possessed before he could explain it? And is it much that the Lord Jesus Christ should demand from us that faith which we must necessarily place in a human being, or be content to lie down and perish? Just consider how many silly expedients a sick man will try where there is the most distant hope of recovery; and then say, whether you will not trust the allpowerful, the all-wise, the all-gracious Being, who bore all the sicknesses and infirmities of your bodily nature -all for your sake, and submitted to the agonies of death to deliver you from hopeless ruin? Be assured that, if you really feel the burden of your disease, you will not hesitate a moment. Come to him with earnest, humble prayer-with a heart at once penetrated with a sense of its corruptions and a love of the Divine Being who offers to pardon and to purify—and assuredly he will not refuse; for he tells us specially—that he came not for those that are whole, but those that are sick; and this he himself explains in the following verse" I came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." But here he also shews us the nature of the cure; he came to call them to repentance, to a change of mind. It must be, of course, by some change in the inner man that a radical disease must be exterminated from the constitution. It seems as if it were actually out of the nature of things that it should be otherwise. When the good and benevolent Being vouchsafed to entreat his wayward and rebellious people to deliver their own soul, he says, "Make you a new heart; for why will you die, O house of Israel?" as if death were the sure and inevitable consequence of their old state, from which it was inconsistent with the natural course of things that they could be saved except by making a new heart and a right spirit within them. But this he is willing to do if we come earnestly and humbly to look for it; for he declares,-"I will give my Holy Spirit to them that ask it;" and, "he that spared not his own Son, how shall he not also, with him, freely give us all things!" But we must allow him to choose his own way. It is generally by producing new habits and tempers of mind -new desires and affections, which gain strength by degrees, that he effects our cure. We have seen but few bodily cures effected by any sudden or instantaneous power; and they were generally most subject to relapse. The good and benign Physician consults our weakness and our nature at the very time that he undertakes to overcome them. How is the cure to be conducted, from its weak beginning, to health and maturity? Now, how would an earthly physician answer this question, proposed with respect to a bodily complaint? He would say," by exercise." Just so the new principle implanted within us, the heavenly tempers and exalted affections, -the delight in God and things invisible, that is the dawn of health to the sick man, is to be cherished and invigorated by a constant converse with holy things, and a constant energy in the performance of every duty. Consider how the great Physician was employed, when he was upbraided by the haughty Pharisee, and when he declared that he was engaged in the very work of healing those who are spiritually sick, and calling sinners to repentance: he was eating and drinking with the sinners; he was engaged in familiar, yet holy conversation with them; and what though he is now far above, out of the range of mortal sight; though he is not now employed in working those bodily cures which were faint representations of the renovation of a ruined soul; although he now no longer walks in our streets, letting his blessed shadow fall upon our infirmities as he passes along,-yet his Word and his Spirit are still with us the Spirit which he sent as his substitute, which is to aid and invigorate our prayers; and the Word that is a substitute for that divine conversation, by which he spoke health to the sinner's soul, while he sat at meat with them. And that Word is wonderfully adapted to all varieties of constitutions, and the several degrees of spiritual health they may have attained; for "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." 18 SERMON VII. 1 CORINTHIANS, vi. 20. Ye are bought with a price. THE use that St. Paul makes of these words is as remarkable as the words themselves. Some time after he had left the Corinthians, he was informed that many of them, while they still professed to be Christians, had fallen away from the purity of the Gospel which he had preached. They no longer trembled, when the man was gone who used to reason among them "of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." They relapsed into former habits with an appetite that seemed to have been sharpened and increased by the self-denial to which they had for a time submitted; and the evil spirit, which had gone out for a season, said, “I will return to my house whence I came out; and he took other spirits more wicked than himself, and went in, and dwelt there and the last state of many of those men was worse than the first." St. Paul remarks, that many vices, such as extortions, strife, envy, and revenge, were gaining fearful ground upon them: many of them indulged in gluttony, in drunkenness, in debauchery, in adultery, to an extent that had been before unknown. They prostituted their bodies to intemperance, and their immortal souls to covetousness, malignity, and corruption. This was cruel and bitter intelligence to such a man as Paul,-one, whose heart and soul were wrapped up in the success of his ministry,-who seemed to rejoice with the joy of ten thousand angels over one sinner that repented, and mourned like one heart-broken if one soul, that appeared to have been won from sin, had fallen away from its immortality. He accordingly writes to them a letter, the most solemn and the most tender that can well be conceived, in language at once the most dignified and affectionate; and he here brings down the great argument of the Gospel upon them with all its weight.. Perhaps we shall understand it better if we first consider those which are generally used in such cases. If a prudent man of the world, who had little respect for religion, but a high sense of what is called morality, had been sent to preach to these men, what arguments do we conceive he would have employed? He would probably have said: "The excesses in which you indulge will ruin your health, will shorten your days, will rack your body with pain and disease, will enfeeble your understanding, rendering it poor, unsteady, and effeminate, unable to follow any regular, manly, and honourable occupation in life; you will lose both your own respect, and the respect of the world; and if you cherish ill-will, malice, and envy, it will destroy your peace of mind, and keep you at variance with your fellow-creatures, with whom you should live in friendship and tranquillity." And he would say very right these arguments are in general very true; but, alas! they are seldom found to avail; and when they do, suppose the object gained, their hearts relieved, their lives lengthened, their success in the pursuit of affluence secured, their reputation standing fair in the eye of all the world; there is yet something behind; there is a death, and there is a judgment; and have they looked to them? have they prepared for them? Verily they have had their reward,the reward they looked for,-health, wealth, long life, and reputation. What claim have they to any thing farther? : |