CONTENTS OF VOLUME II SERMON IX.—THE SECOND DELIVERY OF THE LORD'S PRAYER SERMON X.--PECULIARITIES IN THE MIRACLE IN THE COAST OF DECA- SERMONS ON CERTAIN OF THE LESS PROMINENT FACTS AND REFERENCES IN SACRED STORY. FIRST SERIES. SERMON I. THE FAITH OF JOSEPH ON HIS DEATH-BED. "By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel, and gave commandment concerning his bones."-HEBREWS, XI. 22. We have often occasion to point out to you what a difference there is in the standards by which God and men judge the relative worth or importance of things. In one great sense, indeed, there cannot be to God any of those distinctions which exist to ourselves; for, wondrously exalted as He is, things must be equal in his sight, which differ in ours in many respects and degrees. It is undoubtedly to forget the immeasurable distance of the Creator from the creature, to imagine that He who sitteth in the heavens, swaying the universal sceptre, regards as great, and as small, just what are reckoned such in our feeble computations. There ought to be nothing clearer than this-if our great and our small were great and small to God, God would be little more than one of ourselves, judging by the same measures, and therefore possessing only the same faculties. Yet, though the distinctions made by God must not be thought the same with those made by man, we are not to conclude that God admits no differences where differences are supposed by ourselves. We are evidently in error, if we think that what is great to us must be great to God, and that what is small to us must be small to God: but it is not necessary, in order to the avoiding this error, that we should confound great and small, or compute that in God's sight they must be actually the same. They may not be the same; they may be widely separated: and yet none of them may be great to God, none of them small: whilst, moreover, the divine estimate may be the reverse of the human, great and small changing places, so far as difference is allowed between the two. It is this latter fact on which we now chiefly wish to fix your attention. Take, for example, our sins. We deny that there can be such a thing as a sin which is small in God's sight; forasmuch as sin, from its very nature, must be of infinite guilt, because committed against an infinite Being. But this is not saying that there are no degrees in sin, as though God regarded all crimes as of equal enormity. One sin may be greater than another in the Divine estimate, as well as in the human; and yet God may account no sin small, however ready we may be to think this or that inconsiderable. And what we are disposed to reckon trifling, may be precisely that to which God would attach the greater criminality; so that, as we have said, great and small may change places, and where both God and man admit a difference, you may have to reverse the judgment of the one to find that of the other. Sins of the mind, for instance, are ordinarily thought less of than sins of the flesh; pride incurs but slight reproof, whilst sensuality is heavily denounced. Yet the proud, perhaps, offers a more direct insult to God, and more invades his prerogative, than the sensual; and thus his offence may be the more hateful of the two in the sight of the Creator, whilst it receives, comparatively, no blame from the creature. Accordingly, there is nothing of which God speaks with greater loathing than of pride: the proud man is represented as the object of his special aversion. "God resisteth the proud." So that whilst with ourselves he puts a difference between sins, he inverts our decision, and assigns the greater atrociousness where we assign the less. Take, again, covetousness and drunkenness these sins are neither thought by men, nor represented in Scripture, as of equal enormity. But which do men think the worse! The covetous man escapes with scarce a censure; the drunkard is the object of scorn and reprobation. But is this verdict ratified by the Bible? Nay, whilst the drunkard is unreservedly told that his sin shall exclude him from the kingdom of heaven, the covetous man is identified with the idolater. No one who remembers what idolatry is, and how God denounces the worshipper of images, will hesitate to admit that such a representation places covetousness at the very top of things offensive to our Maker. How careful, then, ought we to be as to what standards we adopt, when we would estimate the relative guiltiness of sins! If we must distinguish sin from sinthough it were perhaps safer to confine ourselves to the truth, that all sin is infinitely heinous-let us take good heed that we always go for our rule to the Divine word, and not to humar opinion. And much the same may be said in regard of duties, and of actions which God may graciously be pleased to approve. It is not to be thought, that because no human action can deserve reward from God, all actions performed in his service must be of equal account. With virtues, as with vices, God may acknowledge great differences: He will not overlook, as too small for notice, the cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple; but he does not necessarily put this act of benevolence on a level with every other achievement of faith and of love. Yet here we have the same remark to make as with reference to sins. The Divine decision will, in many cases, be wholly different from the human; whilst actions are classified by the one as well as by the other, the superiority may be assigned in a contrary order. The act of righteousness, which we should select as most worthy of commendation, and most demonstrative of piety of heart, may not be that on which the Almighty would fix, when signifying his approval of one of his servants. It may rather be, that some sacrifice which the world never knew, some exertion which was limited to his own home, and perhaps even his own heart, has been the most approved thing in the sight of the Lord, of all wrought by one whose time, and substance, and strength, have been wholly devoted to the cause of religion. It may not be when, like Paul, he is fighting" with beasts at Ephesus;" nor when, like Stephen, he is laying down his life for the truth, that a man of God does what specially draws on him the smile of his Maker. There may have been quiet and unobserved moments, moments spent in solitude and prayer, in which he has fought what God accounted a harder battle, and won a nobler victory. And in the arrangements of his household, in meeting some domestic trial, in subduing some unruly passion, he may virtually have displayed a stronger trust, and a simpler preference of the promises of the Most High, than when he has stood forth as the champion and confessor, amid all the excitement of a public scene, and gained for himself a deathless renown. "The Lord seeth not as man seeth :” and mightily should it console those who are not so circumstanced as to have great opportunity of making efforts and sacrifices on behalf of Christ and his cause, that it is not necessarily the martyr whose self-surrender is most accepted of God, nor the missionary whose labors and endurances are most held in remembrance; but that the private christian, in his struggles with himself, in his mortification of his passions, in the management of his family, in his patience under daily troubles, in his meek longings for a brighter world, may be yet dearer to his Father in heaven, and be thought to have shown more of faith, than many a man who has entered boldly the desert of heathenism with the cross in his hand, or even ascended the scaffold to seal with his blood his confession of Christ. think that you would make the same selection as St. Paul makes in our text? passing over all the trials of Joseph; all the afflictions which he bravely and meekly endured; his confidence in his interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams, though on the truth of that interpretation depended his credit, and even his life; his eagerness to receive his father and brethren into the land, though every shepherd was "an abomination unto the Egyptians," and they were but likely to lower him in the general esteempassing over, we say, all this, and having literally nothing to commemorate of Joseph, save that when he was dying, he "made mention of the departing of the children of Israel, and gave commandment concerning his bones." Would this, we ask, have been the fact on which an uninspired writer would have fastened, when choosing from the history of Joseph what might best illustrate the Patriarch's faith then you have a clear exemplification of the truth on which we have endeavored to insist, that the actions which seem to men most conclusive, as evidences of righteousness of character, may not, after all, be those to which God would attach most worth and importance. Now all these remarks on the different standards by which God and man judge actions, will be found to bear directly on the words of our text. In this 11th chapter of his Epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul collects from the histories of in God? Hardly, we think,—and if not, patriarchs, and other worthies, instances and examples of the power of faith. And the question, in reference to our foregoing remarks, is whether he has fixed upon those which we should have fixed upon ourselves. Inspired as the Apostle was, so that he must have been directed to facts most worthy of commemoration, It is one thing, however, to allow that we may not doubt that what he takes the selected proof is not that on which to show the faith of any one of the we ourselves should have fixed, and quite patriarchs, must be at least as strong an another to conclude, that when pointed instance as his history contains. And out, we cannot see its force. We may if the instance selected by the Apostle believe that you all concur with us in be not that which we should have the opinion, that had an uninspired writer selected ourselves-if there be any other had to choose the best proof of faith which we should have decidedly pre- from the history of Joseph, he would ferred-it is evident that our judgment not have chosen that selected by St. differs from that of God; so that we have Paul. But, nevertheless, we may be precisely the case on which we have able to determine that the proof is a been speaking, the case in which what strong proof: if we cannot show it to man would account best is not so ac- be the strongest which the history furcounted by Him who readeth the heart. nishes, we may at least ascertain that it But this, we suspect, is exactly what establishes the power of the principle may be alleged in regard of our text. which it is quoted to illustrate. We give you the history of Joseph, a then it is which we must propose as our history more than commonly eventful, object through the remainder of our disand which is narrated in Scripture with course. We have already drawn one special minuteness. We set you down valuable inference from the text, in that, to the examining this history, in order through showing that God and men do that you may take out of it the incident, not always judge alike in regard of or the action, which shall most clearly righteous acts, it teaches us that the demonstrate that Joseph had faith in obscure individual, and the unnoticed God, and that this faith was a principle deed, may be more approved above of great energy and strength. Do you than the conspicuous leader, and the This |