Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

sun is, there cannot but be light, so where his truth is at the basis of our hearts, there cannot but be glowing, and genuine, and daily deeds of kindness and good-will. Since, while very enemies to him, he poured out for us his precious blood, we, as his now devoted people, must pour out our heart's warmest kindness upon those who have wronged us. For man's sake he denied himself; we must deny ourselves for his sake and for each other's. To those whom he might justly have destroyed, he shewed mercy; we too must shew it to those who deserve it not at our hands. He pitied us, when friendless, hopeless, ruined; we must seek out and anxiously dry up the tears of the forlorn and the unhappy, whether children of want, of sickness, or affliction in any of the forms that sin has accumulated and spread over this earth.

But the Samaritan of another school, he who will not suffer himself to be beaten off so easily from his repose on his own reputation for almsgiving, I think I hear him again objecting, that is not the way to "try the spirits whether they be of God," and demanding the question to be put in some such shape as this, What is the actual amount of money parted with by any given individual for express charitable purposes Well, be it so, let that be your test; then you are willing to be judged by it, if so favourite a one with you, under any form it can assume, or

by any light in which it can be placed. Now let it be thus taken, not only what is the amount you give, in applause of the good Samaritan's act, but what, after you have given, is the amount you retain? Because, not only is it clear that one man may bestow his hundreds, and be at the same time, in proportion to his resources, a niggard in his gift, and another man may resign his very utmost in his pence, but it is also plain, that to make the slightest or remotest approach to the benevolence of Jesus, (for in the imitation of that alone can any professing Christian act in the spirit of the good Samaritan,) a man must relinquish far more than he reserves, and must enjoy no luxury, while a single being can be found, suffering want. But the truth is, the test will fail altogether; the Saviour has shewn incontestibly in many other passages, that when he said, "go, and do thou likewise," he laid down a principle of action the most enlarged possible, and directed his followers to a course far more exalted than any such love to man as is limited by even the most expanded exercise of one portion alone of its operations. That principle is one of soul-felt gratitude for his own rich mercy towards us, and let it be once deep-rooted within, all the rest will easily and necessarily follow. When the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, the love of man for Jesus' sake invariably attends it; and if the love of man be really

planted in us, farewell to all disputes or doubts of what it consists. On the life will be its broad and faithful impress, and the fruits of the Spirit, in "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, brotherlykindness, gentleness, meekness, and forbearance," will speak out, not by the purse only but in the eye, the tongue, the walk, the gesture, the whole living, active, tender-hearted Christian man! But none of us can ever safely think we have already attained the true Samaritan's temper, because none of us that are at peace with God through his dear Son, but must have frequent grief and compunction in the discovery of that strength of selfish and unhumbled nature still within us. None of us, "forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to the things that are before, really presses towards the mark of the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus," but must, by the light and love which the Lord's Spirit pours in the soul, lament to find there many remaining proofs of our vast distance from Immanuel. In all points this will be but too plain, and in no one more so than in our very defective and reluctant assent to his own truth, "it is more blessed to give than to receive."

What then, finally, is our proper course and interest henceforward? That we may be sincere in all those works and labours of love in which, more than all others, the believer is to be found diligent, though less than all others to trust for

acceptance with God, since he is to "have no confidence in the flesh;" that in the temper, the heart, and the life, we may be ever forward in the desire and effort, for our Master's sake, through evil report and good report, to be Samaritans indeed, by the promotion, to the utmost of our power, of all that can advance the spiritual and eternal, as well as temporal and bodily welfare of our fellow men; that we may be this, and more than this, that we may be enabled to grow in grace, and increasingly to approach, though so painfully distant at the very best, to the like mind which was in Christ Jesus, what is our duty, concern, and privilege but this ?-to be daily more fervent in the prayer of faith, that the image of Christ being first renewed in our souls, the law of love may, by his quickening Spirit, be for ever indelibly written upon them!

270

SERMON XVIII.

THE SAVIOUR WEEPING OVER PERISHING JERUSALEM.

ST. LUKE xix. 41.

And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.

FROM these few simple words we derive a most touching proof, if any proof were wanted, of the matchless benignity of our divine and loving Saviour, while we see in the brightest colours that sternness and severity were indeed his strange work. He was now approaching that period when the awful tragedy of his death was to be gone through. He foresaw all the circumstances of aggravated suffering that were to be heaped upon him. In that painful catastrophe now at hand, which was to stamp with a terrible veracity

« AnteriorContinua »