Christ's People - Imitators of Him, 1855

But no one feature will give a portrait of a man; so the one virtue of boldness will never make you like Christ. There have been some who have been noble men, but have carried their courage to excess; they have thus been caricatures of Christ, and not portraits of him. We must amalgamate with our boldness the Ioveliness of Jesus’ disposition. Let courage be the brass; let love be the gold. Let us mix the two together, so shall we produce a rich Corinthian metal, fit to be manufactured into the beautiful gate of the temple. Let your love and courage be mingled together. The man who is bold may indeed accomplish wonders. John Knox did much, but be might perhaps have done more if he had had a little love. Luther was a conqueror-peace to his ashes, and honor to his name!-still, we who look upon him at a distance, think that if he had sometimes mixed a little mildness with it,-if while he had been fortiter in re he had been also suaviter in modo, and spoken somewhat more gently, he might have done even more good than he did. So, brethren, while we too are bold, let us ever imitate the loving Jesus. The child comes to him: he takes it on his knee, saying, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not.” A widow has just lost her only son: he weeps at the bier, and with a word restores life to the dead man. He sees a paralytic, a leper, or a man long confined to his bed; he speaks, they rise, and are healed. He lived for others, not for himself. His constant labors were without any motive, except the good of those who lived in the world. And to crown all, ye know the mighty sacrifice he made, when he condescended to lay down his life for man-when on the tree, quivering with agony, and hanging in the utmost extremity of suffering, he submitted to die for our sakes, that we might be saved. Behold in Christ, love consolidated! he was one mighty pillar of benevolence. As God is love, so Christ is love. Oh, ye Christians, be ye loving also. Bet your love and your beneficence beam out on all men. Say not, “Be ye warmed, and be ye filled,” but “give a portion to seven, and also to eight.” If ye cannot imitate Howard, and unlock the prison doors-if ye cannot visit the sad house of misery, yet each in your proper sphere speak kind words, do kind actions, live out Christ again in the kindness of your life. If there is one virtue which most commends Christians, it is that of kindness; it is to love the people of God, to love the church, to love the word, to love all. But how many have we in our churches of crabtree Christians, who have mixed such a vast amount of vinegar and such; tremendous quantity of gall in their constitutions, that they can scarcely speak one good word to you; they imagine it impossible to defend religion except by passionate ebullitions, they cannot speak for their dishonored Master without being angry with their opponent; sad if anything is awry, whether it be in the house, the church, or anywhere else, they conceive it to he their duty to set their faces like a flint, and to defy everybody. They are like isolated icebergs; no one cares to go near them. They float about on the sea of forgetfulness, until at last they are melted and gone; and though, good souls, we shall be happy enough to meet them in heaven, we are heartily glad to get rid of them from the earth. They were always so unamiable in disposition, that we would rather live an eternity with them in heaven, than five minutes on earth. Be ye not thus, my brethren. Imitate Christ in your loving spirits; speak kindly, act kindly, and do kindly, that men may say of you, “He has been with Jesus.”

This is a second paragraph from this sermon. Read the whole sermon here.

Christ's People - Imitators of Him, 1855

In enlarging upon this point, it will be necessary to premise, that when we here affirm that men should be such and such a thing, we refer to the people of God. We do not wish to speak to them in any legal way. We are not under the law, but under grace. Christian men hold themselves bound to keep all God’s precepts: but the reason why they do so is not because the law is binding upon them, but because the gospel constrains them: they believe, that having been redeemed by blood divine; having been purchased by Jesus Christ, they are more bound to keep his commands than they would have been if they were under the law; they hold themselves to be ten thousand-fold more debtors to God, than they could have been under the Mosaic dispensation. Not of force; not of compulsion; not through fear of the whip; not through legal bondage; but through pure, disinterested love and gratitude to God they lay themselves out for his service seeking to be Israelites indeed in whom there is no guile. This much I have declared lest any man should think that I am preaching works as the way to salvation, I will yield to none in this. That I will ever maintain-that by grace we are saved, and not by ourselves; but equally must I testify, that where the grace of God is, it will produce fitting deeds. To these I am ever bound to exhort you, while ye are ever expected to have good works for necessary purposes. Again, I do not, when I say that a believer should be a striking likeness of Jesus, suppose that any one Christian will perfectly exhibit all the features of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; yet my brethren, the fact that perfection is beyond our reach should not diminish the ardor of our desire after it. The artist, when he paints knows right well that he shall not be able to excel Apelles; but that does not discourage him; he uses his brush with all the greater pains, that he may at least in some humble measure resemble the great master. So the sculptor; though persuaded that he will not rival Praxiteles, will hew out the marble still, and seek to be as near the model as possible. Just so the Christian man, though he feels he never can mount to the height of complete excellence, and perceives that he never can on earth become the exact image of Christ, still holds it up before him, and measures his own deficiencies by the distance between himself and Jesus. This will he do, forgetting all he has attained, he will press forward, crying, Excelsior! going upwards still, desiring to be conformed more and more to the image of Christ Jesus.

Read the whole sermon here.

The Carnal Mind Enmity Against God, 1855

And more, I will summon one other witness to the truthfulness of this act, who shall decide the question; it shall be your conscience. Conscience, I will put thee in the witness-box, and cross-examine thee this morning! Conscience, truly answer! be not drugged with the laudanum of selfsecurity! speak the truth! didst thou never hear the heart say, “I wish there were no God?” Have not all men, at times, wished that our religion were not true? Though they could not entirely rid their souls of the idea of the Godhead, did they not wish that there might not be God? Have they not had the desire that it might turn out that all these divine realities were a delusion, a farce, and an imposture? “Yea,” saith every man, “that has crossed my mind sometimes. I have wished I might indulge in folly; I have wished there were no laws to restrain me; I have wished, as the fool, that there were no God.” That passage in the Psalms, “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God,” is wrongly translated. It should be, “The fool hath said in his heart, no God.” The fool does not say in his heart there is no God, for he knows there is a God, but he says, “No God,-I don’t want any, I wish there were none.” And who amongst us has not been so foolish as to desire that there were no God? Now conscience, answer another question! Thou hast confessed that thou hast at times wished there were no God, now, suppose a man wished another dead, would not that show that he hated him? Yes, it would. And so, my friends, the wish that there were no God, proves that we dislike God. When I wish such a man dead and rotting in his grave, when I desire that he were non est, I must hate that man; otherwise I should not wish him to be extinct. So that wish-and I do not think there has been a man in this world who has not had it-proves that “the carnal mind is enmity against God.”

But conscience, I have another question. Has not thine heart ever desired, since there is a God, that he were a little less holy, a little less pure, so that those things which are now great crimes might be regarded as venial offenses, as peccadillos? Has thy heart never said “Would to God these sins were not forbidden. Would that he would be merciful and pass them by without an atonement! Would that he were not so severe, so rigorously just, so sternly strict to his integrity.” Hast thou never said that, my heart? Conscience must reply, “Thou hast.” Well, that wish to change God, proves that thou art not in love with the God that now is, the God of heaven and earth; and though thou mayest talk of natural religion, and boast that thou dost reverence the God of the green fields, the grassy meads, the swelling flood, the rolling thunder, the azure sky, the starry night, and the great universe-though, thou lovest the poetic beau ideal of Deity, it is not the God of Scripture, for thou hast wished to change his nature, and in that hast thou proved that thou art at enmity with him. But wherefore, conscience, should I go thus round about? Thou canst bear faithful witness, if thou wouldst speak the truth that each person here has so transgressed against God, so continually broken his laws, violated his sabbath, trampled on his statutes, despised his gospel, that it is true, aye, most true, that “the carnal mind is enmity against God.”

Read the whole sermon here.