Part 21

You will observe that this doctrine lies at the very center and heart of all our faith and worship, of all our Christian life of joy and hope. And some exceedingly profitable lessons does it teach us. One is humility. To hear some people talk, one would suppose them the embodiment of all wisdom; they are so self-consequential and conceited as if they knew it all, and what they cannot figure out on their fingers or by the rule of two is not worth accepting. Let such learn in view of this doctrine to put their hand upon their mouth, and their mouth into the dust, and learn to confess their insignificance and folly. It is said of Augustine, the great bishop, that he was once in great distress of mind how he might comprehend and describe this article concerning the Three-One God. When thus engaged, he tells that he dreamed that he was walking along the seashore; he saw a little child who had dug a hole into the sand, and was employed dipping the ocean water into the hole with a shell. "What are you doing?" said the church-father. "Oh," replied the little one, "nothing, only trying to empty this sea here into the hole." Laughingly he rejoined, "You will never be able to do that, will you?" "Indeed," answered the child, "and thou wouldst empty the mysteries of the infinite Triune God with the little dipper of thy thoughts!" Let us guard against being overly wise. Study to be humble when it comes to matters of God and our holy religion. And, to conclude, let us encourage ourselves by such meditation to joyous and childlike faith. God is great beyond all searching; therefore, may we rest assured that all is well in His hands and management. A farmer once remarked to Dr. Luther that he could not understand the Creed when it speaks of God Almighty. "Neither can I nor all the doctors," said the Reformer, "but only believe it in all simplicity, and take that God Almighty for thy Lord, and He will take care of thee and all thou hast, and bring thee safely through all thy troubles."

The same is true with regard to the second part of the Trinity. "If God," says the apostle, "spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" And the Holy Spirit coming into our hearts, changing, sustaining, and enlightening us--ought not a devout consideration of this loving, redeeming, sanctifying work of the Triune God prompt us to trust in Him--for life, in death, for time and eternity?

To the great One in Three The highest praises be Hence evermore! His sovereign majesty May we in glory see, And through eternity Love and adore.

Amen.

FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.--_Matt. 25, 46._

Truth, my beloved, never changes; it is always the same. What was true 1900 years ago, is true to-day; what is true to-day, will be true 1900 years to come. And this is emphatically so with regard to heavenly truth. There is no new revelation in religion. What the Bible taught of old, it teaches now; we have no new Bible. The Christian faith, like its Founder, is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. Thank God that it is so; that among the ever-changing things of earth, the constantly fluctuating and shifting ideas and opinions of men, firmer than the Rock of Gibraltar, more solid than the mountains, there stands the Word of our God. And this pertains also to the doctrine which this day's Gospel prominently sets before us, the doctrine of future punishment.

It is only recently that the public prints quoted the minister of a prominent church as saying: "Modern Christianity has happily grown away from the old traditional doctrine of hell. The Church no longer believes in a place of literal fire and brimstone, into which all unbelievers are cast for an eternity of torment. Even the most rigid orthodoxy allows wide latitude of belief in the problem of future punishment." Such utterances are very prevalent, and have caused untold confusion of thought. The matter, however, is very simple. It is not a question of what some certain minister thinks, however prominent he may be; neither are we to be guided by what modern Christianity thinks, for modern Christianity ought not think and believe differently from ancient Christianity, since Christianity ought to be ever the same; nor are we concerned what was the old traditional doctrine, since tradition is not, nor has it ever been, a criterion for us. The only determining factor in this, as in all articles of our religious belief, is, What saith the Scripture? Nor may it be superfluous, in approaching the subject of to-day's instruction, to warn against another element, which is sentimentality. Sentiment in its place and sphere is noble and good; but it must remain within its place and sphere. When it comes into conflict with God's teaching, or when it sets itself against the teachings of God's Word, and, because it cannot think or feel how a loving and righteous God could do or permit certain things, then sentiment degenerates into sickly sentimentality, becomes ignoble and sinful. We must never allow our emotion to outrun our sober reason, and, least of all, to set itself against the statements of religion and the arrangements of a holy and all-wise God.

And what is that arrangement in respect to the future? Two main thoughts would we dwell upon at this time: _I. Hell, what is it?--its nature. II. How long does it last?--its duration._

Whenever a general in war wishes to surprise his enemy, he seeks to conceal himself from him, endeavors to make his antagonist believe that he is not at all about, or that he is not as formidable as the other might think. Just so the infernal enemy of men's souls seek to delude them into the belief that there is no hell; that, at any rate, it is not what some would make it out to be. Hell is within you; it's the pinching of conscience in this life, or the misery you have to endure here. At the most, it is not terrible, it is not going to last forever; there is going to be a final and universal restoration; all unbelievers will ultimately be delivered.

All this passes for naught. Whether there is a future life, and of what sort that future life is--only one can positively tell us, and that is God--I repeat, _positively_ tell us. Human reason and philosophy have conjectured its probability or its possibility, but as to its _certainty_, that we have exclusively from the book of God's revelations--the Bible. And the Bible tells us, in plain, unmistakable terms, as plainly as it tells us that there is a heaven and a God, that there is a hell. To discredit it is to discredit the Bible, to contradict our blessed Lord, to shut one's eyes willfully against the truth, and what is it? Something within us--something confined to this world? Never does the Bible so speak. Hell, according to the Scriptures, refers always to the future. So in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. The rich man _died_, and _then_, after his death, in hell, he lifted up his eyes. When this life is over, the scenes of this world have faded upon their vision, then, for the unrepentant and unsaved, comes hell.

And what is it? To give it with one word--punishment. "These," declares the eternal Judge, "shall go away into everlasting punishment." This punishment is twofold; it is outward and it is inward. Man consists of body and of soul; both are the instruments of his guilt and condemnation; both receive the just reward of their deeds. Whenever Scripture speaks of future punishment, it uses expressions like these: "darkness, blackness of darkness, thirst, fire, lake burning with fire and brimstone." The Gospel parable represents the rich man begging for a drop of water to cool his tongue. It has been said that this is nothing but imagery, mere drapery, pictorial embellishment; but it is _true_. Imagery and the figure are always less terrible than the reality. It may be idle curiosity to speculate as to whether this fire which the Bible speaks of is material fire, how God can support life in the burnings of hell,--though we know that He sustained the companions of Daniel in a hot furnace in the days of King Nebuchadnezzar whose image they would not worship. Waiving all such questions as to the nature of the fire, the place where it is, and the extent to which it is inflicted, the fact that Scripture almost always employs the idea of fire to express the sufferings of hell leads one to believe that there unhappy sufferers literally endure torments like those which men burning in flames feel; and without running into all sorts of revolting descriptions, so much is plain: Hell is pain, acute sensation of the body, the sense of feeling physical suffering; and coupled with this outward punishment is the _inward_ anguish of mind, remorse of conscience. Thus, in the parable, Abraham speaks to the rich man, "Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things." Memory will be a dreadful source of misery.

Here, again, we shall not enter upon any speculations as to the workings of mind and conscience in future retributions, but we know what agony remorse of conscience occasions in this world. It has made strong men tremble, it has smitten the knees of Belshazzar together in the midst of his pleasure. It has forced many a one to confess his misdeed, to give evidence against himself, and seek punishment to escape its excruciating agony. Terrible is an awakened conscience, and yonder it shall be fully awakened. It will have to do homage to an offended and avenging God; be obliged to say to itself, You are the author of your own punishment, you suffer for your own sins. The recollection of his selfishness, his uncharitableness, sensuality, of possessions, and of opportunities abused and misspent, as in the case of this rich man in the parable, will cause him keen and tormenting self-reproach. Anguish, inward and outward, and all this aggravated by the society, the companionship about them. Imagine the associates in yonder accursed place! No wonder that the unfortunate subject of to-day's parable plaintively pleads: "I pray thee, father, that thou wouldst send Lazarus to my father's house; for I have five brothers, lest they also come into this place of torment." The thought, not that of pity,--for pity and sympathy are unknown in hell,--but of increasing his misery, knowing how much he was guilty toward them in leading them astray by scoffing word and lewd example,--it was this that wrung from his lips this plea. How awful such association! How dreadful it is all!

So much as to the first particular, what hell is: outward and inward punishment in the society of the damned. And such punishment, it is further revealed here, is ceaseless in its duration. Many theories are taught to the contrary. It is contended by some that this punishment is only for a time, then follows annihilation of the wicked, they cease to exist. Others, again, hold that all the wicked will be finally restored to God's favor and heaven; that they are now only in a state of trial and probation; that hell will come to an end. I grant you that we would be very much inclined to believe that if we could. But what say the Scriptures? There is not a single word in all the Bible which indicates that there will be probation, another chance, after death. As the tree falleth, so it lies. When the sand has run out of the glass of life, there is no reversion of the glass, the period of grace is gone. "There is a great gulf fixed, says the Gospel, so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us that would come from thence."

What plainer words could be spoken: "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." Mark the comparison,--everlasting punishment, life eternal. If you tamper with, lessen the one, you do so with the other; the only thing in fairness is to accept them thus strictly and expressly, meaning just what they say. _Eternity_, that is the word which is written over the portals of the blessed, over the place of the cursed.

Thus in its dread and awful solemnity have I set this subject before you. Why? Because it is the duty of a faithful servant of God to declare to his people the whole counsel of His Master, and do so unreservedly. A much abused subject is the subject of "Hell,"--from the playwright who works it up for public amusement, to the swearer who uses it in his foul mouth to add poison and fury to his oath, to the over-sensitive churchmen who treat the passages which treat of hell like a waxen nose that they can twist and turn to suit, and who would not recite in the Creed: "Christ descended into hell," since it sounds so bad. Over against these and all other perversions it behooves us to vindicate the clear and unmistakable teaching of the Bible. It is the Savior Himself who tells us to-day's parable, who spoke the words of our text, and it is for us to believe and declare what He says, to avoid all levity in the matter and all vain speculation, and to give it its proper weight and place.

But above all, this dreadful subject is held up before us that we may know how to escape the terrors portrayed. How? "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." "He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won me, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness and blessedness." That is the purpose of the Gospel. God wants none to perish, not one soul has He destined to eternal perdition; He would have all men to be saved. He has made every provision to save man from everlasting doom. The terrors of yonder place magnify the riches of that grace which in Jesus Christ delivers from it. Let us adore the wisdom, the unspeakable mercy that would spare us from such a doom. Let us turn to the Cross, employ the time of grace in faith and in wholesome service and life,--

So whene'er the signal's given Us from earth to call away, Borne on angels' wings to heaven, Glad the summons to obey, May we ready, may we ready, Rise and reign in endless day.

Amen.

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.--_Acts 24, 25._

Felix, the man here mentioned, was the Roman Governor or Procurator of Judea. Felix is a Latin word and means "happy." But Felix was not happy, for no wicked person can be happy, and Felix was a wicked person. Tacitus, the historian, says of him: "In the practice of all kinds of cruelty and lust, Felix exercised the power of a king with the temper of a slave." A sample we have here given. It reads in the previous verse: "After certain days, ... Felix came with his wife." Strictly taken, she was not his wife, but, being persuaded to elope to him from her husband, the two were living together in an adulterous alliance. And before this man appears a prisoner, unpretentious-looking, loaded with chains. He had stood before the Governor once before in answer to certain charges made by his countrymen, and had so ably and convincingly defended himself that, had it not been, as it says in the next verse, that Felix expected to realize something out of the case by way of a bribe, he would have set him free. As it was, the Governor had been so impressed with Paul's (for none other was the prisoner) forceful speech that he requested the apostle to give him a more explicit account concerning the religion he preached. He arranges the occasion, and the champion of the cross gladly availed himself of the opportunity. We do not know the precise course which he followed in his address to Felix, but his general outline was based on the same principles that every good Christian sermon is based on, viz., faith and practice. First he spoke concerning the faith in Christ, that is, the Christian faith, laying down its fundamental and cardinal facts and doctrines. But as a sick man will never send for the physician till he is aware of his danger, so the sinner will never betake himself to the redeeming blood of his Savior till he becomes sensible of his lost and sinful condition. The apostle, therefore, not only preaches the Gospel; he also preaches the Law. "He reasoned," it says, "of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." No topics could have been more appropriate. Felix was a high-ranked magistrate, accustomed to see every one prostrate at his feet. Paul points out to him that though there be various gradations in social life, the one a king, the other a subject, the one stepping on a carpet of down and gold, the other walking barefoot through the dust, in the sight of God all these distinctions avail not. Yea, having higher opportunities, a man's responsibilities are but the greater, and woe if in the discharge of his office a man measure not up to the responsibilities. Thus, turning to the next particular, he reasoned of temperance, _i. e._, the right government of the passions; he showed him how intemperance degrades the character, debases society, and invites the punishment of God, and, finally, placing his sermon on still higher ground, he draws away for a moment from the eyes of Felix the bandage that concealed the sight of futurity, and ushers him in thought before the judgment-bar of his unalterable Judge.

He had invited this prisoner, far-famed for his topic and eloquence, to give a display of his powers, but he had never supposed such a presentation. As the divine word, the two-edged sword of the Spirit, wielded by such an arm, cut into the joints and marrow of the profligate sinner's conscience. It had the same effect which the handwriting on the wall once had upon Belshazzar of Babylon. He moved about uneasily, his color changed, his knees smote one against the other; "he trembled," it says. The truth had smitten to the heart, and then? Was truth victorious? Did virtue conquer? Did the judgment-hall echo the words of the Philippian jailer, "What shall I do to be saved?" or, like the publican, did he smite upon his breast, saying, "God be merciful to me a sinner"? How the angels would have rejoiced, and Felix would have been what his name means, "happy." But Satan knew his man too well. In a moment the smitten sinner had rallied from his shock; with a grace and courtesy, truly admirable if it had not been so disastrous, he says: "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee."

The story of Felix has been written for our admonition. God grant that like an arrow it may smite into the joints and marrow of our conscience to-day. Our theme is:

THE CONVENIENT SEASON,

noting, _I. A few things that hinder the convenient season; II. The delusion of putting it off._

We have heard Felix' plea; it was not an abrupt turning away from the topics Paul had spoken to him of. He did not declare in express terms that he would never embrace the faith in Christ, that he would not renounce iniquity and prepare for the final account. No, his answer implies that he would do all this, but he begs to be excused from doing it for the present. "When I have a convenient season, I will call for thee."

Felix' plea is still a most prevalent plea. Perhaps it is the most prevalent plea, never advanced so much as in our times. It is not that people are deliberately determined to rush into the arms of the devil and hell; many of the most thoughtless and the most profligate, convicted by the emotions of conscience within and the presentation of religion, still have the intention that some time or other, bye and bye, they are going to become more serious, to reform. The drunkard will some day abandon his cups, the swearer his profanity, the lewd man his profligacy, but not just now. And not only these, the thoughtless, the profligate, but those who are very thoughtful and of excellent standing and morals. What a universal plea it is!

There is one class, they are "too young to be religious. Youth is the time of gayety. Even if they do not sow wild oats, they must have their pleasure. As they advance in years, they will eventually grow more serious." Let me caution you, my young hearers! Of all other seasons, youth is the fittest for God and godliness. No man ever became more disposed to be religious by mere age. He may become more thoughtful and serious, but thoughtfulness and seriousness is not yet religion. The duty enjoined is: "Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth," and it is a solemn fact that the greater number of those who are Christians indeed have been so in early life.--So be not deceived! The present time is the most convenient season. You can never enjoy a better.

Another apology and hindrance which multitudes offer against the convenient season is what they style "business." I suppose Felix had occasion to offer that, too. The office of a governor was no lazy one; he had a large docket of pending cases, a considerable correspondence, many distracting cares.

Correspondingly, at the present, there be those who are occupied in providing for their wants, gaining a livelihood for their families, accumulating a fortune. It is impossible for them just now, but in a few years they will have more leisure; their property will be greater, their anxiety lessened, and then, relieved of pressing cares, they will devote their time and their attention to God's service. Sad mistake! Business never lets up. The world gives no man leisure for the consideration of the greater business of salvation. I have known those who have urged this excuse ten, nearly twenty years ago; they still urge it, and will continue to do so so long as they live. Some may regard it as a witticism, but it was immensely serious when a child recently informed its mother that the child did not think papa was going to heaven, and asked why, replied, "He can't possibly leave the store." We have a number of that class in connection with our membership. It is a sorry business that keeps any man away from the main business, the one thing needful.