Page images
PDF
EPUB

fections, your efforts, are mainly and prevailingly directed.

This, my friends, is the only way to know whether you can yet adopt as your own the words of the Apostle; "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son."-O that by the blessing and grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the words may become applicable, in all their fulness of meaning, to every one of us. Amen.

PRAYER.

We

O God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! bless thee for the exceeding riches of thy grace bestowed on mankind through him. We bless Thee that Thou didst send him to be the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him. We bless Thee that Thou didst grant unto him power over all flesh, that he might give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given him. We bless Thee that in him Thou hast not only assured us of everlasting existence, but furnished to our souls the true means of peace and blessedness for time and for eternity.

We pray that we may so with our inmost hearts receive and feed upon the words of Thy beloved Son, as to find them continually to be indeed spirit and life. We pray that we may ever seek in them our rules of duty, our motives to diligence, our strength for trials, our hope amidst sorrow. We pray that, in our whole temper and conduct, we may be influenced by the knowledge,

communicated in the gospel, of Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. We pray that, as Thou wast continually present to the mind of Thy Son, as he rejoiced to behold Thee in all things, so we by giving up ourselves to his guidance and teachings, may be enabled to have a like abiding, comprehensive, and cheering view of thy fatherly providence. We pray that all thy works, being contemplated in the light of Christian knowledge, all the events and changes of our lives, being considered and undergone in the spirit of Christian piety, and all our thoughts of things to come, being mingled with the promises of Christian hope, may be to us full of profit and encouragement; yea, O heavenly Father, full of Thee, and of Thy gracious, cheering and sanctifying influences. We pray that while the outward man goeth on to fulfil his destiny of decay and corruption, our inward man may be renewed day by day through the enlivening faith of our Lord Jesus Christ; so that weakness may be to us as strength, and sorrow as joy, and even death as life, in the confidence of our assurance that Thou wilt cause all things to work together for unspeakable and everlasting good to the humble and obedient believer in Thy Son.

Hear us, O God, for Thy mercy's sake in Christ Jesus our blessed Lord; for whom and through whom be unto Thee praise, thanksgiving and glory for everAmen.

more.

SERMON XXII.

SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS IN CHRIST.

Ephesians i. 3.

BLESSED BE THE GOD AND FATHER of our LORD JESUS CHRIST, WHO

HATH BLESSED US WITH ALL SPIRITUAL
PLACES IN CHRIST."

BLESSINGS IN HEAVENLY

THE Christian dispensation claims to be regarded as a message, the most gracious and benignant, from heaven to earth. It is entitled, by way of eminence, the Gospel, or good news" the glorious gospel of the blessed God." And by the songs of the celestial host it was ushered in as "glad tidings of great joy to all people."

If ever its claims to such a character were fully recognized, they were by the Apostle Paul. Throughout his writings, he appears laboring for words, sufficiently strong and expressive, to set forth his intense feeling of its worth, and to infuse into the hearts of his readers his deep and glowing sense of the obligations we are under to God, for the gift of his Son our Saviour. This feeling is strikingly displayed in the Epistle from which the text is taken. Whilst contemplating his "spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ," every earthly consid

eration seems to vanish from his view-he rises superior to all his afflictions-his chains are unfelt-his bondage is no more-he exults in the glorious and unassailable liberty of the sons of God-and "bows his knees in prayer unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" that he would grant his beloved converts also to become full partakers in those "unsearchable riches," which made him count all his sufferings light.

What a mighty change, my friends, was here! What a theme did the Apostle's condition present for devout wonder and holy gratitude! Here was the most zealous, the most bitter and infuriated persecutor of the Christian name, become its chief, its foremost, its most intrepid and distinguished advocate! Instead of "breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord," he was now pouring forth his fervent prayers on their behalf. Instead of "compelling them to blaspheme," he was now "beseeching them to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith they were called." Instead of keeping the garments of those who shed the righteous blood of the first martyr to the faith, he was now calmly waiting to be offered up himself, a devoted sacrifice to the same holy cause. The hand of God had been miraculously put forth to arrest him in his career of error. From the cruel zealot, the partizan of a malignant faction, he had been gloriously changed into the generous and disinterested friend of all his race. The narrow spirit of the Pharisee was gone, and in its place was given the spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." He felt himself raised in the scale of being. He was regenerated. He was made a new and nobler creature. And more than this, he was chos

66

en to be an apostle-singled out by Heaven to "preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." For this astonishing change and this high distinction, he seems ever at a loss how to make a suitable return— how to do enough to atone for his former opposition, and show a becoming sense of his obligations to God, for the "spiritual blessings with which he had blessed him in heavenly places in Christ."

But distinguished as was the Apostle, and strongly as he felt the blessedness of the change which his conversion wrought in him, there were thousands then besides, able to join with him in his glowing expressions of devout thankfulness to God. We, who have been brought up under the benign influences of the gospel from our earliest years, can hardly form a distinct conception of the joy, which a converted heathen must have felt, on being introduced into its marvellous light; and we are often in danger of undervaluing and neglecting its blessings, from not having experienced the evils of that condition from which it has saved us. We think not of the wretched gloom in which we might still have been enveloped. We do not realize to our minds that, but for its help, the state of the heathen world night at this moment have been our's—that we might have been in the same or even a still more deplorable need of those "spiritual blessings," on the reception of which the Apostle rejoices with his fellow-disciples. Let this thought, however, accompany our meditations, and call forth our most lively gratitude to God, while we now briefly consider how much the gospel did for its first Gentile con

verts.

And first, it rescued them at once from the bondage

« PreviousContinue »