and false expressions. It is like using Goliath's armor, and thinking that thereby we get a giant's strength: while so long as we are not strong, such armor would only weaken us. And so, the fact of our using Scripture does not make us more spiritual: nay, it makes us less so, if it hides from us our weakness if, while using the language of a spiritual giant, we forget that we are dwarfs. No, my brethren: a life of faith is a grand, solitary, awful thing. Who amongst us is living it? Hence, too, Christian life is a toil (v. 9): labor." In the original it is a strong word zealous, put forth all our efforts." For St. Paul worked, knowing the night was coming. He strove ever as in his great Task-master's eye." And the motives for this toil were two:

66

1. To please God.

2. To be prepared for judgment.

"We

66

are

1. To no man did life present itself so strongly in the light of a scene for work as it did to St. Paul. That spirit which characterized his Master was remarkable in him. What was the Spirit of Christ? "I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day : "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" "My meat is to do the will of my Father which sent me, and to finish His work." And this He did completely; at the close he says, "I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do." This spirit was also in St. Paul. But now observe, this work was with him not a dire necessity, but a blessed privilege; for he says: "And I will very gladly spend and be spent." It was not the service of the slave: it was the joyous service of the freeman : "We are confident: wherefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him." He was not working to win life, but because he had life; he was laboring in love to please God.

2. The second motive was the feeling of accountability (v. 10): "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ." Now this feeling of accountability

may assume either of two forms. In a free and gen erous spirit, it may be simply a sense of duty; in a slavish and cowardly spirit, it will be a sense of compulsion; and the moment the sense of duty ends, the sense of compulsion begins. So St. Paul says: “If I do this thing willingly, I have a reward: but if against my will, a dispensation of the Gospel is committed to me." That is, "If I cheerfully do it, the doing is itself reward; but if not, then it lies on me like an obligation." This is the difference between the two feelings: I ought, or I must; the Gospel, or the Law. These feelings are repeated in every man; for the Gospel and the Law are not two periods of history only, but they are two periods in universal human experience.. Where the spirit of the Gospel is not, there the spirit of the Law is. Hence the Apostle says: "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men."

Consider, then, the terrors of the Judgment. Remember, St. Paul does not say merely that he shall receive according to what he hath done in the body, but that he shall receive the things done-the very self-same things he did they are to be his punishment. To illustrate the Apostle's meaning by analogy, future retribution is the same as here on earth. God's punishments are not arbitrary, but natural. For example, a man commits a murder. It would be an arbitrary punishment if lightning struck him, or an earthquake swallowed him up. The inhabitants of Melita, seeing the viper fasten on Paul's hand, inferred that he was a murderer. But God's punishment for hatred and murder is hardening of the heart. He that shuts Love out, shuts out God. So again, if a man seduces another weaker than himself into crime, the earth will not open as it did for Dathan and Abiram. But God has hidden in the man's own heart the avenging law: he becomes a degraded man: the serpent-tempter's curse is his "to go on his belly, and eat dust all the days of his life." Or again, some one is plunged in passionateness, sloth, sensual life. God will not create a material flame to burn the man; the flame is

spiritual, is inward a reptile to creep and crawl, and leave its venom on his heart. He receives the things done in the body. Now, such as that is the law of future retribution: "Whatsoever a man soweth" not something else, but "that shall he also reap : which is filthy, let him be filthy still." Such are some of the Scripture metaphors to show the personality of future punishment.

"He

"Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord," says St. Paul," we persuade men." Striking words! Not "we terrify," not "we threaten," but "we persuade." Here was the difference between rhetorical thunders and the teaching of one who knew and believed the terrors of which he spoke. Oh! contrast with this the tone in which God's ministers too often threaten sinners. They paint the torments of the lost minutely and hideously, and can yet go home to the evening meal with zest unimpaired. Think you, if such a man believed what he said. that the mass of his brethren were going to hell he could sleep after his own denunciation. No! when a man knows the terrors of the Lord, he "persuades men." Hence came the tears of Jeremiah; hence flowed the tears of Him who knew the doom of Jerusalem. Therefore, if in our tone there be anything objurgatory, denunciatory, threatening, may God give us the spirit to persuade! May He teach us to believe the terrors of which we speak!

Brethren, there is no perhaps. These are things which will be hereafter. You cannot alter the Eternal Laws. You cannot put your hand in the flame, and not be burnt. You cannot sin in the body, and escape the sin; for it goes inwards, becomes part of you, and is itself the penalty which cleaves for ever and ever to your spirit. Sow in the flesh, and you will reap corruption. Yield to passion, and it becomes your tyrant and your torment. Be sensual, self-indulgent, inindolent, worldly, hard-oh! they all have their corresponding penalties: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

LECTURE XLIII.

DECEMBER 5, 1852.

2 CORINTHIANS v. 12-17.—" For we commend not ourselves again unto you, but give you occasion to glory on our behalf, that ye may have somewhat to answer them which glory in appearance, and not in heart. For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause. - For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead : - And that he died for all, that they which live. should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. — Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. -Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

In the preceding chapters and verses, St. Paul has been magnifying his ministry. It had been, he says, a ministry of the Spirit, not of the letter (iii. 6). It had been straightforward and veracious: its authority had been that of the truth;-"commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God" (iv. 2). It had been a suffering and a martyr ministry (iv. 8, 9, 10); representative, too, of Christ in word and deed (iv. 5 and 10); unworldly (v. 2, 8, 9); and persuasive (v. 11).

In all this the Apostle glorifies his own ministry and his way of performing it. It is a glorious description, truly. But when a man speaks thus of himself, we are apt to call it boasting. So, no doubt, many of the Corinthians would call it; and hence St. Paul several times anticipates such a charge, for instance, in the first verse of the third chapter, and also in the twelfth verse of the fifth. For some of the Corinthian Church might have reasoned in this manner: "You say you commend yourself to our consciences, and that we recognize the truth of what you say from an inward plainness.

Now if all this is so plain, why commend yourself? why so anxious to set yourself right?" But the reply is: "I do not commend myself for my own sake. It is not a personal boast. It is the only possible reply to those who require a ministry with splendid external credentials, instead of the inward witness of the heart" -(v. 12).

I. The Apostle's defence of his self-approval.

II. The general principles of life with which this selfapproval was connected.

66

I. The Apostle's defence was founded on two reasons. First: We give you occasion to glory on our behalf, that ye may have somewhat to answer them which glory in appearance, and not in heart." Secondly: "Whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause.'

1. The false teachers gloried "in appearance," in outward demonstration, in dazzling credentials, such as eloquence; or they boasted of belonging to St. Peter, or prided themselves in a superabundance of spiritual gifts. On the contrary, St. Paul says that the true Apostolic credentials are those of the heart; and accordingly, the proofs he had given were his truth, his sufferings, his persuasiveness, his simplicity, his boldness, and his life as being an image of Christ's. This corresponds with what I have before said, namely, that the Christian ministry is a succession of the pro-. phetical, not the priestly office. There were two sorts of teachers, priests and prophets. The priest said: "Here are my credentials. I am ordained God's messenger: therefore, what I say is to be received." The prophet said: "What I say is truth; therefore, I am to be received as from God." The priest proved, first, that he was a messenger, and thence inferred his inspiration; but the prophet declared his message, and from it inferred that he was truly sent. This is clear, from the nature of the thing. Every Every one knew who was the priest. But the prophet rose from amongst the people, proclaiming himself to be from God.