Sermon XI.

HOLY SCRIPTURE.

ROMANS XV. 4.

Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning; that we, through patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope.

In illustrating and enforcing these words of the Apostle, I shall take as the groundwork of the remarks which I have to offer, that admirable collect which the Church on this day has proposed for the subject of our devout meditations.* It furnishes both an exact comment upon the words of the text; and also, as a prayer it comprises those points which are especially essential to a profitable perusal of the

*Second Sunday in Advent.

word of God. On this account, it is the best that can be adopted previously to the study of the sacred volume. For to read the scriptures without praying for divine illumination, is to open a sealed book, to read with the veil on the heart. Those sacred books, we may reasonably conclude, though indited by the Spirit himself, were not written without prayer. The sacred penmen were not passively recipient of the divine oracles. They sat on their watch-towers, and listened attentively, by prayer and fasting, to what the Lord would say to them. And if this was the case with them, much more must the same key that opened the mind of the Spirit to the devout gaze of those " holy men of old who wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," unlock to us their sacred communications.

Such a key is prayer.

I will therefore suppose that you have retired to your chamber to converse with God in his word; that you are about to open that book which assuredly has “God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without mixture of error for its subject;" that book which alone can implant in our souls the germ and principle of a new nature, and so implanted, is able to bring it to perfection; to confirm, strengthen, settle us; that book which contains in it the

word which is to judge us at the last day, which is " quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

Supposing these to be the devout feelings of your mind at the moment when the word of God lies open before you, our excellent and most scriptural liturgy seeks to improve and exalt those feelings by the following petitions. And first, directing our hearts to the author of all truth, from whom descends every good and perfect gift, it instructs us to pray, "blessed Lord who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning."

Revelation finds man ignorant and uninformed in those all-essential points, which it chiefly concerns his interest and happiness to know. Those points are, "the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent." And next to the author of all good, it discovers to us the source and origin of all evil, that deep-rooted principle of pride, which seeking to be independent of God, and to usurp in the human heart the place and precedency of God, plunged mankind into a state of moral apostacy and degradation, as well as of penal guilt. Against this hateful prin

ciple, so rooted in the very fibres of man's heart, and entwining its baneful luxuriance with even his best actions, and purest motives, the whole tenor of scripture, the drift and purpose of the two covenants are levelled. In proportion as scripture lays the axe to this bitter root, it plants. in its place a principle directly opposite in its nature and effects; a child-like meekness and docility, to which is attached the kingdom of heaven; the "mind which was in Christ Jesus:" a submission of the will and affections to be controled, of the understanding to be enlightened; the whole man to be renewed and transformed by divine grace.

The scriptures then, in addition to their saving doctrines, are designed to teach and inculcate a principle as vital and transforming in its effects, as the pride of man's fallen nature is deadly and pernicious. This is the design of the precepts, examples, parables, in short of almost every moral lesson of the scriptures, in whatever form conveyed. They point out to us our fall and disease by sin; our rise and restoration in Jesus Christ. They have the words of eternal life. Had the light of nature been sufficient to instruct us fully upon these subjects, we had still been without the scriptures. And yet even blest as mankind is with this additional light,

there is no man who thinks, that he has too much light, except perhaps it be that person who by this very opinion shows to us that he has not enough, at least that he has not profited by the light which has been vouchsafed him, and has received the grace of God in vain. The truth is, that the scriptures, my brethren, do not overpower our reason, but assist it. Their light is not absolutely irresistible; for then all men would be believers, all pious consistent Christians. But is this the case? Or do men generally affirm, that they are demonstratively convinced of the truths of religion, or that the scriptures are the word of God? Do they generally live, as though they were so convinced? On the contrary, is it not common for many persons to require demonstration for these truths? a proof which revelation in its very nature, will not admit of, but only of probable or moral evidence. And such evidence, my brethren, is sufficient. There is light enough thrown by God on the page of scripture, if we will use that light. To him who does so use it, his "word is a lamp to his feet, and a light to his paths." The same blessed Lord who has caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning, will not deny the light of his spirit to them who are anxious, (as they value such learning,) to use and improve it.