CIENT. "By Christ Jesus." God may and does supply our physical and, to some extent, our intellectual and social needs by nature; but our spiritual needs which are the most urgent and -imperative-He supplies only by Christ Jesus. He does not supply the needs of the human soul by legislation, by science, by art, or by philosophy, but by Jesus Christ. Jesus is the minister to the soul. He is the Samaritan, to bind up its wounds; He is the Guide to conduct it safely through its dreary pilgrimage; He is the Shepherd, to guard it from dangers, appease its hunger, and to lead it into pastures of inexhaustible supplies. Subject: THE LEADING FOE AND THE LEADING FRIEND of HUMANITY. "And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren."-Luke xxii. 31, 32. In Series III., vol. iii., page 289, there will be found a sketch from our pen on these words. But as the passage is a very striking and suggestive one, and another sermonic plan has struck us, we need offer no apology for bringing forward the subject a second time. We infer from it two great facts, I. That man has in the MORAL SPHERE OF HIS BEING A GREAT LEADING FOE AND A GREAT LEADING FRIEND. The one is Satan, and the other is Christ. We learn from the | words, First: That both are superhuman. The various accounts which the Bible gives us of the being here called Satan, assure us that he is superhuman in intelligence, skill, power, activity, and influ ence. He is the prince of the power of the air; he leads man captive at his will. Christ is confessedly superhuman, though He was subject to the ordinary laws of humanity; yet the circumstances of His birth, the wonders that His mighty hand performed, and the extraordinary phenomena connected with His death, demonstrate that He had an existence transcending the human. Man's greatest Friend, then and his greatest foe are both superhuman, both above the reach and span of our nature. Secondly: That both are profoundly interested in individual men. Here we find Satan setting his heart on Simon Peter, a poor fisherman. Satan has a heart. He is not a being of cold, sheer intellect, for he "desired to have" Peter. Christ's heart also is on Peter. Wonderful this, these two great super human beings are not only interested in the race, the masses, generations, nations, and communities, but in individual men. One lonely soul attracts them. What a wonderful existent the human soul must be; though we may think but little of it, it is an object of concern to the greatest beings in the uni verse. We infer, II. THAT MAN'S LEADING FRIEND IS GREATER THAN HIS LEADING FOE. For illustration of this observe: First: That He understands the foe, the foe does not understand Him. Christ knew Satan, knew his heart, read him through and through, knew all his desires and purposes concerning Peter. Christ not only knows what is in man, but knows what is in the devil, what is in the fiends, "He reads hell. But the devil does not know Him. knows something of His outward history, something of His grand purpose; but he cannot comprehend His existence, still less can he read the thoughts of His heart. Satan is no mystery to Christ, He knows all about him; but Christ is the mystery of mysteries to Satan. Observe, Secondly: That His purpose is to preserve, Satan's is to destroy. Satan's idea was, (1) To annihilate the faith of Simon. It was to shake his confidence in Christ, win him over to himself, and thus effect his utter ruin. Destroy the faith of a soul in truth and God, and that soul is lost-lost to virtue, to peace, to heaven, to God. The pur pose of Christ is to preserve this faith. "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." (2) To annihilate the usefulness of Simon. "When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." When thou art converted, when thy weak, shaken, tottering faith has been established, then "strengthen thy brethren." Seek to establish their hearts in the truth, and so render their moral purposes for good invincible. Peter did this nobly, as we find in the Acts of the Apostles. The work of destruction is a very poor work. The meanest creature can do it, an insect kill may the lion. But the work of preservation is divine. God alone can restore. Thirdly: That He has the "I have Highest Helper. prayed for thee." The Infinite God was with Christ, and to Him He looks for co operation. Satan has no God with him. God is against him. He has no one to pray to. Subject: CONTRAST BETWEEN THIS LIFE AND THE LIFE TO Сомк. "And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection."LUKE XX. 34-36.. These words are part of the dispute which Christ had with the Sadducees concerning matrimony in the resurrection. For remarks on the narrative generally, see "Genius of the Gospel," p. 572. We merely take the words at present to point out the contrast between the good man's future world and his present one. The existence of a future world for him is here taught by Christ. He says, "they that shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world,"that is, the great world into which good men enter after their departure from this life. The contrast between the two worlds, as here indicated by Christ, includes four things: ing the wheels of society in perpetual motion. But in the other world, we are here taught, this ordinance has no existence. The social love there is sublimated, it is purely spiritual. All spirits there enter into the closest social and family relationships by doing the will of their Father who is in hea ven. II. There is no WORTHLESS CHARACTER there. All there are "accounted worthy." Men are brought into this world not on account of their worthiness, nor are they continued because they are worthy of it; but in that world all the denizens are "accounted worthy" of the place. This world is populated with men not worthy of it. III. There is no GROSS ORGANIZATION there. Here we live in bodies of clay, subject to the same laws as those of all irrational life; but in that world all are the "children of the resurrection." For a description of the resurrection body, see 1 Cor. xv. 42-44. All human bodies there are fashioned, made like unto the glorious body of Jesus Christ. No hunger, no thirst, no gross impulses and lusts. I. There is no MARRIAGE OBSERVANCE there. "They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are IV. There is no MORTALITY given in marriage." Here there. "Neither can they men marry "and are given die any more." From Adam in marriage." From the be- to Moses, from Moses to ginning it has been so. The Christ, and from Christ to connubial instinct is one of this hour, and so on to the the great mainsprings keep-end of the world, all men die. But there "neither can they die." Why can they not? Not because God cannot annihilate, not because they are essentially immortal. This would make them independent of God. But because the Infinite has purposed they shall live for ever. V. There is no MORAL INFERIORITY there. "They are equal unto the angels." Equal, not perhaps in intellectual might and attainment, but in freeness from sin, as free as angels from all carnalities. How pure are the angels? They are called holy angels, etc. Seeds of Sermons from the Minor Prophets. If the Bible as a whole is inspired, it is of vast importance that all its Divine ideas should be brought to bear upon the living world of men. Though the pulpit is the organ Divinely intended for this work, it has been doing it hitherto in a miserably partial and restricted method. It selects isolated passages, and leaves whole chapters and books for the most part untouched. Its conduct to the Minor Prophets may be taken as a case in point. How seldom are they resorted to for texts! and yet they abound with splendid passages throbbing with Divine ideas. It is our purpose to go through this section of the Holy Word; selecting, however, only such verses in each chapter and book as seem the most suggestive of truths of the most vital interest and universal application. Having passed rapidly through Hosea and Joel, two of the Minor Prophets, we come now to Amos. He, we are informed, was a native of Tekoa, a small region in the tribe of Judah, about twelve miles south-east of Jerusalem. Nothing is known of his parents. He evidently belonged to the humbler class of life, and par sued the occupation of the humble shepherd. From his flock he was divinely called to the high office of prophet; and though himself of the tribe of Judah, his mission was to Israel. He was sent to Bethel, into the kingdom of the ten tribes. He commenced his ministry in the reign of Uzziah, between 810 and 783 B.C., and therefore laboured about the same time as Hosea. In his time idolatry, with its concomitant evils and immoralities of every description, reigned with uncontrolled sway amongst the Israelites, and against these evils he hurls his denunciations. The book has been divided into three parts: "First, sentences pronounced against the Syrians, the Philistines, the Phoenicians, the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Jews, and the Israelites, chapters i. and ii. Second, special discourses delivered against Israel, chapters iii. to vi. Third, visions, partly of a consolatory and partly of a comminatory nature, in which reference is had both to the times that were to pass over the ten tribes previous to the coming of the Messiah, and to what was to take place under His reign, chapters vii. to ix. His style is marked by perspicuity, elegance, energy, and fulness. His images are mostly original, and taken from the natural scenery with which he was familiar. No. CVII. Subject: THE RESTORATION OF THE TRUE MORAL THEOCRACY. "In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old: that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by my name, saith the Lord that doeth this. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt. And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God."AMOS ix. 11-15. The In the previous verses we have had to notice the destruction of the sinful kingdom: in this paragraph we have the establishment of the true kingdom-the true moral theocracy. "In that day." .e., when the judgment has fallen upon the sinful kingdom, and all the sinners of the people of Israel are destroyed. "The Israelites," says Dr. Henderson, "now disappear from the scene, in order to give place to a brief and prominent exhibition of the restoration of the Jews from their repressed condition during their anticipated captivity in Babylon." apostle James, at the first ecclesiastical council at Jerusalem, quotes this prophecy, *-not, however, its identical phraseology, but its general meaning, and applies it to the establishment of Christ's kingdom in the world by the admission of the Gentiles into it. The old Hebrew world was for ages gov. erned by a theocracy. God was their king. He had under Him and by His appointment human rulers and other functionaries; but they were simply His instruments and He was their king. That form of government has Acts xv. 16, 17. passed away; but it was symbolical: it was the emblem of a higher theocracy, that is to be established, not over the Jews merely, but over the Gentiles and over the whole world, it was to stand for ever. We shall use these words as an illustration of this theocratic government. Four thoughts are suggested concerning it. on I. IT ROSE FROM THE HUMBLEST CONDITION. "In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen." "The fallen hut of David."-Delitzsch. Not the magnificent palace of David which the monarch built for himself on Mount Zion (1 Sam. v. 11). "It is striking that Amos, prophesying in Israel, closes with a promise, not to the ten tribes primarily, but to the royal house of David, and to Israel only through its restora. tion. Strange comment human greatness, that the royal line was not to be employed in the salvation of the world until it was fallen. The royal palace had to become the hut of Nazareth ere the Redeemer of the world could be born, whose glory and kingdom were not of this world. . . Who came to take from us nothing but our nature, that He might sanctify it, our misery that he might bear it for us."-Pusey. Ay, this true moral theocracy had in truth a humble origin! Its Founder, who was He? The son of a poor Jewish peasant, who commenced His life in a stable. Its first apostles, who were they? They were amongst the poorest of the poor. In its origin, indeed, its symbols are the little stone, the grain of mustard-seed, and the few particles of leaven. |