LECTURE XXVIII. ENTHUSIASM. "And unto the angel of the Church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."-REV. iii. 14-16. - THIS Church is the last and least praised of the seven; to it special rebukes are addressed, one of which is couched in the words which I have now read. Our blessed Lord introduces himself under one of those august characteristics by which he is described in the opening part of the book: he declares himself to be "the Amen," i. e. the commencement and the close of creation, providence, redemption, to whose glories creation, providence, redemption shall all contribute. The "Amen" is the truth and the substance of every promise—the performance and the burden of every prophecy, in whom revelation is seen complete, and creation shall be seen restored — in whom man shall receive his greatest happiness and God his everlasting glory. He is not only the "Amen," but he is also "the Witness." This epithet is applied to Christ by God through the lips, or rather the pen, of the prophet Isaiah; "I have given him for a witness to the people:" as a witness he has a testimony. To what does Christ witness? The testimony of a witness is the chief ground on which the decision of a judge is based and the information of men is obtained. The testimony therefore of such a witness as Christ must be to us of unspeakable value. On it our duties and privileges and hopes of everlasting happiness and glory do and must depend. He is a witness to what man is by nature. He knows what is in man; what his history, his deterioration, and his true relation are. It is the testimony of this witness who cannot lie, that man by nature is "without God and without hope in the world;""desperately"- that is, by human power incurably depraved;" "dead in trespasses and sins." He is the witness too of what God is by grace. "God is love;" God is "our Father." Again, "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son he hath declared him." And he is also a witness to the method by which God can be glorified in the salvation of sinners such as we are. He has set forth a great proposition which all the wise men of the east and philosophers of the west failed to discover or demonstrate,-how God can remain holy, just, and true, and yet let forth the expression of his mercy, the seal of forgiveness, the manifestation of his love in the forgiveness of those who have been born in apostasy from him, and lived in hourly rebellion against him. Blessed and glorious truth, that God may justify me and yet be just! nay more, that when God bows the heaven to blot out the sins of the greatest sinner, he covers himself with richer glory than when he stood upon the circuit of the skies and said, "Let there be light," and there was light. His judicial acquittal of sinners gives him greater glory than his creative birth of worlds. God received glory when he created the universe, and the morning stars sang his praise beside it; God receives glory when he sustains, maintains, and corrects. it but he never seemed to angels and to the intelligent universe more glorious than when he stooped to the manger and hung upon the cross, and amid the proofs of the sufferer emitted evidence of the present God as he whispered to the dying criminal the blessed accents, "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” My dear hearers, in pleading with God—and I wish all to perceive and feel the full force of this-we may say to him, "O Lord, be merciful to forgive me!" This is a great deal; but we may go further; we may say, "O God, manifest thy justice, thy faithfulness, thy truth in forgiving me." This is much but further, we may say to God, "Glorify thy name in the forgiveness of my transgressions." If we are not forgiven men, it is not because God's love has become cold, or his ear has become heavy, or his mercy has been exhausted; but because we do not with child-like simplicity believe him, thinking these news too good to be true, or our case too desperate to be cured, so that we may not therefore venture to look and live. It may be that others think the world is our proper prize, and that it alone we are to seck after, or that we may hear and speak and think of these things at another and a more convenient season; but very generally, a latent suspicion or doubt of the reality of these things is our besetting state. He is a witness also to the responsibilities of man; to the glories of the saved to all the miseries of the lost; he is a witness to what man is capable of by grace, and what man may be destined to by transgression. He is a witness who speaks not from hearsay, or from second hand. He has come down from the glory that is inaccessible and full of light, and spoken with the tones of authority that which he has seen and known to be the very fact and truth of God. He is introduced, in the second place, as the "beginning of the creation of God." Perhaps this word might be translated "prince." 'Apx is a Greek word that means frequently "a beginning;" occasionally, "a prince," or "chief;" or, it may be used in the same way as the Latin words, "origo mundi," which mean, not "the origin of the world;" but "he that originated the world;" the beginner of the world. We are therefore to understand by "the beginning of the creation of God," not that Christ was the first being who was created, for this is not the meaning of the words, but that he is the Creator of all things that are and have been created. If this be so, then it reveals what science has clearly demonstrated, that matter is not eternal -that the world had a beginning. It may appear to some of you who have common sense, that to speak of this world, so liable to wear and tear, and waste and decay, as having had no beginning, but existing from everlasting. ages, is to speak of an effect without supposing there can be a cause; in other words, to speak absurdity: yet such absurdity has been gravely maintained. It is, then, a very interesting fact that science, from more provinces than one,geology, astronomy, geography, declares with one voice that there is unequivocal evidence in the heavens above, indisputable proof in the earth. beneath, that this globe on which we stand had a beginning; and that that beginning is not a very ancient, but a very recent one. It is thus that science steps forward, not to aid religion, but to add fresh evidence to the skeptic mind, of the truth of religion, -that God spoke truth, and that the Bible embodies that truth, "All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made." Let us look at the sky above, or at the earth below-let us study the ant in its nest, or the angel beside the throne-let us look at the dew-drop that dances on the rose-leaf, or at the sea that girdles the earth as with a broad and glorious zone-let us look at fruit, and flower, and pebble, and gem, and star; and if we look rightly and honestly, we shall see such proofs of wisdom, beneficence, power, design, that we shall come to the conclusion which inspiration itself has an nounced, that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;" so that the heavens and the earth, like one vast transparency, disclose the glory of his power, the inspirations of his wisdom, the luminous monuments of his beneficence and love.— Christ is "the beginning of the creation of God." Here, too, is the interesting peculiarity in this expression, that the Creator of heaven and of earth-the beginner of the creation of God is declared to be "Christ." Thus, then, creation and redemption are not antagonisms, they are at bottom in harmony-they cohere by unseen bands and ties with each other, and in one great author-Christ Jesus. There is something beautiful in this thought, that the hand of the crucified lighted up all the everburning lamps of the sky; pencilled with their beauty, and perfumed with their fragrance all the flowers of the earth; and evermore continues to the former their brightness, to the last their tints, to all things existence. There is something beautiful in the fact, that the Son of Man is the Creator of all things. There is in this the origin of all, an augury of what shall be the issue of all wind and wave shall celebrate his glory, and star and flower and gem shall silently hymn his praise; and upon the earth, as upon a gem retrieved and restored, there shall be engraven the name, not merely of the God that made it, but that name which is above every name-the name of him that redeemed and restored it. If Jesus be thus the maker, as he is the redeemer of all things, is there not suggested by this fact a very interesting plea that we may use at the throne of grace-namely, that at least we are God our Saviour's workmanship? In one of the collects of the English Prayer-book these words occur-" O God'. . . who hatest nothing that thou hast made." This is true. I do not think that God hates anything he has made: he made everything good, beautiful, and holy sin is the foul blot that has fallen upon it-the fever that racks and convulses it; and these shall be removed and extinguished that it may be reinstated in its primeval goodness, and made to subserve its grand and original design. May you not, then, thus plead at a throne of grace? If your mind is so dark, and your heart so desponding, that when you pray to God, you cannot say to him, "O Lord, I am thy child; thou hast adopted me as thy son; therefore, O Lord, my Father, forgive me and bless me;" you may at least, in the very worst and darkest of circumstances, draw near to him, and say, "O Lord, my Creator, my Saviour, thou hast made me; that hand that was nailed to the cross fashioned me; thou hatest nothing that thou hast made; take me, creature of thy power, make me a monument of thy mercy, the subject of thy forgiveness; reinstate thy creature in thy love, and give me, who have the relation of thy creature, the affection of thy son, that I may praise and glorify thy name for ever.” She Our Lord having thus introduced himself as "the Amen-the first and the last, the beginning of the creation of God, the Maker of all," next states what are his views of the state of the Church to which this epistle is addressed, in these necessarily true and expressive words, "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot." There was no charge of heterodoxy against the Church of Laodicea: there was no imputation of error in any doctrine contained in her confession of faith. appears to have been a "highly respectable Church;" to have been externally beautiful; a consistent rubrician in all respects, as far as the outward eye could take cognisance of her state; a model of what a Church should be; but when Christ looks at a Church, or examines an individual, he judges not "after the sight of the eyes, nor after the hearing of the ear." Man's eye sees the exterior only. With us the bended knee, the uplifted eye, the fervent and eloquent petition, are the evidences of re |