Lead me to mercy's ever-flowing fountains; For thou my shepherd, guard, and guide shalt be, Thy feet all beautiful upon the mountains. Hear, Shepherd! thou who for thy flock art dying, With feet nail'd to the cross, thou 'rt waiting still for me? LECTURE XXXIII. COMMUNION. "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." -REV. iii. 20. LAST Lord's-day evening I addressed you from these words. I presented to you, first of all, the place into which Christ would enter the heart, or conscience, of the individual sinner; once a glorious fane, now a ruin-all foul reptiles creeping in it-all impure weeds luxuriating in it; and only here and there sparks of its original glory bursting forth, to reveal how grand it once was, how fallen it now is. I noticed too, the appeal as well as the position of our Lord-" I stand at the door, and knock." I commented on the fact that we, on our part, never asked him to come near to us. There is nothing in us to attract him. His position is only to be explained by himself-his sovereignty, his unmerited love. Man courts the creature, because there is something in the creature beautiful, or lovely, and adapted to attract him. God comes in sovereignty to the creature, not because there is in the creature one element of beauty, but in order to create in that creature all the elements of the beautiful, and holy, and happy.. I tried to consider, in the next place, what can be Christ's object in thus standing at the door and knocking. Interpreted by our sins, we should say, to condemn and to destroy; interpreted by his love, and by facts, it is to bless, to beautify, and to make holy. I have noticed what is our position in regard to Christ's position: "he stands at the door, and knocks." The very fact that he stands, and knocks, shows that there is in us some reluctance to open; we do not open the instant that he applies for admission. How strange is this! Satan is permitted to take possession of our souls; all evil passions cluster about the lintels and the door-posts of that house at which Christ knocks; Mammon presides upon the threshold, and chants the praises of money; and Satan has a passport in and out, when and how he pleases. But the Lord of glory asks for admission, for reasons which I will hereafter specify, and we answer, "Go this time, I will send for you at a more convenient season;""Call when you pass again: I am too busy to attend to you now;" "I have other things to do; I have bought a yoke of oxen; I have married a wife; I have purchased a farm: I will send for you another time." I then endeavoured to explain to you the instruments by which Christ may be presumed reasonably, and without forcing the interpretation of the passage, to knock. He appeals by reason: "Come," he says, "let us reason together." The most reasonable thing upon earth is the Gospel; and the next reasonable thing is to accept the Gospel; there is nothing so irrational as scepticism in principle, except it be scepticism in practice; there is nothing so reasonable as the Gospel, as it is unfolded in the Bible, except it be the welcoming of that Gospel into the heart in order to be implanted and impressed there. I noticed, too, that he speaks to us by the affections. The whole of the Gospel is, in my judgment, mainly a continuous appeal to what is deepest and tenderest in the human heart: "Lovest thou me ?" breathes from the cross, from the grave, from his ascension, from his intercession at God's right hand. And if there be one feature of the Gospel more prominently distinguished than any other, it is its tendency to create in us responsive love, and its recognition of such love as the love of Christ. We love Christ, because we see in him in his cross and passion in his agony and bloody sweat - in his death and burial, the evidence the overwhelming evidence of his infinite, sovereign, and unmerited love towards us. I noticed, in the next place, that Christ appeals to us also by our consciences. What was that feeling in the depths of the soul, as the shadow of some dark recollection swept over it, but Christ saying, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock?" What is that leaf turned over by a mysterious hand, and made luminous by an unearthly light, in which you read the condemnation of the past, but amid which you can all but see, like glowworms amidst the darkness of night, lights that tell you and reveal to you forgiveness for the greatest sin, salvation for the guiltiest criminal? All this is Christ knocking at the door of the human heart for admission. I mentioned also another instrument,-namely, the preaching of the glorious Gospel. "We are ambassadors for God: as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." I also referred to another instrument by means of which he knocks at the door of the human heart, viz., his own providential dispensations. That loss which left behind. it so dark a cloud, so deep a chasm; that babe which you lost in all its beauty, in its infancy, when you watched the cold shadow as it spread over its brow, and at last saw the spirit emerge from its cold marble shrine, the shrine of your parental idolatry,—that babe thus taken from you in its bloom, was a knock by the hand of love, seeking for that supremacy which even your babe ought not to have occupied, and which belongs to Christ alone. The loss of your property, the breaking up and blasting of your prospects-all these things are, Christ in his mercy making your bosom cease to be a pantheon for a thousand gods, in order that it may be a palace for himself, and asking for it as a temple in which he shall be priest, and sacrifice, and altar, and all and in all. I now add, what I ought to have added then, but to which I only briefly alluded, that the last and most powerful instrument by which he appeals for admission is, the Holy Spirit. Men have asked me to prove that the human heart is corrupt. I would not quote a text to prove it, though I might quote many; but I would quote this fact, that it needed not only God in my nature to forgive me, but it needs still God in my heart to enable me to believe that fact, even upon the authority of God himself. All that is written on every page of the Bible-all that is breathed in every promise all that is enunciated in every threat - falls powerless, absolutely powerless, upon the human heart, until the God that inspired the Bible takes the texts he has inspired, and makes them no longer to be in word only, but in power, in man's heart. But you say then, If it need the Spirit of God thus to open our hearts for the admission of Christ, what can we do? I answer, You can do this; you can refuse to admit—you can shut the door-you can fasten it still more strongly-you can doublebolt it you can do all this; you can defy God, you can destroy yourself. There is a great deal of power still left in man; but that power is exerted in the wrong direction. You cannot change your own heart; but recollect, the deep conviction that you cannot do so, if real, will be followed by the instant evidence that the Holy Spirit of God has done so. Paul preached the Gospel at Philippi; Lydia was one of his congregation; it is told us, not that Paul opened Lydia's heart, but that "the Lord opened the heart of Lydia, to receive those things which were spoken of Paul." But when the Spirit of God acts upon the human heart, he does not, as I told you, do so by the exertion of a mechanical force. Christ might command admission to the human heart; but instead of doing so-instead of thundering for admission as a king, he prays for admission as a suppliant; and I told you the reason. The same law which prevails in the constitution of our country prevails in the higher world. All the rains of heaven and all the winds of all the four quarters of the globe may beat into that poor man's house, but the Queen of England dare not enter it without the owner's permission. The Lord of glory seems to recognise, in the palace that he once made so fair and so beautiful for himself, some remains of its aboriginal magnificence-some fragments of its ancient sovereignty; and he acts as if he would not enter into a man's bosom unless the owner of it will make him welcome. Hence, the Bible tells us that God's people "are made willing in the day of his power;" and that the Spirit of God works within us "both to will and to do of his good pleasure." We are saved, not against our wills, but with our full consent and in harmony with our wills; the Spirit works in us, and by us, and through us, but, unquestionably, he does not work dead against us. We have the evidence of the manner in which the Spirit works declared by the prophet Hosea, where we are told, "I drew them with cords of a man, with the bands of love: I was unto them as them that take off the yoke." "With cords of a man," i. e. by their reason |