66 Adam, bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh;1 and, being "joined to the Lord," we are one spirit." Therefore, brethren, as men baptised into Christ, and nourished with the living bread, you have been brought under the powers of the world unseen. The virtue of a holy resurrection is in your mortal bodies; the beginnings of the spiritual body are within you: cherish the gift you have received; beware how you wound or soil the holy thing "which by nature you could not have;" for immortality is a perilous endowment: whether in sorrow or in bliss, we must be deathless. And this our eternal destiny is now hanging in the balance. What more awful thought can the heart of man conceive than the fall of a regenerate spirit? what more fearful than the first movement towards declension? "for it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance." The body with which we are clothed must either be quickened in holiness with our spirit, or it will turn back again toward the second death, and through it our spirit also become Eph. v. 30. 2 Heb. vi. 4-6. 66 "twice dead." In the faithful it is kept under, and held in check by "the powers of the world to come;" but in the faithless it is a haunt of impurity, and a minister of sin and hell. Let us watch against the carnal mind; for though it be thrust down from its dominion, yet the infection of our nature abides still in the regenerate. The immortality which is in us may yet become earthly, sensual, devilish." We may yet be doomed to an unhallowed resurrection, and to an endless life "where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." But, it is also a blessed thought, that there is a change awaiting us. After all our toiling and self-chastisement, there still remains with us a fast-cleaving and mysterious evil; and a deep consciousness is ever telling us that, do what we may, we must bear the graveclothes of the fall till the morning of the resurrection; that we must suffer under the load of an imperfect nature, until God shall resolve our sullied manhood into its original dust, and gather it up once more in a restored purity. The hope of the resurrection is the stay of our souls when they are wearied and baffled in striving against the disobedience of our passive nature. At that day we shall be delivered from the self which we abhor, and be all pure as the angels of God. O healing and kindly death, which shall refine our mortal flesh to a spiritual body, and make our lower nature chime with the Eternal will in faultless harmony! Let us, then, as they that in pledge and promise are risen with Christ, so live in sympathy with the world to come, that death, and the resurrection of the dead, may be not so much a change in our earthly life as the crown of its perfection. Let us so live that our earthly course may run on into eternity, and be itself eternal. Let us never doubt, because we see no visible tokens to bespeak the virtue which is passing on us. The Church itself is but a fellowship of men that shall die; but yet she is "all glorious within." Wait till the morning of the new creation, and then shall all be revealed; and the body, which now shrouds the spirit, shall be as bright as the noon-day light; and then shall be seen openly what now is shrined within; and "the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."1 1 St. Matt. xiii. 43. SERMON XXVI. THE GLORY OF THE RIGHTEOUS. ST. MATTHEW Xiii. 43. "Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the It is plain that these words are spoken of the end of the world, and of the condition of the righteous in God's eternal kingdom. The pur pose for which Christ came into the world was, "to bring in everlasting righteousness." All other gifts and distributions of grace, mercy, and forgiveness, are but parts of this one great and perfect gift. It was for righteousness that the whole creation groaned and travailed together: wrong, and falsehood, and violence, and impurity, and darkness, and the torment of an evil heart, in one word, unrighteousness, was both the sin and the misery of mankind. So also, in one word, the redemption of man through the blood-shedding of Christ is the restoration of righteousness to the world. Noah was the "heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”1 The prophecy of the Gospel was, that "righteousness" should "look down from heaven;"" and again we read, " Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness; let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together:"3 "Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till He come and rain righteousness upon you." And therefore, when the "Sun of righteousness" arose upon the earth, "the ministration of righteousness" was brought into the world, "that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign, through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord."" And to this end we have received the "gift of righteousness," which, though perfect in itself, is not yet made perfect in us, but is ordered by the laws and measures of growth, and slow advancement; and therefore the whole mystical body of Christ, which is so made one with Him, that He is made "righteousness" unto us, is still waiting "for the hope of righteousness by faith."" All the regenerate are brought, by the working of 1 Heb. xi. 7. 2 Ps. lxxxv. 11. 3 Isaiah xlv. 8. 6 2 Cor. iii. 9. 9 Gal. v. 5. C C |