Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

ner stone of our faith. Are we not Christians?

If you pass over his instructions, say that they are not sufficiently comprehensive and complete; give a preference to those of Paul, as more full and intelligible and satisfactory-what would you reply if we were to charge you with not being Christians, and to endeavour to stigmatize you with some such reproachful epithets as the followers of Paul? You do not allow the followers of Mahomet to be Christians, though Mahomet acknowledged Jesus to be a prophet sent by God; you call them Mahometans. But far be such conduct from us as to wish to stigmatize you. Only let us share the Christian appellation with you.

Another question I must ask. Who has the greatest right to the title evangelical? What does evangelical mean? Does it mean that a person forms his opinions from the evangelists, or from the epistles? If a person were to take his faith entirely from the epistles as the standard of truth, and make the evangelist's and our Savi

our's own assertions subordinate to these, surely his opinions, with much greater propriety, should be called epistolical than evangelical. We take our faith from the evangelists; from what they assert that Jesus himself taught. This we consider as the proper standard by which to measure and harmonize the rest. Say not then that you are exclusively evangelical.

And now, my Trinitarian hearers, you and I shall probably continue to differ in our opinions. You will go home and apply to your usual resource, How plausible soever the arguments against the Trinity may be, it is still a mystery and must be believed.' Well, time hastens on, and you and I are rapidly journeying to our long home. With the present year I commenced the present branch of these Lectures, the Person of Christ. In that little space of time eight of the regular attendants at this chapel, who had all arrived at years of maturity, have been launched into eternity.* If the propor

* Delivered on the 7th of February 1813.

tion be continued what ravages will take place in one revolution of the sun! Ere another fortnight elapse, may not we be summoned before the tribunal of Almighty God. On that solemn occasion, doubtless the first question asked of us will be, 'What hast thou done?' The next inquiry may probably be, not, What have been the articles of thy faith?—but, What have been the grounds of thy faith? not, What have you believed? but, Why have you so believed? This will be the test of sincerity.

You believe Jesus to have been God: we believe him to have been a man ; and our plea is the sincerity of our Master, who made no claim superior to those of a man. You pay religious adoration to Jesus Christ; we pay religious adoration to God the Father only; and our plea is the express command of Jesus to worship none other but him. As to this article of our faith, then, we are contented to be tried by the commands and the example of our Saviour, at the solemn tribunal of Almighty God. And we doubt not that he will accept our plea, and, if we act con

sistently, that our blessed Saviour, with open arms, will welcome us as his genuine disciples !

Then let us march cheerfully on,
The road that before us he trod;
It leads us where he is now gone,
To heaven, to himself, and his God.

APPENDIX.

ADDRESSED TO THE MEMBERS OF THE
NEW JERUSALEM CHURCH.

The Lectures which have been delivered this winter have been addressed ex

clusively to Trinitarians. Considering ourselves as separated from every other denomination of Christians, by this insurmountable barrier, that the object of religious adoration should be One, not Three, it did not occur to me, when I entered upon this course of Lectures, that there existed another branch of the family of Christians, who at all resembled us, in prostrating themselves before an altar erected to One God undivided into several

« FöregåendeFortsätt »