seem to differ from our text, you will see that St. Paul speaks on the suppo sition of death being at hand, and his source of comfort was that he had been enabled to continue wrestling unto the end; therefore are the passages quite consistent with our text, for our text does not exactly state doubt as to salvation, but affirms that there could not be salvation were there to come any truce with the world or with the flesh. This, then, at least, is to be drawn from the apostle's words, that he alone hath a right to hope whose whole effort is to strive. Away with the dream of being saved, because orthodox! Away with the delusion of being saved, because zealous for truth! Away with the thought of being saved, because of being elected to salvation! Whose life is one battle? Who is struggling with his corruptions? Who is mastering himself? That man-the man who is always on the watch, always in the strife, always finding something to oppose him, always labouring to conquer what he finds within him-that man is the man who can have a well-founded hope of everlasting life; that man will never speak boldly; that man will rather always speak doubtfully; that man will feel that a remissness for the future would peril all that had been achieved by the struggles of the past, and will therefore endeavour to take St. Paul as his motto-St. Paul, who could say, notwithstanding all his knowledge, all his zeal, all his humility, all his holiness, "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away."

III. Now, there is a third and last point of view under which we may survey St. Paul; that is, as an aged minister. He makes, you see, distinct reference to his preaching. He contemplates the possibility that after having been long engaged in the work of the ministry, engaged in publishing glad tidings of redemption, he might himself be rejected, and fail to sharethe blessings which he had been instrumental in offering and conveying to others. He might be a cast-away, not only after having preached to others, but after having preached effectually, after having so preached as to bring numbers to the faith. And this is indeed the surprising thing, or if not a surprising thing, at least the instructive and admonitory thing. A man may be instrumental in imparting blessings to others in which he himself shall never have shared; helping to build the ark, and then perishing in the deluge. We would have this deeply pondered, for there is something very affecting in a man being used as an engine by God, and then thrown away as reprobate. We must tell you what this proves: it proves that the ordinance of preaching is quite independent on the preacher, so that it is not through what is spoken by the man, but through what is handled and applied by God's Spirit, that the souls of the hearers are converted or confirmed. We are not at all struck with the fact, that a man by the mere force of his natural powers may gather round him an eager audience; and though his discourse may be upon spiritual things, to which the mass of his audience may be wholly indifferent, he may yet actually rivet their attention, and hold them as delighted and interested listeners. We are quite prepared for the spectacle-rich in moral beauty, but not necessarily of greater worth than a highly-wrought picture-the spectacle of hundreds hanging with breathless interest on the lips of the speaker, though the topics of his speech may not have engaged their serious attention: ay, though the speaker himself may never have given his affections to the matter set forth, but may have been describing in the gorgeousness of language an inheritance to which he has no title, or depict

ing with terrible imagery a doom which he has not striven to avert from himself. Up to this point we can explain everything upon natural principles; the whole is accounted for by our mental constitution, and the crowded church differs in nothing from any other public gathering, where an individual may throw a kind of spell over multitudes, working them into some lofty resolve, or melting them to feelings of penitence. But now comes the case which is not to be explained upon natural principles. It may often happen,-ay, would to God it oftener happened—that those eager listeners are not able to break away from the spell which seems at an end, but that when the speaker has ceased, and the crowd is dispersing, the words which have been uttered will be found fastened on the consciences and hearts of many hearers, applied with such stirring and convincing power, that there will be immediate obedience to commands which have been hitherto despised, and immediate abandonment of practices which have been hitherto loved. And must it not be that here fire has been caught from fire? In other words, must it not be that what the speaker has produced in the hearer exists in himself; that he has the feelings which he has communicated; that the repentance and faith which he has been instrumental in effecting, do but correspond to what his own experience furnishes? Alas! no. It is just upon this point that our text gives decided testimony. St. Paul affirms it possible that after thousands had been converted through his preaching he might himself be a castaway. Why is this, except that it is only so far as God's Spirit applies the gospel that the gospel is efficacious; that consequently the spoken thing may have no converting energy till it have parted from the speaker, and that then, and not till then, may it be seized on by that Agent whose office it is to renew human nature and endow it with subjugating might? Therefore it is not to be concluded that the sermon which produces great and lasting effects, which overcomes the impenitence of many, and brings them in godly contrition to the feet of the Redeemer, must have been delivered by a man who is himself in heart and soul the disciple of Christ. It is altogether possible that the words which have proved so efficious have issued from the workshop of a busy intellect, or from the treasury of a brilliant imagination, but not from the depths of consecrated affections; ay, that in the human expounder there has been nothing beyond a cold scientific acquaintance with truth; but, nevertheless, there hath gone forth from him a voice of urgency and of power, awakening conscience from long slumber, and offering mercies which have been eagerly accepted.

We could enlarge much, if time would permit, on this very humiliating fact; but we think we have said enough to show that there are as great lessons conveyed by the text, when regarded as spoken by an aged minister, as when uttered by an aged man or Christian. Not only had St. Paul been long engaged in the work of the ministry, but he laboured with marvellous success, so that he gathered innumerable converts. Not merely did he preach to others; his preaching had been signally useful. If there were some false professors in the church which he had founded, multitudes had been converted through his agency, multitudes translated, through God's blessing on his labours, from darkness to marvellous light. Nevertheless, after and in spite of all this, he might himself be a cast-away. And I beg you not to think that it is only the clergyman who is concerned with this fearful possibility of instrumentally converting others, and being himself a cast-away. All of you are concerned with it who in any way have to do with the spiritual condition

of your fellow-men. You may educate your children religiously, and they may become children of God, and yet you may be casta-ways. You may rule your servants religiously, and they may become servants of God, and yet you may be cast-aways. You may be active and successful in improv ing the spiritual condition of your neighbourhood, and others may be converted through the means which you employ, and yet you may be castaways. That we have saved souls may be as consistent with our own perdition as that we have built churches. The whole question turnsmark it-upon personal religion. The refiner will sit, determining by unerring tests the worth of the metals submitted for his inspection, and it will be nothing to him that they have passed current in the world, and even been useful in taking away the dross from other specimens. What are they when placed in his crucible? What are the men and women who have been eminent as professors, and even successful as dispensers of Chris tianity, when tried by the criterion of the crucifying of the flesh, of the taking up of the cross and bearing it after Christ? In speaking of himself as a possible cast-away, St. Paul uses a word which is strictly used of metals from which the dross has not been duly purged, or coins that are rejected because counterfeit. Let us strive to bring ourselves to the criterion whilst the detection of alloy may be followed by its removal. There is enough to make us all take heed that we be not high-minded, but fear. Enough, for Jeremiah says, not, observe you, of the tin, or the brass, or the lead, but of the silver, "Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them." Enough, for even St. Paul could feel that if he did notcontinue bringing the body into subjection, if he did not fight inch by inch his path to the kingdom, he might preach to others, and nevertheless be himself a cast-away.

818

112

The Preache y.

No. XV.

FORMER DAYS NO BETTER THAN THE PRESENT.

A Sermon

DELIVERED ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 21, 1856,
BY THE REV. HENRY MELVILL, B.D.

(Chaplain in Ordinary to Her Majesty, and Canon Residentiary of St. Paul's,)

IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. PAUL, LONDON.

"Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this."-Ecclesiastes vii. 10.

You must all be aware what a softening power there is in distance; how often an object, on which you gazed with great delight whilst beheld afar off, will lose its attractiveness when it is brought near. Every admirer of the natural landscape is thoroughly conscious of this. He knows, as he throws himself down on an eminence, and looks out with enraptured feelings on some glorious spreading of scenery, he knows there is a great deal in the magnificent prospect which would not bear the being examined in detail. The village which has so sweet and picturesque an air, as its cottages dot the mountain side, or send up their wreaths of smoke through the overhanging slopes, and on which, therefore, the eye rests with singular complacency, is mainly indebted for its loveliness of aspect to the space which separates it from the beholder. The charm would vanish as it was approached; and he who had looked with so much of intensity on the beautiful hamlet, as he surveyed it from his lofty post of observation, would probably be disgusted on entering its streets, with the squalidness and disorder which would everywhere meet his eye. Now, we are inclined to suppose that there is much the same power in distance with regard to what we may call the moral landscape which is so universally acknowledged with regard to the natural. We believe that what is rough becomes so softened, and what is hard so mellowed through being viewed in the retrospect, that we are hardly fair judges of much on which we bestow unqualified admiration. It is certainly thus in regard of the characters of deceased friends. Whilst those friends are with us, and we are mingling in the varied intercourses of life, we are alive to their inconsistencies and defects, to those inequalities of temper, or those asperities of manner, which are often found in alliance with the most amiable qualities. But when the grave has closed upon them, and we can contemplate them only by looking back, we rapidly forget what was displeasing and repulsive, and we come to have no impression but one of unfeigned though melancholy admiration. Nay, it will sometimes happen that the very features which, whilst we were in contact with them, appear rugged and unseemly, appear when viewed from the dis

tance to add to the general effect. But in place of speaking merely of the characters of friends, and arguing that there is a power in distance of softening that character, and causing its harsh features to disappear, might we not consider that we are inclined to the looking with a favourable eye on past times; so that from the landscape, if we may so express ourselves, of a bygone century, there will vanish in a great degree all base and misshapen things, and there will settle on that landscape a kind of golden halo, giving indistinctness to what offends the eye, and greater prominence to other objects on which it can rest with approval. It is not to be questioned, that much which has been viewed by contemporaries with dislike or dissatisfaction, has been regarded by posterity with feelings of admiration, and that actions, which at the moment of performance appeared harsh and unwarrantable, have a noble and heroic air when seen in the glass of history. This is partly to be accounted for by the acknowledged fact, that the fashions and prejudices of the parties into which society is almost unavoidably divided, interfere with anything like a just judgment of conduct and motive; so that it is only by those who stand at a distance, and have no share in the intrigues and jealousies of the times, that a sound decision is likely to be reached. If, however, it were only the softening power of distance which had to be taken into the account, it might be necessary to caution men against judging without making allowances for this power; but we should scarcely have to charge it upon them as a fault, that they looked so complacently on what was far back. But from one cause or another men become disgusted with the days in which their lot is cast, and are therefore disposed to the concluding that past days were better. Whence does it arise that old people are so fond of talking of the degeneracy of the times, and referring to the days when they were young, as days when all things were in a healthier and more pleasing condition? You will hardly meet an old person who is not pathetic in his lamentations on the altered state of things, and who does not speak of the sad deterioration which the world has undergone since he first entered it. If you were to put implicit faith in the representations, you would conclude that there was nothing which had not changed for the worse, and that it was indeed a great misfortune that you had not been born half a century sooner.

And here comes into play the precept of our text-"Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this." Let us first point out to you, that there is an apparent strangeness in the precept, forasmuch as it seems to forbid that study of the past which may enrich us from the experience of our forefathers. It restrains us from searching into the causes why former days were better than these, and thus appears to close against us those sources of information which lie so abundantly in the annals of history. But it is evident that this could not have been the meaning of Solomon, for this would have been in direct contradiction to other statements of Scripture. If, indeed, it were ascertainable truth, "that the former days were better than these," you may be sure that it would never be a forbidden occupation, that of investigating the reasons; but what we understand the wise man to affirm is, the falsehood of the assumption of the superiority of past days; he denies the fact, and therefore demonstrates the folly of labouring to discover the cause. He may be considered as allowing the likelihood that the past days appear superior to the present, just as remote scenes are softened by distance; but he must be equally considered as asserting, that the superiority is only in appear