i : person or agency is made to "hold forth"-and there it is left to III. The History of Opinions or Doctrines, originating in or essential to the kingdom of heaven, is a third fruitful source of illustration. It were an exceedingly interesting and profitable task to trace back to their very origin those fundamental principles in Science, Philosophy, and Theology, which are now generally received; and the various reformations which have been achieved, from time to time, in morals, in religion, in social, and political life, since the Gospel begun its work. Take the great Reformation under Luther. The Bible had be come an unknown book. The Church had taken the place of Christ; penance that of justification by faith; the confessional that of the mercy seat. And the whole world was wrapt in the darkness of a long and terrible night of superstition and death. But an obscure monk, in the peculiar workings of the Spirit of God on his mind, sighs for light, longs for deliverance from the burden of sin. He finds an old and long neglected copy of the Bible. He reads, wonders, admires, weeps, prays, wrestles and rises from his knees a new man!-master of a new princi ple!-a new idea has taken possession of him!-a new life courses through all his veins! The "leaven" of evangelical doetrine is there, and in it the power of God destined to work the most signal reformation that the world had witnessed since apostolic times. He communicates with his brother monks. The leaven spreads. This new principle which he sees so clearly, and the power of which has wrought such a great and happy change in himself-"justification by faith alone in Jesus Christ" becomes the master idea of his life. He gathers courage and strength from it. It makes him the centre and the instrument of a mighty moral power. He preaches it with startling earnestness. He lifts up his thundering voice in the ears of a dead church and proclaims it. He battles for it. He grapples with popes, and cardinals, and legates, and princes, and kings, and emperors, and fights his way onward through hosts of persecutors and opposers. All Germany is in commotion. The new doctrine strikes its roots deep in the bosom of the church, and in the very heart of the world. The "leaven" spreads, agitates the long-stagnant mind of mankind, infuses new ideas of religion, of liberty, of life; works a wide-spread and glorious reformation, both in church and state; frees the Bible and the human conscience from priestly tyranny; gives the death-blow to the Papacy, and sows broadcast those seeds of evangelical truth which are still yielding their golden harvests. At a later period Cæsar and Anti-Christ combined to put down the spirit of religious liberty which was rising in Europe. In Scotland a noble band of men entered into a "solemn league and covenant" to defend that principle, cost what it would. They resisted with blood. They flung their banner to the breeze, and in the name of the God of liberty and Lord of the conscience, battled as for life. Long did the carnage rage. Their solid mountains trembled under the shock of hostile armies. But that principle was a part of the "leaven of the kingdom of heaven." Live it would; triumph it did. It gained a footing on its own free soil. It passed the Tweed. It infused itself into the Commonwealth of England. It finally, after many struggles and bloody conflicts, moulded the constitution of Britain into what it is. It took firm root in that land, and has made that people eminently prosperous, and the most influential for good of any on earth. That principle was the characteristic principle of the Puritans. The Pilgrim Fathers brought it here. It was the precious freight of the Mayflower. And here it spread, and grew, and prevailed. It has given us our free institutions. It fought the battles of our Revolution. It has raised us to a commanding place among the nations. It makes us the terror of despots and the hope of the oppressed of all nations. It is here fast solving the great problems involved in political government; and under the benign sway free evangelical faith, is working out a bright destiny for the world. The spirit of religious liberty is the "leaven" of God's power; it is one of the essential elements of his kingdom. It is his in the great heart of the of a world. It has been silently working there for ages and centuries. It begins now to force its way to the surface of society, and we witness its upheavings and convulsions: the masses of mankind now feel its quickening and uprising power: and all the pressure which popes and despots can lay upon it cannot repress this living spirit. It has its great work to do. It has been at that appointed work noiselessly and unceasingly in ages past; it is at it now; and it will go on to complete it in spite of all opposition, leavening the entire lump. IV. Finally. The history of individual conversions strikingly illustrates the principle of the text. How wonderful is the way that God usually brings about his purpose in this particular. Seldom are sinners converted in a sudden and violent manner, like Saul of Tarsus, or the thief on the cross. Conviction may suddenly and powerfully seize on a man, and he yields at once to Christ. But how many and varied are the antecedents of that final development and submission! What long processes have conducted to this result! What accumulations of light, thought, feeling, motives, experiences, and moral influences were there before he yielded! No man can lay his finger on the beginning of the kingdom of God in his soul; or on the particular agency which converted him. A serious thought, an unconscious impression, a casual word, a providential visitation, may be the "leaven" which the Holy Spirit hides in his heart. Unseen and unobserved there that leaven works. It gains an influence over the man. It waxes stronger; it begins to agitate his mind; the favorable time comes, and suddenly, it may be, there is a development outward; the heart is too full to contain all it feels; convictions have grown too deep to be resisted; the light shining within is so clear he dare no longer sin against it. "The kingdom of heaven" approached him in so quiet a way-worked by influences and agencies so subtle, and noiseless, and unobserved, that, before he was fairly conscious of its presence, he had submitted to it. It came not in the way of "observation;" not heralded by trumpets; not with "a great and strong wind," or with an "earthquake and fire," smoke and earthquakes, but in an unseen way, by unconscious and quiet influences, in "the still small voice" which spoke only to the heart within. This is the way that God usually converts men. Only God would have ever thought of such a way to bring about a saving change in man. But it is a way in manifest accordance with the philosophy of our being. It is a standing proof also that the kingdom of God is not of this world, and owes none of its suc cess to man. We name three concluding remarks, out of many, which this subject suggests. 1. We are not to despise the day of small things in regard to "the kingdom of heaven." We are ever prone to judge of this kingdom as we judge of other things. But in doing so we sin against its manifest laws, and against the entire history of its progress. The day of small things with man, is the day of great things with God! God has chosen this very way to regenerate the world in preference to any other, and he has uniformly honored and magnified it in his providence. No way, that we can conceive of, so signally displays the wisdom of God's counsels, the self-sustaining and self-propagating energy of truth, the power of grace, the unfailing and everlasting character of those principles and purposes which underlie his government. His kingdom on earth is not one of material power, or violent force, or arbitrary will; but a kingdom of spiritual truths, and moral influences, which, from their very nature, cannot operate primarily on the aggregate ignorance and wickedness of the world, and must take time to work out their destined results. Wherever the "kingdom of heaven" is-be it in the solitary heart of an obscure Christian, or in the centre of fearful masses of superstition and wickedness-there the power of the Highest will surely be displayed. Wherever we can hide the "leaven" of the gospel -be it in the weakest instruments--in the humblest agenciesin the most obscure places in the feeblest conceptions, and the slightest impressions, and the most unpromising fields-there we may confidently look for blessed results, sooner or later. O, put the "leaven," the precious, wonder-working "leaven" of the gospel, wherever you can find a mind or a heart to receive it, and God will see that it does its work! 2. We see in this law the reason why God makes such a selection of the subjects of his grace. He does not convert a whole nation, or city, or town, or neighborhood, or family, often. Man would have gone to work this way. On the contrary, He chooses one here and another there. He takes one from a family and ten from a tribe. And he does this that he may get the "leaven" into all their circles of being, and of influence, and of wickedness, and irreligion. It is that he may get it into contact with more hearts than he could in any other way; and cause it to work in its daily and intimate and most favored contact with the world to bring about its proposed change. 3. We infer hope for the world from our subject. The "leaven of the kingdom of heaven" is hid in it. It has been working its way in it, silently, but surely and permanently, for sixty centuries. It is working now by a thousand mysterious processesalong numberless living channels-by irresistible agencies, in the heart and conscience, and sentiments and life of the world. The lines of its influence are going out into all the earth. There are signs, unmistakable, that the hoary systems of error and iniquity feel to their centre the power of this kingdom, and that the mighty mass of human mind begins to be moved by the expansive and quickening energy of the gospel. That leaven will work and nothing can hinder it. It is the hidings of God's power, and nothing can withstand it; and all the world shall one day confess its all-subduing agency and come under the sway of its dominion. THE WEST. THE West may now be regarded as the great battle-field of the world-the place where, probably, more than anywhere else, the destinies of the world are to be decided. The struggle which is going on there for the mastery is to be more important in its issue than that of any battle ever fought in the plain of Esdraelon -more important than the result of the strife at Marathon, at Cannæ, at Bunker Hill, at Waterloo. More individuals are now, and are to be, engaged in the struggle; more interests are at stake; more powerful minds will be engaged; more talent will be developed; and more momentous results will follow. The eye of the world is, and should be, fixed with a more intense interest on that struggle than any which has ever occurred on the earth, for the ultimate issue will be more far-reaching and mighty. The centre of power in this nation has already gone from Plymouth, from New York, from Philadelphia, from Wash ington, over the Alleghanies, and is moving with fearful rapidity to the centre of that Great Valley-perhaps soon will have passed Cincinnati, and reached St. Louis. If this nation is to be free, the population of that valley is to preserve and perpetuate our freedom; if it is to be enslaved, the chains that are to fetter us are to be forged beyond the mountains. When Fisher Ames wished to raise the note of alarm at what he deemed a measure of most dangerous policy, he said that, if he had the power, he would lift his voice so that it would reach every log-house beyond the mountains. He who now seeks to rouse his country to a sense of her danger, must seek so to speak that his voice may be heard in all the cities, towns, and villages of the East-in those places where the battles for freedom have been fought, and where there is still power to send out an influence that shall determine the scale of victory in the great conflicts of the West. The struggle there is for the rule. It is to determine what shall be the governing mind of that vast land. Shall it be barbarism? Shall it be infidelity? Shall it be the Roman Catholic system Shall it be evangelical religion? Never were there so many passions and powers contending in any other conflict; never was a field so large; never was the prospective crown of victory so dazzling. Rev. Albert Barnes. |