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410

SCHEMES OF IMPROVEMENT.

[Serm. the weary maze will become a blessed order, and that you will think of the condition of your race and of its members with a sympathy and a hope which no theories of perfectibility can impart, which only the God of Sympathy and Hope and Consolation can bestow.

But, brethren, to bear the days in which they live is harder for most than to consider the days that are gone. The actual sins and miseries by which a land is vexed should be more to us than all which we hear of by distant report. Whether greater or less, they are those with which we are concerned; they are the beams in our eyes which must make our discernment of the motes in the eyes of others uncertain and hazardous. Yet so many are disposed to dwell on the last and forget the first, to pour forth felicitations on our blessed freedom from corruptions and idolatries or forms of unbelief which afflict neighbouring lands, that other men, experiencing how great our idolatry is, how deep our unbelief, are easily tempted to think we might advantageously change conditions with almost any of those whom we have been used to fly from or despise. There are some who, being at the furthest remove from this opinion, yet feeling how much we need reformation, hope that it may come through the acts of civil rulers. There are some who, scorning all such help, would cry out, that powers, now withheld from the priests and prophets of the land for removing their own grievances, should with all speed be restored to them. Brethren, we may take up with any of these conclusions, we may exchange one for another very frequently, we may at last acquiesce in the opinion that the Church in this land, perhaps in all lands, is destined to perish by slow decay or sudden violence, till we learn to feel how deeply rooted the evil is, how

XXIII.]

THE TEST OF THEM.

411

closely it touches the vitals of society, how near it is to ourselves. Then we shall give over hoping any thing from assimilations to foreigners, we shall think that, even when the original in its own region is innocent and laudable, the copy is likely to be insincere and unnatural, that in general, when we set out with a purpose of imitating, we shall choose what is worst in the practices of others and omit what is best, that the hankering after novelties is the sign of a disease within which the obtaining of them certainly would

not cure.

Then we shall say, 'the rough work which civil rulers can do in cutting up weeds may be inevitable; but it will be done blindly and ignorantly, it will probably destroy as much of wheat as of tares, it will certainly not destroy any of the corruptions in the soil which cause the tares to spring up and the wheat to perish.' Then we shall say 'we churchmen shall have power enough when we know how to use it. But may God give us reformation first; legislative functions, if we require them, afterwards. May He leave us not to the miserable delusion that we can set other men right by any processes which shall not strike first at their sins in ourselves, or that these can be reached till we submit them to God's discipline, till we believe that it is His will to set us and all men right, if we we do not fancy that we can be right without Him.'

And so we are brought back in this case also to the potter's house. But we must learn there that other fearful lesson which Jeremiah learnt, and which is as true for us as it was for the house of Israel. If God's promise, that His Son's kingdom shall have no end, means that all the races which He has invited to become portions of that kingdom, shall always continue to be portions of it, how should Jerusalem, Constantinople, Alexandria, have fallen

412

HOPE FOR NATIONS.

[Serm.

under the power of the Crescent? Are not these cities proofs that the clay is marred in the new, as it was in the old, time, when it resists the will of the Artificer? Why should Romanists or Protestants think that the law will be violated in their case? What is there in the clay of Italy, Germany, France, England, to give it a special exemption from the sentence upon that which is profitable for nothing? Let us not be high-minded, but fear. It is written, "If he spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He spare not thee." But it is written also, that "the casting away of them was the riches of the world." It is written further that "all Israel shall be saved." Even after the clay in human eyes has been utterly marred, we know that the Potter still looks after it, still seeks to bring the true form out of it. No one word of His can fall to the ground. Surely these words cannot, which are sealed with the blood of the Son of God; "He willeth that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth."

We know, that whatever happens to one generation or another, the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established above the hills, and that all the nations shall flow unto it. We know that the regenerating spirit of Him who has ascended on high, that He might fill all things, shall cast out all evil spirits, and shall claim human clay and all natural things for Himself. We know that God has said He will write upon human hearts His own name and the name of the new Jerusalem, His holy city. And since the glory of the universe implies the blessedness of the individuals who compose it, since our belief in the immortality of God's kingdom does not interfere with the belief in a personal immortality but sustains and ratifies it, we are sure that the vision in the potter's house will be fulfilled

XXIII.]

HOPES FOR HUMAN CLAY.

413

in another very literal and blessed manner. He, who has given each of us a tenement of clay, may subject it to much hard discipline, may suffer it at last to be quite marred and to return to its kindred earth again. "But if the Spirit of Him who raised up Christ from the dead dwell in us, He will also quicken our mortal bodies." Only that, which hinders the shining forth of the spiritual beauty in the human form, will perish. The body of humiliation will be made like to Christ's glorious body by that power whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself.

SERMON XXIV.

THE NEW COVENANT.

LINCOLN'S INN, WHITSUNDAY.-MAY 30, 1852.

JEREMIAH, XXXI. 31-34.

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was a husband to them, saith the Lord; but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall by my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

THE later chapters of Jeremiah, which do not follow each other in chronological order and in which there are many

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