Sermons to the Natural Man | Page 4

know themselves. The Delphic oracle was never less obeyed than now, in this vortex of mechanical arts and luxury. For this reason, it is desirable that the religious teacher dwell consecutively upon topics that are connected with that which is within man,--his settled motives of action, and all those spontaneous on-goings of his soul of which he takes no notice, unless he is persuaded or impelled to do so. Some of the old painters produced powerful effects by one solitary color. The subject of moral evil contemplated in the heart of the individual man,--not described to him from the outside, but wrought out of his own being into incandescent letters, by the fierce chemistry of anxious perhaps agonizing reflection,--sin, the one awful fact in the history of man, if caused to pervade discourse will always impart to it a hue which, though it be monochromatic, arrests and holds the eye like the lurid color of an approaching storm-cloud.
With this statement respecting the aim and purport of these Sermons, and deeply conscious of their imperfections, especially for spiritual purposes, I send them out into the world, with the prayer that God the Spirit will deign to employ them as the means of awakening some souls from the lethargy of sin.
Union Theological Seminary, New York, _February 17_, 1871.
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CONTENTS.
I. THE FUTURE STATE A SELF-CONSCIOUS STATE
II. THE FUTURE STATE A SELF-CONSCIOUS STATE (continued)
III. GOD'S EXHAUSTIVE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN
IV. GOD'S EXHAUSTIVE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN (continued)
V. ALL MANKIND GUILTY; OR, EVERY MAN KNOWS MORE THAN HE PRACTISES
VI. SIN IN THE HEART THE SOURCE OF ERROR IN THE HEAD
VII. THE NECESSITY OF DIVINE INFLUENCES
VIII. THE NECESSITY OF DIVINE INFLUENCES (continued)
IX. THE IMPOTENCE OF THE LAW
X. SELF-SCRUTINY IN GOD'S PRESENCE
XI. SIN IS SPIRITUAL SLAVERY
XII. THE ORIGINAL AND THE ACTUAL RELATION OF MAN TO LAW
XIII. THE SIN OF OMISSION
XIV. THE SINFULNESS OF ORIGINAL SIN
XV. THE APPROBATION OF GOODNESS IS NOT THE LOVE OF IT
XVI. THE USE OF FEAR IN RELIGION
XVII. THE PRESENT LIFE AS BELATED TO THE FUTURE
XVIII. THE EXERCISE OF MERCY OPTIONAL WITH GOD
XIX. CHRISTIANITY REQUIRES THE TEMPER OF CHILDHOOD
XX. FAITH THE SOLE SAVING ACT
SERMONS.
THE FUTURE STATE A SELF-CONSCIOUS STATE.
1 Cor. xiii. 12.--"Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
The apostle Paul made this remark with reference to the blessedness of the Christian in eternity. Such assertions are frequent in the Scriptures. This same apostle, whose soul was so constantly dilated with the expectation of the beatific vision, assures the Corinthians, in another passage in this epistle, that "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." The beloved disciple John, also, though he seems to have lived in the spiritual world while he was upon the earth, and though the glories of eternity were made to pass before him in the visions of Patmos, is compelled to say of the sons of God, "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." And certainly the common Christian, as he looks forward with a mixture of hope and anxiety to his final state in eternity, will confess that he knows but "in part," and that a very small part, concerning it. He endures as seeing that which is invisible, and cherishes the hope that through Christ's redemption his eternity will be a condition of peace and purity, and that he shall know even as also he is known.
But it is not the Christian alone who is to enter eternity, and to whom the exchange of worlds will bring a luminous apprehension of many things that have hitherto been seen only through a glass darkly. Every human creature may say, when he thinks of the alteration that will come over his views of religious subjects upon entering another life, "Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. I am now in the midst of the vapors and smoke of this dim spot which men call earth, but then shall I stand in the dazzling light of the face of God, and labor under no doubt or delusion respecting my own character or that of my Eternal Judge."
A moment's reflection will convince any one, that the article and fact of death must of itself make a vast accession to the amount of a man's knowledge, because death introduces him into an entirely new state of existence. Foreign travel adds much to our stock of ideas, because we go into regions of the earth of which we had previously known only by the hearing of the ear. But the great and last journey that man takes carries him over into a province of which no book, not even the Bible itself, gives him any