Sermons to the Natural Man | Page 2

come to destroy the law
or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say
unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no
wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." John the Baptist describes
his own preaching, which was confessedly severe and legal, as being
far less searching than that of the Messiah whose near advent he
announced. "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he
that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to
bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with _fire_; whose
fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his
wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable
fire."
The general burden and strain of the Discourse with which the
Redeemer opened His ministry is preceptive and mandatory. Its
keynote is: "Thou shalt do this," and, "Thou shalt not do that;" "Thou
shalt be thus, in thine heart," and, "Thou shalt not be thus, in thine
heart." So little is said in it, comparatively, concerning what are called
the doctrines of grace, that it has often been cited to prove that the
creed of the Church has been expanded unduly, and made to contain
more than the Founder of Christianity really intended it should. The
absence, for example, of any direct and specific statement of the
doctrine of Atonement, in this important section of Christ's teaching,
has been instanced by the Socinian opponent as proof that this doctrine

is not so vital as the Church has always claimed it to be. But, Christ
was purposely silent respecting grace and its methods, until he had
_spiritualized Law_, and made it penetrate the human consciousness
like a sharp sword. Of what use would it have been to offer mercy,
before the sense of its need had been elicited? and how was this to be
elicited, but by the solemn and authoritative enunciation of law and
justice? There are, indeed, cheering intimations, in the Sermon on the
Mount, respecting the Divine mercy, and so there are in connection
with the giving of the Ten Commandments. But law, rather than grace,
is the main substance and burden of both. The great intention, in each
instance, is to convince of sin, preparatory to the offer of clemency.
The Decalogue is the legal basis of the Old Dispensation, and the
Sermon on the Mount is the legal basis of the New. When the
Redeemer, in the opening of His ministry, had provided the apparatus
of conviction, then He provided the apparatus of expiation. The Great
High-Priest, like the Levitical priest who typified Him, did not sprinkle
atoning blood indiscriminately. It was to bedew only him who felt and
confessed guilt.
This legal and minatory element in the words of Jesus has also been
noticed by the skeptic, and an argument has been founded upon it to
prove that He was soured by ill-success, and, like other merely human
reformers who have found the human heart too hard, for them, fell
away from the gentleness with which He began His ministry, into the
anger and denunciation of mortified ambition with which it closed.
This is the picture of Jesus Christ which Rénan presents in his
apocryphal Gospel. But the fact is, that the Redeemer began with law,
and was rigorous with sin from the very first. The Sermon on the
Mount was delivered not far from twelve months from the time of His
inauguration, by baptism, to the office of Messiah. And all along
through His ministry of three years and a half, He constantly employs
the law in order to prepare his hearers for grace. He was as gentle and
gracious to the penitent sinner, in the opening of His ministry, as he
was at the close of it; and He was as unsparing and severe towards the
hardened and self-righteous sinner, in His early Judaean, as He was in
His later Galilean ministry.
It is sometimes said that the surest way to produce conviction of sin is
to preach the Cross. There is a sense in which this is true, and there is a

sense in which it is false. If the Cross is set forth as the cursed tree on
which the Lord of Glory hung and suffered, to satisfy the demands of
Eternal Justice, then indeed there is fitness in the preaching to produce
the sense of guilt. But this is to preach the _law_, in its fullest extent,
and the most tremendous energy of its claims. Such discourse as this
must necessarily analyze law, define it, enforce it, and apply it in the
most cogent manner. For, only as the atonement of Christ