A SERMON, &c. HEB. Xii. 22, 23, 24. "But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the Living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of Angels. To the general assembly and Church of the first-born which are written in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect; and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the Blood of Sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel." THE special object of this Feast differs in kind from that of any other in the Church's kalendar. Hitherto we have traced the prints left upon the sands of this world by men of like nature with ourselves. Following their King, the saints of Christ have one by one preceded us, bearing our burdens, groaning under our sorrows, tried by our temptations, assailed by our enemies, weakened, it may be, by our falls, upheld by that grace which may be ours. Peaceful as is now their unbroken rest in Christ's paradise; safe as they are in His hands, refreshed as we believe them to be in that unknown land, which the fourfold stream of God's presence ever waters, by special visitations of the Beloved of their souls; new and great, and on many sides by us inconceivable as are the conditions of that life of theirs, which is so entirely hidden with Christ in God; yet are they our very brethren. With some of them we have directly conversed; upon some of them we have leant heretofore in our journey through life and very bare and desolate has it been to us since they were taken to their rest. Many have been patterns whom we have striven, with whatever feebleness, to copy. With all we have, and feel, the deep and mysterious union of a common nature. High and awful as is the thought, we do believe that what they are, that we may be that the grace which wrought in them works in us that the marvellous gift of regeneration which, even from the cradle, drew some of them by a multitude of small steps and imperceptible gradations, up to the highest mysteries of the hidden life, and which in others wrought more marvellously yet, transforming pollution into purity, sinners into penitents, and penitents into saints, that this fearful and blessed gift is ours also, and must work in us either a horrible destruction or the likeness of their glory. And hence the first instincts of the new life draw us into a sensible unity with the blessed company of Christ's saints; of "the spirits of just men made perfect." But, so it is not as to those blessed spirits of whom we keep remembrance to-day. With them we have no community of nature; we know not even whether they are material beings, or beings purely spiritual. Directly there seem no common links between ourselves and them; nay, their very nobleness of state seems to part them from us utterly. Wherever we read of them in the Word of God, it is as of those who are in the full radiance of the light ineffable, and are pervaded with its lustre. Like clouds which float in the fulness of the sunbeams, they give back to us the radiance of the eternal throne, and are themselves of a brightness too dazzling for our weakened gaze. Such was that Angel whom S. John saw in vision, and at whose feet he would have fallen down and worshipped, by whose glory the earth was lightened. And this majesty which rests upon them is the outward expression of their inward holiness; they are emphatically "the holy Angels." What a ground then of separation is there here between ourselves and them. They have never known sin. It is not with them as with the highest saint, who has himself been recovered by a mighty grace, and even in his utmost purity, still knows the secrets of corruption, and can feel in the true unity of sympathy for the tempted and the guilty. They are "the elect Angels ;" the Angels who kept their first estate. On their perfect purity of being has passed no shadow of blemish or corruption. They are as they were when the infinite Love of the Creator breathed forth their unsullied being into the full perfectness of absolute holiness. They have ever known, and done, and loved in all things the Will of God. To each one of them that blessed law which holds together their exalted ranks, has been the very purpose of his being. How must sin then appear to such as these? How incomprehensible must be its mystery, how hideous its defilement. If, as it seems alike from God's Word and the conclusions of reason, the creature cannot possess a knowledge of evil whilst he is himself unstained with it, what a black darkness must wrap us up from that angelic gaze. Self-will, that master sin, with all its train of fleshly impurities, and spiritual defilements; the high thought, the unbelieving heart, the rebellious striving, the imbruted spirit, how must the sight of these in one so feeble as man shew to those elder born of God's creation, whose whole glorious and exalted being is but the energy of perfect love, rejoicing in the blessedness of the Creator's Will. |