SERMON I. SHE HATH DONE WHAT SHE COULD. MARK XIV. 8. "She hath done what she could." THE Christian life is compared to a journey which is to be taken by a narrow way to a straight gate. "Straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it1." Straight indeed has that gate been, to effect a passage through which, for Adam's polluted race, that stupendous miracle of mercy was needful3, the Incarnation, Sufferings, and Death of the Everlasting SON of God! But although a passage be now possible to the adopted children of GOD", through the straight gate, the 1 St. Matt. vii. 14. 2 Rom. v. 12. Psalm xlix. 7-9; Acts, xvii, 3. 4 Rom. v. 21; vii. 18; Art ix. 5 Ephes. ii. 13-18. B lintel of which has been sprinkled with the blood of the immaculate Lamb', still we have each of us, like our Master, to take up our cross2; nor can we reach the gate, which Faith will open to us3, until we have toiled and travelled along the narrow path1. And they who thus toil and travel, who desire to tread in their Divine Master's steps, find the task the more difficult since on either side of the narrow way a precipice seems to yawn upon them;-since on either side there are difficulty and danger, perhaps destruction. Our journey is the more painful, because, to prevent a fall, we have constantly to preserve an equipoise. We have now to sway ourselves on this side, then on that, in order to avoid falling either on the one side or on the other. The gate is before us; to reach it we are to walk in a given line; to keep in that line, we have continually to be balancing this principle against that; not allowing any one principle, however important, so to oversway us as to hurry us into forgetfulness of any other principle; but, even though we may not ourselves perceive their consistency, trying to adhere to them both when both are enjoined. For example, 1 Cf. Exod. xii. 23; 1 Cor. v. 7; Heb. ix. 14. * St. Luke, ix. 23. we must ever remember our own responsibility as being, in many respects, free agents1, and yet we must not forget GOD's predestination2 to whatever it relates; we must act earnestly and labour diligently, as if all our success in all that we undertake depended upon ourselves, and yet we are to trace every event to the special, everinterfering Providence of GOD1: we are to hearken to St. Paul when he tells us that we are justified by faith only, but we are to listen likewise to St. James, on the other side, when he tells us that we are justified by works also"; we are to submit to self-denials, austerities, and mortifications, as if the formation of our moral character rested on selfdiscipline; and we are to have as regular and earnest and constant recourse to the means of grace, as if every thing depended upon grace. We are to look, for justification, to faith only as the inward instrument', and yet we are to have recourse to the Sacraments also as the outward means: not trusting to faith without the Sacraments, nor to the Sacraments without faith, nor to 2 Eph. iii. 9-11. 1 Deut. xxx. 19; Eccl. ix. 10, 11. • St. Matthew, vi. 26, 30; St. Luke, xii. 6, 7, 24; 1 Samuel ii 6, 7; Job, either without repentance; nor to any or all of these except as means of uniting us still more closely to CHRIST the SAVIOUR. These doctrines and duties sometimes appear to stand in opposition to one another, and the mind is so desirous to have them reconciled, that to meet that desire speculative men have formed a variety of systems. This is the origin of theological schools and sects, and this it is that binds men together in schools and sects: the school or sect to which a man belongs being that which affords to his mind the easiest solution to the difficulties which arise from the opposing nature of some of our duties. It were much to be wished that men would always remember that these systems, invented to make religion more intelligible than GOD has made it in the Holy Scriptures, are merely human inventions, and that there is always danger in adopting a system, since a system is generally formed by so insisting on one great principle which may be true, as to explain away another principle which is equally true: sometimes it places a doctrine, such as justification by faith, in the place of CHRIST HIMSELF, and teaches men to suppose that if they hold certain opinions they are safe, whereas we are only really safe by being mystically united with CHRIST our SAVIOUR, by being one with HIM, so that HE is |