and open them to the light; make the dulled ear hear for the first time the words of loving friends and the harmonies of music; give strength to the paralytic; restore health to the sick; remove gloom from the melancholy; give hope to the despairing, joy to the mourner; open the prison door; go among the low haunts of towns and cities and replace vice and poverty with virtue and riches; break off the manacles of the slave and bid the captive go free: stand by the death bed of one loved, and bid light again to the eye, glow to the cheek, and life and movement to the stiff limbs; and you can appreciate earthly salvation. But the giving of holiness for pollution; righteousness for sin; salvation for the eternally lost; and heaven for the helldeserving, who can understand? Yet, this is the salvation the Gospel proclaims. In Christ's side the flaming sword that guarded the way to the Tree of Life is buried; and the entrance to Paradise is wide and free to those who believe He is their Saviour. By His death the Temple veil is rent in twain, and we can enter the very Holy of Holies, and at the Mercy Seat lie in the full light of the Shekinah." 3. But then, further, the Gospel, though it is the power of God unto salvation, is this power only to him that believeth. Man is justified only by faith. Good words and good works can not do it. Nevertheless, let us understand that faith without works is dead. Pure faith is to believe that God, in His mercy to the world, gave Christ to endure the curse to which it was doomed When this is realized, pure faith urges the soul towards perfection in the way of obedience. It develops hope that, through Christ, salvation has come; and it compels consecration of all the energies to the development of love, the highest form of faith. Faith begets love,love to God for His love to you; and love to perishing man, -perishing, ignorant of his unutterable blessings. Hence comes a life devotion :-eagerness to know the will of God and alacrity to do it when known; desire to know the character of the Saviour, and constant searching for some means whereby to glorify Himna crucifixion of self and an entire consecration to His service. This is Christian perfection. But few attain it while beset in this sinful world, yet every true Christian seeks it. Hence his constant prayer is, "Lord, increase my faith." So, to every one who has faith, and whose faith works towards this perfection; to all such, the Gospel of Christ is the power of eternal salvation. This is the glorious Gospel that Christ gave to the world; and of this Gospel it was Paul's pride to boast." I closed the sermon with an earnest appeal to the "unconverted" among my hearers to accept this Gospel for themselves. The appeal took the form of an affectionate entreaty,—such form was characteristically instinctive with me, but the appeal was fraught, too, in accordance with my guiding Creed, with the most solemn and portentous warnings. I declared,- "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; and knowing the terror of the Law we persuade you." My last words were those of a hymn which I hoped would be effective in arousing some tender conscienceamong those to whom the life and death of Jesus were familiar, as they were to nearly all who heard me. "Ashamed of Jesus! Yes! I may, When I've no guilt to wash away, No fears to quell, no soul to save. Till then,-nor is my boasting vain,— That Christ is not ashamed of me." b. A Notable Sequence to the Sermon-An incident following the preaching of that first official sermon gave me not a little concern. I had become quite sensitive, intellectually, because of the experiences of which I have already written. The solemn closing appeal, however, had been conscientiously made; prepared in honest accord with the course of the instructions which I had received continually from childhood up to that time. My special training for the ministry had been shaped under the intention of leading me to preach not only "the good news of salvation," but to accompany that message with earnest warnings of the terrible consequences of refusal to accept the merciful Gospel. I was but doing my duty, therefore, when I said, in the closing appeal I had made to the "unconverted" among my hearers: "I beseech you not to be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, or refuse to accept it. Remember, you must live forever. Listen to the word of God, Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and my words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He shall come in His Glory.' Your condition is fearful. To-morrow it may be too late to be saved after death it certainly will be. Now, it is as though the Great Judge were holding you over the Pit of eternal misery. Only His long suffering power keeps you from falling into it. His cry is continually Look unto me and be saved.' Do not continue to rebel. Do not refuse longer to look. Patience may soon cease. The Hand which now sustains you may be withdrawn, and you will sink into that awful abyss where Mercy cannot enter; where Remorse will sting; Memory will gnaw, and the flame of Conscience will not be quenched forever." These were dreadful words. I knew perfectly well that they were dreadful at the time I spoke them. But I had no good reason for doubting their truth, then; and all the authority I recognized then had enjoined upon me the doctrine they taught, and had denounced doubt of them as, itself, the fruit of evil. When I gave the warning, I had in my possession some verses ascribed to one whom I, with hosts of others, revered as one of the most authoritative theological instructors. of the time,-Dr. Archibald Alexander, recently deceased. The verses had long been circulated by the Presbyterian Board of Publication as a denominational tract. They had been given to me in childhood, and had aroused in me many anxious hours. As late as 1868, I received a copy of them from an interested correspondent, who wrote, condemning me for having entered the Liberal Christian ministry and showing me what had probably become my fate. I did not quote these verses when I wrote the appeal and warning of that first sermon ; but the verses were vividly in mind as I wrote. I have never forgotten their awful movement: There is a time-we know not when,- A point we know not where,- There is a line, by us unseen, To pass that limit is to die,- It does not quench the beaming eye, But on that forehead God has set Unseen by man, for man, as yet Indeed, the doomed one's path below He feels, perchance, that all is well He lives, he dies,- he wakes in Hell, Oh, where, is that mysterious bourne Mascens, less i bly in this hymn, was T & a via Imi brodared my ministry to the Depare 3 mm vil de sem I have outlined. But. DE FALL TE D1 agrising consequence 12 Trg Lise. Na keg is preachment, I met me of my rev udefends & Episcopalian, who bung or dad f is a near by, had become an sit the ss ff is frontier Society. He Tentei I Lair & rey snus protest to me against the res seming appell with with my son had been closed. He asserted dit een was the doctrine of everlasting future i wise to proclaim it with biased I defended my office, of course. Nevertheless. I had in a messure already become prepared to shut there might be good reason for his rocke. Fesles what be sul reminded me of a story related of my favorite and model preacher, Fobert Murray McClerne. It will of his meeting a minister friend who ghy said that he had preached on Hell, the day before. McClayre did not answer for a few moments. Then, laying his band open his friend's shoulder, he asked, with tears in his eyes C21 Ald you preach it tenderly?" The protest of my Friscopalan parishioner, however, did not so much arcuse me sentimentally as awake to rerewed energy much I had thought in the past, and that had been for some time lying dormant. Throughout that summer I served my office, as a Presbyterian minister, conscientiously, and, I would have said, in loyal obedience to the training I had received. I had numerous conversations with my Episcopal friend, and with some others. Several of them were generously inclined |