15 SERMON II. Sunday, February 8, 1835. ON THE DUTY AND DUE EFFECT OF PREACHING THE WORD OF GOD. JEREMIAH, XXIII. 28, 29. He that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces? man. THE Bible is, in very truth, not only the most wonderful book in the world, (as it needs must be which has God for its author,) but it is also the most precious and blessed of all the gifts of God to And yet, strange and incredible as it ought to appear, (and as it must appear to the angels in heaven,) how is it not slighted and neglected, how is it not perverted and blasphemed, even by numbers of these very beings for whose happiness and salvation the great God and Father of all, mercifully ordained and gave it! The Bible, or "The Book," (as the word bible pre-eminently means,) is the Word of God! And there is something in this expression and idea that ought peculiarly to attract and to rivet our most reverential attention. The Word of God! We are daily accustomed to hear and to read the word of man, but this is the Word of God, the express dictation of the invisible Being, the Book of God; or, as the Bible is actually a collection of books, written at various times by different persons, and which took two thousand years to complete, it may properly be called the Library of God, or the Library of Heaven, agreeably to the tenor of that exclamation of David, in the 119th psalm, "O Lord, thy word endureth for ever in heaven!" Library after library of human erudition have been destroyed in the wreck of ages; but the Library of Heaven, the Book of God, like the ark of Noah, has not only escaped the wreck of ages, but like the church, typified by the ark of Noah, it has thriven and multiplied, as the stars in heaven for multitude. Instead of being a single library, only to be consulted in one town or country, the Bible is a library in every person's hands that chooses to possess it. And the Bible Societies of Christendom, engaged as they are in dispersing it among all lands, are fulfilling its own blessed prophecy: "that the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea ;"* and also that other command of the great incarnate Word, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature!" + The quantity of Bibles shipped for foreign parts (and particularly upon the occasion of the ever memorable emancipation of the slaves in the British West Indian colonies, on the first of August last) were computed, I am informed, not according to number, but according to the ton weight of Bibles that were freighted! Happy, glorious England! more great and glorious in thus liberally dispensing the great gift of the Book of God to those who had it not; more, far more great and glorious, I say, by this angelic species of munificence, than by CONTENTS. All her deeds, on field or flood, Of glory drench'd in human blood! The history and the destiny of the Bible, therefore are alike wonderful, as well as its unsearchable And when we compare the MATter of the vast number of books and libraries which there are, or have been in the world, with the contents of this single volume, this extraordinary volume; when we consider what it is, and what it professes * Isaiah, xi. 9; Habakkuk, ii. 14. to be surely our curiosity, our veneration, our appreciation of it, ought gradually to increase, until it have taken such a hold upon our affections and upon our habits, that we find a daily recurrence to its heavenly lore indispensable to our peace and comfort of life; and that it have become to each of us personally what we read of its having been to those who speak of it as it is spoken of in its own sacred pages: "Lord, what love have I unto thy law all the day long is my study in it.” * Nevertheless, such is not the case most commonly. Any book rather than the Bible is apt to please too many of us; and if, by some mistake, we find the Bible open in our hands, it is too often as quickly closed as if we had seen the face of an enemy whose appearance was most unwelcome! And if the subject of religion itself be that of our inquiry, it is the word of man that is appealed to and sought after rather than the Word of God, which is looked upon as a book shut up and sealed, instead of as one whose statements are so plain, and whose characters are so clear, that "he may run that readeth, and the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein." + The same observation holds good likewise with respect to the matter and the manner of public preaching. "Speak unto us smooth things; pro+ Isaiah, xxxv. 8. * Psalm cxix. 97. phesy deceits,"* is the secret solicitation of some. "Have mercy upon our little foibles-have respect to our peculiar notions-take care not to offend our ears have regard to our rank in life,"-compose the tacit insinuation of others. That uncompromising sort of preaching used by St. Paul, about righteousness, and temperance, and judgment to come," that made Felix tremble,† we cannot away with. The style of denunciation used by our Lord, "Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites !'‡ would be a personal insult. The address of John the Baptist in the wilderness to some of those who came to be baptized, when he said, 'O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth, therefore, fruits meet for repentance,'§ is language not suited to the civilized condition of our times, nor to the fastidiousness of our taste. But, my brethren, allow me, with all Christian love and courtesy, to observe, that the Minister of Religion stands in his place, not to minister to the notions of the times, to the taste of the fashion, to the amusement of the idle, to the skill of the supercilious, or even to the approbation of the good. He stands clothed with an authority not his own— commissioned with a message which he is bound to Isa. xxx. 10. + Acts xxiv. 25. |