Sermon.

Preached to the Free Church General Assembly,
16th May 1844.
BY THE REV. C. J. BROWN.
I.

“I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what He will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reprov’d” (Hab. ii. 1).

This remarkable sermon was preached to the Free Church General Assembly, 16th May 1844. In addition to the members of Assembly present, there was an audience of 3000 persons in the hall of Canonmills, “deeply impressed, interested and devout,” so runs the report. The sermon made a profound impression. “The impression produced,” says the account, “was very great. Many, both in the Assembly and among the audience, were affected even to tears. The leading sins of the ministry were enumerated and laid bare, and charged home with an impressiveness of scriptural appeal, and a searching power, which all very evidently felt. The attention of the audience, from the beginning to the close, was unbroken. When Mr Brown had concluded, the 11th, 12th, and 13th verses of the 51st Psalm were sung, after which Dr Duncan being called upon, offered up an earnest, copious, and most suitable prayer.”—Editor.

FATHERS and Brethren,—In endeavouring to fulfil the duty which has been assigned to me, I would bear in mind that the object of our assembling to-day is not so much to speak to one another as to speak unto the Lord our God, to pour out our hearts before Him in sorrowful confession of our many, many shortcomings and sins; in order that, betaking ourselves to the fountain of Emmanuel’s blood, and taking hold of the strength of the good and Holy Spirit of Christ, we may humbly and heartily offer ourselves to the Lord, that if He have any delight in us, and if we have found grace in His sight, it may please Him, in infinite mercy, to make some use of us as His instruments, as workers together with Him, in the great work on which His own heart is set, and for which the Son of God died. And thus I think that I may best fall in with the character and design of this service if I shall make it the simple object of these remarks to suggest some things which may form the materials of our after devotions; and, specially, if I endeavour to mark, successively, some of the chief lines of our exceeding guilt and shortcoming before the Lord, first, in reference to the Ministry, and then, more briefly, in reference to the Eldership and the People.

I. I would first call upon myself, and every Minister present, every watchman on the walls of Zion to take up the language of the text, “I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what He will say unto me.” “Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.” I will watch to see what Thou wilt say unto me of mine iniquities and sins, as one set by Thee to “watch for souls as they that must give account.”

I. And I feel constrained to begin, as the root and spring of all our sins as Ministers together, with the low state of our souls as Christians, the low state of religion in our own hearts. I assume in this, fathers and brethren, that we are Christians, that we are converted men; although the Lord is witness that I assume it not as thinking it a matter of course in reference to myself, at least: and I do believe that it were a very salutary thing this day, be our state and character before God what it may, if we were bearing solemnly in mind that a man may preach the gospel to others and be himself a castaway; that Ministers are in singular hazard of deceiving themselves in this matter; that many will say another day, Lord have we not prophesied in Thy name, and in Thy name cast out devils, to whom He will answer and say, I never knew you, depart from Me; that Judas was the last of all the twelve, when the announcement was made, “One of you shall betray Me,” to put the question, “Lord, is it I?” O it were well if we this day heard that great and gracious One addressing the inquiry to each of us, with which He thrice prefaced the command, “Feed my sheep,” “Feed my lambs,” “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” Blessed if we shall be able, with humble hope, to answer, “Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.”

As we ought not to be Ministers at all, however, if we be not Christians, regenerated men, so, assuming this, I believe that one of our chief sins, and the parent of all other evils in the really Christian ministry together, is to be found in the low state of godliness, of the life of God, in our own souls. I am aware that this statement is liable to be misunderstood; and all I can afford time to say, to obviate misapprehension, is just this, that I am not here comparing us with our former selves. In this view, perhaps, we may have made some happy progress; and this, that we are not quite so far off as before, may just be the secret of our seeing more distinctly to-day our fearful distance from the mark. I am comparing our spiritual state with such words, such notes of a lively and prosperous Christian as the following:—”Our conversation is in heaven—Thy word was found of me, and I did eat it; and it was to me the joy and the rejoicing of my heart—To me to live is Christ—Enoch walked with God—I press towards the mark—My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?”

Now let me try if I can bring out, in a sentence or two, the vital connection between this state of the soul and the discharge of the whole work of the ministry. See it, for instance, in that word of Paul (II. Tim. i. 12), “I suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for”—mark the secret of his heroic bearing; we talk of the magnanimity, the heroism of Paul; but observe the secret of all his labours and toils and sufferings—”for I know,” says he, “whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” Ah! that is what will make a man go through the flames for Christ, that element deep and strong in his soul, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him.” Or, see the same in the words of David we were just singing, “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and uphold me with Thy free Spirit; then will I teach transgressors Thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto Thee”; then—Lord, how shall I teach Thy ways, unless I am seeking to walk close and straight in them myself—unless, restored and upheld by Thy good Spirit, I am both discovering and loathing my own ways, and carefully and constantly seeking to tread in Thine? Or take it thus—Our themes, fathers and brethren, the hinges of the ministry, are Sin and Christ. Well, how shall a man discover the sins of others, solidly and tenderly, not harshly, but tenderly and lovingly, who is not seeing and weeping in secret places over his own iniquities? And as for Christ, the very idea of the Christ, the Beloved of the Father, His “elect, in whom His soul delighteth,” is one of the heart and soul. It is not to be taken up by mere intellectual apprehension. “The love of Christ constraineth us,” says Paul, giving the spring of his whole labours. “Lovest thou Me,” Peter? then “Feed my lambs,” “Feed my sheep”—thou can’st never feed them otherwise. “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.” “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”

Or take this view of it. The Word is our instrument, our sword. But the way to get into the very heart of the Word, and to get the Word into our heart, so as to have it inwrought into our very being, is nothing else than our living on it in secret; praying over it, weeping, rejoicing over it. Thus it becomes our own, and we come to use and wield it with facility. Otherwise, the Word is to a man what Saul’s armour was to David when he said, “I cannot go with these, for I have not proved them.” It is a cumbrous, clumsy thing hanging about a man which he can make no use of. The theme, in short, is endless. If we are not prospering in soul, living much in secret prayer, we are cut off from the fountain of all our strength for the ministry together. What guilt lies on us in this whole matter! What mischief have we thus done to souls! What good have we not failed to do! What endless opportunities have we lost! We, who ought to have been “ensamples to the flock”—we, who have had so many and peculiar advantages for walking with God (for I can never admit that our familiarity with divine things, often as we suffer it to become a snare to us, is not in itself a mighty privilege and advantage), alas, our distance from Him has all but paralysed our ministry! We have not dwelt in the secret place of the Most High. We have not lived under the powers of the world to come. We have not walked humbly, and softly, and mournfully before the Lord. We have not gloried in the cross of Christ. His Word has not dwelt richly in us. We have not “spoken because we believed.” I have no doubt we have spoken what we believed, but too little because—because we “could not but speak the things which we had seen and heard.” Thus have we been too much in our own work like some nervous, sickly man that must work, rather because he is yet upon his feet. But we have wanted the spring, and vigour, and elasticity of the ministry, which comes from a sound, healthy state of the soul before God. “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy loving kindness; according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.”

1. If we have felt anything, beloved, of this parent guilt—this inner, central iniquity—I may mark more briefly a second line of ministerial sin coming necessarily out from that centre. I refer to very faint impressions of the character and great objects and ends of our ministry. Take these, for brevity’s sake, in that one word, “Come with me, and I will make you fishers of men”—”from henceforth thou shalt catch men.” Now, there is one simple way in which, I think, it may come out this day, by the Lord’s blessing, to our painful and sorrowful apprehension, how faint have been our impressions of this the great character and end of our work. I allude to the little concern we have felt, comparatively (and here I cannot speak without trembling and dismay), the little real hearty concern we have felt, provided we were carried in some comfortable manner through our work, about the spiritual fruits and results of it—whether souls were verily saved by it or no. Ah! the truth here comes out too undeniably in such a contrast as that, “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart; for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh.” “God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ.” “My little children, of whom I travail in birth until Christ be formed in you.” “Now we live if ye stand fast in the Lord.” I would venture to ask ministers who know what prayer about their work is, whether they are accustomed to pray much for the success of their sermons after they have been preached, when the work of the day is over, as we say. I fear the fact on this head will be found to disclose some painful things, evincing that, even when we have prayed, the object of concern with us has more been, at bottom, the assisting and carrying through of the messenger than the saving success of the message.

Some one perhaps will say that issues are God’s and duty only ours. No doubt issues, issues from death, are God’s, to accomplish them: but O! they are ours to long, and strive, and pray and pant after them. And, in truth, we never can do our duty till we are in that spirit; till we feel, in some measure, about the souls of unconverted men, as we should about persons intoxicated and lying half asleep in a house in flames. “I became all things to all men,” says Paul, “that I might by all means save some.” It was the intense desire of saving some, pulling them out of the fire, that impelled him to the using of all possible means, now this one, and now that—”to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak; I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” And elsewhere in his writings (I. Thess. ii. 8), “Being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us”; anything to save your souls—”for ye remember,” he adds, “our labour and travail; for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.” A few verses before he had said, “we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention”; again, immediately, “we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children.” But whether it were the boldness of the lion, or the gentleness of the mother and nurse, the secret of each lay there, “so being affectionately desirous of you,” etc., “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” Look how it is in any other matter. If a man goes to negotiate some affair at a market, or with a mercantile house, it is little comfort to him that he has gone to the place and made his proposals if the bargain is not closed—if the gain is not secured, the affair brought to a successful issue. Ah! souls are our gain, fathers and brethren, our hire and wages. “He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal.” Why are we so indifferent about our profits and gains? “My dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown”—”what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming?” “Compel them to come in,” says the Lord. The counterpart of that is not “doing our duty,” in the ordinary sense of the word, but it is the giving men no rest, and “giving the Lord no rest”—pleading with men for God, and with God for men—longing, agonising to pluck souls as brands from the burning—labouring in the spirit of these words, “whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” “I acknowledge my transgressions, Lord, and my sin is ever before me”—”God be merciful to me a sinner.”

1. Let me mark a third line of ministerial guilt, inseparably connected with these, in our little, little realising of the exceeding weight and responsibility of the Ministry. One verse here is a volume. “We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish; to the one we are the savour of life unto life, and to the other the savour of death unto death.” No wonder if Paul adds, “and who is sufficient for these things?” No wonder if he speaks elsewhere of being with the Corinthians “in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.” Alas, that there is so little of this trembling among us—that we can enter our pulpits with so light a heart, especially when we have got our preparations pretty well completed. Ah! surely that were just the time, if we felt aright, to be most of all weighed down in spirit by the recollection “to the other the saviour of death unto death.” No doubt we cannot make the word to be the saviour of life unto life to any soul. But what if it fail of this through our fault—what if, through our fault, it become the “saviour of death unto death?” Can we, indeed, deceive ourselves so far as to doubt that in many, many cases it actually has? “O Lord, have mercy upon me”—”deliver me from blood-guiltiness, and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness!” How lightly have we often spoken in the public prayers of the word not returning to God void! Doubtless it shall not. But what if it have found its issue and fruit, through our neglect, in the aggravated destruction of our hearers? I find Dr Kalley of Madeira, in a letter addressed a few weeks ago to a society in this country, speaking of the Word of God, under the figure of “a conductor for the galvanism of heaven.” “It stretches forth,” says he, “from God into our world, and when its point is directed to the soul of man, there is a transmission of power, compared with which that of all the batteries on earth is nothing. It may consume—it may become the saviour of death unto the soul, adding the most agonizing torments to the eternal misery of an immortal spirit. With what feelings—with what care and prayer should we employ so tremendous an engine, lest through our fault it destroy.” That is in the spirit of the apostle, “who is sufficient for these things?”

2. This leads me to mark a fourth great line of ministerial guilt, in our very faint impressions of where the strength and sufficiency of the Minister alone reside. Ah! we are too little with thee, Lord—too little in thy secret place—too little conversant with the great end of our ministry—the quickening of the dead, raising souls from the grave of trespasses and sins, bringing sinners into vital union and communion with Jesus Christ—to enter much into that word, “the weapons of our warfare are mighty through God”; “our sufficiency is of God”; “when I am weak, then am I strong.” For the ends we are practically very much satisfied with, our own strength may well enough suffice. It may be enough for preparing a suitable sermon and preaching it; but it will not suffice to save lost souls; and what we need is to go to our sermon, and to our pulpit, feeling, Lord, I go, under thee to pluck men as brands from the burning—to open their eyes, and turn them from darkness to light—to espouse sinners, in an everlasting betrothment, to Christ Jesus—to present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. Who is sufficient for these things? In such a work weakness is strength. Strength is but deep-felt weakness linking itself to the arm and word and love of Jehovah. Here the little child is truly the “greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.” “My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

How little have we known of that baptism of suffering and humiliation, which Moses underwent, and Joseph, and David, and Paul—Luther, also, and Zwingle, and all that have been greatly blessed of God in any age! We have known little of the mystery of combining the careful use of all appointed preparations and means, with the renunciation of all—of using them, and yet, in the very act, paradox though it may seem, renouncing them—aye, and the more complete they are, the more renouncing them, and the more simply and singly looking to the Lord alone. “What was felt most,” (writes Dr Duff in the account of his memorable shipwreck), “as being to him irreparable, was the entire loss of all his journals, notes, memorandums, essays, etc., etc., the fruits, such as they were, of the reflection and research of many years, when he possessed special opportunities which he could never expect again to realise. ‘But they are gone,’ was his own written declaration at the time, ‘they are gone’; and blessed be God I can say ‘gone,’ without a murmur. So perish all earthly things; the treasure that is laid up in heaven alone is unassailable. . . . The only article which was recovered, in a wholly undamaged state, was a quarto copy of Bagster’s Comprehensive Bible and Psalm Book. . . . Ah! the lesson and the schooling of a mysterious Providence seemed now complete; and its designs and intentions perfectly developed. . . . It seemed as if the heavens had suddenly opened, and a voice from the Holy One had sounded with resistless emphasis in his ears, saying, ‘Fool that you are, to have centred so unduly your cares and anxieties and affections on books and papers! So intense and devoted was the homage of your heart towards these in the eyes of the heart-searching God, that, as there seemed no other method of weaning you from them, your heavenly Father, to save you from the doom of an idolater, has in mercy to your soul removed the idols—sinking them all to the bottom of the deep, or scattering them in useless fragments on this desolate shore—all, all save one, and that is, the ever-blessed Book of life. Here is the Bible for you—grasp it as the richest treasure of infinite wisdom and infinite love—a treasure which, in the balance of heaven, would outweigh all the books and papers in the universe. Go, and prayerfully consult that unerring chart—that infallible directory—humbly trust to it, and to your God; and never, never will you have reason to regret that you have been violently severed from your idols, as thereby you become more firmly linked by the golden chain of grace to the throne of the Eternal*.” How little, thus also, through ignorance of our own utter insufficiency, have we known of prayer! As for Luther’s three hours of prayer, daily, it is now rather an anecdote we tell, than a thing at all approached to. And yet we fail less seriously in the time, than in the spirit of this exercise—the spirit which would come out of the soul’s being intensely set on the end of the ministry, in the excellency of it, the exceeding difficulty of it, and the divine promise of it—the spirit of Jacob’s wrestling with the Angel of the Covenant, and of Moses’ strange unearthly pleading upon the Mount—of Jacob’s “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me,” and Moses’ answer to the Lord’s, “let me alone”—”remember, Lord, Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self,” etc., etc. (Exodus xxxii. 9-14). How little do we know of such pleading as that in Exodus xxxiii. 12-15, divinely applicable to the ministry, throughout, “and Moses said unto the Lord, See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people; and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me: yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight. Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight; and consider that this nation is thy people. And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. And he said unto Him, if thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.” How wanting have we been, alike, in pleading with God for our people, and with our people for God! “Hide thy face, Lord, from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”

(To be continued.)

• Duff on India and India Missions, pp. 492-4. I would add that the importance of anxious and careful preparation, both for the ministry in general, and for the pulpit, every Lord’s Day in particular, is not to be over-estimated. Nothing can be more mistaken, however, than the sort of ‘antagonism’ which we are apt to conceive of, and in our folly and carnality often to create between such preparations, and a spirit of simple dependence upon God. Never, perhaps, on various accounts has a minister more cause to hang, with childlike simplicity, on the arm and promise of the living God—in a sense renouncing his whole preparations, in the very act of making the fullest use of them, than just when they are the most complete and satisfactory, in their own place, and for their own ends.