NOTE ON SERMON III. (Page 35.) So imaging-for surely we may and should try to do sohis very voice and look, &c. I have ventured in another place (Essay on the Right Interpretation of the Scriptures, p. 392 and note), to regret the disuse of the crucifix in Protestant countries; and as the subject seems to me by no means unimportant in a practical point of view, I shall take this opportunity of recurring to it. 1. It is manifest to every thinking person that the fact of the incarnation was a virtual repeal of the letter of the second commandment. For in the person of Jesus Christ there was given us an image of God which we might and should represent to ourselves in our own minds; and what our thoughts and minds may lawfully and profitably dwell upon, may clearly be no less lawfully and profitably presented to our bodily senses: if it be right and useful to think of Christ, and by that very name we mean not the abstract notion of deity, but God made man,--the most effectual means of bringing him vividly present to our minds must be the best; and this is best effected, as is proved by the common feeling of mankind with regard to portraits, by enabling ourselves in some sort actually to see him. At the same time all anthropomorphism, in the bad sense of the term, is barred by the constant language of the Scripture concerning God the Father. The man, Christ Jesus, represents to us not the Godhead as it is in itself, but all that we can profitably conceive of it: the Godhead in itself, we are told, is utterly invisible and incomprehensible; and to attempt to conceive of it, or to image it to ourselves, were indeed a real violation of the second commandment. 2. The supposed evils of using the crucifix do not follow from the evils which have resulted from the image worship of the Roman Catholics. By far the greater part of their image worship is superstitious and blameable, not from its offering a visible object to our devotions, but an object altogether false and unlawful. Destroy every image of the virgin and the saints, and the feelings entertained towards them are no less blameable: it is the notion formed of them in the mind which is injurious; and it makes no sort of difference whether this notion be embodied in a visible shape or no. And, again, all the superstition connected with the wood of the true cross, or with the sacredness of any particular image of our Lord, is perfectly distinct from the Christian use of the crucifix, and has arisen merely from a general ignorance of the Gospel. If our Lord himself were to return to earth, no Christian, I suppose, would refuse to worship him; yet it would be a gross superstition to believe that his actual presence would of itself save us, or that to touch his garments would at once secure us from the judgment of God. Now what it were superstition to believe of himself, it is of course superstition to believe of his image; but if his living presence impressed his words more deeply on our hearts, would it be superstition then to seek his company? and if his image, though in a less degree, produce the same effect, if it keep him in our remembrance, and recall our wandering thoughts to him, is it superstition to use such an aid? 3. The world is ever present to us while Christ is absent. We need therefore all possible means to remind us of him whom visible things so tempt us to forget. Every one has felt the effect of a church in the most crowded parts of a large city; there, much more than in a peaceful country landscape, we feel thankful for the sight of the spire or tower, " whose silent finger points to heaven." But when the church is out of sight, what is there either in town or country to remind us of our heavenly calling? Is this consistent with Christian wisdom, knowing how prompt our senses are to lead us to evil, to be so careless in making them minister to good? The Bible Society, and other societies of the same kind, can have circulated the Scriptures to little purpose, if the sight of the cross and the crucifix would indeed minister to superstition rather than to godliness. But I believe that it would be far otherwise; and that it is one great benefit arising from the efforts of those societies, if we would but use it, that what is in itself a great help to holiness, would no longer, as in the days of the Reformation, be made an occasion of evil, because the true nature of the Gospel was not generally known. It will appear, from what has been said, that pictures or statues of our Lord are less required in a church than in any other place; and for this evident reason, that by the very act of going to church, and by our employment while there, we are reminded of Christ without any external aid. It is in our own houses, and in public places, not in themselves devoted to a religious purpose, that such Christian memorials are most needed; and though many would pass by them unmoved, yet there would be also many whom they would touch in some softer moment, and whose better thoughts and resolutions they would powerfully strengthen. Nor would it be a light matter that a mark of our Christian profession would thus be set visibly upon the whole land. Christianity should be mixed up with every part of our daily life; but it has been the practice of Protestantism to banish all outward signs of it from every place but a church: and although the signs may exist without the reality, yet it is not easy for the reality to exist amongst a people generally, without being accompanied also by the outward sign. SERMON IV. GOD IN CHRIST. MATTHEW, xi. 27. All things are delivered unto me of my Father; and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. BEFORE I proceed to say any thing of this verse, I will read the two verses that come just before it. "At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight." It seems to me, that taking these verses together with what follows in the text, the case now is very much the same as it was when our Lord spoke these words; it is still in a particular manner to those here called "babes," that is, to persons of simple minds, not having much knowledge, but ready to be taught, that it is revealed in its full extent how all things are delivered to Christ by his Father. To judge by their language on any serious occasion, whether of trouble or of joy, I should imagine that good Christians, amongst the poorer classes, looked up perhaps more directly to Christ as having all power both in heaven and in earth, than is the case with those who may be called "the wise and prudent." With these last, the term "Providence" is more in use: they speak and seem to think of God, rather in a general way, as the Maker of all things, than as he is revealed in the Gospel in the person of Jesus Christ, as our Saviour as well as our Maker. the difference is not altogether trifling: for, when we speak of Providence, we may, and often do, get our notions about it from other places than from the Scriptures, because it is a word which others, as well as Christians, have used; but when we speak of Christ, we think of God only as he has himself been pleased to reveal himself; for of Christ we know nothing whatever, but through the teaching of the Spirit of God. |