And may you be able to answer as you hear it, "Yes, blessed be God, I am not afraid to come to judgment, for 'Bold shall I stand in that great day; Remember, salvation is by Christ; not of works, nor of the will of man, nor of blood, nor birth; and this is the message which Christ bids us deliver, "Whosoever calleth on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Oh! may you be led to call on his name by prayer and humble faith, and you shall be saved. "Whosoever believeth on him is not condemned." Oh! may you believe on him to-night if you never have done so before. Touch the hem of his garment, thou with the bloody issue. Say, "Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me," thou with the blind eye; say, "Lord save me, or I perish," thou who art ready to sink; and the ready ears of Jesus, and the ready hands of the Saviour shall now hear and bless if the heart be ready, and if the soul is asking mercy. May God grant you the richest blessings of his grace for Christ Jesu's sake. Amen. Perhaps it would be improper in the pulpit to wish you "the compliments of the season," but I do wish you the blessing of God at all seasons, in season and out of season, and that is my blessing upon you to-night, that you may have the blessing of God living, and his blessing dying; his blessing in his advent, and his blessing at the judgment. The Lord bless you more and more; may he give you a blessed Christmas and the happiest of new years, and to him shall be all the praise and the honour. A SECRET AND YET NO SECRET. A Sermon DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 26TH, 1862, BY AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. "A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.”— Solomon's Song iv. 12 and 15. OBSERVE the sweet titles with which Christ the husband addresses his Church the bride. "My sister," one near to me by ties of nature, my next of kin, born of the same mother, partaker of the same sympathies. My spouse, nearest and dearest, united to me by the tenderest bands of love; my sweet companion, part of my own self. My sister, by my Incarnation which makes me bone of thy bone and flesh of thy flesh; my spouse, by heavenly betrothal in which I have espoused thee unto myself in righteousness. My sister, whom I knew of old and over whom I watched from her earliest infancy; my spouse, taken from among the daughters, embraced by arms of love, and affianced unto me for ever. See, my brethren, how true is it that our royal kinsman is not ashamed of us, for he dwells with manifest delight upon this twofold relationship. Be not, O Beloved, slow to return, the hallowed flame of his love. We have the word "my" twice in our version. As if Christ dwelt with rapture on his possession of his Church. "His delights were with the sons of men," because those sons of men were his. He, the Shepherd, sought the sheep, because they were his sheep; he lit the candle and swept the house, because it was his money that was lost; he has gone about "to seek and to save that which was lost," because that which was lost was his long before it was lost to itself or lost to him. The Church is the exclusive portion of her Lord; none else may claim a partnership, or pretend to share her love. Jesus, thy Church delights to have it so! Let every believing soul drink solace out of these wells. Soul! Christ is near to thee in ties of relationship; Christ is dear to thee in bonds of marriage union, and thou art dear to him; behold he grasps both of thy hands with both his own, saying, "My sister, my spouse." Mark the two sacred holdfasts by which thy Lord gets such a double hold of thee that he neither can nor will ever let thee go. Do thou say in thy heart this morning, "My brother, my husband?" Seek to be near to him in nature, to be like thy brother, a son of God; and to be near to him in fellowship-to have near and dear intercourse with thy husband, that thou mayest know him and have fellowship with him, being conformable unto his death. Leaving this porch of cedar, let us enter the palace. Observe the contrast which the two verses present to us. I think that the Spirit of God intends that the verses should be understood, as we intend to use them this morning, but even if we should be mistaken as to the precise interpretation of the passage in its connection, we shall not err in enlisting so beautiful a string of metaphors in the service of the truth. You know, beloved, there are two works of the Holy Spirit within us. The first is when he puts into us the living waters; the next is when he enables us to pour forth streams of the same living waters in our daily life. Our blessed Lord expressed what we mean, when on that great day of the feast he cried, saying, "If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. This spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive." The Spirit of God first implants in us the new nature. This is his work-to regenerate us, to put into us the new principle, the life of God in Christ. Then next, he gives us power to send forth that life in gracious emanations of holiness of life, of devoutness of communion with God, of likeness to Christ, of conformity to his image. The streams are as much of the Holy Spirit as the fountain itself. He digs the well, and he afterwards with heavenly rain fills the pools. He first of all makes the stream in the desert to flow from the flinty rock, and afterwards out of his infinite supplies he feeds the stream and bids it follow us all our days. I was pleased to meet a quotation the other day, from one of the early fathers, which just contains in it views I have frequently expressed to you: "The true believer is composed of body, soul, and the Holy Spirit." After the greatest research, eminent mental philosophers have given up all idea of a third principle which they can discover in man, as man. They can find nothing but the body and the soul. But, rest assured that as there is a certain something in the vegetable which we call vegetable life, as there is a sensitive substance which makes animal life, as there is a mysterious subsistence developed as mental life, so there is some real, substantial, divine principle forming spiritual life. The believer hath three principles, the body, the soul, and the indwelling spirit, which is none other than the Holy Spirit of God, which abideth in the faithful continually. Just such a relationship as the soul bears to the body, does the spirit bear to the soul; for as the body without the soul is dead, so the soul without the spirit is dead in trespasses and sins; as the body without the soul is dead naturally, so the soul without the spirit is dead spiritually. And, contrary to the general teaching of modern theologians, we do insist upon it that the Spirit of God not only renovates the faculties which were there already, but does actually implant a new principle-that he does not merely set to rights a machinery which had before gone awry, but implants a new life which could not have been there. It is not a waking up of dormant faculties-it is the infusion of a supernatural spirit to which the natural heart is an utter stranger.Now, we think the first verse, to a great extent, sets forth the secret and mysterious work of the Holy Spirit in the creation of the new man in the soul. Into this secret no eye of man can look. The inner life in the Christian may well be compared to an enclosed garden-to a spring shut up-to a fountain sealed. But the second verse sets forth the manifest effects of grace, for no sooner is that life given than it begins to show itself. No sooner is the mystery of righteousness in the heart, than, like the mystery of iniquity, it "doth already work." It cannot lie still; it cannot be idle; it must not rest; but, as God is ever active, so this Godlike principle is active too; thus you have a picture of the outer life, proceeding from the inner. "A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon." The first is what the Christian is before God; the next is what the Christian will become before men. The first is the blessedness which he receives in himself; the next is the blessedness which he diffuses to others. We will begin, then, where God the Holy Ghost begins with us, when he enters the recesses of the heart and breathes the secret life. I. With regard to the first text; you will clearly perceive that in each of the three metaphors you have very plainly the idea of secrecy. There is a garden. A garden is a place where trees have been planted by a skilful hand; where they are nurtured and tended with care, and where fruit is expected by its owner. Such is the Church; such is each renewed soul. But it is a garden enclosed, and so enclosed that one cannot see over its walls-so shut out from the world's wilderness, that the passerby must not enter it-so protected from all intrusion that it is a guarded Paradise as secret as was that inner place, the holy of holies, within the tabernacle of old. The Church-and mark, when I say the Church, the same is true of each individual Christian-is set forth next as a spring. "A spring," the mother of sweet draughts of refreshing water, reaching down into some impenetrable caverns, and bubbling up with perennial supplies from the great deeps. Not a mere cistern, which contains only, but a fresh spring, which through an inward principle within, begets, continues, overflows. But then, it is a spring shut up: just as there were springs in the East, over which an edifice was built, so that none could reach the springs save those who knew the secret entrance. So is the heart of a believer when it is renewed by grace; there is a mysterious life within which no human skill can touch. And then, it is said to be a fountain; but it is a fountain sealed. The outward stones may be discovered, but the door is sealed, so that no man can get into the hidden springs; they are altogether hidden, and hidden too by a royal will and decree of which the seal is the emblem. I say the idea is very much that of secresy. Now, such is the inner life of the Christian. It is a secret which no other man knoweth, nay, which the very man who is the possessor of it cannot tell to his neighbour. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit." There are mysteries in nature so profound, that we only label them with some hard name, and leave them, and all the knowledge that we have about them is, that they are beyond the reach of man; but what they are, what are those mysterious impulses which link distant worlds with one another, what the real essence of that power which flashes along the electric wire, what is the very substance of that awful force which rives the oak, or splits the spire, we do not know. These are mysteries; but even if we could enter these caverns of knowledge, if we could penetrate the secret chamber of nature, if we could climb the lofty tree of knowledge till we found the nest where the callow principles of nature as yet unfledged are lying, yet even then we could not find out where that hidden life is. It is a something-as certainly a something as the natural life of man. It is a reality-not a dream, not a delusion: it is as real (though far more divine) as that "vital spark" which we say is "of heavenly flame." But though real, it is not in itself perceptible by human senses. It is so hidden from the eyes of men who have it not, that they do not believe in its existence. "Oh," say they, "there is no difference between a Christian and another man. There may sometimes be a little difference in his outward acts, but as to his being the possessor of another life the idea is vain." As to the regenerate being men of a distinct race of being, as much above man naturally as man is above the brute beasts, that carnal men would scorn to acknowledge. They cannot make this out. How can they? is a spring shut up; it is a fountain sealed. Nay, and the Christian himself, though he feels the throbbings of the great life-force within, though he feels the perpetual bubblings up of the ever-living fountain, yet he does not know what it is. It is a mystery to him. He knows it came there once upon a time; perhaps he knows the instrumentality by which it came; but what it was he cannot tell. "One thing I know, whereas I was blind now I see; whereas I once loved sin I now hate it; whereas I had no thoughts after God and Christ, now my heart is wholly set upon divine things." This he can say. But how it was he does not know. Only God did it-did it in some mysterious way, by an agency which it is utterly impossible for him to detect. Nay, there are times when the Christian finds this well so shut up that he cannot see it himself, and he is led to doubt about it. "Oh!" saith he, "I question whether the life of God be in me at all." I know some have scouted the idea of a Christian's being alive and, at the same time, doubting his spiritual existence; but however great a paradox it may seem, it is, nevertheless, a mournful truth in our experience. That spring, I say, is sometimes shut up even to ourselves, and that fountain is so fast sealed, that although it is as really there as when we could drink of it, and the garden is as truly there as when we refreshed ourselves among its spicy beds, yet we cannot find any solace therein. There have been times, when if we could have the world for it, we could not discover a spark of love in our hearts towards God-nay, not a grain of faith. Yet he could see our love when our blind eyes could not, and he could honour our faith even when we feared we had none. There have been moments when, if heaven and hell depended on our possession of full assurance, we certainly must have been lost, for not only had we no full assurance, but we had scarce any faith. Children of light do walk in darkness: there are times when they see not their signs, when for three days neither sun nor moon appears. There are periods when their only cry is, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" There is little wonder about this when we see how secret, how impalpable, how undiscernible by eye, or touch, or human intellect, is the Spirit of God within us. It is little wonder that sometimes flesh and blood should fail to know whether the life of God be in us at all. "A garden enclosed, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed." A second thought is written upon the surface of the text. Here you see not only secresy, but separation. That also runs through the three figures. It is a garden, but it is a garden enclosed-altogether shut out from the surrounding heaths and commons, enclosed with briars and hedged with thorns, which are impassable by the wild beasts. There is a gate through which the great husbandman himself can come; but there is also a gate which shuts out all those who would only rob |