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A Sermon.
O Father of Mercy! by thy benevolence spared, we are again permitted
to enter thy courts, and another year has commenced unto us, that we may
again be witnesses of thy truth and glory, which fill the world. Yet
have we often sinned in thy presence, and done the evil in thy sight,
rebelling against thy will, unmindful of thy holy command. And now we
come before thy presence, asking of Thee forgiveness, pardon, and
atonement; we crave the suspension of thy wrath and of thy indignation
which we have incurred by our sinful deeds. But what excuse can we offer
to thy omniscience? Can we allege aught that will avail as a
justification in thy tribunal? Alas! we have known thy ways and have
wilfully departed from them; we have been taught thy precepts, but our
souls have refused to be obedient to their behest. And the record of our
transgressions testifies against us, and our iniquity is before our eyes
no less than it is known to Thee, to whom all the deeds of man are laid
open. Yet, O Father and King! do not cast us out because of our sins, do
not forsake thy rebellious children, but forgive according to thy great
mercy, as Thou hast borne with our people from Egypt even until now. And
let the world be taught that thy faith is yet entire with the sons of
thy servants; and let these be made conscious, how great is thy goodness
with which Thou watchest over them. Let us also feel the working of thy
spirit, that many may be cleansed from iniquity and become repentant
seekers of thy goodness, that through them those who are now obdurate
may be led to fall down and worship, and to abominate the evil of their
ways which is now the idol of their hearts. And through this shall we
know that thy presence dwells indeed among us, when we see righteousness
spread, and mercy prevail all around us, when many come to pray to whom
thy worship is now a stranger, when those fear thee who now follow the
path of sin. And let thus the coming Day of Atonement be to us a season
of thy renewed love, and be an earnest to us that our spirits have been
purified in thy judgment, and that we all have been numbered among those
to whom Thou imputest no iniquity, whose transgressions Thou hast
forgiven. Amen!
Brethren,
Much had Israel sinned, and the decree of destruction and banishment
went forth against them, and the land, which was fertile and smiling in
beauty was to be stripped of its fertility and rendered desolate to the
eyes of all beholders because of the sins of its inhabitants. The men
were doomed to wander forth, and the women were decreed to wear the
chains of slavery instead of the ornaments of gold and jewels which were
wont to decorate their beautiful limbs; all because the law of the Lord
had been neglected, and because the warnings of the pious seers, who had
been sent to admonish their brethren, had not been listened to, in the
manner becoming messages from the Lord of spirits. Still, amidst all the
dreadful denunciations which in those evil days of transgression fell
from prophetic lips, there are interspersed words of consolation, which,
even at this distant day, fall upon the believing ear like the dewdrops
upon the thirsting flower in the calm stillness of the summer night. You
know of Jeremiah, brethren; he was the man who more than all others was
the messenger of wo and destruction; still even he has consolation in
his messages, and speaks of happy changes which are impending, whenever
the men of Judah return from their transgression. He knew the dread
decree, at that day irrevocable, that Jerusalem must fall,—fall under
the irresistible blows of the conquering nations that went to battle
under the great Nebuchadnezzar’s lead; fall, because the measure of her
iniquity was nearly full to overflowing; but he too saw glorious gleams
of light breaking forth athwart the bloom of the impending night, and he
beheld Jerusalem redeemed, Zion restored, although under his very eye
the men of Chaldea were battering down the lofty walls, and overthrowing
fort and tower, and entering the sanctuary with fire and sword, slaying
the men without remorse, and the women without pity; dashing, in their
fury, the suckling against the rock, and making the tearful mother the
sport for their insatiable swords. And still Jeremiah beheld, through
all this sorrow a glorious future, a future cloudless as the summer sky
in his own lovely Palestine, glorious as the brilliant moon when she
rises in splendour above the quiet sleeping landscape, in the midst of
the glittering array of the stars of heaven. Ay, it was the returning
light of the countenance of the Lord which dawned upon his far-reaching
vision; but it was a light to be purchased by the people themselves; for
they who had forfeited the favour of the Most High, were themselves to
repurchase it by a change of conduct, by a return to obedience. It was
this double change, the wickedness of Israel into righteousness, and of
the divine wrath into mercy and everlasting favour, which stood
prominent before Jeremiah’s mental eye, and thus he spoke:
שובו בנים
שובבים ארפה משובתיכם הננו אתנו לך כי אתה אלהינו׃
ירמי' ג' כ"ב
“O return, ye backsliding children, I will heal your backslidings!
Behold we come unto Thee, for Thou art our God.”—Jeremiah 3:22.
The verse just quoted is composed of two parts, namely, the address
of the Holy Spirit admonishing the people to repent, and their reply to
the mission of mercy. “O return, ye backsliding children, I will heal
your backslidings.” Meaning, “however often and grievously you may have
offended, however laden with built may be your spirit, however far you
may have strayed from the righteous way: come nevertheless freely to the
fold of your Father; I am ready to receive you; and if your
transgressions have been manifold, I am able to forgive them all, to
wipe out all your iniquity from the book of memorial.” In this blessed
message we have the entire scheme of repentance unfolded clearly and
unequivocally to our admiration, and we behold God the same merciful
Being to sinners, which He is to those who have never sinned. Were it
that no remedy existed for transgressers, that
every sin demanded the absolute condemnation of the offender, how lost
would be the whole human family, how utterly hopeless all longing for
salvation, which fills the heart of man! “There is no man on earth so
righteous who does act well, that he sinneth not;” where then would be
those in whom the Lord would detect no guilt? where those who could
escape from the torments which are the portion of those who have forgot
their God? There would be but one step to despair and utter recklessness
on the one side; “We are lost beyond redemption for the smallest evil we
have committed,” would be the desperate reflection of those who have
fallen; “it is useless for us to look back with regret upon what is
past; let us then pluck the roses whilst they bloom, let us dash
heedlessly into the whirlpool of dissipation to drown sorrow in the
brimming winecup, for fear lest the evil hour should reach us before we
have tasted our fill;” and on the other, gloomy despondency would follow
upon the smallest deviation from right, and the sinner would, in
anticipation of the fatal doom that is impending, pass his days in dread
of the certain and coming evil. Would this be mercy? could for this end
life and reason have been given? And still there can be no line drawn
which would separate the consequence of one transgression from that of
another. All sinning is a departure from the will of God; every wilful
transgression is a rejection of the divine guidance which we have
received; consequently, if there were no remedy for sin, every deviation
would amount to a forfeiture of mercy, would consign us to destruction,
without the possibility of a recovery. They, who know how good the Lord
is, will at once recognise the incompatibility of such views with the
mercy discoverable in all creation, with the paternal kindness which
beams forth from every page of the written word of God. But not such is
the spirit of the religion we have received; it breathes forth judgments
and retributions; it tells us of a Judge and an Avenger, but it also
speaks of mercy and indulgence, of a Father and Saviour. There is
judgment for all acts of man, there is retribution for every deed; there
is a Judge who sees all that is done; there is an Avenger who metes out
the merited doom to those who refuse mercy; but there is mercy even to
the sinner, there is indulgence granted that retribution follow not
immediately on transgression; there is our Father who waiteth patiently
to see whether his children will not listen to his call and come again
to his embrace, and there is a Saviour, even our God and Father, who
though both Judge and Avenger will readily forgive all, even the long
obdurate, if they will only claim his mercy, which is extended to all,
from the beginning of all things, even unto this day. Let us be fully
impressed with this consoling idea, when we discover that our way has
been the road of perdition. That the same Being who punishes, rewards us
also, that the same God forgives who is wrathful to sinners, and that we
have received the means and choice to obtain either reward or
punishment; that we are free to act, and when regretting what has
passed, free to come back to the place from which we started, and that
there is no insurmountable obstacle opposed to us from any external
source, why we could not be as good as we desire to be, as good as any
of those whom we consider pious and good.
“Return, ye backsliding children,” is the exclamation of the Lord,
unto Israel as a nation, unto Israelites as individuals. All are
included in the duties which we owe to God, and all are to be comforted
with the promise “I will heal your backslidings.” As a people have we
sinned, and as a people should we return; ever since the time we went
forth from Egypt, have we striven against the Holy Spirit which guided
us; we would not submit to the laws which were laid before us, and we
wandered away upon the path of error, till we have become scattered
among the gentiles. And deep have been the wounds which our apostasy has
caused us! Go to East, you find Jacob’s obdurate sons in dread of the
tyrant who makes bitter their life; look to the West, they there too are
found a by-word to the nations among whom they live; “sinning
Israelites” is their name, because they have forsaken the covenant; in
the ice-covered countries of the North they too are found, loaded with
the same contumely which they meet with in the land once their own; and
far in the regions of the South, you will encounter descendants of the
same ancestry bearing their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers.
Because the common parents of this people in the days of their
prosperity went astray from the law and withdrew themselves from the
service of the Lord; and He permitted thre wounds, which the offended
religion demanded, to be struck by the gentiles who trod down Judah’s
glory as the wild beasts tread down the produce of the vineyard; and to
this day the wounds are not healed, because not yet has Israel returned
from the dominion of transgression. Still our wounds are not incurable;
for the great Physician has promised: “I will heal their backsliding;”
and this hope sustains us amidst all our calamities, calamities which
our sins have justly merited, and which will draw us at length to seek
for healing from the hands of Him who has power to bind up our sores and
to staunch the bleeding wounds. Indeed in the Lord is Israel’s
salvation; and whenever we seek it as one man, whenever we claim it as a
union of brothers, the remedy will not be withheld, and the ransomed of
the Lord will return from the lands of their captivity, and dwell in the
places which are now waste and desolate, as in the days of old, under
Shepherds whom the Lord will raise up, under teachers who will truly
instruct the people in the ways of the Everlasting Lord.
To the individual Israelites too, the call is addressed: “Return, ye
backsliding children.” So soon as you have become conscious that your
course of life is not in consonance with the line of duty marked out for
you in the law; so soon as your conscience is awakened to compare your
own deeds, the result of your own counsels, with the revealed word of
God; so soon as your brothers tell you to beware of the consequences of
your conduct; so soon as you find that sin has a dwelling-place in your
heart: you should pause in your way and return to the path which the
Lord has marked out for you, fearlessly, prayerfully, confident of being
received in favour. O say not, erring brother! “My backslidings are
many, how shall I return? what merits have I to plead in extenuation of
my guilt? who is to plead for me before my offended Judge?” Never fear;
come only with confidence, with prayer, with humility, and thy Father
will be ready with his mercy to shield thee from the consequences of thy
own deeds; seek for no merit, neither in thyself nor in any other being,
when thou comest to pray; thy own sense of degradation and
self-abasement for leaving no righteousness in thy possession, will be
sufficient to make thy God listen to thy prayer; and thy humility when
thou comest to kneel before the Lord because thou FEELEST thyself
sinful, will be all-sufficient, to plead before the dread Judge in the
hour when He comes to winnow the chaff from the wheat, to purge mankind
from those who pollute the world by the iniquity of their deeds.
Only consider, brethren! that to us there has never been revealed any
other idea than individual responsibility and the unbought mercy of God;
on the one side we are told: “The soul that sinneth shall die,” since
the father is not to suffer for the sins of the son, nor the son for the
sins of the father; and on the other hand we are told: “For the Lord thy
God is a merciful God,” and “He being merciful forgiveth iniquity and
will not destroy, and poureth not forth all his wrath.” The evident
meaning of these verses is, that whatever evil man does will fall upon
him only; there can be no transfer of responsibility on the one side,
nor any assumption of guilt on the other. I am not to suffer for the
wrong of any other man, nor can the highest being take upon himself my
punishment to free me from iniquity. God does not punish merely to
punish, which would evidently be the case if needs some one would be
compelled to be punished for any sin before it can be atoned for. God
recompenses evil with retribution, either for reformation of the
offender, or the improvement of others; we may assert at once, for both
objects combined. Now assume that one who is guiltless should bear the
consequences of another’s iniquity, how is such proceeding to amend the
criminal, or influence to good those who witness the punishment?
Evidently as a means of amendment, the party suffering being innocent,
it would fail of effecting the least, and as an example to others it
could to a certainty not operate, since the only idea which can
reconcile us to see punishment inflicted is that we honestly believe
that the sufferer has deserved his fate. So then, it is the Bible
doctrine, that the soul that sinneth alone shall die; but not absolutely
without retrieve, without remedy; for the Lord is not inexorable, He is
ready to pardon if we but come forward to claim his mercy; for He will
forgive us when we seek Him with all our heart, and with all our
soul—that is, if we abhor our conduct, and endeavour to regain his
favour by a newly-awakened devotion to his worship, by a faithful
conformity to his holy will. In other words, the state of sin is one of
death; the way of repentance is the return to life, life in the presence
of the Lord, whose are the souls of the living and the dead.
There is a remarkable degree of expressiveness in the idea: “Return,
ye backsliding children;” the sinner is not beyond the call of the voice
of Heaven; nothing that he does places him beyond the pale of divine
cognizance, of the Creator’s watchfulness; and wherever he may place
himself, there is constantly a whispering in his ear, in the social
hours of night, in the pleasant converse of the evening, in the daily
time of labour, whether alone in the solitude of the student’s chamber,
on the bed of sickness, or amidst the brilliant throng who surround the
monarch on his throne—be he the great or the humble—every where he hears
the whispering of Goodness reverberating in his ear “Return,
return.”—“Come back, erring child,” says the Spirit; “Come back to the
Father’s embrace,” says the invisible Guardian; and will we hear? will
we follow? Alas! how loving is our God, how forgiving is our Father! but
we are obdurate, we feel not that we have offended, that the fruits of
our transgression are ripening to our sorrow! Oh! that we would but once
listen; how speedily would we then follow the guidance of the Lord,
which has never yet failed, how glorious would be our end, when now we
are hurrying on to destruction. And then, the Lord calls us his
children; his children, though we have been backsliders! and do we not
feel sorrowful at the thought that so much love has been, as it were,
almost lost upon us ingrates? that blessings, that indulgence, have
failed to rivet the bond which in youth bound us to our Father? that we
left the road which as children we were taught to travel, though now our
reason is enlightened and the labours of our hands have been blessed
with an ample increase beyond our expectations? beyond our deserts? But
so is man; forgetful of his God, he lives as though he were independent
of all beyond himself, trusting in his strength, confident in his own
wisdom. Yet let him beware; sunshine lasts not for ever, security does
not endure for many days; the hours of trial will approach, despite of
his unwillingness to acknowledge the power of the Supreme Disposer of
events; and as an Israelite we tell him, that his religion claims him as
a servant of God, and that as such he is bound to seek the forgiveness
of his Father in heaven by the very means through which Abraham found
favour, by faith and obedience; and that through these means he will be
accepted, though his deeds have been formerly in opposition to his duty.
For we have received the amplest assurance, that we will be forgiven if
we alter our wicked course, and return to the path from which we
swerved; for our Father is there, even at the diverging roads of life,
to take back to his fold whoever repents and returns from transgression
in Jacob, as He has promised us through his servants the prophets.
Having thus analyzed the first part of our text, we must elucidate
rapidly the other portion, which is: “Behold we come unto Thee, for Thou
art our God.” Whoever has studied the history of our people must have
observed that much as we have sinned, often as we have been given to
idolatry, many as have been our apostacies, even to this day, it cannot
be said that we have ever renounced entirely the worship of the Most
High. Through all the awful scenes which were witnessed in Palestine
during the first and second temples, amidst the horrors of
Nebuchadnezzar’s sieges and Titus’s slaughters; during all the
butcheries of Hadrian and the massacres of the crusaders; when thousands
upon thousands perished with famine and exhaustion in their banishment
from Spain and our expulsion from other lands of civilized barbarians,
the name of the Lord ONE was the venerated object for whose salvation we
yearned in our inmost heart. Had our deeds only equalled our faith, had
the belief which we ever felt only influenced us to remain obedient to
the every will of God: what a happy commonwealth would we have formed,
how beautifully would have stood before the world in spiritual no less
than temporal excellence the kingdom of priests for which we were
destined. But, we must confess to our shame, that we refused to listen,
and the evil, which we yet endure, came upon us in all its overwhelming
horrors and fury, and the land of Israel was rendered desolate and was
bereft of its rightful inhabitants. Had we been obedient, our Messiah
would long since have come to sit upon the throne of David for ever, and
to his kingdom there would have been no end; the world would have been
redeemed, and we would have been happy as the acknowledged favourites of
God, the branch of his planting, the work of his hands through which He
is glorified. Nevertheless have we not fallen off altogether; we are
smitten, affected with the curse of disobedience, marred in our
countenance more than other men; there is neither comeliness nor glory
in us that gentiles should desire our society; but with all this we are
not placed beyond the reach of redemption, we are children of Israel,
recognizable by our descent, by our conduct, by our belief, by the sign
of the covenant which we bear in our flesh. Let our sons and daughters
leave us, and who sees not the child of Israel marked in their face? Let
them swear fealty to another creed, and does not their inward conviction
belie the falsehood which they utter with their tongues ? Let them put
on the emblems which belong to dissenting religions, and how galling do
not the very ornaments which deck them rest on their bosom? Yes we are
children of ONE God, and let us differ in many points of observance; let
us differ upon points of creed; let us be reformers or adherents of
ancient usages; let us come from the far East, or the most distant West:
the exclamation Adonay Echad is the universal watchword of the
whole household of Jacob; in this all join, from this none are excluded.
And go where you will, watch the Jew dying on the frozen snow in a
rencontre with Russia’s armies, or led forth to perish by fire for the
sake of his faith in ancient Spain; or follow him in the crowd who
worship in the house of God at the close of a Day of Atonement, or even
in the social circle where friend meets with friend: every where it is
the same sublime thought which animates all; it is the unity of God, the
saving power of the Father of all.
Long indeed has our holy religion struggled with the obduracy of our
hearts; long has she striven in vain for an absolute victory; but
conquered she has never been. She has had to hide her face because of
the assault of adverse circumstances which opposed her progress; but she
has marched onward, slow indeed, though not less sure of victory. The
house of Israel has not yet returned with a firm heart to the Lord, or
else it would not have fallen to the lot of the humble individual who
addresses you now, to call you to repentance. But to doubt of the
ultimate result, of the happy issue of this contest of truth against
error, would be to despair of the justice and truth of God. Many may
fall off, and leave the fold where Israel is received; but there will
always be enough, though they be few, to bear aloft the banner which is
to wave as the signal for a regenerated world.—The world will be
regenerated, and with the rest of mankind, Israel will not be lost, the
star of Jacob will not set for ever to be blotted out from under the
heaven. But without repentance neither can our nation nor individuals be
accepted; it is, therefore, but reasonable to conclude that at a time
sooner or later, but a time sure to arrive, the houses of Israel and of
Judah will unite to call as one man on the Lord their God, and that then
his wrath will be turned aside and He will have mercy on his land and
his people. It will be at that day that the call of the Spirit: “Return,
ye backsliding children” will be answered by the repentant voice of the
newly-redeemed nation: “Behold we come unto thee, for Thou art our God;”
long since we have heard the call which thy mercy addressed to us, long
we have refused to hear, long we have loved our idols better than Thee,
long we have preferred following the inclination of our hearts to
obeying thy law. But now we feel the unworthiness of our conduct, we are
ashamed of our backsliding, and we are here come back to thy embrace,
for Thou art as ever our God. And let history be witness, let thy own
wisdom testify, whether we have ever been totally lost to thy worship;
and we are again in thy presence to follow thy guidance as in the day
when we went out from Egypt; for then Thou wert alone, “no stranger god
was with Thee,” and now again Thou alone hast redeemed us, unaided by
any other power, from the grasp of sin, from the tyranny of cruel
oppressions.
This is the idea which Jeremiah held out in his dark days, when
foolish idolatry was the practice of the men and women of Israel. Then
their power was broken, and they felt the truth of the word of God.
Changes innumerable have since passed over Israel; and still the name of
the Lord is the tower of strength to which we cling in all our sorrows.
Is it not then a holy consolation which we justly experience amidst all
our trials? a confidence which cannot be shaken, that nothing can
destroy the structure of our faith?—And this noble thought should then
urge every sinner to come forward and purify himself according to the
law of God, to forsake the iniquity in his hands, and to render his soul
free from the taint of deadly sin, seeing that for thousands of years
the religion of Israel has proved its efficacy, knowing that the God who
proclaimed it is sure to punish those who neglect its precepts.—Let us,
brethren, feel the full force of this consideration, let us all, who
have experienced the woful weight of transgression, come to the foot of
the throne of Mercy to ask for healing, for that balm which has never
yet failed of restoring the health which had been destroyed by
indulgence in transgression and sin. And how goodly will it be when the
Lord, at our appearing in his presence, grants us his approbation, and
says mercifully: “I will heal your backsliding.” O! such a moment of
bliss far outweighs all joys of existence, and such a lot can only be
accorded to those who have not sinned, or those who have sincerely
repented of every sin they have committed. Sinless none of us can claim
to be; but repentant all can become; the door is open wide to all who
may wish to enter, and the Hand is stretched forth to draw up from the
depth of the pool of sin all who desire to be washed by the water of
purification. This is the spirit of godliness which is never exhausted;
it flows for ever, even from the first hour of the creation till the
consummation of every thing. It is ours, if we claim it, it is for all
men who desire it; let it then be our endeavour to profit by the
approaching Day of Atonement; to let it make a deep and lasting
impression on the minds of all; that we may leave the house of God
purified and improved, better men, better Israelites, better servants of
the Lord than when we entered to pray. So that, be our days cut short in
the bloom of youth, or prolonged to a green old age, we may be fit for
the kingdom of heaven, to dwell joyfully among the saints, till the day
of the resurrection, when all that is mortal will become endued with
everlasting life, when death shall be swallowed up for ever, and no tear
of sorrow bedew any more the cheek of the sons of man. Amen.
Friday, Tishry 7th, September 20th, 5606. |
