2 Peter 3 - The Biblical Illustrator

This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you.

St. Peter’s love token

I. The nature of it--a letter written. What shall we render to the Lord for His mercy in writing these blessed covenants?

II. The number of it--a second after the former. “This second”; not so much fearing the miscarriage of the first, as hoping to work better confirmation by the next.

III. The tenor of it--to stir up their minds. Why are the words of the wise compared to goads (Ecclesiastes 3:11) but to show that the best in God’s team need pricking forward?

IV. The order--by way of remembrance. This is a just order and method; first, to teach the way of the Lord, then to remind men of walking in it. We are not only called teachers, but remembrancers (Isaiah 62:6). (Thos. Adams.)

I stir up your pure minds.

A Christian memory

The power of memory is, perhaps, the most amazing part of our mental equipment. It is a golden thread that links infancy and age, on which are hung, like pearls, varied facts and experiences of every hue. Memory has her servant, recollection, an invisible librarian running about the chambers of the mind, to find what she calls for. Now God uses this faculty in the work of building up Christian character.

1. The gospel has a history to be remembered.

2. History repeats itself ordinarily; but this history of the gospel can never be repeated. Christ has suffered once for all. A Christian memory is swift to remember this.

3. In the revelation of His “memorial name “Jehovah has emphasised the significance of memory. He is not an abstraction, a far-distant personality, even, but “the Father of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob”--a historic God.

4. Again, keep in mind that the life of our Lord in glory is linked with that of His redemptive work on earth, as truly as your existence there, some day, will be connected with your residence here on earth.

5. Finally, a Christian memory holds in trust these historic dates of Christ and His redemption, because of the fact that they are to be the theme of adoring praise throughout eternity. (J. M. English, D. D.)

Mindful of the words which were spoken before.--

Mindfulness

I. The object of their mindfulness.

1. “Words,” for their plain certainty; not shadows and abstruse paradoxes.

2. “Spoken before,” for their antiquity; not things of yesterday; no new devices.

3. “By the prophets,” for the authority; men that had their commission immediately from God Himself.

4. “Holy prophets,” for the sanctity; they passed not through the lips of a Balaam, or Caiaphas.

5. “The commandment of us,” etc. The prophets were legal apostles, the apostles are evangelical prophets. Both these came to the world with commandments.

(1) Neither prophets nor apostles did ever command in their own names; but the former came with “Thus saith the Lord,” and the other in the name of Christ.

(2) St. Peter refers us to the words of the prophets and commandments of the apostles, and precisely chargeth our mindfulness with these lessons.

(3) Neither the prophets without the apostles, nor the apostles without the prophets, but both together. The gospel without the law may lift men up to presumption; the law without the gospel may sink them down to desperation.

(4) The rule of truth is delivered to us by the prophets and apostles.

II. Their mindfulness of that object. This consists in two things:

1. Observation. God never meant His Word for a vanishing sound; that which is kept upon eternal record in heaven, and is a constant dweller in the elected heart (Colossians 3:16), must not be a sojourner, much less a passenger, with us.

2. Conversation. It is a barren mindfulness that does not declare itself in a holy fruitfulness. Conclusion:

1. Let us desire the faculty and facility of doing; earnestly to desire it is one half, yea, the best half.

2. Let us be thrifty husbands of time and means to be spiritually rich.

3. Let us reduce all to practice. (Thos. Adams.)

Compendious commandments

Cultivate the habit of reflective meditation upon the truths of the gospel as giving you the pattern of duty in a concentrated and available form. It is of no use to carry about a copy of the “Statutes at Large” in twenty folio volumes, in order to refer to it when difficulties arise and crises come. We must have something a great deal more compendious and easy of reference than that. A man’s cabin-trunk must not be as big as a house, and his goods must be in a small compass for his sea voyage. We have in Jesus Christ the “Statutes at Large,” codified and put into a form which the poorest and humblest and busiest amongst us can apply directly to the sudden emergencies and surprising contingencies of daily life, which are always sprung upon us when we do not expect them, and demand instantaneous decision. (A. Maclaren.)

There shall come in the last days scoffers.

The character of the last days

I. The personal qualifications of the disputers here described. To be a scoffer is sure no very laudable character, being the joint result of pride and malice, the doing mischief, and the doing it in sport. But as this temper is most injurious, it is also ignorant and indocile. The sure effect of knowledge is an humble sense of the want of it; the deeper we immerse ourselves in any art or science, the greater difficulties are started by us. But over and above the ingredients, of pride, ill-nature, and incorrigible folly, the mockers of the text are branded with immorality and vice--“to walk after their own lusts.” And sure there cannot be a more prodigious impudence than that guilty persons liable to the severest punishments should dare to awaken observation by being sharp on others.

II. The force of their discoursings. “Where is the promise of His coming?” The delaying of performance is no prejudice against it. With Almighty God everything, however distant it may seem, is actually present. First, the apostle denies the proposition that all things continue as they were since the Creation; and secondly, he denies the consequence drawn from thence, Though all things did continue, it no way follows they shall for ever do so.

III. As they are a recital of a prophecy. The appearance of these scoffers in the world is itself a very signal mark of its approach (Jude 1:17-18; 1 Thessalonians 5:1; Matthew 24:37). Will they find arguments of mockery and laughter in the place of weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth? If they can do this, in God’s name let them mock on, deny a future judgment, or what is more brave, let them dare it. (John Fell, D. D.)

The nature, folly, and danger of scoring at religion

I. To consider the nature, folly, and danger of scoffing at religion, than which nothing can be more offensive to a considerate mind.

1. Is there anything ridiculous in the belief of a Deity, a supreme, infinite, and intelligent mind, the creator and governor of the universe? Is it absurd to assert that He who made the world exercises an universal providence and directs all the affairs of it? What is there ludicrous in any of the duties of piety, in a supreme reverence and love of God? What is there that has a ridiculous aspect, or can excite any but the laughter of fools, in justice, temperance, etc.? Again, is it at all unsuitable to our most worthy notions of God to believe, that when the world was universally corrupted, He would graciously interpose for the good of His creatures, and teach them their duty by an extraordinary revelation? Is it in the least irrational to suppose that this revelation has fixed, with the utmost distinctness, the terms of our acceptance with God, and thereby removed distracting suspicions and superstitious terrors?

2. Further, the grand principles and duties of religion are so far from having anything ridiculous in them, that they are some of the plainest and most obvious dictates of reason, which renders the guilt of the scoffer much more aggravated and his impertinence and folly more insupportable.

3. Let me only add that religion is of the utmost consequence to the comfort of men’s minds, the peace of society, and the general good of the world. So that whoever sets himself to vilify these important truths not only fixes certain reproach upon himself by misplacing his ridicule on what has really nothing absurd in it, but is, in fact, whatever his intention may be, whether to gratify a trifling humour, display the forwardness of his genius, or corrupt the morals of the age, an enemy to society and the general happiness of mankind.

4. And as the guilt of these scoffers is very great, their danger is in proportion. For if the principles of religion should happen to be true, he that has so abused his reason, that noblest gift of God, as to employ it against his Maker, and all that is amiable and useful in human life, must expect to be treated with the utmost rigour and severity.

II. To inquire into the causes of it.

1. It sometimes springs from a levity of mind which disposes men to treat all subjects ludicrously.

2. Again, bantering religion frequently proceeds from ignorance and superficial inquiry.

3. Sometimes again it happens that the fashion of the age they live in, or the general humour of the company they frequent, makes persons set up for scoffers.

4. Scoffing at religion may, in some persons, proceed from a direct hatred of it, occasioned by a prejudice in favour of their vices. This was the case of the scoffers mentioned in the text, who are expressly described as walking after their own lusts. I may safely assert that immorality in the practice is the source of the most invincible prejudices against religion. How natural is it for those, who live as without God in the world, to wish that there was no such Being, that by destroying the first principle of all religion they may justify the want of it in their practice. I shall only add, that when men are averse to the principles of religion, they will naturally decline all further inquiries into the reasonableness of them, and be fond of everything that looks plausible on the side of infidelity.

Learn:

1. Into what extreme corruption the mind of man, which is indued with such noble faculties and formed for Godlike perfection, is capable of being sunk, even to mistake confusion for order and deformity for beauty?

2. Again, that we may not be imposed on by the scoffers of our own times, let us always take care to distinguish between reasoning and ridicule. We should examine what it is that is really ridiculous: whether it be religion itself, or something of a different nature substituted in the place of it.

3. Finally, that we may keep at the utmost distance from this crime, let us employ our reason in defending religion and representing it in a just and amiable light. Let our natural abilities be devoted to this service, and all our studies and improvements made subservient to it. (James Foster.)

The folly of scoffing at religion

I. We will consider the nature of the sin here mentioned, which is scoffing at religion. “There shall come scoffers.” In those times there was a common persuasion among Christians, “that the day of the Lord was at hand.” Now this, it is probable, these scoffers twitted the Christians withal. They looked upon all things as going on in a constant course.

II. the character which is here given of these scoffers. They are said to walk after their own lusts. St. Jude, in his epistle, gives much the same character of them that St. Peter here does (verses 18, 19). To deride God and religion is the highest kind of impiety. And men do not usually arrive to this degree of wickedness at first, but they come to it by several steps. I remember it is the saying of one, who hath done more by his writings to debauch the age with atheistical principles than any man that lives in it, “that when reason is against a man, then a man will be against reason.” I am sure this is the true account of such men’s enmity to religion--religion is against them, and therefore they set themselves against religion. Besides that, men think it some kind of apology for their vices that they do not act contrary to any principle they profess.

III. The heinousness and the aggravations of this vice. If it prove true that there is no God, the religious man may be as happy in this world as the atheist. Besides that, the practice of religion and virtue doth naturally promote our temporal felicity. It is more for a man’s health, and more for his reputation, and more for his advantage in all other worldly respects, to lead a virtuous than a vicious course of life. And for the other world, if there be no God, the case of the religious realm and the atheist will be alike, because they will both be extinguished by death and insensible of any further happiness or misery. But then if the contrary opinion should prove true, then it is plain to every man, at first sight, that the case of the religious man and the atheist must be vastly different; then where shall the wicked and the ungodly appear? I will but add one thing more, to show the folly of this profane temper. And that is this: that as it is the greatest of all other sins, so there is in truth the least temptation to it. Profane persons serve the devil for nought. Lessons:

1. To take men off from this impious and dangerous folly of profaneness, which by some is miscalled wit.

2. To caution men not to think the worse of religion, because some are so bold as to deride it.

3. To persuade men to employ that reason and wit which God hath given them, to better and nobler purposes, in the service and to the glory of that God who hath bestowed these gifts on men. (Abp. Tillotson.)

The sin of scoffing at religion

I. The nature of the vice.

1. It is not the serious inquirer that I complain of, let his objections be raised against whatever doctrines they may, but the individual who treats the subject with a spirit of levity, derision, and contempt.

(1) In some instances this unhappy and unholy disposition goes so far as to despise every kind of religion, natural as well as revealed.

(2) In other cases, the scorner appears in the character of a deist, who, while he professes to believe the truth, and to submit to the obligations of natural religion, attacks the system of Divine revelation. He reviles the Scriptures as forgeries.

(a) Much unhallowed ridicule is thrown by some on what are considered by us as the most sublime and important doctrines of revelation--I mean the trinity of persons in the Godhead, and the atonement of our Lord.

(b) The scorner will not unfrequently be found avowing his belief in the important articles which I have just mentioned, while, at the same time, he ridicules the only legitimate influence and valuable results of these doctrines. Has not the term saint, that highest appellation which can be given to man or glorified spirit, been bandied about society as a term of reproach?

(c) Another way of scoffing at religion is to pitch upon the imperfections of good men and to expose them to public ridicule. But how hateful is the malignity which delights to throw all the praiseworthy parts of the character into the shade of one ludicrous trait.

(d) It is a miserable device, which many have had recourse to, to select the absurdities of fanaticism and the hollow pretences of hypocrisy, as they have been exhibited in some false professors, and thus to raise a prejudice against all genuine religion.

2. To inquire where and when the practice of scoffing is indulged in.

(1) In the theatre.

(2) How often the social circle is the scene of this unhallowed sport and the entertainment of the convivial party is heightened by profane ridicule.

(3) How saturated with the sin of scoffing at religion are many of the publications, and much of the periodical literature of the present day.

II. The causes of scoffing.

1. There are many subordinate and proximate ones.

(1) Of these, pride and an unmortified opinion of self takes the lead.

(2) Scoffing is sometimes the result of a prevailing and indecent levity of mind, an habitual and indulged frivolity, which alike indisposes and unfits a man for any serious pursuit.

(3) A silly affectation of novelty combined with a wish to be thought superior to the terrors of superstition, leads in many cases to the sin of ridiculing piety.

(4) Many are led on to assume the character of the scorner by the power of fashion and the contagion of evil company.

(5) Inability to attack religion in any other way induces some to assail it with their scorn.

2. But the chief source of scoffing is that which the apostle has mentioned in the text, “Scoffers walking after their own lusts.”

III. The character of this vice.

1. It is irrational. Ridicule is neither the test of truth in others nor the way to obtain it for ourselves.

2. It is rude and uncivil. A decent respect is due to every man’s convictions on the subject of religion, though they may be erroneous.

3. It is a most cruel and inhuman sin. Did he but consider how many there are who, amidst the vicissitudes and the trials of life, have no ray of consolation from any other source to fall upon their dreary path, would he follow them to their last refuge and attempt to drive them by unhallowed scorn even from thence?

4. It is a most hardening vice. The sacred writers speak of a scorner as almost irreclaimable.

5. But its impiety in the sight of God surpasses all description. Religion is at once the production and the image of Deity; and to scoff at religion, therefore, is to scoff at God.

6. It is a contagious and injurious vice. Scorners are the chief instruments of Satan, the promoters of his cause, his most zealous apostles, his most able advocates, and his most successful emissaries.

IV. The punishment of the scorner.

1. Are there, tell me scoffers, no midnight scenes of terror and self-reproach? How will this be increased on the bed of death?

2. I cannot conceive of any character with whom Jehovah will be so awfully severe as the scoffer; his is the loftiest height of vice, and his will be the lowest depth of punishment. God’s patience in bearing with such impious creatures is wonderful; and His justice in punishing them will be in proportion.

3. And then, who shall tell the secrets of his prison, or conceive of what the scorner shall endure in the dark world of hell? There will be no saint near him there on whom to utter the effusions of his ridicule. Not one flash of wit will for a moment relieve the darkness of eternal night; not one sally of humour resist the oppression of eternal despair. (J. A. James.)

Where is the promise of His coming?--

The delay of the advent of Christ

I. The scientific difficulty.

1. So far as the objection relates to the delay of the second advent, it would seem that, in a scientific age like the present, it would least of all have weight. For the history of the earth, as related by geology, and the history of the cosmical system, as related by astronomy, present periods so vast, that the eighteen hundred years, during which Christianity has been evolving its work among men, shrink into utter insignificance in the comparison. Certainly, the man of science, of all men, should recognise the utter inadequacy of human standards of time as measures of the development of the plans of the Creator.

2. Again, so far as the objection relates to other aspects of the subject, such as the regularity and immutability of natural law which, it is alleged, forbid any such catastrophe as the end of the world, I suggest--

(1) That creation is the fundamental fact on which all our knowledge rests. Science is compelled to admit the beginning of the Kosmos. The very principle of evolution which, in some form or other, is now generally adopted as a twin generalisation with gravitation, carries with it the idea of a beginning. Even if the Kosmos had been self-evolved, the seed out of which it evolved itself must be assumed. But does not this suggest that it is working towards an end? an ultimate solution?

(2) That the three leading ideas involved in the second advent, and that which is associated with it, at least in perspective, the end of the world, find clear analogies in the latest theories of science.

(a) The second advent involves the idea of the imagination of a higher stage of life and being for man--emancipation from old fetters, the ascent to a higher plane, the taking on a new body with new powers, and under new and higher conditions. But this is just in the line of the story which science is telling us--whether in astronomy, geology, natural history, or sociology--the several spheres in which the law of evolution is traced.

(b) The second advent involves the sudden manifestation of the Son of God, and a new birth of the world resulting from it. But again, the scientific man at our side teaches us that the ascent of matter and force to higher planes, though indeed in orderly succession, has not been by infinite gradation as upon a sliding scale, but always by paroxysms. The story of a chemist is a story of successive births of force into higher and higher forms, the transformation of dead into living matter, of physical into chemical force, and again of chemical into vital force. These are all instances of sudden births into higher conditions with new properties and powers which could not have been imagined before.

(c) The second advent--or that great event which, in the perspective, is contiguous with it, though in reality it may lie far beyond it (like two distant peaks, which seem to spring from the same base though a wide valley really intervenes)--involves also stupendous natural phenomena--the regeneration by fire, the new heavens and the new earth. But here again the analogy of science is in harmony with the scriptural revelation; for the geologist, in telling of an internal treasure-house of fire, as well as the astronomer in his theory of “planetary old age,” clearly establish that harmony. And, moreover, if there is a law of conservation of force, there is also, as its antithesis, a law of dissipation of energy. Says Le Comte, “All scientific speculations on the subject of the final destiny of the Kosmos bankrupt nature. The final result is, the running down of all forms of force into heat, and so the final death of the Kosmos.”

II. The historical difficulty. Christ promised to come again in person to judge the world. He said, “Behold, I come quickly.” But He has not come. Long cycles of history have rolled round, yet still He comes not. Now how do we meet this objection? Exactly as St. Peter did--by reminding the objector that with the Lord “a thousand years are as one day.” He is the strong and patient worker. Whether we study the record of races or of civilisations, the conclusion is the same--that the God who orders the course of history does indeed reckon “a thousand years as one day,” maturing His purposes through long tracts of time, and refusing to hasten His work in obedience to the impatience of men. Great nations are not born in a day; strong civilisations are not the product of a generation; both are rather the resultant of a combination of forces and influences whose origin must be sought in remote antiquity. Judging, then, from the analogy of history, what should be the case of Christianity? Here was a new spiritual kingdom set up on earth, designed to be as wide as the world, and as universal as man. How would its results be reached? Surely we should expect that such a design could only be wrought out through long cycles of time; or, at least, this is certain, leaving out of view what could be done (for who shall limit the power of the Almighty?) if experience shall prove that the kingdom of God is to establish itself slowly and through long ages of development, this is only what the analogy of history would teach us to expect. But does not this slow ripening of the great periods of history and civilisation, while it removes the difficulty occasioned by the long delay of the second advent, create at the same time a presumption against the manner of its imagination? The Scripture picture represents a sudden event, a great crisis and catastrophe in the history of the world, in the second coming of Christ. But this, too, finds its frequent analogies in history. The records of mankind afford instances not a few of great crises in the history of cities and nations and races, when sudden destruction has overtaken them, when the long pent-up clouds of wrath have burst upon them and swept them away from among the families of the earth. Such was the case with Nineveh and Babylon. Such was the case with Accad, a city older than either of these, which was indeed the cradle of civilisation, but which so utterly disappeared, that its existence was not even known forty years ago, and was only brought to light by the discovery of the key to the arrow-headed characters, in which the story of the Accadians, with their laws and literature and religion, had remained securely locked up for more than three thousand years. Such was the case with Jerusalem, which when it filled up the measure of its guilt, perished in that sudden storm of indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish. Such was the case with the Roman Empire, when it sank to rise no more before the devastating flood of the Northern barbarians. Similar examples are not wanting in modern history, illustrating the principle in question, and giving ground for the assertion that the analogy of history is in harmony with the prophecy that the Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night--a day of judgment and indignation and wrath to those who are disobedient and rebellious against the Son of God, but a day of Redemption to all them that wait for His appearing. (R. H. McKim, D. D.)

All things continue as they were.

Mans external universe as read by the scoffing sceptic

I. They get from it a one-sided idea. The idea they obtained from the observation of nature was, that it was unchanging. “Since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue,” etc. This is only partially true. We thank God for this constancy. Without it the farmer would have no motive to cultivate his field, the mariner no chart to guide him over the deep, the philosopher no data on which to prosecute his inquiries or to build up his science. All would be confusion. Man, without plan, and without hope, would move under the wild impulses which the casualties of the moment awakened. Still, nature has her changes. Nay, amidst all this constancy are there not incessant revolutions? Does not the inorganic change in its appearance? Old mountains, rivers, islands disappear, and new ones emerge. The vegetable and animal worlds succeed each other. Nay, perhaps there is nothing the same--all things change. A one-sided view of u many-sided thing is evermore erroneous.

II. They apply this one-sided idea against the written word. “Where is the promise of His coming?” Now, has not the sceptic always read nature in this way? Whether he has looked at its astronomical, geological, or physiological phases, has he not always so read it as to get some false idea of it, in order to turn it against the Bible?

III. They do this from a sad perversity of heart. They are “scoffers walking after their own lusts and willingly ignorant.” (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Miracles are now neither necessary to the conviction of unbelievers, nor the conversion of sinners

I shall consider the words as a standing objection of scoffers or free-thinkers against the truth and authority Of the Christian religion.

I. That miracles are not now necessary to the conviction of unbelievers. It is sufficient that we are assured there was a time when the Christian religion was confirmed by numerous and undoubted miracles. Those who contend for the continuance of miracles in order to evince more effectually the truth of revealed religion, proceed upon one of these suppositions. Either that it is necessary every particular person should for his own satisfaction be an eye-witness of some miraculous fact, or else, that once at least in every age and nation, God should exert His omnipotence, and the miracle be committed to some public and standing record for the information of those who were not eye-witnesses of it. As to what is here required in the last place, it is obviated by staying that we have all the evidence of the miracles recorded in the gospel, that any man, who is not an eye-witness of it, can have of a miracle done in his own age or nation. Upon the former supposition, miracles would be so frequent that they would become of little force or consideration. This is certain, that the effects which miracles have upon men depend upon a good, docile, and obedient temper of mind. He that is in this good disposition needs no further evidence of miracles for his conviction; but he that is not, would not be convinced by them, though we should suppose them more frequent.

II. But if miracles are not necessary to the conviction of unbelievers, may they not re necessary to the conversion of sinners? or to reclaim those who already believe from walking after their own lusts, prod bring them to repentance? I answer again in the negative.

1. The same motives which now induce men to put off their repentance would, in all probability, be as prevalent, though we should suppose miracles more frequent. Would a miracle tend to convince a sinner of the Divine authority of the laws of the gospel? That we here suppose him convinced of already. Would it tend to enforce his obedience to those laws by conveying any sanctifying graces into his nature? What would it then do in order to his conversion? You will say it might be aa occasion of bringing him to a better temper of consideration, and to make him take up some speedy resolutions of amendment. It is granted; but then such a resolution is no more than what we see sinners taking up daily, and yet, notwithstanding this, how ordinary is it for them to shift off their repentance from time to time, till it be past time!

2. It is not reasonably to be expected such an impression should be of any long or lasting continuance.

3. Though what is here asserted could not be made appear from probable reasons and arguments; yet it is confirmed by experience and undeniable shatters of fact. We have numerous examples in Scripture, and it may not be improper to instance some few of them to this purpose.

(1) Who would have thought that Pharaoh, after all the miracles which were done before his eyes, and which he did not only see, but feel the dreadful effects of, should still have persisted in his disobedience to the commands of God?

(2) So, again, notwithstanding the many miracles Moses afterwards wrought in the deliverance of the Jews, what little effect had they towards reclaiming them either from the error or evil of their ways!

1. And when I say that miracles are not now necessary to the conviction of unbelievers, I would be understood as speaking only of such unbelievers as live among Christians, and may at any time have the proofs of Christianity laid clearly before them.

2. If, then, God Almighty has afforded us all sufficient means to convince us of the truth of our holy religion, let us faithfully endeavour to employ those means to the ends they are designed; let us frequently reflect on the reasonableness of Christianity, and the evidence of its truth, that our faith may be built upon a solid foundation. (R. Fiddes, D. D.)

This they willingly are ignorant of.

Willing ignorance

Nelson, at St. Vincent, putting the telescope to his blind eye, and swearing that he could not see the signal to cease firing, affords an apt illustration of ninny who, for less worthy motives, will not, because they wish not, see the truth.

I. The avowed infidels and atheists. They are willingly ignorant--

1. Of the teachings of the Bible which they affect to despise.

2. Of the evidences of its Divine origin and inspiration.

3. Of the evidences of the being, wisdom, and love of God.

4. Of the evidences of the Divine origin of Christianity.

II. Many men of science and culture.

III. Multitudes who profess and call themselves Christians. All those who habitually neglect the sanctuary, and to whom the Bible is an unknown book. (The Study.)

The world that then was,… perished.--

The flood

I. A malefactor. “The world that then was.” Locally, a piece of it perished: the earth; materially, a great deal of it perished: all the riches and commodities of the earth; principally considered, all perished but eight persons: formally, there was nothing left. Only God’s quarrel to the world was for the men of the world; and His quarrel to the men of the world was for their sins. The world itself was, in this, like the sea; and sins, like the winds: the sea would be calm and quiet if the winds did not trouble it; if iniquities, like storms, had not put the course of nature into an uproar, the world had not perished.

II. An executioner. “Being overflowed with water.” This is an excellent servant to us, so God made it; but an ill master, so our sins make it. Nothing is so sovereign, which being abused by sin, may not, of a blessing, become a curse.

III. The conveniency of the execution. The water was not far to fetch; either with danger, as David’s water from the well of Bethlehem, through an army of Philistines; or with labour, as Jacob’s water from a deep well in the bowels of the earth; but near at hand, ready. (Thos. Adams.)

Man’s external universe as regarded by the thoughtful Christian

What is the Christian’s view of nature? The answer we get from this passage is--

I. He regards it as originally produced by the Divine word. “By the Word of God the heavens were of old,” etc. It had an origin--it is not eternal; it arose not from chance, but from the Divine Word.

II. He regards it as dependent every moment upon the Divine word. “The heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same Word are kept in store.”

1. That the past changes of nature are to be referred to the Divine Word. Peter here refers to one tremendous catastrophe. “The world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” The deluge was no accident. “I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth,” etc. The earthquake, the tornado, the blight, the pestilence, all these things in nature come from the Word of God. His will is in all.

2. That the present existence of nature is to be referred to His Word. “But the heavens and the earth which are now by the same Word kept in store”--are preserved in their present state. If this is a right view of material nature, we may infer three important considerations.

(1) That it is absurd to cite the so-called laws of nature against the fulfilment of God’s revealed purposes. This is just what the scoffing sceptics did in the days of Peter. The laws of nature seemed against the deluge; but God purposed that these things should take place, and the laws of nature yielded. The laws of nature may seem against a resurrection, etc., but the purpose of God will be fulfilled. If material nature was originally produced by, and is ever dependent upon, the Word of God, we infer--

(2) That there can be no real contradiction between its facts and those of the Bible. Moreover, if material nature was originally produced by, and is ever dependent upon, the Divine Word, we infer--

(3) That its relation to the soul should be especially realised. As the Word of God is thus in material nature, material nature has a meaning. It is the voice of God to the human heart, a Divine appeal to the human conscience. Nature has a moral meaning, God’s Word is in it. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

One day is with the Lord as a thousand years.--

God’s estimate of time

I. First, take this statement as a general principle, “that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years,” etc.

1. In opening up this general principle we remark that all time is equally present with God. Childhood, manhood and old age belong to creatures, but at the right hand of the Most High they have no abode. Growth, progress, advancement, all these are virtues in finite beings, but to the Infinite the thought of such change would be an insult. Yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, belong to dying mortal, the Immortal King lives in an eternal to-day. This is a subject upon which we can only speak without ourselves fully understanding what we say, but yet, perhaps, a metaphor may tend to make the matter a little simpler. There is a river flowing along in gentle slope toward the sea. A boatman is upon it; his vessel is here; anon it is there; and soon it will be at the river’s mouth; only that part of the river upon which he is sailing is present to him. But up yonder, on a lofty mountain, stands a traveller; as he looks from the summit he marks the source of the river and gazes upon its infant stream, where as yet it is but a narrow line of silver; then he follows it with his clear eye until it swells into a rolling flood, and he tracks it until it is finally absorbed into the ocean. Now, as the climber stands upon that Alp, that whole sparkling line of water adorning the plain is equally present to him from its source to its fall; there is not one part of the stream that is nearer to him than another; in the long distance he sees the whole of it, from the end to the beginning. Such, we think, is the stream of time to God. From the altitude of His observance He looketh down upon it and seeth it at one gaze; taking in, not at many thoughts, but at one thought, all the revolutions of time and all the changes of ages, and seeing both the thousands of years that have gone, and the thousands that are yet to come, as present at one view before his eye.

2. The text teaches us next that all time is equally powerless with God to affect Him. A day does not make any particular change in us that we can notice. But if you take fifty years--what a difference is perceptible in any of us! But as a day seems to make no change with us, so, but far more truthfully, a thousand years make no change with God. Ages roll on, but He abideth the same. We need be under no apprehension that God will ever be affected with weakness through the revolutions of time. The Ancient of Days, ever omnipotent, fainteth not, neither is weary. And as time brings no weakness, certainly it shall bring no decay to God. Upon His brow there is ne’er a furrow; no signs of palsy are in His hand. And as no weakness and no decay can be brought to God by time, so no change in His purpose can ever come through revolving years. To that whereto He hath set His seal He standeth fast, and what His heart decrees, that will He do. Moreover, as there can be no change in His decree, so no unforeseen difficulties can intervene to prevent the accomplishment of it. As long as there is a work to do, He shall do it; as long as there is an enemy to conquer, that enemy shall be overcome.

3. Yet further--no doubt the text intends to teach that all time is insignificant to God. Within the compass of a drop of water we are told that sometimes a thousand living creatures may be discovered, and to those little creatures no doubt their size is something very important. There is a Creature inside that drop which can only be seen by the strongest microscope, but it is a hundred times larger than its neighbour, and it feels, no doubt, that the difference is amazing and extraordinary. But to you and to me, who cannot even see the largest creature with the naked eye, the gigantic animalcule is as imperceptible as his dwarfish friend, they both seem so utterly insignificant that we squander whole millions of them, and are not very penitent if we destroy them by thousands. But what would one of those little infusorial animals say if some prophet of its own kind could tell it that there is a creature living that could count the whole world of a drop of water as nothing, and could take up ten thousand thousand of those drops and scatter them without exertion of half its power; that this creature would not be encumbered if it should carry on the tip of its finger all the thousands that live in that great world--a drop of water; that this creature would have no disturbance of heart, even if the great king of one of the empires in that drop should gather all his armies against it and lead them to battle? Why, then the little creatures would say, “How can this be; we can hardly grasp the idea?” But when that infusorial philosopher could have gotten an idea of man, and of the utter insignificance of its own self, and of its own little narrow world, then it would have achieved an easy task compared with that which lies before us when we attempt to get an idea of God.

4. I think we ought also to learn from the text that all time is equally obedient to God. You and I are the servants of time, but God is its sovereign Master.

II. God’s estimate of a day. He can make a day as useful, and to Him it shall be as long as a thousand years. I think this is one of the most brilliant of the Church’s hopes. We have been saying,” How many converts have been made by the Missionary Society during fifty or sixty years?” and we have said, “Well, at this rate, how long will it be before the world is converted?” Ah! “At this rate”; but how do you know God’s rate? God can do as much in a day as has been done in a thousand years that are past, if so He wills it. Only let Him will it, and there shall be one day written in the records of the Church that shall be equal in achievements, and in triumphs, to any thousand years of her history recorded aforetime. This should lead us to remember that when God speaketh of judging the world at the day of judgment, He will find no difficulty in doing it. Two hundred judges might find it difficult to try in one day all the cases that might be brought before them in a single nation, but God, when He holdeth the great assize, shall be able to convict every guilty one, and to absolve every penitent, and that, too, in one day.

III. God’s estimate of a thousand years. A day is to Him as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. “How long, how long?” the saints under the altar cry. “How long?” and the saints at the altar here to-day take up the same wailing notes, “How long?” But He answereth, “I am not long. What if I have waited and the time is long to you; yet it is not long to Me.” God bids you think for a moment, that if you really measure aright, it is no lengthened period of time that He has made the vision to tarry. For see you first, the time that has elapsed since Christ’s crucifixion is not long compared with eternity. Then, again, when ye say that God is long in the accomplishment of His great purposes, remember that He has no need to be in hurry. Whatsoever you and I find to do, we must do it with all our might: for there is neither work nor device in the grave whither we are hastening; but God liveth for ever. Besides, there is an advantage in His being slow--it tries our faith. To win a fight when it lasteth but for an hour, what is there in it? One gallant charge and the foemen have fled. Comrade, but that is a battle worthy to be written with your Waterloos and your Marathons, when hour after hour, and day after day, valour disdains to succumb, and patience endures the fight while foot to foot the soldiers stand. Further, it is well that God should thus be long, because He is unravelling revelation. The Lion of the tribe of Judah hath prevailed to loose the seals, and to open the book for us, and year after year He reads another page, and yet another in the Church’s history. If Christ should come to-day, if we should have no more conflicts, no more trials, then we might suppose that the book had come to its brilliant golden finis; but if it keepeth on a thousand years to come, so much the better: the glowing eyes of angels wish not for the end of the story, and the bright eyes of immortal spirits before the throne, when it shall be all over, shall not regret that it was too long. No, let it go on, great Master; let a thousand years run on; our loving hearts will patiently bear it, as though it were but one day. And more: the victory of Christ at the end will be all the greater, and the redemption all the more glorious, because of this long time of strife and confusion. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Time a rate of motion

The apostle evidently wishes us to look upon the flight of the years more as God in His eternity looks down upon them. We are to approach the idea of eternity not by multiplying years together in indefinite figures of time, but more truly by remembering that with the Eternal our measurements of time have no importance.

I. I ask you to reflect, first, that time is a gift of God to the creation. Time is a bequest from the Eternal conveyed and secured in the constitution of the creation. These visible, revolving worlds are by nature temporal. Time is the rate of motion determined by the Creator in His own thought of the worlds. Now, inasmuch as time itself is an original gift of God to the creation, we may well stop to reflect upon the value of this gift. It is one of the primal evidences of the benevolence of the Creator. This original providence of perfect time for the world, true to the infinitesimal of a second through the ages of ages, is evidence of the far-seeing thoughtfulness of the Creator. It is the first condition and means of conveyance of all other good gifts of God. Time is the magna charta of all man’s rights upon the earth. The ancient order of the heavens is the surety that our God is not a Sovereign who has made us of His mere pleasure, but one who has made all things according to His good pleasure; and whether man’s works upon the earth be good or evil, this solar system which God made shall keep true time without variableness, or shadow of turning, until the end comes and time shall be no longer.

II. Keeping in mind this fact that time is a gift of God to the creation, reflect, secondly, that what we know as time is only the particular rate of motion to which our life on this earth has been adjusted. For example, you can easily imagine that the human race might have been put to school upon a planet of swifter revolutions than our earth, and all our vital powers adapted to the more rapid succession of day and night upon that orb--our pulses made to beat proportionally quicker, and the whole mechanism of life and thought made to run more swiftly--so that the same human history might be lived through upon that faster world. So, on the other hand, God might have graduated our rate of living and thinking to the motions of a slower planet than this earth, and still our consciousness of the duration of the years, our sense of time, have remained precisely the same. Time, then, is only a relative thing, the rate of motion of the mechanism; nothing of absolute determination or worth in itself. God has chosen this earth for our time-keeper, and adjusted our consciousness of life to its rate of motion; God has determined the existing time-rate of human history for us, out of many possibilities of different time-rates, for reasons which He thought best, and which we do not know. I may make this idea of the relative nature of time still plainer by reminding you how often in our own experiences we escape from the ordinary course of the world’s time, and in a sense make our own time for ourselves, as we live in memory or in anticipation. Fear and hope, sorrow and joy, thought and action, when intense, have a certain witchery and mastery over our time; and not the revolutions of the earth, but the beatings of our spiritual pulses, and the life of our hearts, make our days short or long upon the earth. We mortals are all of us swept along in the flood of the years; yet it seems as if we have power in sudden upspringings of thought to leap, as it were, out of this stream of time and change, and to catch some gleam upon our spirits of a higher element of existence, like God’s eternal light, and then we fall back again into the hurrying stream which is our proper element of existence now. All this superiority of soul to time in memory, thought, and hope, means that there is something timeless and deathless within us--something of the being of the Eternal in the living soul of man. You and I are made of the dust of the earth; but within these bodies bound to the earth, and destined to-morrow to return to its dust, is a godlike something which refuses to measure its life by the revolutions of the stars; a something which sinks back into its own consciousness of being, and in its brooding thought and love forgets the passing hours and separations of this mortality; a mystery of spirit within man which by its own thought of God and immortality proves itself to be above the course of nature, and possessed of a Divine birthright. First of all, let us take the help for faith in God’s character which the text was intended to give. We wonder how God can live these long ages in the calm blessedness of His presence around our human history of sin and death: where is the promise of His coming? But be not ignorant of this one thing--God does not measure His times by our clocks; a thousand of our years is as one day to Him. Everything depends upon the point of view from which things are judged; and God looks from eternity to eternity! You look out in the morning, and see a cloud overhanging the top of a mountain. At noon you glance up, and the south wind still leaves its vapours upon the mountain. At evening you may notice that the cloud is still there, though beginning to be changed by the setting sun into a glory. It has been a short day to you in your business and your pleasures. But had you been on the mountain waiting for the cloud to lift, and hoping for a clear broad view, the hours would have lengthened, and as you watched the time and the shiftings of the mists, the day would have seemed almost endless. We are now under the cloud--a very little cloud of sin and sorrow, it may be--a passing cloud--in the large, bright universe of God! We are waiting for the hour of clear revelation; and this world-age seems long. But what is it to Him who inhabiteth eternity--who sees all around? Again, these reflections may serve to teach us afresh the real value of time to us. Time, I have said, is simply the rate of the mechanism; hence it is worth in any life simply what it is used for--what is worked out in it. We should look upon our lifetime as a means towards an end--time the means, and a Christlike character, worth God’s keeping in His own eternity, the end of our life here. The one thing needful is that the soul go hence clothed in Christ’s wedding garment; not how long a time God gives us to dress our souls for that perfect society. Has He not already given us time enough? (Newman Smyth, D. D.)

God’s eternity considered in reference to the suspension of His promised purposes

I. Endeavour to illustrate their import, and establish the truth of the proposition which they contain. These words are designed as an answer to the objections which irreligious scoffers advance against the certainty of the accomplishment of the Divine declarations, founded on its long delay.

1. Every portion of duration is something real, and has a true and proper existence; but the epithets great and small, when applied to this (as well as to anything else), are merely comparative. We should consider fifty years as forming a very large portion of human life; but the same number of years in the history of an empire would be justly considered small. Thus is the same quantity either great or small, as you place it by the side of something much inferior to it in magnitude, or much superior.

2. Hence it results that absolute greatness belongs only to what is infinite; for whatever falls short of this, however great it may appear, its supposed greatness is entirely owing to the incidental absence of another object that is greater.

3. In duration, absolute greatness belongs only to eternity.

4. We must then conceive that He who has subsisted throughout eternal ages; who knows “no beginning of days, nor end of years”; who possesses eternity; to whom all its parts (if we may be allowed so to speak) are continually open, both past and future; must have a very different apprehension of that inconsiderable portion of it we call time, from creatures who are acquainted with no other. Nor let any one object, and say it must appear as it is, and therefore there is no reason to suppose it appears to Him different from what it does to us. No doubt it appears to Him exactly as it is. His apprehensions are, unquestionably, agreeable to the nature of things; but it does not follow from thence that it must appear in the same light as it does to us. That each portion of duration appears to Him real, we admit: we are not contending for its being annihilated in His view. Something it is, and something it appears, unquestionably, in His eyes. The measure by which God estimates time is, consequently, quite different from that which we are compelled to apply in its contemplation. We measure one portion of duration by another; He measures time by eternity. How inconceivably different must be the apprehension arising from these different methods of considering it!

II. The use to which the doctrine of the text may be applied.

1. It removes the ground of objection against the fulfilment of the Divine declarations, arising from the accomplishment being long delayed.

2. It accounts for the peculiar cast of Scripture language, when employed in announcing the coining of Christ, and the end of all things.

3. Though we cannot immediately change our senses, let us endeavour to conform our ideas and convictions to the dictates of Infallible Wisdom on this subject. Let us consider the whole duration of things here as very short. (R. Hall.)

Heaven’s clock

goes at a different rate from our little timepieces. (A. Maclaren.)

God’s calm view of events in time

is one of the marks of Divinity. For not only is it true that a thousand years are to God as one day to us, but it is also true, as St. Peter tells us, that “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years” are with us. We know what the effect of a thousand years past (for of a thousand years to come we cannot know the effect) is upon the human mind. We regard things that happened a thousand years ago very calmly, without any of the passion which thrilled the breasts of the men who lived when the events we now read of in history were taking place. That is the way in which God regards events the very day they happen. They are to Him as if they had happened a thousand years ago; so calm is the Divine temper, so far from the impatience and haste characteristic of us men who live for threescore years and ten. This comes of His being the Everlasting One. Yet, strange to say, while God takes things so calmly and never hurries, He at the same time never forgets. A thousand years are to Him as one day to us. He is as much in earnest in His purpose at the end of a millenium as we are with ours the day we form it. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.)

The Lord is not slack … but is long-suffering.--

Reasons why God delays the punishments of wicked men

I. That men may re brought to a sense of their condition, and led to use those methods which may serve to avert God’s anger.

II. That in many cases ready punishment cannot be inflicted on bad men without laying a considerable share of it on the good, and therefore God spares them for the present that the righteous may not be involved in the calamities of the wicked.

III. the agency of ill men may be made use of in order to liking about many great designs of providence, and, in particular, the delays of vengeance on some ill men may serve for the chastisement of others.

IV. But it is much one, with respect to the divine being, when punishment is inflicted on ill men if it be inflicted at all: one day is with Him as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Nor can the sinner, if he reflects, take any great satisfaction in thinking that those punishments are distant which are yet certain.

V. That the present delays of vengeance, if they do not work their proper effects and lead men to that repentance they were intended to produce, will but aggravate their ruin. (Bp. John Conybeare.)

God’s forbearance to sinners

I. I am to give some account and to assign some reasons of God’s forbearance to sinners.

1. That the delay bears no proportion either to the eternity of His own or to the future continuance of our being.

2. God never intended this world for the place of our final recompense, and therefore is the less concerned to interpose with frequency for the immediate punishment of the sinner.

3. We may presume it designed in much mercy to sinners that He does not catch at every advantage.

4. It is designed to lead us to repentance. There are critical junctures in religion, as well as in life and fortune.

II. The long-suffering of God is no reason to believe he will never take vengeance. The reasons which account for His forbearance destroy that inference.

1. If the end of the world and the dissolution of all things be the vengeance expected, it was no way proper to raise so vast a fabric except it had been designed for some ages’ continuance.

2. For if sin could never be committed without immediate vengeance closely pursuing it, there could be no proper foundation of reward to our obedience.

3. Whatever continuance the world may seem made for, yet the lives of particular men are short and uncertain.

III. The delay of His vengeance can be no just reason for our continuance in sin. It does not lessen the danger; it gives no colour to the notion that God is an unconcerned spectator of wickedness. But now His present forbearance makes proof that He will hereafter pursue the wicked with His vengeance.

IV. His long-suffering is much rather an argument to us to forsake sin, and to proceed henceforward in all holy obedience.

1. It is so in point of gratitude, because we have seen that it is an effect of His mercy.

2. But if the motives of gratitude fail of persuading us, we should at least consider that our interest is very deeply concerned in this matter. For it is a very great aggravation to turn the means of grace into occasions of sin. (N. Marshall, D. D.)

The long-suffering of God a proof of His power

Suppose I were one of those scoffers, what should I be most inclined to doubt from observing how God’s threatenings did not take effect? I suppose the power of God. I should be inclined to say, “God has threatened what He is not able to perform; hence, the reason why sun, moon, and stars still rise and set in their appointed order.” Well, if this were my way of arguing, would it be any answer to me to say, “The Lord is long-suffering to us-ward.” Yes, indeed it would. There is no proof of the Divine power so great as the Divine long-suffering. How beautifully does one of our collects express this truth! “O God, who declarest Thine almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity.” Now, before beginning to prove to you that long-suffering is a great proof of the power of God, we would allow this idea to be at variance with that most commonly entertained. We have only to make mention of the power of God, and the thoughts are instantly far away amid the fields of immensity, busying themselves with accumulations of the workings of Almightiness--star upon star, and system upon system. And, from the fact of creation, we pass onward to that of preservation: we tell you that the complicated machinery of the universe is superintended and upheld by God. Far be it from us to imply that such a mode of demonstrating the power of God is other than correct. But it would appear to be possible, that whilst searching through the universe for evidence of the power of God, we may pass by the more signal demonstration lying individually in ourselves. We speak not of the testimony which is undoubtedly given by the construction of our bodies, and by the surprising manner in which the material incloses the immaterial. But there may be evidence which is still more overlooked, and that, too, an evidence which each may fetch from his own experience and his own habits. Towards each transgressor there has been an exercise of long-suffering on the part of the Almighty; so that if the greatest demonstration of God’s power be God’s long-suffering, then each of us may find in himself that great demonstration in all its completeness. With an hatred of sin which outruns our conception, and much more our imitation, God is looking down on every misdoing by which the earth is polluted. He is present at the perpetration of each species of crime--standing by the blasphemer whilst pouring out his curses, and by the murderer whilst bearing down on his victim. If this fact be pondered, it must always startle us. And yet He strikes not. We just ask you to imagine a tender-hearted man standing by whilst some monster of his species was foully ill-treating some fellow-creature or animal. Suppose him possessed of the most perfect ability of putting a stop to the cruelty, and awarding due punishment. The first impulse would be to exercise this ability. And if, in place of yielding to the impulse, he should reflect within himself--If I spare this guilty one awhile, if I visit not on him, on the instant, his iniquity, he may possibly repent--why we do not deny that, by a great effort, reflection might carry over the impulse, and the man might pass on in the hope of future amendment, resolved to administer no present correction. We allow that there is no actual impossibility against the exercise of such forbearance. But we think you will all agree that a vast moral effort would be needed for the repressing his feelings. Long-suffering is power over one’s self. If, then, it be reverent so to speak, God’s long-suffering is power over Himself. And assuredly God’s power over Himself must be greater than the power which He puts forth when He deals with what is material and finite. You may read of such instances as of a man in the hardihood of his Atheism challenging, so to speak, the Deity to prove His existence by striking him to the earth. “If there be a God, let Him show Himself, by smiting me, His denier.” Now you can hardly picture to yourselves a Being exercising over Himself so much control as that, with all the apparatus of fiery reply at His disposal, He should not answer the challenge by levelling him who utters it with the ground. Can you measure to me the effort which it would be to the Creator to keep back the thunderbolt and chain up the lightning? Yet the Atheist is allowed to depart unscathed. What lesson does the believer in God derive from this absence of all anger. He learns God’s might a hundredfold more from the unbroken silence of the firmament than he would do from the hoarse tones of vengeance rushing down to the destruction of the rebel. The Atheist overthrown is as nothing to the exhibition of the Atheist spared. We shall probably arrive at right apprehensions of God’s long-suffering as connected with God’s other attributes, if we carefully review two simple facts. The first is that God can punish every sin; the second, that God can pardon every sin. It is essential to the long-suffering of God that each of these assertions should, in the largest sense, hold good. Unless there be the power of punishing, there can be no long-suffering; for long-suffering necessarily pre-supposes that the Being, who might on the instant take vengeance, passes over for a while the iniquity. On the other hand, unless God can pardon every sin, what is there in His long-suffering? We can have no idea of long-suffering except as exhibited in our text--that it is bearing with the offender in order that, time being given him to consider his ways, he may yet by repentance turn away punishment. If we can satisfactorily show that God is pre-eminently powerful, inasmuch as He is both the punisher and the pardoner of sin, we shall have established the point under debate--that God’s long-suffering is a great measure of His power. You will readily admit that it is proving God powerful to prove Him superior to every creature, so that were the whole universe banded against Him, it would have no power in trenching upon His sovereignty. But how can we more thoroughly assure ourselves of God’s superiority to every creature than by ascertaining that over every creature who swerves from obedience God can exercise the office of avenger. Whoever the creature who apostatises from God, whether standing high or low in the scale of intelligence beyond all question the power of God can reach to restrain or crush this creature. It may indeed be that the creature is permitted to go on in rebellion; and thus no direct evidence is given of the supremacy of God. Wherein, then, would be the proof of God’s power? Simply in God’s long-suffering. Long-suffering is the greatest exhibition of power on this side the day of judgment. It is our evidence that God now possesses all that God shall then exercise. And when I am told that God is long-suffering, and no limitations are placed on the attribute, you bring before me a picture as overwhelming in its details as stupendous in its outlines, I see at once that if God can be long-suffering, then God can punish every sin. He could not be long-suffering unless He could punish; He could not punish unless He were supreme. And then observe, secondly, that God can pardon every sin. Of all extraordinary truths, perhaps the most extraordinary is that sin can be forgiven. It may be a bold thing to say; but if you examine carefully, you will see that there is a strong sense in which it may be said that long-suffering is not natural to God. For was God long-suffering without effort? Could He be long-suffering without a preparation? He could be long-suffering only as He had resolved to give up His well-beloved Son to the fiercest agonies and the foulest wrongs. And when I think of the difference between God, the Creator of worlds, and God, the Pardoner of sin, the one done without an effort, and the other demanding an instrumentality nobly sublime; the one effected by a word, the other wrought out in agony and blood oh! the world created is as nothing to the sin blotted out! That God can pardon is the very summit of what is wonderful; and, therefore, O Lord, do I most know Thee, the Omnipotent, when I behold in Thee, the Long-sufferer! (H. Melvill, B. D.)

The patience of God

I. Consider the patience and long-suffering of God towards mankind, as it is an attribute and perfection of the divine nature: “God is long-suffering to us-ward.”

1. The patience of God is His goodness to sinners in deferring the punishment due to them for their sins; and the moderating as well as the deferring of the punishment due to sin is an instance likewise of God’s patience; and not only the deferring and moderating of temporal punishment, but the adjourning of the eternal misery of sinners is a principal instance of God’s patience; so that the patience of God takes in all that space of repentance which God affords to sinners in this life--nay, all temporal judgments and afflictions which befall sinners.

2. It is not necessarily due to us, but it is due to the perfection of the Divine nature; it is a principal branch of God’s goodness, which is the most glorious perfection of all other; and therefore we always find it in Scripture in the company of God’s milder attributes.

3. Give some proof of the great patience and long-suffering of God to mankind.

And this will evidently appear if we consider these two things--

1. How men deal with God. Every day we highly provoke Him; we grieve and weary Him with our iniquities (Isaiah 43:24).

2. The patience of God will farther appear if we consider how, notwithstanding all this, God deals with us. He is patient to the whole world. He “presents us daily with the blessing” of His goodness, prolonging our lives and vouchsafing many favours to us. But the patience of God will more illustriously appear if we consider these following particulars--

(1) That God is not obliged to spare and forbear us at all.

(2) That God spares us when it is in His power so easily to ruin us.

(3) That God exerciseth this patience even when we are challenging His justice to punish us and provoking His power to destroy us.

(4) That He is so very slow and unwilling to punish and to inflict His judgments upon us.

(a) God’s unwillingness to punish appears in that He labours to prevent punishment; and that He may effectually do this He endeavours to prevent sin, the meritorious cause of God’s judgments; to this end He hath threatened it with severe punishments that men may fear to offend.

(b) He is long before He goes about this work. Judgment is, in Scripture, called “His strange work”; as ii He were not acquainted with it and hardly knew how to go about it on the sudden (Deuteronomy 32:41).

(c) When He goes about this work He does it with much reluctance (Hosea 11:8). He is represented as making many essays and offers before He came to it (Psalms 106:26). God withholds His judgments till He is weary of holding in, as the expression is (Jeremiah 6:11), until He can forbear no longer (Jeremiah 44:22).

(d) God is easily prevailed upon not to punish, as in the case of Nineveh. With what joy does He tell the prophet the news of Ahab’s humiliation!

(e) When He punisheth He does it very seldom rigorously and to extremity, not so much as we deserve (Psalms 103:10).

(f) After He hath begun to punish, and is engaged in the work, He is not hard to be taken off (2 Samuel 24:1-25.). Nay, so ready is God to be taken off from this work, that He sets a high value upon those who stand in the gap to turn away His wrath (Numbers 25:11-13).

5. The patience of God will vet appear if we consider some eminent instances of it. His forbearance is so great that He hath been complained of for it by His own servants. Job, who was so patient a man himself, thought much at it (Job 21:7-8). Jonah challengeth God for it (Job 4:2).

II. That the patience of God and the delay of judgment is no ground why sinners should hope for impunity: “God is not slack concerning His promise as some men count slackness.”

III. The true reason of God’s patience and long-suffering to mankind: “He is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” This is the primary end of God’s patience to sinners; and if He fail of this end through our impenitency He hath other ends which He will infallibly attain; He will hereby glorify the riches of His mercy and vindicate the righteousness of His justice; for God does not lose the glory of His patience, though we lose the benefit of it, and He will make it subservient to His justice one way or other. Lessons:

1. That nothing is more provoking to God than the abuse of His patience.

2. That the patience of God will have an end.

3. That nothing will more hasten and aggravate our ruin than the abuse of God’s patience. (Abp. Tillotson.)

Man’s external universe as maintained by God for a moral purpose

I. That man’s external universe is maintained by God.

1. However long He may continue to uphold it, He does not overlook the claims of His justice. There are before Him “a day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”

2. However long He may continue to uphold it, duration is nothing to Him. “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” He is not limited to time as we are.

3. However long He may continue to uphold it, He does not forget His promise. “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness.”

4. However long He may continue to uphold it, His forbearance is manifest through the whole. He “is long-suffering to us-ward.”

II. That man’s external universe is maintained by God for a moral purpose. “Not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” What is the purpose? Why is this world kept in existence for so many ages? Is it that men might luxuriate amidst animal gratifications, revel amidst the elements which minister to the senses, and pander to the passions? Is it that they might train the intellect to think, and to fill the mind with knowledge? Not even this. It is the moral restora tion of man. “That none should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

1. This moral restoration of man requires “repentance.”

2. This moral restoration of man is according to the Divine will. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

God true to His purpose

Sometimes in architecture and sculpture designs are formed as an exercise of skill, without any intention of embodying them in work. And sometimes politicians frame schemes which are intended only for Utopia, and for’ the carrying out of which no attempt will be made. But God’s design is for execution and His scheme for embodiment. A purpose to work out His design has firm hold of every portion and feature of that design. (S. Martin.)

That all should come to repentance.

The rules and directions for the right performing the duty of repentance

1. The first is this, implore repentance at the hands of God (2 Timothy 2:25).

2. Have due regard to the sacred Word. Suppose we were travelling in the dark, what could we do better in such a case than procure a light to guide us? Naturally we are in the darkness of ignorance and mists of error, and want to be illuminated in the right way (Psalms 119:105; 2 Peter 1:19). And that the Holy Scripture has a peculiar efficacy to purify from sin, which is done by repentance, is evident (Psalms 119:9).

3. Consider the nature of God. As His word rightly heard, so His nature duly contemplated, will be not only a mighty antidote against sin, but as strong an inducement to repentance. Now the nature of God we may best learn from His glorious name (Exodus 34:6-7). God in His nature is holy and even essentially and infinitely holy (Isaiah 60:3). And can we endure to rest in wilful sin when it is an evil abominable to God, and makes us as odious to Him as it is in its own nature? Reflect then seriously again, that He is just too. And as His perfect purity sets Him against sinners, so His absolute justice inclines and constrains Him to punish all that persist in it. And then we may consider further that He is powerful too, and armed with omnipotence. And so He is able to punish us (Psalms 76:7).

4. Place the promise and assurance of pardon before your eyes (Ezekiel 18:30; Luke 24:47; Acts 3:19; Acts 5:31).

5. Fix your thoughts upon Christ’s sufferings. They were various, sharp, and terrible; but all for our sins. (R. Warren, D. D.)

God’s willingness to pardon

I. That God is “not willing that any should perish,” appears by His own positive declarations.

II. That God “is unwilling that any should perish,” is illustrated by the invitations with which the sacred scriptures abound.

III. The same truth is still further illustrated by the encouragement God everywhere presents to those who show an inclination to return.

IV. The same truth is illustrated by the threatenings and warnings which are given to persons and nations before destruction comes on them.

V. The delay of judgment illustrates my text.

VI. The most notorious characters are specified in the offers and invitations of mercy which we find in sacred scripture.

VII. The death of Christ is an illustration of the proposition in the text.

VIII. The means employed to keep up the gospel of Christ before the world and the Church declares the same truth.

IX. The pains taken to remove distrust prove that God is “not willing that any should perish.” He not only gives us His declaration that He is not willing that any should perish, but He gives us His oath.

X. The proposition contained in the text is illustrated by many examples: Manasseh. Thief on cross. (W. Freeland, LL. D.)

God’s unwillingness

I. What does the apostle mean here by the expression “perish”? What is it to perish? This will be most appropriately answered in the words of Holy Scripture. Paul called it “Being punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). “Sudden destruction” (1 Thessalonians 5:3). “Swift destruction” (chap. 2:1). “The vengeance of eternal fire” (Jude 1:7).

II. What reasons have we to conclude that any will thus perish?

I. Fallen angels have perished (Jude 1:6).

2. Sodom and Gomorrah have “suffered the vengeance of eternal fire” (Jude 1:7).

3. Other men deserve to perish. “The Scripture hath concluded all under sin.”

4. That part of the punishment which consists in natural death is daily being inflicted before our eyes.

5. God has said that some characters shall perish. “He that believeth not shall be damned.”

III. But WHO are thus in danger?

1. “Despisers” (Acts 13:41).

2. profane persons, and all who “forget God” (Psalms 9:17).

3. All the impenitent (Luke 13:5).

4. All unbelievers (Mark 16:16).

IV. How are we to understand the expression God is not willing that any should perish? Hell does not exist without His permission! Death is His messenger! The judgment of the great day will be held by His appointment! But then--

1. God will not punish without occasion. Nor

2. Till the guilt of man has rendered it necessary. Nor

3. Without having provided a remedy:--the best possible remedy. Nor

4. Without having authorised the publication of that remedy. Nor

5. Without having implored men to accept it. Nor

6. Without having given space for repentance.

7. Nor will He inflict eternal judgment on one soul which has not proved its filial enmity to Him, to truth, to holiness.

V. What evidences have we that God is “not willing that any should thus perish”?

1. The evidence arising from His character.

2. From His word.

3. From His oath (John 3:16).

4. From the gift of His Holy Spirit.

5. From the revelation of His truth.

6. From the exaltation of Christ as a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance.

7. From the promise of the personal help of the Holy Spirit--to them that ask it.

8. From every instance of true repentance which has occurred.

9. From sparing mercy from day to day.

10. From warnings, exhortations, invitations, directions, promises, etc., without number.

VI. What is the imperative and only alternative that men may not perish? We answer, “repentance.” (The Evangelist.)

The day of the Lord will come as a thief.

The day of the Lord

I. The text first points us to a period advancing rapidly upon us, in the future; and as such differs from any other which may have marked an epoch in the succession of ages since the world began.

1. The bright display of the Lord’s attributes which will then be made.

2. The affairs of the mediatorial kingdom of grace, the reign of Christ, as such, will then be completed.

3. The exhibition of His equity, which will then be made in the regular dispensations of His providence among men.

4. The Lord will then receive in and from His people glory and renown.

II. The declarations made in the text concerning its coming.

1. The certainty of it.

2. The sudden and unexpected manner of its approach.

(1) To excite men to watch for the event.

(2) The knowledge of the exact time might alarm men, and prevent attendance to the present duties of life.

III. Some of the occurrences of the day of the Lord. (J. Thompson Smith.)

Preparation for dearth and judgment

I. The period referred to. There have been memorable days in the history of the world and in the histories of nations.

1. On that day the dispensation of mercy will close.

2. It will be the day of the second coming of the Lord Jesus. Believer, it will be the consummation of thy bliss to have a perfect sight of Christ “without a veil between,” and to bear an exact conformity to His likeness. But O sinner! how wilt thou meet His frown?

3. It will be the day of the Lord’s especial honour.

4. It is the day on which all His declarations will be fulfilled and verified--His declarations of mercy to His people and His threatenings of destruction to the impenitent and unbelieving.

II. The duties to which its expected coming calls us.

1. We should watch against a spirit of slothfulness and indifference.

2. We should anxiously desire to be found ready whenever that day may come.

(1) Reconciliation with God is necessary.

(2) A close and humble walk with God is requisite.

(3) Frequent meditation on the consequences of that day will prepare us for its coming.

III. Motives to lead us to the discharge of these duties.

1. The uncertainty of the time when this day shall come.

2. The danger and ruin resulting from the want of preparation for its coming. (Essex Remembrancer.)

The heavens shall pass away with a great noise.--

The destruction of the universe:--

1. The destruction of the universe affords us a picture of the power of our Judge. How powerful is this Judge! Who can resist His will?

2. The conflagration of the universe affords us a picture of the horrors of vice. Behold how far God carries His resentment against sin. Heavens, earth, elements, are ye guilty? But, if ye be treated with so much rigour for having been the unconscious instruments of the crime, what must the condition of the criminal be?

3. In the burning of the universe we find a representation-of the vanity of the present world. What is this world which fascinates our eyes? It is a funeral pile that already begins to burn, and will soon be entirely consumed. The hope of an imaginary immortality hath been able to support some men against the fear of a real death. The idea of existing in the minds of those who exist after them hath, in some sort, comforted them under the miserable thought of being no more. Hence pompous buildings, hence rich monuments, and vainglorious titles inscribed on marble and brass. But behold the dissolution of all those bonds, and the memory of all that is fastened to the world will vanish with the world.

4. The conflagration of the universe furnisheth a description of the world to come. Ye often hear us declaim on the nothingness of earthly things. How is it that God, who hath resolved to render us one day happy, doth not allow us to continue in this world, and content Himself with uniting all happy circumstances in our favour? Ah! a life formed on this plan might indeed answer the ideas of happiness which finite geniuses form, but such a plan cannot even approach the designs of an infinite God. A life formed on this plan might indeed exhaust a terrestrial love, but it could never reach the love of an infinite God. To accomplish this love there must be another world; there must be new heavens and a new earth; there must be objects far more grand.

5. Finally, the destruction of the universe displays the excellence of piety. Oh that I could represent the believer amidst fires, winds, tempests, the confusion of all nature, content, peaceable, unalterable! (J. Saurin.)

The earth also … shall be burned up.

The world on fire

I. The last general conflagration. In this Epistle there is one truth very plainly taught, namely, that this present world is to be consumed by fire. We learn also that this conflagration will take place in connection with the judgment, for “the heavens and the earth which now are, are kept in store, reserved unto fire, against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” We gather also from our text that this fire will burn up all the works existing upon the earth--everything which man has constructed shall perish. Chemists tell us that the great noise which Peter speaks of would certainly accompany such a combustion. The whole world shall become one molten mass again, and this terrestrial firmament shall cease to be. We may here note that the prophecy that the earth will thus be consumed with fervent heat is readily to be believed, not only because God says it, but because there are evidently the means at hand for the accomplishment of the prophecy. Pliny was wont to say that it was a miracle that the world escaped burning for a single day, and I do not wonder at the remark, considering the character of the district in which he spent much of his time. In visiting the country around Naples the same thought constantly occurred to me. Yonder is Vesuvius ready at any moment to vomit fire, and continually sending up clouds of smoke. Then go across to the Solfatara on the other side of Naples, stand at the vent of that ancient volcano and listen to the terrific rumblings which attend the rush of steam and sulphur; then stamp your foot or dash a stone upon the ground, and hear how the earth resounds; it is evident that you are standing over a vast cavern. Look around you and remark how the earth steams with sulphureous exhalations. Observe, also, how the earth in some places has risen and fallen, again and again. Yet this volcanic region around Naples is but one of the many ventholes of the great fires which are in the bowels of the earth; three hundred or more burning mountains have already vomited flame. According to the belief of many geologists, the whole centre of the earth is a mass of molten matter, and we live upon a thin crust which has cooled down, and is probably not so much as one hundred miles thick. The probabilites are that the whole internal mass is in a liquid, and, perhaps, in a gaseous state. Astronomers tell us that within the last two hundred or three hundred years some thirteen fixed stars have disappeared, and according to their belief they have been burned up. If such things happen in other worlds, is there anything improbable in the belief that the like will occur to us? But if there were no internal sea of fire, and no instance of other worlds being consumed by fire, who can guess the power which lurks in electricity, and other subtle forces? God’s dreadful armies lie in ambush everywhere. He has but to speak the word, and the servants of His omnipotence will rise, terrible in their destructive power. Earth is as a pile of wood, and the torch-bearers stand ready to kindle it at any moment. Although we read of the world being burned by fire, we are not told that it will be annihilated thereby. We believe from various things which are hinted at in Scripture, though we would not dogmatize, that this world will be refitted and renovated; and in that sense we expect new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Luther used to say that the world is now in its working clothes, and that by and by it will be arrayed in its Easter garments of joy. One likes to think that the trail of the old serpent will not always remain upon the globe, and it is a cheering thought that where sin has abounded God’s glory should yet more abound.

II. The apostle has drawn practical inferences. “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?” What connection can there be between the burning of the globe and holy conversation and godliness? The first connection is this. Our position as Christians is at this moment like that of Noah before the destruction of the world by water. What manner of person ought Noah to have been? I should suppose such a man, daily expecting the rain to descend and the flood to burst up from beneath, would lead a life very free from worldliness, a life the very reverse of the rest of his fellow-men. Now our life ought to be like that of Noah. Look around on the beauties of nature, and when you enjoy them say to yourself, “All these are to be dissolved and to melt with fervent heat.” You understand that the things which are seen are but a dream, that the things unseen are alone substantial. Therefore sit loose by all things below the moon, and clutch as with the grasp of a dying man the things eternal which God has revealed to you. Such conduct will separate you from your fellow-men. As there is down deep in your heart an object different from theirs, and as you set a different estimate on all things, your conduct will be wide apart from theirs; being swayed by different motives, your life will diverge from theirs, and they will misunderstand you, they will impute ill motives to you. I remark further, that the nearness of the Lord as suggested by the fact that the world is to be destroyed, according to His word, suggests holiness. The sinner finds a reason for sin when he says, “God is not here: everything goes on in the ordinary way: God does not care what men do.” “No,” says the apostle, “He is not away, He is here, holding back the fire forces; He is reserving this world a little while, and by and by He will let the fires loose and the world will be destroyed. He is not far off: He is even at the door.” How can ye sin against One who is so close at hand? The apostle says, “What manner of persons ought ye to be?” Remember he was talking to saints, and he teaches us that even saints ought to be more saintly than they are. We have not attained to what we ought to be, and I may say to the best child of God here this morning, “There is a yet beyond.” And then he goes on to specify two branches of holy life. “In all holy conversation,” that is to say, all holy behaviour towards men; “and godliness,” that is, all pious dealing towards God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

On the dissolution of the world

I. Contemplate the Supreme Being directing the dissolution, as He directed the original formation, of the world.

II. Let us contemplate the dissolution of the world as the end of all human glory. This earth has been the theatre of many a great spectacle, and many a high achievement.

III. contemplate the soul of man as remaining unhurt in the midst of this general desolation, when the whole animal creation perishes, and the whole frame of nature falls into ruins. Here, then, let us behold what is the true honour and excellence of man.

IV. We contemplate the dissolution of the world as the introduction to a greater and nobler system in the government of God. We, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. (H. Blair, D. D.)

Man’s external universe as awaiting a tremendous crisis

There is a spiritual conflagration now going on. Christ came “to send fire on the earth.” His word like a fire consumes the false and the corrupt. But the conflagration in the text is a material one.

I. That the character of this crisis will be very terrible.

1. The agent by which it will be accomplished, “fire,” is terrible. Fire, when not in its latent but active state, is the most terrible force in the world. There is agony in its touch. Forms the most beautiful it turns to ashes. Water, which destroyed the old world, is in some of its forms a terrible power, but life can subsist in it. You can touch it without pain, you can float on its surface, you can construct a vessel to bear you over its surging floods and seas. But not so with “fire.” No ark will bear you over a fiery deluge.

2. The extensiveness of its scene makes it terrible. “The heavens shall pass away.” “The earth also and all the works that are therein.”

3. The tumult with which it will be attended is terrible. “A great noise.” There are some sounds that shake one’s very soul with horror. The howl of the wind rising into the tempest, the rumble of the approaching thunderbolt, the wild and dismal roar of the ocean when lashed into fury--these are all sounds more or less of terror. But there are animal sounds still more so. The groans of the dying, the moanings of bereaved love, the shrieks of an agonised heart--these are fearful sounds. What a noise is produced by a little bonfire, what a noise, too, by a little steam from the engine; but what must be the noise of burning forests, and boiling oceans, of falling cities and rocking mountains! This “great noise” will be very terrible.

4. The unexpectedness with which it will come is another element of terror. “It will come as a thief in the night.” It will not come as a thief in some respects.

(1) A thief comes without warning.

(2) A thief has no right to come.

(3) A thief may be resisted. There is a possibility of turning him back; but not so with this crisis. It must come.

II. That the approach of this crisis is very certain.

1. It is certain that there is a point in the future that will terminate men’s present connection with this earth.

2. There is conclusive evidence that this period will be attended with a conflagration.

III. That the prospect of this crisis should exert on mankind a hallowing influence. The apostle states two effects which the prospect ought to produce upon us--

1. Practical holiness in every part of our life--“Holy conversation and godliness.” If all our material interests are thus to pass away, with what earnestness ought we to cultivate those principles of character, those dispositions of mind, and those habits of life which will abide for ever?

2. An earnest longing of the soul for the future. “Looking for and hasting,” etc. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Elements that will enhance the final conflagration

Since the noblest attribute of water is its blandness, who would be prepared to find that, chemically speaking, it is remarkable for its fiery composition? When its two constituents are burned in the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, they produce a flame of extraordinary ferocity. Such is the violence with which they combine that it is necessary to keep them from mingling, except in small quantities, unless they are just at the point of ignition. Dr. Clarke placed a brick screen between himself and the dangerous gases when he first experimented on their power, but was nearly killed by an explosion. Perhaps, when the world and all the works that are therein shall be burned up, the ocean may really be the magazine from which fuel may be drawn to support the great conflagration. But let this be as it may in God’s good counsel, is it not a startling thought that water, the uncompromising adversary of fire, should be compounded of two elements whose conjunction is accompanied by a passionate burst of flame and a terrible eruption of caloric? (Scientific Illustrations.)

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved.

Immortality and science

It is a singular fact that these words have far more probability of truth than they had a generation ago. Then, the stability of the physical universe was held to be a settled fact of science; it is not so regarded now. If this world and the universe of worlds are to undergo at times such catastrophes as science and Scripture indicate, even to possible destruction, where shall immortal man abide? Physical science chiefly touches human destiny at two points of what is technically known as the principle of continuity; namely, the resolution of thought and feeling into molecular changes, and the development of man from preceding lower orders of life. The principle is thought to militate against immortality, as it implies that all the potency of life is within matter, and that all mental and moral activities are but the operation of organised matter. Under this hypothesis thought and feeling are resolved into the whirl of molecules and the formation and destruction of tissue, a wholly material process, necessary in its character and admitting of no permanent personality. To find anything outside of this all-comprehending law of which immortality can be predicated, anything that survives when the bond breaks that holds the whirling atoms together, is an impossibility under this conception. On the contrary, its analogies seem to point to an opposite result. It is not strange that the dreariness of such conclusions repels the mind towards some better hope, and that physicists are working other veins of truth if for no other end than to escape the horror of desolation their own triumphs have compelled them to face. Mr. Fiske says: “There is little that is even intellectually satisfying in the awful picture which science shows us of giant worlds concentrating out of nebulous vapour, developing with prodigious waste of energy into theatres of all that is grand and sacred in spiritual endeavour, clashing and exploding again into dead vapour balls, only to renew the same toilsome process without end a senseless bubble-play of Titan forces, with life, love, and aspiration brought forth only to be extinguished.” Such sentiments characterise the ablest physicists of the age. We reach at last either nothingness, or a cinder, or a ceaseless clash and repulsion of vapour-balls called worlds, with possible moments of life amidst vast cycles of lifeless ages. We reach the end of a road, but find nothing to tell us why it exists. The question forces itself upon us, if by looking in other directions we cannot; reverse this process and find some worthy end of creation, something instead of nothing, the play of mind instead of the whirl of molecules, life instead of death. The recent verdict of science as to the fate of the material universe drives us with irresistible force to belief in an unseen, spiritual world--not the belief of religious faith, but of cold, hard reason. The other main point at which physical science touches human destiny is in connection with that part of the doctrine of physical evolution which holds that all forms of life are developed from preceding forms under the impulse of some unknown force--a theory not yet exactly defined, and far from being fully proved. Take the extremest form of evolution--matter having all the potency of life within itself--it does not necessarily exclude future existence. If matter can attain to mind that longs for immortality, may not its potentiality be able to achieve it? If it can develop the conception, may it not be able to develop the fact? If the question still recurs, at what point in the process of evolution, granting its truth for the moment, the principle of immortality is inserted, or gets possession?--a question of great pungency under the principle of continuity, we answer it by instancing an analogy. At what point of its growth does a plant acquire the power of self-perpetuation? As a shoot it utterly perishes if cut down; the lusty after-growth of stem and branches also withers into nothingness; the flower is not “a self-reviving thing of power”; but the flower, gathering light and dew into its glowing bosom, intermingles with them its own life essence and so bears a seed around which it folds its faded petals as a shroud, and falls into the dust, no longer to perish, but to live again. This is more than illustration, it is an argument. A living thing under the law of development comes to have a power of self-perpetuation that it did not have at first; why should it not be so with the life that has culminated in man? He is the flower of life, and in his heart alone may there be found the seed of eternal existence. But this phase of the subject is unsatisfactory; it is not necessary to consider it under these suppositions, and we turn to another. We want not mere continuance, but some solid ground for belief in personality after death. Evolution cannot impair the fact of personality here or hereafter, simply because man transcends nature, which is the field of evolution. Man may comprise all that has gone before him in nature, but he is not summed up by it. As the grand proof of this, we adduce the fact of the moral nature with its prime characteristic of freedom. Mr. Darwin himself admits that “free-will is a mystery insoluble to the naturalist.” Necessity, which is the equivalent of law, never could evolve freedom. But choice, or freedom, is the constituting characteristic of man, upon which is built the whole fabric of his life and moral nature. It makes him a person; it is the basis of his history. It puts him above the order and on-going of nature. Professor Tyndall says that the chasm between brain-action and consciousness is impassable, that “here is a rock upon which materialism must split whenever it pretends to be a complete philosophy of the human mind.” The admission is valuable, not merely because of its origin, but for its impregnable truth. With such a chasm between the two parts of man’s nature--molecular processes and perpetual flux on one side, and conscious identity, moral sense, and freedom on the other side--we need not feel troubled at anything physical evolution may assert of man: it simply cannot touch him. We may now build our argument as to his destiny, unhindered by any clamour that may reach us from the other side of this chasm--a chasm that science itself recognises in our composite nature. But other difficulties may arise, such as the thought that this sense of personal identity may be temporary, that as our life was drawn out into separateness from the great ocean of being, so, having some cycle within itself, it will sink back into it, as a star rises and sets. Age and infancy are very like, especially when each is normal; sleep and unconsciousness mark both. As there is no identity before infancy, is there any after age? The fact that, notwithstanding the extreme plausibility of this familiar analogy, the human mind has never accepted the suggestion, has great significance; it has instinctively felt that this resemblance does not indicate a reality. Descartes argued: “I think, therefore I am.” Had he continued, I am, therefore I shall continue to be, he would have uttered as cogent logic. Granted the consciousness of personality, and it is impossible to conceive of non-existence. If self is a unit, and not a conglomerate of atoms, how is it to be got out of existence? But it may be said, if there is another life, there must be another world. Where is it? Of what composed? If it is within the limits, or under the laws of matter, it can have no endurance. The soul must have a sphere like itself, permanent, unfluctuating. Surely if philosophy may create a universe in which to float the worlds, and convey those quiverings of burning suns that we call heat and light, it will not withhold a fit sphere for the soul when it breaks away from the bonds of matter. We base our proof, however, not on mere analogy, but on the simple ground that the nature of the soul demands a proper and answering sphere, as wings demand air, and fins water. Otherwise, creation is without order and coherence. Were we to search for this sphere of the soul, we would not look for it in any refinement of matter, nor in any orb beyond the “flaming walls of the world,” but rather in an order over against this visible order, as mind stands over against the body. If, however, it be said that the mind must always have a body, or something like it, to hold it up, a sub-sto--a something like quicksilver upon a mirror, to take up and turn back its operations, something to sustain reaction and perhaps necessary to yield consciousness--we may follow a hint dropped by science in its latest suggestions. Physicists of the highest rank hold to the existence of a pure or non-atomic fluid filling all space, in which the worlds swim, a sort of first thing to which atomic matter is a second thing. But while science thus acknowledges a non-atomic fluid filling the inter-stellar spaces as a basis upon which the universe is a cosmos, or a united whole, it cannot impugn the analogy of a non-atomic soul fluid, or ether, as the basis or body upholding the mind, if we care to claim it. As we can imagine all the worlds from “Blue-eyed Lyra’s topmost star” to the smallest asteroid, swept together into some far-off corner of space--a not improbable result--and leave it clear of atomic matter yet filled with ether ready to float and unite another universe, so the material atomic body may be swept away and gathered to its original dust, leaving the immaterial body intact, a basis for the mind and its action as it had been before. Science and Revelation here draw very near to each other, science demanding a non-atomic substance as the only possible basis of conscious identity, and Revelation asserting “there is a spiritual body,” and “God giveth it a body even as it pleased Him.” (T. T. Munger, D. D.)

Disturbances in nature an argument for holy living

Nothing preaches to us such a sermon of the vanity of man, his works, his ambition, his art, his fashion, his pleasures, his proud over-weening science, as the instability of earth and of its final dissolution. But these extraordinary movements of Nature have for us a vastly higher argument than this.

1. In these terrific convulsions of the natural world there are found motives of unusual moment for highest, holy living. The force of this argument will perhaps be most felt when we consider, first, the vital relation which exists between this dissolution of nature and the sin of man. The fatal effects of sin were not limited to the boundaries of human nature, but they reach out into all the boundaries of creation, everywhere bringing blight and derangement. The imperfect and abnormal growths in tree and plant; the pains, diseases, death, which riot among these mute, inanimate things; the distempers and sorrows of the inferior animals; the drear waste of deserts, the thawless regions of ice, the fierce and fitful agitations in nature, the internal fires and ferments, ocean tempests and distractions, are palpable symptoms of organic difficulty and incurable sickness throughout the whole natural world. Ought we not to find in this exhibition of nature’s unrest and discord an irresistible argument for holiness of life? How can we delay to forsake that against which nature from the first rebels, against whose influence the very earth protests in her volcanic thunders and her profound shudderings.

2. Again we find an argument for holy living when we consider the vital relation which exists between this dissolution of nature and the restoration of man. Dissolution is not annihilation, it is simply transformation. These are not the death-pangs, but the birth-throes of nature. They clearly foretell a new creation, in which all that so terribly blights and mars the present one shall be absent. Does not the thought of all this come at last to press home upon us as with a tremendous argument to live in all godliness of life? No man of impure habits or misshapen character and deformed repulsive life shall range through that fair region, for there the river of life flows pure from the eternal throne, and instead of the thorn there is the fir tree, and instead of the brier there is the myrtle tree. (G. B. Spalding, LL. D.)

The dissolution of the world

I. The certainty of the dissolution of the world. That all these things shall be dissolved is a doctrine expressly delivered in Scripture, and by many impressive allusions brought home to the human heart. The day no sooner dawns and gains its meridian splendour than it begins to decline and ends in night. Spring no sooner introduces the bloom of summer than autumn assumes its reign, and then the devastations of winter desolate all the beauties of the year. Around us all things continually change, and life itself is ever passing away; grey hair and the faded look soon remind us that old age is at hand. Nothing is stable on earth. Cities, states, and empires have their period set. The labours of men perish; the monuments of art moulder into dust; even the works of nature wax old and decay. The world was created for the pleasure of God; and, when its destined course is fulfilled, He commands its destruction. He saw it meet that when the probationary course of the generations of men was finished, their present habitation should pass away. Of the seasonableness of that period He alone can judge. But amidst this great revolution of nature our comfort is that it is a revolution conducted by Him, the measures of whose government are all founded on goodness. Over the shock of the elements and the wreck of nature eternal wisdom presides. It is the day of the Lord, and from the terrors His faithful subjects shall have nothing to dread.

II. The sudden and unexpected coming of this great event. How miserable they whom it shall overtake in the midst of dark conspiracies, criminal deeds, or profligate pleasures!

III. The consequences of the dissolution of the world to man.

IV. The influence which the dissolution of all things ought to produce upon our lives. It ought to produce a seriousness of thought, at all times, upon the mind. (D. Malcolm, LL. D.)

The end of all things

We think it quite unnecessary to travel into the question whether these words mark an annihilation of matter, or only its purification preparatory to its re-appearance in some better form; it is sufficient for our purpose that the effect shall be the same as if the whole were taken down, and star after star and system after system departed from the vast fields of space.

I. There are two ways in which the assertion as to the dissolution of all material things may be considered and applied; we may speak of them as to be dissolved, either as they are in themselves, or as they are possessed by us.

1. And first as to the fact, literally taken, that “all these things shall be dissolved.” We must pause to note the sublimity and augustness of the fact that the Almighty is to remain unchanged and unchangeable, whilst the very heavens and suns and stars are dim with age. We find His eternity before the series commenced, and we find it when the series shall have passed. Who amongst us does not feel rebuked by the truth now presented to his attention, if indeed he be living in the preference of the objects of sight? Man of pleasure! go on delighting thyself with things which gratify the senses; man of learning! continue to neglect “the wisdom which is from above”; man of avarice! persist in digging for gold, and consume thy days and nights in heaping up riches; man of ambition! still toil for distinction, and spare no sacrifice which may gain the honour of this world. But now, all ye worshippers of visible things, that immortal yourselves ye choose for your portion what is infinite and perishable. Appointed yourselves to an endless duration, ye place your happiness in objects that are to last for a time and then wholly disappear. “All,” yea “all these things shall be dissolved.”

2. But we observed to you-that there was another sense in which this declaration might be taken--regard being had to the shortness of our own lives, rather than finite duration of all visible things. Even if there were never to come an appointed change over the visible universe, if the sun were never to be extinguished nor the earth consumed, ye cannot deny that so far as ye yourselves are concerned “all these things” would have to “be dissolved.” We will not argue with the sensualist in the midst of the fascinating objects wherein he delights; we will not argue with the miser whilst the gold glitters and sparkles before him; we will not argue with the philosopher as the broad arch of the heavens fixes his study; but we will argue with them amidst the graves of a churchyard, and our reasoning shall be its inhabitants of all ages and all ranks. We need not continue our progress through the melancholy spot; but will any of you go away from the churchyard unimpressed with the feeling that all created good can be enjoyed but for a short time, and therefore that it is not the good which should engage the affections of creatures appointed for immortality?

II. But let us endeavour to place before you this inference in a somewhat clearer point of view. The apostle argues that forasmuch as all visible things are to “be dissolved” they ought not to engage our affections; in other words, he argues from the transitoriness of all that earth can give to the folly of making it our chief good; and we wish to prove to you that the argument is in every way sound and logical. You must admit in the general that the worth or the value and possession depends in great measure on the length of time for which it is to be enjoyed. The objects of human pursuit are for the most part precious in men’s eyes in proportion to their probable duration, and you take the most effectual way of depreciating them by proving them transitory in respect to themselves, or transitory in respect to their possessor. And if this be true, there ought to be needed nothing but an actual consciousness of the shortness and uncertainty of life, in order to our estimating at their true worth the riches and honours and pleasures of the world. It would cause the gold that ye covet to look dim, and the honours that ye envy to fade in your estimation, and the knowledge for which ye toil to seem of little worth, and the pleasures which ye crave to appear to you insipid, were ye indeed in the habit of expecting your decease, and were ye really to count yourselves “strangers and pilgrims upon earth.” It is only because there is no such feeling, and practically no such computation that ye are yet so fascinated and engrossed with what the world can bestow on its votaries.

III. If there be one effect which more than another this consideration of the dissolution of all visible things is adapted to produce, it is a willingness “to do good and to communicate.” Shall we, if indeed it be only for a brief time that we can have possession of earthly things--shall we either selfishly hoard them or squander them on our own gratification, when we may “make to ourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,” and secure, by our acting as stewards rather than proprietors, unfading riches in that day when the earth and heavens shall flee from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

What manner of persons ought ye to be.--

Things and persons, here and hereafter

I. An important classification: “Things” and “persons.”

1. Things. We call the visible universe the great system of things. We need sometimes to remember that they are things only. The uplifted mountains which awe us with their sublimity are simply things. The animal and vegetable creations belong to the same category. There are endless varieties of life, instinct, structure, and form; but all are things. The possessions on which men so much pride themselves, and which attract such consideration from their fellows, are things, and nothing more. Our very bodies, so closely related to ourselves--inseparably united with us for this life--are yet not ourselves. They are but things. Youthfulness, elasticity, and bloom; age, debility, and decay, are not ourselves, nor our friends; they are things only--frail and changing things.

2. Persons. Persons are endowed with intelligence and will; they discern both right and wrong; they love and loathe. What a tremendous prerogative, to be a person! What high fellowship! God is a Person. So are angels. Man is the image of his Maker. What a pinnacle of danger is this! What a fall is possible from hence! Things exist for persons, not persons for things. Creation is for God, not God for creation. Nature, like the Sabbath, is for man, not man for nature, not man for the Sabbath. The popular philosophy of our day reverses this order. Its practical teaching is, that persons exist for things. As long as you court men, not for what they are, but for what they have, you put things above persons. In the Divine intention things are subordinate to persons. Business, riches, competence, poverty, are tests of men. They are instruments of education and discipline. None of these things are for themselves; they are ordained for persons--for the development of the mind and conscience and heart of man. The solemn question about every one is--ought to be now--will be hereafter--not, What has the man made by business? but, What has business made the man? The world’s creed is--Man exists for business, not business for man. The same perversion is visible in the misuse of the human body. One needs sometimes to ask, Which is the man, the body or the soul? The outer man is designed to be the hourly test of the inner man. The end of the thing is answered, when the intellectual, moral, and spiritual habits of the person inhabiting and using it are expanded and perfected. The husk is shed when stem and leaf appear.

II. An instructive contrast: “Things “shall be “dissolved”; “persons” must continue “to be.”

1. “Things” shall be “dissolved.” The globe is but our larger habitation, and, like the body which we occupy, it will not survive its uses. It is not “shall be dissolved.” It is, “are being dissolved.” Future events are close to the vision of the seer. There is something of the remotest future in every immediate present. “We all do fade as the leaf.” The elements of death, to which we must succumb at the last, work in us through childhood, youth, and maturity. So, too, the seeds of the final ruin are sown in the world now, and grow from hour to hour.

2. “Persons” continue to be. “Persons” cannot “dissolve.” The consciousness of existence and the sense of responsibility are indestructible. They may be bedimmed, but not extinguished. The intellectual and moral energies of the soul are a fire which may be buried, and, for a while, be constrained to smoulder; but, uncovered to the air, it will break forth once more into dazzling flame. Ah! what changes persons can pass through, and still remain the same! What differences there are between childhood and age, and yet the individual continues as before! A man may so alter his earthly condition that the past may become a dream, and will no more be realised in the present. He may modify and even cancel all the judgments which he ever held, and may reverse all his moral principles and religious hopes. But not even a suspicion will ever cross his mind to confuse the unquestioned conviction that, as a person, he is unaltered and the same. Life and death, the grave and judgment, heaven and hell, immortal activity and endless years will never bedim the individuality of a single soul. Personality in every deathless spirit shall stretch in a line of unwavering light to all eternity.

III. A solemn inference: “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be.”

1. Ye ought to live in the hallowed discharge of all duty towards God and man.

(1) “In all holy conversation.” The word is plural, “conversations.” As usual in our version, conversation means conduct. The plural indicates no particular conduct, but all conduct without exception.

(2) “And godliness.” The plural occurs here also, “godlinesses.” Godliness is all thought, feeling, and conduct which are possible to a man towards God. This is man’s action towards heaven, as the former is man’s action towards earth. Penitence for sin; faith in Christ, whose blood was shed; the eager pursuit of the Holy Spirit’s grace, that godliness with you may be likeness to God; these and all emotions, resolutions, and actions which can cleanse the conscience, pacify the heart, and refine the character, are to distinguish men who recognise that “all things are dissolving,” that “persons” are immortal, and may be for ever blessed.

2. In the holy fulfilment of all duty to man, and in the sacred enjoyment of all hallowed privilege from God, ye are to expect the grand consummation, and by the same conduct to hasten it on.

(1) “Looking for the coming of the day of God.” The word means watching and waiting. It is looking, not doubtfully, but in expectancy. This state of mind is the fruit of “all holy conversations and godlinesses.” It cannot be projected by a wish. It can no more be extemporised in the Christian life than can an elaborate Corinthian capital or an ethereal group of sculpture be flung off and finished with a blow. Languishing piety and increasing worldliness will not attain it. If you would reap the harvest, you must sow the seed, and protect the rising growth from all blight and injury.

(2) “And hasting the coming of the day of God.” “All holy conversations and godlinesses,” not only create the state of expectancy, but in the design of the Almighty they bring on the day. The great system of “things” is passing to dissolution, let holy “persons,” who will mount above the ruin and live for ever, hasten the blissful hour. (H. Batchelor.)

What manner of persons Christian professors ought to be

I. zealous and in earnest as to the concerns of religion. “What shall it profit a man, if,” etc.

II. Penitent and broken-hearted (Psalms 51:17).

III. Believing on Christ as set forth in the word (John 6:27-29).

IV. Patient and resigned. Because--

1. Their sufferings less than they deserve.

2. Christ suffered more for them.

3. They suffer for their profit.

V. Benevolent, condescending, and merciful. Because Christ has been so to them (2 Corinthians 8:9; 1 John 3:16-17),

VI. Circumspect. Because their danger is great.

VII. Grateful. Because all their blessings are undeserved.

VIII. Hopeful. Because what God has done for them ensures everything.

IX. Ready for the dissolution of their present state, and the commencement of that to come. Learning hence-

1. Christianity, when reduced to practice, is beneficial to others as well as to our selves.

2. Christianity at a low ebb amongst us.

3. God will help those who are seeking to be what they should be (Philippians 4:13).

4. The consideration of what we should be teaches us our need of Christ in everything (Galatians 2:19-20). (H. Foster, M. A.)

Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God.--

Desire for the day of God

I. The privilege and duty enjoined. Christians should live and walk as on the borders of eternity, dying daily. This “looking for” the coming of Christ is similar to that of the watchman who waits with earnest solicitude for the dawn of day. It is the look of desire, not of regret; of hope, not of fear; and hence it is added, “hasting to” the coming of the day of God. The Christian ought to do this in two ways--

1. In desire. As he approaches the heavenly country he ought to breathe more of its atmosphere; to become more and more engrossed with those foretastes which faith gives him of its blessedness.

2. In preparation.

II. The means by which we may attain to the exercise of this duty and the enjoyment of this privilege.

III. The blessed consequences which would result from our habitually looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of God.

1. It would make us watchful and circumspect.

2. It would support us under the trials of life.

3. It would make us bold in our Master’s cause.

4. It would lead us to form proper notions of worldly things.

5. It would cause our light to shine brighter amongst men. (W. C. Wilson, M. A.)

Advancing the Second Advent

From the Bibles that have marginal readings it will appear that these words admit of a different construction--“Looking for and hasting the coming of the day of God.” Practically it comes to the same, whether we hasten to Christ or cause Christ to hasten to us. But the intention is that we should do both--“Hasting unto,” and ourselves “hastening,” “the coming of the clay of God.” But now the question presents itself--“Can anything which a man does really ‘hasten,’ by a single moment, the Second Coming of Christ?” It is a question which, in fact, loses itself in a far greater one--“Can the acts of the Almighty, which are all pre-determined from all eternity, be affected by anything which His creatures do?” In every age Christians are to be praying and labouring for the extension of the gospel over the whole earth. And so labouring and so praying they may command results. The Church shall grow, souls shall be saved, God shall be glorified. But, nevertheless, all this is only the earnest of a better dispensation--the falling drops which tell that the shower is coming. “But can mortal wishes, or mortal feelings, accelerate that ‘day of God’?” Assuredly. God has oftentimes, in His mercy, changed His times for His people’s sake. Many things have gone back. Death has retired for fifteen years. The destruction of a city has been postponed indefinitely. Great calamities, threatening a king and his people, have been handed down to the third and fourth generations. But, has anything, with God, gone forward? “In those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be. And except that the Lord had shortened those days.” What does that “shortening” mean? That the day of deliverance was put forward “for the elect’s sake.” Then here is a great and happy event “hastening “on for man! What, then, must we do “to hasten the day of God”?

1. Pray for it. What is the promise, ought always to be, emphatically, the prayer of the dispensation.

2. Let the Church live in love and union, in order that a united Church may attract her Lord to “come.”

3. Make great efforts for the evangelisation of the world.

4. Cultivate personal holiness. Will He “come” until His Bride has put on her jewels? And when she is decked, and when she is meet indeed, can He stay away? (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

The day of God

Can it be that God has left large tracts of present time to themselves; that He has retreated into some distant future, when He will exert a jurisdiction that does not now belong to Him? Certainly not. This were irreconcileable with any true idea of the Omnipresent and the Eternal. All days most assuredly are His, who is the Lord of time. Each hour, each minute, as it passes by, is passed beneath His eye, or rather within His encompassing presence.

I. By “the day of God” is meant a day which will not merely be his, as all days are His, but which will be felt to be His--a day in which His true relation to time and life, which is, in the case of the majority of men, only dimly perceived, will be unreservedly acknowledged; a day which will belong to Him, because in the thoughts of every reasonable creature of His hand, whether it will be for weal or for woe, He will have no rival.

II. “The day of God” means, again, a time when all human things will be rated at their true value; when man’s life, and all that belongs to it, will be seen in the light of the infinite and the eternal, and therefore in its relative insignificance. “The day of God” thus tacitly implies a contrast; it means that the days of man’s earthly life and all that concerns it will have passed away (Isaiah 2:12-17). Most men who have lived until middle life have experienced something that will enable them in part to understand this. You have gone on for years without any shock to the even tenour of life. You may have fallen under the empire of nature and the empire of your bodily senses, and everything belonging to this world may have come to be seen in exaggerated proportions, because you have lost sight of a higher. Now, a state of mind like this is abruptly broken in upon by a great trouble, by a loss of income, by a loss of reputation, by the death of a dearly loved relative, by a break-up of your health. He finds that he has made too much of it, both in detail and as a whole, and he wakes up to see that there is another world beyond it, compared with which, at its very best, it is poor and worthless indeed. This is for him a true “day of the Lord”; and in the light of that day he learns this truth, that “all flesh is grass, and all the goodliness of man as the flower of the field,” and that while “the grass withereth, and the flower fadeth, the Word of our God shall abide for ever.” And every such experience in life is a preparation for the awful day, when we shall learn, as never before, the insignificance of all that only belongs to time.

III. “The day of God” means the day of universal judgment. Certainly God is always judging us. Moment by moment we live beneath His all-seeing eye; He registers each act, each word, each thought, each movement of passion, each truancy of the will, each struggle by His grace to live for Him, each victory over the craft and subtlety of the devil or man. Yes, He is always on His throne of judgment, but this does not prove that no time is coming when He will judge as never before. The predicted day of judgment will differ from the continuous judgment that always is exercised by the Divine Mind as it gazes upon a moral world in two respects--in its method and in its finality. It will be carried out, that last judgment, by the Man Christ Jesus in person. And as the last judgment will be administered by a visible judge, by our dear Lord, who was crucified for us, and who rose from the grave, and who ascended into heaven, so it will be final. There will be no appeal, no rehearing, no reversal possible. Every grace responded to, or neglected, will be taken into account. Every thought, word, act, habit, all that has gone to make up our final self--and everything from the cradle to the dying hour, most assuredly, contributes something--all will be taken fully, unerringly into the reckoning. And thus, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is called an “Eternal Judgment,” meaning a judgment from which there is no appeal, in the new and everlasting age. We cannot picture to ourselves this judgment; but that does not prove that it will not take place. (Canon Liddon.)

The influence of belief in tire coming of the day of God

I. The expectation of a coming day of God affects Christian thought, in the first place, by reminding us of what human life really is and means. Springing, as it does, out of the very idea of duty, being, as it is, the inseparable concomitant of a reasoned conception of right and wrong as the law planted within us by some moral being, who must have the will and the power to enforce it, the expectation of a coming judgment at once raises man into his true place as the first of created beings here below; and yet, withal, it keeps him there. In short, the knowledge that we have to be judged at once guarantees our dignity and defines our subordination. It is only as moral beings having free-will that we are capable of undergoing judgment at all; and, as having to undergo it, we are necessarily and infinitely below Him whose right and whose duty it is to judge us.

II. A second way in which the expectation of the coming of the day of God powerfully affects Christian thought is that which illuminates the sense of responsibility. The sense of responsibility is as wide as the moral sense of man; that is to say, it is as wide as the human race. This primal idea, rooted in our first instinctive perceptions of moral truth, that we are responsible beings, necessarily implies that some one exists to whom this responsibility is due. Who is it? We look around us, and we see, most of us, some fellow creatures to whom we have to answer for our conduct. The child knows that he must answer for it to his parents--to his mother in early, to his father in later years. The schoolboy thinks of his master, the clerk of his employer, the soldier of his commanding officer. As we get higher in the scale of society, it may seem at a distance that there are personages so exalted as to be subject to no human masters to whom their responsibility is due; but in reality it is quite otherwise. Those who govern us are answerable to what is called public opinion for their conduct of public affairs. That is to say, they have to give an account, not to one, but to many millions of their countrymen. But if conscience speaks to us at all with clearness and honesty, it tells every one of us one thing about such responsibilities we owe to our fellow-creatures, and that is that such responsibility covers only a very small part indeed of our actual conduct. A great deal goes on in every life which is either right or wrong, yet for which a man feels in no way accountable to any human critic or authority whatever. Is he, therefore, not accountable for such acts and words as do not fall within human jurisdiction? And this knowledge obliges us to look often and beyond this human world to One to whom our responsibility is really due. As He only can take account of that which is withdrawn from the eyes of our fellow-men, so He assuredly does take account of all in which others may have a right to do so. We are responsible to God--yes, all who seriously believe that He exists as the moral Governor of this world which He has made must admit this responsibility. But, then, the question arises: When is the account to be rendered? That God keeps His eye upon it day by day in the case of every one of us is as certain as that He exists. It is faith in a future judgment which makes the sense of responsibility living and operative, by making the prospect of a real reckoning definite and concrete.

III. Belief in a coming day of God affects our whole view of human history and of human life. When we take up a volume of ancient history, or of the history of our own country, of what does it mainly consist? It describes royal and noble personages succeeding one another--their birth, their training, their coronations, their deaths. It describes the varying fortunes of multitudes of human beings associated together as what is called a nation, their privations, their conquests, their gradual improvement, the crimes for which they are collectively responsible. In short, we read history too often as though it told us all that was to be said about man, as though when man had done with this earthly life there was really an end. Ah! we forget the truth which makes history so inexpressibly pathetic, that all is not really over with those whom it describes, that they have only ceased to be visible, that the most important part of their career yet awaits them, viz., the account they have to give of it. Our Saxon forefathers, and the Britons whom they so ruthlessly exterminated, and Alfred, and Edward the Confessor, and William the Conqueror, and Rufus, and Coeur de Lion, and John, and the great Plantagenets, the Edwards and the Henrys, and Elizabeth, and Mary Stuart, and Charles, and Cromwell, and the Georges, and the Pretenders, and the great statesmen who fill the canvas of the first half of this century, and the men of the first Revolution, and the Napoleons, down to those who left us but yesterday--depend upon it they are no mere names; they are still living beings; and this is the fact, the pathetic fact, common to all of them, that they are waiting for the final judgment, and they already know enough to know what it will mean to each one of themselves. This view of history, considered in the light of a coming day of judgment, extends itself at once and inevitably to human life in our own day and immediately around us. Our first and, so to call it, our natural view of human beings around us takes note of their positions in this world, and of the points wherein they differ from or resemble ourselves. We think of them as better or worse off, as more or less educated, as friendly or as distant acquaintances, as belonging to a past or to a younger generation, or to our own, as standing in this or in that relation to the public life of the country, as belonging to this or to that profession, as occupying this or that or a third position in the social scale; but once let us have steadily thought out the truth that, like ourselves, every human being is certainly on his trial and his judgment before Him, and how insignificant do all those considerations about our fellow-creatures appear in the light of this tremendous fact! Yes, those possessors of vast influence, which they use, if at all, for selfish ends; those owners of accumulated wealth, which they spend so largely, if not altogether, upon themselves; those men of cultivated minds, who regard cultivation as an end in itself, and without a thought of what it may be made to do for others or for the glory of God; yes, the consideration that all, all will be judged, and that every hour that passes brings them nearer to the judgment, makes us think of human life around us in quite a new light. (Canon Liddon.)

The day of God

I. The solemn event we should anticipate. “The day of God, wherein,” etc.

1. The day of His glory.

2. The day of His power.

3. The day of His wrath.

II. The practical influence it should produce. “Looking for and hasting unto,” etc.

1. It should duly interest our minds.

2. It should duly influence our conduct. “Looking for and hasting unto the day of God” comprehends earnest desire and diligent preparation.

III. The important reflections it should suggest.

1. The awful nature and effects of sin.

2. The emptiness and vanity of the world.

3. The necessity of seeking an interest in Christ. (Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons.)

Look for new heavens and a new earth.

New heavens and new earth

A question here arises whether the new heavens and new earth will be created out of the-ruins of the old. The idea of the annihilation of so many immense and glorious bodies, organised with inimitable skill, is gloomy and forbidding. It ought not to be believed without the most decisive proof. On the other hand, it is a most animated thought that this visible creation which sin has marred will be restored by our Jesus.

1. The words which are employed to express the destruction of the world do net necessarily imply annihilation. The figures taken from the wearing out of a garment and from the vanishing of smoke do neither of them import the destruction of substance. For the substance of a garment when it moulders away, and of smoke when it vanishes, is not annihilated; only the form is changed. Is it said that the world shall perish? The same word is used to express the ancient destruction of the world by the flood. Is it said that the world shall have an end and be no more? This may be understood only of the present organisation of the visible system. The natural power of fire is not to annihilate, but only to dissolve the composition and change the form of substances.

2. Our text and several similar passages compel me to believe that new material heavens and a new material earth will be raised up to supply the place of those which the conflagration shall have destroyed. This being allowed, it seems more natural to suppose that the old materials will be employed than that they will be annihilated and new ones created in their stead. We know that the glorified bodies of the saints will be formed of materials which now exist on the earth, and that even the glorious body of Christ is formed of no other.

3. The new heavens and new earth seem eminently represented as a part of the vast plan of restoration which Christ undertook to accomplish. But it is not the part of Christ in this work to create out of nothing, but only to renew.

4. The time of Christ’s advent to judgment is called “the times of restitution of all things.”

5. But the passage on which the advocates for renovation chiefly rely remains yet to be produced (Romans 8:1-39.). If, then, by “the creature” is meant “every creature” or “the whole creation,” how is the whole creation to “be delivered,” in the resurrection, “from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God?” Not by annihilation, but by a glorious renovation. But why, if the heavenly bodies are to be continued in existence, should they be dissolved by fire, since they are not, as far as we know, defiled, as our earth is, by sin? One end of their dissolution may be that by a different composition of their materials they may be rendered more pure and glorious. Another end may be to make a memorable display of God’s abhorrence of everything which has had the most distant connection with sin. They have ministered to apostate man and lighted him in his course of rebellion. Lift up your heads, ye people of God, and sing, for your redemption draweth nigh. What though you are poor in this world, the new heavens and new earth will be all your own. Ye who must now walk on the earth lame and halt, while the world rattle by you in their splendid equipages, shall shortly make easy excursions from star to star, and from world to world. (E. Griffins, D. D.)

The new creation

I. Reflect on the great creation and the purpose of God in making the infinity of worlds. That there is no adequate purpose it would be absurd, indeed almost blasphemous, to suppose. The tornado may work blindly as it tears down the forest trees in its fury; but how unworthy would be such blind, aimless work on the part of the Infinite God! A giant may put forth his portentous strength in mere vain display; but could God exert such stupendous energy in order that some fraction of its wonder might dazzle the few beholders in one world? Surely a devout faith, as well as a reasoning intelligence, must conclude that the purpose which alone explains the creation and arrangement of our earth is that it should be the home of life, and of beings able to apprehend God’s will, is the actuating purpose of all the rest of the creation.

II. But in this world, at least, there has been failure. In man’s inmost nature there has been a collapse. High faith and loyalty, integrity and pureness, persistent endeavour for the right--all this has broken down, and man’s moral and spiritual nature is in ruins. But into the midst of the ruin of human hope there has come the all-renewing power of a great redemption.

III. How boundless is the prospect opened out to man by this new hope! What infinite possibility and promise of the development and application of human faculty! what a future for the researches of science and the plastic skill of art! and what sacred joy in the perfected and permanent relationships of human society!

IV. Our attention is directed to the regnant principle of the new universe. Where vice reigns all is hell; where vice and virtue are in conflict life is mingled joy and pain; but where triumphant righteousness makes its abiding home there must be health without any lurking incipiency of sickness, joy without threat of grief, love without peril of parting, and life without possibility of death. “Wherein dwelleth righteousness”--as the very coherence of the texture of the new world, and the pervasive and penetrating energy of the new life. And for this ultimate triumph of righteousness God is our guarantee. (T. F. Lockyer, B. A.)

A new heaven and a new earth

I. The events looked for.

1. First, the destruction of the world that now is. Not only the heavens, but “the elements.” Light, heat, air, moisture--all these are to come under the action of the final fire. Then “the earth,” where God planted Eden of old, and whose virgin soil was trodden by sinless humanity; earth, where are Bethlehem, Gethsemane, and Calvary, with all their holy memories of suffering and of rejoicing and of triumph. Then not only earth, but the things that are on the earth; all that human art and human labour and human skill may have added to the earth or reconstructed out of material things. Then the means--fire. Fire is the mightiest force with which we are acquainted in the material world. Science has taught us that no material has been found as yet which fire cannot melt. And fire is not only the mightiest force, but it is the most universally diffused. We find it everywhere--in the vegetable, in the animal, and in the mineral. There is fire in the tree which grows, and hence the savage will take two sticks, and, rubbing them briskly together, he produces a spark and flame. Though there is much of moisture in the wood, nevertheless he can produce fire from it. There is fire in the very stone on which you tread. Hence the sparks that you see struck forth beneath the prancing steed, or sometimes occasioned by your own sharp footsteps. There is fire in the water. If there were not it would all be frozen. Fire enters into the constitution of our own body. There is heat in the skin and in the flesh, in the blood and in the bone, and in the sinew; and it causes life to kindle from the sole of the foot to the very crown of the head. This earth of ours was once a sea of molten lava. It is now cooled at the surface, and this constitutes the crust of the globe; but if you were only to dig down seven miles through that crust, you would still come upon the ocean of liquid lava. And God has only to let loose this treasure of fire from its secret place, and then it will rush with destructive fury from world to world and from system to system. No wall can be constructed as a barrier to check its progress. Then you will observe another thing--the manner. “Pass away with a great noise.” The manifestations of God to man are sometimes calm and peaceful and assuring. At other times His manifestations are accompanied with things that awaken terror or create alarm. So it was in connection with Sinai. Then this great crisis is designated the day of the Lord--the day of the Lord Jesus. Why is it designated the day of Christ?

(1) It will be the day of the Lord Jesus, because the transactions of the day will be all based upon the mediatorial work of Christ.

(2) Because it will be the day for the vindication of Christ against all the falsehoods and the prejudices and the wrong judgments which men have entertained concerning Christ.

(3) Then it is the day of the Lord as distinguished from man’s day. It is your day now; and I say to young men it is your day now to do as you please--to rebel against God. But it will be the Lord’s day when the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved.

2. Next, the reconstruction of a new earth out of the material of the old. The renewal of the earth and the heaven will be a something that will take place after the destruction of the old earth and the old heaven. Now we must bear in mind that in the material world nothing is annihilated. He will want all the gold to pave the highways of the New Jerusalem. He will want the diamonds and the precious stones to gem the battlements of the city of the saints. He will put them all into one seething cauldron and melt and purify and purge them, and make them fit material for the erection of the future home of the saints. “We look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.” The wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just. They shall inherit the earth, and the wicked shall not have a part in it at all. But is this old earth to be cursed for ever? No. Jesus Christ’s work as Redeemer would not be complete. After He has saved man, He will have to effect the restitution of things as well as of men. He will have to extract the curse from the heart of the earth, and so silence the cry of a groaning creation. And let me say that this new heaven and new earth, in its purified form, will be far superior to our old home. What do we find here? Beasts of prey are prowling the deserts. In the new heavens and the new earth “no lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon.” In the old earth venomous vipers and poisonous reptiles are crawling, and sometimes they inflict pain, and even death, upon our fellow-men. But in the new heavens and the new earth nothing that hurts and destroys shall ever be seen in all God’s holy mountain. In this old earth what do I find? The air is laden with pestilence and desolation and death. But in the new heavens and the new earth the atmosphere shall be purged of all deleterious influences, and the inhabitants shall never say “I am sick.” Here time lays its destroying hand upon the mightiest monuments that man has ever reared. But in the new heavens and new earth “neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and thieves do not break through and steal.” Immortality is possessed by everything there. The inheritance is “incorruptible and undefiled, and it fadeth not away.” In the new heavens and in the new earth there shall be no more sea, no element of destruction there. And then I look at the heavens above me, so magnificent on a bright starry night; but I cannot help being reminded of the alternations of heat and cold, of the insufferable heat of summer and the greater heat endured in other portions of the world than ours, and of the insufferable cold of winter. But in the new heavens and the new earth there will be no such alternations. There is no need of the sun or of the moon, but the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the light thereof. In this old earth the hearts of righteous ones are wounded and pierced to the very quick by the wickedness of those around them. But in the new heavens and in the new earth there “dwelleth righteousness.” There will be no sorrow or suffering through the wickedness of men rebelling against the Lord most high.

II. What should be our attitude with these things before us? “Be diligent”--that is, “Do your best, that ye may be found of Him in peace.” Oh! is it possible to be at peace when the world is in a blaze? Yes, thank God, it is possible to be at peace then. But how are we to be at peace under such conditions? “Found of Him without spot and blame less”--“without spot” inwardly; “blameless “outwardly. A pure heart and a pure life. There will be nothing to fear then. Suppose two men standing side by side at that day gazing upon the upheaving of all things. The one man has been a millionaire commanding his broad acres and his ample revenue, but has died without Christ. The other man has died in the poor-house, and gone to heaven by faith from his humble abode. The two stand side by side. Ah, which of the two would you prefer to be, then? The one loses all. The fire burns all he ever possessed. The other loses nothing. The flames cannot touch his possessions. He has a pure heart, a clear conscience, a spirit delivered from sin; and the fires cannot touch them. (Richard Roberts.)

The final heaven

There was but one word between chaos and creation--there need be but one between the sustentation and the dissolution of the universal frame. And we are looking for these things! To this promise we hope to come! It is the goal of consummated bliss!

I. Let us endeavour from this description to suggest to our minds the true nature of that perfect felicity and satisfaction which are reserved for the people of God.

1. The scene we occupy was evidently intended for a great system of life. There is scarcely spot or element in which it may not be found. It is a great contrivance for all the forms and kinds of existence. It would be unmeaning, running to waste, but for this intention. Air, land, water are crowded with their several tribes. The happiness of every one is consulted, function and habitude agree most perfectly with the province and support provided for them, and none who survey and reason out the final causes of things can doubt the will of the great Master and Lord of all. Still he who was made the last of all earthly creatures is the greatest: to him they are all tributary and ministering, and God has given him dominion over them. Then, assuredly, when there shall be new heavens and a new earth, man, the capital figure of the present system, shall still be more prominently raised. He shall there need for help no inferior creatures. Their spirit has gone downward to that earth which is no more. But he is not alone. The ministering spirits which ministered to the heirs of salvation during this life shall be his companions amidst these fairer fields.

2. The world in which we dwell, with all its proper appendages of circumambient air and supernal light, is a material fabric. If, therefore, new heavens and a new earth shall be constituted, they must be material and related to space, or the figure does not hold. And everything concerning that abode would seem to confirm it. It has its entrances, its dimensions, its boundaries, that which can be “seen,” that which may be “heard.” The flesh of the risen saints is seen in those borders. The glorious body of the Eternal Son is the centre of all the beatific attractions and influences.

3. The visible works of God are the means by which intelligent creatures rise in their thoughts to Him and judge of Him. These are the monu ments of His existence and natural perfections. Heaven and earth but vary and multiply the perfect demonstration of a First Cause, His skill, His might, and His bounty. When we read, consequently, of “the new heavens and the new earth,” we cannot fail to infer that they shall be impressed with the same designations. How shall the depths of those heavens, how shall the ever-spreading horizons of that earth, be “sought out” and interpreted for the praises of Him whose glorious majesty shines forth from their incomparable frame l

4. The community of the saints is now a most pleasing fact: they are one. A new heaven and a new earth shall now embrace their whole multitude. God hath prepared a habitation for them. They are all brought home.

5. While the present state of our sojourn abounds in multitudinous life, while it is chiefly administrative to the life of man, we cannot but be amazed at the contrivance and the fulness of those provisions which give general life, and peculiarly that of man, its greatest possible happiness and freest possible exercise. We, however, boast a life of higher functions and aims. To be spiritually-minded is life and peace. The spirit of life breathes it into our soul. Though the sky and earth cannot affect this new mode of being, this life of faith, yet the passions and concernments of the present do war perpetually with it. But “the new heavens and the new earth” shall as much favour the inward life, the life of the spirit, as these mundane conveniences and laws now sustain our inferior life.

6. If the future condition of happiness and glory which shall be prepared for the redeemed may be thus expressed, we may expect that, notwithstanding the difference between it and “this visible, diurnal sphere,” there shall be certain points of resemblance. What are now the marks of our dwelling? Heavens--earth. How is our eternal abode described? New heavens--new earth. Is not there in the former an analogue to the latter? Is not the second the reflex of the first? Was there not a shadowing out of ideas which shall seem familiar to the saints in that glory? That which is inferior in appetite and instinct is done away. But is there no beauty in form and colour which the eye may behold? Are there no ravishing harmonies for the ear? Everything here may be but rudiment and cypher to be evolved and interpreted in far distant seats of the universe. By a graduated scale we may now rise through an ascending series of progressive changes until we reach the climax of all.

7. But this supposed parallelism, however unequal, between these different scenes of existence, comprehends an exercise of distinct and perfect memory. The “terrible crystal” of the new heavens, the fair paradise of the new earth, must recall the old.

8. The manner in which the present heavens and earth are supplanted by the new declares that a measure of happiness is ensured by the exchange which perfectly corresponds to the solemn revolution. Joy is the invariable fruit of a rightly appreciated Christianity.

9. Nothing more distinctly marks the evil of sin than the variance which is often supposed in Scripture between man and the scenes of his habitation. These are bid to rise up and declare against him. He is represented as alone “coming short of the glory of God.” They are true to their purpose, while he has turned aside from the end for which he was created and endowed. Hence those awful apostrophes with which inanimate objects are invoked, as if even they could but condemn him. They are summoned, like so many witnesses and justices, to denounce his crimes. But “the new heavens and earth” shall environ nothing which can offend. They shall correspond with whatever they embrace. Their pure elements shall only encompass the pure.

10. Since heaven and earth combine all our ideas of the fair and grand, since these complete our present sphere of life and action, the continuance of such machinery in a future state must intimate to us the diversity of its good. Herein is every constituent of our pleasure, whether sensual or intellectual. From above or beneath we derive all our gratifications. There is endless variety.

11. We have no such images of permanence as those works of God concerning which we speak. “For ever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven.” “They shall fear Thee as long as the sun and moon endure.” “The earth abideth for ever.” God suspends the proof of his faithfulness upon these ordinances, upon the covenant of day and night. Yet are we forewarned of their wreck. If, then, these monuments of whatever is durable are themselves to be destroyed, if the azure fade and the globe decay, how certainly may we regard in the new heavens and earth the voucher of a proper immortality! Their sun shall no more go down. Their refulgent tissues shall not decay. They are the perfect signals of a duration which admits no intervals and wants no monitors--which cannot be broken into ages nor counted out by stars!

12. The power of God to protect and bless is not infrequently rested upon His creative achievements. “My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.” “The Lord that made heaven and earth, bless thee out of Zion.” “Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, which made heaven and earth.” The mourner, the oppressed, the persecuted have sought unto Him who had done all these things--His aid and benediction they could not henceforth distrust nor slight. The meek of the earth were safe beneath the care of Him who made it. The new heavens and earth are fashioned by the same omnipotent artificer, the God of truth and of salvation, and in the same manner does He design that they should support the quietness and assurance of His people for ever! He who reared them shall be their God so long as they endure. They are the standard evidence and voucher of what He can and will work on their behalf.

II. Let us examine the evidence on which this firm expectation rests. To Abraham a covenant was given in which were contained many promises of a more than earthly kind. He had the seal of righteousness by faith. From him was to descend a spiritual seed. We believe in the Lord, and He counteth it to us for righteousness! We take this ancient warrant, which no time can impair nor cancel--a warrant distinct, successive, cumulative--and “according to His promise we look for new heavens and a new earth in which dwelleth righteousness.” Christianity, which brings life and incorruption to light, which is the promise of eternal life, exhibits the true and alone hope of this surpassing condition. We have everlasting consolation and good hope through grace. We depend upon the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began. Promise is a form of Scriptural revelation and encouragement with which we are familiar. It is an infinite condescension in God thus to bind Himself, and to speak to His servants, “for a great while to come.” (R. W. Hamilton, D. D.)

New heavens and new earth

1. We know historically that earth, that a solid, material earth, may form the dwelling of sinless creatures in full converse and friendship with the Being who made them. Man, at the first, had for his place this world, and at the same time, for his privilege, an unclouded fellowship with God, and for his prospect an immortality which death was neither to intercept nor put an end to. He was terrestrial in respect of condition, and yet celestial in respect both of character and enjoyment. This may serve to rectify an imagination, of which we think that all must be conscious--as if the grossness of mater='550 4:4'>Gal 4:4).

5. There is a declarative manifestation of the Son of God in the dispensation of the gospel.

6. He is manifested sacramentally.

7. Christ is manifested in a spiritual and efficacious way in the day of conversion.

8. There is the public and solemn manifestation of the Son of God at the last day (Revelation 1:7). Thus you see how it is that the Son of God is manifested; and in every one of these manifestations He had in view the destruction of Satan and his works.

IV. To speak of the Son of God destroying the works of the devil.

1. The first thing is, to prove that it was the great business of the Son of God to destroy the works of the devil.

(1) Was it the plot of hell to have God dishonoured in all His attributes and perfections by the sin of man? Well, Christ counteracts the devil in this; for He brings a great revenue of glory to the crown of heaven by the work of redemption.

(2) It was the work of the devil to disgrace the holy law of God, by breaking it himself, and teaching man to break in upon it; but the work of Christ is, to “magnify the law, and to make it honourable.”

(3) Was it the work of the devil to disturb God’s government in the world, and to cast all into disorder? Well, God the Father lays the government upon Christ’s shoulders on purpose that He may restore everything into the order wherein He had set them at first (Romans 8:19, etc.).

(4) Was it the devil’s work to establish his own kingdom of darkness in this lower world, by establishing error, ignorance, unbelief, atheism, pride, carnality, profanity, and all manner of sin and wickedness? Well, it is the work of Christ to pull down these strongholds of Satan’s kingdom.

(5) Was it the devil’s work to break all fellowship and friendship betwixt God and man? Well, it is the work of Christ to bring them into friendship one with another; therefore He is called a Mediator, or a Peacemaker.

(6) Was it the work of the devil to bring man under the curse and condemnation of the law, that so he might be in the same condition with himself? Well, it is the work of Christ to “redeem us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.”

(7) Was it the work of the devil to deface the image of God which He stamped upon man? It is the work of Christ to restore it.

2. The second thing here is, to inquire, How is it that Christ destroys the works of the devil? Christ destroys the works of the devil four ways.

(1) By the virtue of His blood.

(2) By the light of His Word.

(3) By the power and efficacy of His Spirit.

(4) By the prudence of His government and administration.

3. The third thing was, to observe upon some particular times and seasons wherein Christ destroys the works of the devil.

(1) The day of Christ’s death gave a notable blow unto the devil’s kingdom.

(2) The day of Christ’s resurrection gave a signal blow to the works of the devil; for He “rose for our justification.”

(3) The day of Christ’s ascension into heaven was a notable destruction unto Satan and his works; for “when He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive”; He opened a passage between this world and heaven, through the territories of the prince of the power of the air, by which all His friends might follow Him to glory.

(4) In the day of Pentecost Christ gave another stroke to the devil and his works.

(5) The day of a sinner’s believing in Christ is a time when Satan’s works are destroyed.

(6) Times of espousals, nearness betwixt God and a soul, are times of destroying the works of the devil.

(7) When at any time an honourable testimony is given to the Lord, to the doctrine, discipline, worship and government of His Church, in a day of uncommon defection and backsliding.

(8) When a believer dies, and goes away to glory, under a guard of angels, along that road that Christ opened.

4. The fourth thing here was, to give the reasons why Christ the Son of God is manifested to destroy the works of the devil.

(1) Christ encounters this enemy, and destroys his works, because it was His Father’s will and pleasure; and He did always these things that pleased His Father, rejoicing always before Him.

(2) Christ destroys the works of the devil, because it was for His own honour to engage in this expedition.

(3) Christ destroys the works of the devil, out of the ancient and wonderful love that He did bear to man upon earth.

(4) Out of regard to His own law, which the devil by his works had dishonoured.

(5) Christ destroys the works of the devil that He may “still this enemy and avenger.”

(6) He destroys the work of the devil, for the manifestation of all the Divine perfections.

V. The last thing in the method was the use of the doctrine, which I shall despatch in the following inferences.

1. See hence a glorious ray of the Godhead or supreme independent Deity of the glorious Redeemer.

2. See hence how the kindness and love of God hath appeared toward man upon earth.

3. See hence the evil of sin, and the folly of those that are in love with it, and give themselves up to its power and service.

4. See hence a good reason why the believer is at war with sin in himself, and wherever he finds it.

5. See hence why hell and earth took the alarm when Christ appeared in the world.

6. See one great reason why believers breathe so much after manifestations of the Lord.

7. From this doctrine we may see how much it is our concern to keep up the memorials of a Redeemer’s death, and why the truly godly love to flock to a sacrament.

Use second may be of trial, whether the Son of God was ever savingly manifested to thy soul.

1. If ever She Son of God was manifested in thy soul, thou wilt be for pulling down the works of the devil, and for building up the works of the Son of God.

(1) You will pull down self-righteousness, and put on the righteousness of Christ.

(2) You will be much employed in pulling down the image of the first Adam, and in setting up the image of the second Adam in your souls.

(3) You will be clear for pulling down the wisdom of the flesh, and for setting up the wisdom of God above it.

2. If ever the Son of God was manifested savingly unto thy soul, the union of the two natures in the person of Christ will be the wonder of thy soul.

3. It will be your great design, in attending ordinances, to have new manifestations of His glory, as David (Psalms 27:4; Psalms 63:1-11; Psalms 84:1-12, etc.).

4. You will be concerned to manifest His glory to others. The last inference is this, Is it so that the Son of God was manifested? See hence noble encouragement to all honest ministers and Christians to make a stand against the defections of the day we live in. (E. Erskine, D. D.)

The works of the devil destroyed

I. First, the works of the devil. This very strong expression is descriptive of sin; for the preceding sentence so interprets it.

1. This name for sin is first of all a word of detestation. Sin is so abominable in the sight of God and of good men that its various forms are said to be “the works of the devil.” Think of that, ye ungodly ones--the devil is at work in you, as a smith at his forge.

2. Next, it is a word of distinction: it distinguishes the course of the ungodly man from the life of the man who believes in the Lord Jesus. If you have not the life of God in you, you cannot do the works of God. The mineral cannot rise into the vegetable of itself, it would require another touch from the creative hand; the vegetable cannot rise into the animal unless the Creator shall work a miracle; and, even so, you as a carnal man cannot become a spiritual man by any spontaneous generation; the new life must be imparted to you by the quickening Spirit.

3. The language before us is, next, a word of descent. Sin is “of the devil,” it came from him; he is its parent and patron. Sin is not so of the devil that we can lay the blame of our sins upon him, for that is our own. It is our work because we willingly yield. Let us be thoroughly ashamed of such work when we find that the devil has a hand in it.

4. Consider, next, that we have here a word of description. The work of sin is the work of the devil because it is such work as he delights in. He has led the human race to become accomplices in his treason against the majesty of heaven, allies in his rebellion against the sovereignty of God most high. The works of the devil make up a black picture: it is a thick darkness over all the land, even a darkness that may be felt.

II. The purpose of God--“For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” Yes, mark that word, “destroyed,” not limited, nor alleviated, nor neutralised, but destroyed.

1. The work which lies in this purpose is assuredly a Divine work. The Lord who can create can certainly destroy.

2. And there is, to my mind, about it the idea of a conquering work. When are the palaces and the fortifications of great kings destroyed? Not till the kings themselves have been overthrown in fair fight; but when their power is broken then it is that the conquerors raze the castle and burn the stronghold.

3. This means also a complete work. The product of evil is not to be cut down for a time and left to grow again.

4. It is a complete work and a conclusive work; for the Lord Jesus will so break the head of the old dragon, that he shall never wear the crown again. Sin in every shape and form the Lord shall destroy from off the face of the earth forever.

III. Our text plainly tells us how this is to be done--by the manifestation of the Son of God. Behind, and under, and over the works of the devil the Lord had ever the design that this evil should be permitted that He might baffle it with love, and that the glory of His grace might be revealed. My text has in it to my mind a majestic idea, first, of the difficulties of the case--that the Son of God must needs be manifested to destroy the works of the devil; and then, secondly, of the ease of His victory.

1. First, Christ’s manifestation, even in His incarnation, was a fatal blow to the works of Satan. Did God come down to men? Was He incarnate in the infant form that slept in Bethlehem’s manger? Then the Almighty has not given up our nature to be the prey of sin.

2. Next, look to the life of Christ on earth, and see how He there destroyed the works of the devil. It was a glorious duel in the wilderness when they stood foot to foot--the champions of good and evil! All our Lord’s preaching, all His teaching, all His labour here below was in order to the pulling away the corner stone from the great house of darkness which Satan had built up.

3. But oh, it was in His death that Jesus chiefly overthrew Satan and destroyed his works. Man, accepting this great sacrifice, loves and adores the Father who ordained it, and so the works of the devil in his heart are destroyed.

4. Our Lord’s rising again, His ascension into glory, His sitting on the right hand of the Father, His coming again in the latter days--all these are parts of the manifestation of the Son of God by which the works of the devil shall be destroyed. So also is the preaching of the gospel. If we want to destroy the works of the devil our best method is to manifest more and more the Son of God.

5. Lastly, on this point, our blessed Lord is manifested in His eternal power and kingdom as enthroned in order to destroy the works of the devil; for “the government shall be upon His shoulders, and His name shall be called Wonderful, the mighty God, the Father of the ages.”

IV. A few words of inquiry as to the experience of all this in ourselves. Has the Son of God been manifested to you to destroy the works of the devil in you?

1. At first there was in your heart an enmity to God; for “the carnal mind is enmity against God.” Is that enmity destroyed?

2. The next work of the devil which usually appears in the human mind is self-righteous pride. Have all those rags gone from you? Has a strong wind blown them right away? Have you seen your own natural nakedness?

3. When the Lord has destroyed self-righteousness in us, the devil generally sets us forth another form of his power, and that is despair. But if the Lord Jesus Christ has been manifested to you, despair has gone, that work of the devil has been all destroyed, and now you have a humble hope in God and a joy in His mercy. What next?

4. Have you any unbelief in your heart as to the promises of God? Down with it! Christ was manifested to destroy the works of the devil. All mistrusts must die. Not one of them must be spared. Do fleshly lusts arise in your heart? In whose heart do they not arise? The brightest saint is sometimes tempted to the foulest vice. Yes, but he yields not thereto. He cries, “Away with them!” It is not meet even to mention these vile things; they are works of the devil, and to be destroyed. Do you quickly become angry? I pray God you may be angry and sin not; but if you are of a hasty temper, I entreat you to overcome it. Do not say, “I cannot help it.” You must help it, or rather Christ must destroy it. It must not be tolerated. Oh, there is to be in every true believer the ultimate abolition of sin. What a prospect this is! (C. H. Spurgeon.)