of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.

She is a tree of life to

them that lay hold upon her, and happy is every one that retaineth her. When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid; yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.' Again, we read in the prophet Micah: "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"† as if it were a little and an easy thing so to do.

Now I will attempt to show how it is that these apparently opposite declarations of Christ and His Prophets and Apostles are fulfilled to us. For it may be objected by inconsiderate persons that we are (if I may so express it) hardly treated; being invited to come to Christ and receive His light yoke, promised an easy and happy life, the joy of a good conscience, the assurance of pardon, and the hope of Heaven; and then, on the other hand, when we actually come, as it were, rudely repulsed, frightened, reduced to despair by severe requisitions and evil forebodings. Such is the objection, not which any Christian would bring forward; for we, my brethren, know too much of the love of our Master and only Saviour in dying for us, seriously to entertain for an instant any such complaint. We have at least faith enough for this, (and it does not require a great deal,) viz. to believe that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is not "yea and nay, but in Him is yea. For all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him amen, unto the glory of God by us."+ It is for the very reason that none of us can seriously put the objection, that I allow myself to state it strongly; to urge it being in a Christian's judgment absurd, even more than it would be wicked. But though none of us really feel as an objection to the Gospel, this difference of view under which it is presented to us, or even as a difficulty, still it may be right (in order to our edification) that we should see how these two views of it are reconciled. We must understand how it is both severe and indulgent in its commands, and both arduous and easy in its obedience, in order that we may understand it at all.

“His commandments are not grievous," says the text. How is this? -I will give one answer out of several which might be given.

Now it must be admitted, first of all, as matter of fact, that they are grievous to the great mass of Christians. I have no wish to disguise a fact which we do not need the Bible to inform us of, but which common experience attests. Doubtless even those common elementary duties, of which the prophet speaks, "doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God," are to most men grievous.

Accordingly, men of worldly minds, finding the true way of life unpleasant to walk in, have attempted to find out other and easier roads;

* Prov. iii. 17-24.

† Micah. vi. 8.

2 Cor. i. 19, 20.

and have been accustomed to argue, that there must be another way which suits them better than that which religious men walk in, for the very reason that Scripture declares that Christ's commandments are not grievous. I mean, you will meet with persons who say, "After all it is not to be supposed that a strict religious life is so necessary as is told us in church; else how should any one be saved? nay, and Christ assures us His yoke is easy. Doubtless we shall fare well enough, though we are not so earnest in the observance of our duties as we might be; though we are not regular in our attendance at public worship; though we do not honour Christ's Ministers and reverence His Church as much as some men do; though we do not labour to know God's will, to deny ourselves, and to live to His glory, as entirely as the strict letter of Scripture enjoins." Some men have gone so far as boldly to say, "God will not condemn a man merely for taking a little pleasure;" by which they mean, leading an irreligious and profligate life. And many there are who virtually maintain that we may live to the world, so that we do so decently, and yet live to God; arguing that this world's blessings are given us by God, and therefore may lawfully be used;—that to use lawfully is to use moderately and thankfully ;—that it is wrong to take gloomy views, and right to be innocently cheerful, and so on; which is all very true thus stated, did they not apply it unfairly, and call that use of the world moderate, and innocent, which the Apostles would call being conformed to the world, and serving mammon instead of God.

And thus, before showing you what is meant by Christ's commandments not being grievous, I have said what is not meant by it. It is not meant that Christ dispenses with strict religious obedience; the whole language of Scripture is against such a notion. "Whosoever shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.”* "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all."† Whatever is meant by Christ's yoke being easy, Christ does not encourage sin. And again, whatever is meant, still I repeat, as a matter of fact, most men find it not easy. So far must not be disputed. Now then let us proceed, in spite of this admission, to consider how He fulfils His engagements to us, that His ways are ways of pleasantness.

way,

1. Now, supposing some superior promised you any gift in a particular and you did not follow his directions, would he have broken his promise, or you have voluntarily excluded yourselves from the advantage? Evidently you would have brought about your own loss; you might, indeed, think his offer not worth accepting, burdened (as it was) with a condition annexed to it, still you could in no propriety say that

he failed in his engagement. Now when Scripture promises us that his commandments shall be easy, it couples the promise with the injunction that we should seek God early. "I love them that love Me, and those that seek Me early shall find Me."* Again: "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth." These are Solomon's words; and if you require our Lord's own authority, attend to His direction about the children: "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God." Youth is the time of covenant with us, when He first gives us His Spirit; first giving then, that we may then forthwith begin our return of obedience to Him; not then giving it, that we may delay our thank-offering for twenty, thirty, or fifty years! Now it is obvious that obedience to God's commandments is ever easy and almost without effort to those who begin to serve Him from the beginning of their days; whereas, those who wait a while, find it grievous in proportion to their delay.

For consider how gently God leads us on in our early years, and how very gradually He opens upon us the complicated duties of life. A child at first has hardly anything to do but to obey his parents; of God he knows just as much as they are able to tell him, and he is not equal to many thoughts either about Him or about the world. He is almost passive in their hands who gave him life; and, though he has those latent instincts about good and evil, truth and falsehood, which all men have, he does not know enough, he has not not had experience enough, from the contact of external objects, to elicit into form and action those innate principles of conscience, or make himself conscious of the existence of them.

And, while on the one hand his range of duty is very confined, observe how he is assisted in performing it. First, he has no bad habits to hinder the suggestions of his conscience; indolence, pride, ill-temper, do not then act as they afterwards act, when the mind has accustomed itself to disobedience, as stubborn, deep-seated impediments in the way of duty. To obey requires an effort, of course; but an effort like the bodily effort of the child's rising from the ground when he has fallen on it; not the effort of shaking off drowsy sleep; not the effort (far less) of violent bodily exertion in a timeof sickness and long weakness and the first effort made, obedience on a second trial will be easier than before, till at length it will be easier to obey than not to obey. A good habit will be formed, where otherwise a bad habit would have been formed. Thus the child, we are supposing, would begin to have a character; no longer influenced by every temptation to anger, discontent, fear, and obstinacy in the same way as before; but with something of firm principle in his heart to repel them in a defensive + Mark x. 14.

Prov. viii. 17.

t Eccles. xii. 1.

way, as a shield repels darts. In the mean time the circle of his duties would enlarge; and, though for a time the issue of his trial would be doubtful to those who (as the Angels) could see it, yet, should he, as a child, consistently pursue this easy course for a few years, it may be, his ultimate salvation would be actually secured, and might be predicted by those who could see his heart, though he would not know it himself. Doubtless new trials would come on him; bad passions, which he had not formed a conception of, would assail him; but a soul thus born of God, in St. John's words, "sinneth not, but he that is begotten of God, keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not."* "His seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God."† And so he would grow np to man's estate, his duties at length attaining their full range, and his soul being completed in all its parts for the due performance of them. This might be the blessed condition of every one of us, did we but follow from infancy what we know to be right; and in Christ's early life, (if we may dare to speak of Him in connexion with ourselves,) it was fulfilled while He increased day by day sinlessly in wisdom as in stature, and in favour with God and man. But my present object of speaking of this gradual growth of holiness in the soul, is, (not to show what we might be, had we the heart to obey God,) but to show how easy obedience would in that case be to us; consisting, as it would, in no irksome ceremonies no painful bodily discipline, but in the freewill offerings of the heart, of the heart which had been gradually, and by very slight occasional efforts, trained to love what God and our conscience approve.

Thus Christ's commandments, viewed as He enjoins them on us, are not grievous. They would be grievous if put upon us all at once; but they are not heaped on us, according to His order of dispensing them, which goes upon a harmonious and considerate plan; by little and little, first one duty, then another, then both, and so on. Moreover, they come upon us, while the safeguard of virtuous principle is forming naturally and gradually in our minds by our very deeds of obedience, and is following them as their reward. Now, if men will not take their duties in Christ's order, but are determined to delay obedience, with the intention of setting about their duty some day or other, and then making up for past time, is it wonderful that they find it grievous and difficult to perform? that they are overwhelmed with the arrears (so to say) of their great work, that they are entangled and stumble amid the intricacies of the Divine system which has progressively enlarged upon them? And is Christ under obligation to stop that system, to recast His providence, to take these men out of their due place in the Church, to save + 1 John iii. 9.

* 1 John v. 18.

them from the wheels that are crushing them, and to put them back again into some simple and more childish state of trial, where (though they cannot have less to unlearn) they, at least, may for a time have less to do?

2. All this being granted, it still may be objected, since (as I have allowed) the commandments of God are grievous to the generality of men, where is the use of saying what men ought to be, when we know what they are? and how is it fulfilling a promise that His commandments shall not be grievous, by informing us that they ought not to be? It is one thing to say that the Law is in itself holy, just, and good, and quite a different thing to declare it is not grievous to sinful man.

In answering this question, I fully admit that our Saviour spoke of man as he is, as a sinner, when He said His yoke should be easy to him. Certainly he came not to call righteous men, but sinners. Doubtless we are in a very different state from that of Adam before his fall; and doubtless, in spite of this, St. John says that even to fallen man His commandments are not grievous. On the other hand I grant, that if man cannot obey God, obedience must be grievous; and I grant too (of course) that man by nature cannot obey God. But observe, nothing has here been said, nor by St. John in the text, of man as by nature born in sin; but of man as a child of grace, as Christ's purchased possession, who goes before us with His mercy, puts the blessing first, and then adds the command; regenerates us and then bids us obey. Christ bids us do nothing that we cannot do. He repairs the fault of our nature, even before it manifests itself in act. He cleanses us from original sin, and rescues us from the wrath of God by the sacrament of baptism. He gives us the gift of His Spirit, and then He says, "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" and is this grievous?

When, then, men allege their bad nature as an excuse for their dislike of God's commandments, if, indeed, they are heathens, let them be heard, and an answer may be given to them even as such. But with heathens we are not now concerned. These men make their complaint as Christians, and as Christians they are most unreasonable in making it; God having provided a remedy for their natural incapacity in the gift of His Spirit. Hear St. Paul's words, "If through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound; that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord."*

* Rom. v. 15-21.