SERMON I.

ST. JAMES v. 8.

For the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. ·

TIME was, when I know not what mystical meanings were drawn, by a certain cabalistic alchymy, from the simplest expressions of holy writ,-from expressions in which no allusion could reasonably be supposed to any thing beyond the particular occasion upon which they were introduced. While this frenzy raged among the learned, visionary lessons of divinity were often derived, not only from detached texts of scripture, but from single words,-not from words only, but from lettersfrom the place, the shape, the posture of a letter: and the blunders of transcribers, as they have since proved to be, have been the ground-work of many a fine-spun meditation.

It is the weakness of human nature, in every instance of folly, to run from one extreme to its opposite. In later ages, since we have seen the futility of those mystic expositions in which the school of Origen so much delighted, we have been too apt to fall into the contrary error; and the same unwarrantable license of figurative interpretation which they employed to elevate, as they thought, the plainer parts of Scripture, has been used, in modern times, in effect to lower the divine.

Among the passages which have been thus misrepresented by the refinements of a false criticism, are all those

which contain the explicit promise of the "coming of the Son of Man in glory, or in his kingdom;" which it is become so much the fashion to understand of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman arms, within half a century after our Lord's ascension, that, to those who take the sense of Scripture from some of the best modern expositors, it must seem doubtful whether any clear prediction is to be found in the New Testament, of an event in which, of all others, the Christian world is the most interested.

As I conceive the right understanding of this phrase to be of no small importance, seeing the hopes of the righteous and the fears of the wicked rest chiefly on the explicit promises of our Saviour's coming, it is my present purpose to give the matter, as far as my abilities may be equal to it, a complete discussion; and although, from the nature of the subject, the disquisition must be chiefly critical, consisting in a particular and minute examination of the passages wherein the phrase in question occurs, yet I trust, that by God's assistance, I shall be able so to state my argument, that every one here, who is but as well versed as every Christian ought to be in the English Bible, may be a very good judge of the evidence of my conclusion. If I should sometimes have occasion, which will be but seldom, to appeal to the Scriptures in the original language, it will not be to impose a new sense upon the texts which I may find it to my purpose to produce, but to open and ascertain the meaning, where the original expressions may be more clear and determinate than those of our translation. And in these cases, the expositions which grammatical considerations may have suggested to me, will be evidenced to you, by the force and perspicuity they may give to the passages in question, considered either in themselves or in the connection with their several contexts.

It is the glory of our church, that the most illiterate of her sons are in possession of the Scriptures in their mother tongue. It is their duty to make the most of so great a

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blessing, by employing as much time as they can spare from the necessary business of their several callings, in the diligent study of the written word. It is the duty of their teachers to give them all possible assistance and encouragement in this necessary work. I apprehend that we mistake our proper duty, when we avoid the public discussion of difficult or ambiguous texts, and either keep them entirely out of sight, or, when that cannot easily be done, obtrude our interpretations upon the laity, as magisterial or oracular, without proof or argument;— a plan that may serve the purposes of indolence, and may be made to serve worse purposes, but is not well adapted to answer the true ends of the institution of our holy order. The will of God is that all men should be saved; and to that end, it is his will that all men, that is, all descriptions of men, great and small, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, should come to the knowledge of the truth. Of the truth, that is, of the truths brought to light by the Gospel: not only of the fundamental truths of faith towards God, of repentance from dead works, and of a future judgment,--but of all the sublimer truths concerning the scheme of man's redemption. It is God's will that all men should be brought to a just understanding of the deliverance Christ hath wrought for us,-to a just apprehension of the magnitude of our hopes in him, and of the certainty of the evidence on which these hopes are founded. It is God's will that all men should come to a knowledge of the original dignity of our Saviour's person, of the mystery of his incarnation,-of the nature of his eternal priesthood, the value of his atonement, the efficacy of his intercession. These things are never to be understood without much more than a superficial knowledge of the Scriptures, especially the Scriptures of the New Testament; and yet that knowledge of the Scriptures which is necessary to the understanding of these things, is what few, I would hope, in this country are too

illiterate to attain. It is our duty to facilitate the attain. ment by clearing difficulties. It may be proper to state those we cannot clear,-to present our hearers with the interpretations that have been attempted, and to show where they fail;-in a word, to make them masters of the question, though neither they nor we may be com. petent to the resolution of it. This instruction would more effectually secure them against the poison of modern corruptions, than the practice, dictated by a false discretion, of avoiding the mention of every doctrine that may be combated, and of burying every text of doubtful meaning. The corrupters of the Christian doctrine have no such reserve. The doctrines of the divinity of the Son--the incarnation-the satisfaction of the cross as a sacrifice, in the literal meaning of the word--the Mediatorial intercession-the influences of the Spirit-the eternity of future punishment-are topics of popular discussion with those who would deny or pervert these doctrines: and we may judge by their success what our own might be, if we would but meet our antagonists on their own ground. The common people, we find, enter into the force, though they do not perceive the sophistry of their arguments. The same people would much more enter into the internal evidence of the genuine doctrine of the Gospel, if holden out to them, not in parts, studiously divested of whatever may seem mysterious,--not with accommodations to the prevailing fashion of opinions, but entire and undisguised. Nor are the laity to shut their ears against these disputations, as niceties in which they are not concerned, or difficulties above the reach of their abilities; and least of all are they to neglect those disquisitions which immediately respect the interpretation of texts. Every sentence of the Bible is from God, and every man is interested in the meaning of it. The teacher, therefore, is to expound, and the disciple to hear and read with diligence; and much

might be the fruit of the blessing of God on their united exertions. And this I infer, not only from a general consideration of the nature of the Gospel doctrine, and the cast of the Scripture language, which is admirably accommodated to vulgar apprehensions, but from a fact which has happened to fall much within my own observation,the proficiency, I mean, that we often find, in some single science, of men who have never had a liberal education, "and who, except in that particular subject on which they have bestowed pains and attention, remain ignorant and illiterate to the end of their lives. The sciences are said, and they are truly said, to have that mutual connection, that any one of them may be the better understood for an insight into the rest. And there is, perhaps, no branch of knowledge which receives more illustration from all the rest, than the science of religion: yet it hath, like every other, its own internal principles on which it rests, with the knowledge of which, without any other, a great progress may be made. And these lie much more open to the apprehension of an uncultivated understanding than the principles of certain abstruse sciences, such as geometry, for instance, or astronomy, in which I have known plain men, who could set up no pretensions to general learning, make distinguished attainments.

Under these persuasions, I shall not scruple to attempt a disquisition, which, on the first view of it, might seem adapted only to a learned auditory. And I trust that I shall speak to your understandings.

I propose to consider what may be the most frequent import of the phrase of "our Lord's coming." And it will, if I mistake not, appear, that the figurative use of it, to denote the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, is very rare, if not altogether unexampled in the Scriptures of the New Testament; except, perhaps, in some passages of the book of Revelations: that, on the other hand, the use of it in the literal sense is fre