1843, under a great charity which was essentially opposed to the sectarian spirit, which aided self-governed and not priest-governed churches, caring not what regulations and arrangements or denominational standards might be adopted by particular congregations. Under that charity I labored in Jackson county until called here in April, 1846, and that charity still contributed for two years to my support as minister of this church and society. And now threescore years have come and gone! The forty members of the church who welcomed me here, have all gone over to the morning land. And I must soon follow. "When all thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys, Transported with the view, I'm lost II THE SPIRIT AND THE LIBERTY OF CHRIST1 Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 2 COR. 3:17. “I F a man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his;" thus said the Apostle Paul. This apostle was the first great teacher, after Jesus, of God's universal love. The apostles who were in Christ before him, to whom Jesus had given commandment to teach the nations and preach the gospel to every creature, had reluctated at the duty. The foremost of them thought it unlawful for a Jew to keep company with one of another nation. He required a peculiar revelation to convince him that he ought to visit a Roman centurion, and though convinced for that occasion, he relapsed into racial pride and exclusiveness. This question was the turning-point of Paul's conversion. By birth and education he was narrow-minded and bigoted. He thought the partition wall between Jew and Gentile too sacred to be broken down. The idea of a new departure, that a prophet of Galilee who had been put to a death of shame should change the customs of Moses, was odious and impious. In abhorrence of the idea, inflamed with fury against it, Paul made havoc of the Church, persecuting that way unto the death, binding and delivering into prison both men and women. At the same time, in his cruelty and exceeding madness he was not without compunctions that he might be fighting against God. At last those compunctions proved too hard for the persecutor. 1 Delivered at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the General Association of Congregational churches and ministers of Iowa, Des Moines, May 21, 1890. A change came. It pleased God to give him an enlargement of mind, to reveal his Son in him, and he saw that the Jews' religion was intended to be supplemented with a larger hope, and be supplanted by a universal religion with grace and mercy for all mankind. As the light of truth flashed into his mind he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. He at once parted with his pride and narrowness and worshiped God in the way which was called heresy, and became a preacher of the faith which he had destroyed. The life of Jesus and the shame of his cross were now changed in Paul's apprehension into honor. On the cross Jesus had given himself freely a ransom and sacrifice for all, to be testified in due time, and from the cross he had gone to the heavenly places, to the right hand of God. The cross thus became a symbol of the divine love and of the triumph of Jesus, and instead of making it an offense Paul made it his glory. He at once preached in the synagogues of Damascus that Jesus is the Son of God. The phrase "Son of man," which Jesus generally used when speaking of himself, Paul does not use, though he calls him "the man Christ Jesus," "the second man from heaven," and speaks of him as "made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man." He gives no details of the human life of Jesus, nor mentions his mother or his miracles. In Paul's conception the divine elements in Jesus surpassed the human elements. He notices the latter the humiliation, the cross, the blood, the death, the burial, the resurrection with bold affirmation and tender pathos, but his mind soars and glows in setting forth the eternal glory of Christ as spanning the ages, far above all principality and power and every name that is named. Yea, he says, though we have known Christ after the flesh, henceforth we know him so no more. To Paul the sense of the Divine, of God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, transcended the sense of the human and earthly Jesus. Henceforth Christ was the First and the Last, the Head of creation, and Paul found in him an explanation of the dark things of former times, a revelation of the mystery of Providence. Reviewing the Old Testament history he saw that the promise of Christ was of earlier date than the laws of Moses; that the latter were to be done away, while Christ was of the eternal Spirit; that he was the light of former ages, the true light of every man in his conscience and reason. To Paul Christ had become the living Head of the living Church, ever present in the world until the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, that God may be all in all. The supreme exaltation and authority of Jesus Christ was Paul's commanding thought. He saw in him the manifestation of God in humanity, the word of God incarnate in human reason and speech. He blended the doctrine of Christ with the doctrine of God. When he said, "Ye are Christ's," he immediately added, "and Christ is God's." He mingled this faith with matters of common life, and said, "The head of every man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God." The love of Christ and "the love of the Spirit," are one and the same. They communicate the divine nature and enable us to live as he lived, who is our life. The superiority of Christ to Moses and a consideration of the veil that was over the Jewish mind in the reading of the Old Testament, were subjects that Paul discussed with great freedom and force. That veil blinded the unbelieving Jews to the light that Jesus brought into the world. Their minds rested in ceremonies and ordinances which they regarded as the hedge of the law, in the same way that modern denominations regard their peculiarities as fences and bulwarks of the gospel. In their boast that they were Abraham's children and disciples of Moses, they forgot the promise which was before Abraham, and the greater prophet than Moses of whom Moses spoke. It was in their zeal for the old religion and its yoke of ordinances, that they both killed the Lord Jesus, and were contrary to all men, forbidding the apostle to preach to the Gentiles that they might be saved. The results of a perversion and over-valuation of the Jews' religion have been paralleled in similar results that have come from a perversion and abuse of Christianity. Jesus uttered many words of heed against making names and forms a substitute for religion. He taught the superiority of moral sentiments, the priority of moral duties, that love and obedience are better than gifts and sacrifices upon the altar. But formalism and dogmatism and ecclesiasticism, which are other names for Pharisaism, have been exalted to factitious importance, and substituted for the truth as it is in Jesus. How often have they eclipsed justice, mercy and faith! What secondary and frivolous matters have displaced the lessons of the Beatitudes, of the Strait Gate and Narrow Way, the Golden Rule, of the Good Samaritan, of the impossibility of serving God and mammon, and of the House built upon the shifting sand or upon the rock! Through gross and carnal interpretations many sayings of Jesus have been made bulwarks of superstition and error. Millions have been led astray by a perversion of what he said of his body and blood and of the rock on which he built his Church. The homage of the mind, the devotion of the heart, and the obedience of the life, have given way to priestly rites and performances. When stress is laid upon outward ceremony, the worship of God in spirit and in truth is discredited. The simple ordinances of baptism and the communion have been made grounds of controversy and division, as though they were the sum and substance of religion. Following the instructions of Jesus the apostle gave his voice against materializing the gospel. He magnified spiritual religion, and made faith and hope and charity its commanding principles, and charity the greatest. These principles are affairs of the intelligence, of the reason, of the conscience and the heart. Paul |