SERMON VIII.

SLOWNESS IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE.

PSALM CXIX. 25.

My soul cleaveth unto the dust."

THESE words express with great intensity of humiliation a consciousness which is universal among all sincere Christians. I mean, the power of the world and of the body over the soul. Such people desire to serve God with a free, growing, spiritual service; but they often feel impotent, slothful, and sluggish. They strive, but make no speed; toil, but make little way: they feel as if they were laden with a great weight, and that weight were powerfully attracted to the earth; and the earth clings to them, and they to it, as by a kindred nature. In all their sorrows, joys, thoughts, cares, hopes, labours of this world, they feel vivid, quick, and untiring; as a bark upon the sea, which, in all its wanderings and flights, is never weary: but in the service of God, in obedience, repentance, prayer,

love, worship, they move with a dull, heavy pace. They are conscious that earth has more part in them than heaven; for out of the dust were we taken, and dust we are. And so, says the Book of Wisdom, "the corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth on many things." The more they are awakened to the knowledge of God, the more they feel their tardiness of spirit. But this does not arise only from the sympathy, so to speak, between our nature and the dust, of which, in the beginning, we were made; for a sinless humanity would cleave not to the dust, but to God. It has a special token of the fall in it. The consummation of this fallen sympathy is the wages of sin, that is, death itself; "unto dust shalt thou return." The curse laid upon the serpent is a proof of this: "And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." And this original curse is not taken off from him even in the redeemed world: when all creation shall have peace, yet still, as the Lord said by Isaiah,"dust shall be the serpent's meat;" that is, humiliation and banishment from God. This slowness and slug2 Gen. iii. 14.

1 Wisdom ix. 15.

3 Is. lxv. 25.

gishness, therefore, in spiritual obedience, is a special proof of the power of the fall still abiding upon us, and of our proneness to linger and hold fast by earth and its attractions. We will not, however, go into so large a subject as this opens, but take only one point in it; I mean, the slowness of spiritual growth, which is so great a humiliation and distress to sincere minds, or, as they believe and express it, the stubborn earthliness of their

nature.

I do not mean to say, that this is not often a very just cause of distress and fear: for some people practise great deceits upon themselves, and, while they keep up a round of religious usages, really give themselves a full and unbridled range of earthly pursuits, enjoyments, aims, and thoughts. But we will not speak of them, nor of any who by their own inconsistency and indolence hinder the gracious inspirations and workings of God in their hearts. Let us take only the case of those who sincerely and faithfully endeavour to follow and comply with His grace in them; whose pure desire is to grow in the spiritual life; and whose chiefest and greatest distress is the consciousness of manifold hindrances, obstinate faults, want of religious affections, of earnestness, zeal, perseverance, delight in God, and the like; or, in one word, of the little advance they make in the life

of spiritual obedience. No words give fuller utterance to their complaint than these: " My soul

cleaveth unto the dust."

1. One cause of this disheartening and saddening feeling is, that people aim at models and examples which are too high for them. It may be asked, How is this possible, when the standard set before us is the life of our Lord Himself, and He with His own mouth said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect ?" And again, St. John says, "every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure ;" and "he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous." What standard can be higher than this? and are we not, by Divine command, bidden to aim at it?

Now we must distinguish between the perfection of the great Example which it is our duty to imitate, and the proportions in which our actual lot, strength, and calling, admit of such an imitation. Clearly the example of our Lord would seem to exact of us, at once, to be no less than sinless. But no one so understands the precept of imitation. It lifts up a pattern, and it prescribes a tendency, which is to govern our whole life. But the measures and proportions in which that tendency may be realized are not only infinitely

1 St. Matt. v. 48.

21 St. John iii. 3.

3 Ib. 7.

various in detail, but are no less ordained and distributed of God than His gifts of grace. The apostles He called to the closest likeness to their Lord in holiness, love, suffering, toil for His elect, utter forsaking of the world, and even to an imitation of His passion: so also all martyrs, evangelists, and successors of the apostles, who have been called out of the world to convert it, and be spent for it: so all who have been specially called to lives of sanctity, to a full devotion of themselves, for life, to works of charity and mercy, to labours of spiritual learning, prayer, and repentance and in like manner through all the manifold shades of the religious life, until we enter upon the confines of the world and its works, its powers and offices, households and homes. "Every man hath his proper gift of God: one after this manner, another after that." Every one has his vocation; and his vocation is of God. Our vocation is the measure of our powers, and fixes the proportions of our duty. This is the first thing to be tried and ascertained. When any are called wholly to forsake the world, their duty is plain. They are set to imitate the life of Christ with all their strength, and with all possible conformity of inward and outward circumstance. This applies chiefly and directly to pastors who are united to the Chief Shepherd in His work of love and self