Preached at Burnham, 10th Sunday after Trinity, August 5, 1866.
“For this is the covenant that I will make with the House of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will put my laws into their mind and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God and they shall be to me a people.”—Hebrews viii. 10.
My Brethren, we have said to-day that we are under this new covenant: when the Commandments were read from the Altar, we prayed, Lord, have mercy upon us, and write all these Thy laws in our hearts, we beseech Thee. The laws are written in the twentieth chapter of Exodus; they are said there to have been written on tables of stone. We are not content that they should be written in that chapter or on those stones. We do not think they can help us much whilst they are at a distance from us—whilst we only read them out of a book. They were spoken to the people of Israel. We want that they should be spoken to us. We want that they should be spoken not only into our ears but into our minds and hearts. We ask Him from whom they came to put them into our minds—to fix them in our hearts. That is what we believe He promised to do for the people of Israel. That is what we believe He promises to do for the people of England. We are sure no one else can do it. No one else knows the heart and mind of an Israelite or an Englishman; no one else knows what is scrawled there which has need to be blotted out, or how any new and better thing can be written in place of it. He does know. He can blot out the scrawl. He can write the clear letters which He wishes to be there.
Yes, my Friends, this is the new covenant—what we call the New Testament. It is the covenant of our Baptism. When you bring your children to be christened you claim this new covenant for them. You believe that your Father has accepted them as His children in His only Begotten Son; you present them to Him that He may give them the Spirit who will put His laws in their mind and write them in their hearts. You are to rear them in the faith that what He has promised on their behalf He will surely keep and perform. You cannot make them obey your commandments or His commandments. You will find them inclined to disobey both. For their inclinations are just like yours, and you are inclined to choose your own ways, to go out of what you know and confess to be the right way. Therefore you need a wisdom and a power above your own to order yourselves as well as your children. This covenant tells you that the wisdom and power are always with you. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the one God blessed for ever, has sealed you with that name. We are all living, moving, having our being in Him who has put it upon us. We may all say assuredly, ‘Thou art our God, we are Thy people, therefore write Thy laws in our hearts, we beseech Thee.’
My Friends, these words become very familiar to us. We repeat them as if they meant nothing. But they do mean that which is more wonderful than all the strangest things that we hear or read of in other days or our own. That God Himself should be taking care of your mind and heart and mine; that He, and not some mortal, should be teaching us what we are and what we have to do; that He should be curbing us when we struggle to run wild; that He should be urging us on when we wish to stand still. Is not that wonderful? For rich and poor to be alike in such a covenant as this; for each one to be able to say, ‘Yes, He was giving me my lesson then and there; I did not take it in; I needed the rod to make me heed it. And the stroke of the rod came. I felt it. That was His way of putting His law in my mind, of writing it in my heart!’ Yet this is even so. We are all to say that and to think that. A sharp twinge of pain is not merely a twinge of pain. It is the message from a Father—‘I would put this law in thy mind, which thou hast broken. I would write this law in thy heart which thou hast forgotten, for I have said that I would be your God and that you should be my people. I do not forget any of my people, and I would not have any of them forget me.’
This seems to me very wonderful. And yet each day and night may show us that it is necessary for us.
There is not one of us can do with any smaller blessing. If the laws stay outside of us they terrify us, we are sure we shall be punished for breaking them, but for all that we cannot keep them. We are like people in a dream. There is a pit before us but we cannot help running into it. There is a robber behind us, but we cannot stir. And yet, as I said before, no man is able to force the laws inside of us; to make us love them instead of hating them; no man and no angel; only God can do that for us. If He has not given us an assurance that He will, it is all over with us. We shall go wrong if we are ever so persuaded that it will lead to our ruin. Therefore I can imagine no better tidings for a man to hear than these, ‘God has given this assurance. He has made this covenant with us in His Son who took the nature of us all, and died for us all, and rose again for us all, and is at the right hand of God for us all. “I will put my laws in your hearts, and in your minds will I write them.”’ That is the Gospel or good news we have received. And that is the Gospel Christ has bidden us preach to all nations. You were told this morning of a society which undertook, on behalf of us English, to spread this Gospel in the lands in which our countrymen settle; to keep alive the remembrance of it in those who have heard it and confessed it to be true, to make it known to those who have not received it. I shall say nothing of the countries in which the society is at work. You have been told of them already. But I will say to you a few words on the name which this society bears, then you will see what kind of task it has to perform.
It is a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, or good news concerning God, of the Gospel or good news which God sends forth concerning Himself. What that is you have been hearing out of the Lesson of this afternoon. The nations of the earth have accepted bad news concerning their Creator and Ruler. They have supposed Him to be a Tyrant over men—governing them according to His fancies, one from whom they have need to seek deliverance. He proclaimed Himself to the Israelites as their Deliverer out of the house of bondage. He commanded them not to do the things which would bring them into bondage. The Israelites broke these commandments, made gods for themselves who enslaved them; then they cried to the God of their Fathers and He brake their bonds asunder. These Israelites, as you heard in the Lesson this morning, were to bless all the families of the earth. They were to tell all men, ‘This Deliverer, whom we worship, is your God, there is no other.’ But before they could do that fully and perfectly God gave a higher sign of what He was than the signs which He gave the Israelites when He brought them out of the land of Egypt. He sent His only begotten Son to deliver those who had rebelled against Him from sin; to deliver them from death and from him who had the power of death. The new covenant tells of this Deliverer. And the new covenant declares that He who is our Redeemer does not merely give men a good law to warn them of the things which shall make them slaves, but that He gives them His Spirit that they may love His law and obey it and be free.
Here is the good news which this Society engages to tell first English citizens and then all other men whom its voice can reach. First, English citizens; for though they have heard these things in their infancy, and have been baptized into the Holy Name, they are as prone as any men can be to forget what they have been told, and to drop into dark thoughts of God, and to live as if He were their enemy and not their Redeemer. Next, all other people; for all have the same right to the message which God has sent by His Son to all. It cannot be true for us if it is not true for them. If God would put His laws into our minds He would put them into theirs. If He would write them on our hearts He would write them on theirs.
And so we understand what is meant by the next words: “And they shall not teach every man his neighbour,” “saying, Know the Lord.” For a moment you might say, ‘Such language is inconsistent with the command to preach the Gospel to every creature; if it is true we need no Societies like that which we have been asked to support to-day.’ But if you think what the Gospel is which we profess to preach or propagate, you will not hold that opinion. We do not teach our Christian neighbour, or our Heathen neighbour, “Know the Lord.” We say to him, ‘We cannot teach you to know Him; but He can teach you to know Him. He knows your minds and hearts. He bids you lay them open to Him with all their ignorance and sin. He will make them sound minds and clean hearts. He will write His laws in them.’ That is a very different message from the other; much less presumptuous, much more consolatory. There is no man, let him be ever so far fallen into evil, ever so little able to raise himself out of it, who may not hearken to that news and live.
And see we are told that one day all shall know Him from the least even to the greatest. The words sound too amazing for our belief. Yet I do not suppose any of us would dare to say, ‘They are not Divine words, I do not believe them.’ We all of us have a hope that they must come to pass let them go ever so far beyond our understanding. Yes, and let us cherish that hope. It will not make us ashamed at the last. And in the mean time it will strengthen us to be patient in well doing; for we shall reap if we faint not. There were no signs of a harvest when you cast the seeds into the ground, nor for weeks and months after that. But you believed it would come; your belief helped you to work and to wait, and you have the fruit of it. So will it be with every word of God which is cast into the hearts of men. He who is the great Husbandman has long patience for the precious fruit of His Son’s travail and suffering. He calls you to the high honour of being His fellow-workers and fellow-waiters; that you may enter into His joy when He shall bring back His sheaves with Him. Do not refuse that honour, there is none that can be compared with it.