ک

OF THE

UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

SERMONS.

First Series.

I.

GOD'S REVELATION OF HEAVEN.

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit."-1 Cor. ii. 9, 10.

THE preaching of the Apostle Paul was rejected by numbers in the cultivated town of Corinth. It was not wise enough, nor eloquent enough:-nor was it sustained by miracles. The man of taste found it barbarous: the Jew missed the signs and wonders which he looked for in a new dispensation and the rhetorician missed the convincing arguments of the schools. To all which the Apostle was content to reply, that his judges were incompetent to try the question. The princes of this world might judge in a matter of politics: the leaders in the world of literature were qualified to pronounce on a point of taste: the counsellors of this world to weigh an amount of evidence. But in matters spiritual, they were as unfit to judge, as a man without ea is to decide respecting harmony; or a man judging alone by sensation, to supersede the higher truth of science by an appeal to his own estimate of appearances. The world, to sense, seems stationary. To the eye of reason it moves with lightning speed, and the cultivation of reason alone can qualify for an opinion on the matter. The judgment of the senses is worth nothing in such matters. For every kind of truth a special capacity or preparation is indispensable.

For a revelation of spiritual facts two things are needed: -First, a Divine Truth; next, a spirit which can receive it. Therefore the Apostle's whole defense resolved itself into this: The natural man receiveth not the things which are of

the Spirit of God. The world by wisdom knew not God. And his vindication of his teaching was: These Revealed Truths can not be seen by the eye, heard by the ear, nor guessed by the heart: they are visible, audible, imaginable, only to the spirit. By the spiritually prepared, they are recognized as beautiful, though they be folly to all the world besides, as his Master had said before him, "Wisdom is justified by her children." In whatever type of life she might be exhibited, whether in the austere Man of the Desert, or in the higher type of the social life of Christ, the Children of Wisdom recognized her lineaments, justified and loved herShe was felt by them.

Two things are contained in this verse:

I. The inability of the lower parts of human nature—the natural man-to apprehend the higher truths.

II. The nature and laws of Revelation.

I. By the natural man is meant the lower faculties of man; and it is said of these that they can not discover spiritual truth.

1. Eternal truth is not perceived through sensation. "Eye hath not seen the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."

There is a life of mere sensation. The degree of its enjoyment depends upon fineness of organization. The pleasures of sense arise from the vibration of a nerve, or the thrilling of a muscle-nothing higher.

The highest pleasure of sensation comes through the eye. She ranks above all the rest of the senses in dignity. He whose eye is so refined by discipline that he can repose with pleasure upon the serene outline of beautiful form, has reached the purest of the sensational raptures.

Now, the Corinthians could appreciate this. Theirs was the land of beauty. They read the Apostle's letter, surrounded by the purest conceptions of Art. In the orders of architecture, the most richly graceful of all columnar forms receives its name from Corinth. And yet it was to these men, living in the very midst of the chastely beautiful, upon whom the Apostle emphatically urged-"Eye hath not seen the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.'

Let us not depreciate what God has given. There is a rapture in gazing on this wondrous world. There is a joy in contemplating the manifold forms in which the All Beauful has concealed His essence--the Living Garment in which the Invisible has robed His mysterious loveliness. In every

aspect of Nature there is joy; whether it be the purity of virgin morning, or the sombre gray of a day of clouds, or the solemn pomp and majesty of night; whether it be the chaste lines of the crystal, or the waving outline of distant hills, tremulously visible through dim vapors; the minute petals of the fringed daisy, or the overhanging form of mysterious forests. It is a pure delight to see.

66

But all this is bounded. The eye can only reach the finite Beautiful. It does not scan the King in his beauty, nor the land that is very far off." The Kingdom, but not the King-something measured by inches, yards, and miles-not the land which is very far off in the Infinite.

Again, it is perishable beauty-a sight to sadden rather than delight. Even while you gaze, and feel how fair it is, joy mingles with melancholy, from a consciousness that it all is fading-it is the transient-not the Eternal Loveliness for which our spirits pant.

66

Therefore, when He came into this world, who was the Truth and the Life, in the body which God had prepared for Him, He came not in the glory of form: He was a root out of a dry ground: He had no form nor comeliness;" when they saw Him, "there was no beauty that they should desire Him." The eye did not behold, even in Christ, the things which God had prepared.

Now observe, this is an Eternal Truth; true at all times— true now and forever. In the quotation of this verse, a false impression is often evident. It is quoted as if the Apostle by" the things prepared" meant heaven, and the glories of a world which is to be visible hereafter, but is at present unseen. This is manifestly alien from his purpose. The world of which he speaks is not a future, but a present revelation. God hath revealed it. He speaks not of something to be manifested hereafter, but of something already shown, only not to eye nor ear. The distinction lies between a kingdom which is appreciable by the senses, and another whose facts and truths are seen and heard only by the spirit. Never yet hath the eye seen the Truths of God-but then never shall it see them. In heaven this shall be as true as now. Shape and color give them not. God will never be visible-nor will His blessedness. He has no form. The pure in heart will see Him, but never with the eye; only in the same way, but in a different degree, that they see Him now. In the anticipated vision of the Eternal, what do you expect to see? A shape? Hues? You will never behold God. Eve hath not seen, and never shall see in finite form, the Infinite One, nor the Infinite of feeling or of Truth.

Again--no scientific analysis can discover the truths of God. Science can not give a Revelation. Science proceeds upon observation. It submits every thing to the experience of the senses. Its law, expounded by its great lawgiver, is, that if you would ascertain its truth you must see, feel, taste. Experiment is the test of truth. Now, you can not, by searching, find out the Almighty to perfection, nor a single one of the blessed Truths He has to communicate.

Men have tried to demonstrate Eternal Life from an ex amination of the structure of the body. One fancies he has discovered the seat of life in the pineal gland-another in the convolution of a nerve-and thence each infers the con tinuance of the mystic principle supposed to be discovered there. But a third comes, and sees in it all nothing really immaterial: organization, cerebration, but not Thought or Mind separable from these; nothing that must necessarily subsist after the organism has been destroyed.

Men have supposed they discovered the law of Deity written on the anatomical phenomena of disease. They have exhibited the brain inflamed by intoxication, and the structure obliterated by excess. They have shown in the disordered frame the inevitable penalty of transgression. But if a man, startled by all this, gives up this sin, has he from this selfish prudence learned the law of Duty? The penalties of wrong-doing, doubtless: but not the sanction of Right and Wrong written on the conscience, of which penalties are only the enforcements. He has indisputable evidence that it is expedient not to commit excesses; but you can not manufacture a conscience out of expediency: the voice of conscience says not, It is better not do so, but "Thou shalt not."

No: it is in vain that we ransack the world for probable evidences of God and hypotheses of his existence. It is idle to look into the materialism of man for the Revelation of his immortality; or to examine the morbid anatomy of the body to find the rule of Right. If a man go to the eternal world with convictions of Eternity, the Resurrection, God, already in his spirit, he will find abundant corroborations of that which he already believes. But if God's existence be not thrilling every fibre of his heart, if the Immortal be not already in him as the proof of the Resurrection, if the law of Duty be not stamped upon his soul as an Eternal Truth, unquestionable, a thing that must be obeyed, quite separately from all considerations of punishment or impunity, science will never reveal these-observation pries in vain the phy sician comes away from the laboratory an infidel. Eye hath