USA > West Virginia > The West Virginia pulpit of the Methodist Episcopal church. Sermons from living ministers. With personal sketches of the authors > Part 27
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they ? No, sir,-not broken. That was a good man. He leaped from gloom to glory, with the shout of vic- tory ringing from those cold lips. That shout rent the cloud, as it descended and the widowed heart leaped after the ascending spirit and cast its anchor within the vail. Angels came down to whisper words of comfort. Hope spans the grave with the bow of promise. Heaven is more attractive, because the loved and gone is there. Go ask that bruised, but not broken reed, what religion is worth. Open the mountains of California and bring forth their treas- ures. Purchase if you can, that woman's hope of the future. That heavy blow, tempered with Christianity, was but the prophesy of the coming glory. Price it if you can! Gold crumbles away to dust. Jewels lose their brilliancy. All sources of profit blush to shame in the presence of this. Here "Godliness alone is profitable," for it alone brings the benediction of God.
But the best is yet to come. We must lay aside this cumbrous body. Now we are free. We will mount the chariot of eternal truth. An angel leads the way. We drive on up the jeweled pathway-on and on-up, up and away past the sun, moon and stars. The Golden Gate stands open. We enter the City of God. Behold its streets of gold ! Its walls of jasper ! Its sunny domes and stary pinnacles ! The River of Life! The plains of bliss ! See those crowns ! Glorious crowns ! more brilliant than the sun. Those palms, whose greenness the cycles never fade. There is Abel the first martyr, Abraham, and the patriarchs pro- phets and apostles. Above all there is the Lamb im- maculate-Jesus the Lord. There are our fathers and mothers-our children There they come, clothed with eternal youth and unchanging beauty. Music from heaven's grand orchestra, rolls and revreberates and charms and melts away in the distance. Here is life ! life ! No hearse ever passed these streets. No orphans cry was ever heard in that happy country. No widow ever wept. There is your child, my brother ; you thought he was lost in the wilds of the West ; but there he is ; long parted friends meet to embrace and
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love forever. No death there. The lines of our life run parallel with the lines of God's existence, and are alike interminable. Our lamp has been "lit by the divine radiance, and burning so near the source that feeds, it shall never be extinguished." Roll on the cy- cles ! and still we live, we live and love. Let the grand old arches of the universe decay, and breaking crash, and tumble into ruins! Let Destiny's clock, high up on heaven's highest dome, that pealed forth in joyous stroke, when the world was born, now sound its doom. While the angel of destruction, commis- sioned by Almighty God, drives forth his chariot, and beneath his thunderous tread grinds a thousand worlds to powder, and flings ten thousand into chaos, wild, and still we live and love and sing on. Roll on the cycles, but the eye grows not dim, the limbs tremble not, the locks proclaim not age.
Will religion pay ? I listen to the millions on mil- lions, who have died for it here, and millions who have had but little else int his world, and they answer back from that blest world, and answering like the "sound of many waters," they declare that " Godli- ness is profitable unto all things." . Oh, sirs, seek this, the boon above price! Without it you will be the sport of temptation; without it, life will be a hard struggle at best, death the victor, and the soul, at last, sink beneath eternal gloom. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;" and you may -you will ere long join the blood-washed throng, and throughout eternity leave your testimony to the truth- fulness of this text, " Godliness is profitable unto all thing, having the promise of the life that now is, and that which is to come."
PERSONAL SKETCH.
REV. JOSEPH EDMUND SMITH was born of Christian parents in Queen Anne's county, Maryland, the very centre of the classic soil of American Methodism. He was early and thoroughly drilled in the great truths of the Gospel, and shortly after attain- ing his sixteenth year he became a Christian, and united with the M. E. Church. Possessed of an inquiring mind, he has ever been an eager student. His early advantages were not great, but his mastery of the fundamentals of an education was thor- ough, and enabled him to pursue his studies with advantage. He is and has been, through his entire life, a tireless student. He has intermeddled with almost all knowledge. The sciences are his especial delight. The conviction that he was to enter the ministry grew upon him after his conversion, and though it clashed with other cherished plans of life, he yielded to the Spirit's summons, and in the spring of 1857, joined the Phila- delphia Conference, on trial. His career as a preacher has been, in some respects, remarkable. Success has crowned his efforts on every field.
In the spring of 1861 he was on a large Circuit in Delaware. The breaking out of the war caused, there, as elsewhere, great excitement. Delaware sympathized with the rebellion. Dr. Smith had been but four years in the ministry, and was sur- rouded by a people who, in all political matters were completely under the control of party leaders, but he did not hesitate a moment. He was the first man in the State to preach upon the duties of the citizen to his country. The leaders of the opposi- tion threatened hislife, but he boldly thundered his convictions from nearly every pulpit of his circuit and then printed, and scattered his sermon through the entire community.
Afterward a number of his friends urged him to allow the use of his name as a candidate for Congress. Under the circum- stances he would probably have been elected, but he refused to turn aside from his chosen work. He is a thorough Methodist. Other Churches have sought his services in vain. Just before his coming to Wheeling, he was asked to become the pastor of a city church of another denomination at a salary of $5,000 per year. He of course refused.
In the spring of 1865 he was stationed in Fifth Street Church, Philadelphia. Since then he has served the following Churches: Twelfth Street, Philadelphia; Lancaster, Pa .; Grace Church
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Wilmington, Del .; First Church, Wilkesbarre, Pa .; First Church, Scranton, Pa .; and in October last he was transferred to this Conference and stationed at Fourth Street Church, Wheeling.
At each of these Churches he remained the full term of three years, except Scranton, which, at tlie earnest solicitation of the people of Fourth Street, he left in the middle of his third year.
Dr. Smith ranks among the best pulpit orators in Methodism. Simplicity is among the most marked features in his sermons. He is always clear in the analysis of his subjects; and yet, his logic is not of that severe order, which, with so many of our min- isters, swallows up the interest of the discourse. He is, there- fore, logical and interesting, as well. He is eloquent; and at the same time his eloquence is native to the soul- not assumed after any exterior fashion, for the mere production of artificial effect, which is so common in this age, but is real, feeling, persuading.
Another of the attractive features of Dr. Smith's preach- ing is his power of illustration. I mean no disrespect when I say that he is a beautiful word-painter. His illustrations are mainly drawn from the great storehouse of Nature. In her school he has studied profoundly; and rich were the revelations his teacher made concerning the ways of obtaining access to the minds and hearts of his hearers.
His literary taste is exquisite. He possesses, to a very great extent, a quick and accurate sense of the beautiful. He is, there- fore, poetical in his nature; and being both gentle and humble, his productions, which are always models of pure English, im- press themselves delightfully upon the mind, and feelingly upon the heart.
The Doctor is an extemporaneous preacher. He uses neither manuscript nor notes. Still, his sermons are anything but un- premeditated effusions. I have not known him long, but my acquaintance, thus far, justifies me in asserting, that his prepa- rations for the pulpit evince the full consecration of all the pow- ers of his mind, and the best use of all the resources of knowl- edge within his reach. He writes his sermons before delivering them; and though always rich in thought and logical in their arrangement, the verbiage, purposely, it would seem, is left for the moment of delivery. He is popular-always has large con- gregations, and is thoroughly devoted to his high calling.
In June 1877, Dickinson College honored him with the degree of Master of Arts, and at the same time Franklin and Marshall College conferred upon him the degree of Doctor in Divinity.
The Northern Christian Advocate, to which Dr. Smith has been a regular contributor for years, said, in speaking of the Doctor's transfer from Scranton to Wheeling, " In the transfer of Dr. Smith, Wheeling gains what Scranton loses, one of the most literary men of the Methodist Episcopal Church."
SERMON XXVII.
. BY
REV. JOSEPH E. SMITH, D.D.
THEME :- THE ATTRACTION OF THE CROSS.
TEXT :- And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me .- JOHN xii: 32.
Attraction is the great law of the universe. It is subject to. no change, knows no variation, admits of no exception. Its subtle power fathoms all distances and is felt across all space. It controls all objects, whether atoms or worlds, and, with equal ease, it binds a monad, swings a planet, or chains a system. Its laws are simple and invariable. Let science con- tend as to the mode ; the facts are plain. Whether it be a power inhering in all matter, or an external power working through matter, the result is the same. There is that in every power that attracts; a power ceaseless, changeless, eternal. A power im- palpable to the touch, invisible to the eye, incogniza- ble by any of the senses ; and yet, a power that works with tireless energy through all æons of time, bring- ing order out of confusion, harmony out of discord, and beauty and perfection from the conflicting con- geries of the primordial elements.
The power of gravitation is in precise proportion to the bulk and density of its object. Given a world of sufficient size and density, and it becomes a centre about which every sun and system of the universe whirls in unvarying cycles, and every farthest and
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smallest atom of creation, hears, and obeys the un- spoken mandate.
In the realm of the intellect, and of the soul this law has its analogies. What atoms are to atoms, and worlds to worlds, so is mind to mind, and heart to heart. There is a universe of intellect, of feeling and of affection. A realm where thoughts, affections, purposes, yearnings, aspirations, will, are the atoms and molecules. With matter the power of attraction is fixed and definite. No atom can change its potency. With spirit the law is equally inflexible ; but spirit has in itself possibilities to which the atom is a stranger. The spirit may advance from feebleness to power, from obscurity to the prominence of a central orb. A man may go down to the grave leaving no perceptible mark upon the world's thought; or, he may stretch across all continents and reach down all ages, and give current to the thought, and color to the life of men to the latest hour of time. Homer and Virgil, Moses and Plato, David and Paul swing about them the world's thinkers as the sun its satelites. The bearing of these facts upon our subject is obvi- ous. Our text was the utterance of an obscure peas- ant of Galilee. He was destitute of wealth, fame, hereditary honors, or a following worthy of the name; and yet, he foretold a time when he should become the world's central magnet, attracting and binding all men to himself. The prophecy was stupendous. From any but the God-man it had been madness. No mere man may expect to sway the sceptre of univer- sal empire. Human genius may thrill the nations, but it cannot bind them. It lacks the bulk and den- sity that would make it a world centre. Distance weakens its grasp, time rusts it, attrition wears it. Its power declines in inverse proportion to the square of the distances. God alone can seize the hearts of earth's teeming millions, and give vitality to the cord that binds the weakest and furthest spirit atom to himself forever.
But, if the announcement was stupendous, the means by which it was to be accomplished was still more surprising. The Cross was the symbol of a
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slave's torture. Inspiration itself had proclaimed, "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." And, yet, the Cross was to become the world's centre. Christ crucified was to captivate all hearts and become the one object in which all men should glory, verily it was a prophesy that only history could vindicate.
The progress of eighteen centuries proves it true. The Cross has lost its shame, and has become the synonym of all virtue and nobleness, goodness and greatness. It has become an evangel in all lands, and it has won its triumphs from among all peo- ples. All men are its enemies, and yet everywhere the heart's enmities are subdued by its presence, and all souls are attracted by its silent power. Sin . ners become saints, and persecutors apostles at its mighty touch. It captures to liberate, binds to enno- ble, humbles to transfigure and save. Who shall ex- plain the mystery? Its shame has become its glory. This root out of dry ground has become the chiefest of ten thousand and altogether lovely. The hated, despised, persecuted, abandoned, crucified Nazarine is a king with hearts for an empire. He has brought desires, affections, impulses, yearnings, yea, even the imaginations into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Men count it their highest glory to suffer and even to die for him. They forsake home and country and friends ; tread beneath their feet ease and fortune and fame; defy danger and persecution ; accept toil and trial ; live unknown, die unhonored for the sake of telling of his love, and of winning trophies for his cause. Such are the facts. They demand our most careful study. We inquire,
I. WHAT ARE THE LAWS OF SPIRITUAL ATTRACTION ?
So far as we can see, everything earthly and heav- enly is subject to laws. These laws may be unknown -perchance they are, by us, incomprehensible ; yet, they exist, and by them, or in accordance with them, are the mightiest achievements produced. But the Cross is divine, and so is nature; and the salvation of the soul no less than the flowering of a shrub is in accordance with inviolable law.
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Alike in nature and in grace it may be said, "And hitherto my Father worketh." What then are the laws of spiritual attraction ?
1. The first condition of attraction is similarity of nature. I speak with reverence, Christ is Divine. I speak with emphasis, Jesus is man. Like only at- tracts like. Matter can never pass the bounds of the Divine decree and attract spirit. The Divine and the human must have something in common. Though broken and marred we still possess the Divine image.
Spirituality is nonforfeitable. God and man are eternally allied. We find that among men the soul is not insulated by either purity or impurity. Spirit attracts spirit whether up or down. God crosses the chasm of the infinite, and in the form of the finite stands by our side, speaks to our heart and draws our spirit. Beasts and birds may have somewhat in com- mon with God as the spark is akin to the central sun, but they have not enough to lift them to divine con- templation and to twine about them the tether of di- vine attraction. Man feels in Christ the touch of a kindred spirit, and so is drawn by this power into newness of life.
2. The second condition of this drawing is superi- ority. In matter as we have seen attraction is regu- lated by density and bulk. Apples and stones fall to the earth. Stars swing around the sun. The heav- enly systems are held in poise by worlds that the Divine hand has weighed and measured. The very clouds are balanced by this law.
In the world of spirit attraction depends upon two things, capacity, of both intellect and soul, and cul- ture. Mind leads mind in proportion to its greatness as the sun leads the stars. Genius is sure of both a recognition and a following. Born in obscurity, or cradled in opulence, living in times of peace or amid the tumult and upheaval of national convulsions, mind recognizes its master and hastens to do obeis- ance to its rightful sovereign. Hence even savages have their heroes and demigods. Civilization boasts its leaders in Church and State; in philosophy, sci- ence, literature and art. And these, in proportion to
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their greatness, and the culture of their intellects, control the thoughts and the faiths of men for an age or for the centuries.
And then, as distinguished from greatness of intel- lect there is a greatness of soul that shines out across the world's darkness, luminous as stars-great orbed spirits that stand like the light house upon the rocky reef, and fling the beams of a holy life athwart the troubled waters of time, to guide the lost mariner to haven and home. Unite these two and you have the greatest of earthly attractions. And so, just because of this, God, when known must ever be the one absorb- ing attraction. Men turn away from God because they do not know him. "O righteous Father," said Jesus, " the world hath not known thee." They look upward through the distorted medium of their own passions, with blinded eye, perverted taste and warp- ed affections, and behold, God is a tyrant grasping the thunder bolts. Like Israel of old we flee from him with the cry, "Let not God speak to us lest we die." And yet, among all people, God is held to be the sum of all excellence. Sin has, indeed, reared its barriers and dug its impassable gulfs. The divine excellence was held to be incommunicable, but by a very neces- sity of reason God is the all perfect. And hence, the necessity of the incarnation. It was to unravel the contradictions, and to make plain the inexplicable. It was a revelation in human form of the Divine goodness and greatness, his character, and thought. The incarnation was infinite wisdom coming in con- tact with human thought, dissipating our darkness, broadening our vision and leading us out into the un- fathomed and unfathomable depths of truth. It was Divine goodness coming in contact with human wretch- edness and sin, and, though veiled in humanity, pour- ing upon our race a blaze of all but insufferable glory. What wonder if, when these are conjoined in Jesus, and concentered on Calvary.their influence goes out in ever widening circles, if all brains are busy with the prob- lem, and all hearts are drawn by the spectacle of Christ crucified. He has moved along the plane of our being, and by the grandeur of his character and the infalli-
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bility of his wisdom, he is captivating and drawing to himself the intellects and affections of the world.
3. The third law of spiritual attraction is the law of love. Love ! queen of the graces, brightest gem that flashes in the coronet of creation's King. Crowning glory of his attributes. Mightier than Hope, that star which burns in the forehead of every night, that guides the weary pilgrim o'er desert strands and thorny paths and trackless wastes to the haven of rest; that cable of the unseen, that, reaching upward in the darkness, grasps the eternal throne. Greater than Faith, that inbreathing of the infinite, that unifies and magnifies all the forces of the soul, lifting weakness into strength, and nothingness to the very verge of almightiness. Love ! the soul's inspiration, the power that uplifts, ennobles, sanctifies and saves; that power, subtle as thought, changeless as truth, lasting as eter nity, resistless as God. It is the essence of the divine nature and the controller of the divine will. Love is the universal, all-potent power. This, when the spirit world has broken from its allegiance, and wandered off in rebellion towards the blackness of darkness, twines about it, binds it again to God, and bids it revolve about him in ever narrowing circles, as the center of its being forever. When man sinned, amid the all but universal wreck of innocence and uprightness, there was left one stone that was not overthrown on which the temple might again be built. He went forth an exile from paradise, but he carried with him one virtue to remind him of the glorious past and to point him to a brighter future. That corner stone, that undying virtue was the love of love. The one thing altogether lovely is not intellect, or truth, or virtue, it is love. This is a sun that never looses its lustre or its power. It shines through all clouds, lives through all death, reaches across all distances and binds the soul with fetters that neither bend nor break,
I go to the cell of the hardened criminal. He is cold, remorseless, defiant. The law crushes him, but every atom of that crushed being remains cruel, daring, des- perate. Society spurns him, and like a wounded ad- der, with his dying breath he spits back the enven-
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omed poison as his only reply. As I enter, he scowls upon me like a demon ; I put my hand on his, and he starts back as though each of my five fingers had con- cealed a scorpion's sting. I speak of childhood and home and mother, and the demon fades from his face as the storm cloud vanishes from the summer sky ; the voice grows husky and breaks beneath the old emo- tion, and the criminal is a child and a penitent. Love is the one power to which no human being can ever be indifferent. To know that I am loved by any, be it child, or beggar, horse or dog, is to enter at once into new relations with the one that loves me. Yester- day I was indifferent to them. To-day, they alone are conspicuous in the passing crowd. Their love has evoked my love. “ We love him because he first loved us."
Such is the general principle of love, and such is its place among the powers that move the soul. But there are three things that constitute the degree of power which this love exercises upon the life of the loved. These are the dignity of the lover, the inten- sity of the love, and the degree of its manifestation. It is the province of love, of all love, to elevate and ennoble. The peasant girl who wakes to the fact that she is the object of a peasant's love, is thrilled, uplifted, ennobled by the fact. But if that lover be a prince, if he be of the royal family, if he sit upon the throne, how, as you ascend the scale, does that love become more and more potent. It invests her with new dig- nity. To be the object of royal love is to be worthy of royal honors. She accepts royal service and is transformed into the royal likeness. Again: love works in proportion to its intensity. It is the nature of love to be a devouring passion, a consuming fire. Persistent, tireless, discouraged by no rejection, turned aside by no repulse, besetting its object on every side, pouring out its treasures in kindly offices, until hat- red gives place to interest, until interest changes into admiration and admiration ripens into affection. The vehemence of love is well nigh resistless. Reason is answered by reason, force by force ; but love under- mines and storms; it burns all barriers, and scatters
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the contagion of its passion until its object catches the infection, when that object falls an easy prey, and is borne away in triumph in the face of all refusals.
Once more: love is potent in proportion to the de- gree of its manifestation. It is the nature of love to sacrifice. This is at once the gauge and measure of its truth and intensity. It covets to give. It yearns to sacrifice. It lays itself and its possessions at the feet of its object. It is no true love that stops like Ahazuerus and Herod of old at the half of its king- dom. And this giving of self for others is to-day the most potent of the world's forces. Sacrifice, even in the brute, elevates and endears them to us as can noth- ing else. My child is struggling in the waters and the noble dog plunges into the deep and brings it safe to land ; henceforth that dog is to me almost as a second child. His home is beneath my roof. He has his place at my hearth and his food from my table. He is loved and caressed while living, wept and honored when dead.
Year by year we strew the graves of our dead heroes with flowers, and poet and orator recount to us the story of their sufferings and sacrifices. The mother of Cæsar gives her life to save that of her unborn babe, and straightway her praise is chanted by all nations and through all time. Three hundred Spartans sacri- fice themselves at the pass of Thermopylæ, and they become the synonym of patriotism forever. To sacri- fice one's self for another is to be ennobled by that act.
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