SERMON I. THE UNNATURALNESS OF DISOBEDIENCE TO GALATIANS III. 1. O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth; before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? IT is to be observed that the Galatians, here addressed, were not Jews; neither had they been dwellers in Jerusalem, when Christ died upon the cross. It was not therefore true of them, any more than of ourselves, that, with the bodily eye, they had beheld Jesus crucified. If the Saviour had been evidently set forth before the Galatians, sacrificed for sin, it could only have been in the same manner as he is set before us, through the preaching of the word, and the administration of the Sacraments. There was no engine brought to bear on the Galatians, except that of the miracles which the first teachers wrought, which is not also brought to bear upon us; and the miracles were of no avail, except to the making good points on which we profess ourselves already convinced. If therefore the very Gospel which St A Paul preached be preached in our hearing, and the very Sacraments which he administered be administered in our assemblies, it may be said of us, with as much propriety as of the Galatians, that "Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among us." The greater distance at which we stand from the introduction of Christianity, does not necessarily occasion any greater indistinctness in the exhibition of the Saviour. It was not the prox imity of the Galatians to the time of the Crucifixion which caused Christ to appear as though crucified among them; for once let a truth become an object of faith, not of sight, and it must make way by the same process at different times - there may be diversity in the evidence by which it is sustained, there is none in the manner in which it is apprehended. We may therefore bring down our text to present days, and regard it as applicable, in every part, to ourselves. There are two chief topics which will demand to be handled. You observe that the Apostle speaks of it as so singular, that men should disobey the truth, that he can only ascribe it to sorcery or fascination. You observe also that he grounds this opinion on the fact, that Christianity had been so propounded to these men, that Christ himself might be said to have been crucified among them. We shall invert the order of the text, believing that it may be thus most practically considered. In the first place, it will be our endeavour to shew you, that there is nothing exaggerated in our declaring of yourselves, that "before your eyes Christ Jesus hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you." In the second place, we shall make this fact a basis on which to ground a question to those who are yet neglectful of the soul, "Who hath bewitched you that ye should not obey the truth?" Now we are bold to claim at once a high character for the ministrations of the Gospel, and shall not attempt to construct a laboured proof of their power. We do not substantiate our claim by any reference to the wisdom or energy of the men by whom these ministrations may be conducted; for Paul may plant, and Apollos water, but God alone can give the increase. It is altogether as a divinely instituted ordinance that we uphold the might of preaching, and contend that it may have such power of annihilating time, and reducing the past to present being, as to set Christ evidently before your eyes, crucified among you. We are assured, in regard of the public ministrations of the word, that they are the instituted method by which the events of one age are to be kept fresh through every other. And, on this account, we can have no hesitation in using language with regard to these our weekly assemblings, which would be wholly unwarranted, if we ascribed the worth of preaching, in any degree, to the preacher. When the services of God's house are considered as an instrumentality through which God's Spirit operates, we may safely attribute to those services extraordinary energy. We say therefore of preaching, that it must be separated as far as possible from the preacher'; for it is only when thus separated, that we can apply to it St Paul's assertion in our text. I might now bring before you a summary of the history of Christ. I might evoke from the past the miracles of Jesus, and bid you look on, as the sick are healed, and the dead raised. I might lead you from scene to scene of his last great struggle with the powers of darkness, and summon you to behold him in the garden, and at the judgment seat, on the cross and in the grave. And then, as though we were actually standing, as stood the Israelites, when the fiery serpents were abroad, round the cross which sustained that to which we must look for deliverance, might I entreat you, by the hopes and fears which center in Eternity, to gaze on the Lamb of God as the alone propitiation for sin. This I might do; and this has been often done from this place. And shall we hesitate to affirm, that, whensoever this is done, Jesus Christ is "set forth, crucified among you?" It is not that we can pretend to throw surpassing vividness into our representations. It is not that we can claim such power of delineation as shall renovate the past, and cause it to re-appear as a present occurrence. It is not, that, by any figure of speech, or any hold on your imaginations, we can summon back what has long ago departed, and fix it in the midst of you visibly and palpably. It is only, that, as Intercession has been appointed to perpetuate the Crucifixion of Christ so that, as our Advocate with the Father, he has continually that sacrifice to present, which he offered once for all upon Calvary-so has preaching been appointed to preserve the memory of that death which achieved our Redemption, and keep the mighty deed from growing old. The virtue therefore which we ascribe to our public discourses, is derived exclusively from their constituting an ordained instrumentality; and our confidence that the virtue will not be found wanting, flows only from a conviction that an instrumentality, once ordained, will be duly honoured, by God. We believe assuredly that there is at work, in this very place, and at this very moment, an agency independent of all human, but which is accustomed to make itself felt through finite and weak instruments. As the words flow from the lips of him who addresses you, flow apparently in the unaided strength of mere earthly speech, they may be endowed by this agency with an energy which is wholly from above, and thus prevail to the setting Christianity before you, with as clear evidence as was granted to those who saw Jesus in the flesh. So that, if there were nothing entrusted to us but the preaching of the word, if we had no Sacraments to administer, we should feel, that, without presumption, we might declare of our hearers what St Paul declared of the Christians at Galatia. Yea, so deep is our persuasion of our living under the dispensation of the Spirit, and of preaching being the chief engine which this Spirit employs in transmitting a knowledge of Redemption, that, after every endeavour, however feeble and inadequate, to bring under men's view "the mystery of godliness," we |