ence, but with a sincere, contrite, and thankful heart and you must serve Him with your lives. : "Why, what have I to do?" Can such an answer proceed from the heart of any one calling himself Christian? Have not body, soul, and spirit, called to the work of salvation with fear and trembling, everything to do, because everything is at stake? See how busy the children of this world, the servants of its service, are about their work. Their master has little cause to ask them, "What doest thou here?" They are doing, there and then, all that he requires of them to do; and they are never weary of doing it. See how hard they work, and how all their mind, and all their talk, is concerned about it: truly they are wise in their generation. And shall the work to be done for the salvation unto eternal life, be done much less, very much less, effectually than the work to be done for the preservation of this life? Shall it even be much less understood in the first instance? Do not all know that it must begin with repentance from sin, and conversion unto God? that it must go on in all watchfulness and prayer, in seeking the Lord's will to do it, in drawing nigh unto Him that He may draw nigh unto us? that this work is a continued process of death unto sin, and new life unto righteousness? So that the true Christian is dying daily, by daily mortifying his members which are upon earth, resisting all their unruly affections and desires, and by daily crucifying the old man with his affections and lusts; daily he prays for grace through the Holy Spirit; daily he receives grace; daily he puts it to account with a deep and due sense of its preciousness, and of how much, in consequence, he has to answer for; daily he lays his account before his Master, and implores forgiveness, both for what he has done and for what he has left undone: and, all through the day, his ear hears the still small voice of his Lord enquiring of him, and saying, "What doest thou here?" And he can say from an honest heart and lively conscience, "I am very jealous for the Lord God of hosts. I am employed about the work of his honour and glory, and which is also, through his infinite mercy, the work of my own salvation. I am a sheep following the good Shepherd who hath bought me. I am his beast, bearing his yoke, and I find it easy. I am his servant, bearing his burden, and I find it light. I find it good to be here." Happy are they who can return such an answer to this awful question. And why should you not all be thus happy? Why should any one go on in forgetfulness of his duty to the Lord who bought him? The question is as yet one of earnest love, "What doest thou here?" He would not lose one sheep. But if it should be unanswered, or answered from an evil conscience, take heed lest it be asked in wrathful indignation, “What doest thou here?" and He pluck you away from the world, and consign you to the prisonhouse and stripes of the unprofitable servant. How much of deep meaning, how much subject for serious thought lies in that short and simple word, "here!" It signifies the post and station which the Lord, as king of his people, and head of his body, hath assigned to us in his Church. It implies our being always there on the watch, like good soldiers, under the Captain of our salvation, and fighting there a good fight. It bids us understand in it this life, the abode of the soul in this present state of the body, the time and place in which alone repentance can avail, and the work of salvation can be wrought out. Should not, then, all that is to be done, be done here, and done quickly too? for who knoweth the day and hour when any one of us may be no longer "here" but "there," even in the invisible world, where they who have been faithless to the Lord can have no other prospect than a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries? And see in the end of Elijah the end of all the true servants of the Lord. When he had done what he was required to do "here,” he was taken up alive into heaven. And so at the last day, when the souls of the righteous shall be clothed with glorified bodies, shining as the sun, they shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall ever be with the Lord 2, in the life and glory of the world to come. And now, may I not ask you, what can be more precious, what more excellent, what more earnestly to be sought, what more joyfully to be found, than a good answer out of a clear conscience to the Lord's question, "What doest thou here?" 2 1 Thess. iv. 17. SERMON VII. THE DEATH UNTO SIN. MARK XVI. 3. "And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre ?" So said the women who came to see Christ, who had died upon the cross. When they had come upon the spot, and not before, all at once they were struck with the thought of the great stone which closed the mouth of the sepulchre, and far surpassed their power to remove. Are they the last who have had the like fears on a like occasion? Has not every Christian who has set himself in earnest to the work of following Christ in his death, been alarmed at an equal difficulty? And are not many frightened at the very outset of their course, and desist almost as soon as they have begun, if indeed they have begun at all? |