It is important also to observe, that although the life of a real Christian is always progressive, still this progress may not always be _visible_ to himself, much less to others. There may be seasons when he can discover no advancement, and when his course is obscured.

It is even so with the going forth of the sun in his might. Every day he makes the circuit of the heavens. He is never stationary. But all days are not the same: clouds sometimes gather; storms and tempests rage above us; the angry elements muster their grim cohorts in the sky; the lightning flashes, the thunders roll; the earth lies shrouded in the drapery of night. Where now is the sun, which a little while ago shone brightly upon us? Has he fled in terror? Has he retreated back, and hid behind the hills above which he rose at morn? No, he has not faltered; far above those clouds, beyond the reach of storm and strife, he still moves on undisturbed. Watch; as the storm subsides, he shows the same bright, joyous face between the opening clouds, and fringes their edges with his golden beams. Yonder he rides in the heavens, just as before. His going forth suffered no interruption when the winds swept and the thunder-clouds lowered. True, we could not see him; but when the dark mantle is drawn aside, lo, there he is, undimmed, the same majestic sun, still going forth in his might; and yonder his rays are sporting with the raindrops, and arching the horizon with the rainbow, in whose brilliant colors the Almighty long ago wrote his covenant with the patriarch and with mankind.

So is it with the Christian's progress through the stormy trials and temptations of human life. External circ.u.mstances seem sometimes to conspire against him: the tongue of slander may be turned against him; the envenomed shaft of malice may wound his character; his integrity may be suspected, and his good name be cast out as evil; darkness and unbelief may settle upon his own soul; manifold temptations may suddenly surprise him, and he be left to doubt and question whether he be not a castaway: but we are not to conclude that such seasons are all against him. We believe that all the while there may be, there is, progress in such experiences. They are trials which test his faith; they are fires which burn out the corruption which lurks within him.

Although we cannot discern in every case the precise benefit which is to be secured, although we cannot see why G.o.d allows some of his dear people to be buffetted continually, yet certain we are that all the temptations which overtake them and the afflictions which weigh upon them are disciplinary in their nature, and are made subservient to their ultimate sanctification. Even in the temporary lapses of the Christian, which surprise and overcome him, there may be the germ of future and higher advancement. Through these he learns his weakness, and is taught the lesson of humility and dependence; and they are followed by a more resolute gathering up of his strength in G.o.d, and a more prayerful watchfulness, which give promise of future progress. And accordingly we have often seen the Christian come out of such experience like gold tried in the furnace, a brighter Christian, a better man, a more chastened, humbled, sanctified believer, for whose good all things are made to work together, according to G.o.d's promise. Like the sun's going forth after storms have we seen many a saint emerge from the clouds of adversity, and in later days exhibit a consistency which told that the trials he endured had resulted in good.

Be not discouraged then, Christian, because all days are not alike to you.

Think not that there can be no progress when you are encompa.s.sed with cares and vexed with temptations. Yield not your confidence when your way seems troubled; for like the sun which goes forth in his might when the elements are astir, so must you keep moving heavenward through the gloom and discouragements of earth.

Such are the Scripture representations of the life of G.o.d's own people. It is a progressive life--a powerful and a joyous life--a life advancing and maturing in the face of difficulties.

Compare this, professing Christian, with your actual life. Perhaps you have long professed to love G.o.d and to serve him; and what has been your progress? Has the work of grace advanced so that now you can say that you are far beyond your former experience? Can you find in the mastery over temptations, the crucifixion of your l.u.s.ts, your habitual delight in the word of G.o.d and prayer and holy living, and in your indifference to the world, its pleasures and its gains, that you have been moving onward and upward? Oh then, in your sun-like path, we bid you press eagerly forward unto the perfect day. It is not time yet to relax a single muscle. You cannot halt or loiter.

But are there some with whom it is far otherwise? After living in the church for years, are you just as cold and dormant, just as covetous and worldly as you were years ago? And dare you liken your dwarfed and sickly life to the sun when he goeth forth in his might? Nay, rather must we describe you as a lost pleiad, or one of those "wandering stars" of which Jude speaks, "to which is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever."

Are you growing in grace? If not, you are graceless. If there is no movement, there is no life. If you are a Christian, there is in you a spiritual power of locomotion which will not let you rest. A Christian goes forth like the sun. Once indeed the sun paused at the command of Israel's leader; but there is no Gideon in the world mighty enough to stop the sunlike course of the Christian in the path of grace; nor is there a mount Gibeon to be found where you can bid him stand still.

III.

The Voice of Blood.

AND TO THE BLOOD OF SPRINKLING, THAT SPEAKETH BETTER THINGS THAN THAT OF ABEL. HEB. 12:24.

This is the last entry made in the rich inventory of spiritual blessings which Christians enjoy under the gospel economy. The blood of Christ shed upon the cross is called "the blood of sprinkling," in allusion to the blood of the paschal lamb; or more generally, to the blood of the burnt-offerings which was sprinkled upon and around the altar. The sprinkling of blood was, under the Levitical economy, the symbol of purification, as we are told by the apostle that "almost all things are, by the law, purged with blood."

The text declares that the blood of Christ, shed for sinners, speaks better things than the blood of Abel, which was shed by the murderous hand of his brother, and called for vengeance.

There has always seemed to be a strange, mysterious influence in blood shed by violence. It has a voice mightier than all other voices, which thrills the human soul with awful terror. Once the Almighty spoke in thunder from the blackened brow of Sinai; but generations before and after that, he spoke to men through the medium of blood. This was the language of all the divine sacrifices offered in the remotest times. The instructions of the whole Levitical economy were written in blood--blood upon the altar, upon the four horns of the altar, upon its sides, around it--ever speaking in language of deep and awful meaning to the worshipper.

Man's blood shed by violence cannot be silenced. It has a cry which rings in the ears, a voice at which all living men start back aghast. It wails like an avenging fiend in the track of murder. It will not keep still. It summons the world to find out the guilty.

The text introduces a contrast between the blood of Christ and that of Abel, or rather, between their utterances. Both spoke, and spoke with mighty power; but their language was far different. In the one it was _terror_, in the other _peace_.

It may be a subject of inquiry, why this distinct and exclusive reference to the blood of Abel, when so many since his time have died by the hands of violence? Every murder speaks, as well as Abel's. The b.l.o.o.d.y deed committed to-day will publish itself. It is the hardest thing in the world to conceal it. The providence of G.o.d often seems to turn the very arts and expedients which were designed to hide it and hush its voice, into the means of its detection. The stone cries out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber answers it. Blood will speak through walls of masonry, through deepest midnight darkness, across seas and deserts uninhabited.

But pa.s.sing over the many dark calendars of crime which generations had filled up, the apostle singles out Abel alone, as he was the first one of our race who died, and that by the hand of violence. That murder woke the first cry of blood which the world ever heard. It was when the world was young. And as then there were no human courts established to sit in judgment upon crime and punish the guilty, the Almighty himself came forth from his solitude and made inquisition for blood, and p.r.o.nounced sentence upon the fratricide. The testimony upon which G.o.d convicted Cain, was the testimony of blood. It cried unto heaven from the ground; and by the prompt and terrible interposition of the Almighty at that epoch, G.o.d impressed upon the race the sacredness of human life and the certain vengeance which would pursue the man who shed blood.

The blood of Abel, though it spoke a language like to that of ten thousand murders since committed, still arrests attention; for it was the first cry of murder which had shocked the world. It stands at the head of the dark roll of guilt which is still filling up. It stained for the first time the bosom of our mother earth. It flung a ghastly mangled corpse into the first family of our race, and deepened the gloom which, at the fall, settled upon the earliest history of humanity, into shadows black as Tartarus.

These considerations would be enough to prompt the apostle to single out the death of Abel from all that followed it.

And in the text he contrasts its testimony with that of the blood of Christ.

What was its utterance? What did the blood of Abel say? Come with me and stand over the revolting spectacle. Look on the clotted gore and ghastly features of the murdered man, and hear the testimony:

1. The blood of Abel testified to the actual infliction of _the penalty of death_ which had been pa.s.sed upon the race. It is evident that Adam and Eve could not have fully understood the full meaning of the curse which had been p.r.o.nounced upon them. Spiritual death, consisting in a loss of holiness and separation from G.o.d's favor, they had already suffered. And they might have had some vague idea of that death which would close their earthly life, and dissolve the body back to dust; but they could know very little about it. They had never seen it. The death of animals offered in sacrifice would help their conceptions very little. Anxiously they questioned what more there was in the sentence which G.o.d had p.r.o.nounced upon them. Time wore along; their family increased: sons and daughters grew up around them, and yet they had never witnessed an instance of death. Perhaps they began to doubt whether there was any thing more in the curse than what they had already suffered. With ruddy cheeks and growing strength, their posterity increased for more than a century after the fall. Their children's children smiled upon their knees. As yet they had never seen a corpse; as yet the earth had not a single grave.

But from the blood of Abel there came a message of unutterable anguish, which dispelled the faintest hope of escape from the threatened penalty.

Around his body, stretched on the b.l.o.o.d.y ground, gathered Adam and Eve and their descendants, and there in heartrending agony and distraction gazed on the dead man's ghastly features, and read in them the first lesson of death. Yes, there was death!--death, which they had long talked about, and wondered what it was--death, which they had never seen before: it had come at last.

The awful revelation was before them. All doubt, all questioning about their fatal doom was gone. The king of terrors had entered upon his dominions, and set up his ghostly sceptre over every thing that breathed.

There was his first conquest.

And from that blood there went forth a voice which published to all the living the execution of the curse. Henceforth all hope of escape must be cut off. The work of death had now begun. Adam and all his race must prepare to die.

2. The blood of Abel spoke of the deep and awful _depravity_ of human nature consequent upon the fall. It showed that man's fallen nature was early ripe for the most atrocious wickedness. The seeds of corruption implanted in that nature required no long period of ages to bring forth their fatal fruits. They developed themselves with most terrible rapidity.

The earliest crime on record in the history of the race, is of t.i.tanic proportions. Old as the world has grown in guilt, it has yet found nothing to surpa.s.s it. Familiar as we are with its dark and dreary annals, its oft-repeated chronicles of wickedness, there is not in them all a more thrilling testimony to the deep and universal depravity of fallen nature, than is uttered in that first cry of blood which went up from the ground into the ear of G.o.d. It would seem as though man's darkened spirit could not wait for death to begin his fatal work upon the species by what we now call the natural course of sickness and disease, but he must himself chide death with tardiness, and lift his own hand with murderous intent, and slay his fellow.

The blood of Abel speaks not of Abel calmly yielding up his breath, while his head lies peacefully on his mother's lap. It calls us to no softened couch over which fond parents bend in agony, and catch the placid smile which lingers on the countenance, and gather up the few rays of hope which beam in the dying eye, and which seem to whisper that death may, after all, be not so formidable a thing.

In no such way does it speak to us. But it is Abel murdered, Abel stretched upon the cold ground, weltering in his blood, a mangled, ghastly spectacle. And every clotted blade of gra.s.s, and every b.l.o.o.d.y stone has found a tongue, and cries, "A brother's hand has done the h.e.l.lish deed." We stand aghast, and ask for no more appalling testimony to the total depravity of the species. Try as we may to soften down the hideousness of that depravity, after all our study to find something to relieve the odiousness of that corruption which festers in the soul, there is a voice in the earliest history of the race, a voice of blood which mocks our arguments and banishes our cherished convictions.

3. The blood of Abel cries for _vengeance_. It was the only testimony the Almighty produced when he summoned Cain to trial. The deed was done in secret. No one saw it. No one heard the dying man's last groan. His lips were sealed, his tongue was stiff and cold, and the murderer thought that by a brazen and persistent denial of his crime, he could escape detection.

But though Abel could not testify, and no living man saw the uplifted hand which smote him, still there were witnesses enough. Dumb things grew eloquent, and the voice of blood published the foul deed to G.o.d and man.

From what we have read of the history of murderers, it would seem that there was something more than a rhetorical figure in those words in Genesis, which give a voice to the blood shed by violence. Hundreds and thousands have heard such a voice. Often it amounts to nothing, that the a.s.sa.s.sin has concealed his crime from his fellow-men, and can walk abroad in the community with no suspicious eyes turned towards him. He is haunted by something which keeps publishing his guilt. The ghastly visage of his victim rises before him, and follows him. It shakes its gory locks at him, crossing his path everywhere like an avenger who will not be appeased. Its avenging cry rings in his ears. He starts at the sound of his own footsteps. Every thing seems to echo it. The rustling of a leaf alarms him. The murmuring waterfall tells the b.l.o.o.d.y tale; the winds wail it through the air. It seems to him that all the world has found it out.

Inanimate things have grown articulate, and published it. He expects the next man who meets him in the street will accuse him to his face. And not unfrequent is it, that by the very alarm and uneasiness, the strange anxiety and restlessness which he betrays, the eye of suspicion is turned upon him, and a clue is furnished, which leads to the disclosure of his crime.

This avenging cry of blood is the hardest thing in the world to silence.

It will not be appeased without the life of him who shed it. It is the voice of retributive justice, speaking from the throne of G.o.d, and echoed from the inner judgment-seat of the human conscience, demanding blood for blood. It is an awful voice, which, for the first time, the world heard when Abel's blood was shed.

But it is time we turned to listen to another voice to which the text invites us. It is indeed the voice of blood; but it is a strange, a new voice, which speaks a new language to the soul. It is the "blood of sprinkling." The crucifixion of the Son of G.o.d was a most foul and atrocious deed of blood: but in consequence of a special and extraordinary arrangement by the G.o.dhead, called the covenant of redemption, that blood spilled on Calvary received a new significancy, and spoke better things than blood had ever spoken before.

1. The blood of sprinkling speaks better things _to G.o.d_, than the blood of Abel did. That blood cried unto G.o.d from the ground for vengeance, but the blood of Christ sends aloft to the Almighty's throne a far different testimony. It speaks to G.o.d of a full satisfaction made to his law and justice for the sins of guilty men. It stands before the eternal Majesty, and challenges the divine attributes of truth and holiness and justice to say aught they can against the sinner's acquittal and acceptance. It holds up before the glittering sword of justice the cleft side and dripping hands of Jesus, and boldly asks, Is not this enough? It declares to G.o.d that now it is consistent with himself and his righteous government to pardon the transgressor, and extend to him the open hand of reconciliation. It pleads for guilty sinners in the heavenly world, and before the throne of Jehovah; and louder than the roll of the eternal anthem, and the shoutings of the angelic choirs, its mighty and prevailing voice is heard, "Spare him; for I have found a ransom." It bids mercy reveal her lovely face, and sway her sceptre over a fallen, but now redeemed world. Yes, the blood of sprinkling is heard in the highest heaven. It speaks in the ear of G.o.d.

2. It speaks _to men_. It proclaims to them a new and living way of approach to G.o.d. The apostle tells us, in the epistle to the Hebrews, that this way is through the blood of Christ, and that Christ hath consecrated this way to us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.

Before this new provision was made, the only way of acceptable approach to G.o.d was through the covenant of works which required complete personal obedience to the divine law. That way was closed. Sin broke it up, and man had no possible means of repairing it. Another way must be discovered, else we must remain under condemnation. The blood of sprinkling opens up a new and living way. It speaks to men of pardon, and a.s.sures them that the sacrifice of the cross was a full propitiation for their sins, which G.o.d himself has approved. It declares to sinners, that now G.o.d can be just, and the justifier of the unG.o.dly; that it has done all that was necessary to satisfy divine justice and avert the sentence of wrath which was over them, and that the very G.o.d who before appeared to them as a consuming fire, is now plenteous in mercy, and ready to forgive.

3. The blood of Christ speaks peace to the human _conscience_. Anxious as the sinner may be to escape the penalty of his transgressions, his conscience holds him to the conviction that that penalty must be endured; for G.o.d, whatever else he be, must be a G.o.d of justice, and must insist upon the sanctions of his law. Much as our selfish nature longs to escape suffering for sin, the conscience sternly says it cannot be. That suffering must be met. The penalty of transgression must be borne.

And now comes in the voice of blood, and says it has been borne, for the dying Saviour was made a curse for us. His cruel sufferings were in the stead of ours, and "on him was laid the iniquity of us all." Conscience can now be at rest, for its claims are satisfied. There is peace through the blood of the cross. The sinner may take refuge here from every accusing voice, and cherish the sweet consciousness of forgiveness.

Again, it speaks of _inward cleansing_ from pollution. Under the Levitical service, the sprinkling of blood was the symbol of purification. It typified the effects of the blood of Christ. The soul that comes to it experiences an inward renewing, and becomes the seat of gracious affections, implanted by the Holy Spirit.

And lastly, it speaks of final and complete _salvation_ in the heavenly world. It is the purchase price of redemption which G.o.d the Father has already accepted from Christ his Son. It is all a sinner needs to enter heaven. By it he is fully justified, and adopted into the family of G.o.d.

It fills the soul with joy and peace, and enables it to hope with confidence for the future glory. It is the believer's t.i.tle to eternal life, which he can carry with him through the gates of death, and which secures him a joyous welcome to the realms of purity and bliss, whither the Forerunner has already gone to prepare mansions for his people.

Such is the language which the blood of sprinkling speaks. No other blood ever spoke like it. No other voice has borne such tidings of great joy to sinners. Turn your anxious ear to every quarter; go listen to the law; go through the universe and summon all the voices which testify of the Almighty, which bespeak his might and majesty, his wisdom and goodness, and you listen in vain for any utterance of peace and hope and favor to a sinner, like that which is proclaimed in the blood of Calvary. That voice which breaks forth from the cross of Jesus is the apocalypse of the world's redemption.

It is the voice of hope and salvation for a lost and guilty race. It reverberates along the arches of the heavenly world, and calls forth a smile of reconciliation on the face of the Almighty. It rolls over against Sinai, and lo, the dark clouds scatter, and the lightnings cease to flash, and the thunders grow still. It comes to the human soul burdened with guilt and shame, and a.s.sures it of pardon, peace, and eternal life.

Thousands upon thousands have heard it, and gone to glory listening to it.

It is still speaking. It will keep on speaking till all the dwellers on this earth shall hear it, and an innumerable company out of every kindred and tribe and people shall be saved by it.