A SERMON.

THE CHRISTIAN'S FIGHT OF FAITH.

1 TIMOTHY VI. 12.

Fight the good fight of faith.

THESE words form part of the instructions given by Paul the aged to his son in the faith, for the due discharge of his duty as a bishop in the church of Christ. But no prophecy of the Scripture is of private interpretation; and therefore, having already answered their purpose as a piece of advice to the spiritual ruler of the church of Ephesus, they became the property of the church of God of every age, a manual of duty to the bishops-those who bear leading rule in the kingdom of God here on earth-of every place and time-and also to the priests of the Lord, who are the legitimate council* of the bishop, and thence, in a lower sense, they all apply also to all who are called with the name of Christ, all those who, being baptized into the faith of Christ, are of the number of his chosen people-members of the royal priesthood, to which Christ is chief, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek. A proof of this universal application of the injunctions of Scripture, even though addressed, in the first instance, to a particular order of men, may be found in the command to preach the word, which, though in its highest sense belonging exclusively to the first heralds of an unwritten gospel, yet, by lawful transition, applies to the duly commissioned successors of those early heralds, in ministerial office, and thence, by equally just interpretation, it appears to enjoin a certain duty to be exacted of all God's adopted children, whatever their rank in the christian family. Thus, while the same Scripture is binding upon all men, and inculcates a duty upon all, yet that duty will be as various in its complexion and extent as the stations, in which men are by the good providence of God severally placed, are different and multiform. Thus a very little consideration is sufficient to show, that there is a sense in which the minister of God is called upon to fight the good fight of faith which does not affect the uncommissioned soldier of Jesus Christ. In an earthly warfare, the exhortation, "quit yourselves like men," exacts duties, different in degree from the man in the ranks and the officer who commands him ; and so the ambassadors of Heaven, the duly commissioned officers of the ministry of reconciliation, have, in addition to the duty enjoined upon all, a still further obligation imposed upon them, when they hear their Lord speaking to them, by his Spirit, through an apostle,-Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto also thou art called. The summons-to stand fast, and to take unto them the whole armour of God-reminds them, no less than the laity, that they have souls to be saved-that they must work out the salvation,

See this point admirably handled in a recently-published pamphlet, entitled "The Rights of the Presbytery Asserted, by a Presbyter." Burns, London.

procured by Christ, with fear and trembling-that they must strive, lest, having preached to others, they themselves should be cast-aways; but over and above this fighting for themselves, they are herein reminded that a good deposit has been committed unto them, and that on them, in an especial manner, it is laid to stand in the breach, when the rude assaults of wicked men assail the ark of God, and the covenant that is laid up therein. But as in preaching to our congregations we have in view their building up, in the faith of the gospel, their improvement, and their edification; therefore I will, in the remainder of this discourse, illustrate one part of the clergyman's peculiar duty in this fight of faith rather by practice than by disquisition-rather by example than by precept.

And may God the Holy Ghost, the Sanctifier of God's elect, so arm these poor words of mine, that they may be effectual in causing you to be animated with true christian courage in the conflict in which you are severally called upon to bear part, as the condition of eternal happiness. Amen.

It is no uncommon thing to find the condition of the Christian represented in holy Scripture as a state of warfare. We are called soldiers of Jesus Christ, warriors with, but not after, the flesh-the weapons of our warfare are described as not carnal, but mighty, through God, to the pulling down of strong holds, and it is, therefore, no just cause of surprise to find the Apostle bid the Bishop of Ephesus, and thence, in a lower sense, all Christians, to fight the good fight of faith, and to lay hold on the eternal life whereunto they are called! Let us, then, consider some of the ways in which all Christians may fight this good fight of faith. The first thing, as we are told in another passage of the writings of the same Apostle, is to hold faith in a pure conscience. If we consider the high and lofty characters which are given to conscience in Scripture, we shall be fully prepared to accord to it this foremost rank. Conscience is styled the candle of the Lord, and it is the law by which the heathens who are destitute of a revelation are to be judged; and therefore, it is above all things necessary that we have a conscience pure and undefiled. In order to this we must be diligent in the watch we set upon our thoughts, words, and actions. For if we transgress in any of these particulars, we by each individual transgression sully the purity of our conscience, and hence we damage a very essential aid to our duly fighting the battles of the faith. Having in our infancy been admitted into membership of Christ, our earliest accents are to be moulded in the creeds and prayers of Christ's church; and knowing that to profess Christ with our lips, and follow Belial in our hearts and lives, is a course worse than dangerous, we should possess, and pray that we may be enabled to preserve, that faith in the Son of God which is the instrumental means, as good works are the declarative evidence, and as the merits of Christ the Saviour are the procuring cause, of our salvation; and if we are permitted to continue steadfast in the faith, then our faith will be a living and productive principle, and we shall be endowed with that holiness of life which is the proximate ground, as the vouchsafed help of the Comforter is the divine foundation, on which is raised the superstructure of an unreproving conscience. For the negative ease of conscience is not

all that is comprehended in fighting the good fight of faith-it is rather the prerequisite, without which it is vain that we enter the battlefield. A conscience void of offence both toward God and man, is questionless a doughty champion in the inward struggle as to the propriety of our joining in the conflict, which God's faithful people have to sustain, in a world whose honours and whose rewards are so many temptations to desert our duty, forfeit our allegiance, and play false to the great Captain of our salvation; but knowing how many are the deceits by which Satan leads to hell, from the paths whose course is heavenward, we shall beware that we do not magnify that which is one among other prerequisites, nay, which is also one of the ultimate consequences of victory, into the actual fight itself, in which we are required not to bear our sword in vain. The reason for this caution will be more apparent, if we consider when it is that we become soldiers of Jesus Christ. It is in our baptism that we are signed with the cross, in token that "hereafter we shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ's faithful soldiers and servants unto our lives' end." Now, a necessary forerunner of any benefit accruing from baptism, is innocence of the actual guilt of sin, or an undefiled conscience, arising from sincere repentance and true faith. In the infant the former of these is found, in the adult the latter is necessary. Thus much, then, as to our qualification to stand up in the Lord's behalf; it now remains to see in what particulars this good fight is to be fought; nor can we take a better plan of the battlefield, than is furnished in the sacramental words of initiation into the body of Christ's church militant, which we have just brought forward. I. We are to confess the faith of Christ crucified.

II. We are to fight manfully under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil.

III. We are to have no thoughts of desertion; we are to lay down our arms only with our breath; we are to continue Christ's faithful soldiers and servants unto our lives' end.

We are to confess the faith of Christ crucified. We are never to be ashamed of Him who for our sakes suffered all indignity, and bore without resentment every obloquy. On all occasions, and at all hazards, we are to be open in our profession of our belief in Christ as the only sacrifice, in Jesus as the only leader, in the Son of God as the only Mediator, in the Son of Mary as the only perfect Exemplar. We shall be strict in our assent to the three creeds of universal Christendom; we shall hold with untiring diligence all the catholic verities; and we shall do this, not merely because they recommend themselves to our notice by their logical accuracy, and their consonance with what we individually deem to be scriptural truth, but because they form the belief of all God's saints in all time, the running commentary uniformly held in all vital particulars by the church of God during eighteen hundred years! We shall remember that everywhere, in Scripture and in the Prayer Book, it is not merely a faith in Christ crucified-not a faith of necessity to be required of all men in order to eternal salvation-not a faith which is earnestly to be contended for; but the thing to be guarded is the sacred deposit com

mitted to the custody of the church of God-the faith once delivered unto the saints. Thus convinced, we shall never suffer any one article of these creeds to be attacked, without at once standing up in its defence. We shall be more jealous of, and more zealous for, the integrity of an article of the faith, than we are of a brother's reputation. Knowing that he is most charitable who speaks most plainly, we shall not dare to hold back any of the truth which God has revealed to man ; and since in repeating the creeds, we are only declaring what we believe to be facts, not framing laws, we shall, at all opportunities, be ready to confess the faith of Christ crucified, in the least equivocal of the phrases which have become watchwords in the camp of our Zion.

From whatever quarter the attempt to remove the keystone of the christian arch may come, the faithful follower of the injunction to fight the good fight of faith, will be ready to repulse the attack, heresy will not be suffered to intrude within the citadel of truth, and Christ, the sinner's friend, the believer's hope, will everywhere be the motto worked on the breast-plate of the soldiers of the cross. Nay, so scrupulous will the true Christian be in his defence of this principle, that he will extend his respect and his care even to things non-essential. Thus an English churchman will, in obedience to canonical order, make humble reverence whenever the name of Jesus is mentioned; and this not because forms are in themselves important, but because as his church has ordered him so will he do. And knowing that his church, in ordering this, has only echoed the scriptural precept, At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, he will recollect that Jesus is the name corresponding to Joshua or leader, the name therefore which was given to him above every name, therefore he will bow at that holy name to betoken that he is a soldier in the army of salvation, of which Christ Jesus is the great Captain. To fight the good fight of faith, therefore, we must be diligent in seeing that that faith is preserved entire; but this will not be enough—we are not called upon to contend for a mere abstract shadow-it is a vital and life-giving principle which we are called upon to carry out-faith without works is dead, and hence he is no true soldier of the cross, who is content with unfurling the standard of the faith, who is merely zealous in preventing alteration in the rules and regulations which prescribe his duty, but he must go on to fight manfully under Christ's banner against sin, the world, and the devil. Here we have three great foes of our spiritual peace suggested to us-sin in our own hearts, sin in the world, and the devil everywhere. How are we to contend with three such adversaries? We must take the field under the banner of the cross. To the fearful sacrifice wrought on Calvary's height must we look, as the sure talisman of victory; thence, and thence only, cometh our strength; thence the power to be more than conquerors through Him that loved and gave himself for us. Looking then to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, let us go forth strong in the power of his might; inspired with energy by God the Holy Spirit, and furnished with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, we shall be more than proof against all the fiery darts of the evil one. Recollect the assurance, Resist the devil, and he will flee from you; call to mind how our great Chief met the assaults of Satan; to all his

wiles he returned an answer, on one authority, and one only-It is written was the one uniform sentence, with which our Lord prefaced the rebuff he gave to the arch-prince of evil; and so we shall do wisely not to trust our own wit nor our own ingenuity, but to go at once to Scripture, and there we shall find the advice, or the answer, as the case may be, which we most require. And for practical purposes, what is the lesson that the Bible teaches us? It is that in all things we work out the purposes of Jehovah, by the means which Omnipotence has prescribed. Thus, whenever assailed by the flesh, the world, or the devil, we shall not trust to our own unaided strength for victory, but we shall flee to Christ, by the way Christ has appointed; we shall flee to Christ in his church, to furnish us with the wherewithal to vanquish our spiritual foes. We shall seek in prayer, and in the reading of Scripture, and in the ordinances of the church, those weapons which we are to wield for the overthrow of the enemies of our religion, and the adversaries of our God. Does sin in the abstract assail us? to it we shall oppose righteousness and sanctification of the Holy Spirit of God working in our lives. Does the world, by its many pageants and its subtle contrivances, seek to lure us from the path of duty? to its blandishments we shall be able to oppose the quiet tranquillities of religion; to the noisy din of Babylon we shall be able to oppose the quiet peace of Jerusalem; with the witcheries of Satan we shall be able to contrast the charms of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world! Aye, manfully shall the true Christian fight, under the banner of the cross, against sin, the world, and the devil, for to them he has to oppose the delightful consolations of holy living, the peaceful joys of the church, and the blessed assistances of the Author of all good, God the blessed Spirit, the holy and adorable third in office, though coequal in rank, of the undivided and ever-to-be-adored Trinity. Fight, therefore, the good fight of faith; remain true to every individual sentence of the three creeds universal; fear, tremble, aye tremble, to doubt, to add to, or to detract from, any one single iota of that faith which cost saints their tears, confessors their pains, and martyrs their blood! Fight the good fight of faith; fight it not only by confessing the faith of Christ crucified, but by opposing sin, the world, and the devil, and by continuing Christ's faithful soldier and servant unto your life's end. It will not be enough that some particular event has witnessed your valour; it will not suffice that some memorable battlefield has borne testimony to your prowess; it will not be enough that many deeds of christian heroism, put you beyond the ordinary reach of crdinary doubts as to your consistent courage; no-more than this, the Christian is ever and anon called upon to appear in the contest. baptism he is clothed in an armour-dress, which he may not but at his peril, put off until he is undressed for the grave; a soldier he is then made, and a soldier he must all his life continue; worn out in the service, God the Saviour will never suffer him to be; an all-sufficient warrior, the frailties of human nature will prevent him from becoming; pensioned here he cannot be; one only accident of the service belongs to him, deserter he may be! And oh, how fearful is desertion in this service, for the tribunal which is to try him sits not with corrective, but with irremovable judicial power only; it dooms not here indeed, but

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