SERMON XXVI.
CHRIST IN ALL.

WHITSUNDAY.

COL. iii. 11.

"Christ is All and in all."

Is not this a short confession of a Christian's faith? Six little words, and easy to be learned by any child, and yet we have much reason to fear that a very large proportion even among thoughtful Christians, do not thoroughly receive more than the half of this confession. That "Christ is All" they allow, but they cannot comprehend how it should be true to say that He is "in all" Let us consider how this is.

When the Apostle in this place tells the Colossians that Christ is all, he means, first, all those things of which he had just before been speaking. What were those things? The outward advantages, which made so great a difference between one man and another before they were Christians, whether they were Jews or Greeks, circumcised or uncircumcised, Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free. These things made a great deal of difference in them while they were in their natural unconverted state; but after they had become members of Christ, these things were of no consequence to them whatever. Christ is to every Christian instead of all these outward advantages. They may have been by birth Greeks or Gentiles; but now, through Christ in Whom they are, they are become Israelites, a portion of the Lord's true people. They have never received outward circumcision, but through Christ they are all circumcised in heart. Their native tongue was that of Barbarians, foreigners, or even Scythians, the wildest of all; but now, in the hearing of the Angels they all speak the language of the kingdom of heaven. They have been some bond, some free, but now they have been all made children of the Freewoman, Christ's Church: they have been released, one by one, and admitted into the glorious liberty of His kingdom. Christ hath become all this to each one of them; their calling, their circumcision, their adoption, their freedom: Christ is become to each one of us all this and much more, fora Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God, is made unto us wisdom from God, even righteousness, sanc-tification, and redemption: righteousness to cure our sins; sanctification to make us holy, and prepare us to be happy with Him, redemption to pay all our debts and undo all our chains. Christ is our All. This, I suppose, we are quite ready to believe, as many as bestow one serious thought on their souls. Christ is our All. But how? In what manner, in what special way does He become All to each one of us in particular? For we know that by nature, and from the moment of our birth, He is none of all this to any one of us: rather we are in a way to give ourselves up entirely to another being, who is the very contrary of all these good things. By nature then, and by birth, Christ is not our All: how and when does He come to be so? This is what we are told in the latter half of S. Paul's short creed in the text: Christ is not only All, but in all. Then He becomes our All, when He enters in and dwells in us: when He unites us to His mystical Body, and makes us members of Himself: and when by virtue of that union we have power to do good works pleasing and acceptable in His sight. And of this happy and saving union God the Holy Ghost is the Author. His descent on the Apostles was the beginning of it to the whole Church, (as the Baptism of each Christian was the beginning to that particular Christian) and therefore the great feast of Whitsunday is appointed to be kept for ever in humble and thankful remembrance of it. Whitsunday is the birthday of the Church, as Christmas day is the Birthday of Christ. If we compare the three great and holy times one with another, Christmas tells us of God in Christ; Easter with Good Friday, of Christ becoming our All, dying, rising, ascending for us; Pentecost or Whitsunday, of Christ in us. Or to put it in another form, Christmas sets before us Christ as He is in Himself; Easter, Christ as our redemption; Whitsuntide, Christ as our sanctification. And perhaps, if we will set our minds to it, we may come from hence to perceive the reason why Whitsunday is less thought of among us, than either of the other two great days. That it is so, no one I imagine will deny. We have only to count our communicants at this season year after year, and compare the number with that at Christmas and at Easter, and we shall find such a difference as to make it quite plain that this is by a good deal less thought of than either of the other holy seasons. But why? Some part of the disrespect is owing, we may well fear, to the greater abundance of ordinary feastings and diversions, which are so apt to take up a great deal of many people's minds and thoughts at this time of the year. Young persons especially permit themselves to be so carried away with the mere diversions, innocent perhaps in themselves, which come in their way at Whitsuntide, that they feel as if their hearts and imaginations were out of tune for the aweful things of God. They think so much of Whitsuntide as a time of pleasure, that they almost, or altogether forget that it is a time of devotion. A sad thing, when you come to think of it, and quite enough to put those who feel it very especially on their guard, lest they come in time to be like that unhappy man, who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, and "found no place of repentance."

But, if I do not mistake, there is another cause, besides the more than usual amount of diversion at this time, to make many of us less devout in comparison than we were at Christmas and Easter. Men do not understand so much of the mystery of this time, what God did for them, as they understand about Christmas, and Easter: and they accordingly care less for it. The Evil one, no doubt, takes pains to hide it from them; and his contrivances are often but too successful. Satan does not so much mind men's believing that Jesus Christ is God and Man, that He died and rose again and went up to heaven for us: Satan, I say, does not so much mind our believing this, if he can but make us doubt or disbelieve or forget our being members of that Christ: so united to Him by His good Spirit, that it is in our power to obey and please Him, if we will. The great deceiver has no objection to our thinking much of our Lord's Cradle and Cross, His mercy in taking our nature and dying for us, if he can but get us to stop there, and not to go on and lay it to heart what manner of persons we ought to be, who by the Holy Ghost are made members of this Holy Saviour, and able, through Him, to work out our own salvation. Satan will be willing enough to let you believe that Christ is All, yea, and to rejoice in that belief, if only he can effectually stay you from believing that He is in us all, by virtue of His own holy Sacrament of Baptism, and therefore, that all our excuses for not being holy are nothing worth. I will shew you this, or rather, S. Paul will shew it you, in a few plain instances mentioned by him just before the words of the text.

First, Satan is the king of pride and the author of envy, and he would fain have us as envious and as proud as himself. He would have us think very much of the ordinary differences among men here on earth; rich and poor, learned and unlearned, sickly and healthy, high and low in the world. Satan would have us think very much of these, in order that he may, if he can, make the one sort envious, and the other proud. Those who are worse off, he tempts to envy others. Who does not know it too well? The moment we see any one richer, healthier, cleverer, more admired than ourselves, there is generally something in our hearts which rises against them, a secret disposition to put them down and lift ourselves up. And on the other hand, the more favoured person is used to look down on the other, to scorn him, and congratulate himself like the Pharisee in the parable, that he is not such an one as lie is. In either case the tempter has his own way with us; with the rich, if he can get him to despise the poor; with the poor, if he can get him to envy the rich: and to both temptations we have an answer, if we will but believe and earnestly recollect, that Christ is in us all: in our brethren whom we might scorn or envy, as well as in ourselves; "we are all one in Christ Jesus." This S. Paul teaches in saying, "Ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all." Why should you mind these earthly and temporal differences? They will presently pass away and be as nothing, nay there is nothing in them already as among Christians. Christians are all alike in this great thing, unutterably great--that Christ is everything to them, and is in every one of them. What can it signify to them, really, if one be born in a higher, another in a lower place, if one be richer and another poorer, or anything else of that kind? In good truth it does not signify at all, only to our weak and frail hearts it is very hard to think so. But we must try and bring ourselves to that good mind; the good Spirit will help us to it, if we try in earnest.

And there is another kind of differences among men; by occasion of which in all times the devil has endeavoured to pervert and ruin Christ's people; such differences, I mean, as those between Jew and Gentile, circumcised and uncircumcised, bond or free. It was a great thing for him if he could get people to fancy that the Gospel was only for the Jews, only for the circumcised; for so the Jews would be proud, the others would be careless, saying it was all nothing to them. So in our times it greatly serves his bad purpose, if he can possess any one with an imagination that Christian privileges and Christian duties are only for a few chosen ones, instead of being meant for the whole elect people of God, i. e. for all who are called to be Christians. He whispers to unstable souls, one after another, "If Christ were in you, you might indeed do God's will; but as it is, you cannot do it: Christ is not yet in you, and therefore God does not expect you to be so very particular in your conduct." These are the whisperings of the Evil one: but thou, O well-advised Christian, wilt know how to silence him at once, by simply trying to set thy mind and heart upon the certain fact, that Christ is in all; and if in all, then in thee also.

The Apostle mentions by name yet one more work of the devil, which would pass away from among Christians, if they all really believed and recollected that Christ is in them all. That evil work is lying. "Lie not," says S. Paul, "one to another, seeing ye have put off the old man and have put on the new." Or as it is in the Epistle to the Ephesians. "Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another." Of course, being all in Christ, we are all members one of another: through Him we are all united; the many corns to make up one loaf, the many drops to make one holy cup of salvation."

"We being many are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." Over and over, you see, the saying is repeated: Christ is in us all, therefore we are all in each other: and consequently among other duties, we are earnestly forbidden on any account to lie one to another. Lying, more plainly than almost any other sin, is the work of the devil, one of the very first lessons which he taught our first parents, setting them an example in that he said (contradicting God, Whose words he well knew), "Ye shall not surely die." And it is certain, that the more entirely the peoples and families of the world are left to themselves, the more false do they generally prove. Savages, no man can trust. And on the other hand, truth, exact truth, in word and in deed, we know to be a certain sign of the new man. Good and true words; words of praise to God, words of charitable truth to men, were the first-fruits of the Day of Pentecost. As soon as the Holy Comforter, according to Christ's promise, had come down upon them, to unite them to Christ, they began all of them to speak with new and Christian tongues. And what did they first speak of? "The wonderful works of God." What next? Peter standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and preached to them the true Gospel of Christ's Resurrection. "Speaking the exact truth" was the first, the very first fruit of the Spirit: and so it has been ever since. For as Christians cannot lie to God, Whom they know to be always in every place, and to read every secret of their hearts, so neither can they lie one to another, for that is still lying to God, since each one of them has Christ i. e. God abiding in him. How should they lie in wait to deceive, since each one, knowing that Christ is in both alike, knoweth also that such craftiness would be trying to make Christ deceive Himself? Each one seeks not his own only but his brother's good, why should one ever wish to deceive another?

And yet, it is indeed a sad thought, a very sad one, how very, very easily, do most people, I fear, allow themselves to lie. For what a mere nothing, what a trifle, what a dream of a shadow, such as to avoid a little scolding, to obtain some small indulgence, to gratify some dislike or partiality, to win a moment's praise and admiration; any of these things, any slighter reason even than these, would be an excuse in the mind of too many for telling any number of lies. It could not be so, if Christians generally had not learned to despise their calling, to think little of their union with God through the Holy Ghost, even though they do really think much, in their fashion, of Christ dying for them on the Cross. They could not be so free in lying, if they understood and believed, what Whitsunday means. O that they would be wise enough to consider this in time! Here is the God of Truth watching you: He has given you a tongue to speak the Truth: He has given you sense to know what will come of not speaking it: "all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." He has given you, above all, His Holy and blessed Spirit, to overcome temptation, and force your tongue to speak true, when that unruly member is inclined to go beyond bounds. These are God's unspeakable gifts, to one as much as to another among you, since Christ is in you all. Truth or falsehood, which will you speak? Eternal life or death, which will you have? How weak must your faith be, if, being warned as you are, you still go on in any kind of falseness! What will it come to? And how will you be able to bear it?

Think on the other hand of the bright and glorious hour, when He, Who is the Truth, shall reveal Himself finally, and for ever, to all who have loved the Truth here on earth. It is written, "God giveth not the Spirit by measure." He is no niggard of His gifts; they are poured out fully according as His servants are able and willing to receive them. If His Holy Ghost, descending to-day, was like a mighty rushing wind, coming on all sides at once, filling all the house where they were sitting: if the Tongues of Fire, softly gliding from heaven, left out none of the faithful worshippers, but sat upon each of them, lighting them up with such fire as that all generations should be kindled at it: what, think you, will be the outpouring of His glory, how will He give Himself without measure to those whom He shall find in His Church waiting for Him, when His last day is fully come! May it please Him, that you and I may be of that blessed company! But in order to be so, we must constantly speak the truth; for He is the Spirit of Truth, and He came to guide us into all Truth.

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