358 SERMONS UPON HEBREWS XI. [SeR. IV.
nothing but a promise for wliat we lay out upon a work of religion : Prov. xix. 17, ' He that liath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord ; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.' Charity and alms is a kind of traffic, and there is a great deal of faith and trust exercised in it, if he lay out a sum upon his word and bond. A carnal mind thinks all lost and gone because he will not lake God's word ; but now he that believes can see profit temporal and spiritual to arise out of this. 2. Here also God trieth us — ' Faith is the evidence of things not seen.' You see no profit, but can you believe it ? Eccles. xi. 1, ' Ca,st thy bread upon the waters ; for thou shalt find it after many days.' When a man goes about doing good, such liberal distributions to a carnal mind are but like sowing the seed in a moorish ground, or like ploughing the sea; as foolish and as vain a course as if a man should cast his bread, that is, his bread corn, upon the waters. The vulgar read it super transeuntes aquas, cast it upon the running stream. We cannot look for a crop out of the water .; it is carried down the stream, and a man shall never see it again. Ay, but faith, which is an evidence of things not seen, will help us in this case even to distribute our substance, for God will make it up again. When you can wait upon God contrary to sense and experience, then you have the true kind of faith.
(5.) In desertion, when God hides himself, faith only can find him out. When all comforts are lost to sense, they are present to fiiith. Faith can see God under his mask and veil : Isa. xlv. 15, ' Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, 0 God of Israel, the Saviour.' When God means to be a saviour, he may hide himself, but faith waiteth upon him in the deepest and blackest desertion. John ii. 4, Christ rebukes the Virgin Mary—' Woman, what have I to do with thee ? mine hour is not yet come ; ' yet ver. 5, ' His mother saith unto the ser- vants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.' She had received a sharp rebuke from Christ, yet she knew he would do something, and therefore saith, ' Fill the waterpots.' True faith can pick love out of God's angry speeches, and draw gracious conclusions from the blackest and hardest premises. Saith Job, if he shall kill me, and lay more terrors upon me, ' Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him,' Job xiii. 15 ; and saith David, Ps. xlii. 11, ' Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him.' When there are no apparent evidences, all comforts and graces are spent, there is not a drop of oil in the cruse, nor a dust of meal in the barrel ; yet hope can hang upon a small thread. They will vv-ait, trust, and look for something of favour from God.
(6.) This faith is necessary to believe the spiritual mysteries of religion. So faith sees a virtue in Christ's death : Gal. ii. 20, ' Never- theless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me ; and the life which I live in the fliesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.' This is a mere riddle to sense, so to believe the salutary and gracious fruits and eftects of christian ordinances, which are to appearance mean and poor, but the worth and fruit of them is unseen. Saith TertuUian, Nihil adeo ac offendit hommicvi mentes, quam simplicitas divinorum ojjerum, there is nothing offends men's minds so much as the simplicity of his ordinances. Plain preaching seems a poor, useless thing _; a vain artifice to catch spuls, it is as much despised by carnal reason in the heart, as it is by vain men
VeR. 1.] SERMONS UPON HEBREWS XI. 359
in tlie world, yet this is God's way to convert the soul: 1 Cor. i. 21, ' It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.' The waters of baptism heathens were offended at, when christians talked of such glorious things as to be born again, united to Christ, possessed of the Spirit, and they could see nothing but going- down into the water^ To find spiritual comfort and ravishing joy iu the Lord's supper, when we see nothing but a piece of bread and a draught of wine ; for ordinances that have no pomp and splendid appearance in them, yet to be sanctified to the most high and mysteri- ous uses of our religion, this is that which is matter of faith.
(7.) That we may look for life iu the hour of death. When sense and understanding is departing, oh ! then to comfort ourselves with the love of God that shall never depart ; to look for life and resurrection among dry bones, and to look on the grave as a place not of destruc- tion, but of delivery — these are all things unseen, and require faith to believe them. Who would think such a pale horse as death should be sent from Christ to carry us to glory ? and that the funerals of the body shall not be the funerals of the christian, but only of his sin and of his frailty ? Miseria moritur, homo non moritur ; it is but a shed taken down, that it may be raised in a better structure ; that the way to live for ever is to die first, that we may be killed and not hurt ; to believe that the morsels for the worms should be parcels of the resur- rection : Job xix. 26. ' Tliough after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God ; ' and then to send our flesh iu hope to the grave : Ps. svi. 9, ' My flesh also shall rest in hope ; ' to go to the grave as a bed of ease and chamber of rest, of which Christ keeps the keys ; all this is matter of faith. Our Saviour saith, John xi. 25, * He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet he shall live ; ' he puts the question, ' Believest thou this? ' ver. 26 ; nothing else will assure it you. But have you faith ? David puts the supposition : Ps. xxiii. 4, ' Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me ; ' tliough I walk side by side with death ; though my bones be cast into a common charnel, and I con- verse with skulls, yet Christ will look after this dust, and those rotten relics'of mortality. Faith must assure and persuade us of all this.