Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, x. (1864) No. 565. Temple (F.), Sermons in Rugby School Chapel, iii. 149. Thomas (J.), Concerning the King, 84. Trench (R. C), Sermons for the Most Part in Ireland, 54. „ Westminster and Other Sermons, 269.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xxiii. (1883) No. 1246.
Walker (W. L.), The True Christ, 21.
Watkinson (W. L.), The Bane and the Antidote, 225.
Whiton (J. M.), Gloria Patri, 205.
Cambridge Review, iv. Supplement No. 91 ; vii. Supplement No. 163.
Christian World Pulpit, x. 376 (Caird) ; xxxvii. 209 (Brooks) ; xlix. 145 (Gore) ; Ixiv. 423 (Lang) ; Ixvii. 97 (Henson).
Contemporary Pulpit^ Ist Ser., v. 104 (Cowie) ; x. 193 (Barry).
Truth and Freedom.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. ... If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. — John viii. 32,36.
1. In the text we find united two of the greatest words in our language. There are perhaps no words in the language which have been so variously interpreted, or around which the conflict of opinion has raged more fiercely ; no words which have had greater power to call forth the energy and devotion of human hearts, or which, on the other hand, have more often been em- ployed to give an ideal colouring to base and selfish ends. How many rebels against just law, or wholesome moral restraint, have masked their caprice under the name of liberty ; how many fires of persecution have been kindled in the pretended cause of truth ! And, on the other hand, what noble battles have been fought for the most sacred interests of humanity, which were identified with these two names ! We should blot out half of the heroic pages of history if we were to erase the deeds done, and the sufferings endured, for Truth and Freedom. In the text the two words are used to throw light upon each other, and, as it were, to exclude the false interpretations which might be given to each taken by itself. That is Truth which makes me really free ; that is the genuine and only valuable Freedom which is based upon the Truth.
2. Let us recall the occasion on which the words were spoken. To some who had attached themselves (slightly, as it would seem) to Him, the Lord had said, " If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Instead of joyfully accepting, they resented this gracious encouraging word of His, this promise, " Ye
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shall he made free," and rejoined in displeasure — " We were never in bondage to any man." How strangely men are often blinded by pride and presumption ! Listen to these proud Jews, " We were never in bondage to any man " ; while yet the whole past history of their nation was the record of one bondage following hard on another, they for their sins having come at one time or another under the yoke of almost every people round about them. They had been, by turns, in bondage to the Canaanites, in bondage to the Philistines, in bondage to the Syrians, in bondage to the Chaldeans ; then again to the Grteco-Syrian kings ; and even at the very moment when this indignant disclaimer was uttered, the signs of a foreign rule, of the domination of a stranger, everywhere met their eye. They bought and sold with Eoman money ; they paid tribute to a Eoman emperor; a Eoman governor sat in their judgment hall ; a Eoman garrison occupied the fortress of their city. And yet, with all this plain before their eyes, brought home to their daily, hourly, experience, they angrily put back the promise of Christ, " The truth shall make you free," as though it conveyed an insult : How sayest Thou, Ye shall be made free ? We were never in bondage to any man.
3. These words of the Jews grew out of a total misunder- standing of the freedom of which Christ was speaking. It was not, in the first place, freedom from the yoke of the stranger, it was not deliverance from the tyranny of Eome, that Christ was promising here to as many as continued in His word, but freedom from the yoke of sin, deliverance from the bondage of corruption, from the tyranny of their own passions and desires. It was this that Christ promised, for it was this that He came from heaven to impart. That other freedom might and would follow in course of time ; for men who are free inwardly are sure, sooner or later, to achieve an outer freedom as well. It was not, however, of this that Christ was speaking here, but of quite another freedom ; and therefore, not caring to note that angry rejoinder of theirs, or to entangle Himself in controversy on so unprofitable a theme, but lifting up the whole question between Himself and them into a higher sphere. He replied, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, Who- soever committeth sin is the servant of sin." Every sinner, He would say, is the servant, or slave, of the sin which he commits —