SERMON XLII.

HEAVEN ATTAINABLE BY ALL WHO ARE PRINCIPLED IN THE LOVE OF GOOD BY TRUTHS OF WISDOM.

BY THE REV. J. BRADLEY, MANCHester.

Matthew viii. 11, 12.

"And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." BEFORE we proceed to an explanation of this portion of the Divine Word, we will briefly notice the occasion on which our blessed Lord was pleased first to utter it, for the intruction of all that should then and afterwards become members of his church. In verses 5 to 11, it is written, "And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying, Lord, my servant is sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof; but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say unto this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel."

In this passage the centurion's faith is contrasted by our blessed Lord, with that of all Israel, to the advantage of the former. This centurion was a gentile, the commander of a hundred men in the Roman army, who, it appears, had been led, either by his own observation or the reports of others, to seek, for his afflicted servant, help from the Lord Jesus.

He appears to have been so completely satisfied of the Lord's power to help, and thereby of his infinite greatness, as well as of his willingness to grant the requests of those who sought his divine aid, that, in an humble sense of his unworthiness to receive the Lord as a guest, and with an entire a confidence in his power,

when the Lord said he would come and heal his servant, he apologized, by saying that he was not worthy of receiving him under his roof, and that his word would be sufficient. This confidence he grounded upon the circumstance, that he had authority over men, who, with the greatest readiness, executed his commands: whence he concluded, that the Lord, having proved himself divine by the exercise of divine power, he had only to will the cure of his servant and speak the word, and his servant would be healed; being confident that all things must be under his government, who could do the mighty deeds he had witnessed, or report had verified to him. This faith of the centurion seems to have had a deeper ground than any the Lord had found in Israel, though with that people the representation of his church had remained, and from among them his first disciples were called. The more man can believe in all things of the Lord, his church, and kingdom, after having duly exercised his rational faculties in the investigation of the truth respecting them, the greater and more acceptable to the Lord does his faith become; because the more it is of this quality, not only the more efficiently does it purify the desires from every species of extravagance, but it enlarges the soul's recipiency of all goodness and blessedness. The Lord wills to be received by man, to the utmost of man's power, in all his goodness, and says to him, "Open thy mouth wide, that I may fill it.” He does not reject those of little faith; but he cannot bless them so fully while, in any degree, it contracts their hearts against the enlargement of his goodness within them.

In this example of the centurion's faith, was represented the character of the future Christian Church as being principally constituted of those, who should believe, from among the Gentiles; that they would be of a more spiritual character than the church had been among the natural Israelites; and it was afterwards found to be the case, and not only so, but the few Jews who embraced Christianity seemed to take so much of the old leaven into their new religion, as to create to themselves and others endless disputes and perplexities about the law, and how much of it it was still necessary to observe. By these things the purity and elevatedness of their faith was much damaged, and with them Christianity assumed a contracted range, altogether unsuitable to its genuine freedom and unbounded liberality.

From this example of liberal and enlightened faith grounded in the most profound humility, and unlimited confidence in the Lord's divine power, and in his willingness to save and bless to the

uttermost, the Lord took occasion to instruct his followers, in the words of our text, that his kingdom in the heavens should be furnished from the east and west, and as Luke has it, in addition (xiii. 29), from the north and from the south, remote from the land of Canaan; thus that it should be furnished from the then Gentile nations, however remote, as to situation and religion, they might be. The selfishness of man has always had a tendency to turn religion, which in itself is most liberal, into bigotry; and blind bigotry would most selfishly limit the kingdom of heaven to such only, as are led by its influence, and worship, or affect to worship, according to its dictates.

The east and west relate to spiritual things and to the spiritual world, as well as to the natural things and natural world. In that world the Lord is the east, and the supreme love of him on the part of the angels, is likewise denoted by the east; those, therefore, who excel in that love, as the celestial do, dwell in the east in heaven. It is the character of the ruling love of all angels, and the intelligence in which it is embodied, as derived from it, that determines the situation of all in heaven, and therefore it comes to pass that the different quarters or cardinal points, signify spiritual states of life. Though the spiritual world is said not to be in time and space, yet there is the appearance of space as in the present world. There could be no sense of distance or of situation, without apparent space; but every thing of the kind in that world is spiritual, because it is a spiritual world, and has therefore relation to the mind, and to what is spiritual in the mind: and when any thing relating to it occurs in the Word, it admits of an explanation of this spiritual character. The church on earth as seen in its spiritual character, will be scen, as it were, in those quarters, independent of its situation in this world, according to its characteristic love and intelligence; for we are able from the knowledge of general arrangements in the spiritual world, to perceive, from the characteristic love and intelligence of any one or body of individuals as belonging to the Lord's Church on earth, the quarters to which they belong. When the Lord therefore says they shall come from the east and west, we shall understand that all in whom is implanted the love of good, as a ruling principle, by the truths of wisdom, clearly or obscurely perceived, will enter into heaven, and take their proper up abode there; for as the east significs every degree of celestial love with its wisdom, so the west, as being the opposite extreme, denotes heavenly love to the utmost extreme, with its corresponding intelligence: or, in other words, the love of the Lord,

signified by the east, denotes internal and superior love, and the love of the Lord, signified by the west, denotes external and, comparatively, inferior love; for love is perfected as it is more and more internal.

As the predominant love forms itself in externals by its proper intelligence, it is evident that such as the love is, such is the understanding, and, consequently, such is the degree and elevatedness of intelligence. The south therefore signifies, corresponding to the east, wisdom in its clearness; and the north, the same in obscurity, that is, comparatively; for in reality the light of heaven is much brighter than our faculties can sustain, while they are enveloped with their material covering in this world. But these significations equally apply to the church on earth as they do to the angels of heaven, and the same comparative differences, as experienced by its members. All, therefore, of the church, whether in the east and south, as to love and wisdom, or in the west and north, as to the same, will be mercifully received into heaven, and take up their abode there with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, according to their respective states.

By Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are not to be spiritually understood the persons who are so called in the Word, for they were representative characters, as named therein, as well as real persons, As real persons, it may be taken for granted, that they have no more distinction in heaven than belongs to their particular states, for in that kingdom none have pre-eminence on account of their station on earth: it may be presumed, therefore, that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as such, are unknown in heaven.

These persons, while on earth, were called by the mercy of the Lord,' to represent his church on earth, and his kingdom in heaven. It was for this purpose, they were so divinely distinguished as well as their posterity after them. Generally speaking they were not a meritorious people; but they were capable of representing the church, on account of their aptitude to prostrate themselves to the utmost, in the way of external devotion, in which they exhibited the outward signs of the most profound humility.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in their highest characters, as representatives, denote the Lord himself as to those essential degrees of divine life, under which he has made himself manifest, and in the reception of which by man, his church on earth and kingdom in heaven are constituted.

The divine celestial of the Lord, as manifest in the flesh, was represented by Abraham, the divine rational by Isaac, and the divine natural by Jacob. Under these degrees are comprehended all

things of celestial and spiritual life, and the Lord, by incarnation, became all these things to man, and, thereby, the eternal source of every blessing which he could possibly desire from any principle of good, united with any degree of genuine intelligence and wisdom. These distinct things in the Lord, loved and adored by man, as a divine man, and flowing from his operation in the minds of all who constitute his church and kingdom, becoming in them answering principles of life and conduct, will be more and more developed to our perceptions, as we become more and more able to understand those portions of the Divine Word relating to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in their spiritual sense. To sit down with them, therefore, in heaven, is to enter into one or other of the degrees of love and wisdom represented by them, as the principles of their proper life; for the Lord gives love and wisdom to the man of his church and to all the angels of heaven, as their proper life, though, in reality, they are himself, and his own things from himself, in them as such, which are so given; as their proper self-hood, considered in itself, and as acting of itself, is of a directly opposite character. Neither men nor angels of themselves, would will any good or think any truth. When we say of themselves, we mean the degree of life which they are capable of receiving and using as their own, without thought of God as their creator, or any regard to him as the source of being, and, therefore, without any conscious dependence upon him: for though man has the privilege to know the Lord, and to love him supremely as the supreme good, he does not necessarily know him or love him. He is in possession of faculties to which the Lord can present himself as the most worthy of his love and regard; but man, of himself, is ignorant of his possession of them, and consequently feels no inclination for their development. The life, therefore, proper to him, while natural, that is, in the development of all affections and thoughts of which he is susceptible, without any idea of God or dependence upon him, is naturally selfish, or, at least, is sure to be so in an extreme degree as his selfishness is indulged and gratified.

Those sit down with Abraham who enter into celestial life, because Abraham represented the divine and celestial principle of the Lord and of heaven; for the Lord is the all of heaven, being the source of all its wisdom and goodness. To sit has relation to life, especially to sit at meat with another, as implied in this passage. Spiritual and heavenly food are all things of goodness and truth appropriated; for as they are appropriated, they nourish all things of spiritual life in the soul, as food nourishes the body. Indeed,