Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it. WHO can ever have read the Gospels, without being startled by these words? Who, if capable of reflecting on his own nature and destiny, has not been led by them into speculations, in which, however great his sagacity might be, it only served to inveigle him from one maze into another? And yet these very words, if we give heed to them with a godly simplicity of heart, afford us a clew to most of the mysteries in this our state of sinful mortality. They hold the keys of life and death. They set forth the eternal irreconcilable difference between spirit of evil. the spirit of good and the In selecting them however, to place them at the head of the sermon I am to preach to you on this occasion, I have not been influenced by any vain wish of displaying the whole fulness of the truth contained in them, or of diving into the hidden recesses of their unfathomable meaning. Such an attempt would carry me far beyond the limits to which I must confine myself. Yet it may be well to take a brief view of the general bearings of the subject, marking out those parts of it on which we shall not be able to enter. Then, after such a rapid glance at the country around, we may set about exploring the particular spot, to which it has seemed to me desirable to invite your attention. Thus the time and place will prevent my engaging in any systematic investigation of the duty enjoined in these words, of the manner in which that duty, branching through the whole tree of life, is to be fulfilled, or of the grounds on which it rests. We shall not be able to institute any inquiry into the nature of that life, which we are exhorted to lose; nor may we try to follow it, so far as human eye can, into the darkness of its origin. Still less can we allow ourselves to discuss that great fundamental problem of philosophy as well as of theology, whether that self, which we are to cast away, be the primary seminal principle of our being; or whether it be not rather a noxious alien graft, which has been inserted into the stock, and has tainted all its juices, and poisoned all its fruits; whether our task be, with the help of God's grace, to free the soul from the evil spirit which has taken possession of it; or whether the soul itself be so thoroughly depraved, so essentially corrupt, that nothing remains for us but to fling it away and tread it under foot. Suffice it on this head to remark, that, although certain texts of Scripture may be pickt out, which, when torn from their seat, and interpreted by screwing up every letter to its utmost meaning, may seem to countenance the Manichean notion, that man comes into the world in the us, image and as the child of the devil, the whole tenour of the Sacred Volume is directly opposed thereto. If we were without the Bible, if we had nothing more than our own observation of mankind, and the lessons of history, to guide then indeed it might be made a question, whether the evil principle or the good be the original essential one in human nature; whether that nature be not a sort of border-land between the two, where both have spent their strength, and can only exert a negative neutralizing influence; or whether what seems better in man be in truth anything more than a happy spark struck out by the collision of opposite vices. There are certain theoretical views of man, which amount pretty nearly to this: and without the help of revelation, it may be that the falsehood of those views could never be conclusively exposed. Volumes upon volumes may assail these doctrines with little effect: but there is one volume, which does utterly confound them; and that is the Bible. Its primary declaration concerning man is, that he was made in the image of God. This truth is written on every page: and the whole is a history of God's merciful counsels to repair, renew, and perfect this image. It opens with a picture of that state, when man was yet innocent, before sin broke in and laid waste his heart. It speaks of sin, not as springing up in the first instance within him, from the spontaneous impulses of his own nature, in which case it might have seemed hopeless to look for a remedy, but as infused into him from without, by the craft and subtilty of another. So that, according to the account given of man in the Bible, he is not the author of evil, but its victim, its unreluctant indeed, its crouching, too often its willing victim. Hereby, what on the former supposition must have been almost desperate, comes more within the compass of possibility. We have a natural capacity of freedom; and if any kind hand will help us to burst our chains, or will burst them for us, we may become free. We have an original aptness for purity; and if any gracious friend will offer us the means of washing away our pollutions, or will wash them away for us, we may become pure. Moreover throughout the Bible Christ is represented, not as a Usurper, who came into the world to dethrone its rightful king, but as the rightful King, who came to drive out the usurper. By nature therefore we are Christ's liege subjects, how far soever by sin we may have become the slaves of Satan. But time would fail me, were I to explore the grounds of the precept in the text, or of the corresponding duty, which the Gospel first brought out into full light. And as I cannot trace that precept downward to its root, neither shall I attempt to trace it upward, through the endless ramifications of blessing that have sprung out of it. For checkt and blighted as it has been, uncongenial and hostile as have been the elements it has had to struggle with and to assimilate, it has grown up, and spread itself abroad; and its branches have reacht to the heavens; and the nations of the earth have found shelter beneath them. On this theme also the time will not permit me to enlarge. Yet there could hardly be a more appropriate meditation on a day when we are met together to offer up our praises and thanksgivings to God for the manifold blessings which we enjoy; and when we are wont to warm and brighten our hearts, by contemplating those burning and shining lights which He has vouchsafed to set up for His glory in the golden candlestick of this our beloved College. For to what do we owe our blessings? and what is the feature in the character of our benefactors for which we feel especially grateful? Is it not for the spirit of selfsacrifice ? Whatsoever they did for their own sakes, we neither pay nor owe them thanks for. But whenever we believe that they acted, not for their own sakes, but for ours, — that they rejoiced to spend and to be spent for the sake of their fellowcreatures, for the sake of posterity, for the sake of truth,—that they were willing and glad to burn away, if so be they might glorify God, and give light to man, -we esteem and honour and love them. If they still live in our memories and affections, if they have earned an enduring life, it is on account of those very actions in which they shewed their readiness to lose their life. - Nor is it otherwise beyond the walls of this our consecrated home. Look whither we may, if we have an eye for truth, we shall everywhere perceive that the spirit of selfsacrifice has been God's chosen angel for distributing His blessings to mankind. To this spirit we are indebted for our chief temporal, and for all our eternal goods. It is to the spirit of selfsacrifice, to those who have been animated and actuated by it, in various modes and degrees, often indeed but faintly, often merely at intervals and by starts, but sometimes with the pervading energy of its lifegiving, soul-redeeming power, that we owe all we have, and all we are, our very name and freedom as Englishmen, all that is sound and precious in our constitution, the light of civilization, and the knowledge of truth. All the great benefactors of mankind, all who have done good in their generation, all who have cast the seeds of good beside the waters of futurity, heroes and patriots and sages and confessors and prophets and apostles, all have been moved by the selfsame spirit, all have wrought in the selfsame |