LECTURE VI.
THE RESOURCE OF THE FAITHFUL IN THE RUINS OF CHRISTENDOM.
Solemnity of the subject; Christ’s words of light require no tapers of man to make them more distinct; dishonour to the name of Jesus in Christendom; difference between owning the ruin and endeavouring to reinstate the Church; the Church of God the greatest work, next to the cross, that God has ever wrought on the earth; to slight it is worse than any evil of former days; the days of Noah followed by the flood, and the days of Lot followed by the destruction of Sodom, types of the day when the Son of Man shall be revealed; Christendom’s danger seen in Rom. xi; its non-continuance in God’s goodness; its excision; its apostacy apparent from the first; the man of sin, and the man of righteousness; Antichrist; Cain, Balaam, Core; he who defends Christendom, gives the Lord the lie; deprecation of the apology, that the Lord will set all right; unsparing judgment His action when He comes; the Lord’s provision for the faithful in the dark day; the Lord’s own weight of authority attached to “two or three” gathered to His name; no wonder men shrink from Church discipline, seeing how it has been abused; the duty of a believer, to renounce every tie not connected with Christ; which is best, your rules or God’s word? how is it that the doctrines of men have taken the place of the word of God? electing a minister, wholly at variance with Scripture; evils resulting from the dissenting and parochial systems; advice to saints taking their place with the “two or three,” how to detect and exclude what is not of God; the great house, and who to separate from; “He that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey;” “The Christian World,” or evil with the name of Christ attached to it; trusting the Lord for eternal life, and denying Him for a bit of bread; what to flee and what to follow (2 Tim. ii.); Christ addresses Himself to hearts, grieved at the dishonour done to His grace and truth; illustration of a rightly and wrongly constituted assembly; Christ the centre and rallying point; no ground for fear, if the Lord be the helper; conclusion.
