HEADS OF A WEEK-DAY LECTURE,
DELIVERED TO A COUNTRY CONGREGATION IN ——SHIRE.
Before we meet again, we shall have celebrated the feast of St. Simon and St. Jude, the Apostles. You will be at your daily work, and will not have the opportunity to attend the service in church. For that reason, it may be as well, you should lay up some good thoughts against that day; and such, by God's blessing, I will now attempt to give you.
As you well know, there were twelve Apostles; St. Simon and St. Jude were two of them. They preached the Gospel of Christ; and they were like Christ, as far as sinful man may be accounted like the blessed Son of God. They were like Christ in their deeds and in their sufferings. The Gospel for the festival[1] shows us this. They were like Christ in their works, because Christ was a witness of the Father, and they were witnesses of Christ. Christ came in the name of God the Father Almighty; He "came" and spoke," and "did works which none other man did." In like manner, the Apostles were sent "to bear witness of Christ, to declare His power, His great mercy, His sufferings on the cross for the sins of all men. His willingness to save all who come to Him."
But again, they were like Christ in their sufferings. "If the world hate you," He says to them, "you know that it hated Me, before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you. The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also."
Thus, they were like Christ in office. I do not speak of their holiness, their faith, and all their other high excellences, which God the Holy Ghost gave them. I speak now, not of their personal graces, but of their office, of preaching, of witnessing Christ, of suffering for being His servants. Men ought to have listened to them, and honoured them; some did; but the many, the world did not—they hated them; they hated them, for their office-sake; not because they were Paul, and Peter, and Simon, and Jude, but because they bore witness to the Son of God and were chosen to be His Ministers.
