APPENDATORY. _SELECTION OF ILLUSTRATIVE SERMONS_.
AND now, although the various, and several selections we have given in the different preceding sections of this volume, may assist the reader in forming some idea of the manner, and method of Christmas Evans, before closing the volume we will present some selections from entire sermons, translated from the Welsh; and while, of course, labouring beneath the disadvantages of translation, we trust they will not unfavourably represent those various attributes of pulpit power, for which we have given the great preacher credit.
SERMON II.—THE PURIFICATION OF THE CONSCIENCE.
“_Until the time of reformation_.”—HEB. ix. 10.
The ceremonies pertaining to the service of God, under Sinaitic dispensation, were entirely typical in their character; mere figures of Christ, the “High-priest of good things to come, by a greater, and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands;” who, “not by the blood of goats, and calves, but by His own blood, has entered once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” Sustaining such a relation to other ages, and events, they were necessarily imperfect, consisting “only in meats, and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances,” not intended for perpetual observance, but imposed upon the Jewish people merely “until the time of reformation,” when the shadow should give place to the substance, and a Greater than Moses should “make all things new.” Let us notice the time of reformation, and the reformation itself.
I. Time may be divided into three parts; the Golden Age before the fall, the Iron Age after the fall, and the Messiah’s Age of Jubilee.
In the Golden Age, the heavens, and the earth were created; the Garden of Eden was planted; man was made in the image of God, and placed in the garden, to dress, and keep it; matrimony was instituted; and God, resting from His labour, sanctified the seventh day, as a day of holy rest to man.
The Iron Age was introduced by the temptation of a foreigner, who obtruded himself into Paradise, and persuaded its happy denizens to cast off the golden yoke of obedience, and love to God. Man, desiring independence, became a rebel against heaven, a miserable captive of sin, and Satan, obnoxious to the Divine displeasure, and exposed to eternal death. The law was violated; the image of God was lost, and the enemy came in like a flood. All communication between the island of Time, and the continent of Immortality was cut off, and the unhappy exiles saw no hope of crossing the ocean that intervened.
