THE CHRISTIAN THEORY OF LIFE.

A SERMON BY REV. W. P. LUNT, D.D.

COL. iii. 3: "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."

In this manner and in such terms does the apostle address the Christian believers of the church at Colossæ. Like the other early Christian churches, which were gathered through the labors of the apostles, as at Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Galatia, and elsewhere, this church at Colossæ was composed in part of those individuals who had previously been Jews, and in part of those who had been born and reared in the midst of pagan influences. Their minds had not yet risen to a true Christian conception of life. The Jewish converts had been taught to attach a superstitious value to the rites and forms which were prescribed in the Hebrew system of religion. Those rites and forms, when they were instituted by Moses the servant of the Most High, had a deep and real significance. They were adapted to a people in a state of pupilage, all whose notions on moral and religious subjects were immature, and who were incapable of receiving, because their minds were not yet unfolded and enlightened sufficiently to receive, the pure truth. Their teachers, therefore, instructed and impressed them by means of signs and types, in the same manner as Christ, when he appeared, taught by means of parables. He had many things, as he declared, to say to his followers; but they were not able at once to receive and inwardly digest them. Therefore he taught the multitudes in parables, that seeing they might see somewhat, but not perceive the chief doctrine; and hearing they might hear his words, but not fully understand the hidden meaning they contained, the mystery to them of truth and righteousness which those words involved.

The forms and rites, I say, of the Hebrew system were thus adapted to a people in pupilage, -a people who were subjected to a training, in providence, for something better that would succeed. And no one can study, with the help of what little light history sheds upon the subject, the condition and character of the Hebrew people as compared with the idolatrous, heathen, polytheistic nations around them in ancient times, without being convinced that

in point of civilization, of morals, of worship, in regard to every thing that constitutes the security, the purity, and the happiness of domestic, social, political life, they were greatly in advance of other nations of the earth. While other people had their gods many, with attributes borrowed from the worst forms of humanity, the descendants of Abraham were believers in, and worshippers of, one God of infinite perfections. While other people had lost from their minds the law of right conduct, which is written upon all human souls, and were given up to vile affections and to the practice of all unrighteousness, and were left to put evil for good, and light for darkness, and to substitute what is wrong for what is right and holy, the descendants of Abraham received a written law which was a copy of God's law of nature, and which had the effect to keep the consciences of his chosen people true to themselves and true to him in some measure; at least prevented those wide and monstrous departures from the natural law of right and duty, which were so glaring in the nations that surrounded them. The ceremonial portion of their system was designed to keep them separate from all corrupting influences, until a time should come, steadily looked forward to, when it would be safe and practicable for them to break down these partitionwalls, and to join in worship and in spiritual obedience with a new church or community gathered out of every tribe and nation upon the earth.

But even after Christ had come into the world, and when churches had been planted in his name in various places, among other places at Colossæ, the error of the Jewish converts was that they still wished to adhere to the forms of the ancient ritual, -forms which the apostle teaches them, in the epistle we are considering, were dead. And therefore the apostle says in the text, Ye are dead to these things; these are but the rudiments of the world. "Let no man judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath-days, which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ." The apostle would have his Jewish converts feel that that old form of life in which they had been educated, and which they were so desirous of retaining, was now deceased; all the virtue it once had was gone out of it; they were, if true to their calling, risen with Christ out of the dead forms of the past into a new spiritual life, to the consciousness of a new moral being, to the

possession of new thoughts, affections, convictions, hopes, and principles. The life which they were called now to live was not indeed outward, external, apparent to sense, limited by visible acts according to the directions of an express law or commandment; it was rather a hidden life of the mind, involving a righteousness that did not always give outward tokens and manifestations of itself; a righteousness that was done not to be seen of men, but in obedience to the Father who seeth in secret, to Him who looketh upon the hearts of his children. The life which they were called as Christians to live might not always be able to vindicate itself to the judgments of the world, who judge only according to appearances; it might, and very likely would, involve disgrace and dishonor: as Christ the Master had been put to an ignominious death, and had been removed out of the world, and hid from men's sight; so his disciples could not expect to be in good repute, or to experience a constant, uninterrupted course of prosperity and success. They must lie, and be contented to lie, under a cloud; the life they were appointed to live must be a hidden, an obscure, an inglorious life often: but it was "hid with Christ in God;" and when he who was the life of his followers should appear, when the time should come for him to emerge out of his obscurity, then they too would appear with him in glory.

And in like manner the apostle reasons with those members of the Colossian church who had been heathens. As the Jews were exhorted to put away their forms and idle ceremonies which had no longer any use and meaning, so the gentile or heathen converts were exhorted to lay aside their pagan, idolatrous practices, the impurities and crimes which had been tolerated and even sanctified by their old religions, and which they had been taught from their youth up to mingle with the offerings to their cruel or licentious divinities. When they were baptized into the faith of Christ, they were dead as to the religion and morals of their infancy. They were now to rise to a new life, a life that was "hid with Christ in God." They had been taught, as heathens, to set their affections upon this world; to regard most highly, if not exclusively, those things which minister gratification to the senses; to value above every thing riches and honors, and distinctions of place and rank; to labor only for the meat that perisheth; to inquire what they should eat, and what they should drink, and

wherewithal they should be clothed; and in what ways and by what instruments they might vary and multiply the sensual, or, at most, the intellectual delights of life. This, their old life of sense and sin, they had put off when they entered the Christian communion. They were dead to this. The life they were now called to live was a divine life. It was the hidden life of the soul. It had reference, not to the external things of this world, which perish in the using, but to imperishable good. It was the life, not of the body, but of the higher and nobler part of man's nature, the mind and soul. It was a life in harmony with Christ's life, "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners," devoted to useful and benevolent offices; a life of faith, as was the great Master's life, having a hidden secret foundation in God, the Source of life, and the Inspirer of all holiness and wisdom. To such a useful, pure, self-denying, spiritual life, were the converts from heathenism called by the gospel.

I have endeavored, in the remarks which have been made thus far, to explain the immediate application of the text, so far as we may suppose the apostle to have had in view the two classes of Jewish and heathen converts forming the church at Colossæ to which he was writing. But let us look at the text now in a different way, and see what general truths, applicable to all souls and at all times, we may discover in it. It suggests to me what may be called the Christian theory of life. And I now proceed to consider this Christian theory of life in some of its more prominent features.

And the first particular worthy of our notice, in the view which Christianity presents of man's true life, regards the origin of this life. The religion of Christ teaches, or rather assumes the fact, and bases its instructions upon the assumption, that the life of which we and all human beings are conscious, had its origin in God. The atheistic theory of man denies this origin in God. It trifles with our reasoning faculties by ascribing to chance that which necessarily involves the exercise of intelligence; or it assumes the eternity of matter, and endeavors to account for the existence of man by supposing this paragon of physical and intellectual being to be the result of successive developments of matter, continually changing its forms, and finally evolving and producing the perfect creature we call man; or it wearies us by an endless genealogy of the race, carrying us up the steps of the past, but

never allowing us to come to the top; an infinite succession of child and parent, without ever arriving at a first pair who were created in a supernatural manner.

The worldly view of the matter, for it cannot be called a theory, is that we who now possess the earth exist; we had immediate progenitors; we have a history of families, tribes, nations, and races, that penetrates back a few centuries into the past, and then is lost in cloud-land. This, the man of the world whose thoughts are engrossed with present and material interests, thinks to be all that is deserving of consideration. In his estimation the present is all that merits attention or regard.

Now, the Christian theory of life does not so judge. It carries us back to an origin, and up to a Creator and Father in heaven. It bids us receive into our creed the article of a beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, and all that they contain. The Christian view is, that we should regard our life as "hid in God,"-"hid with Christ in God." For the same Father to whom he traced his life, his gifts, his wisdom, his inspiration, has fashioned us; has breathed into us his quickening influence; has kindled within us that measure of light we possess; and inspires us with the thoughts, the convictions, the hopes, and principles that direct our powers, and determine our conduct. Our life is hid in God-is the Christian doctrine. It assigns for man a divine origin. It does not encourage us to presume that we can understand how that creation proceeded. That is a mystery beyond our faculties to penetrate. The fact of a divine. original is established, and the soul encouraged to meditate on this fact of the mode, no attempt is made to furnish an explanation. To that sacred source our life is traced; and there we are reminded in fit terms, that it is hid in God.

Nor is it to be regretted that we cannot understand a fact which yet we cannot gainsay. It would not be well for man if there were no mysteries which he vainly tries to understand; if there were no dark places where his proud intellect halts and stumbles, and confesses itself lost. As pride is the master-sin of both men and angels, so humility is placed foremost in the scale of Christian virtues. There is, then, as it is plain to see, a double purpose served in this portion of the Christian theory of life. The mind is strengthened and cheered by being allowed to trace back our life to a divine fountain of life. We can ascend