The New Covenant

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people: and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.—Jeremiah 31:31-34.

1. This is one of the greatest messages that the Old Testament contains. Were we to distinguish degrees of importance by difference of type, then these verses ought to be printed in the boldest lettering, so as to catch every eye. Here is a prophecy that foretells Christianity, that anticipates the New Testament. When the prophet delivers this oracle, he speaks as a Christian born long before the time. When we look on all that is best and most distinctive in the Christian faith, we are entitled to say, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled in our ears.” It was of these words our Lord was thinking when He instituted the sacrament of the Supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” That New Covenant was neither more nor less than the New Covenant of which Jeremiah prophesied. And the whole Epistle to the Hebrews, which labours to show to half-converted Jews the vast superiority of Christianity to the religion of their fathers, may be called a sermon on this great text.

If we are to get at the heart of Jeremiahs meaning we had better change this word “covenant” into the word “religion,” and the full significance of the prophets startling teaching will begin to dawn upon us. That is a fair enough equivalent. The word “religion” does not occur in the Old Testament, but the word “covenant” is found some three hundred times; and when it is used to describe the relation of the people to God it really means religion. The core of the covenant is, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people,” but if you wanted to describe a true and living religion, could you come across better words than these to mark the relation to God in which it consists?1 [Note: A. Ramsay, Studies in Jeremiah, 263.]

2. The words were uttered at a time of national disaster. Jerusalem was captured by the Assyrians, and Jeremiah was taken prisoner to Ramah. During the time of his imprisonment he looked forward to the day when Israel should again be free. Before that could happen, however, he saw that a great change must come over the people. The Old Covenant had proved a failure, not by reason of its own defects, but by reason of the conception of it as an external and legal code, imposing its laws upon a people whose inward spiritual life it had long ceased to reflect. Now the glory of Jeremiah is that in that dark night his heart was filled with hope. “The old order changeth, yielding place to new.” Religion is not to die, although the forms in which of old it found expression are antiquated and ready to perish. A better religion is to rise out of the ashes. He is the prophet of a new religion. He cannot mourn. He cannot sorrow and be in continual heaviness. If he sees Simeon in the Temple tottering and on the brink of the grave, he sees that he holds the infant Christ in his arms. The new and the better age is about to be; the light of the morning is on his face; it is the shadows of the night that flee away. Here indeed is an inspiring optimism. The political order changes; the ecclesiastical order changes; the theological order changes; and through all, not only does religion not die, but it passes forward to a nobler, worthier life; it becomes purer, more spiritual, more personal.

Archdeacon Boutflower, who was Bishop Westcotts domestic chaplain throughout his episcopate, refers as follows to his Diocesans hopefulness and faith in the future of Christianity:—“Parallel to that freshness of powers and interest which the Bishop brought to his last day of work, and still more wonderful, was the freshness of hope and sympathy which he carried to the end. This, no doubt, was cultivated in contemplation, but it was a singular grace of temperament to start with. In mind he never grew old. Occasionally he would say, I am too old for such things now; but it was not really true, and only half-serious. To most men there comes a time when they grow tired of readaptation and of looking forward. They speak of the past with a touch of regret, and the young feel that they are out of sympathy. There were no signs of this about our dear Bishop to the last. He was more hopeful than the youngest of us. He welcomed every new development, if only he was persuaded it was true development, and he waited for more. The Divine Spirit he believed in was a living Spirit, speaking and moving in the Church to-day, and he trusted every fresh age to add to the glory of Gods revelation. And he expected God still to send messages through Samuel to Eli. You must see visions, he said to one of his younger clergy—I despair of you if you dont. Visions belong to youth; when you are older you will only dream dreams. ”1 [Note: Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, ii. 371.]

I

The Need of a New Covenant

1. There had been many covenants—all of them ineffectual. God is said to have made a covenant with Noah, when He promised that a judgment like the flood should not be repeated; and with Abraham, when He promised Canaan to his descendants for an everlasting possession, and imposed the condition of circumcision. But by the phrase, “the Old Covenant,” is meant especially the covenant which God made with Israel as a people on Mount Sinai. The writing called the “Book of the Covenant” comprised the Ten Commandments, and the body of laws which are recorded in the twenty-first and two following chapters of Exodus. These were the conditions imposed by God when He entered into covenant relations with Israel; and the solemn act by which this covenant was inaugurated is described in the twenty-fourth chapter of Exodus. Gathered at the base of the holy mountain, before an altar resting on twelve pillars, in honour of the twelve tribes, the people waited silent and awestruck, while twelve delegates (as yet there was no priesthood) offered such sacrifices as yet were possible, and while the lawgiver sprinkled the blood of the victims upon the assembled multitude. That ceremony had a latent meaning, unperceived at the time, which many centuries afterwards would be drawn out into the light under Apostolic direction; but the solemn character of the transaction was there and then profoundly felt. And at later periods of Israels history this covenant was again and again renewed; as by Joshua at Shechem, by King Asa at Jerusalem, by Jehoiada the priest in the Temple, and also by the priesthood and people under Hezekiah, and under the auspices of Ezra and Nehemiah in later days still, after the great Captivity. It was renewed because it was continually broken. It was a Divine work, and yet, through mans perverseness, it was a failure. Hence the words, “Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord.”

Jeremiah had played his part in establishing covenants between Israel and its God. He is not, indeed, even so much as mentioned in the account of Josiahs reformation; and it is not clear that he himself makes any express reference to it; so that some doubt must still be felt as to his share in that great movement. At the same time indirect evidence seems to afford proof of the common opinion that Jeremiah was active in the proceedings which resulted in the solemn engagement to observe the code of Deuteronomy. But yet another covenant occupies a chapter in the Book of Jeremiah, and in this case there is no doubt that the prophet was the prime mover in inducing the Jews to release their Hebrew slaves. This act of emancipation was adopted in obedience to an ordinance of Deuteronomy, so that Jeremiahs experience of former covenants was chiefly connected with the code of Deuteronomy and the older Book of the Covenant upon which it was based. The Restoration to which Jeremiah looked forward was to throw the Exodus into the shade, and to constitute a new epoch in the history of Israel more remarkable than the first settlement in Canaan. The nation was to be founded anew, and its regeneration would necessarily rest upon a New Covenant, which would supersede the Covenant of Sinai.1 [Note: W. H. Bennett.]

Oliver, we find, spoke much of “the Covenants”; which indeed are the grand axis of all, in that Puritan Universe of his. Two Covenants; one of Works, with fearful Judgment for our shortcomings therein; one of Grace and unspeakable mercy;—gracious Engagements, “Covenants,” which the Eternal God has vouchsafed to make with His feeble creature, man. Two; and by Christs Death they have become One: there for Oliver is the divine solution of this our Mystery of Life. “They were Two,” he was heard ejaculating: “Two, but put into One before the Foundation of the World!” And again: “It is holy and true, it is holy and true, it is holy and true!—Who made it holy and true? The Mediator of the Covenant!” And again: “The Covenant is but One. Faith in the Covenant is my only support. And if I believe not, He abides faithful!” When his Children and Wife stood weeping round him, he said: “Love not this world. I say unto you, it is not good that you should love this world!” No. Children, live like Christians:—I leave you the Covenant to feed upon!”1 [Note: Carlyle, Oliver Cromwells Letters and Speeches, v. 151.]

2. The Old Covenant had thus become, for practical purposes, an outworn safeguard. Israel in her successive generations had utterly failed to perform her part, and so had made it impossible for God to do what He had promised; until at length He loathed the people with whom He was in covenant, and rejected them, and cast them forth out of their land. What if all this should happen over again in the history of our children as it happened in the days of our fathers? Was such a result not all too likely? Such doubting thoughts were most natural to one in Jeremiahs position, and they constituted, we may be sure, one of his direst spiritual trials. But faiths trials are but the precursors of new triumphs. Job despairs of relief in the present life, and his very despair causes faith to reach out beyond the tomb in search of the deliverance which, in spite of all present appearances, it believes will surely come. Even so Jeremiah, justly despairing of permanent prosperity for Israel on the basis of the Old Covenant, by a sublime act of Heaven—inspired faith—dares to predict the advent of a time when the old discredited and bankrupt constitution or covenant shall be superseded by a new one furnished with conditions that shall insure it against failure.

There follows the beautiful passage [in The Ancient Sage] in which the hopeful and wistful upward gaze of faith is described. While melancholy and perplexity constantly attend on the exercises of the speculative intellect, we are to “cling to faith”:

She reels not in the storm of warring words,

She brightens at the clash of “Yes” and “No,”

She sees the Best that glimmers thro the Worst,

She feels the Sun is hid but for a night,

She spies the summer thro the winter bud,

She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,

She hears the lark within the songless egg,

She finds the fountain where they waild “Mirage”!

These lines present to the reader the hopefulness of the spiritual mind, hopefulness not akin to the merely sanguine temperament, but based on a deep conviction of the reality of the spiritual world, and on unfailing certainty that there is in it a key to the perplexities of this universe of which we men understand so little. We know from experience that material Nature is working out her ends, however little we understand the process, and however unpromising portions of her work might appear without this knowledge. That an acorn should have within it forces which compel earth, air, and water to come to its assistance and become the oak tree would seem incredible were it not so habitually known as a fact; and the certainty which such experiences give in the material order, the eye of faith gives in the spiritual order. However perplexing the universe now seems to us, we have this deep trust that there is an explanation, and that when we are in a position to judge the whole, instead of looking on from this corner of time and space, the truth of the spiritual interpretation of its phenomena will be clear—“ut iustificeris in sermonibus tuis et vincas cum iudicaris.” This view runs through all the poem. The poet pleads for steadfast trust and hope in the face of difficulty, as we would trust a known and intimate friend in the face of ominous suspicions.1 [Note: Wilfrid Ward, in Tennyson and his Friends, 236.]

And is the Great Cause lost beyond recall?

Have all the hopes of ages come to nought?

Is Life no more with noble meaning fraught?

Is Life but Death, and Love its funeral pall?

Maybe. But still on bended knees I fall,

Filled with a faith no preacher ever taught.

O God—my God, by no false prophet wrought,

I believe still, in despite of it all!

Let go the myths and creeds of groping men.

This clay knows nought—the Potter understands.

I own that Power divine beyond my ken,

And still can leave me in His shaping hands.

But, O my God, that madest me to feel!

Forgive the anguish of the turning wheel.2 [Note: Ada Cambridge, The Hand in the Dark, 121.]

II

The Content of the New Covenant

The New Covenant has three notes—Spirituality, Universality, and Finality. The formula of the Old Covenant was, “Thou shalt not.” These great words, like a flash of lightning, discovered to man what lies in the depth of his own being—moral obligation along with a sense of utter impotence to meet it, darkness and despair as of chaos returning. The formula of the New Covenant is, “I will”; still greater words, which discover the heights above, as it were the body of heaven in its clearness, unruffled serenity and easy self-achievement of the grace of God. It would not be possible to represent what is characteristic in each dispensation more vividly than by these contrasted formulas. On the one side is a vain effort to attain, a strife between the law of the mind and the law of the members, a sense of hopeless duality that carries unrest—noble, if you will, but not less fatal—to the centre of mans being. On the other side is the rest of faith, a great reserve of spiritual power, the reconciliation of Divine ideals with the practice of human lives achieved by grace. Moral obligation persists under the gospel, but only as it is resolved into the higher freedom of the new life. As Pascal says, “The law demands what it cannot give; grace gives all it demands.”

The fireguard serves a very necessary and beneficent purpose, but its real and ultimate worth lies in educating the child to do without it. So with the Mosaic law. It served its highest ends when it disciplined the soul to independence of it. The difference, therefore, between the Old Covenant and the New was not that one was ancient and the other modern; the mere “newness” was the least important thing about it. It was the difference between law and religion, between the letter of the one and the spirit of the other, between body and soul, between outward form and inward essence. The Old Covenant was imposed by an authority from without, whilst the New was established by an authority from within. One was graven on stone, and needed to be enforced by pains and penalties; the other was to be written in the heart as the glad, spontaneous expression of a free spirit.

1. The New Covenant will be spiritual.—The Old Covenant was formal, working from without inward, telling men what to do. This must come first. Childhood, of the race as of the individual, must begin life under rules. But the aim of the Law was to make itself superseded, by opening the way to a religious force which should work from within outward. A religion of forms, like an educational system, can never be closely personal. It cannot keep adjusting itself to the individual. It is machine work, not hand work. It fits only the average, and misfits everybody else. Gods work is with the inner heart of each human being, where dwells his truest individuality, his real life. When this is gained, the whole is won. From it flow the upright conduct, the gentle manners, the broad benisons of regenerated society. Society is not a machine to which we may bring raw characters to make them virtuous, but the effluence and product of what individual characters bring to it. Nor will religion, or a church, or any clever society or institution within the church, turn out a new generation of new souls by its most perfect adjustments. The best of them is but a path, a hand, to bring men to God, an avenue by which God comes to them. Spirit with spirit is the method of salvation.

One cannot read the words, “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts,” without thinking of the tables of stone which occupy so prominent a place in the history of the Sinaitic covenant. And the writing on the heart suggests very forcibly the defects of the ancient covenant, in so far as it had the fundamental laws of life written on stone. Writing on stone may be very durable. The slabs on which the Ten Words are inscribed may abide as a lasting monument, proclaiming what God requires of man, saying to successive generations: Remember to do this and to avoid doing that. But while the stone slabs may avail to keep men in mind of their duty, they are utterly impotent to dispose them to perform it; in witness whereof we need only refer to Israels behaviour at the foot of the mount of lawgiving. At the very time the tables were being prepared, they danced around their golden calf; at the very moment Moses was descending with the two tables in his hand, with the Ten Words written on them, the first of which said, “Thou shalt have none other God before me,” they had chosen another God; insomuch that the legislator in disgust dashed the tables to pieces, as if to say, What is the use of making laws for such a people? Manifestly the writing on the heart is sorely wanted in order that the law may be kept, not merely in the ark, but in human conduct. And that, accordingly, is what Jeremiah puts in the forefront in his account of the New Covenant, on which restored Israel is to be constituted. How the mystic writing is to be achieved he does not say, perhaps he does not know; but he believes that God can and will achieve it somehow; and he understands full well its aim and its certain result in a holy life.

You may adjust your social relationships according to the most democratic principle; you may define, in terms of economic science, the relations of Capital and Labour; you may abolish slums and build garden cities; but until there is drawn up and ratified between God and man, and between man and man, a new covenant of the spirit, your scheme for a new heaven and a new earth will never be realized. It is here that religion is indispensable, for no covenant will endure which ignores the spiritual nature of man. It is here that the voice of Jesus Christ may be heard, saying to capitalist and to workmen, “Apart from me ye can do nothing.” It is here that the voice of the Redeemer may be heard saying to His Church, as He recalls it to a deeper appreciation of its character and mission: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; this do … in remembrance of me.” This, surely, is our supreme business as Christians, to make this new covenant of the Spirit possible, by writing it on our own hearts, and afterwards to write it on the life and soul of our day.

Till earth becomes a temple,

And every human heart

Shall join in one great service,

Each happy in his part.

And God shall be our Master,

And all His service own,

And men shall be as brothers,

And heaven on earth be won.1 [Note: E. J. Barson.]

2. Under the New Covenant knowledge of God will become universal.—In ancient Israel as now, men learned what they could about God from human teachers. But the truths which they learned, though inculcated with great industry, were, in the great majority of cases, not really mastered, because there was no accompanying process of interpretation and adjustment within the soul. It was to be otherwise in the future. “And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them.” In the New Covenant the Divine Teacher, without dispensing with such human instruments as were wanted, would do the most important part of His work Himself. He would make truth plain to the soul, and would enamour the soul of truth by such instruction as is beyond the reach of human argument and language, since it belongs to the world of spirit. “Ye have an unction from the Holy One,” said St. John to his readers, “and ye know all things.” “Listen not,” says St. Augustine, “too eagerly to the outward words: the Master is within.”

No polemic against the priesthood is intended here. The prophet does not mean, with a stroke of his pen, to abolish an ancient Order to which he himself belongs. A much profounder idea underlies his words. He will have us distinguish between that knowledge of God which is esoteric and technical, the possession of a class, and that which is the instinct of every renewed nature, i.e., between the ceremonial and the moral in religion. We shall never be in a position to claim independence of each other in our spiritual experience. It is “with all saints,” i.e., in the communion of the Catholic Church, that we come to know the love which passes knowledge. Moral sense must be trained; even conscience must be educated. But the education of conscience is one thing, and the imposition of creed or code is quite another. The one develops that individuality which the other tends to repress. The latter is excluded here. When he says, “They shall all know me,” it is probable that the prophet does not consciously overlook the limits of his age. By “all men” he means all Jews. But the relative Universalism he asserts prepared for the absolute Universalism which is characteristic of the gospel age. Christianity is aggressive and world-subduing, because it is the religion not of the letter but of the spirit. English customs and ideals can hardly cross the Channel. They can no more take root in Eastern lands than the Mosaic Law could domesticate itself in the West. But the law of Truth is nowhere from home; the thirst for God is part of the heritage of the race; and it is to these that the gospel makes its appeal. As a revelation of God to the soul of man, Christianity is the absolute Truth, the universal Faith.

The clearest mark of the new order of things, says Jeremiah, is that religion shall henceforth be taken at first hand. Jesus said, “Have salt in yourselves”; do not be dependent for what keeps life strong and wholesome on influences outside of you. The religion that is worth anything is not what is told you but what you know of yourself. This does not mean that there is no room for teaching. Pauls understanding of what is contained in Jesus Christ is rich and subtle, for Paul had a sure insight and a burning love. But if we know only what Paul says, and have no answering knowledge in ourselves, even Paul will help us little. A man may be a heretic in the truth, as Milton says; and “if he believes only because his pastor says so, or because the assembly so determines, without knowing other reasons, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.” It was proclaimed by Joel that God would one day pour out of His Spirit upon all flesh, even upon the servants and the handmaids; for it is Gods intention in the covenant that nothing in station or in lack of education or opportunity should hinder any man from knowing God for himself. The motto of all our faith is, “With open face.”

It must be possible for men to know more of God, because the knowledge of God by man involves two elements, the known and the knower, God and man; and however perfectly God may have revealed Himself, man is but half developed and has only half possession of his knowing powers. The faith has been “once delivered to the saints,” as Canaan was given to the Israelites. To “go in and possess the land” is still the duty of the Christian Israel. Who shall say how far it has been occupied in all these Christian centuries? We may be yet only at Jericho and Ai. Some most adventurous and earnest tribes may have pushed on to Bethel. Some very determined and aspiring souls may have climbed to the mountain-tops and even caught sight of the flashing sea which bounds the Promised Land upon the western side. However we may estimate the progress of the past, there still remains “very much land to be possessed.” Surely the strongest way to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints is to go forward reverently till the saints shall perfectly possess the land and know all that it is possible for them to know of God and of His Book and of His ways.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks, Essays and Addresses, 226.]

3. The New Covenant will be permanent and final.—“For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.” Under the Old Covenant, the provisions for the cancelling of sin were very unsatisfactory, and utterly unfit to perfect the worshipper as to conscience, by dealing thoroughly with the problem of guilt—of which no better evidence could be desired than the institution of the great day of atonement, in which a remembrance of sin was made once a year, and by which nothing more than an annual and putative forgiveness was procured; under the New, on the contrary, God would grant to His people a real, absolute, and perennial forgiveness, so that the abiding relation between Him and them should be as if sin had never existed.

The trouble in every religious system that fails is that it does not bring men close enough to what God really is, and there is no regenerating virtue in bowing before a formless mystery. There must be revelation, and the revelation of a heart. Jeremiah, feeling after things to come, says, It must be God who is to bridge this gulf, and He will do so by showing what He is. The new order is to be inaugurated by a great act of forgiveness, in which all the heart of God will appear. In some public way He will treat as His friends the men who have refused Him, putting them all in His debt. Nothing short of that, as the prophet believed, will get at the obdurate hearts of men; but at the touch of an unmerited forgiveness, gratitude will spring up within them, and love—the power by which men know God and the constraint under which they are drawn willingly to obey Him. Forgiveness brings to erring men new conceptions of what their God is like—a God who does not deal with His creatures on terms of strict, legal precision, but who pardons at His own cost, and gives them what they have not worked for. And the very sight of such a God is a real new birth, clearing and deepening all the faculties, and making obedience easy.

Jeremiah hails here the coming of the religion of redemption. He dwells on what is the crowning glory of our faith. For what is it that is central in the New Testament? It is the cross of Jesus Christ. And why does that stand in the midst? It is because we have here the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. That death of the Son of God in our room and stead is the full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for our sins. That indeed was only dimly and confusedly prefigured in the animal sacrifices of old. One is more struck with the difference than with the resemblance. A lamb led to the altar, unwillingly and unconsciously, is no adequate type of the Lamb of God offering Himself for us, taking upon Him our guilt, standing beneath the condemnation of our sins, and magnifying the justice of God in bowing His head beneath our sentence. The real precursors of Him who suffered on Calvary are to be found in those who gave themselves for their fellows, whose sacrifices did something to draw men nearer to God, and by whose stripes some of mankinds sorrows were healed. All stories, red with the blood of real life, that tell of the innocent suffering for the guilty, are a clearer foreshadowing of the old, old story of Jesus and His love than all animal sacrifices. The old religion had a temple in which sacrifices never ceased, but none of these atoned for sin with God. Christianity centres in the supreme self-sacrifice of the cross, by which we have been redeemed. “We have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” This great blessing of pardon becomes ours because Christ has died for us. The gospel can dwell on the forgiveness of sins. It vindicates and fulfils the great promise, “I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.”

For the most part, we are, as it were, ready rather to steal forgiveness from God than to receive from him as one that gives it freely and largely. We take it up and lay it down as though we would be glad to have it, so God did not, as it were, see us take it; for we are afraid he is not willing we should have it indeed. We would steal this fire from heaven, and have a share in Gods treasures and riches almost without his consent: at least, we think that we have it from him “ægrè,” with much difficulty; that it is rarely given, and scarcely obtained; that he gives it out ἐκὼν ἀέκοντί γε θύμῳ, with a kind of unwilling willingness—as we sometimes give alms without cheerfulness; and that he loseth so much by us as he giveth out in pardon. We are apt to think that we are very willing to have forgiveness, but that God is unwilling to bestow it, and that because he seems to be a loser by it, and to forego the glory of inflicting punishment for our sins; which of all things we suppose he is most loath to part withal. And this is the very nature of unbelief … Reasons line is too short to fathom the depth of the Fathers love, of the blood of the Son, and the promises of the gospel built thereon, wherein forgiveness dwells.1 [Note: John Owen, An Exposition upon Psalms 130.]

Contrite to God I came in sore distress,

“I know,” I cried, “that twas but yester-eve

This self-same fault I asked Thee to forgive,

And promised to renounce all sinfulness.

Yet I would even ask again Thy grace,

Save that I fear Ive drained forgiveness dry

And reached Thy mercys utmost boundary!”

Then spake Gods mighty Voice, and filled the place:

“With thy poor human tape, child, dost thou think

To measure My vast mercys outer bound?

With thy short plummet at Forgiveness brink,

Dost think that thou canst test its depth of ground?

Drop in thy weightiest sin, and bid it sink,

To strike the bottom—there comes back no sound.”

The New Covenant

Literature

Bennett (W. H.), The Book of Jeremiah (Expositors Bible), 346.

Gillies (J. R.), Jeremiah: The Man and his Message, 247.

Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermons in Outline, 68.

Liddon (H. P.), Christmastide in St. Pauls, 38.

Macgregor (W. M.), Jesus Christ the Son of God, 27.

Masterman (J. H. B.), The Challenge of Christ, 52.

Ramsay (A.), Studies in Jeremiah, 261.

Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 5.

Southgate (C. M.), in Sermons by the Monday Club, 17th Ser., 60.

Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, ii. (1856), No. 93; Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxviii. (1882), No. 1687.

Christian World Pulpit, xvi. 369 (H. P. Liddon); lxxx. 269 (E. J. Barson); lxxxiv. 387 (N. H. Marshall).

Expositor, 1st Ser., xi. 65 (A. B. Bruce).