VI. SWIFT TO HEAR. (Ch. i. 19.) Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, but slow to speak, and slow to wrath. The whole life of every man moves between hearing and speaking; and this should lead us to infer how comprehensive and far-reaching in its application this saying of St James must be! What inspiration and expiration are to the bodily life, that to the soul is, so to speak, the receiving by the ear and repeating by the lips. But we must breathe wholesome air, if we would live and thrive. Consequently, it is apparent at once what, and how or to what end, we should hear: it is obvious that we must altogether abstain from hearing lies and deceptions; that we should not, like the Athenians, be always eager or swift to hear some new thing (Acts xvii. 21), with those who count life a market for gain (Wisd. xv. 12). Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear; that is, as we have already heard, because we through the word of truth are born again into first-fruits of the creatures of God. Thus, this word of regeneration is what we must hear! Thus, further, we should not merely hear-as St James afterwards proceedsbut be doers of the ingrafted word, not hearers alone! Otherwise, it is not the right hearing; but the truth has been heard as if it were not true, or as if the truth were not to be carried into act. The word of truth brings to us new things and old; and not to overlook the old, as if we had done with it, is of the utmost importance and necessity in our ever-necessary hearing. How often are we appealed to-Know ye not? Consider well what is said! What the text means is fundamentally the same as St Peter's exhortation-Purify your souls in the obedience of the truth through the Spirit! (1 Pet. i. 22). This is opposed to that holding of the truth in unrighteousness, to that contentiousness of spirit, which obeys not the truth (Rom. i. 18, ii. 8). As this not-hearing is the universal and original sin of the natural man, so, alas, the temptation to it most easily occurs to believers; and they must be asked, as the Galatians were -Who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth? (Gal. iii. 1). Something of this bewitchment adheres always to the old man; therefore we are exhorted (which otherwise would not be needful) swiftly and zealously to hear what we are in ourselves slow to hear and receive, because we love not to hear it. The What, the How, and the Wherefore of this required hearing are sufficiently plain; there remains only the question, When and where should we hear? But the answer which does not permit the last question, Who must hear? to arise, saying already, Let every man!-will, strictly speaking, scarce allow any when or where; for the saying is directed against the evasions of the idle and the wilful, who might say that not now or not here their duty is to hear. St James exhorts us, always and everywhere to hear, where salutary truth for us to act upon, in order to our regeneration, is to be heard. If finally in the judgment our actions will decide, before the actions there must necessarily be the hearing; hence the Lord says, He that heareth these sayings of Mine, and doeth them! (Matt. vii. 24). How can there be any obedience without previous hearing? and where there is wanting a perfect obedience to the truth which has been long heard and known, is there any better way to amendment than first of all better to hear the ever-returning counsel and exhortation? But after all these questions, some may still ask, or even make it the first question-Whom shall I hear? The answer is plain, beloved brethren: I must hear God, who speaks and sends to me the word of truth; rightly to understand, I must assuredly not hear the mere word of man, in as far as it is the word of man, and might therefore be error and delusion. For, it still remains that God alone is true, and every man a liar (Rom. iii. 4). But, on the other hand, if thou shouldst pervert this, and in thy blind pride despise every word which comes to thee through human lips, and refuse to hear until God speak directly to thyself, thou wouldst be again in absolute error. For, although God can, if He will, reveal Himself, as he did to Samuel-Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth!—yet He is pleased especially to speak to man by men, as here to the beloved brethren by His servant James. And if every man who knows the truth has that truth committed to him for a testi mony, and every brother must exhort and edify every brother, it becomes the duty of all to hear every word to which we are directed by God. If, finally, that we may hold carefully to the text, every man is to hear—even if he have no special Divine revelation, no servant of God sent to exhort him, no edifying brethren we must embrace the widest circle of all that truth which is in the world for the hearing of man. We shall, consequently, then only perfectly expound the words, when we understand that we should be zealous to hear every salutary word, every word of truth given for our obedience, which God may send to us in any way. But that truth comes to us in three ways: more immediately and properly as the word of God; more indirectly through the word of man; and, over and above, in all the world, and in the whole of life. As it respects the first, we mention not at once the new revelation of grace; but previously that word of truth which speaks to the natural man in the conscience. Here, as we read before, is found in all men the deepest root and the first beginning of their holding the truth in unrighteousness. O that every man would hear what God speaketh within him! But this most internal, increated word is pressed down by our sin, which suffers it not to become a word spoken to us; it is first awakened, then supplemented and developed by the Holy Spirit. To hear the voice of the Spirit, who is a Spirit of truth and grace, is the true essential for us all; if we do not hear the Spirit in the word, we have not heard the word itself. But, further, how does the Spirit speak and declare His presence? By the external word, in which He condescendingly wraps Himself, by which He opens our eyes, so that we may, according to the will of God, mark the presence of the Spirit in it. We must first have heard by a word that there is a Holy Ghost (Acts xix. 2), before we can receive the Spirit as speaking to ourselves. And where is the essential word of the Spirit? In the Holy Scripture, and in all of it as inspired by God. Christ, the incarnate eternal Word, stands in the midst of Scripture. Over Him sounds out the heavenly voice-Him shall ye hear! (Matt. xvii. 5). He speaks as no other man speaks, with supreme authority-Verily, I say unto you! But His word is not on that account opposed to that of the Apostles and Prophets, who, before and after Him, testified through His Spirit . concerning Himself. The whole Bible is the firm and certain word, in whose light we see light, in whose teaching we hear and learn the truth, which discloses to us the depths of our own hearts, which paves the way for us to the word of the Lord Himself who is the Spirit. The word of Scripture is at once the key and the seal of every extant word of truth, which the grace of God has provided and given. To what end then given, dear brethren? Do you say—to read it, for it is Scripture? But I would hold with St James-not so, but to hear! Understand this aright. Do you not know, have you not experienced in yourselves, and seen in others, how altogether unfruitful is a certain reading of the Bible? O the melancholy reading without the hearing of the heart! O the dead traffic with the letter, which becomes not a living word! Do we not know those who are for ever reading and learning, without coming to the knowledge of the truth? (2 Tim. iii. 7). These are they who hear not! Therefore said Father Abraham to the man in hell, who cared for his brethren-They have Moses and the Prophets, let them hear them! Yes, verily; and thus should we hear the holy men of God, Prophets and Apostles, who, moved by the Holy Ghost, spake to us in the Scriptures, as if we had themselves (which then is the truth) in their words. And not only so, we should similarly hear God, speaking by His servants; we should hear Him, if born again by the word of truth, as His children, with childlike attention-even as a pious child gathers into his heart the words of an earthly father. In order that we may learn and practise this, and that the written word should not remain to us a mere writing, the wisdom of God appointed, before and concurrently with all written Scripture, oral preaching. Let us never despise and reject this good and perfect gift of the Father! Be swift to go into the house of God, as you are invited; come always with purpose to hear internally for faith and obedience. What the preacher speaks to you from the word of God, as the word of God, is not given to you to criticise and talk about, but to retain and ponder in your hearts; never for the mere increase of your knowledge, for the heaping up in your mind even of Bibleknowledge, which will condemn you in proportion as it fails to be in you living seed of fruitful works. How often do we preachers address ourselves to our "devout hearers;" but God : knows how few real hearers there are among the many who listen to the sermon! How few sit under the pulpit of whom it may be said-And they sate down at Thy feet; every one shall receive of Thy words! (Deut. xxxiii. 3). If thou wilt hear and learn to good purpose, hear in every sermon with sincere heart what God in it would say to thee; and what the Holy Spirit, who accompanies the preached word, would say to thy conscience in addition. The genuine hearer of the word in the church holds himself responsible to answer the question of his own heart-What have I now heard for myself? and he goes and becomes a doer of the word which he has heard. But God gives us, further, besides Scripture and preaching, His salutary word, for our sanctification and blessedness, in the more mediate words of men—yea, often, words of men which may prepare the way for the regenerating word of truth. Or are we to listen only to words spoken by those who hold the preacher's office, and reverently receive no other words as the word of God for obedience? Yet every man has through life others over or by his side who are to him invested with the honour and office of God's representatives-parents and masters, according to the Decalogue. Hence we are all bound to hear from childhood to the very end of life. But, that we may not stretch the text beyond its meaning, this requires not so much the obeying, as the earnest attention to every good and true word which God may thus send to us. But we should show ourselves all the more swift to hear, when they who speak to us speak officially to us as appointed by God. Children should hear the word of their parents, and of all who stand in their place, their teachers and guardians; servants should hear the words of their masters; subjects should attend to the commands of those over them-it always being understood that what is said is said from the truth. What endless abundance. of wholesome and good words has God's grace provided for us through life to hear! If thou actually hearest in all these relations, according to St James' meaning,—although it may be asked, Who has done all this as he should?-hast thou fulfilled all thine obligation to hear? By no means, and it would be most perverse and mischievous to think that we have nothing to do but to hear those human words which are spoken by those who have a special Divine appointment over us! So thought |