Looking unto Jesus: THE SERMON, NEXT AFTER THE DECEASE OF THE REV. BENJAMIN DAVIS WINSLOW; BY THE RT. REV. GEORGE WASHINGTON DOANE, D.D., LL.D., BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF NEW JERSEY, AND RECTOR OF ST. MARY'S CHURCH, BURLINGTON. Oh soothe us, haunt us, night and day, With whom we shared the cup of grace, SERMON. LOOKING UNTO JESUS. Hebrews xii. 2. Scarcely an hour before that dear one, whose dust we yesterday committed to the dust, became immortal, when I spoke to him of "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," he turned his eyes to heaven, and with emphatic gesture pointed upward. He was "looking unto Jesus." He had looked to Him, through all his life, so brief, so beautiful, as "the sacrifice for sin," not only, but "an ensample of godly living." He looked to Him through all the stages of his tedious and distressing sickness, as the Author of his faith, and the source of his consolation. And, in the hour of death, when his flesh and his strength failed him, with heart, and eye, and hand, he looked to Him, his crucified Redeemer, as the God of his salvation. I know with what a radiant glory every page of Holy Scripture is invested, in the light of that transcendent truth, JESUS IS GOD! I know with what a clear, distinct, and trumpet tone, the Church's voice has, "through the ages all along," proclaimed him "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God." I know with what resistless eloquence the master minds of our theology have set forth the redemption by the Cross; and with what unquestionable arguments they have demonstrated the offering of his blood there made, to be "a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world."3 But in the holy life of that young man, crowned by a death so holy; and in the simple gesture, so sublime in its simplicity, which confided all, without a word, for life, and death, and immortality, to the protection of the Cross, I feel a testimony to its truth and power, which words can never bear: and I come before you, my beloved brethren, from that serene death-bed, as from some new revealment of the great atoning sacrifice, to preach unto you, with new earnestness, "Jesus and the Resurrection;" and to beseech you, with new importunity, for Christ's sake, "be ye reconciled to God." "Looking unto Jesus." The Apostle does not leave these words, expressive though they are, to any possibility of vague or doubtful application. They "Veni, Creator, Spiritus," in the offices for the ordaining of Priests, and consecration of Bishops. 2 The Nicene Creed, A. D. 325. 3 Communion Service. are part of a most solemn exhortation to the Hebrew Christians, towards the close of his epistle to them. He had just been calling up, from the impressive records of the past, the storied names of Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and Moses, and David, and Samuel, and the prophets, and others, whom the time would fail him but to tell, who, through faith, had overcome the world, and gone rejoicing to their rest. By a noble stroke of eloquence -surpassing far that celebrated oath of the Greek orator, "By those at Marathon!"-he represents these buried saints as hanging in mid air above the path of their surviving brethren, militant on the earth, in breathless interest in the fitful contest, and burning with desire to see them "more than conquerors." "Wherefore seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, LOOKING UNTO JESUs, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." Upon this wide field of motive and of precept, of exhortation and of consolation, I enter not at large. I 1 Demosthenes in the oration, De Corona, cited with highest praise by Longinus, in his treatise, De Sublimitate. |