The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1880-06-01 00:00:00

SERMON.

Acts xx., 33—" And now, brethren. I commend you to
Cod, and to the word of His grace, which to able to build
you up, and to give Lou an inheritance among all them
which are sanctified.
This, my brethren, is the last Lord's Day evening on
which, in the regular course of my ministry, I shall
address you, brethren of my home, in this the church of
my baptism. I do not venture to dwell long upon the
fact: it is for me too full of deepest emotion. And it
would not be right that I should dwell only on the
fact; for a preacher's duty, alike in his last 'sermon and in
his first, and in all that come between, is to preach the
Word; to proclaim not his moat sinful self, but Christ
Jesus, his holy, precious, and eternal Master; the way,
the truth, the life.
But it would be unnatural in me to say nothing about
my farewell to this pulpit; for that would be to seem in-
different to the deepest change and greatest crisis which,
as regards outward thin., ever has come, or la ever likely
to come, into my life. For this farewell is both • fact
awfully heart-searching in itself as I recall the omissions
and comissions of thirteen years of utterance here, and it
is also • fact which touches the inmost springs of affec-
tion, bi log, as it is, the result of the death of parents most
b•lole I and most blessed, and so of the breaking down of
a home indescribably dear; and it carries with it the pain
of flrewell to you, my well-loved and most indulgent
brethren. And more than this: It is not merely that I
go, but in me goes the last reinter representative of my
father in this his pulpit of half • century. My beloved
and honoured brother lingers • little ere his return to
Cin.: but he lingers not as the pastor of Fordingtoe. To
my moat unworthy hands has hems ea entrusted the
carrying on—if it may be called so—of my father's word;
and now behold, I am departing and with me therefore
departs for ever even the semblance of his dear presence
from the church he loved so well.
My brethren, I will to., true to my word, I will not dwell
on all this complicated sadness. Day by day brings,
brethren, enough in that way; the searching into ancient
home-treasures of the past; the necessary destruction of
many • sacred relic of old endearments; the mattering to
distant places and many lands of all the real: the longing
lingering looks behind on fields, and streams, and hills; on
paths that we have trod since our feet first learnt to go,
on doors where for years and years the welcome was
always waiting, such • welcome as home-neighbourhood
alone warm. . . .

So lain not trying now to draw out before my own eyes
any new details of this sort, they rise tip for themselves.
But I most thus at least touch the strings of the sad harp;
not to do just that would be untruthful about my own
feelings and a strange lack of ail action and respect towards
you.
So it is the last Lord's Day ministry of me and of my
house. The series that began with my father's first
sermon—Sunday afternoon, October 25th, 1829—now ends
with thew' words from his son—Sunday evening, May
23rd, MO The last time I Yes, as everything earthly
has its last time. Everything earthly, everythinx in
every life here that is part and parcel of this present
world, all things most familiar, most endeared, most
necessary as they now seem, have their last time, till the
la.t of last times for each shall came, and the soul shall
bid • summary farewell to the whole mass and Mlle of
earthly life, as it steps out, ready or unready, into the
life of the world to come. It is the last time here. Are,
but let us add another word' it is God's last time, His
chosen time to be the last, and, therefore, of all Sundays
of all the years, lets. firstly believe it, as we look up to
His throne, this is the best possible Sunday for this old
pulpit work of ours, for these now almost countless meet-
times of ours in this house of the God of our Father,
to come to an end and be no MOM.
" God's time is the best, yes, ever best of all." Such are
the words appointed in the Lutheran Prayer Book to be
repeated by the bed of the dying believer. "God's time
is the best, yea, ever best of aIL In Him we live, and,
when His time bath come in Him we die." So now for
us, if we believe—God's time In bilk yea ever best of all.
In Him we long have met. In Him—wonderful thought I
still in Him, never removing off of that blessed standing
ground—in Him we part Even so, Father, all wise and
good; even so.
Now, my brethren, at once I turn to the text, to the
Apostle's words, Paul's words at Miletus to the Ephesian
saints. I take them not without one sad thought—
namely, that the contest of them would be wofully un-
suitable to myself. For Paul at Miletus appealed with
glorious frankness sad force to the unwearied faithfulness
of his then closing work. For myself, u I review the
past (and lot me at lea,t in this solemn hour be trust-4 to
speak truth), the kindness of my brethren does but bring
out into blacker contrast in my own conscience the sense
of quite incalculable negligence and unfaithfulness in my
now closing work. I cast myself on my Redeemer, whose
almighty merit alone could bear that ponderous burthen,
as He well knoweth. _ . .

But I say no more of this. I take the text in itself, ss •
precious summary of such thoughts and longings as at
this hour I cannot but feel. I look away from self to my
Matter, and point to Him; away from self to my parents,
and speak as in their name' away from self to my brethren,
and plead with them about • God who cannot die, a word
of grace which cannot change, an inheritance among the
mortified which c moot fade. Oh merciful Master, speak
thou to us, by thy Holy Spirit. Examine then, piece by
piece, the wording of St. Paul'. farewell.
I.—And now, brethm& " And now." The earthly
friend w. going; Paul's voice waa soon for ever to be
silent in Miletus and in Ephesus. For him, as for na, the
necessities of time, ant change, and decay, were exerting
their awful strength. In public and from house to house his
voice had been heard among them, the voice of a direct
messenger of Jesus, straight from the Master; but now no
moreono morel It was the last time; • time not joyous,
but grievous, as the end of this chapter makes it so plains
for we find that 1.800 years ago mortal hearts were much
what they are now, and sorrow and loss struck just the
same upon them. And the Lord nowise blamed the grief
of parting then; nor doe. He now. If those who part
deserve in any moue the name, of brethren—fund ob, if
they truly boar that name as brethren in Christ how
deep its meaning is and how strong its tie)--It would be ,
falsehood not to feel the pang.
2.-1 sousonend you So God. Here at once conies • ray of
light out of the gloom; and it comes straight from the
throne. Paul goes, but the Lord abides' a living person,
inUniately near and dear; an eternal person, abs Antal,
strong and true. God stood ready to take Paul's place, if
we may say so' to make up, and much more than make
up, the personal loss of even a loving and beloved Apostle's
presence. "I commend you to God I " At, brethren,
ponder what those words, "t God," from Paul's lips to
the Ephesian saints meant. Who was this greet Being
to them? Not a dream of the poet, not • theory of the
philosopher, not a cold imagination of some power or cause
Icing hid in the mystery and majesty of nature. When
Paul uttered the word God there were gathered into the
brief wonderful word all the riches of eternal holiness and
divined t tenderness, all the tritium!es of wisdom and know-
ledge revealed through patriarchs and prophets, and, last
and mat of all, all the grace and all the troth that came
by Jesus Christ. This God of Paul and the lipheslans was
He with whom Enoch and Moralism bad walked, He who
buried Moe. upon Pisgah, He who drew David's soul oat
in the rayturous love of the 63rd Psalm—" Thy loving
kindness is better than life." Its before whom AsaPh
poured out his heart in the 73rd Psalm—" Whom have I
In heaven but Thee?" He who called Elijah up to him in
the angel-chariot, when He had led him and fed him so
long in the desert, by the brook, and in the widow's house,
He whom haat, Micah, and Jeremiah, knew as the
Lofty Ono, who ichalgteth eternity, yet dwelletli with
the " contrite heart,' who loveth His own with an
everlasting love, who delighteth in WM. Yes, and Nora
God was the God of the eternal promise • the God who
promised redemption to Adam, who confirmed the blessed
hops to Abraham, who foretold to David the ccming of
his mysterious sou and Lwd, who foreshadowed In tither.
nacle and temple the mysteries and glories of a blood-
bought salvation and an everlasting High Priest within the
veiL Yes and Paul's God was, above all, He who said of
Jesus—" is MY beloved Son ;" He to whom Jesus said
—"Holy Father, righteous Father, Abbe. Fether.-4 have
glorified m..,glorify Me ; keep them through Thine own
name." yes, He was the "blessed God and Father of our
Lord Jams Christ, who bath begotten His people to •
living hope, to an inheritance incorruptible,' by that great
act and fact of life-giving power and merey—the resnrreo.
lion of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Oh, brethren, think this out sometimes. Pans* on the
blared word—God. Think out what the Balk what the
Saviour. reveals al God—thaw lams and ricer of love
end &eV that maks that blamed alms 'riot II le—sad