Morning journal and courier., 1881-04-16
Sonrnal anu Courier.
Local News.
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United Service at Trinity.


 United Service at Trinity.
 Sermon by Rev. pr. Beardsley-The Alp.
 propriate Life Work.
 United Fast day services were held at Trin- ity church last evening supplementary to the late series of united Episcopal services at that church. There was good attendance for the weather. Rev. Dr. Beardsley preached from the text found in John 19-3O, "It is finished" The speaker said These were the last words which came from the cross when our Lord bowed his head and gave up the ghost. They are expressive of death and of the surrender which he made of his soul unto his Father. The wilderness of suffering was now triumphantly passed, all enemies vanquished, and the rest, the glory of his double nature, one with God and one with man, was now to be entered upon in the presence of the Father and to be con- summated with the blessedness of his saints at the restitution of all things The last words of distinguished men have always been regarded with peculiar interest and treasured by thousands as maxims of special value. Sometimes they have been thought to reveal the secret spring of action or to be characteristic of the hopes which are honest ly and justly cherished. When Chysostom died with the words ''Glory to God for all things in his ife," men recognized in them the high principle by which he lived, just as when the Apostate Julian exclaimed in his last hour, "Oh Galilean thou hast con- quered, " it was accepted as an acknowledge ment wrung from him in the death struggle. But no words were ever uttered by men or God himself of higher moment than those of the dying Jesus, ''It is finished" Of all days in the year Good Friday is the most fitted for solitary meditation. Standing therefore this evening at the foot of the cross we learn our first lesson in divine truth, that however lightly we may think of sin, God will not pardon it except on the conditions of the gospel He did not descend upon Mt Sinai in the glory of his sublime majesty and there give in detail the minute arrange ments of sacrifcial offerings for nothing. Until they pointed to something in the fu- ture they were unmeaning and profitless, not to say absurd. Wherefore, when He com eth into the world He saith Sacrifice and offer ing thou wouldst not, but body hast thou prepared me-" You must strike out the larger portion of the Bible, you must overlay the whole dealings of God with his elect people, you must charge him with unmean- ing action before you can say, standing under the shadow of the cross, that the shedding of blood is unconnected with the remission of sin. When Christ said ''It is finished" the apostles were not there to hear his words, and if they had been how little would they at that moment have comprehended their true import. The dying Saviour looked back on his earthly life. his holy infancy, his stain less boyhood his work of redemption, and gathering up all in His perfect vision he spread out the history before God and sealed it with his blood. If the apostles, his friends and followers, were unable to solve the hS 1ock was this the case with his enemies. To those who stood around the cross, the declaration Ut is fnished'' must have seemed the strangest and most incomprehensible of all. ''Finished!" they might have exclaimed in amazement. "Why have not proofs in abundance that it has failed ?" What inhu- ence has he exerted and on how wide sphere in the brief period of his public life and teaching! What great names to be found among his followers? Surely failure and rejection to all human appearance were stamped upon his life, and yet in his last hour and with his latest breath he proclaims that His mission is fulfilled and his work fin ished, not simply ended, but finished, accom- plished. The verdict of the world was the other way. It very often happens in these days that what to mans sight is a failure is only so apparently, not really. There is encouragement for faint hearts and lowly lives, if duty be performed. The Almighty does not judge as man doth. We sometimes think, and perhaps sometimes say, that death overtakes one before he has finished his work or carried it to the point of success. * A few years ago one of the noblest Bishops of the Church of England, none nobler since the days of Gilbert Vurnet, was riding on a beautiful summers day over the hills of Sur rey, and at slight dip in the smooth turf the gentle horse which bore him stumbled and threw him headlong upon the ground, in- stantly killing him without word or strug- gle. Men thought and said that the Bishop of Winchester was gone at momentous crisis in national affairs, just when he was most wanted just when he had grown up to be so great, both in the church and in the country; but he had done his life work and adequately fulfilled his own conception of his high and sacred office, and God took him away in the ripeness of his wisdom and left others to bend the bow which he had so strangely dropped.
 If the cross says anything it is that what looks like defeat is the truest victory All the types and prophecies had their complete ness and realization in the great sacrifice of the Lord of Glory. ''It is finishedn Three times these words or words to this effect oc- cur in the Bible; once in the beginning when God looked on the new born creation and pronounced the heavens and the earth fin ished and all the host of them; once in the revelation of the new heavens and the new earth, when 'tthe mystery of God should be finished as he hath declared to his servants and prophets;'' and here again in the very center of human history, at the point to which all the rays of Christian truth con- verge. The speaker in closing said: Gath CT up the scattered threads of your proba- tion weave them into a complete whole and let Shis Good Friday be new starting point. When you come to the close of the last chap ter in your earthly life ask yourselves, young and old, fearfully, humbly, sincerely, what will then be finished. Will it be life of sin and self qualification, life of personal az grandizement and therefore unfinished, imperfect, unsatisfactory life or will you be able to say, with a measure of reasonable fri umph, in the human, not in the divine sense Father I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do."
 Present in the chancel were Rev. Dr. Har- wood, Rev. Mir. Thorn,-an Rev. MT. Dens- low, of Fair Haven, who conducted the regu- lar service.