THE KING’ S BUSINESS
208
combine liberty with means, with power, and with a certain degree o f prosperity; you may combine it with equality and with fraternity, and yet not have the true -enlightenment. True enlightenment,comes in the way, indicated in the text, by the seeking o f God’s precepts, the knowing of God’s statutes, and this you and I need to keep in mind. “What is liberty?” once asked Burke. “What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? Such liberty is the greatest o f all possible evils, for it is vice and folly and madness, without tuition and without restraint.” Mere lib erty without other forces working in the sphere that it opens up, is only another name for license. “ Give me liberty or give me death,” said Patrick Henry—not because he felt the need o f enlightenment. He had been enlightened ,by the teaching o f an intelligent Scottish father, by the preaching o f the splendid sermons o f Sam uel Davies, and especially by the daily study, which he kept up to his dying day, o f his Bible. He had been enlightened by these things. What he craved for himself and for his fellow men was open space in which, unhindered, other and mighty influ ences might tell upon his fellow men and make the country what, in the blessing of God, it has become. Settle this in your minds: Liberty is simply the freedom for other forces,to act, and it is for you and men who are free, to see what these forces are, and we never can have any so good as those which the Psalmist speaks o f when he says that he sought God’s precepts, he’ studied God’s statutes, that he might do them, and so walk at liberty. We want to walk at liberty. How can we do it? If we do not thus walk. at liberty, there is only one alternative—stay in bondage and walk in bondage, moving about indeed, and apparently free, but with moral chains bind ing our natures and our whole being in bondage to the powers that will rejoice in our misery and ultimate ruin. It is to make men understand this that we have, such institutions as we enjoy today. For this, end church edifices are reared. For
this end ^people are invited to come and be regularly in them and under their influ ence. For this end God has been pleased to give us the day o f holy rest. For this purpose the ministry has been instituted. Our business is ; to make men seek and know God’s precepts and statutes, that they may do them and that they may walk at liberty. •W e ministers are for you; our business is" to seek your moral and spir itual gdod, your full and complete libera tion. Our business is to enlighten you with the truth as God has been pleased to reveal it unto us. You do not come to these churches for our sakes, to hear us. You do not give your money that we may be sustained and upheld. I tell you I would rather sweep the streets, I would rather carry bricks on my shoulder to the builder, than to be a mere official person maintained because he can teach so much and get so many people to hear him. Brethren, it is that you may be enlight ened and saved with the light o f life, that God has brought us into the position in which we are now together. Keep this in your thoughts; and that you may be enlightened and free, look upward and not downward, nor around you. In that statue in our harbor, the light that will shine is light that comes, I suppose, from the heart o f the earth; but the light that is to enlighten the world is the light o f the sun, the Sun o f Righteousness. See that you have that shining into your souls, that you may walk at liberty. THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE Having looked at the former part o f this text, namely, what the Psalmist did with a view to the end, we look at the end at which he was aiming. He studied God’s Word, not simply that he might have so much intellectual knowledge. He studied it for practical uses. He studied God’s pre cepts that He might obey them. I do not need to remind you that you and I have advantages. greater than he had, in some important respects. He had the revelation in part; we have it in its completeness. He had the preparatory dispensation; we have
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs