LECTURE III.

THANKSGIVING CONTINUED FOR THE COLOSSIANS' HOPE OF HEAVEN, AND THE EFFECT OF THE GOSPEL-MINISTRY AND TESTIMONY OF EPA

PHRAS.

COL. i. 5-8.

We now proceed to the four verses which constitute the continuation of our apostle's introduction— those from the 5th to the 8th.

In these, St. Paul finishes his topics of thanksgiving for the Colossians; and bears testimony to the doctrine of Epaphras among them.

5. For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the Gospel.

Hope crowns the christian character. Where faith in Christ precedes, and love to all the saints follows, there hope, or the expectation of future and unseen good, springs up. For " hope that is seen is not hope," says the apostle, " for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? but if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it." This is, then, what our apostle elsewhere terms a "good hope through grace," and which "maketh not ashamed," but is "the helmet of salvation," and brings into the soul some earnest and foretastes of heaven. This is the grace which faith

and love nourish; and which, founded on the blood of Christ," sealed" by the Holy Spirit, and purifying the heart, sheds a brightness upon "the valley of the shadow of death itself."

The apostle speaks of this hope, that is, the blessing of which it is the subject, being laid up in heaven, deposited, reserved, put by in store out of the reach of all enemies and sorrows.

St. Paul uses this expression because the first converts were generally persecuted and assaulted from without; and those at Colosse were now beginning to be distracted and divided by the false teachers from within. But the hope laid up safely for them, and out of all danger, in heaven, was to be the motive to them not to let go their hold of Christ. nor to listen to seducing doctrines which would separate them from him.

So now, in India, let the hope laid up for us in heaven sustain us, not only under the lassitude of an unfriendly climate, the depression of natural spirits, the distance from friends, and the decline of health; but, also, if occasion arise, against the plausible fancies of a superstitious religion, which would root up the very foundations on which a scriptural hope is built.

On earth, indeed, after all, we have only a few foretastes of the heavenly Canaan, a few grapes, as it were, from Eschol; all is so mixed with sorrow, that the grand, and abiding, and copicus fruits of salvation are laid up in the Canaan above,

whither, across the Jordan of death, we shall soon pass, that we may there" inherit the promises."

Wherefore ye heard before in the word of the truth of the Gospel.

"Of which hope," as if the apostle had said, “ye have heard before this time when I am writing to you, from Timothy and other ministers, and especially from Epaphras, in the preaching of that Gospel which is emphatically true, or rather the truth, in contradistinction to the additions and inventions of Jewish bigotry or philosophical speculation."

The Gospel is the glad tidings of salvation to lost sinners, not by man and his doings and fancies, but by God sending his own Son into the world to die a sacrifice for our sins, and sending the Spirit of his Son into our hearts to dispose us to receive salvation as a free and unmerited gift.

This Gospel is the truth, transcendently, preeminently the truth; in comparison with which everything is unimportant, and everything which contradicts it, false.

Whatever is most excellent in different branches of knowledge is called by the term which best expresses its relative importance to the common apprehension of men. So the Gospel is the truth, the most valuable, the most interesting, the most necessary to a guilty, responsible creature.

There are other divisions of knowledge in the different sciences and arts which are not without

their use; but these do not reach our case as dying sinners. The truth of medicine cannot heal the soul; the truth of natural philosophy cannot teach the pardon of sin. The truth of history, chronology, jurisprudence, agriculture, may all be unknown without any fatal consequences to our eternal happiness, but this truth cannot; for it is what God has revealed for our salvation. It makes known our danger and our remedy; it is commanding, essential, vital, of eternal moment; it demands our belief as the first and highest act of obedience. To disbelieve it, is" to make God a liar, because we receive not the record that God has given of his Son." This truth false teachers of Colosse were sapping, whether knowingly or not; and this the Colossians must hold fast, or their hope would be as a spider's web.

So, in India, the Christian must be instructed to grasp firmly his hold of truth, desolate as he may be; the Hindoo converts must be taught that there is one, and one only truth-that of the Gospel. And both must learn to oppose this emphatic substantial truth, to all the dreams and delusions of popish, Mahomedan, or Brahminical fables.

The apostle speaks of the word of this truth, that is, of the preaching or annunciation of it; because it is by the written word of Scripture, and the living voice of the minister of Christ, that the joyful tidings are proclaimed, as by heralds, to a lost world.

6. Which is come unto you, as it is in all the world.

The Gospel may here be considered as a traveller who has set out on his journey, and intends to visit the whole habitable globe.

It travelled first in the person of St. Paul and the other apostles and evangelists, after the resurrection of our Lord and the glorious descent of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. The heavenly messenger, having proceeded through the various parts of lesser Asia, had reached Colosse. Such rapid progress had been made, that when the apostle wrote, about thirty years from the resurrection, "the whole world," as the countries then under the Roman sway were termed, had been traversed.

Since the time of St. Paul, its course has been sometimes impeded, sometimes allowed to proceed with vigour. Our beloved native land was visited probably in the second century, though some think that St. Paul himself first planted the Gospel amongst

us.

* Certainly the British churches were amongst the number of the primitive national churches of the West. We owe neither our religion, nor our orders, nor our Liturgy to Rome. In the sixth century, it is true that Austin and his monks restored, in many parts of our land, though mixed with gross errors, the Christianity which the Saxons had nearly obliterated; and we owe much to their piety and zeal but our British bishops resisted at that early period the usurpation of Rome, which resistance our sovereigns and parliaments continued, from time to time, till Wickliffe and the Lollards first prepared for the clearer