SERMON V.

LUKE X. 20.

Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.

OUR blessed Lord, a short time after his transfiguration, and as He was entering Judæa on his way to keep the feast of Tabernacles at Jerusalem, “appointed seventy" of his disciples, " and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place of Judæa, whither He Himself would come "." The chief part of his commission to them was, that they should "heal the sick, and say unto the people, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you." It does not appear that He conferred upon them at this time any other miraculous gift than that of healing: but

while they were engaged in the faithful and zealous discharge of the trust they had received, "the Lord confirmed their word with" additional "signs ";" insomuch that, having gone throughout all the cities," the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name."

To this expression of the disciples' surprise and joy, our blessed Lord—with reference indeed, principally, to the glorious triumph which his Gospel was eventually to gain over the powers of darkness, yet with an evident and approving reference to their performance of his commands—answered, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven:" and now in reward of your zeal and fidelity, Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven."

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b Mark xvi. 20.

This latter passage, which I have taken for my text, consists of two parts: the first containing an admonition; the second, an exhortation and it will be my object, first, to explain them; and then to deduce from them and enforce the general doctrine which they involve.

:

I. The spirits which our blessed Lord speaks of as being subjected to the seventy disciples, were those evil or unclean spirits or devils, who at that time were permitted to take possession of the bodies of men, and whom the disciples also had spoken of as subject to them through his name. The expulsion of devils seems to have been the highest degree of miraculous power with which the messengers of Divine goodness even in that age were entrusted and some kinds of these spirits held so obstinate possession of those into whom they had entered, that our blessed Lord declared a more than ordinary degree of devotion to be necessary in the person who would cast them out: "This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting." The

Mark ix. 29.

individual case, indeed, of possession by an evil spirit, which gave rise to this observation, He compared, in a phrase by which the Jews were accustomed to express a most difficult and unusual thing, to the removal of a mountain into the sea.

The admonition, then, which our blessed Lord gave to his disciples would amount to this-that they were not to rejoice in the possession even of the highest degree of miraculous power. Yet He is not to be understood as intending to disapprove of all rejoicing in the possession of such powers: for they were not only a subject of promise, but bore the most effectual and triumphant testimony to the truth of those doctrines, which the Christian preachers announced; and they must therefore have been a just cause for some degree of joy to those who had received them.

They were, however, nothing but what they had received; a most trying and important part of their probation on earth; a trust of many talents indeed, but for which they were one day to give a strict account before God.

Considering, then, their frailty as men; that the greater their talents, the greater was also the hazard of an unsuccessful issue of their trial: they were yet to "rejoice as though they rejoiced not";" and remember with humility and self-distrust, that "to whomsoever much is given, of him shall much also be required."

ven.”

II. But our blessed Lord directs his disciples in the second part of the text to a more sufficient cause for rejoicing: “rather rejoice that your names are written in heaIn other parts of Scripture, Almighty God is said to have written in heaven a book, which is emphatically called his book, and also his book of remembrance, the book of life or of the living, and the Lamb's book of life. The contents of this book appear to be the names, the trials, and the actions of the faithful servants of God. Moses, when deprecating the Divine wrath from Israel, prays, that himself, rather than they, might be "blotted out of the book which God had written in heaven!" David prays, that the enemies of e Luke xii. 48. f Exod. xxxii. 32.

d 1 Cor. vii. 30.