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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 59

The Evening Star — Farewell, Sermon by the Rev. Dr Roseby

The Evening Star

Farewell, Sermon by the Rev. Dr Roseby.

At the Congregational Church; Moray place, last evening, the Rev. Dr. Roseby preached his farewell sermon to a congregation which densely crowded every part of the building. His text was—2 Corinthians, xiii., 2, Finally, brethren, farewell." We append some selections from his discourse:—

I have kept on the whole to the great broad lines of vital godliness and practical religion, The natural bent of my own mind has made my ministry rather practical than dogmatic. Indeed, the more theology I read the more I am disposed to emphasise the distinction between theology and religion, I formed the resolution very early in my ministry to preach the few things that I did really know—things that I did assuredly believe—and to leave the rest. The refinements of theology, the controversies of divines, the doubtful disputations which St. Paul so deprecates in the Epistle to the Romans—I determined to perplex the souls of my people with none of these things. And all my deeper and wider experience of page break literature and of men has had the effect of confirming that resolution. I might easily have bewildered you and gained a cheap reputation for myself by plunging into the doctrinal controversies of the churches; to show, of course, that all other definitions were unsound except that of my own school. I might have made this pulpit the mere echo of the popular cries and catchwords of the hour. But my horizon has been wide enough, I trust, to save me from the provincialism of thought which mistakes "the cackle of one's burg for the voice of all the world," and I have read history to better purpose than to be caught by every new Eureka. Besides, I dared not do that thing. I fear God, and I love truth too well to unloose my tongue in mere party or sectarian or polemical battlement. One cannot help the objects of controversy much by modestly saying "I do not know." Yet in half the fierce polemics of theology that is the wisest and truest answer one can give. It has always seemed to me to be a grave and serious thing to be a public teacher; and the most solemn of all teaching is that which concerns the soul and its God.

I have preached God as the Father of men. I have tried so to present Him to the conscience as to make the soul sensible of its sin; but so to present Him to the heart as that the child, however erring and sinful, might feel drawn towards its great and loving Father. I have not shunned to speak plain words concerning the vices and follies, the vanities and meannesses of the world. If any man here has found it possible to say of himself: "Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men are," it has been in spite of a ministry whose hardest words have been aimed (us those of Jesus were) against the sin of Pharisaism. At the same time it has been the joy of my ministry to preach to my brothers the unsearchable riches of Christ, the everlasting Gospel of God's forgiving grace. Christ Himself has been the central point of all; only, I have endeavored to preach Christ in the large, full sense of the New Testament presentation of Him. I have preached Him in the exceeding breadth of His commandment, in the many-sidedness of His teaching, its penetration, its wholesome sharpness, its reproof and tenderness, each bestowed where most deserved and least expected; the woe and warning; the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ. I have preached Him as the power of God, and the wisdom of God. I have preached Him as the Son of man. I have preached him in the nature and wonderfulness of His great atonement—"God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself," and in the majesty of His long-suffering mercy, "not imputing unto men their trespasses." So have I preached Christ in the greatness and many-sidedness of His life and work. But "the well is deep."

Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts,
Thou Fount of Life, thou Light of men,
From the best bliss that earth imparts,
We turn unfilled to Thee again.

Thy Truth unchanged hath ever stood,
Thou savest those who on Thee call;
To them that seek Thee, Thou art good
To them that find Thee all in all.

Our restless spirits yearn for Thee
Where'er our changeful lot is cast,
Glad when Thy gracious smile we see—
Blest when our faith can hold Thee fast.

Then, turning to the Christianity of which Christ is the source and inspiration, I have preached a Christianity not formal or sacramental; not consisting in rite or ceremony, but inward and spiritual; yet manifesting itself as by the sacrament of outward conduct. And I have preached a Christianity inclusive of all sects, and of much beyond them—a Christianity always above them.

And from first to last I have sought to make the whole thing practical. I have spoken freely of many things often narrowly and mistakenly supposed to lie outside the sphere of the pulpit. I have spoken of money; of the tongue; of business; of home; of recreation; of the bearing of Christian principle, and of the Christian spirit, in all that belongs to the worker-day life of man.

Of all this to-night I put you in remembrance. You allowed me to lead and accompany you through a series of Old Testament studies, only now completed. And a most fruitful scries of meditations we found in the events and characters reviewed. And I hardly ever had occasion to raise or notice a difficulty. Not but what there were difficulties of exposition enough if one had chosen to look for them or to make much of them. I never did make much of them cither one way or another. My object was not to find bones for my people to gnaw, but meat on which for them to feed. And what we sought we found. Then we went together into "the green pastures and beside the still waters" of the Four Gospels—the great Biography! How interesting it was. It is wonderful. The Blessed Book only needs to be reverently read for men to discover how great and wise a book it is. How it throbs and pulsates with a divine life! How it breathes on every devout student of it its holy inspiration!

Of all this I put you in remembrance. There is a futile and there is a fertile method of using the sacred volume. I have tried to show how it can be used in a spirit of reverent freedom, so as really to feed and nourish the life of the spirit.

I cannot speak of these things without feeling how far short I have fallen of my own ideal and of my own purpose. To err is human. But I have honestly aimed at the highest well-being of my people; to turn the sinner from the error of his ways; to build up this Church in faith and holiness and love; to persuade men to the page break higher life; to "speak the truth in love"; to get God's will done on earth as it is done in Heaven.

But still, as one looks back, as one thinks of the greatness of the work, of one's own weakness and unwisdom, failure, and fault, the feeling that overwhelms all others is this: "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord, for in Thy sight shall no flesh living be justified."

And now I bring all to a point in the closing salutation of this epistle.

Old friends, farewell. We have been long together in sunshine and in stormy weather. Our very differences in some cases, the very freedom of our friendship, has made it all the stronger—how strong I never knew till now. Keep the tie, and in the better land we shall find it unbroken still.

And newer friends, yet well-beloved—I grasp your hand as it were to-night, and bid you God speed. Hold on your way. Lot the word of Christ (if I have ever spoken it) dwell in you richly in all wisdom. Let the spirit of Christ be in you to bring forth the fruits of righteousness and true holiness.

Ye Christian families, into whose inner circle I have ever been so warmly welcomed, whose sons and daughters I have received at the font of baptism, whose youths and maidens I have joined together in the bands of marriage, and the very dust of whose graves is sacred from the commingled sympathy of friendship—peace be with you! may the overshadowing wings of the blessed God encompass you! May the tender ties of family kindred never be broken either in life or death!

The reverend gentleman concluded with a fervent exhortation, of which the concluding sentence was: "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith; quit you like men; be strong;" but balance all that with the next exhortation of St. Paul, contained in the line which immediately follows: "Let all your things be done with charity." Keep unbroken "the brotherly covenant" in Christ. "Finally, brethren, farewell; be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace, and the God of love and peace be with you. Amen,