R. G. Baker

“ Churches and chapels are made gay with shining leaves and scarlet berries; carols are sung in the streets; the words, ‘A merry Christmas to you!’ pass from mouth to mouth; and beef and pudding, the outward form which joy is wont to put on in this cold, hungry climate, smoke on many a board to which, alas! for every other day in the year they are utter strangers. Nay, it is to be hoped that even in union workhouses there is an intermission of gruel for Christmas day.”—Pp. ”

“ This enrolling of our people every tenth year, each man’s family in his own house, may it not read to us some lessons as Christians; while it affords to those who are set over us in the Lord, the materials for their guidance in the great work of government and legislation? Whether we regard it as private individuals, or as fellow-subjects in that civil community with which the Providence of God has connected us, or as members of the Church of Christ and “heirs together of the grace of life,” [7c] it may suggest to us many reflections of thankfulness, self-inquiry and abasement. ”

“ I declare, it seems to me that the very idea of worship has almost died out in England. Do you think that if people really felt they were speaking to Almighty God, they would sit at their ease, or look over a book, and never do more? Church of Englandism has such a comfortable look about it; it is the religion of people well to do in the world, and have too much business to transact to turn their minds thoroughly to anything else. It is a one day a week religion. ”

“ Our national welfare depends not upon miracles, but upon those provisions of human forethought or experience, which, under the Divine blessing, appear best adapted to meet each exigency that arises. And although there is often cause to lament that this blessing is so seldom implored by us distinctly and publicly as a Christian people, and so little acknowledged by us in the many mercies, which, as a Christian people, we are enjoying, yet still we may humbly believe that the inquiry now conducted cannot be displeasing to God. ”

“ The Protestant professes that the only sure way of knowing God’s will is for every man to read the Holy Scriptures for himself. I take up the Holy Scriptures, therefore, for this purpose, and I find there that our Lord appointed, and the apostles practised, quite another way of learning God’s will and the right road to heaven. I find that our Lord sent, not a message, but messengers; not a book for men to read, but apostles for men to obey ”

“ But surely the thought will occur to some among us, I would to God that it might be brought home by His Spirit to the hearts of all, that there are several other points of inquiry besides these, upon which the great Head of the Church may be expecting, and really does expect, an account to be rendered by us. We may have no power to influence the character or to regulate the habits of those large masses of the people whose irreligion, in the crowded districts that surround us, we may deplore. The influence which is to affect a whole nation falls within the power of very few. ”

“ But, alas! all that we see and hear forbids us to believe that the only design or effect of this measure is to enable the Romanists to provide for their own people. There is already too much evidence to show that it has all the character of an aggression upon the faith of the members of our Church. It is in full accordance with those measures, which within the last few months have happily awakened the Protestant spirit of our whole people, and have shown in its true colours the influence of that unscriptural and grasping Church from which they sprang. ”

“ How many communicants are there in this family among those who have reached the proper age of full communion with the Church, and with her living Head? How many of the children are really reared in the spirit of their baptismal vows, “virtuously brought up to lead a godly and a Christian life?” [19b] Are not these subjects of inquiry on which there would be too great cause for self-reproach to many among us; the reproach resting upon those who had all the means afforded them for their spiritual sustenance and growth, but have carelessly neglected to improve them? ”

“ It is well known that nearly one-half of the number of deaths that occur among mankind happen before the tenth year of life is completed. Yet have we all been spared, through sickness, and casualties, and during one year of that term through pestilence itself raging at our doors, to see the end of it ”

“ Paul, with a full conviction of the truth upon his mind, “This I say, that the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.” ”

“ At the time here spoken of, David had been, for nearly forty years, king over “the Lord’s people.” The youngest of eight sons of one of the shepherds of Israel, and raised from that lowly station to the throne by the express appointment of Jehovah, it may well excite our surprise to observe his conduct on the occasion to which the text refers. We might have supposed that the incidents of his early life, no less than the experience of his riper years, would have taught him a more simple spirit of faith and trust than that which he now showed. ”

“ But surely, with these facts before us, there is the strongest inducement for us all, not only to examine ourselves whether we are in the faith, but why, and on what grounds we are in it; [17c] while there is a motive created strong enough to induce all who have the means at their command to promote any well-advised plans for arresting the evil, or turning it, through God’s blessing, to good. ”

“ If those among us who are spared to outlive them are enabled to “hold fast the profession of their faith without wavering,” [17b] they may not only save their own souls, but lead others, who can only view Him now through the mists of their corruptions, to honour the holy name of Him by whom we are called. ”

“ What “I say unto you I would say unto all, Watch! for ye know not when the Master of the house will come” to reckon with us, whether at the close, or the middle, or the opening of this new decade on which we are now entering.
p. 20But this we know, that when the Lord does come the second time from heaven, then will be the great numbering of the nations: not the mere periodical census of a single kingdom, which, with all its boasted wealth and enterprise, is but a mere speck upon the surface of our earth ”

“ It is confidently believed by those persons who are most familiarly acquainted with the state of the property adjacent to the new Romish Church, that within a very few years nearly the whole of it will be covered with new buildings. And it is so far removed from the churches and National schools at Fulham and Walham Green, where the population has also increased of late very considerably, that it is easy to foresee the necessity which will arise for some new provision for the spiritual instruction of such a district, growing up nearly in the centre of the parish of Fulham. ”

“ But since it is most true, as you yourselves also know, that while the largest funds are never wanting for every scheme, the wildest, the most uncertain, of worldly speculation or display, they are often left to fail, and to fall away, and to be importuned for in the prosecution of the soberest, the most scriptural plans for promoting the glory of God, or the welfare of some distressed portion or other of our fellow-men ”

“ Nay more; may we not hope that having been left hitherto equally ignorant and fettered, ignorant of the commonest means of knowledge, and fettered and precluded from attaining it, the instruction now given to their children will one day become the blessed means of enabling them to throw off their fetters, and make an opening for the light of Gospel truth to shine upon their souls? ”

“ My brethren, in order to answer such an inquiry aright, it seems only necessary that we should remember the essential difference already pointed out between the chosen nation and any which the world has since seen. Never in any other case has the civil government of kingdoms been carried on by the immediate agency of Almighty power. ”

“ At a time when books of the most valuable and interesting character are published at prices far below any former precedent, it seems to be little less than the duty of every master of a Christian household to furnish to his servants a collection, however limited, of such works as would be at once most useful and acceptable to them, which a few shillings annually would serve to keep up or to extend. ”

“ And yet let us remember, that the distinctions of nations, like those of individuals, are given to them as talents to be accounted for and improved, not in order to flatter pride, or to promote the comparison of themselves with others. The higher is the measure of our privileges, the heavier is the weight of our responsibilities. ”

“ Those whom we love the best may be taken from us, or we from them, never more to meet until the resurrection of the last day. With such perpetual notices before us of the shortness of our time, and of the momentous nature of that work which it is given us to do, let us resolve to work while it is day. ”

“ My brethren, it may seem, no doubt, an alarming reflection, but it is still a faithful saying, and confirmed by all our experience, that if ten years more p. 11have not carried us forward in our heavenly course, if they do not find us growing in grace, in the knowledge of ourselves and in the knowledge of Christ Jesus, they will too probably find us confirmed in evil; more estranged from God; more ripe for judgment; the chains of sin bound faster around us, and all our habits more difficult of change ”

“ And may we be found so far faithful to Him who calls us, that out of these our earthly households, some may be continually gathering to join that “multitude which no man can number,” [20f] who, on the sea of glass and before the sapphire throne, are worshipping Him that sits upon the throne, and casting their crowns before Him, and saying, “Thou art worthy to receive glory, and honour, and power; for thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created!” ”

“ And very few of our countrymen, comparatively with other times, have had their lives cut short by a scourge to which the pride and covetousness of mankind are always urging them, but which it may be hoped the God of love and peace, in answer to the prayers of His servants, will continue still to restrain. ”

“ Nor is it only life that has been thus continued to us; but life with all its attendant health, and strength, and reason, and many temporal comforts. And there have been dangers warded off, and blessings multiplied to us in a measure which we should now find it difficult, even with the utmost stretch of memory, to reckon ”

“ But we have now been mercifully spared for nearly forty years from any general or continued war. Ten years more of almost unbroken peace, or of peace broken only in the remoter dependencies of the empire, have passed over us. ”

“ And ever, as the period came round for enrolling our living population, there was an allowance to be made for the losses it had suffered of multitudes who had passed into the grave before their full time, in foreign lands, amidst the horrors of the battlefield or the naval fight, their last hours wanting all the solace of domestic endearment or spiritual comfort. ”

“ Peter, the prince of the apostles, to whom our Lord himself gave the name of Peter, which signifies a rock, and told him at the same time that on that rock He would build His Church, and that the gates of hell should not prevail against it,—this same Peter went to Rome and p. 26became its Bishop; and from that time the Church of Rome, as being the See of St. Peter, has ever been looked upon by the faithful as the mother and mistress of all churches, and each of his successors in turn as the visible head of the Church on earth.”—P. 5. ”

“ These allotted periods fixed by the institutions of men agree very remarkably with those which the Spirit of God in his word has pointed out as warnings p. 8of the shortness and the uncertainty of life. “The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow ”

“ These are some of the topics, and, as I well know, they are but a few of them, which a retrospect of this interval might urge upon us as individuals; and these arise only from a review of our own position as the survivors of this new period of probation which the Lord in mercy has permitted us to pass. But I might well ask you to cast your eyes once more back, (it will be wise and profitable for us to do so,) in order that we may call to mind how many persons, some of them dear to us as our own souls, began this same period with us, who have not lived like us to witness its close. ”

“ There are many texts even then which they do not really receive; some which are to them as an unknown tongue, without any meaning at all, and which they therefore make no use of whatever; others which seem to be opposed to their own creed, and which they therefore try to escape from and to explain away ”

“ The owner of the land, knowing the important object for which it has been wished to obtain it, has liberally consented to accept a price considerably below that which its marketable value would command, and the Bishop of London has kindly given his sanction to the measure. ”