THE FIRST CHURCH.

Evening Star, Issue 3422, 9 February 1874, Page 3

THE FIRST CHURCH.

To the Editor. Sin, —The thirteenth preacher from Victoria—the Rev. Wm. Henderson, of Ballarat preached this forenoon in this church. The sacred edifice was entirely filled. The preacher is a Saul among the Philistines. He is head and shoulders over all his predecessors. He is black-haired and whiskered, mixed with grey. His voice is clear, his utterances are emphatic, and he ij an excellent reader. In appearance and gesture he is a miniature Edward Irving—tall, thin, and even eccentric; but an honest, manly, and sincere messenger of the gospel. After rising in the pulpit, he read, and the congregation then sang a portion of Psalm 2(3, beginning—“ Judge me, O Lord, fori have walk’d in mine integrity.” He then gave a short prayer of a semi Episcopalian charscte-. Then he read the 28th chapter of Genesis, and again offered up a prayer of the Geneva type. In prayer, he rests bis arms on the velvet cushion of the pulpit, while one hand clasps the wrist of the other, and the head is turned somewhat away. After this second prayer he read the 6th chapter of Matthew's gospel, and again read, and the congregation sang, a part of the 43rd Psalm, verso 3, beginning, “ 0 send thy light forth, and thy truth ; let them be guides to me, ” The text was chosen out of Genesis, caput. 28, verse 17 : “ And Jacob was afraid, and said, ‘ How dreadful is this place ; this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’” This text was supremely happy and characteristic. I. Jacob—the fugitive, the child of the promise—awoke out of his sleep beneath the blue vault studded with silent stars, and utters this exclamation. His prospects are dark and gloomy in the extreme. His iniquities are arrayed iu the light of adversity and Providence before his face. He is now a vagabond, with a stqne pillow for his aching bead, in the desert beneath God’s earnest sky. In this state of self-abasement he had his divine dream of the spirit, not of the sense. Its significance is eternal. His hair stands on end. Heaven and earth are conjoined, _ He is alone with his God, and in communion with the angelic visitants that minister to their heirs of salvation. Conscience awakes out of her slumber; his past deeds are spread before him, and in the awful presence of the Divine Majesty the penitent cries out, *• How dreadful is this place !” The preacher eloquently showed what constitutes a bouse of God and a gate of heaven—not rich temples or splendid architecture, or fine music, or any such adventitious circumstances. To Jacob s view vistas opened up brighter, fairer, and purer than anything he had previously experienced during his singularly chequered pilgrimage Communication with Heaven had converted the desert into a paradise and garden of roses, and sweets of happiness. Outward accessories without spiritual life do not constitute a house of God. Without the Divine presence they are worthless. 'J he presence, the enjoyment and loveof God, lathe summvm honum of human felicity. Jacob is a lively type of the man of sorrows—our elder brother, for whose fellowship, along with that of God the Father and his Holy Spirit, we are to assemble on the Lord’s Day in the Church, which is tbe house of God and the gate of Heaven. Through our union with Christ we shall be brought into fellowship with an innumerable company of angels and the spirits of just men made perfect. Yea, at present, in a mystic sense, we are members of that glorious society. This is the rainbow that spans the horizon of our cloudy day. Under this condition, the house of God is the true house of the Spirit. Ko matter where we are, “all is holy where devotion kneels.” 11. “ How dreadful is this place !” That was, under the circumstances, a most natural exclamation of feeling. To meet our God with whom we have lo he eventually, to be alone in the presence of the Eternal, is an awful thought. 'J he soul consciously before its Creator; a guilty man before the omniscient eye. That may well strike the sinner dumb; lor the Divine gaze flashes like lightning through the chambers of sinful

imagery, and sends a shudder through the soul. Behold what it is to fall into the hands of God! Jacob’s sins are now brought forth before his appalling and accusing conscience. He stands on consecrated ground. How impious in us to rush into the presence of God, with our hearts buried in worldly and sensual things ! We are really responsible to God for all the sermons preached and prayers offered up in our hearing in the house of God. 111. The blessedness of Jacob’s situation formed the closing topic in the sermon. In the house of God Heaven’s gates are ajar. God came to commune with the exile’s soul. Jacob’s soul was resuscitated, so that he was enabled to commune consciously with Heaven. As Milton would have said, the patriarch communed or corresponded magnanimously with the skies. Dreadfulncss now gives place to blessedness. No longer dejected, be has conscious communion with God. This is the only condition that can make life, in its best estate, at all endurable. Let us seek communion with God, our Father in Heaven, in his Church, which is the earthly vestibule of Heaven. As pilgrims and sojourners, we may thus, like Jacob, antedate our luture bliss. We may have visions of paradise through the open gate, and may receive precious blessings from the visitant angels that minister to such as are destined to be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. God is now speaking to our souls by his ministering servants and holy ordinances. Without conscious communion with God in Christ, through his holy spirit, all our services are vain and valueless. The divine love has been manifested, to us in the life, passion, death, resurrection, ascension, and perpetual intercession of Christ—the allsufficient and all-atoning Redeemer of sinful men. God is really longing after our eternal welfare. He is here dispensing everlasting blessings. The preacher closed his sermon by giving out a portion of the 2nd 'paraphrase, to be sung by the congregation : 0 Lord of Bethel, &c. After praise, the minister—who for the past twenty-one years has been dispensing the staff of life at the point of death—engaged in devotional exercises, and finally gave out the 42nd Scottish paraphrase, which was nobly sung by the great congregation, “ Let not your hearts with anxious thoughts be troubled or dismay’d,” &c. Sir, Mr Henderson is a noble man. He was Principal Cunningham’s best Divinity student. I was present in Knox’s vestry, Melbourne, when Dr Cairns, along with Kev. Messrs Henderson and Simpson were received by the Presbytery of Melbourne. His first sphere of labor was Williamstown, but for many years he has labored successfully in the golden city of Ballarat. The sermon—of which 1 barely give you an outline—is decidedly the best yet delivered by any of the Victorian clergy that have visited Dunedin.—l am, &c , J. G. S. Grant. York place, February 8.