I read lots of sermons. It goes with my line of work.
On my blog during 2015, I will on occasion post portions of sermons past that I deem have value and interest for today’s readers.
Today’s post comes from Erskine Mason (1805-1851). Mason was a graduate of Princeton who served as pastor of the prestigious Bleeker Street Presbyterian Church in New York. He also taught Church History at Union Theological Seminary.
Mason was a moderate Calvinist (he affirmed an unlimited atonement). This sermon on 1 John 2:2 entitled “Extent of the Atonement” can be found in Erskine Mason, A Pastor’s Legacy: Being Sermons on Practical Subjects (New York: Charles Scribner, 1853), 271-293.
I am posting the last few paragraphs of the sermon. Some of you will relish in his nineteenth century rhetoric; others will nearly smother in it. But either way, don’t miss his passion for the souls of unsaved people.
Regardless of our theological bent, this is the kind of passionate preaching for souls we need today!
“And yet, my brethren, I feel that I would be doing injustice to you and my subject, did I here arrest my remarks. In advocating the doctrine of unlimited atonement, I am not advocating the doctrine of universal salvation. There is a limitation to the application of the atonement. It reaches not to all men. It reaches only to those who embrace it. God pardons not the sin of unbelief, because that is a rejection of his only method of pardon. Upon the ground of Christ’s propitiation, he can be just, while he justifies him who believeth. He can save any man who accepts of Christ, he can save none who refuse him. And this is the limitation we are required to preach to you, and the only limitation we dare put upon the suffering of an Infinite Savior.
And in behalf of the correctness of these general views, we summon the evidence of every enlightened conscience, and the experience of the lost. Those self-reprovings which often trouble the spirit of the worldly minded, when he turns away from the offer of a free salvation, have their origin in the distinct conviction that he is shutting himself out from hope and forgiveness. It would hush many a clamor of an injured conscience, it would obliterate in many a mind that deep sense of guilt which disquiets and harasses it, could man but satisfy himself that forgiveness is beyond his reach, and that the atonement of the Son of God was never meant for him. But he cannot do it. No arts of sophistry, no special pleading, can convince anyone that he is innocent in “neglecting the great salvation.”
Everyman feels that he might be saved if he would be, and that very feeling tallies exactly with the teachings of the Bible, which show us unbelief, and nothing else, as the barrier to eternal1ife. The same feeling will be deeper and more distinct hereafter, and go to form one of the most effective elements in that poison cup from which the spirit lost will forever drink. The man who fails of the great salvation, will stand speechless before his Judge; the vain apologies of earthly impenitence, will not bear looking at in the light of eternity. And when the wretched victim of abused mercy and a neglected gospel, shall self-convicted go to his final allotment, as he begins to sink in his deep perdition, remorse, undying remorse, will prey upon his spirit; and as he sees in the mighty, and still increasing distance, the brightening glories which cluster around those who have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, oh! this will be of all the most overwhelming thought, I might have been there, but I chose death.
My brethren, I am commanded to preach to you, to-day, a full and perfected atonement. I preach Jesus Christ as an all-sufficient Savior for each and every one of you. God says to you, “come, for all things are now ready.” Whosoever will, may take of the waters of life, freely. I wish you to take home this subject as a personal matter — I speak to you in the name of my Master, as individuals.
If you never have been placed in such close contact with your Savior before, I would place you, my hearer, as an individual, in this close contact with him, this morning; I would testify to you, to-day, in behalf of the gospel. I would testify to you that you are a sinner, under condemnation; that God offers to save you from your ruin by the mediation of his Son. I testify to you, that if you would no more make sure to yourself an eternity of anguish and remorse, you must rise at once and accept of this offer of forgiveness and eternal life; I testify to you, to-day, my hearer, by the majesty of God, by a deluged world, by the sufferings of Calvary, by the death-beds of saints, by the wailings of the reprobate, by the anthems of the ransomed, that everlasting life is placed within your reach.
But if you refuse to lay hold upon this hope set before you, there remains no more sacrifice for sin; there can be no propitiation for him who rejects the propitiation, and you must go down to the grave and enter upon an eternal scene unforgiven, unsaved, lost forever. You may be indifferent, you may go away from the house of God careless about Christ as you entered it, but here is the point–I wish you to ponder it–believe me, there is meaning and truth and power in it.
Though you should never hear my voice again, as a messenger of the truth, I have fastened myself to you, and time cannot wear away the links, and the earthquakes of the last day cannot dissolve them. I could not keep back the testimony I have already given you, in the words you have heard, words which express nothing but the simple, well-known truths of the Bible. They have sprung forward, and they cannot be recalled; you have heard them, they have written themselves in God’s book, and oceans cannot expunge them; and, when we shall meet again, hereafter, and memory, to which God shall have given such a resuscitating power that the events of every day and every hour shall come back in their order and freshness, and shall present this our assembly, and recall this my testimony, it is not being too bold in imagining the stirrings and heavings of the thoughts, when “the great white throne” is erected, to suppose that there will arise in your bosoms, and in my bosom, the feeling that the ministry so imperfectly discharged, is nevertheless fulfilling itself with terrible accuracy.
My brethren, there are great ends to be answered by the infinite atonement of the Son of God, and by this testimony to its fullness and all sufficiency, which I give you to-day–ends to be answered in the experience of those who reject it as well as in the experience of those who receive it. I would not attempt to be wise above what is written. But yet I know that the testimony which I give to you, in behalf of Christ, though it may seem not to prevail with you, is not fruitless.
There is no more waste in preaching, than there has been in making an atonement which is not received.
The precious seed which, Sabbath after Sabbath, is thrown out upon the moral desert, which resists and sets at naught all the diligence of the husbandman, is not lost. It will bring forth fruit–the broad field upon which at last shall be gathered the sublime, and awful, and mysterious, and stirring magnificence of the end, is white unto the harvest. Every grain is there giving produce–every particle of gospel truth springs up and waves on that awful field.
I preach for a testimony–oh! it is in feebleness I speak. I cannot throw might into my language. I cannot breathe words which shall take a lasting form and substance, and fall upon my worldly-minded hearers–but yet they die not. I seem already to hear their reverberation from a thousand echoes, louder and louder, and deeper and deeper, responding to the anthems of the saved, or the bitter and deep toned knell which shall be rung over lost spirits. God prepare us, my brethren, for the end.”