Sermons of Christmas Evans

SERMON I. THE TIME OF REFORMATION “Until the time of reformation.” – Heb. ix. 10 The ceremonies pertaining to the service of God under the Sinaic dispensation were entirely typical in their character; mere figures of Christ, the “High-priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands;” who, “not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, has entered once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” Sustaining such a relation to other ages and events, they were necessarily imperfect, consisting “only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances,” not intended for perpetual observance, but imposed upon the Jewish people merely “until the time of reformation,” when the shadow should give place to the substance, and a Greater than Moses should “make all things new.” Let us notice the time of reformation, and the reformation itself. I. Time may be divided into three parts; the Golden Age before the fall, the Iron Age after the fall, and the Messiah’s Age of Jubilee. In the Golden Age, the heavens and the earth were created; the garden of Eden was planted; man was made in the image of God, and placed in the garden to dress and to keep it; matrimony was instituted; and God, resting from his labor, sanctified the Seventh Day, as a day of holy rest to man. The Iron Age was introduced by the temptation of a foreigner, who obtruded himself into Paradise, and persuaded its happy denizens to cast off the golden yoke of obedience and love to God. Man, desiring independence, became a rebel against Heaven, a miserable captive of sin and Satan, obnoxious to the Divine displeasure, and exposed to eternal death. The law was violated; the image of God was lost, and the enemy came in like a flood. All communication between the island of time and the continent of immortality was cut off, and the unhappy exiles saw no hope of crossing the ocean that intervened. The Messiah’s Age may be divided into three parts; the time of Preparation, the time of Actual War, and the time of Victory and Triumph. The Preparation began with the dawning of the day in Eden, when Messiah came in the ship of the Promise, and landed on the island of Time, and notified its inhabitants of his gracious intention to visit them again, and assume their nature, and live and die among them; to break their covenant allegiance to the prince of the iron yoke; and deliver to them the charter, signed and sealed with his own blood, for the redemption and renovation of their island, and the restoration of its suspended intercourse with the land of Eternal Life. The motto inscribed upon the banners of this age was, – “He shall bruise thy heel, and thou shalt

Sustaining such a relation to other ages and events, they were necessarily imperfect, consisting “only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances,” not intended for perpetual observance, but imposed upon the Jewish people merely “until the time of reformation,” when the shadow should give place to the substance, and a Greater than Moses should “make all things new.” Let us notice the time of reformation, and the reformation itself. I. Time may be divided into three parts; the Golden Age before the fall, the Iron Age after the fall, and the Messiah’s Age of Jubilee. In the Golden Age, the heavens and the earth were created; the garden of Eden was planted; man was made in the image of God, and placed in the garden

DEPRESSING VIEWS OF HIMSELF For several years after this, Mr. Evans entertained painfully depressing views of his Christian character and ministerial talents. He thought every other believer had more light than himself, and every other preacher greater gifts. He called himself “a mass of ignorance and sin.” He imagined his discourses entirely useless to his hearers. This he attributed partly to his habit of repeating them memoriter. Others appeared to him to speak extemporaneously, and he “thought they received their sermons directly from heaven,” while he, by memorizing his, forfeited the aid of the Holy Spirit. “I therefore changed my method,” says he, “and took a text without any premeditation, and endeavored to speak what occurred to me at the time. If bad before, it was worse now. I had neither sense nor life, nothing but a poor miserable tone, which