Luke 14:23

Luke 14:23

Acceptance of Religious Privileges Compulsory.

I. Consider what first of all presents itself to our thoughts our birth into the world. Allow that this is a world of enjoyment, yet unquestionably it is a world of care and pain. Also, most men will judge that the pain on the whole exceeds the enjoyment on the whole. But whether this be so or not with most men, even if there be oneman in the whole world who thinks so, that is enough for my purpose. It is enough if only there be one person to be found, who thinks sickness, disappointment, anxiety, affliction, suffering, fear, to be such grievous ills, that he had rather not have been born. If this be the sentiment only of one man, that man, it is plain, is, as regards his very existence, what the Christian is relatively to his new birth an unwilling recipient of a gift. We are not asked whether we will choose this world, before we are born into it. We are brought under the yoke of it, whether we will or no; since we plainly cannot choose or not choose, before the power of choice is bestowed on us, this gift of a mortal nature.

II. Such is our condition as men; it is the same as Christians. For instance, we are not allowed to grow up before choosing our religion. We are baptized in infancy. Our sponsors promise for us. We find ourselves Christians; and our duty is, not to consider what we should do if we were not Christians, not to go about disputing, sifting the evidence for Christianity, weighing this side or that, but to act upon the rules given us, till we have reason to think them wrong, and to bring home to ourselves the truth of them, as we go on, by acting upon them by their fruits on ourselves.

III. We have the remarkable facts (1) that whole households were baptized by the Apostles, which must include slaves as well as children. (2) The usage existed in the Early Church of bringing such as had the necessary gifts to ordination, without asking their consent. (3) Consider the conduct of the Church from the very first time any civil countenance was extended towards it, and you will have a fresh instance of the constraining principle of which I speak. What are national conversions, when kings submitted to the Gospel and their people followed, but going out into the highways and hedges, and compelling men to come in? And though we can conceive cases in which this urgency was unwisely, over-strongly, unseasonably, or too extensively applied, yet the principle of it is no other than that of the baptism of households mentioned in the Acts.

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. iv., p. 52.

References: Luke 14:23. J. Fraser, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 1; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. v., No. 227.