The faithful servant: A sermon, preached in St. Peter's, Southborough, on occasion of the death of the Rev. Stephen LangstonHoare, Edward
Religion
The faithful servant: A sermon, preached in St. Peter's, Southborough, on occasion of the death of the Rev. Stephen Langston
Hoare, Edward
Funeral sermons; Langston, Stephen, -1878 -- Death and burial -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
not an illustration of the truth of the promise, “Train up a child in the
way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it?” And is
there not a word also for young men? Does it not call on them to begin
early, and to begin at once, and in the midst of all the play, and all
the work of early life, to fall down before God’s footstool, and cry,
“Lord save me, Lord make me thine, now, at once, and for ever?”
(2.) HE WAS FAITHFUL IN HIS STABILITY.
It is sixty-three years since he was ordained to the ministry, but
throughout the whole of that long period he was never known to waver.
And how full of disturbing causes has that whole period been! The minds
of men have been unsettled, and there has been a general shaking of
thought. The stagnation which prevailed when he commenced his ministry
has given place to a general fermentation, and during those sixty-three
years we have had wave after wave passing over the Church. In his early
days there was great excitement about the gift of tongues and prophecy
under the leadership of that wonderful christian orator EDWARD IRVING.
Then followed what we used to call “tractarianism,” taught by that master
mind NEWMAN, and since developed in the open Romanism of the Ritualist.
Then arose those who call themselves “The Brethren,” as if they alone
were children in the Lord’s family, and who have done so much to disturb
and unsettle those who have been walking most conscientiously with God.
And lastly, there was wafted from America what many welcome as a new rule
for holiness. In addition to all which there have been from without the
steady efforts of Popery to pervert the purity, and of Infidelity to sap
the foundations of the faith. So wave has followed wave, but in the
midst of it all our venerable friend was kept firm as a rock with his
principles unchanged, and his faith unshaken. As a consistent and honest
Churchman he rejoiced in the thirty-nine Articles, and never for one
moment wavered in his fidelity to their clear testimony to the truth of
God. And as a student of sacred Scripture, he clung to the great, grand
distinctive truths of the Gospel, such as atonement through the
substitution of the Lord Jesus, justification by faith, new birth by the
Holy Ghost, sanctification by the Spirit, preservation through God’s
unchanging faithfulness, and a full salvation in all its parts through
the free grace that is in Christ Jesus. These were the great principles
of his faith and ministry all through his life, and through God’s mercy
nothing shook him. You may compare the old man of eighty-six with the
boy of sixteen, and you will find no change in principle. You may
compare the last Sermon preached last year with the first Sermon which
was preached in his father’s pulpit in the year 1815, and you will find
the great message substantially the same. As he himself said, the last
time he occupied this pulpit, “In the Church where I was baptized, in the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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