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SERMON V.

2 TIMOTHY, iv. 10.

"DEMAS HATH FORSAKEN ME, HAVING LOVED THIS PRESENT WORLD."

OF Demas no other mention than this is made in Scripture; save that, in the Epistle to the Colossians, he is joined with Luke, in sending his salutation to that church; and that, in the Epistle to Philemon, St. Paul styles him his fellow-labourer. Of the ancient ecclesiastical historians, some assert that he became an utter apostate from the faith, and at length a priest to heathen idols. Others, on the contrary, maintain that he recovered from his fall, and was afterwards a bishop in the Christian church. But these matters do not much affect us. All that is necessary for us to know of the character of Demas, is revealed in my text: and may we, every one, take warning by his example.

To consider his conduct in the least striking point of view, it shews how injuriously persons, who yield to the temptations of the world, will act, in those relations which bind man to man.

St. Paul uses no reproachful terms, but simply relates the fact, that Demas had forsaken him. If, however, we look to the time and circumstances of this desertion, we find, first of all, that it happened when the apostle, amidst so many trials, was left with but one solitary companion. "Only," says he, "Luke is with me." It was, also, when Paul was a prisoner in captivity at Rome. It was, moreover, in his old age; and, above all, when the hour of his martyrdom, as we find in this very chapter, was at hand. This was no time, if I may so speak, for Demas to desert his friend and father in the Gospel.

But this apostate was far more than ungenerous to a fellow-mortal. In forsaking Paul, he forsook God. And so it is in every instance, in which we reject the pious counsels of ministers, parents, or any who are placed in authority over us. "No man hath seen God at any time." God does not speak to us immediately, as one man speaks to another. He speaks to us through means, and messengers, and through the appointed channels of his grace and providence. And if these are rejected, it is not the mere instrument we reject, but that God who uses it. "He that heareth you," says our Lord to his disciples, "heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me." It is in this sense, I say, that Demas, in forsaking

Paul, forsook God. He turned his back upon the man who stood, as it were, between God and him: and, in so doing, took the opposite direction from both and moved away from the greater, as well as from the lesser light, thus acting in conjunction together.

Prone as we are, by nature, to depart from the living God, to do so is, to say the least of it, the utmost extreme of folly. It is the part of a wise man, to fly from danger. But to forsake God, is to fly from him who is the shield and the security of his creatures. The mariner, tossed by the tempest, and over whose head the waves are towering, seeks some firm ground on which to cast his anchor; or looks around, if haply he may descry some peaceful and well-sheltered haven. Such a refuge is God to the human soul. Cast as we are, on life's tempestuous ocean, there is no other point of rest to which the mind can fly. Sheltered beneath that Rock of Ages, we are in the very citadel of safety. Let us keep close in there, and though all the powers of darkness were in league against us, it would be a vain confederacy. And in that blessed fortress, we are secured, not only against the present dangers, which the whole compass of creation could collect around us; but against whatever of fear or of alarm may fill the

trackless regions of the future, or lie in the dark and exhaustless womb of the eternity to come.

In truth, if men could be brought to reflect upon themselves, and on what they are; if they would consider what it is, to have been awakened into an existence which will never end; if they kept in mind, that they are now embarked on a voyage, which, willing or unwilling, they must prosecute throughout eternity: they would then know the value of having an all-powerful, unchangeable, and everlasting friend. And such is God, to all who accept the mercies which are freely offered, and fly to the refuge set before them in the Gospel. The man who thus casts himself upon God, as upon the bosom of a Father reconciled in Christ Jesus, is freed from every painful apprehension. He fears no evil tidings, for his heart standeth fast, believing in the Lord.

But man does not merely want security: he is athirst for happiness. There is bound up in the very root and essence of the soul, the desire of some supreme and satisfying good. We breathe, instinctively, after some enjoyment pure and unalloyed; an enjoyment, which, little as men in general realize it, they still press after, with unabated ardour. Nor can any disappointments cause them to doubt the existence of the object

they have been so long pursuing, and never finding. For they feel that they are formed-their capacities, their affections, their insatiable longings, their boundless appetites-that all that is within them, is formed to rest in such an object, or to continue restless for ever. It is this intense desire of pure, unmingled happiness, which sends man's darkened soul through all the haunts and mazes of false pleasure, of sensuality, novelty, and ambition. He takes these for the streams for which his nature pants: but he drinks them, and thirsts again. The aching void is still unfilled; the burning fever is still upon his lips: for these are not the water that springeth up into everlasting life. God alone can fill and satisfy the soul. All its breathings after happiness, are but its native tendencies to God; are but the murmurings of the stream, until it mingles again with the parent ocean. Since God is, then, the centre of all substantial good, it would be our wisdom, if now hovering on the most distant borders of creation, to traverse all the regions of trackless space, in order that we might reach this central source of happiness. What then is the madness of those, who have the living fountains near them, and who yet leave them, and forsake God!

But, to do so, is not less vile than it is hostile to our truest interest. To forsake God, is to turn