Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

⁸ For wherefore are you disturbed? Your heart is disturbed by the pressing troubles of the world, as that ship was, in which Christ was asleep. Lo! What is the cause, stout-hearted man, that your heart is disturbed? That ship in which Christ is asleep, is the heart in which faith is asleep. For what new thing, what new thing, I ask, is told you, Christian? “In Christian times is the world laid waste, the world is failing.” Did not your Lord tell you, the world shall be laid waste?

Did not your Lord tell you, the world shall fail? Why when the promise was made, did you believe, and art disturbed now, when it is being completed? So then the tempest beats furiously against your heart; beware of shipwreck, awake up Christ. The Apostle says, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” Christ dwells in you by faith. Present faith, is Christ present; waking faith, is Christ awake; slumbering faith, is Christ asleep. Arise and stir yourself; say, “Lord, we perish.”

See what the Heathen say to us; and what is worse, what evil Christians say! Awake up, O Lord, we perish. Let your faith awake, and Christ begins to speak to you. “'Why are you troubled?' I told you beforehand of all these things. I foretold them, that when evils came, you might hope for good things, that you might not faint in the evil.” Do you wonder that the world is failing? Wonder that the world is grown old. It is as a man who is born, and grows up, and waxes old. There are many complaints in old age; the cough, the rheum, the weakness of the eyes, fretfulness, and weariness.

So then as when a man is old; he is full of complaints; so is the world old; and is full of troubles. Is it a little thing that God has done for you, in that in the world's old age, He has sent Christ unto you, that He may renew you then, when all is failing? Do you not know that He notified this in the seed of Abraham? “The seed of Abraham,” says the Apostle, “which is Christ. He says not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of One, And to your seed, which is Christ.” Therefore was there a son born to Abraham in his old age, because in the old age of this world was Christ to come.

He came when all things were growing old, and made them new. As a made, created, perishing thing, the world was now declining to its fall. It could not but be that it should abound in troubles; He came both to console you in the midst of present troubles, and to promise you everlasting rest. Choose not then to cleave to this aged world, and to be unwilling to grow young in Christ, who tells you, The world is perishing, the world is waxing old, the world is failing; is distressed by the heavy breathing of old age. But do not fear, “Your youth shall be renewed as the eagle's.”