Rev. Robert Emms Bradfield was born at North Elmham, Norfolk, February 8th, 1818. Died at Rushden, November 16th, 1879.

FOREWORD

(By Rev. J. A. Sutherland, of Park Street Baptist Church, Luton, and until recently minister of Park Road Baptist Church, Rushden.)

Rushden, more than most places of its size, has been influenced by the changes of the last half century. During that period it has developed from a commonplace village into a prosperous and attractive town.

In the circumstances one would have excused a tendency on the part of the present generation to forget the past. It is the more gratifying on that account that the name and fame of one who lived (and I might say reigned) there in the middle decades of the last century remains a household word throughout the district.

Rev. Robert Emms Bradfield has required no tangible memorial although certainly he has deserved it. Older people still revere his memory, and they have so familiarised the younger generations with his doings and sayings that to many of them he has been made to seem a contemporary.

Few things in Rushden impressed me more than the frequent testimonies volunteered to me regarding Mr. Bradfield's worth. While there, I also discovered that his was no parochial reputation. Older ministers of the denomination, and an occasional theological professor, when referring to the Rushden Church would recall my predecessor's name and, invariably, would add some appreciative reminiscence.                                                                               

The marvel is that Rushden retained him for so many years. He did not lack opportunities to go elsewhere, and his going would have been to his material advantage. The " Old Top Meeting," as the Baptist Church was then called, remained his one and only choice, and there for twenty-three years he exercised a notable ministry. November 16th, 1879, marked his passing, and it was a day of mourning throughout the entire community.

Mr. Bradfield was not only a greatly esteemed pastor and preacher but a lecturer and platform speaker of considerable repute. As an anniversary visitor to other churches he was an attraction over a wide area. Social reforms found in him a wise and fearless champion. The story of his efforts on behalf of nonconformity, temperance, education and the extension of the franchise would make an interesting volume. Unfortunately our Julius Caesar wrote no story of his campaigns. In fact, the entire written records of Mr. Bradfield's ministry are surprisingly meagre.

There are those who, valuing his life and work, were anxious lest with the passing of time his memory should in any wise fade in the town whose progress he foretold, and whose success he, more than any man of his generation, helped to establish. It is a satisfaction, therefore, that on the fiftieth anniversary of his passing, his son, Mr. C. L. Bradfield, has been prevailed upon to authorise the reissue of his father's last sermon. It was delivered in Rushden within a few months of the preacher's death, and while he himself knew that the end was near. Copious notes were used, and these, at Mr. Bradfield's own request, were edited and somewhat enlarged by Rev. James Seager, then minister at Thrapston. The sermon needs no commendation of mine. They were privileged villagers in those years who listened to such preaching.

Mr. Bradfield used to say that he never had any educational advantages. No one, from reading this sermon would draw such an inference, nor would they if they perused the essay on the keeping of the Christian Sabbath which he wrote while still a journeyman painter in Cam­bridge. In an open competition for the British Isles that essay was awarded the first prize, which the author journeyed to London to receive at the hand of the great Earl Shaftesbury in Exeter Hall.

After fifty years his sermon will revive memories and also, I hope, create fresh interest in the Norfolk-born man whose influence for good still abides in Rushden and beyond it.   

                                                           J.A.S.

Note.—The original edition of this sermon was printed in 1880. The present edition is issued by Mr. C. L. Bradfield in order to gratify the wishes of many who still cherish loving remembrances of his father.

This Sermon is issued from the Press because it is believed that such a Memorial will be valued by many who learned to esteem and love the author while he lived and laboured among us; and also because it is hoped that he being dead may yet speak words of cheer and courage to those who are journeying towards the fuller life into which he has entered.

Those who heard this last Sermon will doubtless miss some things which fell from the preacher's lips at the time, and perhaps they will be surprised to find phrases here and there which are new to them. This arises from, the fact that the deceased preached from copious notes, which I have to some extent enlarged, according to a request made by my friend as he lay upon his death-bed.

James Seager.

Thrapston, May, 1880.

LIFE FROM DEATH

John xii. 24.

Robert Emms Bradfield

"Verily, verily, I say unts you,, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."

THESE words show that our Lord Jesus Christ had two things in mind at the time of their utterance - a wonderful and beautiful process in the realm of nature, and a yet more marvellous and glorious arrangement in the scheme of redemption. He uses the former to throw light upon the latter, since He is Lord of both. When, therefore, the Lord speaks of nature and redemption He is speaking of His own works. And so His words appeal to us with all the authority of one who has perfect knowledge of the great book of nature and of the glorious scheme of redemption.

All that our Lord said was important, but there were times when He spoke with peculiar emphasis. The intensity of His feelings or the importance of the truth He was about to utter sometimes called forth the impressive preface, "Verily, verily, I say unto you." The use of this solemn introduction in the case before us should im­press us with the fact that Jesus Himself attached great importance to what He was about to say. No doubt the chief significance of these weighty words is found in the tragic scenes which were now brought so vividly before the Saviour's mind and in the wondrous spiritual lessons which spring out of the text, when it is regarded as an analogy; but it may be profitable for us to confine our attention for a few moments to the physical law of which we are here reminded.

I.—Let us notice, then, first of all, what Christ says concerning an important and beautiful law of nature.

Take a well-ripened grain of wheat, perfect in every sense, and put it into a casket, costly and beautiful. Preserve that grain of wheat as carefully as you would preserve a jewel of great value. Now go and open your casket, say at the end of three weeks or a month. Do you see any change in the corn of wheat you deposited therein? Any swelling of the outer shell; any sign of a tiny green shoot? No, there is not a hint that germination has commenced. Wait as many months as you have waited weeks, and look again. Is there any change? None. Go and look once more when a year has nearly elapsed. Still you have only a solitary grain in a cold, hard case, not a repetition in miniature of what is taking place in the fields around, no rich well-ripened ears are there. Why? It has not died, and so "it abideth alone." But now take that same grain of wheat and put it in the ground. It matters not whether you let it fall into the garden of the peasant, or into the wide open field of the farmer, only let it fall into the ground that it may die, and new life will spring from its decay. Close guarded in your costly casket it abides alone. Lay it in the bosom of nature and through all the vicissitudes of autumn, winter, spring and summer, she will guard and nourish it and give you in return the blade, the ear, and the full corn in the ear. For the single grain an increase of many, many fold. Repeat the process again and again, and in a much shorter time than many of you dream of, every acre of corn-growing land in our world might be sown with the produce of a single corn of wheat—so great is its fruitfulness. And all this, so to speak, from the death of that one grain that abode alone so long as it was retained in the casket. Life and fruitfulness spring from death. Not that the whole of the grain dies. For I hardly need remind you that there is a tiny germ contained therein which does not die. But the greater part—the surrounding matter—is decomposed, and in its decay is as beautifully adapted to feed that tiny germ until its rootlets can strike out and gather nourishment from the soil into which it has been cast, even as the milk of the mother sheep is adapted to sustain the life of the lamb till it can crop the flowery mead for itself.

"Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Here, then, we not only have a very beautiful but a most important law of nature. Not merely a renewal, but an immense increase of the grain. I have called this process a law of nature: let me rather call it God's will working through nature. For we are not fed, as some would have us believe, by some strange machinery set in motion, we know not how, nearly 100 centuries ago, and left to govern itself ever since. No, no, 'tis a Father's ear that hears the prayer ascending daily from 10,000 times 10,000 tongues—"Give us this day our daily bread"; a Father's heart that responds to the cry of His needy creatures; and a Father's hand that sends the supply just as surely as when the Israelites gathered that heaven-sent food in the desert of Sinai, or when the multitudes on the hill-sides of Galilee received the broken barley-cakes, after our Saviour had miraculously multiplied the scanty store.

II.—We notice, in the second place, that Christ here alludes to this law of nature to illustrate a most important feature of the great scheme of redemption.

He is speaking of Himself and of His own work under the guise of an agricultural figure, when He says—"Except a corn of wheat fall," etc. Various circumstances have brought the cross and the sepulchre vividly before His mind. And so He speaks of His death—that death fore­told and fore-shadowed in the garden of Eden; foretold in that declaration, "Thou shalt bruise His heel," and fore-shadowed in the death of those animals the skins of which God used for clothing our first parents.

(1) Now see what stress Christ lays upon the importance of His death. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone."He applies that saying to Himself, and so in effect says that if He did not die His mission would be without results. Suppose the incarna­tion had taken place, that Christ had taught great spiritual truths, and that he had wrought mighty miracles, and then had returned to heaven, like Enoch, without passing through the dark gateway of the grave, or in some fiery chariot as Elijah did. Where would have been the glorious issues which have since sprung from that wondrous humili­ation of Calvary? Angels there would have been, but not a redeemed family of human beings. No blood-bought, blood-washed church. For even those faithful souls who ascended to heaven from the church of the Old Testament dispensation entered through the merits of that sacrifice which their faith dimly anticipated as they listened to the glorious utterances of prophetic rapture, or gazed upon the consuming symbol of the coming "Lamb of God." "Faith in His blood" secures "remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God," Paul told the Romans. So he teaches us that the hope of Jew and Gentile centres in the Christ "who died for our sins and rose again for our justification." Apart from the death of Christ we have no hope of life. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone."

Well, then, if this be so, how should we glory in the Lord who died for us. With what reverence and gratitude should we contemplate not only the Lord who became man and walked this earth of ours ; not only the God-man who has ascended again to His place at the Father's right hand; but the Saviour who died on Calvary that by His death He might give life to multitudes "dead in trespasses and sins". No doubt low, vulgar, commercial representations of the atonement have given some ground for the scornful remarks of some who deny it, or so explain it away that there is nothing tangible left. But they who have nothing to present to the anxious enquirer, or to the distressed dying one who asks, "What must I do to be saved?" commit a greater error than those who hold what is called a low, commercial view of the atonement. Men may err when they attempt to define the details of a system, but about the broad fact there can be no mistake if we take the Scriptures as our guide:—"Without shedding of blood there is no remission. It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." But "the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin". The shedding of this blood—the sacrificial death of Christ was fore-shadowed by the bleeding lamb offered by the first martyr, Abel, and by the countless victims of the old Jewish ritual. It was foretold by a long line of Hebrew prophets, and by none more clearly than by him who cried—"He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed." It was the grand theme in which the great Apostle of the Gentiles gloried. Hear how he wrote to the Corinthians: "I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified"; or listen as with yet more enthusiasm he says to the Galatians, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ." It was this in which our fathers trusted; it is this which forms the song of the redeemed in heaven; it is this which ever shall give meaning to the great tide of thanksgiving which through endless ages shall flow around the throne of God. Well then may the death of Christ be the rock of our hope and the theme of our song.

"In the Cross of Christ I glory,
Towering o'er the wrecks of time:
All the light of sacred story
Gathers round its head sublime.

"When the woes of life o'ertake me,
Hopes deceive and fears annoy,
Never shall the Cross forsake me;
Lo! it glows with peace and joy.

"Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure,
By the Cross are sanctified;
Peace is there, that knows no measure,
Joys, that through all time abide."

(2) See, too, how Christ anticipates the glorious results of His death in this passage :—"If it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." I cannot pretend to explain all the glorious truth that is wrapped up in that brief phrase; but I will remind you of some of the blessed results of our Saviour's life and death. His resurrection and ascension—and I can only stay long enough just to remind you of these, and then pass on.

By His own sinless offering He has freed those who trust in Him from the well-deserved penalty of their sins. By suffering the penalty of the law He answered its demands on man's behalf. So that justice has no claims against those who rest in His sufficient sacrifice; the judgment bar, the grave, the dark prison-house of hell suggest no terrors to that soul to whom the Holy Spirit has proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ. "He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us."

The risen Lord bestows the powers of a new life. Just before His ascension He said, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth." One result of this endowment is the bestowal of the Holy Ghost, whose work it is to break down the barrier of unwillingness, as it was the work of the suffering Saviour to do away with the legal hindrances which stood in the way of the sinner's return to a holy God. 'Tis His work to show men their sin, their danger, and their need of Christ. 'Tis His work to illuminate the darkened mind, to spur the sluggish will, and to encourage the fainting heart. This may be deemed very old theology, but I think it is just about eighteen centuries and a half old, i.e., the right age. If you go back further than that you get to ritualism; if you choose a more modern theology you come upon rationalism. I look upon the Holy Ghost as I do upon the fire in a locomotive engine. There are the rails properly laid, the engine beautifully constructed, the carriages securely attached; but the train does not move. Why? There is no fire to send the steam flying through the pipes and valves of the engine. Light the fire : get up the steam : and then the train goes thundering along its iron way. The Holy Spirit is the fire that puts force and motion into hearts that were stony, cold and motionless towards religion.

Again, the Lord who "died for our sins and rose again for our justification", bestows a motive for action as well as the power of movement. If we are saved we are saved that we may serve Him. But what is the constraining motive? Love! "We love Him because He first loved us." Not simply because we have learned that those who do not love Him go to hell; not simply because we have learned that those who do love Him go to heaven; no, but because we have felt His love kindling our love and constraining to grateful service.

"Knowledge, alas ! 'tis all in vain,
And all in vain our fear;
Our stubborn sins will fight and reign,
If Love be absent there."

But what event is it in Christ's history that calls love into exercise more than any other? The falling of the seed-corn into the ground, or as Paul puts it: — "The love of Christ constraineth us because we thus judge that if One died for all," etc. (II Cor. v. 14.)

Once more, the falling of the seed-corn and its rising again secures and pledges heaven to those who trust Him. I said just now that He saves from hell, but this is carrying the thought further, for the two things may be thought of as distinct. For example: a man, holding an important situation, robs his employer and gets thrown into prison. It is one thing to get him liberated from prison, but another thing to restore him to his situation, or even to clear the way for his return. But Christ has done both. We are not only "delivered from going down to the pit" through His redeeming death, for He is also "the Captain of our salvation", who brings His "many sons unto glory."

These are some, but only some, of the fruits of the divine seed-corn that was sown in Joseph's garden. Already large portions of our globe are yielding a glorious harvest of living sanctified souls, and He is yet to "see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied." All the earth is to be sown with the seed of truth and to yield a glorious harvest of righteousness. For is it not said that "all the earth shall see the salvation of our God"? Already the redeemed children of earth are gathering home from every clime and communing with the illustrious fathers of the chosen race, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And ere the end shall come these isolated units shall swell into a multitude which no man can number, and all heaven shall ring with the jubilant song that surges round the throne of the once slain Lamb :— "Thou art worthy—for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and nation, and people."

III.—In the third place we will look at the great principle laid down here in its relation to the first disciples of Christ.

Such a representation of the great redemptive plan was, well calculated to sustain the hearts of Christ's earliest adherents during the great crisis that was fast approaching. Christ had spoken of being glorified. This the disciples, wished. But the object of their ambition differed widely from the glory that Christ anticipated. They had seen Him riding triumphantly into Jerusalem, His way bestrewn with branches of palm, the air ringing with the exultant cry—"Hosanna to the Son of David : blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest." And they had probably entertained the secret idea that He would break the Roman yoke, seize the reins of government, and consent to receive the homage of a liberated people. But God's ways are not man's ways. Christ had a sublimer plan. He was going to be glorified, but not in their way. His method was to pass through death to life: by the cross to the crown: by humiliation and shame to exaltation and glory. He came to found a kingdom, the members of which should be more numerous than the subjects of any other monarch; but these were to be souls emancipated from the yoke of hell—regenerated living spirits—the "much fruit" of His own death and resurrection. The crisis was at hand, which was not only to secure these grand results, but which would also severely test the faith of the disciples. Christ's public ministry was nearly ended. The passover was at hand, the ordinance called "The Lord's Supper" was just about to be instituted. Soon the bloody sweat, the betrayal, the arrest, the mock-trials and the cross will bring about the tragic end. Christ was well aware of the darkness that yet remained in the minds of His disciples. He knew that when they beheld His deep degradation and suffering death they would read therein the sign of defeat—that those men who hoped that in Him they had found the Redeemer of Israel, would think their prospects utterly blighted.

Now what  could be  so  calculated  to  support  those disciples when they should see Him die as this assurance that His death was but the putting of the divine seed-corn into the ground that it might yield a fruitful and glorious harvest? What so likely to cheer their sorrowing hearts as this declaration that from death He would rise to a life that should never end; that from the cross He would ascend to many crowns; that from ignominy He would travel to highest glory, "leading captivity captive"? Oh! had they but grasped the Master's idea, instead of giving way to grief after His sufferings were over, how might they have sung the whole of that Jewish sabbath of His rising power and of the glorious fruitfulness of His death, and so prepared themselves for a part in the reaping of the more than golden harvest.

IV.—We have considered the teaching of the text in its relation to nature, to the Saviour, and to His disciples. Now, in conclusion, let us notice two or three practical lessons which demand a modern application.

(I) Here we may learn the shortsightedness of the enemies of the cross. The Jews were afraid that Christ's teaching, if allowed to continue, would become the foundation of a new sect, or of a kingdom. They hoped that by killing Him they would at the same time kill His doctrines. Vain hope ! They could no more destroy the influence of His Gospel by such means than men would prevent a harvest by taking corn from the granary and scattering it in the open fields. 'Tis ever so. Persecution over-reaches itself. They put John Bunyan in prison that he might not preach to a few people round Bedford, and he has been preaching to the world well-nigh ever since, and will preach as long as time shall last. They hanged John Brown, and his funeral knell was also the knell of slavery. Thus Truth triumphs. The death of her teachers cannot arrest her onward march, for she comes from God, and, like her great Author, is imperishable.

(2) Here, too, we may find some direction and encouragement for Christian workers. Many of the great Teacher's texts were taken out of the book of nature. When He would guard men against wearing anxiety He bade them "consider the lilies of the field";  when He would warn them of the danger of hearing without profit He reminded them of "a sower", who went forth to sow his seed; when He would impress upon His disciples' hearts the importance of union with Him He spoke of the vine and its branches. His example, therefore, teaches us that in trying to impart the truths of His religion to others we shall do well to turn to nature for illustrations of the sublimer messages of revelation.

Nature may encourage the teacher as well as guide him in his work. Teachers are sowers, who will by and by be reapers. Whoever works for God casts in seed which must result in a glad harvest, because the work is His, not ours; the sigh of those who sow in tears shall be followed by the joy of the reaper and the shout of "Harvest Home."

(3) Once more, here the Christian may find comfort in anticipation of trial and death.

The Saviour does not teach His disciples to expect that they will escape the trials of earth. But if they only grasped what He does teach as to their meaning, how these things would be robbed of their power to sadden their spirits. He has taught us that the intention of the trials of this life is to prepare us for the fruitage of a nobler life. These attacks upon our bodies, in the shape of painful diseases: upon our possessions, in the shape of losses: upon our hearts, in the shape of bereavements—what are they all but the working out of the old law, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit"? Like the wheat kernel the external settings of our lives often have to be destroyed in order that the germs of a truer life may flourish. We must die to self if we would live to God. But, thanks be to Him, the trial comes to prepare for the triumph.

"Then heavenward rise;
'Tis heaven in kindness
That mars our bliss,
To heal our blindness,
Hope from vanity to sever,
Offering joys that bloom for ever."

Let us also seek the comfort that this text affords to Christians in view of that last and most solemn of all changes—death. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Oh! how does such a saying as this take the bitterness out of the prospect of that last trial for those who are assured that through trust in Christ they have a part in that harvest of immortality of which He is the first fruits. That grim ordeal from which flesh naturally shrinks is but the necessary introduction to the golden harvest of blessing. So long as this bodily life gathers round us the ignorance and weakness, the pains and poverty, the sins and sorrows of earth, the soul is prevented from entering upon the fruition of holiness and joy that awaits the redeemed. "Corruption cannot inherit incorruption." The body must die that the soul may rise to larger and diviner life. Here, as elsewhere, God's order is—life from death.

If these things be so, then why should we fear, Christian brethren and sisters, when death seems to handle our poor bodies so roughly; why shudder, though earth opens the door to so dark a sleeping place? It is, after all, only the sowing in order to the revival of a larger and grander life. The seed-corn must be thrust into the ground, and the outer part must die that the germ may be nourished, and rise to have a place in the coming harvest. "So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. . . . For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."