Inner Life
At this moment I am writing’ in the Valley of Chamounix, and from my window I can see Mont Blanc, among whose silent fields of ice and snow I could surely find the solitude for Avliich my heart pines, in view of attempting to tell something of that heart’s life and faith. They are poor reminiscences that are confined to the limited and external. If I were to pass in silence what I may call the history of my soul, I should feel that I had been ungrateful to the providence ol’ God and unfaithful to the inspirations which have formed and sustained my ministry during all the years of its course.
Eternal Spirit! help me now to
tell how it was that 1 decided to
give my whole life to the side of
things best exjjressed by the name
So
of Christ and by the triumphant
sorrow of His Cross.
I cannot remember the time when I did not in some degree knoAV the love of God’s only Son. From a child I knew the Holy Scripture, for it was the hook most read in our house; from a child, also, though sinning oft and sinning deeply, I have known somewhat of tender spiritual experience. From my earliest recollection I have found supreme delight in prayer — prayer in that large sense which implies intimate and continuous communion with God. From the beginning until now my highest joy has been in solitary companionship with the Eternal Spirit, my very heart going out after Him with ardent and tender desire. I remember the Sunday night when, walking with my father and a most intelligent Sunday-school teacher, I declared my love to Christ and asked Him to take my child heart into His own gracious keeping. The whole scene is ever before me. The two men, father and teacher, explained to me what they knew of the power and the grace of Christ, and by many loving words they tempted my tongue into its first audible expression of religious thought and feeling. It was a summer evening, according to the reckoning of the calendar, but according to a higher calendar, it was in very deed a Sunday morning, through whose white light and emblematic dew and stir of awakening life I saw the gates of the Kingdom and the Face of the King.
Prom first to last I have enjoyed the consciousness of thorough steadfastness of faith in relation to the holy verities of the Christian religion. I have, like other growing and struggling men, had my fears and doubts, my momentary hesitations and scepticisms, my misgivings and periods of self-examination; but my central faith in the Triune God, in the Atonement of Christ, in the Deity of the Holy Spirit, in the immortality of the soul, in the inspiration and authority of Holy Scripture has never for a moment been shaken. These are the green pastures and these the still waters by which my soul has been nourished. In 1867 I wrote “Eccc Deus,” in which I avowed my faith in the deity of the Son of God, and now in 1898 I repeat every word of that book with gratitude and unction. In 1874 I wrote “The Paraclete,” an Essay on the Personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit, and on reading it in 1898 I subscribe it alike with hand and heart. I have never had so much as one momentary doubt as to the Deity of Jesus of Nazareth. That holy certainty has kept all the other articles of faith in their proper place. Mine has been a ministry founded upon the conception of a Triune Deity, — a mystery not to be explained in sufficing words, but to be felt more and more as the largeness of human life and the depths of spiritual experience have been more and more fully realised. My relation to the Bible has never changed. That God has spoken to man is to me an unchangeable certainty, and that He has spoken more definitely and more authoritatively in the Bible than elsewhere is a conviction which never lapses. ‘^I early came to see that I have not to invent a Bible, but to read one; that I have not to fabricate a Gospel out of my own religious consciousness, but to preach a Gospel personified in Christ and Avritteu in the four narratives of His life. But for these central convictions my reminiscences would have to take a very different turn. They would have to record hesitations, doubts, speculations, intellectual adventures, and spiritual nightmares. Here and there I will noAV touch upon some of the chief points of my ministry, only protecting myself by the reservation that I make no attempt at a complete theological statement.
Personally I have accepted what is. known as the Evangelical interpretation of the Gospel, because I believe that the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, as evangelically interpreted, answers more questions, satisfies more aspirations, responds to more necessities, and supplies better motives for service than any other conception of the Kingdom of God.
That is my position. I am too well aware that there arc special intellectual moods which can dispense with what is familiarly known as the Gospel of salvation by grace. But they are intellectual moods only; they are not moods of the whole man. No one mood can represent the totality of a complex nature. It is to my mind the very glory of the Evangelical conception of Christ’s person and doctrine that it is equally strong at every point in dealing with the whole circuit of human necessity and aspiration. “We do injustice to ourselves, as well as to the doctrine of Christ, by remitting the decision to any one faculty or any one separated set of faculties. The spiritual Christ is not to be tried at the bar of any one Pilate. He must be examined, cross-examined, impeached, defended, suspected, trusted by an infinitely larger and truer criticism. Then, and not until then, can a competent verdict be returned. Pure reason is not sufficient, because the acutest feelings are vitally and deeply involved; nor is feeling sufficient, because reason is called to answer the greatest challenges ever addressed to finite understanding. Historical fact is too limited a basis, because the atmosphere is of as much importance as the literal event; and, on the other hand, imagination itself is too vague, unless it recognise and appreciate the divinely constructed framework of history. The spiritual Christ must be judged by the whole court of judges; and, thus taken in His totality, I repeat, He will answer more questions, satisfy more aspirations, respond to more necessities, and supply truer motives for service than any man who has ever claimed the supremacy of the ages.
I am aware that in receiving the Christ of the NcAV Testament I am committing myself to the doctrine of Avliat is called the supernatural. I object to the word. It is not in the New Testament. Christ never used it. The apostles never used it. Who invented the word “supernatural “? The New Testament word is “spiritual” as opposed to “natural,” That word we are hound to accept. On certain conditions we might occasionally use the word supernatural, hut about all these toy-words we must he wisely cautious. Men invent such indiaruhhersuhstantives as secularism, socialism, agnosticism, positivism, altruism, and then challenge the pulj)it to define its relation to them. The pulpit has a higher work to do. The Gospel has its own secularism, its Own altruism, its own agnosticism; and if it stop to notice and rehuke vicious definitions, it only does so on its way to constructive and heneficent issues, -^he Gospel is a kingdom, not a conundrum. Yet, though we do not adopt the word “supernatural,” we do not shrink from the use of all its hest meanings and implications. The spiritual Christ is to us not a creature of time and space. He was slain from before the foundation of the world. Before man sinned, Christ atoned The crimson of / His blood gives a living hue to all form,j all history, all character. But if we took a lower and commoner ground, Ave should plead that it is more modest to accept the supernatural than to reject it. To deny that there is anything beyond what Ave call nature — who is sufficient for this infinite impertinence? What have we seen P What do we know? John Foster says that before a man can deny the existence of God he must have been everywhere, for in the place where he has not been God may dwell. It ought not to be difficult for any of us to believe that the supernatural is at least possible. Even arithmetic contemplates numbers for which it has no names. Even space enlarges itself beyond all our lines of measurement and drives us to the use of symbols. Even time adds age to age, millennium to millennium, until fancy is bewildered and overborne. In all directions the Known passes into the Unknown; and Unknowableness itself, wisely approached, constrains many minds not to a barren and dumb agnosticism, but at least to reverence, to wonder, and to expectation.
I believe that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary. I believe that He was begotten by the Holy Ghost. I do not idealise the birth of my Saviour. I believe the angel:
“The Holy Ghost shall come iipou thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the .Son of Cod.”
When, with Mary herself, I contend with the angel, and set my poor reason against his overpowering revelation, he gives me a reply which even reason itself can accept, in the gracious words:
“For with God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke i. 37).
In whatever aspect we regard the incarnation of our Lord we cannot escape the presence and influence of mystery. From my own point of view, however, even reason should be more satisfied by the Evangelical view than by any other. This view carries back the whole mystery to God, and does so not in this case only, but over the whole area and movement of human history, as if all things were penetrated and ruled by a spiritual personality.
“Is anything too hard for the
Lord?” “Abraham staggered not at
the promises of God through unbelief.”
“Ah, Lord God! behold Thou hast
made the heaven and the earth by Thy
great power and stretched-out arm,
and there is nothing too hard for
Thee!”
Our amazement or incredulity may be only a siffn of our isnorauce and littleness.
“If it be marvellous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in these. days, should it also be marvellous in Mine eyes? saith the Lord of hosts.” “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Thus in the Evangelical conception, everything is carried backwards and forwards to God, who is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Reason of all things and Cause; and being such, I hold that the Evangelical conception can answer more questions, satisfy more aspirations, respond to more necessities, and supply better motives for service than any other theological conception that has sought the confidence of human reason.
The Virgin-motherhood of Christ invests His incarnation with those elements and features of grace and power, and spiritual fulness and competency, which constitute at once the majesty of His character and the security of His salvation. He who would make others immortal must himself be eternal. Yet he must at some point vitally touch the alien race he would redeem; he must be in it, part of it, warmed by its blood, assailed by its temptations, smitten by its sorrow, chilled by its disappointments — yet, whilst receiving sinners and eating with them, being “separate” from them not by mechanical distance of superiority, Imt by the essential distance of Deity. His very words constitute a new language. The old words burn with new meanings. The words which Christ used as vital to the revelation of His meaning never change, cannot change, take no part in the mutations of etymology or the new settings of phraseography. Hear them, for they carry their Own proof: God, Love, Truth, Peace, Rest, Bread, Water, Life, Light; those words stand for ever; they are original; all others are derivative, tentative, verbal grass that to-day is, and to-morroA- is cast into the oven. The Virgin-motherhood — the miracle of the Holy Ghost — accounts for these words and all their relations and issues. We speak of the Holy Ghost as the gift of Christ, but there is also a sense in which Christ is the gift of the Holy Ghost. We must not depose the Spirit if Ave would read aright the messages of Christ. They are full of God, full of eternity, full of heaven. We must not be affrighted by the Fatherhood of the Holy Ghost. It brings Him, as it were, visibly into the tragedy and agony of the human race; yes, visibly, for “he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; he that knoweth the Son knoweth the Father; I and My Father are one” — a sequence that would be blasphemy were it not established and glorified in eternity. If the Virgin-motherhood is true, all other miracles sink into comparative commonplace. It asserts the supremacy of the spiritual. It puts God in His just relation to the human race. Out of the dust, the flesh, the earth He moulded the Second Adam as He moulded the first. It is an undisturbed and argumentative continuity; it is a personality which heaven cannot contain; a stoop which amazes earth by its lowliness. And because of this, in all the wonder of its grace and all the loving solicitude of its anxiety, it is true that the Evangelical conception answers more questions, satisfies more aspirations, responds to more necessities, and supplies better motives for service than any other faith that aspires to rule the human mind.
The twofold nature of Christ — typified by the Virgin-motherhood — characterises the whole teaching and empire of the incarnation.
The twofoldness was not once for all, as in the memorable nativity of Bethlehem: it followed Him every day of His life; it coloured every word of His ministry; it revealed the glory, as well as the goodness, of every mighty sign. It trembled into speech in the anguish of the Cross. Everything Christ did was explicitly twofold, as was His personality. The dream-ladder, with its foot upon the earth and its head lost in the light, exactly represents the personality and teaching of Jesus Christ. The foot of the ladder, the beginning of the teaching, was ahvays on the earth — ahvays accessible, ahvays strong in reason, ahvays in accord with experience, always illustrated by daily life; whilst the head of the ladder, the full reach and glory of the teaching, went up into heaven, whence it came, the sublimest mystery of thought, the final point in aspiration. Neither the foot of the emblematic ladder nor its head must be regarded alone: in the one case we should l)e rationalists, earthlings, patrons; in the other case we might be mystics sentimentalists, dreamers, — the ladder is one; the argument as well as the person is Immanuel, God Avitli us. Thus we proceed from the Known to the Unknown, from the dark earth to the bright heaven.
The Evangelical preacher occupies no limited relation to human life and discipline. His subject is great, therefore he has no reason for being little himself. When I use the word discipline, I use a word which is strictly Evangelical. Discipline is the severest test of orthodoxy. It must be so if we look at the discipline to which Christ subjected all His disciples. His gate is strait and His road is narroAV; the Cross is the badge of discipleship; right hand and right eye are to be nothing accounted of if they block the soul’s way; “to-morrow” is to be protected from the ravages of anxiety; food and raiment shrink behind the claims of life and love; father and mother must not divide our Christ-loyalty. How different is all this from the notion that Evangelical doctrine is but a tender and slumbrous sentiment! It is an agony, a suicide, a crucifixion, an obliteration! The Christian has no will; he has, by the Spirit of God, willed to have no will; he has surrendered his will to Christ. The Christian has denied himself, renounced himself, parted from himself; he is dead to himself; he has no vanity to be offended, no pride to be abased, no self -pretence to be quenched. Yet there are Christians who are vain, proud, self-considering — no, no, ten thousand thousand noes! — they are not Christians, they are the deadliest enemies of the Cross. What, then, am I never to be offended? Never. Am I not to cultivate the spirit of resentment? Never. Am I not to render evil for evil? Never. How often have I to forgive my brother? As often as he offends me. But is not this more than human nature can bear? It is. Yes, yes! it is, it is! But to no such miracle is human nature called. “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” It is too much for me; but my Lord can fill up the measure of my defect and glorify Himself in mine infirmity.
The discipline of Christianity proves the truth of Christianity. Do you think you are a Christian because you believe in the Trinity? Then how self-deceived you are! Christianity is holiness, purity, sanctification, loveliness of soul! Christianity is Christliness, Christlikeness. Christianity is not merely a scheme of doctrines, not merely a soothing and lulling contemplation: it is mortified flesh, crucified pride, sanctified will. The doctrine is no longer apart from the discipline, and the discipline is impossile apart from the doctrine, and the doctrine is nothing apart from the living Christ, and Christ now lives in the power of the Holy Ghost. Because I believe in the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Three in One, One in Three, I claim to be a Unitarian. Unity is harmonised and co-operative complexity. Unity is not loneliness. They avIio deny the Deity of the Saviour are not Unitarians, they are Solitarians; they knoM’ not the music, the peace, the rapture of unity.
The discipline which penetrates and rules all the sj)rings of conduct has an effect equally direct and severe over the life intellectual. Christianity cannot tolerate mental indolence. It is important to notice this, because of the popular delusion that to be Evangelical in doctrine is to be feeble and outworn in mind. It is supposed that heresy alone is modern, original, progressive. Heterodoxy can sell its books. Orthodoxy can only advertise its sermons. This ought not to be so. Taken as an intellectual conception, nothing can be sublimer than the Evangelical faith: its God, its Trinity, its views of sin, its Cross, its mystery and glory of Blood, its spiritual revelation, its spirit of righteousness and consolation, its day of Judgment, its eternal life, its ever-A PEEACHER’S LIFE
lasting punishment, and its final dominion over the total universe are not ideas that can he grasped by incompetence or lassitude of mind. Intellect can only realise every dimension of its magnitude or every pulse of its energy in the society and service of •Him who is the Light of the World.
Where we find our doctrine and our discipline we also find our socialism. The socialism of Christ is universal. That distinguishes it from the alahaster altruism of parochial selfishness. Evangelical socialism says: “Preach the Gospel to every creature; teach all nations; God hath made of one blood all nations of men; God is no respecter of persons; in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him; there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him. Have we not all one Pather? Hath not one God created us? To us there is but one God... and one Lord Jesus Christ.” If that is socialism I am in favour of it; it is Avorld-wide, man-including, international, cosmopolitan, — big as the heart of God.
But there is another socialism which I reprobate with indignation. It is the socialism that works for classes and cliques and clubs and petty local interests, whatever may become of the rest of the world. We can never be truly patriotic until Ave are truly cosmopolitan. For true cosmopolitanism we are indebted to the Evangelical faith — the only faith on whose Imnner may be read
“every creature,” “all nations,”
“one blood,” “one Father.”
On that crimson banner I do not read,
“England for the English,”
“No Irish need apply,” “Let
the Armenians take care of
themselves,” “No intervention,”
“Foreigners not admitted,” —
these are written on the black flag of the devil, not on the blood-red banner of Christ.
The Evangelical creed penetrates the individual soul, penetrates the life of states, and penetrates the genius of organised civilisation. It is the greatest of creeds — generous as the sun, inflexible as the geometric square, vast and tender as the love of God. This is the true Christian socialism.
A PEEACHER’R LIFE
But there is a socialism that is not Christian. There is a devil’s creed that would boycott and starve a man if he claimed the independence and liberty of a man, — a creed that would drive the Chinaman out of California because he can work skilfully and live Avithoiit wasting his AA ages, — a creed that would drive out the German clerk, the French artisan, the Italian waiter, because they can beat the English on English ground. That is not Evangelical socialism. Evangelical socialism would stir us to noble and generous emulation, saying to each country: “Work so well that no other country can compete with you “; “The palm be his who wins it “; “See that no man take thy croAA ii.” The object of Evangelical socialism is to get rid of the word “foreigner.” It is a carnal word; it is stained AA^tli sin; the brand of Cain is upon it. In every sense, personal, social, political, Ave are to be “no more strangers and foreigners “; we are to be loving children in our Father’s household. Every anti-Christian socialism is organised selfishness, and should only be named in the pulpit to be denounced and damned.
I have no intention, after fifty years’ ministerial service, to give up the old Evangelicalism. Before giving it up ye ought at least to be just to it. Remember that the men who gave us the framework within which we conduct our ministry were believers in doctrines which constrained them to largeness and strenuousness of service. They believed that the Bible was the Word of God; they believed that men who died impenitently went away into everlasting punishment; they believed that Christ made an atonement for the sin of the whole world. These may be old-fashioned doctrines, but they created missionary societies, Sunday schools, hospitals, orphanages, and refuges for penitence; they gave every child a ncAv value, every father a ncAV responsibility, every mother a ncAV hope, and constituted human society into a new conscience and a ncAv trust. We cannot first sneer at the doctrine and then claim its infinite beneficence, nor can Ave borrow its socialism that aa’c may quench its inspiration. Let us be very careful how Ave give up trees that have borne such fruit, and in Ahose leaves there has been such healing.
There is a preaching that is not Evangelical, and I fear lest it should creep unawares into nominally Evangelical pulpits. 1 honour the Unitarian who takes the consequences of his own convictions, for he is undoubtedly honest; hut I dread the knavery that takes Evangelical money and preaches Unitarian doctrine. There is a preaching that is negative, unsettling, destructive, full of untested theories and useless speculations and Avindy vanities. It is common to say that the blessing of God does not rest on such preaching, but I want to say that the blessing of man does not rest upon it. That is clearly shoM^n by dwindling congregations and every other sign of indifference or even resentment. We need not say God does not bless it. Man himself will not have it. In such preaching there is nothing for him. In such husks the soul can find no satisfaction. The Evangelical faith, on the other hand, can say:
“When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me: because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me: and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me: my judgment was as a robe and a diadem. I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor: and the cause which I knew not I searched out. And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth.”
That is the Evangelical faith when it hlls and nerves the soul. What wonder, then, that broken-hearted and hopeless lives, and groaning captives, hearing of it and its messengers, should exclaim: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation,” and that crieth to the whole lost world, “Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” That is what is done by Evangelical preaching, and by Evangelical preaching alone; and because the Evangelical doctrine takes this wide sweep, penetrates life’s inmost recesses, heals the soul’s deadliest diseases, I boldly and lovingly claim for Evangelical doctrine that it answers more questions, satisfies more asi)irations, responds to more necessities, and supplies better motives for service than any other doctrine that invites the confidence of man.
Never let us hold any faith which we are afraid to cross-examine under all the new and brighter lights which are said to come with the progress of education and intellectual freedom. Our faith must not be a mere antiquity, that is venerated simply because of its age: if it is worth keeping it is only because it is a present power — greater than anything that is around us, dealing directly with the whole mystery and outlook of life, subduing and chastening all things, and lifting them up to their right use and influence; it must be the one thing in which all other things cohere, and without which the whole fabric of life would be shaken down. Our faith is no faith at all, in any vital and saving sense, if it require to be kept from the cold, nursed, screened, and spared from all roughness of weather and friction: that is not faith. Whatever it is, there can be no doubt as to its utter uselessness in a life so varied, so mysterious, so guilty, so sublime in its possibilities as ours. We ought to know whether our faith can stand the wear and tear of daily life, whether it can answer the deepest questions of human reverence, or can only exact homage on the ground of a supernatural dumbness wiich holds the imagination in terror, We must not be afraid of our faith; we must find out by every method open to responsible minds whether it can walk with the footmen and run with the horsemen of the age, and then, leaving all footmen and horsemen far behind, — weary and afraid, — can advance with noble mien, with a sovereignty which the soul instinctively adores, to rule the SAvellings of Jordan into infinite peace. Footmen and horsemen there be many, and for a time they seem to be able to do all the business of life’s short road, but when they come Aldthin the sound of the rushing AA’aters, — rivers that plunge into depths unknown, torrents that cannot pause to tell their secret, — they turn away in weakness and in much fear. I Avant a faith to which the darkness and the light are both alike, — the four-faced faith, the face of a lion, the face of an eagle, the face of a cherub, and the face of a man; I Avant a faith that can resist, with infinite reason, “the spear, the dart, and the habergeon, that esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood “(Job xli, 26, 27), — a faith akin to my soul, and that speaks a language I seem to have heard in some other world. What, then, is this thing called the Christian faith? Of what stufi” is it made? What right has it to a place in the thinking of the nineteenth century? Is there any man-making nutriment in its
A PEEACHER’8 LIFE
doctrine? Is it the terror of reason or its inspiration? Is it a little priest-guarded prison which hars in the reluctant mind, or is it an open firmament full of great lights and warm with heavenly summer? I for one am prepared to give it up if these questions cannot be satisfactorily answered — nay, if I cannot find the answer in the complete peace and sacred joy of my own heart. If my faith be outside of me, a ghostly haze in the air, it is but a superstition; it must be in me, part of me — yea, my very soul, my truest, holiest self. We cannot live completely and robustly in some other man’s faitli.> Do, then, let us be strong at the centre of conviction, for weakness there is ruin in the whole exterior of the circle, and not only ruin in the matter of direct and useful action in general society, but the deeper ruin of the soul itself in continually taxing its ingenuity to reconcile its secret unbelief with its public dogmatism, in driving it to find in vocal emphasis what is wanting in spiritual certitude, and in scourging it to invent casuistries which may mitigate the vulgarity, but never lessen the sin of systematic falsehood. We bear the Christian name, we take wages for preaching the Christian Gospel, Ave expel men With whom A e once held Christian fellowship, we appear unto men. to be Christians, — luit what are we when Ave enter our closet, and shut the door, and look into the never-spoken secret of the heart? “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” My ever-recurring question, forced upon me by the spirit of the age, is, How much are we to give up? It is possible that Ave may have to give up some things which Ave ought never to have cared for, and possible that Ave may have to exchange old words for ncAv ones; but it is about a very different kind of surrender that I am concerned. Not that I view even the change of terms without some measure of anxiety, because the custom of change may establish itself before Ave are alive to the progress it has made, and because the spirit of change is so subtle that it only tempts the soul to do the next easy thing, and not to assail the whole line of faith and action at once. MeauAvhile I am concerned about those innermost convictions which make us Christians, and those special inspirations which make us preachers. Christian faith is unchanged amidst all the change of human speech; and it may be partly because we do not recognise the fact that there is a providence of language, as part of the larger providence of civilisation, that Ave have allowed the Christian cause to be dragged through many a controversy of useless words, instead of allowing its divine vitality to pass into all new and ampler forms of human intercourse. Possibly we may have been more anxious about the formal creed than about the spiritual faith, and have imagined that we could do by grammar what can only be done by prayer. The fact that the Eaith was “once delivered unto the saints” is an infinitely larger fact than we suppose if Ave confine its expression to one series of forms and symbols. The faith could be delivered only “once” unto the saints; the “once” is not an assignable point of what Ave call time, — “a figure on a dial plate,” — but a spiritual necessity, because relating to an indivisible and immutable trust. Life was “once delivered” unto man. Reason was “once delivered” unto man. We, as Christians, and as Christian teachers, will save ourselves no small anxiety by remembering that the once-delivered faith is no more endangered by the enlargement of lexicons and grammars than the moral purpose of life is impaired by climate, or the supremacy of conscience is modified by custom or language. What is this once-delivered faith? What is this eternal Christian fact
? There must be something in it: it has counted the centuries up to nineteen; shall it go on counting and claiming all the centuries yet to come? We are entangled by it. The prosaic man unwittingly dates his letters from “the time that the star appeared in the east “; the agnostic keeps his day-books and ledgers by reckonings starting from the Bethlehem he ignores; our letters of friendship, our vows of love, our imperial edicts, our family records are dated from the time “when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king.” The nineteen centuries are so many tributes to the power that created them. What, then, are we to do with the ideas which gather around this Christ, — not quiescent ideas, such as are found in mythologies and superstitions which are satisfied with the formal homage of contemplation, but energetic ideas, demanding the gold and myrrh and frankincense of complete and absolute consecration? Do let us be positive in our attitude; let our surrender or devotion be thorough. Christ can do better without us than with us if our allegiance be hesitant. His half-hearted friends are His difficulty; as for His enemies. He can break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
Even Christ is nothing to us, in our Evangelical thought and worship, but for the fulness of the Godhead that dwells in Him. ‘We should strive after such conceptions of God as will humble the very intellect to which Ave ignorantly ascribe their origin. We ourselves are lost when we have lost the living awe, the trembling reverence which a vivid consciousness of God never fails to realise. Herein, too, is a saying true which is often narrowed and impoverished in its applications: “Them that honour Me I will honour.” It is unquestionably of vital importance that every congregation should have large and clear teaching concerning the person and work of Christ, and in my judgment it is quite as important that we should be filled with an appalling sense of God’s personality and presence, — a realisation which makes us silent, — so awful in spiritual grandeur that even Moses might say, “I exceedingly fear and quake “; so near that even Jacob might exclaim, “This is the gate of heaven “; so bright that even Paul, in referring to it years after its lustre had blinded him, might truly describe it as “the glory of that light.” This noble and holy reverence would make intellectual flippancy impossible, and create an earnestness worthy of the altar which we serve, and so purge even our lawful inquiries of every taint of intellectual conceit as to turn our questions into prayers. We must not be afraid, or ashamed even, of true Deism. It is irrational, not merely sentimental, to poetise the moon and ignore the sun which she modestly reflects. What is God to us? Does He live? Is He only an aggregation of sublime epithets? Or, do we live and move and have our being in Him? Do not let us trouble the mind with vain endeavours to define God; on the contrary, let us guard the mind against what may too narrowly be described as “intelligent conceptions” of God, for thereby we may not lift up our intelligence to God, but drag down God to our intelligence, and so become our own idolators. To think that it is in our power to think of God is to come under the influence of what may, without infinite watchfulness of the heart, become the most insidious temptation that can assail the human mind. The most intelligent conception of God would seem to me to be that God cannot be intellectually conceived. We feel after Him. He is recognised by the heart. Whenever He comes within the lines of Reason it is by a condescension so complete as almost of necessity to mislead Reason, as if the dewdrop should suppose it holds the sun which it only reflects. We bow down before God. We cannot see God and live. God is great and we know Him not. A wonderful thing it was for any mind, supposing it to be but a finite thought, to introduce the word “GOD” into human speech. If Ave coukl think ourselves out of our familiarities back to beginnings, we should find in the introduction ol’ this word something like a miracle in language. Once uttered, once written, it is immediately recognised as the word which the ages have been waiting for, and the mind is apt to imagine that it always kncAV the word, and that the word is part and parcel of its own quality, — a kind of ingratitude not unknown even in strictly human education and intercourse. Yet once suggested {we should say revealed), how strong are the commendations it brings with it! Truly, things do look as if they might have been brought about by a personal and sovereign Mind: they are so wonderfully made, so balanced, so rounded, so interdependent; so huge, yet so safe; so small, yet each cared for and fed as if it were an only child; so long-continued, too, age after age, that time has no more dial space to write figures upon that will tell all the tale of duration. Yes; now that some one has put
into the mind the idea of God, Ave cannot get rid of it. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knoAA’ledge.” Reason is not humbled by this confession, but ennobled by it. Reason itself says, “It must be so! “Reason takes off its sandals and lays down its crook, saying,” Surely this is holy ground! “Reason is a worshipper. Reason has s(^en space, and inferred the infinite; Reason has seen duration, and inferred the eternal; a voice has whispered into the ear of Reason the mysterious word” God,” and Reason cannot silence the solemn music. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God,” but the world has not accepted the fool’s speech. Crime has endeavoured to upset LaAV, yet is there infinite quietness in the order of creation. The heathen have raged and the jieople imagined a A’ain thing, yet has their rage died like a wind, and their pride been broken as a potter’s vessel. Here, then, we stand. We accept the idea — GOD. “VYe did not create it, we have tried to destroy it, yet there it is — a great light, a solemn darkness, a temple of mystery, a deej) where all our thoughts are drowned.
1 repeat that these great doctrines, espoused with the absolute consent of mind and heart, have been to me as an inviolable sanctuary amid all the stress and tumult of theological upheaval and transition. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” I should account myself unfaithful and ungrateful if I could write my biography and leave out the very pith and blood of the story. I make no apology for the insertion of these personal spiritual experiences: they have ruled my whole life; they have been the comfort of my soul; they have been the stay and the inspiration of my ministry. I have companied with Him of Nazareth and Calvary in all holiest and tenderest love — love passing the love of women, ardent like an altar flame. I have never allowed my Lord to come within the lines of mere criticism. Does a man put up his wife for a bid in the market-place of impertinent opinion? Will a man allow cold criticism to vivisect the mother who bore him? As are some hallowed persons upon whom we will not allow unfriendly opinion to be passed, it is even so, only in intiuitely higher degree, with the Lord who on the cross bought me with His blood. I ask no man’s mere opinion about Him. I will not listen to changeable, pedantic, self-satisfied opinion about my Redeemer, nor will I allow capricious opinion to put on and take off His royal crown just as tickle moods may come and go. I will gratefully listen to loyalty, to reverence, to passionate adoration, to simple and tremulous worship, but not to bluster, or to the garrulous conceit of intellectual vanity. (Christ is not a picture to be admired; He is a Saviour to be trusted and served. Christ is not a problem to be intellectually solved; He is a Priest, a Daysman who can lay His hand upon God and the sinner — separated by an infinite diameter — and make them one by the power of His reconciling blood.
My blessed One! Ever-adorable, infinite in strength and grace I Thou hast in Thine own way made me a minister of Thine, and set upon me the warm red seal which covers my whole heart. Daily let me kiss the five wounds borne for me in “death’s agony “; daily shoAV me Thy hands and Thy feet; daily let me shelter in the sanctuary cut for me in Thy quivering side by man’s cruel spear. Now that old age is creeping on, and the prick of the sickle is being felt on the outer edges of the standing corn, I would praise the Lord with loftier ecstasy and devote myself to His service with fonder love. How could I tell the story of my life and omit from my pages the wonders of His grace? Why sacrifice my gratitude on the altar of a spurious modesty? Be this the brightest of my reminiscences, — the only reminiscence worth preserving, — that the Anointed of God, the Christ whose atonement belongs to the eternities, so revealed Himself to my sin and my need in life’s dark and troubled night, that I cried out with heartfelt thankfulness, “My Lord and my God,” and then saw the Morning that cannot be imagined, and received the Peace that cannot be perturbed.