Preface
Having already sent forth a treatise on both Faith and Charity, which have met with much acceptance from the public, I felt a natural and not an unworthy desire to complete the consideration of the apostolic trio of christian graces, by issuing another on Hope. To this I was also impelled by two facts. First. — There is not, as far as my knowledge of theological literature extends, an English work devoted exclusively to this subject. Gurnall, Howe, and Bates have discussed it in parts of their valuable writings, and it will be found incorporated in the numerous sermons and essays of other authors. Secondly. — The importance of the subject justifies this attempt to bring it somewhat more fully before the lovers of practical religious literature. It is in fact the substance of the New Testament; the end of redemption; the glory of Christianity; and the antidote of nature’s supreme evil. It goes with us where all other subjects leave us ; — to the entrance of the dark valley of the shadow of death, and when every other light is extinguished, furnishes us with the only lamp that can guide us through the domain
A a of death, to the realms of glory, honour, and immortality. Thus it accomplishes what the human understanding never could achieve, by solving the sublimely awful problem of man’s existence beyond the grave.
Unaided reason never did, and never could, arrive at a satisfactory conclusion regarding the immortality of the soul and a future state of happiness. It could not be sure that the spirit survives the wreck of its material frame; for some appearances are against it, which the presumptive arguments in favour of it, are too feeble to refute. If it cotUd prove this fact, of the soul’s existence beyond the grave, still it could not demonstrate, nor scarcely hope, that it would be immortal; for eternity seems to be an attribute too vast for any one but God himself. If by any means it could persuade itself of this, it would be unable to prove that the soul would enter upon its felicity immediately after death. Equally uncertain would it be, of what that future felicity consists; still more would it be at a loss to know by what means celestial happiness was to be obtained, and how the sinful, earthly spirit of man was to be meetened for its enjoyment. All these questions being satisfactorily solved, there would yet remain the unrelieved, unrelievable doubt, whether this immortal existence and felicity were intended for all that wear the form of man, for the swarming millions of the human race, the countless multitudes descending to the lowest grade of humanity, or only for the flower and chivalry of mankind. Thus, at every step of the inquiry reason is bewildered, and sees shadows, clouds, and darkness resting upon her horizon. To all these questions, her oracle is dumb, or gives out only vague responses, doubtful and delusive. To settle these points, it was necessary that Qod himself should speak. He has spoken, and it is the glory of divine Revelation, that it does not hold out mere dim and obscure disclosures, but throws a flood of noon-tide radiance upon all these solemn and momentous inquiries. With what glowing raptures should we bless Qod for that gospel which brings life and inmiortality to light, and meets the deepest cravings of the soul. A poet has sung, in the charms of verse, “The Ileasures of Hope.” It is for the christian with his bible opening a vista into heaven, to realize and enjoy them.
To the subject of this volume I have also been in some measure led by my own circumstances. In the seventy-third year of my life, and the fifty-third of my ministry, I have no need of a special revelation to assure me that ‘’I must shortly put off this my tabernacle:” by the course of nature, this cannot be far off. The shadows of evening are gathering fast and thick around me, and I find it most consoling, on the border country of the world unseen, to go forward into what would be otherwise a dark unknown, guided and cheered by a hope full of immortality. I am induced to believe that what has comforted me in the preparation of the work, may by perusal be a source of consolation to others.
Many things are most accurately seen, in their relative importance, when viewed in the decline of life. It is in
Xll PREFACE.
the calm of the eveniDg, and not during the heat, and bustle, and burden of the day, that men in trade best judge of the objects which have engaged their attention in the hours of business. So it is with the christian, in reflecting upon his religious life, and especially with the * Christian minister, in looking back upon the pursuits of his official career. I am not even now indifferent to many lesser matters of christian truth; the subject of ecclesiastical polity still interests me; for surely the framework of Christ’s church, and the order of his house, must be of some consequence: and I am therefore no latitudinarian in reference to this matter. The system of Congregationalism which for more than half a century I have maintained, I believe comes nearer the general principles laid down in the New Testament than any other. This is all I claim for it. A closer approximation than others, to the model of the apostolic churches, is all that any of us can boast of: perhaps no modern system is, or can be a perfect copy of what, from its peculiar cicumstances, must of necessity have been unique. If ever I held my views of church government with the prejudice of a bigot, or propagated them with the zeal of a fanatic, though I am not conscious of either, that time is for ever gone by. Compared with Faithy Hope, and Love these things now appear to me only as the skeleton to the living body of Christianity. No man will be either saved or lost by the principles of church government, but by his possession or his destitution of these graces. There are many ways to perdition, but ecclesiastical polity is not one of them.
PBEFACE. Xiii
There is only one way of salvation, and that is, not Episcopacy, Presbyterianism, Methodism, nor Congregationalism; but repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesas Christ. Along the bye paths of each of these systems many are continually coming into the King’s high-road to eternal life. This should make us charitable to each other, and convince us upon what objects our attention and our zeal should be chiefly concentrated; for is it not pitiable to see men spending so much of their time and energy upon the unprescribed formalities of a ceremonial extemalism, to the comparative neglect oi Faith, Hope, and Love?
Most sad is it, that in the middle of the nineteenth century of the Christian era, so many of its professors should have, if not to learn, yet to remember, that “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink,” nor creed and ceremony, but “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’* Our holy religion, as exhibited on the page of ecclesiastical history, and of theological controversy, has to its own disparagement, been too often made to appear more like a fury, than a seraph; a demon of destruction, rather than a ministering angel; and brandishing a sword, instead of holding out the olive branch of peace. O that some voice, loud enough to be heard throughout Christendom, and powerful enough to be universally obeyed, would summon us all round the fount of inspired truth, first to purify our much abused vision from the scales of error and prejudice, and then to learn that real Christianity consists of the three apostolic graces; while all else is but her earthly attire, which may vary in fashion and colour, without aifecting her substance and life, or destroying her symmetry. Had this been understood, believed, remembered, and practised from the beginning, what monstrous systems of error; what iron yokes of spiritual tyranny; what bloody persecutions; what sacerdotal arrogance and assumption; what disfigurements of the simple and spiritual religion of the meek and lowly Jesus, by Pagan rites and puerile ceremonies; what foul blots upon the fair form of Christianity, would the world have been spared! Amidst the decrees of councils; the edicts of monarchs; the acts of senates; and the controversies of polemics, how has the still small voice of the apostle been stifled, which saith, “Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity.” How forward have men been to admire this sacred trio, but how slow to imitate them. Poets have sung their charms; painters have delineated their beauty; music chanted their praises; and eloquence emblazoned their worth — what remains but for preachers to make them the prevailing themes of their ministry, and for professing christians to exhibit them in the practice of their lives. When this shall every where be done, and they shall universally come in place of a heartless orthodoxy and a childish ritualism, then the world will see Christianity as she is, and will covet to be like her; but, till then, multitudes will look upon her with suspicion, and not a few turn from her with disgust.
I am not without apprehension, that there is danger among Nonconformists just now, of merging the importance of primary matters, in what, after all, is but of secondary and tertiary consequence.
Our great solicitude should be to promote a healthful, spiritual, robust, and saintly piety in our churches; for which no external improvements in our architecture, our psalmody, or our services, can be a substitute. What we should seek to maintain in our denomination, is the more powerful dominion of faith, hope, and love, compared with which many of those matters which are now rife amongst us, are but of very small importance. Provided however our supreme, constant, and vigilant anxiety be directed to the preservation of vital Christianity, and t# that ‘sound doctrine from which alone it can proceed, then is no harm, and will be no danger, in any attention we may pay to matters of religious tastefulness.
My anxiety, notwithstanding all that has been said to dissipate the fears of minds zealous and jealous ‘’for sound doctrine,” is still alive on this momentous subject. Others of far stronger intellectual nerve than myself, partake with me in these apprehensions, as will be evident by the following extract from a letter I received from one of the master spirits of the age, whose name, had I permission to give it, would impart oracular weight to his words.
‘’ You are one with me in the deep and powerful conviction that the grandeur, and reality, and simplicity of the Gt)spel have faded from the view of many around us who still would give their yea’ to an orthodox and evangelic confession. It is not dishonestly that such a yea’ would be uttered, but heartlessly, and with a reserved feeling of this sort: — *I believe all this, if I believe anything; or, I mean to believe it until I have made good my position on another ground.’ *I am orthodox and evangelical ad interim,’ There are many, I fear, who go on to serve the Gospel as discontented menials do, who take care to give no umbrage until the day when they shall have hired themselves to a master more to their taste. I have painfully felt this in listening to and conversing with young ministers. On the Dissenting side it is one sort of thing, on the Episcopal another — but as to the result, it is a departure from, and a disrelish of, the Gospel. I am sure you are right jp. foreseeing the issue — an alienation of heart from the First Truths will end (as to many) in a declared heterodoxy: this, or else a hiding the face behind the mask of ritualism. A most impervious and opaque thing, when properly prepared, painted, and varnished, is a papier mache churchism. Wearing this disguise a heartat-ease atheist may do, say, and seem whatever is convenient.
‘* Among the Nonconformists the house of refuge is an intellectualism, which the people may interpret as they please: a spiritualism in the dialect, of which the old women of the congregation will think they hear what they used to hear, and approve; but which the young men in the crimson-cushioned pews will well know how to render into a philosophy after Hegel, or Miss Martineau, or anybody else.
“And yet while T 80 write — seeing and hearing what is going on around us — I do look for a brighter time: I do not despond, but am hopeful and expectant of good. Whether it may be permitted to me to render service (such as I gladly would render) is with Him to determine with whom is the residue of the Spirit, and the ordering of our lot.”
I too am hopeful of good in the end. It is only for a season that I expect, and for a season I d expect in our received theology a partial obscuration of the truth as it is in Jesus. A school has risen up at Oxford and elsewhere, in which some of the fundamental doctrines of li gospel, especially the atonement and the inspiration and authority of the Old Testament, are, if not absolutely denied, yet undermined. The atonement means, as they t’Cach it, nothing more than a manifestation of Divine love, and the putting away of sin by its moral power over the soul, but which has no reference to the authority and majesty of the law, and the rectitude of the divine government: as held by them, it is merely a wonderful instance of fortitude and patience under suffering of the Man of sorrows, and its whole efficacy lies in the influence of those virtues on the human conscience, but not in his death being an expiation of guilt, a vicarious sacrifice of the Son of God. Mercy, according to their view, is the only attribute of the divine nature displayed in the stupendous transactions of Calvary, while the manifestation of public justice has no provision made for it in their view of the scheme of human redemption. Thus while the name of atonement it retained, and even that reluctantly, the true scriptural idea as shadowed forth in the sacrifices of the Old Testament, and asserted in the pages of the New, is denied and lost. This I fear is the error which is insidiously cor-. rupting the theology of some Episcopalians and Nonconformists. From the writers of this class we hear a great deal about ‘* enlightened and liberal opinions,” ^’ a rational interpretation of Scriptures,” “freedom from the prejudices of the schools,” “extreme views of inspiration,” “the narrow prejudices which trammel the noble spirit of theology by creeds and catechisms.” And we have been lately told, that “Science is the basis of a rational theology, which is to give the death-blow to superstition.” All this high sounding praise of modern illumination, pronounced as it is by men whose genius or whose style gives enchantment to their words, is seductive to those young and ardent minds which are exulting in their freedom from the fetters of old systems, and is I fear leading some astray from the way of truth. But where are the victories and trophies of the men of this school in the conversion of souls, and the sanctification of believers? What aggressions are they making on the realms of ignorance, wickedness and misery P Systems, like men, are to be tried by their fruits. At the same time I am most willing to allow, that by the filtering process of a correct and cautious criticism, to which the old systems of divinity are being subjected, the stream of evangelical truth, as it is held in common by all orthodox churches, is flowing forth more clear fix)m slight admixtures with which it was in some degree impregnated.
It is however, not only from the influence of latitudinarin views on such momenteous subjects as atonement and inspiration; nor only from an adventurous spirit of religious speculation — that danger to religion is to be feared, but from that intellectualism in the pulpit to which the writer of the above extract alludes. Perhaps this is less to be dreaded in the evangelical clergy of the Church of England than among the dissenting ministers; not of nurse for want of ability on their part, or of power on the part of their flocks rightly to appreciate it, but from the deep conviction of their duty to “use great plainness of speech.” Among dissenters a highly improved state of e<iMcation has led to a more elaborate, philosophical, essaylike, and less popular, attractive, and impressive style of preaching. This I know is not a necessary result of a more finished education, but an abuse of it. Ministers may have, should have, ought to have, great stores of knowledge, and yet be “apt to teach.” Simplicity of communication is not incompatible with profundity of possession, nor is earnestness opposed to elegance. Where there is no heresy of doctrine, nor even any want of evangelical truth, there may be so much of excessive elaboration, and of “the enticing words of man’s wisdom, as to make the cross of Christ of none effect.” The gospel may be preached, but with so much of studied intellectualism of style, so much of mere evangelical theory and christian science, and in so heartless a manner, as to be likely to produce little effect. It is too much forgotten, both by preachers and hearers, that it is truth, and not talent merely, that feeds the soul of the christian; and the truth addressed not only to the intellect, in the way of logical argument, but to the heart and the conscience, with earnest warmth, and urgent importunity. Faith, hope, and LOVE, which are, or ought to be, the great themes of the christian ministry, are something more than matters of theory — theses for the theologian to discuss before an audience. They are matters of eternal life or death, and should be preached as if the preachers believed them to be so. The more talent that is brought to such themes the better, provided it be the object of the talent to make the truth understood, felt, and believed. The gospel is worthy of the noblest intellects, and it is a kind of profanity to touch and teach it ignorantly, carelessly, and feebly. High philosophical and metaphysical intellectualism is indeed a luxury for many; but after all is not so adapted to the mental constitution and spiritual health of the great mass of our congregations, as plainer and simpler food. And is it not by the necessaries and comforts of life, — good, substantial, nutritive diet, that our corporeal frame is nourished and strengthened, rather than by the highly- wrought inventions of the culinary art? A very instructive lesson, but one which preachers are backward to learn, may be gained from those instances which occur now and then, in the history of the church, of a Whitfield and Wesley, for instance, in former times, and n Spurgeon in modern ones; as if to show what kind of preachers are wanted to answer the end of preaching; so far, at least as the conversion of sinners is concerned and is not this the great end of preaching?
We might fairly ask, who are the preachers and what is their style of preaching, by whom the minds of men have been stirred, their hearts changed, and their souls saved? By whom, and by what means, have congregations been raised, churches and chapels built, and other pious men moved to give themselves up to the ministry? How much did the life and labours of Simeon, at Cambridge, contribute to the revival of Evangelical reliligion in the Church of England, and to the multiplication of her devoted ministers, and let his Horos Homiletica say by what kind of ministrations these glorious results were wrought out. It is affirmed that the plain and earnest appeals of Richard Knill were the means of the conversion of more than a hundred persons, who, in one way or other, gave themselves to the ministry of the Word, either in this land or abroad. While on the other hand, how many of the most talented, highly cultivated, and intellectual preachers have confessed with bitter lamentations in their latter end, and upon their death-beds, their all but total want of success in the conversion of souls. I am duly aware that conversion is not the only end of preaching, and also that the same kind of preaching is not adapted for conversion in all cases. But what is wanted for the great bulk of the people is the eamest«popular preaching of the gospel; — the power of vigorous thinking in plain language; — a somewhat pictorial style addressed at once to the imagination, the heart, and the conscience, as well a’s to the judgmeht — and all this in a lively elocution.
I confess, howeTer, to a little jealousy of some recent schemes for interesting the masses of our population in the subject of religion. I do not presume to judge and condemn those who have adopted them, but I somewhat question their propriety. The gospel of our salvation is so momentous a subject to man’s eternal welfare; there is such a dreadful and deadly apathy concerning religion lying on the great mass of the population; the ordinary methods have proved so insufficient to rouse them from their stupor, that I am quite prepared to go considerable lengths in oanying out the apostle’s principle, “If by any MEANS I MIGHT SAVB SOME.” But there is a limit even to this, and there is, I think, a danger of passing it in this age. A craving appetite for novelty and excitement may be created, which will be increased by indulgence, and continually require fresh stimulants; till all extraordinary means fail, and ordinary ones then become flat, tasteless, and neglected. Nothing but the earnest, intelligent, popular, and attractive preaching of the gospel, carried on with a deep sympathy and a loving spirit for the masses of the people, and a multiplication of places for their accommodation, will meet their case.
These remarks will be considered by many a long digression from the subject of my book. I know that in some measure they are. But as I shall not have many more opportunities, if any, of speaking from the press, I have determined to embrace the present one, to give utterance to a few thoughts on some prevailing topics of the day. It may be a feeble testimony I deliver, but it is an earnest and anxious one.
Naw, for a short space, I return to the ensuing pages. These pretend to nothing new, original, or eloquent: nothing racy, brilliant, or amusing: nothing for the scholar, philosopher, or even profound theologian: but still much that is true and important: much that by Gkpd’s grace may be useful to the children of His redeemed family, if indeed they read to profit and not to cavil or to criticise; if, in short, they are really anxious to grow in Faith, Hope, and Love. And they cannot be christians if they do not. I write plain truths, in plain language, for plain people; and if they are profited, I have reached the measure of my ambition.
We sometimes, in the department of the fine arts, meet with a painting that professes to be ‘’after the old masters.” It may be very inferior, but it has something of their subject, spirit, and manner. I make a similar pretension, and have written this book after *’ the old author*;*^ and under the humbling consciousness of its immeasurable inferiority, am in no danger of being proud of my success. I am a warm but discriminating admirer of those great men of the seventeenth century, especially of Hall, Taylor, and Barrow, among the Episcopalians, and Howe, Baxter, and some works of Owen, among the Nonconformists. I am aware of their faults — but, O, their matchless excellences I How much would it conduce to the usefulness of their preaching, and the edification of their flocks, if our young ministers made themselves more acquainted with the immortal productions of these illustrious men; and uniting their affluence of thought with modern accuracy and elegance, this would give that power to the pulpit, which at present, in the
opinion of many, it has lost.
If any of the readers of this volume should have perused my work, entitled “The Course of Faith,”* they will find some few repetitions of the thoughts, and perhaps of the language, contained in that work — especially in the chapters on Assurance and Heaven. It was impossible to avoid this, as the graces of faith and hope touch each other in some points so closely. So also there will be found occasional repetitions in one part of what was stated in others: a thought or a text being expanded in one place, which was only glanced at in another. The different aspects or relations of Hope, though on some points dissimilar, are in others alike. Repetitions, however, are not always redundances: they abound in Scripture.
* A new •dition of thii work ii joat published.