I Now Both Live and Work Far More Evangelically Than I Was Wont to Do

Now both live and work far more evangelically than I was wont to do.’ So writes James Fraser, one of the most intellectually able and one of the most spiritually minded of men, in his Memoirs of Himself. There was a time, he tells us, when he both read and heard about Jesus Christ in the most unevangelical, and as a consequence in the most unintelligent and most misunderstanding way. There was a time when he was like Luther, who tells us that he was wont to read and hear about Jesus Christ in a historical way only. The young monk had not as yet been taught to read the four Gospels in an evangelical, a spiritual, a personal, and an appropriating way. He had never been taught why God had sent His Son into this world, and why Jesus Christ had lived and died, as He did live and die. He had never as yet been led to ask what all that had to do with Martin Luther. And you will all remember how John Bunyan, Luther’s English disciple, was wont to enjoy those parts of his Bible that told him about Joshua and his wars, and about Samson and his strength, and about David and his victorious encounter with Goliath, and about Daniel in the den of lions. But as for Paul’s Epistles the young tinker could not away with them. It is not the Bible, my brethren. Book of God as it all is; it is not even the four Gospels, and the Pauline Epistles however learnedly studied and however eloquently preached; it is the evangelical interpretation, and it is the personal application, of what they all contain; it is that which alone will lead us into the true mind of God in them, and into the true meaning, and real intent, of the life and death of Jesus Christ, ‘The history of the Cross, and the mystery of the Cross, are two very different things,’ says that masterly experimental divine, Walter Marshall, of Hursley. And it is the evangelical mystery of the Cross in which all its redeeming and all its saving and all its sanctifying power resides. Now an intellectually able man and a truly converted man and an increasingly spiritually minded man, as the laird of Brea is, he does not say that he has already attained, or is already perfect. But what he does say is of the very deepest interest and importance to us all: ‘I now both live and work,’ he says, ‘ far more evangelically than I was wont to do.’ Let us now go on to trace some of the steps and stages of his growingly evangelical life, and that because our own salvation lies in the same experience.

Now, if you remember the circumstances of James leaser’s conversion, you will naturally think that he was surely sufficiently evangelical from the very beginning of his religious life. You will remember what a deep and what a decided change he under¬ went during his college life in this city. You will remember what a wonderful communion-week he spent when he was a student of seventeen in Edinburgh University. You cannot have forgotten what a Paul-like sight he got of his Saviour; God revealing His Son in that young student in Scot¬ land very much as He revealed His Son in that young Pharisee in Israel, But just as Paul long after his wonderful conversion is still heard confessing and complaining that he has not even yet attained to the full evangelical understanding, and to the full evangelical apprehension of Christ, so was it with the young laird of Brea. And so is it with ourselves. Whatever the reality and whatever the intensity of our spiritual experience to begin with, the life of evangelical faith and evangelical holiness is so deep and is so spiritual that it takes a long lifetime to carry any of us into the more and more iiiAvard experiences of that life. The unsearchable needs of our sinful nature, and over against that, the unsearchable riches of Christ; these things are such that they take a man to old age to discover them and to deal with them in a truly evangelical way. Take the most mature and the most evangelically taught man in this house this evening, and he will be the foremost to say with Paul, ‘ Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect; but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.’ That is to say, there are evangelical discoveries still to be made, and evangelical attainments still to be reached, by the best of us, that make all our past discoveries, and all our past attainments to be forgotten as we still reach forward, and ever forward, to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

As an illustration of Fraser’s increasingly evangelical life take his repentance for his past sins. At one time his repentance was almost wholly made up of a slavish fear of death and judgment. He could not sleep at nights for terror of where he might awake before morning. A horror would sometimes take hold of him that would almost drive him to self-destruction. His bed would be surrounded by the same ghosts and hobgoblins that howled around the pilgrim when he entered the dark river till in great measure he lost his senses. ‘Ah! my brother,’ said he, and refused to be comforted. ‘ Ah! my brother, if the sins of my youth had indeed been forgiven, as I had hoped they were, surely my Saviour would not forsake me in the swellings of Jordan in this way! ’ So was it many a miserable night with Fraser of Brea. He felt sure that God was reserving evil for him and that there was nothing left for him but a fearful looking for of judgment. But as his new life went on, as he grew in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ his Saviour, his repentance became less and less legal, and more and more evangelical. In his own words, his repentance consisted now not so much in a fearful looking for of judgment, but much more in a sweet melting of heart toward God and man for his past sins against them. Now, that, my brethren, in one word, i e vaneli cal..repentance. It is a sweet melt¬ ing of heart that you should ever have so sinned, and against such a God and such a Saviour. You will all remember, then, what to ask of God, and what to follow after — not so much an awful horror of heart, horrible as your sins may have been, but rather, a more and more stricken and contrite heart, a more and more sweet melting of heart, both to¬ ward God and man.

And, then, we find Fraser describing his growingly evangelical faith in this striking way: ‘ I

learned to live less and less in myself and on myself land more and more in and on Jesus Christ, asjmade lof God to me all my need. I less and less looked jto any of my own experiences, or attaimnentSj or ‘feelings, or affections; but on Christ as made of God all that for me and to me. And notn Him as sensibly felt and fully possessed by me and in me, but solely and always as offered to me in the Gospel.’ That, my brethren, in James Fraser’s memorable words, that is the perfection of evangelical faith. It is to look to Christ alone, as if we did not even so much as exist ourseTvesr” And it is to look to heaven alone, as if this earth and its attainments did not so much as exist for us. We have it in its evangelical perfection in Paul: ‘ I am crucified with Christ,’ says Fraser’s forerunner; ‘nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life wdiich I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself forme.’ ‘.

And’ as it was more and more with him in his life of evangelical repentance and evangelical faitTi’so WAs it in hi.s evangelical love, and in his. evangelical j,eyyand in his evangelical good hope, and in his evangeli-GaLliuniility, and in all his other evangelical holiness of heart and life. In all these things he became, more ,and more ^angelicalj, as hgrewAn grace,,.and in the better and better knowlge his Lord an(i Saviour Jesus Christ.

And all the fimeJie is candid enough and grateful enough to acknowledge that it was the evangelical preaching he heard that by degrees so evangelised his mind and his heart and his life. He owed much also to the evangelical sermons hey himself composed and preached, and to the evangelical authors he continually read, and he owed no little to the evangelical journals he kept, and the evangelical letters he took courage to write. All these things worked together to make him the great evangelical preacher and pastor and author he himself came to be. Take this as a specimen: ‘ When I was at my worst, and was saying, surely I shall never escape this awful bondage and this awful darkness, my Lord would find out for me both men and books to quicken me. Sometimes when I was at the point of spiritual death, the Lord would consider me, and He would condescend to me, and would send to me some good man or some good book, which would at once quicken me and strengthen me. Sometimes meeting with a true Christian and conversing with him would do it, and nothing did me more good than written narrations of God’s dealings with the souls of His people.

1 Likewise, being in the south, the Lord trysted me with a powerful evangelical ministry, which did greatly revive me. Many a time, by means of that ministry, was my SAvooning life restored, and was I brought up from the gates of death. And all these evangelical waterings sanctified me more and more, both in my heart and in my life, and thus more and more I entered deeper and deeper into the life of grace, and into the evangelical knowledge of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.’ What a lesson to all our ministers, so that here in the south all sinful and sad-hearted men may through us also be trysted with a powerful evangelical ministry. And what a lesson to our people to tryst themselves to such a ministry, north or south, as was so blessed in the south to the tempest-tossed laird of Brea.

But all this time some men here who have been following all that, and with the greatest interest and anxiety, they will fall back and will say that such things are far too high for them, and that they can never expect to attain to such things; and, indeed, that it is cruel in me to hold up such things to their defeat and to their despair. 0 no! O no! Don’t say that! Don’t think that! If I were able to-night to take you to the end of this wonderful man’s memoirs of himself, you would see that he was down to the end just as you are to-night. And far worse than you are to-night. For all these spiritual attainments, and all these evangelical experiences. only drove him into a deeper despair, when, again, the sin that, all the time, did so easily beset him, again overcame him and laid him low. He was only the more broken in pieces when he again fell, till, for a season, his agony of remorse was simply indescribable. But, when he was in these sad straits, he remembered what he had already learned, and he fell back on his evangelical repentance, and on his evangelical faith. That is to say, all his remaining sinfulness only the more shut him up to Christ. And that far more than ever before. Till he came to see it, and to accept it, that his life on earth was lengthened out, and was filled up with all manner of temptations, and trials, and crooks, and crosses, and grievous falls, just in order that he might learn more and more what the grace of God really is, and who, and what, Jesus Christ really is. Year after year, his pride was more and more humbled, and his self-righteousness was more and more made rags and dung to him, as to the prophet and the apostle, and his heart was more and more broken in pieces within him, and all in order that Christ might come to His own in His sinful servant. And till it came to him to have Christ in his heart and his life, and nothing but Christ. Christ first and Christ last, in life and in death, in grace and in glory. And, till he came, before he died, both to read and to preach nothing else but this: To me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Now, all this was not written for James Fraser’s sake alone, that he lived, and worked, and read, and wrote, and preached more and more evangelically, but for us also. For me, first, that you may be trysted in this church with an evangelical ministry. And, then, that your lifelong conversion and your lifelong repentance, and your faith and your humility, and your love, and your good hope, and your joy in Christ, may all be becoming, every day, more and more evangelical. In the words of the text, that you may more and more, every day, ‘ grow in evangelical grace, and in the evangelical know¬ ledge of your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to fvhom be glory, both now, and for ever. Amen.’