Saving Knowledge: Addressed to Young Men

r HRISTIANITY bears, on its very face, to be a grand scheme of restoration. It professes to deal with a ruined being, and its object is to recover him from ruin. It is not a mere hot-house, where warmth and shelter are given to tender plants, enabling them to thrive and become beautiful, when the open air would stunt or kill them. It is not a mere auxiliary force, added to the moral powers of man, like a screw power in a feeble sailing vessel, to enable him to get on faster and farther than he otherwise would. It is not a mere system of decoration, giving a beautiful finish to a course of improvement which education, and civilization, and culture, have advanced a long way. It embraces all these objects among its subordinate aims but they are not of its essence they are not what it claims to be. It is common, in these times to speak favourably of Christianity as a most valuable hot-house, a most useful propeller a charming decorator. Such compliments are often accompanied with sneers at the idea of its being much more or of mans needing much more. But any view of Christianity must fall infinitely short of the truth, and in practice prove most pernicious, that does not take account of its main claim and profession — as sl divine provision for the removal of man’s guilt, and for the restoration of life, purity, and beauty to his deformed and fallen nature.

The very name given to the founder of Christianity by the angel of the Lord, implied that this was its essential purpose. He was not to bear a name indicating a great Reformer merely, or a great Teacher, or a great Priest, or a great King, but one combining all these offices, in their furthest reach and deepest meaning — Thou shall call his name Saviour, for he shall save his people from their sins, He did not come merely to teach, or to civil ize, or to rule, or to reform, but to save. He refused to allow his gift to man to be described by any term short of Life, in the highest meaning of that word, or to accept the homage of those who would not believe that life could be had only through vital fellowship with Him. (John vi. 30.) He welcomed the shouts of the multitude when they called out ‘Hosanna, ascribing to Him, in that very word, the power to save. He felt it no shame, as He hung on the cross, to have the word Jesus inscribed over His head. Indeed it was to place His claim to that name on an unchallengeable basis, that He bore the cross and its cursed death. And, after His ascension. His apostles showed how truly they apprehended the grand purpose of His incarnation and death by their use of the word salvation. It became a consecrated word. ‘Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is no other name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved, All other applications of the word are dwarfed and overshadowed by the meaning it bears in connection with Christ. No doubt in a sense a man rescued from shipwreck, is saved. A child snatched from off the rails just as an express train is dashing along, is saved. A bedrid paralytic rescued from a burning house, is saved. A young man dragged from the meshes of intemperance, is saved. But in every one of these instances, who does not feel that it is but a mere fraction of the force of the great word that is put forth; and that its measureless compass of meaning is conveyed only when it is said of the sinner, pardoned, purified, and blessed by Jesus Christ, that once lost, now he is SAVED?

There are strange stories of little children stolen in infancy by gipsies from the happy homes of their parents, retaining in after years a vague impression of the condition from which they were torn. No recollection was distinct enough to be shaped into definite form; but a misty notion of a happier time floated like a thin vapour through their brain. A similar impression of an unfallen state seems to have retained its hold on the human race. There is an instinctive feeling in us that we are not what once we were; that the early days of our race were happier and brighter that the golden age of innocence and bliss has degenerated, till at last our lot has fallen upon the age of iron. Alongside of this feeling lies our instinctive hope of better days to come, the longing for a paradise regained out of which poetry is constantly forming so many pictures of peace and beauty. Such fancies are vague, and they are apt to deceive. They may nourish the feeling that this fall is a pure misfortune, a sad evil for which no one of us is more responsible than the babe unborn. At all events, we need a more sure word of prophecy. What is this fallen state in which we are? How came we to be in it? What are its bearings and consequences? And how may we escape from it? The word of God professes to be given for the very purpose of answering these questions; if it be so, the more closely we keep to its guidance, the more accurately shall we be informed,, both of the nature of our ruin, and of the mode of recovery which has been provided by Christ.

Hardly have we opened the Bible, and begun our inquiry, when our attention is arrested by the perpetual occurrence of the words sin and sinner, They swarm in every page. And alongside of them we find hosts of synonymous words — transgression, trespass, iniquity, unrighteousness, ungodliness, rebellion, uncleanness, corruption, guilt. And what is strange, there is not a great deal in the Bible about misfortune or calamity. The leading impression conveyed is not, that through some cause over which he had no control, man has come to be what he now is. He is not represented as the innocent victim of misfortune. His case is a far more serious one in the eyes of his God. He is a criminal. That, undoubtedly, is the outstanding consideration by which the Bible accounts for the state of man.

It is this that gives such an aspect of gloom to his whole history as traced in the Bible. It is this too, that makes the problem of his redemption so difficult. If man’s condition were the result mainly of misfortune or of weakness or of imperfection, or of exposure to fierce and noxious influences, there could be no great difficulty in remedying it. It is because he is a SINNER that the case is so serious and the difficulty so great. And it is because Jesus Christ has surmounted this difficulty, and has made complete provision for every feature and aspect of man’s sinful state, that his salvation is so glorious, and the security of all who are united to him so unchallengeably complete.

The charge of the Bible against man as a sinner is made in many different forms. Thus, in the first place, there are passages not a few in which the whole race, without exception, is brought in guilty’ before God. There is none righteous, no not one.’ ‘The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.’ ‘God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions, ‘If thou Lord, shouklest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?’ All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God, If ve say that we are without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us, In many things, we offend all, Nothing can be wider or more unrestricted than such statements as these. And lest any doubt should remain as to their bearing, some of them are deliberately brought together in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and the very purpose and end of them is solemnly declared to be to establish a verdict of guilty against the whole race of man, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God/

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