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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/
Not less emphatic is the testimony of Scripture to the continued depravity of individuals and of communities that have enjoyed very special advantages, and have had all the resources of Divine care and nurture lavished upon them. A tree bearing bitter fruit in a wild and uncultivated desert, is very likely a bad tree, but if it bear the game bitter fruit in a garden,, with all the advantages of climate soil and cultivation the proof of its badness is more decisive and complete. If we compare the barbarian and the Scythian to the tree in the desert the seed of Abraham will correspond to the tree in the sheltered and cultivated garden. To them every conceivable advantage and encouragement was given and the great vine-dressser could appeal to themselves in proof of His exhaustive attention. ‘What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Wherefore when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?’
Equally clear, and in some respects even more impressive, are the countless passages in which the holiest of men are found to deplore their depravity, confessing that in their flesh, or natural state, dwelt no good thing, and that it was by the grace of God alone they were what they were. Such confessions derive singular depth and earnestness from the fact that the spiritual vision of God vouchsafed to these men exalted immeasureably their ideas of purity on the one hand, and deepened their horror of sin on the other. Job, perfect and upright though he was, according to the common standard of men, no sooner comes into the Divine presence than he sees himself covered with impurity: ‘I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes, In that dread presence where the voices of seraphim cry Holy, holy, holy! ‘Isaiah is overwhelmed with the sense of his uncleanness: ‘Woe is me,^ he cries, ‘’for I am undone! for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts, King David, after his terrible declension, is horror-stricken when he enters the presence of God: his sin glares on him like a fiend, and he can see nothing in himself but wickedness: Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my
GOnS VERDICT ON MAN. i r
mother conceive me.’ St Paul, when he looks into the perfect law of God not only perceives a sad contrast between what he is and what he should be, but finds a horrible law of corruption roused by the very contact into such overwhelming activity as to extort the cry, O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ And there is no part of the experience of Bible saints which honest believers, in all ages of the world, have felt more true of themselves. Whatever differences there may be in the experience of good men, all agree in this, that sin is engrained, so to speak, in the very substance of their nature — that an awful attraction, as strong as the gravitation of the earth, drags them to evil, and that even their life-long struggles against sin leave them in so unsatisfactory a state, that their only hope of final acceptance lies in the merit of the Saviour, and their only prospect of becoming meet for heaven in the promised and all-sufficient grace of the Holy Ghost.
Such passages and such testimonies furnish the clearest proof that in the sight of God all men are sinners. Let us now try to analyze this depravity somewhat — to resolve it into some of its constituent elements, and bring it home, as a sad reality, to the heart and conscience of all. The two great centres of the alleged depravity of man are ungodliness and selfishness — the one having reference to his relation to God, the other mainly to his relation to his fellow-men.
I. Ungodliness. The great charge of the Bible against man is that he is regardless of God. In his heart he fails in every feeling, and in his life he comes short of every service, which is due by him to such a Being. Consider, for example, how sadly he fails in the inward esteem or reverence which he owes to God. God is the perfection of beauty and excellence; every quality worthy of our regard exists in Him in infinite fulness. All other beauty and all other excellence are but feeble sparks from the great source of beauty and excellence. The wisdom of a Newton, the benevolence of a Howard the tenderness of a Ruth, the generosity of a Joseph the friendship of a Jonathan are but stray and feeble rays from the One great Sun — the all-glorious and unchangeable God. Yet, how dead are all mens hearts to this beauty and excellence! When I look at a rainbow, or a lovely sunset, the sense of beauty fills my mind; when, stricken with conscious meanness, I experience the generosity of a friend; or when I follow a self-denying philanthropist through scenes of sickening vice and misery, and witness his untiring love; or when I read of noble-hearted men and women risking their lives to rescue shipwrecked seamen, my heart swells, my bosom heaves: but when I think of God, I am dull, languid, lifeless; I dismiss the thought as ungenial; it has no sunshine for my heart. Consider God in any of the relations in which He stands to us, and how miserably defective are our feelings! Our Creator and Preserver, how well is He entitled to our reverence and gratitude — yet how independently we carry ourselves towards Him! Our Owner and Master, what a claim He has to our service — yet how disposed are we ever to say, Our lips are our own, who is Lord over us?’ Our King, our Lawgiver, and our Judge, on whose will and pleasure our everlasting destinies hang, — how little we think of pleasing Him! Our God and Father, who longs for our affections, who throws all divine earnestness into the request, ‘My son, give me thy heart,^ and whom one genuine look of love from us would gladden infinitely more than the first smiles of her gentle infant gladden the doting mother, — how coldly and heedlessly we leave Him to say, ‘If I be a Father, where is mine honour? and if I be a Master, where is my fear?’ How strange and sad it is to find God contrasting the mindfulness of the very beasts with the reffardlessness of man! Pointing to the ox that knows his owner, and the ass his masters crib, — pointing to the stork of heaven that knows his appointed time, and the turtle and the crane and swallow, that observe the time of their coming, and deploring, in contrast to these, that Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider!’ Contrasting the fidelity of the sons of Jonadab, who would have died rather than forget their father’s charge, with the heedlessness of those whom he had nourished and brought up as children! Contrasting the attachment of the very heathen to their idol-gods, and the constancy with which they continued to honour them, with the changing fickleness of the professed children of Jehovah!
How strange, too, that it should be so difficult to convince men of this great habit of sin! That they should so seldom think that anything is seriously wrong, when the heart is thus dead to God, and that they should be so little shocked, either at themselves or at the world at large, though virtually they are trying to dethrone God, and govern things not after His fashion, but their own! It is not necessary to prove men murderers, or adulterers, or blasphemers, or revellers to bring them in guilty before God. It is enough that their lives have been spent in regardlessness of Him, as if no such Being lived, or as if He had nothing to do with them, or they with Him. The sense of unworthiness that comes over one when he awakes to a sense of the virtual atheism of his past life, is in no sensible degree impaired by the consideration that outwardly his life may have been blameless, and that his relations to his fellow-men may have been amiable and kind. It is the discovery of his godlessness that distresses him; the thought that all his life long he has been neglecting the God in whom he lives and moves and has his being; that in place of the regard due to his Creator, the submission due to his Sovereign, the reverence due to his God, the affection due to his Father, and the gratitude, confidence, and devotion due to his Redeemer, his heart has presented an absolute blank — an utter void of every living sentiment suitable to his relation to the Most High! How can it be supposed that he has fulfilled the great ends of his being, when absokite death has reigned in the region that should have been alive with the warnfiest feeHngs and the most spontaneous activities? A soul dead to God, how is it conceivable that God should be pleased with such a phenomenon? So far from being astonished that he should be declared guilty before God, the wonder is that God should not long ago have put an end to a life so unprofitable. He feels himself so utterly unworthy, that Divine grace alone can effect his salvation; and while he lives on earth, he can never cease to mourn the godless tendencies that still remain in him, nor to feel the necessity of resorting to the throne of grace, that he may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
2. Selfishness is the other great centre of human depravity. It is not necessary to prove that selfishness in its highest degree reigns in every human heart, for undoubtedly there are some on whom this taint has fallen much less heavily than the taint of godlessness. Yet the very fact that selfishness in the vilest forms swarms on every side, even in the bosom of a community professedly Christian, may surely convince us that the deadly virus has got an alarming hold on the whole family of man. A large class among us musters undisguisedly under the motto, ‘Every man for himself; and among the membeis of the fraternity there is no want of loyalty to their banner. See how eagerly many clutch at the highest gains they can procure, utterly regardless of the interests of others; how the trader will push his opium or his ardent spirits among communities which they are sure to enslave or debase; how the slave-dealer will depopulate the fairest regions of the globe, and not scruple to burn and pillage, to mutilate and murder on every side, in order to make up the gang which he has under-* taken to provide; how the sensualist will lure his victim to his haunts, in spite of the broken hearts of parents, and the infallible ruin that awaits herself; how the whole business of parliaments, and courts of justice, and police institutions is mainly to create checks and safeguards against human selfishness and to secure that if men will not live in brotherly love they shall at least pay some regard to the rights of neighbours and brethren weaker than themselves. Can it be that a mortal disease, which on the very face of society is seen to be so widely spread, has passed over any member of the family without leaving behind even one trace of its presence?
But let us not think of selfishness merely in its vilest forms. Our Lord himself has furnished us with a test which enables us to detect it in forms as subtle as any in which the chemist detects the presence of poison. It is the golden rule, Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye also unto them; ’ or, what is in substance the same, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Whoever fails to do this is selfish. To the extent to which he fails, he is selfish. What character, however amiable, could stand the test? Where is the man who has always been as concerned for his neighbour’s comfort as for his own; who has always paid as much regard to his neighbour’s feelings as his own; who has never sought to benefit himself or exalt himself at the expense of others; who has never grudged trouble in doing that for another which he would have done for himself; who even in his inmost heart has never felt a touch of envy when another was prospering beyond him, or a thrill of satisfaction when one who had been an enemy and opponent began to feel the grip of adversity! The truth is that the more unselfish men are the more sensitive are their consciences and the more ready are they to condemn themselves for breaches of the law of charity unperceived and unsuspected by coarser and rougher minds. Looking to so much higher a standard than the mass of men, they are the more ready to feel and confess their shortcomings; and the very compliments that often flow on them so copiously from their fellows, by recalling the host of heart-sins which no eye perceives but their own, only lead to a deeper humiliation and a more absolute sense of unworthiness in the sight of God.
Yes there is a seed of selfishness more or less developed in all men. But undoubtedly it is the godlessness of the natural heart that furnishes the main article of the indictment in which all men are declared guilty before God. The root of the evil is, the secret aversion of man to the Living God, his inward recoil from the Holy One, and the deadness of his heart in respect of those emotions that ought to flow out from it to God in clouds of fragrance. Dead to God! Who can fathom the depths of the unworthiness which that state of things implies? A heart dead to a loving parent, dead to a generous friend, dead to a devoted spouse, stands at a fearfully low point in the scale of depravity; but what can be thought of a heart dead to God! And as the guilt is great, so is the resulting evil. More than the creeping plant depends on the stake or trellis, more than the feeble infant depends on its mother — man is formed to depend on God. God is the fountain of his beings the only source in him of order, beauty life, and progress. Without God everything falls into confusion. Noisome lusts come creeping as from their dens, and leave their slime on the fairest features of the soul. The reins are torn by appetite and passion from the hands of conscience and reason; the texture of the soul is unknit; and there is no force in it to subdue the rebellion. Souls that have been restored through God’s grace in Christ have no stronger conviction than that all their springs are in God, and that if the blessed connection that has been formed between them were for one moment to be severed, that moment they would wither and rot like a fallen leaf. It is this sense of dependence, absolute, constant, and entire, that gives such pathos to some of our hymns, expressive of the breathings of the earnest heart: —
* Other refuge have I none,
Hangs my helpless soul on Thee j
Leave, ah, leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me.
All my trust in Thee is stayed,
All my help from Thee I bring;
Cover my defenceless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.’
Who of us have got this blessed fellowship? Have you awoke from the dark dream of your self-confident heart that you could do well enough without God? Have you come to see that God is indispensable to your very being? Have you been made to shiver in looking back on the past, at the thought of a life spent without God; and still more in looking forward to the future, at the prospect of an endless existence divorced from His presence and darkened by His frown? Have you fled for refuge to take hold of the hope set before you? and have you found at the cross of Jesus the blessedness of Divine acceptance and fellowship, and learned to know the joy and to sing the hymn, of the reconciled and comforted — O Lord, I will praise thee; though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comforted st me/