On the Reasonableness of Faith

“But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.”

“Shut up unto the faith.” This is the expression which we fix upon as the subject of our present discourse — and to let you more effectually into the meaning of it, it may be right to state, that in the preceding clause “kept under the law,” the term kept is, in the original Greek, derived from a word which signifies a sentinel. The mode of conception is altogether military. The law is made to act the part of a sentry, guarding every avenue but one — and that one leads those who are compelled to take it to the faith of the Gospel. They are shut up to this

Q faith as their only alternative — like an enemy driven by the superior tactics of an opposing general, to take up the only position in which they can maintain themselves, or fly to the only town in which they can find a refuge or a security. This seems to have been a favourite style of argument with Paul, and the way in which he often carried on an intellectual warfare with the enemies of his Master’s cause. It forms the basis of that masterly and decisive train of reasoning, which we have in his epistle to the Romans. By the operation of a skilful tactics, he, (if we may be allowed the expression) manoeuvered them, and shut them up to the faith of the Gospel. It gave prodigious effect to his argument, when he reasoned with them, as he often does, upon their own principles, and turned them into instruments of conviction against themselves. With the Jews he reasoned as a Jew. He made a full concession to them of the leading principles of Judaism — and this gave him possession of the vantage ground upon which these principles stood. He made use of the Jewish law as a sentinel to shut them out of every other refuge, and to shut them up to the refuge laid before them in the Gospel. He led them to Christ by a schoolmaster which they could not refuse — and the lesson of this schoolmaster, though a very decisive, was a very short one. “Cursed be he that continueth not in all the words of this law to do them.” But, in point of fact, they had not done them. To them then belonged the curse of the violated law. The awful severity of its sanctions was upon them. They found the faith and the free offer of the Gospel to be the only avenue open to receive them. They were shut up unto this avenue; and the law, by concluding them all to be under sin, left them no other outlet but the free act of grace and of mercy laid before us in the New Testament.

But this is not the only example of that peculiar way in which St. Paul has managed his discussions with the enemies of the faith. He carried the principle of being all things to all men into his very reasonings. He had Gentiles as well as Jews to contend with — and he often made some sentiment or conviction of their own, the starting point of his argument. In this same epistle to the Romans, he pleaded with the Gentiles the acknowledged law of nature and of conscience. In his speech to the men of Athens, he dated his argument from a point in their own superstition. In this way he drew converts both from the ranks of Judaism, and the ranks of idolatry — and whether it was the school of Gamaliel in Jerusalem, or the school of poetry and philosophy in countries of refinement, that he had to contend with, his accomplished mind was never at a loss for principles by which he bore down the hostility of his adversaries, and shut them up unto the faith.

But there is a fashion in philosophy as well as in other things. In the course of centuries, new schools are formed, and the old, with all their doctrines, and all their plausibilities, sink into oblivion. The restless appetite of the human mind for speculation, must have novelties to feed upon — and after the countless fluctuations of two thousand years, the age in which we live has its own taste, and its own style of sentiment to characterize it. If Paul, vested with a new apostolical commission, were to make his appearance amongst us, we should like to know how he would shape his argument to the reigning taste and philosophy of the times. We should like to confront him with the literati of the day, and hear him lift his intrepid voice in our halls and colleges. In his speech to the men of Athens, he refers to certain of their own poets. We should like to hear his references to the poetry and the publications of modern Europe — and while the science of this cultivated age stood to listen in all the pride of academic dignity, we should like to know the arguments of him who was determined to know nothing save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

But all this is little better than the indulgence of a dream. St. Paul has already fought the good fight, and his course is finished. The battles of the faith are now in other hands — and though the wisdom, and the eloquence, and the inspiration of Paul have departed from among us, yet he has left behind him the record of his principles. With this for our guide, we may attempt to do what he himself calls upon us to do. We may attempt to be followers of him. We may imitate him in the intrepid avowal of his principles — and we may try, however humbly and imperfectly, to imitate his style of defending them. We may accommodate our argument to the reigning principles of the day. We may be all things to all men — and out of the leading varieties of taste and of sentiment which obtain in the present age, and in the present country, we may try if we can collect something, which may be turned into an instrument of conviction for reclaiming men from their delusions, and shutting them up unto the faith.

There is first, then, the school of Natural Religion — a school founded on the competency of the human mind to know God by the exercise of its own faculties — to clothe him in the attributes of its own demonstration — to serve him by a worship and a law of its own discovery — and to assign to him a mode of procedure in the administration of this vast universe, upon the strength and the plausibility of its own theories. We have not time at present for exposing the rash and unphilosophical audacity of all these presumptions. We lay hold of one of them, and we maintain, that if steadily adhered to, and consistently carried into its consequences, it would empty the school of natural religion of all its disciples — it would shut them up unto the faith, and impress one rapid and universal movement into the school of Christ. The principle which we allude to makes a capital figure in their self-formed speculations; and it is neither more nor less than the judicial government of God over moral and accountable creatures. They hold that there is a law. They hold the human race to be bound to obedience. They hold the authority of the law to be supported by sanctions; and that the truth, and justice, and dignity of the Supreme Being are involved in these sanctions being enforced and executed. One step more, and they are fairly shut up unto the faith. That law which they hold to be in full authority and operation over us, has been most unquestionably violated. We appeal, as Paul did before us, to the actual state of the human heart, and of human performances. We ask them to open their eyes to the world around them — to respect, like true philosophers, the evidence of observation, and not to flinch from the decisive undeniable fact which this evidence lays before them. Men are under the law, and that law they have violated. “There is not a just man on earth, that sinneth not.” It is not to open, shameless and abandoned profligacy, that we are pointing your attention. We make our confident appeal to the purest and loveliest of the species. We rest our cause with the most virtuous individual of our nature. We enter his heart, and from what passes there, we can gather enough, and more than enough, to overthrow this tottering and unsupported fabric. We take a survey of its desires, its wishes, its affections — and we put the question to the consciousness of its possessor, if all these move in obedient harmony even to the law of natural religion. The external conduct viewed separately and in itself, is, in the eye of every enlightened moralist, nothing. It is mere visible display. Virtue consists in the motive which lies behind it; and the soul is the place of its essential residence. Bring the soul then into immediate comparison with the law of God. Think of the pure and spiritual service which it exacts from you. Amid all the busy and complicated movements of the inner man, is there no estrangement from God? Are there no tumultuous wanderings from that purity, and goodness, and truth, which even philosophers ascribe to him? Is there no shortcoming from the holiness of his law, and the magnificence of his eternity? Is there no slavish devotion to the paltry things of sense and of the world? Is there no dreary interval of hours together, when God is unfelt and unthought of? Is there no one time when the mind delivers itself up to the guidance of its own feelings, and its own vanities — when it moves at a distance from heaven — and whether in solitude or among acquaintances, carries along, without any reference to that Being whose arm is perpetually upon me; who, at this moment, is at my right hand, and measures out to me every hairbreadth of my existence — who upholds me ihrough every point of that time which runs from the first cry of my

infancy, to that dark hour when the weight of my dying agonies is upon mewhose love and whose kindness are ever present, to give me every breath which I draw, and every comfort which I enjoy? We grant the disciples of natural religion the truth of their own principle, that we are under the moral government of the Almighty — and by the simple addition of one undeniable fact to their speculation, we shut them up unto the faith. The simple fact is, that we are rebels to that government, and the punishment of these rebels is due to the vindication of its insulted authority. To say, that God will perpetually interpose with an act of oblivion, would be vastly convenient for us — but what then becomes of that moral government which figures away in the demonstrations of moralists? Does it turn out after all, to be nothing more than an idle and unmeaning declamation, on which they love to expatiate — without any thing like real attention or belief on the part of the thinking principle? If they are not true to their own professed convictions, we can undertake to shut them up to nothing. This is slipping from under us — but it is by an actual desertion of their own principle. If you cannot get them to stand to the argument, the argument is discharged upon them in vain. If this be the result, we do not promise ourselves that all we can say shall have any weight upon their convictions — not, however, because they have gained a victory, but because they have betaken themselves to flight. At the very moment that we thought of shutting them up, and binding them in captivity to the obedience of the truth, they have turned about and got away from us — but how? By an open renunciation of their own principle. Look at the great majority of infidel and demi-infidel authors, and they concur in representing man as an accountable subject, and God as a judge and a lawgiver. Examine then the account which this subject has to render — and you will see, in characters too glaring to be resisted, that with the purest and most perfect individual amongst us, it is a wretched account of guilt and deficiency. What make you of this? Is the subject to rebel and disobey every hour, and the King, by a perpetual act of indulgence, to efface every character of truth and dignity from his government? Do this, and you depose the legislator from his throne. You reduce the sanctions of his law to a name and a mockery. Yoiiive the lie to your own speculation. You pull the fabric of his moral government to pieces — and you give a spectacle to angels which makes them weep compassion on your vanity — poor, pigmy, perishable man, prescribing a way to the Eternal, and bringing down the high economy of Heaven to the standard of his convenience, and his wishes. This will never do. If there be any truth in the law of God over the creatures whom he has formed, and if that law we have trampled upon, we are amenable to its sentence. Ours is the dark and unsheltered state of condemnation — and if there be a single outlet or way of escaping, it cannot be such a way as will abolish the law, and degrade the Lawgiver — but it must be such a way as will vindicate and exalt the Deity — as will pour a tide of splendour over the majesty of his high attributes — and as in the sublime language of the prophet, who saw it from afar, will magnify his law, and make it honourable. To this way we are fairly shut up. It is our only alternative. It is offered to us in the Gospel of the New Testament. I am the way, says the Author of that Gospel, and by me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved. In the appointment of this Mediator — in his death, to make propitiation for the sins of the world — in his triumph over the powers of darkness — in the voice heard from the clouds of heaven, and issuing from

the mouth of God himself, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” — in the resistless argument of the Apostle, who declares God to be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus — in the undoubted miracles which accompanied the preaching of this illustrious personage, and his immediate followers — in the noble train of prophecy, of which he was the object and the termination — in the choir of angels from heaven, who sung his entrance into the world — and in the sublime ascension from the grave, which carried him away from it — in all this we see a warrant and a security given to the work of our redemption in the New Testament, before which philosophy and all her speculations vanish into nothing. Let us betake ourselves to this way. Let us rejoice in being shut up unto it. It is passing, in fact, from death unto life — or, from our being under the law, which speaks tribulation and wrath to every soul of man that doeth evil, to being under the grace which speaks quietness and assurance for ever to all that repair to it. The Scripture hath concluded all to be under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.

We now pass on from the school of natural religion to another school, possessing distinct features — and of which we conceive the most expressive designation to be, the school of Classical Morality. The lessons of this school are given to the public in the form of periodical essays, elaborate dissertations on the principles of virtue, eloquent and often highly interesting pictures of its loveliness and dignity, the charm that it imparts to domestic retirement, and its happy subservience to the peace, and order, and well-being of society. It differs from the former school in one leading particular. It does not carry in its speculations so distinct and positive a reference to the Supreme Being. It is true, that our duties to him are found to occupy a place in the catalogue of its virtues; but then the principle on which they are made to rest, is not the will of God, or obedience to his law. They are rather viev,^ed as a species of moral accomplishment — the effect of which is to exalt and embellish the individual. They form a component part of what they call virtue — but if their virtue be looked upon in no other light than as the dress of the mind, we maintain, that in the act of admiring this dress, and of even attempting to put it on, you may stand at as great a distance from God, and he be as little in your thoughts, as in the tasteful choice of your apparel, for the dress and ornament of the body. The object of these writers is not to bring their readers under a sense of the dominion and authority of God. The main principle of their morality, is not to please God, but to adorn man — to throw the splendour of virtue and accomplishment around him — to bring him up to what they call the end and the dignity of his being — to raise him to the perfection of Iiis nature — and to rear a spectacle for the admiration of men and of angels, whom they figure to look down with rapture, from their high eminence, on the perseverance of a mortal in the career of worth, and integrity, and honour. This is all very fine. It makes a good picture — but what we insist upon IS, that it is a fancy picture; that, without the limits of Christianity and its influence, you will not meet with a single family, or a single individual, to realize it — that the whole range of human experience furnishes no resemblance to it — and that it is as unlike to what we find among the men of the world, or in the familiar walks of society, as the garden of Eden is imlike the desolation of a pestilence. The representation is beautiful — but it is still more flattering than it is fair. It is a gaudy deception, and stands at as great a distance from the truth of observation, as it does from the truth of tlic New Testament. There is positively nothing like it in the whole round of human experience. It is the mere glitter of imagination. It may serve to throw a tinsel colouring over the pages of an ambitious eloquence — but with business and reality for our objects, we may describe the tour of many thousand families, or take our station for years in the market-place, and in our attempts to realize the picture which has been laid before us, we will be sure to meet with nothing but vanity, fatigue, and disappointment. Now, the question we have to put to the disciples of this school is, are they really sincere in this admiration of virtue? Is it a true process of sentiment within them? We are willing to share in their admiration, and to ascend the highest summit of moral excellence along with them. We join issue with them on their own principle, and coupling it with the obvious and undeniable fact of man’s depravity, we shut them up unto the faith. Virtue is the idol which they profess to venerate — and this virtue, as it exists in their own conceptions, and figures in their

own dissertations, they cannot find. In proportion to their regard for virtue, must be their disappointment at missing her — and when we witness the ardour of their sentiments, and survey the elegance of their high-wrought pictures, what must be the humiliation of these men, we think, when they look on the world around them, and contrast the purity of their own sketches, with the vices and the degradation of the species. Grosser beings may be. satisfied with the average morality of mankind — but if there be any truth in their high standard of perfection, or any sincerity in their aspirations after it, it is impossible that they can be satisfied. By one single step do we lead them from the high tone of academic sentiment, to the sober humility of the Gospel. Give them their time to expatiate on virtue, and they cannot be too loud or eloquent in her praises. We have only a single sentence to add to their description: The picture is beautiful, but on the whole surface of the world we defy them to fasten upon one exemplification — and by every grace which they have thrown around their idol, and every addition they have made to her loveliness, they have only thrown mankind at a distance more helpless and more irrecoverable from their high standard of duty and of excellence.

The tasteful admirer of eloquent description and beautiful morality, turns with disgust from those mortifying pictures of man, which abound in the New Testament. We only ask them to combine, with all this finery and eloquence, what has been esteemed as the best attribute of a philosopher, respect for the evidence of observation. We ask them to look at man as he is, and compare him with man as they would have him to be. If they find that he falls miserably short of their ideal standard of excellence, what is this but making a principle of their own the instrument of shutting them up unto the faith of the Gospel, or, at least, shutting them up unto one of the most peculiar of its doctrines, the depravity of our nature, or the dismal ravage which the power of sin has made upon the moral constitution of the species. The doctrine of the academic moralist, so far from reaching a wound to the doctrine of the Apostle, gives an additional energy to all his sentiments. “My mind approves the things which are more excellent, but how to perform that which is good, I find not.” “I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” “But the good that I would I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do.”

But the faith of the Gospel does not stop here. It does not rest satisfied with shutting you up unto a belief of the fact of human depravity. That depravity it proposes to do away. It professes itself equal to the mighty achievement of rooting out the deeply seated corruption of’ our nature — of making us new creatures in Christ Jesus — of destroying the old man and his deeds, and bringing every rebellious movement within us under the dominion of a new and a better principle. If sincere in your admiration of virtue, you are shut up unto the only expedient for the re-establishment of virtue in the world. That expedient is the Spirit of God working in the heart of believers — quickening those who were dead in trespasses and sins, and bringing into action the same mighty power which raised Jesus from the grave, for raising us who believe in Jesus to newness of life and of obedience. This is the process of sanctification laid before us in the New Testament. A wonderful process it undoubtedly is — but are we who walk in a world of myctery, who have had only a few little years to look about us, and are bewildered at every step amid the variety of his works and of his counsels, are we to reject a process because it is wonderful? Must no step, no operation of the mighty God be admitted, till it is brought under the dominion of our faculties? — and shall we who strut our little hour in the humblest of his mansions, prescribe a law to him whose arm is abroad upon all worlds, and whose eye can take in, at a single glance, the unn)easurable fields of creation and providence? Be it as wonderful as it may — enough for us that it is made sure by the distinct and authentic testimony of heaven — and if, from the mouth of Jesus, who is heaven’s messenger, we are told, that” unless a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom,’* it is our part submissively to acquiesce, and humbly to pray for it. Whatever repugnance others may feel to this part of the revealed counsels of God, those who look to a sublime standard of moral excellence, and sigh for the establishment of its authority in the world, ought to rejoice in it. It is the only remaining expedient for giving effect and reality to their own declamations, and they are fairly shut up unto it. Long have they tried to repair the disorders of a ruined world. Many an expedient has been fallen upon. Temples have been reared to science and to virtue — and from the lofty academic chair, the wisdom of this world has lifted its voice amid a crowd of listening admirers. For thousands of years, the unaided powers and principles of humanity, have done their uttermost — and tell us, ye advocates for the dignity of the species, the amount of their operation. If you refuse to answer, we shall answer for you — and do not hesitate to say, that mighty in promise, and wretched in accom-R2 plishment, you have positively done nothingrthat all the wisdom of the schools, and all its vapouring demonstrations, have not had the least perceptible weight, when brought to bear upon the mass of human character, and human performance — that the corruption of the inner man has not yielded at all to your reasoning, and remains as unsubdued and as obstinate a principle as ever — that the power of depravity in the soul of man is beyond you — and that setting aside the real operation of Christianity in the hearts of individuals, and the surface dressing which the hand of legislation has thrown over the face of society, the human soul, if seen in its nakedness, would still be seen in all its original deformity — as strong in selfishness, as lawless in propensity, as devoted to sense and to time, as estranged from God, as unmindful of the obedience, and as indifferent to the reward and the inheritance of his children.

The machine has gone into disorder — and there is not a single power within the compass of the machinery itself that is able to repair it. You must do as you do in other cases — you must have recourse to some external application. The in efficacy of every tried expedient shuts you up unto the only remaining one. Every human principle has been brought to bear upon it in vain, and we are shut up unto the necessity of some other principle that is beyond humanity, and above it. The Spirit of God is that mighty principle. That Spirit which moved on the face of the waters, and made light, and peace, and beauty to emerge out of the wild war of nature and her elements, is the revealed agent of Heaven, for repairing the disorders of sin, and restoring the moral creation of God to health and to loveliness. It will create us anew unto good works. It will make us again after that image in which we were originally formed. It will sanctify us by the faith that is in Jesus. And by that mighty power whereby it is able to subdue all things unto itself, it will obtain the victory over that spirit which now worketh in the children of disobedience. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the first fruit of its operation — and to him who believes it is the satisfying pledge of its future triumphs. That body, which, left to itself, would have mouldered into fragments, is now in all the bloom of immortality, at the right hand of the everlasting throne. We have tried the operation of a thousand principles in vain. Let us repair to this, so great in promise, and so mighty in performance. It has ah-eady achieved its wonders. It has wrought those miracles of faith and fortitude which, in the first ages of Christianity, threw a gleam of triumph over the horrors of martyrdom. It has given us displays of the great and the noble which are without example in history — and from the first moment of its operation in the world, it has been working in those unseen retirements of the cottage and the family, where the eye of the historian never penetrates. The admirers of virtue are fliirly shut up unto the faith — for faith is the only avenue that leads to it. “To your faith add virtue,” says the Apostle — and that you may be able to make the addition, the promise of the Spirit is given to them that believe.

We should now pass on to another school, the school of fine feeling and poetical sentiment. It differs from the former in this — that while the one, in its dissertations on virtue, carries you up to the principles of duty, the other paints and admires it as a tasteful exhibition of what is fair and lovely in human character. The one makes virtue its idol because of its rectitude; the other makes virtue its idol because of its beauty — and the process of reasoning by which they are shut up unto the faith, is the same in both. Look at the actual state of the world, and you find that both the rectitude and the beauty are a-wanting, If you admire the one, and love the other, you are shut up unto the only expedient that is able to restore them — and that expedient is sanctioned by the truth of heaven, and has all the power of omnipotence employed in giving effect to the operation — the Spirit of God subduing all things unto itself — putting the law in our hearts, and writing it in our minds — and by bringing the soul of man under the influence of “whatsoever things are pure, or honest, or lovely, or of good report,” creating a finer spectacle, and rearing a fairer and more unfading flower, than ever grew in the gardens of poetry.

The processes are so entirely similar, that we would not have made it the distinct object of your attention, had it not been for the sake of an argument in behalf of the faith, which may be addressed with great advantage to the literary and cultivated orders of society. There are few people of literary cultivation, who have not read a novel. In this fictitious composition, there are often one or two perfect character’s that figure in the history, and delight the imagination of the reader — and you are at last landed in some fairy scene of happiness and virtue, which it is quite charming to contemplate, and which you would like to aspire after — perhaps some interesting family in the bosom of which love, and innocence, and tranquillity, have fixed themselves — where the dark and angry passions never enter — where suspicion is unknown, and every eye meets another in the full glance of cordiality and affection — where charity reigns triumphant, and smiles beneficence and joy upon the humble cottages which surround it. Now this is very soothing, and very delightful. It makes you glad to think of it. The fancy swells with rapture, and the moral principle of our nature lends its full approbation to a scene so virtuous and so exemplary. So much for the dream of fancy. Let us compare it with the waking images of truth. Walk from Dan to Beersheba, and tell us, if without and beyond the operation of Gospel motives, and Gospel principles, the reality of life ever furnished you with a picture that is at all like the elegance and perfection of this fictitious history. Go to the finest specimen of such a family. Take your secret stand, and observe them in their more retired and invisible moments. It is not enough to pay them a ceremonious visit, and observe them in the put on manners and hoUday dress of general company. Look at them when all this disguise and finery are thrown aside. Yes, we have no doubt, that you will perceive some love, some tenderness, some virtue — but the rough and untutored honesty of truth compels us to say, that along with all this, there are at times mingled the bitterness of invective, the growlings of discontent, the harpings of peevishness and animosity, and all that train of angry, suspicious, and discordant feelings, which imbitter the heart of man, and make the reality of human life a very sober affair indeed, when compared with the high colouring of romance, and the sentimental extravagance of poetry.

Now, what do we make of all this? We infer, that however much we may love perfection, and aspire after it, yet there is some want, some disease in the constitution of man, which prevents his attainment of it — that there is a feebleness of principle about him — that the energy of his practice does not correspond to the fair promises of his fancy — and however much he may delight in an ideal scene of virtue and moral excellence, there is some lurking malignity in his constitution, which, without the operation of that mighty power revealed to us in the Gospel, makes it vain to wish, and hopeless to aspire after it.