Evangelists and Their Gospel
Three hundred years ago, when the Word of God was working its way in strength through Europe, the question arose, once and again, who is to be the Reformer of France? Berquin, Farel, Calvin were named. But the question of leadership soon was settled by the martyrdom or banishment of the noblest of France’s sons. The shepherds were
smitten, and the sheep were scattered.
“Farel would have been the man fitted for this work. He was one of those whose simple, serious, earnest tones carry away the masses. His voice of thunder made his hearers tremble. The strength of his convictions created faith in their souls, the fervour of his prayers raised them to heaven. When they listened to him, ’ they felt,’ as Calvin says, * not merely a few light pricks and stings, but were wounded and pierced to the heart; and hypocrisy was dragged from those wonderful and more than tortuous hiding-places which lie deep in the heart of man.’ He pulled down and built up mth equal energy. Even his life, — an apostleship full of self-sacrifice, danger, and triumph, — was as effectual as his sermons. He was not only a minister of the Word; he was a bishop also. He was able to discern the young men fitted to wield the weapons of the Gospel, and to direct them in the great war of the age. Farel never attacked a place, however difficult of access, which he did not take. Such was the man then called into France, and who seemed destined to be its reformer.” *
Is God now preparing a reformer for France, — a theologian and an evangelist, — a Calvin and a Farel in one? In what direction do the leadings of His providence now point? Is the present work to glide on quietly, widening and deepening without noise? Or are we to be startled some day with the news that a Paul, or a Luther, or a Calvin has arisen? Is the present restraint upon priestly hatred to be continued? Or is the telegraph some midnight
* Merle D’Aubigne’s “Keformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin,” vol. i., p. 602.
to flash through Europe the intelligence that a long-laid Vatican plot has at length been ripened, and that the Pope has found tools among the ‘’ Legitimists” of France to carry it out, if not in massacre, at least in banishment?
But, with or without a leader, will France return to THE FAITH of the Reformation? And is it this that is now going on? Is the present movement working back in the direction of the old landmarks? The converts of the Mission know nothing of the Galilean Confession or the Geneva Catechism; but the truth embodied in these is that which is taught in the Bible which they read, the addresses to which they listen, the hymns which they sing, and the books which are circulated among them.
I do not enter into the question of creeds. I speak of them merely as the classification of truth; and it is of no small importance that the minds of
* In August, 1572, the Duke of Guise called together the captains of the Swiss and French guards, and thus addressed them: “Gentlemen, the hour is come, when, under the sanction of the king, we may at length avenge ourselves upon the accursed race, — the enemies of God. The beast is in the snare, and must not be suffered to escape. Honour and profit may now be won cheaply, and that effected without peril which so many brave captains, at the expense of so much blood, have in vain sought to accomplish.” Is such a thing possible again? Nothing more likely if “legitimacy” gets into the ascendant. A century and a-half of restraint has only whetted the appetite of Rome for slaughter. Some Duke of Guise may yet appear who will “cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.”
of the Mission converts should be turned in the direction of the ancient faith for which their fathers suffered. The Reformation exhibited a singular example of unity in belief, among the different nations; and the “Harmony of Confessions,” — a volume which gathered all Protestant creeds together, — is of itself a study, not only in theology, but in the history of mind. The agreement of so many minds of diverse nationalities, without concert or conference, is a puzzle to the metaphysician, while it is a triumph to the Christian. The Galilean Confession, shorter than most of its fellows, but quite as explicit, as a brief scheme of classified doctrine drawn from Scripture, is a noble heirloom which France must not surrender. It may, perhaps, come up now, and play no inconsiderable part in the development of the nation’s future.”^
* The Gallican Confession, first published in 1561, in French, and afterwards translated into Latin in 1566, bears the following title: — “Confession de foy, faitte d’un commun accord par les Fran9ois, qui desirent vivre selon la puret de I’evangile de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ.” It was presented, in French (in 1559), to Francis II., at Amboise, in the name of all the godly of France, and again, in 1561 at Poissy, to Charles IX., and then afterwards published in Latin by the pastors of the French Churches, with a preface to all other evangelical pastors. As a specimen of this noble document, I give the following extract, in the Old French, from the article on Justification: —” Nous croyons que toute nostre justice est fondle en la remission de noz p(^chez; comme aussi c’est nostre seule flicit, comme dit David. Parquoy nous rejettons tons autres moyens de nous pouvoir instifier devant Dieu, et sans prsumer de nulles vertus
As to the message and the messengers in the present enterprise, let me add the following remarks.
There are several qualifications specially needed in this expanding work. For some schemes the mere keeping of machinery in motion may, to a certain extent, suffice. In this Mission such routine, commonplace discharge of duty is little better than a drag; and it is not a drag, but motive-power, that is needed here. Energy, fervour of spirit, self-denial, patient endurance of toil, undaunted zeal, with love and faith, such as all victorious reformers and successful evangelists have possessed; — these are what the Mission requires, and without which it cannot hope for conquest. My object is not to praise nor to dispraise; not to point out who have and who have not these qualities; but to remind all who engage in it what the enterprise demands. It would rather struggle on with few thoroughly good labourers than have itself weakened by unsound or
ne merites, nous nous tenons simplement h, I’obbissance de Jesus Christ, laquelle nous est allouee tant pour couvrir toutes noz fautes, que pour nous faire trouver grace et faveur devant Dieu. Et de fait nous croyons qu’en dclinant de ce fondement tant peu que ce soit, nous ne pourrions trouver ailleurs aucun repos, mais serious tous joursagitez d’inquitude: d’autant que iamais nous ne sommes paisiblement avec Dieu, iusques a ce que nous soyons bien resolus d’estreaymez en Jesus Christ veu que nous sommes dignes d’estre hais en nous mesmes.”
half-hearted ones. They who have gone into the field understand that they are to throw into their work their whole strength and soul. ‘’ Not weary in well-doing “is one special watchword; but there is another which goes beyond this — “Enduring hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ.”
The biographies of Martin Boos, and Felix Neff, and John Frederick Oberlin might be read with great advantage both as guides and stimulants. Some have thought that our Northern training both in England and Scotland has given us habits both of plodding and of daring which other nations do not possess. But these three above named are specimens of German and French workers, fitted both to humble and to quicken the most zealous of us all.
If any permanent work is to be done, there must be, above all things, a dear theology; and the evangelists must be men giving no uncertain sound as to the way of life. Mistakes here will be fatal. There are some men of fervent spirit and hard-working capacity whose brains are mist and confusion, and whose sermons are quite a theological wilderness. They put things in their wrong places; they turn the Gospel upside down; they either mistake the great truths of Scripture, or they set them in a wrong order, which wrong order, like a misplaced plus or minus in algebra, reduces all to confusion, or
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evolves only error. A preacher may speak, by the hour, of Christ, and faith, and pardon, and regeneration, and good works, and yet preach no Gospel. It is the way or order in which these are stated that makes the Gospel. The mixing up together of faith, and love, and works takes all the “good news” out of the Gospel, and all coherence out of the truth of God.
That the Son of God has done what the sinner should have done, and suffered what the sinner should have suffered, is the foundation of the great deliverance. That we are saved by another’s merits, another’s works, another’s death, by ‘’ foreign worth,” as one has expressed it, is the essence of the glad tidings. But if we mix up the work of the Substitute with the doings of the sinner, and preach that we are partly saved by the one and partly by the other, we make void the cross of Christ. If we mingle together the repentance of the sinner with the sacrifice of the Substitute, we both misunderstand the meaning and deny the value of the sacrifice. If we say that Christ died for the godly, not the ungodly; that God justifies the godly, not the ungodly; that Christ does not receive all kinds of sinners, but only those who are duly sensible of their sins; that we must qualify ourselves for coming to Christ by prayer and faith and love and contrition and good deeds, we utterly subvert the finished work of Calvary, and deny the free love of God. To preach that anything is to be done by the sinner to obtain mercy, and recommend himself to the favour of God, is but to preach a milder Popery. As it was the blindness of the blind man, and the leprosy of the leper that brought them to Christ, and Christ to them, so it is the evil that is in us that fits us for Him, who is the Deliverer from evil. “The whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.”
Men often confound what the sinner gets after coming to Christ, with what he is to bring with him. What is he to obtain after coming? Everything that is good and holy and blessed. What is he to bring with him? Nothing but his sins; and if any man preaches that the sinner is to bring something more and something better, he misleads the wanderer. The Gospel is God’s welcome to the children of men; — as fallen, as wanderers, as evil-doers. It is Christ’s knock at the door of the poor and wretched and miserable and blind and naked. It takes every man just as it finds him, and just where it finds him. It addresses itself to each son of Adam.
Let me suppose a false teacher telling a sinner that he is to look up all the good things he has
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about him and bring them as qualifications, in virtue of which, demerit will be overlooked, and himself made welcome. He comes in compliance with the exhortation he has heard, and he counts on being received in respect of the gifts he brings.
“Who art thou,” he is asked by the Son of God, “and what dost thou want?”
“I am a son of Adam, and I am seeking favour
and forgiveness at Thy hands.”
“But what are these things that thou bringest
with thee?”
“They are gifts, without which I was told that I must not approach Thee.”
“Did I ask for gifts, or did I simply ask for thyself, just as thou wert, when my Gospel came to thee?”
“Thou didst ask for nothing but myself and my sins; but I was told that something more would be expected.”
‘’ What hast thou brought?”
“I have brought my repentance and contrition
and resolutions of amendment. They are poor
enough, but they are the best that I could work up
out of my stony heart.”
‘’ Where didst thou get these things? Did I give them to thee, or didst though get them from thyself?”
“I got them from myself; but I trust that
though they are mine, and not Thine, Thou wilt
accept them for what they are worth, and because
of them accept me; for I did not dare to come
to Thee without something, however small.”
“But what is that self-made repentance worth?”
“I know not; but I was told that I must have some good thing about me; otherwise my coming would be in vain. But, Lord, what shall I do with it? Wilt Thou not look favourably on it, and on me because of it?”
“I tell thee that it is worth nothing; nay, it is worth less than nothing; it is an insult to Me; for it takes for granted that I am an ’ austere man,’ a man accepting gifts and bribes. Even were it better than it is, it would profit thee nothing.”
“What, then, shall I do with these gifts that I have brought?”
“Throw them all away, and come to Me as thou art, without one good feeling. I need no gifts to induce Me to receive the sinner. I give, — I do not sdl: I give to the iimvorthy, I do not bargain with the worthy, if such there be.”
“But must I not repent and be broken-hearted?”
“Yes; but you must come to Me for the broken heart; I am exalted, a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance.’ You cannot break that heart of
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yours; but I can, and will. Put it into my hands simply as it is, and you will soon know the wondrous change.”
One thing that often hindered, or at least retarded the Gospel 300 years ago, in Europe, was the attempt at compromise, sometimes put forth on both sides; cunningly by the Komanists, timidly by some of the Reformers. More than once did this trouble Calvin; and sometimes, it may be, stirred his fervent spirit to the use of strong words, — words which only those who knew how much was at stake can properly judge. “If we can be satisfied with a half Christ,” he exclaims on one occasion, “we could easily come to terms (with Rome).” The tendency to “concession,” before which some feeble spirits were giving way, must be resisted. “Pray,” wrote he, “with all earnestness that we may be strengthened with the spirit of boldness.”
Yet there is the other side of this, — rigid resistance to all kinds of conciliation. “It was the misfortune of that age,” writes Dr. Merle D’Aubign, “that many fastened upon a few differences of detail rather than upon the great truths on which they were agreed.’”^ Of more ao-es than that of the Reformation has this been found true; and few have learned the holy medium between uncharitable
* “History of the Reformation in Europe,” vol. vii., p. 484.
censoriousness and the indifference of a reckless liberality. Christian discrimination and largesouled charity ought to be inseparable. We love the truth, we hate the error; yet we are slow to judge or to suspect or to draw, conclusions which, after all, may be as illegitimate as they are unkind.
Bible truth is twofold, two-sided; and we must always turn it round to know exactly what each side means, and to check unfairness in dealing with it The demands of a human logic have not always lain in the direction of truth. We push past the metaphysical thickets which would detain us from the cross by discussions as to the quality and quantity of the faith that is saving, and rest not till we are landed in the great history of the Son of God, in the knowledge of which there is eternal life.
I feel urged here to notice, though briefly, the way in which the eloquent Vinet has, by means of one-sided logic, mystified the way of life. His name is great in France, and it is all the more needful to mark his departure from the Reformation theology. Faith saves, he says, because it has the “germ of holiness;” and in the saved thief “the Divine eye saw the tree in the germ.” “My faith is to take the place of works which I have not done.” “Faith taking the place of works; faith reckoned as righteousness; faith becoming the condition of a neiu covenant, as obedience luas that of the old.” —
In opposition to these statements (and there are many similar), I set the two following extracts, the first from Melancthon, the second from Luther: —
“You stick to the fancy of Augustine, who, though right in rejecting the righteousness of human reason, imagines that we are justified by that fulfilUng of the law which the Holy Spirit works in us. So you imagine that men are justified by faith, because it is by faith that we receive the Spirit, that thereafter we may be able to be just by that fulfilment of the law which the Spirit works. This imagination places justification in our fulfilment of the law, in our purity or perfection, although this renewal ought to follow faith. But turn your eyes from that renewal, and from the law altogether, to the promise and to Christ, and think that it is on Christ’s account that we become just, that is, accepted before God, and that it is thus we obtain peace of conscience, and not on account of that renewal. For even this renewing is insufficient (for justification). We are justified by faith alone, not because it is a root, as you write, but because it apprehends Christ, on account of whom we are accepted; this renewing, although it necessarily follows, yet does not pacify the conscience. Therefore not even love, though it is the fulfilling of the law, justifies, but only faith; not because it is some excellence in us, but only because it takes hold of Christ; we are justified, not on account of love, not on account of the fulfilling of the law, not on account of our renewal, although these are the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but on account of Christ; and Him we take hold of by faith alone. Believe me, my Brentius, this controversy regarding the righteousness which is by faith is a mighty one, and little understood.”
* Vinet’s “Vital Christianity,” p. 286-7. English edition.
“I am accustomed, my Brentius, for the better understanding of tills point, to conceive this idea, that there is no quality in my heart at all, call it either faith or charity; but instead of these I set Christ Himself, and I say this is my righteousness. He is my quality and my formal righteousness as they call it, so as to free myself from looking into law or works.”
The difference between these two theologies is very wide, yet very subtle, especially as expounded by Vinet: and the way in which the matter is argued reminds us sadly of the logic of the Romish doctors, who conceded as strongly as Luther could wish that salvation was from Christ, yet mixed up love and faith and works as conditions of salvation, — terms of the bargain between the sinner and God.
This wa-s one of the keenly-fought positions of the Reformation battle, the loss of which was sure to bring with it, as Melancthon thought, the loss of the great doctrine of justification. The same battle has often been fought over again between Protestants themselves; and the name of Vinet has again awakened it, not only in France and Switzerland, but in America and England. The antagonism between the Lausanne Professor and the Wittemberg Reformer is very manifest. It is no verbal conflict, nor straw-splitting distinction. The very essence of God’s good news to the sons of Adam is touched by it; and the pacification of the sinner’s troubled conscience depends on its right adjustment. The gospel of Yinet would not have quieted Luther’s soul, nor relieved his terrors. That which he felt he needed was the perfection of another’s righteousness reckoned to him by God, in consequence of which he was to be treated as a righteous man; not the germ of a mystical goodness wrapt up in his own faith, by reason of which he might claim the favour of God and the benefits of the great expiation.
The ‘’fiction of another’s righteousness” is the formula by which both mysticism and rationalism unite in decrying the Pauline theology. For these two systems of error are far more akin to each other than is generally credited. Whether the former should be allowed to call itself “spiritual” instead of “sensational,” and the latter “intellectual” instead of “sceptical,” we do not say. All we suggest is that both oppose the Apostolic Gospel, — which is, that God can only deal with the sinner favourably on the footing of another’s perfection: and that he who would influence a nation or move a city, must do this by the old Gospel which Paul carried with him whithersoever he went, and by which he shook the fortresses of Paganism in Asia and in Greece; in Antioch and Ephesus and Corinth.
The question as to a leader may or may not be raised in France; but this must be. Whether the
French Church is to accept its own old Confession may not be quite a serious matter; but whether she is to accept the truth embodied in it is vital. If God purposes to carry out the work by a leader, He will, when the time comes, bring out some man of faith and might from the school where He has been secretly training him for His work; — some Moses from Midian, some David from the sheepfolds, or some Knox from the galleys. If He means to do a new thing in the earth, and save His Israel without a captain, He will, at least, lift up the banner of the eternal truth, and provide His own standard-bearers, whether these may be the unknown or the well known, the humble or the great. “The Lord gave the word, great was the company of those that published it.” The Word given by Jehovah is the quickening sound; all other voices, true as they may be, are but echoes of the one luord, and derive all their power from conformity to it.
Christ saves! This was the Reformation watchword. It must be ours. He does not help man to save himself. He begins and ends the work of deliverance. He who justifies is God only, without the intervention of priest or church. That which justifies is the one completed expiation of the one SACRIFICE; never to be repeated, nay, incapable of repetition. Not that which the sinner does or tries to do; but that which has been done on Golgotha by the one Substitute: not the soul’s fervour, or devotion, or agony, or mortification, or self-surrender, or intensity of longing, or renunciation of the world; none of these, nor all of them together can propitiate the Judge, or make it right for a righteous God to pardon unrighteous men. All the sinner’s liabilities were fully undertaken by the Son of God; and He has fulfilled that which He undertook. “The chastisement of our peace was on Him:” and His endurance of the chastisement for us has secured the eternal peace for the ungodliest of the sons of men. The knowledge of this is forgiveness and everlasting life. The world needs no other Gospel, even in its worst estate; and he who knows the meaning of that Gospel will ask nothing better, nothing surer, to pacify the conscience, and give boldness in drawing near to God.