Wholly for God

A FEW words, first of all, to let my reader know what has given rise to the publication of this volume. Last winter Dr. Whyte of Edinburgh gave a lecture on William Law, in which he directed attention to the treasures to be found in the writings of this almost forgotten, though, as he styles him, “quite incomparable author.” With many others I owe Dr. Whyte a debt of gratitude for this introduction to one of the most powerful and suggestive writers on the Christian life it has been my privilege to become acquainted with. The present volume is a proof of my high appreciation of his teaching, and my desire to let others share with me in the profit to be derived from it.

Not long after the delivery of the lecture, a volume of selections was published, with the title Character aTid Characteristics of William Law, Nonjuror and Mystic. Selected and Arranged, with an Introduction by Alexander Whyte, D.D. (Hodder & Stoughton.) I would not have thought of now publishing this volume, were it not that I hoped that the special point of view from which these extracts have been made would prove an attraction to some, and introduce Law to readers to whom the larger vohune would never find its way. That pomt of view I have expressed in the title as the True Christian Life. I know of no writer who equals Law in the clearness and the force with which the claims of God on man are asserted. God is all; God must have all; God alone must work all: round these central truths all his teaching gathers. In their light he convicts the religious world of the hollowness and terrible self-deception of the Christianity it professes. He proves to the believer no less how little he has lived as one who is wholly devoted to God in every action of common life, how little he has made exalted and eminent piety, and devotion to God, his one study, in the same way that a man of the world does with his business. And what is more, in his later works he lays bare the root and source of all this evil in the unconquerable power of self, and shows how nothmg but the mighty, immediate, and perpetual operation of God on the soul can give deliverance, and how nothing but the having the very spirit and humility, and love of the Lamb of God within can ever satisfy either God or our own heart. I feel confident that the teaching will be a stimulus and a strength to many.

William Law was born in 1686, and died in 1761, at the age of seventy-five. After completing his studies, he entered Holy Orders, and for five years held a Fellowship in Cambridge. At the end of that time, in 1716, he lost his Fellowship, owing to his refusal to take the oath of allegiance to (Jeorge I. His loss of all hope of preferment in the Church has been its great gain. The closing of the door to active work set him free for that life of contemplation and prayer of which we reap the fruit. His forsaking all for

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what he deemed faithfuhiess to conscience helped to intensify that separation from the world, and that whole-hearted allegiance to God and His will for which he was to be such a witness and advocate.

His earliest books were controversial, 1717-1726, and at once gave him a name as an author. His first practical works were — A Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection (1726) and A Serious Gall to a Devout and Holy Life (1729). It is by the latter of these works that Law is best known. The first short paragraph of the book contains the text into the exposition and application of which the writer throws his whole soul: “Devotion is neither private nor public prayer; but prayers, whether private or public, are particular parts of devotion. Devotion signifies a life given, or devoted, to God!’ Throughout the volume he never wearies of illustrating and applying the two statements of his text. He sees men deceiving themselves with the thought that prayer is devotion: he proves to them, that as words are less than actions, prayer is the least part of devotion: devotion consists in a life given up to God. And what this means, he puts in such a light, both from Scripture and the very nature of things, that every serious reader must confess that he has but little realised how wholly God expects us to live for Him, and how nothing less than a life with the spirit of Christ’s commands and example animating us at all times and in every action is what God asks and accepts. The word “wholly unto God,” which recurs unceasingly, is the keynote of the book.

As I have read and re-read the first ten chapters of the book, and felt how difficult it is to realise, even intellectually, this absolute devotion to God, I have more than once thought that if a minister were to try and reproduce in his preaching their substance, the result would in more than one way be a surprise to him. He would be surprised to find how difficult it is to get a clear and full grasp of that high standard of living, which he cannot but admit is nothing more than what Christ demands. He would be surprised at his own want of success in conveying to his hearers the same impression of intense and entire devotion to God’s will and pleasure as the one object of life. He would probably be surprised at discovering how, while he thought he had preached holiness and the imitation of Jesus Christ, he had given but a very faint impression of the unworldly, the heavenly life, which it is the duty of every Christian to lead. He would possibly be most of all surprised at finding how little his own life had really aimed at, not to say had attained, the true ideal, set before us in Christ Jesus.

It was not many years after the publication of this book that an event took place which exercised an unexpected influence on the life of Law. This was his becoming acquainted with the works of the German mystic, Jacob Boehme or Behmen. Though at first he found much in the writings of Behmen that appeared unintelhgible, he came so completely under his influence that he gave himself up entirely to the study and the exposition of his teaching. The mystic element had always been strong in Law’s nature. One of the chief marks of the mystic is, that he seeks to pierce through all the appearances of nature to the Great Being who lives and moves in it all. The Serious Call is proof of how Law had learnt to see God in every thing, and how he sought to bring men to let

God in very deed be their All. Behmen taught Law what he had only faintly seen before, that God not only is All, and must have All, but that He alone must do All. In different works written after this time, between 1737 and 1740, the influence of Behmen was distinctly visible, and the substance of his teaching given.

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