DISCOURSE IX.
"THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF A NEW
AFFECTION".
" Love not the world, neither the things that are
in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him."
- 1 John ii. 15.
THERE are two ways in which a practical moralist may
attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world - either by a
demonstration of the world's vanity, so as that the heart shall be prevailed
upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it;
or, by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its
attachment, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon not to resign an old
affection, which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old
affection for a new one.
My purpose is to show, that from the
constitution of our nature, the former method is altogether incompetent and
ineffectual and that the latter method will alone suffice for the rescue and
recovery of the heart from the wrong affection that domineers over it. After
having accomplished this purpose, I shall attempt a few practical observations.
Love may be regarded in two different conditions.
The first
is, when its object is at a distance, and then it becomes love in a state of
desire.
The second is, when its object is in possession, and then it
becomes love in a state of indulgence. Under the impulse of desire, man feels
himself urged onward in some path or pursuit of activity for its gratification.
The faculties of his mind are put into busy exercise. In the steady direction
of one great and engrossing interest, his attention is recalled from the many
reveries into which it might otherwise have wandered; and the powers of his
body are forced away from an indolence in which it else might have languished;
and that time is crowded with occupation, which but for some object of keen and
devoted ambition, might have drivelled along in successive hours of weariness
and distaste - and though hope does not always enliven, and success does not
always crown this career of exertion, yet in the midst of this very variety,
and with the alternations of occasional disappointment, is the machinery of the
whole man kept in a sort of congenial play, and upholden in that tone and
temper which are most agreeable to it.
Insomuch, that if, through the
extirpation of that desire which forms the originating principle of all this
movement, the machinery were to stop, and to receive no impulse from another
desire substituted in its place, the man would be left with all his
propensities to action in a state of most painful and unnatural abandonment. A
sensitive being suffers, and is in violence, if, after having thoroughly rested
from his fatigue, or been relieved from his pain, he continue in possession of
powers without any excitement to these powers; if he possess a capacity of
desire without having an object of desire; or if he have a spare energy upon
his person, without a counterpart, and without a stimulus to call it into
operation.
The misery of such a condition is often realized by him who
is retired from business, or who is retired from law, or who is even retired
from the occupations of the chase, and of the gaming table. Such is the demand
of our nature for an object in pursuit, that no accumulation of previous
success can extinguish it - and thus it is, that the most prosperous merchant,
and the most victorious general, and the most fortunate gamester, when the
labour of their respective vocations has come to a close, are often found to
languish in the midst of all their acquisitions, as if out of their kindred and
rejoicing element. It is quite in vain with such a constitutional appetite for
employment in man, to attempt cutting away from him the spring or the principle
of one employment, without providing him with another. Thu whole heart and
habit will rise in resistance against such an undertaking. The else unoccupied
female who spends the hours of every evening at some play of hazard, knows as
well as you, that the pecuniary gain, or the honourable triumph of a successful
contest, are altogether paltry. It is not such a demonstration of vanity as
this that will force her away from her dear and delightful occupatiou. The
habit cannot so be displaced, as to leave nothing but a negative and cheerless
vacancy behind it - though it may so be supplanted as to be followed up by
another habit of employment, to which the power of some new affection has
constrained her. It is willingly suspended, for example, on any single evening,
should the time that wont to be allotted to gaining, require to be spent on the
preparations of an approaching assembly. The ascendant power of a second
affection will do, what no exposition however forcible, of the folly and
worthlessness of the first, ever could effectuate.
And it is the same
in the great world. We shall never be able to arrest any of its leading
pursuits, by a naked demonstration of their vanity. It is quite in vain to
think of stopping one of these pursuits in any way else, but by stimulating to
another. In attempting to bring a worldly man intent and busied with the
prosecution of his objects to a dead stand, we have not merely to encounter the
charm which he annexes to these objects - but we have to encounter the pleasure
which he feels in the very prosecution of them. It is not enough, then, that we
dissipate the charm, by a moral, and eloquent, and affecting exposure of its
illusiveness. We must address to the eye of his mind another object, with a
charm powerful enough to dispossess the first of its influences, and to engage
him in some other prosecution as full of interest, and hope, and congenial
activity, as the former.
It is this which stamps an impotency on all
moral and pathetic declamation about the insignificance of the world. A man
will no more consent to the misery of being without an object, because that
object is a trifle, or of being without a pursuit, because that pursuit
terminates in some frivolous or fugitive acquirement, than he will voluntarily
submit himself to the torture, because that torture is to be of short duration.
If to be without desire and without exertion altogether, is a state of violence
and discomfort, then the present desire, with its correspondent train of
exertion, is not to be got rid of simply by destroying it. It must be by
substituting another desire, and another line or habit of exertion in its place
- and the most effectual way of withdrawing the mind from one object, is not by
turning it away upon desolate and unpeopled vacancy - but by presenting to its
regards another object still more alluring.
These remarks apply not
merely to love considered in its state of desire for an object not yet
obtained. They apply also to love considered in its state of indulgence, or
placid gratification, with an object already in possession. It is seldom that
any of our tastes are made to disappear by a mere process of natural
extinction. At least, it is very seldom, that this is done through the
instrumentality of reasoning. It may be done by excessive pampering - but it is
almost never done by the mere force of mental determination. But what cannot be
destroyed, may be dispossessed and one taste may be made to give way to
another, and to lose its, power entirely as the reigning affection of the mind.
It is thus, that the boy ceases, at length, to be the slave of his
appetite, but it is because a manlier taste has now brought it into
subordination - and that the youth ceases to idolize pleasure, but it is
because the idol of wealth has become the stronger and gotten the aseendancy
and that even the love of money ceases to have the mastery over the heart of
many a thriving citizen, but it is because drawn into, the whirl of city
polities, another affection has been wrought into his moral system, and he is
now lorded over by the love of power. There is not one of these transformations
in which the heart is left without an object. Its desire for one particular
object may be conquered; but as to its desire for having some one object or
other, this is unconquerable. Its adhesion to that on which it has fastened the
preference of its regards, cannot willingly be overcome by the rending away of
a simple separation. It can be done only by the application of something else,
to which it may feel the adhesion of a still stronger and more powerful
preference. Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart, that it must have
a something to lay hold of - and which, if wrested away without the
substitution of another something in its place, would leave a void and a
vacancy as painful to the mind, as hunger is to the natural system. It may be
dispossessed of one object, or of any, but it cannot be desolated of all. Let
there be a breathing and a sensitive heart, but without a liking and without
affinity to any of the things that are around it; and, in a state of cheerless
abandonment, it would be alive to nothing but the burden of its own
consciousness, and feel it to be intolerable. It would make no difference to
its owner, whether he dwelt in the midst of a gay and goodly world; or, placed
afar beyond the outskirts of creation, he dwelt a solitary unit in dark and
unpeopled nothingness. The heart must have something to cling to - and never,
by its own voluntary consent, will it so denude itself of its attachments, that
there shall not be one remaining object that can draw or solicit it.
The
misery of a heart thus bereft of all relish for that which wont to minister
enjoyment, is strikingly exemplified in those, who, satiated with indulgence,
have been so belaboured, as it were, with the variety and the poignancy of the
pleasurable sensations they have experienced, that they are at length fatigued
out of all capacity for sensation whatever. The disease of ennui is more
frequent in the French metropolis, where amusement is more exclusively the
occupation of the higher classes, than it is in the British metropolis, where
the longings of the heart are more diversified by the resources of business and
politics. There are the votaries of fashion,who, in this way, have at length
become the victims of fashion.able excess - in whom the very multitude of their
enjoyments, has at last extinguished their power of enjoyment - who, with the
gratifications of art and nature at command, now look upon all that is around
them with an eye of tastelessness - who, plied with the delights of sense and
of splendour even to weariness, and incapable of higher delights, have come to
the end of all their perfection, and like Solomon of old, found it to be vanity
and vexation. The man whose heart has thus been turned into a desert, can vouch
for the insupportable languor which must ensue, when one affection is thus
plucked away from the bosom, without another to replace it. It is not necessary
that a man receive pain from anything, in order to become miserable. It is
barely enough that he looks with distaste to every thing - and in that asylum
which is the repository of minds out of joint, and where the organ of feeling
as well as the organ of intellect, has been impaired, it is not in the cell of
loud and frantic outcries, where we shall meet with the acme of mental
suffering. But that is the individual who outpeers in wretchedness all his
fellows, who, throughout the whole expanse of nature and society, meets not an
object that has at all the power to detain or to interest him; who, neither in
earth beneath nor in heaven above, knows of a single charm to which his heart
can send forth one desirous or responding movement; to whom the world, in his
eye a vast and empty desolation, has left him nothing but his own consciousness
to feed upon dead to all that is without him, and alive to nothing but to the
load of his own torpid and useless existence.
It will now be seen,
perhaps, why it is that the heart keeps by its present affections with so much
tenacity - when the attempt is, to do them away by a mere process of
extirpation. It will not consent tobe so desolated. The strong man, whose
dwelling-place is there, may be compelled to give way to another occupier - but
unless another stronger than he, has power to dispossess and to succeed him, he
will keep his present lodgment unviolable. The heart would revolt against its
own emptiness. It could not bear to be so left in a state of waste and
cheerless insipidity. The moralist who tries such a process of dispossession as
this upon the heart, is thwarted at every step by the recoil of its own
mechanism. You have all heard that Nature abhors a vacuum. Such at least is the
nature of the heart, that though the room which is in it may change one inmate
for another, it cannot be left void without the pain of most intolerable
suffering. It is not enough then to argue the folly of an existing affection.
It is not enough, in the terms of a forcible or an affecting demonstration, to
make good the evanescence of its object. It may not even be enough to associate
the threats and the terrors of some coming vengeance, with the indulgence of
it. The heart may still resist the every application, by obedience to which, it
would finally be conducted to a state so much at war with all its appetites as
that of downright inanition. So to tear away an affection from the heart, as to
leave it bare of all its regards and of all its preferences, were a hard and
hopeless undertaking - and it would appear, as if the alone powerful engine of
dispossession were to bring the mastery of another affection to bear upon it.
We know not a more sweeping interdict upon the affections of Nature,
than that which is delivered by the Apostle in the verse before us. To bid a
man into whom there has not yet entered the great and ascendant influence of
the principle of regeneration, to bid him withdraw his love from all the things
that are in the world, is to bid him give up all the affections that are in his
heart. The world is the all of a natural man. He has not a taste nor a desire,
that points not to a something placed within the confines of its visible
horizon. He loves nothing above it, and he cares for nothing beyond it; and to
bid him love not the world, is to pass a sentence of expulsion on all the
inmates of his bosom. To estimate the magnitude and the difficulty of such a
surrender, let us only think that it were just as arduous to prevail on him not
to love wealth, which is but one of the things in the world, as to prevail on
him to set wilful fire to his own property. This he might do with sore and
painful reluctance, if he saw that the salvation of his life hung upon it. But
this he would do willingly, if he saw that a new property of tenfold value was
instantly to emerge from the wreck of the old one.
In this case there
is something more than the mere displacement of an affection. There is the
overbearing of one affection by another. But to desolate his heart of all love
for the things of the world, without the substitution of any love in its place,
were to him a process of as unnatural violence, as to destroy all the things
that he has in the world, and give him nothing in their room. So that, if to
love not the world be indispensable to one's Christianity, then the crucifixion
of the old man is not too strong a term to mark that transition in his history,
when all old things are done away and all things become new. We hope that by
this time, you understand the impotency of a mere demonstration of this world's
insignificance. Its sole practical effect, if it had any, would be. to leave
the heart in a state which to even heart is insupportable, and that is a mere
state of nakedness and negation. You may remember the fond and unbroken
tenacity with which your heart has often recurred to pursuits, over the utter
frivolity of which it sighed and wept but yesterday. The arithmetic of your
short-lived days, may on Sabbath make the clearest impression upon your
understanding - and from his fancied bed of death, may the preacher cause a
voice to descend in rebuke and mockery on all the pursuits of earthliness - and
as he pictures before you the fleeting generations of men, with the absorbing
grave, whither all the joys and interests of the world hasten to their sure and
speedy oblivion, may you, touched and solemnized by his argument, feel for a
moment as if on the eve of a practical and permanent emancipation from a scene
of so much vanity.
But the morrow comes, and the business of the world,
and the objects of the world, and the moving forces of the world come along
with it - and the machinery of the heart, in virtue of which it must have
something to grasp, or something to adhere to, brings it under a kind of moral
necessity to be actuated just as before - and in utter repulsion to wards a
state so unkindly as that of being frozen out both of delight and of desire,
does it feel all the warmth and the urgency of its wonted solicitations - nor
in the habit and history of the whole man, can we detect so much as one symptom
of the new creature - so that the church, instead of being to him a school of
obedience, has been a mere sauntering place for the luxury of a passing and
theatrical emotion; and the preaching which is mighty to compel the attendance
of multitudes, which is mighty to still and to solemnize the hearers into a
kind of tragic sensibility, which is mighty in the play of variety and vigour
that it can keep up around the imagination, is not mighty to the pulling down
of strong holds.
The love of the world cannot be expunged by a mere
demonstration of the world's worthlessness. But may it not be supplanted by the
love of that which is more worthy than itself? The heart cannot be prevailed
upon to part with the world, by a simple act of resignation. But may not the
heart be prevailed upon to admit into its preference another, who shall
subordinate the world, and bring it down from its wonted ascendancy? If the
throne which is placed there must have an occupier, and the tyrant that now
reigns has occupied it wrongfully, he may not leave a bosom which would rather
detain him than be left in desolation. But may he not give way to the lawful
sovereign, appearing with every charm that can secure His willing admittance,
and taking unto himself His great power to subdue the moral nature of man, and
to reign over it? In a word, if the way to disengage the heart from the
positive love of one great and ascendant object, is to fasten it in positive
love to another, then it is not by exposing the worthlessness of the former,
but by addressing to the mental eye the worth and excellence of the latter,
that all old things are to be done away and all things are to become new. To
obliterate all our present affections by simply expunging them, and so as to
leave the seat of them unoccupied, would be to destroy the old character, and
to substitute no new character in its place. But when they take their departure
upon the ingress of other visitors; when they resign their sway to the power
and the predominance of new affections; when, abandoning the heart to solitude,
they merely give place to a successor who turns it into as busy a residence of
desire and interest and expectation as before - there is nothing in all this to
thwart or to overbear any of the laws of our sentient nature - and we see how,
in fullest accordance with the mechanism of the heart, a great moral revolution
may be made to take place upon it.
This, we trust, will explain the
operation of that charm which accompanies the effectual preaching of the
gospel. The love of God and the love of the world, are two affections, not
merely in a state of rivalship, but in a state of enmity - and that so
irreconcilable, that they cannot dwell together in the same bosom. We have
already affirmed how impossible it were for the heart, by any innate elasticity
of its own, to cast the world away from it; and thus reduce itself to a
wilderness. The heart is not so constituted; and the only way to dispossess it
of an old affection, is by the expulsive power of a new one. Nothing can exceed
the magnitude of the required change in a man's character - when bidden as he
is in the New Testament, to love not the world; no, nor any of the things that
are in the world for this so comprehends all that is dear to him in existence,
as to be equivalent to a command of self-annihilation.
But the same
revelation which dictates so mighty an obedience, places within our reach as
mighty an instrument of obedience. It brings for admittance to the very door of
our heart, an affection which once seated upon its throne, will either
subordinate every previous inmate, or bid it away. Beside the world, it places
before the eye of the mind Him who made the world and with this peculiarity,
which is all its own - that in the Gospel do we so behold God, as that we may
love God. It is there, and there only, where God stands revealed as an object
of confidence to sinners and where our desire after Him is not chilled into
apathy, by that barrier of human guilt which intercepts every approach that is
not made to Him through the appointed Mediator. It is the bringing in of this
better hope, whereby we draw nigh unto God - and to live without hope, is to
live without God; and if the heart be without God, then world will then have
all the ascendancy. It is God apprehended by the believer as God in Christ, who
alone can dispost it from this ascendancy. It is when He stands dismantled of
the terrors which belong to Him as an offended lawgiver and when we are enabled
by faith, which is His own gift, to see His glory in the face of Jesus Christ,
and to hear His beseeching voice, as it protests good will to men, and entreats
the return of all who will to a full pardon and a gracious acceptance_it is
then, that a love paramount to the love of the world, and at length expulsive
of it, first arises in the regenerated bosom. It is when released from the
spirit of bondage with which love cannot dwell, and when admitted into the
number of God's children through the faith that is in Christ Jesus, the spirit
of adoption is poured upon us - it is then that the heart, brought under the
mastery of one great and predominant affection, is delivered from the tyranny
of its former desires, in the only way in which deliverance is possible. And
that faith which is revealed to us from heaven, as indispensable to a sinner's
justification in the sight of God, is also the instrument of the greatest of
all moral and spiritual achievements on a nature dead to the influence, and
beyond the reach of every other application.
Thus may we come to
perceive what it is that makes the most effective kind of preaching. Itis not
enough to hold out to the world's eye the mirror of its own imperfections. It
is not enough to come forth with a demonstration, however pathetic, of the
evanescent character of all its enjoyments. It is not enough to travel the walk
of experience along with you, and speak to your own conscience and your own
recollection, of the deceitfulness of the heart, and the deceitfulness of all
that the heart is set upon. There is many a bearer of the Gospel message, who
has not shrewdness of natural discernment enough, and who has not power of
characteristic description enough, and who has not the talent of moral
delineation enough, to present you with a vivid and faithful sketch of the
existing follies of society. But that very corruption which he has not the
faculty of representing in its visible details, he may practically be the
instrument of eradicating in its principle. Let him be but a faithful expounder
of the gospel testimony unable as he may be to apply a descriptive hand to the
character of the present world, let him but report with accuracy the matter
which revelation has brought to him from a distant world - unskilled as he is
in the work of so anatomizing the heart, as with the power of a novelist to
create a graphical or impressive exhibition of the worthlessness of its many
affections - let him only deal in those mysteries of peculiar doctrine, on
which the best of novelists have thrown the wantonness of their derision. He
may not be able, with the eye of shrewd and satirical observation, to expose to
the ready recognition of his hearers, the desires of worldliness but with the
tidings of the gospel in commission, he may wield the only engine that can
extirpate them. He cannot do what some have done, when, as if by the hand of a
magician, they have brought out to view, from the hidden recesses of our
nature, the foibles and lurking appetites which belong to it. - But he has a
truth in his possession, which into whatever heart it enters, will, like the
rod of Aaron, swallow up them all - and unqualified as he may be, to describe
the old man in all the nicer shading of his natural and constitutional
varieties, with him is deposited that ascendant influence under which the
leading tastes and tendencies of the old man are destroyed, and he becomes a
new creature in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Let us not cease then to ply the
only instrument of powerful and positive operation, to do away from you the
love of the world. Let us try every legitimate method of finding access to your
hearts for the love of Him who is greater than the world. For this purpose, let
us, if possible, clear away that shroud of unbelief which so hides and darkens
the face of the Deity. Let us insist on His claims to your affection - and
whether in the shape of gratitude, or in the shape of esteem, let us never
cease to affirm, that in the whole of that wondrous economy, the purpose of
which is to reclaim a sinful world unto Himself - he, the God of love, so sets
Himself forth in characters of endearment, that nought but faith, and nought
but understanding, are wanting, on your part, to call forth the love of your
hearts back again.
And here let us advert to the incredulity of a
worldly man; when he brings his own sound and secular experience to bear upon
the high doctrines of Christianity - when he looks on regeneration as a thing
impossible - when feeling as he does, the obstinacies of his own heart on the
side of things present, and casting an intelligent eye, much exercised perhaps
in the observation of human life, on the equal obstinacies of all who are
around him, he pronounces this whole matter about the crucifixion of the old
man, and the resurrection of a new man in his place, to be in downright
opposition to all that is known and witnessed of the real nature of humanity.
We think that we have seen such men, who, firmly trenched in their own vigorous
and homebred sagacity, and shrewdly regardful of all that passes before them
through the week, and upon the scenes of ordinary business, look on that
transition of the heart by which it gradually dies unto time, and awakens in
all the life of a new-felt and ever-growing desire towards God, as a mere
Sabbath speculation; and who thus, with all their attention engrossed upon the
concerns of earthliness, continue unmoved, to the end of their days, amongst
the feelings, and the appetites, and the pursuits of earthliness. If the
thought of death, and another state of being after it, comes across them at
all, it is not with a change so radical as that of being born again, that they
ever connect the idea of preparation. They have some vague conception of its
being quite enough that they acquit themselves in some decent and tolerable way
of their relative obligations; and that, upon the strength of some such social
and domestic moralities as are often realized by him into whose heart the love
of God has never entered, they will be transplanted in safety from this world,
where God is the Being with whom it may almost be said that they have had
nothing to do, to that world where God is the Being with whom they will have
mainly and immediately to do throughout all eternity. They admit all that is
said of the utter vanity of time, when taken up with as a resting place. But
they resist every application made upon the heart of man, with the view of so
shifting its tendencies, that it shall not henceforth find in the interests of
time, all its rest and all its refreshment. They, in fact, regard such an
attempt as an enterprise that is altogether aerial - and with a tone of secular
wisdom, caught from the familiarities of every-day experience, do they see a
visionary character in all that is said of setting our affections on the things
that are above; and of walking by faith; and of keeping our hearts - in such a
love of God as shall shut out from them the love of the world; and of having no
confidence in the flesh; and of so renouncing earthly things as to have our
conversation in heaven.
Now, it is altogether worthy of being remarked
of those men who thus disrelish spiritual Christianity, and, in fact, deem it
an impracticable acquirement, how much of a piece their incredulity about the
demands of Christianity, and their incredulity about the doctrines of
Christianity, are with one another. No wonder that they feel the work of the
New Testament to be beyond their strength, so long as they hold the words of
the New Testament to be beneath their attention. Neither they nor any one else
can dispossess the heart of an old affection, but by the expulsive power of a
new one - and, if that new affection be the love of God, neither they nor any
one else can be made to entertain it, but on such a representation of the
Deity, as shall draw the heart of the sinner towards Him.
Now it is just
their unbelief which screens from the discernment of their minds this
representation. They do not see the love of God in sending His Son unto the
world. They do not see the expression of His tenderness to men, in sparing Him
not, but giving Him up unto the death for us all. They do not see the
sufficiency of the atonement, or the sufferings that were endured by Him who
bore the burden that sinners should have borne. They do not see the blended
holiness and compassion of the Godhead, in that He passed by the transgressions
of His creatures, yet could not pass them by without an expiation. It is a
mystery to them, how a man should pass to the state of godliness from a state
of nature - but had they only a believing view of God manifest in the flesh,
this would resolve for them the whole mystery of godliness. As it is, they
cannot get quit of their old affections, because they are out of sight from all
those truths which have influence to raise a new one. They are like the
children of Israel in the land of Egypt, when required to make bricks without
straw - they cannot love God, while they want the only food which can ailment
this affection in a sinner's bosom - and however great their errors may be both
in resisting the demands of the Gospel as impracticable, and in rejecting the
doctrines of the Gospel as inadmissible, yet there is not a spiritual man (and
it is the prerogative of him who is spiritual to judge all men) who will not
perceive that there is a, consistency in these errors.
But if there be
a consistency in the errors, in like manner is there a consistency in the
truths which are opposite to them. The man who believes in the peculiar
doctrines, will readily bow to the peculiar demands of Christianity. When he is
told to love God supremely, this may startle another; but it will not startle
him to whom God has been revealed in peace, and in pardon, and in all the
freeness of an offered reconciliation. When told to shut out the world from his
heart, this may be impossible with him who has nothing to replace it - but not
impossible with him, who has found in God a sure and a satisfying portion. When
told to withdraw his affections from the things that are beneath, this were
laying an order of self extinetic* upon the man, who knows not another quarter
in the whole sphere of his contemplation, to which he could transfer them - but
it were not grievous to him whose view has been opened up to the loveliness and
glory of the things that are above, and can there find for every feeling of his
soul, a most ample and delighted occupation. When told to look not to the
things that are seen and temporal, this were blotting out the light of all that
is visible from the prospect of him in whose eye there is a wall of partition
between guilty nature and the joys of eternity - but he who believes that
Christ hath broken down this wall, finds a gathering radiance upon his soul, as
he looks onwards in faith to the things that are unseen and eternal. Tell a man
to be holy and how can he compass such a performance, when his alone fellowship
with holiness is a fellowship of despair? It is the atonement of the cross
reconciling the holiness of the lawgiver with- the safety of the offender, that
hath opened the way for a sanctifying influence into the sinner's heart; and he
can take a kindred impression from the character of God now brought nigh, and
now at peace with him. - Separate the demand from the doctrine; and you have
either a system of righteousness that is impracticable, or a barren orthodoxy.
Bring the demand and the doctrine together - and the true disciple of Christ is
able to do the one, through the other strengthening him. The motive is adequate
to the movement; and the bidden obedience of the Gospel is not beyond the
measure of his strength, just because the doctrine of the Gospel is not beyond
the measure of his ac ceptance. The shield of faith; and the hope of salvation,
and the Word of God, and the girdle of truth - these are the armour that he has
put on; and with these the battle is won, and the eminence is reached, and the
man stands on the vantage ground of a new field, and a new prospect. The effect
is great, but the cause is equal to it - and stupendous as this moral
resurrection to the precepts of Christianity undoubtedly is, there is an
element of strength enough to give it being and continuance in the principles
of Christianity. The object of the Gospel is both to pacify the sinner's
conscience, and to purify his heart; and it is of importance to observe, that
what mars the one of these objects, mars the other also. The best way of
casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one; and by the love of what
is good, to expel the love of what is evil.
Thus it is, that the freer
the Gospel, the more sanctifying is the Gospel; and the more it is received as
a doctrine of grace, the more will it be felt as a doctrine according to
godliness. This is one of the secrets of the Christian life, that the more a
man holds of God as a pensioner, the greater is the payment of service that he
renders back again. On the tenure of "Do this and live, a spirit of
fearfulness is sure to enter; and the jealousies of a legal bargain chase away
all confidence from the intercourse between God and man; and the creature
striving to be square and even with his Creator, is, in fact, pursuing all the
while his own selfishness, instead of God's glory; and with all the
conformities which he labours to accomplish, the soul of obedience is not
there, the mind is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed under such an
economy ever can be. It is only when, as in the Gospel, acceptance is bestowed
as a present, without money and without price, that the security which man
feels in God is placed beyond the reach of disturbance - or, that he can repose
in Him, as one friend reposes in another - or, that any liberal and generous
understanding can be established betwixt them - the one party rejoicing over
the other to do him good - the other finding that the truest gladness of his
heart lies in the impulse of a gratitude, by which it is awakened to the charms
of a new moral existence.
Salvation by grace - salvation by free grace
- salvation not of works, but according to the mercy of God - salvation on such
a footing is not more indispensable to the deliverance of our persons from the
hand of justice, than it is to the deliverance of our hearts from the chill and
the weight of ungodliness. Retain a single shred or fragment of legality with
the Gospel, and we raise a topic of distrust between man and God. We take away
from the power of the Gospel to melt and to conciliate. For this purpose, the
freer it is, the better it is. That very peculiarity which so many dread as the
germ of antinomianism, is, in fact, the germ of a new spirit, and a new
inclination against it. Along with the light of a free Gospel, does there enter
the love of the Gospel, which, in proportion as we impair the freeness, we are
sure to chase away. And never does the sinner find within himself so mighty a
moral transformation, as when under the belief that he is saved by grace, he
feels constrained thereby to offer his heart a devoted thing, and to deny
ungodliness. To do any work in the best manner, we should make use of the
fittest tools for it.
And we trust, that what has been said may serve
in some degree, for the practical guidance of those who would like to reach the
great moral achievement of our text - but feel that the tendencies and desires
of Nature are too strong for them. We know of no other way by which to keep the
love of the world out of our heart, than to keep in our hearts the love of God
- and no other way by which to keep our hearts in the love of God, than
building ourselves up on our most holy faith. That denial of the world which is
not possible to him that dissents from the Gospel testimony, is possible even
as all things are possible, to him that believeth. To try this without faith,
is to work without the right tool of the right instrument. But faith worketh by
love; and the way of expelling from the heart the love which transgresseth the
law, is to admit into its receptacles the love which fulfilleth the law.
Conceive a man to be standing on the margin of this green world; and
that, when he looked towards it, he saw abundance smiling upon every field, and
all the blessings which earth can afford scattered in profusion throughout
every family, and the light of the sun sweetly resting upon all the pleasant
habitations, and the joys of human companionship brightening many a happy
circle of society - conceive this to be the general character of the scene upon
one side of his contemplation; and that on the other, beyond the verge of the
godly planet on which he was situated, he could descry nothing but a dark and
fathomless unknown. Think you that he would bid a voluntary adieu to all the
brightness and all the beauty that were before him upon earth, and commit
himself to the frightful solitude away from it? Would he leave its peopled
dwelling places, and become a solitary wanderer through the fields of
nonentity? If space offered him nothing but a wilderness, would he for it
abandon the homebred scenes of life and of cheerfulness that lay so near, and
exerted such a power of urgency to detain him? Would not he cling to the
regions of sense, and of life, and of society ? - and shrinking away from the
desolation that was beyond it, would not he be glad to keep his firm footing on
the territory of this world, and to take shelter under the silver canopy that
was stretched over it? But if, during the time of his contemplation, some happy
island of the blest had floated by; and there had burst upon his senses the
light of its surpassing glories, and its sounds of sweeter melody; - and he
clearly saw, that there, a purer beauty rested upon every field, and a more
heartfelt joy spread itself among all the families; and he could discern there,
a peace, and a piety, and a benevolence, which put a moral gladness into every
bosom, and united the whole society in one rejoicing sympathy with each other,
and with the beneficent Father of them all. - Could he further see, that pain
and mortality were there unknown; and above all, that signals of welcome were
hung out, and an avenue of communication was made for him - perceive you not,
that what was before the wilderness, would become the land of invitation; and
that now the world would be the wilderness?
What unpeopled space could
not do, can be done by space teeming with beatific scenes, and beatific
society. And let the existing tendencies of the heart be what they may to the
scene that is near and visibly around us, still if another stood revealed to
the prospect of man, either through the channel of faith, or through the
channel of his senses - then, without violence done to the constitution of his
moral nature, may he die unto the present world, and live to the lovelier world
that stands in the distance away from it.
Home | Biography | Literature | Letters | Interests | Links | Quotes | Photo-Wallet