INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
TO
CALL TO THE
UNCONVERTED;
NOW OR
NEVER;
AND FIFTY REASONS.
By RICHARD BAXTER.
HAVING already introduced to the notice of our readers one
of RICHARD BAXTERS most valnable treatises,- in the Essay (The Saint's
Everlasting Rest) to which we adverted to the character and writings of this
venerable author we count it unnecessarv at present to make any allusion to
them, but shall confine our remarks to the subject of the three Treatises which
comprise the present volume, namely, A CALL TO THE UNCONVERTED TO TURN
AND LIVE Now or NEVER; and FIFTY REASONS why A SINNER OUGHT TO
TURN TO GOD THIS DAY WITHOUT DELAY.
These Treatise are
characterized by all that solemn earnestness, and urgency of appeal, for which
the writings of this much - admired author are so distinguished. He seems to
look upon mankind solely with; the eyes of the Spirit and exclusively to
recognize them in their spirit relations and in the great and essential
elements of their immortal being. Their future destiny is the all-important
concern which fills and engrosses his mind, and he regards nothing of any
magnitude but what has a distinct bearing on their spiritual and eternal
condition.
His business, therefore, is always with the conscience, to
which, in these Treatises, he makes the most forcible appeals, and which he
plys with all those arguments which are fitted to awaken the sinner to a deep
sense of the necessity and importance of immediate repentance. In his
Call to the Unconverted, he endeavours to move them by the most
touching of all representations, the tenderness of a beseeching God waiting to
be gracious, and not willing that any should perish; and while he employs every
form of entreaty, which tenderness and compassion can suggest, to allure the
sinner to turn and live, he does not shrink from forcing on his
convictions those considerations which are fitted to alarm his fears, the
terrors of the Lord, and the wrath, not merely of an offended Lawgiver, but of
a God of love, whose threatenings he disregards, whose grace he despises, and
whose mercy he rejects. And aware of the deceitfulness of sin in hardening the
heart, and in betraying the sinner into a neglect of his spiritual interests,
he divests him of every refuge, and strips him of every plea for postponing his
preparation for eternity. He forcibly exposes the delusion of convenient
seasons, and the awful infatuation and hazard of delay; and knowing the
magnitude of the stake at issue, he urges the sinner to immediate repentance,
as if the fearful and almost. absolute alternative were Now or
Never. And to secure the commencement of such an important work against
all the dangers to which procrastination might expose it, he endeavours to
arrest the sinner in his career of guilt and unconcern, and resolutely to fix
his determination on turning to God this day without delay.
There are two very prevalent delusions on this subject, which we should
like to expose; the one regards the nature, and the other the season of
repentance; both of which are pregnant with mischief to the minds of men. With
regard to the first, much mischief has arisen from mistakes respecting the
meaning of the term repentance. The word repentance occurs with two different
meanings in the New Testament; and it is to be regretted, that two different
words could not have been devised to express these. This is chargeable upon the
poverty of our language; for it is to be observed, that in the original Greek
the distinction in the meanings is pointed out by a distinction in the words.
The employment of one term to denote two different things has the effect of
confounding and misleading the understanding; and it is much to be wished, that
every ambiguity of this kind were cleared away from that most interesting point
in the process of a human soul, at which it turns from sin unto righteousness,
and from the power of Satan unto God.
When, in common language, a man
says, I repent of such an action, he is understood to say, I
am sorry for having done it. The feeling is familiar to all of us. How
often does the man of dissipation prove this sense of the word repentance, when
he awakes in the morning, and, oppressed by the languor of his exhausted
faculties, looks back with remorse on the follies and profligacies of the night
that is past? How often does the man of unguarded conversation prove it, when
he thinks of the friend whose feelings he has wounded by some hasty utterance
which he cannot recall? How often is it proved by the man of business, when he
reflects on the rash engagement which ties him down to a losing speculation?
All these people would be perfectly understood when they say, We
repent of these doings. The word repentance so applied is about
equivalent to the word regret. There are several passages in the New Testament
where this is the undoubted sense of the word repentance. In Matt. xxvii. 3,
the wretched Judas repented himself of his treachery; and surely, when we think
of the awful denunciation uttered by our Saviour against the man who should
betray him, that it were better for him if he had not been born, we will never
confound the repentance which Judas experienced with that repentance which is
unto salvation.
Now here lies the danger to practical Christianity. in
the above-cited passage, to repent is just to regret, or to be sorry for; and
this we conceive to be by far the most prevailing sense of the term in the
English language. But there are other places where the same term is employed to
denote that which is urged upon us as a duty- that which is preached for the
remission of sins- that which is so indispensable to sinners, as to call forth
the declaration from our Saviour, that unless we have it, we shall all likewise
perish. Now, though repentance, in all these cases, is expressed by the same
term in our translation as the repentance of mere regret, it is expressed by a
different term in the original record of our faith. This surely might lead us
to suspect a difference of meaning, and should caution us against taking up
with that, as sufficient for the business of our salvation, which is short of
saving and scriptural repentance. There may be an alternation of wilful sin,
and of deeply- felt sorrow, up to the very end of our history - there may be a
presumptuous sin committed every day, and a sorrow regularly succeeding it.
Sorrow may imbitter every act of sin - sorrow may darken every interval of
sinful indulgence - and sorrow may give an unutterable anguish to the pains and
the prospects of a death-bed. Couple all this with the circumstance that sorrow
passes, in the cornmon currency of our language, for repentance, and that
repentance is made, by our Bible, to lie at the turning point from a state of
condemnation to a state of acceptance with God; and it is difficult not to
conceive that much danger may have arisen from this, leading to indistinct
views of the nature of repentance, and to slender and superficial conceptions
of the mighty change which is implied in it.
We are far from saying
that the eye of Christians is not open to this danger - and that the vigilant
care of Christian authors has not been employed in averting it. Where will we
get a better definition of repentance unto life than in our Shorter Catechism?
by which the sinner is represented not merely as grieving, but, along with his
grief and hatred of sin, as turning from it unto God with full purpose of, and
endeavour after new obedience. But the mischief is, that the word repent has a
common meaning, different from the theological; that wherever it is used, this
common meaning is apt to intrude itself, and exert a kind of habitual
imposition upon the understanding - that the influence of the single word
carries it over the influence of the lengthened explanation - and thus it is
that, for a steady progress in the obedience of the gospel, many persevere, to
the end of their days, in a wretched course of sinning and of sorrowing,
without fruit and without amendment.
To save the practically mischievous
effect arising from the application of one term to two different things, one
distinct and appropriate term has been suggested for the saving repentance of
the New Testament. The term repentance itself has been restricted to the
repentance of mere sorrow, and is made equivalent to regret; and for the other,
able translators have adopted the word reformation. The one is expressive of
sorrow for our past conduct; the other is expressive of our renouncing it. It
denotes an actual turning from the habits of life that we are sorry for. Give
us, say they, a change from bad deeds to good deeds, from bad habits to good
habits, from a life of wickedness to a life of conformity to the requirements
of heaven, and you give us reformation.
Now there is often nothing more
unprofitable than a dispute about words: but if a word has got into comrnon
use, a common and generally understood meaning is attached to it; and if this
meaning does not just come up to the thing which we want to express by it, the
application of that word to that thing has the same misleading effects as in
the case already alluded to. Now, we have much the same kind of exception to
allege against the term reformation, that we have alleged against the term
repentance. The term repentance is inadequate and why? because, in the common
use of it, it is equivalent to regret, and regret is short of the saving change
that is spoken of in the New Testament. On the very same principle, we count
the term reformation to be inadequate. We think that, in common language, a man
would receive the appellation of a reformed man upon the mere change of his
outward habits, without any reference to the change of mind and of principle
which gave rise to it. Lei the drunkard give up his excesses - let the
backbiter give up his evil speakings - let the extortioner give up his unfair
charges - and we would apply to one and all of them, upon the mere change of
their external doings, the character of reformed men.
Now, it is
evident that the drunkard may gave up his drunkenness, because checked by a
serious impression of the injury he has been doing to his health and his
circumstances. The backbiter may give up his evil speaking, on being made to
perceive that the hateful practice has brought upon him the contempt and
alienation of his neighbours. The extortioner may give up his unfair charges,
upon taking it into calculation that his business is likey to suffer by the
desertion of his customers. Now, it is evident, that though in each of these
cases there has been what the world would call reformation, there has not been
script;traI repentance. The deficiency of this term consists in its having been
employed to denote a mere change in the deeds or in the habits of the outward
man; and if employed as equivalent to repentance, it may delude us into the
idea that the change by which we are made meet for a happy eternity is a far
more slender and superficial thing than it really is. It is of little
importance to be told that the translator means it only in the sense of a
reformed conduct, proceeding from the influence of a new and a right principle
within. The common meaning of the word will, as in the former instance, be ever
and anon intruding itself, and get the better of all the formal cautions, and
all the qualifying clauses of our Bible commentators.
But, will not the
original word itself throw some light upon this important question? The
repentance which is enjoined as a duty - the repentance which is unto salvation
- the repentance which sinners undergo when they pass to a state of acceptance
with God from a state of enmity against him - these are all one and the same
thing, and are expressed by one and the same word in the original language of
the New Testament. It is different from the word which expresses the repentance
of sorrow; and if translated according to the parts of which it is composed, it
signifies neither more nor less than a change of mind. This of itself is
sufficient to prove the inadequacy of the term reformation - a term which is
often applied to a man npon the mere change of his conduct, without ever
adverting to the state of his mind, or to the kind of change in motive
and in principle which it has undergone. It is true that there can be no change
in the conduct withuut some change in the inward principle. A reformed
drunkard, before careless about health or fortune, may be so far changed as to
become impressed with these considerations; but this change is evidently short
of that which the Bible calls repentance toward God. It is a change that may,
and has taken place in many a mind, when there was no effectual sense of the
God who is above us, and of the eternity which is before us. It is a change,
brought about by the prospect and the calculation of many advantages; and, in
the enjoyment of these advantages, it hath its sole reward.
But it is
not done unto God, and God will not accept of it as done unto him. Reformation
may signify nothing more than the mere surface-dressing of those decencies, and
proprieties, and accomplishments, and civil and prudential duties, which,
however fitted to secure a mans acceptance in society, may, one and all
of them, consist with a heart alienated from God, and having every principle
and affection of the inner man away from him. True it is, such a change as the
man will reap benefit from, as his friends will rejoice in, as the world will
call reformation; but it is not such a change as will make him meet for heaven,
and is deficient in its import from what our Saviour speaks of when he says,
I tell you nay, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
There is no single word in the English language which occurs to us as
fully equal to the faithful rendering of the term in the original. Renewedness
of mind, however awkward a phrase this may be, is perhaps the most nearly
expressive of it. Certain it is, that it harmonizes with those other passages
of the Bible where the process is described by which saving repentance is
brought about. We read of being transformed by the renewing of our minds, of
the renewing of the Holy Ghost, of being renewed in the spirit of our minds.
Scriptural repentance, therefore, is that deep and radical change whereby a
soul turns from the idols of sin and of self unto God and devotes every
movement of the inner and the outer man, to the captivity of his obedience.
This is the change which, whether it be expressed by one word or not in the
English language, we would have you well to understand; and reformation or
change in the outward conduct, instead of being saving and scriptural
repentance, is what, in the language of John the Baptist, we would call a fruit
meet for it. But if mischief is likely to arise, from the want of an adequate
word in our language, to that repentance which is unto salvation, there is one
effectual preservative against it - a firm and consistent exhibition of the
whole counsel and revelation of God. A man who is well read in his New
Testament, and reads it with docility, will dismiss all his meagre conceptions
of repentance, when he comes to the following statements : - Except a man
be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Except ye be
converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom
of heaven. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of
his. The carnal mind is enmity against God; and if ye live after
the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of
the body, ye shall live. By the washing of regeneration ye are
saved. Be not then conformed to this world, but be ye transformed
by the renewing of your minds. Such are the terms employed to describe
the process by which the soul of man is renewed unto repentance; and, with your
hearts familiarized to the mighty import of these terms, you will carry with
you an effectual guarantee against those false and flimsy impressions, which
are so current in the. world, about the preparation of a sinner for eternity.
Another delusion which we shall endeavour to expose, is a very
mischievous application of the parable of the labourers in the vineyard,
contained in the twentieth chapter of the Gospel by Matthew. The interpretation
of this parable, the mischief and delusion of which we shall endeavour to lay
open, is, that it relates to the call of individuals, and to the different
periods in the age of each individual at which this call is accepted by them.
We almost know nothing more familiar to us, both in the works of authors, and
in the conversation of private Christians, than when the repentance of an aged
man is the topic, it is represented as a case of repentance at the eleventh
hour of the day. We are far from disputing the possibility of such a
repentance, nor should those who, address the message of the gospel ever be
restrained from the utterance of the free call of the gospel, in the hearing of
the oldest and most inveterate sinner whom they may meet with. But what we
contend for, is, that this is not the drift of theparable. The parable relates
to the call of nations, and to the different periods in the age of the world at
which this call was addressed to each of them, and not as we have already
observed, to the call of individuals, and to the different periods in the age
of each individual, at which this call is accepted by them. It is not true that
the labourers who began to work in the vineyard on the first hour of the day,
denote those Christians who began to remember their Creator, and to render the
obedience of the faith unto his Gospel with their first and earliest education.
It is not true, that they who entered into this service on the third
hour of the day, denote those Christians, who after a boyhood of thoughtless
unconcern about the things of eternity, are arrested in the season of youth, by
a visitation of seriousness, and betake themselves to the faith and the
following of the Saviour who died for them. It is not true, that they who were
hired on the sixth and ninth hours, denote those Christians, who, after having
spent the prime of their youthful vigour in alienation from God, and perhaps
run out some mad career of guilt and profligacy, put on their Christianity
along with the decencies of their sober and established manhood. Neither is it
true, that the labourers of the eleventh hour, the men who had stood all day
idle, represent those aged converts who have put off their repentance to the
last - those men who have renounced the world when they could not help it -
those men who have put on Christianity, but not till they had put on their
wrinkles those men who have run the varied stages of depravity, from the
frivolous unconcern of a boy, and the appalling enormities of misled and
misguided youth, and the deep and determined worldliness of middle age, and the
clinging avarice of him, who, while with slow and tottering footsteps he
descends the hill of life, has a heart more obstinately set than ever on all
its interests, and all its sordid accumulations, but who, when death taps at
the door, awakens from his dream, and thinks it now time to shake away his
idolatrous affections from the mammon of un righteousness.
Such are the
men who, after having taken their full swing of all that the world could offer,
and of all that they could enjoy of it, defer the whole work of preparation for
eternity to old age, and for the hire of the labourers of the eleventh hour, do
all that they can in the way of sighs, and sorrows, and expiations of
penitential acknowledgment. What! will we offer to liken such men to those who
sought the Lord early, and who found him? Will we say that be who repents when
old, is at all to be compared to him, who bore the whole heat and burden of a
life devoted throughout all its stages to the glory and the remembrance of the
Creator? Who, from a child, trembled at the word of the Lord, and aspired after
a conformity to all his ways? Who, when a young man, fulfilled that most
appropriate injunction of the apostle, Be thou strong ? Who fought
it with manly determination against all the enemies of principle by which he
was surrounded, and spurned the enticements of vicious acquaintances away from
him; and nobly stood it out, even though unsupported and alone, against the
unhallowed contempt of a whole multitude of scorners; and with intrepid
defiance to till the assaults of ridicule, maintained a firmness, which no wile
could seduce from the posts of vigilance; and cleared his unfaltering way
through all the allurements of a perverse and crooked generation. Who, even in
the midst of a most withering atmosphere on every side of him, kept all his
purposes unbroken, and all his delicacies untainted. Who, with the rigour of
self-command, combined the softening lustre which a pure and amiable modesty
sheds over the moral complexion of him who abhors that which is evil, and
cleaves to that which is good, with all the energy of a holy determination.
Can that be a true interpretation, which levels this youth of promise
and of accomplishment, with his equal in years, who is now prosecuting every
guilty indulgence, and crowns the audacity of his rebellion by the mad
presumption, that ere he dies, he shall be able to propitiate that God, on the
authority of all whose calls, and all whose remonstrances he is now trampling?
Or follow each of them to the evening of their earthly pilgrimage - will you
say that the penitent of the eleventh hour, is at all to be likened to him who
has given the whole of his existence to the work and the labour of
Christianity? to him who, after a morning of life adorned with all the
gracefulness we have attempted to describe, sustains through the whole of his
subsequent history such a high and ever brightening example, that his path is
like the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day; and
every year he lives, the graces of an advancing sanctification form into a
richer assemblage of all that is pure, and lovely, and honourable, and of good
report; and when old age comes, it brings none of the turbulence or alarm of an
unfinished preparation along with it - but he meets death with the quiet
assurance of a man who is in readiness, and hails his message as a friendly
intimation; and as he lived in the splendour of ever-increasing acquirements,
so he dies in all the radiance of anticipated glory.
This
interpretation of the parable cannot be sustained; and we think, that, out of
its own mouth, a condemnation may be stamped upon it. Mark this peculiarity
-the labourers of the eleventh hour are not men who got the offer before, but
men who for the first time received a call to work in the vineyard; and they
may therefore well represent the people of a country, who, for the first time,
received the overtures of the Gospel. The answer they gave to the question, Why
stand you so long idle? was, that no man had hired them. We do not read of any
of the labourers of the third, or sixth, or ninth hours, refusing the call at
these times, and afterwards rendering a compliance with the evening call, and
getting the penny for which they declined the offer of working several hours,
but afterwards agreed when the proposal was made, that they should work one
hour only. They had a very good answer to give, in excuse for their idleness.
They never had been called before.
And the oldest men of a Pagan
country have the very same answer to give, on the first arrival of Christian
missionaries amongst them. But we have no part nor lot in this parable. We have
it not in our power to offer any such apology. There is not one of us who can
excuse the impenitency of the past, on the plea that no man had called us. This
is a call that has been sounded in our ears, from our very infancy. Every time
we have seen a Bible in our shelves, we have had a call. Every time we have
heard a minister in the pulpit, we have had a call. Every time we have heard
the generous invitation, Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye unto the
waters, we have had a solemn, and what ought to have been a most
impressive, call. Every time that a parent has plied us with a good advice, or
a neighbour come forward with a friendly persuasion, we have had a call. Every
time that the Sabbath bell has rung for us to the house of God, we have had a
call. These are all so many distinct and repeated calls. These are past events
in our life, which rise in judgment against us, and remind us, with a justice
of argument that there is no evading, that we have no right whatever to the
privileges of the eleventh hour.
This, then, is the train to which we
feel ourselves directed by this parable. The mischievous interpretation which
has been put upon it, has wakened up our alarms, and set us to look at the
delusion which it fosters, and, if possible, to drag out to the light of day,
the fallacy which lies in it. We should like to reduce every man to the feeling
of the alternative of repentance now, or repentance never. We should like to
flash it upon your convictions, that, by putting the call away from you now,
you put your eternity away from you. We should like to expose the whole amount
of that accursed infatuation which lies in delay. We should like to arouse
every soul out of its lethargies, and giving no quarter to the plea of a little
more sleep, and a little more slumber, we should like you to feel as if the
whole of your future destiny hinged on the very first movement to which you
turned yourselves.
The work of repentance must have a beginning; and we
should like you to know, that, if not begun to-day, the chance will be less of
its being begun to-morrow. And if the greater chance has failed, what hope can
we build upon the smaller - and a chance too that is always getting smaller.
Each day, as it revolves over the sinners head, finds him a harder, and a
more obstinate, and a more helplessly enslaved sinner, than before. It was this
consideration which gave Richard Baxter such earnestness and such urgency in
his Call. He knew that the barrier in the way of the sinners
return, was strengthened by every act -of resistance to the call which urges
it. That the refusal of this moment hardened the man against the next attack of
a gospel argument that is brought to bear upon him. That if he attempted you
now, and he failed, when he came back upon you, he would find himself working
on a more obstinate and un complying subject than ever. And therefore it is,
that he ever feels as if the present were his only opportunity. That he is now
upon his vantage ground, and he gives every energy of his soul to the great
point of making the most of it. He will put up with none of your evasions. He
will consent to none of your postponements. He will pay respect to none of your
more convenient seasons. He tells you, that the matter with which he is
charged, has all the urgency of a matter in hand. He speaks to you with as much
earnestness as if he knew that you were going to step into eternity in half an
hour., He delivers his message with as much solemnity as if he knew that this
was your last meeting on earth, and that you were never to see each other till
you stood together at the judgment-seat. He knew that some mighty change must
take place in you, crc you be fit for entering into the presence of God; and
that the time in which, on every plea of duty and of interest, you should
bestir yourselves to secure this, is the present time. This is the distinct
point he assigns to himself; and the whole drift of his argument, is to urge an
instantaneous choice of the better part, by telling you how you multiply every
day the obstacles to your future repentahce, if you begin not the work of
repentance now.
Before bringing our Essay to a close, we shall make
some observations on the mistakes concerning repentance which we have
endeavoured to expose, and adduce some arguments for urging on the consciences
of our readers the necessity and importance of immediate repentance.
I
The work of repentance is a work which must be done ere we die; for, unless we
repent, we shall all likewise perish. Now, the easier this work is in our
conception, we will think it the less necessary to enter upon it immediately.
We will look upon it as a work that may be done at any time, and let us,
therefore, put it off a little longer, and a little longer. We will perhaps
look forward to that retirement from the world and its temptations which we
figure old age to bring along with it, and falling in with the too common idea,
that the evening of life is the appropriate seasons of preparation for another
world, we wifi think that the author is bearing too closely and too urgently
upon us, when, in the language of the Bible, he speaks of to-day,
while it is called to-day, and will let us off with no other repentance than
repentance now, seeing that now only is the accepted time, and now only
the day of salvation, which he has a warrant to proclaim to us.
This
dilatory way of it is very much favoured by the mistaken and very defective
view of repentance which we have attempted to expose. We have somehow or other
got into the delusion, that repentance is sorrow, and little else; and were we
called to fix upon the scene where this sorrow is likely to be felt in the
degree that is deepest and most overwhelming, we would point to the chamber of
the dying man. It is awful to think that, generally speaking, this repentance
of mere sorrow is the only repentance of a death-bed. Yes! we will see with
sensibility deep enough and painful enough there with regret in all its
bitterness - with terror mustering up its images of despair, and dwelling upon
them in all the gloom of an affrighted imagination; and this is mistaken, not
merely for the drapery of repentance, but for the very substance of it.
We look forward, and we count upon this - that the sins of a life are
to be expunged by the sighing and the sorrowing of the last days of it. We
should give up this wretchedly superficial notion of repentance, and cease,
from this moment, to be led astray by it. rrhe mind may sorrow over its
corruptions at the very time that it is under the power of them to grieve
because we are under the captivity of sin is one thing - to be released from
that captivity is another. A man may weep most bitterly over the perversities
of his moral constitution; but to change that constitution is a different
affair. Now this is the mighty work of repentance. He who has undergone it is
no longer the servant of sin. He dies unto sin, he lives unto God. A sense of
the authority of God is ever present with him, to wield the ascendancy of a
great master-principle over all his movements - to call forth every purpose,
and to carry it forward, through all the opposition of sin and of Satan, into
accomplishment. This is the grand revolution in the state of the mind which
repentance brings along with it. To grieve because this work is not done, is a
very different thing from the doing of it. A death-bed is the very best scene
for acting the first; but it is the very worst for acting the second. The
repentance of Judas has often been acted there. We ought to think of the work
in all its magnitude, and not to put it off to that awful period when the soul
is crowded with other things, and has to maintain its weary struggle with the
pains, and the distresses, and the shiverings, and the breathless agonies of a
death-bed.
2. There are two views that may be taken of the way in which
repentance is brought about, and which ever of them is adopted, delay carries
along with it the saddest infatuation. It may be looked upon as a step taken by
man as a voluntary agent, and we would ask you, upon your experience of the
powers and the performances of humanity, if a death-bed is the time for taking
such a step? Is this a time for a voluntary being exercising a vigorous control
over his own movements? When racked with pain, and borne down by the pressure
of a sore and overwhelming calamity? Surely the greater the work of repentance
is, the more ease, the more time, the more freedom from suffering, is necessary
for carrying it on; and, therefore, addressing you as voluntary beings, as
beings who will and who do, we call upon you to seek God early that you may
find him - to haste, and make no delay in keeping his commandments. The other
view is, that repentance is not a self originating work in man, but the work of
the Holy Spirit in him as the subject of its influences. This view is not
opposite to the former. It is true that man wills and does at every step in the
business of his salvation; and it is as true that God works in him so to will
and to do.
Take this last view of it then. Look on repentance as the
work of Gods Spirit in the soul of man, and we are furnished with a more
impressive argument than ever, and set on higher vantage for urging you to stir
yourselves, and set about it immediately. What is it that you propose? To keep
by your present habits, and your present indulgencies - and build yourselves up
all the while in the confidence that the Spirit will interpose with His mighty
power of conversion upon you, at the very point of time that you have fixed
upon as convenient and agreeable? And how do you conciliate the Spirits
answer to your call then? Why, by doing all you can to grieve, and to quench,
and to provoke Him to abandon you now. Do you feel a motion towards repentance
at this moment? If you keep it alive, and act upon it, good and well. But if
you smother and suppress this motion, you resist the Spirit-you stifle His
movements within you: it is what the impenitent do day after day, and year
after year - and is this the way for securing the influences of the Spirit, at
the time that you would like them best?
When you are done with the
world, and are looking forward to eternity because you cannot help it? God
says, My Spirit will not always strive with the children of men. A
good and a free Spirit He undoubtedly is, and, as a proof of it, He is now
saying, Let whosoever will, come and drink of the water of life
freely. He says so now, but we do not promise that He will say so with
effect upon your death-beds, if you refuse Him now. You look forward then for a
powerful work of conversion being done upon you, and yet you employ yourselves
all your life long in raising and multiplying obstacles against it. You count
upon a miracle of grace before you die, and the way you take to make yourselves
sure of it, is to grieve and offend Him while you live, who alone can perform
the miracle. 0 what cruel deceits will sin land us in! and how artfully it
pleads for a little more sleep, and a little more slumber; a little more
folding of the hands to sleep.
We should hold out no longer, nor
make not such an abuse of the forbearance of God: we will treasure up wrath
against the day of wrath ill we do so. The genuine effect of his goodness is to
lead to repentance; let not its effect upon us be to harden and encourage
ourselves in the ways of sin. We should cry now for the clean heart and the
right spirit; and such is the exceeding freeness of the Spirit of God, that we
will be listened to. If we put off the cry till then, the same God may laugh at
our calamity, and mock when our fear cometh.
3. Our next argument for
immediate repentance is, that we cannot bring forward, at any future period of
your history, any considerations of a more prevailing or more powerfully moving
influence than those we may bring forward at this moment. We can tell you now
of the terrors of the Lord. We can tell you now of the solemn mandates which
have issued from his throne - and the authority of which is upon one and all of
you. We can tell you now, that though, in this dead and darkened world, sin
appearsbut a very trivial affair - for every body sins, and it is shielded from
execration by the universal countenance of an entire species lying in
wickedness - yet it holds true of God, what is so emphatically said of him,
that he cannot be mocked, nor will he endure it that you should riot in the
impunity of your wilful resistance to him and to his warnings. We can tell you
now, that he is a God of vengeance; and though, for a season, he is keeping
back all the thunders of it from a world that he would like to reclaim unto
himself, yet, if you put all his expostulations away from you, and will not be
reclaimed, these thunders will be let loose upon you, and they will fall on
your guilty heads, armed with tenfold energy, because you have not only defied
his threats, but turned your back on his offers of reconciliation.
These are the arguments by which we would try to open our way to your
consciences, and to waken up your fears, and to put the inspiring activity of
hope into your bosoms, by laying before you those invitations which are
addressed to the sinner, through the peace-speaking blood of Jesus, and, in the
name of a beseeching God, to win your acceptance of them.
At no future
period can we address arguments more powerful and more affecting than these. If
these arguments do not prevail upon you, we know - of none others by which a
victory over the stubborn and uncomplying will can be accomplished, or by which
we can ever hope to beat in that sullen front of resistance wherewith you now
so impregnably withstand us. We feel that, if any stout-hearted, sinner shall
rise from the perusal of these Treatises with an unawakened conscience, and
give himself to an act of wilful disobedience, we feel as if, in reference to
him, we had made our last discharge, and it fell powerless as water spilt on
the ground, that cannot be gathered up again. We would not cease to ply him
with our arguments, and tell him, to the hour of death, of the Lord God,
merciful and gracious, who is not willing that any should perish, but that all
should turn to him, and live.
And if in future life we should meet him
at the eleventh hour of his dark and deceitful day - a hoary sinner, sinking
under the decrepitude of age, and bending on the side of the grave that
is open to receive him - even then we would testify the exceeding freeness of
the grace of God, and implore his acceptance of it. But how could it be away
from our minds that he is not one of the evening labourers of the parable? We
had met with him at former periods of his existence, and the offer we make him
now we made him then, and he did what the labourers of the third, and sixth,
and ninth hours of the parable did not do - he rejected our call to hire him
into the vineyard; and this heartless recollection, if it did not take all our
energy away from us, would leave us little else than the energy of despair.
And therefore it is, that we speak to you now as if this was our last hold
of you. We feel as if on your present purpose hung all the preparations of your
future life, and all the rewards or- all the horrors of your coming eternity.
We will not let you off with any other repentance than repentance now; and if
this be refused now, we cannot, with our eyes open to the consideration we have
now urged, that the instrument we make to bear upon you afterwards is not more
powerful than we are wielding now, coupled with another consideration which we
shall insist upon, that the subject on which the instrument worketh, even the
heart of man, gathers, by every act of resistance, a more uncounplying
obstinacy than before; we cannot, with these two thoughts in our mind, look
forward to your future history, without seeing spread over the whole path of it
the iron of a harder impenitency - the sullen gloom of a deeper and more
determined alienation.
4. Another argument, therefore, for immediate
repentance is, that the mind which resists a present call or a present reproof,
undergoes a progressive hardening towards all those considerations which arm
the call of repentance with all its energy. It is not enough to say, that the
instrument by which repentance is brought about, is not more powerful to-morrow
than it is today; it lends a most tremendons weight to the argument, to say
further, that the subject on which this instrument is putting forth its
efficiency, will oppose a firmer resistance to-morrow than it does to-day. It
is this which gives a significancy so powerful to the call of "To-day while it
is to-day, harden not your hearts and to the admonition of Knowest
thou not, 0 man, that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance; but
after, thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up wrath against the day of
wrath and revelation of the righteous judgments of God ? It is not said,
either in the one or in the other of these passages, that, by the present
refusal, you cut yourself off from a future invitation. The invitation may be
sounded in your hearing to the last half hour of your earthly existence,
engraved in all those characters of free and gratuitous kindness which mark the
beneficent religion of the New Testament. But the present refusal hardens you
against the Power and tenderness of the future invitation. This is the fact in
human nature to which these passages seem to point, and it is the fact through
which the argument for immediate repentance receives such powerful aid from the
wisdom of experience. It is this which forms the most impressive proof of the
necessity of plying the young with all the weight and all the tenderness of
earnest admonition, that the now susceptible mind might not turn into a
substance harder and more uncomplying than the rock which is broken in pieces
by the powerful application of the hammer of the word of God. -
The
metal of the human soul, so to speak, is like some material substances. If the
force you lay upon it do not break it, or dissolve it, it will heat it into
hardness. If the moral argument by which it is plied now, do not so soften the
mind as to carry and to overpower its purposes, then, on another day, the
argument may be put forth in terms as impressive - but it falls on a harder
mind, and, therefore, with a more slender efficiency. If the threat, that ye
who persist in sin shall have to dwell with the devouring fire, and to lie down
amid everlasting bnrnings, do not alarm you out of your iniquities from this
very moment, then the same threat may be again east out, and the same appalling
circumstances of terror be thrown around it, but it is all discharged on a soul
hardened by its inurement to the thunder of denunciations already uttered, and
the urgency of menacing threatenings already poured forth without fruit and
without efficacy. If the voice of a beseeching God do not win upon you now, and
charm you out of your rebellion against him, by the persuasive energy of
kindness, then let that voice be lifted in your hearing on some future day, and
though armed with all the power of tenderness it ever had, how shall it find
its entrance into a heart sheathed by the operation of habit, that universal
law, in more impenetrable obstinacy? If, with the earliest dawn of your
understanding, you have been offered the hire of the morning labourer and have
refused it, then the parable does not say that you are the person who at the
third, or sixth, or ninth, or eleventh hour, will get the offer repeated to
you.
It is true, that the offer is unto all and upon all who are within
reach of the hearing of it. But there is all the difference in the world
between the impression of a new offer, and of an offer that has already been
often heard and as often rejected an offer which comes upon you with all the
familiarity of a well known sound that, you have already learned how to dispose
of, and how to shut your every feeling against the power of its gracious
invitations - an offer which, if discarded from your hearts at the present
moment, may come back upon you, but which will have to maintain a more unequal
contest than before, with an impenitency ever strengthening, and ever gathering
new hardness from each successive act of resistance.
And thus it is that
the point for which we are contending is not to carry you at some future period
of your lives, but to carry you at this moment. It is to work in you the
instantaneous purpose of a firm and a vigorously sustained repentance; it is to
put into you all the freshness of an immediate resolution, and to stir you up
to all the readiness of an immediate accomplishment - it is to give direction
to the very first footstep you are now to take, and lead you to take it as the
commencement of that holy career, in which all old things are done away, and
all things become new - it is to press it upon you, that the state of the
alternative, at this moment, is now or never - it is to prove how
fearful the odds are against you, if now you suffer the call of repentance to
light upon your consciences, and still keep by your determined posture of
careless, and thoughtless, and thankless unconcern about God.
You have
resisted to-day, and by that resistance you have acquired a firmer metal of
resistance against the power of every future warning that may be brought to
bear upon you. You have stood your ground against the urgency of the most
earnest admonitions, and against the dreadfulness of the most terrifying
menaces. On that ground you have fixed yourself more immoveably than before;
and though on some future day the same spiritual thunder be made to play around
you, it will not shake you out of the obstinacy of your determined rebellion.
It is the universal law of habit, that the feelings are always getting more
faintly and feebly impressed by every repetition of the cause which excited
theni, and that the mind is always getting stronger in its active resistance to
the impulse of these feelings, by every new deed of resistance which it
performs; and thus it is, that if you refuse us now, we have no other prospect
before us than that your cause is every day getting more desperate and more
irrecoverable, your souls are getting more nardened, the Spirit is getting more
provoked to abandon those who have so long persisted in their opposition to his
movements. God, who says that his Spirit will not always strive with the
children of men, is getting more offended. The tyranny of habit is getting
every day a firmer ascendancy over you; Satan is getting you more helplessly
involved among his wiles and his entanglements; the world, with all the
inveteracy of those desires which are opposite to the will of the Father, is
more and more lording it over your every affection.
And what, we would
ask, what is the scene in which you are now purposing to contest it, with all
this mighty force of opposition you are now so busy in raising up against you?
What is the field of combat to which you are now looking forward, as the place
where you are to accomplish a victory over all those formidable enemies whom
you are at present arming with such a weight of hostility, as, we say, within a
single hair-breadth of certainty, you will find to be irresistible? 0 the
bigness of such a misleading infatuation!
The proposed scene in which
this battle for eternity is to be fought, and this victory for the crown of
glory is to be won, is a death-bed. It is when the last messenger stands by the
couch of the dying man, and shakes at him the terrors of his grisly
countenance, that the poor child of infatuation thinks he is to struggle and
prevail against all his enemies; against the unrelenting tyranny of habit
against the obstinacy of his own heart, which he is now doing so much to harden
- against the Spirit of God who perhaps long ere now has pronounced the doom
upon him, He will take his own way, and walk in his own counsel; I shall
cease from striving, and let him alone against Satan, to whom every day
of his life he has given some fresh advantage over him, and who will not be
willing to lose the victim on whom he has practised so many wiles, and plied
with success so many delusions.
And such are the enemies whom you, who
wretchedly calculate on the repentance of the eleventh hour, are every day
mustering up in greater force and formidableness against you; and how can we
think of letting you go, with any other repentance than the repentance of the
precious moment that is now passing over you, when we look forward to the
horrors of that impressive scene, on which you propose to win the prize of
immortality, and to contest it single-handed and alone, with all the weight of
opposition which you have accumulated against yourselves a death-bed - a
languid, breathless, tossing, and agitated death-bed; that scene of feebleness,
when the poor man cannot help himself to a single mouthful - when he must have
attendants to sit around him, and watch his every wish, and interpret his every
signal, and turn him to every posture where he may find a moments ease,
and wipe away the cold sweat that is running over him - and ply him with
cordials for thirst, and sickness, and insufferable languor.
And this
is the time, when occupied with such feelings, and beset with such agonies as
these, you propose to crowd within the compass of a few wretched days,
the
work of winding up the concerns of a neglected eternity!
5. But it may
be said, if repentance be what you represent it, a thing of such mighty import,
and such impracticable performance, as a change of mind, in what rational way
can it be made the subject of a precept or an injunction? you would not call
upon the Ethiopian to change his skin - you would not call upon the leopard to
change his spots; and yet you call upon us to change our minds. You say,
Repent; and that too in the face of the undeniable doctrine, that
man is without strength for the achievement of so mighty an enterprise. Can you
tell us any plain and practicable thing that you would have us to perform, and
that we may perform to help on this business? This is the very question with
which the hearers of John the Baptist came back upon him, after he had told
them in general terms to repent, and to bring forth fruits meet for repentance.
He may not have resolved the difficulty, but he pointed the expectations of his
countrymen to a greater than he for the solution of it.
Now that
Teacher has already come, and we live under the full and the finished splendour
of His revelation. 0 that the greatness and difficulty of the work of
repentance, had the effect of shutting you up into the faith of Christ!
Repentance is not a paltry, superficial reformation. It reaches deep into the
inner man, hut not too deep for the searching influences of that Spirit which
is at His giving, and which worketh mightily in the hearts of believers. You
should go then under a sense of your difficulty to Him. Seek to be rooted in
the Saviour, that you may be nourished out of His fulness, and strengthened by
His might. The simple cry for a clean heart, and a right spirit, which is
raised from the mouth of a believer, brings down an answer from on high, which
explains all the difficulty and overcomes it. And if what we have said of the
extent and magnitude of repentance, should have the effect to give a deeper
feeling than before of the wants under which you labour; and shall dispose you
to seek after a closer and more habitual union with Him who alone can supply
them, then will our call to repent have indeed fulfilled upon you the appointed
end of a preparation for the Saviour.
But recollect now is your time,
and now is your opportunity, for entering on the road of preparation that leads
to heaven. We charge you to enter this road at this moment, as you value your
deliverance from hell, and your possession of that blissful place where you
shall be for ever with the Lord - we charge you not to parry and to delay this
matter, no not for a single hour - we call on you by all that is great in
eternity - by all that is terrifying in its horrors - by all that is alluring
in its rewards - by all that is binding in the authority of God - by all that
is condemning in the severity of His violated law, and by all that can
aggravate this condemnation in the insulting contempt of His rejected gospel ;
- we call on you by one and all of these considerations, not to hesitate but to
flee - not to purpose a return for to-morrow, but to make an actual return this
very day-to put a decisive end to every plan of wickedness on which you may
have entered - to cease your hands from all that is forbidden to turn them to
all that is required - to betake yourselves to the appointed Mediator, and
receive through Him, by the prayer of faith, such constant supplies of the
washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, that, from this moment,
you may be carried forward from one degree of grace unto another, and from a
life devoted to God here, to the elevation of a triumphant, and the joys of a
blissful eternity hereafter.
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