Romans - Introduction
LECTURES ON THE ROMANS.
IT is possible to
conceive the face of our world over-spread with a thick and midnight darkness,
and without so much as a particle of light to alleviate it, from any one
quarter of the firmament around us. In this case, it were of no avail to the
people who live in it, that all of them were in possession of sound and perfect
eyes. The organ of sight may be entire, and yet nothing be seen from the total
absence of external light among the objects on every side of us. Or in other
words, to bring about this perception of that which is without, it is not
enough that we have the power of vision among men; but, in addition to this,
there must be a visibility in the trees, and the houses, and the mountains, and
the living creatures, which are now in the ordinary discernment of men.
But, on the other hand, we may reverse the supposition. We may conceive
an entire luminousness to be extended over the face of nature - while the
faculty of sight was wanting among all the individuals of our species. In this
case, the external light would be of as little avail towards our perception of
any object at a distance from us, as the mere possession of the sense of seeing
was in the former instance. Both must conspire to the effect of our being
rendered conversant with the external world through the medium of the eye. And
if the power of vision was not enough, without a visibility on the part of the
things which are around us, by God saying let there be light - as little is
their visibility enough, without the power of vision stamped as an endowment by
the hand of God, on the creatures whom He has formed.
Now we can
conceive that both these defects or disabilities, in the way of vision, may
exist at the same time - or that all the world was dark, and that all the
people in the world were blind. To emerge out of this condition - there must be
a twofold process begun and carried forward, and at length brought to its full
and perfect termination. Light must be poured upon the earth, and the faculty
of seeing must be conferred upon its inhabitants. One can imagine, that,
instead of the light being made instantaneously to burst upon us in its highest
splendour, and, instead of the faculty being immediately bestowed upon us in
full vigour to meet and to encounter so strong a tide of effulgency - that both
these processes were conducted in a way that was altogether gradual - that the
light, for example, had its first weak glimmering; and that the eye, in the
feebleness of its infancy, was not overcome by it - that the light advanced
with morning step to a clearer brilliancy; and that the eye, rendered able to
bear it, multiplied the objects of its sight, and took in a wider range of
perception - that the light shone at length unto the perfect day and that the
eye, with the last finish upon its properties and its powers, embraced the
whole of that variety which lies within the present compass of human
contemplation. We must see that if one of these processes be gradual, the other
should be gradual also. By shedding too strong a light upon weak eyes, we may
overpower and extinguish them. By granting too weak a light to him who has
strong eyes, we make the faculty outstrip the object of its exercise, and thus
incur a waste of endowment. By attempering the one process to the other, we
maintain, throughout all the stages, that harmony which is so abundantly
manifested in the works of Nature and Providence, between man as he actually
is, and the circumstances by which-man is actually surrounded.
These
preliminary statements will we trust be of some use for illustrating the
progress, not of natural, but of spiritual light, along that path which forms
,successive history of our world. Whatever discernment Adam had of the things
of God in Paradise, the fall, which he experienced was a fall into the very
depths of the obscurity of midnight. The faculties he had in a state of
innocence, made him able to perceive, that the Creator, who formed him, took
pleasure in all that He had formed; and rejoiced over them so long as He saw
that they were good. IBut when they ceased to be good, and became evil - when
sin had crept into our world in the shape of a novelty as yet unheard, and as
yet unprovided for - when the relation of man to his Maker was not merely
altered, but utterly and diametrically reversed - when, from a loyal and
affectionate friend, he had become at first a daring, and then a distrustful
and. affrighted rebel - Adam may, when a sense of integrity made all look
bright and smiling and serene around him, have been visited from Heaven with
the light of many high communications; nor could he feel at a loss to
comprehend, how He, who was the Fountain of moral excellence, should cherish,
with a Father's best and kindest regards, all those whom He had filled and
beautified and blest with its unsullied emanations: But, after the gold had
become dim, how He whose eye was the eye of unspotted holiness could look upon
it with complacency - after the sentence had been incurred, how, while truth
and unchangeableness were the attributes of God, it ever could be reversed by
the lips of Him who pronounced it - after guilt with all its associated terrors
had changed to the view of our first parents the aspect of the Divinity, how
the light of His countenance should ever beam upon them again with an
expression of love or tenderness These were:the mysteries which beset and
closed and shrouded. in thickest darkness,. the understandings of. those who
had just passed out of innocence into sin.
Till God made this first
communication, there was no external light, to alleviate that despair and
dreariness which followed the first visitation of a feeling so painful and so
new as the consciousness of evil. And, if the agitations of the heart have any
power to confuse and to unsettle the perceptions of the understanding - if
remorse and perplexity and fear, go to disturb the exercise of all our judging
and all our discerning faculties - if, under the engrossment of one great and
overwhelming apprehension, we can neither see with precision nor contemplate
with steadiness - above all, if, under the administration of a righteous God,
there be a constant alliance between spiritual darkness and a sense of sin
unpardoned or sin unexpiated - Then may we be sure that an obscurity of the
deepest character lay upon the first moments in the history of sinful man; and
which required both light from Heaven upon his soul, a renovation of its
vitiated and disordered faculties, ere it could be effectually dissipated.
From this point then, the restoration of spiritual light to our
benighted world takes its commencement - when Adam was utterly blind; and the
canopy ever his head, was palled in impenetrable darkness. To remove the one
disability, was in itself to do nothing - to remove the other disability, was
in itself to do nothing. Both must be removed before Adam could again see. Both
may have been removed instantaneously; and by one fiat of Omnipotence, such a
perfection of spiritual discernment may have been conferred on our first
parents, aad such a number of spiritual truths have been made by a direct
communication from Heaven to stand around him, as in a single moment would have
ushered him into all the splendours of a full and flushed revelation. But this
has not been God 's method in His dealings with a sinful world. Spiritual light
and spiritual discernment, were not called forth to meet each ether, in all the
plenitude of an unclouded brilliancy, at the bidding of His immediate voice.
The outward truth has been dealt out by a gradual process of revelation - and
the inward perception of it has been made to maintain a corresponding pace
through a process equally gradual. A greater number of spiritual objects has
been introduced, from one time to another, into the field of visibility - and
the power of spiritual vision has from one age to another been made to vary and
to increase along with them.
Those truths, which make up the body of
our written revelation, may be regarded as so many objects on which visibility
has been conferred by so many successive communications of light from Heaven.
They were at first few in number; and these few were offered to mankind, under
the dieguise of a rather vague and extended generality. The dawn of this
eternal revelation was marked by the solitary announcement, given to our
outcast progenitors, that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the
serpent. To this, other announcements were added in the progress of ages - and
even the great truth, which lay enveloped in the very first of them, had a
growing illumination cast upon it in the lapse of generations. The promise
given to Adam, brightened into a more cheering and intelligible hope, when
renewed to Abraham, in the shape of an assurance, that, through one of his
descendants, all the families of the earth were to be blest; and to Jacob, that
Shiloh was to be born, and that to Him the gathering of the people should be;
and to Moses, that a great Prophet was to arise like unto himself; and to
David, that one of his house was to sit upon his throne for ever; and to
Isaiah, that one was to appear, who should be a light unto the Gentiles, and
the salvation of all the ends of the earth; and to Daniel, that the Messiah was
to be cut off, but not for Himself, and that through Him recoriciliation was to
be made for iniquity, and an everlasting righteousness was to be brought in and
to John the Baptist, that the kingdom of Heaven was at hand, and the Prince of
that kingdom was immediately to follow in the train of his own ministrations;
and to the apostles in the days of our Saviour upon earth, that He with whom
they cornpanied was soon to be lifted up for the healing of the nations, and
that all who looked to Him should live - and finally - to the apostles after
the day of Pentecost, when, fraught with the full and explicit tidings of a
world's atonement and a world's reaction, they went forth with the doctrine of
Christianity in its entire copiousness, and have transmitted it to future ages
in a book, of which it has been said no man shall add thereto, and no rnan
shall take away from it.
This forms but a faint and a feeble outline of
that march, by which God s external revelation hath passed magnificently
onwards, from the first days of our world, through the twilight of the
patriarchal ages - and the brightening of the Jewish dispensation, aided as it
was by the secondary lustre of types and of ceremonies - and the constant
accumulation of Prophecy, with its visions every century becoming more
distinct, and its veil becoming more transparent - and the personal
communications of God manifest in the flesh, who opened -His mouth amongst us,
but still opened it in parables - insomuch that when He ascended from His
disciples, He still left them in wonder and dimness and mystery - Till, by the
pouring forth of the Holy Spirit from the place which He had gone to occupy,
the evidence of inspiration received its last and its mightiest enlargement,
which is now open to all for the purpose of perusal, but so shut against every
purpose of augmentation, that in this respect it may be said, its words are
closed up and sealed to the time of the end.
The Epistle to the Romans,
forms one of the most complete and substantial products of this last and
greatest illumination. In this document, the visibility of external revelation
is poured forth not merely on the greatest variety of Christian doctrine, but
on that doctrine so harmoniously blended with the truths of human experience -
so solidly reared from the foundation of Jesus Christ and of Him crucified,
into a superstructure at once firm and graceful and stately - so branching
forth into all the utilities of moral and practical application - and, at
length from an argument bearing upon one great conclusion, so richly
efflorescing into all the virtues and accomplishments which serve both to mark
and to adorn the person of regenerated man - Such is the worth and the density
and the copiousness of this epistle - that, did our power of vision keep pace
at all with the number and the value of those spiritual lessons which abound in
it, then indeed should we, become the children of light, be rich in a wisdom
that the world knoweth not, in a wisdom which is unto salvation.
But
the outward light by which an object is rendered visible is one thing - and the
power of vision is another. That these two are not only distinct in respect of
theoretical conception, but were also experimentally distinct from each other
in the actual history of God's communications to the world, will, we trust, be
made to appear from several passages of that revealed history in the Bible; and
from one single appeal which we shall make to the experience of our
hearers.
The first passage is in 1 Peter, i, 10 - 12. "Of which
salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of
the grace that should come unto you. Searching what, or whet manner of time,
the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified
beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto
whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us, they did minister
the things which are now reported unto you, by them which have preached the
gospel unto you, the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels
desire to look into." This passage sets the old prophets before us in a
very striking attitude. They positively did not know the meaning of their own
prophecies. They were like men of dim and imperfect sight, whose hand was
guided by some foreign power to the execution of a picture - and who, after it
was finished, vainly attempted, by straining their eyes, to explain and to
ascertain the subject of it. They were the transmitters of a light, which, at
the same time, did not illuminate themselves. They uttered the word, or they
put it down in writing, as it was given to them - and then they searched
by their own power, but searched in vain for the signification of it. They
enquired diligently what the meaning of the Spirit could be, when it testified
of the sufferings of Christ and the glory of Christ. But till that Spirit gave
the power of discernment, as well as set before them the objects of discernment
- their attempts were nugatory. And indeed they were sensible of this, and
acquiesced in it. It was told them by revelation, that the subject-matter of
their prophecy was not for themselves, but for others even for those to whom
the gospel should be preached in future days, and who, along with the
ministration of the eternal word, were to receive the ministration of the Holy
Ghost - whose office it is to put into the mouths of prophets the things which
are to be looked to and believed, and whose office also it is to put into the
hearts of others the power of seeing and believing these things. And it serves
clearly to mark the distinction between these two offices, that the prophets,
alluded to in this passage, presented to the world a set of truths which they
themselves did not understand - and that again the private disciples of Peter,
who were not so learned as to be made the original and inspired authors of such
a communication were honoured with the far more valuable privilege of being
made to understand it.
This we think will appear still more clearly
from another passage of the same apostle in 2 Peter, i, 19 - 21. "We have
also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as
unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star
arise in your hearts. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is
of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the
will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost:" No prophecy is of private interpretation. It was not suggested by
the natural sense of him who uttered it - and as little is it understood, or
can it be explained, by the natural powers of the same person. He was the mere
recipient of a higher influence; and he conveyed what. he had thus received to
the world - speaking not of hia own will but just as he was moved by the Holy
Ghost - and enabled to discern or to expound the meaning of what he had thus
spoken, not of his own power, but just as the same Holy Ghost who gave him the
materials of contemplation, gave him the faculty of a just and true
contemplation. The light of which, he was barely the organ of transmission,
shone in a dark place, so long as it shone upon the blind; and, not till the
blind was made to see - not till the eyes of those, who were taking heed to the
letter of the prophecy, were opened to perceive the life and meaning and spirit
of the prophecy - not till that day which has dawned, and that day-star which
had arisen on the outward page of revelation, had also dawned and arisen upon
their own hearts - not, in short, till the great agent of all revelation, even
the Holy Spirit who had already furnished the object of ception in the word,
had also furnished the organ of perception in the understanding - Not till
then, were the enquiries after the truth as it is in Jesus effectually
introduced, to a full acquaintance with all its parts, - or to the full benefit
of all its influence.
We cannot take leave of this passage, without
adverting to the importance of that practical injunction which is contained in
it. They who are still in darkness are called upon to look, and with
earnestness too, to a particular quarter; and that is the word of God - and to
do so until the power of vision was granted to them. If a blind man were
desirous of beholding a landscape, and had the hope at the same time of having
his sight miraculously restored to him, he might, even when blind, go to the
right post of observation, and turn his face to the right direction, and thus
wait for the recovery of that power which was extinguished. And, in like
manner, we are all at the right post, when we are giving heed to our Bibles. We
are all going through a right exercise, when, with the strenuous application of
our natural powers, we are reading and pondering and comparing and remembering
the words of the testimony - and if asked, how long we should persevere in this
employment, let us persevere in it with patience and prayer until, as Peter
says, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in our hearts. That John the
Baptist should not know himself to have been he who was to come in the spirit
and power of Elijah; and hence, in reply to the question Art thou Elias! should
say that I am not - whereas our Saviour affirmed of him, that he was the Elias
who should come - this ignorance of his may be as much due to the want of
outward formation about the point, as to any lack in the faculty of
discernment. The same thing however can scarcely be said of his ignorance of
the true character of the very Messiah whom he himself foretold - insomuch,
that, though he had baptized him and attested him to be the Lamb of God, and
seen the Spirit descending upon him like a dove - yet he seems afterwards to
have been so much startled by the obscurity of his circumstances, and by the
style of his companionship which looked unsuitable to the character of a great
Prince and deliverer, that, in perplexity about the matter, he sent his
disciples to Jesus to ask whether he was the person who should come or they had
to look for another, He laboured under such a disadvantage, whether of darkness
or of blindness about the nature of the new dispensation, that though, of
light, he was greater than the greatest of the prophets, who had gone before
him, yet, in the very same respect, he was less than the least in the Kingdom
of Heaven; or less than the least enlightened of the Christian disciples who
should come after him.
The constant misapprehension of our Saviour's
own immediate disciples, of which we read so much in. the Gospels, was
certainly due as much to their being blind as to their being in the dark - to
their defect in the power of seeing, as to any defect in the visibility of what
was actually set before them.
We read of our Saviour's sayings being hid
from that they perceived not - and of His dealing the light of external truth
to them, as their were able to bear it - and of His averring, in spite of all
He had dealt out in the course of His personal ministrations upon earth, of His
averring, at the close of these ministrations, that as yet they knew nothing,
though if they had had the power of discernment, they might surely have learned
much from what is now before us in the Gospels, and of which they were both the
eye and the ear witnesses. We further read; that after the resurrection, when
He met two of His disciples, and the eyes of their body were holden that they
should not know Him, just as the eyes of their mind were holden that they
should not know the things which were said in Moses and the Prophets and all
the Scriptures concerning Himself, they at length came to recognize His person
- not by any additional light thrown upon the external object, but simply by
their eyes being opened; and they also came to recognize Him in the Scriptures
- not by any change or any addition to the word of their testimony, but simply
by their understandings being opened to understand them. We also read of the
descent of the Holy Ghost in the day of Pentecost - that event on which our
Saviour set such an importance, as to make it more than an equivalent for His
own presence in the way of teaching and enlightening the minds of His apostles.
"If I go not away, he will not come unto you - but if I depart, then him who is
not yet given, because I am not yet glorified, I will send unto you. And he
will guide you into all truth, and take of my things, and show them unto you."
There is no doubt that He showed them new things, which we have in the
Epistles; and so made the Light of external revelation shine more fully and
brightly upon them. But there is as little doubt, that, in His office as a
Revealer, He made them see old things more clearly than before - that, by a
direct work on the power of mental perception, He brought them to their
remembrance. He made them skilful in the discernment of Scripture - a term
applied exclusively at that time to the writings of the Old Testament and He,
not only cleared away the external darkness which rested on that part of
Christian doctrine that was still unpromulgated, but He strengthened and
purified that organ of discernment through which the light of things new and
old finds its way into the heart- insomuch that we know not two states of
understanding which stand more decidedly connected with each other, than that
of the apostles before, and of the same apostles after the resurrection from
being timid, irresolute, confused, and altogether doubting and unsatisfied
enquirers, they became brave unshrinking and consistent ministers of a
spiritual faith - looking back both on the writings of the Old Testament, and
on our Saviour's conversations with other eyes than they had formerly; and
enabled so to harmonize them with their subsequent revelations, as to make them
perceive an evangelical spirit and an evangelical meaning even in those earlier
communications which, of themselves, shed so dim and so feeble a lustre over
the patriarchal and the prophetic ages.
So that the office of the Holy
Ghost with the apostles, was, not merely to show them things new respecting
Christ, but to make them see things both new and old. The former of His
functions, as we said before, has now ceased - nor have we reason to believe,
that, during the vhole currency of our present world, there will another
article of doctrine or information be given to us, than what is already
treasured up in the written and unalterable word of God's communications. But
the latter function is still in full exercise. It did not cease with the
apostolic age. The external revelation is completed. But, for the power of
beholding aright the truths which it sets before us, we are just as dependent
on the Holy Ghost as the apostles of old were. His miraculous gifts and His
conveyances of additional doctrine are now over. But His whole work in the
church of Christ is not nearly over. He has shed all the light that He ever
will do over the field of revelation. But He has still to open the eyes of the
blind; and, with every individual of the human race, has He to turn him from a
natural man who cannot receive the things of the Spirit, to a spiritual man by
whom alone these things can be spiritually discerned.
There is with
many amongst us, an undervaluing of this part of the Christian dispensation.
The office of the Holy Ghost as a revealer is little adverted to, and therefore
little proceeded upon in any of our practical movements. We set ourselves forth
to the work of reading and understanding the Bible, just as we would any human
composition - and this is so far right - for it is only when thus employed that
we have any reason to look for the Spirit's agency in our behalf. But surely
the fact of His agency being essential, is one, not of speculative but of
practical importance - and ought to admonish us, that there is one peculiarity,
by which the book of God stands distinguished from the book of a human author,
and that is that it is not enough it should be read with the spirit of
attention, but with the spirit of dependence and of prayer.
We should
like if this important part in the process of man's recovery to God, held a
more conspicuous place in your estimation. We should like you to view it as a
standing provision for the church of Christ in all ages. It was not set up a
mere temporary purpose, to shed a fleeting brilliancy over an age of gifted and
illuminated men that has now rolled by. Such is the value, and such the
permanency of this gift of the Holy Ghost,.that it almost looks to be the great
and ultimate design of Christ'e undertaking, to obtain dispensation of it, as
the accomplishment of a promise by his Father. And when Peter explained to the
multitude its first and most wondrous exhibition on that day of Pentecost, he
did not restrict it to one period or to one country of world. But the gift of
the Holy Ghost is "unto you," he says, "and to your children, and to as many as
the Lord our God shall call." We think that if we saw Christ in person, and had
the explanation of our Bibles from His own mouth, this would infallibly conduct
us to the highest eminences of spiritual wisdom. But blessed be they who we not
seen, but yet have believed - and Christ has expressly told us, that it is
better He should away from the world, for "if he did not go the Spirit would
not come - but that if he went away he would send him." What the mysterious
connection is between Christ's entrance into heaven, and the free egress of the
Holy Ghost upon earth, it is not for us to enquuire. But such is the revealed
fact, that we are in better circumstances for being guided unto all truth by
having a part and an interest in this promise, than if we had personal access
to the Saviour still sojourning and still ministering amongst us. Let us not
despise that which has so mighty a place assigned to it in the counsels of God
- and if, heretofore, a darkness has hung over the pages of the word of. His
testimony - let us feel assured that in Him or in His communications there is
no darkness at all. It is not because He is dark, but because we are blind that
we do not understand Him; and we give you, not a piece of inert orthodoxy, but
a piece of information which may be turned to use and to account on your very
next perusal of any part of the Bible - when we say that it is the office of
the Spirit to open the eye of your mind to the meaning of its intimations, and
that God will not refuse His Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.
This
brings us by a very summary process to the resolution of the question, How is
it that the Spirit acts as a revealer of truth to the human understanding? To
deny Him this office, on the one hand, is, in fact, to set aside what by the
fullest testimony of the Bible is held forth as the process, in every distinct
and individual case, whereby each man at his conversion is called out of
darkness into marvellous light. On the other hand, to deny such a fulness and
such a sufficiency of doctrine in the Bible, as if beheld and believed is
enough for salvation, is to count it necessary that something should be added
to the words of the prophecy of this book, which if any man do, God will add
unto him all the plagues that are written therein. There is no difficulty in
effecting a reconciliation between these two parties. The Spirit guides unto
all truth, and all truth is to be found in the Bible - The Spirit therefore
guides us unto the Bible. He gives us that power of discernment, by which we
are wisely and intelligently conducted through all its passages. His office is
not to brighten into additional splendour the sun of revelation, or even to
clear away any clouds that may have gathered over the face of it. His office is
to clarify our organs of perception, and to move away that film from the eye,
which, till He begins to operate, adheres with the utmost obstinacy in the case
of every individual of the species. The ebbs and the alternations of spiritual
light in our world, are not due to any fluctuating movements, in the flame,
which issues from that luminary that has been hung out as a lamp unto our feet
and a light unto our paths. It is due to the variations which take place, of
soundness or disease, in the organs of the beholders. That veil which was at
one time on the face of Moses, is now upon the heart of the unconverted
Israelites. The blindness is in their minds, and they are in darkness, just
because of this veil being :yet untaken away in the reading of the Old
Testament or in the New - but this veil which is now upon their faculties of
spiritual discernment, will be taken away. The unconverted of our own country,
to whom the gospel is hid, do not perceive it, not because there is a want of
light in the gospel which would need to be augmented, but because the
God of this world hath blinded their own minds, lest the light of the glorious
gospel of Christ who is the image of God should shine unto them. God hath
already commanded all the external light of revelation, which he ever purposes
to do, in behalf of our world - and that light shines upon all to whom the word
of salvation is sent. But though it shines upon all, it does not shine into
all. He hath already commanded the light to shine out of darkness - and we now
wait for that opening and purifying of the organ of conveyance which is upon
our person, that it may shine into our hearts and thence give us the light of
the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. The period of
the new dispensation has been a period of light, as much from the increase of
vision as from the increase of visibility. The vacillation of this light from
one age to another, is not from any periodical changes in the decay or the
brightening of the outward luminary. It is from the partial shutting and
openings of a screen of interception. And, in those millennial days, when the
gospel, in full and unclouded brilliancy, shull shine upon the world - it will
not be because light came down to it from Heaven in a tide of more copious
supply - but because God will destroy the face of the covering that is cast
over all people; and the veil that is spread over all nations.
The
light is exceedingly near to every one of us, and we might even now be in the
full and satisfactory enjoyment of it - were it not for a something in
ourselves. All that is necessary is, that the veil, which hangs over our own
senses, be destroyed. The obstacle in the way of spiritual manifestation, does
not lie in the dimness of that which is without us - but in the state of our
own personal faculties. Let the organ of discernment be only set right; and the
thing to be discerned will then appear in its native brightness, and just in
the very features and complexion which it has worn from the beginning, and in
which it has offered itself to the view of all whose eyes have been opened by
the Spirit of God, to behold the wondrous things contained in the book of God's
law. His office is not to deal in variable revelations to a people sitting in
darkness. It, is to lift up the heavy, eyelids of a people who are blind, that
they may see the characters of a unchangeable and ever~during record. The light
is near us; and all that remains to be done for its being poured into the
innermost recesses of every soul, is the destruction of that little tegument
which lies in the channel of communication, between the objects which are
visible and him for whose use and whose perception they are intended. To come
in contact with spintual light, we have not to ascend into heaven, and fetch an
illumiiated torch from its upper sanctuaries - we have not to descend into the
deep, and,and,out of the darkness of its hidden mysteries, bring to the
openness of day some secret thing that before was inaccessible. All that we
shall ever find is in that word which is nigh unto us, even in our mouth; and
which, by the penetrating energies of Him in whose hand it becometh a sword,
can find its way through all the dark and obstructed avenues of nature, and
reach its convictions and its influences and its lessons to the very thoughts
and intents of the heart. If you be longing for a light which you have not yet
gotten - it is worth your knowing, that the firmament of a man's spiritual
vision is already set round with all its splendours - that not one additional
lamp will for your behoof be hung out from the canopy of heaven - that the
larger and the lesser lights of revelation are already ordained; and not so
much as one twinkling luminary will either be added or expunged from this
hemisphere of the soul, till this material earth and these material heavens be
made to pass away - And therefore, if still sitting in the region and under the
shadow of death, there be any of you who long to be ushered into the
manifestations of the gospel, know that this is done, not by any change in that
which is without, but by a change in that which is within - by a medicating
process upon our own faculties - by the simplicity of a personal
operation.
This is something more than the mere didactic affirmation of
a speculative or scholastic Theology. It contains within its bosom the
rudiments of a most important practical direction, to every reader and every
enquirer. If I do not see, not because thnrc is a darkness around me, but
because there is a blindness upon me adhering in the shape of a personal
attribute - it were a matter of great practical account to ascertain, if this
defect do not stand associated with other defects in my character and mind
which are also personal. And when we read of the way in which the moral and the
intellectual are blended together in the doctrines of the New Testament - how
one apostle affirms, that he who hateth his brother is in darkness; and
another, that he who lacketh certain virtues is blind and cannot see afar off;
and another, that men who did not, up to what they knew, award the glory and
the gratitude to God, had their foolish hearts darkened, so as to have that
which they at one time possessed taken away from them; and how our Saviour
resolves the condemnation of men's unbelief into the principle that they loved
the dark ness, and therefore wilfully shut their eyes to the truth that was
offered. All this goes to demonstrate, that presumptuous sin stands in the way
of spiritual discernment; that evil deeds, and the indulgence of evil
affections, serve to thicken that has settled upon the mental eye, and obscures
its every perception of the truths of revelation. And this much at least may be
turned into a matter of sure and practical inference from all these
elucidations - that the man who is not yet awakened to a sense of his
iniquities, and not evincing it by putting forth upon them the hand of a
strenuous and determined reform; that the man who stifles the voice of
conscience within him, and, the slave of his inveterate habits, never, either
in practice or in prayer, makes an honest struggle for his own emancipation;
that he who makes not a single effort against the conformities or the
associations of worldliness; and, far more, he who still its in its
dishonesties or its grosser dissipations . - he may stand all his days on the
immediate margin of a brightness that is altogether celestial, and yet, in
virtue of an interposed barrier which be is doing all he can to make more opake
and impenetrable, may he, with the Bible before his eyes, be groping in all the
darkness and in more than all the guilt of heathenism. These sins infuse a sore
and a deadly distemper into his organs of perception, and by every wilful
repetition of them is the distemper more fixed and perpetuated - and therefore
it is that we call upon those who desire for light, to cherish no hope whatever
of its attainment, while they persist in any doings which they know to be
wrong. We call upon them to frame their doings in turning to the Lord if they
wish the veil to be taken away - and, instead of hesitating about the order of
precedency between faith and practice, or about the way in which they each
reciprocate upon the other, we call upon them simply arid honestly to betake
themselves to the apostolical order of "Awake, 0 sinner, and Christ shall give
thee light."
There is another set of passages which may be quoted as a
counterpart to the former, and which go to demonstrate the connection between
obedience and spiritual light - even as the others prove the connection between
sin and spiritual darkness. He who is desirous of doing God's will shall
know of Christ's doctrine that it is of God. He whose eye is single shall
have the whole body full of light. Light is sown unto the upright, and
breaketh forth as the morning to those who judge the widow and the fatherless.
To him who hath, more shall be given - and he who keepeth my
sayings, to him will I manifest myself. These are testimonies which clearly
bespeak, what ought to be the conduct of him who is in quest of spiritual
manifestation. They will serve to guide the seeker in his way to that rest,
which all attain who have attained an acquaintance with the unseen Creator. It
is a rest which he labours to enter into - and, in despite of freezing
speculation, does he turn the call of repentance to the immediate account of
urging himself on to all deeds of conformity with the divine will, to all good
and holy services.
But more than this. It is the Spirit who opens the
understanding; and He is affected by the treatment which He receives from the
subject on which He operates. It is true that He has been known at times to
magnify the freeness of the of God, by arresting the sinner in the full
determination of his impetuous career; and turning him, despite of himself, to
the refuge and righteousness of the gospel. But, speaking generally, He is
grieved by resistance, He is quenched by carelessness, He is provoked by the
constant baffling of His endeavours, to cheek and to convince and to admonish.
On the other hand He is courted by compliance; He is encouraged by the
favourable reception of His influences; He is given in larger measure, to those
who obey Him; and He follows up your docility under one dictate and one
suggestion, by freer and fuller manifestations. In other words, if to thwart
your conscience be to thwart Him, and if to act with your conscience be to act
with Him - what is this to say, but that every enquirer after the way of
salvation, -has something to do at the very outset with the furtherance of his
object? What is this to say, but that a nascent concern about the soul should
instantlym be associated with a nascent activity in the prosecution of its
interests? What is this to say, but that the man should, plainly and in good
earnest, forthwith turn himself to all that is right? If he have been hitherto
a drunkard, let him abandon his profligacies. If he have been hitherto a
profaner of the Sabbath, let him abandon the habit of taking his own pleasure
upon that day. If he have been hitherto a defrauder, let him abandon his
deceits and his depredations. And though in that region of spiritual light upon
which he is entering, he will learn that he never can be at peace with God till
he lean on a better righteousness than his own - yet such is the influence of
the docrines of grace on every genuine enquirer. that, from the first dawning
of his obscure perception of them, to the splendour of their full and finished
manifestation, is there the breaking and the stir and the assiduous effort of a
busy and ever-doing reformation - carrying him onwards from the more palpable
rectitudes of ordinary and every-day conduct, to the high and sacred and
spiritual elevation of a soul ripening for heaven, and following hard after
God.
We know that we are now standing on the borders of controversy.
But we are far more solicitous for such an impression as will lead you to act,
than for any speculative adjustment. And yet how true it is, that, for the
purpose of a practical effect, there is not one instrument so powerful and so
prevailing as the peculiar doctrine of the gospel. It is the belief that a debt
unextinguishable by us has been extinguished by another - it is the knowledge
that that God, who can never lay aside either His truth or His righteousness,
has found out such a way for the dispensation of mercy as serves to exalt and
to illustrate them both - it is the view of that great transaction by which He
laid on His own Son the iniquities of us all, and has thus done away an
otherwise invincible barrier which lay across the path of acceptance - it is
the precious conviction that Christ has died for our sins according to the
Scriptures, and thus has turned aside the penalties of a law, and by the very
act wherewith He has magnified that law and made it honourable - It is this,
which seen, however faintly, with the eye of faith, which first looses the bond
of sin and gives a hope and an outlet for obedience. The subtile inetaphysics
of the question, about the order of succession with the two graces of faith and
of repentance, may entertain or they may perplex you. But of this you may be
very centain, that, where there is no repentance, all the dogmas of a
contentious orthodoxy put together will never make out the reality of faith -
and, where there is no faith, all the drudgeries of a most literal and
laborious adherence to the outward matter of the law will never make out the
reality of repentance.
Life is too short for controversy. Charged with
the urgency of a matter on hand, we tell you turn and flee and make fast work
of your preparation for a coming eternity. The sum and substance of the
preparation is, that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the
Bible bids you. Bestir yourselves, for the last messenger is at the door. There
is not time for cold criticisms, or laborious investigations, or splendid
oratory, or profound argument - when death has broke loose amongst us, and is
spreading his havoc amongst our earthly tabernacles - when he is wresting away
from us the delights and the ornaments of our society upon earth - when he is
letting us see, by examples the most affecting, of what frail and perishable
materials human life is made up - and is dealing out another and another
reproof to that accursed delay, which leads man to trifle on the brink of the
grave, and to smile and be secure, while the weapons of mortality are flying
thick around him. When will we be brought to the beginning of wisdom - to the
fear of God - to the desire of doing His will-- to the accomplishment of that
desire, by our believing in the name of His only-begotten Son, and loving one
another even as He has given us commandment! Let us work while it is day - and,
set in motion by the encouragements of the gospel, let us instantly become the
followers of them who through faith and patience are now inheriting the
promises.
You occasionally meet in the New Testament, with an express
reference to a certain body of writings, which are designated by the term of
Scripture. We now apply this term to the whole Bible. But, in those days, it
was restricted to that collection of pieces which makes up the Old Testament.
For the New was only in the process of its formation, and was not yet
completed; and it was not till some time after the evangelists wrote their
narratives, and the apostles their communications, that they were gathered into
one volume, or made to stand in equal and co-ordinate rank with the inspired
books of the former dispensation.
So that all which is said of the
Scriptures in the New Testament, must be regarded as the testimony of its
authors to the value and importance of those writings which compose the Old
Testament. And it would therefore appear from Paul's espistle to Timothy, that
they are able to make us wise unto salvation.
There can be no doubt,
however, that one ingredient of this ability is, that they refer us in a way so
distinct and so authoritative to the events of the New Dispensation. They give
evidence to the Commission of our Saviour, and through Him the Commission of
all His apostles. The wisdom which they teach, is a wisdom which would guide us
forward to the posterior revelations of Christianity. The Old Testament is a
region of comparative dimness. But still there is light enough there, for
making visible the many indices which abound in it, to the more illuminated
region of the New Testament - and, by sending us forward to that region, by
pointing our way to Christ and to the apostles, by barely informing us where we
are to get the wisdom that we are in quest of - even though it should not
convey it to us by its own direct announcements, it may be said to be able to
make us wise unto salvation.
The quotation taken in all its
completeness is in full harmony, with the statement that we have now given.
"From a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee
wise unto salvation, through the faith that is in Christ Jesus." But there is
more in it than this. The same light from Heaven by which the doctrine of the
New Testament has been made visible, has also made more visible the same
doctrine, which in the Old lay disguised under the veil of a still unfinished
revelation. In the first blush of morning, there is much of the landscape that
we cannot see at all - and much that we do see, but see imperfectly. The same
ascending luminary which reveals to us those more distant tracts that were
utterly unobserved, causes to start out into greater beauty and distinctness,
the fields and the paths and the varied forms of nature or of art that arc
immediately around us - till we come to perceive an extended impress of the
character and the goodness of the Divinity, over the whole range of our mid-day
contemplation. It is thus with the Bible. That light, in virtue of which the
pages of the New Testament have been disclosed to observation, has shed both a
direct and a reflected splendour on the pages of the Old - insomuch that from
certain chapters of Isaiah, which lay shrouded in mystery both from the prophet
himself and from all his countrymen - as in reading of Him who bore the
chastisement of our peace, and by whose stripes we are healed, and who poured
out His soul unto the death, and made intercession for transgressors - we now
draw all the refreshing comfort that beams upon the heart, from an intelligent
view of our Redeemer's work of mediation; and behold plainly standing out, that
which lay wrapt, in a kind of hieroglyphic mantle, from the discernment of the
wisest and most righteous of men under a former dispensation. This power of
illumination reaches upward, beyond the confines of the letter of the New
Testament; and throws an evangelical light upon the remotest parts of an
economy which has now passed away. The rays of our brighter sun bave fallen in
a flood of glory over the oldest and most distant of our recorded intimations;
and a Christian can now read the very first promise in the book of Genesis,
that "the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent," which only
served to light up a vague and general expectation in the minds of our first
parents - he read it with the same full intelligence and comfort wherewith he
reads in the book of the Romans that "the God of peace shall bruise Satan under
your feet shortly."
But there is still more in it than this. If there
be any truth in the process whereby the Holy Spirit adds to the power of
discernment,as well as to the truths which are to be discerned - then this
increased power will enable us to see more - not merely in the later, but also
in the earlier truths of revelation, than we would otherwise have done. It is
like a blind man, in full and open day, gradually recovering his sight as he
stands by the margin of a variegated parterre. Without any augmentation
whatever of the external light, is there a progress of revelation to his
senses, as to all the beauty and richness and multiplicity of the objects which
are before him. What he sees at first, may be no more than a kind of dazzling
uniformity, over the whole length and breadth of that space which is inscribed
with so many visible glories; and, afterwards, may plants and flowers stand out
in their individuality to his notice; and then may the distinctive colours of
each come to be recognized; and then, may the tints of minuter delicacy call
forth his admiration - till all which it is competent for man to perceive, of
what has been so profusely lavished by the hand of the great Artist, either in
one general blush of loveliness, or in those nicer and more exquisite streaks
of beauty which He hath pencilled in more hidden characters, on the specimens
of flowers and foliage taken singly, shall all be perceived and all be
rapturously enjoyed by the man, whose eyes have just beeu opened into a full
capacity for beholding the wondrous things, which lie a spread and a finished
spectacle before him.
And it is the same with the Bible. That book
which stands before the eye of many an accomplished disciple in this world's
literature, as transfused throughout all its extent with one pervading and
indiscriminate character of mysticism, gradually opens up to the eye of him who
is rescued from the power of the god of this world, and whose office it is to
blind the minds of them who believe not; and he beholds one general impress
both of wisdom and of moral beauty upon the whole; and he forms a growing and
more special intimacy with its individual passages; and feels a weight of
significancy in many of them, which he never felt before; and he is touched
with the discernment of a precious adaptation in this one and that other verse
to his own wants and his own circumstances; and this more minute and
microscopic acquaintance ~ with the truths, and perception of the excellencies
of revelation, apply as much to the verses of the Old as it does to the verses
of the New Testament - so that if he just grow in spiritual clear-sightedness,
he will have as growing a relish and observation for the one part of Scripture
as he has for the other:
And thus it is, that, unlike to any human
composition, an advancing Christian ever reads the Bible and the whole Bible,
with a new light upon his understanding, and a new impression upon the
affections and the principles of his nature. The books of the former
dispensation never stand to him in place of the rudiments of a schoolboy, which
now abandon. But written as they are for our admonition on whom the latter ends
of the world have come; and maintaining to this very hour the high functions
and authority of a teacher, all whose sayings are given by inspiration from
God, and all are profitable; and still instrumental, in the hands of the Spirit
for conveying the whole light and power of His demonstrations into the
understanding - let us rest assured that the Old Testament is one of the two
olive trees planted in the house of God, and which is never to be removed; one
of the two golden candlesticks lighted up for the church of Christ upon earth,
and which while that church has being, will never be taken away.
It may
illustrate this whole matter, if we look to the book of Psalms, and just think
of the various degrees of spirituality and enlargement with which the same
composition may be regarded by Jewish and by Christian eyes - how in the praise
which waiteth for God in Zion - and in the pleasure which His servants took in
her stones, so that her very dust to them was dear - and in the preference
which they made of one day in His courts to a thousand elsewhere - and in the
thirsting of their souls to appear before God - and in their remembrance of
that time when they went to His house with the voice of joy and praise, and
with the multitude that kept holyday - and when exiles from the holy city, they
were cast down in spirit, and cried from the depths of their banishment in the
land of Jordan - and when longing for God, in a dry and thirsty land where no
water was, they followed hard after the privilege of again seeing His power and
His glory in the sanctuary - and in the songs of deliverance with which they
celebrated their own restoration, when their bands were loosed, and their feet
were set in a sure place, and they could offer their vows and their
thanksgivings in the courts of the Lord s house, and "in the midst of thee, 0
Jerusalem"
In all this, a Jew might express the desires of a fainting
and an affectionate heart, after that ceremonial in which he had been trained,
and that service of the temple which he loved; and yet in all this, there is
enough to sustain the loftiest flights of devotion in the mind of a Christian.
There is a weight of expression, altogether commensurate to the feelings and
the ardours and the extacies of a soul exercised unto godliness. There is a
something to meet the whole varied experience of the spiritual life, in these
ages of a later and more refined dispensation. And such is the divine
skilfulness of these compositions, that, while so framed as to suit and to
satisfy the disciples of a ritual and less enlightened worship, there is not a
holy and heavenly disciple of Jesus in our day, who will not perceive in the
effusions of the Psalmist, a counterpart to all the alternations of his own
religious history - who will not find in his very words, the fittest vehicles
for all the wishes and sorrows and agitations to which his own heart is liable
- and thus be taught by a writer far less advanced in spirituality than
himself, the best utterance of desire for the manifestation of God s
countenance, the best utterance of gratitude for the visitations of spiritual
joy, the best and most expressive prayers under the major distress and darkness
of spiritual abandonment.
Let us read over without any comment the
whole 84th Psalm - and just simply ask you to consider how those very materials
which form a most congenial piece of devotion for a Jew, admit of being so
impregnated with the life and spirit of a higher economy, that they are able to
sustain all the views, and to express all the aspirations of the most spiritual
and exercised Christian. "How amiable are thy tabernacles, 0 Lord of hosts! My
soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my
flesh crieth out for the living God. Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and
time swallow a nest for where she may lay her young, even thine altars, 0 Lord
of hosts, my King, and my God. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they
will be still praising thee. Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in
whose heart are the ways of them: who passing through the valley of Baca make
it a well; the rain also filleth the pools. They go from strength to strength;
every one of them in Zion appeareth before God. 0 Lord God of hosts, hear my
prayer: give ear, 0 God of Jacob. Behold, 0 God our shield, and look upon the
face of thine anointed. For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I
had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents
of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace
and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. O Lord
of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee."
We think it
necessary to say thus much - lest the Old Testament should ever be degraded
below its rightful place in your estimation - lest any of you should turn away
from it, as not fitted to aliment the faith and the holiness of those, who lie
under a better and a brighter dispensation - - lest you should abstain from the
habit of reading that letter of the Old Testament, which is abundantly capable
of being infused with the same evangelical spirit, that gives all its
power to the letter of the New Testament. And be assured, that, if you want to
catch in all its height and in all its celestial purity the raptures of a
sustained and spiritual intereourse with Him who sitteth upon the throne, we
know nothing fitter to guide your ascending way, than those psalms and those
prophecies, which shone at one time in a dark place; but may now, upon the
earnest heed of him who attentively regards them, cause the day to dawn and the
day-star to arise in his heart.
In turning now to one of the fullest
expositions of Christian doctrine which is to be found in the New Testament;
and which was drawn up for the edification of the most interesting of the early
churches; and where, in the conduct of his argument, Paul seems to have been
fully aware of all those elements both of intolerance and philosophy which were
in array against him; and where, as his manner was, he suits and manages his
reasoning, with the full consciousness of the kind and metal of resistance that
were opposed to him; and where he had to steer his dexterous way through a
heterodox assemblage of Gentiles on the one hand, to the whole literature and
theology and of Jews on the other, most fiercely and proudly tenacious of that
sectarianism which they regarded as their national glory - in such an epistle,
written in such circumstances by the accomplished Paul, when we may be sure he
would bring up his efforts to the greatness of the occasion, it is natural to
look for all the conviction and all the light that such an able and
intellectual champion is fitted to throw over the cause which he has
undertaken. And yet what would be the result in a discussion of science or
politics or law, we will not find to be the result in a discussion of
Christianity, without such a preparation and such an accompaniment as are not
essential to our progress in this world s scholarship.
To be a disciple
in the school of Christ, there must be an affectionate embracing of truth with
the heart; and there must be a knowledge which puffeth not up, but humbles and
edifies; and there must be a teaching of the Spirit of God, distinct from all
those unsanctified acquirements, which we labour to win and to defend, in the
strife it may be of Logical contention. For, let it be observed, that the
wisdom of the New Testament is characterized by moral attributes. It is pure
and peaceable and gentle, and easy to be entreated, and full of mercy and good
fruits, and without partiality and without hypocrisy. Let us not confound the
illumination of natural argument, with that which warms the heart as well as
informs the understanding - for it is a very truth, that the whole
demonstration of orthodoxy may be assented to by him, who is not spiritual but
carnal. And while we are yet on the threshold of by far the mightiest and
closest of those demonstrations, that ever were offered to the world, let us
bow "the knee to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he would grant us,
according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his
Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith; that,
being rooted and grounded in love, we may be able to comprehend with all saints
what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of
Christ which passeth all knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fulness
of God."
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