Miscellaneous
Writings Vol. Two
LECTURE IV.
THE WOMAN
JEZEBEL, AND THE VOICE OF THE CHURCH
(Rev. ii. 18-23).
We are going on to-night with the fourth of these epistles
to the seven churches - the epistle to Thyatira. It is oniy the first part of
this that we shall have before us now. The latter part will be reserved until
another time, if the Lord will.
We have now come to what has very plain
and simple application to Popery, or Romanism. We have been tracing the steps
leading down to it; and when we begin to speak of Romanism (if this be a true
application we are making in this address now), let us remember that God looks
at it as inside of what, in a certain sense, He owns as His. I do not mean that
He owns the woman Jezebel, but that He does own the church of Thyatira, where
the woman Jezebel is. It is not something outside, with which we have nothing
to do, but merely to let alone. It is not something that has arisen
independently, outside of us (though we are surely separate from it,) it is
something that is only the legitimate result, the full ripe fruit, of what we
have seen maturing in former epistles.
We have, in fact, been tracing
its gradual rise. First, the Assembly of God - the called out ones, losing
their separate place as that, and becoming a "Synagogue "- a mere gathering of
people indiscriminately, as it were, together. Then we have seen the
appointment of a distinct class of priests to go between God and the people,
because the people were now strangers, in fact, and not able to go to God for
themselves. That is what we mean by "clerisy." In the next place, we have seen
the marriage between the Church and the world - her complete settlement in it;
and how this necessarily gave her the things of the world, only to become baits
to worldly men to assume the role of Christian teachers, who themselves, on the
other hand, brought in the doctrine of Balaam, teaching and seducing God's
people more and more to amalgamate with those around them, and to give up all
pretence of separation. That was Balaam's work with Israel, whose history has
been, as it were, the anticipation of our own. Now we come to the church of
Thyatira - the full ripe result of this-the woman Jezebel, who is doing
systematically, and as a prophetess, what they had done as individuals, and
with less pretension.
I do not intend to confine myself to what is
called Roman Catholicism. If we were merely looking at it in that way, we
should be attacking something we have very little to do with. But I want to
show you that the very principle that is so plain in Popery obtains much more
widely, in fact, with those even who have come out of Popery, and who
ecclesiastically are fully outside.
I must, first of all, however, show
the application to Popery itself. Evidently, the great point in this epistle is
the sufferance of this woman Jezebel. This woman Jezebel is now at the same
work as the followers of Balaam formerly. But, as I have just now said, they
were but individuals. Now the professing church as a whole is doing it - for
this is the force and meaning of "the woman." This woman is teaching and
claiming absolute authority, the authority of a prophetess - that is, in fact,
inspiration for her teaching. She is claiming infallible authority. And yet,
according to the Scriptures, the woman has no right to teach. "I suffer not a
woman to teach" is the principle there. In Scripture, the Church is always the
woman, never the man. This is very simple, because the Church is what is
espoused to Christ and it is Christ who is the Man to whom she owns subjection.
It is from Christ, therefore, the Word has to come to her. The moment she
herself presumes to teach, that very moment she is of necessity setting up an
independent authority apart from Christ. She is in revolt from her proper
allegiance to Him who is professedly her Lord.
It is the woman in the
Man's place here. It is the Church, substituting herself for Christ. She bears
also a remarkable name - Jezebel, which carries us back to the days of Ahab,
king of Israel,- those days of the very worst part of Israel's history, and of
one who, though queen of Israel, was a Canaanite, an idolatress, and a bitter
persecutor of God's saints and prophets.
I need scarcely point out to
you how remarkably this name Jezebel suits the well-proved character of the
Romish church. If you go on to Babylon the great, the woman of the seventeenth
chapter of this book of Revelation, you find her drunken with the blood of the
saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And there she is pointed out
as sitting upon the seven hills, and the city reigning over the kings of the
earth.
Her name is remarkable in another way. The most commonly accepted
meaning of the word Jezebel is "chaste." While the Lord speaks of her
fornication and killing her children with death, her pretension is the exact
opposite. She pretends to be the chaste spouse of Christ; and in the
seventeenth chapter she is called the harlot. What is her character? Every one
knows that she claims infallibility for her teaching - it is her boast. No
church has gone to the full extent of that as Rome has. She claims to be a
prophetess, and therefore to speak with authority from God, oracularly, and yet
she at the same time is teaching and seducing God's servants "to commit
fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to idols." She is putting the seal of
God on the most horrible iniquity.
The very commencement of the address
here has marked reference to her teaching. In other cases you find the Lord
presenting Himself in a character suited to the state which He is addressing.
Here He presents Himself as "the Son of God." There is nothing more distinct in
the teaching of Rome than that He is simply the Son of Mary. They exalt Mary
above Him in every possible way. They say Mary is a woman, and has a tender
heart; therefore go to Mary rather. Mary, too, is a mother, and she can command
her Son. Even if they own Him to be God, this still serves to exalt Mary more;
for then Mary is the mother of God and queen of heaven. That is the blasphemy
of Rome. The Lord takes distinctly therefore here His own proper title as the
Son of God. How striking it is! If we look into it, we shall find every word
applying in the most complete way to that of which it speaks. This woman
Jezebel is the Church in Christ's place; lowering Him, we may say, in every
possible way to exalt herself; setting aside His Word to introduce her own, and
claiming for her word that authority which she denies to the word of God
itself. You know how she denies it. She will tell you - exalting at the same
time her own tradition to a level with it - that there is no doubt at all that
it is the word of God; but she will tell you at the same time that you cannot
understand it except as you listen to her teaching. Practically it is her
teaching you are to hear: as she misapplies Scripture, you are to "hear the
Church," and will give you Matt. xviii. iy for it. if you ask, on the other
hand, how you are to know the Church, she will give you marks, as Unity,
Sanctity, Catholicity, Apostolicity (not one of which, notoriously, applies to
her); but she will not send you to ascertain her character from that very book
which she calls the word of God, and which she pleads inbehalf of her own
authority! She opens the book to show you a fragment of a sentence -"hear the
Church"- and then she shuts it tight between her fast-closed hands, and says,
with a self-possession that almost redeems it from absurdity,-"and that is
myself; you must hear Me!" So, in point of fact, what she inculcates is the
blindest possible credulity.
But I do not dwell upon this any longer.
We want to have something that concerns ourselves. And I think there is no
difficulty in finding that which concerns us abundantly in the very principles
which are involved in this. We may think ourselves quite outside of Popery,
while we are holding the very principles of Popery itself. We may have got the
root, while disclaiming the proper fruit of the tree; but, beloved friends, the
root, undoubtedly, is to be found everywhere in the soil, and plenty of fruit
too. That root is the Church's authority to teach - to give forth what you are
to listen to as, in some sense, authoritative, because she teaches it.
Of course, when I say that, I admit fully that that is maintained in very
different degrees and ways. If I go to Ritualism, I shall find, for instance,
pretension almost as high as that of Rome herself, only connecting itself with
an antique Catholicism of whose traditions they are merely the jealous
guardians. This is still the infallible oracular Church, only with an
infallibility less tangible, and doctrines less defined. But church-teaching is
not necessarily connected with this pretension at all. If we look through
Christendom, we shall find almost every little sect in it professing to define
for herself doctrines which she holds, and which she insists upon her members
holding. I do not mean to say that they claim infallibility at all, or that
they do not appeal to God's blessed word for what they hold as truth. That, of
course, is all right and in place, but I mean something very different from
that. I mean, if you take, for instance, the churches of the Reformation, and
those which have sprung out of them since, you will find that every one is
still holding fast this principle - that the Church is to teach, and it is
necessary that a body of doctrine should be put forth as church-teaching to
which appeal can be made, and which may answer for the truth their members
hold. In this we have, spite of its disguise, what I may call an essential
principle of Romanism - the Church's, instead of Christ's authority - the
Church pretending to give a word which is authoritative to those who, if they
are not members of Christ, are nothing.
Let us look at it a little more
fully. As I say, in the first place, there is this pretension about it - the
Church claims to be a teacher. I will not say now an infallible teacher - that
would be pure Romanism: but nevertheless a teacher. And those who hold to the
Church, whatever that church may be, are at any rate bound to submit to her
teaching. Now if we take Scripture, how completely contrary it is to all this.
In the first place, what is the Church? The Church is the assembly of God's
people - the assembly that is Christ's body: its members are members of Christ.
From first to last in the New Testament, you will find no other equivalent of
the Church, in God's thought. What man would make of it is recognized, I grant;
but that is another thing. It is the Church which is Christ's body, and to it
every member of Christ, and he alone, belongs. But when that is said, the
question is, where is the teaching body? Plainly, the body of Christ is
composed of all, teachers and taught alike. The very youngest babe in Christ
belongs to that body as well as the oldest and most advanced. How is it
possible, then, that this Church can give any authoritative utterance at all?
The fact is, you must necessarily put aside that definition of the Church the
moment you think of its teaching. Whom would it teach - itself, the world, or
what? Is it not plain that you must not confound the teachers and the
taught?
And if the Church is the teacher, the teaching must be for
those outside the Church. And who teaches the Church?
Every creed and
confession is, in fact, the faith at first of a few, addressed to those outside
the few who put it forth. It may gain adherents, and become the faith in that
way of a great number; but however that may be, the authoritative teaching is
only that of the original few, binding, to whatever extent, even the teachers
of the same body afterward. For when you say, the Church teaches us so and so,
you do not mean the present teachers You may be, in fact, recalling them to the
teaching of the Church, or convicting them of departure from it. The teaching
which binds (or is supposed to bind) is not the teaching of the Church today,
but the teaching of certain teachers in the past. The Church, then, is not here
the teacher, but has only bound itself to receive such and such teaching. The
whole weight of some imposing name is attached to the teaching of those who, if
they lived in the present generation, would not be recognized at all as having
the same authority. But apart altogether from Scripture, which is not in
question here, what gave this place to teachers of the past, which those of the
present may not pretend to? Have we not the same Spirit as they had? Have we
not the same Word to enlighten? We may be less spiritual - true: but are not
the Word and the Spirit of God as sufficient for us now as when these
church-confessions were made?
If we turn to Rome we shall find her more
consistent, and therefore more wholly wrong. She does not exalt the past above
the present, but claims the same infallibility as resident in the Church at all
times. And as there are no degrees in infallibility, her decrees of yesterday
have all the authority of Scripture itself. But here the voice of the Church
means the voice of the Pope, or the Pope with the bishops and the cardinals;
and it would be nothing but sheer irony to tell the simple layman that he had
anything to do with the decree declaring the Pope infallible, or the Virgin
Mary immaculate, except in obeying it.
Some may think this a quibble,
and that "the voice of the Church" does not mean that the Church teaches
otherwise than through its teachers; and this would avail for Rome better than
for the Protestant bodies, if (a great deal often depends upon "if") if it
could be maintained. But it cannot; for the teacher is not the instrument, or
mouthpiece, of the Church, but of Christ through the Spirit. "He gave some
apostles, and some prophets, and some pastors and teachers." And not only so,
but the apostle John can speak to Christians as having the Word of truth and
the Spirit of truth, as being in a true sense independent of teachers. "Ye have
an unction from the Holy One," says he, "and know all things." And again: "But
the anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not
that any man teach you: but the same anointing teacheth you all things, and is
truth, and is no lie" (t John ii. 20, 27).
There is indeed
infallibility, and available for every Christian; but it is the infallibility
of the Spirit, not of the nor of man: an anointing which every Christian has
received, and which renders him, as I have said, independent of teachers even,
in a true sense - which we must guard, however, from constructions that man's
pride would put upon it. The apostle evidently does not mean that teachers are
superfluous, or an excrescence upon the body of the Church. He does not mean to
make every man a teacher, nor that God will maintain him in independence of
ministries which He has Himself ordained. He does not mean us to be isolated
units. The Church of God is a body in which the highest cannot say unto the
lowest "I have no need of you." He who refuses the help that God supplies him
with need not wonder if he be left to prove the folly and barrenness of
self-sufficiency.
But yet there is truth - deep and needed truth for us
- in just these words: "Ye know all things, and need not that any one teach
you." It is the knowledge springing from daylight and good eyes. The best eyes
would not avail in darkness; nor the best light, if we were blind. But the Word
is light, and the Spirit of God has rolled off the darkness from our eyes. To
men with proper sight, in daylight, I can say, not only, "you can see," but,
"you see all things." I do not mean the antipodes, or the other side of the
moon; I simply mean that whatever is before you your own eyes can see. You are
not like a blind man, needing to take it on my authority that the sun is
shining, or the clouds threaten rain. Yet I may call your attention to it, or I
may put an object before you which was not in your field of view before. And
this is the proper office of a teacher: not to give authority to truth, nor yet
to decide for you that such or such a thing is true, but merely to put that
before you which must authenticate to. you both itself and me - itself as
truth, and me as a teacher of truth.
Here the Word and the Spirit have
their proper supremacy with the soul. They, and they alone, are the guarantee
of truth. They, and they alone, are my true and abundant security as to
doctrine.
But here is the trouble with these confessions of faith -
which you will understand I am not finding the least fault with, as the
confession of the faith of those who drew them up. I may thank God for the
Augsburg confession as a protest against error, while I refuse it as an
authority to define or limit my faith. And this is what it came to be used for,
as a test of truth and as security for its preservation - how feeble as such
all Germany bears witness at this day. And no wonder; for thus the apostles'
teachings (what they presented to the Church as truth) is set aside, nay,
proclaimed insufficient and untrustworthy. The Bible! why plenty of Unitarians
will accept the Bible! What then? Why, get a human declaration as to the deity
of Christ, and that will settle the matter. I am not accusing people of
intentional dishonour to the Word or Spirit of God, but, none the less, such it
is in fact.
It is the common sin and shame of the whole Church of God.
It has been our own, I suppose - all of us. And if unbelief introduced these
things at first, unbelief no less maintains them. And we who have had so long
in our hands an open Bible are proportionately responsible, are we not? surely
much more than those who lived in the days when it was only just re-opened. I
do not say that those who hold these things follow them out to their
conclusion, but I am justified in giving the conclusion to which they may be
followed out. What the Lord says is true in this application, "Ye shall know
them by their fruits: do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of
thistles?"
And here, do not let yourselves be misled by the common
thought that men of God could not teach what is false. In that way the goodness
of a man is set up against the truth of the word of God; and, as I have already
said, God's word is not allowed to be authoritative because good men speak
different things. Men equally good and learned, who have taken equal pains (we
suppose) to ascertain what it is they teach, are nevertheless teaching things
directly opposite to one another. Yet God has given His Spirit to lead into all
truth, and He has said, "If any one will do His will, he shall know of the
doctrine, whether it be of God." How are you to connect these things to make
them harmonize? If you take men's goodness as security for their doctrine, you
cannot do it. Thus it is that so many cast the authority of Scripture
overboard. You must not be so presumtuous as to say you have the truth. You may
have opinions. What is the worth of an opinion? Suppose it leads you wrong? If
it is my opinion, it is what I have no title to have, if the word of God is to
be authoritative. Has He spoken unintelligibly, or can His blessed Spirit teach
contradictory things? We must think so if we look at man's goodness and man's
character, instead of testing by the Word all he brings.
God meant, and
has told us distinctly, that by the Word we are to test everything. Will men
submit to that appeal? "Search the Scriptures" were His own words, "for these
are they which testify of Me." So the Bereans (so often spoken of, so little
followed!) are noticed as more noble than those of Thessalonica because, as to
what even an apostle said, "they searched the Scriptures daily, whether those
things were so." Where else shall we find certainty at all? You may talk of
presumption, but, I tell you, in the presence of eternity we do want certainty
- something that we can lean upon that will not give way. And it is the lack of
certainty that is the feebleness of so much evangelical Protestantism.
Infidelity is "positivism," and Rome is as bold as ever with her claim to
possess absolute truth. How will you stand against the two, if you alone are
uncertain? The Romanist naturally turns to you and says, Don't you want
certainty? I say, Surely I do; and therefore I go to that which only can give
it - the word of God, and the Spirit of God. The moment you bring in other
authorities the word of God is gone.
Take, for instance, the so-called
Church of England: if such and such a person teaches error, they do not bring
the Bible into court, and look at that. It has no place there. I say
distinctly, in judging what is heresy it has nothing more to do than if it were
not in existence. It is the Prayer Book that must decide; and if it is not
condemned by the Prayer Book, the man is entitled to hold it, rank as the
heresy may be. It is what Christians are groaning over in every direction, but
they do not impute it to the right source. They do not see that it is the very
necessity of a creed, which they suppose will secure the truth - that the
necessary effect of the creed is that it removes the real standard of truth out
of court altogether, and puts something else in its place. We need not question
the piety of the men who composed the creed; yet, none the less, what is the
result? Of course, they could not foresee what new heresies would arise; they
could not guard every gap. They were not prescient as the Author of Scripture
is. So their notable security for truth actually is in the way of their dealing
with the error. They have barred God out from settling it in His own way; and
their unbelief in His wisdom and care ties them hand and foot, and delivers
them over to the enemy.
Let me ask you seriously, do you really think
God's mind is really less certain, less clear, less plain-speaking, than man's
word? You say that people profess to find this and that doctrine in Scripture.
It is quite true; but do you really mean to say that, after all, man's word is
clearer, and so can be greater security than God's word? If you realize it as
His Word, you cannot surely argue so. Is it not God speaking to man?-a Father
to His children? Does He not speak even to babes - not to the learned, but the
unlearned? If all this be true (and it is the simplest truth that can be), what
must be the result? The result is, that God's word must be simpler, truer,
safer to trust to, far, than any possible human creed can be. And to supplement
it with a creed, an authoritative creed, is, in fact, to supplant it: it is to
say, God has not done for us what man can do; that God has not cared for us
with even the care we have for one another. The next result of a human creed is
necessarily sectarianism and schism. I know this is a very little matter in
people's eyes now, and I grant there is something that is worse in God's eyes -
that false unity which people claim in Rome - a unity, not internal and
spiritual, but external, secured by an authoritative putting down of all
dissent from it. That unity did practically obtain for ages; and what do we
call those times? We call them truly "The Dark Ages:" that was when the
Church's dictum (in opposition to God's word) was most authoritative.
Where there is not power to repress dissent after this fashion, the result of
an authoritative creed is to produce divisions. Being human merely, it will
not, of course, be perfect: it will give the measure of its composer's
knowledge, and, very naturally, also bear the marks of his failure, wherever he
has failed to apprehend the teach-ing of the Word. These errors are now,
equally with the truth itself bound upon all by the same authority. People must
submit, and do violence to their consciences, or they must respect their
consciences and go outside. The confession becomes thus a party badge. It binds
people together by the very beliefs in which they differ from other Christians,
whom they cannot but own to be walking as godly as themselves. Scripture itself
has to be interpreted in conformity with the creed, and where it cannot be
silenced sectarians are made in plenty, and doctrines are changed from their
design of edification to be the unholy watchwords of intestine strife.
So we have lost practically the blessed name of Christians, and are known as
Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists - names derived from our differences
only. Our differences are exalted above what we have in common, and the body of
Christ is rent into many bodies, which become, therefore, human organizations,
not divine. God's Church is owned to be the true one, but it is invisible.
There are practical working churches, which accommodate themselves better to
the many minds of men, and which they can regulate to their own satisfaction.
Who takes the twelfth chapter of i Corinthians as defining the actual church to
which they belong? In what church is "membership" neither more nor less than
membership of Christ? Who takes the fourteenth chapter as regulating the
Church's coming together? Yet the apostle there exhorts every one who pretends
to be spiritual to acknowledge the things he writes unto them are the
commandments of the Lord. is it all antiquated and passed away, or applies to
an invisible body nowhere to be found on earth?
On the other hand, they
tell us that- "The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men
in the which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly
ministered," etc.; and that "The Church hath power to decree rites or
ceremonies, and authority on controversies of faith."
Whose is this
voice? It is not Jezebel's: there is no pretension to infallibility, but the
contrary: the Church "must not ordain anything that is contrary to God's word
written;" and there is danger of it, for "as the church of Jerusalem,
Alexandria and Antioch have erred, so also the church of Rome hath erred, not
only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of
faith."
This is not infallibility, but, on the other hand, a very
simple acknowledgment of danger in submitting to this authority that the Church
is said to have. Yet she is maintained in the power she has abused, and is only
warned not to ordain anything contrary to God's word. But who is to decide if
she does? And what are we to do, if she does? Conform in spite of conscience,
or go outside the Church? Both the one and the other have been done by tens of
thousands; and the Church's authority has been maintained in Protestant England
at the cost of innumerable troubled consciences, and the secession of the
truest, bravest, godliest men she ever had. The Act of Uniformity emptied two
thousand pulpits at once. How many have submitted, not strong enough to
contend, not true enough to make the sacrifice demanded, the day of
manifestation alone will show. How many at present do violence to their own
consciences every time they use the baptismal services, who shall say? It
cannot be helped, they say, for the Church has authority to decree, and she has
no infallibility to save her from decreeing error! Does the word of God indeed
give authority where there is such manifest incompetency to use it? No,
emphatically; God forbid! It is the Church's own decree, not God's; the woman
in the place of the man, and thus confusion.
Jezebel goes farther than
this, and wisely. She does not proclaim her authority and her incompetency in
one breath. She is a prophetess, and "infallible," the only ground upon which
her authority can be righteously maintained. But she is emphatically the
preacher of unrighteousness, teaching and seducing Christ's people to eat
idol-offerings and commit fornication. It is the "woman" of the thirteenth of
Matthew putting the leaven into the fine flour of the meat-offering; for it is
Lev. ii. that explains the parable there. Just as the "tree" of the third
parable shows the result of the word of the Kingdom to be the establishment of
a Babel-like power in the world, (and this answers to Pergamos) so the "woman"
of the fourth parable corresponds to the "woman" of the fourth epistle; and the
"meal" of the parable would be better rendered by the "fine flour" of
Leviticus. That fine flour is Christ, the bread of life, the food of His
people, and the woman might lawfully have this and distribute it. But she is
doing more - she is adding of her own to it, and this is to adulterate and
spoil it. God has given her no right of manufacture of His people's food. If
she adds anything to it, it is "leaven"- corruption. The leaven of the
Pharisees and of the Sadducees, and the leaven of Herod, are what the Lord
Himself points out as the danger in connection with His people's food (Matt.
XV!. 12; Mark viii. 15); and this He plainly points out to be their "doctrine."
The doctrine of the Pharisees was ritualism and superstition; the doctrine of
the Sadducees was rationalistic infidelity; the doctrine of the Herodians was a
courtiership of the world. And here are plainly still the adulterations of
Christianity. It is the klan's voice, Christ's, which alone has title to be
heard by the people of God; when the woman speaks, it is at once
insubordination and corruption.
Unhappily those who at the Reformation
so nobly and boldly protested against the doings and sayings of the woman
Jezebel left the root of it untouched in not protesting against all church
legislation in the things of God. Had they left legislation to the righteous
Lawgiver, and claimed for the Church the simple duty of obedience to Him - had
they maintained the authority of His Word alone, and for power the power only
of His Spirit - how different would the result have been! Instead of this, they
took away but infallibility from the woman, (owned the actual bad fruit of her
teaching,) and then, having branded her thus as evil and incapable, set her up
again as before, with only an admonition to teach truly and according to the
Word. The natural result followed. Men having the Word in their hands now, and
having learnt that the Church was fallible, soon found her teaching actually
false. Division followed - discord - doubt of all truth - until infidelity, on
the one hand, proclaims that nothing can be really known; while Jezebel looks
down from her prophet's chair and asks, "Does not 'babel' mean 'confusion'
?-where is the real confusion? with your many voices, or my single one?" And,
in truth, does not "Babylon the great" extend further, however much her seat
may be, and is, in Rome? When God's judgment fell upon the old typical city -
the seat of empire of the first apostate - and when, scattered necessarily by
the confusion of speech, they separated and left off building the city, did not
those who abandoned the plain of Shinar carry with them, in their diverse
speech, the evidence that they too were only hindered by that effectual
impediment from building Babel still? And are not the diverse tongues of
Protestantism a sign of how thoroughly God hates mere outward, earthly,
ecclesiastical unity ?-only thus hindered from being built up again.
Yet let us not be dismayed. God and His truth remain the same. "He that will do
His will shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." If we will be
content in weakness and nothingness to be doers of His will, seeking, not name
or power, but the blessedness of proving the peace and pleasantness of His holy
ways, we shall find His truth the same as ever, and His strength made perfect
in our weakness still. If but "two or three," literally, were left together,
His "there am I" has provided not only blessing but sanction for them. Was
there any other with whom Enoch walked, who of old "walked with God?" We know
not: but only of himself (in his generation) is this written. The "two or
three" seems to assure us it shall not quite be that with us. But still, as
singly, must our feet be walking as it were alone with God.
We shall
look at Jezebel in yet another character, if the Lord will, next time. But I
put it to you now, whether these church-teachings - much wider than Jezebel's -
have not, in fact, the character I have attributed to them; whether they are
not based upon a false assumption of authority where Christ's word gives none?
whether they do not suppose God's word to be incomplete and less plain-speaking
than man's? and whether they have not led, and do not lead, to the scattering
of Christ's sheep, instead of gathering them? They do, no doubt, assume to be
for gathering, not scattering; but we must mark well our Lord's words : "He
that gathereth not WITH ME, scattereth abroad." As a fact, is not the result
further and further division?-must it not necessarily be so?
And if all
this be true, what is our duty when the Church presumes to step into Christ's
place, and claim the obedience which is His due alone? Is it humility to give
way and say nothing? Is it loyalty to Him to give up what is His due. Surely
every honest-hearted servant of His will answer, No. Let then the answer be
practical and outspoken. Let us return to the simple blessedness of hearing His
words and doing His will - to the yoke which, being His (far different to what
the Church's yoke has ever proved), is easy, and to His burden, which is light.
Let us hear the words which, as they come down to us from the centuries of the
past, approve themselves as indeed prophetic: "He that hath an ear, let him
hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."
LECTURE V. "YE HAVE REIGNED AS KINGS WITHOUT US."
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