purify the emotional and moral nature of man. The Bible may be received as from heaven, while the heart is in moral darkness and impurities. Such a one may be thoroughly acquainted with the scheme of salvation, and believe in the everlasting awards accruing both to the wicked and the righteous, and yet not be a Christian believer in the New Testament sense of that word. This individual may have light, but it is not spiritual light; he may have faith, but it is not saving faith; he may have influence, but it is not sanctifying influence; he may have joy, but it is not holy joy; he may entertain strong hope, but it is not a "good hope through grace." It is important to bear in mind that the forgiving favour of God, and Divine sonship follow a penitent and obedient trust in facts. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved"-believe that there is a Jesus Christ, and who dare say there is not? believe that He is equal with the Father in wisdom and power and glory,-believe that He lived on earth and suffered and died as man's substitute and atonement,believe that He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and ever liveth to make intercession for us;believe this, and who can disprove these statements? and "thou shalt be saved." Christ Himself thus speaks; "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." Hence, I repeat here, it is assuring that the Gospel should be called "The Truth.” "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." "Who hath bewitched you," inquires the Apostle, "that ye should not obey the truth?" Of the well-beloved Gaius, St. John says, "I rejoiced greatly, when the brethren came and testified of the truth that is in thee, even as thou walkest in the truth." Truth in its general and comprehensive import signifies, that which is conformable to fact. Truth is essential to God, because of His Q infinite knowledge and integrity, and the Christian Religion being designated truth, supplies us with a high and honourable account of it, since it is affirming that all its revelations and doctrines,-past, present, and to come, visible or invisible,-are perfectly conformable to the reality of things. When you hear the flippant man in any place contradicting the testimony of history, and aspersing Scripture by speaking of the Bible as abounding in beautiful legends and myths, I implore you, turn a deaf ear to his insinuations, remembering our Saviour has said of it, "Thy Word is Truth." Man cannot live, nor society flourish, without this truth. Whatever science and philosophy, art and civilization, may effect for mankind, they will never supersede the necessity of religion. Man is greatly indebted to the wisdom and instruction of his fellow beings, but possessed as he is of such profound and impulsive religious instincts and cravings, left to the highest human culture, he would be unprovided for and degraded. There is something in him, call it what you will, and account for it as you may, that cannot be satisfied with the objects of earth. The history of every age witnesses to an undeniable religious need in human nature. If these native and earnest necessities of the soul were only discoverable in an individual man or tribe, they might be ascribed to delusion, to education, or policy, and if found only in one age, or among separate families of the world, they might be attributed to locality, or national tendencies; but they are found in savage and civilized, heathen and Christian lands, the religious sentiment being everywhere present in definite forms and convictions, the deepest, the strongest, and most ineradicable peculiarity of universal man. For one I cannot but suppose, that ere long there will be a great reaction in favour of spiritual and practical Christianity. Human nature itself is now rebelling against the neology, positivism, doubt, and destructive criticism of our day. Be assured that hollow and unfaithful teachers of Christianity will be visited with a certain retribution, and it may come in this life. Their secret infidelity and sceptical inuendoes, although they are the official and remunerated advocates of the Holy and Divine Gospel, may not long hence recoil on their own heads, and an indignant Christian public reject them. Why not openly discard all association with Christianity, if suspicious of its truthfulness, and despairing of its future triumphs? One word more, we are safe in attaching, as Holy Scripture does, the greatest solemnity and significance to human nature. We too frequently see it as a fluttering and irresolute thing, pleasure-seeking, money-loving, and ignominious. We see it as if bound to earth, fading and dissolving with its scenes; but this is its eclipse and dishonour. In this age of negativism, mechanical forces, and to some extent we fear of scientific atheism, man is a witness for God, for freedom, for immortality, for a spiritual and experimental Christianity. longing for help and sense of dependence are the justification of prayer; his feeling of remorse is the testimony to a Divine judgment; his abiding convictions of wrong-doing and consequent guilt, a strong witness to the need of an atonement; his instinct of immortality, the pledge of a life to come. Man's own nature His rebukes atheism, by proclaiming God. His conscience speaks with an authority that cannot be called natural, and his moral affinities raise him to the Living Creator, as his sovereign and moral Governor. Man himself, as we shall see in our future conversations, to which you tell me you are looking forward, is a volume of revelations, the nobility and uniqueness of his endowments leading us to the recognition of a spiritual universe, enabling us to vindicate the great doctrines of the Bible, and forming a bulwark against the empiricism and naturalism of our age. We discover the wisdom of Holy Scripture in addressing itself, almost exclusively, to the moral necessities of man, the recovery of his nature constituting a subject worthy of the mission and instructions of God's Word. What in comparison are the claims of cosmogony, ethnology, antiquities and science, with the elevation and redemption of man's immortal spirit? Two facts we must cling to, that Christianity is a life, something more than a belief, a dogma, a creed, it is the life of God in the human soul, the truths of the Gospel applied by the power of the Holy Spirit to the heart and conscience of penitent and obedient men; and further, that the conscious possession of this life may be enjoyed, and the Bible proved to be True. The gracious and sublime design of Holy Scripture may be told in the words of St. John: "These things have I written unto you that believe in the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have Eternal Life." THE END. PRINTED BY UPSTONE & DOE, 15, QUEEN STREET, OXFORD. |