The power of God unto salvation

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♦Publishers'i Weakly
6,Oct.08

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THE POWER
OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

Benjamin B. Warfikld, D.D., LI..I).

Cbe prciJbvncrian pulpu

THE POWER
F GOD UNTO SALVATION

BifNiAMIN \i. WAKFIfcl.D, D.D., l.L.b.

PIITLADELPHIA

PKF^BYTER[AN BOARD OF PUPLICAIION
AND SABHATH-5,CH00L WORK

1903

"-n-iU^

' ^v. ' .- ■

',:<•■■;

Copyright, 1903, by the Trustees of
The Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-
School Work

Publuktd April, iqo3

CONTENTS

I. The Revelation of Man ... 3

II. The Saving Christ 29

III. The Argument from Experience . .57

IV. The Paradox of Omnipotence . . 93
V. The Love of the Holy Ghost . .121

VI. The Leading of the Spirit . . .151

VII. Paul*s Earliest Gospel . . . .183

VIII. False Religion and the True . . 219

The Sermons included in this volume have all
been preached in the chapel of the theological
Seminary at Princeton

THE REVELATION OF MAN

THE

POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

I

THE REVELATION OF MAN

" But one hath somewhere testified, saying, What is man, that
Thou art mindful of him ? Or the son of man, that Thou visitest
him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; Thou
crownedst him with glory and honor; Thou didst put all things
in subjection under his feet. For in that He subjected all
things unto him, He left nothing that is not subject to him.
But now we see not yet all things subjected to him. But we
behold Him who hath been made a little lower than the angels,
even Jesus, because of the suffering of death, crowned with
glory and honor." — Heb. ii, 6-9. (R. V.)

These words form the beginning of a marvel-
ous passage the subject of which is " Christ our
Representative." That He might become our
Representative, the inspired writer teaches, it was
needful that He should identify Himself with us.
Therefore it was that He became man.

Language had been exhausted to exhibit the
divine dignity of our Representative. In contrast
with those men of Grod, the prophets, in whom

3

4 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

God dwelt and through whom God spoke, He is
called a Son through whom the worlds were
made and by the word of whose power all things
are upheld ; who is the effulgence of God*s glory
and the very impression of His substance. In
contrast with the most exalted of the creatures
of God, the angels, He is given the more excel-
lent name of the Son of God, His firstborn, whom
all the angels of God shall worship ; nay, He is
given the name of the almighty and righteous
God Himself, of the eternal Lord, who in the
beginning laid the foundations of the earth and
framed the heavens, and who shall abide the same
when heaven and earth wax old and pass away.

Language is now exhausted to emphasize the
perfection of the identification of this divine being
with the children of men, when He who by
nature was thus infinitely exalted above angels
was made, like man, "a little lower than the
angels . . . because of the suffering of death."
" It behooved Hiift," we are told, " in all things
to be made like unto His brethren *' ; and " since
then the children are sharers in blood and flesh.
He also Himself in like manner partook of the
same," in order " that through death He might
bring to nought him that had the power of death,
that is, the devil ; and might deliver all them who

THE REVELATION OF MAN 5

through fear of death were all their lifetime sub-
ject to bondage." The emphasis is upon the
completeness of the identification of the Son of
God with the sons of men, that by His sufferings
many sons might be brought unto glory. And
the implication is that as He was thus so com-
pletely identified with us for His work, so we are
equally completely identified with Him in the
fruits of that work. He shared with us our estate
that we might share His merit with Him.

There is a great deal more precious truth in
this passage than we can profitably attempt to
consider in a single discourse The whole
gospel of the grace of God is in it. I have
chosen its initial words for my text, and I pur-
pose to ask you to fix your attention on its
initial thought — ^the perfect identification of
Christ with man. And even this in only one of
its aspects, viz.: the consequent revelation of man
which is brought us by the man Christ Jesus.
Because our Lord is the Son of God, the im-
pressed image of God's substance — as the stamp
of a seal is the impressed image of the seal — His
advent into our world was the supreme revelation
of God. But, equally, because of His perfect
identification with the children of men, partaking

6 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

of their blood and flesh, and made in all things
like unto men, He stands before us also as the
perfect revelation of man. It behooves us to
look with wondering eyes upon Him whom to
see is to see the Father also, that we may learn to
know God — the Grod and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who " so loved the world, that He gave
His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
on Him should not perish, but have eternal life."
It may also behoove us to look upon Him who
is not ashamed to call us brethren, that we may
learn to know man — the man that God made in
His own image, and whom He would rescue from
his sin by the gift of His Son.

The text assuredly fully justifies us in looking
upon Christ as the revelation of man. It begins,
as you observe, by adducing the language of the
eighth Psalm, in which God is adoringly praised
for His goodness to man in endowing him,
despite his comparative insignificance, with
dominion over the creatures. The psalmist is
contemplating the mighty expanse of the evening
sky, studded with its orbs of light, among which
the moon marches in splendor ; and he is filled
with a sense of the greatness of the God the
work of whose hands all this glory is. " O Lord,
our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the

THE REVELATION OF MAN 7

earth, who hast set Thy glory upon the
heavens!" He is lost in wonder that such a
God can bear in mind so weak a thing as man.
" When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy
fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast
ordained; what is man, that Thou art mindful of
him, and the son of man, that Thou visitest
him?" But his wonder and adoration reach
their climax as he recounts how the Author of all
this magnificent universe has not only considered
man, but made him lord of it all. In an inextin-
guishable burst of amazed praise he declares:
"Thou hast made him but little lower than the
angels, and crownedst him with glory and honor.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the
works of Thy hands ; Thou hast put all things
under his feet." He enumerates the minor ele-
ments of man's strange dominion, emphasizing
its completeness and all-inclusiveness. " All
sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field ;
the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas."
Nothing is omitted. So the praise returns upon
itself and the Psalm closes with the repeated and
now justified exclamation, "O Lord, our Lord,
how excellent is Thy name in all the earth !" It
is a hymn, you observe, of man's dignity and

8 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

honor and dominion. God is praised that He
has dealt in so wondrous a fashion with mortal
man, born from men, that He has elevated him to
a position but little lower than that of the
angels, crowned him with glory and honor, and
given him dominion over all the works of His
hands.

Now, observe how the author of this epistle
deals with the Psalm. He adduces it as authori-
tative Scripture declaring indisputable fact. " One
hath somewhere testified, saying, What is man,
that Thou art mindful of him ? Or the son of
man, that Thou visitest him ? Thou madest him
a little lower than the angels; Thou crownedst
him with glory and honor; Thou didst put
all things in subjection under his feet." He
expounds its meaning accurately. "For in that
He subjected all things unto him. He left nothing
that is not subject to him." And then he argues
thus: "But now we see not yet all things sub-
jected to him. But we behold Him who hath
been made a little lower than the angels, even
Jesus, because of the suffering of death, crowned
with glory and honor." That is, of course, in
Jesus only as yet do we see in actual pos-
session and exercise, in its completeness and
perfection, that majesty and dominion which the

THE REVELATION OF MAN 9

inspired psalmist attributes to man. God has
expressly subjected all things to man ; man has
obviously not entered into his dominion ; but the
man Jesus has. Therefore it is to Him that we
are to look if we would see man as man, man in
the possession and use of all those faculties,
powers, dignities for which he was destined by
his Creator. In this way the author of this epis-
tle presents Jesus before us as the pattern, the
ideal, the realization of man. Looking upon Him,
we have man revealed to us.

I beg you to keep fully in mind that our Lord's
adaptation to reveal to us what man is, is based
by the author of this epistle solely on the perfec-
tion of His identification with us in His incarna-
tion. To the author of this epistle, our Lord in
His own proper person is beyond all comparison
with man. As God's own Son, the effulgence
of His glory and the impressed image of His
substance. He is beyond comparison even with
prophets and infinitely above angels. He became
identified with us by an act of humiliation and
for an assigned cause, viz. : for the sake " of the
suffering of death," that is, in order that He
might be able to undertake and properly to fulfill
His high-priestly work — ^as we are immediately

lo THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

instructed in detail. This act of humiliation is
expressed here, for the sake of giving point to
the argument, in language derived from the
Psalm : " He hath been made a little lower than
the angels." Observe, then, the pregnant difference
which emerges in the use of this phrase of man
and of our Lord. That man was made but little
lower than the angels marks the height of his
exaltation: "Thou didst make him a little
lower than the angels, Thou didst crown him
with glory and honor." That our Lord was made
a little lower than the angels, marks the depth
of His humiliation : " We behold Jesus, who hath
been made a little lower than the angels for the
suffering of death." So wide is the interval that
stretches between Him and man. He stoops to
reach the exalted heights of man's as yet unat-
tained glory.

But the perfection of His identification with us
consisted just in this, that He did not, when He
was made a little lower than the angels for the
suffering of death, assume merely the appearance
of man or even merely the position and destiny
of man, but the reality of humanity. Note the
stress laid in the passage, on the reality of the
humanity which our Lord assumed, when, as the
inspired writer pointedly declares, He was made

THE REVELATION OF MAN ii

like to His brethren in all things. He was made
like them in their physical nature : as they were
" sharers in blood and flesh, He also Himself in
like manner partook of the same." He was
made like them in their psychical nature: as
they suffered and were tempted, He also '^ Him-
self hath suffered being tempted." Jesus Christ
is presented before us here as a true and real
man, possessed of every faculty and capacity
that belongs to the essence of our nature : as a
veritable "son of man," bom of a woman, and
brother to all those whom He came to succor.
It is because He was in this true and com-
plete sense what He so loved to call Himself, the
Son of man — doubtless with as full reference to
the eighth Psalm as to Daniel's great apocalypse
— ^that He reveals to us in His own life and con-
duct what man was intended to be in the plan of
God.

We must keep these great facts in mind that
we may preserve the point of view of the inspired
writer, as we strive to follow him in looking
upon Jesus as the representative man, in whose
humanity man is revealed to us. He is not the
representative man in the sense that man is all
that He is. When He entered the sphere of
human life, by the assumption of a human nature,

12 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

He did not lay aside His Godhead. He is,
while being all that man is, infinitely more. He is
God as well as man. He is not the representa-
tive man in the sense that in Him the age-long
process of man's creation was first completed —
that His exalted humanity is the goal toward
which nature had been all through the aeons
travailing, till now at last in Him the man-child
comes to a tardy birth. He is the revelation of
man only in the sense that when we turn our
eyes toward Him, we see in the quality of His
humanity God's ideal of man, the Creator's inten-
tion for His creature; while by contrast with Him
we may learn the degradation of our sin ; and
happily also we may see in Him what man is to
be, through the redemption of the Son of God
and the sanctification of the Spirit Let us think
a little on these things.

And, first, in the quality of Christ's manhood
we may see the perfect man, the revelation of
what man is in God's idea of him, of what the
Creator intended him to be.

And what is the quality of Jesus' manhood ?
There is no other word to express it except the
great word perfection. Sin? We cannot think
of it in connection with Him. Those who com-

THE REVELATION OF MAN 13

panied with Him testify that He was "without
blemish and without spot"; that " He did no sin,
neither was guile found in His mouth." The
author of our epistle declares that He was " sepa-
rate from sinners," that He was, in the midst of
temptation, " without sin." The story of His life
and sayings leaves us without trace of acknowl-
edgment of fault on His own part, without
betrayal of consciousness of unworthiness, with-
out the slightest hint of inner conflict with sinful
impulses.

And if the quality of His excellence is too
positive to permit us even to speak of sin in
connection with it, it is equally too universal to
admit of adequate characterization. The excel-
lences of the best of men may usually be con-
densed in a single outstanding virtue or grace
by which each is peculiarly marked. Thus we
speak of the faith of Abraham, the meekness of
Moses, the patience of Job, the boldness of
Elijah, the love of John. The perfection of Jesus
defies such particularizing characterization. All
the beauties of character which exhibit themselves
singly in the world's saints and heroes, assemble
in Him, each in its perfection and all in perfect
balance and harmonious combination. If we
ask what manner of man He was, we can only

14 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

respond, No manner of man, but rather, by way
of eminence, the man, the only perfect man that
ever existed on earth, to whom gathered all
the perfections proper to man and possible for
man, that they might find a fitting home in His
heart and that they might play brightly about
His person. If you would know what man is,
in the height of His divine idea, look at Jesus
Christ.

Is it not well for the world once to have seen
such a man ? How easy it is to accuse nature
of our faults, to confront God with what we have
wrought, and to seek to roll upon our Creator
the responsibility for the creatures which our own
deeds have made us. How easy to look upon
corruption as the inevitable incident of existence
for such beings as men ; and to speak of sin as
only the mark of our humanity. How easily a
cynical temper waxes within us as we mix with
men in the world's marts and tread with them
the devious paths of life. We mark their ways
and ask, waiting, like Pilate, for no answer. Who
shall show us any good ? How easily our ideals
themselves sink jto what we fancy the level of
human powers. We note the aims of those who
strive about us. We note the aims of the great
figures which flit across the pages of history,

THE REVELATION OF MAN 15

commanding the acclamation of all the ages.
We look within at the seething caldron of pas-
sions and impulses of our own souls. Do not
all these voices call us to one natural, one una-
voidable issue ? If in the far distance we faintly
discover hanging above us the beckoning glim-
mer of some star of heaven — ^what is poor wing-
less man, that he should hope to rise to grasp it?
Is it not the part of wisdom, as well as the
demand of nature, that worms shall crawl ? Is
it not folly unspeakable for such as we to attempt
to mount the skies ? But we see Jesus, and the
scales fall from our eyes; in Him we perceive
what man is in his idea, and what it may be well
for him to seek to become.

The man Jesus stands before us as the revela-
tion of man's native dignity, capacities, and
powers. He exhibits to us what man is in the
idea of his Maker. He uncovers to our view, in
their perfection and strength, those qualities and
forces of good, the ruins of which only we may
see in our fellow-men, and enables us to admire,
honor, love, and hope for them, because they still
possess such qualities and capacities though in
ruins. To look upon Him is to ennoble and ele-
vate our ideals of life ; the sight of Him forbids
us to forget our higher nature and higher aspira-

i6 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

tions ; it quickens in us our dead longings to be
like Him, men after God's plan and heart, rather
than after our own corrupt impulses. It is well
for the world once to have seen such a man.

Once and once only. Ah, there is the pity of
it, and there is the despair of it! In no other than
in Him has the ideal ever been realized. And
the more we look upon His perfections the more
we perceive, as in no other light, how far short of
the ideal man have been our highest imagina-
tions. For we need to note, secondly, that in
the light of Jesus* perfect manhood we have, by
contrast, revealed to us what man is in his sin
and depravity, what he has made himself in his
rebellion from good and from God.

The Greeks had a proverb: "By the straight
is judged both the straight and the crooked; the
rule is singly the test of both." And so it is.
Wherever the straight is brought to light, there
inevitably is also the crookedness of the crooked
made visible. Let the builder hang his plumb-
line, with whatever careless intent, over any wall ;
and if the wall be not straight, every wayfarer may
perceive it Let the carpenter lay his straight-
edge alongside of any board, and every crook and
bend is brought to the instant observation of all.

THE REVELATION OF MAN 17

This is what is meant when the Scriptures tell
us that by the law is the knowledge of sin. For
the law is for moral things what the plumb-line
and the straight-edge are for physical things : it is
the rule by which our hearts are measured and in
the presence of which what we really are is made
manifest. We may sin and scarcely know we sin,
until the straight-edge of the law is brought
against us. Oh, how we fall away from its line of
rectitude !

Now, our blessed Saviour, as the perfect
one, full of righteousness and holiness, is the
embodiment of the law in life. And more per-
fectly and vividly than any law — though that
law be holy and just and good — does His pres-
ence among men measure men and reveal what
men are. The presence of any good man in
our midst acts, in its due proportion, as such a
measure. And, therefore, from the beginning of
the world men have been stung by the presence
of a good man among them to hatred of him, and
have evilly entreated and persecuted him. He is
a standing accusation of their sins. "There is cer-
tainly," says Miss Yonge in The Heir of Redcliffe
— that uplifting story which has been such a factor
in the lives of such men as Mr. William Morris
and Dr. A. Kuyper — " there is certainly a ' tyran-

i8 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

nous hate' in the world for unusual goodness,
which is a rebuke to it" But no man ever so
fccis his utter depravity as when he thinks of him-
self as standing by the side of Jesus. In this
presence, even what we had fondly looked upon
as our virtues hide their faces in shame and cry.
Depart from us, for we are sinful in thy sight, O
Lord.

Lay open the narrative in these gospels, of
how the Son of man went about among men, in
the days of His sojourn here below. Note on the
one hand the ever-growing glory of that revela-
tion of a perfect life. And note on the other hand
the ever-increasing horror of the accompanying
revelation of human weakness and human de-
pravity. It could not be otherwise. When we
see Jesus, it must be in the brightness of His
unapproachable splendor that we see those about
Him : as it is in the light of the sun that we see
the forms and colors and characters of all ob-
jects on which it turns its beams. Especially
when we see Him in conflict with His enemies,
as we cannot avoid being moved with amazement
by the spectacle of His utter perfection ; so must
we, in that light, be shocked by the spectacle
of the utter depravity of men. Men are revealed
in this presence in their true, their fundamental

THE REVELATION OF MAN 19

tones of nature with a vivid completeness in
which they are never seen elsewhere.

Now, such a crisis as this, Jesus is bringing into
the life of every man upon whom the light of His
knowledge shines. No man can escape the test
Christ Jesus has come into the world and He con-
fronts every one with the spectacle of His perfect
humanity. When men are least thinking of Him,
lo! there He is by their side. Every time His
name is mentioned in the assemblies of men,
every time His image rises in a brooding human
heart, the crisis comes again to human souls.
They may not realize it ; they may prefer other-
wise; they may determine otherwise. But they
are being tried and tested against their wills every
moment they live in His presence. Some, like
the priests, bum with rage at every thought of
the supreme claim He makes upon their homage,
and refuse with all violence to have this man to
rule over them. Others, like Pilate, yield a lan-
guid and chill recognition to His goodness and
worth, yet choose the pursuit of pleasure or gain
above the service of Him. Others, like the mob,
may in easy indifference prefer some other leader,
though he be a robber and a murderer. Thus a
crisis is brought by His presence to every heart ;
and a revelation of man in his true depravity is

20 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

the result As He moves through the world the
whole race lies at His feet self-condemned. We
shudder as, in the light of His brightness, we see
man as he is.

Yet we have the word of Jesus Himself for it
that God sent not His Son into the world to con-
demn the world, but that the world through Him
might be saved. Let us turn our eyes away,
then, from the terrible spectacle of a race revealed
in its sin to observe, in the third place, that in the
perfection of Christ's manhood we have the reve-
lation of what man may become by the redemp-
tion of the Son of God and the sanctification of
the Spirit.

We observe that the element of promise is
made very prominent in the text and in the wider
passage of which the text is a part. Mark those
words of hope, " Not yet." " We see not yet all
things subjected to him." The psalmist's ascrip-
tion is then yet to be fulfilled in man himself In
Jesus' dominion, and in Jesus* perfection, we are
to see only the earnest and the pledge. When
He entered through sufferings into glory, it was in
the process of bringing many sons unto glory. If
He is the sanctifier, they are the sanctified ; and
He is not ashamed to call them brethren. If He

THE REVELATION OF MAN 21

became like them in order that He might die in
their behalf; this death was to be accomplished in
order that He might, by making propitiation for
their sins, deliver them from their bondage. In a
word, we are to look upon Jesus in His perfect
manhood as our forerunner. In His perfection
we are to see the revelation of what we too shall
be when He shall have perfected His work in us
as He has already perfected it for us.

Let us bless God for these precious assurances.
Without them the sight of Jesus could but bring
us despair. Men speak of Him, indeed, as our
example ; and we praise God that He has given
us such an example — we bless His holy name
that He has permitted the world to see one such
man. But if He were only our example, as we
looked upon Him and saw His perfection and by
contrast saw our depravity, who would not cry
that this example is too high, we cannot attain
unto it !

I fear we do not always consider with what
limitations mere example is hedged about Limi-
tations of space. How narrow a circle can really
feel the uplift of even the most moving personal
example. At the best, only those who cluster
most nearly round the figure of a good man,
however impressive, can be much affected by his

22 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

example. Limitations of time. How soon the
force of the mightiest personality is drowned in
the stream of the years. As the flood of days
falls over it how rapidly it becomes at best a story
— an empty name. Could Jesus have declared
that it was expedient for Him to go away, if it
were only or chiefly as an example that He came
into the world ? Would not it have been rather
expedient that He should have lived through all
the ages, and kept His living example as a living
force before the eyes of men for all time and in
every land? Limitations of power. The most
inspiring example cannot change the heart, cannot
impart new life to a dead soul. At best it can but
deflect the direction of powers already existent
and operative. We thank God that Christ is our
example, that we see in Him all that we fain would
be. But we thank Him that He is much more
than our example ; that He is our life as well
It is only because He is our life, that as our ex-
ample He can be our hope and joy.

With Him as only our example we could see
in His perfect manhood only what we ought to be,
ought but cannot. Hopeless gloom would inevi-
tably settle upon our souls. With Him as our life,
who has died for our sins and purchased the sanc-
tifying Spirit for us, we see in His perfect man-

THE REVELATION OF MAN 23

hood what we are to be. Do we peer into that
mysterious future, with doubt if not dismay ? We
have the precious assurance based upon His per-
fected work of propitiation and purchase: "Be-
loved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet
made manifest what we shall be. We know that,
if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him."
" We shall be like Him." Our hearts take cour-
age, and we rest on this word. We shall be like
Him! "We all remember," says Bishop Gore,
"the pathetic words of Simmias in the argument
with Socrates about the immortality of the soul.
* I dare say,' he says, ' that you, Socrates, feel as I
do, how very hard and almost impossible is the
attainment of any certainty about questions such
as these in the present life. And yet I should
deem him a coward who did not prove what is
said about them to the uttermost, or whose heart
failed him before he had examined them on every
side. For he should persevere until he has ascer-
tained one of two things: either he should dis-
cover and learn the truth about them ; or, if this
is impossible, I would have him take the best and
most irrefragable of human notions, and let this
be the raft on which he sails through life — not
without risk, as I admit, if he cannot find some
word of God which will more surely and safely

24 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

cany him.* ' Some word of God ' : it has come
to us ; crowning the legitimate efforts, supplying
the inevitable deficiencies of human reasoning;
satisfying all the deepest aspirations of the heart
and conscience. It has come to us, and not as a
mere spoken message, but as an incarnate person,
at first to attract, to alarm, to subdue us ; after-
wards, when we are His servants, to guide, to
discipline, to enlighten, to enrich us, till that which
is perfect is come, and that which is in part shall
be done away." Aye, this is it which meets
every longing of our hearts. We shall be like
Him when we see Him as He is.

Oh, toil-worn pilgrim, weary with your burden,
would you know the glory in store for you?
Look at Jesus : you shall be like Him. Are you
tempted to despair? Do you shrink from an
endless future in which you shall remain for ever
yourself? Look at Jesus: not as you are, but
like what He is, you are to be. If we can but
attain to such a hope, heaven bursts at once upon
our souls. To be like Jesus ! Is this not a glory,
in the presence of which all other glories fade
away by reason of the glory that is surpassing ?
When we look at Jesus, we may not — ^we cannot
afford to — ^forget that we are looking at that

THE REVELATION OF MAN 25

which, by the grace of God, we may and shall
become.

And you, in whose veins the pulses of youth
are still beating, whose hearts are high as you
look out upon the still untrodden fields of life —
fields which you doubt not you are to subdue —
you, all of you, no doubt, have your ideals and
your heroes. Some figure rises before your eyes,
now as I speak to you, whom you would fain be
like — ^a soldier, a thinker, some master of assem-
blies, some leader of men, some lord of finance.
Or, perhaps, your gentler blood throbs with
exhilarated longing as you fancy yourself repeat-
ing in your own life the strivings or the accom-
plishments of some noble woman of history or
of romance — some high-minded Hypatia, some
patient Griselda, some devoted Saint Catharine —
a Florence Nightingale, an Elizabeth Fry, a Dora
Pattison, a Frances Havergal. What would it be
to you to have an angel visitant stand suddenly
by your side — as long ago there stood suddenly
by Mary, most blessed of women, one with the
greeting on his lips of "Hail Mary! thou that
art highly favored !"— rand say, "Your wish is
granted ; this — ^all this — ^you shall be !" Are we
so blind that we do not see that this, and more,
is just what has come to us? All these heroes

26 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

of our hearts, great and inspiring as they are, are
but men and women like ourselves, touched with
our faults, our failings, our sins. Partial and
incomplete, alike in themselves and in their
accomplishments, they can provide us with but
stepping-stones to higher things. The one per-
fect man, the one perfect model of life, stands
before us in Christ Jesus. And the voice comes
to us — not the voice of an angel only, but God's
own voice of power — ^proclaiming. Ye shall be
like Him!

Could there be another proclamation of equal
encouragement, of equal strengthening? Up,
brethren, let us take Him, the perfect One, for
our model ; let us nurse our longing to be like
Him; and let us go forth to the work of life
buoyant with the joy of this greatest of hopes,
this most precious of assurances — We shall be
like Him ; what He is, that shall we also become !
In the strength of this great hope let us live our
life out here below, and in its joyful assurance let
us, when our time comes to go, enter eagerly into
our glory.

II

THE SAVING CHRIST

II

THE SAVING CHRIST

« Faithful is the 8a3ring, and worthy of all acceptation, that
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." — i Tim. i. 15.
(R.V.)

In these words we have the first of a short
series of five " faithful sayings," or current Chris-
tian commonplaces, incidentally adduced by the
apostle Paul in the course of his letters to his
helpers in the gospel — ^Timothy and Titus — i. ^.,
in what we commonly call his Pastoral Epistles.
They are a remarkable series of five "words/*
and their appearance on the face of these New
Testament writings is almost as remarkable as
their contents.

Consider what the phenomenon is that is
brought before us in these "faithful sayings."
Here is the apostle writing to his assistants in the
proclamation of the gospel, little more than a third
of a century, say, after the crucifixion of his Lord
— ^scarcely thirty-three years after he had himself
entered upon the great ministry that had been
committed to him of preaching to the Gentiles

a9

30 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

the words of this life. Yet he is already able to
remind them of the blessed contents of the gos-
pel message in words that are the product of
Christian experience in the hearts of the com-
munity. For just what these " faithful sayings "
are, is a body of utterances in which the essence
of the gospel has been crystallized by those who
have tasted and seen its preciousness. Obviously
the days when this gospel was brought as a nov-
elty to their attention are past. The church has
been founded, and in it throbs the pulses of a
vigorous life. The gospel has been embraced and
lived; it has been trusted and not found wanting;
and the souls that have found its blessedness
have had time to frame its precious truths into
formulas. Formulas, I do not say, merely, that
have passed from mouth to mouth, and been en-
shrined in memory after memory until they have
become proverbs in the Christian community.
Formulas rather, which have embedded them-
selves in the hearts of the whole congregation,
have been beaten there into shape, as the deeper
emotions of redeemed souls have played round
them, and have emerged again suffused with the
feelings which they have awakened and satisfied,
and molded into that balanced and rh)^hmic form
which is the hallmark of utterances that come

THE SAVING CHRIST 31

really out of the living and throbbing hearts of
the people.

If we were to judge of the spiritual attainments
of the primitive Church solely by these specimens
of its Christian thought, we should assuredly con-
ceive exceedingly highly of them. Where can we
go to find a truer or deeper insight into the heart
of the gospel — a, richer or fuller expression of all
that the religious life at its highest turns upon ?
Certainly not to the apocryphal fragments of
so-called " utterances of Jesus " raked out of the
trash-heaps of some Oxyrhynchus or other. But
just as truly not to the authentic remains of
the early ages of the Church; which witness,
indeed, to a living, vitalizing Christianity ordering
all its life, but which distinctly reach to no such
level of Christian thinking and feeling as these
fragments point to. We are thus bidden to re-
member that in these five " sayings " we have, not
the total product of the Christian thought of the
age, perhaps not even a fair sample of it, but such
items of it only as commended themselves to the
mind and heart of a Paul, and rose joyously to
his lips when he would fain exhort his fellows in
the gospel to embrace and live by its essence.
They come to us accordingly not merely as valu-
able fragments of the Christian thinking of the

32 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

first period — of absorbing interest as they would
be even from that point of view — ^but with the
imprimatur of the apostle upon them as consonant
with the mind of the Holy Spirit They are dug
from the mine of the Christian heart indeed, but
they come to us stamped in the mintage of apos-
tolic authority. The primitive Christian commu-
nity it may have been that gave them form and
substance, but it is the apostle who assures us
that they are " faithful sayings, and worthy of all
acceptation."

And surely, when we come to look narrowly at
the particular one of these " sayings '* which we
have chosen as our text, it is a great assertion
that it brings us — an assertion which, if it be truly
a " faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation,"
is well adapted to become even in this late and, it
would fain believe itself, more instructed age, the
watchword of the Christian Church and of every
Christian heart On the face of it, you will ob-
serve, it simply announces the purpose or, we
may perhaps say, the philosophy, of the incarna-
tion : " This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners." But it announces the purpose of
the incarnation in a manner that at once attracts
attention. Even the very language in which it is

THE SAVING CHRIST 33

expressed is startling, meeting us here in the
midst of one of Paul's letters. For this is not
Pauline phraseology that stands before us here ;
as, indeed, it professes not to be — for does not
Paul tell us that he is not speaking in his own
person, but is adducing one of the jewels of the
Church's faith ? At all events, it is the language
of John that here confronts us, and whoever first
cast the Church's heart-conviction into this com-
pressed sentence had assuredly learned in John's
school. For to John only belongs this phrase as
applied to Christ : " He came into the world." It
is John only who preserves the Master's declara-
tions: "I came forth from the Father, and am
come into the world " ; "I am come a light into
the world, that whosoever believeth on Me should
not abide in darkness." It is he only who, adopt-
ing, as is his wont, the very phraseology of his
Master to express his own thought, tells us in his
prologue that "the true Light — ^that lighteth
every man — was coming into the world," but
though He was in the world, and the world was
made by Him, yet the world knew Him not.

Hence emerges a useful hint for the inter-
pretation of our passage. Epr in the Johannean
phraseology which we have before us here —
though certainly not in the Johannean phrase-
3

34 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

ology only — ^the term " the world " does not ex-
press a purely local idea, but is sufTused with a
deep ethical significance. When we read accord-
ingly of Christ Jesus coming into the "world," we
are not reading of a mere change of place on the
part of our Lord — of a mere descent on His part
from heaven to earth, as we may say. We are
reading of the light coming into the darkness:
" the world " is the sphere of darkness and shame
and sin. It is, in a word, the great ethical con-
trast that is intended to be brought prominently
before us, and in this lies the whole point of
the incarnation as conceived by John, and as em-
bodied in our passage. Jesus Christ, the Lord
of glory, came into " the world " — into the realm
of evil and the kingdom of sin. In our present
passage this idea is enhanced by the sharp collo-
cation with it of the term " sinners." For, in the
original, the word "sinners" stands next to the
word "world," with the effect of throwing the
strongest possible emphasis on 'the ethical conno-
tation. This is the faithful saying, and worthy of
all acceptation, that the apostle commends to us
— ^that " Christ Jesus came into the worlds sinners
to save." What else, indeed, could He have
come into " the world," the sphere of evil, for—
except to save sinners ?

THE SAVING CHRIST 35

Surely, there meets us here a point that is
worthy of our closest attention. We might have
heard of Christ coming into the world, if the
term could be taken in a merely local sense, with
but a languid interest But when we catch the
ethical import of the term an explanation is at
once demanded. What could such an one as
Christ have to do in coming to such a place as
the world? The incongruity of the thing
requires accounting for. It is much as if we saw
a fellow Christian in some compromising posi-
tion. We might meet with him here, there, and
elsewhere, and no remark be aroused. But by
some chance swing of the shutter as we pass by
we see him standing in the midst of a drinking-
saloon ; we see him emerge from the door of a
well-known gambling hell, or of some dreadful
abode of shame. At once the need of an explana-
tion rises within our puzzled minds, and the whole
stress of the situation turns on the explanation.
What was his purpose there? we anxiously inquire.
So it is with Christ Jesus coming into the world ;
and so we feel in proportion as we realize the
ethical contrariety suggested by the term. Thus
it comes about that the primary emphasis of the
passage is felt to rest on the account it gives of
the situation it brings before us — on its explana-

36 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

tion of how it happens that Christ Jesus could
and did come into the world.

We despair of finding an English phraseolc^^
which will reproduce with exactitude the nice dis-
tribution of the stress. Suffice it to say that the
strong emphasis falls on the fact that it was spe-
cifically to save sinners that Christ Jesus came,
and that the way for this strength of emphasis is
prepared by the use of phraseology which
implies that there was no other conceivable end
that He could have had in view in coming into
such a place as the world except to deal with
sinners, of which the world consists. He might
indeed have come to judge the world; and in
contrast with that the emphasis falls on the word
" to save,^* But He could not conceivably, being
what He was, the Holy One and the Just, have
come to such a place as the world is — the seat
of shame and evil — save to deal with sinners.
The essence of the whole declaration, therefore,
is found in the joyful cry that it was specifically
to save sinners that Christ Jesus came into this
world of evil. And if that be true — simply true,
broadly true, true just as it stands, and in all the,
reach of its meaning — ^why, then, from that alone
we may learn what man is and what God is —
what Christ Jesus is and His work in this world

THE SAVING CHRIST 37

of ours — ^what hopes may illumine our darkness
here below, and what joys shall be ours when
this darkness passes away.

It would naturally be impossible for us to dip
out all the fullness of such a great declaration in
a half-hour's meditation. It will be profitable
for us, accordingly, to confine ourselves to bring-
ing as clearly before us as may prove to be prac-
ticable two or three of its main implications.
And may God the Holy Spirit help us to read it
aright and to apply its lessons to our souls* wel-
fare !

First of all, then, let us observe that this "faith-
ful saying" takes us back into the counsels of eter-
nity and reveals to us the ground, in the decree
of God, for the gift of His Son to the world, and
the end sought to be obtained by His entrance
into the likeness of sinful flesh. " Faithful is the
saying," says the apostle, "and worthy of all
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world
in order to save sinners^ That is to say, the
occasion of the incarnation is rooted in sin, and
the end of it is found in salvation from sin. And
that is to say again, translating these facts into
the terms of the decree, that the determination
of God to send His Son and the determination

38 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

of the Son to come into the world are grounded,
in the counsel of God, on the contemplated fact
of sin, and have as their design to provide a
remedy for sin.

This, it need hardly be said, is in accordance
with the uniform representation of Scripture.
Scripture always speaks of the incarnation as the
hinge of a great remedial scheme. Our Lord
Himself, in language closely parallel to that be-
before us, says, " The Son of man is come to seek
and to save that which was lost." And everywhere
in Scripture the incarnation is conceived distinctly,
if we may be permitted the use of these technical
terms, soteriologically rather than ontologically,
or even cosmologically. Under the guidance of
Scripture, and preeminently of our present pas-
sage, therefore, we must needs deny that the
proximate account of the incarnation is to be
sought either ontologically or ethically in God,
or in the nature of the Logos, or in the idea of
creation, or in the character of man as created;
and affirm that it is to be found only in the needy
condition of man as a sinner before the face of a
holy and loving God.

The incarnation, to be sure, is so stupendous
an event that it is big with consequences, and
reaches out on every side to relations that may

THE SAVING CHRIST 39

seem at first glance even to stand in opposition to
its fundamental principle. It is certainly true that
all that is, is the product of God's power, and, as
coming from Him, has somewhat of God in it
and may be envisaged by us as a vehicle of the
Divine. And surely it is only true that He has
imprinted Himself on the works of His hands ;
and that, as the Author of all, He will not be
content with the product of His power until it
has been made to body forth all His perfections ;
and it cannot be wrong to say that so far as we
can see it is only in an incarnation that He could
manifest Himself perfectly to His creatures. A
similar remark will apply naturally at once also
to the Logos as the Revealer, who must be sup-
posed to desire to make known to man all that
God is, and preeminently His love, which
undoubtedly lies at the basis of the incarnation,
and may be properly represented as its very prin-
ciple and impulsive cause. Nor can it be doubted
that only in his union with God in Christ, which
is the result of Christ's incarnated work, does
man reach his true destiny — the destiny desigptied
for him from the beginning of the world, and
without which in prospect, so far as we can see,
man would never have been created at all.

But it is of the utmost importance for us to

40 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

observe that these truths, great and fundamental
as they are, yet do not penetrate to the basal fact
as to the end of the incarnation. Nor can they
safely be treated atomistically as so many inde-
pendent truths unrelated to one another or to the
real principle of the incarnation. They rather
form parts of one complete sphere of truth whose
center lies in the soteriological incarnation of the
Bible. And only as each finds its proper place
as a segment of this sphere of truth formed about
that great fact does it possess validity, or even
attain the height of its own idea. It is only, for
example, because Christ Jesus came to save sinners
that all that God is is manifested in Him, that
love finds its completest exhibition in Him, that
through Him at last man attains his primal des-
tiny. Eliminate sin as the proximate occasion
and redemption as the prime end of the incarna-
tion, and none of these other effects will follow
from it at all, or at least not in the measure of their
rights. So that it is only true to say that in
order that each may attain its proper place in our
contemplation, as we seek to gather together the
ends served by the incarnation, it is essential that
they be conceived not apart from salvation from
sin, the primary end of the incarnation, as its
substitutes, but along with it, as its complements.

THE SAVING CHRIST 41

But this great declaration not only takes us
back into the counsels of the eternal God that we
may learn what from the ages of ages He pur-
posed for sinful man, but it also throws an intense
emphasis on the nature of the work which the
incarnate Son of God came to perform. We
require only to adjust the stress that falls on the
separate words a little more precisely to catch a
new meaning in its inspiring words, which declare
that Christ Jesus came into the world to sanje
sinners.

What, after all, are we looking for in Christ ?
Perhaps very divergent replies might be returned
to this query did we but probe our hearts deeply
enough and question our hopes resolutely
enough. At all events, from the very earliest
ages of Christianity, men have approached Him
with very varied needs prominent in their minds,
and have sought in Him satisfaction for very
diverse necessities. They have felt the need of a
teacher, an example, a revealer of God, a mani-
festation of the Divine love, an unveiling of the
mysteries of the spiritual world, or of the life that
lies beyond the grave. Or they have felt the
need of a protector, a strong governor on whose
arm they could rest, a bulwark against the evils
of this life, and a tower of strength for their sup-

42 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

port and safety, whether in this life or in that to
come. Or they have felt the need of a ransom
from sin, of a redeemer, an expiation, a reconciler
with God, a sanctifier. In the opulent provision
for all that man can require made in the work
of the Son of man, we can find all this, and
more, in Him. But it makes every difference
where, amid the rich profusion of His mercies,
we discover the center of gravity of the benefits
conferred on us, and what we ascribe more to the
periphery.

In particular, in the first age of the gospel
declaration it appealed to men more especially
along three lines of deeply felt needs. Some,
oppressed chiefly by their sense of the igno-
rance of God and of spiritual realities in which
they had languished in the days of their heath-
endom, and dazzled by the light of the glorious
gospel He brought to them, looked to Christ
most eagerly as the Logos, the great Revealer,
who had brought the knowledge of God to
them, and with the knowledge of God the
knowledge of themselves also as the sons
of God. Others, oppressed rather by the mis-
eries of life, turned from the dreadful physical
and social conditions in which humanity itself
had nearly been ground out of them, to hail

THE SAVING CHRIST 43

in Christ the founder of a new social order;
and permitted their quickened hopes to play
almost exclusively round the promises of the
kingdom He had come to establish and the joys
it would bring. We call the one class "Gnos-
tics " and the other " Chiliasts " ; and by the very
attribution to them of these party names indicate
our clear perception that in neither of these
channels did the great stream of Christian faith
run. For from the beginning it has been true
of Christians at large that the evils they have
looked to Christ primarily to be relieved from
have been neither intellectual nor social, but
rather distinctly moral and spiritual. There have
arisen from time to time one-sided and insuffi-
cient modes of expressing even this deeper long-
ing and truer trust in Christ. Early Christians
were apt, for example, to speak of themselves
too exclusively as under bondage to Satan, and
to look to Christ as a ransom to Satan for their
release. But, however strangely they may now
and again have expressed themselves, the essence
of the matter lay clearly revealed in their thought
— this, namely, in the words of the text, that
Christ Jesus had come into the world to save
sinners ; that sin is the evil from which we need
deliverance, and that it was to redeem from sin

44 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

that the Son of God left His throne and com-
panied with wicked men for a season.

The two thousand years of Christian life that
have been lived since the gospel of salvation was
brought into the world have not availed to elimi-
nate from His Church these insufficient concep-
tions of our Lord's work. Even in this twen-
tieth century of ours there still exist Christian
intellectualists as extreme as any Gnostic of old :
men who look to Christ for nothing but instruc-
tion, manifestation, revelation, teaching, example ;
and who still discover the essence of Christianity
in the higher and better knowledge it brings of
what is true and good and beautiful. And by
their side there still exist to-day Christian social-
ists as extreme as any Chiliast of old : men whose
whole talk is of the amelioration of life brought
about by Christ, of the salvation of society, of
the establishment on Christian principles of a new
social order and the upbuilding of a new social
structure ; and whose prime hope in Christ is for
the relief of the distresses of life and the building
up of a kingdom of well-being in the world.

We shall be in no danger, of course, of neg-
lecting the truth that is embodied in the intel-
lectualistic and the socialistic gospels. Christ
is our Prophet and our King. He did come

THE SAVING CHRIST 45

to make us know what God is, and what His
purposes of mercy are to men; and where the
light of that knowledge is shut out from men's
sight how great is the darkness and how great
is the misery of that darkness! He is our
wisdom, our teacher beyond compare. So far
from minimizing either the extent or the value
of His revelations, we must rather acknowledge
that we cannot magnify them enough. And
Christ did come to implant in human society a
new principle of social health and organization,
and the leaven which He has thus imbedded in
the mass is working, and is destined to continue
to work, every conceivable improvement in the
structure of society until the whole is leavened.
In a word, Christ did come to found a kingdom,
and in that kingdom men shall dwell together in
amity and peace, and love shall be its law, and
happiness its universal condition. It is with no
desire to minimize the intellectual and social
blessings that Christ has brought the world,
therefore, that we would insist that the center of
His work lies elsewhere. We all the more heartily
hail Him as our Prophet and our King, that we
must insist that He is also, and above all, our
Priest He has saved us from ignorance; He has
saved us from pain; but these are not the evils

46 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

on which the hinge of His saving work turns.
Above all and before all He has saved us from
sin. " Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners**

And it is only by saving us from sin, we must
further remark, that He saves us from ignorance
and from misery. There is a high and true sense,
valid here too, in the saying that faith precedes
reason: that it is only he that is in Christ Jesus
who can know God and acquire any effective
insight into spiritual truth. And equally in that
other maxim that the regeneration of the indi-
vidual is the condition of the regeneration of
society : that it is only he that is in Christ Jesus
who can have added to him even these lesser
benefits. Apart from the central salvation from
sin, knowledge can but puff up, and society at
best is a whited sepulchre, full of dead men's
bones. And it is only by His prime work of
saving from sin — ^that sin which is the root of all
our ignorance and of all our bitterness alike —
that He makes the tree good that its fruits may
be good also. In the penetrating declaration of
our text, therefore, we perceive the heart of
Christianity uncovered for us. The saying that
it was to save sinners that Christ Jesus came into

THE SAVING CHRIST 47

the world is a faithful one, and worthy of all
acceptation. And that means that it is not the
primary function of Christianity in the world to
educate men, though we shall not get along with-
out teaching ; or to ameliorate their physical and
social condition, though we shall not get along with-
out charity; but to proclaim salvation from sin.
It exists in the world not for making men wise,
nor for making them comfortable, but for saving
them from sin. That done and all is done — each
result following in its due course. That not done,
and nothing is done. All the wisdom of the
ages, all the delights of life, are of no avail so
long as we are oppressed with sin. The core of
the gospel is assuredly that Christ Jesus came to
save sinners.

We need, however, once more to adjust the
emphasis more precisely in order to gain the
whole message of our passage. What Paul de-
clares to be a faithful saying, and worthy of all
acceptation, is that Christ Jesus came to save
sinners. Put the emphasis now on the one word
*' save " — Christ Jesus came to save sinners.

Not, then, merely to prepare salvation for them ;
to open to them a pathway to salvation; to re-
move the obstacles in the way of their salvation ;

48 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

to proclaim as a teacher a way of salvation ; to
introduce as a ruler conditions of life in which
clean living becomes for the first time possible;
to bring motives to holy action to bear upon us ;
to break down our enmity to God by an exhibi-
tion of His seeking love ; to manifest to us what
sin is in the sight of God, and how He will visit
it with His displeasure. All these things He
undoubtedly does. But all these things together
touch but the circumference of His work for man.
Under no interpretation of the nature or reach of
His work can it be truly said that Christ Jesus
came to do these things. For that we must pene-
trate deeper, and say with the primitive Church,
in this faithful saying commended to us by the
apostle, that Christ Jesus came to save sinners.

We must take the great declaration in the
height and depth of its tremendous meaning.
Jesus did all that is included in the great word
'^ saver He did not come to induce us to save
ourselves, or to help us to save ourselves, or to
enable us to save ourselves. He came to save us.
And it is therefore that His name was called
Jesus — because He should save His people from
their sins. The glory of our Lord, surpassing all
His other glories to usward, is just that He is our
actual and complete Saviour; our Saviour to the

THE SAVING CHRIST 49

uttermost. Our knowledge, even though it be
His gift to us as our Prophet, is not our saviour,
be it as wide and as deep and as high as it is pos-
sible to conceive. The Church, though it be His
grift to us as our King, is not our saviour, be it as
holy and true as it becomes the Church, the bride
of the Lamb, to be. The reorganized society in
which He has placed us, though it be the product
of His holy rule over the redeemed earth, is not
our saviour, be it the new Jerusalem itself, clothed
in its beauty and descended from heaven. Nay,
let us cut more deeply still. Our faith itself,
though it be the bond of our union with Christ
through which we receive all His blessings, is not
our saviour. We have but one Saviour; and that
one Saviour is Jesus Christ our Lord Nothing
that we are and nothing that we can do enters in
the slightest measure into the ground of our
acceptance with God. Jesus did it all. And by
doing it all He has become in the fullest and
widest and deepest sense the word can bear — our
Saviour. For this end did He come into the
world — ^to save sinners ; and nothing short of the
actual and complete saving of sinners will satisfy
the account of His work given by His own lips
and repeated from them by all His apostles.
It is in this great fact, indeed, that there lies the
4

50 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

whole essence of the gospel. For let us never
forget that the gospel is not good advicey but
good news. It does not come to us to make
known to us what we must do to earn salvation
for ourselves, but proclaiming to us what Jesus
has done to save us. It is salvation, a completed
salvation, that it announces to us ; and the burden
of its message is just the words of our text — that
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Now Paul could never write of this tremen-
dously moving truth in a cold and dry spirit.
There was nothing that so burned in his soul as
his profound sense of his indebtedness to his Re-
deemer for his entire salvation. We cannot be
surprised, therefore, to note that as he repeats
these great words, "Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners," his thought reverts at
once to his own part in this great salvation ; and
he cries aloud with swelling heart, " Of whom I
am chief." Says an old Anglican writer : " The
apostle applies the worst word in the text to
himself." But we must punctually note, Paul is
not, therefore, boasting of his sin. He is, on the
contrary, glorying in his salvation. If Christ
came just to save sinners, he says, in effect. Why
that means me ; for that is what I am. There is

THE SAVING CHRIST 51

a sense, then, no doubt, in which he can be said
to be glad that he can claim to be a sinner. Not
because he delights in wickedness, but because
that places him within the reach of the mission of
Him who Himself declared that He came not to
call the righteous, but sinners. Paul knows there
is deep-seated evil within him ; he knows his own
inability to remedy it — for does not that long life
of legalistic struggle, when after the straitest sect
of his religion he lived a Pharisee, witness to his
agonizing efforts to heal his deadly hurt? In
Christ Jesus, who came to save sinners, he sees
the one hope of sinners like himself; and with
deep revulsion of feeling he takes his willing place
among sinners that he may take his place also
among saved sinners. His only comfort in life
and death is found in the fact that Christ Jesus
came just to save sinners.

Brethren, it is there only also that our comfort
can be found, whether for life or for death. Per-
haps even yet we hardly know, as we should
know, our need of a saviour. Perhaps we may
acknowledge ourselves to be sinners only in lan-
guid acquiescence in a current formula. Such a
state of self-ignorance cannot, however, last for
ever. And some day — ^probably it has already
come to most of us — some day the scales will fall

52 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

from our eyes, and we shall see ourselves as we
really are. Ah, then, we shall have no difficulty
in placing ourselves by the apostle's side, and pro-
nouncing ourselves, in the accents of the deepest
conviction, the chief of sinners. And, then, our
only comfort for life and death, too, will be in the
discovery that Christ Jesus came into the world
just to save sinners. We may have long admired
Him as a teacher sent from God, and have long
sought to serve Him as a King re-ordering the
world ; but we shall find in that great day of self-
discovery that we have never known Him at all
till He has risen upon our soul's vision as our
Priest, making His own body a sacrifice for our
sin. For such as we shall then know ourselves
to be, it is only as a Saviour from sin that Christ
will suffice; and we will passionately make our
own such words as these that a Christian singer
has put into our mouths : —

« I sought thee, weeping, high and low,
I found Thee not ; I did not know
I was a sinner — even so,
I missed Thee for my Saviour.

*< I saw Thee sweetly condescend
Of humble men to be the friend,
I chose Thee for my way, my end,
But found Thee not my Saviour,

THE SAVING CHRIST 53

** Until upon the cross I saw
My God, who died to meet the law
That man had broken ; then I saw
My sin, and then my Saviour.

"What seek I longer? let me be
A sinner all my days to Thee,
Yet more and more, and Thee to me
Yet more and more my Saviour.

** Be Thou to me my Lord, my Guide,

My Friend, yea, everything beside;

But first, last, best, whatever betide

Be Thou to me my Saviour !"

Ill

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPE-
RIENCE

Ill

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE

" Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ, . . . and rejoice in hope of the
glory of God."— Rom. v. i, 2 (A. V.).

The subject of these two verses is the Chris-
tian's peace and joy. You will observe that the
apostle does not argue that a Christian ought to
have peace and joy. He does not exhort Chris-
tians to seek to attain peace and joy. He does
not expound the nature of a Christian's peace and
joy. He does something far more striking. He
assumes the Christian's peace and joy as a fact of
experience, the unquestionable reality of which
may stand as a common ground of reasoning
between him and his readers. He thus represents
peace and joy as a special characteristic of Chris-
tians, recognized as such by all — ^peace of heart
as a present possession, and joy over the great
hope which is theirs for the future. " We have,"
says he, "peace with God, and we rejoice over
the hope of the glory of God."

Upon this fact, adduced here just because it

57

58 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

is a universally acknowledged and undeniable
fact, that the Christian enjoys this peace with
God and with happy lips exults over the hope
of glory, the apostle founds an argument Let
us recall the place of the passage in the general
disposition of the matter in the epistle. In the
opening chapters was exhibited the necessity of
a justification by faith and not by works. Then
the nature and working of this method of salva-
tion was expounded. Then the apostle begins a
series of arguments designed to show that this is
indeed God*s method of saving men. The first
proof that he offers is drawn from the case of
Abraham, and operates to show that Grod has
always so dealt with His people : for that Abra-
ham, the father of the faithful, was justified by
faith and not by works the Scriptures expressly
testify, saying that "Abraham believed Cxod, and it
was accounted to him unto righteousness." This
is the immediately preceding section to our pres-
ent passage. In the immediately succeeding sec-
tion he appeals to the analogy of God's dealings
with men in other matters. It was by the trespass
of one that men were brought into sin and death
— does it not comport with God's methods that
by the righteousness of one men should be
brought into justification and life? Our present

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 59

passage lies between, and constitutes an inter-
mediate argument that justification by faith is
God's own method of saving sinners.

This argument, you will observe, is drawn from
the experience of Paul's Christian readers. They
had made trial of this method of salvation ; they
had sought justification, not on the ground of
works of righteousness which they could do, but
out of faith. And the turmoil of guilty dread
before God which filled their hearts had sunk
into a sweet sense of peace, and the future to
which they had hitherto looked shudderingly
forward in fearful expectation of judgment had
taken on a new aspect — they " exult in hope of
the glory of God." It is on this, their own expe-
rience, that the apostle fixes their eyes. They have
sought justification out of faith; they have reaped
the fruits of justification in peace and joy. Can
they doubt the reality of the middle term, of that
justification that mediates between their faith and
their peace and joy ? As well tell the famishing
wanderer that the pool into which he has dipped
his cup is but a mirage of the desert, when from
it the refreshing fluid is already pouring over his
parched tongue, and bringing life and vigor into
every languid member. " It is because we have
been justified," says the apostle — and here is

6o THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

the emphasis, "the triumphant emphasis," as the
great German commentator H. A. W. Meyer
puts it — " it is because we have been really and
actually justified out of faith, that we have this
peace with God, and are able to exult in the
hope of the glory of Cxod." Thus the apostle
argues back from their conscious peace and joy
to the reality of the justification out of which
they grow.

It is very interesting to observe this prominent
use in the reasoning of the apostle Paul of what
we have learned to call " the argument from ex-
perience." Some appear to fancy this argument
one of the greatest discoveries of the nineteenth
century ; others look upon it with suspicion as if
its use were an innovation of dangerous tend-
ency. No doubt, like other forms of argumenta-
tion, it is liable to misuse. It is to misuse it to
confound it with proof by experiment. By his
use of the argument from experience Paul is far
from justifying those who will accept as true only
those elements of the Christian faith the truth
of which they can verify by experiment. There
is certainly an easily recognizable difTerence be-
tween trusting God for the future because we
have known His goodness in the past, and cast-

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 6i

ing ourselves from every pinnacle of the temple
of truth in turn to see whether He has really
given His angels charge concerning us, according
to His word.

And what misuse of this argument could be
more fatal than to make it carry the whole weight
of the evidences of our religion, or even, as has
sometimes been done, to attempt to enhance its
value by disparaging all other methods of proof?
Such an exaggeration of its importance is a symp-
tom of that unhappy subjectivity in religion unfor-
tunately growing in our modem Church, which
betrays its weakened hold upon the objective
truth and reality of Christianity by its neglect or
even renunciation of the objective proofs of its
truth. No wonder when men find the philo-
sophical principles or critical postulates to which
they have committed their thinking, working their
way subtilely but surely into every detail of their
thought, and gradually taking from them their
confidence in those supernatural facts on which
Christianity rests — ^no wonder, I say, that in such
circumstances they should despairingly declare
that the essence of Christianity is independent of
its supposed supernatural history, and is vindi-
cated by the imminent experiences of their own
souls. Needless to say that the essence of Chris-

62 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

tianity which in their view is proved by their ex-
periences is not the Christianity of Christ and His
apostles, but the philosophical faith of their own
preconceptions. And needless to say that this
despairing and exclusive use of the argument
from experience has no analogy in the usage of
Paul. With him, it takes its place among the
other arguments, and is not permitted to take the
place of the rest. He appeals first to God's an-
nounced intention from the beginning so to deal
with His people, and to the historic fact of His so
dealing with them. And he appeals last to the
analogy of His dealings with men in other mat-
ters. Between these he places the argument from
experience, and twines the strong cord of his
proof from the three fibers of God's express
promise, our experience, and the analogy of His
working. When we unite the Scriptural, experi-
ential, and analogical arguments we are followers
of Paul.

Such a use of the argument from experience by
Paul, though it may interest us, certainly cannot
surprise us. It is no unwonted thing with Paul.
It constantly appears in his writings as a capital
argument, and such was his confidence in it that
he did not hesitate at times to stake much upon

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 63

its validity. It is to this argument, for example,
that he appeals when he cries to the foolish Gala-
tians : " This only would I know from you, Re-
ceived ye the Spirit by works of law or by the
hearing of faith ?" They had received the Spirit
— of that he and they alike were sure. And they
had sought Him, not by law-works, but by faith.
That, too, they knew very well. Were they so
foolish as to be unable to draw the inference
thrust upon them — that the seeking that found
was the true and right seeking? The apostle
will then draw it for them. " He therefore that
supplieth the Spirit to you, and worketh powers
in you, doeth He it by law-works or by the hear-
ing of faith ? Even as Abraham believed God, and
it was reckoned to him unto righteousness. Ye
perceive, therefore, that they which be of faith, the
same are Abraham's sons."

An humbler servant of Christ than Paul, and
a far earlier one, had, indeed, long before pressed
this argument with matchless force. Blind un-
belief alone could say to him who once was blind
but now could see : " This man is not from God.
Give glory to God ; we know that this man is a
sinner." The one, the sufficient answer was:
"Whether He be a sinner, I know not; one
thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I

64 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

see. . . . Why herein is the marvel, that ye know
not whence He is, and yet He opened mine
eyes !" Greater marvel than the opening of the
eyes of one bom blind that men should shut
their eyes to who, and what, and whence He is,
who opens blind eyes! "If this man were not
from God, He could do nothing!"

What, after all, is this " argument from experi-
ence" but an extension of our Lord's favorite
argument from the fruits to the tree which bears
the fruits ? He who is producing the fruits of the
Spirit has received the Spirit ; he who has reaped
the fruits of justification has received justification;
and he who has obtained these fruits by the seek-
ing of faith knows that he has obtained out of his
faith the justification of which they are the fruits ;
and may know, therefore, that the way of faith is
the right and true way of obtaining justification.
We must not pause in the midst of the argument
and refuse to draw the final conclusion. If the
presence of the fruits of justification proves we are
justified, the presence of the justification, thus
proved, proves that justification is found on the
road by which we reached it. This is the apostle's
argument.

That the argument is valid it is not easy to
doubt It is one of those practical appeals which

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 65

carry conviction even to minds which do not
care to investigate the grounds of their validity.
Nevertheless its validity has its implications, and
this is as much as to say that it rests on presup-
positions without which it would not be valid.
Men may draw water from a well and be assured
that it comes to them through the action of the
pump, without at all understanding, or stopping to
consider, the theory of suction by which the pump
acts. But no pump will yield water if it be not
constructed in accordance with the principles of
suction. And it seems accordingly important that
the principles of suction should be understood.
Our understanding of these principles not only
increases the intelligence but also adds to the
confidence with which we accredit the refreshing
floods to its gift. In a somewhat analogous way
it will repay us to investigate the validity of the
apostle's argument from experience, and to seek
to bring clearly before us the presuppositions on
which its validity rests and the lines of reasoning
on which its conclusions may be justified. It
will surely grow in force to us in proportion to
the clearness with which its implications are
apprehended.

These implications or presuppositions are,
speaking broadly, two. In the first place, it is
5

66 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

implied in the validity of this argument — ^so im-
mediately and inevitably recognized — that there
is a natural adaptation in this mode of salvation
— ^the mode of justification by faith — ^for the pro-
duction of peace and joy in the heart of the
sinner that embraces it. And in the second place,
it is implied in the validity of this argument that
the deliverances of the human conscience are
but the shadows of the divine judgment : that its
imperatives repeat the demands of God's right-
eousness, and its satisfaction argues the satisfac-
tion of the divine justice. Let us look at these
implications in turn.

First, let us inquire if there is not necessarily
implied a natural adaptation in justification by
faith to produce peace and joy in the sinner.

We have sought, let us say, justification out
of faith. We have peace and joy. Here are two
facts. We may look at them separately. What
is to unite them in our apprehension? What
warrants us to infer from the mere fact that we
have peace and joy that this peace and joy are
the product of the justification that we have
sought out of faith, and therefore argue the reality
of that justification and the success of our seek-
ing it by faith ?

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE (>^

Is it merely that the peace and joy have suc-
ceeded in the sequence of time the seeking by
faith? What is to assure us that this is not a
mere post hoc and no propter hoc at all ? Is it then
merely the universality of the experience — our
observation that all such seekers have proved to
be finders ? Is a Christian to base his peace and
joy, then, on another's finding? Nay, on the
invariableness of such finding by others ? Who
will assure him of this invariableness ? Who will
assure him that the next seeker may not fail to
find ? That in the next village such seekers may
not as invariably fail as among his own acquaint-
ances they have invariably found ? That his par-
tial observation, in a word, is the norm of fact ?
Must he wait to base his confidence and hope on
the collection and tabulation of a body of sta-
tistics ?

For the validity of the argument it is obvious
that there must be some more immediate and
obvious vinculum between the seeking and find-
ing than mere observed sequence, some natural
connection between the justification sought by
faith and the peace and joy which have come
to the seeker — level to the apprehension of all,
and pointing each one directly to his justification,
as the source of his peace and joy, in so clear

68 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

and convincing a way that he needs must find
the account of his inward peace in the reality of
his outward justification. Does any such con-
nection exist?

Something of this connection will no doubt be
supplied by the fact that these Christians who
now enjoy this peace and joy have been seekers
of peace and joy by other methods than through
faith, and have not found; and only upon laying
aside their feverish efforts at self-salvation and
upon seeking through faith, have they found. The
contrast of these diverse experiences counts for
much, and assures them that the blessed fruits
of justification ripen in the heart only when justi-
fication is sought through faith; that they do
not grow on the tree of works. Were this not
the experience of Christians, the apostle's whole
argument would fail. That argument has, there-
fore, a double edge; it as much implies that
peace and joy do not come through works as
that they do come through faith. What he is
attempting to prove is just that justification comes
out of faith and not out of works ; and the expe-
rience it rests upon must be an experience, there-
fore, of not finding as truly as an experience of
finding. This double experience, then, we say,
will go far toward connecting the peace and joy

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 69

which Christians possess, with a justification spe-
cifically by faith as its root and source.

It will go far toward it, but it will not go the
whole way. The connection so found is still
only an empirical one. Even if it should prove
universal it might still be accidental. A deeper
fact must lie behind, creating a more necessary
conqection ; or rather, let us say, giving a rational
account of this experience. That deeper fact
must lie in some inherent difference in the modes
of seeking; that is, it can only lie in the natural
adaptation of the mode of salvation set forth in
the term "justification by faith " for the produc-
tion of peace and joy in the heart of the sinner
who embraces it — a natural adaptation absent
from works. In other words, the connection will
fully emerge only on the discovery of the fact
that peace and joy are the natural, or, indeed,
the necessary fruits of seeking salvation in the
method proclaimed by the apostle.

In order to make this plain, we have only to
formulate clearly the question on the decision of
which it is suspended. It is this : Whether there
is an adaptation in the method of salvation pro-
claimed by Paul for the production of such effects
as peace and joy : or whether the peace and joy
which follow the trial of this mode of salvation

70 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

arise within the heart wholly unrelated with, and
pointing in no wise back to, the justification of
which they are the fruits. In other words,
whether men find peace and joy on seeking justifi-
cation through faith only because the Holy Spirit
works these sentiments in some mysterious way
in their hearts — causing them to spring up within
them on His almighty fiat as flowers growing on
no stalk; or whether the Spirit's fecundating
power causes them to grow visibly upon the stem
of justification by faith itself. We cannot doubt,
following Paul, which is the true alternative.

The sense of peace that steals into the heart,
the exulting joy which cannot keep silence on
the lips of him who seeks his justification out of
faith, are indeed the work of the Holy Spirit.
Apart from His vitalizing operations even the
saved soul might remain dark and the redeemed
lips dumb. But they do not, therefore, hang in
the air without cognizable ground or source.
The Holy Spirit does not here, any more than in
other spheres of his activity, work irrational
effects. There is a rational account to be given
of this peace and joy as well as a spiritual one.
The mode of justification propounded by God
through the apostle is one which is adapted to
the actual condition of man ; one which is calcu-

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 71

lated to satisfy his conscience, to allay his
remorseful sense of guilt, to supply him a rational
ground of conviction of acceptance with God,
and to quicken in him a happy, hopeful outlook
upon the future. And it is because this mode of
justification is thus calculated to provide a solid
ground for peace and joy to the rational under-
standing that those who seek justification thus and
not otherwise acquire, under the quickening influ-
ences of the Spirit, a sense of peace with God and
a joyful outlook of hope for the future.

No more here than elsewhere does the Spirit
of all order work a blind, an ungrounded, an irra-
tional set of emotions in the heart. Did He so,
they would scarcely be probative of anything. A
set of emotions arising in the soul, no one knows
whence, no one knows on what grounds, espe-
cially if they were persistent, and in proportion
as they were violent, would only vex the soul and
cast it into inquietude. It is only because these
Spirit-worked emotions of peace and joy attach
themselves rationally to the mode of justification
by faith that they can point to it as their source,
and prove that they who have sought their justi-
fication by faith have surely found. The proba-
tive power of the actual peace and joy received
by the means of this justification is thus depend-

72 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

ent upon the rational adaptability of this method
of salvation to produce, in those who make trial
of it, peace of heart and joy in the prospect of
the future. The gist of the whole matter, then,
is that this mode of justification may be recog-
nized as supplying the only true and actual justi-
fication, because it alone, among all the methods
by which men have sought to obtain peace with
God, is calculated to satisfy their consciences and
to furnish to them a rational ground of hope of
acceptance.

How many other ways there are in which
men have sought and continue to seek peace!
And how little they avail! Let them seek by
works — at the best, they can but cry at the last
that they are unprofitable servants. The per-
fect obedience which their hearts tell them, in
a voice which will not be gainsaid, is due from
them, they know also that they have not ren-
dered, that they cannot render. And the dread-
ful load of guilt with which their past offenses
have burdened their souls, and which their pres-
ent sins are continually increasing, weighs down
their spirits in hopeless despair. While walking
this treadmill road of works no peace can pos-
sibly visit their hearts; no exultation in the pro-
spective goal can attend their steps. Present

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 73

anguish, despairing desperation — these are their
only possible heritage.

Let them, then, despairingly recognize the
hopelessness of a work-righteousness for such
creatures as men, and abase themselves in rueful
sorrow before God, confessing the blackness of
their sin and the uttemess of their helplessness,
and pleading God's mercy as their only hope.
Can remorse, as it bites back upon the soul in
memory of its deeds of shame, atone for guilt
incurred — condone for continued incompleteness
of obedience ? Is it not rather the heart rising
up against itself in self-disgust, accusing itself
before the holy and just God, and dragging away
its refuges of lies that it may see the sword of
vengeance hanging over it? How can the
awakened sense of sin instill peace into the soul?
Or the soul's own fierce condemnation of itself
open out before it vistas of exulting hope?
When our hearts condemn us it is our despair
to know that God is greater than our hearts —
greater in His flaming hatred of sin, in the
strictness of His inquisition, in the certain ven-
geance of His justice.

Well, then, may God be bribed ? Let us heap
up our votive offerings upon His altar. Let us
continually sing His praises before men — some-

74 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

thing after the fashion of those Ephesians who
stood in the theater and "all with one voice,
about the space of two hours, cried out, ' Great is
Diana of the Ephesians!'" Let us devote our
lives to His service in a perfection of obedience
which we know we cannot render, or in an
exquisite minuteness of self-torture which we
hope He may accept in lieu of obedience. Can
we believe that God will accept these in place of
His due ? Let us drown His altars in the blood
of bulls and goats ; or — for such is the wont of
men seeking to still the accusing voice within
them — let us slash our flesh and mingle our own
blood with that of the sacrifices. Let us even —
for this, too, men have done in their agony of
remorse in every comer of this globe — give the
fruit of our bodies for the sins of our souls,
" making our son or our daughter pass through
the fire to Moloch." Or, since those days are
passed, and the fires on the world's altars are
quenched, let us offer up our own lives to God,
starving within us all natural affections, stifling
all proper emotions, and painfully immolating
ourselves on a daily altar of ascetic observance.
Can we believe that thus the righteous anger of
the holy and righteous One against our sins will
be appeased so that He will satisfy Himself with

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 75

our imperfect obedience? We know that the
judgment of God is true; and that He is of
purer eyes than to behold iniquity, even though
we writhe in fear before His lace and strive to
cloud his eyes to its enormity.

But why need we multiply words? Such expe-
dients men have always tried, and such expedients
men are everywhere trying, in their despairing
search for peace. Every such expedient con-
ceivable men have tried — ^we have tried — and
peace has not been attained. We look in dread
about us, and clearly see that every avenue of
escape is closed.

Every avenue of escape is closed. All but one.
If— if an adequate atonement might be made for
sin ; if 2, perfect obedience could be rendered to
the law ; and if this atonement and this obedience
should be made ours : then, but only then, could
hope awake in our dead souls, could peace once
more steal into our troubled hearts. Now, it is
just this that Paul offers to a despairing world in
the proclamation of justification by faith. It is a
proclamation of "justification," you will observe,
not a proclamation of escape from sin's penalty —
not even a proclamation of simple pardon of sin,
or of the eradication of sin — ^but specifically a
proclamation of "justification." It appeals as

76 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

such to the judgment of conscience, and works its
effect in the realm of conscience. Paul does not
deny man's guilt — he asserts man's guilt. He
does not outrage conscience by proclaiming par-
don without expiation of guilt — he proclaims the
indefeasible need of expiation. He does not insult
intelligence by representing that sinful man can
offer the expiation that is required and at the
same time acquire merit for reward — he proclaims
the helplessness of humanity in its estate of con-
demnation. He empties us of all righteousness
which we may claim, or which we may seek to
acquire by our deeds, and proclaims with piercing
clearness that by the deeds of the law shall no
flesh be justified And then he turns and points
to a wonderful spectacle of the Son of God, be-
come man, taking His place at the head of His
people, presenting an infinite sacrifice for their
sins in His own body on the tree, working out a
perfect righteousness in their stead in the myriad
deeds of love and right that filled His short but
active life; and offering this righteousness, this
righteousness of God, provided by God and ac-
ceptable to God, to the acceptance of the world.
Here is a mode of salvation which is indeed
calculated to still the gnawing sense of guilt and
quiet the fear of wrath. And a capital proof of

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 77

its truth is that it does at last supply a basis, on
which resting, men can believe that they are ac-
cepted with God; that it lays a foundation, on
which building, men can at length feel peace
of heart and entertain hope for the future. In
effect the apostle says to his readers : " You have
tried every way of making your peace with God :
only in this way have you found one which
satisfied your consciences. The righteousness of
Christ, laid hold of by faith, evidently suffices for
all your needs. Resting upon it, your guilty fears
subside and you feel safe at last Thus, and thus
alone, you see that God may be just (as you know
Him to be unfailingly) and yet the justifier of
such sinners as you know yourselves to be."

And you will observe how Paul not only says
this in effect in this appeal to his readers' experi-
ence, but the whole trend of the epistle up to this
point is calculated to give force to the appeal and
to evoke an immediate and deep response. For
what is that proof, with which the epistle opens,
that all men are sinners and under the condem-
nation of the law, so that the wrath of God is
revealed from heaven against them as workers
of iniquity, but a faithful probing of conscience,
awakening it to a sense of guilt and a conscious*
ness of helplessness? And what is that expo*

78 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

sition of God's mode of justification by means of
a righteousness provided by Christ and laid hold
of by faith, but a loving presentation of the sacri-
fice and work of Christ to the apprehension of
faith? And what is that exposition of the ac-
ceptance of Abraham, the father of the faithful,
but a gracious assurance that it is thus that God
deals mercifully with his children? And what,
now, is this appeal to their own experience as
they have humbly sought God's forgiveness and
acceptance in Christ, by simple faith in Him, but
an assault on their hearts, that they may be forced
to realize for themselves and confess to their
fellow-men all the satisfaction they have found in
believing in Christ?

Paul's words, says Jerome, are not like the
words of other men, *'they have hands and feet";
they are living things and tug at our very heart
strings. But they are not less, but more, logical
arguments for that ; and we perceive that in his
present argument it is to this feeling of satisfac-
tion in the man who has sought his justification
by believing in Christ that the apostle appeals in
proof of the reality and truth of the justification
sought His argument is from the internal peace
to the external peace. You have sought justifica-
tion out of faith, he says ; you have appropriated

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 79

the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His righteous-
ness ; you rest on Him, and interpose Him be-
tween you and God. Your conscience says, It
is enough. For the first time you find satisfaction
— ^your guilty fears subside and a sense of peace
and exulting joy in the future prospect take their
place. Is not this new-found satisfaction of con-
science a proof of the reality of the justification
you sought ? This is Paul's argument.

But once more we need to pause and ask, How
is the argument valid ? External peace with God
is inferred here from internal peace of conscience.
What warrants such a tremendous inference ? Is
it so certain that because the qualms of our con-
science are satisfied, therefore the demands of
God's justice are satisfied ? Here lies the deepest
foundation of the argument ; and it is important
for us to realize fully this second of the implica-
tions which we have pointed out as necessarily
lying at its basis. Its validity rests, as we have
said, on the assumption that the human con-
science is the shadow of God's judgment ; that its
deliverances repeat the demands of God's right-
eousness; and that its satisfaction, therefore, argues
the satisfaction of God's justice.

But here again, tremendous as the assumption

8o THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

is, we suppose it needs only to be clearly stated
to be already accepted. For what is the question
that is raised but, Whether the appeasing effect of
Christ's blood of expiation is confined to the
human conscience solely, while what we may call
the divine conscience — God's sense of right — ^is
left unaffected by it ? And what is this question
but this deeper one, Whether our moral sense is
so out of analogy with Grod's moral sense that
what fully meets and satisfies that moral indigna-
tion which rises in us on the realization of sin as
sin, stands wholly out of relation with God's
moral indignation at the spectacle of sin ? Can
this be a matter of doubt ? Certainly it is to be
hoped not For so to affirm would obviously
be to confound all our moral judgments. Not
merely would it dethrone conscience from her
empire over our lives and thoughts, but it would
reduce unhappy man to a state far worse than
that of the unreflecting brutes.

Far better to have no sense of right and wrong
than to be cursed with a faculty as sensitive to
moral distinctions as the needle is to the magnetic
currents, and yet so wayward in its movements as
to lead us continually astray, and bite back upon
us with the bitterest remorse when perchance we
have earned the praise of God. At the best, con-

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 8i

science would sink into the voice of hereditary
custom; and what we call the right would be
transmuted into the habitual, what has been found
expedient in the present constitution of society.
Its opposite would be equally right in a differently
constituted social order — as Mr. Darwin tells us,
indeed, affirming that were men organized accord-
ing to the social order of, say, bees, what we
fondly dream is the voice of God within us guard-
ing the sacred boundary-lines that separate the
domains of eternal right and wrong, would speak
in opposite tones, requiring, with its categorical im-
perative, what it now brands as sin, and scourging
us away from what we now look upon as right,
with all its machinery of instinctive shrinking,
sense of guilt, burning shame, and biting remorse.
Thus, as you will observe, all of what men call
morality perishes out of the earth — ^the convenient
and expedient take its place. And with it per-
ishes also all that men call religion: for a God
requiring we know not and cannot know what —
who may be most deeply offended when we most
sincerely strive to please Him — whose judgments
of right and wrong are so out of analogy with
ours that His most burning wrath may be stirred
by our highest holiness, and His most gracious
good pleasure evoked by what causes us the most

6

82 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

agonizing regret, is clearly not a God whom such
creatures as men may serve ; nay, is clearly to us
no God at all. The truth of our moral sense and
blank atheism are the only alternatives. That
men may remain men, as it is necessary that what
they must believe to be true, is true; so it is neces-
sary that what they must believe to be right, is
right. The eternally ineradicable distinction of
right and wrong, the changeless and sensitive
truth of the human conscience to this distinction
— ^these are the conditions, on the one hand, of
human sanity; and the essential postulates, on
the other, of all religion.

We need not fear to allow, therefore, that the
validity of our sense of peace in the justification
of faith rests on the correspondence between the
moral sense of man and the moral sense of God.
Without that correspondence no valid peace
could ever, on any ground, visit the human heart.
And a peace which is as deeply grounded as the
reality of this correspondence, is rooted so pro-
foundly in the nature of man that humanity
itself must perish before that peace can be taken
away. If there be a God at all, the author of
our moral nature, it is just as certain as His
existence that the moral judgment which He has
implanted in us is true to the pole in the depths

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 83

of His own moral being; that its deliverances
as to right and wrong are but the transcripts of
His own moral judgments; that it is rightly
called the voice of God within us, and we may
hearken to its decisions not so much with confi-
dence that they will be confirmed in the forum
of heaven as with the assurance that they are but
the echoes of the divine judgment. We may
confidently adopt, therefore, the strong language
of Dr. Shedd, and say : " What, therefore, con-
science affirms, in the transgressor's case, God
affirms, and is the first to affirm. What, there-
fore, conscience feels in respect of the sinner's
transgression, God feels, and is the first to feel.
What, therefore, conscience requires in order
that it may cease to punish the guilty spirit,
God requires, and is the first to require. . . .
The subjective in man is shaped by the objective
in God, and not the objective in God by the sub-
jective in man. The consciousness of the con-
science is the reflex of the consciousness of God."
The sense of guilt by which the awakened
conscience accuses us, speeding on into remorse,
is thus perceived to be but the echo of God's
judgment against sin. But this could not be if
an appeased conscience were not the echo of
God's judgment of justification. For, if con-

84 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

science could cease to accuse while God con-
tinued to condemn, it would no longer be true
that an accusing conscience is the sign of the
condemnation of God, and a sense of guilt the
reflex of His overhanging wrath. Conscience is,
therefore, a mirror, placed in the human breast,
upon which man may read the reflection of God's
judgment upon his soul. When frowns of a just
wrath conceal His face the clouds gather upon its
polished surface; and surely when these clouds
pass away, and the unclouded sun gleams upon
us from the mirror, it cannot be other than the
reflection of God*s smile.

We seem now to have probed Paul's argument
to the bottom. Man's conscience is but the
reflection of God's judgment upon the soul.
What satisfies man's conscience satisfies God's
justice. The presentation to faith of an expiat-
ing and obedient Son of God, becoming man to
take our place and stead before the law of God,
and paying the penalty of our sin and keeping
the probation due from us, satisfies the human
conscience. The peace that steals into the heart
of him who rests upon the Saviour in faith, and
the joy that exults upon his lips as he contem-
plates the day when he shall stand in Him before
the judgment seat of God — being but the rejoic-

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 85

ing cry of the satisfied conscience — ^is to us the
proof that God's wrath is really appeased, His
condemnation reversed, and His face turned upon
us in loving acceptance of us in His beloved Son.
Surely, then, this experience of peace and joy is
an irrefutable proof that this and no other is the
just God's mode of justifying the sinner.

And now, men and brethren, what shall we do
in the presence of these things ? What but, first
of all, follow the example of those old copyists
who have transmitted to us the sacred text, and
transmute Paul's appeal to the fact that Chris-
tians have peace and joy into an exhortation to
ourselves to enter into this our peace and joy ?
By God's unspeakable grace the tidings of this
gospel have come unto us. How Jesus Christ,
who Himself was rich, has come into this poor
world of ours that by His poverty we might be
made rich — ^it has all been made known to us.
And by God's superabounding grace in the Holy
Spirit the ears of our hearts have been opened
to the blessed proclamation. We have heard and
believed. So, then, "having been justified by
feith, let us have peace with God, through our
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have
obtained access into this grace in which we stand;

86 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

and let us exult in the hope of the glory of
Godr

Has the argument as we have probed it
seemed long — too long for despairing feet to
follow ? Has its depth seemed too profound for
the plummet of weak faith to sound ? Blessed be
God, it is not by following the argument of the
apostle, by sounding the depths of his thought,
that we are to enter into our peace ; but by
believing in Jesus Christ our Redeemer. We may
drink at this fountain though we know not how
the bubbling water forces its way to the surface —
nor have time to investigate it, nor minds, may-
hap, to comprehend it. Here is the water, and it
is here to drink — living water — and whoso drinks
of it shall never thirst, but it shall become in him
a well of water springing up into eternal life.
Let us thank God that He has not suspended
our salvation on understanding ; and even if we
understand not, and our minds go halting as they
strive to think His thoughts after Him, let us yet
believe and enter into our peace.

And having once entered into our peace, let us
turn and look with new eyes upon this life which
we are living in the flesh. These difficulties,
these dangers, these trials, these sufferings, how
hard they have been to bearl We have deserved

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 87

no better, but — nay, therefore — ^how hard they
have been to bear! But we have been justified
by faith — actually and truly justified by faith —
and now we have peace with God. What a new
aspect is taken by the trials and sufferings of life !
They are no longer our fate, hard and grinding ;
they are no longer our punishment, better than
which is not to be expected — for ever. They
come from the hand of a reconciled God, from
the hand of our Father. What one of them has
not its meaning, its purpose, its freightage of mercy
and of good ? Shall we not follow the apostle
here, and, as we find that peace with God has
stolen into our hearts and that we are exulting in
the hope of future glory, let that glory gild also
our present pathway? Shall we not turn with
new courage, nay, even with joy, to the sufferings
of this present life, crying with him : " And not
only so, but we also rejoice in tribulations, know-
ing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience
triedness, and triedness hope, and hope putteth
not to shame, because the love of God hath been
shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit
which was given unto us ! "

What new light this is to shine on the weary
pathway of God's saints! Says one of these
saints, a follower of Paul in the sharpness of

88 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

his afflictions as well as in the comfort he drew
from them: "The Christian who lives not accord-
ing to nature, but according to grace, should
learn to give thanks to Gx)Afor all things in Jesus
Christ, as His holy and loving word commands us.
And that is no more than right For if we
believe that when we were the enemies of God he
gave His Son for us, to reconcile us to Himself,
how should we not believe that all which He
appoints for us after that not only comes not from
His wrath, but comes really and literally from
His love ? And if God in afflicting us does not
stop short at indifference, but goes the length of
tenderness, is it not right that we in receiving our
troubles should not stop short at patience, but go
the length of thankfulness ? As for myself," he
adds, " in my short and scanty experience of the
life of faith, I have often found that if resignation
does not go so far as that, it does not give to
our sufferings that sweetness which the Scrip-
ture promises." Here is the marvel of the
Christian life. Not patience in afflictions merely,
but thankfulness for them, says Adolph Monod,
is our duty, nay, our privilege. Exult in joy over
them, cries Paul; rejoice in them because we
recognize in them but the "growing-pains" by
which we are attaining " unto a full-grown man —

THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE 89

unto the measure of the stature of the fullness
of Christ, that we may be no longer children,
tossed to and fro and carried about with every
wind of doctrine, by the sleight of man in crafti-
ness, after the wiles of error ; but dealing truly
in love, may grow up in all things into Him which
is the Head, even Christ"

And then the future! We used to look for-
ward to it, perhaps, with nameless dread, with
fearful expectation of judgment. What a glory
has been thrown upon it by our new standpoint !
We are no longer at enmity with God : we are at
peace with God. Our conscience tells us that:
we gaze on Christ and His sacrifice, and we know
that God also sees it, and seeing it cannot con-
demn him who is in Christ. And when did
Almighty God begin anything which He did not
finish ? And such a beginning ! A beginning in
indescribable, in inconceivable love. Our hearts
are fairly dragged out of us in wondering love as
we follow Paul's a fortiori argument. " For while
we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for
the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man
will one die ; yet perhaps for a good man some
one would even dare to die. But God commend-
eth His love toward us, in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then,

90 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

being now justified by His blood, shall we be
saved from wrath by Him. For if, while we were
enemies, we were reconciled with God through
the death of His Son, much more, being recon-
ciled, shall we be saved by His life/*

What means this peace in my heart ? It means
that the sense of guilt is allayed, that I am justi-
fied before God by the death of His dear Son,
What means this justification with God? It
means much more — that I shall be saved, by the
life of His Son, from wrath. Much more ! It is
then much more than certain! Shall we not
exult? Shall we not say with the apostle:
" Much more being reconciled, shall we be saved
by His life, and not only so, but also as those
that rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus
Christ, through whom we have now received this
reconciliation"? Do we face the future now,
then, with calmness ? Ah, no ! that would imply
doubt. Do we face it, then, with courage ? No ;
that would imply danger. Let us with the apos-
tle face it with exultation, as becomes those who
rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ
through whom we have received this reconcilia-
tion ; as becomes those who, having been justified
by faith, have peace with God, through Jesus
Christ, and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

IV
THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE

IV

THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE
" All things are possible with God."— Mark x. 27 (R. V.).

OuvER Wendell Holmes tells us that some
ideas are so great that when they once find
entrance into a human mind they permanently
stretch it, and leave it for ever afterwards bigger.
Surely this declaration of our Lord's embodies
one of these mind-expanding ideas. For we
must observe that its astounding declaration is
not a mere hyperbole of careless speech, the neg-
ligent exaggeration of a proposition which has
only relative validity. It is the well-weighed and
precise assertion of a great fact. It does not
mean merely that God is greater than man, and
may accordingly be believed to be capable of
doing some things which man cannot do. It
means just what its startling words declare : that
"all things'* — taking the term in its unlimited
absoluteness — that "all things are possible with
God." Perhaps the conception is too large to
find entrance into our minds at all. Perhaps none
of us will fail to trim it down on this side or that

93

94 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

in order to make it fit our several capacities of
belief. But surely if it once gets into the mind,
in the fullness of its meaning, it cannot fail per-
manently to enlarge it, to revolutionize all its
points of view, and to raise it to a higher plane
of both thought and feeling.

We may assure ourselves of the absoluteness
of the meaning which our Lord intended to inject
into the words by attending to the circumstances
in which He announced them. The rich young
ruler had come to Him, seeking eternal life ; not
with the simple-hearted trustfulness of a little
child, nor yet with the self-despair of the publi-
can who could only smite his breast and cry,
" God be merciful to me, a sinner " ; but, led by a
rich man's instinct, with his thoughts bent on
purchase. "Good Teacher," he asked, "what
shall I do that I may inherit eternal life ?" Jesus
had probed his heart by setting a price on future
blessedness which the young man was loath to
pay : " Go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give it
to the poor ; and come, follow Me." And when,
with his countenance fallen, the young man had
turned sorrowfully away, the great teacher
improved the occasion for the instruction of His
followers. " How hardly," he exclaimed, " shall

THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE 95

they that have riches enter into the kingdom of
God!" Perceiving the amazement of His disci-
ples, He repeated the declaration, and this time,
if we may trust the form in which the words have
come to us in some of the oldest documents, in
that universalized sense which is attached to
them, in any event, in the sequel : " Children, how
hard it is to enter into the kingdom of God!*'
And then, reverting for a moment to the specific
case which was the occasion of the remark, and
devoting Himself to driving home the impression
which it was His prime object to make on their
hearts. He gave utterance to that extraordinary
comparison which has confounded the minds of
His followers from that time until to-day : " It is
easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye,
than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom
of God."

We all know how men have labored to rid this
limitless assertion of the human impossibility of
salvation of its necessary meaning. Some have
thought to lessen at least the extremity of the
affirmation by reading "cable** instead of "camel"
— under the impression, apparently, that as a
"cable" has some relation to the thread that
would pass through a needle's eye, extreme dif-
ficulty might be expressed by it indeed, but not

96 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

absurd impossibility. Others would have us
believe that our Lord but "paltered here in a
double sense/' and had in mind not a real nee-
dle's eye, but some narrow gateway in Jerusalem,
through which a camel could squeeze itself only
with difficulty, and with the loss of whatever load
it might essay to carry with it. All such emas-
culating interpretations, however, are shattered
by our Lord's own explanation of His words.
For when He observed His astonished disciples
— ^who certainly understood Him to assert an
unconditioned impossibility — asking wonderingly
among themselves, " Who then can be saved ?"
He turned to them and said — ^what? "It is
indeed difficult, but not impossible" ? " I did but
jest in ambiguous words ; I meant, not an actual
needle's eye, but that narrow passage you know
of in Jerusalem"? No, but directly and emphati-
cally this : " With men it is impossible.^'

It was an absolute impossibility He meant to
affirm. Men can no more press themselves into
the kingdom of heaven than a camel can force
himself through a needle's eye. His solution of
the paradox turns on no attenuation of the mean-
ing the language is fitted to convey, but on a
lofly appeal to the omnipotence of God. " With
men it is impossible," he affirms ; " but," he gra-

THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE 97

ciously adds, " not with God : for all things are
possible with God." This special case of the
impossible He meets by referring it to the general
fact of the divine almightiness. This generalized
enunciation of the divine almightiness is there-
fore to be taken in the height of its meaning. It
is not to be weakened into the mere affirmation
that God is very strong and can do things which
man cannot understand It is the ringing asser-
tion of the true omnipotence of God. It is the
grand announcement that the impossible consti-
tutes the very sphere of the divine operation.

Nor have the followers of Jesus ever feared to
take Him at His word. The heathen, the unbe-
liever, the infidel might scoff at the preachment,
which has been to the Greeks of every age alike
foolishness, and to the Jews a stumbling-block.
But the offensive facts of this great gospel have
ever been boldly proclaimed on the faith of a God
to whom nothing is impossible. The incarnation,
the redemption, the resurrection, the descent of
the Spirit, regeneration, the entempling of God
within the heart of man — these things may be
pronounced by men preposterously impossible.
Our fiery TertuUians have shown no wish to
minimize their preposterous impossibility. They
have rather drawn out in detail all the incredibili-

98 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

ties, all the absurdities that may be thought to be
inherent in them. Could the omnipotent God
indeed be inclosed in a woman's womb ? Could
the infinite God really be pillowed on an earthly
mother's breast? Could the omniscient God
actually lisp in the prattle of a child ? Could the
self-existent One really die? The All-blessed
hang a bruised and wounded sufferer upon the
accursed cross ? Do dead men ever rise again?
Can they whose flesh has been dissolved in the
corruption of the grave, take on again the firm-
ness and freshness of youthful life ? Can one who
Himself died on a cross, between two thieves, be
indeed the life of the world ? He who could not
save Himself, can He really save others ? Can a
splash of water on the forehead wash away sin ?
Absurdities, impossibilities, enough ! " I believe,"
cries TertuUian, *' though they be impossible."
And myriads have since boldly echoed his faithful
cry.

Nay, the fervid old saint would turn the tables
upon the objector. "I believe," he cries, "not
merely though they be impossible: I believe
because they are impossible !" For the impossi-
ble is the very sphere of God's activity; and we
most readily credit the divine interposition in
matters beyond the power of man. It is human

THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE 99

to err: God's hand is seen when man waxes
infallible. Man can slay: when dead men rise
again we must needs perceive the finger of God.
If water will not cleanse the soul, then it must be
God who cleanses it in baptism. When those
who are dead in trespasses and sins walk in
newness of life we cannot choose but see dis-
played the power of God. Man's despair is
indeed God's opportunity ; and the things which
are impossible to man are the very things which
would be like God, which would , be worthy of
God, and which we should expect God to do.
Tell me that God has left His throne to do what
I am each day doing for myself, and what I am
entirely competent to do for myself, and how can
I believe ? But tell me that God has descended
from heaven to work what were impossible to His
suffering creatures — ^then indeed I may believe
the word. It is because man cannot save himself,
that I may believe that God has intervened to
save him. It is because man cannot cleanse his
soul, that I can believe that God will interfere to
cleanse it. It is because this world lies dead and
corrupted in its sin, that I can believe that God
will implant in it a germ of life which shall grow
until it leavens the whole mass. It is because
there are so many things impossible to poor puny

loo THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

man, that our hearts bound with joy at our
Saviour's declaration that " all things are possible
with God."

Now we must not fail to take very careful note
that the matter which Jesus had in immediate
mind when He made this great declaration was
the salvation of the soul. " Good Teacher," was
the young ruler's question, " what shall I do that
I may inherit eternal life ?" " Who then can be
saved ?" was the astounded question of the disci-
ples, to which Jesus directly addressed His reply :
"With men it is impossible, but not with God: for
all things are possible with God." These words are,
therefore, a direct assertion of the impossibility to
man of salvation— of the " inheriting of eternal
life," of "entering the kingdom of God," of "being
saved," as it is variously called in the context —
and the casting of man, therefore, for all his hope,
on the God whose almighty power alone can do
the impossible.

Speaking in theological language, here is
then the sharpest possible enunciation of the
doctrine of "inability." Man is unable to do
anything that he may inherit eternal life, enter
the kingdom of Grod, obtain salvation. These
things are not merely difficult to him — ^to be

THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE loi

done at all only at the cost of some great effort,
some supreme expenditure of energy. They are
impossible to him, as impossible as it is for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle; and
are, therefore, not to be done by him at all. An
astonishing doctrine, men are accustomed to
declare — rendering salvation hopeless to man.
This, we must observe, is just what the disciples
of Jesus said when He announced it to them.
"And they were astonished exceedingly," we
read, " saying among themselves. Then who can
be saved?" We need not be surprised that a
teaching which was a " hard saying" to the closest
companions of Jesus still arouses hesitation in the
minds of men. And our answer must still be the
same which Jesus addressed to His astonished
disciples; not an attempt to explain away the
difficulty, not a minimizing of it, but a calm reit-
eration of the fact. " With men it is impossible."
Jesus does not stop here to tell us why it is
impossible with men. He merely asseverates the
fact. The incident which gave rise to His remarks
and which determined their form may, indeed,
help us a little way into the problem. Obviously
the rich young man did not lack any human
endowment. He had intellect to know the com-
mandments of God; he had freedom of will to

I02 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

keep them ; he had the moral sanity that comes
from an upright life ; he had the beauty of char-
acter that calls out the love of good men — " and
Jesus," we are told, "looking upon him, loved
him." Surely here is one, who, were it possible
to man at all, might be expected to do what was
necessary to inherit eternal life : one who, if any
might, might well ask in some perplexity, " What
lack I yet ?" Nevertheless there was a fatal lack
— not resident in his fundamental being as such
by which he was a man, but in his ingrained dis-
position by which he was the man he was. And
this prevented him from estimating at their true
relative values the riches of this earth and the
treasures in heaven ; rendering it, as Jesus says,
" impossible ** for him to enter into the kingdom
of God. And like him, every son of man, though
possessed of treasures of knowledge and crowned
with the most striking virtues, will be found to
lack the power to put in their relatively proper
places the things of God and the things of this
world. With one it is riches, with another it is
pride, with another it is ease, with another ambi-
tion, that has taken possession of the soul. With
all there is real inability to rid themselves of
"whatsoever they have" and turn single-heart-
edly to God.

THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE 103

If we probe deeply enough we shall find the
root of this inability in sin — in a sin-distorted
vision, feeling, judgment — in a word, in a sin-
deformed soul, to which it is just as impossible
" to be perfect " as it is for the lame leg not to
limp or the misshapen pupil not to see awry.
And therefore theologians are accustomed to say
that the correct formula for human inability —
while it certainly is not that man is unable
to perform the right which he wills — just as cer-
tainly will not transmute the cannot into a mere
will not, but will recognize a true inability even to
will the right ; a true inability rooted in a heart
too corrupt to appreciate, desire or go out in an
active inclination toward "the good." What is
in itself corrupt cannot but be corrupted in all its
activities.

Of all this, however, our Saviour says nothing
in this context. It was not the uncovering to
His disciples of the source of human inability in
human sin to which He was here addressing
Himself He was occupying Himself entirely
with the far more pressing task of detaching their
hearts from trust in themselves and casting them
upon God. Therefore He contents Himself with
the emphatic assertion of the bare fact of human
inability, and, fixing that with His pointed illus-

I04 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

tration well in their minds, directs them at once,
in strong contrast, to the plenary ability of God.
His sharp asservation had wrought its work by
arousing excessive astonishment in the minds of
His hearers. The proof of its working came out
in their wondering demand, " Then who can be
saved ?" No explanation follows : simply the calm
reiteration of the astonishing declaration, " With
men it is impossible." But therewith a call to
them to raise their eyes, therefore, above man:
"With men it is impossible, but not with God:
for all things are possible with God**

These words constitute, therefore, the core of the
whole conversation. To them everything else had
been leading up. And it was that He might assert
them with due force and fix them in the hearts
of His disciples with absolute firmness that every-
thing else had been spoken. The great lesson
that the Saviour was seeking to read His disci-
ples was not that of human inability, but that of
the divine ability. Human inability is dwelt upon
only that in contrast with it the divine ability
might be thrown out in strong emphasis. That
man cannot save himself He would have them
know; but the great truth on which He would
have their minds rest was not that man cannot
save himself, but that God can save him. There-

THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE 105

fore everything is so ordered — incident and sub-
sequent conversation alike — ^as to fix attention
first on the helplessness of man, and then, by a
powerful revulsion, to throw a tremendous empha-
sis on the almighty salvation of God. "With
men it is impossible, but not with God : for all
things are possible with God." Here, and here
only, He would say, can you establish your feet,
can you safely cast your hope.

It is almost impertinent to stop to admire the
dialectic skill with which the desired impression
is made. Our hearts cry out at once for the pre-
ciousness of the assurance that is given. We are
men ; and, like men, have been and are prone to
think we can do "some good thing" by which
we may earn eternal life. None know better than
we how hard it is to be weaned from self-trust ;
how persistently we cherish the hope that thus,
or thus, we may win for ourselves a title to bliss.
But none know better than we the inevitable bit-
terness of the ensuing disappointment It may
be that, like the rich young ruler, we have kept
the commandments from our youth up. It has
not satisfied our hearts. We still are asking in
unstilled longing, "What lack I yet? What
good thing shall I do ?" Nor is the longing ever

io6 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

thus satisfied. We may have piled Pelion on
Ossa in our insatiable search after service. The
ends of the earth may know our voice. And yet
we may be pursued with the inextinguishable
conviction that though we may preach to others
we may yet ourselves be castaways. Though we
may have bestowed all our goods to feed the
poor, and though we may have even given our
bodies to be burned, it profits us nothing. Still
the cry rises in our soul, "What lack I yet?
What good thing shall I do that I may have
eternal life?"

We cannot still our craving with such things
as these. Despair ever treads hard on hope, and
the conviction is never shaken within us that by
the work of the hands shall no flesh be justified.
Earth's altars are the proof at once of the uni-
versal longing for salvation, and of the universal
despair of salvation. No offering has been too
precious to be immolated in expiation of sin; and
none has been so precious as to take away the
consciousness of sin. Else would they not have
long since ceased to be offered ? Least of all can
we Christians, in whom the sense of sin has been
quickened by the revelation of the righteously
loving God in the face of Jesus Christ, ever still
our hearts* despair with any deed of our own

THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE 107

hands. If in times of forgetfulness we have been
tempted to think well of ourselves and of our
claims on God, it has required but a glance at
Jesus and at our hearts in contrast with Him to
awake us to a deeper sense of our unworthiness
and helplessness. And when the veil is thus
lifted, and we see ourselves in this true light, our
temptation is not that we may hope to be saved
without Him, but that we can scarcely hope to be
saved with Him.

Let each of us to-day look within his own
heart; let each of us permit to roll before the
mind's eye the history of his soul's struggles —
its hopes, its fears, its despairs. How much of it
is a history of doubt, discouragement, and
despondency! We know we cannot save our-
selves. Our best efforts — have they not always
ended in disillusionment? Our best hopes —
have they not always gone out in failure ? Our
best determinations — have they not always sunk
in gloom ? Salvation — do we not ourselves know
that it is impossible with men? Is it possible
even with God ? Then comes, like balm to our
bruised hearts, our Lord's gracious assurance,
" It is impossible with men, but not with God :
for all things are possible with God." What an
assurance ! We are to trust in God for the sal-

io8 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

vation of our souls not because their salvation is
easy. So soon as our eyes are open to what sin
is, and to what God is, and to what we are, we
know it is not easy. We are to trust in God for
the salvation of our souls because He is one who
does the impossible.

Do we clearly see that salvation is impossible
to us, that a load of guilt rests upon us which we
can never expiate? Our Saviour says, not that
we are mistaken, not that if we will but try hard
enough we may roll off the burden. No; He
does not mock our despair. He fully recognizes
the impossibility which our hearts have found.
He says, " It is impossible with men, but not with
God: for all things are possible with God."
Thus He places the rock under our feet — the
rock of the omnipotence of God. To nothing
less than omnipotence can we trust to do this
impossible thing. But we may well believe that
there is no impossible to it. And resting on it
our fretted souls may at last find peace.

It was, thus, that He might give us hope in the
highest concerns that may awaken our anxieties,
that our Lord enunciated in this startling manner
the great fact of the divine omnipotence: "All
things are possible with God." But the enuncia-

THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE 109

tion itself is quite general, and we should be
wrong not to take comfort from the great truth
here brought home to our hearts, in lesser affairs
also. It is not so set forth as to suggest that it has
no further application than that which Jesus gives
it in this passage. On the contrary, this applica-
tion is put forward as only a single instance under
the general law. It is because "all things are
possible with God " that we are bidden to be of
good cheer with reference to eternal life, though
to win it is obviously impossible with men. The
fundamental proposition which our Lord empha-
sizes, therefore, is the broad and general declara-
tion of the divine omnipotence. And He but
teaches us how to take our practical comfort out
of it when He applies it to calm our fears as to
the possibility of salvation.

In how many other concerns of life do we need
to find comfort in a similar application ! We
men are but puny creatures. We prate about
being the architects of our own fortunes, the
carvers of our own destinies, the masters of cir-
cumstance, who mold the world itself to our
liking. We are but as children whistling to keep
our courage up. There is none of us so young,
so untried as not already to have learned that all
things are not possible with men. In what bitter

no THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

experiences this knowledge has come to us let
each one's heart tell him to-day. Happy is he
who has not been forced to learn it in wringings
of soul and through blinding tears. We are set
in this world in a vortex of forces. They beat,
they seize upon us from every side ; they whirl
us this way and that, and drive us headlong often
whither we would not How often, when we
would fain hew our passage through them, we
stand blankly in the face of the impossible!
How often, when the fight has been fought and
the last possible blow has been struck, we stand
aghast before obvious failure, and can but lift
weak hands of prayer through the darkness up
to God ! Ah, it is in times like these that we
may taste the sweetness of the great assurance
of our Saviour : " All things are possible with
God." How great, how inestimable a privilege
to have the omnipotent God for our refuge !

And let us not fancy that the divine omnipo-
tence is not available to us for such things as
these : the grief that crushes our spirit, the fail-
ure that blackens our future, the disappointment
that makes us at last see that the great design
shall lie unfinished, and our lives be for ever
incomplete. There is abroad among us far too
much of a spurious spiritualism, which would

THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE iii

look upon the common affairs of life, as it is
pleased to call them — our human joys and hopes
and fears and sorrows — as beneath the notice of
God; and would steel our hearts in a Stoic's
indifference to them. Our blessed Saviour's life
among men rebukes so cold-hearted an attitude.
He came burdened with the great task of the
salvation of a world, but found no human pain
and no human sorrow too trivial to pierce His
heart with sympathetic pangs, too insignificant to
call out His helping hand "He went about
doing good." No sick appealed to Him in vain,
no weary came to Him without finding rest. He
sighed over every human suffering ; He wept with
those who mourned; He bore the burdens of
all. In His life He revealed the limitless breadth
of the divine compassion which grieves with all
the sorrows of men; and in His teaching He
instructed us to flee to God for needed aid in
every time of trouble.

The very hairs of our head. He told us, are all
numbered, so that not one of them shall fall to the
ground without His knowledge and permission.
If in this world we are immersed in a perfect
cyclone of forces, driving us this way and that,
there is One ever by our side who shall be to us
"as a hiding-place from the wind and a covert from

112 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

the tempest." We may be weak, but He is strong ;
and He has bidden us to put our trust in Him,
and promised that we shall not be made ashamed.
On the omnipotence of God alone can we depend
in the midst of the trials of this life as truly as for
the hope of the life to come. And what gives the
Christian his stability and peace in the strifes and
conflicts of the world is naught else than that he
feels beneath him the everlasting arms. It is only
because he knows that the God to whom all
things are possible rules in heaven and on earth,
that he can commit his ways to Him, and be
assured that all things shall indeed work together
for good to those that love Him. The Christian's
strength amid the evils of life is drawn from no
lesser source than trust in the omnipotence of
his God.

And all this has a very special application to
the enheartening of those who have become fel-
low-workers with God in the salvation of the
world. If disappointment and discouragement
lie ever in wait for all who would fain do some-
what in the world, surely this is in a very espe-
cial sense true of those whose hearts are set upon
the rescue of their fellow-men from the dominion
of sin. He who would in any measure depend

THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE 113

on an ann of flesh in this warfare is foredoomed
to a very speedy despair. He may meet with
little positive opposition or direct resistance. But
oh, the dead weight of passive indifference which
he will be sure to encounter ! No wonder if the
plaint of the prophet early becomes his own:
" Lord, who hath believed our report, and to
whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed ?"
It will not be strange if he should experience
periods of the deepest depression as he more and
more realizes that he is crying into deaf ears and
seeking to arouse to activity dead hearts. As
the servant of the Lord God Almighty it will be
strange, however, if he permits his natural sense
of insufficiency to grow into a settled habit of
despondency, and prosecutes his work under the
shadow of an unhoping gloom. Let him, indeed,
cry, " Lord, who is sufficient for these things ?"
Let him remember that even a Paul can do no
more than plant, and even an Apollos can do no
more than water. But let him remember also
that the Lord both can and will give the increase:
that the God whom he serves is the omnipotent
God whose voice can wake even the dead, and
that with Him " all things are possible."

And when we raise our eyes from the narrow
circles of our own labors, and survey the progress

8

114 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

of the gospel in the world, what shall we say then ?
Two thousand years have slipped away since
Jesus laid the great commission upon the hearts
of His people : " Go, disciple all the nations, . . .
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
I commanded you !" We shall not permit our-
selves to forget the enthusiasm, the splendid
courage, the high hopes, the steadfast labor which
many of His choicest servants have brought to
the fulfillment of this commandment Every land
and clime has heard their cry and has been
watered with their blood. Not least in our own
day have the hosts of the Lord risen against
the mighty ; have His children flung themselves
with a holy joy into the great task for which the
Church exists. Yet the work still lags. As we
stand to-day and survey the heathen world, how
little seems accomplished ! Surely we shall long
since have concluded that the task is impossible
— ^that no man and no body of men are really
competent to turn the world upside down !

But we cannot give way to despair. As we
come to know more fully the greatness of the
masses of heathendom, and the depths into which
they have sunk, and the ingrainedness of their
points of view and inherited modes of thinking, we
may indeed despair of men. We may readily

THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE 115

enough perceive that no human power can avail to
reverse the currents of centuries and to eradicate
the evil habits of ages. But we cannot despair of
God. " With men it is impossible," we may well
say; but we must quickly add, " but not with God:
for all things are possible with God." Resting
on the divine omnipotence, we may well be sure
that even this desert shall blossom like a rose,
and may — not only in hope, but in firm expecta-
tion — await the fulfillment of the promises. And
now, once occupying this position, how full the
very air is of promise ! Our eyes have seen the
divine omnipotence at work, here and there, in
the midst of the encircling gloom. Souls have
been born again; Christian lives have shed a
broad beam of light into the darkness ; churches
have been planted; Christian virtues have flour-
ished where erstwhile only pagan vices were visi-
ble ; the streaks of the dawn are appearing ; the
very air is palpitant with its prediction of the
coming day. Our hope is set on the God who
does great things without number. And this too
will He in His own good time perform — ^for all
things are possible with God.

Nor is the matter altered when we come nearer
home and contemplate the heathen masses which
crowd the narrow streets of our great cities. It

ii6 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

is one of the signs of our times that the " slums/'
as we call them, have come forth to the observa-
tion of the world. And as they are brought more
fully to public view the sight is not encouraging.
Here the Christian worker comes to close quar-
ters with vice and misery. Here his heart sinks
within him at the manifest magnitude of the task
that is set before him. Here he is gravely tempted
to despair as he realizes more and more sharply
the inadequacy of human methods and human
powers to reach the root of the evil whose dread-
ful fruits daily smite him in the face. How easy
it is to let the great hope die within us and seek
to content ourselves with some lesser endeavor !
This immense mass of corrupting humanity — we
cannot lift it bodily to a higher plane. Shall we
not be satisfied to attack the fringes of the evil, and
be content with some less, indeed, but at least
possible, accomplishment ? There is, after all, we
may say, only so much spiritual power in the
world; why dissipate it in a Quixotic endeavor
to reach the core of the evil, and not rather
expend it wisely and warily in correcting at least
some of its more menacing fruits ? " There is,
after all, only so much spiritual power in the
world !" My brethren, it is an atheistic lie! The
spiritual power in the world is the power of the

THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE 117

omnipotent Jehovah. It does not waste with use;
it does not recoil before the magnitude of any
task. Rightly do you perceive such undertak-
ings as these to be beyond the power of men :
"with men they are impossible." But it is not
so with God : " For all things are possible with
God." Let us then face with fresh boldness this
impossibility: there are no impossibilities with
Him whose strength shall be in our right arm,
mighty to tear down the strongholds of iniquity.

Ah, I know whither your hearts are wandering,
my brethren ! Yes, the blessed assurance is for
this, too. Our battle with sin is not all with the
sin that is without us. Christianity has come not
only into the world, but into our hearts as well ;
and the promise of conquest over sin is not
merely for the world, but also for our individual
souls. Does the victory lag here also ? Are we
tempted from time to time to despair here too, as
we are made to realize our proneness to evil, our
ineradicable readiness to forget our good profes-
sion, lay down our arms, and give up the fight
against temptation and transgression ? Ah, who
of us has not long since learned of the conquest
over sin in the heart — that with men it is impos-
sible ? Let us learn also, with reference to it, too,

ii8 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

that it IS not so with God, " for all things are pos-
sible with God." I g^nt you that only He who
does the impossible can cleanse the heart from its
ingrained corruption, and can free the life from its
continual sinning. But the God whom Jesus pro-
claims to us, in whom we may put our trust, is
a God who does the impossible. And when we
are tempted to despair, and are ready to yield the
battle with the cry that it is impossible, let us
raise our eyes to Him to whom there is no such
thing as the impossible. And, believing His word,
let us go on in His strength to the assured
victory.

"O Lord God of Hosts,
Who is a mighty one like unto Thee,

OJah?
And thy faithfulness is round about Thee 1
«««««««

Thou hast a mighty arm :

Strong is Thy hand, and high is Thy right hand.

Righteousness and judgment are the foundation of Thy throne:

Mercy and truth go before Thy face.

Blessed are the people that know the joyful sound :

That walk in the light of Thy countenance, O Lc^d V*

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST

V

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST

" Do ye think that the Scripture saith in vain. The spirit that
dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?'* — ^James iv. 5. (A. V.)

The translators have found some difficulty in
rendering this verse. The form in which I have
just read it, is that given it by our Authorized
Version. I am not sure that it will at once
convey the meaning. The Revised Version, in
text and margin, presents several renderings.
Among them there is one which expresses much
more clearly what seems to me to be the meaning
of the original. It is this : " Or think ye that the
Scripture saith in vain, That Spirit which He
made to dwell in us yearneth for us even unto
jealous envy ?" It is a declaration, on the basis
of Old Testament teaching, of the deep yearning
which the Holy Spirit, which God has caused to
dwell in us, feels for our undivided and unwaver-
ing devotion.

In the context James had been speaking of the
origin of the unseemly quarrels which even in
that early day, it seems,, marred the life of Chris-

122 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

tians. He traces them to greediness for the pleas-
ures of this world, and consequent envy toward
those who are better placed, or more fortunate in
the pursuit of worldly goods. Then he turns
suddenly to administer a sorrowful rebuke to the
gross inconsistency of such envious rivalry in
grasping after the pleasures of this world, for men
who possess the inestimable treasure of God's
love. It is at once observable on reading over
the passage that its whole phraseology is colored
by the underlying presentation of the relation of
the Christian to God under the figure of marriage.
The Christian is the bride of God. And there-
fore any commerce with the world is unfaithful-
ness. There is not room in this relation for two
loves. To love the world in any degree is a
breach of our vows to our one husband, God.
Hence the exclamation of " Adulteresses !" which
springs to James* lips when he thinks of Chris-
tians loving the world. Hence his indignant
outcry, " Know ye not that love of the world is
enmity with God ?" and his sweeping explanation,
" Whosoever, therefore, has it in his mind to be a
lover of the world is thereby constituted an
enemy of God." We cannot have two husbands ;
and to the one husband to whom our vows are
plighted, all our love is due. To dally with the

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST 123

thought of another lover is ab-eady unfiuthfulness.
On the other side, God is the husband of the
Christian's souL And He loves it with that
peculiar, constant, changeless love with which one
loves what the Scripture calls his own body
(Eph. v. 28). Is the soul &ithful to Him? Who
can paint, then, the delight He takes in it ? Is it
un&ithful, turning to seek its pleasure in the love
of the world ? Then the Scripture tells us that it
is with jealous yearning that God, its lawful hus-
band, looks upon it Does it, after unfaithfulness,
turn again to its rightful lord ? It cannot draw
nearer to Him than He is ready to draw to it;
and it no sooner humbles itself before Him than
He exalts it

The general meaning of the text is thus
revealed to us as a strong asseveration of the
love of Grod for His people, set forth under the
figure of a feiithful husband's yearning love for his
erring bride. James presents this asseveration of
God's love for His people, we will observe, as the
teaching of Scripture ; that is, since he was in the
act of penning the earliest of New Testament
books, as the teachmg of the Old Testament
Scriptures. The mode in which he makes this
appeal to Scripture is perhaps worthy of inci-
dental remark. " Or think ye that it is an empty

124 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

saying of Scripture ?" The question is a rhetori-
cal one, and amounts to the strongest assertion
that from James* point of view no saying of
Scripture could be empty. He would confound
his readers by adducing the tremendous authority
of Scripture in support of his declaration; and
therein he reveals to us the attitude of humble
submission toward the Scripture word which
characterizes all the writers of the New Testa-
ment.

It was not, however, the doctrine of inspiration
which was then engaging his thought. He sends
us to these inspired Scriptures rather for the doc-
trine of God's unchanging love toward His sinful
people. And we will surely have no difficulty in
recalling numerous Old Testament passages in
which the Lord has been pleased graciously to
express His love for His people under the figure
of the love of a husband for his chosen bride ; or
in which He has been pleased to make vivid to us
His sense of the injury done to His love by the
unfaithfulness of His people, by attributing to
Himself the burning jealousy of a loving hus-
band toward the tenderly cherished wife who has
wandered from the path of fidelity. Already this
representation underlies expressions which occur
in the Pentateuch, and indeed it is enshrined for

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST 125

US in the fabric of the Ten Commandments them-
selves, where God announces Himself as a jealous
God who will visit the iniquities of the fathers
upon the children, upon the third and upon the
fourth generation of those that hate Him, while
yet He shows mercy unto thousands of them that
love Him and keep His commandments. In the
later pages of the Old Testament psalmists vie
with prophets in developing the figure in every
detail of its application. Throughout all, the
complaint of the Lord is: "Surely as a wife
treacherously departeth from her husband, so
have ye dealt treacherously with Me, O house of
Israel, saith the Lord " (Jer. iii. 20). Throughout
all. He pleads His changeless though outraged
love for them. If He threatens that He will
judge them as women that break wedlock are
judged, and will bring upon them the blood of
fury and jealousy (Ezek. xvi. 38), He adds:
'* Nevertheless I will remember My covenant with
thee in the days of thy youth, and I will estab-
lish unto thee an everlasting covenant Then
shalt thou remember thy ways, and be ashamed
. . . when I have forgiven thee all that thou hast
done, saith the Lord God" (Ezek. xvi. 60-63).
Throughout all, thus, there throbs the expression
of that deep, appropriating love to which pun-

126 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

ishment is strange work, and which yearns to
recover the fallen and restore them to favor and
honor. Its hopes run forward in anticipation to
that happy day when the wandering one shall
listen once again to the alluring words of love
spoken to her heart, and once more turn and call
the Lord Ishi, " My husband." "And in that day,"
the Lord hastens to declare, " in that day will I
make a covenant for them with the beasts of the
field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the
creeping things of the ground : and I will break
the bow and the sword and the battle out of the
land, and will make them to lie down safely.
And I will betroth thee unto Me for ever ; yea I
will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness, and
in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in mer-
cies. I will even betroth thee unto Me in faith-
fulness : and thou shalt know the Lord " (Hosea
ii. 18-20).

In its general meaning, thus, our text is gen-
eral Bible-teaching. It announces nothing which
had not been the possession of God's people
concerning His love for them from the days of
old. Its message to us is just the common mes-
sage of the whole Scripture revelation, in Old and
New Testament alike. But it has its own peculi-
arities in expressing this one great common mes-

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST 127

sage of God's yearning love for His people. And
possibly there may be found a special lesson for
us in these peculiarities.

The first of them which claims our attention is
the intense energy of the expression which is
used here to declare the love of God for his err-
ing people. He is said to " yearn for us, even
unto jealous envy."

Modes of speech sufficiently strong had been
employed in the prophets of the Old Testament,
in the effort to communicate to men the vehe-
mence of God's grief over their sin and the ardor
of His longing to recover them to Himself. The
simple attribution of the passion of jealousy to
Him one would fancy a representation forcible
enough. And this representation is heightened
in every conceivable way. Even in Exodus
(xxxiv. 14) we meet it in the strengthened form
which declares that the very name of God
is Jealous — " for the Lord, whose name is Jealous,
is a jealous God " — as if this were the character-
istic emotion which expressed His very being.
Nahum tells us that " the Lord is a jealous God
and avengeth ; the Lord avengeth and is full of
wrath " (Nahum i. 2). And in Zechariah we read
that the Lord is "jealous for Zion with great

128 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

jealousy, and He is jealous for her with great
fury " (Zech. viii. 2).

But the language of James has an intensity
which rises above all Old Testament precedent
Not only does the verb he uses express the idea
of eager longing as strongly as it is possible to
express it; but its already strong emphasis is still
further enhanced by an adverbial addition which
goes beyond all usage. The verb is that which
is employed by the Greek translators of the Forty-
second Psalm: "As the hart panteth after the
water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O
God." So, with the thirst of the famishing hart
for water — so, says James, does God pant after
His people whose minds wander from Him. The
adverb is one which often occurs in the classics
to express the feeling which one is apt to cherish
toward a rival ; but it is not the ordinary active
word for jealousy which is frequently elsewhere
applied to God in the Scriptures, but a term of
deeper passion which is never elsewhere applied
to God, and which is expressive rather of the
envious emotion which tears the soul as it con-
templates a rival's success. So, with this sicken-
ing envy, says James, God contemplates our
dallying with the world and the world's pleas-
ures. He envies the world our love — the love

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST 129

due to Him, pledged to Him, but basely with-
drawn from Him and squandered upon the world.
The combined expression is, you will see, aston-
ishingly intense. God is represented as panting,
yearning, after us, even unto not merely jealousy,
but jealous envy. Such vehemence of feeling in
God is almost incredible; and some commenta-
tors, indeed, refuse to believe that it can be
ascribed to Him and declare the anthropomor-
phism involved to be altogether too extreme.

Let us not, however, refuse the blessed assur-
ance that is given us. It is no doubt hard to
believe that God loves us. It is doubtless harder
to believe that He loves us with so ardent a love
as is here described. But He says that He does.
He declares that when we wander from Him and
our duty toward Him, He yearns after us and
earnestly longs for our return ; that He envies the
world our love and would fain have it turned
back to Himself. What can we do but admir-
ingly cry, Oh, the breadth and length and height
and depth of the love of God which passes
knowledge ! There is no language in use among
men which is strong enough to portray it. Strain
the capacity of words to the utmost and still they
fall short of expressing the jealous envy with
which He contemplates the love of His people
9

I30 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION"

for the world, the yearning desire which possesses
Him to turn them back to their duty to Him.
It is this inexpressibly precious assurance which
the text gives us; let us, without doubting,
embrace it with hearty faith.

Another peculiarity of the text lies in the clear-
ness with which it distributes the object of this
great love of God into individuals.

When the Scriptures make use of the figure
of marriage to reveal God's love to His people,
it IS commonly His people as a body which they
have in mind. It is, in the Old Testament, the
" house of Israel " whom Jehovah has chosen to
be His wife; in the New Testament it is the
church which is the bride, the Lamb's wife.
Individuals, as members in particular of the body
of Israel or of the church, partake of its fortunes,
share in the love poured out upon it, and con-
tribute by their lives to the foulness of its sin or
to the beauty of its holiness. It is only as the
members are holy that the church can be that
glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or
any such thing, but holy and without blemish,
which Christ is to present to Himself at the last
day. But, though the individuals thus share in
the love and glory of the church, it is the church

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST 131

itself and not the individual which is prevailingly
represented as the bride of the Lamb. Only
occasionally, in the application of the figure, do
the individuals seem to be prominently in mind
(Ps. Ixxiii. 27 ; Rom. vii. 4).

In our present passage, however, the reference
is directed to the individual and not to the church
as a body. It is the individual Christian who is
in covenant vows to God, and who is forgetting
these vows, when in the prosecution of his pleas-
ures he strives and fights his fellow-man, instead
of depending on God's love to fulfill all his wants.
It is the individual who is warned that he is
guilty of spiritual adultery when he permits the
least shade of love of the world to enter his
heart ; and that the cherishing of such love even
in thought is an act of enmity against God. It
is the individual who is assured that God jeal-
ously envies the world the love which He gives it,
and yearns after the return of His love to Him,
the Lord, who " longeth for him even unto jealous
envy."

This clear individualization of the great truth
which the passage enshrines is surely fraught
with a very precious message to us. Not the
church merely — we might believe that, knowing
ourselves only as unworthy members of what is

132 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

in idea a glorious church: not the church merely,
but you and I are, each, declared to be cove-
nanted with the Lord in the bonds of this holy
and intimate relationship, the recipients of His
loving care as His bride, nay, the objects of His
changeless and yearning affection. Surely this
too is an inexpressibly precious assurance, which
we would fain, without doubting, embrace with
hearty faith.

A third peculiarity of the text lies in its direct
attribution of this appropriating love of God for
His chosen ones to God the Holy Spirit.

In this the text is almost unique in the whole
range of Scripture. In the Old Testament it is
Jehovah, the covenant God, who represents the
covenanted union between Israel and Himself
under the figure of a marriage. It is Jehovah
whose name is Jealous; and whose jealousy burns
unto envy as he contemplates the unfaithful-
ness of Israel. In the New Testament it is pre-
vailingly Christ, the Lamb, who has taken the
Church unto Himself as His bride; and who
loves and cherishes His Church as a husband
loves and cherishes his wife. But in our present
passage it is specifically God the Holy Spirit who
is represented as the subject of this envious jeal-

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST 133

ousy and this yearning affection. " Or think ye
that it is a vain and empty saying of Scripture,
that the Spirit which He made to dwell in us
yearneth jealously?"

And surely it is a great gain from the point of
view of the Christian life to have this explicit
revelation of the heart of the indwelling Spirit.
What James tells us is that it is God the Holy
Spirit, whom God has caused to dwell within us,
who is the subject of the unchanging love of
God*s people which is expressed in these words
of unexampled strength, as a yearning after us
even to jealous envy. Surely this too is an inex-
pressibly precious assurance which we would
fain, without doubting, embrace with hearty faith.

And now let us try to realize, in the simplest
possible way, what is involved for us in this pre-
cious assurance.

Primarily, then, as we have seen, James makes
known to us here the precious fact that the Holy
Spirit loves us.

It is easy to say that this is so far from being
a new fact to which the Christian consciousness
is unwonted, that it is necessarily implicated in
the fundamental Christian postulate that God is

134 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

love. As the Godhead is one and cannot be
divided, so each person of the Godhead must be
the love that God is. The Father is no more
love, and the Son is no more love, than the Spirit
is love ; and when we confess that God is love,
we confess by necessary implication that the Holy
Spirit, who is God, is Himself love. But it will
be far more to the point for us to ask ourselves
in all seriousness if we have been in the habit
of realizing to ourselves the blessed fact that the
Holy Spirit loves us. This does not seem to be
a form of gratulation in which Christians are
accustomed to felicitate themselves.

Our prayers, our jubilations, thank God, also
our hearts, are full of the precious facts that the
Father loves us and the Son loves us. " For God
so loved the world, that He gave His only begot-
ten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should
not perish, but have eternal life." " Behold what
manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon
us, that we should be called children of God."
" Herein is love, not that we loved God, but
that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins." "God commendeth
His own love toward us, in that, while we were
yet sinners, Christ died for us." "God, being
rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST 135

loved us, even when we were dead through our
trespasses, quickened us together with Christ."
"The love of Christ which passeth knowledge."
" Christ also loved you and gave Himself up
for us an offering and a sacrifice to God." " Here-
by know we love, because He laid down His
life for us." "Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
" Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ?"
It is in such texts as these that the Christian
soul finds the heavenly manna, on which it
feeds and grows strong. It is with these glorious
truths — that God the Father loves us, that Christ
the Saviour loves us — that we comfort one another
in times of darkness and trial ; it is these glorious
truths that we whisper to our own souls in their
moments of weakness and dismay. We never
let them escape us. We dare never let them
escape us. For to lose hold of them is to feel the
light fade from life and the dense darkness of
hopeless agony settle down on the heart.

But do we so constantly remember that the
Holy Spirit loves us ? Do we comfort ourselves
so often and so fully with this great fact ? We
feel the lift of John's appeal : " Beloved, if God
so loved us, we also ought to love one another."
We feel the force of Paul's declaration that " the

136 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

love of Christ constraineth us." But do we feel
equally the force of Paul's similar appeal : " Now
I beseech you, brethren, by the love of the Spirit,
that you strive together with me in your prayers
to God " ? Are we equally impelled to a life of
single-hearted devotion to God by James' chal-
lenge : " Or think ye that it is a vain and empty
saying of Scripture, that the Spirit which God
hath made to dwell in us yearneth after us
even unto jealous envy " ? Oh, does it not too
often pass over our minds as if it were really a
vain and empty saying ? The love of the Spirit !
The yearning, jealous love of the Holy Ghost for
our souls! May it come to mean much to us
and be ever in our hearts to strengthen and com-
fort them.

Doubtless the comparative infrequency with
which we meditate upon the love which the Holy
Ghost bears to us is due partly to the infrequency
with which the love of the Spirit is expressly
mentioned in Scripture. It is also, however, due
partly, doubtless, to our not habitually connecting
in our minds the work of the Holy Spirit in the
salvation of men with its motive in His ineffable
love for us.

We ascribe to God, the Father, the plan of sal-

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST 137

vation ; and to God, the Son, the impetration of
redemption under that plan; and to God, the
Holy Ghost, the application to the souls of sinners
of the redemption procured by the Son. We rec-
ognize the necessity of the office-work of each
person of the blessed Trinity if souls are to be
saved. And, if we face the point now and then,
we recognize that each step in the blessed prog-
ress of salvation is equally the pure outflow of
the incredible love of God — ^the striving of the
Holy Ghost with the sinner in bringing salvation
to fruition in the heart, no less than the humilia-
tion of the Son of God even unto the death of
the cross, or the gift by the Father of His only
begotten to suffer and die for a lost world. But
we are accustomed in our thought of it to con-
nect the saving work of the Father and the Son
with the love which dictated it. We are accus-
tomed to say to ourselves with never ceasing
wonder that " God so loved the world, that He
gave His only begotten Son," that " greater love
hath no man than this, that a man lay down his
life for his friends." And we, perhaps, are not so
much accustomed to connect in thought the sav-
ing work of the Holy Spirit with the love which
no less dictated it. We are, perhaps, not so much
accustomed to say to ourselves that herein is love

138 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

manifested, that the Spirit of all holiness is will-
ing to visit such polluted hearts as ours, and even
to dwell in them, to make them His home, to
work ceaselessly and patiently with them, gradu-
ally wooing them — through many groanings and
many trials — to slow and tentative efforts toward
good ; and never leaving them until, through His
constant grace, they have been won entirely to
put off the old man and put on the new man
and to stand new creatures before the face of
their Father God and their Redeemer Christ.
Surely herein is love! But we are perhaps
too little accustomed to remind ourselves explic-
itly of it

Yet what immense riches of comfort and joy
this great truth has in it for our souls! Were
the work of the application of Christ's redemp-
tion to us performed by some mere servant-agent,
indifferent to us, and intent only on perfunctorily
fulfilling the task committed to him, we might
well tremble for our salvation. We know our
hearts. We know how sluggish they are in
yielding to the drawings of the Spirit. We know
how slow they are to forsake sin; how deter-
mined they are to cling to their darling iniquities.
Ah, well may James declare that our pleasures
have taken up arms and pitched their camps in

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST 139

our members, ready for " war to the knife," as we
say, with every good impulse ; and Paul, in like
manner, that the law in our members arrays itself
in war against the new desires implanted in the
mind by the Spirit, so that in view of this condi-
tion he is impelled to cry out, O wretched man
that I am, who shall deliver us from the body of
this death ! Surely the heart of every one of us
has often echoed that cry of natural despair.
Were these hearts of ours committed to the
molding of one who wrought with us only under
a sense of duty and not as upheld by untiring
love toward us, what hope of the issue could we
cherish ? There is no possible deed of ingrati-
tude, opposition, rejection toward the Spirit's work
in us of which we have not been guilty. Can we
hope that He will bear with us ? It is only such
love that He cherishes toward us — the model of
that love which Paul so sympathetically describes,
that suffereth long, is not provoked, beareth all
things, hopeth all things, believeth all things,
endureth all things — ^that could possibly outlive
our shameful disregard and our terrible backslid-
ing. It is only because the Spirit which He hath
caused to dwell in us yearneth for us even unto
jealous envy, that He is able to continue His
gracious work of drawing our souls to God amid

HO THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

the incredible oppositions which we give to His
holy work.

And here we must not omit to take particular
notice of another aspect of the same great fact,
as James brings it before us. Observe how he
here designates the Spirit, whose great love he
has portrayed. It is as the "Spirit whom God
has caused to dwell within us." It is He, the
indwelling Spirit, who, we are told, yearns for us
with envious jealousy whenever the world obtains
a hold upon our hearts.

God in heaven loves us ; and it is because God
in heaven loves us that He has given His Son to
die for us. Christ on the cross — nay, rather,
Christ who once hung on the cross, but is now
seated at the right hand of God, a Prince and a
Saviour — loves us ; and it is because Christ loves
us that He died for us, and is now become head
over all things for His Church, that all things
may work together for good to those who love
Him. But the Spirit in our hearts also loves
us. Infinite love is above us; infinite love is
around us ; and, praise be to God ! infinite love
dwells in us. See how close the love of God is
brought to us. It is made to throb in our very
hearts; to be shed abroad within us; and to

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST 141

work subtly upon us, drawing us to itself, from
within.

In the light of this great truth we may perhaps
better understand the meaning of Paul when,
depicting the conflict going on within the heart
of the newborn man, he declares that the flesh
lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against
the flesh, as if the Spirit were part of our very
being — the only part of our being which lusts
against evil, " that we may not do the things that
we would." And again in its light, we may per-
haps understand somewhat better that other great
passage in which Paul declares that when we
pray the Holy Spirit maketh intercession for us
with groanings which cannot be uttered. Our
prayers may be feeble because our hatred against
sin is weak. But there is One within us, who
loves us with an imperishable love and hates sin
with a perfect hatred ; and His groans of longing
for our release from the bondage of sin reinforce
our weak cries. His unutterable groans for us
sinners are the measure of His unutterable love
for us sinners.

And let us not fail to gather the full gracious
meaning of the word "dwell" here. It is the
word to denote permanent habitation in contra-

142 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

distinction from temporary sojourning. God has
caused the Spirit of love not to visit our hearts
merely, but to abide there ; not to tarry there for
a season merely, tentatively, as it were, and on
trial, but to make His home there, to "settle"
there, to establish His permanent dwelling there.
" Think ye," asks James, " that it is a vain and
empty saying of Scripture, that the Spirit which
God hath caused to settle permanently in our
hearts as His home, yearneth after us with jealous
envy?"

Ah, when God has covenanted with the soul,
it is with no half-heartedness ! When He repre-
sents Himself as having taken us to Himself as a
husband takes a wife in the bonds of a holy cov-
enant, it is no temporary union which He has in
mind. He leaves no prudent way of escape open
to Himself. With Him the covenant is for ever.
He sends the Spirit into our hearts — to make
His home there. And it is because, on His part,
the covenant is an eternal covenant, and He takes
up His abode within us for ever, that, when we
treat it with levity and lightly break its bonds,
He yearneth after us with jealous envy, and can-
not be content until He has won us absolutely
back to Himself and has eradicated from our
hearts every particle of longing for the world and

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST 143

its sinful pleasures. What a great, what an
enheartening truth we have here! God dwells
within us, dwells there permanently, and this
indwelling God loves us, loves us with such
changeless love that even our insults to His love
are met by Him only with yearning after us even
unto jealous envy.

How deeply we are touched by the stories
which reach us from time to time of the persist-
ent love of a father for a wandering son, or of a
brother for a sinful brother, or of a friend for a
friend who has fallen into evil courses ; of how it
follows the reckless sinner into all his wicked
associations, enters the saloon with him, the
gambling hell, the brothel; argues, pleads, uses
kindly violence, seeks every mode of restoration
possible with unwearied patience and persistency,
is not cast off by curses or by blows, or by any
evil entreatment, but pursues with constancy and
unfailing tact and tender perseverance its one
changeless purpose of rescue. Here is the faint
reflection of the Holy Spirit's love for our souls.

See us steeped in the sin of the world ; loving
evil for evil's sake, hating God and all that God
stands for, ever seeking to drain deeper and deeper
the cup of our sinful indulgence. The Spirit fol-
lows us unwaveringly through all. He is not

144 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

driven away because we are sinners. He comes
to us because, being sinners, we need Him. He
is not cast off because we reject His loving offices.
He abides with us because our rejection of Him
would leave us helpless. He does not condition
His further help upon our recognizing and return-
ing His love. His continuance with us is condi-
tioned only on His own love for us. And that
love for us is so strong, so mighty, and so con-
stant that it can never fail. When He sees us
immersed in sin and rushing headlong to destruc-
tion. He does not turn from us, He yearns for us
with jealous envy.

It is in the hands of such love that we have
fallen. And it is because we have fallen into the
hands of such love that we have before us a future
of eternal hope. When we lose hope in our-
selves, when the present becomes dark and the
future black before us, when effort after effort has
issued only in disheartening failure, and our sin
looms big before our despairing eyes ; when our
hearts hate and despise themselves, and we
remember that God is greater than our hearts and
cannot abide the least iniquity ; the Spirit whom
He has sent to bring us to Him still labors with
us, not in indifference or hatred, but in pitying
love. Yea, His love burns all the stronger because

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST 145

we so deeply need His help : He is yearning after
us with jealous envy.

Among the legends which popular fancy has
woven around the memory of Francis of Assisi,
we are told that he was riding along one day in
the first joy of his new-found peace, his mind
possessed with a desire to live over again the life
of absolute love which his Divine master had
lived in the earth. Suddenly, " at a turn in the
road, he found himself face to face with a leper.
The frightful malady had always inspired in him
an invincible repulsion. He could not control a
movement of horror, and by instinct he turned
his horse in another direction." Then came the
quick revulsion of feeling. "He retraced his
steps and, springing from his horse, he gave to
the astounded sufferer all the money that he had ;
and then kissed his hand, as he would have done
to a priest." A new era in his spiritual life had
dawned. He visited the lazaretto itself and with
largesses of alms and kindly words sought to
bring some brightness of the outside world into
that gloomy retreat. Still his love grew stronger.
The day came when he made the great renuncia-
tion and stood before men endued with naught
but the love of Christ. Now no temporary laza-
retto contented him. He must dwell there as a

146 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

permanent sunbeam to the distressed. He came
now with empty hands, but with a heart full to
overflowing with compassion. "Taking up his
abode in the midst of the afflicted he lavished
upon them a most touching care, washing and
wiping their sores, all the more gentle and radiant
as the sores were more repulsive."

It is not given to man, of course, even to com-
prehend, much less to embody in a legend like
this, all the richness of God's mysterious love for
sinners. But in such legends as this we may
catch some faint shadow of what the Spirit's love
for us means. No leprous sores can be as foul in
the eyes of the daintiest bred as sin is foul in the
eyes of the Holy Ghost. We cannot conceive
of the energy of His shrinking from its polluting
touch. Yet He comes into the foul lazaretto of
our hearts and dwells there — ^permanently lives
there ; not for Himself, or for any good to accrue
to Himself; but solely that He may cleanse us
and fit us to be what He has made us, the Bride,
the Lamb's wife.

Could there be presented to us a more com-
plete manifestation of the infinite love of God
than is contained in this revelation of the love of
the Spirit for us? God is love. Does not this

THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST 147

gfreatest of all revelations take on a new bright-
ness and a new force to move our souls when we
come to realize that not only is the Father love,
and the Son love, but the Spirit also is love ; and
so wholly love that, despite the foulness of our
sin. He yearneth for us even unto jealous envy ?

Could there be given us a higher incentive to
faithfulness to God than is contained in this reve-
lation of the love of the Spirit for us ? Are our
hearts so hard that they are incapable of respond-
ing to the appeal of such a love as this ? Can
we dally with the world, seek our own pleasures,
forget our duty of love to God, when the Spirit
which He hath made to dwell in us is yearning
after us even unto jealous envy ?

Could there be afforded us a deeper ground of
encouragement in our Christian life than is con-
tained in this revelation of the love of the Spirit
for us ? Is hope so dead within us that it is no
longer possible for us to rest with confidence
upon such love? Can we doubt what the end
shall be— despite all that the world can do to
destroy us, and the flesh and the devil — when we
know that the Spirit which He hath made to
dwell in us is yearning after us even unto jealous
envy?

Could there, then, be granted us a firmer foun-

148 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

dation for the holy joy of Christian assurance
than is contained in this revelation of the love
of the Spirit for us ? Is faith grown so weak that
it cannot stay itself on the almighty arm of God ?
Surely, surely, though our hearts faint within us,
and the way seems dark, and there are lions roar-
ing in the path, we shall be able to look past
them all to the open gates of pearl beyond, when-
soever we remember that the Spirit which He
hath made to dwell within us is yearning after us
even unto jealous envy !

VI
THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT

)

VI

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT

" For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons
of God."— Rom. viii. 14. (R. V.)

These words constitute the classical pas-
sage in the New Testament on the great sub-
ject of the " leading of the Holy Spirit." They
stand, indeed, almost without strict parallel in
the New Testament. We read, no doubt, in
that great discourse of our Lord's which John
has preserved for us, in which, as He was about
to leave His disciples, He comforts their hearts
with the promise of the Spirit, that " when He,
the Spirit of truth, is come. He shall guide you
into all the truth." But this " guidance into truth "
by the Holy Spirit is something very different
from the " leading of the Spirit " spoken of in our
present text ; and it is appropriately expressed by
a different term. We read also in Luke's account
of our Lord's temptation that He was " led by
the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days,
being tempted of the devil," where our own term

isx

152 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

is used. But though undoubtedly this passage
throws light upon the mode of the Spirit's opera-
tion described in our text, it can scarcely be
looked upon as a parallel passage to it. The
only other passage, indeed, which speaks dis-
tinctly of the " leading of the Spirit " in the sense
of our text is Gal. v. i8, where in a context very
closely similar Paul again employs the same
phrase : " But if ye are led by the Spirit, ye are
not under the law." It is from these two passages
primarily that we must obtain our conception of
what the Scriptures mean by " the leading of the
Holy Spirit."

There is certainly abundant reason why we
should seek to learn what the Scriptures mean by
"spiritual leading." There are few subjects so
intimately related to the Christian life, of which
Christians appear to have formed, in general, con-
ceptions so inadequate, where they are not even
positively erroneous. The sober-minded seem
often to look upon it as a mystery into which
it would be well not to inquire too closely. And
we can scarcely expect those who are not gifted
with sobriety to guide us in such a matter into
the pure truth of God. The consequence is that
the very phrase, " the leading of the Spirit," has
come to bear, to many, a flavor of fanaticism.

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT 153

Many of the best Christians would shrink with
something like distaste from affirming themselves
to be "led by the Spirit of God"; and would
receive with suspicion such an averment on the
part of others, as indicatory of an unbalanced
religious mind. It is one of the saddest effects
of extravagance in spiritual claims that, in reac-
tion from them, the simple-minded people of God
are often deterred from entering into their privi-
leges. It is surely enough, however, to recall us
to a careful searching of Scripture in order to
learn what it is to be " led by the Spirit of God,"
simply to read the solemn words of our text :
" As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these
are sons of God." If the case be so, surely it
behooves all who would fain believe themselves
to be God's children to know what the leading
of the Spirit is.

Let us, then, commit ourselves to the teaching
of Paul, and seek to learn from him what is the
meaning of this high privilege. And may the
Spirit of truth here too be with us and guide us
into the truth.

Approaching the text in this serious mood, the
first thing that strikes us is that the leading of
the Spirit of God of which it speaks is not some-

154 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

thing peculiar to eminent saints, but something
common to all God's children, the universal pos-
session of the people of God.

" As many as are led by the Spirit of God,"
says the apostle, " these are sons of God." We
have here in effect a definition of the sons of
God. The primary purpose of the sentence is
not, indeed, to give this definition. But the state-
ment is so framed as to equate its two members,
and even to throw a stress upon the coextensive-
ness of the two designations. " As many as are
led by the Spirit of God, these and these only
are sons of God." Thus, the leading of the
Spirit is presented as the very characteristic of
the children of God. This is what differentiates
them from all others. All who are led by the
Spirit of God are thereby constituted the sons of
God ; and none can claim the high title of sons
of God who are not led by the Spirit of God.
The leading of the Spirit thus appears as the con-
stitutive fact of sonship. And we dare not deny
that we are led by God's Spirit lest we therewith
repudiate our part in the hopes of a Christian
life. In this aspect of it our text is the exact
parallel of the immediately preceding declaration,
which it thus takes up and repeats : " But if any one
hath not the Spirit of Christ, that one is not His."

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT 155

It is obviously a mistake, therefore, to look
upon the claim to be led by God's Spirit as an
evidence of spiritual pride. It is rather a mark
of spiritual humility. This leading of the Spirit
is not some peculiar gfift reserved for special sanc-
tity and granted as the reward of high merit
alone. It is the common gfift poured out on all
God's children to meet their common need, and
is the evidence, therefore, of their common weak-
ness and their common unworthiness. It is not
the reward of special spiritual attainment; it is
the condition of all spiritual attainment In its
absence we should remain hopelessly the children
of the devil ; by its presence alone are we con-
stituted the children of God. It is only because
of the Spirit of God shed abroad in our hearts
that we are able to cry, Abba, Father.

We observe, therefore, next that the end in
view in the spiritual leading of which Paul speaks
is not to enable us to escape the difficulties, dan-
gers, trials or sufferings of this life, but specific-
ally to enable us to conquer sin.

Had the former been its object, it might indeed
have been a special grace granted to a select few
of God's children, and its possession might have
separated them from among their brethren as the

156 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

peculiar favorites of the Deity. Since, however,
the latter is its object, it is the appropriate gift of
all those who are sinners, and is the condition of
their conquest over the least of their sins. In
the preceding context Paul discovers to us our
inherent sin in all its festering rottenness. But
he discovers to us also the Spirit of God as dwell-
ing in us and forming the principle of a new life.
It is by the presence of the Spirit within us alone
that the bondage in which we are by nature held
to sin is broken; that we are emancipated from
sin and are no longer debtors to live according
to the flesh. This new principle of life reveals
itself in our consciousness as a power claiming
regulative influence over our actions ; leading us,
in a word, into holiness.

If we consider our life of new obedience from
the point of view of our own activities, we may
speak of ourselves as fighting the good fight of
faith; a deeper view reveals it as the work of
God in us by His Spirit. When we consider
this Divine work within our souls with refer-
ence to the end of the whole process we call
it sanctification; when we consider it with refer-
ence to the process itself, as we struggle on day
by day in the somewhat devious and always
thorny pathway of life, we call it spiritual lead-

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT 157

ing. Thus the " leading of the Holy Spirit " is
revealed to us as simply a synonym for sanctifica-
tion when looked at from the point of view of the
pathway itself, through which we are led by the
Spirit as we more and more advance toward that
conformity to the image of His Son, which God
has placed before us as our great goal.

It is obvious at once then how grossly it is
misconceived when it is looked upon as a pecu-
liar guidance granted by God to His eminent ser-
vants in order to insure their worldly safety,
worldly comfort, even worldly profit. The lead-
ing of the Holy Spirit is always for good ; but it
is not for all goods, but specifically for spiritual
and eternal good. I do not say that the good
man may not, by virtue of his very goodness, be
saved from many of the suflFerings of this life and
from many of the failures of this life. How many
of the evils and trials of life are rooted in specific
sins we can never know. How often even failure
in business may be traced directly to lack of bus-
iness integrity rather than to pressure of circum-
stances or business incompetency is mercifully
hidden from us. Nor do I say that the gracious
Lord has no care for the secular life of His
people. But it surely is obvious that the leading
of the Spirit spoken of in the text is not in order

158 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

to guide men into secular goods ; and it is not to
be inferred to be absent when trials come — suflFer-
ings, losses, despair of this world. It is specific-
ally in order to guide them into eternal good;
to make them not prosperous, not free from care
or suflFering, but holy, free from sin. It is not
given us to save us from the consequences of our
business carelessnesses or incompetences, to take
the place of ordinary prudence in the conduct of
our affairs. It is not given us to preserve us from
the necessity of strenuous preparation for the
tasks before us or from the trouble of rendering
decision in the difficult crises of life. It is given
specifically to save us from sinning ; to lead us in
the paths of holiness and truth.

Accordingly, we observe next that the spiritual
leading of which Paul speaks is not something
sporadic, given only on occasion of some special
need of supernatural direction, but something
continuous, affecting all the operations of a Chris-
tian man's activities throughout every moment
of his life.

It has but one end in view, the saving from sin,
the leading into holiness ; but it affects every
single activity of every kind — ^physical, intellectual,
and spiritual — bending it toward that end. Were

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT 159

it directed toward other ends, we might indeed
expect it to be more sporadic. Were it simply the
omniscence of God placed at the disposal of His
favorites, which they might avail themselves of in
times of perplexity and doubt, it might well be
occasional and temporary. But since it is nothing
other than the power of God unto salvation, it
must needs abide with the sinner, work constantly
upon him, enter into all his acts, condition all his
doings, and lead him thus steadily onward toward
the one great goal.

It is easy to estimate, then, what a perversion
it is of the "leading of the Spirit" when this great
saving energy of God, working continually in the
sinner, is forgotten, and the name is accorded to
some fancied sporadic supernatural direction in
the common offices of life. Let us not forget,
indeed, the reality of providential guidance, or
imagine that God's greatness makes Him careless
of the least concerns of His children. But let us
much more not forget that the great evil under
which we are suffering is sin, and that the great
promise which has been given us is that we shall
not be left to wander, self-directed, in the paths
of sin into which our feet have strayed, but that
the Spirit of holiness shall dwell within us, break-
ing our bondage and leading us into that other

i6o THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

pathway of good works, which God has afore
prepared that we should walk in them.

All of this will be powerfully supported and
the subject perhaps somewhat further elucidated
if we will seek now to penetrate a little deeper
into the inmost nature of the work of the Holy
Spirit which Paul calls here a " leading," by attend-
ing more closely to the term which he has chosen
to designate it when he calls it by this name.
This term, as those skilled in such things tell us,
is one which throws emphasis on three matters :
on the extraneousness of the influence under
which the movement suggested takes place; on
the completeness of the control which this influ-
ence exerts over the action of the subject led;
and on the pathway over which the resultant
progress is made. Let us glance at each of these
matters in turn.

One is not led when he goes his own way. It
is only when an influence distinct from ourselves
determines our movements that we can properly
be said to be led. When Paul, therefore, declares
that the sons of God are " led by the Spirit of
God," he emphasizes, first of all, the distinction
between the leading Spirit and the led sons of

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT i6i

God. As much as this he declares with great
emphasis — that there is a power within us, not
ourselves, that makes for righteousness. And he
identifies this extraneous power with the Spirit of
God. The whole preceding context accentuates
this distinction, inasmuch as its entire drift is to
paint the conflict which is going on within us
between our native impulses which make for sin,
and the intruded power which makes for right-
eousness. Before all else, then, spiritual leading
consists in an influence over our actions of a
power which is not to be identified with ourselves
— either as by nature or as renewed — but which
is declared by the apostle Paul to be none other
than the Spirit of God Himself.

We thoroughly misconceive it, therefore, if we
think of spiritual leading as only a conquest of
our lower impulses by our higher nature, or even
as a conquest by our regenerated nature of the
remnants of the old man lingering in our mem-
bers. Both of these conquests are realities of the
Christian life. The child of God will never be
content to be the slave of his lower impulses, but
will ever strive, and with ultimate success, to live
on the plane of his higher endowments. The
regenerated soul will never abide the remnants of
sin that vex his members, but will have no rest

i62 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

until he eradicates them to the last shred But
these victories of our nobler selves — natural or
gracious — over what is unworthy within us, do
not so much constitute the essence of spiritual
leading as they are to be counted among its fruits.
Spiritual leading itself is not a leading of ourselves
by ourselves, but a leading of us by the Holy
Ghost. The declaration of its reality is the declar-
ation of the reality of the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit in the heart, and of the subjection of the
activities of the Christian heart and life to the
control of this extraneous power. He that is led
by the Spirit of God is not led by himself or by any
element of his own nature, native or acquired, but
is led by the Holy Ghost. He has ceased to be
what the Scriptures call a " natural man," and has
become what they call a "spiritual man "; that is,
to translate these terms accurately, he has ceased
to be a self-led man and has become a Spirit-
led man — a man led and determined in all his
activities by the Holy Ghost. It is this extrane-
ousness of the source of these activities which
Paul emphasizes first of all when he declares that
the sons of God are led by the Spirit of God.

The second matter which is emphasized by his
declaration is the controlling power of the influ-

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT 163

ence exerted on the activities of God's children
by the Holy Spirit. One is not led, in the sense
of our text, when he is merely directed in the way
he should go, guided, as we may say, by one who
points out the path and leads only by going before
in it ; or when he is merely upheld while he him-
self finds or directs himself to the goal.

The Greek language possesses words which
precisely express these ideas, but the apostle
passes over these and selects a term which ex-
presses determining control over our actions.
Some of these other terms are used elsewhere in
the Scriptures to set forth appropriate actions of
the Spirit with reference to the people of God.
For example, our Lord promised His disciples
that when the Spirit of Truth should come. He
should guide them into all the truth. Here a
term is employed which does not express con-
trolling leading, but what we may perhaps call
suggestive leading. It is used frequently in the
Greek Old Testament of God's guidance of His
people, and once, at least, of the Holy Spirit :
"Teach us to do Thy will, for Thou art my
God ; let Thy good Spirit guide us in the land of
uprightness." But the term which Paul employs
in our text is a much stronger one than this. It
is not the proper word to use of a guide who

i64 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

goes before and shows the way, or even of a
commanding general, say, who leads an army.
It has stamped upon it rather the conception of
the exertion of a power of control over the actions
of its subject, which the strength of the led one
is insufficient to withstand.

This is the proper word to use, for example, when
speaking of leading animals, as when our Lord
sent His disciples to find the ass and her colt and
commanded them " to loose them and lead them
to Him" (Matt. xxi. 2); or as when Isaiah declares
in the Scripture which was being read by the
Eunuch of Ethiopia whom Philip was sent to
meet in the desert, " He was led as a sheep to the
slaughter." It is applied to the conveying of sick
folk — as men who are not in a condition to control
their own movements ; as, for example, when the
good Samaritan set the wounded traveler on his
own beast and led him to an inn and took care of
him (Luke x. 34) ; or when Christ commanded
the blind man of Jericho " to be led unto Him "
(Luke xviii. 40). It is most commonly used of
the enforced movements of prisoners; as when
we are told that they led Jesus to Caiaphas to
the palace (John xviii. 28) ; or when we are told
that they seized Stephen and led him into the
council (Acts vi. 12); or that Paul was provided

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT 165

with letters to Damascus unto the synagogues,
" that if he found any that were of the Way, he
might lead them bound to Jerusalem" (Acts
ix. 2). In a word, though the term may, of
course, sometimes be used when the idea of force
retires somewhat into the background, and is
commonly so used when it is transferred from
external compulsion to internal influence — as, for
example, when we are told that Barnabas took
Paul and led him to the apostles (Acts ix. 2), and
that Andrew led Simon unto Jesus (John i. 42) —
yet the proper meaning of the word includes the
idea of control, and the implication of prevailing
determination of action never wholly leaves it

Its use by Paul on the present occasion must
be held, therefore, to emphasize the controlling
influence which the Holy Spirit exercises over the
activities of the children of God in His leading of
them. That extraneous power which has come
into our hearts making for righteousness, has not
come into them merely to suggest to us what we
should do — merely to point out to us from within
the way in which we ought to walk — merely to
rouse within us and keep before our minds certain
considerations and inducements toward righteous-
ness. It has come within us to take the helm
and to direct the motion of our frail barks on the

i66 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

troubled sea of life. It has taken hold of us as a
man seizes the halter of an ox to lead it in the
way which he would have it go ; as an attendant
conducts the sick in leading him to the physician ;
as the jailer grasps the prisoner to lead him to
trial or to the jail. We were slaves to sin; a
new power has entered into us to break that
bondage — but not that we should be set, rudder-
less, adrift on the ocean of life; but that we should
be powerfully directed on a better course, leading
to a better harbor.

Accordingly Paul, when he declares that we
have been emancipated from the law of sin and
of death by the advent of the law of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus into our hearts, does not leave
it so, as if emancipation were all. He adds, "Ac-
cordingly then, we are bound." Though eman-
cipated, still bound ! We are bound; but no longer
to the flesh, to live after the flesh, but to the
Spirit, to live after the Spirit. He hastens, indeed,
to point out that this is no hard bondage, but a
happy one ; that sons is a name better fitted to
express its circumstances than " slaves " — that it
includes childship and heirship to God and with
Christ. But all this blessed assurance operates to
exhibit the happy estate of the service into which
we have been brought, rather than to alter the

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT 167

nature of it as service. The essence of the new
relation is that it also is one of control, though a
control by a beneficent and not a cruel power.
We do not at all catch Paul's meaning therefore,
unless we perceive the strong emphasis which lies
on this fact — that those who are led by the Spirit
of God are under the control of the Spirit of God.
The extraneous power which has come into us,
making for righteousness, comes as a controlling
power. The children of God are not the directors
of their own activities ; there is One that dwells
in them who is not merely their guide, but their
governor and strong regulator. They go, not
where they would, but where He would ; they do
not what they might wish, but what He determines.
This it is to be led by the Spirit of God.

It is to be observed, however, on the other
hand, that although Paul uses a term here which
emphasizes the controlling influence of the Spirit
of God over the activities of God's children, he
does not represent the action of the Spirit as a
substitute for their activities. If one is not led, in
the sense of our text, when he is merely guided,
it is equally true that one is not led when he is
carried. The animal that is led by the attendant,
the blind man that is led to Christ, the prisoner

i68 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

that is led to jail — each is indeed under the con-
trol of his leader, who alone determines the goal
and the pathway ; but each also proceeds on that
pathway and to that goal by virtue of his own
powers of locomotion.

There was a word lying at the apostle's hand
by which he could have expressed the idea that
God's children are borne by the Spirit's power to
their appointed goal of holiness, apart from any
activities of their own, had He elected to do so.
It is employed by Peter when he would inform us
how God gave His message of old to His prophets.
" For no prophecy," he tells us, " ever came by
the will of man : but men spake from God, being
borne by the Holy Ghost." This term, "borne,"
emphasizes, as its fundamental thought, the fact
that all the power productive of the motion sug-
gested is inherent in, and belongs entirely to, the
mover. Had Paul intended to say that God's
children are taken up as it were in the Spirit's
arms and borne, without effort on their own part,
to their destined goal, he would have used this
word. That he has passed over it and made use
of the word " led " instead, indicates that, in his
teaching, the Holy Spirit leads and does not carry
God's children to their destined goal of holiness ;
that while the Spirit determines both the end and

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT 169

the way toward it, His will controlling their action,
yet it is by their effort that they advance to the
determined end.

Here, therefore, there emerges an interesting
indication of the difference between the Spirit's
action in dealing with the prophet of God in im-
parting through him God's message to men, and
the action of the same Spirit in dealing with the
children of God in bringing them into their proper
holiness of life. The prophet is " borne " of the
Spirit ; the child of God is " led." The prophet's
attitude in receiving a revelation from God is
passive, purely receptive; he has no part in it,
adds nothing to it, is only the organ through
which the Spirit delivers it to men; he is taken
up by the Spirit, as it were, and borne along by
Him by virtue of the power that resides in the
Spirit, which is natural to Him, and which, in its
exercise, supersedes the natural activities of the
man. Such is the import of the term used by
Peter to express it. On the other hand, the son
of God is not purely passive in the hands of the
sanctifying Spirit ; he is not borne, but led — that
is, his own efforts enter into the progress made
under the controlling direction of the Spirit ; he
supplies, in fact, the force exerted in attaining the
progress, while yet the controlling Spirit supplies

I70 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

the entire directing impulse. Such is the import
of the term used by Paul to express it. Therefore
no prophet could be exhorted to work out his
own message with fear and trembling ; it is not
left to him to work it out — ^the Holy Spirit works
it out for him and communicates it in all its rich
completeness to and through him. But the chil-
dren of God are exhorted to work out their own
salvation in fear and trembling because they know
the Spirit is working in them both the willing and
the doing according to His own good pleasure.

In order to appreciate this element of the
apostle's teaching at its full value it is perhaps
worth while to observe still further that in his
choice of a term to express the nature of the
Spirit's action in leading God's children the apostle
avoids all terms which would attribute to the
Spirit the power ejnployed in making progress
along the chosen road. Not only does he not
represent us as being carried by the Spirit; he
does not even declare that we are drawn by Him.
There was a term in common use which the
apostle could have used had he intended to ex-
press the idea that the Spirit drags, by physical
force as it were, the children of God onward in
the direction in which He would have them go.
This term is actually used when the Saviour declares

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT 171

that no man can come unto Him except the
Father draw him (John vi. 44) — ^which is as much
as to say that men in the first instance do not and
cannot come to Christ by virtue of any powers
native to themselves, but require the action upon
them of a power from without, coming to them,
drawing their inert, passive weight to Christ, if
they are to be brought to Him at all. We can
identify this act of drawing — " dragging " would
perhaps express the sense of the Greek term none
too strongly — with that act which we call, in our
theological analysis, regeneration, and which we
explain in accordance with the import of this term,
as the monergistic act of God, impinging on a
sinner who is and remains, as far as this act is
concerned, purely passive, and therefore does not
move, but is moved.

Such, however, is not the method of the Spirit's
leading of which Paul speaks in our text. This
is not a drawing or dragging of a passive weight
toward a goal which is attained, if attained at all,
only by virtue of the power residing in the mov-
ing Spirit ; but a leading of an active agent to an
end determined indeed by the Spirit, and along
a course which is marked out by the Spirit, but
over which the soul is carried by virtue of its
own power of action and through its own strenu-

172 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

ous efforts. If we are not borne by the Spirit
out of our sin into holiness with a smooth and
easy movement, almost unnoted by us or noted
only with the languid pleasure with which a child
resting peacefully on its mother's breast may note
its progress up some rough mountain road, so
neither are we dragged by the Spirit as a passive
weight over the steep and rugged path. We are
led. We are under His control and walk in the
path in which He sets our feet. It is His part to
keep us in the path and to bring us at length to
the goal. But it is we who tread every step
of the way ; our limbs that grow weary with the
labor ; our hearts that faint, our courage that fails
— our faith that revives our sinking strength, our
hope that instills new courage into our souls — as
we toil on over the steep ascent.

And thus it is most natural that the third mat-
ter to which Paul's declaration that we are led by
the Spirit of God directs our attention concerns
the pathway over which our progress is made.

One is not led who is unconscious of the road
over which he advances; such a one is rather
carried. He who is led treads the road himself,
is aware of its roughness and its steepness, pants
with the effort which he expends, is appalled by

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT 173

the prospect of the difficulties that open out
before him, rejoices in the progress made, and is
filled with exultant hope as each danger and
obstacle is safely surmounted. He who is led is
in the hands of an extraneous power, of a power
which controls his actions ; but the pathway over
which he is thus led is trodden by his own efforts
— ^by his own struggles it may be — ^and the goal
that is attained is attained at the cost of his own
labor.

When Paul chooses this particular term, there-
fore, and declares that the sons of God are led by
the Spirit, he is in no way forgetful of the ardu-
ous nature of the road over which they are to
advance, or of the strenuous exertion on their
own part by which alone they may accomplish it.
He strengthens and comforts them with the assur-
ance that they are not to tread the path alone ;
but he does not lull them into inertness by sug-
gesting that they are not to tread it. The term
he employs avouches to them the constant and
continuous presence with them of the leading
Spirit, not merely setting them in the right path,
but keeping them in it and leading them through
it ; for it designates not an impulse which merely
initiates a movement in a given direction, but a
continuous influence unbrokenly determining a

174 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

movement to its very goal. But his language does
not promise them relief from the weariness of the
journey, alleviation of the roughness of the road,
freedom from difficulty or danger in its course, or
emancipation from the labor of travel. That they
have been placed in the right path, that they will
be kept continuously in it, that they will attain
the goal — of this he assures them ; for this it is
to be led of the Spirit of God, a power not our-
selves controlling our actions, prevalently direct-
ing our movement to an end of His choice. But
He does not encourage us to relax our own
endeavors ; for he who is led, even though it be
by the Spirit of God, advances by virtue of his
own powers and his own efforts. In a word, Paul
chooses language to express the action of the
Spirit on the sons of God which is in perfect har-
mony with his exhortation to the children of
God to which we have already alluded — to work
out their own salvation with fear and trembling
because they know it is God that is working in
them both the willing and the doing according to
His own good pleasure.

What a strong consolation for us is found in
this gracious assurance — poor, weak children of
men as we are ! To our frightened ears the text

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT 175

may come at first as with the solemnity of a
warning : " As many as are led by the Spirit of
God, these and these only are sons of God." Is
there not a declaration here that we are not God's
children unless we are led by God's Spirit?
Knowing ourselves, and contemplating the course
of our lives and the character of our ambitions,
dare we claim to be led by the Spirit of God ? Is
this life — this life that I am living in the flesh —
is this the product of the Spirit's leading ? Shall
not despair close in upon me as I pass the dread-
ful judgment on myself that I am not led by
God's Spirit, and that I am, therefore, not one of
His sons? Let us hasten to remind ourselves,
then, that such is not the purport nor the purpose
of the text. It stands here not in order to drive
us to despair, because we see we have sin within
us ; but to kindle within us a great fire of hope
and confidence because we perceive we have the
Holy Spirit within us.

Paul, as we have seen, does not forget the sin
within us. Who has painted it and its baleful
power with more vigorous touch? But neither
would he have us forget that we have the Holy
Spirit within us, and what that blessed fact, above
all blessed facts, means. He would not have us
reason that because sin is in us we cannot be

176 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

God's children; but in happy contradiction to
this, that because the Holy Spirit is in us we can-
not but be God's children. Sin is great and pow-
erful ; it is too great and too powerful for us ; but
the Holy Ghost is greater and more powerful than
even sin. The discovery of sin in us might bring
us to despair did not Paul discern the Holy Spirit
in us — who is greater than sin — ^that he may
quicken our hope.

This declaration that frightens us is not written,
then, to frighten, but to console and to enhearten.
It stands here for the express purpose of comfort-
ing those who would despair at the sight of their
sin. Is there a conflict of sin and holiness in
you? asks Paul. This very fact that there is
conflict in you is the charter of your salvation.
Where the Holy Spirit is not, there conflict is
not; sin rules undisputed lord over the life. That
there is conflict in you, that you do not rest in
complacency in your sin, is a proof that the Spirit
of God is within you, leading you to holiness.
And all who are led by the Spirit of God are the
children of God; and if children, then heirs, heirs
of God and joint heirs with Christ Jesus. This
is the purport of the message of the text to us.
Paul points us not to the victory of good over evil,
but to the conflict of good with evil — not to the

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT 177

end but to the process — as the proof of childship
to God. The note of the passage is, thus, not
one of fear and despair, but one of hope and tri-
umph. " If God be for us who can be against
us?" — that is the query the apostle would have
ring in our hearts. Sin has a dreadful grasp upon
us ; we have no power to withstand it. But there
enters our hearts a power not ourselves making
for righteousness. This power is the Spirit of the
most high God. " If God be for us who can be
against us ?" Let our hearts repeat this cry of
victory to-day.

And as we repeat it, let us go onward, in hope
and triumph, in our holy efforts. Let our slack
knees be strengthened and new vigor enter our
every nerve. The victory is assured. The Holy
Spirit within us cannot fail us. The way may be
rough ; the path may climb the dizzy ascent with
a rapidity too great for our faltering feet; dangers,
pitfalls are on every side. But the Holy Spirit is
leading us. Surely, in that assurance, despite
dangers and weakness, and panting chest and
swimming head, we can find strength to go ever
forward.

In these days, when the gloom of doubt if not
even the blackness of despair, has settled down
on so many souls, there is surely profit and

178 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

strength in the certainty that there is a portal of
such glory before us, and in the assurance that
our feet shall press its threshold at the last In
this assurance we shall no longer beat our dis-
heartened way through life in dumb despondency,
and find expression for our passionate but hope-
less longings only in the wail of the dreary poet
of pessimism : —

** But if from boundless spaces no answering voice shall start.
Except the barren echo of our ever yearning heart —
Farewell, then, empty deserts, where beat our aimless wings.
Farewell, then, dream sublime of uncompassable things."

We are not, indeed, relieved from the necessity for
healthful effort, but we can no longer speak of" vain
hopes." The way may be hard, but we can no
longer talk of " the unfruitful road which bruises
our naked feet." Strenuous endeavor may be
required of us, but we can no longer feel that we
are " beating aimless wings," and can expect no
further response from the infinite expanse than
" a sterile echo of our own eternal longings." No,
no — ^the language of despair falls at once from
off our souls. Henceforth our accents will be
borrowed rather from a nobler " poet of faith,"
and the blessing of Asher will seem to be spoken
to us also ; —

THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT 179

' Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.
And as thy days, so shall thy strength be.
There is none like unto God, O Jeshumn,
Who rideth upon the heavens for thy help,
And in His excellency on the skies.
The eternal God is thy dwelling-place,
And underneath are the everlasting arms.''

^

VII

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL

VII

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL

" We give thanks to God always for you all, . . . knowing,
brethren beloved of God, your election. . . . For God appointed
us not unto wrath, but unto the obtaining of salvation through our
Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that ... we should live
together with Him. . . . Faithful is He that calleth you, who will
also do it." — I Thes. i. 2, 4; v. 9, 24. (R. V.)

I HAVE put together here passages from the
beginning and the end of the First Epistle of
Paul to the Thessalonians, because, when taken
together, these passages afford a succinct state-
ment of the gospel which Paul preached to the
Thessalonians, and on the basis of which that
apostolic church was built up. It may be of
special interest to note Paul's gospel to the
Thessalonians because it gives what we may
call his primitive gospel. In observing it we
are contemplating the teaching of Paul at the
beginning of his career.

This first letter to the Thessalonians is the earliest
writing that has come down to us from Paul's pen.
Is it perhaps also, we may possibly ask, a little

183

1 84 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

crude and unformed in its presentation of Paul's
gospel ? A glance at the text is enough to reas-
sure us. The gospel Paul preached to the Thessa-
lonians is the same gospel that he preached to the
Romans, and the same gospel that he laid upon
the hearts of his helpers, Timothy and Titus, to
preach when he should no longer be with them.
There is no lack of firmness in the lines of it as
they are drawn here ; no faltering in the expres-
sion of the details. We cannot, then, approach
its consideration in a purely historical spirit.
The gospel Paul preached in those early days to
the Thessalonians is the gospel which he preached
ever after and is still preaching to-day to the
world. It is the gospel that he commends to us
as well as to the Thessalonians, and we may
without hesitation take it to ourselves as the very
gospel of God.

The external history of the carrying of the
gospel to the Thessalonians is soon told. Paul
had come among them filled with a very vivid
sense of his divine mission, in response to the cry
of the Macedonian man to come over and help
the Greek peoples. He was, more immediately,
fresh from the persecution at Philippi, and was
pressed in spirit from his experience there (ii. 2).
Waxing bold in God he had proclaimed, perhaps

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 185

with unusual fervor — certainly not in word only,
but also in power and in the Holy Ghost and in
much assurance (i. 5) — ^the pure gospel of God's
grace ; and had not only adorned the doctrine he
preached by a life of self-denial for its sake (ii. 9),
but also commended it by a loving eagerness and
tender pertinacity in enforcing it on the attention
of his hearers. Looking back on it all, he de-
scribes his yearning after their souls in the beauti-
ful similes of a nursing mother cherishing her
children (ii. 7), and of a watchful father consoling
and encouraging and testifying to his sons (ii. 11).
The Thessalonians had received this gospel,
pressed upon them with such affectionate assi-
duity, with exceptional readiness and exceptional
zeal (i. 6, 9; ii. 15). They had recognized the
word of the message as what it really was, not
the word of man, but the word of God, and had
set themselves to obey its commands. As fruit-
age of their faith the apostle perceives with joy
the Christian graces their lives had from the first
exhibited — ^their work of faith and labor of love
and patience of hope (i. 3, 8 ; iv. 9).

In writing back to them to strengthen them in
face of the persecution which had meanwhile
fallen upon them, and to exhort them to a con-
tinuous advance in their Christian life, Paul

1 86 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

naturally makes much of the gospel which had
wrought so powerfully among them. He calls it
affectionately his gospel (i. 4), and reverentially
God's gospel (ii. 2), which was his therefore only
because, as God's minister in the gospel of Christ
(v. 2), he had been approved to be intrusted with
it (ii. 4). It is not to himself— his eloquence, the
winningness of his appeal, the force of his argu-
mentation, the clearness of his presentation in
preaching it — but to the gospel itself with which
he was armed, that he ascribes the revolution
that had been wrought in the lives of the Thessa-
lonians. He was God's minister in the gospel of
Christ indeed, but the gospel was itself God's
own word, and it was it that energized, as the
word of God, in them that believed (ii. 13). The
whole value of his mission, he gives us to under-
stand over and over again, resided just in the
gospel he preached — the glad tidings which he
was the instrument in bringing to men.

Now, in the words which we have culled out of
this epistle for our text, we have this blessed gos-
pel succinctly summarized. The core of it con-
sisted, it is plain, in one and only one simple proc-
lamation; a proclamation, however, which when
duly apprehended is not less tremendous in its
import and implications than it is simple in its form

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 187

— the proclamation, to wit, of " salvation through
our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us that we
should live together with Him " ; or, as in another
passage (i. 10) it is even more concisely summed
up, the proclamation of ** Jesus our deliverer from
the coming wrath." " Jesus our deliverer from the
coming wrath !" Let us lay that sentence well to
mind, for in that one sentence is contained the
whole essence of Paul's gospel to the Thessa-
lonians, and the whole essence of his gospel to us.
The whole essence, we say, though not, of
course, the entire structure of it. For, as we have
hinted, there are tremendous implications involved
in this simple proclamation. And these implica-
tions Paul did not leave to the inferences of his
disciples to work out, but made them rather the
subject of explicit instruction. There is, for ex-
ample, a whole doctrine of sin implied, and a
whole doctrine of redemption, and a whole doc-
trine of the application of redemption to sinful
men, and of the relation of Grod's activities to the
activities of man in the saving process. For, be
it observed, to say that the core of Paul's gospel
consisted in the simple proclamation of Jesus our
deliverer from the coming wrath — of salvation
through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us
that we should live with Him — ^is not the same as

1 88 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

to say that he preached Jesus simpliciter. He
did not preach Jesus simpliciter. He preached,
as he elsewhere puts it, Jesus as crucified (i Cor.
ii. 2). And the very essence of his proclamation
as a gospel consists in just this, that it was not
Jesus as man or even as God-man merely that
he held up to men's adoring gaze, but Jesus
"our deliverer from the coming wrath," Jesus
" who died for us that we should live with Him,"
that he offered to their trusting faith. And this
mode of presenting Jesus has, as we say, its tre-
mendous implications — ^implications of such im-
port that without them the proclamation would
be vain, and therefore of such importance as to
be made by Paul the subject of explicit and eager
teaching.

It will doubtless be of interest, and certainly it
is of importance to us in our spiritual apprehen-
sion of the truth, to try to draw out somewhat
fully the essential characteristics of Paul's gospel
as exhibited in this his earliest presentation of it
in written form.

The first thing that strongly impresses us, if
we scrutinize it closely, is that it is emphatically
a gospel of deliverance from sin.

It is a gospel of salvation ; and just because it

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 189

is a gospel of salvation, behind it there lies the
deepest possible sense of sin — active in the
apostle's mind as the basis of his whole gospel,
and frankly presuppposed as also lying in his
readers' minds as a fundamental conviction, the
point of entrance, indeed, of his gospel into their
hearts. This background of sin is manifested in
the words which we have taken as our text, in a
double implication. First, there is the contrast
drawn in the declaration, " For God appointed us
not unto wrath, but unto the obtaining of salva-
tion." Here we see the background of sin as
guilt set before us. Those who do not obtain
this salvation remain under the wrath of God;
and the condition of man wherefrom he requires
salvation is therefore a condition of wrath-deserv-
ing sin. Again, there is the contrast underlying
the declaration, " Faithful is He who calleth you,
who will also do it " — for this great assertion is
made to comfort those who despair of attaining a
blameless life in God's sight. We see here the
background of sin as pollution, producing in-
ability to good. It is only in that God who in
this crisp proverb is declared not only the caller,
but the doer — ^the one who emphatically performs
— ^that man can trust for the cleansing of his
heart. In both aspects of it — guilt and pollution

I90 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

— sin lies everywhere presupposed as the primary
condition of Paul's gospel.

Not least do we perceive its shadow, of course,
in that most pregnant of all the declarations of
the epistle — ^that which sums up Paul's gospel in
the proclan^ation of "Jesus our deliverer from
the coming wrath." It is clear that before all
else this preacher is impressed with the fact that
the wrath of God hangs imminent over mankind,
and that the great black cloud of sin rests lower-
ingly over the entire world It is because of this
sense of sin that the need of deliverance looms
so big in his mind ; and that it is such good news,
such glad tidings to his heart that Jesus is our
deliverer from the coming wrath — that in His
death and resurrection we have salvation from
the wrath that otherwise would be appointed to
us. All Paul's gospel thus rests on sin as its
precedent occasion and the measure of its need,
and the measure, therefore, of its preciousness.

Now it may well be that this sense of sin that
supplied to Paul the dark background against
which the glory of the gospel was thrown out, is
not so deep or so poignant in our modem world
as it was to him or even to his hearers. We hear
a good deal, at all events, to-day of the " vanish-
ing sense of sin"; and indeed, when we look

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 191

around us, we see influences enough at work
which must tend to dull men's feeling of the
depth and heinousness of sin. Is it, perchance,
merely unwitting error into which we fall because
of our as yet insufficient knowledge or wisdom ?
Is it possibly merely the mark of our finiteness,
the indication that we are not as yet all that we
are hereafter to be ? Is it perhaps but the effect
of our insufficient adjustment to our environment,
that will pass away as we fit ourselves more per-
fectly into our place? Is it perhaps just the
mark of our advancing evolution to the perfec-
tion toward which we are constantly progressing
— the condition of our advance, because the gall-
ing of the imperfections yet remaining and the
incitement to effort for their removal ? So men
to-day talk mildly of what to the apostle was sin
in all the hideous suggestions of that word —
rotting corruption of heart, throwing itself up in
an unclean and polluted life on the one hand;
remorseful guilt in the sight of a holy God,
entailing His wrath and His wrath's inevitable
punishment on the other. And we shall never
understand or participate in this gospel which
Paul preached to the Thessalonians, and through
them to us, until we feel with him the fact and
the horror and the helplessness and the hopeless-

192 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

ness of the sin that lies as its prime presupposi-
tion at its base.

We must note then, secondly, that just because
Paul's gospel to the Thessalonians was emphat-
ically a gospel of deliverance from sin, it was as
emphatically an ethical gospel — a. gospel of right-
eousness and holiness of life.

In Paul's own summary of it, in the second
epistle, this characteristic is thrown forward into
very special prominence. The salvation which
he makes the substance of his proclamation he
there describes as finding its whole sphere just in
" sanctification of the Spirit," that is, in the work
of the Holy Spirit framing the life into holiness.
This note is equally a fundamental note of this
first epistle. It is just because of their Christian
graces — ^the revolution thus wrought in their lives
— that Paul thanks God in behalf of his converts
(i. 3). It is that God may establish their hearts
unblamable before our God and Father — that
they may be sanctified wholly, and in spirit and in
soul and in body be preserved blameless (v. 23) —
that he offers his most fervent prayers for them.
He declares with strong asseveration that it is the
will of God for them that they should abstain
from fleshly lusts and be sanctified — ^for, he

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 193

explains with insistent iteration, "God called us
not for uncleanness but in sanctification " (iv. 8).
It is the holy walk alone, he declares, that is
pleasing to God (iv. i); and nothing can exhibit
more plainly one's ignorance of God, he intimates,
than that he should walk in uncleanness — for,
says the apostle, God is our judge in all these
things, and of this he had faithfully forewarned his
readers and testified (iv. 6, 7). Thus the very
essence of their calling is made to consist in holi-
ness of life, and Paul obviously looks upon their
holiness as the direct result of their salvation, or,
let us say rather, as the very matter of their sal-
vation. Their salvation consists just in holiness,
and in so far as it exists at all it is manifested in
the sanctification in which it consists.

So far, then, is Paul from lending any counte-
nance to that odd fancy which has shown itself
here and there through all the ages — that would
look upon religion and morality in divorce, and
esteem the one possible in the absence of the
other — ^that he absolutely identifies the two in his
gospel. This, of course, implies that with him
religion is something more than a mere sentiment
of awe in the presence of a superhuman power ;
and morality something more than mere external
conformity to a standard of human custom or to
13

194 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

laws of life of human exactment. To understand
his standpoint we must apprehend all that is
meant by religion conceived as communion with
the holy God in Christ Jesus the righteous one,
and by morality conceived as Godlikeness, as
conformity to the likeness of God's own Son.
He was not proclaiming an abstract " religion " ;
he was proclaiming the concrete religion of salva-
tion from the wrath of God through Jesus Christ,
and as this salvation is from sin it necessarily is
unto holiness — that holiness without which no
one shall see God. But we must not, on the
other hand, suppose that Paul conceived this sal-
vation and holiness as working its whole process
all at once; or looked upon his converts, if
believers at all, as wholly free from sin. Nothing
is clearer than his solicitude for them as viatares
who have not yet attained the goal; nothing is
more striking than his tenderness with them in
their remaining sin, and the zeal of his exhorta-
tions to them to go on to perfection.

We have not reached the bottom of the matter,
therefore, until we observe, again, that Paul's
gospel of salvation from sin, which he preached
to the Thessalonians, was emphatically an eschat-
ological gospel.

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 195

As we have seen, Paul was under no illusions,
nor did he permit his readers to remain under any
illusions, as to the nature of the life they had
been leading in the world, or as to the need that
they had of "salvation" with reference to this
their life in this world — ^if they would at all be
well-pleasing to God. The change that had come
over them, the new life that had become theirs
when " they turned unto God from idols to serve
the living and true God " — their " work of faith
and labor of love and patience of hope " — formed
the very matter of his thanksgiving to God in
their behalf. And one of the chief objects of his
writing to them now was strenuously to urge
them to increase and abound in love to one
another (iii. 11), to abound more and more in the
holy walk which alone is pleasing to God (iv. 7) ;
and to press on their consciences the fact that
the will of God toward them was their sanctifica-
tion and His call to them was unto sanctification
(iv. 3, 7) ; and at the same time to comfort them,
in their sense of hopeless shortcoming, with the
assurance of the faithfulness and ability of the
God who had called them to complete the good
work unto the end (iv. 23).

Nevertheless this strong insistence upon the
salvation of their earthly life to holiness by no

196 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

means exhausted his saving message ; nor did it
constitute its primary element. His eye is set
steadily not upon the present, but upon the future.
Even this holiness of life on which he lays such
stress is, indeed, not looked upon as primarily for
this life, but rather as having its chief significance
for the life to come. This is distinctly its refer-
ence, for example, in Paul's fervent prayers for
their perfecting in holiness and in his comforting
promises concerning it. We read, "The Lord
make you to increase and abound in love toward
one another, and toward all men, ... to the
end He may stablish your hearts unblamable in
holiness before our God and Father, at the coming
of our Lord Jesus with all His saints" (iii. 12, 13).
We read, " And the God of peace Himself sanc-
tify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul
and body be preserved entire, without blame, at
the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ ; faithful is
He that calleth you, who will also do it " (vs. 23,
24). Thus their very sanctification, on which he
lays such stress and in which he makes the very
matter of their " salvation " to consist, is yet looked
upon by him not in and for itself, but as a means
to an end — as a preparation for something to
come — ^in which something to come their real
salvation finds its culmination and its crown.

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 197

It is emphatically, therefore, an eschatological
salvation that Paul preached to the Thessalonians.
And accordingly this epistle that he writes to
them is a markedly eschatological epistle. His
mind was set upon the future, and he kept his
readers' minds also set upon the future. The sal-
vation he was proclaiming to them was a matter
not of present fruition, but distinctly of hope.
To arm themselves for the temptations of life they
are to put on the breastplate of faith and love,
and for a helmet the hope of salvation (iii. 8).
What he desires in them, then, is an attitude not
of attainment, but of expectation. When they
turned unto God from idols it was to serve the
living and the true God, and to wait for His Son
from heaven (i. 10). Whatever comes to them
here and now, therefore, in the way of enjoyment
of this salvation is prelibation only. The realiza-
tion belongs not here, but yonder ; not now, but
in the time to come.

The hinge of the whole proclamation turns, in a
word, on a doctrine of wrath to come, which im-
pends over all, deliverance from which can be had
only in Jesus Christ — in His death in our behalf
and His resurrection as the firstfruits of those that
sleep. Accordingly the very core of Paul's gos-
pel to the Thessalonians is summed up, as we

198 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

have seen, in the proclamation of Jesus our deliv-
erer from the wrath to come. And when the
apostle would encourage his readers in the pros-
pect of that dread coming of the Lord as a thief
in the night, bringing sudden destruction, as tra-
vail upon a woman with child, on all who have
not obeyed His gospel, it is in the carefully chosen
words, " For God appointed us not unto wrath,
but unto the obtaining of salvation through our
Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us that we should
live with Him." The salvation they hoped for is
thus set pointedly over against the wrath appointed
for mankind outside its reach ; and it is set forth
most sharply as distinctly an eschatological sal-
vation.

Accordingly, also, nothing that in this world
befalls those who are appointed to the obtaining
of this salvation can mar their joy in believing.
Not a life of suffering and persecution. Indeed,
to that too they are appointed (ii. 3). And what-
ever may be the distress and the affliction that
assault them here, there remains a far more ex-
ceeding weight of glory in store for them here-
after. And not death itself For death itself is
but a sleep for those who believe that Christ died
and rose again, and that God will bring them
with Him. And when He shall descend from

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 199

heaven with a shout, with the voice of the arch-
angel and with the trump of God, they shall rise
from the dead to be henceforth for ever with the
Lord.

This is a gospel, obviously, then, not of tempo-
ral salvation from present-day evils, but of eternal
salvation from the endless burnings of the wrath
of God against sin ; not of temporal salvation to
present-day excellences, but of eternal salvation
to everlasting glory. We have heard a good deal
of late of very different import. We have been
repeatedly told that our concern is not to be with
heaven, but with earth ; that we should not talk of
saving our souls, but rather, simply, of saving our
lives ; that to get the life right is the main thing,
and conduct should be the one end of our endeavor.
Let us, it is said, take pains with our adjustments
here and see to it that our lives are clean and our
activities determined by altruistic motives; and
what then remains of duty to man or of hopes or
fears with which he need concern himself? Such
a gospel is plainly out of all relation with Paul's
gospel. So far from beginning and ending with
this life, Paul treats this life as but the " suburb of
the life elysian, whose portal we call death." To
him the real life is there ; we are here but pilgrims
with no abiding city, and should live as becomes

200 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

those whose citizenship is elsewhere — in the city
that has foundations, whose builder and maker is
God. To him all that enters into this life is but a
preparation for the life to come, and should be
consciously looked upon as such and dealt with
as such; certainly not as unimportant, but as
finding its importance not in itself, but in its rela-
tions to the eternity of bliss or woe, in comparison
with which this little stretch of time in which the
drama of the earthly life is played out is as noth-
ing.

We cannot feel surprise, then, when we observe,
once more, that Paul's gospel to the Thessalonians
is distinctly a heterosoteric gospel — ^that is to say,
a gospel that offers us salvation in and by the
work of another; and does not simply propose
for us a way in which we may save ourselves.

Had he in mind merely some amelioration of
the conditions of life in this world — some better
adjustment of society and of the individual life
with respect to the several duties that press on it
in its surroundings — it might have been more
possible for him to look to man himself, in his
native powers of conscience and sensibility and
will, to work the necessary change; though for
Paul, with his deep view of sin and of the paralysis

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 2oi

that sin induces in all activities toward God, even
this would have been really impossible. But when
our eye is set not merely upon the adjustments of
this life, but upon salvation from the dreadful
wrath of God that bums against our sin conceived
as guilt, what hope can be placed in man himself,
or any power he may be thought to possess, to
work out deliverance? Accordingly, Paul preaches
a gospel not fundamentally of effort from within,
but of deliverance from without. Its core, its
substance, as we have repeatedly pointed out, lies
in the great proclamation of " Jesus our deliverer
from the coming wrath," or, more fully stated, in
the offer of "salvation through our Lord Jesus
Christ, who died for us that we should live with
Him."

It is not merely a salvation, then, that Paul
preaches, but above everything else, a Saviour;
and the whole nerve of his gospel lies in the
assumption that salvation to us men, immersed in
sin and cowering under the righteous wrath of
God, were impossible save through this Saviour.
Therein, indeed, lies its whole character as a
gospel, good news, glad tidings. To us, helpless
and hopeless in our sins, unable to free ourselves
from either the tyranny or curse of sin, Paul comes
proclaiming a deliverer, in whose hands lies salva-

202 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

tion. For, as we have already said, it is not Jesus
simpliciter that constitutes the substance of Paul's
gospel, but, as he phrases it elsewhere, Jesus as
crucified {i Cor. ii. 2) — ^Jesus our deliverer from the
coming wrath — salvation through Jesus Christ,
who died for us that we should live together with
Him.

It does not fall in Paul's way in this brief epistle
to give any very full description of how Jesus
saves from wrath. But enough is dropped inci-
dentally to assure us of the outlines of His doctrine
even here. Clearly the stress is thrown not on
our Lord's person, but on His work. Not, of
course, as if His person were treated as of no
importance. He is ever "the Lord" to Paul (i. 6;
ii. IS; iv. i, 2, 15, 16, 17; v. 2, 12, 28), and that
in the most exalted sense ; or, with loving appro-
priation, " our Lord " (i. 2 ; iii. 11,13; v. 9, 24, 28).
He is God's unique Son (i. 10), in whom all Christian
graces move as their sphere (i. 3; iii. 8; iv. i, 2),
and who along with God is the determiner of the
ways of men (iii. 11), and from whom grace is
invoked for men (iii. 13; v. 28). But the entire
stress of the proclamation is thrown on His having
become our deliverer from the coming wrath
specifically through His work on our behalf — and
more particularly by His death for us (v. 10).

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 203

With His death the resurrection of Christ is con-
nected as the object of faith for believers (i. 10;
iv. 14); and with these His second coming from
heaven, to close the drama on earth with a final
assize, is associated as the object of the Christian's
loving expectation (i. 10; ii. 19; iii. 13; iv. 14, 15,
17; V. 2, 23), since in it his salvation will be
completed. But it is especially the death of Christ
that is signalized as the hinge of His saving grace.
He died for us that we should live with Him (v.
10). It is that He died and rose again that we
must believe (iv. 14) if we are to be brought with
Him at the last day. It was, in a word, in His
death that He, whom God has raised from the
dead and who now sits in heaven waiting until
the time of His return shall arrive — the day of the
Lord, which shall come not when men expect it,
but when it suits His ends — has accomplished our
salvation, our deliverance from the wrath to come.
And it is precisely at this point that we reach
the center of the center, the heart of the heart of
Paul's gospel. The glad tidings he bore to the
Thessalonians were tidings of death— of a hideous
death, a death which he can think of only with
horror and with reprobation of those who inflicted
it. "Who hath killed the Lord," he says—
instinctively arranging the words so as to bring

204 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

out the enormity of the deed : " who it was who
the very Lord Himself have killed, Jesus, and
also the prophets " — when his indignation arises
against the Jews who are piling up their sins
always, and over whom the wrath of God is, he
says, hanging like a surcharged cloud ready to
burst. But it was a death, on the other hand,
that in another aspect of it was a glorious death —
a death for us by which we are saved from death,
and Christ is made our deliverer. " He died for
us that we should live with Him !" There is the
very kernel of Paul's gospel.

It will scarcely require emphasizing, therefore,
that Paul's gospel to the Thessalonians was,
further, emphatically a supematuralistic gospel.

A gospel that comes proclaiming salvation to
sinful men by the death of the Son of God — slain,
indeed, by the wicked hands of men to their own
undoing, but slain, on the other hand, in His
own purpose, for the deliverance of His people
from the coming wrath — must needs be super-
naturalistic to the core. And so it is in every
item of Paul's representation of it. The deliver-
ance which it proclaims is a deliverance more
especially, not from earthly ills or even from
earthly suffering, but from the wrath to come.

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 205

And as Paul tears aside the veil that hides the
future, he tears aside with it the veil that covers
the vast reaches of the heavenly places, and bids
us raise our eyes from the earth and the forces
that operate in the ordinary events of the earth,
and look up to that broader stage where the
drama of eternity is being played. The very
eschatological character of the deliverance which
he is announcing involves an emphasis on the
supernatural which is almost extreme. Hence we
are bidden to seek not on earth but in heaven for
our deliverer (i. 10) ; whence also He is to come
in His own time — with all His saints — and those
that have fallen asleep in Jesus are to rise, to be
caught up on the clouds and to meet Him in the
air as He descends from heaven with a shout, with
the voice of the archangel and with the trump of
God. There is surely no chariness of the super-
natural in the painting of this scene ; and this is
the scene of the final act in the drama of salva-
tion.

But no less really supematuralistic is Paul's
conception of those processes in the working out
of the deliverance which appeal less to the out-
ward eye as the wonderful works of God ; but to
his inner apprehension clearly evinced themselves
as nevertheless equally of God. How is this

2o6 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

tremendous deliverance, for example, made the
possession of men ? How was it that he himself
and these Thessalonian Christians to whom he
was writing were made sharers in this great deliver-
ance? To Paul this too was directly of God
He conceived it, in his gospel, as just as super-
natural an occurrence as the blast of the trumpet
of God itself, at that day, which shall raise the
dead This is, indeed, suggested to us in the
words we have taken as our text; or, to speak
more correctly, it is the open assertion of every
one of the clauses which we have brought together
in the text. It is, for example, to God that he
gives thanks for the Christian virtues of his con-
verts. Why ? He tells us himself It is because
the very fact that they are Christians at all, that
they received the gospel he brought to them, as
well as all the subsequent fruits of their new lives,
are proof of their election thereunto. Wherefrom
it is easy to infer that in his view it is of God
alone that man believes in the gospel of deliver-
ance through His dear Son. Again, when he
would prepare his readers for the prospect of the
sudden coming of Christ as avenger upon those
who are not in Him, he does it, not by pointing to
anything that they can do for themselves to escape
the impending doom, but by assuring them that

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 207

they have been appointed of God not to wrath,
but to the obtaining of salvation. And, once
again, when he would encourage them, in their
known shortcomings, yet to hope for a blameless
standing before the judgment seat of God, he does
it, not by appealing to their own powers of will
and action, and so stirring them up to new en-
deavors, but by pointing to God : " Faithful is He
that calleth you, who also will do it." In each
and every case, in fine, it is to God that he raises
their eyes as to the author of all that is good
within them, as well as of all that is good in store
for them. That they are in Christ at all is of
God; that they shall abide in Him is of God;
that they shall be fit to receive the reward in the
end is of God. It is all of God and nothing at all
of it is of themselves. From this plane of high
supernaturalism in the application of the salvation
wrought by the death of Christ the apostle departs
in no single word in the whole epistle.

Participation in this salvation is certainly sus-
pended on the proclamation and acceptance of
the gospel. The very ground of Paul's thanks
to God in behalf of the Thessalonians is that they
had accepted the gospel (i. 2, 6; ii. 13). The
very ground of his joy in being approved of God
to be intrusted with this gospel turns on the ines-

2o8 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

timable importance of its proclamation ; and Paul
spared himself in nothing that he might proclaim
it and proclaim it in its purity and with eager zeal
(ii. i). He distinctly declares, indeed, that the
salvation of men depends on the gospel reaching
them, and makes it accordingly one of the chief
counts in his terrible arraignment of the Jews
that they showed themselves haters of men in
forbidding him to speak to the Gentiles that they
might be saved (ii. i6). Obviously, where the
gospel is not conveyed, there is no salvation;
where the gospel, though conveyed, is not
accepted, there is no salvation.

But it does not at all follow, and Paul does
not permit his readers for a moment to imagine
that in his view it followed, that nothing is
implied in its acceptance beyond opportunity to
hear the gospel and a native movement of the
natural will toward its acceptance. To him, on
the contrary, man as a sinner is not an accepter
of the gospel proclamation. That he ever accepts
it is due proximately to a " call " from God — a
call that operates within, at the center of his
activities ; and ultimately to his selection by God
to be a recipient of His grace. Accordingly, it
is God that Paul thanks for the entrance of his
readers into the Christian life and hope, and it is

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 209

to His election that he traces the fact of their
acceptance of the gospel (ii. 2). And he emphat-
ically declares that it is God that called His con-
verts into His own kingdom and glory (ii. 1 3) —
into His own kingdom and glory, as one would
say, Who else can have the power to dispose
of these but He ? (iv. 7). Accordingly, too, Paul
points his readers to this God who has called us
not for uncleanness, but in sanctification, as to
one who employs a mode of action which will
not let his purpose in the call fail : " Faithful is
He that calleth you, who also will do it." This
" caller," in other words, is emphatically also the
" performer."

So little does there lie in Paul's mind a sense
of inconsistency between the two ideas of salva-
tion coming to men through their acceptance
of the truth and salvation communicated to men
by the appointment of God, that in the central
passage of all, in which the terms of his gospel
are most fully set forth, he brings the two ideas
together in the most significant manner. Fear
not, he says, for God appointed us, "not unto
wrath, but" — ^you will observe he does not say
simply "but unto salvation," but, bringing out
our personal act in receiving it, "but unto the
obtaining, the acquisition of salvation through
14

2IO THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

our Lord Jesus Christ." It is our " acquisition "
— ^this salvation; and it comes to none who do
not receive it. But that we acquire it, that we
receive it by whatever subjective act, is only be-
cause of our appointment thereunto by God ; or,
as Paul puts it in the parallel passage in the
second epistle, because " God has chosen us from
the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of
the Spirit and belief of the truth, whereunto He
called us through the gospel unto the obtaining
of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ " (2 Thes.
ii. 13).

Thus, whenever Paul touches on the matter,
he takes us at once back to God, and exhibits in
the fullest light the inherent supernaturalism of
His gospel. It is a gospel of salvation by the
mighty power of God, prepared for in our eternal
election, applied in our effectual call, completed
by a prevalent keeping, and issuing at last in
entrance into glory — all through the constant
work of God, the faithful performer.

It is plain, therefore, that Paul's gospel to the
Thessalonians was a gospel in which all the glory
is given to God.

Its note from beginning to end is the note of
soli Deo gloria. It is God, we repeat, whom he

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 211

thanks for every Christian grace that he discovers
in his readers. It is to God that he ascribes their
very acceptance of the gospel that was offered
them — ^to God who " called " them into His own
kingdom and glory. It is to God that he ascribes
every step they take in the life of holiness into
which they have been called. It is to God that
he prays that they may be perfected in their sanc-
tification, and presented blameless before the
throne of judgment at the last day. It is to God
that he ascribes their keeping until that dread
event. It is on God's faithfulness — the faithful-
ness of Him that calls — ^that he hangs all his and
his converts' hopes of escaping the wrath they
know they deserve : " Faithful is He that calleth
you, who also will do it"

It is all of God ; nothing is, in the ultimate
analysis, of man. Man provides only the sinner
to be saved: God provides the entire salvation.
And though it is a man that God saves, and
though He saves him, therefore, as a man, and as
a man in the full exercise of all his activities that
belong to him as a man — so that he is saved by
the acceptance of the truth, in a life of holiness,
through a perseverance in sanctification to the
end — ^yet it is always and ever God to whom the
acceptance, the walk, the endurance is due ; who.

212 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

in a word, is working at every step and in every
stage both the willing and the doing in accord-
ance with His own good pleasure. The details
of God's modes of operation in bringing the ves-
sels of His election, whom He has appointed not
to wrath but to the obtaining of salvation, to
entrance into His own kingdom and glory, are
indeed little dwelt upon here. We hear of the
Holy Spirit as the agent in performing the work,
certainly (iv. 8; i. 5, 6; [v. 19]), but only incident-
ally, without pause for explanation. But the fact
of the dependence of the whole process of salva-
tion on the loving will of the Father, who selects
and calls and sanctifies and glorifies whom He
will, is the underlying assumption in every allu-
sion. The soli Deo gloria sounds from end to
end of the epistle as its dominant note.

And therefore, finally, the gospel of Paul to
the Thessalonians is emphatically a gospel of
faith, a gospel of trust.

The terms " believe " and " faith " do not occur
with any especial frequency in this epistle (i. 7 ;
ii. 10, 13; iv. 4; i. 3, 8; iii. 2, 5 ; vi. 10; v. 8).
But the thing is a fundamental note of the whole
letter. Just because the whole of salvation as
proclaimed in Paul's gospel, in each of its steps

PAUUS EARLIEST GOSPEL 213

and stages, runs back to God as its author and
furtherer, a continual sense of humble depend-
ence on God and of loving trust in Him is by it
formed and fostered in every heart into which it
makes entrance. Under the teachings of this
gospel the eye is withdrawn from self and the face
turned upward in loving gratitude to God, the
great giver.

Now this attitude of trust and dependence on
God is just the very essence of religion. In pro-
portion as any sense of self-sufficiency or any
dependence on self enters the heart, in that pro-
portion religion is driven from it. And what
other attitude is becoming or, indeed, possible in
weak and sinful man? Can he wrest salvation
from the unwilling hands of God ? Can he retain
it in his powerless grasp when once it is given
him ? No. If he is to be saved at all, it must be
God that saves him ; and the beginning and middle
and end of his salvation must be alike of God.
Every sinner, when once aroused to the sense of
his sin, knows this for himself — knows it in the
times of his clearest vision and deepest compre-
hension with a poignancy that drives him to despair.
Paul's gospel meets the sinner's need ; it provides
a salvation from without, every step of which is
of God. And it meets also the highest aspirations

214 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

of the saint 'as well : for it justifies and strengthens
his instinctive attitude of trust and his ineradicable
conviction of dependence on the God of all grace.
In one word, Paul's gospel to the Thessalonians,
being through and through a gospel of trust,
reveals itself to us as a gospel, as the only gospel,
in which religion comes to its rights and by which
the heart is drawn upward to the great heart of
God, and is immovably attached to it in adoring
love.

Oh, brethren, was this gospel for the Thessalo-
nians only? Or shall we not hearken to it as
also a gospel for us, to-day ? Are we not, in our
native condition, in like case with those to whom
Paul first taught it? We look within us, and
what do we see there but foul corruption, festering
to spiritual death ? We raise our eyes to heaven,
and what do we observe there but the wrath of
God turned against every doer of iniquity ? We
cast our eyes forward and peer into the future,
and what can we discern as the closing scene of
this drama of time in which our parts are cast
but a dread day of judgment, when we shall
receive the due reward of our wicked hearts and
evil deeds ? Does not the cry rise to the lips of

PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL 215

each of us as that scene takes form more and
more sharply in our vision, —

" That fearful day, that day of speechless dread.
When Thou shalt come, to judge the quick and dead —
I shudder to foresee.
Oh, God, what then shall be V*

Oh, what glad tidings it is to hear of " Jesus our
deliverer from the coming wrath "^-of a salvation
through our Lord Jesus Christ, who has died for
us that we should live with Him, to which, rather
than to this impending wrath, God has appointed
us!

God has appointed us! Let us note that clause
— ^for, ah, do we not know that it is not to this
that we have appointed ourselves ? Does not the
proof of this lie all around us ? Did we turn
ourselves from our sins, or did we not rather
delight ourselves in them? Was it we who
sought out the ways of peace and joy, or did we
not from the beginning scorn them and love
rather the pursuit of evil ? Can we even to-day
keep our feet from falling ? Oh, how we slip !
Nay, how we willfully turn aside to do our own
deeds ! When we observe our ways, do we not
know that it is not in us to attain the good ? Let
us hear, then, the rest of this gospel : " Faithful is

2i6 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

He that calleth you, and it is He who will also do
it" As it is He that has given His Son to die
for us ; as it is He who has appointed us to salva-
tion in Him ; as it is He that has called us into
communion with His holy life ; so it is He who
will complete the work He has begun in us — it is
He that will bring us in gladness to the goal. Let
us trust, then, in Him ! Let us trust, then, in Him !
For it is in this trust — ^this trust in Grod, who is at
once our Saviour and our salvation — that begins
and centers and ends all our personal religion;
that begins and centers and ends all our rational
hope; that begins and centers and ends all our
salvation. It is He that saves us and not we
ourselves. Let us trust, then, in Him 1 Let us
trust in Him !

VIII

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE
TRUE

i

VIII

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE

** What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this set I forth unto
you." — Acts xvii. 23. (R. V.)

These words give the gist of Paul's justly
famous address at Athens before the court of the
Areopagus. The substance of that address was,
to be sure, just what the substance of all his
primary proclamations to Gentile hearers was,
namely, God and the judgment. The necessities
of the case compelled him to approach the
heathen along the avenue of an awakened con-
science. They had not been prepared for the
preaching of Jesus by a training under the old
covenant, and no appeals to prophecy and its ful-
fillment could be made to them. God and the
judgment necessarily constituted, therefore, the
staple of his proclamation to them ; and so typi-
cal an instance as this address to the Areopagus
could not fail to exhibit the characteristics of its
class with especial purity.

Nevertheless, the peculiar circumstances in

219

220 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

which it was delivered have imprinted on this
address also a particular character of its own.
Paul spoke it under a specially poignant sense
of the depths of heathen ignorance and of the
greatness of heathen need. The whole address
palpitates with his profound feeling of the darkness
in which the heathen world is immersed, and his
eager longing to communicate to it the light
intrusted to his care. All that goes before the
words selected for the text and all that comes
after serve but to enhance their great declaration
— build for it, as it were, but a lofty platform upon
which it is raised to fix the gaze of men. Out of
it all Paul fairly shouts this one essential message
to the whole unbelieving world : " What therefore
ye worship in ignorance, this set I forth unto
you."

Let us consider for a little while the circum-
stances in which the address was delivered.
Summoned by a supernatural vision, Paul had
crossed the sea and brought the gospel into
Europe. Landing in Macedonia, he had preached
in its chief cities, meeting on the one hand with
great acceptance, and arousing on the other the
intensest opposition. He had been driven from
city to city until the brethren had at last fled with

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 221

him to the sea and, hurrying him upon a ship,
had conveyed him far to the south and, at last,
landed him at Athens. There they left him —
alone but in safety — and returned to Macedonia
to send his companions to him.

Meanwhile Paul awaited their coming at
Athens. Athens! mother of wisdom, mistress
of art ; but famous, perhaps, above all its wisdom
and above all its art for the intensity of its devo-
tion to the gods. Paul had had a missionary's
experience with idolatry, in its grosser and more
refined forms alike ; he had been forced into con-
tact with it throughout his Asian work. Even
so, Athens seems to have been a revelation to
him — a revelation which brought him nothing
less than a shock. Here he was literally in the
thick of it. No other nation was so given over
to idolatry as the Athenians. One writer tells us
that it was easier to find a god in populous
Athens than a man ; another, scarcely exaggerat-
ing, declares that the whole city was one great
altar, one great sacrifice, one great votive offer-
ing. The place seemed to Paul studded with
idols, and the sight of it all brought him a par-
oxysm of grief and concern.

He was in Athens, as it were, in hiding. But he
could not keep silence. He went to the syna-

222 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

gogue on the Sabbath and there preached to the
Jews and those devout inquirers who were accus-
tomed to visit the synagogues of the Jews in
every city. But this did not satisfy his aroused
zeal. He went also to the market place — that
agora which the public teachers of the city had
been wont to frequent for the propagation of
their views — and there, like them, every day, he
argued with all whom he chanced to meet.
Among these he very natursdly encountered cer-
tain adherents of the types of philosophy then
dominant — the Epicurean and Stoic — ^and in con-
flict with them he began to attract attention.

He was preaching, as was his wont, " Jesus "
and the "resurrection" — doubtless much as he
preached them in his recorded address, to which
all this led up. Some turned with light con-
tempt away from him and called him a mere smat-
terer; others, with perhaps no less contempt,
nevertheless took him more seriously and anx-
iously asked if he were not " a proclaimer of alien
divinities." This was an offense in Athens ; and
so they brought him to the Areopagus. He was
not formally arraigned for trial — there was only
set on foot something like a preliminary official
inquiry; and the question put to him is oddly
compounded of courteous suggestion and author-

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 223

itative demand. They said : " May we be allowed
to know what this new teaching is that is talked
of by thee ? For thou dost bring certain strange
things to our ears; and it is our wish to know
what these things may be." The hand is gloved,
but you see the iron showing through. It was
to Paul, however, only another opportunity ; and
in the conscious authority of his great mission he
stood forth in the midst of the court and began
to speak.

We must bear in mind that Paul was put
to the question on the general charge that he
was "a proclaimer of strange deities." He had
no intention whatever of denying this general alle-
gation. He was rather firmly determined to seize
this opportunity yet once more to proclaim a
Deity evidently unknown to the Athenians. And
this, in fact, he proceeded at once to do. But he
did it after a fashion which disarmed the com-
plaint; which enlisted the Athenians themselves as
unwilling indeed, but nevertheless real, worship-
ers of the God he proclaimed ; and which power-
fully pried at their consciences as well as appealed
to their intelligences and even their national pride
to give wings to his proclamation.

The hinge on which the whole speech turns

224 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

is obviously Paul's deep sense of the darkness of
heathen ignorance. As our Saviour said to the
Samaritan woman, so Paul, in effect, says to the
Athenian jurists and philosophers, " You worship
you know not what." The altar at Athens which
he signalizes as especially significant of heathen
worship is precisely the altar inscribed "To a Not-
known God." The whole course of their heathen
development he characterizes as a seeking of God,
if by any chance — " in the possible hope at least
that" — they may touch Him as a blind man
touches with his hands fumblingly what he cannot
see — and so doubtfully find Him; nay, shortly
and crisply, as " times of ignorance." The very
purpose of his proclamation of his gospel among
them is to bring light into this darkness, to make
them to know the true nature and the real modes
of working, the all-inclusive plan and the decisive
purpose of the one true God. Therefore it is
simply true to say that the hinge on which the
whole speech turns is the declaration that the
heathen are steeped in ignorance and require,
above all things, the light of divine instruction.

But when we have said this we have not said
all. After all, it is not quite a blank ignorance
that Paul ascribes to the Athenians. He institutes
a certain connection between what they worship

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 225

and the God he was commending to them. He
does not wholly scoff at their religion, though he
certainly sharply reprobates and deeply despises
the modes in which it expresses itself. He does
not entirely condemn their worship even of a not-
known god ; he rather makes it a point of attach-
ment for proclaiming the higher worship of the
known God of heaven and earth which he is
recommending to them. There is, in a word, a
certain amount of recognition accorded by him to
their religious feelings and aspirations.

It is accordingly not cdl a scoff when he tells them
that he perceives that they are apparently " very
religious." The word he employs is no doubt
sometimes used in a bad sense, and accordingly is
frequently translated here by the ill-savored word
"superstitious." So our English version trans-
lates it : "I perceive that in all things ye are too
superstitious " or " somewhat superstitious," as the
Revised Version puts it. But it is scarcely possi-
ble to believe that Paul uses it in this evil sense
here. It means in itself nothing but "divinity-
fearing" — not exactly " God-fearing," though gen-
erally equivalent to that, because it has a hint in
it of the gods many and lords many of the heathen.
It easily, therefore, lends itself to a bad sense, and
is often, as we have seen, so used. But as often

IS

226 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

it is used in a perfectly good sense, as equivalent
simply to "religious/' and surely it is so used
here. Paul is not charging his hearers with super-
stition; he is recognizing in them a religious
disposition. He chooses a term, indeed, of some-
what non-committal character — ^which would not
say too much — which might be taken perhaps as
bearing a subtle implication of incomplete ap-
proval : but a word by which he expresses at least
no active disapproval and even a certain measure
of active approval. Paul, in fine, commends the
religiousness of the Athenians.

The forms in which this religiousness expressed
itself he does not commend. The sight of them,
indeed, threw him into a paroxysm of distress, if
not of indignation. He could not view without
disgust and horror the degradation of their wor-
ship. In one sense we may say that it reached
its lowest level in this altar, "To a Not-known
God." For what could be worse than the super-
stitious dread which, after cramming every comer
of the city with altars to every conceivable divinity,
was not yet satisfied, but must needs feel blindly
out after still some other power of earth or air
or sky to which to immolate victims or before
which to cringe in unintelligent fear? But in
another aspect it may even have seemed to Paul

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 227

that in this altar might rather be seen the least
degraded expression of the religious aspirations
of the Athenians. Where every definite trait given
to their conceptions of divinity was but a new
degradation of the idea of the divine, there is a
certain advantage attaching to vagueness. At
least no distinctive foulness was attributed to a
god confessedly unknown. Perhaps just because
of its undifferentiation and indefiniteness it might
therefore seem a purer symbol of that seeking
after God for which God had destined all nations
when He appointed to them the ordained times
and limits of their habitation, if by any chance
they might feel Him and so find Him. Surely
the forms they gave to the gods they more defi-
nitely conceived, the characters they ascribed to
them, the functions they assigned them, and the
legendary stories of their activities which they
wove around them, sufficiently evinced that in
them the Athenians had not so much as fumblingly
touched God, much less found Him. A worship
offered to "an unknown god" was at least free
from the horror of definitely conceiving God as
corruptible men and birds and fourfooted beasts
and creeping things.

In any event, behind the worship, however ill
conceived, Paul sees and recognizes the working

228 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

of that which he does not shame to call religion.
Enshrined within his general condemnation of the
heathenism of the Athenians there lies thus a
recognition of something not to be condemned —
something worthy of commendation rather — fit
even on his lips to bear the name of " religion." All
this is implied in the words we have chosen as
our text, and it is therefore that we have said of
them that they give us the gist of the whole
address. "What ye thus not knowing adore,"
says Paul, " that it is that I am proclaiming to
you." It will repay us, probably, to probe the
matter a little in the way of its wider applica-
tions.

First, then, we say there is given in the apos-
tolic teaching a certain recognition to the religion
of the heathen.

We do not say, mark you, that a recognition
is given to the heathen religions. That is some-
thing very different. The heathen religions are
uniformly treated as degrading to man and insult-
ing to God. The language of a recent writer which
declares that man's "most unfortunate things"
are his religions — nay, that man's religions are
"among his worst crimes" — is thoroughly justi-
fied by the apostolic attitude toward them. Read

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 229

but the account given at the end of the first
chapter of Romans of the origin of these relig-
ions in the progressive degradation of man's
thought of God, as man's repeated withdrawals
from God and God's repeated judicial blindings
of man interwork to the steady destruction of all
religious insight and all moral perception alike,
and from this observe how the writers of the
New Testament conceived of the religions which
men have in the procession of the ages formed
for themselves.

Nor is it to be imagined that only the more
degraded of the popular superstitions were in
the apostle's mind when he painted this dreadful
picture of the fruits of human religious think-
ing. In an almost contemporary epistle he
calmly passes his similar judgment on all the
philosophies of the world. Not by all its wisdom,
he tells us, has the world come to know God,
but in these higher elaborations also, becoming
vain in its imaginations, its foolish heart has only
become darkened. In a somewhat later epistle
he sums up his terrible estimate of the religious
condition of the Gentiles in that dreadful declara-
tion that " they walk in the vanity of their mind,
being darkened in their understanding, alienated
from the life of God, because of the ignorance

230 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

that is in them, because of the hardening of their
heart."

This is what the apostle thought — not of
some heathen, but of heathen as such, in their
religious life — not of the degraded bushmen of
Australia or Africa or New Guinea, but of the
philosophic minds of Greece and Rome in the
palmiest days of their intellectual development
and ethical and aesthetic culture ; of the Socrateses
and Platos and Aristotles and Epictetuses and
Marcus Aureliuses of that ancient world, which
some would have us look upon as so fully to have
found God as veritably to have taken heaven by
storm and to have entered it by force of its own
attainments. To him it was, on the contrary, in
his briefest phrase, "without hope and without
God."

Nevertheless, alongside of and in the very
midst of this sweeping and unmitigated condem-
nation of the total religious manifestation of
heathendom there exists an equally constant and
distinct recognition of the reality and value of re-
ligion even among the heathen. It does not seem
ever to have occurred to the writers of the New
Testament to doubt that religion is as universal
as intelligence itself; or to question the reality or

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 231

value of this universal religiousness. To them
man, as such, appears to be esteemed no more a
reasonable creature than a religious animal ; and
they appeal to his religious instinct and build
upon it expectations of a response to their appeal,
with the same confidence which they show when
they make their appeal to his logical faculty.
They apparently no more expect to find a man
without religion than they expect to find a man
without understanding, and they seem to attach
the same fundamental value to his inherent relig-
iousness as to his inherent rationality.

In this the passage that is more particularly
before us to-day is thoroughly representative of
the whole New Testament. Paul, it is seen at
once, does not here in any way question the fact
that the Athenians are religious, any more than he
questions that they are human beings. He notes,
rather, with satisfaction that they are very espe-
cially religious. "I perceive that ye are in all
things exceedingly divinity-fearing." There is a
note of commendation in that which is unmis-
takable. Nor does he betray any impulse to
denounce their religious sentiment as intrinsically
evil. On the contrary, he takes it frankly as the
basis of his appeal to them. In effect, he essays
merely to direct and guide its functioning, and in

232 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

SO doing recognizes it as the foundation of all the
religious life which he would, as the teacher of
Christianity to them, fain see developed in and
by them. In the same spirit he always deals with
what we may call the inherent religiousness of
humanity. Man, as such, in his view is truly and
fundamentally religious.

Now this frank recogfnition, or, we might better
say, this emphatic assertion of the inherent
religiousness of humanity, constitutes a fact of
the first importance in the biblical revelation. It
puts the seal of divine revelation on the great
fundamental doctrine that there exists in man a
notitia Dei insita — a natural knowledge of God,
which man can no more escape than he can
escape from his own humanity. Endowed with
an ineradicable sense of dependence and of
responsibility, man knows that Other on which
he depends and to whom he is responsible in the
very same act by which he knows himself. As
he can never know himself save as dependent and
responsible, he can never know himself with-
out a consciousness of that Other Not-self, on
whom he is dependent and to whom he is
responsible; and in this co-knowledge of self
and Over-not-self is rooted the whole body of

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 233

his religious conceptions, religious feelings, and
religious actions — which are just as inevitable
functionings of his intellect, sensibility, and will
as any actions of those faculties, the most inti-
mate and immediate we can conceive of. Thus
man cannot help being religious; God is impli-
cated in his very first act of self-consciousness,
and he can avoid thinking of God, feeling toward
Him, acting with respect to Him, only by avoid-
ing thinking, feeling, and acting with respect to
self.

How he shall conceive God — ^what notion he
shall form, that is, of that Over-not-self in con-
trast with which he is conscious of dependence
and responsibilty ; how he shall feel toward God
— that is, toward that Over-not-self, conceived
after this fashion or that ; how he shall comport
himself toward God — ^that is, over against that
Over-not-self, so and not otherwise conceived,
and so and not otherwise felt toward: these
questions, it is obvious, raise additional problems,
the solution of which must wait upon accurate
knowledge of the whole body of conditions and
circumstances in which the faculties of intellect,
feeling, and will function in each given case. But
that in his very first act of consciousness of self
as a dependent and responsible and not as a self-

234 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

centered and self-sufficient being, man is brought
into contact with the Over-not-self on which he
is dependent and to which he is responsible ; and
must therefore form some conception of it, feel in
some way toward it, and act in some manner
with respect to it, is as certain as that he will
think and feel and act at all.

That man is a religious being, therefore, and will
certainly have a religion, is rooted in his very nature,
and is as inevitable as it is that man will every-
where and always be man. But what religion man
will have is no more subject to exact a priori deter-
mination than is the product of the action of his
faculties along any other line of their functioning.
Religion exists and must exist everywhere where
man lives and thinks and feels and acts ; but the
religions that exist will be as varied as the idio-
syncrasies of men, the conditions in which their
faculties work, the influences that play on them
and determine the character of* their thoughts
and feelings and deeds.

Bearing this in mind, we shall not be surprised
to note that along with the recognition of the
religiousness of man embodied in the apostolic
teaching, there is equally prominent in it, as we
have said, the unwavering assertion of the abso-

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 235

lute necessity of religious instruction for the proper
religious development of man.

The whole mission of the apostle is founded
upon, or, more properly speaking, is the appro-
priate expression of, this point of sight. Nor
could he be untrue to it on an occasion like that
which is more particularly engaging our attention
to-day. We observe, then, as we have already
pointed out, that though he commends the Athe-
nians for their God-fearingness and finds in their
altar to a "not-known god" a point of attachment
for his proclamation of the true God ; he does not
for a moment suggest that their native religious-
ness could be left safely to itself to blossom into
a fitting religious life ; or that his proclamation of
the known God of heaven and earth possessed
only a relative necessity for them.

Clearly he presents the necessity rather as abso-
lute. God had for a time, no doubt, left the nations
of the world to the guidance of their own relig-
ious nature, that they might seek after Him in the
possible expectation at least of finding Him. But
on God's part this was intended rather as a
demonstration of their incapacity than as a hope-
ful opportunity afforded them ; and in its results
it provides an empirical proof of the absolute
necessity of His interference with direct guidance.

236 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

Accordingly the apostle roundly characterizes the
issue of all heathen religious development, in-
clusive of that in Athens itself, the seat of the
highest heathen thinking on divine things, as just
bald ignorance. That the world by its wisdom
knows not God and lies perishing in its ignorance
is the most fixed element of his whole religious
philosophy.

What is involved here is, of course, the whole
question of the necessity of " special revelation."
It is a question which has been repeatedly fought
out during the course of Christian history. In the
eighteenth century, for example, it was this very
issue that was raised in the sharpest possible form
by the deistic controversy. A coterie of religious
philosophers, possessing an eye for little in man
beyond his logical understanding, undertook to
formulate what they called the " natural religion."
This they then set over against the supernatural
religion, which Christianity professed to be, as the
religion of nature in contrast with the religion of
authority — authority being prejudged to be in this
sphere altogether illegitimate. The result was
certainly instructive. Bernard Piinger is not a jot
too severe when he remarks of this boasted
" natural religion " of the Deists, that it deserves

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 237

neither element of its designation. "It is," he
declares, " neither religion nor natural, but only
an extremely artificial abstraction of theologians
and philosophers. It is no religion, for nowhere,
in no spot, in either the old or new world, has
there ever existed even the smallest community
which recognized this ' natural religion.' And it
is not natural ; for no simple man ever arrived of
himself at the ideas of this * natural religion.' "

And when it was thus at last formulated by the
philosophers of the eighteenth century, it proved
no religion even to them. A meager body of
primary abstract truth concerning God and His
necessary relations to man was the entire result
This formed, indeed, an admirable witness to the
rational rooting of these special truths concerning
God and our relations to Him in the very nature
of man as a dependent and responsible being;
and this the Christian thinker may well view with
satisfaction. It may be taken as supplying him
also with a demonstration, once for all, that an
adequate body of religious truth can never be
obtained by the artificial process of abstracting
from all the religions of the world the elements
held in common by them all, and labeling this
"natural religion." Neither in religion nor in any
other sphere of life can the maxim be safely

238 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

adopted that the least well-endowed member of a
coterie shall be crowned king over all. Yet obvi-
ously that is the result of proceeding by what is
called "the consensus method" in seeking a norm
of religious truth.

Taught wisdom by experience like this, our
more modem world has found a new method of
ridding itself of the necessity of revelation. The
way was pointed out to it by no less a genius than
Friedrich Schleiermacher himself. Led no doubt
by the laudable motive of seeking a place for
religion unassailable on the shallow ground of in-
tellectualistic criticism, he relegated it in its origin
exclusively to the region of feeling. In essence he
said, religion is the immediate feeling of absolute
dependence.

He calls it an "immediate feeling" or an "im-
mediate self-consciousness " just in order to elimi-
nate from it every intellectual element That
is to say, he wishes to distinguish between two
forms of self-consciousness or feeling, the one
mediated by the perception of an object and
the other not so mediated, but consisting in an
immediate and direct sensation, abstracted from
every intellectual representation or idea; and in
this latter class of feelings he places that feeling

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 239

of absolute dependence with which he identifies
religion. Religion, therefore, it is argued, is en-
tirely independent of every intellectual conception;
it is rooted in a pure feeling or immediate con-
sciousness which enters into and affects all of our
intellectual exercises, but is itself absolutely inde-
pendent of them all, and persists the same through
whatever intellectual conceptions we may form of
the object of our worship or through whatever
actions we may judge appropriate to the service
of that object thus or otherwise conceived.

Upon the basis of this mode of conceiving
religion we have been treated of late to innumer-
able paeans to religion as a primal force running
through all the religions ; "and are being constantly
exhorted to recognize as absolutely immaterial
what forms it takes in its several manifestations,
and to greet it as subsisting equally valid and
equally noble beneath all its forms of manifesta-
tion indifferently, because in itself independent of
them all. It is thus only the common cry that
echoes all around us which Pere Hyacinthe repeats
in his passionate declaration : " It is not true that
all religions are false except one only."

Only a few years ago when a professor was being
inducted into a new chair of the History of Religion
established in one of the oldest of the Reformed

240 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

schools, he took up the same cry with much the
same passion, and professed himself able to feel
brotherhood with every form of reUgion— except
that perhaps which arrogated to itself to be the
only legitimate form. " When the history of relig-
ions," he eloquently said, " places in our hands the
religfious archives of humanity it is surely our duty
rather to gamer these treasures than to proclaim
Christianity the only good, the only true one
among the religions of men. * We also, we also
are the offspring of God,' the poet Aratus cried
three centuries before Christ Let us pause before
this cry of the human soul and let us contemplate
with attention the luminous web in which the
history of this divine sonship has been woven by
universal worship. When we have opened, with
the same respect which we demand for our own,
the sacred books of other peoples, when we have
observed them clinging, as to their most holy
possessions, to their sublime traditions, in which
are enshrined the mother-thoughts of all true
religfion — lavishing their genius in exalting them,
sacrificing their fortunes in defending them, exiling
themselves to the most distant lands and sinking
into the burning sands in propagating them,
accepting death itself in order to preserve them —
our hearts, moved with surprise and brotherly

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 241

sympathy, will repudiate for ever the Pharisaic
pride which treats as heathen or as uncircumcised
all God's creatures which are without the sacred
pale of the elect." " Men of all nations," he tells
us, " and of all tongues — whether savage or civil-
ized, whether ignorant or instructed, whether Parsi
or Christian — though God may have been revealed
to them diversely, though they may be looking
up to Him through variously-colored glasses —
are yet all looking nevertheless up to the same
God, by whatever liturgical name He may be
known to them — and it is to Him that all their
prayers alike are ascending. And to all of them,"
he adds, " I feel myself a brother — except to the
hypocrite." " No one," he concludes, " who has
ever felt echoing in his heart the murmur of this
universal worship will ever be able to return to
the sectarian apologetics with which the unhappi-
ness of the times inspired the Jews after the exile,
and which from Judaism has passed into the
Church of Christ."

I have not thus adverted to this eloquent
address because it is especially extreme in its
assertions. It is not. Rather, let it be said, it
enunciates with unusual balance and moderation
views common to a large part of the modem
world. It is on this very account that I have

z6

242 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

adduced its presentation of this very widespread
conception — ^because it affords us a very favorable
opportunity to observe it at its best, touched with
fervor and announced with winning eloquence of
speech. Even in it, however, we may perceive
the portentous results to which the whole con-
ception of religion as an " immediate feeling " may
take us — nay, must inevitably carry us. If what
it tells us be true, it obviously is of no importance
whatever with what conceptions religion may be
connected. So only the religious sentiment be
present, all that enters into the essence of religion
is there; and one may call himself Brahmin or
Mohammedan, Parsi or Christian, and may see
God through whatever spectacles and name Him
by whatever designation he will, and yet be and
remain alike, and alike, validly, religious. We
may justly look upon this inevitable result of the
identification of religion with an " immediate feel-
ing " as its sufficient refutation.

In no event could it be thought difficult, how-
ever, to exhibit the untenability of this entire con-
ception. We should probably only need to ask.
How could an abstract feeling of dependence,
with no implication whatever of the object on
which the dependence leans, possess any dis-

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 243

tinctively religious quality whatever? It would
appear too clear to require arguing that the whole
religious quality of a feeling of dependence, recog-
nized as religious, must be derived necessarily
from the nature of the object depended upon —
viz., God. If we conceive that object as some-
thing other than God, then the feeling of depen-
dence ceases to be in any intelligible sense re-
ligious. It is assuredly only on God that a
specifically religious feeling can rest.

Schleiermacher himself appears to have felt
this. And accordingly he distinguished between
the feeling of dependence in general and the
feeling of absolute dependence in particular ; and
on the supposition that absolute dependence can
be felt only toward the Absolute, confined the
religious feeling to it. Here there appears to
be a subintroduction of the idea of God ; and
therefore a veiled admission that we have in
this "feeling of absolute dependence" not an
" immediate feeling," but a feeling mediated by an
idea, to wit, the idea of God. Thus the whole
contention is, in principle, yielded ; and we revert
to the more natural and only valid ground — ^that
all their quality is supplied to feelings by the
objects to which they are directed, and that,
therefore, the nature of our conceptions so far

244 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

from having nothing, has everything, to do with
religion.

I recall with great vividness of memory a
striking picture I once saw, painted by that weird
Russo-German genius Sasha Schneider, in order
to illustrate religion conceived as the feeling of
absolute dependence, and at the same time to
express the artist's repugnance to it and scorn of
it. It has seemed to me to provide us with a
most striking parable. He figures a man stripped
naked and laden down with chains, head bowed,
in every trait dejection, every fiber of every
muscle relaxed, every line a line of hopelessness
and despair. The ground on which he stands
is the earth itself, fashioned, however, into the
hideous presentment of a monstrous form, so
painted as to give it the texture of hard, black,
iron-like stone. The horizon that stretches around
the figure and seems to bend in upon him con-
sists of two great iron-like arms ending in dread-
fully protuberant fingers, which appear about to
close in on his limbs ; while just before him heavy
shoulders rise slightly into a low forbidding hil-
lock, and between them thrusts forward the hard
mound of a scarce-distinguishable head, lit by two
malevolent eyes, like low volcano-fires glaring up
upon their victim. Thus is set forth the artist's

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 245

conception of religious sentiment as the " feeling
of absolute dependence."

Yes — but we then must add, there are two
points that require criticism in the conception
presented. First, in this figure of a despondent
man, the artist has, after all, painted not the feel-
ing of dependence, but rather the feeling of help-
lessness. These are very different things. And
in their difference we touch, as I think, the very
heart of the error we are seeking to unmask. A
feeling of dependence, properly so-called, neces-
sarily implies an object: helplessness — ^yes, that
may exist without an object, but not dependence.
He that depends must , needs have somewhat on
which to depend. A feeling of dependence is
unthinkable apart from the object on which the
dependence rests. In picturing for us abject
"helplessness," then, the artist has not at all
pictured for us "dependence." The former is
passive, the latter is active, and the abjectness
that belongs to the one is not at all inherent in
the other. Secondly, even so, the artist has not
been able to get along without an object He
has painted this dejected man: there he stands
before us the very picture of helplessness. But
the artistic sense is not satisfied : and so he throws
around him these hideous encircling arms; he

246 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

sets upon him this baleful gaze. He must sug-
gest, after all, an object toward which the feeling
of dependence he is endeavoring to depict turns.
But why this hideous object? Only to justify
the abjectness of the figure he has painted. From
which we may learn at once that the character
of the feeling — all that gives quality and meaning
to it — is, after all, necessarily dependent on the
nature of the object to which it is referred.

And so, if we mistake not, Sasha Schneider's
picture is itself the sufficient refutation of the
whole conception of religion we are discussing.
Given no object, the figure of helplessness re-
mains inexplicable and meaningless and will re-
sult in nothing. Given a monstrous object, it
develops at once into a figure of abject misery.
Given a glorious object — a God of righteousness
and goodness — and only then does it develop
into a figure of that dependence which we call
religion. And if we require an earthly image of
this feeling of dependence, let us find it in an
infant on its mother's bosom, looking up in confi-
dence and trust into a face on which it perceives
the smiles of goodness and love. Even the
heathen poet tells us that the happy infant laughs
as it sees the smile of love on the mother's coun-
tenance. It is in such scenes as this that the true

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 247

earthly portrait of the absolute dependence, which
is religion is to be found.

But it is neither to logical analysis nor to
the artistic instinct of a Sasha Schneider that we
need to turn to-day to assure ourselves that this
whole construction of religion as independent of
knowledge is impossible. For surely it is obvious
that it is the very antipodes of Paul's view of the
matter. This we have already sufficiently pointed
out, and need only now to remind ourselves of it.

Perhaps it is enough for this purpose simply to
ask afresh how Paul dealt with the religiousness
of the Athenians, notable as they were among
all nations for their religiousness. Assuredly he
did not withhold due recognition from it "O
men of Athens/* he cried, " I perceive that in all
things ye are exceedingly religious." But did he
account this exceeding religiousness enough for
their needs? As he went about the streets of
Athens and beheld the great city studded with
idols — one great sanctuary, as it were — did he
reason within himself that the forms of manifes-
tation were of no importance, that through and
beneath them we should rather perceive that pure
impulse to worship which sustained and gave
vitality and value to them all ; and, observing in

248 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

it the essence of all religions alike, recognize it as
enough ?

Our text gives us the emphatic answer: "What
ye, thus, in ignorance adore, that it is that I
declare unto you." The whole justification of
his mission hangs on the value he attaches to
knowledge as the informing principle of all right,
of all valid, of all availing religfion. And if we
care to follow Paul we must for our part also, once
and for all, renounce with the strongest emphasis
all attempts to conceive the native religious
impulse as capable in sinful man of producing
religious phenomena which can be recognized as
well pleasing in the sight of God.

No doubt we shall be under manifold tempta-
tions to do otherwise. Our modem atmosphere
is charged to saturation with temptations to do
otherwise. Let us all the more carefully arm
ourselves against them. In warning us against
this overestimate of natural religions Paul may
perhaps be allowed to give us also a name for it, by
the employment of which we may possibly be able
to put a new point on our self-admonitions. He
calls it, as we have seen, in the case of the Athe-
nians, by a term of somewhat peculiar flavor.
"Divinity-fearing" we bunglingly translate it —

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 249

that is, so to say, "generally Divinity-fearing,"
without too close inquisition into which divinity
it is that we fear or what is the character of the
service that we render it. '* Deisidaimonism " is
the Greek term he makes use of. It is an uncouth
term. But, then, it is not a very lovely thing it
designates. And perhaps, in the absence of a
good translation, we may profitably adopt the
Greek term to-day, with all its uncouthness of
sound and its unlovely association, and so enable
ourselves to make a recognizable distinction be-
tween that general natural religiosity and its fruits
which we may call " deisidaimonism " and true
religion, which is the product of the saving truth
of God operating upon our native religious in-
stincts and producing through them phenomena
which owe all their value to the truth that gives
them form.

Ah, brethren, let us avoid " deisidaimonism " in
all its manifestations ! As you look out over the
heathen world with its lords many and gods many,
and see working in every form of faith the same
religious impulses, the same religious aspirations,
producing in varying measure indeed, but yet
everywhere, to some extent, the same civilizing
and moralizing effects — are you perhaps sometimes
tempted to pronounce it enough ; possibly adding

250 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

something about the special adaptation of the
several faiths to the several peoples, or even some-
thing about the essential truth underlying all
religions? This is " deisidaimonism/' And on
its basis the whole missionary work of the Church
is an impertinence, the whole history of the
Church a gigantic error; the great commission
itself a crime against humanity — ^launching the
Christian world upon a fooPs errand, every step
of which has dripped with wasted blood. Surely
the proclamation of the gospel is made, then,
mere folly and the blood of the martyrs becomes
only the measure of the narrow fanaticism of
earlier and less enlightened times.

It is possible, however, that your temptation
does not come to you in such a crass shape. Per-
haps it may whisper to you only something about
the narrowness of sectarianism within the limits
of Christianity — of the folly of contentions over
what we may at the moment be happening to call
" the truth." Look, it may say — do you not see
that under every faith the religious life flourishes ?
Why lay stress then on creed ? Creeds are divis-
ive things ; away with them ! Or at least let us
prune all their distinctive features away, and give
ourselves a genial and unpolemic Christianity, a
Christianity in which all the stress is laid on life,

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 251

not dogma, the life of the spirit in its aspirations
toward God, or perchance, even the life of external
activities in the busy fulfillment of the duties of
life. This too, you observe, is " deisidaimonism."
Embark once on that pathway and there is no
logical and — oh, the misfortune of it ! — no practical
stopping-point until you have evaporated all rec-
ognizable Christianity away altogether and reduced
all religion to the level of man's natural religiosity.
A really "undogmatic Christianity" is just no
Christianity at all.

Let us not for an instant suppose, to be sure,
that religion is a matter of the intellect alone or
chiefly. But in avoiding the Scylla of intellectual-
ism let us not run into the Charybdis of mere
naturalism. All that makes the religion we pro-
fess distinctively Christian is enshrined in its
doctrinal system. It is therefore that it is a relig-
ion that can be taught, and is to be taught — that
is propagated by what otherwise would be surely,
in the most literal sense, the foolishness of preach-
ing. Mere knowledge, indeed, does not edify ; it
only puffs up. But neither without knowledge
can there be any edification; and the purer the
knowledge that is propagated by any church the
purer, the deeper, the more vital and the more
vitalizing will be the Christianity that is built up

252 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

under that church's teaching. Let us renounce,
then, in this sphere, too, all " deisidaimonism," and
demand that our church shall be the church of a
creed and that that creed shall be the pure truth
of God — all of it and nothing but it. Only so
can we be truly, purely, and vitally Christian.

And what shall we say of " deisidaimonism " in
the personal religious life? Ah, brethren, there
is where its temptations are the most subtle and
its assaults the most destructive ! How easy it is
to mistake the currents of mere natural religious
feeling, that flow up and down in the soul, for
signs that it is well with us in the sight of God !
Happy the man who is bom with a deep and
sensitive religious nature ! But shall that purely
natural endowment save him? There are many
who have cried, Lord, Lord, who shall never
enter into the kingdom of heaven. Not because
you are sensitive and easily moved to devotion ;
not because your sense of divine things is pro-
found or lofty; not because you are like the
Athenians, by nature " divinity-fearing " ; but be-
cause, when the word of the Lord is brought to
you, and Jesus Christ is revealed in your soul,
under the prevailing influence of the Holy Ghost,
you embrace Him with a hearty faith — cast your-
self upon His almighty grace for salvation, and

FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE 253

turning from your sins, enter into a life of obedi-
ence to Him — can you judge yourself a Christian.
Religious you may be, and deeply religious, and
yet not a Christian. How instructive that when
Paul himself preached in " deisidaimonistic "
Athens, where religiosity ran riot, no church
seems to have been founded. We have only the
meager result recorded that "there were some
men that clave unto him and believed, among
whom also was Dionysius, the Areopagite, and
a woman named Damaris, and others along with
them." The natively religious are not, therefore,
nearer to the kingdom of God.

But, thank God, the contrary is also true.
Those who have no special native religious en-
dowments are not, therefore, excluded from the
kingdom of God. We may rightly bewail our
coldness: we may rightly blame ourselves that
there is so little response in our hearts to the
sight of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ, or even to the manifestation of His un-
speakable love in the death of His Son. Oh,
wretched men that we are to see that bleeding
love and not be set on fire with a flame of devo-
tion ! But we may be all the more thankful that
it is not in our frames and feelings that we are to
put our trust. Let us abase ourselves that we

254 THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION

so little respond to these great spectacles of the
everlasting and unspeakable love of God But
let us ever remember that it is on the love of God
and not on our appreciation of it that we are to
build our confidence. Jesus our Priest and our
Sacrifice, let us keep our eyes set on Him ! And
though our poor sinful hearts so little know how
to yield to that great spectacle the homage of a
suitable response. His blood will yet avail even
for us.

** Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling" —

here — and let us bless God for it — here is the
essence of Christianity. It is all of Grod and
nothing of ourselves.