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Catherine Booth Collection, 7-in-1
Books Included are:
1. Aggressive Christianity (10 chapters)
2. Popular Christianity (6 chapters)
3. Godliness (15 chapters)
4. Practical Religion (12 chapters)
5. The Highway Of Our God (17 chapters)
6. Life and Death (19 chapters)
7. Various Addresses (2 chapters)
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The Best of Catherine Booth
Books Included are:
1. Aggressive Christianity (10 chapters)
2. Popular Christianity (6 chapters)
3. Godliness (15 chapters)
Kindle price: only $2.00!
AGGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY, chapters 1-3
Chapter 1: AGGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY
MARK xvi.
15.--"Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every
creature."
ACTS xxvi.
15-18.--"And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou
persecutest. But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee
for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things
which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee:
Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send
thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the
power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and
inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me."
I WAS thinking, while I was reading the lesson,
that, supposing we could blot out from our minds all knowledge of the history
of Christianity from the time of this Inauguration Service--from that
Pentecostal Baptism--or, at any rate, from the close of the period described in
the Acts of the Apostles, suppose we could detach from our minds all knowledge
of the history of Christianity since then, and take the Acts of the Apostles
and sit down and calculate what was likely to happen in the world, what
different results we should have anticipated, what a different world we should
have reckoned upon as the outcome of it all. A system which commenced under
such auspices, with such assumptions and professions on the part of its Author
(speaking after the manner of men), and producing, as it did, in the first
century of its existence, such gigantic and momentous results. We should have
said, if we knew nothing of what has intervened from that time to this, that,
no doubt, the world where that war commenced, and for which it was organized,
would have long since been subjugated to the influence of that system, and
brought under the power of its great originator and founder! I say, from
reading these Acts, and from observing the spirit which animated the early
disciples, and from the way in which everything fell before them, we should
have anticipated that ten thousand times greater results would have followed,
and, in my judgment, this anticipation would have been perfectly rational and
just.
We Christians profess to possess in the Gospel of
Christ a mighty lever which, rightly and universally applied, would lift the
entire, burden of sin and misery from the shoulders, that is, from the souls,
of our fellow-men--a panacea, we believe it to be, for all the moral and
spiritual woes of humanity, and in curing their spiritual plagues we should go
far to cure their physical plagues also. We all profess to believe this.
Christians have professed to believe this for generations gone by, ever since
the time of which we have been reading, and yet look at the world, look at
so-called Christian England, in this end of the nineteenth century! The great
majority of the nation utterly ignoring God, and not even making any pretence
of remembering Him one day in the week. And then look at the rest of the world.
I have frequently got so depressed with this view of things that I have felt as
if my heart would break. I don't know how other Christians feel, but I can
truly say that "rivers of water do often run down my eyes because men keep
not His law," and because it seems to me that this dispensation, compared
with what God intended it to be, has been, and still is, as great a failure as
that which preceded it.
Now, I ask, how is this? I do not for a moment
believe that this is in accordance with the purpose of God. Some people have a
very convenient way of hiding behind God's purposes, and saying, `Oh! He will
do His own will.' I wish He did! They say, `You know God's will is done after
all.' I wish it were! He says it is not done, and over and over again laments
the fact that it is not done. He wants it to be done, but it is NOT DONE! It is
of no use to stand up and propound theories that are at variance with things as
they are.' There has been a great deal too much of this, and it has had a very
bad effect. The world is in this condition, and here is a system launched under
such auspices, with such purposes, with such promises and with such prospects,
and yet nearly nineteen hundred years have rolled away and here we are. How
little has been done, comparatively. What a little alteration has been effected
in the habits and dispositions of the race.
But some of you will say, `Well, but there is a
good deal done.' Thank God for that. It would be sad if there were nothing
done; but it looks like a drop in the ocean compared with what should have been
done. Now I cannot accept any theory which so far reflects upon the love and
goodness of God as to make Him to blame for this effeteness of Christianity,
and, so far as my influence extends, I will not allow the responsibility and
the blame of all this to be rolled back upon God who so loved the world that He
gave His only Son to ignominy and death in order to redeem it. I do not believe
it for a moment. I believe that the old arch-enemy has done in this
dispensation what he did in former ones--so far circumvented the purposes of
God, that he has succeeded in bringing about this state of things--in retarding
the accomplishment of God's purposes and keeping the world thus largely under
his own power and influence, and I believe he has succeeded in doing this, as
he has succeeded always before, by DECEIVING GOD'S OWN PEOPLE. He has always
done so. He has always got up a caricature of God's real thing, and the nearer
he can get it to be like the original the more successful he is. He has
succeeded in deceiving God's people: -- First:-AS TO THE STANDARD OF THEIR OWN
RELIGIOUS LIFE.
And, Secondly, he has succeeded in deceiving them
AS TO THEIR DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS TO THE WORLD.
He has succeeded, first, in deceiving them as to
the standard of their own religious life. He has got the Church, nearly as a
whole, to receive what I call an `Oh, wretched man that I am' religion! He has
got them to lower the standard which Jesus Christ himself established in this
Book--a standard, not only to be aimed at, but to be attained unto--a standard
of victory over sin, the world, the flesh, and the Devil, real, living,
reigning, triumphing, Christianity! Satan knew what was the secret of the great
success of those early disciples. It was their whole-hearted devotion, their
absorbing love to Christ, their utter abnegation of the world. It was their
entire absorption in the salvation of their fellow men and the glory of their
God. It was an enthusiastic religion that swallowed them up, and made them
willing to become wanderers and vagabonds on the face of the earth--for His
sake to dwell in dens and caves, to be torn asunder, and to be persecuted in
every form.
It was this degree of devotion, before which Satan
saw he had no chance. Such people as these, he knew, must ultimately subdue the
world. It is not in human nature to stand before that kind of spirit, that
amount of love and zeal, and if Christians had only gone on as they began long
since, the glorious prophecy would have been fulfilled, "The kingdoms of
this world" would have "become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his
Christ."
Therefore, the arch-enemy said, `What must I do? I
shall be defeated after all. I shall lose my supremacy as the god of this
world. What shall I do?' No use to bring in a gigantic system of error, which
everybody will see to be error. Oh, dear no! That has never been Satan's way;
but his plan has been to get hold of a good man here and there, who shall creep
in, as the Apostle said, unawares, and preach another doctrine, and who shall
deceive, if it were possible, the very elect. And he did it. He accomplished
his design. He gradually lowered the standard of Christian life and character,
and though, in every revival, God has raised it again to a certain extent, we
have never got back thoroughly to the simplicity, purity, and devotion set
before us in these Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles. And just in the degree
that it has approximated thereto, in every age, Satan has got somebody to
oppose and to show that this was too high a standard for human nature,
altogether beyond us, and that, therefore, Christians must sit down and just be
content to be "Oh wretched man that I am" people to the end of their
days. He has got the Church into a condition that makes one, sometimes,
positively ashamed to hear professing Christians talk, and ashamed also, that
the world should hear them talk. I do not wonder at thoughtful, intelligent men
being driven from such Christianity as this. It would have driven me off, if I
had not known the power of godliness. I believe this kind of Christianity has
made more infidels than all the infidel books ever written.
Yes, Satan knew that he must get Christians down
from the high pinnacle of whole-hearted consecration to God. He knew that he
had no chance till he tempted them down from that blessed vantage ground, and
so he began to spread those false doctrines, to counteract which John wrote his
epistles, for, before he died, he saw what was coming, and sounded down the
ages--"Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth
righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous. He that committeth sin is
of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the
Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil."
The Lord revive that doctrine! Help us afresh to put up the standard!
Oh! the great evil is, that dishonest-hearted
people, because they feel it condemns them, lower the standard to their
miserable experience. I said, when I was young, and I repeat it in my maturer
years, that if it sent me to hell I would never pull it down. Oh! that God's
people felt like that. There is the glorious standard put before us. The power
is proffered, the conditions laid down, and we CAN all attain it if we will;
but if we will not--for the sake of the children, and for generations yet
unborn, do not let us drag it down, and try to make it meet our little, paltry,
circumscribed experience. LET US KEEP IT UP. This is the way to get the world
to look at it. Show the world a real, living, self-sacrificing, hard-working,
toiling, triumphing religion, and the world will be influenced by it; but
anything short of that they will turn round and spit upon.
Secondly:--Satan has deceived even those whom he
could not succeed in getting to lower the standard of their own lives with
respect to their duties and obligations to the world. I have been reading of
late the New Testament with special reference to the aggressive spirit of
Primitive Christianity, and it is wonderful what floods of light come upon you
when you read the Bible with reference to any particular topic on which you are
seeking for help. When God sees you are panting after the light, in order that
you may use it, He pours it in upon you. It is an indispensable condition of
receiving light that you are willing to follow it. People say they don't see
this and that, no, because they do not wish to see. They are not willing to
walk in it, and, therefore, they do not get it; but those who are willing to
obey shall have all the light they want.
It seems to me that we come infinitely short of any
right and rational idea of the aggressive spirit of the New Testament saints.
Satan has got Christians to accept what I may call a namby-pamby, kid-glove
kind of system of presenting the Gospel to people.
`Will they be so kind as to read this tract or
book, or would they not like to hear this popular and eloquent preacher. They will
be pleased with him quite apart from religion.' That is the sort of
half-frightened, timid way of putting the truth before unconverted people, and
of talking to them about the salvation of their souls. It seems to me this is
utterly antagonistic and repugnant to the spirit of the early saints: "Go
ye, and preach the Gospel to EVERY CREATURE"; and again the same
idea--"Unto whom now I send thee." Look what is implied in these
commissions. It seems to me that no people have ever yet fathomed the meaning of
these two Divine commissions. I believe we of the Salvation Army have come
nearer to it than any people that have ever preceded us. Look at them. Would it
ever occur to you that the language meant, "Go and build chapels and
churches "and invite the people to come in, and if they will "not,
let them alone?" "GO YE." If you sent your servant to do
something for you, and said, `Go and accomplish that piece of business for me.'
You know what it would involve. You know that he must see certain persons; and
run about the city to certain offices and banks and agents, involving a deal of
trouble and sacrifice; but you have nothing to do with that. He is your
servant. He is employed by you to do that business, and you simply commission
him to `Go and do it.' What would you think if he went and took an office and
sent out a number of circulars inviting your customers or clients to come and
wait on his pleasure, and when they chose to come just to put your business
before them? No, you would say, `Ridiculous.' Divesting our minds of all
conventionalities and traditionalisms, what would the language mean? "Go
ye!" To whom? "To every creature." Where am I to get at them?
WHERE THEY ARE. "Every creature." There is the extent of your commission.
Seek them out; run after them, wherever you can get at them. "Every
creature "--wherever you find a creature that has a soul--there go and
preach My Gospel to him. If I understand it, that is the meaning and the spirit
of the commission.
And then again, to Paul he says, "Unto whom
now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light,
and from the power of Satan unto God." They are asleep--go and wake them
up. They do not see their danger. If they did, there would be no necessity for
you to run after them. They are preoccupied. Open their eyes, and turn them
round by your desperate earnestness and moral suasion and moral force; oh! it
makes me tremble to think what a great deal one man can do for another!
"Turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto
God." How did Paul understand it? He says, "We persuade men." Do
not rest content with just putting it before them, giving them gentle
invitations, and then leaving them alone. He ran after them, poor things, and
pulled them out of the fire. Take the bandage off their eyes which Satan has
bound round them; knock and hammer and burn in, with the fire of the Holy
Ghost, your words into their poor, hardened, darkened hearts, until they begin
to realize that they are IN DANGER; that there is something amiss. Go after
them. If I understand it, that is the spirit of the Apostles and of the early
Christians; for we read that when they were scattered by persecution, they
"went everywhere, preaching the word." The laity, the new converts,
the young babes in Christ. It does not mean always in set discourses, and
public assemblies, but they went after men and women, like ancient
Israel--"Every man after his man," to try and win him for Christ.
Some people seem to think that the Apostles laid
the foundations of all the churches. They are quite mistaken. Churches sprang
up where the Apostles had never been. The Apostles went to visit and organize
them after they had sprung up, as the result of the work of the early laymen
and women going everywhere and preaching the Word. Oh! may the Lord shower upon
us in this day the same spirit! We should build churches and chapels; we should
invite the people to them; but do you think it is consistent with these two
commissions, and with many others, that we should rest in this, when three
parts of the population utterly ignore our invitations and take no notice
whatever of our buildings and of our services? They will not come to us. That
is an established fact. What is to be done? They have souls. You profess to believe
that as much as I do, and that they must live for ever. Where are they going?
What is to be done? Jesus Christ says, `Go after them.' When all the civil
methods have failed; when the genteel invitations have failed; when one man
says that he has married a wife, and another that he has bought a yoke of oxen,
and another that he has bought a piece of land--then does the Master of the
feast say, `The ungrateful wretches, let them alone?' "No." He says,
"Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my
house may be filled." I will have guests, and if you can't get them in by
civil measures, use military measures. Go and COMPEL them to come in. It seems
to me that we want more of this determined aggressive spirit. Those of you who
are right with God this afternoon--you want more of this spirit to thrust the
truth upon the attention of your fellow men.
Oh! people say, you must be very careful, very
judicious. You must not thrust religion down people's throats. Then, I say, you
will never get it down. What! Am I to wait till an unconverted, godless man
wants to be saved before I try to save him? He will never want to be saved till
the death-rattle is in his throat. What! Am I to let my unconverted friends and
acquaintances drift down quietly to damnation, and never tell them about their
souls, until they say, `If you please, I want you to preach to me?' Is this
anything like the spirit of early Christianity? No. Verily we must make them
look--tear the bandages off, open their eyes, make them bear it, and if they
run away from you in one place, meet them in another, and let them have no
peace until they submit to God and get their souls saved. This is what
Christianity ought to be doing in this land, and there are plenty of Christians
to do it. Why, we might give the world such a time of it that they would get
saved in very self defence, if we were only up and doing, and determined that
they should have no peace in their sins. Where is our zeal for the Lord? We
talk of Old Testament saints, but I would, we were all like David. Rivers of
water ran down his eyes because men kept not the Law of his God. But you say,
`We cannot all hold services.' Perhaps not.
Go as you like. Go as quietly and softly as the
morning dew. Have meetings like the Friends if you like. ONLY DO IT. Don't let
your relatives, and friends, and acquaintances die, and their blood be found on
your skirts!!!
I shall never forget the agony depicted on the face
of a young lady who once came to see me. My heart went out to her in pity. She
told me her story. She said, I had a proud, ungodly father, and the Lord
converted me three years before his death, and, from the very day of my
conversion, I felt I ought to talk to him, and plead, and pray with him about
his soul, but I could not muster up courage. I kept intending to do it, and
intending to do it, until he was taken ill. It was a sudden and serious
illness. He lost his mind, and died unsaved,' and she said, `I have never
smiled since, and I think I never shall any more.' Don't be like that. Do it
quietly, if you like; privately, if you like; but do it, and do it as if you
felt the value of their souls, and as if you intended to save them, if by any
possible means in your power it could be done.
I had been speaking in a town, in the West of
England, on the subject of responsibility of Christians for the salvation of
souls. The gentlemen with whom I was staying had winced a bit under the truth,
and instead of taking it to heart in love, and making it the means of drawing
him nearer to God, and enabling him to serve Him better, he said, `I thought
you were rather hard on us this morning.' I said, `Did you? I should be very
sorry to be harder on anybody than the Lord Jesus Christ would be.' He said,
`You can push things to extremes, you know. You were talking about seeking
souls, and making sacrifices. Now, you are aware that we build the chapels and
churches, and pay the ministers, and if the people won't be saved, we can't
help it.' (I think he had given pretty largely to a chapel in the town.) I
said, It is very heartless and ungrateful of the people, I grant; but, my dear
sir, you would not reason thus in any temporal matter. Suppose a plague were to
break out in London, and suppose that the Board of Health were to meet and to
appropriate all the hospitals and public buildings they could get to the
treatment of those diseased, and suppose they were to issue proclamations to
say that whoever would come to these buildings should be treated free of cost,
and every care and kindness bestowed on them, and, moreover, that the treatment
would certainly cure them; but, supposing the people were so blind to their own
interests, so indifferent and besotted that they refused to come, and
consequently, the plague was increasing and thousands dying, what would you in
the provinces say? Would you say, `Well, the Board of Health have done what
they could, and if the people will not go to be healed, they deserve to perish;
let them alone?' No, you would say, `It is certainly very foolish and wicked of
the people, but these men are in a superior position. They understand the
matter. They know and are responsible for the consequences. What in the world
are they going to do? Let the whole land be depopulated!' No! If the people
will not come to them, they must go to the people, and force upon them the
means of health, and insist that proper measures should be used for the
suppression of the `plague.' It needed no application. He understood it, and I
believe, by the Spirit of God, he was enabled to see his mistake, to take it
home, and set to work to do something for perishing souls.
Men are preoccupied, and it is for us to go and
force it upon their attention. Remember, you can do it. There is some one soul
that you have more influence with than any other person on earth--some soul or
souls. Are you doing all you can for their salvation? Your relatives, friends,
and acquaintances are to be rescued. Thank God! we are rescuing the poor people
all over the land by thousands. There they are, to be looked at, and talked
with, and questioned--people rescued from the depths of sin, degradation, and
woe--saved from the worst forms of crime and infamy; and, if He can do that, He
can have your genteel friends, if only you will go to them desperately and
determinedly. Take them lovingly by the button-hole, and say, `My dear friend,
I never spoke to you closely, carefully, and prayerfully about your soul.' Let
them see the tears in your eyes; or, if you cannot weep, let them hear the
tears in your voice, and let them realize that you feel their danger, and are
in distress for them. God will give His Holy Spirit, and they will be saved.
I was going to note that both texts imply
opposition for, He adds, "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the
world." As much as if He had said, `You will have need of my presence.
Such aggressive, determined warfare as this will raise all earth and hell
against you;' and then He says to Paul, "I will be with thee, delivering
thee from the people and the Gentiles unto whom I send thee." Why would
they need this? Because the Gentiles would soon be up in arms against him, and
indeed they were.
Opposition! It is a bad sign for the Christianity
of this day that it provokes so little opposition. If there were no other
evidence of it being wrong, I should know it from that. When the Church and the
world can jog along comfortably together, you may be sure there is something
wrong. The world has not altered. Its spirit is exactly the same as it ever
was, and if Christians were equally faithful and devoted to the Lord, and
separated from the world, living so that their lives were a reproof to all
ungodliness, the world would hate them as much as ever it did. It is the Church
that has altered, not the world. You say, `We should be getting into endless
turmoil.' Yes; "I came not to bring peace on the earth, but a sword."
There would be uproar. Yes; and the Acts of the Apostles are full of stories of
uproars. One uproar was so great that the Chief Captain had to get Paul over
the shoulders of the people, lest he should have been torn in pieces. `What a
commotion!' you say. Yes; and, bless God, if we had the like now we should have
thousands of sinners saved.
'But,' you say, `I see what a very undignified
position this would bring the Gospel into.' That depends on what sort of
dignity you mean. You say, `We should always be getting into collision with the
powers that be, and with the world, and what very unpleasant consequences would
result.' Yes, dear friends, there always have been unpleasant consequences to
the flesh, when people were following God and doing His will. `But,' you say,
`wouldn't it be inconsistent with the dignity of the Gospel.' It depends from
what standpoint you look at it. It depends upon what really constitutes the
dignity of the Gospel. What does constitute the dignity of the Gospel? Is it
human dignity, or is it Divine? Is it earthly, or is it heavenly dignity? It
was a very undignified thing, looked at humanly, to die on a cross between two
thieves. That was the most undignified thing ever done in this world, and yet,
looked at on moral and spiritual grounds, it was the grandest spectacle that
ever earth or heaven gazed upon, and methinks that the inhabitants of heaven
stood still and looked over the battlements at that glorious, illustrious
sufferer, as He hung there between heaven and earth. The Pharisees, I know,
spat upon the humbled sufferer, and wagged their heads and said, "He saved
others, himself He cannot save." Ah! but He was intent on saving others.
That was the dignity of Almighty strength allying itself with human weakness,
in order to raise it. It was the dignity of eternal wisdom shrouding itself in
human ignorance, in order to enlighten it. It was the dignity of everlasting,
unquenchable love, baring its bosom to suffer in the stead of its rebellious
creature--man. Ah! it was incarnate God standing in the place of condemned,
apostate man--the dignity of love! love! LOVE!
Oh, precious Saviour! save us from maligning Thy
Gospel and Thy name by clothing it with our paltry notions of earthly dignity,
and forgetting the dignity which crowned Thy sacred brow as Thou didst hang
upon the cross! That is the dignity for us, and it will never suffer by any gentleman
here carrying the Gospel into the back slums or alleys of any town or city in
which he lives. That dignity will never suffer by any employer talking lovingly
to his servant maid or errand boy, and looking into his eyes with tears of
sympathy and love and trying to bring his soul to Jesus. That dignity will
never suffer even though you should have to be dragged through the streets with
a howling mob at your heels, like Jesus Christ, if you have gone into those
streets for the souls of your fellow men and the glory of God. Though you
should be tied to a stake, as were the martyrs of old, and surrounded by
laughing and taunting fiends and their howling followers--that will be a
dignity which shall be crowned in heaven, crowned with everlasting glory. If I understand
it, that is the dignity of the Gospel--the dignity of love. I do not envy, I do
not covet any other. I desire no other, --God is my witness--than the dignity
of love.
Oh, friends! will you get this baptism of love!
Then you will, like the Apostles, be willing to push your limbs into a basket,
and so be let down by the wall, if need be, or suffer shipwreck, hunger, peril,
nakedness, fire, or sword, or even go to the block itself, if thereby you may
extend His kingdom and win souls for whom He shed His blood. The Lord fill us
with this love and baptize us with this fire, and then the Gospel will arise
and become glorious in the earth, and men will believe in us, and in it. They
will feel its power, and they will go down under it by thousands, and, by the
grace of God, they SHALL.
Chapter 2: A PURE GOSPEL
ACTS xxvi. 15-20.-"And I said, Who art
thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But rise, and stand
upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a
minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those
things in the which I will appear unto thee; delivering thee from the people,
and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee to open their eyes, and to
turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that
they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are
sanctified by faith that is in me. Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not
disobedient unto the heavenly vision: but showed first unto them of Damascus,
and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judea, and then to the
Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for
repentance."
THE second indispensable condition we are going to
note this afternoon, to Aggressive Christianity, is a Pure Gospel. I mean by
that, God's own pure metal, the unadulterated Gospel of Jesus Christ.
There seems, now-a-days, in the Church and the
world, as many different views of the Gospel as there are of secondary matters
and of minor doctrines. One person has one notion of the Gospel, another has
another, until there has come to be a fearful distraction in the minds of many
who are constantly listening to what is called the Gospel. May God the Holy
Ghost help us this afternoon to look at it impartially and carefully.
And, firstly, let me try to define what is the
Gospel. "Oh!" people say, "it is good news." Yes, thank
God, it is good news, indeed--news without which we must all have been lost. It
is the news of the free, measureless, undeserved, reconciling mercy of God,
offered to me through the vicarious, infinite, glorious sacrifice of His Son,
to the end that I may BE SAVED from sin here and from hell hereafter!! But this
news involves a great deal. It is the news of a definite, practical end,
involving conditions; for even good news to me involves certain conditions on
my part, if I am to procure the good which the news brings. Then, secondly, I
will try to explain the conditions on which the Gospel is available to me.
Let me illustrate this; and I am particularly
anxious that you should all understand me. Supposing that a province of this
empire were in rebellion against our Sovereign. Supposing that the people of
that province had trampled underfoot our laws, and set up their own in
opposition; and suppose the Queen, in her gracious clemency, desired not to
destroy these rebels, but to save them, what would be the necessary and
indispensable condition in the very nature of the case, in order for her to
save them? Not merely a proclamation of pardon. That would be a glorious
movement towards the result, but there would want something else; for a
proclamation of pardon merely, whilst the rebels remained in an unchanged
state, would only be giving them greater facilities for further rebellion.
Evidently, in the nature of the case, it is a necessity that a change of mind
should be produced in the rebels themselves, for the Queen not only wants to
save them from destruction, but to restore them to allegiance and obedience to
herself, and, unless she does this, they will never become dutiful and obedient
subjects. There will never be anything but anarchy, confusion, and rebellion in
that province unless those rebels undergo a change of mind. They must be
brought back to allegiance and obedience to the Queen.
Just so with God's proclamation of salvation. The
mischief is in us. Take the illustration of the Prodigal Son. The mischief was
all in him--not in his father. The father loved him before he went away, and
the father loved him afterwards. The father's benevolent heart yearned over him
all the time he was away, and many a time, perchance, he went to the roof of
his house to look over the expanse of country over which the rebellious lad had
gone and wondered whether he would ever come back. The father's heart was
yearning over him all the time. How was it that he could not be reinstated in
the father's love and in the family privileges? Because there needed a change
of heart--a change of mind in him. If he had come back to the old homestead
with the same rebellious spirit in him, the same desire to be free from the
father's oversight, the same unwillingness to be put under the FATHER'S
DOMINION and DISCIPLINE, he would still have been a rebel and a prodigal. In
the very nature of the case, until there was the necessary change, a wise and
righteous father could not pardon him; he must insist, though he loves him
dearly, upon a certain change of mind before he can consistently pardon him.
Just so. The laws of mind are the same when operated
upon by either God or man. This is not laying any necessity upon God any more
than He has laid upon Himself. He has made us with a certain mental
constitution, and therefore He must adapt the conditions and means of our
salvation to that mental constitution, otherwise He would reflect upon His own
wisdom in having given it to us at the first. Therefore when he purposes to
save man He must save him as man--not as a beast or a machine!
He must save him as man, and he must propound such
a scheme as will fit and adapt itself to man's nature. Just as the father might
not pardon the prodigal, irrespective of the prodigal's state of mind and
heart, so neither can God pardon the sinner irrespective of the state of his
mind and heart.
I know, by personal contact with hundreds of souls,
that there is an alarming amount of misunderstanding and of what I consider
false apprehension of the Gospel of Christ at this point. Hence, you have
speakers saying, without anything to guard or qualify their words, `Only
believe, and you shall be saved.'
`Whosoever believeth hath everlasting life.'
Blessed and glorious truth, when rightly applied, and applied to the right
characters; but dangerous error, in my opinion, when applied indiscriminately
to unawakened, unrepenting, rebellious sinners. I have met with disastrous
consequences of this all over the land--so disastrous that I would not like to
repeat them here. Now, I say, we should be careful to let the people understand
what we mean by the Gospel: I dare not do any other. I am so satisfied of the
thousands of souls that are deceived at this point, that, while God gives me
voice to speak, I dare not but try to warn them, and show them their fatal
mistake.
Returning to our illustration--you say, `The man
is, so to speak, dead in trespasses and sins. How can he see his own error? How
can he lay down the weapons of rebellion? How can he, by himself, come back to
the Father?' Granted. Hence, God, in His wisdom and love, has provided for that
incapacity which man has induced by his rebellion, by the gift of His Spirit.
You say, `The parallel is not perfect between your illustration and the thing
illustrated.' No, it is not in that point; because temporal rebels can find out
by themselves the insanity and wickedness of their course. They can see where
it will lead them. They can see the destructive consequences, and be sorry for
the course they have taken. They can lay down their weapons of rebellion, and
they can conform to the conditions on which the Queen issues her proclamation.
You say, `Yes, that they can do, but this man cannot.' Of course, because he
has so hardened his heart that even if he can, be never will without the Holy
Spirit of God. Hence, God has taken compassion on us, and sent His Spirit into
the world for this purpose--'To convince the world of sin, of righteousness,
and of judgment.' Thus He opens our eyes, and shows us our lost estate. Having,
by the Holy Ghost, made us realize our desperate condition, then comes the
Gospel to meet us just where we are, on condition that we abandon our evil
ways, and do the works meet for repentance, which we are able to do by the
power of the Holy Spirit, as well as to lay down the weapons of our rebellion
and accept of Christ, put our neck under his yoke, and pledge ourselves in
heart to FOLLOW HIM ALL THE DAYS OF OUR LIFE. These are the conditions
involved, and this is the end the Gospel contemplates, and there you see the
Gospel accomplishes its END in this case. The heart of the rebel is won back to
its Lord, and the indispensable change has taken place in the being himself. He
has come back to God. His eyes are opened to see the evil of sin, and the
desperate state he is in. Tired of himself, and tired of his evil ways, as the
Prodigal was of the swine-yard, he arises, leaves them and goes to his father.
But now I must stop to meet a difficulty which I
know will arise in many sincere minds. I feel myself such a tender jealousy for
the glory of God, that I do highly respect this feeling in others, and if
anyone disagrees with my views, or my way of putting them, through a feeling of
jealousy for the glory of God, they have my profound respect. You will say,
"If we are able to abandon our evil courses, and lay down the weapons of
rebellion, is that not saving ourselves?' No, dear friends; it is altogether
different. You see it is the indispensable condition of salvation in every one
of the nine passages we read, and in many others--that we abandon our evil
ways. Now, what does that mean? A gentleman in a letter to me said, `We cannot
save ourselves from heart sins.' Granted; but we can will to be saved from
them. Then, there is a great distinction between those sins of the heart, which
are involuntary, and those deliberate transgressions of God's law, which
unregenerate men commit. God requires me to abandon all that I CAN, as a
condition of salvation, and then, when He saves, He will give me power to
abandon all that I could; not before. The Prodigal had to come away from the
swine-yard, the filth, and the husks, before he got into the father's house,
and sat down at the fathers feast, but when he had done so, then the father
said, `Come in,' and he brought the best robe and put it on him and killed the
fatted calf, and put the ring of forgiveness upon his hand. Hence, as the old
divines used to put it, "You must wait for the Lord in the path of His
ordinances," the path of obedience, as far as is possible to you. And is
there any other way? Can the drunkard wait for Him while he abides at his cup?
Can the thief wait for Him while he continues in his diabolical trade? Can any
man indulging in absolute open sin find the Lord? Must he not, as the Saviour
says, cut off that right hand, and pluck out that right eye? He never can
cleanse his guilt, but he CAN cut off his hand, and when he does that, then the
Holy Spirit will come in and apply the Blood, and do the cleansing.
Therefore, you perceive, I take the Gospel to be
aiming not merely at saving, but restoring us. If it were merely to save me
without restoring me, what would it do for me? As a moral agent, if the Gospel
fails to PUT ME RIGHT it will fail eternally to make me happy; and if you were
to transplant me before the throne, and put me down in the inner circle of
archangels with a sense of wrong in my heart, being morally out of harmony with
the laws of God, and the moral laws of the universe, I should be as miserable
as if I were in hell, and should want to get away. I must be MADE RIGHT, as
well as treated as if I were right. I must be changed as well as justified.
This is the Gospel put as clearly in our text as it could be, and also the
Epistles written by the Apostle Paul, the great expounder of the doctrine of
justification by faith. It was through the lips of the glorified Lord Himself,
after He had risen, to the great Apostle of the Gentiles, after the Gospel
dispensation was fully opened, that this most unmistakable commission was
given, "Unto whom now I send thee to open their eyes." What to? Their
sins. As Peter opened the eyes of the murderers of our Lord, on the Day of
Pentecost, "Whom ye have crucified and slain," driving in the
convicting truth of God until, in their agony, they cried out, "WHAT MUST
WE DO?" He tore off the bandages which Satan had wrapped around them, and
drove them as with the schoolmaster's lash, until he drove them to the Cross of
the crucified One. "Open their eyes," that is the first thing. Oh!
how my soul has often shrunk and wept under the sense of the awful
responsibility this brings upon us Christians. The world is asleep. Yes,
friends, your relations, your neighbours--they are asleep. They are
preoccupied. They are full of the world, and the things of the world. They will
not think--they will not see--they will not look into the Word of Life. Your
responsibility comes here tenfold. GO AND WAKE THEM! You CAN DO IT! if you have
the Holy Ghost in you!
Some people would have said to the Lord Jesus,
"What a great deal you are making of human
agency, for, after all, Paul is but a man, and you are setting him to open the
eyes of the unconverted, and turn them from darkness to light, and from the
power of Satan unto God. Are you not making too much of human effort?" But
the Lord Jesus knew what He was about. He knew that Paul had a power in him
which every really renewed child of God has--the Holy Ghost to equip him for
this work; and He says,
"Unto whom now I send thee to open their
eyes." Go and awake them to a sense of their danger. Take them,
metaphorically speaking, by the collar and shake them and make them realize
their peril, as you would if they were asleep in a burning house!! And then
when you have awakened them, what are you to do? Leave them alone? No, no, for
Christ's sake, no! Take hold of them by the mighty power of your moral suasion
and zeal, and love, and energy, and turn them right round from sin and Satan
unto God.
Jesus Christ set Paul to do this, and Paul did it.
He says, "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade
men." His was no meek and mild putting of the truth, and leaving people to
do as they liked. "Knowing, therefore, the TERROR of the Lord, we PERSUADE
men, because we thus judge that if one died for all, then were all dead;"
and, oh! what success the Lord gave him in his desperate enterprise. What
multitudes did he persuade, and succeed in turning round from darkness to
light, and from the power of Satan unto God! Turn them round! `Oh! but,' you
say, `if they are turned round from darkness, which represents evil, to light,
which represents righteousness, are they not saved?' No, not yet. This is only
the change effected in their will, which is beautifully exemplified by Paul in
Romans vii.--willing to keep the law, willing to obey God, willing to do His
will, and follow Him; yea, struggling, but yet unable; though they are brought
round from the voluntary choice or embrace of evil, and the voluntary service
of the Devil, round to the voluntary choice and embrace of righteousness and
the service of God, they are not yet able to do it.
Now, friends, don't say I said they were able.
Don't misrepresent me, as some people do. I will try to be clear, and I say
there is all the difference in the world between BEING WILLING TO LET JESUS
CHRIST SAVE ME FROM MY SINS, AND SAVING MYSELF FROM THEM. It is exactly this
change in the attitude of the will which God demands as a CONDITION OF THE
EXERCISE OF HIS POWER. It is so in all the miracles. "Wilt thou be made
whole?" He says to the man with the withered hand, "Stretch out thy
hand." The man might have said, `Lord, what an unreasonable request. Are
you come to mock me in my misery?' Oh! but Jesus Christ knew what He wanted in
the man. He wanted the response of the MAN'S WILL. He wanted the man to say,
`Yes, Lord;' and when He said that, the Lord put the strength into the
shoulder-bone, and He stretched it out, and it was made whole. There are many
souls just there--they will not say, `Yes, Lord,' to some condition which the
Spirit puts upon them. I could give you some heartrending illustrations on this
point. I am satisfied that this Gospel-enlightened England of ours is full of
people just at this point, who come crying, and praying, and longing, as they
call it, after God. They come up to Jesus Christ again and again. They try to
believe; they want to follow Him, but they are kept back by the right hand and
the right eye which the Holy Ghost has told them they must cut off and pluck
out before He will receive them. They will not do it, and so they are ever
learning, and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. You must renounce
evil in your will. You must will to "obey the truth." You must say,
`Yes, Lord.'
I remember, on one occasion, in the West of
England, I had been delivering week-day morning addresses. We had a blessed
meeting on this particular day. We began at half-past ten, and the Lord was so
with us that He supplied the want of refreshment till we had it at 5.30. He
made up for the want of dinner or tea. A gentleman was there, with whose
appearance I was struck. He was tall, and intelligent, a man of about forty or
forty-five. He knelt down without any emotion, more than deep solemnity, at the
end of the Communion rail. I had been talking about the reason people walked in
darkness--controversy with the Holy Spirit. I said to him, `My dear sir, have
you had a `controversy with the Holy Spirit?' `Yes,' he said. `I have had one
for fifteen years. I am ashamed to say it, and it has eaten up all the joy and
power of my Christian life, and I have been a useless cumberer of the ground.'
I did not know till afterwards that he was a deacon of the church, and had come
up there in the sight of all the congregation. I said, `Well, my dear sir, you
know the Gospel as well as I do. It is of no use to preach faith to you until
you are willing to renounce your idol.' He said, most emphatically, `I know it.'
I said, `Are you willing?' Oh, with what tenacity the human heart holds on to
its idols! Though he had come up to the rail in the face of that congregation,
so deeply was he under the power of the Spirit, yet he hesitated. I said,
`Well, my dear sir, you must make up your mind. In your case, it is between the
choice of this, whatever it may be, and Christ;' and I retired under the pulpit
pillars for a minute, and left him to himself and the Lord. I lifted up my
heart to God for him, and then I went back, and said, `Will you renounce it?'
and, lifting up his eyes to heaven, and, bringing his hand down upon the
Communion rail, he said, `By the grace of God, I do,' and his whole frame
heaved with agony, but he stepped into immediate liberty. His blessed Saviour
was waiting with arms wide open. There was only this accursed thing which had
stood between them, and when he trampled it under his feet, and was willing to
forsake it, as a natural consequence, he sprang into the everlasting arms, and
received the assurance of salvation. It was all over the town for the next
fortnight. People remarked, `Did you ever see such a change come over a man, as
has come over Mr. So-and-so; he is like a new man. He prays in the
prayer-meeting with such fervour. He was at the chapel doors, speaking to the
unconverted, and inviting them to come back. He is visiting up and down the
town--why, he's a new man!' Was there any change in the Gospel? Had he received
any fresh light? It was only the old story--only that he had put away the idol,
and trampled underfoot that which was keeping the life-power of God out of his
soul.
Here is another case. At some services in the West
of England, a gentleman, largely interested in an unlawful business, came every
night for five weeks, and used to sit there, the picture of despair and
wretchedness, till after ten o'clock. He went on in this way until his friends
thought he would lose his reason. He was walking about his bedroom with his
Bible open, kneeling down every now and then, struggling and wrestling and
trying to believe; but every time he thought of this ungodly business which he
could not give up, despair seized him, for he thought of his money--he thought
of the consequences to his family; until at last he said, `Money or no money, I
will settle it.' He gave it up, came out, and got saved at once.
Now I think these illustrations make clear what I
mean, by the abandonment, the turning from the embrace of evil to the embrace
of righteousness as an indispensable condition of forgiveness. Hence the Holy
Ghost has carefully maintained this order `to open their eyes and to turn them
(round) from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God that they
may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among them that are
sanctified by faith that is in me.' You see what a different thing this is to
presenting Christ to people just as they are, where they are, doing what they
like. You see what a different Gospel it comes to, insisting upon a thorough
renouncement and abandonment of evil as a condition of Jesus Christ receiving
the sinner. This was Paul's Gospel. Will you give me any other definition of
it? Can you explain it in any other way? Paul goes on to show us, how he
understood: Whereupon, Oh! King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the
heavenly vision, but showed first unto them of Damascus and at Jerusalem and
then to the Gentiles, they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for
repentance." Was this like saying, "Only believe?" without
respect to any antecedent change of mind? Can anybody show me anything here in
the slightest degree approximating to the Antinomian Gospel which has been
grafted on to some other of Paul's utterances? And yet surely the Apostle could
not contradict himself. His writings about faith must be in harmony with this
most unmistakable putting of the Gospel to both Jews and Gentiles. Moreover,
did he tell Agrippa and Festus to believe? No, he left them trembling at his
words, because they were not willing to abandon their sins and put away the
accursed thing; but to the Philippian gaoler, who said, "Men and brethren,
what must I do?" and who brought them out and began to wash their stripes,
thus doing works meet for repentance at once, he said, "Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." Ah; my friend, you may try to
get hold of Christ to your dying hour and at the last be lost, while you are
holding on to your idols. If he could have saved us after that fashion, we
needed no Christ, we could have gone into heaven without a Saviour; but He came
to save His people from their sins, and while you are in love with your sins,
you may struggle and tremble as Agrippa and Felix did, and as the young Ruler
did, and you will meet a similar fate. You must let go your idols and be
willing that Jesus should come and save you; not down among the dirt and mud of
sin, but lift you out of it; wash you, make you clean, and keep you clean:
circumcise your hearts; and put His law in them; and then you shall know the
gladness of His salvation!
I have some people writing to me in this condition.
If they are here this afternoon, let me say to them--This is what you have to
do--let go your idols and say as the gentleman said of whom I have told you,
`Poverty or no poverty, business or no business, position or no position,
suffering or prosperity; never mind--Christ, Christ, I let go all for Thee!'
Have you forsaken evil? Have you cut off the right
hand? Have you plucked out the right eye? I have people coming to me in
services of this character, groaning and sometimes worn to skeletons. They tell
me they are in distress, they have got into bondage, they want the joy of the
Lord and His daily fellowship; and when I ask the reason, they generally say,
`Well, I don't know, but it seems to be want of faith.' Now, I say to such
people:
'Now let us see what this want of faith arises
from.' There must be a cause. I am afraid that sin lies at the door, and when
we come to close quarters, we generally find there is some idol, some course of
conduct, or some doubtful conduct which keeps God out of the soul, and when
this is confessed and renounced people get the presence of God and go away
rejoicing in Him. It is so in nearly every case. God does not arbitrarily
withdraw Himself from His people. He wants to dwell with them. We are His
proper abode. He has promised to come and abide with his people, and if He does
not, depend upon it there is something in the temple offensive to Him,
something with which he will not dwell. Will you put that away, and consecrate
your hearts this day unto the Lord to be His temple, His temple only, and leave
consequences with Him? He will be able to look after His own.
Then, lastly, when you have come to this decision,
then look and live; take the final leap into the arms of a crucified Saviour.
With some souls who have been the subjects of the drawings of the Spirit for
years, the difficulty is in the surrendering of their wills. They have learned
to reason with God; they have lost the little children's way; they are afraid
to take the final leap, and there they stand before the Cross, not conscious of
anything between them and Christ. What are you to do? What Paul told the
Philippian gaoler to do: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ;" and you
say, "What is that, and how am I to believe?" Wonderful how it has
got mystified! Believe what? That He just means what He says; and that when you
come, He does receive--not He will tomorrow, nor He did yesterday, but that He
does now, this moment. When did He receive the sinners who came to Him on
earth? When they came. Just the same will He receive you. `Oh, but,' you say,
`I do not feel right.' No, of course not. Do you not see, you are to be saved
by faith. If you are to be saved by faith, you must exercise faith before you
will be saved. If it is by faith you are to be saved, you must believe first,
and be saved afterwards; if it is only the next second! `But,' you say, `I do
not feel it.' No, but you will feel it when you have got it. You must believe
it before you get it, on the testimony of His Word, "I will in no wise
cast you out;" "Him that cometh;" `Now I come, Lord, I come. I
have put away my idols; I have put away everything that consciously stood
between me and Thee. I will to serve Thee, I will to follow Thee, I will to put
my neck under Thy yoke for ever, asking no more questions, but being willing
for Thee to lead me whithersoever Thou wilt. Now, Lord, I come--Thou dost
receive.' Leap off the poor old stranded wreck of your own effort, or your own
righteousness, or your own sinfulness, or your own unworthiness, or anything
else of your own, into the glorious lifeboat. It is on the top of the wave this
afternoon--another step, and you will be in--one bound, and you will feel the
loving arms of your Saviour around you. Faith is trust, TRUST. He will do for
you what He promised. Believe that God does now accept you wholly for the sake
of the sacrifice of His blessed Son; that He justifies you freely from all
things from which you could not be justified by the law. You stand a condemned,
guilty, hell-bound criminal, and nothing but His free, sovereign mercy can save
you. Throw yourself upon this, and the moment you do so in real faith you will
be saved. Perhaps you will say, as a curate of the Church of England, writing
to me last week said, `I refuse to be saved by logic.' Amen, amen. So did I,
and I struggled for six weeks because I refused to be saved by logic--because I
would have a living, personal Christ. I admire your decision, my brother, if
you are here, but let this logic help you: nevertheless, Jesus Christ has
promised, if I come, that He will receive me--then, I do come, and He does
receive me, for He cannot lie. Let that help you. Faith is not logic, but logic
may help faith.
Oh! how I should rejoice if some of you were to
launch into the arms of Jesus this afternoon. It often happens that while I am
speaking souls do get into the ark of God's mercy, and come, or write to tell
me afterwards that the Spirit has come, and he is crying "Abba
Father," and now they KNOW they have passed from death unto life. They
don't want logic then. It is a matter of demonstration with them. When you have
come up to the place where saving faith is possible to you, you have no more to
do, no more to suffer, no more to pay. By simple trust we are saved. This is
the way every saint on earth was saved. This is the way every saint in glory
was saved. This is the way we are kept saved too, by LIVING DAILY, OBEDIENT
FAITH. The Lord help you just now. Let the idol go. Put away the ungodly
companion. Give up the unlawful business, or the worldly conformity. Put away
whatever has stood between you and Jesus. Trample it under foot and press
through the crowd of difficulties as the woman did, and go right up and touch
Him with this touch of faith, and you shall LIVE and KNOW THAT YOU ARE HEALED.
Then this Gospel will be good news indeed to you, and Jesus will be the author
of eternal salvation to you, because you OBEY HIM!
Chapter 3: ADAPTATION OF MEASURES
I HAVE chosen, this afternoon, five or six
different passages all exhibiting the principle of Adaptation, on which I am to
speak. The first is 1 Cor. ix. 20-22:
"And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I
might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I
might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as
without law (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ), that I
might gain them that are without law."
To them that are without law as without law; but
here he carefully guards himself by a parenthesis, lest he should seem to
favour a lawless Antinomian Gospel, "not without law to God," not
independent of the great moral law, "but under the law to Christ," in
which is fulfilled ALL LAW.
"To the weak became I as weak, that I might
gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save
some."
"To the weak became I as
weak,"--masterpiece of human humility! Most people want to appear strong,
but here is a man coming down, and appearing a weak man, that he might win the
weak. That is the humility of Jesus Christ:
The Lord give us the like spirit! Again, 1 Cor.
xii. 4-6:
"Now there are diversities of gifts, but the
same spirit; and there are differences of administration, but the same Lord;
and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh
all in all."
Some people want the Spirit to work in everyone
alike, and in all times the same, but He chooses to have diversities. Again,
Galatians iii. 27, 28:
"For as many of you as have been baptized into
Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither
bond nor free; there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ
Jesus."
That is, so far as the privileges, duties, and
obligations of Christ's kingdom are concerned, there is neither nationality nor
sex; and Galatians v. 6:
For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth
anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love."
All mere ordinances and ceremonies come under the
Apostle's term "circumcision." And II. Timothy iv. 2:
"Preach the word: be instant in season, out of
season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine."
What a hue-and-cry there is because we Salvation
Army people save men "out of season!" And Jude 22, 23:
"And of some have compassion, making a
difference: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire."
'Oh, no,' say some of our conventional friends,
`you should not make a difference.' Nevertheless, in all these six texts, the
principle of Adaptation is most distinctly laid down.
Now, we have spent the two last Sabbath afternoons
in trying to point out our view of the characteristics of a pure Gospel, and I
think we have succeeded in doing this so clearly that no person who followed us
carefully, can imagine for a moment that we would hold, or teach any adaptation
of the Gospel itself. As we stated before, we deemed this so above all
adaptation--so above any change, that we would not be responsible for
transposing its order, much less altering its matter, that we would not take a
dot off one of the "i's," so sacredly intact do we believe the Gospel
of Christ in its matter ought to be kept. We believe also that the ORDER of God
ought to be strictly maintained; that it is as rational and true in philosophy
as it is in divinity; and that the way the Spirit operates upon the minds of
men is just the same as ever. This we clearly and most carefully pointed out,
so that what we have to say this afternoon, you will please bear in mind, has
nothing to do with the GOSPEL MESSAGE ITSELF. We have tried to show our idea
(or what we believe to be the Holy Spirit's idea) of a pure Gospel; but when we
come to speak of modes and measures, that is quite another thing. I think, from
the texts we have read, and from many others equally plain and relevant, that
we find a most easily-gathered truth running all the way through the New
Testament, namely, that forms and ceremonies are nothing except as they embody
and express real spiritual life and truth. That circumcision is nothing, and
that uncircumcision is nothing; baptism is nothing, and being unbaptized is
nothing; the Lord's Supper is nothing, and abstaining from the Lord's Supper is
nothing, in itself, as a matter of form, for he embraces under circumcision all
mere outward forms and ceremonies; all these are nothing, but "KEEPING THE
COMMANDMENTS OF GOD:" that is, you may have all these performed upon you,
and regularly perform them yourselves, and be but sounding brass and tinkling
cymbals, if you keep not the commandments of God; for circumcision availeth
nothing, in another place, and uncircumcision availeth nothing, but faith--of
what sort?--that WORKETH BY LOVE: that proves its obedience by its deeds.
Therefore, we start with that fundamental truth lying clearly before us in
every page of the New Testament, that forms and ceremonies, whatsoever they may
be, are nothing except as they embody and represent REAL SPIRITUAL LIFE, and
truth and action--action! Now, it was the great sin--the crowning condemnation
of the Jews--that they had frittered away the spirituality and practical
bearing of the Divine Law, clinging to those forms and ceremonies which were
instituted only to embody and symbolize it. Would to God they had let go the
form when they let go the spirit. Jesus Christ wishes they had. He tells them
it would have been far better. He told them they were children of the Devil,
notwithstanding their holding on to their relationship to Abraham and all the
outward forms and ceremonies of their ritual.
They had better have come out and avowed themselves
unbelievers, than have gone on professing to be the children of God, while they
were doing the work of the Devil. But they would not receive this teaching. It
was too cutting for them, and so they would not have it. It was true,
nevertheless. They held on to the form whilst the spirit had gone. They were
"making clean the outside of the platter, but within they are full of
extortion and excess, appearing beautiful outward, but within they are full of
dead men's bones and all uncleanness." And, dear friends, all corpses are
very much alike, when the spirit is gone out of them--one is found to be about
as good as another.
Alas! there is this tendency still in our fallen
human nature. It is so much easier, or Satan makes it look so much easier, to
an unregenerate man, to rest in a form, than to seek till he finds the
spiritual grace which that form represents. That is to say, it is so much
easier for an unregenerate man to be circumcised, or to be baptized, as the
case may be, to partake of the Lord's Supper, to keep outwardly the Sabbath
Day, to abstain from acts of immorality and open sin, and to be decently moral
and religious--all this he can understand and do for himself, and it looks to
him so much easier, and so it is, in the first instance, than bringing his
evil, unregenerate heart to God for Him to circumcise it, and write His law in
it, as He promises to do under the new covenant.
Now, that is what God wants every man to do. He
wants him to bring this heart to Him, and let Him renew it. He says, "I
will circumcise your hearts to keep my law." But, no! the unregenerate man
rests in the outward form. He will not be at the trouble to sacrifice his
idols, and cry mightily unto God. He will not seek until be attains the
fulfillment of these promises; so be sits down and rests in the form.
Alas! alas! How many thousands in this so-called
Christian England of ours today are just there. They have got the form; they
are like the Jews--they are Pharisees with a Christian creed instead of a
Jewish, the same in CHARACTER, only different in name. That is all the
difference, hanging on to the creed of Jesus Christ, while they know nothing of
its spirit, the form without the power; and they deny their professed Lord every
day. Oh! are there any of this class here? My friend, my friend, if you never
find it out until you come to die, you will find it out then, but it may be too
late. May God, the Holy Spirit, help you to find it out this afternoon, and
bring that unrenewed, unrepentant, evil heart of yours to the Cross; bring it
to God, and wait, and weep, if need be, and struggle, and knock, and cry, as He
tells you, until He does renew it and write His law in it; then the outward
form will be the expression of the inward grace. Then the fruit will be good,
because it springs from a good root inside. The Lord help you!
This tendency to rest in form is just as great as
ever, and, instead of putting away their idols, and bringing their conscience
to be cleansed and kept clean by the precious blood, prayerfully and carefully
walking before God, striving in all things to please Him, people get an outside
form, but LIVE just like the world around them, calling Jesus, "Lord,
Lord," but doing not the things that He says. Now, I say that a pure
Gospel requires that we bring our evil HEARTS to God to be renewed, and that we
resolutely put away our idols, and that we wait on Him by the Cross until He
renews our motives, tempers, tendencies, feelings, and dispositions, and makes
us new creatures in Christ Jesus. Instead of doing this, people go on being
circumcised or baptized, as the Jews did, and they call themselves
"Israel," as they did; whereas, of the spiritual Israel they are
utterly ignorant. They are the children of Hagar (as Paul says), and not the
children of the promise. May the Lord help you to come and be made children of
the promise!
Now, as in the individual, there is such a tendency
to rest in form, so in the Church collectively; hence this tendency to a formal
religion. Just as it was with the Jews--their Temple service and the
paraphernalia of Judaism--was all in all to them, and they thought that Jesus
Christ was the most awfully severe and uncharitable person who ever appeared on
the face of the earth, because He told them the truth. And the same class of
character presents the same attitude now. We shall see when we get to the
Judgment seat of Christ which is the true charity--that which covers up things,
or that which tears off the bandages, and shows people their hypocrisy and, as
we have just read, reveals to them the secrets of their hearts. I fear that we
are very largely in the same condition as the Jews were when Christ came. I say
"very largely," for I know that there are grand and glorious
exceptions; but I speak of the great whole, and I am backed up in this opinion
by some of the most thoughtful and spiritual men of this age. It is the
lamentation everywhere--this formality and death. It reaches us from all parts
of the land, yea, from all parts of all lands. I once heard a great divine, a
leader of spiritual thought in his day, who has recently passed to heaven, say,
"I consider that the writings of the Prophets are far more applicable to
the state of the churches now than the writings of the New Testament, for we
are in the same lapsed and fallen condition, as churches, as Israel of old
was." So many think, and so many teach.
If this be the case, WHAT IS TO BE DONE? What would
strike you should be done in this state of comparative-spiritual eclipse?
Evidently it would be madness to go on as we are. That will mend nothing!
Somebody must strike and do something worthy of the emergency. "There is
no improving the future, without disturbing the present," and the
difficulty is to get people to be willing to be disturbed! We are so
conservative by nature--especially some of us. We have such a rooted dislike to
have anything rooted up, disturbed, or knocked down. It is as much the work of
God, however, to "root out, and to pull down, and to destroy," as "to
build and to plant;" and God's real ambassadors frequently have to do as
much of the one kind of work, as of the other. This is not pleasant work; but
what is necessary to be done? Is it not manifestly necessary that we should go
back to the simplicity, and SPIRITUALITY of the Gospel, and to the early modes
of propagating it amongst men?
On the two last Sunday afternoons we tried to show
what was the pure Acts of Apostles Gospel--calling men to forsake their sins,
to cast away their idols, come out from the world of the ungodly and be
separate in order that their sins might be forgiven, and that God might receive
them, and they become His sons and His daughters. Last Sunday we spoke of faith
and what it would do for us.
Now, with respect to the outward manifestations and
propagation of the Gospel it is equally necessary to go back. We have such a
heap of rubbish to carry away--the accumulated traditionalism of ages to go
through and dig under--that it sometimes takes a considerable amount of time,
and force of character, and a great deal of the Spirit of God to enable us to
do it. Nevertheless, it must be done if we are to reach a better state of
things.
It seems to me, in order to do this we should not
shrink from a recognition of our lapsed and fallen condition. That was what the
Jews did at the teaching of Jesus. They would not have His reproach. They would
not have the light because it condemned them. They rejected it. They persisted
they were the children of Abraham--the children of the promise. They persisted
they were all right, and they pointed to the Temple and to their ceremonialism
as a proof of it; they would not have His testimony, would not admit that they
were wrong. Do not let us imitate them. Let us recognize this state of things.
Let us look it fairly in the face. Honesty is always the best policy both in
spiritual and in temporal things. There is nothing gained by ignoring a
disagreeable truth. It is best to face it. Now there it is and the best way is
to bail any ray of light that comes to us from any part of the heavens, even
though a carpenter should bring it, as He brought it to them--or a fisherman,
or a woman. Never mind--let us hail the light and apply it to ourselves. Let us
bring our hearts and lives out into its blaze, and examine them by it, and improve
it to our own salvation and to the salvation of others. If the Jews had done
that, they would have been saved, and their nation. "If thou had known,
even thou, at least in this thy day, `this twelfth hour of the last day' the
things that belong unto thy peace; but now" (because of thy obstinate
rejection) - "they are hid from thine eyes." The Lord help us to take
the light home to ourselves, each one.
We have seen that it is clearly laid down in the
texts I have read this afternoon, that the law of adaptation is the only law
laid down in the New Testament with respect to modes and measures. I challenge
anybody to find me any other. While the Gospel message is laid down with
unerring exactness, we are left at perfect freedom to adapt our measures and modes
of bringing it to bear upon men to the circumstances, times, and conditions in
which we live free as air. "I became all things to all men." The
great Apostle of the Gentiles who had thrown off the paraphernalia of Judaism
years before, yet became as a Jew that he might win the Jews. The great,
strong, intellect became as a weak man, that he might win the weak. He
conformed himself to the conditions and circumstances of his hearers, in all
lawful things, that he might win them; he let no mere conventionalities, or
ideas of propriety, stand in his way, when it was necessary to abandon them. He
who was brave as a lion, and hailed a crown of martyrdom like a conquering
hero, as he was, yet was willing to submit to anything, when the requirements
of his mission rendered it necessary. He suffered his limbs to be ignominiously
thrust into a basket, and himself let down over the wall when necessary, for
the success of his work. He adapted himself to the circumstances. He was
instant in season and out of season. Oh! what a hue-and-cry there is about
out-of-season Christianity; "of some making a difference" pulling
them out of the fire by the hair of the head, if needful! Never mind--save
them, SAVE THEM. That is the great desideratum. Save them--pulling them out of
the fire. Adapt your measures to your circumstances and to the necessities of
the times in which you live. Now, here it seems to me that the Church--I speak
universally--has made a grand mistake, the same old mistake which we are so
prone to fall into, of exalting the traditions of the elders into the same
importance and authority as the Word of God, as the clearly laid down
principles of the New Testament.
People contend that we must have quiet, proper,
decorous services. I say, WHERE IS YOUR AUTHORITY FOR THIS? Not here. I defy
any man to show it. I have a great deal more authority in this book for such a
lively, gushing, spontaneous, and what you call disorderly service, as our Army
services sometimes are, in this 14th of Corinthians than you can find for
yours. The best insight we get into the internal working of a religious service
in Apostolic times is in this chapter, and I ask you--is it anything like the
ordinary services of today? Can the utmost stretch of ingenuity make it into
anything like them? But even that is not complete. We cannot get the order of a
single service from the New Testament, nor can we get the form of government
for a single church. Hence one denomination think theirs is the best form, and
another theirs; so Christendom has been divided into so many camps ever since;
but this very quarrelling shows the impossibility of getting from the New
Testament the routine, the order, and the fashion of mere modes. They cannot
get it, because it is not there!! Do you think God had no purpose in this
omission? The form, modes, and measures are not laid down as in the Old
Testament dispensation. There is nothing of this stereotyped routinism in the
whole of the New Testament. Why? Now there may be some who may have
difficulties in this matter. I said to a gentleman, who came to me with this
and that difficulty about our modes and measures, `I will meet your
difficulties by bringing them face to face with the bare principles of the New
Testament. If I cannot substantiate and defend them by that I will give them up
for ever. I am not wedded to any forms and measures. To many of them I have
been driven by the necessities of the case. God has driven me to them as at the
point of the bayonet, as well as led me by the pillar of cloud, and when I have
brought my reluctance and all my own conventional notions, in which I was
brought up like other people, face to face with the naked bare principles of
the New Testament, I have not found anything to stand upon! I find things here
far more extravagant and extreme, than anything we do--looked at carefully.'
Here is the principle laid down that you are to adapt your measures to the
necessity of the people to whom you minister; you are to take the Gospel to
them in such modes and habitudes of thought and expression and circumstances,
as will gain for it from them a HEARING. You are to speak in other tongues--go
and preach it to them in such a way as they will look at it and listen to it!
Oh! in that lesson we read what beautiful freedom from all set form and formula
there was! What freedom for the gushing freshness, enthusiasm, and love of
those new converts! What scope for the different manifestations of the same
spirit. Everything was not cut and dried. Everything was not pre-arranged. It
was left to the operation of the Spirit, and the argument that this has been
abused, is no argument against it, for then you might argue against every
privilege. Here is abundant evidence that these new converts, each one, had
opportunity to witness for Jesus, opportunity and scope to give forth the
gushing utterance of his soul, and tell other people, how he got saved, or the
experience the Holy Ghost has wrought in him. And look at the result! "If
there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all,
he is judged of all; and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest, and
so falling down on his face, he will worship God, and report that God is in you
of a truth." What unkind things have been said of The Salvation Army,
because people have fallen on their faces under the convicting power of the
Spirit at our meetings, but you see this is Apostolic! And, oh, friends, what a
glorious service this would be! You say, it would look so strange. More the
pity. More the pity that this natural, easy, domestic, familiar kind of
testimony and witnessing of divine things should have become strange. May it
not be because the experience which prompted it has become strange? May it not
be that there is no more desire to testify because there is little to testify
about? May it not be that there is want of the utterance of the Holy Spirit
through the tongue because there is less of it in the soul? Oh! then, should we
not make haste back to those days of simplicity and power? Should we not pray
to be set free from the traditionalism and routinism in which Satan has
succeeded in lulling us to sleep? I ask any saved man--Do you not remember the
gushing love and enthusiasm of your first-found liberty? how you longed to tell
everybody, and if you had been placed in such circumstances as these Corinthian
converts, how gladly you would have testified to what Jesus had done for you.
It was only the repressing, keeping down, and ultimately, I am afraid the
all-but extinguishing of the Holy Spirit's urgings that has led to the state in
which many of you now are, and also to the dead way in which many of our
services are conducted.
Now, let us look fairly at these things. I maintain
that the only qualification--the only indispensable qualification--for
witnessing for Christ is the Holy Ghost. Paul, expressly, over and over again,
abjures all merely human equipment. He expressly declares that these things
were not the power, even where they existed, but that it was the Holy Ghost.
Therefore, give me man, woman, or child, with the Holy Ghost, full of love and
zeal for God, and I say it is a great strength and joy to that convert to
testify to the Church and to the world, and it is the bounden duty of the
Church to give him the opportunity to do so. The Lord is going to demonstrate
in this land, that He is not going to evangelize it by finished sermons and
disquisitions, but by the simple testimony of people saved from sin and the
Devil, by His power and His grace. He is going to do it by WITNESSING, as He
began.
Now, I say, read your New Testament on this point,
and you will be struck with the amazing amount of evidence for this
unconventional kind of service. The world wants some more PENTCOSTS. When shall
Peters and Marys be so filled with the Spirit that they cannot help telling
what God has done for them--male and female, men, women, and children--like the
woman of Samaria, who, when she had found Him of whom Moses and the Prophets
wrote, went and fetched her fellow-townsmen and women to hear him. He wishes
you to do the same, and this is the way the Lord is going to gather out His
great and glorious kingdom in these latter days by the power of testimony in
the Holy Ghost. He only wants witnesses to be able to go and say, "We
speak that we do know"--that is the qualification. The Lord is multiplying
such witnesses. Bless His holy name.
But you may say--what did the Master Himself do?
Well, he adopted these very measures. I was so struck with this, when someone
said, "Why, you are sending people to preach who cannot read or
write." For a moment I was staggered, but I asked him, "How many of
the Apostles do you suppose could read and write when they were first sent
out?" And then it was the questioner's turn to be staggered. There is no
reason to suppose, with but two or three exceptions, that any of them could.
Education then was far more uncommon than now. It was not reading and writing
that was the great qualification for preaching Christ; it was KNOWING AND
SEEING! It was not the power of eloquence, but it was being able to cast out
devils, that was the test. Give me somebody able to cast out devils, and I
don't care whether they can read or write, or put a grammatical sentence
together. That is of no consequence whatever. Why did not Jesus Christ call the
doctors and scribes of His day? There were plenty of them--highly educated men
with trained and disciplined minds. He was amongst them in the Temple, when He
was twelve years old. He knew them. How was it He did not select these? He who
could have commanded a legion of angels, could surely have commanded a few
scribes and doctors to go to preach the Gospel. Why not? He acted on the law of
adaptation. He wanted His Gospel preached to the great masses, not to the
select few. Not to the educated "upper ten," but to the great masses
of mankind. How was He to have His Gospel so preached, but by men like unto
themselves? They fled from the educated doctors. They would not listen to the
doctors, and they will not now. It may be very wicked, and obstinate, and
foolish, but such is the fact --they never have and they never will. Hence,
Jesus Christ, instead of working a miracle, which he never did when it was
unnecessary, chose the weak things of the earth to confound the mighty. He
would, in the other case, have had first to have untaught all those scribes and
doctors almost all they had learned. He would have had to set them free from
the bonds of traditionalism. He would have had to remould their minds, and then
equip them. There was no necessity for this, when He found the fishermen ready
to His hand. They were just the men He wanted. They only required tempering
with the Holy Ghost, and they were ready for the work. They thought as the
people thought; they spoke with and associated with the people, and, in fact,
were of them. As He wanted the masses of men evangelized, He chose men from
amongst the masses to evangelize them. Here was infinite wisdom. "I thank
Thee, oh, Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in
Thy sight." But He had a purpose, in it, and the purpose was this--that
the Gospel might be propagated in all climes and conditions of men, through any
kind of an agent--Greek, Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, man, woman, child. Any
person who has experienced its power in their souls may go and speak it to
anybody they can get to hear them and everywhere! We are free as air and
sunlight as to our choice of agencies, and it is time the Church woke up to
this. The Lord have mercy on us! Is there not work enough to do? It makes my
ears tingle and burn with shame when I hear people saying, `You must not send
agencies here and there, and we can't have our organization interfered with.' I
say, `Are all the sinners converted in your neighbourhood?' Nay; has every
poor, lost, wretched soul heard the name of Jesus, and the testimony of His
Gospel? Are there not teeming thousands round about you who never heard His
name, and who care nothing for Him, who live every day trampling His law under
their feet? For Christ's sake, send somebody after them. If they will not have
your doctors of divinity and your polished divines, get hold of fishermen and
costermongers and send them! Let the people have a chance for their souls. Let
them hear, for if they hear not, how shall they believe. Oh, they are dying for
lack of knowledge--they are, friends; thousands, are dying for the lack of
knowledge. It is quite a common thing for us to get people into our services
who say, `I never knew there was anything so pretty as that in the Bible. I
didn't know you were reading from the Bible. We never heard anything like that
before.' Hundreds of men in this country were never in a place of worship, save
to be christened or to be married, and a good many, sad to say, are living
without being married. While we have been standing UPON OUR DIGNITY, WHOLE
GENERATIONS HAVE GONE TO HELL!--if the Bible is true. How much longer shall we
stand there? If Jesus had stood upon His dignity He would never have come to
die between two thieves. The whole work of redemption is a work of humiliation,
self-sacrifice, and suffering; and if we are not willing to follow Him in that,
we may as well give up professing His name.
The Lord help us to go down, down amongst the
fishermen, amongst the poor, the weak, the unlearned, the vulgar, to
"condescend to men of low estate."
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