Faith and Feeling

Ecclesiastes 8:4  •  6 min. read  •  grade level: 8
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“WHERE the word of a king is, there is power;” and Christ is the power of God, and the Word of God. You cannot separate Christ and the written word. He is Himself the very essence, life, and core of it. But what is Christ to us? What the word of Christ, without the Spirit of Christ to open up to our souls that word which testifies of Him? We cannot, we dare not separate them. The word of God, Christ the word, the Spirit of Christ, must go together. The word and Spirit testify of Christ. Christ declares the Father; and he that hath seen Him hath seen the Father. (John 14:9; 1:18; 5:39; 15:269Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father? (John 14:9)
18No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:18)
39Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. (John 5:39)
26But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: (John 15:26).) No man cometh to the Father but by Him; and all who come to Christ are drawn to Him by the Father. (John 14:6; 6:446Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6)
44No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:44)); and Jesus says, “If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” (John 14:2323Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (John 14:23).) But we shall know nothing of the power of the word as a hammer to break the heart, as a salve to heal the wound which it has made, but as the Holy Ghost applies it, revealing through it Jesus to and in our consciences, as the Word whom God has sent to heal us (Ps. 107:20), originating at the same time faith to receive it. This is no miserable, dry, heartless doctrine: it is health and cure; it is a matter of inward experience, an experience inwrought by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us, (John 14:16, 1716And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; 17Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. (John 14:16‑17); 1 John 2:2727But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him. (1 John 2:27),) and on whom we are hourly dependent to keep us, through the word, abiding in Christ by living faith; and where there is a measure of such experience, learnt in such a way, there will be, there must be, corresponding feelings. Tell us there is no feeling in joy, no feeling in peace: we say there is. He who has known the bitterness of a guilty conscience, who has felt the arrows of the Almighty within drinking up his spirit, who has had the terrors of God set in array against him (Job 6:44For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. (Job 6:4)), and been holden in cords of affliction (Job 36:88And if they be bound in fetters, and be holden in cords of affliction; (Job 36:8)), no matter from what cause; be it known guilt after a profession of faith, or bad and legal teaching on an ill-instructed, self-righteous conscience, such an one knows what misery is; he has felt it; and now let Christ be revealed to that soul, by the Holy Ghost, as the ONE who hath “put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Heb. 9:2626For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 9:26)), let him learn how He Himself hath made peace through the blood of His cross (Col. 1:2020And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. (Colossians 1:20)), that Christ died for the ungodly (Rom. 5:66For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6)), and that by Him, whom God hath raised from the dead, all who believe ARE justified from all things (Acts 13:3939And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses. (Acts 13:39)), and that just as he is, without one plea but that Jesus died for such, and that He bids him come, saying, “All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me, and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” (John 6:3737All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. (John 6:37).) I say, let such a poor miserable soul be drawn to Christ, and have the Holy Ghost witnessing in his conscience to the efficacy of the precious blood, as that which has met all his responsibilities to God, as his Creator and Lawgiver, as that which perfectly answers for him, cleansing him from all sin, and easing him from all sin’s bitter gnawings, and will he not feel something? Tell such an one that there is no feeling in believers, and he will tell you that there is “joy and peace in believing” (Rom. 15:1313Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost. (Romans 15:13)), and that he has felt it, and that he speaks of that which he does know, and testifies of that which he has tasted and handled. We do not say you must feel before you believe, or that your feeling is the seal and proof of that being true which is declared to you. When we believe we set to our seal that God is true, we add our “Amen” to it; but it was true before we believed; yea, it is the truth which has generated faith in the hearer; let God be true, though every one who hears were to reject the word; but some do and shall believe, for His word shall not return to Him void. We are to publish SALVATION, and leave the results with God, neither guarding it by conditions to be kept by the creature, nor by a certain amount of inward experience in joy or sorrow to be realized. We may despise feelings, and speak lightly of doctrines. It is quite true that doctrines are not Christ, and feelings are not faith; but let us take heed lest we despise what God cloth highly esteem, for doctrines are taught by Him, and feelings will be experienced, in a greater or less degree, whenever the truth is received in the love of it. A Christian whose head is more exercised than his heart, believing, of course, has life, and he will go on his way without much feeling himself or sympathy with others. We may and ought indeed to condemn that style of preaching which makes so much of feelings, which seeks to delineate so accurately, and does so narrowly analyze the inward workings of faith and unbelief, till the poor soul is driven to look within for Christ, instead of to the right hand of God, where He who died and rose again now is, and is there, too, because He has glorified the Father on the earth, and finished the work which He gave Him to do (John 17:44I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. (John 17:4)); but we must equally condemn the dry, theoretic setting forth of an accurately stated gospel, which bolsters up the hearers with a notional assent, while an incessant exhortation to submit to this, to obey that, and do the other thing, succeeds in molding into shape a lifeless lump of self-righteous, captious morality.
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Beloved, let us rest in the bosom of the God of peace, and the peace of God shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. The Lord of peace Himself rests there. All the toil is over. The waves which overwhelmed the Rock on which we build, are all gone back, and our Rock is within the vail. Jehovah is our rock; exalted be the God of the Rock of our salvation.
END OF THIRD VOLUME.