That the providence of God acted sovereignly everywhere, that the confinement of specific relationship to Israel was only because historically men had everywhere departed from God, every Christian owns; and the book of Job is the special witness of it. It is asserted in Psalms and by Prophets a thousand times. Jonah is the public evidence of its subsisting when Israel was fully formed as a people. But what is the meaning of a providence in Jewry comprehending sanctities elsewhere? Is it that the heathen were holy, like God's people Israel, and as really in direct relationship with Him? If so, of course the Old Testament, and Christ's statements, and the apostles, and the whole scheme of scripture is totally false. These do teach that Christianity has broken down the middle wall of partition, but that, before, God had not had His name called on by any other people, but had chosen Israel for Himself out of all nations.
The whole scheme of scripture is on this showing false. Salvation was not of the Jews, as the Lord asserts. The apostate affirms that the religions of India and Arabia, of primaeval Hellas and Latium, appealed to the better side of our nature (!), their essential strength lying in the elements they contained, rather than in any Satanic corruption. So thought not Paul: but let this pass. The infidel has, of course, keener spiritual perception than he! He was in conflict with the evil, saw it around him, would feel its corruption, and could not talk so coolly and philosophically of it as the infidel of our day. Indeed it would have sadly cooled his zeal: his idea of revelation would have widened and deepened! Jupiter, whose ways appealed to the better side of our nature, would have had a part in his sympathies!
Paul, however, could bend himself to human condition and human infirmity in a wonderful way, to seek a point where he could meet those he dealt with, and at Athens meet a weary and wandering conscience with an unknown God; and bring the true One to ignorant and more savage Lystrians, as not having left Himself without witness in that He did good, and gave rain and fruitful seasons, and filled men's hearts with food and gladness. He could lead people to the true God by this, but he could not justify corruption and devils, nor call evil good, and good evil, and put darkness for light, and light for darkness. The true picture of it he gives in Romans 1. There is reason and conscience, and I see Paul meeting (with the utmost earnestness of love, and the delicacy of tact which love gives) the point in man's state accessible to it, in order to draw him, to the goodness and holy grace of the true God, out of the evil he was in: but never seeking to widen the idea of revelation, and lower it to the level of the heathenism it was to draw men out of and thus make them content with their degradation. When Christianity sank morally, Porphyrys and Iamblichus sought to do this by refining on heathenism, and making myths of it, as Julian sought in vain to moralize it to make a stand against Christianity, which, by its fruits, told on the conscience; but never did an apostle, nor any one who had a sense of the excellency of Christ. Paul can quote their own poets, can use all means to win all, but never to sanctify evil, and so degrade the moral judgment of man. This was reserved for the pretenders to higher moral discernment of the nineteenth century.
But a word more on this. We have already spoken on this sanction of heathenism. It is characteristic of the system—this moral leveling of all excellency to make an unwholesome swamp of man's mind, where all stagnates and never rises above its own level. But some particular features of it occur in this paper. It is called widening revelation and deepening it. Widening means giving it so large a meaning that that should be considered a revelation which is no revelation at all. Man's mind works; thoughts are produced. How that is deepening revelation I confess I do not know. I suppose they think men's thoughts are deeper than God's. Less simple they are. All is seen in obscurity, and thought to be profound.
But where are they—these revelations? Is Jupiter a revelation, or Brahm and Siva? I deny all revelation save what revelation means—God's communication to man. Let it be produced. I do not deny shreds of the knowledge of God; but I deny revelation. There is conscience in all, and conscience of God; and there is reason. And there was a knowledge of God from His original revelations of Himself, which men had not discernment to retain; and there was the evidence of nature. This conscience could not be got rid of, nor reason, however fearfully perverted, nor the consciousness of superior power. But this was corrupted. This side of human nature is found in heathenism, as the apostle largely declares; but heathenism itself is a vast system of diabolical corruption and sanctifying of lusts, which was obliged to let this in, for Satan can only act in and by what was in man; and conscience and the sense of superior power was in man.
But it is well known that heathenism was the exclusion of God in unity as far as possible, and the deifying of lusts and powers of nature. It was only the connecting of man, such as man was in sin, with demons; a departure from God without being able to destroy the idea of one, or the conscience which God had taken care should accompany sin; but it in no way sought to maintain the one or to meet the other, but to exclude the one and deaden and pervert the other. It took the character of each distinct nation. In Greece, it was gay, poetic, and corrupt; in India, a wonderful apprehension of the powers of nature, with a tinge of kindness interspersed; in Egypt, wisdom and sobriety of judgment as to man; in Canaan, the filth of inveterate corruption: but in all, without exception, sanctified corruption. In the north, perhaps, the wilder and more warlike passions, but in all passion. It was the devil's revelation of a lie, if it was a revelation, unless Siva, and Jupiter, and Khem be truths. It seized existing facts, but only made a lie of them.
In the truth there is no 'repressive idea of revelation' as regards conscience or reason. There is an authoritative revelation of facts, and teaching of truths by God, which act on conscience and give reason its best light. Reason judges probably, but never more, of the truth and falsehood of anything as a consequence. A revelation gives certain truth, or it is not one. If it be truth, conscience, liable to be misled, is rightly led by it. Reason, as to the direct reception of a revelation, is out of court, because reason draws conclusions, whilst a revelation is received on testimony. To say that reason and conscience are absolute judges, or competent to be so, is palpably and historically false. Reason and conscience received Brahmanism and Buddhism, and Ionism, and the Egyptian system, and Odin King of Men, and Druidism—all false and different in form. Did they judge rightly in this? If not, are they not at least incompetent to hold the balance, and rule above the will and corrupt influences? Why am I to trust them in judging of what is infinite in excellence? They could not secure man's judgment in the grossest cases imaginable of superstition and moral vileness.
I admit conscience, when acted on, recognizes holy truth and divine authority. But when it begins to judge, not good and evil in itself, but to determine the will as competent to judge for itself, as reasoning, it has ceased to be conscience; or rather conscience has ceased to act, and influences and motives are in play. Conscience knows murder, fruit of hatred, is wrong—that stealing is wrong, disobedience to parents wrong. Did a religion come saying “this is good,” as such, conscience could say, “that cannot be from God, for it is not good: that is a lie, not the truth.” But if (not conscience, but) pride begin to say, “God ought not to have done this; miracles do not suit man's better knowledge,” I reply, “! my poor conscience, you are putting on these peacocks' feathers, are you? You are too late. Why did not you judge, all the juggling of oracles, false gods, and priestcraft these four or five thousand years? This is all very fine. Christianity has saved you from all this long-lasting shame, from which you never could save yourself, and never did, with all your fine pretensions now; and you now turn to set up to be competent to judge about what it ought to have been, and reject the very claims of that whose power alone gave you any sense to judge at all. No, no; keep in your place, according to the light which you have got back to. In your own measure call good good and evil evil: this you have only learned really to do through Christianity. Let us see how lively you will be as to this under its influence, and we will applaud you. And do not speak to us—at least by the mouth of those who tell us they stand balancing terror against mutual shame. The eye, though capable of seeing, wants light; but do not fancy because you are the mind's moral eye, that you are therefore God, to know how in His workings and ways He ought to behave. Why did you not judge what man had to do when he was under your care? What did you make of him? Let history tell. If God has graciously used miracles, not against conscience, but to arouse it, and help man against influences tending to incredulity, and to show that there was a power in God above the evil to which you, conscience, had succumbed, do not you complain or set up to judge God for a deliverance which, without this, you never did effect. Do not say it could be done without it. You can tell that, you say. Why did you not then do it in the four thousand years—twenty thousand if you please—which had elapsed? Your pretended competency to judge of means, and reliance on your own power in behalf of man, is an historically proved falsehood. You let man sink into the grossest superstition and corruptions. The Christianity you are calling in question delivered him somehow or another; that is a fact (deep as, conscience and reason and all, he is fallen again in corrupt Christianity and rationalism): you never could.”
Further, I do not talk of kindred reason and conscience. I admit both, and revelation speaks to both; but 1 Say that it is an historical fact that with them man fell from the light he had into the pit of degradation. Christianity delivered him, and set reason and conscience in the light, and on their right ground, and nothing else did. I am talking of history. I trust my reason for things of reason, as far as it is reasonable (that is, as to what is subjected to it); I have to act according to my conscience when this is in the light; indeed it is more honest to do so when imperfectly enlightened. But trust to man's pretended competency to judge of revelation by them, and of what a religion ought to be, I cannot, because with them man has received everything as true that is false, base, and wicked to be God, and that is corrupt and abominable to be a duty, until God in power came in to deliver, and has rejected what was excellent and holy.
I have got my senses, now I am in the light, to see that with my senses I fell into the ditch when I had not the light, and that all the eyes in the world could not make a ray of light, though now I have the light I know it is light. And now I have it I have no inclination to put it out, or to say that eyes without it were competent to see, kindred to light; and widen the sense of light, to make it comprehend men walking, and walking in darkness, and their feeling their way an almost equivalent to having the light—a deepening of the idea of what light is.
I must get rid of history and facts, as well as every moral sentiment of my nature, to receive the theories of these men. Yet they use the name of Christ, while setting conscience above revelation.
Of their speaking of Christ anon, but conscience being above revelation is nonsense upon the face of it. A man may deny revelation; that I understand. I reject his thought as a horror, a moral impossibility, that man should be so left; but it is not nonsense. But if there be a revelation really, that is God. Conscience is man; and a conscience above revelation is man above God.
But must not I judge of a revelation?
It is not the common way of receiving it, because it acts with divine light on the conscience. I cannot say the eye judges light—light makes the eye see. A revelation being holy, convicts of sin, and so proves itself. But when we have to judge of a revelation, if it be one, I am judged by my judgment. If I judge a beautiful picture to be a bad one, and that the painters ought to have distributed the light so and so, what is judged when one knows what really is beautiful? Why I am. Our judgment proves what we are. There is no escaping that, unless finally man is to judge God, not God man. Oh, what a judgment it would be! Yet that is really the question, and in truth we have seen it brought to a trial and issue in Christ. Golgotha can tell that tale.
Our reception or non-reception of the truth is our judgment, and so the New Testament declares. Both analogy and history give us to understand this important principle, wholly overlooked by these unbelieving reasoners, that for the use of a faculty, power outside itself may be needed, so that when the power is not there the faculty is useless. When it is there, it acts rightly and freely; but its action is wholly dependent on a power independent of it. It exists without the power, but it cannot act without it. Conscience is a faculty of the soul, as the power of seeing is of the eye; but conscience without revelation, without light from God, has never judged rightly. Man with this faculty has received all the diabolical horrors and corruptions it is possible to imagine; he walks in darkness, and knows not at what he stumbles. But light is independent of the eye, and the eye judges not light, but everything by the light. Conscience judges not revelation, but by revelation, or perfect divine light—that is, Christ Himself. God is light, and Christ is that light in the world. If men have had it elsewhere, let them say where.
After all, it is only saying there is a God, and that as such He must be above man's judgment and the power of it. It is all confusion to speak of revelation being contrary to conscience, or having reason and conscience for its kindred. God, and God revealing Himself, has His place; and if God does not reveal Himself, we are godless creatures—not without a sense that there is a God, but ignorant of what He is; in the deplorable condition of knowing there is a God, and not knowing Him; with conscience enough to know we are in evil, but ignorant how to get out of it. History, the complaints of a Socrates, the puny efforts of others skew and tell—the world by wisdom knew not God.
And the sense of excellency gives the sense of wretchedness; of excellency (blessed be His name!) in God; of wretchedness in man; but then of infinite love towards us. If the world by wisdom knew God, it did not know love; if it did, where is the knowledge to be found? I defy the skeptic, conscience and reason and all, to tell me. If God does reveal Himself, He reveals Himself as God. Man is not a judge of the way. He has received every kind of lie as God, then laughed at it in the end, in the mockery of despair, without finding out it was his wretched self he was laughing at. But His revelation does not exclude but awaken conscience, makes it for the first time see good, which it in this light can recognize. For God, who is light, is goodness or love manifested in the midst of men.
Conscience is not the instrumentality of revelation, as these skeptical reasoners say: such a statement is nonsense. A revelation is God's making something known which was not otherwise apprehended—perhaps could not have been. Conscience is no instrumentality in revealing. It is a positive essential faculty in man, knowing or discerning good and evil: but it is not an instrument of revelation. It is a proper independent faculty, which the believer knows to have been acquired in the fall. But it must have its object before it, to say it is good or evil: that is, it has nothing to do with revealing. Its object must be there and then; when not perverted, it says, if good be before it, That is good; if evil, That is evil.
Again, reason discerns cause and effect, and as reasoning draws consequences; in moral things it runs closely into conscience. But it is never an instrument of revelation, unless in the sense that the Holy Spirit uses a man as an instrument in revealing; but in itself it never is. It must have its object to reason about.
On the other hand, revelation gives objects otherwise unknown, or fresh truth about known objects, or it is not a revelation. This neither conscience nor reason can do in their very nature. I may figuratively say: It really was a revelation—that is, the perception of reason was so quick, that it was, in comparison with other minds, like one. But this only proves the difference I have stated. In a word, conscience and reason must have objects to judge of. A revelation communicates objects which men have not. There is no contrast with revelation; they are no parts of its instrumentality. Reason and conscience have their own proper power in their place, needing, in order to act in divine things, a light wholly independent of them—that is, a revelation. In their place they are like every other faculty, and, as the most important ones, blessed. As I have said, when conscience has got light, it can say, Jupiter and Saturn cannot be gods; and reason can say, when it has got the idea of God, there cannot be two.
Reason can never say “is” or “is not,” but “must” and “cannot.” Ideas, and not facts, are its sphere. Revelation says “is” —another most important difference. I believe the idea of God is, in spite of Locke, at the bottom of every heart—corrupted and dimmed, but in every heart; and so, of course, are conscience and reason, though blind and corrupted, till light comes, and through passions, interests, and Satanic power, losing the light and being blinded when men have had it. They did not discern to retain God in their knowledge.
I have been, I am conscious, long in my lucubrations on this subject, but hope I have not lost your attention. Those who have followed the phases of the new school, and particularly abroad in its French forms (for it uses, but is not, the old rationalism), know that their battle-horse is this point of conscience. All their statements are, however, error and confusion, and, like everything they say, as superficial as it is pretentious.
Happily, history is there to refute man's pretensions; and the proof it gives of the need of light—that is, of revelation—to give conscience its power is all-important. Whatever the cause—I do not doubt the fall, and Satan's power, man's utter alienation from God, is—but whatever the cause is, the fact is so. By the Christian revelation, partially by the Jewish one, man had light to judge the absurdities and corruptions of paganism; without that, in point of fact, he never did. Conscience, one may see, existed, but was religiously incompetent—incompetent to judge of a revelation (that is, of its truth or falsehood). I might question whether the skeptic's conscience and reason be much better or sounder in his judgment of the matter. I doubt it very much; but this we may leave: I refer to his attempted justification of heathenism in presence of Christianity, and while favoring those horrible corruptions, questioning the divine character of both Christianity and its testimony. It seems to me as perverted as the heathenism it defends. I judge more so, as it comes after the light.