Never, perhaps, in this world's history was the human mind so engrossed as it now is with the things of the world. The very struggle for existence, or at least for life's maintenance, seems to be constantly on the increase. What keen competition there is in every department, and often for the bare necessaries of life! And again, where this is not the question, how keen the pursuit of gain, as gain, or as a source of power how keen, too, the pursuit of pleasure, whether in its higher or in its lower forms! If we glance for a moment at politics, how urgent and absorbing is the public state of things to minds engaged in public affairs! Never was there such a state of things. Even with the best intentions how preoccupied often is the mind with care, how distracted the attention, and this necessarily to the detriment of the soul! Education is pressed on under the fatal delusion that knowledge is the true remedy, the grand panacea for every evil. Yes! but not the knowledge which is of this world. You may inflate the human mind with knowledge, or with fancied knowledge; but what can this do without the knowledge of God, except to develop infidelity? What, under such circumstances, must be the result but increasing ungodliness, with political and social disorder? And so it is and will be increasingly. Morality,—private, social, or public,—forms little or no part of modern instruction; liberty, equality, and fraternity is the prevailing and influential idea of the age. Whether in the church or in the world, popularity is the great power: pander to this and you may succeed; refuse to do so and you become more or less marked. People dream that the world is getting wiser as it is getting older, that things are getting better, and that in due time education, the arts and sciences, commerce, &a., will ameliorate matters, the evils which afflict society will be rectified; corruption and crime will disappear, wars will cease, and the world will at last enjoy a sort of Millennium of its own production,—all will end well. A few of the more sensible are unconvinced of this: to them things seem tending in a very different direction. The Christian should be in no danger of being deceived. He knows it will end in bringing God's judgments on a scene of ripened iniquity and of revolt against God. Believing as he does in Divine revelation, he is not left in darkness; God in His word and by His Spirit has given him a knowledge and a wisdom which is not of this world, and which prevents him from prophesying smooth things, when he knows that to do so would be to deceive. This is a knowledge that never inflates the intellect. Remembering as the Christian does his own weakness, and that he was once of the world, conscious of his own unceasing need of Divine grace, it is in this spirit he contemplates the sad condition of the world in which he yet dwells, and beholds in sorrow the misery and sin of his fellow-creatures, whilst abhorrent of wickedness in itself.
Well then do we understand how little time for serious reflection generally is left amidst the pressing duties and cares of daily life. Yet it is to this we would endeavor with our readers to draw aside for a brief interval. Would that all would seize such opportunities as Divine providence may from time to time give, to turn their thoughts from the things of this world, and to consider their eternal interests! How often has that opportunity occurred which has proved to have been the last, and the state of the soul for eternity become unalterably fixed! If we contemplate our own being, and the circumstances which attend and affect it, how mysterious it appears! We find ourselves in existence quite irrespective of any will of our own in the matter. We soon find it (all of us more or less, but some, perhaps, more than others) one of much trouble. Death constantly stares us in the face. What becomes of us then? We look around, and find the world in which we are for the most part a mass of selfishness, wretchedness, and vice. What a subject of reflection for thoughtful minds! And the more we reflect, the more we must be convinced that the mind, the rational soul, cannot die,—the body alone is perishable. What will be our future destiny? Such have in fact been the reflections of the best and noblest of human minds in all ages. Strange were it not so. The almost brutish indifference of lower natures was not theirs. Yet a satisfactory answer to these higher mental cravings they found not.
Theories indeed, one after another, were propounded by the so-called philosophers, but the entire history of human philosophy will be found to be little else than a repetition of the same process, viz., construction, destruction, and eclecticism; nor was there any power in their philosophy to raise them morally. True, in these days men think they have at last reached terra firma in the positive philosophy. And perhaps finality it is, for infidelity can scarcely go farther. But they will accept and confide in it to their ruin, for what could be more ruinous than a “religion of humanity,” in which Divine revelation is unceremoniously cast to the winds, and almost mathematical demonstration insisted on even with regard to spiritual things? We say “even in regard to spiritual things,” almost forgetting that these are virtually denied, and that the supernatural is too often derided. But a fallen creation is in an abnormal state, and it might justly be thought is a sphere in which a God of grace would act at times, exceptionally, to demonstrate to His fallen and alienated creatures, tint He is acting either for their good, or to reveal Himself in some way. Why should the reasonableness, or the possibility of this, be denied? Truly the days are evil, as well as sad. What is the true and deep cause? what will be its issue? are solemn questions for each one of us. And Divine revelation alone adequately answers them, whilst at the same time it vindicates Divine grace and Divine righteousness.
Disobedience to God, i.e. sin, has brought sorrow into the world, and sin perpetuates it. “Sin is lawlessness” (ἀνομία), the principle of self-will and independence in the creature, insubjection to God; and this too often is carried to such an extent as to lead even to the rejection of all religion, whether natural or revealed.
Being, the great French naturalist, in a most graphic and ingenious way, makes Adam narrate his first sensations and actions on being created. Enraptured with all which was around him, and contemplating his own being, it was but gradually, and by considering in detail one thing after another, that he could realize where and what he was. It is a most interesting sketch, and may be found in his Natural History. But it is vitiated by one fatal defect: Adam is occupied with himself, and with nature around him, God is nowhere in the scene. And how exactly is this what man is doing to this day! Occupied with anything and everything but God? Is it conceivable that God, having created, omitted to reveal Himself to him as his Creator? Impossible! On the contrary, with his first consciousness Adam found himself in the presence of his Creator. The first impression Adam received was the presence of his Creator and Benefactor. God was his companion, his guide, and his instructor in the first hours of his existence, and before he had any other companion. He was left to no surmises or reflections of his own, still less to the approach of the enemy, till he was acquainted with his Creator, with his destiny as innocent; forewarned and forearmed against any possible enemy to God and to himself. He was then furnished with a companion similar to himself, the gift of God designed for his happiness and advantage. But how solemn these words, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” —would that they might sink deeply into the heart of every human being who has heard or read them, for assuredly every human being they immeasurably and everlastingly concern.
“Thou madest him a little lower than the angels, thou crownedst him with glory and honor, and didst set him over the works of thy hands.” Though the complete fulfillment of this will be in the person of the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom Adam was, as it were, the representative (as Eve of the Church), yet it had a very real accomplishment in Adam. How noble his origin, how wonderfully constituted, body, soul, and spirit, what a realm, was even this terrestrial one, to be set over! Creation in each part was indeed “very good.” Whilst our first parents were in a state of innocence, all was harmonious. Liberty, in the true and proper sense there was, because liberty meant, not license, not the exercise or Adam's part of a will antagonistic to God, but freedom and power to act at the same time in accordance with the suggestions of an unfallen nature, and in harmony with the Divine will. Under such circumstances constraint was unknown. Constraint is requisite to fallen beings; to those who are self-willed, and can pat no proper limits to their passions. To act agreeably to his nature was to Adam unfallen, entire freedom in conformity with God's will. It was necessary, however, that the principle of obedience to his Creator should be before Adam. No obedience was then possible which implied privation. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil marked the principle, but involved no privation, inasmuch as it was the sole restriction, unnecessary to his happiness, and on the other hand destructive of it if he disobeyed; without it Adam must almost have thought himself the God of this lower world. The existence of the moral agent must be conditioned, however a higher power may act in relation to that agent, and with a view to his preservation. Innocence was an absolute safeguard to Adam and Eve, unless on the one point of the forbidden fruit. Here only could they be tempted, or put to the test, and even here the temptation ought not to have been seductive, i.e. temptation in their case could have had only the meaning of “put to the test.” There was external suggestion, but no internal proclivity towards, or tendency to, evil, at least until Eve chose to listen to the voice of the stranger. From that instant she was no doubt in danger. Opportunity to the enemy was therefore reduced to a minimum, and could thus far serve only as the simplest test of obedience, scarcely to be called a moral test to a person in a state of innocence.
Nor could Satan appear to Eve or to Adam in propriâ personâ. He therefore avails himself of that one of the lower creation, which, through its subtlety, appeared best adapted to his purpose. How he could so take possession of the serpent is no doubt to us mysterious, but we read later of the man Judas that “Satan entered into him.” A willingness to be so possessed might, if God permit, make the way easy; for a spiritual being may in this be able to do what one possessing a natural body could not do, and may find it difficult to understand, as for instance to take innerpossession of another. We see the fact, however, in the case of demoniacal possession, during the time our Lord was upon earth, and so with the herd of swine. Though such possession may at present, in any very palpable way, be little known, still the possibility of it, if tied permit, has been demonstrated, and might occur again. The modern “spiritualism” is, without doubt, allied to the same power, the so-called “medium” being the human agent very directly acted on. Men and devils are seeking for illicit power and intercourse, and for their punishment God may yet again allow it to some extent to take place (in the Antichrist very completely). This is one of the greatest snares of the day, and Christians should be most careful not to be deluded by it. There is probably far more in it than mere jugglery, though jugglery and jobbery may make use of it.
Satan is the “prince of the power of the air,” and it is with wicked spirits in heavenly places that Christians have to contend, as their enemies. If true to the Lord themselves, they cannot be deceived. The account of the fall as given in Gen. 3 is in fact the only rational explanation of man's condition. God certainly did not create the world in the state in which we see it. A disturbing cause has entered since Adam was created, and the account given in Genesis simply and satisfactorily explains it. The creature lives by dependence on God, the moral agent consciously so. The Fall and its consequences teach us what disobedience is, in principle, i.e. even in the taking of the forbidden fruit, the result how terrible! and the more so that in itself it is irrevocable and irremediable. Yet how little we realize this! Satan in the light, and untempted, fell: for him therefore there is no salvation. For man God has found a ransom,” for verily he (i.e. Christ) taketh not up the cause of angels, but he taketh up the cause of the seed of Abraham “(Heb. 2:16).
But here, again, man is a moral agent,—we do not say exactly a free agent, for he is trammeled by a sinful nature; still, as we see in the seventh of Romans, the will may be right, and the law of sin in our members only then becomes the more apparent, and the more odious. Hence while on the one hand the Lord says, “No one can come unto Me unless the Father, which hath sent me, draw him;” so on the other hand, and to those whose wills are opposed, He says, “Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life.” God has provided a way, and but one way of salvation. Mach as men may differ in the degree to which they practice sin, and in the extent to which they may stifle the voice of conscience (and in those respects they do differ very greatly), yet we are all born in sin, we all inherit a sinful nature, and in the case even of the best of men, when tested in the light of God's presence, or tested by the law when spiritually understood, how perfectly plain and palpable is the defect, either from a perfect state of innocence, or from a perfect state of renewal in Christ!
But imperfection can never satisfy God, and, besides, it really means sin. Hence justification by faith is equally needed by all, the righteousness of God by faith. Blessed be God, in virtue of the work of Christ, God can be just, and the justifier of him who believes in Jesus. The respective offerings of Cain and Abel were typical of the forms which religion ever has assumed or ever could assume, for these forms resolve themselves simply into two kinds: viz. man's endeavor to propitiate God, and to render himself acceptable to Him; and the owning that our rain is too complete for this, and that our acceptance by God mast be in virtue of the work and merits of another. Doubtless Cain's offering cost him more personal effort than Abel's, for the latter had but by the sacrifice of a victim to recognize the grand gospel truth of substitution. Nevertheless Cain's offering WAS without conscience, and indeed insulting to God,—virtually saying, that the fruit of the ground, which for Adam's sake God had cursed, was a fit offering for God,—that the efforts, the religious efforts, of our fallen human nature, are suitable offerings to God. And indeed what else could we do had there been no testimony to the precious truth that “God would provide"? But testimony to this was given as soon as our first parents fell, not only in the figurative words that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head, but in the typical act of the death of the victim, which furnished a cover to their nakedness. And we shall find that this double testimony of God's word, and of typical or symbolic acts, runs through all the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. But God having given this testimony, men are inexcusable for still choosing their religious delusions, and the religion of Cain, the religion of “good works” for our acceptance by God, is one of the great sins and dangers of the day. No doubt when God has saved us in a way which vindicates both His own glory, and His grace, He looks for good works from us, and other fruit of the Divine life in us, that is, as is often and truly said, the Christian works from life, and not for life.
Nor is there in reality the least conflict or obscurity of Scripture as to this. There is a co-ordination of truth in Scripture, but no contradiction. Those who would take any one truth of Scripture out of its place and order, and insert it elsewhere, necessarily produce the greatest confusion and apparent contradiction. Scripture is, so to speak, an organic whole, the truths and doctrines it contains are co-related; but to Fee the bearing and proportion of the several parts, or in fact to understand the things of God at all, we must be taught by the Holy Spirit. The number and diversity of religious sects and denominations is too often quoted as a reason for submission to a central human authority, such as the Pope. It proves indeed the insubjection of the human mind to Divine teaching, and the true remedy is, subjection of our own spirits to the Lord by the Spirit of God; but undoubtedly those who advocate as the remedy the setting up a man in the church, with claims to an infallibility which no apostle over assumed or pretended to, show how far they are impressed with a sense of what is due to the Lord, and to Him alone. That our justification is in Scripture regarded from different points of view is most true: for instance, we are justified meritoriously, by Christ's blood (Rom. v. 9; 3:24); we are justified judicially, by God (Rom. 3:26; 8:33); we are justified mediately, by faith (Rom. 3:28; 5:1), and we are justified evidentially by works (James 2:24). Deny this, and you set Scripture hopelessly at variance with itself, and destroy the integrity of the texts quoted, as well as the general and concurrent teachings of Scripture. “For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: not of works lest any man should boast.”
(To be continued.)