NOTHING is more important in a structure than a good foundation. None would care to live in a house or cross a bridge if the foundation were not reliable. If it is, then, so important to have a good foundation where human life is concerned, which is only for a brief span at the longest, how much more important to have a good foundation in view of eternity.
All will admit that we are living in a day of change and rapid progress. Old institutions and old ideas are fast giving way before the quick march of science. Men glory in the latest discovery in the same way that a child gets excited over the latest novelty or some pretty toy.
Now this is true, alas! with regard to ideas in religion. Some men, both in the past and the present, have been so bent on the process of reconstruction, that they have been vain enough to think that they can reconstruct the Bible itself, if not obliterate its holy, blessed, soul-saving contents altogether. Well might the Psalmist say, “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
Let us, however, try and get to the bottom of things, if thereby we may secure a good foundation — a foundation that shall stand forever — that shall stand when all else is shaken. Let us lay aside all preconceived ideas and prejudiced notions and come to facts. “Facts are stubborn things.” Let us view them with all the candor and gravity they deserve. Let us look at them as we could wish to look at them when we are about to cross the borderland of time and pass into eternity.
1. CONSCIENCE.
Most, if not all, will admit that man has got a conscience — an internal monitor that does duty as a detective. When we do what we know to be wrong either against God or our neighbor, it condemns us. The basest of men have confessed to feeling its condemning power. Truly it makes a strong man the veriest coward. It made Felix tremble on his throne as Paul reasoned with him “of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.”
Where, let us inquire, did conscience come from? If the Creator has not endowed us with a conscience, how can we account for it? Is it not an evidence that though man, the sinner, has revolted against God’s authority, yet God has still a hold upon him? Thus man is a responsible creature.
Even professed infidels have confessed to have felt its awful lash to be worse than the sting of scorpions. Through life, when all was smooth sailing, they fought against it, and even denied that it was any evidence of man’s responsibility, yet when the cold hand of death assailed them the stoutest hearted has quailed and been seized with blank despair.
Men may philosophize and spin theories by the yard to try and get rid of the fall, but let them first settle where conscience came from?
2. SIN.
Take another fact, namely, SIN. “Fools make a mock at sin,” but sin is an awful reality. It is one of the most terrible facts in the universe: its withering blight is felt everywhere. The amount of evil and sorrow it has brought in its train can scarcely be exaggerated.
Why do we require policemen to protect us? — Sin! Why do we bolt and bar our doors at night to keep out the thief? — Sin! Why are we so careful that our children should not read the vile and pernicious literature abroad today? — Sin! Why have we gaols to lock up the profligate and the assassin? — Sin! Why have we workhouses to hide poverty from our eyes, and asylums to confine the lunatic, and graveyards to hide the corruption of our own flesh? — Sin. Sin is in every man’s breast, and because of this the seeds of death are there. Death is the result of sin; lust is sin in the bud; sin is lust in the full-blown flower, and death follows, “When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:1515Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. (James 1:15)).
Man or woman, I challenge you as an honest person to say that you have not been guilty at times of thoughts that have horrified you. You would not like your nearest friend to know them. Where did those abominable thoughts come from if sin does not exist? Admit the truth, that but for the influence of Christianity in these countries, and the restraints of the laws of society, we should be quite as bad as the heathen.
Notwithstanding the effects of Christianity and the barriers that delicacy and refinement have thrown around us, what terrible things appear in the daily papers! Oh! the horror of what goes on underneath the surface that never comes to light! “But he that formed the eye, shall he not see?” “Neither is there any creature that is not made manifest in his sight.”
3. IMMORTALITY.
Take another fact, namely, man is immortal. That is, he possesses an intelligent spirit which is deathless. He must exist forever. Some men may deny it, as they can deny anything, if they have boldness enough for it. But denial is no proof. Man is an intelligent creature, and in that sense he is above the beasts. At times immortality asserts itself in every man’s breast. Why do men dread death if man’s spirit be not immortal? If he dies like a beast and has no further responsibility, why should he at any time be concerned about his future state?
Whence this secret dread and inward horror of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul back on itself, and startles at destruction?
Some have said that it is only the young and the weak that manifest all this concern about the future. When people grow up to manhood they are able to shake it off. Why, then, have the most learned men and the greatest minds that this world has ever produced been so concerned at death’s near approach?
Hear what the great master-painter and sculptor Michael Angelo said before he died: —
“And now remorseful thoughts the past upbraid,
And fear of twofold death my soul alarms.”
It cannot be denied that Sir Walter Scott had a great mind. He was a most prolific writer, yet when he was dying he asked for a Bible to be brought to him, that he might get comfort from its pages. Why did he ask for a Bible and not for some of his own or other literary productions? Was it not because that he felt the Bible was the only book that could meet what his immortal nature craved for? No, death is not the end of existence. “After this the judgment.”
4. GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS.
Take another fact, namely, the righteousness of God. If God’s existence be admitted, we cannot but conceive Him to be a God of unbending righteousness and unsullied holiness. The Scriptures give the fullest testimony to this. If God is holy, He must hate sin. If He is righteous, He must punish it.
Will He allow to go unpunished all the evil that has been done in this world against His righteous government? Will He allow the murder of His own Son to go unrequited? Though He is long suffering the day of reckoning will come. It is not far off. He will manifest His righteousness in judgment by bringing every transgression to light and giving it its due reward. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
5. THE LOVE OF GOD.
Take yet another fact, namely, the love of God “God is love.” It is the nature of God to love. If so, He must express it by devising means whereby His banished be not expelled from Him. He must open a way whereby the sinner might be brought back to Him. How could this be brought about consistently with what God is in righteousness and holiness and with man’s condition as a sinner against God? If He had acted in justice only, He would have swept the whole race into destruction. But where would His love have been seen?
Why should men quarrel with God’s just dealings if He in love gave His Son to meet all that His righteous throne demanded? If sin has come into the world and ruined man, and if God has shown His love to such an extent as to provide the way to meet it, so that man, ruined, rebel, and guilty, might be lifted into far higher blessedness than Adam lost by his fall, why should men quarrel with God?
The cross of Christ is the perfect reconciliation of God’s righteousness and His love. There we see the perfect righteousness of God against sin and the deepest compassion for the sinner. There “mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Psa. 85:1010Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. (Psalm 85:10)). None need perish since Christ has died. He suffered for sins, the just for the unjust. He died for the UNGODLY. God has been so honored and glorified by the death of Christ that in perfect accord with strict justice He has come out to bless REBELS. Christ’s death avails for the blackest, vilest, most polluted, guilty sinner, and therefore it avails for YOU. The sway is now so clear and open that all who come in the confession of their guilt will be received and welcomed into God’s favor, and will thus realize the pardon of all their sins. “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:1515This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. (1 Timothy 1:15)).
Reader, discard the thought forever that God is now asking the fulfillment of the law from you to make you righteous. This is the rock on which many split and make eternal shipwreck. None can be justified by works of any kind. “NOT OF WORKS, LEST ANY MAN SHOULD BOAST.” However hard you try, you will not be satisfied. All your trying will not give peace to your troubled conscience, nor give you the sense of God’s favor.
God is now offering to clothe you with righteousness, and such a righteousness as suits the very light of His unsullied holiness. His righteousness is “unto (toward) all and upon all them that believe.” God is “just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” “By him (Christ Jesus) all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses” (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)).
As well might you expect to extinguish the light of the sun at mid-day with a rush-light, as that God’s justice could fail to those who believe on His Son.
Why not submit to God? Why not bow in the judgment of what you are as guilty and utterly helpless to meet your own condition? Why not accept a righteousness that is divine when God is offering it for nothing? Yes, for nothing.
Hear what Chalmers, the great Scotch preacher, said, who himself before his conversion to God had been a strict law-keeper: “I am now most thoroughly of opinion, and it is an opinion founded on experience, that on the system of ‘Do this and live,’ no peace, and even no true worthy obedience, can ever be attained. It is, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’ When this belief enters the heart, joy and confidence enter along with it. We look to God in a new light. That love to Him which terror scares away, re-enters the heart, and, with a new principle and a new power, we become new creatures in Christ Jesus.”
P. W.