Sufferings of Christ, the Church and Other Papers
James Lampden Harris
Table of Contents
Legislation - the Giving of the Law
This "giving of the Law" is enumerated by the apostle among those indefeasible privileges of Israel which the faithfulness of God has secured to them. They, indeed, had failed in maintaining this, as well as every other privilege, because God would show in them that the flesh could keep nothing. But their failure has by no means invalidated the faithfulness of God; and when the vail is taken from off their hearts, and they are brought under the blessed ministry of the New Covenant, then God himself, of his own abounding grace, will make good to them every privilege which they, undertaking to maintain in their own strength, have lost.
A single glance at the passage must at once convince us that "the giving of the Law cannot possibly mean the ministry of death and condemnation under which they were brought at Mount Sinai. That was, properly speaking, their receiving the Law; as it is said, "who have received the Law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it." It is true, that when the heart of Israel turns to the Lord, and they know forgiveness of sins through the blood of Jesus, then the Lord will write his Law on their hearts and put it in their minds. But this, again, is not "the giving of the Law"; -belonging to them in the same sense as the Adoption and the Promises belong to them. It is clear, therefore, that a privilege given of God's grace to Israel, and to be enjoyed by them, is here intended. The word only occurs in this place in the New Testament, and can only properly be translated "Legislation," or "Law-giving"; as it is in the Rhemish version, which follows the Vulgate, Legislatio. We find the kindred word in James 4:12, Nomothetes, -There is one Law-giver. It is then among Israel's prerogative blessings, to stand in relation to other nations as the only nation which ever had its Legislation directly from God himself; and thereby becomes the great pattern of Legislation to other nations. This is what the apostle asserts.
It pleased God once to own a Nation separated from all other nations as his own. Nationalism, as to Israel, was divine. The highest encomium which an Israelite could pass on a Gentile was "he loveth our nation, and hath built us a synagogue. " Religion and politics were so intimately blended, that the chiefest patriots were the most godly persons; -as Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. This was necessarily the case, since it had pleased God to become the Lawgiver of a nation. The civil, judicial, municipal, and social laws of Israel, were directly from God. "Ye shall not round the corners of your heads," -"Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head," had the same sanction as "Thou shalt not swear by my name falsely." "I AM THE LORD," was the sanction of the one as well as of the other (see Lev. 19). The most minute directions were given for the sale of land and of houses (Lev. 25). God stood in the relation of the Landlord to Israel -"The land shall not be sold forever: for the land is mine" There were no freeholders in Israel; all the land, as we should say, was leasehold; so that it became impossible for the land long to accumulate in few hands (Lev. 25).
One great principle pervaded God's Legislation for Israel, and that was, that everything should he immediately linked with himself. God is the only wise God; and this is shown now to the principalities and powers in heavenly places by the church, as it will be hereafter to the world by Israel as a nation. This was Israel's responsibility, -to show that the nation ordered of God was the only wise and blessed nation. "Behold I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. Keep, therefore, and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who have God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him fur? And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law which I set before you this day?" (Deut. 4:6-8). But Israel failed to exhibit this; and lost their distinguishing privilege by desiring to be governed as the nations round about them. They soon found the difference between the statutes and judgments of the Lord, and the arbitrary enactments of the king they had chosen (1 Sam. 8:10-17). None said of them, "Remember me, O Lord, with the favor of thy people: O visit me with thy salvation, that I may see the good of thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation" (Psa. 106:4, 5). Even in the days of Solomon it was the splendor of the court and wisdom of the sovereign, rather than the happiness of the nation, which drew forth the words "Happy are thy men, happy are these thy servants, which stand before thee continually, and that hear thy wisdom." For Solomon grievously pressed the people for his own personal splendor (1 Kings 12:4). Israel has again rejected God as its king in rejecting Jesus, and saying, "we have no king but Caesar." The kingdom of God is taken from that generation to be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And never, until God's King is set on his holy hill of Zion, and God's nation established under Him, will the blessed fruits of the kingdom of God, in righteous Government in the earth, be made manifest. The Government shall be on his shoulder manifestly, as we know it by faith already to be. In him will he found the greater than Solomon; and yet the true Solomon, -the Prince of Peace; "of the increase of his government and peace there shall he no end, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth even forever." The blessedness of the nation will flow immediately from the person of its King. He will not need any oppression to add to his royal state, for "He shall bear the glory." He brings the riches to the nation and receives them not from it: "For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron. I will also make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness." "A king shall reign in righteousness";" and "God shall give the King his judgments, and righteousness to the King's Son; and he shall judge the people with righteousness and the poor with judgment. In his days shall the righteous nourish, and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth."
Israel will then be manifested as Jeshurun -the righteous nation; as it has been manifested as "the sinful nation." Its metropolis will be the city of Righteousness, the faithful city. And then Israel shall say to the nations round about them, "the glorious Lord is unto us a place of broad rivers and streams, wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ships pass thereby. For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King:; he will save us" (Isa. 33:21, 22).
Israel, thus ordered under their once rejected but now acknowledged King, will be the pattern nation to all the nations round about it. It will not only stand as a kingdom of Priests, from whence alone the true knowledge of God is to be learned (for it is an irreversible principle that "Salvation is of the Jews"); but its present blessed order shall be so manifest, that it must be said, "happy are the people that are in such a case, yea, blessed are the people who have the Lord for their God." And when the mountain of the Lord's house shall he established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, all nations shall flow into it, and many people shall go and say, "Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more"(Isa. 2:1, 2, 3).The laws by which the nations will be governed for their blessing will be the laws of God. "The Lord shall be King over all the earth; there shall be one Lord and his name one."
Jerusalem will be the city of the great King. And he will say, "Judah is my Law-giver." Law-giving and Salvation are alike of the Jews. The history of Joseph may show how Israel may furnish Legislation to the nations. "The king (Pharaoh) loosed him, even the ruler of the people, and let hire go free. He made him lord of his house, and ruler of all his substance, to bind his princes at his pleasure, and to teach his senators wisdom" (Psa. 115:2022; Gen. 47:13-26). While Israel continued to be the one nation of which God was the Law-giver and King, power and truth were united; but at the era of the Babylonish captivity the religious and civil elements were separated: power passed into the hands of the Gentiles, and truth remained with Israel. In the Lord Jesus Christ we sec these again united; "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ"; He is the Truth; and Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. But as he was not owned, things remained as they had previously been. The Jews said, "it is not lawful for us to put any man to death," plainly showing that their political power was gone. And the Lord said, "salvation is of the Jews"; as plainly declaring, though they knew it not, that truth remained with them.
When power was separated from truth, by passing into the hands of the Gentiles, the Legislation of God did not pass with it. God gave power to Nebuchadnezzar, but made no Laws for him, or for his kingdom. Nebuchadnezzar was his own Law-giver; even as it is said of the Gentiles, "their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of themselves" (Hab. 1:7). Very varied have been the forms of their government, and multiplied their laws. There has never been a fixed principle of legislation. At one time the caprice of the monarch, at another the interests of a class, or again popular feeling, have given the tone to legislation. Human interests and human passions have worked together, or thwarted each other in attempting to meet evil or advance good by legislation. It is in the ceaseless course of Gentile legislation that we find the word of the Prophet realized; -"Behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts, that the people shall labor in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity? For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" (Hab. 2:13, 14). his will not be effected by the wisdom of the Gentile, but by the wisdom and power of God, after the former have had the freest scope to try what human wisdom could effect. What a simple principle, and yet how comprehensive, was that of Israel's legislation. "I Am THE LORD." "There is one Law-giver"; and His wisdom is the guarantee for the goodness of the laws. Israel will yet say, with respect to the Gentiles, we are thine; thou never barest rule over them, they "we are thine; thou never barest rule over them, they were not called by thy name" (Isa. 63:19). And as we know that "Salvation is of the Jews," so is it yet to be made manifest that Legislation for the well being, even of nations on the earth, is of them also. Of Jerusalem, the city of the great King, it is said, "the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish" (Isa. 60:12). Then shall the nations seek unto them for statutes and judgments, such as alone can secure national happiness.
As things actually are, the church has no legislative power. Its laws are already ordered and settled, either immediately by its Head, on whose shoulders its government rests, or by those to whom he gave the power of legislation, -the Apostles."That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandments of us the apostles of the Lord and Savior" (2 Peter 3:2). The church is built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets. To legislate now would be to undermine the foundation.
The church has large executive power, -"Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained" (John 20:23). It may, indeed, deliberate as to the application of Christ's laws to a given case; but it cannot make a law to meet a particular case. The presence of the Holy Ghost in the church, acting through living persons, is the provision of the Lord for a right application of His own laws.
The church has judicial power, "Why do ye not judge them that are within?" {1 Cor. 5}. But it only is put in the place of a tribunal of appeal in the ease of private wrong between two individuals; and this after two antecedent steps, 1st, private remonstrance, 2nd, remonstrance in the presence of one or two witnesses; if the individual refuses to bow to them, then the church is to be appealed to. It may lay the matter before the Lord, and pray for the delinquent; but if this fails, the person must be treated as a heathen man and a publican.
Israel is not now governed by God as a nation. It does not now politically exist, and is therefore incapable of being judged by its own laws; or of answering the end of skewing forth that God's own laws for a nation are the only wise and good laws.
The Gentiles are actively engaged in legislating for themselves; and it is to be remarked, that of late years they have legislated for the so-called Church.
The question, therefore, is one of very solemn importance, as one of truth, -can a saint be in a right position as a Legislator?
All are agreed, the world as well as the church, that it is impossible to apply Christ's code (Matt. 5-7) to the ordering of the world. It will hardly be questioned that the fountain of legislation in Christendom is not the holiness of God, and that God's civil code to Israel would not apply to the institutions of the nations of Christendom. Grace does not, cannot, and was not intended to order the world; yet that is the blessed reign under which the saints are brought; "Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord." And the saint is responsible for manifesting grace before men. But what is the result? "Let favor be showed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the Lord" (Isa. 26:10).This it is which perplexes the mind of the saint. He sees men despising the riches of God's goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, and iniquity abounding in consequence. He sees much, very much wrong, which he thinks might be remedied by better legislation. He is made to stand much in the place of Habakkuk the arguing prophet: "Why dust thou show me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievances? Therefore the law is slacked, judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked sloth compass the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceedeth" (Hab. 1:3, 4). All that the prophet was made to see was the progress of iniquity, and that there was no remedy till the vision came. And in the midst of everything, to remedy which we might be tempted to use our political influence, the word is "the just shall live by faith." "Ye have need of patience; for yet a little while, and he that shall come will come and will not tarry." Our place is still to suffer on, to endure unto the end; not to try to remedy the evil, in our own way, but to hold fast our confession until the appearing of Jesus. God's remedy for the evil is, "a King shall reign in righteousness." Everything is now settling into its own principles. May the Saint have grace to assert his "Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," in the midst of trial and suffering here; but glory in the prospect -"If so be we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together." "I we suffer, we shall also reign with him."
Is not a Christian, therefore, out of his place, when acting as a Legislator? Out of his place of confession unto Christ, -as well as to the hope of glory at the appearing of Christ?
What Is a Church?
Having felt constrained by a regard to truth to withdraw from the Ministry of the Established Church {the Church of England}, I am anxious to lay before those whom I love as Brethren in the Lord Jesus Christ, and who continue is connection with her, the reasons of my resolve; I am more especially desirous to bring them before my Brethren who faithfully. preach the Gospel under the protection of the Establishment; earnestly desiring that they may be led to examine and see whether these things be as I have said. 'Buy the truth and sell it not,' is a maxim worthy of our serious attention; and truth is cheaply purchased by the surrender of all worldly influence which obstructs rather than favors the influences of the Spirit of God.
Many, I am persuaded, have felt with myself the difficulties, difficulties of conscience, which continually present themselves in the performance of Ministerial duties. We have been used to get over these difficulties by the authority, one of the other; to think that good and conscientious men must have sufficient reason for bearing with them; and thus to take the easier way of falling in with general practice, than of incurring the odium of singularity. Much, therefore, as I feel the responsibility incurred by an individual, who acts upon his own private judgment in opposition to those whom he has been accustomed to acknowledge as his Ecclesiastical superiors, yet as soon as he is convinced that he has been implicated with evil, and that the tolerance of any evil is contrary to the mind of Christ, his course is determined by another greater than himself -his decision must be upon principles entirely apart from calculations of expediency, or consideration of consequences.
I need not enter into any detail, as to the distressing position in which a Minister of the Church of England is placed, in the indiscriminate use of the Baptismal, Burial, and Communion offices. The evil is acknowledged by all who have given the subject a serious thought. But in anxiously endeavoring to discover some remedy for the evil, and relief for my own conscience, have been led to the firm conviction that none is to be expected. By the controlling power of the Civil over the Canon law, everything like discipline in the Church of England has been broken down. Hence, there is I conceive, a fault in the principle of the Church of England. If, in practice only, she were defective, there would be found a remedial power in her to put it away; otherwise the defect must be in her constitution. And to this conclusion I have been led. That which at first presented itself in the shape of practical evil affecting my conscience, now appears the result of a defect in principle; and it is because I believe the Church of England to be fundamentally wrong in its principle, that I can no longer exercise the Ministry of the Gospel within her pale.
In pursuing a painful inquiry, although evil after evil has forced itself into notice, the question really to be decided is, whether the Church of England has in truth any claim to the title of 'a Church.' This must be answered by another, 'What is a Church?' And here I must distinctly state, that the study of God's word in its plain and literal meaning, since I have been delivered from receiving for doctrines the commandments of men, has made me exceedingly jealous of antiquity and tradition unless based on the word of God. Indeed I hardly know how to express my sense of the blessing of possessing in the Word of God an unerring standard of appeal. I must confess that in the progress of my inquiry I have been often staggered by the thought -Can this be right when so many of the Lord's people and Masters in Israel have not seen it? But I find in the word of God the corrective for this -in the assertion of its own unchangeableness; 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away'; and in the testimony it affords to the tendency of the human mind to supersede the necessity of continual reference to it by reliance on other authority. Accordingly, when He who knew what was in man assigned the reason of Jewish Apostasy, it was this: "that they had made the word of God of none effect through their traditions." It would have been well if Gentile Churches had profited by the warning, but it is the refusal to recognize the Word of God as the sole standard of appeal in the attempts which have hitherto been made to remove difficulties in the way of tender consciences, that has made every such attempt abortive. It is on this principle also that we are enabled to account for the fact, that the same Reformers who luminously explained and defended the truths respecting individual salvation, left the Liturgy, and Church discipline imperfect or neglected. It was because in contending for the former truths, they used the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God; whereas, in compiling the Liturgy, they appealed to tradition, antiquity and Church authority -and seemed very jealous of rejecting anything that had been once established, unless actually opposed to God's word. They, were guided rather by the principle of comprehending the Popish feeling of the people, than consulting the tenderness of conscience of others. In the attempts after their time, while the Non-Conformists {those who rejected the Church of England} pleaded the important principle so clearly laid down (Rom. 14), that no authority can impose that which Christ has left indifferent in itself as the term of Communion; the party in authority pleaded precedent and Church authority; so that in the Savoy Conference, after the fairest promises on the part of the King, the Commission only empowered those nominated, "to compare the Common Prayer-book with the most ancient Liturgies that had been used in the Church," &c. thus virtually excluding any reference to the 'Word of God.
It is, therefore, by the authority of the Word, that I would now try the Church of England. We have been too much accustomed to consider the Articles and Symbols of a Church as the Church itself; and have thus given considerable advantage to the Papist, in almost relinquishing the idea of a visible Church -this has been carried to great excess, both within and without the pale of the Establishment; so that even men whose minds have been accustomed to rest on the glories of the invisible Church, have almost forgotten the nature and object of a visible Church on earth.
A Church, is a congregation of "faithful men"; it is an assembly of Believers united in Fellowship according to the commandments of Christ -such was the Church at Ephesus. They are addressed by the Apostle as the faithful in Christ Jesus; not those who made a nominal profession, but those who by the power of the Holy Spirit, had been convinced of sin; quickened from their death in trespasses, brought to know that they have redemption, even the forgiveness of sins through the blood of the Cross, and who manifested by their blameless conversation that the end of the grace vouchsafed was unto good works, which God had before, ordained that they should walk in them. Wherever such a body is gathered, there a Church exists: a body so separate from the world, that the world can recognize the separation.
If it be asked, how a Church is to be preserved in this state of separation? -I answer, by the power of discipline; which is a corporate power of pronouncing authoritatively on the conduct of the individuals who compose the body. The Corinthian Church affords us an example. We find the solemn judgment of the whole body under the power of the Spirit of Christ exercised in the exclusion of an unworthy Member, by which he is again subjected to the power of Satan, from which he had been rescued on his admission into the fold of Christ.
The remedial and sanatory power of discipline is not the power of the world exercised in taking vengeance and executing wrath upon him that does evil -it proceeds from another Spirit, which is of God, although liable to be abused by Man; and, unless its end be distinctly kept in view, tending to Sectarianism and spiritual pride, yet it is a power which the Church cannot discontinue to exercise without becoming unfaithful, corrupt, and finally ceasing to be a Church at all.
Had the Corinthians not complied with the Apostle's injunction, he would himself have used the rod against those who were puffed up (1 Cor. 4:19, 21). And thus by diminishing the number have increased the strength of the Church, by preserving her purity. But discipline was exercised with a salutary effect not only on the individual who did the wrong, but also on the whole body, by inducing "such a carefulness, indignation, clearing of themselves, and zeal," &c. (2 Cor. 7:11) -as proved to the Apostle, that they were awakened to a proper sense of their responsibility. The value of such discipline, as regarded the body, is strikingly marked in the Apostle's words -It was not for his cause that had done the wrong, nor for his cause that suffered wrong; but that our care for you in the sight of God might appear unto you" (2 Cor. 7:12), "purge out the old leaven that ye may be a new lump."
And why is this purity so important? In order that they who believe, being arrayed in the garments of righteousness which Christ giveth, may fill the place which He intended them to occupy.
As long as He was in the world, He was the Light of the world. He came to manifest the world's darkness, and the world was affected by His testimony, because it was the living testimony of one who was holy, harmless, and undefiled, and altogether separate from themselves. He was not of the world, therefore He was fitted to bear witness against the world that the works thereof are evil.
And when he departed, having proved the apostasy of the world by their rejection of him (John 12:31) he placed believers in the responsible situation which he had left. "And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world." "A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid." "Ye arc the salt of the earth." And let it be observed, that it is not an isolated testimony of individuals, but the manifested union of many, to which the words of the Lord refer—
Holy Father keep through thine own name those whom thou lust given me, that they may be one as we are. That they all may be one, as thou Father art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me (John 17:11, 21) as if the truth of the Savior's Mission was allowed to depend for its proof on the manifested union of his disciples. Accordingly, the Lord's Supper was instituted as the test and manifestation of their Oneness in Him.
Here, indeed, we see how the Church is "the pillar and ground of the truth. " The witness in the world is not the Bible, but the Church. A book is not capable of forcing its testimony upon the world, but a Church informed by the word through the Spirit, is -whatever its numbers be, whether it be gathered in Jerusalem, Antioch, Paris, or London. It was a Church that the Apostle thus addressed—
That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among, whom ye shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life.
To trace the declension of the Churches from the purity in which they were first exhibited in Asia and in Greece, is not my present object, nor to show how identification with the world, under the fostering hand of kingly power, effected what persecution and heresy had failed to accomplish. It is sufficient, at present, to try the Church of England by the standard which we have established. In theory, the Church of England possesses the power of Discipline, of Which the Rules are embodied in the 139 Canons prepared by Convocation in 1603, and which in their ratification by King James, are commanded "to be diligently observed, executed, and equally hept by all his subjects, in this kingdom"; and to these the Clergy are by law, responsible. Many of these are arbitrary enactments opposed to the spirit of the Gospel, many trivial and unimportant, and almost all needless and calculated to burden the consciences of sincere believers -so that in theory the Church of England is one of the most sectarian of all communions. Secondly, the power of judgment, according to this exceptionable rule, is not allowed to be exercised by the body to which the offender may belong, but is vested in the hands of some distant officer, appointed by the Bishop as his law agent. The sentence of Excommunication (so closely are the world and the Establishment united), involves not the loss of Christian brotherhood and sympathy, but civil privileges, so that an excommunicate person cannot "serve upon juries, cannot be a witness in any court, cannot bring an action to recover claims, either real or personal, due to him" (Blackstone, book iii. c. 7). It is enough to mention this. A church, which could have recourse to such a power, must have lost all sense of what a church ought to be, and proves itself not to be of Christ, but of the world. A few men first take upon themselves to bind the consciences of their fellow men, according to the conceits of their own minds, and then if their enactments be in one tittle violated, give the offender over to be tormented and punished by the powers of the world. Such is the Church of England in theory, and such it was in practice in the days of its early prelates.
But it is said, the mild spirit of the Church of England has remedied this evil. It is indeed true, that she has lost all power of discipline, by being submitted to the authority, of the civil courts; so that, while she remains theoretically the closest of communions, in practice she embraces all. But can it be said, in any sense, that her communion is a communion of saints? Her sin, as a Church, is the giving up her communion to the world -and yet it is in this sin that we have been accustomed to seek our arguments for the excellence of the Church of England in practice. That which lays open her communion to the Non-conformist, lays it equally open to the thoughtless and profane, and thus the Church of England is necessarily drawn into the tolerance of evil, which Christ hates; and has no means left her as a body of testifying against sin.
We have been so long accustomed to look at a Church merely as an expedient thing, and to view the Church of England as one adapted to the peculiarities of the nation, intwining itself with all orders and degrees of men, that the idea of the reality and essentials of a Church is not usually brought before our mind. Regarding it merely as instrument of utility, we look upon it as the best: -and if the question has been presented to the mind at all, it has generally turned on the comparison between it and other communions.
It has been forgotten that the office of Evangelist as directed to individual salvation; is altogether subordinate and directed to this end, the fellowship of the saints; or, in other words, that men are converted through the Ministry of reconciliation, in order that they may be built a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:5). Besides, the necessary connivance at sin, from which the Church of England in her practical constitution cannot escape, there is another great evil -that by our striving to attain outward uniformity the greatest possible disorder is introduced. Men are brought to together not on truth but on artificial distinctions. Outward conformity is no hard thing to the flesh -and fearful temptations are held out to the flesh in the emoluments and honors of the Church in order to comply with it. The preaching of the truth and holiness of life are not practically the requisites for the Ministry of the the Church of England. Let a man simply propound morality to his hearers -let him be a man of pleasure -yet so long as he is orderly, he is put out of the reach of authority to correct him. If in the annual returns of any Diocesan, the question was asked 'Do you know of any souls won to Christ?' it would appear, almost an impertinent question. All inquiry turns on that which meets the eye; and yet ministers are they who watch over souls (Heb. 13:7). The necessary result is that there is no approximation to uniformity of doctrine. The highest Calvinism, and the lowest Arminianism and Pelagianism, is alike preached from the pulpits of the Established Church. No inquiry is made as to truth, but only as to order. And to illustrate the practice of the Church of England yet further, we may instance the exercise of that discipline which remains in the hands of the Bishops of the Church of England. The suspension of a profligate or even heretical Minister, if he be beneficed, must be through a tedious legal process, attended with immense expense to the Bishop; so completely does the law of the land, which is in practice, the law of the Church, look simply to outward things, and the interest of the individual rather than of the body. And yet the same Bishop has power, irresponsible power to remove a stipendiary Curate, (who is in the sight of the great Head of the Church as truly a Minister of the Gospel as one who is beneficed), from his curacy without assigning any reason in direct violation of the Apostolical Injunction. Against an elder receive not an accusation but before two or three witnesses (1 Tim. 5:19).
But it is said that a removal of existing abuses may be expected, and therefore it is a duty to wait and see if anything can be done in the way of remedy, before taking so decisive a step as to separate entirely from the communion of the Church of England, much more from exercising the ministry in it. It may be replied that it is not the act of Christian faithfulness to tolerate evil in the hope of a future and contingent remedy. But what remedy is to be expected? Something might be attempted either by the Houses of Parliament, the King's Commission, or the revival of the two Houses of Convocation. I would not inflict a wound on any Christian mind by entertaining even the possibility of anything like Church Reform being effected by the legislature of the nation, composed as it is of Infidels, Socinians, and Papists. Most deeply do I regret that the Church of England should only present itself to public view in such a shape, as to be thought a fit subject for the control of Parliament, and be looked at only in its edifices and revenues. The idea of anything being there done for the revival of Discipline, is not to be expected: since, with few exceptions, those who made the law, would be brought to feel its weight.
The other means of Reformation, viz. the King's Commission, and the assembling of the two Houses of Convocation, may well be considered together; since both must emanate from the same authority. The latter indeed appears to have presented itself to many pious men, as the most probable means of accomplishing their earnest desire after a better state of things; if it was allowed the power of free discussion, of revising the Liturgy and restoring discipline. The difference would be this -the King's Commission would be directed to some few high in Church authority -the Houses of Convocation would consist of all the Dignitaries of the Church of England, and representatives from the Parochial Clergy. We could not hope to see remedial power vested in more favorable hands than these; who present themselves to the public in somewhat of a corporate capacity, in the "Society for promoting Christian Knowledge." Their sentiments and qualifications maybe in a measure judged of from the Tracts issued under the sanction of that Society, which are supposed to express the real doctrines of the Church of England. It is sufficient to notice that the general tendency of the Tracts is to render obscure that which the Articles have expressed so luminously as to a sinner's justification before God, through the one offering of the body of Christ. One quotation from a very popular school-book will serve as a specimen.
Question. -Wherein does the SECOND COVENANT differ from the FIRST, as to the mildness and mercy of it?
Answer. -Whereas a perfect and unsinning obedience was expected of our first parents upon pain of death, we are only required to use our honest and hearty endeavors to serve God and keep his commandments.
Such is the general tone of the Tracts, bringing down the Gospel to a remedial law; denying almost the need of the teaching of the Holy Ghost and aiming at establishing a mere outward conformity; enforcing the things of God by the law of the land (Syke's Dial. p. 21). Any alterations to be expected from persons avowing such sentiments must be for the worse. And I must distinctly state, that the upholding this Society is helping to deny the truth as it is in Jesus. There is a manifest attempt to explain away the most comforting truths, and to render the language of Scripture vague and undefined. Such persons indeed might fit the Church Service for the use of aliens, but would at the same time deprive Christ's true flock of their consolations.
From these considerations, I feel convinced that any reform in the Church of England, so as to render it a congregation of faithful men, is not to be expected from her present Constitution. I do not deny that much may be done in the way of removing outward abuses, but nothing can bring her into a Church position towards the world, in which she is not only entangled, but which even legislates for her. It is not that there are not individual Christians in her of the brightest character -it is not that the Gospel of the GRACE of GOD is not preached in many of her pulpits: these are circumstances rather accidental than essential to her; but it is that while she calls herself "pure and Apostolical," there is no probable security for purity of doctrine, and every possible impediment to purity of practice. She is necessarily placed in the position of tolerating evil, which is quite contrary to the mind of Christ (Rev. 2:15). The name indeed she bears, the position she occupies, the commanding talent of some and deep piety of other of her members, the champions of the truth she has nurtured, are all circumstances which tend much to bewilder the mind and prevent the exercise of righteous judgment, till we have ascertained from the Authentic Record of the Word, what a Church really is. But even then the bias of our minds is to set up the corruption instead of the purity of the Church for our precedent. We shelter ourselves under the plea of the short duration of the Church's embodied luster -we plead corruptions and declensions even in Apostolical times -and therefore sit down under the conviction which paralyzes all effort, that there is no hope, and thus rest content with evil. We first lay down as an axiom that purity is not to be expected, and then act so as to prove its truth. Surely when we have the mind of Christ distinctly stated, that his people should be a peculiar people, not of the world, even as He was not of the world, it is the object for us to aim at; true it is a high aim, but is not the power of God's Spirit adequate to effect it?
Whatever may be our expectation as to the nearness of the Apostasy and our Lord's Advent, those assuredly will be found of Him "in peace and blameless," who separate themselves from whatever they are taught by the Spirit to be displeasing to him, and unite together in Truth. In fact, almost all the arguments used by us for conniving at the acknowledged corruptions of the Church of England, have arisen from our looking to Man, for a remedy instead of to the Spirit. The moment the Church and the world came into union, the power of the Spirit visibly declined. How then shall we expect its revival, except by separating from the world. -Nor can I forbear to testify against the Theological fiction which has been brought in to support the NO-CHURCH SYSTEM, and to keep us content with on lowness both in doctrine and in practice; viz. that now Christianity has obtained a footing in the world, it may be safely left for support to the ordinary powers of man, as if the presence of the Spirit of God was not the very soul of the Church: and who that allows His presence, will deny His power, whether in gifts or graces? -the division of which appears one of the most arbitrary dogmas that man in his pride ever presumed to lay down. Unless, therefore. men are prepared to deny the presence of the Spirit in the Church, or to show that it has been authoritatively withdrawn, it is mere unbelief to limit our expectations to anything short the reality of what we know has existed. It is true, that there is a difference between the essentials of Faith and matters of Discipline. Man's heart is ever the same, and therefore the truths respecting salvation are laid down with the greatest precision in the Word of God. In matters of Discipline, circumstances must be taken into the account; and we have only general principles to guide us. But then in a body gathered by the Spirit {Matt. 18:20} -there would be His power, and those gifts, ministrations, and operations, which are essential to its well-being as a body (1 Cor. 12:4-6), which would readily apply general principles to existing circumstances. That which would at first appear the defect of a Church, in having no certain and invariable rules of Discipline laid down with legal precision, is in fact her very strength; because the presence of the Spirit is presumed for its due regulation, or it ceases to be a Church. -Man's wisdom would always fetter God's Spirit -but nothing more completely shows the folly in attempting LEGAL Discipline, than the Canons of the Church of England -which, if there was the power of enforcing them, would be quite inapplicable to present circumstances.
In arriving at the conclusion, that the Church of England can with no propriety be called a Church according to the mind of Christ, I have been led to perceive that one powerful reason which has weighed on our minds to tolerate the evil of the Establishment, has been the failure of those who have separated from it to exhibit anything as a Church which could practically condemn it. We have seen enough of close communions, to perceive their evil -and it is an evil of fearful magnitude to exclude brethren; it is a deep sin against the Spirit of God for any set of men, to bind not only themselves but other and after generations, to their own measure of light; so that those who do not come up to it, or those who go beyond it, are equally put out. This is Sectarianism -a spirit of selfishness, which often ends in the sinful pride of saying, "The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are we. " The moment we entrench ourselves within any system, whether as Churchman, Baptist, or Quaker, we are brought into circumstances not to judge righteous Judgment; and the more conscientious our regard to our respective systems, the greater our danger of doing "many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth" (Acts 26:9), and of making men our masters by taken the rules and apologists of our systems instead of the Scriptures, for our guides.
The above reason powerful in itself is considerably strengthened by the spirit of modern non-conformity having become quite as worldly as that of the Established Church. It is no longer relief for tender consciences, nor liberty of declaring God's truth fresh from the teaching of God's Spirit, that is contended for -but the emoluments and honors of the world. How mightily has Satan prevailed -What a prospect for the Church in the beginnings of non-conformity! -But he brought in the World, and the Spiritual weapons were laid aside. The strength of the Non-conformists was their being disjoined from the world, and they were placed in the responsible station of showing the superiority of that which was gathered together by the Spirit of Christ, over that which was united under the spirit of the world. But that opportunity has been lost, and I can say for myself, that nothing has made me so slow to act as the political character of modern Dissent. And if I was driven to a choice of evils, I would prefer the anomalous character of the Establishment still, since from the very absence of Ministerial education: and discipline, there is not so much prejudice against truth in it, as among those who have been trained systematically to contend only for that portion of it, which others have seen. But I am persuaded, that a Christian never is placed in the position of choosing between two evils, except by his own faithlessness -and I would profit by the experience of the past. We have seen the attempt at a large comprehensive system to embrace a whole Nation, fostered by the State, and in theory certainly beautiful and perfect {according to man}, but entirely failing in its object to make the Nation religious. God has borne with it -yea, in a measure, God has honored it -He has also acted out a purpose in it, and has shown that the wisdom of men only spoils what ever He may leave for a time in their hands. Again -we have separation from that system in many forms -more or less comprehensive in their communion, but having the same tendency -the moment they become established, the offense of the Cross ceases, and the world gets in; so that a man may be respected in his system as a consistent member, and true to the peculiarities of his body, who is yet unsound in the Faith, and led by the spirit of the world. What then would be the result of the deliberations of men sound in the Faith, enlightened by the Spirit to understand the present circumstances and requirements of the Church of Christ? -Their object must be to produce Unity. To effect this, nothing must be left by which the conscience of the weakest Believer might be needlessly offended: -no terms of Communion must be constituted by arbitrary enactments of man. The Believer who walks according to his profession, has a right to be received at the table of his Lord; and that body which establishes any other test than this, destroys the unity of the heavenly family, and is justly chargeable with the sin of schism. Let this principle be adopted in the Church of England, the 139 Canons would cease to be terms of Communion -the power of the Spirit would be no longer hindered by formularies, nor the consciences of Brethren affected by their compulsatory use. Men would not be chosen to minister in holy things from the mere accident of birth or expensive education, but because they were fitted by the Spirit of the Lord to. instruct and edify his body. The names of worldly honor would be abandoned, and he would be accounted worthy of love and reverence who took the oversight of his little flock, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind. The Establishment then would cease to be honored as the Church of England -but Believers within her would become formed into Churches of Christ.
In conclusion, I would remind my Brethren that the present is not the Dispensation of Universality in effect, although its principle is of Universal application, God dealing with men as SINNERS in a way of Grace, and hence the command -"Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. " But the Gentile Dispensation is described by the Apostle James, as only intended to take out of them a people, for his name and to this the words of our Lord agree -"the Gospel shall be preached as witness." If it be said, that these expressions are ambiguous, all ambiguity is removed by the plain declarations of other parts of Scripture respecting the iniquity of the latter days. For example -the state of the Gentiles at the close of this Dispensation, after the Gospel has been preached among them, as described in 2 Tim. 3. The language is almost the same as that employed Rom. 1 to describe their flagitiousness and abominations before the Gospel was sent among them Without recurring to facts, this alone is sufficient to prove that the professing Gentile Church has not "continued in God's goodness, and therefore shall be cut off" (Rom. 11:22).
Since then, in this Dispensation; unrighteousness increases and does not diminish (Matt. 24:12), it is not the time when the earth shall be full of "the Knowledge of the Lord"; and consequently not the time of the triumph and rest of the true Church of Christ. To decide clearly on this subject is most important, in practically judging on things around us. He who does not perceive the approaching darkness, may rest in the hope that the increase of light will dispel the error of men's minds, and effect that which individual or collective testimony fails to accomplish: but he who has been taught to understand the warnings respecting the Apostasy of the latter day, will not rest until he has benefitted by the light which he at present has, and separated himself from all the evil it may have revealed to his view. That servant which knew his Master's will, and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes. Let us take heed, lest our connection with any system in which the world predominates, should place us in circumstances of being overcharged with its cares, and so that day should come upon us unawares.
And now I commend what I have written to the blessing of God, and the consciences of my Brethren; and if they will (as Brethren ought) kindly point out anything contrary to the law and the testimony -I trust to have Grace given to me to acknowledge and retract my error.
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The School of God
He teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight. Psa. 144:1 Sam. 17
There is one feature common to all those who have been trained of God for His own service; they have had to do with Him in secret before they have become prominent in the eyes of men. The contrast to this is that restlessness of the flesh which seeks to attract attention before the soul has had this needed discipline. They run without being sent; and have to learn them selves by their own painful failures. If Paul is a chosen vessel of the Lord to bear His name, his training is in the school of trial: "I will show him how great things he must suffer for My name's sake." Thus God has His secret ways of training for His service. It was so even with His perfect Servant, His beloved Son. "He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground."
Just so was it with David. In the previous chapter, we find David in perfect obscurity: nothing thought of among his brethren, or by his father: away from the family, keeping sheep: not thought worthy to be called unto the sacrifice. Yet he was the chosen of the Lord. And he had not been alone in the wilderness. He had been under God's teaching. He had been preparing for public service in the secret school of Him who looketh not on the outward appearance, and who seeth not as man seeth. Now so it must be with us. There must be a living before the Lord. Unless our souls are exercised before Him, He will not use us as instruments in His service. We may think He will: but it will not be so. God will always have to do in secret with that soul which He intends to serve Him in public. The excellent wisdom of our God in this may be seen in the history of many of His most eminent servants. They are found calm, wise, and enduring, when all around are perplexed and in fear. All they say and do tells us that they have been prepared for their work. Men who have been living in secret before the Living God can move onward unhindered through the confusion and the strife of men. They have learned how to stand in the breach before terrified Israel; or to meet face to face Goliath of Gath. And their preparation for this has been their living in secret before Him who is so infinitely greater than all, even before the Living God!
Thus is it here with David. In the desert he has learned the resources which faith has in God: and now he is to be the champion of God against the champion of the uncircumcised. The lion and the bear he has slain already, unseen by men: now he comes forth to triumph over Goliath, in the sight of the armies of Israel and of the Philistines.
How fearful a foe had Israel before them in Goliath! Morning and evening he defied their armies, and his defiance was unanswered; for they were dismayed and sore afraid. Saul might set the army in array; the hosts might go forth to the place of fight and shout for the battle (vv. 19-21); but "behold, there came up the champion (the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name) out of the armies of the Philistines, and spake according to the same words: and all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him, and were sore afraid" (vv. 23, 24).
This occurred just as David reached the camp. David heard the proud defiance of Goliath (v. 23), and he saw the dismay and dishonor of Israel. Their loud shout, for the battle was soon over, and all the people were in utter consternation. But David was calm and undismayed amidst all. The stripling David is the only one who feared not. He whom his brothers despised, and spoke lightly of, in the naughtiness of their hearts; he whom the Philistine disdained and cursed. Now there was nothing that any could see in David as a reason why he should put himself forward to meet the Philistine, when none else dared to do so: nothing that men, who judge by "the outward appearance," could discern as power: but quite the contrary, The flesh would see power in "the host," in numbers, and in armor, or in the mighty Goliath: but never in the stripling, just come from his "few sheep in the wilderness!"
Beloved, mark this: David had had to do with the Living God: and now he saw that the name of the Living God was implicated. Israel looked to Israel's resources; and what were the resources of Israel, compared with those of the Philistines? But here was one who had the mind of God -one who looked to the resources of the Living God. It was not that there was natural courage in David more than in Saul: but there was faith in David. It is true that David had been in obscurity in the wilderness: but there he had learned communion with God. And now he came forth as one fresh from the Living God, and viewed all around him according to God: and what he had learned of God in secret, he brought out into the circumstances before him. And this was the secret of his strength and of his victory. The circumstances were well considered, their difficulty and danger weighed, but his faith brought God into them, and acted amidst them in His wisdom, and in His power. Thus it is that David here looks on all around him. He views the army of Israel as the army of the Lord of Hosts. He looks at it in the light of Him from whose presence he had just come (v. 26).
And I ask whether our failures are not invariably here, that we have not been in secret with the Living God? This is the essential and primary matter. Do we esteem communion with God our highest privilege? Do we value living with God, even more than living before the saints and with the saints? I believe we prefer living before the saints, to living before God and with God. We may be comforted when surrounded by the saints: but our strength is in walking in fellowship with the Living God, knowing that we are to endure as seeing Him who is invisible. The flesh itself may seek its own, and find a response, too, among the saints: but the flesh withers, it is truly grass, in the presence of God. Hence it is our security, as well as our joy, to dwell by faith in "the secret place of the Most High," and to come forth into service in strength gathered up there. Then shall we be able to look at every foe, as David here looks at Goliath: "for who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the Living God?"
But the language of faith instantly excites the flesh. So it was with Joseph, when telling his brethren his dreams. So it is here with David and his brethren. This we see in Eliab's words: "I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine heart." The moment the flesh sees a power greater than its own (as Eliab here sees in David), all it can do is to talk of it as pride. Now Eliab was the eldest brother, and he stands forth here in that prominence which the flesh always loves and seeks. He was a man distinguished for natural attractions; but however goodly his countenance or his stature, God "had refused him" (ch. 16:6, 7).
The Lord's anointed was not he whom man esteemed. And how constantly are we taught this lesson in the Word, by God's rejection of the first-born, and His choice of the younger. Eliab stands like Ishmael or Esau, as the representative of the natural title of the flesh. In the exercise of this title, he thus scornfully rebukes David. But David was speaking according to a wisdom, moved by a power of which Eliab knew nothing. David was speaking the language of faith. The Living God, the Lord God of the armies of Israel, filled his eye; and by Him he measured the Philistines and their champion. Eliab had no such standard before him as this: he spoke and felt as a man: and therefore the language of faith was to him "pride and naughtiness of heart."
And the flesh always thus mistakes faith. The flesh angrily replies to us, "It is pride," as often as we speak of confidence in the Living God. That very confidence which is the deepest humility is always condemned by the flesh as pride. For there is no depth of humility so great as self-abandonment, in order to bring in the Living God. David, in the whole of this action, loses sight of himself, seeing only God and the armies of God. It is the power and the privilege of faith to have self cast entirely out of sight, and God alone filling its vision. "No flesh shall glory in His presence"; "he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." This is what David had learned; this David is now displaying; and this it is which Eliab calls pride. Now the truth is, that the flesh is the proud thing. I trust that we know this: and that we know, also, that faith is a self-emptying thing; because faith receives everything from God: yea, beloved, more even than that: faith receives God Himself, as beyond every blessing which God can give.
"David said What have I done! Is there not a cause!" Had David gloried in himself? No, indeed. And was there not a cause for speaking as he did? If ever the name of the Living God is brought in question, there is always a cause. The very purpose for which we are left here in the world is, that we may confess the name of Jesus before men, and set aside our own name O that the hearts of all God's saints were united in this one thing, the confession of the name of the Lord Jesus!
But let us follow David as he passes from Eliab to the presence of Saul. What conscious dignity, what entire self-possession, are now seen in David.
"And David said to Saul, Let no man's heart fail because of him; thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine" (v. 32).
While the whole army of Israel trembles, one stripling stands before the king and says, "Let no man's heart fail because of him." Yes, there is in faith that self-possession which enables us. not only to feel, but also to minister comfort and confidence amidst the most trying circumstances. Faith draws from resources untouched by circumstances: and therefore, instead of being overcome of trial, is able, as the apostle says, "to comfort others with the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God" (2 Cor. 1:4). David had already gone through trial, and had already, therefore, proved the God in whom he trusted. "He knew in whom he had believed." He had been in danger before, and had been victorious: therefore is he confident now. There had been dealings between his soul and God in the wilderness: dealings, it would seem, never brought out to public light until this moment (vv. 34-37). O beloved! where is it that the saints learn really to get the victory? I believe, where no eye sees us save God's. The heartily denying of self, the taking up the cross in secret: the knowing the way, in the retirements of our closets, to cast down imaginations, and everything that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God; these are our mightiest achievements. The closet is the great battle-field of faith. Let the foe be met and conquered there, and then shall we be able to stand firm ourselves, and to comfort and build up others also, in the hour of outward conflict. He who had already slain the lion and the bear in the desert is the only one unterrified by Goliath in the valley of Elah.
How does this disclose to us the real secret of David's strength: the true strength of faith. Now we can tell what the apostle Paul meant when he said, "I am a fool." He was obliged to speak of himself, that was his folly. His great strength in service -the reason why he was able to bear so much from the petulance of the saints, was because there had been exercise between Paul's soul and the Lord, which no one was party to save himself and his God. For the like reason David can now say to Saul, "Let no man's heart fail because of him."
"And Saul said to David, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him." Saul looks at David and then at Goliath: and, speaking as a man, Saul was right. But Saul knew not the secret of God which David had learned. Saul never knew what David was now going to tell. If Eliab had done such exploits, he would not have kept it secret for a day: but David had learned in another school -a school in which he had been taught not to make much of I David, but of the Living God. David, therefore, so far as the Scriptures inform us, had never boasted of, or even mentioned, his victory: but when the occasion demands it, he can come forward and tell of the Lord's goodness unto him. So with the apostle, "I knew a man in Christ, above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell: or whether out of the body I cannot tell: God knoweth): such an one caught up to the third heaven."
For fourteen years no one, it seems, knew he had been up to the third heaven: but when an occasion comes to bring it out for his Master's glory -not for his own glory -then he declares it. A great deal more was going on between the Lord and Paul than any one else knew. So it was with David. Who knew what this stripling had don't? Who knew that he had triumphed already so wondrously? Who knew that he had delivered the lamb of his flock out of the I mouth of the lion, and that both lion and bear had fallen by his hand? Eliab knew not this. Saul knew not this. It might possibly have been known to keen discernment of individual faith (1 Sam. 16:18), but it had gone no further. Beloved, be assured that if you would really be strong, it must be by secret living before God. I believe that the reason why we are all so weak is, that we care so little about secrecy before God. We are ready and eager to run into some service to be seen of men, but do we esteem unseen communion and discipline before God beyond all? Depend on it, if there is not the slaying of the lion and the bear in secret, there will be no killing of Goliath in public: no power or wisdom in our public service.
This should lead us to understand that little word, "taking up the cross daily." People can take up the cross, they think, on some great occasion: but doing this on great occasions is nothing like taking up the cross daily, daily denying self, daily hating and losing one's life in this world. God's eye is always on us; it is our privilege to walk always before God, and thus we have hourly opportunity of taking up the cross before Him: confessing Jesus before Him, and denying self.
"David said, moreover, The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine" (v. 37). David knew that one was as easy to God as the other. When we are in communion with God, we do not put difficulty by the side of difficulty: for what is difficulty to Him? Faith measures every difficulty by the power of God, and then the mountain becomes as the plain. Too often, beloved, we think that in little things less than omnipotence will do: and then it is that we fail. Have we not seen zealous and devoted saints fail in some trifling thing? The cause is that they have not thought of bringing God by faith into all their ways. Abraham could leave his family and His father's house, and go out at the command of God, not knowing whether he went, but the moment he meets a difficulty in his own wisdom, and gets down into Egypt, what does he do? Constantly fails in comparatively small things. Once in a wrong position, one which we have chosen, and how weak are we! Faith knows no little things. Faith discerns our own weakness so clearly, that it sees that nothing less than the power of God can enable us to overcome in anything. So that faith never makes light of danger, for it knows what we are; just as, on the other hand, faith never faints at the danger, because it knows what God is. This true estimate of our weakness and peril always gives a chastened tone to the confidence of faith. Measuring ourselves by our foes, what do we appear? "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places {the heavenlies}" (Eph. 6:12).
And what are we compared with such? what our strength compared with theirs? "We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight!" "Therefore, put on the whole armor of God." Thus does faith discover the reality of our own weakness, while it rests secure in the might of the Lord. Thus faith knows what the flesh is, though the flesh knows not itself; and consequently, he who is strongest in faith will least glory in self. "When I am weak, then am I strong."
Thus it is here with David. He well knew that he was no match for Goliath. None need tell David that. David was not acting in pride of heart. Far from him was any thought of his own strength, when he saw the terrible giant of Gath. He felt himself to be less than either Eliab, or Saul, or Goliath thought him to be. Nevertheless, he could go forth in most perfect confidence. He knew that he should be delivered. Out of weakness he was made strong.
"And Saul said unto David, Go, and the Lord be with thee." Having said this, Saul clothes David in his own armor. "He put an helmet of brass on his head: also he armed him with a coat of mail " Saul could say, "The Lord be with thee": but Saul knew not how to trust in the Lord as David knew. He sought to arm David as Goliath was armed: he brought forth these his own carnal weapons. But these will not suit the soldier of faith. The moment David had got Saul's armor on, he could not move at all. All was constraint; all was effort. Now, beloved, there is no effort in faith. Whenever you and I are acting beyond our faith, we are conscious of effort, we are awkward. Wherever there is simple faith in the Living God, we see saints go on quietly, easily, unobtrusively and (it seems to me) victoriously. There is a happy liberty in the service which faith renders unto God, which no skill or effort of the flesh can assume: and we must watch against mistaking effort for faith. There are many modes in which such effort is made to imitate the faith of others: for example, to make sacrifices because another has made them, is one mode. I believe that all this is truly awful. Whenever there is real strength from the Lord, persons move on easily and quietly: laying aside and relinquishing all other resources, because of what they had learned in the cross.
"And David said unto Saul, I cannot go with these, for I have not proved them. " David feared not to go, the Lord being with him, as Saul had said: but he could not go with these also. Faith never trusts in part to the Lord, and in part to man. David had no helmet of brass, no coat of mail, when he slew the lion and the bear; then he went, the Lord alone being his strength. And, as he says, "The Lord delivered him." Just as Paul said, "No man stood with me but the Lord stood with me... and delivered me out of the mouth of the lion (2 Tim. 4:16, 17)." In like manner had David proved the faithful arm of the Lord, but Saul's armor he had never proved.
But how often have we clothed ourselves, or allowed ourselves to be clothed in such encumbrances, without detecting at once, as David did, their unfitness, and casting them from us. Have we not often worn them complacently; yea, gone forth to fight in them'? Have we not often acted as though God's work needed help by this or that form of human power: as though what was begun in the Spirit could be made perfect by the flesh? and therefore we have had to learn our folly and unbelief, in our discomfiture and loss. But it was not so with David here. He instantly detects that the wrought and polished armor of Saul befits not the soldier of faith. The word of Saul was good, but that word was belied by such arming as this. And I believe that those with whom God deals much in secret will be like David here: they will quickly, intuitively, as it were, discern and reject the advances of the flesh. They will thus distinguish between the precious and the vile. There will be an acuteness of spiritual sense (Phil. 1:9) in such, which is acquired nowhere but in direct communion with God. And hence, when out among the snares and wiles of the foe, if a film pass for a moment over the eye of their faith, and so a false object attract them, its falseness is felt, even when not seen. Thus it is here with David. He stands a moment, indeed, to put on the whole armor of Saul: but just when Saul must have thought him armed for the battle, David feels himself fettered and burdened! The world's most skillful aids are faith's surest hindrances.
"And David put them off him." Thus does faith strip itself of all carnal weapons. For faith stands entirely in the power of God. Now our learning this is often the hardest part of our lesson; that which we most slowly learn, and soonest forget. But if we knew more of secret dealing with God, we should much more speedily rid ourselves of all carnal weapons. The soul which, like David, has been much exercised in secret before God, knows the utter worthlessness of everything but God's own strength. And having thus learned this blessed lesson, it readily casts off those things which the flesh so esteems as aids, and feels itself set free by their loss. How far more blessed this way of learning the flesh, and denying it, than any other. But for want of such direct living before God, we have to learn this in painful discipline, and after many failures: and it is the hardest part of our discipline to be stripped of those things which by habit and education we have all thought necessary; to stand aloof from modes of action in which, after the manner of Saul, the name of the Lord and human authority, or human wisdom, are combined; such combinations, often called judicious and useful, are most delusive and dangerous. How do we see the apostle rejoicing to count all those things esteemed by men loss for the sake of Christ! Why was not this a hard thing to him? How could he thus thoroughly renounce and put from him these things? He had learned to "rejoice in Christ Jesus"; to be "strong in the Lord and in the power of His might."
Remember therefore, beloved, that he who has much to do with God in secret cannot use these carnal weapons. And surely this should show us the importance of coming forth from the presence of the Living God into all our service: that we may be thus prepared to detect and to mortify all the pretensions and advances of the flesh. For it is sad indeed, through want of this, to see a saint trying to fight in the Lord's name, but clothed in the world's armor. Thus the world obtains a place in the church. Its principles and its powers are recognized in the very place where God has written, "Love not the world": "All that is in the world is not of the Father": "The friendship of the world is enmity with God!"
This is often done in controversy. Argument is met by argument, instead of the simple use of the word of the Lord: Saul' s helmet of brass and coat of mail, instead of the sling and the stone, and the arm of faith, are opposed to Goliath's brass and mail How often does the Lord vindicate His own word, when used in faith, carrying it with divine power to the heart! And how often does He humble us, by showing us how little our strong arguments avail, save it be to stir up heats and strife! The Lord in all this make us more simple But David goes not forth unarmed to the fight, though he casts from him the armor of Saul. He took his staff, the five smooth stones in his shepherd's scrip, and his sling; thus armed, he drew nigh to the Philistine (v. 40). Thus he strips himself of one sort of armor, only to array himself in another. But what simple armor is this? If David overcomes Goliath with this, surely the victory must be the Lord's. This armor was never wrought by art and man's device: the running brook had given these stones their smoothness. But faith is always thus armed. The armor of faith, therefore, is always weak and foolish in the eyes of men. Gods mightiest victories have been won by instrumentality which man has most despised. The foolishness of preaching (a foolish thing in itself, and a foolish subject, Christ crucified) man treats with disdain; yet it is "the power of God, and the wisdom of God" Preaching has ever been as foolish as David's sling. But what we want is much more of such simplicity; remembering that we have the truth of God to address to men's consciences. We have weapons "mighty through God": if we had only simple faith to trust to them alone, rejecting the armor of human energy, wisdom, and authority.
"And the Philistine came on, and drew near unto David" (v. 41). And disdaining David and his armor, Goliath says, "Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves?" Remember this, beloved, that the flesh always thinks itself insulted, because our weapons are not such as itself uses.
The flesh likes to see sword opposed to sword; helmet against helmet; the flesh loves its own. But David said, "Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied."
Thus David put the question on its true basis. It is now simply a question between the Lord of Hosts and the Philistine. David puts David quite out of the question, and brings God Himself in, as the antagonist of Goliath.
Thus should it always be with us. What are we? What is the foe It matters not what we are, or what is the power of the foe: it signifies not however mighty the one, or weak the other; will not God vindicate His own name? David came in the name of the Lord of Hosts: and will not God be jealous of His own name? Will He allow the Philistine to triumph over that? Never! Here then is the might of faith. Faith always brings in omnipotence. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" is ever the word of faith.
Now David could never have stood thus at this hour, if He had not learned God as his God in secret. Therefore could he say, "Let no man's heart fail because of him" and therefore could he thus meet Goliath. The name of the Lord must be our strength against every evil, whether without or within. Suppose the worst kind of evil, sin by a saint (and I trust that we all know that sin in a saint is far worse than sin in another), and what is our refuge? "For Thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great." You have only to put God in remembrance of His own name, and He will be jealous for that name. Thus faith can always use the name of the Lord as its strength against every foe. So that instead of there being pride in David's heart here, he was shrinking himself into nothing, and making God everything. His most confident words are his most humble ones. And is it not the name of Jesus that we have to set against everything -against every trial, every anxiety, every enemy? Is it not this which God is teaching many souls in secret now? Leading them into a sense of pollution and weakness they never knew before -into trial they never knew before, in order that they may know the value of what they have in the cross? Not as though they had got everything, but to prove this in them and unite them.
Thus many are proving experimentally what redemption is, by being made to feel the necessity of such an Almighty friend as God. God is thus in secret now instructing many souls in the value of the cross. And why? In order that they may be strong in the conflict.
And living before God in secret will ever make us act, if I may so speak, on the aggressive. This is remarkable in David. He says (vv. 46, 48), "This day will the Lord deliver thee into my hand; and I will smite thee, and take thy head from thee:... that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel!... And David hasted, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine." David tarried not, faltered not: but instantly used his simple arms, and smote his foe to the earth (v. 49). "So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him: but there was no sword in the hand of David."
It was not, then, that David merely waited to be attacked, but he hasted, and ran to meet the Philistine. The confession of the name of the Lord proceeds most powerfully from us, when we have learned in secret the value of that name Then grace and wisdom are often given, even to act aggressively against evil. But surely we have learned how much grace, how much of Christ, it, really requires to stand in testimony against evil! How do we fail in this for lack of more cultivated communion with God! Mark how calmly and deliberately, though instantly, David took the stone. There was no show of effort. It was done just as though he had been in the wilderness, with no eye upon him but God's. And the Lord directed that stone, just as He had enabled him to overcome both the lion and the bear! Thus David prevailed; and thus does faith ever prevail. I believe that at this present moment there is much opportunity for such service of faith: but power for it must be sought by secret living before God. If a saint be greatly blessed of the Lord in public, we may be sure God has been dealing with him in secret, in a way we had not supposed. But how often, after a Christian has been signally used in service, do we see him failing in some comparatively little matter. Such failure too often comes from forgetfulness of that injunction:
"Pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."
Letter From J. L. Harris Announcing His Breach With B. W. Newton
{Transcribed from the Fry MS, pp. 343-346 (in the CBA, John Rylands University Library) copied in Alfred C. Fry's handwriting}
{Note: Before reading J. L. Harris' critique of B. W. Newton's blasphemous teaching concerning Christ's circumstantial distance from God, which came to light in 1847, the reader might be interested to see his letter of Oct. 6, 1845 to B. W. Newton announcing his withdrawal from Plymouth, concerning ministry there. It was one and one-half years later that JLH discovered BWN's heretofore clandestinely-taught, evil teaching regarding Christ's position before God during His life here, and then published an exposure. }
Linton, Oct. 8, 1845
Beloved Brother I have lately been much occupied in solemnly considering the relation in which I stand to the Saints in Plymouth, among whom I have long labored with yourself and others and with whom I may say my spiritual affections are so intimately bound up.
The nine weeks which I passed in Plymouth previous to my leaving it on the occasion of my marriage were to me the most painfully distressing of any that I have known since I left the Establishment {i e, the Church of England} in 1832. I do not enter into details but there are two points which especially press themselves on my notice. The first is my firm conviction which has only strengthened since my absence, that our condition as a body at Plymouth does require humiliation as a body before God. This I know to be contrary to the feelings & judgment of yourself and other valued brethren & sisters. I trust I feel humbled as well as sorrowful in being thus opposed to them in judgment -but a distinct act of humiliation I believe to be God's first remedy for the sorrowful condition in which we actually are. With this conviction on my mind you will readily judge how much I have felt myself hindered in ministry among them. Of course God alone can know how much this may arise from my own evil, I only state the simple fact.
I must next refer to the painful subject of the Friday Meetings. Since I left without my knowledge the subject has been mentioned to the saints generally -and as I understand from William Hayden it has passed without notice. This has certainly augmented my difficulty. Of course I know your very strong judgment on the matter and grieve to differ from you in it; but now it appears to me that I am thrown also into collision of judgment with other of the Saints who may be supposed to have formed a judgment on the question. So far as any of my failing advice to the Saints has been definite I have desired ministerial co-operation in connection with brotherly confidence among ourselves locally, & brotherly confidence without. I know how earnestly many of the valued saints have desired ministerial co-operation -and when it has been expressed to me, I think I have generally that was not the difficulty but the maintenance of that with brotherly confidence. I have expressed myself strongly to the brethren who have desired the continuance of this meeting, and do not see therefore how I could easily escape the appearance of partnership & acting as if it were against the feelings of so many I highly value in espousing their cause. For I could not answer in my conscience before God to this question, why they who were in communion before me & have worked blamelessly and uprightly as myself should without any reason assigned be thus thrown out of our confidence. I desire to respect the conscience and judgment of others but I must before God exercise my own also.
After much anxious consideration I have come to the painful conclusion that I cannot healthfully serve the Saints at Plymouth. And I wish to inform you before any one else that it is not my intention to return to Plymouth to resume any ministry among the Saints there; for—I must both to make some necessary arrangements & to see my own family -and probably to visit Kingsbridge & Tavislock as well as to minister a little at Plymstock [a parish of which Harris was vicar till 1832]. You may very reasonably ask when I am going. I know not. I have conferred with no one. Not a human being save my wife will know the painful decision to which I have been led, when you receive this. I have counted the cost & next to leaving the Establishment I regard this as the most important step in my Christian life. Do not think that I forget either your love or sympathy or that I am a debtor to you for much valuable instruction & so is my dear wife very specially -who regards you with the most affectionate interest. So far as in me lies I will endeavor that nothing shall interrupt the friendship [ of may be "kindliness" the handwriting is so very bad. It is kindliness] which has subsided between us for so many years. Mr. William Hayden has mentioned in a letter that a meeting of brethren has been held, the result of which is the proposition for a very material alteration in the Diaconal department. I must plainly say that it... [dare, shall] betray a little want of confidence in... [one?] not to have mentioned the matter to me. My judgment on the proposed alteration is another thing I should not have referred to this at all, as the decision to which I was forced was made I might almost say previous to my receiving the communication -so that I believe it did not affect it at all -save that I desired to have nothing of an irritating nature on my mind I believe I can say if I deceive not myself that I have no personal feeling as to a single brother altho' I may have a judgment as to their conduct, as they will have of my own. Would that I could say I know nothing of by myself. I have much to confess to God & much forbearance to crave from my brethren; but whatever others may think of the decision to which I have been led, I must leave it to the judgment of that day.
I am sorry that we have trouble again with Mary Smith -I shall hope to send her note & that of her lover together with my replies to both for your approval to Soltau by this post.
We are sorry to hear that your dear wife has taken fresh cold; our affectionate love to her.
Yours very affectionately J. L. Harris We leave this on Tuesday next to visit Mr. James F i & then a few days to see my sister in Northamptonshire. After this I suppose we shall visit Mrs. Richmond at Clifton.
B. W. Newton's Answer*
Beloved Brother,
Your note has caused me sorrow but it has scarcely caused me surprise. I could not but be conscious that ever since March {1845} there has been a gradual and increasing distance growing up between us. To this end, Satan, has I doubt not, long been directing his efforts, and now has succeeded. The chief instrument in this has been Mr. Darby.
I do not say this in anger or haste of spirit. It is my calm settled deliberate judgment. I believe Mr. Darby's visit to Plymouth & conduct since to have been of Satan & against God.
Feeling this so strongly as I do, it has caused me great distress to find you arriving at a different judgment.
I have long felt that if that if that judgment continued and went on to its results happy co-operation would be impossible. We must necessarily be meeting with circumstances which would continually excite suspicion and mistrust.
I have said to you before that I should have considered myself to have been the proper person to leave Plymouth, if I did not believe the whole system of divine truth to be affected by the system promulgated by Mr. Darby. My convictions on this subject are so strengthened that they will materially influence all my future decisions.
You will see from this how little my thoughts are influenced by mere local questions. I see no local [difficulty] that a little patience and forbearance, might not in time surmount, under God's blessing. The real questions are questions that affect the whole church of God.
I still firmly believe that it would have been for my blessing, your blessing, the Church's blessing, if we could have stood together in unity of mind & of judgment. But if it be impossible, I think that I unfeignedly desire that the will of the Lord should be done. I should greatly shrink from continued and constant collision of judgment with one whom I love so sincerely as yourself. I would certainly desire, if it might be, that that ingredient might not be added to what I expect to be a cup of sorrows.
My beloved wife is, I trust somewhat better. She unites in affectionate remembrance to Mrs. Harris and yourself.
Believe me Yes {?} in sincere affection. B. W. N.
[Here BWN's attitude regarding JND comes out (and his entire opposition to the recovered truth through JND) -and that while BWN was generating his doctrine which in after-years he called Christ's "unspeakable circumstantial distance from God"-which evil teaching he held until his death. This clandestine evil teaching was first made public in 1847 through notes of lectures on Psa. 6 from BWN's teaching, which came into the hands of J. L. Harris' wife. She showed her husband the notes and he recognized its blasphemous character. After visiting where BWN was lecturing, to speak of this matter, JLH published an exposure of BWN's evil teaching concerning Christ's relationship to God during His life.
At the end of 1845, JND and some others separated (withdrew from fellowship) from the meeting where BWN was -on the basis that clerisy was established at Plymouth. Later, BWN's supporter at Plymouth, S. P. Tregelles (the well-known textual critic), stated that a modified form of Presbyterianism was being introduced at Plymouth. In 1847 the evil teaching concerning Christ's distance from God was exposed.)
The Sufferings of Christ
{July} 1847 London: Campbell
(NOTICES The words underlined in the original MS. are printed in SMALL CAPITALS.)
(The Editor has printed in ITALICS some of the passages to which he requests the reader's especial attention.)
Editor's Preface
The defense of the doctrine of the cross, so essential to the peace of every true believer, would of itself be a sufficient apology for laying this tract before the Church of Gad, were any such apology needed. But another important consideration is found in the necessity there is for exposing the serious errors which lay hidden under a school of doctrine, of which this paper affords a sample, styled by its advocates as "deep," and "blessed teaching," and even as "precious and invaluable truth" -by which the unsuspecting are led to imagine that there is some hidden or divine mystery enjoyed only by the initiated. This, I believe, is a common artifice of the adversary to cloak error and beguile the souls of the simple If any man think he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know it. Knowledge puffeth up. This is no question of difficult interpretation or of prophetical inquiry, but one concerning which every child of God can judge, and is hound to judge for himself. I speak as to wise men, judge ye what I say. Though we, says the Apostle, or, an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.
Is it not alarming when statements so opposed to Scripture are sent forth with an air of triumph, circulated as recherche, and received as deeply interesting, and even refreshing May the Lord keep His sheep -and may the cross then, in its simplicity be prized by us more than ever, and surely there we shall find a breadth and length, and depth and height yet unfathomed.
It will afford another instance of the abounding grace of our God, if out of all this sorrow, the doctrine of the true presence of the Holy Ghost in the assemblies of God's saints, and somewhat of the preciousness of the cross be revived amongst us.
Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift!
CHRISTOPHER McADAM Countess Wear, Exeter, July, 1847.
Notes From Mr. Newton's Lecture 31*
{Transcript of B. W. Newton's Lecture}
In considering the last two Psalms, beloved friends, looked at the first as representing Christ as the servant of God, standing in the midst of abounding profession of the name of God, not true profession before Him, but the hollowness and deceit of unsound profession of the truth of God; in the other, Christ as the servant of God, contemplating the closing blasphemous iniquity of the latter day, the closing iniquity which will come on at the end of the days in which w live; until that time the Spirit of God must always exercise the souls of the saints in these two things. It is impossible for Him to be as the Spirit of service in us, guiding our actions, influencing our thoughts and judgments, without His leading our consciences to be exercised about the evil around us; and there are two forms of evil: the loose profession of the name of God, or the rejection of that name, so that from the time the Lord Jesus came on the earth, down to the present moment, the Spirit of God in the saints has been exercised or is exercising them about these things. In this there is similarity between Christ and us, for we have received the same Spirit, and are intended like our Master to be exercised in these things, and the more we are, the more blessed it will be for us, we shall learn the blessing of being subdued inwardly by affliction, which is not merely personal; it is better to be taught by personal afflictions than not to be taught at all, but each should desire to be taught by afflictions which come on Him as the servant of the Lord, by being exercised about his Master's business, by being led to sympathize with His feelings, identified with His suffering truth, and the afflictions of His suffering people, and entering into these things according to the love and sympathies of God; then the soul becomes subdued without the painfulness of the rod of personal smiting, and this is a great blessing, seeing judgment must come on our flesh. If we are really used here there must be discipline on our flesh, which God has visited on the cross of Christ; how much better for it to come on us for righteousness sake in the service of our Master, for then it comes sweetly in the power of God, drawing the soul near to God, instead of making it suspect His love, and is in itself fruit which personal afflictions are not; so that it is indeed a great mercy if any of our souls are led by the Spirit to take an interest in the things passing around us, whether of Satan or of God, for God's sake and with Him. This I see is the place of the servant of God in the two preceding Psalms But another interesting and important question is, the manner in which Christ was personally chastened and afflicted, while the servant of God in the earth, for it was not merely the sufferings He had because His soul entered into the condition of things around him, but there was quite another question, the relation of God to Him while thus suffering. "For a person to be suffering here because he serves God is one thing, but the relation of that person to God, and what he is immediately receiving from His hand while serving Him is another; and it is this which the sixth Psalm and many others open to us. They describe the hand of God stretched out as rebuking in anger and chastening in hot displeasure, and remember this is not the scene on the cross. We are so accustomed to think of God as chastening Christ on the cross, and not to feel surprised at that, when He was made a sacrifice for sin, but in this Psalm Christ is not at all standing in the place of sacrifice for sin; there were earlier relations in which he stood to God before the close of His earthly career; it was after He had been proved a lamb without blemish and without spot; after He had in various ways been tried, seen to be the lamb made perfect through suffering, that he gave Himself a sacrifice for sin; this was only one incident in the life of Christ, important indeed to us as involving all out blessings, but in relation to His service to God, it was only the closing incident of His long life of suffering and sorrow; so that to fix our eye simply on that would be to know little what the character of his real suffering were. Now before He came to the cross, there was one great dividing point in His history, and that was, when we first read of Him in the gospels coming to John to be baptized, when He came publicly forward in the sphere of things, as the servant of God, in the sight of Israel and the world, THAT was the great dividing point in the life of Christ, only three and a half years of His life passed after that. He was the public servant of God -three and a half years -a very short time, for He only lived about thirty-three and a half; so that thirty years, by far the greater part of His life, was spent when He was not the public servant, not anointed with the Holy Ghost, as the spirit of power, and sent forth led by the Spirit as the minister of God. In the gospels we have His outward history during those three and a half years, but nothing scarcely respecting the preceding years of His life; they were almost passed over in silence; so we should gain little acquaintance with the character of the Lord's experiences, sufferings, or history, by considering simply what is told us in the gospels, but in the Psalms this is revealed to us: we there see what His relations to God were during those thirty years which passed before His baptism; there we have the record of His sufferings and experience during that time It is a subject which ought to be touched with a cautious and careful hand, one in which it is easy to go wrong, yet amply repaying meditation; and though we may find difficulty in it, and perhaps commit errors, yet it will be found profitable to our souls, to meditate on what the Scriptures reveal respecting this early period of the life of the Lord Jesus in the flesh; it is therefore a subject I would earnestly commend to your regard. In considering Him who thus suffered, we have first to consider who He was. His PERSON: He was only one person, but in that one person there were two distinct natures, He was "the Word made flesh"; "God manifest in the flesh," so there were two distinct natures in His one person, and both were perfect; His human nature was perfect, and His humanity consisted of body, soul, and spirit, into these nothing divine entered; there was no mingling of divine with human, His was strictly a human soul which the word of God had taken into everlasting union with Himself; there was nothing divine in His soul more than in His body; His was strictly a human body, soul, and spirit. It is of great importance to see the true, real humanity of the Lord Jesus. You find it in all the types of His humanity: you never find any metal, gold, or silver introduced into that which typifies His human nature. For example, the veil was rent -it was of purple, and scarlet, and fine linen; but nothing that could not be rent was intertwined in it, and this is strictly preserved through all the types that we may never mingle the thought of Divinity with the humanity of the Lord Jesus. The great importance of this is because Christians are accustomed to lessen the thought of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus, by supposing His divine was so mingled with His human nature that He did not feel as we do, that superior powers were given to Him which in a great measure nullified His sufferings; they could not conceive how terrors should take hold of Him as on other persons; they have less difficulty about wrath, because the thought comes in that His being divine in some part lessened His suffering. Now, I apprehend, the case is exactly the reverse there were two things that gave peculiar intensity to the sufferings of Jesus: one was, that He was perfect as man, holy, and all His sensibilities being perfect, He was prepared to feel things with an acuteness that we never do; it gave Him a susceptibility to human sorrow which we never have. The very perfectness and holiness of His humanity increased His power to suffer, and so His near connection with God, seeing it brought all the apprehensions of the Divine sensibilities into the feelings of human nature. The very circumstance of His being the Word made flesh, made the acuteness of those sensibilities which reached Him through His human more lively; so the two things which made Him suffer were the perfectness of His human nature and the feelings of the Divine which became connected with the human. It may be asked, was not the strength of the Divine put forth to deaden or to give power to sustain His sufferings? I answer, generally speaking not at all, the great mystery of the incarnation was that "He emptied himself," and the power of the Divine nature was never put forth to lessen or deaden the sense of His sufferings. He might have put forth the power of the Divine nature, but a part of His obedience was to suffer, not to lessen His sufferings by working miracles or by doing anything to lessen the weight it was intended He should feel as weak man; the only relief granted to Him was, when God was pleased to sustain Him inwardly by internal joy or communication of strength, such as He communicates to us in affliction sometimes, or by an angel; but Christ was dependent on God for this so as never to put forth His own power save as God bade Him or was pleased to strengthen Him; so His being the Word made flesh added to the intensity of His sufferings; His having all the holiness of the sensibilities which attached to God in the midst of evil and sorrow. He was a person born into the world like a plant sensitive and delicate, which because of His own nature was sure to suffer; the very constitution of it made Him peculiarly by birth a sufferer. It is important to keep this in view in reading the Psalms The next question is how did He suffer? The moment He came into the world He was a part of mankind in it; He was born a man; therefore in that sense became a part of the human family. If He had been born in Paradise, He would not have found sorrow, by becoming a part of it, but being born out of it, and seeing He was born into the world under the curse, it brought Him under all the sorrow and affliction which pertain to the human family as such.
Supposing we belonged to a family which was banished to a distant land, and there subject to every hardship and sorrow, and we were to go and form a part of that family, we must of course drink of the same cup and partake of their sufferings; this was what Christ did. I do not refer to what were called his vicarious sufferings, but to His partaking of the circumstances of the woe and sorrow of the human family, and not only of the human family generally, but of a particular part of it -of Israel which for a little while had been a happy part of it when on the banks of the Red Sea they triumphed gloriously, but now the curse had fallen on them. "Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field; cursed shalt thou be in thy basket, and in thy store. Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out. " These were the character of the curses which had fallen on Israel, because they had transgressed the law, broken the everlasting covenant; so Jesus became a part of an accursed people, a people who had earned God's wrath by transgression after transgression, on whom the prophets too had pronounced their curses; they had rejected the testimony of the prophets, and their testimony therefore was turned into a curse against them, so Jesus became obnoxious to the wrath of God the moment He came into the world, accordingly we find many of the Psalms speaking of this. "From my youth up I suffer thy terrors with a troubled mind, &c. " Psalms which do not apply to the cross or to the period of His manifested service, but which speak of Him as a man living amongst other men, with the terrors of God compassing Him about. I regard this Psalm as one of the earliest experiences of the Lord Jesus. "O Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger, &c." Observe this is chastening in displeasure, not that which comes now on the child of God, which is never in wrath, but this rebuking in wrath, to which He was amenable, because He was a part of an accursed people; so the hand of God was continually stretched out against Him in various ways. He was chastened every morning. "My loins, He said, are filled with a loathsome disease. " Now we do not read of such chastening after He began His public ministry, but before that I doubt not He was often so afflicted. "His eye," in this Psalm, it is said "is consumed because of grief" -Il is visage was marred more than any man's -and His form more than the sons of men"; so that He seemed to be fifty years old when only thirty; for before He entered on His public ministry, He was continually under the pressure of sorrow of this kind from God, and had in this condition to go through the experience of that, proper to man, namely trial here, for "man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward"; besides that death and hades -death representing that which seizes the body, hades means the place where the souls of the departed went. It. was said of Jesus "thou wilt not leave my soul in hades," so there were these two things before Him, death and hades; the body to be in the grave, the soul in hades. It was not a place of torment for the righteous, but of confinement, beneath, in the bowels of the earth, I believe; which is finally to be cast into the lake of fire the place of confinement, and where there is no power of living unto God. "The dead cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee, they that go down to the pit cannot hope for thy truth; the living shall praise thee as I do this day"; but He is able to sustain every where, and did sustain the souls of those who were departed, therefore it is said of the Old Testament saints, "through fear of death they were all their life time subject to bondage"; saints NOW go TO HEAVEN, the saints were subject to bondage because God desired that the awe and terror of death and this place of separation might be with their spirits; He treated them as His servants who were to walk peculiarly in the fear of death so it was His desire to leave this feeling of awe on the spirits, and it is His desire to leave on ours the feeling of triumph, and glory, and blessing -of rest, of life, and not death; but then man had not entered into that condition by the resurrection of Christ. Jesus was often made to pass through this awe and terror, though He was continually revived by visitations from God, which enabled Him to say, He should see His goodness in the land of the living, but He really tasted of death in a way we never shall; part of His sufferings was to have a sense of what this hades was, such as never came on the soul of man, for He was made to feel things according to God, and therefore the full truth of such a solemn condition as this, was a part of the cup He had to drink. It was not merely that He had enemies all around him, and saw with horror the condition of the wicked, His soul felt this, and all the responsibilities of service, but in the midst of all this He felt the Lord rebuking Him in hot displeasure because of His connection with these on whom His displeasure rested; and besides that, He had the terrors of death and hades before Him, that place of separation from God, the bars of which He alone was able to break through. If you can conceive a weak, sensitive, spotless, holy, human soul allowed to be under all this pressure and terror, and if you can conceive what it was to have to walk day by day exercised by experiences of this kind, you may see a little what the darkness of the path of the Lord Jesus was; terror before Him, enemies despising Him for His holiness, every tongue against Him, and He under this chastisement from God, which made them despise Him more, because they saw HE WAS SO, and so looked on Him as one cursed from God, because He was under the weigh of this terrible chastisement from Him. It was after having gone through this condition that He found continual relief from God, but we do not find this in every Psalm; there is one which ends in darkness "lover and friend has thou put far from me, &c.," but commonly they end in relief, God strengthening Him by internal hope and joy, given at the moment or anticipatively, but His life through all the thirty years was made up more or less of experiences of this kind, so it must has been a great relief to Him to hear the voice of John the Baptist, saying, "Repent ye for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Here was a door opened to Israel at once, they might come and be forgiven, so He was glad to hear that word, He heard it with a wise and attentive ear and came to be baptized because He was one with Israel, was in their condition, one of wrath from God; consequently, when He was baptized He took new ground, but Israel would not take it, He stood alone nearly, and the moment He took that ground, the Holy Spirit was sent down, God's seal was set upon Him, "this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." This person who had gone through all this thirty years chastening and rebuking, waiting patiently on God all that time and who, though not employed in outward service, yet never transgressed the commandment of God, often feeling like a sheep that was perishing as He says, "I have wandered as a perishing sheep," like sheep belonging to the heavenly fold, but for a time distanced from it, waiting for the guidance of the Shepherd. "Wandered," here is the same word as where it is said of Abraham, -"Jehovah made him to wander from his country and from his father's house." In a worse sense the Lord Jesus was made to wander from His Heavenly Father's house, so He says, "seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy commandments." That is the history of all Psa. 119; it is the history of Jesus while thus made to wander like a perishing sheep, looking to the Shepherd to feed, direct, and seek Him, seeing He never forgot His commandments all the while. This was his condition during the thirty years of His life, so that it was a relief to Him to be called out to minister, anointed with the Holy Ghost, and sent out to preach and do good to others; He said, "the kingdom of God is come on you." He was able to cure sicknesses and heal diseases, so that the last three and a half years was by, far the happiest in His life, for he was not afflicted by the hand of God as before; there was in great measure relief from the chastisements of the Lord, and now under the guidance of the Holy Ghost He found a new character of affliction as the servant of God, but coming to Him in the ministerial place in which he was set through the power of the Holy Ghost; this place is granted to us the moment we believe, we too are sealed and anointed with the Holy Ghost, we never come under the curse of Israel, but are taken up on the ground of blessing the moment we believe, more than ever Jesus was, because He is now risen, gone home to God, and man is therefore treated as brought nigh to him, and no longer in the distance; we begin where Christ ended, so our life may always be one of ministry -all have received a gift for ministration from God; to minister to each other and to worship before Him; we have received this great relief from suffering and trial, that we are called the moment we believe into a place of service: After this the Lord Jesus had three great scenes to pass through -First, temptation from the devil, brought to Him not in the way of affliction, no horror, but tempting and assailing His soul by seducing gratifications, that was the first trial made by Him when He came publicly forward. He had been a tried servant long before; thirty years He had gone through; so, I suppose, the forty days He was in the wilderness was really a time of joy to the spirit of Christ: when he was peculiarly with God, led there by the Spirit; not till they were over, did He hunger, and then the tempter came; so it is sometimes with us, after a season of spiritual joy, when the soul has found peculiar rest in God, some great trial may come exactly opposite to the condition in which we have been before; we might have been suddenly sustained, and then the sustainment as suddenly with-drawn; then we feel it the more; so during the forty days the Lord Jesus was sustained, so that He felt no hunger, and when the sustainment was withdrawn, and the full power of hunger let loose upon Him, then the tempter came, seeking to persuade Him to put forth His own power to relieve His hunger by turning the stones into bread; if He had done so, He would have ceased to wait on God, and all the righteousness of Psa. 119 would have been lost. In Gethsemane, it was evidently horror of soul; what gives the character to Gethsemane is weak humanity, and all the power of Satan allowed to be brought upon Him; unless we knew what that power was we could not conceive its fearfulness. It was there the hand of Satan coming with all his power to see if he could crush Him. He cried to God with strong crying and tears, but we do not read of any outward power put forth to help Him. He was comforted by the ministration of an angel only. I should regard this as the most terrible hour He ever passed through; we shrink from this more than any other part of His history; it was the only one in which we find Him seeking human sympathy; on the cross, He sought it not, but here He did, as though He felt so oppressed and weak, He would have been thankful to have been relieved by their sympathy and prayers, but they slept: and when it was over so conscious was He that the difficulty was surmounted, that He said to them, "Sleep on now, and take your rest" -that is His word to the church now, we may rest, the difficulties are over, and we may sleep on undisturbed in blessed and happy security and rest, for all is over now. He dreaded not the cross, as He did Gethsemane: the cross was the place where He was made distinctly the sacrifice for sin. He had sought to gather Israel, but Israel would not be gathered; now He had completed the work of redemption, and put it in the hand of God, saying, "Though Israel be not gathered, yet my work is with my God," &c. This is our great blessing; all those various scenes of the past thirty-three years of His holy life, the nature of which, God understood perfectly, all the value of His blood-shedding God has taken into His own hands, and uses it towards us in making us blessed, beautifying us with all the garments of excellency which He has found in. Christ, for Jesus is "made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption," though we are so unlike Him, so unworthy of fellowship with Him, yet God uses it towards us, and will by means of it bring us by and by, into a condition fit for full communion with Himself; when we shall have all the perfectness of His humanity and of His power, for in the glory we shall have the same character of humanity and life, although it will not be inherent, but communicated to us, and we shall be made like unto the Son of God. This is the condition in which we have seen Christ placed; as a servant under the heavy pressure of the hand of God. How does this affect us? We have seen how it has been the means of our being crowned with blessing; how it exempts us from using the language of this Psalm, it is never ours to say; "My soul is also sore vexed," &c., as Jesus had when terrified by death and hades; He had to pray against it, and so to gain deliverance from the Lord; we have not; we have no terror of hades, or death, no bones vexed, no souls disquieted; none of these things rest on us; we are chastened, but not in hot displeasure. "As many as I love I rebuke and chasten," there is SOMETHING DISSIMILAR in that; it comes to us as under the dealing of LOVE, and THAT makes A WIDE DIFFERENCE. It is most profitable to meditate on that -you cannot meditate on it too much -it shows the wonderful character of that love that has placed us in circumstances so different from those of Jesus before the cross. These chastisements were not necessary to Him to make Him more obedient to God; but chastisements are to us to make us more conformed to His image; we have much to subdue in us, He had not, and they come to us to make us more obedient; but to Him because He WAS obedient, and to PROVE His perfect obedience, that thought sometimes a little discourages us, we say "if it came on me as on Christ it would not be so bad, I would bear it, but I feel I deserve it"; now even when we have that feeling, we may always say I am under grace, he had to say, I am under law, He was never under grace, so it is bitterness done away, when we turn to Him and to His grace, and when the soul answers to the rebukes of God, it may always turn to Him and find the same fullness of grace which we are to know when brought into the glory, by and bye in the perfectness of Christ, and afflictions so received will work for the blessing of our spirits, then we shall find that even if we have to say they are deserved, they teach our souls some knowledge of God and the depths of His love, which will be for future fruitfulness, so we shall not repent but have to bless Him for all these things.
{J. L. Harris' Strictures on B. W. Newton's Lecture, Sent to C. McAdam.}
MY DEAR BROTHER, I have no objection to your printing my notices on the doctrine contained in a MS. paper, professing to be notes of a lecture by Mr. Newton on Psa. 6. If it was merely a single statement, however erroneous I might regard it, I should object to publicly noticing it; but after making every allowance for imperfect note taking and misapprehension, the doctrine which the lecture teaches is so clearly defined, that it appears to me to be capable of being stated without misrepresenting its meaning; and believing as I do, that the statements put forth in the lecture are subversive of the doctrine of the cross, I do not hesitate to put it before Christians that they may judge for themselves, and I feel called upon to do this because this lecture has been received and read by many as deeply interesting and instructive without their discerning its unscriptural statements.
I desire explicitly to state how the MS. came under my notice. About three weeks since, one of our sisters in Exeter, very kindly lent the notes to my wife, as being Mr. Newton's teaching, from which she had found much interest and profit. When my wife first told me what she had brought home, I did not pay much attention to it, but shortly after I felt it was not right in me to sanction in my house this system of private circulation and I determined to return the MS. unread. Accordingly I wrote a note to the sister who had lent the MS. thanking her for her kindness and explaining my reason for returning it unread. It was late at night when I had finished writing, and I found in the mean time my wife had looked into the MS. so as to get an outline of its contents, which she mentioned to me, especially the expression that "the cross was only the closing incident in the life of Christ." She thought she did not understand the meaning of the author and referred to me for explanation. I then looked into the MS. myself, and on perusing it felt surprised and shocked at finding such unscriptural statements and doctrine, which appeared to me to touch the integrity of the doctrine of the cross. The doctrine in this MS. appeared to me so important as to require investigation, and wishing to have my own judgment corrected or confirmed by consulting with other brethren, I read the paper to you.
In the law of the land there is such a thing as misprision of treason, involving heavy penalties, when any one who has been acquainted with treasonable practices does not give information. In this case I believe the doctrine taught to undermine the glory of the cross of Christ, and to subvert souls, and it seems to me a duty to Christ and to his saints to make the doctrine openly known. The MS. professes to be notes of a Lecture, I suppose a public Lecture. With these notes on Psa. 6 there was given, as accompanying it, notes on Isa. 13; 14, if I recollect aright, with this notice -"this to go with Psa. 6," or some thing to that effect -so that it appears from this title that these MSS. are as regularly circulated among a select few in various parts of England as books in a Reading Society. I had intended to take a copy of this Lecture, and to return the original MS, to the lender -that is, the one that came to my hands. As you expressed a wish to see the original, I gave it into your hands, and you made yourself responsible for detaining it I have hesitated hitherto to obtrude myself in the unhappy controversy relative to the sectarianism and morals of the system of Ebrington St., although on the latter of these two points, I still ponder in my own mind as to the propriety of being silent, but in the present case there is less fear of personal feeling, which often causes us to give our own impression of facts, rather than the facts themselves. But here there are statements defmitely put forth-so that the whole Lecture itself would be a check on any misrepresentation of any of its parts.
The leading thought is, I think, found in such expressions as "the manner in which Christ was personally chastened and afflicted while the servant of God in the earth, for it was not merely the sufferings he had, because His soul entered into the condition of things around Him, but there was quite another question, the relation of. God to him while thus suffering. For a person to be suffering here because he serves God is one thing, but the relation of that person to God is another, and it is this which the 6th Psalm and many others open to us."
Hence follows the startling doctrine:
-That Christ for thirty years of his life suffered the wrath of God, and that not vicariously -such was his "relation to God" for thirty years.
-That the baptism of Christ by John (in His relation to God) is the great dividing point in the life of Christ.
—That instead of the change in "Christ's relation to God" being from favor, delight, and communion -to wrath, and hiding the face, and casting off the soul on the cross; it was from wrath, hiding the face, and casting off the soul -to favor, delight, and communion at the baptism of Christ by John.
—The cross is only one incident in the life of Christ -"in relation to His service to God, only the closing incident of his long life of suffering and sorrow."
This statement relative to the cross being only an incident, is necessary to sustain the teaching of the lecture -for if it were allowed that there was an hour, fixed and settled in the Eternal counsels of the Godhead, for which the Son of God came into the world, and which He had constantly before Him. (Now is my soul troubled: and what shall I say Father, save me from this hour; but for this cause came I unto this hour (John 12:27). The hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners (Matt. 26:45)).
The hour that Jehovah was to lay iniquity on Christ -to bruise Him and make His soul an offering for sin -the hour when He would make His sword to awaken against the man His fellow, and smite the Shepherd -then this hour necessarily becomes the dividing point, and the relation of Christ to God is altered not by Christ's submitting to John's baptism, but by enduring the cross an despising the shame -not by Christ personally enduring the wrath of God for thirty years, and then taking "new ground" "in relation to God" by John baptism, but by Christ enduring the wrath of God vicariously for his people, and taking new ground in resurrection.
The doctrine of the lecture tends to depreciate the value of the cross, to obscure the blessed truth of Christ standing before God as the substitute for his people -when "he himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree." For, if it should be admitted that the cry is also a dividing point, which the language of the lecture will not allow, yet, according to the teaching of the lecture, He endured more from God while personally under His wrath and chastisement for thirty year than He did vicariously, when "the chastisement of our peace was upon him." I really tremble to deduce the conclusion. It may be that a new thought not drawn from Scripture, but brought to Scripture to be proven, has led the mind to such alarming statements. But this I do affirm, that the moment the doctrine of substitution is seen, "he gave himself. for us" -the whole fabric of this lecture falls to the ground, because it marks the relation of God to Christ, and of Christ to God, in a way unexampled before or after that period.
And the summing up of the doctrine only shows more clearly what the doctrine is: "The cross was the place where he was made distinctly the sacrifice for sin. He had sought to gather Israel, but Israel would not be gathered; now he had completed the work of redemption, and put it in the hand of God, saying, "Though Israel be not gathered, yet my work is with my God, &c." "This is our great blessing; all these various scenes of the past thirty-three years of his holy life, the nature of which God understood perfectly, all the virtue of his blood-shedding God has taken into His own hands, and uses it toward us in making us blessed, beautifying us with all the garments of excellency which he has found in Christ, for Jesus is "made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption," though we are so unlike him, so unworthy of fellowship with him, yet God uses it towards us, and will by means of it bring us by and by, into a condition fit for full communion with himself; when we shall have all the perfectness of his humanity and of is power."
Here, instead of the fixed and inalienable standing of the believer before God, through the death of Christ on the cross, it is all vague and uncertain. Instead of "you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works yet now hath he reconciled, in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and unblamable, and unreprovable in his sight," "it is something which God uses towards us, and will by means of it bring us by and by," &c., as though nothing was certainly and actually done for us now. Substitution and union are not presented to the soul at all, but a certain treasure put as it were into God's hand to deal out towards us, something like (I mean in principle) the works of supererogation dealt out by the Pope. For myself I cannot risk my soul on anything so vague. I need such Scriptures as "he loved me and gave himself for me" -"I lay down my life for the sheep" -"In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins" -and many of the like import, but quite incompatible with the doctrine of the lecture, or I have no rock to stay me. My soul needs such a testimony as, God "hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him," or I know not my standing.
I would now more particularly examine the statement of Christ's baptism by John—
"So it must have been a great relief to him to hear the voice of John the Baptist, saying, Repent ye for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Here was a door opened to Israel at once, they might come and be forgiven, so he was glad to hear that word, he heard it with a wise and attentive car and came to be baptized because he was one with Israel, was in their condition, one of wrath from God; consequently, when he was baptized he took new ground, but Israel did not take it."
This is plainly the pivot of the doctrine taught in this lecture- "Now before he came to the cross, there was one great dividing point in his history, and that was when we first find him in the gospels coming to John to be baptized, that was the great dividing point."
I desire carefully to examine these statements, for it appears to me that they involve most serious error. Where is the thought suggested to us in the gospels that it was great relief to Jesus to hear the voice of John the Baptist, or that He was glad to hear it. In Matt. 2 we have the flight into Egypt and the return into Galilee. "And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene." Thus far this evangelist does inform us of the private history of Jesus before He entered on his public ministry. And the third chapter of Matthew appears to show us Jesus as abiding still at Nazareth when John began his ministry. But before Jesus came to John to be baptized of Him, John bore full testimony to the glory and dignity of his person, "he that cometh after me is mightier than I" -and then we read "cometh Jesus from Galilee unto John to be baptized of him -but John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness." Where do we find the idea of relief in this narrative? relief as though a door was opened to Jesus of emerging from the wrath and hot displeasure of God -relief from the wrath of God to which He was obnoxious, because He was in the condition of Israel? By taking "new ground" is not meant that He who had been so long in obscurity, who had grown up before Jehovah as a "tender plant" now came forth publicly as His servant -but that He now took "new ground," as to his standing before God; one no longer of wrath, but of acceptance, no longer of sore displeasure, but God's beloved Son in whom He was well pleased. He took "new ground" as to suffering, "he was not afflicted by the hand of God as before, there was in great measure relief from the chastisement of the Lord, and now under the guidance of the Holy Ghost he found a new character of affliction as the servant of God, but coming to him in the ministerial place in which he was set through the power of the Holy Ghost, and this place is granted to us the moment we believe, &c."
This statement involves the doctrine of redemption without blood-shedding -"Israel did not take it" (the new ground.) "Here was a door opened to Israel at once, they might come and be forgiven." How? surely by believing on Him that should come after Him, "John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him which should come after, that is, on Christ Jesus." Now it could not be in this sense that Jesus submitted to John's baptism -He was not the object of faith to Himself. He was righteously exempt from submitting to it, but He would own every righteous requirement of God, an therefore submitted to it. It is a wonderful place to witness Jesus in, but He would justify God. He needed it not personally, and after this act of humiliation on His part, the Holy Ghost came down on Him -the seal of God on Him on account of what He was in Himself, as the Baptist testifies, "Upon whom thou shalt see the Holy Ghost descending and remaining on him -the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost, and I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God." The ancient oracle of God was fulfilled -"there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots, and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest on him." Where is the Scripture testimony for his taking "new ground" as to the wrath of God by submitting to the baptism of John? We indeed need deliverance from the wrath to come, through the sufferings of Jesus on the cross, in order to our being sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise -but did He need to get this seal in the same way -"for him hath God the Father sealed." Did the Holy Ghost come on Him because of his own personal intrinsical holiness, or because of his being now brought from under the hot displeasure of God into his favor?
His baptism by John was an important era in the life of Jesus; He came from his obscurity into publicity -hence says Peter, "Wherefore of those men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." But the point is, did it alter his personal relation to God? "we there (in the Psalms) see what his relation to God was during these thirty years which passed before his baptism -there we have the record of his sufferings and experience during that time... terror before him, enemies despising him for his holiness, every tongue against him, and He under this chastisement from God, which made them despise him more because they saw He was so, and so looked on him as one accursed from God, because he was under the weight of this terrible chastisement from him." The doctrine taught in the lecture is, that after his baptism by John, Jesus took "new ground" in His relation to God as to this. "He was glad to hear John say, Repent," &c. -was baptized, "and God's seal war set upon him -this is my beloved Son, in whom I an well pleased."
"It pleased Jehovah to bruise him" -when? all Christians have, I believe, thought alike on this -on the cross. But did Jehovah bruise Him at any other time? -the doctrine of the lecture is, that He did so more or less for thirty years -and then comes a great dividing point -the baptism of the Lord by John -He then took new ground -so that according to this statement, the cross was only one incident in the life of Christ, it was but a brief recurrence to the same kind of sufferings previously endured, for the thirty years of his life, up to his baptism by John -the difference being that the sufferings on the cross were vicarious -his thirty years sufferings were not vicarious but because He was "obnoxious to the wrath of God the moment he came into the world and became part of an accursed people."
And was not wrath and curse his actual relation to God on the cross? so that his relation to God on the cross was identical with his relation to God for the first thirty years of his life, and they were both distinct from his relation to God during his public ministry. If I could receive this statement, which I believe to be without Scripture and contrary to Scripture, derogatory to the person of the Son, and immensely depreciatory of his sufferings on the cross -then I could admit the equally unscriptural statement, that "the forty days he was in the wilderness was really a time of joy to the spirit of Christ, when he was peculiarly with God, led there by the Spirit;" and also that most fearful and extraordinary statement—"he dreaded not the cross as he did Gethsemane."
It is fully allowed that the Lord Jesus knew by experience that which was "proper to man, namely, trial here, for man is born," &c., but this experience cannot apply to this singular class of afflictions of the Lord Jesus till He was thirty years old, because it is as true now of man, as man, as it was in the days of Job -true whether of saint or sinner.
Again, if it be said that Jesus from the first awakening of consciousness after infancy, through youth and manhood, was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, all through, up to the cross -I would not except; and that He had the fear of death before Him in a way that none other had, and that it was constant pressure on his soul, because He knew what death was according to God, and always saw it before Him -as He says, "I have a baptism to be baptized with" -in a word, that "the hour" for which He had come into the world, known to Himself, and Him that sent Him, cast back its dark shade on his earlier years, I see no principle involved in the statement; but the doctrine of the lecture does not allow this -because Jesus took "new ground" at his baptism by John, "he was not afflicted by the hand of God as before." The Old Testament saints, it is said, were, through fear of death, subject to bondage all their life. "God desired that the awe and horror of death and hades might be with their spirits." "Jesus was often made to pass through this awe and terror, though he was continually revived... besides that, he had the terrors of death and hades before him, &c.—" "his life through all the thirty years was made up more or less of experiences of this kind, &c.," and then He took "new ground." So that the doctrine of the tract does not allude to "awe and terror of death and hades" from anticipation of the cross, because the Lord had taken "new ground" at his baptism by John -new, as to his relation to God -new, as to his experience, viz: sufferings in ministry, with comfort from God, instead of suffering from God and the terrors of death and hades. Therefore, it is said, "the last three years and an half were by far the happiest of his life."
Now I do feel clear in my own mind that I am not misrepresenting the doctrine of this lecture. Its tendency is to cast into the shade the sufferings and death of Christ on the cross -so that to contemplate these only, would be "to know little what the real character of his sufferings were. " Certainly it would be so if the doctrine of this lecture relative to the first thirty years of the life of Jesus could be sustained -for it is stated that "Jesus became a part of an accursed people (Israel) a people who had earned God's wrath by transgression after transgression. Was He numbered with the transgressors at his incarnation or on the cross?
"Jesus became obnoxious to the wrath of God the moment he came into the world."
He was rebuked "in displeasure: not that which comes now on the child of God, which is never in wrath, but this is rebuking in wrath, to which he was amenable because he was part of an accursed people; so the hand of God was continually stretched out against him in many ways," "his loins were filled with a loathsome disease," "his eye consumed because of grief," "the terror of death and hades constantly before him—"
all this, besides that which He was suffering from man and Satan, for it is His relation to God which is here spoken of. And if the Psalms referred to as belonging to this period, viz., Psa. 6; 38; 88, do indeed belong to it (which is a point in question and to be proved) then more or less for thirty years He had no rest in his bones by reason of his sin; "for mine iniquities are gone over my head: as an heavy burthen they are too heavy for me" -Psa. 38:3-4. "I will declare mine iniquity," "I will be sorry for my sin," v. 17. Again, in Psa. 88 we have these expressions -"My soul is full of troubles and my life draweth nigh unto the grave," "Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves." "Lord, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me -I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up? while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted. Thy fierce wrath goeth over me, thy terrors have cut me off. They came round about me like water; they compassed me about together. Lover and friend has thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness." Now these are stated to be sufferings of Christ, of which "the scene is not the cross." They were not vicarious sufferings, but sufferings arising from the condition into which He came at His incarnation, by reason of His connection with an accursed people. What then must the cross be according to this doctrine -why truly, only "an incident important to us as involving all our blessings, but in relation to (Christ's) service to God, only the closing incident of his long life of suffering and sorrow." Most legitimately may the cross be so regarded if the doctrine of this lecture be true -for there was no new character of suffering in it as regards Christ's relation to God, it only closed his long life of suffering. His sufferings on the cross were of the same kind as those He had endured for the first thirty years of his life -only instead of being thirty years, they were a few hours. The cross closed his sufferings instead of being the hour of such awful and unparalleled sufferings, as He had never tasted before -for although it is stated, as to Gethsemane, in the lecture, "I should regard this as the most terrible hour he ever passed through"; yet the same lecture states the character of Gethsemane "to be weak humanity, and all the power of Satan allowed to be brought against him"; so that suffering from the immediate hand of God did not characterize that "terrible hour." Now I ask any one to read what is said of the relation in which Christ stood to God during the first thirty years of his life, and then, what more bitter ingredient could there be in the cross? Are not Psa. 38 and 88 expressive of intense sorrow and suffering -"fierce wrath and all God's waves and billows afflicting him," "his soul cast off," "God hidden from him," "lover and friend removed from him," "his enemies lively." The 22 Psalm brings out most clearly the awful truth of his desertion by God. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" We know how to apply this Psalm, and surely the 38 and 88 are kindred to it. It is asserted that Jesus took "new ground" in relation to God at his baptism by John -"new ground" before He came to the cross—"he was delivered from the experience of Psa. 38 and 88 at his baptism by John," and, except in Gethsemane, (the character of which it is stated to be Satan let loose against weak humanity, not God pouring out wrath for sin) the lecture does not hint at any other order of suffering or even of more intense suffering of the same character. I do therefore affirm, that such statements do greatly depreciate the value of Christ's sufferings on the cross, by setting up another order of sufffering, of thirty years' duration; and that by means of this, the fact of a new character of suffering on the cross, namely, desertion by God, is quite obscured; I would say, that the cross was not the closing incident, but if I could reverently copy the expression in speaking on such a subject, a solitary incident, disconnected from all His previous sufferings -by Jehovah being against Christ instead of for Him -Jehovah actively against Him in wrath instead of sustaining Him against his enemies. Truly they were let loose against Him on the cross -"this is your hour and the power of darkness" -the insults and blasphemies of men, and malice of Satan all met on the cross in their fullest power, but what gave the cross its character was, desertion of God. And in this, although it is almost impossible to separate Gethsemane from the cross, there was a difference; in Gethsemane there was not desertion of God; on the cross there was.
I have tried, how far successfully you must judge, to bring out the point of the lecture without misrepresentation, because I believe this (to me) novel doctrine of the relation of Christ to God in suffering "terrible chastisement" for the first thirty years of his life, no, only to be without Scripture and against Scripture, but infmitely derogatory to the glory of the cross -a range of sufferings being put forward in prominence, eclipsing the sufferings of the cross. And I cannot discover that any of the qualifying expressions, such as the cross, "being all important to us as involving ai our blessings," "there he was made distinctly the sacrifice for sin," or Gethsemane being "the most terrible hour of the life" of Jesus, interfere with the drift of the lecture. It draws away our souls from the sufferings and death of Christ on the cross, whither the Lord in the gospels led the minds of his disciples after the revelation of the glory of his person by the Father and which is the constant topic of apostolical instruction -to another range of sufferings of which the New Testament affords no information. That this is the point is, I think, clear The prominence is certain given to suffering and experience, previous to His baptism by John, with which we can have no fellowship any more than with his sufferings on the cross, but when he took new ground" at his baptism by John He entered on a range of suffering in which we can have fellowship with Him and follow Him as our example. So that nothing can be more distinct than the leading thought of the lecture, and there is much coherence in its several parts.
"They describe the hand of God stretched out as rebuking in anger and chastening in hot displeasure, and remember this is not the scene on the cross (p. 7)."
We are taught by the apostle that "the spirit of Christ which was in the prophets testified before hand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow"; and therefore it is very legitimate to interpret expressions both in the Psalms and the prophets, as being in their highest and most proper sense, utterances of the experience of Christ in a variety of circumstances and relations to God, provided we get the clue from the Scriptures of the New Testament that He did actually stand in those circumstances and relation to God. That the sufferings of Christ were not all of the same kind is not disputed. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief before the cross, although I think it could hardly be said independently of the cross, because it was known by Himself from the outset to be the termination of His sorrowful career on earth. He "came into the world to save sinners " He was always walking towards the cross, as He Himself says, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished. " In pursuing his sorrowful path towards the cross, as the awful hour approached, so did the trouble of his soul increase at the anticipation of it. The revelation of the glory of His person, by the Father to Peter, afforded Him the first occasion of speaking to His disciples on this solemn subject. It was vividly brought before Him on the occasion of the Greeks desiring to see Him. "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say Father save me from this hour, but for this cause came I unto this hour." In his last journey to Jerusalem, we find the Lord gathering up His soul for this great work for which He had come. "And it came to pass when the time was come that he should be received up; he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem." It was continually before Him, so that notwithstanding the abundant consolation He had in communion with God, and joy also in ministering blessing to others; the full knowledge of the end must necessarily have marked His path with sorrow here. I believe, therefore, that we are not able to contemplate "the man of sorrows" independently of the cross, although His sufferings on the cross were of an essentially different kind from His sufferings on the way to it. Let it be fully granted that His very person as the Son -Immanuel -God manifested in the flesh -his being from above, made Him more susceptible of human sorrow and suffering. He knew the holiness of God, and sin as the most opposite to it. He knew the wrath of God, what it really was, and that wrath about to come on the world; He knew what death was as the wages of sin, and being "the life" He instinctively shrunk away from death. How must His spotless soul have been vexed at such a scene as this world presented, so contrary to heaven from whence He had come. How must his tender heart have broken at witnessing the total insensibility of man, to His own degradation and danger, as well as to the holiness of God. He found man trifling with death and judgment; He found every one pursuing his own will, Himself alone finding it his meat to do the will of God. This must have been a constant pressure on the spirit of Jesus. Then He had to "endure the contradiction of sinners against himself. " He was "a sign spoken against. " All man's hatred against God was vented against Jesus. "The reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen on me. " His claims too were all denied, his actions all misrepresented. His pity to sinners and his deliverance of the wretched captives of Satan provoked the taunt, and the blasphemy, that He was a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, and that He was in concert with Satan.
Far be it from me to speak lightly of the reality and intenseness of the sufferings of Christ before the cross, I fully believe that we cannot conceive of them properly. Let them be duly spoken of and meditated on, but still, let the line be distinctly marked between the sufferings which Jesus endured on the cross and any other sufferings. The sufferings of Jesus before the cross were because of what He was in Himself -on the cross, because of what God had made Him to be for us. Before the cross, He had sustainment from God, -on the cross He was deserted of God. It was on the cross, that God "made him to be sin for us" -that "Jehovah bruised him" and "made his soul an offering for sin" -that "his soul was poured out unto death. " It was on the cross He bore the whole weight and pressure of divine justice -the wrath of God due to sin. The malice of Satan -the cruelty and mockery of men were here indeed not wanting -but it was the wrath of God that characterized the sufferings of the cross -and I would ask any experienced Christian, whether his soul does not shrink from the thought of any sufferings of Christ, being of a penal and judicial kind, from the hand of God, except the sufferings on the cross? Could penal and judicial sufferings from the hand of God be otherwise than vicarious? This lecture teaches that there were a class of penal sufferings endured by the Lord Jesus from the wrath of God -which sufferings were not vicarious, and that these sufferings were distinct from those which He endured after his baptism by John, when "he found a new character of affliction as the servant of God" -and distinct from his vicarious sufferings on the cross-and that it is to this class of sufferings that several Psalms refer; among others, the sixth, thirty-eighth, and eighty-eighth are mentioned in this lecture. Accordingly it is stated -"I regard this Psalm (the sixth) as one of the earliest experiences of the Lord Jesus." It is said, that this Psalm does not refer to the scene on the cross, but to a character of suffering concerning which the New Testament is silent. So that it is a thought without Scripture to prove it, and without argument to support it. I desire to give some reasons which incline me to maintain that this Psalm has reference (assuming it to be the experience of Christ) to the cross. In v. 5, we find deliverance from death sought for, and in vv. 8, 9, His prayer heard and answered. In v. 4, "Save me," and in 8-10, deliverance from all his enemies. Now let us turn to the comment of the Holy Ghost Himself on language of this kind, describing the experience of the soul of Jesus -"who, in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared." Did not God hear and answer Him in resurrection? Did God save Him from death in any other way? The lecture does not allow us to think of minor deliverances which Jesus experienced out of the hands of Herod in childhood, or at any other time, but death connected with wrath and sore displeasure. The difficulty of v. 5, as applying literally to death, is attempted to be removed by the statement, that Jesus in his experience very frequently went through the awe and terror of death before His baptism by John, and that He was delivered from time to time by gracious visitations from God, and eventually delivered altogether from this awe and terror of death and hades, by his baptism by John!! I am greatly alarmed at this mysticism. How easy would be the next step -that atonement was in the inward experience of Jesus, and not really in His actual death on the cross. But the death of Christ is spoken of as a real thing in the New Testament; He was "for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor." The Lord constantly speaks of his death in connection with his resurrection. And I do believe it to be most unwarrantable, to speak of the answer of God to the cry of Jesus for deliverance from death, in any other way than by resurrection. But there is triumph also in this Psalm over all his enemies -whose hour and great power was at its height in the scene of the cross -and then, having spoiled principalities and powers -He "made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it" (the cross). If it was stated that this Psalm was the experience of Christ in his earlier years, in anticipation of His actual death on the cross, and that He was comforted from God by anticipating resurrection, I should not demur; but the doctrine of the lecture will not allow this, because it is stated, that Jesus took "new ground" as to this awe and terror of death and hades at his baptism by John. "The sting of death is sin." "In that he died, he died unto sin ONCE. These, and similar texts, appear to me quite sufficient to dispel the mysticism of this lecture as to death and hades, and to prove that when Christ speaks of death, He speaks of it as an actual thing, out of which He was only to be delivered by resurrection. Hence I conclude that this Psalm, assuming it to be the experience of Jesus, has reference to the cross.
Again, "it was after he had been proved a lamb without blemish and without spot -after he had in various ways been tried, seen to be the lamb made perfect through suffering, &c."
I must confess that the language of this paragraph makes me shudder. What a thought! that Jesus had to be proved a lamb without blemish and without spot -how very different from the language of the apostle. "Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifested in these last times for you," &c.
When John the Baptist pointed to Him as He passed, he made no reference to his earlier years, as if He had been proved a lamb without blemish, but he says -"Behold the Lamb of God" -the Lamb provided by God -and the Lamb suitable for God. "God will provide himself a Lamb for a burnt-offering. " It is that which Jesus was in Himself, not that which He was proved to be, which rendered Him alone capable of sustaining the wonderful place of the sin-bearer.
The expression, "seen to be the Lamb made perfect through suffering," may sound to the ear Scriptural. because, the last words are in Scripture applied to Jesus; but in the Scripture they are applied in connection with glory in resurrection -in the lecture, to the period before, "he gave himself a sacrifice for sin," and this period is marked as "new ground" which He took at his baptism by John. He was under probation for thirty years, and that of wrath, and then He is delivered, that He might come forth as the Lamb of God!!! Surely this is not the meaning of the Scripture. "It became him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings"-surely his sufferings on the cross, and not those before his baptism by John, are here referred to. "Ought not Christ to suffer and to enter into his glory." It is certainly a new and strange doctrine, that after He had been seen to be the Lamb of God made perfect through suffering -suffering under the wrath and displeasure of God -He took "new ground," and for three years and a half "found a new character of affliction," but with the favor of God instead of His wrath, and then He gave Himself a sacrifice for sin. Surely that which qualified Jesus to be the sacrifice for sin, was his being the holy one of God -Immanuel -God with us. The blessed doctrine that "Christ hath once suffered for sins" is here completely obscured, by the thought of previous sufferings of wrath, to qualify Him to be the Lamb of God. Can we assert that Christ twice suffered the wrath of God without infringing on the apostolical canon. "Nor yet that he should offer himself often" -"for 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." The doctrine of the Scripture is to fix the attention on Christ's vicarious sufferings once for sin; the doctrine of the lecture is, "that to fix our eye simply on that (the cross) would be to know little of what the character of his real sufferings were."
Surely his sufferings on the cross were real sufferings. That Christ was tried, and proved to stand under every responsibility wherein man had been placed and failed, is a most important truth. "He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross"; "he was made under the law," and perfectly fulfilled it, for the law was in his heart; whereas Israel had broken it. He was in the wilderness, and stood in simple dependance on God; whereas Israel had there tempted God and grieved his Spirit. Thus was He proved -the obedient one -the just one -the faithful one. But God never put any other to stand in the place of the Lamb, as a sin-bearer for others. He Himself provided the Lamb -his own Son -his holy one. Jesus was never tried, whether He could sustain such a wonderful place, save, it may be said, when He hung on the tree. Others had stood under law or in the wilderness only to prove failure-but one alone ever entered into the place of the Lamb.
"This was only one incident in the life of Christ, important indeed to us as involving all our blessings, but in relation to his service to God only the closing incident, &c., so that to fix our eye simply," &c."
Is this the language of Scripture? or is this teaching drawn from Scripture? Is the cross thus to be robbed of its glory and cast into the shade by the baptism of John? Have not the Scriptures plainly revealed to us that when the redeemed are in glory the subject of all absorbing interest, will be the "one incident," "the closing incident," which the language of this lecture appears so to depreciate? The worthiness of the Lamb slain awakens a new song in heaven -Rev. 5. The Lamb slain is in the midst of the throne. Angels ascribe everything to the Lamb slain. The cross is to be the eternal theme of praise and admiration in heaven. But is not the cross in itself important to God -"whom God has set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood to declare his righteousness, &c.?" Is not the cross here presented to us as the great public act by which the righteous government of God is demonstrated -especially his righteousness in justifying a sinner freely by his grace. The work on the cross was very distinct from all this previous life of service to God.
If Christians become habituated to statements so depreciating to the work of Christ on the cross, they will gradually be prepared for the reception of any error. The safeguard of all is, "Let that, therefore, abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning." Any teaching which does not rivet the soul more firmly in the cross of Christ is greatly to be suspected. But is the cross only important to us as involving all our blessings? Is it not to us the great dividing point as to holiness and true righteousness? "Enemies of the cross of Christ" -they mind earthly things. The apostle determined to know nothing among the Corinthians "but Jesus Christ and him crucified." He started from the cross. "Yea," says he, "though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." The cross was the one great point he guarded with anxious jealousy -he did not preach the Gospel with words of man's wisdom, "lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect" The cross with Him was the pivot on which all turned. He began with it, and like his blessed Master would lead the disciples through the cross into the marvelous range of new and blessed realities into which it opened. From the cross, we can look back and survey all the past; from the cross we can look forward into future glories. And yet, his baptism by John, is spoken of in the lecture as a more important incident to Christ Himself; in his relation to God, than was the cross.
"We should gain little acquaintance with the character of the Lord's experiences by considering simply what is told us in the gospels, but in the Psalms this is revealed to us."
Is it not our wisdom to be content to be in ignorance of that which it has not pleased God to reveal to us in the Scripture. Let us indeed reverentially receive all it teaches. And I believe the testimony of Scripture to be so exact, that the addition of one human thought or a single deduction of human reasoning is sure to be contradicted by some one or other of its plain declarations. There has been no more fertile source of error than speculations on the person of Christ. "No man knoweth the Son but the Father" is our alone safeguard on this point. The Holy Ghost has set up in his later revelation, certain landmarks for the guidance of our understanding as to his earlier revelation, and He Himself is to be honored as the alone guide into that truth which He has revealed in the word. To savor the things of man on the things of God is a very common temptation; and we are especially liable to it, when having taken "a subject," we go to Scripture to prove it, instead of searching the Scripture to find if the subject be there at all. I am alarmed, and my jealousy is roused when I read such language -"it is a subject which ought to be touched," &c. Is the subject of the lecture drawn from Scripture, or is it first advanced and then brought to Scripture for illustration? Is the subject to be found in Scripture at all? The gospels do not touch on it, as the lecture allows. The apostles do not in the epistles refer to this class of sufferings at all, but keep the soul steadily fixed on his sufferings for us -or on those sufferings in which we can have fellowship with Him, and in which we can follow Him as an example. But the sufferings of Christ, which are "the subject" of this lecture, are quite different from either of these kinds of suffering, and yet they are as confidently spoken of as if they were an unquestionable subject of divine revelation—
"so we should gain little acquaintance with the character of the Lord's experiences, sufferings, or history, by considering simply what is told us in the gospels; but in the Psalms this is revealed to us: we there see what His relations to God were during those thirty years before His baptism; there we have the record of his sufferings and experience during that time."
It is admitted that there is no reference in the gospels to such a character of sufferings, as those of which the lecture treats.
In the many references to the Psalms, both in the gospels and in the epistles, there is not a single one referring to the sufferings of Christ, which refers to that class of sufferings which are the subject of this lecture. And is it not bold for any one to presume to give a history of the early life and experience of the Lord Jesus, from the Psalms, as definitely as the inspired writers have given His public history in the gospels, and commented on it in the epistles? Why are the gospels almost silent as to this era in the life of the Lord Jesus? They are very explicit in their statements as to the mystery of the incarnation -and then, after a brief but interesting notice, they present Him to us in His public ministry -the cross -resurrection -and ascension. Where do we get anything in the gospels as to the baptism of John being the great dividing point in the life of the Lord Jesus. There is no question as to the importance of the era when He commenced His public ministry, "the beginning of the gospel" as the evangelist Mark states it to be. But is there any authority from Scripture for asserting the almost deeper importance of the era before His public ministry, so that if we were not acquainted with the experience of the Lord Jesus during that era, which it has pleased the Holy Ghost in great measure to leave unnoticed in the New Testament, we should have little knowledge of the real sufferings of Christ. For the Scriptures of the New Testament do not refer in any way to this extraordinary class of sufferings, which were endured by our Lord previous to his public ministry. Sufferings, not from the chastisement of love as we have, not vicarious, as His sufferings on the cross -but sufferings which were the result of the hot displeasure of God against Him. With the New Testament in my hand, I can turn to Psa. 22 and 69, and say as an infallible truth to any simple-minded Christian, they describe the sufferings of Christ. But has any one the same warrant (and it is the only warrant for an important doctrine), for saying that the 6, 38, and 88. Psalms describe the sufferings of Christ before his baptism by John? For if it be allowable for one teacher to set forth an important doctrine without Scripture, why may not another do the same with another doctrine on the like authority? It is very dangerous ground when the authority of man is made co-ordinate with the authority of Scripture. We know the result -the word of God is made of none effect. But there is another point, and that is, that what the gospels do state concerning the earlier years of the Lord Jesus, is quite incompatible with the doctrine of his being under such a class of sufferings.
St. Luke presents us with the history of the Lord Jesus from the moment of His lying in the manger at Bethlehem, till a cloud received Him out of their sight. And He gives a brief but interesting notice of his youth. "And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast (Luke 2:42-52). This is what the Scriptures of the New Testament do plainly "reveal respecting this early period of the life of the Lord Jesus in the flesh" -and I fully allow that it is a most profitable subject of meditation to our souls. God trained one son; and He grew up before Him in subjection. He learned obedience through the things that He suffered. Here we see what the true principle of education ought to be -it is learning obedience. Here we see what the nurture and admonition of the Lord is. And I have felt it very interesting and instructive, so to put the training of Jesus under the hand of God before the young. But all this is gone, if I accept the doctrine of this lecture. The great principle of subjection could no longer be taught to a little one from the example of Jesus, because He stood in a relation to God at that time -in which no little one can stand now -a relation of wrath -"continually under the pressure of sorrow of this kind from God." Is such the character of God's own nurture and training, which parents are to copy. The example of Jesus in youth is thus taken away from us by the doctrine of this lecture. And if parents were to copy this example of training, they must terrify their children into obedience; for the language of Scripture is, that Jesus learned obedience by the things which He suffered; -the language of the lecture is "a part of His obedience was to suffer," even terrors unto distraction. But it is not to this plain revelation of the Scriptures concerning the early period of the life of Jesus, which the lecture refers us to for meditation; it is to a scene of a very different character indeed, and the Scriptures which are referred to as unfolding it, have yet to be proved that they do belong to this period of the life of Jesus. When there is plain revelation in the Scriptures of the New Testament, concerning the youth and growth of Jesus into manhood, and that of a very distinct character; and yet we are referred to certain Psalms, as containing the history of the same period of a very opposite character -it is certainly not too much to expect some authority to guide our judgment, that these Psalms do refer to this period. I am persuaded that no one can meditate on the above passage of Luke, and on Psa. 6. and 38, and say they refer to the same period.
Assuredly "It is of great importance to see the true, real humanity of the Lord Jesus" -but it is as important not to divide the person as it is not to confound the natures. Does the veil typify the humanity only, or the person of the Lord Jesus -Heb. 10:19, 20. Is it his humanity through which we enter into the holiest, or is it through Immanuel and Him crucified! Was it the dignity of the person who suffered, or his proper humanity, which have given such value to the cross, as to open the holiest of all to us?
That He saw and judged of everything according to God, and was more sensitive than any other, both because to what He Himself was, and because His judgment was formed according to truth, is fully granted. But this, was true of Him all His life; during his public ministry as well as before it. He wept at the grave of Lazarus, He sighed at witnessing deafness, He was grieved on account of the hardness of their hearts.
I would notice, before considering the Psalms referred to in the lecture, what I believe to be a defect in the illustration respecting the relation of Christ to God by incarnation.
"He was born a man -therefore in that sense became part' of the human family." "Supposing we belonged to a family which was banished to a distant land, and there subject to every hardship and sorrow, and we were to go and form part of that family, we must of course drink of the same cup and partake of their sufferings. This was what Christ did. I do not refer to his "vicarious sufferings," &c."
Now although this may illustrate the relation of Christ to the human family, which however, I cannot allow without some qualifications -seeing He was the holy thing even in His mother's womb -it fails to illustrate His relation to God while in the midst of that family. This is the great topic of this lecture -as it is stated For a person to be suffering here because he serves God is one thing, but the relation of that person to God is another -and this is what the sixth Psalm, and many others open to us."
Now this relation the illustration does not touch, for it does not mention this third party; the banisher. The point is His relation to the banisher. Is that altered by His coming among the banished? He partakes of their sorrow and trial indeed, but He stands in quite a different relation to the banisher from what the banished do. They, estranged and alienated from Him -He, delighting in Him in the midst of sorrow and trial. They, dreading His wrath, He, delighting in the light of His countenance. Illustration of Scripture because of our dullness is often serviceable -"I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh," says the apostle when about to use illustration -but no Christian ought to receive an illustration instead of Scripture. And one Scripture touching the point of the relation of Christ, in a certain sense, to the human family, appears to me to lead our thoughts quite in another direction from that in which the doctrine of this lecture would lead them. "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same" -for what? that He might "drink their cup" -I mean, was this the object? is this the way it is presented to us in Scripture? No, another cup rather is looked forward to -the cup which the Father would in due time put into his hand. "That through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage." This is a text which appears to me to run counter to very much taught in this lecture.
That Christ, by partaking of the circumstances of the sorrow of the human family generally, and of a particular part of it, of Israel, did thereby necessarily come into their condition to God -one of wrath -is the basis assumed in the doctrine of this lecture. It is assumed, but it is not proved from Scripture. Hence Christ must get from under this condition -one of wrath -and stand in another relation to God -one of favor -before He could enter upon his ministry as the public servant of God; and this was effected by his receiving the gospel of John, and being baptized by Him. That which essentially distinguishes one man from another is not circumstances, but relation to God. The human family, as such, drink indeed of the same cup of suffering and sorrow; meted out, it may be, with a more equal hand, than judging from appearances we might suppose. But, while drinking of the common cup of sorrow, there is an essential difference between those who at the same time are partaking of this common cup. There are those who stand far off from God, and those who are brought nigh to Him. Their essential distinction before God, is their condition to Him, and not the circumstances in which they are. One, far off, another, brought nigh through the blood of the cross -one, under the power of darkness, another, translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son. They may alike partake of all that is common to man -and yet their relation to God be essentially different; and it is this relation to God, of distance or nearness, that makes the essential difference; and I would contend, that while the Lord Jesus Christ, by coming into the world, did partake of the cup of human suffering, and by his connection with Israel did come into peculiarity of suffering, as well as under peculiar responsibility (for Israel, at the time of the Lord's incarnation, was a scorn and bye-word and derision among the nations, as Pilate scornfully said, "Am I a Jew?"); yet that his relation to God was essentially distinct (while in the same circumstances) both from that of the human family generally, and from that of Israel, as part of that family; and that this distinction was, because of what He was personally -what He was essentially in Himself, and not from any change in His relation to God, from wrath into favor. I do contend that the Lord Jesus held and maintained this relationship of favor with God, in all circumstances and under every responsibility; and that the only place, where He became identified with our relation to God, as children of wrath; whether speaking of Him as a man, or as an Israelite under the law, was, THE CROSS. He there stood in our relation to God, of wrath; He there felt what the wrath of God was. When God made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, then, and then only, He stood in our relation, of wrath, to God. As man, He then knew death as the wages of sin-as made under the law, He then knew what it was to be under the curse of the broken law, for He bore its curse. And is there in store indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil?" Is this due to man from the righteous judgment of God? Jesus knew the extremity of anguish when Jehovah bruised Him and made his soul an offering for sin -when, separated from the light and joy of God's presence, He cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But in all human circumstances, in His connection with Israel, under all responsibilities, His relation to God was essentially distinct, from that of those among whom He was living. Is He a man among men -"being found in fashion as a man, although He thought it not robbery to be equal with God." He is the only obedient man. Is He a Jew among Jews -"of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, though He was over all, God blessed forever." Ile was the only righteous Jew -the just one -magnifying the law and making it honorable, by being made under the law and rendering it implicit obedience; thus showing the law to be holy, just, and good because it met with a full response from his heart. "I delight to do thy will, yea, thy law is within my heart." Is there to be the trial of faith, and where shall it be tried? The Son of God is led into the wilderness -marvelous contrast to Adam in Eden -and there He is proved to be the faithful one, depending entirely on God.
Now I am persuaded that the more the thought of the Lord Jesus coming into the actual relation, either of man to God, or of Israel to God, because He came into their circumstances and drank of their cup, is examined and tested by Scripture, the more will it appear an unwarrantable assumption. And I am very firmly persuaded, that thus to traverse, as it were, the doctrinal order of the incarnation and the cross-by making the incarnation, as well as the cross, to be a point of Christ assuming our actual relation to God; sullies the glory of both.
That the Lord Jesus Christ was subject to cold, hunger, thirst, and weariness; the consequences of the sin of man, is quite true -although He Himself was distinct and separate from those among whom He dwelt. "Ye," says He, "are from beneath, I am from above. " The testimony of the Baptist is -"he that is of the earth is earthy, he that cometh from heaven is above all. " But the statement made is, that many Psalms describe a range of the sufferings of Jesus, which were neither His vicarious sufferings, nor such chastening as we now know from a Father's love -but terrors, anger, and sore displeasure from God, because He came into the human family, and was especially connected with one part of it, Israel. It is fully granted that He came to his own and His own received Him not -that his mission was especially to the lost sheep of the house of Israel -yea, that by birth He was connected with them. "Of whom as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. " But He was a true Israelite -He was faithful amidst unfaithfulness -the just one -the true righteous Israelite under the law -the holy one of God in the midst of an unclean nation. Was He then under the curse by birth? did the curse fall on Him because of Israel? "of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came? Has not the Scriptures stated most distinctly that Christ has redeemed us (Israel) from the curse of the law being made a curse for us -as it is written "cursed," &c. Is any one so presumptuous, not to say blasphemous, as to predicate of Jesus, what the apostle says of himself as a Jew and others -"were by nature the children of wrath even as other. " Are we to be told without the least warrant from apostolic testimony, that "Jesus became obnoxious to the wrath of God the moment he came into the world, and wherefore? because He became part of an accursed people, on whom the curse -Deut. 28 -had fallen. Could it be said of Jesus personally, that He was cursed when He went out and when He came in. I really tremble to write such language -and the experience of the Lord Jesus under this curse is said to be described in certain Psalms "So Jesus became obnoxious to the wrath of God, &c., accordingly we find many, &c."
But before entering on these Psalms, the question arises, was Israel an actually accursed people. They had broken the law in the wilderness; but when did God visit their sin on them? At the Babylonish Captivity -Acts 7:42, 43. From the days of the golden calf until the Babylonish Captivity, God had dealt with them in many gracious ways but to no purpose, as it is written 2 Chron. 36:15, 16. But there was mercy in store for them, and "the anger and the fury of the Lord" Dan. 9 was turned away from them; but it was turned away only for them to fill up the measure of their iniquity and to bring on themselves more awful wrath; so that their history is almost traced as an uninterrupted course of evil by the Lord Jesus Himself in the parable of the vineyard -Matt. 21:33. God had sought fruit from them by the ministry of his prophets, but got none -"last of all he sent unto them his son. " The curse had not yet lighted on them, the wrath was not yet poured out, it is spoken of as future by our Lord in reference to their rejection of Him; "These be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled," "there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. " In the days of the apostle, the predicted wrath had set in on them (1 Thess. 2:15, 16). The curse of Deuteronomy had laid hold on them. God was acting on their responsibility up to the mission of his Son, and even subsequent to his rejection by the mission of the Holy Ghost -the rejection of his testimony sealed their judgment, and brought judicial blindness on them. It is a very serious thing to affirm, without affording proof, that Jesus by incarnation became "part of an accursed people" -the Scriptures affirm that He was made a curse for them on the cross -and these are two very different things. My whole soul revolts from the thought that it could be said of Jesus, "Cursed shalt thou be in going out," &c., and that at a period when the Scriptures say He was "growing in favor with God and man. " Remember it has to be proved that Israel at the period of the incarnation was "an accursed people" -lying under the curses of Dent. 28 and also that Jesus by incarnation became a part of them, as such, so that He was "personally" under the curses of God before He was vicariously on the cross.
Let us now turn to the Psalm -"accordingly we find many of the Psalms speaking of this" (His being obnoxious to the wrath of God). "From my youth up I suffer thy terrors with a troubled mind. " This is quoted from the authorized version in the Anglican Prayer Book, differing from the authorized version in the Bible. There the verse runs thus -"I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up; while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted. " It would be difficult, perhaps, to decide on the right punctuation, as to which clause of the verse, "from my youth up" properly belongs -at any rate when it is differently punctuated in the two versions -it would not be fair to rest any important statement on it. But it is not criticism which is to decide, but the unction which belongeth even to the babe in Christ; and let the 88 Psalm be read through by such a one, and then let him say what his judgment is; whether it has reference to the cross. What do these strong expressions refer to? "My soul is full of troubles, and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. " "Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. " "Lord, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me? Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off. " Now, would not a simple-minded Christian in turning to the gospels and reading such a passage as this concerning Jesus -"he began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy" -or when He said to his disciples -"My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death" -"I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straightened," &c. Would He not see in such a Psalm as this the inward experience of the soul of Jesus before God, in anticipation of the cross, instead of allowing his imagination without any clue from the gospels to learn from it "the manner in which Christ was personally chastened and afflicted?" According to the statement, the 88 Psalm has no reference to the cross; neither was it applicable to the Lord during his public ministry. If this Psalm, assuming it to be the experience of Christ, has no reference to the cross, but was the personal experience of Christ on account of His connection with Israel, what must be the inference if we dared to draw one? Surely the personal sufferings of Christ were more intense, and of a more awful character than His vicarious sufferings -for God had afflicted Him with all His waves, before He came to the cross. The startling statement is made at the close of the lecture, of Christ, "he dreaded not the cross as he did Gethsemane"; but one might almost gather that He had gone through a more awful experience before He came to Gethsemane.
Let us now turn to Psa. 38, which according to this lecture, was the personal experience of the Lord Jesus, "because he was part of an accursed people," SO "the hand of God was continually stretched out against him in various ways, he was chastened every morning; "my loins, he said, are filled with a loathsome disease." Now we do not read of such chastening after he began his public ministry, but before that I doubt not he was often so afflicted."
Now I do feel this to be a needless shock to our common feeling as Christians; and the reception of such a statement, from which I turn aside with indignation and disgust, would in my mind infinitely lower the value of the work of Christ on the cross. We have the Scripture which cannot be broken, "Jesus increased in favor with God and man." I receive its testimony, and utterly repudiate the thought, that previous to His entrance on his public ministry, God's hand was continually stretched out against Him, or that He often afflicted Him by filling "his loins with a loathsome disease." The holy thing born of the virgin -the holy one of God -Immanuel, often so afflicted, and that personally!! His connection with Israel is granted -God had smitten the Egyptians and He had given Israel a statute -Ex. 16:26. Did not Jesus do what was right in the sight of God; and was not the blessing of this statute His and His alone? The doctrine is, that this Psalm and others of a kindred character describe "the manner in which Christ was personally chastened and afflicted, while the servant of God on the earth," and not his vicarious sufferings. What meaneth then the language, "There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger, neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin, for mine iniquities are gone over my head, as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me." Were they His own sins of which He here speaks? Are they the personal sins of Jesus for which Jehovah was rebuking Him in his wrath and chastening Him in his sore displeasure? if so, though I trust none would say it, then, what becomes of the doctrine that Christ has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit." But if we go on to Psa. 40 the next but one to this, we have instruction from the Holy Ghost as to its interpretation. "It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins, wherefore when he cometh into the world he saith -Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me. In burnt-offerings and sacrifice for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first that he may establish the second, by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." It can admit of no dispute that this Psalm has reference to the vicarious sufferings of Christ. In it we read "For innumerable evils have compassed me about; mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head; therefore my heart faileth me" The language of Psa. 38:4, is, "mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me." The language is nearly the same, and the sins are identified with the sufferer in both cases. In the one the Holy Ghost has given us the clue to interpret them, not personally, of Christ, but of sins made his own by imputation of God, and why not in the other also?
That Jesus had a deeper sense of death than any of us can have, as being the life, is most true; that He knew it according to the sentence of God, and instinctively shrunk from it as being "the wages of sin," is readily admitted; and was not this the great conflict of his soul in Gethsemane -was it possible for the cup to pass away without his drinking it. Redemption apart from death according to the divine counsels was impossible. But the statement is that the Old Testament. saints were in bondage, &c., "God desired that the awe and terror of death and this place of separation might be with their spirits... Jesus was often made, &c. -he should see his goodness in the land of the living." (I do not find any allusion to death and hades in Psa. 37), "but he really tasted of death in way we never shall." Blessed truth! -but when did He so taste death? why shall not we? "We see Jesus made a little lower than the angels; for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man." The apostle refers His tasting death, so that we should not so taste it, to the cross; the lecture to experience of Jesus before His public ministry. He "became obedient unto death even the death of the cross." The Holy Ghost in the New Testament dwells on this point, as well as the Lord Himself in his own ministry after the revelation of the glory of His person to Peter. The death of Christ on the cross, the Son of man lifted up, is the key given us to open the Scriptures, but the doctrine of this tract is awe and terror from fear of death and hades -chastisement and wrath from God previous to his entering on his public ministry.
This statement about death and hades has reference to the 5th verse of this Psalm -"In death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave, who shall give thee thanks?" Jesus, it is stated, had the awe and terror of this continually before Him till He was thirty years of age -and then He is delivered from it, not by resurrection, but by taking new ground after his baptism by John. But the Lord Himself during his personal ministry, makes His actual death which was before Him the prominent subject of His teaching after the revelation of the glory of His person by the Father to Peter, and after showing three of his disciples his glory in the holy mount. According to the statements of the tract, Jesus had gone through all the terrors of death in spirit before -and what then was his actual death? He had, as it were, a reprieve for the three and a half years after his baptism by John -so that those years were "by far the happiest in his life, for he was not afflicted by the hand of God as before."
Were not death and hades as realities before Him during these three and a half years? did not they press on His soul with deeper intensity as the hour which had no parallel before it, or would have after it, approached? Is it really intended to be taught us that the Lord had previously for thirty years, more or less, so gone through the terrors of death and hades, that the awe of them was gone during his public ministry, and the cross was only "the closing incident" of the life of Jesus, and that He was there "made distinctly (why distinctly?) the sacrifice for sin." Was He any where else, or in any way else, the sacrifice for sin? Were the terrors of death and hades, He had previously undergone according to the statement of this lecture, the wrath and chastisement of God which He had endured more or less for thirty years, and relief from which was granted to Him by the baptism of John, in any sense sacrificial? "Without shedding of blood there is no remission. " "I suppose the forty days he was in the wilderness was really a time of joy to the Spirit of Christ, when he was peculiarly with God, led there by the Spirit (p. 17)."
If words are capable of directly contradicting the plainest statements of the New Testament, these words do so. "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil," and the close of the scene is, "Then the Devil leaveth him, and behold angels came and ministered to him" (Matt. 4:1, 11).
"And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness, and he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan and was with the wild beasts and the angels ministered unto him (Mark 1:12, 13).
"And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the Devil!
"And when the Devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season" (Luke 4:1-13).
Temptation is the characteristic of the scene from first to last for the forty days. It is true that hunger is not mentioned till the end of forty days. And, then, three distinct temptations are noticed. "He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. " "In that he himself hath suffered, being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted"; so that this lecture. by perverting the account of the scene in the wilderness, tends, as greatly, to diminish our comfort drawn from the sympathy of Jesus, as it does to subvert our souls by depreciating his sufferings on the cross. But can the doctrine of this lecture be maintained without perverting Scripture? That doctrine is, that most intense sufferings were endured by Christ at the hand of God, concerning which the New Testament is silent; and that unless we meditate on these sufferings we should know little of what the real sufferings of Christ were. It is the object of this lecture to bring these (I hesitate not to say) imaginary sufferings of Christ into strong relief. And hence, the scene in the wilderness, which Christians generally have thought to be one of trial of soul to Jesus, is changed into a season of joy when He was peculiarly with God. "He suffered being tempted" None have ever thought temptation to be a season of peculiar joy to the spirit. For the analogy is drawn in the lecture, between Christ and believers, as to the scene in the wilderness -and the forty days in the wilderness are compared to "a season of spiritual joy, when the soul has found peculiar rest in God."
To be in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan, and to be with the wild beasts, a season of spiritual joy!! Man's dependance and God's faithfulness may be and are proved through temptation. And when we have been carried through the temptation we understand the word. "Blessed is the man which endureth temptation." "God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above what ye are able to bear, but will with the temptation make a way of escape." However blessed the result of temptation, the process of it is peculiarly painful and the very opposite to a season of spiritual joy. It is surely a very solemn responsibility for any one thus to set aside Scripture by a thought of his own. And if Christians become habituated to such tampering with Scripture; what security have we for the integrity of any doctrine? "He dreaded not the cross as he did Gethsemane (p. 18)." This certainly is a most astounding statement; and the effect must be to turn away the thoughts from the distinct character of the sufferings on the cross. The character of Gethsemane is stated to be weak humanity, and all the power of Satan allowed to be brought upon the Lord Jesus; but in the sacred narrative, is Satan presented to us at all in Gethsemane? "Satan had put it into the heart of Judas to betray him" -but Judas was not there -he came at the close, after the sore trial of Gethsemane was over. Separated from the traitor and the world, the Lord was alone with His select disciples in the garden, and from them, He takes the three who had been the favored witnesses of His glory on the holy mount, to be witnesses of another scene. "He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here and watch with me. And he went a little further, and fell on his face and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me except I drink it, thy will be done. And he left them and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, 'Sleep on now, and take your rest; behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners Rise, let us be going: behold he is at hand that cloth betray me.' And while he yet spake, lo, Judas," &c.
The narrative of Mark differs but little from that of Matthew. He "began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy: and saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death -he prayed, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee: take away this cup from me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou wilt... it is enough, the hour is come, and immediately while he yet spake, cometh Judas," &c.
The account of Luke commences and ends with warning to the disciples -"Pray that ye enter not int.( temptation" -but it brings in remarkable circumstance, unnoticed by Matthew and Mark. "He was withdraw from them about a stone-cast, and kneeled down and prayed, saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him -and being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground; when he rose up from prayer, and was come unto his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow, and said unto them, Why sleep ye, rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. And while he yet spake," &c. Here we have the scene before us, and we may judge of its character. We do indeed see weak humanity that sought comfort even from human sympathy. But was it not the sense of something most awful impending, that thus agitated the blessed Jesus? Was it not the prospect of "the cup" not yet actually in His hand -"the hour" not yet actually arrived, that thus overwhelmed His soul with horror, anguish, amazement, and caused Him to urge the plea, "Take away this cup from me."
St. John's gospel does not give us the scene in the garden but only tells us of Judas and the officers coming by night to take Him; therefore, in this gospel, we find Jesus saying "The cup which my Father hath given me shall I not drink it." The struggle was now over, that most solemn moment of suspense was passed, when for an instant the possibility appeared to be weighed by Jesus, whether He might be spared the extremity of suffering, -a new and as yet untasted anguish -even wrath poured out on Him from God -the hiding of his Father's face, while his soul was made an offering for sin! But when that agonizing suspense is over, He bows in perfect submission to his Father's will, even thus proving it to be His meat and drink to do the will of Him that sent Him and to finish his work. That, which appears to characterize the sufferings of Gethsemane is, the struggle whether "the cup" should be drunk or not. "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." And what was the cup? Surely it was the cross. And it is a solemn as well as important difference, whether the cross is regarded as throwing back its deep sorrow even in anticipation, so as to cause the agony in Gethsemane; or whether Gethsemane be held up to depreciate the sufferings on the cross; for the doctrine of this lecture will not admit that it was a new and strange thing for Christ to suffer the wrath of God on the cross, seeing He had suffered it for the first thirty years of His life. There were two things needed to exhibit the glory of Jesus in connection with the cross; it must be, on His part, an act of obedience to God, and at the same time, it must be an act of willingness. Both were brought out at Gethsemane -"Thy will be done" -and "he was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb dumb before his shearers, so opened he not his mouth." He would carry his obedience to death, even the death of the cross, and yet He could say, "I lay down my life of myself." In this we see the wonderful result of the conflict in Gethsemane. And it was after this conflict in Gethsemane was over, when the multitude came with Judas to take Him that He said, "When I was daily with you in the temple, ye stretched forth no hands against me: but this is your hour and the power of darkness."
He was now delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. "God spared not his Son, but gave him up for us all" -"he delivered him for our offenses" -this, God had not done before, though often had they attempted to lay hands on Him; but his hour was not yet come.
It is deeply interesting to mark the connection between Gethsemane and the cross, but important to distinguish the interval between them, so that the cross may be marked off into the distinct prominence which it occupies in the writings of the apostles. "Enduring the cross, despising the shame" -there were many bitter accompaniments to the cross, which were not the cross itself; betrayed by one disciple, denied by another, deserted by all; spitting -buffeting -blindfolding -mocking -the crown of thorns -the ribaldry of the soldiers -the blasphemies of the Jews -all these indignities accompanied the cross, both on the way to it and while hanging on it; but though it was "man's hour and the power of darkness," and the malice and cruelty of men and devils did their worst, yet all torment of body and trial of spirit which our blessed Lord went through, was small in comparison of that tremendous, that isolated hour, when God had to do with Him in judgment. "And there was darkness over all the land from the sixth unto the ninth hour." These hours of darkness seem to have been passed in silence by Jesus, and may we not interpret that darkness of nature, as symbolical of the darkness of soul which came over Him, when His Father hid the light of His countenance from Him -when all the waves and billows of God's wrath passed over Him, while He was numbered with the transgressors. It was the rebuke which broke his heart, and caused Him in the bitterness of desertion to break the long silence by that cry of intensest agony -"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Surely this must have been "the most terrible hour" that Jesus ever past -the all-important hour, even when we carry time into eternity.
"And Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost" -the veil was rent, the earth did quake, the rocks rent, the graves were opened. "It is finished." It was on the cross, and not in Gethsemane, that "the difficulty was surmounted."
I have avoided as much as possible adverting to collateral points, however important I may regard them, because I have desired fairly to consider the leading doctrine of the lecture. This is very clearly stated, viz.: that Christ was "obnoxious to" and under the rebuke of the wrath of God -(see pp. 7, 12, 14, 15) -for the first thirty years of His life, and then by His baptism by John He came into a relation to God quite opposite to this. I have well weighed this doctrine, and believe it to be deeply erroneous. An unguarded expression, or even a mistake of the note-taker on some particular points, would not affect the leading doctrine, any more than some qualifying expressions found in the lecture itself.
There are two important points of our common faith seriously affected by this doctrine.—
"1st, By putting Christ under a curse through His life for thirty years, the doctrine of righteousness, as wrought out by Him, is certainly touched, even "the righteousness of one, or the one righteousness which is unto justification of life" (Rom. 5:18). For can we conceive one personally righteous, using the language of the thirty-fourth Psalm -"mine iniquities are gone over my head," in any other sense than vicariously? and this is one of the Psalms referred to as expressing the experience of the Lord Jesus before his baptism by John.
2ndly, The cross loses its distinctive character, as being the place, and the only place in which Christ stood in the relation of wrath to God. By the prominence given to this more protracted period of suffering the wrath and hot displeasure of God, a simple mind might at first be led to conceive that they enhanced the love of Christ to sinners. But not so. These sufferings were not vicarious. No one was benefitted by them. Christ, it is stated, was under this wrath personally, by being connected with Israel, and when He was delivered from it by His baptism by John, His personal relation to God was altered. And so important a subject of meditation are these sufferings of Christ said to be, that by fixing our eye simply on the cross we should know little of what the real sufferings of Christ were. Now, does not this tend to make us think more lightly of those sufferings which Christ had to undergo on the cross in order to accomplish the great end for which He had come into the world?"
I believe I may speak in the name of every babe of Christ, and in the name of the most experienced saint, and claim for the cross that isolated place, which the counsels of eternity have assigned to it, and which the praises of eternity shall celebrate. On this point we cannot be too sensitively jealous. It is the cross which gives peace to the soul, awakened to a sense of sin bythe Spirit of God. It is the cross which sustains the soul under deeper exercise when proving the reality of indwelling sin. It is the cross which is the great expression to us of the love of God. "God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." And it is the cross which draws forth the response of love from our hearts. Everything is touched if we touch the cross, but I cannot now dwell on this.
I believe the doctrine of this lecture, if received, would subvert the soul. I am sure it would destroy the peace of my own soul; for deeper acquaintance with the loathsomeness of sin, would often raise the doubt of the possibility of being saved -unless that doubt were stayed by the object proposed to our faith -Jesus Christ, the Son of God -Immanuel, crucified. If He, the Lord of glory, has hung on the accursed tree, it is less marvel that a sinner should be saved, than that He should have hung there. And to turn the soul to regard Jesus as under the wrath of God at any other time than the cross, would be to subvert it. And the more the doctrine of Christ suffering the wrath of God (as expressed in the Psalms referred to) otherwise than vicariously, is considered, the more clearly will it be found to be without Scripture and contrary to Scripture. alike derogatory to the glory of the Father and the person of the Son, as well as greatly depreciating the work on the cross.
I can conceive of Christ partaking of the common cup of sorrow, exposed to hunger, thirst, weariness, because the Scriptures so exhibit Him. I can assuredly too accept what is stated in the lecture as to His sufferings from the judgment He must have had of all around Him here, because of what He Himself essentially was, so that He saw everything according to truth. He judged everything according to the light of that blessed region from whence He had come, as He says, "Ye are from beneath, I am from above. " I can understand too His sufferings connected with His service to God, enduring the contradiction of sinners against Himself, and exposed to the malice of Satan, for the Scriptures testify to them. And we do know by the sure word of God, as taught by His Spirit, His sufferings on the cross, when He stood in our place. But I am at a loss to conceive a peculiar class of Christ's sufferings -not resulting from drinking of the cup of human sorrow, nor from his own divine sensibility to the glory of God and dreadful evil of man, neither from the opposition of the powers of darkness, nor from the hatred of man in His arduous service -but a peculiar class of sufferings from the wrath of God, which are not vicarious. And I believe my difficulty to arise from the fact that no such sufferings of Christ are to be found in the Scripture.
"May we still the cross discerning,
There alone for comfort go,
There new wonders daily learning,
More of Jesu's glory know."
Yours affectionately in the Lord, J. L. Harris To Mr. C. McAdam Brampford Speke, June, 1847
No Lie is of the Truth
My Dear Brethren, I am well aware that the communication I felt it needful to make to you the last Lord's-day, caused pain and sorrow to many of you. But I am persuaded that it has not cost you so much in hearing it, as myself in making it. I had conferred with no one, although anxiously exercised in my own mind, as to what it was right, as the servant of Christ, to do. I received a request from you, through our brother Mosely, that I would be with you on one of the Lord's-days during his absence. After writing to our brother, Mr. Randal, to say that I hoped to be with you on the 31st, I learned that the teachers of Ebrington-street, Plymouth, were asked by you exactly on the same terms as myself. I cannot interfere with your liberty of asking the help of any you please, but as the servant of Christ I must act in responsibility to him. There is no hindrance on your part, to my ministering among you; the hindrance is entirely on my part, because I dare not be associated in fellowship of labor with those who hold doctrines injurious to the person of the Lord, and subversive of his work on the cross. It is a case in which I solemnly believe neutrality would be sin; and, under the circumstances in which I found myself placed, silence would be neutrality. "He that is not with me, is against me." I have a very defined judgment as to the previous moral question, yet serious as I regard that, it is nothing in comparison with a question of doctrine affecting the glory of the Person, no less than the integrity of the cross, of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I believe it however to be due to you, to set the point at issue before you, in order that you yourselves may see that I have not wantonly caused you sorrow. It would be a matter of some difficulty, to bring before you the needful evidence of facts, in order for you to form a judgment on the moral question; but the evidence of false doctrine is of another kind, the one who teaches it is the witness against himself -he becomes "self-condemned"; so that if we have authentic documents of what is taught, we have the ground before us of forming a righteous judgment whether any (to us) novel doctrine, is further light graciously brought to us by the teaching of the Holy Ghost, or whether it is heresy privily brought in.
Before bringing the doctrine in question before you, I would remark, that in my judgment, the principle you have proposed to act on, true so far as it goes, is not one applicable to the present case. I understood it to be, that you would judge that which you heard ministered in your own presence: in other words, that you would not judge error until it was publicly preached. Now, I believe it to be the duty of Christians, at all times to bring what they hear, to the test of the "law and the testimony" -that they ought "not to believe every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world." All teaching to Christians assumes the ground of their having a spiritual capacity for judging what they hear. "I write unto you," says the Apostle, to the babes, "not because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth." But while fully allowing your proposed principle to be a most important and valuable principle so far as it goes, it will not apply in the present case, or in any case where error is sought "privily" to be brought in. Even in a case of morals it would not apply. Supposing I came among you with some moral charge against me, which I refused to clear up, you would not judge me by my present good behavior among you. The case is much stronger, where doctrine is concerned; because, however important the conduct of Christians is, truth is more important, because the glory of Christ Himself is so immediately concerned. Now there is ample ground before you, for estimating what the doctrines really are. The Remarks in the "Letter to certain brethren and sisters," and the "Observations," which in no instance impugn a single principle advanced in Notes on Psa. 6, are authentic documents before you. Many expressions of the Lecture on Psa. 6 are modified -one disowned, and another retracted, but the substance of the doctrine therein taught is confirmed. Many statements, valuable statements concerning our common faith, are set forth in both these publications, but the serious doctrinal error, remains unretracted. Error is not less error, because surrounded by truth, but is only more dangerous, because less suspected; just as poison would be in our common food. "No lie is of the truth." And although as a general rule, it is by far happier to seek to establish the soul in the truth, yet there are occasions when the more stern and painful duty of nakedly exposing doctrinal error is needed. Such, I believe to be the positive duty of every true-hearted saint in the present instance, and in seeking to do this, it is well to keep before the mind the great point, without adverting to many others, which, although important, are only collateral. And first, to narrow the question as much as possible -let it be clearly understood -that it is not a question touching the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, neither is it one touching his humanity. The Person of the Lord is not the point, but the deep dishonor done to his person by this doctrine. And in order still to narrow it more, the question is not what the true doctrine of the cross is, but whether this doctrine does not necessarily undermine it. There are pious Roman Catholic writers, yet none of us would accept ever so accurate a statement of the cross from them, as a defense of Popery, because the system of Popery effectually undermines the cross. And I would add also, that in examining a defined doctrine, so far as it is defined, the intention of those who teach it does not necessarily enter into the consideration. We have to do with the naked bare doctrine -the intention of those who introduce it may be considered afterward. It would be a great mistake to suppose that a really pious person might not introduce most vicious doctrines, such as if received would subvert the soul. I cannot for a moment believe that the Apostle Peter had, by his conduct in withdrawing himself from the company of the Gentile believers, for which he was publicly blamed by the Apostle Paul, any intention of acting contrary "to the truth of the Gospel." But an action insignificant in itself, would vitiate the truth of the Gospel. We do not judge the intention of "the Pharisees who believed, who said except ye be circumcised," &c. Their doctrine subverted souls. That was the point to be solemnly judged.
It will also simplify the inquiry to state that it is allowed that the doctrine propounded is neither taught by Christ himself, nor by his apostles.
I will now present to you the leading doctrinal statements, corroborated by Extracts from the three papers, and briefly remark on them.
That Christ, by his position, relatively to man and Israel, was "obnoxious to," "exposed to," "threatened by" the wrath of God, the curse of the broken law, an death.
That He had, previous to his baptism by John, experiences wrought on His soul by the power of God, corresponding to this relative position.
That God inflicted on Him grievous sufferings, because He was found in this position.
That these experiences and sufferings of the Lord Jesus, previous to his baptism by John, are the subject of many of the Psalms, of which the sixth, the thirty-eighth, eighty-eighth, hundred and second, and hundred and nineteenth are given as specimens.
As to the first of these heads; I quote the following extracts:
"These were the character of the curses, which had fallen on Israel, because they had transgressed the law, broken the everlasting covenant; so Jesus became part of an accursed people, a people who had earned God's wrath by transgression &c,... so Jesus became obnoxious to the wrath of God, the moment He came into the world" (Lecture on Psa. 6, p. 12)."
"And if it be asked, was then the Lord Jesus subjected during his life, to all the inflictions that were due to man as man, and Israel as Israel? I answer, No! To be obnoxious, that is, exposed to, certain things, is a different thing from actually enduring them. His faith, His prayer, His obedience, all contributed to preserve Him from many things, to which He was by His relative position exposed, and by which He was threatened (Remarks, pp. 8, 9)."
"And is it a new doctrine, that Jesus by his birth became obnoxious, that is exposed, to all the sinless penalties of fallen man? I do not say, that they all fell upon him. Some did not. He was exposed for example, because of his relation to Adam to that sentence of death, that had been pronounced on the whole family of man. Relatively, He was exposed to that curse; personally, He evinced his title to freedom from it; and His title to life by keeping that law, of which it had been said, "this do, and thou shalt live" (Observations; p. 9)."
In p. 15, Observations, it is stated, Jesus became "one of a nation, that was exposed to all the terrors of Sinai." And again, p. 18, "poverty, hunger, blindness, disease, and (if their hearts had not been hardened) terror of soul was their portion from the Lord. Such was their condition, when Jesus came to be one amongst them."
I would not needlessly multiply quotations, but I must add one more under this head.
And Jesus as man, was associated with this place of distance in which man, in the flesh, was, and he had, through obedience, to find his way to that point, where God could meet him, as having finished his appointed work, glorify him, and set him at his own right hand, in the heavenly places, and that place was death on the cross; death under the wrath of God (Remarks, pp. 31, 32).
Now these statements necessarily involve this; that Christ could not take the place of a surety and substitute for others, until He himself was relieved from these several liabilities under which He had come, by reason of His relative position to man and Israel. Something was needed to be done for Himself, before He could do anything for others. Hence the doctrine of the atonement of Christ is really undermined, for Christ is no longer one who needed nothing to be done for Himself, but one who was under common liabilities by reason of His relative position to man and Israel; and therefore there is no longer any sure ground for a sinner to rest the salvation of his soul on. For I ask, can any of us risk the salvation of our souls on the work of one, who needed first himself to be delivered from the wrath of God, the curse of the broken law, and death as the wages of sin, to which we ourselves, as sinners, are liable?
I do not draw this as an inference from the doctrine stated, it is the doctrine of the tract that Christ was in "a condition out of which he was able to extricate himself and from which be proved he could extricate himself, by his own perfect obedience (Remarks, p. 12). Remember this has nothing to do with the cross. He was in such a position, that if be had not been able to "extricate" Himself out of it, He could not have been the surety and substitute for others. Hence necessarily follows that the glory of the Person of the Lord is disconnected from his suffering on the cross, and it is the glory of His person which gives all the value to the cross; and instead of seeing the Prince of Life crucified, we see one escaping Himself from wrath, the curse of the law, and death, crucified. Can such a one be my surety -my substitute? Can I confide the salvation of my soul to one who has been under the same liabilities as myself? I cannot. And here I add that such a statement entirely obscures the glory of Christ's humiliation, and the perfection of His sympathy. The doctrine of the Lord's humiliation is blessedly stated in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians. "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient," &c. All the voluntariness of His humiliation, and the voluntariness of His obedience, is entirely obscured by this doctrine; for He was by force of His position in distance from God, and by urgent necessity obliged to obey, to get himself out of it. And instead of regarding him in the perfection of sympathy, entering into all the sorrow and trials of others, these sorrows and trials came upon himself by reason of his relative position, and he had, by prayer, to be delivered from them. Such is, in my judgment, this Christ-dishonoring and soul-withering doctrine.
Statements are made in the three papers, that Christ was delivered from some of the liabilities under which by His position He was, by His faith, prayer, and obedience, but this was only partially; the actual deliverance from this position is stated to be by His baptism by John, and then He took new ground, so that the position of Christ himself before his baptism by John and after, was answerable to that of an Israelite bowed down under all the terrors of Sinai, and from thence brought to realize all the blessings of Mount Zion. "The difference between the two dispensational positions held by the Lord Jesus, in the midst of Israel previous to his baptism, and that which He dispensationally and ministerially took when anointed by the Holy Ghost" (Remarks, p. 23.) Christ, by His relative position, was exposed to wrath, the curse of the broken law, and death, and then by His baptism by John His position in relation to these things was altered, and He took new ground, answerable to that which a sinner takes, when from distance He is brought near to God by the blood of Jesus.
I briefly remark on the extract, p. 9 of Observations, that Christ evidenced His title to freedom from the curse of death, and His title to life, by keeping the commandments, that such a statement entirely obscures the truth that "in Him was life," that "He had life in Himself," that He was "The life," that no one could "take it from Him," that He "laid it down of Himself," &c. And note, there must, according to this statement, have been some period when he might have claimed life by keeping the law. When was it? And if he earned a life by keeping the commandments so as to be delivered from the curse of death to which he was exposed by his relative position, could he afterward lay down that life for others? Surely not, when he had earned it for himself. I do therefore very deliberately affirm that this doctrine most seriously affects the truth of the atonement of Christ, yea, I must say, subverts it.
But the passage of the Remarks pp. 31, 32, is on this point awfully conclusive, however it may contradict other statements, because it plainly teaches, "that Christ" was, by His relative position, in the distance in which man was; and had to work His way to that point where God could meet man, and that was "death, death on the cross, death under the wrath of God." Now if Christ had to meet God there, by reason of his relative position, and to be delivered out of it for himself, how can the cross be vicarious at all for others?
II. That Christ had wrought on his soul by the power of God, experiences corresponding to this position, before His baptism by John.
"But in the Psalms, where we especially read the inward experiences of his spirit, we find not only the sufferings of those hours of public ministry but sufferings also which pertained to Him, because He was a man and because He was an Israelite, sufferings therefore which cannot be restricted to the years of his public service, but which must be extended over the whole of that period during which he was made sensible under the hand of God, of the condition into which man had sunk, and yet more into which Israel had sunk in his sight (Remarks pp.1, 2).
"And lastly (which is indeed the thing more than anything else distinctive of these sufferings of Jesus of which I speak) that God pressed these things on the apprehensions of his soul according to his own power and holiness, and caused him to feel part of that which was exposed to the judgment of his heavy hand (Remarks, p. 14)."
"If then the soul of Jesus had realized, experimentally realized, and that too under the hand of God, and to a degree 'we little think the fearful condition of Israel (Remarks, p. 22)."
"Moreover the exercises of soul which his elect in their unconverted state ought to have, and which they would have, if it were possible for them to know and feel everything according to God; such exercises, yet without sin, Jesus had (Observations, p. 26)."
"We may hear of Sinai or think of Sinai, but Jesus realized it as the power of an actual subsisting relation betwixt his people and God (Observations, p. 29)."
"(The Lord Jesus was as much alone in his living estimate under God's hand of the circumstances of human life, as in enduring wrath upon the cross (Observations, p. 36)."
"Jesus was often made to pass through this awe and terror," i.e. of death and Hades (Lecture on Psa. 6, p. 14)."
Mark first, these experiences are said to be wrought on the soul of Jesus by the hand of God. They are entirely distinct from the spontaneous actings of His soul entering into the condition of man and Israel, and the things around him; as surely it did in depth of feeling, and real sympathy, because He estimated everything according to God. "He needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man."
Again, the experiences thus wrought on His soul, by the hand of God, were such as to make Him feel what it was to be part of an accursed people, which was exposed to the judgment of his heavy hand -what it was to feel in his own soul, the condition into which man had sunk; what it was to feel the curse of the broken law; what it was to feel the terror of death and Hades; what it was to feel as God's unconverted elect. I repeat it, that it is what He was made to feel, as his condition, by reason of His relation to man and Israel; and out of which, He was praying to be delivered; and was seeking to extricate himself; and not his entering in depth of sympathy, into the condition of others, weighing and estimating what that condition was, and working to deliver them out of it. It was for Himself He felt; for Himself He worked. He was made to feel under the hand of God the awful condition in which He Himself was, and out of which He was crying to be delivered.
Once more I ask, whether this which is stated to have been the experience wrought in the soul of Christ, by the hand of God, more or less, for eighteen years, must not have been the experiences of the soul of Christ, when on the cross. Was He not there made to feel under the hand of God in His inmost soul, what it was to be under the curse of the broken law -what it was to be part of that which was exposed to the judgment of his heavy hand -what it was to have the awe and terror of death, death as the wages of sin pressed on His soul in the most intense manner, by God himself? Was not such His experience, when God "made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin? And now, mark to what this doctrine amounts, that the Lord Jesus had the Same kind of experience pressed upon His soul, by the power of God, when He stood in such a position relatively to man and Israel, as to need deliverance from it for Himself, as he must have had when made sin for us on the cursed tree, and when He bore our sins vicariously. It may be said, that on the cross He was made "distinctly" a sacrifice for sin -on the cross, vengeance in wrath was poured out on Him -but as to experience, it was no new experience which Jesus had on the cross, He had been made for many years to feel in His own soul, on His own account, what He felt for a while in His soul on the cross for others. I cannot see the possibility of escaping this conclusion. And it is well to remark, that in the Remarks, the contrast is made, between the sufferings of the Lord Jesus, before His baptism by John, and His ministerial sufferings; so that this character of experience, arising from His relative position, is entirely severed from that on the cross, by the new kind of experience, which He had after His baptism by John. Jesus stood alone in these sufferings and experiences on his own account, by reason of his relative position, as He stood alone in His sufferings on the cross. He needed, so far as experience goes, to go through the same for Himself, by reason of His relative position, and that alone; as He did for others on the cross. I ask you to consider, whether this doctrine of the experience of the soul of Christ, under the hand of God, is not both degrading to his Person, and subversive of His work on the cross.
III. That God inflicted on Christ grievous sufferings because He was found in this position.
"So the hand of God was continually stretched out against him, in various ways. He was chastened every morning ' My loins, he said, are filled with a loathsome disease.' Now we do not read of such chastening after he began his public ministry, but before that, I doubt not that he was often so afflicted (Lecture on Psa. 6, p. 12)."
"The texts also which apply to our Lord's bodily sufferings require equal revision as to their translation. The 7th verse of Psa. 37 is an example. The word which our translators have rendered "loathsome disease," &c. "My loins hast thou filled with burning heat, or dryness" is the revised translation."
"In our case, I suppose perturbation of soul as well as derangement of body, is always more or less connected with, though not necessarily originated by, indwelling sin. In our Lord's case, of course, this could not be, for He was sinless (Remarks, pp. 17, 18)."
"He admits that He was exposed to hunger, thirst, weariness, and partook of the common cup of human sorrow. This is an important admission (Observations, p. 21)."
The doctrine taught is that from the age of twelve years to thirty the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy One of God, was visited by grievous bodily disease by the hand of God. It matters little, whether we say that His loins were filled with a loathsome disease or with inflammation, or burning heat; the point is, What is the warrant for this bold affirmation, that the Holy One of God was ever so afflicted? It is allowed that the sacred historians never tell us that He was so afflicted; and therefore to assert that He was, appears to me an outrage on our Christian sensibilities, merely to support a theory. I add also, that the text from Isa. 53, "Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses," is applied by the Evangelist to our blessed Lord in his ministry (Matt. 8:17), showing not that he was afflicted with sickness, but how deeply He sympathized with those whose sicknesses He cured.
As to "admitting" that our Lord hungered, &c.; surely it is no admission to believe what the Scriptures have revealed. It is divine certainty which makes me acknowledge that He hungered and was weary, and not an inference drawn from the condition in which Jesus was. And on the very ground that I receive as an infallible truth that Jesus hungered, thirsted, was weary, sighed, grieved, wept, namely, because the Scriptures reveal it, I reject entirely the doctrine that He was grievously afflicted by God with loathsome sickness, namely, because the Scriptures do not reveal it.
And now, lastly, as to the Psalms, which are said to express the experience of the Spirit of Jesus, and His sufferings under the hand of God previous to His baptism by John, viz., the 6th, 38th, 88th, 119th, 102nd. Of these the 6th, 38th, and 102nd, have been usually called penitential Psalms, and, as such, appointed by the Church of England to be read on Ash-Wednesday. The 88th is one of those appointed by the Church of England for Good-Friday, so that its application to the cross, by a large body of Christians, at least, is distinctly marked. I first notice, however, Psa. 119, which is applied to the Lord Jesus, as soon as He was sufficiently matured in age to enter on the general responsibilities of life around him" (Remarks, p. 15). I first ask for a careful perusal of all these Psalms which are said to express the experience, and sufferings, and exercise of the soul of the Lord Jesus, not as vicariously bearing the sins of His people, not as their surety, not as entering by the spontaneous actings of His soul into the condition of His people by perfect sympathy, but arising from His own relative condition out of which He was seeking to extricate himself. By an altered translation, it is sought to get rid of the difficulty of the last verse of the 119th Psalm. "I have gone astray like a lost sheep. " As it stands, it is said it could not be applied to Christ. See Remarks, p. 18. But the translators have rendered the word morally, as I doubt not, correctly, in Isa. 53, "All we, like sheep, have gone astray," and why not here? The question is as to the application of the Psalm to the personal experience of Christ -before His baptism by John -when He was in a position out of which He was seeking to extricate himself. But v. 67 of the same Psalm is necessarily (not by its translation, but by its context) to be taken morally. "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy word." Was this the experience of Christ himself?
As to the other Psalms here mentioned, I again say let them be read, and remember the frequent confession of sin in Psa. 37 is not vicarious confession, i.e., not feeling the sins of others of which He was bearing the judgment as His own, but an experience pressed on His soul by the power of God by reason of the position in which He was, and out of which He was seeking to be delivered, and from which He was delivered by the baptism of John.
The distinction made between "wrath in chastisement" and "wrath in vengeance" (Remarks, p. 10), cannot be allowed. It is not for us to determine the sense in which wrath is to be used. The question is what is the meaning of wrath in these Psalms, for it is this wrath which it is stated He suffered not vicariously, He suffered it as due to the position in which He personally was, and out of which He must "emerge," before he could take the place of the substitute for others. It was the wrath due to the broken law, and the sunken condition of man, which it is said he suffered. And when I read, "Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off" -if this be wrath in chastisement, what is wrath in vengeance? It is not my intention in this letter, to examine all the statements made and test them by Scripture. If needed, I shall publish an examination already written of the Remarks, and also of the Observations, both which publications show more clearly than the Lecture on Psa. 6 what the doctrine is. At present, my desire is to show you that there is need for you to examine and judge this doctrine. Further it is plainly intimated that Christ's foot slipped from the heavy burden He had to bear; and remember that it is not the pressure of the sins of others which is meant. Compare Psa. 38:16 and Remarks, p. 17, foot note, second paragraph.
In concluding, I must observe that the respected name of Dr. Hawker is brought forward as a shelter for a doctrine which he would have repudiated with his whole soul. And this too, with the avowal that Dr. H. entirely differed on a most important point, which is, in fact, the very point at issue. I will only advert to the quotations from Dr. H. in p. 67 Observations, "Now Jesus, as the sinner's surety," &c.
"Standing thus, though holy, in our nature, and the representative of all his people, the moment he entered our world, the consequences of the curse attached itself to Him and seized upon Him.
Now the doctrine of these tracts is the very opposite to this, viz., that Christ not as the surety, not as the representative of His people, became obnoxious to the wrath of God, death, and the curse of the broken law, and had to extricate himself from these liabilities before He could stand in the place of their surety, or their representative, a statement, I hesitate not to say, which that man of God would have repudiated as derogatory to the glory of the Person of his Lord, whom He loved and served.
I do therefore ask you, solemnly to weigh this doctrine, what it really is. It is not taught by Christ, or his apostles. The apostles have taught largely on the sufferings of Christ; those in which we can have fellowship with Him, and those which He endured alone on the cross; but they have not, in the remotest way, hinted at any such class of suffering and experiences, as those taught in these tracts. It remains either, that this doctrine is a new revelation of something which the apostles had not revealed to them, or a heresy privily brought in. And having formed my judgment deliberately and solemnly before God, as to its real character, I desire, by the grace of God, to expose and oppose this doctrine with the most open and determined hostility. And I would rather be excluded from ministering, in all assemblies of Christians, and find opportunities of preaching Christ to individuals, than identify myself with any, where a doctrine so dishonoring to God, so degrading to Christ, so depreciating to the cross, is not disowned. I do not ask you to receive anything, because I say it; but to test everything by the Scripture, and by that "unction which you have from the holy one."
I remain, your affectionate brother and servant in Christ, and for His sake, J. L. HARRIS.
November 6, 1847
POSTSCRIPT This characteristic of heresy, "privily brought in" has been peculiarly marked in the present case. I had no idea of the extent of secret note-circulation, before the Notes on Psa. 6 came into my hands. I have now in my possession, copies of, and extracts from, other notes, which have been circulated as deep truth. I do not say who is responsible for these notes, but some one is. These, while they contain the same doctrine, are, in expression much more fearful -indeed, in some instances, almost blasphemous -in others most absurd. It is indeed sad, to find that a sense of propriety has not hindered this circulation of notes, as it has been so repeatedly reprehended. No one can object to a person taking notes of what they hear; but to propagate doctrine in this covert way, savors of anything, rather than the spirit of Christ.
I ought, perhaps, to have noticed the Scriptures from the New Testament, which are tried to be brought to support this doctrine.
The will of God, therefore, determined the character of these sufferings, (i.e., before His baptism by John) and their amount. "It became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings," Heb. 2:10 (Remarks, p. 3).
As this is quoted, it appears to be a general statement, but the important causal conjunction, FOR, is omitted, which connects it with the former verse, and this entirely alters the sense, and shows of what sufferings the apostle is speaking. "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man. FOR it became, &c.
"In the first place, consider what is involved in that verse in the Hebrews, in all points tempted like as we are, yet, without sin. How wide the application of the principle of this verse (Remarks, p. 14)." Its blessed wideness is fully granted; but it is not wide enough to embrace a class of temptations, into which we can never come. "I cannot but think that those who object to these things, must find much difficulty in receiving that verse, "He learned obedience by the things which he suffered" (Observations, p. 58)."
For one, I do not find any difficulty, save indeed, of estimating the depth of grace which led the blessed Lord to take this place. Let us look at the full quotation, "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered, and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation, unto all them that obey him; called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec." The thought of the Son humbling himself to learn obedience, gives to me a very different thought from that of one by force of his position obeying to extricate himself. In the text, it is connected with resurrection, when He was called of God to His priesthood; in the tracts to His suffering before His baptism by John, and deliverance by that baptism. And if we read that marvelous chapter, Isa. 1. where He who "clothed the heaven with sackcloth," speaks, as having "the ear of the learned," and to "the tongue of the learned," -there is the school of suffering from man, but an appeal to God. This might be pursued farther, but I must close.