When it pleased God of late to awaken the slumbering virgins by the midnight cry, not only were the wise roused, but the foolish. Nor did Satan delay to set up counterfeits, so as to bring the discredit of heterodoxy and evils of various other kinds on the recovered hope. Evangelical men were at a manifestly low ebb, even the most devoted of them betraying their ignorance of church or even Christian privilege by periodical gatherings for prayer that the Holy Spirit might be once more shed on souls, and meanwhile eagerly forming societies to do thus anomalously the work which was the common responsibility of God's church. There was no real faith in the presence of the Spirit, no looking for His free action in the assembly, no expression of the one body of Christ, nor even sense of the church's ruin-state, any more than really waiting for God's Son from heaven. There was not even the consciousness of the true deliverance and heavenly associations of the Christian. The evangelical revival, whether of Wesley or of Whitfield, or outside the borders of either, was a pious reaction, which insisted on the new birth and earnestness on behalf of perishing souls, from the cold ethics and formality, if not deism, of the century before. But the calling and the inheritance of saints, the purposes of God for the glory of God in Christ, never fully dawned on evangelical hearts, any more than on Puritans, or even the Reformers that preceded. It is needless to say that it would be vain to look for aught better, or as good, in the middle ages, or among the Fathers. Even redemption in any adequate conception of it had quickly faded away, before men had to contend for the truth of Christ's person or the Holy Ghost. Nobody doubts that grace saved all through; but for more than a dozen centuries where is there a single sentence which proclaims salvation as the apostles once taught and all saints enjoyed?
In such circumstances as these who can wonder that the privileges, either of the individual Christian or of Christ's body the church, were unknown? Hard and narrow Calvinism since the sixteenth century maintained a measure of solid footing for the saint sorely tried under law. Active, warmhearted Arminianism, when it did not lapse into Arianism, went out in zeal personally, and in service of others, but with a minimum of truth, without which one could hardly be saved. Man and the world were unjudged. The assembly of God united to Christ, and the scene of the Spirit's free activity according to the word as a present thing, and even Christian standing, were ignored, the future glories of Christ, as well as the actual bearing of His exaltation, being not at all understood.
The horrors of infidelity, both in its multitudinous excesses and in its rising to a head of despotic self-will, made the Bible, then going forth in active circulation beyond example, dearer to, the children of God, whose consciences began to be searched as to their state and ways by the coming of the Lord, which now became more distinctly, practically, and urgently pressed. The family likeness on a small scale, first to the apostasy, next to the man of sin and son of perdition, could not but arouse thoughtful souls to the still more awful evils disclosed in 2 Thess. 2 which are to call down the Lord's personal judgment at His appearing. Hence was felt increasingly the imperious call to be ready for the Lord when He comes for His own, that they may go in with Him to the marriage feast. Resting on Him and His redemption, they had the oil in their vessels. But had they not departed from the original call to quit “the camp,” to love not the world nor the things that are in the world? Had they not, in ceasing to go out to meet the Bridegroom, turned in here or there to slumber or sleep? Had they not, on the one hand, failed to resist evil in the church, and, on the other, adopted ways of their own to escape what was gross, with little heed to Christ's will and glory? If He was coming as they hoped, they knew not how soon, it behooved them to be found honoring the word and Spirit of God. They could not but feel that the church was fallen and broken irremediably as a whole: the great eastern and western bodies swamped by idolatry and plain evils, both doctrinal and practical; the lesser Protestant systems, either enslaved to the state, or settled on their differences without a thought of unity, save invisibly or in heaven.
The ruin was complete; but had faith no resource? Was there no provision for the faithful in a state so sinful and hopelessly awry? Had the blessed Lord not foreseen and revealed His will in view of it? They must cease to do evil if they would learn to do well. Obedience is the saving principle that never fails in Old Testament or New, for Jew or Christian. The word made it clear that, whatever the wreck of outward manifestation, there is one body and one Spirit, even as there is one hope of our calling. These abide unchangeably for such as believe. Were the saints content to fall back on the imperishable blessings of the church, clearing themselves from all compromise of the truth, and owning the fidelity of the Lord to His own word? The Spirit, beyond doubt, was sent down to abide in and with the saints forever. He will be poured out afresh on all flesh for the kingdom by and by; but He has not forsaken, and never can, the church, any more than the cloud of divine presence left Israel, yea disobedient and guilty Israel, all the wilderness through. But the time is come when God wakes up His own, and works readiness to receive their returning Lord; and they recall His voice vouchsafing the promise of His presence in the midst, were they but two or three, no longer scattered by the names of leaders or by exalting this doctrine and policy or that, but gathered to (εἰς) His name.
Hence they judged themselves and their ways, personal, worldly, ecclesiastical, in the light of that word, which also testified the way of obedience that never fails for the single-eyed in the worst of times. For as sure as God, lives, His child never has to choose man's wretched alternative—the less of two evils. There is a way, and it is the way of obedience, of obeying God rather than man, in which the weakest may walk, and the strongest ought to walk. If others turn, as all alas! have turned, to the right and to the left, whatever be the snare, our idol of silver, or our image of gold, Away with it! The written word solves every possible dilemma; but we are wholly dependent on God, Who works in us by His Spirit to exalt the Lord thereby. We have been verily guilty; and repentance, not self-confidence, becomes us. Re-construction is not, nor ever was, God's way for His people in a fallen state. He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Ceasing from evil in brokenness of spirit, our place is to search the scriptures and find what the Lord reveals there open to saints, whatever be their measure; for we are put members in the body as it pleased Him. God set some in the church: first apostles; secondarily prophets; thirdly teachers; after that miracles; then, gifts of healing, &c. This raises the question of power and authority; and assumption is as dangerous as mistake about them is easy. But obeying God's word is the clear duty of every soul born of God. We are elect through sanctification of the Spirit to obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus.
Here it was that the divergence ensued among those awakened from slumber Many are the paths of error. There is but one way of truth: it was that of Christ on earth, the obedient One. Power from on high had been already given; and the Spirit sent down from heaven, though our sins be great and many as they are, has never retired again. He has been grieved in a thousand ways, and has shown His sense of the church's unfaithfulness. But never for a moment has He deserted the post which He deigned to take here below to glorify the Lord Jesus. In obedience we prove His gracious power, and this not in gift individual only, but in communion where we in faith come together to Christ's name in the unity of the Spirit which we are all bound to keep. Those who act obediently have ever found His blessing in it, whatever others may or may not do.
Nor is there a tittle of presumption in obeying God. Therein only is true humility. imitating the apostles is as proud as it is childish; it would be ridiculous, if it were not profane. Men have turned the gifts of Christ, endorsed with the power of God's Spirit, into titles of honor in the world, or of ostentation in a church already Judaized. God has taken care to preserve every privilege good for the saints in lowliness to Christ's glory. Whatever is no longer vouchsafed would be incompatible with the church fallen and scattered as it is. He is as wise in what He withholds, as He is good in what He continues, the state of the church being what it is. Those whose principle it is to obey in the immutable relationships of His grace He has not spared all needed sifting and humiliation, but has largely blessed in an increasing enjoyment of Himself and His word. Such as have set themselves up, coveting power and authority, He has covered with shame in all eyes but their own, perhaps in their own also, if the truth were known.
Mr. Irving and his friends stood on the wholly different ground of ignoring known evil in which they were consciously involved, till God should interfere in power and blessing. This, however seemingly humble after a human sort, was neither faith nor holiness; failure as to which was not repented of as sinful, but virtually set to God's account. Moral responsibility was thus ignored and shirked. They did not judge but accept the unbelief of Christendom in the ever-abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, and prayed (like the evangelicals) for a fresh outpouring; as if God's word were void, and His church had no longer that divine indwelling, without which it is not God's house, and in truth cannot be His church at all. This was to Judaize the assembly. For it is confessed by all who look for the Lord's premillennial advent that the Jews &c. in that day are to be the object of the Spirit's latter rain on the earth.
But the Holy Spirit never left the church since Pentecost. Had it been true, Christ had no longer a body on earth united to Him the Head in heaven. And the error was far more serious in character and consequence for those who professed to be awaiting the Lord from above, as their habitual hope. Others who shared like unbelief meant little more by His outpouring than greatly increased blessing in their own souls, or in conversion at home and abroad. Not so those who (judging Christendom by the light of the word, with the Lord's coming immediately before them) were as loud as men could be in denouncing the various denominations as only so many streets of Babylon. Yet from their incurably vicious starting-point, those who were crying loudly for the Spirit to come down afresh were as urgent as the idolaters of succession and tradition, that men who saw the abominations they shared should remain where they were till God appeared in power, as their selfish unbelief expected. Even after they had had certain strange manifestations in Port Glasgow, London, &c., they still held to the same evil principle, and insisted on all over whom they had influence, that none should abandon the evil under which they groaned, till they had received manifestations of power like their own. Obedience, the uniform principle of the Christian's life, as it was in all perfection seen only in our Lord, was not at all in their counsels and conduct, but really though unwittingly denied by them.
It was just about the same time that God began to impress on some of His children, solemnly and practically, that we are called to holiness, not individually alone, but congregationally; that any other ecclesiastical principle surrenders in truth all genuine claim to consistency with His will about His assembly on earth; that waiting for divine manifestations is a vain excuse for tampering with the evil we allow from day to day; and that in fact we have the personal presence of the Spirit, irrevocable while the church is here below, to know and act on His word. So that the unbelief of that plea is as plain as its unholiness. The abuse of 1 Corinthians, and of the seven Apocalyptic Epistles to justify continuance in flagrant evil is a perversion which all corrupt systems have shared. No upright Christian ought to be ensnared by it; he might be unable to unravel the sophistry of the special pleader for going on with iniquity; but surely the Spirit who dwells in him testifies that to employ God's word for associating His children with evil that He hates is, and must be, from beneath.
Herein it is evident that the Irvingite statements are as inconsistent with themselves as they are with scripture, and thus betray their hollow character, to say the least, human, and wholly unreliable, their egregious pretensions notwithstanding. They do not absolutely deny that the Holy Spirit dwelt in some measure or way in the saints since primitive apostolic days; but they arrogate to themselves as their peculiar blessing, and exclusively to be enjoyed under the authority of their apostolate, “the restored Comforter.” Now it is striking to read how scripture puts scorn on this self-exalting claim of theirs. For it is precisely in speaking of the Comforter that the apostle John gives our Lord's assurance that the Father would give that other Paraclete “that He may be with you forever” (John 14:1616And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; (John 14:16)). Their notion of His restoration impeaches Christ's authority and the truth of scripture. If the Lord, if the scripture, is true, as every Christian believes, the so-called Catholic Apostolics are false. But they agree in fact as little with themselves as with God's word. For they do allow that the gifts or manifestations of the Spirit, the ministrations of the Lord, and the workings or energizings of the Father are as identified as their Persons; that if one fails, so proportionately do the others; and that it is the Father's energizing which raised up Christ that quickens the soul. But if this be true, was there no soul thus born of God between the apostolic age, and the apostles of Newman Street? If souls were so born, what is the value of their teachings and pretensions?
The truth is, that, with all their boldness of assumption and haughty titles, these men have not the courage of their convictions. For if a word of prophecy forbade any other name than that of the Catholic Apostolic Church, as Dr. Norton states (The Restoration, &c., p. 159), it is idle to say, “we arrogate to ourselves nothing, for we do not appropriate it in any exclusive sense.” Common honesty concludes that they thereby arrogate to themselves everything of value. If there were an atom of truth in their doctrine of a restored Comforter, and of a restored apostolate, they most logically appropriate the one body of Christ to their party. The ever-abiding Comforter is as essential on earth, as Christ the exalted Head in heaven, to the perpetuity of the church here below till Christ comes; and the special boast of Irvingism, that they, and they only, have the Comforter restored, is mere folly and falsehood, which are so glaring that one wonders not at their toning down their language in public, whatever they may utter among the initiated. Let their “sealed” ones answer whether they do not in private, and in the most exclusive sense, appropriate more than title or name common to all.