No subject can be more deeply interesting to the saint, than the nature and effect of discipline, which our God, in the plenitude of His love and wisdom, administers to each of His people.
Interesting as the subject is, and one so necessary to the secret exercises of the soul, yet it is little understood; and the dealings of God are either counted strange, or there is no just or useful solution of them.
I propose, therefore, in the Lord's mercy, to present, in a series of papers, the peculiar discipline, its object and its effect, as detailed to us, respecting each distinguished witness for God on earth.
I am induced to do this, in order to accustom the minds of saints to study more a subject which of all others connects us with the secret, loving thoughts of our God about us.
I accordingly begin with Adam. Though not properly heading the life of faith, yet he was the subject of severe discipline, and is a remarkable illustration of its effects. Adam at one time needed no discipline, a state unknown to any since. When he fell the day of discipline began. He that was made in the image of God, that approached nearer to God than any creature, even he is now imbued with a spirit and a nature so adverse to God, that if he would live for God he must learn to renounce his own will, under the training of the mighty hand of God. To Adam this must have been a strange contrast to the once easy acquiescence of his mind with the will of God. Consequently he must have felt it the more; and as the rebellion of his heart was subdued, he could contrast the rule of God with the powerlessness of innocence. As innocent, he fell; as fallen, the hand of God exalts him. Not ignorantly, or passively, but in all the activity of anxious conviction. Innocence with him was a weak thing; the power of God subduing his nature, no longer innocent, was a great thing. He never would have sought the innocent state, for he knew how weak it was. He knew now that he was able to do more with the power of God in a fallen state, than in unassisted innocence he ever could aspire to. As innocent, he had no sense of life; as fallen, yet believing in the revelation of God, he could now name the only creature he had not named, the mother of all living. Under the sentence of death, he could speak of life; while as innocent, his fear and his penalty, (if disobedient) was the loss of it. Innocence had no charm for him now. True, it was a moment of wondrous bliss; but a flight so high only ensures precipitation to disgrace and dismay. Surely, then, he could not seek a return to it. He had been advanced to where he could not stand; but now, under discipline, he stands morally higher, though in condition he is lower. Adam was not deceived, but he was influenced. He early discovers the propensities of nature (no doubt in their best estate) which eventually led to his fall. Neither the world, nor its glory, nor any class of the inferior creatures, supply the craving of the sociable heart of Adam: for him there was not found an help meet for him, and it was not good for him to be alone. The instincts of his nature must be satisfied; but still more, when his wife was deceived, he yields to her influence, as he himself admits, " she gave unto me, and I did eat." The first man disclosed this secret of his heart, that he was dependent on another; so that when Satan would not venture to beguile him, the object of his affections successfully tempted him. Now they are both naked, and both estranged from God, and hiding themselves from His presence, the first lessons of His grace are propounded to them. In discipline there is properly conviction of sin, as well as correction of it. With a saint it is never penance or compensation for wrong-doing. Chastening or correction is to make me a partaker of holiness, not a sufferer for sin. It is not to improve my nature, but to so convince me of its utter helplessness that I may be devoted unto God, which is the true and distinct meaning of sanctification, and without which no man shall see the Lord. There is exceeding pain in being convicted of sin; and if there be not a strong sense of the grace of God when we are convicted, there will be great depression, and a tendency to give up all in despair. Hence the exhortation, " faint not when thou art convicted [Greek] of him." God does not convict hastily. He likes that our cogitations on our own acts should convict ourselves. It is very little use to tell a vain man of his faults; it generally only urges him the better to conceal or extenuate them. It is very hard to induce a person in ill health and unconvinced of it, to adopt the necessary regimen; the more you remonstrate with such an one, the more strenuously will he endeavor to prove you mistaken, and you exasperate the malady you would assuage, while the really sin-convicted soul, like the patient tremblingly alive to his danger, is ready to receive every true palliative and remedy offered. When Adam had perfected the devices of his now estranged and corrupted heart, when the aprons are on and he behind the trees, the voice of God searches him. We are continually allowed to run to the end of our own plans, and thus to learn how futile they are. Many a weary hour and long day is squandered in the execution of plans which, when tested by the searching word of God, must be entirely abandoned. What is the nature of your plans? are they to distance and conceal you from God, or are they to bring you nigh unto Him, and to unfold to Him the minutest secrets of your heart? You may thus test your plans. Adam's were to cloak himself and to escape the eye of God, and God allowed him to complete his schemes. Oh, how well each of us knows what this is! The poor prodigal tries the far country, but returns to his father's house a really humbled man. The many inventions are all tested and found to be as husks, and then the soul listens to the gracious tones of that voice it would fain escape from. It is a terrible question to answer, "Where art thou?" when you find out the insufficiency of all expedients to screen your conscience from the action of God's word. Did the prodigal like to answer it when feeding the swine? Did Peter like to answer it when enjoying the cheer of his Master's foes, when warming himself at their fire? Did Adam like it when he remembered the position which he occupied in contrast with the one he had forfeited? The answer to that question tells his state. The voice of God searches the conscience, and if it has not learned that it is with God it has to do, the history of it must be, "I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself." Concealment is the first effort of a suffering conscience. You neither like to see yourself, nor that any one else should see you, as you are; and when God's voice reaches you, you hide yourself; while concealment betrays distance as well as evasion. There must be some activity in the conscience when concealment is resorted to, especially when no penalty (but the fact of your guilt being known) is attached to it. The babe who breaks a toy conceals it! Concealment is, in fact, resorted to in order that we may appear better than we are. If we were willing that every one should see us as we are, there would be no concealment. A disguise was never yet adopted but for self-exaltation. A lie was never maintained but to give us credit we did not deserve. When God deals with us we learn that " all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do." The word (see Heb. 4) acts on our conscience, "piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart;" but it conducts us to God. It is with Him, and not the word merely, "we have to do." The voice of the Lord penetrated the soul of Adam; and though girdled with fig leaves, which satisfied his own standard of morality, yet when the word came it tried him, and he was afraid because he was naked, (naked before God,) and he hid himself. It is important to study those two actions of the conscience. They give rise to much exercise and trouble in the soul, because they are confounded; that is when one has satisfied his own conscience, has adopted some system which conceals from himself and others the real state of his soul, he floats for awhile on peaceful waters; but no sooner is the voice of the Lord heard, but all the elements seem to him involved in a mighty tornado. His sleep is broken; he is another Philippian jailor, "he is afraid." The fact that he is naked and opened before God flashes fearfully before him, and so much the worse because he had deceived himself, and his reputation with others had helped it on. The action of the word of God would be desperate and overwhelming to the soul if we had not a "great high priest passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God." His sympathy, on the ground of His atonement, in full effect before God, sets the convicted conscience at rest, and at the throne of grace, too, to receive the grace and the mercy it needs. This is just what Adam had to learn; consequently the voice pursues him to his hiding-place. It is in vain that one seeks to escape the eye of God. When He determines that it shall search you, if you take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there He will reach you! Oh, how the conscience that seeks escape from God overshadows itself within the foliage of this world! It engrosses itself with man's leading and most ambitious pursuits, but in vain. The "watchers" will cry aloud, "Hew down the tree, and cut off his branches, shake off his leaves." The refuge of lies shall be exposed, and the soul must have its account with God. It must answer, " WHERE ART THOU?" and all the answer needed is the tale of the plain and simple facts, "I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself!" The moment the soul of the saint is in full confession, he is in the region of forgiveness and restoration, and the Spirit expostulates with it as man would with his fellow. Adam tried his own expedients, and they were vain and profitless; now he will be a listener to the grace that tells of the sure and perfect remedy. But mark, he first discloses the true and full tale of the condition of his soul; he confesses his fear—his nakedness—his effort to hide himself! Discipline had effected this. Now God instructs him. Adam is " meek," and God will teach him His way. He has learned that innocence was no protection against an undue influence, and that the absence of evil motive is no guarantee for true moral action. He, of all men, knew what this was preeminently, and yet it was no safeguard. He was tempted, and he yielded to it. Conscious, indeed, that innocence was gone, and evil motive could rule, he still trusts to himself to screen and rectify his disgrace. The expedient he adopted satisfied his own moral sense, and, what was infinitely more delusive, the moral sense of the one whose good opinion he loved to secure, and whose satisfaction was a bulwark to his own. This is a snare that few, even godly men, escape. It is, in other words, the reputation with one's friends; pressed on the conscience as the verdict of the last court of appeal, and conclusive to it on any recurrence of anxious inquiry. There is a reciprocity in this kind of reputation. What you admit to me, I in return admit for you. If a girdle of fig leaves measures the demands of your moral sense, and you accept it as sufficient for me, I in return do the same for you. This is the essence and true character of all human and religious reputation. But the voice of God sounds, and Adam is troubled in his deceitfully serene and false position. That voice probes the entire condition, and at last he finds himself "naked and opened before the eyes of him with whom we have to do." He confesses all, and he is on the uppermost form for instruction with a humble and a contrite spirit. To the divine challenge he admits (though with an excuse and mitigation) that he was tempted and had eaten. His justification lowers him morally more than the charge he seeks to justify. Yet it is a confession, and it is accepted as such; and our God enters on the gracious work of unfolding His counsels. To each actor in this wondrous scene is now meted the judgment due to the part he has played in it. Satan's sentence is first pronounced, and while his doom is fixed, the deliverance from his power and the eternal remedy of the gospel is declared to the listening and convicted Adam. It is the divine way, in restoring a soul, to establish it first in the power of God, and in His grace. The draft of the fishes and the words of Jesus taught this to Peter. It is the ground work for all godly improvement. When the heart is established, as David's was, ("the Lord has taken away thy sin,") then it can bear to hear what is the discipline necessary to correct that in him which sin could act on. It is important to carry with us the process by which the Lord reveals to the soul the discipline which He will impose. Whatever has provoked our failure is denounced, not in general terms, but in the proportion, and in the order too, of its guilt; at the same time commanding and promising the true mode of deliverance. Satan is not only sentenced, but the effect of his malice retribution. Man shall be avenged of his enemy. The serpent is not only assigned, as a signal judgment, to crawl and eat dust, in perpetual hostility to the lord of the creation, but its "violent dealing shall come sown on its own pate;" its head shall be bruised. The next brought up for judgment is the woman. She was the proximate cause of Adam's failure; but as the principal had received his sentence, she must now hear hers. She is condemned to times of great sorrow on every addition to the human family which she has been instrumental in subjecting to the power of death; with unconditional subjection to her husband, the want of which bore its firstfruits in her own fall, and led to Adam's also. Each transgressor is not only sentenced to a penalty corresponding to his guilt, but the relation in which that guilt has affected Adam is also markedly repaired. God's servant must not be touched with impunity, but he must not err himself. The righteous God will avenge his cause, but only in righteousness. He cannot overlook the frailty of His servant, though He will rescue him when the unmitigated sentence is executed. When God enters into judgment, evenhanded justice is dispensed. But acts are criminal in a greater or less degree: that which implicates God's witness in distance from Him being more so than the failure which that witness evinces by being drawn into distance. The one who misleads another comes under a severer penalty than he who is misled; though he is not exempted because he discovers moral feebleness. The infliction of penalties are not necessarily for correction, nor is the discipline. There was no hope of amending Satan, but yet severe penalties are inflicted on him because Adam had suffered from him. Man was God's representative on earth; injury to him was treason against God. Hence in divine discipline there is always a correction of the evil principle of nature, and also correction for the trespass we may have committed on our fellowman. This is exemplified in the sentence on Adam. His sin was yielding to his wife's request in opposition to the word of God. Probably he did not do so with intent; that is, not after weighing both he decided in favor of the former. But the word was not hid in his heart, and did not control him; for if it had been he would not have hearkened to the voice of his wife. But having surrendered his place, he is to bear the penalty of it, and become the great slave and laborer on the earth, of which he was the ruler and prince. Everything on it would bear indications of insubjection to its rightful master. To assuage the evil, he should spend his life and live thereby; but in the end return to dust, as dust he was. There is deeply instructive teaching in all this; even that if we surrender the position in which God places us in any relation, the one we retire to will inevitably notify to us, in fearful reminiscences, what has been our forfeiture. The smallest thorn and briar reminded Adam that he had surrendered his lordship in hearkening to the voice of his wife. If David retires from the duties of the king, he must surrender, in a painful way, the honors of one. He is reminded how lightly he regarded them by the successful rebellion of his own son. "Cursed be he who doeth the work of the Lord negligently." All the influence of Barnabas would not induce Paul to take Mark who had returned from Pamphylia. The refusal of the apostle reminded him how he trifled with and abandoned the post once his, but easier lost than regained. This is the nature of Adam's discipline. He is reminded by everything of what he surrendered, and the less carefully and diligently he labored to subdue the numerous reminiscences of his failure, the more they increased, and the less able was he to sustain himself against them. By the sweat of his brow he regained his position for his own need. David returned, after a severe campaign, to the throne. Mark was profitable for the ministry after the discipline had produced its effect. Faith always walks above discipline, though walking under it. Adam hears the sentence on all, and, in faith consenting to it, rises above it, and calls his wife's name Eve, because she is "the mother of all living." Faith reaches unto God, therefore it can submit to the position which judicially and correctively falls to an erring soul, and looks to God for His own time and mode of deliverance. It accepts the punishment of its iniquity, not as retribution for it, but as correction. Discipline has in fact produced its greatest effect where the soul submits to it as trusting in God. Adam shows this in making amends to his wife (in thus naming her) for his former reproaches; and what was, in unsubdued nature, the agent of harm to him is now, in the eye of faith, the channel of life. Adam, disciplined in faith, God clothes him, yet discipline must not be arrested nor reprieved. God drives out the man, and sends him to till the ground from whence he is taken, to find out what sort of a man he was, and to learn how his faith would sustain him.
It is in our immediate relations of life, in the innermost circle, where there is least reserve, we most truly disclose ourselves. A man who cannot rule his own house how shall he take care of the Church of God Power is more effective applied immediately than at a distance. If Adam is learning from his discipline, it ought to be seen in his power to avoid the evil for which he was suffering. It does not appear that he does; for Eve assumes the place of naming his eldest son, again losing sight of her own place, and again, beyond doubt, filling her firstborn (which his name alone would suggest) with aspirations which led to his fearful contradiction of it, as well as the painful evidence of her own misapprehension of God's promise. The introduction of death where life was expected; the fact that one child was murdered and the other the murderer; the one in whom their hopes centered must have been a trial to Adam that we can little conceive-a discipline which had its effects-for though it is said that Eve named Seth in the first instance, yet it is also written that Adam called his name Seth, showing, as it appears to me, that he at length had learned what the discipline was sent to teach him, namely, to act for God, above all influence, and not to allow any influence to distract him from the path of faith. He appears to have learned this in the last recorded act of his life, a very pleasing consummation, showing the effect of discipline; and a very fit and happy finale to his history. To sum up, we learn from this history that innocence or absence of evil motive is no safeguard against influence. That satisfying our own moral sense, or the moral sense of any one else, is no proof that we can answer, or have answered, to God's claim on us. That if we cease to maintain our divinely appointed place, we are sure to fall, and the word of God, which would have preserved, us in our place, does not act on the heart outside that place. But that learning to follow our own inclinations, our discipline will always be of a character to correct our failure, and to remind us, in very minute ways, (as did the thorns to Adam,) what our frailty has reduced us to.
Lastly, when discipline has effected its object, our history closes.