I AM not at war with any creed. I do not know that I particularly object to the peculiar belief of any human being provided it does not endanger the peace of his neighbor. I do not see that what men call Providence, has any respect for a special form of worship. The bolt of fire from the thunder-cloud knows no distinction between church, synagogue, mosque, or theater: neither is a stray bullet a sectarian; and the microbe of influenza, smallpox, or cholera, will settle as comfortably in the blood of a Christian, as in that of a Mohammedan or Jew.
“Death! Yes, all die; white, black, yellow, red man, bird, beast, reptile; tree, flower, grass; animal vegetable. In this world everything decays. The strongest machine wears out in time. The fire goes out for want of fuel. The sun itself may one day become a cold black cinder. Spring, summer, autumn, winter; childhood, manhood, old age and death winds up everything.
“What is after death can no man tell. It is a cheerless, comfortless outlook, I am free to confess. We do not seem to get accustomed to the funeral procession. Familiarity has not in this case bred contempt, neither has it reconciled us to it. It is at once the most natural, and the most unnatural thing in the world. It is as frequent as birth, more than twice as frequent as marriage, but there is joy at both, at death hopeless woe. It is king of terrors, and gloom deeper than midnight walls up its kingdom from the gaze of all living. No luminary has as yet been able to filing one radiant beam across the grave. There is plenty of speculation, but we may as well listen to the babbling of a fool as to the dreams of a philosopher. We have no light.”
“We have a revelation from God, the Holy Scriptures.”
“Who can put confidence in them? The writers themselves were not of one mind.”
“This may be only want of understanding on your part. There are two things to which united testimony is borne, and that is ‘without shedding of blood is no remission of sin.’”
“Oh, I hate the blood.”
“And that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only Saviour.”
“I believe I can do very well without Him.”
“You hate the blood, and have no need of the One who shed it. I now understand why you object to the Scriptures.”
“If the Scriptures are the word of God, let it only be proven, and when it is proven, I shall not only believe, but I shall use such time, strength, and means as are at my disposal in publishing the truth everywhere.”
“You have unbounded confidence in yourself. You evidently think it would be a great acquisition, on the part of God, to secure a man like you, and that you would be conferring a great favor upon Him by believing His book. Let me tell you something you seem to have quite overlooked, and that is, that if I succeeded in convincing your mind of the truth of Scripture (a thing I am not at all anxious to do), a very troublesome question would be raised, which it would be found necessary to have settled, before you could become the great missionary your imagination has pictured. And so great a question does it appear to me to be, that if I could make clear to you, in an argument of ten minutes’ duration, the divine origin of the Bible, I do not think I would undertake the task. God’s converts are not made in this way. When the Bible would be proven to be of God, what would come to light would be this, you would be seen to be at variance with God. God has given a revelation of Himself, and you are disgusted with that revelation. His ways in Christ have shocked your moral sensibilities. The blood, the ground of His righteousness in forgiving a poor sinner, is to you obnoxious. He has been declared in Christ, and He is not such a One as you would admire. If you could find a flaw in that revelation, you would use it as an excuse for rejecting the whole. But if He be the true God, what do you think of yourself? You have read the Bible, and you are shocked at the Being presented in it as the true God. If you found Him to be your Creator and your Judge, what then? You could never be it agreement with Him. What would be the use of proving to you that the Scriptures are by inspiration of God, and the expression of His mind, or that Christ was God manifest in the flesh? You do not wish it to be so. You could never be a worshipper of such a Being. It is not merely the enlightenment of your mind which is wanted, it is the setting right of your heart. God is not according to your ideas.
“Therefore you would like to treat the whole subject as a mere matter of opinion, and pretend that if you were only certain of the truth, you would be at once on a friendly footing with God. You seem to have remarkable control over your affections. There is no beauty in Christ that you should desire Him. But if you made the discovery that He is the true God, how would this cause you to love Him? How would it change your heart’s affections? This attitude of yours could not deceive anyone but yourself.
“Every true Christian believes the Bible; but more than this, he loves it. If proofs could be advanced, which so far as my poor reason goes, would seem to disprove its testimony, and which would overpower every argument which my feeble mind could adduce in its support, and which would be so overwhelming; that I dare not allow myself any more to hold it as the truth, I should be convinced utterly contrary to my inclination; my mind might lose the assurance of the truth, but my heart would retain the impression forever.
“I say this that you may come to a proper understanding of your true position, in regard to that which professes to be a revelation from God. Do not flatter yourself, that because you are willing to admit that there are many good things in the Bible, there is no animus in your mind with regard to it. This would be to terribly deceive yourself. You do not like the idea of the blood, and as to Christ, you could do with some little of His teaching, but a Saviour! no, He is quite unnecessary. Take away the Saviour, and the sacrifice from the Scriptures, and what you have left is a bundle of rags, with the fire of divine judgment ready to devour all; for everything else is man and his iniquity.
“This is how the matter stands: True or false, I love the Bible; true or false, you hate it, and would be glad to be rid of it altogether. If it be true, I see in you a creature who is dissatisfied with his Creator. You will tell me, that if false, I have loved a lie. I admit it. I have already staked my eternal happiness upon the fact, that ‘it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul, and that Jesus is Jehovah the Saviour.’ You think it is a tremendous venture. Thank God, I can say ‘I know whom I have believed.’
“This world would be to me, without the Bible, what it is to you, a perfect puzzle. The Bible throws a flood of light upon the whole scene, and I see all according to God―sin and righteousness, good and evil, love and hatred, God and man.
“You are not satisfied with the state of this world. Servants are not satisfied with their masters, nor masters with their servants; nor parents with their children, nor children with their parents. No man will buy or sell in the dark for fear of being cheated. People lock their doors at night, and the strong arm of law is constantly stretched out, that men may be awed into something like good behavior. And the principle upon which all men go is, that no man can be fully trusted. You are not satisfied with your neighbor, and, if you had your neighbor’s candid opinion, you would find he is far from being satisfied with you; yet you expect God to be satisfied with everything and everybody. You may be an Atheist, a Theist, a Theosophist, a Spiritualist, a Socialist, an Anarchist, Freethinker, Agnostic, Pharisee, Sadducee, or adopt any other mad profession you like, but if this is how you stand with God, you are simply hurrying along with all other God-hating sinners, to judgment.
“You may place the Son of God on a level with Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, Homer, or Shakespeare, and put the four Gospels on an equality with ‘King Lear,’ or the mythology of the ancients; but when those few ounces of brains, which fill you with empty conceit, are making a dish for the worms, your spirit shall have learned how horribly you have been duped by the devil. You may tell me how little God regards what creed a man may profess, and in a certain sense, I might agree, but the word that Christ has spoken must save you NOW, or judge you IN THE LAST DAY. Christ crucified you cannot do with. It is too humbling to your pride to accept that, in His cross, God has set forth your true place as a signor under His judgment. To me He is the power of God, and the wisdom of God. The world at large will agree with you; you will find, yourself among the majority. You may rank among the wise, the great, the learned, the cultured, the noble, the philosophic, but will this compensate you for the loss of your soul?
“And because I tell you the naked truth, you will most likely call me a monster. One man tells you that after death, if you have not been virtuous, your spirit will inhabit the body of a toad, and you say that it is his opinion. Another tells you that when you are dead, you are done with, and you think it quite possible. I tell you that if you believe not the gospel you will get the Christ-rejecter’s hell, and you could tear me in pieces.
“The Bible is like no other book, Christ is like no other man. ‘If any man LOVE NOT THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, let him be Anathema Maranatha!’ God has come out in Christ to attract you to Himself, and you have found no attraction in Him. He has expressed Himself on behalf of man in the death of His Son, and the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven witnesses to it in the gospel, and you spurn the sacrifice, despise the Saviour, and insult the Spirit of grace; and your plea is, that you have no certainty that all this is true. Why, man, you do not like it.
“To the Christian Christ is ‘the true God, and eternal life.’ The world, rich and poor, good and bad, Jew and Gentile, condemned Him to a gibbet as a malefactor. I stake my soul’s eternal welfare that this man hath done nothing amiss. I have given to him the affections of my heart. If He be not the true God, I have idolized an impostor, and robbed God of the love that was due to Him alone. To this it may be replied that I was simply mistaken. Yes, but it has not been a mere mistake, for I have not believed in Him, simply because I have found a book which says He ought to be believed in. His life is the admiration of my soul. His words have entered into me, and stirred my heart to its depths. It is unaccountable, but in His company, I find myself in company with the living God. ‘Never man spake like this man.’ My whole soul has risen up in me, and gone out to Him, who has entirely captivated me, with the deep glory of His own infinite holy loveliness and blessedness, and I have cried out from the innermost depths of my spiritual being, ‘MY LORD AND MY GOD.’
“What object can be shown me, to win my heart from such a Person. Put the fairest in the universe beside this glorious One, and I would turn from the rival, with the deepest loathing. As I look upon Him, I abhor myself. But He does not repel me. I am attracted to Him. He is the very opposite of what I by nature am, but yet there is no one suits me like Him. He entirely satisfies the deep fathomless need of my soul, with His heavenly grace, radiant beauty, and the unutterable sweetness of His eternal, changeless love. It is not dry proofs, the accuracy of Scripture, the fulfillment of prophecy, and the like: this glorious One has carried me away with Him altogether. In His presence I am beside myself, and well I may; in Him I have reached perfection, and the very heart of the living God. If there were a hundred contradictions in Scripture for every one there is supposed to be, this blessed Person would not be one whit less to me than He is. He is no invention of the mind of fallen man. Now if all this were a myth, then the believer in Christ would be the most hopeless being in the universe. He is entirely beyond recovery. But if it be true, where are you who despise Him?
“There are dark spots on the sun’s disc. Possibly. I neither know nor care. There may be one spot, or one million. Prove it, and pile up the proofs heaven high. It was the sun before these were discovered. It is the same sun still. Its glory is as great as ever. I enjoy the light, and warmth, and comfort, no less for your discoveries. And as someone else has said, such is the Bible to me.
“These spiritual astronomers, darkening with their devilish wisdom all they touch, would seek to cast the fog and blight of death upon the page of eternal truth; and would put the Holy Scriptures upon the same footing as the dreams of poets, and they are all good books together. It is a foul lie from the bottomless abyss. The Scriptures are the only revelation of God, which has been given to men, or the most abominable lie that ever soiled parchment, and the man who believes in Christ, is either the most blessed being under heaven, or the most deluded.
“The cool way in which the religious leaders of the present day throw overboard the Bible, and disgorge into the public ear the profane glut of their degraded, infidel minds, and the eagerness with which such profanity is received, is fearfully appalling. The deluded multitude, as they listen to these tools of Satan, think that the gods have come down to them in the likeness of men; but one cannot help feeling horrified at the prospect of that terrible moment, when these willing dupes shall discover, in the throes of the second death, that they have imbibed, not the nectar of immortal wisdom, but the slaver of demons.
“You may try to make yourself believe that on earth all things are according to God. You will not be successful. The state of this world does not satisfy any one in it, and how can you flatter yourself that it is according to God? You may have made progress in some things. You can traverse the distance between London and York in four hours. Less than one hundred years ago it took four days. But the driver of the mail coach may have been quite as honest, and as good a servant, husband, or father as the driver of the express train. Look at things morally, and you will not be carried away by the present apparent prosperity of this age.
“You would like to think that even if there is to be a future state there is to be no day of reckoning. Let me tell you that, unless you have clean lost your reason, or given yourself over to believe what you must know to be a deception, you cannot get rid of the idea of a day of judgment. Violence and corruption have run riot ever since sin came into the world, and anyone can see that here there is no recompense. There is no adjustment of things under the sun, and shall I be told that the cries of the victims of men’s cruelty have entered into no ear, that there is to be no redress, no avenger of blood? I do not believe it, neither does any other sane man, unless greatly helped by the devil. I believe God is righteous. He who made man’s eye cannot Himself be without sight, and He who made man’s ear cannot be deaf, and if He has implanted that in man, which will cause him to shudder at, and condemn the atrocities of his neighbor, I am not fool enough to believe that He Himself is indifferent. If your blood has boiled at the oppressors’ wrong-doing, I ask you how you think God has felt?
“If I have the knowledge of good and evil, and if, though under the power of evil myself, I condemn it in my neighbor, then I am certain of this, that it must be infinitely more hateful to God, and that He must one day visit the evildoer with the punishment he deserves, if not in time, then in eternity. If not, I would be more just and pure than my Maker. Judgment may be, and is, His strange work, a work in which He has no pleasure, but a work to which sin has compelled Him, and He must execute it.
“But if there is to be a day of judgment, of necessity there must also be a resurrection. The deeds were done in the body, and in the body man must receive for what he has done. Men may reason about resurrection as much as ever they like, but resurrection must come to pass if there is to be a day of judgment, and there must be a day of judgment if God is righteous, and that God is righteous my conscience bears witness.
“The deeds of cold-blooded wickedness and heartless cruelty, which have been constantly perpetrated by the strong upon the weak in all ages, have caused one eternal, piercing shriek of anguish to be rung in the ear of Heaven ever since sin entered the world, and am I to be told that the Governor of the universe is as insensible to all as a statue of marble? And yet He has put different feelings into me, and feelings, which to be without, I would call brutish! Let no man deceive himself, ‘After this the judgment.’
“I say, If I have the knowledge of good and evil, so that I know evil to be evil, and good to be good, and if my conscience approves the good, and accuses me when I have done the evil, then I know good as something I have lost, and evil as that which has power over me, and the knowledge of this causes death to be to me the king of terrors, because it is upon me as the judgment of God. I may seek comfort by comparing myself with others, but this would be profitless work. I may not be so black as my neighbor, but his blackness does not make me white. Man is at present under sin and death, resurrection and judgment are before him—what beyond?
“Do not begin to tell me if a man leads a moral life he has nothing to fear. Is there a God who takes account of my actions? Will ever the BOOKS be opened? If not, I have nothing to fear, no matter what life I lead. Has a toad to give account of the deeds done in the body? Has a tiger, a chimpanzee, or a crocodile? Have these creatures anything to fear from a righteous Judge? Have I? Have you? Why tell me if I lead a moral life I have nothing to fear? Why talk of morality and virtue? If there be no God you are a beast; and if there be a God, and you are evolved from the lower (?) creation, you are still a beast, and you may do as beasts do, let loose your passions; ‘let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die!’ Go and preach morality to an ape, and if your ancestors were apes you are one, if you were prime minister of this nation; and you have no moral accountability at all. If you trespass upon the well-being of the community, you may be driven out of the society of those of your own species, or put to death by them, as is the custom with most gregarious brutes, but what of that?
Death will take you out of much misery, and you have nothing to fear from a Creator.
“Give up the thought of God, or the first two chapters of Genesis, and turn round and view this vast zoological garden, lit up by the glory of the sun by day, and by the pale moon and silver stars at night, and what have we? Birds, quadrupeds, bipeds, creeping things, dogs, swine, men, monkeys reveling together on raven and corruption. And from whence came to the beast man the idea of accountability to God, and the feeling of shame which causes him to cover his nakedness and hide the hideousness of his moral degradation from his own eyes? You poor, miserable, blinded, degraded dupe of the devil, see how low you are willing to bring yourself to get rid of responsibility to God.
“Have I read what these learned critics say of the Bible? I have read what the Bible says of these learned critics: ‘Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain.’ I have no hope of these men, and my whole soul revolts from them. God and His truth they have abhorred, and He has given them over to believe their own filthy dreams. They rank among professing Christians, but they are children of the devil. They are the Sadducees of the present day, and I read of Pharisees, scribes, lawyers, priests, pagans becoming obedient to the faith, but no Sadducee. They have given God up, and He has given up them. They have rejected His truth for their wretched reasonings, and thus their wisdom has been their folly. One feels compassion for a feeble soul who wanders for a moment into error, but the way of those men provokes righteous indignation. If they would throw off the cloak of Christianity and declare themselves, one would feel it to be more honest, but this would not suit their master.
“It need not be told me they are only searching after truth. It is false. Under this pretense, I admit, they carry on their soul-destroying operations, but I see beneath this mask a devilish antagonism to all that is of God. They have rejected the only revelation which man has got from God, and with feverish eagerness search its pages with the continual hope in their hearts that it will one day turn out to be a lie. With the aid of science they gather their proofs together from the bowels of the earth, and out of the starry vault of heaven, and by these they lay siege to the eternal truth of the eternal God. The thought of every one of them is, ‘It cannot be of God; we won’t have it. God must be something else than what we see in Scripture, a very different Person to the Being declared by Christ.’ Yes, they profess to search after truth, but one is bound to ask the question, ‘Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart for it?’ Light they do not desire, or they would not reject it when it is brought to them.
“But I will close this paper. It will be told me that Christianity has been a complete failure. Not CHRISTIANITY. The failure has been in the rejection of it. I admit it will spoil a man for this world, but this world is not of God, nor the man who loves it. The true Christian glories in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is both the end of the world for him and the end of him for the world. You may say there are not many true Christians. That only proves the state of enmity in which man is, and that what is of God is always rejected. But CHRIST has been no failure. The first man has been, and all his race. Lawlessness has marked him from the beginning, and that is the principle of sin. Man prefers his own will to the will of God. A man may be refined, educated, moral, amiable, benevolent, but he likes his own way. He does not like restraint. But I know only one Person in the universe who has a right to a will, and that is God. In every well-ordered family there is only one will allowed. Where will asserts itself in opposition to the master of the house it is punished. Yet in this world the will of God is set aside. Men are in open rebellion and apostasy, and men find it sweet to please themselves. But though God may bear long with it He will one day assert his authority, and rebellion will cease forever in the destruction of the rebellious.
“No, Christ has been no failure. He pleased not Himself. He loved righteousness and hated lawlessness, and having set forth in His holy life upon earth what the perfect man was according to God, He went to the cross in obedience, that in the death of the cross might be set forth the place of the man after the flesh in the judgment of God. So if you would see the only man that will do for God, behold him in Christ. That is the Perfect Man. You will see how short you have come. And if you want to see your true place as a sinner under the judgment of God, behold it in His cross. A man upon a gibbet, in the sight of the universe, abandoned by God, crying to God but not heard, shut out from God’s presence, made a curse, for he who hangeth upon a tree is accursed of God. This is your true place set forth in the Righteous One that God may be able to justify the believing sinner.
“But in that cross God has been glorified. And He has glorified the One who glorified Him, and through this Man and through faith in His blood you must be saved, or be damned for eternity to the lake of fire as a despiser.
“Christ a failure! No, He has not failed God; neither has He ever failed any poor sinner who put trust in Him. Everything else is a failure. Your skepticism will fail you, terribly fail you, and that when you most need something to sustain you, when the chilling presence of death draws close to you, when the deep throat of hell yawns to receive your immortal spirit, and the grave waits to close upon the corruptible body and hold it till the voice of the Son of God calls forth to judgment. Then you will want something better than these wretched dreams to sustain you in that awful moment. In that hour, if you are Christless, death will have the victory, and its envenomed sting will be felt by you in the very center of your soul. Then you will regret your folly.
“But it shall not be so with the believer in Christ. What saint of God passing from this world of sorrow into the presence of Christ was ever heard to lament a life spent in the service of his Lord? If there has been a regret, has it not rather been that Christ had not been more truly served? On the other hand, what skeptic has not been horrified at the prospect of meeting the Being whom he had defied and insulted?
“Awake from your miserable dreaming! Thank God you have not yet reached the pit. In His goodness and long-suffering He has seen fit to spare you. This is your opportunity. Close your ears upon the scoffing of a Christ-rejecting world, and in the confession of your deep sin against God put your whole trust in the Lord Jesus. You will find Him gracious. He will receive you, for ‘all manner of sin shall be forgiven unto the sons of men.’ Your sin has been great, but not greater than the grace of God. ‘Today, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.’”
“When you own your sin and guilt,
Vain the hopes which you have built;
When you see your depth of shame,
Naught to offer, naught to claim, ―
Then, and not till then, you’ll know
What the grace God can bestow.”
J. B―D.