Sermon 9
From Congrgational Sermons
- Works Vol. 8 No.
1
THE NECESSITY OF THE SPIRIT TO GIVE EFFECT TO THE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL
"And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's
wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit, and of power; that your faith
should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."
I
CORINTHIANS II. 4, 5.
PAUL, in his second epistle to the Corinthians, has
expressed himself to the same effect as in the text, in the following words:
"Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves;
but our sufficiency is of God; who also hath made us able ministers of the New
Testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit."
In both these
passages, the apostle points to a speciality in the work of a Christian
teacher, - a something essential to its success, and which is not essential to
the proficiency of scholars in the ordinary branches of education, - an
influence that is beyond the reach of human power and human wisdom; and to
obtain which, immediate recourse must be had, in the way of prayer and
dependence, the power of God. Without attempting a full exposition of these
different verses, we shall first endeavour to direct your attention to that
part of the work of a Christian teacher, which it has in common with any other
kind of education; and, secondly, offer a few remarks on the speciality that is
adverted to in the text.
I. And
here it must be admitted, that, even in the ordinary branches of human
learning, the success of the teacher, on the one hand, and the proficiency of
the scholars, on the other, are still dependent on the will of God. It is true,
that, in this case, we are not so ready to feel our dependence. God is apt to
be overlooked in all those cases where He acts with uniformity. Wherever we see
what we call the operation of a law of nature, we are apt to shut our eye
against the operation of His hand; and faith in the constancy of this law is
sure to beget, in the mind, a sentiment of independence on the power and will
of the Deity.
Now, in the matters of human education, God acts with
uniformity. Let there be zeal and ability on the part of the teacher, and an
ordinary degree of aptitude, on the part of the taught, - and the result of
their vigorous and well-sustained co-operation may in general be counted upon.
Let the parent who witnesses his son's capacity, and his generous ambition for
improvement, send him to a well-qualified instructor, and he will be filled
with the hopeful sentiment of his future eminence, without any reference to God
whatever, - without so much as ever thinking of His purpose or of His agency,
in the matter, or its once occurring to him to make the proficiency of his son
the subject of prayer. This is the way in which nature, by the constancy of her
operations, is made to usurp the place of God: and it goes far to spread and to
establish the delusion, when we attend to the obvious fact, that a man of the
most splendid genius may be destitute of piety; that he may fill the office of
an instructor, with the greatest talent and success, and yet be without
reverence for God, and practically disown Him; and that thousands of our youth
may issue every year warm from the schools of philosophy, stored with all her
lessons, and adorned with all her accomplishments, and yet be utter strangers
to the power of godliness, and be filled with an utter distaste and antipathy
for its name.
All this helps on the practical conviction, that common
education is a business, with which prayer and the exercise of dependence on
God have no concern. It is true, that a Christian parent will see through the
vanity of this delusion. Instructed to make his requests known unto God in all
things, he will not depose Him from the supremacy of His power and of His
government over this one thing, - he will commit to God the progress of his son
in every one branch of education he may put him to; and, knowing that the
talent of every teacher, and the continuance of his zeal, and his powers of
communication, and his faculty of interesting the attention of his pupils, -
that all these are the gifts of God, and may be withdrawn by Him at pleasure,
he will not suffer the regular march and movement of what is visible or created
to cast him out of this dependence on the Creator. He will see that every one
element which enters into the business of education, and conspires to the
result of an accomplished and a well-informed scholar, is in the hand of the
Deity; and he will pray for the continuation of these elements: and, while
science is raising her wondrous monuments, and drawing the admiration of the
world after her, it remains to be seen, on the day of the revelation of hidden
things, whether the prayer of the humble and derided Christian, for a blessing
on those to whom he has confided the object of his tenderness, have not
sustained the vigour and the brilliancy of those very talents on which the
world is lavishing the idolatry of her praise.
Let us now conceive the
very ablest of these teachers, to bring all his powers and all his
accomplishments to bear on the subject of Christianity. Has he skill in the
languages? The very same process by which he gets at the meaning of any ancient
author, carries him to a fair and a faithful rendering of the Scriptures of the
Old and New Testament. Has he a mind enlightened and exercised on questions of
erudition? The very same principles which qualify him to decide on the
genuineness of any old publication, enable him to demonstrate the genuineness
of the Bible, and how fully sustained it is on the evidence of history. Has he
that sagacity and comprehension of talent, by which he can seize on the Leading
principles which run through the writings of some eminent philosopher? This
very exercise may be gone through on the writings of Inspiration; and the man,
who, with the works of Aristotle before him, can present the world with the
best system or summary of his principles, might transfer these very powers to
the works of the Apostles and Evangelists, and present the world with a just
and interesting survey of the doctrines of our faith.
And thus is,
that the man who might stand the highest of his fellows in the field of
ordinary scholarship, might turn his entire mind to the field of Christianity;
and, by the very same kind of talent which would have made him the most eminent
of all the philosophers, he might come to be counted the most eminent of all
the theologians; and he who could have reared to his fame some monument of
literary genius, might now, by the labours of his midnight oil, rear some
beauteous and consistent fabric of orthodoxy, strengthened, in all its parts,
by one unbroken chain of reasoning, and recommended throughout by the powers of
a persuasive and captivating eloquence.
So much for the talents which
a Christian teacher may employ, in common with other teachers; and even though
they did make up all the qualifications necessary for his office, there would
still be a call, as we said before, for the exercise of dependence upon God.
Well do we know, that both he and his hearers would be apt to put their faith
in the uniformity of nature; and, forgetting that it is the inspiration of the
Almighty which giveth and preserveth the understanding of all His creatures,
might be tempted to repose that confidence in man, which displaces God from the
sovereignty that belongs to Him. But what we wish to prepare you for, by the
preceding observations, is, that you may understand the altogether peculiar
call that there is is in dependence on God, in the case of a Christian teacher.
We have made a short enumeration of those talents which a teacher of
Christianity might possess, in common with other teachers; but it is for the
purpose of proving that he might possess them all, and heightened to such a
degree, if you will, as would have made him illustrious on any other field, and
yet be utterly destitute of powers for acquiring himself, or of experience for
teaching others, that knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ which is life
everlasting.
With the many brilliant and imposing things which he may
have, there is one thing which he may not have; and the want of that one thing
may form an invincible barrier to his usefulness in the vineyard of Christ. If,
conscious that he wants it, he seek to obtain from God the sufficiency which is
not in himself, then he is in a likely way of being put in possession of that
power, which alone is mighty to the pulling down of strongholds. But if he, on
the one hand, proudly conceiving the sufficiency to be in himself, enter with
aspiring confidence into the field of argument, and think that he is to carry
all before him, by a series of invincible demonstrations; or if his people, on
the other hand, ever ready to be set in motion by the idle impulse of novelty,
or to be seduced by the glare of human accomplishments, come in trooping
multitudes around him, and hang on the eloquence of his lips, or the wisdom of
his able and profound understanding, a more unchristian attitude cannot be
conceived, nor shall we venture to compute the weekly accumulation of guilt
which may come upon the parties, when such a business as this is going on. How
little must the presence of God be felt in that place, where the high functions
of the pulpit are degraded into a stipulated exchange of entertainment, on the
one side, and of admiration, on the other! and surely it were a sight to make
angels weep, when a weak and vapouring mortal, surrounded by his
fellow-sinners, and hastening to the grave and the judgment along with them,
finds it a dearer object to his bosorn, to regale his hearers by the exhibition
of himself,- than to do, in plain earnest the work of his Master, and urge on
the business of repentance and of faith, by the impressive simplicities of the
gospel.
II. This brings us to the
second head of discourse, under which we shall attempt to give you a clear view
of what that is which constitutes a speciality in the work of a Christian
teacher. And to carry you at once, by a few plain instances, to the matter we
are aiming to impress upon you, let us suppose a man to take up his Bible, and,
with the same powers of attention and understanding which enable him to
comprehend the subject of any other book, there is much in this book also which
be will be able to perceive and to talk of intelligently. Thus, for example, he
may come, by the mere exercise of his ordinary powers, to understand that it is
the Holy Spirit which taketh of the things of Christ, and showeth them to the
mind of man. But is not his understanding of this truth, as it is put down in
the plain language of the New Testament, a very different thing from the Holy
Spirit actually taking of these things and showing them unto him?
Again, he will be able to say, and to annex a plain meaning to what he
says, that man is rescued from his natural darkness about the things of God, by
God who created the light out of darkness shining in his heart, and giving him
the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ. But is not
his saying this, and understanding this, by taking up these words in the same
obvious way in which any man of plain and honest understanding would do, a very
different thing from God actually putting forth His creative energy upon him,
and actually shining upon his heart, and giving him that light and that
knowledge which are expressed in the passage here alluded to? Again, by the
very same exercise wherewith he renders the sentence of an old author into his
own language, and perceives the meaning of that sentence, will he annex a
meaning to the following sentence of the Bible : - " The natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto
him; neither can be know them, because they are spiritually discerned." By
the mere dint of that shrewdness and sagacity with which nature has endowed
him, he will perceive a meaning here which you will readily acknowledge could
not be perceived by a man in a state of idiotism. In the case of the idiot,
there is a complete barrier against his ever acquiring that conception of the
meaning of this passage, which is quite competent to a man of a strong and
accomplished understanding. For the sake of illustration, we may conceive this
poor outcast from the common light of humanity, in some unaccountable fit of
attention, listening to the sound of these words, and making some strenuous but
abortive attempts to arrive at the same comprehension of them with a man whose
reason is entire. But he cannot shake off the fetters which the hand of nature
has laid upon his understanding; and he goes back again to the dimness and
delirium of his unhappy situation; and his mind locks itself up in the
prison-hold of its confined and darkened faculties; and if, in his mysterious
state of existence, he formed any conception whatever of the words now uttered
in your hearing, we may rest assured, that it stands distinguished by a wide
and impassable chasm, from the conception of him who has all the common powers,
and perceptions of the species.
Now, we would ask what kind of
conception is that which a man of entire faculties may form? Only grant us the
undeniable truth, that he may understand how he cannot discern the things of
the Spirit, unless the Spirit reveal them to him; and yet, with this
understanding, he may not be one of those in behalf of whom the Spirit hath
actually interposed with his peculiar office of revelation - and then there
comes into view another barrier, no less insurmountable than that which fixes
an immutable distinction between the conceptions of an idiot and of a man of
sense - even that wonderful barrier which separates the natural from the
spiritual man. We can conceive him struggling, with every power which nature
hath given him, to work his way through this barrier. We can conceive him
vainly attempting, by some energies of his own, to force an entrance into that
field of light, where every object of faith has the bright colouring of reality
thrown over it - where he can command a clear view of the things of eternity -
where spiritual truth comes home with effect upon his every feeling, and his
every conviction - where he can expatiate at freedom over a scene of
manifestation, which the world knoweth not - and breathe such a peace, and such
a joy, and such a holiness, and such a superiority to time, and such a
devotedness of all his affections to the things which are above, as no man of
the highest natural wisdom can ever reach, with all his attention to the Bible,
and all the efforts of his sagacity, however painful, to unravel, and to
compare, and to comprehend its passages.
And it is indeed a deeply
interesting object, to see a man of powerful understanding thus visited with an
earnest desire after the light of the gospel; and toiling, at the entrance,
with all the energies which belong to him - pressing into the service all the
resources of argument and philosophy - mustering, to the high enterprise, his
attention, and his conception, and his reason, and his imagination, and the
whole host of his other faculties, on which science has conferred her imposing
names, and laid before us in such a pompous catalogue, as might tempt us to
believe, that man, by one mighty grasp of his creative mind, can make all truth
his own, and range at pleasure over the wide variety of her dominions. How
natural to think, that the same powers and habits of investigation which
carried him to so respectable a height in the natural sciences, will enable him
to clear his way through all the darkness of theology! It is well that he is
seeking, for if he persevere and be in earnest, he will obtain an interest in
the promise, and will at length find : - but not till he find, in the progress
of those inquiries on which he entered with so much alacrity, and prosecuted
with so much confidence, that there is a barrier between him and the spiritual
discernment of his Bible, which all the powers of philosophy cannot scale, not
til1 he find that he must cast down his lofty imaginations and put the pride of
all his powers and all his pretensions away from him, - not till he find that,
divested of those fancies which deluded his heart into a feeling of its own
sufficiency, he must become like a little child, or one of those babes to whom
God reveals the things which He hides from the wise and from the prudent, not
till he find that the attitude of self- dependence must be broken down, and he
be brought to acknowledge, that the light he is aspiring after is not created
by himself, but must be made to shine upon him at the pleasure of another, -
not, in short, till, humbled by the mortifying experience, that many a simple
cottager, who reads his Bible and loves his Saviour, has got before him, he
puts himself on a level with the most illiterate of them all, and prays that
light and truth may beam on his darkened understanding from the sanctuary of
God.
We read of the letter, and we read also of the spirit, of the New
Testament. It would require a volume, rather than a single paragraph of a
single sermon, to draw the line between the one and the other. But you will
readily acknowledge, that there are many things of this book, which a man,
though untaught by the Spirit of God, may be made to know. One of the simplest
instances is, he may learn the number of chapters in every book, and the number
of verses in every chapter. - But is this all? No; for by the natural exercise
of his memory, he may be able to master all its historical information. And is
this all? No; for by the natural exercise of his judgment he may compare
scripture with scripture, - he may learn what its doctrines are, - he may
demonstrate the orthodoxy of every one article in our national confession, - he
may rank among the ablest and most judicious of the commentatators, - he may
read, and with understanding too, many a ponderous volume, - he may store
himself with the learning of many generations, - he maybe familiar with all the
systems, and have mingled with all the controversies, - and yet, with a mind
supporting as it does the burden of the erudition of whole libraries, he may
have gotten to himself no other wisdom than the wisdom of the letter of the New
Testament. The man's creed, with all its arranged and its well-weighed
articles, may be no better than the dry bones in the vision of Ezekiel, put
together into a skeleton, and fastened with sinews, and covered with flesh and
skin, and exhibiting to the eye of the spectators, the aspect and the
lineaments of a man, but without breath, and remaining so, till the Spirit of
God breathed into it, and it lived.
And it is, in truth, a sight of
wonder, to behold a man who has carried his knowledge of Scripture as far as
the wisdom of man can carry it, - to see him blessed with all the light which
nature can give, but labouring under all the darkness which no power of nature
can dispel, - to see this man of many accomplishments, who can bring his every
power of demonstration to bear upon the Bible, carrying in his bosom a heart
uncheered by any one of its consolations, unmoved by the influence of any one
of its truths, unshaken out of any one attachment to the world, and an utter
stranger to those high resolves, and the power of those great and animating
prospects, which shed a glory over the daily walk of a believer, and give to
every one of his doings the high character of a candidate for eternity.
We
are quite aware of the doubts which this is calculated to excite in the mind of
the hearer, - nor is it possible, within the compass of an hour, to stop and
satisfy them all; or to come to a timely conclusion, without leaving a number
of unresolved questions behind us. There is one, however, which we cannot pass
without observation. Does not this doctrine of a revelation of the Spirit, it
may be asked, additional to the revelation of the Word, open a door to the most
unbridled variety? May it not give a sanction to any conceptions of any
visionary pretenders, and clothe, in all the authority of inspiration, a set of
doctrines not to be found within the compass of the written record? Does it not
set aside the usefulness of tbe Bible, and break in upon the unity and
consistency of revealed uuth, by letting loose upon the world a succession of
fancies, as endless and as variable as are the caprices of the human
imagination? All very true, did we ever pretend that the office of the Spirit
was to reveal any thing additional to the information, whether in the way of
doctrine or of duty, 4 which the Bible sets before us. But His office, as
defined by the Bible itself, is not to make known to us any truths which are
not contained in the Bible; but to make clear to our understandings the truths
which are contained in it. He opens our understandings to understand the
Scriptures. The Word of God is called the sword of the Spirit. It is the
instrument by which the Spirit worketh. He does not tell us any thing that is
out of the record; but all that is within it he sends home, with clearness and
effect, upon the mind. He does not make us wise above that which is written;
but he makes us wise up to that which is written.
When a telescope is
directed to some distant landscape, it enables us to see what we could not
otherwise have seen; but it does not enable us to see any thing which has not a
real existence in the prospect before us. It does not present to the eye any
delusive imagery, - neither is that a fanciful and fictitious scene which it
throws open to our contemplation. The natural eye saw nothing but blue land
stretching along the distant horizon. By the aid of the glass, there bursts
upon it a charming variety of fields, and woods, and spires, and villages. Yet
who would say that the glass added one feature to this assemblage? It discovers
nothing to us which is not there; nor, out of that portion of the book of
nature which we are employed in contemplating, does it bring into view a single
character, which is not really and previously inscribed upon it. And so of the
Spirit. He does not add a single truth, or a single character, to the Book of
Revelation. He enables the spiritual man, to see what the natural man cannot
see; but the spectacle which he lays open is uniform and immutable. It is the
Word of God, which is ever the same ; - and he whom the Spirit of God has
enabled to look to the Bible with a clear and affecting discernment, sees no
phantom passing before him; but, amid all the visionary extravagance with which
he is charged, can, for every one article of his faith, and every one duty of
his practice, make his triumphant appeal to the law and to the testimony.
We trust that this may be made clear by one example. We have not to travel
out of the record for the purpose of having this truth made known to us, - that
God is everywhere present. It meets the observation of the natural man in his
reading of the Bible; and he understands, or thinks he understands, the terms
in which it is delivered; and he can speak of it with consistency; and he ranks
it with the other attributes of God; and he gives it an avowed and a formal
admission among the articles of his creed; and yet, with all this parade of
light and of knowledge, he, upon the subject of the all-seeing and the
ever-present Deity, labours under all the obstinacy of an habitual blindness.
Carry him abroad, and you will find that the light which beams upon his senses,
from the objects of sight, completely overpowers that light which ought to beam
upon his spirit, from this ohjeet of faith. He may occasionally think of it as
he does of other things; but for every one practical purpose the thought
abandons him, so soon as he goes into the next company, or takes a part in the
next worldly concern, which, in the course of his business comes round to him.
It completely disappears as an element of conduct, and he talks, and thinks,
and reasons, just as he would have done, had his mind, in reference to God,
been in a state of entire darkness. If any thing like a right conception of the
matter ever exist in his heart, the din and the day light of the world drive it
all away from him. Now, to rectify this case, it is surely not necessary that
the Spirit add any thing to the truth of God's omnipresence, as it is put down
in the written record. It will be enough, that He gives to the mind on which He
operates a steady and enduring impression of this truth.
Now, this is
one part of His office; and accordingly it is said of the unction of the
Spirit, that it is an unction which remaineth. Neither is it necessary that the
light which He communicates should consist in any vision which He gives to the
eye, or in any bright impression upon the fancy, of any one thing not to be
found within the pages of the Bible. It will be enough, if He give a clear and
vigorous apprehension of the truth, just as it is written, to the
understanding. Though the Spirit should do no more than give vivacity and
effect to the truth of the constancy of God's presence, just as it stands in
the written record - this will be quite enough to make the man who is under its
influence, carry an habitual sense of God about with him, think of Him in the
shop and in the market place, walk with Him all the day long, and feel the same
moral restraint ujon his doings, as if some visible superior, whose virtues he
revered, and whose approbation he longed after, haunted his every footstep, and
kept an attentive eye fastened upon the whole course of his history. The
natural man may have sense, and he may have sagacity, and a readiness withal to
admit the constancy of God's presence, as an undeniable doctrine of the Bible.
But to the power of this truth he is dead; and it is only to the power of this
world's interets and pleasures that he is alive.
The spiritual man is
the reverse of all this, and that without earrying his conceptions a single
hairbreadth beyond the communications of the written message. He makes no
pretensions to wisdom, by one jot or one tittle, beyond the testimony of
Scripture; and yet, after all, he lives under a revelation to which the other
is a stranger. It does not carry him, by a single footstep, without the field
of the written revelation; but it throws a radiance over every object within
it. It furnishes him with a constant light, which enables him to withstand the
domineering influence of sight and of sense. He dies unto the world, he lives
unto God, - and the reason is, that there rests upon him a peculiar
manifestation, by which the truth is made visible to the eye of his mind, and a
peculiar energy, by which it comes home upon his conscience. And if we come to
inquire into the cause of this peculiality, it is the language of the Bible,
confirmed, as we believe it to be, by the soundest experience, that every power
which nature has conferred upon man, exalted to its highest measure, and called
forth to its most strenuous exercise, is not able to accomplish it; that it is
due to a power above nature, and beyond it; that it is due to what the apostle
calls the demonstration of the Spirit, - a demonstration withheld from the
self- sufficient exertions of man, and given to his believing prayers.
And here we are reminded of an instructive passage, in the life of one of
our earliest and most eminent reformers. When the light of divine truth broke
in upon his heart, it was so new and so delightful to one formerly darkened by
the errors of Popery - he saw such a power, and saw an evidence along with
it-he was so ravished by its beauties, and so carried along by its resistless
arguments, that he felt as if he had nothing to do, but to brandish those
mighty weapons, that he might gain all hearts, and carry every thing before
him. But he did not calculate on the stubborn resistance of corrupt human
nature, to him and to his reasonings. He preached, and he argued, and he put
forth all his powers of eloquence amongst them. But, mortified that so many
hearts remained hardened, that so many hearers resisted him, that the doors of
so many hearts were kept shut, in spite of all his loud and repeated warnings,
that so many souls remained unsubdued, and dead in trespasses and sins, he was
heard to exclaim, that old Adam was too strong for young Melancthon.
There is the malignity of the fall which adheres to us. There is a power of
corruption and of blindness along with it, which it is beyond the compass of
human means to overthrow. There is a dark and settled depravity in the human
character, which maintains its gloomy and obstinate resistance to all our
warnings, and all our arguments. There is a spirit working in the children of
disobedience, which no power of human eloquence can lay. There is a covering of
thick darkness upon the face of all people, a mighty influence abroad upon the
world, with which the Prince of the power of the air keeps his thousands and
his tens of thousands under him. The minister who enters into this field of
conflict, may have zeal, and talents, and influence. His heart may be smitten
with the love of the truth, and his mind be fully fraught with its arguments.
Thus armed, he may come forth among his people, flushed with the mighty
enterprise of turning souls from the dominion of Satan unto God. In all the
hope of victory, he may discharge the weapons of his warfare among them. Week
after week; he may reason with them out of the Scriptures. Sabbath after
Sabbath, he may declaim, he may demonstrate, he may put forth every expedient;
he may, at one time, set in array before them the terrors of the law, at
another, he may try to win them by the free offer of the gospel; and, in the
proud confidence of success, he may think that nothing can withstand him, and
that the heart of every hearer must give way before the ardour of his zeal, and
the power of his invincible arguments.
Yes; they may admire him, and
they may follow him, but the question we have to ask is, Will they be converted
by him? They may even go so far as to allow that it is all very true he says.
He may be their favourite preacher; and when he opens his exhortations upon
them, there may be a deep and a solemn attention in every countenance. But how
is the heart coming on all the while? How do these people live; and what
evidence are they giving of being born again, under the power of his ministry?
It is not enough to be told of those momentary convictions which flash from the
pulpit, and carry a thrilling influence along with them through the hearts of
listening admirers. Have these hearers of the word become the doers of the
word? Have they sunk down into the character of humble, and sanctified, and
penitent, and painstaking Christians? Where, where is the fruit? And while the
preaching of Christ is all their joy, has the will of Christ become all their
direction? Alas! he may look around him, and, at the end of the year, after all
the tumults of a sounding popularity, he may find the great bulk of them just
where they were, - as listless and unconcerned about the things of eternity, as
obstinately alienated from God, - as firmly devoted to selfish and transitory
interests, - as exclusively set upon the farm, and the money, and the
merchandise, - and, with the covering of many external decencies to make them
as fair and plausible as their neighbours around them, proving, by a heart
given, with the whole tide of its affections, to the vanities of the world,
that they have their full share of the wickedness which abounds in it. After
all his sermons, and all his loud and passionate addresses, he finds that the
power of darkness still keeps its ground among them. He is grieved to learn,
that all he has said has had no more effect than the foolish and the feeble
lispings of infancy.
He is overwhelmed by a sense of his own
helplessness, and the lesson is a wholesome one. It makes him feel that the
sufficiency is not in him, but in God; it makes him understand that another
power must be brought to bear upon the mass of resistance which is before him;
and let the man of confident and aspiring genius, who thought he was to assail
the dark, seats of human corruption, and to carry them by storm, let him be
reduced in mortified and dependent humb1eness to the expedient of the apostle.
And let him crave the intercessions of his people, and throw himself upon their
prayers.
Let us now bring the whole matter to a practical conclusion.
For the acquirement of a saving and spiritual knowledge of the gospel, you are,
on the one hand, to put forth all your ordinary powers, in the very same way
that you do for the acquirement of knowledge in any of the ordinary branches of
human learning. But in the act of doing so, you, on the other hand, are to
proceed on a profound impression of the utter fruitlessness of all your
endeavours, unless God meet them by the manifestations of His Spirit. In other
words, you are to read your Bible, and to bring your faculties of attention,
and understanding, and memory, to the exercise, just as strenuously as if
these, and these alone, could conduct you to the light after which you are
aspiring. But you are, at the same time, to pray as earnestly for this object,
as if God accomplished it without your exertions at all, instead of
accomplishing it in the way he actually does, by your exertions.
It is
when your eyes are turned toward the Book of God's testimony, and not when your
eyes are turned away from it, that He fulfils upon you the petition of the
Psalmist, - "Lord, do thou open mine eyes, that I may behold the wondrous
things contained in thy law." You are not to exercise your faculties in
searching after truth without prayer, else God will withhold from you His
illuminating influences. And you are not to pray for truth, without exercising
your faculties, else God will reject your prayers, as the mockery of a
hypocrite. But you are to do both; and this is in harmony with the whole style
of a Christian's obedience, who is as strenuous in doing as if his doings were
to accomplish all, and as fervent in prayer, as if, without the inspiring
energy of God, all his doings were vanity and feebleness.
And the great
apostle may be quoted as the best example of this observation. There never
existed a man more active than Paul, in the work of the Christian ministry. How
great the weight and the variety of his labours! What preaching, what
travelling, what writing of letters, what daily struggling with difficulties,
what constant exercise of thought, in watching over the churches, what a world
of perplexity in his dealings with men, and in the hard dealings of men with
him! And were they friends, or were they enemies, how his mind hehoved to be
ever on the alert, in counselling the one, and in warding off the hostility of
the other! Look to all that is visible in the life of this apostle, and you see
nothing but bustle, and enterprise, and variety. You see a man intent on the
furtherance of some great object; and in the prosecution of it, as ever
diligent, and as ever doing, as if the whole burden of it lay upon himself, or
as if it were reserved for the strength of his solitary arm to accomplish it.
To this object he copsecrated every moment of his time; and even when he set
him down to the work of a tent-maker, for the sake of vindicating the purity of
his intentions, and holding forth an example of honest independence to the
poorer brethran - even here,we just see another display of the one principle
which possessed his whole heart, and gave such a character of wondrous activity
to all the days of his earthly pilgrimage. There are some who are so far
misled, by a kind of perverse theology which they have adopted, as to hesitate
about the lawfulness of being diligent and doing in the use of means. While
they are slumbering over their speculation, and proving how honestly they put
faith in it, by doing nothing, let us be guided by the example of the
painstaking and industrious Paul, and remember, that never since the days of
this apostle, who calls upon us to be followers of him, even as he was of
Christ, - never were the labours of human exertion more faithfully rendered, -
never were the workings of a human instrument put forth with greater energy.
But it forms a still more striking part of the example of Paul, that,
while he did as much toward the extension of the Christian faith, as if the
whole success of the cause depended upon his doing; he prayed as much, and as
fervently, for this object, as if all his doings were of no consequence. A fine
testimony to the supremacy of God, from the man, who, in labours, was more
abundant than any who ever came after him, that he counted all as nothing,
unless God would interfere to put His blessing upon all, and to give His
efficiency to all! He who looked so busy, and whose hand was so constantly
engaged, in the work that was before him, looked for all his success to that
help which cometh from the sanctuary of God. There was his eye directed. Thence
alone did he expect a blessing upon his endeavours. He wrought, and that with
diligence, too, because God bade him; but he also prayed, and that with equal
diligence, because God had revealed to him, that plant as he may, and water as
he may, God alone giveth the increase.
He did homage to the will of
God, by the labours of the ever working minister, - and he did homage to the
power of God by the devotions of the ever-praying minister. He did not say,
what signifies my working, for God alone can work with effect? This is very
true, but God chooses to work by instruments, - and Paul, by the question,
"Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?" expressed his readiness to be an
instrument in His hand. Neither did he say, what signifies my praying, for I
have got a work here to do, and it is enough that I be diligent in the
performance of it. No - for the power of God must be acknowledged, and a sense
of His power must mingle with all our performances: and therefore it is that
the apostle kept both working and praying; and with him they formed two
distinct emanations of the same principle: and while there are many who make
these Christian graces to neutralize each other, the judicious and the clear-
sighted Paul, who had received the spirit of a sound mind, could give his
unembarrassed vigour to both these exercises, and combine, in his own example,
the utmost diligence in doing, with the utmost dependence on Him who can alone
give to that doing all its fruits and all its efficacy.
The union of
these two graces has, at times, beeu finely exemplified in the later and
uninspired ages of the christian church; and the case of the missionary,
Elliot, is the first,and the most impressive that occurs to us. His labours,
like those of the great apostle, were directed to the extension of the vineyard
of Christ, - and he was among the very first who put forth his hand to the
breaking up of the American wilderness. For this purpose did he set himself
down to the acquirement of a harsh and barbarous language; and he became
qualified to confer with savages; and he grappled for years with their
untractable humours; and he collected these wanderers into villages; and while
other reformers have ennobled their names by the formation of a new set of
public laws, did he take upon him the far more arduous task of creating, for
his untamed Indians, a new set of domestic habits; and such was the power of
his influence, that he carried his Christianizing system into the very bosom of
their families; and he spread art, and learning, and civilization amongst them;
and to his visible labours among his people he added the labours of the closet;
and he translated the whole Bible into their tongue; and he set up a regular
provision for the education of their children; and, lest the spectator who saw
his fourteen towns risen as by enchantment in the desert, and peopled by the
rudest of its tribes, should ask in vain for the mighty power by which such
wondrous things had been brought to pass, this venerable priest left his
testimony behind him; and neither overlooking the agency of God, nor the agency
of man as the instrument of God, he tells us, in one memorable sentence written
by himself at the end of his Indian grammar, that "prayers and pains, through
faith in Christ Jesus, can do any thing."
The last inference we shall
draw from this topic, is the duty and importance of prayer among Christians,
for the success of the ministry of the gospel. Paul had a high sense of the
efficacy of prayer. Not according to that refined view of it, which, making all
its influence to consist in its improving and moralizing effect upon the mind,
fritters down to nothing the plain import and signiflcancy of this ordinance.
With him it was a matter of asking and of receiving. And just as when, in
pursuit of some earthly benefit which is at the giving of another, you think
yourselves surer of your object the more you multiply the number of askers and
the number of applications, - in this very way did he, if we may be allowed the
expression, contrive to strengthen and extend his interest in the court of
heaven. He craved the intercessions of his people. There were many believers
formed under his ministry, and each of these could bring the prayer of faith to
bear upon the counsels of God, and bring down a larger portion of strength and
of fitness to rest on the apostle for making more believers.
It was a kind
of creative or accumulating process. After he had travailed in birth with his
new converts till Christ was formed in them, this was the use he put them to.
It is an expedient which harmonizes with the methods of Providence and the will
of God, who orders intercessions, and on the very principle, too, that he
willeth all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. The
intercession of Christians, who are already formed, is the leaven which is to
leaven the whole earth with Christianity. It is one of the destined
instruments, in the hand of God, for hastening the glory of the latter days.
Take the world at large, and the doctrine of intercession, as an engine of
mighty power, is derided as one of the reveries of fanaticism. This is a
subject on which the men of the world are in a deep slumber; but there are
watchmen who never hold their peace, day nor night, and to them God addresses
these remarkable words: "Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence,
and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in
the earth."
Home | Biography | Literature | Letters | Interests | Links | Quotes | Photo-Wallet