The Gospel of St. John Part 21

These arguments have been ill.u.s.trated by a large amount of eulogistic and vituperative rhetoric; but plain readers would rather that they were brought to some practical test. Here is one. I have urged that we should put _Signs_ in nearly all those verses of St. John in which we now find '_Miracles_.' Is this change likely to affect the simplicity of our version, to make its 'language not understanded by the people?'

Is 'miracle' one of their ordinary, homely, Saxon expressions? Would it be exceedingly difficult for a preacher to make his humble parishioners understand the use and purpose of 'Signs?'

But there is the _cui bono_ objection:--'You unsettle a mode of speech to which we are accustomed. To what end? Is there anything "vital" in the difference?' Vital means, I suppose, if it is rendered into our vernacular speech, that which affects life--the life of individuals or of societies. I venture to think that this change is important to the life of both. The habit of looking for wonderments, as the decisive and overpowering witnesses of Christ, has, it seems to me, been most mischievous to the life of the Church, is affecting the life of each one of us. Those who wish to think and speak of Him as not only born at a certain time into the world, but as living before the world, and as the founder of it, find themselves perpetually embarra.s.sed by the notion which has worked itself into the minds of our people and of ourselves, that He established His claim to be an extraordinary person by doing extraordinary acts in the towns of Galilee and the city of Jerusalem, instead of showing by signs what He is and always has been.

The Catholic doctrine is more undermined than we are at all aware by the feeling which this deviation from the original has sanctioned and promoted. We a.s.sume Christ's simple humanity as the ground of our thoughts, and then add on to it an indefinite notion of divinity. The truth which was so dear to the earnest Evangelical teachers of the last century, that Christ is to be proclaimed as the Emmanuel, 'G.o.d with us,' that the whole Gospel is concerning a living Christ, suffers scarcely less from the same cause. And how much the whole argument of Protestants with Romanists about _their_ miracles is weakened, and its practical effect destroyed, by the use of an expression which (such is the curious Nemesis upon those who, for any cause whatever, trifle with language) we have derived, not from the Vulgate, but from Theodore Beza, I fancy some of our professional anti-Romanist orators might discover, if they spent some of the time in studying the controversy and the history of the Church which they spend in constructing denunciations against the superst.i.tions and apostasy of their opponents.

I offer these as proofs that in one instance, at all events, 'vital'

benefits may be gained by an earnest and sober consideration of our existing translation, and that even deadly mischiefs may be averted by it. And I am inclined to think that it is a fair instance. Among those divines who are most earnest for a revision, and would be most competent to take part in it, there is not one, so far as I am aware, who would not watch with the greatest jealousy over the Saxon character of our version, who would wish to subst.i.tute for a single venerable phrase a nineteenth century equivalent, who would not sacrifice anything excepting truth to the preservation of that which is popular and human, who would not expect, as the reward of a steadfast adherence to truth, that the book would become more a book for the English people, and less a book for the schools. And I am satisfied that these honest and learned men may look for another--even, if possible, a higher--reward for their serious devotion to the book which they love and reverence most. Many delusions like that of which I have spoken are perpetuated, I am persuaded, through phrases which crept into our version from carelessness,--which have been repeated and turned into arguments by pulpit rhetoricians,--which often lead honest Englishmen to doubt the truth of the Bible. They will be, in the best sense, defenders of the faith if they rescue the words which the Psalmist speaks of as purified seven times in the fire from any earthly dross, and if they spoil the trade of those who wish it to be mingled with the genuine ore.

I will add one word in conclusion. Much is said in our day about verbal inspiration. Some accuse their brethren of superst.i.tion for maintaining it; some accuse their brethren of infidelity for not maintaining it. I suspect that a common name may cover the most opposite feelings and convictions. A believer in verbal inspiration, like Mr. Tregelles--who lives laborious days that he may discover the purest text, so that none of the inspired words may fall to the ground or be perverted--is one of the n.o.blest witnesses for truth I can conceive of. May G.o.d give us more and more of such men, and hearts to honour them for their works' sake! On the other hand, those who say they believe in verbal inspiration, whenever they wish to direct the wrath of their disciples or of a religious mob against men that are more righteous than themselves, and who then show that they are afraid of trying G.o.d's words, and freeing them from insincere mixtures, lest the minds of the people should be disturbed, are not exactly those whom one can think of as '_Israelites indeed, in whom is no guile_.'

_Note 2._

My attention has been called by a friend to a very interesting interpretation of the dialogue between Jesus and the Virgin, which is given by Gregory of Nyssa, Tom. ii. p. 9, B. c. He makes, it will be seen, the words of our Lord interrogative: 'Is not my hour yet come?'--

??? ??? ?t??a? s??????, ?? ????t?

?at? ?a???? a?t? p??sa??????

?pep???sat?, e?p??? t? ??? ?a? s??

???a?; ? ?a? ta?t?? ?? t??

?????a? ?p?state?? ????e??; ??p? ??e?

?? ? ??a ? t? a?t???at?? pe??e?????

t? ?????? ?a? a?te???s???;

DISCOURSE XII.

I have spoken in this _Sermon_ on two subjects, of which I have spoken at some length in my Theological Essays; the 'Resurrection' and the 'Judgment.' I am not the least anxious to correct any impressions which my remarks in that book may have made on the minds of religious critics. If they have misunderstood me, nothing which I could say would make me intelligible to them. If they have misinterpreted me without misunderstanding me, I am not the sufferer. But I shall be very glad if what I have said here should remove any difficulty from the minds of earnest and thoughtful men, some of whom have written their complaints to me in a most kind and friendly spirit, evidently regarding me as a fellow-inquirer after truth, and wishing that we should help each other in the pursuit of it.

I think they will perceive, from what I have said on the words--'_Those that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of G.o.d, and they that hear shall live_,'--that I am not less zealous than they are to a.s.sert the absolute ident.i.ty of the body of humiliation with the body of glory. That truth cannot be a.s.serted in stronger language than it is a.s.serted by St. Paul in the 15th chapter of the 1st Corinthians, and by our own Burial Service. G.o.d forbid that any one should make it weaker! What I affirm is, that we do not gain the least strength for this conviction by setting aside St.

Paul's a.s.sertion, that corruption shall not inherit incorruption; and that the Burial Service nowhere gives the slightest hint that what is committed as earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, shall be reunited to const.i.tute that body which we have a sure and certain hope will be raised, and will be made like unto Christ's glorious body.

This attempt to identify the corruption of the body with the body, the effects of death with the substance which death is unable to destroy, I know has the sanction of great and venerable names. Transubstantiation and Consubstantiation have also the sanction of names which are most dear to the Church. But if Bonaventura and Thomas a Kempis cannot bind us to the one, or Luther to the other; if we have a right to feel that we partake with them of the sacrament of Christ's risen and glorified body most completely when we forget the theories by which here on earth they limited it; we are surely not bound by the rhetoric of Donne or of Jeremy Taylor, however much we may reverence them both, to adopt what seems to us merely an earthly and sensual explanation of a glorious reality, directly interfering with the scriptural account of it, and with many of the most practical and consolatory truths which flow from it. I do not wish to get rid of any pa.s.sage in the New Testament upon the subject, or to give it a forced construction. I do wish that we may look straight at all the pa.s.sages in it, and not allow a conception which we have formed,--a very natural, but it seems to me a very low and grovelling conception,--to interfere with the full understanding and reception of them. I would not wish a better argument against the popular theory than the eloquent sermon of Donne in the support and elucidation of it. Let any one see how utterly unrestrained the fancy of a devout and excellent man becomes when it enters into this speculation, how entirely it loses sight of all scriptural guidance, how it revels amongst the images of the charnel-house. And then let any one ask himself whether this is the doctrine of that divine pa.s.sage in St. Paul, which reaches indeed from earth to heaven, which is not afraid of the lowest objects when it is in contact with the highest; yet in which all is clear and awful, as if he knew that he was speaking of death and life, of G.o.d and man, and as if the Spirit who was guiding him abhorred all conceits and trifling. Only imagine Donne's Sermon subst.i.tuted for the 15th of Corinthians, when we meet in the church around the coffin of a friend!

It is a very simple test; but I think any one who applies it fairly will know what is the worth of the additions which the fancy, even if it is not ordinarily a vulgar fancy, makes to the divine testimony.

Precisely on the same ground do I protest against the exercises of this same fancy respecting what is called, by a phrase which I have not met with anywhere in Scripture, the intermediate state of disembodied spirits. I am told by a gentleman, who seems to know, that they are placed in the moon, or in one of the fixed stars. Any one who can find consolation in such an opinion, I should be very sorry to deprive of it. But I must say plainly, that we are in a world of life and death; and that if we have nothing better than these dreams to sustain each other with, we had better hold our peace. In the words of our Lord in the 5th chapter of St. John, in the comment upon these words at the tomb of Lazarus, I find what I want, and what I believe every one wants, and more than we shall ever get to the bottom of, if we meditate upon them from this day till the consummation of all things. While I have them I will not, for my part, build up a world of fantasies which, seeing that it has no foundation in the nature of things or in the word of G.o.d, any physical discovery, any application of ordinary logic, may throw down in a moment. _Da nuces puero._ The boyhood of the Church, as of individuals, may have innocently occupied itself in cracking nuts, and eating the poor kernel in the inside.

_Our_ faith perishes in such experiments. Let us put away childish things, and try that we may know those blessed things which are freely given us of G.o.d.

That the declarations respecting a general resurrection at the last day are to me of infinite worth, and that they do not at all clash in my mind with the belief which our Lord's words in this chapter appear very distinctly to justify,--that men, at all times and in all ages, who have been in their graves, have heard the voice of the Son of Man and have lived; that in their bodies, and not in their spirits only, they have awakened at His call; I think will be evident from what I have said on the resurrection of Lazarus. And this general resurrection I connect, as I think all men connect it, with a judgment-day. The only question is, whether we are to follow strictly the a.s.sertions of the Evangelists, and call that day an unveiling of the Son of Man--a discovery to all, wherever they are, in one part of the universe or another, quick or dead, of Him who is, and always has been, their King and their Judge, so that every eye shall see Him, and the secrets of all hearts shall be discovered; or whether we shall subst.i.tute for _this_ notion of His advent to judgment, one which supposes a gathering together, in some certain s.p.a.ce, of mult.i.tudes that never could be gathered together in any s.p.a.ce,--one that reproduces all the pomp and solemnities of earthly courts of justice,--one that supposes Christ not to be the Searcher of hearts, not to be the Light of men, but the mere image and pattern of an earthly magistrate. What I call for, is the _strict_ interpretation of the words of Scripture. What I denounce, is an attempt to subst.i.tute the forms and conceptions of our own carnal understandings for that which speaks to a faculty within us which is higher than our understandings, and which belongs to us all alike. Far from agreeing with those writers, immeasurably superior to me I own in learning and insight, who think that the words of Scripture do not fit the conditions of modern times, and that we need to adapt them to our stage of civilization, or else to cast them aside, I expect no deliverance from the superst.i.tions by which we are tied and bound, from the confusions which a corrupt and money-getting civilization has introduced into our thoughts on the meanest and on the highest subjects, but in a return to the more accurate study of those Scriptural phrases which we use most familiarly, but in the attempt to bring our theology to the higher and simpler standard which they set before us. Earnestly would I implore those friends who have so kindly told me that they would gladly agree with me, in my views respecting the Resurrection and the Judgment, but that they find it impossible--not to trouble themselves about my views at all; to be sure that they can only be of use to them, that I can only be of use to them, just so far as I can help them to clear their minds of mists which hinder them from seeing that light which must throw all my opinions and those of far wiser men into the shade.

DISCOURSES XVI. AND XVII.

A friend, who has kindly looked over the sheets of these Discourses, has intimated to me that though I may have said enough on the simple and childlike character of St. John's _narrative_, I have not directly encountered an impression which he believes to be very general,--that the _discourses_ of our Lord which are contained in this Gospel, are essentially and radically unlike those in the other three. He thinks that this impression may not be felt by the _most_ humble and devout readers of the Gospel; but that it is far from being confined to those who have any knowledge of Baur's opinions, or have even the slightest acquaintance with German theology. It forces itself upon every one who is only beginning to exercise his faculties of comparison and criticism upon the Scriptures; it is especially likely to affect those who have derived their impressions of them from our ordinary English commentators and pulpit teachers.

My own experience corroborates this opinion. Earnest men feel this difficulty more than indifferent men. It is, therefore, one which no teacher ought to leave unconsidered. But every reader must feel how hard it is for one man to put himself exactly in another's point of view, and to discern what the inconsistencies are which seem to him most glaring. To speak about tones and habits of writing, so as to make oneself intelligible, so as not to a.s.sume canons of criticism which the objector does not recognise, is possible, but certainly far from easy. I believe that I can only fulfil my friend's wishes on this subject, with any satisfaction, if I take some special discourse from one of the first three Gospels,--some one which shall be admitted to exhibit their characteristical manner,--and another from St. John, which shall be admitted to exhibit his manner. For many reasons, I think that the former specimen ought to be taken from St. Matthew. Nor can I have much doubt on which pa.s.sage of St. Matthew the reader would wish me to fix. All would say, 'The Sermon on the Mount exhibits that purely ethical tone which we trace in the earlier Gospels. There Christ speaks with authority, no doubt, as a king and a lawgiver; but it is to proclaim blessings upon the poor in spirit, the merciful, the pure in heart. There is little of what in modern times we call doctrine. There is no formal theology. It is a code which saint, savage, and sage, may all recognise as divine, whether they conform to it or no.'

What shall we choose as the parallel discourse to this in St. John? It would be difficult to find any contrast so marked and striking as that which the 8th chapter offers. The discourse there is argumentative, not hortatory. It is addressed to disputers in Jerusalem, not to crowds about a mountain. Those who hear it do not confess its authority, but canva.s.s every word of it. No pa.s.sage in St. John is more strictly theological. Here, then, if anywhere, we may expect to find the radical essential dissimilitude which is spoken of. Let us see whether it is there,--whether the opposition which is so manifest upon the surface does, or does not, penetrate to the heart's core of the two records.

We may amuse ourselves for ever with the words ethical, theological, doctrinal. They are evidently mere artificial helps to our conceptions. We can never arrive through them at any safe apprehension of human thoughts or divine. But it is not difficult, I think, for any earnest reader to ascertain what is the cardinal idea,--at all events the cardinal word in the Sermon on the Mount. Let us take a few pa.s.sages of it, that we may be clear on this point. '_Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.' 'I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you; that you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.' 'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.' 'Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.' 'But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret Himself shall reward thee openly.' 'But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.' 'Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him. After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.' 'For if ye forgive men their trespa.s.ses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespa.s.ses, neither will your Father forgive your trespa.s.ses.' 'But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.' 'Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?' 'Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.' 'If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?' 'Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven._'

I am sure I need not remark that we have not here the mere repet.i.tion of a name. All the precepts that answer most to the description that is given of the Sermon on the Mount, when it is praised for its ethical qualities, for its beautiful morality, are here made to depend upon the fact that those whom He was addressing had a Father in heaven, who knew them and desired them to be what He was. This is the thread which binds all these precepts together. Take it away, and they lose not only their cohesion, but all their practical force; they become a set of cold, dead, formal letters in a book, which we may admire if we like them, but which have no power over us, which do not concern human beings at all. This is not only a truth, but it is _the_ truth which exercises all the charm over those who feel that there is any charm in the Sermon on the Mount, however they may account for it, or represent it to themselves. A person who has been reading the old Hebrew Scriptures asks himself,--'What is the change that I experience in pa.s.sing from them to this doc.u.ment? St. Matthew was a Hebrew; perhaps he wrote in Hebrew. He says the law is not to pa.s.s away; but that every jot and t.i.ttle of it is to be fulfilled. Why, then, do I call his book a Gospel? Why does it transport me into a world altogether different from that in which I have been dwelling,--from that in which I have had such wonderful revelations of G.o.d? Christ speaks to me of a Father; Christ reveals a Father. All other differences are contained in that. This is the new revelation.'

Having made this discovery, let us turn to the 8th chapter of St.

John. What is that about? I am afraid of repeating myself; but I will repeat St. John without fear.

'_And yet if I judge, my judgment is true: for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me.' 'I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me. Then said they unto Him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also?'

'They understood not that He spake to them of the Father.' 'And He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please Him.' 'I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.'

'Jesus answered, I have not a devil; but I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me.' 'Jesus answered, If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that He is your G.o.d._'

These pa.s.sages I think I have shown are the cardinal pa.s.sages here, as the others are the cardinal pa.s.sages there. May I entreat the reader, who thinks there is a radical difference between St. Matthew and St. John, seriously to meditate upon them? They will show him that there is a difference, a very great difference, between these Evangelists. I think they will show him that the difference is of the kind which I have endeavoured to indicate in these Sermons, between one whose function it was to declare to men that they had a Father, and one whose function it was to show them how it was possible they should have a Father, by unfolding the unity of the Father and the Son.

DISCOURSE XIX.

A book has recently been published by Mr. John McLeod Campbell 'On the Nature of the Atonement.' I cannot feel too thankful to the pious and excellent writer for the light which he has thrown upon this subject; for his exemplary charity to those with whom he is at variance; for his successful effort to reclaim the doctrine from the region of hard scholasticism to the region of practical life and holiness; above all, for his vindication of the character of G.o.d as a Father, and for his determination to a.s.sert, that likeness to His character, and communion with Him, are the ends which G.o.d is seeking for us, and which we are to seek from Him. In every one of these respects, I wish to be a learner from Mr. Campbell. Others may criticise him who feel that they know more than he does. I cannot read his book without perceiving how little I do know of the truths which seem to me the most vital and cardinal, and how impossible it is to know more, except by having more of the spirit of love, which is the Spirit of G.o.d.

In a book written expressly for Scotland--though admirably fitted to enlarge and deepen the thoughts of Englishmen--I cannot wish that he should have followed any other method than that which he has followed.

He knows what books are popular among the religious people of his own land; and of these he has spoken with singular candour and wisdom. I might, indeed, wish that Calvinists knew something of Calvin as well as of Edwards, and that Scotchmen cared more for the broad, bold statements of Knox, than for the modifications of much feebler men in this country. I can say for myself that I have read, with infinite delight, Knox's book on Predestination; finding there the fullest and most vehement a.s.sertions of G.o.d as an absolutely righteous Being, and the greatest indignation against his opponents for daring to say that a believer in predestination must think of Him chiefly as a Sovereign.

Knox would evidently have died rather than have adopted phraseology which his descendants think that it is heretical to complain of. He would have rejoiced not to limit G.o.d's grace in any way; only he could not see how the acknowledgment of it as universal was compatible with the attributing of every good thing to G.o.d and nothing to man. As an a.s.sertor, as a resistor of Arminian denials, we may embrace him and go all lengths with him. And I apprehend that even when he was upon earth, at all events that now, he would prefer this sympathy to that of men who fritter away his positions, and only accept his negations.

Neither Edwards, however, nor Dr. Williams, nor Knox, nor Calvin, have much influence upon the mind of England in the present day--at all events on the minds of English Episcopalians. Luther, to whose Commentary on the Galatians Mr. Campbell has done justice, commands our sympathy more. It is the man who speaks to us more than his books.

I believe if we knew them better, we should find such a man speaking in them that we should be scarcely able to make the distinction. He whom we suppose to be the a.s.sertor of Justification by Faith, is really the poor stricken monk, overwhelmed by the sense and burden of sin; grasping the a.s.surance of forgiveness which comes to him from the old Creed; believing that a.s.surance as given by the G.o.d who is the subject of the Creed; certain that it cannot mean indulgence for sin, that it must mean deliverance from sin; discovering that it involves the actual possession of righteousness; discovering that he cannot have that righteousness in himself, and must have it in Christ; learning gradually from St. Paul how Christ is made unto us righteousness and is the righteousness of G.o.d; knocking down every obstacle which stood in the way of the apprehension of this righteousness; preaching the Gospel to men that it is theirs as well as his; anathematizing Popes, Councils, Kings, Doctors, Reformers, whoever seem to him to intercept the intercourse between the sinner and his Lord. With such a man--in his strength and in his weakness, in his gentleness and in his rage--Englishmen, so far as they are enabled to make his acquaintance, feel a cordial interest; they are sure that he was fighting a good fight, even when the smoke of the cannon, or his own single-handed rashness, conceal him from their sight, and make his intentions perplexing to them. And those who have had any fights in themselves, and who therefore know that his descriptions are real and not imaginary, will heartily approve of Mr. Campbell's judgment in putting him foremost among those who have started from the sense of evil in themselves, and have been led to believe in an atonement as the only emanc.i.p.ation from it.

It must not, however, be concealed, that the following of Luther has had an effect in cramping men's study of St. Paul. In another book I have endeavoured to explain how it seems to me that this effect has been produced. The doctrine of Justification by Faith has been a.s.sumed to be _the_ Pauline doctrine. Luther said that it was so; and Luther surely entered into St. Paul as no one else has done. Persons who followed the course of Luther's experience thought that the Epistle to the Romans must begin from the sense of sin, as Luther and as they began. If it did not appear to do so, then the two first chapters must be treated as prologue, and it must begin with the third. All questions about the relation of Jews and Gentiles must be treated as accidental or subordinate to the primary thesis; whatever does not concern that, in the final chapters, must be resolved into practical exhortations, introduced, after the manner of a modern sermon, when the doctrinal statement has been concluded. Those who, without this experience, merely desired to elucidate the formal doctrine, of course subjected the Epistle to still more formal treatment. Its human character disappeared; and the divinity which was to compensate for that disappearance was of a very dry, hungry, uninspired character indeed. Both parties agreed to regard the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians as the specially Pauline Epistles, because there were most allusions in them to justification by faith; other Epistles were to be interpreted mainly by reference to these. Ultimately, Baur, who wrote a triumphant vindication of the Lutheran doctrine against Mohler's 'Symbolik,' has discovered that only four of the thirteen Epistles can be genuine, because the Pauline diagnostic is wanting in the rest; and that there was a deadly antipathy between St. Paul and the other apostles, because he was a.s.serting that spiritual doctrine which they were setting at nought.

The time, therefore, it seemed to me, had come for re-examining this question about the subject-matter of St. Paul's Epistles, and seeing whether we have a right to limit them as some German Evangelicals have been inclined to limit them. I contended, in 'The Unity of the New Testament,' that the words '_It pleased G.o.d to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles_,'--words that occur in the Epistle which was dearest to Luther, in the Epistle on which Baur grounds his great argument for an opposition between St. Paul and the other apostles; words that contain St. Paul's own account of his conversion, and therefore begin from what Lutherans must admit to be the right starting-point of his history,--are the key to the meaning of his life and the object of his mission. I attempted to show that, if we used this key, the Epistle to the Romans might be read as a whole letter, not be cut into fragments to meet a certain hypothesis; and that all the Epistles which Baur would reject become the varied and harmonious expositions of a great and divine purpose. Using that key, also, it seemed to me that a most close and intimate relation would appear between the Epistle to the Hebrews and those which bear St. Paul's name on the face of them; and that--whether the old tradition or the suspicion of critics respecting that Epistle has the strongest foundation, whether or not it actually proceeded from the hand of St. Paul--it does ill.u.s.trate and fulfil his intention, and is a transition point between him and the other Apostles, especially between him and the Apostle St. John.

Why do I refer to these points here? Because it seems to me that the doctrine of Justification by Faith, either in the practical form in which it presented itself to Luther, or in the merely dogmatical form which it a.s.sumes in some of his successors, has determined the thoughts of a number of Germans, Englishmen, and Scotchmen on the subject of the Atonement; so that their thoughts of the one unconsciously and inevitably govern their thoughts of the other. They start from evil, from the conscience of evil in themselves, and then either each man asks himself,--'How can I be free from this oppression which is sitting so heavily upon me?' or the schoolman asks, 'What divine arrangement would meet the necessities of this case?' Of course, the results of these two inquiries are very different; and Mr.

Campbell has done an immense service to Christian faith and life by bringing forth the former into prominence, and throwing the other into the shade. His book may be read as a great protest of the individual conscience against the utter inadequacy of the scholastic arrangements to satisfy it; as a solemn a.s.sertion,--'This arrangement of yours will not take away my sin; and I must have my sin taken away; this arrangement of yours does not bring me into fellowship with a righteous and loving G.o.d; and I must have that fellowship, or perish.'

This is admirable; but if what I have said is true, there is another way of contemplating the subject. We need not begin with the sinner; we may begin with G.o.d. And so beginning, that which speaks most comfort to the individual man may not be first of all contrived for his justification. G.o.d may have reconciled the world unto Himself; G.o.d may have atoned Himself with mankind; and the declaration of this atonement, the setting forth the nature and grounds of it, and all the different aspects of it, may be the real subjects of those Epistles, in which the individual man has found the secret of his own blessing, of his own restoration; but which he mangles and well-nigh destroys when he reconstructs them upon the basis of his individual necessities, and makes them utter a message which has been first suggested by them.

The subject belongs to this place, because the words, '_Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold_,' have led me to speak in this Discourse of the calling in of the Gentiles as part of that mystery of atonement, the great act of which was the Son of Man's laying down His life that He might take it again, the ground of which was the unity of the Father and the Son. Here St. Paul and St. John wonderfully coincide. That which must be thrown into the background by those who merely connect the atonement with individual salvation, becomes most prominent for both Apostles; for the one who believed that He was an amba.s.sador from G.o.d to men, telling them that He had reconciled the world unto Himself, and beseeching them to be reconciled to Him; for the other who taught that '_G.o.d sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved_.' If it be asked, then, whether there is no difference between the tent-maker of Tarsus and the old man of Ephesus, I should answer--this; that while St. Paul's main work was to set forth the fact of atonement, laying its groundwork always in the righteousness of G.o.d manifested in Christ, and ascending, in the Epistle to the Ephesians especially, to the purpose which He purposed in Christ before the worlds were; St. John's calling was to trace this last idea to its source in G.o.d Himself; to exhibit the original const.i.tution of man in the Divine Word; to set forth atonement as the vindication of that const.i.tution, and the vindication of the right of all men to enter into it; to set forth the union of the Father with the Son in one Spirit, as the ground of the reconciliation of man, and of his restoration to the image of his Creator.

To those, then, who ask me whether I hold the doctrine of the Atonement in some unusual and unnatural sense, or do not wish to thrust it into a corner, as if the Bible had other more important subjects to treat of, I answer,--My great complaint of the oracles of the English religious world is, that they do give a most unusual and unnatural sense to the word Atonement; that they give it a most contracted signification; that they lead their disciples to form a poor opinion of its effects; that they do not follow Apostles and Evangelists, in connecting it with the whole revelation of G.o.d and the whole mystery of man. I answer again,--that they connect it with their own faith and their own salvation, not with that cross on which Christ was lifted up that He might draw all men to Him. On many points I believe I could adopt forms of language usual among Calvinistical divines, to which Mr. Campbell, looking at them from his point of view, rightly objects as involving fictions; but I would rather be suspected of rejecting all popular modes of speech on the subject, even when I see in them a good and wholesome meaning, than yield for one instant to those representations of the character and will of G.o.d which must end with us, as they did with the Jews, in the identification of the Father of lights with the Spirit of lies.

DISCOURSES XXII. XXIII. AND XXIV.

I have dwelt much in these Sermons upon the fact that our Lord treated His disciples as a body, and as a holy body. Many persons, as soon as they hear remarks of this kind, exclaim--'Oh, yes; we have often heard that doctrine of corporate holiness set forth before. But it seems to us the very destruction of personal holiness. It involves every ecclesiastical fiction; Romanism is at the bottom of it.'

When statements of this kind are made honestly and earnestly, I am glad to hear them. Abhorrence of fictions we should take all pains to cultivate in others and in ourselves. Whatever tends to the weakening of personal holiness, let it have what logical consistency it may, must be false. And that there is a doctrine about corporate Christianity, corporate faith, corporate righteousness, which is open to these charges, I, at least, can have no doubt. I should not say that Romanism was at the bottom of it; but rather that it is at the bottom of Romanism, in so far as Romanism is an immoral system, and one that deposes Christ from His rightful dignity.

1. Let me explain myself upon each of these points. To suppose a society--call it a Church or what you will--const.i.tuted holy by an arbitrary decree of G.o.d, its members remaining unholy, I hold to be a most dangerous fiction; one which we cannot too vehemently repudiate, as alike condemned by experience, by reason, and by Scripture.

Experience testifies that when a nation or a Church claims a holiness or a righteousness of its own, it becomes practically most unholy and unrighteous in all its acts and purposes. Reason declares that it must be so, because righteousness is predicable only of voluntary beings, and that to be made righteous by an arrangement is impossible in the nature of things. Scripture declares that it must be so, because G.o.d is holy; and the holiness of man is only possible by the partic.i.p.ation of His nature. But is it the same thing to a.s.sert that G.o.d has const.i.tuted man holy in His Son; that all unholiness is the result of the selfish desire of men to have something of their own, and not to abide in G.o.d's order; that a Church is the witness of the true const.i.tution of man in Christ; that every Churchman, therefore, by his position and calling, is bound to say that he is only holy as a member of a body, and holy in its Head; that every Churchman who does not say this, who thinks that it is his individual holiness which helps to make up the Church, is setting up himself, and imitating the sin for which our Lord denounced the Pharisee? Does experience, does reason, does Scripture, protest against this doctrine? Is not experience in favour of it, inasmuch as it testifies that every true patriot has lived and died for his nation, and has renounced himself; that every true Churchman has lived to claim his own blessings for all men, to declare that he himself, as an individual, was worthy of none of them?

Is not reason in favour of this doctrine, seeing that it affirms a voluntary creature to be a mere curse to himself till he confesses a law which is above himself, and gives up his self-will that he may have a free-will? Is not Scripture affirming, in every line, that G.o.d has chosen families, nations, Churches; and that these are holy because He is holy; and that those who go about to establish a holiness or righteousness of their own have not submitted to His righteousness?

2. I have antic.i.p.ated the answer to the second question. Personal holiness is weakened, nay, is destroyed, by everything that could lead a man to think that it was fict.i.tious in him, or that G.o.d was sanctioning a fiction. And therefore it is greatly imperilled by any notions which speak of the individual man having a righteousness imputed to him, in consequence of his faith, which is not truly and actually his. But this fiction is not the consequence of maintaining the doctrine I am a.s.serting; it becomes inevitable when we deny that doctrine. If by the very law and const.i.tution of His universe G.o.d contemplates us as members of a body in His Son, we are bound to contemplate ourselves in the same way. We have a righteousness and holiness in Christ. We have no right to deny it; our unrighteousness is the very effect of denying it. Imputation of righteousness _then_ becomes no fiction. It means only that G.o.d beholds us as we are, as we have not learnt or do not choose to behold ourselves. The fiction has arisen because the truth has been denied.

3. When I speak of a Church, St. Paul tells me to speak of a body. He pursues the a.n.a.logy, we all know, into its details; he speaks of head, and feet, and hands, of functions a.s.signed to each, of sufferings pa.s.sing from one to another, of a life circulating through the whole.

Everything here is living and real. You turn the body into a corporation, a certain thing created by enactment, without parts, functions, life; you attribute to the dead thing what is true of the living thing--to the decapitated trunk what was true of that which derives all its strength and virtue from its head; then, indeed, you are involved in a series of falsehoods, each more monstrous than the last; or, to speak more modern and courteous language, in a series of developments, each preserving a family likeness to its ancestor, the very last and most prodigious being able to prove its descent from the notion out of which they all started. Once suppose it possible for the Church to exist out of Christ, and for humanity to exist out of Christ, and a Church which thinks this may impose anything it pleases upon those who belong to it. Nothing would be restrained from it which it had imagined to do, if its first maxim were _not_ a falsehood, if Christ did _not_ reign in spite of the determination of His subjects to set up another ruler.