exposition, however forcible, of the folly and worthlessness of the
first, ever could effectuate. And it is the same in the great world.
You never will be able to arrest any of its leading pursuits by a
naked demonstration of their vanity. It is quite in vain to think of
stopping one of these pursuits in any way else but by stimulating
to another. In attempting to bring a worthy man, intent and busied
with the prosecution of his objects, to a dead stand, you have not
merely to encounter the charm which he annexes to these objects,
but you have to encounter the pleasure which he feels in the very
prosecution of them. It is not enough, then, that you dissipate
the charm by your moral and eloquent and affecting exposure of
its illusiveness. You must address to the eye of his mind another
object, with a charm powerful enough to dispossess the first of its
influence, and to engage him in some other prosecution as full of
interest and hope and congenial activity as the former. It is this
which stamps an impotency on all moral and pathetic declamation
about the insignificance of the world. A man will no more consent
to the misery of being without an object, because that object is
a trifle, or of being without a pursuit, because that pursuit
terminates in some frivolous or fugitive acquirement, than he will
voluntarily submit himself to the torture, because that torture
is to be of short duration. If to be without desire and without
exertion altogether is a state of violence and discomfort, then the
present desire, with its correspondent train of exertion, is not to
be got rid of simply by destroying it. It must be by substituting
another desire, and another line or habit of exertion in its place,
and the most effectual way of withdrawing the mind from one object
is not by turning it away upon desolate and unpeopled vacancy, but
by presenting to its regards another object still more alluring.
These remarks apply not merely to love considered in its state of
desire for an object not yet obtained. They apply also to love
considered in its state of indulgence, or placid gratification,
with an object already in possession. It is seldom that any of
our tastes are made to disappear by a mere process of natural
extinction. At least, it is very seldom that this is done through
the instrumentality of reasoning. It may be done by excessive
pampering, but it is almost never done by the mere force of
mental determination. But what can not be thus destroyed, may be
dispossest--and one taste may be made to give way to another, and
to lose its power entirely as the reigning affection of the mind.
It is thus that the boy ceases, at length, to be the slave of his
appetite; but it is because a manlier taste has now brought it into
subordination, and that the youth ceases to idolize pleasure; but
it is because the idol of wealth has become the stronger and gotten
the ascendency, and that even the love of money ceases to have
the mastery over the heart of many a thriving citizen; but it is
because, drawn into the whirl of city politics, another affection
has been wrought into his moral system, and he is now lorded over
by the love of power. There is not one of these transformations
in which the heart is left without an object. Its desire for one
particular object may be conquered; but as to its desire for having
some one object or other, this is unconquerable. Its adhesion to
that on which it has fastened the preference of its regards, can not
willingly be overcome by the rending away of a simple separation.
It can be done only by the application of something else, to which
it may feel the adhesion of a still stronger and more powerful
preference. Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart, that
it must have a something to lay hold of--and which, if wrested away
without the substitution of another something in its place, would
leave a void and a vacancy as painful to the mind as hunger is to
the natural system. It may be dispossest of one object, or of any,
but it can not be desolated of all. Let there be a breathing and
a sensitive heart, but without a liking and without affinity to
any of the things that are around it, and in a state of cheerless
abandonment, it would be alive to nothing but the burden of its
own consciousness, and feel it to be intolerable. It would make no
difference to its owner, whether he dwelt in the midst of a gay and
a goodly world, or, placed afar beyond the outskirts of creation, he
dwelt a solitary unit in dark and unpeopled nothingness. The heart
must have something to cling to--and never, by its own voluntary
consent, will it so denude itself of all its attachments that there
shall not be one remaining object that can draw or solicit it.
The misery of a heart thus bereft of all relish for that which is
wont to minister enjoyment, is strikingly exemplified in those
who, satiated with indulgence, have been so belabored, as it were,
with the variety and the poignancy of the pleasurable sensations
that they have experienced, that they are at length fatigued out
of all capacity for sensation whatever. The disease of ennui is
more frequent in the French metropolis, where amusement is more
exclusively the occupation of higher classes, than it is in the
British metropolis, where the longings of the heart are more
diversified by the resources of business and politics. There are the
votaries of fashion, who, in this way, have at length become the
victims of fashionable excess; in whom the very multitude of their
enjoyments has at last extinguished their power of enjoyment; who,
with the gratifications of art and nature at command, now look upon
all that is around them with an eye of tastelessness; who, plied
with the delights of sense and of splendor even to weariness, and
incapable of higher delights, have come to the end of all their
perfection, and, like Solomon of old, found it to be vanity and
vexation. The man whose heart has thus been turned into a desert
can vouch for the insupportable languor which must ensue, when one
affection is thus plucked away from the bosom, without another
to replace it. It is not necessary that a man receive pain from
anything, in order to become miserable. It is barely enough that he
looks with distaste to everything, and in that asylum which is the
repository of minds out of joint, and where the organ of feeling
as well as the organ of intellect has been impaired, it is not in
the cell of loud and frantic outcries where you will meet with the
acme of mental suffering; but that is the individual who outpeers
in wretchedness all his fellows, who throughout the whole expanse
of nature and society meets not an object that has at all the power
to detain or to interest him; who neither in earth beneath, nor in
heaven above, knows of a single charm to which his heart can send
forth one desirous or responding movement; to whom the world, in
his eye a vast and empty desolation, has left him nothing but his
own consciousness to feed upon, dead to all that is without him,
and alive to nothing but to the load of his own torpid and useless
existence.
We know not a more sweeping interdict upon the affections of nature,
than that which is delivered by the apostle in the verse before
us. To bid a man into whom there is not yet entered the great
and ascendant influence of the principle of regeneration, to bid
him withdraw his love from all the things that are in the world,
is to bid him give up all the affections that are in his heart.
The world is the all of a natural man. He has not a taste, nor a
desire, that points not to a something placed within the confines
of its visible horizon. He loves nothing above it, and he cares for
nothing beyond it; and to bid him love not the world is to pass a
sentence of expulsion on all the inmates of his bosom. To estimate
the magnitude and the difficulty of such a surrender, let us only
think that it were just as arduous to prevail on him not to love
wealth, which is but one of the things in the world, as to prevail
on him to set wilful fire to his own property. This he might do
with sore and painful reluctance, if he saw that the salvation of
his life hung upon it. But this he would do willingly if he saw
that a new property of tenfold value was instantly to emerge from
the wreck of the old one. In this case there is something more than
the mere displacement of an affection. There is the overbearing of
one affection by another. But to desolate his heart of all love
for the things of the world without the substitution of any love
in its place, were to him a process of as unnatural violence as to
destroy all the things he has in the world, and give him nothing in
their room. So if to love not the world be indispensable to one's
Christianity, then the crucifixion of the old man is not too strong
a term to mark that transition in his history, when all old things
are done away, and all things are become new.
The love of the world can not be expunged by a mere demonstration
of the world's worthlessness. But may it not be supplanted by
the love of that which is more worthy than itself? The heart can
not be prevailed upon to part with the world, by a simple act of
resignation. But may not the heart be prevailed upon to admit into
its preference another, who shall subordinate the world, and bring
it down from its wonted ascendency? If the throne which is placed
there must have an occupier, and the tyrant that now reigns has
occupied it wrongfully, he may not leave a bosom which would rather
detain him than be left in desolation. But may he not give way to
the lawful Sovereign, appearing with every charm that can secure
His willing admittance, and taking unto Himself His great power to
subdue the moral nature of man, and to reign over it? In a word, if
the way to disengage the heart from the positive love of one great
and ascendant object is to fasten it in positive love to another,
then it is not by exposing the worthlessness of the former, but by
addressing to the mental eye the worth and excellence of the latter,
that all old things are to be done away, and all things are to
become new.
This, we trust, will explain the operation of that charm which
accompanies the effectual preaching of the gospel. The love of
God, and the love of the world, are two affections, not merely
in a state of rivalship, but in a state of enmity, and that so
irreconcilable that they can not dwell together in the same bosom.
We have already affirmed how impossible it were for the heart,
by any innate elasticity of its own, to cast the world away from
it, and thus reduce itself to a wilderness. The heart is not so
constituted, and the only way to dispossess it of an old affection
is by the expulsive power of a new one. Nothing can exceed the
magnitude of the required change in a man's character--when bidden,
as he is in the New Testament, to love not the world; no, nor any
of the things that are in the world--for this so comprehends all
that is dear to him in existence as to be equivalent to a command
of self-annihilation. But the same revelation which dictates so
mighty an obedience places within our reach as mighty an instrument
of obedience. It brings for admittance, to the very door of our
heart, an affection which, once seated upon its throne, will either
subordinate every previous inmate, or bid it away. Beside the world
it places before the eye of the mind Him who made the world, and
with this peculiarity, which is all its own--that in the gospel do
we so behold God as that we may love God. It is there, and there
only, where God stands revealed as an object of confidence to
sinners--and where our desire after Him is not chilled into apathy
by that barrier of human guilt which intercepts every approach
that is not made to Him through the appointed Mediator. It is the
bringing in of this better hope, whereby we draw nigh unto God--and
to live without hope is to live without God, and if the heart be
without God the world will then have all the ascendency. It is God
apprehended by the believer as God in Christ who alone can dispost
it from this ascendency. It is when He stands dismantled of the
terrors which belong to Him as an offended lawgiver, and when we
are enabled by faith, which is His own gift, to see His glory in
the face of Jesus Christ, and to hear His beseeching voice, as it
protests good-will to men, and entreats the return of all who will
to a full pardon, and a gracious acceptance--it is then that a love
paramount to the love of the world, and at length expulsive of it,
first arises in the regenerating bosom. It is when released from
the spirit of bondage, with which love can not dwell, and when
admitted into the number of God's children, through the faith that
is in Christ Jesus, the spirit of adoption is poured upon us--it
is then that the heart, brought under the mastery of one great and
predominant affection, is delivered from the tyranny of its former
desires, and in the only way in which deliverance is possible. And
that faith which is revealed to us from heaven, as indispensable to
a sinner's justification in the sight of God, is also the instrument
of the greatest of all moral and spiritual achievements on a
nature dead to the influence, and beyond the reach of every other
application.
Let us not cease then to ply the only instrument of powerful and
positive operation, to do away from you the love of the world. Let
us try every legitimate method of finding access to your hearts for
the love of Him who is greater than the world. For this purpose
let us, if possible, clear away that shroud of unbelief which so
hides and darkens the face of Deity. Let us insist on His claims to
your affection; and whether in the shape of gratitude, or in the
shape of esteem, let us never cease to affirm that in the whole of
that wondrous economy, the purpose of which is to reclaim a sinful
world unto Himself, He, the God of love, so sets Himself forth in
characters of endearment that naught but faith, and naught but
understanding are wanting, on your part, to call forth the love of
your hearts back again.
And here let me advert to the incredulity of a worldly man when
he brings his own sound and secular experience to bear upon the
high doctrines of Christianity, when he looks on regeneration as
a thing impossible, when, feeling, as he does, the obstinacies
of his own heart on the side of things present, and casting an
intelligent eye, much exercised perhaps in the observation of
human life, on the equal obstinacies of all who are around him, he
pronounces this whole matter about the crucifixion of the old man,
and the resurrection of a new man in his place, to be in downright
opposition to all that is known and witnessed of the real nature of
humanity. We think that we have seen such men, who, firmly trenched
in their own vigorous and home-bred sagacity, and shrewdly regardful
of all that passes before them through the week, and upon the
scenes of ordinary business, look on that transition of the heart
by which it gradually dies unto time, and awakens in all the life
of a new-felt and ever-growing desire toward God, as a mere Sabbath
speculation; and who thus, with all their attention engrossed upon
the concerns of earthliness, continue unmoved, to the end of their
days, among the feelings, and the appetites, and the pursuits of
earthliness. If the thought of death, and another state of being
after it, comes across them at all, it is not with a change so
radical as that of being born again that they ever connect the idea
of preparation. They have some vague conception of its being quite
enough that they acquit themselves in some decent and tolerable
way of their relative obligations; and that, upon the strength of
some such social and domestic moralities as are often realized by
him in whose heart the love of God has never entered, they will be
transplanted in safety from this world, where God is the Being with
whom, it may almost be said that, they have had nothing to do, to
that world where God is the Being with whom they will have mainly
and immediately to do throughout all eternity. They will admit all
that is said of the utter vanity of time, when taken up with as
a resting-place. But they resist every application made upon the
heart of man, with the view of so shifting its tendencies that it
shall not henceforth find in the interests of time all its rest
and all its refreshment. They, in fact, regard such an attempt as
an enterprise that is altogether aerial--and with a tone of secular
wisdom, caught from the familiarities of every day of experience,
do they see a visionary character in all that is said of setting
our affections on the things that are above; and of walking by
faith; and of keeping our hearts in such a love of God as shall shut
out from them the love of the world; and of having no confidence
in the flesh; and of so renouncing earthly things as to have our
conversation in heaven.
Now, it is altogether worthy of being remarked of those men who
thus disrelish spiritual Christianity, and, in fact, deem it an
impracticable acquirement, how much of a piece their incredulity
about the demands of Christianity, and their incredulity about the
doctrines of Christianity, are with one another. No wonder that they
feel the work of the New Testament to be beyond their strength, so
long as they hold the words of the New Testament to be beneath their
attention. Neither they nor anyone else can dispossess the heart
of an old affection, but by the impulsive power of a new one--and,
if that new affection be the love of God, neither they nor anyone
else can be made to entertain it, but on such a representation of
the Deity as shall draw the heart of the sinner toward Him. Now
it is just their belief which screens from the discernment of
their minds this representation. They do not see the love of God
in sending His Son into the world. They do not see the expression
of His tenderness to men, in sparing Him not, but giving Him up
unto the death for us all. They do not see the sufficiency of the
atonement, or of the sufferings that were endured by Him who bore
the burden that sinners should have borne. They do not see the
blended holiness and compassion of the Godhead, in that He passed
by the transgressions of His creatures, yet could not pass them by
without an expiation. It is a mystery to them how a man should pass
to the state of godliness from a state of nature--but had they only
a believing view of God manifest in the flesh, this would resolve
for them the whole mystery of godliness. As it is, they can not get
quit of their old affections, because they are out of sight from
all those truths which have influence to raise a new one. They are
like the children of Israel in the land of Egypt, when required to
make bricks without straw they cannot love God, while they want the
only food which can aliment this affection in a sinner's bosom--and
however great their errors may be, both in resisting the demands of
the gospel as impracticable, and in rejecting the doctrines of the
gospel as inadmissible, yet there is not a spiritual man (and it is
the prerogative of him who is spiritual to judge all men) who will
not perceive that there is a consistency in these errors.
But if there be a consistency in the errors, in like manner, is
there a consistency in the truths which are opposite to them? The
man who believes in the peculiar doctrines will readily bow to
the peculiar demands of Christianity. When he is told to love God
supremely, this may startle another, but it will not startle him
to whom God has been revealed in peace, and in pardon, and in all
the freeness of an offered reconciliation. When told to shut out
the world from his heart, this may be impossible with him who has
nothing to replace it--but not impossible with him who has found
in God a sure and satisfying portion. When told to withdraw his
affections from the things that are beneath, this were laying
an order of self-extinction upon the man, who knows not another
quarter in the whole sphere of his contemplation to which he could
transfer them, but it were not grievous to him whose view had been
opened to the loveliness and glory of the things that are above,
and can there find, for every feeling of his soul, a most ample and
delighted occupation. When told to look not to the things that are
seen and temporal, this were blotting out the light of all that is
visible from the prospect of him in whose eye there is a wall of
partition between guilty nature and the joys of eternity--but he who
believes that Christ has broken down this wall finds a gathering
radiance upon his soul, as he looks onward in faith to the things
that are unseen and eternal. Tell a man to be holy--and how can he
compass such a performance, when his fellowship with holiness is a
fellowship of despair? It is the atonement of the cross reconciling
the holiness of the lawgiver with the safety of the offender, that
hath opened the way for a sanctifying influence into the sinner's
heart, and he can take a kindred impression from the character of
God now brought nigh, and now at peace with him. Separate the demand
from the doctrine, and you have either a system of righteousness
that is impracticable, or a barren orthodoxy. Bring the demand and
the doctrine together, and the true disciple of Christ is able to
do the one, through the other strengthening him. The motive is
adequate to the movement; and the bidden obedience to the gospel is
not beyond the measure of his strength, just because the doctrine of
the gospel is not beyond the measure of his acceptance. The shield
of faith, and the hope of salvation, and the Word of God, and the
girdle of truth, these are the armor that he has put on; and with
these the battle is won, and the eminence is reached, and the man
stands on the vantage ground of a new field and a new prospect. The
effect is great, but the cause is equal to it, and stupendous as
this moral resurrection to the precepts of Christianity undoubtedly
is, there is an element of strength enough to give it being and
continuance in the principles of Christianity.
The object of the gospel is both to pacify the sinner's conscience
and to purify his heart; and it is of importance to observe, that
what mars the one of these objects mars the other also. The best
way of casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one; and
by the love of what is good to expel the love of what is evil. Thus
it is, that the freer gospel, the more sanctifying is the gospel;
and the more it is received as a doctrine of grace, the more will
it be felt as a doctrine according to godliness. This is one of the
secrets of the Christian life, that the more a man holds of God as
a pensioner, the greater is the payment of service that He renders
back again. On the venture of "Do this and live," a spirit of
fearfulness is sure to enter; and the jealousies of a legal bargain
chase away all confidence from the intercourse between God and man;
and the creature striving to be square and even with his creator
is, in fact, pursuing all the while his own selfishness instead
of God's glory; and with all the conformities which he labors to
accomplish, the soul of obedience is not there, the mind is not
subject to the law of God, nor indeed under such an economy ever can
be. It is only when, as in the gospel, acceptance is bestowed as a
present, without money and without price, that the security which
man feels in God is placed beyond the reach of disturbance, or that
he can repose in Him as one friend reposes in another; or that any
liberal and generous understanding can be established betwixt them,
the one party rejoicing over the other to do him good, the other
finding that the truest gladness of his heart lies in the impulse
of a gratitude by which it is awakened to the charms of a new moral
existence. Salvation by grace--salvation by free grace--salvation
not of works, but according to the mercy of God, salvation on such a
footing is not more indispensable to the deliverance of our persons
from the hand of justice than it is to the deliverance of our hearts
from the chill and the weight of ungodliness. Retain a single shred
or fragment of legality with the gospel, and you raise a topic of
distrust between man and God. You take away from the power of the
gospel to melt and to conciliate. For this purpose the freer it is
the better it is. That very peculiarity which so many dread as the
germ of Antinomianism, is, in fact, the germ of a new spirit and a
new inclination against it. Along with the lights of a free gospel
does there enter the love of the gospel, which, in proportion as you
impair the freeness, you are sure to chase away. And never does the
sinner find within himself so mighty a moral transformation as when,
under the belief that he is saved by grace, he feels constrained
thereby to offer his heart a devoted thing, and to deny ungodliness.