unmeek aspect, to disqualify the soul for a full and fair audience
of its Maker's word. The points of the faith we have been called
on to defend, or which are reputable with our party, assume, in
our esteem, an importance disproportionate to their importance
in the Word, which we come to relish chiefly when it goes to
sustain them, and the Bible is hunted for arguments and texts
of controversy, which are treasured up for future service. The
solemn stillness which the soul should hold before his Maker, so
favorable to meditation and rapt communion with the throne of God,
is destroyed at every turn by suggestions of what is orthodox and
evangelical--where all is orthodox and evangelical; the spirit of
such readers becomes lean, being fed with abstract truths and formal
propositions; their temper uncongenial, being ever disturbed with
controversial suggestions; their prayers undevout recitals of their
opinions; their discourse technical announcements of their faith.
Intellect, old intellect, hath the sway over heavenward devotion
and holy fervor. Man, contentious man, hath the attention which the
unsearchable God should undivided have; and the fine, full harmony
of heaven's melodious voice, which, heard apart, were sufficient
to lap the soul in ecstasies unspeakable, is jarred and interfered
with, and the heavenly spell is broken by the recurring conceits,
sophisms, and passions of men. Now truly an utter degradation it is
of the Godhead to have His word in league with that of man, or any
council of men. What matter to me whether the Pope, or any work of
any mind, be exalted to the quality of God? If any helps are to be
imposed for the understanding, or safeguarding, or sustaining of
the word, why not the help of statues and pictures of my devotions?
Therefore, while the warm fancies of the Southerns have given their
idolatry to the ideal forms of noble art, let us Northerns beware we
give not our idolatry to the cold and coarse abstractions of human
intellect.
For the preoccupations of worldly minds, they are not to be reckoned
up, being manifold as their favorite passions and pursuits. One
thing only can be said, that before coming to the oracles of God
they are not preoccupied with the expectation and fear of Him. No
chord in their heart is in unison with things unseen; no moments are
set apart for religious thought and meditation; no anticipations
of the honored interview; no prayer of preparation like that of
Daniel before Gabriel was sent to teach him; no devoutness like
that of Cornelius before the celestial visitation; no fastings like
that of Peter before the revelation of the glory of the Gentiles!
Now to minds which are not attuned to holiness, the words of God
find no entrance, striking heavy on the ear, seldom making way
to the understanding, almost never to the heart. To spirits hot
with conversation, perhaps heady with argument, uncomposed by
solemn thought, but ruffled and in uproar from the concourse of
worldly interests, the sacred page may be spread out, but its
accents are drowned in the noise which hath not yet subsided in
the breast. All the awe, and pathos, and awakened consciousness
of a Divine approach, imprest upon the ancients by the procession
of solemnities, is to worldly men without a substitute. They have
not yet solicited themselves to be in readiness. In a usual mood
and vulgar frame they come to God's word as to other compositions,
reading it without any active imaginations about Him who speaks;
feeling no awe of a sovereign Lord, nor care of a tender Father,
nor devotion to a merciful Savior. Nowise deprest themselves out
of their wonted dependence, nor humiliated before the King of
Kings--no prostrations of the soul, nor falling at His feet as
dead--no exclamation, as of Isaiah, "Wo is me, for I am of unclean
lips!"--no request "Send me"--nor fervent ejaculation of welcome, as
of Samuel, "Lord, speak, for Thy servant heareth!" Truly they feel
toward His word much as to the word of an equal. No wonder it shall
fail of happy influence upon the spirits which have, as it were, on
purpose, disqualified themselves for its benefits by removing from
the regions of thought and feeling which it accords with, into other
regions, which it is of too severe dignity to affect, otherwise
than with stern menace and direful foreboding! If they would have
it bless them and do them good, they must change their manner of
approaching it, and endeavor to bring themselves into that prepared,
and collected, and reverential frame which becomes an interview with
the High and Holy One who inhabiteth the praises of eternity.
Having thus spoken without equivocation, and we hope without
offense, to the contradictoriness and preoccupation with which
Christians and worldly men are apt to come to the perusal of the
Word of God, we shall now set forth the two master-feelings under
which we shall address ourselves to the sacred occupation.
It is a good custom, inherited from the hallowed days of Scottish
piety, and in our cottages still preserved, tho in our cities
generally given up, to preface the morning and evening worship of
the family with a short invocation of blessing from the Lord. This
is in unison with the practise and recommendation of pious men,
never to open the Divine Word without a silent invocation of the
Divine Spirit. But no address to heaven is of any virtue, save as
it is the expression of certain pious sentiments with which the
mind is full and overflowing. Of those sentiments which befit the
mind that comes into conference with its Maker, the first and most
prominent should be gratitude for His ever having condescended to
hold commerce with such wretched and fallen creatures. Gratitude
not only expressing itself in proper terms, but possessing the mind
with one abiding and over-mastering mood, under which it shall sit
imprest the whole duration of the interview. Such an emotion as
can not utter itself in language--tho by language it indicates its
presence--but keeps us in a devout and adoring frame, while the Lord
is uttering His voice.
Go visit a desolate widow with consolation, and help, and fatherhood
of her orphan children--do it again and again--and your presence,
the sound of your approaching footstep, the soft utterance of
your voice, the very mention of your name, shall come to dilate
her heart with a fulness which defies her tongue to utter, but
speaking by the tokens of a swimming eye, and clasped hands, and
fervent ejaculations to heaven upon your head! No less copious
acknowledgment of God, the author of our well-being, and the Father
of our better hopes, ought we to feel when His Word discloseth to
us the excess of His love. Tho a veil be now cast over the Majesty
which speaks, it is the voice of the Eternal which we hear, coming
in soft cadences to win our favor, yet omnipotent as the voice of
the thunder, and overpowering as the rushing of many waters. And tho
the evil of the future intervene between our hand and the promised
goods, still are they from His lips who speaks, and it is done,
who commands, and all things stand fast. With no less emotion,
therefore, should this book be opened, than if, like him in the
Apocalypse, you saw the voice which spake; or, like him in the
trance, you were into the third heaven translated, companying and
communing with the realities of glory which the eye hath not seen,
nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived.
Far and foreign from such an opened and awakened bosom is that cold
and formal hand which is generally laid upon the sacred volume;
that unfeeling and unimpressive tone with which its accents are
pronounced; and that listless and incurious ear into which its
blessed sounds are received. How can you, thus unimpassioned,
hold communion with themes in which everything awful, vital, and
endearing meet together? Why is not curiosity, curiosity ever
hungry, on edge to know the doings and intentions of Jehovah, King
of Kings? Why is not interest, interest ever awake, on tip-toe
to hear the future destiny of itself? Why is not the heart, that
panteth over the world after love and friendship, overpowered with
the full tide of the divine acts and expressions of love? Where is
nature gone when she is not moved with the tender mercy of Christ?
Methinks the affections of men are fallen into the yellow leaf. Of
the poets which charm the world's ear, who is he that inditeth a
song unto his God? Some will tune their harps to sensual pleasure,
and by the enchantment of their genius well-nigh commend their
unholy themes to the imagination of saints. Others, to the high
and noble sentiments of the heart, will sing of domestic joys and
happy unions, casting around sorrow the radiancy of virtue, and
bodying forth, in undying forms, the short-lived visions of joy!
Others have enrolled themselves the high-priests of mute nature's
charms, enchanting her echoes with their minstrelsy, and peopling
her solitudes with the bright creatures of their fancy. But when,
since the days of the blind master of English song, hath any poured
forth a lay worthy of the Christian theme? Nor in philosophy, "the
palace of the soul," have men been more mindful of their Maker.
The flowers of the garden and the herbs of the field have their
unwearied devotees, crossing the ocean, wayfaring in the desert, and
making devout pilgrimages to every region of nature for offerings
to their patron muse. The rocks, from their residences among the
clouds to their deep rests in the dark bowels of the earth, have
a bold and most venturous priesthood, who see in their rough and
flinty faces a more delectable image to adore than in the revealed
countenance of God. And the political warfare of the world is a very
Moloch, who can at any time command his hecatomb of human victims.
But the revealed suspense of God, to which the harp of David, and
the prophetic lyre of Isaiah were strung, the prudence of God, which
the wisest of men coveted after, preferring it to every gift which
heaven could confer, and the eternal intelligence Himself in human
form, and the unction of the Holy One which abideth--these the
common heart of man hath forsaken, and refused to be charmed withal.
I testify, that there ascendeth not from earth a hosanna of her
children to bear witness in the ear of the upper regions to the
wonderful manifestations of her God! From a few scattered hamlets
in a small portion of her territory a small voice ascendeth, like
the voice of one crying in the wilderness. But to the service of our
general Preserver there is no concourse, from Dan unto Beersheba,
of our people, the greater part of whom, after two thousand years
of apostolic commission, have not the testimonials of our God; and
the multitude of those who disrespect or despise them!
But, to return from this lamentation, which may God hear, who
doth not disregard the cries of His afflicted people! With the
full sense of obligation to the giver, combine a humble sense of
your own incapacity to value and to use the gift of His oracles.
Having no taste whatever for the mean estimates which are made,
and the coarse invectives that are vented, against human nature,
which, tho true in the main, are often in the manner so unfeeling
and triumphant, as to reveal hot zeal rather than tender and deep
sorrow, we will not give in to this popular strain. And yet it is a
truth by experience, revealed, that tho there be in man most noble
faculties, and a nature restless after the knowledge and truth of
things, there are toward God and His revealed will an indisposition
and a regardlessness, which the most tender and enlightened
consciences are the most ready to acknowledge. Of our emancipated
youth, who, bound after the knowledge of the visible works of God,
and the gratification of the various instincts of nature, how few
betake themselves at all, how few absorb themselves with the study
and obedience of the Word of God! And when, by God's visitation, we
address ourselves to the task, how slow is our progress and how
imperfect our performance! It is most true that nature is unwilling
to the subject of the Scriptures. The soul is previously possest
with adverse interests; the world hath laid an embargo on her
faculties, and monopolized them to herself; old habit hath perhaps
added to his almost incurable callousness; and the enemy of God and
man is skilful to defend what he hath already won. So circumstanced,
and every man is so circumstanced, we come to the audience of
the Word of God, and listen in the worse tune than a wanton to a
sermon, or a hardened knave to a judicial address. Our understanding
is prepossest with a thousand idols of the world--religious or
irreligious--which corrupt the reading of the Word into a straining
of the text to their service, and when it will not strain, cause it
to be skimmed, and perhaps despised or hated. Such a thing as a free
and unlimited reception of all parts of the Scripture into the mind,
is a thing most rare to be met with, and when met with will be found
the result of many a sore submission of nature's opinions as well as
of nature's likings.
But the Word, as hath been said, is not for the intellect alone,
but for the heart, and for the will. Now if any one be so wedded
to his own candor as to think he doth accept the divine truth
unabated, surely no one will flatter himself into the belief that
his heart is attuned and enlarged for all divine commandments.
The man who thus misdeems of himself must, if his opinions were
just, be like a sheet of fair paper, unblotted and unwritten on;
whereas all men are already occupied, to the very fulness, with
other opinions and attachments and desires than the Word reveals.
We do not grow Christians by the same culture by which we grow men,
otherwise what need of divine revelation, and divine assistance?
But being unacquainted from the womb with God, and attached to what
is seen and felt, through early and close acquaintance, we are
ignorant and detached from what is unseen and unfelt. The Word is
a novelty to our nature, its truths fresh truths, its affections
fresh affections, its obedience gathered from the apprehension
of nature and the commerce of the worldly life. Therefore there
needeth, in one that would be served from this storehouse opened
by heaven, a disrelish of his old acquisitions, and a preference
of the new, a simple, child-like teachableness, an allowance of
ignorance and error, with whatever else beseems an anxious learner.
Coming to the Word of God, we are like children brought into the
conversations of experienced men; and we should humbly listen and
reverently inquire; or we are like raw rustics introduced into high
and polished life, and we should unlearn our coarseness, and copy
the habits of the station; nay we are like offenders caught, and
for the moment committed to the bosom of honorable society, with
the power of regaining our lost condition and inheriting honor and
trust--therefore we should walk softly and tenderly, covering our
former reproach with modesty and humbleness, hasting to redeem our
reputation by distinguished performances, against offense doubly
guarded, doubly watchful for dangerous and extreme positions to
demonstrate our recovered goodness.
These two sentiments--devout veneration of God for His unspeakable
gift, and deep distrust of our capacity to estimate and use it
aright--will generate in the mind a constant aspiration after the
guidance and instruction of a higher power; the first sentiment of
goodness remembered, emboldening us to draw near to Him who first
drew near to us, and who with Christ will not refuse us any gift;
the second sentiment, of weakness remembered, teaching us our need,
and prompting us by every interest of religion and every feeling of
helplessness to seek of Him who hath said, "If any one lack wisdom
let him ask God, who giveth liberally and upbraideth not." The soul
which under these two master-feelings cometh to read, shall not
read without profit. Every new revelation, feeding his gratitude
and nourishing his former ignorance, will confirm the emotions he
is under, and carry them onward to an unlimited dimension. Such
a one will prosper in the way; enlargement of the inner man will
be his portion and the establishment in the truth his exceeding
great reward. "In the strength of the Lord shall his right hand get
victory--even in the name of the Lord of Hosts. His soul shall also
flourish with the fruits of righteousness from the seed of the word,
which liveth and abideth forever."
Thus delivered from prepossessions of all other masters, and arrayed
in the raiment of humility and love, the soul should advance to the
meeting of her God; and she should call a muster of her faculties
and have all her poor grace in attendance, and anything she knows
of His excellent works and exalted ways she should summon up to
her remembrance; her understanding she should quicken, her memory
refresh, her imagination stimulate, her affections cherish, and her
conscience arouse. All that is within her should be stirred up, her
whole glory should awake and her whole beauty display itself for the
meeting of her King. As His hand-maiden she should meet Him; His own
handiwork, tho sore defaced, yet seeking restoration; His humble,
because offending, servant--yet nothing slavish, tho humble--nothing
superstitious, tho devout--nothing tame, tho modest in her demeanor;
but quick and ready, all addrest and wound up for her Maker's will.
How different the ordinary proceeding of Christians, who, with
timorous, mistrustful spirits, with an abeyance of intellect, and a
dwarfish reduction of their natural powers, enter to the conference
of the Word of God! The natural powers of man are to be mistrusted,
doubtless, as the willing instruments of the evil one; but they
must be honored also as the necessary instruments of the Spirit of
God, whose operation is a dream, if it be not through knowledge,
intellect, conscience, and action. Now Christians, heedless of the
grand resurrection of the mighty instruments of thought and action,
at the same time coveting hard after holy attainment, do often
resign the mastery of themselves, and are taken into the counsel
of the religious world--whirling around the eddy of some popular
leader--and so drifted, I will not say from godliness, but drifted
certainly from that noble, manly and independent course, which,
under steerage of the Word of God, they might safely have pursued
for the precious interests of their immortal souls. Meanwhile these
popular leaders, finding no necessity for strenuous endeavors
and high science in the ways of God, but having a gathering host
to follow them, deviate from the ways of deep and penetrating
thought--refuse the contest with the literary and accomplished
enemies of the faith--bring a contempt upon the cause in which
mighty men did formerly gird themselves to the combat--and so cast
the stumbling-block of a mistaken paltryness between enlightened
men and the cross of Christ! So far from this simple-mindedness (but
its proper name is feeble-mindedness), Christians should be--as
aforetime in this island they were wont to be--the princes of human
intellect, the lights of the world, the salt of the political and
social state. Till they come forth from the swaddling-bands, in
which foreign schools have girt them, and walk boldly upon the
high places of human understanding, they shall never obtain that
influence in the upper regions of knowledge and power, of which,
unfortunately, they have not the apostolic unction to be in quest.
They will never be the master and commanding spirit of the time,
until they cast off the wrinkled and withered skin of an obsolete
old age, and clothe themselves with intelligence as with a garment,
and bring forth the fruits of power and love and of a sound mind.
Mistake us not, for we steer in a narrow, very narrow channel, with
rocks of popular prejudice on every side. While we thus invocate
to the reading of the Word, the highest strains of the human soul,
mistake us not as derogating from the office of the Spirit of God.
Far be it from any Christian, much further from any Christian
pastor, to withdraw from God the honor which is everywhere His due;
but there most of all His due where the human mind labored alone
for thousands of years, and labored with no success--viz., the
regeneration of itself, and its restoration to the last semblance
of the divinity! Oh! let him be reverently inquired after,
devoutly meditated on, and most thankfully acknowledged in every
step of progress from the soul's fresh awakening out of her dark,
oblivious sleep--even to her ultimate attainment upon earth and
full accomplishment for heaven. And there may be a fuller choir
of awakened men to advance His honor and glory here on earth, and
hereafter in heaven above; let the saints bestir themselves like
angels and the ministers of religion like archangels strong! And
now at length let us have a demonstration made of all that is
noble in thought, and generous in action, and devoted in piety,
for bestirring this lethargy, and breaking the bonds of hell, and
redeeming the whole world to the service of its God and King!
ARNOLD
ALIVE IN GOD
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Thomas Arnold, schoolmaster and preacher, was born at West Cowes,
Isle of Wight, in 1795. He was educated at Oxford, and after his
graduation taught as fellow of Oriel College, until in 1820 he
removed to Laleham near Haines and took pupils to prepare for the
universities. In 1827 he was elected to the head mastership of
Rugby, and took priest's orders before entering upon his duties.
At Rugby he remained till his death in 1842. His great work as an
educator consisted in teaching boys the duty of self-government,
self-control and freedom of intellectual judgement. His sermons in
the school chapel were distinguished by simplicity and profound
moral and religious earnestness.
ARNOLD
1795-1842
ALIVE IN GOD
_God is not the God of the dead, but of the living._--Matt. xxii.,
32.
We hear these words as a part of our Lord's answer to the Sadducees;
and as their question was put in evident profaneness, and the answer
to it is one which to our minds is quite obvious and natural, so we
are apt to think that in this particular story there is less than
usual that particularly concerns us. But it so happens that our Lord
in answering the Sadducees has brought in one of the most universal
and most solemn of all truths,--which is indeed implied in many
parts of the Old Testament, but which the Gospel has revealed to us
in all its fulness,--the truth contained in the words of the text,
that "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."
I would wish to unfold a little what is contained in these words
which we often hear, even, perhaps, without quite understanding
them, and many times oftener without fully entering into them. And
we may take them, without fully entering into them. And we may take
them, first, in their first part, where they say that "God is not
the God of the dead."
The word "dead," we know, is constantly used in Scripture in a
double sense, as meaning those who are dead spiritually as well as
those who are dead naturally. And in either sense the words are
alike applicable: "God is not the God of the dead."
God's not being the God of the dead signifies two things: that they
who are without Him are dead, as well as that they who are dead are
also without Him. So far as our knowledge goes respecting inferior
animals they appear to be examples of this truth. They appear to
us to have no knowledge of God; and we are not told that they have
any other life than the short one of which our senses inform us.
I am well aware that our ignorance of their condition is so great
that we may not dare to say anything of them positively; there may
be a hundred things true respecting them which we neither know nor
imagine. I would only say that according to that most imperfect
light in which we see them the two points of which I have been
speaking appear to meet in them: we believe that they have no
consciousness of God, and we believe that they will die. And so far,
therefore, they afford an example of the agreement, if I may so
speak, between these two points; and were intended, perhaps, to be
to our view a continual image of it. But we had far better speak of
ourselves. And here, too, it is the case that "God is not the God of
the dead." If we are without Him we are dead, and if we are dead we
are without Him; in other words, the two ideas of death and absence
from God are in fact synonymous.
Thus, in the account given of the fall of man, the sentence of death
and of being cast out of Eden go together; and if any one compares
the description of the second Eden in the Revelation, and recollects
how especially it is there said that God dwells in the midst of it,
and is its light by day and night, he will see that the banishment
from the first Eden means a banishment from the presence of God.
And thus, in the day that Adam sinned he died; for he was cast out
of Eden immediately, however long he may have moved about afterward
upon the earth where God was not. And how very strong to the same
point are the words of Hezekiah's prayer, "The grave cannot praise
Thee, Death cannot celebrate Thee; they that go down into the pit
cannot hope for Thy truth"; words which express completely the
feeling that God is not the God of the dead. This, too, appears to
be the sense generally of the expression used in various parts of
the Old Testament, "Thou shalt surely die."
It is, no doubt, left purposely obscure; nor are we ever told in
so many words all that is meant by death; but, surely, it always
implies a separation from God, and the being--whatever the notion
may extend to--the being dead to Him.