who asks: I will ask at some future time." To "ask" for the Holy Spirit
implies some already existing desire that He would enter the mind and
convince of sin, and convert to God. It implies some _craving_, some
_yearning_, for Divine influences; and this implies some measure of such
influence already bestowed. Man asks for the Holy Spirit, only as he is
moved by the Holy Spirit. The Divine is ever prevenient to the human.
Suppose now, that a man resists these influences when they are _already_
at work within him, and says: "I will seek them at a more convenient
season." Think you, that when that convenient season comes round,--when
life is waning, and the world is receding, and the eternal gulf is
yawning,--think you that that man who has already resisted grace can make
his own heart to yearn for it, and his soul to crave it? Do men at such
times find that sincere desires, and longings, and aspirations, come at
their beck? Can a man say, with any prospect of success: "I will now
quench out this seriousness which the Spirit of God has produced in my
mind, and will bring it up again ten years hence. I will stifle this
drawing of the Eternal Father of my soul which I now feel at the roots of
my being, and it shall re-appear at a future day."
No! While it is true that any one who "asks," who really _wants_ a
spiritual blessing, will obtain it, it is equally true that a man may
have no heart to ask,--may have no desire, no yearning, no aspiration at
all, and be unable to produce one. In this case there is no promise.
Whosoever _thirsts_, and _only_ he who thirsts, can obtain the water of
life. Cherish, therefore, the faintest influences and operations of the
Comforter. If He enlightens your conscience so that it reproaches you for
sin, seek to have the work go on. Never resist any such convictions, and
never attempt to stifle them. If the Holy Spirit urges you to confession
of sin before God, yield _instantaneously_ to His urging, and pour
out your soul before the All-Merciful. And when He says, "Behold the Lamb
of God," look where He points, and be at peace and at rest. The secret of
all spiritual success is an immediate and uniform submission to the
influences of the Holy Ghost.
[Footnote 1: [Greek: _Anto, kath anto, meth anton, monoeides_.]--PLATO:
Convivium, p. 247, Ed. Bipont.]
[Footnote 2: Guyon: translated by Cowper. is expressed by VAUGHAN in
Works III. 85.--A similar thought "The Eclipse."
"Thy anger I could kiss, and will;
But O Thy grief, Thy grief doth kill."]
[Footnote 3: The sin against the Holy Ghost is unpardonable, not because
there is a grade of guilt in it too scarlet to be washed white by
Christ's blood of atonement but, because it implies a total quenching of
that operation of the third Person of the Trinity which is the only power
adequate to the extirpation of sin from the human soul. The sin against
the Holy Ghost is tantamount, therefore, to _everlasting_ sin. And it is
noteworthy, that in Mark iii. 29 the reading [Greek: _amartaemartos_],
instead of [Greek: kriseos], is supported by a majority of the
oldest manuscripts and versions, and is adopted by Lachmann,
Tischendorf, and Tregelles. "He that shall blaspheme against the Holy
Ghost.... is in danger of eternal _sin_."]
THE IMPOTENCE OF THE LAW.
HEBREWS vii. 19.--"For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in
of a better hope did; by the which we draw nigh to God."
It is the aim of the Epistle to the Hebrews, to teach the insufficiency
of the Jewish Dispensation to save the human race from the wrath of God
and the power of sin, and the all-sufficiency of the Gospel Dispensation
to do this. Hence, the writer of this Epistle endeavors with special
effort to make the Hebrews feel the weakness of their old and much
esteemed religion, and to show them that the only benefit which God
intended by its establishment was, to point men to the perfect and final
religion of the Gospel. This he does, by examining the parts of the Old
Economy. In the first place, the _sacrifices_ under the Mosaic law were
not designed to extinguish the sense of guilt,--"for it is not possible
that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin,"--but were
intended merely to awaken the sense of guilt, and thereby to lead the Jew
to look to that mercy of God which at a future day was to be exhibited in
the sacrifice of his eternal Son. The Jewish _priesthood_, again,
standing between the sinner and God, were not able to avert the Divine
displeasure,--for as sinners they were themselves exposed to it. They
could only typify, and direct the guilty to, the great High Priest, the
Messiah, whom God's mercy would send in the fulness of time. Lastly, the
moral _law_, proclaimed amidst the thunderings and lightnings of Sinai,
had no power to secure obedience, but only a fearful power to produce the
consciousness of disobedience, and of exposure to a death far more awful
than that threatened against the man who should touch the burning
mountain.
It was, thus, the design of God, by this legal and preparatory
dispensation, to disclose to man his ruined and helpless condition, and
his need of looking to Him for everything that pertains to redemption.
And he did it, by so arranging the dispensation that the Jew might, as it
were, make the trial and see if he could be his own Redeemer. He
instituted a long and burdensome round of observances, by means of which
the Jew might, if possible, extinguish the remorse of his conscience, and
produce the peace of God in his soul. God seems by the sacrifices under
the law, and the many and costly offerings which the Jew was commanded to
bring into the temple of the Lord, to have virtually said to him: "Thou
art guilty, and My wrath righteously abides within thy conscience,--yet,
do what thou canst to free thyself from it; free thyself from it if thou
canst; bring an offering and come before Me. But when thou hast found
that thy conscience still remains perturbed and unpacified, and thy heart
still continues corrupt and sinful, then look away from thy agency and
thy offering, to My clemency and My offering,--trust not in these finite
sacrifices of the lamb and the goat, but let them merely remind thee of
the infinite sacrifice which in the fulness of time I will provide for
the sin of the world,--and thy peace shall be as a river, and thy
righteousness as the waves of the sea."
But the proud and legal spirit of the Jew blinded him, and he did not
perceive the true meaning and intent of his national religion. He made it
an end, instead of a mere means to an end. Hence, it became a mechanical
round of observances, kept up by custom, and eventually lost the power,
which it had in the earlier and better ages of the Jewish commonwealth,
of awakening the feeling of guilt and the sense of the need of a
Redeemer. Thus, in the days of our Saviour's appearance upon the earth,
the chosen guardians of this religion, which was intended to make men
humble, and feel their personal ill-desert and need of mercy, had become
self-satisfied and self-righteous. A religion designed to prompt the
utterance of the greatest of its prophets: "Woe is me! I am a man of
unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips," now
prompted the utterance of the Pharisee: "I thank Thee that I am not as
other men are."
The Jew, in the times of our Saviour and his Apostles, had thus entirely
mistaken the nature and purpose of the Old dispensation, and hence was
the most bitter opponent of the New. He rested in the formal and
ceremonial sacrifice of bulls and goats, and therefore counted the blood
of the Son of God an unholy thing. He thought to appear before Him in
whose sight the heavens are not clean, clothed in his own righteousness,
and hence despised the righteousness of Christ. In reality, he appealed
to the justice of God, and therefore rejected the religion of mercy.
But, this spirit is not confined to the Jew. It pervades the human race.
Man is naturally a legalist. He desires to be justified by his own
character and his own works, and reluctates at the thought of being
accepted upon the ground of another's merits. This Judaistic spirit is
seen wherever there is none of the publican's feeling when he said, "God
be merciful to me a sinner." All confidence in personal virtue, all
appeals to civil integrity, all attendance upon the ordinances of the
Christian religion without the exercise of the Christian's penitence and
faith, is, in reality; an exhibition of that same legal unevangelic
spirit which in its extreme form inflated the Pharisee, and led him to
tithe mint anise and cummin. Man's so general rejection of the Son of God
as suffering the just for the unjust, as the manifestation of the Divine
clemency towards a criminal, is a sign either that he is insensible of
his guilt, or else that being somewhat conscious of it he thinks to
cancel it himself.
Still, think and act as men may, the method of God in the Gospel is the
only method. Other foundation can no man lay than is laid. For it rests
upon stubborn facts, and inexorable principles. _God_ knows that however
anxiously a transgressor may strive to pacify his conscience, and prepare
it for the judgment-day, its deep remorse can be removed only by the
blood of incarnate Deity; that however sedulously he may attempt to obey
the law, he will utterly fail, unless he is inwardly renewed and
strengthened by the Holy Ghost. _He_ knows that mere bare law can make no
sinner perfect again, but that only the bringing in of a "better hope"
can,--a hope by the which we draw nigh to God.
The text leads us to inquire: _Why cannot the moral law make fallen man
perfect_? Or, in other words: _Why cannot the ten commandments save a
sinner_?
That we may answer this question, we must first understand what is meant
by a perfect man. It is one in whom there is no defect or fault of any
kind,--one, therefore, who has no perturbation in his conscience, and no
sin in his heart. It is a man who is entirely at peace with himself, and
with God, and whose affections are in perfect conformity with the Divine
law.
But fallen man, man as we find him universally, is characterized by both
a remorseful conscience and an evil heart. His conscience distresses him,
not indeed uniformly and constantly but, in the great emergencies of his
life,--in the hour of sickness, danger, death,--and his heart is selfish
and corrupt continually. He lacks perfection, therefore, in two
particulars; first, in respect to acquittal at the bar of justice, and
secondly, in respect to inward purity. That, therefore, which proposes to
make him perfect again, must quiet the sense of guilt upon valid grounds,
and must produce a holy character. If the method fails in either of these
two respects, it fails altogether in making a perfect man.
But how can the moral law, or the ceremonial law, or both united, produce
within the human soul the cheerful, liberating, sense of acquittal, and
reconciliation with God's justice? Why, the very function and office-work
of law, in all its forms, is to condemn and terrify the transgressor; how
then can it calm and soothe him? Or, is there anything in the performance
of duty,--in the act of obeying law,--that is adapted to produce this
result, by taking away guilt? Suppose that a murderer could and should
perform a perfectly holy act, would it be any relief to his anguished
conscience, if he should offer it as an oblation to Eternal Justice for
the sin that is past? if he should plead it as an offset for having
killed a man? When we ourselves review the past, and see that we have not
kept the law up to the present point in our lives, is the gnawing of the
worm to be stopped, by resolving to keep it, and actually keeping it from
this point? Can such a use of the law as this is,--can the performance of
good works, imaginary or real ones, imperfect or perfect ones,--discharge
the office of an _atonement_, and so make us perfect in the forum of
conscience, and fill us with a deep and lasting sense of reconciliation
with the offended majesty and justice of God? Plainly not. For there is
nothing compensatory, nothing cancelling, nothing of the nature of a
satisfaction of justice, in the best obedience that was ever rendered to
moral law, by saint, angel, or seraph. _Because the creature owes the
whole_. He is obligated from the very first instant of his existence,
onward and evermore, to love God supremely, and to obey him perfectly in
every act and element of his being. Therefore, the perfectly obedient
saint, angel, and seraph must each say: "I am an unprofitable servant, I
have done only that which it was my duty to do; I can make no amends for
past failures; I can do no work that is meritorious and atoning."
Obedience to law, then, by a creature, and still less by a sinner, can
never atone for the sins that are past; can never make the guilty perfect
"in things pertaining to conscience." And if a man, in this indirect and
roundabout manner, neglects the provisions of the gospel, neglects the
oblation of Jesus Christ, and betakes himself to the discharge of his own
duty as a substitute therefor, he only finds that the flame burns hotter,
and the fang of the worm is sharper. If he looks to the moral law in any
form, and by any method, that he may get quit of his remorse and his
fears of judgment, the feeling of unreconciliation with justice, and the
fearful looking-for of judgment is only made more vivid and deep. Whoever
attempts the discharge of duties _for the purpose of atoning for his
sins_ takes a direct method of increasing the pains and perturbations
which he seeks to remove. The more he thinks of law, and the more he
endeavors to obey it for the purpose of purchasing the pardon of past
transgression, the more wretched does he become. Look into the lacerated
conscience of Martin Luther before he found the Cross, examine the
anxiety and gloom of Chalmers before he saw the Lamb of God, for proof
that this is so. These men, at first, were most earnest in their use of
the law in order to re-instate themselves in right relations with God's
justice. But the more they toiled in this direction, the less they
succeeded. Burning with inward anguish, and with God's arrows sticking
fast in him, shall the transgressor get relief from the attribute of
Divine justice, and the qualities of law? Shall the ten commandments of
Sinai, in any of their forms or uses, send a cooling and calming virtue
through the hot conscience? With these kindling flashes in his
guilt-stricken spirit, shall he run into the very identical fire that
kindled them? Shall he try to quench them in that "Tophet which is ordained
of old; which is made deep and large; the pile of which is fire and much
wood, and the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone doth kindle
it?" And yet such is, in reality, the attempt of every man who, upon
being convicted in his conscience of guilt before God, endeavors to
attain peace by resolutions to alter his course of conduct, and strenuous
endeavors to obey the commands of God,--in short by relying upon the law
in any form, as a means of reconciliation. Such is the suicidal effort
of every man who substitutes the law for the gospel, and expects to
produce within himself the everlasting peace of God, by anything short of
the atonement of God.
Let us fix it, then, as a fact, that the feeling of culpability and
unreconciliation can never be removed, so long as we do not look entirely
away from our own character and works to the mere pure mercy of God in
the blood of Christ. The transgressor can never atone for crime by
anything that he can suffer, or anything that he can do. He can never
establish a ground of justification, a reason why he should be forgiven,
by his tears, or his prayers, or his acts. Neither the law, nor his
attempts to obey the law, can re-instate him in his original relations to
justice, and make him perfect again in respect to his conscience. The ten
commandments can never silence his inward misgivings, and his moral
fears; for they are given for the very purpose of producing misgivings,
and causing fears. "The law worketh wrath." And if this truth and
fact be clearly perceived, and boldly acknowledged to his own mind, it
will cut him off from all these legal devices and attempts, and will shut
him up to the Divine mercy and the Divine promise in Christ, where alone
he is safe.
We have thus seen that one of the two things necessary in order that
apostate man may become perfect again,--viz., the pacification of his
conscience,--cannot be obtained in and by the law, in any of its forms or
uses. Let us now examine the other thing necessary in order to human
perfection, and see what the law can do towards it.
The other requisite, in order that fallen man may become perfect again,
is a holy heart and will. Can the moral law originate this? That we may
rightly answer the question, let us remember that a holy will is one that
keeps the law of God spontaneously and that a perfect heart is one that
sends forth holy affections and pure thoughts as naturally as the sinful
heart sends forth unholy affections and impure thoughts. A holy will,
like an evil will, is a wonderful and wonderfully fertile power. It does
not consist in an ability to make a few or many separate resolutions of
obedience to the divine law, but in being itself one great inclination
and determination continually and mightily going forth. A holy will,
therefore, is one that _from its very nature and spontaneity_ seeks God,
and the glory of God. It does not even need to make a specific resolution
to obey; any more than an affectionate child needs to resolve to obey its
father.
In like manner, a perfect and holy heart is a far more profound and
capacious thing than men who have never seriously tried to obtain it deem
it to foe. It does not consist in the possession of a few or many holy
thoughts mixed with some sinful ones, or in having a few or many holy
desires together with some corrupt ones. A perfect heart is one undivided
agency, and does not produce, as the imperfectly sanctified heart of the
Christian does, fruits of holiness and fruits of sin, holy thoughts and
unholy thoughts. It is itself a root and centre of holiness, and
_nothing_ but goodness springs up from it. The angels of God are totally
holy. Their wills are unceasingly going forth towards Him with ease and
delight; their hearts are unintermittently gushing out emotions of love,
and feelings of adoration, and thoughts of reverence, and therefore the
song that they sing is unceasing, and the smoke of their incense
ascendeth forever and ever.
Such is the holy will, and the perfect heart, which fallen man must
obtain in order to be fit for heaven. To this complexion must he come at
last. And now we ask: Can the law generate all this excellence within the
human soul? In order to answer this question, we must consider the nature
of law, and the manner of its operation. The law, as antithetic to the
gospel, and as the word is employed in the text, is in its nature
mandatory and minatory. It commands, and it threatens. This is the style
of its operation. Can a perfect heart be originated in a sinner by these
two methods? Does the stern behest, "Do this or die," secure his willing
and joyful obedience? On the contrary, the very fact that the law of God
comes up before him coupled thus with a _threatening_ evinces that his
aversion and hostility are most intense. As the Apostle says, "The law is
not made for a righteous man; but for the lawless and disobedient, for
the ungodly and for sinners." Were man, like the angels on high, sweetly
obedient to the Divine will, there would be no arming of law with terror,
no proclamation of ten commandments amidst thunderings and lightnings. He
would be a law unto himself, as all the heavenly host are,--the law
working impulsively within him by its own exceeding lawfulness and
beauty. The very fact that God, in the instance of man, is compelled to
emphasize the _penalty_ along with the statute,--to say, "Keep my
commandments _upon pain of eternal death_,"--is proof conclusive that man
is a rebel, and intensely so.
And now what is the effect of this combination of command and threatening
upon the agent? Is he moulded by it? Does it congenially sway and incline
him? On the contrary, is he not excited to opposition by it? When the
commandment "_comes_," loaded down with menace and damnation, does not
sin "revive," as the Apostle affirms?[1] Arrest the transgressor in the
very act of disobedience, and ring in his ears the "Thou shalt _not_" of
the decalogue, and does he find that the law has the power to alter his
inclination, to overcome his carnal mind, and make him perfect in
holiness? On the contrary, the more you ply him with the stern command,
and the more you emphasize the awful threatening, the more do you make
him conscious of inward sin, and awaken his depravity. "The law,"--as St.
Paul affirms in a very remarkable text,--"is the _strength_ of sin,[2]"
instead of being its destruction. Nay, he had not even ([Greek: te])
known sin, but by the law: for he had not known lust, except the law had
said, "Thou shalt not lust." The commandment stimulates instead of
extirpating his hostility to the Divine government; and so long as the
_mere_ command, and the _mere_ threat,--which, as the hymn tells us, is
all the law can do,--are brought to bear, the depravity of the rebellious
heart becomes more and more apparent, and more and more intensified.
There is no more touching poem in all literature than that one in which
the pensive and moral Schiller portrays the struggle of an ingenuous
youth who would find the source of moral purification in the moral law;
who would seek the power that can transform him, in the mere imperatives
of his conscience, and the mere struggling and spasms of his own will. He
represents him as endeavoring earnestly and long to feel the force of
obligation, and as toiling sedulously to school himself into virtue, by
the bare power, by the dead lift, of duty. But the longer he tries, the
more he loathes the restraints of law. Virtue, instead of growing lovely
to him, becomes more and more severe, austere, and repellant. His life,
as the Scripture phrases it, is "under law," and not under love. There is
nothing spontaneous, nothing willing, nothing genial in his religion. He
does not enjoy religion, but he endures religion. Conscience does not, in
the least, renovate his will, but merely checks it, or goads it. He
becomes wearied and worn, and conscious that after all his self-schooling
he is the same creature at heart, in his disposition and affections, that
he was at the commencement of the effort, he cries out, "O Virtue, take
back thy crown, and let me sin."[3] The tired and disgusted soul would
once more do a _spontaneous_ thing.
Was, then, that which is good made death unto this youth, by a _Divine_
arrangement? Is this the _original_ and _necessary_ relation which law
sustains to the will and affections of an accountable creature? Must the
pure and holy law of God, from the very nature of things, be a weariness
and a curse? God forbid. But sin that it might _appear_ sin, working
death in the sinner by that which is good,--that sin by the commandment
might become, might be seen to be, exceeding sinful. The law is like a
chemical test. It eats into sin enough to show what sin is, and there
stops. The lunar caustic bites into the dead flesh of the mortified limb;
but there is no healing virtue in the lunar caustic. The moral law makes
no inward alterations in a sinner. In its own distinctive and proper
action upon the heart and will of an apostate being, it is fitted only to
elicit and exasperate his existing enmity. It can, therefore, no more be
a source of sanctification, than it can be of justification.