are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are
they that mourn; for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek; for
they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst
after righteousness; for they shall be filled."[3] The very opening of
this discourse, which He intended should go down through the ages as a
manifesto declaring the real nature of His kingdom, and the spirit which
His followers must possess, asserts the necessity of a needy, recipient,
asking mind, upon the part of a sinner. All this phraseology implies
destitution; and a destitution that cannot be self-supplied. He who
hungers and thirsts after righteousness is conscious of an inward void,
in respect to righteousness, that must be filled from abroad. He
who is meek is sensible that he is dependent for his moral excellence. He
who is poor in spirit is, not pusillanimous as Thomas Paine charged
upon Christianity but, as John of Damascus said of himself, a man of
spiritual cravings, _vir desideriorum_.
Now, all this delineation of the general attitude requisite in order to
the reception of the Christian religion is summed up again, in the
declaration of our text: "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God
_as a little child_, he shall not enter therein." Is a man, then,
sensible that his understanding is darkened by sin, and that he is
destitute of clear and just apprehensions of divine things? Does his
consciousness of inward poverty assume this form? If he would be
delivered from his mental blindness, and be made rich in spiritual
knowledge, he must adopt a teachable and recipient attitude. He must not
assume that his own mind is the great fountain of wisdom, and seek to
clear up his doubts and darkness by the rationalistic method of
self-illumination. On the contrary, he must go beyond his mind and open a
_book_, even the Book of Revelation, and search for the wisdom it
contains and proffers. And yet more than this. As this volume is the
product of the Eternal Spirit himself, and this Spirit conspires with the
doctrines which He has revealed, and exerts a positive illuminating
influence, he must seek communion therewith. From first to last,
therefore, the darkened human spirit must take a waiting posture, in
order to enlightenment. That part of "the clean heart and the right
spirit" which consists in the _knowledge_ of divine things can be
obtained only through a child-like bearing and temper. This is what our
Lord means, when He pronounces a blessing upon the poor in spirit, the
hungry and the thirsting soul. Men, in their pride and self-reliance, in
their sense of manhood, may seek to enter the kingdom of heaven by a
different method; they may attempt to _speculate_ their way through all
the mystery that overhangs human life, and the doubts that confuse and
baffle the human understanding; but when they find that the unaided
intellect only "spots a thicker gloom" instead of pouring a serener ray,
wearied and worn they return, as it were, to the sweet days of childhood,
and in the gentleness, and tenderness, and docility of an altered mood,
learn, as Bacon did in respect to the kingdom of nature, that the kingdom
of heaven is open only to the little child.
Again, is a man conscious of the corruption of his heart? Has he
discovered his alienation from the life and love of God, and is he now
aware that a total change must pass upon him, or that alienation must be
everlasting? Has he found out that his inclinations, and feelings, and
tastes, and sympathies are so worldly, so averse from spiritual objects,
as to be beyond his sovereignty? Does he feel vividly that the attempt to
expel this carnal mind, and to induce in the place thereof the heavenly
spontaneous glow of piety towards God and man, is precisely like the
attempt of the Ethiopian to change his skin, and the leopard his spots?
If this experience has been forced upon him, shall he meet it with the
port and bearing of a strong man? Shall he take the attitude of the old
Roman stoic, and attempt to meet the exigencies of his moral condition,
by the steady strain and hard tug of his own force? He cannot long do
this, under the clear searching ethics of the Sermon on the Mount,
without an inexpressible weariness and a profound despair. Were he within
the sphere of paganism, it might, perhaps, be otherwise. A Marcus
Aurelius could maintain this legal and self-righteous position to the end
of life, because his ideal of virtue was a very low one. Had that
high-minded pagan felt the influences of Christian ethics, had the Sermon
on the Mount searched his soul, telling him that the least emotion of
pride, anger, or lust, was a breach of that everlasting law which stood
grand and venerable before his philosophic eye, and that his virtue was
all gone, and his soul was exposed to the inflictions of justice, if even
a single thought of his heart was unconformed to the perfect rule of
right,--if, instead of the mere twilight of natural religion, there had
flared into his mind the fierce and consuming splendor of the noonday sun
of revealed truth, and New Testament ethics, it would have been
impossible for that serious-minded emperor to say, as in his utter
self-delusion he did, to the Deity: "Give me my dues,"--instead of
breathing the prayer: "Forgive me my debts." Christianity elevates the
standard and raises the ideal of moral excellence, and thereby disturbs
the self-complacent feeling of the stoic, and the moralist. If the law and
rule of right is merely an outward one, it is possible for a man
sincerely to suppose that he has kept the law, and his sincerity will be
his ruin. For, in this case, he can maintain a self-reliant and a
self-satisfied spirit, the spirit of manhood, to the very end of his
earthly career, and go with his righteousness which is as filthy rags,
into the presence of Him in whose sight the heavens are not clean. But,
if the law and rule of right is seen to be an inward and spiritual
statute, piercing to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, and
becoming a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, it is not
possible for a candid man to delude himself into the belief that he
has perfectly obeyed it; and in this instance, that self-dissatisfied
spirit, that consciousness of internal schism and bondage, that war
between the flesh and the spirit so vividly portrayed in the seventh
chapter of Romans, begins, and instead of the utterance of the moralist:
"I have kept the everlasting law, give me my dues," there bursts forth
the self-despairing cry of the penitent and the child: "O wretched man
that I am.! who shall deliver me? Father I have sinned against heaven and
before thee."
When, therefore, the truth and Spirit of God, working in and with the
natural conscience, have brought a man to that point where he sees that
all his own righteousness is as filthy rags, and that the pure and
stainless righteousness of Jehovah must become the possession and the
characteristic of his soul, he is prepared to believe the declaration of
our text: "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little
child, he shall not enter therein." The new heart, and the right
spirit,--the change, not in the mere external behavior but, in the very
disposition and inclination of the soul,--excludes every jot and tittle
of self-assertion, every particle of proud and stoical manhood.
Such a text as this which we have been considering is well adapted to put
us upon the true method of attaining everlasting life. These few and
simple words actually dropped, eighteen hundred years ago, from the lips
of that august Being who is now seated upon the throne of heaven, and who
knows this very instant the effect which they are producing in the heart
of every one who either reads or hears them. Let us remember that these
few and simple words do verily contain the key to everlasting life and
glory. In knowing what they mean, we know, infallibly, the way to heaven.
"I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those
things which we see, and have not seen them: and to hear those things
which we hear, and have not heard them." How many a thoughtful pagan, in
the centuries that have passed and gone, would in all probability have
turned a most attentive ear, had he heard, as we do, from the lips of an
unerring Teacher, that a child-like reception of a certain particular
truth,--and that not recondite and metaphysical, but simple as childhood
itself, and to be received by a little child's act,--would infallibly
conduct to the elysium that haunted and tantalized him.
That which hinders us is our pride, our "manhood." The act of faith is a
child's act; and a child's act, though intrinsically the easiest of any,
is relatively the most difficult of all. It implies the surrender of our
self-will, our self-love, our proud manhood; and never was a truer remark
made than that of Ullmann, that "in no one thing is the strength of a
man's will so manifested, as in his having no will of his own."[4]
"Christianity,"--says Jeremy Taylor,--"is the easiest and the hardest
thing in the world. It is like a secret in arithmetic; infinitely hard
till it be found out by a right operation, and then it is so plain we
wonder we did not understand it earlier." How hard, how impossible
without that Divine grace which makes all such central and revolutionary
acts easy and genial to the soul,--how hard it is to cease from our own
works, and really become docile and recipient children, believing on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and trusting in Him, simply and solely, for salvation.
[Footnote 1: "Concerning the object of felicity in heaven, we are agreed
that it can be no other than the blessed God himself, the
all-comprehending good, fully adequate to the highest and most enlarged
reasonable desires. But the contemperation of our faculties to the holy,
blissful object, is so necessary to our satisfying fruition, that without
this we are no more capable thereof, than a brute of the festivities of a
quaint oration, or a stone of the relishes of the most pleasant meats and
drinks." HOWE: Heaven a State of Perfection.]
[Footnote 2: GOETHE: Wilhelm Meister, Book VII., ch. iii.]
[Footnote 3: Compare Isaiah lxi. 1.]
[Footnote 4: ULLMANN: Sinlessness of Jesus, Pt. I., Ch. iii., § 2.]
FAITH THE SOLE SAVING ACT.
JOHN vi. 28, 29.--"Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we
might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is
the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent."
In asking their question, the Jews intended to inquire of Christ what
_particular_ things they must do, before all others, in order to please
God. The "works of God," as they denominate them, were not any and every
duty, but those more special and important acts, by which the creature
might secure the Divine approval and favor. Our Lord understood their
question in this sense, and in His reply tells them, that the great and
only work for them to do was to exercise faith in Him. They had employed
the plural number in their question; but in His answer He employs the
singular. They had asked, What shall we do that we might work the
_works_ of God,--as if there were several of them. His reply is, "This is
the _work_ of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent." He narrows
down the terms of salvation to a single one; and makes the destiny of the
soul to depend upon the performance of a particular individual act. In
this, as in many other incidental ways, our Lord teaches His own
divinity. If He were a mere creature; if He were only an inspired teacher
like David or Paul; how would He dare, when asked to give in a single
word the condition and means of human salvation, to say that they consist
in resting the soul upon Him? Would David have dared to say: "This is the
work of God,--this is the saving act,--that ye believe in me?" Would Paul
have presumed to say to the anxious inquirer: "Your soul is safe, if you
trust in me?" But Christ makes this declaration, without any
qualification. Yet He was meek and lowly of heart, and never assumed
an honor or a prerogative that did not belong to Him. It is only upon the
supposition that He was "very God of very God," the Divine Redeemer of
the children of men, that we can justify such an answer to such a
question.
The belief is spontaneous and natural to man, that something must be
_done_ in order to salvation. No man expects to reach heaven by inaction.
Even the indifferent and supine soul expects to rouse itself up at some
future time, and work out its salvation. The most thoughtless and
inactive man, in religious respects, will acknowledge that
thoughtlessness and inactivity if continued will end in perdition.
But he intends at a future day to think, and act, and be saved. So
natural is it, to every man, to believe in salvation by works; so ready
is every one to concede that heaven is reached, and hell is escaped, only
by an earnest effort of some kind; so natural is it to every man to ask
with these Jews, "What shall we _do_, that we may work the works of God?"
But mankind generally, like the Jews in the days of our Lord, are under a
delusion respecting the _nature_ of the work which must be performed in
order to salvation. And in order to understand this delusion, we must
first examine the common notion upon the subject.
When a man begins to think of God, and of his own relations to Him, he
finds that he owes Him service and obedience. He has a work to perform,
as a subject of the Divine government; and this work is to obey the
Divine law. He finds himself obligated to love God with all his heart,
and his neighbor as himself, and to discharge all the duties that spring
out of his relations to God and man. He perceives that this is the "work"
given him to do by creation, and that if he does it he will attain the
true end of his existence, and be happy in time and eternity. When
therefore he begins to think of a religious life, his first spontaneous
impulse is to begin the performance of this work which he has hitherto
neglected, and to reinstate himself in the Divine favor by the ordinary
method of keeping the law of God. He perceives that this is the mode in
which the angels preserve themselves holy and happy; that this is the
original mode appointed by God, when He established the covenant of
works; and he does not see why it is not the method for him. The law
expressly affirms that the man that doeth these things shall live by
them; he proposes to take the law just as it reads, and just as it
stands,--to do the deeds of the law, to perform the works which it
enjoins, and to live by the service. This we say, is the common notion,
natural to man, of the species of work which must be performed in order
to eternal life. This was the idea which filled the mind of the Jews when
they put the question of the text, and received for answer from Christ,
"This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent." Our
Lord does not draw out the whole truth, in detail. He gives only the
positive part of the answer, leaving His hearers to infer the negative
part of it. For the whole doctrine of Christ, fully stated, would run
thus: "No work _of the kind of which you are thinking_ can save you;
no obedience of the law, ceremonial or moral, can reinstate you in right
relations to God. I do not summon you to the performance of any such
service as that which you have in mind, in order to your justification
and acceptance before the Divine tribunal. _This_ is the work of
God,--this is the sole and single act which you are to perform,--namely,
that you _believe_ on Him whom He hath sent as a propitiation for sin. I
do not summon you to works of the law, but to faith in Me the Redeemer.
Your first duty is not to attempt to acquire a righteousness in the old
method, by doing something of yourselves, but to receive a righteousness
in the new method, by trusting in what another has done for you."
I. What is the _ground_ and _reason_ of such an answer as this? Why is
man invited to the method of faith in another, instead of the method of
faith in himself? Why is not his first spontaneous thought the true one?
Why should he not obtain eternal life by resolutely proceeding to do his
duty, and keeping the law of God? Why can he not be saved by the law of
works? Why is he so summarily shut up to the law of faith?
We answer: Because it is _too late_ for him to adopt the method of
salvation by works. The law is indeed explicit in its assertion, that the
man that doeth these things shall live by them; but then it supposes that
the man begin at the beginning. A subject of government cannot disobey a
civil statute for five or ten years, and then put himself in right
relations to it again, by obeying it for the remainder of his life. Can a
man who has been a thief or an adulterer for twenty years, and then
practises honesty and purity for the following thirty years, stand up
before the seventh and eighth commandments and be acquitted by them? It
is too late for any being who has violated a law even in a single
instance, to attempt to be justified by that law. For, the law demands
and supposes that obedience begin at the very _beginning_ of existence,
and continue down _uninterruptedly_ to the end of it. No man can come in
at the middle of a process of obedience, any more than he can come in at
the last end of it, if he proposes to be accepted upon the ground of
_obedience_. "I testify," says St. Paul, "to every man that is
circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the _whole_ law" (Gal. v. 3). The
whole, or none, is the just and inexorable rule which law lays down in
the matter of justification. If any subject of the Divine government can
show a clean record, from the beginning to the end of his existence, the
statute says to him, "Well done," and gives him the reward which he has
earned. And it gives it to him not as a matter of grace, but of debt. The
law never makes a present of wages. It never pays out wages, until they
are earned,---fairly and fully earned. But when a perfect obedience from
first to last is rendered to its claims, the compensation follows as
matter of debt. The law, in this instance, is itself brought under
obligation. It owes a reward to the perfectly obedient subject of law,
and it considers itself his debtor until it is paid. "Now to him that
worketh, is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. If it be of
works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work" (Rom.
iv. 4; xi. 6).
But, on the other hand, law is equally exact and inflexible, in case the
work has not been performed. It will not give eternal life to a soul that
has sinned ten years, and then perfectly obeyed ten years,--supposing
that there is any such soul. The obedience, as we have remarked, must run
parallel with the _entire_ existence, in order to be a ground, of
justification. Infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, and then the
whole immortality that succeeds, must all be unintermittently sinless and
holy, in order to make eternal life a matter of debt. Justice is as exact
and punctilious upon this side, as it is upon the other. We have seen,
that when a perfect obedience has been rendered, justice will not palm
off the wages that are due as if they were some gracious gift; and on the
other hand, when a perfect obedience has not been rendered, it will not
be cajoled into the bestowment of wages as if they had been earned. There
is no principle that is so intelligent, so upright, and so exact, as
justice; and no creature can expect either to warp it, or to circumvent
it.
In the light of these remarks, it is evident that it is _too late_ for a
sinner to avail himself of the method of salvation by works. For, that
method requires that sinless obedience begin at the beginning of his
existence, and never be interrupted. But no man thus begins, and no man
thus continues. "The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray
as soon as they be born, speaking lies" (Ps. lviii. 3). Man comes into
the world a sinful and alienated creature. He is by nature a child of
wrath (Eph. ii. 3). Instead of beginning life with holiness, he begins it
with sin. His heart at birth is apostate and corrupt; and his conduct
from the very first is contrary to law. Such is the teaching of
Scripture, such is the statement of the Creeds, and such is the testimony
of consciousness, respecting the character which man brings into the
world with him. The very dawn of human life is clouded with depravity; is
marked by the carnal mind which is at enmity with the law of God, and is
not subject to that law, neither indeed can be. How is it possible, then,
for man to attain eternal life by a method that supposes, and requires,
that the very dawn of his being be holy like that of Christ's, and that
every thought, feeling, purpose, and act be conformed to law through the
entire existence? Is it not _too late_ for such a creature as man now is
to adopt the method of salvation by the works of the law?
But we will not crowd you, with the doctrine of native depravity and the
sin in Adam. We have no doubt that it is the scriptural and true doctrine
concerning human nature; and have no fears that it will be contradicted
by either a profound self-knowledge, or a profound metaphysics. But
perhaps you are one who doubts it; and therefore, for the sake of
argument, we will let you set the commencement of sin where you please.
If you tell us that it begins in the second, or the fourth, or the tenth
year of life, it still remains true that it is _too late_ to employ the
method of justification by works. If you concede any sin at all, at any
point whatsoever, in the history of a human soul, you preclude it from
salvation by the deeds of the law, and shut it up to salvation by grace.
Go back as far as you can in your memory, and you must acknowledge that
you find sin as far as you go; and even if, in the face of Scripture and
the symbols of the Church, you should deny that the sin runs back to
birth and apostasy in Adam, it still remains true that the first years of
your _conscious_ existence were not years of holiness, nor the first acts
which you _remember_, acts of obedience. Even upon your own theory, you
_begin_ with sin, and therefore you cannot be justified by the law.
This, then, is a conclusive reason and ground for the declaration of our
Lord, that the one great work which every fallen man has to perform, and
must perform, in order to salvation, is faith in _another's_ work, and
confidence in _another's_ righteousness. If man is to be saved by his own
righteousness, that righteousness must begin at the very beginning of his
existence, and go on without interruption. If he is to be saved by his
own good works, there never must be a single instant in his life when he
is not working such works. But beyond all controversy such is not the
fact. It is, therefore, impossible for him to be justified by trusting in
himself; and the only possible mode that now remains, is to trust in
another.
II. And this brings us to the second part of our subject. "This is the
work of God, that ye _believe_ on him whom He hath sent." It will be
observed that faith is here denominated a "work." And it is so indeed. It
is a mental act; and an act of the most comprehensive and energetic
species. Faith is an active principle that carries the whole man with it,
and in it,--head and heart, will and affections, body soul and spirit.
There is no act so all-embracing in its reach, and so total in its
momentum, as the act of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In this sense, it
is a "work." It is no supine and torpid thing; but the most vital and
vigorous activity that can be conceived of. When a sinner, moved by the
Holy Ghost the very source of spiritual life and energy, casts himself in
utter helplessness, and with all his weight, upon his Redeemer for
salvation, never is he more active, and never does he do a greater work.
And yet, faith is not a work in the common signification of the word. In
the Pauline Epistles, it is generally opposed to works, in such a way as
to exclude them. For example: "Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By
what law? of works? Nay, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude
that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the law. Knowing
that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by the faith of
Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be
justified, by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law.
Received ye the Spirit, by the works of the law, or by the hearing of
faith?"[1] In these and other passages, faith and works are directly
contrary to each other; so that in this connection, faith is not a
"work." Let us examine this point, a little in detail, for it will throw
light upon the subject under discussion.