and who have advanced, under judicious training, from one stage
of inquiry and attainment to another, till they have acquired a
perfect knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus, both in its
unity and harmony, and who have felt it on their hearts, in the
spirituality of its power, can form no just conception of the severe
and often prolonged conflict to which others are subjected, who
have not been favoured with similar advantages. They are in a moral
condition somewhat analogous to that of the lonely traveller who,
when on a strange road, is suddenly enveloped in a mist--hearing
sounds of danger, while unable to discover from whence they come,
why they are given, or how he shall effect his escape. Their mind
gets bewildered, jaded, and paralyzed by its own fruitless labours
and solicitudes; becomes irresolute, unwilling to relinquish the
question of inquiry, yet unable to pursue it; and like the maniac
amongst the tombs, seeks for rest, but cannot find it. The secret
of relief to all such anxious inquirers, lies imbedded in the
invitation of Jesus Christ: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. xi. 28). This
invitation has ministered consolation to myriads; its efficacy now,
is as powerful as it was when it first fell from his lips; and
whosoever receives it in faith, and yields to it, will find rest to
his soul.
AN ESCAPE FROM A FALSE REFUGE.
When surveying my congregation one Sabbath evening, I noticed an
interesting stranger in the front gallery, whose manner indicated
that he had never been in the chapel before. I had selected for
my text Isa. lvii. 18: "_I have seen his ways, and will heal him;
I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him, and to his
mourners_." As he sat just opposite the pulpit my eye caught his,
when delivering the following introductory remarks:--
"No one can read the Bible with serious attention, without feeling
that he is brought into contact with God. While intently fixed on
the subject which engages his attention, he feels isolated from
others--existing apart from others, yet existing in immediate
connection with God and the eternal world. The same novel effect
is sometimes produced, and often to a greater degree, when a
congregation is attentively listening to the ministrations of the
pulpit. People are drawn together into a place of worship: the
reading, the singing, and the prayer are gone through; and then
the preaching commences. The preacher is known, but he is soon
lost sight of; his subject absorbs attention, excites emotion;
impression succeeds impression; and though, in some instances, there
may be a momentary degree of astonishment awakened as to the source
from whence the preacher has obtained his knowledge of individual
character, yet that astonishment soon subsides, and nothing is left
to engross the attention of the hearer, but an overwhelming sense
of his own guilt, misery, and danger, which is now discovered,
and felt, FOR THE FIRST TIME. Yes, many a person has entered this
chapel to scorn, who has left it to breathe the prayer of the
publican--'God be merciful to me a sinner.' Yes, many a person has
taken his seat with others, and by being blended with the mass
of the congregation, has seemed to lose the individuality of his
existence; but the high and lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity,
whose name is Holy, speaks--and though his voice is not heard, it
is felt--'I have seen his ways.' Yes, O sinner, he has seen your
ways in the gone-by times of your impenitence, when you were living
without him, and without hope in the world. Yes, he has seen your
ways, when you either neglected the ordinances of religion, or
observed them with careless indifference, as though they bore no
relation to the Holy One, who inhabiteth eternity. Yes, he has seen
the ways you have adopted to obliterate your religious impressions;
to pacify your consciences; and to reconcile your habits of gaiety
and folly, with a sense of your obligations to him. But he has never
yet seen you walking in the narrow way that leadeth to eternal
life. He has never seen you at his footstool deploring the error
of your ways, and praying for mercy. Shall he abandon you to your
irreligious course, and leave you to perish? or shall he come to
heal you, to guide you, and to comfort you?"
His attention was arrested; he looked and listened as though he had
never previously seen a minister in a pulpit, or heard a sermon;
and on his countenance there was impressed an air of expressive
solemnity, indicating profound thought.
I saw him again on the next Sabbath evening, then I missed him
for several Sabbaths; he again re-appeared, became more frequent
in his attendance, and at length I saw him walking up the area of
the chapel accompanied by a lady, whom I presumed to be his wife.
On this occasion he was invited into a pew belonging to one of
my elders; and at the close of the service they left the chapel
together. On inquiry I found that this elder knew him; and from him
I obtained the outlines of his history, which he prefaced by saying,
"I was not at the chapel on the first night of his attendance,
and was rather surprised when he told me of it, because I rather
apprehend he is a sceptic, though he does not avow it. However,
though he gave me no reason to expect that he should repeat his
visit, he made one remark which I was gratified to hear, as it
was a proof that he had listened to the discourse, and was rather
pleased than otherwise. 'The sermon,' he said, 'was simple and
plain, yet somewhat original. I have heard more eloquent, and more
argumentative discourses, both in my own country, and in England,
but I never heard one which took such a firm hold of my attention,
or one which brought after it such a train of novel thought; indeed,
I cannot escape from a recollection of it.'"
Mr. Christopher Lobeck, the gentleman in question, was born in
Berlin, in 1794. His parents were Protestants, with whom he lived
till he had finished his literary education; and then he travelled
for two years, visiting Spain, France, and Switzerland, and the
principal manufacturing districts and marts of commerce of his own
country, to qualify himself to engage in mercantile pursuits. Soon
after the termination of the war in 1815, he was introduced to an
English merchant, with whom he made an arrangement to serve his
establishment in the capacity of a corresponding clerk; and this
led to his settlement in London. While in this situation, which he
held for seven years, he married the daughter of a citizen of worth
and distinction; and by his advice, and with the concurrence of the
house in which he had been engaged, he accepted an eligible offer of
partnership in a firm of high respectability in ----, to which place
he removed in 1822. His private residence was situated about a mile
and a half from the centre of the town, a neat snug cottage, with
the usual appurtenances, &c., &c. "He is," the elder added, "both
intelligent and communicative, and has acquired a large amount of
scientific and general information; and notwithstanding his doubts
on the great question of the Christian faith, he generally attends
church on Sabbath morning with his wife and children. Mrs. Lobeck
is a contrast to her husband on religious matters; he looks with
equal indifference on all the external forms of Christianity--she is
one of the most impassioned admirers of Episcopacy and its clergy I
ever knew. She is, in fact, what may be termed a devotee--excited,
as by an electrical shock, if she hear any remark derogatory to
the absolute perfection of her church and its priestly orders." He
concluded by saying, "I think you should now go and see them; as
they have both been to hear you preach, I think it likely they will
be expecting it as an act of courtesy. It is possible that this may
be the opening of a new epoch in their moral history, which may lead
to some grand spiritual result."
I made a call, and was gratified by my reception. Mr. Lobeck was
very cordial, and Mrs. Lobeck very polite; he was free and easy
in chit-chat, but she was rather reserved; yet both seemed to
be pleased by my visit. After looking through his museum, which
contained a choice though not very extensive collection of birds,
reptiles, and fossils, a few coins of different ages and countries,
and a good assortment of autographs, I then strolled round his
garden and shrubbery, and took my leave of them--both equally
pressing for a more lengthened visit. Their attendance at the chapel
now became more regular on a Sabbath evening, and occasionally on a
Sabbath morning; and after the lapse of a few weeks, I met a select
tea-party at their house, and though nearly all were strangers
to me, and most of them high church, yet I spent a very pleasant
evening. No controversial subject was introduced for debate or
discussion; conversation was desultory, without being frivolous,
and was sustained without being prosy, or degenerating into dry
common-place. Having intimated to Mr. Lobeck that it was my usual
habit to conduct family prayer where I spent an evening, the Bible
was presented to me; I read Psalm ciii., offering a few expository
remarks, and then we knelt together at the throne of grace.
At a subsequent interview, when Mr. Lobeck called on me, he said,
"We have decided on attending your chapel if we can be accommodated
with a pew." On expressing some degree of surprise that Mrs. Lobeck
should be willing to leave her church, with all its long-cherished
predilections and associations, he replied--
"She still gives it the preference, but a paramount sense of duty
now compels her to take this step. She was pleased with the extreme
simplicity of your mode of worship the first time she came; and has
on several occasions expressed her approbation of the momentous
truths you have inculcated on the attention of your audience; but
your discourse on Sabbath evening, from Acts xvi. 14, brought her
long-hesitating mind to this decision. As we were returning home,
after alluding to the hymn, and to the singing, which she very much
enjoys, she remarked she now felt no surprise that I should prefer
the preaching at the chapel to the preaching at the church; because,
in her opinion, it is more interesting and instructive. 'It is,' she
added, 'quite a relief to hear no more prosing about the regular
succession question, or about the font and its mysteries. This
clergyman makes one think of one's self, of God, of another world,
and our Saviour Jesus Christ.'"
As they were now become my stated hearers, a close intimacy soon
sprang up between us; and on one occasion, when alluding to
the state of religion on the Continent, he said, with emphatic
earnestness, "My country, Sir, is the land of spiritual barrenness;
death reigns there. Infidelity is awfully dominant, and fatally
powerful."
"But I have heard it now assumes an aspect somewhat different from
the infidelity introduced by Voltaire, and which I believe was aided
in its progress by the more fascinating genius of Rousseau."
"Yes, Sir, it is now the infidelity of Goethe, a man of
extraordinary mental power--a most subtle and beguiling writer.
Voltaire was an _intellectual_ sceptic, who denounced Christianity
as an imposition on human credulity, and he advocated its
suppression and extermination. Rousseau was a _sentimental_ sceptic,
who contemplated Christianity with the same class of emotions as
he surveyed the beauties and the deformities of nature; regarding
it as a strange compound of moral grandeur and of meanness, which,
in his estimation, might remain amongst a people without doing any
social injury, and might be got rid of without their sustaining
any irreparable loss. Goethe is a _rational_ sceptic, or what is
called in Germany a rationalist. His disposition is not mocking like
that of Voltaire and others, nor does he ever indulge in burlesque
or ridicule, when speaking of the popular faith. He uniformly
evinces a marked respect for the ordinary doctrines and ethics of
Christianity, while the drift of his writings is to prove that the
real religion of a man's heart, and the real end of his existence,
lie in the refined cultivation of his mind and affections, and in
subjecting all irregular impulses and passions to a course of due
restraint."
"The infidelity of these sceptical writers who have done so much
mischief on the Continent, and in England too, is substantially the
same in its origin, in its essence, and in its tendencies, though
there is a slight variation in its phases, its developments, and in
its designs."
"Infidelity, Sir, under any phase, or in any form of development, is
a destroying power; and its progress may be traced, like that of an
epidemic, by the scenes of desolation which it leaves in its track.
There would be some difficulty in adjusting the comparative injury
which these distinguished sceptics have entailed on the moral and
religious world; but it is very evident to any one who studies their
writings, that they all tend to the same issue. The primary lessons
which they all teach are these--that man needs no Divine instructor,
which supersedes the necessity of revelation; that his own reason is
sufficient to enable him to discover the safe road to true happiness
and moral greatness, which supersedes the necessity of priestly
instruction and training; and that he need do nothing more for his
present well-being, and his future destiny, if there be a futurity,
than cultivate his own tastes and social virtues."
"But I suppose Goethe has done more moral injury amongst the
theologians of Germany than any other sceptical writer."
"I have no doubt of it; and also amongst all classes of literary
men. I was once one of his devoted disciples; he ruled my mind
with despotic sway. I revered him as an oracle. He stood, in my
estimation, both in intellectual greatness and in the accuracy of
his moral discoveries, far above any of the writers of the Old or
New Testaments. He gave me a distaste for the Bible, and a loathing
against its sublime and momentous doctrines; and I believe that
his writings have tainted to a fearful extent the theology of the
pulpits of Germany. There are a few able and eloquent men, who
preach Christ and him crucified, in close imitation of Paul; but
only a comparatively small number. Human reason is the popular
idol amongst the majority; they keep the cross of Christ in the
background; the atonement is repudiated by them. They maintain
from the press and from the pulpit, and with as much strenuous
earnestness as any of the infidel fraternity, that man has within
himself a self-sufficient power to secure his present and his future
happiness, without being at all dependent on the grace of God or the
love of Christ."
"A sad change since the palmy days of Luther, and the other great
Reformers."
"A most melancholy one; I should not like to return to live amidst
such signs of decay and scenes of moral desolation--it is as Eden in
ruins."
"Your removal, Sir, to England has proved a very important event in
your history."
"It has indeed; a local change often leads to many other changes.
If I had tarried in Berlin, I had not known my wife or had my three
dear children; and most likely I should still have remained a
disciple of Goethe, rather than become a disciple of Jesus Christ."
"Will you permit me to ask you one question, What circumstance
induced you to come to the chapel the first time you came?"
"Your question, Sir, revives in my recollection a proposition which
you illustrated by a series of facts, when delivering a discourse on
John iv. 6, 7, and which, if my memory does not fail me, you stated
in the following words:--'When a crisis approaches in the history of
a nation, or even of a private individual, we may sometimes observe
prognostic signs of its coming; and in taking a review after its
occurrence, we may sometimes see a marked conjunction of determining
events naturally leading to it.' The fact is, on the Sunday of my
first visit to your chapel, we had arranged with a few friends to
take a drive into the country; but just as we were in readiness
to start, a tremendous thunderstorm compelled us to give up our
jaunt. After it had cleared off, as it was too late for our country
excursion, I took a walk into the town to see an old friend; but
the rain again came down in torrents, just as I was passing your
chapel; I ran into it for shelter, not for worship. I had no more
thought of being converted to the faith of Christ when I entered
your chapel, than the woman of Samaria expected to see the Messias
when she left home to get some water from Jacob's well."
"The Psalmist, when calling on all the powers of the celestial and
terrestrial creation to praise the Lord (Psal. cxlviii.), speaks of
fire and hail, of snow and vapour, and stormy wind as fulfilling the
Divine purpose; they come and go at his command, doing the work he
assigns to them."
"So I _now_ believe. I recollect, when watching the coming up of
the dark thunderstorm, feeling vexed that it should come just then,
when we were all in such high glee, and in complete readiness to
be off. I did not then know that on that storm my future destiny
was depending. Had it not come when it did come, we should have
been desecrating the Sabbath by recreative indulgence; and had it
not been followed by the second storm, I should have been with my
friend enjoying the convivialities of hospitality and mirth. In
either case, when laying my head on my pillow, on that memorable
night, my bosom would have heaved to other emotions than those which
your discourse had stirred up within it. There and then I felt what
I never expected to feel; and if the strange commotion had been
predicted by an angel of God, I should have ridiculed it as a mere
phantom. Indeed, my philosophy, which led me to believe that such
a moral change as I have experienced was unnecessary, compelled me
also to believe that it was impossible."
"I recollect the text from which I preached on the occasion to which
you refer, but I do not recollect employing any arguments to expose
the fallacy and delusions of scepticism, or any in confirmation of
the Divine origin of the Christian faith."
"Argument, Sir, in favour of Christianity I could have withstood;
but I could not withstand the great moral power by which I felt
awe-struck and subdued."
"Do you think you were renewed in the spirit of your mind during the
first service you attended at the chapel?"
"I know I felt very differently when I came out of the chapel that
evening, from what I felt on entering; but whether I then actually
passed from a state of spiritual death to newness of life, is a
question I cannot decide. But now I can say what Paul said--By the
grace of God I am what I am."
"Do you ever doubt the reality of the spiritual change which you
have undergone?"
"No, Sir, that's impossible. I know that I was once living in a
state of spiritual death, or mental alienation from God, neither
loving nor fearing him--living without him in the world; but it's
the reverse of this now. I now revere him as my sovereign, whose
laws are my delight; and I now love him as my reconciled Father
through Jesus Christ. All through life, up to my first visit to
your chapel, the invisible world flitted before my imagination,
more as a fairy land than a real world of spiritual beings; and the
immortality of man I considered more a thing of speculation than of
positive certainty; but now I am compelled to believe, and by the
force of evidence which sophistry cannot falsify, that it is the
habitation of the high and lofty One whose name is Holy, and before
whom I hope to be presented faultless with exceeding joy when the
crisis comes."
"But, Sir, does your old philosophy never suggest to you the idea
that these new discoveries and emotions, with their consequent
anticipations, may be referable to the mysterious action of
a disturbed imagination, rather than the direct action of a
supernatural power--what scepticism designates the flights of fancy?"
"I must confess that such an idea has more than once obtruded itself
on my mind; but I at once dismiss it as an intangible fiction; for
when I turned my attention to study the Christianity of the Bible,
which I did very closely as soon as I felt the new impulse from your
first sermon, I perceived that it not only offers remission of sin
to the penitent and contrite sinner, but that it is essentially a
restorative scheme of grace, constructed for the very purpose of
rescuing man from the moral ruin in which sin has involved him, and
ultimately to re-produce that spiritual similitude to the Divine
likeness in which man was created, and which would still have
adorned humanity, if the first transgression had not been committed.
Hence the discoveries and emotions I have made and felt, and the
conflicts through which I am now passing, are the initiate of this
grand design of the high and lofty One--the preparatory steps in the
progress of recovery, which is to lead to such a glorious issue."
"Have you, Sir, any distinct recollection of the order of thought
which followed--the unanticipated impressions and emotions which you
felt while listening to the sermon?"
"I recollect saying to myself, when passing home--I have heard many
sermons in my own country, and many in England, more elaborate, more
argumentative, and more brilliant; and yet no one ever produced such
a series of novel and strange convictions and impressions as this
simple and plain appeal to which I have been listening. Myself, my
moral condition and danger, now absorbed my attention: I felt, and
for the first time in my history, that I had been living without
God--living the life of a practical atheist--that I deserved his
anger, and that he might justly leave me to perish."
"Did you entertain any idea that this new moral discovery would lead
to an eventful issue; or did you suppose it would vanish away, and
leave you to live as in former years?"
"Why, Sir, I felt that the discovery I had made was no mental
illusion, but a palpable and awful reality; and though it excited
emotions of alarm and terror which I could scarcely endure, yet I
felt more inclined to cherish than repress them; and at times during
the ensuing week, I did indulge a vague hope that God would have
mercy on me and comfort me."
"Did you tell Mrs. Lobeck where you had been, and what you felt?"
"No, Sir. I deemed it inexpedient to do that; because I knew it
would distress her to hear that I had been to a Dissenting chapel.
But there were other considerations which imposed silence. I knew
not what opinion to form of the issue of the mental process through
which I was passing. I thought it might bring on some change in
my moral character and history; and I also thought it might end in
nothing. I therefore resolved, while in this state of perplexity and
confusion, not to say anything to any one on the subject, till I
actually knew the result."
"Did you remain long in this state of mental perplexity and
distraction?"
"For several months, during which time I accompanied my family to
our church every Sabbath morning, and very generally I was at your
chapel in the evening. I perceived that the religion of the two
places is the same in its broad outlines; yet I soon discovered a
great difference, not only in its impressiveness, but even in the
doctrines of its public ministrations."
"The Rector and his Curate, I believe, dwell principally on the
efficacy of the sacraments, and the absolute necessity of a steady
adherence to the church, as an implied condition of salvation."
"Yes, Sir: they virtually reject what many of our Protestant
ministers in Germany openly repudiate--the inherent depravity of
man, the atonement for sin made by Jesus Christ, and the necessity
of the agency of the Divine Spirit to enlighten and renovate the
soul of man. In fact, they adopt the leading principle of Goethe's
philosophy, and place our hope of future happiness on our doings
and attainments. Goethe and his disciples work the principle
without the alliance of any auxiliary powers or influences; but the
clergymen of our church identify it with ecclesiastic ceremonies and
associations. In either case, it is man doing something for himself
which makes him his own saviour."
"I often wonder how it is that intelligent persons, who admit the
authority of the Bible, can make such egregious mistakes as they
often do on the question which relates to the way of salvation, or
the method of a sinner's reconciliation with God; when it is stated
with so much explicitness and precision by the sacred writers,
'Believe and be saved.' 'For through him we both have access by one
Spirit unto the Father' (Ephes. ii. 18)."