Sunday, that it is the law of Being that in proportion as you rise
from lower to higher life, the parts are more distinctly developed,
while yet the unity becomes more entire. You find for example, in the
lowest forms of animal life one organ performs several functions, one
organ being at the same time heart and brain and blood-vessels. But
when you come to man, you find all these various functions existing in
different organs, and every organ more distinctly developed; and yet
the unity of a man is a higher unity than that of a limpet. When you
come from the material world to the world immaterial, you find that
the more society is cultivated--the more man is cultivated--the more
marvellous is the power of developing distinct powers. In the savage
life it is almost all one feeling; but in proportion as the higher
education advances and the higher life appears, every power and
faculty developes and distinguishes itself, and becomes distinct and
separate. And yet just in proportion as in a nation every part is
distinct, the unity is greater, and just in proportion as in an
individual every power is most complete, and stands out most distinct,
just in that proportion has the man reached the entireness of his
Humanity.
Now brethren, we apply all this to the mind of God. The Trinitarian
maintains against the Unitarian and the Sabellian, that the higher you
ascend in the scale of being, the more distinct are the
consciousnesses, and that the law of unity implies and demands a
manifold unity. The doctrine of Sabellianism, for example, is this,
that God is but one essence--but one person under different
manifestations; and that when He made the world He was called the
Father, when He redeemed the world He was called the Son, and when He
sanctified the world He was called the Holy Ghost. The Sabellian and
the Unitarian maintain that the unity of God consists simply in a
unity of person, and in opposition to this does the Trinitarian
maintain that grandness, either in man or in God, must be a unity of
manifoldness.
But we will enter into this more deeply. The first power or
consciousness in which God is made known to us is as the Father, the
Author of our being. It is written, "In Him we live, and move, and
have our being." He is the Author of all life. In this sense He is not
merely our Father as Christians, but the Father of mankind; and not
merely the Father of mankind, but the Father of creation; and in this
way the sublime language of the prophets may be taken as true
literally, "The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy;" and the language of the canticle which belongs to
our morning service, "the deeps, the fountains, the wells," all unite
in one hymn of praise, one everlasting hallelujah to God the Father,
the Author of their being. In this respect, simply as the Author of
life, merely as the supreme Being, God has reference to us in relation
to the body. He is the Lord of life: in Him we live, and move, and
have our being. In this respect God to us is as law--as the collected
laws of the universe; and therefore to offend against law, and bring
down the result of transgressing law, is said in Scripture language,
because applied to a person, to be provoking the wrath of God the
Father.
In the next place, the second way through which the personality and
consciousness of God has been revealed to us is as the Son. Brethren,
we see in all those writers who have treated of the Trinity, that much
stress is laid upon this eternal generation of the Son, the
everlasting sonship. It is this which we have in the Creed--the Creed
which was read to-day--"God, of the substance of the Father, begotten
before the worlds;" and, again, in the Nicene Creed, that expression,
which is so often wrongly read, "God of God, Light of Light, very God
of very God," means absolutely nothing. There are two statements made
there. The first is this, "The Son was God:" the second is this, "The
Son was--_of_ God," showing his derivation. And in that, brethren, we
have one of the deepest and most blessed truths of revelation. The
Unitarian maintains a divine Humanity--a blessed, blessed truth. There
is a truth more blessed still--the Humanity of Deity. Before the world
was, there was that in the mind of God which we may call the Humanity
of His Divinity. It is called in Scripture the Word: the Son: the Form
of God. It is in virtue of this that we have a right to attribute to
Him our own feelings; it is in virtue of this that Scripture speaks of
His wisdom, His justice, His love. Love in God is what love is in man;
justice in God is what justice is in man; creative power in God is
what creative power is in man; indignation in God is that which
indignation is in man, barring only this, that the one is emotional,
but the other is calm, and pure, and everlastingly still. It is
through this Humanity in the mind of God, if I may dare so to speak of
Deity, that a revelation became possible to man. It was the Word that
was made flesh; it was the Word that manifested Itself to man. It is
in virtue of the connection between God and man, that God made man in
His own image; that through a long line of prophets the human truth of
God could be made known to man, till it came forth developed most
entirely and at large in the incarnation of the Redeemer. Now in this
respect, it will be observed that God stands connected with us in
relation to the soul as "the Light which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world."
Once more; there is a nearer, a closer, and a more enduring relation
in which God stands to us--that is, the relation of the Spirit. It is
to the writings of St. John that we have to turn especially, if we
desire to know the doctrines of the Spirit. You will remember the
strange way in which he speaks of God. It would almost seem as if the
external God has disappeared to him; nay, as if an external Christ
were almost forgotten, because the internal Christ has been formed. He
speaks of God as kindred with us; he speaks of Christ as Christ _in_
us; and "if we love one another," he says, "God dwelleth in us." If a
man keep the commandments, "God dwelleth in him, and he in God." So
that the spiritual manifestation of God to us is that whereby He
blends Himself with the soul of man.
These then, my Christian brethren, are the three consciousnesses by
which He becomes known to us. Three, we said, _known_ to us. We do not
dare to limit God; we do not presume to say that there are in God only
three personalities--only three consciousnesses: all that we dare
presume to say is this, that there are three in reference to us, and
only three; that a fourth there is not; that perchance, in the present
state a fourth you cannot add to these--Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.
Lastly, let us turn to the relation which the Trinity in unity bears
to the triad in discord. It is intended for the entireness of our
sanctification: "the very God of peace sanctify you wholly." Brethren,
we dwell upon that expression "_wholly_." There is this difference
between Christianity and every other system: Christianity proposes to
ennoble the whole man; every other system subordinates parts to parts.
Christianity does not despise the intellect, but it does not exalt the
intellect in a one-sided way: it only dwells with emphasis on the
third and highest part of man--his spiritual affections; and these it
maintains are the chief and real seat of everlasting life, intended to
subordinate the other to themselves.
Asceticism would crush the natural affections--destroy the appetites.
Asceticism feels that there is a conflict between the flesh and the
spirit, and it would put an end to that conflict; it would bring back
unity by the excision of all our natural appetites, and all the
desires and feelings which we have by nature. But when the apostle
Paul comes forward to proclaim the will of God, he says it is not by
the crushing of the body, but by the sanctification of the body: "I
pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless
unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
In this my Christian brethren, there is one of the deepest of all
truths. Does a man feel himself the slave and the victim of his lower
passions? Let not that man hope to subdue them merely by struggling
against them. Let him not by fasting, by austerity, by any earthly
rule that he can conceive, expect to subdue the flesh. The more he
thinks of his vile and lower feelings, the more will they be brought
into distinctness, and therefore into power; the more hopelessly will
he become their victim. The only way in which a man can subdue the
flesh, is not by the extinction of those feelings, but by the
elevation of their character. Let there be added to that character,
sublimity of aim, purity of affection; let there be given grandeur,
spiritual nobleness; and then, just as the strengthening of the whole
constitution of the body makes any particular and local affection
disappear, so by degrees, by the raising of the character, do these
lower affections become, not extinguished or destroyed by excision,
but ennobled by a new and loftier spirit breathed through them.
This is the account given by the apostle. He speaks of the conflict
between the flesh and the spirit. And his remedy is to give vigour to
the higher, rather than to struggle with the lower. "This I say then,
Walk in the spirit, and ye _shall not_ fulfil the lust of the flesh."
Once more; the apostle differs from the world in this, that the world
would restore this unity, and sanctify man simply from the soul. It is
this which civilization pretends to effect. We hear much in these
modern days of "the progress of Humanity." We hear of man's invention,
of man's increase of knowledge; and it would seem in all this, as if
man were necessarily becoming better. Brethren, it always must be the
case in that state in which God is looked upon as the Supreme Being
merely, where the intellect of man is supposed to be the chief
thing--that which makes him most kindred to his Maker.
The doctrine of Christianity is this--that unity of all this discord
must be made. Man is to be made one with God, not by soaring
intellect, but by lowly love. It is the Spirit which guides him to all
truth; not merely by rendering more acute the reasoning powers, but by
convincing of sin, by humbling the man. It is the graces of the Spirit
which harmonize the man, and make him one; and that is the end, and
aim, and object of all the Gospel: the entireness of sanctification to
produce a perfectly developed man.
Most of us in this world are monsters, with some part of our being
bearing the development of a giant, and others showing the proportions
of a dwarf: a feeble, dwarfish will--mighty, full-blown passions; and
therefore it is that there is to be visible through the Trinity in us,
a noble manifold unity; and when the triune power of God shall so have
done its work on the entireness of our Humanity, that the body, soul,
and spirit have been sanctified, then shall there be exhibited, and
only then, a perfect affection in man to his Maker, and body, soul,
and spirit shall exhibit a Trinity in unity.
V.
_Preached June 2, 1850._
ABSOLUTION.
"And the Scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is
this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God
alone?"--Luke v. 21.
There are questions which having been again and again settled, still
from time to time, present themselves for _re_-solution; errors which
having been refuted, and cut up by the roots, re-appear in the next
century as fresh and vigorous as ever. Like the fabled monsters of
old, from whose dissevered neck the blood sprung forth and formed
fresh heads, multiplied and indestructible; or like the weeds, which,
extirpated in one place, sprout forth vigorously in another.
In every such case it may be taken for granted that the root of the
matter has not been reached; the error has been exposed, but the truth
which lay at the bottom of the error has not been disengaged. Every
error is connected with a truth; the truth being perennial, springs up
again as often as circumstances foster it, or call for it, and the
seeds of error which lay about the roots spring up again in the form
of weeds, as before.
A popular illustration of this may be found in the belief in the
appearance of the spirits of the departed. You may examine the
evidence for every such alleged apparition; you may demonstrate the
improbability; you may reduce it to an impossibility; still the
popular feeling will remain; and there is a lurking superstition even
among the enlightened, which in the midst of professions of
incredulity, shows itself in a readiness to believe the wildest new
tale, if it possess but the semblance of an authentication. Now two
truths lie at the root of this superstition. The first is the reality
of the spirit-world, and the instinctive belief in it. The second is
the fact that there are certain states of health in which the eye
creates the objects which it perceives. The death-blow to such
superstition is only struck when we have not only proved that men have
been deceived, but shown besides how they came to be deceived; when
science has explained the optical delusion, and shown the
physiological state in which such apparitions become visible. Ridicule
will not do it. Disproof will not do it. So long as men feel that
there is a spirit-world, and so long as to some the impression is
vivid that they have seen it, you spend your rhetoric in vain. You
must show the truth that lies below the error.
The principle we gain from this is that you cannot overthrow falsehood
by negation, but by establishing the antagonistic truth. The
refutation which is to last must be positive, not negative. It is an
endless work to be uprooting weeds: plant the ground with wholesome
vegetation, and then the juices which would have otherwise fed
rankness will pour themselves into a more vigorous growth; the
dwindled weeds will be easily raked out then. It is an endless task to
be refuting error. Plant truth, and the error will pine away.
The instance to which all this is preliminary, is the pertinacious
hold which the belief in a human absolving power retains upon mankind.
There has perhaps never yet been known a religion without such a
belief. There is not a savage in the islands of the South Pacific who
does not believe that his priest can shield him from the consequences
of sin. There was not a people in antiquity who had not dispensers of
Divine favour. That same belief passed from Paganism into Romanism. It
was exposed at the period of the Reformation. A mighty reaction was
felt against it throughout Europe. Apparently the whole idea of human
priesthood was proved, once and for ever, to be baseless; human
mediation, in every possible form, was vehemently controverted; men
were referred back to God as the sole absolver.
Yet now again, three centuries after, the belief is still as strong as
ever. That which we thought dead is alive again, and not likely it
seems, to die. Recent revelations have shown that confession is daily
made in the country whose natural manners are most against it; private
absolution asked by English men and given by English priests. A fact
so significant might lead us well to pause, and ask ourselves whether
we have found the true answer to the question. The negation we have
got--the vehement denial; we are weary of its reiteration: but the
positive truth which lies at the bottom of this craving--where is
that?
Parliaments and pulpits, senators and clergymen, have vied with each
other in the vehemence with which they declare absolution
un-Christian, un-English. All that is most abominable in the
confessional has been with unsparing and irreverent indelicacy forced
before the public mind. Still, men and women, whose holiness and
purity are beyond slander's reach, come and crave assurance of
forgiveness. How shall we reply to such men? Shall we say, "Who is
this that speaketh blasphemies? who can forgive sins, but God only?"
Shall we say it is all blasphemy; an impious intrusion upon the
prerogatives of the One Absolver? Well, we may; it is _popular_ to say
we ought; but you will observe, if we speak so, we do no more than the
Pharisees in this text: we establish a negation; but a negation is
only one side of truth.
Moreover, we have been asserting that for 300 years, with small
fruits. We keep asserting, Man cannot give assurance that sin is
pardoned; in other words, man cannot absolve: but still the heart
craves human assurance of forgiveness. What truth have we got to
supply that craving? We shall therefore, rather try to fathom the
deeps of the positive truth which is the true reply to the error; we
shall try to see whether there is not a real answer to the craving
contained in the Redeemer's words, "The Son of Man hath power on earth
to forgive sins." What power is there in human forgiveness? What does
absolution mean in the lips of a son of man? These are our questions
for to-day. We shall consider two points.
I. The impotency of the negation.
II. The power of the positive truth.
The Pharisees denied the efficacy of human absolution: they said,
"None can forgive sins, but God only:" that was a negation. What did
they effect by their system of negations? They conferred no peace;
they produced no holiness. It would be a great error to suppose that
the Pharisees were hypocrites in the ordinary sense of the term--that
is, pretending to be anxious about religion when they knew that they
felt no anxiety. They _were_ anxious, in their way. They heard a
startling free announcement of forgiveness by a man. To them it
appeared license given to sin. If this new teacher, this upstart--in
their own language, "this fellow--of whom every man knew whence he
was," were to go about the length and breadth of the land, telling
sinners to be at peace; telling them to forget the past, and to work
onwards; bidding men's consciences be at rest; and commanding them not
to _fear_ the God whom they had offended, but to _trust_ in Him--what
would become of morality and religion? This presumptuous Absolver
would make men careless about both. If the indispensable safeguards of
penalty were removed, what remained to restrain men from sin?
For the Pharisees had no notion of any other goodness than that which
is restrained; they could conceive no goodness free, but only that
which is produced by rewards and punishments--law-goodness,
law-righteousness: to dread God, not to love and trust Him, was their
conception of religion. And this, indeed, is the _ordinary_ conception
of religion--the ordinary meaning implied to most minds by the word
religion. The word religion means, by derivation, restriction or
obligation--obligation to do, obligation to avoid. And this is the
negative system of the Pharisees--scrupulous avoidance of evil, rather
than positive and free pursuit of excellence. Such a system never
produced anything but barren denial. "_This_ is wrong;" "_that_ is
heresy;" "_that_ is dangerous."
There was another class of men who denied human power of absolution.
They were called Scribes or writers--pedants, men of ponderous
learning and accurate definitions; from being mere transcribers of the
law, they had risen to be its expounders. They could define the exact
number of yards that might be travelled on the Sabbath-day without
infringement of the law; they could decide, according to the most
approved theology, the respective importance of each duty; they would
tell you, authoritatively, which was the _great_ commandment of the
law. The Scribe is a man who turns religion into etiquette: his idea
of God is that of a monarch, transgression against whom is an offence
against statute law, and he the Scribe, is there to explain the
prescribed conditions upon which the offence may be expiated; he has
no idea of admission to the sovereign's presence, except by compliance
with certain formalities which the Scribe is commissioned to declare.
There are therefore Scribes in all ages--Romish Scribes, who
distinguish between venial and mortal sin, and apportion to each its
appointed penance and absolution. There are Protestant Scribes, who
have no idea of God but as an incensed judge, and prescribe certain
methods of appeasing him--a certain price--in consideration of which
He is willing to sell forgiveness; men who accurately draw the
distinction between the different kinds of faith--faith historical and
faith saving; who bewilder and confuse all natural feeling; who treat
the natural love of relations as if it were an idolatry as great as
bowing down to mammon; who make intelligible distinction between the
work that _may_ and the work that may _not_ be done on the
Sabbath-day; who send you into a perilous consideration of the
workings of your own feelings, and the examination of your spiritual
experiences, to ascertain whether you have the feelings which give you
a right to call God a Father. They hate the Romish Scribe as much as
the Jewish Scribe hated the Samaritan and called him heretic. But in
their way they are true to the spirit of the Scribe.
Now the result of this is fourfold. Among the tender-minded,
despondency; among the vainer, spiritual pride; in the case of the
slavish, superstition; with the hard-minded, infidelity. Ponder it
well, and you will find these four things rife amongst us:
Despondency, Spiritual Pride, Superstition, and Infidelity. In this
way we have been going on for many years. In the midst of all this, at
last we are informed that the confessional is at work again; whereupon
astonishment and indignation are loudly expressed. It is not to be
borne that the priests of the Church of England should confess and
absolve in private. Yet it is only what might have been expected.
With our Evangelicalism, Tractarianism, Scribeism, Pharisaism, we have
ceased to front the _living fact_--we are as zealous as Scribes and
Pharisees ever were for negatives; but in the meantime Human Nature,
oppressed and overborne, gasping for breath, demands something real
and living. It cannot live on controversies. It cannot be fed on
protests against heresy, however vehement. We are trying who can
protest loudest. Every book, every journal, rings with warnings.
"Beware!" is written upon everything. Beware of Rome; beware of
Geneva; beware of Germany; some danger on every side; Satan
everywhere--God _nowhere_; everywhere some man to be shunned or
dreaded--nowhere one to be loved freely and without suspicion. Is it
any wonder if men and women, in the midst of negations, cry, "Ye warn
me from the error, but who will guide me into truth? I want guidance.
I am sinful, full of evil! I want forgiveness! Absolve me; tell me
that I am pardoned; help me to believe it. Your quarrels do not help
me; if you cannot do _that_, it matters little what you _can_ do. You
have restricted God's love, and narrowed the path to heaven; you have
hampered religion with so many mysterious questions and quibbles that
I cannot find the way to God; you have terrified me with so many
snares and pitfalls on every side, that I dare not tread at all. Give
me peace; give me human guidance: I want a human arm to lean on."
This is a cry, I believe, becoming daily more passionate, and more
common. And no wonder that all our information, public and private, is
to the same effect--that the recent converts have found peace in Rome;
for the secret of the power of Rome is this--that she grounds her
teaching, not on variable feelings and correct opinions, but on
_facts_. God is not a highly probable God, but a _fact_. God's
forgiveness is not a feeling, but a _fact_; and a material symbolic
fact is the witness of the invisible one. Rome puts forward her
absolution--her false, priestly, magical absolution--a visible fact,
as a witness of the invisible. And her perversion prevails because
founded on a truth.
II. The power of the positive truth.
Is it any wonder, if taught on every side distrust of man, the heart
should by a violent reaction, and by an extravagant confidence in a
priest, proclaim that its normal, natural state is not distrust, but
trust?
What is forgiveness?--It is God reconciled to us. What is
absolution?--It is the authoritative declaration that God is
reconciled. Authoritative: that is a real power of conveying a sense
and feeling of forgiveness. It is the power of the Son of Man _on
earth_ to forgive sins. It is man, God's image, representing, by his
forgiveness on earth, God's forgiveness in heaven.