I. +The import and construction of the Gospel cannot be vague and
indeterminate.+--The character of the Gospel was alleged to be its
truth. This was, to the sophists of that era, a strange and novel
pretension. To require faith to a testimony only so far as
conformable to fact, only so far as supported by evidence, appeared
to them a startling affectation. In the fixed character we recognise
the true perfection of the Gospel. It is the same through all ages,
not changing to every touch and varying beneath every eye but
unfolding the same features and producing the same effects. Unless
there was this invariableness in the Christian system, if a fixed
determination of its purport is impossible, we should be at a loss in
which manner to follow the conduct and imbibe the spirit of the early
Christians. Those lights and examples of the Church would only
ensnare us into a mien and attitude ridiculous as profane. It would
be the dwarf attempting to bare a giant's arm, a wayfaring man
aspiring to a prophet's vision. The truth as it is in Jesus is
contained in that Word which is the truth itself; there it is laid up
as in a casket and hallowed as in a shrine. No change can pass upon
it. It bears the character of its first perfection. Like the manna
and the rod in the recess of the Ark, it is the incorruptible bread
of heaven, it is the ever-living instrument of might, without an
altered form or superseded virtue.
II. +Its Divine origin and authority cannot be controverted.+--The
history of Saul of Tarsus has often been cited with happy success in
confirmation of Christianity. 1. What must have been the strength and
satisfaction of conviction entertained by the writer! The conviction
has to do with facts. It pertains to no favourite theory, no abstract
science, but occurrences which he had proved by sensible observation
and perfect consciousness. Wonders had teemed around him; but his own
transformation was the most signal wonder of all. Nothing without him
could equal what he discerned within. 2. As we estimate the measure
and force of his convictions, inquire what weight and credibility
should be allowed them. Put his conduct to any rack, his design to
any analysis, and then determine whether we are not safe where he is
undaunted, whether we may not decide for that on which he perils all,
whether the anathema which he dares pronounce does not throw around
us the safeguard of a Divine benediction.
III. +Its efficacy cannot be denied.+--It was not called into
operation until numberless expedients of man had been frustrated.
Philosophy, rhetoric, art, were joined to superstitions, radicated
into all habits and vices of mankind. The very ruins which survive
the fall of polytheism--the frieze with its mythological tale, the
column yet soaring with inimitable majesty, the statue breathing an
air of divinity--recall the fascinations which it once might boast
and of the auxiliaries it could command. Yet these were but the
decorations of selfishness most indecently avowed, of licentiousness
most brutally incontinent, of war the most wantonly bloody, of
slavery the most barbarously oppressive. And Christianity subverted
these foundations of iniquity; and yet so all-penetrating is its
energy, that it did not so much smite them as that they sank away
before it. It reaches the human will and renews the human heart. And
a thousand blessings which may at first appear derived from an
independent source are really poured forth from this.
IV. +The authority and force of the present dispensation of Divine
truth cannot be superseded.+--It is final. In it He hath spoken whose
voice shall be heard no more until it "shake not the earth only but
also heaven." No other sensible manifestation can be given, the
doctrine is not to be simplified, the ritual is not to be defined to
any further extent, nothing more will be vouchsafed to augment its
blessings or ratify its credentials. We possess the true light, the
perfect gift, the brightest illumination, the costliest boon. Such a
dispensation constituted to be co-existent with all future time, must
resist every view which would impress a new form or foist a strange
nature upon it.
V. +No circumstance or agency can endanger the existence and
stability of the Christian revelation.+--When the security of the
Gospel is to be most confidently predicted and most strongly
ascertained, supernatural power is restrained--a curse encloses it
round about, a "flaming sword turning every way guards this tree of
life." It shall endure coevally with man. Feeble are our present
thoughts, confused our perceptions; we see everything as from behind
a cloud and in a disproportion. Our convictions are more like
conjectures and our speculations dreams. But we shall soon emerge
from this state of crude fancies and immature ideas. Worthy
sentiments and feelings will fill up our souls. Each view shall be as
a ray of light striking its object, and each song the very echo of
its theme. Then shall we adequately understand why apostles kindled
into indignation and shook with horror at the idea of "another
gospel," and why even angels themselves must have been accursed had
it been possible for them to have divulged it.--_R. W. Hamilton._
_A Supernatural Revelation._--There can be no doubt whatever as a
matter of historic fact, that the apostle Paul claimed to have
received direct revelation from heaven. He is so certain of that
revelation that he warns the Galatians against being enticed by any
apparent evidence to doubt it. It would be impossible to express a
stronger, a more deliberate, and a more solemn conviction that he had
received a supernatural communication of the will of God.--_Dr. Wace,
Bampton Lectures._
_The Best Authority to be obeyed._--A dispute having arisen on some
question of ecclesiastical discipline and ritual, King Oswi summoned
in 664 a great council at Whitby. The one set of disputants appealed
to the authority of Columba, the other to that of St. Peter. "You
own," cried the puzzled king to Colman, "that Christ gave to Peter
the keys of the kingdom of heaven: has He given such power to
Columba?" The bishop could but answer, "No." "Then I will obey the
porter of heaven," said Oswi, "lest when I reach its gates he who has
the keys in his keeping turn his back on me, and there be none to
open."
_Latitudinarianism._--Referring to Erasmus's temporising policy in
the Reformation, Froude says: "The question of questions is, what all
this latitudinarian philosophising, this cultivated epicurean
gracefulness, would have come to if left to itself, or rather, what
was the effect which it was inevitably producing? If you wish to
remove an old building without bringing it in ruin about your ears,
you must begin at the top, remove the stones gradually downwards, and
touch the foundation last. But latitudinarianism loosens the
elementary principles of theology. It destroys the premises on which
the system rests. It would beg the question to say that this would in
itself have been undesirable; but the practical effect of it, as the
world then stood, would have been only to make the educated into
infidels, and to leave the multitude to a convenient but debasing
superstition."