But there is a third dispensation, profounder and richer than that of
statutes; and, at the head of it, one greater than Moses. The period
of literal commandments was insufficient; humanity outgrew it. It
became a dead profession, a school of foolish questions, a shelter
of hideous hypocrisies. Lo! the enlarging soul of the race asks a
freer, more sincere, more vital nurture, and it comes. If the simple
religious instincts of Abraham had been accepted for righteousness;
if the law had been given by Moses; grace and truth enter in by Jesus
Christ; grace for the heart, truth for the understanding; favor for
man’s stumbling feet, and light for his eyes. Christ does not abrogate
law, but by his own life and sacrifice first satisfies its conditions.
He says expressly, “Think not that I came to destroy Moses, but to
fulfill.” The cross does not unbind the cords of accountability, but
tightens and strengthens them rather. The gospel affords no solvent to
disentegrate the commandments; it only lets “the violated law speak out
its thunders” in the tones of pity. Divine laws never looked so sacred
as when they took sanctity from the redemption of the crucified.
Witness now a new light, “lighting every man that cometh into the
world.” It is the deliverance of the heart. It is the purifying of the
life. It is the sanctification of the spirit. The law, by which no man
living can be justified, because no man ever yet kept it inviolate;
which makes no allowance for imperfect obedience, and yet never was
perfectly obeyed—which, therefore, is a rule of universal condemnation
when standing alone—this stern, unrelenting law gives place to a
gospel—gladder tidings—a voice that comes not to condemn but to save,
a ministry of mercy, asking only a penitent spirit that it may offer
forgiveness, and only inward faith changing the motives that it may
confer eternal life.
Law and prophets, then, are not annulled; what they lacked is
supplied. They are absorbed by evangelists. The gospel takes up all
their contents, recasts them, and quickens them with the vitality of
a fresh inspiration. Moses remains, but only as a servant to Christ.
The decalogue still stands; but the cross stands on a higher pedestal,
invested with a purer glory. Humble Calvary is the seat of a loftier
power than towering Horeb. We must still be under discipline; but the
Lawgiver is lost in the Redeemer. What _was_ a task is transfigured
into a choice. The drudgery of obedience is beautified into the
privilege of reconciliation. Love has cast out fear. Man no longer
cowers before his sovereign with terror, but pours out his praises
to a Father. The soul is released from the bondage of a thrall into
the liberty of a child. Out of the plodding routine of mechanical
sacrifice, it ascends into spiritual Joy, where the handwriting of
ordinances is done away; the Great High Priest has ascended once for
all into the heavens, and suffering is willingly borne because it makes
the disciple like the Lord.
Thus the word spoken by the third epoch of religious culture is not,
“Act thy nature out and follow thy lawless impulses”—nor yet, “Do this
circle of outward works, and then come and claim salvation for thy
merits”—but, believe, first, and then out of thy faith do the righteous
works which thou then canst not but do. Repent of thy short comings,
and be forgiven. Lean on Christ, thy Savior. Love God, thy Father. Help
men, thy brethren. And come, inherit thy immortal kingdom!
Now, at last, if it only keeps on in the path divinely marked for
it, the soul emerges into that wide fellowship of Christ—that open
hospitality of spiritual freedom, where the impulse of nature is
only guided, not stifled, by law; where law is ripened and fulfilled
into faith. The highest victory of goodness is union with God. The
union comes only by a Mediator. For reconciliation between finite and
infinite, there must be a Reconciler combining both. The way to peace
lies by Calvary. Humanity realizes its complete proportions, only by
inward membership with him who fills all the veins of his living body
with his blood, and the chambers of his church with the glory of his
presence to-day. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be
saved.”
For, observe, by all means, this striking condition pertaining to the
doctrine; that neither of these three stages, whether of the general
or the personal progress, denies, or cuts off, its predecessor.
Nature prepares the way for law—making the heart _restless_, by an
unsatisfying experiment, without it. Abraham saw more glorious ages
coming than his own, and the promise given to him and his seed,
Emmanuel accomplished. The law disciplined wayward, uncultured man,
making him ready for the Church that was to descend “like a bride out
of heaven.” Every ordinance in its ritual was a type; every statute was
a prophecy.
All Judaism was prospective. Moses looked forward to the Messiah.
So, in the heart of childhood, there are expectations, vague and
yet brilliant, of the responsible second stage of manhood; it is
too thoughtless yet to look beyond, to the age of mature Christian
holiness. But see, again, when that second age of stern command and
strict obedience comes, it grows sober and reflective. It feels heavily
that it is not sufficient to itself. It must look longingly forward
for the consolations of the cross. Nature does not comprehend law,
nor law gospel; Abraham Moses, nor Moses Messiah; but the Son of God
understands all, and the gospel, in its majestic orbit, while embracing
law and nature, transcends them both.
Remember, also, for its practical fruit’s sake, this fact, that each
stage requires fidelity in the preceding. You must have been true to
the better impulses of youth, that you may be, to the best advantage,
a servant of the law of maturity. You must be faithfully obedient to
duty, before you are fit to be a subject of grace. Do not imagine
you can glide over into the favor of heaven, without first keeping
the commandment. It is a strait gate, and a narrow way that leads
to life. I must be a cheerful servant, before I can know the joy of
adoption, and cry, “Abba, Father.” Willing to be constrained by the
positive precept, I may hope, by-and-by, for the freedom of a child and
heir. Many things that I would rather not do—irksome to the sluggish
will, hard to the love of ease, offensive to pride, bitter to selfish
pleasure—I must do, before I can ascend to that sublime self-mastery
with Christ, where I shall _desire_ to do only what I ought. You have
seen a seabird, which in rising from the waves has to run some way
with difficulty upon the water, striking the surface laboriously with
its pinions; but when it has once lifted itself into the upper air,
it balances its flight with a calm motion, and enfranchised into the
freedom of the sky, the slow beat of its wings are imperceptible. It
is by pain and toil _under_ the commandments, that the soul gets the
liberty of its faculties; but when it has been taken up out of itself
by love and trust, it moves in harmony with God. The law was our
schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might “be justified
by faith.” But “after that faith is come, we are no longer under a
schoolmaster.” “All things are yours, and ye are Christ’s, and Christ
is God’s.” No longer at Gerizim, nor yet at Jerusalem, but everywhere,
we may worship the Father!
You have seen the religionist of mere passion. That impulsive
temperament is doubtless capable of good services to the master. But,
to that end, the master must have the reforming of it. That unsteady
purpose must be made steadfast through a thoughtful imitation of the
constancy that said, “Behold, I go up to Jerusalem to be crucified.”
That fluctuating wing of worship must be poised by some influence from
those hills, where whole nights were not too long for a Redeemer’s
prayers. That inexpert swimmer in the sea of life, now rising, now
sinking, and now noisily splashing the waters, must be schooled by
sober experience to glide onward with a firmer and stiller stroke.
Ardor must be matched with consistency. You are not to be carried to
heaven by a fitful religion, periodically raised from the dead at
seasons of social exhilaration; not by a religion alive at church, but
stagnant in the streets and in the market-places; not by a religion
kindling at some favored hour of sentimental meditation, only to sink
and flicker in the drudgery of common work. It is to little purpose
that we read, and circulate, and preach the Bible, except all our
reading and all our living gain thereby a more biblical tone. And it is
quite futile that our breasts glow with some fugitive feeling in the
house of God, unless that feeling dedicates our common dwellings to be
all houses of God.
So have you seen the religious legalist. In business, in the street, in
sanctuaries, at home, you have seen him. In business, measuring off his
righteousness by some sealed measure of public usage, as mechanically
as his merchandise, and making a label or a dye-stuff his cunning proxy
to tell the lie that some judicial penalty had frightened from his
tongue; disowning no patent obligation, but cheating the customer, or
oppressing the weak, in secret. In the street, wearing an outside of
genial manners, with a frosty temper under it, or a cloak of propriety
with a heart of sin; in the sanctuary, purchasing, with formal
professions, one day, the privilege of an untroubled self-seeking the
other six, or possibly opening the pew door and the prayer-book here
to-day, with the same hand that will wrong a neighbor to-morrow; and at
home, practicing that reluctant virtue that would hardly give conjugal
affection but for the marriage-bond, and that, by being exported to
another continent, would find a Parisian atmosphere a solvent of all
its scruples. Not descending, at present, to the depth of depravity,
he certainly never rises to a pure piety. Whatever respectable or
admirable traits you see in him, you miss that distinctive mark which
every eye takes knowledge of as a spiritual consecration.
Engraft, now, on that “wild olive” stock, the sweet juices of Christian
love, drawn from their original stock in Bethlehem, “of the seed of
David and the root of Jesse;” soften that hard integrity by Christian
charity; in place of duty done from sheer compulsion, put duty done
from a willing, eager, and believing heart. Do this, and thou shalt
live.
Abraham, Moses, Christ; impulse, discipline, faith; nature, law,
gospel; instinct, obedience, grace; Mamre, Sinai, Calvary; this is that
divine order—not bound by rigid rules of chronological succession, but
having the free play and various intershadings of a moral growth—to
which we are to conform our lives. When the “_Thus saith the Lord_”
shall have controlled our impatient will, our hearts will be ready
to say, “Our Father, who art in heaven!” Seek, first, after that
indwelling goodness that has its fountain in the center of the soul,
and good works will be the constant stream. Be children of light. Live
by the spirit, not the letter; by faith, not by fear. For you are
called to be disciples of Jesus. Henceforth the Christian is to be
known, and to be saved, not by the hand so much as by the heart; not
by a righteousness that is legal, but spiritual. Let not your piety be
the occasional piety of Rabbinical Sabbaths, with ghastly intervals of
worldliness between, like isolated springs in a desert of sand; but a
piety, whose perennial influence, like the river that keeps the meadows
always green, shall penetrate and fertilize the whole soil and open
field of your being, and thus make glad the city of your God. No rich,
or beautiful, or excepted life can be had by us, except Christ be its
inspiration. Hope will not reach up to immortality, except it climb by
the cross. Let not your lives be dead shapes of outward decency—the
carved and gilded wood of an ark and a tabernacle deserted by the
Spirit—but vital branches, filled with leaping and vigorous currents of
holy feeling, on the living vine! “For if any man have not the spirit
of Christ, he is none of his.”