Chapter Seven: The Acceptance

We have at length reached an entirely new phase of our main subject. Hitherto our attention has been fixed exclusively upon its divine aspects—what God has done, and what, through his appointed means and agencies, he is now doing for the salvation of men. We have been looking upon the vast and mighty streams of force and influence flowing from his love and wisdom, and we have seen them at length concentrated and brought together in the gospel as the one mighty “power of God unto salvation.” Outside of this gospel, and concurrently with it, he is doubtless still working in the sphere of his gracious providence—working in ways which are “past finding out.” He rules the world. He has not retired from it. He worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.

He stirreth up the sea with his power, And by his understanding he smiteth through Rahab. By his spirit the heavens are garnished; His hand hath pierced the swift serpent.

Lo, these are but the outskirts of his ways: And how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand? (Jos 26:)

I sympathize with my fellow-men when their thoughts run in great channels like the above; when they think of God's almighty power; of the omnipresence of his Spirit; and of the boundlessness of his resources. And yet it is possible to abuse these lofty conceptions by making them the basis of an unsafe and unsaying trust. There is nothing in mere force, even though it be almighty force, that can redeem and sanctify. The soul cannot be saved simply by the exertion upon it of miraculous power! Startling as this proposition may be, and as doubtless it will be to those who have been accustomed to rely upon such power, and to wait and look and long and pray for it as the one thing needful, it is still unquestionably the truth; and a moment's serious consideration, without bias or prejudice, will show that it must be the truth. We have but to note that miraculous power is nothing more than divine power, and that its exertion or putting forth by the Divine Being is just as easy to him as that which ordinarily reaches its end through the normal channels which we call laws. He has but to will, and it is done. If, therefore, he desires, as he certainly does, the salvation of men, and if that salvation could be accomplished by the transforming influence of miraculous power—that is, by simply willing it to be done—surely it is not possible for us to believe that he would withhold that will. Nor can we believe that he would have sent his beloved Son into the world to suffer the untold and immeasurable agonies of Gethsemane and the cross if those for whom he died could have been saved by the mere exertion of his power. It is also obvious to remark, and extremely suggestive to notice, that that beloved Son while upon the earth, who had come expressly to seek and to save the lost — and though his whole life was one grand display of supernatural power, put forth in every sphere of our mundane existence, in nature, in human life, in death, and even in the realm of the spirit world — yet so true was he to the everlasting and immutable will of his Father, and so careful to preserve the safeguards of our proper and necessary self-hood, he never exerted his miraculous power directly upon the soul of a single human being. It seems not once to have occurred to his perfect wisdom that a lost soul could be saved in that way. These considerations, if duly weighed, can hardly fail to be deemed conclusive upon the point in question.

But while very few might be disposed to regard miraculous agency as sufficient, in and of itself, to accomplish the work of human 3 6 salvation, there are many who look upon it as necessary in the way of antecedent preparation. The doctrine appears to be that, although the direct and supernatural power of God cannot really save the soul, it can and it does prepare the soul to be saved. I believe that I should not overstate the position if I were to say not only that this power ordinarily can and does, but that uniformly it must do this preliminary work. The soul is thought to be so dead in sins, so dark in its understanding, so enfeebled in all its powers, that it is not able to accept the gospel. It must be quickened, illuminated, strengthened by an immediate influence of the Holy Spirit, operating without means or agencies, directly upon and within the substance of the soul itself. And if the state of human nature is indeed such as is here postulated, it will at once be conceded that some such force, antecedent and supplementary to that of the gospel, must also be postulated as a condition of salvation sine qua non.

Nor is it to be wondered at that those who accept these postulates, and who feel the necessity of adjusting their work to assumptions so fundamental and controlling, not only preach the gospel of Christ, but along with it and in front of it "another gospel" of the Holy Spirit. They are consistent in doing so, and they would be quite inconsistent if they should act otherwise. For certainly, if no man can accept the gospel until he is first quickened by a power operating outside and independently of the gospel, such influence, as it is to be first in his experience, should be first presented to his consideration. Nay, more: the whole process of what, for want of a better word, I may call modern revivalism hinges upon the same assumption, and is to be approved or condemned along with it. This process is admirably calculated and designed in its discourses, prayers, songs and other exercises, to fix the mind of the expectant sinner upon the Holy Spirit as the power which is to come from heaven to regenerate, to convert and to bless. We note especially the earnest prayer to God—for in the main it is earnest, and its motive not to be 3 7 questioned—that he would send down the Holy Spirit; that he would pour' it out upon those who are waiting for it and dependent upon it.

Now, it cannot escape the observation of anyone whose attention is directed to it that in this procedure, and in the assumption which underlies it, there are two distinct and separate objects and forces presented to the mind: the one present, but of itself ineffectual, namely, the gospel; the other absent, but inherently and alone powerful and efficacious—the Holy Spirit. The gospel, it should be understood, is by no means ignored in this scheme. It is always preached; frequently it is most ably, most tenderly, most pungently, preached. But at the same time what seems to be expected from this preaching—what it is supposed the gospel is designed to accomplish, and is able to accomplish—is not the salvation of the soul, but the bringing home to it of the fact that it is lost. When this effect is produced—which, as we shall see hereafter, is certainly a necessary effect—it can do no more. The lost, helpless, impotent soul must wait and look for the saving power to come in from without, from abroad, from above. If it come, well and good; if it fail to come, there is no help for it. There is no other resource.

I am far from believing that those whose evangelistic practices seem to justify me in thus characterizing their position have really thought it over in detail as I have presented it. Many of them perhaps are wholly unconscious of its amazing incongruities; and they may even be shocked at the intimation that they have really been preaching a Christless, Spiritless, Godless gospel; that is to say, a gospel from which the saving influence of these divine personalities is absent. Such in my judgment is the true meaning of their theory, and the significance of their revival practices. And yet they are often signally successful in turning men from sin and winning them to Christ; successful, however, not because the theory upon which they proceed is true—for it certainly is 3 8 not—but in spite of it; successful because, notwithstanding the error of their theological assumption, they really preach Christ and him crucified, and preach him with an unction and love generated in their own hearts by the Spirit of God. And so they often impart and convey the saving grace treasured up in the gospel, even while bewildering the minds of men by teaching them to look elsewhere for it. But, oh, what tongue can tell, what imagination can conceive the success of the gospel — its glorious and world-wide triumphs — if all who believe and love it could be brought to preach it free from the confusions, the inconsistencies, the incongruities with which theology has encumbered and surrounded it!

I have already in a previous chapter emphasized the importance and necessity of the Holy Spirit’s presence in the preacher. What I there said had reference specifically and mainly to his personal qualification and endowment for the work of the ministry. It was urged in effect, if now in terms, that he could not properly bear the divine message to the world without himself being filled with the divine Spirit. And now we come to say, with somewhat more distinctness than formerly, that this is God’s method of imparting this Spirit to the world. Men are not to expect it to come down from heaven; they are not to look beyond the sea, nor down in the deep for it, nor even to think of it, so fare as they are concerned with it, as something separate and foreign. It has its permanent residence in the Church; and it puts forth its influence from the Church, its living home, and through the Church, its living organ. Its gospel is there; not the gospel bound up in a book—this is mere instruction, mere information concerning it—but the gospel as it lives and breathes and glows in sanctified hearts. And not the Church’s preaching only, but all its activities and blessed states, its words of comfort and peace, its prayers, its praises, its exhortations, its observances of the ordinances of grace—all are of the Spirit, and pervaded by the Spirit; for the Church, the true Church of Christ, does and must “live in the Spirit and walk in the 3 9 Spirit.” And when all the people of God shall have learned, as, after a while, I trust that by his grace they will, that for all the work of salvation and sanctification the Holy Spirit is not to be regarded as a far-away influence, as a distant something which may or may not come, but as an ever-present power, as the very atmosphere of the spiritual body, in which and by which it lives and moves and has its being, they will constitute, indeed, the Church of the living God. To use another image, all the riches of grace have been gathered into God’s spiritual house; his fatlings are killed; his table is spread; the feast is prepared; all things are ready. “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come, and let him that heareth say, Come; and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” Human destiny hinges upon the acceptance or rejection of this gospel call. How it is to be accepted will next demand our careful consideration.