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  WRITINGS OF ADONIRAM J GORDON
  by Adoniram J. Gordon
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A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by Adoniram J. Gordon,
compiled for study and devotional reading.

  Chapters: 47

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 01.00. Ecce Venit
    2. 01.01.01.     The Uplifted Gaze
    3. 01.01.02.     Tarrying Within the Veil
    4. 01.01.03.     The Power of His Coming
    5. 01.01.04.     The Programme of Redemption
    6. 01.01.05.     The Ends of the Ages
    7. 01.02.01.     Heavenly Citizenship
    8. 01.02.02.     The Fall of the Church
    9. 01.02.03.     The Advent of Antichrist
   10. 01.02.04.     The Bride of Antichrist
   11. 01.02.05.     The Mock Millennium
   12. 01.02.06.     The Eclipse of Hope
   13. 01.03.01.     Hope Revived
   14. 01.03.02.     Foregleams of the Day
   15. 01.03.03.     Behold He Cometh
   16. 01.03.04.     The First Resurrection
   17. 01.03.05.     The Translation of the Church
   18. 01.03.06.     The Marriage of the Lamb
   19. 01.03.07.     The Judgment of Christendom
   20. 01.03.08.     The Restoration of Israel
   21. 01.03.09.     The Millennial Kingdom
   22. 02.00. The Ministry of Healing
   23. 02.01.     The Question and Its Bearings
   24. 02.02.     The Testimony of Scripture
   25. 02.03.     The Testimony of Reason
   26. 02.04.     The Testimony of the Church
   27. 02.05.     The Testimony of Theologians
   28. 02.06.     The Testimony of Missions
   29. 02.07.     The Testimony of the Adversary
   30. 02.08.     The Testimony of Experience
   31. 02.09.     The Testimony of the Healed
   32. 02.10.     The Verdict of Candor
   33. 02.11.     The Verdict of Caution
   34. 02.12.     Conclusion
   35. 02.13.     Appendix
   36. 03.0.1.     Preface
   37. 03.0.2.     Introduction
   38. 03.01.     The Age-Mission of the Spirit. Introductory
   39. 03.02.     The Advent of the Spirit
   40. 03.03.     The Naming of the Spirit
   41. 03.04.     The Embodying of the Spirit
   42. 03.05.     The Enduement of the Spirit
   43. 03.06.     The Communion of the Spirit
   44. 03.07.     The Administration of the Spirit
   45. 03.08.     The Inspiration of the Spirit
   46. 03.09.     The Conviction of the Spirit
   47. 03.10.     The Ascent of the Spirit

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  CHAPTER 1: 01.00. ECCE VENIT
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Ecce Venit by A. J. Gordon, D.D.

Contents PART FIRST: FORETOLD

“This word He has in fact spoken—‘Hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man coming
iin the clouds of heaven,’ but it is a word of which there is no other example.
Even the mad pride of Roman emperors who demanded religious homage for their
statues has never gone so far as to conceive such an unheard-of thought, and
here it is the lowliest among men who speaks. The word must be truth; for there
is here nomean term between truth and madness,” —Luthardt 1. The Uplifted Gaze
2. Tarrying Within the Veil 3. The Power of His Coming 4. The Programme of
Redemption 5. The Ends of the Ages PART SECOND: FORFEITED

“Our looking at Christ’s coming as at a distance is the cause of all those
irregularities which render the thought of it terrible to us.”— Matthew Henry.

“Chiliasm disappeared in proportion as Roman Papal Catholi­cism advanced. The
Papacy took to itself, as a robber, that glory which is an object of hope, and
can only be reached by the obedience and humility of the cross. When the Church
became a harlot she ceased to be a Bride who goes forth to meet her Bridegroom,
and thus Chiliasm disappeared.” —Auberlen.

“In plucking up the faith of Christ’s coming Satan aims directly at the throat
of the Church. For to what end did Christ die and rise again, but Mat along with
Himself he might someday redeem us from death, and gather us into eternal life
I” —Calvin.

“Our looking at Christ’s coming as at a distance is the cause of all those
irregularities which render the thought of it terrible to us.”— Matthew Henry.

“Chiliasm disappeared in proportion as Roman Papal Catholicism advanced. The
Papacy took to itself, as a robber, that glory which is an object of hope, and
can only be reached by the obedience and humility of the cross. When the Church
became a harlot she ceased to be a Bride who goes forth to meet her Bridegroom,
and thus Chiliasm disappeared.” —Auberlen.

“In plucking up the faith of Christ’s coming Satan aims directly at the throat
of the Church. For to what end did Christ die and rise again, but Mat along with
Himself he might someday redeem us from death, and gather us into eternal life
I” —Calvin.

“Our looking at Christ’s coming as at a distance is the cause of all those
irregularities which render the thought of it terrible to us.”— Matthew Henry.

“Chiliasm disappeared in proportion as Roman Papal Catholicism advanced. The
Papacy took to itself, as a robber, that glory which is an object of hope, and
can only be reached by the obedience and humility of the cross. When the Church
became a harlot she ceased to be a Bride who goes forth to meet her Bridegroom,
and thus Chiliasm disappeared.” —Auberlen.

“In plucking up the faith of Christ’s coming Satan aims directly at the throat
of the Church. For to what end did Christ die and rise again, but Mat along with
Himself he might someday redeem us from death, and gather us into eternal life
I” —Calvin.

1. Heavenly Citizenship 2. The Fall of the Church 3. The Advent of Antichrist 4.
The Bride of Antichrist 5. The Mock Millennium 6. The Eclipse of Hope PART
THIRD: FULFILLED

“With the Lord’s second advent will begin the real reign of God upon the earth—a
kingdom of righteousness, holiness, and peace consisting of saints, with
exception from the Evil One and his enticements, and under a mighty influence of
celestial power. It is called the reign of a thousand years. Modern times have
again paid attention to this doctrine of the Millennium, thus coinciding with
the ancient Fathers. It is resounding, as it were, a new call: ‘The Lord
Cometh!’ Among believers, this doctrine, for far removed from carnal
conceptions, should no more be considered an error.” –John Frederick Myer.

1. Hope Revived 2. Foregleams of the Day 3. Behold He Cometh 4. The First
Resurrection 5. The Translation of the Church 6. The Marriage of the Lamb 7. The
Judgment of Christendom 8. The Restoration of Israel 9. The Millennial Kingdom

“Our looking at Christ’s coming as at a distance is the cause of all those
irregularities which render the thought of it terrible to us.”— Matthew Henry.

“Chiliasm disappeared in proportion as Roman Papal Catholi¬cism advanced. The
Papacy took to itself, as a robber, that glory which is an object of hope, and
can only be reached by the obedience and humility of the cross. When the Church
became a harlot she ceased to be a Bride who goes forth to meet her Bridegroom,
and thus Chiliasm disappeared.” —Auberlen.

“In plucking up the faith of Christ’s coming Satan aims directly at the throat
of the Church. For to what end did Christ die and rise again, but Mat along with
Himself he might someday redeem us from death, and gather us into eternal life
I” —Calvin.

“Our looking at Christ’s coming as at a distance is the cause of all those
irregularities which render the thought of it terrible to us.”— Matthew Henry.

“Chiliasm disappeared in proportion as Roman Papal Catholi¬cism advanced. The
Papacy took to itself, as a robber, that glory which is an object of hope, and
can only be reached by the obedience and humility of the cross. When the Church
became a harlot she ceased to be a Bride who goes forth to meet her Bridegroom,
and thus Chiliasm disappeared.” —Auberlen.

“In plucking up the faith of Christ’s coming Satan aims directly at the throat
of the Church. For to what end did Christ die and rise again, but Mat along with
Himself he might someday redeem us from death, and gather us into eternal life
I” —Calvin.

“Our looking at Christ’s coming as at a distance is the cause of all those
irregularities which render the thought of it terrible to us.”— Matthew Henry.

“Chiliasm disappeared in proportion as Roman Papal Catholi¬cism advanced. The
Papacy took to itself, as a robber, that glory which is an object of hope, and
can only be reached by the obedience and humility of the cross. When the Church
became a harlot she ceased to be a Bride who goes forth to meet her Bridegroom,
and thus Chiliasm disappeared.” —Auberlen.

“In plucking up the faith of Christ’s coming Satan aims directly at the throat
of the Church. For to what end did Christ die and rise again, but Mat along with
Himself he might someday redeem us from death, and gather us into eternal life
I” —Calvin.


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  CHAPTER 2: 01.01.01.     THE UPLIFTED GAZE
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Part I. Chapter I. THE UPLIFTED GAZE. Have we thought how significant and full
of instruction is the earliest attitude of the Church as presented in the
opening chapter of the Acts: “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into
heaven?”In a single graphic sentence is thus indicated the primitive uplook of
Christianity; and this question, with what immediately follows, is uttered, not
so much for rebuke as for interpre­tation. The great High Priest has just passed
within the veil, and the cloud-curtain has shut Him out of sight. And, as the
Hebrew congre­gation, upon the great day of atonement, looked steadfastly upon
the receding form of Aaron as he disappeared within the veil, and continued
looking long after he was out of sight, waiting for his reappearance; so exactly
did these men of Galilee, though they knew not what they did. And the angels
were sent to declare to them the meaning of their action: “This same Jesus,
which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have
seen Him go into heaven.”This is the earliest post-ascension an­nouncement of
that gospel of hope which, at the first, began to be spoken by the Lord
Himself,­ “If I go…I will come again,”—which is now confirmed unto us by His
angels, and is hence­forth to be reiterated by apostle and seer till, from the
last page of Revelation, it shall be heard sounding forth its “Surely I come
quickly.” The second coming of Christ is the crowning event of redemption; and
the belief of it consti­tutes the crowning article of an evangelical creed. For
we hold that the excellence of faith is ac­cording to the proportion of the
Lord’s redemp­tive work which that faith embraces. Some ac­cept merely the
earthly life of Christ, knowing Him only after the flesh; and the religion of
such is rarely more than a cold, external morality. Others receive His vicarious
death and resurrec­tion, but seem not to have strength as yet to fol­low Him
into the heavens; such may be able to rejoice in their justification without
knowing much of walking in the glorified life of Christ. Blessed are they who,
believing all that has gone before, —life, death, and resurrection, —can
joy­fully add this confession also: “We have a great High Priest who is passed
through the heavens;”and thrice blessed they who can join to this con­fession
still another: “From whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus
Christ.”For it is the essential part of our Redeemer’s priesthood that, having
entered in, to make intercession for His people, He shall again come forth to
bless them. How sweet was the sound of the golden bells upon the high priest’s
garments, issuing from the holy of holies, and telling the waiting congregation
of Israel that, though invisible, he was still alive, bearing their names upon
his breast-plate, and offering up prayers for them be­fore God! But, though they
listened intently to these reassuring sounds from within the veil, they watched
with steadfast gaze for his reappear­ing, and for the benediction of his
uplifted hands that should tell of their acceptance.1 This they counted the
crowning act of his ministration. Therefore, says the Son of Sirach, “How
glori­ous was he before the multitude of his people, in his coming forth from
within the veil! He was as the morning star in the midst of the cloud, or as the
moon when her days are full.” If this could be said of the typical high priest,
how much more of the true! Glorious beyond description will be His reemergence
from the veil; “the bright and morning Star,” breaking forth from behind the
cloud that received Him out of sight; His once pierced hands lifted in
benedic­tion above His Church, while that shall be ful­filled which is written
in the Hebrews: “And when He again bringeth in the Firstborn into the world, He
saith, And let all the angels of God worship Him,” (Hebrews 1:6 R.V.). This
attitude of the men of Galilee became the permanent attitude of the primitive
Church; so that the apostle’s description of the Thessa­lonian Christians — “Ye
turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His
Son from Heaven” — might apply equally to all. Talk we of “the notes of a true
Church “? Here is one of the most unquestion­able, —the uplifted gaze. As
apostate Christi­anity, by a perverse instinct, is perpetually aping the
eastward posture of Paganism (Ezekiel 8:16), so inevitably is apostolic
Christianity constantly recurring to the upward posture of Primi­tivism. What
Tholuck says of Israel, that, “As no other nation of antiquity, it is a people
of expectation,” is equally true of the Church of the New Testament. It is
anchored upward, not downward; its drawing is forward, not backward; “Which hope
we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth
into that within the veil, whither the forerunner is for us entered, even
Jesus.” As the ancient Anchorius bore the anchor into port, and fastened it
there, while as yet the ship could not enter, because of the tide; so has our
Prodromos—our Precursor—fixed the Church’s hold within the veil, that it may not
drift away through adverse winds or tides. But this anchoring is only a
preparation for that entering which He shall effect for us when He shall come
again to receive us unto Himself.

What if those who are much occupied with looking up, zealous to “come behind in
no gift, waiting for the coming of the Lord,” should sometimes be stigmatized as
stargazers and impracticable dreamers? Let them rejoice that, in so acting, they
prove themselves, not only the sons of primitive Christianity, but also the sons
of primitive humanity. For, in the beginning, God made man upright, both
physically and morally. Some tell us that the derivation of anqrwpoV—man—makes
the word signify an uplooker.2 Certainly, this originally constituted his marked
distinction from the brutes that perish, that, while they looked downwards
towards the earth, which is their goal, he looked upward toward the heaven for
which he was predestined. How significant the question which Jehovah puts to the
first sin­ner of Adam’s sons: “Why is thy countenance fallen?”The wages of sin
is death, and the goal of the sinner is the earth with its narrow house. So we
find the whole apostate race, from the earliest transgressor onward, with
counte­nance downcast and shadowed with mortality, moving toward the tomb and
unable to lift up the eyes. But the sons of the second Adam appear looking
steadfastly up to heaven and saying: “We see Jesus, who was made a little lower
than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor.” His
coronation has restored their aspiration: it has lifted their gaze upward once
more to the throne. The tabernacle imagery is still further sugges­tive touching
the subject under consideration. Ask the ritualist, clothed in his rich
vestments, and offering his eucharistic sacrifice upon the altar, why he does
thus; and the answer is, that the minister must repeat in the Church on earth
what our Great High Priest is doing in the true tabernacle above. But if this
principle were faithfully carried out, it would prove the death-warrant of
ritualism. The great day of atonement is now passing; let all sacrifices and
ser­vices cease without the veil. Oh, ye self-ordained priests, why do ye “stand
daily ministering and offering, oftentimes, the same sacrifices which can never
take away sins?” Behold, “this Man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins
forever, sat down on the right hand of God, from hence­forth expecting till His
foes be made His footstool.” They most literally reflect His ministry on earth
who, at the communion, sit down to remember the sacrifice of Calvary, but not to
repeat it; who listen to the “Till He come,” which it whispers, and so unite
with Him in His “expecting.” He waits for the same event for which He bids us
wait, His triumphal return. And for the congre­gation before the veil, not
worship, but work and witnessing, are now the principal calling, —work and
witnessing with special reference to that glorious consummation which our Savior
is antici­pating. For, as He assigns us our service, this is the language of His
commission: “Occupy till I come;”and, as He appoints us our testimony, this is
the purport of it: “And this gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the
world, for a witness to all nations; and then shall the end come.”

Indeed, let us observe that, since Christ took His place of expectancy within
the veil, and assigned us our place of expectancy without the veil, all present
duties and spiritual exercises have henceforth an onward look; an advent
adjust­ment, like the needle to the pole. “The solemn Maranatha resounds
throughout the Scriptures, and forms the keynote in all their exhortations,
consolations, warnings,” (Van Oosterzee). Is holy living urged? This is the
inspiring motive thereto: “That, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we
should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for
that blessed hope and the glori­ous appearing of the great God and our Saviour
Jesus Christ,” (Titus 2:13). Is endurance un­der persecution and loss of goods
enjoined? This is the language of the exhortation: “Cast not away, therefore,
your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For yet a little while
and He that shall come will come and will not tarry,”(Hebrews 10:35-37). Is
patience under trial encouraged in the Christian? The admo­nition is: “Be ye
also patient; stablish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh,”
(James 5:8). Is sanctification set before us for our diligent seeking? The
duties leading up to it culminate in this: “And the very God of peace sanctify
you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved
blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,”(1 Thessalonians 5:23). Is
diligence in caring for the flock of God enjoined upon pastors? This is the
reward: “Feed the flock of God which is among you, tak­ing the oversight
thereof, not by constraint, but willingly;…and when the Chief Shepherd shall
appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away,” (1 Peter 5:4).
Is fidelity to the gospel trust charged upon the ministry? This is the end
thereof: “That thou keep this com­mandment without spot, unrebukable, until the
appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ,” (1 Timothy 6:14). And again: “I charge thee
in the sight of God and of Christ Jesus, who shall judge the quick and the dead,
and by His appearing and His kingdom, preach the word,” (2 Timothy 4:1). Space
would fail us, indeed, to cite passages of this purport; they so abound that we
may say that the key to which the chief exhortations to service and consecration
are pitched in the New Testament is: “To the end He may stablish your hearts
unblamable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ with all His saints,” (1 Thessalonians 3:13). The reader of these
and many other texts of like import will observe how God has thus marked His
admonitions with the rising inflec­tion, as though to save our Christian living
from depression and monotony. Duty done for duty’s sake becomes commonplace;
activity inspired by the possible nearness of death has a certain downward
emphasis unbecoming the children of the kingdom. Therefore duty—that which is
due—is less insisted on in the gospel, as a motive, than reward, —that which may
be at­tained; and as for the imminence of death as an inspiration to
devotedness, we never find it once mentioned. It is the advent of the King of
glory, “Behold, I come quickly; and My reward is with Me to give to every man
according as his work shall be,” and not the advent of the king of terrors, that
constitutes the incentive to Christian earnestness. However low the note which
is struck in God’s discipline of His people, it is always keyed to a lofty pitch
to which it is cer­tain to rise; and if, as in one familiar instance, the
inspired discourse drops to the ground-tones of death and doom, —“It is
appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment,”— it is only that
it may mount immediately to the ex­alted strain to which the whole New Testament
is tuned, — “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them
that look for Him shall He appear a second time without sin unto
salvation,”(Hebrews 9:28).

Never did a Christian age so greatly need to have its attitude readjusted to the
primitive stand­ard as our own, —commerce, so debased with greed of gold;
science, preaching its doctrine of “dust thou art; “and Christian dogmatics,
often darkening hope with its eschatology of death! The face of present-day
religion is to such degree prone downward that, if some Joseph appears, with his
visions of the sun, moon, and stars, men exclaim: “Behold, this dreamer
com­eth.” But they that say such things plainly de­clare that they do not “seek
a country.” There is a tradition that Michael Angelo, by his pro­longed and
unremitting toil upon the frescoed domes which he wrought, acquired such a
ha­bitual upturn of the countenance that, as he walked the streets, strangers
would observe his bearing, and set him down as some visionary or eccentric. It
were well if we who profess to be Christians of the apostolic school had our
conver­sation so truly in heaven, and our faces so stead­fastly set thitherward,
that sometimes the “man with the muck-rake “should be led to wonder at us, and
to look up with questioning surprise from his delving for earthly gold and
glory. Massillon declares that, “in the days of primitive Chris­tianity, it
would have been deemed a kind of apostasy not to sigh for the return of the
Lord.” Then, certainly, it ought not now to be counted an eccentricity to “love
His appearing,” and to take up with new intensity of longing the prayer which He
has taught us: “Even so, come Lord Jesus.” Amid all the disheartenment induced
by the abounding iniquity of our times; amid the loss of faith and the waxing
cold of love within the Church; and amid the outbreaking of lawlessness without,
causing men’s hearts to fail them for fear, and for looking after those things
that are coming on the earth, —this is our Lord’s inspiring exhortation: “Look
up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.”

Endnotes:

1 “All their hopes depended on his life within the veil; and when at length he
came forth alone, there was great joy, for they thought they were accepted,” —
Gemara,

2 “From this circumstance—man’s elevated countenance—the Greeks plainly derived
the name anqrwpoV because he looks upward.” Lactantius, Inst. ii. I.


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  CHAPTER 3: 01.01.02.     TARRYING WITHIN THE VEIL
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Part I. Chapter II.

TARRYING WITHIN THE VEIL.

Centuries have passed since our great High Priest disappeared behind the
cloud-curtain of the heavenly sanctuary; and His Church, like the people of old
who waited for Zacharias, has “mar­veled that He tarrieth so long in the
temple.” Pondering the sacred promises of His return, which are written for our
hope, we find warnings of startling immediateness, but also mysterious
suggestions of possible long delay. In the post-ascension gospel of Revelation,
the word is con­stantly sounding out, “Behold, I come quickly;” while in the
parables of the kingdom, contained in the closing chapters of the Gospel
according to Matthew, we read, “While the Bridegroom tar­ried;” and “After a
long time, the Lord of those servants cometh and reckoneth with them.” Yet both
of these gospels have the same keynote: “Watch, therefore, for ye know neither
the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh,” (Matthew 25:1-46); and
“Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments,” (Revelation 16:5). Hence
we conclude that these texts are parts of a complex system of prophecy, wherein
incitements to hope and checks to impatience are so perfectly balanced as to
keep the Church ever expectant, while restraining her from being ever
despond­ent. For nothing can be plainer to the unpre­judiced reader of the New
Testament than that it is the purpose of the ascended Bridegroom to have his
Bride constantly, soberly, and, busily waiting for His return, until the
appointed time of His detention in the heavens shall have expired. Hence “He has
harmonized with consummate skill every part of His revelation to produce this
general result; now speaking as if a few seasons more were to herald the new
earth, now as if His days were thousands of years; at one moment whispering into
the ear of His disciple, at another retreating into the depth of infinite ages.
It is His purpose thus to live in our faith and hope, remote yet near, pledged
to no moment, possible at any; worshipped, not with the consternation of a near,
or the indifference of a distant, certainty, but with the anxious vigilance that
awaits a contingency ever at hand. This, the deep devotion of watchfulness,
humility, and awe, He who knows us best knows to be the fittest posture of our
spirits; therefore does He preserve the salutary suspense that ensures it, and
therefore will He determine His advent to no definite day in the calendar of
eternity,” (Archer Butler).

How could revelation be so adjusted as to se­cure this end—the perpetual
watchfulness of the Church for the Redeemer’s second coming—without, in the
event of long delay, subjecting the Lord to the imputation of having deceived
His flock, or the inspired apostles to the charge of being mistaken in the hopes
which they cherished for themselves, and which they nourished in those to whom
they wrote? We shall find the true answer to these questions by searching the
Scrip­ture to learn how God has actually affected this result.

Observe, in the first place, the union of the known and the unknown in this
great problem of the advent consummation; a union exactly fitted to inspire the
Church with sacred curiosity to search diligently and constantly for its
solution. For just as there is in revelation a dogmatic certainty as to the fact
of Christ’s return, “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,”
so there is a dogmatic uncertainty as to the time of His return: “But of that
day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven,
neither the Son, but the Father.” By this combination of the revealed and the
unre­vealed, perennial interest and inspiring search are ensured, which were
utterly impossible if either one of these elements were wanting. Take away the
certainty as to the fact of Christ’s coming, and tell us that He may never
return, and at once the wing of hope is paralyzed, and the eye of vig­ilance
closed; take away the uncertainty as to the time of Christ’s coming, and tell us
that a definite thousand years of millennial blessedness stands between us and
the advent; or have told the early disciples that at least eighteen centuries
must elapse before their Lord should comes back, —and looking for His immediate
return were utterly impossible, so that the watchman’s vigil must cease and the
virgin’s lamp be quenched. Therefore, by a wise combining of the known and the
unknown factors in the construction of prophecy, there have been secured the
most powerful stimulant to watchfulness, and the most salutary check to
presumption. By the succession of prophetic fulfillments the same result is
promoted. It is a part of the divine plan to give an onward look to all
predestined events; prophecy no sooner becomes history than history in turn
becomes prophecy, accom­plished facts passing into fore-types of greater facts
to come. “A little while and ye shall not see Me,” said Jesus in His last
discourse with His disciples, “and again a little while and ye shall see Me,”
(John 16:16). After two days of burial they did see Him, coming forth from the
grave, and ending the “little while” of their lonely sep­aration in the joy of
the resurrection fellowship. But the forty days of risen earthly life soon
ter­minated and He went to the Father, and again they saw Him not. Yet after
another “little while” of waiting the day of Pentecost arrived; and then, as the
Holy Ghost descended, they beheld Him again spiritually, as He had promised,
—ojesqe me. Thus was His word fulfilled: “I will not leave you orphans; I will
come to you.” But the end of the Master’s gracious prediction had not been
reached: the expectation had rather been lifted up and carried on, through what
Stier calls “the typico-prophetical perspective” of this prediction, to that
still further coming in which these others were to find their consummation.
Therefore the writer of the Epistle to the He­brews, addressing those who had
“tasted the heavenly gift “and been made “partakers of the Holy Ghost,” takes up
the promise yet once more, and repeats it with exquisite pathos: “For yet a
little while—how little, how little—and He that is coming shall come, and shall
not tarry” (Hebrews 10:37). Can it be that nineteen centuries were to be
in­cluded in our Lord’s “little while,” or has He forgotten His word, we ask?
And the apostle Peter answers: “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing,
that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one
day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise," (2 Peter 3:8-9). If those to
whom these words were written could not comprehend them, we can do so in the
light of accomplished time. Christ’s resurrection is the miniature of that of
His Church, both in circumstance and in time. It is written in the prophet
Hosea: “After two days will He revive us; in the third day He will raise us up,
and we shall live in His sight,” (Hosea 6:2). Our Lord’s two days in the tomb
are but a brief of the Church’s two millenniums under humiliation and mortality;
as also an epitome of Israel’s two mil­lenniums of rejection and cutting-off.
But with Him we expect that, on the third day, God will raise us both up, and we
shall live in His sight. Thus the “little while” that covered the two days of
our Savior’s burial stretches across the two millennial days of the Church’s
militant state. But, measured on the scale of eternity, “how little, how
little,” is the time of waiting until we see Him again! This is an illustration
of the prophetic perspective which belongs to many portions of Scripture, and it
shows how God has provided for the raising and carrying forward of our vision to
the one coming in which all others culminate.

Other examples equally striking might be cited; as, for instance, that
prediction and transaction: “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here
which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in His
kingdom. And af­ter six days He was transfigured before them,” (Matthew 16:28).
A miniature rehearsal of His glorious coming was here exhibited, enacted upon a
miniature scale of chronology, —“after six days,” —and presenting in vivid
epitome that sabbatic glory which is to dawn when the world’s weary working days
are over. And the scene remains for all time, not as a type simply, but as an
actual first installment, as St. Peter interprets it, “of the power and coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ,” (2 Peter 1:6).

If we note the events that were predicted to precede and herald the second
advent—the ap­pearance of Antichrist and the widespread preach­ing of the
gospel—we find the same successive fulfillments, and the same consequent
quickening of expectation. “Little children,” writes John, “it is the last time:
as we have heard that Anti­christ shall come, even now are there many
anti­christs; whereby we know that it is the last time,” (1 John 2:18). These to
which he refers were but incipient antichrists, feeble prototypes of that which
was to follow; but their presence was enough to bring the end of the age and the
return of Christ into vivid expectation. A few centuries later we find the
Church, with St. Paul’s Thessalonian prediction in its hands, — “For that day
shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that Man of Sin be
revealed,” —watching the impending fall of the Roman Em­pire, and expecting to
see that Wicked One emerge from its ruins; since it was an apostolic tradition
that the empire was the hindering power that must be taken out of the way before
he could be revealed. 2 The anticipation cast a solemn gloom over the
imagination of Christians; but it touched and kindled that gloom with the
brightest hope, since it was known that, however terrible the monster, his
appearance would be the precursor of the appearing of Christ, who would destroy
him by the brightness of His coming. Thus was the advent-consummation brought
again into vivid relief. The conception gathered from the pro­phetic Scriptures
was that of a single man, the incarnation of diabolical wickedness, raging and
reigning for three years and a half, and then destroyed by the lightning-flash
of the epiphany. Such an idea was natural, and tended again to draw the parousia
into startling proximity to the generation then living. But as centuries of
ful­filling history began to throw their interpreta­tion into prophecy, another
conception inevitably emerged. Have we seen, over the shops, those curious
changeable signs that present one name to the eye as we approach—which gradually
dis­solves in passing— and another name as we look back and read again? So with
this prediction of Antichrist. To the early Church looking forward it seemed to
foretell an individual Man of Sin, of three-years-and-six-months’ reign. But
when, out of the gloom and blood of the Middle Ages, the students of prophecy
looked backward, they began to see what the apostolic Church could have hardly
dreamed of, —a corporate Antichrist; the miniature Man of Sin, who had been
expected, now magnified into a monstrous pseudo-Christian hierarchy; the
Apocalyptic beast bestriding the centuries, red in tooth and claw with the blood
of saints; his twelve hundred and sixty days’ do­minion expanded into as many
years, constituting for the Church an era of unparalleled suffering and travail
and tears; and as they saw and bore witness, once more there burst forth from
the Church, from her prophets and reformers, such an advent-shout, “Behold He
cometh,” as cen­turies had not witnessed. To say that the ear­lier interpreters
were more likely to be correct in their conception of Antichrist than we, upon
whom the end of the age is dawning, is to say that those who gathered from our
Lord’s myste­rious predictions— “This generation shall not pass until,” and
“there be some standing here who shall not taste of death till they see” —the
impression that the kingdom of God should im­mediately appear, more truly
understood Him than we who have for our assistance the exegesis of providential
events which eighteen centuries have been drawing out. It is enough to observe
that, by a marvelous adjustment of prophecy and his­tory, the watchers in the
early Church, and in the modern Church alike, have found constant incite­ment to
expectation. To sum up our observations on this point: The long interval of
apostasy and trial which lay be­fore the Church ere the advent should arrive was
both revealed and concealed in prophecy, —re­vealed even to the minutest
circumstance and detail; yet in such hieroglyphic symbols and chronology that it
should remain graciously concealed until history should furnish the Rosetta
Stone for its interpretation. The Apocalypse—which was to be the Church’s
vade-mecum through the long dark ages—was written in cipher, that it might not
be comprehended prematurely, and thereby bring discouragement to the faithful;
but events were commissioned to yield up the key to that cipher in due time,
that the wise might understand and look up. To the first generation of
Christians this guide-book seemed to show the Lord’s coming near at hand; but
when His coming was delayed, later generations could see that, according to the
sure word of prophecy, it must have been so; and thus, in­stead of
disappointment, there was a confirmation of Scripture that only gave new vigor
to hope.

Holding that the Book of Revelation is the prophetic history of the Christian
Church from our Lord’s ascension to His return to usher in the millennium, we
find that in itself it is a marvelous symbol. As given into the hand of the
glorified Lamb to open, it is described as “a book written within and on the
back side, sealed with seven seals,” which seals represent the successive
chap­ters of the Church’s suffering and judgment throughout this dispensation.

Now, if by a “book” were meant the same thing which we describe by that word,
the reader could turn the leaves through, and look onward at once to the last
page to learn the issue. But here is a roll, sealed with seven seals, and only
as history slowly unwinds that roll can its succes­sive chapters be read. Hence
mark the won­drous plan by which the reader’s expectation is kept alert as it is
unfolded. There are seven seals; under the seventh seal seven trumpets, and
under the seventh trumpet seven vials. Now, the pondering and expectant Church
reads chap­ter after chapter as the successive seals are loosed; and how
anticipation kindles and glows upon the opening of the seventh, which is known
to be the last! But, lo! under the seventh seal appear seven trumpets, seven
sub-divisions of the seventh chapter, —and so once more the expectation is
checked, and then lifted and borne onward. But when angel after angel of
judgment has sounded, and the seventh trumpet is ready to blow, what awed and
solemn anticipation is once more roused, since it was under this that “the
mystery of God should be finished, as he hath de­clared to His servants the
prophets” (Revelation 10:7). But under the seventh trumpet again are seven
vials, —seven chapters still of judgment under the last great chapter, —and once
more the wait­ing Church looks onward; not in disappointment, but in hope, made
stronger by experience, until the seventh vial is poured out, and the voice from
heaven shall cry, “It is done” (Rev. xvi. 17). As the Apocalypse is the Church’s
preor­dained history, so is this symbolic scroll the fac­simile of that history.
It is written within and without, just as the secular and sacred stand related
to each other in their accomplishment; the history of the world and the history
of the Church being the obverse and the reverse sides of the same transaction,
the one permitted in the providence of God to shape the other, and the other to
interpret the one; and these two mov­ing together as time unwinds the scroll of
pre­arranged events. But what chapters within chap­ters! What fulfillment
opening out of fulfillment, all alluring and on-leading the hope towards that
one divine event for which the whole creation groans! We remember sailing over a
beautiful lake in Switzerland, journeying to the village that lay at its
opposite end. Again and again, as the encircling hills shut in about us, the
further shore seemed close at hand, and our destination nearly reached. But,
rounding a projecting point, the aspect would change, the mountains would part
once more, and another broad expanse of water would lie stretched out before us.
Thus, by a singular peculiarity of the landscape, the jour­ney’s end seemed
always imminent, and yet constantly receding. It was striking to observe how
this feature of the journey affected the voyagers. Not a passenger was found at
the ship’s stern gazing backward. Everyone was on the look­out. All eyes were
bent forward in eager expec­tation, till at last the destined harbor was
reached. Now all the commands and promises of Christ put us on the outlook, and
every great junc­ture of fulfilling history sets us watching to dis­cern whether
the day-dawn is not approaching, whether the eternal hills are not closing in to
bring the end of the age. The impulse which inspires us to watch, to expect, to
be ready to disembark, however vain it may seem to men, has both the authority
of God’s word and the admonitions of all the history of the Church for its
support. And, more than this, while none can know the day or the hour of the
advent, we carry with us a chart of the Church’s history to tell us
approximately where in our stormy and perilous voyage we are. Its weird,
mysterious pages contain the whole map and delineation of the Church’s career
from the ascension to the return of the Lord; but it was left for time to break
the seals of this book and to discover its meaning. This it has been doing; and
as, cor­responding to this chart, headland after headland of the prophetic
history has been descried, these have been recognized by the students who have
been searching diligently what and what manner of time the Spirit did signify in
penning this prophecy; and, though they have read no an­nouncement of day or
hour upon them, they have found them displaying the same cautionary sig­nal with
which the Church started: “Behold, I come quickly: hold fast that which thou
hast, that no man take thy crown,” (Revelation 3:11). It is a warning startling
enough to indicate that, though we know not how near the end of the age we may
be, yet we are nearing it.

“Let your loins be girded about and your lights burning,” therefore. There is
enough of certainty in this subject to feed the lamp of our faith; and enough of
uncertainty to make us very careful and solicitous lest when the Bride­groom
comes we be found among the foolish virgins, saying, “Our lamps are gone out.”
The chief point is, that this hope have a liv­ing and abiding place in our
affections and our thoughts. “Thought,” says a Christian father, “is the
sleepless lamp of the soul.” It is a lamp, indeed, that burns with varying
brightness, —flaming up in moments of intense study and ut­terance, and dying
down in sleep till there is only the pale glimmer that remains in dreams. But it
is a lamp that is never really quenched; for however profound the slumber, it
only requires a word to wake us, and to bring all our mental powers into instant
activity. Thus must it be with the holy lamp of watchfulness, —always trimmed
and burning, but not of necessity always shining in full strength. That is to
say, we need not be every moment thinking of Christ’s return, talking of it, and
preaching it. There should be ever in our hearts the calm certainty and the
sober hope that keep us ready for this event at any moment. But this hope should
rather minister to us than be ministered to by us. Instead of perpetually
dwelling on it and reiterating it, we should be lighted by it in our busy toil
of gathering the guests for the marriage feast, and doing the work which our
absent Lord has committed to us. Ready always to give to every man that asketh a
reason for the hope that is in us, we should yet show the value of our lamp by
the holy service into which it guides our feet, and the diligent piety which it
makes visible in our lives.

Endnotes:

1 “The heaven that gives back Christ gives back all we have loved and lost,
solves all doubts, and ends all sorrows. His coming looks in upon the whole life
of His Church, as a lofty mountain peak looks in upon every little valley and
sequestered home about its base, and belongs to them all alike. Every
gen­eration lies under the shadow of it.” —Rev. John Ker.

2 “We are now in the end and consummation of the world, the fatal time of
Antichrist is at hand.” —Cyprian, 3d century. “Who is he that letteth? Who but
the Roman Empire? the breaking up and dispersion of which among the ten kings
shall bring on Antichrist. And then shall be revealed that Wicked One whom the
Lord Jesus shall slay with the Spirit of His mouth.” —Tertullian, 3d century.
“This — the predicted An­tichrist—shall come when the time of the Roman Empire
shall be fulfilled and the consummation of the world approach.” — Lactaxtius,
4th century.

3 “Antichrist is already known throughout all the world. Wherefore the day is
not far off.” — Latimer on 2 Thessalonians 2:3, 1535. “O England, England,
beware of Antichrist! Take heed he doth not deceive thee.” — “I trust our
Redeemer’s com­ing is at hand.” — Bradford the Martyr, 1555. “I believe that all
the signs which are to precede the last day have already hap­pened. The gospel
is preached throughout the world: the Son of perdition is revealed.” — Luther,
1517.

4 The miniature symbols are such as these: A beast for Antichrist, an enthroned
harlot for the apostate Church; an exiled bride for the true Church, two
candlesticks for faithful witnessing Churches. The miniature chronology
accompanying these is the mystical number variously expressed, — “time, times
and half a time,” “forty and two months,” “a thousand two hun­dred and
threescore days,” etc. Since the symbols have been proved to stand for age-long
realities, it seems incontestable that the chronology must stand for a
correspondingly long period. Hence, since it covers the watching-time of the
Church’s history, it is always expressed enigmatically, that it might not be
understood too early. The millennium, on the contrary, belonging to the time
beyond the Lord’s advent and the Church’s waiting, is expressed in plain terms,
— “a thousand years.”


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  CHAPTER 4: 01.01.03.     THE POWER OF HIS COMING
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Part I. Chapter III. THE POWER OF HIS COMING.

Christ is not only coming in power at the last day, but the power of His coming
is to be constantly operating in the present day. As God has appointed the moon
to lift the tide by its at­traction that it may flood and fill all the
inden­tures of the coast, so has He ordained this great event of Christ’s
parousia to draw up the faith and hope and love of the Church, when these have
ebbed towards the world. If the philosopher is counted to have embodied the
highest practical wisdom in his maxim, “Hitch your wagon to a star,” can we
question the efficacy of the divine method which has fastened all our hopes to
“the Bright and Morning Star”? For, indisputably, the chief motive by which
duties, obligations, as­pirations, and attainments are determined in the New
Testament is this, the ever-imminent return of the Lord from heaven. Therefore
even the highest commendation that could be put upon a primitive church— “ye
come behind in no gift” —was not so high that this crown could be omitted from
it, “waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:7). Such
a tribute sounds strange to the Church of today, because she has so much
accustomed herself to steer by the compass of her creed, instead of by the star
of her hope; and to measure her position by the dead-reckoning of ecclesiastical
history, instead of determining it by observation of those heavenly lights which
God has given to rule the day and to rule the night. Yet here is a motive so
tran­scendently powerful that, were it taken away, the Church would lose her
upward gravitation. 1

It is easy to say that absorption in the state of glory tends to render us
careless concerning the serious claims of the state of humiliation. But we
believe that quite the contrary is true. For our present not only makes our
future, but is made by it; and that Christian alone can live well in the life
that now is, who lives much in the life that is to come. As one has well
written: “Only from the point of view of eschatology can we understand aright
the problems of the human life; for only when we recognize what is the final aim
of life and being can we also set forth the goal to all the efforts of man.
Therefore it has been said from an early period, Respice finem,” (look to the
end; consider the outcome; Ed.). Do we apprehend the total change of outlook
which Christ has effected for the believer by His redemption, transforming a
“fearful looking-for of judgment” into a joyful “looking for that blessed hope”?
A sinner cannot look upward if he real­izes his doom; a saint cannot look
downward if he realizes his destiny. How deplorably, therefore, do they lower
the standard of redemption who, by substituting thanatology for eschatology fix
our anticipations upon our departure through the gates of the grave, instead of
lifting them to Christ’s return through the gates of glory. If we make Death our
hope, let us not be surprised if others learn to make him their hero. 2

What, let us ask, are the attainments of the Christian life most insisted on in
Scripture, and yet the most difficult to achieve, and how does the hope of
Christ’s personal return affect them?

Unworldliness, in the midst of the present evil world! —there is nothing which
so powerfully promotes it as the realization that He whose ser­vants we are may
appear at any moment to reckon with us, and take us out of this world. Why is it
that so many Christians make Death their ex­ecutor, leaving thousands and
millions to be dis­pensed by his bony fingers? Because they are exitists, rather
than adventists; their going, and not Christ’s coming, being the goal towards
which they calculate. Therefore, if they die their wealth can stay behind: their
covetousness can still sur­vive and reap post-mortem usury. Living men,
transporting their riches in daily installments into the world to come; or dead
men remitting back their fortunes into this world, and still fingering the
interest thereof in mortuary incomes, —here are the two ideals: and our Lord has
plainly in­dicated which should be the Christian’s in His saying, “Lay not up
for yourselves treasures on earth; but lay up for yourselves treasures in
heaven.” And can there be any doubt that, if the position to which we have been
called and raised by Christ’s enthronement were really occu­pied and exulted in
by us, —“For our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we look for the
Saviour,” —the achievement of making heavenly investments would be easy and
inevitable, and the grip of avarice be unclasped from the purse-strings of
multitudes of Christians? The old nature is not sufficient for itself; and as
truly as “the ex­pulsive power of a new affection “is needed to overcome the
heart-contraction of self-love, so truly is the uplifting power of a new hope
required to break that purse-contraction of self-enrichment which is now the
greatest obstacle to the evan­gelization of the world. The logic is inevitable;
if we are citizens of heaven, we are “strangers and pilgrims in the earth; “and
every rational instinct will lead us to make our investments where we hold our
residence. Not less difficult to overcome is that worldly-mindedness which seeks
a present reward and a present glory. “But it shall not be so among you,” is the
decisive rebuke of our Lord to such aspirations. But how not? By the vision of a
millennial crown and throne, the heart is recon­ciled to a present cross and
humiliation. “We have forsaken all and followed Thee; what shall we have,
therefore?” “Ye that have followed Me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man
shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones
judging the twelve tribes of Israel “(Matthew 19:28). A dispensation of reproach
for the Church cannot be perpetual; neither can a dispensation of glory be
premature. The disciple must wait; but, in waiting for the reign of Immanuel, he
is waiting for his own reign as heir-apparent to a crown of glory. Let us not,
through a false humility, reject the doc­trine of rewards, which Scripture so
strongly emphasizes. But when and where? are the all-important questions.
Constantly do we hear it said of one deceased, “He has gone to his re­ward.”
But, from the testimony of the Word, tell us where the believer is directed to
look for his recompense at death? He is taught to aspire to a crown. But we are
not to infer, because it is said, “Be thou faithful unto death,” — that is, up
to the point of suffering martyrdom for Me, —“and I will give thee a crown of
life,” that our dying day is our crowning day, and that St. Sepulchre has been
especially commissioned to preside at our coronation. To those who share
Christ’s travail and sorrow in the present life, for the rescuing of souls, a
coronet of joy is promised. And when? “For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of
rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His
coming?” (1 Thessalonians 2:19). To those who have chosen the portion of
suffering with Christ in this world, as a little flock, it is written: “And when
the Chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth
not away,” (1 Peter 5:4). To the steadfast soldier, who has fought the good
fight, and finished his course, and kept the faith, the assurance is:
“Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord the
righteous judge shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them
also that love His appearing,” (2 Timothy 4:8). Of that other crown—the
fourth—the time of the bestowal is not mentioned: “Blessed is the man that
endureth temptation; for when he hath been approved he shall receive the crown
of life, which the Lord promised to them that love Him,” (James 1:12, R.V.). But
since it is the corona vitae., it is evident that it will be given at Christ’s
advent, when forever “death is swallowed up in victory,” and not at our decease,
when for the time life is swallowed up in defeat. Most inspiring is this
doctrine of an open and final award to Christian fidelity. Martyrs have grasped
it from afar, and been upheld amid the flames; and we, who are not called to
suffer like them, learn also to exult in it as that which shall bring our
vindication against such as contemn us, because we run not with them to the same
excess of riot in world-getting and gain-grasping. For there is a real choice of
recompense. Let no one say that this world has nothing to give the Christian; it
has. Three times our Lord pronounces that solemn sen­tence concerning religious
man-pleasers, “Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.” The preeminent
question is, whether there is power enough in the Redeemer’s proffer, “Behold, I
come quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every man according as his
work shall be,” to disenchant the heart from this temporal and sor­did
recompense? Only when we realize our call­ing as the sons of God, “begotten
again unto a lively hope,” and made heirs of a reserved inher­itance, can it be
so. “The servant abideth not in the house forever;” and if we are only such, we
shall demand day-wages, even as “the hireling looketh for the reward of his
work.” But “the son abideth ever,” and therefore can “both hope and quietly
wait” the final award of the inherit­ance.

If we turn from the perils of worldly-minded Christians to the trials of serious
saints, we find the advent-hope serving the same end. Unless one is completely
in the spell of a delusive op­timism, he must often be appalled in
contem­plating the condition of the world. A thousand millions of the race still
strangers to any form of Christianity; two thirds of nominal Christendom lapsed
into an apostasy hardly better than paganism; and of the remaining third, only a
meager proportion really spiritual disciples! Without, the whole world lying in
the Wicked One; and within, perpetual corruptions of doctrine, con­stant
estrangements from the faith, daily repri­sals of the Prince of Darkness upon
the domain of light! A heart-swoon, like that which fell upon holy Daniel at the
river Ulai, must some­times seize the thoughtful Christian in view of all this,
from which only a vision of the Ancient of Days, coming in the clouds of heaven,
can rouse him. As, amid the desperate corruptions of the Catholic Church just
previous to the Reforma­tion, we find some who, having abandoned all hope from
prelates and councils, took the name of “Expectants,” and simply waited, such
must we become, if we would be saved from dishear­tenment. We must not only look
forward to the deliverance of the Coming One, but sometimes take our seat with
Him in His throne, and share His attitude and anticipation as He sits there,
“expecting till His foes be made His footstool.”

Then for that great overshadowing woe of mor­tality and corruption, what is the
cure but the coming of the Coming One? “Thou shalt be recompensed at the
resurrection of the just,” said our Lord, speaking concerning the good deed done
to the poor. But, in the light of other Scriptures, we may say that there is no
promise that has so general an application. If death be the payment of the debt
of nature, the first resur­rection, at our Lord’s appearing, will be the full
repayment of the debt of grace. For this event will give us back all that we
have lost: our friends in Christ, looking and speaking as they were wont; our
inheritance in an earth renewed and glorified; and the temple of our body, no
longer a, house divided against itself through the conflict of sin, but raised
up and rededicated with surpassing glory. Christ’s redemption is not a
compromise with Death, but a reimburse­ment for all of which he has robbed us,
—a full refunding, exacted by the lawsuit of the atone­ment, of our defrauded
inheritance. “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me,” was all that
the broken-hearted David could utter con­cerning his dead child. But we who look
for a Saviour can say more than this, since “them also which sleep in Jesus will
God bring with Him.” What a beautiful, prophetic suggestion there is for us in
that record of the Bethany feast which immediately follows the story of the
raising of Lazarus: “But Lazarus, which had been dead, whom He raised from the
dead, was one of them that sat at the table with Him” (John 12:1-2). Often, in
our advent anticipations, have we dreamed of the arrival of the long-looked-for
con­summation, and of our beloved dead suddenly re­appearing, taking the vacant
chair at the table, greeting us with the old familiar look, and speak­ing to us
in the old familiar tones. If but a dream, this certainly is true: that the
parousia will bring a real restoration, not simply a trans­fer into some strange
society of shadows and spirits. Many seem to take pride in death, since they
have learned to call it their dies natalis (day of birth; natal day; Ed.); but
we confess that we are ashamed to die, rather than proud, since we know that in
this event we shall have reached the pay-day of sin’s wages. 3 Praised indeed be
Immanuel, that dying now means our departing to be with Christ; but,
nevertheless, it is a return for which we now wait, —His return, and our return
with Him. There­fore has the Holy Ghost drawn for us that mag­nificent vision of
the Lord Himself descending from heaven with a shout; and then, for the Church
of all ages, is added the injunction: “Wherefore comfort one another with these
words,” (1 Thessalonians 4:18).

“Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty: they shall behold a land of far
distances,” (Isaiah 33:17). Blessed is it if we are so long-sighted as to catch
glimpses of that better country, amid the trial and turmoil of this; but doubly
blessed, if we can look down upon this country through the far-reaching vistas
of that, viewing the pres­ent life from the exalted stand-point of our
Re­deemer’s throne. And this is permitted us. For there are what we may call
spiritual rehear­sals of the advent rapture, in which, like Paul, we are “caught
up into Paradise” and hear un­speakable words. Let those bear witness who have
proved it, —and there are such, —how utterly the whole scene of life has been
changed in such moments. “Like Philip, I was caught away by the Spirit,” writes
one, “and was found, not at Azotus, but in the advent cloud, seated with my Lord
in the chariot of His descending glory. A fire devoured before Him, and it was
very tempestuous round about Him. I heard Him call to the heavens from above,
and to the earth, that He might judge His people, saying, ‘Gather my saints
together unto Me, those that have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.’ And as
His redeemed ones came flying to Him, ‘as a cloud, and as the doves to their
windows,’ from every tribe and kindred of earth, I beheld such as had been left
behind. What wringing of hands there was among those who had loved gold
su­premely in a world which God so loved as to give His only Son for its
redemption! What blanched faces upon those who had fared sump­tuously and lived
deliciously amid a starving and perishing race! Many of them who did so seemed
to have worn the name of Christians; for, as I listened, I could hear a mighty
wail borne up from them towards the descending Judge: Lord, Lord, have we not
prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name cast out devils? and in Thy name done
many wonderful works? ‘ But He only answered them: I never knew you: depart from
Me, ye that work iniquity.’ Whether in the body or out of the body when this
trans­port was upon me, I cannot tell. But never since it occurred has the world
been the same to me; nor can I think of its wealth, its luxury, its ease, its
honors, without an instant prayer to be deliv­ered from making these my gods.”

Such “instant prayer “we may all well learn to offer, in the midst of our
necessary work con­stantly sending up ejaculatory petitions that we may be
delivered from the present evil world, so that, when our Lord appears in the
clouds of heaven, we may bound towards Him by a resist­less attraction, and be
forever with Him. 4 Noth­ing can compensate for their loss who have elim­inated
this advent-hope from their creed. One love conquers another; and only by
tasting “the powers of the world to come” can there be wrought in us a radical
and enduring distaste for the vanities of the world that now is. Well,
therefore, has one written concerning this hope, that, “of the life of
watchfulness, patience, and heavenly-mindedness, it is the soul and power; and
history makes abundantly manifest that, where this prospect has temporarily
receded in the Christian consciousness, the spiritual life also has declined.
One may confidently say that to a healthy Christian life ‘etwas Apocalyptisches”
—something apocalyptical— lso belongs; and that obligation to observe the signs
of the times cannot possibly be fulfilled so long as the question as to the
final whither has not, at least in prin­ciple, received an answer.”

Endnotes:

1 “All the Apostolic exhortations and consolations are so closely connected with
the prospect of the personal return of the Lord, that whoever contradicts this
last, thereby takes away the roof and cornice from the structure of Apostolic
Theology.”—Van Oosterzee.

2 Professor Duncan, commenting on the famous book of Car­lyle, exclaims:
“Hero-worship! Ah, well he and I have to meet a strange hero yet—qdnatoV—the
greatest that I know of next to Him who overcame him.” Let us look to it that by
our death-homage, expressed in such mortuary poetry as, “Death is the crown of
life,…

Death gives us more than was in Eden lost, The King of Terrors is the Prince of
Peace,” we do not take the crown from the head of the greater and place it on
the head of the less.

“For my own part, I must confess to you, that death, as death, appeareth to me
as an enemy, and my nature doth abhor and fear it. But the thoughts of the
coming of the Lord are most sweet and joyful to me; so that, if I were but sure
that I should live to see it, and that the trumpet should sound, and the dead
should rise, and the Lord appear before the period of my age, it would be the
joyfulest tidings to me in the world. Oh that I might see His kingdom come!”
—Richard Baxter.

“O Almighty God, grant that those necessary works wherein we are engaged,
whether in the affairs of Thy Church or of this world, may not prevail to hinder
us; but that, at the appearing and advent of Thy Son, we may hasten with joy to
meet Him, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God,
world without end. Amen.”


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 5: 01.01.04.     THE PROGRAMME OF REDEMPTION
========================================================================

Part I. Chapter IV. THE PROGRAMME OF REDEMPTION.

It is remarkable to observe that the first coun­cil of the Christian Church ever
convened should have outlined the whole scheme of redemption from Pentecost to
the consummation of the ages. And whatever we may hold as to the binding
authority of later councils, we must accept the deliverances of this at
Jerusalem as final, since from the testimony of inspired Scripture we know that
the Spirit so truly presided and guided in the assembly that in publishing its
decisions it was written, “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us,” (Acts
15:28). Jesus Christ is the Architect of the ages. Not only “all things were
made by Him” —all worlds and systems of the material universe—but all the
dispensations were planned and predestined by Him: “By whom also He made the
ages,” (Hebrews 1:2). His Church was not set upon her course until a complete
program of her mission had been placed in her hands, the working-plan by which
all her operations were to be directed. “Known unto God are all His works from
the beginning of the world,” (Acts 15:18,) is the significant declara­tion which
accompanies the publication of this program. And, instead of being day-laborers
working in ignorance, God would have us, as laborers together with Him, to
understand the entire divine scheme by which our efforts are to be directed,
that we may be saved alike from pre­sumption and from despair.

“Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out of
them a people for His name,” (Acts 15:14). Here is the first act of the great
program. Because of the citation from the Old Testament which immediately
fol­lows— “And to this agree the words of the prophets, as it is written: After
this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David which is fallen
down” —it has been inferred that this Gentile outgathering and the tabernacle
upbuild­ing mean the same thing; in other words, that the rearing of the
tabernacle of David is a figura­tive expression for the building of the Church
of Christ. By this superficial though not altogether unnatural explanation of
the passage, the whole program has been reduced to a single act, and the
inference drawn that the preaching of the gospel in this dispensation is to
issue in the con­version of “all the Gentiles.” But it is only necessary to
observe three things in order to correct this misapprehension: First, that the
citation here made from the closing chapter of the Book of Amos is clearly a
predic­tion of the literal restoration of literal Israel, and their
reinhabitance of their land; for the words quoted are part of a passage which
ends with this decisive language: “And I will plant them upon their land, and
they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith
the Lord thy God,” (Amos 9:15). Observe again that in making this citation the
Holy Ghost in­serts the words, not found in the original text, “After this I
will return,” and will build again, thus making the restoration of the Davidic
tab­ernacle subsequent to the gathering out of the Church from the Gentiles, and
connecting it directly with the personal return of the Lord. And, lastly, we are
to notice that in announcing this election from among the Gentiles, it is not
added, “in this are fulfilled the words of the prophets,” but “with this
harmonize—sujwnousin, symphonize—the words of the prophets.” It is but saying
that the parts of the great oratorio of redemption perfectly accord, though
centuries lie between its different measures; and then, to show us how they
accord, the Holy Spirit sounds all the octaves thereof with a single sweep, and
lets us listen to their grand unison. This, then, is the program of redemption
by which we are to work in evangelizing the world:—

“First, God did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name.
And to this agree the words of the prophets, as it is written:—

“After this I will return and will build again the tabernacle of David which is
fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof and I will set it up:

“In order that the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the
Gentiles upon whom My name is called, saith the Lord who doeth all these
things.” The three great stages of redemption are thus outlined in their order.
The gathering of the Church is the first act, and this, having begun at
Pentecost, is still go­ing on. All the descriptions of it contained in Scripture
mark it as elective. From the word of Christ to His first disciples, “I have
out-chosen you out of the world,” to the triumph-song of the saved heard by the
seer in Patmos, “Thou hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred
and tongue and people and nation,” the Bride of Christ is always the Ecclesia,
the called out. Nowhere is universal redemption predicted as the result of
preaching the Gospel in this dispensation. If in the minds of those who are
accustomed to speak of the world’s conversion there is a violent revulsion from
this saying, we remind them that we are simply affirming the truth of the
doctrine of election, and its applica­tion to this entire age. Most tenderly and
rev­erently would we handle this solemn mystery of the Sovereign Will. “Who has
not known pas­sion, cross, and travail of death,” says Luther, “cannot treat of
this theme without injury to man or enmity to God.” But it is written in
Scripture, and the verdict of the ages declares it true. For after eighteen
centuries of Christian conquest the vast proportion of the world still “lieth in
the Wicked One,” and Christ’s true Church is but a “little flock “in comparison.
Only with pathetic sympathy for our fallen race in its ruin and helplessness can
we contemplate this fact. And yet we must be reminded that all attempts to
violate this decree by making the Church a multitudinous collection, instead of
a gracious election, have only issued in apostasy. Sacramentarianism would take
the world into the Church by instituting a baptized paganism instead of taking
the Church out of the world by preach­ing spiritual regeneration; and behold the
result in a half-heathenized Christendom. Latitudina­rianism would make the
Church coextensive with the world by preaching the gospel of universal
salvation, —all men by nature the sons of God, —and thus, by crowding the Lord’s
house with “the children of the Wicked One,” turn it into “the synagogue of
Satan.” Though it be in mystery, and sorrow and tears, we had best work on,
there­fore, by the divine schedule, preaching the gospel among all nations for a
witness that we may gather out for Christ a chosen and sanctified peo­ple,
calmly answering those who say that God’s ways are partial with His own words:
“When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done
away.” And yet, lest we should take too narrow a view of this theme, other
considerations should not be overlooked. Christ is called “The Light of the
World.” The beams of sunlight both elect and irradiate; taking out here and
there from muddy pool or acrid dead sea a pure, crystalline drop and lifting it
heavenward; but also lighting and warming all the atmosphere by their radiance.
So Christ, preached among the Gentiles, elects from them a holy flock, a
regenerate Church; but besides this, He changes the moral climate of the world
so that such noxious growths as cannibalism, slavery, polygamy, and infanticide
disappear. These two results inevitably attend the proclama­tion of the gospel;
regeneration saving some out of the world, and civilization putting something of
Christianity into the world: but by neither process as now going on is the
millennium des­tined to be ushered in.

Moreover, let us reflect that an election is never an end in itself; it is
rather a means and prepara­tion for some vastly larger accomplishment. The body
of the elect is really Christ’s army, gathered by a divine conscription from
every kindred and people, that they may attend Him as He goes forth to His final
conquest of the world. “And they that are with Him are called and elect and
faithful,” (Revelation 17:14). Of this, however, we shall speak later. The
second act of the divine program now comes into view. “After this I will return
and build again the tabernacle of David which is fallen down.” By Christ’s
personal coming in glory, the conversion and restoration of Israel are to be
accomplished. The reader has only to compare this order with the redemption
schedule drawn out in the eleventh of Romans to see how per­fectly they agree.
St. Paul, indeed, begins with the Jewish election, as St. James does with the
Gentile election. And we must remember that the choosing out that is going on in
this dispen­sation touches both: “not out of the Jews only, but also out of the
Gentiles” (Romans 9:24). But each apostle takes up the same succession of
events; first the Gentile out-gathering, and then the Hebrew regathering. The
hardening of the Jews which we now behold is declared by Paul to continue “until
the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved. As it
is written: There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away
ungodliness from Jacob” (Romans 11:25-26). By the “fulness of the Gentiles “we
understand the predestined num­ber, the elect company gathered through the
entire period of this dispensation to form the Bride of Christ. 1 When this
number shall have been accomplished, then the conversion of Israel will occur
and their national restoration to God’s favor. The two parts of the aged
Simeon’s proph­ecy are strictly consecutive: “A light to lighten the Gentiles
and the glory of Thy people Israel” (Luke 2:31-32). The sun is the light of the
earth, overspreading it with his beams and elect­ing and drawing up from it the
pure water-drops which form the clouds; but he is the glory of the heavens,
being their very central and most illus­trious orb. And so is Christ a light for
revelation to the nations, exhibiting God to them in Himself who is “the
brightness of His glory and the ex­press image of His person,” in order to win
from them a chosen heritage. But He will be the supreme glory of His people
Israel, when He shall at last be owned as their Messiah and reign in the midst
of them as King.

These two stages of redemption—the Gentile election and the Hebrew restoration—
are to be accomplished “in order “to a third, namely, “that the residue of men
might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called.”
The old priority still holds, so far as worldwide salvation is concerned: “To
the Jew first and also to the Gentile.” This order was inverted for a time by
the rejection of Christ by His people; but when they shall turn unto Him and
find mercy, it will be taken up again. It stands writ­ten in Scripture that “all
Israel shall be saved;” and just as plainly, that through that consum­mation
“all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called.” Without enlarging upon the
thought, what a profound hint of this does Paul give in the words of the same
chapter concerning his rejected people: “Now if the fall of them be the riches
of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much
more their full­ness.” “For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of
the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?” (Romans
11:12, Romans 11:15) “It is clear,” says Lange, “that the apostle awaits a
boundless effect of blessing on the world from the future conversion of Israel.”
Then shall the word of Joel concerning the effusion of the Spirit have a
complete fulfillment, as it had a partial and pre-figurative accomplishment on
the day of Pentecost. For if we turn to the prophet we find it said: “And ye
shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God and
none else. And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my Spirit
upon all flesh,” (Joel 2:27-28). And with this agree the words of Isaiah where
he predicts the desolation of Zion as continuing “till the Spirit be poured upon
us from on high,” (Isaiah 32:15). When the Lord shall shed forth the Holy Ghost
abundantly upon His covenant people, through them will come unspeakable blessing
to the Gentiles. 2 The modern post-millennial interpretation completely
de­ranges the program of prophecy at this point by making redemption terminate
with its first scene. “The end of the age,” brought in by the second coming of
Christ, misleadingly translated “the end of the world” in our common version, is
supposed by many to close the probation of the race, winding up the present
earthly scene, and bringing in the final judgment and the eternal state, instead
of opening into the triumphs of the age to come. Is it possible that the first
Chris­tians could have had this idea? If so, how could they have so ardently
desired, and earnestly looked for, the speedy return of the Lord, since His
coming would end the work of Gentile in-gathering, while as yet only a handful
had been saved? On the contrary, take the words of Peter to the Jewish rejectors
of Christ, and observe how clearly they teach the very opposite: “Repent ye
therefore and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so there may
come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord; and that he may send
the Christ who hath been ap­pointed for you, even Jesus whom the heaven must
receive until the times of the restoration of all things,” (Acts 3:9-21, R.V.).
Here we have, as constantly throughout Scripture, the repent­ance of Israel
directly connected with the return of Christ from heaven, and their conversion
and the Lord’s appearing resulting, not in their cut­ting off from the presence
of the Lord, but in times of “refreshing from the presence of the Lord;” not in
the winding up of all things, but in the “restoration of all things.” Three acts
of the divine program appear again in this decla­ration of Peter, the coming of
Christ, the con­version of Israel, and universal redemption, —corresponding
exactly with those revealed in the texts from James and Paul already considered.

How clearly it is thus seen that the final re­demption of the world comes at
last through the conversion and restoration of Israel, and the glorifying of the
Church at our Lord’s return! If it be said that this is a Jewish conception,
bor­rowed from the Old Testament, 3 we will answer, “Yes, and reiterated and
more explicitly un­folded in the New Testament.” For nowhere is the order of
events so distinctly revealed as in the Acts and Epistles.

“Election, partial and opposed to universal redemption,” has been the verdict of
thousands who have replied against God, knowing little of the range of His
eternal plan. “Election, gra­cious, and preparatory to universal redemption,” is
the discovery which a deep pondering of Holy Scripture reveals. The chosen
nation, Israel, restored and made glorious on earth, with the Lord dwelling in
the midst of her, and the elect Church transfigured with her risen Saviour,
—these are His appointed agents, trained by long dis­cipline and trial for
bringing all peoples and tribes into obedience to God. As to the Gentile
election, so to the Hebrew restoration, objectors may be reconciled when it
appears that this, too, is instrumental and preparatory to worldwide salvation.
“Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon
thee,” is the summons which the long captive daughter of Zion shall hear, and
then the blessed result: “And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to
the brightness of thy rising,” (Isaiah 60:3). No dream of the world’s
conversion, how­ever ardent, can surpass the glowing reality as depicted in the
prophecy just quoted, —“The abundance of the sea,” “The forces of the
Gen­tiles,” “The inhabitants of the isles,” coming no longer by ones and twos,
but in clouds! Only let us observe the order of their coming, —through restored
and forgiven Israel, —that we may un­derstand the Messianic prayers which are
taught us in the Scripture to be the truest missionary prayers. To plead for the
speedy return of the Lord is to plead for the speedy ingathering of the heathen;
to pray for the peace of Jerusalem is to pray for the conversion of the
Gentiles. How this comes out in the words of the sixty-seventh Psalm! —“God be
merciful unto us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us; that Thy way
may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations.” The Jews have
been in the shadow of God’s averted countenance ever since they rejected His
Anointed, and hid, as it were, their faces from Him. But when they shall re­pent
and return to Him, He will turn His face again upon them in blessing. Then will
redemp­tion go forth unhindered and without measure upon the Gentiles. 4 “Then
shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us,
and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.” Blessed time, when God’s patient
seek­ing after the Gentiles shall give place to a uni­versal seeking of the
Gentiles after God. “And the inhabitants of one city shall go to another,
saying. Let us go speedily to pray before the Lord and to seek the Lord of
Hosts. I will go also, yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek
the Lord of Hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord,” (Zechariah
8:21-22). To those, therefore, who would dishearten us by declaring that
missions to the heathen are a fail­ure, and that, at the end of nineteen
centuries of evangelization by the Church, there are a thou­sand million of
earth’s fourteen hundred millions who have not even named the name of Christ,
—that “for every additional Christian, we have every year a hundred and eighty
additional heathens or Moslems,” —our answer is, An ex­hortation to redoubled
diligence in preaching the gospel to every creature, that we may thereby “hasten
the day of God;” an invocation, “Even so come Lord Jesus;” and a prayer which we
breathe out in the most fitting words of the old English burial service: “That
it may please Thee shortly to accomplish the number of Thine elect and to hasten
Thy kingdom, that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of Thy
holy name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul,
in Thy eternal and everlasting glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Endnotes:

1 The word plhrwma—fullness—is used to signify a limited fullness as well as an
unlimited: it may apply to the contents of the brimming cup dipped from the
ocean as well as to all the waters of the ocean. “When the fullness of time was
come, God sent forth his Son” (Galatians 4:4). Here is meant the completion of a
certain preordained period of time. So “the fulness of the Gentiles” we hold to
mean the entire number of those to be gathered out of the Gentiles during the
age. See use of the word also in Mark 2:21.

2 “A new life in the higher charismatic fullness of the Spirit shall extend from
God’s people to the nations of the world com­pared with which the previous life
of the nations must be considered dead.” —Auberlen.

3 It is certainly not without significance that the Old Testa­ment throughout
binds the fulfillment of the Divine kingdom to the land that was granted to
Abraham, not by right of nature, but by grace. The prophets know of no final
completion of the Divine promises without the confirmation of this old promise
of the eternal possession of the Holy Land.” — Oehler, Old Testa­ment Theology,
1. p. 93.

4 “Those beautiful questioning words of Isaiah about the Gentiles often occur to
me: ‘Who are these who fly as doves to their windows?’ —a flock of doves
speeding to their home, their ark of refuge. Noah’s one dove, like the solitary
Jewish Church, took refuge there from the wild waste of waters; but all
kin­dreds, people, tongues, and nations shall fly to their stronghold in later
times, their feathers of gold and their wings covered with silver, white and
lovely though they have lain among the pots.” — Patience of Hope.


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  CHAPTER 6: 01.01.05.     THE ENDS OF THE AGES
========================================================================

Part I. Chapter V. THE ENDS OF THE AGES.

Three consecutive ends of ages come into view in the New Testament: First
(Hebrews 9:26), “Once in the end of the ages hath he appeared to put away sin by
the sacrifice of Himself,” Christ’s first coming, terminating the Jewish economy
in the judgment and rejection of the house of Israel, and opening the door of
grace to the Gentiles; second, (Matthew 13:49), “At the end of the age the
angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just,” Christ’s
second coming, attended by the first resurrection and the rap­ture of the
Church, terminating the dispensation of grace in the judgment of apostate
Christen­dom, restoring Israel, and introducing the millennium; third (1
Corinthians 15:24, R.V.), “Then cometh the end, when He shall deliver up the
kingdom to God even the Father,” the close of the millen­nium, the resurrection
of the rest of the dead, and the last judgment.

Observe with what dramatic solemnity each of these successive ages is brought to
a close. On the cross of Golgotha, amid the rending of the temple veil, the
shock of earthquake, and the darkening of the sun, Christ ended the first with
that mighty cry: “It is finished,” (John 19:30). Amid voices, and thunders and
lightnings, and an earthquake, and the outpouring of the sev­enth vial, the
present age is closed, a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the
throne, saying: “It is done,” (Revelation 16:17). With the passing away of the
first heaven and the first earth, and the abolishing of death and sorrow and
crying and pain, the millennial age is brought to an end, He that sitteth on the
throne saying: “It is done, I am Alpha and Omega, the begin­ning and the end,”
(Revelation 21:6).

What is called the post-millennial theory—the doctrine that Christ’s return is
at the end of the millennium instead of the beginning—maintains its position by
telescoping the ages, running the second and third together, and so making their
principal events to synchronize. It is agreed that a resurrection takes place at
the advent of Christ. But pre-millennialists hold that this is “the first
resurrection,” — the rising of the just, —and that a chiliad will elapse between
it and the second resurrection, during which period Christ will reign over the
earth with His glorified Church, and that therefore His coming must be
pre-millennial. This might not appear to one whose eye is not trained by a
diligent study of the Word to apprehend the perspective of prophecy. But will
our readers follow us care­fully, and see whether the position is not justi­fied
by an appeal to Scripture. The following text we regard as having to do with
three consecutive ages (1 Corinthians 15:22-29): “In Christ shall all be made
alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits,” —at the close
of the Jewish dispensation, —“after­ward they that are Christ’s at His coming,”
— at the close of the present dispensation, —“then cometh the end,” — at the
close of the millennial dispensation. This last “end,” however, is held by
post-millenarians to mean the time of Christ’s coming and the resurrection of
all, both righteous and wicked; so that there is no considerable period between
the advent and the final consum­mation. But observe the significant adverbs
“after­wards” and “then,” —eteita; eita. 1 They are cor­relatives; and as we
know that one describes an era of at least nearly nineteen hundred years, it is
quite impossible to suppose that the other indi­cates no considerable period of
time. And this is not all. Scripture is like a dissected map, whose scattered
parts we must fit together if we would discover what is the divine pattern of
the ages. And, turning to the Apocalypse, we find that it gives us the period
and the events with which to fill up this disputed space between the
resurrection of them that are Christ’s at His com­ing and the end. For in its
pages we have a vision of “the first resurrection” —that which all Scripture
teaches us to connect with Christ’s second advent—and then the statement that
“the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were ended;” and
between these two, the glorified saints reigning with Christ a thousand years,
(Revelation 20:4-6). If plain language may be plainly interpreted, this gives us
the filling up of the outline revealed in Corinthians, and verifies the schedule
of the ages with which we begin this chapter.

Moreover, if we observe the events which are connected with the “end” in the
Corinthian prophecy, we see how clearly they define it. “Then cometh the end
when He shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father,” (1 Corinthians
15:24, R.V.). But on Christ’s appearing at the close of the present age, He
takes the kingdom from the Father. As Daniel sees One like unto the Son of man
coming with the clouds of heaven, he beholds Him invested with kingship by the
“An­cient of Days:” “And there was given Him do­minion and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples and nations and languages should serve Him,” (Daniel 7:13-14).
Can our Lord’s receiving the kingdom from the Father mean the same thing as His
delivering up the kingdom to the Father? 2 In Revelation the representation is
precisely the same. As the seventh angel sounds—the angel of the last trump
under which the righteous dead are raised, (1 Corinthians 15:52) —there are
great voices in heaven saying: “The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom
of our Lord and of His Christ; “and the response from the four and twenty elders
is: “We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art and wast and art to
come,” —this is the title of the glorified Christ (1:8), — “because Thou hast
taken to Thyself Thy great power and hast reigned.” This certainly is Christ’s
assumption of the kingdom rather than His surrender of it. Not only does He
receive the kingdom at His advent, but, ac­cording to this same prophecy of
Daniel, His redeemed people share its reign and judgment with Him: “And the time
came that the saints possessed the kingdom,” (Daniel 7:22). But this time is
shown in Revelation to extend from the first resurrection to the second
resurrection: “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection:
on such the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of
Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years,” (Revelation 20:6). Observe,
again, that the last end which we are considering is “the end…when He shall have
put down all rule and author­ity and power.” Does He not begin this work at His
advent, when He destroys Antichrist, and all his vast array of allied
wickedness, by the bright­ness of His coming? “For He must reign till He hath
put all enemies under His feet.” But at His coming for the first resurrection,
He finds His enemies unsubdued, the nations angry, the apos­tasy ripe for
judgment. This cannot be the time of the completed subjection of His foes. “The
last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” Yet it is only at the end of the
millennium, at the termination of the thousand years’ reign of the saints, and
after the white-throne judgment, that the announcements are heard: “And death
and hell were cast into the lake of fire;” “And there shall be no more death,”
(Revelation 20:14; Revelation 21:4). We find therefore, an entire era of the
conquest and reign of Immanuel and His saints between the resurrection at His
glorious appearing and the end when He shall surrender His kingdom. These
considerations would seem to establish conclusively the pre-millennial order of
Christ’s coming; but there are others. The present age is everywhere set forth
in Scripture as one of mingled darkness and light, towards the end of which the
shadows rather deepen into judgment than break away before a triumphant
millennial dawn. The parables of the kingdom, contained in the thirteenth
chapter of Matthew, are decisive in their teaching. These parables are seven;
and we hold that—like the seven prophetic pictures of the Apocalyptic
churches—they portray the successive eras of the history of Christendom from the
beginning of the dispensation to its close. 3 In them we have a vivid
delineation of the trials and resistance which the kingdom of heaven was to
encounter from the Adversary, from its first introduction into the world until
the end of the age; and if, in their exposition, we are guided by the light
which other Scriptures throw upon them, we seem to discover both a logical and a
chronological order in the teaching which they set forth. In the first parable,
the seed is “the word of the kingdom.” As it is sown, three parts fall into
unfruitful soil, and only one part into good ground. Does not this harmonize
with the uni­versal experience of the preachers of the Gospel, from the day of
our Lord’s ministry until this present, that only the smaller fraction of their
hearers give fruitful heed to the Word? In the second parable, we take the field
that is really receptive, and into which good seed has been cast, and, lo! tares
are found to have been sown therein by the Adversary, which now appear growing
together with the wheat. This our Lord explains to mean the mingling of “the
children of the Wicked One” with “the children of the kingdom.” And is not this
exactly what came to pass in the first stages of the apostasy, the bring­ing of
unregenerated men into the Church of Christ and mixing them with true saints?
With this second parable of the kingdom harmonizes most strikingly the second
stage of prophetic Christian history as exhibited in the Church of Smyrna
(Revelation 2:9), —“I know the blasphemy of them that say they are Jews and are
not, but are of the synagogue of Satan;” false professors per­sonating the true,
the children of the Wicked One palming themselves off as children of the
king­dom (see Romans 2:28). The third parable shows the result. The king­dom of
heaven becomes a lofty and overshadow­ing world-church. 4 The mustard-seed
springs up, but not according to its kind; from an herb it grows into a great
tree, and the birds of the air that once sought to destroy the seed of the
kingdom now lodge in its branches; the em­perors and kings who had striven to
uproot the pure Church find shelter in this secular Church, which, in its
changed condition, overspreads the earth with marvelous rapidity. Let one read
this parable in the light of the same representation as given by the prophets,
(Ezekiel 31:3-4; Daniel 4:10-19), and he can hardly con­clude that our Lord
intended herein to set forth a true spiritual growth of His Church. It is rather
the Pergamos period of her development which the prophetico-historic
interpreters have understood to be the era of the union of Church and State,
wherein what was originally “not of this world” becomes a vast world-kingdom.
The prophetic prefigurement in the Apocalypse is very striking, —Balaam
conspiring with Balak, the prophet with the king, to seduce the children of
Israel into idolatry, (Revelation 2:14), —even as, in the history of the Church,
the bishops and the emperors by their ecclesiastical alliance pagan­ized
Christianity. The fourth parable gives the result of this rank prosperity of the
Church in the complete corrup­tion of her life and doctrine: “The kingdom of
heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal
till the whole was leavened.” Let those who affirm that this parable signifies
the gradual penetration and sav­ing transformation of the whole world by the
Gospel reflect that, in order to get this interpre­tation, they must give to
leaven a directly oppo­site meaning from that which Scripture invariably assigns
to it, since it is always employed in the Bible as a type of corruption, there
being abso­lutely no exception to this usage in Old Testa­ment or New. 5 Hear
our Lord’s admonition to “take heed and beware of the leaven of the Phari­sees
and of the Sadducees,” meaning thereby their false doctrines, (Matthew 16:12).
Listen to the exhortations of the apostle against “the leaven of malice and
wickedness,” (1 Corinthians 5:8). Warning the Galatians of the doctrine of the
Judaizers, he bids them remember that “a little leaven leaven­eth the whole
lump,” (Galatians 5:9). Reproving the Corinthian Church for harboring
fornicators, he uses the same phrase, and adds: “Purge out, therefore, the old
leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are” —according to your calling and
profession— “unleavened,” (1 Corinthians 5:7). Com­paring Scripture with
Scripture, —the only method of interpreting difficult texts, —it seems clear
that this parable of the leaven symbolizes the apostate Church, “which did
corrupt the earth with her fornication,” (Revelation 19:2), and not the true
Christianity, which was to transform the whole earth by the Gospel. The only
instance where the use of leaven was commanded in Jewish worship affords a
striking confirmation of this interpretation. Rigidly and repeatedly was its
employment forbidden in the Passover service, because that service was
for-typical of Christ, who should be without spot or blemish. But the
wave-loaves of the feast of Pentecost were commanded to be “baken with leaven,”
(Leviticus 23:17); and Pentecost is believed to have been fore-typical of the
Church, as the Pass­over was of Christ; and its corruption by the leaven of
false doctrine was thus possibly fore­shadowed even in a Jewish rite and
ceremony. But could the kingdom of heaven be compared with an evil or corrupt
thing? Not in its prim­itive and original condition certainly. But in its
deteriorated state it might. “Then shall the king­dom of heaven be likened unto
ten virgins: . . . five of them were wise and five were foolish,” (Matthew
25:1-2). Here the kingdom of heaven, as it will be immediately previous to the
coming of Christ, is compared with what is semi-apostate, according to the
invariable representation of the mixed condition prevailing at that period. If,
as we believe, the parable of the leaven belongs to the Middle Ages, when the
Church was com­pletely apostate, it is clearly reasonable that the kingdom
should then be compared with leaven, which is the synonym of corruption. And can
we fail to be struck with the exact correspond­ence between the fourth parable
of the seven in Matthew and the fourth prophecy of the seven in the Apocalypse?
As in the one a woman is seen hiding leaven in the meal, so in the other is
pictured “that woman jezebel teaching and seducing Christ’s servants to commit
fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to idols,” (Revelation 2:20); that is,
the papacy disseminating false doctrine in the Church, and adulterating its
worship with pagan rites and ceremonies.

Such we believe to be the interpretation of this much-disputed parable which
Scripture com­pels, and we may add also, which history con­firms. 6 For if one
holds that here is a similitude of the transformation of the whole world by the
Gospel, he can show no fulfillment in fact; since, after nearly twenty
centuries, the vastly larger part of the world is still pagan, unchristian or
antichristian. If the parable signifies the cor­ruption of the whole prophetic
earth by the leaven of paganized Christianity, history gives a perfect
confirmation of it; since, just before the dawn of the Reformation, it was
proudly boasted by the Roman hierarchy that all opposition had at last been
silenced, and the entire Christian world brought into acquiescence with the
Apos­tate Church.

Having uttered these four parables in the pres­ence of the multitude, our Lord
makes a signifi­cant break in His discourse and sends them away; then, entering
into the house, He speaks the re­maining three to His disciples. What do these
last signify? An eminent commentator, Dr. Schaff following a totally different
exposition of the earlier parables from that we have indicated, when reaching
the parable of the hid treasure remarks on the striking historical likeness
which is presented to it in what occurred at the Refor­mation. We consider that
this may be the in­tended prophetic reference. It is God’s elect people who are
repeatedly called in Scripture His “peculiar treasure,” (Exodus 19:5; Psalms
125:4, etc.). In “the field “where the kingdom of heaven has been so resisted
and thwarted by the Adversary this treasure now lies hid out of sight. “The
kingdom of God is as it were buried beneath the clods of false Christianity, —of
superstition, hu­man ordinances and ceremonies “(Roos). Is not this the Sardis
period of the Church, nominal Christianity alone visible? “I know thy works,
that thou hast a name that livest and art dead.” But there is a hidden remnant:
7 “A few names even in Sardis that have not defiled their gar­ments.” At what
cost of martyr-blood and of the selling of all—property, friends, and life—was
this hidden treasure recovered, and what bound­less joy resulted! So likewise of
the sixth par­able, that of the pearl. The sixth Church of the Apocalypse,
Philadelphia, which has been held to be the Church of the Reformation, has this
as its distinctive honor: “Thou hast kept my Word.” By the hand of such as
Wiclif, and Luther, and Tyndal, who heard the command of God, “Buy the truth and
sell it not,” the priceless pearl of the Holy Scriptures, or, forsooth, that
pearl of pearls, the doctrine of justification by faith, —long hidden from the
people under the rubbish of the apostasy, —was again brought to light and held
forth, at what countless cost of life and substance, but also amid what exultant
rejoicing! The seventh parable is most striking in its fore­casting of the times
in which we live: “Again the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast
into the sea, and gathered of every kind” —ek pantoV genouV— “out of every
race.” Here is the draw-net of world-wide missions; and the fact that our Lord
interprets the parable as applying to the close of the dispensation shows how
per­fectly its teaching accords with His own prophecy that towards the end the
Gospel of the kingdom should be preached among all nations. It will be seen thus
that as the first parable, in which the Son of man is the sower, touches our
Lord’s first advent, so the seventh touches His second ad­vent. And it is
certainly natural to conclude—since seven is in Scripture the number of
com­pleteness—that the others span the entire in­terim. The result of this
net-casting is, accord­ing to the invariable teaching of Scripture, a mixed
gathering, in which righteous and unright­eous are found together at last,
awaiting the sepa­ration of judgment. Is there any likeness here to the seventh
or Laodicean picture of the Church, “Because thou art lukewarm”? If we may
credit the quaint suggestion of an expositor that “luke­warmness is the result
of the mingling of ex­tremes of cold and heat in the same vessel,” there is. At
all events, this picture agrees with the combined teaching of the Scriptures
concern­ing the close of the dispensation. It will be an age of mingled zeal and
formalism; evangelical fervor carrying the servants of Christ to the ends of the
earth proclaiming the everlasting Gospel, and abounding iniquity causing the
love of many to wax cold. The last period, however, does not seem to be the
period of the widest and com­pletest apostasy of the Church, as some would
teach. That era is the middle era, when the whole lump was leavened;
subsequently to this, there is a partial and glorious recovery. This is for our
joy, amid all in the outlook which is for our admonition. The sailors on the
Southern Sea sing, “Midnight is past, the cross begins to bend.” And we, as
voyagers through these trou­bled ages, in which are the sea and the waves
roaring, and men’s hearts failing them for fear, may sing, “Midnight is past.”
Let not those who are looking for the millennium instead of Christ paint a
future for the Church of untinged brightness; let not those who are looking for
Antichrist instead of Christ picture a future for the Church of unmitigated
blackness: for neither representation is true to prophecy. “Watchman, what of
the night? The Watchman said, “The morning cometh and also the night.”

Trace through whatever line we will, we find the same condition at the end of
the dispensation. If from the seed-time of the world we look on to the
reaping-time, we find the wheat and the tares, the children of the kingdom and
the children of the Wicked One, growing together until the har­vest; then
separated each for his destiny: “So shall it be at the end of the age,” (Matthew
13:40).

If we watch with joy the in-gatherings of the Gospel net as it sweeps through
the nations, we find that, when it is full and drawn to the shore, the good are
gathered into vessels, but the bad are cast away: “So shall it be at the end of
the age,” (Matthew 13:49).

If we listen to our Lord’s great eschatological discourse, we hear prediction
after prediction of wars, and famines, and pestilences, persecutions, and
apostasies, and false christs, together with a world-wide preaching of the
Gospel for a witness; but instead of any gleam of millennial glory in the solemn
prophecy, we find it culminating in such a time “as it was in the days of Noah.”
And all this is our Saviour’s answer to the ques­tion, “What shall be the sign
of Thy coming and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3).

If we question the Scriptures concerning the characteristics of the last time as
set forth by the apostles, we are told that these shall be “perilous times” (2
Timothy 3:1), —times in which “some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to
sedu­cing spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having
their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to
abstain from meats,” (1 Timothy 4:1-3); that whereas in primitive days
Christians lived in sober expectation of the Lord’s return, “there shall come in
the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the
sign of His coming?” (2 Peter 3:3-4).

If we inquire concerning the dispensation as a whole, we learn that the purpose
of our Re­deemer’s work was, not that He might transform this into a present
golden age, but “that He might deliver us from this present evil age,”
(Galatians 1:4); not that He might conform this age to us, but that we should
“be not conformed to this age,” (Romans 12:2). Such statements suggestively
in­dicate that it is not the divine purpose to millen­nialize the present
dispensation, but rather to call out from it a holy Church, a separated people.
For what, moreover, are the age-long character­istics as revealed in Scripture?
Paul, in teaching the Thessalonians concerning the second coming of Christ,
admonishes them that, before that day could arrive, there must first come a
falling away and a revelation of the man of sin. And he tells them that this
apostasy had even then begun, — “the mystery of iniquity doth already work,”
—and that out of it “that Wicked “would be re­vealed, “whom the Lord shall
consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of
His coming.” Here is a demonstration from Scripture that the predicted apos­tasy
would stretch across the entire age from the days of Christ’s immediate apostles
to the day of His second advent, when in its consummated development it would
confront the descending Judge and meet its doom. Is it, then, a ripe mil­lennium
that welcomes the returning Lord at His epiphany, or a ripe apostasy? Let him
that read­eth understand.

Again, since God’s ancient people Israel are everywhere represented in Scripture
as having a blessed share in the triumphs and joys of the millennial glory, let
us ask what their condition is to be in this dispensation. In our Lord’s great
prophecy concerning His second coming and the end of the age, He answers this
question con­clusively. He describes in graphic outlines the destruction of
Jerusalem, with the events preced­ing and portending it. After using language
that can only apply to that appalling event, — “Pray ye that your flight be not
in the winter,” — He adds, “For there shall be great tribulation, such as was
not since the beginning of the world to this time, —no, nor ever shall be,”
(Matthew 24:20-21). How long shall this tribulation continue? Until Christ’s
second coming. For our Lord declares that “immediately after the tribulation of
those days” the signs of the advent shall be witnessed, when “they shall see the
Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory,” (Matthew
24:30). So closely are these two events con­nected in the prediction that some
have argued that Christ’s advent must have actually occurred at the destruction
of Jerusalem, in a spiritual or providential sense. But a careful examination of
the language employed proves beyond question that it is a literal coming that is
here described, and that a literal immediateness after the great tribulation is
affirmed by the word euqewV, “imme­diately.” If we turn to Luke’s Gospel,
however, and read his parallel report of our Lord’s words, all becomes plain
(Luke 21:23-27). For he makes the tribulation to include the dispersion of the
Jews among all nations, and the treading down of their Holy City by the
Gentiles, “until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” In other words, the
great tribulation covers the entire age from Zion’s captivity to Messiah’s
coming., To say that the millennium is to precede Christ’s advent, therefore, is
to affirm the possibility of putting that era of unparalleled blessing into the
same period which is occupied by this unequalled tribulation; in other words, it
is to identify and synchronize the golden age of Israel’s triumph with the
gloomy age of Israel’s trouble. This cannot be. For we see in prophecy that the
great apostasy and the great tribulation so far pre­empt the present
dispensation, that the Church’s millennium and Israel’s millennium are alike
crowded out, and there is found no place for them, till the Lord descends in
glory to destroy Anti­christ and restore Israel.

Endnotes:

1 “By the words xpeita and eita, two separate epochs are dis­tinctly marked; and
it is a violation of all usage of terms to construe them otherwise. The interval
of the first is stretching beyond 1,800 years; how many ages will intervene
between the second and the third, who can tell?” — Kling.

2 “Is the object of Christ’s coming to surrender the kingdom to the Father, or
does He come first of all to rightly enter upon it? Undoubtedly the latter. The
appearing of Christ is at the same time the appearing of His Kingdom. This
unquestioned, then it is clear that the return of Christ is rather for the
purpose of assuming than assigning the kingdom, and therefore the pa­rousia of
Christ and the End of the World do not coincide, but on the contrary are
separated from each other.” — Luthardt, Lehre von den Letzten Dingen, p. 129.

3 The Epistles to the Seven Churches, besides describing what is undoubtedly
historical, have so many allusions which are evi­dently figurative and mystical
that there is the strongest reason for accepting the view advanced by Mede, one
of the earliest Protestant Apocalyptic commentators, and received by many later
expositors, that it was intended “that these seven churches should prophetically
sample unto us a sevenfold temper and constitution of the whole Church according
to the several ages thereof, answering the pattern of the churches named here.”

4 “As the mustard-seed even changes its species, passing from an herb to a sort
of tree, so does the kingdom of heaven pass into the likeness of a great
world-state.” Lange.

5 Even the heathen attached this significance to it, as shown by the following
sentence of Plutarch, as cited by Wetstein: “Now leaven is both generated itself
from corruption, and it cor­rupts the mass with which it is mingled.”

6 Some, who cannot admit that the parable of the leaven refers to the corruption
of the Church, concede that it may bear this as a secondary meaning. Richter’s
House Bible says: “The mixed degeneracy and sinfulness of the no longer
apostoli­cally pure Church which now extends itself is at the same time meant.”

7 “The kingdom of heaven is represented as having once more become invisible in
the visible Church; as hid like a treas­ure, erst concealed in a most unlikely
place, in the midst of worldly things. It appears as a treasure-trove—a free
gift of grace—discovered by a person in a fortunate hour while he was engaged in
digging: true Christianity, when again dis­covered, a subject of great joy.” —
Lange on The Parable of the Hid Treasure.


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  CHAPTER 7: 01.02.01.     HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP
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Part II Chapter I.

HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP A man’s dwelling in one country, and holding citizenship in
another and far remote country, is not an unknown circumstance. In such a case,
we may have the singular anomaly of one being most a stranger in the land in
which he is present, and most at home in the land from which he is absent. Our
blessed Lord was the first perfectly to realize this idea respecting the
heavenly coun­try. For He speaks of Himself as “He that came down from heaven,
even the Son of man who is in heaven.” So truly a citizen of the other world was
He that even while walking with men and talking with men He regarded Himself as
there, not here. And this saying of His occurs in that discourse where, with an
emphatic “verily, verily,” He declares that “except a man be born from above he
cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Here is the key to the whole mystery. As the only begotten of the Father,
Christ’s native country was above; and during all the days of His flesh He
neither relinquished His heavenly citizenship nor acquired an earthly residence.
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel: for He hath visited and redeemed His
people,” is a significant note in the prophecy of His birth. And four times in
the Gospels is our Lord’s advent to earth spoken of as a visit. But it was a
visit which never for a moment looked toward a permanent abiding. At His birth
He was laid in a borrowed manger, because there was no room for Him in the inn;
at His burial He was laid in a borrowed tomb, because He owned no foot of earth;
and between the cradle and the grave was a sojourn in which “the Son of man had
not where to lay His head.” The mountaintop whither He con­stantly withdrew to
commune with His Father was the nearest to His home. And hence there is a
strange, pathetic meaning in that saying, “And every man went unto his own
house; Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.”

Now, as it was with the Lord, so it is to be with His disciples. “For our
citizenship is in heaven,” says the apostle. Herein is the saying of Lady
Powerscourt true: “The Christian is not one who looks up from earth to heaven,
but one who looks down from heaven to earth.” A celestial nativity implies a
celestial residence; and with a certain divine condescension may the Christian
contemplate the sordid, self-seeking children of this present evil age and say,
with his Lord: “Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am
not of this world.” Let us be admonished, however, that to say this truly and to
live it really may subject us to the experience indicated by the apostle:
“Therefore the world knoweth us not because it knew Him not.” There is a certain
quaint beauty in the apology which an old reformer made for the hard treatment
which he and his friends received from the men of this world. “Why, brethren,”
he would say, “they do not understand court manners or the etiquette of heaven,
never having been in that country from whence we come; therefore it is that our
ways seem strange to them.” Would that in the Christians of today celestial
traits were so con­spicuous as to occasion like remark! Perhaps it is because
there are so few high saints in the Church that there are so many low sinners
out­side the Church, since the ungodly can never be powerfully lifted up except
by a Church that reaches down from an exalted spiritual plane.

What means that lofty address of the apostle, “Wherefore, holy brethren,
partakers of the heavenly calling”? (Hebrews 3:1). The reference is not merely
to our final destiny as those who are to be called up to heaven, but to our
pres­ent service as those who have come down from heaven; sons of God rejoicing
in a celestial birth, bringing the air and manners of glory into a world that
knows not God. As such we are exhorted to “consider the Apostle and High Priest
of our profession, Christ Jesus;” an apos­tle being one who comes forth from
God, and an high priest one who goes in unto God. And Christ Jesus not only
fulfils both these offices in Himself, as he says, “I came forth from the Father
and am come into the world; again I leave the world and go to the Father,” but
He makes us partakers with Him of the same hea­venly calling, sending us into
the world, as the Father hath sent Him, and permitting us “to enter into the
holiest by the blood of Jesus,” as He has entered in by His own blood.

Confessing that our citizenship is in heaven, it should be easily determined
what our conduct and bearing towards the world must be. One is expected to pay
taxes and make investments where he holds residence. Therefore all calls to
bountiful giving and all demands for rigid self-denial are to be esteemed as
reasonable assess­ments, not as gratuities. Christianity is no para­dox, in
which believers are required to do pecu­liar things for the sake of being
peculiar, and to exhibit startling contradictions for the sake of arousing the
contradiction of sinners against themselves. When we are called to lay up
trea­sures in heaven, it is because that is our country; when we are enjoined
not to love the world, nei­ther the things that are in the world, it is be­cause
this is not our country. Two practical er­rors spring from an earthly theology,
viz., that the world is the Christian’s home, and the grave the Christian’s
hope. On the contrary, one pos­sessed of a clear advent faith would choose for
himself such an epitaph as that which Dean Al­ford composed for his tomb: “The
inn of a trav­eller on his way to Jerusalem.” Ah, yes, that is it! A pilgrim’s
portion, food and raiment and contentment therewith; the mansion which for­tune
has provided, or the cabin which penury has reared, each alike counted a hospice
where one lodges as “a pilgrim and stranger in the earth; “and the grave a
narrow inn whose win­dows look towards the sun-rising, where the so­journer
sleeps till break of day, —this, without question, is the ideal of the Christian
life as out­lined in the Gospel. An impracticable ideal, it will be said. But it
was not so in the beginning. To say nothing of apostolic Christianity, let us
ask what it was that gave the Christianity of the first two centu­ries such
extraordinary vigor in its conflict with heathenism. An eminent writer, Gerhard
Uhlhorn, has shown with a graphic hand that it was just this quality of absolute
unworldliness which constituted the secret of its power. 1 The men who conquered
the Roman Empire for Christ bore the aspect of invaders from another world who
absolutely refused to be naturalized to this world. Their conduct filled their
heathen neigh­bors with the strangest perplexity: they were so careless of life,
so careful of conscience, so prodi­gal of their own blood, so confident of the
over­coming power of the blood of the Lamb, so un­subdued to the customs of the
country in which they sojourned, so mindful of the manners of “that country from
whence they came out.” The help of the world, the patronage of its rul­ers, the
loan of its resources, the use of its meth­ods, they utterly refused, lest by
employing these they might compromise their King. An invad­ing army maintained
from an invisible base, and placing more confidence in the leadership of an
unseen Commander than in all imperial help that might be proffered, —this was
what so bewil­dered and angered the heathen, who often de­sired to make friends
with the Christians with­out abandoning their own gods. But there can be no
reasonable doubt that that age in which the Church was most completely separated
from the world was the age in which Christianity was most victorious in the
world. 2

It was also the era of undimmed hope of the Lord’s imminent return from glory,
so that it illustrated and enforced both clauses of the great text: “For our
citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord
Jesus” (Php 3:20). Our Lord set forth His departure from the world under the
parable of “a certain nobleman who went into a far country to receive for
him­self a kingdom, and to return,” (Luke 19:12). As a Roman, living in Judea on
appointment to the governorship of that province, would go to Rome to be
invested with office, and then return to rule, so Christ has gone to heaven to
be in­vested with the kingship of the world, and now He and His watchful
servants are eagerly wait­ing for the same thing; He sitting at God’s right hand
“expecting till His enemies be made His footstool,” and they expecting till He
shall return to reign over the earth. Of the kingdom, the King and His kinsmen,
the same avowal of unearthly origin is made by Christ: “My king­dom is not of
this world;” “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The
kingdom is the “kingdom of God,” the “king­dom of heaven;” its constituency are
those who are “begotten of God,” and “born from above.” True, this kingdom is
now in the world in its rudiments and principles, in its citizens and
representatives: those who, like their Lord, have been sent hither to accomplish
the work of gath­ering out a people for His name. But, lest we fall into fatal
error, let us not imagine that we are now reigning with Christ on the earth, or
that the kingdom of God has been set up in the world. The Church’s earthly
career during the present age is the exact facsimile of her Lord’s, —a career of
exile rather than of exaltation; of rejection rather than of rule; of
cross-bearing rather than of scepter-bearing. Grasping at earthly sovereignty
for the Church while the Sovereign himself is still absent has proved, as we
shall show hereafter, the most fruitful root of apostasy. It may be said that
this picture of the Church, as despised and rejected in the world, suffering,
outcast, and in exile, does not correspond to the facts. Not to the facts of our
own generation, we admit, wherein the world is on such excellent terms with
Christians. But that it represents the character of the dispensa­tion as a whole
cannot be questioned, when we recall the dark ages and martyr ages of the
Christian era; the prisons, and racks, and dungeons, and stakes, which stretch
on through so large a portion of this age. And the pictures of proph­ecy are
composite pictures, gathering up the main features of the entire dispensation
and presenting them in one. Viewed thus, prediction and his­tory perfectly
accord.

“The kingdom is now here in mystery, and to be here hereafter in manifestation,”
one has tersely put it. And to this the predicted destiny of believers
corresponds. “Your life is hid with Christ in God; when Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory,” (Colossians 3:4).
“Sons of God, therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not,” (1
John 3:1). “The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the
manifestation of the sons of God,” (Romans 8:19). “If we suffer, we shall reign
with Him,” (2 Timothy 2:12). Ob­scurity, rejection, exile, and trial in the
world now; manifestation, vindication, enthronement, when the King comes, —this
is the foretold call­ing of the children of the kingdom. The un­precedented
exemption of the Church from per­secution, and the extraordinary triumphs of the
Gospel which have characterized this nineteenth century, may tend to seduce us
into the notion that the kingdom has already come, though the nobleman who had
gone into a far country has not yet returned. That we may think truly on this
subject, let us hear our Lord’s voice, say­ing: “Fear not, little flock, for it
is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” (Luke 12:32). In spite
of widespread conquests of the Gospel the Church is still “a little flock,” amid
the vast populations of Pagans, Mohammedans, Infidels, and Apostates. This flock
in every age has been branded with opprobrium, and torn by persecution, and
beaten by hireling shepherds, and the end is not yet; for, as good Samuel
Rutherford says, “So long as any portion of Christ’s mystical body is out of
heaven, Satan will strike at it.” However favored in our times, this flock is
not the kingdom; but it has the promise of the kingdom, in which rejection shall
give place to rule, and crucifixion to coronation. When? “And when the Chief
Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away,”
(1 Peter 5:4). Whatever temporary respite from persecution we may enjoy, so that
for the time it may be said as of old, “then had the Churches rest,” no
permanent peace is guaranteed until the Lord’s return. “And to you who are
troubled, rest with us when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven,” (2
Thessalonians 1:7).

Endnotes:

1 Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism.

2 These few sentences from a writer of the second century give a graphic
portrait of the Christians of that period: “They inhabit their own country, but
as strangers; they bear their part in all things as citizens, and endure all
things as aliens. Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every
fatherland a foreign country. . . . They live in the flesh, but walk not after
the flesh. . . . They dwell on earth, but are citizens of heaven. They are poor,
and make many rich; they are in want of all things, and they have all things in
abundance; they are dis­honored, and in dishonor glorified.”— Epistle to
Diognetus V.


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  CHAPTER 8: 01.02.02.     THE FALL OF THE CHURCH
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Part II Chapter II. THE FALL OF THE CHURCH When the Church under Constantine
became enthroned in the world, she began to be de­throned from her seat “in the
heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” For then did she forget her high calling, and
become enamored of earthly rule and dominion. This, let us not forget, was the
fatal temptation through which the Church lost her primitive purity, and brought
upon herself all manner of dishonor and apostasy. What a ten­der prophetic
warning of such temptation is con­tained in that saying of Paul to the
Corinthian Christians: “I have espoused you to one hus­band that I may present
you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent
beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the
simplicity that is in Christ,” (2 Corinthians 11:2). In the world, but not of
it, the Church, the Bride of Christ, was to await the return of her Betrothed
Hus­band from heaven, that, arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, which is the
righteousness of saints, she might be presented to Him “a glorious Church, not
having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” If, during the time of her
espousal, Satan could only alienate her affections by get­ting her enamored with
the kings of the earth, so that she should accept their dowries instead of her
heavenly inheritance, and put on their royal purple instead of her virgin white,
his triumph would be assured. And this is literally what he did.

Observe how the temptation was presented first to the Lord Himself by Satan, to
seduce Him from His love for the Church, that He should not redeem her with His
own blood. “All the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,” was the
alluring prize which the Tempter set before our Bridegroom. “All these things
will I give Thee if Thou wilt fall down and wor­ship me,” (Matthew 4:9), was the
alluring promise held out to Him. Have we understood the deep reality and
significance of this temptation in the wilderness?

Precisely what Satan, “the Prince of this world,” proffered—all the kingdoms of
the earth—had long ago been pledged to Christ by the Father. But before this
inheritance could be realized, He must be despised and rejected of men,
crucified and buried, and then raised up to wait an unknown time upon His
Father’s throne “till His enemies be made His footstool.” The Tempter would say,
“Why not take the kingdoms of the world at once, foregoing the humiliation and
the cross and the long rejection by the world? “But the Saviour’s resistance of
the temptation was prompt and final: “Get thee be­hind Me, Satan.” And when,
afterwards, Simon Peter, preoccupied no doubt with the idea of an immediate
temporal kingdom for his Lord, re­pelled Christ’s announcement of His
approach­ing crucifixion, saying, “Far be it from Thee, Lord; this shall not be
unto thee,” Jesus recog­nized it as the old wilderness temptation reap­pearing,
and met it with the same rebuke: “Get thee behind Me, Satan,” (Matthew 16:23).
Thus the Son of God, true to His Father’s commission and to His plighted
affection for His Bride, whom He must purchase with His own blood, stood firm
against this great temptation, accepting a present cross and rejection, instead
of a present crown and dominion; choosing to be cast out by a world that knew
Him not, until after “the times or seasons which the Father hath put in His own
power” should be fulfilled, and the announcement be made, “The kingdoms of this
world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign
forever and ever.” The second Adam had thus steadfastly resisted the
solicitations of the old serpent. Would the second Eve, His Bride, do likewise?
For more than two hundred years the Church did remain true to her heavenly
citizenship, counting herself a stranger in the earth and looking for her Lord
from Heaven. Her uplifted gaze and unworldly attitude were such conspicuous
features of the early Church that even unbelieving historians like Gibbon have
noted them, and dwelt upon them with a kind of suppressed admiration, that
author conceding that, while the hope of Christ’s imminent return remained
universal, “it was pro­ductive of the most salutary effects on the faith and
practice of Christians, who lived in the awful expectation of that moment when
the globe itself and all the various races of mankind should trem­ble at the
appearance of their divine Judge.” The bloody persecutions which reigned from
Nero to Diocletian only confirmed this hope, —earthly disenfranchisement making
heavenly citi­zenship more real and dear. But now the perilous trial of peace
was to be encountered. Will the Church endure the test of imperial patronage as
she has borne the test of imperial persecution? O Bride of Immanuel, made “dead
to the law by the body of Christ that ye should be married to another, even to
Him who was raised from the dead,” (Romans 7:4), alas for the day when thou
didst receive the kings of the earth for thy lovers, and, forgetful of thy
Lord’s promise, “I appoint unto you a kingdom as My Father hath appointed unto
Me,” didst accept a throne from the princes of this world! Earth’s sovereignty
had long since been pledged to the Church as well as to Christ: “And the kingdom
and dominion and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be
given to the people of the saints of the Most High,” (Daniel 7:27). But the time
for its acquisition was definitely fixed at the coming of the Son of man in the
clouds of heaven. For the Church to accept it in the present age was to fall
before the very temptation where her Lord had stood firm.

If we look upon that famous assembly, the Council of Nicea, A. D. 325, what a
clear dividing line does it present between the old and the new, between the
Church heavenly that had been, and the Church earthly that was to be! Here on
the one hand were the true successors of the apos­tles, bearing in their bodies
the marks of the Lord Jesus; their maimed limbs, and sightless eyes, and marred
visages telling most expres­sively how, up to this time, the servants of Jesus
had been “filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in the
flesh for His body’s sake, which is the Church.” But here, on the other hand, in
strange con­trast with these, was that central figure, arrayed in rich robes and
seated on a golden chair in the midst of the assembly, —Constantine, the head of
the Church. “What gain to our cause,” whispered ambitious bishops, “that now we
have a Christian emperor who will throw over us the shield of his protection and
defend the orthodox faith with the sword!” “Alas, what loss!” might have sighed
the angels, as they witnessed the nuptials of the Bride of Christ with the kings
of the earth. But did not Constantine have a su­pernatural seal set upon his
imperial patronage of the Church in that vision of the flaming cross displayed
in the heavens with its motto, IN THIS SIGN CONQUER? Considering the real
character of the emperor, as afterwards unfolded, a faith which should credit
the alleged vision as from God would be far more difficult than a credulity
which should ascribe it to the arch-tempter. For what was that cross by which
the Church was henceforth to seek her conquests? An eminent historian has
described the startling impression made upon his mind by the sight of a crucifix
which was shown him in Italy, —a crucifix ex­quisitely carved, and studded with
the rarest jewels, but which at the touch of a secret spring flew open, and
proved itself to be a case for hold­ing a keen-edged and glittering Roman
dagger.

There is a cross in which an apostle was wont to glory as that whereby the world
was cruci­fied unto him, and he unto the world; there is a cross concerning
which our Lord spake, say­ing: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny
himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” But how utterly remote from these
that cross which began to sway the Church from the age of Constantine, —that
cross which carried the dagger of persecution in the crucifix of super­stition,
thus supplanting “the sword of the Spirit “by “the sword of the magistrate,” in
order to further the gospel of peace! This fall from heavenly to earthly
citizenship was accompanied, moreover, by a gradual ex­change of spiritual
worship for carnal supersti­tions. Worse than carnal, indeed! Satan, who had
tempted the Church into accepting earthly dominion from his hands, now seduced
her into mixing his own ritual with her simple, primitive services. For we must
not forget that, accord­ing to the explicit teaching of Scripture, pagan­ism is
really demonism. “The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to
demons, and not to God,” (1 Corinthians 10:20), says the apostle. Whether the
deluded votaries of Jupiter and Mars knew it or not, it was really true that
de­mons were the instigators and recipients of their worship. Idolatry is always
and everywhere the religion of Satan, ordained for stealing from God the homage
of human hearts and turning it to himself. And so, little by little, the
elements of paganism began to mingle with the worship of Christ, —holy water,
candles, the wafer, images, processions, the adoration, of saints and relics,
the idolatry of the cross, and much more, —of all which we may assert
confidently what Car­dinal Newman concedes concerning the first, that they were
originally “the very instruments and appendages of demon-worship.” 1 But though
the Church has thus been cor­rupted, out of it a faithful number has been
pre­served to constitute the hidden Bride of Christ. Observe how graphically
this is shown in the seal­ing of the one hundred and forty-four thousand in the
seventh chapter of Revelation, —a passage not hard to understand if we bear in
mind, as always in studying the Apocalypse, that Scrip­ture explains Scripture,
and that history repeats history. In the eighth chapter of Ezekiel we find God
denouncing the heathen abominations which have been mixed with the worship of
His sanctuary, —“the image of jealousy,” the “weeping for Tammuz,” and the
eastward posture in which men “worshipped the sun towards the East.” On account
of these pollutions the Lord com­mands fearful judgments upon His people. But,
before these judgments commence, He bids His messengers: “Go through the midst
of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads
of the men that sigh and cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst
thereof.” As the destroyers go forth the injunc­tion is: “But come not near any
man upon whom is the mark.” Here is a sealed and spared rem­nant in the midst of
the prevailing Jewish apos­tasy. Turn now to the corresponding story in the
Apocalypse (Revelation 7:1-17). The prophetic drama opens with the Church in her
primitive exalta­tion, seated with Christ in heavenly places; then the seals are
unloosed, unfolding the successive chapters of Christian history, —conquest,
conflict, famine, and pestilence; the “Come!” “Come!” “Come!” “Come!” is heard
breaking in before each opening era, answering in majestic antiphon the Lord’s
“Behold, I come quickly,” and showing the Church still true to her ancient hope;
the martyrs, “slain for the word of God and the testimony which they held,”
invoke their Redeemer, “How long, O Lord? “Then comes the crash of falling
paganism, with the affrighted cry of the heathen before “the wrath of the Lamb,”
and Christianity, that was so long upon the scaffold and at the stake, is now
upon the throne of the Caesars.

But, alas, as we have seen, the Church, that has been “more than conqueror”
through defeat, is now more than vanquished through victory! For, having
overthrown paganism, she became herself gradually paganized, and her worship
cor­rupted with mixtures of heathen religion which the Scriptures call the
worship of demons, —the employment of images and pictures, which of old provoked
the Lord to jealousy; the turning to­wards the east, after the manner of the
Babylo­nish sun-worshippers; the signing with the cross, 2 which was long
connected with the sensual wor­ship of Tammuz. In fine, the identical
abomina­tions which God had denounced in the Jewish sanctuary were now found in
the Christian Church. And once more avenging scourges are let loose on
Christendom—Saracen and Turkish invasions—to punish its inhabitants, “that they
should not worship demons, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone,
and of wood,” (Revelation 9:20). But before judgment begins, God’s sealing and
separation again take place: “And I saw another angel ascending from the east,
having the seal of the living God, saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea
nor the trees, till we have sealed the ser­vants of God in their foreheads.” 3
The sealed company whose description follows is an elect company out of the
tribes of spiritual Israel; a small company compared with the great mass of
nominal Christians; a perfect company, “one hun­dred and forty-four thousand.”
It is the four­square multitude, identical with the four-square city, which
appears in the twentieth chapter, coming down from God out of Heaven, and which
is explained to be “the Bride, the Lamb’s wife.” It is a company “sealed with
the Holy Spirit of promise,” in contrast with the vast throngs of unconverted
heathen who have been sealed with the sign of the cross; and as chosen and
faithful, it exhibits the twofold signature of the seal of God, — “The Lord
knoweth them that are His,” and “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ
depart from iniquity,” (2 Timothy 2:19). This true and unseduced Bride of Christ
we meet through­out the Apocalypse, as we do throughout the whole course of
Christian history. Whether as Waldensian, or Huguenot, or Lollard, she is ever
hated by the apostate Church. But she preserves her virginity unstained, keeps
herself undefiled from the harlot Church and her daughters, and when all
Christendom has become earthly she maintains her heavenly citizenship; now
hidden out of sight, and now seen standing with the Lamb upon Mount Zion. So
that to the end, as in the beginning, we greet her with the divine salutation,
“But ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the
heavenly Jerusalem.”

We shall meet her again in her final presenta­tion to the Bridegroom; but for
the present we must further trace the fortunes of her fallen sister.

Endnotes:

1 Development, pp. 359, 360.

2 Julian, the emperor (361 A. D.), taunts the Christians with their idolatry,
saying, “Ye worship the wood of the cross, mak­ing shadowy figures of it in the
forehead, and painting it at the entrance of your houses.” — See Note B.

3 Revelation 7:2-3. In the Apocalypse, where Jewish people, Jewish temple, and
Jewish rites stand for corresponding Chris­tian facts, we have no doubt that
this sealed company represents spiritual Israel, —real Christians out of the
great multitude of nominal Christians. Dean Alford’s challenge, to those who
hold that literal Israel is here meant, is decisive. He asks whether “the Holy
Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God,” (Revelation 21:10), must be taken
to be the residence of literal Jews, because it bears the names of “the twelve
tribes of the children of Israel.” Few would admit this inference, we believe.


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  CHAPTER 9: 01.02.03.     THE ADVENT OF ANTICHRIST
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Part II Chapter III. THE ADVENT OF ANTICHRIST.

Out of the apostasy comes the Antichrist. To look for him without the Church in
latter-day Judaism, or against the Church in latter-day infi­delity, is equally
to miss the clear marks of iden­tification which have been set for our warning
in “the sure word of prophecy.”

Exhorting the Thessalonian Christians “by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ
and by our gathering together unto Him,” the Apostle ad­monishes them not to be
deceived: “For it will not be, except the falling away come first, and the man
of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, he that opposeth and exalteth himself
against all that is called God or that is worshipped; so that he sitteth in the
temple of God, setting himself forth as God,” (2 Thessalonians 2:3 R.V.). Here
is the great Pauline prediction of Antichrist; and how rigidly does its language
bind us to the conception of a dreadful enemy of God, springing up within the
Christian Church! “Except the apostasy come first,” the words read exactly. It
can be “no political or politico-religious falling away” that is here
indi­cated, as Ellicott truly says; but, according to the scriptural use of the
term, “that religious and spiritual apostasy, that falling away from faith in
Christ, of which the revelation of Antichrist shall be the concluding and most
appalling phenom­enon.” And looking backward over the history of the Church for
eighteen hundred years, we ask how the prediction could be more literally
fulfilled than in the astonishing eclipse of pagan and idol­atrous superstition
under whose shadow two thirds of nominal Christendom now rests. So we may
premise that we shall find the answer to this mysterious prophecy in the line of
popes having their seat of authority in Rome, and extending their rule through
more than twelve centuries of the Christian era. In examining this prediction we
begin with that expression which is most central and sug­gestive: “He sitteth in
the temple of God, setting himself forth as God.” The interpretation which
applies these words to the material temple rebuilt in Jerusalem is lacking both
in accuracy and sig­nificance, — in accuracy, since there is no un­disputed
instance in the New Testament where the phrase, o naoV tou qeou, the temple of
God, is applied to the Jewish temple; and in significance, since it would be a
matter of indifferent interest to Gentile Christians that some distant pretender
was to arise who should win the acceptance and homage of the Jews.1 Scripture
interprets Scrip­ture; and when we hear false witnesses accusing Christ of
saying, “I am able to destroy the tem­ple of God and to build it in three days,”
we have only to turn to another text to find that in what he said, “He spake of
the temple of His body,” (John 2:21). So when a Judaizing interpretation would
lead us, from this phrase of the Apostle, to imagine a future temple rebuilt in
Jerusalem, en­throning an infidel Antichrist, we have only to collate the
passages in which the expression occurs to find how invariably it stands for
Christ’s mystical body, the Church, considered as a whole or in its members:
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth
in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16).

Here is wisdom; for why is the Church called the temple of God? Because indwelt
by the Spirit, presided in by the Holy Ghost. When this temple—the redeemed
Church of Christ — was dedicated on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit descended
in the semblance of tongues of fire, and it “sat— ekaqisen —upon each one of
them.” Henceforth the body of believers, sanctified and sealed, is the true
Cathedra, where the Spirit sits; the real “Holy See,” or seat of the Holy One.
Sanctity or sacrilege, therefore, is indi­cated by this word “sit,” according as
it is ap­plied to God presiding in His own house, or to man thrusting himself
into God’s place. Observe how reverently the apostle Peter recognizes the
Spirit’s presence and primacy in the Church so soon as He is come. Rebuking the
sin of Ana­nias, he says: “Why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy
Ghost?” “Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God,” (Acts 5:3). No thought of
His own primacy here! Mark with wonder, also, the holy deference which the
ascended Lord Himself yields to the Spirit, now that, as the promised Paraclete,
He has taken His place in the Church. Seven times in his post-ascension
gospel—the epistles to the seven churches—we hear Him say: “He that hath an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches;” as though to teach us
that, while the Spirit is in office as President and Teacher, even the
glori­fied Christ will not intrude into His seat; but will commend us to His
guidance, even as while He was on earth the Father commended His disciples to
Him, saying, “This is My beloved Son, hear ye Him.”

We are prepared thus to comprehend the pre­sumption and blasphemy which it would
imply for a man to sit in the Spirit’s seat in the Temple of God. And we know
that one of the most con­spicuous traits of the early apostasy was clerisy, the
thrusting of man into the place of rule and authority which belong to the
Spirit; that this tendency constantly strengthened till the bish­ops, instead of
humbly heeding the apostolic in­junction to feed the flock over which the Holy
Ghost had made them overseers, began to lord it over that flock, rearing a
primacy out of the pastorate, and a papacy out of the primacy, till the evil
culminated in the sovereign pontiff usurp­ing the place of the Holy Ghost. For
since the Holy Ghost is Christ’s true and only Vicar on earth, — “another
Paraclete” sent to take the place of the ascended Lord, — what is he who should
claim to be the Vicar of Christ but a usurper of the Spirit’s seat in the temple
of God?

All the dark outlines of Paul’s prophetic pic­ture of the Antichrist harmonize
with this inter­pretation. He is called “The man of sin,” as though to mark his
utter contrast to the true pas­tor, whom the Scriptures name “The man of God.”
But could the long succession of popes be designated by this individual name,
“The man?” Yes; the elect Church, extending through all ages, is called in
Scripture “one new man,” (Ephesians 2:15). The true line of spiritual ministers
is evidently intended by “the man of God thor­oughly furnished,” named in the
Epistle to Tim­othy. So with other terms in which the singular is used for the
plural: the succession of the Jewish priesthood is certainly meant in the
state­ment in the Epistle to the Hebrews, “Into the second went the high priest
alone once every year.” Indeed, if it be urged that the name Anti­christ — ò
anticristoV—must mean an individual man, we find that this is not necessary,
since the whole body of believers throughout the dispensa­tion is called by its
counterpart “The Christ,” ò CristoV (1 Corinthians 12:1-31). Thus Scripture, as
well as the common usage, in which we speak of the royal or of the
ecclesiastical succession as “the king,” or “the bishop,” justify us in
interpreting “the man of sin” to mean the line of pontiffs. As to the character
indicated by the words, must we not admit its fulfilment to the uttermost in the
pontificate? Whatever virtue or mildness may have appeared in single instances,
we are to remember that the pictures of prophecy are com­posite photographs,
giving the main features com­bined as revealed throughout the age. Who can deny
that many of the popes have been mon­sters of iniquity, or that the great
majority have stained their hands with the blood of saints? If so, does not this
language sufficiently express their blended likeness?

Yet deeper and more dreadful grow the shad­ows with which inspiration paints the
portrait: “The man of sin, the son of perdition.” Only one has borne this latter
name, Judas Iscariot, who with a kiss betrayed his Lord, and, with a “Hail,
Master!” on his lips, delivered Him to His ene­mies. And who was Judas that his
significant name should be thrown forward upon the coming Antichrist? He was an
apostate bishop, — “His bishopric let another take,” (Acts 1:20). He was a thief
who had the bag, and who, in order to en­rich himself sold his Lord for thirty
pieces of silver. Oh appalling counter-reality which we see emerging from the
shadows of history! the pontifical bag-bearer, rich with untold treasures
purloined from his poor flock, delivering up the Body of Christ evermore to
death, as the first betrayer did the Head, till the enthroned Re­deemer must
have groaned again and again, as of old: “Why persecutest thou Me?” Revolting as
it is to our Christian charity to dwell upon these things, we are compelled, in
a time when a speculative interpretation is joining hands with a sacramental
apostasy, to veil the face of Anti­christ. Yet, if only once in the ages, —after
Waldensian slaughter or St. Bartholomew’s mas­sacre, —we could see this vicar of
Iscariot fling­ing down his silver and crying, “I have betrayed the innocent
blood,” what haste would we make to throw the mantle of forgetfulness over his
ghastly deeds! The marks of correspondence between this counter-Christ and the
true are most striking at every point. He has his Parousia and his
Apoca­lypse—his coming and his revelation—as does the Christ. The Son of God
enters His earthly career through incarnation, “Great is the mys­tery of
godliness, He who was manifested in the flesh,” —and the son of perdition does
the same: “The mystery of iniquity doth already work.” As it was said of the
Lord’s betrayer, “Then entered Satan into Judas Iscariot,” so the begin­ning of
this enemy is through a dark, mysterious entering in of the Evil One for
corrupting the Church. The mystery of godliness is God humbling Himself to
become man; the mystery of iniquity is man exalting himself to become God, — “Ye
shall be as gods.” The mystery of god­liness is loyalty; the Son of God, through
the Holy Spirit, rendering perfect obedience to the will and word of the Father:
the mystery of in­iquity is lawlessness, anomia; the son of perdition, through
“the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” subverting God’s
law, and rule, and order in the Church. In the one we see Christ emptying
Himself of His glory; in the other we see Antichrist filling himself with his
glory, so that he “opposeth and exalteth him­self above every one called God or
an object of worship,” and “sitteth in the temple of God, set­ting himself forth
as God.” 2 How marvelously has this latter prediction been realized! “Domine
Deus!” [O Lord God: Ed.]. If but once we heard these words addressed to the pope
by his allowance, it should lead us, as the students of this prophecy, to ask,
“Art thou he that should come? “What if employed repeatedly, and with every
variety of adoration? Alexander VI., the Nero of the Pon­tificate, as he has
been called, moving to his con­secration, passes under a triumphal arch, on
which is inscribed: “Caesar was a man; Alexander is a God.” Marcellus, in an
address to Pope Leo X. at the fifth Lateran Council, exclaims, “Thou art another
God on earth” —tu denique alter Deus in terris. Gregory II. boasts to the Greek
emperor: “All the kings of the West rev­erence the pope as a God on earth.” Pope
Nicholas writes: “Wherefore if those things which I do be said to be done, not
of man, but of God, what can you make me but God? Again, if the prelates of the
Church be called and counted of Constantine for gods, I, then, being above all
prelates, seem by this reason to be above all gods.” These instances of
deification, if there were no more, would fill out every line and speci­fication
of this Pauline prediction; while that cul­minating act of 1870—the placing of
the crown of infallibility upon the head of the pope by the Ecumenical
Council—would set the attesting seal of literal history to this astonishing word
of literal prophecy.

We know how some, at this point, have started on an adventurous hunt into the
future for an Antichrist who is at once a God-denier and a God-pretender; since
the apostle John has declared concerning this terrible personage that he
“de­nieth the Father and the Son.” But the candid reader has only to compare
this word “deny” as employed by John with its use by Paul, and Peter, and Jude,
in their predictions of the falling away, to see that the reference is beyond
question to the denial of apostasy, and not to the denial of infidelity; to such
as “profess that they know God, but in works deny Him,” and not to such as are
avowedly and openly atheistic. 3 The anom­aly of bald infidel worship, exacted
by one who at once deifies and undeifies, has no place, we are persuaded, in
this prophecy. Nor has that other conception of a Napoleonic demigod drunk with
the infatuation of world-rule, —a conception which has greatly colored the
imaginations of many ex­positors. That the man of sin is identical with the
“little horn” of Daniel, and the “beast” of the Apocalypse, is clear enough; and
that as such he is a temporal ruler, no one doubts. And so has he proved; for
when has the world seen a line of world-sovereigns like the popes? But can we
imagine such a blending, in any single infidel man, of secular and spiritual
imperialism as is foreshadowed in this compound prediction of Scripture, and as
is fulfilled in this double-headed ruler in the Vatican? The pontiffs are the
lineal successors of the Cæsars, as they claim to be of the apostles. Mr.
Pember, in describing this combination of office, gives a perfect description of
the sovereign pontiff, though he did not intend it as such: —

“At length, however, Julius Caesar, who had previously accepted the office of
Pontifex Maxi­mus, solved the difficulty by constituting himself emperor. He
thus became the first Roman in whom the powers of the Pontifex and the
Impe­rator were combined, and was probably the first to be recognized as the
head of the Oriental priesthood, —the Roman pontificate having pre­viously been
distinct from and inferior to the Chaldean, with which it was thenceforth
identi­fied. He was consequently declared to be divine, and exercised a
wonderful influence over his army and the people, even going to the length of
openly prescribing to the latter for whom they should vote. And lastly he
corrected the calendar and changed times by inserting two additional months, in
accordance with the pontifical preroga­tive, which gave him his title of King of
the Ages. The power which he had acquired descended to his successors; so that
in the statues of the emperors, the ring is always engraved with the figure of a
lituus, or crosier, to indicate the highest quality of imperatorial rank, —that
of Pontifex Maximus.” 4 And the popes are the successors of these successors.

Such is the figure which history presents as its answer to prophecy. Is it only
the eye of bigotry that can detect a likeness between the two? The germs of this
evil system were growing in the apostle’s day, —“The mystery of iniquity doth
already work.” Is it credible that it should have continued operating through
eighteen cen­turies, in order to bring forth some yet future short-lived,
infidel Antichrist, so transcendently wicked that all which has gone before,
with its unspeakable record of blood and blasphemy, is only an indifferent
prototype of him? If charity could bias our interpretation at all, which it must
not, how little mercy have they who, in order to relieve the papacy of this
stigma, darken our future with such an appalling apparition! More­over, such a
conception puts a strain upon our credulity greater than it can bear. For when
we study Satan’s career in Scripture and in history, we find that open
infidelity is little in his line. His way has ever been to masquerade in the
symbols and sacraments of the Church; to manipulate the machinery of spurious
miracles; to put on a sad countenance as the hypocrites do, that behind it he
may mock at God. Therefore the epiphany of “that Wicked One” should be looked
for in a feigned religiousness rather than in a blatant atheism; as it is
tersely said in the Noble Lesson of the Waldensians “Antichrist is the falsehood
of eternal damnation covered with the appearance of truth and righteousness of
Christ and his Spouse.” 5 For this reason we are not surprised at the prediction
of startling wonder-working as signal­izing the advent of this pseudo-Christ,
“whose coming is after the working of Satan in all power, and signs, and wonders
of falsehood.” One who is at all acquainted with the history of the Middle Ages
need not be told how exactly the papal reality fits this prediction; how the
chaste and artless miracles of the primitive Church were travestied by those of
the medieval Church in the grotesque signs and wonders alleged to have been
wrought at saints’ tombs, and through the agency of martyrs’ bones and sacred
relics. Thus was the man of sin to authenticate his ministry “in all deceit of
unrighteousness for them that are perishing;” and the issue would be that God
should “send them a working of delusion that they should believe the lie, that
they may all of them be judged who believed not the truth.” 6 And so has it come
to pass; the assumptions of the priesthood culminating in a deified man, and the
work­ing of delusion culminating in a deified wafer. A devout minister in the
Church of England, crying out in pain at the apostasy now repeating itself in
his own communion, boldly says, con­cerning the miracle of transubstantiation:
“The crowning error into which the visible Church was by degrees led—the process
of Satanic inspira­tion extending from the eighth to the thirteenth century—was,
that the priesthood possessed a divine power to locate the Lord Jesus Christ on
an earthly altar, and to lift him up, under the veils of bread and wine, to the
adoration of the people.

It is in this blasphemous fraud that the apostle Paul’s prophecy finds its
accurate fulfillment. Of the apostasy forerunning the second coming of Christ he
says, that the deluded followers of the Lawless One should believe ‘THE LIE,’
—tó yeudpV. Of all the impostures that the Father of Lies ever palmed upon a
credulous world, this doctrine, which both logically and theologically repeats
millions of times the humiliation of the Blessed Redeemer, necessarily
transcends all! Hence it is that the definite article is placed by the Holy
Ghost before this word ‘lie’” 7 Of “the mouth speaking great things and
blasphemies,” ascribed to this being both in Daniel and Revelation, we have only
to inquire what mouth-assumption could surpass that con­tained in the well-known
Bull Unam Sanctam of Boniface VIII.: “It is essential for salvation for every
human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff” Blasphemy means usurpation of
the prerogatives of the Deity rather than profane denial. When the Jews accused
Jesus of this sin, this was the ground: “Why does this man speak blasphemies?
Who can forgive sins but God alone! “Again: “For a good work we stone Thee not;
but for blasphemy, and because Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God.” Does not
the man of Rome stand openly convicted on both these grounds? In the expression,
“He who now letteth,” we have one of the most significant touches in the whole
picture. What hindered the manifestation of Antichrist? “And now ye know what
with­holdeth,” says the apostle. If they did know, and passed the secret from
lip to lip, tradition on this point is valuable. Hence when we find that it was
the well-nigh unanimous understanding among the Christian fathers, from those
who touched hands with the apostles onward, that it was the Roman Empire that
must be taken out of the way before the man of sin could be re­vealed, we have
strong reason to credit this opinion. And mark how the reserve of the apos­tle,
in not mentioning this hindering power, bears out this interpretation. If, as
some now say, it was the Holy Spirit that was intended, we can see no reason why
He should not have been distinctly named; but if it was the Roman Empire, there
is every ground for the apostle’s withholding the fact from his epistle, and
com­mitting it only to oral tradition. For, the epistle would be publicly read
in the churches, and its contents reported, perhaps, to the ears of the rulers.
To say that the empire, which was held to be eternal, was about to pass away,
would savor of treason, and would form a just ground for persecution. And
therefore, it would seem, the apostle gave it out as a whispered secret:
“Remember ye not that when I was yet with you I told you these things? And now
ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time,” (2
Thessalonians 2:6). For once tradition has authority, since in this chapter the
apostle not only enjoins that those addressed “obey our word by this epistle,”
but also “hold to the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word or
our epistle.” And we know on the fullest testi­mony that the opinion named was
held as a tra­dition apostolical in the early Church; and as such it has come
down to us. If, then, the Thes­salonians knew, and that which they knew has
been, with reasonable certainty, reported to us, is it presumptuous that we
should strongly believe?

If we are right at this point, a strong light is thrown upon the question raised
in the early part of the chapter, whether a singular noun can stand for a
succession of individuals. This hindering power is “he that letteth,” which
antiquity inter­preted to mean the succession of emperors. On which Bishop
Wordsworth remarks, “As he that letteth is a public person or series of persons,
so is he that sitteth also; “the one being the suc­cession of emperors, and the
other being the succession of popes. And here comes in the most weighty
consider­ation that so it was, that the papacy did actually emerge upon the
subsidence of the empire. Car­dinal Manning, who certainly has no preposses­sion
in favor of the view we are advocating, writes thus: “The possession of the
pontiffs com­mences with the abandonment of Rome by the emperors. . . . No
sovereign has ever reigned in Rome since, except the Vicar of Jesus Christ.” 8
Singular coincidence! does the reader exclaim? No, not singular; it was bound to
be so, on ac­count of certain words which an apostle wrote centuries before
under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Prophecy is the mould in which history
is cast; and no violence of man, no con­vulsions of nations, can either break
that mould or constrain the course of history, that the one should not answer to
the other point by point, feature by feature. It is for the Christian
in­terpreter to note such correspondences as they occur, counting each
conformation as a confirma­tion for establishing the sure word of prophecy. A
system of exposition which withdraws our at­tention from these coincidences, and
sets us to gazing into blank space for something to emerge, of which not even
the shadow is in sight, we can­not think profitable. There are things to come
which ought powerfully to attract our attention, but our eyes should not be so
holden thereby that we cannot see what is passing and what has already come to
pass upon the earth. Such cor­respondences of history with prophecy, of fact
with prediction, as these that we have pointed out, cannot occur by chance. And
in view of them we may as certainly hold the papacy to be the fulfillment of
Paul’s prediction of the Anti­christ as we hold the face of a coin to be the
ful­fillment of the die in which it was struck. 9

We end where we began, —with the temple of God. The dreadful prediction of the
destiny of the man of sin is in the words: “Whom the Lord shall consume with the
spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His com­ing.”
Behold how the consuming has been going on within the last few centuries,
especially during our own time; so that an eminent writer has declared that in
the downfall of the temporal power the papacy met with the heaviest loss which
has befallen her in a thousand years. But of the rest how can we speak but with
an un­utterable awe and pity: “Whom He shall destroy with the brightness of His
appearing.” For what? “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the
Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him will God
destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which temple are ye,” (1 Corinthians
3:17). What language can tell how this temple has been defiled? The heathen
rites and ceremonies corrupting the wor­ship of Christ; the idols and the
sacrilege; the worship of the queen of heaven; the blood of God’s saints
staining His own courts; the blas­phemy of a man professing to forgive sin; of a
man snatching the attribute of Divine infalli­bility; of a man receiving worship
from his fel­lows; in fine, of a man sitting in the seat of the Holy Ghost,
shutting the mouth of God’s Spirit, —the Holy Scriptures, —and bidding the
Church hear only his own “mouth speaking great things.” Idolatry of Mary;
idolatry of the mass; idolatry of the cross! How solemnly sounds God’s word in
view of it all! “And what agreement hath a temple of God with idols?” (2
Corinthians 6:16, R.V.) Do we not know, if we have read the Scriptures, that it
is such desecration of His house, and such defiling of His worship, which have
ever called down the severest judgments of God? Let us recall the fact, not that
we may redouble our denunciation of an apostate Church, but that we may search
our own sanctuaries, with a lighted candle, to see if aught of the corrupting
leaven be found among us.

What our eyes see is, again, an astonishing seal set to the truth of this great
prediction. Who has not heard the oft-quoted saying that the con­dition of the
Jews in the present dispensation is the most striking verification of the truth
of the Scripture? Just as was predicted, they have been scattered, peeled, and
subjected to daily death; and yet here they are preserved as a dis­tinct people,
a burning bush ever aflame with persecuting fires, but not consumed. So has the
line of pontiffs continued. 10 Taking its rise in the beginnings of the age,
gradually strengthening and maturing till fully developed, with temporal and
spiritual sovereignty centering in one head, it has lived on for more than
twelve hundred years, and there it sits today on its seat in Rome, in spite of
every likelihood that it would long ago have passed away, the longest line of
rulers the Western world has ever seen. As the Jewish succession remains
unbroken, that the last generation of cast-off Israel may confront the
descending Lord at His advent, looking on Him whom they pierced, and mourning
because of Him with saving penitence that “so all Israel shall be saved;” so
likewise the long succession of hierarchs continues, that the last Pontifex
Maximus may stand face to face with the Lord at His appearing, and receive his
doom, in the cut­ting off of his usurping line forever. As we read all this, let
it be with bowed heads and with weeping eyes, while we ponder the lesson, once
more, of the terrible consequences of pride, and ambition, and worldliness, when
permitted to run their course in the Church of God.

Endnotes:

1For the significance of this phrase, oti nadV tou qeou, see the following
texts, the only ones where it occurs: (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 2 Corinthians
6:16; Revelation 3:12; Revelation 11:19). Of the word nadV alone, we beg it to
be noticed that after the institution of the Christian Church it is never once
applied to the temple in Jerusalem. Twenty-five times in the Acts the Jewish
temple is spoken of, but the word ierdn, is used in every instance, never nadV.
Neither is the latter word once employed in any epistle to designate the Hebrew
temple. How could God call that His temple (nadV) when He had ceased to dwell
therein (ndw), —“Behold, your house is left unto you desolate”? How surely must
the word apply to the Christian Church after that God by the Holy Ghost had
taken up His abode in it! —“An holy temple (loads) in the Lord, in whom ye also
are budded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” We believe
that a candid exegesis of this phrase—ote nadV tou qeou—fixes the seat of the
man of sin within the sphere of the Christian Church, as certainly as the
designation of the seven hills fixes the seat of the woman of sin in the city of
Rome.

2 “‘As God, showing Himself that He is God.’ For many hun­dred years, to this
day, the Roman pontiffs have literally fulfilled this prophecy of St. Paul. When
Cornelius, the centurion, fell down at Peter’s feet and worshipped him, St.
Peter forbade him, saying, ‘Stand up! I myself also am a man.’ But the
self-called successors of St. Peter sit in the temple of God as God. For many
centuries each of them, at his inauguration, has taken his seat in God’s Church,
upon God’s altar, and, so sitting, has been adored by men falling down before
him and kissing his feet.” [Bishop Wordsworth on the Apocalypse, p. 394.].

3 See Titus 1:16, 2 Peter 2:1, Jude 1:4. The latest dictionary of the Greek New
Testament—the Grimm, edited by Thayer—gives this as the second definition of
arneomai, to deny: “Arneomai, God and Christ, is used of those who, by
cherishing and disseminating pernicious opinions and immorality, are ad­judged
to have apostatized from God and Christ.” (1 John 2:22 (cf. 1 John 4:2; 2 John
1:7-11); Jude 1:4; 2 Peter 2:1).

4 Antichrist, Babylon, and the Coming Kingdom, p. 81.

5 “Antichrist es falseta de damnation ætera cuberta de specie de la verita e de
in justitia de Christ e de la soa sposa.” —Des Egiises Vaudoises, chap. xiv.

6 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10 (Ellicott’s translation).

7 Ormiston, Satan of Scripture, p. 126.

8 “By a singular arrangement of Divine Providence, as we have said on a former
occasion, it happened that the Roman Empire, having fallen, and being divided
into many kingdoms and divers states, the Roman pontiff, in the midst of such
great variety of kingdoms, and in the actual state of human society, was
invested with his civil authority.” [The Pope’s Allocution, 1866].

9 It is coming to be admitted even by futurist interpreters that the word
“Antichrist “signifies a vice-Christ, rather than an open opponent of Christ.
Andrew Jukes says: “I am satisfied that, according to the derivation of the
word, Antichrist means primarily ‘in the place of Christ,’ rather than ‘against
Christ.’ Anri —in Latin, vice, whence we get the word Vicar, the very title
claimed in reference to Christ by the Pope of Rome— is literally in the place
of.’” He cites, among others, the follow­ing examples: AnquupatoV (Acts 13:7),
the deputy, or proconsul, not “against the consul,” but “in the place of the
consul;” AntepiskopoV (Gregor. Naz.), a vice-bishop, one acting for the bishop.
That this is not a merely modern and Protestant interpretation will appear from
the fact that Lactantius (260-330) speaks thus of this personage: “Now this is
he who is called Antichrist; but he shall falsely call himself Christ, and shall
fight against the truth.” [The Divine Institutes, lib. vii., cap. xix].

10 “And power was given unto him to continue forty and two months” (Revelation
13:5). This period of Antichrist’s duration we hold to be, according to the
“year-day theory,” twelve hundred and sixty years. To those who deride such
interpretation as strained, and insist that the words mean three years and a
half, we reply: What expositor has interpreted the ten days’ tribula­tion in
Revelation 2:10 to be ten literal days? But if the Holy Spirit meant years, in
the Apocalypse, why did He not say years? it is replied. Why, when He meant
churches and ministers, and kingdoms and kings and epochs, did He say
candle-sticks, and stars, and beasts, and horns, and trumpets? Yet, having used
these miniature symbols of greater things, how fitting that the accompanying
time should also be in miniature! To use literal dates would distort the
imagery, as though you should put a life-sized eye in a small-sized photograph.


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  CHAPTER 10: 01.02.04.     THE BRIDE OF ANTICHRIST
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Part II Chapter IV. THE BRIDE OF ANTICHRIST

Among the presumptuous titles ascribed to the Papal Antichrist is that of “True
Lord and Hus­band of the Church.” If he is such, we must find in Scripture the
portraiture of his bride, that we may carefully distinguish her from the wife of
the Lamb. As the most complete and graphic pic­ture of the “man of sin” is found
in the second chapter of Thessalonians, so the most vivid por­trayal of the
woman of sin with whom he is allied is found in the seventeenth chapter of
Revelation. Here we behold her introduced under the name of “The great harlot
that sitteth upon many waters,” and she is pictured as riding upon a beast with
“seven heads and ten horns.” These symbols are interpreted for us by the Spirit
of God, so that in our study of this mystery we have a divinely revealed clue
with which to begin. “The waters which thou sawest where the harlot sitteth are
peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.” Wide dominion and
far-reaching sway over the inhabitants of earth are here indicated. “The seven
heads are the seven mountains on which the woman sitteth.” In poetry and in
his­tory, on monuments and on coins, Rome is known as “the seven-hilled city.”
Propertius thus speaks of her: — The city high on seven hills That rules the
boundless earth.” The designation is so exact that there is a well-nigh
unanimous consent among Romanist and Protestant interpreters alike, that the
ancient imperial city on the Tiber is hereby pointed out, though the former
contend that the prophecy relates to pagan Rome. “The great harlot” is a term
equally clear in its significance; it being the representation of a fallen and
apostatized Church. “How is the faithful city become an harlot!” (Isaiah 1:21)
exclaims Jehovah in His lament over backsliding Jerusalem. “Thou hast played the
harlot with many lovers,” (Jeremiah 3:1) he cries again. And once more: “Though
Israel play the harlot, let not Judah offend,” (Hosea 4:15). Thus in the
Scripture’s own light we discern this mis­tress to be the faithless Church who,
having vio­lated her betrothment, and having ceased to look for the return of
her affianced Husband, has admitted others into his place and become the
par­amour of the kings of the earth. Most distinctly, then, are the character,
and dominion, and resi­dence of this ecclesiastical woman defined.

If we turn now to the prophetic description of the woman’s dress, we are almost
startled by its realistic character: “And the woman was arrayed in purple and
scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls.” Who does
not know that scarlet and purple are as truly “the colors” of the papacy as the
red, white and blue are of the United States? In the Ceremoniale Romanum —an
ancient book of directions, —the dress and adornments with which the pope must
be clad on assuming his office are minutely de­scribed. Of the different
articles of attire speci­fied, five are scarlet. A vest covered with pearls, and
a miter adorned with gold and precious stones are also named in the prescribed
apparel. Nor need we go back to so early authority on this point. Our own eyes
bear witness to these mis­tress-marks as they appear today. What a pro­fusion
still of purple robes and costly jewels! When the first American Cardinal was
created, the infection of “cardinal red” seized on fashion­able circles
throughout the land, far and wide, ladies’ bonnets and dresses fairly blushing
with it, till society seemed streaked through and through with the hues of the
scarlet woman, as when a blood-clot falls into an urn of water and is diffused
abroad. If any say that it is only a narrow and fanciful sectarianism that can
detect such minute identity between the prophetic picture and the papal reality,
they have but to be reminded that so honored a Catholic saint as Beneventura
con­densed this whole apocalyptic prediction into a single pungent sentence, and
applied it to the papacy of his day, when he designated her as “a wanton clad in
scarlet.” And how striking it is to note that true in­stinct which leads the
ritualists of our time to copy the dress-marks of Rome, just as they are
reviving her pagan ceremonial and doctrine, —so strongly is the prophetic
negative bound to re­produce itself in every photograph of history! 1

What is that chalice which the woman lifts aloft? “Having a golden cup in her
hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.” Idolatry and
spiritual apostasy are clearly sym­bolized here. Concerning ancient Babylon the
prophet wrote: “Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord’s hand that made all
the earth drunken; the nations are drunken with her wine, therefore the nations
are mad,” (Jeremiah 51:7).

Euphratean Babylon was the prolific mother of idolatry, —that idolatry which
Scripture clearly shows to be the liturgy of demons, —and with this she seduced
God’s ancient people into spir­itual fornication. And now the Church, having
become paganized by absorbing into herself the literal elements of this ancient
heathenism, is photographed as mystical Babylon, in her turn enticing to
idolatry and spiritual unchastity.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Eucharis­tic cup which Rome now puts to
the lips of her communicants, with its mixture of miracle and magic, resembles
more nearly the chalice of the ancient Chaldean “Mysteries” than it does the
chaste and simple memorial cup which Christ left in the hands of His Bride, the
Church; and, in view of the transformation which has taken place, what startling
significance is there for Roman­izers in the apostle’s saying: “Ye cannot drink
the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. Ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s
table and the table of demons”! (1 Corinthians 10:21), —startling, if indeed it
be true, that the Bride of Christ, who in the beginning is described as having
“turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and wait for His Son
from heaven,” is become such that she is now turning men from God to serve
idols, seducing them to make an image of the sacrament, before which they fall
down in worship. 2

“And His name shall be in their foreheads,” is the promise given to the Bride of
the Lamb. And Antichrist’s bride must maintain this par­ody, so, as the spouse
of him who is “the mys­tery of iniquity,” this woman of the Apocalypse is thus
presented to us: “And upon her forehead a name written,” “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE
GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” Need we ask who it
is that arro­gates to herself the title, “Rome, Mother and Mistress?” Striking
as are the parallels, even more so are the contrasts. “Jerusalem which is above,
who is the mother of us all,” confesses the

Holy Church whose citizenship is in heaven; the Church which has become earthly
and idola­trous is characterized as “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots.”
The Bride is “arrayed in fine linen, clean and white,” which is the
“righteous­ness of saints.” The Harlot is “arrayed in pur­ple and scarlet
color,” which is the vesture of kings. The union of the true Church with Christ
in Heaven is a “great mystery;” the union of the false Church with the rulers of
this world is the counter “mystery.” As for that other cup with which the Harlot
has intoxicated herself, — “I saw the woman drunken with the blood of saints and
with the blood of martyrs,” —what language shall we bor­row to describe it? It
has been estimated that the papacy has directly or indirectly slain fifty
millions of martyrs on account of their faith, the vast majority of these being
sincere Christians, whose only crime was that they would not own allegiance to
Antichrist. Let charity discount the number by one-half, if it were possible,
and let her suggest every conceivable palliation for the murder of the rest, and
we still have the most ghastly chapter which the volume of history contains.
Would that we might mingle our weep­ing with floods of repentant tears from the
eyes of this cruel mother, if, forsooth, we could thereby mitigate the wrath
treasured up against the day of wrath which her crimes have earned. But, alas!
we find “Te Deums” [Thee, O God, we praise; Ed.], sung over Huguenot slaughters,
but not one papal Miserere can we discover. Commemorative medals are still
ex­tant signalizing the massacre of St. Bartholomew, but not one monumentum
lacrimarum over that event is to be found in all the archives of the
seven-hilled city. “And when I saw her I won­dered with great wonder,” writes
the Seer; and now that history has filled in every detail of the crimson outline
of prophecy, we wonder with even profounder amazement that such a demoni­acal
tragedy could ever have been enacted in the name of Christianity. But we
remember that the woman who did these things was “drunken.” And there is no
intoxication as profound as that induced by pagan superstition tinctured with
Christian blood. Even Martin Luther, while yet in the delirium tremens of
popery, raged with this blood-thirst. “So intoxicated was I, and drenched in
papal dogmas,” are his words, “that I would have been most ready to murder, or
as­sist others in murdering, any person who should have uttered a syllable
against the duty of obe­dience to the Pope.” Nay, even those who have been
sobered by generations of Protestant abstinence from persecution, if they once
return to the cups of the Harlot, speedily exhibit symptoms of the old appetite,
as witnessed, for exam­ple, in the oft-quoted saying of Dr. Manning, now
cardinal, when urging Romish aggression in England: “It is yours, right reverend
fathers, to subjugate and subdue, to bend and to break the will of an imperial
race.” This mystical name of “Babylon the Great” is marvelously apt on many
grounds. It was lit­eral Babylon that was the most constant and inveterate
persecutor of ancient Israel. So was this typical Babylon to be the most
malignant persecutor of spiritual Israel, the true and uncor­rupted Church of
Christ. This was enough to justify the analogy. But we believe that there is
even a profounder significance in the name. Papal Babylon, as we have said
above, was to re­enact the idolatries of Chaldean Babylon to such an extent that
she would be the restored image and counterpart of her. How the Babylonian
cultus was diffused abroad among surrounding nations, and how it reappeared in
the Roman Empire, and was in turn copied and reproduced by the papacy, is a
matter of history. It is too great a subject to be discussed in a single
chapter. The most that we can do now is to note some marks of identification
between the idola­try of the mystical city and that of the literal city. Read in
Jeremiah 44:1-30 Jehovah’s terrible denunciation of the Jews in Egypt for their
ob­stinate worship of “The Queen of Heaven.” This was Semiramis, or Astarte, the
great Babylonian goddess. She was called “the mother of the gods,” and was “most
worshipped of all the divinities.” In the corruptions of Christianity, the
Virgin Mary, astonishing to tell, was gradu­ally lifted into her place, and
adored under the identical titles, till today the voice of the pa­pacy is
exactly that of apostate Israel: “But we will certainly do whatsoever thing
goeth forth out of our own mouth to burn incense unto the queen of heaven,”
(Jeremiah 44:17). Not only in­cense, but, these same Jews confessed, “we did
make our cakes to worship her” (Jeremiah 44:19). Here the pedigree of the wafer
is suggested; and if one will candidly trace back the descent, we challenge him
to resist the conclusion that the wafer comes from the Babylonish cake, its
round­ness being due to the fact that it was originally an image of the sun, and
worshipped as such. Consider, also, the use, in worship, of candles, which the
ritualists are now so sedulously employ­ing to light themselves back into the
Dark Ages. In the apocryphal book of Baruch there is a minute and extended
description of the Babylo­nish worship, with all its dark and abominable
accessories. Of the gods which they set up in their temples, it is said that
their “eyes be full of dust through the feet of them that come in.” And then it
is added that the worshippers “light for them candles, yea, more than for
themselves, whereof they cannot see one.” In the pagan wor­ship at Rome, which
was confessedly borrowed largely from Assyria and Egypt, we have ac­counts of
processionals, in which surpliced priests marched with wax candles in their
hands, carry­ing the images of their gods; and we find a Christian writer,
Lactantius, A.D. 260-330, ridi­culing the heathen custom of lighting candles to
their gods, “because they are of the earth, and stand in need of lights that
they may not be in darkness,” which he certainly would not have done had the
practice formed any part of prim­itive Christian worship. 3 And time would fail
to tell of the confessional, so closely reprodu­cing that imposed on the
initiates in the ancient mysteries; and of holy water, of the eastward pos­ture,
of the signing with the cross, and of cere­monies and vestments, nameless and
incompre­hensible. Granting, for the sake of charity, that altars and incense
were borrowed from Jewish worship, —which things, indeed, were done away in
Christ, —it still remains true that the great bulk of the papal ceremonies were
originally part and portion of primitive idol-worship, of which idol-worship
Babylon was the chief mother and nurse. 4 The complete image, as presented in
this vis­ion, is one of the most striking in all prophecy. “And I saw a woman
sit upon a scarlet-colored beast,” —the apostate Church riding upon the state,
supported by it, and yet controlling it. Who does not know how exactly this
harmonizes with the facts; how the Church, upon her fall, saddled herself upon
the empire, till, acquiring complete control, she became able to hold it in by
bit and bridle of bull and concordat, compel­ling it to bear her weight and to
do her will? Blasphemy and apostasy are counterparts. Anti­christ, a world-king,
sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself as God. Antichurch, forfeiting her
citizenship in heaven, now sitteth in the seat of kings. “Simeon and Levi are
brethren: in­struments of cruelty are in their habitations. O my soul! come not
into their secret.” “Upon a scarlet-colored beast,” —predictive of
blood-guilti­ness, a fore-view which history has amply verified. “Grind enough
of the red,” used to be the ghastly phrase of the painter David, one of the
French revolutionists, as he urged on the bloody work of the guillotine. Rome
secular has never been sparing of the red in carrying out the orders of Rome
spiritual, whom she has faithfully served as public executioner; she has painted
true to the prophetic pattern. Hence the “names of blasphemy:” which cover her.
With heaven-de­fying self-exaltation she has assumed to sit in the judgment-seat
of God, and to condemn His saints by millions to death, so that whereas Jehovah
was wont to reprove kings for their sakes, saying, “Touch not my anointed, and
do my prophets no harm,” these — the Harlot and the Hierarch—have “taken counsel
together against the Lord and against His anointed,” to burn them at the stake
and rend them in the Inquisition. And yet, after all, the longing is
irresistible, that this fallen daughter of God—the harlot Church—might be
reformed, and like that other Magdalene be found bathing the Saviour’s feet with
her pen­itent tears. Nothing in history is more pathetic than that yearning of
pious Catholics of the Mid­dle Ages which found expression in the prophecy of a
“Papa Angelicus,” about to appear, an Angel-Pope, who should restore the defiled
Church to her primitive purity, and invest her once more with the white robes of
spiritual chastity. But such a conception is as contrary to possibility as it is
counter to Scripture. That which has been the curse of the Church can never be
its cure. An angelic man in the papal chair, if such an one could be found to
sit there, would be as abhorrent in his office as he might be lovely in his
person, for papacy is the essence of Antichrist, and as such can never help
Christ in reforming His Church. If any demur at this, and contend that with all
her errors Rome still holds enough of truth to constitute her a true Church, we
must reply that she cannot be both the bride and the harlot; and to this her
most eminent prelates assent, compelling us to choose between the two
alternatives. Cardinal Manning says: “The Catholic Church is either the
masterpiece of Satan or the Kingdom of the Son of God.” 5 We solemnly deny that
she is the latter. Cardinal Newman declares: “Either the Church of Rome is the
house of God or the house of Satan: there is no middle ground between them.” 6
We solemnly affirm that she is not the former. And yet the cup of the Roman
sorceress, let us remember, is once more put to the lips of Protestants, who are
solicited to drink it, and forget their estrangement from their “Mother Church.”
How many have been drugged into communion, or at least into wanton dalliance,
with her, we need not say. It is enough to utter the warning, that here
fellowship is fornication. If, by the regenerating and sanctifying grace of the
Spirit, we belong to the true body of Christ, we are bound to meet every
overture for commu­nion with Rome with the inspired question and inspired answer
of the apostle: “Shall I, then, take the members of Christ, and make them
members of a harlot? God forbid,” (1 Corinthians 6:15).

Endnotes:

1 How the Anglican Church is “resuming the decorations of the harlot” appears
from the following: In the services con­nected with the recent consecration of
the Cathedral of Truro, the red vestments, which were abolished in the reign of
Eliza­beth, were again so conspicuous that Punch photographed the scene under
the heading of “Outbreak of Scarlatina at Truro.” Join with this the following
Church news: “Last Sunday the rector of St. Paul’s Church wore a white stole
embroidered in three shades of blue, the same done in monograms and flowers set
with carbuncles and bugles; with Maltese crosses set with sapphires and
diamonds; with lilies set with garnets, —the whole number of diamonds numbering
forty, and of precious stones one hundred and thirty-five: estimated cost of
this me­morial gift, ₤1,000. A visitor describes the Bishop of Lincoln as
‘adorned with mitre and cloth of gold, his orphreys so lavishly decorated with
amethysts, pearls, topazes, and chrysolites set in silver as fairly to dazzle
the beholder.’ How repulsive is all this to such as seek to maintain the
simplicity that is in Christ!”

2 “If any man shall say that this holy sacrament should not be adored, nor
carried about in processions, nor held up publicly to the people to adore it, or
that its worshippers are idolaters, let him be accursed.” [Council of Trent].

3 Divine Institutes, b. vi. 2. Bishop Coxe, the High Church editor of the
American edition of the Fathers, gives this note on this passage: “The ritual
use of lights was unknown to the primitive Christians, however harmless it may
be.”

4 For a profound and learned exhibition of this whole subject see Hislop’s “Two
Babylon,” London, S. W. Partridge & Co.

5 Lectures on the Fourfold Sovereignty of God, London, 1871, p. 171.

6 Essays, ii. p. 116.


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  CHAPTER 11: 01.02.05.     THE MOCK MILLENNIUM
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Part II Chapter V. THE MOCK MILENNIUM

Antichrist and Antichurch, —these two reign­ing together have brought on an
anti-millennium, the dazzling caricature of that which is promised to appear at
the second coming of Christ and the marriage of the Lamb. An eminent exegete, in
a recent symposium on the pre-millennial advent, replies to those who query
whether the present may not after all be the long-predicted millen­nium, that it
might be more correctly called “the millennium of Satan.” This saying sounds
ex­tremely harsh and pessimistic, but it has the ad­vantage of conforming to
Scripture. “The age to come” — o aiwn mellwn—has its unmistakable
characteristics as set forth in Scripture: it will be the age of the
resurrection of the just (Luke 20:35), with all the glorious triumphs and
rewards which belong to that consummation; and it will be ushered in by the
visible appearing of the Lord from heaven (Matthew 13:39); it will be Christ’s
millennium, during which Satan shall be bound and shut up so that he can tempt
the na­tions no more (Revelation 20:1-5). The present age, —‛οnun aiwn— spanning
the entire distance from the first to the second advent, has also its
distinctive characteristics: it is called the “present evil age,” (Galatians
1:4); Christians are exhorted to “live soberly, righteously, and godly in this
present age,” (Titus 2:12), to “be not conformed to this age,” (Romans 12:2),
and they are admonished that Christ “gave Himself for our sins, that He might
deliver us from this pres­ent evil age,” (Galatians 1:4). So far from Christ
being Lord of this age, as He should be was it His millennium, we are distinctly
told that Satan is “the god of this age,” —o qeoV tou aiwnoV toutou , (2
Corinthians 4:4). Till this dispensation ends, therefore, and the sway of its
god is broken, there can be no millennium of universal righteousness in which
Christ shall reign with His saints upon the earth. Multitudes will be taken out
of this age to form the Ecclesia, the called out, the Bride of Christ, to be
presented to Him at His coming; but the Church will never so transform the
dispensation as to turn it into a blissful millennium. The clock of the ages
runs true to the eternal order, and however impatient the Church may be for the
consummation of all things, she cannot move forward the hands of that clock a
single hour to bring in the Sabbatic rest before the fulness of time be come.
But this was really what was attempted by the Church after her elevation to an
earthly throne under Constantine. She grasped for her glory in the time
appointed for her humil­iation, and vainly thought to reign in the earth while
her King is still absent in heaven. With the historical school of interpreters
we find in the twelfth chapter of Revelation a graphic portraiture of this
critical era. The sun-clothed woman figures the Church in her investiture with
rule and authority under Constantine; her travailing and bringing forth the man
child who was “to rule all nations with a rod of iron,” ex­hibits her compassing
earthly dominion and sov­ereignty, which dominion and sovereignty are, however,
caught away from the true Church, whose portion is for the present the
wilderness and rejection, and reserved with Jesus Christ on the throne where He
is “expecting till His foes be made His footstool,” when the promise shall be
fulfilled to Him and to His reigning Bride: “I will give thee nations for thine
inheritance, and for thy possession the ends of the earth. Thou shalt break them
with a rod of iron, like a potter’s vessel shalt thou dash them in pieces.” But
in the conflict between paganism and Chris­tianity, in which the former is
overthrown, as symbolized by the casting out of the dragon, the deluded Church
imagines that her millennial triumph has arrived, and the cry is heard: “Now is
come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God and the power of His
Christ,” (Revelation 12:10). Mr. Pember, though not following this
interpretation of the Apocalypse, has most ad­mirably sketched its historical
counterpart. He says: “When the Christians were relieved from persecution by the
policy of Constantine, and came into honor after having been so long reck­oned
as the filth of the world and the offscour­ing of all things, the cry was
straightway raised that the kingdom had come. But the result of this vain Lo
here! was the introduction of two pernicious doctrines, that the kingdom is
possi­ble without the personal presence of the King, and that the Church can
become mistress of the world during her widowhood and while Satan is still
reigning prince. Further mischief followed, for there being nothing to support
such views in the New Testament, those who entertained them were compelled to
have recourse to the Old, and to cite from thence the prophecies of Israel’s
fu­ture glory, in order that by a false application of them to the Church they
might justify the pros­perity which had accrued to her through her alliance with
the pagan world.” 1

Satan, who is the god of this age, is an anti-god, and as such he is the great
caricaturist of all holy persons and things that he may the more effectually
delude and destroy. And having seen the counter Christ and the counter Church
which he created for leading men astray, we shall now consider how through these
two he brought in a counter millennium, an astonishing parody of the true
Sabbatic era and the real kingdom of God on earth which are promised in
connection with Christ’s Second Advent.

Everything which belongs to that blessed age has been, and is still, claimed by
the apostate Church as already here. Was not Christ to usher in the millennium
by His personal coming? “On thee, most blessed Leo, we have fixed our hopes as
the Saviour that was to come,” — “Salvatorem venturum.” 2 So spake an adoring
bishop to the pope at the fifth Lateran council. In his sover­eign vicar, Christ
has already appeared and is already ruling, says Rome. “In the person of Pius
IX., Jesus reigns on earth,” exclaims Car­dinal Manning, “and he must reign till
He hath put all enemies under His feet!” 3 But was it not appointed to the
Church to suffer with Christ during this dispensation, that she might reign with
Him in the age to come? “Nay, but now is come salvation and the king­dom of our
God,” replies the harlot bride. Hear the Bishop of Medrusium at the fifth
Lateran council again: “But weep not, daughter of Zion, for God hath raised up a
Saviour for thee; the Lion of the tribe of Judah (alluding to Pope Leo), the
root of David hath come, and shall save thee from all thy enemies.” 4 A “little
flock” wait­ing for “the Chief Shepherd” to appear; an es­poused bride looking
for the Bridegroom’s re­turn, —such we had supposed to be the character of the
Church in this present time. But the un­faithful spouse has found her Chief
Shepherd and Bridegroom in the pope. Marcellus, in behalf of the Church, speaks
thus to Leo X.: “I come to thee as my true Lord and Husband, beseeching thee to
look to it that thy bride may be renewed in her beauty; and see to it that the
flock com­mitted to thee be nourished with the best and spiritual aliment, the
fold united in one which is now divided, and the sickness healed which has
afflicted the whole world: for thou art our Shep­herd, our Physician, our
Governor, in fine, a sec­ond God on earth.” 5

Christ foretold the condition of his true Church— “the children of the
bride-chamber” —during His absence thus: “But the days will come when the
Bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.” The Church of
this false kingdom, this pseudo-millennium, is thus pictured in the Apocalypse:
“For she saith in her heart, I sit as queen and am no widow, and shall see no
sorrow,” (Revelation 18:7). How literally was this prediction translated into
history when the in­fatuated Eusebius, glorying over the triumphs of
Christianity in his day, exclaimed: “Whereas the Church was widowed and
desolate, her chil­dren have now to exclaim to her: ‘Make room! Enlarge thy
borders! the place is too strait for us.’ The promise is fulfilling in her: In
right­eousness shalt thou be established; all thy chil­dren shall be taught of
God, and great shall be the peace of thy children.’” Nay, more: so far from
fasting, and waiting the time when they should sit down with the Lord at His
table in His kingdom, this historian rejoices that after the enthronement of
Christianity under Constan­tine, when “the bishops sat down at the emperor’s
table, and the rest all around him, it looked like the image of the very kingdom
of God.” 6

Though “a name above every name” is given to Immanuel, He still waits for every
knee to bow to Him; He still waits for His promised throne, “the throne of His
father, David.” He still waits for His royal title, “King of kings and Lord of
lords,” which title, as the Scripture shows, belongs only to the day of His
glorious coming. But not so with Antichrist. “There is but one name in the
world,” he declares, “and that is the pope; he only can use the ornaments of
empire; all princes ought to kiss his feet; he alone can nominate and displace
bishops, and as­semble and dissolve councils. Nobody can judge him; his mere
election constitutes him a saint; he has never erred, and never shall err in
time to come; he can depose princes, and; relieve sub­jects from their oaths of
fidelity.” 7

What wonder that with such assumptions all the sublime promises of the
millennial glory should have been counted as now fulfilled! So it was; and we
read of the ambassadors of the Portuguese king bowing down to Pope Leo, and,
after addressing him as “Supreme Lord of all,” blasphemously adapting to him the
words of prophecy: “Thou shalt rule from sea to sea, and from the river Tiber to
the ends of the earth; the kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring gifts to thee;
yea, all princes shall worship thee, all na­tions shall serve thee.” At no point
has the Messianic glory been more brilliantly mimicked than here. The profusion
of offerings which have poured in upon the royal priest of Rome from the kings
of the earth is astonishing to recount. No monarch that ever reigned has been
the recipient of such sumptuous gifts from the princes of this world. And the
spell of fascination which has ever evoked such tributes, although long
weakened, seems to be again reviving, as indicated by the published list of
royal presents to the pope on his recent ju­bilee. The soft adulation toward
Rome, which many Protestant clergymen have learned to culti­vate during the last
half century, is now being matched by a renewed subserviency on the part of
kings. Bishop Cox, one of the compilers of the Liturgy of the Anglican Church,
writing from England to friends on the Continent in 1559, while Elizabeth was
reigning, said: “We are thundering forth in our pulpits, and especially before
our Queen Elizabeth, that the Roman Pontiff is truly Antichrist.” Such thunder
has so far subsided among those employing this lit­urgy that now a great company
of priests are laboring to bring about organic union with Rome, and the present
successor to Elizabeth on the English throne sends one of the most princely of
the anniversary gifts to Leo XIII. Luther, after his eyes, long holden of
superstition, were opened to discern the Scriptures, looked at prophecy and then
at the papacy and exclaimed: “It is most manifest, and without any doubt true,
that the Roman Pontiff, with his whole order and king­dom, is the very
Antichrist.” But instead of Luther’s mitre of malediction upon the head of this
usurper of Christ’s millennial throne, Germany now sends, as the tribute of King
William to the Roman Pontiff, “a jeweled mitre costing four thousand dollars.”
So the masquerade goes on before the eyes of men and angels, that the unwary may
still longer be deceived, and made to believe that this is He of whom the
Psalmist wrote, “The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents; ..
. yea, all kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him.” Only
those can unmask these pretensions who read the Scriptures diligently, and find
that He of whom this is written has this honor, which the pope has never known:
“For He shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath
no helper. He shall spare the poor and the needy and shall save the souls of the
needy; He shall redeem their souls from deceit and violence, and precious shall
their blood be in His sight,” (Psalms 72:12-14). Not merely the millennial reign
but the mil­lennial splendors have been snatched by the faithless bride. Sober
dress becomes the widow­hood of the Church; gaudy attire and jeweled fingers
convict her of wantoning with earthly lovers; majestic cathedrals, hoarding,
boundless wealth and adorned with costly furniture, imply that she has forgotten
that here she has no con­tinuing city, but that her citizenship is in heaven,
from whence she looks for her Lord. Cardinal Newman, in defending these lavish
splendors of the papacy, declares that their presence “as little proves that the
Church is Antichrist as that any king’s court is Antichrist,” and then cites the
following passages in their justification: “I will lay thy stones with fair
colors, and thy foundations with sapphires, and I will make thy windows of
agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of precious stones.”
“The glory of Leb­anon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine tree, and
the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary.” 8 But this is only a
piracy of Messianic prophecies, all these texts being descriptive of the age of
glory yet to come. To quote them in this connection is simply to justify our
charge that the apostasy has ravished the Church millennial to get building
materials for the Church militant. It should be soon enough to walk on golden
streets when the New Jerusa­lem descends from heaven “as a Bride adorned for her
Husband;” but the harlot must needs seize the paving-stones of the Holy City to
beau­tify the streets of “that great city which is spiritually called Sodom and
Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified,” (Revelation 11:8).

Let it not be implied that we should be so shut up to sackcloth and ashes in the
dispensation that now is, that we can have no happy glimpses of that which is to
follow. Most expressively does the apostle, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, speak
of Christians as those who have “tasted the towers of the age to come,” (Hebrews
6:5). Fore­tastes are graciously permitted, but immediate and full appropriation
is forbidden. “Be not con­formed to this age, but be ye transfigured by the
renewing of your mind,” says the Scripture. The transfiguration was a
pre-libation of the age to come; the cup of glory tasted for a moment by our
Lord to strengthen Him to drink the cup of His vicarious anguish. But it could
be only a taste as yet, not a complete fruition. Yet Simon Peter, whose mistakes
are always significant as fore-typical of the permanent errors of his
self-styled successors, exclaims, “Let us make three tabernacles, one for thee,
and one for Moses, and one for Elias, not knowing what he said,” (Matthew 17:4).
As though a momentary visitation of the coming glory could now be prolonged into
a residence! As though this foretaste of the mil­lennium could be made a
permanent repast! In his epistles; however, the same apostle three times speaks
of “the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow,” showing how
clearly now the succession and characteristics of the ages had been revealed to
him by the Spirit. We are still in the dispensation of Christ’s sufferings; and
if we have the patience of the waiting bride we shall covet no richly adorned
dwellings until the dispensation of glory shall be ushered in and the word of
prophecy be fulfilled: “Behold the tabernacle of God is with men,” (Revelation
21:3). Not only did the Church preempt the glories of the age to come, but also
its retributions. And in this her presumption exceeded all bounds. “Do ye not
know that the saints shall judge the world?” asks the apostle. Well might the
lowly disciple of Christ be startled and staggered at such a suggestion! But it
is only an illustration of the reversals which will be effected at the set­ting
up of the kingdom of Christ. They whose portion it was to stand before the
judgment-seat of kings will now sit in the judgment-seat with the King of kings,
“to execute upon them the judgment written: This honor have all his saints,”
(Psalms 149:9). But this exercise of judicial honor is limited most rigidly to
the age to come. “Ye which have followed me, in the regeneration,” — “in the
renovation, paliggenesia, being the res­toration of this world of ours on the
appearance of the new æon,” (Lange), — “when the Son of man shall sit on the
throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve
tribes of Israel,” (Matthew 19:28). It is only in association with the glorified
Lord, present in the body to judge men according to the deeds done in the body,
that this office can be exercised by the redeemed. Therefore the Scripture is
very explicit, and saith: “Judge nothing before the time until the Lord come,”
(1 Corinthians 4:5). But see what the Church was left to do so soon as she began
to glorify herself and live deli­ciously, and to commit fornication with the
kings of the earth. She snatched both the throne and the sceptre of God, and
began to deal out con­demnation to His saints. The centuries of Anti­christ’s
career have constituted one long judg­ment day, in which justice has been
outraged as never before in the history of the ages; one prolonged assize, in
which popes, and cardinals, and bishops have sat in the bench with Chief Justice
Apollyon, and administered sentence according to the statutes of the Prince of
Darkness.

How visibly can the form of this black magis­trate be seen behind this mock
tribunal; how almost audibly does the chuckle of his infernal laughter break
forth over this monstrous parody of the court of God which he has seduced the
apostate Church to set up! With unfathomable ingenuity he has opened, before the
time, the lake of fire to which he is doomed, and made a channel for it from the
apostate Church; and thus to the astonished “world-rulers of this darkness” he
has shown a lurid river of the water of death proceeding out of the throne of
the Beast and the Harlot, with millions of Christ’s true saints writhing in its
flames on account of the testi­mony which they bore to the faith of Jesus:
fantastic cruelties burlesquing the calm justice of God; the throne of iniquity
supplanting the throne of grace, and impaneling the princes of this world, who
crucified the Lord of Glory, to sit in judgment upon His faithful witnesses! If
we knew of no other age than this, we might verily believe that the Father of
Lies had outwit­ted the Father of Mercies. It was the contem­plation of just
what we are describing that is said to have drawn forth from Voltaire the bitter
re­mark: “If this is the best the Almighty Author can do, He deserves to be
hissed rather than worshiped.” No, philosopher! and we may add, no, theologian!
This is not the best that God can do; this is not Christ’s millennium: it is
Satan’s mock millennium. For some inscruta­ble reason, the Lord has permitted a
demon­stration to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places of the
worst which His arch­enemy can do. Wait a little and the Lord shall descend from
heaven to usher in the real millen­nium, the true Sabbatic consummation for
which the ages have sighed, and for which the whole creation, until now, is
groaning and travailing in pain; then our Immanuel will show us the best He can
do.

It is regretted that our Protestant Christianity, in its separation from Rome,
never passed en­tirely out of the baleful shadow of this pseudo-millennium. For
many to this day confound the Church with the kingdom, and apply the prom­ises
of the glory of the age to come to the present triumphs of the gospel. God
forbid that in the slightest degree we should undervalue the missionary and
evangelical victories which have so signally marked this century; but if we are
tempted to predict the speedy conquest of the whole world to Christ through
these successes, we need to be admonished to speak according to the Word. The
present is the dispensation of election; the declared purpose of preaching the
gospel to the Gentiles in this age is, “to take out of them a people for His
name,” (Acts 15:14), and it is a premature grasping of the kingdom to apply to
this period those glorious predictions of universal righteousness in the age to
come, with which Scripture abounds. If it be said that this conception of
preaching the gospel “for a witness,” and “to gather out,” is a narrow and
disheartening one, we reply that it is in harmony with the universal testimony
of Scripture; and we shall be far safer and more successful to work according to
God’s schedule of the ages than according to man’s timetable. Indeed, if we
would be intelligent laborers for Christ, we must not fail to discriminate
rigidly between the sphere of the militant Church and the sphere of the
millennial Church. There is an ancient saying of great significance:
“Distinguite tempora et concordabunt scripture:” “Distinguish the pe­riods and
the Scriptures will harmonize.” Fail­ure at this point has worked vast
misconcep­tion. The theories of Christ’s parousia having already occurred, of
the resurrection already accomplished, and of judgment already going on in the
unseen world, all rest upon that confusion of the dispensations which makes “the
world to come” signify the present time or the disem­bodied state. Here, again,
is a premature snatch­ing of the coming glory; and to effect it the ages have
been telescoped, and their distinguishing events huddled together in one
promiscuous jumble. The result is, prophecy without perspec­tive; dispensations
without distances intervening; the divine vision of things to come blended with
the present scene; and the whole turned into a Chinese picture, with all the
objects in the fore­ground.

Cross-bearing, patient endurance, diligent ser­vice, —this is our present
calling, while we ever pray our absent Lord “that it may please Thee shortly to
accomplish the number of Thine elect and to hasten Thy kingdom.” Meanwhile we
are “to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age,” if by any
means we may be “counted worthy to obtain that age and the res­urrection from
the dead.”

Endnotes:

1 Antichrist, Babylon, and the Coming Kingdom, p. 145.

2 Harduin, 1651.

3 See closing pages of Vatican Council, by Henry Edward, Archbishop of
Westminster, 1871. It is an exaltation of the pope as “the supreme judge and
infallible teacher of men,” end­ing with a warning to his enemies that
“whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall
fall it will grind him to powder.” It is an amazing exhibition of eloquent
blasphemy.

4 Harduin, 1687.

5 Harduin, 1687.

6 V. C. iii. 15.

7 Dict. Pope, Greg. VII.

8 Essays, ii. 184.


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  CHAPTER 12: 01.02.06.     THE ECLIPSE OF HOPE
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Part II Chapter VI. THE ECLIPSE OF HOPE

It would be inevitable that, in the condition of things described in the
previous chapter, the primitive, hope of Christ’s second coming in glory should
pass into utter eclipse If the Messianic reign had begun, and the kingdom had
really been set up, why should Christians longer look for the Lord from heaven
to establish His millen­nial throne? The cry, “Behold the kingdom!” now filled
all mouths; the lavish splendors of the papal court dazzled all eyes; and there
was little occasion for that other cry to be longer sounded, —Behold, He
cometh!”—“the cry which was first uttered by that “brother and companion in
tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ,” and which was
continued for two hundred years by his faithful fellow-sufferers. So it was that
Satan’s counterfeit drove the gen­uine coin out of circulation, till the early
advent hope of the Church passed into almost complete oblivion.

Harnack, in his masterly article on the Millen­nium, shows that Augustine was
the first theolo­gian “to grasp and elaborate the idea that the Church is the
kingdom of Christ and the city of God; . . . that the millennial kingdom had
com­menced with the appearing of Christ, and was, therefore, an accomplished
fact.” And he adds that, “by this doctrine of Augustine’s, the old
millenarianism, though not completely extirpated, was at least banished from the
realm of the dog­matic. 1 Of course, as the papacy developed more and more
subsequent to Augustine’s day, more and more was the millennial hope of the
Church ob­scured. For that hope stands in direct antago­nism to every principle
of the Hierarchy. As a learned writer has said: “It never pleased, but always
gave offense to, the Church of Rome, be­cause it did not suit that scheme of
Christianity which they have drawn. The Apocalypse of John supposed the true
Church under hardships and persecutions; but the Church of Rome, suppos­ing
Christ reigns already by His vicar the pope, hath been in prosperity and
greatness, and the commanding Church in Christendom for a long time. This has
made the Church of Rome al­ways have an ill eye upon this doctrine, because it
seemed to have an ill eye upon her; and, as she grew in splendor and greatness,
she eclipsed and obscured it more and more, so that it would have been lost out
of the world as an obsolete error if it had not been revived by some at the
Reformation,” (Thomas Burnet, 1635-1700).

It is most striking to observe how, as the apos­tasy went on, not only the
teaching on this sub­ject ceased, but the symbols, and worship, and ordinances
of the Church became so changed as to silence their testimony to Christ’s second
com­ing, and to throw that doctrine into eclipse. The seduction of the Church
from its primitive simplicity was accomplished mainly by these two influences:
pagan philosophy corrupting her doc­trine, and pagan ceremonies corrupting her
wor­ship. Both of these were inherently hostile to the chaste and artless
Chiliasm of the apostolic age. The primitive hope was intolerable to rational
theology, because it could not be surveyed and mapped out upon its logic charts.
Hence, no sooner had philosophy been installed in the apostle’s chair than it
began to wage war upon the apostle’s doctrine. As the Apocalypse was regarded as
the stronghold of millenarianism, determined siege was made against this book:
its authority was ques­tioned, its value discounted, till it was finally driven
from the canon; and, so far as the Greek Church was concerned, it was denied a
place in Holy Scripture for centuries, and consequently “Chiliasm remained in
its grave.” 2 Nor was this the worst injury emanating from this source. Pagan
philosophy infused its own notions of a future life into ecclesiastical
theol­ogy. It deftly substituted the Platonic doctrine of the immortality of the
soul for the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. In har­mony
with this change came in the notion of judgment being administered immediately
after death in the disembodied state, instead of being reserved till the coming
of the Lord and the raising of the dead, —a conception as charac­teristic of all
heathen religions as it is foreign to the teaching of both the Old Testament and
the New. This eschatology of the underworld, which even to this day so deeply
colors our the­ology, could not fail to make strongly against the original
advent faith of the Church. For it changed the up-look of primitive Christianity
to the down-look of pagan mythology, by making death the object of consideration
instead of the coming of Christ. This was the master-stroke of Satanic art, —the
substitution of death for life, of mortality for resurrection, in the hopes of
the Church. It is a perversion so radical and subtle that to this day many
Christians are blinded by it, so that they imagine that their dying means the
same thing as Christ’s coming. Twin coun­terfeits of paganism are these two;
ritualism cor­rupting the liturgy of the Church with demon-worship, and
Platonism corrupting the eschatol­ogy of the Church with death-worship. Instead
of the expectation being fixed upon Christ’s ad­vent, it became fixed upon the
soul’s exit; death was glorified into a good angel; and thus mor­tality, Satan’s
masterpiece, supplanted resurrec­tion, Christ’s masterpiece, and the “Terrible
Captain Sepulchre and his Standard-bearer Cor­ruption “were crowned and
enthroned in the place of the Coming Christ, who is “the Resurrection and the
Life.” In the gospel, death is made neither the terminus ad quem, [earliest
point in time; Ed.] nor the terminus a quo, [latest point in time; Ed.]; that
towards which we look for the consum­mation of our hopes, or from which we enter
upon our complete sanctification and final perfection. “Not that we would be
unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life,” is
the inspired confession of the believer. And nothing will so completely quench
the can­dle of our true hope as the opposite idea that death is the supreme
deliverer to be waited for. The ceremonies which gradually grew up in the Church
tended to the same result. For as worship more and more took the place of the
Word in the Christian assembly, the contem­plation was withdrawn from the
glories of the age to come. Purgatory was substituted for Paradise; masses for
the disembodied souls in the former supplanted scriptural exhortations to the
attainment of the rewards and glories of the latter. The lamp of prophecy, which
the Lord left in the hands of his waiting Bride, had at last been exchanged for
the tapers of heathenism. “We almost see the ceremonial of the Gentiles
introduced into the Church under pretense of re­ligion,” exclaims Jerome, “piles
of candles lighted while yet the sun is shining. Great honor do such persons
render to the blessed martyrs, think­ing with miserable tapers to illuminate
those whom the Lamb in the midst of the throne shines upon with the splendor of
His majesty.” 3 It will be seen from this saying which way the candle of
paganism throws its beams, as compared with the true light which Christ gave to
His Church. “We have also a more sure word of prophecy,” writes Peter,
“whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark
place, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in your hearts.” Here is the
lamp which amid earth’s night was to shed its rays far on towards the coming
King, to meet and mingle with the light of His returning glory, “until the day
break and the shadows flee away.” What a blow was it to the bridal hopes of the
Church when ceremony took the place of scriptural preaching and expo­sition in
the assemblies of Christians!

Observe the same suppression of primitive teaching in the Christian ordinances.
Baptism, as instituted by our Lord, bore graphic witness to the first
resurrection, and hence at every ad­ministration it uttered a visible “Behold he
cometh!” Hear the apostolic exposition of this ordinance: “Know ye not that so
many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?
Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death that like as Christ was
raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk
in newness of life (Romans 6:4): a text which shows, says Canon Westcott, that
the very entrance of the primitive Christians into the Church “was apprehended
under the form of a resurrection.” But as the rite became mutilated in the
Western Church, the tongue with which it once proclaimed our advent hope was
plucked out, and its testimony silenced, so that, as now widely practiced, the
ordinance gives no suggestion of resurrection. 4 The Lord’s Supper, also, was
not only robbed of its millennial witness, but made to express a completely
contrary idea. For gradually the doc­trine of “the real presence “became
associated with the communion. Originally the eucharist proclaimed the real
absence of the Lord. —“This do in remembrance of Me” was its voice. We do not
remember a present friend, but one who is absent. “For as often as ye eat this
bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death until He come.” —We do not
wait the coming of one who is with us, but of one who is away from us. The Jews
to this day keep a vacant seat for Eli­jah at their paschal meal, remembering
the word of the Lord, “Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the
coming of the great and dread­ful day of the Lord,” thus making the feast
an­ticipative as well as commemorative. And while the Bridegroom tarries, there
is ever a vacant seat at the Lord’s table, left empty for the Lord Him­self, who
distinctly said at the beginning that He would not henceforth participate in the
cup with His disciples till He should drink it new with them in the Father’s
kingdom. Of course, in the person of the unseen Holy Spirit, Christ is ever with
His Church. But visibly and corporeally He is not present; and the communion was
or­dained to proclaim this fact through the entire in­terim from His departure
to His return. Alas! it was a sad blow to the Church’s advent hope when these
two sacramental witnesses to our Lord’s return were brought into a conspiracy of
silence concerning that blessed event, while one of them was made to bear false
testimony, pro­claiming a literal presence of the Lord in body and blood, thus
hushing into silence the “until He come” which the ordinance was originally
commissioned to utter.

Thus was Christ’s prophecy literally fulfilled: “While the Bridegroom tarried
they all slumbered and slept.” And it was fulfilled exactly as the language
signifies. For the word translated “slumbered “is nustazw, to nod. At first
there were faithful witnesses, such as Nepos, Methodius, Apollinaris, and
Lactantius, who sought to rouse the lethargic Church, but there was only a
mo­mentary awakening, followed by a deeper relapse into slumber. The Church
drowsed and nodded, then fell into a profound sleep; and during the long period
of the Dark Ages the advent faith dis­appeared. Not utterly, indeed, for in
Harnack’s expressive phrase, “It still lived on in the lower strata of Christian
society; and in certain under­currents of tradition it was transmitted from
century to century.” That is, while the harlot Church, including the great body
of nominal Christians, became completely dead to this truth, the true Bride, the
woman in the wilderness, obscure, despised, and persecuted, still cherished it
in secret. Hence all through the ages we find glimmering rays from the Virgin’s
lamp falling here and there in the surrounding darkness. The Waldensian
candlestick, with its motto, “Lux in tenebris,” [light in darkness; Ed.], threw
stray beams of advent light into the encircling gloom. Read the following from
the Noble Lesson, a famous treatise originating in that body about A. D. 1200:
“O brethren, hear a noble lesson: we ought often to watch and be in prayer; for
we see that this world is near its fall. We ought to be very careful to do good
works, for we see that the end of the world is approaching.” That other band of
sackcloth witnesses, the Paulicians, gave similar testimony. For while the great
body of Christendom had settled down into a contented earthly citizenship, these
hunted and hated Protestants saluted each other as sunekdhmoi,— “Fellow-exiles;”
and while the blind virgin-worshipers adored the Mother of God, these spoke of
the Jerusalem above, the Mother of us all, as that from whence Christ, the
“Fore­runner, having for us entered,” would surely come again. Even from within
the Catholic communion came stray testimonies, like that of Bernard of Cluny in
the twelfth century:—

“The world is very evil. The times are waxing late. Be sober and keep vigil. The
Judge is at the gate.” But these were only broken rays, feeble heart-reflections
from those who had kept sight of “The Bright and Morning Star,” in the mid­night
of the Church’s apostasy. We do not for­get that there were powerful outbreaks
of expec­tation of Christ’s return, like that which marked the dawn of the
thousandth year of the Christian era. But the conception which characterized
these was that of a Judge coming in terror, not of a Bridegroom returning to
bring joy to his waiting Bride. The patience of hope revived only in a panic of
fear. The forebodings of this period having passed, Christendom relapsed once
more into profound slumber concerning her prim­itive hope, —a slumber disturbed
only here and there by the dreams of those whom she counted visionaries and
fanatics. So it continued till the dawn of the Reformation.

Endnotes:

1 The article, “Millennium,” by Prof. Adolph Harnack, of Berlin, to which we
constantly refer in this chapter, is in the last edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannica. It is the ablest exhibi­tion, in brief compass, of the primitive and
historical claims of pre-millenarianism, and of the causes of the Church’s
decline therefrom, with which we are acquainted.

2 Professor Harnack, avowing that millenarianism “was in former times
associated—to all appearance inseparably associ­ated—with the gospel itself,”
adds that “it can only exist along with the unsophisticated faith of the early
Christians;” that “the millenarians of the ancient Church, just because they
were mil­lenarians, despised dogmatic in the sense of philosophic theol­ogy.”
Professor Van Oosterzee also observes that there is an irreconcilable “inner
discrepancy between the modern theolog­ical philosophy and the prophetic and
apostolical Scriptures.” [Person and Work of the Redeemer, p. 450.] 3 Adv.
Visilandum,c.ii.

4 Dean Stanley declares that the change from the primitive form of immersion to
sprinkling has “set aside the larger part of the apostolic language regarding
baptism, and altered the very meaning thereof” (Essay on Baptism). Dean
Goulburn, regret­ting that immersion, which is the rule of his church, has been
discontinued, says that, were it still practiced, “The water clos­ing over the
entire person would then preach of the grave which yawns for every child of
Adam, and which one day will engulf us all in its drear abyss. But that abyss
will be the womb and seed-plot of a new life. Animation having been for one
instant suspended beneath the water, —a type this of the interruption of man’s
energies by death, —the body is lifted up again into the air by way of
expressing emblematically the new birth of resur­rection.” [Bampton Lectures,
1850, Oxford Edition, p. 18.].


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  CHAPTER 13: 01.03.01.     HOPE REVIVED
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Part III Chapter I.

HOPE REVIVED The Reformation was virtually a republication of the gospel; it was
the Christian era begin­ning anew, and repeating in substance the primi­tive
features of the religion of Jesus. The historical school of interpreters have
found in the tenth chapter of Revelation a graphic and powerful prefigurement of
this event: “And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven clothed with a
cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and
his feet as pillars of fire; and he had in his hand a little book open.” From
the description of this mighty angel we can hardly fail to iden­tify him with
the glorified Christ, the Angel of the Covenant, as already pictured in this
book (Revelation 1:13-16). There is the same countenance “as of the sun shining
in his strength,” the same mighty voice, and the same burning feet. The
conception seems to be that of Christ appear­ing in history to reaffirm His
testament. But that which identifies this representation most certainly to our
mind is its likeness to a similar scene in the Old Testament, a point hitherto
overlooked, so far as we are aware. For the keys to the Revelation are generally
found in the Bible itself, events of its history being so paralleled or
reproduced in the Apocalyptic imagery as to ren­der the meaning apparent.

Now the scene of the second giving of the law, as described in Exodus, seems to
be substantially rehearsed in this chapter of the Apocalypse in order to figure
the second giving of the gospel. The circumstances were identical. As the tables
of the law had been destroyed on account of the idolatry of Israel, so now the
statutes of the gos­pel had been annulled by the gross idolatry of the papacy.
But, God having commanded Moses to hew two tables of stone, like unto the first
that were broken, the servant of God stands upon Mount Sinai holding the tables
in his hand. “And the Lord descended in the cloud,” (Exodus 24:5). So in the
second giving of the gos­pel we behold “a mighty angel come down from heaven
clothed with a cloud.” There is the same “proclaiming” with a loud voice in
either in­stance. “The pillars of fire” to which the an­gel’s feet are likened
complete the identification, so that we have the pillar and the cloud in both
scenes. “Behold I make a covenant before all thy people,” says Jehovah on the
mountaintop. In the Apocalypse this renewed covenant is graphically symbolized
by the bow overarching the angel: “And the rainbow was upon his head.” Moses,
with the two tables of testimony in his hand received anew from Jehovah, and the
one addressed in the Apocalypse with “the little book open,” received from the
hand of the angel, —this completes the parallel. And if we may conclude, with
many commentators, that the “little book open” is the gospel restored after its
long sup­pression by the idolatrous Church, then the verisimilitude is most
striking between the resto­ration of the law and the restoration of the gospel.

How such truths as justification by faith blazed out anew from the reopened
Testament at the Reformation is well known; and the long-lost doctrine of
Christ’s glorious appearing as the hope of the Church could not fail in like
manner to be revived as soon as the Scriptures were un­chained. We do not say
that primitive Chiliasm was restored in its entireness to the creed of the
Reformed Church. Attention was so much occupied with the saving truths of the
gospel that its sanctifying hopes were not duly empha­sized. Beside there were
gross and repulsive caricatures of ancient millenarianism appearing here and
there to create revulsion from the true. Satan’s tares were not only sown in
Christ’s newly-ploughed field, but they were so rank and forward in their growth
as to forestall attention, and prevent the real wheat from being recognized when
it should appear. But this fact is very noticeable, that, as the features of
Antichrist be­gan to be descried (to catch sight of) in the papacy by the
Re­formers, the mind inevitably went forward to Him who was to destroy this Man
of Sin “by the brightness of His coming.” So ripe was the apostasy, so near
seemed the epiphany; so devel­oped was Antichrist, so imminent seemed the coming
of Christ. Clear and intelligent were the voices that began to break forth from
among the disenthralled subjects of the pontiff. “The world, without doubt,
—this I do believe, and therefore say it, —draws to a close. Let us, with John,
the servant of God, say in our hearts to our Saviour Christ: Come, Lord Jesus,
come.” 1 So spoke Ridley in 1554; and his fellow-martyr for the truth, Cranmer,
said like­wise: “We ask that His kingdom come, for that as yet we see not all
things put under, Jesus Christ. . . . As yet Antichrist is not slain. Whence it
is, we desire and pray, that at length it may come to pass and be fulfilled; and
that Christ alone may reign with His saints, accord­ing to the divine promise,
and live and have dominion in the world according to the decrees of the Holy
Gospel, and not according to the traditions and laws of men, and the will of the
tyrants of this world.” 2 And Hugh Latimer spoke to the same intent: “Let us
therefore have a desire that this day may come quickly; let us hasten God
forward; let us cry unto Him day and night, ‘Most merciful Father, Thy kingdom
come.’ St. Paul says: ‘The Lord will not come till the swerving from the faith
cometh,’ (2 Thessalonians 2:3), which thing is already done and past. Antichrist
is already known throughout the world: wherefore the day is not far off. Let us
observe for it will one day fall on our heads.” 3

These are testimonies which gleam with the light of martyr-fires already
kindling upon their confessors, —fires which were sent to purify that hope which
is itself the purifier of the saints. As an old coin stamped with the image of
some forgotten king, but so worn by use that the royal countenance has
disappeared, yet being subjected to a powerful heat gives back the obliterated
face again to the beholder, so the image and super­scription of the coming
Christ, our advent Re­deemer, long effaced from the gospel by idolatry and vain
philosophy, reemerged in the martyr-fires of the Reformation; and once more men
read and repeated the words thereon: “Behold, I come quickly.” As to the other
reformers, Martensen, the emi­nent Danish theologian, has expressed his regret
that when Luther and his coadjutors, under God, set their hands to recover the
primitive faith, they should not have restored apostolic millenarianism, and
given it a place in the reformed creed. But Luther did not reject it, though
this has been alleged. “The Jewish opinions” so pointedly condemned in the
Augsburg Confession, which he assisted in drafting, really had reference to the
notion of a millennium in the flesh, or the setting up of the kingdom of God in
this present evil age and before the advent. Some extreme Anabaptists had
exhibited this travesty of a sacred truth, and in carrying out the idea had
stirred up sedition and brought scandal upon the Protestant movement. At these
the disavowal was aimed. 4 The article in question really con­demns the
post-millenarianism now so greatly in vogue among us. It reads: “They condemn
others also, which spread abroad Jewish opinions, that before the resurrection
of the dead, the godly shall get the sovereignty in the world, and the wicked be
brought under in every place.” That the godly will not get the sovereignty of
the world, and subdue the wicked before the resur­rection at Christ’s coming, is
what true Chiliasm has always avowed.

How strongly the principal reformers empha­sized this view, as against the
notion of world-conversion and regeneration before the advent, now so widely
accepted among religious teach­ers, will appear from two or three quotations.
“Some say,” writes Luther, “that before the latter day the whole world shall
become Chris­tians. This is a falsehood forged by Satan that he might darken
sound doctrine. Beware, there­fore, of this delusion.” 5 And John Knox, the
intrepid Scotch reformer, likewise declares: “To reform the whole earth, which
never was, nor yet shall be, till that righteous King and Judge appear for the
restoration of all things.” 6 Of the unfitness of the conception of the kingdom
ap­pearing before the King, of the triumph of the saints before the triumph of
the Saviour, John Calvin thus speaks: “Christ is our Head, whose kingdom and
glory have not yet appeared. If the members were to go before the Head, the
order of things would be inverted and preposter­ous; but we shall follow our
Prince then when He shall come in the glory of His Father and sit upon the
throne of His majesty.” 7 These selec­tions sufficiently indicate how strongly
the nega­tive aspects of Chiliasm were maintained by the Reformers. When we hear
their positive avow­als of the certainty and imminence of the Lord’s second
advent, their position becomes even more clearly defined. Hear Knox in his
letter to the faithful in London, in 1554: “Has not the Lord Jesus, in spite of
Satan’s malice, carried up our flesh into heaven? And shall He not return? We
know that He shall return, and that with ex­pedition.” Luther in his weariness
of the Refor­mation battle cries out affectingly: “There is no more help or
counsel upon earth except in the last day. I hope, too, that it will not be much
longer before it comes; I believe that the gospel will become so despised that
the last day cannot be far off, not over a hundred years. God’s Word will again
wax less and fall off, and great dark­ness will come for want of true and
faithful min­isters of the Word. Then will the whole world run wild, sensual,
and live in all security without reflecting. Then shall the voice come and
sound, ‘Behold, the Bridegroom cometh,’ for God will not be able longer to
endure it.” 8

If the excesses of certain Anabaptists preju­diced Luther and his associates so
that they did not give millenarianism that recognition in the reformed theology
which it deserved, the fidelity of others of this sect— “many of whom,” says
Harnack, “need not shun comparison with the Christians of the apostolic and
post-apostolic ages” —had much to do with keeping it alive in Christendom. This,
Harnack distinctly recog­nizes, declaring that, while the Reformers fol­lowed
too much the teachings on this subject which had prevailed in the Catholic
Church since the time of Augustine, “millenarianism neverthe­less found its way,
with the help of Apocalyptic mysticism and Anabaptist influences, into the
churches of the Reformation, chiefly among the reformed sects, but afterwards
also into the Lu­theran Church.” Of these reformed sects we can only speak
briefly. The lineal descendants of the Anabaptists—John Bunyan’s spiritual
kinsmen and fellow-sufferers in England—presented a confession to Charles II.,
which embodies “the purest early Patristic millenarian doctrine of any creed in
modern times.” There were apostolic names among the more than twenty thousand
Baptists who, in giving their adhesion to this document, declare: “We are not
only resolved to suffer persecution to the loss of our goods, but also life
itself, rather than decline from the same.” The confession contains a touching
avowal of the pilgrim condition of Christ’s disciples until His advent, on which
event their hopes are placed: “Though now, alas! many men be scarce content that
the saints should have so much as a being among them, but when Christ shall
appear, then shall be their day: then shall be given them power over the nations
to rule them with a rod of iron; then shall they receive a crown of life which
no man taketh from them.” If the Westminster Con­fession was less explicit so
far as giving any formal expression of Chiliasm, it at least sets the hope of
our Lord’s ever imminent return into conspic­uous prominence, declaring: “Christ
will have that day unknown to men, that they may shake off all carnal security
and be always watchful, because they know not at what hour the Lord will come.”
With the Evangelical party in the Episcopal Church this has been so strong a
con­viction and article of faith as to render them its most conspicuous
champions in modern times.

Among the fathers of Congregationalism, es­pecially those who planted the gospel
in Amer­ica, the ancient doctrine was strongly held and ardently preached. New
England theology was in the beginning as deeply colored with millena­rian hopes
as primitive Christianity itself. The Mathers, who preached in the city in which
we write, and whose sepulchres are with us to this day, were bold confessors of
apostolic Chiliasm; and considering how strongly other eminent men of their day
echoed their sentiments, Davenport, Spaulding, and Walley, we must conclude that
this precious faith had found another blooming period in connection with this
eventful planting of the gospel. But, alas! as in the beginning this doctrine
was wrecked on the philosophy of Augustine, so now it disappeared before the
mighty logic of Jonathan Edwards. For, in his “History of Redemption,” though he
speaks clearly of the literal advent and resurrection, the millennial hope of
God’s Church is so spiritual­ized and attenuated as to be utterly
unrecogniz­able; and from his day the Church, of which he was so eminent a
light, has drifted more and more toward that post-millenarianism which may have
had not a little influence in producing the baleful fruits of eschatology now
ripening among us.

All that we can give in our brief space is only the merest outline of the
renaissance of millena­rianism. The clearest traces of the revived hope of the
Church, however, appear in the noble line of Apocalyptic expositors—a true
apostolic suc­cession—beginning with Joseph Mede, born in the same half century
in which Luther died, and coming down to Elliott in our own century. Their way
is like the path of the just that shin­eth more and more unto the perfect day;
in their hands the prophet’s lamp glows with ever-bright­ening beam towards the
millennial dawn. In­deed, whenever men have turned from dogmatics to Scripture,
a revival of millennial views has been inevitable. So it was that when the great
evangelical exegete Bengel appeared, and began to unchain the Word of God and
allow it to speak for itself, such an impulse was given to advent truth that,
according to Hengstenberg, “Chiliasm obtained an almost universal diffusion
through the Church.” 9 And yet, as ever, there were many adversaries. Of Bengel,
Dorner says: “His works were the first cock-crowing of the new kind of exegesis
the Church so greatly needed.” But before the cock-crowing was fairly heard, the
advent faith was thrice denied by the incred­ulous question: “Where is the sign
of His coming?” For in the same century with Bengel wrote Whitby the Arian, the
author of that “New Hypothesis” in eschatology called post-millen­nialism, which
now rules so largely in the theo­logical schools of this country, —a
spiritualizing system whose ultimate tendency has been to ob­scure the doctrine
of a literal advent, a literal resurrection, and a literal kingdom, and to put
far off the day of the Lord. Just as Judaizing con­ceptions brought the doctrine
of the millennium into disrepute in the early ages by carnalizing it, so this
interpretation has tended to discount it in our times by spiritualizing it. Once
more, how­ever, has come a reaction towards the ancient teaching. For in our own
generation has been witnessed such a flaming-up of the torch of prim­itive
adventism as has not been known since the first century. The learned exegete and
the hum­ble Bible-reader—the one searching with the critical eye of scholarship,
and the other with the single eye of faith—have reached the same con­clusion,
and joined to sound out together the cry, “Behold, He cometh!” What eminent
exposi­tors are today standing forth to give their bold adhesion to this
much-maligned doctrine! What eloquent preachers have risen up to sound out the
cry, “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh!” What ardent evangelists are going through
the land bearing in their hands the relight lamp of prophecy, opening and
alleging that “this same Jesus, who was received up into heaven, shall so come
in like manner as He went up! “What gifted poets have tuned their lyres to this
exalted theme, so that now, “with their garlands and singing-robes about them,”
they are heralding with Milton, their choir-leader, “the eternal and shortly
expected King!” What crowded assem­blies are gathering for conference and mutual
encouragement concerning this lofty theme! All these things constitute an
undisputed sign of that greater sign, “the sign of the Son of man in heaven,”
coming to heed at last the sigh of groaning and travailing creation, to renew
the face of the earth, that it may be to the Lord “for a name, for an
everlasting sign, that shall not be cut off.”

Endnotes:

1 Lamentation for the Change of Religion.

2 Catechism of Edward VI., 1553.

3 Sermons on the Lord’s Prayer,

4 “And as at the time, among other calumnies, this blame was also cast upon us,
as if the gospel taught and encouraged rebel­lion and undutifulness toward
authorities, we had, by these words of the Confession, to free ourselves of such
imputations.” [Me­lancthon’s Works, vol. 26, p. 366.].

5 Commentary on John, 10:11-16.

6 Treatise on Fasting.

7 Psychopannychia, p. 55.

8 Table Talk.

9 “To whom else do we owe it that the Orthodox Church of the present time does
not brand the Chiliastic view of the last times as a heterodoxy, as is done in
almost all the manuals of dogmatics, so that there is scarcely a believing
Christian now who does not take this view?” [Delitzsch].


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  CHAPTER 14: 01.03.02.     FOREGLEAMS OF THE DAY
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Part III Chapter II.

FOREGLEANS OF THE DAY

“EUDIA!” “Fair weather!” Such is the excla­mation which our Lord puts into the
mouth of the watchers of the evening-red upon the western horizon; and then He
chides His hearers that, discerning the face of the sky, they cannot dis­cern
the signs of the times, (Matthew 16:2-3). After the long, wild storm of the
ages, the “hail and fire mingled with blood” devastating the earth, is it
strange that we should watch eagerly for the tokens of the fair day of God which
the coming of the Son of man shall usher in? Some say that signs are not for the
Church, since she is heavenly, and has her home on high. But just for that
reason they are for the Church, for the “strangers and pilgrims on the earth”
who “de­sire a better country, even a heavenly.” The budding fig-tree is
certainly a token for us, —a Jewish sign for the Christian Church; and if, as we
believe, this phenomenon is now appearing, it should be to the waiting Bride of
Immanuel as the song of her Beloved, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come
away: for, lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear
on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the
turtle is heard in the land. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs and the
vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and
come away.” The cursing of the fig tree we believe, with many expositors, to be
an enacted parable. If our Lord had pointed to the green and spreading branches
and said, “This is Israel,” His meaning had hardly been plainer. “Leaves only,”
—abundant professions, luxuriant outward religious display, —such was the
char­acter of the Hebrew Church as it appeared to the Saviour’s eyes. “And he
said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward forever; and presently the
fig tree withered away,” (Matthew 21:19). Yet not forever. Why not translate the
words literally, eiV ton aiwna, “for the age”? Then, in miniature symbol, we
have the magni­fied fact to which the centuries have been bear­ing solemn
witness, namely, that for the entire age, for the whole dispensation following
their rejection of Christ, the Jewish people would be dry, and unfruitful, and
dead. But subsequently we hear our Lord saying: “Now from the fig tree learn her
parable; while her branch is now become tender and putteth forth leaves, ye know
that the summer is nigh.” “As in its judicial unfruitfulness it emblematized the
Jewish people, so here the putting forth of the fig tree from its winter dryness
symbolizes the future reviviscence of that race which the Lord declares shall
not pass away till all be fulfilled,” (Alford, Matthew 24:33). As the blight and
barren­ness were for the age, so the budding and bloom­ing will be a joyful sign
of the termination of the age. Thus our Lord has given one answer to the
question with which this chapter opens: “What shall be the sign of Thy coming
and of the end of the age?” Are there any swelling buds of promise now visible
on the long-withered Jewish stock? We name these, whose presence only the
densest prejudice can fail to recognize as significant: The civil emancipation
of Israel during the pres­ent century where in all lands she has been
op­pressed, as though the word of the Lord were already fulfilling, “Loose
thyself from the bands of thy neck, oh, captive daughter of Zion;” the tide of
emigration setting toward Palestine, accel­erated of late by the persecutions in
many coun­tries, as though the Israelites were being driven out in order to be
driven home; the extraordinary conquests of the gospel in later years among this
people, so that it is estimated that more Jews have been converted to
Christianity in the nineteenth century than during the whole period of the
Christian era; and last, the wonderful Christ-believing movement headed by
Joseph Rabin­owitch of Russia—a movement within the Jew­ish Church for
confessing Jesus as the Messiah—having this for its watchword: “The key of the
Holy Land lies in the hand of our brother Jesus.” This remarkable revival,
though but five years in progress, is said to have already won to itself some
fifty thousand adherents; and Professor Delitzsch, the eminent Hebraist, having
studied it in the light of the prophetic Scriptures, expresses the conviction
that it “marks the beginning of the end;” and with him several thoughtful
Jew­ish Christians join in publishing their judgment, that “this movement may
develop into the prom­ised restoration of Israel.” The worldwide proclamation of
the gospel is also a significant token of the approaching end of the age. “And
this gospel of the kingdom,” our Lord declares, “shall be preached in all the
world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall come the end.” Prophecy
unfolds itself in concentric circles of fulfillment, each circle tak­ing in a
wider sweep of history than its prede­cessor, till the whole circumference of
the divine prediction has been filled up. This principle is illustrated in the
Saviour’s saying: “Verily, I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away
till all be fulfilled,” (Matthew 24:34). The gen­eration then living did not
pass away until the destruction of Jerusalem, —that ending of the Jewish age
which was a vivid fore-type of the greater event, the termination of the
Christian age; but the generation in its larger sense—the Hebrew race—survived
that catastrophe, and still endures, as a standing memorial of the truth of this
saying of our Lord; its budding and revival to be the sure foretoken of the end
of this dispensation, as its cursing and withering were of the end of the
former. We may draw a figure at this point from a beautiful expression in Paul’s
sermon on Mars Hill, where, according to the original, he says that God hath
“horizoned the times appointed.” 1 In prophecy there are near and distant
horizons, their outline so blend­ing to the eye that they can with difficulty be
distinguished. Thus do the bounds of the suc­cessive ages mingle in the outlook
of the future; and, in our Lord’s great eschatological discourse, so complete is
the mingling that it is quite impossible entirely to separate them. Keep in mind
this fact in interpreting our Saviour’s prophecy of the preaching of the gospel
among all nations. It was fulfilled within the narrower circle of the Roman
world, before the fall of the Jewish city and the termination of the Hebrew
economy. Paul, writing to the Colossians, speaks of “the gospel which is come
unto you, as it is in all the world,” and again, of “the hope of the gospel
which ye have heard, and which was preached unto every creature which is under
heaven,” (Colossians 1:6, Colossians 1:23). The inner circle of this prediction
was thus filled up; and now we wait for the outer circumference to be reached,
when, in the largest sense, “all nations” shall be visited by the gos­pel, that
the end of this dispensation may come. Need it be said that our own generation,
and especially our own century, is witnessing the un­questionable marks of the
fulfillment of this pre­diction? The century opened with almost every heathen
country in gross darkness concerning the gospel; it is about to close with every
nation holding up luminous points of evangelized do­main to witness to God that
it has received the witness of God in the gospel of His Son. The closing words
of Daniel contain another sign for us: “But the wise shall understand.” The book
of prophecy, which was sealed “till the time of the end,” was to be revealed to
God’s searching servants as the time of the end drew near. Therefore such
uncovering of the pro­phetic mysteries, such inquiry and demonstration
concerning the “what, and what manner of time,” as our generation has witnessed,
is a most strik­ing token of the nearing termination of the age. The same Spirit
who is in the Word is in the Church; and as “the testimony of Jesus is the
spirit of prophecy,” so the witnesses of Jesus will be the expositors of
prophecy. Errors and mis­calculations they will make, no doubt; but the general
consensus of their opinion will be shaped, we believe, to the teaching of the
inspired page. Therefore the deepening search is a sign of on­coming dawn. “It
is not to be denied that our own age enters, with an earnestness and inten­sity
such as no earlier one has shown, into the eschatological examination, and
presses forward in the complete development of this doctrine, one sign among
many that we are hastening towards the great decision.” 2 And yet this is only
half a sign, the bright side of an omen of hope, whose other hemisphere is in
shadow. Peter gives us the dark counterpart. “Knowing this first, that there
shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying,
Where is the sign of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things
con­tinue as they were from the beginning of the cre­ation,” (2 Peter 3:3). 3
Language could not describe more accurately the attitude of a large sec­tion of
the nominal Church respecting the future. “Evolution, not catastrophe,” is the
cry. By the transforming power of Christian civilization, the world is to be
gradually subdued to God, and the present good age, with its beneficent
endowment of steam, and electricity, and printers’ type, is to terminate in a
Christo-scientific millennium. Darwin, the apostle of evolution, echoes back the
words of Peter, the apostle of judgment, saying: “All things continue as they
were since the be­ginning of creation; there is no need for miracu­lous
intervention, no room for supernatural ac­tion; as it was in the beginning, so
it is now, and so it shall ever be, as regards the succession of physical
phenomena.” In this saying he speaks for multitudes within the Christian Church.
Man is the microcosm of creation; and as the doctrine of salvation by
development has with many su­perseded that of salvation by regeneration, so has
the theory of a millennium through evolution taken the place of that of a
millennium, through crisis.

We should be reminded, at this point, that the signs of the approaching end of
the age are both bright and dark. The gloomy pessimism which looks only for
deepening apostasy is quite as wrong as the placid optimism which expects the
world to glide peacefully into the golden age of glory. The brighter the light
the deeper the shadow. The worldwide evangelization which our generation is
witnessing; the translation of the Scriptures into innumerable tongues; the
unparalleled study of the Bible, through Sunday school and lay instruction; the
revivalism pro­moted by such bands of earnest workers of every grade and order,
—these facts indicate that a light is falling upon our lost humanity such as
never was before. But the shadows are “the blackness of darkness” itself.
Avarice within the Church, threatening to throttle the gospel just when the
promise is greatest for its triumph; anarchy without, menacing all order and
stability with its angry growl; the ruin which Christian nations are sowing, in
the path of the mission­ary’s blessing, by their opium and strong drink; the
ingenious vice and elaborate debauchery which our higher civilization is
begetting; the restrained anger of the nations, who await only the slightest
provocation to fly at each other’s throats with their terrific armaments, —this
outlook is so dis­mal as to be utterly appalling, were we not confi­dent that
even the shadows point to the dawn. “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and
worse, deceiving and being deceived.” Present history gives its emphatic Amen!
to this sure word of prophecy. But “the path of the just is a shining light,
that shineth more and more unto the perfect day;” and, God be praised! a great
company are walking that path today, with their faces brightening with a keener
radiance as they behold their redemption drawing nigh. Hemi­spheres of hope are
both, to those who know the Scriptures, —the darkness of abounding deprav­ity,
and the brightness of saintly consecration. For the energy of Satan is evermore
a tribute to the zeal of God appearing in the Church. If Christians are rising
up to extraordinary service for God, because they know that “the time is short,”
what wonder if Satan should “come down with great wrath because he knoweth he
hath but a short time?” As for chronological signs, we believe that these are
given to enable us to approximate, not to calculate, the time of the end. Those
compu­tations by which some have presumed to deter­mine the day and the hour of
the Lord’s return have brought great discredit upon Apocalyptic study. Only as
the prophet’s lamp shines upon the prophet’s calendar can we read it aright; and
while we examine the inspired dates of the latter, we must give heed to the
divine admonition of the former: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man; no,
not the angels of heaven, but my Father only,” (Matthew 24:36). In saying this,
however, we are far from dispar­aging the study of divine chronology. That
oft-repeated interval, —“time, and times, and a half a time,” “forty and two
months,” “a thousand two hundred and threescore days,” —we hold to sig­nify
always the same thing, according to the year-day interpretation, twelve hundred
and sixty years. Now, as this is the period of the domination of the beast,
(Revelation 13:6), and of the witnesses prophesying in sackcloth, (Revelation
11:3), of the career of the “little horn,” (Daniel 7:24), and of the so­journ of
the woman in the wilderness, (Revelation 12:6), it gives us several lines of
measurement that verify each other. By general consent, the “little horn” and
“the beast”, signify the Antichrist This mysterious power holds dominion for
“forty and two months,” the same period as that of the woman’s sojourn in the
wilderness. But the exile of the Bride, the woman in white, must cor­respond in
duration with the enthronement of the Harlot, the woman in purple, for these are
the obverse and reverse sides of the same prophetic fact Now, as we know from
history that the Harlot has been sitting as queen on the seven hills for more
than twelve hundred years, and as we know from prophecy that her opposite, the
Bride, was to be in exile for “a thousand two hundred and threescore days,” we
conclude that these days signify years, for the Beast, and for the Bride, and
for the Harlot alike, all these having the same period for their allotted
career. Therefore it is not true, as some assert, that An­tichrist arises only
after the apostate Church has run her course, to hold sway for a literal three
years and a half; but he is contemporaneous with her Now, since Antichrist’s
destruction is effected by Christ’s coming, the career of the former, as
predicted in prophecy and confirmed by history, must furnish one of the plainest
meas­ures by which to approximate the time of the end. If the rise of the papacy
could be fixed as to the exact day and year, we might not err in seeking by
computation for the day and year of its fall, and so approximate closely the
date of the coming of the Lord. But as its beginning was in several
epoch-marking events, so, applying our measuring line, we must look for its
decline in corresponding crises of decadence, each crisis being an alarm bell
for admonishing us to watchfulness. From several initial dates in history,
corresponding ter­minal periods have been correctly anticipated by students of
prophecy for the last three hundred years. It is impossible to enter with detail
into the subject. Nearly two hundred years ago, Apocalyptic scholars forecast
the years 1790 and 1848 as critical years in the commencing of the downfall of
the papacy, —the first of which, as events proved, brought her under the bloody
judgments of the French Revolution, and the second into that other political
convulsion which drove the pope into exile. So, likewise, many expositors
concurred in looking for some marked calamity to Rome in 1868-70, —the latter
year, as history was to prove, being that of the downfall of the temporal power
of the pope, the sever­est blow, in the estimation of many, which has fallen
upon Rome in a thousand years. These are illustrations of correct chronological
compu­tation which might be greatly multiplied. They suffice to indicate that
they err not who, like the prophets, search “what manner of time” the Spirit in
the Word has signified by the chronol­ogy therein given; as they suffice, also,
to indi­cate that our century is solemnly marked as the era of expiring dates,
and therefore of startling admonitions to watchful expectation.

One black, portentous cloud of warning hangs upon the horizon, to which we refer
in closing. The Apocalyptic picture of the three unclean spirits like frogs, out
of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the
mouth of the false prophet, has been generally taken as predictive of an
outbreak of sorcery. And here, as frequently, we have the divine in­terpretation
accompanying the divine prediction: “For they are the spirits of demons, working
mir­acles,” (Revelation 16:14). It is a sign of the times not to be mistaken.
The abominations of witch­craft, which God so constantly condemns in Scrip­ture,
with threat of the sorest penalties, have once more broken upon the world, under
the name of Spiritualism. A great cloud of black spirits have darkened the air;
millions have been seduced into lending their ears to their whisper­ings, and,
among these, multitudes of nominal Christians. That it is “the spirits of
demons” who are personating kindred and friends, and giv­ing their
soul-destroying “revelations of the un­seen world,” we have no question. Their
fantas­tic miracles, their grotesque tricks of infernalism, —who has not heard
of them? This we count the blackest cloud on the horizon. But observe the silver
with which it is lighted up: “Behold, I come as a thief!” is the startling
warning which breaks out in the very next sentence of Revela­tion, as though it
had been said, “When you see this come to pass, then look up.” And not only a
warning, but an exhortation: “Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his
garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.” All night long the Temple
watchmen made their rounds of duty, never knowing at what hour their overseer
would come in upon them to learn if they were vigilant and faithful. If, coming
unawares, he found any watchman sleeping at his post, the penalty was that the
offender should be stripped of his garments and turned out naked of his
uni­form, to his shame and confusion. “Blessed are those servants whom the Lord,
when He com­eth, shall find watching. And if He come in the second watch, or
come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants.”

Endnotes

1 It is evident, comparing St. Luke with the other synoptists, that Jesus turned
the thoughts of the disciples to two horizons, one near and one far off, as He
suffered them to see one brief glimpse of the landscape of the future. The
boundary line of either horizon marked the winding up of a aon, the sunteleia
aiwvoV; each was a great teloV, or ending; of each it was true that the then
existing genea first in its literal sense of “gener­ation,” then in its wider
sense of “race” —should not pass away till all had been fulfilled. And the one
was the type of the other: the judgment upon Jerusalem, followed by the
establish­ment of the visible Church upon earth, foreshadowed the judg­ment of
the world and the establishment of Christ’s kingdom at His second coming.
[Farrar’s Life of Christ, ii. 259.].

2 Kling.

3 Never did the Church witness such a constellation of signs of the near coming
of Christ as now. “The branches of the fig tree are full of sap, and the summer
is at hand.” Assuredly I am not ignorant that a portion of the Church has become
grad­ually weary of the long-tarrying, and has fallen into doubt. You also shake
your head, and are of the opinion that we have long talked of “the last time.”
Well, use this language, and increase the number of the existing signs by this
new one. Add that of the foolish virgins, who, shortly before the midnight hour,
main­tained “the Lord would not come for a long time.” [F. W. Krummacher.].


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  CHAPTER 15: 01.03.03.     BEHOLD HE COMETH
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Part III Chapter III.

BEHOLD HE COMETH

It is such a momentous event, —the coming of the Son of man in the clouds of
heaven, —and the contemplation of it so overpowers the imagination, that we can
easily understand why, in this age so averse to the supernatural, attempts to
explain away its literalness should multiply on every hand. But, as though
anticipating these evasions and refinings of latter-day philosophy, the Holy
Ghost has guarded this great hope of the Church by the utmost accuracy of
definition (Acts 1:11). “This same Jesus who is taken up from you “fixes the
corporeal identity of the coming Lord with Him whom we have known of the wounded
hands and pierced feet; and “shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go
into Heaven” determines His literal, visible, and bodily return to earth. So,
also, with the Thessalonian prediction (1 Thessalonians 4:6). In the words, “The
Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,” there is a kind of
underscoring of Holy Writ, that we may be particularly reminded that it is no
spir­itual apparition of Christ for which we look, but “ His own august personal
presence.” And yet His parousia, of which the Scripture so constantly speaks, is
said to signify His pres­ence; and therefore elaborate volumes have been written
to prove that “the coming—parousia—of the Son of man “means His abiding
invisible dwelling in the Church through the Holy Spirit.” Presence” the word
undoubtedly means, but not omnipresence. The everywhereness of Christ in the
person of the Comforter is the peculiar bless­ing of this dispensation. In this
sense He can say to every member of His mystical body, the Church, in every
place on earth and at every moment of time: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto
the end of the age.” It was in order to give place for this worldwide, or rather
Church-wide, indwelling that it was expedient for our Lord to go away; that so
the Paraclete might come to abide with His people perpetually. But this
everywhere-presence of Christ by the Holy Ghost is never once spoken of in
Scripture as His parousia. This term applies only to His bodily and visible
presence, a being with us, which can only be effected by a corporeal return to
us. Therefore is His advent comprehensively called His parousia, or coming; it
is that “for which we look,” and which “every eye shall see,” and not that which
has already come to pass spirit­ually, and which, therefore, no eye can see. The
second coming of Christ is the axis of a true eschatology; that in which all its
doctrines and all its hopes stand together. Rightly are some insisting on what
they name a Christo-cen­tric theology; only let them consistently apply their
principle to the doctrine of last things, making all our ultimate hopes and
attainments to con-center in the coming Christ. Then shall we cease to hear in
orthodox dogmatics that “sanctification ends at death,” when the New Testament
everywhere binds its consummation to the second advent of Christ; then, also,
except in liberal theology, may we no longer listen to the affirma­tion that
resurrection is attained for each one separately in an instant, in the shutting
of an eye, at the last breath of the body, when Scripture declares that “we
shall all be changed, in a mo­ment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last
trump,” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). Any doctrine of the resur­rection dissociated
from the advent must be false, —false because eccentric, and without rela­tion
to the axis of redemption, the parousia. No atonement apart from the cross; no
resurrection apart from the coming! The morning star of the Church is the
glorious appearing; but this star, at least, has satellites, —the resurrection,
the rap­ture, the glory, —and not one of these will be visible “until the day
dawn, and the day star arise.”

What deep questions suggest themselves as soon as we begin to meditate on this
theme! How can it be, if His coming is personal and bodily, that “every eye
shall see Him”? Will His parousia be prolonged, or, as some hold, will it elapse
in a moment, “as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the
west,” leaving the great world to wonder what has be­come of the saints? In
other words, will He be visible to His Church alone at His parousia,
man­ifesting Himself unto them, but not to the world until a later epiphany,
when He shall appear in glory with His saints? Already there has been too much
of dogmatizing on these points; there­fore we prefer to leave them for the day
to reveal. The attitude of the Church towards this sub­lime event is the
all-important consideration. That should be one of joyful hope, and not of dread
expectation. We cannot think that true and watchful believers will share in that
advent wail which is so graphically pictured in the Rev­elation (Revelation
1:7): “All the tribes of the land shall mourn over Him,” indeed, they who
pierced Him reading their condemnation in His wounds and smiting on their
breasts; but they who own those wounds as the credentials of their peace with
God will lift up their heads and rejoice, saying: “Lo, this is our God; we have
waited for Him and He will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for Him; we
will be glad and re­joice in His salvation,” (Isaiah 25:9). Eagerly, do we
summon parable and poetry to picture the exultant scene as we gather it from
Scripture. One who stands among us, as the venerable Sim­eon of our generation,
“just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel,” (Dr. Andrew Bonar)
has, in a recent utterance, made the advent scene so real by the use of a
historical incident, that we are con­strained herewith to reproduce the picture
en­tire: —

“When those that upheld the banner of truth had almost lost heart, and
Protestantism seemed failing, John Knox accepted the invitation from the
true-hearted ones, and left Geneva for Scot­land. When he landed, quick as
lightning the news spread abroad. The cry arose everywhere, ‘John Knox has
come!’ Edinburgh came rush­ing into the streets; the old and the young, the
lordly and the low, were seen mingling together in delighted expectation. All
business, all com­mon pursuits were forsaken. The priests and friars abandoned
their altars and their masses and looked out alarmed, or were seen standing by
themselves, shunned like lepers. Studious men were roused from their books;
mothers set down their infants and ran to inquire what had come to pass.
Travelers suddenly mounted and sped into the country with the tidings, ‘John
Knox has come.’ At every cottage door the in­mates stood and clustered,
wondering, as horse­man after horseman cried, ‘Knox has come.’ Barks departing
from the harbor bore up to each other at sea to tell the news. Shepherds heard
the tidings as they watched their flocks upon the hills. The warders in the
castle chal­lenged the sound of quick feet approaching, and the challenge was
answered, ‘John Knox has come!’ The whole land was moved; the whole country was
stirred with a new inspiration, and the hearts of enemies withered.” Oh, if that
was the effect of the sudden presence of a man like ourselves, —a man whom we
will rejoice to meet in the kingdom, but only a man, —what will the land feel,
what will earth feel, when the news comes, “The Son of man! The Son of man! His
sign has been seen in the heaven! O wise virgins, with what joy will you go out
to meet Him!”

Some admonish us not to take too literally the words, “And at midnight there was
a cry made, Behold the Bridegroom cometh!” since, sudden as the advent surprise
will be, it cannot really be in the night for all the world, as one side of the
globe is dark and the other light at the same moment. True; and yet how
perfectly our Lord’s picture of His coming answers to this fact, since it brings
into the same instantaneous photograph a day-scene, and a night-scene, and a
twilight-scene: “I tell you in that night there shall be two men in one bed,”
—the midnight surprise; “the one shall be taken and the other shall be left.”
“Two women shall be grinding together,” —the twilight surprise; “the one shall
be taken and the other left.” “Then shall two be in the field,” —the mid-day
surprise; “the one shall be taken and the other left,” (Matthew 24:40; Luke
17:34-36). It would seem thus as though the lightning-flash of His parousia
would encircle the world in an instant. Realistic in the highest degree is the
picture: no halt in the hurried march of our humanity for burnishing the armor
for the grand review; no pause in life’s drama for shifting the scenery before
the final act is introduced! Instant transition of the Church from busy toil and
tired sleep into the beatific vision and the awakening immortality, and as
instant a lapse of the ungodly from the day of grace into the day of doom. The
event will evi­dently be utterly unexpected except for the faith­ful few who
have kept their watch.

Morally, or rather dispensationally, Christ’s coming will be in the night. For
such, according to Scripture, is the whole period of our Lord’s absence. When He
was yet with His Church He said: “I must work the works of Him that sent me
while it is day: the night cometh.” It was His presence that made the day, —“As
long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world,” (John 9:5), —and His
removal that would bring the night. Hence we find Paul saying, —in the time of
the Lord’s absence and in view of His return, —“The night is far spent, the day
is at hand” (Romans 13:12). Here is an exact inversion of the order from that of
Christ, suggesting that it is the absence or the presence of our Lord which
determines the question. “They that sleep, sleep in the night,” (1 Thessalonians
5:6). The words are true dispensationally as well as literally. So long as “they
that sleep in Jesus” are still in their graves, the world’s morning will not
have come: “And they that are drunken are drunken in the night.” So long as the
riot of unrestrained sin goes on over all the earth, and the mass of humanity is
held in the mad intoxication of the god of this world, the day-dawn will not yet
be visible. But what an exquisite parable there is for us—an enacted parable—in
that story of Christ’s walking on Tiberias! He has “gone up unto the mountain
apart to pray; “and the Church which He launched is “now in the midst of the
sea, tossed with waves and the wind con­trary.” But “in the fourth watch of the
night” He comes to her, walking upon the sea; and they, who for a moment feared
and were troubled at the startling apparition, will hear His voice saying, “Be
of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid.” These words will bring an end to all
sorrow, a calm for all storms.

“And they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and
great glory.” Himself has said this concerning Him­self, and to attempt to
heighten the effect of His words by any imaginative description of the scene
predicted were certainly to lower the impression which the inspired declaration
itself makes upon the mind. So great is this saying that it alone befits the
incarnate Word who spoke it. “Only a Jesus could forge a Jesus,” it has been
said; and only the Coming One whom we have known, “whose goings forth have been
of old from ever­lasting” could predict for Himself such a coming as this. And
the hope of it has reversed the current of humanity. “Man goeth to his long
home, and the mourners go about the streets,” was the plaintive strain of the
old dispensation. But since Jesus ascended and put the exultant “Ecce Venit”
into the mouth of His redeemed, “Man cometh” is now their song. The proces­sion
of mortality is about to halt, and then to move forward; but forward shall now
signify from death to life: from the pilgrim’s inn of the grave to the long home
of “Forever with the Lord.”


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  CHAPTER 16: 01.03.04.     THE FIRST RESURRECTION
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Part III. Chapter IV. THE FIRST RESURRECTION The announcement of two
resurrections, separated in time by a thousand years, and distinguished in
character as unto immortality and unto mortality, seems to be one of the very
plainest in all Scripture: “And I saw the souls of them that had been beheaded
for the testimony of Jesus and for the Word of God: and such as worshiped not
the beast, neither his image, and received not his mark upon their forehead and
upon their hand: and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. The
rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be finished. This is
the first resurrection,” (Revelation 20:4-5, R.V.). Here is first a vision of
disembodied souls, then of their reanimation. This reanimation must mean a
literal rising from the dead; for two words employed in the passage put the
matter beyond dispute: “They lived” —ezhsan— is language which is never, in the
New Testament, applied to the soul disembodied, but to man in his complete
condition of body and spirit united; and “This is the first resurrection”
—anastasiV —defines this living to be bodily reanimation, since the word in the
New Testament, with perhaps a single exception, always signifies corporeal
resurrection. So that the phraseology employed seems to render it impossible to
apply the vision either to the condition of disembodied existence or to the
quickening of spiritual regeneration. But how is it that we have never met this
startling doctrine of two distinct resurrections, with a millennium between,
till we reach the last book of the Bible? We have met it without being able to
define it. As in Daniel, we have a condensed prophecy of the great tribulation
which, by our Lord’s interpretation in the twenty-fourth of Matthew, is expanded
into an age-long period of Jewish trial; so in John’s Gospel (v. 28),we have a
miniature prediction of the resurrection “For the hour is coming in which all
that are in their tombs shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come
forth, they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that
have done ill, unto the resurrection of judgment,” —which hour, in the
Apocalypse of John, is interpreted as covering the entire millennial era in its
fulfillment. This is according to the common method of prophecy.

Holding that the last presentation of the resurrection—this in the Apocalypse—is
the completest and most comprehensive, the important question is, whether the
statements of the doctrine in other parts of Scripture harmonize with this. Not
only do they harmonize, but in several instances they find their only solution
in it. In the first place, we call attention to a class of passages which are
marked by this peculiarity that they seem to represent the resurrection of
believers as eclectic and special. It is plain, if the scheme which we have
drawn out from Revelation 20:1-15 is correct, that the subjects of the first
resurrection are called out from the general mass of the dead; or, in other
words, that a prior resurrection would involve the idea of an elect
resurrection. And this conception would seem to explain at once our Lord’s
allusion, (Luke 20:35) to those who shall be “accounted worthy to obtain that
age, and the resurrection out from the dead,” —thV anastasewV thV ek nekrwn. If
there be a first resurrection, at the opening of the millennial age, in which
only the righteous share, the significance of this text is apparent at once.
Even more striking are the words of Paul, (Php 3:11):“Icount all things but loss
. . . if by any means I might attain unto the out-resurrection from the dead,”
—thn exanastasin twn nekrwn. The words are very strong in the Greek. We do not
see how they can possibly refer to anything else than an eclectic resurrection,
a separation and quickening to life out from among the dead. Especially would
this seem to be so when, in addition to the very emphatic language describing
the resurrection itself, there is the expression of intense desire and vehement
striving to attain it. Why should one strive to attain what is inevitable, as
Paul’s resurrection must have certainly appeared to be, had he held that all men
will be raised together? And what can our Lord’s words— “They which shall be
accounted worthy to obtain that age and the resurrection from the dead” —mean on
any other view than that which we are defending, —the view, namely, that there
is a prior age in which the rising of the saints will take place, and a
distinct, and special, and privileged dispensation of bodily redemption which
belongs to them? And this phase of our argument is set in very strong light by
the additional fact that this expression, “resurrection from the dead,”
—anastasiV ek nekrwn, —is so invariable throughout the New Testament in its
application to Christ as well as to His saints. There is only one instance where
the other phrase, —anastasiV nekrwn, —the general expression for the
resurrection of the dead, —is applied to our Lord, and that seems to be on
account of a special requirement of the context, (Romans 1:4). He, coming forth
from the dead, and opening the doors for all believers to come forth with Him in
the resurrection unto life, is described just as they are, as rising ek nekrwn.
Hence, very significantly, we find it said in the Acts that the apostles
“preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead,” not the resurrection of
the dead, (Acts 4:2). Now we will not dwell on the question whether the eclectic
conception is contained in the words to the extent that we have claimed. We find
it admitted even by some who oppose the doctrine we are advocating. Olshausen
even goes so far as to declare that “the phrase would be inexplicable if it were
not derived from the idea that out of the mass of the dead some would rise
first.” And what if it be affirmed that even in the Old Testament we find
distinct traces of the idea of an eclectic and precedent resurrection of the
just? The passage in Daniel 12:2, translated in our common version, “And many of
them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life,
and some to shame and everlasting contempt,” is undoubtedly a Messianic
prediction concerning the time of the end. Tregelles translates the passage as
follows, giving us not only the authority of his own accurate scholarship for
the rendering, but that of two eminent rabbis, Saadia Haggion and Eben Ezra,
whose explanations are quoted at length: “And many from among the sleepers of
the dust of the earth shall awake, these—that awake—shall be unto everlasting
life; but those—the rest of the sleepers who do not awake at this time—shall be
unto shame and everlasting contempt.” Here again, if our authorities are
correct, we have the idea of the first resurrection with its eclectic and
separate character, and its distinct issue in life, most emphatically set forth.
And how solemnly applicable to the literal as well as to the spiritual
quickening of men are the words of our Lord: “The dead shall hear the voice of
the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” One event awaits mankind: “Like
sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed upon them.” But all will not
hear the great first resurrection call. As now, so then, the words of Jesus will
be true: “My sheep hear my voice.” As now, so then, only those that have
received the spirit of adoption will cry, “Abba, Father!” as the great God shall
call to the dead by the mouth of His Son. “If the Spirit of Him that raised up
Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall
quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” That Spirit is
the bond of life between Christ and all that sleep in Him, and the pledge of
their redemption from the grave. The witness, now, of our sonship, He is the
witness that then we shall be children of the resurrection; responding and
waking instantly at the sound of the trumpet, —“Thou shalt call and I will
answer;” while in “that silence that terrifies thought,” the rest of the dead
shall sleep on, waiting only in their conscious loss for the Day of judgment to
consummate and manifest their doom. Had we time to take up all the texts bearing
on the question, we should wish to notice some passages which represent the
resurrection as directly conditioned on faith and regeneration and union with
Christ; all of which would go to show that the redemption of the body is a
distinct inheritance of believers in some sense, and certainly not unlikely in
the sense we are claiming.

We wish now to refer to two texts which have been cited as distinctly and
unquestionably contradicting the theory we are advocating. The first is in 2
Timothy 4:1, reading, according to the common version: “I charge thee,
therefore, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and
the dead at His appearing and His kingdom.” It is said that we have here the
living and the dead, without distinction or separation, brought together at the
coming of Christ. All that need be said in regard to this passage is that,
according to the revised version, the words read: “and by His appearing and
kingdom.” This change not only relieves the passage of any seeming contradiction
of the doctrine which we are advocating, but makes it bear emphatic support to
it. The other text is John 5:28, R.V.: “Marvel not at this; for the hour cometh
in which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice and shall come forth,
they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done
ill, unto the resurrection of judgment.” This, it is said, teaches a
simultaneous resurrection, since it declares that in the hour that is coming
both classes will come forth to their respective rewards. We answer that, in the
first place, we think it is clear that the word “hour” (wra),as here employed,
refers to an era or lengthened period of time. This we know is not an unusual
meaning of the word, as appears by referring to such examples as 1 John 2:18,
Romans 13:11; and,what is more directly to the point, our Lord had just used the
term in this sense in verse twenty-fifth: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, the
hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of
God, and they that hear shall live.” This is generally taken to refer to that
spiritual quickening, under the preaching of the gospel, which began with the
time of Christ, and is going on today. Therefore the hour referred to must have
continued for at least nearly two thousand years. This is the time for the
quickening of the living who are dead in sins. It is evidently synchronous with
1 John 2:18,—“It is the last time” (wra), —and covers the whole gospel
dispensation. Next follows, in our Lord’s discourse, a statement in regard to
the time of the dead. The two periods are set in contrast, as it would seem. The
first—the hour of spiritual quickening—has already begun. Hence it is described
thus: “The hour is coming and now is.” The second had not yet begun; hence only
the words, “The hour is coming,” are used with reference to it. Is it not fair
to presume that the second era, like the first, is a prolonged one? We think no
one can reasonably deny this. This is the way we take it: At the appearing of
the Lord from heaven, the age will open in which all that are in their graves
will come forth, but some at the beginning and some at the end of the age. If it
be said that it is a strained and unnatural construction to bring events which
are so far apart into such immediate juxtaposition, with no intimation of any
time lying between them, we reply that it is not at all uncommon in prophecy.
Who, for instance, in reading Isaiah’s words concerning the Messiah, —“to
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God,”
—would have imagined that in this single sentence two grand and distinct eras
were brought together and spoken of in a breath, —the era of grace and the era
of judgment? But the Lord, by His penetrating exegesis, cleft the passage
asunder, we remember, as He expounded it in the synagogue, and, breaking off in
the middle of the sentence, —”to preach the acceptable year of the Lord,” —He
closed the book and sat down, saying: “This day is this Scripture fulfilled in
your ears” (Luke 4:21).We take it that, in this prophetic passage of His own,
there is a similar conjoining of distinct and widely separated acts of the same
resurrection drama. And we are confirmed in this impression by noting how
exactly this passage, with its expressions “resurrection of life” and
“resurrection of judgment,” corresponds to the passage in Revelation, these
being common points in the two texts, —the latter seeming to fill out in detail
what is here presented in outline. And this leads us to remark that there is
perhaps no doctrine of Scripture the references to which are at once so
fragmentary and so complemental of each other as this doctrine of two
resurrections. Except in the passage in the Revelation, it is nowhere presented
in a formal and complete statement. But what is very striking is, that almost
every scattered allusion to it fits into this passage at some point, confirming
its literal significance, and being confirmed by it. For example: All are agreed
that John 5:28-29, and Luke 20:36, have reference to the literal rising of the
body from the grave. Apply these texts to Revelation 20:1-6, and note how
perfectly they fit it: “They that have done good unto the resurrection of life;”
“They lived and reigned with Christ this is resurrection the first” (Rev.);
“They that shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection
from the dead neither marry nor are joined in marriage, neither can they die any
move” (Luke); “On such the second death hath no power” (Rev.). “They that shall
be accounted worthy to obtain the resurrection from the dead” (Luke); “Blessed
and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection;” “They that have done
evil to the resurrection of judgment” [krisin](John); “And they were judged
[ekriqhsan] every man according to their works.” (Rev.). We do not see how any
candid critic can fail to identify these passages as referring to the same
event, the literal resurrection of the body. And putting all these texts
together, we find that one supplies what another omits; the gospels and epistles
teaching the privilege and preeminence attaching to the believer’s resurrection,
and the Apocalypse teaching its priority and separateness in time.

Let us observe that the saints’ resurrection is “first” in several senses.

It is first in time, as we have already seen. How shall we state it? That the
death sentence has been shortened by a thousand years for the martyrs who have
won their reprieve by their faithful sufferings for Christ; for the overcomers
who have gained a seat with Christ in His millennial throne by their victory
over the world. We seem to hear these sainted ones saying to grim Death, as he
exacts sin’s wages: “Take thy bill and sit down quickly and write fifty,” for,
as partners with our suffering and victorious Lord, the half of your sentence
has been remitted. Of Immanuel it is written: “Whom God hath raised up, having
loosed the pains of death; because it was not possible that He should be holden
of it.” He was no prison-breaker who burst the gates of death and “tore the bars
away.” He had served His appointed time in the grave, and therefore could not be
longer detained; and hence, after His two days’ burial had expired, He received
His righteous discharge. So we believe that His mystical dead body— “those that
have been laid to sleep through Jesus” —cannot be holden of the tomb a single
hour after it shall have begun to dawn towards the first day of the millennial
week, because then their sentence will have terminated. This is the overcomer’s
hope, —the reward so much earlier, as well as more glorious, than we have
dreamed of! the crown so much sooner, as well as brighter, than we have
imagined! The devout Lavater, meditating on this point, exclaims: “flow
inexpressibly animating to the best exercise of our moral powers must this idea
be, —to be a thousand years sooner in the enjoyment of the full fruition of the
blessed! So much earlier—a thousand years earlier—to enjoy personal fellowship
with the lovely Saviour and the noblest of the human family, and, along with
Jesus, the prophets and apostles, to superintend the immediate concerns of the
Godhead.”

First in character also will be this pre-millennial resurrection; its preeminent
glory being that upon those who attain to it “the second death hath no power.”
Here is the true harvest of which Christ is “the First-fruits.” How can that
Scripture be true which declares that Christ is first born from the dead,”
(Colossians 1:19)? Had not several returned from death before Christ rose, —the
Shunamite’s son at the prayer of the prophet, and Lazarus and the widow’s son at
the call of Jesus? How, then, was He “the first begotten of the dead,”
(Revelation 1:5)? The answer seems obvious. These were raised to die again.
Wondrous as was the transaction which restored them to life, it was only this
mortal putting on mortality, and this corruptible putting on corruption. But
“Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion
over Him” (Romans 6:6). The gospel of the resurrection which we preach,
therefore, has no peer or rival in that which nature presents to us. Beautiful
and oft-recurring as is the latter, it whispers no hint of immortality. Of a
mortal resurrection which the Scriptures foretell for some, we see tokens and
similitudes all about us in nature—in the flower springing up from the seed
which has fallen into the earth and died; in the morning opening the vast grave
of night, and summoning a sleeping world to rise and meet the sun “as he cometh
forth as a bridegroom from his chamber;” in the springtide calling the earth
from the tomb of winter, loosing her shroud of snow, and clothing her with
renewed life and beauty: in all these there are joyful parables and pledges of a
resurrection. But the flower fades and dies, the morning sinks again into the
embrace of night, and the earth lies down once more in the sepulcher of winter;
and so, alas! these symbols only mock the hope they have kindled in the soul.
But while we are asking sorrowfully, “Is there no resurrection that is exempt
from death?” this great text breaks upon our ears: “Blessed and holy is He that
hath part in the first resurrection; on such the second’ death hath no power.”
Christ’s resurrection is the epitome of His Church’s. As He rose only after a
definite and divinely appointed time of resting in the grave, so will His
people. That unseemly snatching for the crown of life which characterizes the
latest improved eschatology—the theory that every man rises from the dead as
soon as the breath is out of the body—has no foundation in Scripture. Indeed, it
has none in reason, unless we can admit that death is equivalent to life;
elimination to resurrection; the falling down of this tabernacle of clay to its
standing up. This is the revived error of Hymeneus and Philetus which makes the
resurrection to be past already; it places our hope in what is death’s victory
over us rather than our victory over death; it promises us a bodiless spirit in
place of that “spiritual body” which is our redemption-birthright. “This
immortal spirit shall put off its mortal coil” is the doctrine of philosophy;
“This mortal shall put on immortality” is the doctrine of Scripture. Do we not
see what transcendent honor is thus put upon the body in its promotion to
incorruptibility? This in which we dwell—“the temple of the Holy Ghost” —is not
our “vile body,” as it is misleadingly called in the common version; though,
because of the shadow of the curse which rests upon it, it is that in which “we
groan being burdened.” But itself shall be changed by the coming Lord, the very
fabric and substance of it transformed and glorified. And because restoration
rather than evolution is so distinctly taught in Scripture, we are certified of
our continued physical identity, as it is written: “From whence also we wait for
a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body of our
humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory,” (Php 4:21
R.V.). The charcoal and the diamond are the same substance; only that one is
carbon in its humiliation, and the other carbon in its glory. So is this
tabernacle in which we now dwell, in comparison with our house which is from
heaven. The one is mortal flesh shadowed by the curse, and doomed to be “sown in
dishonor;” the other is that flesh made immortal and marvelously transfigured.
This house of clay, endeared to us by so many associations, is, therefore, only
to be untenanted for a brief while, that we may move into it again wondrously
refitted and beautified by its divine Fashioner. This thought, if cherished, may
heal the homesickness which so often comes over us in the thought of death. For
observe the exquisite balancing of those two household words—endhmounteV and
ekdhmounteV —in Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians “Knowing that while we are at
home in the body, we are from home from the Lord, . . . and willing rather to be
from home from the body, and at home with the Lord,” (2 Corinthians 5:6). But
this home-dwelling with our Redeemer, as the connection shows, is not attained
by our being unclothed, but clothed upon, with our house which is from heaven,
that mortality may be swallowed up of life. It is when we become immortal
residents in an immortal body that we are forever at home: “So shall we be ever
with the Lord: wherefore comfort one another with these words.” Having these
promises, therefore, we should eagerly look upward, in patient waiting for our
house from heaven, seeking the consummation of our hope, not in the putting off
of this our tabernacle, but in the putting on of that. After his ardent prayer
that he “might attain unto the resurrection from the dead,” the apostle adds: “I
press towards the mark for the prize of the up–calling” —thV anw klhsewV —”ofGod
in Christ Jesus.” Let, who will fasten their hope upon the down-calling of
mortality: “Return unto dust, ye children of men;” we will listen patiently and
joyfully for the up-calling of immortality: “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in
the dust, for thy dew is as the clew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out her
dead,” (Isaiah 26:19).

ENDNOTES:

“What special meaning,” asks Professor Stuart, “can this language have unless it
implies that there is a resurrection where the just only, and not the unjust,
shall be raised?” This expression, as well as the “every man in his own order,”
and the evident “plain prose” character of the passage in Revelation 20:1-15,
compels this learned man, though a strong post‑millenarian, to concede most
fully the doctrine of the first resurrection. —Stuart on Apocalypse, vol. 1, pp.
175, 178, 379, 499, and vol. 2, 356, 474, 562. As indicating how far this idea
is from being novel or modern, we offer these striking testimonies: Chrysostom
says: “The just shall rise before the wicked, that they may be first in the
resurrection, not only in dignity, but in time” (Comment on 1 Thessalonians
4:15). Jeremy Taylor says: “The resurrection shall be universal: good and bad
shall rise, yet not all together, but first Christ, then they that are Christ’s;
and then there is another resurrection,” etc. (Sermon on 1 Corinthians 15:23).
Toplady says: “I am one of those old-fashioned people who believe the doctrine
of the millennium, and that there will be two distinct resurrections of the
dead: first of the just, and second of the unjust; which last resurrection of
the reprobate will not commence till a thousand years after the resurrection of
the elect.” —Works, vol. 3, p. 470.

Professor Christlieb well says: “Whoever denies the bodily resurrection should
be honest enough no longer to speak of res­urrection at all. Resurrection does
not refer to the spirit, the continued existence of which the Scripture takes as
a matter of course, but only to the body, and its issuing forth alive from the
grave. Only that can rise again which has been laid down in the grave, and that
is only the body, not the spirit.” —Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, p. 449.


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  CHAPTER 17: 01.03.05.     THE TRANSLATION OF THE CHURCH
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Part III. Chapter V. THE TRANSLATION OF THE CHURCH The most startling, and
except for the testi­mony of the “sure word of prophecy” the most incredible,
transaction of which we can conceive, is that set forth in the words, “caught up
to meet the Lord in the air.” The lightning-flash of the advent, dazzling and
blinding for a moment; the swift transition of the cloud-chariot, and then
“forever with the Lord,” —this is the brief de­scription of the ecstatic scene
which we call the Church’s translation, (1 Thessalonians 4:15-18).

It is a twofold event, affecting the sainted dead and the saints that are living
at the time of the parousia, and bringing both into one condition. “The dead in
Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up
together with them.” This order and distinction are revealed in several passages
where the casual reader might not discover them. In the story of the raising of
Lazarus that enacted prophecy of the first resurrection—they are distinctly
marked (John 11:1-57). Beautiful miniature of the Church is that home in
Bethany, whose crowning honor is this, that “Jesus loved Martha and her sister
and Lazarus.” Like the body of Christ today, a part living and a part dead,
—“our friend Lazarus sleepeth,” —this household was waiting the coming of the
Lord. But notwith­standing the sickness and dying that were rav­aging that home,
Jesus “abode two days still in the same place where He was,” just as He has
already remained away from His Church nearly two millenniums— “one day is with
the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” —while sickness
and mourning and death have been holding sway. Then the advent an­nouncement,
for which we also wait, was heard, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go that I
may awake him out of sleep.” Such will be the blessed errand on which our Lord
will come when the time of His return arrives. “Then Martha, as soon as she
heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him,” even as the wise virgins will do
when He shall come again; “but Mary sat still in the house,” like those of the
other company, the unwatchful and ungirded ones.

Then hear the Lord’s great advent exposition: “I am the Resurrection and the
Life: he that be­lieveth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and
whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” It is no mere rhetorical
amplification which we find here. This double office of Christ and the
corresponding twofold work, exactly match the declaration in the First Epistle
to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 4:17). He is “the Resur­rection “to those
who shall be in their graves at the time of His coming; He is “the Life “to
those who shall then be on the earth. To the first class He alludes when He
says, “though he were dead, yet shall he live;” to the second He refers in the
saying: “Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” But both, in a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye, shall be brought into the same condition of
“glorified corporeity “at the sound of the last trumpet. 1

Need we say that the transfiguration —that vivid tableau of the glorious
appearing of our Lord—exhibits the same truth in unmistakable outline: “And,
behold, there talked with Him two men, which were Moses and Elias, who appeared
in glory.” These two men were the representatives of the two classes just named.
Moses, coming up from his unknown sepulchre in the valley of Moab, as the
forerunner of the dead who shall be raised at the advent of Christ; and Elias,
returning from the presence of the Lord, as the representative of those who
taste not of death, but are translated, —these, stand­ing together with the Lord
in transfiguration glory on the Mount, present to us a radiant re­hearsal, a
glowing epitome, of the coming and kingdom of Jesus Christ.

If we turn to the great resurrection discourse of Paul in the fifteenth of 1
Corinthians, we find at the culmination of the argument the same double
reference: “For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” Here are the two parties to the final
transfiguration; and they are in an in­stant brought into the company of One for
whom they both had been waiting.

Incomparably beautiful are the prophet’s in­spired words, when freed from the
translator’s interpolated words: “Thy dead shall live, my dead body shall they
arise” (Isaiah 26:19). The sainted sleepers, though under the deep humili­ation
of corruption, he disdains not still to call “my body.” Strangers and pilgrims
in the earth, they have pitched their tents in the grave for a night, saying
with their Lord: “Moreover, my flesh shall tabernacle in hope.” And the first
incident in the advent consummation will be the summons for these sojourners in
the tomb to strike their tents, and, with the living, to take up their march to
meet the coming Bridegroom in the air. “For this corruptible must put on
incorruption, and this mortal must put on immor­tality.” Here we must believe in
no mere skillful balancing of inspired rhetoric, but a double desig­nation to
distinguish a double company, —those that are dead and those that are alive at
the com­ing of Christ. For whether or not the first mem­ber of the sentence
describes those whose flesh has seen corruption, the second member
unques­tionably applies to the living and their change: “So when this
corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on
immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is
swallowed up in victory.” 2 For then those upon the earth under sentence of
death, and those in the earth under the dominion of death, will shout together
their triumph over the last enemy. As the daily watchers for the Lord’s return,
it is our dear hope that we may be in the company who shall not see death. This
was the aspiration of Paul, expressed in the words: “Not for that we would be
unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.” He
speaks not here of resurrection, but of transfiguration; not of death swallowed
up in victory, but of the swifter and more immediate transition of mortality
swallowed up of life. With the secret wherewith he comforted others— “Behold, I
show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed” —he now
comforts him­self, while groaning and burdened in this taber­nacle. It is the
most thrilling thought conceiv­able for those who are all their lifetime subject
to bondage through fear of death, that, instead of being unclothed by the
ghastly hands of death, they may be clothed upon by the transfiguring touch of
life; that, instead of the winding-sheet of the grave, there may be the
immediate en­swathement of the garments of glory. But to whichever company we
may belong, the shout of triumph will be ours: “O Death, where is thy sting? O
Grave, where is thy victory?”

Reunion with the descending Saviour is the first experience in the great
transaction. “Caught up to meet the Lord in the air,” —these words are crowded
with suggestion, since they always signify to meet and return with. As the
dis­ciples in Rome went out to meet Paul when they heard of his approach, and
accompanied him to the city; as the wise virgins are pictured as go­ing forth to
meet the bridegroom and attending him to the house of the bride, —so by the same
form of speech it is here implied that the Church will be raptured away to join
the Lord on His advancing way, and escort Him back to the earth. 3 It is not
true, as some have judged from this passage, either that the Lord comes no
fur­ther than the upper air, or those believers depart forever from this lower
world. This is rather the Redeemer’s royal return to the earth. We remember how,
on the visit of a great general to our city, —after he had conquered peace and
saved the country, —a delegation of our most honored citizens went out a few
miles beyond the borders of the town to welcome and conduct him to the
metropolis. Thus will God’s elect, the transfigured Bride of Christ, go forth at
the sound of the trumpet to meet the Bridegroom upon the suburbs of our globe,
to attend Him earthward.

Triumphal entry, indeed Earth, that once rejected her Lord, and sent Him back
alone to heaven with five wounds upon His person, will furnish a majestic convoy
for His return. “The glorious company of the apostles, the noble army of
martyrs, the Holy Church throughout all the world,” —these, whom the world knew
not, even as it knew Him not, now raised and transfig­ured, will constitute an
innumerable white-robed retinue to attend Him onward as He comes at last to
accomplish the restitution of all things. And yet, so far as we can read the
outlines of prophecy, we infer that there will be a pause in the march of this
descending procession, —how long we do not conjecture, —while the advent
judgments are visited upon Christendom. For observe in the prophet Isaiah that,
following the summons of the dead, “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust,”
there is the gracious call: “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and
shut thy doors about thee; hide thyself, as it were, for a little moment, until
the indignation be overpast. For, behold, the Lord cometh out of His fleet to
punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall
disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain,” (Isaiah 26:20-21). As
Noah was hidden in the ark when the judgment of the flood came upon the earth;
as the disciples, being forewarned by Christ, were sheltered in the hill-top of
Pella, beyond Jordan, during the bloody siege in which Jerusalem per­ished, —so
shall it be with those who are ac­counted worthy to escape the judgments poured
out upon apostate Christendom. They shall be wrapped away in a sheltering
pavilion of cloud, and hidden in some angel-guarded retreat on high, where the
apostle’s word shall be fulfilled to them: “And to you who are troubled, rest
with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, with His mighty
angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and obey not
the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-8). As to the deep
questions of when? and how? connected with this transporting theme, we must not
speak dogmatically. We get suggestive hints, however, from type and parallel, as
well as from literal prophecy. “Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of
these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints,” (Jude
1:14). He not only prophesied, but was himself a prophecy, —a literal prototype
of those who shall be translated and not see death. As he was the “seventh from
Adam,” these raptured ones, we expect, will belong to the seventh millennium
from creation; and as the history of his change is condensed into these brief
words, “And he was not, for God took him,” so will theirs be unheralded and
unnoted by the great busy world, so far as we can judge, will be this
transaction. “Behold, I come as a thief!” says our Lord. Not one of the sleeping
household saw the midnight robber as he crept in and snatched the jew­els, and
silently stole away. “And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that
day when I make up my jewels,” (Malachi 3:17). But the world will not know its
loss until they are gone, the wheat gathered in and the tares left; the jewels
snatched away and the casket remaining. Then, at last, will they “discern
between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serv­eth God and him that
serveth Him not,” as the day has now come that burns as an oven, “in which all
that do wickedly shall be stubble,” and the Lord sits “as a refiner and purifier
of silver.” True, it is written that “the trumpet shall sound” at the ushering
in of this great transaction; but as the outer world has not heard the
Apocalyptic trumpets as they have successively sounded, they may not hear “the
sound of the last trump.” True, it is said also, that “the Lord Himself shall
descend from heaven with a shout;” but this keleusma, or summons, may be only
for the ears of the faithful, who, like a re­treating army, shall now be
silently withdrawn from a judgment-doomed Christendom. And yet, upon this whole
question of a secret rapture, we would speak with reserve, knowing that there
are scriptures which give a different impression. But the event itself, hidden
or man­ifest is a most inspiring one in the influence which it carries. “The
translation of Enoch,” says Dr. Owen, “is a divine testimony that the body
itself is capable of eternal life.” And this transaction, like Peter’s vision,
has been thrice repeated, —in the Patriarchal age by Enoch; in the Prophetic age
by Elijah; and in the Gospel age by Christ, — that we might not forget the
lesson which it teaches. 4 With such a vision before our eyes, we should cease
talking of the immortality of the soul, as though we knew not that God had
provided some better thing for us. It is a lamentable apostasy from Paulism to
Pla­tonism to substitute the hope of being “un­clothed” for that of being
“clothed upon.”

Let philosophers dream of a naked immortality as man’s highest estate in the
life to come, but we will be content with nothing less than God’s full provision
of this mortal putting on immortal­ity. Therefore the conception of the body as
the spirit’s clog and prison-house should find no place in a Christian
eschatology. It may, indeed, some­times be so in our present fallen and
disordered condition. But the transfiguration will forever abolish such an
anomaly, giving us a winged body in the place of a weighted spirit. If heathen
moralism spoke the best it knew in the famous saying of Plotinus, that “he was
thankful he was not tied to an immortal body,” let not Christianity fail to
speak the best it knows in the rejoicing of its disciples that they shall be
untied, indeed, from this mortal, but only to be translated in an immortal body:
“They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they
shall walk and not faint.”

Endnotes:

1 Let it be noticed that the second company named by Christ and the second
company named by Paul are described by pre­cisely the same form of speech, the
timeless present participle; paV o zwn kai pisteuwn, “all the living and
believing” (John 11:25); hmeiV oi zwnteV oi perileipomenoi “we the living, the
remaining,” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

2 Lange’s Commentary criticizes Bengel’s view of this passage, that “the
epithets ‘corruptible’ and ‘mortal’ (1 Corinthians 15:53) are to be
distinguished as though the former applied to the dead and the latter to the
living.” But though the first word, fqaptoV, —corruptible, —may refer to the
living, its cognate forms, em­ployed in 1 Corinthians 15:42 and 1 Corinthians
15:52, apply to the dead. And we thence infer that “this corruptible” designates
the same class. “This mortal,” —qnhtoV, —on the contrary, is defined in the
Thayer-Grimm Greek Lexicon to mean “subject to death, and so still liv­ing” (cf.
Romans 6:12; Romans 8:2; 2 Corinthians 4:2; 2 Corinthians 5:4). We think
Bengel’s view is reasonable, and not fanciful.

3 Acts 28:15; Matthew 25:6. The phrase of our text—eiV apanthsin—is used in both
these other instances, and nowhere else in the New Testament. The circumstances
in each case define its meaning, showing it to signify, as Alford says,
“meet­ing one who is approaching, not merely meeting with a person.”

4 “Not infrequently we substitute for the fullness of the Chris­tian creed the
purely philosophical conception of an immortality of the soul, which destroys,
as we shall see hereafter, the idea of the continuance of our distinct personal
existence. Nothing is more common than to hear it assumed that the soul is the
whole self. Yet nothing can be more clear upon reflection than that the only
self of which we are conscious is made up of soul and body.” [Westcott, Gospel
of the Resurrection, pp. 6, 138].


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  CHAPTER 18: 01.03.06.     THE MARRIAGE OF THE LAMB
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Part III. Chapter VI. THE MARRIAGE OF THE LAMB The bridal relationship of the
Church to her Lord is so profound an idea that we are not sur­prised to find its
roots deeply embedded in the history and prophecy and poetry of the Old
Tes­tament. Not to dwell upon the typical fore­shadowings of this truth
contained in the story of Abraham’s servant seeking a bride for Isaac, and of
Jacob’s seven years’ service for Rachel; and not to enlarge upon the gracious
words of Jehovah to His people, “I will betroth them unto Me for­ever; and as
the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee,”
—we find in the Canticles the most complete and vivid setting forth of this
conception. The central idea of the Song of Solomon is the same as that of the
Apocalypse. According to Ewald, the commen­tator, who has given the most subtle
analysis of this exquisite poem, the plot is this: “On the one hand, a king in
all the splendors of his glory, transported with admiration, overflowing with
passion; on the other, the poor and simple shep­herd to whom the Shulamite has
plighted her faith; the former present, the latter absent; the maiden called to
decide freely between these two rivals. Such is the conflict in all its moral
grandeur.”

Translating Oriental poetry into Apocalyptic symbolism, the Book of Revelation
yields us the same conception. 1 Immanuel, the Shepherd Bridegroom, feeding His
flock in Paradise, is ever sending word to His espoused Church on earth,
“Behold, I come quickly.” But she, in her long waiting, is constantly solicited
and wooed by royal suitors—purple and gold and precious stones being offered
her—to withdraw her heart from her heavenly Consort, and to accept a throne with
the kings of the earth. The harlot bride, a fallen daughter of God, clothed with
scarlet and decked with jewels, and living in for­nication with the rulers of
this world, appears upon the scene, hating and hunting this unsullied spouse of
Christ and driving her into exile. But in spite of all these trials of her faith
on the one hand, and all these solicitations of kings and these proffers of
Solomonic wealth and splendor on the other, her heart is still true to her
absent Lord, and her noble answer is, “Many waters cannot quench love, neither
can the floods drown it; if a man would give all the substance of his house for
love it would be utterly contemned” (Song of Solomon 8:7). And yet the trial is
one of intense and pro­tracted severity. Her Lord delays His return long beyond
her expectation; and the world mocks at her bridal hope, incredulously asking,
“Where is the sign of His coming?” Beside, it is an invisible and far-off Lover
to whom her heart is plighted, one who appears only in visions of hope, and “who
in His sublime austerity scorns to use any sensuous means for attracting His
people to Himself.” In a word, her choice must be between an earthly Solomon,
crowned with present glory and honor, and the Beloved whom the world has
rejected, and who now stands without, knocking, His head wet with the dews of
the night. “Sometimes He comes down and manifests Himself to the eyes of her
faith. She sees Him as in a dream; she delights herself spiritually with His
presence, —then suddenly He vanishes. And then once more she is alone, carrying
on the contest with Solomon, who draws near in all his pomp, and tries to cast
his spell upon her. But she remains faithful to Him who is invisible; she sees
the moment approaching in which, the true love of her God having won the victory
in her heart over all the arts of the se­ducer, she will be fetched away by Him,
and—more fortunate in this respect than the Shulamite herself will be able to
follow Him to those spiced mountains where He pastures His flock amongst the
lilies.” 2 That moment has now come; the Bridegroom appears in the clouds of
heaven to take His be­trothed one to Himself; and this is “the mar­riage of the
Lamb.” For mark the significant fact, that the Church is only affianced to
Christ as yet, not married. “I have espoused you to one husband that I may
present you as a chaste virgin to Christ,” writes Paul to the Corinthians,
speaking by the Holy Ghost. All through the time of His absence “the Spirit and
the Bride say, Come.” But not until He appears in glory, and translates the
Church, does the Bride become the wife: “Come hither and I will show thee the
Bride, the Lamb’s wife.” The convent language, therefore, in which the veiled
nun is declared to be “wedded to Christ,” is entirely foreign to the teaching of
Scripture. For, these holy nuptials are not with the individual, but with the
whole Church, and therefore they cannot be consummated till all the faithful—the
quick and the dead are brought into one company. As long as the Saviour is still
absent from His people, it is the Church’s fast-day, not her feast-day. “Can the
children of the bride-chamber fast while the Bridegroom is with them? As long as
they have the Bride­groom with them they cannot fast. But the days will come
when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them; then shall they fast, in
those days” (Mark 2:19-20). This describes the pres­ent attitude of the Church,
—one of patient waiting and chastened sobriety “till He come.” As often as she
breaks the bread and drinks the cup, she may say to her Lord: “Thou pre­parest a
table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” But not yet are His words
fulfilled to her: “That ye may eat and drink at My table, in My kingdom.” All
attempts at premature wed­lock with Christ, by making the communion a feast of
His “real presence,” instead of a fast for His real absence, does violence to
that virgin-instinct of the Church which knows that there can be no true
nuptials until the Bridegroom comes, as there can be no real reign of the saints
until the King appears. For where is the true Bride of Christ at this time?
Before the face of her enemy she has “fled into the wilderness, where she hath a
place prepared of God, that they should feed her there, a thousand two hundred
and threescore days,” (Revelation 12:6). The time of the Harlot’s enthrone­ment
is the time of the Bride’s exile; while the one is sharing a crown with the
princes of this world, who crucified the Lord of glory, the other is sharing
rejection with Him whom the world knew not. What pathetic sorrows are hers
dur­ing all this wilderness period! Because she will not be seduced from her
bridal affection, all man­ner of opprobrium is heaped upon her. Even the
watchmen, when they find her, smite her and wound her, and the keepers of the
walls take away her veil from her. But in spite of all vio­lence and scorn of
men, her heart is with the absent Bridegroom, saying: “I charge you, O daughters
of Jerusalem, if ye find my Beloved, that ye tell Him that I am sick of love.”

“My heart is with Him on the throne, And ill can brook delay;

Each moment listening for His voice:

‘Rise up and come away.’” But now the long hoped-for consummation has arrived.
The cry, “Behold, the Bridegroom com­eth, go ye out to meet Him,” sounds upon
the air. She who kept her garments unspotted from the world is ready to be
married, and stands clothed in her wedding vesture: she, also, who lived
wantonly with the kings of the earth, is ready to be condemned, and stands
“arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones.”
Hardly has the “Alleluia” over the judgment of “the great Harlot which did
corrupt the earth with her fornication” died away, before another is heard:
“Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad, and rejoice,
and give honor to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath
made herself ready,” (Revelation 19:6-7). It is the hour of blissful fruition
for the waiting Bride: “Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness leaning
upon her beloved?” (Song of Solomon 8:5). Who, indeed, but she whose countenance
was often bedewed with tears, whose feet were often torn with the thorns of the
desert through which her enemies pursued her? But now the reproach of her
widowhood is taken away, the bridal veil is upon her face, and the nuptial joy
is in her heart. The end of the Redeemer’s spousal love is at last made
manifest: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church and
gave Himself for it,” writes the apostle. And to what purpose was this divine
affection? “That He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by
the word:” this is what he is now accomplishing by the ministry of the Holy
Spirit. “That He might present it to Himself, a glorious Church, not having
spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without
blemish,” (Ephesians 5:25-27): this is what He is yet to accomplish by the
ministry of His second coming. How striking the language! “Himself to Himself,”
— autoV eautw, — “Christ permits neither attendants nor paranymphs to present
the Bride; He alone presents, He receives.” 3 And He gives her to Himself in
completed sanctification and transfigured beauty. St. Paul was jealous over the
Corinthian Christians, that he “might present them as a chaste virgin to
Christ.” But Immanuel receives this virgin not only as chaste, but as chastened;
not only as sanctified through trial, but as at last glorified through rap­ture.
Often she may have been tempted to mur­mur at the hardship of her lot, and the
severity of her wilderness portion. But all this is not worthy to be compared
with the glory that is now revealed in her as she stands at the Bride­groom’s
side, and hears Him saying to her: “I remember for thee the kindness of thy
youth, the love of thine espousal, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness,
in a land that is not sown,” (Jeremiah 2:2 R.V.). And there is not only a
presentation, but a manifestation, in which obscurity and obloquy give place to
glory and honor.

It has happened within our knowledge that a wealthy and cultivated gentleman
became affi­anced to a maiden of the lowest and poorest con­dition. Because he
had set his love upon her, he took her out of her poverty and ignorance, and
sent her to a distant school to be educated and fitted for her appointed sphere.
After years of discipline and preparation, he withdrew her from her retreat and
brought her to his home, where a splendid reception was given her, and she was
publicly introduced into the society in which she was henceforth to move as his
wife. Precisely thus has Christ dealt with His Church,—sending her into long
wilderness discipline to be trained for her heavenly associations. But now that
the time of her humiliation is ended, He brings her forth to receive her visible
manifestation and royal dowry. Whereas she has “esteemed the reproach of Christ
as greater riches than the treasures of Egypt,” now is manifested in her “what
is the riches of the glory of His inheri­tance in the saints;” and whereas she
has been counted “the offscouring of all things” for His sake, she is now
exalted before the eyes of men and angels with Him who has come “to be glorifled
in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe.” In a word, the Bride
who has shared her Lord’s rejection now shares His throne as the wife of the
Lamb, the Queen-con­sort of the King of kings. Here is the crown­ing joy of the
redeemed. He and His are no more twain, but one; the “little while” of their
separation is at last swallowed up in the “forever with the Lord.” They see His
face; His name is in their foreheads; they hear His voice: “Eat, O friends:
drink, yea, drink abundantly, O be­loved.” “Blessed are they which are called
unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

Endnotes:

1 “The Seer That, ere he died, saw all the grievous times Of the fair Bride—who
with the lance and nails Was won.” — Dante.

2 Godet, Studies on the Old Testament, p. 329.

3 Ellicott.


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  CHAPTER 19: 01.03.07.     THE JUDGMENT OF CHRISTENDOM
========================================================================

Part III. Chapter VII. THE JUDGMENT OF CHRISTENDOM The first resurrection and
the rapture of the saints have carried our contemplation heaven­ward; but it is
now recalled to what is passing on the earth. The one transaction is the exact
reverse of the other. The Virgin Bride is called upward to the marriage supper
of the Lamb; the apostate Spouse of Christ is now cast down and publicly
divorced by her long dishonored Lord. The punishment meted out to her “These
shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her
flesh and burn her with fire,” (Revelation 17:16) —is according to a very
ancient law: “And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing
the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire,” (Leviticus
21:9). This fallen daughter of God has persisted in her fornication with the
kings of the earth for centuries; and they with whom she has glorified herself
and lived deliciously now turn against her and become the providential
instru­ments of her destruction, saying to the Almighty: “Thy daughter-in-law
hath played the harlot: bring her forth and let her be burnt,” (Genesis 38:24).
Graphic and lifelike to the highest degree are the delineations of the papal
apostasy. As the true Church of Christ is set forth under the double similitude
of a bride and of a city, so is the false. And one has only closely to compare
the details of the harlot’s photograph in Revelation 17:1-18 with the lurid
painting of Babylon the Great in Revelation 18:1-24 to perceive that the subject
is the same in each. The scarlet and purple, the gold and precious stones and
pearls, are found in both de­scriptions: the same sin of wantonness with the
kings of the earth; the same indictment of persecuting God’s saints; and the
same doom of being “utterly burned with fire” belong to each. Only in the first
portrayal the kings of the earth are seen executing the divine vengeance upon
the apostate bride; while in the second they are represented as bewailing and
lamenting her doom, even as a profligate will sometimes weep and mourn over his
murdered paramour. This judgment seems to be executed in two stages, gradual and
sudden, harmonizing with the two stages of the judgment of the Man of Sin as
foretold in Thessalonians: “Whom the Lord shall consume with the breath of His
mouth, and destroy with the brightness of His coming.” The first process is
described thus: “And the ten horns which thou sawest and the beast, these shall
hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh,
and shall burn her with fire,” (Revelation 17:16). The beast here must be the
same which carries the harlot; it cannot be an individual Antichrist, therefore,
else we should have the grotesque figure of the woman riding upon a man, a
symbolical monstrosity of which revelation could not be guilty. Besides, there
is no precedent in Scripture for making a beast signify an individual man. If
Daniel gives the key to Revelation, as is generally admitted, a beast means a
dynasty or civil government. It is the body of the beast, the Papal Empire, with
its ten kingdoms, including rulers, people, terri­tory, and dominion, that is
here evidently meant. These that have long supported the harlot church now turn
and rend her. It is useless to say that by identifying the papacy with the
beast, this verse would compel the conclusion that the Roman Pope finally
destroys the Roman Church. There is a Head and a Body of the true Church; the
Head is called The Christ, ‘o cpistoV (1 Corinthians 11:13), and the Body is
called The Christ, ‘o cpistoV (1 Corinthians 12:12); but it does not follow,
therefore, that when it is said that “Christ loved the Church and gave Himself
for it,” we must conclude that He loved Himself and gave Himself for Him­self;
for though Christ and the Church are mys­tically one, their actions and offices
are separable. So the papacy, as head of the Roman Empire in its ten-kingdomed
condition, is called the beast (Revelation 13:4-6); and the empire itself, as
the body, is called the beast (Revelation 17:3). But though symbolically one
their actions and career are distinguishable. It is clearly the body of the
beast that is figured as carrying and supporting the harlot, —the Roman Empire
under the sway of the Roman Church, the empire supporting the Church, and the
Church ruling the empire. But when the consuming judgments begin, this is
changed. Just what was predicted, we have lived to see, —the kingdoms once
subject to the papacy snapping their concordats and alliances, till the woman’s
bit and bridle are utterly broken; those kingdoms turning upon her and stripping
her of her endowments, rejecting her authority, and tearing away her territory.
So we have beheld it wonderfully come to pass in these latter days. Events often
constitute an indisputable exegesis. So long ago as A. D. 1607, Brightman, the
com­mentator, “searching what and what manner of time” the Spirit signified by
this prophecy, con­cluded that about A. D. 1800 the dismantlement of the Roman
Church would begin. In August, 1797, the French ambassador in Rome wrote to
Napoleon: “Discontent is at its height in the papal states; the government will
fall to pieces of itself. We are making it consume by a slow fire. It will soon
crumble into dust.” The next year the papal government was overthrown, and an
infidel democracy reared on its ruins. “The churches and convents,” says Alison,
“the palaces of the cardinals and nobility, were laid waste. The spoliation
exceeded all that the Goths and Vandals had effected.” 1 A further exhibition of
the same process of consumption we have witnessed, especially in Italy and in
France, since the recent loss of the pope’s temporal power.

Then follows a subsequent stage in the retribu­tion, when the awful cry breaks
upon our ears: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great!” It is history repeating
itself. Every age has ended in judgment, and so shall the present dispensation
close. As apostate Judaism met its doom in the destruction of Jerusalem; so
apostate Christen­dom expiates its sentence in the overthrow of mystical
Babylon. This destruction will fall, we believe, upon the literal city of seven
hills, as the visible centre and capital of the apostasy. What other systems
beside the papal may be involved in the judgment is a most solemn question to be
pondered. It is plainly intimated that the mother has daughters, and therefore
that Babylon the Great has outlying suburbs which are in fellow­ship with her.
Let him that readeth understand. The extent of this judgment needs to be
carefully considered, since some would discredit the plain interpretation which
we follow, by declaring that it implies the consigning of every subject of the
pope to perdition, as it is declared that “if any man worship the beast and his
image, and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand,” he shall be
consigned to everlasting punishment. But here the analogy of previous judgments
throws striking light. Before the doom of fire and brim­stone fell upon Sodom,
the warning was sounded, — “Up! get thee out of this place, for the Lord will
destroy this city;” and heeding the call, some were found sheltered in little
Zoar ere the burn­ing rain descended. So, likewise, before Jerusa­lem was
destroyed, the Saviour’s previous admo­nition was enforced: “Then let them which
be in Judea flee to the mountains;” and the holy seed gained refuge from the
awful slaughter in the hilltop of Pella. The Apocalypse predicts a similar
warning be­fore the fall of Babylon: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not
partakers of her sins.” This summons, we believe, is synchronous, or nearly so,
with the descending of the Lord in glory (Revelation 18:4). We conclude this
because the Church is summoned to exercise judgment,— “Reward her even as she
rewarded you, and double unto her according to her works” —which she is
everywhere forbidden to do in her present suffering state, but which she is to
do at the time of her reign and judgment with Christ at His coming in glory.
Before the sentence goes forth, “Babylon the Great is fallen,” the gracious call
of separation will have been sounded: “Come forth, my people, out of her,” and
then “they that are Christ’s at His coming,” whether hitherto in Babylon or
without her, whether in their graves or living on the earth, will be caught up
to meet the Lord in the air, where, standing with the Lamb upon Mount Zion with
the hundred and forty-four thousand having the Father’s name written in their
foreheads, they shall see afar off the doom of such as persisted in worshiping
the beast and wearing his name upon their brows. As some true saints of God have
been found in Rome during all her history, so we doubt not it will be to the
end. But overwhelming doom will fall upon such as persevere in their idola­tries
after this last warning cry shall have been sounded. If then “any man is
worshiping the beast, and receiving his mark on his forehead or upon his hand,”
“the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out
without mixture into the cup of his indignation,” 2 (Revelation 14:9).

Hark the song of exultation breaking forth from heaven! A great voice of much
people —of myriads whose blood the harlot drank—is now heard saying: “Alleluia!
salvation, and glory, and honor, and power unto the Lord our God. For true and
righteous are His judgments; for He hath judged the great whore which did
cor­rupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of His
servants at her hand,” (Revelation 19:2). And immediately a triumphal
pro­cession is seen moving forth from the direction whence comes the song: “And
I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and He that sat upon him was
called Faithful and True, and in righteousness doth He judge and make war,”
(Revelation 19:11). This majestic rider we met at the very opening of
Apocalyptic history (Revelation 6:2), but then He was going forth in peaceful
con­quest: “And I saw, and behold a white horse, and He that sat upon him had a
bow,”— “Thou didst ride upon Mine horses, upon thy chariots of salvation: thy
bow was made quite bare,” (Habakkuk 3:9), “and a crown was given unto Him.” This
is the “stephanos,” the crown which in Scripture is so repeatedly set before the
Christian as the prize for his spiritual overcoming, and which is fitly worn by
Him who in the days of His flesh could say, “I have overcome the world.” “And He
went forth conquering and in order to conquer,” —not only to effect the present
victories of redemption, but to win the ultimate sovereignty of the world. This
final conquest has now arrived; for as the white-horse rider comes forth from
heaven, we behold, “and on His head were many crowns.” Not the stephanos now,
but the diadema is the symbol of His supremacy. The kingdom of the world has
become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ; and all the crowns of all the
kings have passed over upon His brow. The long suc­cession of world-wide
monarchies which we be­held in Daniel’s vision has intervened; the stone cut out
of the mountain without hands now smites the image upon its feet, and itself
fills the whole world. How striking the picture of the final transfer of earth’s
sovereignty to Immanuel! To Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the first in this
line of universal monarchs, God said: “Thou, O king, art a king of kings,”
(Daniel 2:37). Now that this bloody line terminates in the over­throw of
mystical Babylon—whose sovereign, the pope, has long arrogated both temporal and
ecclesiastical supremacy—Messiah takes up both the successions and also takes
the long abused title attaching thereto: “And He hath on His vesture and on His
thigh a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords,” (Revelation 19:16).

It is necessary here to explain how this judg­ment of Christendom is related to
that of the world as a whole. This will only be possible by giving careful
attention to the law of prophetic perspective which rules so constantly in the
di­vine predictions. That wondrous judgment par­able of our Lord, recorded in
the twenty-fifth of Matthew, seems to be opened out by later rev­elations so as
to have an age-long reach. Resurrection and judgment are counterparts; and as
the rising of the dead, foretold by Christ in the Gospel of John (John 5:28),
though seeming to be a simultaneous event for the righteous and for the wicked,
— “The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His
voice and shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of
life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” —is
shown in the later Revelation of John to take place in two stages a thousand
years apart: so the judgments in which these respective resurrec­tions issue are
separated by an entire millennium. Laying the prophecy of the 25th of Matthew
alongside this of the 5th of John, we judge that they exactly harmonize; that
the time when the Son of man shall “sit upon the throne of His glory “is the
whole millennial period; that the time when the righteous dead shall hear the
King say unto them, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world,” is at the coming of Christ in the
beginning of the millennium, which is “the resurrection of life:” that time when
the unrighteous dead shall hear the sentence, “De­part from me, ye cursed, into
eternal fire,” is at the close of the millennium, which is “the resurrection of
condemnation.” While this is so, we should not err in saying that in one sense
the judgment of the righteous and of the wicked is simultaneous. For since
resurrection is the great declarative act of justification, the coming forth of
the righteous from the tomb at the advent of Christ is their open acquittal and
vindication be­fore the universe; while the non-resurrection of the wicked is
their silent condemnation, —which silent condemnation, however, is to be made
pub­lic and visible at the second resurrection and the great white-throne
judgment at the end of the millennium.

It has been maintained that the scene in the 25th of Matthew is strictly and
only a judgment of the living nations. It is clearly this; but the question is,
whether this prophetic picture of our Lord is not a composite photograph
comprehend­ing in a single view all the stages and subjects of the judgment.

While acknowledging the exceeding difficulty of harmonizing all the texts
relating to this sub­ject, we conceive of the great transaction thus: Judgment
begins at the house of God when the Master of the house returns in the clouds of
heaven. Instantly there is a separation of the wheat from the tares; of the
sheep from the goats; of the Bride from the harlot. By resur­rection and
translation, the faithful living and the faithful dead are instantly brought
into one company in the skies; by non-resurrection and devastating judgments,
the apostate dead and the apostate living are brought into the other company in
Hades. Thus, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, judgment is pronounced for
both classes.

Now the reward of the righteous begins. That manifestation predicted in the
words, “For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every
one may receive the things done in his body according to that which he hath
done, whether it be good or bad,” at last takes place. This is not a judgment of
believers as to the question of life or death; into such judgment it is
distinctly declared they do not enter: “Ver­ily, verily, I say unto you, he that
heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and
shall not come into condem­nation,” — kpisin, judgment,— “but is passed from
death unto life,” (John 5:24). The first resur­rection is itself the award of
life; and they who now stand in their risen and immortal bodies have passed
beyond all possible inquisition con­cerning the inheritance of life eternal. But
into strict and solemn investigation concerning their works they do now come;
for at length is that Scripture fulfilled: “Every man’s work shall be made
manifest; for the day shall declare it, be­cause it shall be revealed by fire;
and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is,” (1 Corinthians
3:13). Doubtless there will stand before the Lord in that day many who are saved
but unrewarded, redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, but not recompensed at
the resurrection of the just; their works burned up as worthless, but themselves
saved so as by fire, (1 Corinthians 3:15). But to such as have borne the cross
and endured hardness, this is the time of reward: “Behold, I come quickly and my
reward is with me to give to man according as his work shall be.” And this
recompense we believe will consist in no vague and transcendental joys of song,
and rapture, and repose. That repeated strain in the parable which follows that
of the ten virgins — “Well done, good and faithful servant: thou hast been
faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things” —seems to
indicate the nature of the saints’ inheritance. Reigning with Christ over the
earth throughout the millennium, their rank in His manifested kingdom will be
according to their fidelity during the time of His absence. In the judgment of
the nations which now follows, they will be associated with their Lord, — “Know
ye not that the saints shall judge the world?” (1 Corinthians 6:2) —and in their
nearness to Him in honor and authority will consist the greatness of their
reward. It is not necessary to believe that the saints’ reward will be
altogether earthly or civil, but nevertheless there is a meaning which must not
be spiritualized away in the beatitude of our Lord: “Blessed are the meek, for
they shall inherit the earth,” (Matthew 5:5); and in the award of the nobleman
returning from a far country to set up his kingdom: “Well, thou good servant:
because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten
cities,” (Luke 19:17). At the end of the millennium occurs the sec­ond
resurrection. So far as there is a quicken­ing of “the rest of the dead” —those
left behind at the sound of the advent trumpet a thousand years before—it is
strictly a “resurrection unto judgment.” Here, in the vision of the great white
throne which follows, we find “the book of life” opened, and “whosoever was not
found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” Those whose
names were in the book have already been living and reigning with Christ a
thousand years; therefore, unless we think of them as now leaving their thrones
and crowns, and coming before the bar of God to be tried for their lives, we
cannot conceive of their being the subjects of this solemn inquisition: and as
we have already seen, the Scripture declares that they will not be, since they
have already passed from death unto life, and come not into judgment.

But, holding that the righteous and unrighteous still die during the millennium,
it appears that there will be saints as well as sinners in the second
resurrection. Hence there will be for such a judgment of works when the assize
of the great white throne and of Him that sits on it shall open. How solemnly,
therefore, it reads: “And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death
and hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged every
man accord­ing to their works!” (Revelation 21:13.)

Such seems to be the order as we gaze through the long and solemn perspective of
the judgment scene; but if our readers shall put a question mark against many of
our conclusions, we shall not be surprised. There is a massing of shad­ows and a
concentration of mystery about the whole scene which invest it with unutterable
awe. We are willing to leave the shadows unlifted and the mystery unsolved, if,
“knowing therefore the terror of the Lord,” we may “persuade men.”

Endnotes:

1 Closing-Days of Christendom, Wale, p. 362.

2 “Covetous Babylon of wrath divine, By its worst crimes, has drained the full
cup now.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . Her idols shall be shattered in the dust, Her proud
towers, enemies of heaven, be hurled, Her wardens into flames and exile thrust.

Fair souls and friends of virtue shall the world Possess in peace; and we shall
see it made All gold, and fully its old works displayed.”

Petrarch 1304-1374.


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  CHAPTER 20: 01.03.08.     THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL
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Part III. Chapter VIII. THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL

There is a fragment of Jewish legend that has floated down to us, which
represents two venera­ble rabbis as musing among the ruins of Jerusa­lem after
its destruction. One is giving way to unrestrained lamentation, saying: “Alas!
alas! this is the end of all. Our beautiful city is no more, our Temple is laid
waste, our brethren are driven away into captivity.” The other, with greater
cheerfulness, replies: “True; but let us learn from the verity of God’s
judgments, which we behold about us, the certainty of His mercies. He hath said,
‘I will destroy Jerusalem,’ and we see that He hath done it. But hath He not
also said, ‘I will rebuild Jerusalem,’ and shall we not believe Him?” This is a
correct method of reasoning, and one which we would commend to Gentile doctors
as well as to Hebrew rabbis. A literal fulfillment of threatenings upon Israel
argues a literal fulfill­ment of promises. The sorrowful and ill-starred history
of the Jewish race since the dispersion has been the theme of constant
reflection among thoughtful men. It is not merely the fact of their unparalleled
sufferings which has arrested attention, but the evidence of a providential
method, if we may say so, running through those sufferings, the appearance of
their history having been woven at every point to the pattern of some hidden
decree. Persecution which would have blotted out any other nation seems in their
case to have been so blended and tempered with divine preservatives, that, like
that symbol of their Jehovah, the burning bush, they present the astonishing
spectacle of a nation always girdled about with the fires of judgment, but never
con­sumed. Scattered like dust to the four winds, they have yet preserved their
national unity as firm and compact as a rock; driven out of their land, and kept
from it by an inexorable decree, they have beheld their supplanters guarding
with scrupulous care their most sacred shrines, as though unconsciously waiting
to surrender them back to them on the expiration of their lease; so utterly
homeless that they have had no city or foot of land for centuries which they
could call their own, they have, nevertheless, been the bankers of the world, as
though destined always to have on deposit the wealth needful for restor­ing the
desolations of Zion, if the hour for such restoration were to come. This
mingling a mercy and misfortune in their career has consti­tuted the Jewish race
the paradox and miracle of modern history. It has awakened a constant curiosity
and speculation in the minds of the thoughtful as to their future. Incomparably
dark as has been their history for eighteen hundred years, men have been
constrained to see in that darkness the shadow of Jehovah’s hand turned over
them for their protection and preservation! And in the very sharpness of the
judgments that have overtaken them, not a few have discerned the presage of a
future glory far surpassing any­thing in the past. Have we thought what an
undertone of hope there is even in the divine condemnations of the Jews? The
single word “until” constitutes a kind of epitomized prophecy of Israel’s
restora­tion. The picture which our Lord gives in the gospels of the destruction
of the Holy City and the dispersion of the Jews is one of the darkest in all
Scripture. What a massing of the shadows of doom; what a crowding together of
successive chapters of woe! And yet, as we reach the mid­dle of that sentence
which summarizes whole cen­turies of divine retribution, “Jerusalem shall be
trodden of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled,” we are
conscious of a cer­tain powerful relief from the strain that has been put upon
us. “Until” —amid the dense sur­rounding darkness, this one word fairly gleams
with the promise of a better future for the suffer­ing race. It is only a hint,
an intimation, that is given us; but it is so pregnant with the hid­den light of
hope, that it impels us instinctively to fix an end to the desolations of Zion.
So in our Lord’s pathetic farewell to the Temple, after His rejection, there is
the same refrain, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate;” and, “Verily I
say unto you, Ye shall not see Me, until the time come when ye shall say,
Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Until the time come, —here,
certainly, is a flash of light upon the dark prediction of Israel’s desertion.
It is but a word, again; but it is heavy with the burden of prophetic
expectation. Next to the silence which says nothing contrary to our hope, the
hint which barely breaks the silence in its favor is the most significant. And
this is all we have here; but how much is in it! In St. Paul’s discourse upon
the hardening and healing of his people, like phraseology occurs. “Blindness in
part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.”
Thus, again and again, this word “until” is heard, like a cadence, in the solemn
strain of the Divine threatening, in which Jehovah’s voice seems to drop, for a
moment, from the stern tones of anger and impre­cation, to those of His “old
love” and tender­ness. 1 But let it not be supposed that we have in the New
Testament only inspired hints and implica­tions concerning Israel’s restoration.
The elev­enth chapter of Romans is a compact and well-reasoned argument upon
this theme, conducting us step by step from sorrowful premise to trium­phant
conclusion. “Hath God cast away His people!” is the question considered. “God
hath not cast away His people whom He foreknew,” is the conclusion reached. And
this upon two grounds, —present fact and future fulfillment. Though the nation
has been cut off, there is “a remnant, according to the election of grace,” who
have believed on Christ to their salvation, and therefore have been preserved in
the favor and fellowship of God; while, on the other hand, those remaining
outside this remnant have been hardened: “the rest were blinded” But concern­ing
this rejected majority, there is hope, because of the sure covenant of God. And
though, like the branches of an olive tree, they have been broken off, we are
told, first, that “God is able to graff them in again;” and, a little after,
“How much more shall these which be natural branches be graffed into their own
olive tree.” Not only possibility, but certainty, of Israel’s restoration is
thus predicated. And the argument culminates in the grand conclusion, “And so
all Israel shall be saved” —an elect and individual redemption at last succeeded
by a national and complete re­demption. And this full recovery, it will be
ob­served, is in connection with the second coming of Christ in glory. As it is
written: “There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away
ungodliness from Jacob.” 2 A typical man is often set before us in Scripture for
our clearer instruction in regard to great events. And such was Paul in relation
to the final redemption of Israel. He says of himself, the “blasphemer and
persecutor” of Christ: “Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in Me
first Christ Jesus might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern of those
who should hereafter believe on Him unto eternal life,” —upotupwsin twn
mellontwn pisteuein, —not an ensample to, but a sample of those who should
afterwards believe unto salvation. By the manner of his conversion he was
constituted a kind of first-fruits, or prototype, of the Jewish harvest. Whether
or not in this passage he refers expli­citly to his kinsmen according to the
flesh, we find, at least, that the circumstances of his own new birth were so
unique as to constitute a special type. For, enumerating those by whom the Lord
was seen after His resurrection, he says: “And last of all, as unto one born out
of due time, He appeared to me also.” By the vis­ible, glorious manifestation of
Christ to his eyes, was this Hebrew of the Hebrews smitten with conviction; by
the indictment of the Redeemer’s personal wounds— “I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom
thou persecutes” —was he brought to repentance and confession. When he “could
not see for the glory of that light,” then was the veil taken away from his
heart, so that he turned to the Lord in the profoundest penitence.

“Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also that
pierced Him, and all the tribes of the earth shall mourn over Him,” (Revelation
1:7, R.V.). If, with most expositors, we must understand “the tribes:” in this
instance to mean the kindreds and peoples of the world, we cannot so interpret
the Old Testament proph­ecy of which this is a quotation. In the profound
mourning, so graphically pictured by Zechariah, in which “every family apart” is
seen sobbing out an uncontrollable grief, the scene is, by gen­eral consent, in
the Holy Land, and the subjects the house of Israel. And what has come to pass?
The bounds of another prophetic “until” have been attained for Jerusalem. “Upon
the land of my people” God threatened thorns and briers, forsaken palaces, and
deserted towers, “until the Spirit be poured out upon us from on high,” (Isaiah
32:15). That time has now been reached, and the word which God spoke by the
mouth of Zechariah is fulfilled: “And I will pour upon the house of David, and
upon the inhabitants of Je­rusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplications:
and they shall look upon Me, whom they have pierced, and mourn for Him, as one
mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one is in
bitterness for his firstborn,” (Zechariah 12:10). The point of departure at last
becomes the point of return. The wounds of Jesus were the death sentence upon
national Is­rael; and now they become the source of life to that long-rejected
people. For immediately upon the prediction of their mourning for Him whom they
pierced, it is added: “In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house
of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness.”

Nationally or individually, there is but one way of salvation for Israel, —the
way of the Cross; and one way of repentance, —a total reversal of attitude
towards the Nazarene. The Jews cried out: “His blood be upon us and upon our
chil­dren;” and for this whole age that blood has been crying out for vengeance
against them. By their own repentance and faith must that pre­cious offering be
turned from the blood of impre­cation to the blood of cleansing. “Not this man,
but Barabbas,” they said, when the awful alterna­tive was offered them; and
Barabbas, the mur­derer and robber, has swayed them with his dag­ger, and
pillaged them of their wealth, even unto this day. “Not Barabbas, but this man,”
must be their penitent confession before this spoiling shall cease. “We have no
king but Cæsar,” was their answer when the appeal was made to them, “Will you
crucify your King?” And Cæsar after Cæsar has crucified, enslaved, and outraged
them till, as no other, they have become a nation of sorrows and acquainted with
grief. This fatal choice must also be reversed, and instead of it the
acclamation be raised: “Hosanna to the Son of David! blessed is He that cometh
in the name of the Lord!” Indeed, recalling Christ’s prediction, — “Ye shall not
see Me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of
the Lord,” (Matthew 23:39), we must remember that He gives us the key-note of
Is­rael’s repentance in these words. They are part of the Jewish “Hallel,” sung
at the Passover. The strain which immediately precedes this ben­ediction is:
“The stone which the builders refused is become the Headstone of the corner.
This is the day which the Lord hath made: we will rejoice and be glad in it,”
(Psalms 118:22-25). How glorious this song of Israel’s consummated res­toration!
And what a heightening of the dra­matic effect of that lurid picture of the
overthrow of mystical Babylon, that, amid the rejoicing of the Church over the
downfall of her great enemy, this “Hallel” is heard four times breaking in, as
though Israel, too, were joining to celebrate the fall of the last and bloodiest
form of Cæsar’s kingdom, that from which both Christian and Jew have received
their bitterest persecution! (Revelation 19:1, Revelation 19:3-4, Revelation
19:6) As to the exact order of events connected with Israel’s conversion and
restoration, we must not speak too confidently. Some passages seem to make the
Jews’ repentance the occasion of the Lord’s return, and others would appear to
make the Lord’s return the occasion of their repent­ance. Of the first kind is
Peter’s declaration to the crucifiers of Jesus: “Repent ye, therefore, and turn
again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so there may come seasons of
refreshing from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send the Christ who
hath been appointed for you, even Jesus, whom the heaven must receive until the
times of the restoration of all things,” (Acts 3:19-21, R.V.). Here the
Saviour’s coming back is made contingent on the conversion of the Israelites;
while, in the prophecy of Zechariah, that appearing in glory seems to be the
producing cause of the Jews’ repentance. From all that we gather, we judge that
both conclusions are true, —that Israel will regather in their land in
un­belief, as they are now beginning to do; that they will be brought into great
tribulation through the assaults of enemies coming against them in siege; that
in their utmost extremity they will cry out for their Messiah; and “then shall
the Lord go forth and fight against those nations.” His com­ing, however, will
bring sorrow, as well as succor. “His feet shall stand in that day upon the
Mount of Olives, which is over against Jerusalem on the east.” But those feet
that bring deliverance will bring overwhelming conviction, as it is seen that
they are the same that they once nailed to the cross. As He lifts up His hands
for their help, “one shall say unto Him, What are these wounds in Thy hands?
Then He shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my
friends,” (Zechariah 13:6; Zechariah 14:4). Thus while He comes to bring
salvation to a repenting people, His coming will add repentance to repentance,
as it brings home their terrible crime against their Messiah, so that “all the
tribes of the land shall wail because of Him.” But what joy shall give place to
that lamentation, after their sin is purged! Now shall long-prostrate Jerusalem
hear the sum­mons: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the
Lord is risen upon thee.” The twin fact of Israel’s restoration to God’s favor
is this of their restoration to their own land. To cite passages in proof of
such restoration would be to quote whole chapters and entire books from the
prophets, of whose writings this is the constant glowing burden. This great
consummation seems destined to occur in two principal stages, elective and
na­tional. First, a few are represented as being brought upon ships from their
scattered habita­tions (Isaiah 18:1-7:; Isaiah 60:9) “I will take you one of a
city, and two of a family; and I will bring you to Zion,” (Jeremiah 3:14). These
would appear to be a kind of first-fruits of the final restoration. And as sober
judges of events see this gathering-out and gathering-home already taking place,
it should be to us a sign and an earnest of the speedy realization of Israel’s
complete hope. Af­ter this partial restoration, we are led to expect the final
and full regathering, a national move­ment, like the Exodus from Egypt, only far
sur­passing that in glory and power, (Jeremiah 23:3-5; Jeremiah 31:8-9). This
great restoration constitutes the true hope of the Israelite, as the return of
the Lord does of the Christian. And it is very interesting to read, in the light
of this fact, the closing chapters of the Old and of the New Testaments. In the
one the promise is, “Behold, I will send you Elijah;” in the other, “Behold, I
come quickly.” To the prepared people of His Church He comes, that He may
receive them into the place which He has gone to prepare; to His
long-disobedient people, Israel, He sends the prophet, that He may “turn the
heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their
fathers.” Accordingly, as for the Christian the commun­ion is commemorative and
anticipative, so is the Passover for the Jew. The Lord’s Supper, by its solemn
formula, is ever repeating, “Till He come;” and the Passover, with its vacant
seat for Elijah, is ever saying, “Till Israel return.” As the sprinkled blood
and bitter herbs remind children and children’s children of the Hebrew household
how the Lord brought their fathers out of Egypt, they also recall evermore
Jehovah’s promises: “Therefore behold the days come, saith the Lord, that it
shall no more be said, The Lord liveth that brought up the children of Israel
out of the land of Egypt; but, The Lord liveth that brought up the children of
Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither He had driven
them; and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their
fathers,” (Jeremiah 16:14-15). Nothing that has yet occurred can be said to have
fulfilled this prediction of “bringing them again into their own land.” If the
contrary be affirmed, how can we explain the finality and perpetuity of this
restoration as affirmed in several parallel texts? “And I will plant them upon
their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have
given them, saith the Lord thy God,” (Amos 9:15; Jeremiah 31:8-9; Ezekiel
34:1-31; Ezekiel 35:1-15; Ezekiel 36:1-38; Ezekiel 37:1-28). And if any ask,
“How can this be, considering the wide apos­tasy and practical surrender of
these promises by such vast numbers of Israelites?” we must an­swer: How can it
fail to be, since Jehovah, who made this promise, cannot lie? As though
an­ticipating this incredulity of men, He has said, concerning the time when He
makes a new cov­enant with His people, “to forgive their iniquity and remember
their sin no more:” “Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by
day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which
divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of Hosts is His name: If
those ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel
also shall cease from being a nation before Me for­ever. Thus saith the Lord: If
heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out
beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have
done, saith the Lord,” (Jeremiah 31:31-37). So great will be the glory of
Israel’s recovery that the sorrow of His long rejection will seem as nought in
comparison. Now will God comfort His people, saying: “For a small moment have I
forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee,” (Isaiah 54:7).
Instead of the sentence: “I have given the dearly beloved of My soul into the
hands of her enemies,” to His people, resisting no longer, He will say: “For as
the girdle cleaveth to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave unto Me
the whole house of Israel, and the whole house of Judah, saith the Lord, that
they might be unto Me for a people, and for a name, and for a praise, and for a
glory,” (Jeremiah 13:11). Not only shall their sun no more go down, but because
the Lord is their sun, “the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun,
and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the
day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of His people, and healeth the stroke of
their wound,” (Isaiah 30:26).

Endnotes:

1 “O then that I Might live, and see the olive bear Her proper branches, which
now lie Scattered each where, And without root and sap decay, Cast by the
husbandman away, And sure it is not far!

“For surely He Who loved the world so as to give His only Sonne to make us free,
Whose Spirit, too, doth mourn and grieve To see man lost, will, for old love,
From your dark hearts this veil remove.”

Henry Vaughan, 1654.

2 “The passage cannot be understood merely to denote the first appearance of
Messiah as Isaiah 11:1-16; but, in any case, the eschatological appearance of
Jehovah is also conjoined in the Messiah.” — Lange.


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  CHAPTER 21: 01.03.09.     THE MILLENNIAL KINGDOM
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Part III. Chapter IX. THE MILLENNIAL KINGDOM In the transfiguration—which is
distinctly called “the Son of man coming in His king­dom” —we have a miniature
presentation of the millennium. Moses and Elias, who appear with Christ in
glory, prefigure respectively the risen and the changed saints translated and
brought into one company at the appearing and kingdom of our Lord; while the
disciples who stand with­out the cloud and behold His glory are typical of those
in the flesh, the Jews and the nations, who will still be left on the earth
after the rapture of the saints. What relation to this globe will the
transfigured Church hold in the millennium? Some have maintained that she will
be forever removed from this sphere, the world and its in­habitants being burned
up together as soon as the Church is taken away. Others have held that while the
ungodly will be utterly consumed at the appearing of the Lord, the earth,
purified and renewed, will become the eternal and exclu­sive abode of the
saints. Either view is extreme, as judged by a full collation of Scripture. It
is plainly declared in Revelation that the saints shall “reign over the earth;”
but that they will be absolutely bound to it, as now, by terrestrial
gravitation, does not follow. “They that are ac­counted worthy to obtain that
age and the res­urrection from the dead . . . are angel-like, —isaggeloi, —and
are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection,” (Luke 20:36). Surely, here is
a suggestive hint for us. Angels visit this earth and mingle with its
inhabitants; they have tan­gible forms, and accept material food, and exer­cise
gracious ministries for those in the flesh, and yet they reside in a higher
sphere. So may it be with the sons of the first resurrection, —in perpetual
contact with the earth, but not inhabit­ants of it. Instinctively we turn for
light on this subject to our Lord’s forty days between His ris­ing and His
ascending. Though now in the res­urrection body, He associated as familiarly as
ever with His disciples: at one time holding high dis­course with them
concerning the things of the kingdom; at another eating in their presence of the
broiled fish and honeycomb; today directing that cast of the net into the Sea of
Galilee by which the multitude of fishes was enclosed, and tomorrow announcing
the great commission in the mountain of Galilee by which the draw-net of
worldwide missions was committed to His Church; and all the while maintaining
that strangely double life in which He was now han­dled and inspected to prove
his body to be literal flesh and bones, and now mysteriously withdrawn like a
vanishing specter. Here is revelation in a mystery concerning the glorified
saints and their relation to the millennial earth. For the life of Christ is the
life of His Church in epitome.

Reasoning from these hints, we gather that the millennial Church may hold a
relation to the earth as close as that which we now maintain, and a relation to
heaven as intimate as that which the angels enjoy. Perhaps there is more than
poetry in the prophet’s delineation of the Mes­sianic glory, (Isaiah 40:31):
“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up
with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not
faint: “celestial flight alternating with terres­trial travel, and each alike
unwearying. 1

What a realistic element in the promised vic­tory of the saints it is that they
shall enjoy their triumphs in the very sphere where they suffered their defeats!
This is according to the divine purpose. The millennium is called “the times of
the restitution of all things” (Acts 3:21). The steps in this restitution move
slowly and stead­ily; but, because it is a restoration, each step for­ward is
really a step backward towards the purity and perfection of the primitive
paradise. All that was involved in the fall will be involved in the recovery:
the soul restored to God by regen­eration; the body restored to the soul by
resur­rection; and the earth restored to man by regen­esis. Thus the rainbow
arch of redemption bends back and touches the earth from which it springs, —
“the sufferings of Christ, and the glory which should follow,” both have their
scene in the same material world. And remembering that the ex­alted Head and the
mystical body have an identi­cal destiny, we see how much is suggested by this
fact. Christ returns in glory to the point of His earthly departure: “His feet
shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on
the east,” (Zechariah 14:4). In His transfigured body He may now survey the
literal scenes of His humiliation: Gethsemane, where He sweat great drops of
blood; and Golgotha, where “by wicked hands He was crucified and slain;” and the
garden where He lay for two days buried. Heroic poetry, in its most presumptuous
flights, has never dreamed of such a vindication for defeated warriors as this,
—tri­umphing in a deathless body on the very field where the dead body was
mutilated and en­tombed. And our Redeemer comes not alone in His victorious
entry upon the earth: “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints
to execute judgment upon all, and to con­vince all that are ungodly among them
of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their
hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him,” (Jude 1:15).
Christ’s confessors, who, being reviled, re­viled not again, but committed
themselves to Him that judgeth righteously, may tread again the very judgment
halls where they listened in silence to the hard speeches of ungodly sinners who
condemned them to death; may stand on the very spot where the earth once drank
up their witnessing blood, or tread underfoot the very soil with which their
martyr-ashes once mingled. Will the glorified Church hold relation to mor­tal
men still living on the earth? They who deny this, and suppose that the whole
human race will be swept from the globe and destroyed at the coming of Christ,
quote words of terrific import for such a view (2 Thessalonians 1:7). But if we
balance Scripture with Scripture, the conclusion is otherwise. For not only is
it taught that the advent judgments fall especially on apostate Christen­dom
(Matthew 13:40-41), but with equal clearness that Christ’s coming issues in the
conversion of Israel, (Zechariah 12:10; Romans 11:26), and through Israel in the
conversion of the Gentiles (Romans 11:12-15; Isaiah 60:1-22). We conclude,
therefore, from a wide collation of Scripture, that after the transla­tion of
the Church, two classes will still remain living on the earth, —the Jews and the
nations. And as the glorified saints have now become “kings and priests unto
God,” they must exer­cise rule and ministry over some besides them­selves, and
over whom but these? Here Scrip­ture is clear and harmonious with itself.
Im­manuel now takes “the throne of His father David,” that He may “reign over
the house of Jacob forever.” But He is not alone in His kingly rule over Israel.
Of His risen saints it is written that “they lived and reigned with Christ a
thousand years.” His glorified Bride sits by Him in His throne, Queen-consort
with her en­throned Lord; nearer to Him than any other as “the wife of the
Lamb.” Now is fulfilled that Scripture which cannot be broken: “Verily I say
unto you that ye which have followed Me in the regeneration,” — the regenesis,
paliggensia, “when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of His glory —ye also
shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew
19:28). In this dominion of the risen saints there doubtless is order and
precedence according to the degree of suffering and loss endured for Christ. The
apostle band would seem to have especial preeminence; next the martyr company,
whose long waiting for the avenging of their blood is at last rewarded; and
saints and be­lievers of all generations, who have been counted worthy to obtain
that age and the resurrection from the dead. Israel is still in the flesh,
though converted, purified by long trial, and brought at last into loyal
subjection to Messiah. Through her as a redeemed nation, and through her
ex­alted city as capital of the world, the Son of David will now extend His
blessed sway to the ends of the earth. “For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the na­tions,
and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares
and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more,” (Isaiah 2:4). At length, through this
benignant consummation, the righteous gov­ernment for which the suffering
nations have sighed will have been reached. The last attempt at human rule, like
all before it, will have miser­ably failed, and men, despairing of self-help,
will finally be prepared to accept the benignant rule of God, that perfect
theocracy in which Christ the Lord shall be King over all the earth. We have
said in a previous chapter that election is not the end of grace, but the means
to a vastly higher end. This ultimate purpose here comes into view. The elect
Church glorified with her Lord, and the elect nation Israel restored and
converted, now take up the work of universal re­demption. Have we pondered the
deep suggestiveness of the apostle’s saying: “He hath raised us up together, and
enthroned us together with Him, in order that He might show forth to the ages
which are coming the exceeding riches of His grace in His goodness towards us in
Christ Jesus,” (Ephesians 2:7). 2 The garnered wealth of redemp­tion, the
holiness, and faith, and love gathered up from generations of chastened
experience, and now displayed in the transfigured Church, —what may be the
impression of this upon the generations of the age to come? At last the Son of
God is fully manifested in “the manifes­tation of the sons of God.” He has come
“to be glorified in His saints and to be admired in all them that believed,” (2
Thessalonians 1:10), —the raised and enthroned Church being as a mirror in which
His majesty is reflected and displayed. Now will be seen “what is the riches of
the glory of His inheritance in the saints,” (Ephesians 1:18). And we may
believe that, as the Queen of Sheba was astonished at the splendor of Solomon,
and at­tested her admiration by rich gifts, so the gen­erations yet unsubdued to
Christ at the opening of the millennium, may be filled with wonder at the
exhibitions of redeeming grace now visible in the perfected Church, and at the
riches of His forbearance as manifested in converted Israel, so that they shall
be moved to take up, con­cerning Immanuel, the beatitude of this admir­ing
queen: “Happy are thy men, happy are these thy servants which stand continually
before thee and that hear thy wisdom. Blessed be the Lord thy God which
delighteth in thee to set thee on the throne of Israel: because the Lord loved
Israel forever, therefore made He thee king to do judgment and justice,” (1
Kings 10:8-9). These triumphs may not be gained at once; but they will be
effected with a rapidity of which we as yet know nothing, so that literally a
nation shall be born in a day. For two new conditions will now be brought in,
—condi­tions utterly unknown since the fall of man: the binding of Satan and the
universal outpouring of the Holy Ghost. Let us try to conceive of the
astonishing changes which will thus ensue in the complete repression of “the
spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” and in the
unrestrained operation of the Spirit of truth and holiness now poured out upon
all flesh. What will have now come to pass is not simply an exchange of malign
influences in the earth for more benign, but the actual dethronement of “the god
of this age,” and the unhindered reign of Christ in his stead. Thus there is a
complete reversal of conditions: “the Prince of Peace” holding absolute sway in
the dominion where the “Prince of the power of the air” has so long triumphed.
Now will be ushered in the real golden age of which the weary nations have so
long dreamed, —the true Sabbath-keeping for which the people of God have waited.
If our readers have been inclined to put a mark of in­terrogation against any of
our millennial anticipa­tions, we have only to remind them that when the chief
apostle bounds forward in thought to this period, and speaks of its “far more
exceeding and eternal weight of glory,” (2 Corinthians 4:17), his language
becomes well-nigh untranslatable, he so joins hyperbole to hyperbole —kaq
uperbolhn eiV upepbolhn — in his effort to express its transcen­dent
blessedness. “The uniquely beautiful, the eternally true, the highest good, must
be fittingly made manifest upon an earth whereon they have been so long ignored;
and as that earth has so long crowned with thorns its lawful King, it must
contemplate Him yet once again in His full beauty. It is this blissful period to
which proph­ecies like Isaiah 11:6-9, Isaiah 35:1-10, Isaiah 60:1-22; Isaiah
65:1-25, and others appear to us to point. It will be the time in which the
kingdom of God rules upon earth. Purified by suffering and conflict, the Church
of God now shares in the triumph of its Head: the Bride finds her rest, after
her long wanderings in the desert, on the bosom of the Bridegroom. It now
becomes apparent that the kingdom of God is in reality a power in every domain
with which it comes in contact, and that the highest manifes­tation of the truth
calls forth a life such as with­out this is nowhere found on earth. In a word,
it is the time of the Christocracy ever more tri­umphantly unfolding itself; the
realization of the Ideal, of which the old Theocracy in Israel was only the
shadow; a realization, however, which in nothing detracts from the
universalistic char­acter of the Saving Revelation now brought to completion.” 4
The relation of the three classes of men in the millennium has been compared to
the threefold division of the tabernacle. The Bride of Christ, the glorified
Church, is the Holy of Holies, ex­alted into equal fellowship with her Head. 5
Con­verted Israel is in the relation of the Holy Place, and the nations which
come up to worship Jehovah stand as in the court of the Gentiles. Only we must
be reminded how completely the veil of the Holiest is now rent asunder, so that
as the millennial triumph advances all peoples are em­braced in the light of
God’s favor. The cloud of glory—symbol of Jehovah’s presence—was first contained
within a narrow ark in the wilderness; then, as the Temple of Solomon was
dedicated, it filled the whole house, so that “the priests could not stand to
minister by reason of the cloud,” 2 Chronicles 5:14); in its final outreach it
will em­brace the world in its effulgence, and the whole earth will become a
Holy of Holies. Then will the kingdom of God be fully consummated; the blessed
predictions of righteousness and peace contained in the seventy-second Psalm
will be no longer chanted only in the music of the Levites, but they will be set
to the measures of literal accomplishment, and sung out in the strains of
triumphant experience: “All men shall be blessed in Him; all nations shall call
Him blessed.” At length, in a restored creation, will Messiah see of the travail
of His soul and be satisfied. Thus will the Psalm of redemption be finished:
“And let the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen, and amen. The prayers
of David the son of Jesse are ended,” (Psalms 72:20). But we have outrun our
argument, and must return to what has been passed over.

Beside Jew and Gentile and Church of God, there is still another sharer in the
millennial re­demption; a dumb partner who is yet to find utterance when “the
hills shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap
their hands.” “Often” says Goethe, “have I had the sensation as if Nature, in
wailing sadness, entreated something of me, so that not to under­stand what she
longed for cut me to the heart.” We understand what her longing is, and what is
to be God’s final answer to it. “For we know that the whole creation groaneth
and travaileth in pain together until now, . . . waiting for the adoption, to
wit, the redemption of the body,” (Romans 8:23). Earth bears the wound received
through man’s transgression, and the brute cre­ation travails in anguish with
fallen humanity. Deep as is the mystery of punishment for sin, the punishment of
no sin, as witnessed in animal suffering, is even more inexplicable. “In Adam
all die:” not only all persons but all things. But as man and creation fell
together, so must they rise together in the time of redemption. Earth will then
lay off her soiled week-day garb and put on her Sabbath dress, and, with her
singing robes about her, take up again that anthem which was heard when the
morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. “Cursed is
the ground for thy sake, thorns and briers shall it bring forth to thee,”
(Genesis 3:17-18), is the sentence which for six thousand years has re­mained as
a sign and testimony to God’s judg­ment upon sin. But then: “Instead of the
thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the
myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign
that shall not be cut off,” (Isaiah 55:13). The beauty of holiness and the
eternal harmony of redemption must be displayed where the dishonor of sin has
been most visible. Therefore this globe, which has so long served as a grave for
man fallen, will now serve as a temple for man upraised; yea, more, as Anselm
says: “The whole earth, which carried in its lap the body of the Lord, will be a
paradise.” With such predestined glory before her, what wonder that Nature
should be found taking her place with Christ and the Church as an eager
expectant of the Advent? If we could bring out the full original of that
passage, “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the
mani­festation of the sons of God,” (Romans 8:19), we should behold a
delineation so graphic that, as Godet has said, “A sculptor of any imagination
and genius might carve a statue of Hope from it.” The picture is this: “Nature,
an unwilling slave to vanity and corruption, stands, impatient of her bonds,
with uplifted head, scanning with longing eye the distant point of the horizon
from which she looks for help, her hands stretched out to grasp and welcome the
redemption into freedom and perfec­tion which she yearns for and confidently
expects.” 6

It is necessary to emphasize this truth of the rehabilitation of the earth on
philosophical as well as on spiritual grounds. For we know not how to vindicate
the ways of God to sober thinkers, if this material world is to end in
catastrophe in­stead of regeneration. A vague shadowy heaven beyond the stars,
to which man as a bodiless im­mortal spirit is to be finally transported, has
lit­tle meaning or attraction for the ordinary mind. And we are free to say that
such a conception is a triumph of Gnostic philosophy over scriptural revelation,
—the philosophy which finds man’s highest happiness in release from this
material body, and therefore, logically, the race’s high­est attainment in
deliverance from this material world. While this notion is widely prevalent in
the Christian Church of our day, we deny that there is anything inspiring or
victorious in it. 7 Instead of the apostolic prayer for the perfection of our
“whole spirit, soul and body at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” it places
our hope in the dismemberment of this human trinity: it proposes a truce with
the grave, willingly sur­rendering the body to its possession, provided only the
soul may be eliminated in the dissolv­ing chemistry of death, and float away to
some realm of happy shades. Instead of rejoicing in the beatitude, “Blessed are
the meek: for they shall inherit the earth,” it makes haste to yield all right
and title to this globe, if only the saints may be released from its gross
environments, and soar to worlds unknown. Even so lofty a thinker as Edwards
gives full sway to this idea in his “History of Redemption,” where, speaking of
the end, he says: “Thus Christ’s Church shall for­ever leave this accursed world
to go into the high­est heaven, the paradise of God. . . . When they are gone
this world shall be set on fire and turned into a great furnace, wherein all the
enemies of Christ and His Church shall be tormented for­ever.” Is this an
alluring conception of redemp­tion, that in its final issue it will have turned
what was made to be a Paradise for man’s delight, into a purgatory for his
torment? We should call this the apotheosis of divine failure, rather than the
crown of divine redemption. Yet it is the logical outcome of that philosophy
which considers the spiritual to be everything, and the material nothing. We
hold that it is infinitely honoring to the Creator to believe that in the end He
will be found tabernacling in a restored world, from which He has wiped away the
last vestige of sin, and in which He has silenced the last discord of rebellion.
8 If the problem of hu­man destiny is to be worked out to a successful issue
only on some yonder side of creation, and in such unknown terms and quantities
that even the spiritual Christian cannot comprehend it, how impossible it will
be to justify God’s dealings to men! In treating of the doctrine of future life,
it may be questioned whether modern theology has not so far withdrawn from a
sober and Scriptural materialism as to be carried into an atten­uated, and for
the most part incomprehensible, spiritualism. We believe, on the contrary, that
in setting forth the judgments and rewards of the future, God has expressed them
in conditions which even the men of this world may under­stand if they will.
That there must be a baptism of judgment-fire for the earth, preparatory to this
anointing with millennial joy, is plainly revealed. How difficult it is to
explain the predictions of Scripture on this subject, we need not say. “The day
of the Lord” of which Peter writes— “in the which the heavens shall pass away
with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth
also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” —is evidently a long
period, embracing the entire age, from the second advent to the close of the
millennium. It is within this era that these burning judgments occur. But the
fire is for purging, and not for annihilating, since the announcement
immediately follows: “Nevertheless, we, according to His promise, look for new
heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness,” (2 Peter 3:13). In the
prophecy of Isaiah we have a glimpse of this re­newed order: “For, behold, I
create new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered nor
come into mind,” (Isaiah 65:17). Now Jerusalem is seen restored and made a
per­petual joy in the earth; a warring creation has been tamed, and the wolf and
the lamb are found peacefully feeding together. But though life is wondrously
ameliorated and prolonged, so that one a century of age is counted an infant, —
“The child shall die an hundred years old,” —immortality has not yet been
reached for the whole race on earth. The goal of death has been pushed far
onward, but not abolished; and though for the risen Church death has been
swallowed up in victory, it still has dominion over men in this globe during the
millennium. But looking on to the end of this millennial period we behold the
final and perfected order in which mortality, with all its sorrowful
accom­paniments, has at last been swept away: “And I saw a new heaven and a new
earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away: and there was
no more sea,” (Revelation 21:1). Now the climax of blessedness has been reached
for the world and all that dwell therein. As the opening of the millennium
witnessed the bridal of the Church with Christ, its close will witness the
bridal of the earth with heaven. Then the redeemed were caught up into the
clouds to cele­brate their nuptials with their Lord; now the Lord comes down to
our globe to celebrate the nuptials of the earth and sky: “And I heard a great
voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He
shall dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be
with them and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;
and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall
there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away,” (Revelation
21:3-4). From all we have thus considered, our infer­ence is, that the
redemption of the earth will begin with the return of the Lord from heaven at
the opening of the millennium; but will only be perfected at the end of that
period, when death shall be forever abolished, and there shall be no more curse.
The millennial kingdom is thus redemptive, not only for the race, but for the
earth, —the final chapter in the great res­toration which is to usher in the
eternal state. Though far surpassing all which we now know in blessedness, the
millennium will not be a fault­less condition. Sin and sin’s agencies will still
have a certain sway; for Satan will yet once more incite rebellion before being
finally and forever cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:3-10). But after
that the eternally perfect, the faultlessly holy, condition will be reached. Of
this condition we can as yet only catch transport­ing glimpses, and speak in
stammering accents. It is the time when God shall be all in all, and the whole
world brought into unwavering obe­dience to His will. The long-suffering Church
forever married to her Lord; Israel, once hated and forsaken, now made an
“eternal excellency, a joy of many generations;” the Gentiles, who long lay at
the gate full of sores, carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom; and the world,
with all its reconciled inhabitants, lying forever on the breast of God.

“Earth, thou grain of sand on the shore of the Universe of God; thou Bethlehem,
amongst the princely cities of the heavens, —thou art, and re­mainest, the Loved
One amongst ten thousand suns and worlds, the Chosen of God! Thee will He again
visit, and then thou wilt prepare a throne for Him, as thou gayest Him a manger
cradle; in His radiant glory wilt thou rejoice, as thou didst once drink His
blood and His tears and mourn His death! On thee has the Lord a great work to
complete!”

Endnotes:

1 “Captain Credence lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, Immanuel came with
colors flying, trumpets sounding, and the feet of His men scarce touching the
ground.” [Bunyan’s Holy War, 17.]

2 “That God in the future order of things, that is, in the kingdom of God, —in
which the glory of the faithful, which is hidden here below, will be made
visible to all, —may manifest the overwhelming richness of His grace.”
[Olshausen’s Para­phrase].

3 “That which ceases by the binding of Satan is the cohesive power of evil, by
which it has been able to become an historical and motive principle in the
development and in the life of na­tions, by which it has proved itself a ruling
power on earth. In­stead of that now comes in the development of the power of
the glorified Church of God.” [Karsten].

4 Van Osterzee, Christian Dogmatics, p. 799.

5 “How beautifully does the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 4:5) suggest the Bridal
relationship of Christ to His Church in the millen­nium! The shekinah glory has
returned: ‘A cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by
night.’ And now it is said, not as in our common version: ‘For upon all the
glory shall be a defense,’ but ‘Upon all the glory shall be the marriage
canopy.’”

6 Dr. Samuel Cox on Romans 8:19.

7 It is a one-sided spiritualism which can conceive of no perfectly consummated
blessedness save in a heaven distant as far as possible from this earth.
Infinitely more acceptable, and more worthy of God, is the Biblical conception
that this earth, too, which, through sin laden with the curse has been made the
scene of grace, has, as well as other worlds, a peculiar destina­tion to
accomplish in the realization of God’s adorable plan; and that the gulf shall
entirely cease to be, which at present exists between heaven and earth.” [Van
Oosterzee, Image of Christ, p. 491.].

8 “Upon two distinct grounds we may believe that the earth will ultimately be
made new, —First, that having been brought under the bondage of corruption, not
of its own will, but by the sin of man, it is embraced in the scope of
redemption; it is to enter into the liberty of the glory of the children of God’
(Romans 8:21). Second, that God having made man, body and soul, and appointed
the body to be an essential element in humanity, He will so order the material
world that it shall min­ister in the highest degree to all his needs. If the
body be raised into a higher condition through resurrection, there must be a
corresponding change in its material environments, the new creation serving as a
means to higher knowledge of God, and to the continual enlargement of man’s
conception of His power, wisdom, and goodness.” [Rev. S. J. Andrews, God’s
Revelations to Men, p. 361.]


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  CHAPTER 22: 02.00. THE MINISTRY OF HEALING
========================================================================

The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon Second
Thousand Revised 1883, Copyright 1882

A.J. Gordon (1836-1895) came to prominence in the United States as the
forthright evangelical pastor of Clarendon Street Baptist Church in Boston for
over 25 years. A missionary training school and publishing house were associated
with the church, and Gordon preached at many of D.L. Moody’s Northfield
Conferences, along with other notable preachers such as A.B. Simpson, A.T.
Pierson and R.A. Torrey. He wrote and published this significant book on divine
healing in 1882 and many others, including the popular book In Christ: or The
Believer’s Union With His Lord, first published in Boston in 1872.

1. The Question and Its Bearings 2. The Testimony of Scripture 3. The Testimony
of Reason 4. The Testimony of the Church 5. The Testimony of Theologians 6. The
Testimony of Missions 7. The Testimony of the Adversary 8. The Testimony of
Experience 9. The Testimony of the Healed 10. The Verdict of Candor 11. The
Verdict of Caution

12. Conclusion

13. Appendix
http://glorifyhisname.com/sys-tmpl/moh/http://peterwade.com/articles/gordaj/healcont.shtml]


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  CHAPTER 23: 02.01.     THE QUESTION AND ITS BEARINGS
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The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 1. The
Question and Its Bearings

Introductory Have there been any miracles since the days of the apostles? To
this question the common answer has been, in our times at least, a decided no. A
call recently put forth in one of our religious journals, asking the opinion of
ministers, teachers and theological professors on this point was very largely
answered; and the respondents were well nigh unanimous in the opinion that the
age of miracles passed away with the apostolic period. The statement contained
in several of these replies gave evidence indeed that the question had never
been deeply investigated by the witnesses. In some instances there was a perhaps
unintentional, evading of the issue by the question "What is a miracle?" But
there were only one or two replies which gave countenance to the view, that
miracles are possible in all ages and have appeared more or less numerously in
every period of the Church’s history. If then the little book which we now send
forth shall win any assent for its views, it will not do so in all probability
because its sentiments accord with the opinion of the majority of the
theologians of the day.

It is therefore no enviable task which we have undertaken. The demand of the
times is rather in the contrary direction from that in which our conviction
carries us. "The strongest requirement now pressing on the Church is for an
adaptation of Christianity to the age," -- so we read not long since. How
presumptuous it will look in the face of such an utterance for one to set his
face squarely in the opposite direction, and insist that the greatest present
demand is for the adaptation of the age to Christianity. And not that exactly;
for "this present evil age" can never be made to harmonize with a religion that
is entirely heavenly in" its origin, in its course and in its consummation. But
we trust it will not be presumption to say that the Church in every direction
needs to be reshaped to the apostolic model and reinvested with her apostolic
powers. For is it not apparent that between the indignant clamor of skeptics
against primitive miracles, and the stern frowning of theologians upon any
alleged modern miracles, the Lord’s people are in danger of being frightened out
of their faith in the supernatural? We speak of what we have often noticed. A
simple hearted believer comes into the assembly of the Church and details some
remarkable answer to prayer -- prayer for healing or prayer for deliverance, in
response to which he alleges that God has wrought marvelously; and then we
notice the slowness and shyness with which Christians turn their ears to the
story, and the glances of embarrassment amounting almost to shamefacedness which
they cast towards the minister, as though appealing for rescue from the perilous
neighborhood of fanaticism to which they have been drawn. This we have often
observed, and on it we have pondered, and from it we have raised the question
again and again, whether the Church has not drifted into an unseemly
cautiousness concerning the miraculous. As a religion which is ritual is sure,
to put vestments on her ministers sooner or later, so a religion which is
rational rather than spiritual, will be certain to put vestments on the Lord’s
providences, insisting on their being draped in the habiliments of decent cause
and effect, and attired in the surplice of natural law and order, lest God
should "make bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations." "The world
dislikes the recurrence of miracles." Yes, without question. For the world which
"by wisdom knew not God" is very jealous of everything which it cannot explain
or reproduce. "A miracle is something very embarrassing to mock professors."
Doubtless; for it brings such, uncomfortably near to God. Accustomed only to
such manifestations of the Infinite as have been softened and assuaged by
passing through the medium of the natural, they cannot bear this close proximity
to the Cause of causes. "He that is near to me is near to the fire" is one of
the sayings which apocrypha puts into the mouth of Christ. How shall they whose
feet have never put off their shoes of rationalism and worldliness come near the
burning bush, and into open vision of the "I am." But it is not worldlings and
false professors alone that dislike miracles. Real, true hearted and sincere
disciples are afraid of them and inclined to push away with quick impatience,
any mention of their possible occurrence in our time. In most cases probably
this aversion comes from a wholesome fear of fanaticism. On which point permit
us to observe: that fanaticism is in most instances simply the eccentric action
of doctrines that have been loosened from their connection with the Christian
system. Every truth needs the steadiness and equipoise which come from its being
bound into harmony with all other truths. If the Church by her neglect or denial
of any real doctrine of the faith thrusts that doctrine out into isolation and
contempt, thus compelling it to become the property of some special sect she
need not be surprised if it loses its balance. She has deprived it of the
conserving influence which comes from contact and communion with other and
central doctrines and so doomed it inevitably to irregular manifestations. If
the whole body of Christians had been faithful to such truths as that of the
second coming of Christ, and scriptural holiness, for example, we probably
should never have heard of the fanaticism of Adventism and perfectionism. Let a
fragment be thrown off from the most orderly planet and it will whirl and rush
through space till it is heated hot by its own momentum. It is nothing against a
doctrine in our minds therefore that it has engendered fanaticism. One who
studies the history of important religious revivals indeed must take quite an
opposite view, and suspect that it is a proof of the vitality of the truth
around which it has gathered. Who that is acquainted with the religious
movements led by Luther and Wesley and with the endless extravagances that
followed in their wake does not see that in these instances the stir produced
came from; the writhing of wounded error rather than from the birth of
falsehood, from the contortions of the strangled serpents around the cradle of a
new Hercules come for reformation. So let us be less disturbed by the
unaccustomed stir of truth than by the propriety of dead and decent error. But
we are offering no apology for fanaticism and providing no place for it in
connection with the doctrine which we are defending. It need have no place. We
believe in regeneration, the work in which God comes into immediate contact with
the soul for its renewal. That is no less a miracle than healing in which God
comes into immediate contact with the body for its recovery. In the one case
there is a direct communication of the divine life to the spirit, which Neander
calls "the standing miracle of the ages;" in the other there is a direct
communication of the divine health to the body which in the beginning was called
"a miracle of healing." An able writer has said, we believe with exact truth:
"You ask God to perform as real a miracle when you ask him to cure your soul of
sin as you do when you ask him to cure your body of a fever" (Jellett: Efficacy
of Prayer; Donnellan Lectures, 1877, p.43), Yet who of us thinks of encouraging
fanaticism by preaching and praying for man’s regeneration? Enthusiasm has often
kindled about this truth indeed, when it has had to be revived after long
neglect and denial, but not when it has been held in orderly, and recognized
relation to other cardinal doctrines.

Very beautifully did one say of the sister of the poet Wordsworth, that "it was
she who couched his eye to the beauties of nature." More than anything else is
it needed today that some one couch the eyes of Christians to the realities of
the supernatural. Holden of unbelief, filmed with suspicion and distrust, how
many of the Lord’s truest servants would be unable to discern his hand if he
were to put it forth in miracles. It is not easy for those whose daily bread has
always been forthcoming, with no occasion for the raven’s ministration to
believe in miraculous feeding. The eyes that "stand out with fatness" would be
the last ones to catch sight of the angels if they should chance to be sent with
bread to some starving disciple. To whom saith the Lord "anoint thine eyes with
eyesalve, that thou mayest see?" Is it not to those that say "I am rich and
increased in goods and in need of nothing?" If then we protest that we do not
see what others claim to have witnessed of the Lord’s outstretched hand, it may
be because of a Laodicean self-satisfaction into which we have fallen. When
shall we learn that "the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him" most
deeply, and not of necessity with those who have studied the doctrines most
deeply. And so if the eyes long unused to any sight of the Lord’s wonder-working
are to be couched to the realities of the supernatural, it may be some very
humble agent that shall perform the work, some saintly Dorothea of Mannedorf at
whose feet theologians sit to learn things which their utmost wisdom had failed
to grasp, or some Catharine of Siena who speaks to learned ecclesiastics with
such depth of insight that they exclaim with astonishment "never man spoke like
this woman." In other words let us not be too reluctant to admit that some of
God’s children in sore poverty and trial and distress, and with the keener faith
which such conditions have developed may have had dealings with God of which we
know nothing. At all events be not angry, Oh ye wise and prudent, at those
Christians of simple faith, who believe with strong confidence that they have
had the Saviour’s healing touch laid upon them. Nor should we unwittingly limit
the Lord by our too confident theories about the cessation of miracles. The
rationalist jealous of any suggestion that God in these days may cross the
boundary line that divides the natural from the supernatural cries out against
"the dogma of divine interference" as he names it. The traditionalist viewing
with equal jealousy any notion that the Lord may pass the line that separates
the apostolic from the post-apostolic age, and still act in his office of
miracle working sounds the cry of fanaticism. But what if some meantime should
begin to talk about "the crown rights of Immanuel" as the old Covenanters did,
insisting on his prerogative to work what he will, and when he will, and how he
will, without our compelling it to be said of us and of our century that "he
could not do many mighty works among them because of their unbelief?" Certainly
the time has come for us to make use of all the divine assistance that is within
our reach. If there are any residuary legacies of power and privilege accruing
to us since the fathers fell asleep, and yet remaining unclaimed, every
consideration is pressing us to come forward and take possession of them. For
observe what confessions of weakness our Protestant Churches are unconsciously
putting forth on every hand. Note the dependence which is placed on artistic
music, on expensive edifices, on culture and eloquence in the pulpit; on
literary and social entertainments for drawing in the people, and on fairs and
festivals for paying expenses. Hear the reports that come in at any annual
convention of Churches, of the new organs and fres-coings and furnishings, and
of the -- not saints’ festivals -- but strawberry festivals and ice cream
festivals and flower festivals and the large results therefrom accruing. And all
this from Churches that count themselves to be the body of Christ and the
habitation of God through the Spirit! Is not this an infinite descent from the
primitive records of power and success -- the Lord "confirming the word with
signs following" and the preaching which was "not with enticing words of man’s
wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power?"

How deeply we need the demonstration of the Spirit in these days! We have not
utterly lost it indeed. When men are renewed by the Holy Ghost, and give the
world the exhibition of a life utterly and instantly transformed, that is a
master stroke for our divine religion. "And that is all we want," most will say.
But did such ever witness an instance of a drunkard cured in a moment of
enslaving appetite by the prayer of faith; the opium habit which had baffled for
years every device of the physicians broken and utterly eradicated by the direct
energy of God’s spirit; the consumptive brought back from the edge of the grave,
or the blind made to see by the same power, after long years of darkness and the
glowing love, the ex-exultant thankfulness, the fervid consecration which almost
invariably follow such gracious deliverances? If they have not, they have not
witnessed a sight that has within our own time and knowledge extorted conviction
from the most reluctant witnesses. These are some of the practical bearings of
the question before us.

It is not our purpose in this volume to define a miracle any further than we
have already done so. For the definitions generally given are widely variant;
and it is easy for a disputant to evade facts by entrenching himself behind a
definition. We prefer rather to appeal to specimens of acknowledged miracles and
then to press the question whether there have been any like them in modern days.
It is written in the Acts of the Apostles as follows. "And it came to pass, that
the father of Publius lay sick of a fever and of a bloody flux; to whom Paul
entered in and prayed and laid his hands on him and healed him" (Acts 28:8).
This is conceded, we suppose to be a miracle of healing. Has anything of the
same sort occurred in the Church since the days of the apostles?

Again it is written in the same book: "And a certain man lame from his mother’s
womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called
Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple: Who, seeing Peter
and John about to go into the temple, asked an alms. And Peter, fastening his
eyes upon him with John, said, Look on us. And he gave heed unto them, expecting
to receive something of them. Then Peter said, silver and gold have I none; but
such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and
walk. And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his
feet and ankle bones received strength. And he leaping up stood, and walked, and
entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God" (Acts
3:2-8). This transaction is expressly called a "miracle of healing" in the same
scripture. Has there been any recurrence of such a miracle since the time of
Christ’s immediate disciples? It has been our purpose in preparing the present
volume to let the history of the Church of all ages answer to the teaching of
scripture on this question without presuming to dogmatize upon it ourselves.

One who has not committed himself on this subject, as it was the fortune of the
writer to do a year ago in a little tract called "The Ministry of Healing" has
several things to learn. First that there is a sensitiveness amounting often to
extreme irritability towards any who venture to disturb the traditional view of
this question. Credulity is sure to get more censure than honest doubt; and
while one may with impunity fall behind the accepted standard of faith
concerning the supernatural, provided he does it in a regretfully necessitous
spirit, it is hardly safe for one to go beyond that standard. Thus a little
experience has made us aware of the peril to which we have exposed ourselves of
being sorely shot at by the theological archers. But being defamed we still
entreat our critics to deal kindly and candidly with us since we desire naught
but the furtherance of the truth. But in another way one has a real advantage
who has published his views on such a question. His communication puts him en
rapport with those like-minded, and opens to him sources of information which he
could not otherwise have had. It has been an occasion of no little surprise to
us to learn how widely the minds of Christians of all names and countries are
exercised upon this subject. Information to this effect has come to us not only
in the constant testimonies from humble Christians who bear witness to what God
has wrought in their own bodies; but also from pastors and evangelists and bible
readers and foreign missionaries and in one instance from a theological
professor expressing their strong assent to the view which is herein set forth.
We are well aware indeed that it is not a question of human opinion, but of
scriptural testimony. On the word of God therefore we wish our argument to lean
its heaviest weight. The witnesses which we have brought forward from the Church
of all the ages, have been summoned only that they may corroborate this word.
May the Lord graciously use whatever of truth there may be in this volume for
the comfort and blessing of his children; may he mercifully pardon whatever of
error or forwardness of opinion it may contain. And if by his blessing and
furtherance our words should bring a ray of hope to any who are sick, let not
those who are "whole" and who "need not a physician," unreasonably grudge their
suffering and afflicted brethren this boon of comfort.


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  CHAPTER 24: 02.02.     THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE
========================================================================

The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 2. The
Testimony of Scripture In the atonement of Christ there seems to be a foundation
laid for faith in bodily healing. Seems -- we say, for the passage to which we
refer is so profound and unsearchable in its meaning that one would be very
careful not to speak dogmatically in regard to it. But it is at least a deep and
suggestive truth that we have Christ set before us as the sickness-bearer as
well as the sin-bearer of his people. In the gospel it is written, "And he cast
out devils and healed all that were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was
spoken by Esaias the prophet saying, Himself took our infirmities and bare our
sicknesses" (Matthew 8:17). Something more than sympathetic fellowship with our
sufferings is evidently referred to here. The yoke of his cross by which he
lifted our iniquities took hold also of our diseases; so that it is in some
sense true that as God "made him to be sin for us who knew no sin," so he made
him to be sick for us who knew no sickness. He who entered into mysterious
sympathy with our pain which is the fruit of sin, also put himself underneath
our pain which is the penalty of sin. In other words the passage seems to teach
that Christ endured vicariously our diseases as well as our iniquities.

(Dr. Hovey commenting on this passage says: "The words quoted by the evangelist
are descriptive in the original passage of vicarious suffering. It is next to
impossible to understand them otherwise. Hence in the miraculous healing of
disease, a fruit if not a penalty of sin, Jesus appears to have had a full sense
of the evil and pain which he removed. His anguish in the garden and on the
cross was but the culmination of that which he felt almost daily while healing
the sick, cleansing the leprous or forgiving the penitent. By the holy sharpness
of his vision he pierced quite through the veil of sense and natural cause, and
saw the moral evil, the black root of all disorder, the source of all bodily
suffering. He could therefore heal neither bodily nor spiritual disease without
a deep consciousness of his special relation to man as the substitute, the
Redeemer, the Lamb of God who was to bear the penalty of the world’s guilt." The
Miracles of Christ, p.120.)

If now it be true that our Redeemer and substitute bore our sicknesses, it would
be natural to reason at once that he bore them that we might not bear them. And
this inference is especially strengthened from the fact, that when the Lord
Jesus removed the burden of disease from "all that were sick," we are told that
it was done "that the scripture might be fulfilled, Himself took our infirmities
and bare our sicknesses." Let us remember what our theology is in regard to
atonement for sin. "Christ bore your sins, that you might be delivered from
them," we say to the penitent. Not sympathy -- a suffering with, but
substitution -- a suffering for, is our doctrine of the Cross; and therefore we
urge the transgressor to accept the Lord Jesus as his sin-bearer, that he may
himself no longer have to bear the pains and penalties of his disobedience. But
should we shrink utterly from reasoning thus concerning Christ as our
pain-bearer? We do so argue to some extent at least. For we hold that in its
ultimate consequences the atonement affects the body as well as the soul of man.
Sanctification is the consummation of Christ’s redemptive work for the soul; and
resurrection is the consummation of his redemptive work for the body. And these
meet and are fulfilled at the coming and kingdom of Christ. But there is a vast
intermediate work of cleansing and renewal effected for the soul. Is there none
of healing and recovery for the body? Here, to make it plain, is the Cross of
Christ; yonder is the Coming of Christ. These are the two piers of redemption,
spanned by the entire dispensation of the Spirit and by all the ordinances and
offices of the gospel. At the cross we read this two-fold declaration: -- "Who
his own self bare our sins."

"Himself bare our sicknesses." At the coming we find this two-fold work
promised: -- "The sanctification of the Spirit."

"The redemption of the body." The work of sanctification for the spirit
stretches on from the cross to the crown, progressive and increasing till it is
completed. Does the work of the body’s redemption touch only at these two remote
points? Has the gospel no office of healing and blessing to proclaim meantime
for the physical part of man’s nature? In answering this question we only make
the following suggestions, which point significantly in one direction.

Christ’s ministry was a two-fold ministry, effecting constantly the souls and
the bodies of men. "Thy sins are forgiven thee," and "Be whole of thy plague,"
are parallel announcements of the Saviour’s work which are found constantly
running on side by side. The ministry of the apostles, under the guidance of the
Comforter, is the exact facsimile of the Master’s. Preaching the kingdom and
healing the sick; redemption for the soul and deliverance for the body -- these
are its great offices and announcements. Certain great promises of the gospel
have this double reference to pardon and cure. The commission for the world’s
evangelization bids its messengers stretch out their hands to the sinner with
the message, "He that believeth shall be saved," and to "lay hands on the sick
and they shall recover." The promise by James, concerning the prayer of faith,
is that it "shall save the sick, and if he have committed sins they shall be
forgiven him." Thus this two-fold ministry of remission of sins and remission of
sickness extends through the days of Christ and that of the apostles.

We only suggest these facts, leaving the example and acts and promises of the
Lord and his apostles to stretch out their silent index in the direction which
our argument will obediently pursue throughout this discussion.

Only one other fact need be alluded to -- the subtle, mysterious, and clearly
recognized relation of sin and disease. The ghastly flag of leprosy, flung out
in the face of Miriam, told instantly that the pirate sin had captured her
heart. Not less truly did the crimson glow of health announce her forgiveness
when afterwards the Lord had pardoned her and restored her to his fellowship.
And it is obvious at once that our Redeemer cannot forgive and eradicate sin
without in the same act disentangling the roots which that sin has struck into
our mortal bodies.

He is the second Adam come to repair the ruin of the first. And in order to
accomplish this he will follow the lines of man’s transgression back to their
origin, and forward to their remotest issue. He will pursue the serpent trail of
sin, dispensing his forgiveness and compassion as he goes, till at last he finds
the wages of sin, and dies its death on the cross; and he will follow the
wretched track of disease with his healing and recovery, till in his
resurrection he shall exhibit to the world the first fruits of these redeemed
bodies, in which "this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this
mortal shall have put on immortality." From this mysterious and solemn doctrine
of the gospel, let us turn now to some of its clear and explicit promises.

We will take first the words of the gospel according to Mark: "These signs shall
follow them that believe: in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall
speak with other tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any
deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay their hands on the sick and
they shall recover" (Mark 16:17-18 -- See 13. Appendix, Note C)).

It is important to observe that this rich cluster of miraculous promises all
hangs by a single stem, faith. And this is not some exclusive, or esoteric
faith. The same believing to which is attached the promise of salvation, has
joined to it also the promise of miraculous working. Nor is there any ground for
limiting this promise to apostolic times and apostolic men, as has been so
violently attempted. The links of the covenant are very securely forged, "He
that believeth and is baptized shall be saved," in any and every age of the
Christian dispensation. So with one consent the church has interpreted the
words, "And these signs shall follow them that believe" in every generation and
period of the church’s history; -- so the language compels us to conclude. And
let us not unbraid this two-fold cord of promise, holding fast to the first
strand because we know how to use it, and flinging the other back to the
apostles because we know not how to use it. When our Lord gives command to the
twelve, as he sends them forth, "to heal all manner of sickness and all manner
of diseases," we might conclude that this was an apostolic commission, and one
which we could not be warranted in applying to ourselves. But here the promise
is not only to the apostles, but to those who should believe on Christ through
the word of these apostles; or as Bullinger the Reformer very neatly puts it in
his comment on the passage, to "both the Lord’s disciples and the disciples of
the Lord’s disciples." And to show his belief in the fulfillment of the promise,
Bullinger adds, "To this the Acts of the Apostles bear witness. Ecclesiastical
history bares witness to the same. Lastly, the present times bear witness;
wherein through confidence in the name of Christ numbers greatly afflicted and
shattered with disease are restored afresh to health."

Whatever practical difficulties we may have in regard to the fulfillment of this
word, these ought not to lead us to limit it where the Lord has not limited it.
For if reason or tradition throws one half of this illustrious promise into
eclipse, the danger is that the other half may become involved. Indeed we shall
not soon forget the cogency with which we heard a skillful skeptic use this text
against one who held the common opinion concerning it. Urged to "believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ," that he might be saved, he answered: "How can I be sure that
this part of the promise will be kept with me, when, as you admit, the other
part is not kept with the church of today?" And certainly, standing on the
traditional ground, one must be dumb before such reasoning. The only safe
position is to assert emphatically the perpetuity of the promise, and with the
same emphasis to admit the general weakness and failure of the church’s faith in
appropriating it. ("The reason why many miracles are not now wrought is not so
much because faith is established, as that unbelief reigns." -- Bengel.) For who
does not see that a confession of human inability is a far safer and more
rational refuge for the Christian than an implication of the divine
changeableness and limitation. There is a phrase of the apostle Paul which has
always struck us as containing marvellous keenness and wisdom if not covert
irony -- "What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh." The
law must not be impugned by even a suspicion; "the law of the Lord is perfect."
But there has been utter failure under its working -- the perfection which it
requires has not appeared. Rashly and dangerously, it would seem, the apostle
has arraigned the law, telling us what it "could not do" and wherein it was
"weak" -- and then, having brought us to the perilous edge of disloyalty, he
suddenly turns and puts the whole fault on us where it belongs -- "What the law
could not do in that it was weak through the flesh." The one weak spot in the
law is human nature; there is where the break is sure to come; there is where
the fault is sure to lie. In like manner this great promise, with which Christ’s
commission is enriched and authenticated, has failed only through our unbelief.
It is weak through the weakness of our faith, and inoperative through lack of
our co-operating obedience. ("It is the want of faith in our age which is the
greatest hindrance to the stronger and more marked appearance of that miraculous
power which is working here and there in quiet concealment. Unbelief is the
final and most important reason for the retrogression of miracles." --
Christlieb’s Modern Doubt, p.336.) We believe therefore that whatever
difficulties there may be in us, there is but one attitude for us to take as
expounders of the scripture, that of unqualified assent. The treatment which the
commentator Stier gives to this passage is truly refreshing. It is a brawny
Saxon exegesis laying hold of a text, to cling to it, not to cull from it; to
crown it with an amen! not to condition it with a date. For he puts the two
sayings side by side and bids us look at them. "He that believeth; shall be
saved:" "Them that believe; these signs shall follow." And then he gives us
these strong words. "Both the one and the other apply to ourselves down to the
present day and indeed for all future time. Every one applies the first part of
the saying to ourselves: teaching everywhere that faith and baptism are
necessary in all ages to salvation, and that unbelief in all ages excludes from
it. But what right has any to separate the words that Jesus immediately added
from his former words? Where is it said that these former words have reference
to all men and all Christians, but that the promised signs which should follow
those who believe referred solely to the Christians of the first age? What God
hath joined together, let not man put asunder."

It should be observed however, that while the same word is employed in both
clauses of this text, there is a change in number from the singular to the
plural form. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." The promise of
eternal life is to personal faith, and to every individual on the ground of his
faith. "Them that believe, these signs shall follow." The promise of miracles is
to the faithful as a body. The church has come into existence so soon as any
have believed and been baptized; and thus this guarantee of miraculous signs
seems to be to the church in its corporate capacity. "Are all workers of
miracles? have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues?" asks the
apostle. Nay, but some employ these offices, so that the gifts are found in the
church as a whole. For the church is "the body of Christ," and to vindicate its
oneness with the Head it shall do the things which he did, as well as speak the
words which he spake. How significant the place where this promise is found! It
was given just as the Lord was to be received up into heaven to become "Head
over all things to his church." It is Elijah’s mantle let fall upon Elisha; so
that having this, the disciple can repeat the miracles of the Master (2 Kings
2:9; 2 Kings 2:15). Oh timid church, praying for a "double portion of the
Spirit" of the ascending prophet, and having his promise "greater works than
these shall ye do, because I go to my Father," and yet afraid to claim even a
fragment of his miracle working power! We conclude therefore that this text
teaches that the miraculous gifts were bestowed to abide in the church to the
end, though not that every believer should be endowed with them. This promise
given in Mark emerges in performance in the Acts of the Apostles. But it is
significant and to be carefully observed, that the miraculous gifts are not
found exclusively in the hands of the Apostles. Stephen and Philip and Barnabas,
exercised them. These did not belong to the twelve, to that special and
separated body of disciples with whom it has been said, that the gifts were
intended to remain. It was not Stephen an apostle, but "Stephen a man full of
faith and of the Holy Ghost --" "Stephen full of faith and power" that "did
great wonders and miracles among the people" (Acts 6:5; Acts 6:8). We in these
days cannot be apostles: but we are commanded to be "filled with the Spirit,"
and therefore are at least required and enjoined to have Stephen’s
qualifications. According to the teaching in Corinthians it is as members of
Christ’s body and partakers of his Spirit, that we receive these truths. ("You
say that Christ Jesus and his Apostles and Messengers were endued with power
from on high not only to preach the word for conversion but also with power of
casting out Devils and healing bodily diseases. I answer, as an holy witness of
Christ Jesus once answered a Bishop, ’I am a member of Christ Jesus as well as
Peter himself.’ The least Believer and Follower of Jesus partakes of the nature
and spirit of him their holy head and husband as well the strongest and holiest
that ever did or suffered for his holy name." Roger Williams Experiments of
Spiritual life and Health, 1652.)

We come now to consider the promise in James 5:14-15. "Is any sick among you?
Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him anointing
him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the
sick, and the Lord shall raise him up: and if he have committed sins they shall
be forgiven him."

Now let us note the presumption there is that this passage refers to an
established and perpetual usage in the Church. That command in the great
commission -- "Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost," appears in the Acts of the apostles in constant exercise; and
in the letters of the Apostles as explained unfolded and enforced. Romans 6:3-4;
Colossians 2:12; 1 Peter 3:21. The injunction given at the institution of the
supper "This do in remembrance of me" appears in the Acts of the Apostles in
constant exercise; and in the letters of the apostles as explained and unfolded,
and enforced. Acts 46(?); 1 Corinthians 10:11. The promise given also in the
great commission, "They shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall
recover" appears in the Acts of the Apostles in constant exercise, and in the
letters of the apostles as explained, unfolded and enforced. 1 Corinthians
12:29; James 5:14-15. Thus this office like the great ordinances of Christianity
rests on the three-fold support of promise and practice and precept. And we
cannot too strongly emphasize this fact that what was given by our Lord in
promise before his ascension should appear as an established usage in the church
after his ascension. For we all insist that the church of the apostles was the
model for all time. When we are called "followers of the Lord" we might rightly
protest that though his followers, we surely could not be expected to walk in
his steps as he enters the field of the miraculous. When we hear Paul saying "Be
ye followers of me, as I am of Christ" we might well insist that we could not
imitate him in working wonders since he is an apostle and we only humble
disciples. But when we read "For ye brethren became followers of the churches of
God which in Judea are in Christ" we say "Yes! in every point and punctilio. For
these are the pattern for all churches in all time." So we all hold and teach.
We believe that there is nothing in all the ordering and furniture of the church
which was present in the beginning which should be absent now. And if we rejoice
in having the laver and the bread of the ordinances, the ministry of the word
and prayer; not the less should we willingly be without the primitive miraculous
gifts which were like the Shechinah glory, the outward visible signs of God’s
presence among his people. To return now to the text which we are considering.
Here is the calling for the elders of the church -- a voluntary appeal to the
ministry and intercessions of the servants of God. Oil is applied as a symbol of
the communication of the Spirit, by whose power healing is effected. It does not
seem reasonable to suppose, that it is used for its medicinal properties.
Because observe, it is the elders of the church, not the doctors of physic, who
are called to apply it; and it is accompanied by prayer, not by manipulations
and medications. As in Baptism the disciple confesses his faith in the cleansing
power of Christ’s atonement, by the use of water; or, as in the Communion he
declares his dependence on Christ for spiritual sustenance, by the use of bread;
so here he avows his faith in the saving health of the Spirit by the use of oil.
(Lange commenting on Mark 6:13: "And they anointed with oil many that were sick
and healed them" says that oil here is "simply a symbolic medium of the
miraculous work;" and that "the anointing was a symbol of the bestowment of the
Spirit as a preliminary condition of healing.") In other words, this whole
ceremony is a kind of sacramental profession of faith in Jesus Christ as the
Divine Physician acting through the Holy Ghost. Such public profession of faith
in Christ as the Healer, the Lord seems rigidly to require, just as he demands
baptism as a confession of faith in him as the Redeemer. Neither in the
forgiveness of sin nor in the remission of sickness will he permit a clandestine
blessing. There are many who would gladly secure his healing virtue by stealth,
laying hold of it secretly, but avoiding the publicity and possible reproach of
having applied to such a physician. But this cannot be. The Lord will have an
open acknowledgment of our faith. It will be remembered that from the woman whom
he healed of an issue of blood, he drew forth a public confession before he
pronounced that full and authoritative absolution from sickness, "go in peace
and be whole of thy plague." ("Therefore when she held her peace trusting that
she might still be undescribed, he looked round about upon the people. This
looking about was a gesture of him that courteously required a confession of the
benefit received. He would not utter her by name, lest he should have seemed to
hit her in the teeth with the good turn heshamefacednessas a prick or
provocation given to make her to put away that unprofitable shamefasteners and
to wring out of her a wholesome confession." - Thomas Key.) The promise of
recovery is explicit and unconditional -- "And the prayer of faith shall save
the sick and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins they
shall be forgiven him." Doubtless the words "prayer of faith" should be strongly
emphasized. It is the intercession accompanied by the special miraculous faith
alluded to in the scriptures as "the gift of faith," and "the gift of healing"
-- a faith which we believe to be not wanting in this age, though comparatively
so rare. And the words which Bengel italicizes in his Commentary ought to be
strongly marked -- "Let them use oil who are able by their prayers to obtain
recovery for the sick; let those who cannot do this abstain from the empty
sign." If the peculiar miraculous faith of which we speak had utterly
disappeared from the church, then it would certainly be best that the usage of
anointing should be wanting also, rather than continue as a hollow sign, or as
in the extreme unction of the church of Rome, a standing sacramental confession
of inability to render any help to the diseased. But we are persuaded better
things than this. We believe that there are those in our own time who have
humbly sought, and manifestly obtained this gift of prevailing faith. If the
larger majority of Christians, either through wrong teaching or indifference
have willingly consented to surrender this primitive birthright of the church,
and have learned to say without emotion to the sick, that lie at their doors
"thy bruise is incurable, and thy wound is ggrievous there is none to plead thy
cause that thou mayest be bound up;" there are some who are more jealous for the
Lord’s honor in this matter. Because they believe that the miraculous gifts are
for all ages, they have thought it not covetous to seek them for themselves --
and yet not for themselves, but that through them the Lord might still show
forth his glory. And why should it be thought a thing incredible that they may
have obtained what they sought? In the old dispensation were miracles of healing
shut up within some narrow and special age? Run through the list and see: --
Abraham healing Abimelech and his household by his prayers to God; Moses crying
unto God for Miriam, "Heal her now, O God I beseech thee," and the Lord,
answering with the promise that after seven days her leprosy should depart;
God’s cure of the bitten Israelites in answer to Moses’ prayer, and through a
look of faith at the brazen serpent; Naaman the Syrian recovered of his leprosy
by the faith of Elisha; Hezekiah raised up from his death bed in answer to
prayer and his life lengthened out fifteen years, and other instances which we
have not space to refer to. These miracles of healing were not confined to the
opening of a dispensation, but belonged to its entire history. Indeed
intercession for healing was a part of the very ritual of Jewish worship and its
answer a part of God’s explicit covenant with his people. Hear Solomon’s prayer
at the dedication of the Temple. "Whatsoever sore, or whatsoever sickness there
be: then what prayer, or what supplication soever shall be made of any man, or
of all thy people Israel, then hear Thou from heaven Thy dwelling-place, and
forgive" (2 Chronicles 6:28-30). And hear God’s promise in reference to this
same matter. "I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication that thou hast made
before me: I have hallowed this house to put my name there forever" (1 Kings
9:3). "If I shut up heaven, or if I send pestilence among my people; if my
people humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked
ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal
their land" (2 Chronicles 7:13-14). Here is a broad promise conditioned indeed
by the repentance and faith of the people of Israel, but fenced by no statute of
limitations, shutting up God’s mercies within a certain miraculous era. And we
know from the history of prophets and saints how constantly this promise opened
to the key of faith and poured forth its treasures. This under the old covenant!
How much greater things might we expect under the new, after that the Lord had
ascended up on high and given gifts to men -- the Comforter the greatest and
supreme gift to abide perpetually in the church; and with him and through him,
"miracles, gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues."

It is comparatively easy indeed to credit miracles in these olden times of
patriarchs and prophets, because of the enchantment of distance and the halo of
superior sanctity through which the men of these times are seen. But antiquity
has no monopoly of God’s gifts, and ancient men as such had no entry into God’s
treasure house which is denied to us. How very significantly James enforces the
doctrine, "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." After
the exhortation, "pray one for another that ye may be healed" -- as though
reading the thoughts which might come into our minds, of the superior faith of
prophets and the higher privilege of apostles, the Spirit adds, "Elias was a man
subject to like passions as we are" -- Not some privileged courtier of the King
of kings, not some high and titled chancellor of the exchequer of heaven having
rights of access and intercourse with God of which we know nothing -- "and he
prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth for the
space of three years and six months, and he prayed again and the heavens gave
rain and the earth brought forth her fruit." If he could shut and open heaven,
not the less can you the children of today, since he is a brother and kinsman in
the same bonds of frailty, and fear, and also a son and disciple of "the same
Lord over all who is rich unto all that call upon him."

Such is the Spirit’s practical enforcement of this great promise of healing. How
much we need to ponder it! How much we need to relearn the truth, that, though
Christ who heard the cry of the suffering and touched them with healing, has
gone far off "above all heavens," and ages have been added to his eternal years
"whose goings forth have been of old from everlasting," still "his hand is not
shortened that it cannot save; neither is his ear heavy that it cannot hear."


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  CHAPTER 25: 02.03.     THE TESTIMONY OF REASON
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The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 3. The
Testimony of Reason

"Nowise contrary to scripture and very agreeable to reason" is the opinion with
which Archbishop Tillotson closes his observations on the recurrence of
Christian miracles in modern times.

It may be asked, what reason has to do with such a question; Nothing except as
corroborating the testimony of faith. Miracles have not been generally defended
on the ground of their intrinsic reasonableness, but on that of their scriptural
authority; and that in us which first assents to their reality is not so much
the logical mind as the docile heart -- "the heart proffering itself by
humiliation to inspiration" as Pascal expresses it. And yet we hold that to
believe in miracles is reasonable, after it is faithful. That supreme miracle,
the resurrection of our Lord, was first credited and published by loving and
devoted believers; but it has since been defended again and again by Christian
philosophers. So then, reason is not forbidden to look into the empty tomb and
see the folded grave clothes and therefrom to conclude that Christ is risen,
only she must be accompanied by faith and not be surprised if faith like that
"other disciple" shall outrun her and come first to the sepulchre (John 20:4).

Believing miracles to have existed in the days of Christ and the Apostles, is it
reasonable to conclude that they may have continued to exist until our own time?
It seems to us that it is. For in the first place if they should cease they
would form quite a distinct exception to every thing which the Lord introduced
by his ministry. The doctrines which he promulgated and which his apostles
preached, atonement, justification, sanctification and redemption, have never
been abrogated or modified. The ordinances which he enjoined, Baptism and the
Lord’s Supper, have never been repealed. The divine operations in the soul,
which he ordained for man’s recovery from the fall, "the washing of regeneration
and the renewing of the Holy Ghost" have never been suspended. These belong to
the dispensation of Grace which Jesus Christ introduced and which is to span the
whole period between his first and his second advents. All orthodox Christians
hold them to be perpetual and unchangeable. And not only so, there was to be a
development of these doctrines and operations of Christianity under the
administration of the Spirit, so that the stream which started with Christ’s
ministry was to widen and deepen under the ministry of those who should come
after him. "I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,
howbeit when he the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you into all truth"
-- an enlargement of knowledge and a development of doctrine under the ministry
of the Comforter rather than a decrease!

"Verily, verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do
shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my
Father" (John 14:12; John 16:13) -- A reinforcement of power for service rather
than an abatement! And all intelligent Christians admit that these promises were
fulfilled in the wider unfolding of truth and the more extensive work of
regeneration which have occurred under the administration of the Spirit. The law
of Christianity is from less to greater, and not from greater to less. "Of all
that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up"
are the significant words with which the Acts of the Apostles opens; and as the
beginnings are less than the unfoldings, we may conclude that the Lord was to do
more through the Spirit’s ministry than through his own. And so far as works of
regeneration and salvation are concerned this undoubtedly proved true and is
proving just as true today. The conversion of three thousand souls in a single
day under Peter’s preaching surpasses any thing which occurred in the earthly
ministry of Christ; and the conversion of ten thousand in a year on a single
mission field in India, also surpasses the results of any single year in the
Saviour’s ministry.

Now as the "works" of Christ are among the things which He "began to do,"
miracles of healing stood side by side with miracles of regeneration and
therefore we say that the theory of the "gradual cessation" of miracles
contradicts all analogy. We have read of certain South African rivers which
instead of beginning as tiny brooks and flowing on deepening and widening as
they go, burst out from prolific springs and then become shallower and shallower
as they flow on until they are lost in the wastes of sand without ever reaching
the sea. Two streams of blessings started from the personal ministry of our
Lord, a stream of healing and a stream of regeneration; the one for the recovery
of the body and the other for the recovery of the soul, and these two flowed on
side by side through the apostolic age. Is it quite reasonable to suppose that
the purpose of God was that one should run on through the whole dispensation of
the Spirit and that the other should fade away and utterly disappear within a
single generation? We cannot think so.

If miracles were abnormal manifestations of divine power, against nature as well
as above nature, they might indeed be expected to cease; for the abnormal is not
as a rule perpetual; The earthquakes and volcanoes, nature’s agues and fever
fits are soon over; but the sunshine and the rain, the breezes and the blossoms,
nature’s tokens of health are perennial. And miracles of healing are
manifestations of nature’s perfect health and wholeness, lucid intervals granted
to our deranged and suffering humanity. They are not catastrophes, but
exhibitions of that divine order which shall be brought in when our redemption
is completed. We cannot for a moment admit the complaint of skeptics that
miracles are an infraction of the laws of nature. Alas! for them that they have
so lost their ear for harmony that they cannot distinguish earth’s wail from
Heaven’s Alleluiah; and know not the difference between the groans of a
suffering creation and the music of the spheres, as it was on that day when "the
morning stars sung together and all the sons of God shouted for joy."

Miracles of healing and dispossession are reminiscences of an unfallen Paradise
and prophecies of a Paradise regained. Though we call them supernatural, they
are not contranatural. "For surely" as one has said, "it is plainly contrary to
nature and indeed most unnatural that one should have eyes and not see, ears and
not hear, organs of speech and not speak, and limbs without the power to use
them; but not that a Saviour should come and loose his fetters. It was contrary
to nature that ruthless death should sever the bands of love which God himself
has knit between mother and son, between brother and sister but not that a young
man of Nain or a Lazarus should be released from the fetters of death through a
mighty word! And that was the climax of the unnatural that the world should nail
the only righteous one to the cross; but not that the holy bearer of that cross
should conquer undeserved death, should rise and victoriously enter into his
glory" (Christlieb).

If then miracles of healing are exhibitions of divine recovery and order in
nature and not rude irruptions of disorder, why having been once begun should
they entirely cease? We are under the dispensation of the Spirit which we hold
to be an unchangeable dispensation so long as it shall continue. On the day of
Pentecost the Holy Spirit was installed in office to abide in the church
perpetually. Exactly as the first disciples were under the personal ministry of
Christ we are under the personal ministry of the Comforter. Having begun his
miracles at Cana of Galilee, Jesus never permanently suspended them. His last
gracious act before he was delivered into the hands of wicked men was to stretch
forth his hand and heal the ear of the high priest’s servant. And having wrought
the first notable miracle after Pentecost by the hand of Peter at "the Beautiful
gate" why should the Holy Ghost in a little while cease from his miraculous
works? We know that the Lord "did not many mighty works" in a certain place
"because of their unbelief" and that the place where he was thus hindered was
"in his own country and in his own house." But we know not that he would not do
mighty works in any place if faith were present; and were it not a simpler
solution of this whole question to say that possibly Christ through the Holy
Ghost will not do many miracles today on account of man’s unbelief, than to say
that he wills not to do them?

Then again the use which was made of miracles of healing as signs seems to argue
strongly for their permanency.

If the substance remains unchanged why should the sign which was originally
chosen to exhibit it be superseded?

It is said, indeed, with some show of reasonableness, that Christianity being a
spiritual system, physical miracles were but the staging employed for the
erection of that system, destined to fall away and disappear so soon as it
should be completed. That certainly might be so. But how do we regard the
argument of those who have reasoned precisely thus about the ordinances of
Christianity? The Friends and other bodies of religionists have said that the
rites of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are too physical to be perpetuated in
connection with a spiritual religion; that whatever place they may have had in
the founding of Christianity they are not demanded for its continuance. To which
we reply at once -- first, that they constitute a vivid sign and picture-writing
of the great foundation facts of Christianity, the death and resurrection of our
Lord; that they are a pledge and earnest of those great things to come at the
resurrection of the just and the marriage supper of the Lamb, and that by the
constant and glowing appeal which they make to the senses, they tend to keep
these facts in perpetual remembrance; and, secondly, that however we may reason
about it, these are ordinances, established for continual observance by the Lord
until he come, and therefore we are forbidden to terminate them. This reasoning
would be accepted, doubtless, as sound by all orthodox believers. But we can
argue in precisely the same way about the "signs" which attested the first
preaching of the Gospel. In the great commission we have them solemnly
established as the accompaniments of preaching and believing the Gospel. In
James’ epistle we find healing recognized as an ordinance, just as in Paul’s
epistles to the Romans and to the Corinthians we find Baptism and the Supper
recognized as ordinances. As signs they could never loose their significance
till the Lord comes again; they pointed upward and told the world that Christ
who had been crucified was alive and on the throne; they pointed forward and
declared that he would come again and subdue all things unto himself. This last
we believe to be the chief testimony of miracles as signs: They were given to be
witnesses to the "restitution of all things" which Christ shall accomplish at
his coming and Kingdom. For notice how invariably our Lord joins the commandment
to heal the sick and to cast out devils with the commission to preach the
Kingdom, thus: "Jesus went about preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and healing
all manner of sickness and all manner of disease amongst the people." "And as ye
go preach, saying: the Kingdom of Heaven is as hand. Heal the sick; cleanse the
lepers; raise the dead; cast out devils." (Matthew 4:23; Matthew 10:7; read also
Luke 9:1; Luke 10:9.) Healing and resurrection and the casting out of demons
were a kind of firstfruits of the Kingdom, to be presented along with its
announcement. As, to use a familiar illustration, the commercial traveler
carries samples of his goods as he goes forth soliciting trade, the Lord would
have his ministers carry specimens and tokens of the Kingdom in their hands as
they went forth to preach that Kingdom. ("The devil is said to be he who has the
power of death: he is the author of death; he introduced sin into the world, and
through sin death; and as he is the author of death, so he is the author of
disease, which is just a form of death, and which, as well as death, is the work
of the devil. And, therefore, Jesus while he was upon the earth healed the sick
and raised the dead, not merely to typify a spiritual healing and quickening,
but to prove that he was indeed the promised Deliverer by destroying the works
of the devil, and also to give a foretaste and a shadow of the ultimate effect
of his redemption upon the whole man, body and soul. And thus we find in the New
Testament that the healing of the sick and the preaching of the Gospel of the
Kingdom are almost always co-joined, and are so spoken of as though they meant
the same thing" -- Thos Erskine; Broun Serpent, p.272.) This seems to be what is
referred to in that picture of the groaning creation which we find in the eighth
chapter of Romans: "But ourselves, also, which have the firstfruits of the
Spirit even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to wit
the redemption of the body" (Romans 8:23). As though it were said: we have
witnessed the works of the Spirit in healing the body of its sicknesses, in
dispossessing it of the evil spirit, in quickening it from the power of death;
and this makes us long only the more for that crowning and consummated work of
the Spirit, of which these things are but an earnest; when "he that raised up
Jesus from the dead shall quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth
in you." These signs were the fore-tokens of the body’s redemption which the
Lord at the first bid his messengers carry with them as they went forth
preaching Jesus and the resurrection. Even dumb, suffering nature would be made
glad by the sight of them. Goethe beautifully says, "Often have I had the
sensation as if nature in wailing sadness entreated something of me, so that not
to understand what she longed for cut me to the heart." But we understand what
she longs for, "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in
pain together until now, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the
body." And they who "have tasted the powers of the world to come" were bidden to
go forth and preach the Kingdom, bearing in their hands the grapes of Eschol,
which they have brought from that Kingdom, that they may show what a goodly land
that is where "The inhabitant shall no more say I am sick." Thus, not only our
wounded and pain-stricken humanity shall be cheered with the hope of better
things, but even dumb nature shall be comforted by these fore-gleams of that
millennium wherein "the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage
of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." ("Sickness is
sin apparent in the body, the presentiment of death, the forerunner of
corruption. Disease of every kind is mortality begun. Now, as Christ came to
destroy death, and will yet redeem the body from the bondage of corruption, if
the Church is to have a firstfruits or earnest of this power it must be by
receiving power over diseases which are the first fruits and earnest of death."
-- Edward Irving. Works. V. p.464.)

Now why, if these credentials were so rigidly attached to the first preaching of
the Kingdom, should they utterly disappear from its later proclamation? There is
the same groaning of creation to be answered; the same coming of the King to be
announced; the same unrepealed commission of the Master to be carried out. The
answer given by the majority to this question is: "Signs are no longer needed."
If reason can be satisfied with this answer, faith cannot. For "faith has its
reasons, which reason cannot understand." Among these is this: "Jesus Christ,
the same yesterday, today, and forever." Miracles we hold to be a shadow of good
things to come. The good thing to come for the soul is its full and perfect
sanctification at the appearing of the Lord. The work of regeneration and daily
renewal by the Holy Ghost is the constant reminder and pledge and preparation
for that event; and regeneration is a "perpetual miracle." The good thing to
come for the body is "glorified corporeity," resurrection and transformation
into Christ’s perfect likeness when he shall appear. Healing by the power of the
Holy Ghost is the pledge and foretoken of this consummation. Was it in God’s
purpose that we should never again witness this after the apostolic age was
past?

Here let us answer three or four objections which have been urged against our
position. "If you insist that miracles of healing are possible in this age,
then," it is said, "you must logically admit that such miracles as raising the
dead, turning water into wine, and speaking in unknown tongues are still
possible." But it requires only a casual glance to see that healing through the
prayer of faith stands on an entirely different basis from any of these other
miracles.

Raising the dead is nowhere promised as a privilege or possibility for the
believers of today. There is, indeed, in one instance, Matthew 10:8, a command
to raise the dead; but this was given specifically to the twelve and in a
temporary commission. It therefore differs very materially from the promise in
Mark 16:1-20, which was to all believers, and is contained in a commission which
was for the entire dispensation of the Spirit. That the Lord did this miracle,
and that his apostles did it, in one or two instances is not enough. Unless we
can show some specific promise given to the church as a whole we are bound to
concede that such works are not for us or for our age. Healing the sick, on the
contrary, rests on a distinct and specific promise to believers.

Miracles on external nature, like the turning of water into wine, and the
multiplying of the loaves, belong exclusively to the Lord; we do not find them
perpetuated beyond his own ministry either in fact or in promise. Miracles of
cure, on the contrary, being in the direct line of the Lord’s redemptive work,
abound in the ministry of the disciples as they do in that of the Lord, and have
the clear pledge of scripture for their performance. The discrimination which
Godet makes between miracles of healing and those performed on the outward world
we believe to be strictly accurate. He says: "One consequence of the close
connection of soul and body is that when the spirit of man is in this way
vivified by the power of God it can sometimes exert upon the body, and through
it upon other bodies, an influence which is marvelous. This kind of miracle is
therefore possible in every age of the Church’s history; it was possible in the
middle ages, and is possible still. That which would seem to be no longer
possible is the miraculous action of the divine power upon external nature. The
age of such miracles seems to have closed with the work of revelation, of which
they were but the auxiliaries" (Defence of the Christian Faith, p.208). As to
miracles of prophecy, we see no reason to believe that they were strictly
limited to apostolic times. We recall, indeed the one important text on this
question, "But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be
tongues they shall cease; whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away; for
we know in part, and we prophecy in part, but when that which is perfect is
come, then that which is in part shall be done away." Thus speaks the Spirit in
the Epistle to the Corinthians. By this scripture some have attempted to shut up
all miracles within the apostolic era as belonging to the things which were "in
part," and therefore destined to pass away. But, in the first place, let it be
noted that it is only prophecies, tongues and knowledge that are specified, not
healings. And we are to put no more within this limitation than the word of God
has put there. And, in the second place, the bounds set to the exercise of these
gifts is "when that which is perfect is come" which scholarship has generally
held to mean, when the Lord himself shall return to earth. (1 Corinthians 13:10.
"This verse shows by the emphatic ’then’ that the time when the gifts shall
cease is the end of this dispensation. The imperfect shall not cease till the
perfect is brought in." -- Ellicott.) The gifts of tongues and of prophecy
therefore do not seem to be confined within the first age of the church. We
cannot forget, indeed that the utterances of prophecy and knowledge culminated
and found their highest expression when the Canon of the New Testament
Scriptures was completed; so that some thoughtful expositors have conjectured
that this may have been the coming of that which is perfect so far as prophecy
and knowledge are concerned. But in either event this does not touch the gifts
of healing. These cannot have culminated so long as sickness and demonical
possession are unchecked in the world; nor until the great Healer and Restorer
shall return from above. To sum up these observations then; is it reasonable to
conclude that the office of healing through faith, resting on the same apostolic
example, and held by the same tenure of divine promise and precept as the other
functions of the Christian ministry, was alone destined to pass away and
disappear within a single generation? With the advance in power and knowledge
which was to take place under the administration of the Holy Spirit after
Pentecost, is it reasonable to believe that in this one particular instance
there was designed to be a signal retarding of supernatural energy? Is the Lord
less likely to heal those who extend to him the touch of faith now that he is on
the right hand of God, having all power in heaven and earth given to him, than
he was while on earth? ("Is the truce broke? or cause we have A Mediatour now
with thee, Dost thou therefore old treatyes wave, And by appeales from him
decree? Or is it so, as some green heads say, That now all miracles must cease?
Though thou hast promised they should stay The tokens of the Church, and peace."
-- Harry Vaughan, 1654.) Is it reasonable to believe that the administration of
the Comforter has changed since its first inauguration, so that, while his
mission and his offices were to continue till the end of this age, it is found
that one of his ministries has entirely disappeared since the days of the
apostles? With sin and sickness still holding sway in the world, is it
reasonable to consider the latter as entirely beyond the redemptive work of
Christ, while the former is so entirely met by that work, which was not the case
in the beginning? And, finally, until the harvest shall come, is it reasonable
to suppose that we are to be left entirely without the firstfruits of our
redemption? Until we can answer these questions, perhaps caution is becoming us,
at least, in denying that miracles of healing are still wrought.


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  CHAPTER 26: 02.04.     THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH
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The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 4. The
Testimony of the Church

"Witnesses who are above suspicion leave no room for doubt that the miraculous
powers of the apostolic age continued to operate at least into the third
century." Such is the conclusion of Dr. Gerhard Uhlhorn; and one who has read
the work from which this opinion is taken will not doubt his eminent fitness to
judge of such a question. (Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism, p.169. --
See 13. Appendix, Note A). This concession is a very important one in its
bearings on this whole subject. Prove that miracles were wrought, for example,
in the second century after Christ, and no reason can be thereafter be urged why
they might not be wrought in the nineteenth century. The apostolic age, it must
be admitted, was a peculiarly favored one. So long as the men were still living
who had seen the Lord, and had companied with him during his earthly ministry,
there were possible secrets of power in their possession that a later generation
might not have. It is easy to see, therefore, that this period might be
especially distinguished by the gifts of the Spirit. And yet the Saviour seems
to be careful to teach that there would be an augmenting rather than a
diminishing of supernatural energy after his departure. "But ye shall receive
power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." "Verily, verily I say unto
you, He that believeth on me the works that I do shall he do also, and greater
works than these shall he do; because I go to my Father." (Acts 1:9; John
14:12.) He made no provision for the arrest of the stream of divine
manifestations which he had started, either in the next age or in a subsequent
age. But, conceding certain marked advantages possessed by the immediate
followers of Christ, if we find in history that there is no abrupt termination
of miracles with the expiration of the apostolic age, then we must begin to
raise the question why there should be any termination at all, so long as the
Church remains, and the ministry of the Spirit is perpetuated?

Now, when we turn to the writings of the Christian Fathers, as they are called,
we find the testimonies abundant to the continuance of the miraculous powers. We
will quote only a few as specimens from a large number, which may be readily
collated by any one who will take the pains. Justin Martyr says: "For numberless
demoniacs throughout the whole world and in your city, many of our Christian
men, exorcising them in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under
Pontias Pilate, have healed, and do heal, rendering helpless and driving the
possessing devils out of the men, though they could not be cured by all the
other exorcists and those who used incantations and drugs." (Apologetics,
Chapter 6.)

Ireaneus says: "Wherefore also those who are in truth the disciples receiving
grace from him do in his name perform miracles so as to promote the welfare of
others, according to the gift which each has received from him." Then after
enumerating the various gifts he continues: "Others still heal the sick by
laying their hands upon them, and they are made whole." (Adv. Haer, Book II:4.)

Tertullian says: "For the clerk of one of them who was liable to be thrown upon
the ground by an evil spirit was set free from his affliction, as was also the
relative of another, and the little boy of a third. And how many men of rank, to
say nothing of the common people, have been delivered from devils and healed of
disease." (Ad. Scap. iv:4.)

Origen says: "And some give evidence of their having received through their
faith a marvelous power by the cures which they perform, invoking no other name
over those who need their help than that of the God of all things and of Jesus,
along with a mention of his history. For by these means we too have seen many
persons freed from grievous calamities and from distractions of mind and
madness, and countless other ills which could be cured neither by men or
devils." (Contra Celsum B. III. Chap. 24.)

Clement says, in giving directions for visiting the sick and afflicted: "Let
them, therefore, with fasting and prayer, make their intercessions, and not with
the well arranged and fitly ordered words of learning, but as men who have
received the gift of healing confidently, to the glory of God." (Epis. C. xii.)
The weight of these and like testimonies is so generally acknowledged by Church
historians that it seems little less than hardihood for scholars to go on
repeating that well worn phrase "the age of miracles ended with the apostles."
Mosheim, speaking of the fourth century, says: "But I cannot on the other hand
assent to the opinion of those who maintain that in this century miracles had
entirely ceased." (Cent. iv.)

Dr. Waterland says: "The miraculous gifts continued through the third century,
at least." (See list of citations in Creation and Redemption. London, 1877.
p.50.)

Dodwell declares that "though they generally ceased with the third century,
there are several strongly attested cases in the fourth." Dr. Marshall, the
translator of Cyprian, says "there are successive evidences of them down to the
age of Constantine." ("With regard to the continuance of miracles after the
apostolic age, we have testimonies, not only from Tertuilian and Origen, who
tell us that many in their time were convinced, against their will, of the
truths of Christianity by miraculous visions, but, also, much later from
Theodore of Mopsueste (429). The latter says: Many heathen amongst us are being
healed by Christians from whatever sickness they have, so abundant are miracles
in our midst." Christlieb; Modern Doubt, p.321.)

"The age of Constantine" is a significant date at which to fix the termination
of miracles. For almost all Church historians hold that there was a period when
the simpler and purer forms of supernatural manifestation ceased to be generally
recognized, or were supplanted by the gross and spurious type which characterize
the Church of the middle ages. And the era of Constantine’s conversion
confessedly marks a decided transition from a purer to a more degenerate and
worldly Christianity. From this period on, we find the Church ceasing to depend
wholly on the Lord in heaven, and to rest in the patronage and support of
earthly rulers; and ceasing to look ever for the coming and Kingdom of Christ as
the consummation of her hopes, and to exult in her present triumph and worldly
splendor. Many of her preachers made bold to declare that the Kingdom had come,
and that the prophetic word, "He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from
the river to the ends of the earth " had been fulfilled. (Eusebius L. x.3,4.)

If now, as we have indicated elsewhere, the miracles were signs of the sole
kingship of the living and exalted Christ, and pledges of his coming again to
subdue all things to himself, it is not strange that as the substance of these
truths faded from men’s minds, their sign should have gradually disappeared
also. At all events it is very significant that precisely the same period, the
first three centuries, is that generally named by historians as the era in which
that apostolic hope, "the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour,
Jesus Christ," and that apostolic faith, "they shall lay hands on the sick and
they shall recover," remained in general exercise. It is not altogether strange,
therefore, that when the Church forgot that "her citizenship is in heaven," and
began to establish herself in luxury and splendor on earth, she should cease to
exhibit the supernatural gifts of heaven. And there is a grim irony in the fact,
that after death and the grave had gradually become the goal of the Christian’s
hope, instead of the personal coming of Christ, then we should begin to find
miracles of healing alleged by means of contact with the bones of dead saints
and martyrs, instead of miracles of healing through the prayer of faith offered
to the living Christ. Such is the change introduced by the age of Constantine.
("Ah, Constantine, of how much ill was cause Not thy conversion, but those rich
domains That the first wealthy Pope received of thee." -- Dante.) But now comes
a most suggestive fact; that whenever we find a revival of primitive faith and
apostolic simplicity there we find a profession of the chaste and evangelical
miracles which characterized the apostolic age. These attend the cradle of every
spiritual reformation, as they did the birth of the Church herself. Waldenses,
Moravians, Huguenots, Covenanters, Friends, Baptists and Methodists all have
their record of them.

Hear the following frank and simple confession of the Waldenses, that people who
for so many ages kept the virgin’s lamp trimmed and burning amid the gross
darkness with which the Papal harlot had overspread the people: "Therefore,
concerning this anointing of the sick, we hold it as an article of faith, and
profess sincerely from the heart that sick persons, when they ask it, may
lawfully be anointed with the anointing oil by one who joins with them in
praying that it may be efficacious to the healing of the body according to the
design and end and effect mentioned by the apostles; and we profess that such an
anointing performed according to the apostolic design and practice will be
healing and profitable. (Johannis Lukawitz Waldensis Confessio, 1431. See also
Waldensia, p.25.)

Then after condemning extreme unction, that sacrament of the Papists wherein an
ordinance for life is perverted into an ordinance for death, they say further:
"Albeit we confess that the anointing of the sick performed according to the
design, end and purpose of the apostles, and according to their practice and
power of which St. Mark and James make mention, is lawful; and if any priest
possessing the grace of healings had so anointed the sick and they have
recovered we would exhort all that when they are really ill they omit not to
receive that ordinance at their hands, and in no way despise it, because
despisers of that or of other ordinances, so far as they are ordained by Christ,
are to be punished and corrected, according to the rules of the evangelical
law." The Moravians, or United Brethren as they are otherwise called, have
obtained a good report among all Christians for their simple piety, and
especially for their fervent missionary zeal. They have not only been earnest
reformers, but reformers of reformers; so that such men as Wesley, catching
their light and getting kindled by it, have brought a new revival to the
backslidden children of the Reformation. On principles already referred to, we
might expect to find their missionary zeal signalized by supernatural tokens.
And so it has been, if we may believe what seems to be trustworthy records. In
what is regarded as a very faithful history of the United Brethren, that of Rev.
A. Bost, the author gives his own view of the continuance of the apostolic gifts
in a very clear manner, and records for us with equal clearness the sentiments
of the Moravians. He says: "We are, indeed, well aware that, so far from its
being possible to prove by scripture, or by experience, that visions and dreams,
the gift of miracles, healings and other extraordinary gifts, have absolutely
ceased in Christendom since the apostolic times, it is on the contrary proved,
both by facts and by scripture, that there may always be these gifts where there
is faith, and that they will never be entirely detached from it. We need only
take care to discern the true from the false, and to distinguish from miracles
proceeding from the Holy Ghost, lying miracles, or those which without being so
decidedly of the devil do not so decidedly indicate the presence of the Lord."
(Bost 1, p.17.) In this book are several statements of the Brethren concerning
the character and discipline of their churches. The famous Zinzendorf writes as
follows: "To believe against hope is the root of the gift of miracles; and I owe
this testimony to our beloved Church, that apostolic powers are there
manifested. We have had undeniable proofs thereof in the unequivocal discovery
of things, persons, and circumstances, which could not humanly have been
discovered, in the healing of maladies in themselves incurable, such as cancers,
consumptions, when the patient was in the agonies of death, etc., all by means
of prayer, or of a single word" (Idem, p.III.) Speaking of the year 1730, he
says: "At this juncture various supernatural gifts were manifested in the
Church, and miraculous cures were wrought. The brethren and sisters believed
what the Saviour had said respecting the efficacy of prayer; and when any object
strongly interested them they used to speak to him about it, and to trust in him
as capable of all good; then it was done unto them according to their faith. The
count [Zinzendorf] rejoiced at it with all his heart, and silently praised the
Saviour who thus willingly condescended to what is poor and little. In this
freedom of the brethren towards our Saviour, Jesus Christ, he recognized a fruit
of the Spirit, concerning which they ought on no account to make themselves
uneasy, whoever it might be, but rather to respect him. At the same time he did
not wish the brethren and sisters to make too much noise about these matters,
and regard them as extraordinary but when, for example, a brother was cured of
disease, even of the worst kind, by a single word or by some prayer, he viewed
this as a very simple matter, calling to mind ever that saying of scripture,
that signs were not for those who believed, but for those who believed not."
(Idem, pp. 405-6.)

Thus we have the sentiment of the Moravians on the subject of miracles very
distinctly indicated. And the statements quite accord with their simple faith
and filial confidence in the Lord, as indicated in other things. The following
furnishes a very beautiful glimpse into the actual miraculous experiences above
referred to: "Jean de Watteville had a childlike confidence in our Saviour’s
promise to hear his children’s prayers. Of this he often had experience. One
example we will here offer: -- A married sister became extremely ill at
Hernnhut. The physician had given up all hopes, and her husband was plunged in
grief. Watteville visited the patient, found her joyfully expecting her removal,
and took his leave, after having encouraged her in this happy frame. It was at
that time still the custom of unmarried brethren, on Sunday evening, to go about
singing hymns before the brethren’s houses, with an instrumental accompaniment.
Watteville made them sing some appropriate hymns under the window of the sick
sister, at the same time praying in his heart to the Lord that he would be
pleased, if he thought good, to restore her to health. He conceived a hope of
this so full of sweetness and faith that he sang with confidence these lines:
’Sacred Cross, oh sacred Cross! Where my Saviour died for me, From my soul,
redeemed from loss, Bursts a flame of love to thee. When I reach my dying hour
Only let them speak thy name; By its all prevailing power Back my voice returns
again.’ What was the astonishment of those who surrounded the bed of this dying
sister when they saw her sit up, and join with a tone of animation in singing
the last line: ’Back my voice returns again.’ To his great amazement and delight
he found her, on ascending to her chamber, quite well. She recovered perfectly,
and not till thirty-five years after did he attend her earthly tabernacle to its
final resting place." And now we come to the testimony of that most illustrious
band of Christian worthies, the Scotch Covenantors. Illustrious, we said, and
yet with a light altogether ancient, apostolic and strange to our modern age.
Let one read that book of thrilling religious adventure and heroic faith, The
Scots Worthies and he will almost seem to be perusing the acts of the apostles
reacted. Such sterling fortitude; such mighty prayers; such conquests of
preaching and intercession! Howie, its author, seems to have had in mind
especially, in writing it, the rebuke it would bring to a later, faithless and
degenerate age, by showing, as he says in his preface, "how at the peril of
their lives they brought Christ into our hands," and how quickly their offspring
are gone out of the way piping and dancing after a golden calf." Nor did he
think such a luxurious and unbelieving generation would be able to credit these
mighty deeds of their fathers. For he continues: "Some may be ready to object
that many things related in this collection smell too much of enthusiasm; and
that other things are beyond all credit. But these we must suppose to be either
quite ignorant of what the Lord did for our forefathers in former times, or
else, in a great measure, destitute of the like gracious influences of the
Spirit by which they were actuated and sustained." If we are inclined to
discredit the marvels of divine interposition recorded in this book, we have to
remember that the men who relate them, and of whom they are related, are the
historic characters of the Scottish Kirk; Knox, Wishart, Livingston, Welch,
Baillie, Peden and Craig. We never tire of repeating the great and holy things
which these men did in other fields of spiritual service. Who has not heard how
John Livingston preached with such extraordinary demonstration of the Spirit
that five hundred souls were quickened or converted under a single sermon? And
what Christian has not had his spiritual indolence rebuked by reading of John
Welch, rising many times in the night to plead for his flock, and spending seven
and eight hours a day in Gethsemane intercessions for the Church and for lost
souls. These things we have read and repeated without incredulity. But how few
have read or dared to repeat the story of the same John Welch praying over the
body of a young man, who, after a long wasting sickness, "has closed his eyes
and expired to the apprehension of all spectators; how, in spite of the
remonstrance of friends, he "held on for three hours, twelve hours, twenty-five,
thirty-six, forty-eight hours", and when at last it was insisted that the "cold
dead" body should be borne out to burial, how he begged for an hour more, and
how, at the end of that time, he "called upon his friends and showed them the
dead young man restored to life again, to their great astonishment." All this is
told with the utmost detail in the book of The Scots Worthies. If we are
startled to ask in amazement -- as who will not be -- "Are such things possible
in modern times?" we might better begin with the question, has such praying and
resistless importunity with God ever been heard of in modern times? If we can
get a miraculous faith, the miraculous works will be easy enough to credit. Yet
this is a specimen of the men who compose this extraordinary group of Christian
heroes. The wonders recorded of them are of every kind -- marvels of courage,
marvels of faith, marvels of martyrdom, and marvels of prophetic foresight.
Theirs was a faith born and nourished of the bitterest persecution. But if,
according to the saying of their biographer, they were "followed by the
prophet’s shadow, the hatred of wicked men," it is equally true that they were
crowned with the apostle’s halo, the power of the Holy Spirit.

Here we read of the holy Robert Bruce, of whom the beautiful incident is told,
that once being late in appearing in his pulpit as messenger was sent for him
who reported: "I think he will not come today, for I overheard him say to
another: ’I protest I will not go unless thou goest with me’. Howbeit, in a
little time he came, accompanied by no man but full of the blessing of Christ;
for his speech was with much evidence and demonstration of the Spirit." Of this
man, mighty in pulpit prayers, it is affirmed that "persons distracted, and
those who were past recovery with falling sickness, were brought to him and
were, after prayer by him on their behalf, fully restored from their malady"
(p.118).

Also we read of Patrick Simpson, whose insane wife, from raving and blaspheming
as with demoniacal possession, was so wonderfully healed by his importunate
prayers that the event was found thus gratefully recorded upon some of the books
of his library: "Remember, O my soul, and never forget the 16th of August, 1601,
what consolation the Lord gave thee, and how he performed what he spoke
according to Zechariah, ’is not this a brand plucked out of the fire’" (p.116).

We give verbatim one incident of healing as recorded in this book, admonishing
the reader that this story, as well as several others, has been somewhat
softened in later editions of the work, with the avowed purpose of making it
accord more exactly with modern religious sentiments. It is from the life of
John Scrimgeour, minister of Kinghorn in Fife, and "an eminent wrestler with
God." Mr. Scrimgeour had several friends and children taken away by death: and
his only daughter who at that time survived, and whom he dearly loved, being
seized with the King’s evil, by which she was reduced to the point of death, so
that he was called up to see her die; and finding her in this condition he went
out into the fields, (as he himself told) in the night-time in great grief and
anxiety, and began to expostulate with the Lord, with such expressions as for
all the world, he durst not again utter. In a fit of displeasure he said --
"Thou O Lord knowest that I have been serving thee in the uprightness of my
heart according to my power and measure: nor have I stood in awe to declare thy
mind even unto the greatest in the time; and thou seest that I take pleasure in
this child. O that I could obtain such a thing at thy hand as to spare her!" and
being in great agony of spirit at last it was said to him from the Lord -- "I
have heard thee at this time, but use not the like boldness in time coming for
such particular." When he came home the child was recovered, and sitting up in
the bed took some meat: and when he looked on her arm it was perfectly whole."
(Edinburgh Ed. 1812, p.89,90).

Now when we reflect that these things are recorded by the pen of some of the
holiest men the church of God has ever seen: and recorded too as the experiences
of their own ministry of faith and prayer, the fact must at least furnish food
for reflection to those who continue to assert with such confident assurance
that the age of miracles is past. Past it may be indeed, if the age of faith is
past. For that we conceive, to be the real question. It is not geography or
chronology that determines the boundary lines of the supernatural. It is
apostolic men that make an apostolic age, not a certain date of Anno Domini. We
are forever thinking to turn back the shadow certain degrees upon the dial, to
bring again the age of miracles, forgetting that he who is "without variableness
or the shadow of turning" has said, "if thou canst believe" -- not if thou wast
born in Palestine and within the early limits of the first Christian century --
"all things are possible to him that believeth." When by the stress of violent
persecution or by the sore discipline of reproach and rejection by the world the
old faith is revived, then we catch glimpses once more of the apostolic age. And
such perhaps beyond all others in modern times was the age of the Covenanters.
No one can read this stirring narrative of their sufferings and triumphs, their
martyrdoms and miracles without a profound spiritual quickening. There is little
danger withal of the book ministering to fanaticism, for if any one should be
inspired by it with an ambition to be a miracle-worker he will meet the
challenge on every page -- "Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink of, and to
be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" If we come to the
Huguenots, those faithful followers of the Lamb, among generations that were so
greedily end wantonly following the Dragon, we get glimpses of the same
wonderful things. In the story of their suffering and obedience to the faith in
the mountains of Cevennes whither they had fled from their pursuers upon the
revocation of the edict of Nantz, we hear constant mention of the exercise of
miraculous gifts. There were divine healings and extraordinary actings of the
Spirit in quickening and inspiration. They who in their exile carried their
mechanical arts and inventions into England to the great blessing of the nation,
carried here and there the lost arts of supernatural healing to the wonder of
the church of Christ. (Morning Watch, B.iv: p.383).

Among the early Friends, as is well known, the same manifestations were
constantly reported. Whatever we may think of the general teaching of this sect,
no one can read the Journal of George Fox without feeling that he was a devoted
man of God, doing a wholesome work of quickening and rebuke in a time of great
spiritual deadness and conformity to the world. His quaint prayer that he "might
be baptized into a sense of all conditions" seems to have been literally
fulfilled. Like a latter day apostle he went among all ranks, rebuking the gay
and worldly, turning away the wrath of those at enmity, visiting the sick and
ministering to the prisoner. A worthy model is he for any minister, in any age
who would learn how to labor "in season out of season" for the Lord. Not only in
his teaching but especially in his active service does he recognize the
continuous operation of the Spirit in miraculous ministries. He records these
manifestations without comment as though they were as much a matter of course as
conversion or regeneration. In a record of evangelizing in Twy-cross in
Lincolnshire, England, he says: -- "Now there was in that town a great man that
had long lain sick and was given over by the physicians: and some friends in
that town desired me to go and see him, and I went up to him in his chamber and
spoke the word of life to him and was moved to pray for him, and the Lord was
entreated and restored him to health." (Journal B.i: p.111). While preaching in
Hertfordshire, they told him of a sick woman and requested him to go to her
help. He says: -- "John Rush of Bedfordshire went along with me to visit her,
and when we came in, there were many people in the house that were tender about
her: and they told me she was not a woman for this world, but if I had anything
to comfort her concerning the world to come I might speak to her. So I was moved
of the Lord to speak to her, and the Lord raised her up again to the
astonishment of the town and country." (Id. vol.I: p.281). This book abounds in
such instances, told without ostentation or enlargement, but almost always
alluded to as "Miracles." In the earlier days of the Baptists, days of
simplicity and purity, we meet with similar illustrations of miraculous faith
and manifestation. As usual it was in times of great straits, when the prison
doors were shut upon the persecuted flock, that the windows of heaven were
opened in miraculous blessing. Vavasor Powell,"the morning star of the Welsh
Baptists" as he has been named, has left a clear affidavit to his faith and
practice on the subject we are considering. He was a man of the same fiber as
the Covenanters; endued with such power of the Spirit that extraordinary
revivals followed his preaching wherever he went. He was also a bitter sufferer
for the faith having in the course of his life lain in thirteen different
prisons for his testimony for Christ. Besides the uncommon blessing which
attended his preaching it is recorded that "many persons were recovered from
dangerous sickness through the prayer of faith which he offered." He took the
promise in James 5:1-20th literally, as shown in the story of his own recovery,
and especially as declared in the following article of his creed -- "Visiting
the sick and for the elders to anoint them in the name of the Lord is a gospel
ordinance and not repealed" (Ivimy’s History of the Baptists, p.333 -- See 13.
Appendix, Note B). That his creed was to some extent adopted by the English
Baptists appears from the account given in the same book, of the ceremony of
anointing and prayer as performed for a blind woman at Aldgate in London. Rev.
Hansard Knollys, and Rev. Henry Jessey, eminent names in the early ministry of
the body, united with others in the service, prayer being offered and the words
pronounced, "the Lord Jesus restore thee thy sight" (Idem, p.332) .

Among the Methodists we find references here and there to the appearance of
miraculous manifestations in the churches. There is one very striking instance
which is recorded of Ann Mather, daughter of Joseph Benson the Methodist
commentator, the story being given in full by the father in his journal. She had
been afflicted with lameness in the feet, for some years having no use of her
limbs, and not for a long time having walked a step. We give the narrative in
the words of Mr. Benson’s Journal abridging in unimportant details: -- "Oct.
4th. This evening the Lord has shown us an extraordinary instance of his love
and power. My dear Ann yet remained without any use of either her limbs and
indeed without the least feeling of them, or ability to walk a step, or lay the
least weight upon them, nor had she any use of them for upward of twelve months.
I was very much afraid that the sinews would be contracted, and that she would
lose the use of them forever. We prayed however, incessantly, that this might
not be the case; but that it would please the Lord, for the sake of her three
little children, to restore her. This day a part of my family and some of my
pious friends went to take tea at her house; Mr. Mather bringing her down in his
arms into the dining-room. After tea I spoke of the certainty of God’s hearing
the prayer of his faithful people, and repeated many of his promises to that
purpose. I also enlarged on Christ’s being the same yesterday, today, and
forever, and still both able and willing to give relief to his afflicted people:
that though he had doubtless done many of his miracles of healing chiefly to
prove himself to be the Messiah, yet that he did not do them for that end only,
but also to grant relief to human misery, out of his great compassion for
suffering mankind; and that not a few of his other miracles of mercy he had
wrought principally or only for this latter purpose, and that he was still full
of compassion for the miserable.

"I then said, ’Ann, before we go to prayer, we will sing the Hymn which was full
of consolation to your mother,’ and I gave out the words of the hymn beginning:
-- ’Thy arm, Lord, is not shortened now, It wants not now the power to save;
Still present with thy people, thou, etc.’ After singing, we then kneeled down
to pray, and Ann took her infant child to give it the breast, that it might not
disturb us with crying while we were engaged in prayer. I prayed first, and then
Mr. McDonald; all the company joining fervently in our supplications. We pleaded
in prayer the Lord’s promises, and especially that he has said that whatever two
or three of his people should agree to ask, it should be done for them. Matthew
17:19. Immediately on our rising from our knees, Ann beckoned to the nurse to
take the child, and then instantly rose up, and said, ’I can walk, I feel I
can’; and proceeded half over the room: when her husband, afraid she should
fall, stepped to her, saying, ’My dear Ann, what are you about?’ She put him off
with her hands, saying, ’I don’t need you: I can walk alone,’ and then walked
three times over the floor; after which, going to a corner, she knelt down and
said, ’Oh let us give God thanks!’ We kneeled down, and gave thanks; Ann
continuing on her knees all the time, at least twenty minutes; she then came to
me, and with a flood of tears threw her arms about my neck, and then did the
same first to one of her sisters, and to the other, and afterwards to Mrs.
Dickenson; every one in the room shedding tears of gratitude and joy. She then
desired her husband’s brother to come up stairs; and when he entered the room,
she cried out, ’Adam, I can walk;’ and to show him that she could, immediately
walked over the floor, and back again.

"It was, indeed, the most affecting scene I ever witnessed in my life. She
afterward, without any help, walked up stairs into her lodging room, and with
her husband kneeling down, joined in prayer and praise. In conversation with her
afterward, I learned from her the following particulars: -- that when she was
brought into the dining-room a little stool was put under her feet, but which
she felt no more than if her feet had been dead. While we were singing the hymn,
she conceived faith that the Lord would heal her; began to feel the stool, and
pushed it away; then set her feet on the floor, and felt that; while we prayed
she felt a persuasion she could walk, and felt inclined to rise up with the
child in her arms; but thinking to do that would be thought rash, she delayed
till we had done praying, and then immediately rose up, and walked as above
related." Among the persons present who witnessed this remarkable scene was Rev.
James McDonald, who followed Mr. Benson in prayer and was afterwards his
biographer, and in making reference to this wonderful healing he says: "All
believed that the power to walk, which she received in an instant, was
communicated by an immediate act of omnipotence." The account was also published
in the London Methodist Magazine, from which this is quoted.

We have thus set before us as a mass of evidence for the continuance of
miraculous interventions which few, we imagine, would wish to condemn as utterly
false. Whatever deduction or allowance any may wish to make, there remains too
solid a substratum of well-proven fact to be easily set aside. Untimely -- born
out of due season, is the objection which will at once be urged indeed. That is
to say, put the same facts and the same witnesses back into the age of the
apostles and they can be easily enough credited, but not as speaking for modern
times. But some believe that the church like the tree of life "whose leaves are
for the healing of the nations," not only bears twelve manner of fruits but
"yields her fruit every month." "All supernatural manifestations, determined
with apostolic times and apostolic men" -- so I read from a learned author, as I
glanced for a moment from the page which I was writing. Then casting another
glance through my window I saw a tree just before me crowned with a fresh coat
of green leaves and white blossoms. Strange sight to witness in the month of
October! Yet such was the season in which it came to pass. For it had happened
that the canker worms had stripped the tree of all its foliage and left it bare
and naked; but because there was life in its veins and the sap had not yet
returned downward, it must find expression, and so even in autumn it had leaved
and blossomed.

Alas that the church should ever have been shorn of her primitive beauty! But so
it was: apostasy succeeding to purity, and papacy to apostasy, and corruption to
papacy, and infidelity to corruption, till it was literally as the prophet has
written: "That which the palmer-worm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that
which the locust hath left, hath the canker-worm eaten, and that which the
canker-worm hath left, hath the caterpillar eaten. (Joel 1:4). But because there
is life still remaining in the church, because the sap has not utterly departed
from the tree of God, fresh shoots are constantly putting out bearing the leaves
and blossoms of primitive piety, and not less certainly the rich fruits of
miraculous blessing. And so we are persuaded it shall be until the end. For it
belongs to the Church as the body of Christ to do the works of Christ, and it
belongs to believers as the habitation of the Spirit to manifest the gifts and
fruits of the Spirit.


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  CHAPTER 27: 02.05.     THE TESTIMONY OF THEOLOGIANS
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The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 5. The
Testimony of Theologians

Admitting, with the historians, that miracles ceased to be recognized in the
Church, as a whole, after the third century, there have still continued to be
witnesses here and there to their occurrence through all the ages. We call to
the stand several theologians, who have not only defended the doctrine of the
continuance of miracles, but have cited illustrations of what they regarded as
credible instances in support of their theory.

Augustine, it has been claimed, denied the existence of miraculous
interpositions in his day; and he certainly said some things that give occasion
for that opinion. But, on the other hand, he has left on record what cannot but
be regarded as the strongest testimony to their continuance in his generation.
Archbishop Trench considers that the true solution of this seeming contradiction
is, that he held to their cessation in his earlier writings, and, changing his
opinion, maintained their continuance in his later. ("In the same chapter he
goes on to give instances to corroborate this assertion. We reproduce one,
abridging the narrative, which is very extended, but retaining the essential
points. The story is exceedingly natural and affecting. It is concerning
Innocentius, a devout Christian, and a man of high rank in Carthage. He was
suffering from a painful malady, and had submitted to several surgical
operations for its removal, but without effect. An eminent surgeon, Alexandrinus
by name, being summoned, declared that there was no hope except possibly in
another operation. This was decided on, and several officers of the Church were
with him the evening before his trial, of whom he begged that they would be
present the next day at what he feared would be his death. "Among those
present," says Augustine, "was Aurelius, now the only survivor and a bishop: a
man ever to be mentioned with the greatest regard and honor, with whom, in
calling to mind the wonderful works of God, I have often conversed on the
occurrence, and I find that he retains the fullest recollection of what I now
relate." -- Trench, Notes on the Miracles, p.59.) If this be so, we must take
the last opinion as his true conviction, not that which he had retracted.

How decidedly, indeed, he commits himself to the doctrine of the perpetuity of
miracles will appear if we read the heading of one of the chapters of the De
Civitate Dei: "Concerning the miracles which were wrought in order that the
world might believe in Christ and which cease not to be wrought now that the
world does believe." He lived in a time, indeed, when the shadows of
superstition had already begun to creep over the Church, and the records of
miracles which he makes are occasionally marred by some trace of such
superstition: "For even now, he says, ’miracles are wrought in his name whether
by the sacraments, or by prayers, or at the tombs of the saints. But they are
not proclaimed with the same renown, so as to be spread abroad with the former.
For the sacred volume which was to be made known on all sides caused the former
to be told everywhere and to hold their place in all men’s memories; but the
latter are known of scarcely beyond the whole city or neighborhood where they
may happen to be wrought.’" (Work v., p.299). In an early work, Dt Vera
Religione xxv.47, he denies their continuance, while in his Retractions he
withdraws this statement, or limits it to such miracles as those that
accompanied baptism at the first. In De Civ. Dei. xxii.8, he enumerates at great
length miracles, chiefly those of healing, which he believed to have been
wrought in his own time, and coming more or less within his own knowledge." The
rest we give in the words of Augustine: "We then went to prayer; and, while we
were kneeling and prostrating ourselves, as on other occasions, he also
prostrated himself, as if some one had forcibly thrust him down, and began to
pray: in what manner, with what earnestness, with what emotion, with what a
flood of tears, with what agitation of his whole body, I might almost say with
what suspension of his respiration, by his groans and sobs, who shall attempt to
describe? Whether the rest of the party were so little affected as to be able to
pray I knew not. For my part I could not. This, alone, inwardly and briefly, I
said: ’Lord, what prayers of thine own children wilt thou ever grant if thou
grant not these?’ For nothing seemed more possible but that he should die
praying. We arose, and, after the benediction by the bishop, left him, but not
till he had besought them to be with him in the morning, nor till they had
exhorted him to calmness. The dreaded day arrived, and the servants of God
attended as they had promised. The medical men made their appearance; all things
required for such an occasion are got ready, and, amidst the terror and suspense
of all present, the dreadful instruments are brought out. In the meantime, while
those of the bystanders whose authority was the greatest, endeavored to support
the courage of the patient by words of comfort, he is placed in a convenient
position for the operation, the dressings are opened, the seat of the disease is
exposed, the surgeon inspects it, and tries to find the part to be operated upon
with his instrument in his hand. He first looks for it, then examines by the
touch; in a word, he makes every possible trial, and finds the place perfectly
healed. The gladness, the praise, the thanksgiving to a compassionate and all
powerful God, which, with mingled joy and tears, now burst from the lips of all
present, cannot be told by me. The scene may more easily be imagined than
described." It will be seen, on careful reading, that aside from the testimony
of the writer himself, there is everything in this story to indicate the
genuineness and authenticity of the miracle. Its detailed narration shows how
unquestionably the writer believes in healing through the prayer of faith.

Martin Luther, "whose prose is a half battle," would be likely to speak strongly
on this subject if he spoke at all. Martin Luther, whose prayers were victorious
battles, so that they who knew him were wont to speak of him as "the man who can
have whatever he wishes of God" would be likely to plead efficaciously in this
field if he entered it at all. And so he did. The testimony of Luther’s prayers
for the healing of the body are among the strongest of any on record in modern
times. He has been quoted, indeed, as disparaging miracles. And the explanation
of this fact is perfectly easy for those who have investigated his real
opinions. Like the other reformers -- like Huss and Latimer, for example, he
revolted violently from the impudent Romish miracles which in his day put forth
their claims on every side. This frequently led him to speak in very
contemptuous terms of modern signs and wonder-working. And it is not strange
that some, lighting on these utterances, should have concluded that he denied
all supernatural interventions in modern times. But if we turn from Luther the
controversialist to Luther the pastor, we find a man who believed and spoke with
all the vehemence of his Saxon heart on the side of present miracles. "How often
has it happened and still does," he says, "that devils have been driven out in
the name of Christ, also by calling on his name and prayer that the sick have
been healed?" And he suited his action to his words on this point; for when they
brought him a girl saying that she was possessed with a devil Luther laid his
hand on her head, appealed to the Lord’s promise: "He that believeth on me the
works I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do," and then
prayed to God, with the rest of the ministers of the Church, that, for Christ’s
sake, he would cast the devil out of this girl (Seckendorf’s History of
Lutheranism, B.III. p.133). Perfect recovery is recorded in this instance as
well as in several others where he prayed for the sick. The most notable
instance is that of Philip Melancthon. An account of this recovery, which seems
to be trustworthy, is given by the historian to whom we have just referred.
Melancthon had fallen ill on a journey, and a messenger had been despatched to
Luther. The story continues: "Luther arrived and found Philip about to give up
the ghost. His eyes were set; his consciousness was almost gone; his speech had
failed, and also his hearing; his face had fallen; he knew no one, and had
ceased to take either solids or liquids. At this spectacle Luther is filled with
the utmost consternation, and turning to his fellow travellers says: ’Blessed
Lord, how has the devil spoiled me of this instrument!’ Then turning away
towards the window he called most devoutly on God." Then follows the substance
of Luther’s prayer: "He beseeches God to forbear, saying that he has struck work
in order to urge upon him in supplication, with all the promises he can repeat
from scripture: that he must hear and answer now if he would ever have the
petitioner trust in him again." The narrative goes on: "After this, taking the
hand of Philip, and well knowing what was the anxiety of his heart and
conscience, he said, ’Be of good courage, Philip, thou shalt not die. Though God
wanted not good reason to slay thee, yet he willeth not the death of a sinner,
but that he may be converted and live. Wherefore, give not place to the spirit
of grief, nor become the slayer of thyself, but trust in the Lord who is able to
kill and to make alive.’ While he uttered these things Philip began, as it were,
to revive and to breathe, and gradually recovering his strength, is at last
restored to health."

If the reader should conclude hastily that this recovery may be accounted for on
entirely natural principles, we have to remind him that the conviction of both
parties to the transaction was quite otherwise. Melancthon writing to a friend
says: "I should have been a dead man had I not been recalled from death itself
by the coming of Luther." Luther speaks in the same manner writing to friends:
"Philip is very well after such an illness, for it was greater than I had
supposed. I found him dead, but, by an evident miracle of God, he lives." Again,
referring to his attendance at the Diet, he says: "Toil and labor have been
lost, and money spent to no purpose; nevertheless, though I have succeeded in
nothing, yet I fetched back Philip out of Hades, and intend to bring him now,
rescued from the grave, home again with joy, etc." Such is the witness of the
great reformer, and, if needful, it might be strengthened by reference to other
remarkable instances of his power in prayer for the sick. That of Myconius is
well known, who wrote of himself: "Raised up in the year 1541 by the mandates,
prayers and letter of the reverend Father, Luther, from death." Luthardt
furnishes this version of the event: "Myconius, the venerated superintendent of
Gotha, was in the last stage of consumption, and already speechless. Luther
wrote to him that he must not die: ’May God not let me hear so long as I live
that you are dead, but cause you to survive me. I pray this earnestly, and will
have it granted, and my will shall be granted herein, Amen.’ ’I was so
horrified,’ said Myconius, afterwards, ’when I read what the good man had
written, that it seemed to me as though I had heard Christ say, ’Lazarus come
forth.’ And from that time Myconius was, as it were, kept from the grave by the
power of Luther’s prayers, and did not die till after Luther’s death."
(Luthardt, Moral Truths of Christianity, p.198. The stout lion-heart of the
Reformer revolted against the grotesque miracles of Anti-christ; but the
believing heart of the Christian took the promises of God, and pleaded them and
proved them; and he gained what he regarded as the greatest of conquests: that
of having demonstrated scripture, so as to be able to say of one text in the
Bible: "This I know for certain to be true."

Richard Baxter will be listened to with especial deference on the question
before us. He was so bold in uttering his convictions that Boyle said of him
that "he feared no man’s displeasure, nor hoped for any man’s preferment;" and
he was also so devout that Joseph Alleine was accustomed to preface his
quotations from him with the words "As most divinely saith that man of God, holy
Mr. Baxter." He wrote very decidedly in defense of present miraculous
interpositions for God’s faithful. Speaking of what he calls "eminent
providences," he says: "I am persuaded that there is scarcely a godly
experienced Christian that carefully observes and faithfully recordeth God’s
providence toward him but is able to bring forth some such experiment, and to
shew you some strange and unusual mercies which may plainly discover an Almighty
disposer, making good the promises of this scripture to his servants; some in
desperate diseases of body; some in other apparent dangers delivered so suddenly
or so much against the common course of nature when all the best remedies have
failed, that no second cause could have any hand in their deliverance." (Saint’s
Rest, Part II chap.vi. Sec.V.)

After referring to some remarkable instances in the lives of the reformers he
says: "But why need I fetch examples so far off? or to recite the multitude of
them which Church history doth afford us? Is there ever a praying Christian here
who knoweth what it is importunately to strive with God, and to plead his
promises with him believingly, that cannot give in his experiences of most
remarkable answers? I know men’s atheism and infidelity will never want somewhat
to say against the most eminent providences, though they were miracles
themselves. That nature which is so ignorant of God, and at emnity with him,
will not acknowledge him in his clear discoveries to the world, but will ascribe
all to fortune or nature, or some such idol, which, indeed, is nothing. But when
mercies are granted in the very time of prayer, and that when to reason there is
no hope, and that without the use or help of any other means or creature, yea,
and perhaps many times over and over; is not this as plain as if God from heaven
should say to us, I am fulfilling to thee the true word of my promise in Christ
my Son? How many times have I known the prayer of faith to save the sick when
all physicians have given them up as dead." (Here Baxter subjoins a note to be
given presently.) "It has been my own case more than once or twice or ten times,
when means have all failed, and the highest art of reason has sentenced me
hopeless, yet have I been relieved by the prevalency of fervent prayer, and that
(as the physician saith "tuto, cito, et jucunde," my flesh and my heart failed,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.) And though he yet
keep me under necessary weakness, and wholesome sickness, and certain
expectation of further necessities, and assaults, yet am I constrained by most
convincing experiences, to set up this stone of remembrance, and publickly to
the praise of the Almighty, to acknowledge that certainly God is true of his
promises, and that they are indeed his own infallible word, and that it is a
most excellent privilege to have interest in God, and a Spirit of supplication
to be importunate with him. I doubt not but most Christians that observe the
Spirit and providences are able to attest this prevalency of prayer by their own
experiences."

He then gives a detailed account of his own remarkable healing which we quote in
full. "Among abundance of instances that I could give, my conscience commandeth
me here to give you this one, as belonging to the very words here written. I had
a tumor rise on one of the tonsils or almonds of my throat, round like a pea,
and at first no bigger; and at last no bigger than a small button, and hard like
a bone. The fear lest it should prove a cancer troubled me more than the thing
itself. I used first dissolving medicines, and after lenient for palliation, and
all in vain for about a quarter of a year. At last my conscience smote me for
silencing so many former deliverances, that I had had in answer of prayers;
merely in pride, lest I should be derided as making ostentation of God’s special
mercies to myself, as if I were a special favorite of heaven, I had made no
public mention of them: I was that morning to preach just what is here written,
and in obedience to my conscience, I spoke these words which are now in this
page, viz: "How many times have I known the prayer of faith to save the sick
when all physicians have given them up as dead" -- with some enlargements not
here written. When I went to church I had my tumor as before (for I frequently
saw it in the glasse, and felt it constantly.) As soon as I had done preaching,
I felt it was gone, and hasting to the glasse, I saw that there was not the
least vestigium or cicatrix, or mark wherever it had been: nor did I at all
discern what became of it. I am sure I neither swallowed it nor spit it out, and
it was unlikely to dissolve by any natural cause, that had been hard like a bone
a quarter of a year, notwithstanding all dissolving gargarismes. I thought fit
to mention this, because it was done just as I spoke the words here written in
this page. Many such marvellous mercies I have received, and known that others
have received in answer to prayers." At once we imagine the explanations which
will be given to this artlessly narrated incident. We do not vouch for its
supernatural character. We have introduced it simply to show that Richard Baxter
believed in modern miracles of healing, and there we leave it. It is not the
authenticity of wonder but the opinion of the man which we wish now to
establish. That must be considered unquestionable.

John Albert Bengel is not only greatly esteemed but held in real affection by
lovers of God’s word who have studied his commentary. He expounds pithily, but
what is far better he believes intensely. "His works," says Dorner, "were the
first cock crowing of that new kind of exegesis which the Church so much
needed." His is preeminently the exegesis of faith in distinction from the
exegesis of reason. If he finds things in the Bible too hard for his critical
faculty he finds nothing too hard for his believing faculty. Hence his
interpretations are not a sizing and sorting of scripture to the dimensions of
human experience, but a frank acceptance of it as God’s truth. The word never
appears shrunken as it comes forth from his hand; it does not present a scant
weight as though it had paid toll to modern doubt. "Faith takes up all she can
get and marches bravely onward," is a saying of his that describes better than
any other his conduct in handling scripture. Now by faith Bengel staggered not
at the promise of miraculous healing, which he found in the New Testament, but
believed it, and confessed it, and rejoiced in it. In speaking of the gift of
healing he says: -- "It seems to have been given by God that it might always
remain in the Church as a specimen of the other gifts: Just as the portion of
manna betokened the ancient miracles" (Comment on James 5:17). "O happy
simplicity! interrupted or lost through unbelief," he exclaims. And yet he
declares, "even in our day faith has in every believer a hidden miraculous
power. Every result of prayer is really miraculous even though this be not
apparent; although in many, because of their own weakness and the world’s
unworthiness, -- not merely because the church once planted needs not miracles
(though no doubt the early New Testament miracles have made for the Lord an
everlasting name) -- that power does not exert itself in our day. Signs were in
the beginning the props of faith: now they are the object of faith" (On Mark
16:14). And then, for confirming his assertions of his belief in the possibility
of modern miracles, he introduces the following instance: "At Leonberg a town of
Wirtembergh, A.D. 1644, thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, a girl of twenty-three
years of age, was so disabled in her limbs as hardly to be able to creep along
by the help of crutches. But whilst the Dean, Raumier was his name, was from the
pulpit dwelling on the miraculous power of Jesus name she suddenly was raised up
and restored to the use of her limbs." This story the American editor omits as
though solicitous for the critics reputation; but Faucett the English translator
retains it in its place, and adds from information gathered from other sources
that "this happened in the presence of the Duke of Eberhard, and his courtiers
and was committed to the public records which are above all suspicion."

Edward Irving is another illustrious confessor bearing witness to the doctrine
we are defending. A man of wonderful endowments, ("But I hold, withal and not
the less firmly for these discrepancies in our moods and judgments, that Edward
Irving possesses more of the spirit and purpose of the first Reformers, that he
has more of the head and heart, the life and unction and the genial power of
Martin Luther, than any man now alive: yea, than any man of this or the last
century. I see in Edward Irving a minister of Christ after the order of Paul."
Coleridge; Works v. vi., p.115) his highest gift seems to have been that of
faith. He believed, with the whole strength and intensity of his nature,
everything which he found written in the Scriptures. Cast upon times of great
spiritual deadness, he longed to see Christendom mightily revived, and he
conceived that this could only be effected by stirring up the Church to recover
her forfeited endowments. "To restore is to revive," was emphatically his motto.
He gave great offense by his utterances and had his name cast out as evil. He
was accused of offering strange fire upon the altar of his Church, because he
thought to relight the fire of Pentecost. Need enough was there of restoration,
when teachers had so far made void the word of God by their traditions that in
their discussion with him they openly appealed from the Bible to the standards.
Have you never read what Jehoiakim the son of Judah did with his penknife upon
the prophet’s roll? -- How "it came to pass that when Jehudi had read three or
four leaves, he cut it with his penknife and cast it into the fire!" Alas! that
modern theology should have given occasion to be accused of doing likewise with
the 12th of I Corinthians and sundry other parts of scripture that tell about
"to another the gift of healing by the same Spirit, and another the working of
miracles, to another prophecy," etc.

Irving, with a zeal for the Lord not always temperate, accused the Church of
having clipped out these portions from the scripture with her exegetical
penknife, because she had said "these things do not pertain to the Church of
today." And he went farther -- "the Lord commanded Jeremiah to take another roll
and to write in it all the former words that were in the first roll which
Jehoiakim the son of Judah had burned." And Irving conceived that he had a
similar commission or at least permission, -- not to make any new revelation, as
he was accused, -- but to retrace the faded lines of the old, wherein it spoke
of "spiritual gifts": and so he encouraged his flock to seek for, and if the
Lord should permit, to exercise the gifts of prophecy and of healing. This was
his chief affront, and that which brought his splendid career under an eclipse,
-- a result inevitable indeed considering that he was to be judged by those who
knew no distinction between innovation and renovation. But bating any
extravagances into which he may have fallen, we confess that our heart has
always gone out to him in reverence for his heroic fidelity to the word of God,
and his willingness, in allegiance to that word, to follow Christ "without the
camp bearing the reproach." And we believe that when the Master shall come to
recompense his servants, this one will attain a high reward and receive of the
Lord double for the broken heart with which he went down to his grave.

Irving wrote upon this subject with his usual masterly ability. Considering the
Church to be "the Body of Christ," and the endowment of the Church to be "the
fullness of him that filleth all in all," he held that the Church ought to
exhibit in every age something of that miraculous power which belongs to the
Head. That as she endures hardness and humiliation as united to him who was on
the cross, so she should exhibit something of supernatural energy as united with
him who is on the throne. This he conceived to be essential for the Church’s
full witness to Christ -- to him "who is now creation’s sceptre-bearer as he was
heretofore creation’s burden-bearer." He lamented that the Church in her working
has descended so much to the plane of the merely natural, that in preaching, the
arts of the logician and the rhetorician have so far supplanted the gifts of the
Spirit. "The power of miracles must either be speedily revived in the Church",
he says, "or there will be a universal dominion of the mechanical philosophy,
and faith will be fairly expelled to give place to the law of cause and effect
acting and ruling in the world of mind as it doth in the world of sense." (Works
V.: p.479).

He considered miracles to be intended not only for a perpetual demonstration of
Christ’s power as now living and glorified, but also as a visible fore-token of
his coming kingdom. He has pointed out with marked clearness the significance of
the various signs promised in the great commission, showing how these were given
as firstfruits of the kingdom of God as it shall appear in its full
consummation. As that kingdom was always to be preached, he held that these
signs were promised as the perpetual accompaniment of that preaching. He
concluded that their withdrawal is due to the Church’s unfaithfulness, and not
to any revocation on the part of God. "These gifts have ceased, I would say,
just as the verdure and leaves and flowers and fruits of the spring and summer
and autumn cease in winter. Because by the chill and wintry blasts which have
blown over the Church, her power to put forth her glorious beauty hath been
prevented. But because the winter is without a green leaf or beautiful flower do
men thereof argue that there shall be flowers and fruits no more? Trusting in
the word of God, who hath Created everything to produce and bring forth its
kind, man puts out his hand in winter and makes preparations for the coming
year: so if the Church be still in existence, and that no one denies: and if it
be the law and end of her being to embody a firstfruit and earnest of the power
which Christ is to put forth in the redemption of all nature; then, what though
she hath been brought so low, her life is still in her, and that life will under
a more genial day put forth its native powers." (The Church with her Endowment
of Holiness and Power; Works, V. p.101.)

It was from such convictions as these that he reasoned so powerfully and prayed
so earnestly for the recovery by the Church of her primitive gifts. If the
effort brought pain and persecution to him, we believe it has brought forth some
very sweet and genial fruits in others. He was no mere theorist. He not only
exhorted his flock "to live by faith continually on Jesus for the body as well
as the soul," but he has told us the story of his casting himself on the Lord
when mighty disease laid hold of him; and how his faith was tried to the last
extremity till with swimming brain and deathly sweat he stood holding on to the
sides of the pulpit, waiting for God to fulfill in the eyes of the people his
word "the prayer of faith shall save the sick;" and how his Redeemer at last
appeared for his help and loosed for him the bands of sickness enabling him to
preach on that morning with such demonstration and power of the Spirit as he had
rarely known.

Thomas Erskine has written on this subject with rare insight and depth of
conviction. Those who have read his writings know what a subtle and intuitive
spiritual apprehension he has. A barrister by profession he is far more widely
known as a theologian, while he is most deeply revered as a Christian, "who" to
use Dr. Hanna’s words in his preface to his letters "moved so lovingly and
attractively among his fellowmen and who walked so closely and constantly with
God." Speaking of miraculous healing and the other gifts he says: -- "But I
still continue to think, that to any one whose expectations are formed by and
founded on the New Testament, the disappearance of these gifts from the Church
must be a far greater difficulty than their reappearance could possibly be."
(Letters, p.408.) In his correspondence with Dr. Chalmers, when the latter
argued that we ought not to desire signs from the Lord, but to be satisfied with
the ordinary manifestations of the Spirit, he replied that we ought to desire
them, if God has ordained them: -- "If the Lord gives these things as means,
surely it is not genuine humility which says I am satisfied without them. When
the Lord desired Ahaz to ask a sign he answered, ’I will not ask neither will I
tempt the Lord:’ but he is severely rebuked for this apparent humility" (Isaiah
7:12-13). His strong conviction was that the miraculous gifts were designed to
be a permanent endowment of the Church: -- "The great and common mistake with
regard to the gifts is that they were intended merely to authenticate or to
witness to the inspiration of the Canon of Scripture, and that therefore when
the Canon was completed they should cease: whereas they were intended to witness
to the exaltation of Christ as the head of the body, the Church. Had the faith
of the Church, continued pure and full these gifts of the Spirit would never
have disappeared. There is no revocation by Christ of that word" (Mark 16:17-18)
-- Brazen Serpent, p.303. With such views he watched with great interest any
indications of a revival of these gifts, and in the movement in that direction
going on in his day, he believed he witnessed some genuine instances of
miraculous healing, as well as of speaking with tongues. We refer to one case
mentioned in his letters: "In March, 1830, in the town of Port Glasgow, on the
Clyde, lived a family of MacDonalds, twin brothers, Jaraes and George, with
their sisters. One of the sisters, Margaret, of saintly life, lay very ill, and
apparently nigh to death. She had received a remarkable baptism of the Spirit on
her sick bed, and had been praying for her brothers that they might be anointed
in like manner. One day when James was standing by, and she was interceding that
he might at that time be endowed with the power of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit
came upon him with marvelous manifestations. His whole countenance was lighted
up, and with a step and manner of most indescribable majesty he walked up to
Margaret’s bedside and addressed her in these words, ’Arise and stand upright.’
He repeated the words, took her by the hand, and she arose. Her recovery was
instantaneous and complete, and the report of it produced a profound sensation,
and many came from great distances to see her. Mr. Erskine visited the house and
made careful and prolonged inquiry into the facts, and put on record his
conviction of the genuiness of the miracle." (Letters, pp. 176,182,183.) His
whole discussion of the subject in the work referred to, The Brazen Serpent, is
deeply instructive, and especially his exposition of the intention and
significance of miracles of healing as signs.

Dr. Horace Bushnell, in his well-known work Nature and the Supernatural, not
only admits the existence of present-day miracles, but considers that a denial
of their possibility would imperil his whole argument for the supernatural.
Conceding that the Church as a whole has lost her miraculous faith, and would be
inclined to repel it were it offered to her, and admitting that thinking men are
not open to conviction on this point, because "the human mind, as educated mind
is just now at the point of religious apogee, where it is occupied or
preoccupied by nature and cannot think it rational to suppose that God does
anything longer which exceeds the causalities of nature," he yet holds that
among humble and simple-hearted believers "sporadic cases" of miracles have
constantly appeared, and continue to appear. And not only this; he considers
that in our time there are signs of a revival of the primitive apostolic gifts;
that Christians "feeling after some way out of the dullness of second-hand
faith, and the dryness of merely reasoned gospel, are longing for a kind of
faith that shows God in living commerce with men such as he vouchsafed them in
former times." "Probably, therefore," he continues, "there may just now be
coming forth a more distinct and widely attested dispensation of gifts and
miracles than has been witnessed for centuries."

Dr. Bushnell’s testimony as a whole is quite remarkable, because it is that of a
cultivated reasoner, looking at the question through the eyes of logic as well
as through the eyes of faith. His well argued discussion and wide array of facts
ought at least to arrest the attention of the savans who toss off this subject
with a derisive sneer. That unripe skepticism, which denies before it has even
doubted, has nowhere been more arrogant than on this field. Presumptous enough
it is to attempt to pick a miracle to pieces with the steel fingers of logic,
but to leave it cooly alone is worse. And yet this is the method which reason
has too often taken with anything professedly supernatural in these days.
Scientific reason and Christian reason have passed by modern miracles as poor
relations, to be looked at askance but not to be admitted into the best circles
of faith and credence. And it is, therefore, quite gratifying to note the frank
and cordial recognition which a thinker like Dr. Bushnell extends to them.
Healing, prophecy, and gifts of tongues he admits as possible, and to some
extent operative today as in the beginning. From a large array of instances
adduced in his work we give place to but one, referring the reader for further
information to the fourteenth chapter of the work named, in which he discusses
the proposition: "Miracles and supernatural gifts not discontinued." The case
cited is from the experience of a friend of his, who had been healed by prayer
himself, and had, as he believed, received the gift of healing. He gives the
instance to Dr. Bushnell in writing, and the doctor considers his character and
veracity to be such as to put his story beyond question: "At length one of his
children, whom he had with him away from home, was taken ill with scarlet fever.
And now the question was, I give his own words, ’what was to be done? The Lord
had healed my own sickness, but would he heal my son?’ I conferred with a
brother in the Lord, who, having no faith in Christ’s healing power, urged me to
send instantly for the doctor, and I dispatched his groom on horseback to fetch
him. Before the doctor arrived my mind was filled with revelation on the
subject. I saw that I had fallen into a snare by turning away from the Lord’s
healing hand to lean on medical skill. I felt greviously condemned in my
conscience; a fear also fell on me that if I persevered in my unbelieving course
my son would die, as his oldest brother had. The symptoms in both were precisely
similar. The doctor arrived. My son, he said, was suffering from a scarlet
fever, and medicine should be sent immediately. While he stood, prescribing, I
resolved to withdraw the child and cast him on the Lord. And when he was gone I
called the nurse and told her to take the child into the nursery, and lay him on
the bed. I then fell on my knees, confessing the sin I had committed against the
Lord’s healing power. I also prayed most earnestly that it would please my
heavenly Father to forgive my sin, and to show that he forgave it by causing the
fever to be rebuked. I received a mighty conviction that my prayer was heard,
and I arose and went to the nursery, at the end of a long passage, to see what
the Lord had done, and on opening the door, to my astonishment, the boy was
sitting up in his bed, and on seeing me cried out, ’I am quite well and want to
have my dinner.’ In an hour he was dressed, and well, and eating his dinner, and
when the physic arrived it was cast out of the window.

"Next morning the doctor returned, and on meeting me at the garden gate he said,
’I hope your son is no worse?’ ’He is very well, I thank you,’ said I in reply.
’What can you mean?’ rejoined the doctor. ’I will tell you; come in and sit
down.’ I then told him all that had occurred, at which he fairly gasped with
surprise. ’May I see your son,’ he asked. ’Certainly, doctor; but I see that you
do not believe me. We proceeded upstairs, and my son was playing with his
brother on the floor. The doctor felt his pulse and said, ’Yes, the fever is
gone.’ Finding also a fine, healthy surface on his tongue, he added, ’Yes, he is
quite well; I suppose it was the crisis of his disease.’ (Nature and the
Supernatural, p.480.)

These testimonies might be increased by the addition of such names as those of
Hugh Grotius, the Dutch theologian, and Lavater, the "Fenelon of Switzerland,"
as he has been called, and Hugh McNeil, the eminent English evangelical minister
of the last generation, and Thomas Boys, M. A., of Trinity College, Cambridge,
England, and others. (The works of Thomas Boys, The Christian Dispensation
Miraculous and Proofs of Miraculous Faith and Experience of the Church in all
Ages are full of learning and information on this whole subject, and this book
gratefully acknowledges its indebtedness to them for several quotations and
translations from rare and inaccessible works.) But we have not space to refer
to more. These are a goodly array of witnesses; yet not because of their
eminence have we summoned them. We care little for the testimony of a deep
thinker except he has thought deeply and devoutly upon the subject in hand. The
shorter sounding line, if it has dropped its lead to the utmost limit, has told
us more of the depth than the longer one that remained coiled and dry. And so
the very mediocre theologian who has studied this question to the extent of his
capacity is a better witness than the most profound who has never investigated
it, but has rested in unreasoning assent to what Dr. Bushnell calls "the clumsy
assumption" that all miracles closed with the apostolic age.


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  CHAPTER 28: 02.06.     THE TESTIMONY OF MISSIONS
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The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 6. The
Testimony of Missions

There is a special and weighty reason why we should lay emphasis on any
testimonies on this subject coming from those who are preaching the gospel among
the Pagans. The rigid logic which is supposed to fence out miracles from modern
Christendom, does not seem to have been careful to include heathendom in its
prohibition. For when it is said that "miracles belong to the planting of
Christianity not to its progress and development;" it will at once strike us
that missions are practically the planting of Christianity. There is really
little if any difference between Paul at Melita, and Judson in India. In each
instance it is the herald of the Gospel set down among a superstitious and
idolatrous people. And admitting the proposition just quoted to be true, it
would be very difficult to say why if Paul went into the house of Publius in the
one place and laid his hands on his sick father and healed him, it might not be
permitted Judson to go into some home in Burmah and do the same. And if it be
said that signs are not needed while we have the history of the Christian
Church, and the influence of powerful Christian nations for the authentication
and enforcement of the gospel (See Alford on Mark 16:1-20), it must still be
remembered that these forces are practically powerless until by the planting of
Christianity the heathen have been made acquainted with Ecclesiastical History
and brought in contact with Christian civilization; so that the argument comes
back again to this conclusion: -- that if miracles belong to the planting of
Christianity, there would be no inherent improbability of their appearing on
missionary fields, and among those who are engaged in introducing the Gospel
into new countries. The justness of this conclusion has been recognized by
several writers.

We are glad to find, for example so devout and eminent a theologian as Professor
Christlieb of Bonn accepting most candidly and frankly this position. For after
admitting the force of the argument against miracles in Christianized countries
he says: -- "Our age however is still characterized by the establishment of new
Churches. The work of missions is outwardly at least more extended than it ever
was before. In this region therefore, according to our former rule, miracles
should not be entirely wanting. (Abp. Tillotson puts forth a similar view.
Works, x. p.230.) Nor are they. We cannot therefore fully admit the proposition
that no more miracles are performed in our day. In the history of modern
missions we find many wonderful occurrences which unmistakably remind us of the
apostolic age. In both periods there are similar hhindrancesto be overcome in
the heathen world and similar confirmations of the word are needed to convince
the dull sense of men: we may therefore expect miracles in this case." (Modern
Doubt and Christian Belief, p.332.) And then as though less afraid of the
imputation of credulity than of skepticism, he gives several instances, in the
genuineness of which he expresses entire confidence. These we believe are but
samples of hundreds that might be produced were it not for the exceeding
timidity, the shyness amounting almost to shame-facedness with which so many
Christians approach this subject. Of course with this sentiment of distrust
generally prevailing on the subject, we could hardly expect that witnesses would
be very forward in reporting things indiscreetly supernatural, though quite
confident of having seen them.

We venture however to give several instances of what seems to be divine healing,
as they have been reported from missionary fields -- the first three being those
cited by Dr. Christlieb in the work just referred to: -- "And now read the
history of Hans Egede, the first Evangelical missionary in Greenland. He had
given the Esquimaux a pictorial representation of the miracles of Christ before
he had mastered their language. His hearers, who, like many in the time of
Christ, had a perception only for bodily relief, urge him to prove the power of
this Redeemer of the world upon their sick people. With many sighs and prayers
he ventures to lay his hands upon several, prays over them, and lo, he makes
them whole in the name of Jesus Christ! The Lord could not reveal himself
plainly enough to this mentally blunted and degraded race by merely spiritual
means, and therefore bodily signs were needed."

"At a Rhenish mission station in South Africa in 1858, an earnest native
Christian saw an old friend who had become lame in both legs. Impressed with a
peculiar sense of believing confidence, he went into the bushes to pray, and
then came straight up to the cripple, and said, ’The same Jesus who made the
lame to walk, can do so still: I say to thee, in the name of Jesus, rise and
walk! The lame man, with kindred faith, raised himself on his staff and walked,
to the astonishment of all who knew him." (Vide the Memoire of Kleinschmidt,
Barmen 1866, p.58,ff).

Another most remarkable instance occurred in the case of a missionary of the
Rhenish society, named Nommensen, working in Sumatra. "On one occasion a heathen
who had designs on his life managed secretly to mix a deadly poison in the rice
which Nommensen was preparing for his dinner. Without suspicion, the missionary
ate the rice, and the heathen watched for him to fall down dead. Instead of
this, however, the promise contained in Mark 16:18 was fulfilled, and he did not
experience the slightest inconvenience. The heathen, by this palpable miraculous
proof of the Christian God’s power, became convinced of the truth, and was
eventually converted; but not until his conscience had impelled him to confess
his guilt to Nommensen, did the latter know from what danger he had been
preserved. This incident is well attested, and the missionary still lives."
(1873, vide, Rohden Geschichte der rhein, Missionsgesellsschaft, p.324.)

It will be seen that these instances cover several specifications in Mark
16:17-18. Their miraculous character cannot of course be vouched for with
certainty. For we have not witnesses supernaturally inspired to accredit works
supernaturally wrought, if there are such still. But one would hardly wish to
charge deception on those who have reported them. For us, however, their
probability rests more strongly on the words of the great commission under which
these missionaries were acting than on the trust-worthiness of human testimony.
("But, inasmuch as far later times are full of testimonies to this point, I know
not from what motive some persons restrain the gift to the first ages. While I
readily grant to such persons that there was a richer abundance of miracles in
order that the foundation of so great a structure might, in spite of the world’s
power, be laid, I cannot with them perceive why we should believe that this
promise of Christ has ceased to be in force. Wherefore, if any one preach
Christ, as he would have himself preached, to the nations that know him not (for
miracles are peculiarly intended for such, 1 Corinthians 14:22), I doubt not
that the promise will still be found to stand good; for the gifts of God are
without repentance (Romans 11:29). But we, whenever the fault lies in our own
sloth or unbelief, throw the blame on him." -- Hugh Grotius. 1583-1645.)

Doctrines which have been almost universally denied are certain to force themselves into acceptance again if they are in the Bible, and that Bible is studied. And a promise in the missionary’s commission which says: "These signs shall follow" is liable now and then to break through custom and prejudice and get itself fulfilled. Besides that commission is certain to fall into the hands of native preachers, who are unskilled in the arts of refining and spiritualizing scripture, and who know no better than to take God literally at his word. And who can tell what may not happen when a Christian who has not learned to doubt comes to God to claim the fulfillment of one of his promises? In such a case we may hear of miracles quite artless and rude in their form. A missionary of the Presbyterian Board who has been laboring for many years in China, declares that with the New Testament in their hands, the native Christians are constantly finding and putting in practice the promises for miraculous healing. This fact has led him to a careful revision of his opinions on the subject. He writes: "Fully believing that the gifts of the Spirit were not to be taken from the Church, I feel assured that our faith ought to exercise and claim their use now. The salvation aimed for by all, should be present release from sin and the power of Satan. If this is attained then the whole advantage of Christ’s life, death and resurrection will be secured. Healing is as much a part of this as any verbal proclamation of the good news. The ministry of healing, therefore, can not be divorced from the duty of the missionary." An honored missionary among the Karens gives the following experience: "While traveling in the Pegu district I was strongly urged to visit an out of the way village, in which were only a few Christians. Entering the house of one of them, I had been seated but a little while when there came in a Karen, an entire stranger, but whose salutation proved him a Christian. He at once said that hearing that the teacher had come to visit the village, he came to beg that I would go and pray for his son who was very ill, he feared dying. He quoted James 5:14-15 as his excuse. Of course Mrs.----- and myself went at once, accompanied by the three or four Christians of the house in which we were. The patient was found to be a child of about fifteen years of age, possibly not over fourteen, but through scrofula, he was distorted and crippled so that he could not walk, indeed had never walked upright but crept painfully on knees and hands. He was greatly wasted, and had been much worse for some weeks, and at the time was perfectly helpless through extreme weakness. He had every appearance of one near death. We prayed, each in turn, the lad mingling short requests with ours. I think in all seven brethren offered petitions. A little bottle of medicine was left from our scanty supplies and we took leave of the poor little fellow. Six months afterwards the father came to the city, and on inquiring of him he said that his son was well, -- well as he had never been in his life, and was actually walking on his feet, that the heathen families living in the village were deeply impressed, and said unhesitatingly that our prayers had saved him. I asked him his own opinion. He, most emphatically, in his strong Karen way, said: ’God has done it; God has healed him.’ He then said, ’Teacher this is no new thing; I was with your father-inlaw many times when God, in answer to prayers, healed the sick, and that is why I asked you to pray with my boy, and now he is healed.’"

Many testimonies have been recently published by missionaries of their own
recovery from hopeless sickness through the prayers of faith. We can give place
to but one, and that quite abridged in form. It is from Rev. Albert Norton, and
is written to Dr. Stanton of Cincinnati, formerly moderator of the General
Assembly. After describing his terrible sickness in Elichpoor, India, June, 1879
-- an abscess in the liver which had worked itself through the pleura and was
discharging itself into the right lung -- the most intense pain ever endured,
and withal malarious remittent fever, etc. He continues: "I was thinking only of
how I might die as easy as possible, when I was aroused by strong desire to live
for my family, and to preach the unsearchable riches of the Gospel, and the
thought came ’Why cannot God heal you?’ My dear wife was the only Christian
believer, except an ignorant Kerkoo lad, within eighteen miles. At my request
she anointed me with oil, and united her prayers with mine that God might at
once heal me. While I was praying vocally, before I felt any change in my body,
I felt perfectly certain that God had heard and answered our prayers. When we
were through praying we commenced praising; for the acute pain in my right side,
and the fever, had left me. I was able at once to read some from the Bible, and
to look out some passages from the Greek Testament. Neither the fever nor the
acute pain returned, and from that hour I began rapidly to grow stronger. In a
few days I was able to walk half a mile without fatigue. In this sickness I took
no medicine, and had the help of no physician but Jesus. To him be all the
praise and glory. Why should it be thought a strange thing that he can heal our
bodies? It is written of him, ’Himself took our infirmities and bare our
sicknesses.’ Is it not said of our Lord, ’Who healeth all thy diseases,’ as well
as ’Who forgiveth all their iniquities’?" (The Great Physician, by Rev. W.E.
Boardman, p.73.)

We must believe, however, that if God really stretched forth his hand to heal in
these instances, it was for the furtherance of the gospel as the chief purpose.
Miracles are the signs and not the substance of Christianity. They are for the
confirmation of the Word, and not merely for the comfort of the body. And this
fact especially enhances the probability that they might not be entirely wanting
in heathen lands. The blind man must read his Bible by means of raised letters
and through the coarser sense of touch, since he is lacking in eyesight. And
what if to the blind pagans, God should be pleased now and then to present the
gospel embossed in signs and wonders, if "haply they might feel after him and
find him" in this way, when they could not at first discern him with the
spiritual understanding? No more serious objection could be made against this
method than that it is a revival of the primitive. -- "And they went forth and
preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with
signs following." Not for the satisfaction of the flesh but for the glory of God
and the vindication of his truth does our Lord stretch out his healing hand and
"make bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations." If it should be his
good pleasure to make use of those other miracles, the miracles of martyrdom
("Martyrdoms I reckon amongst miracles, because they exceed the strength of
human nature"-- Bacon), and to show the power of his grace in the supernatural
endurance of his servants under suffering, the same end has been reached.
Perpetua and Felicitas, going to a terrible death with a serenity rising into
absolute joy -- the declaration of utter insensibility to pain made before a
multitude of witnesses -- who has not read of the thrilling impression thus
produced upon the heathen, and of the irresistible impulse thereby given to the
truth? These are but miracles of healing seen on their reverse side; the Lord’s
hand stretched out to rob death of its pain, instead of robbing death of its
victim. "That the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified whether
by my life or by my death"; whether by my cure or by my patience under suffering
-- this must be our prayer always. But God be praised that he willeth the health
of his people and not their hurt. The priests of Baal seek to prove their God by
cutting themselves with knives and lancets. Elijah has just proved his God by
calling the widow’s dead son to life and delivering him to his mother. How
greatly do the idolators, with their endless worship of self-torture, need to be
taught this truth: that our God is one that makes alive and not one that
killeth.

Would, then, that the heathen could know Christ as the Healer! Who has not said
it as he has read of the awful loathsomeness of their sicknesses and the cruel
impositions of their doctors. Next to the intolerable tyranny of evil priests is
that of "the forgers of lies, the physicians of no value," with which every
pagan nation is afflicted. Can we describe or imagine the joy of the heathen’s
deliverance from the hopeless search for peace of conscience, as he finds
Christ, the sin pardoner? "Great Spirit, untie the load of our sins. If this
load were bound round our shoulders we could untie it for ourselves; but it is
bound round our hearts, and we cannot untie it, but thou canst. Lord untie it
now." So prayed a poor Fiji Islander (Journal of Wesleyan Missions). Was not the
revelation beyond all price that made known to him the fact that Christ "bore
our sins in his own body on the tree," and so could instantly lift the load
which he had toiled in vain to lift? And what if added to this he could hear and
appropriate that other revelation, that "himself bare our sicknesses?" If when
"the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint, from the sole of the foot
even unto the head, no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrifying
sores;" and if, after spending all his living on false physicians, his wounds
"have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment," he
could then know the Saviour’s healing touch laid upon him, and hear the word
"thou art made whole," what glory would he give to our Lord and Redeemer! Is it
unbecoming or presumptuous for us to conjecture what effects would ensue if the
gospel were thus to be preached on heathen fields "with signs following"?
Sickness is the dark shadow of sin, and nowhere does it lie so heavily as on the
pagan nations. If now and then that shadow were seen to be lifted by the Lard’s
hand, the event could hardly fail to open a wide and effectual door of entrance
for the gospel. God forbid that we should desire or grasp for anything which it
is not his pleasure to give. But what if it should seem to us that the great
commission demands these signs instead of forbidding them? Baptism, that sign of
Christ’s death and resurrection and of our justification thereby, is in the
commission: and what bitter battles have been fought in the Church for its
maintenance! And healing the sick, that sign of Christ glorified and alive
forevermore, is in the commission just as unequivocally. And yet we are so weak
and perplexed and impotent before it. Yes! it is there: "But who is sufficient
for these things?" Who of us would quite dare to repeat on behalf of our
Missionary brethren, some of whom are laboring among hostile rulers, and
blood-thirsty tribes, the apostles prayer -- "And now Lord behold their
threatenings and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak
thy word, by stretching forth thine hand to heal: and that signs and wonders may
be done in the name of thy holy child Jesus?" If we cannot utter this prayer we
may at least join in the petition which a devout commentator breathes over the
closing words of Mark’s Gospel. "Let us cry to the Lord: strengthen and bless
thou the hands of thine authenticated messengers: that they may rightly lay them
upon men; and that before thy coming again thy promise may be abundantly
fulfilled: they shall be healed: it shall be well with them" (Stier’s Word’s of
Jesus).


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  CHAPTER 29: 02.07.     THE TESTIMONY OF THE ADVERSARY
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The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 7. The
Testimony of the Adversary His testimony ought not to be cited, it will be said,
since he is "a liar and the father of it." But if we bear in mind always who and
what he is, his witness may serve a very excellent end. For we must know, unless
we are utterly "ignorant of his devices," that his deceptions are generally
counterfeits of divine realities. His business is to resist the Almighty by
mimicking his words and his works. Hence his lies are often very serviceable as
the negatives from which to reproduce photograph’s of God’s truths. And if we
will notice what the adversary is especially busy in bringing forward at any
period, we may by contrast infer what vital doctrine or important truth of God
is struggling into recognition.

We regard this principle as so unquestionable and so distinctly scriptural, that
we are always surprised to see Christian writers betrayed by overlooking it. "If
you credit any modern miracles in God’s true Church, you must logically concede
the genuineness of the alleged miracles of the Romish Church" it is often
confidently said. Nay! but have you never read of him "whose coming is after the
working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders?" (II Thessalonians
10,12; also Revelation 16:14, "spirits of devils working miracles"). The working
of Anti-christ is the counterpart of the working of Christ. Not feeble,
transparently false, and contemptible are the miracles of the adversary. "Signs
and wonders" are predicted of him -- the same terms as those applied to the
works of Christ. And not only that, but "all power" is ascribed to him -- the
same words employed which Christ used at his ascension, when laying claim to
universal authority. Without stopping to consider what limitations the language
may have in such connection, its use is certainly startling and indicates that
the miracles of Anti-christ are likely to be powerful and impressive, and fitted
to "deceive the very elect." But it is most illogical to conclude that we must
believe in lying wonders, because we believe in real wonders; and that we must
credit the miracles of the Apostate Church because we find those which we credit
in the true Church. We say "miracles of the Apostate Church." The fathers and
the reformers attributed actual miracles to Anti-christ, -- wonders of a
superhuman character, only demoniacal instead of divine, wrought through the
agency of evil spirits to simulate the works of the Spirit of God. (Augustine
declares that miracles may emanate "either from seducing spirits or from God
himself." Huss says, "the disciples of Anti-christ are more distinguished by
miracles than those of Christ, and will be so in days to come" [Defence of
Wickliffe, p.115]. Calvin says, "Satan perverts the things which otherwise are
truly works of God and misemploys miracles to obscure God’s glory" (Comment on
II Thessalonians 11:9.) And this view seems scriptural. In describing the perils
of the last days Paul declares concerning false teachers that "as Jannes and
Jambres withstood Moses so do these also resist the truth." The method of
resistance which these magicians offered, it will be remembered, was to
reproduce the miracles of God’s servants. When Aaron wrought wonders with his
rod "they also did in like manner with their enchantments." Miracle was matched
by miracle, and wonder by wonder, up to the point where God triumphed by
confounding the deceivers. So has it been with the Church of Christ all through
her history. Satan has ever been seeking to thwart God by imitation rather than
by denial. And we imagine that he has done more for building up his kingdom
through the Papal miracle-mongers who have claimed divine power than through the
infidel miracle-deniers who have disputed it. But there have been nevertheless
certain evident tokens of spuriousness attaching to Romish miracles, that have
indicated their true character to believers. There is a kind of Egyptian
crudeness about them which suggests the art of the sorcerer rather than the
touch of God’s finger. Alleged healing by contact with the bones of dead saints:
pains assuaged by making the sign of the Cross over the sufferer; recoveries
effected by pilgrimages to the shrines of martyrs, and evil spirits exorcised by
the crucifix or the image of the virgin! who does not see the vast contrast in
these methods, from the dignified and simple methods of Christ and his Apostles?
"God never puts a man upon the stage that Satan does not immediately bring
forward an ape," says Godet. He will approach as near the truth as possible, and
still keep to his lie. He will give us miracles through his false prophets that
seem divine in their end and purpose, but will always be careful to link them to
some deadly superstition or fatal heresy. We emphasize the assertion therefore
that false miracles are a testimony to the existence some where of the true, and
that we ought to be very careful lest in our revolt from the caricature, we
swing over to a denial of the genuine. ("According to all evidence of Scripture
there never were spurious miracles without the genuine: there never were those
from beneath, without those from above at the same time. And prophecy agrees
with fact. As tokens of the last day our Lord foretells the signs and wonders of
false Christs and prophets, and Joel foretells true ones. Thus every counterfeit
implies something counterfeited; and if you prove counterfeit miracles, you only
tell us to open our eyes the wider and look for the originals." Rev. Thomas
Boys. Proofs of Miraculous Faith and Experience of the Church. p.11,12.) In our
own time we have witnessed an extraordinary forth-putting of satanic energy in
the works of modern spiritualism. This is a system more versatile in
uncleanness, more fertile in blasphemy, and more prolific of adulteries, fleshly
and spiritual than any probably that has appeared for many generations. In all
its acts and exhibitions, it is so redolent of the foul smoke of Gehenna, that
it would seem impossible that any Christian could be deceived by it; yet it has
taken thousands of professed disciples of Christ captive, so that they have
"gone in the way of Cain, and run greedily after the error of Baalam for reward,
and perished in the gainsaying of Core." Its manifestations are characterized by
just those impish, grotesque and fantastic exhibitions, which always distinguish
the devil’s work from that of Christ. Its rappings and table-tippings and
materializations, and communions with the dead,-- what evident tokens of
perdition these should be to one who has been at all accustomed to discriminate
between divine and satanic traits! And yet as a competent writer declares "these
things are unblushingly and openly professed and practiced by Christian men in
all lands: those who believe them to be really spiritual, affirming that they
are wrought by good spirits; and those who disbelieve them to be the work of
spirits at all, playing with them in their unbelief." Alas! that such a system
should be able to boast of its millions of adherents, and that in those millions
thousands should be found who have borne or still bear the name of Christ.
Looking at the matter in the light of Scripture, we know of no more conspicuous
sign of the last days and of the "perilous times" therein predicted than this.
("Whenever these things have appeared it was a sign of approaching doom. When
the Canaanites practised them the measure of their iniquity was full. When Saul
applied to the Witch of Endor, his end was near. When these things prevailed
among the Jews, their day was closing. Let us not permit such among us lest it
should become the sign to us of declension and doom" -- Tract, What is
Mesmerism?. London, Bosworth and Harrison.)

Now it is well known that one of the loudest pretensions of spiritualism is the
claim to effect miraculous healing. It declares that Christ wrought his cures
through the agency of spirits and that it can do the same. Hence the legion of
"healing mediums," and the innumerable "lying wonders" by which their
assumptions are enforced. It is very natural that decent Christians in their
recoil from such revolting wonder-working, should take the position of stout
denial of all miraculous interventions in modern times, and of any supernatural
healing. But we believe this to be an unworthy and unfaithful attitude. It is as
though Moses and Aaron had retreated in disgust before Jannes and Jambres,
instead of pressing on with miracle upon miracle till they had compelled them to
surrender to the Lord of Hosts. It is as though Paul had been ashamed of the
power of the Spirit that was in him when he met the "damsel possessed with a
spirit of divination," and had renounced his miraculous gifts for fear of being
identified with sooth-sayers and necromancers, instead of asserting his power as
he did the more mightily, and saying to the evil spirit that possessed her, "I
command thee in the name of the Lord Jesus to come out of her." To us this
outbreak of satanic empiricism would be a strong presumptive proof that
somewhere the Lord is reviving among his people the gifts of divine healing: and
this constant presentation of the devil’s coin would lead us to search
diligently for the genuine coin bearing Christ’s own image and superscription.
(It is a curious fact that in the New Testament Greek, the term for sorcery is
the same as that for drugs. For example, Revelation 22:15, "Without are dogs and
sorcerers", pharmacists, and Galatians 6:19, "The works of the flesh are
adultery, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft (pharmacy). And when
we think of the legion of medicine-men and medicine-women who prey upon the
sick; the spiritualists and trance-doctors with their prescriptions dictated by
the dead, who swarm into the sick-rooms of our afflicted humanity, as thick as
the frogs of Egypt in the bed-chambers of Pharaoh, there seems to be a grim
significance in the use of these words.) A thoughtful writer on this subject has
called attention to the fact that the era of modern spiritualism covers almost
exactly the era of the alleged revival of the gifts of healing. The most
striking instances of professed miraculous cure in modern times happened, as we
have shown elsewhere, about fifty years ago in Scotland and in England. The
instances have increased and multiplied since, till today the number of devout,
prayerful, evangelical Christians who claim to have been miraculously recovered
is very large, and their names are sent up from every nation where the Gospel
has been preached.

It may be that "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh
in the children of disobedience," seeing God about to put forth his hand again
in signs and wonders, and miracles of healing, has determined, as he is wont, to
thwart the Lord by caricaturing his work, and bringing it into contempt in the
eyes of his own true people. Thus, perhaps, he has thrown himself into the very
path which the Almighty is about to enter, that so he may frighten his church
from treading it. Or, to state the matter as it seems to us most probable, it
may be that the adversary has seized as his most opportune occasion a time when
a belief in the supernatural is at its lowest ebb in the church ("When men no
longer believe in God they begin to believe in ghosts. In truth there has
scarcely ever been an age when men have snatched more greedily after the
extravagant than our own which derides the supernatural" -- Schenkel. Hear also
Carlyle’s powerful ridicule of Paris, casting off God and running after
mesmerism, "O women! O men! great it your infidel faith!" -- French Revolution,
p.50), and when a denial of modern miracles is well nigh universal among the
learned, and that in such a period he is putting forth the most signal displays
of superhuman power in order to set his evil impress upon those who may be
impressed by these things. Thus he is copying the Lord’s own method in using
miracles as an evidential testimony, only with this end, to establish "the
doctrines of devils," and to convert people to the creed of the prince of
darkness. But are we to turn against the witness of miracles, because of this
attempt to make it perjure itself in the interest of the evil one? Or, to
reverse the hypothesis, and suppose that the evil one is the first to enter this
field, then comes the question with equal force, whether because of his
preoccupancy we should refuse to go into it, if God’s Spirit leads the way. If
Anti-christ is about to make his mightiest and most malignant demonstration,
ought not the Church, if the Lord will give her power, to confront him with
sweet and gracious and humble displays of the Spirit’s saving health? Here we
believe Prof. Christlieb speaks again with true scriptural wisdom when he says:
"In the last epoch of the consummation of the Church she will again require for
the final decisive struggle with the powers of darkness the miraculous
interference of her risen Lord; and hence the scriptures lead us to expect
miracles once more for this period" (Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, p.332).
Meanwhile let us be careful that the adversary does not cheat us out of our
birthright. If he has set his trade-mark on miracles, and is using them mightily
in his traffic with simple souls, let us not make haste therefore to forfeit
whatever right and title in them the Lord has bequeathed to us. Let us not
abandon our wheat field because the devil has sowed tares in it. The fact that
he sows tares, is his testimony to the genuineness of the wheat. Of course we
should expect in the event of the Church’s recovery to any extent of her
supernatural gifts that the enemy would put forth redoubled energy to baffle and
confound her. Before a sleeping church the adversary walks very softly, and
modulates his roar to the finest tones, lest he wake her from her slumber. But
let her once rise up and take to herself some long disused power and he will
quickly manifest himself in his old character of "a roaring lion walking about
seeking whom he may devour."

Erskine, speaking concerning those texts which so clearly confer miraculous
gifts upon the Church, says: "I may here remark it, as a striking fact
illustrative of the cunning of the prince of darkness, that he has not permitted
his instruments to press these texts much, nor to argue from them so
triumphantly as they might have done, that the absence of miracles from the
Church was a refutation of the Bible. The Bible says, "These signs shall follow
them that believe." And yet here is a Church holding this faith and unfollowed
by these signs. The ready conclusion from this fact certainly is that the Bible
is not true; and we might have expected that this argument would be much used by
those who deny the Bible to be a divine revelation. But it has not been much
urged; and why? "The subtle enemy of man saw that there was more danger to his
own kingdom from the use of this weapon than advantage. It might have led to a
result very different from that of disproving the divine authority of the Bible.
There is another conclusion to which it might have led, and that is a lack of
faith in the Church. And thus the pressing of this argument might have awakened
the Church to a sense of her true condition; and this Satan fears more than the
Bible, knowing that a church asleep is the most powerful weapon against the
world, much more powerful than any infidel arguments" (Brazen Serpent, p.204).

Awake, then O Church! Put on thy strength! Awake indeed to evil surmisings and
contempt and opprobrium. For none ever yet escaped these things in attempting to
revive a forgotten truth. But these may be tokens of the Lord’s favor. Certainly
they are not the credentials of a slumbering and world-pleasing church. At all
events, let us fear them less than that other alternative, that the heathen
shall cry "Where is thy God?" and none shall be able to answer "Jehovah Rophi is
with us."


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  CHAPTER 30: 02.08.     THE TESTIMONY OF EXPERIENCE
========================================================================

The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 8. The
Testimony of Experience

"Prove me now herewith" is the challenge which the Lord has given in his word;
and there are many in the present generation who have accepted and tested his
challenge on the promises of bodily recovery.

We wish in this chapter to consider the experiences and testimony of certain,
who within our own times have exercised a ministry of healing. Let us not be
misunderstood. We do not attribute to any man the power of curing sickness,
though we think many are called to be instruments to that end. A physician is a
mediator between nature and our suffering humanity. And his skill depends solely
upon his ability to interpret and apply the laws of health to the sick, and to
bring the sufferer into contact with the recuperative forces of the natural
world. In like manner if the primitive "gifts of healing" are still bestowed in
the Church, as we believe, those endowed with them have power only through the
mediation of their faith and prayers. We are told that Paul entered into the
house of Publius, and, finding his father sick, "prayed and laid his hands on
him and healed him." But we do not understand from this that the apostle had any
inherent personal power to heal disease; else why did he pray? Prayer is
touching the hem of Christ’s garment by the human intercessor, while in the
laying on of hands he at the same moment touches the body of the sufferer. It is
simply, in a word, the repetition of what was done again and again during the
earthly ministry of our Lord, the bringing of the sick to Jesus for healing and
cleansing. "Why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or
holiness we had made this man to walk?" asks Peter of those who were wondering
at the miracle at the Beautiful Gate. If it were a question of human power or
holiness we might be quite ready to relegate the gifts of healing to the
apostolic age, confessing our utter lack of these qualifications. But since it
is a question of the power and holiness of "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday,
today, and forever," it is quite another matter. "If thou canst believe" is the
question now. "A year famous for believing," is the language in which Romaine
designated a certain unusual twelve-month of his ministry. If such a year should
be graciously injected into the calendar of any Christian life it would be a
year of success. For believing is knowing God and finding the depths of power
and privilege that are hidden for us in him: and "the people that do know their
God shall be strong and do exploits" says the scripture (Daniel 11:32).

Now, there have been some in our day who have had faith to take the Lord at his
word in connection with the promises of healing. And having, as they believed,
proved him, and found him faithful, their testimony will be deeply instructive
to our readers. Dorothea Trudel is a name especially honored in this relation.
The story of her life and labors in connection with the home for invalids in the
Swiss village of Mannedorf on Lake Zurich has been very widely read, and has
caused great searchings of heart in many who have pondered it. (Dorothea Trudel,
or The Prayer of Faith. London: Morgan and Scott.) The Lord provides deep roots
when there are to be wide-spreading branches. And this life whose boughs so ran
over the wall, and stretched beyond the bounds of ordinary service, was
unusually rooted and established. The mother from whom she received her birth
and early training was so remarkable for her faith and consecration that, though
living in the utmost obscurity and poverty, her biography has been placed among
those of the illustrious Christian women of the ages. (Consecrated Women.
London: Hodder and Stoughton.) The wife of a brutal and godless husband, and so
cut off from human sympathy that there was none but God to whom she could appeal
in her need, she was schooled by this bitter tuition into a life of faith and
absolute dependence on God. She looked to Him for food for her family when they
must otherwise have starved; for deliverance when they must otherwise have
perished; for healing when they must otherwise have died. Dorothea grew up with
perpetual exhibitions before her eye of the Lord’s restoring of the sick for a
poor household which could employ no other physician. The faith which it is so
difficult for us to recover was her native inheritance. Hence what we doubt so
painfully whether we may do, she bitterly condemned herself for not doing when
she had subsequently neglected it.

After her parents had died we find her engaged in labors of love among the
working people; teaching them the gospel, and seeking to lead them to the
Saviour. How her personal use of the prayer of faith begun in connection with
these labors she tells in the following words: "Four of them fell ill, and, as
each could do as he pleased, all four summoned a doctor. It was remarked,
however, that they got worse after taking the medicine, until, at last, the
necessity became so pressing that I went as a worm to the Lord, and laid our
distress before him. I told him how willingly I would send for an elder, as is
commanded in James 5:1-20, but, as there was not one, I must go to my sick ones
in the faith of the Canaanitish woman, and, without trusting to any virtue in my
hand, I would lay it upon them. I did so, and, by the Lord s blessing, all four
recovered. Most powerfully then did the sin of disobeying God’s word strike me,
and most vividly did the simple life of faith, the carrying out just what God
orders, stand before me."

Soon after she gave herself wholly to the Master’s work; and as the effects of
her evangelistic efforts, and the answers to her earnest prayers were noticed,
she was importuned to receive patients into her house. Consenting reluctantly
the life-work thus began, from which was to flow such a blessing to the souls
and bodies of men. Her methods were very simple: the Bible and prayer were her
medicines. She dealt with the soul first, using every effort to bring it to
faith and obedience to the Gospel; she prayed for the body, laying hands on the
sick and anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. In all this she
recognized the necessity of the most absolute consecration on her part and that
of her helpers, and of the most surrendering faith on the part of the sick. Very
beautifully does she thus speak of the believer’s privilege:-- "In the New
Testament we are called kings, and priests. Power accompanied the anointing of
the kings, and if we really belong to the kingly priesthood shall not strength
to heal the sick by prayer come on us also through the anointing of the Spirit?
If we only wear our Levite dress, and are consecrated in soul and body -- if we
are only prepared to be vessels of his grace -- it is his part to bless. Oh,
that we were willing not to do more than God would have us do, then would this
day be one of great reviving to us!"

Thus her work was inaugurated, and thus was she inducted by unseen hands into
her remarkable ministry. Rarely have we traced the story of a life whose
consecration was so even and unreserved. Among the sayings which she left on
record is this: "The heart ought not to be an inn where the Lord sometimes
comes, but a home where he always abides." It was her calling for many years to
keep an inn where the sick could lodge, a hospice into which the suffering and
distracted wanderer could turn for solace. These came and went with the
recurring months, but so constantly was the Lord abiding with her, that it might
be said according to Luther’s beautiful simile that the way-farer coming and
knocking at her heart and asking "Who lives here?" would hear the instant answer
from within, "Jesus Christ." Not that she ever claimed as much; for none was
ever more humble and self depreciatory; but her life declared it. It comes out
in her biography that her prayers were sometimes prolonged into midnight: that
her soul so wrought with intense desire that often the sweat would stand in
beads upon her forehead. Once in busy labors among the sick she passed the whole
day without food, utterly forgetting the claims of nature in her absorbing
devotion to her work; and then finding it impossible to get food on account of
the lateness of the hour she falls at Jesus’ feet, and begs for that meat that
the world knows not of, and is so refreshed and filled that she goes all night
in the strength of it.

Such rare and Christ-like consecration has always proved an apt soil for the
manifestation of the miraculous; especially when chastened and fertilized by
bitter persecutions. And this token which the Scripture promises to "all who
will live godly in Christ Jesus" was not wanting to her, as the spirit to endure
it with unresenting meekness was not wanting. "I have had enemies," she writes
"both known and unknown in crowds; and thickly scattered falsehoods and slanders
were no pleasant portion. I write this with the feeling that whoever cannot
bear, without emotion, even the blackest falsehoods and slanders has yet to
experience something of the peace of God which is like an ocean without bounds."
Medical men and others conceived great hostility to her, and sought to convict
her of malpractice in the courts; though it was shown in testimony that most of
her patients were such as had spent all their living upon physicians only to be
made worse; and that the only medicine she employed was prayer. Speaking of this
adversity she says: --

"But a storm was now to burst over the work; for in 1856 when the second house
was filled with invalids, and the Lord was working mightily we were fined sixty
francs, and were ordered to send away all the patients by a certain time. Though
it was the most gregrievousy of my life I obeyed the command; but the houses so
hastily emptied, filled as fast as ever with the blind, the lame, and the deaf,
for whom the Lord did great things. Evil spirits were cast out of some of the
invalids by prayer, and the sufferer became instantly free. Many were delivered
from the power of darkness which had been exercised over their minds, though
less visibly and outwardly and received what we consider the highest and best
blessing, that of being changed from wolves into lambs." In 1861 a second
persecution was raised against this most saintly and inoffensive woman. At the
instigation of a physician, the magistrates imposed a heavy fine upon her, and
ordered her patients to be sent away. Then, through appeal to a higher tribunal,
her case was brought into court, and the world was made acquainted through the
testimony of scores of living witnesses, with the wonderful work which God had
wrought through her prayers.

Mr. Spondlin an eminent advocate of Zurich volunteered to conduct her case;
Prelate Von Kopff, Prof. Tholuck and many others were witnesses on her behalf,
and the result was that she was fully acquitted and left undisturbed in her
gracious work. Henceforth her house which had too often through the malice of
enemies been a Bethaven "house of affliction," became only a Bethesda "house of
mercy." If her own simple record, confirmed by the word of scores who bore
testimony at her trial, could prove that miracles of healing were wrought in her
house, the fact must be considered as established. With a deep conviction that
sin is often the hidden root of sickness, she dealt most earnestly with the
souls of her patients. "Confess your faults one to another and pray one for
another that ye may be healed," was an injunction that had a deeply practical
meaning to her, and often conviction and conversion were the first symptoms of
physical convalescence.

"On one occasion a young artisan arrived, in whom cancer had made such progress
as to render any approach to him almost unbearable. At the Bible lessons this
once frivolous man, now an earnest inquirer, learned where the improvement must
begin; and from the day that he confessed his sins against God and man, the
disease abated. Some time afterwards he acknowledged one sin he had hitherto
concealed, and then he speedily recovered his bodily health and returned to his
home cured in spirit also." In some instances her prayers and her eager seeking
for the will of God were long continued before any sign of recovery was
manifested: in some she gained the strongest impression that it was not the
Lord’s will to restore them, and then she labored with unceasing diligence to
bring them into peace with God before they should die; in others healing was
vouchsafed at once.

"A lady in S. had so injured her knee by a fall, that for weeks she lay in the
greatest agony. The doctor declared that dropsy would supervene, but the
heavenly physician fulfilled those promises which will abide until the end of
the world, and by prayer and the laying on of Dorothea’s hands, the knee was
cured in twenty-four hours, and the swelling vanished."

One giving an account of her arraignment says: -- "During the course of the
trial, authenticated cures were brought forward, it is said, to the number of
some hundreds. There was one of a stiff knee, that had been treated in vain by
the best physicians in France, Germany, and Switzerland; and one of an elderly
man who could not walk, and had also been given up by his physicians, but who
soon dispensed with his crutches; a man came with a burned foot, and the
surgeons said it was a case for "either amputation or death," and he also was
cured; one of the leading physicians of Wurtemburg testified to the cure of a
hopeless patient of his own; another remained six weeks, and says he saw all
kinds of sicknesses healed. Cancer and fever have been treated with success;
epilepsy and insanity more frequently than any other forms of disease.

Such was the ministry of healing and comfort carried on by this holy woman till
the day when she fell asleep in Jesus, and such was the blessed example which
she left behind her. Travellers tell us of a deep and secluded lake in
Switzerland in whose crystal mirror the reflection of distant mountains may be
seen, though the mountains themselves are not visible to the eye. In the
tranquil, hidden life of this Swiss peasant girl, the image of the invisible
Saviour was clearly mirrored, and how many of those who knew her in life, and of
those who have read the story of her consecration since her death have therefrom
caught a reflected glimpse of the unseen Redeemer, and been quickened with new
love to him, and a new sense of his present power.

Samuel Zeller took up the work at Mannedorf as it dropped from the dead hands of
sister Dorothea. He is the son of the founder of a well-known boys’ reformatory
at Beuggen, near Basle, and brother in-law of Gobat, late bishop at Jerusalem.
He had been a co-laborer at the home before the death of its founder, and with
much prayer that the gifts of faith and of healing might rest upon him she had
committed the work to his care. Since her death the institution has continued
with no apparent loss of power or usefulness under his direction, he being aided
by Miss Zeller, his sister, and by several devoted assistants. All the helpers,
even to the servants, render their service as a labor of love, in grateful
return in most cases for the recovery which they have received at this home.

Mr. Zeller is a fervent evangelist, going out in every direction preaching the
word, as well as laboring "in season out of season" for the souls and bodies of
those who come under his care. From two houses the home has grown to ten, and
they are always filled with patients, from many nations. The same methods are
employed as under his predecessor. He lays hands upon the sick; he anoints with
oil in the name of the Lord, and pleads the promise given in James 5:1-20th
chapter; and his reports published year by year are full of striking instances
alike of healing and of conversion.

He entertains no extravagant views of his mission. Holding most tenaciously to
the perpetuity of the promise: "The prayer of faith shall save the sick," he yet
strongly recognizes the sovereignty of God in the answer. To the question asked
by a recent visitor, whether it is not God’s will that all his children should
be free from sickness, he replied that it is evidently the Father’s will that
some should overcome sickness and that others should overcome in sickness, and
he quoted significantly the words of Hebrews chapter 11: Some, "through faith,
subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths
of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of
weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies
of the aliens; Women received their dead raised to life again; and others were
tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better
resurrection. And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea,
moreover of bonds and imprisonment. They were, stoned; they were sawn asunder,
were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and
goat-skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not
worthy); they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of
the earth. And these all having obtained a good report through faith," etc. A
visit to this home was made a few years since by several eminent German
preachers and professors, and when one of these was asked his opinion of the
work he answered; "Where the Holy Spirit speaks with so much power, we can do no
other wise than listen to his teaching; critical analysis is out of the
question." A quiet and deep spiritual life, a profound faith in the promises of
God, and a humble and self-denying surrender to his word and will are the traits
which have characterized the work from the beginning until the present time. The
cases of recovery at Mannedorf are so fully given in the report of the home that
we need not here reproduce them.

Pastor Blumhardt exercising his ministry in the small Lutheran village of
Mottlingen, in the heart of the Black Forest in Germany, is another who was
greatly honored of God in his prayers of faith. He died quite recently, but
during many years of his active pastorate he was credited with extraordinary
grace in praying for the sick. Like others of whom we have spoken he had the
ministry of healing thrust upon him. He first became known for his unusual
consecration, and for his zeal and ability in stirring up formal Christians to
renewed activity. He prayed for the diseased with such efficacy, and such well
attested cures were reported from his intercessions, that very soon he was
resorted to by the suffering from every direction. His home and neighborhood
became a hospital, where not only invalids, but sorrowing and sin-sick souls
came for counsel and help. One writing of him says; "As regards Blumhardt and
his work, it may emphatically be said that the pleasure of the Lord prospered in
his hands." He seems to have taken no pains to report his success, having
evidently learned the secret that "the way to have a strong faith is to think
nothing of yourself." But others praised him if not his own lips, and he became
widely known throughout his country as a pastor who considered the sick bodies
of his flock to be under his ministration as well as the sick souls.

We give one instance from the life of Blumhardt, to show the vast influence
which a striking exhibition of miraculous power may exert upon the spiritual
life of a people. On commencing his ministry in Mottlingen he found the place
fearfully given over to infidelity and sensuality. As his fervent preaching
began to tell upon the community, Satan seemed to come in, with great wrath to
resist him. A case occurred in the village which exactly resembled the instances
of demoniacal possession recorded in scripture. The woman thus afflicted endured
the most excruciating agony. The Pastor being called in was quite appalled,
having never seen anything of the kind; and in his perplexity was inclined to be
excused from interfering with it. But some of his brethren in the Church who had
listened to his strong utterances on the subject of the prayer of faith, came to
him saying. "If you do not wish to shake our belief in your preaching you cannot
retreat before the evil one." After a moment’s thought, and silent prayer he
answered: "You are right; but to be in accord with the word of God you must also
unite with me in supplication according to James 5:14." What followed appears
from the following account by his friend Pastor Spittler. He says: -- "Kindly
permit me not to mention in this place the frightful details of her sufferings.
The medical man who attended the person was perfectly at a loss as to the case.
He said, ’Is there no clergyman in this village who can pray? I can do nothing
here.’ The minister (Blumhardt) who had then the spiritual care of the village
felt the force of such a reproach, joined as it was to that of his believing
people. He went to the house in the strength of faith. The more frightful the
manifestations of the destroying power of Satan became, with the more unshaken
faith in the all-overcoming power of the living God, that pastor continued to
struggle against the assaults of the infernal powers, till at last, after a
tremendous outcry of the words, ’Jesus is Victor! Jesus is Victor!’ heard almost
throughout the whole little village, the person found herself freed from all the
dreadful chains under which she had sighed so long, and often come to the very
brink of death."

"That voice, ’Jesus is Victor!’ sounded like a trumpet of God through the
village. After a week one man of very loose and deceitful character, whom the
pastor on that account felt almost afraid of approaching, came trembling and
pale to Blumhardt into his study, and said, ’Sir, is it then possible that I can
be pardoned and saved? I have not slept for a whole week, and if my heart be not
eased, it will kill me.’ He made an astonishing confession of iniquity, which
for the first time opened the pastor’s eyes to the multitude and enormity of
sins prevailing among the people. The pastor prayed with him and put Christ
before him, in his readiness to pardon even the vilest of sinners that would
come to him for mercy. When the man seemed completely cast down and almost in
despair, Blumhardt found it his duty, as an ambassador of Christ, solemnly to
assure him of God’s mercy in Jesus Christ; and lo! immediately his countenance
was changed, beaming with joy and gratitude.

"The first thing which the man now did was to go to his fellow-sinners, from
cottage to cottage, and tell them what he had just experienced. First they were
astonished, and could not understand it; yet they saw the marvellous change in
him. He urged them to go to the minister about their souls; some he even dragged
as it were in triumph to the manse, till about twenty persons were in the same
way convinced of sin, and found grace and forgiveness in Jesus." (Pastor
Blumhardt and His Work. London. Morgan and Scott -- See 13. Appendix, Note D).

Then follows the account of a most gracious and wide-spread revival. The whole
village became a Bochim. With tears and lamentations the people came confessing
their sins, and inquiring the way of escape from the wrath of God that was
resting upon them. The Pastor’s house was besieged from morning to night with
penitents, so that within two months, as he declared, there were not twenty
persons in the place who had not come to him bewailing their sins and finding
peace in Jesus Christ. The transformation which resulted was hardly less
wonderful than that which occurred in Kidderminster under the preaching of
Richard Baxter. The story gives a most striking indication of what might result
even now, under the preaching of the gospel "with signs following."

"The soul is the life of the body; faith is the life of the soul; Christ is the
life of faith" -- so wrote the good John Flavel; and thus he traced very
obviously and directly the course through which Christ the Redeemer acts upon
the human body.

Pastor Otto Stockmayer might be fitly named the theologian of the doctrine of
healing by faith. He has given some very subtle, not to say bold and startling
expositions of the relation of sin and sickness. "The soul is the life of the
body," and the Lord does not intend that his saving and sanctifying ministry
shall stop with the regeneration and renewal of the soul, is Stockmayer’s
strongly asserted doctrine. Attaching great weight to the words of Scripture
which declare that Christ, "healed all that were sick that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken by Esaias the prophet saying, himself took our infirmities and
bare our sicknesses" he reasons that if our Redeemer bore our sicknesses it is
not his will that his children should remain under the power of disease, any
more than that having borne our sins it is his will that they should remain
under condemnation and disobedience. He says:-- "Once understanding that it is
not the will of God that his children should be sick (James 5:14-18), and that
Christ has redeemed us from our sickness as from our sins (Matthew 8:16-17), we
can no longer look upon healing as a right which it would be lawful for us to
renounce. It is no longer a question whether we wish to be healed, God’s will
must be fulfilled in our bodies as well as in our souls. Our beloved Lord must
not be robbed of a part of the heritage of his agony.

It is by virtue of a divine will that the offering of the body of Jesus Christ
has sanctified us (Hebrews 10:10), which means that Christ by his death has
withdrawn the members of our body, with our entire being, from every
sacrilegious end or use. He has regained and consecrated them for his own
exclusive and direct use.

Wrested by Christ’s ransom from all foreign power, from the power of sin or of
sickness or of the devil, our members must remain intact, surrendered to him who
has redeemed them. "Let my people go" was God’s word to Pharaoh, and such is
God’s command to sin and sickness, and to Satan: "Let my people go that they may
serve me." Thus God’s children must not seek the healing of the body without
taking at the same time by faith, all the new position which Christ’s redemption
gives us -- and which is expressed in these words of Moses to Pharaoh: or better
still in Paul’s words (2 Corinthians 5:14-15), which amounts to this -- Nothing
more for self, but all for Christ. Before seeking freedom from sickness we must
lay hold of the moral freedom which the Redemption of Christ has obtained for
us, and by which we are cut off from any self-seeking: from the seeking of our
own will, our own life, our own interests, or our own glory. Our members are
henceforth Christ’s, and neither for ourselves or for our members, but for
Christ and for his members we desire health. We knew none other but Christ."
This in brief is the doctrine of Pastor Stockmayer as set forth in a tract
entitled "Sickness and the Gospel," (Partridge and Co., London) which has passed
through many editions and been very widely read. As the minister of a Christian
flock his practice has conformed to his teaching. He has used the same methods
as those employed at Mannedorf; and he has now a home in Hauptwiel Thurgan
Switzerland for the reception of such as desire to be healed through prayer.

Pastor Rein is another of the same group of primitive teachers and ministers. He
was greatly esteemed while living, and it is only a few years since he fell
asleep. He began his service in the gospel as a decided formalist. But shutting
himself up to the Bible and determining to shape his ministry rigidly by its
teachings without regard to tradition, a great change came over him. He now
abandoned the habit of reading prayers at the bedside of the sick, and began to
pour out petitions directly from the heart. Later he felt constrained to use the
practise of laying hands on them while praying, according to the word of the
Lord in Mark 16:1-20. Still later he began to anoint with oil in the name of the
Lord in connection with his praying for the sick, carrying out strictly the
directions given in the Epistle of James. His ministry seems to have been as
conspicuous for its humility as for its zeal and consecration; and diligent care
for the welfare of others so marked his course, that he may be said to have
illustrated the maxim that "true humility consists not so much in thinking
meanly of ourselves as in not thinking of ourselves at all." From a very tender
tribute to his life which recently appeared we make the following extract (See
Israel’s Watchman, Aug. 1878): "When sick people were brought to him he received
them as sent by the Lord. Much blessing and consolation was found in the silence
and retirement of the simple cure of Pastor Rein. He loved to work for the
kingdom of God in self-renunciation, and always in silence, without show, and he
always shrank from being spoken of. Oh how blessed it is when the word of God
accompanied with prayer is used as the medicine of the body as well as soul.

Rein never employed a doctor, believing in the words of Exodus 15:26: "I am the
Lord that healeth thee," or as it is in many translations, "I am the Lord thy
physician." When he was ill the elders of his Church or his friends laid hands
on him, and prayed over him, and he was always better than if he had taken
medicine; he was kept in a greater calm, and his communion with God was not
interrupted by the doctors’ visits, and by the continual occupation of
punctually following their directions. He lived in such intimate relation with
God that he asked him for all he wanted, the greatest and the least things
alike. This was why he could not except even healing, and he shrunk from seeking
any help but that which came directly from God.

He was jealous for God that he alone should have the glory. That which grieved
him deeply was to see how little glory is given to God in general, and
especially in the cure of illness, which is attributed generally to doctors or
to medicine. Thus he would not allow any remedy to come between him and his God,
and he rejoiced with all his heart when he saw others leave the old track of
this world’s laws of prudence, to follow the path of an obedient and unreserved
faith. When he prayed over and laid hands on the sick he watched attentively for
a knowledge of God’s will regarding the person whom he was occupied with, and
always besought him to reveal to him, whether the sickness was unto death, or
whether it was rather a merciful visitation, sent to lead the subject of it to
reflection; and he prayed accordingly. This confidence in God, which made him
renounce all human means in illness, caused him to be much criticised. But we
must say to his honor, that Rein was extremely charitable towards others, never
seeking to put a yoke upon them or to lay down the law to them, in that which he
looked upon as a permission, a precious grace from on high.

He never regarded it as a sin in any one to take medicine, or to consult a
doctor, when they had not the special faith to do without them; a faith which
very precious as it is, is not necessary for salvation. Who can find fault with
such as declare, like Rein, that they cannot do otherwise than commit themselves
solely to God in ail things, even for bodily health, and that they esteem as
happy those who can do the same.

He was actuated by a holy jealousy, when he heard the signs which should follow
them "that believe" (Mark 16:17-18), spoken of as belonging only to Apostolic
times, instead of its being recognized, that it is owing to the decline of faith
that these signs no longer exist. It has been said that "Faith is God s power
placed at man’s disposition." So he believed, and on this principle he acted."

Several interesting incidents of recovery under his prayers are given in
connection with this sketch of his life, but they are of the same type as those
elsewhere recorded, and we will not reproduce them.

Among other Evangelists and pastors abroad, who hold the same faith and practice
as these we may mention Lord Radstock of England. A very devoted and deeply
spiritual man he is known to be by all who have come in contact with him. And
many who have never seen him have read with interest of his evangelistic work
among the higher ranks especially in Russia and Sweden. Writing to the London
Christian [magazine] concerning his work in the latter country, he sends reports
of several very striking instances of cure in answer to prayer and says: -- "One
interesting feature of the Lord’s grace in Stockholm is the obedience of faith
with which several pastors and elder brethren have accepted their privilege of
anointing the sick and praying over them in the name of the Lord. There have
been many remarkable instances of God’s gracious healing. I enclose details of a
few cases, that God’s children may be encouraged to see that God has not
withdrawn the promise in James 5:15, and that it is better to trust in the Lord
than to put confidence in man." In America there are several homes for healing
conducted on the same principle as that of Miss Trudel. Quite a number of them
are under the direction of pious women, who have learned the secret of the
prayer of faith. We have only space to refer to one work which is most widely
known through its published reports, and of which, from his near neighborhood to
it, the writer has had an excellent opportunity to judge.

Dr. Charles Cullis is at the head of what is known as the "Faith-work" in the
City of Boston. The work has many branches, the Consumptive’s Home; the Willard
Tract Repository; homes for children; city mission work; foreign missionary
work; schools among the freedmen, etc., all maintained upon the same principle
virtually as the orphan work of Pastor George Muller, at Bristol in England. Any
one who has been made acquainted with a single department of this enterprise, as
for example, that of the Consumptive’s Home can have no doubt as to the most
beneficent and Christ-like character of the labors there carried on.

Dr. Cullis has for several years been accustomed when applied to, to minister to
the sick in the manner above described. And there are among us many
unimpeachable witnesses to the answers which have been granted for the recovery
from disease. The writer is well acquainted with quite a number of these, some
of several years standing, and has no hesitation in saying that they bear every
evidence of genuineness. How Dr. Cullis was led to exercise this ministry is
best told in his own words which we extract from his published report called
Faith Cures.

"For several years my mind had been exercised before God as to whether it was
not his will that the work of faith in which he had placed me, should extend to
the cure of disease, as well as the alleviation of the miseries of the
afflicted. I often read the instructions and promise contained in the fourteenth
and fifteenth verses of the fifth chapter of the epistle of James. They seemed
so very plain, that I often asked of my own heart, why, if I can rely on God’s
word, "whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do," and every day verify
its truth in the supply of the daily needs of the various work committed to my
care, -- why can not I also trust him to fulfill his promises as to the healing
of the body. "The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise
him up"? I could not see why with such explicit and unmistakable promises, I
should limit the present exercise of God’s power. I began to inquire of earnest
Christians whether they knew of any instances of answer to prayer for the
healing of the body. Soon afterwards the Life of Dorothea Trudell fell into my
hands, which strengthened my convictions, and the inquiry arose, "if God can
perform such wonders in Mannedorf, why not in Boston?" At this time I had under
my professional care a Christian lady, with a tumor which confined her almost
continuously to her bed in severe suffering. All remedies were unavailing, and
the only human hope was the knife: but feeling in my heart the power of the
promise, I one morning sat down by her bedside, and taking up the Bible, I read
aloud God’s promise to his believing children; and the prayer of faith shall
save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins,
they shall be forgiven him." "I then asked her if she would trust the Lord to
remove this tumor and restore her to health, and to her missionary work. She
replied ’I have no particular faith about it, but am willing to trust the Lord
for it.’ I then knelt and anointed her with oil in the name of the Lord, asking
him to fulfill his own word. Soon after I left, she got up and walked three
miles. From that time the tumor rapidly lessened, until all trace of it at
length disappeared." The work thus begun has gone on now, for quite a number of
years, and we think there can be no reasonable doubt that in Boston as well as
in Mannedorf and in Mottlingen there has been a living and repeated
demonstration that God is still pleased to recover the sick directly and
manifestly in answer to his people’s intercessions.

If these things be so, can any say that we have not reason to praise God and
rejoice with new joy in him: -- "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, Who healeth
all thy diseases"? "Any explanation but the admission of the miraculous" is the
cry which an unbelieving world raises when anything wonderful happens. And
Christians more solicitous for their caution than for their faith, have
sometimes joined in the cry. And thus the seal of the supernatural has been
assiduously withheld we fear, where it should have been permitted to place its
impress and testimony. But we do not so much call attention to these instances
of healing as to these examples of faith. There may be mistakes in the estimates
put upon the cures, but can there be any in the sure word of promise? If any of
these testimonies of recovery should prove ill-founded, it would only
demonstrate the ignorance of men. But God hath in the last days spoken to us by
his Son and "he that receiveth his testimony hath set to his seal that God is
true."


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  CHAPTER 31: 02.09.     THE TESTIMONY OF THE HEALED
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The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 9. The
Testimony of the Healed

"One thing I know, that whereas I was blind I now see." This confession of
experience has always been regarded as the strongest that can be made. The "I
know" indeed may seem to savor of egotism and assurance. But let us not forget
that while the egotism of opinion is always offensive, the egotism of experience
can never be rebuked. It is the highest attainment of mere human thought and
speculation to know that one does not know. Hence very fittingly we have the
culture of our age graduating in agnosticism, which is knowledge culminating in
ignorance, as the highest mountain peaks are lost in the clouds. On the other
hand, when we read the opening words of John’s first epistle, "That which we
have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our
hands have handled of the word of life," we are not surprised at the writer’s
constant use of the words "we know," or that he is able to say "Hereby we do
know that we know him."

Experience is the surest touch-stone of truth. It is not always infallible,
indeed; especially when it deals with our spiritual states and conditions. For
these are often deceptive and difficult to interpret. But certainly one ought to
know when an infirmity which has long oppressed the body has been removed, or
when a pain that has incessantly tortured the nerves has ceased. This is a kind
of testimony which is not easily ruled out of court. And there are many who
stand ready to give in this witness. Ought we to refuse to hear it, or to
dismiss it as visionary and idle talk? We are quite accustomed to accept what we
call a religious experience as a test of fitness for church membership. Is it
less difficult to recognize and interpret a physical experience?

Let us listen to the statements of some who have told the story of their bodily
healing. We cite as our first example that of Miss Fancourt, of London, the
daughter of an English clergyman, whose case created no small interest at the
time of its publication. The story of her sickness is too long to be given in
detail. Suffice it to say that she was attacked with severe hip disease in
November 1822. From this date till 1828 she was a constant sufferer, not only
from the disease itself, but from the varied operations of leeches, blisters,
bleedings, and cuttings of the surgeon’s knife, and all to no effect. From this
period onward for two years she was a helpless cripple, for most of the time
confined to her bed. The story of her recovery we give in her own words:

"Thus it continued till the 20th of October, 1830, when a kind friend who had
seen me about two months before had been led by God to pray earnestly for my
recovery, remembering what is written, ’Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer,
believing, ye shall receive.’ He asked in faith, and God graciously answered his
prayer. On Wednesday night, my friend being about to leave the room, Mr. J.
begged to be excused a short time. Sitting near me, we talked of his relations
and of the death of his brother; rising, he said: ’They will expect me at
supper,’ and put out his hand. After asking some questions respecting the
disease, he added, ’It is melancholy to see a person so constantly confined.’ I
answered ’It is sent in mercy.’ ’Do you think so? Do you not think the same
mercy could restore you?’ God gave me faith and I answered ’Yes.’ ’Do you
believe Jesus could heal, as in old times?’ ’Yes.’ ’Do you believe it is only
unbelief that prevents it?’ ’Yes.’ ’Do you believe that Jesus could heal you at
this very time?’ ’Yes. -- Between these questions he was evidently engaged in
prayer. -- ’Then’ he added, ’rise up and walk; come down to your family.’ He
then had hold of my hand; he prayed to God to glorify the name of Jesus. I rose
from my couch quite strong. God took away all my pains, and we walked down
stairs, Mr. J. praying most fervently, ’Lord have mercy upon us; Christ have
mercy on us.’ Having been down a short time, finding my handkerchief left on the
couch, taking the candle I fetched it. The next day I walked more than a quarter
of a mile; and on Sunday from the Episcopalian chapel, a distance of one mile
and a quarter. Up to this time God continues to strengthen me, and I am
perfectly well. To Jesus be all the glory. November 13, 1830." (Mrs. Oliphant’s
Life of Edward Irving, p.461.)

We have the added information that this long suffering invalid continued to be
well, and that the story of her healing, so soon as it went abroad, drew down
upon her and her family a most violent storm of ridicule and obloquy. By the
religious press which took up the matter the story was treated as a gross
scandal upon the Christian faith, and so bitter were the reflections upon the
parties involved that the venerable father of the lady, though hitherto a
confessed disbeliever in modern miracles, felt called upon to publish his
emphatic confirmation of the story. The following is the statement of Rev. Mr.
Fancourt:

"Under this peculiar dispensation of mercy there rests on my mind a solemn
conviction that the glory of God and the interest of religion are deeply
involved in the publicity which it will probably acquire. But without shrinking
from the responsibility attached to the declaration, I profess myself ready to
bear my open testimony to a notable fact, namely; that as I view it God has
raised an impotent cripple, in the person of my youngest daughter, to
instantaneous soundness of her bodily limbs by faith in the name of Jesus, being
taught by her mother church to know and feel that there is none other name under
heaven given to man in whom and through whom she could receive health and
salvation, but only the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this faith, through
the instrumentality of the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man (for God
heareth not sinners), which availeth much, God has done exceeding abundantly
above all that we could ask or think. I am aware that there are questions of
difficult solution as to the instrumentality by which the benefit has been
bestowed; but who would not tremble at the fearful conclusion which would result
from a denial of the divine interposition? Deprecating such a thought, I feel
persuaded that they are most on the side of truth and soberness who unite with
us in telling the church that God hath done great things for us, whereof we are
glad, which in their first communication made us like them that dream."

We cannot help pausing upon the lesson suggested by this, incident. Strange, it
might be said, that the sufferer should be grudged her release from pain and
helplessness. If a supernatural cure could not be admitted, it would seem that
at least none would envy her the harmless illusion. Yet has it not been so from
the beginning? "We must admit any solution rather than a miracle," said the
Christian Observer, commenting on this cure. And we remember that the wise Jews
said about the healing of another cripple, "that indeed a notable miracle has
been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot
deny it," as if to say "we have done our best to disprove it." Evidently our
Lord anticipated this treatment of miracles of healing when he introduced them;
for he said, "Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: the
blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the
deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to
them. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me" -- The last
thing, it would seem, at which the world should take offence. That the prison
doors should be opened, and light and sound be let in upon poor immured and
darkened souls; that lame feet wearily dragged by bodies which they were made to
bear up should be rendered whole and elastic by the healer’s touch; that lepers
should be released from their ghastly malady, and the dead be given back to
their friends, -- Are these events that should give offence? Alas! at what
antipodes man’s anger often stands to Christ’s. The rulers of the synagogue
"answered with indignation" because on the Sabbath day the Lord had healed a
sufferering woman whom Satan had bound for eighteen years. Once we hear of the
mighty indignation of Christ. At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus was "indignant in
spirit," for so they tell us the words mean. He saw the masterpiece of the
devil, whose works he had come to destroy, spread out before him -- death and
the tears, the anguish and the groans that follow in death’s train; and his soul
was stirred to holy wrath within him. Do we well to be angry at the suggestion
that even now the Lord of life may snatch from sickness, death’s forerunner,
those upon whom he has laid his hand? We give the following instance which we
find recorded and strongly endorsed by an eminent Baptist minister of the last
century, Rev. Morgan Edwards, of New Jersey. We reproduce the story of the
"miracle," as he names it in his own somewhat quaint and old-fashioned
phraseology. It is in regard to Hannah Carman, who, he says, died in Brunswick,
New Jersey, 1776. He says:

"Of her I received the following piece of history, so well attested that the
skeptic himself can have nothing to gainsay. I have before me three certificates
of the fact, and the testimony of Squire N. Stout’s lady, who was present at the
time of the miracle. She was remarkable for piety and good sense from a child.
About the 25th year of her age she got a fall from a horse, which so hurt her
back that she was bowed down and could in no wise lift up herself. Her limbs
were also so affected that she was a perfect cripple, not able to walk nor to
help herself in the smallest matters. One day the young woman who had the care
of her (now Squire Stout’s lady), seated her in an elbow chair, and went to the
garden. She had not been long in the garden before she heard a rumbling noise in
the house. She hastened in, thinking that the cripple had tumbled out of her
chair; but how was she surprised and frightened to see the cripple in the far
end of the room praising God who had made her whole every whit. Miss Ketcham
(for that was the name of Squire N. Stout’s lady, from whom I had the narrative)
sent to her neighbor Bray (the signer of one of my certificates) who came in
haste, and was equally astonished, for the cripple was all the while in an
ecstasy, taking no notice of the company, but running about the house, moving
chairs and tables from place to place, going to her bedroom, taking up her bed
and walking about with it, and every now and then falling on her knees to praise
God, who had made whole a daughter of Abraham, who had been bowed down for ten
or a dozen years. It has been observed before that the cripple was alone in the
house when the miraculous event occurred. The manner thereof must have come from
herself, and was as follows: ’While I was musing on these words, Aeneas, Jesus
Christ maketh thee whole, I could not help breathing out my heart and my soul in
the following manner: O that I had been in Aeneas’ place! Upon that I heard an
audible voice saying, Arise, take up thy bed and walk! The suddenness of the
voice made me start in my chair; but how was I astonished to find my back
strengthening and my limbs recovering their former use in that start. I got up,
and to convince myself that it was a reality and not a vision, I lifted up my
chair and whatever came in my way: went to my room and took up my bed, and put
my strength to other trials, till I was convinced that the cure was real, and
not a dream or delusion.’"

Edwards adds: "I doubt not but some witlings will find pleasantry in this story. Let them; and be their pleasantry their reward. But whoever believes in the power of ejaculatory prayer will be benefited by it." (Materials for History of the Baptists in New Jersey, 1792, p.63.) The witlings it would seem then made sport of this story of healing, as of the one just before referred to. But, considering the eminent character of the man who vouches for it, and the certificates to the truth of the narrative of which he speaks, is there not a fair presumption at least in favor of its genuineness? We shall be regarded as very simple, no doubt, for having reproduced the tale, but no matter; simplicity is one of the soft and formative stages of all true faith. The first announcements of the resurrection were deemed as "idle tales" by those who heard them, and had it not been for the credulity of the simple-minded women who first reported this miracle we might not soon have had the faith of the strong-minded men, who afterwards preached it. Professor Godet, alluding to alleged miracles among the French Protestants which have precisely the same kind of documentary evidence in their favor, strongly refuses to pronounce against them, and quotes with approval the following weighty words: "There was a time when men believed everything; in our day they believe nothing. I think we should take a middle course; we should not believe everything, but we ought to believe some things. For this spirit of incredulity and strong-mindedness answers no good purpose, and I have not discovered its use. Is it possible that God has so hidden himself behind the creatures of his hand and under the veil of secondary causes that he will never lift the curtain at all? Let us conclude that the credulity of our ancestors caused many fictions to be received as good history, but also that incredulity causes good history to pass in our day for worthless stories." (Defence of the Christian Faith, p.88.) The following narrative of a well known physician, Dr. R--- of Philadelphia, is certainly very striking. It is given in his own words as published in The Great Physician, by Dr. Boardman. Being asked to give an account of the recovery of his son, Dr. R--- said: "I do not like to speak of it to people generally, they are so unbelieving; but I can tell you. The children were jumping off from a bench, and my little son fell and broke both bones of his arm below the elbow. My brother, who is a professor of surgery in the College at Chicago, was here on a visit. I asked him to set and dress the arm. He did so; put it in splints, bandages, and in a sling. The child was very patient, and went about without a murmur all that day. The next morning he came to me and said, ’Dear papa, please take off these things.’ ’Oh, no, my son! you will have to wear these things five or six weeks before it will be well.’ ’Why, papa, it is well.’ ’Oh, no, my dear child, that is impossible.’ ’Why, papa, you believe in prayer, don’t you?’ ’You know I do, my son.’ ’Well, last night when I went to bed it hurt me very bad, and I asked Jesus to make it well, and he did make it well, and it is well.’

I did not like to say a word to chill his faith. A happy thought came; I said,
’My dear child; your uncle put the things on, and if they are taken off he must
do it.’ Away he went to his uncle, who told him he would have to go as he was
six or seven weeks, and must be very patient; and when the little fellow told
him that Jesus had made him well, he said, ’Pooh! pooh! nonsense,’ and sent him
away. The next morning the poor boy came again to me, and plead with so much
sincerity and confidence that I more than half believed that he was really
healed, and went to my brother and said, ’Had you not better undo his arm and
let him see for himself? then he will be satisfied. If you do not, I fear,
though he is very obedient, he may be tempted to undo it himself, and then it
may be worse for him.’ My brother yielded, took off the bandages and splints,
and exclaimed, ’It is well, absolutely well,’ and hastened to the door for air
to keep from fainting.

He had been a real, simple-hearted Christian, but in his student days wandered
away; but this brought him back to the Lord. Strange if it had not. To all this
I could say nothing, if I had been ever so much disposed, in the way of
accounting for it, upon any other hypothesis than that of the little fellow
himself, that Jesus had made him well." A marvelous story, you will exclaim; but
is it not especially wonderful that we find the doctors of medicine as the
witnesses to a miracle? They who handle human wounds with the callous fingers of
science, cry out, "Lo, God was in this place!" while we theologians are such
devotees to cause and effect that we fear we may commit sacrilege by bringing in
the Cause of causes. But it may be that the physicians and physiologists are
bolder than we in personalizing the mysterious agency which operates in the cure
of sick. They call it the "vis medicatrix" as if it were "some gentle feminine
nurse hidden from the sight, whose office it is to expel the poisons, knit the
fractures, and heal the bodies." Would that we were quite as bold to recognize
sometimes, at least, the Holy Spirit as our healer, and to pay that only fee
which he requires, our open acknowledgment and thanks to him who has said, "I am
the Lord that healeth thee." And we must express our decided conviction that, on
the whole, Christian physicians are less skeptical on the question of miraculous
healing than Christian ministers; at least we know more of them in our day who
have orally or in writing given in their adherence to this doctrine than of
preachers and theologians. In the narrative next following we have the beautiful
sight of the beloved physician spending the night in prayer with a few friends
who have come to ask the recovery of his long suffering patient. In Dr.
Boardman’s book we read the tender story of an English physician, Dr. De
Gorrequer Griffith, leaving a little patient for whom his skill could avail
nothing, and going down by the river side, whither he had been wont to resort,
for communion with God, and there asking and receiving the recovery of the
child. The two persons who have been most largely used in praying for the cure
of the sick in our own city are educated and practicing physicians. We to whom
are committed the oracles of God, do well to see to it that we are not more
skeptical than they to whom are entrusted the pharmacopoeiae of nature.

We instance another cure, the story of which has been read by many, and heard by
not a few from the lips of the emancipated sufferer herself. The remarkable
history of Miss Jennie Smith of Philadelphia, is rehearsed in the little book
From Baca to Beulah (Garrigues Bros., Philadelphia: 1880). Her disease, so
mysterious and agonizing and long continued that her pastor pronounced it "a
narrative of suffering rarely if ever equaled," cannot be described at length
here. Suffice it to say that she was a helpless cripple for about sixteen years,
suffering much of the time the extremest agony.

One limb was subject to such violent and uncontrollable spasms that it had to be
confined in a strong box, and often held down by heavy weights. During her
extraordinary sufferings her faith and consecration seem to have been brought
into very lively exercise, so that making her couch a pulpit, she was greatly
used for quickening the spiritual life of such as came within her reach.
Meantime she began to lay hold of the promise of God for bodily healing, and
getting tokens of his power in several partial reliefs, she was led on to ask
and obtain entire recovery. The story of this we give in her own words. After a
day of unusual suffering a few Christian friends had gathered about her in the
evening as she lay in her extension chair. She says: "The evening was devoted to
prayer, led by pastor Everett. After the first hour or more, some were obliged
to leave. One brother, whom I had not met before, as he shook hands on leaving,
said, ’My sister, you are asking too much; you are too anxious to get well. The
Lord can make better use of you upon your cot than upon your feet.’ I was
thankful for the brother’s words. I then looked searchingly into my heart. The
blessed Lord knows I honestly answered, ’No, I am not anxious to get well; I
have gained the victory over that. If the heat of the furnace was increased a
thousand fold I could say, Thy will be done, and to feel pain would be sweet if
fully shown to me that it is the Father’s will that I should suffer. And I
believe the time has come for me to know that will.’

"Up to this point of the meeting there was not that oneness of mind that I felt
there must be. I said to those who remained, ’Can you tarry with me till the
morning if need be? I feel that it must be by waiting that our Father will give
us the blessing. Are we of one accord in this matter?’ My physician, Dr. Morgan,
was the first to say, ’I will stay, and I fully agree with you.’

"They all gathered about my chair. Never can that little group forget that
season. It was now after nine o’clock. We continued waiting before the Lord.
Occasionally one or another would quote, with comment, an appropriate text of
scripture, or engage in a brief prayer. For myself, I lay in quiet expectancy,
still suffering, but with a remarkable sense of the divine presence. Much of the
time I was almost oblivious to my surroundings, so engaged was I in communion
with my heavenly Father. About 11 o’clock I was led to vocally offer myself to
God in fresh consecration, saying: ’I give this body anew -- these eyes to see,
these lips to talk, these ears to hear, and, if it be thy will, these feet to
walk -- for Jesus. All that is of me -- all, all is thine, dear Father. Only let
thy precious will be done.’

"Up to this time there was no cessation from suffering or increase of strength.
As before said, I was weaker than usual. After a brief silence there suddenly
flashed upon me a most vivid view of the healing of the withered arm. It seemed
to me I could see it being thrust out whole. At the same instant the Holy Spirit
bestowed on my soul a faith to claim a similar blessing. It seemed as if heaven
were at that moment opened, and I was conscious of a baptism of strength, as
sensibly and as positively as if an electric shock had passed through my system.
I felt definitely the strength come into my back, and into my helpless limbs.
Laying my hand on the chair-arms, I raised myself to a sitting posture. The
Garrigues brothers, being seated on either side of the chair, naturally sprang
forward and laid hold to assist me. This, however, was not necessary. Dr.
Morgan, who was sitting near, stepped forward and let down the foot-board, and,
while the hands of my friends were yet on my shoulders, I arose and stood upon
my feet.

"Sister Fannie could not remember ever having seen me standing up. She was so
startled she threw up both hands and screamed, ’Oh, Jennie, Jennie!’ No words
can express my feelings. My very being yet thrills with praise as I speak of
that hour. As I stood Brother W.H.G. placed his hand upon my head, saying,
’Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.’

"My first thought was ’Can I kneel?’ I asked to do so, and knelt as naturally as
if I had been accustomed to it. There was so much of the divine presence that
not a word was spoken. We poured forth our souls in silent thanksgiving and
praise. I then arose and walked across the room with entire ease and
naturalness; there were no prickling or otherwise unpleasant sensations. Sat
down in a rocking-chair for some minutes. It seemed so wonderful that I did not
have to learn to walk. My limbs and body seemed as if made new." A case so
widely known as this has been could not fail to elicit considerable comment. How
was such a rapid and complete recovery effected? Some said that it was doubtless
owing to a sudden and powerful reassertion of the will; that as in many such
obscure diseases the ill was probably nervous and largely imaginary, and their
prayers and faith simply brought courage and reassurance. Indeed; -- and is it
not a great thing even to find a physician who can discover that nothing ails us
when all the doctors have pronounced it a desperate case? If this were all,
which we do not for a moment admit, it would certainly be a vast triumph of
faith-healing over medication. For it is not alone that our poor diseased
humanity needs a physician with divine skill to remove our deep-seated
sicknesses, but especially one with divine insight to fathom and uncover them.
The doctor’s eyes are often more at fault than his hand. He cannot cure because
he cannot comprehend the secret of our plague. How wonderful is the insight of
the Great Physician. His penetrating glance goes to the root of disease when
ours can only see the symptoms.

Never was there healer with such vision as his.

"He took our suffering human race, He read each wound and weakness clear, He
struck his finger on the place, And said, thou ailest here and here"

Blessed is the patient who has found a doctor whose healing touch is guided ever
by that clear and unerring sight which knows what is in man, and needeth not
that any should testify of him. Of this instance we have the doctor’s written
statement, confirming in every particular the testimony of his patient, both as
to the fearful character of her sickness and her sudden and complete recovery in
answer to prayer. We might bring forward many more witnesses did space permit.
The instances of drunkards, cured at once of long enthralling appetite; of the
victims of opium saved from their degrading bondage, and all traces of the habit
taken away, are especially interesting as evidences of God’s immediate action in
taking away the consequences of sin, as well as forgiving the sin itself.

If one’s eye is open, and his mind unprejudiced, how many of such traces of
God’s finger will he see in the world, events clear and unmistakable enough for
him who is willing to believe, but questionable and uncertain enough for him who
is determined to deny.


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  CHAPTER 32: 02.10.     THE VERDICT OF CANDOR
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The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 10. The
Verdict of Candor In summing up what has been brought forward in the preceding
chapters, we wish to review briefly the theory, the testimony and the practice,
which our discussion has involved. As to the theory: -- Is it right for us to
pray to God to perform a miracle of healing in our behalf? "The truth is,"
answers an eminent writer, "that to ask God to act at all, and to ask him to
perform a miracle are one and the same thing." (Jellett: Efficacy of Prayer,
p.41.) That is to say, a miracle is the immediate action of God, as
distinguished from his mediate action through natural laws. We see no reason,
therefore, why we should hesitate to pray for the healing of our bodies any more
than for the renewal of our souls. Both are miracles; but both are covered and
provided for by the same clear word of promise. Our hesitancy to ask for
physical healing we believe to rest largely on a false and widespread error in
regard to the relation of the human body to the redemption of Christ. It is
taken for granted by many that this house of clay was never intended either to
be repaired or beautified by the renewing Spirit. The caged-eagle theory of
man’s existence is widely prevalent -- the notion that the soul is imprisoned in
flesh, and is beating its bars in eager longing to fly away and be at rest --
all of which may be very good poetry, but is very bad divinity. The scripture
teaches indeed that "we that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened;"
but it does not therefore thrust death’s writ of ejection into our hands as our
great consolation, and tell us that our highest felicity consists in moving out
of this house as quickly as possible. "Not for that we would be unclothed, but
clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life," is the inspired
testimony concerning our highest hope of existence. The redemption of the body,
not its dissolution, resurrection not death is set before us in the gospel as
the true goal of victory. But because that great promise of the gospel, "Who
shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the
body of his glory," has been so largely supplanted by the notion of a spiritual
elimination taking place at death, in which a purified soul is forever freed
from a cumbering body, all this has been changed in the creed of many. The
heresy of death-worship has supplanted the doctrine of resurrection, with a
multitude of Christians, because they have allowed the partial felicity, the
departing to be with Christ, to take the place of the final victory, the coming
of Christ, to quicken our mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in us.

It is easy to see now that when death gets established in the high esteem of
Christians, sickness, his prime minister, should come to be held in great regard
also. And so it is, that while very few enjoy being sick, very many are afraid
seriously to claim healing, lest it should seem like rebellion against a sacred
ordinance, or a revolt from a hallowed medicine which God is mercifully putting
to their lips for their spiritual recovery. Those who have such a feeling should
search the scriptures to learn how constantly sickness is referred to as the
work of the devil. From the day when "Satan went forth from the presence of the
Lord and smote Job with sore boils," to the hour when the deliverer came and
loosed "a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound lo these eighteen years," --
he that "hath the power of death, that is the devil," has been compelling our
wretched race to reap the first fruits of mortality, disease and pain and bodily
decay. Alas, if the Lord’s people shall be so deceived by him that they shall
willingly accept sickness, the first fruits of death, as their portion, instead
of seeking for health, the first fruits of redemption! If any shall insist
indeed, that God often allows his servants to be sick for their good; or that he
sometimes permits them to fall into sin for their chastening, on that account we
shall not admit that sickness is God’s agent any more than that sin is. An old
divine probably spoke as truly as he did quaintly when he said that "the Lord
sometimes allows his saints to be sharpened on the devil’s grindstone," but we
believe that in the comprehensive petition, "Deliver us from the evil one" is
contained without question a prayer for rescue from all the ways and works of
Satan -- from sickness as well as from sin; from pain, the penalty of
transgression, as well as from transgression itself. But, it is asked, if the
privilege and promise in this matter are so clear, how is it that the cases of
recovery through the prayer of faith are so rare?

Probably because the prayer of faith itself is so rare, and especially because
when found it receives almost no support in the church as a whole. Prayer for
such matters should be the outcome of the faith and intercession of the whole
body of believers. So it was in the beginning. When Peter was delivered from
prison it was because "prayer was made without ceasing of the Church unto God
for him." And when Paul knelt alone in the chamber of Publius to intercede for
his father’s recovery, it was equally true that his petition was an expression
of what was the unanimous and concurring faith of the whole Church. But it is
not easy for an individual prayer to make headway against the adverse sentiment
of the great body of Christians. For example let an earnest soul pray for a
revival in a church where the prevailing view is that of indifferent unbelief,
or positive disbelief in revivals, and would he be likely to obtain the coveted
blessing? The promise stands fast, indeed, "How much more shall your heavenly
Father give the Holy Spirit unto them that ask him;" but the condition, "They
were all with one accord in one place," is wanting. How shall one man move the
great ship before the wind by holding up his pocket handkerchief to the breeze,
when all the mariners refuse to spread the sails? And how shall one Christian’s
faith prevail against the non-consent of the whole Church? There may be
scattered instances of blessing in such circumstances, but there can be no
widespread exhibitions of divine power. They tell us that all the heat
communicated to a cake of ice short of that which would bring it to the melting
point becomes latent and disappears. Faith, likewise, may become inoperative and
fruitless in the Church when multiplied a hundred fold by unbelief. But there is
another answer also to the question. It is as true here as in any other field
that God acts sovereignly and according to his own determinate counsel. He sees
it best to recover one person at the instance of his people’s prayers, and he
may see it best to withhold such recovery for the time from another. ("Nor are
signs wrought continually, but as often as it shall have pleased God and seems
necessary; whence it is evident that to work signs depends not on the option of
man, but on the will of God." Bullinger.) And we would most strongly emphasize
the importance of offering our supplications for this as for all mercies in the
most loyal and hearty and unreserved submission to the will of our Father. He
has told us that "all things work together for good to them that love God," but
we are not to conclude that they all work in one direction. There are blessings
and trials, joys and sorrows, pains and pleasures, sickness and health, falls
and recoveries, advances and retrogressions, but the final issue and resultant
of all these experiences is our highest good. This we conceive to be the meaning
of the promise. And when we remember that God superintends all this complex
system of providences, and foresees the final effect of each separate element in
it, we see how becoming it is that we should bring every petition into
subjection" to the will of the Lord. When Augustine was contemplating leaving
Africa and going into Italy, his pious mother, fearing the effect which the
seductions of Rome might have upon his ardent nature, besought the Lord with
many tears and cries that he might not be permitted to go. He was suffered to
go, however, and in Milan he found his soul’s salvation. "Thou didst deny her,"
says Augustine in his confessions, "thou didst deny her what she prayed for at
that time that thou mightest grant her what she prayed for always." This is a
perfect illustration of the point which we are emphasizing. God may withhold the
recovery which we ask today because he will give to us that "saving health "
which we ask always. He may permit temporal death to come, in order that he may
preserve his child unto life eternal. How little we can know what is best for us
and what shall work our highest good! Isaac Barrow, the eminent and devout
theologian was so wayward and wicked while a lad that his Christian father
confessed that he had prayed "that if it pleased God to take away any of his
children it might be his son Isaac." What would the Church have lost had this
prayer been granted? On the other hand, the mother of Charles I, it is said,
bent above the cradle of her infant boy when he had been given up to die, and
refused to be comforted unless God would spare his life. His life was spared;
but how gladly would that mother have had it otherwise could she have looked
forward to the day when his head fell bleeding and ghastly beneath the stroke of
the executioner’s axe? Such illustrations open a broad field for reflection, and
suggest the real limitation of the prayer of faith as related to healing, viz.,
the gracious and all wise will of God. And this is the same limitation which
belongs to the entire realm of intercessory prayer. "Holding such views in
regard to the efficacy of prayer for recovery from disease, why should you have
any sick persons in your flock?" is the question which a clerical critic
propounds. We shall answer by propounding a much harder one. Holding such views
in regard to the efficacy of prayer for the conversion of souls, and resting on
the plain declaration of scripture concerning God our Saviour that he "will have
all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," why should our
questioner allow any sinner to remain unconverted under his ministry? And yet is
it not his sorrowful experience that of all that come under his word and
prayers, only a few comparatively give evidence of being regenerated? Alas! that
we must all concede that this is our observation. But because I have to admit
that all will not hear, and all will not repent and be converted, shall I
therefore refuse to persist in preaching and warning and rebuke and
intercession, "that I might by all means save some?" Indeed not! And since the
sure word of promise is given to us on this matter also, let us hold fast our
confidence without wavering, so that whether there be few or many who shall be
recovered we may by all means heal some. Such we believe to be a candid verdict
in regard to the promise concerning prayer for the sick. And now what shall be
said in regard to the testimony brought forward? It would be considered very
weighty, we venture to believe, were it adduced in support of a generally
accepted theory. When evidence and established conviction are put in the same
scale they tip the beam very easily, but testimony against a heavy make-weight
of unbelief and prejudice makes slow headway. If the story of Augustine, or
Luther, or Livingston, or Fox, or Dorothea Trudel were found in the gospels how
we should fight for its genuineness. "Ah, yes," you say, "because the gospels
are inspired, and we should not dare to question any statement recorded on their
pages." But miracles were given to accredit inspiration, and not inspiration to
accredit miracles. The first miracles got themselves credited simply on human
testimony, on the evidence of men and women like ourselves, who saw, and
believed and reported. And when they had become established as facts, then their
weight went to prove the divine origin of Christianity. It is easy for us to say
that the works recorded in the gospels are supernatural, because the system to
which they belong is supernatural. That is true; but it is reading backward. The
first Christians could not reason in that way, because the premise from which we
argue was not established in their day. No! The miracles of the New Testament
became established in precisely the same manner as any alleged fact is proved
today, by the evidence of honest, candid and truthful witnesses, who saw and
bare record. If, therefore, our theologians choose to treat the narratives of
such godly and truthful men as Augustine, and Luther, and Baxter as "silly
tales" they must be careful that they do not build a portico to "the school of
Hume," from which their pupils will easily and logically graduate from the
denial of modern miracles to the denial of all miracles. Nor does age have
anything to do with determining the value of signs and wonders. A young miracle
is entitled to the same respect as an old one, provided it bears the same
credentials. And if we give way to the subtle illusion that the marvelous is to
be credited just in proportion to its distance from us; if we show ourselves
forward to admit that the Lord wrought great and mighty signs eighteen hundred
years ago, and utterly averse to conceding that the same Lord does anything of
the kind today, then we must be very careful again that we do not give
countenance to the mythical theory of miracles, which has been so strongly
pushed in this generation. Do we believe that the credibility of miracles
depends on the magnifying power of distance; that antiquity must stand behind
them as a kind of convex mirror to render them sufficiently large to be
distinctly seen? How we revolt from such an imputation! Yet let us be cautious
that we do not give occasion for it, by emphasizing, as we cannot too strongly,
the great things that the Lord did by our fathers, while we utterly refuse to
believe that he does any such things by their sons. Let us not forget that the
Jews in Christ’s day were condemned for denying the wonderful works wrought in
their own generation, and not for disbelieving those done by Elijah and Elisha
nine hundred years before. The defenders of New Testament miracles are numbered
by hundreds, and there is no special danger of a breach in the ramparts of
Christianity at that point. The question of God’s supernatural working today and
tomorrow is the one where havoc is being wrought. Unbelief shading off from
rationalism to liberal evangelicism is doing its utmost to give away our most
precious heritage. With how many is regeneration merely a repairing of the old
nature by culture, instead of a miraculous communication of the divine life! How
many regard the promised coming of Christ in glory as simply a new phase of
providence effected by the turning of the kaleidoscope of history! To how many
is Satan only a concrete symbol of evil, so that their denial of the reality of
the infernal has issued in a disbelief in the Supernal! To how many is
inspiration only a higher state of intellectual exaltation; and resurrection an
elimination or spiritual release, effected by the dissolving chemistry of death!
To read the utterances put forth by Christian teachers in these directions
within the last few years is enough to startle one and make him cry out in the
strong words of Edward Irving: "Oh the serpent cunning of this liberal spirit,
it is killing our children; it has already slain its tens and thousands; this
city is sick unto death, and dying of the mortal wounds which she hath received
from it." Therefore, let us be cautious that by taking up the current sneer
about prodigies and wonders we do not get our eyes blinded and our ears dull of
hearing so as to be utterly unable to discern any divine manifestations in case
they should be made. As to the practice involved in this discussion: Can it be
of any service for authenticating the truth of Christianity today to show
examples of men and women healed of sickness through faith in the Great
Physician? So far as our observation goes, the most powerful effect of such
experiences is upon the subjects themselves, in the marked consecration and
extraordinary spiritual anointing which almost invariably attend them. We can
bear unqualified testimony on this point. Of a large number within the circle of
our acquaintance, who have been healed, or who have imagined themselves healed,
we have never seen one who did not give evidence of having received an unusual
enduement of spiritual power. It has seemed as though the double blessing of
forgiveness and health had been followed by the bestowment of a double portion
of the Spirit. If we could let the objectors to our doctrine witness some of the
examples of alleged healing which have been under our eyes for several years --
inebriates who, after half a lifetime wasted in desperate struggles for reform,
declare that their appetite was instantly eradicated in answer to intercessory
prayer; invalids lifted in an hour from couches where they had lain for years;
and now their adoring gratitude, their joyful self-surrender, their burning zeal
in the service of the Lord -- if we could let our critics witness these things
we believe that the most stubborn among them would at least be willing that
these happy subjects of -- something should remain under the illusion that they
have had the Saviour’s healing touch laid upon them.

Such we believe to be the verdict of candor upon this whole question. We do not
ask that the highest place in Christian doctrine be given to faith in
supernatural healing. We readily admit that grace is vastly more important than
miracles; but miracles have their place as shadows of greater things. We urge
that they may hold this place, that we may be helped thereby the better to
apprehend the substance. When the Emperor Theodosius had on a great occasion
given release to all the prisoners confined within his realm he exclaimed: "And
now would to God I could open all the tombs and give life to the dead!" If we
could sometimes see the Lord unlocking the prison-house of sickness and giving
reprieve from the impending penalty of death to those long in bondage it might
be a salutary pledge and reminder of our Redeemer’s purpose to bring forth the
prisoners from the tomb in that day when he shall quicken our mortal bodies by
his Spirit that dwelleth in us; it might sound in our ears with repeated
emphasis the Lord’s word, "turn ye to the stronghold ye prisoners of hope; even
today do I declare that I will render double unto thee."


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  CHAPTER 33: 02.11.     THE VERDICT OF CAUTION
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The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 11. The
Verdict of Caution

"The Church can no longer say, silver and gold have I none," said Pope Gregory
to Thomas Aquinas. "No, nor can she say any longer, ’In the name of Jesus Christ
of Nazareth rise up and walk, " answered Thomas. A very deep wisdom, and a very
fruitful suggestion are contained in this answer of the theologian. As riches
increase, that close dependence on God which is the fertile soil of faith and
trust, decreases. It is when we are most straightened in ourselves that the
bounty of God is most widely open to us; it is when we have nothing that we find
the key with which to enter in and possess all things which are ours in Christ.

We are living in an age in which the Church enjoys very large prosperity in an
earthly direction; when she is "rich and increased in goods," and, therefore, in
constant peril of saying "I have need of nothing." It is not an era, therefore,
in which the greatest triumphs of faith and intercession may be reasonably
looked for. Every Christian knows in his own experience the difference between
saying his prayers and supplicating God for help under the stress of
overwhelming need; and in the Church we may well open our eyes to the fact that
our prosperity, and our rest from persecution and trial are sources of weakness
and enervation. We do not pray as apostles, and martyrs, and confessors, and
reformers prayed, because not pressed upon by enemies, and thereby shut up to
God as they were; and so we do not get such answers as they received. Our first
caution therefore concerning this subject is that we do not demand too much of
the Christian Church of today. We should ask great things and expect great
things of God; but of men, weak and back-slidden in heart, we ought not to be
too exacting. Faith for healing cannot rise above the general level of the
Church’s faith. There are multitudes of prayers in these days, written prayers
and extemporaneous prayers, prayers in the Church, and prayers in the family;
but how many Christians out of the great mass have any very extensive record of
direct, definite and unmistakable answers to their petitions? Of all who knock
at the gates of heaven each day, how many wait and watch till the door is opened
and their portion is brought to them? But it is not reasonable to expect that
such as have no experience in prevailing prayers for other things should be able
to wield at once the prayer of faith which saves the sick. In God’s school it is
no more true than in man’s, that pupils can step immediately into the highest
attainments with no previous study, or diligent mastery of the first principles
of faith. If the conviction and assurance of the Church as a whole should rise
to the height of this great argument, we might witness wonderful things; but, so
long as it does not, we should not be made to doubt because of the meager
conquests which we witness. It is for us to pray always and earnestly that the
Lord would be pleased to restore to his Church her primitive gifts, by restoring
her primitive endowments of unworldliness and poverty of spirit and separation
unto God. If any organ of the body be weak and sickly, the only sure method of
restoring it is to tone up the whole system, and bring it to the normal standard
of health; so if the entire body of Christ were revived and reinvested with her
first spiritual powers, these special gifts and functions of which we are
writing would not fail to be in extensive exercise.

Then again we need to be very careful that we do not fall into heresy on this
question. Heresy, as a thoughtful Christian writer has pointed out, means a
dividing or a choosing; it is the acceptance and advocacy of one hemisphere of
truth to the rejection of the other. Every doctrine is two sided; so that
whichever phase commends itself to us we must remember its counterpart, and aim
to preserve the balance of truth by holding fast to this also. In the matter
before us, as in the whole doctrine of prayer, human freedom and the divine
sovereignty are inseparably joined. Here are the two sides:

"Ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you." -- John 15:7.

"If ye ask anything according to his will he heareth us." -- 1 John 5:14. In our
assent to the doctrine of the divine sovereignty we must never forget the
gracious privilege which is accorded to us of freely making known our requests
to God, with the fullest assurance that he will hear and grant them. "Whatsoever
ye shall ask in my name that will I do;" -- we cannot lean too hard upon this
promise or plead it too confidently. But at the same time we must be sure that
beneath every prayer the strong, clear undertone of "thy will be done" is
distinctly heard. Of course in saying this we open a mystery, and suggest a
seeming contradiction which the wisdom of the ages has been unable to solve. But
because we find both sides of this truth distinctly expressed in scripture, we
must be sure to emphasize both. ("The only way for a believer, if he wants to go
rightly, is to remember that truth is always two-sided. If there is any truth
that the Holy Ghost has specially pressed upon your heart, if you do not want to
push it to the extreme, ask what is the counter-truth, and lean a little of your
weight upon that; otherwise, if you bear so very much on one side of the truth,
there is a danger of pushing it into a heresy. Heresy means selected truth; it
does not mean error: heresy and error are very different things. Heresy is
truth; but truth pushed into undue importance to the disparagement of the truth
on the other side." --William Lincoln.) Let us be very careful therefore that we
do not proclaim the doctrine of divine healing in an unbalanced and reckless
manner. If we are told that a brother in the Church is sick let us not make
undue haste to declare that he will certainly be restored if we carry his case
to God. We must keep distinctly in mind both Melita and Miletum: remembering
that at one place Paul healed the father of Publius by his prayers, and that at
the other place he left Trophimus sick.

Some commentators have conjectured the reason why the latter was not at that
time recovered, viz., that he was to be thereby kept back from martyrdom which
he would probably have met had he gone with Paul, and for which his time had not
come in the purpose of God. Whether there is any truth or not in this
conjecture, there was doubtless some good reason why this companion of the
apostle should have been detained for the while under infirmity. The all-wise
and gracious Lord, who is shaping our lives, must be allowed to choose such
detentions for us, if he sees that he can thereby best forward our usefulness
and advance his own glory. We should be cautious therefore that in this matter
we do not push the element of human choice too strongly and rashly, to the
ignoring of the divine, and so bring in the heresy of free-will.

Let us take warning from those misguided teachers who are going to the other
extreme, and bearing so hard upon the divine sovereignty as practically to deny
man’s freedom, to ask or expect miraculous healing. More than this, indeed, they
seem to have pushed the sovereignty of God almost into an iron fixedness, where
even the Almighty is not at liberty to work miracles any longer, as though under
bonds to restrain this office of his Omnipotence since the apostolic age. This
we hold to be a far more serious error than the other, since it appears not only
to shut up man’s freedom of asking, but to limit God’s freedom of giving. There
have appeared in our religious newspapers, of late, extended deliverances, in
which the possibility of any miraculous interventions in this age is most
emphatically denied, and the attempt to apply the plain promise in James to
present times and circumstances characterized as gross superstition. A rash
responsibility for evangelical teachers to take in speaking thus, we should say.
It is opening channels of denial respecting the supernatural, into which the
swelling unbelief of our age will not be slow to pour, inevitably deepening
those channels into great gulfs of skepticism. "Ah, but it is you who are
ministering to unbelief," it is replied, "by holding out promises in the
fulfilment of which men will be disappointed, and thereby be led to doubt the
word of the Lord." That is an objection that can be urged equally against the
whole doctrine of prayer, and it is one concerning which we can take no blame.

It is for us simply to emphasize every promise which God has given, and to
refrain from cumbering it with any conditions of ours. If such assent should
promote unbelief in any, that is the Lord’s responsibility who gave the promise.
If instead of assent we give denial, that is our responsibility, and the
consequences must lie at our door.

Let us on our part, therefore, avoid heresy by keeping these two great elements
of prayer in equilibrium, believing strongly but asking submissively, holding up
in one hand of our supplication a "Thus saith the Lord," and in the other a "The
will of the Lord be done."

It requires great caution also in this subject that we do not fall into
fanaticism. As we have already indicated, fanaticism is not necessarily a sign
of error. It is more likely to be a healthful than a fatal symptom. It is often
the proud flesh and fever heat which indicate that healing is going on in some
fractured bone or ligament of the system of doctrine. Nevertheless, it must be
subdued and kept down lest the truth may suffer reproach. And in this field
especially do we need to guard against it.

Nowhere does zeal require to be so carefully tempered by knowledge as here.
Novices, lifted up with pride, will lay hold of this doctrine, and with the
enthusiasm which the discovery of some long neglected truth is apt to engender
they will parade their faith, and make extravagant claims concerning it Nothing
needs to be held with such quietness and reserve as this truth. To press it upon
the undevout and uninstructed is only to bring it into contempt Those who have
the most wisdom in such matters will be found speaking in very hushed tones, and
without assumption or ostentation. One who has the habit of parading this theme
on all occasions, and haranguing it at every street corner, gives clear evidence
of his unfitness to handle it. Here is a serious peril, as we distinctly forsee;
but the best truth has always had to run such risks. Dry and lifeless tradition
is the only thing which has invariably been exempt from them. The more careful,
therefore, should all be, who desire to see God’s word prevail, to pray much and
argue little, that the Spirit who can alone discover the deep things of God may
reveal his true will to the Church concerning this important question. And most
especially is all undue forwardness in attempting to exercise this ministry to
be avoided. We are persuaded that there is no deeper or more difficult question
which can come within our reach. If any one is sincerely desirous of being used
of the Lord in this direction let him give diligent heed to be taught of God
concerning it. We are persuaded that there is no school on earth which is
competent to graduate one in this divine science. Therefore we would commend our
readers neither to books nor to theologians, but to the personal instructions of
the Spirit of God. We admire the candor with which one eminent doctor of
theology, Professor Godet, has confessed the true secret of knowledge in this
field. He says: "A single prayer answered, a single case of living contact with
the power of the Father, a single exertion of the strength of Christ over the
weakness that is in us will teach us more on the subject of miracles than all
that I have been able in this lecture to say to you upon this great subject."

Let it be distinctly borne in mind that this is no easy art, no surface-truth to
be picked up by any religious adventurer who may desire to exhibit some novel
accomplishment. Unless one is ready for the most absolute self-surrender and the
most implicit obedience let him not even enter this school of inquiry with any
hope of learning its secrets. It is told of Pastor Blumhardt, who knew as much
of this subject, we believe, as any man in recent times, that after the promise
for healing was first brought powerfully to his mind he passed two years in
repeated prayers and fastings and searchings for the mind of the Spirit before
he had the assurance that he should lay hands on the sick for their recovery. We
know that others who have been greatly owned of God in this direction have had a
similar experience. Therefore we would interpose a strong caution against
rashness or forwardness in this matter. We need less praying for the sick rather
than more; only that the less shall be real, and deep, and intelligent, and
believing. What a revelation is contained in the fact that some of the
disputants in this controversy, after boldly denying that miraculous healing is
possible in this age of the world, have then added "of course we ought to pray
for the sick." That is, being fairly interpreted, after becoming thoroughly
convinced that God will not interpose supernaturally for their restoration then
we should offer our supplication for their healing. It seems to us, on the
contrary, that such a conviction furnishes a good reason why we should refrain
from praying till we have acknowledged our unbelief and forsaken it. The
strongest and most enlightened faith, oneness of heart in all uniting to pray,
minute and obedient submission to every condition named in scripture are what
are absolutely essential in this field. With the utmost tenderness and deference
we would allude to a memorable instance of praying for the sick, which is fresh
in mind. A call issued by the secular authorities; a day of prayer in when
believers and formalists alike unite; the incense of the Romish mass ascending
with the intercessions of the Protestant prayer meeting; the Jew and the
Christian offering up, each according to his kind; the helpless and imprisoned
patient meantime shut out from the ministry of grace and shut in to the ministry
of drugs and stimulants so that any lucid exercise of faith or of prayer in the
Holy Spirit would seem to be well-nigh impossible, -- What shall we say of this?
God forbid that we should by the slightest criticism seem to mock the grief of a
suffering nation, or to disparage a call to prayer from the rulers who did the
best they knew in a great crisis, and we have no light as to how the Lord may
have regarded such an offering. But in simple candor and loyalty to the word of
God we must decline to have this event established as a prayer gauge, as many
are insisting on making it. It was simply a national fast day, concerning which
we proffer no remark. But the prayer of faith, by the elders of the Church,
offered at the special request of the sick person, made in the name of Jesus,
the one mediator between God and man, and in the Holy Ghost the Comforter, and
all rendered up in obedience to every known condition of faith and oneness of
mind enjoined in scripture -- this is the kind of prayer for the sick which we
are discussing in this volume, and no other. Here is a service which belongs to
the Holy of holies of the Christian Church, and which cannot be brought out into
the court of the Gentiles. A caution against dogmatism and pride of opinion in a
field where we know only in part, may well close what we have to say. Alas! how
little we truly understand of this whole matter. We believe strongly because we
have promises that are "yea, and in him, amen unto the glory of God by us." And
so we have presented as best we could the doctrine, the history and the
experience of the Church upon this great question. How little we can speak of
actual use of these gifts. But in the oft quoted words of a good man, we are
"very confident that the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of his holy
word;" on this subject especially, because so many of God’s people are
"searching diligently what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ did
dignify" when he penned these great promises. If God has anything to reveal by
any instrument whatever, let us be open to receive it. If such instruments shall
prove to be, as we quite believe, the "poor of this world rich in faith; " the
servants of Christ, who after long endurance of the bondage of pain have traced
the promises of healing line by line in their own experience; and the obedient
children, who have faced the world’s doubt and scornful denial for the joy of
answering God’s challenge, "Prove me now herewith," let us take heed that we do
not despise even such teachers and light bearers. And in all our urgency for the
truth of God in this matter, let us not forget that miracles are but signs, not
the substance. In prayer, in preaching, in tears and persuasions over perishing
souls, in bearing the cross and counting all things as loss for the excellency
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord, let us for the present be diligently
employed, until the day dawn and the shadows flee away; until the harvest be
gathered and the first fruits shall be needed no more; until that which is
perfect shall come, and that which is in part shall be done away.


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  CHAPTER 34: 02.12.     CONCLUSION
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The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 12. The
Conclusion The prayer of faith, when really understood and exercised, will be
confessed to be the very highest attainment of the Christian life. And yet it is
an attainment which comes from unlearning rather than from learning; from
self-abnegation rather than from self-culture; from decrease towards spiritual
childhood rather than from increase towards the stature of intellectual manhood.
The same condition holds for opening the kingdom of heaven for others as for
entering it ourselves, viz., that we "become as little children." To reach down
and grasp the secret of simplicity of faith and implicitness of confidence is
far more difficult than to reach up and lay hold of the key of knowledge. Hence,
how significant it is that in the Scriptures children are made the heroes of
faith. "This is the victory that overcometh the world even our faith." And who
then are the over-comers? Who are they that have laid hold of the mighty secret
of this spiritual conquest? "Ye are of God little children, and have overcome
them." And why? "Because greater is he that is in you than he that is in them."
Yes; and just in proportion as we are emptied of self, and schooled back into
that second childhood which should follow the second birth, will God be in us
most fully and act through us most powerfully.

There is a passage in the life of an eminent Christian philosopher which is well
worth pondering deeply and seriously in this age of superficial praying. A
friend of Coleridge says that standing by his bedside not long before his death
he was commenting on the Lord’s prayer, when he suddenly broke out: "Oh my dear
friend, to pray, to pray as God would have us; to pray with all the heart and
strength; with the reason and the will, to believe vividly that God will listen
to your voice through Christ and verily do the thing he pleaseth thereupon --
this is the last, the greatest achievement of the Christian’s warfare on earth.
Teach us to pray, O Lord!" "And then," says the narrator, "he burst into a flood
of tears, and begged me to pray for him." The greatest achievement indeed! And
yet it is not by might nor by power. Wisdom cannot compass it; learning cannot
master it. "To pray with all the heart and strength;" which should mean with the
heart submerged in the heart of Christ, and with the strength transformed into
"the irresistible might of weakness," with the reason brought into complete
captivity to the cross of Christ, and with the will surrendered up to the will
of God, this is indeed the secret of power.

Let it be noted that we are speaking of one of the highest attainments of
Christianity now, and not of its rudiments. The faith which saves us is the
simplest exercise of the heart; the prayer of faith which saves the sick is the
most exacting. The one is merely receptive, the other is powerfully
self-surrendering. Do you wish to be saved, the Master will only say to you,
"Take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord." Do you wish to
be mightily used of the Lord in the office of raising the sick from their beds,
and giving life to those who are dead in sin, you will hear him asking the
searching question, "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of and be baptized
with the baptism which I am baptized with?" In the faith by which we are
converted and delivered from the wrath to come we do naught but receive Jesus
Christ; in the faith by which we are consecrated and made vessels "meet for the
Master’s use and prepared unto every good work," we give ourselves, soul, body
and spirit to Jesus Christ. That we may see how strenuous and searching the
requirements for prevailing prayer are, let us note three explicit conditions
laid down in Scripture, to which are attached the promise of whatsoever we ask:

"If ye abide in me and my words abide in you." --John 15:7.

"If we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight"
-- 1 John 3:22.

"If we ask anything according to his will." -- 1 John 5:14. The first
requirement, "If ye abide in me --" is that of intimate and unbroken communion
with the Lord. Our justification depends upon our being in Christ. Our power and
fellowship depend upon our abiding in Christ. And this last implies the most
constant and uninterrupted intimacy of the soul with the Saviour. It is the
entering into his life and having his life so entering into us, that the
confession of the Apostle becomes realized in us -- "I live, yet not I, but
Christ liveth in me." Such abiding will stand in exact proportion to our
detachment from the world. The "double minded man" who is trying to make the
most of both worlds, grasping for earth’s riches and pleasures and yet wishing
to secure the highest prizes of the kingdom of heaven, will inevitably waver;
and to such a one the Scripture speaks expressly, "Let not that man think that
he shall receive anything of the Lord." It is a hard saying, but one which in
some form or other is constantly repeated in the word of God. "Know ye not that
the friendship of this world is enmity to God?" asks the apostle James; and the
converse is hardly less true for believers, that the enmity of this world is
friendship with God. When, for any cause, a Christian finds his earthly
affections sundered, so that they do not draw him down, he will at least learn
how much easier it is to set his affections on things above. Never do we find
the heart of God opening so widely to us as when the heart of the world is
closed against us. There is a homely wisdom, therefore, in the lines of an old
poet, Henry Vaughan, when for his "soul’s chief health" he prays for these three
things:

"A living faith, a heart of flesh, The world an enemie; The last will keepe the
first two fresh, And bring me where I’de be."

How easy it is to understand the secret of Paul’s, "I live, yet not I," after he
has told us of the double crucifixion which he has endured -- "By whom the world
is crucified unto me and I unto the world." Some become dead to the world
through the pain or trial or privation which cuts them off from all communion
with it, though the world is still there; to others the world becomes dead
because of the cutting off of friends, and comforts, and fortune, in which their
world consisted. In either case, if there be a heart which truly longs for God,
it will find a wonderful release towards him. We are advocating no morbid
asceticism, but simply interpreting Scripture; and we must add, also,
interpreting the secret of power in those who have been mightily prevalent in
intercession. For in tracing the lives of those most eminently successful in the
prayer of faith, as they have passed in review in this volume, we have found
that, almost without exception, they have been those remarkably separated from
the world, either through their own voluntary consecration or through
persecutions, and trials, and sufferings endured for Christ’s sake. The next
condition which we have noted "If we keep his commandments and do those things
which are pleasing in his sight," needs to be emphasized not less strongly.
Implicit obedience, a painstaking attention to the smallest and the greatest
requirements of the Lord, is what is enjoined. Rather, we might say, a fidelity
in service which admits no distinction of small or great when handling the
commandments of the Lord. For true obedience knows no such discriminations as
essential and non-essential in the divine requirements; it has no test fine
enough for distinguishing things indifferent from things vital. Among the
sayings of Christ, our perfect exampler in praying as in living, we find these
two professions which we do well to read together. "I do always those things
that please him." "I know that thou hearest me always." Here again we touch the
heart of this great secret. To obey well is to pray well; for not only does God
love the willing and the obedient, but such know his mind and understand how and
what to ask as no others can. One step in compliance with the Father’s will will
carry us further in knowledge than ten steps in mere studious search into the
mystery of his ways. Wonderfully do the mind and purposes of God open themselves
to the obedient soul "Who by searching can find out God?" But "if any man do his
will he shall know of the doctrine."

Therefore should we study to exercise the most minute and diligent obedience to
the Lord’s requirements. "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." In keeping this
commandment there is great reward and the surest entrance into the promise of
Christ, "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name he will give it you." In
all our Christian life and practice let us beware of saying concerning any
command of God that it is only a form, and therefore it does not matter. Forms
are sometimes given, no doubt, as tests of our fidelity, as when Naaman is
enjoined to wash seven times in the Jordan for his healing, or when the elders
are commanded to anoint the sick with oil for their recovery. Forms are nothing,
to be sure; but the obedience which responds to those forms in every minute
particular, for the love of Christ, is most precious in the sight of God. Hence,
significantly, Paul thanks God concerning the Roman Christians that they had
"obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was committed to them."

And, finally, "if we ask anything according to his will;" which means "that we
should be of a truth purely, simply and wholly at one with the One Eternal Will
of God, or altogether without will, so that the created will should flow out
into the Eternal Will, and be swallowed up and lost therein, so that the Eternal
Will alone should do and leave undone in us." (Theologia Germanica, p.90.) And
let us not be alarmed at this requirement, as though it meant pains, racks,
tortures, the loss of our lives, the death of our children, and everything else
which is dreadful to contemplate. Why is it that we have associated such things
with the prayer, "Thy will be done?" Let us search the Scriptures and see what
God’s revealed will is. "For this is the will of God even your sanctification"
(1 Thessalonians 4:3). "And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one
that seeth the Son and believeth on him may have everlasting life" (John 6:40).
"Who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth"
(1 Timothy 2:4). These and many other texts, if we had space to quote them,
point in one direction, and indicate that the will of God is our health and not
our hurt; our weal and not our woe; our life and not our death. It must be the
will of God that all that is contrary to him should be destroyed. "Every plant
which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up." Sin, sickness and
death are contrary to God; they are not plants of his planting, but tares which
the enemy has sown in his field. Therefore they are to be plucked up, and we may
be certain that we are working in the line of his will when we are seeking to
eradicate them.

What, then, if we should chiefly aim in our ministry at the sick bed to set
forth this blessed disposition and purpose of the divine will? What if, instead
of laying such stress on patient submission to pain and bodily disorder as
things inevitable, we should seek to lift the sufferer up into harmony with God,
in whom there is no sickness and no disorder? And then when we pray "thy will be
done" we shall mean let sickness be destroyed; let the sufferer be delivered
from the racks and tortures of pain’s inquisition; let sin and the bitter fruit
of sin in these poor tormented bodies be plucked up together. In praying thus we
must surely be setting our faces in the right direction. For looking upward for
the key of our petition, "Thy will be done on earth," we hear "as it is in
heaven." But in heaven there is certainly no sin, sickness or death; and so we
are enjoined to ask and strive and labor that there be none on earth. And
looking forward to the predicted consummation of Christ’s redemptive work, when
God’s will shall be actually done on earth, we read the glowing words: "And
there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be
any more pain." Here then is the clearly defined pattern, above us, and before
us; and amid all the tangled mysteries of evil, we should set our faces like a
flint to pray it out and work it out into blessed fulfillment. And while we
recognize the doctrine of the Divine Sovereignty, to which we have elsewhere
referred, this should no more prevent our asking in faith for the healing of our
bodies, than the doctrine of election should prevent our asking with the fullest
assurance for the salvation of our souls.

These observations in this closing chapter, let it be remembered, are especially
for such as may be called to exercise the ministry of healing. If there are
those who desire this office we believe they should seek with all their heart
the consecration, the separation from the world and the surrender to God’s will,
which the Scriptures enjoin as conditions of prevailing prayer. To the sick,
sensible of their lack of these attainments, and fearing that their case cannot
be reached on that account, we would speak a different word, even the word of
the Master -- "Be not afraid, only believe." Christ comes to the sinner,
helpless, guilty, lost, and saves him just as he finds him. And so with the
sufferer, when he lies "stripped of his raiment, wounded and half dead." As the
good Samaritan "came where he was and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and
wine," so Jesus will take the patient just where he is, if he takes him at all.
We have not to make ourselves better in order to be healed, either spiritually
or physically. Therefore let the sufferer take courage and lift up his weary
head. Oh, ye unnumbered subjects of pain and bodily torture, with hands and feet
which you would use so diligently and swiftly in the service of your Lord if
they were only released from the fetters which bind them! Oh ye countless
victims of pain and disorder, who have never consecrated either your souls or
your bodies to the service of him who made them, hear all of you that voice of
him who speaketh from heaven, saying, "I am the Lord that healeth thee." And if
the promises of God and the teachings of Scripture and the testimonies of the
healed set forth in this book might throw one ray of hope or alleviation into
your sick chambers, it would repay amply the pains we have taken in its
preparation, and more than compensate us for any reproach we may incur for
having borne witness to a doctrine of which many, as yet, can hear only with
impatience and derision. And to this last word we would join a prayer which has
come down to us from a very ancient liturgy:

"Remember, O Lord, those who are diseased and sick, and those who are troubled
by unclean spirits; and do thou who art God, speedily heal and deliver them."


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  CHAPTER 35: 02.13.     APPENDIX
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The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon

13. Appendix Note A. (chapter 4) -- The Testimony of the Fathers

Those who have never had their attention called to the statements of the
Christian fathers respecting the continuance of miracles in their day, will
doubtless be surprised at this conclusion of Uhlhorn. But other eminent writers
on the early history of the church are equally emphatic. And we are persuaded
that no one who has looked carefully into the subject, will consider it an easy
task to refute this conclusion. The most ingenious attempt to break the force of
the patristic testimony on this subject, which we have met, is that of Rev. Dr.
Geo.W. Samson, in an article, "Are there Miracles of Healing?" in The Christian
at Work, June 1st, 1882. His position is that "no evidence of the continuance of
miracles after the apostolic age is presented by the early Christian writers."
And his theory is, that the seeming testimonies to such continuance are written
in a kind of historical present tense, the real reference being to the days of
the apostles, and not the times of the writers. He applies this method somewhat
plausibly to the statements of Irenaeus, but refrains, we think very wisely,
from using it upon the other witnesses. When, as in the testimony of Tertullian
and Augustine, for example, names and places are given, it is clearly quite
impossible to throw the allusion back to apostolic times. We insert a few
additional testimonies from the fathers, and ask the candid reader to see how
impossible it is to make them refer to the times of the apostles.

Tertullian says: "Even Severns himself, the father of Antonine, was graciously
mindful of the Christians. For he sought out the Christian Proculus, surnamed
Torpacion, the steward of Euhodias, and in gratitude for his once having cured
him by anointing, he kept him in his palace till the day of his death." (Ad.
Scap. 4.) We believe no one can candidly read the paragraph in which this
sentence stands without being persuaded that the reference is to healing by
supernatural means.

Origen commenting on the words, "the demonstration of the Spirit and of power,"
says: "Of ’power’ because of the signs and wonders which we must believe to have
been performed, both on many other grounds and on this, that traces of them are
still preserved among those who regulate their lives by the precepts of the
gospel" (Contra Celsum, B. 1, Chap. II.) Again he says: "And there are still
preserved among Christians traces of that Holy Spirit which appeared in the form
of a dove. They expel evil spirits, and perform many cures and foresee certain
events according to the will of the Logos." (Id. B. I, xlvii.) Once more: "We
assert that the whole habitable world contains evidence of the works of Jesus,
in the existence of those churches of God which have been founded through Him by
those who have been converted from the practice of innumerable sins. And the
name of Jesus can still remove distractions from the minds of men and expel
demons, and also take away diseases." (Id. B. I, lxvii.) Who can deny that these
are plain assertions of the continuance of miracles in the writer’s day?

Chrysostom, in his Liber Contra Gentiles, commenting on John 15:12: "He that
believeth on me the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works," etc.,
appeals to the miracles recorded in the Acts of the Apostles in proof of the
truth of this promise; and then adds: "But if any one assert that these are mere
smoke and a fictitious wonder unworthy of credit, LET US VIEW THOSE OF THE
PRESENT DAY, which are calculated both to stop and to put to shame the
blaspheming mouth, and to check the unbridled tongue. For throughout our whole
habitable world, there is not a country, a nation, or a city, where these
wonders are not commonly spoken of, which, if figments, would never have
occasioned so much admiration. And you yourselves indeed, might testify for us
to this. For we shall have no occasion to receive confirmation of what we assert
from others, seeing that you yourselves, our opponents, supply us therewith."
(Logos pros Hellenas -- Ed. Par, 1621, Tom I, p. 728-732.)

We now reproduce the famous paragraph from Irenaeus entire, that the reader may
judge whether the writer is speaking of his own, or of apostolic times: "If,
however, they maintain that the Lord, too, performed such works simply in
appearance, we shall refer them to the prophetical writings, and prove from
these both that all things were thus predicted regarding Him, and did take place
undoubtedly, and that He is the only Son of God. Wherefore, also, those who are
in truth His disciples, receiving grace from Him, do in His name perform
[miracles], so as to promote the welfare of other men, according to the gift
which each one has received from Him. For some do certainly and truly drive out
devils, so that those who have thus been cleansed from evil spirits frequently
both believe [in Christ], and join themselves to the church. Others have
foreknowledge of things to come; they see visions, and utter prophetic
expressions. Others still, heal the sick by laying their hands upon them, and
they are made whole. Yea, moreover, as I have said, the dead even have been
raised up, and remained among us for many years. And what shall I more say? It
is not possible to name the number of the gifts which the church, [scattered]
throughout the whole world, has received from God, in the name of Jesus Christ,
who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and which she exerts day by day for the
benefit of the Gentiles, neither practicing deception upon any, nor taking any
reward from them [on account of such miraculous interpositions]. For as she has
received freely from God, freely also does she minister [to others].

"Nor does she perform anything by means of angelic invocations, or by
incantations, or by any other wicked, curious art; but directing her prayers to
the Lord who made all things, in a pure, sincere and straightforward spirit, and
calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, she has been accustomed to work
miracles for the advantage of mankind, and not to lead them into error. If,
therefore, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ even now confers benefits, and
cures thoroughly and effectually all who anywhere believe on Him, but not that
of Simon, or Menander, or Carpocrates, or any other man whatever, it is manifest
that when he was made man he held fellowship with His own creation and did all
things through the power of God, according to the will of the Father of all, as
the prophets had foretold." (Adv. Haer B. I, xxx ii.) We have in this case, as
in the other quotations, used the translation of the Ante-Nicene Christian
Library, T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh.

Mosheim referring to the alleged cures and expulsion of demons in the 2nd
century, says: "That those gifts of the Spirit which are commonly termed
miraculous, were liberally imparted by Heaven to numbers of the Christians, not
only in this, but likewise in the succeeding age, and more especially to those
who devoted themselves to the propagation of the gospel among the heathen, has
on the faith of the concurrent testimony of the ancient fathers, been hitherto
universally credited throughout the Christian world. Nor does it appear that in
our belief as to this we can with the least propriety be said to have embraced
anything contrary to sound reason. Only let it be considered that the writers on
whose testimony we rely, were all of them men of gravity and worth, who could
feel no inclination to deceive, that they were in part philosophers, that in
point of residence and country they were far separated from each other, that
their report is not grounded on mere hearsay, but upon what they state
themselves to have witnessed with their own eyes, that they call on God in the
most solemn manner to attest its truth (vid Origen contra Celsum, L. I, p.35),
and lastly that they do not pretend to have themselves possessed the power of
working miracles, but merely attribute it to others; and let me ask what reason
can there possibly be assigned that should induce us to withhold from them our
implicit confidence." (Historical Commentaries, Century II, sect. 5, Note.) The
extended note of Mosheim from which we make this extract is well worth the
reader’s examination in full. It contains the strong avowal, that the opinion
above quoted of the continuance of miracles is the Catholic view; and it
criticizes at length the opposite theory as propounded by his contemporary
Middleton, which he says the author was compelled in a later work practically to
retract.

Note B. (chapter 4) -- Practice of the Early Baptists

Rev. Morgan Edwards, in Materials towards a History of American Baptists, Vol.I,
p.23, speaking of Rev. Owen Thomas, once pastor at Welch Tract, Del., says: "Mr.
Thomas left behind him the following remarkable note: ’I have been called upon
three times to anoint the sick with oil for recovery. The effect was surprising
in every case; but in none more so than in that of our brother Rynallt Howell.
He was so sore with the bruises of the wagon when he was anointed that he could
not bear to be turned in bed otherwise than with the sheet; the next day he was
so well that he went to meeting. I have often wondered that this rite is so much
neglected, as the precept is so plain and the effects have been so salutary.’"
On page 28 of the same work Mr. Edwards says, referring to Rev. Hugh Davis,
pastor of Great Valley church: "Some years before his death he had a severe pain
in his arm, which gradually wasted the limb and made life a burden. After trying
many remedies he sent for the elders of the church to anoint him with oil,
according to James 5:14-17. The effect was a perfect cure, so far that the pain
never returned. One of the elders concerned (from whom I had this relation) is
yet alive [1770], and succeeds Mr. Hugh Davis in the ministry, viz., Rev. John
Davis."

He gives several other like incidents, and makes the following observation upon
the custom: "The present generation of Baptists in Pennsylvania and the several
other colonies (German Baptists excepted), have somehow reasoned themselves out
of the practice of anointing the sick for recovery, not believing that the same
kind of reasoning would lead them to discontinue every positive rite, as it
actually led Barclay and thousands besides. Our pious forefathers in this
province practiced the rite frequently and successfully, as might be shown. (See
Examples, pp.23,28.) The same may be said of the Baptists of Great Britain and
Ireland. Their progenitors also used the salutary unction, whereof some
narrations have been made public."

Note C. (chapter 2) -- A Disputed Text

Since the first edition of this work was published, some of its critics have
sharply arraigned it because of its failure to discredit the last part of Mark’s
Gospel, viz, the sixteenth chapter, from verse 9th to the end.

After an extended examination of the whole question, it seemed to the author,
that the doubts which have been thrown upon the passage have so rapidly
diminished, and have now so nearly reached the vanishing point, that it was
hardly worth while to disturb the reader’s mind with them. It is a grave
consideration as to how much of questioning in regard to such texts the preacher
or the writer is justified in raising. It seems to us that unless the evidence
against them considerably preponderates, it is best to say nothing about the
uncertainty. In this case, we believe that the evidence in favor of the
genuineness of the passage vastly outweighs that against it. We have not room to
set forth the grounds of this conviction, but would refer the reader to
Olshausen’s very strong and to us very conclusive defense of this side of the
question. The fact that so early a writer as Irenaeus quote this passage as a
part of Mark’s gospel, both Olshausen and Lange consider to be a powerful
argument in its favor. When we consider that Irenaeus was only a step removed
from the apostles, being a disciple of Polycarp who was the disciple of John, we
shall see how important a consideration this is. The view of Olshausen that this
part was accidentally torn off from some ancient manuscript, and the loss
perpetuated by the transcribers, is far more reasonable, it seems to us, than
that it was an addition by a later hand. For a full and satisfactory discussion
of the whole question we would refer the reader to the fresh and able Commentary
of Morrison. His conclusion in regard to the matter is as follows: Speaking of
the view that this passage is spurious, he says: "This notion has grown into a
romance of criticism which has thrown a spell of doubt over spirits that have
not the least sympathy with Biblical skepticism. But we have shown in a full
discussion of the subject in the body of the Commentary that the romance has
culminated. There would appear to be no good reason for questioning the
authority of the passage." -- Introduction to Commentary on Mark.

Note D. (chapter 8) -- Pastor Blumhardt

We cannot too strongly commend the biography of this excellent man, from which
we have made this brief extract. It is the most remarkable exemplification of
the power of faith and of the possibilities of intercessory prayer which we have
ever met At the same time it is a life the farthest removed from anything of
extravagance, and high assumption. We give one or two further extracts from it
for the benefit of such as may not be able to read the entire book. The first is
a reference to the remarkable instance which we have cited: --

"It was especially," he writes, "in that awful case of sickness (page 160) that
I discovered how the testamentary words of our Lord Jesus Christ, ’They shall
lay hands on the sick, and, they shall recover,’ are not yet quite out of power,
if applied with an humble, penitent, and believing heart. Everything concerning
illnesses in my parish began to be changed. Seldom did a medical man appear in
it; the people would rather pray. Certain diseases especially among new-born
children, seemed entirely to cease, and the general state of health became
better than it was before."

"Yet never in the least did Blumhardt urge the people to give up medical means;
they did it all of their own accord. Nor did he consider his personal presence
and mediation necessary. Hundreds and thousands that came, in course of time,
from all parts of Europe -- yea, from the remotest parts of the globe -- or
applied to him, either through friends and relations or by letter, were directed
by him to search themselves before the Almighty, to repent, to give themselves
entirely up to God, with all their families, and he would then, in answer to a
child-like petition as to their peculiar necessities, do according to His holy
pleasure. But others without number came or were brought to Mittlingen,
especially on days of public worship; scores of them were accommodated inside
the church, outside in the church-yard, or listened to the sermon from
neighboring houses. From early in the morning till after the third service, in
the evening, Blumhardt had scarcely a minute of rest. Hundreds came, one after
another, desiring to lay their spiritual and bodily complaints in particular
before him."

"I myself," continues Mr. Spittler, "was an eye-witness during eighteen months.
Two years after the beginning of the revival, one Sunday morning, a friend and I
counted more than a hundred towns and villages of Wurtemburg and the Grand Duchy
of Baden, from which either a few or whole bands of thirty or fifty had come to
hear the Word of God, or to receive release from diseases. It would take me
hours to testify what the Lord has, through a series of years, done for many a
distressed family or individual, who, when all human means seemed to fail,
looked up to God as a compassionate and merciful Father. God knows the cases,
and those who are concerned know them, and will praise Him here on earth as long
as their breath is within them. Blumhardt’s daily prayer and sigh before the
Lord was, ’Oh that all people would learn again to pray and bring all their
matters before their Heavenly Father!’" -- pp.30-32.

Pastor Blumhardt did not like to dilate on these answers to prayer. Still they
were known. He held that the signs mentioned by our risen Saviour (Mark 16:18)
embraced a promise for all times, and that if the signs were now lacking it was
through a want of faith in the Church. He took the Lord at his word. Many a
captive who had been enthralled bodily and mentally by Satan went away from Bad
Boll rejoicing in a liberty wherewith Christ had, in both respects, made him
free. Often, as those who had left wrote to tell of their healing, and of the
change that had passed over their life, Blumhardt would say with energy, "Thank
God, the God of our fathers still lives." An esteemed professor of the school of
medicine at the University of Tubingen, resolved, during one of his vacations,
to go and make personal inquiries about these cases of healing. Curiosity mainly
moved him. He asked the pastor to give him some proofs of the reality of these
cures. Blumhardt said, "Give yourself time, and take out of these drawers of my
writing-table the letters I have received. Take out as many as you please.
Examine the testimony of others as to the answers to prayer for healing. I know
of no other proof I can give." We give the words of an intelligent visitor at
Bad Boll: "This professor has often since related to me that Blumhardt, (not at
all wishing to bias his judgment) left him alone to peruse the letters. He
confessed that during the reading of these letters, some of which he thought to
be ’most remarkable,’ his astonishment grew more and more, and it became
difficult to him to continue to doubt, as he had done, the reality of these
things, and still more difficult knowing the man whose communication made the
deepest impression upon him to be a thoroughly open and honorable character, and
least likely to lend himself to anything approaching a selfish fraud." --
pp.59-61.


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  CHAPTER 36: 03.0.1.     PREFACE
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PREFACE

It is not claimed that in this little volume all has been said that might be
said upon the subject treated. On the contrary, the writer has proceeded upon
the belief that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit can be better understood by
limiting the sphere of discussion, rather than by extending it to the largest
bounds. For finite beings, at least, presence is more intelligible than
omnipresence. So, though the subject of this book is in itself profoundly
mysterious, we have sought to simplify it by dwelling upon the time-ministry of
the Holy Ghost without entering upon the consideration of his eternal ministry.
What the Spirit did before the incarnation of Christ, and what he may do
hereafter beyond the second advent of Christ, is a question hardly touched upon
in this volume. We have sought rather to emphasize and to magnify the great
truth that the Paraclete is now present in the church: that we are living in the
dispensation of the Spirit, with all the unspeakable blessing for the church and
for the world which this economy provides. Hence, as we speak of the ministry of
Christ meaning a service embraced within defined limits, so we name this volume
the "Ministry of the Spirit," as referring to the work of the Comforter
extending from Pentecost to the end of this dispensation.

How deep a subject for a study! What prayer more becoming for those entering
upon it than the humble petition that the Spirit himself will teach us
concerning the Spirit! Deeply sensible of the imperfection of this work, it is
now committed to the use and blessing of that Divine Person of the Godhead of
whom it so unworthily speaks.

A. J. G.

BOSTON, Dec., 1894.


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  CHAPTER 37: 03.0.2.     INTRODUCTION
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INTRODUCTION

It is remarkable how many in these last days have been led to deal with the
sublime subject to which this treatise is devoted. Without doubt the mind of the
church is being instructed, and her heart prepared for a recognition of the
indwelling, administration, and co-operation of the blessed Paraclete, which has
never been excelled in her history, and is fraught with the greatest promise
both to her and to the world.

Each of these treatises has brought out some new phase in respect to the person
or mission of the Holy Spirit, but I cannot recall one that is so lucid, so
suggestive, so scriptural, so deeply spiritual as this, by my beloved friend,
Dr. Gordon. The chapters on the Embodying, the Enduement, and the Administration
of the Spirit seem specially fresh and helpful. But all is good, and deserving
of prayerful perusal. Let only such truths be well wrought into the mental and
spiritual constitution of God’s servants, and there would be such a revival of
pure and undefiled religion in the churches, and such marvelous results through
them on the world that the age would close with a world-wide Pentecost. And
there are many symptoms abroad that this also is in the purpose of God. Nothing
else can meet the deepest needs and yearnings of our time.

Christianity is beset with three powerful currents, which insidiously operate to
deflect her from her course. Materialism, which denies or ignores the
supernatural, and concentrates its heed on ameliorating the outward conditions
of human life; criticism, which is clever at analysis and dissection, but cannot
construct a foundation on which the religious faculty may build and rest; and a
fine literary taste, which has greatly developed of late, and is disposed to
judge of power by force of words or by delicacy of expression. To all of these
we have but one reply. And that is, not a system, a creed, a church, but the
living Christ, who was dead, but is alive forevermore, and has the keys to
unlock all perplexities, problems, and failures. Though society could be
reconstituted, and material necessities be more evenly supplied, discontent
would break out again in some other form, unless the heart were satisfied with
his love. The truth which he reveals to the soul, and which is ensphered in him,
is alone able to appease the consuming hunger of the mind for data on which to
construct its answer to the questions of life and destiny and God, which are
ever knocking at its door for solution. And men have yet to learn that the
highest power is not in words or metaphors or bursts of eloquence, but in the
indwelling and out-working of the Word, who is the wisdom and the power of God,
and who deals with regions below those where the mind vainly labors.

Jesus Christ, the ever-living Son of God, is the one supreme answer to the
restlessness and travail of our day. But he cannot, he will not reveal himself.
Each person in the Holy Trinity reveals another. The Son reveals the Father, but
his own revelation awaits the testimony of the Holy Ghost, which, though often
given directly, is largely through the church. What we need then, and what the
world is waiting for, is the Son of God, borne witness to and revealed in all
his radiant beauty of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, as he energizes with and
through the saints that make up the holy and mystical body, the church.

It is needful to emphasize this distinction. In some quarters it seems to be
supposed that the Holy Spirit himself is the solution of the perplexities of our
time. Now what we may witness in some coming age we know not, but in this it is
clear that God in the person of Christ is the one only and divine answer. Here
is God’s yea and amen, the Alpha and Omega, sight for the blind, healing for the
paralyzed, cleansing for the polluted, life for the dead, the gospel for the
poor and sad and comfortless. Now we covet the gracious bestowal of the Spirit,
that he may take more deeply of the things of Christ, and reveal them unto us.
When the disciples sought to know the Father, the Lord said, He that hath seen
me hath seen the Father. It is his glory that shines on my face, his will that
molds my life, his purpose that is fulfilled in my ministry. So the blessed
Paraclete would turn our thought and attention from himself to him, with whom he
is One in the Holy Trinity, and whom he has come to reveal.

Throughout the so-called Christian centuries the voice of the Holy Spirit has
borne witness to the Lord, directly and mediately. Directly, in each widespread
quickening of the human conscience, in each revival of religion, in each era of
advance in the knowledge of divine truth, in each soul that has been
regenerated, comforted, or taught. Mediately his work has been carried on
through the church, the body of those that believe. But, alas! how sadly his
witness has been weakened and hindered by the medium through which it has come.
He has not been able to do many mighty works because of the unbelief which has
kept closed and barred those avenues through which he would have poured his glad
testimony to the unseen and glorified Lord. The divisions of the church, her
strife about matters of comparative unimportance, her magnification of points of
difference, her materialism, her love of pelf and place and power, her
accounting herself rich and increased in goods and needing nothing, when she was
poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked--these things have not only robbed her
of her testimony, but have grieved and quenched the Holy Spirit, and nullified
his testimony.

We gladly hail the signs that this period of apathy and resistance is coming to
a close. The Church which is in the churches is making herself felt, is arising
from the dust and arraying herself in her beautiful garments. There is a
widespread recognition of the unity of all who believe, together with an
increasing desire to magnify the points of agreement and minimize those of
divergence. The great conventions for the quickening of spiritual life on both
sides of the Atlantic in which believers meet, irrespective of name or sect, are
doing an incalculable amount of good in breaking down the old lines of
demarcation, and making real our spiritual oneness. The teaching of consecration
and cleanliness of heart and life is removing those obstacles that have
restrained and drowned the Spirit’s still small voice. The fuller’s soap and the
refiner’s fire have been largely resorted to, with the best results. And as
believers have become more consistent and devoted, they have grown increasingly
sensitive to the indwelling, energy, and co-witness of the Holy Spirit.

If only this glorious movement is permitted to achieve its full purpose, the
effect will be transcendently glorious. The church will become as pliant to the
Divine Tenant as the resurrection body of our Lord to the impulse of his divine
nature. And so the Lord Jesus will increasingly become the object of human hope,
the center around which the concentric circles of human life shall circle. That
the Lord Jesus should be thus magnified and glorified through the ministry of
the Holy Spirit, and with this end in view, that the hearts and lives of
believers should be made more sensitive to and receptive of his blessed energy,
this treatise has been prepared; and I add my testimony to the beloved author’s,
that in the mouth of two witnesses, every word may be established; and my prayer
to his that the yea of the Spirit to the great voice of the gospel may be heard
more mightily and persistently amongst us.


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  CHAPTER 38: 03.01.     THE AGE-MISSION OF THE SPIRIT. INTRODUCTORY
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I THE AGE-MISSION OF THE SPIRIT

"It is evident that the present dispensation under which we are is the
dispensation of the Spirit, or of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. To him
in the Divine economy, has been committed the office of applying the redemption
of the Son to the souls of men by the vocation, justification, and salvation of
the elect. We are therefore under the personal guidance of the Third Person, as
truly as the apostles were under the guidance of the Second."--Henry Edward
Manning. THE AGE-MISSION OF THE SPIRIT--INTRODUCTORY In some observations on the
doctrine of the Spirit, which lie before us as we write, an eminent professor of
theology remarks on the disproportionate attention which has been given to the
person and work of the Holy Spirit, as compared with that bestowed on the life
and ministry of Jesus Christ. It is affirmed, moreover, that in many of the
works upon the subject now extant there is a lack of definiteness of impression
which leaves much still to be desired in the treatment of this subject. These
observations lead us to ask: Why not employ the same method in writing about the
Third Person of the Trinity as we use in considering the Second Person? Scores
of excellent lives of Christ have been written; and we find that in these,
almost without exception, the divine story begins with Bethlehem and ends with
Olivet. Though the Saviour lived before his incarnation, and continues to live
after his ascension, yet it gives a certain definiteness of impression to limit
one’s view to his historic career, distinguishing his visible life lived in time
from his invisible life lived in eternity. So in considering the Holy Spirit, we
believe there is an advantage in separating his ministry in time from his
ministry before and after, bounding it by Pentecost on the one side, and by
Christ’s second coming on the other. We have to confess that in many respects
one of the best treatises on the Spirit which we have found is by a Roman
Catholic--Cardinal Manning. Notwithstanding the papistical errors which abound
in the volume, his general conception of the subject is in some particulars
admirable. His treatise is called "The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost." How
much is suggested by this title! Just as Jesus Christ had a time-ministry which
he came into the world to fulfill, and having accomplished it returned to the
Father, so the Holy Spirit, for the fulfillment of a definite mission, came into
the world at an appointed time; he is now carrying on his ministry on earth, and
in due time he will complete it and ascend to heaven again--this is what these
words suggest, and what, as we believe, the Scriptures teach. If we thus form a
right conception of this present age-ministry of the Spirit, we have a definite
view-point from which to study his operations in the ages past, and his greater
mission, if there be such, in the ages to come.

Now we conceive that the vagueness and mystery attaching in many minds to the
doctrine of the Spirit, are due largely to a failure to recognize his
time-ministry, distinct from all that went before and introductory to all that
is to come after--a ministry with a definite beginning and a definite
termination. Certainly no one can read the farewell discourse of our Lord, as
recorded by John, without being impressed with the fact that just as distinctly
as his own advent was foretold by prophets and angels, he now announces the
advent into the world of another, co-equal with himself, his Divine successor,
his other self in the mysterious unity of the Godhead. And moreover, it seems
clear to us that he implied that this coming One was to appear not only for an
appointed work, but for an appointed period: "He shall give you another
Comforter, that he may abide with you forever"--eis ton aiõna. If we translate
literally and say "for the age," it harmonizes with a parallel passage. In
giving the great commission, Jesus says: "And lo, I am with you alway, even unto
the end of the age." Here his presence by the Holy Ghost is evidently meant. The
perpetuity of that presence is guaranteed, "with you all the days"; and its
bound determined, "unto the end of the age." Not that it need be argued that he
shall not be here after this dispensation is finished; but that there is such a
thing as a temporal mission of the Holy Spirit does seem to be implied. And a
full study confirms the view. The present is the dispensation of the Holy Ghost;
the age-work which he inaugurated on the day of Pentecost is now going on, and
it will continue until the Lord Jesus returns from heaven, when another order
will be ushered in and another dispensational ministry succeed. In the
well-known work of Moberly, on "The Administration of the Holy Spirit in the
Body of Christ," the author divides the course of redemption thus far
accomplished into these three stages: The first age, God the Father; the second
age, God the Son; and the third age, God the Holy Ghost. This distribution seems
to be correct, and so does his remark upon the inauguration of the last of these
periods on the day of Pentecost. "At that moment," he says, "the third stage of
the development [manifestation] of God for the restoration of the world finally
began, never to come to an end or to be superseded on earth till the restitution
of all things, when the Son of Man shall come again in the clouds of heaven, in
like manner as his disciples saw him go into heaven." And what shall be the next
period, "the age to come," whose powers they have already tasted who have been
"made partakers of the Holy Ghost"? This question need not be answered, as we
have done all that is required, defined the age of the Spirit which constitutes
the field in which our entire discussion lies.


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  CHAPTER 39: 03.02.     THE ADVENT OF THE SPIRIT
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II THE ADVENT OF THE SPIRIT

"Therefore the Holy Ghost on this day--Pentecost--descended into the temple of
his apostles, which he had prepared for himself, as a shower of sanctification,
appearing no more as a transient visitor, but as a perpetual Comforter and as an
eternal inhabitant. He came therefore on this day to his disciples, no longer by
the grace of visitation and operation, but by the very presence of his
majesty."--Augustine.

"For the Holy Ghost was not yet," is the more than surprising saying of Jesus
when speaking of "the Spirit which they that believe on him should receive." Had
not the Spirit been seen descending upon Jesus like a dove at his baptism, and
remaining on him? Had he not been the divine agent in creation, and in the
illumination and inspiration of the patriarchs and prophets and seers of the old
dispensation? How then could Jesus say that he "was not yet given," as the words
read in our Common version? The answer to this question furnishes our best point
of departure for an intelligent study of the doctrine of the Spirit. Augustine
calls the day of Pentecost the "dies natalis" of the Holy Ghost; and for the
same reason that the day when Mary "brought forth her first-born son" we name
"the birthday of Jesus Christ." Yet Jesus had existed before he lay in the
cradle at Bethlehem; he was "in the beginning with God"; he was the agent in
creation. By him all things were. But on the day of his birth he became
incarnate, that in the flesh he might fulfill his great ministry as the Apostle
and High Priest of our confession, manifesting God to men, and making himself an
offering for the sins of the world. Not until after his birth in Bethlehem was
Jesus in the world in his official capacity, in his divine ministry as mediator
between man and God; and so not till after the day of Pentecost was the Holy
Spirit in the world in his official sphere, as mediator between men and Christ.
In the following senses then is Augustine’s saying true, which calls Pentecost
"the birthday of the Spirit":

1. The Holy Spirit, from that time on, took up his residence on earth. The
Christian church throughout all this dispensation is the home of the Spirit as
truly as heaven, during this same period, is the home of Jesus Christ. This is
according to that sublime word of Jesus, called by one "the highest promise
which can be made to man": "If a man love me he will keep my words: and my
Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him"
(John 14:23). This promise was fulfilled at Pentecost, and the first two Persons
of the Godhead now hold residence in the church through the Third. The Holy
Spirit during the present time is in office on earth; and all spiritual presence
and divine communion of the Trinity with men are through him. In other words,
while the Father and the Son are visibly and personally in heaven, they are
invisibly here in the body of the faithful by the indwelling of the Comforter.
So that though we affirm that on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came to
dwell upon earth for this entire dispensation, we do not imply that he thereby
ceased to be in heaven. Not with God, as with finite man, does arrival in one
place necessitate withdrawal from another. Jesus uttered a saying concerning
himself so mysterious and seemingly contradictory that many attempts have been
made to explain away its literal and obvious meaning: "And no man hath ascended
up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in
heaven"--Christ on earth, and yet in glory; here and there, at the same time,
just as a thought which we embody in speech and send forth from the mind, yet
remains in the mind as really and distinctly as before it was expressed. Why
should this saying concerning our divine Lord seem incredible? And as with the
Son, so with the Spirit. The Holy Ghost is here, abiding perpetually in the
church; and he is likewise there, in communion with the Father and the Son from
whom he proceeds, and from whom, as co-equal partner in the Godhead, he can
never be separated any more than the sunbeam can be dissociated from the sun in
which it has its source.

2. Again: The Holy Spirit, in a mystical but very real sense, became embodied in
the church on the day of Pentecost. Not that we would by any means put this
embodiment on the same plane with the incarnation of the Second Person of the
Trinity. When "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," it was God entering
into union with sinless humanity; here it is the Holy Spirit uniting himself
with the church in its imperfect and militant condition. Nevertheless, it is
according to literal Scripture that the body of the faithful is indwelt by the
divine Spirit. In this fact we have the distinguishing peculiarity of the
present dispensation. "For he dwelleth with you and shall be in you!" said
Jesus, speaking anticipatively of the coming of the Comforter; and so truly was
this prediction fulfilled that ever after the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit
is spoken of as being in the church. "If so be that the Spirit of God dwell in
you" is the inspired assumption on which the deep teaching in Romans eighth
proceeds. All the recognition and deference which the disciples paid to their
Lord they now pay to the Holy Spirit, his true vicar, his invisible self,
present in the body of believers. How artlessly and naturally this comes out in
the findings of the first council at Jerusalem: "It seemed good to the Holy
Ghost and to us" runs the record; as though it had been said: "Peter and James
and Barnabas and Saul and the rest were present, and also just as truly was the
Holy Ghost." And when the first capital sin was committed in the church, in the
conspiracy and falsehood of Ananias and Sapphira, Peter’s question is: "Why hath
Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?" "How is it that ye have
agreed together to tempt the Holy Ghost?" Not only is the personal presence of
the Spirit in the body of believers thus distinctly recognized, but he is there
in authority and supremacy, as the center of the assembly. "Incarnated in the
church!" do we say? We get this conception by comparing together the inspired
characterizations of Christ and of the church. "This temple" was the name which
he gave to his own divine person, greatly to the scandal and indignation of the
Jews; and the evangelist explains to us that "he spoke of the temple of his
body." A metaphor, a type! do we say? No! He said so because it was so. "The
Word was made flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory" (John
1:14). This is temple imagery. "Tabernacled" (eschênôsen) is the word used in
Scripture for the dwelling of God with men; and the temple is God’s
dwelling-place. The "glory" harmonizes with the same idea. As the Shechinah
cloud rested above the mercy-seat, the symbol and sign of God’s presence, so
from the Holy of Holies of our blessed Lord’s heart did the glory of God shine
forth, "the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and
truth," certifying him to be the veritable temple of the Most High.

After his ascension and the sending down of the Spirit, the church takes the
name her Lord had borne before; she is the temple of God, and the only temple
which he has on earth during the present dispensation. "Know ye not that ye are
the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" asks the
apostle. This he speaks to the church in its corporate capacity. "A holy temple
in the Lord, in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God
through the Spirit," is the sublime description in the Epistle to the Ephesians.
It is enough that we now emphasize the fact that the same language is here
applied to the church which Christ applies to himself. As with the Head, so with
the mystical body; each is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and thus is God in some
sense incarnated in both; and for the same reason. Christ was "the Image of the
Invisible God"; and when he stood before men in the flesh he could say to them,
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Not otherwise than through the
incarnation, so far as we know, could the unknown God become known, and the
unseen God become seen. So, after Christ had returned to the Father, and the
world saw him no more, he sent the Paraclete to be incarnated in his mystical
body, the church. As the Father revealed himself through the Son, so the Son by
the Holy Spirit now reveals himself through the church; as Christ was the image
of the invisible God, so the church is appointed to be the image of the
invisible Christ; and his members, when they are glorified with him, shall be
the express image of his person. This then is the mystery and the glory of this
dispensation; not less true because mysterious; not less practical because
glorious. In an admirable work on the Spirit, the distinction between the former
and the present relation of the Spirit is thus stated: "In the old dispensation
the Holy Spirit wrought upon believers, but did not in his person dwell in
believers and abide permanently in them. He appeared unto men; he did not
incarnate himself in man. His action was intermittent; he went and came like the
dove which Noah sent forth from the ark, and which went to and fro, finding no
rest; while in the new dispensation he dwells, he abides in the heart as the
dove, his emblem, which John saw descending and alighting on the head of Jesus.
Affianced of the soul, the Spirit went oft to see his betrothed, but was not yet
one with her; the marriage was not consummated until the Pentecost, after the
glorification of Jesus Christ."[1]

3. A still more obvious reason why before the day of Pentecost it could be said
that "the Holy Ghost was not yet," is contained in the words, "Because that
Jesus was not yet glorified." In the order of the unfolding ages we see each of
the persons of the Godhead in turn exercising an earthly ministry and dealing
with man in the work of redemption. Under the law, God the Father comes down to
earth and speaks to men from the cloud of Sinai and from the glory above the
mercy-seat; under grace, God the Son is in the world, teaching, suffering,
dying, and rising again; under the dispensation of election and out-gathering
now going on, the Holy Spirit is here carrying on the work of renewing and
sanctifying the church, which is the body of Christ. There is a necessary
succession in these Divine ministries, both in time and in character. In the
days of Moses it might have been said: "Christ is not yet," because the economy
of God-Jehovah was not completed. The law must first be given, with its
sacrifices and types and ceremonies and shadows; man must be put on trial under
the law, till the appointed time of his schooling should be completed. Then must
Christ come to fulfill all types and terminate all sacrifices in himself; to do
for us "what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh," and to
become "the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." When
in turn Christ had completed his redemption-work by dying on the cross for our
sins, and rising again from the dead for our justification, and had taken his
place at God’s right hand for perpetual intercession, then the Holy Ghost came
down to communicate and realize to the church the finished work of Christ. In a
word, as God the Son fulfills to men the work of God the Father, so God the Holy
Ghost realizes to human hearts the work of God the Son.

There is a holy deference, if we may so say, between the Persons of the Trinity
in regard to their respective ministries. When Christ was in office on earth,
the Father commends us to him, speaking from heaven and saying: "This is my
beloved Son, hear ye him"; when the Holy Ghost had entered upon his earthly
office, Christ commends us to him, speaking again from heaven with sevenfold
reiteration, saying: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith
unto the churches."[2] As each Person refers us to the teaching of the other, so
in like manner does each in turn consummate the ministry of the other. Christ’s
words and works were not his own, but his Father’s: "The words which I speak
unto you I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me he doeth the
works."[3] The Spirit’s teaching and communications are not his own, but
Christ’s: "Howbeit when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into
all truth; for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear that
shall he speak; and he will show you things to come." "He shall glorify me; for
he shall receive of mine and show it unto you." This order in the ministries of
the Persons of the Godhead is so fixed and eternal that we find it distinctly
foreshadowed even in the typical teaching of the Old Testament. Many speak
slightingly of the types, but they are as accurate as mathematics; they fix the
sequence of events in redemption as rigidly as the order of sunrise and noontide
is fixed in the heavens. Nowhere in tabernacle or in temple, shall we ever find
the laver placed before the altar. The altar is Calvary and the laver is
Pentecost; one stands for the sacrificial blood, the other for the sanctifying
Spirit. If any high priest were ignorantly to approach the brazen laver without
first having come to the brazen altar, we might expect a rebuking voice to be
heard from heaven: "Not yet the washing of water"; and such a saying would
signify exactly the same as: "Not yet the Holy Ghost."

Again, when the leper was to be cleansed, observe that the blood was to be put
upon the tip of his right ear, the thumb of his right hand, and the great toe of
his right foot; and then the oil was to be put upon the right ear, the right
thumb, and the right foot--the oil upon the blood of the trespass-offering
(Leviticus 14). Never, we venture to say, in all the manifold repetitions of
this divine ceremony, was this order once inverted, so that the oil was first
applied, and then the blood; which means, interpreting type into antitype, that
it was impossible that Pentecost could have preceded Calvary, or that the
outpouring of the Spirit should have anticipated the shedding of the blood.

Then let us reflect, that not only the order of these two great events of
redemption was fixed from the beginning, but their dates were marked in the
calendar of typical time. The slaying of the paschal lamb told to generation
after generation, though they knew it not, the day of the year and week on which
Christ our Passover should be sacrificed for us. The presentation of the wave
sheaf before the Lord, "on the morrow after the Sabbath"[1] had for long
centuries fixed the time of our Lord’s resurrection on the first day of the
week. And the command to "count from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day
that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering, seven Sabbaths,"[4] determined
the day of Pentecost as the time of the descent of the Spirit. We sometimes
think of the disciples waiting for an indefinite period in that upper room for
the fulfillment of the promise of the Father; but the time had been fixed not
only with God in eternity, but in the calendar of the Hebrew ritual upon earth.
They tarried in prayer for ten days, simply because after the forty days of the
Lord’s sojourn on earth subsequent to his resurrection, ten days remained of the
"seven Sabbaths" period. To sum up what we are saying: The Spirit of God is the
successor of the Son of God in his official ministry on earth. Until Christ’s
earthly work for his church had been finished, the Spirit’s work in this world
could not properly begin. The office of the Holy Ghost is to communicate Christ
to us--Christ in his entireness. However perfectly the photographer’s plate has
been prepared, there can be no picture until his subject steps into his place
and stands before him. Our Saviour’s redemptive work was not completed when he
died on the cross, or when he rose from the dead, or even when he ascended from
the brow of Olivet. Not until he sat down in his Father’s throne, summing up all
his ministry in himself,--"I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I am
alive forevermore,"--did the full Christ stand ready to be communicated to his
church.[5] By the first Adam’s sin, God’s communion with man through the Holy
Ghost was broken, and their union ruptured. When the second Adam came up from
his cross and resurrection, and took his place at God’s right hand, there was a
restoration of this broken fellowship. Very beautiful are the words of our risen
Lord as bearing on this point: "I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God
and your God."[6] The place which the divine Son had won for himself in the
Father’s heart, he had won for us also. All of acceptance and standing and
privilege which was now his, was ours too, by redemptive right; and the Holy
Ghost is sent down to confirm and realize to us what he had won for us. Without
the expiatory work of Christ for us, the sanctifying work of the Spirit in us
were impossible; and on the other hand, without the work of the Spirit within
us, the work of Christ for us were without avail.

"And when the day of Pentecost was fully come." What these words mean
historically, typically, and doctrinally, we are now prepared to see. The true
wave sheaf had been presented in the temple on high. Christ the first-fruits,
brought from the grave on "the morrow after the Sabbath," or the first day of
the week, now stands before God accepted on our behalf; the seven Sabbaths from
the resurrection day have been counted, and Pentecost has come. Then suddenly,
to those who were "all of one accord in one place," "there came a sound from
heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were
sitting, and there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and sat
upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." As the manger
of Bethlehem was the cradle of the Son of God, so was the upper room the cradle
of the Spirit of God; as the advent of "the Holy Child" was a testimony that God
had "visited and redeemed his people," so was the coming of the Holy Ghost. The
fact that the Comforter is here, is proof that the Advocate is there in the
presence of the Father. Boldly Peter and the other apostles now confront the
rulers with their testimony, "Whom ye slew and hanged on a tree . . . Him hath
God exalted with his right hand to be a prince and a Saviour, to give repentance
to Israel and forgiveness of sins; and we are his witnesses of these things; and
so also is the Holy Ghost, whom God, hath given to them that obey him." As the
sound of the golden bells upon the high priest’s garments within the Holiest
gave evidence that he was alive, so the sound of the Holy Ghost, proceeding from
heaven and heard in that upper chamber, was an incontestable witness that the
great High Priest whom they had just seen passing through the cloud-curtain,
entering within the veil, was still living for them in the presence of the
Father. Thus has the "dies natalis," the birthday of the Holy Spirit, come; and
the events of his earthly mission will now be considered in their order.

[1] "The Work of the Holy Spirit in Man," by Pastor Tophel, p. 32.

[2] See epistles to the seven churches: Revelation 2:11.

[3] John 14:10.

[4] Leviticus 23:11-16.

[5] "Christ having reached his goal, and not till then, bequeathes to his
followers the graces that invested his earthly course; the ascending Elijah
leaves his mantle behind him. It is only an extension of the same principle,
that the declared office of the Holy Spirit being to complete the image of
Christ in every faithful follower by effecting in this world a spiritual death
and resurrection,--a point attested in every epistle,--the image could not be
stamped until the reality had been wholly accomplished; the Divine Artist could
not fitly descend to make the copy before the entire original had been
provided."--Archer Butler.

[6] John 20:17. "Because though he and the Father are one, and the Father his
Father by the propriety of nature, to us God became a Father through the Son,
not by right of nature, but by grace."--Ambrose.


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  CHAPTER 40: 03.03.     THE NAMING OF THE SPIRIT
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III THE NAMING OF THE SPIRIT

"The name Paraclete is applied to Christ as well as to the Spirit; and properly:
For it is the common office of each to console and encourage us and to preserve
us by their defense. Christ was their [the disciples’] patron so long as he
lived in the world; he then committed them to the guidance and protection of the
Spirit. If any one asks us whether we are not under the guidance of Christ, the
answer is easy: Christ is a perpetual guardian, but not visibly. As long as he
walked on the earth he appeared openly as their guardian: now he preserves us by
his Spirit. He calls the Spirit ’another Comforter,’ in view of the distinction
which we observe in the blessings proceeding from each."--John Calvin. The Son
of God was named by the angel before he was conceived in the womb: "Thou shalt
call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins." Thus he
came, not to receive a name, but to fulfill a name already predetermined for
him. In like manner was the Holy Ghost named by our Lord before his advent into
the world: "But when the Paraclete is come, whom I will send unto you from the
Father" (John 15:26). This designation of the Holy Spirit here occurs for the
first time--a new name for the new ministry upon which he is now about to enter.
The reader will find in almost any critical commentary discussions of the
meaning of the word, and of the question of its right translation, whether by
"Comforter," or "Advocate," or "Teacher," or "Helper." But the question cannot
be fully settled by an appeal to classical or patristic Greek, for the reason,
we believe, that it is a divinely given name whose real significance must be
made manifest in the actual life and history of the Spirit. The name is the
person himself, and only as we know the person can we interpret his name. Why
attempt then to translate this word any more than we do the name of Jesus? We
might well transfer it into our English version, leaving the history of the
church from the Acts of the Apostles to the experience of the latest saint to
fill into it the great significance which it was intended to contain. Certain it
is that the language of the Holy Ghost can never be fully understood by an
appeal to the lexicon. The heart of the church is the best dictionary of the
Spirit. While all the before-mentioned synonyms are correct, neither one is
adequate, nor are all together sufficient to bring out the full significance of
this great name, "The Paraclete."

Let us consider, however, how much is suggested by the literal meaning of this
word, "the Paracletos" and by all that our Lord says concerning him in his last
discourse. "To call to one’s aid," is the meaning of the verb, parachaleô, from
which the name is derived. Very beautiful therefore is the word in its
application to the disciples of Christ at the time when the Spirit was given.
They had lost the visible presence of their Lord. The sorrow of his removal from
them through the cross and the sepulchre had after three days been turned into
joy by his resurrection. But now another separation had come, in his departure
to the Father after the cloud had received him out of sight. In this last and
longer bereavement, what should they do? Their beloved Master had told them
beforehand what to do. They were to call upon the Father to send them One to
fill the vacant place, and he who should be sent would be the "Paraclete," the
"one called to their help."[1] But what deep questionings must have arisen in
their hearts as they heard the Saviour’s promise: "If I go not away the
Paraclete will not come unto you; but if I depart I will send him unto you." Did
they begin to ask whether the mysterious comer would be a "person"? Impossible
to imagine. For he was to take the place of that greatest of persons; to do for
them even greater things than he had done; and to lead them into even larger
knowledge than he had imparted. The discussion of the personality of the Holy
Ghost is so unnatural in the light of Christ’s last discourse that we studiously
avoid it. Let us treat the question, therefore, from the point of view of
Christ’s own words, and try to put ourselves under the impression which they
make upon us. To state the matter as simply and familiarly as possible: Jesus is
about to vacate his office on earth as teacher and prophet; but before doing so
he would introduce us to his successor. As in a complex problem we seek to
determine an unknown quantity by the known, so in this paschal discourse Jesus
aims to make us acquainted with the mysterious, invisible coming personage whom
he names the "Paraclete" by comparing him with himself, the known and the
visible one. Collating his comparisons we may find in them several groups of
seeming contradictions, and just such contradictions as we should expect if this
comer is indeed a person of the Godhead. Of the coming Paraclete then we find
these intimations.[2]

1. He is another, yet the same: "And I will pray the Father and he shall give
you another Comforter" (John 14:16). By the use of this expression "another" our
Lord distinguishes the Paraclete from himself, but he also puts him on the same
plane with himself. For there is no parity or even comparison between a person
and an influence. If the promised visitor were to be only an impersonal
emanation from God, it would seem impossible that our Lord should have so
co-ordinated him with himself as to say: "I go to be an Advocate for you in
heaven (1 John 2:1), and I send another to be an Advocate for you on earth." But
if Christ thus distinguishes the Comforter from himself, he also identifies him
with himself: "I will not leave you orphans: I will come to you" (John 14:18).
By common consent this promise refers to the advent of the Spirit, for so the
connection plainly indicates. And yet almost in the same breath he says: "The
Comforter whom I will send unto you" (John 14:26). Thus our Lord makes the same
event to be at once his coming and his sending; and he speaks of the Spirit now
as his own presence, and now as his substitute during his absence. So what must
we conclude but that the Paraclete is Christ’s other self, a third Person in
that blessed Trinity of which he is the second.

2. The Paraclete is subordinate yet superior in his ministry to the church. "For
he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak.
He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine and show it unto you" (John
16:13).

Well may we mark the holy deference between the persons of the Trinity which is
here pointed out. Each receives from another what he communicates, and each
magnifies another in his praises. As Bengel concisely states it: "The Son
glorifies the Father; the Spirit glorifies the Son." What then is the office of
the Holy Ghost, so far as we can interpret it, but that of communicating and
applying the work of Christ to human hearts? If he convinces of sin it is by
exhibiting the gracious redemptive work of the Saviour and showing men their
guilt in not believing on him. If he witnesses to the penitent of his acceptance
it is by testifying of the atoning blood of Jesus in which that acceptance is
grounded; if he regenerates and sanctifies the heart it is by communicating to
it the life of the risen Lord. Christ is "all" in himself, and through the
Spirit "in all" those whom the Spirit renews. This reverent subjection of the
earthly Comforter to the heavenly Christ contains a deep lesson for those who
are indwelt by the Spirit[3] and makes them rejoice evermore to be witnesses
rather than originators. With this subordination of the Holy Spirit to Christ,
how is it yet true that such a great advantage was to accrue to the church by
the departure of the Saviour and the consequent advent of the Spirit to take his
place? That it would be so is what is plainly affirmed in the following text:
"Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away: for
if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart I will
send him unto you" (John 16:7). If the Spirit is simply the measure of the Son,
his sole work being to communicate the work of the Son, what gain could there be
in the departure of the one in order to the coming of the other? Would it not be
simply the exchange of Christ for Christ?--his visible presence for his
invisible? To us the answer of this question is most obvious. It was not the
earthly Christ whom the Holy Ghost was to communicate to the church, but the
heavenly Christ,--the Christ re-invested with his eternal power, re-clothed with
the glory which he had with the Father before the world was, and re-endowed with
the infinite treasures of grace which he had purchased by his death on the
cross. It is as though--to use a very inadequate illustration--a beloved father
were to say to his family: "My children, I have provided well for your needs;
but your condition is one of poverty compared with what it may become. By the
death of a kinsman in my native country I have become heir to an immense estate.
If you will only submit cheerfully to my leaving you and crossing the sea, and
entering into my inheritance, I will send you back a thousand times more than
you could have by my remaining with you." Only in the instance we are
considering, Christ is the "testator" as well as the heir. By his death the
inheritance becomes available, and when he had ascended into heaven he sent down
the Holy Spirit to distribute the estate among those who were joint heirs with
him. What this estate is, may be best summarized in two beautiful expressions of
frequent recurrence in the epistles of Paul, "The riches of his grace"
(Ephesians 1:7), and "The riches of his glory" (Ephesians 3:16). On the cross
"the riches of his grace" was secured to us in the forgiveness of sins; on the
throne "the riches of his glory" was secured to us in our being strengthened
with all might by his Spirit in the inner man; in the indwelling of Christ in
our hearts by faith, and in our infilling with all the fullness of God. The
divine wealth only becomes completely available on the death, resurrection, and
ascension of our Lord; so that the Holy Spirit, the divine Conveyancer, had not
the full inheritance to convey till Jesus was glorified.

Observe therefore, in the valedictory discourse of our Lord, the frequent
recurrence of the words: "Because I go to the Father," one of the sayings which
greatly perplexed his disciples. In the light of all which Jesus says in this
connection, let us see if its meaning may not be clear to us. "If ye loved me ye
would rejoice because I go unto the Father; for the Father is greater than I"
(John 14:28), he says in the same connection. We cannot here enter into the deep
question of the kenosis, or self-emptying of the Son of God in his incarnation.
It is enough that we follow the plain teaching of the Scripture, that though
"being in the form of God, he counted it not a thing to be grasped to be on an
equality with God; but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" (Php
2:6-7, R. V.). What now does his going to the Father signify but a refilling
with that of which he had been emptied, or a resumption of his co-equality with
God? The greater blessing which he could confer upon his church by his departure
seems to lie in the fact of the greater power and glory into which he would
enter by his enthronement at God’s right hand. As Luther pointedly puts it:
"Therefore do I go, he saith, where I shall be greater than I now am, that is,
to the Father, and it is better that I shall pass out of this obscurity and
weakness into the power and glory in which the Father is." In the light of this
interpretation the meaning of our Lord’s words above quoted does not seem
difficult. The Paraclete was to communicate Christ to his church,--his life, his
power, his riches, his glory. In his exaltation all these were to be very
greatly increased. "All things that the Father hath are mine" (John 16:15), he
says. And though he had for a time voluntarily disinherited himself of his
heavenly possessions, he is now to be repossessed of them. "Therefore said I,
that he shall take of mine and shall show it unto you" (16: 15). Christ at God’s
right hand will have more to give than while on earth; therefore the church will
have more to receive through the Paraclete than through the visible Christ. What
obvious significance then do the following sayings from this farewell sermon of
Jesus have: "Verily verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me the works
that I do shall he do also; greater works than these shall he do; because I go
unto the Father" (John 14:12). The earthly Christ is equal only to himself thus
conditioned; and if the Holy Spirit shall communicate his power to his
disciples, they will do the same works that he does. But the heavenly Christ is
co-equal with the Father, therefore when he shall ascend to the Father, and the
Spirit shall take of his and communicate to his church, it will do greater works
than these. The stream of life, in other words, will have greater power because
of the higher source from which it proceeds. Very deep are the mysteries here
considered, and we can only speak of them in the light which we get by comparing
Scripture with Scripture. Did the risen Christ breathe on his disciples and say
to them: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost"?[4] "It is enough, Lord, that we have
received the Spirit from thee," they might well have said. Yet it was not enough
for him to give; for looking on to the day of his enthronement, he says: "But
when the Paraclete is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the
Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me" (John
15:26). When Jesus hath ascended "on high," then can the Holy Ghost communicate
"the power from on high." Therefore it is expedient that he go away. As with the
power which Christ was to impart to his church through the Paraclete, so with
the righteousness which he was both to impute and to impart; its highest source
must be found in heaven: "And when he, the Comforter, is come, he will convince
the world of righteousness; . . . of righteousness because I go to my father,
and ye see me no more" (John 16:8-10). We may say truly that the righteousness
of Christ was not completely finished and authenticated till he sat down at the
right hand of the majesty on high. By his death he perfectly satisfied the
claims of a violated law, but this fact was not attested until the grave gave
back the certificate of discharge in his released and risen body. By his
resurrection he was "declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the
Spirit of holiness" (Romans 1:4). But the fact was not fully verified till God
had "set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all
principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named"
(Ephesians 1:20; Ephesians 1:2 l). Now in his consummated glory he is prepared
to be "made wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" to
his people. He who had been "manifest in the flesh" that he might be made sin
for us, was now "justified in the Spirit" and "received up into glory," that he
might be made righteousness to us, and that "we might be made the righteousness
of God in him." Christ’s coronation, in a word, is the indispensable condition
to our justification. Till he who was made a curse for us is crowned with glory
and honor we cannot be assured of our acceptance with the Father.[5] How deep
the current of thought which flows through this narrow channel--"Because I go to
the Father."

3. The Paraclete teaches only the things of Christ; yet teaches more than Christ
taught: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
Howbeit when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all the
truth" (John 16:12-13). It is as though he had said: "I have brought you a
little way in the knowledge of my doctrine; he shall bring you all the way." One
reason for this saying seems plain: The teaching of Jesus during his earthly
ministry waited to be illumined by a light not risen--the light of the cross,
the light of the sepulchre, the light of the ascension. Therefore until these
events had come to pass, Christian doctrine was undeveloped, and could not be
fully communicated to the disciples of Christ. But this is not all. The "because
I go to the Father" still gives the key to our Lord’s meaning. "But what things
soever he shall hear, these shall he speak, and he shall declare unto you things
to come" (John 16:13, R. V.). Very wonderful is this hint of the mutual converse
of the Godhead, so that the Paraclete is described as listening while he leads,
as having an ear in heaven attentive to the converse of the Father and the
glorified Son, while he extends an unseen guidance to the flock on earth,
communicating to them what he has heard from the Father and the Son. And we may
reverently ask, Has not the glorified Christ more of knowledge and revelation to
communicate than he had in the days of his humiliation? Of "the things to come"
has he not secrets to impart which hitherto may have been hidden in the counsels
of the Father? To take a single illustration from the words of Christ. Speaking
of his second advent, he says: "But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not
even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father" (Mark 13:32[6]). It
is best that we should interpret these words frankly, and instead of saying,
with some, that he did not know in the sense that he was not permitted to
disclose, admit it possible that while in his humiliation and under the veil of
his incarnation, this secret was hidden from his eyes. But is it not
presumptuous for us to reason, that therefore he does not now know the day of
his coming? How constantly is that text quoted as a decisive and final
prohibition of all inquiry into the proximate time of our Lord’s return in
glory. But they who so use this saying simply remand us to the childhood of the
church, to the spiritual nonage of the ante-Pentecostal days. Have we forgotten
that since our Lord ascended to the Father he has given us a further revelation,
that wondrous book of the Apocalypse, which opens and closes with a beatitude
upon those who read and faithfully keep the words of this prophecy? And one
characteristic feature of this book is its chronological predictions concerning
the time of the end, its mystical dates, which have led many sober searchers of
the word of God to inquire diligently "what and what manner of time" the Spirit
did signify in giving us these way-marks in the wilderness. This being so, we
may ask: If we are not irreverent in concluding with many devout expositors that
our Saviour meant what he said in declaring that he did "not yet" know the time
of his advent, are we presumptuous in taking literally the opening words of the
Apocalypse?: "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show
unto his servants the things which must shortly come to pass." It was because of
his going unto the Father that greater works and greater riches were to attend
the church after Pentecost. Why may we not assign to the same cause also the
fuller revelation of the future and the leading into completer truth concerning
the blessed hope of the church? In other words, if we may think of Christ as
entering into larger revelation as he returns to the glory which he had with the
Father must we not think of larger communications of truth by the blessed
Paraclete? Have we not learned something of the nature and offices of the Spirit
by this study of his new name, and of all that the departing Lord says in the
wondrous discourse wherein he introduces him to his disciples? At least the
study should enable us to distinguish two inspired terms which have been
needlessly confounded by not a few writers, viz.: the words "Paraclete," and
"Parousia." The latter word, which constantly occurs in Scripture as describing
our Lord’s second coming, has been applied in several learned works to the
advent of the Holy Spirit; and since Christ came in the person of the Spirit, it
has been argued that the Redeemer’s promised advent in glory has already taken
place. But this is to confuse terms whose use in Scripture marks them as clearly
distinct. Observe their difference: In the Paraclete, Christ comes spiritually
and invisibly; in the Parousia, he comes bodily and gloriously. The advent of
the Paraclete is really conditioned on the Saviour’s personal departure from his
people: "If I go not away the Paraclete will not come to you" (John 16:7). The
Parousia, on the other hand, is only realized in his personal return to his
people: "For what is our hope or joy or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in
the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?" (1 Thessalonians 2:19.)
The Paraclete attends the church in the days of her humiliation; the Parousia
introduces the church into the day of her glory. In the Paraclete, Christ came
to dwell with the church on earth: "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to
you" (John 14:18). In the Parousia, Christ comes to take the church to dwell
with himself in glory: "I will come again and receive you unto myself; that
where I am there ye may be also" (John 14:3). Christ prayed on behalf of his
bereaved church for the coming of this Paraclete: "And I will pray the Father
and he shall give you another Paraclete." The Holy Spirit now prays with the
pilgrim-church for the hastening of the Parousia. "And the Spirit and the bride
say, Come" (Revelation 22:17). These two can only be understood in their mutual
relations. Christ, who gave the new name to the Holy Spirit, can best interpret
that name to us by making us acquainted with himself. May that name be for us so
real a symbol of personal presence that while strangers and pilgrims in the
earth we may walk evermore "in the paraclesis of the Holy Ghost" (Acts 9:31).

[1] The word paraklêtôr is used in the Septuagint (Job 16:2) with the meaning of
"Comforter," and the term paraklêtos occurs in the Talmud, signifying
"Interpreter."

[2] The most obvious reason for concluding that the Holy Spirit is a person is
that he performs actions and stands in relations which belong only to a person,
e. g.: He speaks (Acts 1:16); he works miracles (Acts 2:4; Acts 8:39); he sets
ministers over churches (Acts 20:28); he commands and forbids (Acts 8:29; Acts
11:12; Acts 13:2; Acts 16:6-7); he prays for us (Romans 8:26); he witnesses
(Romans 8:16); he can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30); he can be blasphemed (Mark
3:29); he can be resisted (Acts 7:51, etc).

[3] If the Holy Spirit may not speak of himself as preacher, how canst thou draw
thy preaching out of thyself--out of thine head or even out of thine
heart.--Pastor Gossner.

[4] Let it be observed that in this communication of the risen Christ it is not
said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost"--the article being significantly
omitted--Labete Pneuma agion (John 20:22).

[5] How righteous must he be, who will go to the Father from the cross and the
grave! Thus will the Holy Spirit convince the world that he is a righteous man,
and truly righteous for man.--Roos.

[6] "Neither the Son": "It is more than neither; it is not yet the Son," says
Morrison the commentator.


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  CHAPTER 41: 03.04.     THE EMBODYING OF THE SPIRIT
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IV THE EMBODYING OF THE SPIRIT

"But now the Holy Ghost is given more perfectly, for he is no longer present by
his operation as of old, but is present with us so to speak, and converses with
us in a substantial manner. For it was fitting that, as the Son had conversed
with us in the body, the spirit should also come among us in a bodily
manner."--Gregory Nazianzen.

"The church, which is his body," began its history and development at Pentecost.
Believers had been saved, and the influences of the Spirit had been manifested
to men in all previous dispensations from Adam to Christ. But now an ecclesia,
an outgathering, was to be made to constitute the mystical body of Christ,
incorporated into him the Head and indwelt by him through the Holy Ghost. The
definition which we sometimes hear, that a church is "a voluntary association of
believers, united together for the purposes of worship and edification" is most
inadequate, not to say incorrect. It is no more true than that hands and feet
and eyes and ears are voluntarily united in the human body for the purposes of
locomotion and work. The church is formed from within; Christ present by the
Holy Ghost, regenerating men by the sovereign action of the Spirit, and
organizing them into himself as the living center. The Head and the body are
therefore one, and predestined to the same history of humiliation and glory. And
as they are one in fact, so are they one in name. He whom God anointed and
filled with the Holy Ghost is called "the Christ," and the church, which is his
body and fullness, is also called "the Christ." "For as the body is one, and
hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one
body, so also is the Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:12). Here plainly and with
wondrous honor the church is named o Christos, commenting upon which fact Bishop
Andrews beautifully says: "Christ is both in heaven and on earth; as he is
called the Head of his church, he is in heaven; but in respect of his body which
is called Christ, he is on earth." So soon as the Holy Ghost was sent down from
heaven this great work of his embodying began, and it is to continue until the
number of the elect shall be accomplished, or unto the end of the present
dispensation. Christ, if we may say it reverently, became mystically a babe
again on the day of Pentecost, and the hundred and twenty were his infantile
body, as once more through the Holy Ghost he incarnated himself in his flesh.
Now he is growing and increasing in his members, and so will he continue to do
"till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of
God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of fullness of Christ."
Then the Christ on earth will be taken up into visible union with the Christ in
heaven, and the Head and the body be glorified together. Observe how the history
of the church’s formation, as recorded in the Acts, harmonizes with the
conception given above. The story of Pentecost culminates in the words, "and the
same day there were added about three thousand souls" (Acts 2:41). Added to
whom? we naturally ask. And the King James translators have answered our
question by inserting in italics "to them." But not so speaks the Holy Ghost.
And when, a few verses further on in the same chapter, we read: "And the Lord
added to the church daily such as should be saved," we need to be reminded that
the words "to the church" are spurious. All such glosses and interpolations have
only tended to mar the sublime teaching of this first chapter of the Holy
Spirit’s history. "And believers were the more added to the Lord" (Acts 5:14.)
"And much people were added unto the Lord" (Acts 11:24.) This is the language of
inspiration--Not the mutual union of believers, but their divine co-uniting with
Christ; not voluntary association of Christians, but their sovereign
incorporation into the Head and this incorporation effected by the Head through
the Holy Ghost.

If we ask concerning the way of admission into this divine ecclesia, the
teaching of Scripture is explicit: "For in one Spirit were we all baptized into
one body" (1 Corinthians 12:13). The baptism in water marks the formal
introduction of the believer into the church; but this is the symbol, not the
substance. For observe the identity of form between the ritual and the
spiritual. "I indeed baptize you in water," . . . said John, "but he that cometh
after me . . . shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and in fire" (Matthew 3:11).
As in the one instance the disciple was submerged in the element of water, so in
the other he was to be submerged in the element of the Spirit. And thus it was
in actual historic fact. The upper room became the Spirit’s baptistery, if we
may use the figure. His presence "filled all the house where they were sitting,"
and "they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." The baptistery would never need
to be re-filled, for Pentecost was once and for all, and the Spirit then came to
abide in the church perpetually. But each believer throughout the age would need
to be infilled with that Spirit which dwells in the body of Christ. In other
words, it seems clear that the baptism of the Spirit was given once for the
whole church, extending from Pentecost to Parousia. "There is one Lord, one
faith, one baptism" (Ephesians 4:5). As there is one body reaching through the
entire dispensation, so there is "one baptism" for that body given on the day of
Pentecost. Thus if we rightly understand the meaning of Scripture it is true,
both as to time and as to fact, that "in one Spirit we were all baptized into
one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free." The typical
foreshadowing, as seen in the church in the wilderness, is very suggestive at
this point: "Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how
that all our fathers were under the cloud and all passed through the sea; and
were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea" (1 Corinthians 10:1).
Baptized into Moses by their passage through the sea, identified with him as
their leader, and committed to him in corporate fellowship; even so were they
also baptized into Jehovah, who in the cloud of glory now took his place in the
midst of the camp and tabernacled henceforth with them. The type is perfect as
all inspired types are. The antitype first appears in Christ our Lord, baptized
in water at the Jordan, and then baptized in the Holy Ghost which "descended
from heaven like a dove and abode upon him." Then it recurred again in the
waiting disciples, who besides the baptism of water, which had doubtless already
been received, now were baptized "in the Holy Ghost and in fire." Henceforth
they were in the divine element, as their fathers had been in the wilderness,
"not in the flesh but in the Spirit" (Romans 8:9); called "to live according to
God in the Spirit" (1 Peter 4:6); to "walk in the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25);
"praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit" (Ephesians
6:18). In a word, on the day of Pentecost the entire body of Christ was baptized
into the element and presence of the Holy Ghost as a permanent condition. And
though one might object that the body as a whole was not yet in existence, we
reply that neither was the complete church in existence when Christ died on
Calvary, yet all believers are repeatedly said to have died with him. To change
the figure of baptism for a moment to another which is used synonymously, that
of the anointing of the Spirit, we have in Exodus a beautiful typical
illustration of our thought. At Aaron’s consecration the precious ointment was
not only poured upon his head, but ran down in rich profusion upon his body and
upon his priestly garments. This fact is taken up by the psalmist when he sings:
"Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It
is like the precious ointment upon the head that ran down upon the beard, even
Aaron’s beard, that went down to the skirts of his garments" (Psalms 133:1-2).
Of our great High Priest we read: "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the
Holy Ghost and with power" (Acts 10:38). But it was not for himself alone but
also for his brethren that he obtained this holy unction. He received that he
might communicate. "Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining
on him, the same is he that baptizeth in the Holy Ghost" (John 1:33). And now we
behold our Aaron, our great High Priest, who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus the Son of God, standing in the holiest in heaven. "Thou didst love
righteousness and didst hate iniquity," is the divine encomium now passed upon
him, "therefore God, thy God, anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy
fellows" (Hebrews 1:9). He, the Christos, the Anointed, stands above and for the
Christoi, his anointed brethren, and from him the Head, the unction of the Holy
Ghost descended on the day of Pentecost. It was poured in rich profusion upon
his mystical body. It has been flowing down ever since, and will continue to do
so till the last member shall have been incorporated with himself, and so
anointed by the one Spirit into the one body, which is the church.

It is true that in one instance subsequent to Pentecost the baptism in the Holy
Ghost is spoken of. When the Spirit fell on the house of Cornelius, Peter is
reminded of the word of the Lord, how that he said: "John indeed baptized in
water, but ye shall be baptized in the Holy Ghost" (Acts 11:16). This was a
great crisis in the history of the church, the opening of the door of faith to
the Gentiles, and it would seem that these new subjects of grace now came into
participation of an already present Spirit. Yet Pentecost still appears to have
been the age-baptism of the church. As Calvary was once for all, so was the
visitation of the upper room.

Consider now that, as through the Holy Ghost we become incorporated into the
body of Christ, we are in the same way assimilated to the Head of that body,
which is Christ. An unsanctified church dishonors the Lord, especially by its
incongruity. A noble head, lofty-browed and intellectual, upon a deformed and
stunted body, is a pitiable sight. What, to the angels and principalities who
gaze evermore upon the face of Jesus, must be the sight of an unholy and
misshapen church on earth, standing in that place of honor called "his body."
Photographing in a sentence the ecclesia of the earliest centuries, Professor
Harnack says: "Originally the church was the heavenly bride of Christ, and the
abiding place of the Holy Spirit." Let the reader consider how much is involved
in this definition. The first and most sacred relation of the body is to the
head. Watching for the return of the Bridegroom induces holiness of life and
conduct in the bride; and the supreme work of the Spirit is directed to this
end, that "He may establish our hearts unblamable in holiness before God our
Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints" (1
Thessalonians 3:13). In accomplishing this end he effects all other and
subordinate ends. The glorified Christ manifests himself to man through his
body. If there is a perfect correspondence between himself and his members, then
there will be a true manifestation of himself to the world.[1] Therefore does
the Spirit abide in the body, that the body may be "inChristed," to use an old
phrase of the mystics; that is, indwelt by Christ and transfigured into the
likeness of Christ. Only thus, as "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a
holy nation, a peculiar people," can it "shew forth the virtues of him who has
called us out of darkness into his marvelous light." And who is the Christ that
is thus to be manifested? From the throne he gives us his name: "I am he that
liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore" (Revelation 1:18).
Christ in glory is not simply what he is, but what he was and what he is to be.
As a tree gathers up into itself all the growths of former years, and contains
them in its trunk, so Jesus on the throne is all that he was and is and is to
be. In other words, his death is a perpetual fact as well as his life. And his
church is predestined to be like him in this respect, since it not only heads up
in him, as saith the apostle, that ye "may grow up into him in all things which
is the Head, even Christ," but also bodies itself forth from him, "from whom the
whole body, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint
supplieth, . . . maketh increase of the body" . . . (Ephesians 4:16). If the
church will literally manifest Christ, then she must be both a living and a
dying church. To this she is committed in the divinely given form of her
baptism. "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were
baptized into his death; therefore we were buried with him by baptism into
death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the
Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:3-4). And the
baptism of the Holy Ghost into which we have been brought is designed to
accomplish inwardly and spiritually what the baptism of water foreshadows
outwardly and typically, viz., to reproduce in us the living and the dying of
our Lord.

First, the living. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made
me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2). That is, that which has
been hitherto the actuating principle within us, viz., sin and death, is now to
be met and mastered by another principle, the law of life, of which the Holy
Spirit of God is the author and sustainer. As by our natural spirit we are
connected with the first Adam, and made partakers of his fallen nature, so by
the Holy Spirit we are now united with the second Adam, and made partakers of
his glorified nature. To vivify the body of Christ by maintaining its identity
with the risen Head is, in a word, the unceasing work of the Holy Ghost.

Secondly, the dying of our Lord in his members is to be constantly effected by
the indwelling Spirit. The church, which is the fullness of him that "filleth
all in all," completes in the world his crucifixion as well as his resurrection.
This is certainly Paul’s profound thought, when he speaks of filling up "that
which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for his body’s sake,
which is the church" (Colossians 1:24). In other words, the church, as the
complement of her Lord, must have a life experience and a death experience
running parallel.

It is remarkable how exact is this figure of the body, which is employed to
symbolize the church. In the human system life and death are constantly working
together. A certain amount of tissue must die every day and be cast out and
buried, and a certain amount of new tissue must also be created and nourished
daily in the same body. Arrest the death-process, and it is just as certain to
produce disorder as though you were to arrest the life-process. Literally is
this true of the corporate body also. The church must die daily in fulfillment
of the crucified life of her Head, as well as live daily in the manifestation of
his glorified life. This italicised sentence, which we take from a recent book,
is worthy to be made a golden text for Christians: "The Church is Christian no
more than as it is the organ of the continuous passion of Christ." To
sympathize, in the literal sense of suffering with our sinning and lost
humanity, is not only the duty of the church, but the absolutely essential
condition to her true manifestation of her Lord. A self-indulgent church
disfigures Christ; an avaricious church bears false witness against Christ; a
worldly church betrays Christ, and gives him over once more to be mocked and
reviled by his enemies. The resurrection of our Lord is prolonged in his body,
as we all see plainly. Every regeneration is a pulse-beat of his throne-life.
But too little do we recognize the fact that his crucifixion must be prolonged
side by side with his resurrection. "If any man will come after me let him deny
himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." The church is called to live
a glorified life in communion with her Head, and a crucified life in her contact
with the world. And the Holy Spirit dwells evermore in the church to effect this
twofold manifestation of Christ. "But God be thanked, that ye have obeyed from
the heart that pattern of doctrine to which ye were delivered," writes the
apostle (Romans 6:17). The pattern, as the context shows, is Christ dead and
risen. If the church truly lives in the Spirit, he will keep her so plastic that
she will obey this divine mold as the metal conforms to the die in which it is
struck. If she yields to the sway of "the spirit that now worketh in the
children of disobedience," she will be stereotyped according to the fashion of
the world, and they that look upon her will fail to see Christ in her.

[1] "The Holy Spirit not only dwells in the church as his habitation, but also
uses her as the living organism whereby he moves and walks forth in the world,
and speaks to the world and acts upon the world. He is the soul of the church
which is Christ’s body."--Bishop Webb, The Presence and Office of the Spirit, p.
47.


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  CHAPTER 42: 03.05.     THE ENDUEMENT OF THE SPIRIT
========================================================================

V THE ENDUEMENT OF THE SPIRIT

"To the disciples, the baptism of the Spirit was very distinctly not his first
bestowal for regeneration, but the definite communication of his presence in
power of their glorified Lord. Just as there was a two-fold operation of the one
Spirit in the Old and New Testaments, of which the state of the disciples before
and after Pentecost was the striking illustration, so there may be, and in the
great majority of Christians is, a corresponding difference of experience. . .
When once the distinct recognition of what the indwelling of the Spirit was
meant to bring is brought home to the soul, and it is ready to give up all to be
made partaker of it, the believer may ask and expect what may be termed a
baptism of the Spirit. Praying to the Father in accordance to the two prayers in
Ephesians, and coming to Jesus in the renewed surrender of faith and obedience,
he may receive such an inflow of the Holy Spirit as shall consciously lift him
to a different level from the one on which he has hitherto lived."--Rev. Andrew
Murray.

We have maintained in the previous chapter that the baptism in the Holy Ghost
was given once for all on the day of Pentecost, when the Paraclete came in
person to make his abode in the church. It does not follow therefore that every
believer has received this baptism. God’s gift is one thing; our appropriation
of that gift is quite another thing. Our relation to the second and to the third
persons of the Godhead is exactly parallel in this respect. "God so loved the
world that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16). "But as many as received
him to them gave he the right to become the children of God, even to them that
believe on his name" (John 1:12). Here are the two sides of salvation, the
divine and the human, which are absolutely co-essential.

There is a doctrine somewhat in vogue, not inappropriately denominated
redemption by incarnation, which maintains that since God gave his Son to the
world, all the world has the Son, consciously or unconsciously, and that
therefore all the world will be saved. It need not be said that a true
evangelical teaching must reject this theory as utterly untenable, since it
ignores the necessity of individual faith in Christ. But some orthodox writers
have urged an almost identical view with respect to the Holy Ghost. They have
contended that the enduement of the Spirit is "not any special or more advanced
experience, but simply the condition of every one who is a child of God"; that
"believers converted after Pentecost, and living in other localities, are just
as really endowed with the indwelling Spirit as those who actually partook of
the Pentecostal blessing at Jerusalem."[1] On the contrary, it seems clear from
the Scriptures that it is still the duty and privilege of believers to receive
the Holy Spirit by a conscious, definite act of appropriating faith, just as
they received Jesus Christ. We base this conclusion on several grounds.
Presumably if the Paraclete is a person, coming down at a certain definite time
to make his abode in the church, for guiding, teaching, and sanctifying the body
of Christ, there is the same reason for our accepting him for his special
ministry as for accepting the Lord Jesus for his special ministry. To say that
in receiving Christ we necessarily received in the same act the gift of the
Spirit, seems to confound what the Scriptures make distinct.[2] For it is as
sinners that we accept Christ for our justification, but it is as sons that we
accept the Spirit for our sanctification: "And because ye are sons, God hath
sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father"
(Galatians 4:6). Thus, when Peter preached his first sermon to the multitude
after the Spirit had been given, he said: "Repent and be baptized, every one of
you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall
receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:38). This passage shows that
logically and chronologically the gift of the Spirit is subsequent to
repentance. Whether it follows as a necessary and inseparable consequence, as
might seem, we shall consider later. Suffice that this point is clear, so clear
that one of the most conservative as well as ablest writers on this subject, in
commenting on this text in Acts, says: "Therefore it is evident that the
reception of the Holy Ghost, as here spoken of, has nothing whatever to do with
bringing men to believe and repent. It is a subsequent operation; it is an
additional and separate blessing; it is a privilege founded on faith already
actively working in the heart. . . I do not mean to deny that the gift of the
Holy Ghost may be practically on the same occasion, but never in the same
moment. The reason is quite simple too. The gift of the Holy Ghost is grounded
on the fact that we are sons by faith in Christ, believers resting on redemption
in him. Plainly, therefore, it appears that the Spirit of God has already
regenerated us."[3]

Now, as we examine the Scriptures on this point, we shall see that we are
required to appropriate the Spirit as sons, in the same way that we appropriated
Christ as sinners. "As many as received him, even to them that believe on his
name," is the condition of becoming sons, as we have already seen, receiving and
believing being used as equivalent terms. In a kind of foretaste of Pentecost,
the risen Christ, standing in the midst of his disciples, "breathed on them and
said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost." The verb is not passive, as our English
version might lead us to suppose, but has here as generally an active
signification, just as in the familiar passage in Revelation: "Whosoever will,
let him take the water of life freely." Twice in the Epistle to the Galatians
the possession of the Holy Ghost is put on the same grounds of active
appropriation through faith: "Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law or
by the hearing of faith?" (3: 2). "That ye might receive the promise of the
Spirit through faith" (3: 14). These texts seem to imply that just as there is a
"faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ" for salvation, there is a faith toward the
Holy Ghost for power and consecration.

If we turn from New Testament teaching to New Testament example we are strongly
confirmed in this impression. We begin with that striking incident in the
nineteenth chapter of Acts. Paul, having found certain disciples at Ephesus,
said unto them: "Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed? And they said
unto him, Nay; we did not so much as hear whether there is a Holy Ghost." This
passage seems decisive as showing that one may be a disciple without having
entered into possession of the Spirit as God’s gift to believers. Some admit
this, who yet deny any possible application of the incident to our own times,
alleging that it is the miraculous gifts of the Spirit which are here under
consideration, since, after recording that when Paul had laid his hands upon
them and "the Holy Ghost came upon them," it is added that "they spake with
tongues and prophesied." All that need be said upon this point is simply that
these Ephesian disciples, by the reception of the Spirit, came into the same
condition with the upper-room disciples who received him some twenty years
before, and of whom it is written that "they were all filled with the Holy Ghost
and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance." In
other words, these Ephesian disciples on receiving the Holy Ghost exhibited the
traits of the Spirit common to the other disciples of the apostolic age.

Whether those traits--the speaking of tongues and the working of miracles--were
intended to be perpetual or not we do not here discuss. But that the presence of
the personal Holy Spirit in the church was intended to be perpetual there can be
no question. And whatsoever relations believers held to that Spirit in the
beginning they have a right to claim to-day. We must withhold our consent from
the inconsistent exegesis which would make the water baptism of the apostolic
times still rigidly binding, but would relegate the baptism in the Spirit to a
bygone dispensation. We hold indeed, that Pentecost was once for all, but
equally that the appropriation of the Spirit by believers is always for all, and
that the shutting up of certain great blessings of the Holy Ghost within that
ideal realm called "the apostolic age," however convenient it may be as an
escape from fancied difficulties, may be the means of robbing believers of some
of their most precious covenant rights.[4] Let us transfer this incident of the
Ephesian Christians to our own times. We need not bring forward an imaginary
case, for by the testimony of many experienced witnesses the same condition is
constantly encountered. Not only individual Christians, but whole communities of
disciples are found who have been so imperfectly instructed that they have never
known that there is a Holy Spirit, except as an influence, an impersonal
something to be vaguely recognized. Of the Holy Ghost as a Divine Person,
dwelling in the church, to be honored and invoked and obeyed and implicitly
trusted, they know nothing. Is it conceivable that there could be any deep
spiritual life or any real sanctified energy for service in a community like
this? And what should a well-instructed teacher or evangelist do, on discovering
a church or an individual Christian in such a condition? Let us turn to another
passage of the Acts for an answer: "Now when the apostles which were at
Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God they sent unto them
Peter and John, who when they were come down prayed for them that they might
receive the Holy Ghost; for as yet he had fallen upon none of them; only they
were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then laid they their hands on them
and they received the Holy Ghost" (Acts 8:14-17).

Here were believers who had been baptized in water. But this was not enough. The
baptism in the Spirit, already bestowed at Pentecost, must be appropriated. Hear
the prayer of the apostles "that they might receive the Holy Ghost." Such prayer
we deem eminently proper for those who today may be ignorant of the Comforter.
And yet such prayer should be followed by an act of believing acceptance on the
part of the willing disciple: "O Holy Spirit, I yield to thee now in humble
surrender. I receive thee as my Teacher, my Comforter, my Sanctifier, and my
Guide." Do not testimonies abound on every hand of new lives resulting from such
an act of consecration as this, lives full of peace and power and victory among
those who before had received the forgiveness of sins but not the enduement of
power?

We conceive that the great end for which the enduement of the Spirit is bestowed
is our qualification for the highest and most effective service in the church of
Christ. Other effects will certainly attend the blessing, a fixed assurance of
our acceptance in Christ, and a holy separateness from the world; but these
results will be conducive to the greatest and supreme end, our consecrated
usefulness.

Let us observe that Christ, who is our example in this as in all things, did not
enter upon his ministry till he had received the Holy Ghost. Not only so, but we
see that all his service from his baptism to his ascension was wrought in the
Spirit. Ask concerning his miracles, and we hear him saying: "I by the Spirit of
God cast out devils" (Matthew 12:28). Ask concerning that decease which he
accomplished at Jerusalem, and we read "that he through the eternal Spirit
offered himself without spot unto God" (Hebrews 9:14). Ask concerning the giving
of the great commission, and we read that he was received up "after that he
through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles" (Acts 1:2).
Thus, though he was the Son of God, he acted ever in supreme reliance upon him
who has been called the "Executive of the Godhead."

Plainly we see how Christ was our pattern and exemplar in his relation to the
Holy Spirit. He had been begotten of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin,
and had lived that holy and obedient life which this divine nativity would
imply. But when he would enter upon his public ministry, he waited for the
Spirit to come upon him, as he had hitherto been in him. For this anointing we
find him praying: "Jesus also being baptized and praying, the heaven was opened,
and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him" (Luke
3:22). Had he any "promise of the Father" to plead, as he now asked the
anointing of the Spirit, if as we may believe this was the subject of his
prayer? Yes; it had been written in the prophets concerning the rod out of the
stem of Jesse: "And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him; the spirit of
wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of
knowledge and of the fear of the Lord" (Isaiah 11:2). "The promise of the
seven-fold Spirit," the Jewish commentators call it. Certainly it was literally
fulfilled upon the Son of God at the Jordan, when God gave him the Spirit
without measure. For he who was now baptized was in turn to be baptizer. "Upon
whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he
which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost" (John 1:33). "I indeed baptize you in water
unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I . . . he shall
baptize you in the Holy Ghost and in fire" (Matthew 3:11, R. V.). And now being
at the right hand exalted, and having "the seven spirits of God" (Revelation
3:3), the fullness of the Holy Ghost, he will shed forth his power upon those
who pray for it, even as the Father shed it forth upon himself.

Let us observe now the symbols and descriptions of the enduement of the Spirit
which are applied equally to Christ and to the disciples of Christ.

1. The Sealing of the Spirit. We hear Jesus saying to the multitude that sought
him for the loaves and fishes, "Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for
that meat which endureth unto eternal life, which the Son of man shall give unto
you, for him hath God the Father sealed" (John 6:27). This sealing must
evidently refer back to his reception of the Spirit at the Jordan. One of the
most instructive writers on the Hebrew worship and ritual tells us that it was
the custom for the priest to whom the service pertained, having selected a lamb
from the flock, to inspect it with the most minute scrutiny, in order to
discover if it was without physical defect, and then to seal it with the temple
seal, thus certifying that it was fit for sacrifice and for food. Behold the
Lamb of God presenting himself for inspection at the Jordan! Under the Father’s
omniscient scrutiny he is found to be "a lamb without blemish and without spot."
From the opening heaven God gives witness to the fact in the words: "This is my
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," and then he puts the Holy Ghost upon
him, the testimony to his sonship, the seal of his separation unto sacrifice and
service. The disciple is as his Lord in this experience. "In whom having also
believed ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise" (Ephesians 1:13). As
always in the statements of Scripture, this transaction is represented as
subsequent to faith. It is not conversion, but something done upon a converted
soul, a kind of crown of consecration put upon his faith. Indeed the two events
stand in marked contrast. In conversion the believer receives the testimony of
God and "sets his seal to that God is true" (John 3:33). In consecration God
sets his seal upon the believer that he is true. The last is God’s "Amen" to the
Christian, verifying the Christian’s "Amen" to God. "Now he, which establisheth
us with you in Christ, and anointed us, is God; who also sealed us and gave us
the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts" (2 Corinthians 1:21-22).

If we ask to what we are committed and separated by this divine transaction, we
may learn by studying the church’s monograph, if such we may name what is
brought out in a mysterious passage in one of the pastoral epistles. In spite of
the defection and unbelief of some, the apostle says: "Nevertheless the
foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal." Then he gives us the two
inscriptions on the seal: "The Lord knoweth them that are his"; and, "Let every
one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness" (2 Timothy
2:19)--Ownership and holiness. When we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit it is
that we may count ourselves henceforth and altogether Christ’s. If any shrink
from this devotement, how can he have the fullness of the Spirit? God cannot put
his signature upon what is not his. Hence, if under the sway of a worldly spirit
we withhold ourselves from God and insist on self-ownership, we need not count
it strange if God withholds himself from us and denies us the seal of divine
ownership. God is very jealous of his divine signet. He graciously bestows it
upon those who are ready to devote themselves utterly and irrevocably to his
service, but he strenuously withholds it from those who, while professing his
name, are yet "serving divers lusts and pleasures." There is a suggestive
passage in the Gospel of John which, translated so as to bring out the
antitheses which it contains, reads thus: "Many trusted in his name, beholding
the signs which he did; but Jesus did not trust himself to them" (John 2:23-24).
Here is the great essential to our having the seal of the Spirit. Can the Lord
trust us? Nay; the question is more serious. Can he trust himself to us? The
Holy Spirit, which is his signet ring, can he commit it to our use for signing
our prayers and for certifying ourselves, and his honor not be compromised? The
other inscription on the seal is: "Let every one that nameth the name of the
Lord depart from unrighteousness."[5] The possession of the Spirit commits us
irrevocably to separation from sin. For what is holiness but an emanation of the
Spirit of holiness who dwells within us? A sanctified life is therefore the
print or impression of his seal: "He can never own us without his mark, the
stamp of holiness. The devil’s stamp is none of God’s badge. Our spiritual
extraction from him is but pretended unless we do things worthy of so
illustrious birth and becoming the honor of so great a Father." The great office
of the Spirit in the present economy is to communicate Christ to his church
which is his body. And what is so truly essential of Christ as holiness? "In him
is no sin; whosoever abideth in him sinneth not." The body can only be sinless
by uninterrupted communion with the Head; the Head will not maintain communion
with the body except it be holy. The idea of ownership, just considered, comes
out still further in the words of the apostle: "And grieve not the Spirit of God
in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:30). The day of
redemption is at the advent of our Lord in glory, when he shall raise the dead
and translate the living. Now his own are in the world, but the world knows them
not. But he has put his mark and secret sign upon them, by which he shall
recognize them at his coming. In that great quickening, at the Redeemer’s
advent, the Holy Spirit will be the seal by which the saints will be recognized,
and the power through which they will be drawn up to God. "If the Spirit that
raised up Jesus dwell in you" (Romans 11:9), is the great condition of final
quickening. As the magnet attracts the particles of iron and attaches them to
itself by first imparting its own magnetism to them, so Christ, having given his
Spirit to his own, will draw them to himself through the Spirit. We are not
questioning now that all who have eternal life dwelling in them will share in
the redemption of the body; we are simply entering into the apostle’s
exhortation against grieving the Spirit. We must fear lest we mar the seal by
which we were stamped, lest we deface or obscure the signature by which we are
to be recognized in the day of redemption.[6] In a word the sealing is the
Spirit himself, now received by faith and resting upon the believer, with all
the results in assurance, in joy, and in empowering for service, which must
follow his unhindered sway in the soul. Dr. John Owen, who has written more
intelligently and more exhaustively on this subject than any with whom we are
acquainted, thus sums up the subject: "If we can learn aright how Christ was
sealed, we shall learn how we are sealed. The sealing of Christ by the Father is
the communication of the Holy Spirit in fullness to him, authorizing him unto
and acting his divine power in all the acts and duties of his office, so as to
evidence the presence of God with him and approbation of him. God’s sealing of
believers then is his gracious communication of the Holy Spirit unto them so to
act his divine power in them as to enable them unto all the duties of their holy
calling, evidencing them to be accepted with him both for themselves and others,
and asserting their preservation unto eternal life."[7]

2. The Fullness of the Spirit. Immediately upon his baptism we read: "And Jesus,
full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into
the wilderness" (Luke 4:1). The same record is made concerning the upper-room,
disciples, immediately after the descent of the Spirit: "And they were all
filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:4). What is here spoken of seems nothing
different from what in other Scriptures is called the reception of the Spirit.
It is a transaction that may be repeated, and will be if we are living in the
Spirit. But it is clearly an experience belonging to one who has already been
converged. This comes out very plainly in the life of Paul. If according to the
opinion quoted in the early part of this chapter, the reception of the Spirit is
associated always and inseparably with conversion, one will reasonably ask, why
a conversion so marked and so radical as that of the apostle to the Gentiles
need be followed by such an experience as that named in Acts 9:17 : "And Ananias
departed and entered into the house, and laying his hands on him, said Brother
Saul, the Lord, even Jesus who appeared unto thee in the way which thou earnest,
hath sent me that thou mightest receive thy sight and be filled with the Holy
Ghost." We seem to have a clear allusion here to that which so constantly
appears in Scripture, both in doctrine and in life, a divine something distinct
from conversion and subsequent to it, which we have called the reception of the
Spirit. "The enduement of power" we may well name it; for observe how constantly
throughout the book of Acts mighty works and mighty utterances are connected
with this qualification. "Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto
them" (Acts 4:8), is the preface to one of the apostle’s most powerful sermons.
"And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word with
boldness" (Acts 4:31), is a similar record. And they chose Stephen, a man full
of faith and of the Holy Ghost, the narrative runs, regarding the choice of
deacons in Acts 6:5. "And he, being full of the Holy Ghost," is the keynote to
his great martyr-sermon. This infilling of the Spirit marks a decisive and most
important crisis in the Christian life, judging from the story of the apostle’s
conversion, to which we have just referred.

But, as we have intimated, we are far from maintaining that this is an
experience once for all, as the sealing seems to be. As the words "regeneration"
and "renewal" used in Scripture mark respectively the impartation of the divine
life as a perpetual possession and its increase by repeated communications, so
in our sealing there is a reception of the Spirit once for all, which reception
may be followed by repeated fillings. It is reasonable to conclude this since
our capacity is ever increasing and our need constantly recurring, according to
the beautiful saying of Godet: "Man is a vessel destined to receive God, a
vessel which must be enlarged in proportion as it is filled and filled in
proportion as it is enlarged." And yet we confess here to a degree of
uncertainty as to the use of terms, and as to whether the two now under
consideration are identical. We may well pause therefore and lift a prayer, that
since "we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit which is of
God, that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God," this
blessed Revelator and Interpreter may not only reveal to us our privilege and
inheritance in the Holy Ghost, but teach us to name and distinguish the terms by
which it is conveyed.

While the fact of which we are speaking seems undoubted, the exposition of it is
far from being easy. Therefore we should attach no little value to a consensus
of opinion on this subject from those who have thought most carefully and
searched most prayerfully concerning it This is our apology for the multiplied
quotations which we are introducing into this chapter, believing that the Holy
Spirit is most likely to interpret himself through those who most honor him in
seeking his guidance and illumination. In a recent work upon this subject, in
which careful scholarship and spiritual insight seem to be well united, the
author thus states his conclusions: "It seems to me beyond question, as a matter
of experience both of Christians in the present day and of the early church, as
recorded by inspiration, that in addition to the gift of the Spirit received at
conversion, there is another blessing corresponding in its signs and effects to
the blessing received by the apostles at Pentecost--a blessing to be asked for
and expected by Christians still, and to be described in language similar to
that employed in the book of the Acts. Whatever that blessing may be, it is in
immediate connection with the Holy Ghost; and one of the terms by which we may
designate it is ’to be filled with the Spirit.’ As with the early Christians so
with us now, the filling comes when there is special need for it. . . And there
is an occasion when that blessing comes to a man for the first time. That first
time is a spiritual crisis from which his future spiritual life must be dated.
There may be a question as to what it is to be called, or at least by what name
in Scripture we are authorized to call it. . . Whether consciously or not, it is
to the fact of the Holy Spirit’s coming in new power to the soul that all new
life is due; and the more that this is consciously understood the more is the
Holy Ghost in his due place in our hearts. It is only when he is consciously
accepted in all his power that we can be said to be either ’baptized’ or
’filled’ with the Holy Ghost. I should like to add that it is possible to
maintain that God from the first offered to his own people a higher position in
this matter than they have generally been able to occupy, in that the fullness
of the Spirit was and is offered to each soul at conversion; and that it is only
from want of faith that subsequent outpourings of the Holy Ghost become
needful."[8] That the filling of the Spirit belongs to us as a covenant
privilege seems to be clear from the exhortation in the Epistle to the
Ephesians, which is confessedly of universal application: "Be not drunken with
wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18). The
passive verb employed here is suggestive. The surrendered will, the yielded
body, the emptied heart, are the great requisites to his incoming. And when he
has come and filled the believer, the result is a kind of passive activity, as
of one wrought upon and controlled rather than of one directing his own efforts.
Under the influence of strong drink there is an outpouring of all that the evil
spirit inspires--frivolity, profanity, and riotous conduct. "Be God-intoxicated
men," the apostle would seem to say; "let the Spirit of God so control you that
you shall pour yourself out in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." If such
divine enthusiasm has its perils, we believe that they are less to be dreaded
than that "moderatism" which makes the servants of God satisfied with the letter
of Scripture if only that letter be skillfully and scientifically handled,
rather than giving the supreme place to the Spirit as the inspirer and motor of
all Christian service.

3. The Anointing of the Spirit. After the baptism and temptation we find our
Lord appropriating to himself the words of the prophet, as he read them in the
synagogue of Nazareth: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath
anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor" (Luke 4:18). Twice in the Acts
there is a reference to this important event in similar terms: "Thy holy servant
Jesus, whom thou didst anoint" (Acts 4:27, R. V.). "Jesus of Nazareth, how that
God anointed him with the Holy Ghost and with power" (Acts 10:38). And as with
the Lord so with his disciples: "Now he that establisheth us with you in Christ,
and anointed us, is God" (2 Corinthians 1:21, R. V.). A student of the
Scriptures need not be told how closely the ceremony of anointing was related to
all important offices and ministries of the servants of Jehovah under the old
covenant. The priest was anointed that he might be holy unto the Lord (Leviticus
8:12). The king was anointed that the Spirit of the Lord might rest upon him in
power (1 Samuel 16:15). The prophet was anointed that he might be the oracle of
God to the people (1 Kings 19:16). No servant of Jehovah was deemed qualified
for his ministry without this holy sanctifying touch laid upon him. Even in the
cleansing of the leper this ceremony was not wanting. The priest was required to
dip his right finger in the oil that was in his left hand and to put it upon the
tip of the right ear, upon the thumb of the right hand, and upon the great toe
of the right foot of him that was to be cleansed, the oil "upon the blood of the
trespass-offering" (Leviticus 14:17). Thus with divine accuracy did even the
types foretell the two-fold provision for the Christian life, cleansing by the
blood and hallowing by the oil--justification in Christ, sanctification in the
Spirit.

If we ask now what this anointing is, the reply is obviously the Holy Spirit
himself. As before he was the seal attesting us, so now he is the oil
sanctifying us--the same gift described by different symbols. And as it was the
Aaron who had been the first anointed who was qualified to anoint others, so
with our great High Priest. It is he within the veil who gives the Spirit unto
his own, that he may qualify them to be "an elect race, a royal priesthood, a
holy nation, a people for God’s own possession" (1 Peter 2:9, R. V.). "But ye
have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things" (1 John 2:20).
Christ in the New Testament is constantly called "the Holy One." And because the
Spirit was sent to communicate him to the people, they are made partakers of his
knowledge as well as of his holiness. If it should be said that this unction of
which John speaks is miraculous, the divine illumination of evangelists and
prophets who were commissioned to be the vehicles of inspired Scripture, we must
call attention to other passages which connect the knowledge of God with the
Holy Ghost. "For who among men knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a
man which is in him; even so the things of God none knoweth save the Spirit of
God" (1 Corinthians 2:11, R. V.). The horse and his rider may see the same
magnificent piece of statuary in the park; the one may be delighted with it as a
work of human genius, but upon the dull eye of the other it makes no impression,
and for the reason that it takes a human mind to appreciate the work of the
human mind. Likewise only the Spirit of God can know and make known the thoughts
and teachings and revelations of God. This seems to be the meaning of John in
his discourse concerning the divine unction: "But the anointing which ye have
received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you; but as
the same anointing teacheth you of all things" (1 John 2:27). In nothing does
the enduement of the Spirit more distinctly manifest itself than in the fine
discernment of revealed truth which it imparts. As in service, the contrast
between working in the power of the Spirit and in the energy of the flesh is
easily discernible, even more clearly in knowledge and teaching is the contrast
between the tuition of learning and the intuition of the Spirit. While we should
not undervalue the former, it is striking to note how the Bible puts the
weightier emphasis on the latter; so that really the unspiritual hearer is to be
accounted less blameworthy for not discerning the truth than the intellectual
preacher is for expecting him to do so. When, for example, one attempts with the
utmost learning to convince an unbeliever of the deity of Christ and fails, the
word of Scripture to him is: "No man is able to say ’Lord Jesus’ save in the
Holy Ghost" (1 Corinthians 12:3). The Spirit of Jesus can alone reveal to men
the lordship of Jesus, and this key of knowledge the Holy Ghost will never put
into the hand of any man however learned. As it is written that Christ is the
"raying forth" of the Father’s glory, and "the express image of his person"
(Hebrews 1:3), thus by a beautiful figure reminding us that as we can only see
the sun in the rays of the sun, so we can only know God in Jesus Christ, who is
the manifestation of God. It is so likewise between the second and third Persons
of the Trinity. Christ is the image of the invisible God; the Holy Ghost is the
invisible image of Christ. As Jesus manifested the Father outwardly, the Spirit
manifests Jesus inwardly, forming him within us as the hidden man of the heart,
imaging him to the spirit by an interior impression which no intellectual
instruction, however diligent, can effect. In his profound discourse concerning
the "unction" and accompanying illumination, John was only expounding by the
Spirit what Jesus had said before his departure: "Howbeit, when he the Spirit of
truth is come, he will guide you into all truth; he shall glorify me; for he
shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you" (John 16:13). "The Spirit of
truth"--How much instruction and suggestion is conveyed by this term! As he is
called "the Spirit of Christ," as revealing Christ in his suffering and glory,
so he is called "the Spirit of truth," as manifesting the truth in all its
depths and heights. As impossible as it is that we should know the person of
Christ without the Spirit of Christ who reveals him, so impossible it is that we
should know the truth as it is in Jesus without the Spirit of truth who is
appointed to convey it. "The Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive"
(John 14:17)--We must come to Christ before the Spirit can come to us. "The
Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father" (John 15:26)--He can only
teach us in intelligent sonship to cry "Abba, Father." "The Spirit of truth . .
. shall guide you into all truth" (John 16:13). Divine knowledge is all and
altogether in his power to communicate, and without his illumination it must be
hidden from our understanding.

Thus we have had the enduement of the Spirit presented to us under three
aspects--sealing, filling, and anointing--all of which terms, so far as we can
understand, signify the same thing--the gift of the Holy Ghost appropriated
through faith. Each of these terms is connected with some special Divine
endowment--the seal with assurance and consecration; the filling with power; and
the anointing with knowledge. All these gifts are wrapt up in the one gift in
which they are included, and without whom we are excluded from their possession.

While thus we conclude that it is a Christian’s privilege and duty to claim a
distinct anointing of the Spirit to qualify him for his work, we would be
careful not to prescribe any stereotyped exercises through which one must
necessarily pass in order to possess it. It is easy to cite cases of decisive,
vivid, and clearly marked experience of the Spirit’s enduement, as in the lives
of Dr. Finney, James Brainard Taylor, and many others. And instead of
discrediting these experiences--so definite as to time and so distinct as to
accompanying credentials--we would ask the reader to study them, and observe the
remarkable effects which followed in the ministry of those who enjoyed them. The
lives of many of the co-laborers with Wesley and Whitefield give a striking
confirmation of the doctrine which we are defending. Years of barren ministry,
in which the gospel was preached with orthodox correctness and literary finish,
followed, after the Holy Spirit had been recognized and appropriated, by
evangelistic pastorates of the most fervent type, such is the history of not a
few of these mighty men of God.

Let not this great subject be embarrassed by too minute theological definitions
on the one hand, nor by the too exacting demand for striking spiritual exercises
on the other, lest we put upon simple souls a burden greater than they can bear.
Nevertheless we cannot emphasize too strongly the divine crisis in the soul
which a full reception of the Holy Ghost may bring. "My little children, of whom
I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Galatians 4:19), writes
the apostle to those who had already believed on the Son of God. Whatever he may
have meant in this fervent saying, we doubt not that the deepest yearning of the
Spirit is for the informing of Christ in the heart, in order to that outward
conformity to Christ which is the supreme end of Christian nurture. If we
conceive of the Christian life as only a gradual growth in grace, is there not
danger that we come to regard this growth as both invisible and inevitable, and
so take little responsibility for its accomplishment? Let the believer receive
the Holy Ghost by a definite act of faith for his consecration, as he received
Christ by faith for his justification, and may he not be sure that he is in a
safe and scriptural way of acting? We know of no plainer form of stating the
matter than to speak of it as a simple acceptance by faith, the faith which is
An affirmation and an act, Which bids eternal truth be present fact.

It is a fact that Christ has made atonement for sin; in conversion faith
appropriates this fact in order to our justification. It is a fact that the Holy
Ghost has been given; in consecration faith appropriates this fact for our
sanctification. One who writes upon this subject with a scholarship evidently
illuminated by a deep spiritual tuition, says: "If a reference to personal
experience may be permitted, I may indeed here ’set my seal.’ Never shall I
forget the gain to conscious faith and peace which came to my own soul, not long
after a first decisive and appropriating view of the crucified Lord as the
sinner’s sacrifice of peace, from a more intelligent and conscious hold upon the
living and most gracious personality of the Spirit through whose mercy the soul
had got that blessed view. It was a new development of insight into the love of
God. It was a new contact as it were with the inner and eternal movements of
redeeming goodness and power, a new discovery in divine resources."[9]

Well is our doctrine described in these italicised words: "A contact with the
inner movements of Divine power." The energy of the Spirit appropriated, even as
with uplifted finger the electric car touches the current which is moving just
above it in the wire and is borne irresistibly on by it.--Thus does the power
which is eternally for us become a power within us; the law of Sinai, with its
tables of stone, is replaced by "the law of the Spirit of life" in the fleshly
tables of the heart; the outward commandment is exchanged for an inward
decalogue; hard duty by holy delight, that henceforth the Christian life may be
"all in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, for the glory of God."

[1] Rev. E. Boys, "Filled with the Spirit," p. 87.

[2] It is assumed by some that because those that walked with Christ of old
received the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire at Pentecost, more than eighteen
hundred years ago, therefore all believers now have received the same. As well
might the apostles, when first called, have concluded that because at his
baptism the Spirit like a dove rested upon Christ, therefore they had equally
received the same blessing. Surely the Spirit has been given and the work in
Christ wrought for all; but to enter into possession, to be enlightened and made
partakers of the Holy Ghost, there must be a personal application to the Lord,
etc.--Andrew Jukes, "The New Man."

[3] William Kelly, "Lectures on the New Testament Doctrine of the Holy Spirit,"
p. 161.

[4] It is a great mistake into which some have fallen, to suppose that the
results of Pentecost were chiefly miraculous and temporary. The effect of such a
view is to keep spiritual influences out of sight; and it will be well ever to
hold fast the assurance that a wide, deep, and perpetual spiritual blessing in
the church is that which above all things else was secured by the descent of the
Spirit after Christ was glorified.--Dr. J. Elder Cumming, "Through the Eternal
Spirit."

[5] It will be observed that the inscription on the seal is substantially the
same as that upon the forehead of the High Priest, [Hebrew characters]--HOLINESS
TO THE LORD (Exodus 39:30).

[Transcriber’s note: I have not attempted to insert the transliterated Hebrew
characters in the above footnote. As best my research can tell me, they are,
from left to right, H (het, hei), V/O/U (vav), H (het, hei), Y (yod, yud), L
(lamed), a blank space, S/Sh (shin), D (dalet) or R (resh, reish), and Q
(qof/kuf).]

[6] The allusion to the seal as a pledge of purchase would be peculiarly
intelligible to the Ephesians, for Ephesus was a maritime city, and an extensive
trade in timber was carried on there by the shipmasters of the neighboring
ports. The method of purchase was this: The merchant, after selecting his
timber, stamped it with his own signet, which was an acknowledged sign of
ownership. He often did not carry off his possession at the time; it was left in
the harbor with other floats of timber; but it was chosen, bought, and stamped;
and in due time the merchant sent a trusty agent with the signet, who finding
that timber which bore a corresponding impress, claimed and brought it away for
the master’s use. Thus the Holy Spirit impresses on the soul now the image of
Jesus Christ; and this is the sure pledge of the everlasting inheritance.--E. H.
Bickersteth, "The Spirit of Life," p. 176.

[7] John Owen, D. D., "Discourse Concerning the Spirit," pp. 406, 407.

[8] "Through the Eternal Spirit," by James Elder Cumming, D.D., pp. 146, 147.

[9] "Veni Creator Spiritus," by Principal H. C. G. Moule, p. 13.


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  CHAPTER 43: 03.06.     THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT
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VI THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT

"In his intimate union with his Son, the Holy Spirit is the unique organ by
which God wills to communicate to man his own life, the supernatural life, the
divine life--that is to say, his holiness, his power, his love, his felicity. To
this end the Son works outwardly, the Holy Spirit inwardly."--Pastor G. F.
Tophel. The familiar benediction which invokes upon us the "communion of the
Holy Ghost" has probably a deeper meaning in it than has generally been
recognized. The word "communion"--choinônia--signifies the having in common. It
is used of the fellowship of believers one with another, and also of their
mutual fellowship with God. The Holy Spirit dwelling in us is the agent through
whom this community of life and love is effected and maintained. "And truly our
fellowship," says John, "is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1
John 1:3). But this having in common with the first two persons of the Godhead
were only possible through the communion of the Holy Ghost, the third person. In
his promise of the Comforter, Jesus said: "He shall take of mine and show it
unto you." As the Son while on earth communicated to men the spiritual riches of
the invisible Father, so the Spirit now communicates to us the hidden things of
the invisible Son; and if we were required to describe in a word the present
office-work of the Holy Ghost, we should say that it is to make true in us that
which is already true for us in our glorified Lord. All light and life and
warmth are stored up for us in the sun; but these can only reach us through the
atmosphere which stands between us and that sun as the medium of communication;
even so in Christ are "hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," and by
the Holy Spirit these are made over to us. It will be our endeavor in this
chapter to count up our hid treasures in Christ, and to consider the Spirit in
his various offices of communication.

1. The Spirit of Life: Our Regeneration. Not until our Lord took his place at
God’s right hand did he assume his full prerogative as life-giver to us. He was
here in the flesh for our death; he took on him our nature that he might in
himself crucify our Adam-life and put it away. But when he rose from the dead
and sat down on his Father’s throne, he became the life-giver to all his
mystical body, which is the church. To talk of being saved by the earthly life
of Jesus is to know Christ only "after the flesh." True, the apostle says that
"being reconciled" by Christ’s death, "much more being reconciled we shall be
saved by his life." But he here refers plainly to his glorified life. And Jesus,
looking forward to the time when he should have risen from the dead, says:
"Because I live, ye shall live also." Christ on the throne is really the heart
of the church, and every regeneration is a pulse-beat of that heart in souls
begotten from above through the Holy Spirit. The new birth therefore is not a
change of nature as it is sometimes defined; it is rather the communication of
the Divine nature, and the Holy Spirit is now the Mediator through whom this
life is transmitted. If we take our Lord’s words to Nicodemus: "Except a man be
born again he cannot see the kingdom of God," and press the "again" anôthen back
to its deepest significance, it becomes very instructive. "Born from above," say
some. And very true to fact is this saying. Regeneration is not our natural life
carried up to its highest point of attainment, but the Divine life brought down
to its lowest point of condescension, even to the heart of fallen man. John, in
speaking of Jesus as the life-giver, calls him "he that cometh from above" (3:
31); and Jesus, in speaking to the degenerate sons of Abraham, says: "Ye are
from beneath, I am from above" (John 8:23). It has been the constant dream and
delusion of men that they could rise to heaven by the development and
improvement of their natural life. Jesus by one stroke of revelation destroys
this hope, telling his hearer that unless he has been begotten of God who is
above as truly as he has been begotten of his father on earth, he cannot see the
kingdom of God.

Others make these words of our Lord signify "born from the beginning." There
must be a resumption of life de novo, a return to the original source and
fountain of being. To find this it is not enough that we go back to the
creation-beginning revealed in Genesis; we must return to the
precreation-beginning revealed in John, the book of re-genesis. In the opening
of Genesis we find Adam, created holy, now fallen through temptation, his face
averted from God and leading the whole human race after him into sin and death.
In the opening of the Gospel of John we find the Son of God in holy fellowship
with the Father. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God",
pros ton theon--not merely proceeding from God, but tending toward God by
eternal communion. Conversion restores man to this lost attitude: "Ye turned to
God, pros ton theon, from idols to serve the living and true God" (1
Thessalonians 1:9). Regeneration restores man to his forfeited life, the
unfallen life of the Son of God, the life which has never wavered from steadfast
fellowship with the Father. "I give unto them eternal life," says Jesus. Is
eternal life without end? Yes; and just as truly without beginning. It is
uncreated being in distinction from all-created being; it is the I-am life of
God in contrast to the I-become life of all human souls. By spiritual birth we
acquire a divine heredity as truly as by natural birth we acquire a human
heredity. In the condensed antithesis with which our Lord concludes his demand
for the new birth, we have both the philosophy and the justification of his
doctrine: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of
the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I say unto you, Ye must be born anew"
(John 3:7, R. V.). By no process of evolution, however prolonged, can the
natural man be developed into the spiritual man; by no process of degeneration
can the spiritual man deteriorate into the natural man. These two are from a
totally different stock and origin; the one is from beneath, the other is from
above. There is but one way through which the relation of sonship can be
established, and that is by begetting. That God has created all men does not
constitute them his sons in the evangelical sense of that word. The sonship on
which the New Testament dwells so constantly is based absolutely and solely on
the experience of the new birth, while the doctrine of universal sonship rests
either upon a daring denial or a daring assumption--the denial of the universal
fall of man through sin, or the assumption of the universal regeneration of man
through the Spirit. In either case the teaching belongs to "another gospel," the
recompense of whose preaching is not a beatitude but an anathema.[1] The
contrast between the two lives and the way in which the partnership--the
choinônia--with the new is effected, is told in that deep saying of Peter:
"Whereby he hath granted us his precious and exceeding great promises; that
through these ye may become partakers--choinônia--of the divine nature, having
escaped from the corruption which is in the world by lust" (2 Peter 1:4, R. V.).
Here are the two streams of life contrasted:

1. The corruption in the world through lust.

2. The Divine nature which is in the world through the incarnation.

Here is the Adam-life into which we are brought by natural birth; and over
against it the Christ-life into which we are brought by spiritual birth. From
the one we escape, of the other we partake. The source and issue of the one are
briefly summarized: "Lust when it hath conceived bringeth forth sin, and sin
when it is finished bringeth forth death." The Jordan is a fitting symbol of our
natural life, rising in a lofty elevation and from pure springs, but plunging
steadily down till it pours itself into that Dead Sea from which there is no
outlet: To be taken out of this stream and to be brought into the life which
flows from the heart of God is man’s only hope of salvation. And the method of
effecting this transition is plainly stated, "through these," or by means of the
precious and exceeding great promises. As in grafting, the old and degenerate
stock must first be cut off and then the new inserted, so in regeneration we are
separated from the flesh and incorporated by the Spirit. And what the scion is
in grafting, the word or promise of God is in regeneration. It is the medium
through which the Holy Spirit is conveyed, the germ cell in which the Divine
life is enfolded. Hence the emphasis which is put in Scripture upon the
appropriation of divine truth. We are told that "of his own will begat he us
with the word of truth" (James 1:18). "Having been begotten again, not of
corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and
abideth" (1 Peter 1:23, R. V.).

Very deep and significant, therefore, is the saying of Jesus in respect to the
regenerating power of his words, in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John; He
emphasizes the contrariety between the two natures, the human and the divine,
saying: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." And
then he adds: "The words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and life." As
God in creation breathed into man the breath of life and he became a living
soul, so the Lord Jesus by the word of his mouth, which is the breath of life,
recreates man and makes him alive unto God. And not life only, but likeness as
well, is thus imparted. "So God created man in his own image; in the image of
God created he him," is the simple story of the origin of an innocent race. Then
follows the temptation and the fall, and then the story of the descent of a
ruined humanity: "And Adam begot a son in his own likeness, after his image."
And yet how wide the gulf between these two origins. The notion is persistent
and incurable in the human heart, that whatever variation there may have been
from the original type, education and training can reshape the likeness of Adam
to the likeness of God. "As the twig is bent the tree is inclined," says the
popular proverb. True; but though a crooked sapling may be developed into the
upright oak, no bending or manipulation can ever so change the species of the
tree as to enable men to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. Here again
the dualism of Jesus Christ’s teaching is distinctly recognized. "A good tree
cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good
fruit." And what is the remedy for a corrupt tree? The cutting off of the old
and the bringing in of a new scion and stock. The life of God can alone beget
the likeness of God; the divine type is wrapped up in the same germ which holds
the Divine nature. Therefore in regeneration we are said to have "put on the new
man who is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him"
(Colossians 3:10), and "which after God hath been created in . . . true
holiness" (Ephesians 4:24). In a word, the lost image of God is not restamped
upon us, but renewed within us. Christ our life was "begotten of the Holy
Ghost," and he became the fount and origin of life henceforth for all his
church. This communication of the divine life from Christ to the soul through
the Holy Spirit is a hidden transaction, but so great in its significance and
issues that one has well called it "the greatest of all miracles." As in the
origin of our natural life we are made in secret and curiously wrought, much
more in our spiritual. But the issue has to do with the farthest eternity. "As
when the Lord was born the world still went on its old way, little conscious
that one had come who should one day change and rule all things, so when the new
man is framed within, the old life for a while goes on much as before; the daily
calling, and the earthly cares, and too often old lusts and habits also, still
engross us; a worldly eye sees little new, while yet the life which shall live
forever has been quickened within and a new man been formed who shall inherit
all."[2]

2. The Spirit of Holiness: Our Sanctification. "According to the Spirit of
holiness" Christ "was declared to be the Son of God in power by the resurrection
from the dead" (Romans 1:4). How striking the antithesis between our Lord’s two
natures, as revealed in this passage, Son of David as to the flesh, Son of God
as to the Spirit. And "as he is so are we in this world." We who are regenerate
have two natures, the one derived from Adam, the other derived from Christ, and
our sanctification consists in the double process of mortification and
vivification, the deadening and subduing of the old and the quickening and
developing of the new. In other words, what was wrought in Christ who was "put
to death in the flesh but quickened in the spirit" is rewrought in us through
the constant operation of the Holy Ghost, and thus the cross and the
resurrection extend their sway over the entire life of the Christian. Consider
these two experiences.

Mortification is not asceticism. It is not a self-inflicted compunction, but a
Christ-inflicted crucifixion. Our Lord was done with the cross when on Calvary
he cried: "It is finished." But where he ended each disciple must begin: "If any
man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life
for my sake shall find it" (Matthew 16:24-25). These words, so constantly
repeated in one form or another by our Lord, make it clear that the
death-principle must be realized within us in order that the life-principle may
have final and triumphant sway. It is to this truth which every disciple is
solemnly committed in his baptism: "Know ye not that so many of us as were
baptized into Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with
him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by
the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans
6:3-4). Baptism is the monogram of the Christian; by it every believer is sealed
and certified as a participant in the death and life of Christ; and the Holy
Spirit has been given to be the Executor of the contract thus made at the
symbolic grave of Christ. In considering the great fact of the believer’s death
in Christ to sin and the law, we must not confound what the Scriptures clearly
distinguish. There are three deaths in which we have part:

1. Death in sin, our natural condition.

2. Death for sin, our judicial condition.

3. Death to sin, our sanctified condition.

1. Death in sin. "And you . . . who were dead in trespasses and sins," "And you
being dead in your sins" (Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13). This is the condition
in which we are by nature, as participants in the fall and ruin into which the
transgression of our first parents has plunged the race. It is a condition in
which we are under moral insensibility to the claims of God’s holiness and love;
and under the sentence of eternal punishment from the law which we have broken.
In this state of death in sin Christ found the whole world when he came to be
our Saviour.

2. Death for sin. "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by
the body of Christ" (Romans 7:4). This is the condition into which Christ
brought us by his sacrifice upon the cross. He endured the sentence of a
violated law on our behalf, and therefore we are counted as having endured it in
him. What he did for us is reckoned as having been done by us: "Because we thus
judge, that one died for all, therefore all died" (2 Corinthians 5:14, R. V.).
Being one with Christ through faith, we are identified with him on the cross: "I
have been crucified with Christ" (Galatians 2:20, R. V.). This condition of
death for sin having been effected for us by our Saviour, we are held legally or
judicially free from the penalty of a violated law, if by our personal faith we
will consent to the transaction.

3. Death to sin. "Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but
alive unto God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:11, R. V.). This is the condition of
making true in ourselves what is already true for us in Christ, of rendering
practical what is now judicial; in other words, of being dead to the power of
sin in ourselves, as we are already dead to the penalty of sin through Jesus
Christ. As it is written in the Epistle to the Colossians: "For ye died,"
judicially in Christ, "mortify"--make dead practically--"therefore your members
which are upon the earth" (Colossians 3:2; Colossians 3:5, R. V.). It is this
condition which the Holy Spirit is constantly effecting in us if we will have it
so. "If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live"
(Romans 8:13). This is not self-deadening, as the Revised Version seems to
suggest by its decapitalizing of the word "Spirit." Self is not powerful enough
to conquer self, the human spirit to get the victory over the human flesh. That
were like a drowning man with his right hand laying hold on his left hand, only
that both may sink beneath the waves. "Old Adam is too strong for young
Melancthon," said the Reformer. It is the Spirit of God overcoming our fleshly
nature by his indwelling life, on whom is our sole dependence. Our principal
care therefore must be to "walk in the Spirit" and "be filled with the Spirit,"
and all the rest will come spontaneously and inevitably. As the ascending sap in
the tree crowds off the dead leaves which in spite of storm and frost cling to
the branches all winter long, so does the Holy Ghost within us, when allowed
full sway, subdue and expel the remnants of our sinful nature.

One cannot fail to see that asceticism is an absolute inversion of the Divine
order, since it seeks life through death instead of finding death through life.
No degree of mortification can ever bring us to sanctification. We are to "put
off the old man with his deeds." But how? By "putting on the new man who is
renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." "For the law of
the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and
death" (Romans 8:2), writes Paul. It is a pointed statement of the case which
one makes in describing the transition from the old to the new in his own
experience, from the former life of perpetual defeat to the present life of
victory through Christ. "Once it was a constant breaking off, now it is a daily
bringing in," he says. That is, the former striving was directed to being rid of
the inveterate habits and evil tendencies of the old nature--its selfishness,
its pride, its lust, and its vanity. Now the effort is to bring in the Spirit,
to drink in his divine presence, to breathe, as a holy atmosphere, his
supernatural life. The indwelling of the Spirit can alone effect the exclusion
of sin. This will appear if we consider what has been called "the expulsive
power of a new affection." "Love not the world, neither the things that are in
the world," says the Scripture. But all experience proves that loving not is
only possible through loving, the worldly affection being overcome by the
heavenly. And we find this method clearly exhibited in the word. "The love of
the Spirit" (Romans 15:30) is given us for overcoming the world. The divine life
is the source of the divine love. Therefore "the love of God is shed abroad in
our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." Because we are by nature
so wholly without heavenly affection, God, through the indwelling Spirit, gives
us his own love with which to love himself. Herein is the highest credential of
discipleship: "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have
love one to another" (John 13:35). As Christ manifested to the world the love of
the Father, so are we to manifest the love of Christ--a manifestation, however,
which is only possible because of our possessorship of a common life. As one has
truly said concerning our Saviour’s command to his disciples to love one
another: "It is a command which would be utterly idle and futile were it not
that he, the ever-loving One, is willing to put his own love within me. The
command is really no more than to be a branch of the true vine. I am to cease
from my own living and loving, and yield myself to the expression of Christ’s
love." And what is true of the love of Christ is true of the likeness of Christ.
How is the likeness acquired? Through contemplation and imitation? So some have
taught. And it is true, if only the indwelling Spirit is behind all, beneath
all, and effectually operative in all. As it is written: "But we all with
unveiled face, reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed
into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit" (2
Corinthians 3:18, R. V.). It is only the Spirit of the Lord dwelling within us
that can fashion us to the image of the Lord set before us. Who is sufficient by
external imitation of Christ to become conformed to the likeness of Christ?
Imagine one without genius and devoid of the artist’s training sitting down
before Raphael’s famous picture of the Transfiguration and attempting to
reproduce it. How crude and mechanical and lifeless his work would be! But if
such a thing were possible that the spirit of Raphael should enter into the man
and obtain the mastery of his mind and eye and hand, it would be entirely
possible that he should paint this masterpiece; for it would simply be Raphael
reproducing Raphael. And this in a mystery is what is true of the disciple
filled with the Holy Ghost. Christ, who is "the image of the invisible God," is
set before him as his divine pattern, and Christ by the Spirit dwells within him
as a divine life, and Christ is able to image forth Christ from the interior
life to the outward example. Of course likeness to Christ is but another name
for holiness, and when, at the resurrection, we awake satisfied with his
likeness (Psalms 17:15), we shall be perfected in holiness. This is simply
saying that sanctification is progressive and not, like conversion,
instantaneous. And yet we must admit the force of what a devout and thoughtful
writer says as to the danger of regarding it as only a gradual growth. If a
Christian looks upon himself as "a tree planted by the rivers of water that
bringeth forth his fruit in his season," he judges rightly. But to conclude
therefore that his growth will be as irresistible as that of the tree, coming as
a matter of course simply because he has by regeneration been planted in Christ,
is a grave mistake. The disciple is required to be consciously and intelligently
active in his own growth, as a tree is not, "to give all diligence to make his
calling and election sure." And when we say "active" we do not mean self-active
merely, for "which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto his stature?"
asks Jesus (Matthew 6:27, R. V.). But we must surrender ourselves to the divine
action by living in the Spirit and praying in the Spirit and walking in the
Spirit, all of which conditions are as essential to our development in holiness,
as the rain and the sunshine are to the growth of the oak. It is possible that
through a neglect and grieving of the Spirit a Christian may be of smaller
stature in his age than he was in his spiritual infancy, his progress being a
retrogression rather than an advance. Therefore in saying that sanctification is
progressive let us beware of concluding that it is inevitable.

Moreover, as candid inquirers, we must ask what of truth and of error there may
be in the doctrine of "instantaneous sanctification," which many devout persons
teach and profess to have proved. If the conception is that of a state of
sinless perfection into which the believer has been suddenly lifted and of
deliverance from a sinful nature which has been suddenly eradicated, we must
consider this doctrine as dangerously untrue. But we do consider it possible
that one may experience a great crisis in his spiritual life, in which there is
such a total self-surrender to God and such an infilling of the Holy Spirit,
that he is freed from the bondage of sinful appetites and habits, and enabled to
have constant victory over self, instead of suffering constant defeat. In saying
this, what more do we affirm than is taught in that scripture: "Walk in the
Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16).

Divine truth as revealed in Scripture seems often to lie between two extremes.
It is emphatically so in regard to this question. What a paradox it is that side
by side in the Epistle of John we should have the strongest affirmation of the
Christian’s sinfulness: "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and
the truth is not in us"; and the strongest affirmation of his sinlessness:
"Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him,
and he cannot sin because he is born of God" (1 John 1:8; 1 John 3:9). Now
heresy means a dividing or choosing, and almost all of the gravest errors have
arisen from adopting some extreme statement of Scripture to the rejection of the
other extreme. If we regard the doctrine of sinless perfection as a heresy, we
regard contentment with sinful imperfection as a greater heresy. And we gravely
fear that many Christians make the apostle’s words, "If we say we have no sin we
deceive ourselves," the unconscious justification for a low standard of
Christian living. It were almost better for one to overstate the possibilities
of sanctification in his eager grasp after holiness, than to understate them in
his complacent satisfaction with a traditional unholiness. Certainly it is not
an edifying spectacle to see a Christian worldling throwing stones at a
Christian perfectionist.

What then would be a true statement of the doctrine which we are considering,
one which would embrace both extremes of statement as they appear in the Epistle
of John? Sinful in self, sinless in Christ--is our answer: "In him is no sin;
whosoever abideth in him sinneth not" (1 John 3:5-6). If through the
communication of the Holy Spirit the life of Christ is constantly imparted to
us, that life will prevail within us. That life is absolutely sinless, as
incapable of defilement as the sunbeam which has its fount and origin in the
sun. In proportion to the closeness of our abiding in him will be the
completeness of our deliverance from sinning. And we doubt not that there are
Christians who have yielded themselves to God in such absolute surrender, and
who through the upholding power of the Spirit have been so kept in that
condition of surrender, that sin has not had dominion over them. If in them the
war between the flesh and the spirit has not been forever ended, there has been
present victory in which troublesome sins have ceased from their assaults, and
"the peace of God" has ruled in the heart. But sinning is one thing and a sinful
nature is another; and we see no evidence in Scripture that the latter is ever
eradicated completely while we are in the body. If we could see ourselves with
God’s eye, we should doubtless discover sinfulness lying beneath our most joyful
moments of unsinning conduct, and the stain of our old and fallen nature so
discoloring our whitest actions as to convince us that we are not yet faultless
in his presence. Only let us gladly emphasize this fact, that as we inherit from
Adam a nature incapable of sinlessness, we inherit from Christ a nature
incapable of sinfulness. Therefore, it is written: "Whosoever is born of God
cannot sin, for his seed remaineth in him." It is not the nature of the new
nature to sin; it is not the law of "the law of the Spirit of life" to
transgress. For the new-born man to do evil is to transgress the law of his
nature as before it was to obey it. In a word, before our regeneration we lived
in sin and loved it; since our regeneration we may lapse into sin but we loathe
it.

3. The Spirit of Glory: Our Transfiguration. "The Spirit of glory and of God
resteth upon you," writes Peter (1 Peter 4:14). Let us recall this apostle’s
habit of dividing the stages of redemption into these two, "the sufferings of
Christ and the glory that should follow," in which he seems to conceive of our
Lord’s mystical body, the church, as passing through and reproducing the twofold
experience of its Head, in humiliation and in subsequent exaltation. Even in the
time of her humiliation she has the Spirit of glory abiding on her, as the cloud
of glory rested down upon the tabernacle in the wilderness during all the
pilgrimage of the children of Israel. And is not Peter’s saying the same as
Paul’s, in his picture of the suffering creation: "But ourselves also, which
have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves,
waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Romans 8:23). Not
yet have we reached the consummation of our hope, at the "appearing of the glory
of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13, R. V.); but the Spirit,
through whose inworking power this great change is to be wrought, already dwells
in us, giving us by his present quickening the pledge and earnest of our final
glory. And so we read in another Scripture: "But if the Spirit of him that
raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the
dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you"
(Romans 8:11). It is not our dead bodies which are here spoken of as the objects
of the Spirit’s quickening, but our mortal bodies--bodies liable to death and
doomed to death if the Lord tarry, but not yet having experienced death. Hence
the quickening referred to has to do rather with the vivifying of the living
saints than the resurrection of the dead saints. Of course the consummation of
this vivifying is at the Lord’s coming, when those who have died shall be
raised, and those who are alive shall be transfigured; but because of the Spirit
of life dwelling in us, who shall say that the process has not even now begun?
To explain: "Behold I shew you a mystery," says Paul; "we shall not all sleep,
but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the
last trump" (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). That is, as at Christ’s coming the dead
saints will be raised, so the living saints will be translated without seeing
death. A change will come to them, so far as we can understand, like that which
came to Jesus at his resurrection--the body glorified, all of mortal and earthly
belonging to it by nature eliminated in an instant, and the Holy Ghost so
completely transforming and immortalizing it that it shall become perfectly
fashioned to the likeness of Christ’s glorified body. But having the Spirit
dwelling in us we have, even now, the first-fruits of this transformation in the
daily renewing of our inward man, in the helping and healing and strengthening
which sometimes comes to our bodies through the hidden life of the Holy Ghost.
Sanctification is progressive, waiting to be consummated in the future; so is
glorification in some sense progressive, since by the presence of the Spirit we
already have the earnest of the glory that is to be. As Edward Irving
beautifully states it, condensing his language: "As sickness is sin apparent in
the body, the presentiment of death, the forerunner of corruption, and as
disease of every kind is mortality begun, so the quickening of our mortal bodies
by the inward inspiration of the Spirit is the resurrection forestalled,
redemption anticipated, glory begun in our humiliation." When is sanctification
completed? At death, is the answer which we find given in some creeds and
manuals of theology. This may be true; but we say it not, because the Scripture
saith it not. So far as we can infer from the word of God the date of our
sanctification or perfection in holiness is definitely fixed at the appearing of
the Lord "a second time without sin unto salvation." Our sanctification, now
going on, is glory begun in us; our glorification then ushered in will be glory
completed in us. The Spirit of glory now working in us brings forward and
already works within us the beginning of the perfect life. Because we have been
made "partakers of the Holy Ghost" we have thereby "tasted the powers of the age
to come" (Hebrews 6:4-5, R. V.), that age of complete deliverance from sin and
sickness and death. But at most we have only tasted as yet; we have not drunk
fully into the fountain of immortal life. It is at Christ’s advent that this
blessed consummation is fixed: "To the end he may establish your hearts
unblamable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus
with all his saints" (1 Thessalonians 3:13, R. V.). Not simply blameless but
faultless, seems to be the condition here foretold, since it is unblamable in
the sphere and element of holiness. And with this agrees another text in the
same epistle: "And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your
spirit and soul and body be preserved entire without blame at the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thessalonians 5:23, R. V.). The time appointed for the
consummation of this blameless wholeness is at the Saviour’s advent in glory.
And how suggestive the order maintained in naming the threefold man: "Your
spirit, soul, and body." Our sanctification moves from within outward. It begins
with the spirit, which is the holy of holies; the Spirit of God acting first on
the spirit of man in renewing grace, then upon the soul, till at last it reaches
the outer court of the body, at the resurrection and translation. When the body
is glorified, then only will sanctification be consummated, for then only will
the whole man, spirit, soul, and body, have come under the Spirit’s perfecting
power.

We may see the difference between progressive sanctification and perfected
sanctification, or glorification, by comparing familiar texts. One already has
been quoted in this chapter: "We all, beholding as in a glass the glory of the
Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit
of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18). Here are degrees of progress "from glory to
glory," and it is a progress in the glorified life--gradual conformity to the
Lord of glory, through successive stages of glory, effected by the Spirit of
glory. The word-painting of the passage inevitably associates it in our thought
with the great transfiguration experience of our Lord, when by a kind of rapture
he was for a little while taken out of "this present evil age" (Galatians 1:4),
and translated into "the age to come," and made to taste of its powers as "he
appeared in glory" (Hebrews 6:5, R. V.). So says the apostle: "Be not fashioned
according to this age, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds"
(Romans 12:2, R. V.). That is, by his inward transformation the Holy Spirit is
to be daily repeating in us the Lord’s glorification, separating us from the
present age of sin and death and assimilating us to the age to come, with its
resurrection triumph and its perfected restoration to God, when we shall be
presented "faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy" (Jude
1:24). This is our step-by-step advancement into a predestined inheritance; and
it must for the present be step by step. "Of his fullness have all we received,"
but we can appropriate that fullness only "grace by grace" (John 1:16). Of his
righteousness we have all been made partakers, but we only advance in its
possession "from faith to faith" (Romans 1:17). Even in passing through the
valley of Baca we can make it a place of springs, going "from strength to
strength" as we appear "before God in Zion" (Psalms 84:6). Thus our growth in
grace is our glory begun; but the progress is like the artist’s slow and patient
perfecting of his picture. Turn now to another statement: "We know that if he
shall be manifested we shall be like him, for we shall see him even as he is" (1
John 3:2, R. V.). Whatever difficulty may arise from another translation of this
passage, one thought seems to be taught in the entire connection, viz., that the
unveiled manifestation of God will bring the full perfection of his saints. Thus
Alford sums up the meaning of the passage. As the believer, having by a
knowledge of God been regenerated, "becomes more and more like God, having his
seed in him, so the full and perfect accomplishment of this knowledge in the
actual fruition of God himself must of necessity bring with it entire likeness
to God." In a word, it seems to us that the sanctification taking place at the
manifestation of our incarnate Lord will be as the instantaneous photograph
compared with the Spirit’s slow and patient limning of the image of Christ in
our present state. "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," "we shall be
changed" (1 Corinthians 15:52). Then the glorified body and the glorified
spirit, long divorced by sin, will be remarried. So long as this twain are
separated by death, or are at war in our present earthy life, our perfection in
holiness were impossible.

It is because the resurrection and translation of the saints are instantaneous
that we affirm sanctification to be instantaneous at the coming of the Lord. The
Scripture is always harmonious with itself, however widely separated the writers
of its books by time or distance. David struck the same joyful note with John,
though the learned may insist that he did not know of the resurrection. "As for
me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness"--the seeing him as he is and being
made fit to see him. "I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness"--the
conformity to the Divine image at the instant sound of the resurrection trump.
(Psalms 17:15.) Perhaps we may conjecture wherein will consist the perfection of
the resurrection state. We may find it in that one saying: "It is raised a
spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:44). Now, how often the body dominates the
spirit, making it do what it would not; but then, the spirit will dominate the
body, making it do as it will. In a house divided against itself there can be
neither perfection nor peace. Such is the condition in our present state of
humiliation. And not the body alone, but the immaterial within us may be at war
with the divine. What does the Apostle Jude mean in his description of certain
who separated themselves, saying that they are "sensual, having not the Spirit"
(Jude 1:19). The soul, the middle factor in the man, if we may say so, instead
of being in alliance with our higher nature, the spirit, takes sides with the
lower, the flesh, so that instead of being spiritual we become "earthly,
sensual, devilish" (James 3:15). The whole man must be presented blameless at
the coming of the Lord before we can enter upon a state of blessed perfection.
Our spirit must not only rule our soul and our body, but both these must be
subject to the Holy Spirit of God. Dimly and imperfectly do we thus image to
ourselves the perfection of our "spiritual body." Now the body bears the spirit,
a slow chariot, whose wheels are often disabled, and whose swiftest motion is
but labored and tardy. Then the spirit will bear the body, carrying it as on
wings of thought whithersoever it will. The Holy Ghost, by his divine inworking
will, has completed in us the Divine likeness, and perfected over us the Divine
dominion. The human body will now be in sovereign subjection to the human
spirit, and the human spirit to the divine Spirit, and God will be all and in
all.

[1] Milton probably gives the true genesis of this doctrine in these words,
which he puts into the mouth of Satan:

"The son of God I also am or was; And if I was, I am; relation stands; All men
are sons of God."

[2] Andrew Jukes, "The New Man," p. 53.


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  CHAPTER 44: 03.07.     THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT
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VII THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT

"The Holy Ghost from the day of Pentecost has occupied an entirely new position.
The whole administration of the affairs of the Church of Christ has since that
day devolved upon him. . . That day was the installation of the Holy Spirit as
the Administrator of the Church in all things, which office he is to exercise
according to circumstances at his discretion. It is as vested with such
authority that he gives his name to this dispensation. . . There is but one
other great event to which the Scripture directs us to look, and that is the
second coming of the Lord. Till then we live in the Pentecostal age and under
the rule of the Holy Ghost."--James Elder Cumming, D. D. The Holy Spirit, as
coming down to fill the place of the ascended Redeemer, has rightly been called
"The Vicar of Jesus Christ." To him the entire administration of the church has
been committed until the Lord shall return in glory. His oversight extends to
the slightest detail in the ordering of God’s house, holding all in subjection
to the will of the Head, and directing all in harmony with the divine plan. How
clearly this comes out in that passage in the twelfth chapter of First
Corinthians. As in striking a series of concentric circles there is always one
fixed center holding each circumference in defined relation to itself, so here
we see all the "diversities of administrations" determined by the one
Administrator, the Holy Ghost. "Varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit";
"diversities of working, but the same God"; different words "according to the
same Spirit"; "gifts of faith in the same Spirit"; "gifts of healing in the one
Spirit"; miracles, prophecies, tongues, interpretations, "but all these worketh
the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally as he will." Whether
the authority of this one ruling sovereign Holy Ghost be recognized or ignored
determines whether the church shall be an anarchy or a unity, a synagogue of
lawless ones or the temple of the living God. Would one desire to find the clue
to the great apostasy whose dark eclipse now covers two-thirds of nominal
Christendom, here it is--the rule and authority of the Holy Spirit ignored in
the church; the servants of the house assuming mastery and encroaching more and
more on the prerogatives of the Head, till at last one man sets himself up as
the administrator of the church, and daringly usurps the name of "The Vicar of
Christ." When the Spirit of the Lord, speaking by Paul, would picture the
mystery of lawlessness and the culmination of apostasy, he gives us a
description which none should misunderstand: "So that he, as God, sitteth in the
temple of God, shewing himself that he is God" (2 Thessalonians 2:4). What is
the temple of God? The church without a question: "Know ye not that ye are the
temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (1 Corinthians
3:16). Whose prerogative is it to sit there? The Holy Ghost’s, its ruler and
administrator, and his alone. When Christ, our Paraclete with the Father,
entered upon his ministry on high, we are told more than a score of times that
he "sat down at the right hand of God." Henceforth heaven is his official seat,
until he returns in power and great glory. When he sent down another Paraclete
to abide with us for the age, he took his seat in the church, the temple of God,
there to rule and to administer till the Lord returns. There is but one "Holy
See" upon earth: that is, the seat of the Holy One in the church, which only the
Spirit of God can occupy without the most daring blasphemy. It becomes all true
believers to look well to that picture of one "sitting in the temple of God,"
and to read the lesson which it teaches. We may have no temptation toward the
papacy, which thrusts a man into the seat of the Holy Ghost,[1] or toward
clerisy which obtrudes an order of ecclesiastics--archbishops, cardinals, and
archdeacons into that sacred place; but let us remember that a democracy may be
guilty of the same sin as a hierarchy, in settling solemn issues by a "show of
hands," instead of prayerfully waiting for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in
substituting the voice of a majority for the voice of the Spirit. Of course, in
speaking thus we concede that the Holy Spirit makes known his will in the voice
of believers, as also in the voice of Scripture. Only there must be such
prayerful sanctifying of the one and such prayerful search of the other, that in
reaching decisions in the church there may be the same declaration as in the
first Christian council: "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us" (Acts
15:28). In some very profound teaching in 2 Corinthians 3 we seem to have a hint
as to how we hear the voice of the Lord in guiding the affairs of the church.
There, the administration (diachonia) of the Spirit is distinctly spoken of in
contrast with the administration of the law. Its deliverances are written "not
with ink, not in tables of stone, but in the tables that are the hearts of
flesh, with the Spirit of the living God" (R. V.). There must be a sensitive
heart wherein this handwriting may be inscribed; an unhindering will through
which he may act. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," it is
written in the same passage; liberty for God to speak and act as he will through
us, which begets loyalty; not liberty for us to act as we will, which begets
lawlessness. To us there is something exceedingly suggestive in the teaching of
the Lord’s post-ascension gospel, the Revelation, on this point. The epistles to
the seven churches we hold, with many of the best commentators, to be a
prophetic setting forth of the successive stages of the church’s history--its
declines and its recoveries, its failures and its repentances, from ascension to
advent. And because the bride of Christ is perpetually betrayed into listening
to false teachers and surrendering to the guidance of evil counsellors, the Lord
is constantly admonishing her to heed the voice of her true Teacher and Guide,
the Holy Ghost. How forcibly this admonition is introduced into the great
Apocalyptic drama! As in the opening of the successive seals, representing the
judgments of God upon apostate Christendom, the cry is repeated, "Come"! "Come"!
"Come"! "Come"! (Revelation 6)--as though the church under chastisement would
repeatedly relearn the advent prayer which her Lord put into her mouth in the
beginning: "Even so, come, Lord Jesus," so at each stage of the church’s
backsliding a voice is heard from heaven saying: "He that hath an ear, let him
hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." It is the admonition "of him that
hath the seven spirits of God," seven times addressed to his church throughout
her earthly history, calling her to return from her false guides and misleading
teachers, and to listen to the voice of her true Counsellor. From this general
statement of the administration of the Holy Spirit let us now descend to the
particular acts and offices in which this authority is exercised.

1. The Holy Spirit in the ministry and government of the church. In speaking to
the elders of Ephesus Paul says: "Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the
flock in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the church of
God" (Acts 20:28, R. V.). Clearly in the beginning bishops or pastors were given
by the Spirit of God, not by the suffrages of the people. The office and its
incumbent were alike by direct divine appointment. We find this distinctly set
forth in the Epistle to the Ephesians: "When he ascended on high, he led
captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. . . And he gave some to be apostles;
and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for
the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up
of the body of Christ" (Ephesians 4:8-12, R. V.). The ascent of the Lord and the
descent of the Spirit are here exhibited in their necessary relation. In the one
event Christ took his seat in heaven as "Head over all things to his church"; in
the other the Holy Ghost came down to begin the work of "building up the body of
Christ." Of course it is the Head who directs the construction of the body, as
being "fitly framed together it groweth into a holy temple in the Lord"; and it
is the Holy Ghost who superintends this construction since "we are builded
together for an habitation of God in the Spirit." Therefore all the offices
through which this work is to be carried on were appointed by Christ and
instituted through the Spirit whom he sent down. Suppose now that men invent
offices which are not named in the inspired list, and set up in the church an
order of popes and cardinals, archbishops and archdeacons? Is it not a
presumption, the worst fruit of which is not alone that it introduces confusion
into the body of Christ, but that it begets insubordination to the rule of the
Holy Ghost? But suppose, on the other hand, that we sacredly maintain those
offices of the ministry which have been established for permanent continuance in
the church, and yet take it upon us to fill these according to our own
preference and will; is this any less an affront to the Spirit?

Doubtless the mistakes of God’s servants, as given in Scripture are as truly
designed for our instruction and admonition as their obedient examples. We think
we do not err in finding such a recorded warning in the opening chapter of the
Acts of the Apostles. A vacancy had occurred in the apostolate. Standing up in
the upper room, amidst the hundred and twenty, Peter boldly affirmed that this
vacancy must be filled, and of the men who had companied with them during the
Lord’s earthly ministry, "one must be ordained to be a witness with us of his
resurrection." But the disciples had hitherto had no voice in choosing apostles.
The Lord had done this of his own sovereign will: "Have I not chosen you
twelve?" Now he had gone away into heaven, and his Administrator had not yet
arrived to enter upon his office-work. Surely if the divine order was to be,
that having "ascended on high" he was "to give some apostles," it were better to
await the coming of the Paraclete with his gifts. Not only so, but we are
persuaded that, with Christ departed and the Holy Spirit not yet come, a valid
election of an apostle were impossible. But in spite of this, a nomination was
made; prayer was offered in which the Lord was asked to indicate which of the
candidates he had chosen; and then a vote having been taken, Matthias was
declared elected. Is there any indication that this choice was ever ratified by
the Lord? On the contrary, Matthias passes into obscurity from this time, his
name never again being mentioned. Some two years subsequent, the Lord calls Saul
of Tarsus; he is sealed with his Spirit, and certified by such evident
credentials of the Divine appointment that he boldly signs himself "Paul, an
apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father"
(Galatians 1:1).

We believe that the apostolic office has passed away, the qualification
therefor, that of having been a witness of the Lord’s resurrection, being now
impossible. But the office of pastor, elder, bishop, or teacher of the flock
still remains. And the divine plan is that this office should be filled, just as
in the beginning, by the appointment of the Holy Ghost. Nor can we doubt that if
there is a prayerful waiting upon him for guidance, and a sanctified submission
to his will when it is made known, he will now choose pastors and set them over
their appointed flocks just as manifestly as he did in the beginning. Very
beautiful is the picture in Revelation of the glorified Lord, moving among the
candlesticks. There are "seven golden candlesticks" now, not one only as in the
Jewish temple. The Church of God is manifold, not a unit.[2] He who "walketh in
the midst of the seven golden candlesticks" "holdeth the seven stars in his
right hand." These stars are "the angels of the seven churches"--their ministers
or bishops as generally understood. The Lord holds them in his right hand. Does
he not require us to ask of him alone for their bestowal? Yes. "Pray ye
therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his
harvest" (Luke 10:2). There is no intimation in Scripture that we are to apply
anywhere but to him for the ministry of his church. Does he not give such
ministry, and he alone? Yes. "When he ascended on high . . . he gave some . . .
pastors and teachers." And now, speaking to the church in Ephesus, the elders of
which, chosen by the Holy Ghost, Paul had so affectionately exhorted, he is seen
in the attitude of Chief-shepherd and Bishop--giving pastors with his own hand;
placing them with his own right hand, and warning the church that though they
have tried and rejected false apostles, they have nevertheless left their "first
love." Significant word! On this love our Lord conditioned the indwelling of the
Father and of the Son through the Holy Spirit (John 14:23). Losing this the
peril becomes imminent that the candlestick may be removed out of its place; and
so the warning is solemnly announced: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what
the Spirit saith unto the churches." Without the Spirit the candlestick can shed
forth no light, and loses its place of testimony.

Dead churches, whose witness has been silenced, whose place has been vacated,
even though the lifeless form remains, have we not seen such? And what is the
safeguard against them, if not that found in the apostle’s warning: "Quench not
the Spirit?" The voice of the Lord must be heard in his church, and to the Holy
Ghost alone has been committed the prerogative of communicating that voice. Is
there any likelihood that that voice will be heard when the king or prime
minister of a civil government holds the sole function of appointing the
bishops, as in the case of State churches? Is there any certainty of it when an
archbishop or bishop puts pastors over flocks by the action of his single will?
We may congratulate ourselves that we are neither in a State church nor under an
episcopal bishop; but there are methods of ignoring or repressing the voice of
the Holy Ghost, which though simpler and far less apparent than those just
indicated, are no less violent. The humble and godly membership of the little
church may turn to some pastor, after much prayer and waiting on God for the
Spirit’s guidance, and the signs of the divine choice may be clearly manifest;
when some pulpit committee, or some conclave of "leading brethren," vetoes their
action on the ground, perchance, that the candidate is not popular and will not
draw. Alas! for the little flock so lorded over that the voice of the Holy Ghost
cannot be heard. And majorities are no more to be depended upon than minorities,
if there is in both cases a neglect of patient and prolonged waiting upon the
Lord to know his will. Of what value is a "show of hands" unless his are
stretched out "who holdeth the seven stars in his right hand?" Of what use is a
viva voce choice, except the living voice of Christ be heard speaking by his
Spirit? One may object that we are holding up an ideal which is impossible to be
realized. It is a difficult ideal we admit, as the highest attainments are
always difficult; but it is not an impossible one. It is easier to recite our
prayers from a book than to read them from the tables of a prepared heart, where
the finger of the Spirit has silently written them; but the more difficult way
is the more acceptable way to him who seeks for worshipers who "worship in
Spirit and in truth." It is easier to get "the sense of the meeting" in choosing
a pastor than to learn "the mind of the Spirit" by patient tarrying and humble
surrender to God; but the more laborious way will certainly prove the more
profitable way. The failure to take this way is, we are persuaded, the cause of
more decay and spiritual death in the churches than we have yet imagined. From
the watch-tower where we write we can look out on half a score of churches on
which "Ichabod" has been evidently written, and the glory of which has long
since departed. They were founded in prayer and consecration, "to serve the
living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven." Why has their light
been extinguished, though the lampstand which once bore it still remains,
adorned and beautified with all that the highest art and architecture can
suggest? Their history is known to him who walks among the golden candlesticks.
What violence may have been done, by headstrong self-will, to him who is called
"the Spirit of counsel and might"? What rejection of the truth which he, "the
Spirit of truth," has appointed for the faith of God’s church till at last the
word has been spoken: "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did,
so do ye." Is it only Jewish worshipers to whom these words apply? Is it only a
Jewish temple of which this sentence is true: "Behold your house is left unto
you desolate"? The Spirit will not be entirely withdrawn from the body of Christ
indeed, but there is the Church, and there are churches. A man may yet live and
breathe when cell after cell has been closed by congestion till at last he only
inhales and exhales with a little portion of one lung. Let him that readeth
understand. The Spirit is the breath of God in the body of his church. While
that divine body survives and must, multitudes of churches have so shut out the
Spirit from rule and authority and supremacy in the midst of them that the
ascended Lord can only say to them: "Thou hast a name to live and art dead." In
a word, so vital and indispensable is the ministry of the Spirit, that without
it nothing else will avail. Some trust in creeds, and some in ordinances; some
suppose that the church’s security lies in a sound theology, and others locate
it in a primitive simplicity of government and worship; but it lies in none of
these, desirable as they are. The body may be as to its organs perfect and
entire, wanting nothing; but simply because the Spirit has been withdrawn from
it, it has passed from a church into a corpse. As one has powerfully stated it:
"When the Holy Spirit withdraws, . . . he sometimes allows the forms which he
has created to remain. The oil is exhausted, but the lamp is still there; prayer
is offered and the Bible read; church-going is not given up, and to a certain
degree the service is enjoyed; in a word religious habits are preserved, and
like the corpses found at Pompeii, which were in a perfect state of preservation
and in the very position in which death had surprised them, but which were
reduced to ashes by contact with the air, so the blast of trial, of temptation,
or of final judgment will destroy these spiritual corpses."[3]

2. The Holy Spirit in the Worship and Service of the Church. Is there anything,
from highest to lowest, which we are called to do in connection with the worship
of God’s house, of which the Holy Spirit is not the appointed agent? Believers
are the instruments indeed through which he acts; but they have no function
apart from his inspiration and guidance, any more than the organ-pipe has
without the wind, which breathing through it causes it to resound. To make this
clear, we may consider the several parts of the service of the church as we are
accustomed to participate in it, and observe their relation to the divine
Administrator.

(1) Preaching is by general consent an important factor of the work of the
ministry, both for the pastor and for the evangelist. In what consists its
inspiration and authority? We "have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy
Ghost sent down from heaven" (1 Peter 1:12), is Peter’s simple story of the
apostolic method. And the words direct our thought to the Spirit not as
instrumental but as inspiring. "In the Holy Ghost," the words mean literally.
The true preacher does not simply use the Spirit; he is used by the Spirit. He
speaks as one moving in the element and atmosphere of the Holy Ghost, and
mastered by his divine power. In this fact the sermon differs immeasurably from
the speech, and the preacher from the orator. How distinctly Paul emphasizes
this contrast in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 2:4). The sole
substance of his preaching he declares to be "Jesus Christ and him crucified,"
and the sole inspiration of his preaching, the Holy Ghost: "And my speech was
not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and
power." What did good Philip Henry mean by his resolve "to preach Christ
crucified in a crucified style"? More perhaps than he thought or knew. "He shall
testify of me," is Jesus’ saying concerning the promised Paraclete. The
Comforter bears witness to the Crucified. No other theme in the pulpit can be
sure of commanding his co-operation. Philosophy, poetry, art, literature,
sociology, ethics, and history are attractive subjects to many minds, and they
who handle such themes in the pulpit may set them forth with alluring words of
human genius; but there is no certainty that the Holy Ghost will accompany their
presentation with his divine attestation. The preaching of the Cross, in
chastened simplicity of speech, has the demonstration of the Spirit pledged to
it, as no secular, or moral, or even formal religious discourse has. And when
Paul writes to the Thessalonians: "Our gospel came not unto you in word only,
but also in power and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance" (1 Thessalonians
1:5), we need only to be reminded that "our gospel" meant but one thing to Paul,
the setting forth of Jesus Christ crucified in the midst of the people, and we
have found the secret of evangelical power. Ought it not therefore to be the
supreme question with the preacher, what themes can assuredly command the
witness of the Holy Spirit, rather than what topics will enlist the attention of
the people? Let us set the popular preacher and the apostolic preacher side by
side, and consider whose reward we would choose, universal admiration or "God
also bearing witness, both with signs and wonders and with divers miracles, and
gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his will" (Hebrews 2:4)--the sermon
greeted with applause and the clapping of hands, or "the word received with joy
of the Holy Ghost" (1 Thessalonians 1:6)?--admiration of the preacher possessing
all who listen to the discourse, or "the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard
the word" (Acts 10:44)? Language cannot express the vital moment of the question
which we are here discussing. Our generation is rapidly losing its grip upon the
supernatural; and as a consequence the pulpit is rapidly dropping to the level
of the platform. And this decline is due, we believe, more than anything else,
to an ignoring of the Holy Spirit as the supreme inspirer of preaching. We wish
to see a great orator in the pulpit, forgetting that the least expounder of the
word, when filled with the Holy Ghost, is greater than he. We want the gospel,
forsooth; but in the strenuous demand that it be set forth according to the
"spirit of the age" we ignore the supremacy of the "Spirit of God." And the
method of discourse soon tells upon the matter. We cannot very long have the
truth in the pulpit after we have lost "the Spirit of truth" therefrom. "When
one possesses not the whole of life," says Vinet, "he possesses not the whole of
truth." In all that we have said we do not ignore the human element in
preaching, nor undervalue good learning and sanctified mental training, as a
furnishing for this high office. We only emphasize the extreme peril of making
that supreme which God has made subordinate. As it is genius which raises the
great painter or poet far above the common man, so it is the Holy Spirit which
lifts the preacher far above the man of genius. A gifted artist spoke wisely
when one, thinking only of the implements of his profession, asked, "With what
do you mix your paints?" "With brains, sir," he replied. The preacher who
brought three thousand to believe on a crucified Christ, under a single sermon,
anticipated the question of those who, with an eye upon the mere human
accessories of his sermon, might ask after the secret of his power; and he
unfolds that secret in a single terse sentence: "With the Holy Ghost sent down
from heaven."

(2) Prayer is a most vital element in the worship of God’s church. "Lord, teach
us how to pray, as John also taught his disciples." Jesus complied literally
with this request of his followers. As John, under the law, could only give
rules and rudiments, not yet having come to the dispensation of grace and of the
Spirit, so did Jesus give a form of prayer, a lesson in the "technique of
worship." But only when he reaches the eve of his passion, when he announces the
coming of the Comforter, does he lead his disciples into the heart and mystery
of the great theme, teaching them to pray as John could not have taught his
disciples. "Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name," said Jesus, in his
paschal discourse. But now that he was about to enter into his mediatorial
office at God’s right hand, and to send forth the Comforter into the midst of
his disciples, this joyful privilege was to be accorded to him: "Whatsoever ye
shall ask the Father in my name he will give it you"[4] (John 16:23). The words
are equivalent to "in me." The thought is not surely that of using the name of
Jesus as a password or as a talisman, but of entering into his person and
appropriating his will; so that when we pray, it shall be as though Jesus
himself stood in God’s presence and made intercession. Nor is it "as though"--it
is the literal fact. We become identified with Christ through the Spirit, now
sent down, and his will is wrought within us by the Holy Ghost, so that to ask
what we desire of him is to ask what he desires for us. We are inwilled by his
will, because inspired by his Spirit, who lives and breathes within us.
Therefore we may know that we are always heard, since we are in him who can
boldly say to the Father: "I know that thou always hearest me." It is Christ’s
mediatorship with the Father, and the Holy Ghost’s mediatorship with us, that
gives us this high privilege of praying in the name of Jesus, as it is written:
"For through him we both have access in one Spirit unto the Father." When
therefore, under the fuller development of doctrine as found in the epistles, we
read of "praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit"
(Ephesians 6:18), and of "praying in the Holy Ghost" (Jude 1:20), it is simply
an admonition to use our privilege of asking in the name of Jesus. For to be in
the Spirit is to be in Christ, united to his person, identified with his will,
invested with his righteousness, so that we are as he is before the Father. In
that fullest exposition of the doctrine of the Spirit, given in the eighth of
Romans, we see clearly that the ministry of the Comforter consists in his
effectuating in us that which Christ is accomplishing for us on the throne.
Especially is this true of prayer. In the Epistle to the Hebrews we read:
"Wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near to God
through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25,
R. V.). In the Epistle to the Romans we read: "And in like manner the Spirit
also helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought, but the
Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be
uttered; and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the
Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of
God" (Romans 8:26-27, R. V.). These passages, read together, clearly show the
Spirit doing the same thing in us which Christ in heaven is doing for us. And,
moreover, they reveal to us the method of the glorified Christ in helping those
who know not what to pray for as they ought, teaching them, not by an outward
form, but by an inward guidance. Indeed, the prayer inspired by the Holy Spirit
is often so deep that it cannot be expressed in formal words, but reaches the
ear of the Father only in unspeakable yearnings, in unuttered groanings. The
keynote of all true intercession is the will of God. In the disciples’ prayer,
as taught them by the Master, this note is distinctly sounded: "Thy will be done
on earth as in heaven." In the Saviour’s garden-prayer it is heard again, as
with strong crying and tears the Son of God exclaims: "Not my will but thine be
done"; and in the revelation of the doctrine of prayer through an inspired
apostle we read: "If we ask anything according to his will he heareth us." It is
the Spirit’s deepest work in the believer to attune his mind to this exalted
key, as he "maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God."
There is a promise which all disciples love to quote for their assurance in
prayer: "If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall
ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 18:19).
The word translated "agree" is a very suggestive one. It is, sympsônêsôsin, from
which our word "symphony" comes. If two shall accord or symphonize in what they
ask, they have the promise of being heard. But, as in tuning an organ all the
notes must be keyed to the standard pitch, else harmony were impossible, so in
prayer. It is not enough that two disciples agree with each other; they must
both accord with a Third--the righteous and holy Lord--before in the scriptural
sense they can agree in intercession. There may be agreement which is in most
sinful conflict with the divine will: "How is it that ye have agreed together
[synepsônêthê, the same word] to tempt the Spirit of the Lord?" asks Peter (Acts
5:9). Here is mutual accord, but guilty discord with the Holy Ghost. On the
contrary it is the Spirit’s ministry to attune our wills to the Divine; thus
only can there be praying in the Holy Ghost.

We cannot therefore emphasize too strongly the administration of the Spirit in
directing the worship of God’s house. The use of liturgical forms is a relapse
into legalism, a consent to be taught to pray as "John taught his disciples."
True, there may be extemporaneous forms as well as written forms, praying by
rote as well as praying by the book. Against both habits we simply interpose the
higher teaching of the Spirit, as belonging especially to this dispensation, in
which the Father seeketh worshipers who "worship in Spirit and in truth." To
pray rightly is the highest of all attainments. And it is so because the secret
lies between these two opposites; a spirit supremely active while supremely
passive, a heart prevailing with God because prevailed over by God. "O Lord,"
says a high saint, "my spirit was like a harp this morning, making melody before
thee, since thou didst first tune the instrument by the Holy Spirit, and then
didst choose the psalm of praise to be played thereon." Most solemn and
suggestive words these have always seemed: "The Father seeketh such to worship
him." Amid all the repetition of forms and the chanting of liturgies, how
earnestly the Most High searches after the spiritual worshiper, with a heart
inwardly retired before God, with a spirit so sensitive to the hidden motions of
the Holy Ghost that when the lips speak they shall utter the effectual inwrought
prayer that availeth much!

If any shall interpose the objection that what we are saying is too high to be
practical, it may be well to confirm our position by the witness of experience.
We are not speaking of pulpit prayers especially, in what we have said. The
universal priesthood of believers, which the Scriptures so plainly teach,
constitutes the ground for common intercession, for "the praying one for
another" which is the distinctive feature of the Spirit’s dispensation The
prayer meeting, therefore, in which the whole body of believers participate,
probably comes nearer the pattern of primitive Christian worship than any other
service which we hold. To apply our principle here, then, what method is found
most satisfactory? Shall the service be arranged beforehand, this one selected
to pray, and that one to exhort; and during the progress of the worship, shall
such a one be called up to lead the devotions, and such a one to follow? In a
word, shall the service be mapped out in advance and manipulated according to
the dictates of propriety and fitness as it goes on? One, after many years of
experience, can bear emphatic testimony to the value of another way--that of
magnifying the office of the Holy Spirit as the conductor of the service, and of
so withholding the pressure of human hands in the assembly that the Spirit shall
have the utmost freedom to move this one to pray and that one to witness, this
one to sing and that one "to say amen at our giving of thanks," according to his
own sovereign will. Here we speak not theoretically but experimentally. The
fervor and spirituality and sweet naturalness of the latter method has been
demonstrated beyond a peradventure, and that too, after an extended trial of
both ways, the first in ignorance of a better way, with constant labor and worry
and fret, and the last with inexpressible ease and comfort and spiritual
refreshment. Honor the Holy Ghost as Master of assemblies; study much the secret
of surrender to him; cultivate a quick ear for hearing his inward voice and a
ready tongue for speaking his audible witness; be submissive to keep silence
when he forbids as well as to speak when he commands, and we shall learn how
much better is God’s way of conducting the worship of his house than man’s
way.[5]

(3) The service of song in the house of the Lord is another element of worship
whose relation to the Spirit needs to be strongly emphasized. Spiritual singing
has a divinely appointed place in the church of Christ. Church music, in the
ordinary sense of that phrase, has no such place, but is a human invention which
custom has, with many, unhappily elevated into an ordinance. We often quote the
exhortation of the apostle: "Be filled with the Spirit," without marking the
practical service with which this fullness stands immediately connected:
"Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and
making melody in your heart to the Lord" (Ephesians 5:19). As immediately as
prayer is connected with the Holy Ghost in this same epistle: "Praying at all
seasons in the Spirit"; and our edification in the church: "Builded together in
the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:22, R. V.); and our spiritual energizing: "Strengthened
with power through his Spirit" (Ephesians 3:16, R. V.); and our approach to God,
"Access in one Spirit unto the Father" (2: 18, R. V.), so intimately is the
worship of praise here connected with the Holy Ghost and made dependent on his
power. Therefore it would seem too obvious to need arguing, that an unregenerate
person is disqualified from ministering in the service of song in God’s house.
Scripturally this seems incontestable; and as to the teaching of experience, we
should hardly know how to name any custom which has brought a sorer blight upon
the life of the church, or a heavier repression upon its spiritual energy, than
the habit, now so general, of introducing unsanctified, unconverted, and even
notoriously worldly persons into the choirs of the churches.

Now the teaching of the text just cited is decisive, not only against such
performers in choirs, but against the choirs themselves, if by the latter term
is meant certain ones employed to dispense music for the delectation of the
congregation. For observe how distinctly the mutual and inter-congregational
character of Christian singing is here pointed out: "Speaking to one another in
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." The one feature of the worship of the
church, which distinguishes it radically and totally from that of the temple, is
that it is mutual. Under the law there were priests and Levites to minister and
people to be ministered to; under the gospel there is a universal spiritual
priesthood, in which all minister and all are ministered to. Every act of
service belonging to the Christian church is so described. There must be prayer,
and the exhortation is, "Pray one for another" (James 5:16). There must be
confession, and the injunction is: "Confess your sins one to another" (James
5:16, R. V.). There must be exhortation, and the command is: "Exhort one
another" (Hebrews 3:13). There must be love, and we are enjoined to "love one
another" (1 Peter 1:22). There must be burden-bearing, and the exhortation is:
"Bear ye one another’s burdens" (Galatians 6:2). There must be comforting, and
the command is: "Wherefore comfort one another" (1 Thessalonians 4:18). So with
the worship of song. Its reciprocal character is emphasized, not only in the
passage just quoted, but also in the Epistle to the Colossians: "Teaching and
admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Colossians
3:16). This is according to the clearly defined method of the Spirit in this
dispensation. He establishes our fellowship with the Head of the church, and
through him with one another. All blessing in the body is mutual, and the
worship which is ordained to maintain and increase that blessing is likewise
mutual. As now the Spirit is the inspirer and director of the worship of God’s
church, he must have those who have been renewed and are indwelt by himself as
the instruments through whom he acts; and by a teaching of Scripture too clear
to be misunderstood all others are disqualified. How distinctly is this shown
even in the types and symbols of the old dispensation. The holy anointing
enjoined in Exodus for Aaron and his sons, is confessedly a type of the unction
of the Holy Ghost. And mark the rigid and sacred limitations in its use: "And
thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them that they may minister
unto me in the priest’s office. And thou shalt speak unto the children of
Israel, saying: This shall be a holy anointing oil unto me throughout your
generation. Upon man’s flesh it shall not be poured; neither shall ye make any
other like it, after the composition of it; it is holy, and shall be holy unto
you; whosoever compoundeth any like it, or whoso putteth any of it upon a
stranger, shall even be cut off from his people" (Exodus 30:30-33).

Now, of these minute directions and prescribed transactions we may say
confidently that "they happened unto them for ensamples and they are written for
our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world [ages] are come" (1 Corinthians
10:11). The three rigid prohibitions here named touch just the errors which are
most characteristic of the present generation. "Upon man’s flesh it shall not be
poured"; honoring the natural man, and exalting human nature into that place
which belongs only to the regenerate. This is the error of those who believe in
the universal sonship of the race, and call the carnal man divine. "Whosoever
putteth any of it upon a stranger." This is the sin of those who thrust into the
ministry and service of the church persons who have never by the new birth
through the Spirit been brought into the family of God, into the household of
faith. "Whosoever compoundeth any like it." This is the artificial imitation of
the Spirit’s offices and ministration. Let the Christian reader pause and ponder
well this last prohibition. In the story of the primitive church sample sins are
given for our warning, as well as specimen graces for our emulation. One such
sin, so subtle, so dangerous, and so constantly recurring in Christian history,
having taken the name of its first author and being called "simony," has been
handed down from generation to generation. "Because thou hast thought that the
gift of God can be purchased with money" is the solemn indictment against one
who had purposed to buy the power of the Holy Ghost. Many desire the gifts of
the Spirit who little care for the Spirit himself. Divine music is greatly
coveted. Why not, with our thousands of gold, buy this spiritual luxury? Bring
the singing men and singing women from the opera and from the concert hall; bid
them compound a potion of sanctuary music, which shall entrance all ears and
draw to the church those who could not be drawn thither by the plain attractions
of the Cross. But what is the exhortation of Scripture? "By him therefore let us
offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our
lips, giving thanks to his name" (Hebrews 13:15). This kind of sacrifice
costs--earnest prayer, deep communion, and the fullness of the Spirit; but no
sum of gold, however large, is adequate for its purchase, nor can any musician’s
art, however ingenious, imitate it. Is there no approach to the sin of simony in
those churches which spend thousands yearly in artistic music? And is not this
attempted purchase of the Holy Ghost closely linked with the other sin of
robbing God, considering how this lavish expenditure on artificial worship is
almost always accompanied with meagre giving for the carrying out of the Great
Commission? Our conclusion is, that the service of song has been committed to
the church, and to the church alone, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Some
of her number may be appointed to lead this service, if they themselves are
under the leadership of the Spirit. But the church cannot commit this divine
ministry to unsanctified hireling minstrels, without affront to the Spirit of
God and serious peril to her own communion with God.

If again any object that we are setting up an exaggerated and impossible ideal,
let the voice of experience be heard in evidence. Let pastors be called to
testify of the added blessing and fervor which have come to their sanctuaries
when this ideal has been approximately realized. Let history repeat its story of
song driven in times of apostasy into some narrow stall of the church, and into
the hands of a few trained monopolists of worship; and then, in eras of revival,
of the bursting of the barriers and the people of God seizing once more their
defrauded heritage and breaking forth, a great multitude, into "hallelujahs of
the heart." The annals of the Lollards, and of the Lutherans, and of the
Wesleyans, and of the Salvationists bear harmonious witness on this point, and
are deeply instructive.

3. The Holy Spirit in the Missions of the Church. In the Gospels which contain
the story of Christ’s earthly life we have the record of the giving of the Great
Commission: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."
In the Acts, which contains the story of the life of the Spirit, we have the
promise of the coming of the Executor of that Commission: "But ye shall receive
power when the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be my witnesses, both
in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth"
(Acts 1:8, R. V.). Nowhere is the hand of the Spirit more distinctly seen than
in the origination and superintendence of missions. The field is the world, the
sower is the disciple, and the seed is the word. The world can only be made
accessible through the Spirit--"When he is come he will convict the world of
sin"; the sower is energized only through the Spirit--"Ye shall receive the
power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you"; and the seed is only made productive
through the quickening of the Spirit--"He that soweth unto the Spirit shall of
the Spirit reap eternal life" (Galatians 6:8, R. V.). In the simple story of the
primitive mission, as recorded in the thirteenth of Acts, we see how every step
in the enterprise was originated and directed by the presiding Spirit. We
observe this:

(1) In the selection of missionaries: "The Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas
and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them" (13: 2).

(2) In their thrusting forth into the field: "So they, being sent forth by the
Holy Ghost, departed unto Seleucia" (13: 4).

(3) In empowering them to speak: "Then Saul, who also is called Paul, filled
with the Holy Ghost, said" (13: 9).

(4) In sustaining them in persecution: "And the disciples were filled with joy
and with the Holy Ghost" (13: 52).

(5) In setting the Divine seal upon their ministry among the Gentiles: "And God,
which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as
he did unto us" (15: 8).

(6) In counseling in difficult questions of missionary policy: "It seemed good
to the Holy Ghost and to us" (15: 28).

(7) In restraining the missionaries from entering into fields not yet appointed
by the Lord: They "were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the gospel in
Asia. . . They assayed to go into Bithynia but the Spirit suffered them not"
(16: 6, 7).

Very striking is this record of the ever-present, unfailing, and minute
direction of the Holy Ghost in all the steps of this divine enterprise. "But
this was in apostolic days," it will be said. Yes; but the promise of the Spirit
is that "He shall abide with you for the age." Unless the age has ended he is
still here, and still in office, and still entrusted with the responsibility of
carrying out that work which is dearest to the heart of our glorified Lord. Who
can say that there is not need in these days of a return to primitive methods
and of a resumption of the Church’s primitive endowments? The Holy Spirit is not
straitened in himself, but only in us. If the Church had faith to lean less on
human wisdom, to trust less in prudential methods, to administer less by
mechanical rules, and to recognize once more the great fact that, having
committed to her a supernatural work, she has appointed for her a supernatural
power, who can doubt that the grinding and groaning of our cumbrous missionary
machinery would be vastly lessened, and the demonstration of the Spirit be far
more apparent?

[1] Of course Catholic writers claim that the pope is the "Vicar of Christ" only
as being the mouth-piece of the Holy Ghost. But the Spirit has been given to the
church as a whole, that is to the body of regenerated believers, and to every
member of that body according to his measure. The sin of sacerdotalism is, that
it arrogates for a usurping few that which belongs to every member of Christ’s
mystical body. It is a suggestive fact that the name klêros, which Peter gives
to the church as the "flock of God," when warning the elders against being lords
over God’s heritage, now appears in ecclesiastical usage as the clergy, with its
orders of pontiff and prelates and lord bishops, whose appointed function it is
to exercise lordship over Christ’s flock.

[2] By the candlesticks being seven instead of one, as in the tabernacle, we are
taught that whereas in the Jewish dispensation, God’s visible church was one, in
the Gentile dispensation there are many visible churches; and that Christ
himself recognizes them alike.--Canon Garratt, "Commentary on the Revelation,"
p. 32.

[3] "The Work of the Holy Spirit in Man," by Pastor G. F. Tophel, p. 66.

[4] It was impossible up to the time of the glorification of Jesus to pray to
the Father in his name. It is a fullness of joy peculiar to the dispensation of
the Spirit to be able to do so.--Alford.

[5] It were well for us to give more heed to the voice of Christian history as
related to such questions as these. The rise of "sporadic sects" like the
"Quietists," the "Mystics," the "Friends," and the "Brethren," with their
emphasis on "the still voice" and "the inward leading," is very suggestive. If
we may not go so far as some of these go in the insistence on speaking only as
sensibly moved by the Spirit we may be admonished of the hard, artificial
man-made worship which made their protest necessary.


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  CHAPTER 45: 03.08.     THE INSPIRATION OF THE SPIRIT
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VIII THE INSPIRATION OF THE SPIRIT

"Have you visited the Cathedral of Freyburg, and listened to that wonderful
organist, who with such enchantment draws the tears from the traveler’s eyes
while he touches, one after another, his wonderful keys, and makes you hear by
turns the march of armies upon the beach, or the chanted prayer upon the lake
during the tempest, or the voices of praise after it is calm? Well, thus the
Eternal God, embracing at a glance the key-board of sixty centuries, touches by
turns, with the fingers of his Spirit, the keys which he had chosen for the
unity of his celestial hymn. He lays his left hand upon Enoch, the seventh from
Adam, and his right hand on John, the humble and sublime prisoner of Patmos.
From the one the strain is heard: ’Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of
his saints’; from the other: ’Behold he cometh with clouds.’ And between the
notes of this hymn of three thousand years there is eternal harmony, and the
angels stoop to listen, the elect of God are moved, and eternal life descends
into men’s souls."--Gaussen’s Theopneustia.

Inspiration signifies inbreathing. Both the scribe and the Scripture, both the
man of God and the word of God were divinely inbreathed. In that memorable
meeting of the risen Lord and his disciples within the closed doors, we read
that "He breathed on them and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost;
whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whosesoever sins ye
retain, they are retained" (John 20:22, R. V.). Well may the question of the
scribes concerning Jesus now arise in our hearts concerning his disciples: "Who
can forgive sins but God only?" And the answer should be: "True; God alone can
forgive sins. And it is only because the Spirit of God, who is God, is in the
apostles, endowing them with his divine prerogatives, that they are able to
exercise this high authority."

We are persuaded, however, that this commission was not given to all Christians,
though all have the Spirit. In a note in Olshausen’s Commentary the matter seems
to be correctly stated: "To the apostles was granted the power, absolute and
unconditioned, of binding and loosing, just as to them was given the power of
publishing truth unmixed with error. For both they possessed miraculous
spiritual endowments." Only we should say "sovereign" rather than "miraculous"
endowments. "The Spirit breatheth where he wills, and thou hearest his voice,"
said Jesus.[1] While miraculous gifts were not confined to the apostles, Christ
may have committed to these, and to these alone, the sovereign prerogative of
forgiving sins; gifts of healing, on the other hand, the working of miracles,
prophecy, the discerning of spirits, and tongues, being distributed throughout
the church; "but all these worketh one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one
severally even as he will" (1 Corinthians 12:11, R. V.). In a word, the action
of the Holy Ghost was supremely sovereign in the assignment of spiritual
offices, and when Jesus breathed on his apostles the Holy Ghost, and gave them
authority to remit sins, he separated them unto a prerogative of which others,
indwelt by the same Spirit, might have known nothing. It is very generally held
that the order of apostles ceased with the death of those who had seen the Lord
and companied with him until the day that he was received up. But the reason for
this cessation has been too little considered. May we not believe that the
apostles and their companions were commissioned to speak for the Lord until the
New Testament Scriptures, his authoritative voice, should be completed? If so,
in the apostolate we have a provisional inspiration; in the gospel a stereotyped
inspiration; the first being endowed with authority ad interim to remit sins,
and the second having this authority in perpetuam. The New Testament, as the
very mouthpiece of the Lord, pronounces forgiveness upon all in every generation
who truly repent and believe on the Son of God; and preachers in every age, with
the Bible in their hand, are authorized to do the same declaratively. But when
it is urged, as by Catholic writers, that this infallibility for teaching and
absolution, which was committed to the apostles, has descended through a
succession of ministers called the clergy, the answer seems to be, that this
authority has not been perpetuated in any body of men apart from the Scriptures,
but was transferred to the New Testament and lodged there for all time.
Historically, at least, it seems to have been the fact, that as the apostles and
prophets of the new dispensation disappeared, the Gospels and Epistles took
their place, and that henceforth the divine authoritative voice of the Spirit
could be distinctly recognized only in the written word. As coal has been called
"fossil sunlight," so the New Testament may be called fossil inspiration, the
supernatural illumination which fell upon the apostles being herein stored up
for the use of the church throughout the ages.[2]

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God [theopneustos--God-breathed], and
is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness" (3 Tim. 3: 16). As the Lord breathed the Spirit into certain men,
and thereby committed to them his own prerogative of forgiving sin, so he
breathed his Spirit into certain books and endowed them with his infallibility
in teaching truth. God did not choose to inspire all good books, though he has
chosen to inbreathe one book, thereby separating it and setting it apart from
all other books.[3] The phrase, "the Bible is simply literature," which some are
using to-day, as a suggestion against bibliolatry, is not true. Literature is
the letter; Scripture is the letter inspired by the Spirit. What Jesus said in
justification of his doctrine of the new birth is equally applicable to the
doctrine of inspiration: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that
which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Educate, develop, and refine the natural
man to the highest possible point, and yet he is not a spiritual man till,
through the new birth, the Holy Ghost renews and indwells him. So of literature;
however elevated its tone, however lofty its thought, it is not Scripture.
Scripture is literature indwelt by the Spirit of God. The absence of the Holy
Ghost from any writing constitutes the impassable gulf between it and Scripture.
Our Lord, in speaking of his own doctrine, uses the same language, to show its
separateness from common teaching which he employs above to mark the distinction
of the new man. He says: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth
nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life" (John
6:63, R. V.). Words they were, and in that respect, literature; but words
divinely inbreathed and therefore Scripture. In fine, the one fact which makes
the word of God a unique book, standing apart in solitary separateness from all
other writings, is that which also parts off the man of God from common men--the
indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Therefore we may say truly of the Bible, not
merely that it was inspired, but it is inspired; that the Holy Ghost breathes
within it, making it not only authoritative in its doctrine but life-giving in
its substance, so that they who receive its promises by faith "have been
begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word
of God which liveth and abideth" (1 Peter 1:23, R. V.).

Thus far in this volume we have been dwelling upon the various works and offices
of the Paraclete. Now we come to consider that the Holy Spirit not only acts but
speaks. Let us listen to the repeated affirmations of this fact. Seven times our
glorified Lord says, speaking in the Apocalypse: "He that hath an ear, let him
hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches" (Revelation 2:7). The Paraclete on
earth answers to the Paraclete above, so that to the voice from Heaven saying:
"Write, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth," the
response is heard: "Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their
labors," etc. (Revelation 14:13). This accords with the general tenor of
Scripture as to its own Author. In referring to the Old Testament, Peter says:
"This Scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the
mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took
Jesus" (Acts 1:16). And again: "David himself said by the Holy Ghost" (Mark
12:36), our Lord thus plainly recognizing the voice of the Spirit in the voice
of the psalmist. So again: "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was
in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me" (2 Samuel
23:2-3), and "Wherefore as the Holy Ghost saith, To-day if ye will hear his
voice" (Hebrews 3:7). And what is it to speak? Is it not to express thought in
language? The difference between thinking and saying is simply the difference of
words. Therefore, if the Holy Ghost "saith," we are to find in the words of
Scripture the exact substance of what he saith. Hence verbal inspiration seems
absolutely essential for conveying to us the exact thought of God. And while
many affect to ridicule the idea as mechanical and paltry, the conduct and
method of scholars of every shade of belief show how generally it is accepted.
For, why the minute study of the words of Scripture carried on by all
expositors, their search after the precise shade of verbal significance, their
attention to the minutest details of language, and to all the delicate coloring
of mood and tense and accent? The high scholars who speak lightly of the theory
of literal inspiration of the Scriptures by their method of study and exegesis
are they who put the strongest affirmation on the doctrine which they deny. Then
we cannot forget what we imply when we say that language is the expression of
thought. Words determine the size and shape of ideas. As exactly as the coin
answers to the die in which it is struck, does the thought answer to the word by
which it is uttered. Vary the language by the slightest modification, and you by
so much vary the thought. As ultra spiritualism interprets Paul’s words "a
spiritual body," to mean a ghost, when the accent is as strongly on the sõma as
on the pneumatichon, his real thought evidently being that of a body
spiritualized; so some, remembering that "the letter killeth," would etherealize
Scripture by telling us that the divine idea is the chief thing, and the
language quite secondary. But wisely and well has Martin Luther reminded us that
"Christ did not say of his Spirit, but of his words, they are spirit and life."
To deny that it is the Holy Ghost who speaks in Scripture, is an intelligible
position; but admitting that he speaks, we can only understand his thoughts by
listening to his words. True, he may beget within us emotions too deep for
expression, as when "The Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with
groanings which cannot be uttered" (Romans 8:26). But the idea which is really
intelligible is the idea that is embodied in speech. For finite minds, at least,
words are the measure of comprehensible thoughts. Evidently Jesus claims for his
teaching not only inspiration, but verbal inspiration, when he says that his
words are "spirit and life." And to this agrees the saying of Paul, in speaking
of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost: "But God hath revealed them unto us by his
Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For
what man knoweth the things of man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even
so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have
received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we
might know the things which are freely given to us of God, which things also we
speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost
teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual" (1 Corinthians 2:10-13).
And what if one objects that this theory makes inspiration purely mechanical,
and turns the writers of Scripture into stenographers, whose office is simply to
transcribe the words of the Spirit as they are dictated? It must be confessed
that there is much in Scripture to support this view of the case. Should we see
a student who, having taken down the lecture of a profound philosopher, was now
studying diligently to comprehend the sense of the discourse which he had
written, we should understand simply that he was a pupil and not a master; that
he had nothing to do with originating either the thoughts or the words of the
lecture, but was rather a disciple whose province it was to understand what he
had transcribed, and so be able to communicate it to others. And who can deny
that this is the exact picture of what we have in the following passage from
Scripture: "Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched
diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching
what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify,
when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should
follow; unto whom it was revealed," etc. (1 Peter 1:10-11). Here were inspired
writers, studying the meaning of what they themselves had written. If they were
prophets on the manward side, they were evidently pupils on the Godward side.
With all possible allowance for the human peculiarities of the writers, they
must have been reporters of what they heard, rather than the formulators of that
which they had been made to understand. How nearly this also describes the
attitude of Christ,--a hearer that he might be a teacher: "All things that I
have heard of my Father I have made known unto you" (John 15:15); a reporter
that he might be a revealer: "I have given unto them the words which thou gavest
me" (John 17:8). In these days scholars are very jealous for the human element
in inspiration; but the sovereign element is what most impresses the diligent
student of this subject. "The Spirit breatheth where he wills." Concerning
regeneration by the Holy Ghost, we are carefully told that it is "not of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God"; and concerning
inspiration by the Spirit, the teaching is equally explicit: "For no prophecy
ever came by the will of man, but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy
Ghost" (2 Peter 1:21, R. V.). The style of Scripture is, no doubt, according to
the traits and idiosyncracies of the several writers, as the light within the
cathedral takes on its various hues from passing through the stained windows;
but to say that the thoughts of the Bible are from the Spirit, and the language
from men, creates a dualism in revelation not easy to justify; so that we must
quote with entire approval the words of an eminent writer upon this subject:
"The opinion that the subject-matter alone of the Bible proceeded from the Holy
Spirit, while its language was left to the unaided choice of the various
writers, amounts to that fantastic notion which is the grand fallacy of many
theories of inspiration; namely, that two spiritual agencies were in operation,
one of which produced the phraseology in the outward form, while the other
created within the soul the conceptions and thoughts of which such phraseology
was the expression. The Holy Spirit, on the contrary, as the productive
principle, embraces the entire activity of those whom he inspires, rendering
their language the word of God."[4]

If it be urged that the quotations which the New Testament makes from the Old
are rarely ipsissima verba, the language being in many instances greatly
changed, it should be noted in reply how significant even these changes often
are. If the Holy Spirit directed in the writing of both books, he would have a
sovereign right to alter the phraseology, if need be, from the one to the other.
In the opinion of many scholars the change of "the Redeemer shall come to Zion,
and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob," in Isaiah 59:20, to "There
shall come out of Zion the Deliverer," in Romans 11:26, is an inspired and
intentional change.[5] So of the citation from Amos 9:11, "In that day will I
raise up the tabernacle that is fallen," as given in Acts 15:16, "After these
things I will return, and I will build again the tabernacle of David which is
fallen"; the modification of the language seems designed, in order to make clear
its significance in its present setting. Many other examples might be given of a
reshaping of his own words by the divine Author of Scripture. On the other hand,
the constant recurrence of the same words and phrases in books of the Bible most
widely separated in the time and circumstances of their composition, strongly
suggests identity of authorship amid the variety of penmanship. The
individuality of the writers was no doubt preserved, only that their
individuality was subordinated to the sovereign individuality of the Holy
Spirit. It is with the written word as with the incarnate Word. Because Christ
is divine, he is more truly human than any whom the world has ever seen; and
because the Bible is supernatural, it is natural as no other book which was ever
written; its divinity lifts it above those faults of style which are the fruits
of self-consciousness and ambition. Whether we read the Old Testament story of
Abraham’s servant seeking a bride for Isaac, or the New Testament narrative of
the walk of the risen Christ with his disciples to Emmaus, the inimitable
simplicity of the diction would make us think that we were listening to the
dialect of the angels who never sinned in thought, and therefore cannot sin in
style, did we not know rather that it is the phraseology of the Holy Spirit.[6]
An eminent German theologian has written a sentence so profoundly significant
that we here reproduce it in Italics: "We can in fact speak with good reason of
a language of the Holy Ghost. For it lies in the Bible plainly before our eyes,
how the Divine Spirit, who is the agent of revelation, has fashioned for himself
a quite peculiar religious dialect out of the speech of that people which forms
its theatre."[7] So true do we hold this saying to be, that it seems to us quite
impossible that the exact meaning of many of the terms of the New Testament
Greek should be found in a Lexicon of classic Greek. Though the verbal form is
the same in both, the inbreathed spirit may have imparted such new significance
to old words, that to employ a secular dictionary for translating the sacred
oracles, were almost like calling an unregenerate man to interpret the mysteries
of the regenerate life. Do we not know how modern progress and discovery have
even put new meanings into many English words, so that one must be in "the
spirit of the age" in order to comprehend them?[8] Thus likewise, even in the
work of verbal criticism, it is essential that one possess the spirit of Christ
in order to translate the words of Christ. As to the question of the "inerrancy
of Scripture," as the modern phrase is, we may well pass by many minor
arguments, and emphasize the one great reason for holding this view, viz.: If it
is God the Holy Ghost who speaks in Scripture, then the Bible is the word of
God, and like God, infallible. A recent brilliant writer has challenged us to
show where the Bible anywhere calls itself "The word of God."[9] The most
elementary student of the subject can, with the aid of a concordance, easily
point out the passages which so describe it. But we dwell on the fact that is
not only called o logos tou theon, "the Word of God," but ta logia tou theou,
"the oracles of God." This collective name of the Scriptures is most
significant. We need not inquire of the heathen as to the meaning which they put
upon the words as the authoritative utterances of their gods; let the usage of
Scripture make its own impression: "What advantage then hath the Jew? or what is
the profit of circumcision? Much every way; first of all, that they were
intrusted with the oracles of God" (Romans 3:2, R. V.).[10] This comprehensive
expression is very helpful to our faith. When critics are assailing the books of
the Old Testament in detail, the Holy Spirit authenticates them for us in their
entirety. As Abigail prayed for a soul "bound in the bundle of life" with the
Lord, so here an apostle gives us the books of the Law and the Prophets and the
Psalms bound together in one bundle of inspired authority. Stephen, in like
manner, speaks of his nation as "those who received the lively oracles (of God)
to give unto us" (Acts 7:38); and Peter says, "If any man speak let him speak as
the oracles of God" (1 Peter 4:11). And not only this; the same apostles who
submitted to the authority of the Old Testament as the oracles of God,
themselves claimed to write as the oracles of God in the New Testament. "If any
man," says Paul, "think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him
acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the
Lord" (1 Corinthians 14:37). "We are of God," writes John. "He that knoweth God
heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us" (1 John 4:16). These claims
are too great to be put forth concerning fallible writings. Admitting their
premises, the Jews were right in charging Jesus with blasphemy, in that being a
man he made himself God. If Christ is not God, he is not even a good man. And if
the Scriptures are not inerrant, they are worse than errant; since, being
literature, they make themselves the word of God. And what if it be said that
there are irreconcilable contradictions in this book which calls itself the
oracles of God? Two things may be said: First, it should be expected that under
"the scientific method" such contradictions should appear and constantly
multiply. The Bible is a sensitive plant, which shuts itself up at the touch of
mere critical investigation. In the same paragraph in which it claims that its
very words are the words of the Holy Spirit, it repudiates the scientific method
as futile for the understanding of those words: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard,"--and insists on the spiritual method as alone adequate,--"but God hath
revealed them unto us by his Spirit" (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). Not only does the
Bible not yield roses to the critic, it yields the thorns and briars of hopeless
contradiction. "Intellige ut credos verbum meum," said Augustine to the
rationalists of his day, "sed crede ut intelligas verbum Dei." "Understand my
word, that you may believe it; believe God’s word, that you may understand it."
Faith holds not only the keys of all the creeds, but of all the contradictions.
He who starts out and proceeds under the conviction that the Bible is the
infallible word of God, will find discrepancies constantly turning into unisons
under his study. And this remark leads to the second observation: that the
contradictions of man may really be the harmonies of God. An uncultivated
listener, hearing an oratorio of one of the great masters, would detect discords
again and again in the strains; and as a matter of fact, what are called
"accidentals" in music are discords, but discords inserted to heighten the
harmony. Thus, as one after another of the alleged discrepancies of Scripture
having been noted and made to jar upon the ear have then been reconciled, with
what an emphatic and heightened harmony have the words of the psalmist, speaking
by the Holy Ghost, fallen on our ear: "The law of the Lord is perfect,
converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple"!
There seems to the critic to be historic error in the statement of Stephen that
Jacob was buried at Sychem (Acts 7:16) instead of in the field of Machpelah
before Mamre, as recorded in Genesis 50:13, just as it was once thought that
Luke had made a mistake, not to be explained away, in his reference to Cyrenius
in chapter 2: 1, 2. But as the latter contradiction has disappeared, only
confirming the veracity of Scripture by the investigation which it has called
forth, so may the former. And so also with such alleged discrepancies as that
between the record in one place that King Solomon had four thousand stalls for
horses, and in another forty thousand; or that of the statement in one passage
that King Josias began to reign at eight years of age, and in another, at
eighteen. What if we freely admit that we cannot reconcile these statements?
That does not prove that they are not reconcilable. The history of solved
contradictions has certainly shown this, that as "the foolishness of God is
wiser than men, and the weakness of God stronger than men," so the discords of
God are more harmonious than men.

We may say, in closing this chapter, that almost the highest proof of the
infallibility of Scripture is the practical one, that we have proved it so; that
as the coin of the State has always been found able to buy the amount
represented on its face, so the prophecies and the promises of Holy Scripture
have yielded their face value to those who have taken pains to prove them. If
they have not always done so, it is probable that they have not yet matured.
Certainly there are multitudes of Christians who have so far proved the veracity
of Scripture that they are ready to trust it without reserve in all that it
pledges for the world yet unseen and the life yet unrealized. "Believe that thou
mayest know," then, is the admonition which Scripture and history combine to
enforce. In the farewell of that rare saint, Adolph Monod, these golden words
occur: "When I shall enter the invisible world, I do not expect to find things
different from what the word of God represented them to me here. The voice I
shall then hear will be the same I now hear upon the earth, and I shall say,
’This is indeed what God said to me; and how thankful I am that I did not wait
till I had seen in order to believe.’"

[1] John 3:8. "The wind bloweth where it listeth." Without pronouncing
dogmatically, it must be said that the translation of Bengel and some
others--"The Spirit breatheth where he wills, and thou hearest his voice"--has
reasons in its favor which are well-nigh irresistible; e.g., If to pneuma here
is the wind, it has one meaning in the first part of the sentence and another
meaning in the second; and that meaning too, one which it bears in no other
instance of the more than two hundred and seventy uses of the word in the New
Testament. It is not the word used in Acts 2:2, as might be expected if it
signified wind. Then it seems unnatural to ascribe volition to the wind, thelei.
On the contrary, if the words apply to the Spirit, the saying is in entire
harmony with other Scriptures, which affirm the sovereignty of the Holy Ghost in
regeneration (John 1:13) and in the control and direction of those who are the
subjects of the new birth (2 Corinthians 12:4-11).

[2] The proof that the inspiration of the apostles and scribes of the New
Testament was not transmitted to successors is thus stated by Neander: "A
phenomenon singular in its kind is the striking difference between the writings
of the apostles and those of the apostolic fathers, so nearly their
contemporaries. In other instances transitions are wont to be gradual, but in
this instance we observe a sudden change. There is no gentle gradation here, but
all at once an abrupt transition from one style of language to another--a
phenomenon which should lead us to acknowledge the fact of a special agency of
the Divine Spirit in the souls of the apostles and of a new creative element in
the first period."--Church History, II., 405.

[3] There are the strongest reasons for rejecting the rendering of this passage
as given in the Revised Version: "Every Scripture inspired of God is also
profitable", etc. The reader will find the objections to this rendering
powerfully and conclusively set forth in Tregelles on Daniel. Note, p. 267.

[4] Lee on the "Inspiration of the Holy Scripture," pp. 32, 33.

[5] See Lange’s "Commentary" in loco.

[6] I am satisfied only with the style of Scripture. My own style and the style
of all other men cannot satisfy me. If I read only three or four verses I am
sure of their divinity on account of their inimitableness. It is the style of
the heavenly court.--Oetinger.

[7] Rothe, "Dogmatics," p. 238.

[8] For example, Shakespeare, and Milton, and Dryden, employ the words "car" and
"engine" and "train" in their writings; but living before the age of steam and
railways they knew nothing of the meaning which these terms convey to us. And it
is possible that Homer and Plato knew as little of the meaning of such words as
aiôn and paraklêtos, as found in the revelation of Jesus Christ, by whom "the
ages were framed" and the Comforter sent down.

[9] Dr. R. F. Horton, in "Verbum Dei."

[10] The apostle in calling the Old Testament Scriptures the "oracles of God,"
clearly recognizes them as divinely inspired books. The Jewish church was the
trustee and guardian of these oracles till the coming of Christ. Now the
Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are committed to the guardianship of the
Christian Church.--Dr. Philip Schaff.


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  CHAPTER 46: 03.09.     THE CONVICTION OF THE SPIRIT
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IX THE CONVICTION OF THE SPIRIT

"The Comforter in every part of his threefold work glorifies Christ. In
convincing of sin he convinces us of the sin of not believing on Christ. In
convincing us of righteousness, he convinces us of the righteousness of Christ,
of that righteousness which was made manifest in Christ going to the Father, and
which he received to bestow on all such as should believe in him. And lastly, in
convincing of judgment, he convinces us that the prince of the World was judged
in the life and by the death of Christ. Thus throughout, Christ is glorified;
and that which the Comforter shows to us relates in all its parts to the life
and work of the incarnate Son of God."--Julius Charles Hare.

"And when he is come he will convict the world in respect of sin, and of
righteousness, and of judgment" (John 16:8, R. V.). It is too large a conclusion
which many seem to draw from these words, that since the day of Pentecost the
Spirit has been universally diffused in the world, touching hearts everywhere,
among Christians and heathen, among the evangelized and the unevangelized alike,
and awakening in them a sense of sin. Does not our Lord say in this same
discourse concerning the Comforter: "Whom the world cannot receive, because it
seeth him not neither knoweth him"? (John 14:17) With these words should be
associated the limitation which Jesus makes in the gift of the Paraclete: "If I
depart I will send him unto you." Christ’s disciples were to be the recipients
and distributors of the Holy Ghost, and his church the mediator between the
Spirit and the world. "And when he is come (to you) he will reprove the world."
And to complete the exposition, we may connect this promise with the Great
Commission, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,"
and conclude that when the Lord sends his messengers into the world, the Spirit
of truth goes with them, witnessing to the message which they bear, convincing
of the sin which they reprove, and revealing the righteousness which they
proclaim. We are not clear to affirm that the conviction of the Spirit here
promised goes beyond the church’s evangelizing, though there is every reason to
believe that it invariably accompanies the faithful preaching of the word.

It will help us then to a clear conception of the subject, if we consider the
Spirit of truth as sent unto the Church, testifying of Christ, and bringing
conviction to the world. As there is a threefold work of Christ, as prophet,
priest, and king, so there is a threefold conviction of the Spirit answering
thereto: "And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin and
of righteousness and of judgment; of sin, because they believe not on me; of
righteousness, because I go to the Father and ye behold me no more; of judgment,
because the prince of this world hath been judged" (John 16:8-12, R. V.). It is
concerning the testimony of Christ as he spake to men in the days of his flesh;
and concerning the work of Christ now carried on in his intercession at God’s
right hand; and concerning the sentence of Christ when he shall come again to be
our judge, that this witness of the Spirit has to do.

"He shall convince the world of sin." Why is he needed for this conviction since
conscience is present in every human breast, and is doing his work so
faithfully? We reply: Conscience is the witness to the law; the Spirit is the
witness to grace. Conscience brings legal conviction; the Spirit brings
evangelical conviction; the one begets a conviction unto despair, the other a
conviction unto hope.

"Of sin, because they believe not on me," describes the ground of the Holy
Spirit’s conviction. The entrance of Christ into the world rendered possible a
sin hitherto unknown: "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had
sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin" (John 15:22). Evil seems to have
required the presence of incarnate goodness, in order to its fullest
manifestation. Hence the deep significance of the prophecy spoken over the
cradle of Jesus: "Behold this child is set for the fall and rising again of many
in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against, that the thoughts of
many hearts may be revealed" (Luke 2:34-35). All the most hideous sins of human
nature came out during the betrayal and trial and passion of our Lord. In that
"hour and power of darkness" these sins seem indeed to have been but imperfectly
recognized. But when the day of Pentecost had come, with its awful revealing
light of the Spirit of truth, then there was great contrition in Jerusalem--a
contrition the sting of which we find in the charge of Peter: "Jesus of
Nazareth, whom ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." Was
not that deep conviction, following the gift of the Spirit, in which three
thousand were brought to repentance in a single day, a conviction of sin because
they had not believed on Christ? For our reproof the Holy Ghost presents another
side of the same fact, calling us to repentance, not for having taken part in
crucifying Christ, but for having refused to take part in Christ crucified; not
for having been guilty of delivering him up to death, but for having refused to
believe in him who was "delivered for our offenses and raised again for our
justification." Wherever, by the preaching of the gospel, the fact of Christ
having died for the sins of the world is made known, this guilt becomes
possible. The sin of disbelieving on Christ is, therefore, the great sin now,
because it summarizes all other sins. He bore for us the penalties of the law;
and thus our obligation, which was originally to the law, is transferred to him.
To refuse faith in him, therefore, is to repudiate the claims of the law which
he fulfilled and to repudiate the debt of infinite love which, by his sacrifice,
we have incurred. Nevertheless, the Spirit of truth brings home this sin against
the Lord, not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be
saved. In a word, as has been well said, "it is not the sin-question but the
Son-question" which we really raise now in preaching the gospel. "Christ having
perfectly satisfied God about sin, the question now between God and your heart
is: Are you perfectly satisfied with Christ as the alone portion of your soul?
Christ has settled every other to the glory of God." In dealing with the guilty
Jews, it was the historical fact which the Holy Ghost urged for their
conviction: "Ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and killed the Prince of Life"
(Acts 3:14-15). In dealing with us Gentiles, it is rather the theological or
evangelical fact: "Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the
unjust, that he might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18), and you are condemned
that you have not believed on him and confessed him as Saviour and Lord. It is
the same sin in the last instance, but viewed upon its reverse side, if we may
say it. In the one case it is the guilt of despising and rejecting the Son of
God; in the other, it is the guilt of not believing in him who was despised and
rejected of men. Yet if submissively yielded to, the Spirit will lead us from
this first stage of revelation to the second, since what Andrew Fuller said of
the doctrines of theology is equally true of the convictions of the Spirit, that
"they are united together like chain-shot, so that whichever one enters the
heart the other must certainly follow."

"Of righteousness, because I go to the Father and ye see me no more." Not until
he had been seated in the heavenly places had Christ perfected righteousness for
us. As he was "delivered for our offenses and raised again for our
justification," so must he be enthroned for our assurance. It is necessary to
see Jesus standing at the right hand of God, in order to know ourselves
"accepted in the Beloved." How beautiful the culmination of Isaiah’s
passion-prophecy wherein, accompanying the promise that "he shall bear the sin
of many," is the prediction that "by his knowledge shall my righteous servant
justify many"! But he must be shown to be righteous, in order that he may
justify; and this is what his exaltation does. "It was the proof that him whom
the world condemned, God justified--that the stone which the builders rejected,
God made the Headstone of the corner--that him whom the world denied and lifted
up on a cross of shame in the midst of two thieves, God accepted and lifted up
in the midst of the throne."[1] The words "and because ye see me no more," which
have perplexed the commentators, seem to us to give the real clue to the meaning
of the whole passage. So long as the High Priest was within the veil, and
unseen, the congregation of Israel could not be sure of their acceptance. Hence
the eager anxiety with which they waited his coming out, with the assurance that
God had received the propitiation offered on their behalf. Christ, our great
High Priest, has entered into the Holy of Holies by his own blood. Until he
comes forth again at his second advent, how can we be assured that his sacrifice
for us is accepted? We could not be, unless he had sent out one from his
presence to make known this fact to us. And this is precisely what he has done
in the gift of the Holy Ghost. "Who being the brightness of his glory, and the
express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power,
when he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of the
Majesty on high" (Hebrews 1:3). There he will remain throughout the whole
duration of the great day of atonement, which extends from ascension to advent.
But in order that his church may have immediate assurance of acceptance with the
Father, through his righteous servant, he sends forth the Paraclete to certify
the fact; and the presence of the Spirit in the midst of the church is proof
positive of the presence of Jesus in the midst of the throne; as is said by
Peter on the day of Pentecost; "Therefore being by the right hand of God
exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he
hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear" (Acts 2:33).

Now the Lord’s words seem plain to us. Because he ascends to the Father, to be
seen no more until his second coming, the Spirit meantime comes down to attest
his presence and approval with the Father as the perfectly righteous One. How
clearly this comes out in Peter’s defense before the Council: "The God of our
fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted
with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to
Israel and forgiveness of sins; and we are witnesses of these things, and so
also is the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him" (Acts
5:30-32). Why this two-fold witness? The reason is obvious. The disciples could
bear testimony to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, but not to his
enthronement; that event was beyond the ken of human vision; and so the Holy
Ghost, who had been cognizant of that fact in heaven, must be sent down as a
joint-witness with the apostles, that thus the whole circle of redemption-truth
might be attested. Therein was the promise of Jesus in his last discourse
literally fulfilled: "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you
from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he
shall testify of me; and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with
me from the beginning" (John 15:26-27). As we have said, it is not only the
enthronement of Christ in righteous approval with the Father that must be
certified, but the acceptance of his sacrificial work as a full and satisfying
ground of our reconciliation with the Father. And the Spirit proceeding from God
is alone competent to bear to us this assurance. Therefore in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, after the reiterated statement of our Lord’s exaltation at the right
hand of God, it is added: "For by one offering he hath perfected forever them
that are sanctified, whereof the Holy Ghost is also a witness to us" (Hebrews
10:14-15). In a word, he whom we have known on the cross as "the Lamb of God
that taketh away the sins of the world," must now be known to us on the throne
as "the Lord our righteousness." But though the angels and the glorified in
heaven see Jesus, once crucified, now "made both Lord and Christ," we see him
not. Therefore it is written that "no man can say Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy
Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3, R. V.). So also we are told that "if any man sin we
have a Paraclete with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1); but
we can only know Christ as such through that "other Paraclete" sent forth from
the Father. It was promised that "when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he
shall not speak from himself; but what things soever he shall hear, these shall
he speak" (John 16:13, R. V.). Hearing the ascriptions of worthiness lifted up
to Christ in heaven, and beholding him who was made a little lower than the
angels for the suffering of death, now "crowned with glory and honor," he
communicates what he sees and hears to the church on earth. Thus, as he in his
earthly life, through his own outshining and self-evidencing perfection, "was
justified in the spirit"; so we, recognizing him standing for us in glory, and
now "of God made unto us righteousness," are also "justified in the name of the
Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:11).

Thus, though unseen by the church during all the time of his high-priestly
ministry, our Lord has sent to his church one whose office it is to bear witness
to all he is and all he is doing while in heaven, that so we may have "boldness
and access with confidence by the faith of him," and that so we may come boldly
to the throne of grace, "the Holy Ghost this signifying"--what he could not
under the old covenant--"that the way into the holiest of all" (Hebrews 9:8) has
been made manifest. And yet--strange paradox--in this identical discourse in
which Jesus speaks to his disciples of seeing him no more, he says: "Yet a
little while and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me; because I live ye
shall live also" (John 14:19); words which by common consent refer to the same
time of Christ’s continuance within the veil. But it is now by the inward
vision, which the world has not, that they are to behold him. And they are to
behold him for the world, since Christ said of him: "Whom the world cannot
receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him." And yet it is "to
convince the world" "of sin and of righteousness and of judgment" that the
Spirit was to be sent. How shall we make it plain? When the sun retires beyond
the horizon at night, the world, our hemisphere, sees him no more; yet the moon
sees him, and all night long catches his light and throws it down upon us. So
the world sees not Christ in the gracious provisions of redemption which he
holds for us in heaven, but through the illumination of the Comforter the church
sees him; as it is written: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have
entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that
love him; but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit" (1 Corinthians
2:9-10). And the Church seeing these things, communicates what she sees to the
world. Christ is all and in all; and the Spirit receives and reflects him to the
world through his people. The moon above, the church below, A wondrous race they
run; But all their radiance, all their glow, Each borrows of its sun.

"Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." Here, we believe, is
a still farther advance in the revelation of the gospel, and not a retreat to
the doctrine of a future judgment, as some would teach. For we repeat our
conviction, that in this entire discourse the Holy Spirit is revealed to us as
an evangel of Grace, and not as a sheriff of the Law. Hear the Apostle Peter
once more, as, pointing to him who had been raised from the dead and seated in
the heavenlies, he says: "By him every one that believeth is justified from all
things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:39, R.
V.). Justification, in the evangelical sense, is but another name for judgment
prejudged and condemnation ended. In the enthroned Christ every question about
sin is answered, and every claim of a violated law is absolutely met; and though
there is no abatement in the demands of the decalogue, yet because "Christ has
become the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth," now
"grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."
Strange paradox set forth in Isaiah’s passion psalm: "By his stripes we are
healed," as though it were told us that sin’s smiting had procured sin’s
remission. And so it is. If the Holy Spirit shows us the wounds of the dying
Christ for condemning us, he immediately shows us the wounds of the exalted
Christ for comforting us. His glorified body is death’s certificate of
discharge, the law’s receipt in full, assuring us that all the penalties of
transgression have been endured, and the Sin-bearer acquitted. The meaning of
this last conviction seems plain therefore: "Of judgment, because the prince of
this world is judged." Recall the words of Jesus as he stood face to face with
the cross: "Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this
world be cast out" (John 12:31). "The accuser of the brethren" is at last
non-suited and ejected from court. The death of Christ is the death of death,
and of the author of death also. "That through death he might destroy him that
hath the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who, through fear
of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:14-15). If the
relation of Satan to our judgment and condemnation is mysterious, this much is
clear, from this and several passages, that Christ by his cross has delivered us
from his dominion. We must believe that Jesus spoke the literal truth when he
said: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth him
that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed
out of death into life" (John 5:24, R. V.). On the cross Christ judged sin and
acquitted those who believe on him; and in heaven he defends them against every
re-arrest by a violated law. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them
that are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). Thus the threefold conviction brings the
sinner the three stages of Christ’s redemptive work, past judgment and past
condemnation into eternal acceptance with the Father. In striking antithesis
with all this, we have an instance in the Acts of the threefold conviction of
conscience, when Paul before Felix "reasoned of righteousness, and temperance,
and the judgment to come" (Acts 24:25). Here the sin of a profligate life was
laid bare as the apostle discoursed of chastity; the claims of righteousness
were vindicated, and the certainty of coming judgment exhibited; and with the
only effect that "Felix trembled." So it must ever be under the convictions of
conscience,--compunction but not peace. We have also an instructive contrast
exhibited in Scripture, between the co-witness of the Spirit and the co-witness
of conscience. "The Spirit himself beareth witness (summarturei) that we are the
children of God" (Romans 8:16). Here is the assurance of sonship, with all the
divine inward persuasion of freedom from condemnation which it carries. On the
other hand is the conviction of the heathen, who have only the law written in
their hearts: "Their conscience bearing witness (summarturousês), their thoughts
one with another accusing, or else excusing them, in the day when God shall
judge the secrets of men" (Romans 2:15-16). Conscience can "accuse," and how
universally it does so, abundant testimony of Christian missionaries shows; and
conscience can "excuse," which is the method that guilty thoughts invariably
suggest; but conscience cannot justify. Only the Spirit of truth, whom the
Father hath sent forth into the world, can do this. The work of the two
witnesses may be thus set in contrast:

Conscience Convinces-- The Comforter Convinces-- Of sin committed; Of sin
committed; Of righteousness impossible; Of righteousness imputed; Of judgment
accomplished. Of judgment impending.

Happily these two witnesses may be harmonized, as they are by that atonement
which reconciles man to himself, as well as reconciles man to God. Very
significantly does the Epistle to the Hebrews, in inviting our approach to God
make, as the condition of that approach, the "having our hearts sprinkled from
an evil conscience." As the High Priest carried the blood into the Holy of
Holies in connection with the old dispensation, so does the Spirit take the
blood of Christ into the inner sanctuary of our spirit in the more wondrous
economy of the new dispensation, in order that he may "cleanse your conscience
from dead works to serve the living God" (Hebrews 9:14). Blessed is the man who
is thus made at one with himself while made at one with God, so that he can say:
"I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in
the Holy Ghost" (Romans 9:11). The believer’s conscience dwelling in the Spirit,
even as his life is "hid with Christ in God," both having the same mind and
bearing the same testimony--this is the end of redemption and this is the
victory of the atoning blood.

[1] For as the ministry of Enoch was sealed by his reception into heaven, and as
the ministry of Elijah was also abundantly proved by his translation, so also
the righteousness and innocence of Christ. But it was necessary that the
ascension of Christ should be more fully attested, because upon his
righteousness, so fully proved by his ascension, we must depend for all our
righteousness. For if God had not approved him after his resurrection, and he
had not taken his seat at his right hand, we could by no means be accepted of
God.--Cartwright.


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  CHAPTER 47: 03.10.     THE ASCENT OF THE SPIRIT
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X THE ASCENT OF THE SPIRIT

"The Apostle Paul evidently saw the redemption of the bodies of the saints and
their manifestation as the sons of God and with them the redemption of the whole
creation from its present bondage to be the complete harvest of the Spirit,
whereof the church doth now possess only the first-fruits, that is, the first
ripe grains which could be formed into a sheaf and presented in the temple as a
wave-offering unto the Lord. ’That Holy Spirit of Promise which is the earnest
of our inheritance,’ saith the same apostle--the earnest, like the first-fruit,
being only a part of that which is to be earned . . . yet a sufficient surety
that the whole shall in the fullness of the times, be likewise ours."--Edward
Irving.

"He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens." So
writes the apostle concerning the Paraclete who is now with the Father, "Jesus
Christ the righteous" (Ephesians 4:9). And what is true of the one is true of
that "other Paraclete," the Holy Ghost, who was sent down to abide with us
during this age. When he has accomplished his temporal mission in the world he
will return to heaven in the body which he has fashioned for himself--that "one
new man," the regenerate church, gathered out from both Jews and Gentiles during
this dispensation. For what is the rapture of the saints predicted by the
apostle when, at the sound of the trumpet and the resurrection of the righteous
dead, "we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in
the clouds to meet the Lord in the air?" (1 Thessalonians 4:17). It is the
earthly Christ rising to meet the heavenly Christ; the elect church, gathered in
the Spirit and named o christos, (1 Corinthians 12:12,) taken up to be united in
glory with "Christ, the Head of the church, himself the Saviour of the body"
(Ephesians 5:23, R. V.). In the council at Jerusalem this is announced as the
distinctive work of the Spirit in this dispensation "to gather out a people for
his name." It was not by accident and as a term of derision that the first
believers received their name; but "the disciples were divinely called
Christians first in Antioch" (Acts 11:26). This was the name pre-ordained for
them, that "honorable name" by which they are called (James 2:7). When,
therefore, this out-gathering shall have been accomplished, and the people for
his name shall be completed, they will be translated to be one with him in
glory, as they were one with him in name, the Head taking the body to himself,
"as Christ also, the church" (Ephesians 5:29). And this translation of the
church is to be effected by the Holy Spirit who dwells in her. "But if the
Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up
Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that
dwelleth in you" (Romans 8:11). It is not by acting upon the body of Christ from
without, but by energizing it from within, that the Holy Ghost will effect its
glorification. In a word, the Comforter, who on the day of Pentecost, came down
to form a body out of flesh, will at the Parousia return to heaven in that body,
having fashioned it like unto the body of Christ, that it may be presented to
him "not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, . . . holy and without
blemish" (Ephesians 5:27). Is it meant to be implied in what is here said that
the Comforter is to leave the world at the time of the advent, to return no
more? By no means. And yet what is meant needs to be very explicitly set forth.
A very able writer on the doctrine of the Spirit makes this remark, so striking
and yet so true that we have put it in italics: "As Christ shall ultimately give
up his kingdom to the Father (1 Corinthians 15:24-28), so the Holy Ghost shall
give up his administration to the Son, when he comes in glory and all his holy
angels with him."[1] The church and the kingdom are not identical terms, if we
mean by the kingdom the visible reign and government of Jesus Christ on earth.
In another sense they are identical. As the King, so the kingdom. The King is
present now in the world, only invisibly and by the Holy Spirit; so the kingdom
is now present invisibly and spiritually in the hearts of believers. The King is
to come again visibly and gloriously; so shall the kingdom appear visibly and
gloriously. In other words, the kingdom is already here in mystery; it is to be
here in manifestation. Now the spiritual kingdom is administered by the Holy
Ghost, and it extends from Pentecost to Parousia. At the Parousia--the appearing
of the Son of Man in glory--when he shall take unto himself his great power and
reign (Revelation 11:17), when he who has now gone into a far country, to be
invested with a kingdom, shall return and enter upon his government (Luke
19:15), then the invisible shall give way to the visible; the kingdom in mystery
shall emerge into the kingdom in manifestation, and the Holy Spirit’s
administration shall yield to that of Christ.

Here our discussion properly ends, since the age-ministry of the Holy Spirit
terminates with the return of Jesus Christ in glory. But there is an "age to
come" (Hebrews 6:5), succeeding "the present evil age" (Galatians 1:4), and we
may, in closing, take a glimpse at that for the light which it may throw upon
the present dispensation.

What significance has the phrase, "the first-fruits of the Spirit," which
several times occurs in the New Testament? The first-fruits is but a handful
compared with the whole harvest; and this is what we have in the gift of "the
Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the
redemption of the purchased possession" (Ephesians 1:13-14). The harvest, to
which all the first-fruits look forward, is at the appearing of the Lord.
Christ, by his rising from the dead, became "the first-fruits of them that
slept" (1 Corinthians 15:20). The full harvest, of course, is at the advent,
when "they that are Christ’s at his coming" shall be raised up (1 Corinthians
15:23). So of the Holy Ghost. We have all the Spirit, but not all of the Spirit.
As a person of the God-head, he is here in his entirety; but as to his ministry,
we have as yet but a part or earnest of his full blessing. To make this
statement plain, let us observe that the work of the Holy Spirit, during this
entire dispensation, is elective. He gathers from Jew and Gentile the body of
Christ, the ecclesia, the called-out. This is his peculiar work in this gospel
age. In a word, the present is the age of election, and not of universal
ingathering. But is this all we have to hope for? Let the word of God answer.
Paul, in considering the hope of Israel, says that there is at this present time
"a remnant according to the election of grace"; and a little farther on he
declares that in connection with the coming of the Deliverer "all Israel shall
be saved" (Romans 11:5; Romans 11:26). Here is an elective out-gathering, and
then a universal in-gathering; or, as the apostle sums it up in this same
chapter: "If the first-fruits be holy, so also the lump." On the other hand,
James, speaking by the Holy Ghost concerning the Gentiles, says first that "God
did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name," and "after
this will I return," etc., "that the residue of men might seek after the Lord,
and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord" (Acts 15:14;
Acts 15:17). Here, again, is first an elective out-gathering and then a total
in-gathering.

Now, by looking at other scriptures, it seems clear that the Holy Spirit is the
divine agent in both these redemptions, the partial and the total. If we refer
to Joel’s great prophecy: "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh," and then
to Peter’s reference to the same, as recorded in the Acts, we are led to ask,
Was this prediction completely fulfilled on the day of Pentecost? Clearly not.
Peter, with inspired accuracy, says: "This is that which was spoken by the
prophet Joel," without affirming that herein the prophecy of Joel was entirely
fulfilled. Turning back to the prediction itself, we find that it includes
within its sweep "the great and the terrible day of the Lord," and the "bringing
again of the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem" (Joel 2:31; Joel 3:1), events
which are clearly yet future. If again we examine the vivid prophecy of Israel’s
conversion, we observe that their looking upon him whom they pierced, and
mourning for him, follows the prediction: "And I will pour upon the house of
David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and
supplication" (Zechariah 12:10). So in the picture of the desolations of
Jerusalem, as they have actually existed during the present age, the prophet
represents this judgment of thorns and briars and forsaken palaces and desertion
of population, as continuing "until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high"
(Isaiah 32:15).

Indeed the Scriptures seem to be harmonious in their teaching that, after the
present elective work of the Spirit has been completed, there will come a time
of universal blessing, when the Spirit shall literally be "poured out upon all
flesh"; when "that which is perfect shall come" and "that which is in part shall
be done away."

Thus in the doctrine of the Spirit there is a constant reference to the final
consummation. "The Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of
redemption," says Paul (Ephesians 4:30). Again: "Ourselves also which have the
first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves, groan within ourselves, waiting
for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Romans 8:23).

All which the Comforter has yet brought us, or can now bring us, is only the
first sheaf of the great harvest of redemption which awaits us on our Lord’s
return. "Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father"
(Romans 8:15); but for the adoption itself we wait; sons of God already by birth
from above, we with the whole creation yet wait for "the manifestation of the
sons of God" (Romans 8:19). To his tender exhortation to be patient until the
coming of the Lord, which James writes in the first chapter of his epistle,
there is added the suggestive illustration: "Behold the husbandman waiteth for
the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it until it receive the
early and latter rain." As in husbandry the one rain belonged to the time of
sowing, and the other to the time of harvest, so in redemption the early rain of
the Spirit was at Pentecost, the latter rain will be at the Parousia; the one
fell upon the world as the first sowers went forth into the world to sow, the
other will accompany "the harvest which is the end of the age," and will
fructify the earth for the final blessing of the age to come, bringing
repentance to Israel and the remission of sins, "that the times of refreshing
may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus Christ,
before appointed for you, whom the heavens must receive until the times of the
restitution of all things" (Acts 3:19-21).

[1] "Through the Eternal Spirit," by Elder Cumming, D. D., p. 185.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-of-adoniram-j-gordon/
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