Catherine Booth, the daughter of a coachbuilder, was born in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, on 17th January 1829. When she was a child the family moved to Boston, Lincolnshire and later they lived in Brixton, London. Catherine was a devout Christian and by the age of twelve she had read the Bible eight times. She had a social conscience from an early age. On one occasion she protested to the local policeman that he had been too rough on a drunken man he had arrested and frog-marched to the local lock-up.
Catherine did not enjoy good health. At the age of fourteen she developed spinal curvature and four years later, incipient tuberculosis. It was while she was ill in bed that she began writing articles for magazines warning of the dangers of drinking alcohol. Catherine was a member of the local Band of Hope and a supporter of the national Temperance Society.
In 1852 Catherine met William Booth, a Methodist minister. William had strong views on the role of church ministers believing they should be “loosing the chains of injustice, freeing the captive and oppressed, sharing food and home, clothing the naked, and carrying out family responsibilities.” Catherine shared William’s commitment to social reform but disagreed with his views on women. Catherine was an avowed feminist. On one occasion she objected to William describing women as the “weaker sex”. William was also opposed to the idea of women preachers. When Catherine argued with William about this he added that although he would not stop Catherine from preaching he would “not like it”. Despite their disagreements about the role of women in the church, the couple married on 16th June 1855, at Stockwell New Chapel.
It was not until 1860 that Catherine Booth first started to preach. One day in Gateshead Bethesda Chapel, a strange compulsion seized her and she felt she must rise and speak. Later she recalled how an inner voice taunted her: “You will look like a fool and have nothing to say”. Catherine decided that this was the Devil’s voice: “That’s just the point,” she retorted, “I have never yet been willing to be a fool for Christ. Now I will be one.”
Catherine’s sermon was so impressive that William changed his mind about women’s preachers. Catherine Booth soon developed a reputation as an outstanding speaker but many Christians were outraged by the idea. As Catherine pointed out at that time it was believed that a woman’s place was in the home and “any respectable woman who raised her voice in public risked grave censure.”
In 1864 the couple began in London’s East End the Christian Mission which later developed into the Salvation Army. Catherine Booth took a leading role in these revival services and could often be seen preaching in the dockland parishes of Rotherhithe and Bermondsey. Though often imprisoned for preaching in the open air, members of the Salvation Army fought on, waging war on poverty and injustice.
The Church of England were at first extremely hostile to the Salvation Army. Lord Shaftesbury, a leading politician and evangelist, described William Booth as the “anti-christ”. One of the main complaints against Booth was his “elevation of women to man’s status”. In the Salvation Army a woman officer enjoyed equal rights with a man. Although Booth had initially rejected the idea of women preachers, he had now completely changed his mind and wrote that “the best men in my Army are the women.”
Catherine Booth began to organize what became known as Food-for-the-Million Shops where the poor could buy hot soup and a three-course dinner for sixpence. On special occasions such as Christmas Day, she would cook over 300 dinners to be distributed to the poor of London.
By 1882 a survey of London discovered that on one weeknight, there were almost 17,000 worshipping with the Salvation Army, compared to 11,000 in ordinary churches. Even, Dr. William Thornton, the Archbishop of York, had to accept that the Salvation Army was reaching people that the Church of England had failed to have any impact on.
It was while working with the poor in London that Catherine found out about what was known as “sweated labour”. That is, women and children working long hours for low wages in very poor conditions. In the tenements of London, Catherine discovered red-eyed women hemming and stitching for eleven hours a day. These women were only paid 9d. a day, whereas men doing the same work in a factory were receiving over 3s. 6d. Catherine and fellow members of the Salvation Army attempted to shame employers into paying better wages. They also attempted to improve the working conditions of these women.
Catherine was particularly concerned about women making matches. Not only were these women only earning 1s. 4d. for a sixteen hour day, they were also risking their health when they dipped their match-heads in the yellow phosphorus supplied by manufacturers such as Bryant & May. A large number of these women suffered from ‘Phossy Jaw’ (necrosis of the bone) caused by the toxic fumes of the yellow phosphorus. The whole side of the face turned green and then black, discharging foul-smelling pus and finally death.
Women like Catherine Booth and Annie Beasant led a campaign against the use of yellow phosphorus. They pointed out that most other European countries produced matches tipped with harmless red phosphorus. Bryant & May responded that these matches were more expensive and that people would be unwilling to pay these higher prices.
Catherine Booth died of cancer on 4th October 1890. The campaigns that were started by Catherine were not abandoned. William Booth decided he would force companies to abandon the use of yellow phosphorus. In 1891 the Salvation Army opened its own match-factory in Old Ford, East London. Only using harmless red phosphorus, the workers were soon producing six million boxes a year. Whereas Bryant & May paid their workers just over twopence a gross, the Salvation Army paid their employees twice this amount.
William Booth organised conducted tours of MPs and journalists round this ‘model’ factory. He also took them to the homes of those “sweated workers” who were working eleven and twelve hours a day producing matches for companies like Bryant & May. The bad publicity that the company received forced the company to reconsider its actions. In 1901, Gilbert Bartholomew, managing director of Bryant & May, announced it had stopped used yellow phosphorus.
Catherine Booth and William Booth had eight children, all of whom were active in the Salvation Army. William Bramwell Booth (1856-1929) was chief of staff from 1880 and succeeded his father as general in 1912. Catherine’s second son, Ballington Booth (1857-1940), was commander of the army in Australia (1883-1885) and the USA (1887-1896). One of her daughters, Evangeline Cory Booth (1865-1950) was elected General of the Salvation Army in 1934.
From http://articles.ochristian.com/article13188.shtml
“Why should woman be confined exclusively to the kitchen and the distaff, any more than man to the field and workshop? Did not God, and has not nature, assigned to man his sphere of labour, “to till the ground, and to dress it”? And, if exemption is claimed from this kind of toil for a portion of the male sex, on the ground of their possessing ability for intellectual and moral pursuits, we must be allowed to claim the same privilege for woman ; nor can we see the exception more unnatural in the one case than the other, or why God in this solitary instance has endowed a being with powers which He never intended her to employ.”
“We well know,” says the late Mr. Gurney, a minister of the Society of Friends, “that there are no women among us more generally distinguished for modesty, gentleness, order, and right submission to their brethren, than those who have been called by their Divine Master into the exercise of the Christian ministry.”
“Who would dare to charge the sainted Madame Guyon, Lady Maxwell, the talented mother of the Wesleys, Mrs. Fletcher, Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Whiteman, or Miss Marsh with being unwomanly or ambitious. Some of these ladies we know have adorned by their private virtues the highest ranks of society, and won alike from friends and enemies the highest eulogiums as to the devotedness, purity, and sweetness of their lives. Yet these were all more or less public women, every one of them expounding and exhorting from the Scriptures to mixed companies of men and women. Ambitious doubtless they were; but theirs was an ambition akin to His, who, for the “joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame:” and to his, who counted all things but dung and dross, and was willing to be regarded as the off-scouring of all things that he might win souls to Jesus and bring glory to God. Would that all the Lord’s people had more of this ambition.”
- From ‘Female Ministry; or, Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel’ by Catherine Booth
“And I said, ‘Who art Thou, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But arise, and stand on your feet; for this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which Iwill appear to you; delivering you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, in order that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.”’ -Acts 26:15-18
I was thinking, while I was reading these passages, what if we could erase from our minds all knowledge of the history of Christianity from the close of the period described in the book of Acts - and then looking at the book of Acts, sit down and try to calculate what was likely to happen in the world. We would most likely expect very different results - a radically changed world as the outcome of it all. A system which started with such power, under such promises and declarations on the part of its Author, and producing, as it did in its first century, such gigantic and monumentous results! We would have thought (if we knew nothing of what has intervened from then until now) that the whole world would have fallen long ago to the influence of that system, and would have been brought under the authority of its great Originator and Founder. I say from reading these Acts, and from observing the Spirit which moved the early disciples, that we should have anticipated ten thousand times greater results - and in my opinion, this anticipation would have been perfectly rational and just.
We Christians profess to have in the Gospel of Christ a mighty lever which, rightly and universally applied, would lift the entire burden of sin and misery from the shoulders (that is from the souls) of our fellow man - a total remedy for all the moral and spiritual woes of humanity. We all profess to believe this - Christians have professed to believe this for generations - and yet look at the world, look at so-called “Christian England and America.” The great majority in these nations utterly ignore God, not even making a pretense of remembering Him even one day a week. And then look at the rest of the world. I have often become so depressed with this view of things that I have felt as if my heart would break. I don’t know how other Christians feel, but I can truly say that “My eyes shed streams of water, because they do not keep Thy law.” (Psalm 119:136) And because it seems to me that this dispensation1 compared with what God intended it to be, has been, and still is, as great a failure as the one that preceded it.2
Now I ask, how can this be? I do not for one moment believe that this is in accordance with the purpose of God. Some people have a very convenient way of hiding behind “God’s purposes,” and saying, “Oh! He will do His own will.” I wish He did! They say, “You know, God’s will is done after all.” I wish it were! He says (in the Scriptures) it is not done, and over and over again laments the fact that it is not done. He wants it to be done… but it is NOT DONE! It is of no use to stand up and state theories and theologies that are in conflict with things as they really are. There has been far too much of this, and it has had a disastrous effect. We see the world is in this terrible condition… nearly 2,000 years have rolled by and here we are! How little has been done, comparatively. What little change has occurred in the habits, attitudes, and choices of the human race.
But some of you will say, “Well, but there has been a great deal done.” Thank God for that! It would be sad if there were nothing done; but it looks like a drop in the ocean compared with what should have been done. Now I cannot accept any theory which so tarnishes the love and goodness of God in people’s eyes, so as to make Him to blame for this lack of vitality and power in Christianity. And so far as my influence extends, I will not allow the responsibility and the blame for all of this to be rolled back upon God, Who so loved the world that He gave His only Son to suffering and death in order to redeem it. I do not believe it for a moment! I believe that the old arch enemy has succeeded in bringing about this state of things - in retarding the accomplishment of God’s purposes and keeping the world largely under his own power and influence. And I believe he has succeeded in doing this, as he has always succeeded before - by deceiving God’s own people. He has always done so. He has always conjured up a look - alike of God’s real thing, and the closer he can get it to look like the original, the more successful he is.
He has succeeded in deceiving God’s people:
First, as to the standard of their own religious life.
And secondly - he has succeeded in deceiving them as to their duties and obligations to the world.
He has succeeded first in deceiving them as to the standard of their own religious life. He has gotten the church, nearly as a whole, to receive what I call an “Oh, wretched man that I am” religion! He has gotten them to lower the standard which Jesus Christ Himself established in His Book - a standard not only to be aimed at, but to be attained - a standard of victory over sin, the world, the flesh, and the devil - real, living, reigning, triumphing Christianity! Satan knew the secret of the great success of those early disciples. It was their wholehearted devotion, their all-encompassing love for Christ, their utter renunciation of the world. It was their entire absorption in the salvation of their fellow man and the glory of their God. It was an enthusiastic religion that swallowed them up and made them willing to become wanderers and vagabonds - for His sake to dwell in dens and caves, to be torn in two, and to endure persecution in every form to the ends of the earth.
It was this degree of devotion which Satan saw he had no chance against. Such people as these he knew would ultimately conquer the world! People could not resist that kind of spirit, that amount of love and zeal, and if Christians had only gone on as they began long ago, then the glorious prophecy would have already been fulfilled - the kingdoms of this world would have already “become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.” (Rev. 11:15)
Lowering The Standard Therefore the arch enemy said, “What must I do? I will be defeated after all. I will lose my supremacy as the god of this world. What can I do?” No use bringing in a gigantic system of error, which everyone will see to be error. Oh dear no! That has never been Satan’s way. His plan has been to get a hold of a good man here and there who will, as the apostle says, creep in unaware and preach another doctrine, and who will “mislead, if possible, even the elect.” (Matt.24:24)And he did it! He accomplished his design. He gradually lowered the standard of Christian life and character. And although in every revival in church history God has raised it again to some extent, we have never gotten back completely to the simplicity, purity, and devotion set before us in these Acts of the apostles. For every time God was raising the temperature in the church so that people were once again on fire with the Holy Spirit - in every age Satan has gotten someone to oppose and to show that this was too high a standard for human nature. It was altogether beyond us, and therefore Christians must sit down and just be content to be “Oh wretched man that I am” people, to the end of their days. He has gotten the Church into a condition that sometimes makes one positively ashamed to hear professing Christians talk. It is no wonder that thoughtful, intelligent men are being driven from such Christianity as this. It would have driven me off too, if I had not known the power of godliness. I believe this kind of religion has made more atheists than all the “atheist books” ever written.
Yes, Satan knew that he must get Christians down from that high pinnacle of wholehearted consecration to God. He knew that he had no chance till he tempted them down from that blessed vantage point. And so he began to spread those false doctrines, to counteract what John wrote in his epistles - for before he died, John saw what was coming and sounded the alarm down the ages - “Little children, let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” (I John 3:7-8) Oh Lord revive that doctrine! Help us afresh to put up the standard!
Oh! The great evil is that dishonest-hearted people, because they feel it condemns them, lower the standard to their miserable experience. I said when I was young (and I have repeated it many times in my mature years) that even if it sent me to hell I would never pull the standard down. Oh, that God’s people felt like that! There, in the Bible, the glorious standard is placed before us, the power is offered, the conditions laid down, and we can all attain it if we are willing. But even if we are not willing - for the sake of the children and for generations yet unborn, do not let us drag the standard down, trying to make it meet our weak and failing Christian experience. LET US KEEP IT UP! That is the way to get the world to look at it. Show the world a real, living, self-sacrificing, hard-working, toiling, triumphing Christianity, and the world will be influenced by it; but anything short of that, they will turn around and spit upon.
Duties And Obligations To The World Secondly, Satan has deceived even those whom he could not succeed in getting to lower the standard of their own lives, concerning their duties and obligations to the world. I have been reading the New Testament lately with special reference to the aggressive spirit of original Christianity. And as far as I can see, we come infinitely short by comparison. “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation.” Look at what is implied in this commission. I believe that no generation since that first century has yet fathomed the meaning of this divine commission. Look at it! Would it ever occur to you that it really meant, “Go and build chapels and churches, and invite the people to come in, but if they won’t - leave them alone”? “GO!” To whom? “To all creation.” Where am I to get at them? WHERE THEY ARE. “All creation.” This is the extent of your commission. Seek them out, run after them, wherever you can get at them. “All creation” - wherever you find a creature that has a soul - there go and preach My Gospel to him. If I understand it, that is the meaning and spirit of this commission.
In another commission to Paul, God says “…I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God.” (Acts 26:17-18) They are asleep - go and wake them up. They do not see their danger. If they did, there would be no need for you to run after them. They are preoccupied. Open their eyes, and turn them around by your desperate earnestness, intense persuasion, and moral force. Oh! It makes me tremble when I think of how much one man can do for another! ‘“Turn from darkness to light, and from the dominion of Satan to God.” How did Paul understand this? He says, “We persuade men."(II Cor.5:11) Do not be content with just putting it before them, giving them gentle invitations, and then leaving them alone. Paul ran after the poor souls, and pulled them out of the fire. Do the same! Take the blindfold off their eyes which Satan has bound them with; knock and hammer and burn your words into their poor, hardened, darkened hearts with the fire of the Holy Ghost, until they begin to realize that they are IN DANGER! Go after them. If I understand it, that is the spirit of the apostles and of the early Christians.
Sure it’s okay to build churches and chapels; we should invite the people to them. But do you think it is consistent with these commissions to rest only in this, when three-fourths of the population utterly ignore our invitations and take no notice whatsoever of our buildings and of our services? They will not come to us. That is an established fact. Jesus Christ says, “Go after them.” He says, “Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, that My house may be filled.” (Luke 14:23) I will have guests, and if you can’t get them in by nice, civil measures, use military measures. Go and compel them to come In.
Oh! People say you must be very cautious. You must not push religion down people’s throats. What! Should I wait until an unconverted, godless man wants to be saved before I try to save him? Am I to let my unconverted friends and acquaintances go quietly down to damnation, and never tell them about their souls until they ask, “If you please, I want you to preach to me!” Is this anything like the spirit of early Christianity? No! Therefore we must make them look, and if they run away from you in one place, meet them in another, and let them have no peace until they submit to God. This is what Christianity ought to be doing in this land, and there are plenty of Christians around to do it. Why, we might give the world such a time of it, that they would get saved in self-defense - if we were only aggressive enough and determined that they should have no peace in their sins.
An Example I had been speaking in a town in the west of England on the subject of the responsibility of Christians for the salvation of people’s souls. The gentleman with whom I was staying had winced a bit under the truth, but instead of taking it to heart in love and having it enable him to better serve God, he said, “I thought you were rather hard on us this morning.” I said, “Did you? I should be very sorry to be harder on anyone than the Lord Jesus Christ would be.” He said, “You can push things to extremes you know. You were talking about seeking souls, and making sacrifices. Now you know that we build the chapels and churches and pay the ministers - and if the people won’t get saved, we can t help it!” I said, “It is very heartless and ungrateful of the people, I agree. But my dear sir, you would not reason this way in a serious physical matter. Suppose a plague were to break out in London, and the Board of Health appropriated all the hospitals and public buildings for the treatment of the disease. And suppose they were to issue proclamations saying that anyone who came to these buildings would be treated free of charge - and best of all, that the treatment was guaranteed to cure them. Now what if the people were so blind to their own well-being, so indifferent and uncaring, that they refused to come, and consequently the plague increased and thousands were dying. What would you say? ‘Well, the Board of Health has done all they could, and if the people will not go to be healed, they deserve to perish - let them alone!’ What? Let the whole land be depopulated? No! If the people will not come to them, they must go to the people and make sure that everyone had the necessary treatment to be saved from the plague.”
I did not have to explain any further… he understood perfectly, and I believe, by the Spirit of God, he was able to see his mistake, to take it to heart, and determine to get to work for perishing souls.
What We Must Do Men are preoccupied with many things, and we need to bring this subject of salvation powerfully to their attention. There is some one soul that you have more influence with than any other person on earth. Are you doing all you can for their salvation? Take them lovingly aside and say, “My dear friend, I have never spoken to you closely, carefully, and prayerfully about your soul.” Let them see the tears in your eyes, or if you can’t weep, let them hear the tears in your voice. Let them realize that you feel their danger, and are in distress for them. Then God will give His Holy Spirit so they can be saved.
It is a bad sign for the Christianity of this day that it provokes so little opposition. If there were no other evidence of it being wrong, I could tell from just that. When the Church and the world can jog comfortably along together, you can be sure there is something wrong. The world has not compromised - its spirit is exactly the same as it ever was. If Christians were equally as faithful to the Lord, separated from the world, and living so that their lives were a reproof to all ungodliness, the world would hate them as much as it ever did. It is the Church that has compromised, not the world. You say, “You’re implying that we should be getting into endless conflict with the world!” Yes- “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34) There would be uproar, yes! The Acts of the apostles are full of stories of uproars. One uproar was so great, that the Chief Captain had to get Paul over the shoulders of the people, otherwise he would have been torn to pieces. “What a commotion!” you say. Yes, and bless God, if it was like that now, we would have thousands of sinners saved.
The Dignity Of Love “But,” you say, “wouldn’t that be inconsistent with the dignity of the Gospel?” It depends on what you mean by “dignity. " It was a very undignified thing, humanly speaking, to die on a cross between two thieves. The Pharisees spat upon the humbled sufferer and shook their heads and said, “He saved others, He cannot save Himself.” Ah! But He was intent on saving others. That was the dignity of everlasting, unquenchable love, baring its bosom to suffer in the place of its rebellious creature - man. It was incarnate God, standing in the place of condemned man - the dignity of LOVE!
Oh friends! Will you get this baptism of love! Then you will, like the apostles, be willing to stuff your body into a basket and be let down by the wall, if need be - or suffer shipwreck, hunger, peril, nakedness, fire, or sword, or even beheading (II Cor. 11:23-33) -if thereby you may enlarge His Kingdom and win souls for whom He shed His blood. Oh Lord, fill us with this love and baptize us with this fire! And then the Gospel will arise and become glorious in the earth, and men will believe in us, and in it. They will feel its power, and they will yield to it by the thousands, and by the grace of God, THEY SHALL!
The subject for this afternoon is The Cowardly Service of Popular Christianity in contrast with the Real Warfare which Christ demands of His People.
I should like to say before I commence, that I hope, nay, I believe, that many of my audience will give me credit for speaking the truth in love; that although some things I may have to say may sound cutting, and will be cutting, as all truth when it comes in contact with error must be -- it would cease to be truth if it were not -- yet that I do not speak these things censoriously. If I know anything of my own heart and experience, I can say I do not speak these things harshly, but painfully and reluctantly. But they have been burnt into my soul during twenty-one years of public work, by absolute personal contact with the evils of which I speak. I have forborne long, hoping that some one more able would take up this sword, until I sometimes fear that I have been guilty of withholding my sword from blood -- God knows not for my own sake, for since I came to the crucifixion of myself I have not cared much what men might say of me; but I have forborne sometimes under a mistaken notion of dealing gently with, and of hiding, the sins of professed Christians for fear of hurting the kingdom. But some three or four years ago the Lord took me to task, more especially on this matter, and showed me that I had no more right to palliate a wrong state of things in His professing people than in open sinners -- that we ought to examine ourselves, judge ourselves, and reprove ourselves and each other, so that we might redeem His name from the awful effects of our inconsistency, and of our coming so far short of the standard which Christ has set up for us. Therefore what I say this afternoon, and in my following lectures, please to bear in mind I only say because I MUST, and because I could not die in peace if I had not said it. That I shall be criticized and condemned I fully expect, and that in exact proportion to the force with which the truths shall be demonstrated in every man's conscience. But be assured that this effort has cost me many a tear and prayer, and much thought and self-abandonment. I think I can say to those persons here who may be cut the most severely, and to those who are not here to whom my words refer, I could gladly go down at their feet and wash them with my tears, if I could thus bring about a better state of things.I want to remark first, that Jesus Christ came to establish the kingdom of God upon the earth; that He intended this kingdom to be a literal kingdom, that is, as truly a kingdom as any of the kingdoms of this world; that He intended it to be a holy kingdom, a kingdom of righteousness, and consequently separate from, and above, all other kingdoms; that Christ continually spoke of His followers as a community, existing in the midst of another kingdom or community, having its own laws and principles and aims entirely distinct. and separate from the world. He not only made it separate, but He ordained that it should be kept separate, and He did not fail to give the most emphatic cautions and prohibitions against any amalgamation whatever between the forces of His kingdom and the forces of the kingdom of Satan, in the midst of which His kingdom was established.
Further, He put forth the claim, as the King and Sovereign of this kingdom, to the highest affection, allegiance, and homage of the hearts of His subjects, representing Himself as a King in a sense entirely beyond and above all earthly sovereigns. He represented Himself as reigning, not by virtue of outward power, but by virtue of the inward love, devotion, and adoration of His subjects; and thus more perfectly and completely over their outward I lives than any earthly king could pretend to do.
Further, the avowed purpose of Jesus Christ was to propagate and extend this kingdom over the whole earth.
In this respect only was He the originator of a new dispensation, for God had already a kingdom in the earth, although it was of a national and sectarian character. Jesus Christ came to break down the walls of partition between Jew and Gentile, and to let out, so to speak, the mercy, goodness, and grace of God to the whole race. Henceforth there was to be “neither Greek nor Jew … barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all, and in all.”
But as in Adam all had died, so in Christ should all be made alive; as all men had lost their souls in Adam, so all should have the opportunity, subject to that free choice without which either salvation or damnation would be a mere figure of speech, and without which a man would be no more capable of salvation than an ox, – subject only to such choice every son and daughter of Adam should have the provision in Christ of eternal salvation.
Then, further, Jesus Christ ordained and arranged that this kingdom of His should be propagated in the world by human instrumentality. Why, we do not know. There might be many reasons, but the main one probably was that the human being, him self transformed, restored to God and to His image, and inspired with His love, would be the most effectual ambassador that God could send.
Another reason might be that Christ chose to put this honor on His own brethren after the Spirit those whom He had redeemed from amongst men, and who have chosen Him as their Sovereign, with His cross and its consequences, in preference to the pleasures, riches, or honors of this world.
Or, third, it might be that no other instrumentality would be so calculated to bring glory to His Father, the weakness of the human agent exhibiting most perfectly the excellency of the Divine power.
Note further, that the establishment of this kingdom over all the earth means, of course, resistance and opposition from those nations already in possession.
And here is a wonderful analogy between the establishment of the kingdom of Christ and the subjugation of Canaan to the Israelites. God had promised that land to Abraham long years before, and spoke of it as already belonging to his descendants; nevertheless they had to go and conquer it in His strength. So God has given the kingdoms of this earth to His So n. In the end the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ; but we have to go and conquer them, just as the Israelites had to conquer Canaan, in the faith, and by the strength, of our God. It has only been for want of faith that the world has not been conquered long ago. Oh, what a delusion many Christians labor under with respect to the extension of the kingdom of God! They have a notion that the kingdom is to take the world by stealth; that men are to be turned to God without any connection of means with the event; that it is going to be done with a sort of internal miracle, and the church has been waiting for this miracle for 1800 years. Consequently the work is not done, because this notion is in direct opposition to the orders and ordination of the King. If ever the world is subdued, it will be by His servants Carrying out their Lord’s instructions, and setting themselves to subdue it. It will be by bringing all the wisdom, skill, and force of their humanity, allied with divinity, as the early disciples did, and turning that force upon the rebel world. It will be done by hard, desperate fighting, if the great fundamental principles laid down in this Bible are to be relied on, and in no other way, because the nations in possession will never let you subdue them and take them for God without opposition. Christ systematically foretold and depicted this opposition, and gave His disciples to understand that they would have to wage WAR with all the power of those who were possessed of evil, and who were profiting by evil, and that it would be no easy conquest.
He told them they would have to go and subdue this evil by good, this unrighteousness by righteousness. The spirit of the devil would have to be driven out of man by the power of the Spirit of God dwelling in them. This He taught as plainly and persistently as He taught anything. If we wanted an illustration of the continuance of this spirit of opposition in the earth, we might find it in the events that have lately transpired in Switzerland. A little force of godly people, without any of the peculiarities about which there has been such a hue and cry in England, without an instrument of music, without a banner or flag, or procession, or open-air service, without even a uniform, had only to commence to live Jesus Christ over again, and to carry out His orders in thrusting His claims on their fellow-men, when wicked rulers combined with those who profit by the vilest kinds of vice to mob them, drive them out, put them down, or kill them, as the case might be. Why? Because the instinct of the evil one recognized the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The devil always knows where the Spirit of Jesus Christ is, and he knows something else; he knows where it is not, and where it is not he lets well alone!
“Oh! people say, “the world is different in these days from what it was in the days of Jesus Christ and Paul.” Is it? Try it on the same lines, and you will soon find out how far different it is. The very essence of the spirit of evil is antagonistic to the spirit of good. Good and evil are as diametrically opposed to each other as ever; therefore they can never be brought into contact without conflict, without war, and sometimes of the most deadly kind, ending in the death and martyrdom of the saints. I was amused with the exemplification of this some weeks ago. As one of our female officers was walking up Clapton, a band of lads were hooting after her, “Hallelujah!” “Jesus Christ!” “Salvation!” and other beautiful names; for in whatever voice they be hissed out, they cannot make such words ugly. They were hissing these names after her as she walked meekly and quietly along. At length she turned suddenly to them and said, “What are you doing this for? I have never done you any harm. I am walking peaceably along the road; why are you shouting after me?” They were all so taken aback that they stood breathless for a moment, then one of them, I suppose a little bolder than the rest, and at least an honest lad, said, “It is because you are good and we are bad.” Ah! that was the truth for once. That was the expression, in his rough way, of the eternal principle, that there must be conflict between good and evil; and the greater good you bring in conflict with evil, the more the evil will rage and try for the mastery. Hence, the world treated Him who was the very personification of the Father’s holiness, worse than it ever treated any other human being, because He was the concentration of goodness, and therefore the devil did His worst on Him; and just as we approximate to His character will the devil do his worst on us.
Further, Christ taught His soldiers to expect the opposition of devils.
I suppose most of you believe in evil spirits who have access to the human mind. I wish, if you do not, you could have some of the experience of the Salvation Army; I think you would then. If there are evil spirits, if they have access to this world, and if they are interested in circumventing the plans of God, it only stands to sense that they should influence their servants to fight in opposition to the servants of God. This opposition was foretold by Christ, and His servants were warned against it, and provided for it. He said to His apostles when he commissioned them, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep among wolves, but lo, I am with you always.” And again to Paul, “I will be with thee, delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee.” Why? Because He knew the opposition which their mission would provoke. He said, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” Wherever the true Christ appears, there must the sword come to the dividing asunder of everything evil, and there must also come the sword of provocation. Even the nearest and dearest relatives rise up to persecute those who truly follow the Christ. This must continue to be so while good and evil continue in contact, and the fact that modern Christianity has ceased, as a rule, to provoke opposition, is one of the deadliest signs of its effeteness. As a rule, the world and modern Christianity go comfortably on together. They are so actuated by one common principle, and walk so amicably on one common pathway, that you see very little collision between them. The world has very little to complain of, and so it lets them alone. May God help, and quickly mend or end it.
Further, I want you to note, that, notwithstanding all the danger involved in this deadly warfare, which Jesus Christ represented it to be, – for He did not deceive them, but told them plainly that all. men would hate them, that they would probably have to follow Him to martyrdom and death, nevertheless, they accepted the mission. I grant that they were a little time in coming to comprehend it; I grant that it took some time to free them from their national and sectarian prejudices. Peter had to receive his lesson through the vision of the sheet let down from heaven, before he understood the true genius of his mission. But when he and the other apostles did comprehend it, – and that was the difference between them and modern apostles, when they saw the work to which the Master called them, they joyfully embraced it. They did not stop to confer with flesh and blood, or to reason what it would cost them, to ask about salaries, or houses, or friends; they embraced the mission and went, and carried it out with their lives in their hands; and oh, how magnificently they succeeded! What a large portion of the world they subdued in comparison with their numbers and facilities, for, remember, there were no railways in those days to speed them from town to town, and city to city; there were no telegraphs to fly before them with their announcements; no printing presses to herald their coming with posters and handbills and all manner of notices; they had none of the facilities which we possess in these days for quickening the speed, or how gladly would they have availed themselves of them! What gigantic success they attained, because they carried out their mission on the lines which Jesus Christ had laid down. Is it not true that just in proportion as their successors have followed in their steps, they have been successful in propagating the gospel? We all know that the stars in the heavenly firmament, the men and women who stand out with extra brilliancy on the page of history, as having been successful in pushing this glorious warfare, have been the men and women who took their lives in their hands, and followed their Master without respect to consequences; who came out straight and clear from the world and set themselves to their work, irrespective of what men might say or do to them. And we know what mighty conquests some of them achieved, and therefore we may reason that if all Christ’s professed disciples had followed in the same track, a million times greater results would have been attained.
Let me put a practical question here. How many are there here who have comprehended the task? How many are there to whom the Spirit of God has said in unmistakable language, “Come out from amongst the ungodly or the half-hearted, and be separate, and I will touch your lips with a live coal from off My altar, and will make you fishers of men?” Did you embrace the mission? Have you gone forth following your Master, carrying His cross and seeking the souls of men? If not, what will you say to Him in the great day of account?
Further, in looking at the requirements of the King, and at the history of the early apostles and disciples, I charge it on modern Christianity, that its professors do not even comprehend the first principles of this warfare, much less do they set themselves to carry it on to the ends of the earth.
The service rendered to the King and to the kingdom in these days is, alas, with few exceptions, of a very milk-and-watery type, of a very short-weight character, and the great effort of the majority of its teachers, judging from their writings, and from what we see and know of their public services and of their private lives, seems to be intended to make things comfortable all round. “Peace, peace,” is the continual cry, when there is no peace. As one of the bishops said a little while ago, “We hear a great deal about Church defense; we ought to be hearing about Church aggression.” Yes, alas! in the great mass of instances when these modern Christians do fight, it is over opinions and ceremonies with their own children, inside their own walls, instead of with the enemy outside. They are far more valiant in defending. some ceremonial of the Church, than they are in defending the cross of Christ in the presence of its adversaries. They are far more concerned in propagating their “ism” than the kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Alas, that it should be so; but such is the fact, and it is patent to every enlightened observer.
Jesus Christ did not call us to fight each other, but He called us to present one bold front to the enemy. He bade us go and take captive the hearts and souls of men, and not merely to change their opinions. Get a man’s heart right, and his opinions will soon follow. But you may be tinkering at his intellect till the hour of his death, and he will not be a whit nearer heaven, but perchance nearer hell, than if he had been left alone.
Further, these modern Christians, as a rule, do not see any NEED for the fight.
They hide themselves under some vain, false notions of the sovereignty of God. Oh, how often they have made my heart ache when I have been trying to arouse them to do something for the kingdom. They say, “God is a sovereign, and He will accomplish His purposes out of all this sin and ruin;” and so they sit comfortably down and let things drift; and they have drifted to some purpose, have they not? In this so-called Christian country, in this nineteenth century, they have drifted to about as near perdition as they well could, without absolutely bringing hell on the earth. They have drifted socially as well as spiritually. Look at the state of the nation. Look at the godlessness, the injustice, the falseness, the blasphemy, the uncleanness and the debauchery everywhere! Do you ever look at the condition of things close to your doors and your churches? the worse than heathen beastliness into which thousands of our neglected neighbors, rich and poor alike, have sunk? If only half the professing Christians of London had followed in their Master’s steps for one twelvemonth, such things would have been impossible, utterly impossible
I repeat, Jesus Christ has ordained and provided that His people are to set themselves to stem these .torrents of moral and social pollution; they are to go and beard the lion in his den; to face the slaves of sin, open their eyes, and bring them down to His feet, just as much as were His early followers; and never till we do it shall we realize a better state of things. All the legislation, education, or provision of better dwellings, as I shall hereafter try to demonstrate, won’t touch the moral cancer, the spring of all this wickedness and misery; nothing will do it until the Christians rise up to do their Master’s bidding. But I say, they do not see any need for it, and they try to quiet us who do. You have to prove, and argue, and drive, and almost show them damnation before you get a bit of service of any sort out of them. They have no heart for the fight. They do not feel these things. As God said of the fallen and false prophets of the ‘Jews, “They lay not these things to their hearts.” They lay their own business to their hearts. You see it depicted on the countenances of these Christian men if the balance is on the wrong side; if bankruptcy stares them in the face, you soon find that out. These Christian women lay the welfare of their own families to their hearts; you soon find out when a child is sick, or in any kind of disgrace or danger. But these same men and women can walk about the walls and see the desolations of Zion without any of these marks of distress or apprehension, without any such tears or groans.
They will manifest more anger against the people who urge them to fight, than they will against the enemy. A great many of them hate the Salvation Army for this more than for any other thing. They say, “You are always at us; let us alone, we want peace.” They want to be quiet and comfortable, and to have their religion in a snug, back-parlor fashion. Fight! they hate the name of fighting. Going out to face the mob! oh, dear no! that is out of all question. How could you ever think of such a thing? Being mocked, and spit upon, and kicked, and buffeted, and perchance killed for Christ! they would think you were clean gone mad. Some of these modern Christians have tried to put two or three of our people into asylums for nothing else . The moment anybody attempts really to obey Jesus Christ, they cry, “Mad! mad! away with such a fellow; he is not fit to live.” What a veritable laughing-stock to hell such professed Christians make themselves. The devil says, “All right; let them alone. Let them go to their sanctuaries, let them have their creeds and ceremonies, let them sing their sweet hymns, and amuse themselves with their religious entertainments and their Bible classes; do not disturb them, whatever you do, they are amongst my best and most successful allies.” Oh, may God show us these things, and help us to set to work to awaken every backslidden, lazy professor within reach of us.
Many of these latter day Christians are most zealous in building the sepulchers of the prophets, that is, of the saints – the spiritual warriors of bygone tunes. They are often great at lectures on these ancient worthies – Luther, George Fox, Wesley, and others, – and they will listen most interestedly to a dissertation on their heroism, just as they would listen to a lecture on Shakespeare or Milton; but as to imitating their deeds of valor, it never enters their minds any more than if they had been inhabitants of another sphere. They simply go, in the great mass of instances, to have their intellects amused, their feelings tickled. It never dawns on them that they are to go and imitate the example of. these heroes. They do not perceive that it ought equally to be the absorbing interest of their own lives, and that they are equally called to brave men and devils in propagating the kingdom of Christ in the earth. They go home and live the coming week exactly as they lived the week preceding it. They admire the men who laid down their lives for .the King a hundred or three hundred years ago, and will perhaps put up a monument to their memory, but as to doing so themselves, or allowing themselves to come into the same circumstances of persecution, they would sooner almost go to hell. I speak the things I know and have witnessed till my heart is sick.
Further, I charge it on popular Christianity that its professors are ashamed of their colors in the presence of the enemy.
They shrink from any open, straight forward confession .of Christ before men. I maintain that it is not confessing Him to go to church or chapel once a week amongst those who go the same way with you. They do not confess Him on the exchange, in the bank, or in the streets of the city. Where do you see any one, or only one in a million, who comes out with any thorough going, straightforward confession of Christ before the world? Where? There are a few Roman Catholics or high Church monastics, and whatever I may think of their errors and their mummeries, I always feel a measure of reverence when I pass them. I feel there is a man or woman who is willing to acknowledge his God before men, and who is not ashamed to come out and condemn the world, by being separate from it, and entering a protest against its fashions and its follies.
How many professing Christians are there of this day who would go through the city of London in any attire, or with any kind of badge, that said to men and women, “I am a saint and a soldier of Jesus Christ?” And yet the soldiers of the queen are proud to do this in an enemy’s country! I repeat, who is there that dare do it for Christ, except us fanatics of the Salvation Army?
I understand that a popular minister said the other day, speaking of the Salvation Army, that we were “playing at soldiers!” I will engage to say that if that minister will come with us for a single day, we will give. him such a dose of fighting as he never had in his life before. We will send him home at night quite convinced that it is no playing at soldiers on our part. If he does not get his head broken, we will guarantee that his coat will be torn, or covered with mud or ochre [ochre = a mineral of clay and ferric oxide, used as a pigment varying from light yellow to brown or red – Oxford Dict.], or something worse!
Playing at soldiers, indeed! let him doff his kid gloves, his gentleman’s attire, and lay aside his cigar, and come with our lasses into the public-houses with the War Cry or a Bible under his arm, or anything else that tells the inmates what he has come for, and he will find out whether we are playing at soldiers or not! I would like to put that man alongside one of our dear little female captains in a certain jail just now, and see whether such an experience, even for twenty-four hours, would not change his opinion. Such cruel stabs from professed Christian ministers are worse than the cruel mockings and scourgings of the enemy. “May the Lord not lay this sin to their charge.” But to return to this shame-facedness in the Master’s cause: it is time we had done with it; it is time we proclaimed ourselves; for we speak to numbers by our appearance to whom we can never speak by our words, and unless we confess Christ in our appearance in such instances, we cannot confess Him at all Besides, why should we be ashamed of it? Why? The other day when I was driving through a low thoroughfare of London, and the little urchins were crying after me, one “Jesus!” another, “Hallelujah!” and a third, “There goes the Salvation Army!” I felt my soul glow with holy joy as I thought of the words, “The reproaches of them that reproached Thee fell on me.”
I do not care what kind of a garb or a badge you wear, – that is not the point, but there ought to be a badge which says to every man and woman, “I belong to Jesus Christ, and I am not ashamed of my colors.”
Any profession of Jesus Christ which brings no cross is all nonsense; it is not confession at all There are plenty of Christians very brave inside their churches in the presence of their friends, or on parade. They sing:
“Am I a soldier of the cross?”.
or, “Hold the fort, for I am coming.”
I was once in a large congregation where they were singing this with the greatest gusto:
“Wave the answer back to heaven, ‘By Thy grace we will.’”
I was sitting beside a warrior of the cross, one who carried the marks of many a desperate battle on his worn face. I whispered, “What should you think this people’s conception of holding the fort is?” and he whispered back, “A seven-and-six-penny pew!” Alas, how true, in hundreds of instances. Are there any ministers here? If so, I ask you, Is it not true of three parts of your congregations? What do the people in your pews mean by holding the fort? What fort do they hold? They hold the fort valiantly on the stock exchange, in the bank, at the office, or behind the counter. Let anybody go and try to get the better of them there, and they will hold that fort valiantly enough; but what fort are they holding for Jesus Christ? Here are two men, one is a professing Christian, the other an honorable man of the world. They are both, we will suppose, in the same business. Take their lives from day to day, and what is the difference between them? The one goes to church or chapel once or twice on Sunday. On the week day he gets up in the morning and has his breakfast, and perhaps he reads prayers out of a book, or perhaps not; this done and away be rushes to the city, to the business, where he works and thinks and plans with untiring energy till evening to make money. This is what he does six days in the week, without giving one hour per day to any kind of service to God or humanity, or even to the affairs of his own or his children’s souls. The other man does just the same, only he does not go to church on Sunday, or read prayers. If you look into the lives of these two men at the end of the week, you can’t find that the professed Christian has done one iota for the kingdom of God more than the other. You can’t find that he has spoken to any one about his soul, he would think it out of season to talk about religion in the shop, the counting-house, or on the exchange. He has never buttoned-holed any of his acquaintances or friends in his own house; he has never knelt down by the side of any poor wandering brother or sister, never visited any sick one or prayed with the dying; he has not done a thing for the Lord Jesus, and yet he will go to chapel and sing, “Hold the fort” on Sunday, as though he had been living the life of a saint all the week. I ask, Why should such a man be called a Christian any more than his neighbor over the way? Oh, friends, it is time we wiped away this reproach, and put it out of the power of infidels and atheists to wag their heads and say, “What do ye more than others?” It is time we drummed out of the professed armies of our Lord all such renegades or hypocrites!
Further, the great mass of these modern Christians cannot enter into this fight because they REFUSE TO BEAR THE CONSEQUENCES.
Fighting is hard work, whatever sort of fighting it is. You cannot fight without wounds of body, heart or soul. You cannot be a soldier without enduring “hardness,” and genteel Christians don’t like hardness – they won’t have the consequences.
First, they won’t lose their reputation; they won’t be counted fools and fanatics. I was thinking the other day, if we could have a list of the names of every person, high and low, rich and poor, who however been to the meetings of the Salvation Army, and who has received light and truth, and been called and claimed by God for this war, but who has gone back into the wilderness, what a list that would be! And more than half of this drawing back has been because people have been ashamed to own where they got their blessing, or where they might have had it. Friends, the recording angel keeps such a list! A gentleman answered the other day, when bewailing his miserable spiritual condition, and one of our friends asked him to go to a holiness-meeting, “not in my own town.” If he had been in London, and could have crept in with the crowd into the great Congress Hall, where nobody would have recognized him, he would have gone, but not in his own town. That reveals the secret of thousands of people having resisted the light, and lost the blessing they might have had. It was the same spirit of false shame which prompted the question of the Pharisees, “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on Him?”
My brother, my sister, listen:– while you care what any man or woman on earth thinks about you, or the instruments used of God to bless you, never expect to keep your blessing, for you never will. That man will go blundering on in his present lean and skeleton condition to the grave, and probably into hell, unless he repents, and finds out his mistake, and does his first works. Ashamed! Won’t be thought fanatical or weak, won’t be mixed up with these common people. “Not in my own town, not in my own family,” – too proud to confess that I am not just what I should be, and that I am going amongst those poor people to be made better. Oh, dear no, not if heaven depended upon it. Listen! “Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and of my words, of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”
Then, further, these modern Christians refuse to give their substance to carry on the war. You see war is impossible without money. I wish it were not so, but I cannot help it. This war is as impossible as any other, without money. Men and women must eat to live, however little they may manage with. And traveling expenses, rent of buildings, announcements, working expenses, prosecutions, breakdowns through sickness, etc.; etc., must be met. This war, I say, must have money, AND THE MORE WAR THE MORE MONEY IS WANTED. How many of these mongrel Christians, when faced with the needs of the war chest, exclaim, “Money again! always begging.” Now contrast the feelings of these same people when there is any great popular national war on foot. Then, what do they say in their newspapers, in their public meeting? They say to their statesmen: “You must ask for grants; you must not stick fast for money. We must win. John Bull must not be beaten for the sake of a few millions!” Ah, ah! their hearts are in this warfare! The women would sell their ornaments, and the men would hand over their balances, rather than England’s freedom or greatness should be sacrificed. Now then, I say that if the Christians of this London and this England of ours had the true war spirit, the spirit which says, “I want the world for Christ Jesus: I want my King to reign over the hearts of men: He shall win, be it at the cost of money or blood, or all else,” – if this spirit possessed them, instead of begrudging and reckoning how little they could give, and how much would save appearances, they would try how far they could deny themselves, and how much they could give. Oh! is this not true? Can you contradict it? Then, what am I to think of a band of professed soldiers who are always grumbling about having to give their money to extend the reign of their king, whom they profess to love more than all else besides! I do not propose to dwell on the beggarly subterfuges for getting money which these Christians resort to; it would make my cheeks crimson with shame. I said to a lady a little while ago, who was working an elaborate piece of embroidery for a bazaar, “Why don’t you give the money, and use your time for something better? She answered, “This will sell for more than it costs.” “Then reckon what it will sell for, and give the money; don’t sit at home making other people’s finery, instead of visiting the sick and seeking to save the lost!” It makes me burn with shame to think how money is raised for so-called religious purposes by semi-worldly concerts, entertainments, penny readings, and bazaars, at which there is frequently positive gambling to raise money for Jesus Christ, whom they say they love more than fathers, mothers; husbands, wives, houses or lands, or anything else on earth! And these are the people who accuse the Salvation Army of want of reverence! I have sometimes talked to ladies when they have been expensively dressed, and they have said, “Really, I do not care for these things.” “Then,” I have said, “it is passing strange you should be willing to spend your money for them. People generally care for the things they pay for.” If Christians really cared for the reign of Jesus Christ over the hearts of men, if their hearts were set on His Kingdom and on doing all they possibly could to extend it, if it were the highest ambition of their souls, the waking and sleeping idea of their minds, do you think they would grudge to pay for it? Oh no; any child knows they would not. Such professed concern is a mockery!
Further, these modern Christians refuse to give themselves or their children to the propagation of the kingdom.
They studiously bring up their children from three or four years of age to eighteen or twenty, grinding it into them every. day of their lives, for six and eight hours a day, how to get on and up in this world; but when Jesus Christ wants one of them – especially if he or she happens to be clever – to do any unpopular, or, in the eyes of the world, vulgar work for Him – any work that will bring a cross they consider it absolutely throwing that child away. All the ordinary, silly, sickly circles of gossip, and croquet, and drawing-room occupations, are considered most respectable and satisfactory in the case of young girls, alongside of any one of them giving her self up to seek and to save the lost. I heard a young lady say of a large circle of Christian friends: “While I was in frivolity and sin they all let me alone; I never had a letter, that I remember, from any of them about my soul; but as soon as they found that I had given myself to work amongst the poor and the lost, then they all woke up to a deep concern about my future, and I was flooded with letters from these Christian friends?” Oh! what do you think Jesus Christ would say to such people? Would He not say, as He said of their representatives, the Pharisees, “Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoreth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me”? Why should that daughter be thought thrown away who conies out and chooses a voluntary poverty and humility, and becomes a salvation officer to win poor lost men and women, for whom you say Jesus Christ shed His blood? If they were worth His blood, surely they are worth your daughter’s respectability! Then why, because she chooses to sacrifice it, should she be put at a disadvantage compared with her elder or younger sisters, who spend their time in the frivolities of the world? Answer, all ye parents, professed followers of the despised Nazarene!
Oh, the stories I could unfold, the dozens of letters that could be produced, pleading with young men and women whose hearts God has touched with pity for the perishing multitudes; bringing all the considerations of family ties, worldly position, future prospects, wealthy alliances, and I know not what else, in order to induce them to turn aside from the path of self-sacrifice and whole-hearted abandonment to the interests of the kingdom. I sometimes wonder that Christian parents and friends dare utter such words or pen such letters. I wonder that the ink does not turn red as they write, and that their accusing consciences do not force them to sign their names “Judas.”
What a different spirit parents and friends manifest with respect to their children and wards when the war-fever seizes the nation! Mothers give their sons – it may be with tears and heartaches – nevertheless ungrudgingly, to face the horrors of foreign warfare, in the shape of loneliness, toil, long marchings, exposure, privation, fever, dysentery, and a desolate death; and in other instances to wounds, loss of limbs, enfeebled constitutions, or violent death. Nay, women themselves have gone to such a war with the bravery of men, making lint, nursing the wounded, and inspiring the weak or wavering, and even working the guns; and as one rank has fallen, others have rushed in to fill up the bleeding gaps. But is it so in this warfare? It used to be. No grander enthusiasm, no more heroic self-sacrifice, no more determined abandonment, has ever fired human souls than has been exhibited in the cause of Jesus Christ; but alas! it is a long while ago. The Christians of this age, as a rule, want all their time, strength, and ability, and that of their children also, to enable them to climb up the ladder of this world’s social position; to get up, UP, from whence God – if Christ’s teaching means anything – will say, “Thou fool!” and hurl them down to perdition when they have done.
Friends, is it not true? If so, we ought to go down on our faces and weep, and have a confession service – first, for those who feel that this truth applies to themselves; and second, for those who, although their own consciences acquit them, know that it applies to thousands round about us. Like the prophets of old did, let us humble ourselves for the sins of our people. Let us take their iniquities on our hearts as far as we may, weep over them, confess for them, and pray for them, and then set ourselves to try to arouse them up to a sense of their responsibility and danger.
Further, I charge it on the professors of popular Christianity that they have no valor in the fight for truth and for God.
They hold not fast the faith once delivered to the saints, but surrender first one point and then another of God’s revelation to any skeptical heathen who may see fit to attack it. They bid Godspeed alike to all professed prophets and creeds, simply because it is a matter of indifference with them whether truth or error shall prevail; in fact, they are most tolerant of false teachers because they propound the easiest doctrine, often patronizing the most monstrous contradictions and shameless caricatures of the gospel. There can be no doubt that millions of souls are being sacrificed to the godless, senseless antinomian gospels of the present day, gospels which have been hacked and hewed worse than any poor vivisected animal. The very standards and landmarks of goodness, truth, honesty, chastity, and godliness are broken down, and the people are taught that they have nothing to do, to sacrifice, or to suffer, in order to be saved and to get into heaven, in fact that they call get there as easily by the broad road as by the narrow way; and all who preach the truth as Christ preached it are stigmatized as legal – as workmongers, as antichrists and papists.
Further, these modern Christians lack all enthusiasm in the warfare.
Look at their poor, gasping, half-hearted, uncertain profession of personal religion. They condemn anybody who dares get up and tell out any definite change that God has wrought in them, or of any glowing experience of the love, sufficiency, and power of Christ to save. They characterize all such testimony as self-exaltation and vainglory, whereas they ought to know that one of the main purposes of Christ in establishing a kingdom on the earth was that His servants might be His witnesses – not witnesses merely of His existence, but of His power to save from sin and its consequences. They should also study the writings of Paul, whom they claim as their great apostle, and note his bold, comprehensive, and persistent expression of his own personal experience, which occupied so large a share of his epistles.
Look at the cold, stiff, stilted public service of these modern Christians; note how they pray, sitting looking about, without reverence or decency, while their ministers pray for them by proxy; listen to their songs, mostly sung by a few dressed-up dolls perched in an organ-loft or singing pew, doing their praises for them, perhaps with a profane or drunken leader at so much a year. Listen to the preaching, – as a rule, cold dissertations and abstractions or platitudes, “moving not a hair of the polished divine” who utters them, nor of the people who listen. An amen or hallelujah would sound almost as much out of place as it would be on the gallows Who would ever imagine that such a minister and such worshippers were professedly serving Him of whom it was said, “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire”? Alas, alas such worshippers have nothing to be enthusiastic about. They have no personal participation in the Spirit or purposes of their professed Lord, no realization of His presence, and no glowing anticipation of His predicted triumphs. But watch the change when the time for dismissal comes; see the rush of acquaintances at the church or chapel doors to shake hands with one another; listen to the rush of tongues; there is plenty of enthusiasm now! Frank’s prizes at school or honors at college, Harry’s promotion in the killing army, Gertrude’s recent engagement, or Lizzie’s new baby, – these are topics in which the heart is interested, and so the tongue is inspired, and the soul comes forth from its lethargy! Alas for the little children who watch the altered countenances and listen to the interested tone and manner of mother and father during the progress of these congratulations! No wonder if they conclude that this is the reality, and what they have been witnessing in the church or chapel is a sham. No wonder such a Christianity cannot hold its own against the forces of the enemy; no cause is so hopeless as one without enthusiasm. People who do not care much are sure to go to the wall.
Further, I. charge these modern Christians with a lack of missionary enterprise.
No wonder, if they reason from the value and effect of their religion on their own characters and lives, that they do not see the importance of sending it to the heathen; and from all accounts it does no more for the heathen abroad than for the Christians at home. Alas, alas! on all these points popular Christianity must be confessed, when weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, to be found lamentably wanting.
Friends, what about yours?
The Real Warfare
We will now glance at two or three of the main characteristics of that warfare to which Christ has called His soldiers.
First: Christ’s soldiers must be imbued with the spirit of the war.
Love to the King and concern for His interests must be the master passion of the soul. All outward effort, even that which springs from a sense of duty, will fail without this. The hardship and suffering involved in real spiritual warfare are too great for any motive but that of love. It is said that one of the soldiers of Napoleon, when being operated upon for the extraction of a bullet, exclaimed, “Cut a little deeper and you will find my general’s name,” meaning that it was engraven on his heart. So must the image and glory of Christ be engraven on the heart of every successful soldier of Christ. It must be the all-subduing passion of his life to bring the reign of Jesus Christ over the hearts and souls of men. A little child who has this spirit will subjugate others to his King, while the most talented and learned and active, without it, will accomplish comparatively little. If the hearts of the Christians of this generation were inspired with this spirit, and set on winning the world for God, we should soon see nations shaken to their center, and millions of souls translated into the kingdom.
Secondly: The soldiers of Christ must be abandoned to the war.
They must be thoroughly committed to God’s side: there can be no neutrals in this warfare. When the soldier enlists and takes the queen’s shilling, he ceases to be his own property, but becomes the property of his country, must go where he is sent, stand at any post to which he is assigned, even if it be at the cannon’s mouth. He gives up the ways and comforts of civilians, and goes forth with his life in his hand, in obedience to the will of his sovereign.
If I understand it, that is just what Jesus Christ demands of every one of His soldiers, and nothing less.
Some one may ask, “But we cannot all be ministers, or missionaries, or officers in the Salvation Army; must we not attend to the avocations of this life, and work for the bread that perisheth for ourselves and our families?” Certainly, but the great end in all we do must be the promotion of the kingdom. A man may work in order that he may eat, but he must eat to live, not to himself or for the promotion of his own purposes, but for his King, and for the advancement of His interests; and if his heart is really set on this, he will have no desire to work at his secular calling longer than is absolutely necessary to promote this object. When the necessary amount of work is done, he will gladly lay aside his implements of husbandry or handicraft for the sword of the Spirit, and for the conflict with ignorance, vice, and misery. Instead of spending his evenings in ease and self-indulgence, he will betake himself to the streets or other places of resort for the people, and will spend what would have been his leisure hours in pressing. on them the claims of God and of His truth. There will be no running away, no forsaking of the cross, no shrinking from the hard places of the field; but a determined pushing of the battle to the gate, even amid weariness, opposition, and sometimes in the face of dire defeat. I ask, Was it any less a devotion than this which actuated the martyrs and confessors of old? Have I depicted an abandonment greater than that which they understood to be their duty and privilege? If they might have drawn back, why did they persevere, many of them, through long years of conflict and persecution, culminating in stripes, imprisonment, and death? It is evident that they understood fidelity to Christ to involve the most perfect self-abandonment, both in life and in death.
Then, third: Christ’s soldiers must understand the tactics of war.
In order to do this, they must make it a subject of earnest and prayerful study how to make the most of their time, talents, money, or any other resources which God may have placed at their command for the advancement of the kingdom. They must think and scheme how best to attack the enemy. Only think of the time, trouble, skill, and money that are expended by great killing armies in planning for stratagem, and maneuver in order to surprise and overcome their enemies. Some of you will remember reading, in the records of the last German and French war, that the German officers were better acquainted with the geography of France than the French themselves; they knew every road, by-way, and field, likely to be available for their purpose. Think of the time and trouble that must have been expended in becoming thus familiar with a foreign country, and compare this with the haphazard, rule-of-thumb kind of way in which spiritual warfare is for the most part conducted. Think of the undigested schemes and abortive plans, throwing away both labor and money, embarked in by professed Christian soldiers, who have never, perhaps, spent a day’s anxious thought and prayer over them in their lives. Think also of the shameful indifference-which cannot be characterized as warfare at all-of the ordinary services and arrangements of the churches. It often makes my heart ache as I pass some stately, closed-up church or chapel, with its antiquated board with a shame-faced, insignificant announcement that the “Reverend So-and-so will preach,” or a “Gospel address will be delivered” at such a time on such a day; in which it is evident nothing is contemplated beyond securing the eye and attention of those who already have a liking for going to churches and chapels. And as I sometimes read the lists of meetings connected with ordinary churches, I say to myself, “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,” is evidently the creed of the originators of this program, not with respect, perhaps, to the doctrines they preach, but with respect to the old-fashioned, effete methods by which they continue to publish them. Oh, is it not time that the professed children of light should learn, as the great Captain of our salvation exhorted them, wisdom by contrast with the children of darkness?
As I heard some friends talking the other day about the rescue of Gordon, and listened to their calculations as to the probable cost being some millions of money, and perhaps thousands of lives, I could not help thinking, yes, and I suppose all England (the Christians included) will think this quite a legitimate expenditure of both money and life to rescue this one man and the little band who is with him; and yet, if we were to ask for a few millions of money, and propose to sacrifice a few hundreds of lives in the rescue of millions of the human race from a bondage of misery and destruction ten thousand times more appalling than that which threatens General Gordon, they would call us mad enthusiasts and senseless fanatics. Alas, alas we may well ask, Where is the zeal of the Christians of this generation for the Lord of hosts? How much do they care about His reign over the hearts of their fellow men? What is their appreciation of the present and eternal benefits embraced in His salvation; or what is their estimate of the “crown of life” which he promises to give to every one of His conquering soldiers?
Fourth: The soldiers of Christ must believe in victory.
Faith in victory is an indispensable condition to successful warfare of any kind. It is universally recognized by generals of killing armies, that if the enthusiasm of expected conquest be destroyed, and their troops imbued with fear and doubt as to the ultimate result, defeat is all but certain. This is equally true with respect to spiritual warfare, hence the repeated and comprehensive assurance and promises of victory from the great Captain of our salvation The true soldier of Christ, who has the spirit of the war and who is abandoned to its interests, has an earnest in his soul of coming victory. He knows it is only a question of time, and time is nothing to love! As he is lying in the trenches, or taking long marches, or suffering for the want of common necessaries, or enduring the sharpest bayonets or heaviest fire of the enemy, or lying wounded, overcome by fatigue, pressed by discouragement, realizing the greatness of the conflict in contrast with his own weakness – in the very darkest hours and severest straits, he has the herald of coming victory sounding in his ears. The faithful soldier knows that he shall win, and that his King will ultimately reign, not only over a few, but over all the kingdoms of this earth, and that He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. This faith inspires Him to endure hardship and to suffer loss, to hold on. He never thinks of turning his back to the foe, or shirking the cross, or turning the stones into bread, or of trying to shorten the march. He never thinks of withdrawing from the thick of the fight, but goes on through perils by land, by sea, by his own countrymen, by the heathen, by false brethren at home and abroad. He looks onward through the dark clouds to the proud moment when the King will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” He listens, and above the din of the earthly conflict he hears the words, “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life!”
The Christs of the Nineteenth Century
I suppose there will be no division of opinion in my audience as to the fact that humanity needs a Christ, -- that everywhere and in all ages, men and women have been, and are still conscious of a strife with evil; not merely physical evil represented by thorns and thistles, but with moral evil -- evil in thought, in intention, in action, both in themselves and in those around them. This consciousness of wrong has thrust upon men the realization of their need of help from some extraneous power, or being. In all generations men have seemed to feel that without such help there must be a perishing.This sense of need has been forced upon men, first, by the failure of their own repeated efforts to help and save themselves.
Secondly, by their observation of such fruitless efforts in others.
What man or woman who has thought at all, who has not stood on the edge of this human whirlpool, and watched the struggling multitudes as they have risen and sunk, striving and struggling by resolutions, by the embracing of new theories, by taking of pledges, and making new departures, to escape from the evil of their own natures and to save themselves? Who has watched the struggle without realizing the need that some Almighty independent arm should be stretched out to deliver and to save? Who can read history or contemplate the experience of humanity at the present time, without realizing that it needs a Saviour, whatever idea may be entertained as to the kind of Saviour required?
Further, this sense of need is the outcome of the filial instinct born in every human soul, which cries out in the hour of distress or danger to an Almighty Father, – a God, a friend somewhere in the universe, able to help and to deliver. This instinct is at the bottom of all religions, and more or less embodied in all their formulas, from that of the untutored savage up to the profoundest philosopher the world has ever produced. Perhaps the cry of humanity, destitute of a Divine revelation, could not be better summed up than in the following words of Plato, who, speaking of the soul and its destiny, says:
“It appears to me that to know them clearly in the present life is either impossible or very difficult; on the other hand, not to test what has been said of them in every possible way, not to investigate the whole matter and exhaust upon it every effort, is the part of a very weak man. For we ought in respect to these things, either to learn from others how they stand, or to discover them for ourselves, or, if both these are impossible, then taking the best of human reasonings, that which appears the best supported, and embarking on that, as one who risks himself on a raft – so to sail through life – unless one could be carried more safely, or with less risk, on a secret conveyance, or some Divine Logos.”
In this confession, and in that of many others similar, we see, as it were, a mighty soul praying through the gates of life, striving to fathom the mysteries of being and to unlock the unknown future, – in fact, crying out for a Christ, a Divine Word, or Logos, a something or somebody who should guide him, taking him up where human reason and philosophy failed him. It is also worthy of note that it has always been the highest type of man in all ages who has cried out most persistently for an extraneous deliverer. The more conscious of his own powers and the higher in his aspirations man has become, the more vehemently has he sought, outside of himself, for light and deliverance. . Surely this universal cry of humanity, in all its phases and throughout all ages, betrays a great want, casting its shadows before – the cry of the creature responding to the purpose of the Creator to send a Saviour able to save to the uttermost of . man’s necessity. The great realized want of humanity was a deliverer who could take away its sense of guilt, enlighten its ignorance, and energize it for the practice of all goodness and truth, – a being who could not only stand without and legislate as to what men were to do, but who could come within and empower them to do it. Heathen philosophies and ancient religions could say, “Love thy neighbor,” but they could none of them inspire the man to do it, much less enable him to love his enemy none of them even aspired to command that. That was beyond humanity. Here, then, was the great need of a power to come inside and rectify the wrong, making the spring right, so that its outcome might be right.
Further, I want to remark that in the Bible a Christ is offered that meets this need. This is the great distinguishing boast of our faith the only religion on the face of the earth in which the idea of a Christ has ever been conceived. The Bible offers this Christ. The golden chimes of great joy that rang out on the day when He was heralded by the angels, were to be glad tidings to all people of a Saviour which was Christ the Lord, a mighty deliverer, able to cope with man’s inability, with the disadvantages of his circumstances, and the consequences of his fall. Now we contend that this Christ of the Bible, the Christ who appeared in Judea 1800 years ago is now abroad in the earth just as much as He was then, and that He presents to humanity all that it needs; that He is indeed, as He represented Himself to be, the Bread of Life come down from heaven, the Light, and the Life, and the Strength of man, meeting this cry of his soul which has been going up to God for generations. Here I stand and make my boast, that the Christ of God, my Christ, the Christ of the Salvation Army, does meet this crying need of the soul, does fill this aching void, and does become to man that which God sets Him forth as being in this book. Guilty humanity He promises to pardon, and He does pardon. Ignorant humanity (with respect to God and the things of God) He promises to enlighten, and He does enlighten it. Degraded, sunken, impure humanity (in the very essence of its being) He promises to purify, and He does purify it. We make our boast of this Christ, and we say He is able to save to the uttermost, and that He does this now as much as ever He has done in the 1800 years that are past, – - that He is a real, living, present Saviour to those who really receive and put their trust in Him.
I know that many may answer, “This is not the Christ that is generally presented in the preaching and teaching of this age, or that is generally professed and believed in by the Christians of this age; neither do we see such results as you depict in their characters or lives.” Granted. The skeptics and the infidels say: “We do not see these results, and therefore we do not believe in your Christ.” And I say, looking at the question from their standpoint, I should feel just as they do, because they have a right to have these results proved to them. It is useless telling of wonderful things having transpired a long time ago and a long distance away. They say, Show them now; show us the men in whom this change is wrought, and then we will believe that this Christ always does these things. I say Amen, and that because they do not see these signs in the popular Christianity of this day, therefore they reject its Christ, and there is great excuse for them, – not such excuse as will justify them at the bar of God, because they ought to have found out Christ for themselves, – nevertheless, an excuse to themselves and to their fellow-men.
I say, I grant that this is not the Christ exhibited in these days.
I will now try to give to you, as I perceive them, those modern representations of Christ which, instead of drawing all men unto Him, have driven the great mass away from Him, and disgusted many of the ablest minds with the whole system of existing Christianity.
False Christs
The first imaginary Christ of this age seems to be a sort of religious myth or good angel – a being of the imagination who lived in the long distance, and who does very well to preach, write, and sing about, or to make pictures about, with which to adorn people’s dwellings – a kind of religious Julius Caesar, who did wonderful things ages ago, and who is somehow or other going to benefit in the future those who intellectually believe in Him now; but as to helping man in his present need, guilt, bondage, or agony, they never even pretend that He does anything of the kind. This Christ makes no difference in them or their lives; they live precisely as their neighbors do, only that they profess to believe in this Christ while their neighbors do not.
Now this is not the Christ represented in the New Testament. The Christ of God was a real veritable person, who walked about, and taught, and communicated with men; who helped and saved them from their evil appetites and passions, and who promised to keep on doing so to the end of the world; who called His followers to come out from the evil and sin of the world to follow Him, carrying His cross, obeying His words, and consecrating themselves to the same purposes for which He lived and died; seeking always to overcome evil with good, and to breast the swelling tide of human passion and opposition with meekness, patience, and love; promising to be in them an Almighty Divine presence, renovating and renewing the whole man, and empowering them to walk in His footsteps.
I am afraid there are thousands who sit in our churches and chapels and hear the modern Christ descanted on, who, if asked their idea of Christ, would be utterly at a loss to give it. They have no definite conception of what His name or being means. They would not like to say whether He is in heaven or on earth. If asked whether He had done anything for them personally, they cannot tell; the most they say is that they hope so, or that they hope He will do something some day. He is to them a mere idea.
Another false but very common view of Christ in these days is that He is a sort of divine make-weight. You will hear people say, when spoken to about their souls, “Yes, I know I am very weak and sinful, but I am doing the best I can, and Jesus is my Saviour; He will make up what I lack.” In these instances there is not even the recognition of the necessity of pardon, much less of the power of Christ to renew the soul in righteousness, and to fit it for the holy employments and companionships of heaven. This Christ is simply dragged at the tail, not only of human effort but of human failure, and offered, as it were, in the arms of an impudent presumption, as a make-up in the scale of human deserts. And yet how many thousands of church and chapel-going people, it is to be feared, are deluded by supposing that this imaginary Christ will meet the needs of their souls before the judgment bar of God.
To others this imaginary Christ is only a superior human being, a beautiful example – the most beautiful the world has ever seen; not Divine, yet the nearest to our conception of the Divine which even they think possible, but only human still. This Christ is held up as the embodiment of all that is noble, true, self-sacrificing and holy – an example of what we are to be, but supplying no power by which to conform ourselves to the model.
I frequently find that the people who make so much ado about the example of Christ are the furthest from following it. They say it is not intended to be followed literally. But how else can you imitate anyone? How can an example be followed figuratively? Alas! the admirers of this human Christ make it sadly manifest in their lives and experience that humanity needs not only a model, but an inspiring presence to restore its lost balance, energize its feeble faculties, and rekindle its spiritual aspirations. Conceiving only of a human model, the paralyzed soul finds no higher source of strength than its own desires and resolutions, and after the oft-repeated experiment at self-deliverance, sinks at length overwhelmed with a sense of failure and despair. It is not in man or angel, however sublime, to free the human soul from its fetters of realized guilt, or to empower it for the reconquest of that Eden of righteousness and peace from which the avenging angel of justice once expelled it. A human Christ is only a phantom of the imagination, an ignis fatuus.
Another modern representation of the Christ is that of a substitutionary Saviour, – not in the sense of atonement merely, but in the way of obedience. This Christ is held up as embodying in Himself the sum and substance of the sinner’s salvation, needing only to be believed in, that is, accepted by the mind as the atoning Sacrifice, and trusted in as securing for the sinner all the benefits involved in His death, without respect to any inwrought change in the sinner himself.
This Christ is held up as a justification and protection in sin, not as a deliverer from sin. Men and women are assured that no harm can overtake them if they believe in this Christ, whatever may be the state of their hearts, or however they may, in their actions, outrage the laws of righteousness and truth.
In other words, men are taught that Christ obeyed the law for them, not only as necessary to the efficacy of His atonement for their justification, but that He has placed His obedience in the stead of, or as a substitution for, the sinner’s own obedience or sanctification, which in effect is like saying, Though you may be untrue, Christ is your truth; though you may be unclean, Christ is your chastity; though you may be dishonest, Christ is your honesty; though you may be insincere, Christ is your sincerity.
The outcome of such a faith only produces outwardly the whited sepulchers of profession, while within are rottenness and dead men’s bones. The Christ of God never undertook to perform any such offices for His people, but He did undertake to make them “new creatures,” and thus to enable them to perform them for themselves. He never undertook to be true instead of me, but to make me true to the very core of my soul. He never undertook to make me pass for pure, either to God or man, but to enable me to be pure. He never undertook to make me pass for honest or sincere, but to renew me in the spirit of my mind so that I could not help but be both, as the result of the operation of His Spirit within me. He never undertook to love God instead of my doing so with “all my heart and mind and soul and strength,” but He came on purpose to empower and inspire me to do this. The idea of a substitutionary Christ accepted as an outward covering or refuge, instead of the power of “an endless life,” is a cheat of the devil, and has been the ruin of thousands of souls. I fear this view of Christ, so persistently preached in the present day, encourages thousands in a false hope while they are living in sin, and consequently under the curse not only of a broken law, but of a Saviour denied and abjured. Let me ask you, my hearers, what sort of a Christ is yours? Have you a Christ who saves you, who renews your heart, who enables you to live in obedience to God, or are you looking to this outside and imaginary Christ to do your obeying for you?
Another false idea of Christ, entertained, I fear, by multitudes of sincere souls, is that of a Divine condemnation.
This class of people seem to think that they ought to spend all their lives bewailing and bemoaning their sins, and are forever crying out, “Oh, wretched man that I am,” “Christ have mercy on us, miserable sinners”; and they go on crying this every day of their lives. They forget that He of whom Moses and the prophets did write, is come. They forget that the deliverer is here that. pardon is offered, and that he is ready to witness it and fill their souls with peace and joy. If Christ be only for condemnation, what are these poor souls advantaged by His coming? what has He done more than the law did, for them? The law made them realize their bondage, writhe under a sense of their Sills, and set them longing after freedom and deliverance. It was their schoolmaster (or should have been) to bring them to Christ – Christ, the Son, who was to make them free; but alas! in this case He is made a much harder schoolmaster than the law itself, for these poor souls get no deliverance, no peace, no joy, or power. They are always piping Paul’s bewailing notes, in which he personified a convicted sinner, struggling under the fetters of condemnation. But they never get into his triumphant notes, where he declares, “there is now no condemnation.”
This false view of Christ has led to most of the idolatries, penances, and lacerations of Catholicism.
The exhibition of a Christ too unsympathetic and implacable to be approached without a second intercessor – a far-off, austere judge, rather than a pitying, pardoning Saviour, – - has kept millions of poor souls in bondage all their lives. I must say, however, that I have more sympathy with such souls, because they are sincere, and earnest, and willing to deny themselves, in order to find the right way, than with those who thoughtlessly take refuge under any of the false representations of Christ to which we have referred. It is to be feared, however, that the same spirit of worldliness which has so largely destroyed the power of Protestantism, has, to a great extent, extinguished this groping after Christ in the Catholic Church. I confess that I cannot see sufficient cause for congratulations such as are common in Protestant circles over the decadence of Popery, seeing that everybody knows that it is not in consequence of a growth of real heavenly light, but only the further spread of a careless, godless, take-it-easy spirit, putting out the earnest desire for purification which formerly led to so much self-sacrifice in the Church of Rome. There can be no doubt that it is through the loss of this true spirit of devotion that the evils which have crept into that Church have so completely overshadowed the good, and prevented the multiplication of St. Bernards and others who got through the self-despair into the purest light and joy. Still, there are many earnest souls left, who continue to cry over their sins as though no deliverer had come. The Christ of God came not to bring condemnation but pardon, peace, and gladness to every penitent sinner on the face of the earth. I heard, the other day, a story which beautifully illustrates this: A poor Catholic woman, who had been in bondage all her life to a sense of guilt, and had earnestly sought by all the methods prescribed by her Church, especially by devotion to the Virgin Mary, to find peace and deliverance, when on her death-bed was brought into contact with one who had in reality found the Christ of God, and who was enabled to show to this poor trembling soul the sufficiency of His sacrifice, and His willingness to pardon and to purify. Through the influence of the Spirit of God which accompanied this exhibition of the true Christ, she was enabled to rest her soul on Him, and immediately entered into rest. Shortly afterwards her priest presented himself at her bedside, when she accosted him with the words, “Oh, you are too late, too late, I have found a better Priest than you, and He has absolved me. I am happy, happy, happy!”
The Christ of God is not a condemnatory Christ, but a pitying, pardoning Saviour, calling to His bosom the weary and heavy laden in all ages.
Another of these false views of Christ is that which presents Him as a future deliverer, without being a present Saviour.
It is to be feared that thousands are looking to Him to save them from the consequences of sin that is, hell, – who continue to commit sin; they utterly misunderstand the aim and work of the Christ of God. They do not see that He came not merely to bring men to heaven, but to bring them back into harmony with His Father; they look upon the atonement as a sort of make-shift plan by which they are to enter heaven, leaving their characters unchanged on earth. They forget that sin is a far greater evil in the Divine estimation than hell; they do not see that sin is the primal evil. If there were no sin there need he no hell. God only proposes to save people from the consequences of sin by saving them from the sin itself; and this is the great distinguishing work of Christ to save his people from their sins!
The Christ of God
Now I deny that any of the representations of Christ to which I have referred are the Bible representations of the Christ of God, or that they meet the need of the soul of man. They are for the most part made to meet the ideas of a modern worldly Christianity.
Men have made up their minds that they can possess and enjoy all they can get of this world in common with their fellow men, and yet get to heaven at last. They have made up their minds that it is all nonsense about following the Christ, – becoming a laughing stock to the world, which He made Himself every day He lived, – and setting themselves to live a holy life, which He said if they did not they were none of His; all this they have abandoned as an impossibility, and yet, not content. without a religion, and finding it impossible to look into the future without a hope of some sort, they have manufactured a Christ to meet their views, and spun endless theories to match the state of their hearts. The worst of all, however, is that a great many of the teachers of Christianity have adopted these theories, and spend their whole lives in misrepresenting the Christ of the Gospel.
Now let me try to put before you what I conceive to be the true representation of the Christ of God. We say that He meets the whole world’s need that He comes to it walking on the waves of its difficulties, sins, and sorrows, and says, “I am the Bread of Life; take Me, appropriate Me, live by Me, and you will live forever. I will resuscitate and pardon, cleanse and energize you; I am the Christ, the Saviour of the World.” This is the Divine “Word,” or deliverer, which philosophers have longed for, and stretched out their dying hands to embrace – which all the heathen world have, more or less, groped after in some dim figure.
First: The Christ of God is Divine.
We admit the incarnation was a mystery, looked at from a human standpoint, but no greater mystery than many other incarnations taking place all around us, and because a mystery, none the less a necessity. Humanity must have a deliverer able to save, and no less than an Almighty deliverer was equal to the task. Here, all merely human deliverers, all philosophers and teachers of the world, had failed, because they could only teach, they could not renew. They could set up a standard, enunciate a doctrine, but they could not remove man’s inability, or endue him with power to reach it. Here even the law of God failed, and that which was ordained to life wrought death. Here was the sunken rock, the bitter, maddening failure of all systems and deliverers – they failed to rectify the heart; they could not give a new life or impart another spirit.
We saw at the outset that man needed some being outside of himself, above him, and yet able to understand and pity him in his utmost guilt, misery, and helplessness – able to inspire him with a new life, to impart light, love, strength, and endurance, and to do this always and everywhere, in every hour of darkness, temptation, and danger. Humanity needed an exhibition of God, not merely to be told about Him, but to see Him; not merely to know that He was an Almighty Creator, able to crush him, but that He is a pitiful Father, yearning and waiting to save him. God’s expedient for showing this to man was to come in the flesh. Can the wisest modern philosopher or the most benevolent philanthropist conceive a better? How otherwise could God have revealed Himself to fallen man? Since the fall, man has proved himself incapable of seeing or knowing God; he has ever been afraid of the heavenly, running away even from an angel; and when only hearing a voice and seeing the smoke which hid the Divinity, he exceedingly feared and quaked, and begged not to hear that voice again. Truly, no man, as he is by nature, can see God and live. Seeing then, that God desired that man should see Him – that is, know Him – and live, notwithstanding his fall, He promised a Saviour, who should reveal Him in all the holiness and benevolence of His character, and in His plenitude of power to save!
Here the Christ of God presents Himself, claiming to be this Divine Saviour. An objector may ask for proof of His Divinity. This would be far too great a subject to go into now, but we may glance at two or three considerations, which are quite sufficient, unless, indeed, Christ were an impostor.
First, those who reject His Divinity say He is the nearest to the Divine of anything we can conceive. They say He is the best of the good of our race even infidels cannot find fault with His character; they all bow down before the spotless purity, the beneficence and moral beauty of Jesus Christ. All schools grant this. Then, taking my stand here, I say that this perfect being claimed to be Divine, and He claimed it so unmistakably and persistently, that if you take it out of His teachings, you reduce them to a jumble of inconsistencies. His Divinity is the central fact around which all His doctrines and teachings revolve, so that if this be extinguished, they become like a system of astronomy without the sun, dark, conflicting, and inconsistent. Read the Gospels and eliminate for yourselves all His assumptions of Divinity, and then see what you can make of His teaching.
Secondly, these assumptions were understood and resented by the people to whom He spoke, and they surely were the best judges as to what He meant. If they had mistaken His meaning, He was bound, merely as a man of honor, to explain Himself, but He never did; so when the Jews said, “Whom makest Thou Thyself,” or, “This man maketh himself equal with God,” He did not demur or retract, but repeated, “I came forth from the Father, and I go to the Father.” This was the one intolerable point in His teaching, which the Jews, who owned no plurality in gods, could not endure; that any other being should be one with their Jehovah, was to them insufferable, and for this they ultimately crucified Him. “What further need have we,” said the high priest, “of witnesses? Behold, now ye have heard His blasphemy.”
Then, if He were so near an approach to perfection as even infidels admit, how was it that He allowed such an impression of His teachings to go abroad, if he were not Divine? How could He say, “If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins,” if He had not known Himself to be the Christ of God?
Thirdly, His character supported His assumptions. For 1800 years millions of the best of the human race have accepted these assumptions without being shocked by them. If He be not Divine, how comes it to be that the greatest of human intellects, the sincerest of human souls, and the most aroused and anxious of human consciences, have ventured their all upon this Divine Word, and have seen nothing contradictory between His claims and the actual character which He sustained in the world; whereas, imagine the very holiest and best who ever trod our earth putting forth such assumptions, and how would they sound! Suppose Moses, who had talked with God in the burning bush, or Isaiah, whose tongue was touched with the live coal from off the altar, or Daniel, the man greatly beloved, to whom the angel Gabriel was sent again and again, or the apostle of the Gentiles, who was admitted into the third heaven, or the beloved apostle John, – suppose any of these men saying, “I am from above, ye are from beneath,” “I am not of this world,” “If ye believe not I am He, ye shall die in your sins,” “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world.” Again, “I leave the world and go to the Father; and in His prayer on the eve of His agony, “The glory which I had with the Father before the world was,” and again, in answer to Philip’s request, “Show us the Father,” – “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father;” “believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me?”
And not only does He claim this oneness of essence with the Father, but also that omniscience which enables Him not only to be with His people but to dwell in them, as shown in His answer to the question of Judas, when he asked how it was that He would manifest Himself to His own people and not to the world. Jesus answered, “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.”
Think of any creature – a David, a Paul, a John, – daring to claim for himself this omniscience. If this Christ were not Divine, then there is no alternative; he was altogether an impostor and a deceiver.
From such a conclusion, however, even infidels and blasphemers shrink, and therefore we must be allowed to hold to our faith in our Divine Redeemer – our Immanuel, “God with us.” I may ask here, if there is one of my hearers whose consciousness does not tell him that he needs a Divine Saviour? Would any less than an Almighty, omniscient, infinite deliverer meet the needs of your souls? If so, you must feel much better and stronger, and more able to help yourselves than I do. “Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”
But take this mystery out of Christianity, and the whole system utterly collapses. Without a Divine Christ Christianity sinks into a mere system of philosophy, and becomes as powerless for the renovation and salvation of mankind as any of the philosophies which have preceded it. But no, our Joshua has come, our Deliverer is here; He is come, and is now literally fulfilling His promise to abide, “I and my Father will come unto you, and make our abode with you.” He comes now in the flesh of His true saints, just as really as he came first in the body prepared for Him, and He comes for the same purpose, to renew and to save. He is knocking at the doors of your hearts even now, through my feeble words, and will come into your hearts if you will let Him. As he came walking over the sea of Galilee to the men and women of His own day, He comes now to you, walking over the storm raised by your appetites, your inordinate desires, passions, and sins – a storm only just gathering, waxing worse and worse, and which, unless allayed, will grow to eternal thunderings, lightning, and billows but He is able to allay it, He offers to pronounce “Peace, be still,” and end this tempest of your soul for ever. Will you let Him?
Second: The Christ of God offered Himself as a sacrifice for the sin of man.
The Divine law had been broken; the interests of the universe demanded that its righteousness should be maintained, therefore its penalty must be endured by the transgressor, or, in lieu of this, such compensation must be rendered as would satisfy the claims of justice, and render it expedient for God to pardon the guilty. We will not attempt to go into the various theories respecting the atonement; it is enough for us to know that Christ made such a sacrifice as rendered it possible for God to be just, and yet to pardon the sinner. His sacrifice is never represented in the Bible as having purchased or begotten the love of the Father, but only as having opened a channel through which that love could flow out to His rebellious and prodigal children. The doctrine of the New Testament on this point is not that “God so hated the world that His own Son was compelled to die in order to appease His vengeance,” as we fear has been too often represented, but that “God so LOVED the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.”
As Christ represented His union with the Father as perfect and entire on every point and in every particular of His humiliation, so He represents it as equally complete with respect to the sufficiency and vicarious character of His death. “THEREFORE doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. He so shows that in baring His own heart to the sword of justice, He was equally with the Father interested in the maintenance of the dignity of the law, and equally inspired with boundless and quenchless love for its transgressors.
There has been a great deal of empty talk as to the needlessness of a vicarious sacrifice, and many contend that the Father’s love flows out to all His creatures independently of any such intervention; but, setting aside the requirements of the Divine law altogether, I venture to assert that there has never been a human conscience awakened in any measure to the deserts of sin, which has not instinctively felt the need of such a sacrifice. In thousands of instances, even with the strongest representations of the infinity, value, and efficacy of the atonement, it requires the utmost effort to get the trembling soul to rest its hopes on the merits of even this Divine sacrifice, and all history proves that in no other way have sinful consciences ever been able to find rest.
Third: The Christ of God is an accepted sacrifice.
This has been attested by His resurrection from the dead. God has declared to the three worlds, of angels, men, and devils, that justice is satisfied, and that henceforth no guilty son or daughter of Adam need despair of His mercy and salvation – the accepted sacrifice for all men, and we know not for what other beings. How far-reaching its benefits are we cannot tell, – perhaps to distant planets and suns; any way they reach to you and to me.
In view of this sacrifice God waits to pardon your guilt, cleanse your pollution, transform your character, and hallow, and beautify, and utilize your life. You have no longer any excuse for groaning under the dominion of sin. He calls you forth from the tomb of your depravity; He calls you out of the dungeon of your guilt, and offers you a full and free acquittal, with all the resources necessary for a new life of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
Fourth: The Christ of God is an embodiment of His Father’s righteousness.
He will only administer the benefits of His sacrifice in accordance with the Divine standard of right. He will do no violence either to the Government of God or the nature of man. Although love was the supreme ingredient of His character, yet we hear no words of an indiscriminate charity dropping from His lips, no excuse of sin, no palliation of the guilt of enlightened transgressors of His Father’s law, or impudent presumers on His Father’s forbearance. He hated iniquity as supremely as He loved righteousness. The great end and aim of His coming was the regeneration and restoration of man to the mind and will of God; hence He confirmed the first and greatest commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.”
Fifth: The Christ of God claims to be the Sovereign of all whom He saves. He tells us, if men keep not His words – do not obey Him – they are none of His; and He claims absolute inward and outward obedience to His precepts every hour of every day of all the life of every one who professes to be His subject.
My friends, have you accepted this Christ? Do you know Him as your Divine Almighty Deliverer from the strength and power of sin? Have you cast your weary soul on Him as your sacrifice, claiming freedom from the condemnation of the past? Have you the witness of His Spirit that this sacrifice has been accepted by God on your behalf, and does the answering cry, “Abba, Father,” go up from your soul? Are you living in the regeneration of His Spirit, carefully seeking to fulfill all righteousness, commending your every act to Him in faithful obedience? Does he reign over you as the sovereign of your heart and life, and do you hold everything you possess, – yourself, your children, your property, your time, your influence, your reputation, your life, your death, – - subservient to His will and interests? If so, happy are you, and your example . before men and your influence in the world will be worthy of the professed followers of the “Christ of God.”
I suppose that most of those present this afternoon are aware that the subject is "A mock salvation in comparison with Christ's salvation"-- deliverance from sin. As I said last week with respect to a Christian, so I may say this week with respect to salvation, that there will be no difference of opinion as to the need of our race for a salvation of some sort. This must be too patent to need argument, that our world is disordered, disjointed, morally diseased, and that it needs some sort of regenerating, rectifying process, if society is not to be disorganized by its own corruptions, or sunk forever in the hell of its iniquities. Every man knows this to his own hurt. All men have a personal consciousness of being wrong, whether they believe in a Divine revelation or not; nay, whether they believe in God or not. I do not think I have spoken to more than half a dozen people in my life and I have spoken, I suppose, to some thousands of different classes who have maintained that they were right. Even infidels, when you face them with the question, "Are you right? are you living according to the dictates of your judgment and conscience?" dare not say that they are. The universal cry of our poor humanity is, "Oh, wretched man that I am" whether it be looking for any Divine deliverance or not. Men everywhere know that they are not living according to their own conceptions of right, and therefore they have a sense of self-condemnation; and this asserts itself in spite of their arguments and excuses. It is of no avail to the soul tormented with a sense of guilt to say, "The woman tempted me," or "I was under the pressure of great fear, or shame, or dread"; this is no real palliation. Hence the universal fear to face the future, the disinclination to think about God, the predisposition to blind the eyes to the proofs of His existence, and to harden the heart against His claims. Truly, conscience makes cowards of us all until cleansed from dead works, purified and restored to the throne of the soul.
Further: not only do all men feel this sense of wrong in themselves, but they expect wrong in others. Even parents anticipate and provide for it in their children. Every parent knows that there is a tendency in . his children to go astray from the very first moment of accountability. He knows that there is in his child a tendency to speak lies as soon as it can speak at all, that there is a tendency to perverse tempers and wicked passions. Hence wise parents universally recognize, whether they make any pretensions to Christianity or not, the necessity of family government and careful training in order to check, counteract, or eradicate, as the case may be, these tendencies to evil; and thus they acknowledge the necessity for a certain kind of salvation. in their children, and they recognize also this fact, that if they do not attempt to work out this salvation, the children will bring them to wreck and ruin. A child left to itself brings its mother to shame; we know that sadly too well.There is the same recognition of the need of a salvation amongst men of the world. Every intelligent business man goes on the assumption that he has to encounter wrong in the hearts and conduct of his neighbors; in fact; the world takes it as a sign of intelligence that a business man goes on this assumption, and would call him a fool if he did not. He knows that he is beset on all hands by those who will over-reach, cheat, and ruin him for anything that they care, if they can promote their own interests by so doing. Hence the necessity for a kind of legal salvation, in the form of agreements and bonds, between man and man.
I hear a good deal about this in connection with our negotiations for buildings, which we are carrying on every day. When proprietors and agents have made certain offers or promises, the General says, “Have you got it in black and white?” and if the answer is “No,” then he says, “What is the use of it?” Alas! we know only too well that it is of no use; and I am sorry to say that this is as true of many professing Christians as of worldly men. Why is this? Because a man’s word is nothing in the great majority of instances. Hence the necessity for lawyers, magistrates, and judges; and even these have to be tied down by law, and watched and supervised, lest even the judges should turn traitors to justice, and, for the sake of bribes or party considerations, sell the interests of those whom they ought to protect. Here again is the recognition of the necessity for a salvation for these very people who are placed as guardians of public justice and the administrators of the law. This salvation many of them specially require when dealing with the poor Salvation Army. By the way, it is a curious fact that such is the impression produced by the Army, that again and again politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have laughingly represented various combinations of statesmen as “salvation armies. How often do politicians in different lands represent their countries as in some particular, verging on ruin, and needing a “salvation”? What is this but a great public confession, made by those best capable of judging, that whole nations are misled? for in these days of popular government most people have to be cajoled into voting to their own injury. Moreover, we have it from the highest public authority that nation after nation goes astray on questions vitally affecting their highest good; and it is commonly asserted that they are deliberately led astray by men who care only for their own interests, and so contrive to delude their fellow men wholesale.
It is evident that but for these temporal salvations to which I have alluded, the world would be unendurable for us to live in You know this. You know that it is not safe for a man to trust his neighbor – nay, in many oases, even his brother; “for there is none upright among men … they hunt every man his brother with a net.”
Here, then, is the patent, palpable necessity for a salvation. Now, the question is, What sort of salvation meets the necessities of the case? What kind of a salvation does God our Maker, who knows what He meant us to be at the first, and who knows perfectly what we have become through sin, what kind of a salvation does HE propose for humanity?
I answer, He proposes a salvation that deals with and removes the cause of all this wrong and woe.
Our Saviour, in Matthew xv. 19, goes to the root of the evil when He says: “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” And the apostle also, in Galatians v.19: “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in tune past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” Whether you believe in the revelation or not, you will agree with the fact that these are the works coining everywhere from the evil heart of man; there is no getting away from that. Then I say that God proposes to deal with and remove the cause the wrong state of the heart. If all men’s hearts could be set right today, we should need no more temporal, legal or political salvation, lawyers, police, magistrates, or judges; for a salvation that renews the heart would render all these unnecessary.
God’s plan of salvation in dealing with the internal malady embraces all its external consequences.
It is evident then that any salvation which does not deal with this leprosy of evil in the heart is a mockery.
As I showed last week that there are, alas, many false, delusive, disappointing christs; so I have to show this week that there are many make-believe, mock salvations, which only deceive, disappoint, and damn those who trust in them. As I walk about the world, and as I look at professing Christians, my soul cries: O God, make haste to help us to raise up a holy people, in order to show the world what salvation really means, for they do not know. They are utterly befogged and bewildered, and I do not wonder.
We will now look at a few of these mock salvations, for they are legion. First, I want to premise that anything, no matter how valuable in itself, which is put in the place of something for which it is no substitute, is a mockery. For instance, here is a stone, very valuable in its right place – especially if it be in one of the shops in Oxford Street; but offered to a starving man in a desert it is a mockery; because, valuable as it is, the man cannot eat it, and he will die notwithstanding that the stone, worth a, thousand pounds, lies at his feet, because it is no substitute for bread.
Now, there are endless substitutions for salvation. It has been the devil’s plan from the beginning to make imitations of God’s best things. Perhaps it is a necessity that evil must try its power upon all God’s creatures as it did upon Adam; we do not know. Probably there was no other way of working out the transcendent value and beauty of goodness than by allowing it to come in contact with evil; if this be so, of course it applies to God’s remedies for sin; anyway, the devil has done his worst on these. God’s plan of salvation is at present in this crucible. The devil is trying to circumvent it, and his favorite plan for doing this is by forging plenty of mockeries.
We will look at these under four divisions – Salvations of theory; salvations of ceremony; salvations of mere belief, and the salvation of unbelief.
First, let us look at salvations of theory. You see it matters very little what kind of a theory a man has; if it be substituted for salvation it becomes a mockery, – a true theory no less than a false one.
The devil no doubt has a correct theory; I fancy that he is a much better theologian than many Christians, but be remains the old serpent still.
It is doubtless better to have right opinions than wrong ones, but the best opinions will not save a man. I am afraid there is a great deal of preaching that amounts to a mere putting of the different theories about salvation, instead of persuading men to come to Christ and be saved.
The main idea of much of the preaching of this day seems to be that of teaching people – instructing them, – which too often results in hardening their hearts, and finding them an easier way down to perdition than they would have found without it. Unfortunately a man feels more comfortable when he has been to a place of worship and heard a fine theory about salvation, then he would if he had not been, although he may be no nearer being saved. All preaching, Sunday School teaching, tract writing and distribution, or any other instrumentality which has not for its end the immediate salvation of the people, only leads them to trust in mere teaching, which is a mockery. It is like giving a dissertation on the relative value of a vegetarian and an animal diet to a man dying of hunger. What good will your dissertation do unless you get the man to eat of the food about which you are descanting. And, unless your teaching induces men and women to eat of the Bread of life for themselves, it is a mockery! And yet how few preachers or teachers, how few religious workers have this as their main idea – the end at which they aim. You can see the want of it in the way they fail to bring men to Christ there and then. How my heart has ached over this aimless, pointless preaching, I could not express. Perhaps, when I have had the rare opportunity of a Sunday’s rest, I have gone to some near place of worship, hoping to be refreshed or stimulated, and to see sinners saved, or at least convicted, but alas! I could only weep as I listened to dissertations on some creed or doctrine which had probably been believed and approved by everybody present since they were children, while the poor empty souls were left starving for want. I have felt like saying to the minister, “My brother, if you have nothing better than this to offer, let us have a prayer meeting and get something direct from the great Father himself, without your intervention.” Would to God there were more preachers in the fix of a Baptist minister in a town where we are just now having a glorious work, who has been so stirred up and awakened to his responsibilities, that, on a recent occasion when he had read his text, he broke down, weeping, which had more effect than all the sermons he had preached during the years he had been in that town. His people wept too, and many of them got converted over again. I wish that a few thousands of the ministers of this kingdom could be brought to a similar state of mind before next Sunday; what a commotion there would be in the land, and what a stir in hell, ah, and in heaven too!
But further, I want you to note that any theory which teaches people to rest in a mere intellectual belief in the Scriptures, or any doctrines therein, while their souls are left in bondage to sin, is a mockery, and it is one of the most popular mockeries of this day.
Oh, Christians say, “Scatter the Word,” and they have been scattering the Word for generations, spending thousands of pounds over it, and I could enlighten them as to what becomes of the Word in thousands of instances when it is scattered. We always get wrong when we depart from God’s way, and this is not His way. It is not written that “it pleased God to save by the distribution of Testaments, those who believe,” but it pleased God to save by the foolishness of preaching – by the living testimony of living men – by those who embody the word in their experience and lives, and then go and speak it in the power of the Spirit to others. This is the sort of preaching God has commanded. Study and love the written Word as much as you like, but remember that the letter killeth, and that you will never save men by merely giving them the letter; and I point to the miserable results of this plan as proof of the truth of what I say.
I fear the giving away of texts and tracts has proved a most successful stratagem of Satan for enabling Christians to salve their consciences in resisting the Spirit’s urgings to a hold, straight forward testimony for Christ. It is so much easier politely to hand one of these silent messengers, than to make a determined onslaught on the sinner’s conscience, and to try to persuade him there and then to flee from the wrath to come. Not only is it easier for the Christian, but it is also much more endurable for the unsaved; consequently he is willing to make a compromise, and in order to escape from straight, plain, personal dealing, he will pocket a tract, laughing in his sleeve at the cowardice of the giver; because he knows perfectly well that Christians, to be consistent with what they profess, ought to make a desperate effort for the immediate salvation of every unsaved man and woman with whom they come in contact. The world wants living epistles who will live, weep, act, suffer, and, if need be, die before the people. The testimony of such witnesses will prove a living word indeed, sharper than any two-edged sword.
I say that the knowledge of and belief in this whole Bible, from beginning to end, if substituted for actual, personal salvation, will prove as great a mockery as any other sentimental belief.
No mere intellectual beliefs can save men, because right opinions do not make right hearts. Alas, we all know the little practical effect opinions have on character. Look around you. Do you know any man who is not a thorough intellectual believer in chastity being better for a man, or a woman, in the end, than uncleanness? Is there any wicked, profligate young man who, if you could take him aside and talk fairly to him, would not tell you that he believed that chastity was the best for a man, and yet you have only to look at him to see that he is a sepulcher of uncleanness and debauchery. What avails his intellectual belief in chastity while he is the slave of his lusts? What better is the man who believes in chastity and sins, than a man who does not believe in chastity and sins? As a French infidel, answering a caviler against holiness, said the other day, “You believe and sin, I do not believe and sin: where is the difference? It seems to me I am the better of the two.” Exactly, for however true or grand a mail’s beliefs, of what use are they if he does not act them out? “Can faith save him?” Nay, verily, but such a faith can damn him.
Further, any theory which leads men to suppose that they are safe without being actually saved is the most dreadful of all.
Such a theory adds an intellectual opiate to the deceit of the heart, and prevents the truth from troubling the conscience. Now, the only use of appealing to the understandings of the unregenerate, is, that through their understandings you may get at their hearts, but if Satan has “blinded their minds” by some intellectual opiate, there is no chance. The understanding is darkened, the conscience seared, and the soul paralyzed. These are the worst people in the world to preach to; when I had to preach to them, how I groaned many a time for a congregation of heathen. I have found such now in the Salvation Army – I mean, a people whose understandings are not darkened by these false theories and intellectual conceits. One can get the light in through their heads into their hearts, and this is the reason of our success with them; and is not this the reason why the publicans and the harlots have always gone into the kingdom of God, while the natural children of the kingdom have been left out?
A man is either saved or not; the fact is independent of his theory, and it is of comparatively little consequence what his theory may be if he be saved. Hence many savages and Catholics have rejoiced in a consciousness of pardon, while many evangelicals have never known it. A man is either under the dominion of sin, or else he is delivered from it. If he is under the dominion of sin, what an awful theory is that which makes him believe he is saved. Could the devil have invented a more damning theory than that? And yet, alas! alas! he allures millions to destruction through it, who otherwise would take alarm and begin to seek salvation. He says to all the qualms of conscience and the pangs of remorse, “You are all right, you believe this or the other, your faith is orthodox, you are safe,” frequently quoting separated or mutilated texts to back up his lying insinuations, such as – “By faith ye are saved;” “He that believeth shall be saved; “You are complete in Him,” etc. This latter phrase has come to express, in numbers of instances, the most utter ruin to which the human soul can be brought. “‘Complete in Christ”! complete without any true repentance, without any offering of the heart, without the slightest change inward or outward, “complete in Him,” while living without Him, and having no conscious connection with Him whatever; complete without losing one evil feature of the godless life, without receiving one grace of any kind, without doing or suffering anything, except perhaps a whispered “I believe”; complete all in a minute, since somebody pointed to a text with which perhaps the poor victim had been familiar all his life. Complete in Christ with a gnawing consciousness at the heart that is as sinful, as empty, as powerless, and as joyless as ever; complete as a poor corpse would he complete, if painted and dressed in the clothes of a living man! May God save you from any such mock salvation as this.
Further, any theory that leads men to trust in general confessions and prayers for salvation, is a mockery.
How many thousands of people every Sunday confess to being “miserable sinners,” and cry to God to have mercy upon them, without the slightest appreciation of the meaning of the words they utter. They feel better and safer because of these confessions and prayers, whereas their prayers remove them further, rather than bring them nearer, to any real salvation. What is the use of prayer that produces no effect, that brings no answer? Here is a mother whose boy is condemned to die the father goes to the Queen to beg for his life. When he returns, the -mother says, “Well, have you succeeded?” He answers, “I have put up my petition before the Queen.’ “Well, but what is the answer?” “Oh, you must not exact a direct answer: I have no answer, nor have I any reason to believe I shall get one, but I have put up my petition.” The mother would say, “That is a delusion; I want to know whether my boy is going to be released; I cannot sleep in my bed till I know that the answer is!” Now, I say, people who go on petitioning God for years together, never concerning themselves about the answer, or even expecting one, show that they are utterly insincere, and consequently obnoxious to God, and yet there are thousands of such people, who go to and fro to our churches and chapels every Sunday like a door on its hinges. They say, “O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners,” but they have no real desire for His mercy, no recognition even of the necessity for the forgiveness of sins, no concern about living to please Him, no idea of what repentance or salvation really means! Is it not manifest that such hypocritical confessions and prayers render those who engage in them more impervious to the truth, and more oblivious to any true idea of salvation, than they would be without them? God says such prayers are an abomination to Him. There is Only one kind of prayer from an unconverted soul which is acceptable to God, and that is the prayer that is wrung out of the heart by anguish for sin.
Further, another mock salvation is presented in the shape of ceremonies and sacraments. These were only intended as outward signs of an inward spiritual reality, whereas men are taught that by going through them or partaking of them, they are to be saved. Amongst these may be classed Baptism, the last Supper, and the ceremonials of ancient or modern churches.
Oh, the thousands of souls who are resting their hopes of salvation on the fact that they have been baptized, not only such as believe in the palpable delusion of baptismal regeneration, but amongst ordinary church and chapel-going people. As I look at our Army congregations in rinks, theaters, and other similar places, and note the signs of sin, debauchery, and crime on many of their faces, I say to myself, I suppose all these people have been baptized; but I do not think there are many thieves, or harlots, or drunkards, or openly immoral people who claim baptismal regeneration. Thank God! It is only genteel sinners who can bring themselves to believe in such a palpable sham, and yet, if baptism possesses any efficacy, it should be as effective in the one class of sinners as in the other.
What an inveterate tendency there is in the human heart to trust in outward forms, instead of seeking the inward grace! And where this is the case, what a hindrance, rather than help, have these forms proved to the growth, nay, to the very existence, of that spiritual life which constitutes the real and only force of Christian experience!
It is a calamity deeply to be deplored that men should thus put the form in the place of the power, but they have always been doing so. It is only another species of that idolatry which has prevailed from the foundation of the world. Take, for instance, the brazen serpent. All are familiar with the story of that miraculous intervention of Jehovah on behalf of the Israelites dying from the poisonous bites of the fiery flying serpents, sent as a punishment for their rebellious murmuring. God directed Moses to exhibit a brazen serpent on a pole, and to proclaim to the bitten multitudes that all who would look to it should be healed. Thousands looked, and as they looked were cured. In memory of that wonderful deliverance, and doubtless also as an emblem of the coming Saviour, that serpent was preserved; but when, in the years that followed, the people came to attach undue value to the ceremony of viewing it, – burning incense before it, with idolatrous worship, – - Hezekiah, jealous for the honor of Him whom this form was only intended to shadow forth, called it “Nehustan,” i.e., a piece of brass, which it really was, breaking it in pieces and casting it away with the trees of the groves and the altars of the high places which the people had desecrated by idolatry. Now, we have nothing to say against forms; but they are only, as it were, the bodies in which spiritual ideas and purposes are manifested, and without LIFE they are useless, and worse than useless.
When forms are exalted, and idolized, and trusted in, no matter how beautiful in themselves, or how Divine in their origin, they become “Nehustan,” as a piece of brass, or a piece of bread, or a bowl of water. As the apostle said of circumcision, when the Jews had put it in the place of righteousness, “Neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. Circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” And although originally ordained by God, he says again: “Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God.”
We feel persuaded that if Paul were here now, and could see the deadly consequences which have arisen from the idolatrous regard given to what are called the Sacraments* of the Supper and of Baptism, he would say precisely the same with respect to them; for even if Jesus Christ intended them to be permanent institutions (against which there are very strong arguments, as put forth by many most devoted and intelligent Christians ever since the days of the apostles, amongst whom are the “Friends” of our own time), such is the awful abuse to which these ceremonies have been subjected, that we feel sure Paul would say Baptism is nothing, and the ceremony of the – Lord’s Supper is nothing, apart from keeping the commandments of God, especially that great and all-comprehensive commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself.”
[* So far as Mrs. Booth questions the Divine authority, validity and usefulness of the sacraments of the Church, American Publishers disagree with her. But they endorse her condemnation of their too common abuse.]
Christians often say to me, when I put this view before them, “Ah, but you have no authority to remit the Supper, because the Lord said we were to take it in remembrance of Him till He come!” I answer that He left the taking of it at all perfectly discretional; and as to its continuance, that entirely depends on which coming He alluded to. “Friends,” and many others of the most spiritual and deeply taught Christians of all times, have believed that He then referred, as in so many other the places which are generally misunderstood, to His coming at the end of the Jewish dispensation. Anyway, our Lord, who had long before said to the woman of Samaria, “The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem (in any special sense) worship the Father … But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth,” anywhere and everywhere, could not have intended to teach that God could be more acceptably or profitably worshipped through any particular form or ceremony than without such form or ceremony, and especially if there were weighty reasons on the other side for rejecting it! Neither is it credible to a spiritually enlightened mind that He who said, “If a man love Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and we (I and My Father) will come unto him, and make our abode with him,” could have intended to teach that through the earthly medium of bread and wine His people were to remember Him on whom their thoughts were to be constantly concentrated, or to commune with Him in any special sense above that in which they were to commune with Him always and everywhere. The water which Jesus gives, and to which alone He attaches any importance, is that which is “in us a well of water springing up into everlasting life”; and the wine which He values and promises to drink with us in His Father’s kingdom, is that wine of the kingdom which is righteousness, and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.
Friends, do you partake of these sacraments? If not, rivers of earthly water, vineyards of wine, will avail you nothing; they will be as “Nehustan.”
If we were to have any binding forms in the new and spiritual kingdom in which all forms were to find fulfillment, it seems to me that there is a great deal more ground for insisting on washing of one another’s feet than for either of those already referred to; and in this we can see a great practical lesson on the human side which our Lord actually laid down. How comes it, I wonder, that many of those who regard the former with such sanctimonious reverence, can utterly, and without scruple, set aside the latter? I fear that human pride and priestly assumption must be held largely responsible.
Further, nothing is more evident to all who have any acquaintance with the history of Christianity, than that the undue value set upon these ceremonies has been one of the greatest hindrances to the extension of Christianity. Again and again have its valiant warriors paused in their triumphal progress, and turned aside from the battle with the great forces of evil, to quarrel amongst themselves concerning these mere externals.
When I was in Ireland, some of the oldest and most experienced Christians who took part in that great revival some twenty-five years ago told me that a great proportion of the results of that wonderful work of God were lost, in consequence of a controversy about water baptism. Do you wonder that we of the Salvation Army shrink from the possibility of such a sacrifice of the greater to the less, especially when we are hacked up by the great apostle of us Gentiles thanking God that he baptized none of his early converts, and for the very same reason, namely, because they were making the ceremony a cause of controversy!
Further, what can be the value of imitating the marchings and vestments and songs of the ancient Jewish Church? We are not accepted in the beloved Jews, and if these ceremonies had become, as God said they were, a stink in His nostrils because of the backsliding unbelief and hardness of heart of His ancient people, how much greater must the offence of them be when adopted by impenitent, infidel, and rebellious Gentiles. Neither can it be any less repugnant to the mind of God, that spiritually uncircumcised Philistines should dare to put their hands to his ark, by anticipating the signs, ordinances, and alleluias of the Church triumphant. What have such people to do with the songs of martyrs and confessors, or with the alleluias of the angel bands who stand before the Lord in His temple? “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.” And yet what multitudes who are hardening their hearts and stiffening their necks every day against the claims of God and of His truth, dare to how down to what they call the table of the Lord and unite in what they believe to be the songs of saints and angels. The first qualification for participating in any spiritual exercises or ceremonies, is the renewal of the heart by the Holy Ghost. If you could have die very same ceremonial which they have in heaven, with angels as your ministers, unless you had the spirit of it within, it would profit you nothing. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not the love of God, I am nothing.” And our Lord said, with respect to some of His hearers, “Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in Thy presence, and Thou hast taught in our streets. But He shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from Me, all ye workers of iniquity;” showing that even where Christ Himself was the preacher, if the heart remained under the bondage of sin and in the gall of bitterness, the bearers would only inherit greater condemnation, and sink into a deeper hell.
I must not omit to say a word here on the salvation of unbelief, notwithstanding that I purpose to enlarge upon it at a future time. The most astounding theory of all the false theories about salvation, and also the latest novelty propagated, alas, from Christian pulpits and through the Christian press, as well as from avowedly infidel platforms, is that man is to be ultimately saved from his errors and iniquities, and especially from all trouble concerning them, by a simple negation. He is to dismiss from his mind all the creeds, all idea of any precise revelation, and to get light from any natural earthly source he can, especially from the modern lights, who are responsible for this new theory. He is to throw his mind back as far as is possible towards heathenism, nay, further back than those enlightened heathen philosophers to whom I referred in my first lecture, for he must on no account even sigh after anything supernatural or Divine. He is to believe in himself and in humanity; especially the future of humanity seeing that there are so many ugly facts about its present. Thus he will have no more difficulties, sighings, or cryings!
He is to put away everything unpleasant and unsightly as far as he can, even if it professes to be the Word of God, and possessing his soul (no, I beg pardon, his mind) in patience, to wait and hope till the law of evolution has transformed our poor sin-stricken and groaning earth into a heathen paradise!
What a striking reproduction is this modern revelation, only in a new fashion, of the words of fools thousands of years ago, who used to say, “How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?” and who “consider not that they do evil.”
Truly we may say of all these theories, ceremonies, prayers, faiths, and unbeliefs, which are palmed on man as substitutes for salvation from sin, Vanity of vanities, cruel mockeries, making destruction doubly sure.
Poor humanity still cries out, “Who will show us any good?” Miserable comforters are ye all, leaving us still on the dunghill, covered with wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores. WHAT SHALL WE DO TO BE SAVED?
Deliverance From Sin
Let us now. consider the character of that salvation proposed by God for our race. The salvation of God embraces deliverance, restoration, preservation, and glorification.
Of course the mere idea of salvation supposes some enemy, bondage, disease, or danger; there can be no salvation where there is nothing to be saved from. All the saviours raised by God for Israel during their national existence were actual deliverers of their people from their enemies, otherwise they could not have been saviours. Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Nehemiah, and many others, were real deliverers of their people; they delivered from the outward consequences of sin; but the great distinguishing feature of our Joshua is that He delivers His people from their spiritual enemies, and from the power of sin itself. Where there is no deliverance there can be no salvation. What a mockery and a delusion it is for a man to profess to be saved, while he is groaning under the power of his spiritual enemies. If you are under the dominion of sin, you are yet an utter stranger to the salvation of God.
First: Salvation implies restoration.
Salvation to a man who is sick means restoration to health; to a man who is drowning, restoration to dry land; to a man dying, restoration to life to a man on the verge of bankruptcy it means liquidation of his debts, and restoration to solvency.
The common sense of mankind has prevented any theoretical deliverances or mock salvations for these temporal maladies and destructions, but our great adversary, who lieth in wait to deceive, has succeeded, as we have already seen, ill deluding men and women, as to the reality of Salvation when applied to the soul. But the salvation of God is no less real and practical for the soul than any of these temporal salvations are for the body or the circumstances.
What is man’s disease? Sin, badness, falseness, spiritual death. Salvation means restoration to goodness, to truth, to spiritual life, and to God. It means deliverance from inward evil, and renewal of the heart in righteousness and true holiness. It means the right adjustment of the faculties of the soul, bringing it into harmony with the laws of its own being, with the law of God, and with the rightful claims of its fellow beings. In short, it means being PUT RIGHT in all its relations for time and for eternity.
Second: Salvation implies preservation.
In order to the well-being and happiness of a being who has been saved from any disaster or death, there must be a provision for his continuance in a state of health or safety. It would be a small mercy to save a man from drowning, if he were under the cruel necessity of throwing himself into the water again tomorrow; and equally small would be the mercy of pardoning a sinner, and restoring him to a sense of peace and purity, if no provision had been made for his continuance in such a state of salvation. The salvation of God contemplates all the weaknesses and necessities of fallen human nature; hence the Christ of God becomes “the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him.” He not only restores, but He promises to dwell in His people as the power of all endless life, enabling them to purify their hearts by faith, to love God with all their soul and strength, and to offer themselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable in His sight. He promises to empower them to resist the devil, to keep themselves unspotted from the world, and to fight manfully under the banner of His cross till death.
Do you ask for living witnesses of such a salvation? Thank God, there are thousands who can testify that they have passed from darkness to light, that they have been delivered out of the hands of all their enemies, and are now enabled to serve God, walking before Him in righteousness and holiness day by day – thousands, not of genteel, refined, religiously trained people, such as most of you here today, but from amongst the most ignorant, neglected, besotted, and openly wicked of earth’s populations. They stand forward, an exceeding great army of witnesses to the reality of the salvation of God, and to the power of His Christ to deliver, to restore, to purify, and to keep all those who really receive and obey Him.
Third: The salvation of God embraces also glorification.
How do we know? Well, first, reasoning from analogy, and seeing that the great change wrought in true saints is in the soul, and that it manifests itself in spiritual and heavenly instincts, dispositions, – and aspirations, which do not find their full development or satisfaction in this life, we conclude that there is a future and more congenial sphere for such development and satisfaction.
Secondly, we have the most satisfactory evidence which mortals can give, of future glorification in the fact that many are glorified before our eyes in death. Amidst the humiliation, pains, and agonies of physical dissolution, we see the soul emerging from the wreck of its physical environment, triumphing over him who hath the power of death, and in regal majesty pluming its wings for its final flight, and in view of such victory, human reason, no less than Divine revelation, declares: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
Are there any here who want salvation? Come and try our Saviour Lord. He can cure your disease, extract the poison out of your heart, and make you new creatures! We testify that He has done this for some of us on this platform; whereas we once were the children of wrath, because the children of sin, even as others, now He has made us the children of God and of light, enabling us to seek those things that are above.
Consistently with our profession, we consecrate ourselves, our whole being, our children, influence, time, life, and, if need be, death, to the pressing of this salvation on the attention and acceptance of our fellow-men. We make all things how down before this unbending resolution, to seek and save the lost.
The Sham Compassion
Benevolence has come somewhat into fashion of late. It has become the correct thing to do the slums, since the Prince of Wales did them; and this general idea of caring in some way or degree for the poor and wretched has extended itself even into the region of creeds, so that we have now many schemes for the salvation of mankind without a real Saviour.Do not misunderstand me. I have no objection – nay, I rejoice in any real good being done for anybody, much more for the poor and suffering – I have no objection that a large society of intelligent Christians should take up so noble an object as that of caring for stray dogs, providing it does not interfere with caring for stray babies! I desire not to find fault with what is good, but to point out the evil which, to my mind, so largely diminishes the satisfaction one would otherwise feel in much benevolent effort being put forth around us. As I said at the beginning, the most precious stone given instead of bread is useless to a starving man.
Surely nobody ever cared for poor suffering humanity so much as Jesus Christ. He gladly put forth his mighty power for the healing and feeding of the body, and he laid it down most distinctly that all who were true to Him must love the poor and give up their all for them in the same practical way in which He did; but all this real brotherhood did not prevent His keeping the great truths of salvation ever to the front, and applying them as relentlessly to the poor as to the rich, and vice versa.
But now in the name of Christ we are asked to believe either that the truest way to carry out His intentions is to ignore men’s souls and care only for their bodies, or else to join with this sort of material salvation some theory that will practically get rid of all serious soul-need.
The First Scheme
The First Scheme of salvation without a Christ provides for attention to all the needs of the body, ignoring the soul.
This system has not only become more popular in many Christian circles than any of Christ’s teachings, but some of its advocates actually go so far as to place it in favorable contrast with any spiritual ’ work whatsoever, thus plainly intimating that those who really have the spirit of Christ show it better by devotion to these so-called practical ends than by what are assumed to be the less practical efforts which have regard to the world to come. This religion of bodily compassion may almost be said to have many sects devoted to it, each having its own favorite theory.
First, we have the educationalists.
These almost abandon the existing generation, but are confident of the results of their labors upon the coming one, such results being conveniently remote. But whether in connection with week-day or Sunday schools, this plan has had at least the trial of one generation, with extremely bad results so far as we can judge. What a mockery of mankind to suppose or to teach that mere information can satisfy its wants, when the more information men get, the more clearly we see the reign of evil in the world, and the hopelessness of attaining to righteousness, so far as human power is concerned. Yet, strange to say, the efforts of an enormous proportion of the mission agencies at work are directly devoted to education, and the ablest heathen in the world today are those who have been carefully instructed in missionary institutions, and have used their education to obtain higher positions and greater influence in the world, with which they now the better withstand the gospel of Christ.
Many of the more sensible Christians, perceiving how little ordinary education can do for the toiling masses, devote their attention to mechanical education, hoping to raise the position and prospects of the working classes by teaching them how to put a better finish on their daily tasks, although it is notorious that the cleverest of workmen are frequently the greatest drunkards and the most miserable of men.
Second on this list, for the regeneration of society, we have the house-builders. These are afflicted, and rightly so, with the overcrowded condition of working-class dwellings, and consider that all will be well when the people are better housed, shutting their eyes to the condition of multitudes who may be seen today living in the greatest sin and misery in well-built modern dwellings. Certainly it is a shameful scandal on those Christian landlords who keep their tenants in buildings unfit for dogs; but, after all, not so much more shameful than the conduct of those who, although aroused to the frightful condition of the masses, deliberately attempt their improvement on the same principles as if they were cattle, mainly by means of buildings which pay a liberal interest. No one could possibly be more thankful than I should to see the compassion which has of late found such loud expression in words, embodied in some practical scheme for the provision of comfortable, wholesome houses for the poor, at such rental as they could comfortably pay; but to provide this, with land under our present iniquitous system, will require a benevolence willing to “lend, hoping for nothing again.”
Thirdly: Next comes the total abstinence plan for the salvation of the people.
Amongst those who devote themselves to this sphere of labor there are some of whom I would speak with the greatest respect, namely, those who perceive that in all these outward things there is no remedy without some radical internal change. The majority, however, observing that drink has more than anything else contributed to the degradation of the people, concentrate their efforts upon their deliverance from this one evil – unquestionably a great temporal good – but we have only to look across the channel to see abundant evidence that the people may be almost clear of drunkenness without being, for that reason, any nearer to God or true happiness. To soberize without saving can only be compared to the action of a set of people who should with heroic effort drag drowning men ashore, and then leave them lying all unconscious within reach of the waves.
Fourthly: Another scheme of temporal salvation may be represented as rescuing work.
There are benevolent efforts of many kinds put forth for the rescue of various classes of fallen or endangered people from their several perils, without a thought of placing them in spiritual safety. I am not speaking with the least desire to depreciate any of these efforts; but what I would point out is, that while Christ held up for condemnation the priest who haughtily passed by the poor victim, He no less held up to condemnation the Levite who deliberately looked at his necessities and yet passed on. I desire to give every credit for true kindly feeling on behalf of the fallen or suffering; but it seems to me unaccountable that intelligent beings should look upon any form of human ruin without realizing that something must be done within, as well as without, in order to produce any lasting change for the better.
Fifthly: Another plan of temporal salvation is the providing for needy children.
This is one of the most favorite hobbies of benevolent people, and properly so, if it were only carried out in the right way. But how astounding, that people professing to revere and follow Christ should be capable of entertaining any schemes which undertake the guardianship of children, and yet which ignore their spiritual necessities; which train and teach them how to get on in the world without God. Alas I know from personal experience and actual contact with some of the children turned out of orphan asylums of high reputation in Christian circles, that, so far as any real living acquaintance with the things of God, or any practical carrying out of the teachings of Jesus Christ, are concerned, they might as well have been brought up amongst infidels; and I am by no means alone in this opinion. I have reason to believe, that in many such instances, nothing would be more highly resented than any attempt to make such children realize the willingness and sufficiency of a personal living Saviour to renew their hearts and to enable them to walk in obedience to His will, and to keep themselves “unspotted from the world.” Dry conventional dogmas and ceremonies constitute the only notion that thousands of such children have of the religion of Jesus Christ; and no wonder, considering the specimens they have had exhibited to them in the conduct of many of those to whom their poor little lives and hearts have been committed. I have many times said what I here deliberately repeat, that if I were dying and leaving a family of helpless children, I would leave it as my last request that they might be divided – one here, and another there – amongst any poor, but really godly, families who would receive them, rather than they should be got into the most highly trumpeted orphanage with which I am acquainted; for I should infinitely prefer that their bodies should lack necessary food and attention, rather than that their poor little hearts and souls should be crushed and famished for want of love, both human and Divine. Children brought up without love are like plants brought up without the sun. I would suggest to some of you ladies who may be on committees, or who might possibly get on to them, that you would be doing God and humanity good service by visiting these institutions, not on specified days, but at unthought of hours or seasons; for instance, get up a little earlier and go and insist on joining the children at their breakfast table. On other occasions, demand admission to the schoolroom, and observe the countenance and manner of those paid to instruct these children; in short, observe the deportment of paid servants of the institution all the way through. A still better way, by-the-by, of following your Saviour and serving your generation, would be to take some such children yourselves and bring them up with all the love and care with which you bring up your own, or would have done so had God granted you the privilege. It will be a happy day for England when Christian ladies transfer their sympathies from poodles and terriers to destitute and starving children!
Sixth. Another scheme, perhaps the lowest of these material systems of salvation, is the feeding system.
I mean that system in which large sums of money are spent merely upon providing some special feast for those who are well known to be, as a rule, almost without food. Now, I thick you will all believe me when I say that I rejoice in every bite or sup provided for the needy, but I cannot help seeing how monstrously all this exhibits the recklessness of the Christian world as to the greater needs of the perishing. Some of the most intelligent and highly placed people in the country may be seen looking complacently on upon the ragged, hungry crowd, who are eagerly devouring the only good meal perhaps which they have had for a twelvemonth, or which is likely to be within their reach for as long again, looking on without apparently having their sense of satisfaction in the slightest degree ruffled by the thought (if such people ever do think) about the lives which these “poor creatures” live during the other 36d days of the year! Such observers do not seem to look behind the staring eyes and hollow cheeks and savage ferocity of the eaters. The starving hunger, the devilish dispositions and abject despair of the “man inside” does not seem to trouble them.
Now, what I want to impress upon you is, not that these bodily wants are unworthy of the attention bestowed upon them, – for I regard it as a crying shame that such wants should not have a thousand times more attention, and in a thousand times more comprehensive fashion than they at present receive, but what I complain of is, the attempt to substitute any or all of these for a thorough work in the heart; and when such “charity” is carried out on the long pole system, and yet paraded in the name of Christ, I regard it as rather an insult than a credit to His name. It seems to me that the Popular Christianity which would put these things in the place of the Gospel is only another of the clever shams of the devil by which to ruin our race, and to turn aside God’s people to broken cisterns, only insuring a more eternal weight of misery at the cost of a little present relief.
Oh, friends, you who have health, talent, and means, make up your minds on which side you will act. Remember that in the light of that judgment which is coming on, it will appear worse than useless to have expended your energies and powers on doing that kind of good which will NOT LAST, which will, in fact, by itself, serve the enemies purpose rather than otherwise. Either do as Christ commands you, or cease to call your work by His name. Do not let any one delude you with the idea that you are following Christ, or doing that work which is peculiarly His, in contradistinction to all merely human benevolence and earthly salvation, unless you are seeking first His kingdom, both within your own soul and every one else’s.
The Second Scheme
The second of these schemes of salvation without a Saviour is even worse than that which I have already described; for while that tended to turn the thoughts of men from the world to come to some good or advantage of a temporal kind, this would lay a degrading hand upon eternity itself, and, under pretense of elevating humanity, would push it into a future life with its deepest intuitions all scorched up, and its highest aspirations disappointed and blighted.
Here, again, are to be found various sects, etc.
First comes universalism. This theory would make men into mere puppets, who for the time being are allowed to be the prey of an evil power, but after a certain amount of suffering are to be picked up by a better power. Like some unhappy country whose patriotic force has been crushed out of it until it has become the helpless prize, first of one monarch and then of another, so the kingdom of the human soul is to pass from evil to good and from Satan to God.
The blackest wretch on earth, who has made his home a hell, and spread moral ruin as widely as he could reach, is, according to this theory, to be saved even as the purest saint; for “all men” are to be saved -by repentance and a holy life, if they choose; if not, still they are to be saved – by their own free will, if they have fixed their affections on things above; but if, on the other hand, they have loved sin and vice, and committed all the catalogue of crimes, still salvation is to come out of deviltry, and a clean thing out of an unclean To try to make men believe in such a system seems to me to be no less insulting to their understandings than it is shocking to their consciences, and defiant of the plainest teachings of Scripture common sense and analogy.
The extent of our present knowledge with respect td a better world is that it is the abode of those “who have overcome” evil. Its songs are of victory! Its inhabitants renounced the mark of the beast on earth, washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, kept the commandments of God, and through much tribulation were faithful unto death. To this assemblage of crowned victors, the universalist would introduce the man who, while on earth, overcame not evil but good, who was victorious, not over his own passions, the temptations of the devil, and the forces of evil around him, but over the dictates of his own conscience, the influences and agencies which God put in operation in order to save him, and over all the forces of righteousness with which he came in contact. Strange mercy! to send a man like this to a heaven where every song would remind him of defeat and degradation, and every crown and psalm make conspicuous his false and ignominious position. Strange justice also which gives the prize to him who never won it, nay, who despised the conditions of the contest, and refused to enter the lists!
Second in this scheme comes what I shall designate as the all love theory.
The propounders of this theory, without daring actually to contest the great facts of revelation, would have us be silent about the most serious of them, lest we should shock the people. They tell us gravely that men will be “repelled from the Gospel,” if its truth about judgment and hell are not kept in the background; tell, say they, about the Father’s love, but do not talk about “damnation " and “the wrath to come.” Strange mercy this, to let men perish rather than tell them that sin breeds a hell from which none can deliver them. What should we think of a father too merciful to tell us the truth? Should we not say he was cruel? The child playing on the hearth-rug might well complain if you will not tell him that fire burns, because, forsooth, he might think you cruel to have it there, and so you leave him to find it out by falling in! “Hush, do not frighten the people; “Sing to them, talk sweetly to them; there are no modern words for hell and such-like horrors. In ancient days there were prophets, whose fiery warnings of judgment to come led whole nations to repentance, but men think they know better now The God who sent those poor old fanatics to speak plain words of wrath and denunciation is not their God. His words of burning reproof and fearful threatening is not their burden. Their message is some “sweet text” tied to a bunch of flowers; their burden can be given by “Saturday evenings for the people,” where “comic readings,” “gymnastics,” “secular music by the choir” are the converting measures deemed most suitable. Alas! alas! such maudlin souls are not worthy to deal with the things of eternity! Who wants in the hospital a man too “tender” to probe the wound, too “merciful " to amputate the mortifying limb, too “loving” to say with firmness, Do this, bear this, or die? Away with such a sentimental surgeon, you would cry; send him to pick rose leaves, where his feeble hands will do no mischief. And yet these over-merciful friends I am talking about would spiritually elevate the masses by twaddling to them in their sins and rebellion, about love, and sweetness, and peace, when, if they did not shut their ears, and were willing to catch the sound, they would hear the thundering echoes from every sinner’s conscience, “There is no peace to the wicked;” “Wrath to come, wrath to come!”
Third. Next in this catalogue of modern salvations comes the theory of doubt.
These doubters, while manifestly very shaky as to their own theory, argue that all is “too uncertain for us to speak positively as to eternity.” As we have before noted, their scheme for elevating men is to teach know-nothingness. They seem to think that doubt in itself is something very ennobling, that is, in things spiritual, for in things temporal they have faith enough, and also exact it from others. They claim explicit trust in their business relations, perfect confidence in their domestic lives, but appear to think that to doubt the great God and His revelation will somehow prove a great blessing and benefit to mankind; “as to eternal things it is not seemly to speak positively.”
In yonder back street, ah, even in the worst dens of vice, are found men who have in the depths of their sinful hearts some hidden memory, which is the link of holy things. Perhaps they have stood when boys by the dying bed of some humble believing father, who declared in his last hours that he knew whom he had believed; or perhaps, even in the later and blacker days of their lives, they have seen a little one go from their own dark homes with a heavenly smile upon its face, and the words, “Jesus has come to fetch me,” on its lips; and these men believe without a doubt in the God who, somehow, made their fathers and their children know Him, and some day they mean to turn to Him; but the chains of an evil life are holding them down with the “masses” of desperate and dangerous sinners around them. To these the modern scheme comes with its new light, and lays its withering touch on these memories of good. “We cannot know,” it says; “women may have dreamt, and children believed, old men may have had their sick fancies, but it is better to be without that which is delusive the only certain thing is that all is uncertain, the manly thing is to doubt.”
Ah! rich man, you may sit in your palace-like home, where nothing unpleasant is now allowed to enter, and it may seem little loss to you, so far, that your belief in eternal things has been loosened; but to the poor man in his bare life, and to the man who is bound by some sinful chain of vice, and whose earthly career has not another gleam of hope, it becomes the final stroke of misery and degradation to make him think that he cannot know with any certainty any better things than those which now surround him. If there is not anywhere in the universe a Saviour’s hand, whose clasp he may yet feel, and on whose strength he may depend to draw him up out of his drunken jail-bird existence to something purer and better, some day, when he shall have made up his mind to be saved, then his one door of hope is closed, and he realizes, with a bitterness which will drown itself in fresh outbursts of sin and villainy, that there is no true light or guide anywhere for anybody. Granted that the one guide is untrustworthy, the one beacon light possibly false, he is out on the sea of life without a spark of hope or cheer. Shipwreck and eternal ruin may be the next event at any hour.
Fourth. “The Christian free-thinkers” next claim our attention.
These are bolder than the latter class, denying whatever seems to them to be objectionable in the Scriptures. The inspiration of the Bible is to them on a level with that of Shakespeare or Homer, and for anything they do not like they have a free rendering, or a cool excision. They would take away what they fancy to be stumbling-blocks in the path of men, without stopping to consider whether God Himself placed them there as guiding-posts. Ah, what contempt such men would feel for the word “free,” if it were applied in other ways. Who would tolerate the “free” soldier, who set up his own notions as to military matters, and at the critical hour of the fight was found obeying and leading others to obey orders which had been altered by the omission of all which he considered objectionable! Who would for long be retained in her Majesty’s household who should presume to alter the rules of court behavior, and to expunge what he deemed irksome? And yet the revelation which is to train servants for the eternal household of the King of kings, and the laws laid down by the Lord of hosts, by which His battles are to be fought, may be treated with a free hand, and tinkered and paired – obeyed or disobeyed – according to the notions of men who love their own will better than anything else in heaven or on earth! Alas, I fear it may be said of these doubters that “while they promise men liberty, they themselves are servants to corruption,” and I would remind them “how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards destroyed them that believed not.”
We might go on to multiply these modern schemes for the improvement and elevation of man, for they are legion, and some of them doubtless propounded by those who have much real concern and compassion for the multitudes, but which all the more, because there is so much of good in them, are the most dangerous and ruinous to the highest interests of mankind.
Take away from the way-faring man the absolute certainty which he feels about the truth of the gospel, and where do you leave him? Wretched and hopeless in the very center of his being; You may have fed his body, you may have clothed and housed him, you may have educated his children, you may have nursed him in sickness and comforted him in sorrow; but for all this he is left on the moors to wander and die in desolation and darkness, in spite of all your feeding and all your loving rush-lights.
This sort of compassion is the most cruel ignis fatuus the devil ever invented. Depend upon it, you cannot be more merciful than Jesus, who says today to you and to all men, “He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.”
The Dying Love of Christ
We propose now to consider in juxtaposition with all these modern schemes for the elevation of mankind, on which we have been remarking, that one which is universally admitted to be the model scheme; the ideal of all that is lovely, tender, ennobling, and comprehensive.
The scheme of Christ, with its aims and modes, as shown in the story of His life-compassion for the world. I contend that the compassion of Jesus stands out distinguished as of another kind from all the philanthropic plans which we have been considering.
First: By its clear perception of the worst feature of man’s condition.
No doubt the Saviour’s heart ached in sympathy with the mass of human sorrow, sickness, and poverty brought before Him. Where we have only a glimpse of men’s troubles as we move hurriedly up and down among them, He had the whole sad story unfolded to Him, and His keen love responded tenderly to every cry for help. Nevertheless, He was never diverted from the great central danger. To Him the sorrowful troubled crowd were not merely poor and suffering, not merely oppressed by unjust laws, and crowded into badly constructed dwellings, – not merely hungry, hard-worked, and comfortless; these were incidents which He sometimes alleviated and more often shared, but the crowning peril, the absolutely certain woe which eclipsed, in His sight, every other, was the loss of the soul. He flings aside contemptuously the thought that living well in this world was a real benefit. The fool of all the world, the man who in His opinion stood in most awful risk, is drawn by Him in a parable sketch which is little dwelt on in these days. This fool in Christ’s picture was the rich .man with bursting barns and “so much goods” that he knew not how to dispose of them. He was a man who had been elevated by education enough, at any rate, to enable him to do a good business; he enjoyed the benefits of a good dwelling, good food, and, doubtless, the best society within his reach; and yet he was a fool, and Christ holds him up as the last sample of such, simply because he left his soul in jeopardy.
Again, Christ draws another picture, blacker and more awful yet, and again He selects the rich man (the very man, remember, who had enjoyed the best of this world’s benefits and who also was kind to the poor Lazarus), and yet Christ draws aside the veil of the future world, and shows where earthly elevation landed him.
“The rich man died, and was buried; and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And He cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from thence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.”
What! could it be Christ who talked about a man in fire, a man crying for a drop of water, and denied even the small boon! Could it be Christ who talked about torment, and showed this vision of despair; the tender, loving, merciful Christ! Ah, He showed it, because He SAW IT; because this was the real danger, from which He had come to deliver! Because He knew that the sick beggar, covered with undressed wounds, and with scarce an alleviating circumstance to assuage his sufferings, might have the eternal compensation which should make his earthly troubles seem like a dream, if only his soul were right, if only he were “rich towards God.” Christ showed this, because it was the one thing which no one else saw. The human needs of men were apparent enough to many benevolent people in His day, including the rich giver who was going to hell, but the crying soul needs, which had brought him out of heaven, the hopeless woe to which even the rich and happy were drifting – the undying worm, the quenchless fire, were the visions of sorrow which He only saw, and which His tenderest compassion betrayed itself in seeking to relieve. “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose His own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” may be taken as indicating the foundation principle of His entire scheme of redemption.
Second: Christ’s compassion is distinguished from all other compassions by its plain, cutting, personal dealing.
“He would eat with sinners,” talk familiarly and tenderly with the worst on the earth, and lay His hands upon the most loathsome, but He was incapable of dealing lightly with their sin.
Imagine Christ giving an entertainment, and spending the evening in frivolous talk, in order that He might humor sinners and attract them to Himself! Imagine Him allowing His little band of disciples to sing current songs and read “amusing selections” for a couple of hours at a time to keep people out of worse company! No, He was too tenderly compassionate for souls, who He knew might end their time on earth at any moment, thus to fool away His chance. He never lost an opportunity of talking straight to them about their sins, the interests of their souls, and the claims of His Father’s law. The young ruler conies to Him, and he is so lovable, so moral, so good, might he not have been allowed to join the little band of disciples, and to have gained light gradually? “Yet lackest thou one thing” was pronounced all the more clearly because “he loved him.” “Sell that thou hast, and follow Me” rang out all the more distinctly because He could offer treasures for the soul.
The compassion of Jesus was not of the maudlin kind which leaves men their “little indulgences,” and shrinks from being “too hard” on them, where hardness is the indispensable condition of salvation. “If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off; if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out,” He mercilessly prescribes; better, He decides, be maimed and suffering here, than be cast into “eternal fire.”
As to the religious ideas of His day, He walked straight across them with a cutting “Woe unto you!” Woe! woe! was the one cry with which He met the teachers and professors of His time, provoking their bitterest hate and animosity. “Making clean the outside platter, while within are dead men’s bones,” was His short description of them and their doings. He upset the nice little fashions which had sprung up around the temple worship with a whip of cords. “Publicans and harlots shall enter the kingdom before you,” He told the grand professors who listened to Him. He inflicted the faithful wounds of a friend, in order that He might awaken them to their danger and lead them to seek the only remedy.
Third: Christ’s compassion was in direct contrast with all mere human benevolence in its “other worldliness.”
No one will dispute that He possessed the power to elevate the masses in a temporal sense, by bestowing on them all those benefits at which modern philanthropy aims. He could have fed them by a miracle every day, as easily as on the two occasions when he multiplied the bread; and who could have lectured on science, or history, or invention, so clearly, so perfectly, as He to whom all knowledge must be as an open book? He could have brought into His services those twelve legions of angels, and taken an earthly kingdom, from which He could have dispensed wealth and prosperity to all around; but He indicated his scheme for elevating and saving people when He said “I am the way” – to another sphere, another realm, not of earthly good, but of heavenly. When He was asked for the posts of honor in His kingdom, He made it clear that he was leading to another and higher world through a “baptism” and with a “cup” of suffering and poverty in this.
Fourth: Christ’s compassion stands out in its spiritual fellowship.
The King of kings makes eternal friends of the fishermen. “He did not visit the poor,” “He did not elevate their sad lot,” and walk on in His own high path, having His fellowship, His joys, His sorrows apart from them; but He shared His life with them in a holy comradeship. He did not live in the style and companionship of the worldly Pharisee, and occasionally visit Peter, James, and John, and hold meetings for the working classes; no, He lived with theta and became education, elevation, salvation, and all to them by His blessed fellowship. “Ye are my friends,” said He, and “all things that I have heard of My Father, I have made known unto you.” His heart had no reserves from these men. John’s head could lean on His breast, and Mary could sit at His feet, with the consciousness that they were taken into His confidence, and were indeed as brethren.
That they could not always understand Him was their fault, not His; but their slowness and dullness never wearied His compassion, nor caused Him to seek friends elsewhere. He called His three fishermen to Him when He was about to put forth any wonderful exercise of power. He wanted Peter, James, and John, when He was raising the dead, and took them to share His joy on the mount of transfiguration. He craved for their presence in His last agony, and desired no better provision for His mother, when He hung upon the Cross, than the home that one of them could afford.
Fifth: The Compassion of Jesus is yet further distinguished by its Divine faith, and hope, and action.
He had faith in the possibilities of these people, which possibilities would not have been very apparent to any other eye. He believed in the transforming power of the Spirit which He could send them. His hope was not chilled by stupidity, or foolishness, or non-comprehension on the part of disciples or outsiders. Mighty compassion must that have been that Could live thirty years on such terms with such men, and never falter or turn back. Many a fine scheme of modern benevolence dies and goes out when the people who are to be benefited get to be known! “Such wretches,” “so ungrateful,” “so presuming,” “so hopeless.” But Christ hoped all things, believed all things, until the Peter who was afraid of a servant girl stood triumphant before. the three thousand converts. Christ kept His little band together, although He knew there was a traitor amongst them, – the traitor who would betray Him, and sell Him for money into the hands of His enemies. Christ forbore and worked with John until the man who wanted fire from heaven to burn up sinners became the apostle of love. Christ made the Samaritan harlot woman into His ambassador on the spot; Christ made sound men of the lepers, and sane divines of the mad. He called the devils out of those whom they tormented, and then let loose the whole strange flock of ex-harlots, maniacs, and lepers, to tell His praises and to gather others to His presence. Christ went up to Calvary undismayed by His perfect knowledge of sinful, perverse, opposing men, to die for the whole ungrateful race. Christ hoped and believed in His own blackest hour for the dying blackguard at His side, and saved him as he hung there. Talk about “eternal hope!” Is not this the eternal hope which saves to the uttermost now and here?
Sixth: The compassion of Jesus is further distinguished by His ever going straight to the one end.
The whole work of Christ was aimed at the salvation of men’s souls. And this is not the less true because He also benefited their bodies by healing their diseases and sympathizing with their sorrows.
This latter side of His work is much dwelt upon in these days, and yet it was a merely incidental part. If He had come to remove earthly suffering, poverty, oppression, and distress, He would, as – I have pointed out, certainly have gone about it in a different way. He would have aimed at riches and position and ease, in order that He might have shared them with His own chosen ones. He would have sought to build up an earthly kingdom, where men should neither hunger nor thirst, nor be sick, nor die; and it would have been a far easier task than the founding of that new invisible kingdom which we have already tried to describe, where only the spiritual and eternal should be of much importance. In comparison, how much easier to have drawn crowds if He had always given them their dinner, than to hold followers who should enter into the mysterious doctrine, “I am the Bread of life;” “Ye must be born again!”
But He did feed the multitudes, and He did heal the sick! Yes, but He gave up the former when He found that they followed Him for that only, and His acts of healing were flashes of the Divine power within Him, rather than the “work given Him to do.” “I came to call sinners to repentance,” “I am come to set the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” “I came to bring fire on earth.” “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” These sayings, and multitudes of others, were descriptive of a spiritual mission, and yet He was most tender, as we readily trace, to every suffering, needy creature who came in contact with Him. His pity was boundless for the lame, the blind, and the deaf, and His loving heart must have grieved over much in the sea of human misery brought before Him, of which we never hear. The truest love must ever seek the highest good of its object, sometimes even with forgetfulness of important lesser advantages. He gave the great rule by which His compassion for men’s necessities was guided, when He said, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all other things shall be added unto you.”
Seventh: The compassion of Jesus stands out in contrast with all other in its devotion unto death.
He was too merciful to men to spare them the bitter truths of hell, or to conceal from them the punishments due to transgression; but on Himself He had no compassion.
If the penalty were indeed so awful, He would share it. He too would bear the curse, the shame, the agony of dying for sin, so far as could for the sinless One be possible.
How brightly this compassion shines out against that of many who profess so much for the suffering and the lost. Watch the people who talk the most loudly of their tenderness, and will not say one word of the “outer darkness” and the hell fire of which He said so much. Where is there, any dying love amongst them? Where are their Calvarys? Are they remarkable for cross-bearing? Are they noted for self-denial, or is it in word only, and not in deed, that they are more compassionate than Jesus? They do not like to repeat to the poor His terrible words of warning. May it not be because they are unwilling to act toward the poor as He did?
No rough living, no fishermen friends, no hungry, weary days, no homeless nights, no persecution and contempt above all, no scourge, no crown of thorns, no march up to Golgotha, no nailing to the cross, no agony, no dying for the salvation of men! There can be no other dying love than that which causes the real dying. Do settle that in your minds, for without a dying, a real, complete, and eternal separation between your old self and the new self, which means to live and die for others, you cannot be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, or an eternal benefactor to your race. You may not come to any such terrible end as your Master did, for as a rule in outward things the servant is above his Lord, but in some way or another you are doubtless called to follow Him in a path full of suffering and self-denial, in a road of shame in which you will find yourself completely cut off, alas, from the rest of mankind; but without this daily dying, this true following of Him, do not expect to be able to do any lasting good to those who are perishing around you.
Let no benevolent projects, no magnificent phrases deceive you. The good done to mankind by the poor fishermen who spoke the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, has surpassed all the achievements of modern philanthropy as far as the noon-day sun surpasses the rush-light.
If you want to elevate the masses, go and ask HIM how to do it, and if the answer comes, “Take up thy cross and follow Me,” OBEY.
Its Sham Judgment
Many people dislike the very sound of the word judgment. They have abandoned, as far as they can, any belief in a judgment to come, and they ignore as uncharitable and severe any expression of judgment as to the doings and characters of individuals in the present; but somehow the instincts of humanity are too strong for them, and these very people find themselves, in spite of their theories, pronouncing judgment both on themselves and others every day of their lives.God has reared a judgment seat in every man’s conscience, which in some slight measure answers to, and prefigures the sentence which He declares He will pronounce on every man’s action, whether it be good or bad.
Then if there is a great Judge of all, and a standard of right and wrong which He has set up, it must be of supreme importance that we should correctly understand what this standard is, and that we should judge of the conduct of ourselves and of those around us according to it. Surely nothing could be more deceptive and soul-ruining than to accept as correct any short of the one unalterable and eternal standard of righteousness and truth which he has laid down; and yet, alas! popular Christianity distinguishes itself by nothing more than by a systematic misrepresentation of right and wrong, calling evil good and good evil. Just as in the days of Christ the spirit and essence of the law of God was set aside and made of no effect by traditional interpretations of the letter, so in our time interpretations and expositions, in direct antagonism to the plainest words of Christ, are palmed upon the world by many of the official representatives of Christianity, who back up their false tenets by quotations from “the word,” separated from their explanatory connections, and made to sanction views and practices the very opposite to the mind and intention of their Divine Author.
In pointing out as plainly as I am able a few of these misrepresentations, I know only too well I shall lay myself open to criticism, and that I may even run the risk of wounding some hearts that I would fain cheer. But the vital importance of the subject will not permit me to pass it over lightly.
First: “Judge not that ye be not judged” is one of the favorite texts of popular Christianity, which is interpreted to mean that we are on no account to form an opinion of the rightness or wrongness of anybody’s conduct. Under the specious guise of charity, faith and unbelief, obedience to God and disobedience, sin and holiness, are to be confounded in one indiscriminate hodge-podge, and their actions and abettors treated exactly alike, making no separation between the precious and the vile.
This serious charity is pushed to such an extent that even the man who has pledged himself to preach certain doctrines, and who is actually employed as the agent of a Church for so doing, is not to be condemned if his “riper judgment” should lead him to renounce those doctrines; while at the same time he holds fast the salary and position with which he was entrusted in view of his original engagement.
On the same principle we are asked to allow that people who never go to a place of worship or how their knees in prayer may be as good and faithful servants of God as any others. We are told that perhaps they are carrying out “the Divine will in a spirit of true devotion to duty,” that working is praying, and that a man’s belief bounds his responsibility, and so forth.
“We are all aiming at the same thing” is a favorite way of expressing this popular Christianity, which just suits the ideas of drunkards, adulterers, and liars, as well as of shallow professors.
To declare positively that people are sinners, condemned already, and on their way to hell, is accounted as “uncharitable judging,” “really dreadful,” and no one, we are told, can possibly be justified in coming to such a conclusion.
All this we could understand perfectly, coming from the camps of infidelity or from the haunts of vice; but to find it passed off in connection with the name and teachings of Jesus Christ is monstrous indeed. What a sham to worship Him Who declares Himself to be THE Way, the Truth, and the Life, if there be no certain way, no definable difference between the true and the false, no practical separation between the Christ life and the life without Christ! Surely it is high time for all who care about the reign of Christ on the earth to make up their minds to one thing or the other. If Christ be our master let us learn His lessons, and abide by His rule, and obey His commands. If, on the other hand, some are unwilling to see any difference between the narrow and the broad road, between those who are in the kingdom of God or out of it, who are with Christ or against Him, let them be honest enough to declare openly that they have no Christ and will have no prophet but “Society.”
Another text which might be taken as setting forth a very favorite theory of modern Christianity is that in which Paul personified the struggles of a convicted but unsaved soul: “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” We are all to look upon ourselves as “poor, incapable, fallible creatures,” and this assumed humility is to absolve us from all condemnation, on account either of doing evil or neglecting to do good. Instead of condemning ourselves or others, when convicted of some flagrant wrong or manifest inconsistency, we are to look upon it as only what might have been expected. How often have I heard people say, with regard to some man holding an official position &f great responsibility in the Church, “Well, he does not do this, that, or the other (whatever may be the duty in question) as he might, but, you know, he can’t do everything.” Such an apology as this would be beautiful in the extreme, applied to those who are known to be earnestly and faithfully striving to do their share for the extension of the kingdom of God; but when applied, as I have generally heard it, to what everyone knows to be a systematic and inexcusable neglect of everyday duty, it is no more nor less than a wholesale cloaking of sin. But, friends,. whatever you do, never allow your minds for a moment to trifle with questions of duty, for nothing can be more fatal to either body or soul than to give way to the theory that one really cannot be expected to do what one ought.
How differently people treat this question of doing their duty in commercial matters. Imagine the business man who cannot attend to all his customers, or who thinks it unnecessary to keep his place of business open all the week and every week. What would you think of a servant who should consider it unreasonable to get up at the proper time every morning, or carry out your wishes in matters in which her views differed from yours? How bug could society hang together if this looseness of thought as to what we ought and ought not to do were permitted to enter into the sphere of everyday life? But alas, alas! how much more ruinous is this looseness when it relates to our great spiritual duties towards God and our fellow-creatures. Either you ought or you ought not always to pray and not to faint – to learn and to do the will of God, to care for perishing souls, to warn, counsel, and help those around you; and what applies to you applies to all who take upon them the name of Christ in any way whatever. We should never, on any account, allow ourselves to excuse any neglect of God and duty, because such neglect is all but universal, but we should look at things as they are, and in the light of the judgment throne; and when we see conduct worthy of condemnation, condemn it, and be determined to separate ourselves in heart and life from evil practices, however much respected they may be, and to take our stand on the side of duty and of God at all costs.
I tell you honestly that I have turned away numberless times of late years, and with almost despairing disgust, from audiences of what would be called intelligent Christians, that is to say, persons who talk and act upon an intelligent view of any imaginable subject except that of Christian duty. How often do I hear the remark, “We know things are not as they should be,” from people who have not the slightest intention of striving in any way to make things better, and who would not on any account, incur the odium of expressing any condemnation on that neglect of religious duty which they profess so much to deplore. Away with this unmanly, unwomanly cowardice. We have the light; let us come to it in order to see whether our deeds, and the deeds of those around us who profess to be “working for God,” are wrought in Him. We call by God’s grace, do our duty, if we will. As we tried to show in a former lecture, Christ came on purpose to empower us to do it; but let those who will not have such a doctrine and such a Christ, but who prefer to accept the miserable theories of impotency, which would not be tolerated for a moment in the kitchen, the shop, or the exchange, – let them at least save Christ from the indignity of having such helpless, incapable creatures called by His name, and professing to be His followers. He says with respect to all such, “Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?”
“But the Lord looks at the heart,” is another of the pet doctrines of popular Christianity.
True, terribly true in the right sense, – for God is not to be mocked with lip service or the formality of worship in which the heart has no share, – but false, ruinously false, when it means, as it generally does, that all sorts of wrong may be passed over and excused, if people only say they mean to do right.
I rejoice beyond all expression in the precious thought of the Lord’s longsuffering and tender mercy toward those who sit in darkness; and if we were living in the center of Africa, where people have been trained only to fear and worship some hideous imaginary power of evil, – if we had absolutely no spirit of truth, and no word of light to hear or to read, no knowledge of God or a Saviour, – it might be admissible to consider everybody right who meant right; but even those in this country who are most skeptical as to divine revelation cannot pretend to be in any such position as this, much less people who profess to call themselves Christians. Is there anybody here taking refuge in this hollow subterfuge? Friend, let me ask you, did you really worship and serve God last Sunday? Had you any convictions as to what He wished you to do, not only on that day but throughout the following week? If so, have you acted on them, have you honestly tried to carry them out? If not, do not, I beseech you, try to pacify your conscience with any silly nonsense about the Lord looking at the heart. He has plainly told us over and over again in the New Testament, and in the very last book of it, that he will judge every lean according to his works, and, moreover, He has laid down the same rule of judgment for us. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous.” I fear there are thousands of professed Christians excusing themselves from the performance of the most manifest duty by this excuse; for instance, when a prayer meeting is announced, there are a certain number of people who make an effort to be present, but a much larger number of so-called Christians who deliberately choose to keep away. It is quite allowable to apply the doctrine of the Lord’s looking at the heart to the poor mother who would fain be there, were she not detained by the inexorable claims of half a dozen little children; but to cloak over with the same excuse, the constant indifference, nay, positive irreligion, in the great majority, is only to refuse to come to the light because it would condemn you. People who mean well, where there is no physical impossibility in the way, do well; but those who fail to do well, will fare ill when the great reckoning day comes.
Further, I charge it upon popular Christianity, even when it does pay some tribute to the truth with regard to character, by recognizing here and there what it calls an “excellent man,” or a “noble woman,” that when you come to examine into the meaning of these phrases, they are, in many instances, utterly misleading. Most generally the persons thus eulogized are distinguished, rather for the lack of those peculiar characteristics set forth by Christ and His apostles as of supreme importance, than by the possession of them. Just try to call up a person so distinguished within your own knowledge, and ask yourself how they have earned their title. To begin with, do they excel in prayer, or are they in most cases persons who were never known to pray in public, or, at any rate, without being specially called upon to do so? Or, are they renowned for praying by the bedsides of the sick, or even with their own families in the privacy of their own homes? Do these persons excel in faith, shown by their works in the way of bold, straightforward testimony for God, or in daring, unpopular enterprises for the salvation of men? or are they generally silent both in public and private, giving no personal testimony as to their knowledge of Christ, and carefully abstaining from any outward demonstration on His behalf, which would bring them into discredit with their neighbors? Probably they do excel in what is called charity; but is not this generally due to the fact that they are much richer than others, and only out of their enormous abundance do they contribute occasion any large sums for Christian or philanthropic objects. What a name may be acquired in modern Christendom by the judicious use of a few hundred pounds per year, without so much as speaking a kind word to a brother or sister in need, or denying yourself a moment’s ease or a single luxury! Is it not notorious that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is simply the possession of a certain amount of wealth which gives a man or woman his or her grade in religious as well as in civil society, and that people chosen for and entrusted with leading positions in churches, are simply those who have the best houses of their own? By-and-by their splendid coffins will be pompously deposited in the family vault, and you will be told that they “maintained an unblemished character for many years;” that is to say, they neither got drunk, blasphemed, committed robbery, nor picked anybody’s pocket. They lived in society in such a style as made them welcome in the circles of semi-worldliness everywhere. Their linen and their dresses were unblemished, for they never turned aside, like their Divine Master, into any of the soiling habitations of the poor and the wretched, nor mingled amongst such mobs as continually jostled Him all the way through life. Their names were always mentioned with honor, for they took care never to let them be used in connection with any enterprise, even on behalf of Jesus Christ, which was not considered “quite the thing.”
Do not misunderstand me. I am very far from wishing to pour contempt upon such persons, for without them what would become of the churches and of benevolent enterprises generally? I do not question that many of these individuals have at one time or other been converted, and might have become true saints, had they been faithfully dealt with; but alas! they have, to a great extent, been made the victims of that sham judgment which now selects them as its standard-bearers. Of many of them, I doubt not, it might be written, were Jesus Christ again amongst us, and were they brought in contact with Him, that He looked upon them and loved them, notwithstanding all their worldliness and pride of position. But what I want to point out is, that such persons are not distinguished by popular Christianity for the peculiarly Christ-like traits in their characters, but for the possession and use of a long purse. This exaltation of mere morality with money stamps modern Christianity as an unjust judge, and it will be fatal to your views of what Christ demands of you, if you accept its model men and women as the representatives of Christian excellence.
Fifth: As I have before remarked, there has come over society of late quite a fever of professed benevolence towards the poor; and yet, in connection with this very pleasing awakening to the existence of millions of miserable people, we have another striking illustration of the sham judgment of modern Christendom. “Those wretched, filthy people” are simply the poorer classes, who are compelled by their poverty to herd together by families in small rooms, surrounding perhaps a court-yard full of oyster-shells and other refuse, at which society – and Christian society, too – turns up its nose, and declares that the people breathe an “atmosphere of moral pollution.” Perfectly true there is an atmosphere of moral pollution present in these dark alleys and horrible dens, to which people are driven by thousands, that others may have plenty of room in which to carry out their ideas of civilization; but to eyes that look at things in the light of God, I say there is an atmosphere of moral pollution not a whit less dangerous, and far more blameworthy, in very different circles.
Is it not notorious that multitudes of people amongst what are called the higher classes deliberately denude themselves of ordinary clothing, and then go in a half-dressed condition, with every addition of ornament that can be conceived, to insure that they shall be noticed and admired, to large places of public amusement? Is there hot a growing disposition in Christian circles to look upon it as perfectly harmless for Christian families, including often those of ministers, to spend hours together, dressed in the way I have described, at parties, balls and other entertainments, frequently given within the precincts of some consecrated building, or in order to raise money for church purposes? Now, I ask, how it comes to pass that the poor are spoken of as herding together without regard for decency under the circumstances of necessity which I have described; while the herding together of the rich and well-to-do in this voluntary indecency should be regarded with complacency and described as refined and genteel? That such is the judgment of modem Christendom can only be attributed to one fact – the power of the purse; and that the churches should in the main devote their attention to the well-to-do classes, while they regard the masses of the people as a kind of outside element, to be operated upon by separate agencies, as a few missionaries or Bible-women, is, I contend, a crying scandal to the Saviour’s name. The judgment of Jesus Christ led Him to spend most of His time herding with fishermen, with publicans and sinners. Their language might often be very violent and bad and their home life simply scandalous; but the Son of God preferred to make His bed in a fishing-boat, and to sit talking with that infamous woman of Samaria, rather than to hobnob with the religious swelldom of Jerusalem, the outside of whose cup and platter would have passed muster with modern Christianity while their lives were full of hypocrisy and unrighteousness.
Sixth: “The brutal tastes of the lower orders” Is another pet phrase of modern Christendom.
It represents the idea that for a poor man, who has to keep himself and his family on a few shillings per week by hard labor, which takes away all inclination towards study or more exalted pursuits, it is a brutal taste to like to have a quart of four-penny beer as often as his scanty means will allow. It is a brutal taste to take pleasure in seeing two men fight each other with their fists, inflicting in the course of half an hour many hard knocks and bruises; and it is a still’ more brutal taste which leads men to train animals to fight each other, and to take pleasure in seeing them do so. Now, I perfectly concur in the denunciation of all these evils, from which God is enabling the Salvation Army to rescue multitudes of these poor, so-called “brutal fellows;” but let us turn the light of truth upon the Christian society which shrugs its shoulders in horror at the mere description of these men who get drunk and beat their wives; the Christian society whose refined taste leads it to have as little intercourse as possible with these lower orders.
What sort of taste is it, which, in the presence of the existing state of things among the poor, spends not four-pence but four shillings, and double and treble that sum on a single bottle of wine for the jovial entertainment of a few friends, and from twenty to forty pounds for a dinner to be swallowed by a dozen or two of people? I maintain that no splendid furniture, no well-trained and livened servants, no costly pictures or display of finery or jewels, can redeem such a scene, viewed in the light of the teachings of Christ, from being worthy of being called “brutal,” and all the more brutal because it is delighted in by persons whose intelligence and knowledge of the awful state of things in the world around them must make them fully aware of the good that might be done with the money which they thus lavish upon their lusts.
Let me take you to another scene. Here is His Grace, the Duke of Rackrent, and the Right Honorable Woman Seducer, Fitz-Shameless; and the gallant Colonel Swearer, with half the aristocracy of a county, male and female, mounted on horses worth hundreds of pounds each, and which have been bred and trained at a cost of hundreds more, and what for? “This splendid field " are waiting whilst a poor little timid animal is let loose from confinement and permitted to fly in terror from its strange surroundings. Observe the delight of all the gentlemen and noble ladies when a whole pack of strong dogs is let loose in pursuit, and then behold the noble chase! The regiment of well-mounted cavalry and the pack of hounds all charge at full gallop after the poor frightened little creature. It will be a great disappointment if by any means it should escape, or be killed within as short a time as an hour. The sport will be excellent in proportion to the time during which the poor thing’s agony is prolonged, and the number of miles it is able to run in terror of its life. Brutality! I tell you, that in my judgment, at any rate, you can find nothing in the vilest back slums more utterly, more deliberately, more savagely cruel than all that; and yet this is a comparatively small thing. One of the greatest employments of every Christian government and community is to train thousands of men, not to fight with their fists only, in the way of inflicting a few passing sores, but with weapons capable, it may be, of killing human beings at the rate of so many per minute. It is quite a scientific taste” to study how to destroy a large vessel with several hundreds of men on board instantaneously. Talk of brutality! Is there anything half as brutal as this within the whole range of rowdyism? But against all this, modern Christianity, which professes to believe the teachings of Him who taught us not to resist evil, but to love our enemies, and to treat with the utmost benevolence hostile nations, has nothing to say. All the devilish animosity, hard-hearted cruelty, and harrowing consequences of modern warfare, are not only sanctioned but held up as an indispensable necessity of civilized life, and in times of war, patronized and prayed for in our churches and chapels, with as much impudent assurance as though Jesus Christ had taught, “But I say unto you, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and, return evil for evil, hate your enemies and pursue them with all the diabolical appliances of destruction which the devil can enable you to invent.” Alas, alas! is it not too patent for intelligent contradiction that the most detestable and brutal thing in the judgment of popular Christianity is not brutality, cruelty or injustice, but poverty and vulgarity? With plenty of money you may pile up your life with iniquities, and yet be blamed, if blamed at all, only in the mildest terms, whereas one flagrant sin in a poor and illiterate person is enough to stamp him, with a majority of professing Christians, as a creature from whom they would rather keep at a distance. I had an amusing corroboration of this the other day from one of my younger daughters who had been visiting a poor criminal in one of our large prisons. She said to one of the officers in attendance, “I suppose you do not often have rich people in here?” He replied, “No, miss, we very seldom get anybody but poor folks,” and on her replying, “No, I am afraid it is because you do not look out so sharply for them,” he remarked to a fellow officer, “She’s all there.”
Seventh: Further, “the criminal classes” is another of the cant phrases of modern Christianity, which thus brands every poor lad who steals, because he is hungry, but stands, hat in hand, before the rich man whose trade is well known to be a system of wholesale cheatery.
It is never convenient for ministers or responsible church wardens or deacons to ask how Mr. Money-maker gets the golden sovereigns or crisp notes which look so well in the collection. He may be the most “accursed sweater” who ever waxed fat on that murderous cheap needlework system, which is slowly destroying the bodies and ruining the souls of thousands of poor women, both in this and other “civilized” countries. He may keep scores of employees standing wearily sixteen hours per day be hind the counter, across which they dare not speak the truth, and on salaries so small that all hope of marriage and home is denied to them. Or he may trade in some damning thing which robs men of all that is good in this world and all hope for the next, such as opium or intoxicating drinks; but if you were simple enough to suppose that modern Christianity would object to him on account of any of these things, in fact, that you were alluding to such as he, in the phrase “criminal classes,”– how respectable Christians would open their eyes, and, in fact, suspect that you had recently made your escape from some lunatic asylum, and ought to be hastened back there as soon as possible. If any one should dare to cast any reflections upon any of these Christian money-makers, the representatives of their churches would say, “Hush, hush, my dear sir, Mr. So-and-so is the great man at our place, you know; they would be glad enough of him at the church opposite, but he likes our minister, and we mean to propose him as a deacon at the next church meeting.” So the wholesale and successful thief is glossed over and called by all mariner of respectable names by the representatives of a bastard Christianity. It is ready enough to cry, Stop, thief! when some poor fellow who has been out of work for perhaps months, gets desperate at the sight of children crying for bread, and makes a bungling attempt at getting what is not his own in order to satisfy them; or when it hears that such men, left helplessly to their own devices, take to living together, and bringing up a generation of thieves, it cries out vigorously against the criminals. Sure, it may suggest a mission to them, and even set about it in a helpless, patronizing sort of way, wondering if really it is of any use to try to help “such men,” as though they were of different flesh and blood to themselves. Verily such Christianity is of different blood from Him who preferred talking to a thief in His own last moments, to holding conversation with any priest or white-washed temple worshipper standing around. The man who hung by His side was a great ruffian, no doubt, but then he had been trained in that way; and if we want the judgment of Jesus Christ on such a point, He would certainly give. it against the pet of modern Christianity, and in favor of this poor rough. The man whom Jesus Christ consigned to .a hopeless perdition was he who made long prayers, and at the same time devoured widows’ houses; or whose barns were filled with plenty while Lazarus lay covered with sores at his gates.
On no point does the sham judgment of popular Christianity appear more startlingly in contrast with that of Jesus Christ, than on the everyday question of honesty. It knows that its rich tradesmen are so dishonest in their modes of carrying on their business, that if some poor fellow comes out of prison, determined to do right and earn his bread honestly, we know scarcely any with whom we dare entrust him, and with whom he would not be tempted to break his resolution, by being asked to tell business lies, or perform business tricks, which to his “unChristianized” intelligence is only another mode of thieving; but Christianity goes on, with virtuous breath declaring that the poor and found-out thieves are criminals, while the rich and secret scoundrels are the valued supporters of her institutions.
Further: “Desecrating the Sabbath” is another virtuous-sounding phrase, which is accepted .as the expression of a very reverential religion. So it should be, but here the sham judgment comes in again! What is desecrating the Sabbath? Well, it is not dressing up in fabulously costly clothes (sometimes unpaid for), as near in fabric, style, and fashion as can be to those worn in the very vilest services of sin. It is not to lie in bed consuming the early hours of the day, and then to flaunt in this array to one short service, as an exhibition of self and respectability, spending the remainder of the “sacred day” in an easy chair with the last new book. This is Sabbath keeping, even though to carry it out comfortably, servants may have to work over an elaborate dinner, or the turning out of a luxuriant equipage. Then what is “desecrating”? Well, go and spend next Sunday evening in Mr. Easy’s mansion, and he will show you. You will not have an unpleasant time, that is, if your notions agree with his. He will give you a splendid meal, and then you will be allowed to lounge on one of his soft couches, while your host tells you spicy stories about the popular ministers of his denomination, or his daughter will play to you some “sacred” music on the piano or the harp. Fire and lamp-light will gleam softly, and thick curtains shut out the night, about which some one will occasionally remark that it is awful weather.”
Presently a harsh, discordant sound is heard, like shouting and singing with some brass instrumental music all mixed up; and if you looked out you would see a little handful of men and women, wet and mud-stained, nearly exhausted in the struggle with rain and storm, and the half rough, half good-natured crowd, who have been allured out of yonder alley, and are now going, swearing pushing, rolling along, in a fashion of their own, to a little room, or a low music-hall, where these tambourine players and the rest do congregate. Your host will jump up with an annoyed air, and exclaim with great emphasis, “Desecrating the Sabbath, that is what I call it!” and he will go on to expound his views until you understand that it is a Sabbath breaking for those poor folks to have made a noise in the street, even though they were only doing what David and Jesus Christ insisted was to be done-praising God with a loud voice, and confessing Him before all men. For, “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” or “Glory! Hallelujah!” certainly had rung clearly out above the din with almost tragic earnestness. You will learn that your host’s son and daughter have kept the Sabbath by singing in the church choir, although you see them later on, the one reading a novel, the other strolling out of the house with a cigar and a hint about returning with the latch-key. Now I charge it upon popular Christianity that its professors know all the miserable desecration which lies under the whole modern keeping of the day, and yet have not courage to condemn, but keep their blame for some effort to serve the Lord which they deem vulgar and distasteful. Modern Christendom gives its judgment ill favor of the hollow, conventional sacredness of the performance of the dressed up choir, whose very manner and countenance often betray the irreligion and frivolity of their hearts, and which neither wins the souls of sinners nor stirs the souls of saints; but reserves its strongest censure for the unscientific, rough-a nd-ready brass band, which empties the public houses and gets sinners saved by scores and hundreds.
Further: “The Sanctuary,” according to modern Christian theories, is a “holy place,” and yet a place where no one must speak of being now and actually holy! In fact, it is a place where scarcely anybody except the minister may say a word to, or for God; where such a scene as that recorded in 1 Cor. xiv. 23-31 would be counted the highest fanaticism, and next door to blasphemy. I have heard of a congregation being actually thrown into dismay by the cry to God for mercy of some poor sinner who had been previously convicted, and gone to that chapel in the hope of finding the way of salvation; but he had a near escape of being ejected by the beadle. Better everybody refrain their feet from going to these modern sanctuaries, than have a crowd of rough, needy sinners really wanting light and needing to be brought to repentance and salvation “Keep silence before me,” says modern Christian society, and not a word is breathed to hurt its feelings. It is a literal fact that in these modern sanctuaries any manifestation of the LIVING GOD is the last thing expected or desired. Imagine the scare and horror of excitement and the intense surprise if He came, as He did once in an upper room, with His baptism of fire, in the middle of one of these quiet and soothing services next Sunday morning! There would be a quicker and more precipitous exit of many of the professed worshippers than there was from the temple when He drove them out with a scourge of small cords! The great work nearest to His heart – the gathering in of the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind, or the victims of sin, debauchery, and crime, the thieves and the harlots – is the very last thing desired and expected in these modern sanctuaries. That He should speak in what is called His own “house” is the last thing arranged for. Alas, alas! do not these facts prove that these are the temples of Mammon, of respectability, of miserable, hollow, Pharisaic profession, where all manner of ungodliness is glossed over by what answers to the tithing of mint, anise, and cummin? and yet Christianity baptizes these temples with her name, and holds up to ridicule and contempt the open-air ring, where poor, simple, but devout and consecrated people, plead with God to speak, and try to make the world hear His message.
Further: “He is much to be condemned!” What for?
Never, as we have shown, because he is taking it too easy; never because he is enjoying a thousand a year, and letting men go on in sin undisturbed; never because he makes no straight forward, bold confession of Christ, or takes not up his cross to follow Him; never because he does not deny himself even the luxuries indulged by others in his “position,” in order that he may push on the interests of the kingdom of God in the world!! “But he is much to be condemned” who gets into trouble, – into a row, as it is politely termed, – for Christ’s sake. Modern Christians ask with bated breath, “Why ever should he have gone and stirred up the moral cesspools all around him, filling the atmosphere with ‘moral pollution’? How could he be so quixotic and fanatical as to expect to make things better where the bishops and clergy, and all the most influential good people of the day, had long decided that it was better left alone? We really cannot pity him,” say these modern Christians, “if he is set upon and traduced and persecuted by all the libertines and whoremongers of the age; we fear that he is seeking notoriety, and posing to be a martyr!!” And thus this bastard Christianity adds its bann [sic] to the curses of God’s enemies on the man who has not done well for himself, but who has dared to stand up for the poor and helpless, for broken-hearted mothers and fathers, and for the innocent and infant victims of the devils of lust and villainy, incarnate in the persons of rich debauchees. Modern Christianity has got rid, to a great extent, of damnation, but it can damn right vigorously in its own fashion all those who “go to extremes.” It can pour its half-pitying, half-sneering contempt upon ignorant, blundering fishermen or mechanics, but who, nevertheless, love God and souls, and believe in heaven and hell, and who really exercise self-denial and take trouble in order to serve God and save men. If such men go to prison to win some point for God and liberty of conscience, these Christians say in their drawing rooms, in their magazines and newspapers, “Ah, they are trying to become notorious! they are zealous of being thought martyrs!” And thus they join hands, as of old, with those who stood around the cross and wagged their heads, and said, “He saved others, Himself he cannot save;” and they can pronounce this judgment with such a pious, ex cathedra air that many simple men accept it as really the judgment of Christ’s body on earth, instead of the hollow, sham verdict of modern Pharisees.
In conclusion, let me repeat that if my words seem to condemn the great majority of the representatives of Christianity around us, it is with sincere grief that I admit it. Would to God there were few localities, few churches, and few ministers to which my remarks could be applied! But if there be not few but many, I cannot help it. I appeal to you whether I have spoken more than the truth; and I speak it in love to you who wish to hear and to obey it in the love of it. I would gladly -forbear to speak out thus, – I have forborne for long, and have frequently felt condemned hi so doing and it is only because I see the utter hopelessness of any improvement, of any recurrence to the simplicity and purity of the gospel, without an utter abandonment of the false and hollow judgment of modern Christianity with respect to the matters we have been reviewing, that I venture to speak thus. I would fain hope that some of you may be induced to forsake every refuge of lies which has been reared around you, and to abandon all the false standards of faith and practice to which I have alluded, and open your hearts and ears to listen to the voice that never changes, but which in all ages alike tells men of a just judgment to come. We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ; and it will be no excuse for us there that we were surrounded by false witnesses, sham lights, and an openly received system of hypocrisy. God has shown us His beloved Moses, Daniels, Nehemiahs, Jeremiahs, Pauls, Johns, and numberless other worthies, standing out gloriously alone in the midst of a Pagan society, full of refined and splendid iniquity, and standing out ever more Divine, when all around were “weighed in the balances and found wanting.” You have but the old choice to make; may God enable you to make it, and to stand out for God and righteousness against all around you.
The Judgment of the Great White Throne
As we remarked in the first part of this lecture, the innate convictions of humanity are too strong for the successful annihilation of a dread of coming judgment. It seems to have been the universal opinion of the wisest and best of the human race that there ought to be a judgment, The continual miscarriage of justice in this world, and the unequal distribution of its goods and enjoyments; its false standard of right and wrong; its unjust and sham judgments, to which we have already alluded, have seemed to drive it in upon the reason of all thoughtful beings that there must come a settling day.
The unavenged wrongs of multitudes of the poor and the oppressed; of millions of slaves; of poor, helpless children; of tens of thousands of poor, broken hearted girls, – mere children, – who have been wrecked of virtue and happiness through the vice of those double or treble their age, and who were fully awake to the consequences of their conduct; wrongs such as these, and multitudes of others, all unjudged and unrequited in this world, seem to demand some future retribution. The unpunished sins of multitudes who have flourished in their lives and gone in triumph to their graves, who floated to their positions of eminence, fame, and luxury through the tears and blood of widows, orphans, and others, down-trodden by their greed and power, cry from the ground, as did the blood of Abel, for avenging justice.
Methinks if we could face this guilty crowd and compel them to speak, they would be obliged to say, " Yes, during our lives we violated all law and justice, won the applause of men and the pleasures and honors in which we reveled, by means of the sorrows and sufferings of our fellows; but no strong arm stayed our progress, no tongue denounced our villainies, no power punished our crimes; we lived and fattened, and died with the approbation, nay, applause, of men ringing in our ears; and after death we were praised and flattered on tablets of marble, in newspapers and biographies, as though we had been the excellent of the earth. We know that we are of the devil; we expect and are waiting for the judgment.”
Further, the common-sense of humanity perceives that human lives are all unfinished at the grave, and require some appendix, some explanation. If you found a book with the story all unfinished, – the villains and seducers all unpunished, and the poor, .down-trodden slaves unavenged, the wronged and helpless people undelivered, – you would feel that there must be another volume somewhere. So, when life breaks up, with almost all men there are so many things and doings and feelings all unfinished, that you might write on every gravestone, “To be continued in the next world.” It is as if the tree were blighted at its bloom; as if the life were sapped at its source; as if the flood were turned back at its tide.
But, as we have already noted, there is a judgment already begun here and now. The same Divinity is at work in this world who will reign and operate in the next, and He is working on precisely the same principles. The moral government of this world is going on under the shadow, so to speak, of the great white throne. The shadow of that tribunal is reflected on all the tribunals and transactions of this earth.
Formerly, when the judges visited the provincial towns, there used to be a sort of public entry. The legal civic dignitaries went forth to meet them and march in procession with them into the town, preceded by heralds with trumpets, announcing the coming of judgment for the wrong-doers of those towns. So God has His heralds abroad in the world, proclaiming that He is coming. These heralds are already gone forth; they are here today. There is a herald in every man’s heart, giving foretastes of what the judgment will be, pointing out and convicting him of sin.
Every transgressor of the Divine law stands condemned before his own judgment seat. Conscience pronounces sentence on him according to his works, independently of all creeds and theories. A false gospel, under the auspices of popular Christianity, essays to set at naught this judgment, and to tell men that they are not to judge themselves according to their works, but according to their beliefs. But God’s herald in them remorselessly holds up their sin, and points to coming retribution. Conscience asserts itself, and the man who has sinned knows, feels that he must be judged.
Further, not only does conscience convict of sin, but to a certain extent punishes sin, even here. What horrors men suffer from their guilty consciences, in spite of all their infidel reasonings and hopes. How many suicides will be found, like Judas, to have been driven to distraction by the remorse and anguish of realized guilt. Is not the fact that such suffering is the consequence of sin unquestionable evidence that so long as the soul contumes [with insolence purposes – DVM] to live and remain guilty, it must continue to suffer? If transgressors can find no comfort or deliverance from this tormenting sense of guilt in this world, on what principle can it be argued that they will find it in the next? If conscience is too strong for them here, what ground is there for supposing that they will rise superior to it in the future?
Secondly: God has a herald in society. We have wandered a long distance from God in these days, I admit, and as distance from the sun brings corresponding darkness and obliterates the distinctions between natural objects, so distance from God brings spiritual darkness and induces blindness to moral distinctions. Nevertheless, far as society has got away from God, and rotten as it largely is, still it has the herald trumpet blowing loudly enough to proclaim evil to be evil, and, being evil, to be amenable to judgment. And although many preachers of a false theology, under the patronage of popular Christianity, combine to persuade men and themselves that they will escape punishment, the very libertines, thieves, gamblers, and moral bankrupts of all descriptions, pronounce their judgment to be false, saying, “Hypocrites all of you, we know we are of the devil his works we do, and we expect to go to hell.”
I have no doubt that the great secret of the success of the Salvation Army with multitudes of the openly wicked and profane is that we go straight to their consciences, attacking their sins, making no excuse or palliation, but telling them as straight as Jesus Christ Himself told the sinners of His day, that, except they repent, forsake their sins, and turn to God, everlasting fire must be their portion. This gospel answers to the voice of conscience within; they know it is true, because it matches their most secret and powerful intuitions, whereas the popular gospel of this day, its judgment included, is the laughing-stock of hell; it dare neither damn the sinner nor sanctify the saint.
But we must now consider for a few minutes what the character of this judgment is to be, which is proclaimed alike by conscience, reason, and religion. And the BIBLE, after all, is the great authority. It meets us just where conscience and reason fail us, and responds to and corroborates the profoundest and most indestructible intuitions of humanity.
Here the bible comes forward and proclaims the fact of a coming judgment in the most emphatic and unmistakable language, and describes the principles on which it is to be conducted, and the consequences which are to follow from it, with the utmost minuteness. I have avoided quoting texts more than I could help in former lectures, mainly because the number corroborative of each of my points would have been so overwhelming; but I must necessarily quote three or four passages here, and shall take them from the words of Jesus, Paul, Peter, Jude, and John, that in the mouth of three or four witnesses this truth may be established.
“The hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, 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” (John v. 28, 29).
“The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be published with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power” (2 Thess. 1:7-9).
“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that everyone may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor. v. 10).
“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; 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” (2 Peter 3:10).
“And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6).
“And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works” (Rev. xx. 11, 12).
I accept that authority. That answers to the voice of my conscience. That satisfies the claims of my intellect. Here I perceive that God will avenge the wrongs, not only of His own elect, but of the fatherless, the widow, and the oppressed of all ages, and the cry of my soul for justice is met, my sense of outraged righteousness is appeased, my conscience pronounces, “True and righteous art Thou, O King of saints!”
But people say, and a great many Christian people say in this day, “A good deal of the language in these and similar texts is figurative language.” They do not like the doctrine; it is too definite, too particular, too inclusive for them; and so they try to explain it away. But supposing that some of the language were figurative, – what then? What do you gain by making it out to be figurative? What are figures for? Surely no one will argue that the judgment, as prefigured in the words of Jesus Christ and His apostles, will be less thorough, less scrutinizing, less terrible than the figures used to set it forth i Therefor it does not matter whether these be figurative expressions or no, seeing that they are calculated to convey the most awful and tremendous ideas of the judgment which any figures could convey, which the wisdom of God could select.
Some of the objections which people bring against the literal fulfillment of these passages seem to me to be very weak.
They say, " Where could be the scene of such a judgment seat!” I answer, He who created the universe can surely make a platform big enough on which to judge the inhabitants of this little world. For ought we know, there may be one already erected. There may be a world of judgment going on, where the representatives of the Divine government are already at work, getting ready for the final sentence. We do not know.
Again, they say, “Look at the time it would require.” But I say, He who has had patience to watch the long procession of man’s iniquities through the ages of time will perhaps have patience to judge men on account of them And as one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, be sure, sinner, He will take the time to investigate your case; you will not be missed out.
Note that the judgment is to be universal.
These passages and numberless others declare that the dead, small and great, shall stand before God, and that every knee shall bow before Him, and every tongue confess to Him. If God in some way will deal individually with every son and daughter of Adam, what does it signify where or by what method He does it, so that the end be secured? You and I will find our way from the spot, wherever it may be, to heaven or to hell, according to the sentence. Our destiny in the great eternity which follows will be settled by the sentence, not by the method by which it is arrived at. The great matter to us is that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” This is not the Old Testament. I have purposely confined my quotations to the New; this is the revelation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, by which Paul declares God will “judge the secrets of men.”
Not only will every man and woman be dealt with, but every character will be demonstrated, made manifest.
There will be no whited sepulcher business there, no make-believe, sentimental salvation, no false gospel, with its creeds and phrases, no ceremonial salvation; but we shall all stand revealed as we are, black or white, good or bad, washed or unwashed, pure or impure.
What nonsense it is for people to talk of going down to death with their hearts full of iniquity, “as a cage of unclean birds,” as some of them are so fond of quoting. If so, what effect will death have upon their moral nature? What cleansing stream will be opened by the Angel of Death? If you are not saved from sin before you come down to the Jordan of death, there is no virtue in its waters to wash you. There is only one cleansing medium for SOULS, and that is the blood of the Lamb; and you must get washed in life, if you want to pass muster at death and at the judgment seat.
People say, “Do you think the sins of the saints are going to be dragged out at the judgment seat?” No! not the sins of the saints, for they are cast behind His back; but the saints themselves are going to be dragged out. One great end of the judgment will be to decide who are the saints, and to show to the universe that Jesus was equal to the work He had undertaken, namely, to destroy in the hearts of His saints the works of the devil, and that He was strong enough to hold them up against all the temptations and allurements of sin, blameless unto that day; and now they are to be revealed and held up, not as dark, hollow, evil-hearted, hypocritical people, but as the saints of God, washed and saved and made clean and white, which you know means holy, in the blood of the Lamb. He will point all the devils in the universe to His saints; they will be His boast and glory, and manifest victory over the devil. The question of questions then will be, Are you a saint?
Further, every character is not only to be settled and demonstrated, but it is to be judged according to its deserts – “according to that he hath done.”
He that knew his Master’s will and did it not, is to be beaten with many stripes; while he who knew it not and did things worthy of stripes, is to beaten with few. “And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell.”
We shall be judged according to our privileges, according to the light we have received, and the obedience we have rendered to it, not only outwardly, but inwardly; according to our rebellion or submission to God; according to our loyalty and obedience to Him, in our hearts as well as in our lives.
I am afraid many, even of those who are saved, will suffer great loss in that day. There will be a great deal of wood, hay, and stubble, instead of gold, silver, and precious stones. Oh, let us wake up in time to redeem the few remaining days of our lives. The past is irredeemable; it is gone, and its losses must remain forever. The harvest which we might have gathered is lost, and God Himself cannot make up to us for that loss. We may have many to-morrows, but we shall never have over again a yesterday. Oh friends, you who love Him will have to stand before His judgment seat to receive the things done in the body. What are you doing? Are you visiting His sick or in prison? Are you ministering unto Him when hungry or naked, in the persons of His poor? When He is cast out and traduced in the persons of His persecuted ones, are you showing your love to Him by standing up for His character and doing what you can to defend Him? Are you seeking after His lost sheep diligently until you find them, which means, you know, going after them where they are, however the thorns may prick your feet or the sun light on your head? Are you DOING these things? because, if not, don’t expect Him to say, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Can anybody imagine that Jesus Christ will pronounce a sort of figurative or sentimental judgment – that He will say, “Inasmuch as ye did this or that” to those who never did anything of the kind? Such a proceeding would be very unlike anything He ever did or said when on earth, would it not? He was so true that He was called “the Truth;” so intensely real and practical that no shadow of unreality or sham could endure His gaze for a moment. is it possible to conceive that He will be any other when he comes ’to judgment?’ And yet how many of His professed followers are presuming on a Judge all meekness, mercy, and love, quite forgetting that in that day the reign of mercy will be ended and the Lamb that was slain will appear as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Judge of all the earth, who will still do right.
What are you doing, friend? As the stories come to me from Hackney Wick, Seven Dials, St. Giles’, the Borough, and other parts where our people are visiting and working continually, – stories of destitution, sickness, sorrow, and suffering, no less than of sin crime and shame, – I feel, what can I do, what can I say that will arouse God’s professed people to some concern and care for these poor lost multitudes? Our people tell me they find people who say, “Don’t talk to us about a God: we don’t believe in such a Being. Don’t tell us about Christians: we want neither you nor your tracts, nor your Bibles – away with you. We don’t believe in such Christians, who leave us to die in want and misery like this.” Men and women nearly naked, children absolutely so, women who must not look off from their match-box making, at 2 1-2d. per gross, or their shirt stitching, at 3d. each, for fear of reducing their earnings a half-penny, and thus robbing their children of an ounce more bread, or the rent of their wretched room of the last fraction which an inexorable (perhaps Christian?) landlord exacts. Thousands of such wretched beings, without a bed to lie upon, without fire to warm them, or sufficient food to keep body and soul together, are living in the .greatest degradation and sin all over this London, perhaps not two hundred yards from the very spot where we are assembled this afternoon; and yet who cares for them, or visits them, or weeps over them with a really Christ-like sympathy? Who carries them either the bread that perisheth or the Bread of Life? You London Christians, what shall you say in the great day of account? Where shall you stand? How will you look? Oh, friends, give up the sentimental hypocrisy of singing,
“Rescue the perishing, Care for the dying,” –
in the drawing room, to the accompaniment of the piano, without ever dreaming of going outside to do it; such idle words will prove only a mockery and a sham in the great day of account. Such songs will come booming back on the ears of the soul with more awful forebodings than the echoes of the Archangel’s trumpet itself! Sentimentalism will have no resurrection; it will rot with the grave clothes! What doth it profit, my brethren, to say to the hungry and naked, either physically or spiritually, Be ye warmed and filled, if, notwithstanding, ye give them not either the temporal or the spiritual bread? He will say, “Inasmuch as ye did it not, depart from Me.” .
Further, the verdict of that day will carry universal conviction.
Every being will feel that long-waited-for justice has come at last. The song which will burst forth from the lips of the saints, as they take their places in the celestial city, will be, “True and righteous art Thou, O King of saints;” and methinks the same words, though not uttered by the lips, will be graven on the hearts of the hosts of the lost as they sink to meet their doom, and the realization of the justice of their sentence will make their hell. May no soul in this assembly, or any who may read these words, ever realize what this means. Amen.
NOTES OF THREE ADDRESSES ON HOUSEHOLD GODS
Delivered in Steinway Hall, Regent Street
“Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” (Romans vi. 1(3).
It is assumed all through this Book that every human being has a deity. In fact, we are so made that we must have a god. Even the man who says there is no God, worships a god notwithstanding, and that god is, “to whom he yields himself a servant to obey.” Now God claims to be the Deity of the soul of every human being; but Satan has supplanted God, and he has done it in many ways. He has assumed many different forms in order to suit different classes and conditions of men. For one class of persons he finds one idol, for another class another. But the principle here laid down is, that whatever the outward form may be, that which usurps in a man’s affections, life, and action, the place of God, becomes his deity. He need not outwardly label it idol, or bow his knees and worship it. The supremacy which he gives to it in his affections and life is the point.
What an awful thought that in this so-called Christian England, tens of thousands of people are as truly worshipping idols as are any of the inhabitants of Africa or China.
I want this morning to confine myself more particularly to the gods of the household. Professing Christians speak about giving up the vanities of the world, and coming out from the world, when, alas! we need not go outside the four walls of their own dwellings to find their god. I am afraid there are quite as many people who go wrong with these inside idols as with the outside ones.
The first that strikes us as the most universal god of so-called religious society in this day is the
God of Fashion.
Now, what is fashion? What does the term mean?. It means the world’s way of having things, and the world’s way of doing things. When we look abroad on the great majority of men and women around us, we see that they are utterly godless, selfish, and untrue, and yet the majority always fixes the fashion. It is not the few true, real, God-fearing, earnest men and women who want to serve God and help humanity, who fix the fashion; it is always the majority. Consequently, you see, fashion is always diametrically opposed to God’s way of having things, and God’s way of doing things. Therefore the votaries of fashion cannot possibly be the servants of God! There is no getting away from that conclusion.
Let us now inquire what is God’s great end or purpose in His way of doing things, and in the way that He has prescribed in which we are to have and to do things. What is shown by the constitution of our bodies, by the laws and ordinances of the heavens, and by the laws of nature, to be God’s end in everything? Utility! If you look at your eye, or study your ear or hands, or any other part of your body, you cannot find a single fiber or nerve which is not of some use in your annual economy-nothing superfluous, nothing for waste or for mere sake of being there. A useful result is the end contemplated. Look at the heavens-it is the same; there is not a single waste star. Look at the animal creation – it is the same. Look at the vegetable creation – it is the same. The very rocks exist not for themselves. The earth ministers to the wants of man and beast. There is nothing created for mere show, no useless part of creation. The aim of God in all His modes and works is the highest good to all His creatures. Now let us inquire what is the end of fashion. When we substitute the means for the end, we lose the great result God had in store for us. This is true in everything, natural, mental, and spiritual. Now, God’s order is to have everything attuned to the highest result, especially in the case of His highest creature-man. He wants us to use every power and capacity He has given us for the highest ends-to serve God and humanity! But fashion has turned God’s order topsy-turvy, and set up as its end, supposed Beauty! not that beauty which is an accompaniment of utility; but fashion sets up beauty as the end, and not the accompaniment. Fashion says, “That is elegant. That looks grand, so it shall be so.” So the great question comes to be in dress, in equipage, in our modes of doing business, in our furnishing arrangements, and in our institutions, What is the order of fashion? Fashion sets the law, and everybody does what everybody else does; and all who will not bow down to this idol are called puritans, fanatics, straight-laced, or by any other terms of contempt most convenient. So hot is this furnace of contempt and scorn that it is one of the highest tests of moral courage in man or woman to set fashion at naught. It is one of the grandest things to teach your children from their babyhood to say, “No, I won’t do that because everybody else does it. You must give me a better reason than the fashion for what I do.”
Fashion prescribes the form of dress for almost the whole world. Doctors may talk, and advise, and warn against high heels, tight waists, and insufficient clothing
If any father has a prodigal son, I ask, How is it that you are reconciled to your son? You love him intensely. Probably you are more conscious of your love for him than for any other of your children. Your heart yearns over him, you pray for him, you dream of him, your bowels yearn over him. Why are you not reconciled? Why are you obligated to hold him at arm's length and not have him come in and out, and live with you on the same terms as the affectionate, obedient daughter? "Oh!" you say, "the case is different, I cannot. It is not, I would not, but I cannot". "Before that can possibly be, the boy's feeling must be changed toward me. I have done all a father could do, but he will go on in defiance of my will." You say, "As a wise and righteous father I must insist on a change in him. He must confess his sin and ask me to forgive him. Then I should run to meet him and put my arms around his neck!" But there is a "cannot" in the case.
Just so. It is not that God does not love you, sinner, or that the great benevolent heart of God has not, as it were, wept tears of blood over you. It is not that He would not put His loving arms around you this moment if you would only come to His feet, and confess you wrong, and seek His pardon. He cannot. The laws of His universe are against His doing so. He dare not and cannot until there is a change of mind in you. You must repent, "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."Well, if repentance be an indispensable condition of salvation, let us try to find out what repentance really is. How full of confusion the world and the Church are upon this subject! Repentance is not merely conviction of sin. If it were, what a different world we should have, for there are tens of thousands in whose hearts God’s Spirit has done His work of convincing them of sin. We should be perfectly astounded if we had any conception of the multitude whom God as convinced of sin, as he did Agrippa and Festus. They are convinced of sin, but they go no further. They live this week as they did last. That is not repentance.
Neither is repentance mere sorrow for sin. I have seen people weep bitterly and writhe and struggle, yet hug their idols, and vain as it been to try to shake these from them. If Jesus Christ would have saved them with those idols, they would have had no objection at all. If they could have got through the strait gate with one particular idol, they would have gone through long since, but to part with it is another thing. Some people will weep like your stubborn child when you want him to do something which he does not want to do. He will cry, and when you apply the rod he will cry harder, but he will not yield. When he yields he becomes a penitent, but until he does he is merely convicted sinner.
When God applies the rod of His Spirit, of His providence, and His word, sinners will cry, wince, and whine and make you believe they are praying and want to be saved, but all the while they are holding their necks as stiff as Iron. They will not submit. The moment they submit they become true penitents and re saved. There is not mistake more common than for people to suppose they are repentant when they are repentant when they are not. Repentance, therefore, is not mere sorrow for sin. A man may be ever so sorry and all the way down to death be hugging some forbidden thing, as the young ruler hugged his possessions. But that is not repentance. Neither is repentance a promise that you will forsake sin in the future. It if were, there would be many more penitents. There is scarcely a poor drunkard that does not promise, in his own mind, or to his poor wife, or somebody, that he will forsake his cups. There is scarcely any kind of a sinner who does not continually promise that he will one day give up his sin and turn to God, but he does not do it.
What then is repentance? Repentance is simply renouncing sin, turning round from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God. This is giving up sin in your heart, in purpose, in desire; resolving that you will give up every evil thing, and that you will do it now. Of course this involves sorrow; for how will any sane man turn himself round from a given course into another if he does not repent? it implies, also, hatred of the course he formerly took, and from which he turns.
He is like the prodigal who, when he sat in the swine yard amongst the husks and the filth, fully resolved, and at last acted. He went, and that was the test of his repentance. He might have sat resolving and promising till now, if he had lived as long, and he would never have got the father’s kiss, the father’s welcome, if he had not started. Yet, he went, and went to his father honestly and said, “I have sinned” which implied a great deal more in his language then than it does in our now. Then comes the proof of his submission, “and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants” -put me in a stable, or set me to clean the boots, so that I can be in thy family and have thy smile. That is Jesus Christ’s own beautiful illustration of true repentance. Sub mission is the test of true repentance. My child may be willing to do a hundred and fifty other things, but if he is not willing to submit on the one point of controversy he is a rebel and remains one until he yields.
Here is the difference between a spurious and a real repentance. I am afraid we have had, in our churches thousands who had a spurious repentance: they were convinced of sin - they were sorry for it; they wanted to live a better life, to love God in a sort of general way; but they skipped over the real point of controversy with God; they hid it form their pastor, perhaps, and from the deacons, and from the people who talked with them. Abraham might have been willing to give up every other thing he possessed, but if he had not been willing to give up Isaac, all else would have been useless. It is your Isaac that God wants. You have an Isaac, just as the young ruler had his possessions. You have something that you are holding on to, that the Holy Spirit says you must let go, and you say, “I can’t” Very well, then you must you must stop outside the Kingdom.
Then another difficulty comes in, and people say, “I have not the power to repent.” There is a grand mistake. You have the power, or God would not command it. You can repent!
You can this moment lift up your eyes to Heaven and say, with the prodigal, “Father, I have sinned, and I renounce my sin.” You may not be able to weep. God nowhere requires or commands that. You are able, this very moment, to renounce sin in purpose and in resolution. Mind you do not confound the renouncing of the sin with the power of saving yourself from it. If you renounce it, Jesus will come and save you from it, like the man with the withered hand whom Jesus intended to heal. Where was the power to come from to heal him? From Jesus, the benevolence, the love, that prompted that healing all came from Jesus; but Jesus wanted a condition, and that was the response of the man’s will. So He said, “Stretch forth thine hand.” If the man had been like some of you he would have said, “what an unreasonable command! You know I cannot do it.” Jesus wanted that “I will, Lord” to be inside the man, the response of his will. The moment he said that, Jesus supplied strength. He stretched forth his hand and you know what happened.
Stretch out your withered hand, whatever it may be, and say, “I will, Lord.” You have the power and mind, you have the obligation, which is universal and immediate. God “now commandeth all men every where to repent” and to believe the gospel. What a tyrant He must be if He commands that and yet knows you have not the power!
Now, do not say, “I do not feel enough.” Do you feel enough to be willing to forsake you sin? That is the point. Any man who does not repent enough to forsake his sin is not a penitent at all. When you repent enough to forsake you sin, that moment your repentance is sincere and you may take hold of Jesus with a firm grasp. Then “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved”.
 William Booth
(1829 - 1912)
Founder of the Salvation Army |
n one of my recent journeys, as I gazed from the coach window, I was led into a train of thought concerning the condition of the multitudes around me. They were living carelessly in the most open and shameless rebellion against God, without a thought for their eternal welfare. As I looked out of the window, I seemed to see them all... millions of people all around me given up to their drink and their pleasure, their dancing and their music, their business and their anxieties, their politics and their troubles. Ignorant- willfully ignorant in many cases- and in other instances knowing all about the truth and not caring at all. But all of them, the whole mass of them, sweeping on and up in their blasphemies and devilries to the Throne of God. While my mind was thus engaged, I had a vision.
I saw a dark and stormy ocean. Over it the black clouds hung heavily; through them every now and then vivid lightening flashed and loud thunder rolled, while the winds moaned, and the waves rose and foamed, towered and broke, only to rise and foam, tower and break again.
In that ocean I thought I saw myriads of poor human beings plunging and floating, shouting and shrieking, cursing and struggling and drowning; and as they cursed and screamed they rose and shrieked again, and then some sank to rise no more.
And I saw out of this dark angry ocean, a mighty rock that rose up with it’s summit towering high above the black clouds that overhung the stormy sea. And all around the base of this great rock I saw a vast platform. Onto this platform, I saw with delight a number of the poor struggling, drowning wretches continually climbing out of the angry ocean. And I saw that a few of those who were already safe on the platform were helping the poor creatures still in the angry waters to reach the place of safety.
On looking more closely I found a number of those who had been rescued, industriously working and scheming by ladders, ropes, boats and other means more effective, to deliver the poor strugglers out of the sea. Here and there were some who actually jumped into the water, regardless of the consequences in their passion to "rescue the perishing." And I hardly know which gladdened me the most- the sight of the poor drowning people climbing onto the rocks reaching a place of safety, or the devotion and self-sacrifice of those whose whole being was wrapped up in the effort for their deliverance.
As I looked on, I saw that the occupants of that platform were quite a mixed company. That is, they were divided into different "sets" or classes, and they occupied themselves with different pleasures and employments. But only a very few of them seemed to make it their business to get the people out of the sea.
But what puzzled me most was the fact that though all of them had been rescued at one time or another from the ocean, nearly everyone seemed to have forgotten all about it. Anyway, it seemed the memory of its darkness and danger no longer troubled them at all. And what seemed equally strange and perplexing to me was that these people did not even seem to have any care- that is any agonizing care- about the poor perishing ones who were struggling and drowning right before their very eyes... many of whom were their own husbands and wives, brothers and sisters and even their own children.
Now this astonishing unconcern could not have been the result of ignorance or lack of knowledge, because they lived right there in full sight of it all and even talked about it sometimes. Many even went regularly to hear lectures and sermons in which the awful state of these poor drowning creatures was described.
I have always said that the occupants of this platform were engaged in different pursuits and pastimes. Some of them were absorbed day and night in trading and business in order to make gain, storing up their savings in boxes, safes and the like.
Many spent their time in amusing themselves with growing flowers on the side of the rock, others in painting pieces of cloth or in playing music, or in dressing themselves up in different styles and walking about to be admired. Some occupied themselves chiefly in eating and drinking, others were taken up with arguing about the poor drowning creatures that had already been rescued.
But the thing to me that seemed the most amazing was that those on the platform to whom He called, who heard His voice and felt that they ought to obey it- at least they said they did- those who confessed to love Him much were in full sympathy with Him in the task He had undertaken- who worshipped Him or who professed to do so- were so taken up with their trades and professions, their money saving and pleasures, their families and circles, their religions and arguments about it, and their preparation for going to the mainland, that they did not listen to the cry that came to them from this Wonderful Being who had Himself gone down into the sea. Anyway, if they heard it they did not heed it. They did not care. And so the multitude went on right before them struggling and shrieking and drowning in the darkness.
And then I saw something that seemed to me even more strange than anything that had gone on before in this strange vision. I saw that some of these people on the platform whom this Wonderful Being had called to, wanting them to come and help Him in His difficult task of saving these perishing creatures, were always praying and crying out to Him to come to them!
Some wanted Him to come and stay with them, and spend His time and strength in making them happier. Others wanted Him to come and take away various doubts and misgivings they had concerning the truth of some letters He had written them. Some wanted Him to come and make them feel more secure on the rock- so secure that they would be quite sure that they should never slip off again into the ocean. Numbers of others wanted Him to make them feel quite certain that they would really get off the rock and onto the mainland someday: because as a matter of fact, it was well known that some had walked so carelessly as to loose their footing, and had fallen back again into the stormy waters.
So these people used to meet and get up as high on the rock as they could, and looking towards the mainland (where they thought the Great Being was) they would cry out, "Come to us! Come and help us!" And all the while He was down (by His Spirit) among the poor struggling, drowning creatures in the angry deep, with His arms around them trying to drag them out, and looking up- oh! so longingly but all in vain- to those on the rock, crying to them with His voice all hoarse from calling, "Come to Me! Come, and help Me!
And then I understood it all. It was plain enough. The sea was the ocean of life- the sea of real, actual human existence. That lightening was the gleaming of piercing truth coming from Jehovah’s Throne. That thunder was the distant echoing of the wrath of God. Those multitudes of people shrieking, struggling and agonizing in the stormy sea, was the thousands and thousands of poor harlots and harlot-makers, of drunkards and drunkard makers, of thieves, liars, blasphemers and ungodly people of every kindred, tongue and nation.
Oh what a black sea it was! And oh, what multitudes of rich and poor, ignorant and educated were there. They were all so unalike in their outward circumstances and conditions, yet all alike in one thing- all sinners before God- all held by, and holding onto, some iniquity, fascinated by some idol, the slaves of some devilish lust, and ruled by the foul fiend from the bottomless pit!
"All alike in one thing?" No, all alike in two things- not only the same in their wickedness but, unless rescued, the same in their sinking, sinking... down, down, down... to the same terrible doom. That great sheltering rock represented Calvary, the place where Jesus had died for them. And the people on it were those who had been rescued. The way they used their energies, gifts and time represented the occupations and amusements of those who professed to be saved from sin and hell- followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. The handful of fierce, determined ones, who were risking their own lives in saving the perishing were true soldiers of the cross of Jesus. That Mighty Being who was calling to them from the midst of the angry waters was the Son of God, "the same yesterday, today and forever" who is still struggling and interceding to save the dying multitudes about us from this terrible doom of damnation, and whose voice can be heard above the music, machinery, and noise of life, calling on the rescued to come and help Him save the world.
My friends in Christ, you are rescued from the waters, you are on the rock, He is in the dark sea calling on you to come to Him and help Him. Will you go? Look for yourselves. The surging sea of life, crowded with perishing multitudes rolls up to the very spot on which you stand. Leaving the vision, I now come to speak of the fact- a fact that is as real as the Bible, as real as the Christ who hung upon the cross, as real as the judgment day will be, and as real as the heaven and hell that will follow it.
Look! Don’t be deceived by appearances- men and things are not what they seem. All who are not on the rock are in the sea! Look at them from the standpoint of the great White Throne, and what a sight you have! Jesus Christ, the Son of God is, through His Spirit, in the midst of this dying multitude, struggling to save them. And He is calling on you to jump into the sea- to go right away to His side and help Him in the holy strife. Will you jump? That is, will you go to His feet and place yourself absolutely at His disposal?
A young Christian once came to me, and told me that for some time she had been giving the Lord her profession and prayers and money, but now she wanted to give Him her life. She wanted to go right into the fight. In other words, she wanted to go to His assistance in the sea. As when a man from the shore, seeing another struggling in the water, takes off those outer garments that would hinder his efforts and leaps to the rescue, so will you who still linger on the bank, thinking and singing and praying about the poor perishing souls, lay aside your shame, your pride, your cares about other people’s opinions, your love of ease and all the selfish loves that have kept you back for so long, and rush to the rescue of this multitude of dying men and women.
Does the surging sea look dark and dangerous? Unquestionably it is so. There is no doubt that the leap for you, as for everyone who takes it, means difficulty and scorn and suffering. For you it may mean more than this. It may mean death. He who beckons you from the sea however, knows what it will mean - and knowing, He still calls to you and bids to you to come.
You must do it! You cannot hold back. You have enjoyed yourself in Christianity long enough. You have had pleasant feelings, pleasant songs, pleasant meetings, pleasant prospects. There has been much of human happiness, much clapping of hands and shouting of praises- very much of heaven on earth.
Now then, go to God and tell Him you are prepared as much as necessary to turn your back upon it all, and that you are willing to spend the rest of your days struggling in the midst of these perishing multitudes, whatever it may cost you.
You must do it. With the light that is now broken in upon your mind and the call that is now sounding in your ears, and the beckoning hands that are now before your eyes, you have no alternative. To go down among the perishing crowds is your duty. Your happiness from now on will consist in sharing their misery, your ease in sharing their pain, your crown in helping them to bear their cross, and your heaven in going into the very jaws of hell to rescue them.
Now what will you do?