By Dr. SHEDD.
WE curtail the following excellent sermon by the renowned evangelical divine, Dr. Shedd of New York, on the text (Romans i. 28): “As they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind.” After showing how the pagan world did not like to retain the natural head knowledge of a holy God and a holy law in their understanding, they degenerated from monotheism to pantheism and polytheism, he concludes as follows:—
“We have thus considered the truth which the Apostle Paul teaches in the text, that the ultimate source of all human error is in the character of the human heart. Mankind do not like to retain God in their knowledge, and therefore they come to possess a reprobate mind. The origin of idolatry, and of infidelity, is not in the original constitution with which the Creator endowed the creature, but in that evil heart of unbelief by which he departed from the living God. Sinful man shapes his creed in accordance with his wishes, and not in accordance with the unbiased decisions of his reason and conscience. He does not like to think of a holy God, and therefore he denies that God is holy. He does not like to think of the eternal punishment of sin, and therefore he denies that punishment is eternal. He does not like to be pardoned through the substituted sufferings of the Son of God, and therefore he denies the doctrine of atonement. He does not like the truth that man is so totally alienated from God that he needs to be renewed in the spirit of his mind by the Holy Ghost, and therefore he denies the doctrines of fatal depravity and regeneration. Run through the creed which the Church has lived by and died by, and you will discover that the only obstacle to its reception is the aversion of the human heart.
“It is a rational creed in all its parts and combinations. It has outlived the collisions and conflicts of a hundred schools of infidelity that have had their brief day, and died with their devotees. A hundred systems of philosophy, falsely so-called, have come and gone, but the one old religion of the patriarchs, and the prophets, and the apostles, holds on its way through the centuries conquering and to conquer. Can it be that sheer imposture and error have such a tenacious vitality as this? If reason is on the side of infidelity, why does not infidelity remain one and the same unchanging thing, like Christianity, from age to age, and subdue all men unto it? If Christianity is a delusion and a lie, why does it not die out, and disappear? The difficulty is not on the side of the human reason, but of the human heart. Sceptical men do not like the religion of the New Testament, these doctrines of sin and grace, and therefore they shape their creed by their sympathies and antipathies; by what they wish to have true; by their heart rather than by their head. As the Founder of Christianity said to the Jews, so He says to every man who rejects His doctrine of grace and redemption: ‘Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life.’ It is an inclination of the will, and not a conviction of the reason that prevents the reception of the Christian religion.
“Among the many reflections that are suggested by this subject and its discussion, our limits permit only the following. (1) It betokens deep wickedness, in any man, to change the truth of God into a lie,—to substitute a false theory in religion for the true one. ‘Woe unto them,’ says the prophet, ‘that call evil good, and good evil; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.’ There is no form of moral evil that is more hateful in the sight of Infinite Truth, than that intellectual depravity which does not like to retain a holy God in its knowledge, and therefore mutilates the very idea of the Deity, and attempts to make Him other than He is. There is no sinner that will be visited with a heavier vengeance than that cool and calculating man, who, because he dislikes the unyielding purity of the Moral Law, and the awful sanctions by which it is accompanied, deliberately alters it to suit his wishes and his self-indulgence. If a person is tempted and falls into sin, and yet does not change his religious creed in order to escape the reproaches of conscience and the fear of retribution, there is hope that the orthodoxy of his head may result, by God’s blessing on His own truth, in sorrow for the sin and a forsaking thereof. A man, for instance, who amidst all his temptations and transgressions still retains the truth taught him from the Scriptures, at his mother’s knees, that a finally impenitent sinner will go down to eternal torment, feels a powerful check upon his passions, and is often kept from outward and actual transgressions by his creed. But if he deliberately, and by an act of will, says in his heart: ‘There is no hell’; if he substitutes for the theory that renders the commission of sin dangerous and fearful, a theory that relieves it from all the danger and all fear, there is no hope that he will ever cease from sinning. On the contrary, having brought his head into harmony with his heart; having adjusted his theory to his practice; having shaped his creed by his passions; having changed the truth of God into a lie, he then plunges into sin with an abandonment and momentum that is awful. In the phrase of the prophet, he ‘draws iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart-rope.’
‘It is here that we see the deep guilt of those, who, by false theories of God and man and law and penalty, tempt the young or old to their eternal destruction. It is sad and fearful, when the weak physical nature is plied with all the enticements of earth and sense; but it is yet sadder and more fearful, when the intellectual nature is sought to be perverted and ensnared by specious theories that annihilate the distinction between virtue and vice, that take away all holy fear of God, and reverence for His Law, that represent the everlasting future either as an everlasting elysium for all, or else as an eternal sleep. The demoralization, in this instance, is central and radical. It is in the brain, in the very understanding itself. If the foundations themselves of morals and religion are destroyed, what can be done for the salvation of the creature?’
‘A heavy woe is denounced against any and everyone who tempts a fellow-being. Temptation implies malice. It is Satanic. It betokens a desire to ruin an immortal spirit. When, therefore, the siren would allure a human creature from the path of virtue, the inspiration of God utters a deep and bitter curse against her. But when the cold-blooded Mephistopheles endeavours to sophisticate the reason, to debauch the judgment, to sear the conscience; when the temptation is addressed to the intellect, and the desire of the tempter is to overthrow the entire religious creed of a human being,—perhaps a youth just entering on that hazardous enterprise of life in which he needs every jot and tittle of eternal truth to guide and protect him,—when the enticement assumes this purely mental form and aspect, it betokens the most malignant and Heaven-daring guilt in the tempter. And we may be certain that the retribution that will be meted out to it, by Him Who is true and The Truth; Who abhors all falsehood and all lies with an infinite intensity, will be terrible beyond conception. ‘Woe unto you ye blind guides! Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell! If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things that are written in this book.’
‘(2) In the second place, we perceive, in the light of this subject, the great danger of not reducing religious truth to practice. There are two fatal hazards in not obeying the doctrines of the Bible while yet there is an intellectual assent to them. The first is, that these doctrines shall themselves become diluted and corrupted. So long as the affectionate submission of the heart is not yielded to their authority; so long as there is any dislike towards their holy claims; there is great danger that, as in the instance of the pagan, they will not be retained in the knowledge. The sinful man becomes weary of a form of doctrine that continually rebukes him, and gradually changes it into one that is less truthful and restraining. But a second and equally alarming danger is, that the heart shall become accustomed to the truth, and grow hard and indifferent towards it. There are a multitude of persons who hear the Word of God and never dream of disputing it, who yet, alas, never dream of obeying it. To such the living truth of the Gospel becomes a petrification, and a savour of death unto death.
“We urge you, therefore, you who know the doctrines of the Law and the doctrines of the Gospel, to give an affectionate and hearty assent to them both. When the divine Word asserts that you are guilty, and that you cannot stand in the Judgment before God, make answer:—’It is so, it is so.’ Practically and deeply acknowledge the doctrine of human guilt and corruption. Let it no longer be a theory in the head, but a humbling salutary consciousness in the heart. And when the divine Word affirms that God so loved the world that He gave his only-begotten Son to redeem it, make a quick and joyful response: ‘It is so, it is so.’ Instead of changing the truth of God into a lie, as the guilty world has been doing for six thousand years, change it into a blessed consciousness of the soul. Believe what you know; and then what you know will be the wisdom of God to your salvation.”