By REV. JOHN P. MACQUEEN.
A MINISTER, in closing, at a Friday Fellowship Meeting, remarked that there was one mark of grace which all the brethren seemed to have omitted that day, and yet, without it, all the other marks described would be futile. It was the Scriptural mark:—”He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved” (Matthew xxiv, 13). It is the enduring to the end of life’s journey, uncompromisingly faithful to the Word of God, that testifies the reality of the saving grace professed by the individual believer. It is to that professing believer who remains faithful to the end that the Lord promises the crown of victory that never fades away. “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” As Dr. Ryle of Liverpool put it:—”We are never sure regarding our being enduringly consistent in practical godliness till our two feet are safely planted on the shore of the eternal haven.”
Even such as shall shine in glory, because they have the regenerating and sanctifying grace of God in their heart, have no assurance that they shall not bring disgrace upon their public profession, so that they shall shine no more in this world, other than by perpetually and constantly walking humbly with God, in the strength of divine grace. As the Rev. John Newton expressed it:—”To divine grace how great a debtor daily I am constrained to be.” We all need, therefore, as the Apostle Peter wrote “by way of remembrance,” to be constantly reminded of the truth, which the Apostle Paul learned by experience, “when I am weak, then am I strong.” How little, after all, the human race really remembers, so that the constant appeal of Scripture to God’s people of old was:—”Remember and forget not.” As long, however, as a believer has a constant perpetual consciousness that he, or she, is, apart from sustaining divine grace, the very personification of spiritual weakness, frailty, inability, and helplessness, especially in view of innumerable subtle and powerful temptations, within and without, his, or her, confidence will be entirely in the almighty arm of a never-failing, faithful, Covenant-keeping, promise-fulfilling Saviour. He must be indebted to free and sovereign grace for every step in the path of holy obedience.
The true believer will thus be exercised as has been the Church of Christ in every age and clime, “coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her Beloved,” and “kept by the power of God, through faith, unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time,” for He is “able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.” Thus the people of God “shall be brought with gladness great, and mirth on every side, into the palace of the King, and there they shall abide” (Psalm xlv, 15, metrical version). “Neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed” (Isaiah liv, 10). “Well done, good and faithful servant . . . enter thou into the joy of thy Lord” (Matthew xxv, 21).
The foregoing thoughts occurred to the present writer, in connection with complaints, that have been made by some of those who have left our church as ardent followers of ministers who would, if they could, have reduced our denomination to fragments. These complained bitterly, and equally unreasonably, that ministers and elders who have died since they left our church received no commendation, by way of biographical obituary sketches, in the official organ of our church—the “Free Presbyterian Magazine.” Surely the exercise of a modicum of commonsense should have been sufficient to convince these people that those who did their utmost to ruin our church after they left us, without any known sign of repentance for their evil-doing and folly, deserve only from us the silence of omission, to say the least; while we take nothing to do with their state for Eternity. If they had grace in their heart, even their lamentable backsliding, when repented of sincerely, would not keep them out of Heaven. To try to break up into fragments the existence and identity of a branch of the visible Church that has always and outstandingly stood for an inspired and infallible Bible, is as heinous a work as the great adversary ever gave men to do on this earth, even when some of them might be imagining that they were doing God service. Accordingly, those guilty of such work would need to manifest unmistakable signs of true repentance, before expecting any place whatever in the fellowship of the church that they so grievously harassed. Those who thus err have need of the prayers of the Lord’s true people that their eyes would be opened to see the evil of their ways, and so repent, and go mourning for the rest of their days. “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.”