(To the Editor of the F. P. Magazine.)
DEAR SIR,—A prominent feature of the British Weekly of 17th February, is a sermon by Dr. Whyte, of Free St. George’s, Edinburgh. As the editor in his opening article pronounced it to be a great sermon, I was curious to see what might be its style and substance. My taste may, perhaps, be a perverted one, but having read the sermon I was unable to relish it. The title of the sermon is—”The woman and the hem of his garment.”—(Luke viii. 43.) Was it “Mr. Lachlan” who gave the advice—”Do not be always talking of your sins and infirmities? The Most High likes better to hear of His own good things than of your bad things.” Dr. Whyte has not entered into the spirit of this advice, for his sermon is greatly taken up with elaborate details of sin, meant to be very candid and humiliating, but with a strong suspicion of oratorical display. Is Dr. Whyte not afraid of the home thrust which Bunyan makes at the penitence which is too cheap, easy, and profuse? He introduces Christian and Talkative discoursing of the work of grace in the soul, and Talkative proceeding to give marks of true conversion says—”When true grace comes into the heart it raiseth a great outcry against sin.” Bunyan is in favour of sound conviction of sin, but he is evidently not very sure of the “great outcry.”
What makes Dr. Whyte’s elaborate studies of sin to be the less acceptable is the fact that it is his own sin which he is always obtruding on our notice. Three times over in this sermon, Dr. Whyte takes a fit of advertising what a bad, miserable man he is. “I am not dead, but I often wish I were. For I, too, am sick unto death, and I have tried everything, every preacher, every author, every discipline, every medicine, and I am worse to-night than ever I was. This woman envied the ruler’s dead daughter, and so do I. Luther had no proper pleasure in his children because of his sin, and neither have I;” with more of the like sort. Perhaps Dr. Whyte thinks that because Paul penned a seventh of the Romans so should he, but Dr. Whyte should rather cultivate modesty and self-repression.
But not only are Dr. Whyte’s attainments in penitence and self-knowledge very great and notable, but his attainments in faith are also, it seems, equally notable. For further on he says—”She felt in her body that she was healed of that plague, and so do I. I would die every day if I did not touch the hem of His garment many times a day. Not on Sacrament days only, but still more on other days, what that miserable woman said and did on that street that day, that same, I, a thousand times more miserable, do on the streets of your city and in my own house day and night. I touch the hem of His garment. I not only touched the hem of His garment in this house last Sabbath, I actually ate His flesh and drank His blood till I felt, all the time I sat in my seat, as if I were almost healed of my plague like her.” To touch the hem of Christ’s garment for the cure of the daily running sores of sin is doubtless a blessed experience, but that conscious communications of the virtue of Christ, such as Dr. Whyte indicates, are so numerous or so attainable by the free will of the sinner, as he seems to find them, I doubt extremely. In this age of decayed spirituality especially, God’s elect are nearly all saying, “Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, oh God of Israel the Saviour.” The common experience of real saints, I think, is that iniquities prevail against them, and the Comforter that should heal their souls has withdrawn Himself and is gone. Dr. Whyte’s experiences are, therefore, I am afraid, largely the outcome of emotion and imagination, and he is misleading his hearers as to the true character of the Christian life. In fact, though we hear much about sin and a little (in a poetic way) about Christ, we hear nothing at all about the grace and working of the Holy Spirit, without whom there can be no communication between Christ and the sinner. That “the Spirit applieth to us the redemption purchased by Christ by working faith in us and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling,” is a line of teaching very little insisted on by modern preachers like Dr. Whyte.
He professes to be able to touch the hem of Christ’s garment many times a day, but for the impotent needy soul who feels himself as unable to do this as to clutch the stars, he has no advice or information but to stir up his dead heart into some mighty fervour, and in the midst of this, somehow or other, he will find himself in touch with Christ. For a pattern of patient waiting for the special heavenly operation of the Divine Spirit, see the Diary of Dr. Love, and observe there how unable he felt himself to touch the hem of Christ’s garment, and how determined he was not to be content with any but the true communication of Divine grace, though he should wait all his days for a visitation from on high.
Dr. Whyte’s egotistical pulpit appearances are certainly quite out of keeping with the best traditions of Scottish Christianity, and I think, however novel and fetching they may prove at the moment, they will not stand the test of time and reflection.
I am, yours,
J. M’N.