IT may not be unprofitable at the present time to examine some of the arguments that are put forward in favour of giving Home Rule to Ireland. We take nothing to do with party politics in the matter, but write from the standpoint of our common Protestantism. It is the duty of everyone, who has any regard for the things of the kingdom of God, to put his Protestantism first and his politics second. What is genuine Protestantism but loyalty to the fundamental principles of God’s word, according to which the affairs of the State, as well as of the Church, ought to be regulated? We would consider ourselves traitors to Christ and His truth if we would take up any position either for or against Irish Home Rule, simply because a party in the State was for or against it. We have one Master, even Jesus Christ.
The first argument that may be noticed is, that Home Rule is a good thing in itself, and that, therefore, the desire of the Irish to have it should be granted. In answer, we have to say that there are many good things in the world which many people make a very ill use of. They ought not to be entrusted with the handling of them. A sharp knife is an article of value, but it may be employed for the most dreadful purposes. Fire is one of the most useful agents in existence, but persons of a violent temperament often abuse it to the serious injury of their neighbour’s property. It is not enough, therefore, to maintain that Home Rule is a good thing in itself. The question is, “Are the Irish Roman Catholics capable of making a good use of it?” Their declared religious beliefs and their personal conduct in the past, answer with loud voices, “No.” They are enemies to the grand principles of truth and liberty upon which Great Britain, as a united kingdom, was founded.
The second, and the most outstanding argument that is employed in favour of Irish Home Rule is that the Irish Roman Catholics
are fellow subjects along with Protestants, paying the same taxes, possessing the same franchise or vote, and having representatives in the same Parliament, and that their religion ought to be reckoned no disqualification for the enjoyment of Home Rule. Now, let it be observed in answer to this that it is just here where our nation has erred in the past in respect of its treatment of Roman Catholics. They have been regarded and dealt with as subjects on the same footing as Protestants. This was a grievous and suicidal mistake. All Roman Catholics are bound, according to the unchanging creed of their so-called Church, to acknowledge the Pope of Rome as their supreme head in civil as well as religious matters. He is their king in deed and in truth and not the Protestant Sovereign of Great Britain and Ireland. They are, therefore, first and foremost, the subjects of a foreign potentate, and never had any right to expect that they should be treated as citizens on the same platform with the Protestant people of these realms. When it is also considered that this foreign potentate is an absolute ruler whose principles and aims are diametrically opposed to those by which the British nation has been regulated since Reformation times, the fatal inconsistency of admitting his subjects to the same privileges as Protestant citizens is seen in a still more dreadful light. No greater error has ever been committed by our national legislature than the passing of the Act of 1829, whereby Roman Catholics were admitted to seats in Parliament. Not a few good men, under the influence of a mistaken charity, favoured the passing of this deplorable Act, and we are reaping the evil consequences to-day in the bold aggressiveness and insidious advance of Romanism throughout the three kingdoms. The Irish Home Rule measure is one of its pernicious fruits, and it is our duty to labour and pray against its adoption as giving more and more power and influence to men who will, if they can, utterly destroy everything that is noble, honourable, and Protestant in connection with the realm. Better a thousand times it would be that the Irish Papists should be entirely disavowed from the United Kingdom than that they should gain the ascendancy over our fellow Protestants in Ireland, which the proposed establishment of an Irish Parliament will inevitably involve.
A third argument which is often heard is that the Roman Catholics are just as good people as the Protestants any day, and that they may therefore be quite safely entrusted with self-government. In reply, it may be admitted without any difficulty that some Roman Catholics are as moral and amiable in their lives as some Protestants, but that in nowise proves the point asserted. To declare without qualification that Roman Catholics are just as good people as Protestants is as much as to affirm that Romanism is as good as Protestantism and has produced equally good results. This we blankly deny. All history and observation prove the contrary—that Romanism is immoral in its principles
and destructive of all good in its practical fruits. Now, no matter how moral and amiable Roman Catholics might naturally be, they are pledged to uphold an evil creed, and are constantly under the baneful influence of their rulers the priests, and who can tell what they may be led to do if they get the power? Past history proves that Romanism, where it has had the ascendancy, has been the promoter of cruelty, persecution, and bloodshed to an immeasurable degree, and there is not the slightest evidence that Romanism has essentially changed. Home Rule in Ireland will undoubtedly be Rome Rule, and it is hard to tell what dreadful consequences may not follow.
A fourth and last argument we shall notice is, that the tendency of the people in these times is to take up an attitude of opposition to absolute authority, that in Italy, Portugal, France, and Spain, Roman Catholics have risen up against the tyranny of the Church and priesthood, and that a Parliament in Ireland may lead the Roman Catholic people to throw over the tyranny of the Church and claim greater freedom. It is readily granted that the people have risen against the so-called Church in other countries, but the same cannot be at all affirmed of Ireland. Ireland is the most devoted of all the Pope’s children, which he constantly recognises, and Ireland will want nothing better than to retain her adherence to the Pope, and at the same time to be nurtured by Great Britain. Truly the above argument is far-fetched, in relation to a country which has continued an abject slave of Popery from the beginning until this day, and shows no signs of awakening to throw off her chains. Again, are we to do evil that good may come? Supposing that good was anticipated in some form or other by Home Rule, are we justified in doing evil in order to attain that good? Such is not the divine direction for us, and professed Protestants, in taking this method, are adopting one of the very principles of Rome herself, which declares that the end justifies the means. Whatever may be the ultimate result of impending events, it is, to say the least, an extraordinary thing to find the greatest Protestant nation in Christendom fostering to its utmost the most devoted of the Pope’s children. It is greatly to be feared, indeed, that the majority of Protestants in the present degenerate day—not living up to their principles—are no better than the Roman Catholics, and so great evil has come upon us. May the Most High, in His infinite mercy, avert threatened calamities!
HATH not the harlot of Babylon more costly array and rich apparel than the homely housewife of Christ? Where is the beauty of the King’s daughter, the Church of Christ—without or within? Doth not David say within? Can the Pope and his prelates mean honestly, who make so much of the wife, and so little of the husband? The Church they magnify, but Christ they contemn.—Bradford.
A Sermon.
BY THE LATE REV. CHARLES C. MACKINTOSH, D.D.,
OF TAIN AND DUNOON.
“Looking unto Jesus.”—HEBREWS xii. 2.
THE apostle having, in the preceding chapter, illustrated the power of the faith which is to the saving of the soul, proceeds in this chapter to exhort the Hebrew Christians to follow “them who, through faith and patience, inherit the promises.” He compares the Christian life to a race. True religion is not the bare—the easy—profession of Christ’s name. To follow Christ is arduous work, in which hardness must be endured and a conflict fought; in which the flesh must not be spared, but in which continual self-denial must be exercised; and in which there must be perseverance to the end. It is a struggle for an incorruptible crown; a journey from the city of destruction, through a world full of temptation and sources of trial, to the celestial city. The believer in Jesus is called to the enjoyment of a peace which the world cannot give, a peace which passeth understanding; but that very peace can only be enjoyed while fighting the good fight of faith—a fight which must be maintained till his dying hour. Moreover, there are things that must be laid aside if we would so run this race as to obtain:—namely, “every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us.” Whatever interferes with the following of Christ as the one thing needful—in an especial manner, the things of this world and its love—must be laid aside. In all circumstances the kingdom of God and His righteousness must be first sought; and growth in grace, as connected with the divine glory, must be the thing supremely desired by the believer if he would make progress in holiness. “The sin that doth so easily beset us” must also be laid aside. There belongs to every one what we may call the sin of his temperament or constitution, which it is of great importance to know, and against the outbreaks of which special guard must be kept. There is in many also some sin which, in consequence of special circumstances—special fostering in the days of their impenitence—has grown to gigantic dimensions in the soul, and which must be laid aside to run this race. They must conflict with it; they must labour to mortify it. But, especially, there is indwelling sin manifesting its power in unbelief—a sin of which the apostle speaks so much in this epistle, and against which, above all others, he warns his brethren—“the evil heart of unbelief.” This must be laid aside, in the sense of keeping it under and mortifying it. Further, patience is necessary; patient continuance in well-doing; patience in the enduring of whatever trials or afflictions may attend the following of Christ. For every follower of Christ will
be tested as to the reality of his principles and as to the truth of grace in him. He may be called to suffer, and to suffer much; to part with his earthly all, and with life itself, for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s. And while many are offended—while many draw back and shrink from the cross—he must take it up and bear it after Christ if he would follow Him.
It may be said, “These are heavy and great requirements; who is sufficient for these things?” Well, there are grounds of encouragement. There is, first, what we may call a subordinate ground of encouragement, yet a very precious one: “We are compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses.” It is refreshing to find the inspired apostle speaking thus of the Old Testament saints. Often we may be ready to think that they were few—and they were few in particular ages of the Church—but yet he speaks of them as a great company, a “cloud of witnesses”—witnesses for God and for His truth in their day and generation. And he speaks of them as having obtained a good report through faith—as witnessing to us of the nature of the race, of what we may look for if we would follow the Lord fully, and of what will carry us through; and not only witnessing of these things, but looking on and sympathizing with us, and thus not only stimulating but encouraging us to follow their footsteps and to run the same blessed race. And how powerfully do they stimulate and encourage, when we consider that there is no case in which the Christian is found to which he will not find a corresponding one among those who, through faith and patience, now inherit the promises!
But in our text we have what we must call the grand encouragement, as well as the grand direction and the source of strength: “Looking unto Jesus.” Not only is the racecourse compassed about by a great cloud of witnesses, but Christ is looking on. His sleepless eye is upon His people; He is watching them with the deepest interest. The success of those who have preceded us in this race—notwithstanding the fears with which many of them were oppressed, the difficulties they had to encounter, the fiery trial through which, in many cases, they were brought—is a powerful motive to patient endurance and to hope against hope. But it is the presence and the unchangeableness of that glorious Object, in looking to whom they ran and obtained, that can inspire the believer with the hope that he, too, shall be enabled to persevere and to overcome. If a great cloud of witnesses encompasses the believer’s path—if the eyes of all the glorified spirits are upon him as a conflicting, suffering brother, and if this is a motive to follow their faith and patience—yet it is in looking unto Jesus that the hope is produced of being enabled to follow them. And if to run the race successfully it be necessary that the believer lay aside every weight and his easily-besetting sin, it is in looking unto Jesus—and in this way alone—that he is enabled to comply with these requirements.
It is in looking unto Jesus that the racecourse is entered upon; looking away from other objects to Him; looking away from the accusations of a guilt-laden conscience, from a fiery law, to Jesus for rest; and looking away from the world to Jesus. It is in obtaining a view of Him as the Lamb slain that the soul is drawn by the invisible but almighty chain of His grace and love out of the fearful pit and miry clay; and it is under the joint influence of His authority, His love, and His teaching, that it is brought to say, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” Faith in Christ is the starting-point of true religion; faith that depends upon Jesus for salvation—that gives the heart to Him, saying, “What have I to do any more with idols?” And whatever impressions may be made on the heart with respect to the necessity and all-importance of true religion, and whatever efforts may be made to follow Christ in the path pointed out to His followers, these impressions are not saving and these efforts are unavailing until the soul complies with the Gospel call, and receives Christ as Jesus, who “saves his people from their sins.” This is a truth of vital importance.
It is in looking to the Lord Jesus that we run the race. He is not only the Alpha and Omega of the sinner’s hope when he first attains to good hope of salvation, but He is the Alpha and Omega of His people’s continued hope—the beginning and end of their confidence. He is the believer’s strength, and light, and guide, and consolation, and salvation, and glory—his all. He is the Sun of Righteousness in his firmament, in whose light alone he can see spiritual objects or discharge spiritual duty; in whose warmth alone he can taste of true joy. It is on His righteousness that he depends altogether for the acceptance of his person; it is on His grace he depends for the sanctification of his nature. It is His arm that supports him; it is His love that satisfies him. To contemplate Him, indeed, in the unveiled glory of His divinity, apart from His work as Immanuel, would only dazzle and consume him; but as He is revealed in the mellowed lustre of His mediatorial work, the contemplation is inexpressibly refreshing to the soul. The poor, dark, guilty sinner can contemplate Him with the deepest humiliation, and yet as the object of his trust and confidence. Humiliation and hope can thus take root and flourish side by side in “looking unto Jesus.”
You are to remember, believer, and you are to be animated to greater hope in remembering, that a company which no man can number has trod the same path which you are treading—that you are compassed about by a cloud of witnesses; but you are to look to Jesus. The whole company of the redeemed are but so many mirrors, in which some small part of His beauty is to be seen; and even in their glorified state what can they do for a poor sinner—for a burdened spirit? They can sympathize with him, but that is all. There is but one object that can meet all his need; that can fill his eyes when capacitated for perceiving
and drinking in moral and spiritual beauty; that can fill his heart for ever; and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. The eternal Father is never weary of contemplating His excellences; the holy angels are never weary of singing His praises; the redeemed will never complain that their constant contemplation of His beauty has brought satiety. Many are the groans of the burdened soul under a sense of distance from Christ, and of dim, dim views of Him; but he will never weary of seeing His face when he comes to the heavenly Zion.
But we must view this subject in another light. A poor, dark, weak creature is called to run the race from sin to holiness; to aspire after nothing less than perfect likeness to God; to seek after nothing less than to glorify God. Very true, he has undergone a glorious change. He has passed from condemnation to a state of acceptance in God’s sight; he has been renewed in the spirit of his mind; old things have passed away; the world has been made vanity to him for Christ. And yet he is, in himself, as utterly without strength as he was before. He has no stock of grace on which to trade; he has no inherent might to resist his spiritual enemies. He cannot preserve his own soul, cannot exercise aright any one of the graces of the Spirit, and whatever may be his advances in the divine life, his condition in this respect remains unchangeable. He is still, while in this world, a sinner needing mercy as surely as when he first sought and obtained mercy; needing the everlasting strength of the Lord Jesus to sustain him as surely as when he began the conflict. And the more he advances in the divine life the more vividly does he realise this, and the more does he shrink from the workings of that evil principle which would conjoin with the finished work of Christ, as a ground of hope, anything of his own—anything even of what the Spirit of God has wrought in him—or that would interfere with his looking to Jesus with the same feeling of strengthlessness in himself as when he first looked and was saved. And yet he is called to run this race. How then can he run it? He is to run it as he entered it, “looking unto Jesus.” As there is One who has done all for him as regards the deliverance of his soul from condemnation and the beginning of the good work, so He is to continue to do all for him, and to perfect that which concerns him. On Him therefore he is to depend; to Him he is to look; and for all the necessities of the Christian life there is provision in the Lord Jesus. Observe, then, how spiritual sloth on the one hand, and dependency on the other, are shut out by the provision of the Gospel. The Lord Jesus seeks no rival to Himself in beginning or in carrying on the work of grace. What He seeks is dependence—simple, exclusive dependence—on Himself for beginning and for perfecting it; and in this dependence He is glorified.
On the one hand, then, it is the confiding, depending believer that will be the diligent and the active believer. It is he who
carries all his wants and burdens to the Lord Jesus, to have his wants supplied out of His fulness, who will be engaged with his whole heart in running the race. And, on the other hand, the call to run this race is not like Pharaoh’s call to the children of Israel: “Make bricks without straw.” The poor, empty believer is not called, in the exercise of his own resources, to be holy. No; Christ is made of God to His people not only righteousness, but sanctification. The doctrine which gives any place whatever in the justification of the sinner, or which gives the Christian inherent power to carry on the work of sanctification, independently of its being a soul-destroying doctrine, is a miserable and a cheerless one.
Faith, then, is the great principle of obedience. The obedience of the true Christian is distinguished from the obedience of the formalist in many respects—it is the obedience of love, love to Christ, and of universal respect to all Christ’s commandments; but it is specially distinguished in this, that it is the obedience of faith. When we say that it is the obedience of faith, we mean, first, that it is opposed to the obedience prompted by self-righteousness or produced by slavish fear, for it is animated by hope; and secondly, that it is opposed to the obedience that draws on self for its supplies, for it draws its supplies from an unseen Saviour.
I shall not at present dwell upon the nature of faith as set forth under this beautiful emblem or simile, “looking unto Jesus.” I do not know that there is in the Word of God an exhibition of faith that is more fitted for the weak believer, more fitted to “help unbelief,” than this one. The glorious simplicity that belongs to faith in Christ is brought out by it—the simplicity that makes it so hard for the self-righteous heart to understand what faith is—that it is the simple looking of a consciously-lost and helpless sinner to the Lord Jesus Christ in the gospel, for that salvation which He died to purchase, which he lives to bestow. Two or three things, however, we must keep in view as necessarily included in it. For example, there must be the knowledge of Christ, some measure of true spiritual knowledge of His person and work. Faith cannot be exercised on an unknown Christ; cannot be exercised except in so far as the understanding, illuminated by the Spirit of God, discerns the glory of Jesus the Christ. And so, for the continued actings of this faith, there is needed growth in the knowledge of Christ. Therefore it is that when the Apostle Peter exhorts his brethren to “grow in grace,” he adds, as one thing in which, in an especial manner, growth in grace consists, “and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Then there must be trust in Christ. Now, the general call of the Gospel affords a warrant at all times to the believer for a fresh exercise of faith in the Lord Jesus; e.g., such a glorious passage of God’s Word as this—”God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” And blessed be God that we are warranted to make this use of the glorious Gospel from hour to hour. But in addition to this there are particular exhibitions of the Redeemer suited to all the conditions or circumstances in which His people are found in this world. Now, “looking unto Jesus” is looking to Him in the exercise of expectation and trust that He will be to us according to His own word and according to our need; that He will be our life in our deadness, our advocate to undertake for us; our keeper to protect us, our shepherd to feed us. And so for all our wants.
Then again, this “looking unto Jesus” must be such a looking as implies heart-complacency in the glorious object of faith. No doubt, we are to distinguish between faith and love. We are not to confound these two graces; but we must remember that they are ever inseparable. Faith kindles love, and love stirs up faith to increasing exercise. It is to the look of love as well as to the look of trust that the believer is invited.
Now let me notice, ere we come to a close, some of the special characters in which the Lord Jesus is to be contemplated.
Here let us not forget that if our faith be exercised on the Lord Jesus Christ so that we shall really run the race set before us, it must first realise the glory of His Person. We cannot perceive the preciousness of Christ’s work unless we perceive the glory of Christ’s Person—God-man, Immanuel. There is no human teaching that can give us one right view of Christ in His Person. The Spirit of God can give this. He gives this to His people; He will give it to us if we ask it of Him. Oh, where there is a “looking unto Jesus,” and a running of the race, there is prayer from day to day and hour to hour for the teaching of the Spirit to show us Jesus in the Word in the glory of His Person!
He is to be contemplated as the Lord of this race, whose we are by creation and by redemption, so that each one of His people ought to be able to say, “To me to live is Christ,” and so that they ought to come each day to Him with the question, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? what wilt Thou have me to part with? what wilt Thou have me to suffer in running this race? I am thine.” A sense of His authority and of infinite obligation must possess His people if they would follow Him.
Again, He is to be looked unto as the great High Priest, or the propitiation for sin, and as the Advocate with the Father. It is a view of Christ in His priestly office that first attracts the sinner and gives him peace, and a continued view of Christ in His priestly office is necessary for preserving peace in His people. It was as the Lamb of God that He manifested forth on earth the glory of the Father; it is as the Lamb that was slain that He is adored and worshipped in heaven, and while seated there at the Father’s right hand, representing the persons of His people, He presents their services too, perfumed with the incense of His own merits. Oh! how soon would the believer faint, give over, and
sink into utter despondency, unless he had the great High Priest to look to—and such a High Priest who is touched with the feeling of His people’s infirmities, and who saveth to the uttermost, because He liveth for ever to make intercession.
Again, He is to be looked unto as the Forerunner. He hath gone before His people in this race. And now the very print of His steps is to be seen in the course. It is to be seen in the doing of the Father’s will—this was His meat and drink. It is to be seen in prayer—He spent whole nights, He wrestled and agonized, in prayer. It is to be seen in the deep valley of humiliation—His whole life on earth was spent in it. It is to be seen in temptation—He suffered, being tempted. It is to be seen in the dark valley of the shadow of death—He passed through that valley. He has gone before, and now He says to His people, “Follow me.” Christ has thus consecrated with the true consecration, He has sanctified and hallowed, every step of the way to glory. There is no enemy with which His people must contend that has not been vanquished by Christ, there is no trial which He has not converted into a blessing. He has taken the sting out of death, and because He lives, His people shall live also.
With this blessed truth we must connect another. He is the Example—“that we should follow His steps.” The believer in Jesus is to aim at nothing short of being like Christ, and if he aims not at this, he cannot follow Christ at all. Oh! are not many of us condemned by this truth? How little is it realized and laid to heart! In seeking to run the race set before us we should consider how He endured the cross, despising the shame. These are great words—may they sink in our hearts!—“He that saith he abideth in him,” that saith he is a follower of Christ, “ought himself also so to walk even as he walked.”
In the last place He is to be contemplated as the Author and Finisher of our faith. He is the life of His people. So that their life depends not on what they have received from Him, but on their continued union to Him; and the exercise of this life depends not on any inherent strength of theirs, but on continued communications from the life-giving Head. And so that, if He is to be trusted in as the Priest, submitted to as the Master, rejoiced in as the Forerunner, and imitated as the Example, it must be through cleaving to Him as the Life, and looking to Him for that very faith which depends upon Him. So true is it that Christ “is all and in all.” It is He who begets this faith when the sinner cries, “Lord, save me, I perish.” It is He who keeps it from fainting in the time of trial, when it says, “Lord, to whom can I go?” It is He who clears its eye when it waxes dim, to see afresh His own beauty in the page of truth. It is He who strengthens its vision to see the land that is very far off. It is He who teaches it to say, “My soul, wait thou with patience upon thy God alone.” It is He who nerves it to do and to suffer great things for His name’s sake. It is He who will teach it to commit
the spirit to Him who has redeemed it, when its race is run. He is, then, to be looked unto as the Author and Finisher of faith. And let it be observed, faith is here singled out as comprehending every other grace. He who is the Author and Finisher of faith is the Author and Finisher of every other grace; the source of all life, light, consolation, and joy, without whom His people can do nothing.
We must distinguish between the hold that faith takes of Christ and the hold that Christ has of the soul. What is necessary in order to saving faith is a renouncing of every false refuge, and a resting in truth upon Christ for salvation. Now, though this is the production of almighty power, yet, as it exists in the sinner and is matter of his consciousness, this precious grace is often very weak, very feeble, quivering like a leaf. Yes, and as he runs the race it is often so. But then while faith, so to speak, stretches out its weak, trembling hands to Christ, Christ has the everlasting arms about it, and holds it secure from wrath and sin and all that can harm it, in a grasp stronger than death and the grave; and nothing can pluck it out of His hands. He saith, “Because I live, ye shall live also.”
And now to close. Dear friends, pray for him who has been addressing you from these blessed words, that it may be given to him, through abounding grace, so to run as that he shall obtain; not to run uncertainly, not to fight as one that beats the air. It is a solemn truth—woe to us if we overlook or forget it—that there is a running which is unsuccessful, which does not obtain the crown. There is the running of mere profession. There is the running of him who subordinates Christ and the care of the soul to the world in some form or other. There is the running of the self-righteous, who thinks more of his own goodness than of the finished work of Christ. There is the running of the man who trifles with the obligations of God’s law, who holds by some darling lust and will not let it go, though God says that “they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” There is the running of the prayerless, the spiritually dead man, who never seeks communion with the unseen Saviour. There is the running of those who have set out well and have drawn back—some wiled away, some engulfed by the world, some terrified back in the time of sore trial. And there are those who run to the very gate of heaven with the hope of being admitted there—”Lord, Lord, open to us”; to whom Christ will say, “Verily, I say unto you, I know you not.” Is it possible that an immortal spirit should go on under this strong delusion to face death and to enter eternity, if he really sat down to examine himself by God’s word, to try his state and to know the case of his soul? Is there one of my hearers who says, “God forbid that I should go on so! What will mere profession avail? What will a name or place in the visible Church avail if I do not know and love the Lord, and if Christ Himself be not formed in me the hope of glory?” Remember, if you are
Christ’s, you will have a struggle to maintain. You must expect a struggle and a contest while here. Seek preparedness for it, and pray for the continued teaching of the Holy Spirit to show you the things of Christ. It is looking unto Jesus that makes the race blessed in all its hardships, temptations, and difficulties. Young Christian, if, through grace you have counted the cost—if you would follow the Lord fully in the way He has marked out for His people—if you would be kept from looking back to Sodom—then we bid you welcome in Christ’s name. Be not discouraged; be not afraid. Christ can keep, support, carry you through; giving you to feel that His “yoke is easy” and His “burden light.” And this is what the advanced Christian needs—to have the things of Christ shown him. This is what the aged Christian needs “till the day break and the shadows flee away,” when he shall see that head, which was crowned with thorns, now with the many crowns.
Once more. How many are there of us (the Lord knoweth) who are still strangers to this race, without the strait gate, in an unconverted and impenitent state; who have never realised that the salvation of the soul is the one thing needful; never been brought to lay to heart that to flee from the wrath to come is a thing which cannot be put off till to-morrow, which requires haste—is pressing—urgent? “Press into the kingdom.” “To-day, while it is called to-day, harden not your hearts.” O, that the Lord, the Spirit, would cause His own solemn truth—His own glorious truth—to enter consciences and hearts; the truth in regard to the race, to eternity, to the blessedness of the saved, the misery of the lost; the truth in regard to Jesus. O, that some wandering eye might be fixed this day upon the Lamb of God; that some vain mind were fixed—some vain heart brought under the power of the Cross of the Lord Jesus! And then never, never, my dear fellow-sinner, would you find rest until that union was made up between you and Christ, which would be manifested by your cleaving to Him in this world, and which would last for ever; for who shall separate His people from His love?
The late Miss Mackay, Dingwall.—We regret to record this month the death of Miss A. M. Mackay, 85 High Street, Dingwall, who passed away on Thursday the 7th August, at the age of 77 years. Miss Mackay, who was a deeply pious woman, was widely known for her earnest activity in the interests of the cause of truth. She had an ardent desire for the circulation of sound Protestant and Evangelical literature, and with much ungrudging labour republished many valuable booklets and tracts. “The great day” alone will declare how much good she was enabled to accomplish in this way for the spiritual benefit of her fellows. Her removal has caused a great blank in the Dingwall congregation and the Church at large. A fuller notice will (d.v.) appear at an early date.
The Bearing of Destructive Criticism of the Bible on Missionary Work.*
THE impact of the West upon the East at the present day is producing, and must produce, effects of immense importance and of almost boundless potency for both good and evil. It has been admitted by some of the greatest living statesmen that, among the beneficial influences exercised by Europe and America upon Asia and Africa, none is more effective and vital than the preaching of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Yet there are several elements in western life which are now being brought to bear upon the East to counteract the progress of Christianity there. One of these takes the form of religions distinctly opposed to the “faith once for all delivered to the saints.” Among the chief of these are Bahaism, Theosophy, and the “New Theology.” Ultimately, due, as all three are, to the reaction of eastern thought upon the western mind, and representing a repetition of the religious history of the last decaying days of the Roman Republic, when “the Orontes flowed into the Tiber,” these “fancy religions” yet assume, to the eastern mind, a proud position as being the latest products of European thought, if they are not recognised as of Hindu origin. In either case they appeal to the intellectual pride of many, and are welcomed for their supposed ability to check the advance of Christianity.
Only one other intellectual movement (of distinctively western origin this time) is at the present exercising a strongly adverse influence to the progress of Christianity, especially in Asia and in Egypt. That is the Destructive Criticism of the Bible, more generally known as “Higher Criticism.” The injury which it inflicts on missionary work is the subject with which we now proceed to deal.
I.—This unscientific and very largely subjective method of criticism deprives the Bible of its authority as the Revelation of God which testifies to the Lord Jesus Christ and supports His claim to be the Son of God and the one Saviour of the world. As an instance of this we may quote the words of the Review of Religions, a Moslem paper. It says: “Thus has the Bible been swept away like a straw before the mighty current of modern criticism.” Professor Hartmann, a distinguished German statesman, who has lived long in Mohammedan lands, represents a Moslem well acquainted with European thought as saying: “Why should there be disseminated among us religious documents the genuineness of which is in part contested, the meaning of which is in very many instances uncertain, and which
* This interesting and important paper was read by the Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall, D.D., at a Conference held after the Annual Meeting of the Bible League. A reprint of this address may be had from the office of the Bible League, 31 John Street, Bedford Row, London, W.C. Price 1½d. post free.
in general Church use are treated as purely human productions that, even as far as Christian countries are concerned, have merely the value of a historically evolved fact?”
When we remember that the great contest between Christian Missions and their Mohammedan opponents has always been on the subject of the authority and the genuineness of the Bible, and that for the greater part of a century the Oriental defenders of Islam have constantly endeavoured to uphold their faith by attacking our Holy Scriptures, the very serious nature of the obstacle caused to us by the Destructive Criticism may be faintly realised. European books have long been ransacked for any statements which might even appear hostile to the Bible. In a Persian defence of Islam by a renegade Syrian, I found even Jerome’s criticism of the various old Latin versions extant in his time used to show how unreliable the Bible is! This is still more the case when Moslems are able to point to volume after volume, written by men of learning not only professing Christianity but holding high positions in our Churches and at the Universities, in which the Higher Critical “proved results” are maintained as incontestable. An Arabic work published only last year at Cairo declares that the historical parts of the Pentateuch are merely legendary, that they are not written by Moses but collected from oral traditions, and that these books did not assume their present form until after the Exile. As his authority for these statements its author refers to Christian “Ulama” (theologians). A very much more serious attack on Christianity is contained in another Arabic book, published at Beirut last year, and entitled, The Heathen Doctrines in the Christian Religion. This writer, borrowing from European books, fancies that he has succeeded in proving that Christianity has taken from Hinduism, the ancient Egyptian religion, Zoroastrianism, and many other ethnic faiths, the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, the Atonement, and almost everything else. Besides the fact that he would find no difficulty in adducing vastly more assertions on the part of European writers in support of his contention than he actually does, it is lamentable to think that our Missionary Societies’ Committees at home are so ignorant of the necessity of providing an adequate vernacular literature that the book will probably remain unanswered. A Jesuit has already tried to reply, but he has entirely failed, for want of first-hand knowledge of eastern religions and ancient languages.
I have mentioned the effect which the Destructive Criticism is exerting on the Islamic opponents of the progress of the Gospel. The same thing is true with regard to its influence on the champions of Hinduism, Buddhism and other eastern faiths. They regard the Bible and Christianity as so completely discredited by this criticism, which, as they truly say, is advocated by a large number of professing Christians themselves, that they are encouraged to think that their own religions are much truer
and their own sacred books more reliable. Theosophists are strongly urging upon them the same view of things.
II.—The Destructive Criticism is also to some considerable extent affecting European missionaries. Partly through them and partly through the study of European theological and other books and magazines, the Native Church, especially native pastors and catechists, are in not a few countries becoming greatly influenced thereby. Such influence is even more injurious among converts from heathenism and Islam than it is in England. As showing this, I quote a letter written by two Japanese Christians of thirty-six years’ standing to a quasi-Christian magazine in that country. They say: “A generation ago we were taught by the early missionaries to believe the Bible to be verbally inspired from Genesis to Revelation; we now hold it to be full of errors. We reject the greater part of Paul’s teaching: we no longer believe in Virgin Birth or Everlasting Punishment for unbelievers, nor that God can forgive sins only through the mediation and suffering of Christ:—this, a mere Paulinism, is no longer tenable. Many who, thirty or forty years ago, became Christians, have ceased to be Christians for these reasons, and there are more who have left the Church than now belong to it.” All this is a direct result of the Destructive Criticism.
In the same country the Japanese clergy and catechists at Kiushiu sent a series of questions to the C.M.S. Missionary Conference there in 1907, showing their desire to “restate Christianity.” The covering letter said: “Up-to-date learning shows us that Evolution was the mode of origin of things, not Creation, and that the Bible is scientifically wrong and full of error.” It added that Genesis was a myth, written long after the events occurred; the New Testament facts were discredited, miracles a mistake, and there was no real basis for many doctrines taught by the Church.
Catechists and even Bible-women proudly air their knowledge of “the new, the learned, views,” and speak slightly of “the antiquated views.” A catechist recently described the late head of his theological college as “sickeningly and disgustingly orthodox.” One of our missionaries, who has had much to do with itinerating, writes: “My own observation is that the catechist who accepts the results of the Higher Criticism is of no use as an evangelist. He is sure of nothing, and only feebly exhorts people to get better and be better: he makes no converts. Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo are the most deeply affected of any part of Japan by the Higher Criticism.”
Turning to other parts of the Mission field, we find the same thing prevalent there too, in a greater or less degree. A Singalese pastor writes thus about the congregation to which he ministers in Ceylon: “The young men are getting tainted with the ideas of the New Theology and the Higher Criticism, which are reproduced in the local papers and which are eagerly read. . . . The papers refuse to publish the other side.” A secular paper there
quotes from The Burning Bush, a review of a certain book by a Wesleyan missionary, published at a Colombo mission press, in which it is said: “The author has not the faintest notion wherein Christianity differs fundamentally from the various systems of philosophy with which he endeavours to compare it. The Christ he knows is not the Christ of the Bible.” The book referred to says: “God . . . is the personality of the universe, a something—intangible, spiritual—which uses an ever-progressing universe as the only vehicle by which It expresses Itself to us.” The author of the book, though professedly a Christian missionary, was at the same time a Fellow of the Theosophic Society and a Member of the Society of Buddhistic Teaching. He resigned these latter offices, however, at the request of his Missionary Society.
The C.M.S. Missionary Conference, held in Lower Bengal in 1906, reported that even then Higher Critical views had “begun to trouble the minds of Indian Christians. Among non-Christians also the advance of the Kingdom of Christ is likely to receive a serious shock if a suggestion comes with any authority from a Christian source that our Sacred Records are not true.”
In China a Missionary Magazine prints a picture of two hideous apes as our first ancestors.
A famous Baptist missionary, who has worked for some forty years in China, published a book in 1910 in which he endeavours to prove that “Mahayana faith is . . . an Asiatic form of the same gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” that there is a “vital connexion between Christianity and Buddhism,” and expresses the hope that his book may “pave the way for the one great world-wide religion of the future.” He identifies Buddha with God, and the Chinese goddess Kwanyin with the Holy Spirit.
Such conduct on the part of a Christian missionary is almost incredible, yet many, very many, more instances might be given to show how distinctly the Destructive Criticism of the Bible is proving itself by its fruits in the Mission field to be one of the greatest enemies of the Cross of Christ.
III.—In another way also the Destructive Criticism affects Missions injuriously by the effect it produces upon those at home who support Mission work abroad. This is well stated by the late George Ensor, the first C.M.S. missionary to Japan. “Christian people,” he wrote, “will never . . . put themselves long about to preach and teach out of a discredited Bible. If the Bible be untrustworthy, we will not exert ourselves to send it to the Confucianist or to the Mohammedan. Both will logically affirm that, if our Bible be untrue, they don’t care to exchange theirs for ours. If our teaching be subject to a Bible test for its truth, and the test itself have proved unreliable, we find ourselves before the Confucianist and the Mohammedan in the most illogical, the most hopeless, and the most helpless plight.”
The Christian Commonwealth quotes the vicar of a South London Church as saying: “Broad Churchmen are not very
enthusiastic about foreign missions. . . . We are less anxious that Mohammedans should become Christians than that they should live up to the best in their own faith.” The speaker evidently knew next to nothing of Islam, or he would not have spoken of “living up” to its teachings. But his words show very fairly the way in which “liberal” theology prevents people who hold such views from taking any share in obeying our Risen Lord’s parting command.
The acceptance of the Destructive Criticism hinders many men, who once entertained the hope of becoming missionaries, from undertaking that work. They find they have no message, and therefore they cannot run. They can tell the heathen of no Saviour; they have no Atonement to preach; they have lost their Bible, their Christ. Hence, too, they have no motive-power sufficient to enable them to leave home and country, to sacrifice all their prospects, to risk health and life, in order to obey One Whom they believe to have been a fallible Teacher. For the Higher Criticism distinctly teaches that our Lord’s statements about the Old Testament were incorrect. Thus Prof. Meinhold says: “That Jesus erred is undoubtedly the case;” and again, “If Christ is right in His utterances, then the criticism of the Old Testament may vanish.” Hence Professor Kuenen long since wrote: “Either we must set aside as valueless our dearly purchased scientific method, or we must for ever cease to recognise any New Testament authority within the province of Old Testament exegesis.”
So generally admitted is our Lord’s errancy (among writers of the Destructive School of Criticism) that they have started two theories to account for it without entirely giving up belief in His Deity. One is the “Kenosis” and the other the “Accommodation” theory. It cannot be said that either of these is really satisfactory to honest men. In fact, their failure is generally admitted, even among ourselves. Not even the most sanguine missionary could ever hope to convince the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Confucianist, or the Moslem, of the possibility of being satisfied with either theory, and of falling at the feet of a fallible Jesus with the words, “My Lord and my God.” Thus the Higher Critic again finds himself absolutely destitute of both an object in becoming a missionary and a hope of success as such. Nor, in fact, has he anything worth teaching the heathen and the Mohammedan, except perhaps ethics. But men are not likely to take as an authoritative text-book even on ethics a Bible which is largely made up of forged documents, if the Higher Critics are right. No logical mind can long continue to believe that such a book can possess Divine authority. What Bishop Copleston, the late Metropolitan of India, said of one book of the Bible may be said of the greater part of the Old Testament: “It is hardly possible to imagine any accumulation of probabilities of the lower kind which would not be brushed away in a moment by the
improbability that Almighty God should have used a conscious literary forgery for the purpose for which He has used the Book of Deuteronomy.”
The fact is that the residuum left us by the Destructive Criticism is not Christianity, not the martyr’s faith, not the faith once for all delivered unto the saints. Hence its impotence to do any good in the Mission field. That the proclamation of such a mutilated “Gospel,” falsely so called, produces no good but does grievous harm has already been shown.
IV.—We are, then, regretfully compelled by the stern logic of facts to admit that the Destructive Criticism has invaded the Mission field, and has even affected not a few missionaries and native agents. The question remains, What is to be done?
One thing is clear. We cannot expect true Christians—the only people who have ever supported Christian missionary work—to deny themselves in order to give money to propagate ideas which are contrary to the teaching of the Bible, are dishonouring to the Lord Jesus Christ, and are ineffective for men’s salvation. As Mr. Ensor wrote: “Men will not permanently—and their children not at all—support Missions infected with the Higher Critical virus.” The very suspicion of such a thing is sufficient to alienate sympathy and to stop contributions. Our Missionary Societies must, therefore, if they wish to continue to exist, take a decided stand in this matter, and let it be clearly known that they will not sanction any departure from “The Way.”
But how are they to secure a body of missionaries who will be sound in the faith in the future, as doubtless many, probably the great majority, are still? Men cannot refuse to read books on the Destructive side: least of all can Missionaries do so, since they have to be ready to give an answer to all, Christians or non-Christians, troubled believers or triumphant opponents, who ask a reason for the faith that is in them. How are those now preparing to go to the foreign field to keep themselves from imbibing at least something of the methods and dogmas of the Higher Criticism? Our Universities teem with it: even the Theological Colleges of the Church of England (not entirely, excepting, alas! those styled Evangelical) teach it in a somewhat modified, and therefore extremely illogical, form. Our magazines and newspapers accept it as proved correct. So much the case is this that even in the Churchman it is almost impossible to get an article inserted which decidedly opposes the Higher Criticism. That this should be so at a time when the revolt against the Higher Critical methods and conclusions has been begun on the Continent by such men as Troelstra, Dahse, Van Hoonacker, Möller, Kegel, Eerdmans, and in Great Britain and America by Orr, Sayce, Whitelaw, Wiener, Kyle, Leitch, Green, Margoliouth, Reich, is very remarkable. It shows how far behind the times not only the general public, but even the teachers in our Theological Colleges and the Editors of our magazines are apt to fall in England. None the less our younger clergy and our
Theological students, the very classes from which missionaries should be drawn, find it very difficult to know where to obtain instruction which will enable them not only to learn what the Higher Critics teach, but also to perceive on what a slender substructure their grandiose constructions rest. It is most undesirable, were it possible, to keep our students from a thorough acquaintance with the Destructive Criticism; but the more on that account is it absolutely necessary to enable them to refute it, and to see that our Divine Lord was absolutely right in what He said regarding the Old Testament. To teach our Theological students other subjects of far less importance, while leaving them ignorant of what is most vitally essential, to themselves and those among whom they are to work, is most unwise in any case. In the case of missionaries it is a fatal policy. We cannot forbid men to accept the dogmas of the Destructive School: the only thing to do is to teach them how to answer them. At present one of the very many weak points in our preparation of men for the foreign field is that neither with reference to the errors of the Higher Critical methods and conclusions, nor with regard to the attacks which are based upon a misunderstanding of the lessons of Comparative Religion, are men properly trained. They must be properly trained if they are to do their work, remain faithful, convince opponents, preach the Everlasting Gospel, and continue to deserve the support and confidence of the Christian public at home.
As for the final issue of the conflict there can be, of course, no doubt. Truth is bound to win, and Christ is the Truth, as well as the Way and the Life. As Lord Beaconsfield said: “There is no reason to believe that the Teutonic rebellion of this century against the Divine truths entrusted to the Semites will ultimately meet with more success than the Celtic insurrection of the preceding age. Both have been sustained by the highest intellectual gifts that human nature has ever displayed; but when the tumult subsides the Divine truths are found to be not less prevalent than before, and simply because they are Divine. Man brings to the study of the oracles more learning and more criticism than of yore; and it is well that it should be so. The documents will yet bear a greater amount both of erudition and examination than they have received, but the Word of God is eternal, and will survive the spheres.”
At the ever-memorable Diet of Spires, in 1526, the Evangelical Princes, who there so boldly declared their faith in the Gospel of Christ, took as their motto those grand words of the Evangelical Prophet: “The Word of our God shall stand for ever”; and every one of their followers bore embroidered on his right sleeve the initials of these words in Latin, Verbum Dei Manet et Aeternum. Let this be our motto too, both at home and in the Mission field. Then the work we do in our Master’s might will last and bear good fruit, when the “little systems” of His opponents and ours have long ceased to be.