IN connection with the subject of the authority of the Church an interesting and important question meets us. Does the right of liberty of conscience undermine and invalidate the lawful authority of the Church? Or are there limits to the right of liberty of conscience? These questions were raised in an acute form during the Civil Wars when the Sectaries carried the claims of the rights of liberty of conscience to indefensible lengths. The Brownists carried “pretended liberty of conscience” against all church authority while the Fifth Monarchy men did the same in reference to the state. Then there were the thorough-going Anti-nomians who pressed the claims of liberty of conscience against the authority of God’s law and the Libertines who held that men were at liberty to hold any opinions they pleased provided these were held conscientiously. It will be seen that the extraordinary confusion caused by these various parties all in the interests of liberty of conscience required some clearing up. Men of sound judgment saw clearly that such confused thinking required correctives. Hence we find in Edwards’ Gangraena; Baillie’s Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time; Rutherford’s Pretended Liberty of Conscience, etc., an exposure of these errors and an indication of the limits of liberty of conscience when confronted with lawful authority in Church or State. The Westminster Divines in their usual well-balanced way state clearly the claims of liberty of conscience and its limitations. “God alone is Lord of the conscience,” they assert, “and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to His Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship” (Confession of Faith, chap. xx. sec. 2). This has rightly been regarded as one of the finest statements on the rights of liberty of conscience that has ever been penned. But the Divines further add: “And because the powers which God hath ordained, and the liberty which Christ hath purchased, are not intended by God to destroy, but mutually to uphold and preserve one another; they who, upon pretence of Christian liberty, shall oppose any lawful power, or the lawful exercise of it, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical, resist the ordinance of God” (Confession of Faith, chap. xx. sec. 4). These sections conserve the rights of liberty of conscience and the authority of the State and the Church. On the one hand, they teach that the authority of the State or Church is not absolute for it is limited by the rights of conscience. On the other hand, the rights of conscience are not absolute for they are limited by the lawful authority of Church and State. The teaching of the Confession asserts that conscience and lawful authority, civil or ecclesiastical, are not antagonistic and inconsistent: for both are ordinances of God; they limit one another but are not antagonistic.
We live in an age when the liberty of the individual is emphasised with almost as much outcry as it was in the French revolutionary period though fortunately not accompanied with such insensate madness. Men who are obsessed with a sense of the infallibility of their logic and who keep their eye fixed unmoved on the liberty of the subject are liable to be troubleers of peace in Church and State. It never seems to dawn on them that there are other rights than those of liberty. So they set about building a structure in which they entrench themselves with a complacency that for the time being makes them believe that they shall never be moved. Their attention is so intently fixed on liberty that they ignore, if ever they acknowledged it, the claims of authority. It is one of the delusions of the age and we need not be surprised if it should seek to enter the ecclesiastical as well as the civil sphere and work havoc in both spheres.
It is not our intention to deal here with the questions of Toleration and Confessional doctrine of the power and duty of the civil magistrate in regard to religion into the discussion of which the doctrine of the rights of conscience enter. We have seen that according to the teaching of the Confession the rights of the liberty of conscience have certain limitations civil and ecclesiastical. For the present it is with the latter we are mainly concerned. What are these limitations? This is a question that is easier put than answered; but without attempting to lay down precisely, even if that were possible, the extent and limits of liberty of conscience there are certain general principles which may be noted. 1. The rights of liberty of conscience are limited by the divine law. Divine authority cuts right across the rights of the individual and the claims of liberty of conscience. In the nature of things God’s law must be supreme and no claim made in the interests of the conscience can invalidate that authority in the slightest degree. There can be no liberty, it has been well said, under whatsoever pretext or plea, to think, act or believe in opposition to that law. The specious plea, often uttered by unthinking men, that we are free to think whatever we please is immoral and strikes in the very face of divine authority. We are not at liberty to think what is wrong. To maintain the opposite is barefacedly to put in a plea for licentiousness. We have no right, at the bidding of a mistaken conscience to do that which is against the divine law. God’s law and the conscience of man are not co-ordinate authorities. They are not to be regarded as each supreme in its own sphere. The conscience is subordinate to the divine law and any claims made by it must come within the ambit of God’s law and not go against or beyond it. There is a limit beyond which liberty of conscience cannot go and that limit is the authority of God’s law. It is anarchy of the worst kind to deny this limitation and act as if it did not exist. 2. Liberty of conscience is further limited by the lawful authority of the Church. The Church is an ordinance of God. As such it is invested with a certain measure of authority as we have seen. The Church has authority to declare the truth of God and in doing so, to determine upon the faith and profession of its members for its own purposes. Its decisions in connection with controversies of doctrine and its declarations of the truths of the gospel are to be received and submitted to by its members where these decisions and declarations are in accordance with the Word of God. The Church also has authority in regard to the exercise of discipline,* to proceed by admonition, censure, reproof and, if necessary, excommunication. “Such discipline too,” says Dr. Bannerman, “is to be reverenced and submitted to because of the authority of the Church, as divinely appointed to exercise it. Here too, then, we have the lawful exercise of a lawful authority that must oftentimes come into contact with the liberty of conscience in the case of individuals. And conscience may be pleaded, and pleaded honestly, on behalf of opinions and practice in the case of her members, which yet may be right and indispensable for the Church to condemn or restrain by means of the spiritual authority committed to her. Shall we say that the spiritual sword is to be stayed, and the authority of the Church disarmed, in consequence of the authority of conscience on the part of the offender? Shall we say that the exercise of that authority is unlawful, and its censures null and void, because of the liberty of conscience that is pleaded in opposition to them? To do so would be to deny the right of Church authority altogether; it would be to set aside, in any case in which conscience might be alleged, all ecclesiastical judgment or restraint as regards the offender, and to make religion entirely a matter of personal and individual concern, in regard to which the Church had no right to interfere and no commission to act. Such an interpretation of the liberty of conscience on the part of her members must destroy Church authority altogether, and must leave the kingdom of Christ without government or order, utterly helpless to redress wrong or restrain offences, and without power to guard its own communion from open profanation and dishonour. The plea of absolute and unlimited liberty of conscience is inconsistent with the authority and existence of a Church” (The Church of Christ, I. 169-70).
*We have not dealt with the Church’s authority in the exercise of discipline but we purpose to quote Calvin’s treatment of the subject in his Institutes in future issues of the Magazine.—Editor.
Synod Sermon.
By REV. JAMES MACLEOD, GREENOCK.
Preached at Inverness, 17th November, 1936.
“Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen; that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am He: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me” (Is. xliii. 10).
IN the preceding part of this chapter the Lord is comforting His poor people. It is true concerning God’s people in every age of time, that they are poor and needy, and that they need encouragement, help, and strength from the Lord, and blessed be His name, He was never a wilderness to them and never will be. He says: “But now, thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and He that formed thee, O Israel, fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine.” Oh! what a merciful thing it is when the Lord says to an immortal soul, “fear not.” Although every man and woman in the world would say to a poor sinner, “fear not,” that could not take away his fears and doubts, unless the Lord Himself would say “fear not.” It is neither against men nor angels that we sinned, but against God and, my dear friends, when the Lord says to us, “fear not,” that means that He is in infinite mercy and love reconciled to us through the infinitely precious satisfaction rendered to law and justice by the atoning sacrifice of His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus. He continues to comfort His Church: “when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour; I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.” If the Holy Spirit should apply these precious promises to our souls, that would strengthen us and raise our thoughts and affections to those things that are above.
We can rest assured, as far as this world is concerned and this desert life in it, there is nothing here for the Lord’s people from the beginning to the end but trials and difficulties, temptations, and other innumerable evils they have to contend with on this side of the grave; but blessed be His name, there is an end coming to their troubles. They must have their trials on this side, for there are no trials or difficulties in the way on the other side for the Lord’s people. Their trials are all over for ever the moment that they leave this life and put off this tabernacle of clay to be forever with the Lord.
As the Most High may be pleased to enable me I intend to draw your attention to the 10th verse in this chapter. I desire to bring before your notice three or four things upon which we may meditate for the brief time at my disposal: I. “Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen.” II. They were to know, and believe Him and understand who He was. III. They were to serve and worship Him alone. IV. Can we claim in accordance with the Word of God to be witnesses for God according to His Word and our Confession of Faith? I will very briefly endeavour to bring these four things before you.
I. “Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen.”
The Lord’s people have been called effectually by the power of the Holy Ghost out of the kingdom of sin and darkness into the marvellous light of the everlasting gospel of God’s grace, as witnesses to the great fact of redemption. It is impossible for anyone according to the Word of God to be brought from darkness to light, from the power of sin and Satan unto God, without having some realisation of being translated out of darkness into light. When the Holy Spirit takes possession of fallen man, He finds him in absolute darkness as far as his state and nature is concerned—an alien to God, under His wrath and curse, and as it is stated so scripturally in the Shorter Catechism—”made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself and to the pains of hell forever.” Again, we have that brought before us very clearly in Romans—”the wages of sin is death.” It needs, my friends, the power of the Holy Ghost, to apply to the understanding and conscience the doctrine of God’s Word. You cannot enforce this doctrine upon fallen and ruined human nature by all the arguments and logic in the world, unless the Spirit of the living God enters into the spirit of man, convincing him that he is ruined, in his state and nature through the fall of Adam. Those with whom the Lord in His infinite love and mercy deals graciously are witnesses that, if the Lord in His mercy and love had not begun this work in them, they could never bring this great change about in their hearts and minds. In that sense they are witnesses to the great work of redemption. The Holy Spirit bears witness with their spirit that God wrought in them, changing their relationship to Him by removing the guilt of sin from their souls through the blood of Christ.
The Word of God is a witness in their understanding and conscience, so that it is needless meantime to appeal to their experience otherwise than that God is the sole Author of their redemption and salvation. “Ye are my witnesses.” They are witnesses to God as to the fall of man. The Lord’s people know that they have a depraved nature and a deceitful heart, and that they are utterly helpless to save themselves without the grace of God. In our own generation, there is an extraordinary spirit abroad in Protestant Churches not merely to minimise sin but to repudiate entirely the doctrine of the fall. How dare men profess the Christian religion and, by professing it, say that they are the disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ and dispute, ignore, and discard the doctrine of the fall. If the fall of Adam was a mere legend, redemption and salvation through our Saviour Jesus Christ would be absolutely meaningless. Can men and women who hold such opinions be witnesses for God? Not at all; for when the doctrine of the fall is denied in heart and life, that reveals clearly that such men and women are not witnesses for God, whatever be their profession among their fellowmen in the world. Their profession stands for nothing so far as the Word of God and His revelation to man is to be believed and practised in this world.
The child of God, whether in the pulpit or pew, from the rising of the sun to his going down, is a witness to the fact that he is a sinner, a great sinner, and that all his sins are against God, and that he deserves to be punished in time, and for all eternity in Hell—there to weep and wail forever. Faith believes the Word of God. If you are taught of God you are a witness to that. From the days of Abel the people of God are agreed in their universal language in confessing sin—”against thee only have I sinned.” They are witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus Christ because the Holy Spirit quickened them in a day of mercy. They are all taught of God, by His blessed Spirit through the Word. They live a resurrected life in this present evil world. Paul said: “He loved me and gave Himself for me,” and that is equally true of all the Lord’s people. He died for the ungodly, so that by faith in Him, they might live. He suffered the pain and agony of death for His people. It was a shameful death! My friends, if Christ had not died for the ungodly and if He had not satisfied the eternal claims of justice against us, we would be eternally debarred from the presence of God. It was Christ that obeyed the law of God, and made it honourable in obeying it in our nature. It was Christ who glorified and satisfied God as Judge. It was He who banished forever the power and dominion of sin, in all its curses and guilt, so that the elect of God were forever free from the curse of sin brought upon them through the fall of Adam. He bought them with a price—Yes, the price of His precious blood. Oh! that we might see a little of that infinite love that was manifested on the accursed cross of Calvary! A glimpse and a taste of that love would cause us to look upon everything under heaven as dross and dung. If poor sinners would, by faith, see a little of that love revealed by Jesus Christ on the accursed cross of Calvary, it would absorb all their attention and affections as long as they were left in this world. Try and meditate on His love, and may the Holy Spirit open up to your soul its wonders as revealed in the blessed Saviour—His love to God, and to His church—burning as it were in the bosom of His human nature through His divine Spirit, looking forward into infinity, as well as encompassing the heirs of life to the end of time. They will all taste of His love in the day God is reconciled to them by saving faith in Christ. Saving faith is the gift of God and out of the fountain of divine love and mercy all believers drink by faith. Christless sinner, if you will not drink out of this fountain of love and mercy by faith in Jesus Christ you shall not exhaust for all eternity the wrath of God. The wrath which is to come will never cease coming forever upon the lost in hell.
You who have heard the Lord say to you in a day of mercy and power: “I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy sins,” or words to that effect, are under everlasting debt to the grace of God in Christ Jesus. As you are under debt to the grace of God it is your inestimable privilege to be true and faithful witnesses to that grace as long as God shall leave you on this side of glory. “Ye are my witnesses.” You must be willing witnesses on the side of truth against error. The Lord’s people are witnesses to the fact that the Law of God is good, pure and holy; that justice must and shall punish all transgressors of God’s law. The weakest believer united to Jesus Christ by faith shall never be separated from Him, world without end. Yet as long as they are in this world they are not without sin. Do not look for perfection in a child of God. It is in heaven they will be perfect, and perfect not only in holiness, but in happiness. Their eternal happiness will be to glorify God perfectly. Sin and its dreaded corruption is the cause of their grief and pain here.
II. “And my servant whom I have chosen.”
Some able interpreters take the “servant” here to mean the prophet Isaiah himself. I am not to detain you by entering upon a lengthy discussion on that opinion. All the Lord’s people are elected in Christ, but Christ Himself was elected and chosen for the great work of redemption. If the blessed Saviour had not been chosen for the work of redemption, neither Isaiah nor Moses, Peter nor Paul would have been heard of any more than the thousands of millions that have died in China since the past four thousand years, Christless and graceless and eternally hopeless. It was the Spirit of Christ that was in Abel, Noah, Abraham and Moses and in all the Prophets of the Lord—see chapter xlii, verse 1. Christ is the principal and chief witness—the first-born among many brethren. My friends, are we not assured of this in our own understanding and conscience, that, were it not for Christ (God with us) we could know neither Father, Son nor Holy Spirit as the God of Salvation? He was the chosen servant, as prophet, priest and king sent by God to His elected Church to teach and instruct His people by His word and ever blessed Spirit. The woman of Samaria knew in her poor miserable guilty soul who Christ was; so did Saul of Tarsus and all God’s people. They knew Him as the One chosen to make known to them the purpose and will of God. Christ was the chosen servant—Isaiah and Paul were chosen vessels to carry the good news to the Church, and so are all Christ’s chosen servants—vessels to carry the gospel to the poor and needy in Sion. It is through the gospel Christ is reconciling sinners to Himself. It is not through what amount of knowledge you may have of sin, guilt and corruption that you can be saved. The devil knows more of sin than millions of men, but that will not change him. What changes us is our knowledge by faith of Christ Jesus. If God has not revealed that to you, may we be protected against your profession of Christianity. Christ, the servant of Jehovah saith concerning Himself: “Before Abraham was, I am.” The Church sang in the days of Moses “from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.” No other could suffice. We are living in a dreadful age. What is written and preached to-day in our own land should make us weep. Do you say: “I do not read or listen to what is written and preached against the blessed Son of God. I try to keep my mind clear of all these things?” You are not like the Psalmist when reproach broke his heart, nor like the Prophet Habakkuk who says: “when I heard, my belly trembled, my lips quivered at the voice, rottenness entered into my bones,” etc. If Isaiah had not watched, listened, or heard what was going on, how could he answer and say: “He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night?”, and the watchman had to declare what he saw, and we ought to declare what we see and hear. There is a constant war being waged in this country against Christ’s mediatorial offices, suffering, death and resurrection. We must witness against such roaring lions and warn the people. There are still a few in Scotland, in England and in some other parts who warn the people—they are but few in comparison with those who, without a blush, blaspheme the name of the adorable Saviour, Jesus Christ our Lord. The malice of the world against Christ, His truth, cause and people is as active to-day as ever it was, and rest assured that you shall be persecuted if you witness against its hypocritical religion, and its vile hatred to the truth of God. I have been exercised in my mind for some time that when the next war shall come, we may suffer terrifying persecutions, as sure as the Protestants of Germany are suffering now. We love our communion seasons, but, my friends, we do not know how long their peace and calm may last. There is a black cloud hanging over Europe and who shall escape when the storm bursts in all its dreadful fury! You are waiting for something dreadful to happen, and I think from the highest to the lowest, even to the extreme corners of our Highlands and Islands, that feeling is general among our people. As the Prime Minister said last week—”the last war was happiness in comparison to what is coming.” We shall be punished for our sins, and let me mention three ways in which this will be done. (1). The punishment of the wicked in this life, such as came upon Pharaoh and his people, on the old world and upon Sodom and Gomorrah. (2). He chastises His own people when they go astray from His ways, as we read in Psalm lxxix.—”If they break my statutes and keep not my commandments, then I will visit their transgression with the rod and their iniquities with stripes.” It is not to their credit nor honour when God chastises them for conniving at sin. (3). There is a third form of chastisement. When the people of God feel and know that the judgments of God are abroad in the land, they humble themselves under the mighty hand of God. That chastisement is to the glory of God, and to the honour of the believer. May the Lord grant us the grace of holy humility to bow ourselves in the dust before Him. Men tremble at the thought of another war. No wonder. Let us ignore what our statesmen think. We have a city of refuge in Jesus Christ.
III. In the third place, they were to know the Lord.
If they did not know Him, how could they bear witness on His side. They would be as blind men talking of colours. If you were to ask the vast majority of the professors of religion to-day “Have you faith?”, they would say, “Yes, I have.” “Do you know the Lord?” “No, but I have faith for all that.” “Do you know yourself as a sinner?” “No, but God is love and I have faith and hope.” “Do you love your Bible?” “No, my professors say the Bible is full of error.” “How did you believe?” “Through logical deductions.” “You do not need the Bible at all?” “No, only bits of it. I prefer hymns. We must be saved by good works.” What a delusion! My friends, it is a common delusion in our day. In the experience of God’s child, knowledge of sin, of righteousness and of judgment precedes faith. Faith cometh by hearing the Word of God. They are made conscious of their sins, and lost state by the fall of Adam, and their own transgressions. You see clearly in the Word of God that knowledge of themselves precedes saving faith. Faith is the gift of God. It is wrought in their hearts by the Holy Spirit. It is not by a determinate act of their own corrupt dead wills that they believe in Jesus. They are made willing in a day of His power to believe in the crucified Saviour in the gospel. It is all of grace. The Spirit enlightens them in their poor blind understandings, to know the Lord. They are made to understand that there is no other God. They are witnesses to the fact that there is but one God. The omnipresence of Jehovah banished forever from their souls all other false gods. They are witnesses that Jesus Christ is God with us. They know that there are three persons in the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They know that there is no room for any other god here or hereafter. They can say with the Psalmist: “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” If you know and fear God, there is no place for you in earth, nor in heaven, nor in hell where you could sin and hide yourself from the all-seeing eye of this infinite God!
I remember reading in the writings of one of the Puritans, of a good man that was tempted to commit sin; and as the devil’s agent was pressing the child of God, he said: “Well, you must find a place for me where God and the devil cannot see me.” That implied that the child of God is made conscious of the omniscience of the eternal Spirit that fills all space and the future eternity that he is approaching. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and if you fear His holy name in truth, the longer you are left in this world, the deeper and more conscious you will be in your soul of the omniscience of this God, and Saviour Jesus Christ. It is a great comfort to the tried believer that the Most High knows all things as Simon Peter declared. They are not perfect in their knowledge. Far from it. The late Rev. D. Macfarlane said that he would not like to see any of the Lord’s people perfect on this side of heaven. Why should he not wish to see them perfect here? They would have to go away to heaven to be perfect. There would be no place for them in this world—not even in His own Church. You say about some of the Lord’s people—”he is near his end—he will soon be in glory.” It makes some of us sad missing those who are away. May the Lord grant that Free Presbyterians in the infinite mercy of God may realise that there is but one God, one Spirit, one Mediator between God and man. If our people realised that, what a change it would make in our families, in our congregations, in our Church, in our Highlands, yea, in the whole land! When a poor sinner knows the Lord as his personal Saviour, that man is saved. There is life in his soul. There is something supernatural in that soul and the nobility of Heaven. That is the highest standard of nobility on this side of eternity. Would to God, that all the young men and women in our Church would say with that noble young man, Joseph: “I fear God.” That is the highest testimony that any mortal can give on this side of the judgment-seat of Christ. We ought to be thankful to the Lord that there are a few in our midst who by their consistent walk in the world, prove that they “fear God,” in faith, love and holy obedience to His blessed Word.
III. They were to serve and worship God.
It is impossible to worship Him without saving faith which is the gift of God. We are not to make merchandise of our religion, bartering church privileges to ungodly men for worldly ends and aims. It was not in vain the Apostle said to Timothy—”not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre.” It is a matter of history how often the Cause of Christ has been betrayed by unfaithful men, making merchandise of it in order to gain the respect and applause of the enemies of the cross of Christ. Such men may serve the world and their own lusts, but they cannot serve God. It is not to gain a name in the world, that the Lord called His people out of the bondage of sin, but to serve, worship and obey Himself. Let the world have its pleasures and its lusts; the child of God will endeavour to serve, honour and glorify Him who called him out of darkness into His own blessed light. I hope the most of you admire the Covenants. They had to suffer cruel shame and often painful imprisonment and death. Christ and His cause must be nearer and dearer to us than our natural lives and worldly comforts. You may be afraid that you would not stand if called upon to suffer for the Cause of Christ. You feel so weak and helpless. I believe that if God were to permit you to be persecuted to the sacrificing of your natural life, He would fill your soul with the graces of His Spirit, so that you would die as willingly for Christ’s truth, cause, and people, as ever you took a draught of cold water to quench your thirst! “My grace is sufficient for you, my strength is made perfect in weakness.”
IV. Can we claim to be witnesses for God, His truth and the divine testimony and I may add to that, our Confession of Faith?
The Free Presbyterian Church can righteously claim before God and men, that it has not changed an iota from the position taken up by the men who wrote the Confession of Faith. They accept the Bible from Genesis to Revelation as the inspired Word of God. That is a great testament. We ought to be thankful to the Lord, as should our children after us, for the witness that the late revered Rev. D. Macfarlane raised in Scotland on the side of God’s truth. If the Lord had not such a faithful witness, where were we to-day? Mr. Macfarlane was a faithful witness. You can claim as far as your Church and its testimony are concerned, that you have not changed in the least degree from the Word of God, Confession of Faith, and the doctrines of the gospel. You are witnesses to that testimony, and may the Most High grant that we be kept faithful to His blessed Word as long as we are left in time. The discipline of the Protestant Churches of Britain has broken down. The shipwreck is obvious in Sessions, Presbyteries, Synods and General Assemblies. When discipline breaks down in the Free Presbyterian Church she will be on the down-grade with the rest of the Protestant organisations in Britain. It is not easy to exercise discipline under certain circumstances, but, however, painful the case may be, our duty must be performed in the light of God’s Word and our own consciences. “Ye are my witnesses.” We are, and have been, blamed for being too severe in exercising discipline in the courts of our church on those who transgress the laws of God. Can our accusers and traducers say and prove that we have changed the laws, practice, and discipline of the Church of the Reformation? They can not. It is obvious, owing to our environment, that we are in danger of erring on the side of leniency and not on the side of severity. We must be guided by the Word of God and not by the carnal sentiments of worldly-minded men. Through much tribulation we shall enter into His rest. The tribulations and persecutions we have encountered so far are not worth mentioning when you read the eleventh chapter of Hebrews; and also when you consider what God’s people suffered in Scotland, England and on the Continent in ages past. There is no crown without a cross.
In conclusion, my friends, let us keep near one another by prayer and supplication. We cannot as professed witnesses of God, His truth, and cause, live too near a throne of grace, nor too near one another. The moment we begin to depart from one another in our minds, coldness enters in and who can tell what may be its results? It is our privilege and duty to pray against back-sliding from each other in our minds, and let us guard against it with our whole hearts. If we nurse and cherish carnal and sinful thoughts towards each other, the devil shall see it and use it against the cause of Christ and our own souls.
“Let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.” May the Lord grant us grace to love one another in the bowels of Jesus Christ more and more to the glory of His sovereign grace. “Ye are my witnesses.”