By the Rev. Prof. JOSEPH ADDISON ALEXANDER, D.D.
IN a sermon on the text, Matthew xi. 12:—”From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent taken it by force,” the saintly, intellectually brilliant, scholarly, and cultured Rev. Prof. Joseph Addison Alexander, D.D., the world-renowned Princeton divine, ends by dealing with two extreme attitudes regarding the extension of the Church of Christ and the conversion of the world; which sermon is as applicable to-day as when first delivered:—
“God has appointed certain means to be assiduously used for the extension of the Church and the conversion of the world. The obligation to employ these means is imperative, and cannot be dispensed with. The very fact of their Divine authority entitles us to look for the most salutary effects from their constant and faithful application. We cannot err, therefore, by excess in the employment of these means. But may we not err by limiting the Holy One Himself to means—even those which He has sanctioned and blessed? May we not err by supposing that because it is our duty to make constant, prayerful, and believing use of these means, and to watch for their effect, there is nothing more to be expected—even from the free and sovereign operation of Divine grace? In other words, by looking too much, or, at least, too exclusively, at the ordinary results of ordinary means, may we not cease to hope for those extraordinary gifts with which the Lord is sometimes pleased, as it were, to reward the faithful use of the stated and appointed means of grace?
“There is, no doubt, an opposite error, into which we are no less prone to fall, and from which the Church has suffered incalculable loss and damage. This is the error of expecting all from God’s extraordinary gifts, to the exclusion of those stated means which He has ordained, and on which He has not only promised, but bestowed a blessing. This error, pushed to an extreme, becomes fanaticism, and is the fruitful source of doctrinal corruptions, practical abuses, spiritual pride, and all the other evils springing from a violent excitement followed by reaction towards the opposite extreme of lethargy and deadness. The error which produces all these evils does not merely lie in the denial or oblivion of the fact that God’s extraordinary blessings must, from their very nature, be occasional, but also in denying or forgetting that extraordinary gifts are, according to a law of God’s most gracious dispensations, not bestowed at random, but conferred as blessings in the faithful use of ordinary means.
“To expect an extraordinary harvest, without using the means necessary to secure an ordinary one, would be scarcely more absurd than to concentrate all our hopes and wishes on extraordinary spiritual visitations, while we wilfully or negligently slight the stated and invariable means of doing and obtaining good, on which God sometimes sets the seal of His approval by remarkable outpourings of His Spirit. As the manna in the wilderness did not take the place of ordinary food, but supplied its deficiencies, and furnished special proofs of the Divine presence and favour to His people, so the greatest spiritual gifts to the Church now, are not intended to supplant the use of ordinary means, but rather to encourage it by signs of the Divine approbation; and the hope of such extraOl’dinary gifts is never better founded than at those times when, instead of intermitting duties, we perform them with redoubled zeal.
” But no extreme of judgment or of practice is to be corrected by another. While we shun the error of relying on extraordinary gifts as a substitute for ordinary duties, or an apology for slighting them, let us not lose sight of such extraordinary gifts altogether, or regard them as impossible and hopeless, or as inconsistent with the faithful use of ordinary means. By so doing we gratuitously throwaway one ‘of the most powerful incitements to duty, and most efficacious stimulants to hope and zeal. Nothing is better suited to invigorate habitual exertion than a firm belief that God bestows His most invaluable and special gifts on such as diligently seek for those of a more ordinary nature. To relinquish this belief and hope, is to cut the sinews of -our spiritnal strength even in relation to our ordinary duties. At the same time this extreme of error and misconduct tends more directly to diminish the amount of good which we might otherwise accomplish. While it still remains indisputably true, that the extension of the Church and the conversion of the world are suspended, under God, upon the constant use of ordinary means, for the neglect of which nothing can compensate or atone, it is equally certain that the aggregate result of these means would be comparatively small, without occasional accessions of Divine and human strength, making good, as it were by a single movement, the arrears of many years, and giving a new impulse to those means which, though they cannot be dispensed with, are too apt, in human llands, to grow inert and inefficient, unless frequently Tenewed and set in motion by a special Divine influence. In other wOTds, and in accordance with the figurative langu3lge of the text, although the kingdom of heaven, e,’en now, as when it was first visibly erected upon earth, must grow by constant gradual accession, and although, if this mode of increase should fail, its place could be supplied by nothing else, yet even this increase is stimulated, and the aggregate result indefinitely multiplied, by those occasional seasons of awakening and commotion, when ‘the kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.’
, ‘I rejoice to know that I address some, I trust many, to whom the extension of this kingdom is a subject of intense desire and fervent prayer. But do the hopes of such beaT due propoTtion to their conscientious labours and their zeal for God Are we not, Christian brethren, too pTone to despondency, as well as to presumption and security-extremes which are continually j’ound in close proximity, not only among members of the same community, but in the vacillating, varying experience of one and the same person And may not one of these extremes, at least, arise from the mistake which we have been considering,-the mistaken notion, that because Christ’s kingdom must be built up by a slow and sure increase, there is no such thing to be expected as a general and powerful commotion of men’s minds, producing the same result upon a lar,g-er scale and in a shorter time; that because that YlISt reservoir of God’s grace and man’8 happiness is fed by rivulets and drops in ordinary times, there is no such thing to be expected as the sight of an irresistible current impetuously setting in the same direction; that because we are accustomed to see men gained over, one by one, from the service of Satan and the world to that of God, there is no such thing to be expected in our days as that of the kingdom of Heaven suffering violence, and the violent taking it by force? Oh, let us see to it, that even our attachment to the stated ordinary means of grace, and our well-founded fears of spurious and fanatical excitements, do not unfit us for the reception of extraordinary mercies, and betray us, for a time at least, into unreasonable trust in accustomed forms and methods, and a groundless dread of irregularity and insubordination, simply because in this day, as in that day, ‘the kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.’
“Is there not still a class to whom I may, without offence, address myself in terms of solemn warning and entreaty, in application of the subject which has been before us? I mean such as have long enjoyed the stated dispensations of God’s Word, but as yet seem not to have experienced its power. To such I venture to address myself directly, and to put the question, are you not, perhaps unconsciously, relying on this passive enjoyment of religious privileges as a means of safety, independent of all serious reflection or exertion on your own part? Such a state of mind may be produced by a misapprehension or abuse of the doctrines which you have ever been faithfully taught, of God’s sovereignty and man’s dependence. But this only makes your error more alarming, and your danger more imminent. God is, indeed, the only Saviour, the Alpha and Omega of our hopes, the Author and the Finisher of our salvation; but He does not save men in their sleep, or carry them to heaven stupified in death—like lethargy. If He means to save you, be assured He will awaken you.”
“However various the degrees and forms of that alarm which enters into all evangelical repentance, or prepares the way for it, you must experience some disturbance of your long and deep sleep of security. If the absence of any such emotion is the fault of God Himself, derive what consolation you find possible from this blasphemous apology, but do not forget that after all, whatever be the cause, or wherever the blame lies, your deep sleep must be broken, or you will never be saved. With all allowance for the freedom and variety of God’s dispensations towards the souls of men, and for the difference produced by constitution, education, and the previous mode of life, it is still true that you cannot doze or dream yourself into salvation; that in some sense, and to some extent, a vehement exertion is required and produced in every soul to which God has purposes of mercy; and that this is not peculiar to one age or country, but characteristic of God’s saving methods in all times and places. So that in a certain sense, it may still be truly and emphatically said that ‘from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.'”
Erratum.—In last month’s Magazine, p. 10, line 18 from foot of page, John v. 23 is misquoted. It should be as most of our readers will have noticed:—”he that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father.”