By the REV. C. H. SPURGEON.
SOME animals make up for their natural weakness by their activity and audacity: they are typical of a certain order of men. Assumption goes a long way with many, and, when pretensions are vociferously made and incessantly intruded, they always secure a measure of belief. Men who affect to be of dignified rank and superior family, and who, therefore, hold their heads high above the canaille, manage to secure a measure of homage from those who cannot see beneath the surface. There has by degrees risen up in this country a coterie more than ordinarily pretentious, whose favourite cant is made up of such terms as these: “Liberal views”; “Men of high culture and scholarship”; “Persons of enlarged minds and cultivated intellects”; “Bonds of dogmatism and the slavery of creeds”; “Modern thought”; “Moving with the times”; “Broadminded”; “Tolerant”; “Charitable,” and so on. That these gentlemen are not so thoroughly educated as they fancy themselves to be is clear from their incessant boasts of their culture; that they are not free is shrewdly guessed from their loud brags of liberty; and that they are not liberal but intolerant to the last degree is evident from their superciliousness towards those poor simpletons who abide by the old Scriptural apostolic faith. Jews in old times called Gentiles dogs, and Mahomedans cursed unbelievers roundly, but we question whether any men, in any age, have manifested such contempt of others as is constantly evinced towards the evangelically orthodox by the modern school of “cultured intellects.” Let half a word of protest be uttered by a man who believes firmly in something, and holds by a defined doctrine, and the thunders of “cultured liberality” bellow forth against that obscurantist bigot. Steeped up to their very throats in that bigotry for liberality which, of all others, is the most ferocious form of intolerance, they sneer with the contempt of affected learning at the benighted morons who contend uncompromisingly for “a narrow Puritanism” and express a patronising hope that the obscurantist adherents of “a half-enlightened creed” may learn more of “that charity which thinketh no evil.” To contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints is to them an offence against the liberal advanced enlightenment of this nineteenth century; but to vamp old, worn-out, long since exploded heresies and pass them off for profound thinking, originality, and learned versatility is to secure a high position among minds “emancipated from the enslaving fetters of traditional beliefs.”
Manliness and moral courage are the attributes in which they consider themselves to excel, and they are constantly asserting that hundreds of ministers see with them but dare not enunciate their views, and so continue to preach one thing and believe another. It may be so here and there, and the more is the cause for sorrow, but we are not sure of the statement, for the accusers themselves may, after all, fancy that they see in others what is really in themselves. The glass in their own houses should forbid their throwing stones. If they were straightforward themselves, they might call others to account but, in too many cases, their own policy savours of the serpent in a very high degree. The charge could not be fairly brought against all, but it can be proven against many, that they have fought the battles of “liberality,” not with the broad sword of honest men, but with the cloak and dagger of assassins. They have occupied positions which could not be reconciled with their false beliefs, and have clung to them with all the tenacity with which limpets adhere to rocks. Their testimony has, in some cases, been rendered obviously worthless from the fact that with all their outcry against evangelical orthodoxy, they did their best to eat the bread of the orthodox opinions, had they been permitted to do so. Whether this is in agreement with common honesty we need not wait to consider: that it is not manly is certain.
Those gentlemen of advanced and enlightened culture have certainly adopted peculiar tactics. The misbelievers, unbelievers, atheists, agnostics, infidels, and sceptics of former ages withdrew themselves from Churches as soon as they found they could not honestly endorse their fundamental articles of religion, but these abide by the stuff, and great is their indignation at the continued existence of the creeds which render their position, to say the least, morally dubious. Churches, according to these erudite pundits and savants, have no right to believe anything, comprehensiveness is the one only virtue of a denomination; precise logical and Scriptural definitions are a sin, and fundamental doctrines are a myth: this is the notion of “our foremost men.” For earnest God-fearing people to band themselves together to propagate what they hold to be the very truth of God is, in their eyes, the miserable endeavour of antediluvian bigots to stem the irresistibly flowing torrent of “modern thought.” For zealous Christians to contribute of their substance for the erection of a place of worship, in which only the truths most surely believed among them shall be inculcated, is sheer treason against “liberality”; while the attempt to secure our pulpits against downright soul-ruining error is a mischievous piece of persecution to be resented by all “intellectual” men. The proper course, according to their “broad views,” would be to leave doctrines to the benighted dunces who care for them. Truths there are none, but only opinions; and, therefore, cultivated scholarly ministers should be left free to trample on our most cherished beliefs, to insult supernatural convictions, no matter how long experience may have matured them, and to teach anything, everything, or nothing, as their own superior culture, or the prevailing current of enlightened modern thought, may direct them. If certain old theological fogies and barnacles object to this, let them turn out of the buildings they have erected, or subside into silence under a due sense of their backward inferiority and intellectual stagnancy.
It appears to be, nowadays, a doubtful question whether Christian men have a right to be quite sure of anything. Dogmatic certainty and certitude ill become an impartial erudite scholar. The Jesuit argument that some learned doctor or other has taught a certain doctrine and that, therefore, it has some probability, is now practically prevalent. Any passage of Scripture that exposes the untenability of certain popular heresies or, on the other hand, asserts the right of an unpopular Scriptural doctrine to be part and parcel of the canon of the New Testament, must be pronounced, oracularly, and with a show of scholarship, an interpolation. He who teaches an extravagant error is a fine, generous spirit; and, therefore, to condemn his teaching is perilous, and will certainly produce an outcry against your bigotry. Where the substitutionary, vicarious atonement is virtually denied, it is said the preacher is a very clever man—an adjective also applicable to Satan—and exceedingly good and pious; and, therefore, even to whisper that he is unsound is libellous: we are assured that it would be far better to honour him for his courage in scorning to be hampered by conventional expressions, ordination vows notwithstanding. Besides, after all, it is only his way of putting it, and the radical idea is discoverable by cultured minds. As to other fundamental doctrines, they are regarded as too trivial to be worthy of controversy, the most of them being superseded by the advancement of science and other forms of progressive enlightenment and modern scholarship.
The right to doubt is claimed clamorously, but the right to believe is not conceded. The modern “gospel” runs like this: “He that believes nothing and doubts everything shall be saved.” Room must be provided for every form of scepticism; but for the old-fashioned faith once delivered to the saints, a manger in a stable is too commodious. Magnified greatly is the so-called “honest doubter,” but the man who holds tenaciously by ancient forms of the true faith is among “men of culture” voted by acclamation a fool. Hence it becomes a “sacred duty” of the “advanced thinker” to sneer at the man of the creed, a “duty” which is in most cases fully discharged; and, moreover, it is equally imperative upon him to enter the synagogue of bigots, as though he were one of their way of thinking, and in their very midst inveigh against “their superstition,” “their ignorant contentedness,” and “their worm-eaten dogmas,” and generally to disturb and overthrow their order of things. What if they have confessions of faith? They have no right to accept them and, therefore, let them be held up to ridicule. Men, nowadays, occupy pulpits with the tacit understanding that they will uphold certain doctrines, according to their ordination vows; and from those very pulpits they assail the faith they are sacredly pledged to defend. The plan is not to secede and separate, but to operate from within, to worry, to insinuate, to infect, and to undermine. Within the walls of Troy one Greek is worth Agememnon’s host; let, then, the wooden horse of “liberality” be introduced by force or art, as best may serve the occasion.
Talking evermore right boastfully of their candour and hatred of the hollowness of outworn creeds and subordinate standards, they will remain members of Churches long after they have renounced the basis of union upon which these Churches are constituted. Yes, and worse; the moment they are reminded of their inconsistency they whine about being persecuted and imagine themselves to be martyrs because they did not get their own evil undermining way absolutely. If a person holding radical sentiments insisted upon being a member of a Conservative Club politically he would meet with small sympathy if the members would not allow him to remain among them and use their organisation as a means for overthrowing their cherished principles. It is a flagrant violation of liberty of conscience when a man intrudes himself into a Church with which he does not agree wholeheartedly and demands to be allowed to remain there and undermine its principles. Conscience he evidently has none himself, though claiming a monopoly of tenderness of conscience, or he would not ignore his own principles by becoming an integral part of a body holding tenets which he despises; but he ought to have some honour in him as a man and act honestly, even to the bigots whom he so greatly pities, by warring with them in fair and open battle.
If a Calvinist should join a community like the Arminian Wesleyans, and should claim a right to teach Calvinism from their platforms, his expulsion would be a vindication, and not a violation, of liberty. If there is any religious freedom left, then one must be free, not only to proclaim what he himself believes, but to expose what he believes to be fallacious in the beliefs of others. We are told that the teaching of God’s ministers must be conformed to the spirit of the age. We shall have nothing to do with such treason to truth. If it be demanded that in such matters as the foregoing treacherous conduct we respect the man’s independence of thought, we reply that we respect it so much that we would not allow him to fetter it by a false profession, but we do not respect it to such a degree that we would permit him to ride rough-shod over all others and render the very existence of organised Christianity impossible. We would not limit the rights of the lowest ruffian, but if he claims to enter our bedroom the case is altered; by his summary expulsion we may injure his highly-cultured feelings and damage his broad views, but we claim in his ejection to be advocating, rather than abridging, the rights of man. Conscience, tender, sensitive conscience, indeed! What means it in the mouth of a man who attacks the creed of a Church and yet persists in continuing in it? He would blush to use the term conscience if he had any, for he is insulting the conscience of all the true members by his impertinent intrusion. Our pity is reserved for the honest people who, in the exercise of a Scriptural discipline, have the pain and trouble of ejecting the disturber of the Church’s peace; with the ejected one we have no sympathy; he had no business there with his mental reservations, and had he been a true man he would not have desired to remain, seeing he was “the only who was right,” nor would he even have submitted to do so had he been solicited.
This is most illiberal talk in the judgment of our liberal friends, and they will rail at it in their usual liberal manner; it is, however, plain commonsense, as all can see but those who are wilfully blind. While we are upon the point, it may be well to enquire into the character of the liberality which is nowadays so much vaunted. What is it that these men would have us handle so liberally? Is it something which is our own and left at our disposal? If so, let generosity be the rule. But, no, it is God’s eternal immutable truth that we are thus to deal with, the Gospel which He has put us in trust with, and for which we shall have to render account. The steward who defrauded his lord was liberal; so was the thief who shared the plunder with his accomplice; and so were those in the Proverbs who said: “Let us have all one purse.” There is, after all, a kind of code of honour even among thieves. If truth were ours absolutely; if we created it, and had no responsibilities in reference to it, we might consider comprehensive broad Church proposals, but the Gospel is the Lord’s own, and we are only stewards of the manifold grace of God, and of stewards it is not so much required that they be liberal, as that they be found faithful, even unto death. Moreover, this form of “charity” is both useless and dangerous. Useless, evidently, because all the agreements, and unions, and compromises beneath the moon can never make an error a truth, nor shift the boundary line of God’s Gospel a single inch. Like its Divine Author, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. If we basely merge one part of Scriptural teaching for the sake of charity and courtesy, it is not, therefore, really merged; it will bide its time and demand its due with terrible reprisals for our treachery and injustice towards it; for more than half the sorrows of the professing Church arise from smothered truth. False doctrine is not rendered innocuous by its being winked at, and the doctrine that ceases to be proclaimed from the pulpit soon ceases to be believed in the pew. It is, therefore, forever imperative that the whole counsel of God be uncompromisingly and unequivocally proclaimed. God hates false doctrine whatever glosses we may put upon it; no lie is of the truth and no charity or courtesy can make it so. Either a doctrine is right or wrong, it cannot be indifferent. Two contradictory statements may both be wrong, but they cannot both be right, as the logicians say. Conferences have been held of late between Baptists and Paedo-Baptists, in which there has been much oily talk of mutual concessions; one is to give up this and the other that. The fit description of such transactions is mutual, or rather united, treason to God. Will the eternal immutable Word of God shift as these conspirators give and take? Are we, after all, our own law-makers; and is there no rule of Christ and of His Word extant? Is every man to do as seemeth good in his own eyes? If we can find support in God’s Word for our cherished principles, woe to us if we play false to the will of the Great Head of the Church. The rule of Christians is not the flickering glimmer of opinion; but the eternally fixed law of the Statute-Book of Heaven. “For ever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled in Heaven” (Psalm exix. 89). It is rebellion, black as the sin of witchcraft, for a man to know the law and talk of conceding the point. In the name of the Eternal King, who is this liberal conceder, or, rather, this profane defrauder of the Lord that he should even imagine such a thing in his heart?
Nor is it less important to remember that trifling with truth and conscience is to the last degree dangerous. No error can be imbibed without injury, nor propagated without sin. The utmost charity and courtesy cannot convert another “gospel” into the Gospel of Jesus Christ, nor deprive it of its soul-deluding and destroying influence. There is no ground for imagining that an untruth, honestly believed, is in the least degree changed in its character by the sincerity of either the receiver or the propagator; nor may we dream that the highest culture, erudition, or scholarship render a departure from revealed truth less evil in the sight of God. If you give the sick man a deadly poison, however sweet it may taste, instead of a healing medicine, neither your “broad views” of chemistry nor his “enlightened judgment” upon anatomy, will prevent the drug from acting after its own nature. It may be said that the parallel does not hold, and that error is not morally and spiritually deadly, but here we yield not, no, not for an hour. Paul pronounced a curse upon man or angel who should preach another gospel, and he would not have done so if other gospels were harmless. It is not so long ago that men need forget it, that the blight of Unitarianism and other wickedly lax opinions withered the very soul of the Dissenting Churches, and that evil spirit has only to be again rampant to repeat its mischief. Instances, grievous to our inmost heart, rise up before our memory at this moment of men seduced from what they believed was their first love and drawn aside from their father’s Gospel, who only meant, at first, to gather one tempting flower upon the brink of the precipice of error, but fell, never to be restored. Such was their conceit and obstinate pride that they chose to perish rather than confess their fatal mistake. No fiction do we write, as we bear record of those we have known, who first forsook the good old paths of doctrine and the denominations that faithfully upheld them, and then the ways of evangelical usefulness and witness-bearing against the errors and evil practices of their day, and then even the enclosures of morality: In all cases the poison has not so openly developed itself, but we fear the inner ruin has been quite as complete. In the case of public teachers cases are not hard to find where little by little men have advanced beyond their “honest doubt” and “tender conscience” into utter blasphemy. One notorious instance will occur to all of a man who, having ignored the creed of his Church and, indeed, all lines of fixed belief, has become the very beacon of Christendom, from the astounding nature of the blasphemy which he pours forth. In him, as a caricature of “advanced thought,” it is probable that we have a more telling likeness of the real evil than we could by any other means have obtained. It may be that Providence has allowed him to proceed to the utmost lengths that the true Church might see whereunto the much-vaunted philosophical intellectual school would carry us.
We are not believers in stereotyped phraseology, nor do we desire to see the reign of a papal stagnant uniformity, but at this present the perils of the Church lie in another direction. To us, at any rate, the signs of the times portend no danger greater than that which can arise from landmarks removed, ramparts thrown down, foundations shaken, and doctrinal chaos paramount. We have written this much because silence is reckoned as consent and pride unrebuked lifts up its horn on high and becomes more insolent still. Let our opponents cease, if they can, to sneer at Puritans and Covenanters whose learning and piety were incomparably superior to their own, and let them remember that the names which have adorned the school of evangelical orthodoxy are illustrious enough to render scorn of their opinions, rather a mark of imbecility than of intellect. To differ is one thing, but to despise is another. If they will not be right, at least let them be civil; and if they prefer to be neither, let them not imagine that the whole world is gone after them. Their forces are not so potent as they dream; the old Scriptural, apostolic, Reformed faith is rooted deep and ineradically in the minds and hearts of tens of thousands, and it will renew its youth when the present phase of soul-ruining error shall be only a memory, and barely that.