By REV. A. MOODY STUART.
NOTWITHSTANDING the sternness of his earlier doctrine, and his life-long severity against himself, his preaching was full of consolation; and during the long period of his latter years he was both large-hearted in his views of what constitutes a child of God, and most free in the offer of the Gospel. After an address I had given on the tokens of regeneration, he said to me with a quiet smile, “A man may want the marks you have given us, and be a true believer after all”; and of Thomas Sheppard, a severe sifter of sincerity, he said, “Sheppard’s books are fine books for basketing the fish (Matt. xiii. 47, 48); but mind you catch them before you basket them. Sheppard is fine, but I wish I were as good as one of his hypocrites.” That warrant for a free invitation, “Let him that heareth say, Come,” was a favourite text with him, and often on his lips. His own cast of preaching was not that of an evangelist, yet with such preaching he found no fault, provided it did not deny human inability, the Divine sovereignty, and the warrant and duty of prayer on the part of all men.
The true urgency of the Gospel he expressed in these words: “It will not do to tell a man that he may come to Christ, but that he must come, and that he cannot come; that he must come, or he will look to another to come for him; and that he cannot come, or he will look to himself for salvation.” With all his theology no man was less trammelled by theological systems, either lax or severe; less fettered by narrowness, as against the true breadth of Bible doctrine; or more alert and frank to meet every human heart in every step of its return God-ward. And few men were so tender to inquirers, so hopeful in the first symptoms of a saving change, or more free in presenting Christ for universal and immediate acceptance. He repeated with the most cordial approval a remark which he had heard from the pulpit on the words, ‘All things are ready, go out into the highways, and as many as ye find, bid to the marriage’—that ‘the Gospel is a prepared feast for unprepared guests.’
While he insisted much on the indispensable work of the Spirit, and on the utter incapacity of the natural man to discern or receive spiritual things, no man held more strongly that the necessity of conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit in no way interferes with the free offer of the Gospel. “If only convinced sinners,” he said, “are warranted to embrace Christ, then I must, ere I can be warranted to embrace Him, be convinced that I am a convinced sinner. But the Holy Spirit is the only source of infallible conviction, and the Holy Spirit is nowhere promised to convince of conviction; He is only promised to convince of sin. True, the convinced sinner is the only capable subject of saving faith, but it is not as a convinced sinner I am called upon to come to Christ. The Gospel does not address convinced sinners as such with offers of reconciliation, but fallen sinners. It is a very beautiful arrangement in the Gospel that it does not proclaim itself to convinced sinners. None are so unwilling to consider themselves convinced as those who really are. But the convinced sinner would be the last to embrace an offer made to convinced sinners; but proclaim the Gospel to a vile, guilty sinner, and he says, ‘That is I.'”
“For myself, I cannot always come to Christ direct, but I can always come by sin. Sin is the handle by which I get Christ. I take a verse in which God has put Christ and sin together. I cannot always put my finger upon Christ and say, ‘Christ belongs to me’; but I can put my finger on sin and say, ‘sin belongs to me.’ I take that word, for instance, ‘The Son of man is come to save that which was lost.’ Yes, lost, lost, I’m lost; I put my finger upon that word and say, ‘I’m the lost one; I’m lost.’ Well, I find that ‘the Son of man is come to save the lost’; and I cry out, ‘What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’ “
As regards assurance, while he doubted so much for himself, there was none more prompt or skilful in removing the doubts of others; and while he was wont to look too much within for evidences, he held most clearly the immediate shining of Christ upon the soul, and the direct witness of the Spirit. In listening to an exposition of the text, “After ye believed ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,” it was argued by the preacher that as the seal of the Spirit came “after” faith, it might be given at any time after it, and the believer might for long remain without it. Considering how strongly he held that believers may want the assurance of salvation, I fully expected him to assent to the exposition; but he quite disagreed, and said, that “after” in these words did not at all imply an interval of time between the faith and its seal, but rather the one immediately following the other. He had a great jealousy for Jesus Christ, and of everything that would sever the light of the soul from the discovery of Christ. “To you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing under His wings.” The healing is under the wings, it is not by itself; it is not Christ without benefits, or benefits without Him, for the sun cannot be shorn of its beams. The way we obtain light is by the bright shining of the sun; and as soon may a man bottle up the daylight as have a Gospel of benefits without the immediate shining of the Sun of Righteousness. As the old rays cannot be bottled up or preserved, so a believer cannot see light but in His shining, nor a dying sinner be raised up but by His shining.”
On our responsibility for carrying the Gospel to others, he said at one of our Communion tables: “Mind, you have got the sinner’s Gospel, and if you have it, it is to give to sinners; if you have it, you are a debtor to all the sinners to give it to them; and then you have to be very nice, and let the sinners know that you are a sinner too when you give it to them, and that you have nothing else for yourself but that. Let us be sure to give it, lest if we do not give it, we do not get it; lest the Holy Ghost do not give it to us, if we keep it to ourselves. As being saved by the sinner’s Gospel, God has made us evangelists to the world.”