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Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break my heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts 21:13)
IT was the observation of the learned Gerson (when the world was not so old by many years as now it is) that mundus senescens patitur phantasias: The aged world, liked aged persons, dotes and grows whimsical, in its old age; the truth of which observation is confirmed by no one thing more, than the fond and groundless dreams and phantams of tranquility, and continuing prosperity, wherewith the multitude please themselves, even whilst the sins of the times are so great, and the signs of the times so sad and lowring as they are.
It is not the design of this Manual to scare and affright any man with imaginery dangers, much less to sow jealousies, and foment the discontents of the times; it being a just matter of lamentation that all the tokens of God's anger produce with many of us no better fruit but bold censures and loud clamours, instead of humiliation for our own sins, and the due preparation to take up our own cross, and follow Christ in a suffering path, which is the only mark and aim of this tract.
We read the histories of the primitive sufferers, but not with a spirit prepared to follow them. Some censure them as too prodigal of their blood, and others commend their courage and constancy; but where are they that sincerely resolve and prepare to be followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises (Heb 6:12)? or take them for an “example of suffering, affliction, and of patience (Jam 5:10).”
It is as much our interest as it is our duty to be seasonably awakened out of our pleasant but most pernicious drowsiness. Troubles will be so much the more sinking and intolerable, by how much the more they steal upon us by way of surprizal. For look, as expectation deflowers any temporal comfort, by sucking out much of the sweetness thereof before-hand, and so we find the less in it when we come to the actual enjoyment: So the expectation of evil abates much of the dread and terror, by accustoming our thoughts before-hand to them, and making preparation for them: So that we find them not so grievous, amazing, and intolerable when they are come indeed.
This was exemplified to us very lively by holy Mr. Bradford the martyr, when the keeper's wife came running into his chamber, saying, 'O Mr. Bradford, I bring you heavy tidings, for to-morrow you must be burned, your chain is now buying, and presently you must go to Newgate.' He put off his hat, and looking up to heaven, said, O Lord, I thank thee for it; I have looked for this a long time; It comes not suddenly to me, the Lord make me worthy of it. See in this example the singular advantage of a prepared and ready soul.
Reader, the cup of sufferings is a very bitter cup, and it is but needful that we provide somewhat to sweeten it, that we may be able to receive it with thanksgiving; and what those sweetening ingredients are, and how to prepare them, you will have some direction and help in the following discourse; which hath once already been presented to the public view; and that it may at this time also (wherein nothing can be more seasonable) become farther useful and assisting to the people of God in their present duties, is the hearty desire of
Thine and the Church's Servant in Christ,
JOHN FLAVEL.
1. The Text Explained and the Doctrine Propounded
Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break my heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts 21:13)
THE Divine providence is not more signally discovered in governing the motions of the clouds, than it is in disposing and ordering the spirits and motions of the ministers of the gospel, who, in a mystical sense, are fruitful clouds, to dispense the showers of gospel blessings to the world. The motion of the clouds is not spontaneous, but they move as they are moved by the winds; neither can gospel ministers chuse their own stations, and govern their own motions, but must go when and where the Spirit and providence of God directs and guides them; as will evidently appear in that dangerous voyage to Jerusalem in which the apostle was at this time engaged (Acts 20:22). “And now, behold, I go bound in the Spirit to Jerusalem,” [bound in the Spirit:] Alluding to the watery vapours which are bound up in the clouds, and conveying according to the motions of the wind. This journey was full of danger; Paul foresaw his business was not only to plant the gospel at Jerusalem with his doctrine, but to water it also with his blood; but so effectually was his will determined by the will of God, that he cheerfully complies with his duty therein, whatsoever difficulties and dangers did attend it.
And indeed it was his great advantage, that the will of God was so plainly and convincingly revealed to him touching this matter; for no sooner did he employ himself to obey this call of God, but he is presently assaulted by many strong temptations to decline it.
The first rub he met in his way was from the disciples of Tyre, who pretending to speak by the Spirit, said unto Paul, that he should not go up to Jerusalem (Acts 21:4). The Lord by this trying the spirit of his apostle much, as he did the young prophet coming from Judea to Bethel (1 Kings 13:18), but not with like success.
His next discouragement was at Caesarea, where Agabus (whom Dorotheus affirms to be of the seventy-two disciples, and had before prophesied of the famine in the reign of Claudius, which accordingly came to pass) takes Paul's girdle, and binding his own hands and feet with it, said, “Thus saith the Holy Ghost, so shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliever him into the hands of the Gentiles (Acts 21:11). And surely he was not ignorant what he must expect whenever he should fall into their hands; yet neither could this affright him from his duty.
But then, last of all, he meeteth with the sorest trial from his dearest friends, who fell upon him with passionate intreaties and many tears, beseeching him to decline that journey: O they could not give up such a minister as Paul was! this even melted him down, and almost broke his heart, which yet was easier to do, than to turn him out of the path of obedience: Where, by the way, we may note two things:
First, that divine precept, not providence, is to rule out our way of duty.
Secondly, That no hindrances or discouragements whatsoever will justify our neglect of a known duty.
All these rubs he passes over; all these discouragements he overcame, with this heroic and truly Christian resolution in the text; “What mean ye to weep, and to break my heart? For I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem, for the name of the Lord Jesus.”
In which we have,
1. A loving and gentle rebuke.
2. A quieting and calming argument.First, He lovingly and gently rebukes their fond and inordinate sorrow for his departure, in these words, What mean ye to weep, and to break my heart? As if he should say, What mean these passionate intreaties and tempting tears? To what purpose is all this ado? They are but so many snares of Satan, to turn my heart out of the way of obedience: You do as much as in you lies to break my heart; let there be no more of this I beseech you.
Secondly, He labours to charm their unruly passions with a very quieting and calming argument; For I am ready, &c. parate habeo. I am prepared and fitted for the greatest sufferings which shall befal me in the pursuit of my duty; be it a prison, or be it death, I am provided for either: Liberty is dear, and life much dearer, but Christ is dearer than either.
But what was there in all this, to satisfy them whose trouble it was to see him so forward? Let the words be considered, and we shall find divers things in them to satisfy and quiet their hearts, and make them willing to give him up.
First, I am ready; that is, God hath fitted and prepared my heart for the greaest sufferings; this is the work of God: flesh and blood would never be brought to this, were not all its interests and inclinations subdued, and over-ruled by the Spirit of God. What do ye therefore in all this, but work against the design of God, who hath fitted and prepared my heart for this service?
Secondly, I am ready; that is, my will and resolution stands in a full bent, my heart is fixed, you cannot therefore study to do me a greater injury, than to discompose and disorder my heart again, by casting such temptations as these in my way, to cause the flesh to rebel, and the enemy that is within to renew his opposition.
Thirdly, I am ready; that is, my heart is so fixed to follow the call of God, whatever shall befal me, that all your tears and intreaties to the contrary are but cast away; they cannot alter my fixed purpose; you had as good be quiet, and cheerfully resign me to the will of God.
Thus you see the equipage and preparation of Paul's spirit to receive both bonds and death for Christ at Jerusalem; this made him victorious over the temptations of friends, and the malice and cruelty of his enemies: By this readiness and preparation of his mind, he was carried through all, and enabled to finish his course with joy. From hence the observaion is,
Doct. That it is a blessed and excellent thing for the people of God to be prepared, and ready for the hardest services, and worst of sufferings, to which the Lord may call them.
This is that which every gracious heart is reaching after, praying, and striving to obtain; but, ah! how few will attain it! Certainly there are not many among the multitudes of the professors of this generation that can say as Paul here did, “I am ready to be bound, or to die for Christ.”
THE PREACHER AND HIS MODELS
THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING, 1891By the Rev. James Stalker, D.D.
To
The Rev. Alexander Whyte, D.D.
LECTURE 5: The Preacher As A False Prophet
UPON anyone who is studying the physiognomy of the age of the prophets there is one disagreeable feature which obtrudes itself so constantly that even in the briefest sketch it is impossible to pass it by. This is the activity of the false prophets (1). It culminated in the lifetime of Jeremiah, whose whole career might almost be described as a conflict with them. Again and again he and they came to open war; and on at least one occasion the whole body combined to take away his life. Ezekiel was scarcely less afflicted by them. They were perhaps not so prominent an element in the life of Isaiah, but he also refers to them frequently; and, indeed, their sinister figures haunt the pages of all the prophets.
It is a kind of humiliation to speak of them at all, and I would gladly pass them by; but the figure of the true prophet will rise before our eyes more clearly by the contrast of the false: and it is perhaps a duty to look also at the degradations to which our office is liable. The higher the honour attaching to the ministerial profession, when it is worthily filled, the deeper is the abuse of which it is capable in comparison with other callings; and its functions are so sacred that the man who discharges them must either be a man of God or a hypocrite. Yet there are plenty of motives of an inferior kind which may take the place of right ministerial aims. Though it is painful to speak of such things, yet here again the method which we have adopted in these lectures, of following the guidance of Scripture, may be leading us better than we could have chosen ourselves; and it may be wholesome to have to look at an aspect of our subject which of our own accord we would avoid.
There are two things in Scripture which I have never been able to think of without strong movements of fear and self-distrust.
One of them is that, when the Son of God came to this earth, He was persecuted and slain by the religious classes. His deadly opponents were the Scribes and Pharisees. But who were the Scribes and Pharisees? The Scribes occupoed almost exactly the position in the community which is held among us by the literary, the scholastic and the clerical classes; and the Pharisees were simply what we should now call the leading religious laymen. Had they been adherents of a false religion, there would have been nothing surprising in their resistence to the final revelation of the true God. But the religion which they professed was the true religion; the Scribes were the exponders of the Word of God, and the Pharisees occupied the foremost places in the house of God. Yet, when the Son of Jehovah, whose name they were called by, appeared amongst them, they rejected Him and took away His life. Many a time, as I have followed Jesus step by step through His lifelong conflict with their illwill and contradiction, the question has pressed itself painfully upon my mind: If He were to come to the earth now and intervene in our affairs, how would the religious classes receive Him? and on which side would I be myself? If to any this question may seem fantastic, let them change it into this other, which cannot appear idle, though it means exactly the same thing: What is the attitude of the religious classes to the manifestations of the spirit of Jesus in the life of to-day? do they welcome them and back them up? or have the new ideas and movements in which Christ is marching onward to the conquest of the world to reckon on opposition, even from those who call themselves most loudly by His name?
The other circumstance which has often affected my mind in the same way is that which comes before us to-day - that the true prophets of the Old Testament had to face the opposition, not of heathens, and not of the openly irreligious among their own countrymen only, but of those who had the name of God in their mouths and were publicly recognised as His oracles. To us these are now false prophets, because time has found them out and the Word of God has branded them with the title they deserve; but in their own day they were regarded as true prophets; and doubtless many of them never dreamed that they were not entitled to the name.
They must have been a numerous and powerful body. Jeremiah mentions them again and again along with the king, the princes and the priests, as if they formed a fourth estate in the realm; and Zephaniah mentions them in the same way along with the princes, the judges, and the priests. They evidently formed a separate and conspicuous class in the community. They cannot have been equally bad in every generation; and there may have been many degrees of deviation among them from the character of the true prophet; but as a body they were false, and the true servants of God had to reckon them among the anti-religious forces which they had to overcome.
This is an appalling fact - that the public representatives of religion should ever have been the worst enemies of religion; but it cannot be denied that even in Christendom, and that not once or twice, the same condition of things has existed.
At the same time these men did not suppose that this was the position they held; but history has judged them. It is not easy for a man to admit the thought into his own mind that in him his office is being dishonoured and its aim frustrated; and it is far more difficult to do so if he has the support of the prevailing sentiment and is going forward triumphantly as a member of the majority. But there is enough in the history of our order to warn us to watch over ourselves with a jealous mind, lest we too, while clad in the garb of a sacred profession and in the authority of an ecclesiastical position, should be found fighting against God. It will not do to think that, merely because we sit in Moses' seat and have the Word of God in our mouths, therefore we must be right. Nor must we be too confident because we are in the majority. If we have faith in our views, it is quite right, indeed, that we should try to make them prevail; and there is a legitimate joy in seeing a good cause carrying with it the sympathies and auffrages of men. But we are all too easily persuaded that our cause is good simply because it can win votes. In ecclesiastical affairs there is often as feverish a counting of heads as in party politics. The majority have the same confidence that the case is finally decided in their favour; and there is the same exaltation over the defeated party, as if their being in the minority were a clear proof that they were also in the wrong. But this is no criterion, and time may sternly reverse the victory of the moment. Even in the Church the side of the false prophets may be the growing and the winning side, while Jeremiah is left in a minority of one.
The false prophets were strong, not only in their own numbers, but in their popularity with the people. This told heavily against the true prophets; for the people could not believe that the one man, who was standing alone, was right, and that his opponents, who were many, were wrong. The seats and the trappings of office always affect the multitude, who are slow to come to the conclusion that the teachers under whom they find themselves in providence can be misleading them. This is, to a certain extent, an honourable sentiment; but it throws upon public teachers a weighty responsibility. If they are going wrong, they will generally get the majority of the people to follow them. So completely may this be the case, that by degrees the popular taste is vitiated and will not endure any other teaching than that to which it has been accustomed, though it be false. There is no sadder verse in all prophecy than the complaint of Jeremiah, “The prophets prophesy falsely, and My people love to have it so.” Like prophet, like people; the public mind may be so habituated to what is false, and satisfied with it, that it has no taste or even tolerance for the true (2). Jeremiah could not gain a hearing for his stern and weighty message from ears accustomed to the light and frivolous views of the false prophets; and to Baruch, his young coadjutor and amanuensis, who was starting on the prophetic career with the high hopes of youth, he had to deliever the chilling message, “Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not.” The path to popularity and eminence was not open to anyone who did not speak according to the prevailing fashion.
The false prophets won and kept their popularity by pandering to the opinions and prejudices of the people. The times of Jeremiah were big with coming calamities, and he had to predict that these calamities were sure to come; for there were no signs of deep or genuine repentance, and, indeed, the time for repentance was past. The self-flattering, ease-loving people hated to hear these disagreeable facts. Their frivolous minds were engrossed with the gossip and excitement of the passing day, and it was too great an exertion to give their attention to the majestic views of the Divine justice and the far-reaching sweep of the Divine providence to which Jeremiah tried to direct their attention. They wished to enjoy the present and to believe that all would come right somehow. The false prophets flattered these wishes. They said that the calamities which Jeremiah was foretelling would not come to pass, or that at least they would be much less formidable than he represented. They were, as Jeremiah says, like an unconscientious physician, who is afraid to probe the wound to the bottom, though the life of the patient depends on it. Ezekiel accuses them of making nightcaps to draw over the eyes and ears of their countrymen, lest they should see and hear the truth, and of muffling with a glove the naked hand of God with which the sins of the people should have been smitten. The constant refrain of their prophecies was, “Peace, peace,” though the storm-clouds of retribution were ready to burst. The people said to them, “Prophesy to us smooth things;” and the false prophets provided the supply according to the demand.
We cannot flatter ourselves that this is a danger which belongs entirely to the past. There will always be a demand for smooth things, and an appropriate reward for him who is willing to supply them in the name of God. Popularity is a thing which will always be coveted; and under certain conditions it is a thing to be thankful for. If it means that the truth is prevailing and that men are yielding their minds to its sway, it is a precious gift of heaven. It is a good thing to see many coming out to hear the Word of God, and to both preacher and hearers there is a great deal of exhileration and inspiration in a full church. But popularity may be purchased at too dear a rate. It may be bought by the suppression of the truth and the letting down of the demands for a religion which does not agitate the mind too much or interfere with the pursuits of a worldly life.
I have seen a very trenchant article from an American pen on the power of the moneyed members of a church to dictate the tone of the pulpit; and it is a common accusation against ministers, that they flatter the prevailing classes in their congregations. If their congregations are wealthy, they are afraid, it is said, to speak up for the poor, even when justice is calling out on their side; and, if their congregations are poor, they take the side of the working-man, right or wrong. I should question whether temptations so gross as these are much felt. Far more dangerous are the subtler temptations - to truckle to the spirit of the age, to keep at all hazards on the side of the cultivated and clever, and to shun those truths the utterance of which might expose the teacher to the charge of being antiquated and bigoted. Let a preacher dwell always on the sunny side of the truth and conceal the shadows, let him enlarge continually on what is simple and human in Christianity and pass lightly over what is mysterious and Divine: let him, for example, dwell on the human side of Christ but say nothing of His atonement, let him extol the better elements of human nature but say nothing of its depravity, let him preach frequently on the glories of the next world but never mention its terrors: and very probably he may be popular and see his church crowded; but he will be a false prophet (3).
Who were these false prophets, and how did there come to be such numbers of them? These are questions which an attentive reader of the Bible cannot help asking; but it is not by any means easy to answer them.
The prophets whose names have come down to us are not by any means numerous; but, besides them, there must have been many other true prophets. There were times when the spirit of religion was breathing through the community, and then men were not wanting who felt called to be its organs. The spirit of inspiration might fall on any one at any time; no prescribed training was necessary to make a man a prophet. It might come, as it did to Amos, on the husbandman in his fields or the shepherd among his flock. It might alight on the young noble amidst the opening pleasures of life, as it did on Isaiah and Zephaniah; or it might come, as it did on Jeremiah and Ezekiel, on the young priest preparing for his sacred functions.
But some of the more noted prophets endeavoured in a more systematic way to diffuse the spirit which rested upon themselves, and thus to multiply the number of the prophets. They founded schools in which promising young men were gathered and plied with the means of education available in that age, cultivating music, reading the writings of the older prophets, and coming under the influence of the holy man who was at their head. These were the Schools of the Prophets, and their students were the Sons of the Prophets. Samuel seems to have been the first founder of these schools. They were flourishing in the times of Elijah and Elisha, and they probably continued to exist with varying fortunes in subsequent centuries. Perhaps all who went through these schools claimed, or could claim, the prophetic name. Those who took up the profession wore the hairy mantle and leathern girdle made familiar to us by the figure of John the Baptist; and they probably subsisted on the gifts of those who benefited from their oracles. Their numbers may have been very large; we hear of hundreds of prophets even during an idolatrous reign, when they were exposed to persecution.
In times when the spirit of inspiration was abroad or when the schools enjoyed the presence of a master spirit, it is easy to understand how valuable such institutions may have been, and how they may have been centres from which religious light and warmth were diffused through the whole country. But they were liable to deterioration. If the general tone of religion in the country declined, they partook in the general decay; an inspiring leader might be taken away and no like-minded successor arise to fill his place; or men who had received no real call beforehand might join the school and pass through the curriculum without receiving it.Only they had learned the trick of speech and got by rote the language of religion. They had no personal knowledge of God or message obtained directly from him; but it was not difficult to put on the prophet's mantle and talk in the traditional prophetic tones. The fundamental charge against the false prophets is always this: “I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran; I have not spoken unto them, yet they prophesy.”
If I am right in tracing the origin of false prophecy to the schools of the prophets, this gives a suggestive hint as to the point at which the same danger may beset ourselves. It is obviously the duty of the authorities of the Church to make provision for the training of those who are to be the future ministers of the Gospel; and it is natural for those who have the honour of the Church at heart to covet for her service the talents of the gifted. Parents, too, will often be found cherishing an intense desire that the choicest of their sons should become ministers. These wishes of superiors have a legitimate influence in determining the choice of our life-work. The wishes and prayers of pious parents are especially entitled to have very great weight. Yet there is a danger of an outward influence of this kind being substituted for genuine personal experience and an inward call. When, a generation ago, in the rural parts of England, the church in many a parish was looked upon as “a living,” to be allocated to a junior member of the family, who was educated for the position as a matter of course, the custom, whatever happy results it might produce in exceptional cases, was not fitted to fill the pulpits of the land with men of prophetic character. The pious wishes of parents, however beautiful they may be, require to be made absolutely conditional on a vocation of a higher kind; otherwise we get a manufactured ministry, without a message, in place of men in whom the spirit of inspiration is stirring and who speak because they believe.
Having no message of their own, what were the false prophets to do? The best they could do was to repeat and imitate what had been said by their predecessors. It is with this Jeremiah reproaches them when he says, “Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal My words everyone from his neighbour.” The older prophets used to begin their utterances with the phrase, “the burden of the Lord;” and Jeremiah complains that this had become an odious cant term in the mouths of his contemporaries; and in the same way Zechariah complains that in his day the great word “comfort,” which from the lips of Isaiah had descended like dew from heaven on the parched hearts of the people of God, had become a dry and hackneyed phrase in the mouths of false prophets. How dangerous this habit of stealing the words of others might become, when practical issues were involved, may be illustrated by a striking example. The inviolability of Jerusalem had been a principle of the older prophets, which was quite true for their times; and Isaiah had made use of it for rousing his fellow-citizens from despair, when the army of Sennacherib stood before the gates. But in Jeremiah's time the change of circumstances had made it to be no longer true; and yet the false prophets kept on repeating it; and no doubt they seemed both to themselves and others to be occupying a strong position when, in opposing him, they could allege that they were standing on the same ground as Isaiah. All the time, however, they were betraying those who listened to them.
There is a sense in which the truth of God is unchangeable; it is like Himself - the same yesterday and to-day and forever. But there is another sense in which it is continually changing. Like the manna, it descends fresh every morning, and, if it is kept till to-morrow, it breeds loathsome worms. Isaiah describes the true prophet as one who has the tongue of the learner - not of the learned, as the Authorised Version gives it - and whose ear is opened every morning to hear the message of the new day. What was truth for yesterday may be falsehood for to-day; and only he is a trustworthy interpreter of God who is sensitive to the indications of present providence.
It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that the only form which false prophecy can take is a dried-up orthodoxy, mumbling over the shibboleths of yesterday. If he who stands forward as a speaker for God is out of touch with God and has really no Divine message, he may make good the lack of a true Divine word in many ways. The easiest way is, no doubt, to fall back on some accepted word of yesterday; but he may also strike out on the path of originality, announcing a gospel for to-morrow, constructed by his own fancy, which has no Divine sanction. Neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy is a guarantee: the only guarantee is a humble mind living in the secret of the Lord.
I have mentioned that the prophets subsisted on the contributions of those to whom their oracles were supposed to be valuable. There is, indeed, very little information on this head; but they are accused of prophesying for bread, and avarice and a greedy appetite for the good things of this life are reproaches frequently cast at them. It is not likely that prophecy can ever have been a paying profession, but it would appear to have been at least a means of livelihood; and there are indications that those who enjoyed an exceptional popularity may have occupied a high social standing. Ezekiel, whose characterizations of the false prophets are remarkably striking, uses about them a significant figure of speech. He says that, while a true prophet was like a wall of fire to his country, standing in the breach when danger threatened and defending it with his life, the false prophets were like foxes that burrow among the ruins of fallen cities. What mattered it to them that their country was degraded, if only they had found comfortable places for themselves?
This also is a painful side of the subject. It is inevitable that the ministry should become a means of livelihood, and yet it is fatal to pursue it with this in view. It is the least lucrative of the professions, and yet, in the pressure of modern life, it may tempt men to join it merely as a profession. Even if it has been entered upon from higher motives, the attrition of domestic necessities may dry up the nobler motives and convert the minister into a hireling who thinks chiefly of his wages (4). The commercial spirit is omnipotent in our day; and men who can buy everything for money think that ministers are procurable in the same way. Thus they tempt men away with bribes of money from work to which God has called them. I am far from questioning the importance of the mission of the pulpit to the wealthier classes; and we must have men of culture to preach to the cultivated. I would no more think of setting up the poor against the rich, as the exclusive objects of the Church's attention, than the rich against the poor. But perhaps the most essential work of the Church at the present time is to win and to hold the working classes. I should like to see ministers coveting work among them; and let him who has learned to wield such an audience, where he can speak with the freedom and force of nature, beware of being bribed away to a position where he will be tamed and domesticated, and have his teeth drawn and his claws cut.
So monotonous is the evil side of the false prophets that one longs for a gleam of something good in them. Can they not at least be pitied? May they not have been weak men, who were elevated to a position which proved too much for them? The times were full of change and difficulty, and it required a clear eye to see the indications of Providence. It is not every one who has the genius of an Isaiah or the magnificent moral courage of a Jeremiah. Was it not possible to take a milder view of the world than Jeremiah did, and yet be a true man? May they not at least have been mistaken, when they ventured to emit prophecies which history falsified?
Such sentiments easily arise in us; but they are driven back by what we read of the personal character of these men. “Both prophet and priest,” says Jeremiah, “are profane; yea, in My house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord.” “I have seen,” he says in God's name, “in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies.” Jeremiah's view of them might be thought to be coloured by his own melancholy temperament; but Isaiah's is not less severe: “The priest and the prophet,” he says, “have erred through wine, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink.” And he gives this terrible picture of them: “His watchmen are blind, they are ignorant; they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand; they all look to their own way, every one to his gain from his quarter. Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink; and to-morrow shall be as this day and still more abundant.” The representation in the other prophets are to the same effect. Zephaniah passes on the whole class the sweeping judgment, that they are light and treacherous persons. But the lowest deep is reached in Zechariah, who forsees a time, close at hand, when the very name of prophet will be a byword, and the father and mother of anyone who pretends to prophesy, will thrust him through, to deliver themselves from the reproach of having any connection with him (5).
The influence of such a travesty of the sacred office as these passages describe must have been deplorable; and without doubt it was one of the principal causes of the overthrow of the Jewish State. Jeremiah says expressly, that from the prophets profaness had gone out over the whole land. They who, from their position and profession, ought to have been an example to their fellow-countrymen were the very reverse. They were the companions of the profane and licentious in their revels, and they joined with scorners in scoffing at those who led a strict and holy life. So God charges them by the lips of Ezekiel: “Ye have made the hearts of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad, and strengthened the hands of the wickd, that he should not return from his wicked way.”
This is a terrible picture. Yet there have been epochs in the history of the Christian, and even of the Protestant Church, when its features have been reproduced with too faithful literality. Let us be thankful that we live in a happier time; but lets us also remember the maxim, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” If a Church lose the Spirit of God, there is no depth of corruption to which it may not rapidly descend; and a degraded Church is the most potent factor of national decay.
Allow me to say, in closing, that I believe the question, what is to be the type and the tone of the ministry in any generation, is decided in the theological seminaries. What the students are there, the ministers of the country will be by-and-by. And, while the discipline of the authorities and the exhortations and examples of professors may do something, the tone of the college is determined by the students themselves. The state of feeling in a theological seminary ought to be such, that any man living a life inconsistent with his future profession should feel thoroughly uncomfortable, and have the conviction driven in upon his conscience every day, that the ministry is no place for him.
NOTES:
(1) As this sunject is somewhat novel, the following collection of texts may be acceptable; but it is not given as exhaustive:-
Isa. ii. 6; xxviii. 7; xxx. 10,11; xlvii. 13; lvi. 10-12.
Jer. ii. 8,26; iv. 9; v. 31; vi. 14; xiv. 13-16; xviii. 18; xxiii. 9-40 (locus classicus); xxvi. 8; xxvii. 9,16; xxviii. xxix. 8.
Ezek. xii. 24; xiii. (locus classicus); xiv. 9; xx. 25; xxi. 23; xxii. 25,28.
Micah ii. 11; iii. 5,11.
Zeph. iii, 4.
Zech. x. 2; xiii. 2-4.
(2) “Sicut autem cuius pulchrum corpus et deformis est animus, magis dolendus est, quam si deforme habaret et corpus, ita qui eloquenter ea quae falsa sunt dicunt, magis miserandi sunt, quam si talis deformiter dicerent.” - ST. AUGUSTINE.
(3) Even popularity honestly won may be a great snare. Vanity, it must be allowed, is probably the commonest clerical weakness; and, when it is yielded to, it deforms the whole character. There are few things more touching or instructive than the entries in Dr. Chalmers' journal, which show with what earnestness he was praying against this, in the height of his popularity, as a besetting sin. If this were common, there would not be the slight accent of contempt attached to the name of the popular preacher which now belongs to it in the mouths of men. The publicity which beats on the pulpit makes veracity, down to the bottom of the soul, more necessary in the clerical than in any other calling. “A prime virtue in the pulpit is mental integrity. The absence of it is a subtle source of moral impotence. It concerns other things than the blunt antipodes represented by a truth and a lie. Argument which does not satisfy a preacher's logical instinct; illustration which does not commend itself to his aesthetic taste; a perspective of doctrine which is not true to the eye of his deepest insight; the use of borrowed materials which offend his sense of literary equity; an emotive intensity which exaggerates his conscious sensibility; an impetuosity of delivery which overlooks his thought; gestures and looks put on for scenic effect; an eccentric elocution, which no human nature ever fashioned; even a shrug of the shoulder, thought of and planned for beforehand - these are causes of enervation in sermons which may be otherwise well framed and sound in stock. They sap a preacher's personality and neutralise his magnetism. They are not true, and he knows it. Hearers may know nothing of them theoretically, yet may feel the full brunt of their negative force practically.” - AUSTIN PHELPS, D. D., My Note Book.
(4) “That which in its idea is the divinest of earthly employments has necessarily come to be also a profession, a line of life, with its routine, its commonplace, its poverty and deterioration of motive, its coarseness of feeling. It cannot but be so. It is part of the conditions of our mortality. Even earnest purpose, even zealous and laborious service, cannot alone save from the lowered tone and dulness of spirit which are our insensible but universal and inveterate enemies in all the business of real life. And that torpor and insensibility and deadness to what is high and great is, more than any other evil, the natural foe of all that is characteristic and essential in the Christian ministry; for that ministry is one of life and reality, or it is nothing.” - DEAN CHURCH.
(5) This may perhaps help to determine the age of the portion of Zechariah to which this passage belongs. Is there any proof elsewhere that a degradation of the prophetic office as deep as this had taken place, or was imminent, at the period to which it is usually assigned?
PERSONAL DECLENSION AND REVIVAL OF
RELIGION IN THE SOULby Octavius Winslow, D. D.
CHAPTER 2 - DECLENSION IN LOVE
“The love of many shall wax cold (Mt 24:12).”
Having described the hidden and incipient declension of the believer, we propose in the present and succeeding chapters, to trace this melancholy state in some of its more advanced stages, as it is seen in the langour and decay of the graces of the Spirit in the soul. It is no longer the concealed, but developed, character of spiritual and personal declension that we are now to consider. Its type is more marked, and its symptoms more palpable and visible to the eye. It has arrived at such a stage as to render concealment impossible. Just as in the physical frame, a slight sinking in the heart's pulsation, even though the seat of disease is invisible, may be traced in the external symptoms that ensue; so, in the spiritual man, when there is a secret unhealthiness of the soul, the effects are so marked in their character as to leave no doubt of its existence. The man may not himself be sensible of his backsliding state; he may wrap himself up in the fearful deception that all is well, close his eyes voluntarily against his real state, disguise from himself the rapidly advancing disease, crying “peace, peace,” and putting far off the evil day; but with a spiritual and advancing believer, one whose eye is keen to detect an unfavourable symptom, and whose touch is skilful to mark a sickly pulse, the case is involved in no mystery.
In tracing the declension of some of the essential and prominent graces of the Spirit, we commence with the grace of LOVE, it constituting the spring-head of all the kindred graces. The spiritual state of the soul, and the vigour and promptness of its obedience, will correspond with the state and tone of the believer's affections toward God. If decay, coldness, declension, exist here, it is felt and traced throughout the entire obedience of the new man. Every grace of the Spirit feels it; every call to duty feels it; and every throb of the spiritual pulse will but betray the secret and certain declension of Divine love in the soul. Let the Christian reader, then, imagine what must be the spiritual unhealthiness of the believer, what his outward and visible declensions from God, when love, the spring of all spiritual duties, ceases to exert a vigerous influence, and when, as the heart of experimental godliness, it transmits but sickly and sluggish streams of life throughout the spiritual system. Let us, before we proceed to the immediate discussion of the main subject before us, present a brief and scriptural view of the necessity, nature, and operation of Divine love in the soul.
Love to God is spoken of in his word, as forming the primary and grand requirement of the Divine law. Thus is the truth declared, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment (Mt 22:37,38).” Now, it was both infinitely wise and good in God, thus to present himself the proper and lawful object of love. We say it was wise, because, had he placed the object of supreme affection lower than himself, it had been to have elevated an inferior object above himself. For whatever other object than God is loved with a sole and supreme affection, it is a deifying of that object, so that it, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing itself that it is God. It was good, because a lesser object of affection could never have met the desires and aspirations of an immortal mind. God has so constituted man, implanting in him such a capacity for happiness, and such boundless and immortal desires for its possession, as can find their full enjoyment only in infinity itself. He never designed that the intelligent and immortal creature should sip its bliss at a lower fountain than himself. Then it was infinitely wise and good in God, that he should have presented himself as the sole object of supreme love and worship to his intelligent creatures. His wisdom saw the necessity of having one centre of supreme and adoring affection, and one object of supreme and spiritual worship to angels and to men. His goodness suggested that that centre and that that object should be himself, the perfection of infinite excellence, the fountain of infinite good. That, as from him went forth all the streams of life to all creatures, it was but reasonable and just that to him should return, and in him should centre, all the streams of love and obedience of all intelligent and immortal creatures: that, as he was the most intelligent, wise, glorious, and beneficient object in the universe, it was meet that the first, strongest, and purest love of the creature should soar towards, and find its resting-place in him.
Love to God, then, forms the grand requirement, and fundamental precept of the Divine law. It is binding upon all intelligent beings. From it no consideration can release the creature. No plea of inability, no claim of inferior objects, no opposition of rival interest, can lessen the obligation of every creature that hath breath to “love the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind.” It grows out of the relation of the creature to God, as his Creator, Moral Governor, and Preserver; and as being in himself the only object of infinite excellence, wisdom, holiness, majesty, and grace. This obligation, too, to love God with supreme affection, is binding upon the creature irrespective of any advantage which may result to him from so loving God. It is most true that God has benevolently connected supreme happiness with supreme love, and has threatened supreme misery, where supreme affection is withheld; yet, independent of any blessing that may accrue to the creature from its love to God, the infinite excellence of the Divine nature, and the eternal relation in which he stands to the intelligent universe, render it irreversibly obligatory on every creature to love him with a supreme, paramount, holy, and unreserved affection.
Love, too, is the great influential principle of the Gospel. The religion of Jesus is pre-eminently a religion of motive: it excludes every compulsory principle; it arrays before the mind certain great and powerful motives with which it enlists the understanding, the will, and the affections, in the active service of Christ. Now the law of Christianity is not the law of coercion, but of love. This is the grand lever, the great influential motive, - “the love of Christ constraineth us.” This was the apostle's declaration, and his governing motive; and the constraining love of Christ is to be the governing motive, the influential principle of every believer. Apart from the constraining influence of Christ's love in the heart, there cannot possibly be a willing, prompt, and holy obedience to his commandments. A conviction of duty and the influence of fear may sometimes urge forward the soul, but love alone can prompt to a loving and holy obedience; and all obedience that springs from an inferior motive is not the obedience that the gospel of Jesus inculcates. The relation in which the believer stands to God, under the new covenant dispensation, is not that of a slave to his master, but of a child to its father. “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father (Gal 4:6).” “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God (Rom 8:16).” “Wherefore thou art no more a servant (a slave), but a son (Gal 4:7).” With this new and spiritual relation, we look for a new and spiritual motive, and we find it in that single but comprehensive word - LOVE. And thus our Lord declared it: “If ye love me, keep my commandments (Jn 14:15).” “If a man love me, he will keep my words; and he that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings ((Jn 14:23,24).” It is then only where this love is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost, that we may expect to find the fruit of obedience. Swayed by this Divine principle, the believer labours not for life, but from life: not for acceptance, but from acceptance. A holy, self-denying, cross-bearing life, is not the drudgery of a slave, but the filial, loving obedience of a child: it springs from love to the person, and gratitude for the work of Jesus; and is the blessed effect of the spirit of adoption in the heart.
It must be acknowledged, too, that this motive is the most holy and influential of all motives of obedience. Love, flowing from the heart of Jesus into the heart of a poor, believing sinner, expelling selfishness, melting coldness, conquering sinfulness, and drawing that heart up in a simple and unreserved surrender, is, of all principles of action, the most powerful and sanctifying. Under the constraining influence of this principle, how easy becomes every cross for Jesus! - how light every burthen, how pleasant every yoke! Duties become privileges - difficulties vanish - fears are quelled - shame is humbled - delay is rebuked; and, all on flame for Jesus, the pardoned, justified, adopted child exclaims, “Here, Lord, am I, a living sacrifice; thine for thine, and thine for eternity!”
Love is that principle that expels all legal fear from the heart. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love (1 Jn 4:18).” Who has felt it will deny that “fear hath torment?” The legal fear of death, of judgment, and of condemnation, - the fear engendered by a slavish view of the Lord's commandments, - a defective view of the believer's relation to God, - imperfect conceptions of the finished work of christ, - unsettled apprehensions of the great fact of acceptance, - yielding to the power of unbelief, - the retaining of guilt upon the conscience, or the influence of any concealed sin, will fill the heart with the torment of fear. Some of the most eminent of God's people have thus been afflicted: this was Job's experience, - “I am afraid of all my sorrows.” “Even when I remember, I am afraid, and trembling taketh hold on my flesh.” “When I consider him, I am afraid of him.” So also David, - “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” “My flesh trembleth for fear of thee; I am afraid of thy judgments.” But “perfect love casteth out fear:” he that feareth is not perfected in the love of Christ. The design and tendancy of the love of Jesus shed abroad in the heart, is to lift the soul out of all its “bondage through fear of death” and its ultimate consequences, and soothe it to rest on the glorious declaration, triumphing in which many have gone to glory, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” See the blessed spring from whence flows a believer's victory over all bondage-fear - from Jesus: not from his experience of the truth, not from evidence of his acceptance and adoption, not from the work of the Spirit in his heart, blessed as it is, but from out of, and away from, himself, even from Jesus. The blood and righteousness of Christ, based upon the infinite dignity and glory of his person, and wrought into the experience of the believer by the Holy Ghost, expel from the heart all fear of death and judgment, and fill it with perfect peace. O thou of fearful heart! why these anxious doubts, why these tormenting fears, why this shrinking from the thought of death, why these distant, hard, and unkind thoughts of God? Why this prison-house, - why this chain? Thou art not perfected in the love of Jesus, for “perfect love casteth out fear;” thou art not perfected in that great truth, that Jesus is mighty to save, that he died for a poor sinner, that his death was a perfect satisfaction to Divine justice; and that without a single meritorious work of thine own, just as thou art, poor, empty, vile, worthless, unworthy, thou art welcome to the rich provision of sovereign grace and dying love. The simple belief of this will perfect thy heart in love; and perfected in love, every bondage-fear will vanish away. O seek to be perfected in Christ's love! It is a fathomless ocean. Why then shouldst thou not descend into it? Approach, for it is free; drink, for it is deep; launch into it, for it is broad. “The Lord direct your heart into the love of God.”
Love is that grace of the Spirit that brings faith into active exercise; “faith which worketh by love (Gal 5:6),” and faith thus brought into exercise, brings every spiritual blessing into the soul. A believer stands by faith (Rom 11:20); he walks by faith (2 Cor 5:7); he overcomes by faith (1 Jn 5:4); he lives by faith (Gal 2:20). Love is therefore a labouring grace; “God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed towards his name (Heb 11:10).” There is nothing indolent in the nature of true love; it is not an inert, sluggish principle: where it dwells in the heart in a healthy and vigorous state, it constrains the believer to live not to himself, but unto Him who loved and gave himself for him; it awakes the soul to watchfulness, sets it upon the work of frequent self-examination, influences it to prayer, daily walking in the precepts, acts of kindness, benevolence, and charity, all springing from love to God, and flowing in a channel of love to man.
The Holy Ghost distinguishes love as a part of the Christian armour: “Let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breast-plate of faith and love (1 Thess 5:8).” Without ardent and increasing love to God, the believer is but poorly armed against his numerous spiritual and ever-aggressive foes: but what a breast-plate and helmet is this in the day of battle! Who can overcome a child of God whose heart is overflowing with Divine love? what enemy can prevail against him thus armed? There is something so shielding in its influence, so repelling to the spirit of enmity and darkness, so obnoxious to sin, that he only is fit for the conflict who is well clad in the breast-plate of love. He may be, and he is, in himself, nothing but weakness; his foes many and mighty; hemmed in on every side by his spiritual Philistines; and yet, his heart soaring to God in love, longing for his presence, panting for his precepts, desiring above and beyond all other blessings, Divine conformity! O with what a panoply is he clothed! No weapon formed against him shall prosper: every “fiery dart of the adversary” shall be quenched, and he shall “come off more than a conqueror through him who hath loved him.”
In a word, love is immortal; it is that grace of the Spirit that will never die. This is not so with all the kindred graces; the period will come when they will no more be needed. The day is not far distant, when faith will be turned to sight, and hope will be lost in full fruition, but love will never die; it will live on, and expand the heart, and tune the lip, and inspire the song, through the unceasing ages of eternity. “Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away;” but love never faileth; it is an eternal spring, welled in the bosom of Diety; heaven will be its dwelling-place, God its source, the glorified spirit its subject, and eternity its duration.
For one moment let the Christian reader call to mind the period and the circumstances of his first espousals to Jesus. If there ever was a blissful period of thy life, - if a spot of verdure in the remembrance of the past, on which the sunlight ever rests, - was it not the time, and is it not the place, where thy heart first expanded with the love of Jesus? Thou hast, it may be, trod many a thorny path since then; thou hast travelled many a weary step of thy pilgrimage - hast buffeted many storms, hast waded through many deep afflictions, and fought many severe battles, - but all have well-nigh faded from thy memory; but the hour and the events of thy “first love,” - these thou never hast forgotten, thou never canst forget. O ever to be loved, ever to be remembered with deep songs of joy, with adoring gratitude to free and sovereign grace, the period when the chains of thy bondage were broken, - when thy fettered soul broke from its thraldom, and sprang into the liberty of the sons of God, - when light discovered thy darkness, and that darkness rolled away before its increasing lustre, - when the Spirit wounded thee, then healed that wound with the precious balm of Gilead, - when he gave thee sorrow, then soothed that sorrow by a view of the crucified Lamb of God, - when faith took hold of Jesus and brought the blessed assurance into the soul, “I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine;” and when Jesus whispered, - O how tender was his voice! - “Thy sins, which were many, are all forgiven; go in peace.” Blissful moment! How fresh is the whole transaction to thy mind: the sanctuary where thou didst worship, - the minister whom thou didst hear, - the people with whom thou didst associate, - the spot where thou didst lose thy burden, and where light, and love, and joy, broke in upon thy soul, - the saints who rejoiced over thee, and the happy converts who clustered around thee, mingling their joys and their songs with thine; and the man of God who introduced thee within the pale, and to the ordinances and the privileges of the Church of Christ, - all, all is now before thee with a vividness and a freshness as though it had bust just transpired. O that the Lord should ever have reason to prefer the charge, “thou hast left thy first love!” And yet to the consideration of this melancholy state of a professing soul we have now to turn. May the Spirit of truth and of love be our guide and teacher!
The subject now before us for reflection, is the humbling and affecting truth, that the grace of love in a child of God may greatly and sadly decline. We speak, let it be remembered, not of the destruction of the principle, but of the decline of its power. This spiritual and influential truth cannot be too frequently nor too strongly insisted upon, - that through faith and love, and hope, and zeal, and their kindred graces, may greatly decline in their vigour, fervour, and real growth; yet that they may entirely fail even in their greatest decay, or severest trial, the Word of God assures us can never be. To believe the opposite of this, is to deny their Divine origin, their spiritual and immortal character, and to impeach the wisdom, power, and faithfulness of God. Not a grain of wheat can ever be lost in the sifting, not a particle of the pure gold in the refining. Let us now be understood as unfolding in this chapter the declension of love in its vital actings in the soul, and in its influential character upon the outward, holy walk of a child of God.
In looking into God's Word, we find this to have been the solemn charge which he brought against his ancient professing people: “Thus saith the Lord, I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.” Then follows the charge of declension in their love: “Thus saith the Lord, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?” “O generation, see ye the word of the Lord. Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? Wherefore say my people, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee? Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number (Jer 2:2,5,31).” And to the same state, as forming an evidence of approaching desolations, our dear Lord refers, when He says, “And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold (Mt 24:12).” And against the church of Ephesus the same charge is thus preferred: “Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love (Rev 2:4).” The following may be considered as forming some of the marked characteristics of the decay and declension of this principle.
When God becomes less an object of fervant desire, holy delight, and frequent contemplation, we may suspect a declension of Divine love in the soul. Our spiritual views of God, and our spiritual and constant delight in him, will be materially affected by the state of our spiritual love. If there is coldness in the affections, if the mind grows earthly, carnal, and selfish, dark and gloomy shadows will gather round the character and the glory of God. He will become less an object of supreme sttachment, unmingled delight, adoring contemplation, and fillial trust. The moment the supreme love of Adam to God declined, - the instant that it swerved from its proper and lawful centre, he shunned converse with God, and sought to embower himself from the presence of the Divine glory. Conscious of a change in his affections, - sensible of a divided heart, of subjection to a rival interest, - and knowing that God was no longer the object of his supreme love, nor the fountain of his pure delight, nor the blessed and only source of his bliss, - he rushed from his presence as from an object of terror, and sought concealment in Eden's bowers. That God whose presence was once so glorious, whose converse was so holy, whose voice was so sweet, became as a strange God to the rebellious and conscience-stricken creature, and, “absence from thee is best,” was written in dark letters upon his guilty brow.
And whence this difference? Was God less glorious in himself? was he less holy, less loving, less faithful, or less the fountain of supreme bliss? Far from it. God has undergone no change. It is the perfection of a perfect Being that he is unchangeable; that he can never act contrary to his own nature, but must ever be, in all that he does, in harmony with himself. The change was in the creature. Adam had left his first love, had transferred his affections to another and an inferior object; and conscious that he had ceased to love God, he would fain have veiled himself from his presence, and have excluded himself from his communion. It is even so in the experience of a believer, conscious of declension in his love to God. There is a hiding from his presence; there are misty views of his character, misinterpretations of his dealings, and a lessening of holy desire for him: but where the heart is right in its affections, warm in its love, fixed in its desires, God is glorious in his perfections, and communion with him the highest bliss on earth. This was David's experience, - “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is; to see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee (Ps 63:1-3).”
Not only in the declension of Divine love in the soul, does God become lass an object of adoring contemplation and desire, but there is less filial approach to Him. The sweet confidence and simple trust of the child is lost; the soul no longer rushes into his bosom with all the lowly yet fond yearnings of an adopted son, but lingers at a distance; or, if it attempts to approach, does so with the trembling and the restraint of a slave. The tender, loving, child-like spirit, that marked the walk of the believer in the days of his espousals, when no object was so glorious to him as God, no being so loved as his heavenly Father, no spot so sacred as the throne of communion, no theme so sweet as his free grace adoption, has in a great degree departed; and distrust, and legal fears, and bondage of spirit, have succeeded it. All these sad effects may be traced to the declension of filial love in the soul of the believer towards God.
Hard thoughts of God in his dispensations, may be regarded as another undeniable symptom. The mark of a vigorous love to God is when the soul justifies God in all his wise and gracious dealings with it; rebels not, murmurs not, repines not, but meekly and silently acquiesces in the dispensation, be it never so trying. Divine love in the heart, deepening and expanding towards that God from whence it springs, will, in the hour of trial, exclaim, “My God has smitten me, but he is my God still, faithful and loving. My father has chastened me sore, but he is my Father still, tender and klind. This trying dispensation originated in love, it speaks with the voice of love, it bears with it the message of love, and is sent to draw my heart closer and yet closer to the God of love, from whom it came.” Dear reader, art thou one of the Lord's afflicted ones? Happy art thou if this is the holy and blessed result of his dealings with thee. Happy if thou heardest the voice of love in the rod, winning thy lone and sorrowful heart to the God from whom it came. But when love to God has declined, the reverse of this is the state of a tried and afficted believer.
When there is but little inclination for communion with God, and the throne of grace is sought as a duty rather than a privilege, and, consequently, but little fellowship is experienced, a stronger evidence we need not of a declension of love in the soul. The more any object is to us a source of sweet delight and contemplation, the more strongly do we desire its presence, and the more restless are we in its absence. The friend we love we want constantly at our side; the spirit goes out in longings for communion with him, - his presence sweetens, his absence embitters, every other joy. Precisely true is this of God. He who knows God, who, with faith's eye, has discovered some of his glory, and by the power of the Spirit has felt something of his love, will not be at a loss to distinguish between God's sensible presence and absence in the soul. Some professing people walk so much without communion, without fellowship, without daily filial and close intercourse with God; they are so immersed in the cares, and so lost in the fogs and mists of the world; the fine edge of their spiritual affection is so blunted, and their love so frozen by contact with worldly influences and occupations, - and no less so, with cold, formal professors, - that the Sun of righteousness may cease to shine upon their soul, and they not know it! God may cease to visit them, and his absence not be felt! He may cease to speak, and the stillness of his voice not awaken an emotion of alarm! Yea, a more strange thing would happen to them, if the Lord were suddenly to break in upon their soul, with a visit of love, than were he to leave them for weeks and months without any token of his presence. Reader, art thou a professing child of God? Content not thyself to live thus; it is a poor, lifeless existence, unworthy of thy profession, unworthy of Him whose name thou dost bear, and unworthy of the glorious destiny towards which thou art looking. Thus may a believer test the character of his love: he, in whose heart Divine affection deepens, increases, and expands, finds God an object of increasing delight and desire, and communion with him the most costly privilege on earth: he cannot live in the neglect of constant, secret, and close fellowship with his God, his best and most faithful Friend.
When there is a less tender walk with God, we may be at no loss to ascertain the state of our love. What do we mean by a tender walk? When a believer walks in holy circumspection, in uprightness, integrity, close vigilance, and prayerfulness, before God, he then walks softly: “I shall go softly all my years (Is 38:15).” When with filial tenderness, he trembles to offend his Father, his God, his best Friend, - when he increasingly delights himself in the precepts and commandments of the Lord, - when he would rather pluck from himself the right eye, and sever the right hand, than wilfully and knowingly offend God, and grieve the Spirit; then his walk is tender and soft and close with God. And what constrains a believer to this glorious life, this holy, hidden walk, but the love of God shed abroad in his heart? Imagine, then, what dangers must throng the path, what temptations must beset the soul, in whom the precious and influential grace of love is in a state of declension and decay!
Need we add, when Christ is less glorious to the eye, and less precious to the heart, Divine love in the soul of a believer must be on the wane? it cannot be otherwise. Our views of Jesus must be materially affected by the state of our affections towards him. Where there is but little dealing with the atoning blood, leaning upon the righteousness, drawing from the fulness, and bearing daily the cross of Christ, the love of a believer waxeth cold. We would judge the depth of a man's Christianity, by his reply to the question, “'What think ye of Christ?' Is he lived to, is he lived upon? is his name your delight, his cross your boast, his work your resting place?” This will be your blessed experience, if the pulse of Divine love beats strong in your breast for Christ.
A decay of love to the saints of God, is a strong evidence of a decay of love to God himself. If we love God with a sincere and deepening affection, we must love his image wherever we find it. It is true, the picture may be but an imperfect copy, the outline may be but faintly drawn; there may be shades we cannot approve of; yet, recognising in the work the hand of the Spirit, and in the outline some resemblance to Him whom our souls admire and love, we must feel a drawing out of our holiest affections towards the object; we shall not pause before the surrender is made, to inquire to what section of the church of Christ he belongs, what name he bears, or what the colour of his uniform; but, discovering the man of God, the meek and lowly follower of Jesus, our heart and our hand are freely offered. O what a passport to our hearts is the image of Jesus in a child of God! Do we trace Christ in the principles that guide him, in the motives that govern him, in the spirit, in the very looks of the man? - we feel that we must take him to our bosom for Jesus' sake. O, it marks the decay of love to God in the soul, when the heart beats faintly, and the eye looks coldly, towards any dear saint of God, because he belongs not to our party, and wears not our badge; when bigotry, narrow-minded selfishness, warps the mind, congeals the current of love, and almost unchristianises a believer. The word of God is solemn and decisive on this point: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God, love his brother also (1 Jn 4:20,21).” “By this,” says Jesus, “shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another.” If we love not the visible resemblance, how can we love the invisible Archetype?
When love to God declines, with it will decline an interest in the advancement and prosperity of his cause: the one invariably follows the other. We do not say that outward zeal may not continue long after a process of concealed declension has advanced in the soul, and secret duties have become neglected - this is the lamentable case with many; but a true, spiritual, and lively interest in the increase of Christ's kingdom, in the diffusion of his truth, the deepening of holiness in the church, the conversion of sinners, will invariably decline with the declension of love to God. And when we mark a member of a church maintaining his external union, and yet hanging as a dead and fruitless branch upon the vine, doing nothing to advance the cause of God and truth, withholding his money, his prayers, his personal attendance on the means of grace, and rather opposing than cheering on the active portion of the body, we are ready to ask, “How dwelleth the love of God in him?”
The declension of love may be traced to many CAUSES: we can enumerate but a few; let the following be seriously pondered. Worldly encroachment is a fruitful cause; no two affections can be more opposite and antagonistic than love to God and love to the world: it is impossible that they can both exist with equal force in the same breast; the one or the other must be supreme, - they cannot occupy the same throne. If a Divine affection is regent, then the world is excluded; but if an earthly affection, a grovelling and increasing love to the world governs - God is shut out: the one must give place to the other. Love to God will expel love to the world; love to the world will deaden the soul's love to God. “No man can serve two masters”: it is impossible to love God and the world, to serve him and mammon. Here is a most fertile cause of declension in Divine love; guard against it as you would fortify yourself against your greatest foe. It is a vortex that has engulfed millions of souls; multitudes of professing Christians have been drawn into its eddy, and have gone down into its gulf. This enemy of your soul will steal upon you by silent and insidious encroachment. It has its disguises many. It will present itself masked in a proper regard for business, in a diligence in lawful callings, a prudent yielding to domestic claims, and will even quote scriptural precept and example, and assume the form of an angel of light; but suspect it, guard against it. Remember what is recorded by the apostle of a primitive professor: “Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” Be not a modern Demas: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world; if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” No Christain man can maintain his spirituality unimpaired, his love uninjured, his robe unspotted, his walk irreproachable, who secretly admits the world to his heart. How can he exemplify the life of a pilgrim and a sojourner; how can his heart rise in a constant flame of love to God? What attraction can the throne of grace have, what zest in spiritual duties, what delight in the communion of saints, while his heart goes out after covetousness, and worldly ambition, love of place, and human applause are the rival passions of his soul? Let it, then, be solemnly remembered, that an inordinate, uncrucified attachment to the world, must be parted with, if the precious grace of love to God is to enthrone itself in the affections of the believer.
An idolatrous and unsanctified attachment to the creature, has again and again crucified love to Christ in the heart. Upon the same principle that no man can love the world and God with a supreme and kindred affection, so no man can give to Christ and the creature the same intensity of regard. And yet, how often has the creature stolen the heart from its lawful Sovereign! That heart that was once so simply and so supremely the Lord's, - those affections that clung to him with such purity and power of grasp, have now been transferred to another and inferior object: the piece of clay that God had given but to deepen the obligation and heighten the soul's love to himself, has been moulded into an idol, before which the heart pours its daily incense; the flower that he has caused to spring forth, but to endear his own beauty and make his own name more fregrant, has supplanted the “Rose of Sharon” in the bosom. Oh! is it thus that we abuse our mercies? is it thus that we convert our blessings into poisons? that we allow the things that were sent to endear the heart of our God, and to make the cross, through which they came, more precious, to allure our affections from their holy and blessed centre? Fools that we are, to love the creature more than the Creator! Dear reader, why has God been disciplining thee as, it may be, he has? why has he removed thine idols, crumbled into dust thy piece of clay, and blown witheringly upon thy beauteous flower? - why? because he hateth idolatry; and idolatry is essentially the same, whether it be offered to a lifeless, shapeless stock, or to a spirit of intellect and beauty. And what speaks his voice in every stream that he dries, in every plant that he blows upon, and in every disappointment he writes upon the creature? - “My son, give me thine heart. I want thy love, thy pure and supreme affection; I want to be the one and only object of thy delight. I gave my Son for thee - his life for thine; I sent my Spirit to quicken, to renew, to seal, and to possess thee for myself: all this I did, that I might have thine heart. To possess myself of this, I have smitten thy gourds, removed thine idols, broken thine earthly dependences, and have sought to detach thy affections from the creature, that they may rise, undivided and unfettered, and entwine around one who loves thee with an undying love.”
Again; interpreting God's covenant dealings in the light of judgments rather than the fruits of love, will tend greatly to deaden the soul's affections towards God. Hard and harsh thoughts of God will be the effect of wrong interpretations of his dealings: if for one moment we remove the eye from off the heart of God in the hour and depth of our trial, we are prepared to give heed to every dark suggestion of the adversary; that moment we look at the dispensation with a different mind, and to God with an altered affection; we view the chastisement as the effect of displeasure, and the covenant God that sent it, as unkind, unloving, and severe. But let faith's eagle-eye pierce the clouds and darkness that surround the throne, and behold the heart of God is still love, all love, and nothing but love, to his afflicted, bereaved, and sorrow-stricken child, and in a moment every murmur will be hushed, every rebellious feeling will be still, and every unkind thought will lay in the dust; and, “He hath done all things well, - in love and faithfulness hath he afflicted me,” will be the only sounds uttered by the lips. If, then, beloved, you would have your heart always fixed on God, its affections flowing in one unbroken current towards him, interpret every dispensation that he sends in the light of his love; never suffer yourself to be betrayed into the belief, that any other feeling prompts the discipline; give not place to the suggestion for one moment, - banish it from the threshold of your mind, the moment it seeks an entrance. And let this be the reflection that hushes and soothes you to repose, even as an infant upon its mother's breast: “My God is love! my Father is unchangeable tenderness and truth! he hath done it, and it is well done.”
Let us now turn to the consideration of the revival of this waning grace in the child of God; but before any especial means of revival are suggested or adopted, let the believer seek to know the exact state of his love to God. A knowledge of himself, is the first step in the return of every soul to God. In conversion, it was self-knowledge - a knowledge of ourselves as utterly lost - that led us to Jesus; thus did the Eternal Spirit teach, and thus he led us to the great and finished work of the Son of God. Before, then, you fall upon any means of revival, ascertain the exact state of your love, and what has caused its declension; shrink not from the examination, - tuen not from the discovery. And should the humiliating truth force itself upon you, - “I am not as I once was; my soul has lost ground, - my spirituality of mind has decayed; - I have lost the fervour of my first love - have slackened in the heavenly race; Jesus is not as he once was, the joy of my day, the song of my night; - and my walk with God is no longer so tender, loving, and filial as it was,” - then honestly and humbly confess it before God. To be humbled as we should be, we must know ourselves; there must be no disguising of our true condition from ourselves, nor from God: the wound must be probed, the disease must be known, and its most aggravated symptoms brought to view. Ascertain, then, the true state of your affection towards God; bring your love to him, to the touchstone of truth; see how far it has declined, and thus you will be prepared for the second step in the work of revival, which is, to -
Trace out and crucify the cause of your declension in love. Where love desclines, there must be a cause; and when ascertained, it must be immediately removed. Love to God is a tender flower; it is a sensitive plant, soon and easily crushed; perpetual vigilance is needed to preserve it in a healthy, growing state. The world's heat will wither it, the coldness of formal profession will often nip it: a thousand influences, all foreign to its nature and hostile to its growth, are leagued against it; the soil in which it is placed is not genial to it. “In the flesh there dwelleth no good thing;” whatever of holiness is in the believer, whatever breathing after Divine conformity, whatever soaring of the affections towards God, is from God himself, and is there as the result of sovereign grace. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” What sleepless vigilance, then, and what perpetual culture are needed, to preserve the bloom and the fragrance, and to nourish the growth of this celestial plant! Search out and remove the cause of the declension and decay of this precious grace of the Spirit; rest not until it is discovered and brought to light. Should it prove to be the world, come out from it. and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing; or the power of indwelling sin, seek its immediate crucifixion by the cross of Jesus. Does the creature steal thy heart from Christ, and deaden thy love to God? - resign it at God's bidding; he asks the surrender of thine heart, and has promised to be better to thee than all creature love. All the tenderness, the fond affection, the acute sympathy, the true fidelity, that thou ever didst find or enjoy in the creature, dwells in God, thy covenant God and Father, in an infinite degree. He makes the creature all it is to thee: that fond smile which thy fellow-believer beamed upon thee, was but a ray from his countenance; that expression of love was but a drop from his heart; that tenderness and sympathy was a part of his nature. Then, possessing God in Christ, you can desire no more, - you can have no more: if he asks the surrender of the creature, cheerfully resign it; and let God be all in all to thee. This suggests a second direction:
Draw largely from the fount of love in God. All love to God in the soul is the result of his love to us; it is begotten in the heart by his Spirit, - “We love him, because he first loved us:” he took the first step, and made the first advance, - “He first loved us.” O heart-melting truth! The love of God to us when yet we were sinners, who can unfold it? what mortal tongue can describe it? Before we had any being, and when er were enemies, he sent his Son to die for us; and when we were far off by wicked works, he sent his Spirit to bring us to him in the cloudy and dark day. All his dealings with us since then - his patience, restoring mercies, tender, loving, faithful care, yea, the very strokes of his rod, have but unfolded the depths of his love towards his people: this is the love we desire you to be filled with. “The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God.” Draw largely from this river; why should you deny yourselves? There is enough love in God to overflow the hearts of all his saints through all eternity; then why not be filled? “The LOrd direct your hearts into the love of God;” stand not upon the brink of the fountain, linger not upon the margin of this river, - enter into it - plunge into it; it is for thee, - poor, worthless, unworthy, vile as thou feelest thyself to be, - this river of love is yet for thee! Seek to be filled with it, that ye may know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, and that your heart in return may ascend in a flame of love to God.
Deal much and closely with a crucified Saviour. Here is the grand secret of a constant ascending of the affections to God. If thou dost find it difficult to comprehend the love of God towards thee, read it in the cross of his dear Son. “In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 Jn 4:9,10).” Dwell upon this amazing fact; drink into this precious truth; muse upon it, ponder it, search into it, pray over it, until your heart is melted down, and broken, and overwhelmed with God's wondrous love to you, in the gift of Jesus. O how will this rekindle the flame that is ready to die in your bosom! how it will draw you up in a holy and unreserved surrender of Body, soul, and spirit! Forget not, then, to deal much with Jesus. Whenever thou detectest a waning of love, a reluctance to take up the daily cross, a shrinking from the precept, go immediately to Calvary; go simply and directly to Jesus; get thy heart warmed with ardent love by contemplating him upon the cross, and soon will the frosts that gather round it melt away, the congealed current shall begin to flow, and the “chariots of Amminadib” shall bear thy soul away to communion and fellowship with God.
Do not fail to honour the Holy Spirit in this great work of revival. The work is all his; beware of taking it out of his hands. The means we have suggested for the revival of this waning grace of love, can only be rendered effectual as the Spirit worketh in you, and worketh with you. Pray much for his annointings; go to him as the Glorifier of Christ, as the Comforter, the Sealer, the Witness, the Earnest of his people: it is he that will apply the atoning blood, - it is he that will revive thy drooping graces, - it is he that will fan to a flame thy waning love, by unfolding the cross, and directing your heart into the love of God. Take not your eye off the love of the Spirit; his love is equal with the Father's and the Son's love. Honour him in his love, let it encourage thee to draw largely from his influences, and to be “filled with the Spirit.”
Lastly: remember that though your love has waxed cold, the love of thy God and Father towards thee has undergone no diminution: not the shadow of a change has it known. Although he has hated thy declension, has rebuked thy wandering, yet his love he has not withdrawn from thee. What an encouragement to return to him again! Not one moment has God turned his back upon thee, though thou hast turned thy back upon him times without number: his face has always been towards thee; and it would have shone upon thee with all its melting power, but for the clouds which thine own waywardness and sinfulness have caused to obscure and hide from thee its blessed light. Retrace thy steps and return again to God. Though thou hast been a poor wanderer and has left thy first love, - though thy affections have strayed from the Lord, and thy heart has gone after other lovers, still God is gracious and ready to pardon you; he will welcome thee back again for the sake of Jesus, his beloved Son in whom he is well pleased, for this is his own blessed declaration, - “If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; then I will visit their transgressions with a rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless, my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail (Ps 89:30-33).”
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15/10/2006
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