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Les d6tail» de cat exemplaire qui sont peut-Atre uniques du poini de vue bibliographique. qui peuvent modifier une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une modification dans la mithoda normale de filmaga sont ind^qu4s ci deaaoua. pn Coloured pages/ D Pages de couleur Paijes damaged/ Pages endommagAes □ Pages restored Rnd/or laminated/ Pages restaurdas et/uu peiliculAes [771 Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/ I I Pages d^colorAes. tncheties ou piquAes □ Pages detached/ Pages d6tach6es 0Showthrough/ Transparence □ Quality of print varies/ Quality inigtUa da I'lmprassion □ includes supplementary material/ Comprend du mat6riel supplAmentaire □ Only ectition available/ Seule Edition diaponibla Pagrs wholly or partially obscured by arrata slips, tissues, etc., have been lef limed to ensure the best possible image/ Les pages totalemant ou partieliement obscurcies par un feuillet d'errata, une pclure. etc.. ont AtA filmAes CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. Conversation in general Nicodemus and Jesus Time of their conversation Place of their conversation Theme of their conversation Character of their conversation Plan of their conversation Usefulness to Nicodemus Usefulness generally Dr. Alford's Revised Version of the Conversation XV xvi id. xviii tb. xix ib. XX xxi xxii CHAPTER I. _^ TRUE RELIGION IS NEW LIFE. § I. The new birth is the Beginning of new life. John iii. 1-3 How Nicodemus begins I ib. VI CONTENTS. Nature and Use of Miracles Answer of Jesus Birth is the lieginning of Life . Every Rehgion is either Vital or Mechanical Vital Religion is Love .... Page I 2 3 4 5 § 2. The inception of new life is a Spiritual cleansing. John iii. 4, 5 6 Nicodemus's objection .... Meaning of the Answer .... Parallel Passage : Luke iii. 16 . No reference to Water-baptism § 3. Sp' ritual Purity is the Nature of God in Man JoLn iii. 6 Homogeneousness of Parent and Child Flesh and Spirit ....... Regeneration the only Beginning of Human Holiness Human Holiness is Divine Likeness No Higher Aspect of True Religion ib. 7 8 10 12 ib. ib. 13 ib. § 4. Regeneration is a Mysterious certainty. John iii. 7, 8 Operation of the Holy Spirit generally His Emblem is the Wind Our Knowledge of this Knowledge of our own Salvation two-fold Development of our Sonship .... Mystery of the Spirit IS ib. ib. 16 17 18 ib. § 5. Tiie mysterious certainty of regeneration is the Consent of Revelation. John iii. 9, 10 20 How to meet persistent prejudice ib^ C V T CONTENTS. Page I 2 3 4 5 n^r, III. 6 ib. 7 8 lO 12 ib. ib. 13 ib. 14 Main purport of Old Testament . . . . Many are like Nicoclemus § 6. T/tc consent of Revelation is C/irist^s oiun testimony. JohnJii. II, 12, 1.3 . . . Competency of Christ to testify Meaning of " Kingdom of Heaven " .... '' Earthly Things " and " Heavenly Things" . Vll Pane 21 23 24 tb. 26 § 7. H'Aot Christ himself now testifies is Absolutely necessary. Something in Religion is necessary . Everything in Religion is not necessary What is necessary .... Christ reiterates the necessity . The necessity re-Affirmed . Resumr of the chai)ter 29 ib. 30 31 32 33 IS ib. ib. 16 17 18 ib. Consent 20 ib CHAPTER II. NEW LIFE IS THE FRUIT OF DEATH. § I. The Death that gives life. I John iii. 14 . . i Cause of life illustrated . j Vicarious Death pervades the Bibie Two aspects of this death . 34 35 36 n i ^•** VIU CONTENTS. § 2. Till- Life thai spriiij^s from ikath. John Hi. 15 Life is Safety Life is Union with God /'Of/'- 38 ib. 40 (M-,- §3. The Fai:h that Jimh life. John ill. 15 Varieties of faiih Saving faith belongs only to the Repentant Saving faith is faith in Christ Distinction of faith before repentance and after Incipient faith is the Means of Life .... The faith in Christ of the repentant always iinds Life Persevering faith 41 ib. 42 ib. 44 45 46 47 CHAPTER III. KRUinil- DKA'IH IS THE GIFT OF LOVE. ^ I. Tiw Love if God to Man is Parental in its Nature. w John iii. 16 This is the Trmh to be believed for Salvation The Love of Clod in the New Testament . God's Love is Parental .... Children and Servants distinguished 48 ib. ib. 49 SO 4' ib. 42 ib. 44 45 46 47 ♦ ■ \ 2. 7V/"-i6 ^^ The best test of love is the Practical .... ib. God shows his love to us in a Divine Gift . . , // In the gift of Himself • * ^l In the gift of his Son for Humiliation . . . .* 56 § 4. The love of God to Man is GraiuitoHS in its Method. John iii. 16 . . . . . , ^ / ^ ^ Preparation and Achievement d'stinguished . .' * {f,^ Exchange and Gratuity contrasted .... * // God freely saves the Ungodly on Believing . .* .60 He saves all that believe .* 6l 48 ib. ib. 49 50 § s. The love of God to Man is Universal in its Scope, John iii. 16, 17 . . . • , . *. ' . g Meaning of the word " C^jw^j," World ...'.' ^ God's Love of the World is not Actual Universal Salvation 6c No Warrant for Faith but General Love and a General Overture ..... ., ^ ■ • «*• CONTENTS. The Scope of the Son's Mission Coincides with the Scope of the Father's Munificence God's Conservative and Restorative Government Restorative Government embraces all the Human Space and Time of this Woi from the Fall The Religions of Conscience, Law and Love . Page 66 67 70 71 CHAPTER IV. THE GIFT OF LOVE IS THE CHOICE OF FAITH. § I, Religion is Personal, * John iii. 18 Faith is Personal, not hereditary or gregarious This Doctrine always Requisite .... Meaning of " the Name of the Only-Begotten Son of God " The Object of saving faith is, first, the Fathers Love : Divine anger and wrath explained The Object of saving faiih is, secondly, the Son's Sin Bearing Faith and Unbelief Purely Personal Both Testaments show this 73 ib. ib. 75 ib. 76 79 81 82 r § 2, Religion is Determinate. John iii. 18 ....... The Object of relii,ious faith or unbelief is GOD Believing is a process of Consciousness . Unconsciousness of belief means unbelief 83 ib. 84 85 CONTEXTS. xl § 3, Rdigion is Voluntary. John iii. 19 Voluntary and involuntary relations to God Divine condemnation is for evil in the light And for evil from the Heart .... And the evil of Choice . . . , - Evil deeds breed Evil Love . . . Evil iove produces Evil Practice .... Evil choice and love are Early and Progressive Nothing adjudicable but Choice and its Consequences Faith and Unbelief are Consequences of Choice Hence Responsibility for religious belief . . . . Why Christ so often specifies faith in connection with salvation POQC 86 ib. ^7 89 90 91 93 id. 94 id. § 4. Religion is Pnictical. John iii. 19, 20, 21 Moral and Physical distinguished .... Good and Evil distinguished Nothing Moral but Choice and its Consequences Choice consists of either Intention or Action, or of both Every moral being chooses either good or evil . Right choice results in P^aith, Wrong in Unbelief True religion is Practical . • • • • » So the whole Bible teaches ' § 5. Evil practice Shuns detection. John iii. 20 Evil doers denoted Evil doers hate light and love darkness . . . ! Evil doing breeds Hatred to the Truth . * The Concealment and Cowardice of Guili illustrated Detection and punishment inevitable 98 //;. 99 ilK 100 ib. lOI ib. 102 103 ib. 104 105 106 107 iirrr XU CONTENTS. § 6. Good Works Openly glorify God. John iii. 21 .J What is Truth? . ' ^^' " The Truth » is Practical "° How the Christian comes to the Light . . • . m What is " Wrought in God " is made Manifest . . 112 4 CHAPTER V. .i IMPLICATIONS. 4 § I. r/i^ Glory of Life. This Conversation should be Reviewed and Generalized Something is Implied in it as well as Expressed Its Theme throughout is Spiritual Life What is Life? The Life of the Soul Illustrated .... Its Greatness Incomparable • • ' • 114 ib. ib. IIS ib, 116 ib. \ 2. The Agency of Life, The Agency of Spiritual Life is both Divine and Human. The Divine Agency is Life- Giving . . • • • 118 ib. CONTENTS. xiii Pag$ The Human Agency is Life-receiving . . . .119 Scripture Proof of this 121 § 3. The Trinity of Life. ^ ■<■ God is Life . . . . . . . , ^ j j ^ How Reverently we should consider this .... ib. How the Trinity of the Godhead is taught in the New Testament ......... z^. God is not a solitary eternal Monad . . . .126 Or merely Economically Three 2resent religious condition, to read and liear (iod's word, to come within the ran<^e and reach of the truth, to afford tlie teachers of truth an opportunity of communication. These two interlocutors are met at the world's centre. The affairs of mankind do not gravitate to Athens or to Rome, but to Jerusalem ; for the temple of God is there, the oracles of God are there, and there, too, the only true Priest is about to offV;r the true and only sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. " Salvation is of the Jews." Tliey are met to converse on the theme of themes, religion the relationship between God and man, the kingdom that is over all forever. Men's ordinary topics find no place here. The weather, the crops and the war, party politics, the literature of time, human science, civilization, fleeting philosophy, are not now stirring the heart of Nicodemus or seeking to elicit the Master's weighty words. These two talk of God's kingdom and the men that shall enter it. They talk of escape from perdition, of God's love and its gifts, of the faith that saves and the unbelief that destroys. Wliat can match such themes as these ? They belong to us all ; they are above all estimation and beyond all comparison ; and they should be our great study and topic. A little longer, and we shall have nothing else to think of; a little longer, and we shall have nothing- else to care for. INTKODLCTION. XIX Very adniiraljle and valual)le is the conversation itself. Tlie more we attempt to fathom it, tlie deeper we find it; the more we seek in it, the more it yields ns ; it is an nnfailiu^ s])rin«,' of si)iritual influence, an inex- haustible mine of heavenly weidtli. Its theme, from beginning to end, is one, true religion; and the Wisdom of God presents this theme in its noblest and most appropriate aspect, the aspect of LIFE. The conversation, as our Lord conducts and moulds it, contains four parts or portions. The first may be taken to include the first thirteen verses of the third cha])ter of the gos})el according to John ; the second i)art consists of the fouilcentli verse and the fifteenth ; the third, of the sixteenth and seventeenth ; and tlie fourth comprehends the remnining four verses. It seems strange tliat any one should ever doubt the extension of the conversation to the end of the twenty-first verse. The beginning and the end are clearly marked. The introduction narrates that there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, who came to Jesus by night ; and the conclusion is marked by the resumption of the evangelist's narrative at the twenty-second verse : " After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judea," the region lying south of Jerusalem. But the best evidence of the extent of the conversation is its own structure and import. The first part teaches us that true religion is new life, originating in a new birth, the birth of the Holy Spirit ; the second part teaches us that this new life is the fruit of death, the death of the Son of Man ; the third part teaches us that this fruitful death is the «l XX INTRODUCTION. gift of love, the love of the Feather ; and the fourth part teaches uh tluit this gift of love is the choice of man, the choice of man hy faith. " All are but parts of one stupendous whole." The several parts are most closely connected, and evince such consecutiveness, interdependence and unity as to compel the conviction tliat they form one divine and glorious whole, worthy of Him who spake as never man spake, and frauglit with grace and truth to all that rightly read and learn. Such a conversation, endlessly multii)lied in speech and writing, over the world and down through tlie ages, could not be un])roductive. It appears to have been profitable, first of all, to Nicodemus. The profit does not appear in the conversation itself (for profit is not always immediate), but in subsequent acts, which the evangelist significantly links with the nightly interview. When *tlie Pharisees scotfed at their own officers as " deceived," for eulogizing Jesus instead of seizing liim, and at the multitude that followed him as "cursed," "he that came to Jesus by night " said to his fellow Pharisees — " Doth our law judge any man before it hear him and know what he doeth?"* This was speaking manfully for fair play. When Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews, obtained from Pilate the body of Jesus, " there came also Nicodemus, who at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mix- ture of myrrli and aloes, about a hundred weight." Then Joseph and Nicodemus " took the body of Jesus and wound it in linen clothes, with the spices, as the /* John vii. 50, 51. INTRODUCTION. XXI manner of the Jews is to bury. Now in the phice where he was cnicified there was a garden, and in the garden a new sepnlchre, wherein was never man yet laid." There Joseph and Nicodemns laid Jesus.* These men are coupled as kindred spirits, as if alike disciples of Jesus secretly for fear of the Jews. The expression tli«t Nicodemus came to Jesus by night " at first," appears to imply tliat he was advanced from that beginning; that he was profiting by that gi'eat interview. It is remarkable also that in the first mention of Nicodemus, after the conversation, it is said li(3 was "one of the Pharisees"; but in the second menti(ja of liim, in connection with Joseph, tliis de- scriptiDu is omitted, as if to denote that he had ceased to be " one of them." Whjit Nicodemus lieard at first by night has stirred the liearts of countless multitudes, and led them into life. Many, it is to be feared, have heard it and read it in vain, because of their counter-choice, their inattention and unbelief. Many, probably, have heard or read it at first with Nicodemus-like ignorance or incredulity, but afterwards pondered it with profit ; and multitudes, by means of it, have been born again. It is for every man and for all time. It is for every pulpit, and Sunday School, and family ; and its influence and efficacy are widening with the suns. The foremost doctrine of the Lutheran era was justiti cation by faith; the foremost doctrine of the Methodistic era has been regeneration by the Spirit. The one implies the other, the one is the complement *John xix. 38-42. XXll INTRODUCTION. Ill of tlio other, and botli, in tlioir Scriptural completeness and validity, are the nii^lity means of spiritual con- quest and culture. They can never l)e superseded or rivalled : and their function will never b<: linished till, as the seed of the kingdom, they fdl the face of the world with fruit, and the last ))eliever is born into the family of God. " But there was* a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodenius, a ruler of the Jews ; the same came to Jesus by night, aiul said unto him — 'ltal)l)i, we know that thou art a teacher come from (Jod ; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him.' Jesus answered and said unto him- -' Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God,' Nicodemus saith unto him — 'How can a man l)e born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?' Jesus answered — 'Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and the Spirit,"j* he cannot enter into the kin^doiu of God. That wdiich hath been born of the Hesh is Hesh, and that which hatli been born of the S[)irit is spirit. ]\Iarvel not that I said unto thee ye must be born anew. The wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but knowest not whence it conieth, and whither it goeth ; so is every one that hath been born of the Spirit.' Nicodemus answered and said unto * **Nou} there waa" — Dr. Geo. Campbell on the Four Gospels, t " Water and Spirit"— Dr. G. Campbell. Eg u(5aToc: xai INTRODUCTION*. XXlll him — * How can these things he?* .lesiis an.swered and said unto liim — ' Art thou the teacher of Israel, ami understaiul.jst not these tliin','s ? Verily, verily, I say unto thee we speaK that wiiich we know, and testify that which we have seen, and ye receive not our testimony. If 1 have t(dd you earthly things, and ye believe not, how sliall ye hell eve if I tell you lieavenly things? And no one hath ascended into heaven but he that came down from heaven, [even] the Son of Man which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up,* that wliosoever believetli in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believetli in him might not perish, but might have eternal life. For (xod sent not his Son. into tlie world that he might judge the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He that believetli in him cometh not into judgment; Init he that believetli not hatii been judged already, because he hath not believed in the name of tlie only be- gotten Son of God. And tliis is the judgment, that the light is come into the Morld, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their works were evil.-|- For every one that doetli evil hateth the light, * "If ye understand not when I told you earthly thing-', how will ye uiulorstand when I tell you heavenly tilings? For none asoondeth into i eaven hut he who descended from heaven — the Son of Man, whose abode ia heaven. As Moses jihiced on liigh the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be placed on high," ic— Dr. Geo. Campbell. t " Now this is the ground of condemnation, that the light is come into the world, and men have preferred the darkness to the light, because their deeds were evil."— Dr. Geo. Campbell. i i i I y^iy INTRODUCTION. and Cometh not to the light, lest his works should he detected. But he that doetli the truth conieth to the light, that liis works may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.'"— John iii. 1-21.* , v : *From "The New Testament of our Lord au.l Saviour Jesus Christ, after the authorized versimi ; "ewly eomimred with the original Greek, and revised By bearyAlford, D.D., Dean Canterbury. Strahan & Co., Loudon, 18/1. ' m m iiii: I THE RELIGION OF LIFE. ■}^-:..i«,ii ^• "*■;> '^. CHAPTER I. ,;i :. TRUE RELIGION IS NEW LIFE. / ^ - ^ § 1. The new birth is the Beginning of new life. " There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews : the same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him — * Kabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God : for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.' Jesus answered and said unto him — 'Verily, verily, I say unto thee except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.' " — John iii. 1-3. , , . . Nicodemus opens the conversation with a recognifion and a reason. He recognizes Jesus as " a teacher come from God," and the reason he assigns is that " no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him." Nothing could bo more appropriate than the recognition or more valid than the reason. A miracle is the immediate act of God, to verify his message or accredit his messenger ; it is the seal of his commission. It ought not to be des- cribed as a violation or suspension of the laws of nature, '\"X as a superior addition to them, a direct divine force, the immediate act or operation of the Author and Lord of nature, to do wliat nature alone is undesigned fr»v and unadapted to. Nature everywhere indicates her Author, illustrates his perfections «».iid sings his praise ; but alone, or 1 ,. ^- ^-^ ' - -r'fW*' 2 THE RELIGION OF LIVE. I J!' ml III! in her ordinary phenomena, is incapable of authenticating the Creator's special message or accrediting his special messenger. What does so autlienticate and accredit we call a miracle, which means the direct action of the Author of nature, in the field of nature or on the forces or forms of nature. Who but God himself is competent to determine whether the condition of his human offspring requires special messages and means? And if he determines in the affirmative, it surely becomes him to vouchsafe the requisite attestation in miraculous cliange. This occurred so eminently and amply in the ministry of Jesus as to con- vince Nicodemus of a divine function. Jesus is divine, and his teaching is divine, for, in his own name, he acts directly on nature, healing sickness and disease, restoring life, correcting organic faults and defects, creatively multi- plying human sustenance, controlling the winds and the waves. The wisdom of his teaching, to Nicodemus and others, befits the might of his working ; and each illustrates the other. : The Recognized teacher at once evinces his wisdom and authority by aptly presenting religion to the ruler under the aspect of divine rule or kingship, and declaring the primary pre-requisite : " Verily, verily, I say unto thee except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." The words " verily, verily," or " amen, amen," are a form of solemn and emphatic asseveitition, to indicate the importance of the lesson about to be given and to fix the attention of the hearer. One thing is needful for the kingdom of God, and our Lord denotes it by tlie words ys\ivYi6ri avwfisv (genneethee anothen), translated " born again." What do these words mean? The .verV> yitvaiu (gennao) occurs ninety-seven times in the New Testament, and always denotes the beginning of life ; and in nineteen THE RELIGION OF LIFE. ^ instances it is used to denote tlie beginning of spiritual or religious life, as in this instance in relation to the king- dom of God. There is no necessity for any dispute as to whether <«vw0i» (anothen) means " from above" or " again." It means both. To be born " anothen " is to be born " from above," bom of the Highest, because at verse? five and six and eight, it is explained as born of " the Spirit." To be born of the Spirit is to be born again, or a second time ; and accordingly, the apostle Peter uses a»ay«v»a« (anagennao), to be born again, in exactly the same sense as our Lord uses ytvtriOr] a*(A}9tv, •«'hen he says — " He hath begotten us again unto a living hope," and " being born again, not of corruptible seed [the seed of flesh] but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth." * Birth is the beginning of life. Our lower life begins at birth, and so also our higher life begins. The highest con- cei)tion and aspect of true religion is life, the life of God in the soul of man, life from God and for God. As we can- not live with man without being born of man so w? cannot live to God without being born of God. Life from below is life by a literal or fleshly birth ; life from above is life by a spiritual or supernatural birth. Life for kh eaj-thly kingdom begins with an eaithly birth ; life for the king- dom of heaven begins with a heavenly birth. The two lives never begin together. We come into the world " without strength," without spiritual strength, without the strength of spiritual and divine life. We are by nature ** alienated from the life of God : " This language is definite and decisive. Christ " cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world," because the world is without *1 Peter i. 3, 23. j THE RELIGION OF LIFE. m I i : .:iH life, and the world is without life because it is " without God;" and accordingly Christ says that he is "the life," and that to be without him is to be without life, since " except ye eat the flesh of the Son )f man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." The life from which we are naturally alienated, and which Christ, as the life of the world, has come to give us, begins, as he tells Nicodemus, in a second birth, a birth from above, a bii^th of the Spirit. How else could such life begin ] How else but in birth does any life begin ] As fleshly life always begins in fleshly birth so spiritual life begins in spiritual birth ; and because the spiritual life is immediately of God, it begins in a birth of God. A Christian man is one that is born again to a living hope, the hope that belongs to spiritual life, the living hope that aspires to eternal life in the skies ; and his second birth or regeneration is not by the corruptible seed of flesh but by the incorruptible seed of the Spirit. His second birth is not of material blood or by fleshly choice or by any human force, but by the agency and operation of God. Me is " born of God," as John says ; and " through the gospel " or " belief of the truth," as Paul says. The consequent life corresponds with this commencement. Every possible sort of religion is either vital or mechani- cal, the religion of power or the religion of form. By this distinction every variety of religion may be detected and disf'riminated. Every false religion, every human religion, every superficial and impotent religion is mechanical ; but every true, profound, potent, productive religion is vital. And so our Lord calls the beginning of true religion a birth, to denote vitality, to teach us that religion is life, and not mechanism or ritualism ; and so we are commanded to turn away from all such as haA'e a form of godliness and deny the power, since the kingdom of God is not in word m THE RELIGION OF LIFE. but in power. Every religion that really pleases God anu profits man is the religion of life ; and nil such life is love. Christian life is Christian love ; divine life is divine loA'e ; life from above is love from above ; life to God is love to God ; to be born of God is to be quickened with love from God, such love as will operate and fructify, firat of all towards God, and then towards everything known and lovable under God. So sticred Scripture teaches us. " Hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts," or has been poured forth in our hearts, " by the Holy Spirit which was given us."* " We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren," for love is the life into which we have passed. " He that loveth not abideth in death. "+ " Be- loved, let us love one another, for love is of God ; and every one that lovet^' is born of God and knoweth God, He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." "The end of the commandment is love, out of a pure heart and a good con- science and ftiith unfeigned." " Love is the fulfilling of the law." " Over all these things put on love, which is the bond of pcrfectness." " If a man love me, he will keep my word ; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."f Only as incipient life can the beginning of true religion * Romans v. 5. + 1 John iii. 14: "his brother," says Alford, is omitted in tho three oMcst MSS. ' ... t 1 John iv. 7, 8 ; Matthew xxii. 37-40 ; 1 Timolhy i. 5 ; Komans xiii. 10 ; Colossians iii. 14 ; John xiv. 23. ; ; !i ill 6 THE RELIGION OF LIFE well be likened. It is like the germination of the living seed in the soil, that, with moisture and sunshine, brings foi-th " first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear." But especially is it like the beginning of all human life, to be followed by all the stages of growth, by all the rich variety of relationship, by all the power of action and achievement, by nW the wealth of attainmer*^^ and conscious possession, by all the diversity and intensity of enjoyment, by all the beauty and utility of purity and culture. We never live till we live to Grod , and we never live to God till we are born of God. It matters little when and where we were born of earth ; it matters everything to be born of heaven. This is our true nativity, from which we should reckon, and for which we should ** ever- more rejoice." ^ r ?m § 2. The inception of new life is a Spiritual cleansing. "Nicodemus saith unto him — * How can a man be born when he is old ? Can he enter the second time infc) his mother's womb and be born ? ' Jesus answered — ' Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Sp.rit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.'" John iii. 4, 5. Nicoderaus the aged asks how an old man could be born. ^, Nicodemus, the formalist and ritualist, with an. ol i man's prejudices and slowness to believe, asks how a man could be literally born a second time of his mother. He ought , not to have supposed for a moment that a teacher sent from God, accredited by miracles, could utter such an _ absurdity. But in fact he had not a glimpse of our Lord's spiritual meaning. Apparently, religion to him was all . external ; and with everything external he was well acquainted. Through his long life and in his high position, THE RELIGION OF LIFE. he had boon familiar with the temple and its services. He knew all about the priests and their vestments and duties. He understood all the institutions and observances of Judaism. But of such a thing as an old man or a full- grown man or any human being having a second birth, he had never thought or heard. How does our Lord deal with such a case 1 How does the greatest of teachers instruct such an objector 1 By what means does he seek to pour light on such a darkened heart 1 By what comparisons and words does he explain to such a man his own opening utterance, the great doctrine of a divine birth, the divine beginning of a divine life ] His skill as ft teacher will appear in his answer to his visitant's objections, and will suggest to every teacher the best method of illustrating the inception of spiritual life. • j The answer, in the fifth verse, signifies that by a second or heavenly birth is meant a spiritual cleansing. To be born from above is to be " born of water and the Spirit." What does this mean ] The conj unction kxi (kai) is some- times epexegetical or explanatory, having the sense of " even ; " and so it is here : " born of water, even the Spirit."* Water, as the great means of cleansing or purify- ing, is an emblem or symbol of the sanctifying Spirit. As we cleanse our utensils, garments and persons with water, so the Spirit of God cleansing the soul is symbolized by water. He alone can cle.inse the soul, and his cleansing is necessary because the soul is naturally unclean. " Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean 1 " Who can bring a clean life out of an unclean heart ] " Not one." * "The kingdom of God and (even) his righteousness," Matthew vi. 38. In the following passages x.xi (and) is rightly rendered " even : " Matthew viii. 27 ; Matthew xxv. 29 ; Mark vi, 2 j Luke xii. 7 ; Acts v. 39 ; Romans v. 7 ; Hebrews xi. 19. 8 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. " Eitlier make the tree good and its fruit will be good, or else make the tree corrupt and its fniit will be corrupt." The ceremonial and legal d(ifilements of Judaism were in- tended to illustrate and teach the defiling of the soul by sin ; and the numerous ablutions of Judaism were intended to illustrate and teach the washing of salvation. God ha s graciously made ample provision for our purification. " The blood of Jesus Chnst his Son cleanseth us from all sin ; " the Spirit, as the sanctifier, is called " Holy ; ' through " the truth " of the word we arc sanctified ;* and accordingly a fountain " for sin and for uncleanness " is open 3d in the house of David. " For I will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed. "t The blood is the life. Religion is life, as its beginning is a birth, the inception of life ; and its cleansing if, the cleansing of the blood, which is the cleansing of life. The countless multitude bet'ore the throne consists of those only who had in this world washed their robes and made them white^ or clean, in the blood of the Lamb. Their original cleansing is the birth from above, a birth of the Spiiit and water, the great inceptive cleansing. Scripture is its own aiid best interpreter; and accord- ingly we find a parallel expression in the words of the Forerunner : " I indeed baptize you with water, but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose : he shall baptize you with the Jloly Ghost and with fire,"J even with fire. In this passage, the Spirit and fire are in conjunction ("Spirit and fire"), to denote that they are one, just as in John iii. 5, the Spirit and water are in conjunction (" water and the Spiiit,") to denote that they are one. In the former * John xvii. 17. + Joel iii. 21. X Luke iii. 16. THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 9 par,3!ige, the Spirit's emblem or symbol is firo ; in the latter water. As in ]juke, water is in opposition to the Spirit and firo (I with Vt^ator, He with the Spirit and tire), to denote that the Avater Is to be taken literally and the fire 8}>iritually, so in John, Hesh is in opposition to the Spirit and water (born of the flesh, born of the Spii-it and water), to denoto that the flesh is to be taken literally and the water spiritnally. As John contrasts his water with Christ's Spirit and fire, so Christ contrasts Nicodemns's flesh with his own Spirit and water. " That which is born of the flesh is flesh," as you Nicodemus understand it ; " that which is born of the Spirit is. spirit," as I, the heavenly teacher, inculcate it. The birth that you speak of is simply a birth of flesh, the birth that I speak of is a birth of the Spirit ; and the S^jirit that I speak of is a cleansing or purifying Spirit, the Spirit even water, tlie Spirit that cleanses as by water, the Spirit whose symbol or sign i» water, and who engenders, therefore, nothing but what ia pure and holy. In Luke, John's baptismal water is in, opposition to Clu'ist's baptismal fire, to distiiig'iish the ritual from the spiritual ; in John, Nicodemus's generative flesh is. in opposition, to Christ's regenerative SpLit, to distinguish the carnal from the spiritv 1. In John's conjunction of Christ's. Spirit and. fii-e, there are not two baptisms, a baptism of the Spirit and a baptism of fire, but otie baptism, whose agent is. the Spirit and whose sign is fij'e ; that 'is, a divine fiery bi4)tism, that searches, penetrates and purifies the soul, a» fire is the most searching, penetrating, purif^ing^ agency in natur^. In Christ's, conjiuicbioni oT the Spirit and water, there are not two births, a birth of the Spirit and a birth of Avater, but one bii'th, a second birth,, a birth from above, a birth of the Spirit of God, according to the symbol or emblem of water, a birth that purifies the soul, w MF m THE RELIGION OF LIFE. !!!l |:i| I I as water jmrlfioa the hody. Paul too (Uniote.s tlio purification of a second birth or regcnenitioii, when ho ttlls uh that God Haved iis, according to his mercy, " by the washing of regeneration, even (x..... ^>.„r,,: •,v...^.. ,.. ,^.,. ,,,,,.,. .;...,.,^, ,...,:' i 'I fir If THE RELIGION OF LIFE. \ '" § 3. Spfrilual pitrili/ is the Nature of C%/d in man. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is Bi)irit. " — John iii. 6. Man was made in the moral ima^e of God, and to restore him to cleanness or holiness is to restore him to the divine likeness or to moral oneness v^ith God. This restoration is always and everywhere a divine achievement. Holiness is invariably the propagation of God, and all holy beings are his children. Fleshly life is the offspring of fleshly par- entage, for " that which is bom of the flesh is flesh ;" and spiritual life is the offspring of spiritual parentage, for " that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Parent and child are of one nature. Find out the nature *bf the parent, and you find out the nature of the child ; find out the nature of the child, and you find out the nature of the parent. If the parent is flesh, the child is flesh ; if the parent is S])irit, the child is spirit. God is the only generating or repro. ductive Spirit in the universe ; and therefore" all spiritual beings are his offspring. God is the only original Holy Spirit in the universe, and all holy beings are his moral offspring. The spirit of man war holy when he was divinely generated or created, and he can be restored to holiness only by being divinely regenerated or re-created. We cannot cleanse ourselves ; we cannot cleanse one another ; no angel or minister or church can cleanse us ; no ordinances or institutions, no ceremonies or sacraments, can cleanse us. It is not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, in the water of baptism or otherwise, that makes us clean, but the washing of a second birth, the renewing of the Holy Ghost, to which belongs " the inquiry of a good conscience after THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 13 ,., ii God."* Tho typo, |mttorn or Htauflanl of this ])uri(ictviion in tho holiiioss of (Jod himself, not creature purity or con- ventional excellence. lUrth is tlu? inception of life ; tho new birth in tho inception of now life ; the birfeh of the Spirit is tho inception of a spiritual and divine life. Ifoli- ness in man, holiness in tho world, lia« no other commence- ment. Tlie liolinesH that otherwise originates is a false apjiearance and an empty name ; and those tliat preach it are as resounding hrass or a clanging cymbal. Holiness is the reproductive work of God, the puqxjse of the Father, the image of the Son, the produce of the Spirit. Since no man is or can be self-sanctified, tho praise of all holinesH belongs to Got i : "Wo are his workmanship;" "by grace are ye saved." Holiness in num is the reflection of God's light, tho influx of his love, the genenition of his grace, the imiMirtatiou of his nature, tho indwelling and influence, the fruit and life, of his blessed Spirit. As soon as we begin to be sanctified, that ir:, as sooii as we are born of God, we are children of Gotl, infants in his family, to grow up in holi- ness to tlie strength and stature of manhood. Whoever is born of God is a child of God, and has all tlie privileges and promises, tho immimities and advantages, of his moral oftspring. He is a ixirtaker of the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world through lust.f He i» under the discipline of the Father, that he may be a jwir- taker, more and more, of his heaveidy Father's holiness.;): That nature or holiness is love, "for God is love " and " lovo is of God, and every one that loveth is bom of God and kuoweth God."|j Tiie Christian's life henceforth is liis heavenly Father's care, to be shielded and sheltered, to be * 1 Peter ivi. 21. — Alfoid's Revision. +2 Peter i. 4. v . , X Hebrews xii. 10. |1 1 John iv. 7, 8. . . - mm 14 THE RELIGION OP LIFE. Ill li^ liil' ' 1 " ! lit'll 1 - ' J; :: I! 11' nourished and festered, to be developed and atrengthene-^^ to be trained and employed, for the glory of God and the maturity of the skies. This filial participation of the Divine nature is the highest aspect of religion that is conceivable or possible, and is fitly called godliness. To be a Christian is to be godly or godlike, to be the very offspring of God, to love him and commune with him as Father, to have a name and a place in his family, to be the associate and equal of his many ■children, to be an heir of himself and a joint-heir with Christ. " Beloved," says the apostle John, with exulting gratitude, " now are we the sous of God." " Whom, having not seen, ye love ; in whom, though now ye see hini not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeak- able aud full of glory." "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a living hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." The believer in Jesus Christ is said to le "born" or "begotten" of God ; and he is again denoted in the same chapter as "bom" or "begotten" of God, to teach us that he is a filial partaker of the divine nature. With such a nature in him, " he keepeth himself" (or "it keopeth him,") "un- spotted from the world;" and escaping the world's cor- ruption of lust, he cleanses himself " from all filthiness of the flegh and spirit," and " pei-fects holiness in the fear of God.'* *lJohn iii. 2; 1 Peter i. 8 ; 1 Peter i. 3; 1 John v. 1, 18; 2 Corinthians vii. 1. „^.». THE RELIGION OP LIFE. 15 III § 4. Regeneration is a Mysterious certainty. "Marvel not that I said unto thee — Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth wheie it liateth [where it pleases or where it will], and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it corieth and whither it goeth : so is every one that is born of the Spirit. "—John iii. 7, 8. . , " The wind blows where it will," that is, according to its own nature ; and so the Spirit of God operates on men as he wills or according to his own supreme and perfect nature ; not arbitrarily, but " according to the good pleasure of his will " and " after the counsel of his will." The good pleasure of his will means benevolence ; and the counsel of his will means wisdom, the wisdom of congruity with his own benevolence and his own work of creation. " The world cannot receive the Holy Spirit " because " it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him," and it neither beholds him nor knows him because it " always resists " him ; but the Father gives the Spirit " to them that obey him " and " to them that ask him." The Spirit may be " grieved " as well as resisted ; he may be " vexed " or " quenched ; " but his "fruit" in all believers is "in all goodness and right- eousness and truth."* ' The operation of the wind is partly known, for " thou hearest the sound thereof;" and partly unknown, for "thou canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit." The Spirit's emblem is now the wind, as just before it was the water ; and as the water signifies power to cleanse^ the * Ephesians i. 5, 11 ; John xiv. 17 ; Acta vii. 51 ; Acts v. 32; Luke xi. 13 ; Ephesians iv. 30 ; Isaiah as*im. + Romans viii. IG, and Galatians iv. 8. It Galatiana V. 22, 23. > i 18 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 3' ■> I 1:1 t :«■ '. -r He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. . , If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his lovo is perfected in us. Hereby we know that we dwell in him, and he in us. because he hath given us of his Spirit. . . God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. . . Every one that loveth Him that begat loveth hin^also that is begotten of him. . . We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and ye know that no murderer hath etoi'nal life abiding in him."* He that believes on the Son of God has not only the \>r?tness in himself, but gives evidence in his life of his new nativity. Faith and love produce their proper fruits among men. "If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him. . '. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin ; for his seed remaineth ; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the childi-en of the devil : whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. . . By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments : and his com- mandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. . . We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not ; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself [or, it keepeth him], and the wicked one toiicheth him not."t As in the blowing of the wind so in the work of the 1 John : passim. + 1 John : passim. THE RELIGION OF LIFE 19 Sj)irit, there is mystery as well as certainty : " thou canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth." How could it be otherwise 1 Nature is so full of mysteries that the solution of one problem is the creation of another. Since Job was baffled and humbled with many a " knowest thou " and " canst thou " and "who has done it," all human research has been illustrating Christ's words to Nicodemus. Much has been learned, and so " thou hearest the sound ; " and much has eluded our research, to remind us that we cannot " tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth." If the finite around us and below us be so difficult, what must the infinite be 1 If thou canst not tell the whence and the whither of the wind, how canst thou by searching find out God, or by thy little analysis and synthesis comprehend the religious relationships of the Eternal Spirit 1 Religion is in part a mystery, and ever must be. A religion without mystery is a fraud and a fallacy. If I cannot comprehend myself, in whom are combined the dust of ^ai*th and the intellect of heaven, the uniformity of mechanism and the multiformity of freedom, how can I comprehend the moral operations of the Most High ? If I cannot comprehend the lowliest life, the springing grass, the opening flower, the humming insect, how can I comprehend the life of God in my soul 1 if I cannot comprehend the Spirit's work in myself, though I hear his voice, how can I comprehend his work in otliers 1 Every sound that we hear, every breeze that we feel, may well teach us humility. Y7hat has tho wind done on its way to us ] It may have been " the gentle breath of morn " or the terrible simoom. What is the wind leaving us to do ? It may go to urge the freighted ship, to fan the fevered couch, or to desolate the fields of beauty and strew the ocean with wrecks. Let us not pre- ;l ¥ 1 i-. 20 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 1 1 !} • sume to sit in judgment on the spiritual condition of others or determine by appearances. There may be deep emotion and mighty conflicts in some that seem unmoved ; and there may be little life under goodly aspects. But one thing we should never forget : the Spirit operates every- where, for his emblem is the universal wind. Nothing escapes his penetrating power. Let us take it for granted that every one we know, every one we meet, is convinced and drawn by the Spirit, for he convinces the world ; and let us work and hope accordingly. Wherever we go, the wind blows ; wherever we go, the Spirit works ; let us seek to be his messengers and instruments, to lead men into submission, that they too may know the joyful sound, " Let him as he listeth blow ;" as the gentle zephyr or as " a rushing mighty wind ; " with a " still small voice " or with " the thunder of his power." Let us hear him for ourselves in faith ; and let us speak for him to others with praying love. Let him that heareth " come " and " say come." § 5. The mysterious certainty of regeneration is the Consent of Revelation. **Nicodemu8 answered and said unto him — 'How can Ihese things lie?* Je-us answered and aaid unto him — 'Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?' " — John iii. 9, 10. "When a man has grown old in the profession and official maintenance of a religion that he does not understand, and to whose chief realities he demurs, what is to be done with him? Just what Jesus did with Nicodemus. Turn him back on his own authorities, and tell him of his inconsist- encies. At the sight of incongruity between one aspect of himself and another, between his objections on the one I n fl THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 21 hand and his acts and authorities on the other, his very self-love may help to lead him from objection to better inquiry, and from doubting to believing. At all events, no other mode of treatment seems open and available. " Art thou a master of Israel, a teacher and ruler of Israel, an authorized expositor and administrator of the laws and principles of Israel, as contained in the Pentateuch, the Prophets and the Psalms, and knowest not these things 1 For the very things that I tell you are in the sacred writings that you profess to believe, that you glory in be- lieving, that you officially explain and maintain, that, as a member of the grand council, you magnify and minister, for the good of all the people. What is the purport of all the Mosaic lustrations but spiritual cleansing] What is the use of distinguishing between clean and unclean but to teach and promote moral purity, holiness to the Lord 1 What do all the psalms teach but purity of heart and life, secret conversation with God, a life that springs from him and continually returns to him 1 What else does the fifty- first psalm teach, when it prays for a clean heart and a right spirit, for washing into more than snowy whiteness, for truth in the inward parts and wisdom in the hidden 1 What else does the thirty -second psalm mean by a spirit without guile, a spirit compassed with mercy and songs of salvation, an upright or righteous heart that both secretly and openly rejoices in God ] What else do the prophets mean by the divine gift of a heart of flesh for a heart of stone, by the cleansing of the heart from all filthiness and idols, by the cleansing of the blood, by the sprinkling of clean water, b" the circumcision of the heart for the com- plete love of God ? And is not the mysterious certainty of the Spirit's work denoted in the Scripture of truth? What 1 i;i .P l''t . i , ;ii: 22 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. else does David mean, when he says — * Take not thy Holy Spirit from me. . . Restore unto me the joy of thy salva- tion, and u[)hold me with thy free Spirit. . . Thy Spirit ia good ; lead me into the land of uprightness. . . Whither shall I go from thy Spirit 1 ' A new, spiritual, holy life, beginning with a supernatural nativity, sustained and increased by intercourse with God, is the end and aim, the purport and theme, of all divine revelation. It is common to all the Mosaic writings, to the law, the prophets and the psaluis ; it is common to all divine communications, from the testimony that Abel was righteous and that Enoch l)leased God to Malachi's assurance that God hearkens aiid hears when his servants hold holy converse. It is the con- sentience of all heavenly oracles, the convergence of all Bacred influences. What is all real religion for but to make men new and clean ; what does all real religion mean but a regenerated heart and a noly life ? And what is this but a life beginning in a second and sanctifying birth of the Spirit 1 And art thou, Nicodemus, a teacher and ruler of Israel, God's most highly-favoured people, and k newest not these things 1 Art thou a light and a guide in the land of Israel, and knowest not these things ] What hast thou been reading and hearing and judging for so long, till thou art now gi'own old, if thou hast not learnt the first truths, the foundation facts, the primary lessons, of all holy conversation and godliness ? " Such remonstrance and admonition may be addressed with increased force to all the teachers of the Christian Church that understand and inculcate only outward things, or that place inward things on a false foundation, and attempt to deduce them from a wrong beginning. The teachers of baptismal regeneration, of salvation by priestly prescription and absolution, by sacramental institutions and THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 23 foiTiiH, by ritualistic observances, are tlio successors of Nico- d»*mus as he came by night to Jesus ; they are blind leaders of the blind, forgers of errors and fountains of lies, much more guilty and inexcusable than Nicodemus, as they have in their hands the writings of the New Testament in addi- tion to the Old, the conversation of Christ with Nicodemus, the instances and examples of the Acts of the Apostles, and all the comments and illustrations of the apostolical Epistles. Scarcely less blamable are the members of Churches who piuctically hold with Nicodemus agjiinst their own formu- laries, and neglect the inspired word of truth. Many pray for the cleansing of the thoughts of their hearts by the in- spiration of the Holy Spirit, that they may perfectly love God and worthily magnify his holy name, who yet know nothing of a divine cleansing, and stoutly deny it. Many pray to be saved from sin, and yet go on in it. Many hear the gospel without receiving it. Sooner or later they must hear the Master saying : Are ye called by my name and know not these things ] They must either hear him now in mercy or at the last in "judgment without mercy." 3 ill § 6. The consent of Revelation is Christ's ovm testimony. "Verily, verily, I say unto thee — We speak that we do know, and testify that we bave seen ; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things ? And no man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man [which is in heaven.]"* — John iii. 11, 12, 13. * Textual criticism (that is, comparison of the best manuscripts, ancient vjpdious and (luutations) determines that the word> " which ia in heaven " (v. 13,) are no part of the text. See Drs. Milligau & II iberts oa "The words of the New Testament : " Edinburgh, 1873. 24 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. ^M i : ,'■■!■■■ : 1(1'!:, « What all the Scriptures, with one consent, declare is what Christ himself now testifies. The great Pei-sonage, to whom all times pointed, for whom all times prejmi-ed, and whom all tlie nations desired, is now in the world, expound- ing and inculcating the new life, testifying the nature and necessity of the new birth, particularly to his nocturnal visitant. The sujiernatural inception of a new and holy life now rests on the latest and highest authority, for " the J^on of God is come and hath given us an understanding." Christ testifies nothing by report or at second hand, but only what ho himself ideally knows, what he himself has seen. This language implies his divinity, as when he declared that Abraham had seen his day with gladness. All that he had seen and known as man was utterly in- sufficient to determine the character of all the entrants into the kingdom of God ; but as God, he was the lawgiver and Lord of that kingdom and knew all about it, and now what he knows he makes known. He si)eak8 with authority, and not as the Scribes. He alone, in all the world, knows the final kingdom of heaven, prepared from the foundation of the world, into which, at the final judg- ment, the righteous shall enter, by the invitation of tho Judge himself, the veiy Son of man witli whom Nicodemus now converses. To that kingdom no man has yet ascended or can ascend till the judgment. Even David is not yet ascended to those final heavens ; and their crown, the crown of righteousness, was not expected by Paul before " that day," the final day of inquiry and award. The heaven where Christ now is, and where all his disembodied saints are also, between death and the judgment, is not the heaven that judgment will award, but " the third heaven," the mediatorial heaven. Christ as God is in the hijrhest and final heaven, for he came down from it ; but Christ, as THE RELIOION OF LIFE. 25 Mediator between Gotl and man, is in the kingdom of redemptive grace and truth, ** the heavenly places " of the Father's right hand and of intermediate blesHednetiH. "In my Father's house," he says, "are many mansions ;" and one great purpose of his departure from this world was to prepare an intermediate place in that house, for his dis- ciples, between death and the judgment. The final heaven needed no preparation, for it was pro])ared of old, " from the foundation of the world ; " but an intermediate place was needed, now that God was manifest in the flesh and his own were to be collected with him ; and this place is prepared by the depai*ted Son of God. Paul was caught up into this place, but not into the heaven of final reward ; for " no man ' hath ascended up to [this] heaven but he that came down from heaven, the Son of man." It is customary in the Scriptures to speak of things under lower or earliei names, the names already known, till the time comes to speak of them more fully under their higher and final names. Under Judaism, for instance, the name of Christ was the Son of David, the name of his harbinger was Elijah, and the . name of his church and kingdom was Judah, Jerusalem, Mount Zion. And so the name of the God-man is to Nicodemus " the Son of man," till the time comes, farther on in the conversation, to speak of himself more eminently as " the Son of God," " the only-begotten Son." But though he first speaks of himself under the lower name, he plainly implies his higher nature. It was not as man, but as God, he came down from heaven ; it was not as man, but as God, he knew and had seen whatevei pertains to the highest and final heaven ; and when Nico- demus persists in his prejudice and incredulity, our liord brings to bear upon him his liighest argument, his final influence, the very competence and authority that Nicode- 2 R* \H 1 ii THE RELIOION OF LIFE. miiB had partly recognized at the outset. " Verily, verily, I say unto thee we speak that we do know and testify that we liavo seen, as freely ascendiiif; to lu'aven and coming down from it, and therefore perfectly familiar with it." What does our Lord mean by tlio distinction between " earthly things " and ** heavenly things ? " He has been telling Nicodemus the things of the new birth only : why docs he call them earthly ? T^ie usual answer is that the new birth is an earthly thing because it takes place on the earth. Is this answer sutisfactory 1 Does the place or time of an occurrence determine its nature 1 Is everything earthly and not heavenly that takes place on the earth 1 Divine manifestations and communications were, surely not earthly because they took place on the earth. The incar- nation of the Son of God was not on this account earthly, or the descent of the Spirit on Christ at his baptism, or on men at Pentecost. The kingdom of heaven is not earthly because it comes to men on the earth. The life of a Chris- tian man, though it takes place on the earth, is not earthly, for " our country is in the heavens,"* and God * hath raised us up together with Christ, and made us sit together with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus."t If our new life is heavenly, how can the birth that begins it be earthly ? How can a birth " from above " be earthly '? How can a birth of the Spirit of God be earthly '{ Surely some better reason must be found for calling the things of the new birth " earthly " than the occurrence of the new birth on the earth. , Since the distinction of earthly things and heavenly can- not be taken literally, it must be taken figuratively ; and in its own chapter, the third of John, we have a clue to its * Phil. iii. 29. + Epli. ii. G. I THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 27 moaning. In answer to his own disciples, John the Baptist contrasts himself witii Christ. Christ is the bridegroom, John is the bridegroom's friend. Christ must increase, John must decrease. Christ comes from above, and is above all ; John is of the earth, earthly, and speaketh of the earth.* Comparing Judaism and Christianity, the former is earthly, the latter heavenly. They are so com- pared in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The things of Chris- tianity are " things in the heavens," " good things to come ;*' their Jewish " patterns " were " things of earth," things of " a worldly sanctuary," " things ordained," " carnal ordin- ances," " things purged with blood ; " and accordingly we find " the patterns," that is, the patterns on earth, of things in the heavens, distinguished from *' tl' heavenly things themselves," that is, we find earthly things distinguished from heavenly things, as Christ distinguishes them to Nicodemus. The Baptist is "of the earth, earthly," be- cause he belongs to the earthly or inferior economy of Judaism, and " speaketh of the earth," to " decrease ; " but Jesus " coming from above," or " coming down from heaven," is " above all," to " increase." His words and his harbinger's should be compared. He says of himself to Nicodemus — " We speak that we do know and testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our testimony ; " John says of him — " What he hath seen and heard he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony." Jesus says of him- self to Nicodemus — " The Son of Man came down from heaven ;" John says of him — " He that cometh from above," " he that cometh from heaven," is " above all." The parallelism of our Lord's words and John's is too clear and specific to be doubted, and makes " the earth " of the * John iii. 25, &c. 28 THE BELIGION OF LIPE. ii 1 IP lis ^it^. latter explanatoiy of the " earthly things " of the foiiner, and the latter's phrase, " from heaven " or " above all," explanatoiy of the former's phrase, " heavenly things." So also our Lord contrasts the Jews, as " from beneath " and " of this world," with himself, as "from above " and "not of this world."* When Jesus spoke to Nicodemus of a supernatural birth, ho spoke of what really belonged to Judaism, in common with every era and revelation ; and if Nicodemus could not believe the teaching of his own Scrip- tures and his own times, how should he believe if Jesus told him of the things of later and higher j-evelation and of the fulness of time, the " heavenly things " of the kingdom of heaven, not yet come but '-^ at hand 1 " If he could not believe the things of Sinai, how should he believe the things of Sion 1 If Jerusalem the earthly, with its symbolical purification and supernatural light, was incredible, what would Jerusalem the heavenly be, what would the latter day glory be, with its fulness of truth, its Pentecostal power, itii unveiled vision, its equality of Jews and Gentiles, its freedom from Jewish yokes, its inheritance of the world ] In all this contrast, one very important thing is clear, that the spiritual nativity of a new and holy life is neither a Christian nor a Jewish peculiarity, but the consensus of all revelations and dispensations. It is not the Gentile only or the Jew only, but " man " that needs to be born again. All doub, respecting it should now forever cease, for he that Came from heaven and ascends to heaven tells us of a divine nature in man, by a spiritual and divinely-cleansing birth, that, however mysterious in others, is as certain as the sound of the wind to every one that is begotten of God. John viii. j. THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 29 § 7. What Christ himself now testifies is Absolutely necessary. fSomething but not everything in religion is necessaiy. To say that nothing in religion is necessary is to say that religion itself is not necessary ; and if religion is not neceS' sary, what is necessary ] Religion is relationship with God ; true religion is right relationship with Grod ; and is not this necessary] If il; is not necessary to be rightly related to the Supreme Being, it in not necessary to be right with any subordinate being : if it is not necessary to be right with the Infinite and the Eternal, what mattera it whether we are right or wrong with every finite and temporary being ; if it is not necessary to be right with the Maker and Monarch of the universe, we need give no heed to any other or lower relationship, domestic, conventional or civil. Is nothino: then essential ] Reason and conscience recoil from such latitudinarianism and confusion, and com- pel us to recognize the necessity of something in religion. Is that something everything 1 If it is, there is no room in religion for human imperfection, no allowanne for con- scientious differences, no tolerance for honest misappre- hension, no distinction in law or gospel between ligliter and weigiitier matters, between jo'^s and tittles, or letters and strokes, and the body of the truth. Reason and con- science recoil from such impracticable bigotry. We dare not make necessary what God has not made necessaTy, for he is the only competent ordainer and judge of reUgioua necessity ; and wo daro not make circumstantial what he has made essential, It is for liim to say what is or is not pssentlj to hin^self ; and it is for \\h to say it only in t - ■■'>va/Kt} 30 THE RELIGION '►P LIFE. ! ■ t 1 il^ f. i Iv* 4 ' I it-"' rehearsal. According, then, to the Master himself in this conversation, what is necessary in religion is the DIVINE BIRTH THAT BEGINS IT. To end well we must begin well ; to be well we must become well ; to walk aright with God, we must become right, according to his word ; to live we must be born ; to live to God, we must be born of God ; to be holy before him, we must be inceptively cleansed. Thrice, and with the utmost explicitness, solem- nity and emphasis, our Lord declares wLat is necessary for the kingdom of God. First of all, he says : — " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man [any man] be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Seeing is knowing, personally and experimentally, for one's self. So the Greek word (s»5sw), occurring here, signifies, through- out the New Testament, where it abounds. " Jesus an- swered — ' Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' " We cannot know the kingdom of God without belonging to it ; and we cannot belong to it, with- out entering it. The kingdom of God is not something into which a man is bom but which he enters, and for entrance into which he must be spiritually born. The birth and the entrance are not coincident ; the birth pre- cedes the entrance ; the birth is necessaw to the entrance. Knowing and entering practically coincide, but not birth and entrance. The birth is here, the entrance is hereafter ; and the kingdom, as thus distinguislied, must mean the ultimate and retributive kingdom of God, the heaven from which Christ came and to which, as God, he ascends. In this world, the kingdom of God, as grace, comes to us ; in the next world we shall come to it and enter it, as glory ; {in4 accordingly, it will be found, ou a careful examination, THE RELIGION OP LIFE. 31 I ,1 that entrance into the kingdom of God, in the New Testa- ment, points to the futurity and finality of the kingdom.* Our Lord plainly teaches Nicodenius that the new birth is necessary to heaven, that none shall enter heaven without it. " Except a man," any man, Jew or Gentile, " be born again, born from above, born of water and the Spirit, ho cannot know, he cannot enter/' he cannot belong to, this highest and latest kingdom of God, the kingdom of collected mediatorial results and final judicial awards. " Mai-vel not," he says, asserting the necessity for the third time, " that I said unto thee ye mast be born aa^ain." Wonder not at the reiterated necessity of the new birth. Nativity is necessary to life, and life is necessary to heaven. The kingdom of God is not, the kingdom of the dead but of the living. It consists of all the members of God's family, gathered into one. There can never be any one in heaven but God and his holy children. God is the Father-king, and all else in heaven are his subject-sons. His eldest sons that never sinned will be there ; his younger sons will be there, whom his grace sfives by a spiritual nativity and a new life ; and no others can be there. The dead can never be found there, or the alien, or the outcast. We are spirit- ually born into the kingdom of grace here, into the family of God now ; and we hope, in consequence, to enter into the kingdom of glory hereafter. This is the only process in the ordination of God and in the nature of things. Nativity in the kingdom of grace is necessary to entrance into the kingdom of glory. " The holy to the holiest leads," as the holy place, in the Jewish temple, led to the holiest of all. ^ ... . * Matt. V. 20 ; Matt. vii. 21 ; Matt, xviii. 3 ; Matt. xix. 23, 24 j Mark ix. 47 ; Mark x. 23-25 j Acts xiv. 22 -, 2 Peter i. 10, 11. V.ll ' Sit i'i ■pi ■f » li' 1 .Si, i <' I V. S2 THE RULIOION OF LIFE. This necessity holds good in religion, under every aspect and illustrution. True religion is love, the Christian's res- ponsive filial love to Clod and consequent fraternal love to his people. This love lives and reigns among the mem- bei-s of the divine family in earth and heaven. No man belongs to this family or can have the love of it till he in born into it. As soon as our new life in this family begins, our love in it begir", for then the love of God is poured into our heai-ts by the Holy Ghost given unto us. The one thing essential in this family is love, the life of love. " He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. . . • Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. . . He that loveth not hi« brother abideth in death. . . He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. . . We love him be- cause he first loved us." " Though I speak vdth the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am be- come as sounding Vjrass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth nu nothing."* Prophecies, tongues and know- ledge shall (lisai)pear, but " love never faileth." Other things are partial, love is perfection. Of the three that " abide," love is " the greatest." There is no Christian union without it, for it is " the perfect bond." There is no obedience to God without it, for it is " the fulfilling of the law." There is no likeness to God without it, for " God is love." It is the only antagonism and cure of selfishness, M * 1 Cor, xiii. 1-3, ^i^ 1 THE AELIQION OF LIFE. S8 for " love is kind ; " it is the mighty motive of Christian enterprise and heroism ; it is the way to heaven, and heaven itself, where, in the perfection of love, we shall have face- to-face acquaintance, and "know as we are known." It is properly the commencement of the life of true religion that is denoted and urged in the first part of this conversation. Other aspects of this life come out as the Master proceeds. The highest life begins with Birth, a bii*th from above. Such a birth is a Purification, not of the body but of the soul, not ritual but real, not of man but of God. Such a purification is a divine Propagation OR Regeneration, the participation by man of God's moral nature or excellence, especially the excellence of love. In such a participation, there is the certainty of a conscious- ness which the Spiivit creates by the sunshine of his pres- ence and the sanctity of his produce, but with the mystery that is inseparable from everything vital and divine. This nativity from heaven is Common to all real revelation and all authentic religion, and is sjmbolized in the Jewish law, sought and experienced in the psalms, illustrated and exalted in the prophets. Now, however, it has tho Specialty of Messianic testimony, that places it, to the true disciple, beyond controversy and doubt. This testi- mony also thoroughly establishes among men the Necessity of this supernatural birth ; for without it there can be no place for man in the family of God, and no place, at the last, in that kingdom of heaven that shall comprise and crown all the children of the Highest in glory everlasting. This necessity is the necessity of holiness for the presence of the Most Holy, the necessity of purification for the unclean, the necessity of commencement to conclusion, the :! :,. \\ I- i ! 34 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. necessity of birth to life, the necessity of man's divine regeneration to his divine sonship, the necessity in which all revelations concur, and which the Revealer himself now specially testifies. What Christ testifies of heaven is what he knows and has seen ; for though, as man, he was born of man, lie is infinitely higher. The heaven that ho came to people and prepare for is the very heaven from which he descended and to which he alone ascends. Whatever belongs to it he knows ; and no man can eventually ascend to it, except in conformity with his teaching and testimony, by the belief of himself as the Light and Life of men, by his regenerating Spirit, that cleanses like the water, and communicates and vivifies like the universal wind. '■':ii*','l'--fi .,'-;,.i|.!J^ tf? ■■•■'I;' CHAPTEK II. NEW LIFE IS THE FRUIT OP DEATH. "i ;'vj 11 V-, § 1. The Death that gives life. ** And as Mo3es lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." John iii. 14. From the nature of the highest life, we naturally pass to its origin or cause. How is such life to be accounted for ? How is it that man can be made a partaker of the divine nature, a member of the heavenly family, an ultimate inheritor of the kingdom of God 1 The second part of the conversation is the answer, in the form of a comparison between the means of life to the serpent-bitten Israelites, in the wilderness, and the means of life to all mankind. Let us fairly set before us the things compared. THE RELIGION OF LIFE. ^ " And the people spake against God and against Moses — * Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in tlie wilderness ? For there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth tlds light bread.' And the Lord sent fiery serpents among tiie people, and they bit the people ; and much people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses and said — * We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Loud and against thee ; pray unto the Lord that he take away the serpents from us.' And Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said unto Moses — * Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole : and it shall come to pass that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.' And Moses made a serpent of brass and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived."* What does the lifting up of the Son of Man mean] " Then said Jesus unto them — ' When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am he and that I do nothing of myself ; but as my Fatlier hath taught me, I speak these things.' "f " ' Now is the jule mea:is of that result, regard to an apiK)inted object, and in the publicity of that object ; the contrast lies between the elevated foe and the elevated victor, between the sight of the Destroyer and the sight of tlie Saviour, for salvatfoii. But the grand tnith of the com- parison is that the death of the Son of Man is the ap- pointed and provided means of life to mankind. Thif. truth pervades the Bible. To Abel, believing God and oftering a slaughtered lamb, God vouchsafed acceptance with witness of righteousness ; while Cain, with a mere thank-offering, was rejected. The offending Israelite, under the law, brought his bleeding sacrifice, and was for- given. And nou', whoever accepts the provided and pub- lished sacrifice of Christ shall not i)erish but have everlast- ing life. Our LorcJ does not say that the Son of Man was born for salvation by believing in him, or that he lived and ministered for salvation bv believing; in him ; but he goes farther, he tells much more, by saying that he must be lifted up, " signifying what death he should die," for our life by believing. " The hour is come," said Jesus on another occasion, " that the Son of Man should be glorified. THE RELIOION OF LIFE. 37 Verily, verily, I say unto you except a corn of wheat fall into the ;;'*ound and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."* Chi-ist is that corn of wheat who came from heaven to earth, to sufior and die, that by dying he might multiply his life into a glorious golden har- vest of ransomed and regenerated souls. " For when we were yet without strength," the strength of spiritual health and life, when we were " without God" or as it is immedi- ately expressed " ungodly," or " while we were yet sinners," Christ died for us, so as that " being now justified by hi^ blood," by the loss of his life or by his death, ** we shall be saved from wrath through him," being " reconciled to God by the death of his Son."t " In that he died, he died unto sin once.";|: " Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures."§ " Our Lord Jesus Christ died for us, that whether we wake or sleep we should live together with him. "I I " Christ ai)peared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself " ; " he was once offered to bear the sins of many. "IT " Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness ; by whose stripes ye were healed."** What comment do such words require i What controveniy do such words admit J As there is mystery in life so also is there mystery in the means of life. Salvation has always two aspects, the aspect of its origin and the aspect of its opei-ation, its aspect towards God from whom it comes and its asj)ect towards man to whom it comes. In its first aspect, it is necessarily incompiehensible because everything divine is incomprehen- * John xii. 23, 24. § 1 Cor, XV. 3. t Romans v. G-IO. il 1 Thess. V. 9, 10. ** 1 Peter ii. 24. X Romans vi. 10. ^ Hebrews ix. 2G, 28. ...J.. 38 THE RELIGION OP LIFE. illLi; lit ir'. sible. " Who by Hearcliing can tiiul out God ] " How Hhall tho finite comprehend the Infinite 1 How can wo analyze and graHp the counsels and conduct of the Infinite and the Eternal ? Salvation is the wisdom of God, the heart of God, tho way and work of God ; and as such is past finding out. We have no j)lunmiet to fathom the depths of divinity, no scales to weigh the infinite ; and wlien we attemj)t to discern the philosopljy of God with us, God manifest in flesh, God redeeming us to himself by him- self, God within us, we are battled and confounded. No wonder that the salvation of man by the atonement of tho Son of God has occasioned endless diversity, confusioa and contradiction to philosoi)hizing mortals. Every attempt to go beyond revealed facts and forms, in studying the God- ward aspect of salvation, must end in mist and darkness, perplexity and error. But its manward aspect is particu- larly for man's apprehension and use. What salvation is in itself, what salvation is for us, though hidden from the wise and prudent, is revealed t ) babes. It belongs to us, and we should examine and understand it. Christ himself made it known to Nicodcmus, and through him to us all, that we may become wise unto salvation. jfes;?. ^ii^^ ii.: § 2 The Life that sprimjs from ileatli. ■\i^..i:r!% -.»,'■«'■'.';# "^J^Vii'^.i^. ^■y^^:^t s^,^..■ ** That whosoever b^ieveth iu him suouIvD not rERisu but have . ETERNAL LIFK." Johu iii. 15. What is the life that comes to man by tho death of Christ ? It is life instead of deatli ; it is everlasting life instead of perdition \ according to the words — " should not . perish but have eternal !ife." In contrast with perdition, this life means safety. There may be existence without THE RELIGION OP LIFE. safety, but not life, not high and noble life. To bo in con- stant peril, to be under perpetual menace, to be always shrinking on the precipice from the dismal gulfs below, to be threatened every moment with the law's last penalty, is not life, but a wretched and precarious existence. Just so it is with man in sin. We are all in danger, for we are all sinnei*s, and the wages of sin is death. " Every mouth must be stopped, and all the world become guilty ))efore God." " Sin, when it is finished, bnngeth forth death." " The end of these [shamefulj things is death." " The soul that sinneth shall die." This death is not the death of the body, for that is appointed to all men, to many infants as well as adults, to believers and unbelievers, saved and unsaved ; but it is the second death, the lake of fire, th(^ destruction of both soul and body in h»;ll, everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from his glorious power. This is the curse of the law, the wages of sin, the terrible reward of ))ersistent ungodlinoss?. Every man is in danger of this till he obtains tJie salvation that is in Christ Jesus. We are in the greatest peril, whether we think of it or not, whether or not we give heed to it. When we wake in the morning, while we lul)our through the day, when wo return at even, while we slumber through the night, we are exposed to the wrath of God, on account of our persistence in trespasses and sins, on account of neglecting salvation and the Saviour. But as soon as we believe in Christ, the danger ceases. Whosoever believes in him sliall not perish, but have the safety as well as the sanctity of '* eternal life." " Tliere is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." " He tliivt believeth is not condemned." " He that believeth is justified from all things." '* Being justified freely^by his grace through the redemption that is +.0 ., ;$■ 40 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. i & WW %i in ChriHt JeauH." " Weconulude tluit a iiiaii in justified by faith without deeds of law." " To liiui that worketh not," to him that in the sight of Uod, or towards God, never did one good deed iu his life, " but bclieveth on him that justi- rieth the uugodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." This is indeed glad tidings of great joy to the guilty and condemned, the helpless and tlie j)erishing. Believing in Christ, we are pardoned and have peace with God. Believ- ing in Christ, we are Veconciled to Him whom we have long and greatly offended. Believing in Christ, we are lifted out of the horrible pit and miry clay to the everlasting rock, to sing the everlasting song of redeeming grace. Believing in Christ, we are hidden in God's secret place, and sheltered in his pavilion. Who shall lay anything to our charge, since God himself justifies us ? Who shall condemn us> seeing Christ, who is oui-s by faith, has died and risen for ns, and reigns and intercedes for us i We were ready to perish, but now we are " safe from all impending harms." Jesus lifted up fur us is " the Lord our ri 'iteousness ; " and in his book of life in heaven, our names are written. Everlasting life is more than a negation, more than the absence of danger ; it is something positive and perpetual, worthy of its Lord and Giver, worthy of the death that procures it, correspondent in dignity and value to the safety of absolving and accepting grace. It is union with God, as the life of the body is Tiuion with the soul, for " he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." It is communion with God, for " our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ." This life is the likeness of God, the vitality of his love in the heart of man, a participation on earth of his own nature. It is the happiness of holiness, the joty of victory, the pleasure of heavenly hope, the blea- THE BELIOION OP LIPE. 41 Beelow. It w not only exist- ence in Hafety Imt existence in sunshine ; it is not only the absence of danger but the presence of Jesus ; it is not only the removal of curse but the fulness of blessing ; it is not only a paciiietl conscience but a purified heart ; it is not only a legal absolution but a gracious adoption, not only a shelter from every storm and a shield in every conilict but a share in every benefit that our hearts can hold and our Father's promises comprehend. It is growth from spirit- ual maturity to the fulness of the stature of a man in Christ Jesus, and thence to the fellowship and full felicity of the skies. ♦ § 3 The Faith that finds life, ** Whosoever bclieveth in him." Binco it is " whosoever believeth " in tho Son of Man that shall not perish but have eternal life, it is necessary we should know what believing means. This is the more neces- sary as it is not any and every believing that finds life. We need not quote here that the devils believe and tremble, for their case is not ours. It is not the angelic race (as Heb. ii. 16, declares) that Jesus helps, but the human race of Abrahamic faith ; and therefore between angels, fallen and unfallen, and ourselves, there is no parallel. But we know that " Simon himself believed " without obtaining salva- tion, for lie remained in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity, without part or lot in the matter. King Agi'ippa believed the prophets but scorned to become a Christian.* Salvation is through faith, but there is a faith * " Then Agi'ippa said unto Paul — 'Slightly dost thou persuade me to bo a christian.' And Paul aaid — ' I would to God that not only slightly but largely, not only thou but also all that hear n»e this I (■r r It m F 42 THE HELIGION OF LIFE. • te V^'' ^l'' that is " dead in itself," there is a faith that is " idle," there is a faith that is not unto salvation.* Tlie faith that finds life is the faith of the repentant, or faith after repentance. It is never once, in all the Bible, placed va. a different connection.. Repentance and faith occur ih only one order. " Repent ye, and believe the gospel ; " " repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ." The faith of Simon Magus was of no avail because it was without repentance, and accordingly Peter says to him — " Hepent and pray," repent of sin and pray in faith, " repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thy heart may be foVgiven thee."f The faith that is " unto righteousness " or that "justifies," whose possessor is " saved " or " born of God/' and there- fore " shall never thirst" or " die " but " hath everlasting life," is the end of repentance ; or, in other words, repent- ance towards God is both the antecedent and the means of faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. " John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not ; but the publicans and the harlots believed him ; and ye, when ye had seen it^ repented not afterward that ye might believe him," repented not in order that ye might believe him, repented not as the means of believing. \ The faith that finds life is faith in Christ. " Ye believe in God," says our Lord to his disciples, " believe also in me."§ Many believe m God but not in Christ. Every Deist so believes ; so does every Mohammedan, every Jew, every man who, though called a Christian, disbelieves the day might become such as I am, except these bonds.' " — Acts xxvi. 28, 29, revised. ,c « .,:r, .^.i ♦Epiat'^of James. +Acts viii. 22, t Matt. xxi. 32. §Johnxiv. 1. ,, ,-. THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 43 personal nature and the redemptive work of our Lord and Saviour, and disobeys him. Both repentance from dead works and faith in God belong to the foundation of personal religion, which we are not to lay again but leave for Chris- tian progress ; but faith in Christ is not like these, for by- it we begin to live and continue to live, going on to perfec- tion ; and in it is merged the earlier belief in God, since to believe in Christ is to believe in God. Christ describes his o#n disciples as " little ones that believe in me," that is, continuously " believe in me." The gospel that we are called to believe is " the gospel of God concerning his Son ; " which is sometimes called the gospel of God, or the gospel of the grace of God, or the gospel of the Son of God, or the gospel of Christ. Preaching the gospel and preaching Christ are equivalent expressions ; and believing the gc.>^jel and believing in Christ are equivalent also. Believing in Christ is the frequent and standing phrase for saving faith. When unrepenting Simon asks a share in Christian things^ Peter bids him repent ; when the repentant jailor in Philippi asks what he must do tc be saved, Paul bids him believe in the Lord Jesus, Our teaching and preaching should be regulated by these authoritative examples. We are not to bid the repentant sinner believe in God, for he has done so already, his repentance towards God involves faith in God ; but we are to bid him believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, according to the gospel. We are not to bid the un- repenting sinner believe in Christ, but repent of his wickedness. Faith in Christ without repentance is an empty and delusive sound. The foundation cannot be laid without " repentance from dead works;" and on the true foundation we are to build by faith in Christ,, till the top- atone is brought forth, amid the acclaim of " grace.'* i -■1 '.1 f '4 ») 4' f I 11,1 44 THE RELIGION OP LIFE. ,4^ But how, it may be asked, can a man repent without any faitli ] He cannot. To repent towards God, we must first believe in God, since repentance towards God is compliance with his command to all men everywhere to repent. "We cannot repent towards One whose existence we deny or whose communications we disbelieve. As we cannot repent towards God without believing in him, so we cannot savingly believe in Christ without repentance towards God. Faith IN God precedes repentance, faith in Christ fW LOWS : this is the key to all the difficulties of the connec- tion between repentance and faith. Subjectively considered, (thrit is, considering only ourselves believing), the faith that finds life is the faith of the repentant ; objectively con- sidered, (that is, considering only the object of believing) life-finding faith is faith in Christ. This faith may always be known by its antecedent, its object, and its issue. Its antecedent is repentance, its object is Christ, its issue is love. As soon as we repent of our dead works, the works of spiritual death, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are saved, we are justified freely through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus and renewed in the spirit of our minds ; and then, at once, this faith in Christ begins to evince itself in love to God and love to man and in the new obedience and service of a loving heart. We are not justified on account of the fruit of faith, or with any regard to the fruit of faith, but on account of the object that faith acce[)ts, which is " the Lord our righteousness," and we are justified as soon as we believe. What follows faith is no ground or reason of justification. We are now justified by faith without deeds of law or deeds of love. Considering only salvation itself, as consisting of justification and regeneration, the faith that finds life is !' I'M I'J THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 45 distingiushed only by its antecedent and its object, by tlie eubjectivity of repentance and the objectivity of ths Saviour ; but considering botb salvation and its issues, both the inception of spiritual life and its development, the faith that finds life may be said to be distinguished by its ante- cedent, object and operation. Incipient faith is not the fruit of life, but the root ; not the result of life, but the means. Salvation means life, which is not for faith, but from or tI.r.eBH as if it were itself righteousness or could icseK be a 1 v?>?! 1 i THE liELIflllON or LIEE. t equivalent for righteousness, but because it is the recog- nition and reception of a righteousness that is divine, — divinely provided, divinely offered, divinely bestowed. " Surely, sliall one say, in the Lord [Jesus Christ] have I righteousness and strength," the righteousness of justification and the strength of sanctification. " This is his name whereby he shall be called, Jehovah our righteousness." " He is made of God unto us righteousness." All our sins are answered or atoned for by the substitutionary suffering of the Son of God, for '* of him it was exacted, and he was made answerable;" and when, by believing, we acceptor personally ai)propriate this divine righteousness, offered unto all and bestowed on all that believe, our faith is reckoned for righteousness, because, in the economy of grace, it ia the means and method of our complete justifi- cation before God, it serves as truly and effectually to the sinner for righteousness as perfect obedience serves to the unfallen. Not by doing but believing, not by deserving but receiving, not by earning but accepting, not by self-preparing but by simply coming, are we accepted and saved. " Whosoever" believeth shall not perish but have ever- lasting life. There is no excei)tion or restriction. Not the Jew only or pre-eminently, not the Gentile only or pre- eminently, but whosoever believes is saved. The terms and method of the gospel know no distinction or peculiarity of race, colour, rank or condition. Any one of any time or place, that believes, is saved. Young or old, rich or poor, prince or peasant, learned or unlearned, male or female, bond or free, black or white, or red or brown, may believe and be saved. The message is simply to man, the sinner, in this world ; the method is simply believing in the Son of God ; the time is now. Come then to the mercy-seat in ^he nam© of m >,, . 1^ t t HI 62 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. ii! : Jesus ; come as you are ; and come at once ; and though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Let us not vainly attempt either to save ourselves or prepare ourselves. " All the fitness he requireth is to know your need of him ; " and this fitness " he himself gives you, 'tis his Spirit's glimmering beam," for it is the ofiice and work of the Spirit to convince the world of sin, or to give to the world the knowledge of sin as well as of righteousness and judgment. Every attempt to heal or help ourselves only makes our case worse and aggravates our guilt, because it is attempting to do what Christ alone can do and what God has forbidden us to attempt. The more we try to fit ourselves for Christ the more we keep away from him and the worse we make ourselves. How can the guilty fit himself for mercy 1 His guilt is his fitness, and nothing is required of him but acceptance. How can the diseased fit himself for the physician ? His disease is his fitness, and nothing can be his but submission to benevolent skill. God himself pro- vides salvation by giving his Son to the sujfferings of priesthood and the succourings of princedom ; God himself prepares us for salvation Vjy giving us the knowledge of our sins and our Saviour ; God himself draws but not drives us to himself by his Spirit of truth and love ; God himself bestows salvation on believing ; and God himself appoints the time. " What could have been done more to my vine- yard, that I have not done in it ?" " What could your Redeemer do more than he has done for you T' " This is the time ; no mere delay ; this is the acceptable day." God gives us no command or invitation to come to-morrow ; he gives us no promise fon to-morrow ; he holds out no hope of salvation on the morrow. 0' . the contrary, he has made kvunan life the most fearfully precarious of all things, that 1; i^m THE RELIGION OP LIFE. 63 we may not presume by delaying, that we may not risk everything by postponement, but that at once we may turn to our Saviour from every sin, and live. § 5. The love of God to man is Universal in its Scope. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to CONDEMN the WORLD, BUT THAT THE WORLD THROUGH HIM MIGHT ££ SAVED. — John iii. IG, 17. Whom or how many does God love 1 "What is the scope or extent of his regard to sinners of mankind 1 The answer is " the world," for the Scripture of truth knows no other answer. There are many passages that denote the univer- sality of God's love, but there is not one that asserts its limitation. There are })assag(is that men have construed or rather misconstrued into the siii)port of limiting tiieories and for the sanction of their own " little systems," but no direct and ex|;.»'ess limitation of the divine benevolence can be found in all the Bible. When Christ says " the world," he means the world ; and we have no right to fritter away his meaning. God speaks to us in the Bible in our own language and manner, for otherwise he would speak in ain ; and whon he says he loves the world, we should not '.are to deny or doubt it. The word that Christ uses is not cnwv, age or world ; or yv), land or earth ; or o»xo-fAivy], ewipire or world ; but xocf^kog' (cosmos), which is the proper Greek word for world. It is either the merest trifling or the veriest cavilling to object to the proper gener;il sense of thi*j word by quoting the exceptional or tropical w^, of it, as when Peter e^iploys it for the order or adorning of female attire, or James fo** the iniquity oC the human tongue, or as when n THE RELIGION OF LIFE. I If ' ■ f 1 1 i ■' the Pharisees say with customary exaggeration — " Behold, the world is gone after him."* What has such a use of the word by such men as the Pharisees to do with the most solemn and important use of it by the Master of words, in conversing witli Nicodemus about the purpose and love of God ] The word occurs one hundred and eighty-seven times in the New Testament, and so seldom in a tropical or limited sense (which is founded on the general sense) that the very exception proves the rule, and shuts us up to the general sense, which is tlie primary, proper and customary sense, that is not to be questioned or departed from (especially when the w )rd is used by Christ or his inspired servant), without the gravest and best- weighed reasons. In the present iastunce, there is not a shadow of reason for any secondary sense. The meaning of the word in the six- teenth verse is determined by its use in the seventeenth : *' For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved." With this the Bible throufifhoiit ajjrees. " The Lord is aood to all; and his tender mercies are over all his works." " God is love." " Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefiilly use you and persecute you," that is, love all, do good to all, pray for all, not excepting the worst and most hostile, ^'that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven," the imitators, partakers of the nature of your heavenly Father ; " for he," in his universal love, " maketh the suu to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust," that is on all. " Be ye therefore perfect," by all-embracing love, " even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" or all-embracing. * 1 Peter iii. 3 ; James iii. 6 ; John xii. 19. F? THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 65 in his love. " We have seen and do testify thai the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world." Because God loves all men, he is ** not willing that any should |>erish but that all should be saved, and," as the means of stilvation, "come to the knowledge of the truth." " lie is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe." " I came," says Jesus, " that I might save the world." Universal love is not actual universal salvation, since many will not yield to this love to be saved. A universal Saviour is not actual universil salvation, for the salvation of godlike man is not by divine compulsion but by divine light and love and by man's free acceptance ; and many will not come to the Saviour to have life. A universal atonement is not universal salvation, but the foundation or preparation that makes the salvation of every man legal and [iraollisablo. Hut univtn-sal love, and a universal Saviour, and a universal Spirit (convincing "the world") and a uni- versal overture are the ample and unquestionable warrant for the comi'ij^of any and every sinner to the Son of God for lite. Nolliing cnii waimUh iiWj/ MIIh'h uppioach to Gommuuioation8. If there is any except ion, how rosy which the good PhyKician has promised to cure ; in me is death ""^hich the " Quickening Spirit " promises to transmute into life. What more can I exp 'Ct or require as the ground of faith and prayer .' God loves me, because he tells me that he loves the world ; " Christ loved me and gave himself for me," because he tells me that lie gave himself a ransom for all. The messenger of mercy is to go into all the world, for " the field i.- the world j" and " to every creature " iu that field, and therefore to me. '' ' Respecting the extent of the atonement, it is often said that the real question to be settled is the design of God ; and so it is, for of the sufficiency of the atonement itself for all there can be no question. The atonement is for all, if God intended it to be for all. The scope of God's love and of his Son's mission to the world, doubtless coincides with the scope of his design respecting the salvation of the world. What is that design 1 Christ himself tells us in the most explicit and decisive terms : " For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world," with the design or intention of judging or condemning the world, "T THE RELiaiON OF LIFE. 67 "but" with this mosi benignant, magnificent and impartial paternal design, *' that the world through him nught be saved." The same design is elsewhere declared or denoted. '* We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son," with this purpose, or for this en«l, " to Ihj the Saviour of the world." " 1 came," with this design or purpose, or for this end, ' that 1 might save the world," "Tliatthe world m.iy believe that thou didst send me:' " That the world mav know that thou didst send me." " God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." The extent of his reconciling work is the best evidence of the extcit of his reconciling design, just as the scope of Christ's inter- cession denotes the scope of his own and his Father's design. Inspiration tells us that " there is no difference " among men, " foi- all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Since there is no difference among men, there is no ground or reason why God should make a difference in hia prospicieut love to men or in the design of the niission of his Son to men. God loves all his children beforehand, without a difference, because he sees in thorn no diflerence. In the wisdom of his love he governs his childron with adminstrative difference, through time and space, and will probably disclose hereafter the gi-ounds and reasons of this counsel of his will ; but in the reality, the impartiality and amj)litude of his paternal love, he governs all his chil- dren kindly and fairly. It is Heavenly Love that rules the world, in the Patriarchal, Mosaic and Christian economies ; and accordingly, " in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh rigliieousness is accepted of him." The nature as v>''ell as the scope of Christ's mission appears clearly in this conversation. The verb x^/vw (krino), ren- dered " condemn," in John iii. 17, occurs one hundred and fourteen times in the New Testament. Our translators IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // ^ .<^% v.. 1.0 ■ 4i 1.1 1.25 J^ 12.5 Hi 1 2.2 M ^^^ <^ 4 /2 <;^> . ''T ^;; i»' ^> /S # ^ Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. M580 (716) 873-4503 37 vV <* '^ ^ y^* r^,^^ ■7 -^ ^v ^ 68 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. i ■ I ' have rendered it "judge" in eighty-eight instances, "deter- mine" in seven, "condemn" in five, "sue at the law" or " go to law " in three, and in the other eleven instances by " esteem," " call in question," " sentence," " ordain," " con- clude," "think," "decree," "damn," "avenge." The meaning of words is not to be determined by counting, but it is evident that our learned translators regarded the word as primarily and properly signifying to judge ; so Dean Alford renders it in Jersonality of religion ; and the wisdom and courage of the great Teacher appear in inculcating it. The Jews con- fided in their descent from Abraham, in their national in- heritance, in their severance from the heathen : " We have Abraham to our father — the temple of the Lord are we — all else are dogs." In opposition to all such vain confidence and boasting, the Master says — *' He that btlieveth in the Son of God is unconderanod," not the world at large or in particular the son of Abraham ; " but he that believeth not," whether Jew or Gentile, " is condemned." The faith that saves is not ancestral or gregarious, but personal ; the unbelief that destroys i& our own individual unbelief, not the unbelief of our parents, kindred, country or neigh- bom's. This teaching is no less necessary now than formerly. As social beings, we are always in danger of making the virtues of others our refuge, or making their faults our excuse. Adam blamed his wife, and Eve blamed the ser- pent. The Hebrew g'oried in the name of Abraham and the grandeur of his favoured nation. And so we think, our- ti THE RELIGION Or LIFE. selves safe or su))erior because we belong to a Christian nation or a Christian church, because we belong to a godly iincage or family, or to a religious age anJ place ; and if this does not quite secure ns, we cast whatever blame re- mains on our erring predecessors, especially Adam, on our ungenial circumstances or the old man within. To suppose oureelves successors of the apostles hides a multitude of sins and creates a plenitude of power. The sceptered episcopate or the compact presbytery or the mere democracy or the venerated founder may be the idol of our boast. Not Christianity but churchianity may be our confidence and watch-word. We may take the culture of our feilowthip for conversion ; and, unlike our Master, scorn all others as Philistines, The remedy for all such folly is the personality as well as vitality of true religion. A person is a being that, like man, is capable of conscious choice ; it is only personally we are either wrong or right with God ; society means our relationship to each other, not our relationship to God, but may serve as a sphere or means for the develop- ment of that highest relationship. Knowing fully the tendency of men to shelter or excuse themselves behind society, our Lord passes at once from the universal scope of the Father's love and the Son's mission to the personality or particularity of religion. God loved the world and sent his Son to save it, but this secures no man's salvation, for it is " he that believeth " that is justified, and " he that believeth not " that is condemned. As it was not Abraham that made a Hebrew right with God, or Ishmael that made an Arab wrongs or Esau that made an Edomite evil, so it is not Adam that makes any man guilty or the Father's mere gift of his Son that makes any man really sale .md right. "What we are to Christ personally, by personal faith or un- belief, that is what we really are to God» THE RELIOION OP LIFE. ■W The gospel specifies faith as the one tiling needful for ac- ceptance with God, a faith that has repentance for its ante- cedent, Christ for its obj»!Ct, and love for its consequent. Tnere may be many things in 'the Bible that we have not had time to learn, or that are hard to be understood, or that are not yet truly interpreted and therefore not really believed ; but the one thing necessary to be believed for salvation is " the name of the only-begotten Son of God." The name of any one is what is truly or competently said of him ] and so the name of the Son of God is what is divinely said oi him, what the Father testifies of him, what the Spirit witnesses concerning him ; and all this is to be found in the pages of inspiration. We nt^ed not wait to ba saved till we have studied the Patriarchs, appreciated Moses, apprehended the Prophets, and estimated Lhe Harbinger and all the Evangelists and Apostles. What we are to believe for salvation is the testimony that God has given concerning his Son. What is this testimony? It is, first of all, that the Father himself loves us, for his Son is the gift of his love to us. God loved us from the beginning, loved us of his own accord, loves us now. Men generally do not believe this. They believe that God relaxes his severity or somewhat relents in his wrath, and that he may become loving ; but they do not believe that to themselves God is really and already love, that he is in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing to them their trespasses. They think of him as a stern sovereign, rather than as a loving father ; they think of his power and his glittering sword and his scales, rather than of his loving heart, his inviting voice and his open arms. Conscious of guilt, they shrink from him with terror, and tremble at every whisper "-r 76 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. if lis If i --i- of his power. Even when resolved like the prodigal to re- turn, it is rather to a rult;r that is to be petitioned and con- ciliated they think of returning than to a father that is al- ready on his way to them, and will wait for no words or forms to caress and bless them. Conscious guilt can scarcely believe in such love, but hopes to become a "hired servant ; " and ac- cordingly it is the more necessary to hold up this spontaneous boundless love of the Father, in the gift of his Son, as the object of every repenting sinner's belief. What like this love can attract and encourage such a sinner 1 What refuge is like this for the anxious sinner to repair to 1 There is no other refuge, and Jiere needs no other. Here is i)ersonal love for the personal prodigal, which he is to believe for himself and not for another. This, first of all, should every Christian teacher and preacher hold forth to the mourner in Zion ; and urge it with amplitude of Scripture argument and wealth of aptest illustration. It may be said in objection to such teaching as this that the Bible ascribes anger and wrath to God as well as love. So it does, but in what sense ? God is not angry with men for what they cannot help or avoid, but solely for their wilful persistence in evil ; he is angry with them because they will not submit U> his authoritative goodness, will not hear bis paternal call and command, will not accept his great sal- vation, will not walk in the light of his love ; and his anger with them for sin is the anger of holy love. He is angry with the wicked every day for persisting in wickedness ; he is angry as a loving father, who would save and bless them, but they will not be saved and blest, and as a holy father who can look upon the wilful persistent wickedness of his foolish sons with nothing but the grief of love and the aver- bIou of purity. His anger is not judicial, for it is "after death * * THE RELIGION OP LIFE. 77 the judgment,," and " the Father judgeth no man." Hia anger is not retrihiitive, for retribution is the award and issue of judgment. His anger with men in this worhl, in the probation of this life, is the anger of redemptive h)ve. His wrath is either another name for such anger or else it is the indication of such anger in its outgoing or operation, in its practical manifestation, in its chastisement and disci- pline of the disobedient, or in its manner of removing the incorrigible from the sphere of help and hope. Because the Father looks with the grief of holy lOve on the unfaithful, and with the aversion of holy lovo on the unyielding, he is said to be " grieved " or "vexed ;" as Jesus, in the days of his flesh, looked round about on the refractory Jews " with anger, being grieved,'' lovingly grieved and pained, " for the hardness of their hearts." There is no judicial wrath in God now against any living sinner, for he has sent his Son to save the world and not to judge the world ; there is no des- tructive anger in God's heart now against any in the flesh. *' Fury is not in me. Who would set the briers and thorns [of impotent humanity] against me in battle ] I would go through them, I would burn them together. Or let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me ; and he shall make peace v/ith me." * As soon as the sinner repents, the divine anger is turned away ; and as soon as he believes, he becomes a child of God. v^; ;; . The redemptive wrath of God, or the practical expression of his redem[)tive anger, consists in the infliction of physical evil. " Is there [physical] evil in a city, ^^r.d Jehovah ha h not done it 1 " This evil serves two great purposes —to discipline the sinner and to limit his probation. As the limitation or termination of probation, we call it • Isaiah xxvii. 4, 5. -iT 78 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 1 death, which is the strongost and moRt appalling form of physical evil ; as discipline or ciiastisement, it is the shadow of death, compriKiug corporeal pain and sickness, hunger and thirst, weakness and weariness, noxious vegetation, and in fact all the physical ills that are incident to humanity in this life. God is said to be angry with men, or to send forth his wrath against them, when he so signally and impressively closes their probation as to admonish the survivors and dis- suade them from evil ; or when he inflicts physical evil on the living, as a means of reclaiming or improving them. In other words, he may make the dismissal of the incor- rigible from the probation of life so sudden or so severe* like the drowning of the antediluvians and the destruction cf Sodom, as to benefit the surviving ; and he may lay on the rod of his anger for their reformation, or the rod of hia fatherly care for their improvement. In either case, in either form, his anger to the living is the anger of holy love, his wrath to probationers is paternal chastisement ; and even his method of removing the wicked (for removed every man must be) is made the means of moral improision to those that survive. God's government of this whole world and of every mau in it, from the Fall to the Judgment, is simply and solely the government of redeeming love, wise and holy love, a love that is parental in its nature, benignant in its ends, exhaustive in its means, gratuituous in its method, and universal in its scope. It is a love so holy as to be angry with persistent sin, and to transfer the incor- rigible from the sphere of his evil influence to the im- prisonment of Hades ; and so strong as to chastise the cor- rigible "for a moment" only, and to "delight in mercy" that " endures forever," To every living sinner God is Iovq, to all the world he is love ; and to every repentant or THE u;:LiaiON of life. 9$ roturni»'g sinner he is reconciling ami forthgoing love, that, like the prodigal's fithtu".. will give, in tlio nionumt of believing, the ombraoe and tlie kiss, the ring pledge and the raiment, the call for joy and the signal for festivity. The testimony of (lod to us, that w(; may believe it and be saved, is, ixi ^he secind place, Tif k sin-beabt.nO of his Son. Christ was lifted up on the cross, to pour out his soul to death for sinners. He not only died for us but. he died for our sins, the just for lUe unjust, to bring us to God. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world. The sinner, convinced " of sin, of righteousness and of judgment," wants more than an assurance of God's world-wide benignity. With an awakf^ned conscience, he wants to know how he can be saved from sin without any connivance at sin, without interference with God's rights, without dishonour to God*.^ IdbW ; and what he wants he finds in the sin-bearing of the Son of God. " Now, without law, God's ri^'hteousness has been manifested, being attested by the law and the prophets, evep God's righteousne iS through faith in Jesus Clirisf-, unto all, and upon all the believing ; for there is no difference : for all sinned and are fallen short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God set ([)ublicly) forth (as) propitiatory, — (available) through faith in his blood, — for de- monstration of his rigb toousncss, because of the pretermission of the sins of former times in the forbearance of God, — in order to the demonstration of his righteousness in the pre- sent time, that he may be rigiiteous even in justifying him who is of faith in Jesus."* * Romans iii. 21-26 : — Revised version by Rev. Dr. J. Mor'son, London, 1866. 80 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. •i; These two things, mainly, constitute " the witness that God hath bonie conC'^ming his Son," namely, that the Son is the love-gift of God and the sin-bearer of man. As the divine gift of the Father, be represents and embodies Grod's love to the world ; as 3 divinely-given Priest of mankind, he atoned for the sins of the world. In his person, he com- bines the nature of the Father and his offending human childi-en, for he is both the Son of Grod and the Son of man, ** a child bom, a son given ; *' in his office and work, he is the very fulness erf' the love that gave him, and the very fountain of li.'e to the sinner that receives iiim. These two tilings, truly taken, that God loves us and that Christ died lor us, constitute the gospel of God concerning bis Son, the gospel of the grace of God, glad tidings of great joy to all peopla The sinner wants to be reconciled to God, and this gospel tells him that God loves him ; he wants to be saved from his sins, and this gospel tells him that Christ bore his Bins in his own body on the tree. What more need he believe or know to have peace with Grod, to be consciously reconciled, to be freely and fully justified t This is what the awakened trembling sinner is called to believe for admis- sion into the family of faith. What can be simpler than this gospel, what can be more suitable ? A child can appre- hend and believe it, and to " babes " is it really revealed. Doubtless it involvds and implies much, as the new-born soul, in the process of his growth and education, will find out ; but no analysis of it is necessary for laying hold of salvation. Man enters the kingdom of grace as a little child, taking God at his word, and bGlieving without doubt that the Father is love and the Son life ; and the faith that thus begins should thereafter grow exceedingly, j; * This faith or the V92it of it is pux^ly personal. It can- THE RELIGION OP LIFE. not exist by society or proxy. Christ commissions his ser- vants to preach the gospel to every creature or to each creatine in all the world ; and in the Acts of the Apostles* we see their obedience, m the tenor of their public utter- ances and in their personal communications. On the day of Pentecost, it is " whosoever shall call on the name of the Jjord shall be saved. . . Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins."* Peter in the temple says — •" Every soul that will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people," and " God, having raised up his Son Josus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities. "+ The truth was communicated personally to Simon, the Eunuch, Saul, Cornelius, Sergius Paulus, the Philippian jailor and many others. The personality of religion is mo3t emphatically re cognized in the epistles. "Be of the same mind, one toward another." | " Let every mf n be full}- persuaded in his own mind. . , Every one of us shall give account of himself to God. . . The faith which thou hast, have it to thyself before Goc',"§ " Let every man take heed how ho buildeth thereupon ... If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer lose ; but he himself shall be saved."|| ♦' Let a man examine hiuiSelf/'IT " All these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will."** The love of 1 Cor. xiii., is described as a personal excellence : *' 1 am n ag . . . It profiteth me nothing ... I put away childish *, * Acts ii. 21, 38. t Acts iii. 23, 2 t Romans xu. 16. ' § Romans xiv. 5, 12, 22. li 1 Cor. iii. 10, 14, 15. ' II 1 Cor. xi. 28. ** ICor. xa. 11. . 4* m I I til! -k IP THE RELIGION OF LIFE. things." " W^ must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ ; that every one may receive the things dona in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad ... If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." * " Let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For every man shall bear his own load. Let him that is taught in the word communicate to him that teacheth in all good things. Be not deceived ; God is not mocked ; for wliat- soever a man soweth that shall he ilso reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corrnpticn ; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting, "t The same doctrine of human personality, or of personal religion, belongs to both Testaments. " The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the Bon : the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him . . . when a righteous man turneth away from his righteousness and committeth iniquity, and dieth in them, for his ini- quity that he hath done shall he die." Again, * When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive ... I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord God." X ^^^ are not swept up to heaven or down to hell in crowds To each sort of ground in the parable of the sower, is iven a personal explanation. Every man's mind ie his kingdom. " Every heart knoweth his own bitterness, * 2 Cor. V. 10, 17. t Gal. vi. 4-8 ; partly revised by Bishop Ellicott. X Ezekiel xviii. 20, 26, 27, 30. • " -^ THE RELIGION OP LIFE. 83 and a "stranger intermeddleth not vith his joy." Sin is personal transgression ; salvation is personal deliverance ; and life and death are personal realities. shop § 2. Religion is Determinate, i " He that believeth on hirii is not condemned, hut he that he- lieveth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-beootten Son of God." — John iii. 18. Religion is determinate, not vague or doubtful, because it primarily means faith in the Son of God. The Son of God is God, as the son of man is man ; and the term " only- begotten" strengthens the indication of divinity. Believers in Christ are begotten of God, in the sense of being divinely mixde like God or partakers of his moral nature, but the Christ is the ouly-begotten Son of God, in the sense of being really God or of possessing God's essential nature. In the first sense, God has many sons ; in the second sense, he has only one Son, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Not to believe in him, therefore, is not to believe in the only living and true God, as he is revealed in his own word. To reject Christ, as he is pro- claimed in the gospel, is to reject God, for the Father and the Son are one. This is the unbelief that is justly con- demned. With such unbelief no pure theism can coexist. No man can be a believer in the one only God who rejects him as he reveals himself. He may be a believer in some god of his own conception or of some other man's con- ception ; but the deitio creation of human conception or imagination is not the Godhead that creates and rules the universe, since he can be known by us only as the God that gave his only-begotten Son for the world's salvation. ' - 8i THE RELIGION 0¥ LIFE. i ■ i How great is our guilt, then, when we turn away from Christ, when we will not have him to reign over us, when in the pride of our unbelief or the worldliness of our pursuits, we virtually say — " Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways V " For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation, which at the 6rst began to be spoken hj the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him ; God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, accoTding to his own will V* He who made " purification of sin" at the end of the Jewish days, he who " made the ages," he who is " appointed heir of all things," he who " sits on the right hand of the Majesty on high," he who " upholds the universe by the word of his power," is '' the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his substance."* He and the Father are one, and therefore to disbelieve him is to be condemned for making God a liar. From this condemnation there is no appeal, because it is the condemnation of God ; and there can be no escape but by the submission in this life of repentant feith. ■ - *^ Religion is determinate, not vague or doubtful, because the truly religious man consciously believes. it is a great mistake to suppose that our condition before God can not be known till the day of judgment. On the contrary, he that bolieveth is not condemned, is not now condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already. Every roan's Btate is real and definite, according to his own unbelief or faith. We need no messenger froiii the skies to tell us * Hebrews ii, 2-4 and i, 1-3, * jvf; fl »t THE RELIGION OF LIFE, l> what "we are and whither we are going. God's '.Ford and our own conscience are sufficient. We know whether we have turned to God by repentant faith or not. It is no- where written or implied in Scripture that either faith or unbelief is immutable, for the believer was once an un- believer and may become an unbeliever again, may so draw back from faith that there shall be no pleasure in him ; but it is taught that faith immediately and really saves from " sins that are past," and that unbelief already condemns us and will condemn, as long as it lasts. " He that believeth is not condemned," meaning not condemned as soon as he believes, and not condemned as long as he believes. "He that believeth not is condemned already," meaning con- demned without delay, because of unbelief and during unbelief. We need not then be ignorant of our relationship to God. Faith and unbelief are not mystical and unin- telligible. To believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God is intelligently and really to receive the divine communications concerning Christ. A man cannot believe God without knowing it, just as he cannot learn or com- municate anything among men without knowing it. " These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even to you that believe on the name of the Son of God : " " we know that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding, that we may know the true One, and we are in the true One, in his Son Jesus Christ."* " The wind blows where it will, and thou hearest the sound thereof." ' On the ojher hand, not to know ourselves believing is to be unbelievers. We cannot believe unconsciously or come to Christ by faith without knowing it ; and therefore not to * 1 John v. 13, 20. Alford's Revision. THE RELIGION OF LIFE. I know that we have believed is to be unbelieving, not to bo conscious of faith is to be without faith. We need no witness from the distance, from the depths or from the heavens, to tell us that we have or have not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. The word of faith is nigh us, in our mouth and in our heart ; it is the testimony of God concerning his Son ; and to receive it without knowing is a contradiction in terms. We may be in doubt about the results of faith, but how can a man be in doubt about the reception of a communication that he receives 1 Nothing can be more determinate than the religion of believing. I § 3 Religion is Volunta/ry» ** And this is the condemnation, that light is ci me into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because tbeir dreds were evil." — John iii. 19. '■''■'"' - - ;:^ >v < - ; ! It iff Some relationships to God are iu voluntary. We are his creatures without our choice, for " it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves." We are subjects of his sovereign sway without our choice, for he is " the king of all the earth." He gives us life, and maintains his right to us, and will bring us into judgment. In all this we have no option, but it is not this that determines our present character and ultiuiate condition. Our everlasting state is not what we drift to but what we drive to. The retributions of God are not arbitrary and unconditional appointments, but judicial allotments, according to our persistent choice before him, and according to his own forewaruings. " Whatsoever a man soweth thi*t shall he also reap. For he that soweth unto his own flejih shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but THE RELIGION OP LIFE. ar he that aoweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." " God will render to every man according to his works," that is, according to his choice, for working is choosing both in purpose and practice. So our Lord teaches in his conversation with Nicodemus. Religion is personal, personal faith or unbelief. Personal religion is determiuRte, because faith instantly determines our relationship to God as justified, and unbelief instantly determines our relationship to him as condemned. But what of the faith or unbelief itself? Is this voluntaiy or involuntary 1 If absolutely involuntary, the issue is some- how determined for vs by another, and we are finally dis- posed of as physical existences and not as moral beings. If in some proper sense voluntary, then we choose our rela" tionship to God, we choose our character before him, and» under his forewarnings, vre choose the judicial award. Very important therefore is the Master's teaching on this point. Do his lips give any certain sound in this conversation, o^^ so weighty and momentous a question ] Let us see. " This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men Iced darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." The first thing that strikes us in the study ( f these words is that we are not helplessly and hopelessly benighted, that our sins cannot be excused or extenuated on the ground of ignoi*ance, but that when we sin, we sin in the light. " Light is come into the world," for Christ is come into the world, and he is the light of the world, the Sun of righteousness, whose wings bring healing. He shines directly wherever his word comes to men ; and everywhere else he shines by reflection, as the light of the sun is reflected by moons and planets, in zodiacal light and aurora borealis. The Light of the world shines down r THE KELIQION OF LIFE. I > ^ 1 I through the ages and over the nations. He shines m the religion of conscience, the religion of law, and the religion of love. He is the Light that lighteth every man that Cometh into the world ; or, " the true Light, which lighteth every man, came into the world." Every one in the world will be judged according to his light, according to his opportunities and abilities. " If ye were blind, ye would not have sin." " If I had not come and spoken unto them, they would not have sin."* "It is required of a man accord- ing to what he hath, and not according to what he hath not." *' What things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law." What things soever the gospel says, it says to them that are under the gospel. What the Bible says, it says to those that have it. What the law or the gospel or the Bible always says to men must not be confounded with what it sometimes says of men ; and especially what it says to those to whom it comes must not be confounded with what it says of those to whom it does not con\e. The Gentile world of old, without Jewish law, was not judged by Jewish law but by the light of conscience ; and the Gen- tile world now, without Jewish law or Christian gospel, (by no choice of its own), is not judged by such law or gospel but by its own light of conscience. *' For when Gentles, which have not the [Mosaic] law, do by nature the things of the law, these, though they have not the law, are the law unto themselves, inasmuch as they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness thereto, and their thoughts among one another accusing or else excusing." f "The times of this [Gentile] ignorance God overlooked ; but now [as far as his word comes] com- * John ix. 4i ; xv. 22, — Alford's Revision. fKomans ii. 14, 15. Alford's Eevision. •■/,- THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 89 mandeth all men everywhere to repent."* And the times of ignorance he Ktill overlooks, throughout the world, suf- fering all the heathen nations " to walk in their own ways," till his word comes to them. The second thing thjit strikes us in the study of the nineteenth verse is that wh^it God condemns men for is not only something in the light but "something from the heart. " Men loved darkness rather than light." What Gfod con- demns men for is not irremediable darkness, absolute ignor- ance, or satisfaction with hopeless, helpless night, but for loving darkness rather than light; or, in other words, for the heart-choice of darkness. He does not condemn us for guilty predecessors, for evi^ surroundings, for unfavorable circumstances, for infelicitous relationships that we have not chosen and cannot control ; but he condemns us for what is within us, for the working and state of our own souls. He condemns us for evil love, and bids us look within for the cause and the root of our danger and dread. It is no ancestral deed that ruins us, it is no mere inheritance that curses us, it is nothing external that determines us. Cir- cumstances may mould us but they neither make nor mar us. " The things which come out of the man, those are they that defile the man. For from within, out of the heart of man, proceed evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetousness, wickedness, deceit^ lasci- viousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness : all these things come from within, and defile the man."f The third thing that strikes us, in the study of the nine- teenth verse, is that the evil love for which God condemns us SPRINGS FROM OUR OWN CHOICE or is the fruit of our owa * Acts xvii. 30. Alford, except within the brackets. + Mark vii. 15, 20, 21, 22, 23 ; Alford. 90 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. doings. Feolings are not volitions, but they may spring from volitions. Love and liatred are not themselves electivity or choice, but they may be the fruit of it. And so in this very case they arc. " Men loved daikness rather than light because their deeds were evil." We love evil because we do evil. Why do we prefer darkness to light 1 Because we voluntarily j)ractise the works of darkness, vhoose dark and devious deeds, pursue dark and evil ways, turn from the light and plunge into the night. The love of darkness rather than light, then, is not hereditary or native, not an infliction or fatality, not an involuntary state or condition, but the natural result of our own free deeds, our ov/n wilful evil ways. We come into the world, it is true, without 8})iritual strength, without the in- dwelling of the Divine Spirit, and so grow up disjoined from God or totally ungodly ; but wo do not come into the world with the love of any specific evil. In fact, we do not come into the world with any feeling, with either love or hatred. We come into the world capable of loving and hating, capable of knowing and ignoring, capable of purposing and performing ; but these operations and changes are not congenital conditions but the vital develop, ments of free beings, and they will take place without God, if we do not give him our hearts, at his benign command and call. No man is born with the love of alcohol or gam- bling. Men love alcohol because they drink it ; they love gambling because they practise it ; they love dissipation of every sort because they addict themselves to it and refuse the highest good for which they were niade. The hand and the foot, or the use we make of them, as well as the eye and the ear, affect the heart. If we walk with the wicked, we shall love them and be like them, but we were not so born. THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 91 The preferential love of darkiieas is self-onginatcti ; and very easily, because the heart is vacant and rea.ly for almost anything that chooses to enter. The intoxicant that at first disgusts us ^e make palatable and pleasant by persistent use, perhaps to please our com})anions, ixjihaps to become like others. The gaming-table that sluxjked us at the outset, by its madness and vice, fascinates us at last, after wilful addiction to it. We have only ourselves to blame, if we love darkness rather than light ; and we are justly condemned for giving ourselves, in spite of the light, to deeds and ways of evil, to haunts and habits of sin and shame. We are fallen but not foraaken ; we are degenerate but not deserted ; we are lapsed but not utterly lost. We, to whom the gospel comes, are not in the night but in the light of the Son of God. We are not the helpless victims of evil circumstances but foolish lovers of darkness. We are not lovers of darkness by natural or philosophical necessity but by our own wilful deeds of evil. It is very true that when we become lovei*s of specific evil by practising it, the love sustains and strengthens the prac- tice. We addict ourselves to drinking or to gambling till we love it, and then we drink or gamble because we love it. The effect becomes a cause, the resultant love becomes a mighty motive ; and so we weave webs around ourselves, we bind ourselves with chains and fetters of our own forging, till nothinff remains for us but to " lie down in sorrow." It is very true also that though we come into the world without thoughts and feelings, without aims and practices, we do not long rem.tin so. Sensation begins at once ; per- ceptions of t.vieni.il things soon follow; the pain and desire of aj>p^;ite are speedily felt ; and so the develop- ment proceeds till the whole circle of thinking, feeling and willing is completed. Where the light of revelation clearly V Wj 92 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. shines, either choice for God or neglect of God takes place, in childhood or youth. If the soul, with its wants and lon^iugs, does not turn to God, at his coinniand and call, under the conviction and attraction of his Si)irit, it em- braces the world, practises evil and ioves it, and then practises the evil it loves more and more. The distance from God increases at every step, evil love continuady strengthens, and so the " evil man waxes worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." The progress is downward and easy, with constantly increasing momentum ; and is either stopped by tlie sinners submission to God for salva- tion, under the full flow of divine communication, influence and discipline, or is accelerated and confirmed to the end of life, the bitter and terrible end. The more we studv Christ's words to Nicodemus, the more we discern their discriminating and comprehensive wisdom. From the universality of divine agency in the gift of Christ for the salvation of the world, our Lord passes to the particularity of human agency in the belief that saves and the unbelief that destroys. From the per- sonality of faith and unbelief, in the region of revelation, he passes to the freedom of man's agency throughout the world. Our belief of the truth dei)ends, first of all, on the coming or communication of the truth to us ; but when the truth comes, are we really and truly free in receiving or rejecting it? And if the truth does not come to us directly anvl fully, if it comes only in the imperfect reflec- tion of the light of conscience or the light of preparatory law, are we free and responsible in our religious conduct and condition 1 With what wonderful wisdom our blessed Lord answers these questions, by plainly indicating that all men are in light, that the guilt of any man is something in THE RELIOION OF LIFE. 93 tlie heart aguitiHt tho light, and tliat the guilty lovo of the heart in the coiiHe<)ueiice of evil deedH, evil choice, uncom- pelled practices, the unnoceBsitated purHuit of evil aims and ways. And now, with the light of this widest view of human character and accountability, we can intelligently return to the narrower circle of gospel lands, to ascertain how far, or in what sense, faith and unbelief are voluntary and thero- fore justly adjudicable. Every human conscience, every just government, recognizes choice as the ultimate and only adjudicable thing. Nothing is really blamable or reward- able but choice, provided we take choice to embrace its known or knowable consequences. As the cause is answer- able for the effect so choice is answerable for its conse- quences. If I kindle a fire, I must answer for the known or knowable results. If I inflict a wound, I must give account for the known or knowable issue. If I lay a train and ignite it, I am justly held responsible for the conse- quent and foreseeable injury to possessions and pei-sons. Faith and unbelief aie not themselves volitions or elections but consequences of choice, and as such justly adjudicable. Whether we take faith in the intellectual sense, as assent or credence, or in the emotional sense, as trust or confi- dence, it is not choice! ; for choosing is quite distinct from thinking or feeling. Choosing means only intention or the action that fulfils it. But though faith is not a choice, it is the fruit of choice. Men generally believe in agreement with their predominant love and hatred, and these, as we have seen, spring from choice. Belief of truth usually results from using the means of ascertaining truth ; and the use of such means is voluntary. If we thoroughly study history, we shall believe its well-attested facts. If we study science, we shall discern and accept its facts and I 94 THE RELIGION OP LIFE. I!i1 forms. If we rightly use the means of ascertaining the truth, we sliall come to the knowledge or belief of the truth ; if we neglect the mean? or inadequately use them, we shall be ignorant and unbelieving. The cause, in sucli a case, is our own voluntary use or disuse of the means of truth ; the consequence, in such a case, is also ours, our own knowledge cr ignorance of the truth, our own belief or disbelief of tho truth ; and ar we are answerable for the cause so are we answerable for tho consequence. The use or disuse of the means is our own free choice, our own untrammelled, unnecessitated election ; and the con- sequence is also ours, our heai*t-choice, our moral possession, for which we are justly accountable and adjudicable, and from which we ctunot in equity escape. It is utterly erroneous and misleading to say that a man is no more accountable for his belief than for his complexion. He is accountable for all his intentions and actions and for all their consequences, according to his light ; and he is accountable for all omissions of intentions and actions for which he had light, and for all the consequences of si ch omissions. He is accountable for all that he is by his own election, he is accountable for all that he might be by his own election, to the amount of his bq^ht or of his oppor- tunities and abilities ; and to gainsay or question this is to assail the very foundation of all moral relationship and rule. Why is faith so often specified, in this conversation, in connection with life ? It is not specified in connection with the regeneration of the first part, though the want of it in Nicodemus is comj)lained of ;* but it is specified in each of the other three pai-ts, and in tho very same words in the -■'- ^^^'''^^'- -'- T-^-.'-v, * johniii. 11, 12. THE rt;:ligion of life. 95 the second and third : " that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everUisting life." This is not tautology, for Christ never repeats without reason or uses words with- out meaning. Faith is mentioned, in the second part of the converaation, as the measure of actual salvation, deter- mining its limits ; iu the third part as the method of sal- vation, determining its gratuitousness ; and in the fourth part as the morality or moral means of salvation, accounting for its limits. In the second part, Christ is lifted up on the cross to be the public means of salvation ; but to how many 1 Not actually to all, for all are not actually saved, but to as many as believe, just as the elevated or public serpent wa^ ^e means of life to as many as looked at it. And so elsewhere, John says the same thing : " As many as received him, to them gave he power [or privilege] to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name ; " that is, as many as believe in him, neither more nor less, are saved and become the children of God. The extent of faith in Christ is the extent of actual salvation by Christ, in the case of all those to whom Christ is made known. Believing neces- sarily implies something to be belie\ >ed, some report or testi- mony ; and accordingly, Christ carefully limits his censures and forev/amings and promises to those that know them. " Every one that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not ; " " he that heard and did not ; " " when any one heareth the word of the kingdom and hath not underatood it ; " "he that heareth my word and believeth on him. that sent me ; " "I testify unto every one that heareth the say- ings of the prophecy of this book." So Isaiah says res- pecting Christ — " Who hath believed our report 1 " And so Paul asks — " How can they believe in him of whom they 96 THE RELIGION OP LIFE. have not heard 1 "* The extent of faith in Christ is the extent of actual salvation by Christ, among those and tJiose only to whom Christ is somehfiW niade knovm. Faith has no function of limitation in the case of those to whom Christ is not reported, since they cannot " believe in him ot whom they have not heard ; " and therefore their condition and destiny must be determined by some other rule. Just as *' what the law saith, it saith to those that are under ne law " and to no others, so what the gospel says of the efficacy and necessity of faith in Christ, it says to those only to whom it comes ; but those beyond cannot be judged by such saying. In the third part of this conversation, fe,ith is mentioned as evidencing the gratuitousness of salvation, and therefore denoting the grace or love of God. "It is of faith that it might be by grace ; " and accordingly " God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him [not whosoever worketh or deserveth] should not perish but have everlasting life." God's love to the world appears partly in the gratuitousness of salvation, and the gratuitousness appears in the bestowal of salvation on the simple condition of faith in the Son of God. Because salvation is by faith without deeds of law, it is perfectly free ; and because it is perfectly free, it pix)ves and illustrates the love and liberality of the Giver. In the fourth part of this conversation, faith is specified for a different purpose ; not as the measure of actual salva- tion, determining its extent under the gospel ; not as the divine method of salvation, evincing its gratuitousness ; but as the morality or moral means of salvation, indicating •John i. 12 ; Mt. vii. 26 : Luke vi. 49; Mt, xiii. 19 ; Johu v. 24 ; Kev. xxii. 18 ; Isa. liii. 1 ; Ro. x. 14. THE RELIGION OP LIFE. 9T the freedom and respoiiHibility of the sinner, who is saved if he believes, or perishes if he disbelieves. Why sbovild salvation, in gospel lands, be limited to believers ? Because believing is free man's free acceptance of salvation, and unbelief is free man's free rejection of it. Man can bo saved only according to the nature that God has given him ; and as God has made him a moral being, which largely moans a free being, he cannot be saved without accepting salvation. God has tixed the method of accepting salva- tion as faith, in consonance with his own grace and with man's condition. Salvation by beUeving is salvation by grace, and so God is gloritied ; solvation by believing is the salvation of one so fallen that "tie cannot fultil the law, but can, with the help alforded him, believe, and so man is redeemed. Whoever i>ersists iii believing persists in accei)ting salvation, and shall live forever : whoever per- sists in disbelieving persists in rejecting salvation, and of necessity perishes. He perishes by his own act or choice, and has only himself to blame. This is what is meant in the fourth })art, when it is said — " He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of fio i,*' tl.at is, because, voluntarily, he has not l)elieved in the Saviour proclamietl to him, and that Saviour God. Such a one liees to tlio j>it and none can stay him ; he chooses his portion and no one can hinder ; he will not have life, and therefore he must die. There is no power in the universe to save him. Po ver to save from sin j' free intelligence that will i\q^ be saved is a contradiction. No one is compelled, no one can be comi)elled, either to believe or disbelieve. Believing is the result of right choice, according to God's word ; and disbelieving is the result of wrong choice. Each is per- i 11 98 TitE RELTOION OP LIFE. sonal and voluntary ; and both sufficiently account for the limitation of actual salvation. If I am actually saved} it is because, with the light and help afforded me, I accept the salvation of divine grace by believing in Christ ; and if I am not actually saved, it is b(!cause, with all the light and help afforded me, I do not believe in Christ for salvation. My unbelief is the fruit of my own choice, my own evil doings, my own wilful n(3glect of the means of faith and salvation ; and for this I am justly responsible and punishable. What is said in the eighteenth verse about not believing accounts for condemnation in gospel lands ; and what is said in the next verse accounts for condemnation in all other lands. He that believes not the divine report of Christ is justly condemned ; and so is he that persists in doing evil, from the heart and by choice, against his light, whether his light be twilight or starlight or moonlight or noonlight. This covers the whole vi^orld-field. The choice of faith liinits actual salvation in gospel lands ; the choice of well-doing, accoiding to light, limits actual salvation in all other lands. Of the man that hears the gospel, it must be said — " He can be saved through faith ;" and of every other mail it must be said, as concerning Cain — "If he does well, shall h(3 not bo accepted i And if not, sin lieth at the door." The believing and the well- loing are prac- tically ctquivalent or morally tantamount to each other. • ^4. Ihliuion is Practical. '• Their tleetla [or works] were evil. Every one that doeth evil. . . He that doeth truth. "—John ill. 19, 20, 21, Everything in the universe is either moral or physical, that is, either moral or unmoral, either capable or in- ^m IHE RELIGION 07 LIFB. 99 capable of moral action ; and every moral being in the universe is either good or evil. To say of anything that it is neither good nor evil is to say that it is simply physical, that it ranks with a stone or a vegetable or a bnite, and can never rise higher. The law of the whole universe is the distinction of the moral and the physical ;* and the law of the moral universe is the distinction of good and evil : The first is the universal law of dualistic contrast, that admits of no exception ; the second is the law of dualistic antagonism, that admits of no neutrality. The head and gloiy, the crown and climax, of the universe is laoral excellence, -w^hich is in God, without beginning or limita- tion or change. All that he has created is either like him- self or unlike. Whatever is like him or bears hid image is his child, his moral offspring ; whatever is unlike him is his servant, his physical or non-moral production, whether it be living or lifeless. God is the fountain and type of being, and every moral creature is either like him as good, or unlike him as evil ; and accordingly, Christ bids us bo the children, the imitators, of our Father in heaven, in his all-embracing and benignant love.t Men and angels are the only moral bcmgs we knov of ; angels only by testi- mony ; men by consciousness, testimony and observation. Kothing is moral but the choice of a moral being and its known or knowable consec^uences ; or, in other words, what is moral is voluntary, either in itself or in its cause. The cause is always answerable foj* the consequence. The effect of moral causation or choice is moral ; the effect of physical force or operation is physical. Thinking or feel- ing is moral as the consequence of moral choice, but not * Using the word physical as (ippoaed to moral and not as equival- eut to materiaL f Matthew v, 44-48. l! 100 THE RELIGION OF LIFA otherwise, because it is not itself choice or volition. There are only two sorts of choice, intention and action. Inten- tion, purpose, design, aim, detei-mination or resolution, is preparatory choice, prospective or prospicient volition, legis- lative election ; and the action that fulfils it is accom- plished choice, effective volition, executive election. There is or can be no other sort of choice. There cannot be a moral being like man, standing in various relationships, without activity, the activity or change that we call choice, change from one puri)osc to another, or from one perform- ance to another, or from purpose to its complementary per- formance ; ill other words, a moral being cannot be stag- nant or lifeless, without choice or change, without aim or eftbrt, which is the same as to say that there cannot be a moral being without intending and doing either good or evil. He may choose either good or evil, but he cannot refrain from choosing something. Not to choose good, when the occasion or opportunity of good arises, is evil. Even if every fellow-creature were absent and inaccessible, we should still have to choose good or evil in relation to the Lord and Giver of life. " He that is not with me," says Christ, " is against me ; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth :" " He that is not against us is for us."* Christ is so all-related, all-controlling, all-possessing, that we can- not be neuters before him. Not to be against him is to be with him, in the sense that he legislatively gives to this expression. We cannot be neutral, for he owns us and claims us ; and we cannot be both with him and against him, on account of the direct and essential antagonism of good and evil, right and wrong, and on account of the fact that he himself is the embodiment of right and good. Matthew xii. 80 ; and Mark ix. 40. THl RELIGION OP LIFE. 101 Christ to Nicodemns recognizes this moral dualism, this good and evil, and recognizes it as practical. The men that God condemns are men of evil deeds or works, the men whose evil choice results in unbelief. As the consequence Of evil choice is unbelief so the consequence of right or good choice, in the light of revelation, is faith. There can be neither faith nor unbelief without choice ; the choice of the means of truth that ends in the belief of the truth, or the choice of the neglect of the means of truth that ends in the disbelief or ignorance of tlie truth ; the choice of doing good that ends in the love of God or the choice of doing evil that ends in the love of evil. Such choi- o always proceeds under divine supervision and Influence, for God never relinquishes the curatorship of his creatures ; and over his whole human family in this world, he never ceases to rule redemptively. His good Spirit's emblem is the wind, the universal wind, that blows in every land and may be heard by every ear. He everywhere has sway, and never leaves himself without witness. True religion is not a mere speculation or sentiment, mere knowledge or emotion, but choice, consisting of noblest ends by noblest means. Its great aim is to be conformed to the image or likeness of the Son of God ; and its efforts for this aim are all comprised in the Son's teaching and example. To become Christ's by l)elieving in him, and to be like Christ, by living as Jie lived, are really whai true religion means. This doubtless com])roljcnds " the light of the knowledge of the glory of (Jod in the fixce of Jesus Christ" and " the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given to us." The use of such light is to lead us to God, and the value of such love is to innke us godlike and to animate and impel us in '' the work of tlio m 102 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. I li"l i Lord." As " God's fellow-labourers, God's tillage, God's building,'"* as the holy offspring of the Holy Spirit, as the princely children of the King immoi'tal, eternal, invisible, we are to be heartily and practically on the side of the truth and the right. , The piacticality of true religion, as the result of grace through faith, pervades the Bible ; and is most conspicuous in the Biblical place where grace is most abundant. What teacher is so practical as the Master himself, throughout the four gospels 1 The more doctrinal any epistle is the more practical it is also ; the more evangelical, the more precep- tive ; the more it tells us of grace and faith, the more it teaches us about holy living. The epistles to the Romans and Hebrews may be specially cited in proof of this. The very epistle in which Paul so clearly and copiously teaches the world's depravity, redemptive lighteousness and justi- fying faith, is the very epistle in which he chiefly teaches renewal in righteousness and the works and ways of holiness The very e})istle that shows us the inability of the law to save us, and the superiority and sufficiency of Christ's priest- hood, is the epistle that pre-eminently shows us the activities and achievements, san service, of the life of faith. So it is also in the epistle to the Galatians. The more we see, in any part of Scripture, of the divine source of our salvation, the more wo see also of the human stream of inward and outward holiness. An unholy or inactive Christian is an anomaly and contradiction. Man is a work- man, life is his work-day, and the world is his field. " Go, v.'ork to-day in my vineyard " is the voice of God every- where, in his written and published word. "Labour not," says Christ, " for the meat which perisheth, but for that '-• • 1 Co, iii. 9, revised by Alford, THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 103 meat wliich eudureth unto everlasting life, wliich the Son of Man sliall give unto you : for liini hath God tlie Father sealed. . . If any man serve me, let him follow me ; and where I am, there shall also my servant be. If any man serve me, him will mv Father honour."* § 5. Ecil practice Hhiins detection. " For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should l)u reproved" or detected. — John iu. 20. The men of the world, men without God, are appro- priately denoted as evil-doers. They do evil by purposing it and practisino it, having, in many instances, " left off to be wise and to do good." They do evil before God by the disregard of his commands and claims, for they refuse to submit to his redeeming grace, to return at his call, for reinstatement in his favour and likeness ; and they do evil before men. " A foe to God was ne'er true friend to man." " This commandment have we from God, that he who loveth God love his brother also." " He that doeth evil hath not seen Goc' "'+ Evil-doers co-operate in evil and " fight against God."" " He that is not with me," says Christ, " is against mo, and he that gathoreth not with me scattereth." " No man can servo two masters," and no man can be without some master. Every one that refuses to serve God serves Satan. Not to love God is to love Mammca. To despise salvation is to hold to sin : to hate righteousness is to love evil. In the mighty warfare of the universe, every moral being belongs in reality to one of the two great hostile camps, however he may deceive * John vi. 27 and xii. 26. t 1 John iv. 21 and 3 John U. 104 THE RELIGION OP LIFE. ifii: himself by tlie vain irnajnrination of neutrality oi* of delayed decision. Not to decide for God is to decide for evil ; not to bo enlisted under the banner of Christ is to fall off to the foe and serve the ])owers of darkness. We may be neutral or undecided in relation to some forms of evil, some methods of selfishness and worldliness, but there can be no neutrality or indecision on the part of any man, in relation to the great antagonism between good and evil, Heaven and Ilell. V "Every one that doeth evil hatoth the light"; and tc hate the light is to bate manifestation, for " that which maketh manifest is light." To hate the light is to love the darkness, and " so men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil." The love of moral darkness and the hatred of moral light are inseparable and mutually complementary. The luiman heart is a magnet, whose opposite poles are love and hatred. Dr. Johnson's liking for a good hater was founded in the nature and reason of things, for a good hater is a good lover, and a good hater and lover is forceful and decided. Men love darkness and hate light by their own choice, as the re- sult of their own evil practice ; and therefore have only themselves to blame. The evil worker shuns detection and discovery. We cannot do evil without knowing it, and to know that we do evil is to be self-condemned. As moral beings, we writhe under the condemnation of our own conscience ; as social beings, we shrink from the condem- nation of our fellows ; and as created beings, we dread the condemnation of God. The evil-doer hates the light that would expose him still more fully to himself and to the condemnation of men. and that by ex})osing his selfish designs would defeat them ; and therefore he avoids religious instruction, conversation and company and the THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 105 scrutinizing eye. He keeps aloof from the wise and good, and cowers in the shade from the presence and the eye of God, as our guilty first parents endeavoured to hide them- selves among the trees of the garden. He masks and cloaks himself, courts solitude and darkness ; and either flees when no man pursues or skulks in secret when no m'.in watches, for a guilty conscience " makes cowards of us all." Our Lord discloses to Nicodemus the chief root of men's neglect and dislike of revealed truth, " He that doeth evil hatetli the light." Men hate the Bible because it is the light of God that exposes and condemns their sins of heart and life. " The world hateth me because I testify of it, that the works thereof arii evil." If tlie Bil)le was simply a book of ancient history, impartial biography, Hebrew law, eastern antiquities and customs, beautiful or lofty poetry, wise sentences, skilful comparisons, sagacious conversation, able letters, wondrous foresight and forecast, they could admire and recommend it ; but because it is nuich more than all this, because it is at war with all impurity and in- culcates thorough holiness of heart and life, recognizing only the blessedness of godliness, the evil-doers hate it. They are against it because it is against them. It leaves them neither cloak nor excuse for their sins, because it detects their sins in root and branch, and shows them the means of salvation. It exposes the inanity of external or occasional religion, the rottenness of worldly morality, the emptiness and frivolity of fashionable pleasures ; it leaves the neg- lecter of revealed truth and redeeming grace no foundation to build on, no i)rop to lean on, no refuge to flee to, no good- ness to boast of, no real joy to revel in or hope for. Such a book as this exasperates every man that clings to evil ways, and will not submit to GodVi righteous authority and re- M'm 106 THE RELIGION OF LIFE. (Ineming love. And as ho liatoH tlie light, he will not come to the light, lest his deeds should he detected. He keeps away from evangelic truth hy neglecting the Bihle and shunning the preaching of the gospel : "These preachers say nothing good of me, but evil ; this book contains nothing for me but reproach and menace ; and I will have nothing to do with them." Wilmot, the infidel, when dying, laid his trembling emaciated hand upon the sacred volume, and exclaimed solemnly and with unwonted energy — " The only objection against this book is a bad life." The concealment and cowardice of conscious guilt admit of endless illustration, from the day that Adam and Eve loved darkness rathei* than light because their deeds were evil. When the sons of Jacob sold their brother into slavery, they concealed it with falseliood. When Achan stole some of the spoils of Jericho, he hid them in his tent. When Saul resorted to the sin of witchcraft, he chose disguise and the night. To get rid of competition, Joab murdered Abner under false pretences. By murderous deceit, David obtained the wife of Uriah. By hypocritical patriotism, Absalom won the country from his father. , When Jezebel wou i plunder Naboth for her husband, she resorted to false evidence and deceptive forms. Grehazi vainly imagined himself safe from detection, when, under false pretences, ho received the coveted money and goods of Naaman. Haman veiled his hatred to Mordecai and his people under loyalty to the king. The enemies of Daniel ' secretly planned his overthrow but falsely pretended to - magnify the royal power. Herod hid his purpose to destroy the infant King under a pretended desire to worship him. In the darkneFS of secret bribery, the Jewish authorities sought the destruction of Jesus of Nazareth, and in the 1 TUy. RELIGION OF LIFE. 107 darkness of the ntght sent men to seize him. As it was*in the ages of biblical history so it has been ever since. Wickedness is deceitful, dark and cowardly. Its hatred is the light, it fondnebs is for darkness, its dread is detection. False appearances, secrecy and night are its congenial choice and habitual means. " With their tongue they have used deceit." But the detection and punishment of persistent wicked- ness are certain and inevitable. " There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed ; and hid that shall not be known." " The Lord will bring to light the hidden things of dark- ne'js, and will make nianifrst the counsels of the hearts." ** For God shall bring every work into judi/ment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." * § 6, Good works Openly glorify God. "But he that doeth truth cometli to the light, that his deeds maybe made manifest that they are wrought in God." — John iii. 21. What is truth? This is a question more easily and more frequently asked than answered ; and yet a question that ought to be answered. Pilate might have had an answer from the Divine Embodiment of truth, had he desired it and waited for it. Truth is the assertion or indication of reality. It is the assertion of reality when it takes the form of a proposition ; otherwise, it is simply the indication of reality. When I assert, according to fact, that I see a human form before me or that a pleasant sound breaks upon my ear, I assert a reality, and my assertion of reality is truth ; when I say — " See that man " or " listen * Mt. X. 26 ; 1 Cor. iv. 5 ; Ecc, xii. 14. 108 THE RELIOION OF LIFE. to 'the miiaic," or in answer to the traveller's inquiry for the right road, point with my finger to a particular road, I indicate a reality, and ray indication of reality is truth. Reality itsel*" is not truth ; the man I see or the sound I hear or the road I indicate is not truth. Neither is my notion or perception of reality truth ; my visual perception of a form or my aural perception of a sound is not truth ; or, in other words, truth is not the raera conformity of notions to things. In spite of etymology, tiiith is not what a man troweth — thinketh or believeth — for men often believe or think what is utterly unreal. Truth always means com- munication, yet not every sort of communication. To one absolutely solitary, or without any communication, there is reality, there is knowledge, but not truth. Truth is social, not solitary ; truth means utterance or indication, not silence and seclusion ; truth is the name for the communi- cation of reality. Whether we assert reality by a proposi- tion or denote it by some sign or indication, the process is communication, the process is truth, and we ourselves are truthful ; and as lynguage is the great means of communica- tion, it may be generally said that truth is the linguistic communication of reality. *- ^ ' ^ ««;- In this account of truth, reality must be taken to mean the truth-teller's knowledge of reality. There is only one Being in the universe whose knowledge of reality is abso- lutely accurate aiid complete ; ours is limited and imperfect. Both in sensation and testimony we are sometimes deceived. We may examine facts or interpret words amiss ; and what we call our knowledge may be rather our error. Hence the necessity of some additional distinctions respecting our communicati:rn« with each other. Asserting or indicating reality (oui- knowledge of reality) is truth ; asserting or TITE RELIGION OF UfE. loo indicating the misapprehension of reality or the belief of unreality is error, and may be called fiilsity without im- plicating motives. But " truth " has an ethical meaning as well as this psychological one. Communicating unre- ality as reality, without any intention to deceive, or in mere ignorance or mistake, is simply error or psychological falsity ; but doing it knowingly, or with intention to deceive, is mendacity, falsehood or lying, which really means an intentional endeavour to create erroneous belief. As the opposite of knowledge is either ignorance or error, so the opposite of mendacity is veracity, which means an inten- tional endeavour to create the belief of ^'eality. Either from disregard to such distinctic ns as these, or under worse influence, innocent men have been falsely accusfid, unjustly condemned, and even capitally punished. Civil rulers have not only blasphemously usurped the judgment of conscience that belongs k God alone, but they have punished error as lying, misapprehension as perver- sion, religious ignorance or mistake as wilful rejection and denial of the truth, and even the belief of reality as error or infidelity. So Rome has murdered thousands, so Calvin burned Servetus, so even Englantl has harassed and slain good men. It is time for " vain man, decked in a little brief authority," to let conscience alone, and to understand that error and honesty may be friends, that mistake is not mendacity, that waiit of knowledge is not wickedness, that " orthodoxy is not my 'doxy, and heterodoxy your 'doxy," that testifying what we believe to be the truth of God is both beyond the sco))e of the civil magistrate's adjudica- tion and beyond the right of any man to stigmatize as im- piety or sin. ■ ' '--^ ■ ' ■ '■'<' ^*''-' ' c^^W'''-"-.;-;:.-.'''?^' ^;:v.,sj:v,.,>;- .. What our Lord means by " truth" or rather " the truth '* "fvS no fkE RiLIOiON 0^ Llk-K. I WW l> < i r'' 111! (r»]v aXYiQsiav) is not truth in general but the truth of God respecting his Son, the truth of man's redemption by Christ Jesus, the truth of divine revelation in the law, the pro- phetb and the psalms, divine truth that was then already written and to be written, God's own testimony to men, the truth of the gospel of the grace of God, the divine assertion or indication, through accredited messengers, of the realities of God's redemptive government of the world by his Son. This is the truth of the Father's " word," through which Jesus prays him to " sanctify " his disciples. This is the truth whose knowledge makes men " free." J sus calls himself " the truth " because he is the great Reality of divine communications and the great Communicator ; and because his Spirit testifies of this reality he is called " the Spirit of truth." This is " the truth of the gospel," " the word of truth," " the truth of God," " the truth of Christ," and emphatically and pre-eminently " the truth." This truth is practical, both as testimony to be believed and precept to be fulfilled. The faith that receives God's testimony works by love, and love fulfils the law ; and so the very doctrines and promises of Scripture are practical. That precepts are practical is beyond all question. And so a Cliristian man, a disciple of Christ, is one " that doeth truth." " Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yoi'v own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass : for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed."* In the moral antagonism of Christ's kingdom, as it appeara * James i. 22-25. THE AELIGlOi'f Ot LIFE. HI in this conversation, the opposite of evil-doing is not called good-doing or well-doing, but truth-doing, and with design and significance, because in our imperfect state, it is the truth of God that distinguishes and determines the good we ought to do ; and above all, in our subjection and devotion to our Heavenly Father, we are to do his will and not our own ; and as his will is in his word, our great business in the world is to " do the truth of God." Christ came not into the world to do his own will but the will of Him that had sent him ; and we are to havel, with his spoken testimony and illustrative example, with his works of faith and labours of love, with his plans and practices for men's salvation, is to be " made manifest," that his deeds are wrought iu God, " that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen." True religion, then, is to be practised, professed and pro- moted. It is private in its origin an