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SIN AND SALVATION
BY
HENRY A. NELSON
NEW YORK:
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY
900 BROADWAY, COR. 20th ST.
JS~
*:**■
COPYRIGHT, 1 88 1, BY
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY.
Edward O. JenKins, Printer and Stereotypy,
20 North William St.. N. Y.
TO
HIM WHO IS NAMED JESUS,
BECAUSE
HE SHALL SAVE HIS PEOPLE FROM THEIR SINS,
THIS TREATISE IS
REVERENTLY INSCRIBED.
371517
CONTENTS
PART FIRST.— SIN.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION, --------7
CHAPTER I.
SIN AS AN ACT, --------9
CHAPTER II.
SIN AS A STATE, -------- 20
CHAPTER III.
SIN AS DISEASE, --------30
CHAPTER IV.
SIN AS SEPARATION FROM GOD, 43
CHAPTER V.
SIN AS AN INHERITANCE, ------ 55
CHAPTER VI.
SIN AS A DELUSION, -- 67
CHAPTER VII.
SIN AS A DOOM, --------78
PART SECOND.— SALVATION.
SALVATION, ---------89
CHAPTER I.
SALVATION AS AN ACT, ----._ 93
(v.)
vi Contents.
CHAPTER II.
PAGfl
DIVERSE BEGINNINGS OF SALVATION, - - - 102
CHAPTER III.
WHAT IS ESSENTIAL TO THE BEGINNING OF SALVATION, 115
CHAPTER IV.
EARLY BEGINNING OF SALVATION, - - - - 127
CHAPTER V.
SALVATION AS HEALING, - - - - - - 140
CHAPTER VI.
SALVATION A RETURN TO GOD, - - - - - 1 54
CHAPTER VII.
SALVATION A RECOVERY FROM DELUSION, - - 1 67
CHAPTER VIII.
SALVATION OF HOUSEHOLDS, ----- 178
CHAPTER IX.
SALVATION OF SOCIETY, ------ 192
/
CHAPTER X.
SALVATION CONSUMMATED, ----- 204
INTRODUCTORY.
THE salvation which is offered to us by Jesus Christ
has its significance from a true understanding of
that from which we need to be saved.
The study of sin is, no doubt, a painful study ; yet it
draws and fastens the mind to itself with a strange inter-
est. It is a difficult study. It is a perplexing study.
There are questions in it which never have been answered,
and which we can not hope to answer. Attempts to an-
swer some of these questions have involved really great
minds in pitiable perplexity.
Is this a good reason for neglecting the subject ? for
abandoning the study ?
Yonder lies a lake which has places so deep that they
have never yet been sounded. It would be rash to say
that they never can be; yet, granting that those places
are practically unfathomable — that it is not worth while
to spend any more time in trying to sound them — is there
not still a great deal that can be learned concerning this
lake by careful observation and diligent study ? Is it not
best for people who are to live on its shore, and sometimes
to row and sail over its surface, to become as intelligent
concerning it as they can ?
The attempt to sail to the North Pole, or to climb and
travel to it among huge bergs or over broad floes and
(7)
8 , Introductory.
fields of ice, among the rigors and horrors of Arctic cold,
is probably a hopeless attempt. Intelligent heroism is
not likely to pursue that attempt much further. But shall
science and enterprise abandon all study of the Arctic
regions ? Shall they not rather keep up their watch, and
push their researches as far as human powers and re-
sources are competent to carry them with reasonable hope
of useful results ?
No more let us be discouraged by the miscarriage or
shortcoming of past attempts in the investigation and study
of sin ; no more let us be intimidated by the difficulties
which loom visibly before us.
We may well let these things make us modest; make us
cautious; make us temperate in our expectations; but
they do not justify despair, nor indolence, nor recklessness.
We can not be rid of this subject. Whether we study
it or neglect to study it, we are inevitably in it, and it is
in us. We can not escape it by refusing to think about it,
any more than we could escape the bad air of a close
chamber by refusing to become intelligent on the subjects
of ventilation and respiration.
Let us be patient with the difficulties, patient with the
limitations under which we are placed, patient with our
own infirmities and conscious perverseness, patient with
ourselves, even when we find occasion to be humble and
penitent. Let us prayerfully endeavor so to study that
we may find deliverance from this evil and bitter thii
which then we shall not so much need to understand.
PART FIRST.
CHAPTER I.
SIN AS AN ACT.
IN this simple form sin is first revealed to us in
holy Scripture. In this form we first know it in
experience. In the Bible account of the fall of man,
the word sin is not used, but that is there first pre-
sented, to which this name is given in the subsequent
Scriptures.
To Adam and Eve, in Paradise, a single, plain pre-
cept was given, a simple, intelligible prohibition,
limiting, in only one particular, the liberty of action
which their generous Maker accorded to them, in the
midst of a scene in which He had provided for the
otherwise unrestricted gratification of all their de-
sires. This divine command they were persuaded to
disobey. They did disobey it. They ate the forbid-
den fruit.
" And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and
that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one
wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat ; and gave unto her
husband with her, and he did eat." — Gen. iii. 6.
I* (9)
io Sin and Salvation.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism states the
truth with admirable brevity and precision, in its an-
swer to Question Fifteenth. " The sin, whereby our
first parents fell from the estate in which they were
created, was their eating the forbidden fruit." It is
more fully stated in the Larger Catechism (Q. 21),
thus : " Our first parents, being left to the freedom of
their own will, through the temptation of Satan,
transgressed the commandment of God, in eating the
forbidden fruit, and thereby fell from the estate of in-
nocency wherein they were created." In the Confes-
sion of Faith (Chap, vi.), the fact is stated thus:
" Our first parents, being seduced by the subtilty and
temptation of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden
fruit." These are clear and candid statements of the
Bible doctrine, which we do well to have in memory,
and often to meditate upon.
In that taking and eating the fruit of which God
had said, " Ye shall not eat of it," was exemplified,
the first time in human history, the act of transgres-
sion. That word (transgression) is exceedingly sig-
nificant. It is a going over, going across. Still
more exactly, it is a stepping over.* The word, when
thus carefully examined, carries the mind to the nat-
ural mode of locomotion of the human body, by the
voluntary movement of the limbs. It is not a flight,
* It is from the Latin — trans, over, and gressus, step.
Sin as an Act. n
nor a sliding, but a distinct stepping. It is by an act
of the will that the foot is lifted for a step. It is by
a continuous act of the will that a succession of steps
is made to produce a continuous advance in any di-
rection. It is by a definite act of the will that a foot
is lifted on one side of a line to which attention has
been called, and is set down on the other side of that
line. Thus we step over from one definite region or
space into another.
It is not an uncommon experience, to come to a
line, to step across which involves the decision of
some grave question. One deliberates at such a
place; holds his foot suspended, or arrested from its
previous advance ; considers, whether he will step
across, quite aware that the decision, as to that one
step, is to settle the question and determine the direc-
tion of the future progress.
So Julius Caesar paused and deliberated on the
bank of the Rubicon. Determining at length to cross
that stream, he well knew that he determined to enter
upon a contest which should not cease until his power
should be utterly destroyed or he should become mas-
ter of his country. The fate of his country and his
own place in history were to be decided by his cross-
ing that stream, or by his deciding to turn back, and
not cross.
So has many a fascinated youth paused at the
threshold of that house which is " the way to hell go-
12 Sin and Salvation.
ing down to the chambers of death." His whole
future hangs on his decision, whether to set his foot
over that threshold. Just as decisive may be the
stepping through the door of a drinking saloon, or
stepping behind that green lattice, where one may-
drink, and wipe his mouth, and come away imagin-
ing that those who see him come away, do not know
what he has been doing, and forgetting that God saw
all the time. It is that step which tells — the one
step beyond the last point to which you can go
safely and rightly — nay, the first step in the direction
in which you know that you ought not to go.
Let me not omit to say, right here, that, to those who
have gone wrong and who are wrong, a step, the right
way, may be equally decisive.
Many a person has decided his whole future in de-
ciding whether he would cross the threshold of a
church, upon the Sabbath, or enter a prayer-meeting,
or go into a pastor's study, or into the chamber of a
pious mother, to unbosom himself, in that holy con-
fidence, to one whose sympathy is the best human
help toward all that is pure, from all that is evil.
Every commandment, issued by competent author-
ity, every true law, is a line. It defines a region
within which action is free, and beyond which it is
forbidden. To do the forbidden action is to cross
over that line. It is to transgress.
This is indeed a figurative use of language. It is
Sin as an Act. 13
the expression of moral truth in terms and figures of
mathematics, of geometry. But I know of no other
terms or types which can express it so well. Our
customary use of such terms as rectitude, uprightness,
a line of conduct, etc., show how close the analogy is,
and how natural the connection of thought between
mathematical and moral truth.
Sin as an act, the transgression of a rule, or (vary-
ing the form of the figure) as a deviation from a rule —
it is in this form that sin is first revealed to us in the
Bible. In the same form did each of us first come to
the knowledge of it in experience.* .
I have just now intimated that sin may be more
exactly a deviation from a rule, than a transgression
or going across it. We may conceive of a line, not
as defining a space out of which we may not step,
but as indicating a direction in which we are required
to go. * Every step must be on that line. Every
wrong step is aside from it — a deviation rather than
a transgression. Yet again, we may think of the line
as marking the limit of a space, over the whole of
which we are required to go, in some obedient labor,
as in plowing a field, or reaping it. The faithful
plowman will turn his last straight furrow close up to
* It is not here affirmed that each of us becomes a sinner, as Eve
and Adam did, by deciding to do a thing known to be forbidden.
But it is when first distinctly conscious of doing such a forbidden
or wrong thing, that we get our first distinct idea of sin — first
know it.
14 Sin and Salvation.
that line as carefully as he will restrain the hoofs of
his team or the sharp plow-share from marring the
turf on the lawn beyond that line. The obedient
reaper will see to it that he leaves no stalks standing
within the boundary, as carefully as he will hold back
his sickle's point from encroaching beyond it.
The first human sin was in the form which I first
illustrated, and which is rightly called transgression.
It was in disobedience of a law which prohibited
something — a law which did not require an action to
be done, but required that a specified action should
not be done. It put a restriction upon Adam's and
Eve's activity. It clearly defined one action which
they must not do. "And the Lord God commanded
the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou
mayest freely eat ; but of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it : for in the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." — ■
Gen. ii. 15, 16.
Their doing that very thing, which was thus plainly
forbidden, was the first human sin. They disobeyed
that precept. They transgressed that law. They
stepped across that line.
They did this intelligently. Eve knew what she
was doing when she plucked the fruit and ate it at
the wicked instigation of the tempter. She knew
that she was doing exactly what her Maker had for
bidden her to do. The same was true of Adam
Sin as an Act. 15
when Eve gave him of the fruit, " and he did eat."
If we should suppose Eve to have deceived Adam as
to the fruit ; if it was undistinguishable by sight,
or touch, or smell, from other fruit, of which they
might freely eat, so that Adam could have no means
of distinguishing it, after its removal from the tree ;
and if we might suppose Eve to have plucked it, and
craftily placed it among other fruit, served up in
her customary way, in their bower, while Adam knew
no reason for distrusting her, and was incapable of
distrusting her without reason ; — if thus the man had
eaten, not knowing, not suspecting that it was the
forbidden fruit, our minds could not attach blame
to such an action, nor is it possible to believe that it
would have drawn after it such disastrous conse-
quences. Adam and Eve evidently did that forbid
den thing, knowing just what they were doing. They
knew that they were eating the forbidden fruit.
Neither did Eve deceive Adam, nor had the serpent
deceived Eve into the belief that it was the fruit of
any tree of which they were allowed to eat.
Not only did they know that it was forbidden fruit,
but they also knew that the prohibition was binding
upon them ; that they were morally bound by it ;
that they ought to obey it. That sentiment which
we express by the word ought, was in their minds as
it is in ours, and they knew its application to that
action to which they were tempted. They knew that
1 6 Sin and Salvation,
to disobey God was wrong. They knew that they
ought to obey Him. Whatever view we take of the
amount and variety of their general knowledge, or of
their intellectual powers and condition ; whether we
suppose them possessing intellects fully developed
and mature, and acquainted with science, or alto-
gether childlike in attainments and capacities, we
have no reason whatever to doubt that they knew
their obligation to obey God. Their vocabulary may
have been limited ; their ability to express moral
ideas in words may have been small ; they may not
have been able to state or define the principles which
are the ground and basis of moral obligation. So is
the little child now, or even the child considerably
advanced in the knowledge of visible things. But
can you remember a time when you did not know
that you ought to obey your parents ? Were not
you just as sure of this — did it not lay hold on your
conscience just as decisively before you learned the
Fifth Commandment, as ever it did afterward ? And
as soon as you knew of God, did you not know that
you ought to obey Him ? It is not possible to be a
child capable of knowing its parents ; it is not pos-
sible to be a creature- capable of knowing its God,
and have any honest doubt of that obligation.
Adam and Eve could not be the creatures that
God made them, and not know that they ought to
obey Him. They did know that to do what He had
Sin as an Act. ij
forbidden was wrong. And that is just what they
did.
They did it voluntarily. The tempter craftily per-
suaded : he had no power to compel. If he had so
taken possession of their bodies, as to deprive their
souls of all. power to control their bodily motions,
and thus had compelled them to pluck and eat, the
muscular motions being directly and decisively con-
trolled by His will, and not by theirs, then certainly
we should say that this was properly and responsibly
His action, and not theirs ; He did it, and not they.
In what they actually did, we contemplate an action
done with intelligence — i.e., with knowledge of its
real character — and done voluntarily, contrary to a
command of known obligation.
This is well stated in the " Westminster Cate-
chism " : " Our first parents, being left to the freedom
of their own will, through the temptation of Satan
transgressed the commandment of God in eating the
forbidden fruit."
It seemed good to God to test our first parents by
a law which was a simple, single prohibition. If He
had chosen to test them by a positive precept, doubt-
less He might have done so. If He had set them a
task of positive labor, within the compass of the
powers with which He had endowed them, it is evi-
dent that His command to do that work would have
been just as binding upon them as was that single
1 8 Sin and Salvation.
prohibition which He did enact. If, for example,
He had bidden them prune every tree of the garden,
and they had knowingly and purposely neglected to
prune some one, that refusal or neglect to do what
God had commanded would have brought the same
blame upon them as their actual doing of what God
had forbidden. The obligation is to obey, and the
guilt of disobedience is the same, in whichever direc-
tion the disobedience may be. The obligation to walk
on a line is equally violated by turning to the right
hand or to the left. We are as culpable for stopping
short of the line which limits our duty or our di-
vinely-commanded service, as for going across the
line of a divine prohibition. A creature equally
wrongs his Creator by doing the things which He
has forbidden, and by leaving undone the things
which He has commanded.
If until this moment you had never done wrong —
had never done what God has forbidden, nor failed
to do anything which He has required of you — if
now there were right before you a line which you
were forbidden to cross, and you were about to
decide the question of crossing — what an awful mo-
ment this would be ! How breathlessly would all
who love you watch you ! With what feelings would
the angels look down on a human soul so deliberating !
To imagine one just now about to disobey God,
who never disobeyed Him before, chills our very
Sin as an Act. 19
hearts. Is it less dreadful to have disobeyed Him
many times — to have become used to disobeying
him ? No, guilt is thus ever accumulating. Every
single act of disobedience has its own distinct culpa-
bility. It is an evil and bitter thing to sin against
God — to have been long in the habit of sinning
against Him. It is not less dreadful because habit
makes one lose the painful sense of it. It is dreadful
to lose the sense of it. It is more dreadful not to
be willing to confess it. " He that covereth his sins
shall not prosper ; but whoso confesseth and for-
saketh them shall have mercy."
CHAPTER II.
SIN AS A STATE.
WHEN a wrong act has been done, forthwith
the soul of the wrong-doer is in a wrong
state. It immediately knows itself to be in a wrong
state. Not only has that soul sinned : it now is a
sinner. The act of sin took place, and has passed.
The guilty state continues. The act was done some
time ago ; the guilt of it, the blame of it, the sinful
state of soul, abides.
. Whether the wrong action has induced the wrong
state, or has sprung out of it, and proves that it
was existing before ; whether the wrong action is
the cause of the evil state, or the evil state was the
cause of the wrong action — it may puzzle us to de-
cide. But the mind knows them both as facts, as
realities. It has no doubt about this. When a sinful
deed has been done, a sinful state exists. Innocence
is gone. The soul is guilty. This is now its fixed
and abiding character.
We are accustomed, in thought, to distinguish the
evil state of the soul, which underlies its bad actions,
from the actions themselves. When one of whom we
have had a favorable opinion disappoints us by an
(20)
Sin as a State. 21
act of flagrant wickedness, we not only are shocked
by that deed, but are conscious of deeper pain at
finding him capable of such a deed. We are inclined
to infer that he must previously have been in a state
of heart different from what had appeared ; an evil
state from which such an evil action has naturally
proceeded, or which has been an adequate cause of it.
On the other hand, however, we are equally aware
that evil deeds voluntarily committed react upon the
soul which commits them, making its evil state more
evil than it was before, or (in the first instance of
wrong action) changing it from a good and holy
state into an evil and sinful one.
THIS STATE BLAMABLE.
For this evil state, or disposition, from which evil
deeds will flow as surely and as naturally as streams
from a fountain, or as rays from a sun, we can not
help blaming the subjects of it, whether ourselves or
others. We no more condemn ourselves or our
fellow-men for what we do than for what we are.
We do not blame Joseph's brothers for not speaking
peaceably to him, any more than for being of such a
disposition that they " could not speak peaceably to
him." We blame them not merely for doing so many
wicked, unbrotherly, and unfilial things, but for being
such mean and wicked men as could do such things ;
for whom it was natural to do such things.
22 Sin and Salvation,
THIS STATE .INEXPLICABLE.
There is a difficulty here which puzzles and baffles
the philosophers. None of them satisfactorily ex-
plain it ; none of us understand it. Nevertheless
the voice of conscience is clear, and its testimony is
sufficient for our practical direction. You may be-
wilder yourself in trying to tell how it can be that
you are to blame for being such a man as you are.
But then you know all the while that you are to
blame ; you feel guilty. We all know that we not
only have done things which we ought not to have
done, but that we are such persons as we ought not
to be. That solemn word "ought" forces its way
into our consciences just as irresistibly with reference
to what we are as with reference to what we have
done. Let us accept the self-evidexit fact. Let us
confess the situation we actually are in. Let us bow
down under the self-condemnation, in deep humility,
in absolute submission, and in confessed helplessness,
at the feet of our divine Judge and Sovereign. Then
only are we in the proper state of mind to hear, if He
has any practicable way of mercy for us ; to inquire
teachably what it is ; and thankfully, trustingly to
accept it. Even then we may not be able satisfac-
torily to expound the evil out of which the hand of
Divine Mercy has plucked us. Numbers of such
rescued men have applied their sanctified intellects
Sin as a State. 23
to the solution of this problem ; some of them have
thought that they had solved it ; but other equally
clear and candid and regenerate minds have failed to
be satisfied with every proposed solution. For ex-
ample, in our present actual condition, we trace a
connection, as of cause and effect, between our sinful
acts and our sinful state. We take bad actions to be
evidences of a bad heart, from which they proceed.
We seem to have our Saviour's sanction of this :
" For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, mur-
ders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness,
blasphemies." — Matt. xv. 19. "For from within,
out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adul-
teries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness,
wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blas-
phemy, pride, foolishness : all these evil things come
from within, and defile the man." — Mark vii. 21-23.
Assuming, as we may, that our nature is now cor-
rupt, that our hearts are by nature evil, we then
easily account for all the evil actions of which we
find ourselves guilty. We can also account for our
present possession of this nature. We have inherited
it. But when we ask how the nature which we have
inherited became corrupt, having been perfectly good
in the beginning — when we attempt to account for
the fall of our human nature from its original holi-
ness — we can only say that actual sin, the first human
sin, corrupted the human nature there, at its very
24 Sin and Salvation.
source, and thence in all its streams. But now we
have lost our hold upon our previous method of ac-
counting for the actual sin. There was no evil nat-
ure back of the first transgression out of which it
could proceed.
Shall we try to account for this by referring to the
temptation of Satan, whereby an evil element was
brought into the human nature from the Satanic?
It is doubtless true that " our first parents, being
seduced by the subtilty and temptation of Satan, sin-
ned in eating the forbidden fruit." But does this
solve the difficulty ? Not to my mind. It is a great
marvel to me how an evil suggestion from an evil
being could get any hold upon a pure nature, dwell-
ing hitherto in communion with God, and in perfect
felicity. And if I waive this difficulty, my mind will
still go back in the history of that other being, the
tempter. I ask how he became such a being? How
could his first sin, the first sin in the universe, the
first going wrong of any moral agent, take place when
there was no tempter to seduce ; no evil nature to
come in from without ? Here my mind confronts a
question which I not only can not answer, but am
sure that no man can answer. At this point, I be-
lieve, we all find ourselves utterly baffled — all who
think persistently enough to come up to this point.
The advocates of all theories, when they come to-
gether here, just look in each other's faces in mute
Sin as a State. 25
helplessness. They gather, in awed silence, about
the margin of a deep pit down which they gaze with-
out seeing a bottom — down which they drop their
interrogatory pebbles, and listen in vain. No sound
comes back.
I strongly suspect that all human attempts to ex-
plain sin must necessarily fail. Human philosophy,
the human mind must, I believe, at last confess, that
here is one fact, the most dreadful fact in human his-
tory, which it can not account for, of which it can
give no rational exposition. I believe that it is really
contrary to all true philosophy to try to account for
sin. I believe that a fallacy lurks in every attempt
to account for it. For what do we mean by account-
ing for any fact ? That expression has no propriety
except with reference to a nature of things — an or-
derly system, in which things are coming to pass ac-
cording to the law of that system, according to the
rational idea of him who constituted the system.
Now the very idea of sin is of a deviation from
rule. It is a violation of order. We sometimes
speak of the nature of sin, but not properly ; for sin
is ^mature. It is wholly monstrous. It is the very
negation of all with which reason and philosophy can
deal. Nature hath laws ; Nature hath order ; Nature
hath harmony. How beautifully, and how impressive-
ly are the men of science, in our time, showing this
in respect to physical nature in all its vast and various
26 Sin and Salvation,
realms ! Astronomy, chemistry, the mighty and grand
movements of the worlds, the wondrously precise ad-
justments of the elements and atoms of matter, the
absolute obedience to law in the formation of crystals,
from the hard and durable diamond to the feathery
and fragile snow-flake, the orderly adjustment and
steady transmission of vital forces, through all the
multitudinous species and varieties of plants and of
animals — in all nature, we find order, harmony, law.
But Sin is discord ; Sin is disorder ; Sin is lawlessness.
Am I not right, in giving up all attempts to_account
for it, and in dissuading you from spending any of
your time or strength in such attempts ? Is it not a
reasonable opinion, which I expressed, that all human
attempts to explain sin must be failures ?
ANOMY.
There is an old English word, which you will find
in the dictionary, but marked " obsolete " — that is,
gone out of use. It is "Anomy." I almost wish
that our influential writers would restore it to our cur-
rent literature. It is the very word which we need for
translating the most important word in a most im-
portant Bible text. I refer to I John iii. 4, "Whoso-
ever committeth sin, transgresseth also the law ; for
sin is the transgression of the law."
In the Westminster Catechism (S. C, Q. 14) this
definition of sin is extended thus: " Sin is any want
Sin as a State. 27
of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of
God." This is not, however, such an extension of
the Apostle John's definition as it seems. Our En-
glish version does .not express the meaning of John's
words either so fully or so accurately as it is express-
ed in the catechism. John uses there the Greek word
from which that old and now obsolete English word
was formed. In the Greek it is " anomia " — the En-
glish form of which is anomy. In the Greek language,
the word for law is nomos, and that letter (a) prefixed
to a word has the same effect upon its meaning which
the syllable un, prefixed to a word, has in our language.
It just reverses the meaning, or takes the previous
meaning out of the word.* Anomy then is unlaw.
And the Apostle John says that sin is anomy. The
whole verse translated by means of that word, would
be, " Every one who doeth sin, doeth anomy, and sin
is anomy." An able scholar, Dr. Bloomfield, in his
notes on the Greek Testament, has this comment on
this phrase : " For sin is * the transgression of the
law,' or a lawless conduct. Whatsoever in any degree
exceeds, comes short of, or deviates from the law, and
in thought, word, or deed, is not perfectly coincident
with it, is sin — a violation of the law."
A thorough study of that word in John's Epistle
fully justifies the definition of sin in the catechism,
* Notice the similar formation and import of "atrophy "
28 Sin and Salvation.
which includes want of conformity to the law, as well
as transgression of it. Not only so, I think that it
confirms the view I have expressed of sin, as an un
explainable, unaccountable, anomalous fact.*
Sin is, however, no less real, nor is it any less dread-
ful, because it is inexplicable. A shape is not the
less horrible,
" If shape it may be called, that shape hath none,
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb."
Surely this inexplicableness of sin, the dark, impene-
trable mystery in which it is enveloped, ought to
make us dread it, and hate it all the more, and be all
the more anxious and earnest to escape from it.
If we were living in some low valley in which the
air was found to be charged with deadly malaria,
would we keep our homes there because no chemist
could detect, by any careful analysis, the hurtful ele-
ment, or because no careful observation and study of
the soil beneath, or hills around, or streams or
marshes, or prevailing winds, could show us whence
the mysterious deadliness comes? Would not we
* President McCosh closes a profound note, on this topic, with
these words : " That in ethics, as in a thousand questions of physics,
we must often rest satisfied with knowing the fact without knowing
its origin, ground, or explanation." " The Divine Government," p.
378. I also find this remark in Lange's " Commentary on Paul's
Epistle to the Romans," p. 330 : " Only after the accomplished vic-
tory over evil can the deep, dark enigma of evil .... be fully
solved."
Sin as a State.
29
first of all build our homes, far up the hill-sides, or
on their breezy summits, postponing our study of the
nature and causes of the sickness, until our own
blood and brains should be free from it?
If we had fallen into the midst of a bottomless and
shoreless sea, and should persist in an effort to fathom
it, or by the vigor of our own muscles to swim out of
it, we must inevitably perish in the vain and foolish
attempt. But floating for a moment, on that wide
and awful desolation, we might clearly see the calm
heaven over us ; and if we saw also a ladder, let down
from its serene height, even into the wave at our side
— surely then we would not turn away our eyes from
its golden steps and the beckoning angels, down into
the dark and hopeless depth beneath.
Verily, verily, we human sinners are afloat on a
shoreless and bottomless sea. Left to ourselves, we
shall toss and shiver here for a little while, and then
go hopelessly down. But we are not left to ourselves.
We do indeed " see heaven open, and the angels of
God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.'
CHAPTER III.
SIN AS DISEASE.
THERE is a very intimate connection between
sin and bodily disease. They are found to-
gether, a great deal, in human experience. Christ is
revealed as the great deliverer from both. The
prophet Isaiah, the "evangelical prophet," prophet
of. glad tidings, foretelling the Great Deliverer,
represents Him as suffering, in our place, that which
must be suffered for our sins. He speaks of Him
as bearing the heavy load of our griefs and sor-
rows, not merely as a sympathizing friend, but as our
substitute, judicially considered. This is made plain
by the expressions, " Wounded for our transgressions,
bruised for our iniquities"; and by the declaration,
that the " chastisement of our peace was laid upon
Him." The doctrine of expiation for human guilt is
there clearly taught. Yet even in such connection the
idea of healing is present to the prophet's mind. He
finds it natural to say, " And with His stripes we are
healed."
The Evangelist Matthew, in quoting this prophetic
declaration of Christ's relation to human sin, cites the
prophet as saying : " Himself took our infirmities.
(30)
Sin as Disease, 31
and bare our sicknesses " ; as if to His inspired mind
bearing our sicknesses, and being bruised for our ini-
quities, were equivalent. The Apostle Peter, with
evident reference to the same prophetic passage, repre-
sents Christ as having borne our sins, for their expia-
tion, that He might rescue us from the morbid spirit-
ual condition, and restore a new, healthy, holy life
within us, " that we being dead to sins, should live
unto righteousness." The only phrase which he
quotes literally from Isaiah, is the one which makes
the idea of healing prominent, " by whose stripes ye
were healed."
Our Lord himself, in that instance of exercising
His healing power which Matthew has recorded
(Chap. ix. vs. 1-7), proceeds in a manner peculiarly
adapted to impress us with the close connection, in
his mind, between sin and sickness. A man sick of
the palsy, a helpless paralytic, is brought to Him on
a bed, by friendly persons who have faith in Jesus'
power and disposition to heal him. "Seeing their
faith," the Lord is willing to grant their desire. But
it shall not be merely a material benefit, a physical
relief, a bodily healing. He compassionately beholds
more than the body burdened with infirmity, even
the soul loaded with guilt. He looks through the
diseased frame, and beholds the sinful soul ; and He
directs the healing word within, to the center and
source of the poor man's trouble. " Thy sins be for
32 Sin and Salvation.
given thee," is the word of relief to the sufferer, and
of offence to the skeptical lookers-on. From their
cold censure the Lord vindicates His power to forgive
sins, by visibly demonstrating His power over disease.
The paralytic leaps up and walks home, in their
sight. A healed soul is enabled to uplift an infirm
body, not only from its prostrate position, but out of
its morbid condition. By one and the same mighty
word, the man is pardoned and is healed.
What is disease f It is dis-ease. You are familiar
with the grammatical force of that syllable dzs, pre-
fixed to any word. Dis-own, dis-qualify, dis-regard,
dis-locate, dis-franchise — all these words express the
opposite of that which the several terms would signi-
fy without that prefix. The first idea then which the
word dis-ease should suggest, is the opposite of that
which is conveyed by the word ease. By ease we
mean " freedom from pain, disturbance, trouble." So
Webster defines it, and so your mind thinks it. It is
a condition, or state, which is desirable, on account
of the absence of what is unpleasant. It does not
necessarily imply any positive enjoyment, but freedom
from suffering, and an opportunity for enjoyment to
be super-added. Dis-ease should then imply the
cessation of that condition, or its change into a con-
dition in which one is a sufferer. It implies pain, dis-
turbance, or trouble. But, in use, this word (as is very
common in human language) settles to a deeper mean-
Sin as Disease, $?>
ing. It goes down below the fact or phenomenon
which it first designates, to the cause of it. By the
term disease, the physician now does not mean the
pain or distress which his patient feels, but that con-
dition of his bodily organs which causes the dis-
tress.
The painful throbbing which you feel in your head,
or the sense of oppression or suffocation in your
breast, is dis-ease, or dis-comfort — disease, in the
primary sense of the word — but your physician re-
gards this as only a symptom or sign of the real dis-
ease, which he calls congestion. This means the heap-
ing together of an excessive amount of blood, gorg-
ing and straining its natural channels, thereby caus-
ing the discomfort, the pain, which you suffer. The
organs are working wrong. The heart is beating too
fast ; it is pumping the blood too rapidly ; it is strain-
ing and stretching the blood-vessels ; they swell and
redden ; the healthy vital warmth is unhealthily in-
creased to hot inflammation, to fiery fever ; and as,
when one member suffers, all the members suffer with
it, soon the whole body is sick — the whole man groans
and labors with pain.
This is all because something has gone wrong, in
this curious bodily frame. Some law of its constitution
has been violated. There is some anotny, some trans-
gression of, or want of conformity unto, a physical
law, the rule by which the physical action should be
34 Sin and Salvation.
regulated, and only in conformity to which it can be
healthy and happy.
You do not need a doctor to tell you that all such
wrong working of bodily organs not only gives pres-
ent pain, but works lasting damage to the organiza-
tion itself ; gets it into a morbid (7. e,, a diseased) con-
dition. If the car-wheels are thrown off the track.
and run jolting over stones and timbers, not only
will the passengers suffer painful thumping and bruis-
ing, but the wheels themselves are likely to be broken,
the axles bent, or other parts of the machinery dam-
aged. If you thrust hard leather into your family
sewing-machine, or force its irregular motion, when
its bands or screws are not rightly adjusted, or when
it creaks for lack of oil, you not only must bear the
present fatigue' of such hard work, but must expect
to find your machine permanently injured or dis-
ordered.
Here is another word, sometimes used as equivalent
to disease. It is formed in the same way — dis-order.
It suggests at once the idea of derangement or dis-
arrangement. It is the putting out of an orderly
arrangement of something which had been rightly
arranged or disposed. Dis-order in any of the bodily
organs, as to their location or as to their action, gives
pain, and works damage, deterioration, perhaps dis-
solution of the organs themselves. The organs of
the human body, as truly as the wheels and bands
Sin as Disease. 35
and springs of the most delicate machine, must be in
that shape and condition and order which the maker
of it intended, and must act regularly (i. e., according
to the rule which he intended), or else suffering and
disease will result. The human body is a machine,
the most delicate and the most perfect that exists on
earth. A Corliss engine, or a Hoe's printing-press,
or an Elgin watch, is not to be compared to it. The
human body is a most exquisite machine. It is not
only that. It is something more and greater ; but
it is that, notwithstanding. The human body is a
machine that is alive ; that has a soul in it. The
soul is not in the body merely as the inhabitant is in
the house ; not merely as the engineer is in the
engine. The soul and body of man are united to
constitute him. Man is not merely a body that has
a soul, nor yet a soul that has a body. Man is a
body and soul in a real, though inexplicable union.
I do not wish to entice you into any unpractical or
unnecessary refinements ; but I do wish you to recog-
nize the evident truth that you exist, body and soul,
in a real union of these, far more intimate than any
which can be affirmed of the house and its inhabitant
or of the machine and him who works it. And I
desire that what you know and feel of disorder and
disease in your bodily organization may help you to
a true apprehension of the disorder and disease of
soul which sin produces and which sin really is. I
$6 Sin and Salvation,
would fain quicken our minds unto a livelier sense of
what is so variously and abundantly set forth in the
Bible on this subject. It will help us to this, if we
consider it —
i. With reference to our natural desires. Desire,
or longing for a real good — the wish to obtain and
possess that good — belongs to the human constitu-
tion, no doubt, as God originally designed and made
it. It is not easy to see how a rational creature could
be active and responsible — could be capable of enjoy-
ment and capable of character — without this element.
It is equally evident, however, that it is an element
which needs to to be subjected to regulation and
restraint. It is always the irregular indulgence of
desire which moves to sin as an act. The woman
took the fruit of the tree of knowledge, because she
" saw that the tree was good for food and pleasant
to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make wise." —
Gen. iii. 6.
Says the Apostle James : " Then when lust hath
conceived, it bringeth forth sin." — J AS. i. 15. The
word " lust " here translates the same Greek word,
which is elsewhere sometimes translated "desire."
That it does not necessarily imply sin, is evident
from the fact that it is the word in which Luke
records our Lord's own expression : " With desire I
have desired to eat this passover with you before I
suffer." — LUKE xxii. 15. At present, we do not
Sin as Disease. $7
commonly use the word lust in a good sense, but
apply it to desires which ought not to be indulged,
or to unlawful indulgence of desires.
Closely related to both these words is the word
appetite, which implies desire, and suggests a posi-
tive impulse to seek or strive after that which will
satisfy it. We commonly apply this to objects which
afford bodily gratification, but not always. " An
appetite for power," would be admitted as good
English, although, doubtless, it would seem to most
readers as a figurative expression, like " thirst for
gold." It is easy to see that unregulated desires at
once create disorder. A mind whose desires do not
submit to proper regulation is as certainly a diseased
or disordered mind as that is a disordered or diseased
body whose organs are not regular in the discharge
of their functions. It is a matter of plain and com-
mon observation that indulging any desire wrongly
usually increases its strength, and makes it more dif-
ficult to restrain or regulate than it was before. It
becomes excessive in its force and urgency. It is
morbid. It may be compared to the too rapid beat-
ing of the heart, and its effects to congestion in
any bodily organ. Such wrong and unlawful indul-
gence does not therefore lose its quality of blama-
bleness ; but it is best for us to see and to study
this other quality of morbidness. If this needed
illustration, we might readily find it in the desire for
38 Sin and Salvation.
intoxicating drink which so terribly tortures and
enslaves its victims. If you have never felt the
power of that appetite in yourself, God grant you
may be forever kept from it by total abstinence
from that which excites it. But doubtless you have
had occasion to witness its terrible power over some
one in whom you are interested — perhaps some one
in whom you are so tenderly interested that it has
caused " a sword to pierce through your own soul
also." We can not, with the Bible open before us,
regard the drunkard as only unfortunate. It is not
best for him to forget that he is guilty ; that the
bondage he is in is a bondage for which he should be
ashamed and penitent ; that God is indeed angry
with him. Notwithstanding all that, .his sin is also
disease. It has deranged and disordered his faculties
of body and of mind — of both in their intimate
union.
So is it with all desires unlawfully indulged. That
unlawful indulgence perverts them ; exaggerates
them ; inflames them. They become unnatural, and
are liable to become monstrous.
2. With reference to the wilL I am not going to
plunge into the metaphysical mystery of the will. I
purpose no subtle distinctions. I would only speak of
what every one may easily observe and know. Every
one does know that to desire a thing and to will it,
are not the same. You have a will-power by which
Sin as Disease. 39
you can refuse to gratify your own desires, especially
your appetites. You may see luscious and tempting
fruit, and say, " I will not take it." You may strongly
desire to lie too late in your bed, and may say, " I will
arise and gird myself to my labor." Now this will-
power — this power to govern our desires, and not be
governed by them — is as certainly weakened, as the
desires themselves are strengthened, by wrong indul-
gence of them. This is a dreadful effect. This takes
the life out of a soul. Under this influence character
perishes ; manhood perishes ; the soul perishes. This
is to the soul, what the disorganization of the spine is
to the body."
3. With reference to Conscience. Avoiding all meta-
physical subtleties here also, I include under the term
conscience, our whole ability to distinguish between
right and wrong, and our whole sensibility in respect
to this distinction. " The moral sense" is an expres-
sion sometimes used to convey substantially the same
meaning. Bodily sense (which is a power of the soul
exercised in and through the body) distinguishes be-
tween hard and soft ; between hot and cold ; between
sweet and bitter; between differing qualities or powers
of material things. It also gives us the consciousness
of being variously affected by those various qualities
or powers — of being hurt or stopped by that which is
hard ; of being rested upon that which is soft ; of be-
ing chilled by cold and comforted by moderate heat,
40 Sin and Salvation.
or tortured by an excess of it ; and of pleasure or dis-
gust with things which are sweet or bitter, delicious
or nauseous.
The moral sense in like manner discriminates be-
tween right and wrong, and affects us with pleasure or
pain, self-approval or remorse, according as we are or
are not in conformity with our own judgment of right.
Certainly there is no other part of our constitution
so important as this — no other in which our original
likeness to our Maker is so manifest. To have this
perverted — to have its power to discriminate enfee-
bled or distorted, or to have its sensibility deadened —
I can think of no other so dreadful calamity. Does
this happen ? Has it happened, in greater or less de-
gree, to all of us ? Let each soul answer this ques-
tion to itself, and to God. If in any soul there is in-
difference to this question — if any soul does not care
about its own condition in this respect, — I can not
think of any more decisive evidence that the soul has
lost the healthy sensibility of conscience. The spirit-
ual condition of a man who does not care about this,
who is indifferent to it, is like the bodily condition of
a man who does not care how near you hold a burn-
ing coal to his hand, or who would not know, if you
should thrust a needle into his flesh. Why is it that
you can not find a place on all your body into which
you can carefully push the finest needle, without mak-
ing you start and scream? It is because the nerves,
Sin as Disease. 41
in which is the power of feeling, are spread all over
the body, fine threads woven so closely that your
needle will not go between ; it will hit a nerve before
it goes far into the flesh. Anatomists call this the
nervous system. It is in this that we are alive, or
"quick" according to the old English expression,
found in old books, like our English Bible. " Quick "
indeed, how expressive ! But our nerves may lose
that mysterious power. They may become incapable
of warning us of the dangerous nearness of the fire ;
incapable of reporting to us the damaging puncture
of the needle or cut of the knife.
Do you know what paralysis is? Did you ever
wake up in bed, and find that one arm had been lying
under your body or in some constrained posture, till
it had become numb ; there was no feeling in it ; you
could hardly tell where it was, and when the other
hand found it, and touched it, it did not feel like your
own hand ? How briskly you rubbed it, and lifted it
about ! Perhaps you sprang out of bed, and bathed
it with cold water, or cold air, or spirits of camphor.
When the circulation of blood was restored, and the
natural sensibility returned, you lay down again, and
composed yourself to sleep with a lively joy and
thankfulness. You got a new impression of the rap-
ture with which the paralytics of Galilee and Judea
used to rise and take up their beds, at the word of
Jesus.
42 Sin and Salvation.
How would you like an arm that has no feeling in
it — that might be pricked, or cut, or burnt, or crushed,
without hurting you? You would be then forever
safe from that kind of pain. How would you like it ?
How would you like a conscience that will not hurt
you when you do wrong? a conscience as indifferent
to sin, as a paralyzed arm might be insensible to the
touch of ice or of a coal of fire ?
CHAPTER IV.
SIN AS SEPARATION FROM GOD.
THERE is no more impressive, no more fearful
view of sin, in the Scriptures, than this of sepa-
ration, alienation, departure from God.
Immediately after the first human transgression
was consummated, our first parents showed a desire
to get away from God, to conceal themselves from
Him. Although so little is recorded of God's actual
verbal communication with Adam and Eve, in their
innocence (Gen. i. 28-30; ii. 16, 17), it is enough to
justify the inference, that there was then pleasant
and happy intercourse between Him and them.
They were not afraid of Him. Their sense of His
presence with them made them happy. The thought
that His eye was upon them gave them neither
shame nor solicitude. The sound of His voice did
not alarm them, but rejoiced them. In nothing
could they be more painfully conscious of the change
which their act of transgression had wrought in them-
selves, than in their changed feelings toward God.
Now His voice startles them — terrifies them — makes
them <=hrink, and shiver, and hide. They are conscious
that the happy connection between their own spirits
(43)
44 Sin and Salvation.
and the Father of spirits is broken. There is a break
between them and Him — a separation. They are
away from God, to whom they have beforetime
been so near; and how strange it seems that the
immediate effect of this is to make them wish to get
farther away — as far away as they can !
Ages afterward, the patriarch Job, describing the
prosperous wicked men, the worldlings of his time,
says : " They say unto God, Depart from us ; for we
desire not the knowledge of thy ways." He put
into these plain words what they perhaps would not
thus speak, but what they said by their habitual
behavior, by " actions, which speak louder than
words." No form of words could more adequately
express the habitual feeling of those who find their
pleasure in wickedness. Without reasoning about
it, without distinctly thinking about it, they instinct-
ively shrink from God ; they take no pleasure in the
thought of His presence with them ; they would
gladly be out of His presence ; they would gladly
have nothing to do with Him.
Still later, the prophet Isaiah — commissioned to
address God's people, concerning their unhappy
spiritual condition, a condition in which they felt
that God's hand did not reach them, to bestow gifts
and benediction, as aforetime — assures them that this
is not because His arm is shortened, or His ear
heavy, " But your iniquities have separated between
Sin as Separation from God. 45
you and your God, and your sins have hid his face
from you." — ISA. lix. I, 2.
Paul, writing to those in Ephesus, who had been
converted from dismal idolatry, referring to their
former evil and forlorn state, reaches the very climax
of his powerful description, when he declares that
they were " without God in the world." — Eph. ii. 12.
We may get a more just impression of this, by
noticing the contrast of it with an opposite spiritual
condition, which is represented in Scripture by an
opposite figure.
Of that antediluvian saint, who so pleased God
that He would not let him "taste of death," but
translated him, the pregnant record is — " And Enoch
walked with God."* When Abraham "sojourned in
Gerar," and had for some time been observed by
King Abimelech and his chief captain, they said to
Abraham, " God is zvith thee in all that thou doest."f
When God revealed Himself to Jacob at Bethel,
speaking down to him from the top of that wondrous
stair-way up and down which he saw the angels going,
in the promise which God there made to him, noth-
ing else seems so precious as that which is expressed
in. the words, " I am with thee"% When Joseph had
been sold by his brethren, and unjustly disgraced and
imprisoned in Egypt, he was not unhappy, for " the
* Gen. v. 24. f Gen. xxi. 22. % Gen. xxviii. 1. 5,
46 Sin and Salvation,
Lord was with him."* To be with God — to have
God with us — expresses the happiest, the most
blessed condition possible for finite spirits.
Sin breads this happy connection of the soul with
God. Sin separates the soul from God. Sin is sepa-
ration or departure from God.
Let us try to understand the true and full import of
this. The terms separation and departure are pri-
marily terms of matter and of space. To depart is
to go or remove from one point or location to an-
other ; to separate is to remove one body or one
part of a body from another — to remove two bodies
or two parts of a body in opposite directions, or to
remove one, leaving the other where it was. A per-
son departs from a place or from another person,
when he goes away, i.e., removes himself to some
other place. Two persons are separated when a ma-
terial barrier {e.g., a wall) is placed between them
through which they can not have communication, or
when they are placed at such a distance from each
other that they can not have communication. Empty
space, if there be enough of it, is as effectual a barrier
as a granite wall.
By an easy and natural process our minds pass
from this primary meaning of these terms, in their
application to matter, to an intelligible application of
* Gen. xxxix. 21.
Sin as Separation from God. 47
them to spirits. There may be other than material
barriers between two persons, effectually preventing
communication between them — at least all happy
communication — while their bodies are near together,
and no wall or even so much as a curtain is between
them. Two souls may be conscious of mutual aver-
sion or mutual repulsion. These, also, are terms pri-
marily applied to matter and space. Aversion is
turning away ; repulsion is driving apart, or driving
back. How significant we all feel these terms to be of
that of which we are conscious in being brought into
the presence of one whom we dislike — who is uncon-
genial ! To be attracted to a person — to be repelled
from a person — these expressions are as readily
understood as the same terms are understood when
applied to a magnet, or to an elastic ball rebounding
from a hard surface. We all feel the significance of
them so readily that attempts to explain them would
be superfluous.
What is it that draws two souls together? What
is it that drives two souls apart ? It is impossible to
answer this without knowing the character of the
souls. Says a classical Roman writer : " To like and
to dislike the same things, this is firm friendship."
The fact that two persons like the same things,
and dislike the same things, is proof that they are
alike in their tastes. Attracted to the same things,
repelled by the same things, they must have the same
48 Sin and Salvation.
susceptibilities toward those objects. It is to be ex-
pected that they will be drawn to each other. But
when one likes what the other dislikes — when one's
attraction is the other's aversion — how can they be
kept together? They may be violently forced into
bodily proximity ; but no force can bring their minds
together, or overcome their mutual repulsion.
To be not attracted to a good being — to be repelled
from him — what does it show ? The infinitely good
Being, infinite in " wisdom, power, holiness, justice,
goociness, and truth " — to be averse to Him, to dis-
like Him, to shrink from Him, to desire to hide from
Him, to say to Him, " Depart from us ; we desire not
the knowledge of thy ways " — what must all this
show in respect to the spiritual state of those in whom
all this is experienced ? Such is the spiritual state
which sin naturally induces ; such is the spiritual state
of sinners. It is proper and truthful to say, that sin
is aversion to God, separation from God, departure
from God.
But God is " the Father of our spirits." We have
derived our being from Him ; and only by His con-
tinual upholding can we continue to exist. " In Him
we live and move and have our being." We can not
really go away from Him. " Whither shall I go from
thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence ?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there ; if I make
my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the
Sin as Separation from God. 49
wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost
parts of the sea ; even there shall thy hand lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me." — Ps. cxxxix. 7-
10. It is impossible to go, even in thought, any-
where beyond God. There is nowhere beyond Him,
nowhere where He is not. How wretched then, and
how hopeless is that creature who can not be happy
where God is ; who would like to find a place beyond
Him ; would like to go utterly away from Him ! To
dwell in the same house, to eat at the same table, to
occupy the same chamber, to be constantly in com-
pany with one whom you dislike, from whom, how-
ever near your bodies may be, your soul turns away
in aversion — what a weary and loathed life that would
be ! To know yourself the creature of God, living
and moving and having your being in Him, and to
have that in you which is most offensive to Him, and
the necessary effect of which upon you is to make
you turn from Him in utter aversion : — can you think
of any other so great misery ? Sin is just that. Un-
checked, uncured, it goes steadily on to that. It is,
in its completion, utter and hopeless estrangement
from God. And in all less degrees it proportionately
mars the soul's relations to God ; proportionately
alienates or estranges the soul from God.
We have before considered sin with reference to
law ; and have found that any deviation from the law
of God, any want of conformity to it, is sin, as really
3
50 Sin and Salvatio7i.
as any direct and positive transgression. We found
the old and obsolete word anojny, or un-law, expressive
of it. But what is law? Is it not the expression of
the will of God? Whatever variety of theories there
may be, in respect to the ultimate principle of moral
obligation — however some may think that God's will
constitutes right, and others may insist that there is
an eternal right to which God's will spontaneously
conforms, and that therein is its excellence — surely
the latter no less than the former hold and insist that
the actual, expressed will of God evermore is perfect
law, a perfect and infallible rule to all His rational
creatures. To be or to do wrong, then, is inevitably
to be at variance with God. All will agree to this,
who believe in God at all — all who are not atheists.
And what a dreadful thing it must be, to be an
atheist ! I have conversed with a man who earnestly
repelled the imputation of atheism ; who considered
it an affront to be called an atheist, and yet he said
that he did not know whether there is any God or
not. He would hold-the term atheist to the definition,
" one who disbelieves or denies the existence of a
God " ; and so, as he neither denied nor affirmed, he
would not be called by that name. It is not worth
while to dispute about that definition, though I can
not help agreeing with those writers who think that
it would be a more exact use of terms, to call all who
do not positively believe in God, atheists, and to call
Sin as 'Separation from God. 5 1
those who positively disbelieve, or who deny that
there is a God, anti-theists. But what I now ask you
to consider is the forlorn condition of both those
classes* of minds — call them atheists, or anti-theists,
or call them by whatever name they themselves may
wish to be called by — people who have no positive
belief in God — who can not say, " Our Father which
art in heaven," and put any real meaning into the
dear phrase. How much more dismal is it, after all,
to be an orphan, and to know that you are, than not
to know whether you are an orphan or not ?
In one of the passages of Scripture which I have
cited (Eph. ii. 12), Paul speaks of some "having no
hope, and without God in the world." The word
which Paul used, and which is translated " without
God," is aSeoi, (atheoi), which to even an English ear
sounds like atheists. It is formed by prefixing to the
Greek word for God that which (as I have before ex-
plained) has the same effect as the syllable " un " pre-
fixed to any word in our language. They were people
who had no God. The word godless might express
this, just as the word fatherless expresses the idea of
one who has no father. It has come to pass, how-
ever, in our usage, that godless means un-godly. We
apply it not so commonly to those who do not be-
lieve that there is a God, as to those who do not obey
Him ; who act as if they did not care for Him ; as if
they did not £are whether there is any God or not.
52 Sin and Salvation.
After all, is there not a natural connection between
this intellectual darkness, and this moral recklessness ?
It is not exemplified in every individual. There are
some amiable men, some kind-hearted and fair-d-ealing
men, men of clean lips and lives, whose minds are
obscured by atheistic doubts, or pantheistic, which
are not very different. And there are men who have
no doubt about the real being of God, who live very
badly, very godlessly. They are not governed in
their, lives by their theism; not governed by their
own view of what God requires, or of what would be
pleasing to Him. This I admit, and yet I am con-
fident that all must regard this as anomalous, and
that it is much more natural and much more common
for atheistic unbelief to be associated with moral reck-
lessness. I do not so much think that speculative
atheism causes moral recklessness as that it is caused
or produced by it. I have no doubt that it works
both ways ; but I think that moral recklessness more
evidently and more often leads to atheism, than it
springs out of it. "The fool hath said in his heart,
there is no God," most frequently, when he has wish-
ed that there were none — when the thought of a holy
and just Being above him, who hates sin, has made
him afraid. Loving sin, he would fain believe that
there is no God to punish sin. So sin alienates from
God ; makes the sinner averse to God ; makes him
dislike God ; makes him disbelieve in Him. Nor do
Sin as Separation from God. 53
I believe that this effect is confined to those cases in
which there is a conscious desire or endeavor to dis-
believe. Sin naturally works in the soul this ill effect,
an estrangement, an alienation, a departure of the
soul from God. I might have adduced this as a phase
of the disease, which I affirmed sin to be, and it is a
terrible phase of it. Is there any more terrible morbid-
ness of mind, than that, so often exemplified, in insan-
ity ; the strong, sometimes deadly, aversion to those who
before were, and who still deserve to be, most loved
and trusted? Our comfort in such cases is in the
hope that the delirium will be temporary ; that the
insane delusion will pass away, " as a dream when one
awaketh." What wreck and ruin would it be, to have
such an alienation last forever !
This delirium of sin, this morbid alienation of mind
from God which sin is — there is danger that it will last
forever. There is a liability of being given up to it hope-
lessly. To those who persist in saying, by their actions,
to God, " Depart from us ; we desire not the knowk
edge of thy ways," the time is coming, when God
— even God, the Redeemer who is now saying so
graciously, " Come unto me," — will say, " Depart from
me." Nor can there a more dismal doom fall on any
finite spirit. To go away from God, away from
Christ, away from light, away from holiness, away
from peace, away from hope, "wandering stars, to
whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever " !
54 Sin and Salvation.
All sin tends that way. A sinful character, kept,
at length inevitably snaps asunder every cord that
binds to good ; at length nullifies every attraction
that holds to hope and to God.
Do not risk it. "Seek the Lord, while he may be
found ; call upon him, while he is near."
CHAPTER V,
SIN AS A N INHERITANCE.
TO inherit anything is to receive it by descent
from an ancestor — to receive, as his heir, that
which has been the property of another, usually an
ancestor. An inheritance is whatever is or may be
inherited, whatever is derived by an heir from an
ancestor. We usually apply it to property or rank,
or something which is valuable. Under our Amer-
ican laws, children inherit, in equal portions, the
property left by parents at their death, unless by the
will of the parents some different distribution or dis-
posal is made. In some other countries the eldest
son inherits much more than an equal share of an
estate ; and in countries where rank is hereditary, it
descends in the line of the first-born. We do not,
however, wholly confine these terms to valuable pos-
sessions. They may be applied, intelligibly and with-
out impropriety, to whatever a person naturally has,
because his parents, or either of them, had it.
Thus children are said to inherit either the honor
or ^the shame of parents ; .they inherit their good or
their bad dispositions ; they inherit health or disease
— a sound and vigorous or a morbid and feeble phys-
(55)
56 Szn and Salvation.
ical constitution. The kindred word hereditary is
perhaps oftener used in. this wider meaning. Cer-
tainly we speak not only of hereditary property and
hereditary rights, but of " hereditary' pride, hereditary
bravery, hereditary disease."
All this comes naturally from the hereditary man-
ner in which we have our being. There would be
nothing of this sort in a world fully peopled at once
by creative power, peopled with mature creatures —
all equals in age, and all having derived their being
directly from God. Existing as we in fact do, in
successive generations, each transmitting its life to
the succeeding, it was to be expected that many
incidents and liabilities of being and life would be
transmitted also. This is the evident fact, and it is
recognized in the Scriptures.
The begetting of offspring by the first man is said
to have been " in his own likeness, after his image."
That first man having become a sinner, being, after
his first act of sin, evermore in a state of sin, it is
solemnly written in the New Testament, that " by
one man, sin entered into the world, and death by
sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all
have sinned." It is also written that " by one man's
offense death reigned by one " ; and that " by one
man's disobedience many were made sinners."
We here enter a region of thought, in which per-
plexing questions spring up very thickly, a region
Sin as an Inheritance, 57
too in which there has been much theological contro
versy. It is not at all my purpose, however, to
engage in any such controversy ; for I remember
Paul's charge : " That we strive not about words to
no profit, to the subverting of the hearers." — 2 TlM.
ii. 14. I seriously think that very much of the the-
ological controversy which has arisen on the subject,
has been just such " striving about words " as that
against which Paul in that text warns us. I wish to
bring forward certain facts, revealed in Scripture or
attested by our own consciousness or observation*
i. e., by our observation of others and of ourselves.
I propose a serious study of such facts :
I. It is an evident fact that we do inherit mental
and moral characteristics from our parents, as truly
as physical characteristics. We as confidently look for
resemblances of children to their parents in mind
and manners, in disposition and character, as in stat-
ure, in features, and in complexion. " Like begets
like," is a received maxim, which has its fulfillment
not oftener nor more strikingly in respect to the
body than in respect to the soul. Personal beauty,
agility, strength on the one hand, and personal ugli-
ness, infirmity, or deformity on the other, are often
hereditary.' No one will dispute this ; and I think it
will almost as readily and generally be admitted that
strength, regularity, or soundness of mind, and weak-
ness, disorder, or perversity of mind, are hereditary
3*
58 Sin and Salvation,
also. We have these various characters as our par
ents had them, and because they had them, quite as
evidently in our souls as in our bodies. We need
not exaggerate this. We ought not. Education can
doubtless greatly modify natural traits of character.
So, also, can physical training do much to modify
physical characteristics. We are not able always
accurately to discriminate what education has done
for us from what we have by nature and from birth.
But certainly no candid and careful observer will
'doubt that it makes at least as real a difference to us,
from what parents we derive our being, as by what
nurses and teachers we are, brought up. However
we may magnify the importance of education, the
power of example, etc., none of us can wholly rid
our minds, if we would, of the thought expressed in
the terse maxim, " Blood tells."
2. It is equally certain that what we thus inherit
from our parents is not altogether the same which it
would have been if our parents had not been sinners.
Filial love and dutifulness, no doubt, incline and
require us to turn our eyes away from our parents'
faults, and not to cherish or indulge censorious
thoughts of them. But what wise and honest par-
ent would wish his child to believe him free from
faults ? What thoughtful parent is able to doubt
that begetting a child, " in his own likeness, after his
image," he transmits to him unhappy and bad traits
Sin as an Inheritance. 59
of character. There can nothing be gained by shut-
ting our eyes to this. It is a fact that we all have
inherited evil from our parents, and do transmit evil
to our children ; not only physical evil, pertaining to
our bodies, but moral evil, pertaining to our char-
acter.
3. It is a fact, that this evil inheritance has come
down to us, through all the generations of mankind,
all the sad way from Adam and Eve. This is clearly
enough attested in the Bible. From its narrative of
the fall of our first parents by eating the forbidden*
fruit, in all its account of mankind, in their successive
generations, it carries all along the plain assumption ,
that mankind are naturally inclined to evil ; that,
as a race, they are fallen away from God. The uni-
versal idea is, that like begets like ; that every living
creature produces offspring after its kind. The con-
stant proclivity to sin of children is accounted for by
their descent from parents having the same procliv-
ity. And when, in the New Testament, an inspired
apostle is treating of this deep question, he clearly
affirms the universal sinfulness of mankind, and as
clearly ascribes the sad fact to the sin of Adam as its
cause. — Rom. v.
4. Another fact in the case is, that sin does not
lose its proper character by being hereditary. It
does not cease to be sin, by being accounted for, in
the way we have seen, any more than virtue ceases
60 Sin and Salvation,
to be virtue by being accounted for in the same way.
I have made acquaintance with some persons whose
character greatly pleased me. When I have ex-
pressed such pleasure, in some instances, to persons
knowing them, I have been told that the same char-
acter was notably exemplified in their parents, whom
I never saw. My informants have not expected nor
desired thus to abate from my satisfaction with such
characters. They have not expected, nor wished
that I should less highly esteem an industrious, hon-
est, amiable man, by reason of being informed that
his father before him was just such a man. Such
information accounts for my neighbor's possession of
a noble character, but does not alter it, nor alter any
one's estimation of it.
On the other hand, if you know an unamiable,
lazy, dishonest man, do you dislike him less, or blame
him less, or estimate him any more favorably, be-
cause you know him also to be " a chip of the old
block," a worthless child of a worthless father ? No ;
character is character still, however acquired. The
mysterious law by which the character of a parent
goes so far to determine what the child's character
shall be, does not thereby change or affect the nature
of character. Character is evermore personal. Re-
sponsibility is evermore in the individual.
There have been attempts to obscure this, in order
to evade responsibility, and such attempts have, I
Sin as an Inheritance, 6 1
fear, been aided by some theological speculations.
There have been affirmations of personal responsi-
bility for the sin of Adam, in each individual of his
posterity, which the Scriptures do not warrant, and
to which our natural consciences do not respond ;
and I can not help thinking that this has made it
easier for some, reversing the process of thought, to
throw off from themselves, in part, the sense of
responsibility for their own sins — to throw it back
upon ancestors from whom they have inherited
sinful dispositions or inclinations.
This is r signally and sharply rebuked by the Prophet
Ezekiel. " The word of the Lord came unto me
again, saying, What mean ye, that ye use this proverb
concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers
have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are
set on edge ? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye
shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb
in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine ; as the soul of
the father, so also the soul of the son is mine : the
soul that sinneth, it shall die." — Ez. xviii. 1-4.
-Likewise, in the New Testament, the same inspired
writer who has spoken most strongly of the disastrous
consequence of the first man's sin to his entire race,
says, in the very tone of Ezekiel : " So then every
one of us shall give account of himself to God." —
Rom. xiv. 12.
This organic unity of the family and of the race
62 Sin and Salvation.
does not obliterate nor confuse the sharp and clear dis-
tinctions of personal responsibility. Each individual
of the race must answer for himself to God for all that
he does, and must be estimated by God for just what
he is, in his distinct individuality, no less distinctly
and no less solemnly, than if he were the only respon-
sible creature in existence. This thought clearly held,
as the Bible plainly and solemnly and abundantly
teaches, and as our own consciences testify, should pre-
vent us from perverting the facts concerning our in-
heritance of sin to the confusion of our ideas of respon-
sibility, or the blunting of the sense of responsibility.
Yet we should not overlook those facts. They are of
solemn import. The scriptural view of them will go
far to make us appreciate the wretchedness of the
spiritual condition in which we are by nature, and
the infinite importance of being divinely delivered
from it. For certainly, the more correctly we appre-
hend this truth, the more fully shall we know that
there can be no human deliverance.
The fact is, that this entire race is a sinful race.
Not merely the individual man Adam and the in-
dividual woman Eve did, each of them, an act of
sin, and thereby fell into a state of sin ; but that
pair, who then were all mankind ; that pair from
whom all mankind were to descend, begotten and
born " in their likeness, after their image," fell by
their sin from the estate in which they were created.
Sin as an Inheritance. 63
That fall, that loss, that breaking away from God,
was an immense calamity to the race. Adam and
Eve, when they sinned and fell, were the whole race,
the only embodiment of this human nature. It
lapsed into moral ruin in them, and it is in us, all
their posterity, what it became in them.
Shall I blame God for constituting the human
nature thus, under such an awful and infinite lia-
bility ? " Shall the thing formed say to Him that
formed it, Why has thou made me thus ? "
With God's assurance that I shall answer to Him
for only my own sins, and with the consciousness,
which I can never lose, that my sins are responsibly
only my own, it would be rash indeed in me to criti-
cise His construction of my being. But beyond this,
it seems evident to me that God has manifested a
most wise benevolence in constituting us as He has,
and giving us such a wonderful connection with each
other, in the unity of the human race. -
Certainly the solemn social liability to be so fear-
fully affected by each other, is closely connected
with a social opportunity that is unspeakably precious.
When tempted to murmur at the exposure to
which my relation to others has subjected me, I have
asked myself, Would I willingly be exempt from this
exposure ? Would I willingly have all human rela-
tions and human susceptibilities so changed that no
one could suffer for the sin of another? Would I
64 Sin and Salvation.
willingly be so made, that it would make no differ-
ence to me how my father, my brother, my child
should behave? Or, on the other hand, would I
choose to have the nature, the heart of my child, my
brother, my wife such that my committing some,
great crime would bring no pain, no shame, no harm to
them ? Nay, verily, if there is anything in our nature
for which we should thank Him who so made us, it
is, that He has made us so much to each other ; that
He has so made us that we so largely live not only
for each other, but in each other. Sooner far would
I have all sensibility gone from my right arm, to
secure me from the liability of pain from hurting it,
than be deprived of all this sensitiveness of affection,
to escape pain and harm from the wrong-doing of
those I love. Yes, I deliberately say it ; I am glad
and thankful that I am so united to others in this
mysterious solidarity of life that the wrong-doing of
one of them, the loss of character in one of them,
would give me unspeakable pain. I would rather
bear any pain which my heart can bear, than be the
monster I must be, if I could not feel such pain.
Yes, and on the other hand, my love for those I love
best does not make me wish them to be exempt from
suffering from any wrong-doing into which I might
be successfully tempted. I should be sorry not to
feel sure that loss of character in me would give un-
speakable pain to those in my home, and to many
Sin as an Inheritance. 6 s
more. Surely I should be impoverished of my richest
treasures if assured that such a disaster to me would
distress none but me. I have no fear that any one
will deem this a selfish feeling; for certainly I can
see no way in which we could be exempted from
this social liability, except by making each of us
utterly selfish, utterly incapable of social affection.
Thank God, He has not made us so. Thank God
that .such social union, such union of interests, of
feelings, of hearts is possible and actual, in human
homes, in human society, in human life. We would
not give up this glorious possibility, even to escape
the dreadful attendant liability.
But it would be very foolish not to regard this
liability. Through this, our entire race has fallen
into an abyss of sin and misery, out of which we can
never climb. By nature, we are in fact a ruined race.
Nature has no salvation for us. Nature has broken
under us, like an iron bridge, and we have all fallen
into a chasm up whose icy sides not one of us can
climb. We all went down in the terrible fall. " By
one man sin entered into the world, and death by
sin ; and so death passed upon all men, for that all
have sinned." Yes, all have sinned, Jew and Gentile,
Celt and Saxon, European and African, Asiatic and
American, savage and civilized, degraded and re.
fined — "there is no difference" — "all have sinned,
and come short of the glory of God."
66 Sin and Salvation.
Do not let us waste time, opportunity, life, in
thinking of the unimportant differences between us,
in thinking how unlike other men we are ; how much
less degraded, how much less abandoned, how much
less guilty. We are all, by nature, ruined. We are
all down in the dark and slippery gorge, and the con-
suming fire is not far away.
There is One " able to save to the uttermost."
Let us not cherish the vain delusion, that only a part
of our number need His help. We all need it — all of
us — all mankind.
If any of us have not availed ourselves of that
saving help, let us do so without any further delay.
So many of us as have availed ourselves of it — how
much can we do for the rescue of others — others at
our doors ; others, no matter how far away ?
CHAPTER VI.
SIN AS A DELUSION.
WE shall not have an adequate view of sin,
without taking into account the illusions
which belong to it, and carefully studying them.
It is a great aggravation of any evil or danger, that
it is deceptive, that it easily conceals itself and works
on unseen. We are more afraid of " the pestilence
that walketh in darkness," than of " the destruction
that wasteth at noon-day."
In war, an invading force is dangerous, in propor-
tion to its leader's ability to keep its numbers and
resources, and his own plans of campaign concealed.
A disease is the more dangerous, if its symptoms are
not understood, nor the circumstances which promote
it, nor the remedies for it. A bad man, or a perni-
cious organization, is likely to do harm in a com-
munity, in proportion to the ability of the one or the
other to appear harmless, or even useful. Anything
of evil character and tendency is deprived of much
of its bad power when it is fully understood.
This is obvious. Many of the best maxims of
prudence, in warfare and in ordinary life, are founded
on it. " To be forewarned is to be forearmed."
(67)
68 Sin and Salvation,
Successful reconnoissance gives the best hope of
victory in the coming battle. To see correctly what
you have to avoid gives you the best opportunity to
avoid it.
All that we have seen of sin — as an act ; as a state ;
as a disease ; as departure from God ; and as an
inheritance — all this is greatly aggravated by its de-
lusiveness.
Sin is delusive in two ways.
I. In regard to its results. Those who sin com-
monly do so, in the expectation of results, seeming
to them desirable, which seldom, if ever, are real-
ized. So was it with the first human sin. It was to
open the eyes to knowledge of good and evil, exalt-
ing Adam and Eve from their feeble and low human
state, and making a pair of gods of them. It did
open their eyes to their own nakedness, and loaded
their spirits with shame and guilt. It has been the
same ever since. Nothing is more plainly taught in
the Bible, nothing is more evident from experience,
than that the enjoyment which is expected to result
from any form of sinful indulgence, is never realized.
The person who has yielded to such an inducement
to sin, always finds that he has been deluded. The
promise of pleasure is not fulfilled. The promised
pleasure utterly fails in many cases, and when it does
not, it falls far below the expectation, or is soon fol-
lowed by embittering or sickening pain.
Sin as a Delusion. 69
How notoriously is this true of all forms of .unlaw-
ful sensual indulgence ! Who, that ever yielded to
the solicitations of appetite, and transgressed God's
commandment, for the sake of the gratification of
appetite, has failed to experience painful disappoint-
ment in respect to the pleasure thus secured ? No
one was ever thus made really content and happy.
On the other hand, such sinful indulgence is always
followed by unhappy consequences that were not
looked for.
This has been the frequent subject of thrilling
description and of eloquent appeal with reference
to the appetite for intoxicating drinks. The forma-
tion of this appetite and the habit of indulging it, so
almost imperceptible in the beginning, how terrible
does it become in the fullness of its mature strength !
how utterly ruinous in its final issue !
The same is true, substantially, of all forms of
profligacy, all forms and modes of sinful indulgence.
Every such indulgence allures with promises of much
greater pleasure than is ever realized ; and " at the
last," it may truly be said of every one of them, " it
biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder."
This statement is applicable not only to the gross
and revolting forms of sin ; it is no less true of every
sinful disposition that is ever indulged. The spirit
of selfishness (whatever form it takes) subjects the
mind to the same delusion. Ambition promises to
jo Sin and Salvatio7t.
bless and to satisfy the soul ; but it commonly tosses
and shakes, and often wrecks it. The selfishly ambi-
tious man, in proportion to his success, becomes lonely
and desolate. Avarice allures with gilded hopes ; but
it dries and withers the spirit, and when its utmost
aspirations are realized, the soul is pinched with the
worst poverty. Worldly gayety and fashion, all forms
and types of worldliness, allure with promises of en-
joyment which are never fulfilled, and they cheat the
soul that pursues them out of the real good which,
but for them, it might have sought and found. There
is no sinful course in which he who pursues it will
not fail of the enjoyment which he hoped for, and
reap much bitter fruit.
2. In regard to its own character. Sin does not
commonly avow itself as sin. More commonly it
puts on the garb of virtue. The illusions of sin upon
the mind, in this respect, are many, and they are
wonderful. He who sins does not always, nor often,
squarely face his sin, and confess to himself that he
is sinning. There is scarcely any sin which does
not so disguise itself as to seem almost innocent to
him who allows himself to listen to its blandishments,
to stand within the sphere of its fascination. Noth-
ing is more common than for the guilty not to feel
their guilt, or to feel it very feebly and inadequately.
Nothing is more difficult than to bring men to a right
estimate of their own character. If every person who
Sin as a Delusion, Ji
commits sin, every time he commits it, were to see
and feel just how guilty he is in committing it, sin
would appear to every one a hideous, horrid thing.
No one could have a moment's peace or a moment's
ease in sinning. The most miserable feeling of
which our human hearts are capable is the sense of
guilt.
But there is in sin the power of blinding the mind
of him who commits it to its own moral deformity.
A person may in fact be very guilty, and be not at
all, or very slightly, sensible of his guilt. A person
may sin long and greatly with no adequate convic-
tion of his own sinfulness.
Such is the deceitfulness of sin. It deludes the
soul, both as to its own nature, and as to the results
which will flow from it.
This may easily be illustrated and verified from
common observation and experience. Whenever you
have yielded to a temptation to any sinful indulgence,
have you not uniformly been disappointed ? Did any
pleasure thus obtained ever satisfy you, or fulfill the
expectation whereby you were misled ? Did the
pleasure resulting from any sin, in your experience,
ever prove equal to what you had been led to expect ?
and was there not always a sequel of remorse or of
shame, or at least of uneasiness and discontent, of
which, in the excitement of temptation and indul-
gence, you had no adequate foreboding ?
72 Sin and Salvation.
If those who are now excited by sinful allurements,
with hopes of pleasure from sinning, would but listen
to those who have tried it, they would be convinced
that happiness is not to be found that way. " It
is all vanity and vexation of spirit. "
That other and worse; delusion, wherein sin blinds
men to its own sinfulness, is as readily illustrated
from experience. There are many persons living in
known and habitual disobedience to God, in habitual
neglect of known and confessed duties, who yet do
not feel themselves to be sinners — who think them-
selves really good-hearted. They excuse themselves ;
justify themselves ; value themselves. They claim to
be esteemed as honest, humane, generous, virtuous,
worthy of high esteem, although they are living in
neglect of God, prayerless and careless toward Him.
They do not feel guilty about this. They do not
feel at all as they imagine they would feel, if they
had committed crimes, or were practicing vices.
They seem to suppose that there is a great difference
in this respect, between those sins which violate the
rights of our fellow-men, or which are destructive to
society or disgraceful in society, and those sins of
heart which are directly and only against God. In
words, they may confess, or at least in words they
will not deny, that obligations to God are the high-
est and most sacred of all obligations, and yet they
do not feel guilty for violating or disregarding these,
Sin as a Delusion. 73
as they presume that they would feel for wronging
their fellow-men, or practicing any gross vice, such as
profanity, drunkenness, or lewdness.
This is utterly a mistake. Persons actually guilty
of gross vices are quite as apt to be torpid as to the
guilt of them, and the worst crimes sometimes dull
and blunt the conscience marvelously. I have never
met with a self-satisfaction more difficult to disturb
than that of a man whose neighbors looked upon
him as conspicuously wicked, a profane, coarse, reck-
less man. Even in prospect of dying soon, he avowed
his readiness to meet God, on the ground that he had
never done anything with which a just God should be
offended, to any serious or alarming extent. I have
never tried harder, or with less success, to awaken
any human consciences to a sense of guilt, than those
of two murderers, whom I visited, and instructed, and
prayed with for months, and until "their feet lost
their hold upon the scaffold."
You, who read this with surprise, and perhaps think
yourself incapable of crime — if under temptation you
should become a criminal — might probably at first be
tortured with paroxysms of remorse ; but if left to
sink deep in crime and become used to it, it is prob-
able that you would feel as little conscious guilt
and self-condemnation as you feel now. It is the
very character of sin to blind the eyes and delude
the minds of its victims. Nothing is more character-
74 Sin and Salvation.
istic of it ; nothing is more evil and harmful in it
than this deceptive, deluding, blinding power.
The explanation of this delusive power of sin
is not difficult. The natural selfishness of our hearts
indisposes us to look candidly at the evidences of
our own guilt. Notoriously, we do not see ourselves
as others see us ; how unlikely are we to see ourselves
as God sees us ! We love ourselves out of all pro-
portion to our real worthiness. It is painful to feel
guilty. It is the most miserable feeling we can have.
Naturally we shrink from it. Naturally we turn our
minds away from those contemplations which would
bring this feeling upon us. This unwillingness to feel
guilty, goes far to account for our failing to feel so in
any just proportion to our actual occasion for feeling
so. It prevents the mind from taking a thoroughly
candid position, from opening itself fully to convic-
tion. There is inevitably a prejudice in favor of
ourselves when we are called to sit in judgment upon
ourselves.
Another reason for this lack of a due sense of guilt
is found in the very nature of conscience, that power
or susceptibility through which alone we are capable
of either a conviction or a feeling of guilt. We may
regard it as both a power and a susceptibility. As a
susceptibility, as a capability of feeling, like every
other, it can be blunted, can have its sensibility grad-
ually diminished till it is quite gone, like the sense of
Sin as a Delusion. 75
feeling from fingers that have become slowly accus-
tomed to handle hot iron. Unquestionably, the prac-
tice of sin gradually benumbs the conscience. It
deadens its sensibility. That is a fearful state of the
soul ; but it is the state toward which all habitual sin-
ning tends — all habitual doing of wrong, and all habit-
ual neglect of duty. And it is just as true of sin that
is not socially disgraceful as of that which is so. It
is just as true of sin in the heart, between the heart
and God, as of that which breaks out toward our fel-
low-men, in wrongs and outrages, in crimes or in vices.
" Take heed, brethren, .... lest any of you be hard-
ened, through the deceitfulness of sin." No* one is
likely to handle iron that is red hot, or coals that are
brightly glowing. One may in haste and heedlessness
touch them when they are black, and still hot enough
to harden and deaden the skin. We have no right to
be heedless ; there are other ways of knowing whether
coals are hot, besides the glowing color; there are
other ways of knowing that an action or a course of
action is sinful and will hurt our consciences, besides
its being odious and disgraceful in human society.
We are bound to be attentive and obedient to the
very whispers of conscience ; not merely to its loud
outcries in full chorus with the indignant clamor of
the public. If we will subject our souls to this slow,
sure hardening, it should be no wonder that we find
them blinded also. It is no wonder that when sin
has hardened us it can then easily deceive us.
J6 Sin and Salvation.
Sin spoils the soul. Sin ruins the soul. Its destruc-
tive work is constantly going on in this world ; and
that world in which its work is finished, is " the bot-
tomless pit."
This hardening and blinding effect of sin is one of
its worst. It blinds by hardening, and then the victim
is easily led and pushed on toward that pit.
There is a form of bodily blindness which resembles
this. The eye retains its natural form and color, just
as in health. No film covers it. No cataract darkens
it. No inflammation reddens, and swells, and closes
it. Physicians call this disease amaurosis. That is. a
Greek word for simple darkness. They also call it by
a Latin name, Gutta serena (drop serene) ; and Milton
in his great poem, in that famous passage in which he
refers, with infinite pathos, to his own loss of vision,
says of his own sightless eye-balls :
11 So thick a drop serene has quenched their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled."
He seems to have been uncertain which of two dif-
ferent diseases had consigned him to perpetual dark-
ness. But that which he describes by the terms
" drop serene " does consign to utter darkness one
whose eyes may still be whole and fair for others to
look upon. It is defined as " a loss or decay of sight,
without any visible defect in the eye, usually from
loss of power in the optic nerve," that quick thread,
expanded in the back of the eye into a living canvas^
Sin as a Delusion. 77
on which all our objects of sight are pictured, and
the vivid sense of them telegraphed through the fine*
ly throbbing brain, unto the conscious indwelling
spirit. That marvelous nerve has lost its vivid power.
It is quenched. It is dead. Eyes thus quenched
then
11 roll in vain,
To find light's piercing ray, and find no dawn."
Even thus may the soul be blinded by the amau
rosis of sin.
CHAPTER VII.
SIN AS A DOOM.
OUR study of Sin will not be complete without
a serious inquiry concerning the final issue and
consummation of it. We have seen that, as an act,
it is utterly wrong; is in violation of the supreme
authority and the perfect law of God our Maker.
We have seen that it is a permanently evil and culpa-
ble state of the soul ; that whosoever hath sinned is
a sinner ; whosoever has done what he ought not to
do, is what he ought not to be. We have seen that
sin is a corruption, a distortion, a morbid condition of
the human faculties, the worst of all diseases. We
have seen that it is departure, separation, alienation
of the soul from the God who made it, union and
communion with whom would be its highest, even its
perfect blessedness. We can not avoid nor repress
the question : " What shall come of all this ? " " What
shall the harvest be ? " The Bible has not left us with-
out an answer to this question. I try here to present
that answer by gathering from the Bible at large, the
teaching which characterizes it.
I. The Bible treats of sin as belonging to that part
of our human nature which is immortal. It does not
disregard its connection with the body, nor its effects
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Sin as a Doom. 79
upon the body. We read in the book of Job (xx. 1 1)
of " the bones of the wicked being full of the sins of
his youth," and if you will visit a good anatomical
museum, they will show you human bones swollen
and distorted into such monstrous and hideous shapes
as do constitute a most impressive warning against a
sin to which youth is everywhere fearfully tempted.
We read also in the book of Proverbs (xxiii. 29) of the
"wounds without cause" and the "redness of eyes,"
as well as of the "babbling" and the "sorrow" and
the "contentions" of them "who tarry long at the
wine ; that go to seek mixed wine." We have seen
how the Bible, in both Testaments, in its revelation
of the Redeemer, connects human sins and human
sicknesses in its account of the burden which He
bore for mankind. Yet it nowhere makes the impres-
sion that sin is of the body ; that the body sins.
Sin, as an act, is an act of intelligence and of free
will. It is an act which can only be done by a
rational and voluntary being. A machine can not
sin. A beast can not sin. You can not think of a
beast, or a machine, or a tornado, or a volcano, or
a whirlpool, or typhoid fever, or the cholera, as
a sinner. You dread them for the harm they do.
You never blame them for wrong-doing. There is
no broader distinction in human thought than that
between a physical hurt and a moral wrong ; between
a physically harmful thing and a morally wrong thing
80 Sin and Salvation.
between injury and sin. You always think of sin as
an act or a state of the soul, not the body. It is not
then something that is finally disposed of by the dis-
solution of the body. However deformed, disordered,
poisoned, the body may be, and however loathsome
the process of its dissolution, when that process is
finished, the hideousness and the loathsomeness are
gone. " Earth to earth, dust to dust " ; then there
are no forms of beauty, nor of sweetness, nor of life
into which that dust may not again enter. But hid-
eousness, deformity, disease of soul do not end thus.
The Bible habitually gives the impression that the
soul continues, after the body's dissolution, the same,
in character, which it was before. The Bible, Jesus
Christ, speaking in the Bible, has brought clearly
out the grand fact of the soul's immortality. The
pagan philosophers hoped for it. The natural yearn-
ings and longings of the soul do doubtless " intimate
eternity to man." But it is the Bible, " the word of
God written," which has made the immortality of the
soul a certainty. It is " Jesus Christ, who hath abol-
ished death, and hath brought life and immortality
to light, through the Gospel." — 2 TlM. i. 10. The
Bible gives us the assurance that in and after the
body's dissolution, the soul lives on, and awaits the
reconstruction and revivification of the body, " in the
resurrection, at the last day." Now it is this undying,
indestructible part of us — it is our spiritual being, to
Sin as a Doom, 81
which sin belongs ; sin is an act and a state of the
soul, the immortal human spirit.
II. Sin is a power in the universe, in human life
and experience, which operates, like other powers,
under an established law of cause and effect. Just
as gunpowder embosoms a force which, when awak-
ened by the touch of fire, will rend to fragments the
rock in which you have imprisoned it, or drive for-
ward with terrific swiftness the ball that lies before
it, in the gun-barrel ; just as seed has in it a power
which, in appropriate conditions of soil and warmth
and moisture, will generate and uplift and mature the
stalks and the ears of a harvest ; just as this process
is regular and determinate, under an ascertainable
and intelligible law, so that the kind and quality of
the seed predetermines the kind and quality of the
harvest ; so is sin a power, which works on, under its
own law, and works out, in human experience, certain
definite and ascertainable effects.
" They that plow iniquity and sow wickedness, reap
the same." — JOB iv. 8. " He that soweth iniquity
shall reap vanity." — PROV. xxii. 8. " For they have
sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind." —
HOS. viii. 7. " Be not deceived ; God is not mocked ;
for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap
corruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of
the Spirit reap life everlasting." — Gal. vi. 7, 8.
4*
82 Sin and Salvation.
III. The result toward which sin works, the final
effect of which it is the cause, the ripe harvest of which
it is the seed, is death. " Then when lust hath con-
ceived, it bringeth forth sin ; and sin, when it is fin-
ished, bringeth forth death." — J AS. i. 15.
What do we, what should we mean by this word ?
We apply it properly to that destructive consumma-
tion of disease or of violence which separates the soul
from the body, and gives up the body to speedy dis-
solution. We can not help connecting this bodily
death, in our thoughts, with the sad fact of sin. We
believe that sin brought this into the world. Without
sin, we do not indeed know that life in this world
might not have had a limit, and come regularly to an
end. The actual experience of Enoch and of Elijah, as
recorded in the Old Testament, shows that God could
have transferred us all, if we had been sinless, to some
other sphere of being, without our tasting of death.
Or, if so He pleased, He could have brought about
the separation of our souls from our bodies, with no
such accompanying pain and horror as those with
which, in our actual experience, death is invested.
Doubtless He could have ordained that we all should
fall asleep painlessly at the end of our appointed
time upon the earth, and wake in heaven, unembod-
ied, or with our bodies transfigured and glorified, as
the body of the Lord was upon the mount, as it was
when He ascended, and as the bodies of those saints
, Sin as a Doom. 83
shall be, who are alive at Christ's final coming,
" changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trump" (1 Cor. xv. 51, 52).
^Vhatever such experiences there might have been
of sinless men — of transition to other worlds or
spheres of being — they would not have been death.
We can not believe that there would have entered
into the experience of sinless beings any such horror
as this, to which we give the name of death. In this
proper and impressive sense, then, the death of our
bodies is, no doubt, an effect of sin, a consequence of
our sinfulness. It is also true that indulgence in sin,
sinning " with a high hand," very commonly hastens
bodily death, and fearfully aggravates all the natural
horror and pain of it. This is especially and notably
so in respect to some particular forms of sin, as
drunkenness and lewdness.
But is this death of the body, this quenching of
animal life and dissolution of the animal frame, all
that we mean by death ? Is it all that we ought to
mean ? Is it all that the Bible means ? Is it all that
God meant, when He said to Adam, " Of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, .... in the day
that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die " ?
or when by the mouth of Ezekiel He said, and by
the pen of Ezekiel caused to be written for all ages —
" The soul that sinneth it shall die " ? Nay, you can
not begin to put all the solemn intimations, all the
84 Sin and Salvation.
dread forebodings, all the plain declarations of the
Bible into that supposition. Take, for example, these
words of Jesus — " Fear not them which kill the body,
but are not able to kill the soul ; but rather fear J]jm
who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." —
MATT. x. 29. The Lord Jesus believed in something
beyond the death of the body, more terrible than the
death of the body, so much more terrible that, in
comparison, this seemed to Him not to be dreaded
at all. Did He know what He was saying ? Ah !
He knew of a killing of the soul, quite other than
its violent and painful disrupture from the body. He
knew of a death beyond this bodily, which He described
as the destruction of " both soul and body in hell." De-
struction / Let your mind dwell on that fearful
word. Can you reach and grasp all its meaning? —
all its meaning, when applied to such a thing as your
soul ? — to such a being as yourself ?
" What is a man profited," Jesus asked, " if he shall
gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? " So
Matthew reports His saying, who probably heard it
from His own lips. — Matt. xvi. 26. Another in-
spired writer, reporting the same saying, gives it in
these words : " What is a man advantaged, if he gain
the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away ? "
— Luke ix. 26. That shows how men of that time
understood the Lord. To lose the soul, is to lose
yourself. It is to be a lost man ; not a lost man in a
Sin as a Doom. 85
deep wilderness ; not a lost man in a wintry storm.
in the midst of a broad prairie ; not a lost man on
the fragment of a wreck, far out on the sea ; but a
lost man in eternity. That is just what it will be, to
" die in your sins," as Jesus declares that they shall -
die who do not believe on Him.
There are no recorded words of Jesus, no words
written in the Bible, which seem to me more dreadful
than those — "ye shall die in your sins"
There are indeed views of that to which sin ex
poses us, in the future, which are more particular,
more specific, set forth in more graphic representa
tion ; but to my mind the very generality of this, the
absence from it of all specification, and all particular
description, give it a peculiar fearfulness. It seenw
to me that I should not shudder so much at the
thought of the future retributions, if they were or
could be fully described in human language, or
brought within the measure of human comprehen-
sion. I am not so much afraid of anything which I
find that I can measure, can go all around, and know
that I have seen the whole of it. Anything which I
could adequately describe to another, or which an-
other could adequately describe to me, so that I
should at length feel sure that I had the whole of it,
had satisfactorily made out its full import — any such
thing, I might perhaps think it possible for me to
bear, when it should come upon me. But those
86 ^ Sin and Salvation. ~~
words of Jesus, "ye shall die in your sins," give me
the impression of something which He would not
undertake to describe, something which can not be
adequately described or expressed, something which
I can not suppose myself able adequately to con-
ceive.
Standing here, in this world, in the midst of what
is so evidently a scene of probation and of mercy, of
opportunity and of hope, seeing myself, feeling my-
self so rapidly borne on across this scene, irresistibly
borne toward the door of departure from it, unable
to see an inch beyond that door into the solemn
boundlessness, I listen for any voice that may per-
adventure come in to me, telling me what I must
there meet, what I ought there to be prepared for.
Thus listening, there come to me, out of God's Word,
such divine voices as these : " It is appointed unto
men once to die, but after this the judgment." — Heb.
ix. 27. " He that is unjust, let him be unjust still ;
and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still ; and he
that is righteous, let him be righteous still ; and he
that is holy, let him be holy still. And behold, I
come quickly ; and my reward is with me, to give to
every man according as his work shall be." — Rev. xxii.
II, 12. So clearly, so solemnly is that other world
announced to me by God's Word, not as a scene of
probation, of opportunity, of hope, but as a scene of
retribution, of judgment. It is not a place for earn-
Sin as a Doom. Sy
ing wages, but of receiving wages ; and " the' wages
of sin is death." — ROM. vi. 23. It is not a scene of
seed-sowing, but of harvest-gathering. " 0, what
shall the harvest be ? "
Conscious of having here deeply sinned, conscious
of being deeply sinful, I can not think of anything
else so dreadful as to be left to " die in my sins " — to
go, in all my guilt, unpardoned, uncleansed, into the
presence of Him who is of purer eyes than to behold
evil, and who can not look on iniquity " (Hab. i. 13) ;
to stand, in His presence, in that clear light in which
there is no need of sun nor of candle, and in which I
shall know even as also I am known. — 1 COR. xiii. 12;
Rev. xx. 5.
Reading the Bible, and finding how full it is of
God's revealed provision for our deliverance from sin,
how affectionately it entreats us to depart from evil,
and to seek life now ; how richly it exhibits God's
saving mercy, and His gracious help — then, to
think of all these opportunities being neglected, all
these provisions slighted, and that, notwithstanding
them all, any should "die in their sins" — I can not
think of anything consoling or hopeful for them.
For those who here know the way of life, and decline
all invitations to walk in it ; who know of Christ, in all
His fullness of grace and truth, and turn their backs
to Him ; who refuse when He calls, and when He
stretches out His hand do not regard it ; who, when
88 Sin and Salvation.
He stands at the door and knocks, will not open to
Him, and let Him in ; who refuse to believe on Him,
and die in their sins ; — verily, " there remaineth no
more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking
for of judgment." — PROV. i. 24-33 5 Heb. x. 26, 27 ;
Rev. iii. 20.
PART SECOND
SALVAT ION.
WE have studied sin in several of the aspects
in which the Bible reveals it, and in which
we know it in sad experience. Sin, as an act ;
as a state ; as disease ; as departure from God ; as
an inheritance ; as a delusion ; as a doom. This has
been necessarily a painful study ; it would be a use-
less one, if there were no available remedy for the
dreadful evil. In that case, the only true wisdom
would be to close our eyes to the ruin before us, and
harden our hearts against the misery upon us. It
was because we knew that it is not so, that we were
able to pursue that study. All the pain of it was
made tolerable by the hope which accompanied it.
Deep, dark, dismal as the valley of our sin and mis-
ery is, there is a light streaming into the darkness.
" The sable cloud turns forth a silver lining on the
night." " The day-spring from on high hath visited
us." Let us heed and follow its gleaming. Let us
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90 Sin and Salvation.
" take heed unto the light shining in a dark place,
until the day dawn, and the day star arise in our
hearts." Yea, let us believe that this shining light
shall " shine more and more unto perfect day." It
surely will, if we obediently and trustingly " walk in
the light," "as God gives us to see" it; light of
truth, light of hope, light of salvation. " For we are
saved by hope : but hope that is seen is not hope :
for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for ?
But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with
patience wait for it. Likewise also the Spirit help-
eth our infirmities : for we know not what we should
pray for as we ought : but the Spirit itself maketh
intercession for us with groanings which can not be
uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth
what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh in-
tercession for the saints according to the will of God.
And we know that all things work together for good
to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose. For whom he did fore-
know he also did predestinate to be conformed to
the image of his Son, that he might be the first-born
among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did pre-
destinate, them he also called : and whom he called,
them he also justified : and whom he justified, them
he also glorified." — Rom. viii. 24-30.
Verily, it is a " great salvation," which " the word
of God written " reveals to us, which the Word of
Salvation. 9 i
God incarnate brought to us. To the study of this
Salvation we now turn, and will consider it in a num-
ber of aspects more or less correspondent to those in
which we have studied sin.
As the very idea of sin implies a sinner, an intelli-
gent, free being, subject to a law, and responsible to
a Law-giver, a being capably of doing the wrong acts,
and being in the wrong state, which sin is — liable to
the disorder, the alienation from God, the delusion,
and the doom — even so the idea of salvation implies
a Saviour, a being who is able to do all that is im-
plied in the rescue of the sinner from that doom,
from that delusion, that disorder, that alienation, that
evil state.
The first Bible reference to salvation, the first hint
of deliverance from the ruin into which mankind, in
the first pair, had then recently fallen, was in the
obscure promise of one to come, " seed of the wom-
an," who should defeat and destroy their destroyer,
should " bruise the serpent's head."
When the ages and dispensations had been fulfilled,
whereby preparation had been made, and the fullness
of times completed, for his coming, the first New
Testament reference to human salvation was in the
angelic announcement of the name by which the
coming Deliverer should be known. " Thou shalt
call his name JESUS ; for he shall save his people
from their sins." — MATT. i. 21.
92 Sin and Salvation.
The wonderful person and the twofold nature of
this Jesus, child of a human virgin, Son of the blessed
God, we are not now to study. Knowledge of Him,
sufficient for our purpose, is here assumed, and the
recognition of Him as the personal author of the sal-
vation which we are to study, is taken for granted.
The salvation of which He is the author, who for
that very reason was named JESUS, or SAVIOUR, was
declared to be a salvation from SIN. " He shall save
his people from their sins."
This salvation we are to contemplate in several
aspects, in the light which the Bible throws upon it.
CHAPTER I.
SALVATION AS AN ACT.
WE have seen that salvation implies a saviour.
It also implies something evil from which
one is saved. A person needing to be saved ; an
evil from which he needs to be saved ; a person able
to save ; — all these are continually implied.
There may be an actual exposure to the most
serious danger ; and there may be a sudden transi-
tion from that situation of exposure to one of perfect
safety by a single act. That may be wholly the act
of the person himself; it may be wholly the act
of another ; it may be a concurrent act of the person
saved with that of another, who, in either of these
two latter cases, is properly called his saviour.
When Simon Peter, from his fishing-boat tossed
helplessly on the waves of stormy Gennesaret, saw
his Lord walking on the water, he asked permission
to come to Him ; but as He was coming his courage
and faith failed. He felt himself sinking. " Lord,
save me," he cried, and immediately Jesus stretched
forth His hand, and caught him, and said unto him,
"O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt ?'
It was the peril of a moment. A single act of Jesus
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94 Sin an d Salvation.
wrought a rescue, a salvation. Again, on the same
waters, the disciples were imperiled by a fierce tem-
pest covering and rilling their vessel with waves. The
Master was asleep. They woke Him with the wild
cry : " Carest thou not that we perish ? " " Peace !
be still ! " said the Lord, " and there was a great
calm." They were saved by the Lord's act, a single
and sudden putting forth of His miraculous power, a
single peremptory, decisive exercise of His dominion
over the forces of nature. " He spake, and it was
done." "He uttered his voice" and the mad ele-
ments subsided from their fury. " The winds heard
it, and fled to their secret chambers ; and the waters
ceased their commotion, and rolled in gentle ripples
upon the shore of Galilee." The imperiled crew of
that Galilean vessel were saved by a single act of
their Master. By the word of His power going forth
in one mighty command their salvation was imme-
diately and fully accomplished.
On one occasion, our Lord, being at the table of
a Pharisee, was approached (as was practicable in
their oriental mode of reclining) by a broken-hearted
woman, who poured precious ointment from a costly
vial upon His feet, and also shed tears on them so
profusely, while she kissed them and let her loose
hair fall about them, that the sacred writer poetically
calls it washing His feet with her tears, and wiping
them with her hair. The self-righteous host was
Salvation as an Act. 95
astonished at this, and drew an inference unfavorable
to Jesus' claim to be considered a prophet. This
gave the Lord occasion to utter a most instructive
parable, and most encouraging to the sincerely peni-
tent. But the priceless gem that is set in the golden
story is His word to the woman: "Thy faith hath
saved thee ; enter into peace."* There was wrought
for this penitent, an instant salvation, by the Lord's
authoritative act of forgiveness. He also brought into
great prominence her own act of faith, declaring that
that had saved her. He justifies us in holding that
there is a sudden, a momentary transition of a soul,
when it receives Divine forgiveness, which is prop-
erly called salvation. It is a transition, a passing
over from a state of peril to a state of safety ; from
a condition of condemnation to a state of justifica-
tion ; from a situation of exposure to wrath and ruin,
to a situation of peace and of assurance of hope.
He teaches us to say, that a soul which, by confess-
ing its sin, and receiving Divine forgiveness, has
made that transition, is then and thereby saved ; that
a forgiven soul is a saved soul. Furthermore, He
teaches us not only that this sudden and immediate
salvation is accomplished by the authoritative act of
* Luke vii. 50. This is a more exact rendering than that in our
common version. It marks the transition of the forgiven soul, from
its previous trouble and unrest, into that peace which passeth under-
standing.
96 Sin and Salvation.
God, but also that it is conditioned on an act of the
sinful soul itself, even its act of faith, its believing
acceptance of the Saviour, as He is pffered in the
Gospel. So, most evidently, that penitent woman
had accepted Him, and poured the evidence of such
acceptance on His feet, and sealed it with pure and
fervent kisses, and filled all the space around with
the holy fragrance. How could He have declared
more distinctly the true and indispensable relation of
her faith to her salvation, or how could He have
emphasized the declaration more impressively, than
by saying, as He did to her, " thy faith hath saved
thee ; enter into peace " ?
He teaches us the same lesson, in His gracious
healing of the woman, who crept so timidly to Him,
through the crowd, and touched the hem of His gar-
ment, for the healing of her painful and irksome malady :
" And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort :
thy faith have saved* thee : enter into peace." — LUKE
viii. 48. Another illustration of this is given us by
Luke (xvii. 19), where He uses the same expression
to a leper ; and still another (xviii. 42) where, to the
blind man of Jericho, responding to his touching
prayer, " Lord, that I might receive my sight," He
* Our version gives us " made whole" instead of " saved, " but in
the Greek the word is the same which is rendered " saved" in the
other passages. The words " made whole" correctly explain what
kind of salvation was intended ; saved from the burden and pain of
that " issue of blood."
Salvation as an Act, gj
says, " Receive thy sight ; thy faith hath saved thee."
The faith, in that case, was shown simply by calling
upon " Jesus, the Son of David," with earnest and
persistent outcry — earnest, disregarding all small
questions of decorum ; persistent in spite of all re-
bukes from those whose frigid propriety bade him
hold his peace. Happy result and reward of per-
sistent earnestness !
•How like the sinner's salvation, and entering into
peace, is this man's salvation from the misery of
blindness ! Luke, who records that gracious miracle,
gives us (in Acts ii. 21) this sweeping, this glorious
evangelical announcement : " And it shall come to
pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the
Lord shall be saved." He gives it from Peter, whose
Pentecost sermon he is there reporting, and Peter
avowedly quotes it from the prophet Joel. Turning
back to that book of prophecy, in the last verse of its
second chapter, you will read : " And it shall come to
pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the
Lord shall be delivered!' An inspired apostle inter-
prets for us an inspired prophecy, and assures us that
the transition is made, from the wretchedness and
exposure of sin into the blessedness of assured salva-
tion, by that believing acceptance of the Lord, which
is naturally and properly signified by " calling on His
name." The natural connection between the mind
and the mouth, between the thoughts of the heart
5
98 Sin and Salvation.
and the utterances of the tongue, is constantly taken
for granted in Scripture. It is assumed that whoever
heartily trusts in the Lord will orally call upon His
name. It is taken for granted that if the heart is
filled with grateful confidence in His mercy, the
mouth will " show forth His praise." It is affirmed,
that "with the heart man believeth unto righteous-
ness ; and with the mouth confession is made unto
salvation." — ROM. x. 10. Says Dr. McCosh : " There
may be prayer where there are no words employed,
and the heart may move when the lips do not move.
Still, it is according to the constitution of man that
out of the abundance of the heart the mouth will
speak ; and words, while forming no essential part
of the prayer, will essentially aid it, by keeping the
mind from falling into blankness and vacuity, by in-
stigating and guiding it in a certain train ; in short,
they furnish cords to bind the sacrifice to the altar,
they supply a censer in which the delicate incense of
our feelings may be presented before the Lord."*
That Christian philosopher thus partly explains the
utility of spoken words in the offering of prayer, and
in cultivating the spirit and the habit of prayer.
Their value in that first act of prayer, wherein a soul
commits itself to God, is signally exemplified in a
narrative given by the late Mr. Finney, in his " Me*
* "Divine Government, Physical and Moral," p. 220.
Salvation as an Act. 99
moirs." It is the account of the conversion of Mr.
H., of Buffalo, in 183 1. I transcribe from pp. 308-
310 of the volume :
" That night he could not sleep. His mind was so exercised
that he rose as.soon as there was any light, left his house and
went off to a considerable distance, where there was then a
grove, near a place where he had some water-works, which
he called ' the hydraulics.' There in the grove he knelt down
to pray. He said he had felt, during the night, as if he must
get away by himself, so that he could speak aloud and let out
his voice and his heart, as he was pressed beyond endurance
with the sense of his sins, and with the necessity of immedi-
ately making his peace with God. But to his surprise and
mortification, when he knelt down and attempted to pray, he
found that his heart would not pray. He had no words ; he
had no desires that he could express in words. He said that
it appeared to him that his heart was as hard as marble, and
that he had not the least feeling on the subject. He stood
upon his knees disappointed and confounded, and found that
if he opened his mouth to pray, he had nothing in the form
of prayer that he could sincerely utter.
"In this state it occurred to him that he could say the
Lord's Prayer. So he began, ' Our Father which art in heaven.'
He said as soon as he uttered the words, he was convicted of
his hypocrisy in calling God his Father. When he added the
petition, ' Hallowed be thy name,' he said it almost shocked
him. He saw that he was not sincere, that his words did not
at all express the state of his mind. He did not care to have
God's name hallowed. Then he uttered the next petition,
Thy kingdom come.' Upon this he said he almost choked.
He saw that he did not want the kingdom of God to come ;
that it was hypocritical in him to say so, and that he could
not say it, as really expressing the sincere desire of his heart.
And then came the petition, ' Thy will be done on earth as
it is in heaven.' He said his heart rose up against that, and
he could not say it. Here he was brought face to face with
xoo Sin and Salvation.
the will of God. He had been told fr«m day to day that he
was opposed to this will ; that he was not willing to accept
it; that it was his voluntary opposition to God, to His law,
and His will, that was the obstacle in the way of his conver-
sion, This consideration he had resisted and fought with
desperation. But here on his knees, with the Lord's Prayer
in his mouth, he was brought face to face with that question ;
and he saw with perfect clearness that what he had been
told was true ; that he was not willing that God's will should
be done ; and that he did not do it himself, because he
would not.
" Here the whole question of his rebellion, in its nature and
its extent, was brought so strongly before him, that he saw
it would cost him a mighty struggle to give up that volun-
tary opposition to God. And then, he said, he gathered up
all the strength of his will and cried aloud, ' Thy will be
done on earth as it is done in heaven.' He said he was per-
fectly conscious that his will went with his words ; that he
accepted the will of God, and the whole will of God ; that he
made a full surrender to God, and accepted Christ just as He
is offered in the Gospel. He gave up his sins, and embraced
the will of God" as his universal rule of life. The language
of his heart was, 'Lord, do with me as seemeth thee good.'
' Let thy will be done with me, and with all creatures on
earth, as it is done in heaven.' He said he prayed freely, as
soon as his will surrendered ; and his heart poured itself out
like a flood. His rebellion all passed away, his feelings sub-
sided into a great calm, and a sweet peace seemed to fill his
soul."
Not more suddenly did turbulent Gennesaret set-
tle into level tranquillity, and the roar of that angry
tempest cease in the surrounding hills, when the voice
of Jesus sent out, " amid the howling of the tempest,"
its potent " Peace, be still." It was a sudden, an in
stantaneous stepping over from the territory of re-
Salvation as, an Act.* ' '• ' 101
bellion into the territory of submission. It was an
instantaneous transition from the tumult of hostil-
ity to God into the quiet of reconciliation. It was
a sudden, instantaneous abandonment of self and ac-
ceptance of Christ. It was an immediate, voluntary
trustful coming into union with Christ in cordial,
affectionate, obedient confidence. It was a single,
voluntary, decisive act of the soul, committing itself
to Him, attaching itself to Him, connecting itself
with Him. It was as distinct an action, as voluntary,
as decisive, as instantaneous, as your grasping the
plank pushed out to you by friendly hands, over the
edge of the ice, where you had broken through ; and
it wrought as immediate and as complete a rescue.
There was, there is salvation, in that first honest,
hearty act of trust, of full self-commitment to the
gracious, Almighty Saviour.
CHAPTER II.
DIVERSE BEGINNINGS OF SALVATION.
THE decisive act of the beginning of salvation,
recorded at the close of the preceding chapter,
was the conscious bowing of a human will to the will
of God. It was a mature will, a strong will, an obsti-
nate will, a proud will. It was a will which, in its
steadiness, and tenacity, and strength, was the very
back-bone of a powerful character, of a sturdy and
energetic manhood. It was such a will as makes its
possessor a power in the community in which he lives,
a significant factor in the problems of the age to
which he belongs, and is felt effectively and memo-
rably in the enterprises and in the history of his time.
Such a will, having matured and consolidated in im-
penitence, in selfness, when " brought face to face
with the will of God," must yield and bow as, happily,
that will did, or else stiffening itself in obstinate re-
fusal, it must choose the attitude of rebellion, and
abide the result, the eternal consequence. Such a
will was that of him who so suddenly found himself
face to face with the Lord Jesus, near Damascus, and
there yielding to Him, in full surrender, began that
memorable apostolic career. Such a will was that of
(102)
Diverse Beginnings of Salvation. 103
Him in Egypt, who found himself face to face with
Moses, the messenger of Jehovah to him, and who,
hardening his heart in rebellious obstinacy, said,
"Who is Jehovah, that I should obey his voice to let
Israel go ? I know not Jehovah, and I will not let
Israel go." — Ex. v. 2. In every age, among every
people to whom Jehovah has made Himself known,
and sent His word, there are examples of such de-
cisive surrender, and of such determined refusal — ex-
amples also, far more numerous, of as real refusal, less
courageously made, disguising themselves in some
such cowardly evasion as that of Felix, " Go thy way
for this time ; when I have a convenient season, I
will call for thee." — ACTS xxiv. 25. The result will be
the same to you, whether you politely bow the Lord
away from your door with smooth and graceful apol-
ogy, or rudely bid Him begone.
But that is not the only form of the initial act in
the experience of salvation. This initial act is fre-
quently called conversion. The word fitly describes
such a change, such a turning, such a reversal of po-
sition. The experience which Mr. Finney so graphi-
cally describes, was doubtless regarded by him, and
rightly regarded, as a clear instance of conversion, a
memorable and instructive instance. There were
many such instances in his time and under his preach-
ing. It was a type of conversion to which conversion
under his preaching was very apt to conform, to which
104 Sin and Salvation.
his preaching was fitted to lead, whenever the accom
panying energy of the Holy Spirit made it effectual ;
for that preaching necessarily took its character from
the qualities of his own mind, and the type of his
own experience, himself a man of uncommon strength
of character, converted in maturity of manhood, and
from positive and mature ungodliness.
There are many mature men. now needing such con-
version as much as those men needed it, in the pre-
ceding generation. One can hardly help wishing that
there might come among us in this age, such another
Elijah the prophet, a man of such decisive individu-
ality, and with a will having such power over other
wills. It would be a fatal mistake for such men to
wait for any such human leader. It is hardly more
probable that this age will have a Finney, than that
it will have an Elijah. The question whether the
mature impenitent men of to-day, — the men now man-
aging railroads, and telegraphs, and manufactories,
and commercial enterprises, enacting and expounding
laws, and administering governments, — shall submit
themselves to God, and commit themselves to Christ,
is a question which they will probably have to settle
in the clear, dry light of Scriptural knowledge, in
which they have grown up from childhood, and which
they possess in a way favorable to calm deliberation and
candid decision, but not likely to electrify them with
sudden and overwhelming conviction. To all such, we
Diverse Beginnings of Salvation. 105
say calmly, yet earnestly, it must just be left between
you and God, for you yourselves to choose, whether you
will serve Him. It must just be left between you and
Christ, for yourselves to decide, whether like the
fishermen John, and Simon Peter, and the custom-
house officer, Matthew, you will arise and follow
Him ; or whether, like the young man, in whom He
was so kindly interested, but who lacked one thing,
viz : the willingness to consecrate his property to
Hirm you will " go away sorrowful," and remain un-
saved. — Luke xviii. 18-24.
I have spoken of that instance of conversion which
Mr. Finney relates, as illustrating a type of conver-
sion. So speaking, I have intimated that there
are different types of conversion ; that while in all
genuine conversions the change, which the word ex-
presses, is radical and decisive, it is, in different in-
stances, attended by a considerable variety of con-
scious and manifested experiences.
This variety in types of conversion is sufficiently
illustrated in the New Testament, in the instances of
conversion recorded by the inspired writers, and which
occurred in the time of the apostles.
1 . That of Saul of Tarsus. — This was of the same
type with that of Mr. H. of Buffalo. It is a mature
mind in conscious opposition to Christ, suddenly giv-
ing up that opposition, and taking the attitude of
5*
106 Sin and Salvation.
voluntary subjection to Him. This is almost certain
to be preceded by violent emotion fitly symbolized
by a tempest, and followed by a tranquillity as fitly
represented by the subsidence of such a storm at the
miracle-doing word of Jesus. The prominent feature
in this type of conversion is submission, surrender of
the human will to the will of God, to which it has
been in conscious rebellious opposition, and the right-
ful supremacy of which is clearly seen. It is the
giving up of a determination known and felt to be
wrong, and voluntary subjection to an authority seen
and known to be right. It is not a breaking down of
the will. The energy and persistence of the man,
that which we significantly call his will-power, may
subsequently be found undiminished, and may carry
him on a career which shall be historic and memo-
rable. There have been no stronger human wills
than those which have been most decisive in their
surrender, and most persistent in their submission to
the will of jGod. As illustrations of this, I will only
name Paul in the first century, and Mr. Finney him-
self in this passing century. This type of conversion
does not crush the will, does not enfeeble it. It sim-
ply regulates it, by reducing it into due subordination
to the will of God. Let it not be supposed that this
surrender of the will is all that is involved in such a
conversion. Other things, no doubt, are involved, of
which I shall speak more particularly as connected
Diverse Beginnings of Salvation, 107
with other types of conversion, and being severally
prominent in them and characteristic of them, while
this type is characterized by this one, its most promi-
nent feature. In such a conversion as Saul's or that
of Mr. H. in Buffalo, there is nothing else of which
the soul must be so vividly conscious, at the time,
nor anything else so memorable to it ever afterward,
as that surrender of the will. Submission to the
authority and the will of God is such a soul's conver-
sion.
2. That of the Jailer (Acts xvi.) — This man was
not probably very well acquainted with the Gospel.
We have no evidence that he was an unusually bad
man. About such a man as we should expect to find
a Roman officer in charge of a prison in a Roman
province; stern, harsh, not tenderly considerate of
prisoners whom he had been strictly charged to keep
securely ; a worldly, selfish man, we may well believe
him to have been. Yet he seems not to have been
without* conscience ; and his conscience was not so
profoundly asleep but that it woke easily, and cried
loudly to him, when the earthquake shook open the
prison doors. He recognized in this a divine inter-
position, an interposition of the God of those strange
prisoners. Conscious of guilt, and fearing the wrath
of God, and quite sure that those prisoners could
teach him the way of mercy, if there was a way of
mercy for him, he came trembling to them and cried
108 Sin and Salvation.
out : " What must I do to be saved ? " It was honest
terror ; nor was it unmanly terror. It is not coward-
ice to fear God. It is not courage, but foolhardiness,
not to be afraid of His judgments. This jailer
knew himself to be a sinner, and when the God who
had laid the foundations of the earth, and could
shake them, seemed about to reveal Himself in judg-
ment, he trembled with fear. He desired, if possible,
to be saved from the coming wrath. He soon learned
from his prisoners that their Master was the Savior
of men from their sins, and from the wrath of God,
which those sins deserve. He readily accepted this
offer of salvation ; took the Lord Jesus to be his
Lord and his Savior; immediately had the visible
seal of this acceptance put upon him, and was num-
bered thenceforth among His disciples.
Here is not a conflict of wills, a human will first
stiffening itself in resolute resistance to the will of
God, and at length bowing in submission. Doubtless
the surrender of his will to the authority and will of
God is involved. But this is not the prominent and
characteristic feature, in this case, as it was in the
other. Neither does there appear to have been any
violent struggle, before he was brought to this surren-
der. The prominent feature here is the believing ac-
ceptance of offered' salvation from a fearful exposure
to God's just anger. The season of distress preceding
the full relief of that glad acceptance was short, sim-
Diverse Beginnings of Salvation, iog
ply because the acceptance came so soon — as soon,
apparently, as the offer and the opportunity were
clearly seen and understood.
" O, what peace men often forfeit !
O, what needless pain they bear ! "
What weary and tedious months of gloom and de-
spondency would be saved, if as soon as Christ's gra-
cious offer is brought to them, they would at once
heartily and trustingly accept it ! So did that Phi-
lippian jailer, and the clear statement of his case by
Luke, gives us that type of conversion, — a sinner
made sensible of his just exposure to divine wrath,
and promptly accepting Christ's merciful offer of de-
liverance from that exposure. One thus converted
naturally at once avows his discipleship, associates
himself with fellow-disciples, takes the badge of dis
cipleship upon him, and thenceforth follows the Lord
in dutiful and thankful service, even as blind Bartime-
us, as soon as his blindness was cured, thankfully
" followed Jesus in the way." — Mark x. 52.
3. That of the Ethiopian (Acts viii.) — This man
was found by the Evangelist Philip, reading, in his
chariot, from the book of the prophecies of Isaiah,
that wonderful passage concerning the Christ being
led as a lamb to the slaughter ; and so little instructed
was he that he did not even know of whom the proph-
et so spoke, whether " of himself or of some other
no Sin and Salvation.
man." Philip was fresh from Jerusalem ; he was
furnished with full information of the facts which
had then recently fulfilled that precious prophecy;
he was sent to the candid inquirer by the Holy Spirit,
and by Him doubtless aided in instructing him. He
soon made him aware that Jesus, slain and risen again,
was the Lamb of God on whom all our sins had been
laid, and " by whose stripes we are healed." As soon
as he sees this, he accepts it ; as soon as they come
to a convenient place, he avows his belief in Jesus,
the Christ, and seals the avowal by baptism ; and he
" goes on his way rejoicing." There is no account
here of any struggle of will against God's will, mak-
ing the final surrender a marked and notable feature
of the experience. There is no account of any ex-
perience of terror in view of exposure to God's just
wrath, prompting the earnest outcry, " What must I
do to be saved ? " There is clearly enough implied
the confession of guilt, and we may fairly presume
that this was accompanied with the candid acknowl-
edgment of just exposure to the penalty of ski.
But so far as appears, the whole mind was tranquil,
thoughtful, teachable, and pre-eminently candid. The
prominent feature in this case is the prompt and glad
acceptance of Christ, the Savior, just as soon as the
soul knows Him, and knows itself privileged to ac-
cept Him. And let us not fail to observe that it is
clearly and pre-eminently as our substitute, suffering
Diverse Begi7inings of Salvation. 1 1 1
vicariously for us, that Jesus was presented to the
Ethiopian by Philip and by the Holy Spirit ; and
that in that character the Ethiopian accepted Him,
and " went on his way rejoicing," a relieved, saved,
happy man, the most gladsome man, we may well be-
lieve, though the most conscientious man, thenceforth,
of all Candace's courtiers, and of all her subjects.
Can any observant person fail to see that this is
the prevalent type of conversion under the preach-
ing of the favored evangelist of our time, who on a
conspicious and memorable occasion, announced that
53d chapter of Isaiah as his printed creed ? The ration-
alism of our time loftily criticises this evangelist's con-
tinual presentation of "the blood''' ; yet is compelled
to confess the efficacy of his preaching in winning
and saving men from vicious and unclean lives, as no
bloodless teaching and extolling of Jesus' precepts
and examples- has shown itself able to win and to
save. Doubtless Mr. Moody knows that in " the
blood" is the very " hiding of the power" of that
Gospel which he so diligently and so successfully
preaches. His whole labor is to convince men that
" the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin,"
and to persuade them to accept its cleansing from
theirs. The more speedily they thus accept it, with
the less of delay, of struggling, of endurance, of dis-
tress, and fear, and doubt, and despondency, the bet-
ter.
ii2 Sin and Salvation.
Another example of this type of conversion seems
to me to be given in the same chapter. It is the case
of Lydia. She was evidently a respectable, virtuous,
serious woman. She is even spoken of as one who
" worshiped God." This may even justify a doubt,
whether, when she sat there by the river-side, with
other women who resorted to that place of prayer,
she needed conversion. We need not try to solve that
doubt. She at least did not know Jesus as the Christ.
The presumption is that she did not know God's way of
peace, though she revered God, and desired to find ac-
cess to Him. But she was attentive ; she was candid ;
she was teachable. The Lord made her so. "The Lord
opened her heart, that she attended unto the things
that were spoken of Paul." The result was the nat-
ural and proper result of candid attention to any
serious communication. She acted according to its
import. She accepted it, and at once put her life un-
der its directing influence. So far as appears, there
was as little of tumult in her mind about it, as little
of agitation or struggle, and just as quiet, and straight-
forward, and decisive proceeding, as in accepting an
offer for a quantity of the purple which she used to
sell — just as little as there might have been in the
mind of so sensible a woman, in accepting a proposal
of marriage from a man whom she had long known
and thoroughly esteemed, when frankly informed by
him of his love and his desire to make her his wife
Diverse Beginnings of Salvation. 113
Believing, affectionate, sincere acceptance is the es
sential thing' in the true union of two souls in mar
riage. Believing, affectionate, sincere acceptance is
the essential thing in the union of a soul with Christ.
In each case, it is the acceptance of a person, in view
of what he is known to be, justifying the full trust in
him for all for which he offers himself.
This quiet, thoughtful type of conversion is unques-
tionably as genuine and scriptural as either of those of
which the phenomena are more striking and startling.
I believe it to be the type in which conversion is more
apt to occur among people long acquainted with the
Bible, and accustomed reverently to attend upon pub-
lic worship and preaching. I seriously fear that some,
needing conversion, feeling their need of it, and hav-
ing now the opportunity for it, are prevented from ex-
periencing it by failing to see that the Scriptures do
offer them this type of conversion. They are waiting
for some conscious struggle with God, giving them
opportunity to surrender to Him, or for a conscious
terror in view of their known exposure, which long
use has made them able to think of without tremor.
They have been scripturally taught, and they believe,
that they must be moved and led by the Spirit of
God to any true acceptance of the Savior ; but they
fail to see (perhaps because they have not herein been
scripturally taught), that the calm thoughtfulness of
which they are conscious, and the clear perception
ii4 Sin an d Salvation.
which they have of their need and of Christ's suf-
ficiency, are truly the work of God's Spirit within
them. Dear reader, in simply yielding to this gentle
influence, in voluntarily going the way it leads, you
would be led by the Spirit of God ; and " as many as
are led by the Spirit of God, they are sons of God." —
Rom. viii. 14.
U
CHAPTER III.
WHAT IS ESSENTIAL TO THE BEGINNING OF
SALVATION.
WE have seen that the beginning of salva-
tion, in the experience of any human soul,
may have considerable variety of conscious and
manifested phenomena. We have found several dis-
tinct types of conversion in the narratives given in
the Acts of the Apostles ; and we have found these
different types exemplified in our own age. We
have seen mature persons making the transition from
ungodliness to piety, which the word conversion
properly expresses, by a sudden and conscious sub-
mission of the will to God, after a season of stiff and
resolute opposition, or of violent and bitter conflict.
Others we have seen terrified by a serious and just
apprehension of exposure to the righteous anger of
God, and to utter and hopeless destruction, learning
that Christ Jesus offers them salvation ^rom that
exposure, and finding speedy relief in cordial accept-
ance of that gracious offer. We have seen still others
made aware of their guilt and exposure, and of the
opportunity to be saved from both by the Lord
Jesus, at once quietly and calmly, but decisively
(115)
1 1 6 Sin and Salvation.
embracing the opportunity, and " going on their
way rejoicing." In either case, the acceptance oi
Christ, being sincere and real, will be evidenced by
the abandonment of whatever the person believes to
be displeasing to Christ, and by the honest endeavor
to follow Him in the way of hearty obedience. In
all these cases, no doubt, the same elements of faith
and repentance are involved ; but in one class of
cases, one feature of the experience is prominent and
characteristic, and another in another.
These varieties of type in conversion are probably
occasioned by differences of temperament, of mental
development and culture, of age, of habits, and of
the circumstances in which the conversion occurs.
It is not important, nor is it best, for those needing
conversion, to concern themselves about these dif-
ferent types of it any further than this. They need
to know that there are different types, and therefore
they need not be hindered or discouraged in seeking
salvation, because they do not find their own minds
affected as they know that some other mind has
been with which they have been acquainted, or of
which the^ have read, in religious biography, or in
the Bible. It is important to see what is essential,
and common to all types of genuine conversion, and
not to be diverted from attention to this by having
the mind occupied with what is variable and unes-
sential. The decisive thing, in every case, is the ac-
What is Essential to Salvation. 117
ccptance of JESUS CHRIST, as He is offered in the
Gospel. " As many as received him, to them gave
he power to become children of God, even to them
that believe on his name." — John i. 12. " Therefore
if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." — 2
Cor. v. 17.
This beginning act of salvation, the soul's accept-
ance of Christ, may properly be still held before us
for further study. We can not study it too thor-
oughly. We can not contemplate it too often nor
too earnestly. Let us consider what it involves.
1. The soul must be informed of the truth, that
Jesus Christ is the Savior of men from sin. " How
shall they believe in him of whom they have not
heard ? " — Rom. x. 14.
All our work, as ministers, as Sabbath-school teach-
ers, as parents, or in any way, for the salvation of men
or of children, begins with giving them information,
communicating truth to them, making truth known to
them, and helping them to understand it. So it was
in the preaching of the apostles, and in all evangeliz-
ing in their time, and always since. When Philip,
by direction of the Holy Spirit, " went near and
joined himself to that chariot," in which the Ethi-
opian eunuch was riding (Acts viii. 29), it was for the
purpose of helping him understand what he was
reading. Philip's plain exposition of that Scripture
soon made it evident to that candid and teachable
n8 Sin and Salvation.
man, that He whom the prophet there foretold (to be
"led as a sheep to the slaughter") was Jesus of Gal-
ilee, lately slain in Jerusalem, and who had risen
from the dead and ascended into heaven. The mind
of the inquirer had first to be furnished with this
information, to be made the possessor of this truth.
So also must Lydia first " attend unto the things
which were spoken by Paul " (Acts xvi. 14). Atten-
tion is the voluntary act of a hearer, whereby his mind
takes the truth which a speaker delivers, and without
which the speaking will be mere sound, empty and
ineffective. The two actions, truthful speaking and
attentive hearing, must concur in order that the
hearer's soul may really have possession of the truth
by means of which it is to be saved.
2. The soul must sincerely accept the truth which
is thus communicated to it. That word accept is a
great word. It is a deep word. We have no plum-
met which we can drop to the bottom of its meaning.
" It means everything." And yet it is a very simple
word. It is a very simple thing which it expresses.
Do not miss the simplicity of its meaning : then you
need not lose its depth.
You accept an offered bargain : so many yards of
cloth, or so many acres of land, at so much an acre,
or so much a yard. This means that your whole
mind assents to the representation made to you con-
cerning the value of the property and its desirableness
What is Essential to Salvation. 119
to you as a possession, and that you will act accord-
ingly. You will take possession of the property, and
will honestly pay the stipulated price. You will do
all that the transaction implies, all that the bargain
means.
You accept an invitation to dine with a friend.
This means not only that you are informed of his
sending you an invitation, and acknowledge that the
messenger has faithfully delivered it to you, but also
that you agree to do that which it offers you the
privilege of doing. Your friend may expect you to
be at his table.
A gift is sent to you, in token of friendly regard.
Your acceptance of it implies your grateful apprecia-
tion of that friendly regard, your willingness to be so
regarded. You and the giver are friends. Sincerity
and self-respect would require you to refuse the gift,
if you could not honestly assent to that which it sig-
nifies and seals.
You are in want ; have not wherewith to purchase
bread or fuel or needed clothing. Food, fuel, cloth-
ing, or money to purchase them is sent to you by a
benevolent person. If you accept it, you not only
take and use the material benefit, but take the posi-
tion and relation of a beneficiary, and take upon you
the indebtedness, the duty of gratitude. If your
heart is right, it responds with actual conscious grati-
tude, which your mouth will express, and your con-
120 Sin and Salvation.
duct will manifest. Nothing short of this would be
a true, a real acceptance.
You have done wrong, and he whom you have
injured is ready to forgive you. Acceptance of his
forgiveness is not a reality, if you are still cherishing
the wrong disposition, ready to repeat the injury.
You accept an offer of marriage. This means, not
merely that you have received the offer, not merely
that you know of it as a fact, and believe it to be
sincerely and honorably made ; it means that you
respond to all that it proposes ; give all that it asks ;
consent to enter into the relation which it contem-
plates ; surrender yourself to the affectionate and
honorable possession which it means. That accept-
ance of a person, offering himself for such a per-
manent union, involves the giving yourself to him
in the corresponding self-commitment, and binding
yourself with him, in the mutual obligation, and the
indissoluble union. That acceptance means every-
thing, involves everything which the proposal means.
No other acceptance, in human and earthly affairs,
means so, much, because no other proposal has so
much in it. Acceptance of any proposal — honest
and real acceptance — means everything that is in that
proposal.
How much is there — let us now consider — in
Christ's proposal ? What is fairly meant, when a soul
accepts Him ?
What is Essential to Salvation. 121
1. It does not mean that the accepting soul fully
understands Him. Some souls are troubled and hin-
dered by the fact that, as soon as they seriously
think of Jesus, and begin earnestly to study what is
written of Him in the Word of God, they find that
there is a great deal written which they can not under-
stand. The meek, kind man, " who went about do-
ing good," in Galilee and Judea, always gentle, com-
passionate, considerate, helpful ; always truthful, ear-
nest, faithful ; always patient, forbearing, forgiving ;
all this seems not difficult to understand. Even His
miracles, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind,
walking on the sea, raising the dead, are not difficult
to understand, from the common-sense point of view
which Nicodemus took (John iii. 2). He is " a teacher
come from God," and " God is with him," sealing
Him as His messenger. The power of God is present
in this man, to do all these wonders. This is plain
enough. The unlettered peasant can understand it
as well as the learned scholar. The little child can
understand it as well as the wise man. But when we
find this Jesus, not only speaking for God, like Isaiah
and Elijah and Moses, and doing miracles to show
that He has authority to speak for God, and that
God is with Him, while He speaks ; but also find
Him claiming to have come into this world, not as
other men do, coming then into being, but down
from a higher world and glorious state, in which He
122 Sin and Salvation.
was " in the beginning," and is eternally ; — when we
find the Scripture asserting that He " was in the be-
ginning with God, and was God ; that He and the
Divine Father are one, so that whoever hath seen
Him hath seen the Father — surely here we find some-
thing which we can not understand. This man Jesus,
real and true man as He evidently is, is also as evi-
dently something besides, something higher, some-
thing grander. We see in Him all that belongs to
our human nature, except its sin ; but we also see a
higher nature, and are constrained even to adore Him
as God. Yet He Himself forbid us, and all His apos-
tles, taught and commissioned by Him, forbid us to
believe in more Gods than oite. Then God, the true
and only God, Jehovah eternal, is here " manifested in
flesh," the great " mystery of godliness." We can not
understand this. It " passeth knowledge."
Equally unable may we be to understand His work.
How He, in His innocence, can take our sins upon
Him ; how He, the just, the holy, can righteously
suffer for us, the unjust, the sinful ; how the pain and
the shame which He willingly bore, can rightly be
substituted for the shame and woe which we, for our
sins, deserved ; this also we may be unable to under-
stand. Some may think that they understand it.
Let us not dispute with them ; but no more let us be
alarmed or disheartened if they fail to make us under-
stand it, with all their explanations. It is not neces-
What is Essential to Salvation. 123
sary. God understands it. When He makes us a
plain offer, we may be sure that He understands what
He is doing. When He assures us that Christ's
sacrifice does expiate human guilt ; does remove
the necessity of punishing us for the vindication of
His justice ; does render it possible for Him to " be
just and the justifier of every one who believeth "
(Rom. iii. 26) — can not we take all that to be true, on
God's Word for it, simply because He says it, how-
ever unable we may be to understand how it all can
be, or however unsatisfactory may be all the attempts
of theologians to explain it, to make us understand it.
2. That is just what we have to do ; to take all
that to be true, which God thus says to us ; to take
all that to be sincere, which God offers to us ; to take
all that to be reliable, which God proposes to us ; to
believe all that to have been fully accomplished,
which Christ, His eternal Son, incarnate, undertook
for us. We have just to believe this, to take it to be
true, not because we can explain it, nor because any
one can explain it to us ; but just because God says it.
3. Such full and hearty belief of God's testimony
and proposals concerning His Son, prepares the way
for, and justifies the consent of, the will, which makes
the act of acceptance complete.
This final consummating act of acceptance, has been
called " the faith of a transaction,"* and has been W
By Dr. Bushnell. Sermons " For the New Life."
124 Sin and Salvation.
lustrated somewhat as follows: A man goes to his
neighbor with a proposal, that he shall invest a sum
of money in a business enterprise. Let it be the con-
struction of a railroad. The first thing he has to do
is to give him the needed information, to furnish him
the facts on which his decision must be based. He
lays before him the survey of the tract of country
through which the road is to pass ; shows him the
practicability of the route, and the reasonable ex-
pense of construction ; gives him the statistics of
trade between the points which the road is to con-
nect, and the populousness of the towns and districts
along the route ; in short, furnishes him with all the
information needed for forming an intelligent judg-
ment. Let us suppose that all these facts are seen
and admitted to be satisfactory. The man assents to
the statements, and admits the validity of the argu-
ment founded on them. He says: "Yes, I see; I
am convinced that this is a practicable enterprise,
and that it is a wise investment." The only question
that now remains is this : " Will you invest ? " This
is not a question for the intellect, but for the will.
The intellect has done its work, and finished it. The
facts are all seen ; have all been examined ; have all
been weighed. The figuring is all done. The esti-
mates are all made. The thinking is finished. Any
more thinking is not only superfluous, but bewilder-
ing or debilitating. The only thing now to be done
What is Essential to Salvation. 125
is to decide : Will you invest ? The question nc
longer is : " What do you think ? " — that is answered.
The question now is: "What will you do?" That
is the only question. This is the question to prepare
for which all the previous investigation was made.
Before the investigation this question would have
been premature. Except as a preparation for this,
the investigation would have been useless. In the
answer to this question the will is concerned. This
is a decision of the mind, a decision of the man,
whether he will commit the interest in question to
the view of truth which has won the consent of his
understanding. If he says, " I will do it " — if he
takes his pen, and subscribes the instrument — if he
draws his check, and delivers it, accepting the receipt
or the certificate or the bond in return — then he has
exercised " the faith of a transaction." The faith is
now consistent and complete. The whole man is
in it.
The same thing is true when you are proposing to
yourself a voyage across the sea. You obtain all
needed information concerning a particular ocean
steamer, information concerning her sea-worthiness,
the competency of her commander, the fidelity of
her crew, etc. All these being satisfactory, you come
to the conclusion that it would be safe and wise to
embark. All this amounts to nothing unless you de-
cide that you will embark. Then your will enters
126 Sin and Salvation.
into your belief, and quickens it into " the faith of a
transaction."
If by similar investigation and consideration of
facts, you conclude that a serious surgical operation
is necessary, and that the surgeon whom you have
consulted is competent and faithful, your faith in
that surgeon becomes complete and effective as " the
faith of a transaction,"' when you stretch yourself out
on the couch and take the chloroform. Thus you not
merely declare your belief in the skill and fidelity of
the surgeon, but you actually commit yourself to
him. Human life abounds with transactions which
are thus the simple consummation of faith. The
Christian life begins with such a transaction. A soul
made acquainted with the Lord Jesus, furnished from
holy Scripture with all requisite information concern-
ing Him, convinced that He is the all-sufficient and
the only Savior from sin, then just takes Him as
such ; takes Him as He offers Himself, and thence-
forth relies upon Him.
CHAPTER IV.
EARLY BEGINNING OF SALVATION.
THE Scriptures have not left us without examples
of personal spiritual salvation beginning in very
early life. There are many reasons for regarding such
early beginning as both entirely practicable and alto-
gether desirable. Two notable instances of this are
that of Samuel in the Old Testament, and that of
Timothy in the New Testament. We also have pre-
cious and memorable words of our Lord, assuring all
children that they may come to Him, and belong to
His kingdom, and encouraging all who have the care
of children, and who love them, to bring them to
Him. Nay, it is worthy of being carefully noted,
that He charges us all not to hinder little children
from coming to Him. He saw that we would be in
danger of this ; that even religious teachers and pas-
tors would be apt positively to prevent children from
coming or being brought to Him. Certainly none of
us intend anything so cruel as that. But we are —
any of us — liable not to understand the feelings and
the needs of children. Even more liable are we not
to understand, and so not to let the children under-
(127)
128 Sin and Salvation.
stand, that the salvation of Christ is for them as well
as for grown-up people ; for them now, not by and
by ; for them especially, and that they can better and
more easily take it now than at any time hereafter.
Our Lord's treatment of little children, and His
words concerning them, do fairly teach all this.
How early may salvation from sin begin in the
experience of a child ? How young may a child be
a Christian ? At how early an age can that change
take place, which is commonly and properly called
conversion, and which is the passing of a soul out of
the state of impenitence into that of true piety ?
We have seen that this change may be experienced
under a considerable variety of forms or types, and
we have tried to ascertain what is essential to it under
all these forms. If we should find that some of these
forms of conversion never occur in early childhood,
it might still be that it should be possible for little
children to experience it under other forms. It seems
not unlikely that the difference between childhood
and maturity should account in a large degree for the
difference between one type of conversion and an-
other. By this I mean that it would seem natural to
expect that one converted in early childhood should
not have all the same feelings and exercises of mind
with one converted in maturity. As a matter of fact,
however, I believe there is as real diversity among
the experiences of children as among those of men
Early Beginning of Salvation. 129
and women — as real, if not as great difference, be-
tween the conversion of one child and that of another
as between the conversion of one man and that of
another — e.g., between the conversion of Saul of Tar-
sus and that of the Ethiopian eunuch. A child, as
truly as a man, may find the decisive point of this
experience in some conflict of his will with the will
of God, in some way made known to him ; and his
actual submission, his consent to be controlled by the
will of God may be the beginning act of his salvation
as decisively as it was with Mr. H. in Buffalo*, or with
Saul near Damascus. The practical issue between
God and the little child is not likely to be the same
as between God and the mature man. With the
mature man it does not always come in the form in
which Mr. H. met it, in the general and comprehen-
sive question, " Can I sincerely say, \ Thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven ' ? " Sometimes it
comes as a more specific question — " Will I do this
particular thing which God requires of me, and be-
cause He requires it ? " Or, " Will I abandon this
particular indulgence, or practice, or interest, simply
because I am convinced that it is God's will that I
should abandon it?" Just as Adam and Eve broke
away from their happy state of willing subjection to
the will of God, by making up their minds to disobey
Him in a particular case, to do a particular thing
which He had forbidden, so a soul may return into
6*
130 Sin and Salvation.
the state of willing subjection to the will of God, in
the act of obeying a particular command. Doubtless
the first act of real and sincere obedience to God is
the act of a renewed or converted soul, as certainly
as the first act of disobedience was the act of a fallen
soul. In the case of a child, there is a close connec-
tion between the authority of God and the authority
of its parents. God deals with little children mainly
through their parents. The duty of obedience to the
father and the mother is probably the first duty of
which most children become conscious. The com-
mand, " Honor thy father and thy mother," is not
only " the first commandment with promise," but
often, no doubt, the first commandment which a
child knows as a commandment of God, and which
he feels bound to obey. The direct struggle of the
little child's will may most probably be with the will
of the parent. There may be a struggle between a
parent and child, which is full of selfish passion and
obstinacy on both sides. The parent may be simply
determined to subdue the child — to make the child's
obstinacy yield to his own arbitrariness — the child's
passion to his stronger passion — the child's selfish
desire to be gratified or to have his own way, to the
parent's equally selfish desire to be gratified or to
have his own way. Here strength may overpower
and crush down weakness with no more moral or
spiritual effect than when a sturdy ram butts back-
Early Beginning of Salvation. 131
ward a too adventurous lamb. But when a thought-
ful, loving, godly parent, understands himself to be
entrusted with the care and nurture and training of a
child, by the God to whom both parent and child
owe their being, and are accountable, any opposition
of that child's will to the will of his parent is likely
to be a very different affair. Such a parent is not
engaged in a selfish struggle with a fellow-being
smaller and feebler than himself, determined to have
and hold the advantage which superior size and
strength give him. There is nothing of his own
pleasure which such a father would not willingly
forego ; there is nothing of her own comfort or en-
joyment which such a mother would not gladly give
up, for the real welfare of their child. But to give
up their control of the child, they know, would be
hurtful to the child, dangerous, not improbably ruin-
ous. Wise love forbids their doing or risking such
fearful harm to the child. Furthermore, they know
themselves to be invested, by God, with a sacred
authority over the child, to which, by them, He has
given immortal being. This authority is a sacred
trust from Him, which fidelity to Him requires them
to keep ; forbids them to surrender. When such
parents find their child disobedient to them, they
know that he is at the same time", and in that very
thing, disobedient to God also ; and it is obedience to
God which they are commissioned to require — sub-
132 Sin and Salvation.
jection to the authority of God reaching the child
through them. There is, there can be, no more
solemn issue made up between any two beings than
this — "Will you, a child, in the home of your par-
ents, obediently submit to those parents in their
exercise of the authority which God has given them?"
They dare not yield to you, because that would be
disobedience to God ; your yielding to them is obe-
dience to God. When a child sees this, and does
thus honestly and truly yield his will to the authority
of his parents, because he sees that their authority is
God's authority, and in submitting to them he sub-
mits to God — that may be the child's conversion, as
genuine and as thorough as that of the strong, proud,
self-willed man, in the Buffalo grove, with no human
authority between him and God, but facing God
alone, and consciously giving up his opposition, pour-
ing all his submissive soul out in the loud cry, " Thy
will be do?iey
Christian parents, in the thoughtful, faithful, lov-
ing, prayerful, firm exercise of parental authority, are
not merely educating their child for this world, but
are administering to that child the best adapted
means of grace. In bringing your child to willing
submission to you, you may, at the same time and
on the same issue, be bringing him into willing sub-
mission to God. Remember that by no power of
your own can you accomplish this. In praying God
Early Beginning of Salvation. 131
to bring your child, by the power of His Spirit, into
that subjection to you, which He has ordained, you
are indeed asking Him to convert that child, to make
it His child. If your child is disobedient and unsub-
missive to you, the worst of it is, that this proves
the child to be disobedient and unsubmissive to God.
Your prayer ought to be, that God will grant His
converting grace to the child, and that the child's
true conversion to God may be evidenced by kin
filial submission to you. Praying thus, watching
thereunto with believing expectation, and thought-
fully, watchfully, patiently using all scriptural means
to that end, ought not you to accept the 'child's real
and evident submission to your authority, as a good
evidence of his real conversion to God ? I do not
say that this is the only evidence, nor that this alone
is sufficient evidence ; but I can not help regarding it
as a good evidence, as even among the best of evi-
dences, and without this I know of no other that is
satisfactory.
Does some thoughtful parent ask : " How young
may my child have this experience ? Must there be a
definite and a decisive conflict between me and my
child, a struggle more or less vehement, and more or
less protracted, of the child's will against my parental
authority, ended by the child's submission ? And must
this be after the child is old enough to be taught, and
to know that I am ruling him for and under God, and
j 34 Sin and Salvation.
that his submission or resistance to me is submission
or resistance to God ? " I can not think so. I think
that there are facts within the observation of parents,
which show that this whole question of a child's duti-
ful subjection to its parents may be settled in the cra-
dle, or in the arms of the parent, during that early-
period of which there is no remembrance in later life,
so that the person will have no recollection of ever
having been in opposition to the will of his parents.
Not long ago I was conversing with a thoughtful
and prayerful man, concerning his own child, now a
mature woman, a decided and devoted Christian, the
wife of a Christian minister. He told me, with deep
feeling, of his daughter's infancy, and of the solicitude
with which he and his wife sought to fulfill their re-
sponsibility to God concerning the child He had given
them. I am not able to give his words, but what
he said was substantially this : u We had had the gen-
eral and rather vague impression that real governing
of our child must begin after she should be old
enough to know something of what it should mean,
when we should be able to make requirements of her
which she could know as such, and could understand
that she ought to submit to us and obey us. But she
did not wait for that time before she began to show
resistance to us. She would stiffen her little body
and all its members, as she lay in our arms, or would
violently struggle against that to which we thought
Early Beginning of Salvation. 135
best to hold her, screaming forth her infantile wrath
in inarticulate cries, while yet she could speak no
words, nor understand any words in which we could
reason with her." What was to be done ? Even the
physical well-being of the child, the entire condition
of her nervous system, was imperiled. More alarming
still was the prospect of the child coming to that de-
gree of intelligence for which the panfnts had pro-
posed to wait, with the habit already formed of putting
the whole of her energy into the effort to resist the
will of the only beings with whom she had had to do,
and the habit of succeeding in that resistance. They
were too wise to consent to this. The God whom
they trusted, did not fail to make them see that then
the rightful supremacy of the parental will must be
gently, lovingly, but firmly asserted. It cost the child
some bodily pain, and doubtless cost it a sharper pain
of soul ; it cost the parental hearts keen anguish ; but
the infantile will yielded ; the baby head bowed and
drooped in submission ; the whole muscular system
relaxed into pliant surrender; the child woke from
the ensuing sleep with loving smiles, ready for joyous
compliance with every parental wish ; and never again
did she offer resistance to the will of her parents. She
grew up, not only affectionate, amiable, obedient, to-
ward her parents, but also prayerful and devout to-
ward God. I suppose that neither she nor her parents
would undertake to decide when she became a child
136 Sin and Salvation.
of God, and her personal salvation began. As little
do I attempt to decide. But at no point does it seem
to me more probable than at that at which she yield-
ed to her parents. Her conscious recognition of God's
authority and submission to it came long afterward.
But who shall say, that it did not then come as a mat-
ter of course from the state of her will into which
God brought her, when He heard the prayer of her par-
ents — sweet, willing, affectionate subjection to them ?
And have not other parents called upon God and
obtained His saving help for their infants earlier still?
Are there not some, whose parents first took them to
their arms with believing prayerful expectation that,
from the very first, God would help them to control
them so firmly and so steadily and withal so gently as
even to forestall and prevent all uprising of will in op-
position ? Are there not parents who remember no
instance of struggling with an infantile will in re-
bellion, and whose children remember no time when
subjection to the will of parents was not to them a
thing of course, and a real comfort and rest ? Are
there not some such to whom the will of God, as soon
as it comes to be known, seems but to encompass the
will of their parents, and ready submission to it to be
but the natural fulfillment of what they have always
felt ? I am confident that this is so ; I know of nothing
in the Bible to forbid this belief, and there are credible
witnesses of such experience, extending back to a
Early Beginning of Salvation. 137
time beyond which their memory runneth not to the
contrary. There are Christians, of approved piety
and devout lives, who have no remembrance of any
even momentary struggle against the will of God,
however that will may have been revealed to them '
There are many such.
We saw that, in adult life, the transition from im-
penitence to piety is not always characterized by any
conscious struggle of opposition to God, ending in
peaceful submission to Him ; that sometimes there is
a sense of guilt and exposure, as in the case of the
jailer, relieved by learning Christ's power and willing-
ness to save, and by immediate acceptance of the sal-
vation offered ; and sometimes, in utmost tranquillity
of thoughtful attention, as in the case of the Eunuch
and of Lydia, the heart is opened to receive the word,
and does cordially trust in the Lord Jesus, and go on
rejoicing in the way of dutiful obedience to Him.
We saw that in all this variety of other exercises, and
features of experience, the one constant. and essential
thing is the hearty acceptance of Christ as He is of-
fered in the Gospel.
How early can this be experienced ? How young a
child can really trust in Jesus? Who will set a limit
of age, before which he will dare to say that a little
child can not come to Jesus ? A very little child can
know that he is naughty, and can feel unhappy on
that account ; can know that his naughtiness dis*
138 Sin and Salvation.
pleases God as truly as it displeases his father, and
grieves Jesus as much as it grieves his mother. A
very little child can know and believe that Jesus died
on account of his and others' naughtiness, and that
Jesus is able and willing to make a naughty little
child good and happy. So believing, such a child
may trust Jesus as really as he trusts the mother on
whose breast he lays his head in the dark chamber.
I have said that a very young child may do this.
I undertake not to say how young ; but my strong
belief is that it may be so young that no memory of
this will be retained in the future years.
Two notable instances of early piety are recorded
in the Bible — Samuel and Timothy. Paul says, in a
letter to Timothy himself, " From a child thou hast
known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make
thee wise unto salvation." He also expresses his
confidence that the same faith dwelt in Timothy
which dwelt first in his grandmother and mother.
Doubtless this might all be said truly of one who be-
came a Christian in later childhood or in youth, who
would distinctly remember the time when he became
a Christian, but not a time when his mother had not
already taught him much of the Scriptures. But at
least Paul makes no mention of such an experience,
and would not need to speak differently if Timothy
was a child of God from a time to which his own
memory did not extend.
Early Beginning of Salvation. 139
The story of young Samuel gives a similar impres-
sion of him. It is not necessary to believe that Han-
nah had any sorrowful remembrance of him as a
disobedient child to her, or that Samuel remembered
a time when he was not ready to say, " Speak, Lord,
for thy servant heareth," so soon as ever he should
know that the Lord spoke to him.
Every parent of children, however young, should
be encouraged to seek the present salvation of those
children — to ask of God that the saving work of
His grace may begin now in their souls, and to ex-
pect it.
We should also encourage all children to come to
Jesus. None are too young. If any child feels him-
self to be a sinner ; if any one feels afraid of God's
displeasure and of the wrath to come, there is no
need of staying in that unhappiness. The Lord Jesus
calls each little child to Him now. He is just as
ready to begin His work of salvation in the soul of
the youngest child as of the wisest man. Yes, some-
times these things are hidden from the wise and pru-
dent, and are revealed to babes.
CHAPTER V.
SALVATION AS HEALING.
IN our study of the Scripture doctrine of salvation
over against the Scripture doctrine of sin, we
have thus far attended only to the beginning of sal-
vation. We have seen that there is an act of salva-
tion, an act of God's free grace, wherein He at once
and sovereignly releases the sinner from the condem-
nation which his sin has incurred ; exempts him from
all liability to punishment ; rescues him from his ex-
posure to the wrath to come. We have seen that
there is a corresponding act of the sinner, without
which that gracious act of God does not take place.
This is the sinner's sincere acceptance of Jesus Christ
as He is offered in the Gospel. This voluntary act
of acceptance of Christ we saw to be the proper con-
summation of honest and hearty belief, constitut-
ing what has been expressively called "the faith
of a transaction." One who has thus heartily en-
trusted himself to the Lord Jesus has scriptural war-
rant for believing that God has done for him that
distinct, decisive, sovereign act of free grace. There
is a proper and scriptural sense in which such a par-
(140)
Salvation as Healing. 141
doned, justified man may be called a saved man. We
have seen that this beginning act of salvation, on the
human side, in the human experience, is attended
with a considerable variety of mental exercises, giving
us occasion to consider several different types of con-
version, or different styles of experience accompany-
ing the soul's transition . from impenitence to piety,
or becoming a Christian. We have also seen that
this experience may occur very early ; that the
Scriptures give us no right to say that any living
human being is too young to enjoy it. Little chil-
dren may be saved. Infants may be saved. " Babes
and sucklings" may be saved. Theirs is a real salva-
tion as much as was Saul's or the jailer's, as much as
is that of any mature sinner now whose sturdy will
surrenders to God, whose proud heart giving up its
vain endeavor " to establish its own righteousness,"
" submits itself unto the righteousness of God." The
infant's salvation is not only as real as that of the
adult, it is the same salvation, involving the same
essential elements, however it may differ in many
attending phenomena.
But all this pertains to that beginning act, which is
indeed scripturally called salvation, but which strictly
is but the beginning of salvation. It is a decisive be-
ginning, and to it a continuing and a consummation
are strongly assured. Yet it is only a beginning. A
man who has thus decisively begun his work and ex-
142 Sin and Salvation.
perience of salvation, may properly be called a saved
man, just as one taken from the water, breathless and
pulseless, is declared to be saved, when by the vigor-
ous application of appropriate means, his pulse and
breath begin again. He is properly said to be saved,
just as the physician properly declares that his patient
is saved when his professional scrutiny discovers that
the fever has passed its crisis. It is a salvation which
is real, but which is only begun — decisively begun,
yet, it may be, feebly.
It is also to be remembered that the beginning act
of salvation is, in its judicial aspect, complete and
finished. The sovereign act of God, resetting the
sinner from condemnation, is complete and decisive
at once. In that respect, the believing sinner, the
sinner accepting Christ, does not then merely begin
to be saved ; he is saved. His justification is an in
stantaneous, a conclusive, a finished act of God's free
grace.
Nevertheless, this divine act of the sinner's justifi-
cation, concurring with the sinner's believing act of ac-
ceptance of Christ, is the beginning of a process which
is quite as properly and intelligibly regarded as a pro-
cess of salvation. That process may profitably be
studied in several different aspects. I propose it now
in this aspect — Salvation as Healing.
This corresponds with one of the aspects in which
we viewed sin — Sin as Disease. In this aspect we
Salvation as Healing. 143
found that sin is frequently and forcibly presented in
Scripture. We shall find the same to be true of this
aspect of salvation.
The psalmist fervently prays, " Lord, be merciful
unto me : heal my soul ; for I have sinned against
thee." — Ps. xli. 4. God promises to heal the back-
sliding of his people. — Hos. xiv. 4 ; Jer. iii. 22. The
prophet prays, "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be
healed ; save me, and I shall be saved." — JER. xvii. 14.
The forgiveness of iniquities and the healing of dis-
eases are frequently associated in both the Old Testa-
ment and the New.
This is not merely that bodily disease and infirmity
and deformity are regarded as analogous to sinful
conditions of the soul, nor that they come in con-
sequence of sin. But, besides those facts, it is seen
that the soul is as really and essentially harmed by
sin as the body by disease. A sinful soul is a dam-
aged soul. , It is not merely liable to be hurt here-
after in consequence of its sin and as a punishment for
it. It is hurt already. Its faculties are disordered by
it, impaired, deteriorated. They are thrown out of
harmony, out of order, as really as are the forces in a
machine by some loosening of its screws or bands, or
some misshaping of its wheels or rods, or some loss
of strength or elasticity in its springs ; as really as are
the vital forces in our bodies, by the ulceration of any
organ, or by any excess or deficiency, or irregularity
144 StH and Salvation.
in the action of any organ, as when the brain is soft-
ened, or the ; bones are made brittle, or some muscu-
lar tissue is changed into bone, or the heart beats too
swiftly or too slowly, too strongly or too feebly. We
have not rightly understood sin, if we have considered
it only as exposing us to a death to be inflicted
judicially, in fulfillment of a sentence pronounced
against us. It does expose us to this, and from
this we are at once and completely saved by God's
gracious act of justification immediately on our
acceptance of Christ. But there is a death already
• experienced, from which also we need to be saved,
and our salvation from which is not thus instantly
completed. The apostle Paul declares that "to.be
carnally minded is death " (Rom. viii. 6), and writing
to the Ephesians (ii. i), he speaks of them as having
previously been " dead in trespasses and sins," and
having then been made alive by the Spirit of God.
Let us not press these expressions too far, nor
enter into any minute questions of interpretation
which are unnecessary for our present purpose. These
are specimens of Paul's writing, the ordinary tone of
which shows that Paul regarded all sinful souls, not
merely as liable to be put to death by and by, like a
criminal under sentence awaiting his execution, but
as in a process of death already, like a man subject
to a disease which is steadily eating its way to the
vital center. This is not only Paul's view, but the
Salvation as Healing. 145
view which pervades the whole Bible. Call this evil
condition of the soul death, or call it disease ; you
probably have in your own mind, and convey to
other minds, the same impression. Disease is death
in process. Death is disease consummated. To be
healed is to be delivered from death ; is to be made
truly alive.
Let us understand then that the Lord Jesus, when
He says, " Thy sins be forgiven thee," says also,
" Arise and walk." He comes to us, and speaks to
us, and sits down and talks with us, not merely as a
messenger sent from the court of the divine King, of-
fering us pardon and amnesty for offences, and put-
ting into our hands documents, sealed with blood,
which we may by and by present at the judgment-
seat, to secure us from sentence being pronounced
against us there ; but also as a skillful physician,
gently and faithfully inquiring into the condition of
our enfeebled, distorted, diseased souls, and offering
us help, and relief, and healing. He asks us to be-
lieve in Him, in this character, as well as in the other.
He asks us to trust Him for healing as much as for
forgiveness. He asks us not only to take the sealed
documents of pardon from His hand with no misgiv-
ing doubt of their validity, but also to let Him lay
His hands on us, that divine virtue may come forth
from Him, to make us whole of whatsoever disease
we have ; whatsoever form or type of the disease of
7
146 Sin and Salvation.
sin ; whether its blindness, its benumbing paralysis, of
its polluting and consuming leprosy.
In more literal, though I can scarcely think more
intelligible phrase, we are to trust the Lord Jesus, not
only to save us from the punishment which should be
judicially inflicted for sin, but to deliver us from the
sin itself which deserves such infliction. This de-
liverance is a process, not an instantaneous act. We
are saved from condemnation instantly, and once for
all, as a man's life is saved instantly when a messenger
comes from the capital with the pardon signed and
sealed by the governor, just when the sheriff was lead-
ing him out from the cell, to set him under the gal-
lows.
Our salvation from the wrath to come, our rescue
from condemnation, is thus sudden, and instantane-
ous, and complete. But not so is our soul's healing,
our cure from sin. Sin in us, an evil possession, de-
ranging, impairing, enfeebling, perverting the whole
structure of our spiritual being, is not instantly and
once for all cast out. Our being made whole is not
an act, but a process. It is a work of God's free
grace, on which He spends time, and employs means
and agencies, especially our own agency, bidding us
" work out our own salvation," cautioning us against
heedlessness and presumptuous confidence, warning
us of danger, bidding us do this work " with fear and
trembling," yet withal breathing into us strength and
Salvation as Healing. 147
courage by the assurance that God himself " worketh
in us to will and to do of His good pleasure."
The analogy between the ordinary process of re-
covery of our bodies from sickness, and the recovery
of our souls from the disease of sin, is as scriptural as
it is obvious. In saying this, we do not overlook the
fact that Jesus did in many instances, by His word or
touch, suddenly and instantaneously cure inveterate
diseases of long standing — blindness from birth, in-
firmity which had been borne " thirty and eight years."
We do not forget that in our cure from sin, we de-
pend upon the divine power of this same mighty one.
We do not deny that instant and complete deliver-
ance of a soul from all indwelling sin, from all dispo-
sition, tendency, liability to sin, is possible, in some
proper and scriptural sense. But, as a matter of fact,
the Scriptures give us no examples of such deliver-
xnce ; they give us many examples of the saving proc-
ess already affirmed ; and the general tone and tenor
of Scripture instructions to believers in Christ [L e. y
to pardoned men and women), evidently contemplate
such a process, long and patiently carried forward,
with obedient and persevering endeavor, sustained by
continuous and persistent trust in Christ's gracious
help, or in the helpful indwelling and inworking of the
Holy Spirit ; for between these two there is no prac-
tical or discernible distinction. — See JOHN xiv. 15-23.
In our study of sin as disease, we considered it with
148 Sin and Salvation.
reference to (1) our natural desires, (2) our wills, and
(3) our consciejices.
Let us inquire now how the Lord Jesus saves us in
these same respects.
1. As to our natural desires. When our eyes are
opened to see ourselves as we are, we find that our nat-
ural desires have somehow fallen into an unnatural con-
dition. What man or woman of us all has not some
desires that are unnaturally strong, and some that are
unnaturally weak ? Who of us do not, in the vehe-
mence of desires toward that in which we ought not
to indulge, or the languor of desires toward that
which we ought to pursue, find ourselves convicted of
sin ? Who of us do not right here, find and feel sad
evidence that sin is in us as disease, marring, enfee-
bling, corrupting us ? Wherein more evidently than
in this, do we need the help of the Great Physician ?
No more signal examples of this can be found than
in bodily appetites. We sometimes hear men tes-
tify that, in simple answer to prayer, they suddenly
find themselves released from an appetite for intoxi-
cating drink, whereby they had long been enslaved.
That such help is sometimes given, is not to be
doubted consistently with the respect due to these
honest men's testimony, nor with proper regard for
the promises of Christ recorded in Scripture. How
far this answer to prayer involves a direct and super-
natural operation upon these men's minds, and how
Salvation as Healing. 149
far it is by means of natural physiological and mental
forces, it is not necessary now to decide, nor do I
think that we can yet decide. Neither should we let
our minds be so much engaged with God's answer to
this prayer in this way, or on this side of these men's
experience, as to assume that there is no answer in
any other way, or on another side of the experience.
Suddenly increased strength of purpose to resist ap-
petite might be as great a blessing and as kind an an-
swer to prayer, as the sudden taking away of appetite ;
and no less would be a victory over appetite slowly
and laboriously gained by means of patient effort,
with studious use of physical -and mental means, and
even after many mortifying failures and humiliations.
It behooves any one who is thus enslaved, to pray
with full confidence in Christ's power, and full . sub-
mission to whatever methods he may choose to em-
ploy.
There are other appetites as difficult to subdue, and
which, uncontrolled, work as fearful ruin and degrada-
tion. There is no one who comes to Christ for par-
don, and receiving it, becomes His disciple, who does
not then need His gracious help, to deal with his own
perverse desires, to restrain them, to regulate them —
to strengthen perhaps and invigorate some of them.
2. There is no reason to doubt the Lord's ability
and willingness to restore and invigorate and enthrone
over all natural desires, that sublime power of will
150 Sin and Salvation.
which belongs to our human nature, and which is so
debased and enfeebled or perverted by sin. There are
appropriate means to be studied and applied for the
remedy of this deep disease, and the rectifying of this
perverseness. But there is no good hope of their suc-
cessful application, unless they are accompanied with
a direct divine influence. The full and unreserved
surrender of our wills to God will not impair nor de-
bilitate them : it will put us into the best possible
condition to receive from Him the salutary influence
needed, to restore them to full health and vigor, and
to enthrone them in their proper dominion over all
our desires and impulses.
3. No less do we need Christ's healing of our con-
sciences. That sad loss of sensibility, which, when
carried to the extreme, the Scripture calls having
them " seared as with a hot iron," in greater or less
degree has befallen the consciences of us all. When
we are saved from condemnation ; when we are shel-
tered from the wrath to come ; when we are at peace
with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ ; then surely
we are in a far better situation than before to receive
influences favorable to the health of our consciences.
It is right to pray that the Lord Jesus will help us in
this ; that He will deliver us from callous numbness
of conscience on the one hand, and from morbid sen-
sitiveness on the other ; and from stings and tortures
and worries of a bewildered and darkened conscience,
Salvation as Healing, 151
We are not entitled to expect His answer to this
prayer without our faithful use of the means of grace.
The diligent study of the Bible ; faithful attendance
upon the ordinances of the Gospel ; the wholesome
influence of Christian companionship and association ;
constant, thoughtful endeavors to do good — all these
are proper means of restoring health to enfeebled or
disordered consciences. We are to use these means,
but to remember always, that only the present help
of God, the direct influence of His Spirit, will make
them effectual, and nothing else will keep us to the
faithful use of them.
This consideration of sin as disease, and, corre-
spondingly, of salvation as healing, condemns the
harsh judgment which many pass upon faulty Chris-
tians. There are not a few who virtually pronounce
all professors of religion who have great faults hypo-
crites ; or else they infer that the religion whose pro-
fessors may have great faults is a delusion. No doubt
our religion is to cure our faults ; it is to heal our dis-
eased, sin-sick souls. But it takes time to do it. Our
Physician is very patient with us. We try His pa-
tience sadly, by not taking His medicines better nor
practicing the means of improvement which He pre-
scribes for us more faithfully, and by indulging our-
selves in many things which JJe has told us are not
good for us. Doubtless we often dishonor Him, and
harm ourselves, and hinder others from trusting Him,
152 Sin and Salvation.
This is too bad. But, after all, any candid person may
see that exactly in proportion to any diseased soul's
real trust in Jesus, shown by faithful compliance with
His directions and faithful use of His appointed
means, that soul's spiritual health is restored. There
is no room to doubt this. A physician's skill is
not shown directly by the health of those who con-
sult him ; but by the degree of improvement which
results from that consultation. This may have been
greater in one who is yet very ill, than in one who is
now fully restored.
This view encourages those who are conscious of
great faults, but who cleave to Christ in affection-
ate trust. He came " not to call the righteous, but
sinners to repentance." " They that be whole need
not the physician, but they that are sick." Some
of the disciples who followed Him in Galilee and
Judea had great faults, even when they had been His
disciples a long time ; but He never lost patience
with them. He cast off only the one who was utterly
insincere. Cling to Him in affectionate trust, how-
ever faulty you may be, and He will cling to you
with patient love, and shed upon you gracious influ-
ence, until He can present you faultless before His
Father.
There is no greater mistake than trying to get rid
of faults before coming to Christ, or delaying to come
to Him until we shall be rid of them.
Salvation as Healing, 153
Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot —
O Lamb of God, I come.
Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind,
Sight, riches, healing of the mind, —
Yea, all I need in Thee to find—
O Lamb of God, I come."
7*
CHAPTER VI.
SALVATION A RETURN TO GOD.
IN that wonderful word-picture which Luke has
given us from the Lord Jesus, the Parable of the
Prodigal Son, the situation and condition of the wan-
derer "when he had spent all," is powerfully depicted.
Whose mind, attending to that parable, does not see
the unhappy youth in that "far country" out in the
field alone, among the swine he is tending, penniless,
hungry, friendless, homesick ? Whose heart does not
feel that there is infinite pathos in that sight ? If
we were standing together before a painting of that
scene — any dozen of us — and if each of us was asked
to point out the feature which impressed him most
strongly, it is not likely that we should all point to
the same feature. This might depend upon the angle
from which each took his view, or upon the special
susceptibility of each, or upon some recent or some
long past experience with which there would be some
vivid association. And yet it might be, that if any
one in such a group should mention the particular
point upon which his eye fastened, or the thought to
which the picture specially called his mind, all might
(i54)
Salvation a Return to God. 155
find increased pleasure in looking together upon that
point, and engaging their minds together upon that
thought with conscious sympathy.
Thinking their thoughts aloud — such a group — one
might say, " How hungry he looks ! See his hollow
cheeks and sunken eyes." Another might say, " What
an expression of shame the artist has put into his
face ! See him gaze, with such disgust, at the un-
clean animals he is obliged to feed, Jew that he is,
taught from childhood to loathe them ! He must be
bitterly remembering the folly which has brought him
to such degradation." Some one else says, " He has
only himself to blame. He is too intelligent not to
know it. He is taking the blame to himself. That
look on his face is, to my eye, the look of remorse.
It says, l I have smned.'" And I can easily fancy
some affectionate, motherly woman listening silently
to all these remarks, and when all are waiting to know
what she thinks, turning away from the picture, and
saying, as she catches their inquiring glance, " He's
just homesick."
If the artist himself were within hearing, perhaps
he would say, that they were all right ; that every one
of the features named belongs to the picture, and every
one of those thoughts enters into the complex con-
ception. Yet I should not be surprised to see a look
of the greatest satisfaction spread over his face, at
that last suggestion — "He is homesick." Certainly
156 Sin and Salvation.
every pang of the hunger that has so pinched that
cheek and wasted the muscles that used to brace that
frame, reminds him of the father's house, in which
even the servants "have bread enough and to spare."
Every remorseful thought of the riotous scenes in
which he has " wasted his substance," recalls the ven-
erable figure and grave face of his father, as he took
from his hand the money which should be his por-
tion of the inheritance. Every glance at the coarse
beasts before him, champing and trampling the pods
which he has thrown out to them, must remind him
of the field in which his elder brother is working, or
overseeing the hired laborers, and from which at
eventide he will walk home, past fruitful olive -or-
chards, and along trellises laden with purpling clus-
ters, soothed from his weariness by the gentle lowing
of kine, and the contented bleating of clean flocks,
as he goes to his wholesome supper, and his clean
bed, and his fathers benediction.
All this poverty, all this hunger, all this shame, all
this guilty degradation and wretchedness have re-
sulted from leaving that father, coming away from
that home.
As these thoughts work on his mind ; as this sor-
row " worketh repentance " ; as the distress of mind
at length produces a change of mind ;* see the form
* 2 Cor. vii. 10.
Salvation a Return to God. 157
which his resolution naturally and fitly takes. " 1
will arise, and go to my father." As all the misery
and guilt have come by departing from his father, the
only way out of them is by a return to his father.
We need not try to fancy him utterly forgetful of
his own personal needs and cravings, and thinking
only of his father. We need not doubt that he
hopes to be fed by his father's bounty, even if he
does doubt whether he can ever again sit at his fa-
ther's table. He can not expect to remain hungry or
in rags, either in or near his father's house. We can
scarcely doubt that he hopes for the comfort and rest
of forgiving words spoken by his father's voice. But
do not all our hearts tell us, that his deepest and
strongest feeling is, the desire to be with his father ?
His heart can not rest until neither the distance of a
far country, nor the distance of unforgiven undutiful-
ness any longer separates them.
This state of sin and misery in which we are — all
mankind — the worst of it is its separating us from
God. The only real and effectual salvation from it is
a return to God.
This hiding and shrinking away of souls from " the
Father of spirits," like Adam and Eve hiding them-
selves among the trees of the garden (Gen. iii. 8),
this insane disposition to say unto God, " Depart
from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy
158 Sin and Salvation.
ways," of which Job spoke (Job xxi. 14); this separa*
tion from God and hiding His face from us which
Isaiah ascribes to sin (Isa. lix. 2) ; this being " with-
out God in the world/' of which Paul wrote (Eph. ii.
12); it is from these that we need to be recovered.
Sin is all these. Sinners are, comprehensively, wan-
derers from God. Return to Him is salvation. Re-
turning to God, we are saved. Let us try to under-
stand this returning to God, this coming home to our
heavenly Father, from whom all our sin is a foolish
and wicked wandering.
1. By what way can we come to Him ? The Lord
Jesus answers this question, in words which His be-
loved John reports to us : " No man cometh unto the
Father but by me I am the way." — JOHN xiv.
6. " One mediator between God and man, the man
Christ Jesus." — 1 TlM. ii. 5. "When we were ene-
mies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his
Son." — ROM. v. 10. " And all things are of God, who
hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ." — 2
COR. v. 18. "Whom God hath set forth, a propitia-
tion through faith in his blood, to declare his right-
eousness for the remission of sins that are past,
through the forbearance of God ; to declare at this
time his righteousness ; that he might be just, and
the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus." — Rom.
iii. 25, 26. " For God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
Salvation a Return to God. 159
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
— JOHN iii. 16. The atoning work of Christ, His suf-
fering and death on the cross, was necessary, in order
that God might consent to let us come back to Him.
He could not take us back ; could not let us come
home ; could not restore us to the position and con-
dition of children, happy in His favor, without that
atonement.
Why not ? Is God revengeful ? Doth He keep His
anger forever ? Is He implacable ? Must He, like
some cruel tyrant, be bought off from wreaking His
vengeance on guilty men by the opportunity to wreak
it on one so strong to endure it, so exalted in nature
and position, and so innocent as Jesus ? So revolt-
ingly is the doctrine of atonement represented by
some who reject it. So understood, I do not wonder
at the rejection of it. If any honestly so understand
it, I do not blame them for rejecting it. To be recon-
ciled to such a God would not seem to me to be sal-
vation. There is no such God in heaven. There is
no such doctrine in the Bible. There is no such per-
version of the Bible doctrine in any evangelical creed,
nor in any evangelical pulpit. It is only so caricatured
in unevangelical pulpits, and in a very pretentious
but very shallow sort of literature. All who read the
Bible know that the^od whom it reveals "hath no
pleasure in the death of the wicked." He swears by
Himself that He hath not, since He can swear by no
160 Sin and Salvation,
greater. "As I live, saith the Lord God" (Ez. xxxiii
1 1). He gave His only begotten Son, that Son freely
consenting and giving Himself, because He "so loved
the world." In nothing is the eternal agreement and
union of the Son and the Father more evident than
in this. The Father gave the Son, and the Son
" through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without
spot to God."* The whole Godhead in His entire
personality and being, in harmony of all His infinite
perfections, in the exercise of all His wisdom and
power and grace, labored to save guilty man. He
was ready to sacrifice everything but His own charac-
ter for our sake. The only difficulty was how to be
just and justify us ; how to have it right to pardon
us ; how to let us come back home into His favor
without His ceasing to be the just, the holy, the good
God, whose favor is life to holy creatures. Will you
call it stern or harsh or revengeful that He would not
try to save us on any other terms than such as would
thus secure His own character? What if He were ca-
pable of consenting to the sacrifice of His own char-
acter to save us — could He save us thus ? Would it
be salvation to be received into the favor of a God,
who in the very act of so receiving us, would cease to
be worthy of our reverence or our trust ? Shall the
prodigal wish to come home, ^nd be received by his
* Heb. ix. 14.
Salvation a Return to God. 161
father on terms which will degrade the father to
baseness like that from which he himself needs to be
reclaimed, and make that home fit only for a sty for
the unclean beasts he has been tending ?
There are no words lawful to be written, there are
no figures fit to be presented which can at all ade-
quately represent the unreasonableness of the demand
that God should clear the guilty from deserved con-
demnation, without an adequate substitute for the
penalty of His law, without a satisfaction to His own
eternal justice.
While His Word has preserved to us the full assur-
ance of His holiness and His love, it has made it
equally plain that, in His estimation, the sacrifice of
His Son freely offering Himself does remove all that
difficulty ; does make it right for Him to offer us
pardon ; does enable Him to justify all who believe
in Jesus, and still be just; does enable Him to receive
home all guilty wanderers who will come back in this
way, and take us into His favor equally with the un-
fallen seraphs, without ceasing to be worthy of their
song, " Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts."
This, then, is the way in which we can return to
God — can go home to our Father's house. Christ is
the way.
2. How are we to go in this way ? The answer to
this question is " the old, old story." It is the old,
apostolic answer to the old anxious question, " What
1 62 Sin and Salvation,
must I do to be saved?" "Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ." Trust the Lord Jesus ; trust your
soul to Him, your all, your eternity. Close your long
thinking about Him by thankfully accepting Him.
Bring your long consultation with Him to its fitting
conclusion by distinctly committing yourself to Him.
Consummate the belief of your understanding by issu-
ing it into " the faith of a transaction."
" Having, therefore, brethren, boldness to enter
into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new
and living way which he hath consecrated for us
through the vail, that is to say, his flesh ; and hav-
ing a high-priest over the house of God ; let us draw
near, with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, hav-
ing our heart sprinkled from an evil conscience, and
our bodies washed with pure water." — Heb. x. 19-22.
Thus, through this " new and living way," sim-
ply by trusting ourselves to the Lord Jesus for His
expiation of our guilt and reconciling to us God,
do we come back to God from our wretched and
guilty wandering.
" There is therefore now no condemnation to them
who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit." — ROM. viii. 1. "Now therefore
ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-
citizens with the saints, and of the household of God."
— Eph. ii. 19. You have come home ; and are met
with a father's affectionate and hearty welcome
Salvation a Return to God. 163
Here y<3u are. The swine, and the husks, and the
dismal field are far away ; as far the wine, and the
dance, and the guilty revelry wherewith you were
impoverished and degraded. You are at the home
door ; and the Father's arms are about you ; and
you hear Him order the fatted calf killed ; and
harps, and viols, and glad voices are filling all the
house with music.
3. Are you then saved? Is your salvation finished?
Yes and No. You are saved from condemnation.
You are recovered from that sad and guilty estrange-
ment. You are no more a willful wanderer from your
Father's house. You are restored. You are recon-
ciled. You are generously welcomed. You are a
child of God, having received Christ, and believed
on His name.* " He that believeth on Him is not
condemned." — JOHN iii. 18. You are now a child of
God, acknowledged and loved as such. But you are
a faulty child. You are saved from condemnation ;
but you have only begun to be saved from sin. You
are rescued from exposure to the wrath to come ; but
you are not cured of the disease of sin. You are con-
valescent ; but you are not yet well. You have come
home from the far country. You are within the Father's
house. But are you yet as near the good Father as
you wish to be ? Is there not yet much which you
John i. 12.
164 Sin and Salvation.
feel to be separating between you and Him, prevent-
ing that near access which you long for, and, if not
hiding His face from you, at least obscuring your
view of it ? Verily your salvation is a prosperously
begun work. It is a process which is to be carried
forward. I have a friend of fourscore and twelve
years ; I have talked with him often and have always
found him making a modest estimate of his own life
and attainments as a Christian, and avowing a sim-
ple trust in our Redeemer. He now knows that the
time can not be far distant when (if ever) he shall be
" with the Lord." What now is his ground of hope
that he shall be ready for that ? He makes no men-
tion of his services or attainments. He says with
exceeding simplicity that he feels assured of God's
ability to finish what He has begun. It is still a life
of trust — as truly so now, so near its end, as in all its
earlier stages. Even so saith the Scripture. " For
we are made partakers of Christ if we hold the begin-
ning of our confidence steadfast unto the end." —
HEB. iii. 14.
" The beginning of our confidence." There must be
the same reliance upon Christ all the way that there was
at the beginning. There must be constant adherence to
Him, with the same compliant and obedient trust,
with which we- first committed ourselves to Him. In
Him only, by His grace strengthening us, can we suc-
cessfully subdue our desires, and bring every part of
Salvation a Return to God. 165
ourselves into obedient subjection to the will of God.
By Him only can our sin-diseased natures be restored
to spiritual health. In whatever aspect we view it,
and by whatever types we represent it, in Christ is all
our salvation and all our hope.
We are viewing it now, in the aspect of return to
God. As the beginning of our salvation is a decisive
turning from the world, and coming to God, by Christ,
the living way, so the process of salvation is drawing
nearer to God — ever nearer and nearer, into closer and
closer fellowship.
Dependent as we are upon Christ for this, it is not
the same kind of dependence as was that for expia-
tion of our guilt. In that there was nothing for us
to do, "Jesus paid it all." But in this, while "with-
out Him we can do nothing," we "can do all things
through Christ who strengthened " us.
We are to "work out our own salvation, with fear
and trembling, for it is God who worketh in us to will
and to do of his good pleasure." — PHIL. ii. 12, 13. It
is a work in which all our thoughtfulness and all our
energy are to be engaged, yet always with the humble
recollection that only Christ's ever-present help can
give us success.
Much effort is unsuccessful, much labor lost by
failing to consider our work of sanctification in this
aspect, as a coming nearer to God. This " work of
God's free grace " within us, quickens, and stirs, and
1 66 Sin and Salvation.
guides all the powers of our being to the continual
effort after nearer access to Him, closer fellowship
with Him. To draw nearer unto God ; to become
like Him ; to become free from whatever would sepa-
rate between us and Him ; to become such in charac-
ter and spirit that we shall be* in sympathy with Him ;
shall have the same likes and dislikes with Him,
hating only what He hates, and loving all that He
loves ; — to " walk with God," as two can only walk to-
gether who " are agreed " — this is salvation.
CHAPTER VII.
I
SALVATION A RECOVERY FROM DELUSION.
IN our study of sin, we found it important to con*
sider the illusions which belong to it, the delu-
siveness wherewith, at the beginning in Eden, and all
the way down the successive ages and generations, its
victims have been beguiled. We saw that sin is delu-
sive, and sinners are deluded, especially in two ways,
(i) as to the results of sin, (2) as to its character.
Men sin under the expectation of pleasant results
which are never realized, and under a delusion which
blinds them to its exceeding guiltiness.
A true salvation must include deliverance from
these illusions. Such deliverance is made very prom-
inent among the various aspects of salvation set forth
in the Bible.
The Psalmist prayed, " Open thou mine eyes, that
I may behold wondrous things out of thy law." A
fuller and clearer revelation was not what he so much
felt the need of, as a better capacity to use and enjoy
the revelation already given. Not more light, but
better eyes, opened eyes, eyes cured of their amauro-
sis, their insensibility to light, or whatever morbid ob-
(167)
1 68 Sin and Salvation,
struction there might be to the entrance of light into
them. Remove the cataract. Quicken the torpid
nerve. Give me clear, accurate, healthy eyesight.
Isaiah, in his glorious vision of the world's popula-
tion coming to God, flocking to Mt. Zion, hears them
calling, " O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk
in the light of the Lord." From the darkness of pa-
ganism, the saved nations are to come into the light
that shines forth " out of Zion, the perfection of
beauty." The Psalmist reverently and thankfully
declares to Jehovah his own expectation to see light
in His light, that light whereof the fountain is with
Him. — Ps. xxxvi. 9.
In the New Testament announcements of the Son
of God incarnate, come into the world to accomplish
the foretold salvation, we read, " In him was life ; and
the life was the light of men." This seems to inti-
mate that His coming among men is not so much to
increase the outward illumination falling upon them
as the inward power to see by means of the illumina-
tion. The life is the light. Again, Jesus himself is re-
ported by John as declaring himself " the light of the
world," and promising that those who follow Him
shall have " the light of life."
The Apostle John, in his first Epistle (i. 5-7),
shows his own mind full of this conception of salvation.
It is ever, with Him, walking in the light, and being
fully delivered from darkness.
Salvation a Recovery from Delusion. 169
In that charming parable, in which the Lord so ad-
mirably illustrated the sinner's coming home to God,
He does not iail to recognize the prodigal's escape
from the delusion which had impoverished and de-
graded him, as the very first stage of his recovery.
" He came to himself." He gave rational considera-
tion to his forlorn and miserable situation, in contrast
with what, but for his own madness, he might be en-
joying in his father's house. This rational considera-
tion soon led to the rational resolve — " I will arise and
go to my father."
The phrase " came to himself " is an expressive one.
It is literally rendered from the Greek, as written by
Luke. The figure has such a natural significance as
needs little exposition. To be beside one's self, to be
out of one's mind, or out of one's head, and, on the
other hand, to be restored to one's mind, or to come
to himself, are expressions which everybody under-
stands. But does everybody understand and consider
that for a sinner to become a Christian is, first of all,
to become rational, to come to himself?
"Come now, and let us reason together, saith JE-
HOVAH." — ISA. i. 18.
" I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto
thy testimonies," said the Psalmist. — Ps. cxix. 59.
What say you to this proposition: "A reasonable
view of ourselves and of Christ, simply a?id reasonably
acted upon, is Salvation ? Does any one- dispute
3
170 Sin and Salvation.
this proposition? Does any one doubt or ques.
tion it ?
Let us look into it more particularly. Let us take
it apart, and look carefully at its several members.
A reasonable view of ourselves — how shall we get
it? Being sinners, we have already seen that it is
natural for us to take an unreasonable view of our-
selves, a partial and prejudiced view, prejudiced in
our own favor, a view of ourselves more flattering
than the truth would justify. We shall all agree that
God, our maker and judge, sees us as we are ; knows
us perfectly; judges us infallibly. The view which
He takes of us must be a reasonable view, a view to
which no just objection can be made. Do not we all
assent to this? Do not we all feel this? If God
would now speak to us from the heaven, if He would
" call the earth from the rising of the sun unto the
going down thereof," announcing Himself as about to
declare His divine judgment of us, His infallible view
of our state and character, would not we all listen,
ready to accept that solemn and authoritative decla-
ration? But could God utter His judgment of us
more clearly than He has long ago caused it to be
written in His Word ?
" The Lord looked down from heaven, upon the
children of men, to see if there were any that did un-
derstand and seek God. They are all gone aside,
they are together become filthy ; none that doeth
Salvation a Recovery front Delusion. 171
good, no, not one." — Ps. xiv. 2, 3. Is there one of
us who will take issue with God, frankly and squarely,
and refuse to be thus estimated? Is there one of us
who will deny that God's view, so clearly stated in
His Word, is the reasonable view of us, the view
which, whenever we come to ourselves, we must take
of ourselves? Do not we all admit that any more
flattering or less humbling view of ourselves, which
we are inclined to take, is a false view, a delusion to
which our sinfulness has exposed us? Then let us
take God's view ; let us accept it, and submit to it.
Let us give up our own view, the flattering view of
ourselves to which our selfish pride clings so fondly,
and confess that we have all " gone aside " ; have all
gone astray like lost sheep ; have all " sinned and
come short of the glory of God." If we do not feel
as deeply as we see to be proper, the guilt and the
shame of this, still let us frankly confess the fact,
submitting to God's judgment. In that proper atti-
tude of submission, perhaps He will shed upon us
the grace whereby our eyes may be opened, and we
be enabled to see wondrous things out of His law.
We have read of a poor servant girl, illiterate and
ignorant, whom a minister advised to offer to God,
day by day, this simple prayer : " Lord, show me my-
self." Obeying the wise direction, the poor child daily
knelt alone, before Him who seeth in secret, and thus
honestly prayed. She really and sincerely wished to
172 Sin and Salvation.
know how wicked, how guilty, how vile she was, in
the sight of the holy One. She really and truly
wished to know what God thought of her, and was
willing to bear the necessary pain and shame of
thinking just so of herself. The result soon was a
very deep conviction of sin, a very humble sense of
her guilt and need. She felt herself to be " wretched,
and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." So
any one is likely soon to feel, who thus honestly
places himself before the holy God, and asks to be
made to see himself in His light ; yet let it be care-
fully noted, the vivid painfulness of this conviction
is not the measure of its value, but the soul's willing-
ness to submit to God's estimate and decision. He
has come to himself, who sees that not his own esti-
mate of himself, but God's estimate of him is reliable,
and who accordingly takes God's estimate, and hum-
bles himself submissively under it.
What now is a reasonable view of Christ ? Surely we
must be guided to a right answer to this question, in the
same way. What think we of Christ, ought to be deter-
mined by what God says of Christ ; what Christ says
of himself. That there is no difficulty in understand-
ing all this, as it is written in holy Scripture, I shall
not pretend. I can not deny that there is difficulty in
making out and defining the exact meaning of some
of those great things which are written of the Christ.
I shall not claim that all honest disciples do under-
Salvation a Recovery from Delusion. 173
stand all those divine sayings rightly, or do all under-
stand them alike. Nicodemus did not understand all
that Christ said to him, a teacher of Israel " though
he was. Peter and John did not understand all that
He spoke to them while He was with them, and it
put Thomas's mind to a painful strain even to believe
all that his dear Lord said — so hard was it for him to
believe what he could not understand — to accept,
even from his Lord, simple affirmation without ex-
planation. But I think that Thomas at last con-
cluded that it was more reasonable for him to take
Christ's word than to depend on his own reasonings.
Christ was gently teaching him that lesson in that
conversation recorded by John, when Jesus had told
the disciples that He was going away from them, away
from the world, unto the Father. Thomas was anxious
to be told the way to that house of " many mansions,"
and Jesus replied to him : " I am the way." — JOHN xiv.
6. Not then at once did Thomas learn that lesson of
implicit trust. But when to the risen Jesus showing
him the wounds in His hands and side Thomas ex-
claimed, " My Lord, and my God," then, I think,
Thomas had pretty thoroughly learned that lesson.
It is time that we had learned it. Just now I am
trying to show what is a reasonable view of Christ,
and I insist that such a view may and does include
some things which we must believe to be true, which
yet we can not explain nor understand. The fact of
174 Sin and Salvation.
His resurrection, His being visibly and tangibly alive
again, after He had been dead, was so clearly demon-
strated to Thomas, that he could no longer refuse to
believe it, although it could not be explained. So
also was it reasonable for Thomas fully to trust Jesus,
as to the way to the Father's house, although Jesus
did not try to explain it to him. He was just to be-
lieve that in due time Jesus would bring him thither.
He was the way. Very much like that, altogether
like that, is the reasonable view for us to take of
Christ. We are not to expect to understand Him, to
be able to explain, nor to have satisfactorily explained
to us, all the high truths concerning His person, or
concerning His work. But, without that, and far
short of that, we can know that His power is ample
for the task He has undertaken ; that He is accepted
and acknowledged by the Father as having made a
sufficient satisfaction to His justice, for our sins, and
as "able to save them to the uttermost who come
unto God by Him." This I affirm to be a reasonable
view of Christ. It is repeatedly, variously, continual-
ly presented, and insisted upon in the New Testa-
ment, and is there presented as the fulfillment of all
the teachings concerning salvation in all the Old Tes-
tament Scriptures, " Christ is the end of the Law for
righteousness to every one that believeth." — ROM. x.
4. He is " the lamb of God, bearing the sin of the
world." — John i. 29. He "of God is made unto us
Salvation a Recovery from Delusion. 175
wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and re-
demption." — 1 COR. i. 30. In short, nothing could be
made plainer than it is made plain in Scripture, that
Jesus Christ is our all-sufficient Savior; that what-
ever was necessary to be suffered on account of our
sins, He has freely suffered, " long, long ago," and
" once for all " ; that whatever needs to be done to
assure our justification at the bar of God, He is able
to do, and has undertaken to do ; that He also under-
takes to supply all the gracious help we need for the
Christian life on the earth, and for our safe and sure
entrance into heaven, when our life on earth is ended.
It is reasonable to regard Him as competent for all
that He undertakes, reliable for all that he promises.
Now with this reasonable view of ourselves, which
the word of God so irresistibly gives us, as simply
lost sinners, guilty, condemned, helpless, and with
this reasonable view of Christ, as an all-sufficient
Savior, ready and willing to undertake for us all that
we need — what is the only reasonable action ?
Does not the actual acceptance of Christ, actual
commitment of ourselves to Him, follow as a matter
of course ? We should certainly think so, in any sec-
ular matter. To see a great need, and at the same
time to see at hand an ample and available supply of
that need, and not promptly avail ourselves of it, is
certainly the height of unreasonableness. We can
not account for men acting thus, unless they are un-
der the influence of some delusion.
176 Sin and Salvation.
In nothing is the deceitfulness of sin more painfully
shown than exactly in this failure of impenitent minds
to act reasonably in view of the Gospel, in respect to
Christ's offer to be their Savior. In nothing, I think,
are thoughtful, impenitent persons more a puzzle to
themselves than in this.
The little serving-maid whose simple prayer, " O
Lord, show me myself," was soon answered in deep
conviction of her guilt and need, was then advised to
pray, " O Lord, show me Thyself/' Daily she of-
fered up this prayer, in deep sincerity ; and after a little
while there was vouchsafed to her such a view of God,
in Christ, of His tender and infinite pity for her, and His
ability and disposition to save her, that she was filled
with peace. She had found the Savior. Rather, the
Savior had found her. You who have so long known
the way of salvation, as well as men can show it to
you — pastors, and teachers, and parents — do not you
need to have God show it to you, by His Spirit ? Ye
who have so long known Christ with your heads, but
have not known Him with your hearts, is it not best
for you to take up the little maiden's prayer^and beg
the Lord to show Himself to you ?
Recall the experience of Paul, as he tells it to the
Galatians (i. 15, 16). He speaks there of God who
had set him apart, even from his birth, unto the
apostleship which he at last fulfilled, at a definite
point in his life, " revealing His Son in him! y Then,
Salvation a Recovery from Delusion. 177
when he was thus made to know Christ with his
heart, he says, " Immediately I conferred not with
flesh and blood." We understand him to mean, that
he then needed no human counsel, because the Lord
directly revealed to him all that was needful for the
fulfillment of his mission.
That call to the apostleship was peculiar. But in
that revealing of the Son of God in Paul, was there
not also an enabling him to see Jesus as his own Sav-
ior, trusting in whom he found peace with God ? I
have no doubt of this ; and I know of no person who
lacks that peace with God, whom I would not gladly
persuade to pray unto God thus to reveal His Son in
him.
If you will do this, if day by day, in that childlike
simplicity, you will ask the Lord to show Himself to
you, I believe that you then will not need to " confer
with flesh and blood " ; but will find His gracious
power delivering you from the illusions of sin ; find
yourselves truly " beholding the Lamb of God who
taketh away the sin of the world."
8*
CHAPTER VIII.
SALVATION OF HOUSEHOLDS.
IN our study of Sin, we found one of its saddest
aspects to be its hereditariness, our being involved
in its guilt and misery, not as isolated individuals, but
as a race, in our families and generations, all the way
from our first parents. Our first parents sinned and
fell, when they two were all mankind ; when they
were the only human persons existing ; when, in a
serious and true sense, all their posterity were yet in
them. The consequence of this evidently is, that all
their posterity are sinners, exposed to the wrath of
God, and needing salvation. The different theories
by which theologians have tried to explain this, or to
account for it, and show its consistency with the jus-
tice and goodness of our Maker, were purposely ex-
cluded from consideration. These are products of hu-
man speculation, by which faith must not be bound,
and upon which faith does not depend for its saving
efficacy. More and more, theologians are finding
that they can " agree to differ " in those speculations,
and yet know each other to hold alike, and with equal
tenacity, all the facts asserted in the Scriptures. We
(178)
Salvation of Households. 179
can also agree to neglect those speculations, and hold
fast those solemn, awful, grand facts.
It is an interesting, and by no means an unpracti-
cal question, whether salvation comes to us wholly as
separate individuals, or comes to us in the association
in which we exist and live — particularly, whether our
closest association in families has any vital connection
with our experience of salvation.
In the New Testament records of the actual ex-
perience of salvation, the family relation has the same
prominence as in all secular experience and history.
Men and women were habitually addressed and dealt
with by the Lord Jesus, and by His Apostles, both in
their preaching and in their Epistles, not as isolated
persons, but as related persons, bound together by do-
mestic ties, grouped together in households, interested
in each other, influencing each other, loving each
other as husbands and wives, as parents and children,
as brothers and sisters — in short, as families. There
is everywhere a recognition of home, of that dwelling
together, that interlacing of relations, that blending
of interests and experiences, of which the word home
is so sweetly and so powerfully significant.
Did ever any one to whom the Gospel of salvation
was to be preached by Jesus himself, seem more alone
than the little man who climbed up into a tree to see
Him, near Jericho? But Jesus bade him "come
down," and take Him home with him, and there He
180 Sin and Salvation.
said, " This day is salvation come to this house." Now
the word house, in the language in which Luke wrote,
as in our own and probably in all others, has a two-
fold meaning. It may denote the material building
in which a human family live, or the human family who
live in tl at building. It may mean a human dwelling-
place or the natural cluster or association of human
beings who dwell together therein. In this case, it
certainly is possible to understand our Lord, in the
words which Luke has recorded, as saying simply,
" Salvation has taken place, or become a fact, this
day, in this house"* But is it possible to understand
him as thinking of the house merely as a material
building, and not chiefly as a human dwelling-place ?
Although no mention is made of Zaccheus' domestic
relations, and we do not know whether he was mar-
ried, do we not most naturally imagine him as the
head of a family, into the midst of which he ushered
his newly found Savior, and to whom the gracious
words of the Savior came as cheeringly as to himself,
" This day salvation is come to this house" ? We do
not affirm this. It would not be right to affirm that
of which the Scripture is silent. But I do think it is
natural to think: of Zaccheus as most probably the
head of a family, which was blessed with him, in the
Savior's coming into their home. I also think that
" On djj/iepov dun-rjpia to olaco rovru eyevero.'
Salvation of Households. 181
this natural supposition is encouraged by the manner
in which the Scriptures do speak of other instances
in which salvation came to men in their homes.
When the Philippian jailer, trembling and aston-
ished at the earthquake, and convinced of his soul's
guilt and peril by the Spirit of God, fell down before
Paul and Silas and asked what he must do to be saved,
they answered, " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." The narra-
tive proceeds to state that the same " word of the
Lord " which was blessed to the jailer for his salva-
tion was presently spoken " to all that were in his
house " ; and that he " was baptized, and all his
straightway " ; also, that " he set food before them
and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house."
The nice questions, whether there were any infant
children in that house ; whether, if there were, they
were baptized ; or whether we are to understand the
phrases " all his," " all his house," and " all that were
in his house," in the connection and relations in which
they are used, as denoting only all those persons
dwelling there who could and did intelligently hear
" the word of the Lord," and did intelligently " be-
lieve in God " — these are questions on which sincere
Christian students of the New Testament are not
entirely agreed. We, who hold to the scriptural pro-
priety, and estimate above all price the privilege of
presenting our children to God in baptism, can not
1 82 Sin and Salvation.
fairly claim that it is put beyond all question by this
passage alone. Indeed I am not disposed to claim
that it is quite put beyond question by all that we
have in Scripture. My own mind is satisfied, and
rests with unutterable delight in the assurance, that
when I presented the children which God gave me,
in His house to receive the baptismal token, and
when so often I have taken the infant children of my
people in my arms, and placed that sweet token upon
them, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost, I have acted as certainly within my
scriptural privilege as did any devout Israelite who
set the seal of God's everlasting covenant upon His
offspring, in its own blood. Being assured by in-
spired Paul, that, if I believe in Jesus, I am as good
an Israelite as he, that being in Christ I am of Abra-
ham's seed, and an heir according to the promise, I
confidently claim the privilege of having that promise
sealed to me and to my seed after me, by that milder
token which I understand to be in the place of the
bloody token of old. Yet I cheerfully testify that I
have intimate acquaintance and precious fellowship
with sincere believers in Jesus, who do not see that
the visible token of faith and of consecration may
scripturally be put upon the offspring of believers,
but think that the word of God, fairly interpreted,
requires it to be put only upon the persons of be-
lievers. I cheerfully and thankfully testify that I
Salvation of Households. 183
have found such Christians able to sympathize fully
with us in all that we mean by the baptism of our in-
fants, though not seeing it right to apply baptism for
the expression of that meaning. They consecrate
their children to Christ ; they invoke for them His
gracious blessing ; they ask for their early renewal by
the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit ; they be-
lieve in and pray for this spiritual renewing even in
infancy ; but do not think it scriptural to apply the
sacramental token until the child can make intelligent
profession of faith, and give evidence, in a godly life,
that he has in fact experienced " the renewing of the
Holy Ghost." I have no heart for disputing with such
brethren and sisters. We are agreed as to the thing
signified. We differ only as to the proper application
of an outward sign. How sad it would be, and how
foolish, to mar our fellowship in that which we both
hold to be spiritual and vital, by too eager disputa-
tion about that which is outward and visible, and
which is confessedly of no use or value apart from its
spiritual import.
It is right for me to call attention to the record of
Lydia's reception into the Christian Church (Acts
xvi. 15). "And when she was baptized, and her
household, she besought us, saying, If ye have judged
me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house,
and abide. And she constrained us." I shall no more
assert here, than in the other case, that there were
184 Sin and Salvation.
infants in the household. We are not told, and I am not
sure, whether there were. While I frankly admit this,
I will just as frankly say that this and kindred state-
ments in the New Testament about the baptism of
households do seem to me like the writing of men
who believed in the baptism of households as such,
not merely in the baptism of believers as such. It
certainly is more natural for missionaries to use the
same form of expression, who when they baptize be-
lievers baptize also their households as a matter of
course, than for those who baptize only believers
with such members of their households as are be-
lievers also. These find no occasion to speak of
baptizing households. Even when all the members
of any family, being believers, are baptized, they do
not at all baptize them as members of that house-
hold, but only as individual believers, and their re-
ports and records naturally take shape accordingly.
The apostolic records took what seems to us the
pedo-baptist shape. Another instance of this is in
1 Cor. i. 16, where Paul, while showing plainly that
he regards baptism, any way, as of vastly less impor-
tance than preaching, so that he seldom baptized
anybody himself, still did speak of having " baptized
the household of Stephanas."
I have already adverted to that remarkable affirma-
tion of Paul (Gal. iii. 29) that, " if we be Christ's, then
are we Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the
Salvation of Households. 185
promise." Coupling this with the promise to Abra-
ham, which was sealed by circumcision, we claim for
our children, with ourselves, all the spiritual good
which that Abrahamic covenant assured to the be-
lieving Israelite, and to his children with him. " And
I will establish my covenant between me and thee
and thy seed after thee in their generations, for an
everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to
thy seed after thee." — Gen. xvii. 7.
No one believes that this promise made spiritual
salvation certain to every one born into an Israelite
household, and circumcised on the eighth day. No
one doubts that an Israelite, duly circumcised, might
apostatize from the covenant of his God, and go " to
his own place," as surely Judas did.
Was there, then, no advantage in being an Is-
raelite, born and circumcised in a home over
which the divine covenant extended ? We might
justly answer this question in words of Paul. Ad-
vantage there indeed was, " much every way, chiefly
because that unto them were committed the oracles
of God." — Rom. iii. 1,2. If he said this of the priv-
ilege of belonging to the Jewish nation, we do not
pervert it in applying it to the privilege of belonging
to a Jewish household, of being born and circumcised
and reared in a Jewish home. Paul was far from
teaching and far from thinking that the advantage
consisted in the being circumcised. It consisted in
1 86 Sin and Salvation.
that possession and use of the oracles of God which
circumcision pledged, of which circumcision was the
token. There was immense advantage in being born
and reared in a home in which divine influences were
enjoyed, and to which divine promises were given,
such as circumcision signified and sealed.
There is the same advantage in being born and
reared in a truly Christian home of parents who take
hold of God's ancient promise with full faith, accord-
ing to inspired Paul's assurance that they are " Abra-
ham's seed and heirs according to the promise."
I am not, by any means, so solicitous to commend
the view which I take of the ordinance of baptism in
its application to infant children of believers, as to
exalt the spiritual privilege which I understand that
visible rite to signify. That privilege I have found
that some Christian parents hold as dear as we, who
can not accept our view of the applicability of that
rite to infants.
The essential, spiritual privilege is, to have God in
our homes. It is to have the Savior come into our
houses, and bring salvation to all their inmates.
I. It is infinitely desirable that every husband and
wife be united u in the Lord " — " as being heirs to-
gether of the grace of life." The union of two hu-
man beings in marriage is the closest and most inti-
mate which human life knows. It supposes harmony
of views, and sympathy, as to all that is most im-
Salvation of Households. 187
portant and precious. It is a sad lack, if such har-
mony and sympathy be not between them in regard
to their relations to God and their anticipations of
eternity. I need not dwell upon this. All to whom my
words will come, admit it to be so. There is no need
that that sad fact should continue, in the experience
of any such. There is no impenitent man, living in
wedlock with a Christian wife, who is not invited im-
mediately to become a Christian. The reasons in favor
of this are sufficient, and ought to be conclusive, apart
from all human relations. But every one of those
reasons is strengthened, every one of those consider-
ations is intensified, by the fact that you are thus re-
lated. The human person to whom, of all human
persons, you are most dear, and who is most dear to
you, would be made more happy by your acceptance
of Christ than by any other event whatever. It is
not wrong for you to regard this, nor to be influenced
by it. It is in His great mercy that God has set
within your home such a persuasive power drawing
you toward Himself; that He has fastened upon
your heart so mighty an attraction heavenward. Do
not resist it. Take the hand that was placed in yours
in such affectionate and self-devoting confidence, and
let it lead you to Christ. Clasp that hand with yours
this day, upon your open Bible. Kneel together this
day, before the Lord, in cordial union of prayer, and
consecration to Him of your home, and your mutual
1 88 Sin and Salvation,
love, and your united life. He who made you male
and female, He who instituted the holy estate of
marriage, He who said, " What God hath joined to-
gether, let not man put asunder," is not willing that
you should be permanently put asunder even by
death. He is not willing that now you should be
estranged from each other, out of union with each
other, in respect to your most important experiences,
in respect to your spiritual life.
2. A husband and wife being not only united in
true and pure love to each other, but united in Christ,
have exceeding great and precious encouragement to
seek from Him the salvation of their offspring. Apart
altogether from what we believe concerning God's
covenant with Abraham and the interest of Christ's
people in it, is there anything touching which it is
easier for two Christian hearts to be agreed in asking
it of God, than the salvation of a child that is bone
of their bone and flesh of their flesh ? To what more
surely than to this can that sweet promise of Jesus be
applied? Matt, xviii. 19: "Again I say unto you,
that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching
anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them
of my Father which is in heaven."
And do not all we, who believe in that special
Abrahamic covenant, and in its perpetual validity and
present availableness to us, find in it a strong rein-
forcement of our trust in this general assurance con-
Salvation of Households. i8g
cerning united prayer? Do Christian parents take
hold on those divine assurances, with anything like
the confidence which the character of Him who gives
them deserves ? I can not think that those parents
at all appreciate the exceeding riches of God's promise,
who only take encouragement from it to pray for the
" conversion " of their children after they have come
to " years of understanding." I have given my rea-
sons for believing in the " early beginning of salva-
tion," so early that the word "conversion" is not
properly applicable to it, inasmuch as that word im-
plies a turning from a course which they never begin
who experience the earliest beginning of salvation.
There is nothing in Scripture to forbid, there is much
in Scripture, and in the happiest Christian experience,
to encourage the belief that God does meet some souls
with His regenerating grace, at the beginning point of
their history, as moral, responsible creatures, " so that
their whole nature may be developed in a state of
reconciliation with God."* Is anything more proper
to be asked of God in earnest union of believing
prayer, by any two disciples of Christ than this by
two who are united in marriage, in behalf of their
own child ? May not a married pair who so dwell
together, as heirs of the grace of life, "that their
prayers be not hindered," scripturally hope to ob-
* Dr. Charles Hodge.
190 Sin and Salvation.
tain this early beginning of salvation for all their off*
spring ?
I earnestly commend such early and complete sal-
vation of households to the contemplation, to the
prayers, to the hopes, of all who lay the foundations
of homes in the union of believing Christian hearts.
Yet let me not seem to teach nor to hold, that in
homes in which this best experience has not been se-
cured, there may not yet be full salvation of all the
household. You who are now dwelling together in
the same home, fed daily from the same table, shar-
ing all home experiences of joy and of sorrow, while
some of your number have hope in Christ, and others
of you have no such hope, — why should this separa-
tion continue? It is not God's desire to have it so.
He evidently wishes you all to be happy together in
Him, together saved by His Son, our Savior.
It purely is a sad thing that there should be divided
households in a Christian congregation ; that in the
same home there should be some loving and trusting
the Lord Jesus, and some who do not love and trust
Him. There surely is no need of this. I am afraid
that mistaken views of what is supposed to be ortho-
doxy lead some to assume that this must be so ; and
I apprehend that this assumption is among the causes
of its continuing to be so. There is no need of its
being so. There is no reason for its being so. There
is no excuse for its being so. There are families in
Salvation of Households. 191
which all are Christians, parents and children all
dwelling together "as heirs of the grace of life."
There is no good reason why, in any home in which
there are any Christians, all should not be Christians.
Every family in which there is one saved person, has
a present example, which if the whole family will but
follow, there is at once a saved family.
CHAPTER IX.
SALVATION OF SOCIETY.
A BEAUTIFUL and instructive parable of out
Lord is recorded by Matthew and by Luke, in
a single sentence : " The kingdom of heaven is like
unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three
measures of meal, till the whole was leavened."* It
is quite remarkable that this is the only instance in
the New Testament in which the action of leaven is
used to illustrate the diffusion of good influence. In
other places leaven is the type of unwholesome and
evil influences.
" Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Phari-
sees and of the Sadducees," said Jesus to His dis-
ciples, and marveled that they did not at once under-
stand that He was warning them against the perni-
cious teaching of those sects. — Matt. xvi. 6. Luke
also informs us, that he had reference not only to
their erroneous teaching, but to the " hypocrisy " in-
volved in it. They did not sincerely mean what they
taught.
* Matt. xiii. 33 ; Luke xiii. 21.
(192)
Salvation of Society. 193
The apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, refers
to the diffusive quality of leaven, its power to " leaven
the whole lump," and exhorts them to " purge out
the old leaven." He speaks further in the same con-
nection, of " the leaven of malice and wickedness."
He uses the same type, for similar admonition to the
Galatians. — Gal. v. 9. Considering that leaven was
forbidden to the Israelites, in their chief national fes-
tival, we should rather expect it to be used in Script-
ure as a symbol of that which is to be shunned than
of that which is to be sought and prayed for. Yet
there is no reason to think that ordinarily, and apart
from that religious festival, there was any objection to
the use of leavened bread in Jewish families. Indeed
our Lord's reference in His parable, seems to assume
that His hearers were familiar with this use of leaven,
as we are in our domestic bread-making. It is a beauti-
ful, and truly a wonderful process, involving one of
nature's deep and cunning mysteries, mastered and
managed by human skill, for human use. Observe
the frugal housewife preparing bread for her family.
From her well-provided store-room she brings a suf-
ficient quantity of flour. She has at hand the several
ingredients which experience or science has taught
her to provide. She carefully mingles them, observ-
ing the required conditions of moisture, temperature,
etc. Then, placing the whole mass in a secure posi-
tion, she leaves it. Shall we say that she leaves it to
9
194 Sin an d Salvation.
itself ? Shall we say that she leaves it to nature ? —
to the operation of forces and laws of chemistry ? Let
us rather say (telling the truth more fully and more
deeply), she leaves it to God, who instituted and per-
petually upholds and works those laws and forces.
While she busies herself here and there iri the house,
or while she reads, or entertains company, or while
she sleeps, those forces, under those laws, work on,
because God evermore works in them. An invisible
force, God's invisible finger, touches every particle of
that mass, and makes it tingle, and stir, and lift up
itself, with a strange life. No longer a heavy, inert
lump, it expands, and rises in beautiful porous light-
ness. She must hasten to prevent its pouring itself
wastefully over. See the good housewife's look of
complete satisfaction as she lifts the cover. With
cheerfulness of hope she kneads, and divides into
loaves, and deposits these in the heated oven, from
which in due time she brings them forth ready for
the table. Industriously and wisely working, work-
ing in conformity with nature (z. e. f in conformity
with God's orderly way of working), she has God
working with her unto the happy result, the good
cheer of her table, and the nourishment and health
of her family.
What is the instrument, provided and energized by
God, and dutifully used by her, for this good and use-
ful work ? It is the leaven, little in bulk, but great in
Salvation of Society. 195
power. She puts it into the midst of the flour, she
buries it up there, and quite hides it out of sight. But
it can not stay hidden. Its mysterious influence soon
quickens the adjacent particles; through them it is
transmitted to the next beyond ; onward and onward
still spreads the defusive influence, until every particle
has waked from its torpor, and has touched and waked
its neighbor, and the whole lump is leavened.
Our Lord has hallowed this process of nature, this
familiar transaction of domestic life, by setting it in
His Gospel as one of His many types of the kingdom
of heaven — that kingdom of which He so beautifully
said, it " cometh not with observation " ; it is " within
you."
In His use of this type, He recognizes some im-
portant characteristics of the human mind, in human
society; and He shows how thought, opinion, ideas,
teaching, true or false, work upon the human mind,
in human society, for corruption, debasement, ruin,
or for quickening, uplifting, salvation.
In His parable, He likens the kingdom of heaven
to leaven. The type is not inapplicable to the expe-
rience of individuals — to what an old writer has called,
in his title of a precious book, " the rise and progress
of religion in the soul." Softly and silently the power
of the Divine Spirit is felt in the human spirit, waking
it to right thought, quickening its sensibility, rousing
its conscience, making its affections rise to things
196 Sin and Salvation.
above, giving it a benevolent expansion and a devout
aspiration. From the hidden, central places of the
spirit, the quickening influence entends through all
the substance of the character, unto the outermost
circumference of the life.
Still more strikingly applicable is the type to the
rise and progress of religion in communities, the ap-
plication of the Gospel to the salvation of human so-
ciety. Having meditated upon Salvation by Christ,
in various aspects of it, as experienced by individuals,
having also considered what the Scriptures teach con-
cerning the salvation of households, we naturally in-
quire what we may scripturally hope from the Lord
Jesus, for human society at large.
What is human society? The phrase calls our
minds to mankind, as they are associated and related.
Mankind are obviously fitted by nature for mutual
association and relations. It was no more true of the
first man, that it was " not good for him to be alone,"
than it is true of all other men and of all women.
Neither is that first relation, which was formed in
Eden, the only relation which is needed by all men.
No two human beings are altogether sufficient for
each other. It is not good for any pair of human be
ings to be alone. Their nature needs, for its best
development and condition, a wider and more various
association. God has provided for this. The family,
if it is the first and the fundamental form of human
Salvation of Society, 197
society, is not its only form. Human nature would
be dwarfed and stunted and deformed by attempting
to make it so. The family naturally expands into
the wider society, from which states and ' nations are
developed, and the wide community of nations as
naturally arises. When we speak of society, we
mean more than the home circle of any single house-
hold. We at least include a considerable number of
households, having some kind of social relations with
one another, holding some kind of intercourse. These
relations and this intercourse may grow out of busi-
ness, and may be cultivated for the sake of business.
They may relate to literature and science, and be val-
ued as helps to intellectual improvement. They may
be founded in common views and sympathies concern-
ing religion. They may have reference to that need
of protection from wrong and violence, for the sake
of which we establish and uphold civil governments.
Any or all of these forms and modes and purposes
of association, and any or all of the relations which
they involve, may be included in the phrase, " human
society."
It is sadly evident that, in all these forms and
phases of it, human society is dreadfully damaged
and corrupted by sin. Sin is always a thing of per-
sonal, individual choice, responsibility, blame. No
wrong thing can be done, or spoken, or purposed, but
some person has to answer to God for it. Yet two
198 Sin and Salvation.
persons, or many persons, may agree together and
unite in the doing of a wrong ; one person may in-
fluence another to the doing of wrong; and when
many persons are influencing one another to wrong,
the evil power and tendency fearfully accumulate.
Such has been the sad experience of mankind in
all generations, and in all lands. It thus naturally
cOmes to pass that, not only is each person in every
human community a sinner and a sufferer, needing
pardon, needing healing, needing to be brought back
to God, needing salvation ; but every community, as
such, suffers in its common interests and character, by
the sin of its members, and by their association in
sin. Some of the worst evils are social evils. Some
of the most ruinous vices owe their prevalence to evil
association. Some of the worst consequences of sin,
in this life, are its effects upon communities. There
are many evils and vices, from which it does not
seem to be possible to relieve or reclaim single and
isolated persons. There are evils of such a character
that, even as men help each other into them, they
need each other's help to get out of them ; and there
is help of God which comes to men, not separately,
to each person by himself, but to men as they are
naturally associated, and in their actual mutual rela-
tions.
We have seen that this is so in the family, in the
home ; that there is such a fact, such a blessed fact
Salvation of Society. 199
as the salvation of households ; — is it so in the wider
associations, in the larger communities ? Is there sal-
vation for human society ? This is the great question
of our time. This is the great question of all times.
The evils which oppress and afflict society — " the op-
pression of the poor, the sighing of the needy," the
groaning of victims of tyranny, political corruption,
commercial dishonesty, intemperance and lewdness
with all their hideous abominations, and immeasur-
able debasement — is there salvation from these, for
human society? Can not only a few who have fallen
into these pits of misery and sin be plucked out, and
a considerable number be held back from falling in ;
but can a community be rid of these pits ? Can^-
ciety be saved from them ?
Certainly there has been a great amount of philan-
thropic endeavor for this ; and while very excellent
results have been obtained, there has generally been a
sad falling short, very far short, of what philanthropic
hearts have always desired, and always must desire.
Efforts for the reformation of men, in large masses,
for the deliverance of extensive communities from
abounding vices, have been often discouraging fail-
ures. Moral reformations, giving great promise of
sweeping triumphantly through large communities,
have often fallen far short of the results which their
promoters have hoped for, and sometimes they have
been succeeded by disastrous reactions.
200 Sin and Salvation.
May we not hope that the kingdom of heaven is
yet to come, in human society, more effectually and
more fully than has yet been seen ? Is not the leaven
yet to leaven the whole lump ?
Let us limit our present inquiry to one particular
moral reformation, that which relates to the evil of
intemperance. From a time beyond which the mem-
ory of but few now living extends, no other evil ex-
isting in society has engaged the attention of Chris-
tians and philanthropists more extensively or more
earnestly.. It has been widely proclaimed and gener-
ally admitted, that this holds a foremost place among
the evils which afflict society. Its manifold and
dreadful miseries, its malignant aggravation of all
miseries, are scarcely capable of exaggeration. The
morbid conditions of body which intoxicating drink
induces, its enfeebling and debasement of the intel-
lect, its debauching of conscience, its hardening of
the heart, its blighting of all pure affections, its stim-
ulation of every impure and unholy impulse, its deso-
lation of home, its multiplication of crimes, its load-
ing of society with burdens of otherwise unnecessary
taxation, and its enfeebling of society by enervating
vices, its hopeless ruin of souls by rendering them in-
capable of attending to the Gospel and embracing
it — all these are but too well known everywhere to
thoughtful and observant men. The oratory and the
literature of our age have depicted them vividly and
Salvation of Society. 201
abundantly. These pictures have become so common
and so familiar that they have lost much of their for-
mer power to impress us. Yet it is true, that in our
land especially, and in Great Britain a vast amount
of honest effort has been put forth to deliver our
communities from this evil. A great deal has been
accomplished by these efforts. A great number have
been saved. Yet in both countries intemperance con-
tinues to be the great evil, confessedly the cause of
by far the greater part of the crime, the poverty, the
casualties, and the domestic miseries which abound.
In both these countries there is at present, very
extensively, a renewal of these efforts. With what
hope may we look upon them? With what heart
may we engage in them ?
The great hopefulness of the present movement is
in its frank and humble and hearty acknowledgment
of Jesus Christ. Very extensively the temperance
movement of this time is evidently but a phase of
religious revival. In communities in which there is
extensive and thorough religious awakening, where
Christians are fervent in prayer and diligent in labor,
and great numbers of impenitent are seeking salva-
tion from sin, many drunkards, as well as harlots, are
found among them, seeking the Savior, and rejoicing
in the assurance of His pardoning love. They also
accept the assurance of His readiness to uphold and
strengthen them unto the conflict with evil — with ap
9*
202 Sin and Salvation.
petite within and manifold solicitation from without,
confessing the utter insufficiency of their own resolu-
tions and their own powers. This is a practical ac-
knowledgment of Christ, as the only Savior from
this as from every other form of sin.
In some instances, also, the religious revival begins
with a movement for the reformation of men from in-
temperance, commenced and continued in the name,
and depending on the gracious power, of the Lord
Jesus. Such effort is owned and honored by God ;
the Holy Spirit comes into the hearts of men and
women, convincing thgm of their guilt and need ;
they become not merely sober men and women, but
disciples of Christ. It certainly is a very noticeable
fact, that many of the men who are now most impres-
sively pleading the cause of temperance are men who
once were drunkards, and who now humbly and thank-
fully and explicitly ascribe their reformation wholly to
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Not unfrequently
they testify, that again and again they tried to reform
by the strength of their own wills, and again and
again they have failed. Now, seeking divine help by
simple prayer, honoring Christ by open and thankful
acknowledgment of His gracious help, they feel a
strong assurance that He will not fail them. Well
may they thus trust Him. He is worthy thus to be
trustee^. He has a gracious power to help all who
trustingly seek His help to be delivered from sin.
We shall have reason to cherish hope for the sue-
Salvation of Society. 203
cess of this movement, just in proportion as it pre-
serves this character. We can really and effectually
help it forward, just in proportion as we are near to
Christ, and have His Spirit dwelling in us.
This surely is a hopeful movement. It is a Chris-
tian movement. It plants itself on Christian princi-
ples. It is led by Christian men, and nourished by
Christian women. It honors the Lord Jesus. It in-
vites and encourages trust in Him only. It aims to
extend His kingdom ; to realize His salvation. It
accepts the Apostle John's declaration, " For this pur-
pose the Son of God was manifested, that he might
destroy the works of the devil." — 1 JOHN iii. 8.
This peculiar and hopeful extension of salvation to
those for whom there has been the least hope of it,
ought surely to engage the unselfish labor and prayer
of those already saved. The Church of God upon
earth is the living body, of which Christ is the living
head. Her real possession and manifestation of His
indwelling must have the effect of destroying the
works of the devil, of nullifying his fascinating, en-
slaving power, and releasing his victims. If the evil
works of the evil one could prosper and prevail in the
very presence of the Church, and receive from her no
check and no hindrance, she would justly apprehend
that she lacks his power and his indwelling. When
she is conscious of his power and his indwelling, his
virtue will go forth out of her to heal the world's
sicknesses.
CHAPTER X.
SALVATION CONSUMMATED.
THE salvation which Jesus Christ brings, and
which His Gospel reveals, is a salvation of im-
mortal beings. They are everywhere so represented
and contemplated in the Scriptures. It is expressly
claimed for this Savior, that He " hath abolished
death, and hath brought life and immortality to light
through the Gospel." — 2 TlM. i. 10. That which was
uncertainly hoped for by the best and wisest heathen,
is made a certainty by this divine revelation. This
assurance of immortality, and of an available oppor-
tunity to make it an immortality of holy bliss, makes
this revelation indeed a gospel, glad tidings.
The beginning of this great salvation, in each per-
son's experience, is in his believing acceptance of the
Savior, at once securing his release from condemna-
tion, and making him, in that sense, at once a saved
man, saved completely, and once for all, rescued, no
longer exposed to condemnation.
This salvation progresses, in the work of sanctifica-
tion, which is not unfitly contemplated as a conva-
lescence of the soul from the disease of sin, its gradual
(204)
Salvation Consummated. 205
recovery of spiritual health. It is not merely the
cessation from positive acts of sin, ceasing to trans-
gress the law of God ; it is the cure of the soul from
all disposition to sin — the recovery of it from all
spiritual infirmity.
If we had to contemplate this as a result only
reached at the close of existence ; if we were left to
regard death as not only the dissolution of our bodies,
but as the cessation of our being ; if we were com-
pelled to feel ourselves so sinful all our lives, and could
only hope to be free from sin just when we cease
to be ; — surely we could not call that salvation, nor
Him a Savior to whom we should owe only that. No
such meagre, paltry, futile thing is revealed to us, or
offered to us under so great a name, in the New Tes-
tament. It is " eternal salvation." — Heb. v. 9. It is
the salvation of immortal beings, beings whose im-
mortality the Author of this salvation has brought to
light, having for them conquered and abolished death.
The life which the saved are to live eternally is
their salvation consummated.
Where shall that life be? To this question the
Scriptures give no definite nor clear answer. We may
indeed scripturally say, that it is in heaven ; or that it
is where God is, and where Christ is. We may recall
Christ's own words : " I go to the Father" ; " I go to
prepare a place for you " ; "I will not leave you com-
fortless " ; "I will come again, and receive you unto
206 Sin and Salvation.
myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.'
These assurances are sufficient for our faith, and for
our peace and satisfaction ; but they do not furnish
our minds with any distinct conceptions whereby we
can locate the scene of all this bliss. Our faith rest-
ing on our Savior's word, our imagination is left free.
That house of " many mansions " — His " Father's
house " — whether those words describe some world
fairer than this, revolving about some more resplen-
dent sun, in some far-ofl region of space ; or some
glorious system of worlds, far beyond Arcturus, Orion,
and Pleiades, beyond aH the stars that sparkle to our
vision through our most powerful glasses — some sys-
tem of worlds to which this solar system may be
compared as a child's play-house to an imperial
palace ; and through which from world to world the
saved are to go and come as freely as a child from
room to room in his father's house ; --of all this the
Lord has not told us. What our relations to space
will be, when this mortal shall have put on immortal-
ity, we do not know. Conjecture is not forbidden.
The regaling of the imagination is not sinful : but we
must not mistake imagination for faith, nor teach
conjecture as doctrine, nor yet as science. Is there
then no solid substance of doctrine within our reach,
available for present comfort and edification — noth-
ing which we may steadfastly believe, and assuredly
know ? Indeed there is, and not a little.
Salvation Consummated. 207
I. The abode of the saved, wherever it may be, will
be inexpressibly beautiful and glorious, fitted to give its
occupants the most complete and perfect satisfaction.
We are well assured of this, by what our Savior said
to the disciples (John xiv. 2), " In my Father's house
are many mansions. .... I go to prepare a place
for you." Taken in its connection, we can not un-
derstand this as less than an assurance of ample pro-
vision in the heavenly home, for every need of those
whom He promises to bring to it. Glimpses into
that abode have been vouchsafed to a few favored
ones. Stephen, when dying that cruel death, " look-
ed up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of
God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God .
And said, Behold, I see heaven opened, and the Son
of Man standing on the right hand of God." — ACTS
vii. 55, 56. But who on earth, save the three who
witnessed the Lord's transfiguration, has been able to
understand what that vision would be ? To one of
those three there was a revelation made upon the
Isle Patmos, an apocalypse, which He was ordered to
record for us. In its last two chapters, we read of a
celestial city with wall of jasper, its foundations
garnished with precious stones, its gates pearl, and
" the streets of the city pure gold, as it were trans-
parent glass," — " no night there, no candle, neither
light of the sun ; for the Lord God giveth them
light." We read also of its river of life, and its tree
208 Sin and Salvation,
of life on either side of the river. From all this we
can not understand less than that this divine attempt
at revelation or disclosure of the heavenly world to
us here, speedily exhausts all human language and
metaphors and powers of conception. " Eye hath
not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man the things which God hath prepared
for them that love him." — I COR. ii. 9.
2. The abode of the saved will be suited not only to
their souls, but to their raised bodies. Those bodies
will be very different from these, yet they will be bodies.
They will indeed be these bodies; not other bodies
then and there newly created, of other earth than this,
other matter, other substance. The representation
constantly is that these bodies shall be raised, reani-
mated, revivified. Not indeed as was Lazarus' body,
and that of the daughter of Jairus, and that of the
young man at Nain, and that of our Lord, revivified
before they were decomposed. " Dust to dust," no
doubt, all our bodies will crumble, and be utterly dis-
sipated among kindred earthy elements, entering into
we know not what other combinations. It is no more
necessary that the same particles of matter thus dis-
sipated should be regathered, in order to maintain
the identity of the body before death and after the
resurrection, than it is necessary for the body now to
hold continuously the same particles of matter in
order to preserve its identity, to be the same body,
Salvation Consummated. 209
from year to year, and from youth to age. In fact,
we well know, that our bodies are continually decay-
ing and dissolving, through all their cells and tissues,
and are continually renewed by vital forces. Yet
from childhood to age we have the same bodies.
There is in our bodies something real which is not
the ever-changing dust, but which with mysterious
potency evermore constitutes that dust a living body.
The qualities and powers of this body might be great-
ly changed, for better or for worse, without losing its
identity. Is not that bloated, loathsome body which
you see reeling out of a grog-shop, or standing either
before or behind its counter, the same body that it
was ten years ago, though you knew it then in youth-
ful vigor or childish beauty ? It has not lost its
identity although it has been so greatly and so sadly
changed in its qualities.
The body of your friend which you now see so fair
and vigorous, is it not the same body which a few
months ago you saw prostrated with disease, pitiably
emaciated and powerless ? It has not lost its identity,
although so great and so joyous a change has passed
upon it.
" We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last
trump : for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall
be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." — 1
COR. xv. 51, 52. Plainly we shall all be changed—
210 Sin and Salvation.
those of us who shall have been dead for centuries and
those of us who will then be alive on the earth. The
apostle speaks for us all, of all the ages. The raised
dead shall be no more changed from what they were
before death, than shall those yet living be changed
in that one moment, the twinkling of an eye. But
changed, vastly changed, all those millions of bodies
will be. They will be bodies still. Vastly changed
they might be, in form, in qualities, in powers, and
still be kept within the same physical laws which now
hold them. I looked out on the lake visible from my
windows, on a cold, clear morning. As the sun was
rising, there emerged a body of vapor more beautiful
than the fabled Venus, born of the sea. With won-
derful grace of motion, it climbed the air, evolving
forms various and mobile, and arraying itself in colors
most fit to honor the sun's bright coming. Was not
that airy, facile, soaring body the same which lay be-
fore, in liquid helplessness? This change of inert,
ever down-flowing water into aerial, soaring luminous
mist, is wrought within nature, in accordance with
natural law, by the steady action of forces which
have been steadily acting from the creation of the
world, according to the order of nature which God
ordained in the beginning. The men of science in
our time tell us that in the onworking of these forces,
the time may come when the whole world — its fluid
seas, its rocky strata, and its subterranean fires — shall
Salvation Consummated. 211
all burst again into the vast volume of nebulous va-
por which perhaps it once was, in that primeval time
when the earth was "without form and void." The
ordering of those forces is the word of God, who
" spake and it was done." If they rightly interpret
God's word (as it has been spoken through nature
and been written in Scripture), who say that His word
condensed that primal cloud (" nebula ") into this solid
globe, and formed and fashioned it into this habitable
world, there is no difficulty in supposing that His
word commanding, His will directing these awful
forces, may bring a dissolution of terrestrial nature
as sublime as any have understood the Scriptures to
foretell, or the pent-up volcanic fires and latent chemi-
cal forces to intimate. When this human history
shall have told all its ages, and fulfilled all its marvels ;
when earthly time shall end in that sublime catastro-
phe which both science and Scripture forebode ; who
will question the power of our Creator to refashion
the same substance into a new world whose land-
scapes, and whose climates, and whose whole system of
physical laws and forces shall be to the present, as the
fairest of earth's cultured landscapes to a waste, howl-
ing wilderness ? As little surely is it to be questioned,
that His power can take the same substance which
forms our present bodies, and (whether by forces now
existing or by new forces which He will then origi-
nate) form and fashion it into bodies whose beauty,
212 Sin and Salvation.
and powers, and susceptibilities shall far transcend all
that we know of these, and all that we imagine of
those which walked together in Eden ; — shall equal
all that we can imagine of those that tread the golden
pavements of New Jerusalem.
His written word abundantly warrants our expec-
tation that the bodies of the saved will be such as to
give their souls the happiest condition ; and that the
world they will dwell in, will be perfectly adapted to
their wants and their powers. It will be no sin-blighted
world, bringing forth thorns and thistles, no creation
groaning and travailing in pain, under God's frown at
its people's wickedness. Christ's saved people will
dwell in an uncursed world.
3. The saved in eternity will enjoy perpetual rest.
This is not to say that they will be in perpetual idle-
ness. In a world and a life in which labor is so apt
to be toil, and so sure to bring fatigue and exhaus-
tion, we are liable to get a low and unworthy con-
ception of rest, as if it were slothful inactivity, the
lazy sleep of the sluggard. The heavenly idea of rest
is not cessation from activity, but exemption from fa-
tigue, from alarms, and from anxiety. Powers that
are incapable of weariness, employment that has no
tendency to exhaustion, work that is perpetual play,
refreshing, joyous, exultant activity, perpetual day
with no felt need of night, — such is the heavenly rest.
"And to you who are troubled rest with us, when
Salvation Consum7nated, 213
the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his
mighty angels." — 2 THESS. i. 7. "And I heard a voice
from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the
dead which die in the Lord from henceforth : yea, saith
the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors ;*
and their works do follow them." — REV. xiv. 13.
Amid the fatigues of these earthly toils, and the
worry of these earthly anxieties, it may be difficult
for us adequately to conceive of such rest. Doubt-
less it is not necessary that we should have such ade-
quate conception. It is even now the sweet and
blessed privilege of all who follow Jesus, to know
that He will bring them at last where they shall feel
no more fatigue, no more alarms, no more solicitude.
" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you
and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart ;
and ye shall find rest unto your souls." — Matt. xi.
28, 29.
It does not contradict this affirmation of heavenly
rest, when we add —
4. The saved in eternity will find occasion for the
highest and the most energetic exercise of intellect-
ual powers. For what observations, what researches,
what discoveries will there not be opportunity? Over
what fields of observation, with what delicious facility
* The word is kottqv, denoting toil, or wearisome effort, not epyov
or evepyein i which might denote as strenuous activity without fatigue.
214 Sin an( t Salvation.
may not those spiritual bodies soar and range ? Of
what vision, insight, intuition, may not those sinless,
unwearying spirits be capable ? What science ! what
philosophy ! what study and comprehension of his-
tory ! — not the history of families and nations, but of
worlds and dispensations ! — and how shall all the celes-
tial sciences resolve themselves into all-comprehend-
ing Theology, in which we shall be learning more and
more of God, forever and ever ! " For now we see
through a glass, darkly : but then face to face ; now T
know in part : but then shall I know even as also I
am known." — I COR. xiii. 12. " Beloved, we are now
children of God, and it doth not yet appear what we
shall be : but we know that when he shall appear, we
shall be like him ; for we shall see him as he is." — 1
John iii. 2.
5. The saved in eternity will doubtless enjoy the
steady exercise of pure and holy affection. " God is
love : and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God,
and God in him." — 1 JOHN iv. 16.
They will be ever in the most congenial society —
" with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of
God " ; " ever with the Lord " ; where " there shall
never enter anything that defileth, neither whatso-
ever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie ; but they
which are written in the Lamb's book of life." — Rev.
xxi. 27.
Add to all this the conscious approbation of their
Salvation Consmmnated. 215
own consciences, and of all holy fellow-creatures, and
of God, with the undoubting assurance that all this is
to endure forever — and what is lacking to fulfill and
to consummate a complete SALVATION ? " Therefore
are they before the throne of God, and serve him day
and night in his temple ; and he that sitteth on the
throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger
no more, neither thirst any more ; neither shall the
sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb
which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them,
and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters ;
and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." —
Rev. vii. 15-17.
" And there shall be no more curse ; but the throne
of God and of the Lamb shall be in it ; and HIS SER-
VANTS SHALL SERVE HIM : and they shall see his face ;
and his name shall be in their foreheads. And there
shall be no night there ; and they need no candle,
neither light of the sun ; for the Lord God giveth
them light : and they shall reign [shall be kings], for-
ever and ever." — Rev. xxii. 3-5.
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