aggravated by a view of the providential order which history has proved to be delusive; and it does not follow that this narrowness of conception belongs to the essence of the religion. Let us turn for a moment to the teaching of Christ himself. That Jesus had a profound sense of his Divine call to proclaim and introduce a new spiritual kingdom cannot, I think, be reasonably doubted; and even the Synoptics represent him as having a consciousness of God's fatherhood, and a power of revealing it to others, which were peculiar to himself.1 This profound consciousness may explain the saying ascribed to him by the fourth Evangelist, ‘No man comes to the Father but through me';2 for, according to the same disciple, he felt himself in such intimate union with God, and in such absolute dependence upon him, that his words and deeds were a direct expression of the Father's will, and it is only through the same absolute self-surrender to perfect love that any man can become conscious that he is in the Father, and the Father in him. But while Jesus. asks for a complete trust, and a love which will never be ashamed of him, his principles of judgment are universal. He declares, Not every one that says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but he that doeth the will of my Father'; men shall be known by their fruits, and it is the workers of iniquity that must depart from him.3 When the rich young man asked Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life, Jesus simply referred him to the commandments. In the figurative description of the future judgment everything is made to depend on deeds of sympathy and love.5 Christ's brother and sister and mother are those. who do the will of his Father.6 The Samaritan, that is, the 1 Matt. xi. 25-27; Luke x. 21, 22. 2 John xiv. 6. 3 Matt. vii. 20-23. Compare Luke vi. 45, 46. 4 Matt. xix. 16 sqq.; Mark x. 17 sqq.; Luke xviii. 18 sqq. C Matt. xii. 50; Mark iii. 35; Luke viii. 21. alien and the heretic, is our neighbour when he forgets himself in an act of mercy; and this is said to illustrate the declaration that he who loves God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself, shall live.1 The prodigal son is driven simply by the misery of his own sin to seek his father's house, and, coming with none to plead for him, is received with overflowing joy.2 Even in the model prayer, designed for the use of his own disciples, there is no mention of himself. All this is characteristic, and although theologians who love to reduce Christ to their own petty level may explain it away, its meaning is perfectly clear, and it conducts us to principles of judgment of world-wide application. Goodness in a Gentile is the same as goodness in a Christian; to say that good is evil is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit; those everywhere whose rule of life is the will of God are accepted of him; and Christ's spiritual kingdom is not coincident with Christendom, but is partly within, and partly outside of it. Thus it appears that the narrowness and exclusiveness of Christianity do not belong to its essence, but are in reality a departure from the principles of its Founder. 2. Grace If men were predestined to some high rank in the spiritual world, then some provision must have been made to secure the attainment of that end. We have already spoken of the outward 'means of grace'; and now we must turn to the doctrine of grace itself. The whole Christian movement is so constantly ascribed to the unmerited love of God that it is needless to refer to particular passages. Indeed, the gospel was essentially a proclamation that God loved the world, and wished all men to be saved, and to live as his children. But certain questions inevitably arise: What is man's relation to the means of grace? How does it act, and what does it effect? To these questions different answers may be given. It may be said that grace consists simply in the provision of external aids which the free will of man may accept or reject; or it may be maintained, on the contrary, that grace is the action of the Holy Spirit within the heart, predisposing or even compelling it to turn to God in love and obedience, and that apart from this supernatural influence the will must remain powerless for good. These conflicting views of Pelagius and Augustine correspond with two types of mind, which, I suppose, always exist, and which, necessarily guided by the interpretation of their own consciousness, diverge widely from one another in their spiritual psychology. There are happily constituted natures to whom a virtuous life is easy, who are not haunted by visions of an unattainable holiness, and who consequently have no harrowing sense of sin and impotence, and are never torn by the fierceness of inward strife. But there are deeper and more passionate natures, who send their glance far above the ordinary moral law, and seek for perfect inward communion with the holiness of God; who have wrestled in agony with sin, and been defeated; and who have finally found rest through simple surrender to the mystic touch of Divine love and peace amid their warring impulses. It may be that these profounder souls are subject to an exceptional experience; and yet that experience may give them a truer insight into our spiritual relations, and, when guarded against one-sided exaggeration, may represent truly the hidden life of ordinary men. The extreme views which present themselves on both sides arise from the difficulty of harmonizing grace and free will. The reality of both is guaranteed by Christian experience. Many a quiet soul, which has not the fervour of Paul or Augustine, is nevertheless conscious of aspirations after goodness, and of devout impulses towards life in God, which are not the creation of the will, but, coming spontaneously, reveal themselves as a Divine call to holiness; and sometimes this call is so clear and strong, so full of visions and revelations, that the whole principle of life is changed, and the man feels himself lifted into a higher realm of spiritual being without any effort on his own part. Thus grace seems to act by laws of its own, and to take no account of the human will. Nevertheless, within the Christian consciousness, the sense of responsibility, and the conviction of the reality of sin and ill-desert, are no less deep and permanent, and there is no legitimacy in these if the will has no power of free determination towards good or evil. It is probable that the majority of good men have these two experiences, and are not troubled by any apparent contrariety between them; but as soon as you come to formulate a doctrine, difficulties occur, and while one is so overwhelmed by his assurance of Divine grace that he sacrifices responsibility in its honour, another is so impressed by the voice of duty and the sense of responsibility which it evokes, that he minimizes the action of grace. The controversy which sprang from these apparently discordant facts played a conspicuous part at the time of the Reformation, so that we may reasonably assign the first place to a statement of the Lutheran dogma. The first reformers were deeply impressed by what seemed the natural alienation of the mind from God, by requirements in the Divine law which no human power was competent to fulfil, and by the impotence of all the good works prescribed by ecclesiastical authority to bring peace of mind. But peace had come to them by quite a different method. In listening to the Scriptures as the Word of God a glowing faith in Christ had been kindled in their hearts, and that faith had given them for the first time an assurance of God's love and forgiveness, and awakened that pure devotion to the higher Will which their own willing and running had failed to attain. This experience must have confirmed in their minds the doctrine of original sin; and in its turn that doctrine must have cast a dark shade over their experience. It is assumed that the natural state of man is one of sin and damnation, from which a certain number are to be saved: the question is, how is salvation effected? In his long and admirable article on grace, or, to give it its proper title, 'On love and the fulfilling of the law,'1 Melanchthon appeals to the general consciousness as a sufficient proof of the futility of works. Those who think that they are to earn eternal life by their works can have no peace of heart or conscience in the hour of death, and can never be certain whether God is gracious; for they can never know whether they have done works enough, or have satisfied the law. Rather, they will feel that they are guilty before the law, and cannot rightly love or serve God; and such hearts and consciences are very hell, full of doubt, despair, and hatred, and the highest saint would have no security against the power of the Devil, the horror of death, and the anguish of hell, if he had not the assurance of the gospel that he should attain eternal life out of pure grace.2 Accordingly the fundamental Lutheran dogma on this point relates to the impotence of the human will. It is admitted that man has free will to live outwardly in a respectable way, to choose among ordinary things, and even, from its inborn light, without the Holy Spirit, to do external works of the law; but without grace and the help and operation of the Holy Spirit man cannot please God, for the reason is blind in spiritual things, and the unregenerate will is not only turned away from God, but is God's enemy, and has pleasure only in evil, and therefore no one is able, without the Holy Spirit, to turn the whole heart to God, as the first table of the law and the first and great commandment require. It is apparent from this statement that it is the power rather than the freedom of the will which is denied. Freedom to choose between alternatives is granted, and even the power of doing such good works as society may exact 1 Apology for the Augsburg Confession, Article iii. 2 pp. 128 sqq. I follow the German. The German translation was made by Justus Jonas, but contains additions and alterations proceeding from Melanchthon himself (see J. T. Müller's edition 1860, p. lxxxiii.). 3 Augsburg Conf., Article xviii.; Apol., pp. 84, 93; Formula of Concord, Epitome, Art. ii.; Solida Declaratio, Art. ii., pp. 655 sqq. |