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Title: The doctrines of grace and their application : some studies of a colonial ministry
Author: Whyte, Alexander
Published: N.Z. Bible Tract and Book Society, Dunedin, N.Z., 1909
THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE
AND THEIR APPLICATION.
SOME STUDIES OF A COLONIAL MINISTRY.
BY THB
Rkv. ALEXANDER WHYTE, m.a„ b.d., b.sc., f.i.s.,
St. Columba’s, Church, Havelock, Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand.
tvKaipwQ aicaip(jj£.
Itonebtn:
N.Z. Bible, Tract and Book Society, Princes Street.
1909.
TO MY MOTHER’S MEMORY.
CONTENTS.
STUDIES IN DOGMATICS-
Page
1. The First Principles 5
2. Charms—these principles taught
TO THE YOUNG 1 6
3. The Christian Life 21
STUDY IN APOLOGETICS.
The Darwin Centenary 29
STUDY IN NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS—
Concerning the Collection 47
STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY—
1. Reformation - The Calvin Cen-
tenary 55
2. Recent—The Hawke’s Bay Jubilee 68
STUDIES IN PRACTICAL WORK—
1. The Colonial Minister’s Reading—
The Case for Hebrew and Greek 72
Greek 72
2. The Colonial Minister’s Life—
The Sky Pilot’s Trail 78
THE FIRST PRINCIPLES.
The Life was manifested.—l John 1, 2.
The student of this epistle observes repeatedly the word “ manifested.” It is even more noticeable in the original, for it appears in the translation in various equivalents. Each of us has his characteristic words. These are always emerging in his conversation. His friends lie in wait for them. They smilingly surname him according to one or other of them. Now John s word at this time of hia life was “ manifested.” We know where he got it. It belonged to the crisis of his life, and it moulded his thought all the rest of his days. He borrowed it from his old teacher the day he first saw his Master and Lord. When John the Baptist cried “ Behold the Lamb of God,” he told the people “ That he might be manifested to Israel, therefore am I come baptising with water.” That declaration strangely moved the generous youth. The testimony of Jesus had been the spirit of the Baptist s prophecy, and at last Jesus was manifested. The younger man hesitated, but next day as he stood by his teacher, Jesus again passed by. The Baptist cried to his disciples: “ Why have you not believed? Look upon Him. Is nob He the Lamb of God, He of Whom I spake, ‘He must increase and I must decrease 1” Then the younger man obeyed the elder, and followed Jesus. Henceforward the “ manifestation ’ of Jesus became the one category according to which all the thoughts of John the Divine were fashioned.
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE.
The Incarnation.
1. The first example of John's idiosyncrasy that we shall consider is found at the end of the present verse, “ We show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.” The first manifestation is the incarnation.
To John the alpha of Christianity is to know where Jesus was before He was born. He cannot write about Jesus without settling this question with his readers. His Gospel begins like his first epistle—“ln the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If Jesus is only of the seed of David, according to the flesh, there is nothing of Gospel to be said. Jesus then is but a man of like passions with ourselves, made under the law, sold under sin, and shapen in iniquity. Such a sinner cannot be the saviour of sinners. There are men to-day who deny the virgin birth and call themselves Christians, lo John they are but pagans. He maintains that in disowning the Son of God they forfeit their faith in God. “ Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.”
Now, how did John arrive at this conclusion regarding the pre-existence of Christ? If it was by spiritual influence, it was equally by human effort. It was by the ordinary scientific method of induction. It was the result of his investigation into the law of cause and effect. John watched Jesus more closely than any other man ever did. His subtlety and sharpness of vision showed him what most men missed. He had the best of opportunities—he leaned on Jesus’ breast. What he saw daily astonished him. His closest and narrowest look throughout three years could detect nothing unholy. Never man spake like this man, and who was there to convince Him of Sin ? What holiness and majesty! These things were not of earth; they were attainments more than human. One cause only sufficed for this effect. One hypothesis alone was adequate for this phenomenon, and that was the preexistence of Christ. John reached this conclusion as Sir Isaac Newton reached the law of gravitation. This
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE
was the theory that explained all the facts and contradicted none. “ The life was manifested, and we have seen it. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.”
No fair-minded man can study the life of Jesus Christ without reaching the same result. The moment one tries to avoid this conclusion he wraps himself in contradictions and absurdities. The foremost sceptics find themselves compelled to speak of Jesus in terms that ultimately postulate the supernatural. The only life of Jesus Christ written on natural principles that keeps the field to-day is the work of Renan, written half a century ago. The Rationalists are scattering this book broadcast to ensnare the unwary. This is their last word on Jesus Christ. That book falls to pieces because of its fundamental contradictions. As Renan advances in his work he becomes impressed with the majesty of Jesus. In his last chapter he multiplies sentences suggesting divine attributes. “ The religion of Jesus is in some respects the final religion. His perfect idealism is the highest rule of the unblemished and virtuous life. Jesus gave religion to humanity as Socrates gave it philosophy and Aristotle science. No one will improve upon the essential principle Jesus has created; he has fixed for ever the idea of pure worship. Let us place the person of Jesus at the highest summit of human greatness. Jesus remains an inexhaustible principle of moral regeneration for humanity. This sublime person who each day still presides over the destiny of the world we may call divine. Let us bow before these demigods.” In another work he says; “The Christ of the Gospels is the most beautiful incarnation of God in the most beautiful of forms.” But in order to stop short of worshipping Jesus, Renan has to make Him out to be in miracles a juggler, a cheat, or, as he has it in Greek, a thaumaturgus. “We will admit then, without hesitation, that acts which would now be considered as acts of illusion or folly
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE.
held a large place in the life of Jesus.” A demi-god and a cheat! A principle of moral regeneration and a persistent impostor! These two things do not consist. Their disparity asserts the old argument that we call the “ reduction to the absurd.” It proves the truth of the original disputed hypothesis. This finished product of rationalism breaks down. The man who goes as far as Renan must go one step further. He must fall down at the feet of Jesus and cry, “ My Lord and my God.”
That glorious form, that light uneufferable,
And that far beaming blaze of majesty.
Wherewith he wont at Heaven’s high council table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity
xu aii/ me imue-i/ wi xiiiiiii unity, He laid aside; and here with us to be
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with ue a darksome house of mortal clay.
God, Who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, by Whom He made the worlds.
The Atonement.
2. A second illustration of John’s peculiarity we find in chapter iii, verse 5: "Ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin.” The second manifestation is the atonement. It is the property of age to go back in thought to youth. The old man lives his youth over again. He remembers not yesterday, but a lifetime past. We onoe stood by the bed of a relative who had outlived threescore years and ten. She had been widowed forty years. We had seldom heard her speak of her husband. But as she lay near the end her lips were opened. She had gone back fifty years. She was again, a bride, and she would keep the tryst with him before the throne. So the old man that writes this epistle tells how his mind is ever on the day of his betrothal, of his conversion. He cannot but use the very words he heard that day—- “ Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” John had been caught up in the ethical revival of his time. He had hungered after
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE.
righteousness. He had been drawn to the man who was the most severely holy in the land. His blameless youth had felt the burden of his sin, and had agonised to be free. He had come up baptised out of the water, but he had cried within himself “ unclean, unclean.” He had brought forth fruits meet for repentance, but his sin was ever before him. That day he looked unto the Lamb of God. He talked with Jesus. Jesus would tell him what he so soon afterwards told Nioodeanus: “ The Son of Man which is in heaven came down from heaven. As Moses lifted up the serpent, so shall the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believoth on Him may not perish, but have eternal life.” Then for the first time, assured that Jesus was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, John felt the peace of God steal into his soul. Sixty years have gone past, but that precious moment is always with him. Day by day all these years John has rehearsed the actings of that day’s faith. He is now St. John the Divine, the holiest man the world has ever seen save the God-man Himself. But the nearer he comes to God the more he abhors himself, and the sweeter becomes the atonement. “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves. But He is the propitiation for our sins. He hath loosed us from our sins by His own blood.” >
Brethren, we stand where John stood, we know no other stand. We receive Jesus’ own explanation of His life and death, that He came to give Himself a a ransom for many. We accept the testimony of this Sinless One that His blood is the blood of the New Covenant shed for many for the remission of sins. We acknowledge that this Risen One was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification. His peace He leaves with us, and it abides, for it is peace through the blood of. the Cross. The demand of God within us, in our conscience, is met by the offer of God above us, in His Son. We hear the making of the covenant. The Son presents Himself;
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE.
Behold me then, me for him, life for life
I offer, on me let thine anger fall.
Account me man ; I for his sake will leave
Thy bosom, and this glory next to thee
Freely put off, and for him lastly die
Well pleased, on me let death wreak all his rage.
To that the Father answers:
0 thou in Heaven and earth, the only peace
Found for mankind under wrath, . , . . . . Thy merit
Imputed shall absolve them who renounce
Their own both righteous and unrighteous deeds,
xucu wtr.il uvtu ugnwuuo oaiu ut And live in thee transplanted, and from thee
Receive new life. So man, as is most just,
Shall satisfy for man, be judged and die,
And dying rise, and rising, with him raise
His brethren, ransomed with his own dear life ;
So heavenly love shall outdo hellish hate.
The covenant, the counsel, is confirmed by an oath. The covenant holds: the counsel is immutable. We have a strong consolation, we who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon this hope set before us.
Holy Living.
111. A third illustration of John's habit of speech we find in chapter iii, verse 8: “ For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.”
To many of us the most distressing time of life has been the period between fifteen and twentyfive. In these years there is for most men the weariest war with the devil. At fifteen the devil concentrates his forces, and lays siege to a lad’s soul. The man who will prevail has to fight as Christian fought with Apollyon in the Valley of the Shadow. Many a youth fights his fight alone, misunderstood. After long conflict he meets another who has heard the din of battle and who has endured. It was this that drew John to th© Baptist. The elder man looked tenderly upon the younger. “ I know it all, my lad. I went through it all in the deserts of Judah. That is why I ©at locusts and wear camels’ hair. I would keep under my
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE
body, and bring it into subjection, lest I myself should be a castaway. I would I could help you, but my baptism is only of water. Behold the Lamb! There is He Who can avail. His baptism is of fire,” And John clave to Jesus. We know how the young man will open his soul to the man he trusts. We have looked into the ©ye of, Henry Drummond and felt that he was the one man on earth to whom we could tell all our heart, knowing that we would have sympathy and loyalty and sure direction. So John followed Jesus. All that night he kept telling Jesus how hard it was for him to be good. “My danger is from company. I love company. Ido things in company that I might never do by myself.” And Jesus whispered to him: “If by company came death, by company also cometh the resurrection from the dead. I am come to save you by my company, to put my arm in yours and walk down the street with you, that sin may vanish in its guiltiness. Lean upon my bosom and be kept from the wicked one.”
It is by the supernatural that we are made good, as it is by the supernatural that we are pardoned. If we cry, “ Cursed be indwelling and upsprouting sin—O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 1” we get an answer which makes us exclaim: “ I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Our chemists show us that the air consists for the most part of a mixture of two gases. The one is oxygen, active, vigorous, the author of heat and comfort. The other is nitrogen, dull and inert, sluggish and neutral, diluting the oxygen and hindering its efficacy. These two gases remain in the atmosphere side by side, the one without effect upon the other, the oxygen unable to vivify the nitrogen, and being itself weakened in its power. But there comes a day when the thunder roars and the lightening flashes. In the fierce heat of that electric spark the nitrogen sloughs off its vices, and, joining with the oxygen, forms one of the most active substances we know. Dissolved in water, this new compound is the aqua fortis, that
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE.
subdues most metals to its will. When added to spirit of salt it becomes that aqua regia, which can dissolve the most precious gold itself.
So in our constitution there exist together the active principles of God’s law and Gospel, along with the baseness and inertness of our spiritual nature. The law and the Gospel have no appreciable effect upon us. They remain in the memory, in the understanding, where they were placed by parents and preachers. They aro without benefit to us, they receive disparagement from us. Their effect on others is weakened through our lethargy. We hinder the Gospel of Christ. But when to our cry the Spirit descends on us like a fire, then our natures become fused and wedded to the piecepts of the law and the promises of the Gospel. They issue in a new creation. This new thing is restless in its energy. This nascent compound is allreducing in its activity. It rushes forth eager and impetuous, seizing upon everything that is unholy, attacking and removing it, grasping everything that is godly, embracing and possessing it, making our lives like metals from the fire, purified and made white, to shine as the sun in the Kingdom of the Father.
Holy Dying.
IV. The last example we shall choose of John’s tendency in speech is found in chapter ii, verse 28; " And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He shall be manifested, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.”
There was a day when it was thought that John would never die. At the Sea of Galilee Jesus appeared to His disciples after His resurrection, and brought them the second miraculous draught of fishes. After they had dined Peter learned of his coming trials and asked how John should fare. Jesus answered, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee 1” The disciples thought this meant for John the rapture of Elijah. John in his gospel cautions us against this inference. But it would seem that he looked wistfully to the day when the Lord
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE.
would come and take him unto Himself. He saw the signs of the second coming of the Master. There were many antichrists, whereby he knew it was the last time. These signs have been present ever since. So the Lord has willed, that His servants might be alert. In every age men have believed that they should not see death before they had seen the Lord's Christ-. When the year 1000 drew near ail Europe held its breath, believing that the day of the Lord was at hand. These signs exist to-day, for the Lord would have us watch. Of that day knoweth no man, no, not the angels. He shall come as a thief in the night. You recall the climax of the greatest fable in our language. You remember the night when the longlost heir came home, and the scroll the witoh sent to Mannering;
Dark shall bo light.
And wrong done to right,
When Bertram's right and Bertram's might
Shall meet on Ellangowan Height
So our Lord shall come. His triumph will be ours. Our wrongs will be righted, and we shall get our own. Behold, He cometh with clouds, His right and might, our right and might, meeting upon the top of the mountains. He cometh, not with the slow rumble of wheels, but with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God. Then we who were exiles, the home of our sires riven from us and we from it by witchery and wickedness, will gain our Ellangowan, the inheritance to which we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.
The Marrow of Divinity.
Perhaps the most wonderful excursion in this colony is that from Rotorua to Waimangu. Early astir, the tourist passes for hours through the fern country, every dew-clad leaf glistening with the life of the morning. Suddenly there opens to him a region in which the powers of hell revel and prevail over those of earth. Great yawning ravines, blasted, dust-strewn hillsides, gaunt openings into the bowels of the earth, gurgling waters that rise wave above wave until columns
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE.
of black mud laden with broken rocks lift themselves hundreds of feet into the air, and fall crashing into the watercourses below. Thence, skirting on foot the fringe of treacherous quicksands, he sails upon a boiling lake, overhung with steaming precipices bristling with geysers. Before him is a black mountain, its side blown out to become the fragments and ashes that lie around, wasting the country t nd quenching the life of all things. He leaves the boat, and walks across the debris of the volcano to embark upon a second lake. This is of another older from the first. Its surface is gentle as the bosom of heaven. Its bays are fairy scenes, where the former desolation is done away, and trees have sprung and overgrown the waste. The thick leafage of the groves tolls of a new earth, and gives a prophecy of coming fruitfulness. Beyond this lake the tourist joins his carriage, and rides delighted homewards. But soon two other lakes appear, marvels and mysteries of loveliness. One is green, as if the beauty of the fresh herbage were concentrated within it. The other is blue, above the blue of earth, for the blue of heaven is here, and the glory of the Highest has come down to dwell with men. The beholder passes on enchanted, to feel far hence the power of this day’s visions, and to confess:
These beauteous forms
Through a long absence have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye ;
But oft in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din
Of towns and cities I have owed to them.
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet.
Felt in the blood and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration.
We have traversed in like fashion the wonderland of this epistle, with one word for our guide. W© have viewed the incarnation, as dew upon the tender herb. We have seen the earth rents, the abysses of sin and misery, and have rested in the peace of reconciliation and atonement. We have known the power - and charm of the new nature wherein dwelleth righteousness. At last, considering the second coming, we behold as in
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE.
a glass the glory of the Lord, and are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Beloved, now axe we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that, when H© shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE
CHARMS.
From 1 Thess. i, 3.
Every girl who stops at a jeweller’s window to look long at the brooches and lockets and diamonds, wonders when she will be big enough to wear such things. One day her father brings her some simple necklace with perhaps three charms attached—a heart, a cross, and an anchor. The child fondles them and calls them faith, hope, and charity. Now, as children love to have ornaments on their necks, so the Lord likes to see graces and charms in our hearts. Paul afterwards told the people of Corinth that these charms, worn not on the bosom, but in the breast, would last for ever. So whenever he thought of his friends at Thessalonica he thanked God for their work of faith and labour of love and patience of hope in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Cross.
The most common of these charms is the cross. Girls of all ages wear crosses. We have seen an African woman with the brand of a cross upon her brow. Even men wear gold crosses. This is the way some people take to tell their friends that no one can be good indeed unless he comes to the Cross of Jesus. We have seen imitation jewels. So there is an imitation goodness. It is the aping of good manners in dress and speech and carriage. But very soon imitation silver turns black, and very soon imitation goodness is tarnished by bad temper and envy and spite. True goodness is the work of faith. The lad who is going to be good looks at the Cross and sees Jesus hanging there. He wonders why the Sinless One should die among thieves. He reads in his own life the story of his sin. Ha reads in the Book the end of his sin and the judgment of the wicked. He learns in the Gospel that Jesus gave Himself a ransom for many, and in the epistles that Jesus bore God’s anger for his sins. Gradually he comes to say “ Lord Jesus be
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE
it so. Bear my sins as Tlfou hast borne the sins of the whole world.” When he does this there comes to his heart a great relief and a great joy. Ho goes home singing through the house—
Jesus paid it all;
All to Him I owe.
Many of us have fared as did Henry Martyn. He had ia< big sister who wore the l charm of true goodness, while he had but the imitation. He did not like her trying to make him a Christian. But a great sorrow came to him. His father died. He took up his New Testament and read of the Cross. After a little ho wrote to his sister, “ What a blessing it is that I have such a sister to keep me in the right way!” Later on he wrote: “ I was more than ever convinced of sin, more earnest in fleeing to Jesus for refuge.” The schoolboy, wearing the cross within, went out to be Senior Wrangler at Cambridge, and then the apostle of India, and to refresh at last by his diary and letters the people of God everywhere. Begin at the Cross. Handle and fondle the Cross. Put your finger on the nails and thrust your hand into the side.
AU your sins shall be forgiven,
Oh, how He loves!
The Anchor,
Did you ever test an anchorl Once we rode at anchor for a whole week, through a storm. We were off the east coast of Spain. The harbour of Valencia was crowded as it had never been for forty years with ships that had fled for refuge. We had been loading fruit close to the shore, but our captain removed three miles off and cast one anchor into the sea and stood by the other. Day by day the officers and engineers kept watch, ready for action, as if the ship were far at sea. Day after day the great waves would strike the ship and shake her. From side to side she rolled, her rail deep and her deck awash. Every now and then she shivered and trembled, straining and tugging at the cable. The anchor held, and we were safe.
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE
On the fifth day the rain ceased, the wind abated, and another ship sailed up and anchored beside us. Hope is such an anchor. The letter to the Hebrews speaks of the anchor as entering into that within the veil, the veil of cloud that is stretched between earth and heaven. Ihe anchor of hope fastens on the rock Christ Jesus.
So Paul speaks of the “ patience of hope.” The lad in the upper form will tell you that the word “ patience ” is made out of a Latin word which means “ suffering.” “ Patience of hope ” just means hope in spite of suffering, and in the midst of suffering, hope that Jesus will bring all things right. We all have something to suffer, and soon we may have more. To know that in some way or other the Lord will provide is to have an anchor both sure and steadfast.
Hope is sometimes deferred, but hope in Jesus prospers. The Lord does with us what our father did last Hallowe’en. When we were merry mother took apples and put them into a tub of water, and made them spin round. Then over a chair each child dropped a fork and tried to catch an apple. Sometimes he hit and sometimes he missed. But when our little sister went up to the chair father held the fork along with her and said, “Wait till I tell you —now!” At that moment she let go, and the fork fell in the right place, and stuck in an apple. She came down from the chair clapping her hands. This is just how God deals with us. We are His children. He says to us, “ Wait, wait, bear, suffer, have patience, and hope ”; and then He guides our hand and gets us in His own good time what is good for us. He supplies all our needs according to His riches by Christ Jesus, and those that hope in Him are not put to shame.
The Heart.
A few days ago we watched the little children ccme out of an infant school. We saw the boys when they reached the street clench their fists and fight. The girls went along the pavement with their arms
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THE DOCTRINES OP GRACE.
round one another’s necks. Does Jesus want the boys to become girls? Surely not. The boys must learn to fight, to fight the real enemy—the devil and all his angels. But the boys will never deserve to be called men till they become large-hearted. They will never be great men till they love their fellow-men.
Faith, hope, and love are the things that abide, but the greatest of these is love. We met, not long ago, a man as brave as David and as honest as Jonathan and as big almost as Goliath. He was a man of war, the terror of evil-doers. But by-and-bye we found why he was the best-liked man in the city. We heard everywhere, from high and low, from rich and poor, of his great love. This was the man the youths made their hero. His love had come from the Cross, by way of the sign of the Anchor.
Paul praises not dreaming about love, not singing about love, but the labour of love. Love cannot be idle—it works for someone’s sake. One of our school inspectors told us an experience in the back-blocks of his province. He had been sent into the heart of the wilderness, thirty miles beyond his furthest school in that direction. He arrived late on Saturday night at the little inn. Next morning two of the settlers waited on him and invited him to church. “ Church in these parts?” he said. “Where is the church, and where is the minister 1” They led him to a raupo whare two hundred yards off. Entering through the low doorway he found the place filled with a reverent congregation of the settlers, come from miles around, from their clearings in the scrub. Presently, from behind a screen, there entered a young lady, cultured and accomplished, who had exchanged for these wilds her native University city. She played and sang with grace. One of the settlers read a sermon and offered prayers. The inspector was deeply moved. He reported to his board that these people deserved their school. That lady was the angel of the settlement. With Church and Sunday School and daily conversation, she sweetened the intercourse of the neighbours. But the Lord loved her best and called for her. One sad day the neighbours parted
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from her on the hill behind her father’s door. Years passed, and the children of her school felt the breath of a revival of religion. For many months the schoolhouse saw thred services every Sabbath, and many souls were added unto the Lord. She had broken the alabaster box and the house wtas filled with the odour of the ointment.
Going on Before.
So we return to our starting point. Those who know the cross find with it the anchor and the heart. Those that have come to Jesus have all other things added unto them. A family of our acquaintance emigrated from Scotland. The day they were to leave home they were very sad. The father and mother said little to each other, and the old grandmother said less. They were vexed at leaving home, and anxious about the long voyage and the strange land. They worked busily to keep themselves from thinking. The mother got the children ready one by one, bidding each when dressed sit quietly and wait. One little lad of four years old could not sit. He grasped a walking stick and marched through the house, carrying it aloft singing—
.With the Cross of Jesus going on before.
The father looked at the mother, and both of them at the grandmother, and that with full hearts and wet eyes. Out of the mouth of the child the Lord had given His word and perfected Hia praise. Next morning, when the father awoke, the ship was sailing slowly because of the haze over the calm water. In the stillness ho heard the voice of his babe of two years singing in her distant cabin—
In past’ce g’een He ’eadeth me,
The q’iet wate’s by.
It was enough. That day and evc*ry day was given the daily bread of faith and hope. Goodness and mercy have followed these wanderers all the days of their life.
Jesus Christ, and Him crucified—may this be our charm, our refuge, and our reward.
THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE.
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THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.
I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.—Galatians ii, 20.
It is the happiness of us who have been the children of Christian homes and the catechumens of Christian assemblies that we never outgrow the teaching of our infancy. We are the scions of a royal race who received from our Puritan fathers nothing but what was beat, and what was God’s. We awoke to consciousness with the Shepherd Psalm upon our lips, and we sang the praise of Him who neither slumbers nor sleeps. So, first with holy text, and then with some form of sound words devised by holy men, wo were schooled in the work of the Lord Jesus. These conceptions we have never needed to qualify. The older we have grown the more gladly we have treasured them. We will read afresh to-day one of these texts of our childhood, graven on the tablets of our memory, and let the experience of years expound it. We will see what it teaches of the Christian life, as a fact, a philosophy, an appropriation.
The Fact.
I. Observe the fact of the Christian life l —“ I am crucified, nevertheless I live.”
It is not uncommon to find in Nature the same substance in quite different forms. We are familiar with the solid, the liquid, and the gaseous forms of water. We can hardly suppose that if the pigmy of an African forest were to see a snow-capped mountain, or to stand with us upon a frozen loch, he would suspect' that he was gazing at different forms of the water that dripped from his trees, still less that he would imagine the driving power of the Uganda railway to be a form yet stranger.
Even at the same temperature we have similar variety. We are familiar with the red phosphorus of our lucifer matches. This has been made of a red
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powder, stable, inert, requiring violence before it can be ignited. But there is a quite different form into which it can be changed. This form is clear and transparent like wax, readily cut with a knife. It burns with a brilliant flame; at the ordinary temperature it fumes; the heat of the hand is enough to ignite it; and so it is usually kept and handled under water.
Among the plants such alterations of form are more readily seen in the lower classes than in the higher. The farmer in summer speaks of “ rust ” in his wheat. These red patches on the green leaves are masses of simple seeds, produced singly at the ends of short stalks. But earlier in the summer there are seen upon the leaves of certain shrubs and trees most exquisitely sculptured vessels and vases which open to discharge rows of many-sided seeds. This organism pcsseses these two forms of life, the lower upon the grass, the higher upon the tree.
The most remarkable changes, however, appear in the animal kingdom. The naturalist sets us in spring time to watch certain little black fish-like creatures in a pool, swimming with prominent gills. As the spring advances these gills disappear; the tail of each creature disappears; four limbs suddenly appear, and by the time the dog days have come, and the pool has dried up, these water creatures have become land animals, leaping over the grass to seek their meat upon the moor.
Now what our men of science are so fond of showing to us in Nature without, the students of the spiritual world declare to be as real in the kingdom of the soul. The writers of the New Testament are never weary of demonstrating that there is another life above that of the natural man. They call it the life of the spirit, the life born of the spirit, the life begotten of the Father unto a lively hope, the life by the faith of the Son of God. As in other kingdoms, this life and its contrast can more easily be exhibited among the lower orders. It may be hard for us to understand the power of the devil, who walks as a raging lion, when we sit upon the cushioned pew of
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the church. But there are parts of the city in which the devil casts off his disguises. There, side by side, you may see the child of light and the son of darkness, the life of shame and the life of holiness, and the reveller being wooed to soberness by the conversion of his fellow. Although more readily seen there the distinction is universal. Above the life of education, of culture, of refinement, of taste, all which things can coexist with Paganism—there is a life of faith, that excellent vigour, that strong connected strength of soul and body renewed, grounded upon supernatural reasons.' This is a life not dull and cold and frigid, but flowing as a stream of living water through the valley of human nature. It is no base, inert, motionless life, but sparkling and bursting into flame or in the darkest moments shedding its glow of consolation. It is a life not grovelling among the herbs, but soaring to the trees of the forest. It is a life which will endure when all else shall have perished, when the world and the firmament shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.
The Philosophy.
11. Observe the philosophy of the Christian life.
What is it in Christianity that gives it its virtue! What is its vital element? It is the principle of substitution—The Sen of God loved me and gave Himself for me.”
The letter to the Galatians was written to assert this principle. It throbs with the passion of argument and declamation against those who see heaven in selfrighteousness. The false teachers who visited Galatia would have their hearers depend for salvation upon their own good works. With Paul the saving of the soul is hazarded by turning the eye from Christ’s merits to one's own. “ Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.” Paul sums up his gospel in vivid fashion a few verses below our text: “ Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for
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us.” He expounds it in logical order in a letter which we might almost call the second edition of this letter—the Epistle to the Romans—“ The redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past.”
The kernel of the whole matter lies in this word “ propitiation.” We are not at a loss to discover what this means. The word Paul employs is the same word as was used by the Greek translators of the Hebrew text to express the Hebrew word which our version renders “ mercy seat,” but which we would rather translate “ place of expiation ” or “ place of propitiation.” The “mercy seat” was the central symbol of the Jewish worship. It was the meeting place between God and His people. It was the covering of the ark of the covenant, the sacred chest that contained the tables of the law. It rested in the Holy of Holies, the innermost chamber of the temple, into which none might enter but the high priest, and even himself only once a year. This Greek name was therefore a household word in every Greek-speaking Jewish family. As the mother in our midst teaches the little child and stirs its heart by showing it pictures of the Saviour on the Cross, so the Jewish mother took her little one upon her knee and told him the romantic tale of the mercy seat and the great day of atonement. She told how the people came to the temple to be sorry for their sins; how the high priest, after making sacrifice for his own sins, took two goats to offer sacrifice for the sins of the people; how h© slew the one and brought its blood into the most holy place, and sprinkled it upon the mercy seat and before the mercy seat; and how he took the other and confessed over it the sins of the people, “ putting them upon the head of the goat,” and sent it out by the hand of a fitting man into the wilderness to wander and die in its shame. When the little lad plied her with questions she would tell how the people could not approach God till the hindrance of their gin was removed; how the blood of the goat was shed instead of the blood of the people; how the scapegoat, bearing their sin upon its head
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into banishment, took the place of the people who deserved nothing but to be driven, from the face of God. God fer the sake of this substitute gave the people the forgiveness of their sins and a share of his friendship. Therefore, it is clear to us that when Paul applied to Jesus that familiar household' name for “ mercy seat ” he carried into the word “ propitiation,” as an expression for Christ’s work, the ideas and ideals that were involved in the ritual of the great day of atonement. That this is historically the true philosophy of Christianity we have evidence from one of the earliest Christian treatises that have come down to us. Bound up with our earliest manuscript of the Greek Testament, there is a commentary on the gospel, a letter purporting to come from Barnabas. The early fathers counted it genuine, though they did not give to it the weight that was given to the letters of Paul. Barnabas takes the ritual of the day of atonement and applies it directly to Christ—“ That he might foreshow that he was to suffer for. them, hear then how he appointed it. ‘ Take,’ says he, ‘ two goats, fair and like, and offer them; and let the high priest take one of them for a burnt offering.’ And what must bo done with the other. ‘Let it,’ he says, ‘be accursed.’ Consider how exactly this appears to have been a type of Jesus.” Christ is the scapegoat. This is the philosophy of our religion. This is its central idea. The principle of our faith is to be seen not in its issues, not in the quickening of mind which it has caused, not in its wider knowledge, its extensive literature, its better manners, its purer society. All these things may exist as by-products in cultured men and women who have no higher life in its hopes, its affections, its aspirations than had the Epicurean hearers of Paul at Athens. The basis of our religion is the doctrine of the expiation of sin by the blood of the Redeemer. He bore the penalty that we might be accepted. He was abandoned that we might be welcomed. He despaired that we might delight. On Him was the wrath of God that on us might be the peace of God. It is because Christ was for us a scapegoat that we are lambs of the flock. It is because He cried
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“ My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” that we can cry, “ Thy gentleness hath made us great.” This is the core of our faith. Take this away and we are pagans. But beyond all controversy, by the inexorableness of a logic founded on any reasonable interpretation of the facts of revelation and of history, we have a Great High Priest who has passed into the heavens to make propitiation for our sins and to save to the uttermost.
The Appropriation
111. Observe the appropriation of the Christian life— I live by the faith of the Son of G-od. ’
Every missionary of the Church Missionary Society, the largest of all such societies and the partner of the Presbyterians, looks back to Charles Simeon, the founder of the society, as his spiritual father. When Simeon went up to the University the master of his college invited him to Communion. He was panicstricken, for he was not ready. He sought to prepare himself by studying the best books. In three weeks he made himself ill with reading and fasting and prayer. At last in Passion week ho read that the Jews knew what they did when they transferred their sin to the head of the offering. “ The thought rushed into my mind, ‘ What! may I transfer all my guilt to another? Has God provided an offering for met, that I may lay my sins upon his head! Then, God willing, I will not bear them upon my own soul a moment longer.’ Accordingly, I sought to lay my sins upon the sacred head of Jesus, and on Easter Day I awoke early with these words upon my heart and lips, ‘Jesus Christ is risen to-day, Hallelujah!’ From that hour peace flowed in abundance into my soul, and at the Lord’s Table in our chapel I had the s-veetest access to God through my blessed Saviour.’’
My brothers, it is this act of transferring our sin and guilt to another that is the appropriation of the Christian life. Isaiah cried in his epic of substitution: “ The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all;
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he bore the sins of many.” David, overcome in repentance, and feeling in his soul the gleam of faith, cried, “ Blessed is the man whose sin is forgiven.” The word used for "forgiven ” is the same Hebrew word that Isaiah used to express “ bare.” The psalmist’s cry is the shout of deliverance that has come to a soul penitent and ransomed, “ Blessed is the man whose transgression is carried.” It is to this one act of the abandonment of our sin upon the head of Jesus that there comes the response of the power of Christ and the gift of the Holy Ghost. To those who are justified by faith is given the implanting of the spirit of holiness, until at last they stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.
You may remember the crisis of the most awful study of sin and sorrow that the American nation has furnished to our literature. You have read the story of the sinner who has lived the life of secret agony, wearing the scarlet letter beneath his dress. He comes forth from uttering an oration of surpassing eloquence to walk amid the plaudits of the great men of his land to the feast in the banqueting hall. As the procession passes the pillory he sees standing by it a woman and her child, the woman who seven years before had stood upon that scaffold, clasping her infant in her arms, and bearing the scorn of all the settlement, the scarlet letter blazing the while upon her breast. Then over this man, wasted by the anguish of his double life of inward horror and of outward serenity, there comes at last a gracious influence. He turns to the scaffold and stretches forth his arms. “ Hester, come hither; come, my little Pearl.” Leaning on her shoulder, supported by her arm, the child beside them, he ascends the steps of the scaffold and bares his breast before the people to show them on his flesh the same red sign that she bears on her robe. Then the fiend who has tracked his victim all these years, insinuating himself into his secret counsels and playing upon the fibres of his heart with tortures never ending, throws up his arms undone, foiled of the vengeance he has planned. " Hadet thou sought the
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whole earth over, there was no place so secret, no high or lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me—save on this very scaffold.”
My brothers, each of us bears upon his bosom and upon his raiment, a spectre to his own eyes and emblazoned ocfore the eyes of all his kindred, that selfsame scarlet letter. There is none that doeth good, no not one. For us guilty men there is but one safe standing place in all the world. It is the pillory, the scaffold, the place of a skull. It is where well nigh two thousand years ago One stood for us and hid not His face from sham© and spitting. It is “ a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stands a cross, and a little below, a sepulchre.” Only here can we escape the fangs of our arch enemy and all his minions. Herein is our protection, that in the wounds of Him Who hung there the fiery darts of judgment have been quenched. My brothers, let us abandon the refuge of. lies and seek that scaffold
Where the young prince of glory died.
Here let us take our stand, here at the Cross. Let us dwell all the days of our life under the shadow of the Cross. Her© only in the universe have we peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.
Unto Him Who loved us and loosed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings aud priests unto God and His Father, to Him be glory and dominion, world without end, Amen.
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THE DARWIN CENTENARY.
The twelfth day of February registered the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles Robert Darwin. The centenary is being observed with honour. The Senate of our University has appointed its Chancellor, the Chief Justice of the Dominion, to represent it at the celebrations to be held at Cambridge, the university at which, after that of Edinburgh, Darwin was trained. This is the public tribute of our colony to the greatest naturalist of our time. His statu© we have seen conspicuous at the entrance to the Natural History collections of the British Museum, which owe to him more than to any other their present order and extent. He liee with the heroes of our nation in Westminster Abbey.
The Manner of the Workman.
The nature of Darwin’s work we may illustrate by an account of his own. “In the summer of 1860 I was idling and resting near Hartfield, where two species of Sundew abound, and I noticed that numerous insects had been entrapped by the leaves. I carried home some plants, and on giving them insects saw the movements of the tentacles, and this made me think it probable that the insects were caught for some special purpose. Fortunately, a crucial test occurred to me, that of placing a large number of leaves in various nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous fluids of equal density, and as soon as I found that the former alone excited energetic movement, it was obvious that here was a fine new field for investigation.
“ During subsequent years whenever I had leisure I pursued my experiments, and my book on Insectivorous Plants was published in July, 1875, that is sixteen years after my observations. The delay in this case, as with all my other books, has been of great advantage to me; for a man after a long interval can
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criticise his own work almost as well as if he were another person. The fact that a plant should secrete when properly excited a fluid containing an acid and ferment, close! -- analogous to the digestive fluid of an animal, was certainly a remarkable discovery.”
Thus he worked, seeing things where no one else had seen anything, testing his conclusions till they could scarcely be disputed, and teaching all the world to use their eyes and canvass creation. He disclaimed genius. “At no time am I a quick thinker or writer; whatever I have done in science has solely been by long pondering, patience, and industry.” He had all the Puritan love of, work and zeal for duty and scorn of play. Like Herbert Spencer, whom in ill-health and long life he so resembled, he made work possible by the most resolute economy of strength and time. “ My habits are methodical, and this has been of not a little use for my particular line of work. Even illhealth, though it has annihilated several years of my life, has saved me from the distractions of society and amusement.” His life and work are alike a rebuke and an inspiration.
The “ Beagle ” and the Bay of Islands.
To New Zealanders there is a special interest in Darwin's account of his five years’ voyage round the world in the survey ship “ Beagle.” On December 21, 1835, the “ Beagle,” under Captain Fitzroy, afterwards our Governor, visited the Bay of Islands. Darwin’s description is as complete as it is brief. “ Three whaling ships lay at anchor. . . . An air of, extreme quietness reigned over the whole district. In the afternoon we went on shore to one of the larger groups of houses . . . the residence of the missionaries. ... It was quite pleasing to behold the Engl’sh owners in the gardens before the houses.” Most of the features of the place and the people are noted. We see the hills covered 11 with tall fern, together with a low bush that grows like a Cypress.” We see the fortified pahs, the weapons and the courtesies, the rubbing of noses and the lack of
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soap, the storing of potatoes, and the reserve of fernroot and shellfish. W© thread the kauri forests and dig the gum and deplore the docks. The industrial mission at Waimate receives much notice. “ I cannot attempt to describe all I saw. ... I thought it admirable. . All this is very surprising when it is considered that five years ago nothing but fern flourished here. . . The lesson of the missionary is the enchanter’s wand.” The Christian Natives astonish him both in their prayers and in their play. ' When I thought of the austerity of which the missionaries have been accused, I was amused by observing one of their own sons taking an active part in the game. ... I took leave of the missionaries with thankfulness for their kind welcome and with feelings of high respect for th©ir gentlemanlike, useful, and upright characters. I think it would be difficult to find a body of men better adapted for the high office which they fulfil.” The last word is melancholy. ‘ December 30.—1n the afternoon w© stood out of th© Bay of Islands on our course to Sydney. I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a charming place. Amongst th© Natives there is absent that charming .simplicity which >s found at Tahiti, and the greater part of the English are the very refuse of society. Neither is the country itself attractive. I look back to one bright spot, and that is Waimate, with its Christian inhabitants.” To-day, after threequarters of a century, this colony furnishes England with army officers, and Rhodes scholars, and Nobel prize-men. It enriches India and China with teachers of Christian civilisation. The son of one settler has been family doctor in th© household of the King’s granddaughter, and through the training of the son of Darwins “ Mr Williams,” a Maori is a Minister of the Crown.
The Origin of Species.
When Darwin sailed in the Beagle” he believed that God had created plants and animals much as they stood. This appears in his description of those very
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species of the Galapagos Islands which were to play so different a part in his reasoning. “ Considering the small size of these islands, we feel the more astonished at the number of their aboriginal beings, and at their confined range. Seeing every height crowned with its crater, and the boundaries! of most of the lava streams still distinct, we are led to believe that within a period geologically recent the unbroken ocean was here spread out. Hence both in space and time we seem to be brought somewhat near to the great fact, that mystery of mysteries, the first appearance of new beings on this earth.’' The germ of a new view shows itself in the account of the birds. Of the finches there were thirteen species, all peculiar to the Islands. “ The most curious fact is the perfect gradation in the size of the beaks. . . . One might really fancy that from an original paucity in birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.” As he worked in England at his collections this new view grew upon him. Other men had thought of it, even of natural selection. He thought adequately. He wrote draft after draft of an essay on the subject. In 1844 he told Hooker—“ At last gleams of light have come, and I am almost convinced, quite contrary to the opinion I started with, that species are not—it is like confessing a murder—immutable.” One day in 1858 Wallace, then in the Moluccas, sent him what was actually a statement of his own theory. Wallace, ■when ill of a fever, had conceived the idea; he had thought it out in two hours, and written the paper in three evenings. Darwin, as Wallace desired, sent it on to Lyell, adding, “ Your words have come true with a vengeance, that I should be forestalled.” Hooker and Lyell saw that he got his due. Papers by Darwin and Wallace were read together to the Linnean Society. In 1859 the “ Origin of Species ” was published. The whole edition was sold the first day. The book asserted that all organic beings that had ever lived on this earth were derived from some primitive form. The advance had been mide by small successive variations extending over vast ages. The main factor in the progress had been Natural Selection. The successful forms had been
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survivals of the fittest. Although in the book the growth of any particular species was not discussed, yet he thought it best, that no honourable man should accuse him of concealing his views, to add that by the work a light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history. A revolution took place in scientific thought. To-day every naturalist adopts evolution as at least a useful working theory. It has given cohesion to the various branches of natural science. It has stimulated the researches of multitudes of labourers who have sought to fill the blanks in the story of development. By its immense contribution to the sum of knowledge it has brought countless benefits to the human race.
“ The Little Rift Within the Lute.”
But, after all, Darwin's particular contention was only a theory. In the past, other scientific theories widely held and fruitful in discovery have ultimately been utterly disproved. Our chemistry professor used to quote the Phlogiston theory of heat, which ruled chemistry for a century, and which was at last completely set aside by Black’s experiments. Huxley, in an altogether worthy and generous review of the “ Origin,” instanced the successive theories of astronomy. “ What if the orbit of Darwinism should be a little too circular? Grand as was the service Copernicus rendered to Science, Kepler and Newton had to come after him. . . . It is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in Nature, has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or natural. . . . This ‘ little rift within the lute ’ is not to be disguised or overlooked.” The time came when Darwin and his son confessed—“ Wo cannot prove that a single species has changed.”
11.
Theology in the “ Origin.”
In the “ Origin ” Darwin protested that his views need shock no man’s religion. When men accused him
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of ungodliness, he comforted himself by remembering that even Leibnitz had attacked the views of Sir Isaac Newton as subversive of natural and, by inference, of revealed religion. He exhibited a letter from “ a celebrated author and divine,” who wrote that it was just as noble a conception to believe that God had created a few original forms capable of self-development “ as that by a fresh act of creation he had supplied the voids caused by the action of His laws.” The last paragraph of the book is a picture of a tangled bank with plants of many kinds, with birds singing in the bushes, with various insects flitting about and worms crawling on the ground. All these have been produced from the war of Nature, from famine and death. " There is grandeur in this view of life with its several powers having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or one, and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.”
The Religion of Darwin.
But as a matter of fact the views of Darwin had changed. Whilst on board the “Beagle” he was quite orthodox. On one occasion he wa® heartily laughed at by several of the officers, though themselves orthodox, for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. The ceaseless working of natural selection, however, explained tor him so many things that used to look miraculous, that he got out of the way of considering miracle at all. So he looked on the Old Testament as no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos. He gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. Regarding God, his judgment fluctuated. His sense of God was often very faint. No one described better than he the adaptations of plants and animals to their surroundings or to their work, which other men called design, but he refused the inference of a Designer. He could not' admit that the existence of «o-called
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natural laws implied purpose. Late in life he confessed to the Duke of Argyll how the conviction that these wonderful contrivances were the expression of mind often came over him with overwhelming force, but that other times it seemed to go away. Yet in his most extreme fluctuations he. never was an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. If, in his chapter's on variation, he spoke as if the variations were due to chance, he protested that this was a wholly incorrect expression. He could not conceive of this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. As to the beginning of things, he called himself an agnostic. So far as a future life was concerned, he said every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.
And of His Followers.
The followers of Darwin proceeded to out-Herod Herod. Many men brought up like him in the atmosphere of evangelical religion, became agnostic and something more. Since, as they believed, man had been gradually modified from the ape, emerging as a half-brute and then as a wild savage, gradually through a million years becoming human, there was no Garden of Eden, no fall, no sin to speak of, no curse, no judgment, no incarnation or resurrection or ascension, no need of redemption, no use for prayer, no hell, and no heaven.
The Seraph Abdiel,
If Darwin gave an uncertain sound, Wallace arrayed himself for the battle. This man, to whom is due almost as much as to the other whatever is useful in their hypothesis, has maintained the direct intervention of the creative act of Almighty God. Others demanded this for the creation of matter, and emphasised the absence of any other power for the origin of life. He urged that it was equally logical to understand the divine action in the appearance of
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man. He was not shy of a break in the chain. He believed in miracle as possible and actual. He thought a new force necessary to explain the development of man, especially of his brain and mind. The brain of the savage was too large for his actual requirements, and could not, therefore, have been produced merely from causes adapted to these requirements. The absence of a general hairy covering in lower man was another obstacle. He found difficulty especially in conceiving the origin of some of man’s physical and moral faculties by natural selection. The nature of the moral sense was something transcendent. While, therefore, he conceded natural and universal laws, he concluded that a superior intelligence had guided the development of man in a definite direction and for a special purpose. It was clear to most men on the other side that Wallace, without accepting revelation, had given away the case against Theism and Christianity. If God came in so often, what was there to prevent Him coming in at the resurrection or at any other miracle ?
The Glorious Company of the Apostles.
We well remember when we were first introduced to these studies. Materialism was at its worst. With some it was rampant, with others it was despondent. Romanes was deploring: “ It becomes my obvious duty to stifle all belief of the kind which I conceive to be the noblest, and to discipline my intellect with regard to this matter into an attitude of the purest scepticism. With this virtual negation of God the universe has lost to mo its soul of loveliness. ... I think of the appalling contrast between the hallowed creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as I now find it.” But already reaction had set in. Bayloy Balfour, in Glasgow, was telling us that the first chapter of Genesis was an admirable statement of evolution, the more amazing that it was so ancient. Cleland, in the intervals of histology and poetry, was preaching design in the development of the egg. We have heard M'Kendrick at the University Council maintain against Edward Caird that evolution
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was consistent with the Confession of Faith. Kelvin every now and then was punctuating his lectures with adjurations not to let evolution theories blind us to the great Optician. In these paleolithic days even John Mott had his forerunners, and Gairdner, the Nestor of the medical quadrangle, was leading the men in their prayers. All these were professors of European reputation. We found Edinburgh yet more devout than Glasgow. We listened certainly to Romanes delivering the lectures h© afterwards published as “ Darwin and After Darwin,” though we got little hint that h© would so soon come to the Lord's table. But week by week the great Dons of the University appeared behind Henry Drummond on the platform of the Oddfellows’ Hall to support him in the evangelisation of the students. Simpson and Grainger Stewart among the physicians and Joe Bell and Carter among the surgeons, the idols of the students, knew the chief end of man, and were not ashamed. Tait was the ally of Kelvin, and Crum Brown, like M'Kendrick, was eminent as an Assembly elder. We have seen the Medical Student’s Association rally in hundreds to hear Bishop Lightfoot open the Valley of Achor for a door of hope, and muster in many hundreds at Free St. George's to study Puritan pathology. Wisdom was justified of all her children.
Is Saul also Among the Prophets?
The confident religion of these eminent men has its counterpart in the hesitation of no less a Darwinian than Huxley. Wo believe most people think of Huxley as an uncompromising Mohammedan, ready to offer to every man “death or Darwin.” His essays show him otherwise. None has a greater reverence for Darwin, for his singularly original and well-stored mind, and his high-minded love of truth. His experience in reading the “ Origin ” is naively confessed • “ You spin through it as if it were a novel the first time you read it, and think you know all about it; the second time you read it you think you know rather less about it; and the third time you are amazed to find how little you have apprehended its vast scope and objects, I can positively say that 1 never take
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it up without finding in it gome new view or light or suggestion that I have not noticed before.’ He thinks that several of the chapters have no equals in the whole range of biological literature. But he clearly distinguishes the book and its theory. The utmost that he claims for the theory is that it will guide speculation in biology for three or four generations. The “rift within the lute” impresses Huxley. Again and again he comes bank to it: “ Our acceptance of the Darwinian hypothesis must be provisional so long as one link in the chain of evidence is wanting; and so long as the animals and plants certainly produced by selective breeding from a common stock are fertile and their progeny are fertile with one another, that link will be wanting. ... If we were shown that this must be the necessary and inevitable result of all experiments, I hold that Mr Darwin's hypothesis would be utterly shattered.” This is something very different from the cocksureness of so many of the lesser students of Science. Another of Darwin's weak points, which later men have emphasised, is clearly indicated by Huxley : “Mr Darwin’s position might, we think, have been even stronger than it is if he had not embarrassed himself with the aphorism, ‘ Nature, non facit saltum,’ which turns up so often in his pages. We believe that Nature does make jumps now and then.” His favourite example is the Ancon sheep. In 1791 a Yankee farmer found a ram lamb with a long body and short, bandy legs. He bred from this ram until he had a flock that could no longer trouble him by leaping over the fence. No one, moreover, has more courageously acknowledged the failure to get a step between man and the ape. “ The structural difference between man and the man-like apes certainly justify our regarding him as constituting a family apart from them. ... In the present creation at any rate no intermediate link bridges over the gap between Homo and Troglodytes. No one is mere strongly convinced than I am of the gulf between civilised man and the brutes, or is more certain that whether from them or not, he is certainly rot of them. This functional difference
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is vast, unfathomable, and truly infinite in its consequences.” He ia equally frank about the lack of any hint in the fossil human remains of a development of new species. “ I may say that the fossil remains of man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us nearer to that lower pithecoid form by the modification of which he has propably become what he is.' He makes another concession, which many will think equally surprising. “ I am one of those who believe that at present there is no evidence that mankind sprang originally from any more than a single pair.”
Wherefore should the Heathen say, “ Where is now their Cod?”
These utterances of one who has all these years been so closely associated with Darwin seem to us to open the door to the old-fashioned theology. If all mankind have originated from a single pair, Adam and Eve emerge again. If evolution is by “ jumps,” what is there to prevent a “ jump ” that will create man? If the difference between men and the ape be infinite, why should not the “ jump ’’ be in the direction of holiness? And so we are led back to a familiar definition upon which is raised the whole structure of Biblical and supernatural religion;— God created man, male and female, after His own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.”
11l
We have found in the writings of Huxley admissions which warrant us, with the Darwinian hypothesis in full view, in continuing to teach our children the Shorter Catechism. We venture to add some other reasons that seem to us to justify the first chapter of Genesis, with all its implications.
The Sudden Emergence of Species.
We remember conversing with the then president of the Lmnean Society, the society in whose publica-
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tions the original papers of Darwin and Wallace appeared. This gentleman was the curator of the botanical collections in the British Museum, and one of the first scientists in his department in the Kingdom. He assured us that he was as a botanist kept from accepting without qualification the views of Darwin because of the facts of fossil botany. The sudden emergence of numerous new species, for instance, at the beginning of the carboniferous period, presented too serious an obstacle to the theory of continuous descent. That distinguished botanist is on© of the foremost elders in our Church in London, and one of the most fervent of evangelicals. Darwin felt the full force of this objection. In the later editions of ths “ origin ” he does not conceal that it is urged against him by prominent students of the rocks, particularly by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick. Ho acknowledges that if numerous species belonging to the same genera or families have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to a theory of evolution by natural selection. His suggestion is that the intermediate stages would be manifest if only we had in the rocks the complete record. “To the question,” he says, “ why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer. . . . The case at present remains inexplicable, and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained.” The diffidence of the master ie very different from the dogmatism of his disciples.
And of Man.
The advent of man is as sudden. He belongs to the very latest strata. If we accept the ordinary classification of the rocks into primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary, we find the last of these falls into two divisions hardly separated from one another, the Glacial period and the Human period. These last deposits are superficial, found in peat mosses, at the bottoms of lakes and on the floors of caves. They are ancient, as men term ancient, for the human
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remains are found along with the bones of extinct animals. But the men who owned these bones were every inch men. The two best known fossil skulls are carefully noted by Huxley. That from the cave of Engis, first described in 1833, was found along with the bones of the mammoth elephant. And yet, says Huxley, " this skull has no mark of degradation about any part of its structure. It is in fact a fair average human skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage.” The other skull was found in 1857 in a cave in the Neanderthal. Huxley agrees that this is the most ape-like skull yet discovered, yet he calculates that the capacity of the cranium is the average capacity for Hottentot and Polynesian skulls. The measurement of the other bones of the same skeleton indicate quite a European of middle stature. “In no sense,” he concludes, “ can the Neanderthal bones be regarded as the remains of a being intermediate between men and apes. ' In 1891 there was found in Java a skull which the finder, Dr Dubois, considered the missing link. When Dubois expounded his views at the Ethnological Society at Leyden in 1895, the chairman, the venerable Virchow, the chief authority in Europe on ethnology, stoutly contested Dubois’s measurements as well as his arguments. He held that the skull was only one of a large gibbon. He declared that up to the present no one had succeeded in making a diluvial discovery which could be held as referring to a man of the ape type. We can understand why it was that when Haeckel advocated the teaching of the principles of evolution in elementary schools, Virchow would have none of it. He objected that it was mischievous to teach a hypothesis which still remained in the speculative stage. The principles of evolution were not as yet proved.
Within Recent Times.
The difficulty of Darwin’s theory increases when we observe the relatively small time allowed to evolution by the greatest students of the earth’s
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history. Darwin calls this a “ formidable objection, for it seems doubtful whether the earth, in a fit state for the habitation of living creatures, has lasted long enough.” He cites the calculation of Sir William Thompscn, afterwards Lord Kelvin, that the consolidation of the earth’s crust occurred not more than 200 million years ago. That seems to him a very short time for the many and great mutations of life. His hope is that the early changes in the physical conditions will prove to have been more rapid than they are at present. Later study has been altogether against Darwin’s hopes. On the one hand the geologists contend that there is no sign of such a change in the rapidity of physical processes. On the other hand Lord Kelvin greatly reduced his estimates until be argued that the age of the sun was not more than 20 millions of years, and that of the earth much lees. Professor Tait, Lord Kelvin’s partner in many of his •studies, has allowed not more than 10 millions of years for the age of the earth. Now scientists so different in their opinions as Dana and Haeckel agree that the tertiary and quaternary rocks together have lasted not more than one sixteenth part of the total length of the life of the earth. Of that, again, the quaternary allowance is only about an eight part of that of the tertiary, and of this last the glacial portion is much more extensive than the human period. The advent, of man must therefore have been far too recent for Darwinism. This line of reasoning has received a striking corroboration from the results of the examination of several river gorges which have been formed since the last ice sheet retreated at the close of the Glacial epoch. We may instance the Niagara Falls, Lyell thought their age was about one hundred thousand years. The staff of the geological survey of the United States consider that they are not older than seven thousand years. The authorities agree almost unanimously, we are assured, that post glacial time does not exceed ten thousand years. We realise that a revolution in estimate has taken place, and that the Biblical account is ceasing to appear unreasonable.
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In Early Perfection.
Now the remains of early man in Europe show him to have been endowed with much skill. Our text books figure the drawing of a mammoth elephant on palaeolithic ivory. The race that could do such work with its correct proportions and vigorous outline, possessed no small culture. This, then, is Europeean man, say, six or eight thousand years ago. It is admitted that he must have come from the warmer regions of the South, along with the lions and bears and elephants whose remains axe found with his. In these warm regions, in that very quarter in which it is agreed we must place the original home of the human race, the sand dunes of Assyria and the swamps of Babylonia have revealed to us a marvellously perfect civilisation existing six thousand years ago. The tombs of Egypt give us written records of the same age. These facts are not in harmony with any view of gradual modification of something like man through vast ages. But they do harmonise with the belief that God made man upright, though he has sought out many inventions.
The Newer Evolution and the Old Faith.
Professor Orr has directed our attention to the attitude of the more recent German evolutionists, as set forth by Rudolph Otto in a series of articles in one of the more “ advanced ” of the German reviews. These students, while retaining the principle of descent, have passed by Darwin s explanation of the mode. They place emphasis on elements which Darwin’s earlier critics did not miss. They think of variation as a property of all living beings, acting independently of external causes, and equally active in neutral surroundings. They remember Huxley's insistence upon advance by “ leaps,” and give this a leading place in their systems. They differ absolutely from Darwin in the place they give to the struggle for existence. They regard this as a factor hostile and not favourable to evolution. They argue that under hard conditions no new species can originate, and that natural selection
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decimates the forms which variation has secured. They assert that progress and advance are made, not by adaptation merely to external conditions, with the gradual building up in successive generations of the characters which appear useful, but by an impulse which resides within the organism and directs it to perfection. This newer evolution is a restoration of the old faith. If there resides in the organism a tendency to advance towards a given point, then the former doctrine of design is brought back. The ideas and forms evolve out of the germ because they were put there. They evolve according to direction. The heavens still declare the glory of God and the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. If progress is to be considered, not as by infinitesimal variation, but by “ jumps,” then we have restored the doctrines of special creation and miracle. A “ leap ” sufficiently great gives us psychical man as well as physical man. It gives us man without sin as well as with speech. We again see him made in the imago of God, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures. This philosophy of “ leaps renders logical the incarnation and the resurrection and the whole Christian dogmatic. It preaches the faith that once it destroyed.
“ The Facts Beat Me.”
Wallace has told us how he abandoned materialism. He had been a philosophical sceptic, revelling in Voltaire and Strauss. He could find no place in hia mind for spiritual existence, or for any agencies in the world except matter and force. Bub his attention was directed to some phenomena in a friend's family. “ The facts became more and more assured, more and more varied, more and more removed from anything that modem science taught or modern philosophy speculated on. The facts beat me.'’ So he was led to believe in a great cloud of witnesses, of spirits of various grades that can act on matter and influence mind. Therefore, for nearly half a century this man, who shares
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with Darwin the honour of having led the world in its modern scientific movement, has stood the champion of the kingdom of spirit. He has taught the world that evolution by natural selection and the survival of the fittest may account for the sweater and the money grabber and the company promoter; but that there is another origin for the devotion of the patriot, the enthusiasm of the artist, or the constancy of the martyr.
“The facts beat me!” Years before we saw Wallace’s confession we reached independently the same conclusion. While yet at school w© passed through the crisis that old-fashioned people call conversion. We discovered the reality of the exceeding sinfulness of sin and of the holiness of God. We experienced what Calvin calls the secret testimony of the Holy Spirit to the truth of Scripture. We received the witness that Christ died for our sins. We felt the new birth and believed to the saving of the soul. These facts were as real to us as the movements of protoplasm and the mysteries of conjugation. They were as palpable as Darwin’s variation of pigeons under domestication, and Huxley and Marsh’s tertiary bones from successive strata suggesting the evolution of the horse. We could not fit these facts into the unvarying order of Nature demanded by a materialistic or pantheistic evolution. We could not look upon sin as an innocent vestigial characteristic, a vermiform appendix surviving from a lowly ancestry. We could not derive our cunning from the cat or our rapacity from the shark. Sin was an invader, a parasite sending its suckers into the very cambium ring of our nature and sapping our life at its source. That we should have power over sin was not natural, but supernatural. Wo had flung off the parasite by faith in Him who wore the crown of thorns. We were free from the guilt of sin to our unspeakable gladness, and to the sight of those who watched us we had shaken off habits of sin.
Such phenomena of consciousness, this acquaintance with spiritual influence, and this emancipation by hanging on Him Who hung upon the Cross, have
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become the imperial factors of our existence. We can receive no philosophy as universal which has no place for them. When in the science quadrangle we met the Sadducean cry, uttered in those days so blatantly, “ There is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit,” we answered, “We speak that we do know,” “ Whereas I was blind, now I see.” So we hold our religion with our science. The religion came first and the science fitted into it. and was ruled by it. We have long learned to offer to others as our apologetic the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. We believe, with Arnold, that there is no fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer. Upon this corner stone we raise the whole fabric of the Christian system. But for ourselves we have a deeper witness, and an experimental authority. We can hold the Christian faith with any theory of an evolution directed and limited. We fit our faith into the breaks. We see a break at the origin of matter, at the origin of life, at the origin of man, at the redemption of man, at all times when we cry unto the Lord in our trouble, and He delivers us out of our distresses, and whenever He opens the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers. So, bearing with us all that science can give, we come unto Mount Zion, and to the general assemblv and church of the first born, and to the blood of sprinkling. We worship Him Who is before all things, and by Whom all things consist.
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CONCERNING THE COLLECTION.
Paul places the collection alongside the resurrection, as one of the verities of the faith and the doctrines of grace. After the rapture and the eloquence of the greatest discussion on the resurrection that literature contains, after uttering words to which we come back at the most solemn moments of our lives, when we commit our dead in hope, Paul takes breath for a. moment, and then adds; “Now concerning the collection, on the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him."
Jerusalem was famine-striken. Paul, who had once made women widows and children orphans, now yearned to feed them. He asked each church he visited to help. Corinth sent back a ready answer. Paul, addressing Macedonia, held Corinth and Achaia up to admiration. A year passed, but the collection in Corinth had not yet been made. Therefore, in his second letter, in chapters viii and ix, he pled with the Corinthians to honour their promise. These three chapters, from these two epistles, contain the chief exposition of Christian liberality we possess. Scattered certainly throughout the Scriptures are sufficient examples and exhortations. Jacob vows to give a tenth and his devout sons obey him. Later, God enters into covenant with the young man, offering him all manner of blessings, if he will fulfil three conditions—" Attend unto my law," “In all thy ways acknowledge Me,” “Honour the Lord with thy substance"—the three conditions of Bible study and of prayer and of giving. Jesus, in His picture of the judgment seat, represents niggardliness as the chief cause of doom—“ Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.” So great a place, however, does Christian liberality hold in Paul’s view, that in these chapters he gives it six other significant names besides the earlier name “ collection.”
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I.—“ Grace.”
The word translated “liberality” in 1 Cor. xvi, 3, is the ordinary Greek word for grace. The same word he uses in 2 Cor. viii, 1. Paul delights to place liberality among the Christian graces. Most solemnly does he exhibit the astonishing “grace” that had been shed abroad on the churches of Macedonia. They were in poverty “ down to the depth.” This poverty was a test to show what manner of spirit they were of, whether they would excuse themselves from giving by saying: “ They had nothing,” “ They were poorer than their neighbours,” “ Charity begins at home,” “ Be just before you are generous,” or any of the other expletives of meanness. But though in great affliction they had joy—the joy of Paul and Silas, who, in the Macedonian prison at Philippi, with their feet fast in the stocks, at midnight prayed and sung praises unto God, while the prisoners heard them. That joy abounded unto the riches of their liberality. Paul’s verdict on the Macedonians is exactly that which we have heard collectors give when returning to us their collecting books: “ The poor give more than the rich; they know how to give.” Paul admits that liberality is often the last of the Christian graces to be developed. It is long before the converted heart appears in the opened purse. The Corinthians have abounded in faith and utterance and knowledge and diligence and love. He will have them finish the arch of the graces by adding the keystone of liberality—“ See that ye abound in this grace also.”
II.—“ Collection.”
It is significant that the word translated " collection ” is not found in the classical pagan Greek writers. It belongs to the Christian writings. Pagans had outbursts of generosity. Even the worst men have such. But liberality systematic, regular, and proportionate to one’s means, came in with revealed religion. In our communities we know it only among Christians. We have sometimes seen newspapers applaud the liberality of betting men who would hand the day’s
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winnings to tke jockey that had broken his bones in the fall. We learn of other experiences. The wealthy “ owner ” subsidises a charity by giving permission to take the fallen apples from his orchard. To help a great forward movement for the evangelising of the back-blocks, he doles out a fraction of what would be spent in attending a race meeting. These are the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table. The gambler, as he really is, though he calls himself the “ racing man,” studies the “ stable,” filches the unwary of his gold, and grabs for himself. But the systematic, proportionate, regular setting apart of one’s goods on the first day of the week which Paul calls “ collection ” belongs only to the Christian. Therefore it is that he gives to the collectors the majestic name of “ the Apostles of the Churches and the Glory of Christ.”
11l “ Singleness.”
For “liberality” in 2 Corinthians viii, 2, the margin reads “ simplicity,” but the literal meaning is “ singleness,” that is of mind or heart, whence “ frankness,” “ straight-forwardness.” What suggestions are here! Whenever a man becomes frank, sincere, single-eyed, he becomes liberal. When he can look God and man in the face he gives. The man who does nob give is a man not of “ simplicity,” but of duplicity. Therefore it is that a man’s collections are the thermometer of his piety. The poor widow put into the collection box her two mites. A man in the frankness of his awakened youth resolves that out of his apprentice wage of 10s a week he will give 6d to the collection. He becomes a journeyman, with 8s a day, and still he gives 6d. He is a foreman at £3 a week, and still he gives 6d. He is master at £lO a week, and still 6d suffices for his offering. The man is double, not single. He is trying to serve God and mammon. His fellcwmen endorse the judgment of Christ that this attempt fails. They lament that year by year he is becoming enslaved by mammon. Thus wealth becomes a curse, creating covetousness and searing sympathies.
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IV.—“ Fellowship.”
In 2 Corinthians viii, 4, Revised Version, liberality is called “ the fellowship in the ministering to the saints.” This phrase is inserted as explanatory of the preceding phrase, “ Beseeching us with much entreaty in regard of this grace,” To Paul we are all one in Christ Jesus. We are brethren, the sons of our- Father, and one is the elder brother. The world, for its part, pursues the practices of brotherhood. It makes fellowship the chief end of the game, of the feast, of the flowing bowl, of the giving of gifts. Is the Church to be behind the world 1 Is there not to be the same fellowship in giving and receiving ? Does not the one brother say to the other, as he offers him the gift, “ What is that between me and thee?” Between brothers born of the same blood there is this obligation to mutual assistance. Help is given without patronage and received without humiliation. Brothers redeemed by the same blood, who have fellowship in the unspeakable gift, should confess the same obligation. And was not the ministering to the saints the occasion of the last commandment of all ? “If I, your Lord and Master, have washed vour feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.”
V.—“ Blessing.”
In 2 Corinthians ix, 5, the Authorised Version reads " bounty.’' but the margin “ blessing.” It is the word used in the Greek version of Gen. xxxiii, 11. Jacob is offering Esau a splendid present, which he is declining. “ Taka I pray thee, mv blessing that is brought to thee because God hath dealt graciously with me, and I have enough.” This giving is the opposite of grudging. So far is it from vexation, from the grumble that collections are endless and collectors a weariness, that it can never satisfy itself. The best men are ashamed of their gifts. They let not their left hand know what their right hand doeth. just because thew are ashamed of that doing. They hand the collector their cheque deploring that it is so small. At the first chance thereafter they send
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another and yet another, to appease a heart which is a perpetual benediction. That word “blessing" has passed into the English language as “ eulogy.” But it has changed its meaning and become poorer. The old Greek was more strenuous than the modern Englishman. His eulogy was not speech but action. He did not merely say a kind thing—he did the good deed to his neighbour. He was also more polite. My “ eulogy ” is an affair that concerns me, my reputa tion, and my gratification. To the Greek, his eulogy transferred benefit from himself to another man. We all love “ eulogy ” —let us have its more ancient and excellent embodiment in “ liberality.”
Of two such lessons why forget The nobler and the manlier one?
Vl.—“ Righteousness.”
In 2 Corinthians ix, 9, we read: “He hath dispersed—lavished —he hath given to the poor, his righteousness eudureth for ever.” Most men think giving a matter outside the Ten Commandments. It is an “ extra ” for which they expect credit. To Paul it is an elementary virtue. It is simply fairplay. It is loving one's neighbour as oneself. It is this unromantic elsment of common-place integrity in Christian giving that makes the good man a proportionate giver. But few men are in this sense righteous. Most men fear to head a subscription list. They wish to appear well down on the list, and to be spared effort. But when we find a righteous man we can bear repulse. We once asked a subscription for a certain cause from a man who was reputed liberal. He told us he set apart a tenth of his income every quarter for the Lord’s work, that his benevolent account was already overdrawn, but that next quarter he would weigh the urgency of the various claims made on him, and supply us if no greater claim appeared. We have not yet received help for that particular cause, though we have obtained it for Others. But we have never ceased to revere the man whom we always thought openhanded, but whom we now knew to be righteous.
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VII.—“ Service.”
Paul’s last word is “ Service,” 2 Corinthians ix, 12. The peculiar word of the original was a technical term in Athens. It was restricted to the particularly noble and burdensome and costly service which a private citizen at his own expense rendered to the State by furnishing the means of outfit for some troop. It was the handsome contribution of an able man for the public good. Now no giving is worth this name, or comes up to the Christian standard, unless it resembles tho handsome generosity of the man who serves the State at his own cost. What that ia we not long ago discovered. It was found necessary to raise the Third Transvaal Contingent by private subscription. We know how splendidly the provinces answered that appeal. Tho rich men gave their hundreds of pounds, the pood men gave their sovereigns or their shillings, delighting thus to serve the State. One farmer suggested that each man should contribute a certain sum for each sheep he owned, and many made their gifts proportionate. No man was made bankrupt by that contribution. None was oppressed. All rejoiced to bear the burden. Therefore Christian liberality must never be named among us until the provinces do every year for Christ what that year they did for the Queen. Many of our parishes could then not only maintain their own churches and ministers, but also support several missionaries apiece in the home or in the foreign field.
Modern Instances.
It seems to us that this discussion is timely. Throughout our land some members of our Church have seen their incomes multiplied manyfold during the last few years. Millions of pounds have come to our farmers, the free gift of God, given through causes to which they have not contributed, operating upon markets at the ends of the earth. We have seen their lavish expenditure on luxurious homes and gav trappings. We have watched the multiplication of motor cars. We have known the direct steamers unable to
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lodge all those who were ready to spend sumptuously upon the pleasures of travel. We have not seen equal readiness to sacrifice for religion, to lose the world and gain one’s own soul. Ten years ago, in a remote province, we found ourselves on a back-block farm. It was the day of harvest of the flocks. The farmer sighed as he told how hard had been the years of struggle to fell his bush and get his grass and meet his interest and keep a roof above his head. He looked round at the bleating lambs, and thought the increase of that year would give him heart. We have since known that small farm to yield to the hands of the heir in one year two thousand pounds. We contratulate the young man on his fortune. We do not grudge him his long holiday, the first he has had beyond his district for many years. But we do not learn that he has given two hundred pounds to maintain for the year a foreign missionary, or to keep alive religion in parts as needy as his own bush once was. That man is an estimable citizen. We are prepared to hear that he has increased his annual contribution to religion from ten shillings to five pounds. God does not want that man’s five pounds. God wants from him rather more than two hundred pounds. His very rate of giving should increase as his income removes him further from need. God wants that man to set aside “ the Lord’s portion ” before he takes the farmer’s way of accumulating money by reducing his mortgage. God would have him assign his offering according to the dictates of an enlightened conscience, and pay his dues and play the man. What has happened to this “ small farmer ” has happened to multitudes. God has passed through the land with a searchlight to see if there be a farmer or a merchant who will call himself a son of Paul or Abraham and be content to be poor, yet making many rich.
We ourselves are tempted, like Paul, to become fools in glorying and to contend that those who have sacrificed most are the mini-tors. Our school and college mates write us that their incomes are ten times orurs. We were in the same rank with them. We were as clever as they, and as laborious. We had
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open to us the same avenues of wealth. We stood at the parting of the ways and saw to the full the alternatives. We chose the ministry with our eyes open. We believed in religion, and we have not turned our back upon it. If we had our life to live over again we would do the same thing. We have worked for spiritual rewards, and have got some, and the best is yet to be. The consciousness of all this makes us bold. We set down our schoolfellows’ incomes; we deduct from them our own modest incomes, and we maintain that the remainder, which amounts to thousands of pounds, represents our annual contribution to the cause of religion. We have then the assurance to confront our wealthy members and ask them to make a fraction of the sacrifice that we have made.
But why should we hint at sacrifice, forgetting the charity that vaunteth not itselft Why should we speak, not after the Lord, but as it were foolishly, in this confidence of bcastingt We will chasten our souls with fasting, and remember the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich.
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THE CALVIN CENTENARY.
This day four hundred years ago there was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness unto the truth, that all men through him might believe. More than any other, Calvin is the father of the Presbyterian Church. With Luther he stands preeminent above the rest of the Reformers—Luther in lively faith and love, Calvin in peerless intellect and practical genius. The one burnt the Popes bull; the other built the house of God. If Luther had the exuberance of Peter, and was the roek on which the modem Church has been built, Calvin for loftiness of mind and deftness of brain, for vigour of will and fervour of spirit, for skill in marshalling truths and ordering men, has had no equal since the days of Paul.
The Seminarist.
'What a wonderful genius" said his Spanish professor at the School of La Marche. “It is a long time,” said others, “ since Sorbonne or Montaigu had so pious a seminarist.” The son of the notary of Noyon was taught with the sons of Monseigneur. At twelve he received the tonsure, was installed a chaplain and sent to Paris. The long, lean, shy lad with gleaming eyes caught the eye of Cordier. “O, Master Mathurin,” confessed Calvin when in Geneva, “ it was God's will that I should have you for my teacher. I owe to vou all the advancement that has followed.” At Montaigu he profited above his equals. The town folk knew the light that burned till midnight and shone again at 5 in the morning. To his fellows his pure life and grave bearing made him “the Accusative Case.” He was the hope of the Church. He was so obstinately given to the superstitions of Popery that it seemed impossible that he should ever be pulled out of that mire. Thomas Aquinas was to him meat. At eighteen he was presented to one living, at twenty to another.
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Though not ordained, he preached sermons to the people. Before him were the bishop’s apron and the cardinal’s hat and the pope’s tiara.
The Man of Law.
“ When I was a very little boy my father had destined me for the study of theology, but afterwards, when he considered that tho legal profession commonly raised those who followed it to wealth this prospect induced him suddenly to change his purpose. Thus it came to pass that I was withdrawn from the study of philosophy and put to the study of law. To this pursuit I endeavoured faithfully to apply myself, in obedience to the will of my father.” The Lord reigneth. The destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race in great part lay in that change. The recluse became fitted to be the man of affairs, the advisor of kings, and the maker of republics. At Orleans he learned law from the first lawyer of his nation, with such success that at tho age of nineteen he was, upon occasion, set to take the place of the professor. When he left that college he received the degree of doctor without paying the ordinary fees. At Bourges he studied under the first lawyer in Europe—an Italian whom the king had invited to France. What was of equal importance, here he studied Greek under Wolmar, a, famous master, and read the Greek Testament. All the while his literary style was becoming polished. He gave days and nights to the study of Cicero, whose works he read through every year thereafter. He was shaping a weapon that would be keener even than Augustine’s. It is significant that his first book was a commentary on Seneca’s treatise on Clemency. At the same time he was preparing to be the maker of modern French, as Luther was of modem German. He was gaining precision in the use of his mother tongue, that he might teach great truths to his countrymen in speech that would be for ever classical. But all this law course was cut short as suddenly as it had begun. His father died, and he had to return to Noyon.
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The Lutheran,
Calvin’s cousin Olivetan visited him in Paris, and bade him study the Scriptures. Olivetan, who afterwards translated the Bible into French, read Creek and Hebrew, Calvin, the inflexible adversary of the new heresies, answered, “ I cannot listen to you.” But the Word was in his heart as a burning fire. “ I have been taught that Thy Son has ransomed me by His death, but I have never felt in my heart the virtue of this redemption. . . . Alasi! I am a miserable sinner. O God, Thy glance freezes me with terror.” His teachers bade him confess to a priest and blot out by good works the memory of his trespasses. It was a carnal cure for a sick soul. “Every time I descend to the depths of my heart; every time, O God, that I lift up my soul to Thy throne, extreme terror comes over me. ... I see that no purification, no satisfaction, can heal my disease.” He paced his room as Luther did his cell, with strong crying and tears. At last what he called “ sudden conversion ” came to him. “ O Father, His sacrifice has appeased Thy wrath, His blood has washed away my impurities, His cross has borne my curse. We had devised for ourselves many useless follies, but Thou hast placed Thy word before me like a torch, and Thou hast touched my heart, in order that I should hold in abomination all other merits save that of Jesus.”
Calvin had passed through the same crisis as Paul and Augustine and Buuyan and Wesley and Spurgeon. His friends now came to him beseeching him to open to them the Scriptures. All his retreats became like public schools. He resigned his preferments and gave himself to the ministry of the Word. At Poictiers he formed a congregation and dispensed the Lord’s Supper after the simple order, in a cavern still called Calvin’s grotto. Though only twenty-four, he was the leader of the French Lutherans. The time came when these Huguenots were called Calvinists.
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The Theologian—The “ Institutes.”
Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and war and the liberal arts, sprang fully grown and fully armed from the head of Jupiter. Calvin, no less the prophet of these verities, leapt at twenty-six at one bound into the first place in Europe in the realm of theology. He published the ‘‘lnstitutes of the Christian Religion, comprising almost the whole sum of piety and whatever in the doctrine of salvation is necessary to be known, a work recently put out, worthy to be read by all those desirous of piety. Preface to the Most Christian King of France, as this book is offered to him for a confession of faith. John Calvin, of Noyon, author. Basle, 1536.” It astonished the world. Melancthon in 1521 had published his “ Commonplaces,” an attempt to gather into one the new doctrines brought out of Scriptures by Luther. The attempt had had only partial success. Now, however, the reformed doctrine was collected and digested and arranged with power and symmetry, to present one complete system that could successfully cope with the ancient and elaborate system of Rome. Its Latmity was the purest Ciceronian. We may find a parallel to the sensation the book caused in the reception given to Darwin’s “ Origin of which even now has caused hundreds of the foremost men of science to go in procession to Cambridge to remember Darwin's centenary. The Reformed Doctrine was fixed for all time. The “ Institutes ” coloured all the creeds of Protestant Christendom.
The book quivers with emotion. Like Augustine’s " City of God,” it is a defence of the faith against the calumnies of all enemies. Like the “ Apology ” of Justyn Martyr, it is a protest to the King against the persecutors. “ Whilst I lay hidden at Basle, and known only to a few people, many faithful and holy persona were burned alive in France. It appeared to me that unless I opposed the Court to the utmost of my ability my silence could not be vindicated from the charge of cowardice and treachery. This was the consideration which induced me to publish my
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‘ Institutes of the Christian Religion.’ Immediately after I left Basle. . . . Nobody there knew that I was the author.” In every sentence there is the passion of an advocate pleading for the life of his friend. To this is added a comprehension the most sublime, soaring to the highest Alps of thought, and an order the most direct and perfect which forgets no fact, but maintains the proportion of faith. “ When it was published,” he relates, “it was not that copious and laboured work which it now is, but only a small treatise containing the summary of the principal truths of the Christian religion.” Nevertheless it was so definite in doctrine and in expression that in the latest folio of 1559 every word, except one or two sentences, has been retained. The later editions only amplified the sentences of the first. Melancthon was the readiest to greet his rival. He called him, above all others, ‘ the theologian.”
I. Analysis.
Calvin's system is a threefold deduction from the cry of his conversion, “ that I should hold in abomination all merits save that of Jesus.” The first is the inference of total depravity. If I have no merit I am all sin. “ The third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans,” he says, “ is nothing but a description of original sin. . . . Original sin may be defined as a hereditary corruption and depravity of our nature, extending to all parts of the soul, which first makes us obnoxious to the wrath of God, and then produces in us works which in Scripture are termed the works of the flesh.” The second inference is that of grace, implying Divine efficiency and Divine election. It is the inference of substitution and of predestination. If I must trust in the merit of Jesus, then my salvation is all of grace. It is applied to me by the Holy Spirit, Who works in me faith and repentance. If of grace, it is of God, Who arranged to send Jesus to save me, and arranged beforehand that I would accept Jesus as my substitute. If He has given this grace to me and not to my neighbour, then fiom the beginning he chose me and
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not him. Thus Calvin reached as a corollary to faith the doctrine of predestination and reprobation. The third inference is that of liberty. If I have to trust only to the merit of Jesus, then the king has to do the same. Prince and peasant, rich and poor, priest and layman stand alike before God, saved by grace alone. All believers are thus equal in privilege. They are kings and priests unto God. They are freemen, able to govern themselves by representatives in council assembled. Hence come democracy in the State and parity of presbyters in the Church. The king is but the duly elected chief magistrate, and the bishop only one of the elders of the people.
ll.—Synthesis.
Building up his system from such an analysis, Calvin followed the order of the Apostles’ Creed, and divided his treatise into four books—concerning the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and the Church. In the first book the knowledge of God is born in man, effaced by sin, and restored by Scripture, whose full authority lies in the testimony of the Spirit. God is sovereign creator and ruler. ‘ I affirm and maintain that the world is managed and governed by the secret providence of God. . . . Let it be our law of modesty and soberness to acquiesce in His supreme authority, regarding His will as our only rule of justice and the most perfect cause of all things. When once the light of Divine providence has illumined the believer’s soul he is relieved and set free, not only from the extreme fear and anxiety which formerly oppressed him, but from all care.” Yet for all this, God is not the author of sin. “ Presumptuous men rise up against me,” he says elsewhere, “ and allege that I represent God as the author of sin. This is so foolish a calumny that it would of itself quickly come to nothing did it not meet with persons who have tickled ears, and who take pleasure in feeding upon such a discourse.” Similarly God does not destroy the efficiency of second causes. “ The Christian will always direct his eye to Him as the principal cause of events, at the same time paying due regard to the inferior causes in their own
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place.” Neither does God violate the will of His creatures. “ When I say that the will deprived of. liberty is led or dragged by necessity to evil . . . the expression . . does offend those who know not to distinguish between necessity and compulsion. . . Simply to will is the part of man; to will ill the part of corrupt nature; to will well the part of grace.”
The second book sees the necessity of redemption in the fall of man. “ Since the Spirit proclaims that the carnal mind is enmity against God, and does not leave us the power of thinking a good thought, we maintain with Augustine that man, by making a bad use of free will, lost both himself and it.” The exposition of the Ten Commandments is the schoolmaster to lead to Christ. The provision of redemption is in the Son of God. Calvin has the merit of elaborating the division of the work of Christ into the three offices of prophet, priest, and king, a division suggested by Eusebius, but lost sight of both by Luther and by the Romanists.
The third book concerns the internal means of grace, the operations of the Holy Spirit in regard to our sahation. Faith, repentance, justification, prayer are opened in most moving chapters, pulsating like Luther’s Primary Works with the energies of the new birth. Justification and sanctification are declared inseparable. All these comforts and actions are traced back to election. “We shall never feel persuaded as we ought that our salvation flows from the free mercy of God as its fountain until we are made acquainted with His eternal election.”
The fourth book expounds the external means of grace. The true Church, marked by the pure preaching of the Word and the due administration of the sacraments is set forth against the Church of Rome and its hierarchy. The Pope is confuted with such a wealth of patristic learning and scriptural argument that we do not wonder that he feared Calvin even more than Luther. Not the least important part of the book is the section on the sacraments. The Church of Rome teaches that at the word of the priest the
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bread becomes together the body and blood of Christ. When the priest raises the wafer the people bow down and worship it, believing that in it they worship Christ. When they eat the wafer they eat Christ. They cannot help getting good from the Sacrament if they only use their teeth. Luther could not altogether shake himself from the shackles of this “ transubstantiation.” He believed that somehow Christ associated Himself with the bread and spoke of “ consubstantiation.” Zwingli, the Swiss Reformer, went to the other extreme, and said that the elements were symbols, and symbols only. Men who read in John’s gospel of Christ’s flesh being meat indeed, and in the Epistle to the Corinthians of the communion of the body of Christ, felt that Zwingli had not stated all the case. Calvin took a course midway between that of Luther and that of Zwingli; and most of the Reformers perceived that he was nearest to the truth. He taught that the worthy communicant takes the symbol into his hand, but partakes by faith of the body of Christ, which is in heaven The book ends with a discourse of Civil Government, to refute, on the one hand “ barbarous men who seek to overturn the order established by God,” and on the other hand, “ the flatterers of princes who extol their power without measure.” These chapters hold the balance between anarchy and Divine Right. They inculcate obedience, but concede that God raises up avengers to deliver the people from tyrants. It was by men who read these chapters that Charles I was beheaded and James II dethroned and Victoria revered. They dictated our Revolution Settlement, and created that mutual contract between prince and people which is Kin'g Edward’s title to the throne.
“ Thou has placed Thy Word before me like a torch ” —that cry at his conversion made Calvin expound the Scriptures in public several times a week and follow up the “ Institutes” by writing commentaries. In praise of these we need quote only the opinions of his great antagonist Arminius: “ I exhort my pupils to peruse Calvin’s commentaries, which I extol in loftier terms than Helmich himself; for I affirm that he excels beyond comparison in the interpretation of the
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Scripture, and that his commentaries ought to be more highly valued than all that is handed down to us by the Library of the Fathers. I acknowledge him to have possessed above most others—or, rather, above all other men—what may be called an eminent gift of prophecy.” These commentaries are modem. Our best English scholars, whether Perowne or George Adam Smith for the Old Testament, or Alford for the Hew, appeal to him continually.
The Theocrat.
Calvin had given the Reformation its theology. Just as unexpectedly did he give it a polity. He hid met Roman teaching by the Word, free grace, and predestination. He had now to create against the Roman organisation of Pope, bishops, and priests, lords of the conscience and vicars of Christ, a society of freemen equal in liberty and rank, obeying laws freely accepted, and administering these laws by officers freely elected. He found a theatre in Geneva. That republic had, after a fight for a generation, gained freedom from the tyranny of the Bishop and the Duke. It had cast out with the Bishop the idols, and by the vote of the citizens had received the Reformed faith. Calvin, lawyer and statesman, created here a Theocracy in which Church and State were distinct and not subordinate to each other. They mutually helped each other to train a people for God, fearing His rebuke and seeking His benefits.
The occasion was dramatic. “As the most direct route to Strash urg—to which I then intended to retire —was shut up by the wars, I had resolved to pass quickly by Geneva, without staying longer than a single night in the city. . . . Then an individual discovered me. Upon this Farel strained every nerve to detain me. He proceeded to utter an imprecation that God would curse my retirement and the tranquillity of the studies I sought if I should withdraw and refuse to give assistance when the necessity was so urgent. By this imprecation I was so stricken with
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terror that I desisted from the journey. ... I was carried, I know not how, as it were by force, to the Imperial assemblies.”
Calvin organised the State. He codified and digested into a compact system the old laws of the city. Primary education was compulsory. For higher education he established a university. He organised the Church. As at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts xv. he lodged the authority in the Church with the Apostles and elders and brethren. Each Christian was a king. He divided the city into parishes, each with its minister and ciders, its evangelical liturgy and congregational psalmody, its pure preaching of the Word and due administration of the sacraments. Much lay in that word “ due.” Upon it depended the reformation of the manners of the people. The unworthy were not allowed to communicate. Every week there sat the “ Consistory ” —a court of ministers and elders, to examine the character of each worshipper. Excommunication was real. The highest in the city had to answer to this court. The old laws of the city had taken note of all manner of private and domestic actions, and these laws were administered with thoroughness. The elders in the Consistory were members of the City Council. If the warnings of the Church Court were not heeded the City Council punished the offender. The system was open to criticism; but it had been freely adopted; the people could change it if they wished; and they actually did try another system, to their peril. The issue was that in a single generation Geneva was raised to the first place in Europe for religion and liberty and order, for knowledge and culture and prosperity in arts. Knox judged Geneva to be '* the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the Apostles. In other places I confess Christ to be truly preached, but manners and religion to be so sincerely reformed I have not yet seen in any other place beside.”
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The Sufferer.
' Quousque Domine ?”—“O Lord, how long?” the cry of Habakkuk and of the martyr souls under the altar, is the motto of the second and later editions of the Institutes. To the first French edition, “ translated by himself,” he added the device of the flaming fire and the sword. “ I can say as to myself that I have been assailed on all sides, and have scarcely been able to enjoy repose for a single moment, but have always had to sustain some conflict either from enemies within or without the Church.” In the preface to his peerless commentary on the Psalms he cites these sufferings as his authority. “In unfolding the internal afflictions both of David and of others I discourse upon them as matters of which I have familiar experience.” He had been but two years in Geneva when, at the instance of the Libertines whom he had disciplined, he, with Farel, was banished from the city. When his chief enemies had been beheaded or banished as traitors or murderers the citizens begged him to return. “ Why not rather submit to be crucified t” he answered. “It would be better to perish at once than to be tormented to death in that chamber of torture.” He came back in honour. In a few years the Libertines again prevailed, and Calvin had to stand before the council, facing the drawn swords of his foes. “If it is my life you decire lam ready to die.” Again after some years, the Libertines rushed at the communion table to get the elements for an excommunicated friend. Calvin covered the symbols with his hands: “You may break these limbs and shed my blood; I would rather die than dishonour the table of my God.” That night he bade his congregation adieu, expecting to be again banished on the morrow. The last of these throes was in 1556. The Libertines were discovered in a plot to murder the refugees in the city. They were beheaded or banished. Then had the land rest. To these trials were added such as oome to every man. Bereavement prostrated him. He lost his only child. “We feel it bitterly, but He is a Father.” After nine happy years he lost his wife. “If I had not exercised
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the whole force of my being I could nob have borne it.” Melancthon died—“ O Philip, a hundred times hast thou said, when, wearied with labour and oppiessed with sadness, thou didst lay thyself familiarly upon my breast, ‘Would that I'could die upon this breast!’ Since then I have a thousand times wished that it had been our lot to die together.” His body, tormented with the ills so hard a life engendered, pined early. He would give himself no rest—“ Would you that the Lord should find me idle when He comes!” The disciple is not above his Master, the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.
Abraham Our Father.
Calvin !vas set his image and superscription upon our race. His books were translated into all civilised tongues, even into Arabic. The Pan-Presbyterian Alliance—Huguenot and Dutch, German and English and American—is his acknowledged issue. The Anglican Church, in the Protestant portion which adheres to the “ Thirty-nine Articles ” of 1562, is of his blood. Only after the defeat of the Spanish Armada did the Cavaliers, whom his word and spirit had saved, forsake him. But the Scottish and New England Churches, the churches of Knox and Jonathan Edwards, of Fraser of Brea, and Thomas Sheppard, bear most his likeness. Knox, schooled in Geneva, transferred Calvin’s system bodily to Scotland—the same zeal for the Word, and that in the original tongues; the same simple Presbyterian order and worship; the same weekly Consistory for the discipline of the people; the same Sabbath catechising from the very same Catechism ; the same love of liberty and learning, of education, primary and university; the same strong will, the same martyr soul. We have Calvin’s civil polity in the protest of Andrew Melville to King James Vl—“There are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland,”—and in all the succeeding Covenanting struggles for civil and religious liberty. Knox on his deathbed read Calvin on the Ephesians. The successors of Knox so read the ' Institutes ” and the “ Commentaries ” that we, when reading
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these books to-day imagine ourselves listening to the Scottish preachers of our childhood. We cannot turn over the pages on Divine Sovereignty or Election or the work of the Holy Spirit in conversion without hearing afresh these our giant grandfathers, whose more worthy sons thus taught now guide the Empire the Shorter Catechism, which the Covenanters helped to compose—that angels’ food of the Scottish youth—is just the "Institutes ”in brief. The very portrait of Calvin, as given by his colleague Beza, would stand for that of many a man from liree or Ecolefechan—" In dress he was neither over-careful nor mean. In diet he was temperate, ile took little sleep, and had such an astonishingmemory. His judgment was so clear and correct that he often seemed almost to prophesy. In the doctrine he delivered at the first he continued steadily to the last. Although Nature had formed him for gravity yet in the common intercourse of life there was no man who was more pleasant. He was naturally of a keen temper, and this had been increased by the very laborious life he had led. But the spirit of the Lord had so taught him to command his anger that no word was heard to proceed from him unbeccmmg a good men. Nor was he easily moved unless religion was ; t stake. In him all men may see a most beautiful example of the Christian character, an example which it is as easy to slander as it is difficult to imitate.
We look this day to the rock whence we have been hewn, and rejoice in Abraham our father. In him the nations of the world are blessed.
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A PROVINCIAL JUBILEE.
The Church in Hawke’s Bay has attained its jubilee. The congregation of St. Paul’s, Napier, has with reverence and gladness been remembering that on June 6, 1859, the Rev. Peter Barclay arrived in the “ White Swan ” to begin his ministry there. It has incidentally transpired that the real foundation of the church was a year before, when on Saturday, June 9, 1858, a meeting was held in the Royal Hotel of those who desired further religious ordinances. From the advertisement we infer that the Church of England had already begun services. The Hawke’s Bay Herald, which first appeared in 1857, records that by that time, though there was no church, Church of England service was held in the schoolhouse. Certainly the Anglican missionary, Mr Colenso, had for years been at work in the district. That meeting appointed a committee and subscribed handsomely to begin a Presbyterian cause. These gentlemen felt that they were too few to build a church and keep a minister without the help of the country settlers. At first they aimed at getting only an apartment for occasional services, a residence for the minister, and a horse to carry him hither and thither. Mr Barclay on his arrival ministered to all the settlers from Waipukurau to Wairoa. We rejoice to observe that the son of one of these fathers of the Church, Mr R. D. D. Mac Lean, delivered the principal speech at the jubilee celebration. We would venture to lay stress upon this earlier meeting. We would suggest the feelings of these early founders as they agreed together “ fifty years syne.” We would cite some reasons why they were not content with the offices of the Church of England already established in their midst.
The Church of the Martyrs.
I.—Each man was moved by the mighty history of his Church. He knew he was setting his feet in the footsteps of his fathers of that great day in August, 1560, when Knox and his brethren stood ready to
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answer for their faith and presented “ the sum of that doctrine which we profess and for the which we have suffered ignominy and danger.” The Romish bishops, the spiritual peers, declined the argument, and only three temporal peers voted against it. The Parliament adopted the Confession, the Scots lords, .as Randolph wrote to Cecil, speaking “ with as glad a will as I have ever heard men speak. Many also offered to shed their blood in defence of the same.” That day was the birthday of the Church and of the Scottish nation. Again and again has the Church saved the Empire. When Mary was pursuing her plan to make Scotland and then England Romish like Spain, it was the Scottish Church that baulked her. When Charles I. was forging fetters for the nation it was the stool of Jenny Geddes that hurled him from his throne and gave the Empire its civil and religious liberty. When Charles 11. and James 11. were selling the nation to the King of France and to the Pope it was the generation of Scottish martyrs that put them to shame, and gained the Revolution. Settlement and the Colonial Empire. Each Napier Scotchman had a catch in his voice as he rose 50 years ago to make his motion. Before him were the sea and the swamp and the spit and the white limestone and the ti-tree and the tutu, but his eye saw afar off the moss hags and the grey whin stones of Galloway and Pentland, Where o’er the graves of the Martyrs the whaups were crying, His heart remembered how.
And of the Evangel.
ll.—Each man had a clear religious idea. With Calvin he confessed, “ Thou hast placed Thy Word before me like a torch, and Thou hast touched my heart in order that I should hold in abomination all other merits save that of Jesus.” If salvation was of free grace, then the God Who had sent the Son and the Spirit had as all-wise foreseen every conversion, and as all-powerful had pre-arranged it. The reformers of every land saw clearly that they had to choose between Popery and predestination. The latter they learned from the letters of Paul and the prayers of Christ. The
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English “Thirty-nine Articles,” drawn up in 1562, set forth with Calvin the same predestination type of doctrine. Moreover, those who received free grace were the moralists. They were reproached as too rigid. To the Napier men of 50 years ago this system of faith and morals was summed up in the Westminster “ Confession of Faith ” and “ Shorter Catechism.” Every man who sat at that table had his Shorter Catechism by heart, and he set himself to found a church which would expound the Scriptures according to the tenor of that catechism.
And of the People,
lll.—They established a great democratic polity. They held that every Christian man was a priest; that, according to the teaching of the New Testament as admitted by Cranmer, bishops and elders were equal; and that as in Jesus Christ there was neither male nor female the women had equal votes with the men. Here were freedom and representative democratic government. The progress of the British nation has just been the imitation of this—the conversion from feudalism to democracy. The present colonial government—not by Star Chamber, but by Cabinet, with elective Parliaments, and female and universal suffrage—is just in the State what the Napier fathers 50 years ago established in the Church,
And of Learning
IV.—They set up higher education. They sent Home for a master for a High School as well as for a minister. The first High School is now St. Paul’s Schoolroom, and the present superintendent’s desk was 50 years ago the schoolmaster’s. The master, Mr Thomson, and his honoured wife are still elsewhere pillars of the Church. William A. Couper was their first boarder, and R. D. D. Mac Lean was a day boy. Since the Bible was God’s word, every child must be taught to read it. Since the Word in the original tongues was the rule of faith, some men must be educated to the highest. Since every believer had to vote, his intelligence must be cultivated by education
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to the utmost limit of his natural ability. The State has now adopted these education doctrines and practices. It borrowed them from the Presbyterian Church.
And of the Future.
V.—They did all these things with a passion for posterity. Calvin, the greatest theologian of modern times, could find nothing better to do than every Sabbath afternoon in Geneva to exercise the children in the Catechism he had prepared. Knox saw Calvin at this work, and adjured every Scotchman to explain the Bible to his household at least onoe every day, and prepare his children to say the Catechism to the minister on the Sabbath. The Napier fathers were bred to this. They have in turn handed it down. The issue of their passion has been that though the Presbyterian Church in the Dominion is only half the size of the largest church, its church attendance at the last census in which such was recorded was the greatest in the Dominion. When at the Bible Society Centenary the contributions from the churches of the Dominion were published in detail, the Presbyterian Church was found to have given as much as all the other churches put together. When last November the University results at Christchurch were published, the minister of the old Scottish church pointed out that though the Presbyterians were but a remnant in the population of that province almost every honour of consequence had been taken by one or other of the young people attending the Presbyterian Bible Classes. Their children are not ashamed of what Sir Donald Mac Lean and his friends did 50 years ago. They wmuld be ashamed to turn their backs upon it. The Church of the martyrs is stiil the Church of piety and sacrifice and understanding, the Church of the people and of the future.
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THE CASE FOR HEBREW—& GREEK.
The Outlook, published on Tuesday, reached our Ultima Thule on Saturday, bringing the demand to justify our post-card of protest which had been printed. We confess ourselves unable to understand this movement to reduce the efficiency of the divinity course by the elimination of Hebrew and ultimately of Greek, When the Minister of Education visited our quarter he told us that everybody in the Dominion who was anybody was being educated nowadays for the University. Why, then, should anyone wish to see reduced the standard of education among ministers ? Are they no longer to be the leaders of the people? Are they to be surpassed in their peculiar studies by their devout parishioners? We used to be told at College that John Knox carried his Hebrew Bible and his Greek Testament in his saddlebags; but—
John P.
Robinson he
Says they didn't know everything down in Judee.
No Trme.
We country preachers hold to the Hebrew because we have so little time to study. Our Northern parishes are dioceses. For ourselves, we preach two hundred times a year, and travel two thousand five hundred miles, and never know a minister's holiday. We are for days on end away from the desk, and yet Saturday comes with its agony of preparation for the two sermons of the morrow. Because our study is so irregular, and our time so slight, what we read must be of the best. It is of less importance for ua to know what the latest manufacturer of Shibboleths says about "Leviticus. It is of supreme importance that we look at Isaiah direct, and know hia message first hand, and tell the labourer mending the road and the rabbiter in from the mountain what we ourselves think about his oracles. That is why we must have not translations, not commentaries, but the native word itself—the word
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in its naked majesty, the word on fire with the passion of the prophets and quivering with the fervour of the Psalms.
Is It for Cheyne and the Specialists Alone?
It is asserted that Hebrew should be left to Cheyne and the specialists, and that men should wait for Smith and Driver, and then prophesy. That sort of thing may do for Dunedin and the shadow of the Residential College, but it will not suit the canyons and the shoulder of Ruapehu. We preached last Sabbath evening at a lonely farmhouse to a handful of shepherds, and the Bible that was set before us contained primers of Hebrew and Greek. Wo are due next month to preach at a more remote farmhouse, where over forty years ago a Glasgow Highlander first drove his bullocks and carved his home, and read theology, and dandled the many babes that were born to him, born where the foot of white woman had never before trod, of a tender spouse of ancient and royal Scottish blood. That man recently lectured to our Highland Society on the resemblances between the Gaelic and Hebrew tongues. He talks of Wellhausen as well as of wethers. He lent his minister the first edition of the “ Logia ” and of Smith’s “ Chaldean Genesis,” and Robertson Smith’s “ Old Testament.” Is the minister to be outclassed by the back-block farmer ? We are more than due at another farm across a wide and treacherous river, where for six months of the year the settlers were cut off from civilisation, until recently their bridge was built. That farmer reads more recent works on philosophy and religion and science than does the minister. He still looks up to the minister as more skilled than himself in Hebrew. He sent him Professor Cheyne’s commentary on the Hebrew text of Samuel. Just after the volumes arrived we chanced, in ordinary course, to read First Samuel at family worship. We noted certain peculiarities in the text. When, later in the day, we opened Cheyne, we saw these peculiarities discussed. The inferences drawn by Cheyne were so arbitrary, and the arguments so teemed with assertion and presupposition that we
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were delivered from the last vestige of bondage to authority. We informed our bucolic fellow student that on Cheyne’s premises and by his methods anything might equal anything. Then we read Dr Orr's " Problem of the Old Testament,” and thanked God and took courage. The man, who, in our vear, took the first Hebrew prize is now a missionary in China. In his last letter to us, received a few weeks ago, he told how, with two other missionaries, he had been appointed to prepare a new translation of the Old Testament into Chinese, and how he was perfecting his Double Ayins. If ever a son of ours elect to be a missionary at Canton or the Otira, we will make him learn Hebrerw from Dr Watt long and early in his Arts course, and daily practice it, and show himself a workman. The Hebrew is for the soldier of Christ a foremost weapon, his polished steel, his Damascus blade.
Hebrew versus the English Bible and English Literature.
We cannot admire the calibre of the men who wish to give up Hebrew, that they may the better master the English Bible, and possess the treasures of English literature. To hear a senior man advocate this suggests the indulgent mother who is sure Tommy will do something else well if he is let off from doing what he is told to do now. Let Tommy off from the one and he will shirk the other, and so sparing the task will spoil'the boy. The men of our year who were stylists in English were the men near the top of the Hebrew class. We keep their letters to help our composition. They were the men who knew Stevenson as well as verbal suffixes, and filled their talk with Wordsworth and with Browning. These also were the men who knew the English Bible. That book had made them students at the first, and day by day they searched it and laid it up in their heart. So we, far in the country, carry Milton and Macaulay on the saddle, and rehearse our English Bible daily. We depend upon King James’s version, not only to illustrate our sermons, but also to supply our prayers. When we have hid it
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in our hearts wo cannot rise to lead the petitions of our people without its words and phrases flowing to our lips in endless combinations, for the book has become bone of our bone and soul of. our soul.
What the Hebrew Means to Us.
We had seen pictures, coloured forsooth, of the green and blue lakes of Rotorua, and had felt curious. But one spring morning the fern parted and opened up the road and round the bend we came upon the same blue lake, and the glory of the Lord shone round about it. For a season we were dumb, but all our lives thereafter we will speak. So it is when we open to the original Hebrew, the mirror of God’s heaven. We may have already read the “ Lord is my Shepherd,” but the Hebrew gives us “ Jehovah rohi,” “ the Lord Who is shepherding me,” and wo see the present action, we feel the softness of His touch and measure the strength of His staff, and know He is a very present help. We read: “He restoreth my soul,” and discern the mercy. But when we read “ yeshovev,” “He maketh my soul to return,” “ He converteth my soul,” all the crisis of our life comes back to us, and endless exposition opens. Again, we read “I will fear no evil,” and recover. But when we see on the other page “ lo ira ra,” the terseness of the protest, with its play on sound and word, ends the argument and shuts the door on care. So in the first words of the fortieth chapter of Isaiah we read: ‘ Hahamu, nahamu ammi, yomar Elohekem,” until we hear the crooning of the great mother heart of God, and we speak to the heart of Jerusalem, that her iniquity is pardoned. So we read the pitiful plight of Eve, and the meannesses of Adam, until there comes on us the assurance that, spite of theories of J. and E. and the “ redactor,” the thing is true, true to the simplicity of the child man, our frail post-glacial ancestor. So we keep on reading our Hebrew, pointing it, holding the paper beneath the consonants as we used to do at College, and find, like crystals in a drusy cavity, a gleaming text in a pausal qametz, and a sermon in a Hithpalel. We rise with the fire of God in our heart, and testify what we have seen.
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And the Creek.
As with the Hebrew, so with the Greek. We covet both daily, with King James's Psalms and the “ Golden Treasury.” The Greek fares better than the Hebrew, for the book is heavy for the hack, and small Hebrew letters we cannot see; but we have a clear print Greek Testament, and a Bagster’s pocket lexicon that the saddle straps have crushed. Last week, as we finished the " Acts of the Apostles,” the last word burned into our imagination. The English “no man forbidding him ”ia tame. The single Greek word “ akolutos,” the adverb that modifies the meaning of the participles “ preaching ” and " teaching,” the word we venture to translate “ unhinderedly ” —that last word of the greatest history the world has known, which, summing up the progress of the past, hurls defiance to all foes throughout the coming centuries, constrains us till we speak. The sermon grows, gathering accretions from the experiences of the week’s pastorate, and from fragments of the magazines, and from Chaucer’s “ Canterbury Tales ” that we have been reading every spare moment, till on Saturday night, after a week of distractions such as no city man would dream of, we set our thoughts in order, and write in haste the one sermon in the week that we can finish. Such are the methods to which we northern men are forced. But by reason of the Hebrew and the Greek, and our English Bible and our English classics, and the good hand of our God upon us, we have not yet gone under.
Say Ye not “ A Confederacy ”?
But why should we protest? There steals upon us tlie suspicion that our brother is smiling, that he has in his own fashion excluded himself in numbering the sons of Levi. We are sure that his Hebrew is one of the secrets of his perennial freshness, and that at the flame of these fiery words of Jeremiah :
The Lord doth light hie candle so
That it doth shine full bright.
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He is drawing his brethren on to like precious zeal. Has he conspired to get a Hebrew inscription over the door of the new College, as we saw one over the lintel of Dr Andrew Bonar’s church? And is he conspiring to enact that each time Dr Watt presides at table of the College only the speech of Deuteronomy and of the Zionists will be sanctioned? We axe not ignorant of his devices.
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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE.
THE SKY PILOT'S TRAIL.
Harnessing.
Wo saw him a minute ago as we got up lazily and looked out. He stood in shirt and trews, brushing his greys—a short, broad, strenuous, business-like man, with eye flashing but kindly. He is such a one as Mr Osbaldistone hailed on the moor as “ Mr Campbell!” a man for burdens and for war. Next to souls, he loves his greys. The squatter might covet them, for they are sleek and nimble, newly clipped, with close-cut manes and plaited tails. The colt he bought this summer for a song. Other men had fled from his fangs, but this man wheedled him into loyalty. The mare came to him sick, and he nursed her, till now her owner is glad to let her stay, for she gains in value daily. He has milked his cow, in from the paddock that his own hand has ploughed. He has chopped wood to serve his little wife for a week. He ha» lashed a bag of oaten chaff to the back of the buggy, for nobody grows oats where we are going. He is packing the saddle bags, warning us to leave every possible ounce behind. He puts in a Bible and a hymn book, and sundry tools as of tonsure, that in these realms of mud and dust the ministry be not blamed. We have slipped into the study to wait and scan the shelves. There, side by side, stand the best masters, old and new—Maclaren and Barnes and Westcott and Godet and Spurgeon. At his hand by his desk are his Greek Testament and Dictionary, and Garvie on "Romans.” The child prattles after us; “ Daddie has got such a lot of books, he does not know hardly what to do with them. Mostly daddie sits in that chair; when he is at home he does,” and we know the wavs of the student. Then, fondling her doll, she sighs, “ Baby won’t keep good in the night time.” The mother comes in to mend the fire. “ I suppose you are not much away at night. He is away every month, a week at a time, and you never can depend when the rivers are up. All the’flood time it was very
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miserable.’' The pilot travels 4000 miles a year. He has been here three years, and this is his thirty-ninth monthly trip to his four farthest out stations among the mountains. For seventy miles the buggy is possible in the summer time, and fifty more are passed in the saddle. For half the year the saddle only is available. Thirty-one of these trips have been with rain. But there is his shout, and the greys are prancing.
The Buggy Track.
We think how Geikie would have expounded the geology of this noble valley. The river drains a score of glens that open 10 miles up into what was once an inland lake, but is now a level plain. We are driving up the course of the waters of outlet, which have delved deep and cloven the papa and laid down flats, now on this side and now on that, undoing in one year the work of many floods, and hewing out old gravel beds to build afresh a mile away. The farmhouse we are passing is doomed, the orchard trees are falling into the stream. But the pilot has eyes for something else. “ Good morning, Syd. Good morning, Bill.” “Are they your men?” “Not exactly, but I know them all.” As one man told us, “He always meets us smiling.” We overtake a farmer of Doric tongue, from our own old glen, and the name of the burn makes us brothers. He used to pass our father's house on his way to the High School, walking the six miles to save the fare, and we reflect how Scotch learning and Scotch thrift have made him rich. The pilot has found his heart, and he meditates manse repairs. Now the gorge opens into the plain. A new town has arisen where once there was but an inn. One shop has the eloquent sign “ Established 1905.” That is ancient history here. The hotel still towers above the other buildings. It is only 1 o’clock, but we hear the click of the billiard balls, and see the youths coming out wiping their lips. But the dainty Presbyterian Church has arisen behind the schoolhouse—the first church in the town. The saints are given to hospitality, and the day of grace is at hand.
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Beyond the plain the sorrows of the road begin. The way leads up the valley for other 25 miles, to 'the watershed. Each river crossing has its tragedy. Here a minister -was washed down stream till he caught a tree and saved himself. But the shock undid him, and he died. There a horseman riding with the pilot fell into a hole, the water over his head, and he was caught under the water by some submerged branches till he, too, was almost drowned. One crossing is bad because of boulders, another because of steep banks. Beyond the last crossing the road mounts the hill. It is called “ good,” although the light trap which acts as a mail coach needs a team of five horses. Here and there groat holes in the track try the pilot’s skill, and in the cuttings the greys tug and pant, resting every few yards, for the mud is a foot deep and gluey. “ This is nothing yet,” he chuckles, though on the next road coach traffic is stopped for the winter. This is the last time the buggy will pass this way this year.
The Warm Hearths.
If roads are miry, hearths are happy. When we spoke of the rosy faces of the women and children, we were told: “We do not fret like the people in the towns.” It would seem that the folks here have a double portion of life. A bright and youthful mother, with her family of ten about her, cares for wayfarers and comforts the mother-lorn men around. We passed a house from which another heroine marshals to church those of her fifteen who are left at home. The youngest looking Deborah of all, the mother of seventeen sons and daughters, offers entertainment for travellers “at all hours.” This back country brings forth by handfuls.
Each hearth that welcomes us represents a new stage in the conquest of the land. Some settlers are in the thick of the battle, some are entering, some have won. When we cross the stream and unyoke at the wicket gate of the first homestead of the bush, the full moon has been shining for an hour, making the glen a fairy land. That home was carved out half a generation
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86
ago, when there was no road but the sheep track on the next run. In nine years the lady of the house could get to town twice. The praise of that pair is in every mouth, for they have been succourers of many. Their struggle is over, and the only bush now to be seen is the clump behind the house, for shelter and for beauty. The door opens upon a tall, high-browed, hoary Scot, grave and warm and kindly. He is “ the son of the very best Christian woman in the world,” and the kinsman of noble preachers. Throughout his almost fourscore years goodness and mercy have followed him, whether on his father’s farm beside Oulloden, or on the Otago border, or alongside the gallant and guileless and honourable gentlemen who dug gold at Hokitika. And now in these wilds he is a priest of the Most High God. Next day we lunch at the house of another southern Scot. This man, too, has weathered the worst, and his house of sawn timber is nearly finished. What students w© find here! One is well known to Mr Don and the Outlook competitions. Another, trained first by his mother and then in the little schoolhouse the settlers themselves built, took the National Scholarship, and he is now the leading boy in his High School. “ A remarkable boy,” said his host at the port to us. “ I have read of such a boy in books, but I never saw one till now.” Further on we spend the night in a cottage among the tall pines. We find the farmer to be the eon of an old neighbour of our own. We are near the limit of settlement. Not long ago our hostess was the farthest-in bride, starting on lonely nights at the moreporks and the wind. Her baby, the first born of this region, was the world’s wonder to all the young men who are still pitching the tent and plying the axe, and building the slab whare and sighing for the future and wife and happiness. In this house Divine service used to be held till the accommodation house was built, and the Lord has blessed the house of Obed-Edom because of the Ark of God.
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The Railway Camp.
This buggy track is giving place to the railway. The line is creeping up the valley. To-day the last station is at the edge of the plain, where a whare with six stalls, that last show day fed 80 horses, suggests a new city. Next week three miles more will be opened, and by Christmas yet more. A tramway is to connect the railhead with the sawmills that are being put up in the bush above. We saw at the roadside the first part of the new engine—the largest in the bay—to drive the first mill. This upland district will be a new Dannevirke, with a timber export trade. When the bridges are built the piles are driven 30 feet deep, to carry the heavy express engines of the coming through trains. A new problem has opened to the pilot. Navvies are being crowded on the line, a new parish is arising, and the pilot is straitened to tend it. Since his last trip a fresh “ canvas town ” has sprung up under the trees at the river bank. The white tents are gleaming among the foliage. The largest tent of all, whose walls are mostly packing-case boards, invites travellers to enter. We venture into the low doorway, and discover the nicest of dining rooms, the long, narrow table covered with a snow-white cloth, graced with flowers. Already to-day thirty-two have dined here, but we fare well. The courteous keeper of the room offers it to the pilot for service, and his heart is glad.
A navvies’ camp is all the world’s epitome, and its saints shine. Some of the men are the pilot’s people from the plain below. They tell us of one who has just left the line to become a home missionary. “ He was the best pick-and-shovel man we had on the ballast train. I had several conversations with him. Putting these religious matters aside, he is a very popular young man. He has a good voice and a taking way. Any man on the line will have a good word for him.” This Amos is no prophet’s son. but the Lord has taken him from the herdmen of Tekoa, and said, “ Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”
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The Riding Track.
“ Have you seen him ride?” said a settler’s wife. “ Just see him in the saddle ; he looks better even than in the pulpit.” It is true. He sits his horse solid and square like a major of dragoons. He goes through everything—rocks and rivers and blazed trails, rain and wind and snow. His cure for a cold is a long ride in heavy rain—the soaking and steaming make a good vapour bath, but it needs his energy and animal heat to bear him through scatheless. He has borrowed horses for our 50-mile ride, and he is ambling ahead through the fern and titree. Far down the bum is roaring over its linns. The sheep track turns round the face of the cliff, and we shut our eyes and trust the horse, for one stumble will be the death of us. We pass a camp in which the poor fellows have had a sore morning. The storm last night blew down their tents. No; they are not ready for church. By-and-bye we reach a lonely house. The family have gone on ahead. We shall meet them at the schoolhouse. Soon we cross the stream by a bridge just built, where there used to be frequent peril of men and mails, and reach the high road from the port. “ High ” it is, for the hills on each side are 3000 feet'. We are again in the bush country. Stumps are all around, and springing tree ferns that have defied the fire. After service we meet the mud, the endless mud. Timber waggons pass us glad to escape, though strained and buffeted. Then a travelling circus defiles past, the buck-jumpers jaded and bespattered. We criticise the Sabbath observance, and we are told that some people consider the Sabbath to end twenty miles down the road. Our pace falls to a walk, to a wade, and the rain comes on, and the night. After seven miles a light appears on the left. The farmer’s wife has been waiting half an hour for us, but her clock is out. This good woman can give the cup in the name of a disciple and receive a benediction. Over the tea we ask, “ How far is it?” “As far again, and the worse half.” Out into the dark the pilot dives, his grey mare’s tail our only gleam —out into the mud. Splash, splash, splash, mile after mile. In these parts when a man buys a horse his
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question is, "Is he a good mud horse 1” Our beast was born in the mud, and he is happy; but we wonder when it will end. “ Oh, this is nothing! There is a track at times at the side. Wait till even that disappears.” The moon has risen now, and its faint light comes through the tall pines. We are in the middle of the standing bush. Along the cuttings the glowworms sparkle under the ferns. Then the track gets firmer as we near the gravel banks of the river, and we canter into the open and see the lights of the township. Around the schoolhouse door the people are waiting, for we are just in time. We unbuckle our leggings, thinking we never saw them so muddy. Afterwards one tells us, “ When you came in we thought you looked so clean.” As we return next day the sun is bright. The hills circle close round the river flat, the green trees covering them nearly to the foot. The township is but a clearing in the forest. The single sawmill is roaring, the workmen full of purpose. Everything speaks of hope. The settlement has felt the throbbing of the railway, and its pulse beats faster. We visit the church site, choked with stumps. The manse site is in the big bush, where we see trackless thicket and towering rimu. Along the road are hints of progress. The new saleyards were opened some days ago, to save the settlers the fifty miles’ drive to the port. Houses are starting up here and there. That one on the left, on a charming site on the hillside, with a stream dancing down through the section, was hanselled last week by the latest bride from below. There she comes, convoying him to work, her arm in his, the lovelight in his eye,
And Eden raised in the waste wilderness.
Back we ride along a pack track. The trees are glistening after the rain, the bush berries clustered and red. The pigeons and tuis are flying in the pine tops, while the pilot sings lustily and declaims lays of the Cavaliers, and tells Puritan tales of his revival meetings. The mud is everywhere, with its soft ridges between the miry pools, into which each horse, following its fellow, plants its feet. We do not heed it now, for
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the worse parts have been paved with slabs, the culverts are sound, and we have time. Near midday the track opens on a fenced roadline, blocked with cindered stumps; then the roadmen’s camp emerges, then the newly-formed buggy road, and civilisation.
In Meeting of the Saints.
The bush conventicles are the glory of the land. We have seen four of them in two days. They represent the moorland preachings of the Covenanters. Here are the youth and vigour and enterprise of the colony. Here are, concentrated, intelligence and resolve and courage and endurance and charity and godliness. This is the fighting line of the army of colonisation. On the Saturday evening we worship at the new accommodation house at the corner of “ Taranaki street,” named because of the Taranaki men who have just settled. Few women are present but these are centres of culture and sanctification. In default of a school the elder children teach the younger, and perfect themselves. The young men have com© in from, the camps. The surveyors are in from the mountain. The colonel of militia, who commands men and obeys God, has with him a scion of a famous family of English pulpit orators. A farmer takes up his concertina, for the day of the pipe organ is not yet, and these deepchested bushmen sing with their might "of the Home over there,” and listen as for eternity. Across the road we pace the site a settler has offered for a church, and realise that it will soon be in the centre of another Taihape, by the side of an East Coast Main Trunk Line.
The congregation of the Sabbath morning is somewhat older. Thirty people are present, their fifteen horses hitched to the fence. There are more married men and more children, with a fine group of youths, captained by the schoolmaster. The school boasts of an organ. The organist is the daughter of a missionary in the Islands. These men dissect the sermon deftly, and the women are of the order of Jeanie Deans.
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In the afternoon, nine miles further on, the little schoolhouse is full. This region has reached its permanent condition. Its folk are not feeble. The father of the settlement took a full University course. Another of the fathers is the stalwart County Councillor, a candidate for Parliament. In one of the young men we recognise the son of a leading city man, come out to farm. These Bereans receive the Word with all readiness of mind.
The evening congregation is the oldest of all. The schoolhouses in which we have already worshipped were built by the settlers. Here the school, built by the first three settlers, has served its generation, and given place to a new school, built by the Education Board, This is but the second service in the new place. Two generations of souls are present, but on this stormy night the younger folks prevail. In the front of the congregation sits the mother of the church, who started the Sunday School, entertained the first travelling preachers, and was the centre of all good. What tales she can tell of the pack-road days! Only recently did the dray road reach her house. Fourteen years ago her husband and she came from comfort in England. For seven years their organ was stored in town, till a dray road had been made far enough along the track, and then the precious instrument was sledged the last miles home in triumph. Her heart sank when her childreu, commended by the Inspector of Schools, were unable to get higher education. But her boys were reminded that the colony needed good bushmen as well as good scholars, and now they are breaking in their own land far back. One of the elders lights the lamps and plays the instrument. That man has ridden seven miles through the mud and rain to be a doorkeeper in the house of his God. His brother, also an elder, is to-night camped with his travelling sheep far down the road to the port. These men are the sons of the Chairman of an Education Board. They take services on the Sabbaths between the visits of the pilot. One of them, to fit himself for preaching, has learned to read the New Testament in its own tongue.
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Such is the stuff of which these back-block companies are made. So full of faith and good works are they that the pilot would not fear to leave the centre of his great parish and minister wholly to the bush. In truth, we are convinced that the Church is shirking its duty to this noble people. They deserve to have their minister every Sabbath day. He is compelled to neglect great opportunities. There are farms beyond that he has never visited. New settlers are entering every year, and the railway is advancing. This country needs his care daily, for the bush has its tragedies, of which we may not now speak particularly. We have had to-day the fellowship of the saints. But there are others. The devil walketh about here as a roaring lion, and he does devour.
The Return.
Late in the afternoon of the second day of the return we reach home. The colt is lame, and even the mare hangs her head. The poor beasts have felt the journey, but the men have been cheered by kind hosts, and by an autumn landscape, rich with the green of spring. To-day the pilot is grave. He has the burden of a speech which he has to deliver two days hence, and which is boldly advertised in the newspapers. The No-license people have organised their first demonstration at the port. At last election the cause was lost by only a few votes, and the present fight will be keen. Last time the pilot did valiantly. This time they have retained the Principal of the Maori College, the most learned man on tno coast, to state the case and win the rich. They look to the pilot to rouse the workmen, with whom the verdict lies. In their poster they have put the pilot’s name first, in great letters ; for over an area of a thousand square miles he is the one platform man dreaded by the devil and all his works.
The Recompense.
To-night the Presbytery meet seven miles away to consider the work of the parish. They are exercised to get a decent maintenance for their hero, the pastor
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of eight churches, attended by five hundred persons. These people are not poor. For the last few years they have had success unheard of. One bush man summed up the conditions: “ I have travelled much. I was never in a place where men can save so much. Last winter I declined 2s an hour and food. No man had to work for less than Is 6d an hour. The wages of a bushman have been from £5 to £lO a week,” The parish pays the pilot £2 10s per week, with house, and looks to the Church at large to eke out the pittance. We find that these are just the wages, with privileges that amount to house rent, that our farmers’ own store pays the lad in his teens behind the counter. But Paul the aged, Paul the prisoner, calls for his old cloak and for his books in hope of eternal life.
Ortoo Daily Timis Pbint
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Bibliographic details
APA: Whyte, Alexander. (1909). The doctrines of grace and their application : some studies of a colonial ministry. N.Z. Bible Tract and Book Society.
Chicago: Whyte, Alexander. The doctrines of grace and their application : some studies of a colonial ministry. Dunedin, N.Z.: N.Z. Bible Tract and Book Society, 1909.
MLA: Whyte, Alexander. The doctrines of grace and their application : some studies of a colonial ministry. N.Z. Bible Tract and Book Society, 1909.
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29,385
The doctrines of grace and their application : some studies of a colonial ministry Whyte, Alexander, N.Z. Bible Tract and Book Society, Dunedin, N.Z., 1909
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