THE MAGNIFICENCE OF THE DIVINE GRACE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 95, 21 April 1906, Page 10

THE MAGNIFICENCE OF THE DIVINE GRACE.

B% JOHN WATSOX, DD. (" lan Maclaren.")

"Now veto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think, according to the power that •■wortetii in us, unto Him be glory in the Church of Ckrist Jesus? throng-tout all aces, world without end. Amen.—Eph. iii. 20-21.

It was an ascent from the commonplace of experience to say that God should be able to answer the spoken prayers, and that modest height catches our faith j sometimes. Bizfc God is able also to fulfil the secret longing, the cherished desire, the fond imagination which nestled in the heart when we are in the best and most spiritual mood and have not had courage to put into words. Every prayer spoken, and every prayer unspoken, shall be realities when God begins to work. That is not enough, however. St. Paul realised he was only on the lower level of the hill of God. Everything else, according to the will of God, God will perform. When He begins to perform it, it will be not according to the measure of the human mind, but according to the mind of the Eternal, " above el? all that we ask or think." Then come other levels, "abundantly above all that we ask or think."' And before the apostle's mind there arose in the white glory, "unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that ■we ask or think." He would have said more if he could. But he has exhausted the resources of language, even, the Greek speech so flexible that it bends to any man's hand, and is so fertile that it can fruit off words at every turn. To express the thought the imagination has now given up the effort in despair. There is no speech known to man that can deal with the grace of God. The only expression adequate to that grace is Jesus Christ Himself, the Word of God! PAUL'S - ABOVENE3S." Were one to mention a single word characteristic of St. Paul's style it ■would be above, and if one were to mention a single quality of his mind it ■would be ■"' aboveness." His nature was not by birth stunted nor cramped. He ■was not warped by ignoble passions or hitter jealousies or petty ambitions or xinmanly envies. He was according to the stature of humanity, an " exceeding abundant" mau. He, by his nature, would attempt heroic deeds, but he always imagined more splendid things he could not do. He "was a man uncalculating in sacrifices, affluent in service, in affection. He was to Ibegin with, and in himself, an " exceeding abundant"' man; and he had had an exceeding abundant experience of the grace of God. He had refused light] from earth in the lives of Christian people, and, Taehold God gave Mm light from heaven. He had resisted Christ in his own. heaart, and Christ spoke to him from the midst of the Throne. He had j persecuted Christian people unto death, j and Christ -made him an apostle of His Church. Xever has a man received such meTcy, never has a man been llesaed with such a guerdon of love. !Ah, brethren, it is out of profound experience of God tha-t noble ideas of God are born. It was because St. Augus- 1 .tine had been delivered from such a ! deadly and loathsome grip of sin that le was able to give to all the centuries such a majestic conception of the grace, of God. It was because John Bunyan wrestled long for peace to Ms own soul that he wrote the " Pilgrim's Progress" and led a multitude no man can number into the way of peace. It was because Mr. Spurgeon sought so long for God, until He revealed Himself "by the word of that Methodist preacher, that he became the chief evangelist of ithe grace of God unto our generation. la it a wonder that when St. Paul preached the Divine grace his words failed him and his heart -was nigh, unto the bursting? His inability sometimes to make speech run smoothly was his tribute to the overwhelming magnificence of ' God. I don't wonder that the word '"above" in its various forms in the ! original occurs three times more frequently in St. Paul's writings than in : all the Test of: the New Testament. Every apostle had hie own individuality, and every apostle had his own message, and St. Paul is the preacher of "the magnificence of grace." This note of magnificence has not always, I submit, brethren, been preserved in the history of our faith; and the preaching of Christ's evangel, the-Jboundless grace of God, has been limited by various schools. I am not here to criticise any school, but only to point out how limited is the Church throughout her borders. ECCLESIASTICAL LIMITATION. First of all, it lias Tjeen Testrieted in its channel by eeelesiasfcieism. According to this view- of the Divine economy, grace can only come in ordinary circumstances to persons who are members of a. particular body oi Christians, perhaps Roman Catholics (and I do not -want to say anything against them, as I have too many dear friends amongst them): perhaps- Anglicans whom we for scholarship and beautiful piety: perhaps Seotc-h Seeeders of the eighteenth century who said to Whitefield boldly, "We are the people of God in Scotland," and perhaps it has been restricted by our dear friends the Plymouth Brethren, who think they have by some patent the exclusive possession of salvation. Fellowship with Christ is made dependent upon the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and the ministry in its efficacy is bound up with men ordain-«-d in a particular iasMon. Ah! brethren, this is to confound the rivulets of artificial irrigation, which can be cut oft" somewhere by the turn of a man's hand, with the rain of God which descends from the clouds and makes green the earth, which is beyond a man's commanding and beyond a man's restricting. Surely, brethren, an intelligent and impartial man, being witness, it is a fact that no body of Christians has ever' had a monopoly of the Divine grace. If grace were exceeding abundant in men like St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom, in St. Francis and ' St. Bernard, was it not also most evident in Bishop Andrewes and Archbishop Leighton, in Richard Baxter and John Bunyan, in Samuel Rutherford and John Wesley? Men have taken the sacrament carefully and frequently, and have disgraced the name of our comiaon Lord by ungodly living, such as the Borgias. And other Christians, for reasons that commend themselves to their judgment, do nof employ the aid of any sacrament and yet have tnade the name of Jesus fragrant throughout this land, such as the Society of Friends. When an artificial light is employed it illuminates a small -circle; but the light of God which, rises

on a spring day pours over the- whole earth, and if it" touches the dwellers of of the hill first, it does not cease until: it Teaches ..the smallest cottages in thetiniest glen.. We'do not lift our voice against the "Churchy else we should. b&. striking StrP.aul.".We believe in the Church. We are the- sons of men who believed in the Church and were prepared to die for the Church, which is the body of Christ. But we imagine . |b> Church more hospitable and more glorious than any section thereof. • The Churc-h is the whole body of the faithI ful throughout the earth to-day, and| throughout the heavenly places, and. in I this sphere the grace of God is "exceed-' ing abundant." SCHOLASTIC LIMITATION. The magnificence of God in our preaching and experience has also been ie!- -! strained, not in its channel, but in its direction, by what I tail scholasticism. According to the bold and thoroughgoing , theory which was well known in Scotland, and 1 believe was well known m England, too. which is losing ground, I suppose, but stiil is an influence —accord- . ing to this theory, grace in its most generous form is only bestowed by God upon a certain number of people: and although it be offered in appearance to others, it i.s not given to them in reality. Who these favoured sons of men may be, God caa Himself alone know. And no one can estimate the suffering and the uncertainty of pious and tender souls as in days past, if not to-day, they tried to discover whether they were within the "election of God." In my own ministry, although not much of recent years, I have tried to comfort people who have trusted the Lord Jesus all through their -lives, and were entering into the shadow under His care, but who were trembling lest they were not within the saving purpose of God. One does not admire that effrontery of logic, that God flings wide the promise of His | mercy to all the outcasts of the highways of life, but strictly limits the j places of the feast to those whom he has determined. Never can I forget a ' quarter of a century ago a pious and excellent minister, an elderly man, say- i ing to mc at the close of a service, when I had been stirred (alas! if 1 had been oftener stirred) to make the offer of free, forgiveness to all men in the congregation, that I had no right to do what I had done. He said, "You ought not to have made the offer to all aud sundry, but only to sensible sinners, the men who had been prepared by God to receive the mercy which He lias prepared for them." It was only in the middle of the last century that a learneji and excellent minister of the Scotch. Kirk was removed from the Kirk because lie dared to believe thatwhatsoever God said He intended; that the grace of God was striving in every man's heart unto salvation: and that if any man be lost, the blame shall fall on the awful liberty of a stubborn will; but it shall never be laid upon the limitation of-.the Divine grace which is '"exceeding abundant, above all that we ask | jor think." (To be concluded.)