NEW LIGHTS on THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 186, 10 August 1867, Page 2

NEW LIGHTS on THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.

To the Editor op the Nelson Evening Mail. God's Word gives life, but these men's carnal comments Create but doubts, obscuring to the truth, And oft, alas ! give death." Sir —l proceed with my remarks on the pamphlet noticed iu my letter which appeared in your Friday's issue. The assumed error "that Christians are still under the law as a rule of life," is by the author dismissed by au assertion that "an attentive perusal of the Epistle to the Galatians sufficiently refutes this notion, not to speak of the Sermon on the Mount, which enjoins much that is above and beyond, nay quite different from what the law taught." Now nothing is so selfevident as that the whole force of the Apostle's argument in that Epistle is to guard against any reliance upon the Mosaic law of rites and ceremonies, and not agaiust the moral law as means to an end, neither is there any thing in what Jesus Christ taught that militates against the Decalogue, but rather a more imperative enforcement of that law in contradistinction to the vain traditions of the Pharisees. It is a confusion of thought when, throughout his pamphlet, the author uses the word " works" as a synouym for the word law apart from faith. But both confusion and exaggeration alike arise from the unhappy assertion of any division at all. If such a division exists, how can it be said " Love is the fulfilling of the law. He that doeth the will of God shall know of the doctrine," etc. " Think uot that I am come to destroy the law," etc. (Matt. v, 17 —20), and other passages too numerous to quote, illustrative of the fact " that without holiness no man shall see the Lord." I am by no means prepared to receive the broad assertion of this reprover of " popular errors" that " the whole tenor of Scripture is to the effect, that faith, and faith aloue, saves the soul." When did the law of the Ten Commandments cease to be enforced ? When did faith, as an abstract principle of salvation, begin as the sole means of reconciling man to God ? Notwithstanding the author's defiance of criticism by stating that he is "of course aware in anticipation of certain marvellously wise replies, "■* I must, as an attentive reader of the New Testament, presume to say that the symbolical and highly figurative mode of expression of the apostles gives no countenance to the extravagant doctrine of the sinner being clothed with the imputed righteousness of Christ, in order to his justification, a notion than which nothing (it appears to me) can be more foreigu to the whole genius of Christianity, or more inconsistent with reason and Scripture, and which indeed never occurred to any one's imagination till mauy centuries after the mission and ministry of the Apostles had been concluded. The key to this false contract \as I hold it to be) between faith and works lies in the exaggerated importance which the author attaches to what is no doubt a fact of his own theology; but is there no fear that this substitution of abstract theology for the commandments of God, and th e too evident underrating of all "good works" will miserably mislead 'he enquiring mind ? It will, nay, must have an evil effect upon the mind of the young, who are not always prepared to draw nice distinctions about "God's restraining grace" and the insinuation that salvation depends not in " any, the least degree on ourselves." I find I shall have to trouble you with yet further notice of this pamphlet. I am, etc., A Truth-seeker. August 9th, 1867.