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CHAPTER
X.
PERFECT LOVE AS A DEFINITE BLESSING
It
took four thousand years to unroll the scroll of the sacred
Scriptures --"to import God into knowledge," in the phrase
of Dr. Bushnell. The patriarchal and Jewish dispensations
were occupied by the disclosure and ineradicable inculcation
of the Divine unity upon one nation amid surrounding
polytheism. To have taught the trinal personality of God,
before the firm establishment of his oneness of substance,
might have overtasked mankind in the period of their early
theological pupilage. The first words taught to every child
in the Jewish nursery for more than three thousand years are
these: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." Faith
in this truth, such as inspired obedience, was saving under
the dispensations before Christianity. It is saving now to
all who have no higher revelation. What need, then, have we
of any clearer and more definite manifestation of the nature
of God? Why should he reveal the unthinkable fact of his
threefold personality, and require our faith to mount to
heights so far above reason? This is a question which the
angels might well approach with bashful tread. It is certain
that he has not taken me into his counsels. Here I walk by
faith. Faith says that the higher revelation of God, and the
new requirement of faith in the Trinity, proceed from the
gracious purpose to bestow richer blessings upon the
believer in a dispensation "rather glorious." Such is the
nature of the human soul, and probably of all finite
spirits, that faith creates and measures its capacity for
spiritual good. By this gateway alone does God enter. Hence
it follows that he would make an advanced revelation of
himself, requiring a higher upreaching of faith, when he
should purpose to fill us with his fullness. It will not now
be sufficient to believe in one God, as do the trembling
demons. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, in his offices of
prophet or teacher, priest and king, and the Holy Ghost, as
our regenerator, spirit of adoption, and sanctifier, must be
specifically grasped by our faith. Hence we should look for
little spirituality where these distinctive truths of the
Gospel are little preached, and for much spiritual power and
deep religious experience where they are distinctly taught
and received with the least intermixture of error, and
without disproportionate emphasis upon ritualism. Church
history will sustain this assertion. There is always a
spiritual decline whenever Christ and the Holy Spirit have a
secondary place in preaching; and there is always a revival
when the "whole counsel of God," the Father, Son, and
Spirit, is faithfully presented in the pulpit. Of many
individual believers it may be truthfully said that their
spiritual life is feeble and sickly because they fail to
grasp Christ and the Comforter in all their distinct
offices. Thousands are faintly moving, with languid steps,
along the heavenward path, who might run with gladness,
surmounting every obstacle and overthrowing every foe by
their resistless momentum, if they would only persistently
endeavour to "know the exceeding greatness of Christ's power
to usward who believe." Thousands of sincere souls are
harassed and weakened by perpetual doubts, simply because
they do not render due honor to the third person of the
Trinity by trusting him to the work of his office,
certifying their sonship by "the spirit of adoption." They
do not stir themselves up to take hold of this blessed
assurance, and to insist that the Divine seal be impressed
upon them by the Holy Ghost. They live in constant disregard
of the second pungent inference from Wesley's sermon on the
Witness of the Spirit, "Let none rest in any supposed fruit
of the Spirit without the witness." The natural consequence
of this absence of "the spirit of adoption, crying in their
hearts, Abba, Father," is a perpetual oscillation between
hope and fear, sorrowfully singing: --
"'Tis a
point I long to know;
Oft it causeth anxious thought,
Do I love the Lord, or no;
Am I his, or am' I not?"
Instead of this they might be exultingly singing: --
"O love,
thou bottomless abyss!
My sins are swallowed up in thee;
Covered is my unrighteousness,
Nor spot of guilt remains on me:
While Jesus' blood, through earth and skies,
Mercy, free, boundless mercy, cries."
I am convinced
that this unsatisfactory and unmethodistic experience too
prevalent in our Churches, is chargeable in part to the
failure of our preachers to specialize this blessing, the
common privilege of all believers. Hear Mr. Wesley:
Generally, wherever the Gospel is preached in a clear
and scriptural manner, more than ninetynine in a
hundred do know the exact time when they are
justified.
This is
the testimony of a man more competent, from personal
observation, to express a reliable opinion than any since
the apostolic age, for he visited all his Societies
annually, and met them in class, and put to each member
searching test questions which went into the very core of
his being. That was the style of classleading in his day.
But no such proportion of conversions, with the direct
witness, now obtains at our altars. The failure is not in
the Gospel, which is a changeless stream of power emanating
from the living Christ, "the same yesterday, and today, and
for ever." Where, then, is the failure? Let every preacher
examine his sermons, and see whether he has made "the spirit
of adoption" conspicuous in his ministry.
Another office of the Spirit is that of purification. He is
the Sanctifier. Beginning this work in the new birth by
implanting love to God, the purifying principle, he
continues it until perfect love casteth out fear. That this
consummation may take place long before death, has never
been a disputed question with Methodists. That it was
specialized by their great founder, with increasing
emphasis, till his dying day, no man on the earth can
candidly deny, after reading "Tyerman's Life and Times of
John Wesley." That this magnifying of the office of the
Sanctifier produced such Christian characters as Bramwell,
Hester Ann Rogers, the seraphic Fletcher, and his saintly
wife, and many others unknown to fame, but precious Jewels
in the crown of Jesus, is as certain as the sequence of any
effect after its cause.
These
results were not the work of chance. There was a distinctive
faith which grasped this prize.This faith came from
preaching which honored the Sanctifier by dwelling
emphatically upon his office, and not by the use of
"glittering generalities" gliding smoothly over it like a
slurred note in music. It must be borne in mind that the
Holy Spirit is the most sensitive person of the Godhead. If
blasphemy against him is unpardonable, the slighting of any
of his offices must not only grieve him, but also deprive
the soul of the blessings which it is his perogative to
bestow. "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are
sealed unto the day of redemption." |