VI. THE SINNER'S EXCUSES ANSWERED
Elihu also proceeded and
said, Suffer me a little, and I will shew thee that I have yet to speak on
God's behalf. I will fetch my knowledge from afar, and will ascribe righteousness
to my Maker."-Job xxxvi. 1-3
ELIHU was present and heard the controversy between Job and his
friends. The latter maintained that God's dealings with Job proved him wicked.
This Job denied, and maintained that we could not judge men to be good or bad,
from God's providential dealings with them, because facts show that the present
is not a state of rewards and punishments. They, however, regarded this as
taking part with the wicked, and hence did not shrink from accusing Job of
doing this.
Elihu had previously said -- My desire is that Job may be tried
in regard to what he has said of wicked men. But ere the discussion closed, he
saw that Job had confounded his three friends, maintaining unanswerably that it
was not because of any hypocrisy or special guilt that he was so signally
scourged. Yet plainly even Job had not the key to explain the reason of God's
dealings with him. To him it was still a mystery. He did not see that God might
have been seeking to test and discipline his piety, or even to make an example
of his integrity and submissiveness to confound the devil with.
Elihu purposed to speak in God's behalf and ascribed
righteousness to his Maker. It is my present object to do the same in regard to
sinners who refuse to repent, and who complain of God's ways. But before I
proceed, let me advert to a fact. Some years since, in my labours as an
evangelist, I became acquainted with a man prominent in the place of his
residence for his general intelligence, and whose two successive wives were daughters
of Old School Presbyterian clergymen. Through them he had received many books
to read on religious subjects, which they and their friends supposed would do
him good, but which failed to do him any good at all. He denied the inspiration
of the Bible, and on grounds which those books did not in his view obviate at
all. Indeed, they only served to aggravate his objections.
When I came into the place, his wife was very anxious that I
should see and converse with him. I called; she sent for him to come in and see
the new minister; to which he replied that he was sure he could do him no good,
since he had conversed with so many and found no light on the points that so
much stumbled him; but upon her urgent entreaty, he consented for her sake to
come in. I said to him in the outset, "Don't understand me as having
called here to have a quarrel with you, and provoke a dispute. I only wish at
your wife's request to converse with you, if you are perfectly willing, upon
the great subject of divine resure to have such a conversation, and accordingly
I asked him to state briefly his position. He replied "I admit the truths
of natural religion, and believe most fully in the immortality of the soul, but
not in the inspiration of the Scriptures. I am a Deist." But, said I, on
what ground do you deny the inspiration of the Bible? Said he, I know it cannot
be true. How do you know that? It contradicts the affirmations of my
reason. You admit and I hold that God created my nature, both physical and
moral. Here is a book, said to be from God, but it contradicts my nature. I
therefore know it cannot be from God.
This of course opened the door for me to draw from him the
particular points of his objection to the Bible as teaching what his nature
contradicted. These points and my reply to them will constitute the body of my
present discourse.
1. The Bible cannot be true because it represents God as
unjust. I find myself possessed of convictions as to what is just and
unjust. These convictions the Bible outrages. It represents God as creating men
and then condemning them for another's sin.
Indeed, said I, and where? Say, where does the Bible affirm
this?
Why, does it not? said he. No. Are you a Presbyterian? said he?
Yes. He then began to quote the catechism. Stop, stop, said I, that is not, the
Bible. That is only a human catechism. True, said he, but does not the Bible
connect the universal sin of the race with the sin of Adam? Yes, said I, it
does in a particular way, but it is quite essential to our purpose to understand
in what way. The Bible makes this connection incidental and not direct;
and it always represents the sinner condemned as really sinning himself, and as
condemned for his own sin.
But, continued he, children do suffer for their father's sins.
Yes said I, in a certain sense it is so, and must be so. Do you not see
yourself, everywhere, that children must suffer for the sins of their parents?
and he blessed also by the piety of their parents? You see this and you find no
fault with it. You see that children must be implicated in the good or ill
conduct of their parents; their relation as children makes this absolutely
unavoidable. Is it not wise and good that the happiness or misery of children
should depend on their parents, and thus become one of the strongest possible
motives to them to train them up in virtue? Yet it is true that the son is
never rewarded or punished punitively for his parents' sins. The evil
that befalls him through his connection with his parents is always disciplinary
-- never punitive.
Again, he said, the Bible certainly represents God as creating
men sinners, and as condemning them for their sinful nature. No, replied I; for
the Bible defines sin as voluntary transgression of law, and it is absurd to
suppose that a nature can be a voluntary transgressor. Besides, it is in
the nature of the case impossible that God should make a sinful nature. It
is in fact doubly impossible, for the thing is a natural impossibility, and if
it were not, it would yet be morally impossible that be should do it. He
could not do it for the same reason that He can not sin.
In harmony with this is the fact that the Bible never represents
God as condemning men for their nature, either here or at the judgment. Nowhere
in the Bible is there the least intimation that God holds men responsible for
their created nature, but only for the vile and pertinacious abuse of their
nature. Other views of this matter, differing from this, are not the Bible, but
are only false glosses put upon it usually by those whose philosophy has led
them into absurd interpretations. Everywhere in the Bible men are condemned
only for their voluntary sins, and are required to repent of these sins, and of
these only. Indeed, there can possibly be no other sins than these.
Again, it is said, the Bible represents God as being cruel,
inasmuch as He commanded the Jews to wage a war of extermination against the
ancient Canaanites.
But why should this be called cruel? The Bible expressly informs
us that God commanded this because of their awful wickedness. They were too
awfully wicked to live. God could not suffer them to defile the earth and
corrupt society. Hence He arose in His zeal for human welfare, and commanded to
wash the land clean of such unutterable abominations. The good of the race demanded
it. Was this cruel? Nay, verily, this was simply benevolent. It was one of the
highest acts of benevolence to smite down such a race and sweep them from the
face of the earth. And to employ the Jews as His executioners, giving them to
understand distinctly why He commanded them to do it, was putting them
in a way to derive the highest moral benefit from the transaction. In no other
way could they have been so solemnly impressed with the holy justice of
Jehovah. And now will any man find fault with God for this? None can do so, reasonably.
But the Bible allows slavery.
What? The Bible allow slavery? In what sense allow it? and under
what circumstances? and what kind of slavery? These are all very important
inquiries if we wish to know the certainty and the meaning of the things we
say.
The Bible did indeed allow the Jews, in the case of captives
taken in war, to commute death for servitude. When the customs of existing
nations put captives taken in war to death, God authorized the Jews in certain
cases to spare their captives and employ them as servants. By this means they
were taken out from among idolatrous nations and brought into contact with the
worship and ordinances of the true God.
Moreover, God enacted statutes for the protection of the Hebrew
servant, which made his case infinitely better than being cut off in his sins.
And who shall call this cruel? Jewish servitude was not American slavery, nor
scarcely an approximation toward it. It would require too much time to go into
the detail of this subject here. All that objected God is unmerciful,
vindictive, and implacable. The gentleman to whom I have alluded said -- I
don't believe the Bible is from God when it represents Him as so vindictive and
implacable that He would not forgive sin until He had first taken measures to
kill His own Son.
Now it was by no means unnatural that, under such instructions
he had received, he should think so. I had felt so myself. This very objection
had stumbled me. But I afterwards saw the answer so plainly that it left
nothing more to be desired. The answer indeed is exceedingly plain. It was not
an implacable disposition in God which led Him to require the death of Christ
as the ground of forgiveness. It was simply his benevolent regard for the
safety and blessedness of His kingdom. He knew very well that it was unsafe to
forgive sin without such a satisfaction. Indeed, this was the strongest
possible exhibition of a forgiving disposition, to consent to the sacrifice of
His Son for this purpose. He loved His Son, and certainly would not inflict one
needless pang upon Him. He also loved a sinning race, and saw the depth of that
ruin toward which they were rushing. Therefore He longed to forgive them, and
to prepare a way in which He could do so with safety. He only desired to avoid
all misapprehension. To forgive without such atonement as would adequately
express His abhorrence of sin, would leave the intelligent universe to think
that He did not care how much any beings should sin. This would not do.
Let it be considered also that the giving up of Jesus Christ was
only a voluntary offering on God's part to sustain law, so that He could
forgive without peril to His government. Jesus was not in any sense punished;
He only volunteered to suffer for sinners that they might be freed
from the governmental necessity of suffering. And was not mercy manifested in
this? Certainly. How could it be manifested more signally?
But, says the objector, God is unjust, inasmuch as He requires
impossibilities on pain of endless death.
Does He, indeed? Then where? In the law, is it, or in the
Gospel? In these taken together we have the aggregate of all God's
requirements. In what part, then, of either law or Gospel do you find the
precept contained which requires impossibilities? Is it in the law? But the law
says only Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart;" not
with another man's heart, but simply with thine own; only with all thine own
heart, not with more than all. Read on still further: "and with all thy
strength." Not with the strength of an angel -- not with the strength of
any other being than thyself, and only with such an amount of strength as you
actually have for the time being. The demands of the law, you see, exactly meet
your ability; nothing more and nothing else.
Indeed, said he, this is a new view of the subject. Well but is
not this just as it should be? Does not the law carry with it, its own
vindication in its very terms? How can any one say that the law requires of us
impossible service -- things we have no power to do? The fact is, it requires
us to do just what we can and nothing more. Where, then, is this objection to
the Bible? Where is the impossibility of which you speak?
But, resumed he, is it not true that "no mere man since the
fall has been able wholly to keep the commandments of God, but doth daily break
them in thought, word, and deed?"
Ah, my friend, that's catechism, not Bible; we must be careful
not to impute to the Bible all that human catechisms have said. The Bible only
requires you to consecrate to God what strength and powers you actually have,
and is by no means responsible for the affirmation that God requires of man
more than he can do. No, verily, the Bible nowhere imputes to God a requisition
so unreasonable and cruel. No wonder the human mind should rebel against such a
view of God's law. If any human law were to require impossibilities, there
could be no end to the denunciations that must fall upon it. No human mind
could possibly approve of such a law. Nor can it be supposed that God can
reasonably act on principles which would disgrace and ruin any human
government.
But, resumed he, here is another objection. The Bible represents
men as unable to believe the Gospel unless they are drawn by God, for it reads,
"No man can come to me except the Father who hath sent me draw him."
Yet sinners are required to believe on pain of damnation. How is this?
To this the reply is, first, the connection shows that Christ
referred to drawing by means of teaching or instruction; for to confirm what He
had said, He appeals to the ancient scriptures, "It is written, They shall
all be taught of God." Without this teaching, then, none can come. They
must know Christ before they can come to Him in faith. They cannot
believe till they know what to believe. In this sense of coming, untaught
heathen are not required to come. God never requires any to come, who have not
been taught. Once taught, they are bound to come, may be and arefuse.
But, replied he, the Bible does really teach that men cannot
serve the Lord, and still it holds them responsible for doing it. Joshua said
to all the people, "Ye cannot serve the Lord, for He is an holy God."
Let us see. Joshua had called all the people together and had
laid before them their obligation to serve the Lord their God. When they all
said so readily and with so little serious consideration that they would,
Joshua replied, "Ye cannot serve the Lord for He is a holy God; He is a
jealous God; He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins." What
did he mean? Plainly this -- Ye cannot serve God, because you have not heartily
abandoned your sins. You cannot get along with a God so holy and so jealous,
unless you give up sinning. You cannot serve God with a selfish heart. You
cannot please Him till you really renounce your sins altogether. You must begin
by making to yourselves a new heart. Joshua doubtless saw that they had not
given up their sins and had not really begun to serve God at all, and did not
even understand the first principles of true religion. This is the reason why
he seemed to repulse them so suddenly. It is as if he would say -- Stop; you
must go back and begin with utterly putting away all your sins. You cannot
serve a holy and jealous God in any other way, for He will not go along with
you as His people if you persist in sinning against Him.
It is a gross perversion
of the Bible to make it mean that men have no power to do what God requires. It
is true indeed, that in this connection it sometimes uses the words can and can
not, but these and similar words should be construed according to the
nature of the subject. All reasonable men construe thus intuitively in all
common use of language. The Bible always employs the language of common life
and in the way of common usage. Hence it should be thus interpreted.
When it is said that Joseph's brethren hated him and could not
speak peaceably to him, the meaning is not that their organs of speech could
not articulate kind words; but it points us to a difficulty in the heart.
They hated him so badly they could not speak pleasantly. Nor does the
sacred historian assume that they could not at once subdue this hatred and
treat Joseph as brother should treat brother. The sacred writers are the last
men in the world to apologize for sin on this wise.
There is the case of the angels sent to hasten Lot out of guilty
Sodom. One said, "Haste thee escape thither, for I can not do anything
until thou be come thither." Does this mean that the Almighty God had no
power to overwhelm Sodom so long as Lot was in it? Certainly not. It meant
only that it was His purpose not to destroy the city till Lot was out. Indeed,
all men use language thus in common life. You go into one of our village stores
and say to the merchant, Can you lift a ton of your goods at once? No. Can you
sell me that piece of cloth for a shilling a yard? No. Does this it can mean
the same as the other? By no means. But how is it that you detect the
difference? How is it that you come to know so readily which is the physical
cannot and which the moral? The nature of the subject tells you.
But, you say, the same word ought always to mean the same thing.
Well, if it ought to, it does not, in any language ever yet spoken by man. And
yet there is no difficulty in understanding even the most imperfect of human
languages if men are honest in speaking and honest in hearing, and will use their
common sense. They intuitively construe language according to the nature of the
subject spoken of
The Bible always assumes that sinners can not do right and
please God with a wicked heart. It always takes the ground that God
abhors hypocrisy -- that He can not be satisfied with mere forms and
professions of service when the heart is not in it, and hence that all
acceptable service must begin with making a new and sincere heart.
But here is another difficulty. Can I make to myself a new
heart?
Yes, and you could not doubt but that you could, if you only
understood what the language means. and what the thing is.
See Adam and Eve in the garden. What was their heart? Did
God create it? No; it is not possible that He should, for a heart in this sense
is not the subject of physical creation. When God made Adam, giving him all the
capacities for acting morally, he had no heart good or bad until he came to act
morally. When did he first have a moral heart? When he first waked to moral
consciousness and gave his heart to God. When first he saw God manifested, and
put confidence in Him as his Father, and yielded up his heart to Him in love
and obedience. Observe, he first had this holy heart because he yielded up his
will to God in entire consecration. This was his first holy heart.
But at length the hour of temptation came, alluring him to
withdraw his heart from God and turn to pleasing himself. To Eve the tempter
said "Hath God indeed said -- Ye shall not surely die? "Ah, is that
so? Then he raised the question either as to the fact that God had really
threatened death for sin, or as to the justice of doing so. In either
case it raised a question about obedience and opened the heart to temptation.
Then that fruit came before her mind. It was fair and seemed good for food. Her
appetite enkindles and clamours for indulgence. Then, it was said to be fitted
to "make one wise," and by eating it she might "be as the gods,
knowing good and evil." This appealed to her curiosity. Yielding to this
temptation and making up her mind to please herself, she made herself a new
heart of sin; she changed her heart from holiness to sin, and fell from
her first moral position. When Adam yielded to temptation, he made the same
change in his heart; he gave himself up to selfishness and sin. This accounts
for all future acts of selfishness in after life.
Adam and Eve are again brought before God. God says to Adam --
Give me thy heart. Change your heart. What! says Adam, I cannot change my own
heart! But God replies, How long is it since you have done it? It is but
yesterday that you changed your own heart from holiness to sin; why can't you
change it back?
So in all cases. Changing the ruling preference, the governing
purpose of the mind, is the thing, and who can say, I cannot do that. Cannot
you do that? Cannot you give yourself to God?
The reason you cannot please God in your executive acts, is that
your governing purpose is not right. While your leading motive is wrong, all
you do is selfish, because it is all done for the single object of pleasing
yourself. You do nothing for the sake of pleasing God, and with the governing
design and purpose of doing all His holy will; hence all you do, even your
religious duties, only displease God. If the Bible had anywhere represented God
as being pleased with your hypocritical services it would be proven false, for
this is perfectly impossible.
But you say, the Bible requires me to begin with the inner man
-- the heart -- and you say yon cannot get at this; that you cannot reach your
own heart or will to change it.
Indeed, you are entirely mistaken. This is the very thing that
is most entirely within your power. Of all things conceivable, this is the very
thing that you can do most certainly -- that is most absolutely within your
power. If God had made your salvation turn upon your walking across the room,
you might not be able to do it; or if upon lifting your eyelids or rising from
your seat, or any the least movement of your muscles, you might be utterly
unable to do it. You could will the motion required, and you could try;
but the muscles might have no power to act. You often think that if God had
only conditioned your salvation upon some motions of your muscles, it would
have been so easy; if He had only asked you to control the outside; but,
oh, you say, how can I control the inside? The inside is the very thing
you can move and control. If it had been the outside, you might strive and
groan till you die, and not be able to move a muscle, even on pain of an
eternal hell. But now inasmuch as God only says, "Change your
will," all is brought within your control. This is just the thing you
always can do; you can always move your will. You can always give your
heart, at your own option. Where, then, is your difficulty and objection? God
requires you to act with your freedom; to exercise the powers of free voluntary
action that He has given you. He asks you to put your hand on the fountainhead
of all your own power, to act just where your central power lies -- where YOU
ALWAYS HAVE POWER so long as you have a rational mind and a moral nature. Your
liberty does not consist in a power to move your muscles at pleasure, for the
connection between your muscles and your will may be broken, and at all events
is always necessary when your body is in its normal state; therefore God does
not require you to perform any particular movement of the muscles, but only to change
your will. This, compared with all other things, is that which you can
always do, and can do more surely than anything else.
Again, considering volitions as distinct from ultimate purposes,
and as standing next before executive acts, it is not volitions that God
requires, but He lays His requisition directly upon the ultimate purposes. The
ultimate purposes being given, these subordinate volitions follow naturally and
necessarily. Your liberty, therefore, does not, strictly speaking, lie in these
subordinate volitions -- such as the volition to sit, to walk, to speak. But
the ultimate purpose controlling all volition, and relating to the main object
you shall pursue, as, for example, whether you shall in all things strive to
please God, or, on the other hand, strive to please yourself; this being the
precise point wherein your liberty of free action lies, is the very point upon
which God lays his moral requisitions. The whole question is, will you please
God, or please yourself? Will you give your heart to Him, or give it to your
own selfish enjoyment?
go long as you give your heart to selfish pleasure and withhold
it from God, it will be perfectly natural for you to sin. This is precisely the
reason why it is so natural for sinners to sin. It is because the will, the
heart, is set upon it, and all they have to do is to carry out this ruling
propensity and purpose. But, just change this governing purpose, and you will
find obedience equally natural and equally easy in all its executive acts. It
will then become natural to please God in everything. Now pleasing
yourself is natural enough. Why? Because you are consecrated to pleasing
yourself. But change this purpose; make a new and totally opposite
consecration; reverse the committed heart, and let it be for God and not for
self; then all duty will be easy for the same reason that all sin is so easy
now.
So far is it from being true that you are unable to make your
heart new, the fact is you would long ago have done it if you had not resisted
God in His efforts to move you to repentance. Do you not know that you have
often resisted God's Spirit? You know it well. So clear were your convictions
that you ought to live for God, you had to resist every appeal of your
own conscience, and march right in the face of known duty, and press your way
along directly against God. If you had only listened to the voice of your
reason, and to the demands of your conscience, you would have had a new heart
long ago. But you resisted God when He tried to persuade you to have a new heart.
O, sinner, how strong you have been to resist God! How strong to resist every
consideration addressed to your intelligence and to your reason! How strangely
have you listened to the considerations for sinning! O, the miserable petty
things -- tell me, what were they? Suppose Christ should question you, and ask
-- What is there in earth that you should love it so well? What in sin that you
should prize it above my favour and my love? What are those little indulgences
-- those very small things that always perish with the using? Vanity of
vanities, all is vanity. Most utterly contemptible! You have been holding on to
sin with no reasonable motive for so doing. But O, consider what motives you
have fought against and resisted -- motives of almost infinite force! Think of
the motives resulting from God's law -- so excellent in itself, but so dreadful
in its penalties against transgressors; and then think also of God's infinite
love in the Gospel; how he opened the life-tides of His great heart, and let blessings
flow with fullness like a God! Yet consider how, despite of this love, you have
abused your God exceedingly. You have gone on as if the motives to sin were
all-persuasive, and as if sin's promises of good were more reliable than God's.
When God spread out before you the glories of heaven, made all attractive and
delightful in the beauties of holiness, you coolly replied-Earth is far better!
Give me earth while I can have it, and heaven only when I can have earth no
longer! O, sinner, you would have been converted a long time ago if you had not
opposed God and trodden under foot His invitations and His appeals.
O, what a thing is this moral agency! How awful its power, and
how momentous, therefore, must be its responsibilities. When God is pouring forth
influences in waves of light and power, with a kind of moral omnipotence, you
resist and withstand all! As if you could do anything you pleased despite of
God! As if His influence were almost utterly powerless to move your heart from
its fixed purpose to sin!
Does it require great strength to lay down your weapons? Indeed,
this is quite a new thing; for one would suppose it must rather require great
strength to resist and to fight. And so you put forth your great strength in
fighting against God, and would fain believe that you have not got strength
enough to lay your weapons down! O, the absurdity of sin and of the sinner's
apology for sinning!
But you say -- I must have the Holy Ghost. I answer, Yes; but
only to overcome your voluntary opposition. That is all.
After I had gone over this ground with my friend, as I have
already explained, he became very much agitated. The sweat started from every
pore; his feelings overcame him; he dropped his head down upon his knees,
buried in intensest thought and full of emotion. I rose and went to the
meeting. After it had progressed awhile he came in; but O, how changed! Said
he, "Dear wife, I don't know what has become of my infidelity. I ought to
be sent to hell! What charges I have been making against God! And yet with what
amazing mercy did my God bear with me and let me live!" In fact, he found
he had been all wrong and he broke all down and became as a little child before
God.
And you, too, sinner, know you ought to live for God, yet you
have not; you know that Jesus made Himself an offering to the injured dignity
of that law which you violated, yet you have rejected Him. He gave Himself a
voluntary offering, not to suffer the penalty of the law, but as your legal
substitute; and shall He have done all this in vain? Do you say, "O, I'm
so prejudiced against God and the Bible!" What, so prejudiced that you
will not repent? How horrible! O let it suffice that you have played the fool
so long and erred so exceedingly. It has been all wrong! At once return and
devote yourself to God. Why should you live to yourself at all? You can get no
good so!
Come to God -- He is so easily pleased! It is so much easier to
please Him than to please and satisfy yourself. The veriest little child can
please Him. Children often have the most delightful piety, because it is so
simple-hearted. They know what to do to please God, and, meaning honestly to
please Him, they can not fail. No matter how simple-hearted they are, if they
mean to please God, they surely will.
And can not you at least do so much as honestly to choose and
aim to please God?