02.A02. Character of the Convicting Illuminations

CHAPTER II.

CHARACTER OF THE CONVICTING ILLUMINATIONS OF THE SPIRIT, AS ILLUSTRATED IN MY OWN EXPERIENCE. The Wanderer Lost through Misdirection.

I WILL now elucidate the above statements by a reference to facts of my own experience. When, at the age of seventeen years, and while engaged in teaching school, I was led, during the progress of a revival of religion which occurred in the place where I then was, to think with deep seriousness upon "the things which concerned my peace," I was made distinctly conscious that the final question of my soul’s eternity was then and there to be determined. Hence the intensity of interest with which I contemplated the result of that divine visitation. Having from childhood been educated amid "the straitest sect" of the Calvinistic faith, regeneration, the beginning and source of the religious life, was regarded by me, and rightly so, if I had been correctly taught, as a change of the moral and spiritual nature of the soul -- a change in which the creature is wholly passive, and which is the exclusive result of a sovereign act of God; and the question whether that change was to be wrought in me, depended not at all upon what I should or could do, but upon a decree immutably fixed in the Divine mind from eternity. My whole being was consequently centered upon the inquiry, not what I should, but what God would do in the matter of the change referred to? I begin to pray, and did so, not knowing whether I was acting for my good or ill, but under the distinct impression, having ever been so taught, that with God "even my prayers were an abomination." No one urged upon me "repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ;" but all held before me the sovereign election of God, and His exclusive agency in regeneration. In one of the meetings, we were absolutely assured, in so many words, that if we had not been from eternity elected to eternal life, our salvation was impossible. This, as the speaker afterwards informed me, he said especially on my account. I conversed much with Christians and ministers, and that not to learn what "I should do to be saved," having been absolutely taught that I could do nothing whatever effective in the matter, but to know from their experience whether God was, or was not, likely to produce in me the regenerating change under consideration; and whether, if I was to be saved, the period of that change was near or remote. Thus inquiring, and thus waiting, the agony of suspense which I endured deepened at length into the rayless midnight of blank despair. During the many days and nights in which I wandered on in this "blackness of darkness," I came to understand fully the meaning of those words of inspiration, "In the evening thou shalt say, would God it were morning; and in the morning, would God it were evening." Each hour, between the setting and the rising of the sun, seemed an eternity; and I would say to myself, "I would give the universe, did I possess it, if I could see the sun once more." As soon as I saw his face, I would exclaim, "I would give the universe if I could see him set in darkness again." The fountain of life was dried up within me, and I often said to myself, "Were all the world mine, I would freely part with it for the privilege of shedding a single tear." At length all my sensibilities seemed to fail, and I descended into a state of almost emotionless despondency. While in this state, I went home and spent an evening with my mother. I told her that I had but one desire, and that was to be a Christian. I was absolutely assured, however, that I was not one of the elect; that God, consequently, would never regenerate me; and that she must expect to see her only son thereafter, not as he had been, but as a reckless reprobate in the world. To me no other destiny seemed possible. She insisted that the change had already occurred in my inner life. But so I viewed my own condition and prospects. The Great Revelation, and consequent Passage from Death unto Life

I had continued in this state but a short time, when a new revelation -- I know not what else to call it -- was made to my mind -- an open vision of the character, glory, and love of God on the one hand, and of my own entire moral or spiritual life on the other. In this manifestation I apprehended, with absolute distinctness, God as having ever loved me with a more than parental love, and as having ever been ready to receive me, pardon me, love me, and care for me, as a child, had I confessed my sin to Him, implored His pardoning mercy, and sought His favour. In the light of the face of God as turned towards me, I saw with equal distinctness that my whole heart and entire moral life had been in total alienation and estrangement from Him. I had never sought to know Him, or asked for His favour and care; had never recognised His parental love and kindness; had never entertained the least respect for His will, sought to please Him in anything, or done the right or avoided the wrong, because He required it. In other words, my entire moral life had been an utterly godless one. Every moral act of my entire existence, whether such act had been, without reference to the motive or intent which prompted it, in the form and direction of the right or the wrong, "evil, and only evil continually." Not an act of my life had been performed from that sacred respect for the will of God and the law of duty -- the respect which renders, or can render, any act morally virtuous. In other words still, I saw with perfect distinctness that the moral depravity of my entire moral life had been total and absolute. At the same time I perceived, with equal distinctness and absoluteness, the infinite criminality and ill-desert of such a life, and its utter forfeiture of the Divine favour to eternity; that, in consequence of a life of such utter voluntary alienation and estrangement from such a Being -- a Being of such ineffable love, glory, purity, and perfection, and Him, too, my Creator, my Redeemer, my Preserver, and infinite and boundless Benefactor-- that for such alienation and estrangement from such a Being, I had utterly forfeited all claims to His mercy and favour, both now and for an eternity to come. On this subject I had no more doubt than I had of my own existence. Under these convictions my mind turned with shame from the face of God, and, with utter reprobation upon my own moral self and life. "I abhorred myself and repented as in dust and ashes." At that time, not knowing what my God would do with me, I said distinctly and definitely, that if God should "cast me off for ever," I would stand before the universe and affirm the sentence to be just. The thought of continuing in such alienation and estrangement from such a Being became also more to be reprobated and fearful in my regard than perdition itself. In this state of mind, when alone with God, "I bowed the knee" before Him, and confessed that I had no right to ask or expect any favour at His hands, and that my whole eternity hung upon His mere grace and mercy. One favour I would venture to ask, that I might be kept from ever returning to that state of alienation from Him in which my life had been spent, and that I might have grace to appreciate His love, excellence, and glory; to love and venerate Him, and have a sacred respect for His will. If He would grant me this, I would accept of anything in time and eternity that He might appoint me. This was the exact substance and form of that prayer. I had no sooner pronounced these words, than I was consciously encircled in "the everlasting arms." I was so overshadowed with a sense of the manifested love of a forgiving God and Saviour, that my whole mental being seemed to be dissolved, and pervaded with an ineffable quietude and assurance. I arose from my knees without a doubt that I was an adopted member of the family of God. With "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding," pervading every department of my mental nature, I could look upward, and, without a cloud between my soul and the face of God, could and did say, "My Father and my God." Such was my entrance into the inner life. Let us now consider Certain important Lessons taught by the Facts above Presented. The Nature of Sin. -- If we would understand sin as God regards it, we should contemplate it just as the Spirit presents it to the mind when He induces conviction of sin. Sin, as the Spirit of God convicts us of it, is always apprehended as exclusively a personal matter, a state of the inner man, a form of voluntary moral activity, on account of which the soul has justly forfeited the eternal favour, and as justly incurred the endless displeasure of God. As revealed to the mind by the Spirit, and the conscience enlightened by the Spirit, sin and infinite ill-desert, a hopeless forfeiture of the favour of God, are inseparably united. God is apprehended as having, on account of His relations to us as our Maker, Redeemer, Preserver, and infinite Benefactor, and, also on account of His infinite natural and moral perfections, infinite claims upon our love, veneration, and obedience. The soul is also revealed to itself as having been, in all its moral activities, in voluntary alienation and estrangement from all the claims of God and of His moral law upon it. The soul is revealed to itself as having come into this state, and continued in it, not from necessity, but choice. In my own case, for example, I was convicted of no sin of my ancestry, near or remote, and of no form or degree of demerit for anything which did attach to me personally, and to no one else but myself. Nor was I convicted of ill-desert for anything in or about myself but alienation and estrangement from God, His character, His will, and the law of duty -- alienation and estrangement in which I was consciously voluntary. The same holds in all other cases. Under the convicting power of the Spirit, every man is convicted of personal criminality, and nothing else; of "knowing God and not glorifying Him as God;" of knowing Him as our Maker, Preserver, Redeemer, and infinite Benefactor, and yet withholding gratitude from Him, of knowing His will, and refusing obedience to it. Every individual, also, when convicted by the Spirit of sin, or of voluntary estrangement from God, from His will, and the law of duty, apprehends, with absolute distinctness, that that estrangement has been total, and has been equally so in respect to all forms of moral activity, whether externally right or wrong. When the Spirit renders the truth "a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart," every man, whatever the visibilities of his life may have been, and however amiable certain of his natural temperaments may have been, perceives with perfect absoluteness that no moral act of his unregenerate life was prompted by that motive and intent which render such act morally virtuous, or such that the conscience or God can regard, or ought to regard, as an act of obedience to the Divine will and the law of duty. Regeneration is not an advance from a low state of moral goodness to one that is higher, but an entrance into a state entirely new. The words of inspiration, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things have passed away, and behold, all things have become new," are just as true of any one man as of any other; and this passage from the old state to the new is just as immutably necessary to eternal life in the case of any one unregenerate man as it is in that of any other. Any other view of sin, or of the natural state of man, is in open contradiction to all that Christ, Moses, the prophets, apostles, and the Eternal Spirit, teach us of "what is in man."

Reasons of the Objections of Individuals to the Evangelical Faith.

We now perceive the reason of the objections which individuals entertain to the principle and doctrines of the evangelical faith. All such objections take their origin and form from a want of a true apprehension of sin, and of the actual condition of man as sinner. When any individual, whatever his previous views may have been, apprehends sin as it is, sin as God and the conscience divinely enlightened view it, when any man perceives his own moral life as it stands related to the will of God and the law of duty, all his objections to the doctrines of the Trinity, atonement, salvation on the condition of "repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ," and eternal judgment," disappear at once. When man knows himself as he is, he becomes absolutely conscious that that faith, with all its revelations, must be true, or he is hopelessly lost. A very highly-educated and intelligent unbeliever, for example, once listened to a discourse which we delivered on the subject of regeneration. In that discourse, the actual character of the natural man was set forth, and the necessity of the change, represented by the term regeneration was verified. The truth, as presented, he afterwards stated, "commended itself to his conscience." On his way from the house of God, these thoughts passed through his mind: "What a fool I have been! If I had this religion, what injury could it do me? It might, on the other hand, be to me an eternal benefit." With these thoughts pressing upon his mind, he on the next Sabbath listened to a discourse from the text, "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified: for by the law is the knowledge of sin." In that discourse the nature of the moral law, and man’s relations as a sinner to that law, were as clearly elucidated as we were able to do it. As the man listened to these expositions, he said to himself, This, as I absolutely know, is the moral law, and these are my conscious relations to that law. If, now, there is no redemption for me in Christ, I am without hope for eternity." Thus, through "the knowledge of sin," he was led directly to Christ, and few men ever evinced a purer faith in Christ than did this man in his subsequent life. Hence it is that the Spirit first convinces of sin, as the means of inducing faith in Christ as a saviour from sin. Such, also, is the fixed tendency and aim of all true preaching of "the everlasting gospel." A ministry whose fundamental aim, and the fixed tendency of whose ministrations are not to convince men of their sin, and hopeless ruin in sin, and thus to lead them to Christ, is "a plant which our heavenly Father has not planted." The Witness of the Spirit.

We may now understand also, in one of its essential forms, "the witness of the Spirit" to our sonship with God. Much is said upon this and kindred subjects in the New Testament. When, as shown above, I, for example, was brought into a certain state of utter self-abandonment and dependence upon the mercy and grace of God in Christ, I was made absolutely conscious that God had pardoned and accepted me. I was as absolutely -- I could not tell how -- assured of this, as I was that I existed at all. This, as I understand it, is one of the forms in which "the Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are the sons of God." The Spirit, and He only, knows when we are accepted, and He only can make us absolutely conscious of the fact. When, in connection with implicit faith and consecration on our part, He manifests God to us as our Father and portion, then "the Spirit bears witness with our spirit," our conscious trust and consecration "that we are the sons of God." When He imparts to us "full assurance of faith," "full assurance of hope," and "full assurance of understanding," we have the witness of the Spirit that we are being "taught of God," and are, consequently, "His sons and daughters."