S. Addresses to the Students of the New College, Edinburgh

Addresses to the Students of the New College, Edinburgh FRIENDS AND BRETHREN, - BEING forced reluctantly to abandon all idea of personally taking any part in the proceedings of this Session, and being very unwilling to let it close without some indication of my unabated interest in you and in your studies and prospects, I take the liberty of speaking to you in a few words through the press. I beg your acceptance accordingly of two addresses delivered, the one at the end of last Session, and the other at the opening of the present Session; - not as if I considered them of much value in themselves, but in the hope that they may help to keep me in your kindly remembrance, and may also suggest to you some not unprofitable lines of thought. They were hastily composed, and did not bring out to my own satisfaction the kind of inquiry I wished to institute. For I had it in my mind to contribute something towards the supply of what must be admitted to be a present desideratum, - the magnifying of the preacher’s office, in harmony with received evangelical traditions, and with due reference to more recent tastes and tendencies. To my younger brethren in the ministry, and more especially to you whom I address, a somewhat more difficult task falls than I think we who are passing away had to face; or at any rate a task somewhat different. When I began work in 1829, - for, though not ordained till 1834, I was in harness and upon full duty from the former date, having the entire charge successively of two congregations, - it was when the tide of the evangelical revival that specially marked the second and third decades of this century was still full and fresh. The ground was then simply and clearly marked. Two styles of preaching were opposed to one another; the one, the old commonplace routine of moral essays, with elegant literary compositions on the Christian evidences, or on the heathen ethics slightly Christianised; - the other, what was largely felt in that age to be comparatively new, the proclamation of a free gospel, or of salvation by grace alone. There was little, if any, intermediate or debatable territory. Discourses on virtue generally, or on particular virtues in detail, - under a favourite plan of division setting forth, first, the nature of the virtue, secondly, its obligation, and thirdly, some reasons for the practice of it, - formed the staple of pulpit oratory in the moderate school; while the evangelical minister, on the other hand, was chiefly occupied in the primary and elementary work of pressing upon the acceptance of his hearers the unrestricted and unconditional offer of immediate pardon, peace, and eternal life, through the blood and merit of Christ. Thus the line was sharply drawn. The doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in the righteousness of Christ alone, stood boldly out in contrast with what was then almost its only antagonist in the pulpit, the cold and dry praise to weariness of good outward conduct. The heralds of the cross had a plain, if somewhat narrow, path to tread.

Things have considerably changed since then. The anti-evangelical or non-evangelical pulpit has materially altered its tone. Such Christless discourses and mere moral platitudes as used to pass muster respectably and creditably enough, would not be well received or tolerated now. Christ is preached after a fashion, - or a Christ of some sort is preached, - generally in all the churches. It is not that the offence of the cross has ceased, or the dislike and disrelish of the pure and simple gospel at all abated. The published writings of the class of divines I refer to, - even the best of them, - suggest the very opposite inference; and the current light literature of the day, in trashy sensational novels and flippant newspaper or magazine articles, abundantly confirms the inference. But here lies the danger. Their opposition to the Evangelical system, or the evangelical mode of setting forth the truth as it in Jesus, is not now negative merely, but actively and in a high degree positive. It is not merely the omitting or dropping out of Christ, - or of all but the name of Christ, - in their essays; it is the substitution of a false ideal instead of the real original. They are doctrinal now and theological in their teaching; and that fact is fitted to make their teaching plausible and prevalent. You who desire to stand in the old way, and preach the old gospel, must take this condition of matters into account. For one thing, by way of example, you have to study great accuracy and exactness in all your expositions of scriptural dogmas. You are aware that in assailing what they are fond of stigmatising as Puritanism or Calvinism, our opponents, for the most part, aim at success through the grossest misrepresentations and offensive caricatures of the tenets which we hold; some of them doubtless sinning ignorantly in this; others, however, I am afraid, sinning wilfully. I am willing to make allowance for the entire absence of anything deserving the title of theological teaching or training in such a body as the Established Church of England, and to ascribe to that cause the shameful and profane language often used in speaking of the received doctrine of the Atonement, and other doctrines connected more or less closely with it. That circumstance, however, does not render my caution and counsel to you the less necessary. For, beyond all question, the persons I have in my eye have been able to lay their fingers on such unwise and unsafe utterances, on the part of the defenders of these gospel mysteries, as may afford some ground for their ridicule or resentment. Rhetorical appeals and pictures may occur in the course of a flood of fervid eloquence, which, in a time of excitement, and in presence of an enthusiastic audience, convey no impression but that of divine reality and truth, - which, however, when calmly weighed, may call up images and associations the reverse of salutary, and may admit of being twisted into an evil guise. I urge, therefore, the duty of caution and circumspection in the use of current theological terms and formulas, and the necessity of bearing always in mind the art, or the ignorance, which in various ways is doing mischief, - say, for instance, in the way of putting a heathen gloss on the evangelical doctrines of atonement and mediation, or in the way of ascribing to the great truths on the subject of imputation and justification which the Reformers vindicated, the reproach of being like mercantile trafficking, or the sophistry of a legal fiction. With due regard, however, to such considerations, let it be your constant aim to hold forth the “common salvation” strongly, clearly, unambiguously, in all its breadth and freedom. Be not ashamed of the cross, in which you must be ever glorying. And in all your doctrinal statements, make it palpably plain that it is salvation in Christ, not salvation through Christ, that you preach. Let the root of all personal religion be the personal union of the believer and the object of his faith. Be true to our standards, as well as to Scripture, in making all turn or hinge on the real vital, divine unity which the Spirit effects between the Saviour and every saved soul.

“And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.” - I am, yours truly, ROB. S. CANDLISH.

Edinburgh, March 1872.

I. - CLOSING ADDRESS

Session 1870-71

I DESIRE to offer a few remarks on the subject of preaching; in answer to the question, What is the preacher’s function?

I. He has a message to deliver. He is an ambassador for Christ. Never, on any account, let him forget that. It is the distinctive feature and attribute of his office or calling. It is, in logical phrase, its differential quality; the essential characteristic by which it is separated from all other functions which men may have to exercise in the service of God, and of their fellow men. To give instruction, to convey information, to investigate, elucidate, and explain difficult problems in theology and religion, as in other sciences and arts; - to open up the Scriptures, and unfold in an orderly way their inexhaustible fulness of grace and truth as containing, all throughout, the unsearchable riches of Christ; - to discuss controverted questions and establish dogmatical conclusions; - to be the expositor and defender of the whole truth as it is in Jesus; - these all, and more than these, are works within the sphere of the preacher’s province. It is his right and his duty to handle all these themes or topics, largely and freely, according to the word of God. Nor is there any risk of his thereby turning the evangelistic pulpit into a quasi-academic chair; if only he keep always in view that, above all these matters, and subordinating them all to itself, there is the commission with which he is charged, whenever, in his special vocation of preacher, he opens his mouth; the commission to deliver a message from God to those whom he is addressing - a personal message, from God personally, to each one of them personally. The preacher must have this always in his view; all through his discourse, and all through his treatment of any of those themes which his discourse may embrace. For this view of his office does not, I repeat, limit the range of the preacher’s function as a teacher, bound to declare the entire Name of the Lord, and entitled, therefore, to deal with “all that whereby God maketh himself known.” He is entitled to bring in, as parts or elements of his dealing for God with men, not only all such Scriptural narratives, parables, proverbs, but also all such rational illustrations and analogies, as he can turn to account in the way of unfolding the character, plans, and methods of him whose messenger he is. But let him always and in everything magnify his office. Let him see to it that he is always and in everything asserting his position; as being not merely an exhibitor and explainer of the nature of the Most High, but a real ambassador on his behalf to men.

One thing, however, this principle or practice demands. The preacher’s trumpet must give no uncertain sound. He must not come forth from God to his fellowmen without a clear and definite message. If he holds and argues that there are no fixed dogmas in theology; no fixed principles in religion; no facts in Christology which, if admitted, must become doctrines; if he boastfully professes that he cannot tell where theology ends and religion begins, or how much of theology may or must enter into religion, or how much of religion may or must admit of being formulated in theological, - that is, logical and intelligible, - propositions; if, in a word, he is in a position to tell his audience little more than this, - that definition of saving truth is difficult and dangerous; and that sincerity in any view of Christ or Christian doctrine is saving faith; - he may have much to say about Christ. But he can scarcely be an ambassador of Christ; having a specific message from Christ to deliver to the people.

He may, in a sense, preach Christ. And there is more of such preaching of Christ now than there was in the days when Hugh Blair’s moral essays found favour in Scotland, and when Bishop Horsley stigmatised a large section of the clergy in England as apes of Epictetus. A discourse without Christ in it would scarcely now be tolerated. But how is he presented and held forth? Is it Christ elevated in the host? Is it Christ mysteriously materialised in the mass? Is it Christ given in a wafer, and eaten with fasting lips? Is it Christ exhibited and presented in some poor, half-credulous mimicry of that gorgeous Roman idolatry? Or, again, is it Christ brought in as the centre of subtle analysis or philosophical disquisition; a name with which to conjure in handling ideal theories of the universe of God, and the nature of man? Or finally, is it Christ, giving me, the preacher, a definite and explicit message to deliver to you the hearers, on his authority, and with his peremptory demand for a reply? This last method alone is a real preaching of the gospel; a real preaching of Christ. I personally am commissioned and charged by Christ personally, to deliver a message to you personally. The transaction is personal throughout; doubly personal; personal in both its stages.

There is a personal dealing of Christ with me; like Isaiah’s divine interview “with Jehovah (Isaiah 6:1-13); when he saw the Lord in the glory of his majesty, his grace, his holiness; and, - smitten with a sense of uncleanness, - purged by an atoning touch, and quickened by a pardoning word, - was constrained by love-begotten love to cry, Here am “I, send me!” There is personal dealing there! “Would that I could always apprehend it as real in my case; every time I open my lips to any one poor sinner; every time I ascend the pulpit steps to address the great congregation in the name and on behalf of Christ.

Then would my address to them be sufficiently personal too; as personal as my present and immediate commission from him. I would speak as if it were not I, but Christ speaking in me. And he spoke as one having authority. He had a message from heaven to earth, - from God to men; - not merely to make discoveries of the essence, attributes, and operations of Deity; far less to raise and leave unfixed general questions or problems as to man’s constitutional religious tendencies, and the sorts of spiritual treatment they may severally require or admit; but to propose and make provision for the distinct personal adjustment of the relation of every man, individually and personally, to God his Father. That was his personal ministry in preaching. Did it want breadth, or liberty, or variety? Did it want these qualities when it became his preaching in Paul, or John, or Peter? Was it a monotonous whine, or an endless uniformity of mere beseeching? Was it a Paganini-like harping on a single violin-string? Nay. The message to be delivered is of such a sort as to admit of all but endlessly diversified modes of thought and speech in the delivery of it. Over the whole wide field of nature the preacher may roam; all things in heaven and earth are his - the sun, the moon, the still and starry firmament, the cloudy sky, the rolling thunder, the raging waves, the quiet breath of spring; the green and tender grass, the flowers of the field, the trees of the forest, the lofty mountains, the lowly vales; the fowls of the air also, the beasts that roam the desert, the domestic tribes, - all the works of God are at your command, for illustration, ornament, and appeal. The entire range of human experience, the vicissitudes of human life, the rich resources of human history over all the world and through all the ages, are freely open to you. Nor need you hesitate to draw materials of analogy from the freshest discoveries of science and the most ingenious inventions of art. Then how manifold must your pleading be if you are masters alike of the divine message which you have to deliver, and the human heart which it is meant to touch! Argument, instruction, expostulation; admonition, reproof; nay, even ridicule and sarcasm at times; terrible and cutting irony; affectionate remonstrance; tremblingly-uttered threats; vivid painting of the open heart of God, and the blessedness of being his; - these and many other similar instruments of persuasion you have to wield at will. How should there then be any lack of varied interest in your discourse? There can be none if it is scriptural, for there is no lack of varied interest in Scripture; and all Scripture is yours, to be used by you in your calling. Only remember that all Scripture testifies of Christ. And not of Christ as an object of sentimental affection or the poetic rapture of imagination; vague and abstract; the ideal divine man; the restorer of manhood generally; to be welcomed as such gratefully and gladly, though without the need of any very exact conception of what he is to me personally, and what he does for me personally. No. But of Christ, true Son of God, executing a definite purpose, finishing an actual work. You are ambassadors of this Christ. You are charged by him with a message concerning himself and the Father, who defined the purpose he had to accomplish, and gave him his work to do. Magnify your office in that character. Never pen a single sentence, never speak a single word of your sermon, without having this great thought full in your mind and heart: I have here and now a message to each and all of my hearers; - a manifold message in one sense; of varied application to different classes and different cases; but at bottom one and the same to the whole. “As an ambassador of Christ, I pray you, in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.”

II. The preacher, in delivering his message, is not alone. He has a Divine Person associated with him, the Holy Ghost. He is to apprehend and feel that fact all throughout his preaching. I do not here speak of the help which you are entitled to expect from the blessed Spirit in the preparation of your discourse in the closet and in the study. Your prayer in the closet, your reading, thinking, composing, in the study, are of the Spirit, if they are real. In some sense, a discourse thus prepared is the production of the Spirit. It is the Spirit working in you, and so causing you to work with fear and trembling. Would to God that no sermon were ever otherwise made? But I wish rather to advert at present to another view of the Spirit’s presence and co-operation with you in the discharge of your office of messenger or ambassador; a view which, if vividly realised, will materially affect, indeed, your preparation of your discourse, but which directly bears more upon your delivery of it.

There is a gracious promise given by Christ to his disciples when he was about to leave them alone in the world, exposed to the world’s hostility on account of their witness-bearing for him (John 15:27; John 16:11). While they are bearing witness of him, there is another also who is bearing witness of him; the Comforter, the Holy Ghost. The two witness-bearings differ from one another. The disciples testify outwardly, by words and signs, to the world, to men. The Holy Spirit testifies inwardly, by a work in the world, in men. This is a very encouraging, but also a very solemnising assurance to every faithful herald of the cross. Let me place any one of you in the pulpit, with a discourse prepared in the presence and with the help of the Holy Spirit, - prayed for in the closet, waited for and felt in the study. Have you done with him now, as regards yourself personally? Can you dispense with his presence and his help in your own soul, as you stand face to face before that sea of expecting faces? No. You need him almost more than ever, that he may enable you to forget yourself in your audience, and in the message of the Lord which you have to deliver to them; that you may speak to them from the heart; not with stammering lips, but with holy boldness; With the mild majesty and meekness and gentleness of him in whose name you speak. But even this is not exactly what I desire to bring out. At the very moment when you are delivering the message to your hearers, the Holy Spirit is moving among them, upon them, within them. You speak; he works. And his working goes along with your speaking.

Surely this is a very awful position for you, for me, to occupy. That the infinite, almighty Spirit of the Most High, and I, - a poor sinner, scarcely saved myself through the rich mercy of God, - should be, - in a manner so close, intimate and personal, - fellow-labourers, true yoke-fellows, joined in so real a partnership in the house and business of God; that while I am dealing with the message, - handling it, with his help, as best I may, - pressing it home, with all the power and pathos I can command, on the consciences and hearts of the men before me; he also is dealing with that selfsame message, cutting a way for it through the callous conscience and rocky heart, into the deep recess of the inner man, where sits and reigns the lordly will! No doubt, in one aspect of it this thought or belief is fitted to minister to me strength, comfort, and hope, in the delivery of my message. It is an assurance which I sorely need, and should most thankfully embrace. But for it, I cannot but despair. If, indeed, the ordinance of preaching is a mere spiritual entertainment, or a pleasant and profitable exercise of the higher faculties in speculations about all things in heaven and earth, as in some quarters it threatens to become; or if it is thrust aside as an ordinary means of grace and salvation, and made to give place to sacramental and sacerdotal observances; - then I may take the matter easily enough. If, however, it is a message to be delivered; a message about which God is deeply in earnest, and upon which men’s destinies depend; - when I think what little weight my words can have, - or, indeed, any words, be they uttered by angels’ tongues, - to tell upon the dull cold ear of apathy and sloth, - how little capable they are of adequately setting forth that love of him who gives the message which, rightly urged, should melt and break the very stones, - how can I but cling to this promise of the Spirit’s effectual inward co-operation, which alone can meet and solve the despairing cry, - “All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people”?

But, while thus, in one aspect of it, this assurance is most cheering and encouraging, in another, it is deeply solemnising. And the solemnising effect of it is felt all the more when we bear in mind that the promise on which it is founded is limited. It is not a promise of such a co-operation of the Spirit, - working inwardly in those to whom I bear witness or deliver a message from Without, - as shall absolutely secure my success, in the best and highest sense of the term; in their being actually converted and saved. It reaches only to conviction. He will convince; not, he will convert. It is a work of conviction that, according to the promise, he carries on in a parallel line, as it were, with the word which I speak, as witnessing of Christ and delivering a message from him and about him. I may warrantably hope that in many instances the Spirit will convince so as to convert, and thus secure for my message, not awakening and anxiety merely, troubling the conscience, but acquiescence and consent also, giving peace to the heart. But I have no absolute assurance of that; nor have I any probable reason to believe that even the Spirit’s work of conviction will be co-extensive with my witness-bearing or my delivery of my message. Whole congregations may retire, unmoved and unimpressed; the Spirit of the Lord being straitened for my sin and for theirs. Still, there is the general rule or law, that the Spirit works conviction in those to whom I testify. It is a gracious adaptation. And it may partly explain some of the phenomena of a religious revival. As the fruit of a faithful ministry, - or as the cause of it, - simultaneously with a fresh life in the preaching of the gospel to the people, there comes a wide and deep working of the Spirit in the people. And what is the immediate result, in terms of the promise? Conviction merely; conviction of the sin of unbelief in connection with a present righteousness and a coming judgment. The conviction may not issue in conversion. There may be travailing in the womb, and no new birth. And this very repression may cause pains and convulsions. There may be vehement agitations of mind, violent contortions of body, bringing a scandal on the whole movement. And yet it may be a real movement of the Spirit after all; proved to be real by the numbers, larger or smaller, of those who are at once brought, through the simple message of the gospel, to a simple resting on Christ, and a quiet peace in believing; until soon, when all the chaff that had been stirred flies away and subsides, the good and fruitful seed remains and grows apace. But, apart from such seasons of well-marked revivals, coming back to the ordinary routine, - the case of a preacher delivering his sermon as a real message from God, - let me ask if there is not something very awe-inspiring in the thought that, if all is rightly ordered, his feeble word, spoken with fear and trembling, has in strict alliance and connection with it the mighty working of the Holy Ghost; softening the hard wax, which he is trying to impress with the divine seal; melting the cold iron, on which he seeks to impose the heavenly mould. It is a thought that may well cause increased fear and trembling. That he should be standing in the pulpit alongside, as it were, of the Spirit; and when he opens his mouth thence to the people, the Spirit should fly thence, in haste to work among the people; convincing many, converting some? It enhances greatly the anxiety which Paul felt when he said, “We are a savour of death unto death, as well as of life unto life.” We are so, as being ourselves witnesses for Christ, delivering a message which must either kill or cure; which, if rejected, is death, and, if accepted, is salvation. We are so much more, as being not alone in witnessing and delivering the message, but having the Spirit co-operating with us in a work of conviction that must either lead to gracious and saving conversion, or sink the soul that resists in the hopeless gloom of the Spirit’s final withdrawal, and the consummation which that entails.

Now, it is in the view of its being such a message from God, and a message involving such responsibilities and issues, that you must seek always to prepare and deliver your discourse. These solemn views of preaching must be ever before your eye. The earlier you become impressed with them the better. They are your best, your only safeguards against perfunctory or merely professional preparation. They cut up by the roots the miserable practice of mechanical sermon-making. They cast you at once into the arms of that divine Spirit whose joy it is to testify of Christ; to take of what is Christ’s, and show it unto men; to glorify Christ alone.

III. One practical counsel more let me give, as a sort of corollary from the views I have been suggesting. In your whole work of preparation and delivery, see that you have ever steadily before you, in your mind’s eye, a real, living audience. In the penning of your first sentence, conjure up for yourself listeners, hearers, real or imaginary; and throw yourself into the attitude and spirit of a witness-bearer to them, the deliverer of a message to them. Let your solitary chamber be thronged with living faces, looking and waiting to hear what you have to say as Christ’s ambassador to them. Write as if you were actually face to face with them; speaking to them as a man speaks to his friends. Sometimes you may set before you an individual to be appealed to and dealt with. To obviate all risk of a charge of personality, it may be safest and best to let that individual be yourself. Prepare the sermon first for yourself. Preach it first to yourself. Deliver the message first to yourself. Then, as taking it home primarily to yourself, you will find yourself all the better able and all the better entitled to press it home upon your fellows. Another end also may be thus incidentally served. It is said, and truly said, that one of the most important elements or conditions of good preaching is a knowledge of human nature; an intimate acquaintance with the workings and windings of the human heart. And many seem to think that this can be best acquired, or indeed can only be acquired, by a large induction founded on a wide experience of the world, its men, its maxims, and its ways. If what is sought is what Lord Chesterfield tried to teach his unhappy boy, that notion may be correct. But if I wish to learn what man is, or what is in man, for the purposes of gospel preaching and the delivery of my message from God, I had better tarry at home than range far and wide abroad. In that view, the study of myself is my best way of studying mankind; and when I bring the message to bear personally and particularly on myself, - on my own sins and sorrows, and wants and fears, and loves and hates, and hopes and joys - on the manifold moods and experiences of my own soul, I am equipping and accomplishing myself in the very best way possible for wielding that message as my weapon in dealing with all sorts of men and all sorts of cases. For in me, as in a microcosm, in my bosom, agitated by every influence that can reach me from above, from around, from beneath, all that is in any man may in a sense be found. Observing the movements of my own consciousness and conscience, in the searching light of God’s holy word, I can understand and enter into all the frames and feelings in others with which the gospel has to deal. Let me then be always applying to myself, in the first instance, the text I have chosen for my discourse, and gathering out of it the message God has in it specially to me. Let me habitually adopt that method in every sermon I compose. It will wonderfully enlarge and deepen my sympathising insight into the heart of God and the heart of man, and into the fitness and adaptation of all that God reveals of his heart to all that is to be discovered in man’s. I come to know both of them, by personal insight and experience, through the Spirit’s teaching. And so I learn to speak because I believe, - to testify of what I have seen and heard.

II. - OPENING ADDRESS

Session 1871-72 AN indispensable qualification of an ambassador is loyalty. It is especially so when the embassy is from heaven, and in the name of heaven’s Lord. I wish to say something upon that qualification that may be seasonable and suitable to your calling and preparation for the Christian ministry. This loyalty, as I take it, is something different from love, or something more than love. It assumes love. It has love as its basis and its vital principle throughout. Love is its motive power and living influence. It is nothing if it is not loving. It is itself love in its highest mode of action. It has in it, however, a certain royal element, chivalrous, single-eyed, forgetful of all else than what is due to the one object of its devoted allegiance, and enthusiastic about that. There may be real love lacking this element, or having it only imperfectly. The love of sentiment, or of impulse and emotion, or of gratitude, or of complacency, good-liking or good-will, - may be real, and, so far as it goes, strong. But the full strength of love is loyalty. That is perfect love.

Now, I wish to illustrate and enforce this view, in connection with some of the more important departments of theological study and ministerial work, and to show how a spirit of loving loyalty may carry, and how that alone can carry, a student and a worker through, or over, not a few embarrassments.

I. I begin briefly with the revelation which God has given to us in Scripture. I assume that you are satisfied, on good and sufficient ground, as to the authenticity and authority of the sacred books, and that you cordially accept the Bible as being the Word of God. You accept it bona fide, as not discovered by you, but given to you in common with all mankind. You are not in the secret of its preparation or compilation. You have no knowledge beforehand of the principles upon which it is put together; the plan according to which it is framed and fashioned. Its author, the Holy Ghost, - the one author throughout, though employing manifold agencies and instrumentalities, - has not explained his method à priori. You have the product; his finished work of authorship; the Word of God. “With full faith you receive it as such. You fully and firmly admit the authorship. And now, I ask, What is the attitude which becomes you, if you would be loyal in this matter to him whose word it is? For one thing, such loyalty should surely inspire calm courage and confidence, amid whatever rough handling this holy thing may meet with, in the midst of unholy strifes and collisions, - or, let me say, putting it more mildly, whatever shocks this divine and heavenly thing may encounter in its contact with human and earthly movements. There should be an entire absence of haste, irritation, over-sensitiveness. Any inclination to oppose or limit free inquiry, or free speculation, in any line fairly open to human research, should be resisted. Any dread, - any jealousy or resentment of results should be repudiated. The fact, that the divine revelation of saving truth from age to age was never meant to supersede or to fetter human study in its attempts to penetrate and estimate the unfolding secrets of nature, must be frankly admitted and fully acted upon. The loyalty of a loving son, accepting his father’s deed of settlement as authentic and valid, will sustain him in a patient confidence amid all the vexatious questions that lynx-eyed legal subtlety may suggest. He will not press for a premature discussion or solution. He will be content to wait for further light; whether it may fall on the scruples and objections raised, or on the interpretation of some portions of the document called in question. Meanwhile, his loyal faith in the document and in its author is not shaken or even touched. He knows that it is his Father’s voice to which he listens; that it is his Father’s message which he has to deliver. With all confidence and with all authority he can still use the august formula - “Thus saith the Lord.” Sitting loose, in large measure, - or rather free from anxiety, - as to the progress of investigation, whether biblical or scientific, he is right loyal in his firm and sure belief that all will end well; that a harmonious adjustment of all difficulties will be the happy result of whatever misunderstandings may now disturb the atmosphere of philosophical and theological thought. And, meanwhile, he is thoroughly and confidingly loyal in his conviction that he really has the truth of God to believe and teach.

II. There is need of loyalty in the assertion and exercise of the preacher’s function as an ambassador of God to men individually.

I use this last word advisedly and emphatically. In preaching the gospel, we have to address multitudes and masses of men, and, in a sense, to address them collectively or miscellaneously. But we have no collective or miscellaneous method of salvation to propose. We have no message to any crowd, as such. Our message is to every one in the crowd; separately and personally; to every man, woman, and child; isolated and apart. True, we cannot feather the arrow, or give it its aim to the particular person it is meant to hit. For all that, we look out of and above ourselves. We look to the Holy Spirit, our co-witness; whose office it is to deal directly with the conscience, heart, and will; and to fasten the convincing and converting barb in the soul that is to be pierced and saved. Our preaching, however, must proceed upon the firm faith of its being the divine purpose and method to save men, by means of it, one by one; not through any wholesale process, or general amnesty and jail-delivery, as it were; but by means of a special dealing with every one criminal, every one prisoner, alone; - a special negotiation with him of pardon, peace, and reconciliation, as if he were really alone, the only one in all the prison-cells.

Now, what tries and tests our loyalty here is, to a large extent, a certain prevalent and somewhat plausible line of thought and tone of feeling in the current literature of our day. Some leading thinkers, as they are fond of calling themselves and one another, in influential periodicals and publications of various kinds, grave and gay, have got into the way of stigmatising evangelical religion, or, as they are very fond of calling it, Calvinism, with the brand of selfishness. It is self-preservation merely that we Evangelicals or Calvinists care for; that, in the first instance, always first; and then, perhaps, as the utmost stretch of our benevolent aspirations, the salvation of a select few, who may plume themselves along with us on being heaven’s favourites themselves, while coolly consigning the mass of their fellow-men to ruin.

Deferring the question of the issue or result of gospel preaching, I would speak for a little of its character and nature considered in itself. Is it really open to the charge of heartless selfishness, because it calls upon every sinner individually to make the saving of his own soul his first concern? I must show how the issue is thus raised; first, in the light of mere secularism; and then more theologically.

(I.) “Man is for Mr. Carlyle, as for the Calvinistic theologian, a fallen and depraved being, without much hope, except for a few of the elect.” So one of our most advanced thinkers writes, in an Essay on the Chelsea Philosopher, forming part of his Critical Miscellanies (Morley, p. 240). He makes an admission: - Mr. Carlyle has indeed written that generation stands indissolubly woven with generation; “how we inherit not Life only, but all the garniture and form of Life; and work and speak, and even think and feel, as our fathers and primeval grandfathers from the beginning have given it to us; how ‘mankind is a living indivisible whole.’ Even this, however, with the ‘literal communion of saints’ which follows in connection with it, is only a detached suggestion; not incorporated with the body of the writer’s (Carlyle’s) doctrine. It does not neutralise the general lack of faith in the cultivable virtue of masses of men; not the universal tone of humoristic cynicism with which all but a little band, the supposed salt of the earth, are treated.” Then follows the sentence already quoted - “Man is for Mr. Carlyle, as for the Calvinistic theologian, a fallen and depraved being, without much hope, except for a few of the elect.” Of course, I am not concerned about Mr. Morley’s view of Carlyle’s philosophy; nor about the philosophy of Carlyle himself. I simply wish to indicate the common mode of regarding and representing “Calvinistic Theology,” - that is, evangelical religion, - which prevails in the circle of advanced thinkers that such a writer as Morley may be held to represent. In that view, I quote from Morley’s volume another notice of Carlyle as compared with Rousseau. He says, with reference to their comparative influence on their respective ages and countries (p. 210) - “Rousseau’s renovation was far more profoundly social than the doctrine of Mr. Carlyle, which, while in name a renunciation of self, has all its foundations in the purest individualism. . . . It has all the fundamental egotism of the doctrine of personal salvation.” This last idea is what I have now to do with; “the fundamental egotism of the doctrine of personal salvation.” Of course it is egotism in an evil sense.

Once more, I cite a sentence from the author’s comparison of Carlyle with Byron (p. 237) - “As a reaction against religious theories, which make humanity over-abound in self-confidence, and fill individuals with the strutting importance of creatures with private souls to save or lose, even such cynicism as Byron’s was wholesome, and nearly forgivable.” But Byron, and even Carlyle, failed, it seems, in “stirring in men and women, many or few, a deeper and more active sense of the worth and obligation and innumerable possibilities, not of their own little lives, one or another, but of life collectively; . . . heightening the self-respect of the race.” These are significant utterances. And they are current in a class of self-confident literateurs.

(II.) On the other hand, from the theological point of view, there is a tendency in the same direction. Not to speak of what may be regarded perhaps by many as its foreign source and origin in the ideal philosophy of Kant, efflorescing into the vague spiritual mysticism of Schleiermacher; - in our own country and in our own tongue, its influence may be traced from Coleridge downwards; through men like Arnold in the first instance, and ultimately through men like Maurice; as affecting largely an imposing school of religious thought.

I give here a sentence or two from a work just published, which is, I am sure, destined to be classical and authoritative in theology; the first volume of Dr. Hodge’s Systematic Theology. In his elaborate and exhaustive Introduction, Dr. Hodge discusses briefly but clearly this phase of the theological mind, He connects it with the doctrine of Realism in the system of the schools; not as if its advocates were always conscious of the connection; but as for his own part tracing it to that paternity. And it would seem that he is right. The theology which he criticises does indeed tacitly assume the realism of abstract generalisations. For thus he speaks of it, when discussing Schleiermacher’s theory of inspiration (p. 174): “God, in becoming man, did not take upon himself a true body and a reasonable soul, but generic humanity; i.e. humanity as a generic life. The effect of the incarnation was to unite the human and divine as one life. And this life passes over to the church, precisely as the life of Adam passed over to his descendants, by a process of natural development. And this life is Christianity. Participation in this divine-human life makes a man a Christian.” Or, as Dr. Ullman, whom he quotes, puts it - “The ground and central point of Christianity is the oneness of Deity and humanity effected through the incarnation of God and deification of man.” To the same effect, Dr. Hodge speaks again of (p. 176) “Realists, who define man to be the manifestation of generic humanity in connection with a given corporeal organisation; and who believe that it was generic humanity which Christ took and united in one life With his divine nature, - which life is communicated to the church as his body, and thereby to all its members.”

Now, I do not put upon the same level, or in the same category, these two influences; the one simply secular, the other theological. But, unhappily, they concur and conspire. And, as is always the case in any such alliance, the secular turns to account the theological, more than the theological the secular. It has become a cant or slang axiom in high literature, that to care for one’s soul and for one’s own personal salvation is the worst form of selfishness. By all means, let the race be redeemed, regenerated, glorified; but not its individual members. I do not now stay to argue upon the merits of this theological anthropology. It may easily be shown to involve a notion of human nature that is very humiliating. It is so, because it touches, so as to degrade, human nature in its original state, irrespectively altogether of any fall. It assumes that man was made to be dealt with collectively and gregariously; as mankind; in the mass. Direct personal intercourse between God and the individual man it ignores and precludes. It divests man therefore of his indefeasible dignity; the dignity which belongs to him essentially, and which no accident or fault can touch; his being, in his own proper person; - every man, individually; - one with whom God can personally deal, and who can personally transact with God. That is the ground and reason of our appeal to men individually when we speak as the ambassadors of God. And it is what makes a demand upon our loyalty to God in our appeals to men. For there is a subtle but strong temptation in the line of such thoughts as I have indicated. I am sorely pressed in spirit to give in to this cry of selfishness. It does look like mean egotism, or narrow individualism, that in a state of society teeming with general disorder, and rushing into general ruin, I should think it my duty to isolate myself, and make it my first and chief concern to save myself from this untoward generation, and make my own calling and election sure. Yes; and that thereafter and thereupon I should make it my business, not to organise a general raid into the dark and cruel places of the earth, according to some large, wholesale plan, operating upon a multitude in mass; - but to get one, and another, and a third, personally and individually, each to seek his or her own salvation. Surely the essence of such a gospel is pure selfishness. How am I to meet that imputation? How am I to resist the tendency in my own heart to give way to it? Certainly there is a call for loyalty here. I may not reason; I may not speculate, when thus painfully exercised. Better far to fall back on my allegiance to the King and Lord, the uniform of whose commission I wear.

First and chiefly, let me be sure of my loyalty as regards my own personal relation to God; his dealing with me and my dealing with him personally; person to person, face to face, in a private, personal audience. I am not to enlist under his banner in a crowd. I am not to be one of a multitude baptized into his name indiscriminately and wholesale. The oath of allegiance is not tendered to the army en masse, and to me, as lost in the miscellaneous host. It is an oath which I must loyally take as an individual; an enlisted recruit; a volunteer; separately; by myself; alone. Yes! Alone; alone with him to -whom I swear; or who swears me to himself! Lovingly he does so; most lovingly. Owning his own work in making me willing in the day of his power, - graciously taking me at my word when I am made willing by him to say, “Here am I, send me,” - he seals the transaction, and hinds me to himself in covenant. It is a personal transaction between him and me. Yes! It is a personal transaction. He receives me individually, and lays me under a vow more sacredly binding on me than any military oath. Thus personally and individually am I pledged to loyalty; loyalty to the captain of my salvation; the king and lord of my soul that he has redeemed; of my whole being that he has purchased and conquered for himself. Only thus am I prepared and qualified for going forth, in fearless loyalty, along with him, as he goes forth, to subdue the people under him. In fearless loyalty, I say. For I have full and loyal sympathy with him in his manner of subduing the people under him. I am not in haste for wholesale conquests. I am not incredulous of individual conversions. I recognise his purpose, his desire, to have sinners saved, - the enemies of God reconciled, - not in crowds - but singly; one by one. It may be a fond and pleasing dream that I have to renounce when I cease to reckon on any gregarious or collective regeneration of humanity. But, reserving all my confidence, such as it is, in sundry indirect influences of Christianity, I do my master’s work loyally, lovingly, hopefully, when I beseech men one by one to be reconciled to God; each one for himself to be reconciled; that so the kingdom may at last come, whose citizens are all holy; and the temple be set up, every stone of which is pure and precious and perfect.

III. The third and last view which I mean to suggest of the need of the loyalty I crave, has respect to the result or issue of the preaching of the gospel, or of the divine plan of which it forms the chief part. Here the strain, the stress of pressure on a loving and loyal heart, is apt to become very trying. And the trial is the more severe in these days, when it seems to be a special device of the great enemy, through his manifold agencies, to turn, if he can, the message of salvation into “tidings of damnation.” It is no new device. The decorous moralist, Dr. Hugh Blair, is said to have suggested that phrase to Burns, as an amendment of a verse of his Holy Fair. The poet had written “salvation.” The divine makes it, - “Now Moodie speels the holy door, Wi’ tidings o’ damnation.” The present race of friends of culture and free thought are open-mouthed with the same cry. We poor preachers of the gospel are anathematised as men who revel in the idea of the vast majority of the human race being none the better, but rather all the worse, for the gospel which we preach; who gloat over the horrid spectacle of an all but universal ruin; while we hug ourselves in our security among a very few comparatively that are chosen and saved. Now, it is true that we must, with our convictions, face in the last resort an issue which they do not consider themselves called upon to contemplate, the condemnation of a portion, at least, - nay, let us say, a large portion, of mankind to eternal death. And the question of more or fewer may seem to us, as it really is, irrelevant or unimportant, since the difficulty, after all, lies in there being any. It is beside the question, therefore, to harp upon the subject of the lost being in our opinion numerous. Still, since a prejudice is created by the exaggerated representations of enemies, and sometimes by the unwise statements or admissions of friends of the truth, it may be well to indicate the real state of the question as on our side. And, with that view, a few facts and observations may be brought forward.

1. I touch a dark and dread mystery when I advert to the state of heathen nations, ancient and modern, who have had no written revelation and no preaching of the gospel. Their case, as we are constrained to view it, is, if fully realised, such as may appal the stoutest heart, while it must move to tenderest pity and most strenuous effort. It is impossible to paint it in colours too black, or to dream of any reasonable or scriptural hope of salvation for multitudes of immortal souls perishing in gross darkness and vice. “We may indeed make some account, perhaps, of these two considerations: - First, That, believing, as we do, the common origin of all mankind, and their descent from a single pair, to whom and through whom divine communications of law and grace were unquestionably made, we cannot say of any people that there may not be among them some faint remains, in their deepest degeneracy, of the primeval traditionary message; and, secondly, that we cannot tell how small a portion of saving truth, lying hid in much error, the Holy Spirit, in the sovereignty and omnipotence of his merciful dispensation, may use and turn to account for good. But these considerations, whatever may be their value and bearing, cannot be felt by any of us to cast even a fitful gleam of light on the impenetrable gloom, or mitigate the pain and anguish which the thought of earth’s dark places and their doomed inhabitants should call forth in our breasts. They have knowledge enough of God and duty, we are assured, to condemn them; the light of nature, the voice of conscience, and the Lord’s own original discovery of himself, leaving them without excuse. That is the fact on which alone we must ever dwell; a fact which makes a demand upon our dumb and silent loyalty, such as only the strongest faith can enable us always to meet; a fact which, when fully apprehended in all its overwhelming significancy, may well awaken emotions of awe and terror such as only the holiest sympathy with him who said, “Go ye into all the world,” and the warmest and most loving zeal in obeying that great command, can in some tolerable measure practically assuage or soothe.

2. It is an easier and brighter theme I handle when T speak of the salvation of infants. I firmly believe that all who die in infancy are saved. “That,” says Dr. Hodge (p. 27), “is the general belief of Protestants, contrary to the doctrine of Romanists and Romanisers,” who, more or less categorically, connect salvation with baptismal grace. The belief rests chiefly on a fair and liberal interpretation of the comparison and contrast which Paul draws (Romans 5:1-21) between the effect of Adam’s sin and that of Christ’s righteousness, and partly also on the Saviour’s treatment of little children, and his acknowledgment of them as members of his kingdom.

I have ventured elsewhere to indicate[1] an opinion that the death of infants is itself one of the results of redemption; that it is in consequence and in virtue of Christ’s substitutionary work that any die in infancy; and that, if there had been no such work, all born of Adam would have lived on the earth long enough to manifest and consummate their original sin by actual transgressions; the earth being in that case spared, not as now in gracious, but in judicial forbearance, till that result was accomplished. I give it not certainly as an article of faith, but as a probable opinion, deriving some considerable support from particular statements of the divine word, as well as from general views of the principles of the divine plan of salvation. To my mind, at least, it is a most welcome and blessed thought that all the countless multitude of babes who in all ages and in all countries have, by whatever means, whether decay of nature or violence of man, been snatched prematurely, as we say, from the fond maternal bosom or the cold cruelty of crime, have been specially given by the Father to the Son, as the recompense of his obedience, and the fruit of the travail of his soul, to be taken by him from the evil to come on earth; taken to be trained and nurtured in the school and home of heaven. The fact, at any rate, that all who die in infancy are saved we all believe; and it surely helps our loyalty, required to acquiesce in so much that is dark as regards the prospects of our race, to dwell on that bright belief. Nor need we be much moved by the poor and miserable cavil which would twist the words, - “Elect infants, dying in infancy,” in our Confession, into an argument against the doctrine of their universal salvation. The article in our creed may not positively assert the doctrine; I give no judgment upon that point. But it argues the profoundest ignorance or the grossest unfairness, to allege that it denies or contradicts the doctrine. Every intelligent student knows that creeds and confessions arise out of the necessity of guarding the truth against error, and are compiled with a view to that end. The honest way, therefore, of interpreting any passage in any one of them is to ask, Against what error is it directed? To what heresy does it point? Plainly and undeniably, in the present instance, the error or heresy meant to be condemned is that of holding that infants dying in infancy are saved “in respect of their natural innocency and purity, irrespectively of the electing love of the Father, the redeeming work of the Son, and the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit.” The initial word “elect,” and all the subsequent words in the section, repudiate that infidel notion. They place the salvation of infants on the scriptural footing. They do that; and they do nothing more than that.

3. Another cheering topic may be briefly noticed. The present rate at which additions are made to the church of such as shall be saved, - which may be regarded as having been too long and too generally the average rate, - is not that to which alone we are to look as providing for the peopling of heaven with redeemed men. In the past, from the days of Enos, when men began to call on the name of the Lord, downwards, through repeated seasons of revival, to the coming of the Lord; and thence again forward and onward, through the Pentecostal work, Reformation awakenings, and other subsequent visitations of grace on a larger or smaller scale, - specimens have been given, and they are only specimens, of what is to be looked for in the latter times, when a nation shall be born in a day, - when the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in, - when Israel’s restoration shall be as life from the dead, - when Satan shall be bound, and millennial prosperity and peace shall reign. What may be the measure of the Spirit’s effusion then, - how great the company of those who spread abroad the word, - how accelerated the speed of men running to and fro in the world, - how vast the numbers springing up everywhere to sing songs of praise; - when the whole earth, becoming the garden of the Lord, is indeed a nursery for heaven; - who can tell? Enough to know that between now and then it will not always be a day of small things.

I have adverted to these encouraging thoughts, as somewhat relaxing, so to speak, the strain upon our loyalty; because it seems right to relieve our evangelical Calvinistic faith from the charge of being a mere gloomy and morose fanaticism, in the representation it makes of the condition and prospects of the human race. It is the fashion to stigmatise our system of doctrine as mercilessly exclusive; confining the chance or possibility of salvation within the narrowest possible limits; holding out hope to a very few, a mere handful, a small infinitesimal minority of mankind; and leaving the vast majority, almost the whole mass, to perish helplessly by an irreversible decree or an inevitable doom. And it must be acknowledged that in a few Calvinistic writings, of considerable authority, unguarded and incautious expressions do occasionally occur; unduly exaggerating the number of the lost, and dwelling with needless and unwarrantable reiteration on the exceeding fewness of the saved. This tendency may arise perhaps from natural temperament, inclining men to look too much on the dark side of things; or from their pressing beyond its fair meaning the Lord’s warning about the two gates; or from a desponding and perhaps morbid feeling, like that of Elijah, despairing of his age and country, ignorant of the thousands still remaining true to their God; or from the absence at times of that large and wide sympathy which grasps the purpose of God to gather into one all things in Christ. Still a prejudice is thus created in men’s minds against the truth of God. And the prejudice may be fostered by too much being made, and erroneously made, of expressions occurring even in our standards. For instance, the word “some,” as used in stating the doctrine of election, is apt to be made an offence in ill-affected quarters, and even perhaps to stagger honest minds; as if it meant a few, only a few, a very few. I need not say that it has not at all necessarily that meaning, nor would it, as I think, when originally employed, have suggested that idea. At the same time, I must confess that I have often wished that some other mode of expressing the truth had occurred to the Westminster Divines.

I was greatly delighted, accordingly, when a few years ago I lighted on the phraseology adopted in the Confession of Faith of the Calvinistic Methodists in Wales. Here is their article (12), headed, “Of the Election of Grace.” “God from eternity elected Christ to be a covenant head, a mediator, and a surety to his church; to redeem and to save it. God also elected in Christ a countless multitude out of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, to holiness and everlasting life; and every means were employed to effect this purpose most securely. This election is eternal, righteous, sovereign, unconditional, peculiar or personal, and unchangeable. It wrongs none. Though God has justly left some without being elected, he has not wronged them; they are in the same condition as if there had been no election; and had there been no election, no flesh had been saved.” Thus, by placing in the forefront Christ, the elect of the Father, and then all the rest of the elect in him, the full wonder of God’s comprehensive grace is brought out. The wide and free flow is unembarrassed and unimpeded. The limitation is put in the form of a vindication of God’s justice. The main stress is laid on the election being the election of Christ, and therefore, in him, of a “countless multitude;” in whom he sees of the travail of his soul, and is satisfied.

I hold our statement to be equivalent to that of our “Welsh Calvinistic and Presbyterian friends, although I greatly prefer theirs. It is their spontaneous and original utterance. For, in the constituting of their church they adopted neither creed nor government from any outward source, or under any outward influence; but from their own study of the Bible brought out for themselves Calvinism and Presbyterianism; Charles of Bala, and others of like mind, being their chief human guides, under whose auspices, originally and freshly, their Calvinistic Confession of Faith was drawn up, and their substantially Presbyterian manner of administration organised. But I must return, in a few closing sentences, to my subject. With all the explanations and qualifications which I have ventured to suggest, the office to which we are called, as preachers of the gospel, demands no ordinary amount of loyalty. It is an office which we have to execute very much in the dark. Not that there is any darkness as to the message which we have to deliver, or the name and authority in which we have to deliver it. No. But thick darkness veils the issues, and the elements of sovereignty and power on which the issues depend.

I desire here to make my concluding application as personal, as well as practical, as I can. I speak for myself while I speak to you. I urge the paramount importance of our loyally giving the first place always to God in the discharge of our ministry, - in the preaching of the word. He is our master. We are his ambassadors. It is for him that we act. It is on his behalf that we treat with our fellow sinners. We are the men of his secret. We stand in his counsel. Let us give good heed, let us look well to it, that we be thoroughly, unreservedly, fearlessly, and uncompromisingly on his side, in the great controversy which he has with men, and which, partly through our instrumentality, he would have amicably settled. Let us keep steadily before our eyes, as our first and chief concern, what is due to him, to his name, his kingdom, his will; his character and claims; his authority and law. To that high end, every other consideration, even the salvation of precious souls, must be secondary and subordinate. Let God be true, and every man a liar. Let God be magnified, and the guilty perish. Let the hallowing of his name, the coming of his kingdom, the doing of his will, take precedence of all human interests, the highest and the dearest. Let us ever consult for the Creator’s glory in preference even to the creature’s good. To carry out this loyal principle, to cherish this loyal spirit, is no easy attainment. Flesh and blood often rebel against it. Our best affections often rebel against it. We may not be, in the ordinary sense, men-pleasers or time-servers. We may have no bye-ends of our own to seek. We may court no man’s favour. We may fear no man’s frown. These, indeed, are temptations to unfaithfulness, which are ever besetting us, and against which we need to be ever watching and praying. But we may be resisting and withstanding all such influences, and yet not be true to our high calling, and thoroughly loyal to our God. A far sorer trial may be soliciting us; the sort of trial which these affecting words may indicate: “Jesus, beholding him, loved him.” The sad, sad case of one, “almost persuaded,” - “not far from the kingdom of God,” - may be touching your tender heart. Or Jerusalem doomed may be drawing tears from your aching eyes. You may not utter a word in disparagement of Jehovah’s righteousness. You may give no sign, you may drop no hint, in the line of any concession or surrender. But ah! the yearning of your pained and grieved soul may cause an inward faltering, - a secret shrinking, - a hidden wish. On the instant your power is gone. Something about you, - your trembling lips, - your hesitating tongue, - betrays your weakness. God’s own Spirit in you is on the point of leaving you, and the lie of the devil is again soliciting you, - in your brother’s case perhaps first, and then in your own, - the fatal lie, “Ye shall not surely die.” The Lord give us grace to be loyal; so that our ministry may be such as to warrant our adoption of Paul’s words at its close, “I take you to record this day that I am pure from the blood of all men, for I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God.”