Lord's Manhood and Flesh. IX. On the Nature of our Salvation through Christ. X. Appendix.

We regret to observe that there is no index; an unpardonable deficiency, which we hope to see supplied in the event of a future edition.

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The first paper (like most of the others, an epistolary disquisition, referring to a previous conversation) has for its main object, to prove, that the true Christian life is not only an inward and spiritual life, but a virtuous, peaceful, happy life; victo'rious over the world and over sin, in every instance that is necessary to continued peace of conscience and filial access to the Father of Spirits.' The cold, low, unenergetic notion of Christianity, which is all that the most admit, is, Mr. Knox remarks, 'really below Cicero in moral matters, and far below Plato as to the contemplative action of the mind.' In a variety of passages cited from Horace, it is shewn, how even enlightened heathens could express the longings of human nature for such a state of moral victory and mental peace as Christianity proposes, and is alone adequate to produce. The very highest flight of 'Horace's fancy did not rise above St. Paul's Christianity,' which realizes not only the philosophical speculations, but the poetical 'dreams of mental happiness. St. Paul's daily, hourly feeling was a happy one, the animus æquus of Horace, a confirmed habit of contentment: it was, "I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me." These observations introduce the following just and valuable strictures upon the statements of a writer who ranks high in the estimation of many as a theological authority, but who is too much chargeable with that spirit of rationalizing which reduces Christian ethics to a cold and barren philosophy.

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It is to be lamented,' says Mr. Knox, ' that too many writers, who imagined themselves the truest church-of-England men, have almost entirely overlooked this felicitating influence of our divine religion. They have considered the Christian system as so imperceptibly efficacious, that he who walks in their path is to hope for no other comfort or happiness, than that which naturally grows out of his own progressive endeavours. "Whatever grace," says Dr. Scott, in his Christian life, "the Spirit of God now affords us, it ordinarily works on us in the same way, and after the same manner, as if all were performed by the strength of our own reason; so that, in the renovation of our natures, we cannot certainly distinguish what is done by the Spirit, from what is done by our reason and conscience co-operating with him." (Vol. iii. p. 80.) If Dr. Scott meant, merely, that the Spirit of God, in the act of influencing, is not certainly distinguishable from the natural motions of our own minds, or animal spirits, no sober Christian could dispute the position. But his expressions go further, and seem to imply, that the effects are as indistinct as the operation,- -we can

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not distinguish what is done by the Spirit from what is done by our reason and conscience." Much of the same kind is Bishop Watson's assertion, in his address to persons confirmed. "The manner," says he, "in which the Holy Spirit gives his assistance to faithful and pious persons, is not attended with any certain sign of its being given; it is secret and unknown. You cannot distinguish the working by which He helpeth your infirmities, from the ordinary operations of your own minds." (Dublin edition, p. 14.)

'But, on this view, would it not be reasonable to ask, what does Christianity do for us? or wherein consists its value, if it produces no perceptible effects? We have reason and conscience inherent in our nature, and we can form a pretty clear estimate of what they are competent to effect, by reflecting on what passes in our own bosoms. If, then, the additional influences of God's Holy Spirit bring with them. no additional effects, no certain sign of their being given, what benefit do we derive from our Saviour's coming into the world? What is that rest which he promised? that "well of water" within the soul, springing up into everlasting life"? what that "peace of God which passeth all understanding"? How, indeed, could it pass any understanding, if it were not to be distinguished from what is done by reason and conscience? Or what meant our divine Redeemer, when he said in his last discourse, He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him"? This was beyond the comprehension of the apostles, and, therefore, one of them asked, "Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?" If, therefore, the expressions used by our Saviour had really meant nothing but the comfort arising from en lightened reason and a tolerably quiet conscience, now would be the time for so stating the fact. But the answer repeats the foregoing assertion, in terms still less capable of any cold, or merely rational construction. “If any man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." Nay, more, as if our Lord considered the spiritual happiness which these elevated expressions represent, as the grandest object he could propose to excite the warmth of cold and languid minds, he almost uses the very same idea, in his apocalyptic message to the angel of the church of Laodicea :-" Behold," says he, "" I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open unto me, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with me. Vol. I. pp. 19-21.

After citing some other striking passages of Scripture descriptive of the spiritual blessedness of the Christian, Mr. Knox supposes the question to be started, How are we, taking these expressions literally, to preserve the rationality of religion, and to obviate enthusiastic perversion.' To this he replies, that there 'can be no need to abate the strength of any of these expressions ' in order to guard them from fanatical abuse.'

On the contrary, I rather think that attempts of that kind have peculiarly served the cause of Fanaticism. The jejune interpretations

of such writers as those mentioned above, have so evidently fallen below the force and fulness of the text, as to make their comment a kind of concession to fanatics, that Scripture, in its strict sense, was really with them. In order, therefore, to secure the rationality of Christianity, as well as its depth and energy, these passages, instead of being loaded or diluted, ought to be dispassionately investigated; in the confidence, that the Spirit of God has suffered nothing to enter into the sacred volume, of whose clear and uncoerced meaning we need entertain any apprehension.' Vol. I. p. 26.

Can any thing be more admirable than the wisdom and piety which dictate these remarks? In what follows, Mr. Knox seems to have anticipated, in some degree, the views of Mr. Erskine in his Essay on Faith. What," he asks, is that high state of 'Christian attainments which the strongest of these texts describe, 'but the being impressed with certain incontrovertible facts, to the degree and in the manner which, considering the interest we have in those facts, strict common sense would dictate?'

If the Gospel be true, it is a concern of such magnitude, as should in all reason be paramount in our minds; and the Gospel being indubitably and irrefragably true, its not being thus paramount implies the grossest and most irrational infatuation. But why has it not this ascendancy? St. Paul answers, "The animal man knoweth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned;" that is, the Gospel is diametrically opposite to the taste of depraved human nature; the unchanged, unpurified heart goes quite another way, and the understanding goes along with it; taste dictating to understanding, in almost every instance in this world. An inward influence of divine grace, therefore, is necessary, to dispel this delirious dream, to rationalise the mind, and to liberate the higher faculties from their captivity to the lower; to emancipate thought and ratiocination from that inner prison of sense, wherein their feet are, as it were, made fast in the stocks of appetite and passion. When this is once fully done, or in proportion as it is done, the facts of religion, as recorded in Scripture, and borne witness to by internal conscience and external nature, are apprehended as facts; and proportionably to their being thus apprehended, do they engage, and influence, and felicitate the soul. Reason and conscience informed the heathen sages, that there was a chief good of man, compared with which earth and all its seductive contents were very vanity. They saw, that this chief good implied predominant virtue in man; but they did not clearly, though some, in part, did see, that the soul of virtue is to love the living source of virtue. But to them, this living source of virtue was little more than undefined, as well as unapproachable brightness. This, however, is actually defined to us, in the Gospel, in a manner fitted, by the very skill of God himself, to attract, inform, and satisfy our minds; to operate, in the aptest way conceivable, on all our passions and affections; to subdue all that is evil in us; to quicken, exalt, and make ascendant, all that is rational and noble in us; to engage us in looking at

the things which are not seen, and to enable (us) to endure, as seeing Him that is invisible. The facts of the Gospel need only be fully felt, in order to these effects being produced. "We," says St. Paul, "beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image."

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What, then, is really the difference, between the merely rational, and the spiritual Christian? Is it, that the latter receives an hypothesis which the former rejects? I conceive not merely, nor chiefly, this; but, rather, that the one is more deeply impressed by the indisputable facts of Christianity, than the other. The one feels, while the other only reads or hears. Why was it that, through the death of the Son of God, the world was crucified to St. Paul, and he to the world? Clearly, because he apprehended this fact, in rational proportion to its weight and magnitude; and he who at this day is enabled, by the grace of God, to contemplate the same divine object with equal realisation, becomes inspired with the same holy temper. "Ye shall know the truth," said our Saviour, " and the truth shall make you free."- Faith," says an apostolic writer, "is the TσTIS (substance) of things hoped for, and the λyxos (evidence) of things not seen. What is this, but the apprehending of divine things as realities? He who finds himself in a storm on shipboard, needs not argue himself into alarm, nor strive to recollect all the various circumstances of danger. If, therefore, divine and eternal things do once impress themselves on the mind as facts, religion will grow out of that impression by a necessity of nature; and, in proportion to its strength, it will influence all the movements both of the inner and outward

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The making this impression, then, is the great operation of divine grace. Man cannot give it to himself; we are made sensible of this, times without number. When we wish to rise above worldly uneasiness, or to resist alarming temptations, we endeavour to call up stronger feelings of religion, as our sole resource: but experience tells us how little we can do in this way; and even our very endeavours are too often cold and half-hearted; we are conscious that, if our sense of God, of Christ, of heaven, and of hell was more lively, we should find it our best support, both against trouble and temptation. If, then, after many such ineffectual wishes and endeavours, we feel those things at length taking real hold of our mind,-so that the awful apprehension of eternal things, excites in us a salutary and effectual watchfulness, and the warm sense of the divine excellence engages and spiritualises our affections, raising them to high and heavenly objects, and, by that means, making us superior to temptations by which hitherto we were led captive,--this, I conceive, he who feels it, will never attribute to mere reason or conscience, or to any less cause, than His influence, who quickeneth all things.

'But, though it be divine, it is most rational. It is, indeed, a felt return to right reason, after phrenzy: "When he came to himself,” says our Saviour of the prodigal: all before was infatuation. Now, for the first time, the mind begins to discover realities. It perceives, that its former insensibility to these was an absolute sleep of the soul, and that it only then awoke, when it became sensible of them. In

such feelings, then, the genuine religion of the Gospel commences; and, as the matter-of-fact persuasion of divine things increases, it increases, also, until all painful conflict is put an end to, by the decided ascendancy of spiritual objects and attachments.' Vol. I. pp. 27-30.

‘The radical, substantial disagreement, then, between the merely moral Christian and the experimentalist', Mr. Knox proceeds to argue, is, 'that the former has a weaker sense of the religious facts recorded in the Scripture, than the latter. If 'these be felt only as they should be, the consequences are in'fallible.* And this in spite of all mental diversities, because 'the influential facts of the Gospel are ineffably adjusted to all possible minds. Further on, another essential difference between the merely rationalising and the spiritual Christian is pointed out the one is not, the other is, a man of prayer'.

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Happy is he who so despairs of his own efforts as to expect support and establishment only through means of prayer. By such a course, he brings himself into the presence of God; and in that presence, sin appears exceeding sinful. Outward reformation will not avail there: "If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things." Prayer, therefore, excites tenderness of conscience,-whose language is, "Search me, O God, and prove me; look well if there be any way of wickedness in me.' Thus, the depth and variety of the disease being more and more felt, the least degree of effectual aid will be felt also. He prays thus earnestly, because he feels that there is no health in him; and, consequently, when any better feeling springs up in his heart, he is all alive to it. A change of heart is his object; and every tendency to such a change, every symptom of softened, spiritualized feelings, is to him more precious than the wealth of worlds. It is in prayer-whether it be in the closet or in the heart-that such emotions are chiefly felt; and the emotions themselves, if genuine, have the very character of prayer in them. In fact, the spirit of prayer is the spiritual Christian's element: were this to be extinguished, his mind would be like the animal in the exhausted receiver. A sense of God, and of divine things, is that to his soul, which animation is to his body; and the habitual devotion of the heart is, in spiritual life, what the action of the lungs is in corporeal life; as Herbert beautifully says,-" God's breath in man returning to its birth." Faith, therefore, that divine and yet most rational faith already described,-acts most radically by prayer; and in this way, chiefly, it generates love, and also strengthens itself. To him who "prays to God always," divine objects become more and more impressive on the mind and heart,-which is the growth of faith; as well as more and more attractive to the imagination and affections,-which implies advance in love. Prayer, therefore, must be the chief nourishment of that religion which St. Paul makes essentially to consist in faith working by love.

* This approaches, in form, to a truism; yet, how far is it from being a generally recognised truth!