scs^n-K Sa/tf/fjc S^ska/'SS, ■fhivv-G-i f "7Vv***v CHRIST THE BREAD OF LIFE CHRIST THE BREAD OF LIFE AN A TTEMPT TO GIVE A PROFITABLE DIRECTION TO THE PRESENT OCCUPATION OF THOUGHT WITH ROMANISM JOHN M'LEOD CAMPBELL, D.D. SECOND EDITION JJmtbxm MACMILLAN A X D CO 1869 All Rights Reserved Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library http://archive.org/details/christbreadoflifOOcamp CONTENTS. Preface to Second Edition, i Receiving Christ as the Bread of Life the Practical Aspect of Faith, 7 Subject how divided, ...... 9 First, — Relation of the Lord's Supper to the Life ofLaith, 9 Eternal Life, one from the beginning, Psalm xc, Acts xvii. 28, . Faith feeding on Christ, St. John vi. 27-58, Divine teaching here needed, and promised, Giving liberty, not bondage, .... Christ's words spirit and life, .... Alleged reference of St. John vi. 27-58 to the Lord' Supper, the two views, .... Results of error here, negative and positive, A faith demanded alien to Christianity, the faith of physical mystery not of a spiritual truth, Transubstantiation the extreme development, Appeal to sense, Appeal to spiritual discernment, These distinct while harmonious, Advantages of the latter, . Question suggested here, ...... 32 Difficulty spiritual not intellectual, . . . -33 CONTENTS. The answei- of Christian experience is conclusive, . 36 The new faith objected to, . . . . -37 Demands a further development, .... 38 Evil result thus perfected, ..... 39 Deceptive elements of peace in the faith of the Mass, 41 We cannot serve two masters, ..... 42 That here there are two services seen historically and in the light of Eternal Life, light which justifies present fears, ...... This perfects its parallelism with the elements of the Truth and the danger it involves, . Justice to Romanism aimed at, ... Warning to Protestants here suggested, Perverted and deceptive use of the Lord's Supper, Inference which this suggests to Romanists considered Felt need of God not faith, .... Our misuse of the Lord's Supper implies self-deception Questions for self-examination, Relation of worship to knowledge, . Awe and earnestness why accepted as religion, . The highest awe belongs to the purest light, To witness that this is so our high calling, 47 49 52 53 55 57 59 60 62 63 65 69 7i 73 SECOND, — Feeding upon Christ considered as expressing the part of Man's Will in Faith, .... 74 Jewish and Romanist understanding of St. John vi. 51, how related, ....... 75 Figurative use of "food," "feeding," in relation to mind, ........ 77 St. John Lv. 5-34 connected with St. John vi. 27-63, 80 Light thus shed on the mystery of spiritual life, Fleb. vii. 16, 82 The Father's will Christ's meat, .... 83 That will in Christ our spiritual food, ... 85 CONTENTS. vn S7 Eternal Life one in Christ and in us, St. Matt, xi 27-30, This unity is known in the light of Eternal Life, . 89 By movements of the will is spiritual food appropriated, 91 Christ the true vine, ...... 92 Christ the light of the world, 93 Christian experience, ...... 94 Difficulties suggested, how to be regarded, . . 96 Faith absorbed in its object, ..... 97 Yet further explanation called for, .... 99 A departure from the simplicity that is in Christ, . 101 Justification and Sanctification unduly separated, . 103 Their unity, seen in the light of Eternal Life, . .105 Abraham was strong in faith, giving glory to God, . 107 True relation of faith to Eternal Life, . . . 109 Error in system with truth in the life, how to be thought of, . . . . . . . .112 Evils still great and difficult to estimate, . . .114 Risk of misconception, . . . . . 115 We may be aided by considering some superficial and inadequate views which prevent our reaching the simplicity that is in Christ, . . . . .121 Perplexities that arise, . . . . . .123 Unsuccessful endeavour to harmonize, . . .127 Light reveals unity, . . . . . .128 Christian Prayer, . . . . . . .129 In the name of Christ and according to the will of God, 131 The confusion of thought as to Justification exists also as to Prayer, ....... 134 The Divine Law of Prayer, . . . . 135 Substitutes for the Spirit of Prayer, . . . .137 Romanist and Protestant, . . . . 139 The Scriptures as well as the Church put between man and God, ....... 142 vin COXTEXTS. Third, — Development of the Mass from the Lord's Slipper, 143 True importance of the change, . . . 145 Meaning of the Lord's Supper and its value, . . 147 How marked at the first by praise and prayer, . 149 Symbols in time identified with what they expressed first in fonn of words, afterwards in thought, . 153 Hence a change of their function and a new faith, . 155 Whose strength was mystery, not love, . . 157 Peace in darkness the fruit of faith in light, . 159 Light, not darkness, saves, . . . . .160 The quest of Orthodoxy not in the light of love har- dens and misleads, . . . . .163 Transubstantiation, sought to be connected with the Incarnation, . . . . . . .166 God comes near to man in love therefore in light, . 169 The two aspects of religion now considered, . . 171 Question as to the figurative or literal use of words not to be decided by the words alone, but by the light in which they are read, . . . .177 Error here may coexist with a living faith, . -179 The Eucharistic Sacrifice, to be taken to the light of the Atonement, . . . . . . .181 Appeal here to the light of Christianity, the Christian consciousness in its response to the words of Christ, 186 Result looked for where no prepossession, . .188 Even where there is may be reached, . . .190 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. The Infallibility of the Church and Transubstantiation are to Protestants the most repulsive aspects of the teaching of the Church of Rome. — Yet they are also her great attractions to those who pass over to her from Protestantism ; and, once accepted, form her strongest hold upon them. The explanation of this seeming contradiction appears to me to be that, however open to obvi- ous and palpable objections these two doctrines are, — the one as making a logically inconsistent demand on reason, the other as opposed to sense, — they offer themselves as severally meet- ing deep cravings of humanity — cravings which may be so strong as to tempt to a blind grasp- ing at what promises to satisfy, in spite of all protestations of sense and reason. As to the doctrine of the Infallibility of the PREFACE. Church, which is made the gate by which all must enter in, — Cardinal Wiseman representing the Church as a city to which many roads lead but which has but this one gate, — this doctrine promises the peace and rest of certainty to minds seeking a sure knowledge of God. Dr. Newman says that if it was the purpose of God to give us certain knowledge of Himself, such a purpose implied the gift of an Infallible Church. The answer seems obvious — that such an Infalli- ble Church would need a witness of God to her infallibility other than herself to justify the faith she asks from us. And, besides, if we consider it, any assumed impossibility in God's imparting certain knowledge of Himself to individual man would be the impossibility of Revelation at all. But such answers, though just, offer nothing that can meet the craving for certain knowledge of God, for however they cast doubt on the claim made for the Church they offer no other guide to certainty. For the question here is not one as to the authority of Scripture, but as to the sure understanding of Scripture ; and to PREFACE. s ubstitute th e right of private judgment for the right of the Church to interpret with authority, is to leave the seeker for certainty to depend for certainty ultimately on his own judgment as to what the Scriptures teach. Now we can under- stand that one judging to the best of his ability may feel his conscience discharged, and may say, " If I am in error I at least am not blameably so." But this is altogether different from a justifiable certainty in holding what we believe. Nevertheless while the craving for certain knowledge is not yet awakened, and the free exercise of independent thought is enjoyed without misgiving, this distinction, however im- portant and undeniable, is not duly considered. But it is otherwise when conflicting interpreta- tions of Scripture perplex the searcher for truth, and he anxiously asks "What am I to believe?" No rebutting of the claims of Romanism by the exposure of the vicious circle which asks faith for the Church on the authority of Scripture, and asks faith for Scripture on the authority of the Church, can do more for such a man than at PREFACE. the most to shut him up to uncertainty as to a necessity to which he must submit. But is such a necessity what the heart crying out for God, even the living God, can submit to ? — making, as it would, intelligent worship impossible, and God the unknown God. How, then, is the unwarranted claim to guide us set up by the Church of Rome to be satis- factorily dealt with ? — Not in the negative way of urging the contradiction that is in that claim, but by directing faith to the living God as Him- self the teacher who gives us certain knowledge of Himself. " It is written in the Prophets ' They shall be all taught of God.' " " If ye being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heav- enly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him." So, also, as to Transubstantiation. The crav- ing - to which Transubstantiation addresses it- self is not so obvious as that craving for light to which the doctrine of the Infallibility of the Church is addressed. Yet as Christ is the de- PREFACE. 5 sire — unconsciously — of all nations, so the words " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you," must be the recognition of a true need of humanity. To the dim, unenlightened feeling of this need the Church of Rome presents the Eucharist with the faith of Transubstantiation, and the blind hunger felt makes welcome the assurance of the teacher already believed to be infallible, and the craving for Divine food and the craving for Divine light are combined in giving attraction to the Church's promises of such light and such food. These misleading promises of the Church of Rome I have endeavoured (the latter here, the former in "Thoughts on Revelation") to pre- sent in the light of the truths the place of which they usurp. And this I have attempted in the first place with the hope of offering help to those who feel these attractions to Romanism too strong to be overcome by direct arguments ad- dressed to sense and reason ; and, in the second place, and chiefly, with the desire to quicken interest in the Truth itself ; which further end is PREFACE. what I contemplate as " giving a profitable direc- tion to the present occupation of men's thoughts with Romanism." It will be an important gain if, in seeking to deliver the Lord's Supper from that deceptive though solemn interest with which the doctrine of Transubstantiation has invested it, and from the perversion which renders it a substitute for the true feeding upon Christ, I do something towards restoring it to that function and that value which it had in the Church at the begin- ning, bv vindicating for it its true character as a Divine symbol having power to deepen and strengthen faith in the truth which it symbolizes, and, as a witness for the source and manner of our participation in Eternal Life, having a Divine fitness to nourish and develope that life in us. Partick, December, 186S. CHRIST THE BREAD OF LIFE. 1 ' Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." — Psalm xxiii. 5. OUR relation to Christ as our life has these two expressions given to it in the records of our Lord's teaching preserved for us by the Evan- gelist St. John. Our Lord says " I am the vine ye are the branches," and He says " I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever." Our dependance on the Son of God for the Eternal Life given to us in Him is thus likened to vegetable life as that is present in a branch, the sap flowing into it from the tree, and to animal life, as that is sustained by the eating of food. The intention of this teaching is undeniably practical, viz., guidance as to that exercise of our CHRIST THE BREAD OF LIFE WILL to which our God has given the place of being the link between the high purpose of His love for us and the accomplisJmicnt of that purpose in us. The reference to vegetable life does not of itself so suggest movements of will as that to animal life. There is nothing of the nature of will in the abiding of branches in the tree — there is in eating. But the words " Abide in me" spoken to us as branches add what the thought of the passing of life into the branch from the tree does not of itself suggest. We are branches, but branches to which it belongs to choose whether they will abide in the vine, and, as such, motives for abiding are addressed to us. "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide in me." What I desire now to keep in view is that practical purpose which I believe our Lord to have contemplated : and because of the evil that has arisen from the error of believing the words in which He represents the life of faith as feeding on Himself to have been spoken in THE PRACTICAL ASPECT OF FAITH 9 reference to the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, I shall consider, First, this error and what has been involved in it ; Second, I shall then en- deavour to illustrate the life of faith considered in itself in that aspect of it on which I under- stand our Lord to have been fixing our attention, viz., as movements of the will in response to the divine will in Christ — our livings by_Him as He by the Father ; Third, I shall in conclusion offer some thoughts on the development of the Mass of Romanism from the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, so far as that development affects faith in Christ as the Bread of Life. FIRST, — Relation of the Lord's Sapper to the Life of Faith. That Christ is the Bread of Life expresses that which from the beginning has been the inmost aspect of the Divine Life in man : there- fore songs of praise which have come down to us from the earlier dispensation fit themselves to our experience as Christians ; as very specially the 23rd Psalm. We know not in what circum- 10 ETERXAL LIFE stances the faith here seen triumphing was originally exercised, or what measure of the light of Eternal Life is to be recognised in it. But in the fullest light of Eternal Life to which we attain we can use it as the natural expression of our experience of salvation. In some Psalms the conflicts recorded and the deliverances and victories for which thanks are given have so much of the impress of a lower dispensation upon them that we experience difficulty in using their language in a higher and more spiritual reference ; but in this Psalm it is different. There is no room here for the objec- tion sometimes urged, that our use of the language of the warrior-king of Israel, who loses not that character as the sweet singer of Israel, is an unwarranted spiritualizing of lan- guage not originally so intended. For as to this Psalm we may say that it is spiritualized to our hand : — as when the being led in "green pastures and by still waters " is interpreted as " restoring' the soul," " leading in tJic paths of righteousness. " We feel ourselves here called to ONE FROM THE BEGINNING. 1 1 communion with a spirit that is hungering and thirsting after righteousness : we cannot think otherwise of one who has learned to regard all outward paths, however some of these might be in themselves " not joyous but grievous, " as " green pastures and still waters, " because to his spirit "paths of righteousness." Nor can we doubt that to this man the sweet taste of right- eousness has had in it the element of Eternity — the consciousness of having chosen the better part which is not taken from those who make choice of it. So we understand his confident expectation, " Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever." For the meat which endures unto Eternal Life has ever been the same, — Christ the Bread of Life, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. This is the testimony of God, that God has given to us Eternal Life and that this life is in His Son. This in the Spirit, is ever the testi- mony of the Father of our spirits. " Thou hast 12 PSALM XC; ACTS XVII. 28. been our dwelling-place in all generations" are the opening words of that Psalm which is pre- sented to us as " a prayer of Moses the man of God ;" and coming to us across the ages it unites its teaching with that of the Apostle, that " in God we live and move and have our being" — for "we are all His offspring." The light of the early dawn is one with that of noon-day, and when faith in God is seen producing and sustaining a peaceful realization of existence in one having the sense of his own mortality, the essence of such peace must from the beginning have been that which it is now. I therefore feel in communion with the Psalm- ist, while in the more perfect light now shining I accept the expression of his faith as meet for our use, and to these thoughts on " Christ the Bread of Life " prefix his words " Thou prepar- est a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." The table here spoken of is that spiritual table, the food on which is that bread of life which hath come down from heaven. The enemies in whose presence it is spread are FAITH FEEDING OX CHRIST. 1 3 the various elements of that fear of death through which we were all our lifetime subject to bondage. The transition of thought is from the sense of freedom from fear in "walking through the valley of the shadow of death" to the recognition of the source of that freedom, viz., our participation in the Eternal Life given to us in the Son of God. And the form of the language has reference to the manner of that participation, viz., our eating His flesh and drinking His blood. The teaching of our Lord in the light of which we thus use the Psalmist's words we have in the Gospel of St. John, Chap. vi. 27 to 58. The passage is one which arrests attention and which, even while it is felt to be imperfectly understood, is vividly remembered. Our Lord's earnestness and urgency cause us to feel that what He is teaching is of fundamental importance, while the form of expression which He employs is not only solemn but in some sense mysterious, or at least what makes a peculiar demand for spiritual in- telligence. The difficulty experienced by those 1 4 DIVINE TEACHING HERE XEEDED to whom the words were originally addressed, and the way in which our Lord met their mur- muring, — reiterating the statement at which they stumbled instead of explaining it, — contri- butes to this feeling of mystery, which is still further deepened by the intimation that those alone could understand it who were specially taught of God. Yet the teaching is what we cannot turn away from. We cannot rest peacefully in ignorance of its meaning. " Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood ye have no life in you." Here there is a requirement which must be understood in order to be obeyed, while obedience involves the issue of Eternal Life. We ask and we cannot put from us the enquiry " what is it to eat the flesh and to drink the blood of Christ?" while our Lord deepens the solemn interest which He is awakening when He adds " As the living Father has sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me even he shall live by me." But these words, while they deepen the AND PROMISED. l S interest only increase the mystery, and the more simply and earnestly we set ourselves to understand, the more we feel that if we are to understand we must, as we are told, be taught of God. Rightly considered, the imperative necessity for our understanding, along with the need of divine teaching that we may understand, awaken the expectation that God will teach us. Our Lord's words to the murmuring Jews we must see to have been not words of rebuke only, but of guidance also ; and we are saved from joining in their murmuring, and welcome the guidance which they did not accept. " No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him." "It is written in the prophets 1 They shall be all taught of God.' " " Every man therefore that hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto me." I say we shall accept this promise of Divine teaching, for such it is. Nothing else could meet us here. Our Lord's exposition of the manner of the life of faith is a demand for spiritual intelligence which i6 GIVING LIBERTY— NOT BONDAGE. we can only propose to ourselves to respond to in the remembrance and faith of His own words " If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children how much more will your Heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him." It has, I know, come to pass amongst us that intimations of our dependence upon Divine teaching for light are felt rather as perplexing than as encouraging ; arresting us by a practical difficulty rather than setting our feet in a large place ; intimating a necessity for a miracle rather than declaring a Divine constitution of humanity, to the freedom and blessedness of which we are called to rise. But of such a feeling we find no trace at the beginning. "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure." Here is no shadow of difficulty in harmonizing the call upon us to work with the faith that God is working in us. I feel no difficulty in cherishing the expectation of entering into the light of our Lord's words CHRIST'S WORDS SPIRIT AND LIFE. 1 7 while realizing that to this end I must be taught of God. I could not cherish that expectation othenvise. But it is important to consider the aspect which the passage now engaging our attention presents, when in connection with it our need of Divine teaching that we may under- stand is so emphatically impressed on us. Does not this imply that the subject of our Lord's teaching here is peculiarly spiritual and only to be spiritually discerned, — the same impression which we receive when He says " Doth this offend you ? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before ? It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life. " But before proceeding to illustrate the char- acter of the life of faith as a feeding on Christ the bread of life, I must stop to notice an inter- pretation of what I am now accepting as our Lord's special teaching on this subject, which, if just, would preclude my so using it. Not that so important an aspect of the life of faith could B 1 8 ALLEGED REFERENCE OF JOLLN VI. 27-58 be presented to us in one passage only, so that the loss of this passage would leave it in dark- ness. What we are here taught pervades the teaching of the Lord and of His Apostles, but we cannot give up the peculiar and most explicit setting-forth of the teaching here, more especially as the demand on us to do so is the demand to accept an interpretation which would introduce a new element into Christianity, and such an element as wars with the elements which our faith already accepts — so wars with them as to render the attempt to combine it with them like the attempt to serve two masters. The other interpretation to which I refer represents our Lord as here speaking not of the life of faith, but of the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, accepting His discourse as prophetic, and having as its object to declare the important place and function which that ordinance was to have in His future Church. This is the inter- pretation adopted by the Church of Rome. I believe the relation of the passage in ques- tion and of the Lord's Supper to each other to TO LORD'S SUPPER. — THE TWO VIEWS. 19 be simply this, that they both refer to the same spiritual reality, that ordinance setting forth in act what this passage sets forth in word. They both declare the manner of the life which is by the faith of the Son of God, using our experience of the conscious process of eating and drinking to illustrate the self-appropriating movements of the will in receiving and in feeding upon the spiritual food which is our Lord's broken body and shed blood ; thus helping us to conceive of the intimacy of our union with Christ, and of the literal truth of the expression " partaking in Him," through our knowledge of what the food which we eat is to the body which it nourishes. By both, I say, are we thus taught, and of our profitable meditation of the one, and of our worthy participation of the other, the fruit is one and the same ; viz., living obedience to the guidance which the Lord's words bestow ; living conformity with the meaning of the symbolical act, in which, at His command, we have engaged. Our Lord's teaching of the life of faith as a feeding upon His flesh and blood, and the light 20 RESULTS OF ERROR HERE shed upon that life by the ordinance of the Lord's Supper being thus identical, we ought ever to combine that teaching and this ordinance in our thoughts ; — the ordinance helping us to realize the practical demand which the teaching makes, and the teaching helping us to engage in the ordinance, in that light in which alone it can be the communion of the body and blood of Christ, and so be that strengthening to our spirits which it has been Divinely fitted for being. So it was at the beginning, for to the experience of this strengthening we trace the frequent use of the Eucharist in the Early Church. Such aid in fighting the good fight of faith, being conformed to the death of Christ, they could not fail to value who were so literally dying daily. But the common relation of the passage we are considering and of the Lord's Supper to the life of faith not being recognised, and that interpretation which represents the former as prophetic of the latter being accepted, these consequences follow, — 1st, we no longer receive NEGA TIVE AND POSITIVE. 2 1 this portion of our Lord's teaching as shedding light on the life of faith and parallel with the words, "I am the vine ye are the branches." " I am the light of the world ; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life." And 2nd, we no longer have light shed on the manner of the life of faith by the ordinance of the Supper ; the character of that ordinance being entirely changed when it is represented as itself the subject of such words as, " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." This double loss, though negative, will still if realized be found to be very great. But it is the positive result of the change of interpretation to which I am anxious to direct attention — that result which I have ventured to call the intro- duction of a new element into Christianity and one that wars with what we know Christianity to be. A new element is introduced into Christianity when the words " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life 1/ 22 A FAITH DEMAXDED in you " are understood to be spoken of the Lord's Supper, for now that ordinance claims to be the med ium of our participation in Christ — that apart from which we have no life in us. An ordinance which bore witness to the naturc^of the life of faith has become a mystery cmbodymg spiritual life in material elements. — I believe that a true spiritual discernment could in the contemplation of this change anticipate what the historical development of it has made too certain ; viz., that in its new character, the Lord's Supper as the Mass would absorb in itself the interest which Christ has to us as our Life. When we consider this matter closely, the first thing which we realize is, that there is a demand made upon us for another manner of faith than that which apprehends Christ and the grace of God in the gospel of our salvation. The apostle Paul describes himself as, in preaching the gospel, ' ' By manifestation of the truth commending himself to every man's conscience in the sight of God." Of what takes place in the reception of the gospel, he speaks ALIEN TO CHRISTIANITY. thus, " God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Of subsequent progress in the Divine Life, he says, " We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." Faith, therefore, as respects the first commencement of the life of faith, and as respects its subsequent progress, is an apprehending, and a growing in the apprehension of, the glory of God in the Gospel ; and so it is a passing into and an advancing in light ; and that light the highest, a seeing light in God's Light. But the faith which the Lord's Supper de- mands, when that ordinance is presented, not as a witness to the manner of life of which Christ is the food, but as itself the appointed medium through which that food is received, is the faith of a mystery, — of a mystery, not in the sense of something hid from ages and. generations, and in due time revealed, but in the sense of something 4 24 THE FAITH OF A PHYSICAL MYSTERY incapable of manifestation ; and so it is a faith which receives in the dark, in simple reliance on authority, and which, in the same reliance, con- tinues holding in the dark what it understands not nor apprehends, neither expects to under- stand or apprehend. It is said, " the peculiar and appropriate faith here is the faith of the words, ' This is my body,' ' This is my blood.' " I believe that this asser- tion is not warranted. The faith proper to the ordinance, and in the exercise of which alone it has vitality, is the faith of that which the ordi- nance means and expresses, viz., the faith, that Christ's flesh is meat indeed, and His blood drink indeed ; and not the faith that this bread is Christ's flesh, and this wine is Christ's blood. J But, assuming that the faith here called for is the faith of the assertion supposed to be made in the words, " This is my body," " This is my blood," such faith is faith, not as to a spiritual truth spiritually discerned, but as to a physical mystery, not discerned, but assumed on autho- rity. Such faith, supposing it to be required NOT OF SPIRITUAL TRUTH. 2$ from us, is still manifestly distinct from the faith which apprehends the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The distinction, which I expect to be recog- nized when thus put, between the faith which receives a physical mystery and the faith which apprehends a spiritual truth, is a difference in kind, not in degree. The physical mystery seems greatest, in the form which the doctrine has in the Church of Rome. The measure of the corresponding faith called for is therefore greatest there also. But, as to modifications of Transubstantiation, under the name of Consub- stantiation, or some other name yet undeter- mined, there is but a difference of degree, so long as it is held that the faith required from us, in partaking of this ordinance, is the faith of the assertion supposed to be contained in the words, " This is my body," " This is my blood." Say to me, "You must believe that literally this is Christ's body," or say to me, " You must believe that mystically this is Christ's body," the impor- tant fact remains, that what I am required to TRAXSUBSTAXTIA TIOX exercise is, a faith about the bread and the wine as the medium in which I receive Christ, and 7iot a faith that simply contemplates Christ, and realizes that He is my life. I say the faith which the less startling forms of thought on this subject call for, is the same in nature with that which receives Transubstanti- ation, differing only in degree. But, inasmuch as Transubstantiation is the fullest development of this conception of the ordinance, and the physical mystery greatest so presented, there is an attraction which Transubstantiation has to minds that have once come to conceive of special glory to God in the faith of mystery, which the modifications of it have not ; or rather I should say, the cravings which they in measure feed it alone can satisfy. If the very essence of the faith exercised, and of the glory given to God in exercising it, be, that I believe on author- ity that which is not light to me, but altogether darkness, each ray of light shed on the object of such faith, if light could be shed upon it, would just diminish by so much the amount of the THE EXTREME DEVELOPMENT. V demand for faith, and, therefore, the amount of glory to God, which it is put in my power to give. And all modification of the Roman Catholic doctrine is but the attempt to let some rays of light fall upon it. Therefore the endeav- our of those who say " here is a mystery," and still attempt to qualify the mystery by such comparisons as that to the presence of the soul in the body is self-contradictory. They are trying to satisfy what they would call a sceptical craving, at the same time that they are demand- ing an implicit faith ; and in proportion as that demand for implicit faith awakens a response in their disciples, will the attempt at explanation not only lose interest, but become distasteful. And hence the fact, that earnest mental occupa- tion with this matter is so often found to end in Romanism ; while those who have first given the downward impetus to the stone, stand wondering and lamenting that it rolls so far. We know that, in the mind of every Romanist, one very peculiar claim to the adhesion of Christians possessed by his Church is, that that 2 8 APPEAL TO SENSE. Church, and that Church alone, has the bread of life to administer to the faithful ; this language being used with reference to Transubstantiation : and I have known the claim so urged, the first attraction of the Church of Rome to Protestants who have eventually become Romanists. And when the teaching of our Lord in the words, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you," is understood as having the Lord's Supper as its subject ; and when, in harmony with this inter- pretation, the words of the institution itself, "This is my body," "This is my blood," are understood as demanding the faith as to the elements of bread and wine, that they are the Lord's body and blood, I cannot wonder at such a result, — the Romanist form of the doctrine being at least simpler and more self-consistent. I do not forget the argument against Tran- substantiation, that it not only is a mystery, but also contradicts our senses. To ask me to believe in the dark, is not certainly to go so far as to ask me to believe in contradiction to what APPEAL TO SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT. 20, I naturally feel to be light ; and this disadvantage Transubstantiation seems to have, as compared with other conceptions of the actual presence of Christ in the bread and wine. Nor would I make light of the confidence with which any fellow Protestant appeals to our bodily senses, in his rejection of Transubstantiation. But, inasmuch as our bodily senses are certainly not our highest faculties of perception, I feel that the contradiction it presents to them, does not weigh more with me, — I would say, does not weigh so much with me as the contradiction it presents to a higher endowment with which God has endowed man, viz., that faculty of perception which distinguishes him as a spiritual being — the inhabitant not merely of a physical, but of a spiritual universe — that in man which makes him capable of knowledge not of nature only, but of nature's God. What is the physical sense of hearing in comparison with that spiritual sense which is addressed when our Lord says to us, " Hear and your soul shall live ?" What the sight that makes the light of the sun available, 30 THESE DISTINCT WHILE HARMONIOUS. in comparison with that which enables us to rejoice in the light of the Sun of Righteousness ? When partaking of the Lord's Supper, I, by my bodily senses, take cognizance of the bread and wine, and know what they are, as I consciously partake of them ; while, in my spiritual nature, I deal with the spiritual realities which they symbolize, and discern the Lord's body broken for me, His blood shed for the remission of my sins, which I thankfully receive, and consciously feed upon, as the spiritual food of the Divine Life. The two conjoined processes are quite distinct. They are both experienced realities. In neither is there any mystery. Nothing is assumed to be what it is not felt and proved to be. If, as to the first part of this experience, I may have sufficient confidence in my bodily senses to refuse on their testimony to believe that what seemed bread and wine were not bread and wine, but were transubstantiated into the actual flesh and blood of Christ, I feel at least equally authorised in the confidence which justly accompanies the exercise of spiritual ADVANTAGES OF THE LATTER. perception, to believe that the spiritual realities which I have spiritually discerned, the spiritual food of which I have consciously partaken, was just what to my spiritual apprehension it ap- peared ; existing as a spiritual existence alto- gether in the region of spirit, and not clothed with a material form, or existing in the material substance which to the outward senses is bread and wine. Of course there is this difference between the contradiction which Transubstantiation presents to the spiritual sense, and that which it presents to the bodily senses, that all see the bread and wine, and may feel entitled to say, " these are but bread and wine," while the spiritual realities, which they represent, are seen only by those who exercise spiritual vision. But, assuming that a man has both these preparations for dealing with this matter, and while his bodily senses bear to him the testimony that they bear to all men, that his spiritual eye is opened to see the appropriate food of Eternal Life pre- sented to him in Christ, I believe that such a 32 QUESTION SUGGESTED HERE. man's spiritual perceptions afford to him as direct a contradiction to the doctrine of Tran- substantiation as his physical perceptions do. Now, though the modifications of the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the elements to which I have referred, cease to contradict our bodily senses as directly as Transubstantiation does, they continue to contradict our spiritual perceptions, the perceptions which pertain to our higher nature, and to that region in which Christ and eternal life are seen and known. Those who have gone along with me thus far may feel that I have said enough to justify my estimate of the evil involved in interpreting the words of our Lord, " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you," as referring to the ordinance of the Lord's Supper. Yet some, from a deep sense of our mental limits and of the danger of being unduly in- fluenced by the inability to form consistent and harmonious views, may be disposed to say, " No doubt the manner of faith, which receives the DIFFICULTY SPIRITUAL. 33 words, ' This is my body,' ' This is my blood/ as literally or mystically true of the bread and the wine, is distinct from the faith that receives Christ, nor is the exercise of the former within the region of spiritual intelligence. But may not both these faiths be required from us ? May we not, as to our ordinary experience, be called to the direct faith of Christ, while as to the Lord's Supper we are called to faith in the mystery of His presence in the bread and the wine ? And may not, as to both demands, the obedience of faith be due from us ? n My difficulty as to such a combination is spiritual rather than intellectual, and belongs to the experience of the life of faith. Without anticipating the direct exposition of the meaning of feeding upon Christ, I ask you to endeavour to realize, using what materials for so doing your experience may afford, the consciousness that accompanies that obedience of faith which is the reception of the gospel — your consciousness in receiving the record that God has given to us Eternal Life in his Son. In 34 THE ANSWER OF this exercise of faith is not the Eternal Life seen by you in Christ ? Are not its elements the objects of spiritual apprehension ? Is not their relation to your own inner man spiritually intelligible ? Is not the movement of your own being in which you appropriate them a conscious movement ? Is not the participation in Eternal Life which results — the being spiritually quick- ened, also a conscious experience ? And, in all the variety of connection with outward means of grace in which this experience is known, is it not universally one and the same ? In relation to joy or to sorrow, when engaged in active duty or in solitary meditation, dealing with men in the name of Christ or drawing near to the Father in that name, — in all things is not Christ the same ? Eternal Life the same ? the renew- ing of your inner man essentially one process ? — that essential oneness being at once the reason of the command, " Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus," and the ground of the assurance "that all things work together for good to them that love God." CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 3 5 I ask you thus to realize the life of faith, in its outward variety, in its inward oneness, and then to consider what you are required to combine with this experience as another manner of feed- ing upon Christ, when you are called to believe that Christ and Eternal Life are presented to you in the Lord's Supper in the bread and the wine. The combination proposed you will find impos- sible. You may pass from the one manner of faith to the other, but in so doing you will not be continuing to receive the one Eternal Life. The sap of the vine will not be felt to flow into you in the exercise of this new faith, as it did in that of the faith which you have hitherto cherish- ed. Proceed, with careful self-conscious discern- ment of the conditions of your own spirit, and you will speedily find that no setting yourself to believe about the bread and the wine that Christ is in them literally or mystically can feed that life into the fellowship of which the direct faith of Christ had introduced you, and which all exercise of the same faith had nourished and strengthened. Every other employment to 3 6 IS COXCLUSIVE. which God has called you, and in which you have engaged as a Christian man, has been found to be what you could so engage in as in it to be consciously feeding upon Christ. But in that which is now proposed to you this consciousness can no longer accompany you. Though you submit your mind to the mystery presented to you — though you believe, however inconceivable the assumption seems, that Christ is in the bread and the wine — still there is no consciousness of feeding upon Christ. Your acceptance of this mystery in no degree adds to what the medita- tion of the work of Christ has wrought in your spirit ; nor does this gazing on darkness — how- ever solemn and awful the darkness — forward that progress in the Divine Life to which you were conscious while " beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord." This then is the difficulty, viz., the experience of the impossibility of feeding through the faith of this mystery that conscious Eternal Life which has been quickened and nourished by the direct faith of Christ. THE NEW FAITH OBJECTED TO 37 I have said, that when the language of our Lord in the 6th chapter of St. John, with refer- ence to the life of faith, is interpreted as the exposition of the nature and function of the Lord's Supper, that ordinance "ceases to be a testimony to our relation to the engrafted word, which is able to save our souls, and becomes, so to speak, the rival of that word as the food of Eternal Life." It may be asked, how can it be the rival of the living word as the food of Eternal Life, if practically it proves not to be food for that life at all ? Certainly this seeming contradiction could not arise if the true conception of Eternal Life were adhered to, and a spiritual discernment freely exercised as to the result of attempting to sustain that life by this manner of food. But, in point of fact, the seeming contradiction is presented to us ; and it arises in this way. The recognition of the Lord's Supper as the medium of Eternal Life, in virtue of the assumed actual presence of Christ in the bread and wine, involves a new conception of the nature of Eternal Life. For it 3 8 DEMANDS FUR THER DE VEL OPMENT. becomes necessary to believe not only that Christ is in that in which He is not discerned to be, but also that Christ is fed upon while there is^ jip c onsciousness of feeding upon Him ; so that the fact of our being fed comes to be as much taken on trust as the fact of Christ's pres- ence in that which we eat and drink — both facts being alike assumed as parts of the one mystery. But this being granted, as a man believes that Christ is in the bread and the wine, so he be- lieves that, having partaken of the bread and the wine, he has fed upon Christ. To ask a man to take this experience to the light of the ex- perience of feeding upon Christ by faith is to demand light where the essential character of the experience is taking upon trust in the dark. And the question " Are you consciously fed ? " would be as irrelevant as to ask " Do you discern Christ's presence in the bread and the wine ? " And thus an ordinance which does not con- sciously feed Eternal Life may become, and does become, the rival of the engrafted word which does ; because the faith exercised dispenses E VI L RESUL T THUS PERFE C TED. 3 9 with such consciousness, and permits and author- izes the conviction that without that conscious- ness we are experiencing the fulfilment of these words, "Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life." I say the ordinance may become, and does become the rival of the living word. For this I believe to be the true conception of the relation in which they come to stand to each other : and that the ultimate ground of objection to that conception of the ordinance against which I contend is that it makes it the antagonist of Christ. Viewed on the side on which I have at present approached it such a rival to the true bread of life may appear little formidable ; for I have contemplated its claims as they will appear to one having experience of the life of faith, and clear discernment of the nature of that life. One so prepared to deal with the subject ought not to be in much danger. But in the ab- sence of such experience, or even where there is a measure of that experience in the 4° DECEPTIVE ELEMENTS OF PEACE absence of such discernment, the danger is not small. I have spoken of the powerlessness of the faith of the presence of Christ in the bread and wine, to yield to the spirit of man what the direct faith of Christ yields ; but I have not spoken of what it has power to yield. I have used the expression " solemn and awful darkness" in speaking of that on which this faith calls us to gaze, instead of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. How solemn and awful we may not easily realize when not actually (as we dare not be,) cherishing the faith of that mystery. But we can understand that to believe that Christ is in the bread and the wine is to see these material substances invested with an over- awing Divinity, before which our souls prostrate themselves as before God; that, to proceed to take the material substance of which we so conceive into our lips is to perform an act of deep mysterious interest, with which there natu- rally are combined thoughts of marvellous con- descension on the part of God — of inconceivable IN THE FAITH OF THE MASS. 4 1 obligation on our own part ; and that to re- flect on what has taken place, and that now that word is fulfilled in us — "Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood hath Eter- nal Life ; and I will raise him up at the last day," is to feel emboldened to cherish peace and confident hope as to the invisible and the eternal ; while all this combination of awe, and thankfulness, and triumphant hope, is sealed to us by the persuasion, that to doubt the reality of the grounds on which it rests, would be to doubt the power and truth of God. Now here are elements of an experience which, while it has no claim to be called Chris- tian experience or fellowship in the life of Christ, may yet too easily be accepted as religion, and earnest and solemn religion too, even where Christian experience is not unknown. How much more easily where serious emotions and experiences of awe and veneration are all that the human spirit has yet recognised in itself as religion ; and of how many esteemed by them- 42 WE CANNOT SERVE TWO MASTERS. selves and by others religious may this be all that can be said ! But that which enhances the danger and makes it to extend widely is that however antagonistic this faith of Christ's presence in the ordinance is to the direct faith of Christ revealed in us the hope of glory, and however antagonistic this taking for granted that we are partaking in the food of Eternal Life is to looking for and resting in the testimony of the Spirit bearing witness with our spirits that we are the children of God, still it is not as something instead of, but as something besides the faith of the gospel that the faith of this mystery is inculcated ; and so men not discerning the contradiction may attempt to combine both. I believe such an attempt to be the attempt to serve two masters. If any reply and say, " No, for surely some have combined both ; " if this be spoken with reference to men of God within the Church of Rome, or other churches holding cog- nate views in this matter, I say the day of the Lord will reveal what has been indeed that THAT HERE THERE ARE TWO SERVICES 43 feeding upon Christ through which they have come to bear His image — what of that which they held has determined what they were, and what had no part in that result. As to what I have at present characterised as two, and mutually opposed services, there is abun- dant historical evidence, that in proportion as the food of life is believed to be received in the bread and wine, it is less and less sought through belief of the truth. Nay, in proportion as that is conceived of as the highest act of religion, and the act in which there is assumed to be the most absolute participation in Christ which is most entirely away from the region of consciousness and of spiritual discernment, that region loses its interest, and men withdraw from it. We find it more and more spoken of as a region of mists and uncertainties, a region in which no clear light shines, a region where no voice gives forth a certain sound, or speaks with authority ; inso- much, that he who would attain to certainty, and feel his feet on a rock, is told that he must turn elsewhere than inward. The voice of the Living 44 SEEM HISTORIC A LLY Word being thus treated as an uncertain sound, the way is prepared for obedience to an external authority, and the perplexed spirit seeking re- pose and rest is fain to welcome the church claiming to be infallible, and, in despair of at- taining to the light of spiritual vision, to still itself and be silent in the darkness of implicit faith. To me it appears that there is a mutual re- lation between this doctrine of the real presence and the doctrine of the infallibility of the church of a most instructive and warning kind ; and that,, while the belief of the real presence invests the church which inculcates it with the highest claim on the homage of the faithful that can be conceived, that belief could never have been off- ered to men but by a church claiming to be infallible, or be received but in the faith of that infallibility. But apart from the testimony of observation or history, looking at the subject in the clear lieht of our life in Christ I can have no doubt as to the true character of that against which I contend. For I can have no doubt that the AND IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNAL LIFE. 45 attitude of the human spirit in cherishing the faith of the presence of Christ in the bread and wine, and in assuming that partaking of them is partaking of Christ, is not any form of obedience to the words — "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide in me : " or the words — " I am the light of the world : he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life :" or the words — " Receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls : " and, therefore, neither can I doubt that, not being any form of that obedience of faith which is thus called for, and yet making the high and solemn claim which it does make, its relation to that obedience of faith is that of a rival and substitute. When Luther, at one stage in his progress, said, that "if the Pope would permit him to preach Justification by faith, he would not object to the Mass," he understood not how certainly Justifi- cation by faith is subversive of the Mass, and of all conceptions of the Lord's Supper which have -4-3 LIGHT WHICH JUSTIFIES a common root with the Mass, and which ask for the right participation in that ordinance a faith so alien to that which receives the gospel of the grace of God. Those with whom Luther contended had an instinctive feeling — probably beyond their own clear intelligence in the matter — of the danger to which his preaching of Justi- fication by faith exposed the whole hold of their church upon the minds of men, and especially that which they felt, and justly, to be its strong- est hold of men — that Mass to which he thus disclaimed hostility. The fear at present enter- tained, by those whose confidence is Justification by faith, of the leaven of Romanism working in the land may be more instinctive than intelli- gent ; traditional also it may be — doubtless is with many ; while in many, we may hope, it is the discernment that this is another gospel, which yet is not a gospel. But, whether more or less enlightened, I believe that the fear does not in degree exceed the danger ; nor, however inoperative and so far innocuous the doctrine of the real presence may have been, received by PRESEXP PEARS. 47 tradition and held among the mere forms of thought, can I, when it is seen, as now, attract- ing awakened minds, and sought unto for com- fort and hope towards God, and renewal of strength for the daily conflict of life, regard it but as evil beyond the worst apprehensions which it has awakened. Christ is the desire of all nations. All men have in them a craving which Christ alone can truly satisfy. Yet, alas ! how often is this desire, unenlightened, unguided, just that which moves men to meet, with hasty and unwarranted response, the cry, " Lo ! here is Christ, lo ! there is Christ!" The warning of our Lord in regard to that cry — " Go not after them, nor follow them," may have reference to other and yet future forms of danger to His church ; but according to the spirit of that warn- ing do I believe it to be, to treat the assump- tion of the actual presence of Christ in the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper, as one form of that danger. I have used the name, "the Mass," as that given to the Lord's Supper in the church of 4-8 OTHER ELEMENT OF THE MASS. Rome, while I have only referred to part of what constitutes the Mass of Romanism, and gives its high place to that service in the worship of Romanists. For the Mass consists of two parts : that receiving and feeding upon the ma- terial substance assumed to be transubstantiated into the body and blood of the Lord which corresponds to what Protestants call the Com- munion ; and the offering up to God in worship, and as the mean of procuring the highest out- comings of divine mercy, that same material substance as to which this faith is cherished, which is called the unbloody sacrifice, or euchar- istic offering of Christ. And this other part of the service of the Mass attracted more of the attention of the reformers than that which has now been considered ; for it took to their minds the form of a renewal of sacrificial offering for sin, to the depreciation of the one and all-suffi- cient offering of Christ, who, once in the end of the world, hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Now, the eucharistic offering appears to me a A SACRIFICIAL OFFERING. 49 natural development of the Lord's Supper, seen in the light of Transiibstantiation ; and as such I would now notice it, because the appearance of this development still farther illustrates how the faith of the doctrine of the real presence renders participation in the ordinance a substitute for, instead of a witness to the life of faith. That which was believed to be through Tran- substantiation the body and blood of the Lord, men fed upon as the food of Eternal Life. It was also offered to God as the highest worship drawing forth the highest grace (for, doubtless, that effect on the condition of spirits out of the body which they contemplate in that offering they regarded as the highest form of answer to prayer). I ask, is not this as a whole consistent with itself, and the one part as naturally related to the faith of Transubstantiation as the other ? I trust the reader may regard the whole subject with too solemn a sense of its importance to deal lightly with any part of it because of its incon- gruity with our habits of thought. If Christ is conceived to be so truly present, where to sense SO THIS PERFECTS ITS PARALLELISM is but a material substance, that He may therein be fed upon by the human spirit ; to one so conceiving, what coming to God in the name of Christ, or asking mercies for Christ's sake, or presenting of Christ to the Father as the ground of expectation of the answer of prayer, can be more fitting than that of the eucharistic offering ? Feeding upon Christ, and worship- ping God through Christ, are so related that what we understand to be the first of these will always determine our conception of the other also. With very different measures of spiritual apprehension are the expressions — " accepting Christ as a Saviour," — " receiving him as the bread of life, which hath come down from heaven," — employed by Protestants ; which may be also said of our use of the ex- pressions — "praying in Christ's name," — "trust- ing for the answer of our prayers to Christ's merits," but the meaning of the former language, as used by any individual, determines, as to his use of it, the meaning of the latter also. As these two several attitudes of the human spirit WITH THE ELEMEXTS OF TRUTH are related to each other in the experience of Protestants, so to Romanists are the two parts of the service of the Mass mutually related. The parallel be'tween what we know in ourselves and what we see in the Mass will be more and more apparent to us in proportion as our experi- ence of Christianity is more truly the fellowship of the life of Christ. What we receive from God, in Christ, as Eternal Life, is what, being fed fe, we Our life ascends to •Iw«jMnirawa»i«»u»iiVsM4lKlBff upon, and so offer to God in, wotshirj God in worship. And it is its being the Divine nature — its being the Eternal Life, that is the secret of the acceptableness of the worship, and of the sureness of the response to it. The life which we are living is lived, so to speak, in our being led by the Spirit of God, and, therefore, the worshipping form of this life is, worship in spirit and in truth. We are born of the will of God, and we, therefore, ask tilings according to His will, and He heareth us. Thus is it the mind of Christ which we present to the Father. Thus is Christ, who, through the Eternal Spirit, offered 52 AXD THE DANGER IT INVOLVES. ^ Himself without spot to God, and was accepted asThe one and sufficient sacrifice for sin, presented anew in all prayers of Christians, in so far as these are a participation in the spirit of Christ — a form of the life of Christ in them. " To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious ; ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." Knowing thus, in ourselves, the relation which the spiritual reality of worship bears to the spiritual reality of feeding upon Christ, we understand how the belief of the doctrine of the actual presence has produced the Mass of Ro- manism in both its parts, and see, in the euchar- istic offering, the substitute for that worship which is in spirit and in truth, as we saw in the other part of the service, in which the consecrated materi al su bstance is partaken of, the s ubstit ute for receiving with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save the soul. The completeness of this parallelism greatly JUSTICE TO ROMANISM AIMED AT. 53 tends to confirm the conviction that the one of these objects of contemplation is the counterpart of the other ; and at the same time to strengthen the fear that, if the counterpart once begin to awaken an interest, and to be felt something to the mind because of what seeming religious feeling the faith of it sustains, its self-consistency and harmonious development will enable it to insinuate itself until it is received as a whole, and takes hold of the mind by all its parts. And of the likelihood of this there is striking evidence in the fact that forms of 'thought as to the Lord's Supper, one in nature with the faith of the Church of Rome, are just now seen developing themselves into forms of service that suggest the Mass, and are awakening on this ground the distrust of Protestants. I have endeavoured to do all the justice which one not holding them can, to the views to which I have objected ; and their completeness and self-consistency in that system in which they are fully developed has made this not difficult : so 54 WARNING TO PROTESTANTS that I hope that any intelligent Romanist would have no hesitation in recognizing the fairness of my representation. I believe, also, that those in whom that tendency to Romanism which at present awakens so much attention is manifested will recognize themselves in what I have intended as the statement of their mental position, how- ever they may feel confident that still they run no risk of ending in Romanism, or however they may satisfy themselves with the line of separa- tion which they draw between themselves and Romanists. But the root of that which has been fully ■ j — ■ ■ ■ . developed only in the Mass of Romanism is present and manifests its presence in Protestants much more widely than the limits of this move- ment. It may be discerned even in those sects of the Protestant Church which have gone furthest in their protest against the Church of Rome. And I fear I dare not assume that all those whose case this may be will easily recognize the application of what I have said to themselves. On the contrary, all such self-application is HERE SUGGESTED. 55 likely to be precluded by the strong recoil from Romanism to which they are conscious. So long as the Mass offends them as both super- stitious and idolatrous, how can they suspect that the elements of the interest which the Mass has to Romanists are present in the interest with which they themselves regard the Lord's Supper? So small is the likelihood that to any in this mental position my word will come w T ith the arresting personal application, "Thou art the man," that I had almost withheld from the attempt so to press it home. But my remem- brance of a comfort not in Christ, nor in the true communion of His body and blood which I have witnessed in connection with the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, where there has not been the least misgiving as to the truly Protestant character of the service, is too painful, and my sense of the danger to the spirits of men which it involved too deep to permit me to conclude without making some effort to awaken conscience in this solemn matter. I have said, "a comfort not in Christ, nor in the 5 6 PERVERTED AND DECEPTIVE USE true communion of His body and blood." I use this language with reference to a comfort experi- enced through partaking of the Lord's Supper which does not flow from the exercise of faith in Christ, but from a vague persuasion of benefit derived from the ordinance itself because of some assumed virtue in it to promote man's peace with God, and strengthen the soul's hold on Christ ; which persuasion, however undefined its grounds, invests the ordinance with the interest and importance of a medium of participation in Christ and means of salvation, and clothes the act of communion with a character of peculiar solemnity and peculiar acceptableness to God as a religious service ; so that the Communion Table is left with a sense of relief to the con- science and a strengthened hope of the forgive- ness of sms. When a manner of comfort the crude elements of which I thus endeavour to indicate is derived from the fact of participation in the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, those so comforted being persons to whom the true spiritual apprehension of Christ is unknown, it is OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 57 too manifest that the place given to the or dinanc e is that of a substitute, for the actual life of faith, and not, as it ought to be, of a witness to that life ; for partaking in it is not — does not profess to be — a testimony as to what Christ is proved to be from day to day, a testimony as to the secret of a continuous life of which Christ is the food. On the contrary, it is clearly had recourse to as affording some vague mystical hope of keeping up through it an interest in Christ, — that Christ of a knowledge of whom the ordinary life gives no token. Surely the elements of the Mass are present in the Lord's Supper so used. And that it is widely so used in all the sects of Protestants, those in each several sect who know most of vital Christianity will be the most pre- pared to admit. I doubt not that observant intelligent Roman- ists mark the same fact. To them, indeed, that fact will appear in a very different light from that in which it appears to me. They will re- gard it as indicating how Christians in all sects of Protestants are, though they know it not, 1/ 5^ INFERENCE WHICH THIS SUGGESTS feeling the need of that which the Church of Rome alone has to give. They will look on these elements of the feelings with which they themselves regard the Mass thus appearing in connection with a form of doctrine on the subject of the Lord's Supper the most opposite to theirs, as proving how deep in humanity that craving is which thus utters its voice in spite of all intellectual protests against it in creeds and catechisms. And from a con- siderable depth in man it surely does come. For not of the visible, nor of man's temporal interests, nor of his relation to the creature does that voice speak ; but of the invisible, of the eternal, of man's relation to God. Therefore is a certain reverence and consideration due to it. Yet, assuredly, that voice is not from the depths of humanity — those depths of which the Psalm- ist speaks, " Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord." That which utters itself thus widely, and not unfrequently with much earnest- ness and solemnity, still is not the experienced sense of the deepest ultimate need of man. It TO ROMANISTS CONSIDERED. 59 pertains not to that depth in which the pure craving for Christ arises — in respect of which Christ is the desire of all nations. It asks, indeed, for a hold of the invisible and the eter- nal ; but it does so with mere fleshly negative conceptions of these, as the unknown opposites of seen and temporal ; and not as apprehending in the spiritual the essentially invisible and eternal. Though it demands a religion and solemn transactions with God it can be con- tented with assumed transactions with an un- known God. It offers homage to the Almighty and Omniscient, as from felt weakness and ignorance ; but the sense of weakness and ignor- ance confessed, though such as would manifest itself in prostration of the human spirit at the presence of a miracle and a mystery, is not what looks for light to the fountain of light, — the " soul waiting for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning." The recognition of sin and the anxiety for an interest in the Atone- ment manifested may have a certain measure of truth in them ; but they amount not to the 60 FELT NEED OF GOD NOT FAITH. spiritual apprehension of the awful reality of man's alienation from God, and therefore they permit the cherishing of a peace which is not true peace — is not oneness with God — is not the experience of the power of the blood of Christ to purge the conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Some sense of the un- sheltered feeling of an intelligent being, realising that there is a Supreme Ruler of the universe and yet having no hold of His favour, that voice utters, and with some welcome for any guidance in a path on which that favour may be assumed to rest ; but that voice indicates not that deeper sense of desolation which pertains to the human spirit yet ignorant of God — the sense of being an orphan while God is not known as a Father, and which prepares a welcome for Him who comes to reveal the Father. Thus coming short in all respects of the true sense of that need of men which is met by the grace of God in the gift of Christ this craving of the mind has no authority, and however tenderly it may be right to deal with it as it may be connected with OUR MISUSE OF THE LORD J S SUPPER 6 1 some measure of awakenedness on the subject of religion, we can only regard its clothing the Lord's Supper among Protestants with that practical interest which attaches to the Mass of Romanism as one among the many instances of its influence in substituting superstition for re- ligion ; for what, in truth, is this craving, but that sense of the necessity for a religion com- bined with spiritual ignorance of God which has made man so universally a worshipping being and yet left him not a worshipper in spirit and in truth ? The difficulty I have felt in saying what the nature of the comfort is which is found in the Lord's Supper when that comfort is derived simply from participation in the ordinance and not from the direct faith of Christ, has arisen from this, that that comfort has not, as in the case of the Romanist, a doctrinal foundation, but is really in contradiction to the doctrinal system of those who still cherish it. And this fact presents also the great difficulty in en- deavouring to carry their own convictions along 62 IMPLIES SELF-DECEPTION. with me. They never say distinctly to them- selves why or how they expect good from this ordinance, and therefore though another may correctly interpret their feelings for them they will be slow to receive an interpretation of these feelings which contradicts their system. Yet, if any thing I have said cause any to stand in doubt of themselves in this matter, let me suggest to them to press themselves home with such questions as these : — i. Does the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, in your meditation of it, speak to you of Christ ? or does it commend itself? Does it suggest what altogether apart from it you possess in Him ? or does it promise as to what of Him you are to receive through it ? Does it turn your thoughts to Christ as the true interest of all things, the meat which endureth unto Eternal life, to be dis- cerned and fed upon in all occupations of your being ? or does it concentrate your interest on itself as the specially appointed medium of your participation in Him ? 2. Is the act of participation in the ordinance QUESTIONS FOR SELF-EXAMINATION. 63 as it is your own act what you consciously feel to be, and would have others to recognize as being-, the exponent and manifestation of your ordinary manner of existence as a Christian man ? or is it an act which has as its object to make good for you a cl aim to be a Christian ma n ? Is it in har- mony with the words, " This do in remembrance of me,"— " Ye do show the Lord's death till he come," a testimony concerning Christ which your personal knowledge of Him qualifies you to give ? or is it an act which these words neither describe nor interpret, not being of the nature of a testimony at all, but having its whole import in the participation in Christ assumed to be throug^.iJiatact itself ? 3. Is the benefit which you believe yourself to derive from this ordinance resolvable into a quickened faith in Christ as your life, a fuller purpose of heart in cleaving to the Lord, a more vivid realization of your own position, as one who is dead and his life is hid with Christ in God ? or is what sense of benefit you cherish referable to your persuasion that, in some way r 64 RELATIOX OF IVORS HIP which you understand not, you have by the act of communion strengthened your hold of Christ ; along with, it may be, that feeling of sacredness and worship which associates itself with all ex- ercise of awe and veneration and prostration of the spirit before God even though the unknown God? I know that questions such as these, in so far as they suggest the desirable answer, are apt to be leading questions to all self-justifying spirits, but this risk is unavoidable, and they may be helpful to those who are really honest with themselves. The way in which I have just now and throughout spoken of awe and veneration, and the sense of mystery, may suggest the question, " And is it not a commendation of a doctrine or an ordinance, that it provides exercise for awe and veneration? and indeed is not prostration of our reason in the presence of Divine mysteries an element in all worship ?" I have heard it said, that " worship begins where knowledge ends." I cannot receive this TO KNOWLEDGE. 65 proposition : yet it is not without some relation to truth ; inasmuch as, though worship does not begin where knowledge ends, it still d oes no t end where kno wledge ends , but always goes con - sciously beyond knowledge. But, if it be indeed spiritual worship, it is to be described no less justly as worship in the truth than as worship in the spirit ; nay, because it is in the spirit there- fore it is in the truth ; for it is in giving us of His Spirit that God enables us to worship Him in spirit and in truth. Not by darkness but by light is the deepest ano 1 most in timate awe awakened in us. That we may be such wor- shippers as the Father seeketh we are brought out of darkness into God's marvellous light. The spiritual objects visible to us in that light awe us because of what they are spiritually seen to be. Nor is their infinity and our felt inability to comprehend them absolutely, and our feeling that on all hands they go beyond us, an experi- ence which, properly speaking, demands prostra- tion of reason. On the contrary, this experience is that of the highest exercjae_of reason — spirit- * ■ — — Te I 66 RELATION OF WORSHIP TO KNOWLEDGE. ually enlightened reason sustaining and justify- f- ing worship ; justifying worship because of what is known ; justifying it beyond what is known because of the believed expansion of what is ^"^"^b^y ~n.fi Jggj-fYfi^^ God is light. In His light He gives us to see light, and to the spiritual eye light is sweet ; and is felt to be light, though in its infinite intensity it be light inaccessible. God is love : and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and knoweth God ; while yet it is said of the love of God that it passeth knowledge. Nay, as to the divine power put forth in the accomplishing of the divine will in us, that mighty working whereby it is said God subdueth all things unto Himself, the apos- tle's trust in it is based on experimental know- ledge ; " according," says he, " to the power which worketh in us ;" while yet his expectation from it goes beyond knowledge : he trusts in God, as "able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." Earnest continued meditation on what, in re- ference to feeding upon Christ as the bread of A WE AND EARNESTNESS. 6? life, is to my mind a rival and substitute, may have given a minuteness beyond what will awaken interest to my perception and detail of the points which are at once those of paral- lelism and of difference. I have endeavoured to include the full circle of those to whom the question is a personal one by dealing with the germ and root of the evil, and not merely with its developed forms. The circle thus em- braced is a very large one, though the extent of injury sustained be very various ; the error which in some is influential enough to character- ize their mental position being present in others only as a very subordinate though still hurtful element in their religion. I have one word to add which concerns us all. I have acknowledged the awe and veneration which are often present in connection with the error which I have been considering, and have endeavoured to indicate how it may be so ; while I have vindicated the claim of spiritual light to be the proper source of awe to the human spirit. But why are awe and veneration — which may be 68 WHY ACCEPTED the accompaniments of superstition — so impos- ing? Why are seriousness, self-restraint, and ab- sorption in religion so easily assumed to imply true piety ? Doubtless in part because thought and feeling on the subject of religion are in gene- ral so superficial that most men when they see an earnest devout man see one who has gone further in the direction of religion than them- selves. He is to them as one listening to a voice which they are disregarding, but to which they yet feel that they also ought to give heed ; a voice that comes from a greater depth in man than the voices which they are allow- ing to engross their attention ; and they may easily fail to discern that it is not a voice from the real ultimate depths of man's being. But the voice that comes from that ultimate depth is also in men's ears as well as that other. Man is spoken to from within as to what is religion as truly and as universally as he is as to the necessity for a religion. In truth, what I have spoken of as a voice from a less depth is, in so far as it is a true voice, only that AS RELIGION. voice from the ultimate depth imperfectly heard. Therefore, however indiscriminating may be the testimony to mere seriousness which the thought- less give, we might expect that the presence of a seriousness which arose from true religion, and was obedience to the voice within clearly under- stood, would lead men to discriminate in this matter, and would draw from them the acknow- ledgment that this and not that was what they themselves should be, though they are not. I believe that such an expectation is so far warranted that at least it would make a con- siderable difference ; and that therefore we may say that the fact to which I refer is also in part to be explained by this other fact that men have so little help of living epistles of the grace of God ; the number of such being comparatively so small, and of those that are, the light so feeble. Let us then seek in this view to realize our calling and our shortcoming. We must believe that the awe and veneration experienced in taking into a man's lips a material substance 70 THE HIGHEST A WE BELONGS which he regards as literally or mystically the body and blood of the Lord, are lean and barren emotions compared with the awe and veneration which accompany conscious feeding upon the living word — the being consciously led by the Spirit of God. The apostle regards " fear and trembling" as the emotions which naturally attend the faith that "God is working in us:" and surely nothing can be conceived more solemn than the sense of being in the hand of God, as clay in the hand of the potter. May it not suggest what we would imagine, were such a thing possible, as the solemn consciousness of man receiving from God his being at first, and with the additional solemnity of the sense of personal responsibility for yielding himself to God. Such an habitual consciousness as that of being spiritually new made — "created anew in Christ Jesus," — must be the fountain of an habitual awe and solemnity to which the partici- pation, from time to time, in the consecrated elements can bear no comparison in degree, any more than in kind. And certainly the mani- TO THE PUREST LIGHT 7 l festation of these feelings should come to others with a proportionally greater weight of authority, commanding in them a clearer inward testimony. Let us therefore consider what, in this respect, is due from us to our fellow men, and what manner of protection from error in this great question as to the Bread of Life, we are thus called to afford to them. One instance of the manifested power of the habitual consciousness of finding Christ's flesh meat indeed, and His blood drink indeed, presented within the circle of those with whom they live, is of inestimably higher value to men than many and clear argu- ments against the error of the doctrine of the actual presence, and all modifications of it. Let this consideration combine with all else that calls upon us to abide in Christ. Let us seek to abide in Him that men may see in us what manner of awe and veneration dwelling in the light of life awakens. Christians are children of the light and of the day. Light, therefore, is of their birthright. Let our claim to this high birthright be made practically. Let us walk in 72 TO WITNESS THAT THIS IS SO the light, and let men learn in us that so to do r is not to lean to our own understanding, or to exalt our own intelligence ; that, on the contrary, this is the true prostration of the human spirit before the Father of spirits, who also is the Father of lights. Let the form of our claim to implicit faith be our ready reception of that word the entrance of which giveth light. Let the illustration we offer of the humility that receives the kindgom of heaven as a little child be, not rest in ignorance, but teachableness — " the opening of the ear as the learner," as is prophetically spoken of our Lord. While we thus propose to ourselves to vindi- cate against all that would usurp its place the claims of the engrafted word which is able to save our souls, simply by ourselves receiving that word with meekness, trusting to the assur- ance of Christ — "He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit," — let us be prepared to meet with many disap- pointments. In the measure in which through abiding in Christ we bear fruit we shall be OUR HIGH CALL1XG. 73 offering to men help — important help, but they will not necessarily profit by it, and we must be contented to go forward through ill report as steadily as through good report. And let us remember how high a thing we are attempting, not only in order that even a little success may encourage us but also that we may not wonder that it is comparatively so little. The question which we press upon men is not that between religion and no religion ; it is the closer question between true religion and what usurps the name. Now I believe that two things have progressed together in this country, viz. an increased realiza- tion of the importance of having a religion, and an increased readiness to regard all earnest serious religion as to be held in the same esti- mation. In proportion as this is the condition of men's minds, being helpful to them in the way of which I speak will be difficult. But if indeed we be on God's side God will acknow- ledge us : it is not for us to seek to know when, or to what extent. Let us cast ourselves into the treasury of the Lord. The offering will be 74 JEWISH AND ROMANIST UNDERSTANDING much according as it approaches to being all that we have, even all our living. Alas ! our offering being thus weighed in the scales of the sanctuary, will not our continual burden be that it is not greater, rather than that our God does not use it more ? Let me record it as my painful humbling experience, that, in now dealing with error I have felt myself continually obliged to take it to the light of the ideal of Christianity, that which shines from actual Christianity being too feeble for my need. SECOND, — Feeding upon Christ considered as expressing the part of Man's Will in Faith. w I am," says our Lord, " the living bread which came down from heaven : if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever : and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. The Jews, there- fore, strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat ? " "Anticipat- ing," says the Romanist, " the unbelieving Pro- testant." Nay, rather, as we believe, looking at OF S. JOHN VI. 51, HOW RELATED. 75 the subject of the Lord's discourse with that fleshly mind to which the mind that applies His words to the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, and finds in the doctrine of Transubstantiation a solution of their difficulty, is most akin. It was not the sin of the Jews that understanding the Lord's words they would not believe them ; but that, murmuring among themselves, and leaning to their own understanding instead of being taught of God, they understood them not. In assuming that what the Lord called upon the Jews to believe was what they call upon Protes- tants to believe, Romanists adopt the misunder- standing of the Jews, and identify themselves with their carnal apprehensions, and so are more truly one with them, notwithstanding their re- ceiving what the Jews rejected, than we, whose claim to be found in the exercise of faith in the Lord's words is as confident as that of the Ro- manists ; while we separate ourselves alike from the unbelief of the Jews, and the kind of faith exercised by the Romanists, by accepting our Lord's words in their spiritual import, and re- 7 6 FIG URA TI VE I 'SE OF FO 0£>, < ' FEEDING, " ceiving their mystery as a spiritual mystery, to be spiritually discerned. I will now assume that I have already suffi- ciently vindicated the Protestant interpretation of the language of our Lord as to eating His flesh and drinking His blood as having reference to the life of faith ; and so have prepared the way for considering what light is shed upon the secret of that life by those earnest and solemn expressions, which, while they awe us by their aspect of mystery and difficulty, still make an imperative demand on us to seek entrance into their light For, as I have said, the conviction that they make such a demand is inevitable if we reflect upon this, that they make a require- ment which must be understood in order to be complied with, and compliance with which in- volves no less momentous an issue than Eternal Life. We are familiar with the transference to the department of mind of language connected with the dependence of our animal life on meat and drink. We speak of mental food — we speak IN RELATION TO MIND. 77 also of mental poison. We speak of appetite — of thirst, with reference to knowledge. This use of words, or rather that reality of parallelism between the lower and higher kinds of life which belong to us which leads to this use of words, may help us here ; only that we must carefully distinguish between those higher experiences to which this language is usually applied, and that highest human consciousness of feeding to which our Lord's words refer. The desire to be fed with food convenient for us, legitimate as to the lowest form of life in which we partake, rises in dignity, doubtless, as it is cherished with reference to intellectual food : but a higher meaning still is that which belongs to it as the desire of meat enduring unto Eternal Life — the hunger which welcomes the Bread of Life which hath come down from heaven. And it is the more necessary to insist upon this distinction between what is higher in this matter and what is highest, that Christianity used as food for the intellect only is so often assumed to be, in that use of it, spiritual food ; and that thus this in- 7 8 S. JOHN IV. 1 TO 34. tellectual feeding upon it comes to be mistaken for the experience of eating and drinking Christ's flesh and blood. I desire now to conjoin the 4th chapter of the Gospel of St. John (to the 34th verse) with the portion of the 6th chapter with which we have been occupied. In this 4th chapter the spiritual and the natural are most instructively presented to us, in their distinctness and in their parallelism, in the thoughts of our Lord, contrasted first with those of the woman of Samaria, and then with those of the disciples. As we read we are, so to speak, hearing our Lord speaking in the higher spiritual light in which man's need as a spiritual being is visible; while the woman of Samaria and the disciples are heard speaking in the lower light of sight and sense. His asking drink of her, a woman of Samaria, He being a Jew, draws out on her part a reference to the unbrotherly alienation of Jew and Samaritan ; while this alienation as it was a form of spiritual death immediately connects itself in His mind with that water of life which- is love ; her need of CONNECTED WITH 79 which she was manifesting. Himself that love and the imparter of it, " Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink ; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." Still she under- stands Him not ; nor conceives of other water than that which the well at which they were met afforded. Nor while He goes on to speak in the light of the spirit does she seem at all raised out of sight and sense. "Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again : but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw." His manifestation of supernatural knowledge of her circumstances commanding her acknowledgement of Him as a prophet, with thoughts pertaining to a carnal worship she speaks of the rival claims of that mountain and 8o S. JOHN VI. 27 TO 63. of Jerusalem to be the place where men ought to worship. His reply, while claiming for Jerusalem the place which God had given to it, deals with her spiritual nature, — " Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what : we know what we worship : for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth : for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit : and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." What response these words had within her we know not ; for there is no raising of her up into the spiritual implied in that prostration before the supernatural which she afterwards expressed, saying to her towns- men, " Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did : is not this the Christ ?" Again, His disciples, returning with food, ask Him to eat. To Him, then feeding upon the higher food — that of the Spirit, the proposal LIGHT THUS SHED ON THE MYSTERY 8 I suggests the difference and superiority of that higher food rather than the acceptableness of the material food offered to Him, how great soever His present need might be. He said unto them, " I have meat to eat that ye know not of." Standing without, as well as the woman of Samaria, in respect of the light in which He dwelt, they said one to another, " Hath any man brought him ought to eat?" "Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work." Most instructive in this record is the tenderness and patience of true spiritual light towards darkness as exhibited in our Lord's dealing with the woman of Samaria, and with the disciples. But I wait not to dwell on this. What do these words of our Lord, speaking in the light of the spirit, teach us concerning the mystery of spiritual life? — for to that mystery they mani- festly guide our thoughts. What help do they afford to us seeking to know what it is to eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood ? Much surely. That living water which, 82 OF SPIRITUAL LIFE—HEB. VII 16. if she had known the gift of God, He said to the woman of Samaria she would have asked of Him and He would have given to her ; that water which He said would be in him that received it a well of water springing up into everlasting life could not be so spoken of and be other than that of which He spoke in saying, " Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life." Neither is the intimation that the true wor- shippers shall worship in spirit and in truth, for that the Father seeketh such to worship Him, without help to us. To declare the worship which was to be was to declare the salvation that was given ; for worship in spirit and in truth can only be rendered by those to whom the gift of God is Eternal Life. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, which we may regard as parallel in its general character to this conversation of our Lord with the woman of Samaria, inasmuch as in both the transition from the one dispensation to the other is set forth in the light of a change in worship, the difference between the priesthood of our Lord, our High THE FATHER'S WILL CHRIST'S MEAT. 83 Priest, and that priesthood which gave place to it is expressed in saying, " There ariseth another Priest, who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life!' But the most direct light shed by our Lord, upon the meaning of eating His flesh and drink- ing His blood, is in what He says to His dis- ciples of His own feeding on the will of the Father — that meat which He had to eat which they knew not of. It was their interest in the secret of His spiritual life which caused the Lord thus to make that secret known to them. For their sakes He spoke it. For their guidance as the Captain of their salvation does He say, " My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work." Our Lord's uniform intima- tion of a parallelism between His own relation to the Father and our relation to Himself would justify our receiving these words as light on the secret of our own spiritual life, considered simply as they meet us here ; but they immediately connect themselves with His words on that &4 THAT WILL IN CHRIST occasion on which He spoke directly and fully of our relation to Him as the Bread of Life, "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me." Meditating on these words we ask ourselves, " What conception can we form of our Lord's living by the Father?" Yet, unless there be some aspect of that relation of our Lord to the Father which can be visible to us — unless light can shine for us on His living by the Father, this reference to it can afford us no practical guidance. Wonder and awe and in- tense interest so high a reference must awaken. But unless we are helped to the understanding of that which awakens these feelings the Lord's words will be darkness and not light to us ; and our sense of the high nature of that which they intimate will only increase our feeling of dark- ness. Therefore we welcome the light shed on our Lord's living by the Father, when He says, " My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work," and we feel that, in con- nection with these words, the words — "As the OUR SPIRITUAL FOOD. 85 living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me even he shall live by me," are light to us and guidance ; and we understand that, as to do the Father's will was the Lord's meat, and so He lived by the Father, so to do the Lord's will must be our meat ; and thus shall the word be accomplished in us, "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me even he shall live by me ; " even as He says in another place, " If ye keep my commandments ye shall abide in my love ; even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love." While the reference made by our Lord to His own living by the Father, illustrated by His saying that doing the Father's will was His meat, thus sheds light on our living by Him as the Bread of Life, it, at the same time, indicates very clearly both the oneness and the difference of His position and ours ; the one Eternal Life being in Him a living_b)M:he Father, in us a living by Him. We must seek to apprehend and realise both this oneness and this difference 86 ETERNAL LIFE ONE IN CHRIST — the difference of our Lord's position and ours, that we may know our dependence on Him as to salvation ; — the oneness, that we may con- ceive truly of the nature of the salvation which we receive through Him. For His will, on Avhich we are to feed, and His commandments, which we are to keep, are none else than what, as the Father's will, He fed upon, as the Father's commandments, He kept. Let us combine in our thoughts on this sub- ject the words, " My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me," with the words, " My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed ; " that is to say, let us connect our Lord's con- sciousness that doing His Father's will was Eternal Life with His testimony to us that doing His will is Eternal Life to us. In His personal consciousness that the will of God ful- filled in humanity is Eternal Life for humanity, does the Lord testify to men that that is Eternal Life which, in giving Him, the Father has given to them. How does this conscious- ness utter itself in the urgency and reiteration AND IN US—S. MATT. XL 27 TO 30. 87 of the testimony ? It is like (because there also the same personal consciousness utters itself,) " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." This speaking out of His own experience — the good treasure of His own heart — it is that gives to our Lord's words their peculiar power to come home to our hearts; and we hear with all the more gladness and free welcome the voice of the Eternal Wisdom because uttering itself within humanity — the voice of humanity. Our Lord not only speaks with divine authority : He speaks, so to express myself, with human a uthority also. His hum anity pronounc es to our humanity as the fixed and certain law of the wellbeing of all humanity that which it is itself through its connection with His Divinity. The comfort to us of faith in our Lord's humanity depends on our faith in His Divinity ; for the 88 THIS UNITY IS KNOWN interest to us of the Eternal Life seen in His hu- manity depends on His power to impart it to us — to sustain it in us. But we cannot draw too near to the Eternal Life as it is in Him in seek- ing to understand what it is to be in ourselves ; neither can we study too closely all that is made visible to us of His living by the Father in order to understand how we are to live by Him. In proportion as we realize the oneness of the food on which our Lord fed, and on which we feed, that food being the one Eternal Life, to Him the Father's will, to us the Father's will fulfilled in Him, and so His will, we are prepared to recognize the oneness of the process of feed- ing, in His case doing the Father's will, in our case doing His will ; and my desire is that you should thus see the relation of the will to the life of faith, to eating the flesh of the Son of man, and drinking His blood, in the clear light of Eternal Life. For, however clear the light seems to be which is shed upon our Lord's living by the Father, and consequently on our living by Him, by the words, " My meat is to IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNAL LIFE. 89 do the will of him that sent me," I would not feel justified in representing the obedience of the will, the calling Jesus Lord in the Spirit, as the essence of the act of feeding upon Christ, were this conception a mere inference from two texts of Scripture thus seemingly related. Indeed, though these verses placed together as I have now placed them are peculiary explicit on this subject, the passages of a similar import are many. But I am not contented that it should stand simply as what the intellect concludes as to the meaning of even many passages. I desire, as I have said, that you should, in the light of the Eternal Life given to us in Christ, see that the oneness of the Eternal Life in Him and in us, implies that, as doing the will of the Father was His meat, doing His will is our meat ; and that it is thus that we live by Him as He lived by the Father. The oneness of the Eternal Life in our Lord and in us to whom He imparts that life implies this. The nature of a salvation which is a life implies it also. For it appears to me a statement 9° BY MOVEMENTS OF THE WILL that has its light in itself, that, as spiritual beings, it is by movements of the will that we appropriate spiritual food. Such movements are acts of spiritual eating and drinking, issuing in the consubstantiating of our spirits with that which being received into the will is received into us, into what is, in the most intimate sense, our proper selves, so affecting what we are. For as is our will such are we. It is of the will of God that we are born again : our being born again is the formation in us of a will one with the will of God. By the will we feed on spiritual food ; so that whatever is presented to us as spiritual food remains outside of us — is not yet fed upon — so long as the will shuts it out. By the will we feed upon that which is death and not life to our spirits — feeding upon ashes, a deceived heart leading us astray. By the will we feed on the Bread of Life which hath come down from heaven, being taught of the Father and so drawn to the Son. Speaking less strictly, meditation on Christ, occupation of heart and mind with His love — with His work IS SPIRITUAL FOOD APPROPRIATED. 9 1 and its results, may be thought of as feeding upon Christ ; but this they are not in themselves. This they imply only in so far as they are issuing in that calling Jesus Lord in the spirit which is the result contemplated in the divine purpose, and is an event in the will. To understand the place which the will has in our feeding on the Bread of Life which hath come down from heaven is to understand the counsel, " Keep thine heart with all diligence ; for out of it are the issues of life :" for to keep the heart aright is to reserve the obedience of the will for that living word which is the utterance of the will of Christ within us. Such yielding up of the will to Christ, and calling Him Lord, is that result of the true knowledge of Himself of which our Lord spoke to the woman of Samaria. " If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink ; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water :" and the result is the fulfil- ment in us of what He added, "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall 1/ 9 2 CHRIST THE TRUE VEYE. never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life :" and this springing up into everlasting life of the living water is, in reference to o ur rela tion to God, that worship of the Father in spirit and in truth of which the Lord also spoke to her ; for it is the life of the Son in us that ascends to the Fat her in such w orship. I cannot wait to consider the many passages that naturally come to our recollection and connect themselves with the understanding at which we have arrived as to the meaning of feeding upon Christ, viz., that it is receiving His will to be our will, so receiving His life to be our life ; passages which at once illustrate this conception and are illustrated by it. The rela- tion Of the branches to the vine, the force of the charge, " Abide in me," the result of so abiding in the flowing in of the life that is in the vine into the branch : all this is recalled and illus- trated ; and we are taught to cherish the living consciousness of the meeting-place and junction of the branch with the vine, and of the pressure CHRIST THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 93 of the sap of the vine seeking entrance into the branch, and of the freedom of the human will in that we may welcome that living sap, or shut it out, and of our dependence on the teaching of the Father that we may exercise that freedom aright — our dependence on the guidance of the voice which says, " This is my beloved Son : hear him," that we may hear Him and live. These words of the Lord also are recalled to us, " I am the light of the world : he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." And the nature of light as afford- ing guidance, revealing a path to walk in ; and the nature of obedience to light, as walking in the path revealed ; and the nature of the relation to Him that speaks into which we are invited as following Him in a path in which He is walking ; all this connects itself with what we have been seeing to be the essence of receiving as a Saviour Him who, " being made_perfect, became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him." 94 CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. If, in seeking light on the subject of feeding upon Christ, we study the records of the hidden life of Christian men which the journals which they have so often kept present to us, and which are doubtless a part of the riches of the Church, we shall have our attention engaged with much that does not seem to pertain to the region of the will at all ; and more especially when need of Christ, and appropriation of Christ, and comfort and peace experienced through such appropriation are spoken of, the language employed is altogether unrelated to the will. We meet confession of sin — rejection of trust in self — realization of the freeness of divine grace. We meet acceptance of the free grace realized and complacency in the way of salvation. Such responses to the free grace of God we meet ; but nothing that places before us such actings of the human will as I have now spoken of, and for which I have claimed that they and they alone are, strictly speaking, acts of feeding upon Christ, acts of living by Him as He by the Father. We meet nothing DIFFICUL TIES SUGGESTED. 9 5 that indicates discernment of a will of God for man revealed in Christ — a human will one with the divine will — along with the expression of an apprehension of this will as "the bread of life which hath come down from heaven, of which if a man eat he shall never die." We meet no record of acts of feeding upon this will by re- sponding to it, accompanied by the consciousness that such calling of Jesus Lord is the true expe- rience of feeding upon Him. We meet no re- cord of experience that expresses itself by using language in reference to the Lord's will such as He uses as to the Father's will when He says, " My meat is to do the will of him that sent me," or that suggests, as being a living illus- tration of its reality, that connection on which I have dwelt so much of these words with the words, " As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me." Such record of eating the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink- ing His blood, we meet not : and yet such feeding upon Christ there must have been, if 96 HOW TO BE REGARDED. indeed we are reading of branches abiding in Christ the vine, and living by His life ; of men of whom it was true that, in living the lives recorded, they lived, yet not they, but Christ in them ; of men whom the law of the spirit of the life that is in Christ was making free from the law of sin and death. If of such men we are reading, the acts of will which I have recognized as acts of feeding upon Christ must, however unexpressed, still have been present underlying all that is expressed, — the fruit and result of all that occupation of thought and heart with the grace of God, which is ex- pressed : — I would venture to add, the real ultimate ground and reason of all the peace and confidence before God which we see cher- ished, being that in the human spirits before us to which the Divine Spirit has borne testimony ; for, in so far as the Divine Spirit bore testimony to their spirits that they were the children of God, it must have been because — " as many as are led by the spirit of God they are the sons of God." FAITH ABSORBED IN ITS OBJECT. 97 How has it come to pass that men spiritually- alive should record so much concerning their inward life, and not have led us to this inmost ultimate point of the contact of their will with the will of Christ in submission to it, as the secret of that life ? The explanation is partly in the history itself of this bending of the will, viz. : that it is the effect of a spiritual appre- hension of Christ which naturally occupies more attention than this its effect ; so that the man who, through beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, is changed into the same image, is more occupied with the glory which he is beholding than with the change in himself which it is making ; and yet would that glory give him no peace but in working that change. Let him but be disobedient to the heavenly vision, and his peace will forthwith depart. This is partly the explanation. But, doubtless, the explanation is chiefly to be found in the case of the Christians with whose diaries we are most familiar in this country, and to these I specially refer, in the fact of a departure from G YET FURTHER EXPLANATION the simplicity that is in Christ in their concep- tions of justification by faith and of the way in which faith excludes boasting. That in so many instances the form of thought and lan- guage alone should bear the impress of such error, while the condition of the heart and spirit is manifestly in harmony with the counsel of God in Christ, is a seeming contradiction, for which we must be thankful. These are instances in which true elements of thought on the subject of salvation have neutralized error; in which also, doubtless, the spiritual quickening of conscience has protected from danger beyond the discernment of the intellect, and saved true and earnest spirits seeking peace with the Father of spirits and harmony — peace and harmony to be found only in consistency with the laws of His spiritual kingdom. " Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" "What communion hath light with darkness?" "If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me." " If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. u CALLED FOR. 99 Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God." " Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world." True peace can only have been attained in harmony with these laws of the kingdom of God, whether the language of those who seem partakers in such peace make direct reference to them, or do not. But what are these quotations from the sacred volume but records of the original Christian experience, that of those who first trusted in Christ ? And what are Ave taught by this direct reference by the early Christians to their par- ticipation in the life of Christ and oneness of will with God in Him, in speaking of their peace toward God, while we are not accustomed to it among ourselves ? Why, among us, are we left to infer such participation and one- ness as the ultimate essence of the confidence cherished ; and to do so, I may say, in opposi- tion to the literal import of the language used ? I have suggested as one reason of that absence IOO A DEPARTURE FROM THE of recognition of the state of the individual's own will, as connected with confidence toward God, which we meet with in the Christian diar- ies with which we are most familiar, that the Christian is more occupied with the apprehen- sion of Christ which affects his will, than with the consciousness that his will is affected. But, doubtless, this reason existed at the first as well as now ; and yet the Apostle, as the most natural utterance of his experience, speaks of both together, "We all, with open face be- holding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord." Therefore the other reason which I suggested, viz. : a departure from the simplicity that is in Christ in the conceptions entertained of justification by faith, and of the way in which faith excludes boasting, demands the more attention. We cannot treat as of small ac- count any difference of apprehension in such a matter between ourselves and the Apostle and those who saw in the same light with him SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 10 1 of such magnitude as to impress itself on the language of Christian men speaking of their inner life, and of their peace toward God through our Lord Jesus Christ ; nor can we feel that we have full communion with these first Christians, until we find their language the natural expression of our experiences. In truth, although we believe that many have really found life in feeding upon the will of Christ, while expressing their hope toward God in language that would, strictly interpreted, imply that to them feeding upon Christ consisted in the acknowledgment of Christ's work for them, and not in thus receiving His life to be their life, it is impossible not to fear that many more, not protected by an awakened conscience and quickened spiritual apprehension, have come short of the salvation that is in Christ through placing such mental reference to the work of Christ in the place of that obedience of the will in accomplishing which the knowledge of Him and of His work saves. The day of the Lord will make manifest to what extent the true 1 02 JUSTIFICA T10N AND SANCTIFICA TION feeding upon Christ has thus been hindered. What I recognize in the record of primitive Christianity — what I desire to see, but do not see, even in some of the most unequivocal records of living Christianity with us, is the acknowledgment of the directness of the demand which the gospel makes on the will. I say, the acknowledgment of the directness of the demand which the gospel makes on the will. For an indirect effect upon the will is admitted, is indeed contended for. " The faith," it is said, "which saves, also sanctifies. It produces not only peace and confidence towards God but also holiness. Not merely is the work of Christ trusted in : His example is also followed. Not only is forgiveness of sin received through His blood, but deliverance from the power of sin by the Spirit is also God's gift to us in Him; and we have no right to regard our faith as a saving faith unless its soundness be proved by the fruit which it bears." Nor am I insensible to much good that has resulted from this manner of teaching, much gain to the cause UND UL Y SEPARA TED. 1 03 of righteousness ; gain, I mean, in comparison with what would have been the result if the first half in all this had been insisted upon without the second ; if what has been called Justification had been insisted on without what has been called Sanctihcation. The addition has been a concession to the demand of con- science ; and has of course been valuable in proportion as it has been interpreted by an enlightened and quickened conscience. But still the evil has been great. Two things have been spoken of where there is but one thing, laborious efforts at harmony made where iden- tity should be recognised ; and a complexity embarrassing to the spirit has been introduced instead of the simplicity that is in Christ. This is the testimony of God concerning His Son, " that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." To receive this testimony and be taught of God is spiritually to apprehend Eternal Life as manifested in the Son of God, and given to us in Him. The practical demand which in this light is felt to 104 THEIR UNITY SEEN IN THE press upon us is that we welcome this life to be our life ; the trust in Christ called for is that we feed on Him as the bread of life ; for trust in food is to use it as food, expecting to be nour- ished by it. Spiritual, doubtless, and as spirit- ual to be only spiritually discerned, is this way of salvation ; but exceedingly simple in the con- ception of it. The Eternal Life lived by our Lord as the Son of Man is apprehended as the gift of God to man — to us, — therefore our proper life given to us that we may live it. We see it divine, but we see it human also, the life of Christ. We accept the free gift of God, and yield up our will to the will of Christ, our spirit to His spirit ; and the end of our God is accom- plished. We live : we live the Eternal Life. " He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness, or record, in himself." We are become living epistles of the grace of God. It is now recorded in our being that God has given to man Eternal Life in His Son. It is recorded in our very being, inasmuch as we are alive with the Eternal Life given in the Son of God. Here I LIGHT OF ETERNAL LIFE. 105 say is one thing, not two but one, simple and uncompounded viz. a life given, that life re- ceived — lived. The elements of this life we may conceive of as many, but as a life it is one thing — the one thing; needful ; and as it is one thing, so to receive it is one movement of our being, implies one direction of our attention, one thought, one care. With a single eye we may look at it ; with a simple and entire purpose of heart cleave to it. What is the relation of this one thing to the two things of which I have spoken ? What is this receiving of Eternal Life, this feeding upon Christ, this accepting His will to be our will, this esteeming the elements of His life in humanity, the mind that was in Him, His flesh and His blood, to be meat indeed and drink indeed — what is it in reference to these two great objects of attention, so carefully distinguished, so laboriously and anxiously har- monized ? Is it Justification ? Is it Sanctifi- cation % Is it trust in the work of Christ — that trust which is so carefully separated from every element of self-consciousness or recognition of 106 ABRAHAM WAS STROXG IN FAITH, any thing acceptable to God on the spiritual condition of the individual ? or is it the culture of Christian graces — that culture of them to which a man sets himself as to an employ- ment altogether distinct from his trusting in Christ for salvation ? It cannot be both of these if we hold to the distinguishing definitions which are so carefully insisted upon. It is not in fact either, as we shall immediately see if we attempt to make it fit into the definitions of either. Yet is it beyond all question the one great reality, and as such must it include what- ever element of spiritual truth is in either. Trust in Christ there is in this relation of spirit to Him — trust of the most intimate, most fundamental nature, for it is trust in Him as our life ; it is really the trust of the branch in the vine — trust for the sap of the vine. But it manifestly is not a movement of the human spirit that can be denned as men have defined justifying faith. For though it has reference to the favour of God as resting upon Christ, and contemplates that favour as life, recognizing the GIVING GIORY TO GOD. 107 life given in Christ as indeed life because of that favour, — and so having the merits of Christ, and God's delight in Christ, at the foundation of the peace which accompanies it, — this is not in the way of dividing between participation in the favour that rests on Christ, and participation in the mind of Christ : on the contrary, participa- tion in the mind of Christ it conceives of as that condition of the human spirit to which alone the divine favour can extend. So far is it from con- ceiving of the faith of the gospel as something as to which we must carefully guard against the idea of its being pleasing or acceptable for his own sake, or indeed being more than the mere thread that in God's plan connects us with that in Christ which is pleasing and acceptable, that on the contrary it recognises the call to faith as a call to that exercise of man's being in which there is most glory given to God ; as it is written, "Abraham was strong in faith, giving glory to God." Again, the feeding on Christ of which I speak is as truly a culture of all the graces of the 108 TRUE RELATION OF FAITH spirit as it is a trust in Christ. But whatever, in the actual experience of men of God, is com- mon to it and to what is recognized as the Sanctincation to be added to Justification, a wide distinction holds between them in this, that not as fruits of faith needful to prove that we are justified and so are saved are these graces desired ; nor even, as some have said, feeling that they were taking higher ground, as imparting the necessary meetness for heaven ; but these graces are desired — the culture of them is engaged in — directly for their own sake, and not as evidences of a saved state but as themselves portions of the salvation received — elements of the Eternal Life given to us in Christ and not the mere meetness to receive that life hereafter. Therefore I say that the great reality of eating the flesh of the Son of man and drinking His blood is not to be defined either in the language in which men have spoken of Justifi- cation, or in that in which they have spoken of Sanctincation ; though I do not doubt that it TO ETERNAL LITE. IO9 has been present, not unfrequently, in the ex- perience which has been described as the one of these, and also in that which has been described as the other. And to this belief I anxiously cling, feeling thankful for all I meet with in the records of Christian experience which justifies me in clinging to it ; for it is manifest that, if obliged to give it up— if obliged to see the peace of many professing trust in Christ through their own definitions of justifying faith or their own views of the place of the graces of the spirit in the Christian scheme, — I could no longer think of them as heirs of the righteousness which is by faith, or as partakers in that holi- ness without which no man shall see the Lord. If their actual confidence towards God, and ex- pectation of acceptance and acknowledgment in drawing near to Him, must be conceived of as strictly according to the belief that God accepts them as righteous without reference to their receiving Christ as their life, on the simple and exclusive ground of their trusting to the merits of His work ; or if they must be regarded as I 10 ERROR IN SYSTEM indeed cultivating holiness, truth, love, not for their own sake, nor as the ultimate good and the elements of the salvation given to them in Christ, but just as proofs that their faith is that which secures an interest in the merits of Christ, and so what will secure their salvation, — then are both their confidence of acceptance with God and their practical care to do His com- mandments alien from the righteousness and the sanctification known to those who are of God in Christ Jesus, and who know Christ as made of God unto them "wisdom, and right- eousness, and sanctification, and redemption." But however liable to abuse, and however often abused, may be the distinction drawn between the intellect and the spirit — between what a man thinks and what a man is — I cannot but be thankful that it has a foundation in truth when I thus consider what, in the matter before us, giving up that distinction would imply. And my conviction is, that to assume a necessity for holding that men's own exposition of the elements of their religious WITH TRUTH IN THE II FE, peace and hope is the true exposition of them would be, in many of the cases in which the language of a wrong system is used, unjust as well as painful. The words which I have just quoted — "who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteous- ness, and sanctification, and redemption," pre- sent the one Eternal Life given to us in the Son of God in four elements and aspects. To separate the righteousness spoken of and to represent it as ours on a totally different prin- ciple from that on which they are ours, regard- ing it as imputed while the others are imparted, seems unnatural as an understanding of the Apostle's words, and also a separating between our confidence towards God and our partici- pation in the life of Christ which all real ex- perience of that life would teach men to reject. Yet it may be that the very conviction that the sanctification is something to be wrought in us, and which will be wrought in us, is the real reconciling of the conscience to the faith that the righteousness is only imputed. 112 HOW TO BE THOUGHT OF. So also as to the words — "But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifi- eth the ungodly, his faith is counted for right- eousness," when men contend that these words recognise the co-existence of ungodliness and justifying faith so that a man is pronounced just being actually ungodly, and will not con- cede to the faith which justifies that it is in itself a godly condition of the human spirit, regarding it as only something which connects the believer with Christ's righteousness ; so that, though ac- tually ungodly, he is accounted righteous : it may seem very bold to separate between this intellectual misconception and the state of the man's spirit who contends for it, and so venture to cherish a comfort about him from indica- tions of the one, which seems forbidden by the other. Yet it may be quite discernable that the real ground on which he finds it possible to believe in this imputation of righteousness as co-existent with present ungodliness is, that it is contemplated as a step towards the destruc- tion of ungodliness ; so that, though no godli- E VILS STILL GREA T I 1 3 ness be recognised in the faith itself, it is regarded as the power which is to produce godliness. Still, whatever redeeming elements may be present or however conscience may be heard de- manding with an authority that will not be gainsayed a righteous character in the peace of mind that claims to be peace with God, there can be no doubt that departure from the sim- plicity that is in Christ such as we have been considering must be evil, and fruitful of evil. Those who are acquainted with the terms, "subjective religion," "objective religion," will I trust, see that I am not simply contending for the co-ordinate importance of the former and the latter, or insisting upon the realization of what God calls on us to be as being an element in true religion as essential as the faith of what He calls us to know and believe. If what we are called on to know and believe, the objective in religion, be truly conceived of, that which we are called on to be — the subjective — is already before us ; and to be it, is the imperative demand 1 14 AND DIFFICULT TO ESTIMATE. addressed to us by what we know and believe. This indeed seems practically denied when it is felt necessary to say, " It is not enough that you believe what you are required to believe : you must also be what you are required to be." But there can be no doubt that the objective de- mands the subjective, as truly as the subjective presupposes the objective. My conviction is that there is a departure from the simplicity that is in Christ alike in the conception of what we are taught to believe, and of what we are expected to become in believing. As to the amount of this departure, I feel it difficult to avoid seeming to say either less or more than what I feel. If I speak of it spirit- ually, I have such a conviction of the preserving power that is in all earnest actual dealing with God, in self-distrust and self-despair and in that hope only which His free grace inspires, aided by the faithfulness of a quickened conscience, that in expressing my belief as to the extent to which the heart and spirit may be in harmony with the will of God beyond what the intellect appre- RISK OF MISCONCEPTION. I I 5 hends of the divine counsel, I am in danger of seeming to make less account of the error of which I have spoken than accords with my per- suasion of its magnitude. On the other hand, if I lay out broadly, as I have at present been endeavouring to do, the amount of difference in the intellectual conception of feeding upon Christ as the bread of life, I am in danger of seem- ing to conclude that if intellectual error be operative at all, the operation of such error as this must be well-nigh fatal I must trust for sympathy with me in this diffi- culty to what consciousness the reader may have of the great duality, so to speak, which is in man viewed as a spiritual and as an intellectual being ; and of the slowness of our progress towards perfected and inward unity. I will en- deavour to be true to my convictions of the evil considered at once in both its aspects, and call the conditions of mind in which it presents it- self superficial and inadequate views of truth. I. That view of the grace of God I regard as superficial and inadequate which, while it recog- 1 1 6 WE MA Y BE AIDED BY CONSIDERING nizes the freeness of the love of God to man and man's exclusive dependence on what that love spontaneously gives to the rejection of all idea of claim or merit, d oes not disc ern in that freeness or in the nature of the gift given enough to exclude boasting on the part of the receiver of the gift. Hence carnal expedients to exclude boasting, and more especially the change in the conception of justifying faith from being that of the reception of Christ as our life to that of a naked trust in His work for man as a ground of acceptance with God. 2. That view of the work of Christ and of the merits of Christ I regard as superficial and inade- quate, which, as to the work of Christ, permits us to cherish peace on the ground that that work has been performed apart from the recognition of that call to spiritual participation in it which that work addresses to us ; and which as to the merits of Christ calculates on God's rejoicing over a condition of humanity which is not in itself a fit thing for God to rejoice over because of His delight in these merits : while in truth the SOME SUPERFICIAL 11 7 delight of God in the merits of Christ can war- rant no conclusion other than that He will ever delight in all measures of that condition of humanity of which they are the perfection : — the voice of that delight uttering itself to us, and for our guidance, being " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ; hear ye him." 3. That view of the Atonement and of the forgiveness of sins I regard as superficial and inadequate which rests in the declared fact of the Atonement and the forgiveness, and which, as to the Atonement, does^ not apprehend the nature of the condemnation of sin in the flesh which is in the sacrifice of Christ, or the call which it ad- dresses to us to unite ourselves to that condem- nation by the rejection of the life of the flesh ; and, as to the forgiveness, does not imply any communion in the blood of Christ, any fellow- ship in His death, any discernment of that power in Christ's blood which the Apostle recognizes when he says, " If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the AND IX ADEQUATE VIEWS unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh ; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works, to serve the living God ? " 4. Finally, I regard as superficial and inade- quate that conception of our relation to Christ as having left us an example that we should walk in His steps which, while recognizing the outward form of His life on earth and in some lower sense also the inward regulation of His life according to the law of righteousness as practi- cal light for our guidance, still leaves a broad gulf between His confidence towards God, and our confidence towards God. Such a gulf between Him and us is interposed by the er- roneous view of Justification by faith, against which I have been contending ; for that view introduces a whole system of thought and feel- ing into the region of our intercourse with God, and that at the very heart of that intercourse, to which there is — there could be nothing parallel in the example of Christ. Consider the mental WHICH PRE VENT UR RE A CHING 1 1 9 elements of justifying faith as it has been de- fined — the position consciously taken by the human spirit — the nature of the confidence cherished. Nothing of it all is first in Christ — nothing of it is an element in the Eternal Life revealed in Christ. It is no form of the spirit of Christ. The confidence it includes is not one in nature with that which accompanies the spirit of sonship, and is of its essence according to the words, " There is no fear in love — perfect love casteth out fear." This is evident ; and I do not suppose that any will contend that the kind of confidence which is held to accompany what is called justifying faith, is one in nature with that of the Son towards the Father. But the conclusion that the conception of the example of Christ which recognizes at this point so great a gulf between Him and us is superficial and inadequate may not be so readily conceded. Yet I cannot judge otherwise as I understand the words of our Lord, " I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me." In fellowship with Him as !20 THE SIMPLICITY the truth and the life is the Lord known as the way. No man cometh unto the Father but by Him, inasmuch as humanity cannot attain to God but in the Eternal Life given in the Son of God. No other conscious condition of humanity is nearness to God but^Lhat^which is presented to us in the humanity of Christ. For not as a mere permission to come — a personal liberty and warrant to come — are we to conceive of our access to God in Christ, but as a spiritual power to draw near to God in newness of life ; as the Apostle says of Jew and Gentile, "Through him we both have access by one spirit unto the Father." To sonship are we called in the Son of God. In the confidence inherent in sonship are we called to follow God as dear children walking in love. In the very inmost experience pertaining to our intercourse with God are we to have the consciousness of following our Lord and walking in his steps. If the example left us by our Lord as the first born among many brethren has this extent, can we be called to the exercise of a faith and confidence towards THA T IS IN CHRIST. 1 2 1 the Father alien from His and impossible for Him ? I have chosen the expressions " superficial and inadequate," rather than erroneous, because practically, if not logically, they more truly state the fact. And I am not a little anxious that where there is a true trust in Christ in con- nection with the forms of thought to which I object it should be felt that I am only urging progress in a path already entered upon. It is not any form of self-trust as opposed to trust in Christ for which I call, but a more perfect nega- tion of self-trust, and a more absolute, and deeper, and all-embracing trust in Christ than can be known otherwise ; the opposition being not between my own works and Christ's work, but between my own life and Christ's life : that which is given up being, not my works alone but the life of flesh which took form in them ; what is recognized and accepted as the gift of God, being not Christ's work alone but the Eternal Life in Christ which took form in His work. 122 PERPLEXITIES THAT ARISE. And many and perplexing to the spirit are the confusions which arise from stopping short of this apprehension of justifying faith. Life is said to be in God's favour ; and God's favour rests upon Christ. " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." And, that that favour may rest upon us and so life in God's favour be our portion, the Father's call to us is, " Hear ye him." And so, being taught of God, we listen to the voice of the good Shepherd and His word is fulfilled in us, " My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me : and I give unto them eternal life." So we re- ceive life in hearing the Son in obedience to the teaching of the Father ; life both as viewed in itself, the fellowship of the mind of Christ, and as viewed with reference to the divine favour — participation in that favour which rests on Christ. So, whether we think of life as the reality in Christ, the law of the spirit of the life that is in Him, or as the favour and acceptance and per- sonal acknowledgment of God, one direction is given to our attention — on one thing is our hope PERPLEXITIES THA T ARISE. 1 2 3 fixed, viz., that obedience to the will of Christ — that receiving Him as the Lord of our spirits : that eating His flesh and drinking His blood of which I have been speaking. But if in respect to life as what exists in God's favour, we are directed to keep our minds trust- ing in what Christ has done, thinking of God as ^^^3KM^th^J^9Xkoi _ Christ, and not at us at all, while in respect to life as a condition of our own being, we are directed to look to the Spirit of Christ to work in us that holiness without which no man may see the Lord, — surely by such teaching distraction is introduced into our thoughts of life and practical embarrassment into our pursuit of life. Or, to look at the same reality in an aspect a little different, the divine favour is connected with the region of conscience in man inasmuch as it is there that God expresses to man his pleasure and displeasure. No one denies that while we are without Christ the voice in con- science condemns what we are; and however Scripture may have been instrumental in awaken- 124 PERPLEXITIES THAT ARISE. ing conscience, or in helping us to understand the condemnation addressed to us by conscience, no one is regarded as spiritually convinced of sin whose conviction that he is a sinner is not im- mediate and direct, the result of seeing himself in the light of truth, and not a doctrinal inference from the statements of Scripture. Now what is thus condemned is the life of the flesh — the old man — and ourselves personally as living that life. When, then, another life, the life of Christ, is re- vealed to us in the Spirit as the Father's gift to us in the Son, and we receive it to be our life, feeding upon Christ, the favour of God resting on this life, and now upon us on our choosing this life, is testified also in the conscience, just as the divine displeasure formerly was ; and neither is now the conviction that we are righteous in God's sight, any more than formerly the con- viction of sin, a doctrinal inference from the statements of Scripture ; but the immediate and direct result of seeing ourselves in the light of truth. As the divine testimony within was formerly against us, it now is for us, "the Spirit PERPLEXITIES THAT ARISE. 1 25 itself bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." But adopt the view of Justification to which I have objected, and substitute for this conscious reception of that life on which the divine favour rests and consequent personal sense of divine favour, a mental reference to the work of Christ as ascribed to us and a keeping of our own actual condition out of sight altogether, and manifestly the peace so attained is cherished in the way of a doctrinal inference from statements of Scripture, and is no direct testimony of the conscience at all; neither presents that parallel to the sense of guilt and condemnation which, in the true view, is so close, and gives to the peace enjoyed so deep a foundation. I have ventured to describe this careful keep- ing away from the recognition of the conscious- ness of receiving Christ as our life, when the way in which it comes to pass that the favour of God which rests upon Christ comes to rest upon us, is set forth as a carnal expedient for excluding boasting ; for it seems to be suggested 126 UNSUCCESSFUL ENDEAVOUR by the fear that we could not without boasting say directly, as the Apostle says, " If our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God," — " Herein is our love made perfect that we may have boldness in the day of judgment : because as he is, so are we in this world." I believe that, Christ being revealed in us the hope of glory, boasting will be excluded alike by the consciousness that we have but what we have received, and by the nature of that which we have received ; for if we have received Christ to be our life, we, in the deepest sense, have learned of Him who is meek and lowly in heart. But is boasting excluded by the expedient adopted ? To say that it is a carnal expedient — a human device, and not a divine counsel, is to suggest that it is not. And my conviction is, that while true faith excludes boasting because it is in its nature the right position of the spirit towards God, the hope of guarding against boasting by holding that we are not to boast of faith because it is but the link that connects us with that work of Christ in which it is that TO HARMONIZE. 1 27 God has pleasure, is futile ; for, say to ourselves what we will about it, faith, after all, makes the difference between us and others that believe not, but for whom, as for us, Christ died : and if it were, as on this scheme it would be, an act of acceptance on our part of an arbitrary arrange- ment, and not a spiritual apprehension of the Eternal Life, there would be room for self-com- placency in the consciousness that we had ac- cepted and so done our part ; and in this way the most pure self-righteousness might be present under the guise of the negation of self-right- eousness. How true do we thus see the in- stinct of spiritual men to have been who, in connection with this system, have given earnest warning of the danger of making a Christ of our faith ! Nay, have they not still further mani- fested distrust in the expedient of their system for excluding boasting, when, after reducing faith to the most naked conception of a link or a thread, that it might not interfere with the place given to the work of Christ, the further security has been had recourse to of regarding 1 2 8 LIGHT RE VEALS UNITY. that faith itself as in such a sense the work of God, and a special putting forth of divine power, as that, on that ground also, boasting would be excluded : a view of the origin of faith, — how- ever near the truth of the due recognition of the drawing of the Father, — not in harmony, certainly, with the care taken to preclude the idea of their being any thing of the nature of righteousness inherent in the faith itself. But may we not say — " Salvation has God ap- pointed for walls and bulwarks." Light is its own wall against darkness. The life of Christ is the light of men. That life saves from boasting the man who receives it to be his life. The confusion introduced into our thoughts of Eternal Life when the divine favour is separated from the life of Christ and referred to the work of Christ, and we are taught to expect partici- pation in that favour, not in receiving Christ's life to be our life, but in having His work im- puted to us ; and the corresponding confusion introduced into the region of conscience, when CHRISTIAN PRAYER 129 the divine acknowledgment of the righteousness of faith is regarded as altogether different in its nature from the divine condemnation of sin, and, while the latter is admitted to be a direct testimony of God condemning what we are, the former is represented as not a testimony to the condition of our spirits at all — these practical perplexities introduced into the inner life, in the region of justifying faith, necessarily extend themselves in corresponding forms into the re- gion of worship . The intimacy of the relation between feeding upon Christ as the bread of life and worshipping God through Christ has already engaged our attention in connection with another error. It comes before us again here ; for it could not have been that a wrong conception of Justification by faith could have failed to introduce a wrong con- ception of praying in Christ's name — of expect- ing an answer to prayer for Christ's sake. The concept ion of Christian worshi p which has been expressed above, and to which a res- ponse in other minds has been hoped for, is, that u IaJ 13° IN THE NAME OF CHRIST AXD it is the Eternal Life in the form of worship — that living acknowledgment of what God is, and hope towards Him in oneness of mind with what He is, which accord with the language — " wor- ship in spirit and in truth." It is the Eternal Life which comes to us through the Son, ascend- ingfrom us through the Son — the Son in us honouring the Father — the worship of Sonship — as such grateful to the Father, whojseeketh such worship. Freedom and confidence of acknowledgment are of the very nature of such worship ; arising necessarily from the oneness of the Spirit, causing oneness of mind and will in the worshippers and in Him who is worshipped. In such w orship there is a continual living pre- sentation of Christ to the Father — a continual drawing upon the delight of the Father in the Son — the outgoing of a confidence that, what- ever is asked in Christ's name — in the light of His name — in the faith of the Father's ac- knowledgment of that name — will be received. The praises rendered — the desires cherished — the prayers offered — are all within the circle of 6 ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF GOD. lj l the life of Christ, and ascend with the assurance of partaking in the favour which pertains to that life — which rests upon Him who is that life. It is worship according to the words of S. Paul — "For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." If we change the language in which we speak of this worship, and, instead of using that of our Lord when He teaches us that what we "ask the Father in his name" shall be given to us, say in the words of the Apostle John, "And this is the confi- dence that we have in him, that, if we ask any- thing according to his will, he heareth us : and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him," we feel that we have only changed the form of expression, and that it is one confidence which in either way is equally truly expressed ; as indeed how could it be otherwise ? Our Lord could not put confidence as to the answer of prayer on one footing, and the Apostle put it on another. I3 2 THE CONFUSIOX OF THOUGHT But I have said that a wrong conce jDtior^ of justification by faith could not fail to introduce a wrong conception of praying in Christ's name ; and we know that, in point of fact, men have followed out a system consistently at the ex- pense of giving to the expressions of our Lord in placing the assurance of an answer to prayer on the ground of its being offered in His name a meaning altogether different from that now assumed according to which these expressions are synonymous with those of the Apostle which rest that assurance on harmony with the divine will in the prayer itself. When, in the close of a prayer, it is added that an answer is expected for Christ's sake and on the ground of His j&erits, we know that it is not intended by such language to claim for the prayer which has preceded the character of having been offered in Christ's spirit — of having been an utterance of the life of Christ in the worshipper. Were such the meaning intended the use of the words would accord with what our Lord really teaches when He instructs us to pray in His name. But AS TO JUSTIFICATION the sense in which they are employed is alto- gether different. As men employ them they express a passing away from the character of the prayer itself and a disclaiming of any hope from that character, and a betaking of them- selves, on the part of the worshippers, to the name of Christ, as affording a ground of con- fidence which the spirit of the prayer itself has not furnished. As if, while the Apostle directs attention to the nature and essence of the prayer itself — its harmony with the divine will, our Lord meant to turn us away from this, and to fix our hope on His own merits as affording a confidence altogether independent of harmony with the divine will in the prayer, and which should sustain hope even under the conscious- ness that the prayer itself had no claim to be heard, nor fitness to awaken a response in the heart of God. The coherence and harmony of a system here is undeniable. As in seeking justification the mind is trained to turn away from its own conscious attitude towards God as the giver of Eternal Life in His Son, to engage 134 EXISTS ALSO AS TO PR A YER. in a mental reference to the imputed work of Christ ; so injoj^^j^is^rAined to turn away from the spirit and nature of its own cry to God, and to build its hope of an answer on its pre- senting Christ's merits to the Father _ as the ground on which it pleads. But just as we have seen that the former mental process differs from that which the Apostle recognizes when he says, " if our hearts condemn us not, then have Ave confidence towards God," so is it manifest that the latter mental process differs from that which the same Apostle recognizes when he says, " if we ask any thing according to his will he heareth us." And thus the perplexity and confusion introduced into the region of Justifi- cation by faith extend themselves into the region of p rayex And our Lord in teaching us to expect an answer because we pray in His name, and the Apostle in teaching us to expect an answer because we ask things according to the Father's will, are made to be to us as two masters presenting to us totally distinct grounds of confidence in drawing near to God. I THE DIVINE LA W OF PR A YER. 1 3 5 But the law of the kingdom of God according to which prayer in the name of the Son is answered, and that according to which prayer for things according to the Father's will is answered, are one and the same law. For to ask in the name of the Son is to ask in the light of the name of Him in whom the Father is well-pleased. In answering such pra yer Godjs not granting for Christ's sake what for its own sake He would not grant. He is granting that which His delight in Christ reveals His eternal willingness to grant. In its most imperfect lisping of the Father's name the life of the Son jnjas is that same life on which in our Lord at the right hand of the Father the light of the Father's countenance ever shines. It is this one- ness of the Eternal Life in its feeblest dawn in us, and in its fulness in Christ, which identifies us and our hope and confidence with that ful- ness " connecting us and glory in one thought," in a way that sometimes presents itself as an explanation of the origin of the faith of the imputation of righteousness. For on this ground 13^ SUBSTITUTES FOR the babe in Christ, in whom the kingdom of heaven is as a grain of mustard seed, is taught to cherish the desire and to offer the prayer into which the life of Christ forms itseff with a confidence of acceptance which is according to the faith of the delight of the Father in the Son. The use which has just been made of the relation between feeding upon Christ as the bread of life and worshipping God through Him, in endeavouring to bring out the evil of erroneous conceptions of Justification by faith and of praying in Christ's name, will recall to my readers the application of it formerly made in considering the subject of the Mass. The parallelism of these spiritual operations — feed- ing on Christ, and praying through Christ — to the two parts of the Mass was then considered as at once illustrating the relation of these two aspects of the life of faith, and confirming the view that the Mass was in relation to that life, not a witness, as the Lord's Supper is, but a sub- stitute, and any whose intelligent sympathy I THE SPIR1 T OF PR A YER 1 3 7 have been receiving will agree with me that we have now met another ^substit ute for the li fe of faith — a substitu te also for that life in both its aspects, as feeding upon Christ, and worshipping through Christ — within the circle of Protestant- ism, — less gross than the Mass of Romanism, and therefore more suited to an intellectual age, but in being so, only .more dangerous to us. The saying of Luther, that if the Pope would allow him to preach Justification by faith he would not object to the Mass, has been referred to above as indicating, that at the time he so spoke he did not clearly apprehend how sub- versive of the Mass, and of all that is cognate to the Mass, Justification by faith really is. But that preaching Justification by faith should destroy men's belief in the Mass is a result that can be rejoiced in only in so far as it is the truth of Justification by faith which takes the place of that delusion. If indeed men cease from using the consecrated material substance in that service as the food of Eternal Life because it is no longer regarded by them as the S 138 ROMA X 1ST body and blood of the Lord, and, so ceasing, turn to the engrafted word and feed upon it, receiving the life of Christ to be their life, the change is one in which to rejoice ; and if men cease to offer the eucharistic offering in the Mass because they no longer believe that therein Christ is offered to the Father, and so ceasing, engage in that worship in spirit and in truth which is the liv ing presentation of Chris t / - to the Father in that worship of sonship _which is \V ' the worshipping form^of^the _Eternal Lif e given to us in the Son^this change also is one in which to rejoice. But that the Mass should give place, not to the spiritual reality of which it is the counterfeit, but to an intellectual oper- ation which in reference to the great spiritual reality is but a counterfeit also — in this there is nothing in which to rejoice. An intellectual substitute for the life of Christ is not less fatal than a material substitute. The mental oper- ation of reference to Christ's work assumed to be imputed to us is no more able to supply the place of receiving Christ as our life than the AND PROTESTANT. 139 physical operation of feeding upon the material substance assumed to be transubstantiated into the body and blood of the Lord : and the mental pleading of Christ's merits in prayer is no more able to supply the place of praying in the Spirit of Christ than the physical act of offering up the eucharistic offering. The physi- cal substitute for the life of faith assumes a physical mystery. Does not the intellectual sub- stitute assume a moral mystery ? The former is without witness in the conscience and is taken upon trust in the way of implicit faith. Is not this true of the latter also ? The Romanist receives Transubstantiation, accepting the Scriptures as interpreted by the Church, and feels no need of any corresponding light in conscience. The Protestant who receives im- putation of righteousness is accepting the same Scriptures as interpreted by himself, and he also feels no need of a corresponding light in conscience. Let us not be misled by the fact that the latter goes directly to the Scriptures, while the former suffers the Church to come 14° THE SCRIPTURES between him and the Scriptures. However im- portant in other views this difference is it affects not the matter before us. The Church which demands from men implicit faith in her own teaching and forbids their seeking individually to see light in God's light does not err merely because her claim to infallibility is unwarranted : — she would err in making such a demand even were she infallible. And when we go direct to the infallible record, if we regard the inspired men who speak to us there as making a demand for faith such as the Church of Rome makes, reconciling ourselves to the demand because they are inspired, we greatly err. They make no such demand. We may think to honour their inspiration by holding what we understand them to teach not recognizing any need for a corresponding light in conscience ; but in so doing we shall be giving to the record of their teaching a place which as living men they did not themselves take. Shall we supersede con- science to make room for the authority of men whose testimony concerning themselves is that AS WELL AS THE CHURCH H 1 by manifestation of the truth they commend themselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God ? These teachers sent from God sought not to supersede the teaching of God. The answer of a good conscience towards God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to which they laboured to raise men is a condition of the human conscience spiritually educated and developed, not a peace in the reception of a moral mystery which has no corresponding light in conscience and is held in a way of implicit faith. The necessity for our being all taught of God is if possible, a more important subject of thought than that which has now led us to it — at least more radical ; but I attempt not to dis- cuss it here. This important consideration it suggests with general reference to what is going on around us, viz. that Protestants take wrong ground with Romanists when controverting the , J necessity for an infallible Church, evading the conclusions drawn from the diversity of opinion originated by the exercise of the right of private \> 142 PUT BETWEEN MAX AXD GOD. judgment, and taking their stand upon the ab- stract truth of the Scriptures ; not recognizing the need there is — as surely there is need — in some way to bridge over the gulf between the abstract truth of the record and the certainty that an individual reader of the record has hold of the truth. Protestants do not look this matter full in the face. Surely it is one thing to know that the Bible is true, and another thing to know that I myself am in the light of the truth that is in the Bible. To say I judge for myself as to the meaning of what I read, is, as respects certainty, to say nothing, unless I can add that I myself am infallible. The real fact is that it is not the place of the Bible that the Church of Rome has taken in claiming infalli- bility, but the place of the living God — whose voice heard and known alone gives individual certainty of being in the light of life. The Romanist looks to the Church to interpret the Scriptures that he may certainly know the meaning of what he reads : the man of God ex- pects and waits upon the teaching of God, and DEVELOPMENT OF THE MASS 1 43 so expects to understand that which he reads. For in God's light alone does the individual hu- man spirit see light clearly. Spiritual light as natural light is its own witness. Let us who call ourselves Protestants in this matter consider how far in our dealing with Romanists we are found obeying that word of the Lord, "First cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." Until we ourselves give the right place to conscience and the teach- ing of God we cannot really help Romanists. For of Romanism, however varied the forms of error which it presents, this is the root evil — that it addresses not conscience, neither directs men to the living God, to be taught of Him. Third, — Development of the Mass from the Lord's Supper. If I have carried the reader along with me in the attempt now made to illustrate that feeding upon Christ in the deep movements of the will by which we call Him Lord in the 144 FROM THE LORD'S SUPPER. Spirit I have accomplished my great object. Darkness on this subject is our greatest danger in relation to Romanism, while we have also seen that the error which in Romanism has assumed a form to us gross and palpable exists among ourselves in forms more refined and undefined but tending to the same result ; viz., hiding the vital truth that Christ is the Bread of Life, perverting to this end the very ordinance which has been appointed for keeping the sense of this aspect of our relation to Christ fresh and powerful. What is written will have prepared us for some profitable consideration of the develop- ment of the Mass of Romanism from the sacred institution of the Lord's Supper. How has this development arisen ? The question is one of much historical interest, for this development has not been an event in the history of some obscure sect : it very early impressed its character visibly on the worship of the Church, as early liturgies show — though the transition from a figurative to a literal use TRUE IMPORTANCE OF THE CHANGE. 1 45 of words is not easily marked — and through the great extent of Christendom Transubstan- tiation came to be held as a dogma, and has affected religion according to the measure in which it has been a faith. But the solemn interest of the subject is not the greatness of the error for which faith is asked, but the importance of the truth which it is the tendency of that error to hide. This is scarcely felt as it ought to be. Men are occupied with resisting the demand for a pros- tration of reason made by Transubstantiation .rather than with the infinite spiritual loss to which they are exposed by what so powerfully tends to divert faith from Christ as the bread of life. Apprehending as the inmost aspect of faith that it is a feeding upon Christ in the movements of the will by which we call Him Lord in the Spirit, we understand the character and value of the Lord's Supper as an abiding witness-bearing to our relation to Christ as our life. Its voice is " we are crucified with Christ : nevertheless we K 14-6 MEANING OF THE LORD'S SUPPER live ; yet not we, but Christ liveth in us : and the life which we now live in the flesh we live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us." It is therefore to be con- templated apart from the ordinary life of faith. Nevertheless, rightly engaged in, it is itself a high exercise of the faith of which it is the con- fession — a feeding upon Christ as well as a declaration that we live by feeding on Him ; yet this with a special character of its own. Our ordinary feeding upon Christ has its ever-vary- ing aspect determined by the special demands on faith which successively arise in God's order- ing of our circumstances, but at the Communion Table we are, as it were, upon the mount of the Lord, above the region in which the daily battle of the life of faith has to be fought : though in the light in which the excellence of that conflict and its high issues are clearly seen and calmly realised, as they cannot be in the fight itself. With all its elements present to our spirits we seal our faith by that special act of personal appropriation of the unsearchable riches which AND ITS VALUE. 1 47 we have in Christ of which eating the bread and drinking the wine, the symbols of the Lord's body and blood, is the divinely chosen form of expression. To this there is nothing parallel as a confession of Christ except the receiving of Baptism by conscious believers or that highest Godward movement of our spirits on this side of the veil, the faith in death which says " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." In the early church — in men dying daily — the faith which received Baptism and the faith which partook in the Lord's Supper worthily must have been one with the faith in which they would desire to die ; and in proportion as it rose to this elevation eating bread and drinking wine at the Table of the Lord, would have a full and perfect meaning, yielding in the highest measure quickening and strength to that life of faith which was confessed. The most simple and naked realisation of the truth to which they were putting their seal in the solemn act of Communion would not fail to enlarge men's hearts to run in the way of God's command- 1 4 8 HOW MARKED AT THE FIRST ments : while it accorded with that grace of God wherein they stood — as it still is the frequent experience of the faithful — that the love con- fessed would be more abundantly shed abroad in the heart in the time of confessing it Their bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus filling the ordinance of the Lord's Supper with its true meaning, and that ordi- nance in its turn sealing and deepening the faith of that death of Christ which it showed forth, these would act and react on each other with intensifying power, and the promise " they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength" — a promise to all believing meditation and prayer — would have its highest fulfilment in the experience of all worthy communicants. It has been said that " no Christian can fail to see in the Lord's Supper the crown of public service and the solemn and chief work of Chris- tian assemblies." It had undeniably this place in the Church at the beginning ; and we know that there gradually gathered around the Com- munion the highest utterances of the collective B Y PRAISE AND PR A YER. 1 49 life of the Church, and that the naked act of showing forth the Lord's death as He had appointed came to have associated with it praises, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings such as men met together in the light of re- deeming love would be moved and emboldened to offer to God : a range of praise, prayer, inter- cession, and thanksgiving, wide as the free out- goings of hearts dwelling in Christ and partak- ers in the mind which was in Him. This the earliest liturgies abundantly show. That all these were origi nally offered in the narne of Christ, i.e., in the light of the worship- per's relation to God in Christ — in the faith of Christ's presence at the right hand of the Father, the High Priest over the house of God — we cannot doubt ; nor is there any reason to as- sume as to the ordinance itself with which these utterances of faith in God were thus as- sociated that there was the most remote idea that that ordinance added to the ground of con- fidence embraced in the faith to which it bore witness. The worshippers knew that God had I 50 SYMBOLS IN TIME IDENTIFIED raised Christ from the dead, and had given Him glory that their faith and hope might be in God : and their faith and hope were in God accor- dingly. This faith and hope the gospel of their salvation had quickened in them at the first. In this faith and hope they continued to live to God. Therefore at the Lord's Table, with all the elements of their divine life quick in them, abounding in love to God, to each other, and to all men, their life flowed freely, Godward and manward, according to its proper nature. The Holy Spirit, the Comforter, would mark such seasons by peculiar consolations according to the Church's need. In the record of the mar- tyrdom of St. Stephen we read " He, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God." We know not how far seasons of worthy participation in the Lord's Supper had their part in educating St. Stephen for this high experience of the grace of the great Comforter ; but we must believe that all such strengthening of his faith WITH WHA T THE Y EXPRESSED I 5 l had been in harmony with this special strength given for martyrdom — that in his witness-bearing in the Lord's Supper, as in this his highest wit- ness-bearing, his faith contemplated the Son of man at the right hand of God. We can easily see how the ordinance about which praises and prayers and the highest actings of faith so clustered — ever anticipated as it would be for comfort and enlargement of heart, ever looked back to with the thankful consciousness of renewed strength — however purely and exclusively Christ seen in the Spirit continued to be its interest and value, might come to be thought of and spoken of as identi- fied in the mind with what it symbolised. Without any departure from the simplicity that is in Christ, thanksgivings which were moved by the experience of meeting Him at His Table would take the form of thanksgiving for the sacred ordinance in the use of which this experi- ence had been enjoyed : nor to men abiding in Christ as branches in the vine, and in intercourse with others so abiding, would a need of caution 1 5 2 FIRST IN FORM OF WORDS in their use of words suggest itself, or the fear of a danger of confounding the symbols with what they symbolised. We know among ourselves how Christians at the utmost possible remove from the faith of a presence of Christ in the bread and the wine, real or mystical, use lan- guage in relation to the Lord's Supper which as to its mere sound might seem to recognise such a presence. Assuming that in the light of the reality of feeding upon Christ as the bread of life the true function of the Lord's Supper as witnessing for the nature of the Christian life was understood by the early Church and the symbolic character of the bread and the wine recognised, I feel that we might expect language to be used in connection with the consciousness of receiving divine nourishment in the Eucharist analogous to the words of institution. This doubtless was the case ; but no use of such lan- guage by the early Christians can prove more than our Lord's own words, prove I mean that if our Lord in speaking of the bread and wine as His body and His blood is not accepted as AFTER WARDS IN THO UGHT. I 5 3 implying that the bread and the wine then in His hands were actually His body and His blood, neither can similar words used by the early Church be regarded as having more than a symbolic import. But though the use of language in reference to symbols which was strictly proper in reference only to that which these symbolised might be safe as well as natural while the speaker spoke in that light of life in which feeding upon Christ was an abiding consciousness, and while as yet the occasional participation in symbols derived its interest from that abiding consciousness to which the use of these bore witness, we know that it came to pass — through what gradual de- cay of divine life we know not — but it did come to pass that the symbols were in the course of time confounded with and then substituted for what they symbolised. That special quickening and strengthening of the life of faith which was experienced in the worthy partaking of the Lord's Supper came in time to be regarded as a grace received through the bread and the wine : I 54 HENCE A CHANGE OF THEIR FUNCTION until at last these came to be regarded as spe- cial mediums of life to be partaken in, in order by so doing to receive the life put into them. When this state of mind in relation to the Lord's Supper was reached — and it may have been reached long before it became the faith of Transubstantiation, and may have passed through the gradually deepening shades of as- sumed mystical presence by which we see Tran- substantiation arrived at now — then a new func- tion in the economy of salvation was ascribed to the sacred ordinance : and this implied a new faith. The demand for a new faith, distinct from that which receives the gospel and is present in all divine life in us, which the doctrine of a presence of Christ in the bread and wine makes, even when that doctrine has not yet become the doctrine of Transubstantiation, has been noticed above. And this demand separates between the development which we are now tracing and anything that might be regarded as the tendency of religious observances to pass into formalism. AND A NE W FAITH 1 5 5 The most beautiful liturgy may become in men's minds a shadow and from their lips an empty sound : but the form remains though emptied of spiritual life. Even when a certain self-righteous feeling, as being engaged in a religious obser- vance, gives a false and delusive interest to the prayers used in words only, still this is without any change in our conception of what the pray- ers are in themselves. Here the case is different. We might conceive the Holy Communion be- coming a form, for acts may be emptied of their meaning as well as words. We might conceive all those full and rich outpourings of the Chris- tian life in connection with the observance of the Lord's Supper to which I have referred as clothing the Eucharist in early ages — these we might conceive of as used in a way of mere formalism. But what we are tracing is not such a dying-out of life from what once had life. To devout worshippers a deep earnest interest con- tinued to belong to the Eucharist ; — deep and earnest, however alien from its original interest, and incongruous with its original meaning. The 1 5 6 WHOSE STREXG TH WAS MYSTER Y change we are contemplating is not of a negative character ; it is the arising of a new faith. I have already endeavoured to state some of the elements of religious feeling which I can conceive the Mass used in the honest faith of Transubstantiation capable of quickening. Of course as one without not within I may seem bold in making this attempt. Only there arises a necessity for this boldness if the claims of the doctrine in question are to be fairly weighed and if the mental position of those who hold it is to be understood. In this view we must attempt the task of conceiving truly and correctly the faith which asks our acceptance, that we may know how it has found entrance into and how it keeps possession of the minds of our brethren. Argu- ments urged not in this light can never help them out of error or really secure our own posi- tion. The element in the faith of Transubstantia- tion which strikes us most is mystery. The con- ception of a special glory given to God by the faith of mystery appeared in the church at a . NOT LOVE. 1 57 very early period ; and certainly facilitated the transition from the simplicity and light of the Lord's Supper to the darkness which shrouds the Mass. We are not to be impatient of mystery — which encompasses us on all sides. Our God gives us light and we are to walk in it and to \y rejoice in it : but this light seems to have ever beyond it a region of darkness. The light is not on that account less truly light, and to be trusted in as light. To permit darkness to bring light into question — to feel sure of noth- ing because we cannot know all things — is in truth to do violence to the constitution of our being ; to which if we are faithful we shall know light to be really light whatever outer circle of darkness may make itself felt by us. Let us thankfully rejoice in the light and let us also reverently submit to the darkness. And let us also welcome that gradual widening of the region of light of which we have experience, the retiring of the circle of encompassing dark- ness. How far remaining darkness may yet 58 PEACE IN DARKNESS give place to light now or hereafter in the endless Eternity before us we know not. In the meantime we honour the light by obeying it and in so doing honour God, while we honour Him also by a right aspect of our minds to- wards the darkness, accepting our limits in the faith of the wise love which appoints them. For~~lf ^rer-are-gtving God glory in what He gives us to know, it will not be difficult to give Him the further glory of being peaceful and at rest concerning the darkness which remains : not doubting that what we know not must be in harmony with what we know ; and would be seen by us to be so if God saw it good that the remaining darkness should altogether pass away: if indeed it is possible in the nature of things that it should pass away. For we can believe that much is embraced in the divine conscious- ness and in the relation of the , creature to God which it may be incompatible with creature limits that we should know. Yet on the other hand that is a large word "Then shall we know even as also we are known." THE FRUIT OF FAITH IN LIGHT. 1 59 But this aspect of our minds towards mystery and reverent submitting to darkness is alto- gether different from that glory which was supposed to be given to God by the acceptance of mysteries, and which came very early to be regarded as a very special honouring of God : insomuch that the acceptance of mysteries was regarded as the highest obedience of faith, hesitation to receive mysteries as rebellion of spirit. Faith was a believing on divine autho- rity. In proportion as belief rested exclusively on that authority did it honour God. All that made belief difficult raised the measure of the honour rendered. Mystery seemed ap- pointed for the trial and development of faith. Light exists, darkness exists. The darkness affords the higher opportunity of giving glory to God. Surely this was an inversion of the divine order. It is light that enables us to give glory to God. What glory He has in our submitting to darkness is properly a glory which the light enables us to give ; for it is but one form of l6o LIGHT, NOT DARKNESS, SAVES the confidence in God which the light inspires. The submission to darkness which has not this faith in light underly ing it is but submitting to necessity. "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.'' Such words prepare us to find light — not darkness — "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." But it is in realising the nature of the light given, — that that light is love— that we understand the relative places of light and darkness and what is our right state of mind in regard to each. If the divine light be the divine love, the demand which Revelation makes on the heart should take precedence of that which is made on the understanding. The essence of its utterance, as the voice of the Eternal Father, is to each of us " My Son give me thine heart" — to us collectively "Ye are all brethren." This was understood at the beginning ; but it early came to pass that THE QUEST OF ORTHODOXY Revelation was regarded as making its demand on the intellect not on the heart ; and the intellect meeting the demand without help from the heart only yielded — it could do no more — submission to the divine authority, and so not love but orthodoxy came to have the supreme value : with hard and most unloving results as we know. I am not to be . understood as undervaluing orthodoxy any more than as rejecting mystery or impatient of intellectual limits, or as at all refusing to believe in the supernatural. What I say is that the divine purpose of love to reveal itself and impart itself not being used as the key-thought, a trite orthodoxy has not been attained, and the acceptance of mystery having a wrong place given to it and a false value, the sense of mystery became a snare ; and a religion became possible, and in time was developed, in which obedience in darkness and not the response of love in the light of love has been regarded as the God-glorifying faith. I say a true orthodoxy has not been attained ; for the L 62 XOT IN THE LIGHT OF LOVE intellect attempting to systematize the discov- eries of Revelation, not in the light of love, could not fail to err, as the blind would do if discour- sing of colours. 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