Scs #)0°i 
 
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THE UNCONDITIONAL 
 
 FREENESS OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
Edinburgh : Printed by Thomas and Archibald Constable. 
 
 FOR 
 
 EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. 
 
 LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE. 
 
THE 
 
 UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE GOSPEL 
 
 BY THOMAS EBSKINE 
 
 OF LISLATHEST. 
 
 New Edition. 
 
 EDINBUKGH 
 
 EDMONSTON" AND DOUGLAS 
 
 1873. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/unconditionalfreOOersk 
 
NOTE. 
 
 The lamented author of this valuable work 
 had long refused to permit its republication, 
 on the ground that it no longer adequately re- 
 presented his thoughts on the subject. 
 
 At last, however, yielding to repeated solici- 
 tation, he was induced to listen to its reperusal, 
 and became satisfied as to the substantial har- 
 mony between his later thoughts and the 
 teaching which is embodied in its pages, 
 
 Although unable from physical weakness to 
 take any active part in the revision, it was 
 with his entire and intelligent sanction that 
 those passages have been omitted which had 
 reference to forms of erroneous doctrine no 
 
VI NOTE. 
 
 longer prominent in the teaching of the day ; 
 and the few actual changes which have been 
 made, were either dictated by himself, or cor- 
 dially approved of by him. 
 
 May 20, 1870. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DIFFICULTIES AS TO THE FREEDOM OF THE GOSPEL, 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 FORGIVENESS THE MEANS NOT THE END CONTEM- 
 PLATED IN THE GOSPEL, 31 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE TRUE MEANING OF JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH, 62 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CONSIDERATION OF SOME PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 REFERRING TO THE SUBJECT, .... 93 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SYMPATHY WITH THE MIND OF GOD, . . . 110 
 
V1U CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY THE FOREGOING RE- 
 MARKS, 126 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CONSISTENCY BETWEEN PRESENT FORGIVE- 
 NESS AND FUTURE JUDGMENT, .... 150 
 
INTBODUCTOBY CHAPTER 
 
 Difficulties as to the Freedom of the Gospel. 
 When we tell a man that salvation is per- Apparent 
 
 contradic- 
 
 fectly gratuitous, whilst, at the same time, we tionsj 
 tell him that unless he believes the gospel he 
 cannot be saved, we appear to him to be say- 
 ing free and anfree with one breath. And 
 we increase his difficulties when we add, 
 ( ' Except a man be born again, he cannot see 
 the kingdom of God." The gratuitousness of 
 the salvation seems altogether to vanish in the 
 presence of these high and weighty conditions. 
 And yet, if faith and holiness are not appended 
 as conditions of salvation, where is their place 
 in the Christian system ? If Christian doctrine 
 is not believed, it can be of no use ; and if 
 Christian faith does not produce Christian 
 
2 THE UNCONDITIONAL FKEENESS 
 
 holiness, it can be of no use either. Are not 
 faith and holiness then conditions of salvation % 
 And if there are any conditions of salvation, 
 where is its gratuitousness? 
 
 I am well aware that there are many Chris- 
 tians who do not perceive these difficulties at 
 all, and who of course are not disquieted by 
 them. The object of their contemplation is 
 not a theological system, but the great Being 
 whose nature and relation to us form the theme 
 of theology, — and their delight is not in the 
 logical coherence of their theory, but in 
 spiritual communion with Him. Such persons 
 are indeed blessed, — and instead of presuming 
 to teach them, I desire to learn from them. 
 But there are persons of a very different de- 
 scription. There are many who are kept at a 
 distance from Christianity altogether by these 
 apparent contradictions; and there are even 
 many real Christians who have suffered much 
 perplexity from them. To such believers and 
 unbelievers, I humbly offer the solution which 
 has satisfied myself. 
 
 I think that much of the theoretical diffi- 
 culty on this matter has arisen from the habit 
 of considering salvation and condemnation 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 3 
 
 merely as future; and this again arises from 
 considering them as outside of ourselves, as 
 dependent on a sentence of God concerning 
 us, rather than as consisting in very deed in 
 the state of our own being. Now, the Bible 
 tells us that the kingdom of heaven is " right- 
 eousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
 Ghost," and it describes the future happiness 
 as consisting in likeness to Christ: "We shall 
 be like him, for we shall see him as he is." We 
 are told that it shall be said on the last day to 
 those on the right hand, "Enter into the joy 
 of your Lord." This shows that their joy is 
 to be of the same nature as their Lord's. His 
 joy on earth was to do the will of his Father, 
 — it was his meat, as he himself expresses it ; 
 and, now in heaven, his satisfaction consists 
 in " seeing of the travail of his soul ;" that is, 
 in seeing the advancement and accomplish- 
 ment of the objects for which he came into 
 the world. Those who enter into this joy 
 must also enter into the Saviour's likeness, — 
 for only holy and loving beings could enjoy 
 this joy. Salvation therefore cannot be a 
 thing of place or time ; in its essence it must 
 be the same here and hereafter ; and it fol- 
 
4 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 lows that the idea of having heaven without 
 holiness, is like the idea of having health with- 
 out being well, it is a contradiction in terms. 
 The disease Christianity may be considered as a divinely 
 
 of the soul, J J J 
 
 medicine. rey ealed system of medical treatment for dis- 
 eased spirits. Heaven is the name for health 
 in the soul, and hell is the name for disease ; 
 and the design of Christianity is to produce 
 heaven, and to destroy hell. 
 
 But what is the meaning of pardon, unless 
 there are rewards and punishments % Does 
 not the very idea of pardon suppose the exist- 
 ence of law and condemnation % Yes, but the 
 deliverance from condemnation, which we call 
 pardon, may be understood in two senses. It 
 may be regarded as the removal of a penalty 
 arbitrarily inflicted by a judge who views the 
 transgression and pronounces sentence against 
 it merely in reference to its deserts, or as the 
 revelation of a fatherly love which survives 
 our sin, and which will not cease to seek the 
 deliverance of the sinner from sin, till, by the 
 awakening of filial trust in the sinner's heart, 
 the end is attained. 
 
 Those, therefore, who maintain the gratuit- 
 ousness and universality of pardon, do not at 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 5 
 
 all suppose that God is indifferent to right and 
 wrong in His creatures, — for they regard the 
 pardon as the spiritual medicine for the re- 
 moval of sin. 
 
 When the apostle proclaims, as the sub- 
 stance of his gospel, " Be it known unto you, 
 men and brethren, that through this man is 
 preached unto you the forgiveness of sins," 
 he adds, "And by him all who believe are 
 justified from all things f that is, they are 
 set right with God by faith in His forgiving 
 love thus proclaimed. Being justified freely 
 by His grace, they have peace with Him, — 
 past sin is no longer a barrier, — they can trust 
 His purposes concerning them, and are thus 
 set free to love Him. 
 
 Suppose a man were relieved from all judi- 
 cial infliction, whilst the disease of his soul 
 remained unchanged, — would he be happy \ 
 Does the misery of man, at this hour, arise 
 simply from death and pain and absence from 
 Eden % Would a healthy immortality, in a 
 beautiful garden, make him happy ? Would 
 the presence of God make him happy 1 Alas ! 
 life itself, abstracted from pain or sickness, is 
 often a heavy burden, — and the presence of 
 
6 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 the holy God, far from being sought as a bless- 
 ing, would be shunned as a curse by an unholy 
 being. 
 
 No. The misery of man does not arise 
 merely from positive infliction, and could not 
 be relieved by the mere removal of judicial 
 penalties. 
 
 What is the misery of man ? It is that his 
 mind is diseased. He was made to regard and 
 enjoy God as his chief object ; and his facul- 
 ties will not work healthfully in the absence 
 of this object. But he has left God, and wearies 
 himself in seeking good from created things. 
 The love of God is to the human spirit what 
 the key-stone is to the arch ; ruin is the con- 
 sequence when it falls from its place. And 
 thus, we see that man s reason bewilders him, 
 and his conscience harasses him, — his imagina- 
 tion deceives and disquiets him, — his passions 
 and affections agitate and torture him. He 
 has a misery wrought into the very elements 
 of his being, independent altogether of positive 
 infliction. This misery is rarely felt in all its 
 force here ; sometimes, in consequence of the 
 occupation and distraction which the mind 
 finds in external things, it is scarcely felt at 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 all ; but when these are removed, the unhappi- 
 ness is felt. Hence the horror of solitary con- 
 finement, without the means of occupation. 
 Hence, also, the misery of the spirit is some- 
 times even alleviated by external inflictions, 
 because they draw its attention from itself. 
 
 When I can lay the blame of my misery on 
 anything external to me, there may be hope 
 of deliverance, for I can distinguish between 
 myself and my sorrow. But it is a terrific 
 discovery to make, that I am myself my own 
 misery. I had supposed the source of the evil 
 to be elsewhere, and retreated, as I thought, 
 within myself. But the more I retreated in 
 that direction, the more intense and intoler- 
 able the heat became. My own mind was the 
 furnace. This is indeed appalling, for how am 
 I to escape from myself 1 
 
 But how, it may be asked, is pardon to cure 
 this misery % We can understand how pardon 
 might remove an external infliction, but how 
 can it remove this internal disease ? 
 
 I answer : The great cause of the disorder 
 and misery which distract the human mind is 
 averseness or indifference to God. The love 
 of God, the key-stone of the arch, is fallen 
 
8 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 from its place, and all has, in consequence, 
 gone to wreck. The sense of sin continually 
 increases this averseness of the heart from 
 God, because pollution hates and shrinks from 
 holiness, and an accusing conscience dreads 
 avenging justice. The only cure for this 
 dreadful and wide-spreading disorder, must 
 therefore be something which will replace the 
 key-stone in the arch, — something which will 
 rekindle love towards God, by taking away 
 fear and inspiring confidence. 
 
 Now, the manifestation of the character of 
 God contained in the gift of Christ is exactly 
 fitted for this purpose. It is not a mere de- 
 liverance from penalties. Indeed, the penalties 
 are not cancelled — death still remains, and 
 man toils and sweats still on the outside of 
 Eden. The forgiveness of the gospel meets 
 the penalties of the law, not by cancelling 
 them, but by associating them with the pur- 
 pose of a loving Father to deliver from sin, 
 instead of a purpose of mere retribution. 
 Death remains, but there is the promise of 
 new and endless life beyond the grave. Eden 
 is still barred, and man still eats his bread at 
 the price of labour ; but the access into the 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 9 
 
 real presence of God is thrown open • all are 
 invited and urged to come in. He hath loved 
 us, and given Himself fox us. The medicinal 
 virtue of the gospel— -the virtue which heals 
 the disease of the soul, which destroys enmity 
 and enkindles holy love, which does away the 
 cowardly fear of punishment, and at the same 
 time implants and strengthens the holy fear of 
 sinning, — the medicinal virtue which effects 
 this lies in the manifestation of that love of 
 God which passeth knowledge, that holy love 
 with which God so loved the world as to give 
 His only begotten Son for it. 
 
 Love is the great principle developed in the 
 gospel, which reveals the union of an infinite 
 abhorrence towards sin, and an infinite love 
 towards the sinner. This mysterious history 
 is the mighty instrument with which the Spirit 
 of God breaks the power of sin in the heart, 
 and establishes holy love and filial dependence. 
 
 It is impossible to look into the Bible, with Teaching of 
 
 r ... the Bible. 
 
 the most ordinary attention, without feeling 
 that we have got into a moral atmosphere quite 
 different from that which we breathe in the 
 world, and in which the world lives. 
 
1 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 In the Bible, God is represented as doing 
 everything, and as being the cause and the 
 end of everything ; and man appears only as 
 he stands related to God, — either as a revolted 
 creature or as the subject of Divine grace. 
 Whereas in the world, and in the books which 
 contain the history of the world from its own 
 point of view, man appears to do everything, 
 and there is as little reference to God as if 
 there was no such Beino; in the universe. "The 
 fool hath said in his heart, No God — we desire 
 none. Our lips are our own ; we are they that 
 ought to speak ; who is Lord over us ? " There 
 seems to be a general agreement to shut God 
 out of the world which He has made, and to 
 suppress all reports of His claims and rights 
 and sovereign power. The old serpent, who 
 deceived our race, and poisoned it in its root, 
 by that well-chosen temptation addressed to 
 our first parents, " Ye shall be as gods," seems 
 to have spoken the word into their very souls, 
 so that it has become a part of their being — a 
 part of their nature, which they have trans- 
 mitted to their posterity. All would be gods. 
 And men live in this lie, and strengthen each 
 other in it, and they die in it. 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 1 1 
 
 Nothing seems more evident, even to reason, Man 
 than that a creature can have nothing but what re 
 it receives from its Creator. But the pride of 
 man's heart revolts at the idea of being a re- 
 ceiver. Alas ! this pride is his foolishness, for 
 it has separated him from the ever full and ever 
 flowing fountain of Divine love. He was 
 formed to be a happy member of the family of 
 God. All the members of that family are 
 closely united to God ; He is their Creator and 
 their Fountain, their Head, their Heart. Their 
 life-blood is His Holy Spirit flowing freely and 
 fully through them. They are mere receivers, 
 but they are receivers of God, — of the love and 
 holiness and joy of God. He is their strength 
 to will and to do. In His light they see light, 
 and in His glory they are glorious. He is their 
 full-satisfying eternal portion, abiding in them 
 and they in Him. He feeds them with the 
 hidden manna, and gives them to drink of the 
 water of life. His Spirit unites all the mem- 
 bers of the family to each other, and there is 
 no schism in that body ; they have all their 
 place in Him, they are all one in Him and with 
 Him. They are dependent, but it is this very 
 Spirit of dependence which keeps open all the 
 
12 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 sluices and avenues of their souls to admit the 
 fulness of God. Each is a distinct individual, 
 conscious of his own peculiar duties and pecu- 
 liar blessedness, but the principle which unites 
 him to God is stronger than the principle of 
 separate individuality ; he is more a member of 
 God's family than an individual ; and as this 
 principle uniting him to God is stronger than 
 the principle of his own individuality, he sees 
 and judges and feels things in the light of 
 God and as they relate to Him, rather than in 
 his own light, or as they relate to himself in- 
 dividually. He is a sharer in the common 
 light and common interests of the family ; there 
 is not a holy feeling in the universe to which 
 his heart does not vibrate ; he enters into the 
 joy of his Lord, and that embraces all joys. 
 
 We look at this picture from a distance, and 
 wonder at the madness of man, which banished 
 him from so fair a scene ; but we need go no 
 further than our own hearts to see the cause of 
 this sad banishment. The spirit of dependence 
 is lost, — that open door by which God enters 
 the heart. The spirit of independence shuts 
 the heart against God, and cuts off its supply 
 from the Fountain of Life. " Open thy mouth 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 13 
 
 wide and I will fill it," says our God ; but we 
 refuse to hearken. " My people would not hear 
 my voice, Israel would none of me." 
 
 Oh what a mass of misery was before the 
 mind of our God when He uttered these words ! 
 They are few and simple, but they describe a 
 madness and iniquity and sorrow passing utter- 
 ance ! Yet they breathe compassion ; and in 
 this lies our hope, for it is the compassion of God. 
 As the approving love of God is the light and 
 air and joy of His unfallen family, so His tender 
 mercies, His long-suffering, His holy compas- 
 sion, manifested in Christ Jesus, are the only 
 hope of return to those who are fallen. As 
 His approving love could enter the hearts of 
 His unfallen children by no other avenue but 
 the open door of their dependence, even so 
 must His holy compassion enter our hearts. 
 
 Humility is but another name for the spirit The nature 
 of dependence. It is the realization of our true humility, 
 condition before God, and of our true relation 
 to Him. The world does not know what hu- 
 mility means ; the world's humility is mere dif- 
 fidence or fear or affectation ; but real humility 
 is truth and confidence and assured hope : for 
 the truly humble heart recognises itself as a 
 
14 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 receiver, and feels content to be so ; it hears 
 its Lord's voice saying, " Open thy mouth wide 
 and I will fill it ; " it opens and receives the 
 fulness of the blessing. "For thus saith the 
 High and Lofty One, who inhabiteth eternity, 
 I dwell in the high and holy place, with him 
 also that is of a humble and contrite heart, to 
 revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive 
 the heart of the contrite ones." Humility is 
 the acceptance of the true spiritual order. It 
 teaches the branch to abide in the vine. It 
 restores the disordered hierarchy in the heart 
 by replacing God upon His throne there. 
 Humility is simply truth, and independence 
 is nothing but a lie, honouring the branch 
 above the vine, the member above the body, 
 and the creature above the Creator, — calling a 
 stream the fountain, and a planet the sun. 
 
 It is impossible that the creature can per- 
 form a single spiritual act aright whilst it con- 
 tinues in independence. A branch torn from 
 the tree ceases to have its vegetable life, and is 
 no longer capable of performing the functions 
 of that life, because the sap of the root no 
 longer circulates through it. And man separat- 
 ing himself from the spiritual system loses his 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 1 5 
 
 spiritual life and his capacity of spiritual action; 
 for the life-blood of that system, even the Holy 
 Spirit, no longer animates him. 
 
 And yet, as if impelled by the uneradicated 
 instincts of his original nature, formed for the 
 exercise and enjoyment of spiritual life he often 
 desires and attempts to perform the functions 
 of that life, not considering that he has cut 
 himself off from the source which alone sup- 
 plies life and strength for the performance of 
 these functions. 
 
 A hand separated from the strength of the 
 body by dislocation or fracture is incapable of 
 doing any service to the body ; every effort to 
 use a hand in these circumstances would be 
 vain ; the only reasonable hope lies in adopting 
 means for curing the dislocation or fracture. 
 Even so, man's only hope lies in his reunion 
 with God, in his being grafted on the true vine 
 through the spirit of dependence. Nothing 
 done by independent human effort can have the 
 nature of spiritual life ; it is out of the spiri- 
 tual order ; therefore it is that the Scriptures 
 sometimes seem to speak more of what God 
 has done for grafting man again into the vine, 
 than of what is required from man as duty. 
 
16 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 When God has enlarged man's heart — when 
 man has been delivered from the narrowness of 
 his own selfish individuality and grafted on the 
 root of God's infinite love and quickened by 
 His free Spirit — then he will run in the way 
 of God's commandments. 
 
 centre and So l° n g as man remains the centre of his 
 centre! 6 own system, it is merely a matter of interested 
 consideration how much he should sacrifice to 
 the will of God, in order to secure himself from 
 the consequences of Divine displeasure. Such 
 negotiation has nothing of true religion in it ; 
 there is nothing in common between such feel- 
 ings and the generous uncalculating devoted- 
 ness of a child of God. It is from taking this 
 view of religion that metaphysicians have often 
 regarded it as a mere variety of the selfish 
 system of morals ; they suppose heaven and 
 hell to be the great motives in Christianity, 
 and these they regard only as reward and 
 punishment addressed to the interested feelings 
 of selfish hope and fear. But this is altogether 
 a misapprehension. Selfish hope or fear may 
 drive a man to seek after religion, but religion 
 itself is another thing : it is the displacing of 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 17 
 
 this selfish individuality from its supremacy 
 in the heart, and restoring that supremacy to 
 Him whose right it is. 
 
 The moral reformations which men make on 
 themselves, uninfluenced by the Spirit of God, 
 are but the results of a refined selfishness. 
 They give up certain gratifications, because 
 they perceive that their evil consequences in 
 the future overbalance any present pleasure 
 they can give ; but the doctrine of self-denial, 
 as such, is foolishness to them. They say, 
 Show us that certain privations are good for 
 our health or our reputation or our safety, and 
 we shall feel it to be our wisdom to submit to 
 them ; but the idea of putting down self, as 
 self, is unintelligible. Yet the fall of man 
 consists in self having taken the place of God 
 in the heart ; and the object of the Christian 
 duty of self-denial is not merely to pay homage 
 to God, but to weaken this usurper in our 
 hearts, and to unbar that door which shuts 
 God out. 
 
 This leads to a true view of God's purpose 
 in making the life of man so full of sorrow. 
 Sorrow indeed cannot of itself break the self- 
 ishness of the heart. Ungodly sorrow is as 
 
 B 
 
18 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 selfish as ungodly joy. Its language sounds 
 more like religion than that of joy, but in 
 reality they are not much unlike. Joy rests 
 in the present while the stream runs smooth. 
 Sorrow looks at the future, because the present 
 is painful ; it looks to heaven, because earth is 
 darkened ; and it wishes that God, or any other 
 Being who can, would deliver it from its pain. 
 But this is still self ; it is Pharaoh trembling 
 under the rod of Moses ; it is man growing 
 out of his own root, and seeing things in his 
 own light. And so we often find that when 
 the pain is removed, the repentance disappears 
 along with it. "When He smote them, they 
 sought Him ; but within a while, they forgat 
 his works, and would none of His counsel." 
 When Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he 
 hardened his heart. 
 
 Sorrow alone cannot take man off his own 
 root, and graft him on the true vine. This is 
 work for Him who made us. Yet there is a 
 great use in sorrow. It gives pause to the 
 soul, it shows us that we are not able of our- 
 selves to help ourselves, and that the creature 
 cannot satisfy us. It acquaints us with the 
 fact that God's way is different from our way, 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 19 
 
 and presses us to inquire into the cause of 
 this difference ; and above all, it suggests the 
 thought of prayer, because it awakens a sense 
 of need, and thus, by the Divine blessing, it 
 often becomes the instrument of drawing wan- 
 dering sinners back to God. 
 
 I have sometimes been led to think that in Relation' 
 
 between 
 
 our modern svstems of religion the relation the Creator 
 
 J ° and the 
 
 between the Creator and the creature is too creature - 
 much lost sight of, and merged in the par- 
 ticular doctrines of Christianity. No doubt, 
 it may be answered that this relation is sup- 
 posed and taken for granted in all religions. 
 But this is not enough. The creative and 
 sovereign and personal omnipotence of God 
 is, to our minds, the basis of Deity ; and the 
 sentiment of creaturely dependence on Him, 
 which arises out of our recognition of it, and 
 corresponds to it, is the basis of religion. The 
 doctrines of Christianity are necessary as the 
 declarations of the character of the omnipotent 
 Creator ; but without the sense of His living 
 reality there can be no religion, and Christi- 
 anity becomes a mere set of notions. 
 
 There can be no doubt that a great deal of 
 the Christianity of our day is of this spurious 
 
20 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 kind, or at least has a mixture of it. And 
 there are times in which God, by His dealings 
 with us, sends a fearful conviction of its un- 
 reality into the heart. He brings a genuine 
 reality, such as death, and sets it before us, 
 and makes us feel how mere notions melt into 
 nothing at its presence, and how utterly vain 
 and valueless any doctrines are which do not 
 unite us to God, by a bond as real as death is 
 real. The living personality of God must, if 
 I may use the expression, animate and fill out 
 our systems of Christian doctrine — otherwise 
 they only tend to add a fatal security to the 
 sleep of the soul. They may be subjects of 
 talk to us, as the gods of gold and silver fur- 
 nished talk to Belshazzar and his lords, until 
 some providence surprise us, as the hand- 
 writing on the wall surprised them, and make 
 us feel and know what it is to be in the pre- 
 sence of the real God, whom we have not 
 glorified. 
 
 I feel persuaded, that no idea of a power 
 external to us, however mighty, can ever pro- 
 duce the sentiment of creaturely dependence 
 in the heart ; there must be the sense of God v 
 within us, as the root and basis of our being, 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 21 
 
 — as the continual supplier of strength for 
 thought and action, — as "the fountain from 
 which our current runs, or else dries up." 
 
 The Bible is full of this idea and feeling of 
 God, subjective as well as objective. He is 
 there not only the light which the eye sees, 
 but He is the power of the eye to see the 
 light. That practical atheism may enter into 
 the profession of religion, and may even be- 
 come a zealous partisan of orthodox Christi- 
 anity, is a fact which ought to produce much 
 watchfulness and self-distrust. But the God 
 who is revealed and contained in the doc- 
 trines, He it is alone who alarms and assails 
 the independence of the natural man. When 
 they are separated from Him and His omni- 
 potence, — when they become mere syllogisms 
 or emblazonments, they can take their place 
 under the dark shadow of the atheism of the 
 heart as well as the syllogisms or emblazon- 
 ments of any other science. 
 
 But how different are these forms from the 
 overawing reality with which the doctrines 
 are animated in the Bible ! And oh ! how dif- 
 ferent is the effect produced by them on the 
 hearts of their partisans, from those cries and 
 
22 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 breathings of the creature after the Creator, 
 which are embalmed in the sacred record, and 
 which still seem to ascend to heaven like in- 
 cense from an altar ! " As the hart panteth 
 after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul 
 after thee, God. My soul thirsteth for God, 
 for the living God ; when shall I come and 
 appear before God V " Thy hands have made 
 me, and fashioned me ; give me understand- 
 ing, that I may keep thy commandments." 
 " I will abide in thy tabernacle for ever, I will 
 trust in the covert of thy wings." " I am 
 thine, save me." Happy spirit, thou hast 
 found thy fountain ! thy cry enters with ac- 
 ceptance into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. 
 " When thou saidst unto me, Seek ye my face, 
 my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will 
 I seek." Surely this sweet communion be- 
 tween heaven and earth is true religion. Oh 
 for the putting forth of that power which 
 made the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak, 
 that such sounds might enter our hearts, and 
 draw forth such answers. To a spirit thus 
 bound by a real bond to the living God, life 
 and death are equal, for it finds the will of 
 God in either, and His will is its delight. It 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 23 
 
 finds God in everything, and God is its por- 
 tion. When Jesus says, "Behold, I come 
 quickly," it answers, " Even so, come, Lord 
 Jesus." This is to walk with God. 
 
 There is something inexpressibly mysterious 
 and solemn in the relation of the creature to 
 the Creator. There is no parallel to it in the 
 universe. When I think of it, I am over- 
 whelmed by it. I am unable to conceive how 
 I have the consciousness of a separate exist- 
 ence distinct from my Creator. It seems to 
 me that I am in regard to Him as a ray of 
 light to the sun, proceeding continually out of 
 His substance, and having no individuality of 
 my own. 
 
 We are apt to lower our idea of this rela- 
 tion, by comparing it to the relation between 
 men and their works. The potter forms the 
 clay into a vessel, and that vessel is then 
 completely independent of him — it does not 
 require his thought or power to uphold its 
 existence. And thus we are prone to think 
 of God and His works as if they could exist 
 independently of Him. But there is a vast 
 difference. The potter merely takes advan- 
 tage of the laws of nature, which are in con- 
 
24 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 tinual action independently of him, and as it 
 was by the application of their power that he 
 fashioned it, so they uphold his work after it 
 is finished. Thus, in fact, the potter creates 
 nothing, he only changes the position of the 
 clay. But the laws of nature are the continual 
 actings of God. There is no power in the 
 universe but His, and where His power is, 
 there is He. He made the clay, and sustains 
 it with all its qualities, whatever form may be 
 given to it ; and the cessation of His ivill 
 that it should exist, would be the cessation of 
 its existence. The course of nature — the ele- 
 ments — the order of events — the existence and 
 movement of all matter — are the direct act- 
 ings of God. And are not the existence and 
 movement of mind, too, His actings ? Surely 
 it must be so ; my will is the sustained crea- 
 ture of His will from moment to moment, in- 
 capable of a single act without power com- 
 municated from Him, — and yet I am conscious 
 that it works contrary to Him, and that it is 
 morally responsible for so doing. This is too 
 wonderful for me, I cannot attain unto it. 
 Lord, thou hast beset me behind and before, 
 and laid Thine hand upon me. 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 25 
 
 With what feelings ought I to regard Him, 
 to whose infinite mind my individual existence, 
 with every particular of my history through 
 the future eternity, has been from all past 
 eternity a distinct and familiar idea \ It was 
 a birth of His mind from all eternity. At 
 length He realized it, by calling me into life 
 and giving me a substantial existence, — and He 
 has ever since sustained this life, by His con- 
 tinually pervading presence in every part of 
 my soul and body. 
 
 I have never been a single moment separ- 
 ated from Him. It is impossible that I should 
 be separated from Him without ceasing to 
 exist. I have never been alone— and I know 
 that through eternity I shall never be alone. 
 I am sure that I have never formed a thought, 
 nor uttered a word, nor done a deed, of which 
 He has not been most intimately cognisant, 
 and in which He has not been Himself the 
 acting power, enabling me to think, and speak, 
 and do. 
 
 And here is the great marvel. I am con- 
 scious that these thoughts, and words, and 
 deeds have been full of sin, and yet my con- 
 science acquits Him, and lays the undivided 
 
26 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 blame upon myself. Who can solve this diffi- 
 culty ? 
 
 What an unspeakable relation is this ! And 
 what an infinite possibility of enjoyment arises 
 out of this perpetually pervading presence, 
 seeing it is a presence of infinite holiness and 
 love and beauty and wisdom ! It seems as if 
 He were too near me to see Him, as the eye 
 sees not itself ; yet I feel assured that until I 
 see Him and feel Him in His perpetually per- 
 vading presence of infinite holiness, and love 
 and beauty and wisdom, I cannot have that 
 good for which I was created. His presence is 
 my real home and my real portion, and until I 
 become sensible of it, I am without a home 
 and without a portion in the universe. 
 
 It is appalling to know that there is a Being 
 so near me, surrounding me, and inhabiting 
 me, and yet that He should remain unseen and 
 unknown by me ; and is it not still more ap- 
 palling to know that in this Being and His 
 relation with me is treasured up a possibility 
 of good beyond utterance and beyond concep- 
 tion, and yet that I may have no part in it ? 
 Alas ! that I should have a sense which informs 
 me of the presence of material light, and makes 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 27 
 
 it a pleasant thing for me to behold the sun, 
 and that I should have no sense to inform me 
 of the presence of the Light of Life, and to 
 give me joy in conversing with His brightness. 
 The spirit of dependence is the spirit of re- 
 ligion, and the spirit of independence is the 
 spirit of atheism and of idolatry. 1 This atheism 
 
 1 At first sight it appears remarkable, that the Bible should 
 at the same moment charge men with the guilt of idolatry, and 
 of atheism. It would seem impossible that the same indivi- 
 dual should be guilty of both. Atheism consists in having no 
 God, and idolatry seems to consist in having too many. But, in 
 fact, there is no God in idolatry any more than in atheism. The 
 notion of various independent powers, which is the spirit of 
 idolatry, is the spirit of atheism. God is the one power which 
 does all things, and the one Fountain from which all things flow. 
 The course of nature and providence — the course of life and 
 being, are the actings of that power, and the streams from that 
 fountain. The spirit of religion goes directly to this first cause, 
 seeing, acknowledging, and feeling it in all things ; it regards 
 second causes, whether they be the elements of nature or the 
 actions of men, as mere channels through which this first and 
 only cause operates ; it stops not at them ; it regards life as a 
 holy thing flowing out of this Fountain, and returning thither, 
 it lives, and moves, and has its being in God, by the spirit of 
 its will as well as by the necessity of its nature. The spirit of 
 atheism and idolatry alike stops short at second causes ; seeing 
 independent powers in everything, and itself claiming independ- 
 ence. It acknowledges that there are powers stronger than 
 itself, as one man is stronger than another. But it regards 
 existence as its own possession, though liable to be invaded and 
 affected by superior powers, and on this possession it can stand 
 and parley, and make conditions with these powers, whatever 
 they may be. 
 
28 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 of the heart then — this insensibility to God — 
 this blindness to His direct actings — this spirit 
 of independence, under the influence of which 
 we live surrounded by God, and sustained by 
 Him, and yet entirely unconnected with Him 
 in spirit and desire, this being the evil to be 
 remedied by Christianity, does it not seem 
 most reasonable to expect that there should be 
 in the remedy an especial putting forth of the 
 direct agency of God, and that He should 
 reveal Himself through it in such a way that 
 the soul may know and feel that it is God 
 of a truth that worketh, and none other than 
 He? 
 
 The branch separated from the vine cannot 
 graft itself on again ; if it could, the order of 
 nature would be subverted. And man sepa- 
 rated from God cannot, according to the order 
 of a higher nature, again unite himself to 
 God. Indeed, this appears to me so full of the 
 highest reason and evidence, that I should 
 consider the great purpose of Christianity ab- 
 solutely defeated, were it possible for man to 
 become a Christian by his own unassisted 
 efforts, or without a conviction of the neces- 
 sity of divine assistance. Nay, it would be 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 29 
 
 an absurdity — it would be teaching the spirit 
 of dependence by an argument for independ- 
 ence — it would be leading man to repose his 
 all on God by showing him that he could do 
 without God. 
 
 The true state of the creature is a state of 
 absolute dependence on the Creator, and when 
 he has left his true state, he can only be 
 brought back to it by Him from whom he has 
 wandered, and by a way of absolute depend- 
 ence. All the messages of God to man have 
 related to this way of return, and have been 
 filled with the most urgent calls to come back 
 by it, and the most solemn warnings against 
 refusing the voice of Him who speaketh from 
 heaven. All these messages have been mes- 
 sages of love. And man needs such a message, 
 for his conscience testifies against him, and 
 tells him of his sin, and of God's just dis- 
 pleasure at sin, and thus forbids the spirit of 
 confidence, while at the same time it commands 
 the spirit of dependence. 
 
 Therefore the gospel is indeed a welcome 
 message ; for itjells of the love of God to sin- 
 ners,— of His having provided an atonement 
 for sin, and of His open arms ready to embrace 
 
30 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 all who come to Him through this atonement, 
 The knowledge of the grace of God through 
 Jesus Christ converts the dependence of neces- 
 sity into a dependence of love, and thus grafts 
 man into the true vine. 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 3 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Forgiveness the means not the end contemplated in 
 the Gospel. 
 
 " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all ^p^Sce 
 thy heart and mind, and soul and strength, and ^te'of the. 
 thy neighbour as thyself." On these two com- creature - 
 manclments hang all the law and the prophets; 
 and the whole object of the gospel is the ful- 
 filling of them in our hearts. They describe 
 the perfection of man's spiritual state. They 
 describe his confiding devoted dependence on 
 the great Eoot of the spiritual family, and his 
 fraternal sympathy with all the branches. 
 When the love of the Creator is the dominant 
 principle in the creature's heart, it keeps all 
 the other principles and faculties and relations 
 of the soul in their proper place. It is the true 
 keystone of the arch, which gives strength by 
 maintaining order. It is the principle which 
 
32 THE UNCONDITIONAL FKEENESS 
 
 connects the creature with the spiritual system, 
 enabling it to receive of the fulness of the 
 Creator. 
 
 The fall of this key-stone from its place in 
 man's heart was, and is, the fall of man from 
 his place in the family of God. Self and the 
 creature took the place of God, and each man 
 became an independent individual, — loving 
 and desiring and approving things according 
 as they affected himself, without regard to the 
 will of God or the sympathies of the universal 
 family. This is the fall and the sin and the 
 misery of man, — that the first and paramount 
 relation has not the first and paramount place 
 in his heart, and that self — the principle of in- 
 dividuality — has usurped that place, and has 
 thus cut off the blessed communication between 
 God and man, which had been, and could only 
 be, maintained through the channel of a su- 
 preme affection. 
 
 And as this is the fall of man, so his restora- 
 tion can be nothing else than the restoration of 
 the love of God as the paramount principle in 
 the heart, resulting in the due subordination 
 of self and the creature under it. Any remedy 
 which falls below this restoration falls below 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 33 
 
 man's need. No pardon which leaves this 
 undone is of any value to him. He needs no 
 infliction from without to make him miserable, 
 — and it is not the removal of any outward in- 
 fliction that can give him happiness. He must 
 love God supremely. He must know that God 
 is better than happiness, and that sin is worse 
 than sorrow. The love of God, not the desire 
 of happiness, is the true keystone of the arch. 
 " He that will save his life shall lose it, and he 
 that will lose his life for my sake shall find it." 
 But if he loses his life not for Christ's sake, 
 but with the hope of saving it, he is out of the 
 order of the blessing. For the very object of 
 the gospel is to displace self and the creature 
 from the heart, and to restore the love of God 
 to the supremacy which is its due, thus restor- 
 ing man to his place in the family of God. It 
 effects this object by setting before us in Christ 
 Jesus a true representation of the gracious 
 character of God in relation to His rebellious 
 creatures. Christ is the revelation of God in 
 relation to sinners. The gospel tells us how 
 full of love He is towards sinners, in all his 
 feelings and in all his actions. It tells us of a 
 love beyond utterance and conception, — of his 
 c 
 
34 THE UNCONDITIONAL FEEENESS 
 
 humbling himself even to the death of the 
 cross for them, of his suffering for them on 
 earth, of his reigning for them in heaven ; and 
 then it says that he who hath seen Jesus hath 
 seen the Father. The gospel tells us that this 
 is our God, the God who made us and with 
 whom we have to do, that this is He from 
 whom we have been turning away with fear 
 or indifference, and who yet has all along been 
 thus loving us, and putting forth His love to 
 us continually in every breath which we draw, 
 and in all the care and protection and support 
 which we experience ; and it tells us this that 
 we may feel it no constraint to love Him su- 
 premely, to choose Him for our portion, to 
 depend on Him with an absolute confidence, 
 and thus to have our individual will subordi- 
 nated to His will. 
 First pro- Before Christ came into the world, God had 
 promised that He should come ; for no sooner 
 had man fallen than he received an intimation 
 of God's purpose of restoring him. There is 
 something very striking in the form in which 
 this first intimation of a Deliverer was given ; 
 and it appears to me that much instruction as 
 to the nature of the gospel may be obtained 
 
 mise of a 
 Deliverer 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 35 
 
 by examining its characteristic features. The 
 intimation, as appears from the record in the 
 third chapter of Genesis, was not directly 
 addressed to our first parents themselves, but 
 formed a part of the sentence pronounced in 
 their hearing, against the serpent who had 
 deceived them. " I will put enmity between 
 thee and the woman, and between thy seed 
 and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and 
 thou shalt bruise his heel." 
 
 The most prominent feature in this sentence 
 is, that the serpent's head was to be bruised 
 by. a descendant of the woman. This inti- 
 mated to the human pair the purpose of God 
 to raise up a champion of their race, who 
 should avenge their quarrel with the serpent, 
 and undo what he had done. Now, as the 
 work of the serpent had been to draw them 
 away from the love of God, so the undoing of 
 that work was to draw them back to the love 
 of God; as the serpent's work had been to 
 introduce sin and its consequences into the 
 world, so the undoing of that work was to 
 destroy sin and its consequences. 
 
 This sentence of final destruction was pro- 
 nounced on the serpent before Adam and Eve 
 
36 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 received their own sentence. As they stood 
 trembling before their Judge, they heard the 
 sentence pronounced against their deceiver, in 
 which his final defeat and the subversion of 
 his plans by one of their own descendants 
 were predicted. They thus learned that God 
 had not abandoned them, and that His thoughts 
 towards them were thoughts of compassion, 
 even whilst pronouncing sentence upon them. 
 They learned that, although they were to be 
 sent forth from Paradise into the wilderness 
 of the world, — although they were to be taught 
 the evil of sin by a life of suffering, yet God 
 was even then preparing the means of their 
 return. Would not this discovery wholly 
 change the character of their feelings towards 
 Him \ They had feared His wrath, they knew 
 they had deserved it, and their consciences 
 spoke terror. But they found that He pitied 
 them, and that although they were to suffer, 
 yet it was love which was appointing and 
 measuring out the suffering. Would they 
 not feel that the sting of the suffering was 
 taken away, and would not the thought of 
 God's compassionate care sweeten that cup of 
 sorrow, which their own hands had mixed % 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 37 
 
 Would they not read in the compassion which 
 gave this consolation, an assurance of for- 
 giveness ? They had been hiding themselves 
 amongst the trees of the garden from the face 
 of their Creator, but now His presence would 
 be to them a refuge and a protection, a 
 sun and a shield. They had felt themselves 
 to be banished from His family, and to be no 
 longer His children ; but this revelation of 
 His final purpose proved that He was still 
 their Father, even while chastening them, and 
 that they might be still His children even 
 under chastisement. 
 
 Thus the promise of the Saviour did for our 
 first parents, in the extent in which it was 
 really apprehended by them, that which the 
 Saviour himself, when He came in the flesh, 
 did for all who received him. " As many as 
 received him, to them gave he power to be- 
 come the sons of God." Faith in the promise 
 gave them the feelings and the privileges of 
 children, and changed their dependence of ne- 
 cessity into a dependence of delighted choice. 
 It taught them to accept their punishment in 
 submission and hope ; for they now knew that 
 it was their Father's good pleasure and pur- 
 
38 THE UNCONDITIONAL FKEENESS 
 
 pose that sin and sorrow and death should 
 one day be abolished, and could therefore pray 
 with confidence for the coming of that day, 
 knowing their Father's love, and knowing that 
 their petition was according to His will. 
 
 God's love I do not think that I have attributed to this 
 forgiveness, first intimation of the Saviour, any effect on 
 the minds and feelings of Adam and Eve, 
 beyond what is conceivable and probable in 
 their circumstances. And now I shall endea- 
 vour to explain the use which I wish to make 
 of this case. I have supposed that Adam and 
 Eve would infer from the promise of the seed, 
 that God pitied them, and had a gracious pur- 
 pose of restoring them. I have also supposed 
 that this judgment which they formed of the 
 compassionate feelings of God towards them 
 would necessarily inspire them with confi- 
 dence towards Him, and would lead them to 
 regard Him as a Father who had forgiven 
 them in His heart. Yet there was not a single 
 word spoken by God on that occasion directly 
 pronouncing a present or promising a future 
 pardon ; therefore their confidence could only 
 arise from a conviction that the promise of a 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 39 
 
 Deliverer was the proof of love which neces- 
 sarily included forgiveness. The belief of the 
 existence of a compassionate feeling towards 
 them in the mincl of God could not but in- 
 spire them with some degree of confidence; 
 and when they knew that this compassion was 
 actually occupied with a plan for undoing the 
 evil which their fall had introduced, that con- 
 fidence would rise nearer to assurance. 
 
 From this proof of the existence of love 
 they would infer pardon as a necessary con- 
 sequence. If they had not heard this inti- 
 mation of a deliverance, or if they had heard 
 without understanding, they would have had 
 none of those feelings of confidence, and in- 
 stead of exercising the privileges of sons, and 
 leaning on God's omnipotent love, they would 
 have still shunned His presence, and feared 
 Him as their enemy. And yet the mind of 
 God, and His purposes towards them, would 
 have been the same. Their want of faith 
 would prevent any change of mind in them- 
 selves, and therefore would prevent their jus- 
 tification, that is, their being set right with 
 God ; and consequently it would prevent their 
 sanctification ; for without confidence in God's 
 
40 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 good-will towards them, they could not love 
 Him nor do any of the works which proceed 
 from love. Their forgiveness, in the heart of 
 God, would have been as much a matter of 
 fact as they now saw it to be. The difference 
 between their receiving the testimony, and 
 their not receiving it, was a difference affect- 
 ing their own minds ; it did not change the 
 truth of the matter testified. God had not 
 spoken to them of the necessity of faith in 
 His testimony. He had not held out any 
 promise to faith, but if the testimony was be- 
 lieved, it would necessarily do its own work, 
 and if not believed, that work would as neces- 
 sarily remain undone. Faith, according to its 
 degree, must have done for Adam and Eve 
 all that it ever did or can do for any one, en- 
 abling them to see, though perhaps dimly, that 
 it was His purpose to destroy sin, and thus to 
 save the sinner ; and they would have peace 
 through this conviction ; that is to say, they 
 would be justified by faith. 
 
 Now, I would ask the reader if he thinks it 
 possible that God gave them any premium on 
 account of their believing the intimation — 
 that He pardoned them because they believed 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 41 
 
 it \ Surely not ; or that He pardoned them 
 in believing it, as it is sometimes expressed ; 
 that is to say, that He bestowed on them belief 
 and pardon at the same time ? Surely the 
 expression, " They were justified by faith," 
 when applied to them, would seem to signify 
 simply this, — that believing the reality of the 
 love of God as expressed in the gracious pur- 
 pose which He had intimated to them respect- 
 ing the future Deliverer, they took their for- 
 giveness as included in it, and looked with 
 confidence towards God. This, I believe, was 
 their justification, — if they were indeed justi- 
 fied, — and this I believe to have been the jus- 
 tification of every child of man who ever has 
 been justified, from that hour to this ; for I 
 am persuaded that no one ever receives or 
 ever did receive anything in consequence of 
 his belief of a truth, other than the natural 
 effect of that truth upon his mind. 
 
 Doubtless it will appear to many a strange p ar don 
 sort of pardon which did not remit The pun- imply re- 
 ishment; for Paradise remained barred, and punish- 
 the sentence of sorrow and of death remained 
 unreversed. But God had spoken in their 
 
42 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 hearing of His gracious purposes respecting 
 them, and that was forgiveness, — all the for- 
 giveness which they needed, — and though His 
 hand might still for a season be heavy on them, 
 it was the hand of a Father, and for their good. 
 And when we recollect the object of the 
 gospel and the evil it was intended to remedy, 
 we shall feel that this was precisely what was 
 required. The hearts of the offenders were to 
 be drawn back to the love of God for what He 
 is, and not for His gifts. It was part of His 
 purpose to teach them to seek satisfaction in 
 Himself by stripping them of His gifts, and 
 by making them feel their own insufficiency, 
 thus leading them back to a child-like depend- 
 ence on Himself. 
 
 It was their own spirit of independence 
 which had cut them off from God's family, 
 which had extinguished in them the principle 
 of spiritual life, and had cast them down from 
 heaven, by shutting God out from their hearts. 
 A pardon which did not restore the spirit of 
 dependence, would still have left them miser- 
 able outcasts. They had fallen by following 
 their own selfish individual will, rather than 
 the good and holy will of the great Father of 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 43 
 
 the spiritual family. And now God in love 
 made them feel the bitterness of their own 
 will, and of their own root. He allowed them 
 to be surrounded with darkness and hopeless- 
 ness, and then He presented to them His own 
 holy will as the only light in the midst of the 
 darkness, the only refuge in the midst of the 
 hopelessness, and thus He invited their depend- 
 ence, and urged them to return ; and He 
 taught them, even by the terms of the promise, 
 to regard His holy abhorrence of sin as the 
 only foundation of their hope. 
 
 For the promise was, that the serpent's head 
 should be bruised ; that is to say, that sin, 
 self-will, and independence, as well as their 
 consequences, should be rooted out. So long 
 as these evil principles continued to be the 
 chosen counsellors of their hearts, such a pro- 
 mise could give them no comfort. But when 
 they learned to look on sin — the essence of 
 which is selfishness, — as the enemy which 
 had ruined them, then they would regard 
 with thankfulness God's avowed determina- 
 tion to exterminate it ; His holiness and His 
 abhorrence of evil would be to them the 
 pledges of their own future deliverance. 
 
44 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 It is not the least important or striking fea- 
 ture in this first intimation of the gospel, 
 that it is thus expressed rather in the form of 
 a denunciation against sin than of direct par- 
 don to the sinner. It marks that the only 
 real mercy to the sinner must manifest itself 
 in the destruction of sin, — that the love of God 
 is essentially a consuming fire to sin, — and that, 
 in the dealings of God with regard to man, the 
 restoration of happiness is less thought of than 
 the restoration of holiness. 
 
 No pardon can be worthy of God, or could 
 possibly proceed from Him, which does not 
 agree with and strengthen the sanctions of j 
 holiness. But this is not all. There can be l 
 no peace for a moral being which does not rest 
 on the foundations of moral truth. If Adam 
 had felt his own moral sense compromised by 
 his pardon, that pardon could never have given 
 him peace ; it could not even have given him 
 the feeling of personal security ; — there would 
 have remained a restless misgiving in his soul I 
 that all was not well, seeing that the God of 
 holiness cannot cease to abhor sin. There can 
 be no way of giving true peace to the sinner, 
 except by making God's abhorrence of sin the 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 45 
 
 very ground of the sinner's hope. The agony 
 of Adam's mind could not have arisen merely 
 from the fear of consequences ; a sense of sin 
 must have been its chief element. And now 
 from the sentence on the serpent he under- 
 stood that evil was to be destroyed, and right 
 was to triumph. He saw that whatever might 
 be the nature of God's purposes, the palliation 
 of the guilt of sin did not enter into them, as 
 the head of the rebellion was to be crushed. 
 He thus felt assured that God made no com- 
 promise of truth when He spoke hope to the 
 sinner. 
 
 The serpent's promised pardon was a mere 
 impunity in sin, — "Ye shall not surely die." 
 Its object was to encourage sin. God's pardon 
 embraced the destruction of sin, and its object 
 was to restore to holiness. We have need to 
 beware of mistaking the serpent's hiss for the 
 grace of God. The hope of impunity given by 
 the serpent encouraged Adam to yield to the 
 promptings of his earthly desires. The holy 
 forgiveness of God encouraged and allured him 
 to return back to God, not so much as a refuge 
 from punishment, as from sin and from weak- 
 ness, from earthly desires and from the assaults 
 
46 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 of that spiritual enemy who had stolen his 
 
 jewel from him. 
 we may And although the Word of God is sparing 
 
 our first of information with regard to the effect of the 
 
 parents 
 
 were saved promise upon him, yet it is not inconsistent 
 
 by their L r . 
 
 faith. with the tenor of that information to hope and 
 believe, that he who was the first offender, was 
 also the first monument of saving grace ; — that 
 with the promise he received the spirit of the 
 promise, and the consolation of the promise, 
 into his soul. For surely never was there a 
 created being that stood in such need of a 
 strong consolation. He had breathed the air 
 of Eden, and had been cast out of it, — who 
 has ever made such a shipwreck \ He felt 
 himself to be the author of a foul stain on the 
 universe of God. He felt that his act was 
 irretrievable, that he had opened a flood-gate 
 which he could not again shut, and through 
 which a dark tide rolled in, overwhelming all 
 the destinies which had been committed to his 
 keeping. He saw this tide rolling in, — he felt 
 that it was his work, and that he could not 
 stop it. Yerily he had need of a strong con- 
 solation. Who ever but him had his conscience 
 burdened with the ruin of a world ! He knew 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 47 
 
 somewhat of the value of the light of God's 
 countenance, — and he knew somewhat of the 
 horror of its loss ; he had tasted the good and 
 the evil, — and he knew that his heart and his 
 hand had done the deed which had severed all 
 his descendants from the tree of life, and made 
 them outcasts from God and wanderers through 
 a homeless wilderness. And whereas he had 
 been intrusted by God, for their behoof, with 
 the pearl of eternal life, he had cast it from 
 him, and instead of it had bequeathed to them 
 the bitter cup of sorrow and death, and a 
 proneness to every crime, and an exposure to 
 every misery. What a blow must Cain's mur- 
 der have given to his heart, and what a fearful 
 sense must it have given him of the living and 
 growing and spreading reality of that curse 
 which he himself had brought upon his off- 
 spring ; and as his prophetic spirit went down 
 that troubled stream of human life which was 
 to issue from him, would not each drop lift up 
 in the ear of his conscience an accusing voice 
 against him, and as the various forms of out- 
 rage and calamity succeeded each other, would 
 not his heart wither with the thought, " This 
 is my work" 1 
 
48 THE UNCONDITIONAL FKEENESS 
 
 But the gospel was sent to comfort all that 
 mourn, — and surely it comforted this father of 
 mourners. For the serpent's doom revealed to 
 him the love of God. " This was the rest 
 wherein his wearied spirit found rest, and this 
 was the refreshing." This love was the love of 
 Him who was, and is, and shall be, — the In- 
 finite in power and in wisdom ; of Him who 
 can make darkness light, and crooked things 
 straight : and He had pledged His faithful 
 word that He would undo this evil which had 
 entered into the world. Surely we may hope 
 that Adam looked forward to the day of the 
 Deliverer, and rejoiced to think that on that 
 day God was to be glorified and Man restored. 
 
 When once he had learned this, he was in 
 possession of the secret of the Lord, — the secret 
 of peace, — for he would see the God of love in 
 everything. He would see in every event a 
 preparation for the coming of the Deliverer. 
 In every affliction he would recognise the plan 
 of restoration. He would feel how well his 
 present sorrow suited with his spiritual needs. 
 He had fallen by seeking good, not in God, but 
 in the creature. God's gifts had hid God from 
 his soul, instead of being used as channels of 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 49 
 
 communion with Him. He was now stript of 
 these gifts ; but it was that he might learn that 
 the Giver was better than the gift ; and that 
 even in the absence of all gifts, God was Him- 
 self an overflowing fulness, satiating every 
 weary soul, and replenishing every sorrowful 
 soul. For God's best gifts are no portion for 
 man ; He is Himself the portion of the soul, 
 and so long as He is sought only for His gifts, 
 He is Himself unknown and unprized. 
 
 And now I would say that every one who in 
 like manner understands the manifestation of 
 love which was contained in that first promise, 
 and which reached its full development in 
 Christ, must have the same sense of his own 
 personal place in the heart of God. For only 
 consider — the gospel reveals to us the existence 
 of a fund of divine love, containing in it a 
 propitiation for all sin, and a promise to 
 destroy all the works of the devil, — the sin — 
 the misery — the death, which he has intro- 
 duced ; — and this fund is general to the whole 
 race, every individual has a property in it, of 
 the same kind that he has in the common air 
 and light of this world, which he appropriates 
 and uses simply by opening his mouth or his 
 
 D 
 
50 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 eyes. Is it not clear, that as soon as any one 
 really knows that such a fund exists, and that 
 it is, indeed, the gift of God to the world, and 
 the common property of all the individuals in 
 the world, just as the natural air or light is, he 
 will immediately infer his own particular in- 
 terest in it, and enter into the enjoyment of it, 
 and he will make that blessed discovery which 
 no tongue can rightly describe, and no mere 
 intelligence can rightly conceive, even that he 
 himself has a possession, an unalienable, an 
 everlasting possession in the heart of God ? 
 This con- There is another feature in this first intima- 
 
 ception of 
 
 tion of the gospel which merits consideration 
 — and that is its generality. It strikes at the 
 j viduaiity? 1 root of the selfishness and narrow individuality 
 of will which has taken possession of that 
 place in man's heart which ought to be filled 
 by the wide will of God, and by sympathy 
 with the whole spiritual family. Its consola- 
 tion is not a selfish consolation. It calls on 
 men to share in higher and more extended in- 
 terests than their own ; and in accordance with 
 this, each is led to infer his own pardon, and 
 his own individual place in God's heart, not 
 from any special declaration to himself, but 
 
 the gospel 
 strikes at 
 the root of 
 man's 
 selfish indi 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 51 
 
 from a manifestation of the holy love of God 
 to the whole world. 
 
 When I consider this important feature of 
 the first promise, I cannot help thinking that 
 the expectation of the restitution of all things 
 occupies a much less space in the usual preach- 
 ing of the gospel, and in the thoughts of men, 
 than it ought to do. It is the chief feature of 
 that gospel which was preached to Adam, and 
 it is bequeathed to the Church in the last 
 words of inspiration as an enduring conso- 
 lation and expectation, — " Behold, I come 
 quickly." The statements of the gospel in our 
 days relate too exclusively to what is past, and 
 to the individual salvation of each believer. 
 Of course it is impossible altogether to separate 
 the doctrine of Christ's sacrifice from its general 
 and future results ; but these results seem to me 
 not brought forward with such emphasis as 
 they are in the Bible. I do not speak of the 
 detail of these results, nor of the particular 
 fulfilment of prophecies supposed to refer to 
 the last times ; but I speak of a fixed and 
 longing expectation of the accomplishment 
 of those promises which announce the final 
 triumph of the Messiah, the establishment of 
 
52 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 his reign upon earth, the maDifestation of the 
 sons of God, and the full development of all 
 those high privileges which arise out of their 
 union with their Divine Head. 
 
 If selfishness be really one of the chief 
 elements in the fall of man, it might be ex- 
 pected that the divinely bestowed medicine 
 for sick souls should contain an ingredient 
 specially fitted to counteract and remove that 
 selfishness. And such an ingredient we find 
 in the universality both of the declaration and 
 purpose of the gospel ; a feature which must 
 necessarily impress its own character on the 
 hope of every one who rests upon it. For if 
 this conception of the Gospel is true, the first 
 hope which any man can arrive at with regard 
 to his own personal acceptance with God must 
 be drawn from the great general manifestation 
 of Divine love, directed to the destruction of 
 evil and to the restoration of the ruined race. 
 The individual drops are thus merged in the 
 ocean, and self is lost in the " liberty, the 
 universality, the impartiality of heaven." 
 
 What Adam was thus taught to expect, we 
 yet look forward to. The Champion has ap- 
 peared, but evil is still spread over the earth, 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 53 
 
 and the serpent's crested and uncrushed head 
 still towers above it. Yet the work is going 
 on which will accomplish the great prediction 
 on which the destiny of our race hangs. We 
 know that the government of the world is in 
 the hand of God, and therefore we may rest 
 assured that there is not a single link in the 
 apparently perplexed chain of human events 
 which does not connect with and guide to the 
 coming glory. And we may rest assured, not 
 only that all the histories of the kingdoms of 
 this world are under the influence of an unfelt 
 but irresistible control, preparing the way for 
 that kingdom which cannot be moved, but also 
 that personal events as well as national, private 
 as well as public, are all under the same man- 
 date, — commissioned to lead on to the same 
 great consummation. This truth gives a 
 seriousness and a dignity to everything. It 
 banishes littleness from life, because it connects 
 all life with the glory of God and the eradica- 
 tion of evil ; it leads us on, as under the 
 shadow of everlasting and omnipotent Love, in 
 the faith of which we may rest in peace until 
 all calamities be overpast. 
 
 When the eye of the spirit is thus opened 
 
54 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 to see God working — in everything and by 
 everything — to bring on the reign of righteous- 
 ness, we shall feel ourselves invited to the 
 blessed privilege of entering into the purposes 
 of God, of sympathizing with the everlasting 
 counsels of His grace, of rejoicing in their 
 assured fulfilment, and of being fellow-workers 
 with Him in every action of life. These 
 actions may appear small and insignificant in 
 the world's judgment, but the believer knows 
 that it is not in vain that the Kuler of the 
 universe has called him to do all things to the 
 glory of God. 
 
 These are animating thoughts for poor wan- 
 derers in the wilderness, who are listening to 
 the Saviour's voice. For them the fall, with 
 all its sin and misery and darkness, will soon 
 pass away, having served (under the control. of 
 Him who bringeth good out of evil) to glorify 
 the Divine attributes, and to introduce a high 
 and holy and happy order of things — higher 
 and holier and happier than that which Adam 
 lost, because founded on a nearer relation with 
 God and a fuller manifestation of His char- 
 acter. 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 55 
 
 Men are disposed to imagine that if pardon Confidence 
 
 be made conditional it will be more effectual love ante- 
 cedent to 
 as a stimulus to exertion. But the answer a11 trae 
 
 obedience. 
 
 to this objection is, that Christian obedience 
 does not consist in doing certain actions and 
 abstaining from others, without regard to the 
 motive from which this conduct proceeds — 
 Christian obedience consists in holy love to 
 God in habitual exercise. Now it is quite 
 evident that no hope of reward could produce 
 this kind of obedience. The heart cannot be 
 induced to love by anything except by the 
 real or apparent loveableness of the object. 
 A man might do or suffer much in order to 
 obtain pardon of sin ; but this is not what 
 God requires ; He requires the heart ; He re- 
 quires a generous disinterested love, which 
 longs to express itself in every possible act of 
 devotedness, counting all little and vile in 
 comparison of the worthiness of Him whom 
 it desires to please. The obedience which God 
 asks is the free obedience of a child, not a 
 mercenary negotiation for deliverance from 
 punishment. True obedience can only be 
 rendered by a spirit which rejoices that God 
 desires its love ; both because it recognises in 
 
56 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 this demand a Father's heart, and because it 
 feels that amidst all its failures and all its 
 weaknesses it yet has love to give. It is im- 
 possible that such loving obedience as this can 
 exist in a heart which feels the weight of un- 
 pardoned sin, and regards God as an offended 
 Governor and condemning Judge ; for an 
 assurance of forgiveness must precede confi- 
 dence, and what love can there be without 
 confidence 1 Is it not reasonable, then, to 
 think that He who demands the love of the 
 heart should begin by removing that fear of 
 condemnation which would prevent love ? 
 
 But the gospel is much more than a mere 
 putting away of past transgression. Nothing 
 short of a manifestation of God can be a true 
 gospel to sinners. If our hearts were attracted 
 to anything else than God Himself, — if remis- 
 sion of penalty were the chief attraction, — we 
 should still be out of our place in the spiritual 
 system. God is the centre of that system ; 
 there can be no other. The pardon of the 
 gospel is just the manifestation of the Divine 
 character in relation to sinners. In relation 
 to His sinless and happy creatures His char- 
 acter is holy complacency ; but in relation to 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 57 
 
 th.osfi._who are sinful and weak and miserable, 
 it is holy compassion. Forgiveness, therefore, 
 is the prominent feature in the gospel ; it is 
 "God in Christ reconciling the world unto Him- 
 self, not imputing their trespasses to them" 
 Forgiveness is a permanent condition of the 
 heart of God. 
 
 When through Christ Jesus we learn to 
 apprehend this, all self-pleasing thoughts of 
 personal merit are extinguished. What have 
 we done to Him or for Him who hath done 
 this for us % We have repaid Him by pre- 
 ferring the least of His gifts to Himself, — by 
 turning a deaf ear to His condescending invi- 
 tations of fatherly kindness, and by offering 
 Him the reluctant service of our hands and 
 the ceremonial of our tongues, as an adequate 
 return for His heart's love. If we know this 
 love, we shall feel annihilated by it ; we have 
 nothing to give in return which is not despi- 
 cable, when considered as payment. But God 
 asks no payment. He asks but the filial trust 
 of the creature who is the work of His own 
 hands, as that in which He delights, and as 
 that in which the good and the happiness of 
 the creature consist. He has dearly earned 
 
tion 
 
 58 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 our gratitude and our confidence, and these 
 feelings, when wrought into the heart, put us 
 in our proper place towards Him. Affection- 
 ate dependence on the Creator is the spiritual 
 health of the creature, as averseness and in- 
 dependence are his spiritual disease. 
 
 Spiritual Men are very apt to consider sin as consist- 
 
 gravita- 
 
 ing merely in this or that particular action. 
 The old philosophers taught that virtue is the 
 mean between two extremes ; thus, for ex- 
 ample, that the virtue of generosity is the 
 mean between the vices of prodigality and 
 avarice ; courage the mean between rashness 
 and timidity, and so of the rest : thus making 
 the difference between virtue and vice to lie 
 merely in the degree, not in the kind. But 
 the Word of God teaches another sort of 
 morals. According to it, sin consists in the 
 absence of the love of God from the heart, as 
 the dominant principle ; so that sin is not so 
 much an act as a manner of being. It is not 
 necessary to go to the expense of an action 
 in order to sin ; the habitual state of most 
 minds, — of all minds, indeed, naturally, even 
 in their most quiescent form, — is sin ; that 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 59 
 
 is to say, the love of God is not dominant in 
 them. 
 
 The centripetal force constitutes an element 
 in every line which the planet moves in its 
 orbit. Were the influence of this force to be 
 suspended, we should not think of reckoning 
 the number of aberrations which the planet 
 might make in its ungoverned career ; we 
 should say that its whole manner of being, 
 severed from the solar influence, was one con- 
 tinued and radical aberration. In like manner, 
 the soul ought to feel the love of God as a 
 governing element along the whole course of 
 its existence ; every movement of thought and 
 feeling and desire ought to contain it, as an 
 essential part of its nature. When this prin- 
 ciple is wanting, we need not reckon the moral 
 aberrations which the spirit makes ; its whole 
 existence is an aberration, it is cut off from 
 the spiritual system of the universe, it has lost 
 its gravitation. 
 
 In such a state of things, it is evident that 
 a pardon which did not bring back the wan- 
 derer, and restore his lost gravitation, would be 
 of no use to him ; until his gravitation is re- 
 covered, he is a blot on the creation. Love to 
 
60 THE UN CONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 God is the gravitation of the soul, and it is 
 restored by the apprehension of His mind and 
 will as revealed in Christ Jesus. A faith which 
 does not restore spiritual gravitation is useless; 
 and that only is true gravitation which keeps 
 the soul in its orbit. 
 
 The movement of the soul along the path of 
 duty, under the influence of holy love to God, 
 constitutes what in Scripture are called good 
 works. Good works are works which proceed 
 from true principles. The external form of an 
 action cannot alone determine whether it be a 
 good work or not. Its usefulness to others 
 may be determined by its external form, but 
 its moral worth depends on the moral spring 
 from which it flows. Good works, then, are 
 properly healthy works, — works proceeding 
 from a living principle. Healthy bodily actions 
 can only proceed from healthy bodily prin- 
 ciples ; and healthy spiritual actions can pro- 
 ceed only from healthy spiritual principles. 
 All efforts to do good, apart from that life from 
 above which our Lord proclaimed to Nico- 
 demus, are in Scripture called dead works. 
 
 A man who has lost his health does not 
 recover it again by any endeavour to perform 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 61 
 
 healthy bodily actions, for of these his bad 
 health renders him incapable (in which in- 
 capacity, indeed, his bad health consists), but 
 by the use of some remedial system, generally 
 involving much self-denial ; and as health re- 
 turns, its proper and natural actions return 
 along with it. Health is not produced by 
 these actions, but it produces them, and is 
 strengthened by them. Physical enjoyment 
 consists in these healthful actions ; they are the 
 spontaneous language of physical health. They 
 constitute the music, as it were, which results 
 from the organ being well tuned. 
 
 It is the same thing with the actions of the 
 soul. Spiritual health is not acquired by good 
 actions, but it is followed by them, and streng- 
 thened by them. They also are music, sweet 
 music. And oh ! were these spirits of ours, 
 with their thousand strings, but rightly tuned, 
 what a swell of high and lovely song would 
 issue from them, — a song of holy joy and 
 praise, commencing even here, and still rising 
 upwards, until it blended with the full har- 
 mony of that choir which surrounds the throne 
 of God. 
 
62 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The true meaning of Justification by Faith. 
 
 Were some great convulsion of nature to 
 destroy all the human race save one single in- 
 dividual, the Bible with all its contents would 
 belong to that individual. It is addressed to 
 Adam's race, and he would be the sole repre- 
 sentative of the race ; but we all and each of 
 us belong to and represent Adam's race as 
 much as such an individual would ; we have 
 therefore the same right in the contents of the 
 Bible that he could have. 
 Appropria- I am persuaded that faith in the gospel 
 
 tioninvol- --it ~T • 
 
 ved m the always is and always must be an appropriat- 
 
 very idea J J x * * 
 
 of faith, ing faith, and that there is no true faith in the 
 gospel which is not so. When a man opens 
 his eyes upon the sun, he necessarily appro- 
 priates his share of its light, and he cannot 
 look upon the sun without making this ap- 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 63 
 
 propriation. In like manner no man can look 
 upon the Sun of righteousness, which is the 
 love of God manifested in Christ Jesus, with- 
 out appropriating his own share of its blessed 
 light. He that believes really in the love of 
 God to the world cannot but believe in the 
 love of God to himself. The general belief 
 and the appropriating belief are not two 
 beliefs, but one — just as the general receiving 
 the light of the sun, and the particular receiv- 
 ing our own share, are not two receivings, but 
 one. God tells me in His Word that " He is 
 in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, 
 not imputing unto them their trespasses." 
 When this message comes to me, can I put 
 any other interpretation on it than that God is 
 reconciling me, and not imputing my tres- 
 passes to me \ I think that any person who 
 understands the meaning of these words, and 
 believes them to be the true words of God, 
 must see that they imply forgiveness for him- 
 self. 
 
 The following passage from a very interest- 
 ing account of the conversion of a young man 
 who died at St. Helena, is a striking illustra- 
 tion of the doctrine which I have been endea- 
 
64 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 vouring to explain. "His faith seemed to 
 have no mixture of imperfection in it, for he 
 simply and sincerely took for granted that all 
 God said in His "Word was true, and was 
 astonished to hear any of us express our want 
 of assurance of faith, or of a constant and 
 abiding sense of our personal interest in Christ. 
 This to him was a mystery we could never 
 explain, and which, happily for himself, he 
 died in entire ignorance of." Surely of such 
 is the kingdom of heaven. Happy man ! — he 
 had opened his mouth and God had filled it. 
 We need go no further than this to understand 
 the nature of the assurance of faith. A present 
 sense of the love of God revealed in Christ 
 will always give assurance, or in other words, 
 justification ; and when that sense decays, the 
 assurance must decay, — no remembrance of it 
 can fill its place. 
 justifica- It appears to me quite clear that justifi- 
 judidaiact cation is described by St. Paul as a state 
 
 of God. . J 
 
 of mind proceeding from or arising out of 
 faith; whereas, if justification be a judicial 
 act of God, then that act originates in and 
 
 from mans faith, and is the reward of 
 
 faith. 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 6 5 
 
 It is a principle of common sense, as it is a 
 principle always taken for granted in the Bible, 
 that the ground of a man's hope and expecta- 
 tion and dependence must command his will 
 and mould his character. As long as he de- 
 pends on himself, or has hope of delivering 
 himself by his own exertions, so long will he 
 hold and maintain the independence of his 
 own will. He may do many things that are 
 right, — many things that are honourable to 
 himself and useful to others, and yet all the 
 while it is not the will of God, but his own 
 will that he follows. Nothing short of an 
 absolute despair of delivering or helping him- 
 self at all can cut the roots of his self-will, 
 and nothing short of an absolute dependence 
 on God for everything can graft him on the 
 root of God's will. Thus nothing but a true 
 sense of the absolute unconditional gratuitous- 
 ness of the gospel can write the law of God on 
 the heart of man. And yet this doctrine of 
 gratuitousness is opposed as if it were anti- 
 nomian. 
 
 The true reason of the opposition is, that it 
 opposes the pride of man. Man therefore 
 opposes it. There is indeed something very 
 
66 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 striking in the perverse ingenuity with which 
 man endeavours to dilute the medicinal virtue 
 of the gospel. He must have self to lean on, 
 and so when he is obliged to surrender his own 
 works he betakes himself to his own faith as 
 his prop. But this is still self; and in what- 
 ever form it appears, as long as it is the 
 ground of hope it must command the will. 
 Surely this is the chief reason why the gospel 
 contains so many evident declarations on the 
 part of God, that beside Him there is no 
 Saviour, and that man is absolutely incapable 
 of doing anything in the work of his own re- 
 demption. Anything of man's own must be 
 bad, — because the growing out from his own 
 root is itself the original offence and disorder : 
 he ought to be a branch, and not a separate 
 plant. Self in fact, is the great antinomian, 
 because it is the great antichrist ; where self 
 acts, and tries to establish a claim to the for- 
 giveness of sin, either by faith or by works, it 
 incapacitates us for spiritual obedience, by 
 cutting us off from the true source of spiritual 
 life. 
 
 Thus we may in some measure understand 
 how the very gratuitousness of the gospel may 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 67 
 
 lead to its rejection ; because this gratuitous- 
 ness is, in fact, a declaration on the part of 
 God that man can do nothing for himself, and 
 is thus an offence to his pride. And not pride 
 only, but every unholy feeling in the human 
 heart is offended by the gospel For the De- 
 liverer revealed in it is to destroy the works 
 of the devil. Those who cleave to evil cannot 
 welcome the gospel, for they cannot rejoice 
 that evil is to be destroyed. Its destruction 
 is the destruction of their hope and of their 
 joy ; and however much they may desire im- 
 punity, they cannot embrace that as good 
 news, which tears their idol from them. Evil 
 is " the strong man armed " holding their 
 hearts and wills, their thoughts and desires, 
 in captivity ; and they cannot bear to hear of 
 that stronger than he, who, by the proclama- 
 tion of free forgiveness, would take his armour 
 from him, and cast him out of his usurped hold 
 in the heart. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, the true Deliverer ^sfyet 
 stands at the door and knocks for admit- for g ta£. not 
 tance. His forgiving love is universal; and 
 still it may with perfect propriety and con- 
 sistency be said, that until man receives the 
 
68 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 forgiveness into Ins heart, he is under con- 
 demnation. He is excluded — for he excludes 
 himself — from the only good and joy in the 
 universe ; he is away from the God of love, 
 and thus is full of wrath, and encompassed 
 with wrath ; he is away from the God of 
 light, and thus is in outer darkness ; this is, 
 and must be, his condition, until he admits 
 the gospel into his heart. It is quite evident, 
 therefore, that a man may be thoroughly and 
 for ever miserable, although this pardon has 
 been proclaimed to him ; and that he can 
 derive no possible benefit from it, until he 
 believes it. 
 
 But when a poor sinner comes to know that 
 God is his true friend, who has loved him with 
 an everlasting love, and that evil is his real 
 enemy, which has ruined him, — that God has 
 a right to his whole heart, and to be the first 
 and the last in all his ends and aims, — when 
 he comes to know that evil is a usurper whose 
 reign over him is a reign of injustice and 
 darkness and hopelessness, this powerful per- 
 suasion within him opens the door of his 
 heart ; and he welcomes in the forgiveness, 
 chiefly because with it and in it there comes 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 69 
 
 that stronger than the strong man, who will 
 cast out the usurper, and chase away his dark- 
 ness and wrath and injustice and lies, and 
 bring in a reign of righteousness. 
 
 He expects no reward for admitting- the Eternal life 
 
 not given 
 
 Deliverer into his heart, other than the bless- .M but in 
 
 believing. 
 
 edness of having this new and better reign 
 within him. It is God's holy love which he 
 receives, and into the enjoyment of that holy 
 love he enters only by believing it. 
 
 When a man says, " I believe the gospel, 
 and therefore I may hope that God will give 
 me pardon and eternal life," we cannot but 
 fear that he does not understand the meaning 
 of the word ; for if he really believed the 
 gospel, he would know that he had, even 
 now, eternal life. Let me suppose the case 
 of a mother, whose only child has been stolen 
 from her in infancy, whose heart still bears 
 the fresh and unclosed wound of her loss, and 
 whose imagination is continually haunted with 
 dark thoughts as to what the present condi- 
 tion and future fate of her child may be. I 
 discover the child, and find it all that a 
 mother's heart could desire ; I come to her 
 and say I have news for her, and that she will 
 
70 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 be richly rewarded if she believes them. I 
 then tell her my news. Oh, reader ! do you 
 think she would ask me, what reward I meant 
 to give her for believing 1 
 
 The good which we receive from believing 
 in the love of God, manifested in Christ Jesus, 
 is analogous to that which we receive from 
 believing in the worth and kindness of a 
 human friend — only that the one is as no- 
 thing in comparison with the other. It is 
 nothing else than the enjoyment of God in 
 Himself and in His creatures. It is not any- 
 thing that we get on account of our loving 
 Him, but it is the blessedness of loving Him, 
 and knowing ourselves to be loved by Him. 
 It is giving Him our perfect sympathy, and 
 receiving His. It is knowing Him as the in- 
 finite God, and yet as an affectionate Father, 
 as a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. 
 It is the assurance which the heart draws from 
 His love in giving His Son, that He will never 
 leave us nor forsake us, that He will never 
 cease to love us, with a love which will be, 
 and must be, our satisfying and delighting 
 portion through all eternity. It is the joyful 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 71 
 
 and confident anticipation of the day when 
 the mystery of God shall be accomplished, and 
 the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and 
 when the children of God shall be glad, and 
 rejoice for ever in the new heavens and the 
 new earth which their Father shall create. It 
 is the discovering, that all the works of crea- 
 tion, — all events, — time and space, — eternity 
 and infinity, — everything is full of that God 
 who loved us, and gave Himself for us ; and 
 who, in giving us Himself, freely gave us all 
 things. This is the good that a soul gets by 
 believing the gospel ; and shall we still ask, 
 whether we are warranted to expect pardon 
 and eternal life because ive believe ? Does not 
 such a question indicate a radical mistake as 
 to the meaning of the gospel I 
 
 Let me repeat : If justification be a judicial 
 act of God, imputing Christ's righteousness to 
 believers, — and if this act has no existence 
 until the gospel is believed, then justification 
 is not received by faith, but bestowed on 
 account of faith. It is a recompense for be- 
 lieving ; and men are not blessed in the gospel 
 itself, but on account of their belief of it. 
 Whereas if justification means the being made 
 
72 THE UNCONDITIONAL FKEENESS 
 
 justifica- perfect as pertaining to the conscience, and 
 
 tion a state . 
 
 of mind having the conscience purqed from dead 
 
 arising out . . 
 
 of faith, works (Heb. ix. 9), then all is simple; for we 
 can have no difficulty in seeing that a sense 
 of our own personal pardon and acceptance 
 must arise out of a belief in that holy love of 
 God which gave Christ to be a propitiation for 
 the sins of the whole world. This justification 
 is truly and intelligibly by faith, for it neces- 
 sarily and naturally results from a belief of 
 this love of God, revealed in the gift of His 
 Son. But if we do not understand the atone- 
 ment of Christ, — if we do not see in it such 
 an expression of forgiving love, and such a 
 recognition of the evil of sin as may engage 
 our confidence, and purge our consciences, — 
 then our belief in the atonement can do us no 
 good, — it does not justify us, it does not com- 
 fort us nor strengthen us, it is to us a well 
 without water. Thus, when no comfort is 
 derived from the atonement itself, an endea- 
 vour is made to draw comfort from the belief 
 of the atonement as an act to which God is 
 supposed to have promised acceptance, and a 
 special blessing. I see no warrant for this in 
 the Bible. There are exceeding precious pro- 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 73 
 
 raises to those who trust in God, and wait on 
 God; but the promise of pardon, as the re- 
 ward of faith, seems to me a mere human 
 invention, in direct opposition to the whole 
 tenor of the gospel. 
 
 It is evident, from Eom. v. 1, that justifi- 
 cation is necessarily connected with peace of 
 conscience, — " Being justified by faith, we have 
 peace with God ;" — now pardon, unknown or 
 unbelieved, will not, and cannot, give peace of 
 conscience. Justification, then, is not pardon 
 simply, but pardon known and believed, — 
 pardon implied in and inferred from a gift 
 greater than pardon. Eom. iii. 20 : "By the 
 deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified, 
 for by the law is the knoivledge of sin." The 
 knowledge of sin, or the sense of sin, is placed 
 in direct antithesis to justification, w^hich there- 
 fore ought to mean a sense of deliverance from 
 sin. The deeds of the law in this passage 
 appear to me to mean the expiatory and puri- 
 fying rites of the Mosaic law. And when the 
 apostle says of them that no flesh shall be jus- 
 tified by them, for by the law is the know- 
 ledge of sin, he presents to us the same idea 
 which is more fully explained in the Epistle 
 
74 THE UNCONDITIONAL FEEENESS 
 
 to the Hebrews, chap. ix. and x., viz., that 
 these rites were intended to awaken such a 
 sense of sin as should make pardon a needed 
 blessing. They removed ceremonial pollution, 
 but they could give no real peace to the con- 
 science, except by pointing the worshipper to 
 that great sacrifice of which they were only 
 shadows. The law, in its addresses to those 
 who were under it, always supposes them to be 
 sinners, i.e., under condemnation. It knows 
 nothing and teaches nothing about that new 
 life which is communicated by Christ to those 
 who come to Him, and which is not under 
 condemnation. The law supposes men always 
 to be growing out of a root which is under the 
 condemnation of death. The gospel reveals a 
 fountain of new life in Christ Jesus, wdiich 
 cannot fall under condemnation, because it is 
 the life of God, — and this is the fountain to 
 which all are invited. 1 
 
 The same truth is taught in the Epistle to 
 
 1 The truest interpretation of the expression " justification 
 by faith," is the condition of a man who is ^_set right" with 
 God by the assurance that His purpose in all His dealings with 
 him is " not to destroy but to correct ;" that is, not to inflict 
 present suffering as retribution, but to train him by suffering 
 into a participation in His own holiness. 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 75 
 
 the Hebrews, ix. 9-14 : "Which was a figure 
 for the time then present, in which were 
 offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could 
 not make him that did the service perfect, as 
 pertaining to the conscience ; which stood only 
 in meats and drinks, and clivers washings, and 
 carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the 
 time of reformation. But Christ being come 
 an high priest of good things to come, by a 
 greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made 
 with hands, that is to say, not of this build- 
 ing ; neither by the blood of goats and calves, 
 but by his own blood, he entered in once into 
 the holy place, having obtained eternal re- 
 demption for us. For if the blood of bulls 
 and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer 
 sprinkling the unclean, sanctifleth to the puri- 
 fying 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'?" Chap. x. 1, 2 : "For the law 
 having a shadow of good things to come, and 
 not the very image of the things, can never 
 with those sacrifices, which they offered year 
 by year continually, make the comers there- 
 
76 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 unto perfect : for then would they not have 
 ceased to be offered \ because that the wor- 
 shippers once purged should have had no more 
 conscience of sins." Verses 19-22 : "Having 
 therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the 
 holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and 
 living way, which he hath consecrated for us 
 through the veil, that is to say, his flesh ; and 
 having an high priest over the house of God ; 
 let us draw near with a true heart, in full 
 assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled 
 from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed 
 with pure water." 
 
 From these passages I am led to infer, that 
 the faith of the gospel attaches to and takes 
 hold of the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, as 
 including and implying in it the pardon of 
 sin, and thus delivers the conscience from the 
 sense of unpardoned sin. And I am also led 
 to infer, that this deliverance from the sense 
 of unpardoned sin, by the knowledge that a 
 propitiatory sacrifice has been made, is just 
 another expression for justification by faith, 
 because similar effects are ascribed to them 
 both, viz., " peace with God," and " boldness " 
 and "full assurance" before him. Man, in 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 77 
 
 order to his true well-being, must walk with 
 God, and must depend on him ; he cannot and 
 dare not do this, whilst he feels the weight of 
 unpardoned sin on his conscience ; but when 
 his soul hears the good news, that through 
 Christ the forgiveness of sin is preached, that 
 is, proclaimed to us (see Acts xiii. 38), then 
 he can look on God as his Father, and dares 
 to depend on Him, and to expect great things 
 from him. He may then " draw near with a 
 true heart and full assurance of faith," and ask 
 and receive the blessing. 
 
 I know that all who are really taught of Darkness 
 
 caused 
 
 God will feel themselves debtors to His mercy ty the 
 
 J thought, 
 
 alone, whatever their theory may be. But " we are 
 
 J J saved on 
 
 even those whose true feeling may save them account of 
 
 o J our faith. 
 
 from the full effect of their erroneous theories, 
 may be much perplexed and hindered by them. 
 And assuredly there are many who do really 
 consider their faith as the fulfilment of a con- 
 dition by which they are entitled to pardon 
 and eternal life. Of course, when these per- 
 sons wish to confirm their assurance of sal- 
 vation, they look to the accuracy, or to the 
 unquestioning submission of their faith, and 
 
78 THE UNCONDITIONAL FEEENESS 
 
 endeavour to persuade themselves, that be- 
 cause they believe aright, God will give them 
 eternal life. They remember the words, " Be - 
 lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt 
 be saved," — and they say, We believe in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, therefore we shall be saved. 
 If misgivings arise, they endeavour to encour- 
 age themselves with the inference, that as they 
 have not doubted the Christian doctrines, they 
 must be within the pale of that covenant which 
 promises all things to faith ; but I am confi- 
 dent that such reasonings never can give peace 
 to a really awakened conscience. 
 
 The moral sense refuses such comfort. To 
 a moral and thinking being it cannot but 
 appear strange that God should pardon him 
 because he believes something. It gives such 
 an unintelligible and unedifying idea of the 
 Divine character — an idea which never can 
 impress the mind with holy feelings or affec- 
 tions or desires. And when the hour of weak- 
 ness and apprehension comes, — when he feels 
 himself on the brink of the unseen eternity, — 
 will he then be able to draw comfort from this 
 dry cistern, "that he has believed certain 
 doctrines" 1 — Is it not more likely that he will 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 79 
 
 begin anxiously to inquire whether his faith 
 has been of the right kind 1 If it had been 
 so, would it not have had a more sanctifying 
 influence on his conduct through life, and 
 would it not now impart greater peace ? 
 
 I can conceive nothing more melancholy 
 than the situation of a man lying on his death- 
 bed, with all the rich treasures of the gospel in 
 his view, but not seeing how he is to connect 
 himself with them. He reads in the Bible the 
 assurances of God's everlasting love, and of the 
 gift of eternal life, but he does not see these 
 treasures as his own, he asks what and where 
 is the link which unites a sinner to them ? — 
 An inquiry how full of agony when death is 
 evidently not many hours distant ! He is told 
 that faith is the link which unites the sinner 
 to the promises, and he looks within to see 
 whether his faith is right, but cannot tell 
 whether it is or is not. His perplexity rises 
 above his strength or endurance, and his agita- 
 tion makes it impossible for him to know or 
 examine what the state of his belief is. 
 
 Would it not be a blessed relief to that soul 
 to be assured that Christ died, not for believers, 
 but for the wjarld, — that He was promised as a 
 
80 THE UNCONDITIONAL FKEENESS 
 
 deliverer before there was one penitent or be- 
 lieving thought in any human breast, — and 
 that when He did appear on earth, He said of 
 Himself, that He came " to seek and to save 
 that which was lost," — that His invitation was 
 " Come unto me all ye that are weary and 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest " 1 
 
 Would it not be good tidings of great joy to 
 be told that through Christ Jesus God is recon- 
 ciling the world unto Himself, not imputing 
 unto them their trespasses ; — that He has tasted 
 death for every man — that He, the righteous 
 one, is our advocate with the Father — that He 
 is the propitiation for the sins of the whole 
 world — that thus the full pardon is already 
 resting on him before he had thought of ask- 
 ing it ; and that all which now remains is to 
 bless God for His unspeakable gift, and to ask 
 for the Spirit of Christ to open his understand- 
 ing and his affections to appreciate the gift 
 and use it ? 
 
 These good tidings are proclaimed to the 
 whole world, and when the poor man believes 
 them he will be justified by faith — that is, he 
 will have the sense of pardon and acceptance 
 before God, and will trust in Him as in a 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 81 
 
 Father who pitieth His own children. Before 
 he believed this, he was indeed one of that 
 world which God so loved as to give His Son 
 to die for it ; but till he believed in it he could 
 not be justified ; his conscience remained un- 
 purged, he had no child-like confidence in God, 
 he had no share in eternal life. 
 
 There is something very satisfying in this Our hope 
 
 . lies in what 
 
 way oi drawing nope and encouragement from God is, not 
 
 J n in what we 
 
 what God is, and not from what we ourselves are. 
 are, in drawing hope for the future from His 
 past acts and expressions of love. It is con- 
 nected very intimately with the spirit of de- 
 pendence, and it is a style of thought and 
 feeling which seems to me to run through 
 the whole Bible, and to be its peculiar cha- 
 racteristic. Let me give some examples 
 of it. 
 
 When our Lord asked water from the woman 
 of Sychar at Jacob's well, she reminded him of 
 the dissensions between the Jews and the Sa- 
 maritans as a reason which ought to have 
 prevented him from making such a request. 
 He answered, "If thou knewest the gift of 
 God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me 
 
82 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 to drink ; thou wouldest have asked of him, 
 and he would have given thee living water " 
 (John iv.) The Jew refuses water to the Sa- 
 maritan, and the Samaritan to the Jew, — but 
 such is not the manner of God. His love is 
 free and boundless, giving to all men liberally 
 and upbraiding not. If she had known the 
 fulness of that love ; if she had known that 
 He who spoke to her was Himself the great 
 gift of God to a lost world, and the dispenser 
 of all other gifts ; she would have made another 
 use of this interview, and instead of speaking 
 of the quarrels of men, would have asked for 
 the blessing of God ; " thou wouldest have 
 asked, and he would have given thee living 
 water." There is something unspeakably touch- 
 ing in that simple expression. He seems to 
 regard His giving as the natural consequence 
 of her asking ; and it is so, for the gift is 
 already given, and the creature's asking is 
 merely the opening of the heart to admit a love 
 which has been long waiting at the door. 
 
 This argument for present confidence and 
 future hope, drawn from past kindness, per- 
 vades the Old Testament as well as the New. 
 I may mention one beautiful example of it in 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 83 
 
 the 51st chapter of Isaiah.. As the prophet is Hope 
 
 drawn from 
 
 contemplating the fallen state of Israel, he thus past ex- 
 
 - 1 - ° perience. 
 
 draws encouragement from the former dealings 
 of God in their behalf, — "Awake, awake, arm 
 of the Lord ! Art thou not it which hath cut 
 Kahab (Egypt), and wounded the dragon ? 
 Art thou not it which hath dried up the foun- 
 tains of the great deep, and made a way- 
 through the sea for the ransomed to pass over % 
 Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall re- 
 turn, and shall come with singing unto Zion ; 
 and everlasting joy shall be upon their head : 
 they shall obtain gladness and joy ; and sorrow 
 and mourning shall flee away." With what 
 confidence does he draw his conclusion ! He 
 passes from the past deliverance to the future, 
 as if the one necessarily grew out of the other. 
 This is an argument worth a thousand syl- 
 logisms, for it speaks to the heart; and the 
 only argument in religion that is worth any- 
 thing is that which does speak to the heart. 
 I cannot but transcribe the words which follow. 
 They are words which some sorrowful heart 
 may be glad to read • for they are the words of 
 Him who made the heart and sends it sorrow, 
 and can make sorrow a greater blessing to it 
 
84 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 than joy. " I, even I, am he that comforteth 
 you." Who need remain uncomforted when 
 there is such a comforter ? taste and see 
 that the Lord is gracious ; blessed is the man 
 that putteth his trust in Him. 
 
 This is the manner of the Bible ; it tells us 
 of the streams, that it may allure us to the 
 Fountain ; it tells of the past acts of God's 
 faithful love, that we may be led to set our 
 hope on God, and to feel assured that He who 
 hath helped will help, and that He who hath 
 loved will love unto the end. " God hath so 
 loved the world, as to give His only begotten 
 Son " for it ; and " will He not with Him 
 freely give us all things V It is impossible to 
 doubt it. That great gift includes all others, 
 for it is the gift of God Himself. It is not a 
 stream from the fountain, but the fountain it- 
 self ; the unsparing and inexhaustible fountain 
 of eternal love. And it is given to the world. 
 
 Therefore, as each and every Israelite might 
 take to himself encouragement and consolation 
 from the past interpositions of God in behalf 
 of his nation, so each and every child of man 
 may draw rich and abundant encouragement 
 and consolation from this past act of God's 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 85 
 
 holy love in behalf of the world. And it is 
 indeed a full fountain. It contains all other 
 gifts, and is contained in them all, — it is their 
 very spirit and life, — it gives them all their 
 value, all their sweetness, — and without it they 
 are empty husks. The selfishness of man s evil 
 heart greedily seizes on the lower gifts, whilst 
 it rejects the love of God contained in them, 
 which is their very soul ; and thus they be- 
 come husks, — the husks on which the poor 
 prodigals of the world are feeding. 
 
 The_bxe§d of our Father's house is the love 
 of God in Christ Jesus, and there is enough of 
 it, and to spare, and we might find it even 
 enclosed in the outward gifts, if the mouth of 
 our spirit were opened, as the mouth of our 
 sense is ; if the desire of our heart were after 
 God, instead of being set on self-gratification. 
 Does it not seem strange that such a Father 
 should have so many prodigals, and that the 
 swine and the husks in this far country should 
 be so much preferred to the society and the 
 bread of our Father's house % It is not that 
 the swine and the husks satisfy any one ; they 
 are seen by many in their true loathsomeness 
 and emptiness, but self can live amongst them, 
 
86 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 — that is the secret, — whereas a man must re- 
 nounce self before he says in earnest, " I will 
 arise and go to my father." This is the real 
 bar which separates man from God, for God's 
 arms are open. 
 
 Theinvi- It appears to me further, that the invitation 
 prayer a to prayer is itself a pledge of forgiveness. And 
 forgivt- it will not be denied that the invitation to 
 prayer is universal, that " whosoever will" 
 may make use of it, that there is no limit but 
 in the will of man. The proof of this con- 
 tained in the words of Peter to Simon the 
 sorcerer (Acts viii. 20-24) is very strong. The 
 apostle tells him that he is in the gall of bit- 
 terness and bond of iniquity, and yet he desires 
 him to pray. 
 
 Some of my readers may recollect an anec- 
 dote told of Buonaparte, which, whether it be 
 founded on fact or not, in some degree illus- 
 trates my meaning. "When the Due d'Enghien 
 was apprehended, it is said that he begged 
 much for a personal interview with Buona- 
 parte. This, however, Buonaparte decidedly 
 refused ; and being afterwards asked his reason 
 for doing so, he replied, " I should have been 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 87 
 
 obliged to pardon him if I had admitted him, 
 and I had resolved that he should die." Hear 
 what this unjust judge saith ; he would have 
 considered the reluctantly granted admission 
 of his victim into his presence as inferring a 
 pardon, — surely then a pressing invitation to 
 come into his presence would have been con- 
 sidered as still more strongly inferring a par- 
 don. If that hard man felt thus, what shall 
 we conclude from the invitations of Him who 
 willeth not the death of the sinner, but that all 
 should turn and live ? — of Him who said, 
 " Come unto me, all ye that are weary and 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest"? 
 
 Is it said that only the prayer of faith is 
 heard ? True ; but every real prayer is a 
 prayer of faith. It is not, and cannot be, a 
 prayer at all, without the belief that " God is, 
 and that He is the rewarder of them that 
 diligently seek Him." We may pray for faith ; 
 we may pray for the spirit of prayer ; we may 
 pray for the waiting eye, and the spirit hun 
 gering and thirsting after righteousness ; we 
 may pray for the first elements of Christian 
 light and feeling, just as well as for the com- 
 munications of heavenly joy, and the greatest 
 
88 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 advancements in the Divine life. But the first 
 breathing or cry of the heart after these things 
 implies faith. 
 
 And such prayers, moreover, if real, are 
 prayers in the name of Christ, because they are 
 prayers for the accomplishment of that work 
 which Christ came from heaven to do. The 
 name of God is not the word God, but His re- 
 vealed character ; and the name of Christ is 
 the Divine character revealed in Christ, — the 
 character of holy love, — consuming sin, and 
 thus saving the sinner. He came to destroy 
 the works of the devil, — this is His name, — 
 and a prayer against the works of the devil is 
 a prayer in His name, being according to the 
 will and counsel of God revealed in him. This 
 seems to be the meaning of that frequently re- 
 curring expression, " in the name of Christ." 
 When the heart goes along with the declared 
 purpose of God, to eradicate evil, and bring in 
 the reign of righteousness, it prays in the name 
 of Christ ; 1 it lives and moves and has its 
 being in that name. 
 
 *At a later period the author would have given a more de- 
 finite meaning to this expression. He would have said it was 
 prayer in the spirit of filial trust. 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 89 
 
 Prayer seems to imply faith in an open ear 
 and a forgiving heart ; when God commands 
 prayer, is He not thereby declaring Himself to 
 be the hearer of prayer and the forgiver of 
 sins 1 
 
 It appears to me that this view of pardon, The true 
 as being a manifestation of the Divine charac- offorgive- 
 
 ° . ness lifts 
 
 ter in Christ Jesus, altogether independent of the . sou] 0llt 
 man s belief or unbelief, is a view much fitted 
 to draw the soul from self to God, and thus to 
 sanctify, at the same time that it gives peace ; 
 because it presents a ground of hope entirely 
 out of the soul itself, unchanged and unaffected 
 by its fluctuating feelings, and because that 
 ground is the holy God. It is not a pardon 
 apart from God, but it is the holy God mani- 
 festing Himself in pardon. It represents the 
 love of God as the one fountain out of which 
 all comfort and strength, all hope and holiness 
 are to be drawn ; and it represents this foun- 
 tain as perfectly and absolutely open and ac- 
 cessible to all the children of men at all times. 
 Whereas when a man thinks that he is not 
 pardoned until he believes, he is almost neces- 
 sarily drawn to self, and driven to seek comfort 
 
90 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 in the actings of his own mind ; and as he does 
 not conceive himself entitled to draw water 
 out of that fountain of holy love until he has 
 satisfactorily answered to himself the question, 
 "Do I believe V so, after he has answered it, 
 he is tempted to consider the water to be the 
 reward of his belief. 
 
 and places A second important advantage attends this 
 onthe right way of stating the subject. Whilst pardon is 
 ' conceived to depend upon faith, and is thus 
 confounded with eternal life, it is very difficult 
 to press the warnings and precepts and exhorta- 
 tions of the Bible, as the Bible itself presses 
 them. People reason thus : — If pardon and 
 eternal life are proclaimed gratuitously, what 
 place is left for obedience? How can the 
 preacher urge it as absolutely necessary, with- 
 out some inconsistency in his plan of instruc- 
 tion ? 
 
 The usual way of escaping from the difficulty 
 is to urge holy obedience as an evidence of the 
 reality of faith ; as if its value consisted not in 
 its own intrinsic worth as conformity to the 
 will of God, and thus as being in itself eternal 
 life to the soul, but merely in its proving the 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 9 1 
 
 existence of faith and gratitude. We are ex- 
 horted " to love the Lord our God with all our 
 heart ; " upon the ground, that if we do not, 
 we want an important evidence of the reality 
 of our faith. Is this a worthy argument for 
 urging men to the exercise of that high and 
 holy privilege, that blessed commandment, on 
 which " hang all the law, all the prophets/' 
 may we not add, all the gospel ? Must not 
 there be a radical error in that system which 
 reduces many a faithful servant of God to such 
 an argument ? 
 
 The whole use of the gospel is to introduce 
 the holy love, of God into man's heart, that it 
 may work there its own likeness. But the 
 gospel cannot enter the heart without being 
 believed, and here is the whole use of faith. 
 The duty of the creature to love the Creator, 
 and the other creatures of that Creator for His 
 sake, ought to be pressed as flowing neces- 
 sarily from our relation to Him and His good- 
 ness to us, — as constituting the height of moral 
 and spiritual perfection, — as being the very 
 substance out of which all true blessedness is 
 composed. The end of the commandment is 
 love out of a pure heart and a good conscience, 
 
92 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 and faith unfeigned. Surely then it is more 
 befitting that faith should be pressed and 
 prized as producing holy love in the heart and 
 life, than that love should be pressed as an 
 evidence of faith. 
 
 There is a third reason which seems to me 
 to recommend this view of pardon. When 
 pardon is sought as ao end, rather than as 
 means to an end, it gives a contracted and 
 mercenary tone to the mind. We are delivered 
 from this mercenary feeling when we discern 
 pardon to be not the end, but a means to the 
 end, which is holiness. Forgiving love is the 
 manna rained down from heaven on all our 
 habitations ; it is the daily bread on which the 
 soul must feed, to strengthen itself for the 
 daily work. When we receive it as such, then 
 our natural language is — " What shall I render 
 to the Lord for all his benefits towards me ? I 
 will take the cup of salvation, and call upon 
 the name of the Lord." While we look on 
 pardon as the ultimate object in religion, and 
 not as a grace already bestowed, it is impos- 
 sible that we can thus feed on it ; yet unless 
 we do so we can neither have peace nor 
 strength. 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 93 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 Consideration of some passages of Scripture referring 
 to the subject. 
 
 But, it may be asked, are there not many 2 Cor. v. 
 passages in the Scriptures which seem decid- the recon- 
 
 x ciler, not 
 
 edly to teach that forgiveness is bestowed only the ™- , 
 
 J ,° J conciled, 
 
 on those who believe in Jesus Christ \ Let us 
 examine some of these. Before doing so, how- 
 ever, let us consider attentively the general 
 declaration contained in 2 Cor. v. 19, 20, 21 : 
 " God was in Christ, reconciling the world 
 unto Himself, not imputing unto them their 
 trespasses." I ought to observe that here, as 
 indeed always in Scripture, God is spoken of 
 as " reconciling" — never as " being reconciled." 
 To reconcile is the act of an injured party who 
 forgives ; to he reconciled is the condition of 
 one who has committed an offence, and has 
 obtained forgiveness. 1 
 
 1 Thus our Lord says (Matt. v. 23, 24), " If thou bring thy 
 
94 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 In this passage God is represented as declar- 
 ing a purpose of forgiveness to every individual 
 in the world — as breathing out forgiveness to 
 all (not imputing to men their trespasses) — 
 in order that the world might be reconciled to 
 Himself. 
 
 Immediately after the fall, He had made 
 known His purpose of restoring the lost race 
 through the instrumentality of the woman's 
 seed. In the fulness of time the Deliverer 
 came forth, and was declared to be no less 
 than the only begotten of the Father, — the 
 manifestation and expression of His nature, — 
 full of grace and truth. Christ is thus not 
 only the proof and pledge of Divine love, but 
 is also the appropriate organ through which 
 that love may be dispensed to sinners. God 
 manifested in Christ, therefore, is God revealed 
 as the holy and gracious forgiver of sins. This 
 is His attitude. All who see Him in this at- 
 titude must believe in His forgiving love. 
 
 But sin hides the forgiving character of God 
 
 gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath 
 aught against thee (hath ground of complaint against thee), 
 leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way ; first be 
 reconciled to thy brother (obtain his forgiveness), and then come 
 and offer thy gift." 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 95 
 
 from us ; the accusations of conscience raise a 
 cloud between God and the sinner. The for- 
 giving love of God being manifested in the life 
 and death of Christ, declares itself to be a con- 
 suming fire to evil, and thus no heart which 
 does not sympathize with the threatened de- 
 struction of evil can possibly embrace cordially, 
 or enjoy fully, the forgiveness of the gospel. 
 So long, therefore, as a man chooses to keep 
 his sin, so long he refuses to allow the forgiv- 
 ing love of God to enter his heart. In such 
 circumstances, although God remains the same, 
 — although He is still, as Luther calls Him, 
 " the merciful forgiver of the sins of all men," 
 — yet the man can have no real peace, no true 
 sense of forgiving love ; and if he continues in 
 this state through eternity, he must through 
 eternity be a child of wrath, abiding in outer 
 darkness. Therefore, when the light of God's 
 reconciling countenance is first perceived shin- 
 ing through these veils and clouds and ob- 
 stacles, although the forgiving love has been 
 always the same, yet the man may be said to 
 be then first 'pardoned, because he then first 
 admits or accepts the pardon. When one man 
 loves another, that other is loved, whether he 
 
96 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 accepts the love bestowed on him or not. In 
 like manner, when God in Christ forgives the 
 world, the world is forgiven, whether it accepts 
 the pardon or not. But as in the first case the 
 refuser of human kindness receives no joy 
 and no benefit from it, though it has been 
 bestowed, so, in the second case, those who 
 understand not — or refuse to accept — Gods 
 pardon, receive no joy, — no benefit from it, 
 though it also has been bestowed. When the 
 Saviour came into the world, St. John tells 
 us, "He came unto his own, and his own 
 received him not ; but as many as received 
 him, to them gave he power to become sons 
 of God, even to them who believed in his 
 name." He came to the world, and pardon 
 was and is proclaimed , in him. Those who 
 receive him receive the pardon in him ; those 
 who do not receive him do not receive the 
 pardon. See also 1st John v. 11, 12. 
 
 Let us now proceed to examine some of the 
 
 passages which appear to represent pardon 
 
 as a gift bestowed upon believing, or upon 
 
 being baptized. 
 
 Actsiii. 19. "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 97 
 
 that your sins may be blotted out, when the 
 times of refreshing shall come from the pre- 
 sence of the Lord." Leave, therefore, your 
 false notions of God, and be converted to that 
 true view of His character which blots out sin 
 and assures of the forgiveness of sin (and 
 thereby delivers from its power), that your 
 sins may be found to be blotted out when the 
 times of refreshing shall come, etc. (or, accord- 
 ing to Schleusner), "especially now that the 
 times of refreshing have come from the pre- 
 sence of the Lord, and that He hath sent 
 Jesus Christ, who was before promised by the 
 prophets." 
 
 That this interpretation of the latter clause 
 is correct, appears to me quite evident, from 
 the fact that it is the first and not the second 
 coming of our Lord which is here referred to 
 — for his second coming is separately men- 
 tioned in the 21st verse. 
 
 " To him give all the prophets witness, that Acts x. 43. 
 whosoever believeth in him shall, through his 
 name, receive the remission of sins." The 
 word " receive " here has the same sense that 
 it has in John i. 12, which has been already 
 quoted : " He came to his own, and his own 
 
 G 
 
98 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 received him not," or accepted him not. He 
 had come to them whether they received him 
 or not, and so had the remission of sin ; but 
 those only who believed in his true character, 
 viz., that he had come as a destroyer of the 
 works of the devil, and as thus being a pro- 
 pitiation for the sins of the world, would in 
 that very character of him read and receive 
 their own forgiveness. 
 
 The next passage which I quote is still more 
 distinct on the point — Acts xiii. 38, 39 : "Be 
 it known unto you, therefore, men and breth- 
 ren, that through this man is proclaimed unto 
 you the forgiveness of sins ; and by him all 
 that believe are justified from all things, from 
 which ye could not be justified by the law of 
 Moses." Here the forgiveness is declared to 
 be universal, while the justification is limited 
 to those who believe the proclamation • that is, 
 they only who receive the unspeakable gift are 
 justified; — they only have their consciences 
 purged of guilt, and are delivered from the 
 burden of unpardoned sin. 
 
 And I cannot but think that Abraham's 
 justification was of the same kind. In Gen. xii. 
 we read that God said to him, " Get thee out 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 99 
 
 of thy country, and from thy kindred, and 
 from thy father's house, unto a land that I will 
 shew thee : and I will make of thee a great 
 nation ; and in thee shall all families of the 
 earth be blessed." Eelying on this promise, 
 Abraham went forth as a stranger and pilgrim 
 towards the land of promise ; but his faith was 
 still very imperfect, for we find that when God 
 appeared to him some time after and said to 
 him, " I am thy shield, and thy exceeding 
 great reward," his only answer was, " Lord 
 God, what wilt thou give me ? Behold, to me 
 thou hast given no seed : and, lo, one born in 
 mine house is mine heir." On this God renews 
 the promise. " He brought him forth abroad, 
 and said, Look now towards heaven, and tell 
 the stars if thou be able to number them. And 
 He said, So shall thy seed be." And then it is 
 added, " he believed in the Lord ; arid He 
 counted it to him for righteousness." 
 
 Now if we suppose that God rewarded the 
 greatness of Abraham's faith by imputing to 
 him righteousness, then we must also suppose 
 that his acceptance is " no more of grace, but 
 of debt." And if we decline this interpreta- 
 tion as being contrary to the whole tenor of 
 
100 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 the gospel, and to the express commentary of 
 St. Paul on the subject (Romans iv.), what 
 other explanation can we adopt but that which 
 has been suggested, viz., that from the great- 
 ness of God's kindness manifested in His pro- 
 mises to him, he had learned to look up to 
 God with filial confidence, and that God de- 
 clared this state of filial confidence to be what 
 He regards as the righteousness of man 1 
 
 We shall now consider some passages of a 
 different kind, such as, " Believe in the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved ; " and 
 "He that believeth in Him shall not perish, 
 but have everlasting life." With regard to 
 such passages, I have to observe, that salva- 
 tion and eternal life are things quite different 
 from pardon, just as a medicine is different 
 from the health which is produced by its ap- 
 plication. Salvation is the healing of spiritual 
 disease, and eternal life is the communication 
 of the life of God to the soul. These blessings 
 are brought to man by the knowledge of God 
 entering into him, and abiding in him, and 
 giving him a participation in the Divine na- 
 ture. The saving knowledge of God is the 
 knowledge of Him as revealed in Christ, the 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 101 
 
 forgiver of sin, and it can only enter into him 
 by being believed. 
 
 This doctrine, then, of the forgiveness of 
 sins through Jesus Christ, is the medicine and 
 nourishment of the soul ; faith is taking this 
 medicine, and feeding on this nourishment. 
 Salvation, sanctiflcation, heaven, eternal life, 
 are different names for the spiritual health and 
 strength and enjoyment, which are the blessed 
 effect of receiving this spiritual medicine and 
 this spiritual nourishment. Therefore, "Believe Acts xvi 
 in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
 saved," is not a nostrum nor a magical amulet, 
 but a declaration of the way to obtain spiritual 
 health. The Philippian jailer had been ar- 
 rested by the voice of Paul, when in the very 
 act of plunging into eternity. He now looked 
 back on what had happened with the feelings 
 of a man who in the morning contemplates the 
 full extent of a danger through which he has 
 passed unconsciously during the night, — he 
 lived the danger over again, and felt the fear. 
 His arm had been stopped and his life saved 
 by the voice of the men whom he had thrust 
 into the inner prison. He must have known 
 that it was for preaching a new religion that 
 
102 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 these prisoners, after having had many stripes 
 laid upon them, had been committed to him 
 by the magistrates, with a special charge of 
 safe custody, and he knew that he had not 
 softened his charge in the execution of it. 
 
 It was a remarkable night. Nature, or the 
 God of Nature, seemed to take part with the 
 prisoners, and to protest against the wrong 
 done to them ; there was a great earthquake, 
 so that the foundations of the prison were 
 shaken, all the doors were opened, and every 
 one's bands were loosed ; he was awakened by 
 the commotion, and when about to kill himself, 
 supposing that the prisoners were fled, he was 
 saved by St. Paul's assurance that they were 
 all there. As his agitated mind hastily con- 
 templated and compared these striking things, 
 he seems to have been led to connect them all 
 with the new God whose claims and authority 
 these men had been asserting. 
 
 Under these impressions he came trembling, 
 and fell down before Paul and Silas, saying, 
 " Sirs, what must I do to be saved ? " and they 
 replied, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and thou shalt be saved." And then it is 
 added, " they spake unto him the word of the 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 103 
 
 Lord;" that is, they explained to him the 
 gospel, — they told him who Jesus Christ was, 
 and for what he had come into this world. 
 This was absolutely necessary; for these words, 
 " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou 
 shalt be saved," however full of meaning to one 
 who knows the gospel, yet if spoken alone and 
 without a commentary, must have been ab- 
 solutely unintelligible to a Macedonian jailer, 
 who knew nothing at all about Jesus Christ. 
 Pressed by his fears, he might have answered 
 to such an address, " I will believe anything ;" 
 but would this have been pleasing to Him who 
 desires reasonable service ; or could the jailer 
 have been enlightened or benefited in any way 
 by such a faith, or rather such superstitious 
 credulity % 
 
 Paul must have told him that the God of 
 heaven and earth, the Holy One, who cannot 
 look upon iniquity, yet looks v/ith a father's 
 love on this lost world ; yea, that He has so 
 loved them as to give His Son to die for them; 
 that Jesus Christ is this son — the image of the 
 invisible God, the manifestation of His holy 
 love ; and that through him a full and free 
 forgiveness is proclaimed to every man, and 
 
104 THE UNCONDITIONAL FEEENESS 
 
 access to God, as to a loving Father and the 
 Hearer of prayer, is laid open to every man. 
 
 We may suppose the jailer then asking, 
 " But is there anything that I have to do in 
 order to entitle me to a participation in these 
 privileges and blessings ? " And Paul answers, 
 " No — nothing ; all you have to do is imme- 
 diately to use them and enjoy them." If you 
 believe this history of God's love, you will not 
 doubt of His forgiveness to yourself, you will 
 know that wherever you are, you have an 
 Almighty friend who will never leave you and 
 never forsake you, you will ask of Him, and 
 He will give you living water, which will 
 bathe your heart with gladness, and purify 
 you even as He is pure. " Believe on the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." 
 
 our ground I think that much obscurity has arisen from 
 is not <f-i_ considering these words, " Believe in the Lord 
 
 believe 
 
 but "God Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved," as con- 
 has forgiven 
 
 me -" taining in themselves a statement of the gospel. 
 
 This remark may be thought hyper critical, but 
 I am persuaded of its importance. Only con- 
 sider : If the gospel really consists in this pro- 
 clamation, then to believe the gospel is "to 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 105 
 
 believe that those who believe in the Lord 
 Jesus Christ shall be saved." "Well/' one 
 may say, " I believe that those who believe in 
 the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved;" but 
 then, another question arises, "Do I myself 
 believe in the Lord Jesus Christ ? If so, I am 
 saved ; if not, I am not saved." Then comes 
 a doubt, " Have I any evidence of the sincerity 
 of my faith ? Have my actings proved it ? 
 Have I not been unfaithful to my light ?" It is 
 quite clear that the mind cannot find firm 
 footing in this way. It is an unravellable 
 perplexity. But suppose the result of the in- 
 quiry to be, " Yes, I am sure that I believe in 
 the Lord Jesus Christ ; " then I say that, draw- 
 ing his hope from the fact of his faith, he is as 
 far from the spirit of the gospel as the man 
 who rests his hope on his alms-deeds. When- 
 ever anything in myself is the source of my 
 comfort, I am sure that I am drawing from an 
 empty cistern. It is not in the nature of 
 things that I should be able to draw peace or 
 strength or holiness from knowing that I be- 
 lieve a fact, however true and important that 
 fact may be. The fact itself may be a comfort 
 to me ; but not my knowing that I believe it. 
 
106 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 The gospel is not " he that believeth shall be 
 saved/' but "Be it known unto you, men and 
 brethren, that through this man is preached 
 unto you the forgiveness of sins." 
 
 Let the reader thoughtfully compare these 
 two statements, and judge between them. If 
 the first be true, then the gospel consists 
 simply in a premium to faith. If the second, 
 then it consists in a manifestation of the un- 
 utterable love of God to man. In the first 
 case, the belief is that a promise has been 
 made to faith, and therefore none can draw 
 comfort from it, except those who hiovj they 
 have the true faith. In the second case, the 
 belief is that God forgives sinners, and through 
 Christ announces this to sinners, and this 
 belief will give comfort to all who know that 
 they are sinners, and desire deliverance from 
 sin. 
 
 I hope that I have made my meaning clear ; 
 for the error which I am opposing seems to me 
 very general, and a great source of disquietude. 
 There are many who, when seeking for peace, 
 inquire rather " Have I believed ? " than what 
 is there to be believed ? " Has God indeed 
 forgiven the sins of the whole world ? " Yet 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 107 
 
 surely this is the question : and, blessed be 
 God, the answer rests on the unchangeableness 
 of God, and does not vacillate according to the 
 high or low spirits of a weak mortal. " The 
 Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, 
 forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, 
 and that will by no means clear the guilty." — ■ 
 This is His name for ever ; " and they who 
 know His name will put their trust in Him, 
 for He never faileth them that seek Him." 
 This name of God is the strong tower into 
 which the righteous fleeth and is safe. 
 
 Eeader, art thou in this strong tower ? How 
 wouldst thou feel, if it were now said to thee 
 by a voice which thou couldst not mistake nor 
 gainsay — This night thy soul shall be required 
 of thee? Oh, my brother! thy God loveth 
 thee, and hath given His Son for thee, so un- 
 quenchable is His love. He hath said, Look 
 unto me and be saved, — Come unto me, and I 
 will give thee rest. The love from which these 
 gifts and promises and words of kindness flow 
 is the strong tower. Wilt thou not flee into 
 it ? It is the one thing needful : that tower is 
 the secret place of the Most High, the shadow 
 of the Almighty ; if thou art abiding in it, 
 
108 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 although thou hast no earthly friend nor re- 
 fuge nor comfort, yet thou art safe, for nothing 
 can separate thee from the love of God, which 
 is in Christ Jesus ; and even if thou hast 
 hitherto received the grace of God in vain, 
 that grace is still lying at thy door, and beg- 
 ging for admittance. Fear not, therefore : 
 " Open thy mouth wide, and He will fill it." 
 
 And let no one be alarmed by hearing that 
 it is " the righteous " who flee into this tower ; 
 as if they must become righteous before they 
 can have a right to flee into it. The sinner is 
 invited to flee into this strong tower ; and he 
 becomes righteous in doing so. 
 
 " This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only 
 true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast 
 sent/' Eternal life is not given as a premium 
 for knowing God ; the knowledge of God as 
 revealed in Christ is eternal life. God is light, 
 and the knowledge of God is a ray of that 
 light, and the soul into which it enters be- 
 comes a partaker of the Divine nature. 
 
 We may have an atheistical knowledge of 
 Christianity, as I have before observed. That 
 is, Ave may receive its doctrines, without re- 
 ceiving the God of the doctrines, just as the 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 109 
 
 philosophers of this world receive the doctrines 
 of natural science, without thinking of or re- 
 ceiving the God of nature, or as men are con- 
 tinually receiving the events of life, without 
 receiving the God who manifests Himself in 
 them. And therefore it is most necessary to 
 bear continually on our minds that it is God 
 with •whom we have to do, and not a science. 
 The doctrines of revelation are the manifesta- 
 tions of that ever-present Almighty God, in 
 whose hand our breath is, and whose are all 
 our ways. They are lights to guide us back 
 to God, our long-lost heavenly Father, and if 
 they serve not this purpose, they serve no pur- 
 pose. They are channels through which His 
 Spirit, which- is our life, may be received into 
 the heart ; and if they bring not this Spirit, 
 they do nothing. 
 
110 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 
 CHArTEK V. 
 
 Sympathy with the mind of God. 
 
 Two fields Christianity has two fields ; the one is the 
 Sanity. infinite and unchangeable character of God — 
 the other is the heart of man : the first is all 
 light — original, uncreated light ; the second in 
 itself is all darkness — but it is created with a 
 capacity of receiving light. The great object 
 of Christianity is to dispel the darkness of the 
 second field, by introducing into it the light of 
 the first. 
 
 A man may know that there is light in God, 
 and he may acquire some ideas concerning the 
 colour and the qualities of the rays of that 
 light, and yet be un visited by a single ray. 
 He may know about it, as a blind man may 
 know about material light. And all the while, 
 though he reasons about it, he has it not — he 
 is in darkness. 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. Ill 
 
 But why is the heart of man dark ? Surely 
 it was not so when God pronounced it good. 
 No, it was then light ; but it was light merely 
 and solely because it was then open to receive 
 the light of God. The creature must be dark- 
 ness when separated from the Creator — when 
 shut against Him ; and man has separated 
 himself from God, and shut out His light, and 
 never can have light again, until he opens his 
 heart to receive the light of God. As easily 
 may the eye create light for itself, indepen- 
 dent of the sun, as the soul of man create light 
 for itself, independent of God. There is no 
 light for man but in God ; if He is not in thee, 
 my brother, the light that is in thee is dark- 
 ness. 
 
 The natural sun entering upon the polar 
 regions, which have been locked up in the death 
 and frost and darkness of their long winter, 
 and filling all things with light and life and 
 warmth, is but a feeble emblem of the entrance 
 of the Sun of Righteousness on the cold, dead, 
 dark regions of the human heart. The human 
 heart, apart from God, is a land of darkness, 
 as darkness itself, inhabited by lies and vain 
 imaginations, and lying under the shadow of 
 
112 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 death ; it is a chaos and a terror to itself, 
 whenever it can look upon itself. But no 
 sooner does that sun enter, no sooner does the 
 dead heart drink in His quickening beams, 
 than it revives ; it finds that the light is life, — 
 the darkness and the fear and the frozen death 
 are past ; a new principle of life is imparted ; 
 the cold and torpid heart opens its rigid and 
 shrunken veins to receive the life-blood and 
 the quickening influences which flow from Him 
 who is the heart and the head of the spiritual 
 universe ; it finds that that light is love, and 
 that that uncreated, all-embracing, and omni- 
 potent love, is its own joyful and satisfying 
 portion through all eternity. " Surely the light 
 is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes 
 to behold the sun." 
 
 To know Each revealed perfection of God, as it enters 
 sympathize the heart of man, goes to form a part of the 
 Christian character, and is necessary to the 
 filling up of that character. The perfected 
 character is a cordial, delighted, intelligent 
 sympathy with the whole revealed will of God. 
 But we must know God in order thus to sym- 
 pathize with Him ; for we cannot sympathize 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 113 
 
 with, what we neither know nor believe in. 
 We may know and believe many things with- 
 out sympathizing with them ; but no man can 
 know or believe in God without sympathizing 
 with Him. He who does not know God as the 
 light and the life and the portion of his soul, 
 knows Him not ; and he who knows this can- 
 not but sympathize with Him. 
 
 " This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only 
 true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast 
 sent ;" that is, to know God as He is revealed 
 in Christ, — to know Him in His relation to 
 sinners. It is to know His purpose of destroy- 
 ing the works of the devil through the work of 
 the Eedeemer ; to know the tenderness of His 
 love, and its freeness ; to know Him as the 
 prodigal knew his father, when he felt his arms 
 about him ; and at the same time to know that 
 the grand object of this love is the eradication 
 of evil. 
 
 "This is life" saith the faithful and true 
 Witness ; it is a living principle, and not a 
 mere notion ; it is a participation in the life 
 of God ; it is an indwelling of the Spirit of 
 God. The Saviour complained, " Ye will not 
 come unto me, that ye might have life." There 
 
 H 
 
114 THE UNCONDITIONAL FKEENESS 
 
 was but one life, and one Dispenser of that 
 life in the whole universe, yet they would not 
 come to him for it. Oh ! if they had known 
 the gift of God, and who it was that offered it 
 to them, they would have asked, and he would 
 have given them eternal life. 
 
 Life eternal does not consist in knowing that 
 there is a God and that there is a Saviour ; 
 but in acquaintance with God and with the 
 Saviour. In knowing Him, as a child knows 
 his father, as a friend knows his friend. When 
 man discovers that his Creator, the fountain of 
 eternity, the fountain of his being and of all 
 being — in whom and by whom he lives and 
 thinks and feels — who pervades and sustains 
 his soul and his body in all their parts — who 
 ever is, and ever must be essentially present 
 in every faculty and capacity of his nature, 
 — without whom nothing lives, nothing hap- 
 pens, nothing is done through all worlds — in 
 whom, as in their one root, all the varieties of 
 things are united, and from whom, as from 
 their one root, they all grow — when he dis- 
 covers that this great One, this Mystery which 
 contains and binds in and animates the uni- 
 verse, has a love for him passing thought as 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 115 
 
 well as utterance, a love which led Him to 
 take on Himself the human nature, that in it 
 He might reveal Himself to man — when he 
 discovers that this revelation was made that 
 we might live for ever in the knowledge and 
 fellowship of His holy love — dwelt in by Him, 
 and animated by His Spirit, and filled with 
 His fulness, — oh ! then the darkness is past and 
 the true light is come. We have found the 
 pearl of eternity, the pearl of great price, and 
 know the meaning of that word, " He that 
 hath the Son hath life ;" we have found the 
 pearl, and for joy thereof we go and sell all 
 that we have and buy it. 
 
 The pearl is a free gift! What then isTtemean- 
 meant by saying that the merchant-man who ?£ that 
 had found it went and sold all that he had 
 and bought it ? The meaning is, that there is 
 no room for it in a heart which is filled with 
 other things ; — he who would possess it must 
 make room for it. It is not and cannot be 
 enjoyed unless it occupies the whole heart. It 
 must be the first and the last, the sole object 
 of the thoughts and affections and desires. 
 
 The pearl of great price is eternal life — it is 
 
116 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 the love of God reigning in the heart. Now 
 eternal life has no fellowship with a sensual, 
 selfish, worldly life, and the love of God can- 
 not reign in the heart whilst self reigns there, 
 disposing of the affections according to its will. 
 What we have to sell, therefore, is self; self 
 must be given up in order to possess the pearl. 
 Whilst self continues to be the dominant prin- 
 ciple within us, we may hear of God by the 
 hearing of the ear — we may read and reason 
 and talk about Him — we may have our feelings 
 and imaginations strongly excited by the ideas 
 which we have formed of Him, but He is not 
 our God, He is not the portion of our souls. 
 There is no room for Him there, as there was 
 no room for Him in the inn when He was born 
 into our nature and our world. 
 
 Yet let no one think that his business is 
 first to cast out self, and then to look for this 
 pearl ; the knowledge of its value is the power 
 in the hand of God by which self, the strong 
 man armed, is cast out — the only power which 
 can do so. They who know the name of God 
 will put their trust in Him — they who know 
 the value of the pearl will sell all that they 
 have and buy it. But they who know not the 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 117 
 
 name of God cannot trust in Him, and they 
 who know not the value of the pearl cannot 
 part with anything so dear as self, in order to 
 make room for it. They keep self, and in 
 keeping self they refuse the pearl. 
 
 Is self then still reigning in us ? Let us not 
 deceive ourselves with vain words. In this case 
 we have yet neither part nor lot in the matter, 
 and our religion is nothing else than Simon's 
 traffic, who wished to purchase the Holy Ghost 
 in order to flatter and pamper self. Whilst we 
 continue thus we are strangers to the covenant 
 of promise — we are without home, or hope, or 
 God in the world. 
 
 And yet the love of God is still resting on 
 us, the ear of God is still open to our cry, and 
 the sighing of the prisoner comes before Him : 
 He waiteth to be gracious, and He delighteth 
 in mercy. Nevertheless the danger is immi- 
 nent, for every hour of delay strengthens self, 
 and confirms the opposition of the heart 
 against God. Let us consider how we shall 
 estimate the pearl when we come to die, and 
 how we shall estimate self. Do we not know 
 well that at that hour we shall be ready to give 
 ten thousand times ten thousand worlds, if we 
 
118 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 had them, for one smile of the face of God, 
 for one good hope of eternal life. And if such 
 a smile and such a hope be worth so much at 
 that hour, why should they be less worth at 
 this hour ! For be assured that however the 
 things that are seen may, for a time, veil un- 
 seen realities, it was for these you were created, 
 and nothing lower can satisfy the cravings of 
 your being. And certainly the hour is not far 
 off when thou wilt know this. Oh, then, is 
 there any madness equal to the madness of 
 neglecting the soul and the favour of God, 
 and spending thy short uncertain hour here 
 in treasuring up for thyself regrets and fears 
 against the day of the revelation of the judg- 
 ment of God \ Is it not madness in an im- 
 mortal being to leave eternity entirely out of 
 his account of existence, when, in truth, it is 
 the only thing in his existence which is worth 
 thinking of ? Neglect not the pearl, for it is a 
 pearl of great price. 
 
 Man's ^he appeals made by God to every man, 
 
 misery and * -t J J 
 
 us cure, through the occasional misgivings of conscience 
 and the appointments of providence, and espe- 
 cially through that sense of the weariness and 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 119 
 
 unsatisfactoriness of life which forces itself 
 upon him when he is not under the immediate 
 exciting influence of some particular object, 
 are all urgent invitations to seek for that good 
 in the Creator which has in vain been sought 
 for in the creature. 
 
 Why is the world such a scene as it is % Why 
 is life such a scene ? Think for a moment of 
 the loathsome sin and misery which cover the 
 crowded population of our cities, and over- 
 spread immense regions of the earth. It is a 
 festering and putrefying evil, which defies all 
 human skill and power and benevolence to 
 cure it. And think of the better regulated 
 sin and the better disguised misery which 
 poison the more decent or the more refined 
 portions of humanity. The bitter root of all 
 this is that self which has taken the place of 
 God in man's heart. 
 
 There is no common centre wherein men 
 may be united to each other, for all worship 
 each one his own self, so that there are as 
 many centres as there are individuals. And 
 there is no true order in the individual any 
 more than in the race, for the spiritual key- 
 stone is gone. The one common centre of 
 
120 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 men is God. Love to Him is the only 
 common principle which can unite them to 
 each other. And as God is the common centre 
 of the whole spiritual universe, so He is the 
 keystone of the arch in each individual spirit. 
 The fool who " hath said in his heart, There 
 is no God," has chosen as his portion a restless 
 misery within, and a tumultuous strife without. 
 Is not this the world's condition \ Whither 
 can we turn for hope and consolation in such 
 circumstances but to our Creator \ Our revolt 
 from Him is the very spring and source of the 
 evil ; our cure lies only in our return to Him. 
 Oh that each heart might hear and answer to 
 the call, "Keturn unto Me, for I have re- 
 deemed you." " Look unto Me, and be ye 
 saved, all the ends of the earth." 
 
 We must look, we must believe, we must 
 receive the truth of God, else we cannot be 
 saved. Salvation does not consist in the re- 
 moval of punishment, but in the willing 
 acceptance of it — in dying unto self and living 
 unto God — in being made one with the Father 
 and the Son — in being made partakers of the 
 same mind, the same will, the same spirit with 
 God. Salvation is God's truth abiding richly 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 121 
 
 and efficiently in the soul, and how can truth 
 enter the heart but by being believed % Salva- 
 tion is thus by faith, and by faith alone ; that 
 is, it is the effect produced on the heart by the 
 truth and love of God believed in. 
 
 Sanctiflcation and salvation are one thing, why saiva- 
 
 _ . — . tion comes 
 
 The great High Priest prays thus — " Sanctify ty faith. 
 them through thy truth ; thy word is truth." 
 Knowledge is truth in the understanding ; 
 sanctiflcation is truth in the will and the affec- 
 tions, — choosing and estimating and loving 
 things according to truth. But truth can 
 enter the will and the affections only through 
 the understanding. Therefore it is that our 
 souls are " sanctified through the truth." 
 
 Christianity simply reveals the truth of our 
 relation to God, there is nothing arbitrary in 
 it. We are not called upon to believe any- 
 thing merely for the sake of believing it, or 
 merely in obedience to the command of a 
 Being more powerful than ourselves, on whose 
 arbitrary good pleasure our happiness depends. 
 Christianity explains the true relation between 
 the Creator and the creature. It ascribes the 
 evil that is in the world to the breach of that 
 
122 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 relation on the part of the creature, and de- 
 clares the means by which God proposes to 
 heal the breach, and to bring out of this foul 
 stain a higher manifestation of His own cha- 
 racter, and a higher holiness and happiness to 
 the restored race, as well as to all the rest of 
 the spiritual family. Through the intelligent 
 belief of this we enter into sympathy with the 
 mind and will and purposes of God ; and thus 
 faith is the natural and necessary means by 
 which man is reunited to God ; — for reunion 
 with God and a renewed sympathy with His 
 will and purposes are one and the same thing. 
 " Sanctify them through thy truth — thy 
 word is truth." Truth is the instrument, but 
 it is the God of truth who works. In fact the 
 " Word/' understood in its highest significa- 
 tion, implies this. It is not truth to our souls 
 till God is discerned in it. Whilst the truth 
 lies in our minds as a mere knowledge or 
 system of theology it cannot profit us — it is a 
 body without a soul ; not that it is this in 
 itself, but it is so to us, so long as we do not 
 make it a channel of communion with God. 
 If we would have our souls really fed by the 
 word we must get it fresh from the mouth of 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 123 
 
 God Himself, and we must get it daily, for 
 like the manna in the wilderness it will not 
 keep. We must receive it in the spirit of 
 dependence. We must ask for it till He gives 
 it, — we must open our mouths wide till He 
 fills them. 
 
 " Sanctify them through thy truth ;" thus 
 our High Priest prayed whilst on earth, and 
 prays still without ceasing ; and it is sweet, 
 when the soul is dry and comfortless, and can- 
 not pray with any fervour of feeling, to sit 
 down at His feet, and say Amen to His prayer. 
 Oh ! what high things will the soul hear that 
 sits there, and with what high things will its 
 soul mingle ? Hear some of them, — " Neither 
 pray I for these alone, but for them also which 
 shall believe on me through their word, that 
 they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in 
 me, and I in Thee ; that they also may be one 
 in us. And the glory which Thou gavest me, 
 I have given them, that they may be one, 
 even as We are one. I in them, and Thou 
 in me ; that they may be made perfect in one." 
 " Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast 
 given me be with me where I am, that they 
 may behold my glory," and " that the love 
 
124 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in 
 them, and I in them." He who prays thus is 
 the Son whom the Father heareth alway — and 
 who is " Head over all things to his Church." 
 Will not the soul that hears this say with 
 David, " Who am I, and what is my house ? 
 and what can I say more unto Thee 1 yet, 
 now, Lord God, Thou art that God, and Thy 
 words are true, and Thou hast promised this 
 goodness unto Thy servant ; and now, Lord 
 God, the word that Thou hast spoken concern- 
 ing Thy servant, establish it for ever, and do 
 as Thou hast said." 
 
 It is very profitable and delightful to read 
 the Psalms in this same spirit, regarding them 
 as the confessions and prayers and praises and 
 hopes and assurances, which the great High 
 Priest presents to the Father in the name of 
 His Church. The soul that joins in this wor- 
 ship of the upper sanctuary must pray with 
 confidence, — it cannot doubt of an answer, — 
 it knows that it has the petitions which it 
 asks, because it asks according to the will of 
 God, and through the mouth of the all-pre- 
 vailing Intercessor. This is indeed profitable 
 for the soul, for thus it learns a holy famili- 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 125 
 
 arity with Heaven, — it becomes one of that 
 great multitude which no man can number, — 
 and as it sees and feels more of the privilege 
 of being united to Christ and to His body, it 
 learns more and more to loathe the contracted - 
 ness and littleness of self and individuality, 
 and to pant after a full participation in that 
 free spirit, which is the Spirit of God, and the 
 quickening breath of the universal family. 
 
126 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 Thoughts suggested by the foregoing Remarks. 
 
 Reason of Perhaps some of my readers, as they look 
 tion in the back on the views which I have been laying 
 
 prayer of ° 
 
 Johnxvii. before them, may refer to this very chapter 
 (John xvii.) from which I have been making 
 these most comforting quotations, as a com- 
 plete refutation of what I have said concern- 
 ing the universality of the love of God. For 
 in that prayer our Lord only prays for such as 
 either were then, or should afterwards become, 
 believers. But there is no inconsistency here. 
 The circumstances of the disciples at the time, 
 and the character of the prayer itself, fully 
 explain this limitation. 
 
 The disciples were at that moment, without 
 knowing it, on the very brink of a most tre- 
 mendous event, which was to shake all their 
 high hopes of their Masters success, and which 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 127 
 
 was at first sight to appear the complete tri- 
 umph of the world over his cause. He had 
 all along been forewarning them of this event, 
 and particularly as it came near its accom- 
 plishment ; their eyes were holclen that they 
 should not see the truth, yet he continued to 
 prepare them for it. He at last distinctly 
 told them that he was to suffer at the feast 
 which was about to be celebrated ; and when 
 he sees their hearts dejected by the intelli- 
 gence, he has recourse to another mode of 
 encouragement and consolation. He prays in 
 their hearing for them to the Father, and in 
 his prayer he speaks as the high priest over 
 the house of God above, and thus draws their 
 thoughts and expectations past the present 
 sorrow, and fixes them on that future triumph 
 and glory which should be the consequence of 
 his sufferings, and which should be for a praise 
 and a rest and a joy to his people for ever and 
 ever. 
 
 They were soon to stand in need of a very 
 special and very strong consolation, and he 
 gave it them ; he let them know that he bore 
 their individual names on his heart before his 
 Father. They were soon to see him crucified 
 
128 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 by the world, and thence would learn to dread 
 the world as their own enemy ; he therefore 
 prayed for them, as distinct from the world, 
 that they might be kept from the evil that is 
 in the world. They knew that he had come 
 to seek and to save the lost ; but they needed, 
 in this their extremity, something more pre- 
 cise, more special, more directly applicable to 
 themselves, and he did not withhold it from 
 them. 
 
 Therefore he began his intercession with a 
 prayer for them individually, but he did not 
 end it so ; he proceeded, as High Priest, to em- 
 brace all who should afterwards believe on him 
 through their word. By doing this he gave to 
 his then little flock an encouraging assurance 
 that their numbers should be increased, whilst, 
 at the same time, he bequeathed an enduring 
 consolation to all who, at any period of the 
 world, should put their trust in him. He does 
 not in this prayer appear as the Saviour of 
 sinners, but as the elder brother of his disciples, 
 and as the Head and His;h Priest over the 
 Church of God. All are invited to come into 
 the temple, and the access is open to all, but 
 the High Priest intercedes only for those who 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 129 
 
 have entered. The names and titles of Christ 
 are all relative. He is the Shepherd of his 
 sheep ; he is the Read of his body ; he is the 
 High Priest of his church ; he is the Saviour 
 of sinners ! He came to seek and to save the 
 lost; he came not to call the righteous, but 
 sinners to repentance. He invites all to come 
 into the temple ; but those who listen not to 
 his call remain without, lost in the death of 
 sin. They enter not into the Church of Christ ; 
 he is neither their Head nor High Priest. They 
 have no part therefore in this intercession. 
 Whilst those who do listen to him, and whose 
 hearts are opened to receive his message of 
 love, do in that very message receive a new 
 life. His love becomes their life, they become 
 members of his body, and partakers of that 
 Divine life of which the fountain is in him. 
 He is their head and representative with the 
 Father ; and as he is their righteousness, so he 
 is their intercessor. He is not the Kighteous- 
 ness of those who do not believe in him, and 
 this not from any unwillingness in him to be 
 so, but because from the nature of the thing it 
 is impossible. He cannot be the confidence of 
 those who do not confide in him, neither can 
 I 
 
130 THE UNCONDITIONAL FBEENESS 
 
 he be the nourishment of those who do not 
 feed on him. So also he is not the high priest 
 of those who are not his people — of those who 
 are not the members of his church and of his 
 body. He cannot be the organ of those who 
 are not partakers of his life ; he cannot present 
 the prayers of those who do not pray, nor the 
 offerings of those who offer nothing. As the 
 Saviour of sinners, he says, " Come unto me, 
 all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I 
 will give you rest." As the Saviour also, he 
 prays, " Father, forgive them, for they know 
 not what they do." But as the High Priest, he 
 says, concerning his own disciples, " I }3ray for 
 them, I pray not for the world, but for those 
 whom thou hast given me, for they are thine ; 
 and all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and 
 I am glorified in them." He is their organ of 
 communication with the Father ; they are one 
 with him ; their life is derived from him ; their 
 prayers are the breathings of his Spirit within 
 them, which he presents with acceptance be- 
 fore the Father. 
 
 Let us not then lose the comfort or enjoy- 
 ment of this prayer by supposing that it marks 
 any limitation of the Saviour's love ; it is not 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 131 
 
 uttered by him as the seeker and saver of the 
 lost, but as the organ of those who are par- 
 takers of his life, and the members of his body. 
 Let the believer read it with great joy, for it is 
 now being made in his behalf, and it is always 
 heard and always answered ; and let the un- 
 believer, as he reads it, compare his own hopes 
 for time and for eternity with the hopes of the 
 least of those who are prayed for in it ; and let 
 him be urged to flee from wrath/ and to take 
 refuge in this ark of the covenant of love — 
 this true temple of the living God ; and let 
 him understand that he has but to admit that 
 love of Grod, which has been long knocking at 
 the door of his heart, in order to his being 
 himself admitted within this sacred enclosure. 
 Eeader, ponder the last words of the prayer, 
 — "0 righteous Father, the world hath not 
 known Thee, but I have known Thee, and 
 these have known that Thou hast sent me ; 
 and I have declared unto them Thy name, and 
 will declare it, that the love wherewith Thou 
 hast loved me, may be in them, and I in 
 them/' You see that the great end and object 
 of God's doings, and Christ's sufferings for 
 man, is that the love of God, — that very love 
 
 V 
 
132 THE UNCONDITIONAL FKEENESS 
 
 with which the Father loveth the Son, may be 
 in man, and abide in him, and unite him to 
 God for ever and ever. 
 
 It was for this that Christ hath declared, 
 and will declare — the name of God — His holy 
 love — His unwearied compassion. Christ de- 
 clares this name that it may become a new life 
 in man — a life unsubject to sin, or sorrow, or 
 death — a life which is nothing else than a 
 stream flowing from — and continually supplied 
 from — that eternal fountain of holy love which 
 is in God. And this name is not declared that 
 men may amuse themselves by talking about 
 it or reasoning about it, but that — believing in 
 it — they may be one with the Father and the 
 Son. It is not by philosophy or speculation 
 that we can know God, but by the desire of 
 the heart after Him — by the opening of the 
 heart to receive Him, — by the spirit of prayer. 
 " Except ye receive the kingdom of heaven as 
 a little child, ye shall in no wise enter therein." 
 There is no true religion except the holy love 
 of God abiding in the heart ; and there is no 
 heresy so great as the want of love. Thus 
 alone can God be known, " he that loveth not 
 knoweth not God, for God is love." 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 133 
 
 I have often heard it asked, " Do you think Knowledge 
 
 and love of 
 
 that the belief of such or such a doctrine is God are sal- 
 vation — not 
 essential to salvation ?" This question always belief in 
 
 - 1 - J doctrines 
 
 seems to me to indicate a mistake in the mind about God - 
 of the asker as to the nature of salvation. The 
 heart which truly chooses God as its chief good 
 has salvation ; for salvation is the love of the 
 heart for God on account of what He is. The 
 faith which produces this love is saving faith ; 
 any faith which does not produce this love is 
 not saving faith. But let no one mistake. It 
 is quite possible to love a God, who after all 
 may not be the true God, but a mere idol of 
 the imagination. God has Himself told us in 
 His Word what He is, and what He has done, 
 so that we may know Him and love Him in 
 His true character. If we love God for some- 
 thing that He is not, — as, for example, for a 
 good-natured indifference whether His crea- 
 tures are holy or not, we do not love the true 
 God, but a lie. A true knowledge of God is 
 necessary to a true love of God, and it is only 
 a true love of God which can produce con- 
 formity to His will. The evil, then, of tak- 
 ing up a wrong doctrine, or a wrong view 
 of a doctrine, does not lie in this — that God 
 
134 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 punishes false doctrine, but in this, — that it 
 frustrates the great purpose of revelation, viz., 
 that the love of God may abide in the heart of 
 man, conforming his mind and will to the 
 Divine mind and will. 
 
 " The world hath not known Thee, but I 
 have known Thee." Oh, infinite blessed know- 
 ledge ! And we may partake in it. " No man 
 knoweth the Son but the Father, neither 
 knoweth any man the Father save the Son, 
 and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal 
 Him" The Son of God has declared his 
 Fathers name, and will declare it ; we have 
 not to ascend into heaven, nor to descend into 
 the deep to find him ; he is very nigh us, and 
 he longs to reveal the Father, and to give us 
 that knowledge which is life eternal. 
 
 It is through the Bible, read in the spirit of 
 prayer, that this knowledge is chiefly com- 
 municated. Header, do you believe that the 
 Bible is the gift of God ? and that God caused 
 it to be written for this very purpose, that by 
 it He might direct and support and comfort 
 man in his journey through time to eternity? 
 Do you not need direction and support and 
 comfort % If you do, where else can you ex- 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 135 
 
 pect to find it ? We are so accustomed to the 
 sight of a Bible, that it ceases to be a miracle 
 to us. It is printed like other books, and we 
 are apt to forget that it is not just like other 
 books. But it is a treasure of unspeakable 
 value, for it contains a special message of love 
 and tender mercy from God to our soul. 
 
 Do you wish to converse with God ? Open 
 it and read. Look to Him who speaks to you 
 in it, and ask Him to give you an understand- 
 ing heart, that you may not read in vain, that 
 the living Word, of which that written word 
 is but the expression, may be in you, as good 
 seed in good ground, bringing forth fruit unto 
 eternal life. Take heed not to separate God 
 from the Bible. Bead it in the secret of His 
 presence, receive it from His lips, and feed 
 upon it ; so will it become to you, as it did to 
 Jeremiah, the very joy and rejoicing of your 
 heart. 
 
 Let us seek to make ourselves acquainted 
 with the Bible ; but, in doing so, let us re- 
 member that, however much we may add by 
 study to our knowledge of the book, we have 
 just so much true knowledge of God as we 
 have love, and no more. Our continual desire 
 
136 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 and prayer ought to be, that our true notions 
 may become true feelings, and that our ortho- 
 doxy and theology may produce in us holy 
 love and holy obedience. Love is the religion 
 of eternity ; and the religion of eternity is the 
 only religion for us, who are made in the image 
 of the eternal God. 
 
 Men are apt to think that religion is but one 
 of the many duties of life, and that it ought to 
 have its own time and its own place like the 
 others ; and they set apart for it churches and 
 Sundays and certain special occasions, and 
 having done so, they seem to consider it an 
 intruder if it appears out of these limits. But 
 religion is not just one of the many duties of 
 life ; it is itself the life, through which alone 
 all duty can be done. 
 
 As the sap of the root circulates through 
 every branch and twig and leaf of the tree, so 
 the love of God, wdiich is the sap of this new 
 spiritual root, ought to circulate through every 
 thought and desire and action of the man. So 
 far as a man is truly religious, he judges of 
 everything by the light of God's will ; and 
 this will of God he gives as the reason of his 
 judgment, whenever he is asked for his reason. 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 137 
 
 Amongst those who, not nominally, hut really, 
 acknowledge the authority of God, such a rea- 
 son will be considered as the only good reason. 
 God is not really acknowledged where His 
 authority cannot be appealed to as a ground 
 of judgment or of action. 
 
 It is a small thing to me, says the apostle of M ^? d *f' 
 the Gentiles, to be judged of you, or of man's of the Lord - 
 day. The expression is remarkable — mans 
 day. This is man's day ; man now looks at 
 things and judges of them by the light of his 
 own self-will, and this way of judging passes 
 current, and is little questioned. It was in 
 man s day that the Just One, the anointed of 
 the Father, was rejected and condemned 1 — 
 and those who judge according to man's day, 
 do still continue to reject and condemn him. 
 But there is another day coming — the day of 
 the Lord, — and by its light all the judgments 
 of man's day shall be judged. Man's judg- 
 ments shall pass away with man's day ; but the 
 judgment of the Lord shall stand, for the day 
 of the Lord is eternity. 
 
 1 Luke xxii. 53. 
 
138 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 We may live even now in the light of God's 
 day, for the Sun of Kighteousness has arisen, 
 and many rays of its heavenly light reach the 
 conscience ; the Bible is full of that light, and 
 God answers prayer by the communications of 
 it to our spirits. It shows things as they are, 
 for it shows them as God sees them ; and it 
 shows things as they always will be, for it is 
 the light of eternity. The man who lives in 
 this light sees God to be the only satisfying 
 portion of the soul, and chooses God for his 
 own portion. He who lives in the light of 
 man's day sees nothing but the perishing things 
 of time as a portion, and can therefore choose 
 no other. 
 
 Now mark these men, as death approaches 
 them ; the one feels that in leaving this world 
 he is leaving his portion — all that he knows or 
 dreams of as good — for ever ; the other knows 
 that he is entering on the full enjoyment of 
 that portion which he has chosen here, and 
 here tasted to be good, but which he cannot 
 fully enjoy whilst encompassed with the body 
 of his humiliation. All the thoughts of the 
 one are about to perish ; all the thoughts of 
 the other are about to be accomplished. 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 139 
 
 Thus life and death are set before every 
 man. God has made a general proclamation 
 of love and compassion to the whole race ; and 
 they who hear it rejoice for the consolation. 
 He commands all men to believe that their 
 sins are forgiven. Therefore St. John says 
 that they who do not believe that God hath 
 given us eternal life in his Son, make God a 
 liar. God proclaims over the wdiole world, 
 " Eeturn unto me, ye backsliding children ;" 
 and every one who hears His voice answers, 
 " I will arise and go to my Father." 
 
 This proclamation of free unconditional God's free 
 - 1 - love re- 
 
 mercy, manifested in the gift of Christ, is ^Xte 
 
 the blessed gospel of the grace of God ; which ^ e f "^ cri " 
 " has appeared unto all men, teaching us, that, KaTrto 
 denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we takeitm - 
 should live soberly and righteously and godly 
 in this present evil world, looking for that 
 blessed hope, even the glorious appearing of 
 the great God, even our Saviour, Jesus Christ." 
 The ^gospel is a. message of most free and 
 unbounded love, and yet no message ever came 
 to man which required him to make such sac- 
 rifices. But this is in the very nature of the 
 
140 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 thing. The receiver of a free and generous 
 kindness cannot but feel himself required to 
 respond to it by the sacrifice of self ; and he 
 will refuse the kindness, if he cannot make up 
 his mind to the sacrifice. The heart which 
 deliberately clings to self cannot for its very 
 life receive or admit a generous and disin- 
 terested kindness. Self must be cast out, in 
 order to admit the kindness. Its very base- 
 ness may enable it to receive an act of kind- 
 ness, a donation, an alms, but it cannot receive 
 the love which does the kindness without being 
 changed into the same image — without becom - 
 ing itself generous. 
 
 And so when the pardon of the gospel is 
 supposed to be a mere removal of penalties 
 and deliverance from torments, a man may 
 catch at the pardon and keep his selfishness ; 
 but when it is seen to be the gift of infinite 
 love — of wholly disinterested self-sacrificing 
 love on the part of God, laid down at the 
 door of man's heart, and waiting there with 
 a patience which is grieved, but not exhausted 
 by the madly pertinacious rejection which 
 meets it, — when it is seen to be the gift of 
 God's own heart, the gift of Himself to His 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 141 
 
 poor prodigals, His apostate children — no man 
 can receive it and continue selfish. The very 
 sight of such love compels him to sell all and 
 buy it, to surrender himself and cast out all 
 besides, that he may make room for the recep- 
 tion of this overwhelming, annihilating, unre- 
 pairable love. Such love, if realized, would be 
 perfect torture to any one who did not submit 
 himself with grateful humility, who did not 
 recognise God as the only and necessary and 
 perpetual Giver, and himself as only a receiver. 
 But the great practical difficulty is to realize 
 it. This love of God, this eternal embrace of 
 the Father of our spirits, when once seen, 
 appears so glorious, so subduing, so attractive, 
 that, until by bitter experience we learn the 
 deceitfulness of our own hearts, we can scarcely 
 conceive the possibility of our ever forgetting 
 God for a moment. But deep humiliation is 
 the lesson which man has to learn in this 
 world. He has to be taught his own weak- 
 ness, and his own utter incapacity to produce 
 or maintain in himself the feeling of common 
 gratitude to God, without the continued supply 
 of divine grace. He has to learn that he 
 can be nothing but a receiver — that his only 
 
142 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 strength consists in the strength of God com - 
 municated to him from moment to moment 
 — that he has nothing of his own which is 
 good, and never will have ; and that his spiri- 
 tual perfection and blessedness consist in his 
 being' a receiver of God — of God's life and love 
 and li^ht — in his being a branch on the true 
 vine, and not a plant on his own root. Let 
 him then live in the spirit of dependence and 
 the spirit of prayer, listening to that word, 
 " Abide in me." 
 
 Every event The apostle James says, " Count it all joy 
 is gracious when you fall into divers trials, for the trial 
 purpose, of your faith giveth it endurance ;" that is, 
 works the Divine principle into the very sub- 
 stance of the mind. 
 
 This is surely the great purpose of our 
 Father in His providential dealings. Not a 
 sparrow falleth to the ground without God, 
 and not an event happens without a parti- 
 cular reference to the state and character of 
 the person to whom it happens. We have 
 thus, every day of our lives, many direct and 
 special messages from God to our souls, and 
 surely we show Him small respect if we treat 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 143 
 
 His messages as trifling things. They are full 
 of importance, they are opportunities given to 
 us of dying to self, and living to God, and 
 holding communion with Him. In every one 
 of them God is saying, " Seek ye my face," 
 and we ought to be ever ready with our an- 
 swer, "Thy face, Lord, will we seek." With 
 what an awakedness of attention should we 
 live if we really believed that every event is 
 a voice from God, and an opportunity of dying 
 to self! My dear reader, allow me to repeat 
 this to you. Every event that happens to 
 ourselves or those around us, strengthens 
 either the love of God or the principle of self 
 within us ; because on every event we exer- 
 cise our judgment or our feelings, and this we 
 must do either according to the will of God, 
 or according to our own will. 
 
 Thus we can never stand still for a moment : 
 there is no rest from the conflict ; we are con- 
 tinually taking part either with God or against 
 Him. There are but two ways in which man 
 can walk towards eternity — the narrow way 
 which leads to life, or the broad way which 
 leads to destruction. The first is the way of 
 self-forgetting and God-pleasing ; the second 
 
144 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 is the way of self-pleasing and God-forgetting. 
 In one or other of these ways every man is 
 walking. He is either resisting self or he is 
 not. He may be doing nothing absolutely 
 wrong, according to the world's estimate of 
 duty; but unless he is on principle denying 
 himself, and taking up his cross daily, he can- 
 not be Christ's disciple ; for there is no room for 
 Christ's love in a heart which refuses to give 
 up self. 
 
 Oh ! if we felt as we ought that that only is 
 good which draws us near to Cod, and that 
 self is indeed the great bar which divides us 
 from God, and keeps us at a distance from 
 Him, how entirely should we be reconciled to 
 those events which cross and thwart the prin- 
 ciple of self, seeing that they weaken the bar 
 which separates us from God, our only real 
 good ; we should then know that there is no 
 evil but sin, and that everything God sends 
 must be a blessing, if received in the spirit of 
 that prayer which says, " Not my will, God, 
 but Thine be done!" 
 
 We are apt to lay our own faults upon events, 
 and to think that if our circumstances had 
 been more favourable, as we call it, we should 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 145 
 
 have been more religious, or more peaceful, or 
 more spiritually minded. The apostle James 
 meets all such complaints in this way : — " Let 
 no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted 
 of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, 
 neither tempteth He any man, but every man 
 is tempted when he is drawn away of his own 
 lust and enticed. Then when lust hath con- 
 ceived it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is 
 finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err, my 
 beloved brethren," in this matter ; " every ap- 
 pointment is gracious in its intention, and 
 divinely fitted for its purpose, seeing that it 
 cometh down from the Father of lights, with 
 whom there is no variableness, neither shadow 
 of turning." 1 Practical religion consists in 
 
 1 It seems to me quite clear that the apostle does not mean 
 to say, as translators in general have supposed, that every good 
 gift and every perfect gift is from above. No one is disposed to 
 question this ; and, besides, it makes nothing at all for the 
 argument which he is holding. He had said, that we ought to 
 count it all joy when we fall into divers trials, because the 
 trial of our faith increases its strength. Then he supposes some 
 one objecting, — Yes, but there are events, which, by leading 
 us into sin, weaken instead of strengthening our faith. It evi- 
 dently would be no answer to such an objection to say, "Every 
 good gift and every perfect gift is from above ; " for the ob- 
 jector might reply, " I have no doubt of that ; but the bad gifts 
 — the events which lead me into sin — come from above also, or 
 at least are not prevented from coming by the Power above ; 
 
 K 
 
146 THE UNCONDITIONAL FEEENESS 
 
 seeing God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 in everything, and expecting a blessing from 
 Him in everything, and in being more con- 
 cerned as to the spiritual improvement which 
 we may draw from every event that befalls us, 
 than as to the nature of the event itself being 
 either agreeable or disagreeable to us ; in other 
 words, it consists in the spirit of dependence. 
 
 Affliction is a great realizer — or rather a 
 great detector of the want of reality — in re- 
 ligion. We perhaps thought ourselves Chris- 
 tians, and that we were founded on the rock ; 
 and now affliction comes, and we shake like 
 
 and it is of these bad gifts that I am speaking at present, and 
 not of the good ones." The true interpretation of the apostle's 
 words precisely meets this objection. There are no bad gifts, 
 no bad events ; " every appointment is gracious in its design, and 
 divinely fitted for that design. All events are fitted for exercis- 
 ing and strengthening the faith of those to whom they are sent, 
 and they have been selected by infinite love and infinite wisdom 
 for this object. Man may neglect or misuse them ; but let 
 him not presume to say, I am tempted of God ; " he is himself 
 to blame ; he may have cast away an opportunity of growing 
 for heaven, he may have converted a blessing into a curse, but 
 the appointment itself was wise and gracious. The natural sun 
 sends forth wholesome warmth in his beams ; the diseased state 
 of the object on which his beams alight may convert that 
 wholesome warmth into fever or putrefaction, yet in itself it is 
 a wholesome warmth. Even so, the beams of the Sun of 
 Righteousness may be turned to evil by the diseased heart of 
 man, and yet there is nothing but love in God. 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 147 
 
 aspen leaves. Could this be if we were really 
 on the rock ? We thought fondly that God 
 was the chosen portion of our souls, and that 
 though all created things were taken from us, 
 we had enough when we had Him ; and yet 
 when He crosses some desire of our hearts, or 
 removes some of His own gifts — health, it may 
 be, or a friend, or even a little of " this world's 
 good," — we seem as if we had lost our all, and 
 cry after it, as that Danite did after his idols ; 
 and thus we learn the fact, that our former 
 comfort did not, as we idly supposed, flow from 
 the eternal fountain (for that still remains to 
 us), but had been drawn from perishing cis- 
 terns, seeing that now when they are broken 
 we die of thirst. This is an important dis- 
 covery, and it is to make this discovery to us 
 that God sends affliction. Let us then receive 
 it in deep humility, let us receive it as a call 
 from God to leave the creature behind us and 
 go directly into His own more immediate 
 presence, into His inner chamber. 
 
 Header, will you allow me to speak a word 
 to you on this matter % Beware of occupying 
 your mind as to how the affliction happened, 
 or how it might have been prevented. Think 
 
148 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 not of the oversight or folly or malice which 
 may appear to you to have been the immediate 
 occasion of it. God did it ; and you must bid 
 away all second causes from your thought, and 
 carry the affliction to His throne of grace, and 
 cast it and yourself before Him. Ask Him to 
 deliver you from resting on any created por- 
 tion, and pray Him to become Himself your 
 real, true, and everlasting portion. Take heed 
 that this affliction be not lost. Abide in His 
 presence, and be jealous of receiving comfort 
 from any other source. You may lose your 
 affliction if you do. And oh ! remember that 
 holiness is of more importance than comfort ; 
 and be more anxious for profit from your afflic- 
 tion than for deliverance from it. You are an 
 immortal creature, and eternity is your great 
 concern. Holiness is eternal blessedness ; com- 
 fort may be the affair of an hour. And God 
 sends affliction that we may become partakers 
 of His holiness. 
 
 Let me conclude by saying that everything 
 is to be looked for and received from God. 
 " Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it." It 
 is the soul that receives all from God, which 
 alone can feel itself to be the property of God 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 149 
 
 — His property to guide and to command, His 
 property to bless and to keep, His highly- 
 prized property, purchased at no less a cost 
 than the death of Christ, for this very end — 
 that He might sanctify it in time and glorify 
 it in eternity. The soul which feels this has 
 peace ; it does not make haste, for it knows 
 how secure it is ; it possesses the secret of the 
 Lord, that secret which suffices for all circum- 
 stances and contingencies — for life — for death 
 — for duty — for suffering; which gives the 
 spirit of a pilgrim and yet a willing servant ; 
 which gives a foretaste of the joy of heaven, 
 inasmuch as it is the commencement of the 
 character of heaven. 
 
150 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Consistency between Present Forgiveness arid 
 Future Judgment. 
 
 Life the The great truth which I have been trying to 
 
 end of the . . 
 
 gospel, press upon my readers is, that neither forgive- 
 oniy the ness of sin nor deliverance from punishment is 
 
 means. x 
 
 the great and ultimate blessing which God 
 intends for man in the work of Christ. That, 
 in fact, the forgiveness of sin is only a pre- 
 paratory step, as it were, to the great blessing, 
 which consists in becoming " the habitations of 
 God through the Spirit " — in being " turned 
 away every one of us from our iniquities " — 
 in being " holy and without blame before God 
 in love " — " in having eternal life" (Ephesians 
 ii. 22 ; i. 4 ; Acts iii. 26 ; John iii. 17). 
 
 No creature can have any real goodness in 
 it except in so far as it is dwelt in by God ; or 
 in other words, in so far as it is the habitation 
 of God through the Spirit. None is good save 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 151 
 
 One, that is God — and the creature can be 
 good only by being in-dwelt by Him. But 
 how is the creature to attain this state % It 
 cannot draw down God into itself — it is weak- 
 ness. How then is the object to be accom- 
 plished ? In order to answer this question, we 
 have only to see how man fell at first. God 
 had told him, that if he sought for happiness 
 elsewhere than in the provision which He had 
 made for him, he would find death instead of 
 life. The devil told him, that instead of death, 
 he would find great advancement by doing so, 
 and thus suggested that God's prohibition did 
 not proceed from love, but from grudging. As 
 soon as Adam disbelieved God's love, his heart 
 shut against God. Before this — whilst he had 
 full confidence in God's love — his heart stood 
 ever wide open to God, and as we live, and 
 move, and have our being in Him, his ever 
 open heart was ever receiving God into it — 
 and thus he continued good with God's own 
 goodness, until his heart was closed by dis- 
 belief. Then he ceased to have any goodness 
 in him, or true life or true blessedness, for he 
 had shut out the love, and the life, and the 
 blessedness of God. 
 
sin. 
 
 152 THE UNCONDITIONAL FKEENESS 
 
 Not God's By this act, though he did not destroy God's 
 man's reia- love, he yet changed his own relation to it. 
 
 tion to God . i-i • • i .... 
 
 changed by Gods is a love which rejoiceth not in iniquity, 
 but rejoiceth in the truth ; therefore it could 
 not rejoice in a creature which had shut out 
 the truth. The love of God in such circum- 
 stances could not he favour } for He regardeth 
 only the righteous with favour ; and it is in 
 His favour that there is life. A righteous 
 barrier was raised by sin between God and 
 man. As man had shut out God, so he was 
 shut out from that "favour of God" in which 
 alone there " is life." But God's love still 
 yearned over man, and desired again to em- 
 brace him with favour, that he might live; 
 and to this end He sent forth his Son, who is 
 " the truth " into the human nature, to become 
 the head of the nature, and to fulfil all right- 
 eousness as its head ; that so that loving favour 
 in which there is life and which rejoiceth only 
 in the truth, might again rejoice with man, and 
 embrace the human race. This is the work of 
 Christ in the flesh. God now sees truth in the 
 human nature, for He sees Jesus in it, and 
 therefore His love can rejoice in it. " He hath 
 made of one blood all the nations of the 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 153 
 
 earth," and Jesus has taken that one blood 
 and offered it up pure — he has entered into 
 the one flesh, and yet remains in it, and shall 
 remain in it for ever ; and in him, as the head 
 of this one flesh, is lodged the fulness of the 
 the Spirit ; as the life-blood which circulates 
 through the whole body wherever it can find 
 access, that is, wherever it finds a heart opened 
 to God. Now this opening of the human heart 
 to let in the life-blood, can only be produced 
 by a belief in forgiveness. Until a man be- 
 lieves that his sins are forgiven, his heart 
 necessarily remains closed, for he cannot have 
 confidence in God till then. We cannot have 
 confidence in any one who, we think, regards 
 us with unforgiveness ; and it is confidence 
 alone which opens the heart. Therefore, so 
 long as a man refuses to believe in forgiveness, 
 so long does he refuse access to the Spirit of 
 God into his heart. 
 
 If the condemnation is not actually removed 
 there can be no ground for confidence in God, 
 and so there can be no way of obtaining that 
 life which is the favour of God. But we are 
 now, to say the least of it (and far indeed it is 
 below the truth), in as favourable a condition 
 
154 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 as Adam was before the fall. He had not to 
 create or call forth the favour of God, but had 
 merely to rejoice in a favour which ever rested 
 on him, and to receive it into him as his life ; 
 and even so we have not to create or call forth 
 the forgiving love of God (in which alone there 
 is life for a sinner), but to rejoice in that for- 
 giving love which in Christ ever rests upon 
 us, and so to receive it into us as our life. 
 
 And as there is no inconsistency between 
 the love and favour which rested on Adam 
 before the fall, and the judgment which con- 
 demned him after the fall for rejecting that 
 love and favour which had been resting on him 
 — so there is no inconsistency between the for- 
 giveness which is now resting upon every man 
 during this dispensation of grace, and the 
 judgment which at its close will condemn 
 those who shall be found to have rejected that 
 forgiving favour which had been resting on 
 them. 
 
 Adam was called on to rejoice in the love 
 of God — this was his life — and this he could 
 not have done, unless that love had been rest- 
 ing upon him. The condemnation of sin con- 
 sists in not being permitted to rejoice in the 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 155 
 
 love of God — and so the word of condemnation 
 in the day of judgment is " depart " — that is, 
 you are no longer permitted to rejoice in God's 
 love, you have separated yourself from it. 
 Nothing short of this is condemnation ; for 
 surely no creature can be said to be under 
 condemnation that is still permitted and called 
 on to rejoice in the love of God. Into this 
 true condemnation Adam fell by his apostasy, 
 and out of it he was delivered by the seed of 
 the woman, the Lamb slain from the founda- 
 tion of the world. The deliverance from this 
 condemnation through the forgiveness of sins, 
 is the permission again to rejoice in the love 
 of God — the permission again to drink out of 
 the fountain of God, which is love and life. 
 Now we know that throughout this dispensa- 
 tion the word of God to every man is, " Gome 
 unto me, all ye that labour." " Ho ! every one 
 that thirsteth, come to the waters." " Eejoice 
 in the Lord always." And one of the con- 
 demning sins of Israel was, "because they 
 served not the Lord with gladness." 
 
 But this forgiving love which rests on every 
 man during this dispensation, is so far from 
 opposing the coming judgment, that it is 
 
156 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 actually the ground of that judgment, — just 
 as the love which rested on Adam before the 
 fall was the ground of his subsequent condem- 
 nation. We have the permission to drink out 
 of God's love, in order that we may so drink. 
 We are permitted to rejoice in God, in order 
 that our hearts may be filled with Him. And 
 thus those who are not led by the forgiveness 
 of sin to drink out of God and to rejoice in 
 His love, frustrate the counsel of God against 
 themselves, and when the dispensation of judg- 
 ment arrives, they shall be condemned for 
 having so done. 
 
 " Return unto me, for I have redeemed you" 
 (Isaiah xliv. 22), is the true preaching of re- 
 pentance, for repentance and returning are one 
 thing, and no man was ever called on — or 
 could ever be called on — to return on any 
 other terms. And this is the condemnation, 
 that men "deny the Lord who has bought 
 them, and thus bring upon themselves swift 
 destruction" (2 Peter ii. l). 
 
 Christ is " the Lamb of God that taketh 
 away the sins of the world" (Johni. 29), and 
 thus he is " the light of the world" (John i. 9), 
 for until the forgiveness of sin is known all is 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 157 
 
 darkness ; until then every step which a man 
 takes is in darkness ; " And this is the con- 
 demnation, that the light hath come into the 
 world, and men have loved darkness rather 
 than light, because their deeds are evil " (John 
 iii. 19). Thus we see that the condemnation 
 of God is grounded on man's rejection of for- 
 giving love. " Despisest thou the riches of 
 His goodness and forbearance and long-suffer- 
 ing, not knowing that the goodness of God 
 leadeth thee to repentance, but after thy hard- 
 ness and impenitent heart treasurest "up for 
 thyself wrath against the day of wrath (the 
 coming dispensation of judgment), and revela- 
 tion of the righteous judgment of God, who 
 will render to every man according to his 
 deeds?" 1 This last expression is evidently 
 taken from the last verse of Psalm lxii., in 
 which psalm the speaker, who is none other 
 than the Divine Son (verse 7), confesses God 
 as his salvation and glory, the rock of his 
 strength and his refuge. And then this true 
 Truster calls on all people (verse 8) to trust 
 in this God, who is as much their refuge as his, 
 
 1 Eom. ii. 4. 
 
158 THE UNCONDITIONAL FREENESS 
 
 and warns them (verses 9 and 10) against 
 trusting either in other men, or in their own 
 strength or riches ; then he sums up the rea- 
 sons for putting our trust in God, in these 
 words, "power belongeth unto God, also unto 
 Thee, God, belongeth mercy" And having 
 placed before men the two principles — of trust 
 in God and trust in the creature, with their 
 consequences, he thus concludes : — " Thou 
 renderest to every man according to his 
 works," that is, according to his trust, the 
 trust being the principle of action ; he who 
 trusts in God acts according to God — he who 
 trusts in the flesh, or the creature, acts accord- 
 ing to its suggestions. If the mercy of God 
 to every man is denied, then the scriptural 
 ground of judgment on every man is also 
 denied. 
 
 The righteous Judge is coming to judge and 
 to reign ; and the voice which has been sent 
 forth into this wilderness before him, to pre- 
 pare his way, is the proclamation of the remis- 
 sion of sins through his blood ; this was the 
 preaching of John the Baptist ; he called on 
 men — not to repent, in order to have their sins 
 remitted, but — to repent, or to turn the eye of 
 
OF THE GOSPEL. 159 
 
 their soul to the truth of a forgiveness already 
 bestowed; 1 and the belief of this message is 
 always indispensable, in order to prepare the 
 heart to welcome the coming King. 
 
 Keader, farewell. I believe that what I 
 have written is according to the word of God ; 
 and as far as it is so, I may look up to Him for 
 a blessing on it. It would be an unspeakable 
 joy to me to have any reason to think, that it 
 has been really honoured by Him to be the 
 bearer of a message to your soul. At all events, 
 I trust it may not do you the injury of excit- 
 ing the spirit in you of controversy. If you 
 don't agree with it, lay it down and go to the 
 Bible ; and if you do agree with it, in like 
 manner lay it down and go to the Bible, and 
 go in the spirit of prayer to Him whose word 
 the Bible is, and ask of Him, and He will lead 
 you into all truth — He will give you living 
 water. 
 
 1 See Acts xix. 4 ; x. 36 ; xiii. 36, 48- 
 
 EDINBURGH : T. AND A. CONSTABLE, 
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88 PRINCES STREET, EDINBURGH. 11 
 
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22 EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, 
 
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88 PRINCES STREET, EDINBURGH. 23 
 
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24 EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. 
 
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