LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES M. CAMPBELL 
 
 *' With the Lord there is mercy, and with him there is plenteous 
 redemption^ 
 
 — Psalm cxxx. 7. 
 
 
 8 !R89rt,r 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT 
 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 OF CONGRESS 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 ^>P 
 
 6** 
 
 Copyright, in 1889, 
 
 By James M. Campbell. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Of the things contained in the following 
 pages, this is the sum : — that the rainbow of 
 divine propitiousness overarches -every life; that 
 this redeemed earth is to all who dwell upon it 
 the footstool of mercy ; that plenitude of redeem- 
 ing power has, by the hand of the Crucified, been 
 lodged in the world's heart ; that divine grace is 
 mightier than human sin ; that beneath the vilest 
 sinner the ever-present Christ puts the saving 
 strength of his atoning love to lift him up into 
 the sunlight of pardon and purity; that the line 
 of limitation in human redemption is drawn by 
 man himself, not by God ; that all sin involves 
 eternal loss, all righteousness eternal gain ; that 
 the freedom of man as a moral being, and his 
 consequent responsibility to God, continue for 
 ever under conditions which render response to 
 every moral requirement eternally possible ; that 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 whatever the unknown future may hold in store 
 for any, the present life — because of the insepa- 
 rable connection of Christ with it — is, in every 
 part and particle, sufficient unto salvation for 
 all. 
 
 Watertown, Wis. 
 
 September, 1889. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Unto the Uttermost, 7 
 
 II. A Castaway Reclaimed, .... 17 
 
 III. Grace Conquering Nature, . . . .27 
 
 IV. A Pessimistic View of the Moral Condition 
 
 of Man, 39 
 
 V. The Limits of Evolution, . . . . 49 
 
 VI. Moral Miracles, 65 
 
 VII. The Higher Environment, . . . -79 
 VIII. The Universality of the Divine Purpose of 
 
 Redemption, 91 
 
 IX. The Forthputting of Redemptive Effort 
 
 a Necessity of the Divine Nature, . . 103 
 
 X. The Sin that Shuts the Door of Mercy, 117 
 
 XL The Chief Danger-Point, . . . .143 
 
 XII. The Fluidity of Character, ... 163 
 
 XIII. Judicial Blindness, . . . . . .181 
 
 XIV. A Common Spiritual Disease, ... 191 
 XV. Past Feeling, 203 
 
 XVI. Bartering the Birthright, . . .215 
 
 XVII. Death a Loss, 227 
 
 XVIII. The Finality of the Present, . . . 239 
 
I. 
 
 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
" He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto 
 God through him." — Heb. vii. 25. 
 
 " The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all 
 sin." — \ John, i. 7. 
 
 " Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord ; though 
 your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though 
 they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." — Isa. i. 18. 
 
UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 Filtering through the religious teaching of 
 to-day there is a spirit of moral pessimism that 
 gendereth to despair. The appalling doctrine 
 gains currency, that man may glide impercepti- 
 bly downward in the path of sin to a point from 
 which there is no possibility of return to the 
 light and freedom of a holy life. Largely as the 
 result of the influence of the scientific spirit of 
 the times upon religious thought, it has come to 
 be taken for granted that in virtue of the inevi- 
 table tendency of moral force to persist in the 
 course upon which it has started, the evil doer 
 may sink into a condition in which he is inca- 
 pable of redemption. It is averred that even in 
 this life the erring feet of man may pass beyond 
 the boundary line of hope, and his probation be 
 practically ended. Over against this gospel of 
 doom, to which false exegesis has given an 
 
JO UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 appearance of scriptural support, it is necessary 
 to place in boldest relief the gospel of hope, 
 which proclaims the good news of salvation to 
 the lost. 
 
 Christ is a perfect Saviour for a world of sinners. 
 He is able to meet the heaviest spiritual demands 
 that may be made upon him. Sufficiency of 
 power abides in his cross to save the worst of 
 men. His saving power reaches out to all who 
 need deliverance from sin and condemnation, and 
 reaches down to the depth of their utmost need. 
 He is able to save all men, and he is able to save 
 them entirely, completely. As far as the disease 
 of sin has spread the saving power of his cross 
 extends. Beyond his saving power no soul can 
 sink. There is no case too desperate for him to 
 undertake ; there is no case ever turned away, 
 pronounced by him incurable. For the healing 
 of the most diseased, for the uplifting of the 
 most degraded the power of his atonement is 
 abundantly, yea, superabundantly, adequate. He 
 is mighty, yea, almighty, to save. " He is able 
 to save unto the uttermost all that come unto God 
 by him." 
 
 With the talismanic word uttermost, which 
 stretches beyond all human limitations of the 
 divine mercy, the vilest sinner may repel every 
 temptation to despair. Placing that word upon 
 the homiletical anvil William Jay fashions out of it 
 
UNTO THE UTTERMOST. I I 
 
 the six-linked chain of gospel truth that Christ is 
 able " to save to the uttermost ends of the earth ; 
 to the uttermost limits of time ; to the uttermost 
 period of life ; to the uttermost depth of deprav- 
 ity; to the uttermost depth of misery; and to 
 the uttermost measure of perfection." Christ's 
 uttermost of redemption outreaches man's utter- 
 most of need. With an ample ransom provided, 
 none need go down to the pit. With sufficiency 
 of redeeming grace encompassing every life, hell 
 is in no case a necessity, but is always and for- 
 ever a choice. 
 
 Popular preaching delights in exalting the 
 saving power of Christ. Spurgeon, in a passing 
 sermon, gives the following: "If you are so far 
 gone that there seems to be not even a ghost of 
 a shade of a shadow of a hope anywhere about 
 you, yet if you believe in Jesus you shall live. 
 Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, for he is worthy 
 to be trusted. Throw yourself upon him and he 
 will carry you in his bosom. Cast your whole 
 weight upon his atonement, it will bear the 
 strain." All this is true as it is forcible ; but 
 it will not do for the preacher of the gospel with 
 one breath to say that Christ can save to the 
 uttermost, and with the next breath to affirm that 
 man may reach a point in perversity in wicked- 
 ness which places him below the line of help and 
 hope. Consistency there is none in affirming 
 
12 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 that the strong arm of Christ can deliver those 
 who have sunk the deepest in the mire of iniq- 
 uity, and at the same time affirming that char- 
 acter can become so fixed and stereotyped that 
 even with the power of Christ taken into account 
 change is impossible. If the one position be 
 maintained the other must be surrendered. The 
 two positions are logically irreconcilable. 
 
 A father mourning over the guilt of his child 
 is represented by Shakespeare as exclaiming : 
 
 " Oh 1 she is fallen 
 Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea 
 Hath drops too few to wash her clean again." 
 
 With this hapless wail, which shame and 
 wounded love have wrung from an agonized 
 heart, contrast the tender words of mercy and 
 hope in which the Heavenly Father addresses his 
 sin-befouled and despairing children: "Come 
 now, and let us reason together ; though your 
 sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; 
 though they be red like crimson, they shall be as 
 wool." That there are sins which stain a man to 
 the inmost core of his being must be conceded ; 
 but that sin ever leaves an indelible stain, that it 
 ever leaves a mark which the mercy of heaven 
 cannot efface, no one who believes in the moral 
 power of the gospel, and in the efficacy of the 
 Redeemer's sacrifice, ought for a moment to 
 
UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 1 3 
 
 admit. The resources of the saving power of 
 Christ, for the race and for the individual, cannot 
 be exhausted. The treasury of divine grace 
 cannot be reduced to bankruptcy. Heaven's 
 supplies are co-extensive with man's want ; 
 heaven's remedy co-extensive with man's disease. 
 Deeper than the deepest depths of man's guilt is 
 God's mercy; deeper than the deepest depths of 
 man's sin is the atoning power of the sacrifice of 
 Christ. " So great, so high, and so extensive," 
 exclaims the venerable John Arndt, " are the 
 power and efficacy of the merit of the atonement 
 that it would still prove a sufficient ransom if 
 every man were guilty of the sins of the whole 
 world. Nay, if there were as many worlds 
 drowned in sin as there are men that live on this 
 earth, yet would the merit of Christ and his 
 righteousness be large enough to cover all their 
 sins."* 
 
 Universal in the world, the power of Christ is 
 also universal in the individual. Depth and 
 breadth, intensiveness and extensiveness are 
 equal, and equally complete. The Kingdom of 
 Christ ruleth over all, and it ruleth over the 
 whole man ; controlling the spirit, and through 
 the spirit controlling the soul and the body, thus 
 bringing the entire man into subjection to the 
 
 * True Christianity, Book II., Chapter II. 
 
14 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 divine will. There is no half-work with Christ. 
 Were his atonement less than universal in the 
 sweep of its purpose and power it would fail to 
 meet all that is demanded, and would leave the 
 redemption of our fallen race still unfinished ; 
 and were discovery to be made of a single in- 
 stance in which the gospel had proved powerless 
 to save we should be compelled to regard the 
 sacrifice of Christ as incomplete, the power of 
 Christ as something less than divine, and the 
 purpose of God in redemption as a melancholy 
 failure. A perfect, adequate atonement must 
 contain of redeeming power, " enough for each, 
 enough for all, enough for evermore." 
 
 If Christ be indeed a sufficient and efficient 
 Saviour the low condition into which any man 
 has fallen does not place him beyond the reach 
 of deliverance. No man, and no race of men, can 
 fall so low, that the lever of divine power cannot 
 lift them up to a Godlike life. Within the gos- 
 pel there is a moral dynamic force which consti- 
 tutes it " the power of God unto salvation to 
 every one that believeth." However frequently 
 and flagrantly any man may have sinned, his 
 case is not hopeless. The gulf of his guilt 
 is spanned by the bridge of propitiation, and 
 over that bridge he may pass to pardon and 
 righteousness. In the iron wall of despair by 
 which the sinning soul frequently finds himself 
 
UNTO THE UTTERMOST I 5 
 
 ringed around, there is always, if he only knew 
 it, a door of deliverance. To every soul bowed 
 down with the burden of sin, thinking himself 
 too guilty to be forgiven, limiting by his doubt 
 and unbelief the mercy in which he would fain 
 believe, Christ the Blessed One says, " Behold I 
 have set before thee an open door, and no man 
 can shut it." With this declaration of universal 
 mercy uncancelled, and unrecalled, it is a daring 
 thing, an unwarrantable thing to say of any one 
 in the whole round world that the sun of his hope 
 has set, that all possibilities of good have been 
 lost out of his life forever, and that henceforward 
 he must continue to drift onward in the darkness 
 of despair, uncheered by any glad forelooking to 
 the possible dawning of a better morrow. Place 
 a single soul beyond the hope of salvation, and 
 a limit is put upon the mercy of God, and the 
 saving power of Christ ; in fine, the salvation of 
 Christ is made something less than " Salvation 
 unto the uttermost" 
 
II. 
 
 A CASTAWAY RECLAIMED. 
 
" Thank God, no Paradise stands barred to entry." 
 
 R. Browning. 
 
 " Man cannot be God's outlaw, if he would." 
 
 J. R. Lowell. 
 
 " Wearily for me thou soughtest, 
 On the cross my love thou boughtest, 
 Lose not all for which thou wroughtest." 
 
 Judgment Hymn. 
 
 " O God ! how beautiful the thought, 
 How merciful the blest decree, 
 That grace can e'er be found when sought 
 And naught shut out the soul from Thee." 
 
 Eliza Cook. 
 
 " My mercy doth outreach the universe ; 
 Shall it not be sufficient for one soul ? " 
 
 P. J. Bailey. 
 
II. 
 
 A CASTAWAY RECLAIMED. 
 
 THERE are in Scripture certain things hard to 
 be understood, which have unwittingly been 
 wrested to the destruction of human hope. The 
 gospel message which has been sent " to pro- 
 claim release unto the captive," has been changed 
 into a message of doom ; the door of mercy 
 which God has opened in his Word, the hand 
 of false interpretation with unseemly haste has 
 shut ; limits have been set up from beyond 
 which the wanderer cannot return ; the soul to 
 which Eternal Mercy clings has been too readily 
 surrendered to the blackness of despair; the 
 ambassador of Christ, ceasing to publish salva- 
 tion, has, without heaven's sanction, begun to 
 ring the death-knell of souls. 
 
 An illustrative example of the manner in 
 which the words of Scripture are frequently per- 
 verted by reading into them narrow, preconceived 
 ideas touching the scope of redemption, is 
 afforded in the interpretation which is commonly 
 given to the oft-quoted words in Hosea iv. ij. 
 
20 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 14 Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone." 
 These words have been taken as setting the seal 
 of doom upon souls now living on this fair earth. 
 They have been so explained as to send despair 
 to many a heart. Take the following exposition 
 by the gentle-hearted Matthew Henry, as a fair 
 sample of what has been written upon this text : 
 44 Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone. Let 
 no man reprove him. Let him be given up to 
 his own heart's lusts, and walk in his own coun- 
 sels. It is a sad and sore judgment for any 
 man to be let alone in sin ; for God to say con- 
 cerning a sinner ; He is joined to his idols, the 
 world, the devil and the flesh ; he is incurably 
 proud, covetous, or profane ; an incurable drunk- 
 ard, or adulterer; let him alone; conscience, let 
 him alone ; minister, let him alone ; Providence, 
 let him alone ; let nothing awaken him till the 
 flames of hell do it." 
 
 Such an interpretation, to say the least of it, 
 presents a very forbidding aspect. To harmon- 
 ize it with those other Scriptures which plainly 
 teach the willingness of God to save the guiltiest 
 sinner is a feat surpassing the highest dialectic 
 skill. No common mind could identify as one, 
 the God who spurns from him this offending 
 child, saying, ' 4 Let him alone," and the God 
 whose heart-yearnings over this very prodigal 
 voice themselves in the tender words, " How 
 
A CASTA WA Y RECLAIMED. 2 1 
 
 shall I give thee up, Ephraim ? how shall I 
 deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as 
 Admah ? how shall I set thee as Zeboim ? Mine 
 heart is turned within me, my repentings are 
 kindled together." * There is one presumptive 
 mark of correctness which the interpretation 
 referred to fails to reveal — harmony with the 
 moral convictions of humanity as to what is 
 right. That it is based upon an entire miscon- 
 ception of the text, we proceed to show. 
 
 The first question to be considered is, "To 
 whom does God here speak?" A plain answer 
 to this question not only produces a rift in the 
 clouds, but clears away the whole cloud-bank of 
 difficulty that has settled down upon the text. 
 Evidently the prophet Hosea was not told to let 
 Ephraim alone. If he received such instruction 
 he was mindful to disregard it. Unceasingly did 
 he beseech Ephraim to repent of his sins, and 
 turn to God. There can be no doubt that the 
 injunction, " Let him alone," was given to Judah. 
 A study of the context makes this abundantly 
 evident. 
 
 The ten tribes had hived off under Jeroboam 
 and formed themselves into a separate kingdom. 
 The wily usurper Jeroboam, seeing that if he 
 was to maintain his power over the rebellious 
 
 * Hosea xi. 8. 
 
22 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 tribes, he must prevent them from assembling at 
 Jerusalem as had been their wont, reasoned 
 thus: " If this people go up to do sacrifice in the 
 house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then shall the 
 heart of this people turn again unto their lord, 
 even unto Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they 
 shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam, king of 
 Judah." In order to strengthen his hold upon 
 them he revived the ancient calf-worship, with 
 which they had become familiar in Egypt. Tak- 
 ing counsel of his evil confederates, he made two 
 calves of gold and said unto the people : " It is 
 too much for you to go up to Jerusalem ; behold 
 thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of 
 the land of Egypt. And he set one in Bethel, 
 and the other in Dan." Cut off from the wor- 
 ship of Jehovah in Jerusalem, the people of 
 Israel soon forgot the God of their fathers, and 
 followed after strange gods. In the expressive 
 language of the text they became joined to idols 
 — in love with them — wedded to them. 
 
 Now Judah, although tainted with idolatry, 
 was in the main true to God. The prophet, 
 drawing a contrast, says : " Ephraim compasseth 
 me about with lies, even the house of Israel with 
 deceit, but Judah yet ruleth with God, and is 
 faithful among the saints." And in the text 
 under consideration, God, through his faithful 
 servant Hosea, exhorts the people of Judah to 
 
A CASTAWAY RECLAIMED. 23 
 
 let Ephraim or Israel alone, lest by keeping com- 
 pany with him, they become infected with idol- 
 atry. Again he says : " Though thou Israel play 
 the harlot, yet let not Judah offend, and come 
 not ye unto Gilgal, neither go ye up to Beth- 
 aven." How needful this expostulation : The 
 men of Judah were neighbors, and kinsmen to 
 the men of Israel ; and the Lord knew that if 
 once they began, under cover of friendship, to 
 attend their idol festivals they would be ensnared. 
 Hence he, in effect, says : — " Go not upon the 
 devil's ground; turn away your faces and your 
 feet from these places of vanity ! Ephraim is 
 glued to idols, let him alone ! Do not keep com- 
 pany with him or he will make you as corrupt as 
 he is himself." 
 
 A very practical lesson, this. The only safe 
 course for any one is to shun the society of the 
 ungodly ; " to have no fellowship with the 
 unfruitful works of darkness." " Evil commu- 
 nications corrupt good manners." Nothing is 
 more ruinous than evil companionships. " Enter 
 not into the path of the wicked, and go not in 
 the way of evil men. Avoid it, do not even go 
 across it, turn from it and pass away." 
 
 This is a very different thought, however, from 
 the one which has been too frequently extorted 
 from these words. When rightly understood, 
 this text gives no countenance to the fearful 
 
24 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 doctrine that when wickedness reaches a certain 
 point God leaves men to themselves — gives them 
 up to perish hopelessly in their sins ; that when 
 the need is sorest he cuts the soul adrift and 
 abandons it to its fate ; that when sin abounds 
 grace diminishes, until it fades completely out. 
 
 There is thus no warrant furnished by the text 
 before us for leaving the most notorious sinner 
 alone, in the sense of ceasing to make him an 
 object of reforming effort. This is exactly the 
 thing which the Christian ambassador is not to 
 do. Down to the dying moment he is to stand 
 beside the sinner telling of the mercy that stoops 
 to receive the fragments of a wasted life ; telling 
 of the blood of sprinkling, and challenging earth 
 and hell to show a sin it cannot cleanse. 
 
 In the treatment of a peculiarly aggravated 
 type of a transgressor — one who has come within 
 the circle of Christian discipleship, and has pre- 
 viously wronged a member of the Christian 
 brotherhood — the rule laid down is, " Restore 
 such an one in the spirit of meekness, consider- 
 ing thyself lest thou also be tempted." But 
 should the wrong-doer prove unrelenting, should 
 all efforts to win him back prove abortive, what 
 then? "Let him be unto thee as a heathen 
 man and a publican." Does that mean, " Spurn 
 him from you ; let him feel the fire of your indig- 
 nation ; let him be given up to walk unhindered 
 
A CASTA WA Y RECLAIMED. 2 5 
 
 in the path to ruin?" No. This rather is the 
 meaning: — " If by his evil conduct he has denied 
 the faith, and you cannot longer fellowship with 
 him as a Christian, treat him as a brother man ; 
 treat him as Christ treated heathen men and pub- 
 licans ; labor and pray for his repentance and 
 restoration." Church discipline has for its ulti- 
 mate aim the recovery of the fallen. Hope of 
 realizing this aim ought never to be abandoned. 
 When upon an infamous transgressor the sever- 
 est ecclesiastical penalties must needs be visited, 
 the end to be sought is, "to deliver such an one 
 to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his 
 spirit may be saved, in the day of the Lord."* 
 
 It is of the utmost moment to catch the spirit 
 of divine hopefulness which irradiates the Bible ; 
 and so be led to see a possible saint in every act- 
 ual devil. Untiring effort to save, can spring only 
 from unfailing hopefulness of success. When 
 hope dies effort will cease. Unfaith in the possi- 
 bility of the reformation of the worst of men will 
 show itself in the absence of works. The un- 
 scriptural doctrine that some men are in a hope- 
 less state will always bear its legitimate fruit in 
 the paralyzing of Christian endeavor. No sane 
 man will continue his efforts to resuscitate a 
 corpse. If the vital spark has fled, every motive 
 
 * 1 Cor. v. 5. 
 
26 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 for further exertion is taken away. It has some- 
 times happened, however, that people have been 
 laid out for burial before they were really dead, 
 and those who have been hastening them to inter- 
 ment have been surprised by unmistakable signs 
 of returning vitality. And in like manner souls 
 that were given up for burial in the grave of 
 hopelessness have not unfrequently been quick- 
 ened into newness of life. 
 
 Turning to Ephraim we find that he did actu- 
 ally repent. The castaway was reclaimed ; the 
 dead became alive ; the apostate returned to the 
 pure faith from which he had drifted away. His 
 inner disposition and outward conduct alike were 
 changed. He came to loathe what once he had 
 loved, and to love what once he had loathed. 
 With the deepest revulsion of feeling, he ex- 
 claimed, " What have I any more to do with 
 idols!" That to which his heart had been 
 "joined " he cast away as a thing abhorred. And 
 God, who is rich in mercy and ready to forgive, 
 was quick to observe the first sign of penitence. 
 " I have heard him and observed him," he says. 
 " When he was yet a great way off, his Father 
 saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell 
 on his neck, and kissed him." 
 
GRACE CONQUERING NATURE. 
 
" Grace works into the natural life of a man a supernatural 
 life, which differs from the former as essentially as the world of 
 glory differs from the present world of decay." — Dr. Franz 
 Delitzsch. 
 
 " Give me a man who is choleric, abusive in his language, 
 headstrong and unruly ; and with a very few words — the words of 
 God — he shall be rendered gentle as a lamb. Give me a greedy, 
 avaricious, close-fisted man, and I will presently return him to 
 you a generous creature, freely bestowing his money by handfuls. 
 Give me a cruel, blood-thirsty wretch, instantly his ferocity shall 
 
 be transformed into a truly mild and merciful disposition 
 
 In one laver — the laver of Regeneration — all his wickedness shall 
 be washed away." — Lactantius. 
 
III. 
 
 GRACE CONQUERING NATURE. 
 
 " Total depravity" in the sense of general or 
 universal depravity is an incontrovertible doc- 
 trine ; but total depravity in the sense of com- 
 plete depravity in the individual is a doctrine 
 which falsifies human history, and vilifies human 
 nature. There is something good in man. 
 Human nature produces other and better crops 
 than weeds of wickedness. As sweet, fragile 
 flowers are found growing upon barren deserts, 
 among the snows of Lapland, or on the mouths 
 of slumbering volcanoes, so in corrupt hearts are 
 often found some of the fairest flowers of virtue. 
 In man at his worst there remain some vestiges 
 of goodness, some hint of the glory from which 
 he has fallen. Were depravity total in the indi- 
 vidual there would be nothing to save ; nothing 
 would be left to work upon for the restoration of 
 man to spiritual health. Nevertheless, the mel- 
 ancholy fact remains that the strongest tendency 
 in man is towards evil. Viewed abstractedly sin 
 is an unnatural thing: it is a violation of the laws 
 
30 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 of the moral nature of man. " Whoso sinneth 
 against God wrongeth his own soul." Viewed 
 practically it is natural to the depraved heart to 
 fall into sin. The corrupt tree bringeth forth 
 bad fruit. " The wicked are estranged from the 
 womb ; they go astray as soon as they be born, 
 speaking lies." 
 
 There is one patent mark of natural depravity 
 of which the Scriptures give special mention, viz., 
 wrath, or anger. All men are said to be "by 
 nature children of wrath."* That is to say, all 
 men are by natural disposition and tendency 
 prone to wrath or anger. The reference is not to 
 wrath of which they are the objects but to wrath 
 of which they are the subjects. " Children of 
 wrath " are those of whom wrath or anger is pred- 
 icate, just as " children of disobedience " men- 
 tioned in the previous verse, are those of whom 
 disobedience is predicable, " disobedient children." 
 
 But, assuming for the nonce that the reference 
 is to divine, punitive wrath, the question arises, 
 who are the objects of divine wrath ? Men as 
 men, or men as sinners ? Unquestionably the 
 latter. The children of disobedience, and the 
 children of wrath are one and the same. And is 
 it not in perfect harmony with the natural con- 
 stitution and course of things that children of 
 
 * Eph. ii. 3. 
 
GRACE CONQUERING NATURE. 3 I 
 
 disobedience, who fulfill the desires of the flesh 
 and the mind, should be also children of wrath ? 
 " It would," says Dr. Morison," be utterly unnat- 
 ural were any but the children of disobedience 
 to be the children of wrath ; but it is nat- 
 ural that all the children of disobedience should 
 be children of wrath." If the objective meaning 
 of the term " wrath " be insisted upon, Meyer is 
 undoubtedly right in asserting that it is only 
 through the development of natural disposition 
 into actual sin that men become the objects 
 of divine wrath. The presence of inborn quali- 
 ties can never of itself make man the object of 
 divine displeasure and punishment. Man is not 
 responsible for his natural tendencies and inclina- 
 tions, but solely for his conduct in reference to 
 them. So long as evil tendencies are resisted 
 there can be no guilt ; only when welcomed and 
 yielded to does temptation become sin. Moral 
 tendency may depend upon things beyond the 
 sphere of choice, but moral character is always 
 the result of moral action. " To suppose that a 
 being may be morally evil before he has done 
 evil, is to suppose that a moral character may be 
 made for him, and not by him." Inherited ten- 
 dencies to evil are misfortunes, not crimes ; they 
 demand pity, not blame. It is actual sin, and 
 actual sin alone, that brings any one under the 
 wrath of God. 
 
32 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 By the great majority of commentators the 
 question has never once been raised, whether the 
 wrath here referred to may not, after all, be sub- 
 jective rather than objective ; whether, in other 
 words, the reference is not to the wrath of man 
 rather than to the wrath of God. It has been 
 quietly taken for granted that these words teach 
 the hideous dogma that man is born an object of 
 divine wrath and condemnation ; that before he 
 has committed a single sin, he carries within him 
 an "inborn childship of wrath." Augustine in 
 view of this text did not hesitate to affirm that 
 "as soon as man is conceived he is condemned." 
 Calvin, echoing Augustine, is certain that " Paul 
 testifies that we are born with sin, as serpents 
 bring from the womb their poison." Dr. Charles 
 Hodge, echoing Calvin, declares that, "the truth 
 here taught is . . that mankind as a race are 
 fallen, that they had their probation in Adam, 
 and therefore are born in a state of condem- 
 nation." 
 
 One fatal objection to the above interpretation 
 is that the term " children," in the expression 
 "children of wrath," does not mean babes; but 
 is employed metaphorically to denote those who 
 are under the dominion of wrath, as children 
 are under the dominion of a parent. Children of 
 wrath are not those who are born under wrath, 
 but those who by the peculiarity of their being, 
 
GRACE CONQUERING NATURE. 33 
 
 are predisposed to wrath. Their inclination to 
 wrath is not acquired, but is inherent and inher- 
 ited. In a word, it is natural. 
 
 It lies entirely outside the present purpose of 
 the Apostle to discuss the question of original 
 sin. His object is a more practical one. He 
 sees men in the pit of evil, lost and helpless, and 
 his one concern is to get them out. He does not 
 bend over them asking them how they got there. 
 He does not stop to inquire whether they fell 
 into the pit, or were born in it. It is enough 
 that they are there; unable to deliver themselves. 
 Every struggle to escape reveals the presence 
 within them of a principle of evil which has 
 gained the mastery over their moral natures. 
 They are prone to evil. They are by nature 
 children of all unrighteousness. 
 
 Anger is only one sample of the poisonous 
 growth which springs up rank and abundant in 
 the human heart. The name of sin is Legion. 
 The native, inborn propensities of man incline 
 him to every form of sin. Before he is quick- 
 ened by grace he lives in the unbridled lusts of 
 the flesh. There is within him no holy restraining 
 power. According to the very constitution and 
 order of things he is the child or slave of his own 
 unhallowed desires. Perhaps in nothing is the 
 sinful nature of man so obviously manifested as 
 in the tendency to anger. All men are by nature 
 3. 
 
34 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 " children of anger.' ' Even if brought up in the 
 society of angels their natural disposition to 
 anger would crop out. One of the first fruits 
 which the evil tree of human nature yields is 
 anger. Witness this in the case of the infant 
 whose wish has been crossed or left ungratified. 
 It is no wonder then that this sin should have 
 been singled out as a special mark of natural 
 depravity. It is a typical sin, a sin common to 
 the race. It is also a destructive sin, withering 
 like the fiery breath of the simoon every grace 
 in the garden of the soul. 
 
 Interpreting the word " wrath " in a subjective 
 sense, the whole phrase " children of wrath " will 
 fall into place as part of a sharply drawn contrast 
 between what men are by nature, and what they 
 are by grace. By nature they are children of dis- 
 obedience, by grace children of obedience ; by 
 nature children of darkness, by grace children of 
 light ; by nature children of wrath, by grace chil- 
 dren of love ; by nature children of Satan, by 
 grace children of God. When grace conquers 
 nature, natural disposition is changed, natural 
 inclination and desire are reversed, unholy pas- 
 sion is subdued, the fierce hell-fire which raged 
 within the breast is quenched. Among the de- 
 mons exorcised when Christ enters the heart, 
 is the demon of anger. From those who were 
 formerly the slaves of ungoverned passions 
 
GRACE CONQUERING NATURE. 35 
 
 " All bitterness and wrath, and anger are put 
 away." 
 
 At a single stroke the foundations are thus cut 
 away from beneath the common excuse : " I 
 cannot help being overcome with passion ; I am 
 a child of anger ; I have inherited a hot, ungov- 
 ernable temper ; it is as natural for me to flare 
 up with anger when provoked, as it is for gun- 
 powder to explode at the touch of fire." Unholy 
 anger is natural, of that there is no denial ; but 
 is it Christian ? Cannot the grace of God change 
 nature into that which is above nature ? Can 
 it not transform the natural man into the spir- 
 itual man ? Can it not alter the inward disposi- 
 tion, so that whereas the prevailing tendency has 
 been towards evil it shall henceforth be towards 
 good? Cannot the principle of righteousness 
 which Christ imparts vanquish the inborn prin- 
 ciple of sin, so that in spite of some remaining 
 roots of bitterness hidden in the renewed heart 
 the life shall be characterized by the fruits of the 
 Spirit, which are " love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
 kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self- 
 control ? " 
 
 When Zopyrus, reading the physiognomy of 
 Socrates, said of him, to his astonished and indig- 
 nant pupils, that his face was " the rendezvous of 
 the vices," that it was the face of a man stupid, 
 brutal, sensual, and addicted to drunkenness, the 
 
$6 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 philosopher replied that by nature he was dis- 
 posed to all these vices, and that they were only 
 restrained and vanquished by the exercise of 
 virtue. From whence he derived the power 
 of virtue, by which he conquered his natural ten- 
 dencies to evil, Socrates does not state. Was it 
 from himself? Not so thought Aristotle, who 
 says, " It is clear that not one of the moral 
 virtues spring up in us by nature." Vice by 
 nature, but not virtue, is the double testimony 
 of Socrates and Aristotle. The origin of virtue 
 was a secret which neither of them knew. Had 
 they known it, they would have wept tears of 
 joy. With a deeper insight into " the mystery 
 of godliness," with a clearer knowledge of the 
 source of all-sufficient moral help, than any 
 heathen sage ever possessed, Paul exclaimed, 
 " By the grace of God I am what I am : All 
 that is good in me I ascribe to the continuous 
 agency of divine grace operating upon me as a 
 restraining and a sanctifying power." Thomas 
 a Kempis is therefore standing upon Scriptural 
 ground, when he p.rays : " O Lord, let that be- 
 come possible to me by thy grace, which by 
 nature seems impossible to me." 
 
 Where grace reigns nature is conquered. 
 Those who were at enmity to God are reconciled ; 
 those who were disobedient are brought into 
 loving, loyal submission ; those who were the 
 
GRACE CONQUERING NATURE. 37 
 
 slaves of sinful passions are made meek and 
 gentle. The transformation of children of wrath 
 who " tear their prey with sharp-edged tooth and 
 claw," into children of love, who hold out toward 
 their bitterest enemy hands of blessing, is the 
 crowning victory of grace. 
 
IV. 
 
 PESSIMISTIC VIEW OF THE SPIR- 
 ITUAL CONDITION OF MAN. 
 
" 111 habits gather by unseen degrees : 
 As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas." 
 
 Dryden's Ovid. 
 
 " For use almost can change the stamp of nature, 
 And master the devil, or throw him out 
 With wondrous potency." 
 
 Shakespeare, Hamlet. 
 
 " The habitual tendency of vice as certainly determines the 
 choice as even a total depravity. A decided majority in Parlia- 
 ment carries every measure with as much certainty as if there 
 were no minority." — A. Fuller. 
 
IV. 
 
 A PESSIMISTIC VIEW OF THE SPIRITUAL CON- 
 DITION OF MAN. 
 
 THERE was a time when the prophet Jeremiah 
 came almost to despair of effecting any moral 
 reform among his people. Observing their fre- 
 quent backslidings ; knowing that evil-doing had 
 become a second nature with them ; perceiving 
 that through the long and complete surrender of 
 themselves to the dominion of sinful habits they 
 had become bound with fetters which they could 
 not break, his hope of seeing them reclaimed, 
 never too strong at the best, had well nigh van- 
 ished. Using words which in his day had passed 
 into a proverb, he dispiritedly inquired : " Can 
 the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his 
 spots ? then may ye also do good, who are accus- 
 tomed to do evil ; " or, more literally, " who are 
 accustoming yourselves to do evil" * 
 
 This proverbial utterance of the pessimistic 
 prophet presents rather a dark picture of the 
 moral situation ; but it must be admitted that it 
 
 *Jer. xiii. 23. 
 
42 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 holds at the heart of it one hard, stubborn point 
 of fact — namely, that the moral reform of habit- 
 ual sinners is always extremely difficult. " Use 
 doth breed a habit in a man," and habit strength- 
 ened by every repetition of the acts which led to 
 its formation, becomes, after long continued ex- 
 ercise, solMified into character. Illustrating the 
 force of habit, Dr. Boardman remarks : " The law 
 of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. 
 Sow an act and you reap a habit ; sow a habit 
 and you' reap a character ; sow a character and 
 you reap a destiny." Acts are the stuff out of 
 which habits are made ; habits the warp and 
 woof out of which the web of character is woven. 
 Good habits grow with the growth of the soul, 
 bad habits grow with the decay of the soul. The 
 strength of a good habit is the measure of a 
 man's strength; the strength of a bad habit 
 is the measure of his weakness. Increasing 
 strength to do right is the reward of " patient 
 continuance in well-doing ; " increased weakness to 
 resist the wrong, and to break away from it, is 
 the penalty of habitual indulgence in evil-doing. 
 All who accustom themselves to do evil find the 
 practice of virtue more and more difficult. Each 
 separate act of evil becomes an added strand in 
 the cable of habit by which they are moored to 
 the slimy shores of a fleshly life. How can they 
 break the habits which have grown from cob- 
 
A PESSIMISTIC VIEW. 43 
 
 webs into cables, and the strength of which is 
 being constantly increased by every sinful act ? 
 How can they cut loose from their vile moor- 
 ings, and, taking advantage of the fast ebbing 
 tide of opportunity strike sail for a life of right- 
 eous liberty?- That is the problem which has 
 vexed the righteous soul of many a prophet ! 
 Possibility of deliverance there is none unless 
 they can be aroused to grapple with the sin by 
 which they have become enslaved. The practice 
 of evil must be discontinued before the lessons of 
 the new life are learned ; the way of wickedness 
 must be forsaken before the good way is en- 
 tered ; the old temple must be taken down before 
 the new temple is built up ; the old man put off 
 before the new man is put on. To attempt the 
 changing of ingrained habits of evil without an 
 intermission of the acts which led to their for- 
 mation would be like attempting to wash the 
 negro white. " Cease to do evil," is the first 
 step in the way of reform ; " learn to do well," is 
 the second : and not until the first step has been 
 taken is the second possible. As by the double 
 action of the lungs the bad air is exhaled before 
 the good air is inhaled, so evil must be expelled 
 from the heart before holiness enters. Repent- 
 ance is first from sin, then to God. 
 
 Under any circumstances the habits of a life- 
 time are never easily displaced. They cannot be 
 
44 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 set aside, at any moment, like a garment. It is 
 a deduction from universal observation that those 
 who have been born and bred in sin abide in 
 it, that those who from childhood have been 
 trained up to walk in the way in which they 
 should not go, keep on to the end in that broad 
 and well beaten path. The cases are compara- 
 tively few in which there is any sudden reform of 
 evil habits, or any sudden breakdown of holy 
 principle. The governing principle of life gen- 
 erally remains unchanged to the last. Few 
 repent in old age, fewer still at death. The re- 
 flection of St. Augustine is full of heart-moving 
 suggestiveness, that " there is one instance of 
 deathbed repentance recorded in the Scriptures — 
 the penitent thief — that none should despair, and 
 only one, that none may presume." 
 
 But, although difficult, the reform of the 
 habitual sinner is not impossible. The prophet 
 did not think that his people were altogether 
 incorrigible. He did not look upon them as 
 having passed the convertible stage ; as having 
 got past being prayed for, or reasoned with. He 
 seeks to rouse them to a sense of danger. He 
 urges them to present action. This very chapter 
 closes with the tender appeal, " Wilt thou be 
 made clean? When shall it once be?" How 
 long wilt thou defer repentance? How long will 
 divine solicitude rebuke your indifference? 
 
A PESSIMISTIC VIEW. 45 
 
 When will it once be, that, weary; of wickedness, 
 and moved by divine pity, you will return to God 
 that he may heal your backslidings ? 
 
 The utmost that is expressed by the strong 
 graphic words of the proverb under consideration 
 is the extremely difficult, and not the absolutely 
 impossible. Similar in meaning is the hyperboli- 
 cal language in which Christ represents the great 
 difficulty of discharging the responsibilities and 
 overcoming the temptations of riches. " It is 
 easier," he says, " for a camel to go through the eye 
 of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the 
 kingdom of God." Of this bold proverbial phrase 
 Lightfoot remarks that " it was used in the 
 schools to intimate a thing very unusual and 
 very difficult." A qualifying expression is 
 added, " What is impossible with man is possible 
 with God." " God's grace," says Scott, " can sur- 
 mount such difficulties as are impossible for 
 nature to overcome, and thus we are to under- 
 stand the passage before us." And thus also are 
 we to understand the words of the prophet. 
 Words that merely assert that no man can change 
 his own heart or habits must not be given an 
 interpretation which leaves out of view the con- 
 trasted truth, which if not expressed is at least 
 assumed, namely, that what man cannot do for 
 himself the Almighty Grace of God can do for 
 him. No man, it is true, can cleanse his own 
 
4.6 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 heart and life, no man can, by his own efforts, get 
 rid of the blackness of soul which is the result of 
 self-developed character ; but where man fails 
 upon himself Christ succeeds. His blood cleans- 
 eth from all sin. Through the power of his cross 
 the leprous nature of man may be renewed, the 
 mark of the beast may be removed, the impure 
 heart may be cleansed, the inbred habits which 
 blackened the soul and spotted the life may be 
 changed, the sin-seared wretch may be trans- 
 formed into a heavenly child and made a fit com- 
 panion for the angels. 
 
 It is told of Bunyan that when garnishing his 
 speech with oaths an abandoned woman adminis- 
 tered to him a severe rebuke. The child's heart 
 that still lived in him was touched. He hung his 
 head in shame and silence. " While I stood 
 there," he says, " I wished with all my heart that 
 I might be a little child again, that my father 
 might learn me to speak without this wicked way 
 of swearing. This biographer adds, " He thought 
 himself so accustomed to this evil habit that he 
 could not leave it off ; but he did so from that 
 moment." And that he did leave it off he him- 
 self attributed to that divine grace, which, 
 abounding to the chief of sinners, changed the 
 skin of the Ethiop and the spots of the leopard. 
 
 A friend wrote to Coleridge urging him to 
 give up the -use of opium. "You bid me rouse 
 
A PESSIMISTIC VIEW. 47 
 
 myself! Go, bid a man paralytic in both arms 
 rub them briskly together, and that will save 
 him. 'Alas!' he would reply, 'that I cannot 
 move my arms is my complaint and misery.'' 
 But what Coleridge was unable to do in his own 
 strength he accomplished through the strength of 
 God. Help came not from within but from with- 
 out, or rather, from above. Turning from the cold 
 comfort of an earth-born philosophy which said 
 to one oppressed with a sense of weakness, " Be 
 strong; 1 ' he listened to that voice of good cheer 
 from heaven. "Be strong and of a good cour- 
 age, and I will strengthen thine heart /" and, 
 " Strong in the Lord and in the power of his 
 might he brake asunder the shackles of his evil 
 habit, as Samson his green withes." 
 
 There are two symbolic works of art, the 
 Laocoon and St. George and the Dragon, which 
 may be taken as setting forth in contrasted form 
 that irrepressible conflict of man with the alien 
 forces of the spirit-world, which underlies all 
 mythologies and religions. In the Laocoon, that 
 peerless work of ancient sculpture, the death-like 
 struggles of the priest-father as he vainly 
 endeavors to tear the coiling serpents from him- 
 self and children, presents a picture of man con- 
 tending in his own might against the mightier 
 powers of evil. The artist has caught the pas- 
 sion at its highest point, — as Lessing with fine 
 
48 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 critical insight has pointed out. In the midst of 
 a tempest of agony there is a calm like the peace- 
 ful depths beneath the wind tossed surface of the 
 sea. But the calm which overspreads the face, 
 suffusing with subtle power the lines of pain, is 
 not the calm of resignation or of hope, but of 
 mute, heroic despair. The Laocoon is a confes- 
 sion in marble of the failure of man at his best, to 
 gain the mastery over evil. In St. George and 
 the Dragon the same struggle is portrayed, but 
 here the saint is victor. Entering the lists 
 against the devouring, anarchic principle, of which 
 the Dragon is the emblem, he returns from the 
 conflict in triumph. The greatest object of 
 human effort is attained, the highest hope of the 
 human heart is met, the Dragon is slain, and man 
 delivered. Deliverance is wrought out through 
 the interposition of another. One whose heart 
 heaven has touched with a spirit of holy chivalry 
 wins, with his own strong arm, redemption for 
 the weak. Fit emblem of the greater victory 
 won by the "Strong Son of God," who came 
 down to earth to rescue perishing souls from 
 the Powers of darkness and sin ! 
 
V. 
 
 THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION. 
 
"Christianity does more than present a system of ultimate 
 morals. It throws in a force which evolution does not reckon 
 upon, and which hastens on all currents for good, working in 
 human life." — C. L. Brace. 
 
 " It is not a bad thing for a man to have a tempest in the lower 
 half of his face, if but he has a hurricane in the upper half. — 
 Joseph Cook. 
 
 " Temptations hurt not, though they have accesse, 
 Satan o'ercomes none but by willingnesse." 
 
 Herrick. 
 
 " If they who wrought earth's crowning crime 
 Were of thy intercession worthy, Lord ! 
 Of whom shall fellow-sinners like ourselves 
 Despair ? " 
 
 P. J. Bailey. 
 
V. 
 
 THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION. 
 
 The one thing lacking alike in all purely 
 materialistic schemes of evolution, and in all 
 schemes of ethical self-culture whatsoever, is a 
 starting-point. Who can bring life from death ? 
 is the question of science. " Who can bring a 
 clean thing out of an unclean?"* is the question 
 of religion. The yawning gulf which stretches 
 between a physical cause and a spiritual effect, 
 or between a sinful cause and a holy effect can- 
 not be bridged over by any theory of sponta- 
 neous generation. " Life proceeds from life and 
 from nothing but life."f Purity proceeds from 
 purity and from nothing but purity. All living 
 souls are the offspring of the living God ; all holy 
 souls are the progeny of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Evolution works well enough after the starting- 
 point has been secured. Given the seed, and the 
 evolution of the flower follows; given a right 
 heart, and a right life follows. But with man the 
 
 * Job xiv. 4. f Huxley. 
 
52 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 seed is corrupt, the inner nature is denied ; and 
 hence, looking at his case from the human stand- 
 point, the question, " Who can bring a clean 
 thing out of an unclean?" is answered, " Not 
 one ! " No man can do it. Such a thing is 
 contrary to the law of human generation. From 
 an impure stock pure offspring cannot be brought 
 forth ; from a polluted fountain a clean stream 
 cannot flow. Clean children must have clean 
 parents. When it is said of Adam that "he 
 begat a son in his own likeness/' a particular 
 instance is furnished of a general law. Like 
 always begets like. 
 
 It is indisputable that man has a sinful origin, 
 that he comes from an unclean stock, that his 
 life is polluted at the fountain-head. In a moral 
 sense he is badly born. The Royal Singer of 
 Israel spoke not for himself alone, but as the 
 mouthpiece of the race, when he exclaimed: — 
 "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin 
 did my mother conceive me."* Sorrowfully, but 
 not remorsefully, he confesses the deep-seated 
 nature of the evil from which he prays to be 
 cleansed. Translating the strong poetic figures 
 which he employs, into sober thought, this much 
 of general truth remains:— Man has a sinful 
 parentage; the world into which he is born 
 
 * Psalms li. 5. 
 
THE LIMITS OF E VOL UTION. 5 3 
 
 is sinful ; his body is contaminated with sin ; 
 his soul tainted with sin. Even within the 
 sphere of experience sin is no recent thing. 
 The consciousness of self and the consciousness 
 of sin rise like double stars in the soul together. 
 Man goes astray, from the womb. Not a flat- 
 tering picture, but a true one ! Let it be 
 noted, however, that the declaration " in in- 
 iquity was I born," does not mean " iniquity 
 was born in me ; " nor does the declaration, " in 
 sin did my mother conceive me" mean, "sin 
 was conceived in me while I lay in the womb of 
 my mother." Sin is not born into man, but 
 done by him. The corrupt nature of man is 
 not the cause but the occasion of sin. In the 
 will, "the innermost core of personality," is found 
 the cause of sin. Sin originates in the will of the 
 sinner, and nowhere else. Every man is an orig- 
 inal sinner. 
 
 But while every man is an original sinner, no 
 man is an original saint. Sin originates in man, 
 righteousness in God. All who enter into eternal 
 life are " born not of blood, nor of the will of the 
 flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." The 
 Chaldee paraphrase quoted by Henry, "Who 
 can make a man clean that is polluted with sin ? 
 Cannot one, that is God?" brings out this sup- 
 plemental thought. Yes, God can change the 
 heart; he can cleanse the fountain of life so that 
 
54 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 the outflowing streams shall be pure ; he can 
 create a new nature from which a holy character 
 shall be produced. When therefore it is asked, 
 "Who can bring a clean thing out of an un- 
 clean?" the doctrine of divine inability must not 
 be deduced from words which merely teach the 
 doctrine of human inability. That man is help- 
 less to change his own nature cannot for a 
 moment be questioned. But who shall dare to 
 limit the Holy One of Israel? Who shall dare 
 to set bounds to the Infinite ? Who shall dare 
 to set up little theological stakes, saying to the 
 onrushing tide of salvation, " Hitherto shalt 
 thou come and no further?" Limit the ocean, 
 limit the sun, but limit not the mercy of God to 
 erring man ! There are limits to human power ; 
 but there is no limit to the saving power of God, 
 except that which man himself sets up — his own 
 impenitence ; and when that is removed the 
 renewing grace of God enters his heart. 
 
 For the redemption of man nothing less than 
 the incoming of the renewing grace of God will 
 suffice. What man needs is not reformation from 
 without, but regeneration from within. It is not 
 enough to pick off the bitter fruit from the tree 
 of his life, for fresh crops will come again ; the 
 tree itself must be made good, and then will 
 the fruit be good. It is not enough to put the 
 transgressor behind the bars of outward restraint, 
 
THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION. 55 
 
 for when he is set free he will return to his evil 
 ways ; his nature must be changed and then will 
 the desire for doing wrong be taken away. The 
 sow that is washed is a sow still, and upon the 
 first opportunity will return to her wallowing in 
 the mire. Stories have been told of tigers which 
 had been domesticated when young having all 
 their natural ferocity aroused by the first taste of 
 blood. The tiger-nature had not been changed ; 
 it merely slumbered, and when played upon at 
 some careless moment it was at once excited 
 into activity. Just so is it with man when he 
 has changed his outward habits without changing 
 his heart ; the old corrupt nature is not dead but 
 sleepeth, and may at any time be awakened by 
 the touch of temptation. What is demanded is 
 not the restraint of the old nature but its destruc- 
 tion, not its improvement but its dislodgment. 
 The old nature can never be improved into the 
 new nature. Carnal character can never grow 
 better and better until it generates spiritual life. 
 In the divine order all outward reformation pro- 
 ceeds from inward, vital change. First life, then 
 culture ; first renewal, then development ; first a 
 new heart, and then a new character ; first a 
 germinal creation, then an evolution. 
 
 When, and in what way does the germinal crea- 
 tion, which forms the starting-point in the upward 
 evolutionary process of the new life, take place ? 
 
56 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 It takes place as soon as God can bring it about ; 
 and it takes place in harmony with the laws of 
 man's nature. Upon the stream of natural law 
 Heaven has launched the richly freighted vessel 
 of redemption, in confidence that the onflowing 
 tide will, in spite of every counter current, bear it 
 forward to the destined port. Just as, in virtue 
 of the organic unity of the race, the sin of " the 
 first man Adam " affected the nature and charac- 
 ter of all his descendants, influencing them medi- 
 ately along the universal law of heredity, and not 
 by some outward arbitrary act of immediate 
 imputation ; so, along the same great law the 
 saving grace of Christ has been inwrought into 
 human nature, that the redemption of man 
 might be wrought out from within. As the 
 Spiritual Head of humanity Christ has put him- 
 self into human life at the beginning, propa- 
 gating and multiplying his influence through the 
 law of heredity, which is of all the laws that 
 mould and govern human life, the most powerful 
 and far-reaching. From the moment that life 
 has its genesis he is at work upon the embryonic 
 soul, seeking through the cooperation of sancti- 
 fied parenthood to obtain " a godly seed " with 
 which to replant the world. Under him any 
 father may become the new Adam of a better 
 dispensation, modifying and lessening the ten- 
 dencies to evil in his children ; purifying the 
 
THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION: 57 
 
 polluted fountain of life before it breaks forth in 
 a stream of actual transgression. From him as 
 the secret source of spiritual life, goes forth a 
 stream of redeeming power, which flowing par- 
 allel with the turbid tide of inherited depravity, 
 may, whenever man himself shall so elect, be 
 united with it, overcoming and cleansing it. 
 However strong may be the power of inherited 
 evil, the power of inherited grace may prove 
 to be stronger. Not that piety itself can be 
 inherited, but the inclination thereto may be. 
 This delightful possibility is certainly implied in 
 the words of Paul to Timothy: "I am filled with 
 joy when I call to remembrance the unfeigned 
 faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy 
 grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice, 
 and, I am persuaded, in thee also." Why may 
 not all parents give to their children a like 
 precious heirloom ? Why may not the natural 
 and the spiritual births be contemporaneous? 
 Why may not generation and regeneration coa- 
 lesce? Why may not the spiritual atmosphere 
 be made congenial to the growth of piety ? Why 
 may not the soul from its first unfolding be 
 baptized with heavenly influences ? Why may 
 not the spirit of purity brood over the young life 
 from the first moment of its existence, and work 
 for the counteracting of its inherited depravity? 
 Why may not divine grace prevent the ruin of 
 
58 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 the soul, instead of coming in after the catas- 
 trophe with remedial influences? Why may not 
 the devil be forestalled, and the soul be pre- 
 empted for God? In a word, why may not the 
 powers of good overmatch the powers of evil in 
 the struggle for supremacy, and that blessed 
 state of things be at length reached, in which the 
 soul is tempted to good ? 
 
 But, wherever the genetic starting-point of 
 the new life may be located, the main thing to 
 be kept in view is that it is always directly 
 traceable to the presence of the life-giving Spirit 
 in the heart. Sinful man holds within himself 
 no power of self-recovery from the damage which 
 his moral nature has received. " A corrupt tree 
 cannot bring forth good fruit." A fallen nature 
 cannot produce a perfect life any more than a 
 broken instrument can send forth melodious 
 sounds. Restoration to spiritual health can 
 come only through the communication of re- 
 cuperative grace, by which the evil reigning 
 within the heart is destroyed, and the good still 
 lingering there is drawn out and perfected. 
 Broken character can be repaired only by the 
 inworking of a supernatural power, converting 
 the activities which it awakens into a process of 
 restoration. Tis the divinity that stirs within 
 him — 't is the living Christ that dwells within him 
 that intimates to man the possibility of redemp- 
 
THE LIMITS OF E VOL UTION. 5 9 
 
 tion. The healing fountain which man finds 
 opened in his heart, is not from himself, but 
 from Christ present in him. 
 
 The moral consciousness of every man testifies 
 that far back as anything can be traced there is, 
 working alongside the power that makes for evil, 
 a power which he can oppose to his own destruc- 
 tion ; a power to which he can join himself, and 
 be lifted up out of moral degradation into god- 
 likeness of character. Through personal partici- 
 pation, this regenerative power is transmuted 
 into regenerated life. Within the open heart it 
 operates remedially, going down to the root of 
 the disease in the moral nature of man, bruising 
 the head of evil ; striking at the spirit and essence 
 of sin ; destroying wrong feelings; renovating un- 
 holy desire ; empowering the enfeebled will ; dis- 
 lodging the strong man of self by the coming 
 in of the stronger man of love; producing out- 
 ward change of conduct by an inward change 
 of nature ; accomplishing, in short, a thorough, 
 radical change in the governing thoughts of 
 the mind, choices of the will, affections of the 
 heart, and principles of the life. The lion is 
 changed into the lamb, the wilderness is made to 
 blossom as the rose, the soil of the moral nature, 
 out of which all character springs, is altered ; so 
 that " instead of the thorn comes up the fir tree, 
 and instead of the brier comes up the myrtle 
 
60 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 tree.'* All theories of natural sequence are com- 
 pletely overturned. Strength is brought out of 
 weakness, the sweet is brought out of the bitter, 
 the clean is brought out of the unclean. Volup- 
 tuaries like Augustine are lifted up out of the 
 mire of sensuality in which they long have wal- 
 lowed, into a life of purity ; rude blasphemers 
 like John Bunyan, the Bedford tinker, have 
 " grace poured upon their lips;" scoffing profli- 
 gates like John Newton feel the hand of the Lord 
 laid upon them, and instantly they cease to be 
 the servants of sin and become servants of holiness, 
 " preaching the faith of which they once made 
 havoc ; " pitiful inebriates like John B. Gough 
 are checked in their mad career of sin and shame, 
 by the tender pleading of the divine voice speaking 
 within their hearts ; and, turning in their weak- 
 ness to the sole source of help, their fetters are 
 broken, the demon of drunkenness is exorcised ; 
 and touched with the Lord's own pity they 
 thenceforth spend their lives in reclaiming moral 
 waifs who are drifting down the stream of life 
 towards the dark gulf of hopeless ruin. Some- 
 thing happens in many lives by which human 
 nature at its worst is transformed into human 
 nature at its best ; something happens by which 
 lives of selfishness are changed into lives of 
 benevolence, and lives of sin into lives of holiness. 
 From among the world's outcasts sovereign grace 
 
THE LIMITS OF E VOL UTION. 6 1 
 
 wins richest trophies. A host of living witnesses 
 stand ready to render happy and triumphant tes- 
 timony to the incoming of a power not of earth, 
 a power mightier than sin, a power which proved 
 to be to them in their low and lost estate, the 
 moral omnipotence of God, unto salvation. 
 
 Rule regeneration out and man is bound hand 
 and foot by the law of heredity, which is to him 
 a law of sin and death ; every sinful tendency 
 bred in the bone comes out in the flesh; inherited 
 evil spreads unchecked until the whole moral 
 nature becomes incurably diseased. Rule regen- 
 eration in and the law of heredity although not 
 destroyed is intercepted, the entail is broken, a 
 new evolutionary process is established, a new 
 start is given to the life of a moral being. With 
 the impartation of a new principle of life, regen- 
 eration begins. From life and not to life is the 
 way in which evolution works. 
 
 But whence comes life ? Whence can it come 
 save from God, the fountain of life ? " The gift 
 of God is eternal life, and this life is in his Son ;" 
 — and by him it is ministered to the world. The 
 new heart is not an evolution but an impartation. 
 " I will give you a new heart," is the word of 
 divine promise. Shut up to the renewing grace 
 of God as the only power unto regeneration, 
 what can man in his helplessness do but look 
 heavenward and pray, " Create within me a clean 
 
62 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 heart, O God \ and renew a right spirit within 
 me"? 
 
 Truly wonderful is the reluctance of many to 
 believe that man's extremity is God's opportuni- 
 ty, that abounding sin is met with superabound- 
 ing grace, that regenerative power universal in 
 the world and in the individual, sufficient at once 
 to redeem all men and to redeem the zvhole man, 
 has been put into present operation. Into the 
 gospel of grace a legal spirit has been imported. 
 It is thought that before the penitent is received 
 into the kingdom of God he ought to be kept 
 riding at quarantine ; that before the prodigal is 
 allowed to return home he ought to be stripped 
 of his rags. " To-day shalt thou be with me in 
 Paradise," is changed into, "After thou hast 
 stood in the outer darkness long enough to make 
 amends for past transgressions, the doors of 
 Paradise will open to receive you." Death-bed 
 repentance is, of course, treated with incredulity. 
 A distant hint of the bare possibility of the con- 
 trite murderer dropping from the scaffold into 
 the arms of Infinite Mercy, calls forth a chorus 
 of derision. It is treated as a thing incredible 
 that a soul besotted by wickedness, whom the 
 shock of impending death has awakened to utter 
 an agonizing cry for mercy, should be instantly 
 forgiven. " Hoaven is for the penitent, it is 
 urged ; but heaven is not so easily won that the 
 
THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION. 6$ 
 
 repentance of a moment can wash away the sin 
 of a lifetime : God is merciful, but he is also 
 just, and before the sinner can be forgiven and 
 renewed he must gather in the full harvest of his 
 iniquity." From the standpoint of law this 
 elder-brother reasoning is right ; from the stand- 
 point of love it is wrong. Justice demands that 
 men reap as they have sown ; the interposition of 
 mercy makes it possible for them to reap what 
 they have not sown. Standing in the grace of 
 Christ, those who have sown death reap life ; 
 those who have sown hell reap heaven. The law 
 of moral continuity is reversed ; for development 
 there is change ; for evolution, revolution ; for 
 the survival of the fittest, the survival of the 
 unfittest ; for the salvation of the most hopeful, 
 the salvation of the least hopeful. Publicans and 
 harlots enter the kingdom of God before the 
 self-righteous scribes and Pharisees. The last are 
 first, and the first last. 
 
 Is it said that if man were left to himself 
 every moral movement would be downward ; 
 that all progress would be from bad to worse ; 
 and that thenceforth there would remain only the 
 sad possibility of self-ruin, without the blessed 
 alternative of self-redemption? Left to himself ! 
 In that sad plight no child of the Eternal Father 
 is ever found. Into the foaming current of evil 
 no hapless soul is thrown, to be swept on to a 
 
64 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 resistless fate. Constant and uniform as the 
 operations of natural law, are the operations of 
 the Spirit of God upon every heart. Within the 
 ruined nature of man Christ the restorer abides; 
 and whenever his presence is welcomed, and his 
 grace received, miracles of moral might are 
 wrought ; the taint of evil is removed ; hereditary 
 tendencies are conquered ; the order of develop- 
 ment is thereafter upward and not downward, 
 towards righteousness and not towards sin, 
 towards life and not towards death. Of all who 
 unite themselves with the regenerative power 
 operating within them, it may be said : " They 
 go from strength to strength, every one of them 
 in Zion appeareth before God," 
 
VI. 
 
 MORAL MIRACLES. 
 
" The church is the expanded gospel because it bears the life 
 of Christ within itself." — Lange. 
 
 " As gravitation is universal by reaching the masses through 
 its action upon each particle, so Christianity seeks to become 
 universal by dealing with men as individuals." — Mark Hopkins. 
 
 " Christianity has carried civilization along with it whitherso- 
 ever it has gone ; and, as if to show that the latter does not 
 depend upon physical causes, some of the countries the most civ- 
 ilized in the days of Augustus are now in a state of hopeless 
 barbarism." — Guesses at Truth, A. W. and J. C. Hare. 
 
 " Through all depths of sin and loss 
 Drops the plummet of the Cross! 
 Never yet abyss was found 
 Deeper than the cross could sound." 
 
 Whittier. 
 
VI. 
 
 MORAL MIRACLES. 
 
 WITH plenitude of power at her command, 
 what a melancholy spectacle to men and angels 
 does the Church of the risen living Christ 
 present, standing in conscious and confessed im- 
 potence, unable to cast out the spirit of evil from 
 afflicted humanity ! A crowd of unfriendly wit- 
 nesses beholding with undisguised delight her 
 sad discomfiture ask in derision, " Where is now 
 your divine Christ ? You boast of being his 
 agent and representative. We would see a sign 
 from you in confirmation of your claim ; let new 
 miracles substantiated by living witnesses be pro- 
 duced, and we will believe that the Almighty 
 Christ is with you, of a truth." The demand is 
 reasonable. A divine religion ought to be able 
 to give continuous attestation of power to per- 
 form divine works. From an institution laying 
 claim to the indwelling of a power higher than 
 human, nothing short of a superhuman witness 
 will be accepted. 
 
 Pledging to his people power to perform 
 
68 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 mighty works which should startle men from 
 their sense-bound dreams, Jesus said, " He that 
 believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do 
 also, and greater works than these shall he do."* 
 What ! greater works than these which their eyes 
 beheld? Greater works than healing the sick, 
 opening the eyes of the blind, and giving life to 
 the dead? Yes: greater works than these. Not 
 greater physical works certainly ; not works 
 greater in degree, but in kind. Efforts have been 
 made to show that the miracles of the apostles 
 were greater in degree than those of the Master. 
 Christ healed with the hem of his garment, Peter 
 with his shadow, Paul with his handkerchief. 
 This, says Stier, " is a petty interpretation." 
 The reference is evidently to spiritual works. 
 Did Christ feed the hungry with bread? It is 
 given to the Church to feed famishing souls with 
 heavenly truth and love. Did Christ make the 
 lame to walk? It is given to the Church to 
 make moral cripples walk erect in renewed man- 
 hood. Did Christ open blind eyes? To the 
 Church it is given to open the eyes of the under- 
 standing. Did Christ make the dumb to speak? 
 To the Church it is given to make dumb souls 
 sing the praises of their Redeemer. Did Christ 
 cast out demons? To the Church has been 
 
 * John xiv. 12, 
 
MORAL MIRACLES. 69 
 
 .liU 
 
 given power to cast out of the human heart, ai 
 out of human society, the demons of pride, envy, 
 selfishness and lust. Did Christ raise the dead ? 
 To the Church has been given power to raise 
 souls dead in sin into newness of life before God. 
 For a partial fulfillment of the promise of Christ, 
 look at the wonders wrought upon the day of 
 Pentecost. Three thousand souls converted ! 
 Three thousand natures changed ! Three thou- 
 sand moral beings delivered from the power of 
 sin, and led to choose, to love, and to practise a 
 life of holiness ! Was not this a greater work 
 than any display of power in the physical realm 
 would have been? How poor and paltry along- 
 side these supernatural works of moral power, 
 appeared the miracles of physical force, which 
 often did nothing more than attract and dazzle 
 the onlooker! Not until the Church was freed 
 from the outward signs and wonders which were 
 incidental to an early stage of her development ; 
 and which, while they served a temporary pur- 
 pose, were in no sense to be numbered among 
 the essentials of Christianity, did she stand forth 
 clothed in spiritual power alone, bearing her own 
 witness to the world ; a kingdom not of earth, a 
 kingdom that is to depend for the perpetuation 
 of her existence and influence upon the spiritual 
 power by which she was founded ; a kingdom to 
 which any admixture of worldly power will prove 
 
yo UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 to be like feet of clay to an image of gold ; — 
 a blot upon her beauty and a sure and certain 
 cause of ruin. 
 
 The principle of development characterizes the 
 plan of redemption in all its historical outwork- 
 ings. Beginning in types dim and shadowy, the 
 manifestations of truth and grace move upon a 
 constantly ascending scale until they culminate 
 in the God-man. So with manifestations of 
 divine power. Beginning in the physical sphere 
 they gradually ascend until they end in the 
 spiritual sphere. Miracles take on a higher form ; 
 they move along a higher plane ; they pass from 
 the realm of nature into the realm of grace. 
 Works are wrought which more strikingly dis- 
 play the glory of Christ than did the raising of 
 the dead. Souls are raised from the death of 
 sin to a life of righteousness ; and the raising of 
 dead souls is a higher work, a work demanding 
 the exercise of a higher kind of power than the 
 raising of dead bodies from the tomb. The 
 miracles of Christ were themselves parables ; 
 sensible representations of moral works ; visible 
 signs of the reality and supremacy of an inner 
 spiritual kingdom, of which the material world is 
 but the outward shadow. The evidential value 
 of the miracles lay in the testimony which they 
 bore to the almightiness of Christ as the Lord 
 of nature and the Saviour of men. By them men 
 
MORAL MIRACLES. J\ 
 
 were taught that Christ had power to deliver 
 from inward evil ; for no one could reasonably 
 doubt that he who could say to the sick of the 
 palsy, " I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy 
 bed and go unto thy house," had power on 
 earth to forgive sins. 
 
 Works of supernatural power in the physical 
 realm are no longer needed to bear witness to 
 the working of the divine hand in the spiritual 
 realm. The greater spiritual works speak for 
 themselves, and bear upon their forefront indu- 
 bitable evidence that they are wrought of God. 
 Thus the argument from miracles takes on a 
 higher form ; the less being superseded by the 
 greater. A higher order of works suggests a 
 higher order of power, and furnishes a higher 
 order of testimony. " Greater works " are per- 
 formed as the result of a superadded enduement 
 bestowed upon those who already possessed power 
 to work miracles on a lower plane. Unrestricted 
 to any special class of christians the new gift of 
 power descends upon the universal church, break- 
 ing out on the upper side of things in mar- 
 vels of moral change wrought in human hearts 
 and lives, which afford to an unbelieving world 
 the same convincing proof of the divine origin of 
 Christianity, that the miracles of Christ afforded 
 of his Messiahship. 
 
 Too often has the Church taken the lower 
 
72 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 ground, depending less than it was her privilege 
 to do upon the spiritual power of which she is 
 the conservator, and which she is the chosen ves- 
 sel to convey to an unregenerate world ; yet, by 
 her practical power to regenerate human charac- 
 ter she has never failed to make good, in some 
 measure, her claim of standing in the Pentecostal 
 line of succession, the direct representative and 
 agent of the Almighty Christ. Her answer to 
 those to come to her as messengers from the 
 world inquiring, Is the Lord among you or not? 
 is this, " Go and tell what things ye do hear and 
 see ; tell of lives redeemed, tell of new miracles, 
 miracles of grace, miracles of spiritual power 
 wrought by the feeblest of instrumentalities, and 
 ask if these things do not present indisputable 
 proof of the indwelling presence of the Lord of 
 Glory." It is a commonly expressed sentiment 
 regarding any one far gone in sin ; No human 
 power can save him ! Nothing but the grace of 
 God can save him ! Nothing short of a miracle 
 can save him ! How true this is! Culture is not 
 omnipotent ; philosophy is vain ; will-power 
 when substituted for divine power is the merest 
 mockery. The supernatural power of divine 
 grace, and nothing else, can save all types 
 and classes of men, from the highest to the 
 lowest. 
 
 Is it asked ; If salvation be of the Lord, how 
 
MORAL MIRACLES. J$ 
 
 can man save his brother? He can save him in- 
 strumentally ; he can save him as the agent of a 
 higher power. Although possessing no power in 
 himself he can be the hand which the divine 
 worker uses, the channel through which the 
 divine power is dispensed. Not apart from 
 Christ, but in his strength and in his name are 
 the greater works of saving power performed. 
 Christ himself is content to remain out of sight ; 
 he hides behind his people ; works in them ; im- 
 parts to them his mighty power; and allows them 
 to receive the credit for the works which he has 
 enabled them to perform. " Christ has sown, we 
 reap," exclaims Stier, "and the harvest is greater 
 than the seed-time." 
 
 Were anything further needed to show that 
 the "greater works" are spiritual works, it 
 would only be necessary to consider the ground 
 upon which the promise of power to perform 
 them, is made to rest. " Greater works than 
 these shall ye do," said Jesus, " because I go unto 
 my Father." I go unto my Father to be en- 
 throned in the seat of power ; I go unto my 
 Father to secure for you that baptism of the 
 Spirit which will qualify you to act in my room 
 and stead in the spiritual kingdom which* I am 
 about to set up, and empower you to carry to 
 completion the work of the world's redemp- 
 tion. 
 
74 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 Because Christ still abides within his Church 
 in the power of the Spirit, her power to perform 
 spiritual miracles remains. Into her hands has 
 been put an instrument by which she can accom- 
 plish greater wonders than those performed by 
 the wonder-working rod of Moses. She has a 
 gospel to proclaim which is mighty through God 
 to the pulling down of the strongholds of sin, 
 and to the building up of the kingdom of right- 
 eousness. Wherever the gospel is preached 
 moral transformations are accomplished which 
 require for their explanation the operation of a 
 supernatural power; and which draw from the 
 most reluctant lips the acknowledgment, " What 
 hath God wrought ! " 
 
 No more thrilling romance has ever been writ- 
 ten than the plain, unvarnished recital of the 
 triumphs of the gospel during the last century. 
 Things which were deemed impossible have 
 taken place. By the introduction of a vital, 
 practical Christianity, which makes its influence 
 felt through medical missions, higher education, 
 and the blessed work of woman in the jealously 
 guarded Zenanas, the very atmosphere of social 
 life in heathen lands has become impregnated 
 with a subtle spirit of reform, and the most 
 stupendous changes have gradually and silently 
 been brought about. The walls of caste exclu- 
 siveness have begun to crack and crumble ; 
 
MORAL MIRACLES. 75 
 
 human sacrifices and infanticide have been 
 suppressed ; polygamy and slavery have been 
 abolished ; humaner customs and juster laws 
 have been established. But it is among the 
 most debased classes at home, and the most 
 debased races abroad that the power of the liv- 
 ing, conquering, reigning Christ has been most 
 marvellously exhibited. Great moral changes, 
 which those only who are spiritually blind 
 have failed to see, have taken place. In the 
 city slums and in the rural wastes many have 
 been raised from the lowest depths of brutality 
 and vice to lives of sweetness and purity. Upon 
 the rising tide of spiritual power the lowest 
 classes — the classes lowest in the moral scale — 
 have been lifted up to a higher plane. Religion 
 has become more vital ; Christendom has become 
 more Christian. Among the most degraded 
 heathen nations a new type of civilization, dis- 
 tinctively Christian, has been introduced : the 
 naked savage has been clothed ; houses have 
 been built ; improved methods of agriculture 
 have been promoted ; trades have been learned ; 
 schools and churches established ; the unfortu- 
 nate cared for ; woman elevated ; marriage hon- 
 ored ; and where before was heard the revelling 
 of diabolical heathen orgies, the hushed and holy 
 voice of family worship may now be heard. 
 Nowhere is the work of individual or .social re- 
 
76 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 generation complete. Much remains to be clone. 
 But a beginning has at least been made ; light 
 has broken ; the currents of life have been 
 altered ; souls have been won back to God, 
 brought into conformity to his will, and assimi- 
 lated to his character ; nations that were hasten- 
 ing to extinction have been arrested on the way 
 to death and put upon the upward path of prog- 
 ress ; that " revivifying force," which according to 
 Frederick Harrison — the apostle of Positivism — 
 " life and society stand in need of," has by the 
 hand of the Church been lodged in the heart of 
 the world, and is secretly leavening the whole 
 social lump. As chapter is added to chapter in 
 the history of the aggressive christian agencies of 
 to-day, confirmation is given to the conclusion of 
 Dr. Christlieb in his " Survey of Foreign Mis- 
 sions," " that no race is so spiritually dead that 
 it cannot be quickened into new life by the 
 "glad tidings," no language is so barbarous that 
 the Bible cannot be translated into it ; no indi- 
 vidual so brutish that he cannot become a new 
 creature in Christ Jesus." * 
 
 Overwhelmed by the vastness and difficulty of 
 the work set before her, the Church, in her 
 moments of despondency, cannot forbear from 
 exclaiming, "Who is sufficient for these things?" 
 
 * p. 23. 
 
MORAL MIRACLES. J J 
 
 When, of old, the prophet Ezekiel was in like 
 manner beginning to lose sight of the all-suffi- 
 cient source of power, the Lord to confirm his 
 faltering faith took him " in the spirit " into the 
 midst of a valley which had been the scene of a 
 great battle, and bade him look at the bleached 
 bones of the slain. Inspecting them carefully 
 the prophet saw that they were " very many and 
 very dry." " Son of man, how can these dry 
 bones live?" was the startling question put to 
 the discouraged prophet. To human power it 
 seemed impossible that they should ever live, 
 but he wisely answered, " O Lord thou know- 
 est." He did not know how it could be done, 
 but he dared not limit the restoring power of the 
 Holy One of Israel. When God is taken into 
 account despair is banished. Looking at the 
 wretched condition of the world, who has not 
 wondered how the dry and sapless bones scat- 
 tered over the plains of life could ever live 
 again ! But faith falls back upon this — God 
 knows how it can be done. What seems impos- 
 sible to man is easy to God. If God be taken 
 into account miracles either in the physical or 
 moral spheres can no longer be looked upon as 
 unnatural or impossible. " Is anything too hard 
 for the Lord ? Is the Lord's arm shortened that 
 it cannot save?" The Eternal Christ who says, 
 " Behold I make all things new," can bring to- 
 
78 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 gether the disjointed bones of society and of 
 man's moral nature, and quicken them by the 
 breath of his mouth. He can, by the touch of 
 his life-giving Spirit " create a soul under the 
 ribs of death." To a divine Saviour all things are 
 possible ; and what is possible to a divine Saviour 
 is possible to the Church in which he abides and 
 through which he acts. 
 
VII. 
 
 THE HIGHER ENVIRONMENT. 
 
Haunted for ever by the Eternal Mind." 
 
 " The All-Enfolding 
 The All-Upholding 
 Folds, and upholds he not 
 Thee, me, Himself ? " 
 
 " A sense o'er all my soul imprest 
 That I am weak yet not unblest, 
 Since in me, round me, everywhere 
 Eternal strength and wisdom are." 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 ' God enters by a private door into every individual." 
 
 Emerson. 
 
VII. 
 
 THE HIGHER ENVIRONMENT. 
 
 NEVER, perhaps, was more weight given than 
 at present, to the influence of man's earthly 
 environment upon the shaping of his life and 
 destiny. Little room is left for the charge that 
 too low an estimate is being made of the number 
 and nature of these tributary influences which 
 lead to the formation of moral habits. An 
 ample share of credit is freely accorded to ances- 
 try, physical constitution, climate, education, 
 social position, companionships, home-training, 
 and all the outward conditions and surroundings 
 of life, for the power which they exert in the 
 moulding of character. Indeed, the danger lies 
 in making the earthly environment all in all, so 
 that, given certain conditions of life, and a certain 
 character can be infallibly predicted ; given a 
 tropical or an arctic atmosphere of moral influ- 
 ence, and a certain moral product is the inevi- 
 table result. The character of man is thus pre- 
 destined with the certainty of absolute fate. 
 
 The doctrine of unconditioned predestination 
 6 
 
$2 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 simply shifts ground. Driven from the Divine 
 Will, it takes up its place in the outward environ- 
 ment which the Divine Being has thrown around 
 his creature, man. In either case the result is 
 the same ; man is left in the iron grip of a power 
 which he is helpless to resist— a power by which 
 his whole life and destiny are absolutely deter- 
 mined. 
 
 An important factor has often been entirely 
 lost sight of in computing the sum total of forces 
 which go to the making up of character, namely, 
 the divine environment — the environment of the 
 human soul by the living God. This higher 
 environment qualifies and balances the lower, 
 and just because it is higher has proportionately 
 more to do in giving form to character and direc- 
 tion to destiny. God is the element in which all 
 men live, the pervading presence by which all 
 life is quickened, the power diffused through 
 all things by which all creatures are sustained in 
 being. " As the plant upon the earth, so man 
 rests upon the bosom of God ; is nourished by 
 unfailing fountains, and draws at his need inex- 
 haustible power." * 
 
 There is in Pantheism a great measure of truth. 
 We have only to make the Pantheist's Soul of 
 the Universe a conscious, intelligent being — a per- 
 
 * Emerson. 
 
THE HIGHER ENVIRONMENT. 83 
 
 sonal God, in short, in order to have a true 
 science of the world. God will not then be a 
 dreary abstraction, he will not be put into the far 
 distance as the Inscrutable, the Infinite, or the 
 Eternal, but will be brought near and dwell 
 among men, in close and abiding fellowship, as of 
 old he dwelt among his people Israel. Witness 
 this in the " Higher Pantheism " of Tennyson : — 
 
 " The sun, the moon, the stars, the sea, the hills, and the plains, 
 Are not these, O Lord, the vision of him who reigns ? 
 Speak to him then, for he hears, and spirit with Spirit can meet ; 
 Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands or feet." 
 
 Too little account has been taken by Christian 
 thought of the immediate communication of God 
 with the soul. Frequently the only entrance 
 left open to God into the city of Mansoul has 
 been the Gateway of Knowledge. The doctrine 
 of the direct and conscious touch of God upon 
 the human heart has been scouted as vague and 
 mystical. But is it so ? Was not Pentecost a 
 direct communication of power, rather than a 
 revelation of new truth ? And is not the inward 
 feeling or conviction of a divine overshadowing 
 presence one of the most clearly recorded facts 
 of consciousness? Is it not the great primary 
 fact in human nature which forms the real basis 
 of our knowledge of God ? Just as we receive 
 the first knowledge of the outward world by 
 
84 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 sensation, so we receive the first knowledge of 
 God from a sense of his brooding presence, a 
 sense at first dim, but gradually growing clearer 
 with the expanding of moral consciousness, until 
 to the feeling of nearness there is joined the 
 knowledge of sacred relationship ; and with all 
 the spontaneity of natural love, and with all 
 the certainty of knowledge, come the words, 
 " Abba, Father. " * This upspringing of filial love 
 by which " the Spirit Himself beareth witness 
 with our spirit that we are the children of God," 
 must not be watered down to a subjective infer- 
 ence. It is a direct and conclusive evidence of 
 our filial relation to God. And thus is the 
 saying of Richter verified: "We arrive at the 
 knowledge of the Infinite by wings, not by 
 steps." We feel God near before we hear his 
 voice. We feel the touch of his hand, the draw- 
 ing of his love, the effluence of his power, before 
 we have learned to syllable his name. 
 
 A beautiful illustration of the inward witness 
 of the heart to the presence of God is afforded in 
 the case of a soldier who was severely wounded 
 in one of the battles of the war of the Rebellion. 
 As he lay at death's door, his mother hastened 
 from her Northern home, and arriving at the hos- 
 pital desired to be taken to him at once. She 
 
 * Freely translated by Luther, " clear Father." 
 
THE HIGHER ENVIRONMENT. 85 
 
 was informed that he was sleeping, and that it 
 would not be best to disturb him. She was 
 allowed however to go to his couch and take the 
 place of the nurse who sat by his side with her 
 hand upon his feverish brow. But hardly had 
 the mother's hand touched his forehead when 
 the patient's eyes opened, and he started up in 
 great excitement. "Whose hand was that?" 
 he asked. " That felt like my mother's hand ; 
 bring a light and let me see my mother's face ! " * 
 When the hand of God touches us shall we, even 
 in the darkness of our ignorance and sin not 
 know it ? Will there be nothing in the nature 
 of that touch to bring the conviction that the 
 unseen friend who is bending over us, is our lov- 
 ing, Heavenly Father ? 
 
 This immediacy of contact, this impact of the 
 divine upon the human, this outflowing of the 
 divine into the human, is made possible because 
 of oneness of relationship and nature. When 
 the divine within man calls to the divine without 
 him, what is it but the child calling to the 
 Father ? And when the divine without him 
 calls to the divine within him what is it but the 
 Father calling to the child ? 
 
 Between man and his divine environment there 
 is the same wondrous correlation, the same wise 
 
 * The Homiletical Review, Vol. IX. p. 90. 
 
86 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 adjustment, that there is between man and his 
 earthly environment. The eye and light, the ear 
 and sound are not more manifestly correlated to 
 each other than are man and God. Man has evi- 
 dently been made for God — made, in other words, 
 for his spiritual environment. All the roots of his 
 existence are in God. A sense of utter and 
 absolute dependence upon a higher power is the 
 deepest feeling of his nature. In this feeling of 
 dependence is found the vital norm of faith, the 
 common source of religious life. Even Herbert 
 Spencer, the prophet of the Unknowable, finds 
 himself compelled at last to fall back upon the 
 belief in " the omnipresence of something which 
 passes comprehension." * The omnipresent 
 " something " which passes comprehension is the 
 omnipresent God, the great underlying support of 
 all things. The inborn feeling of dependence, 
 from which it is impossible for man to free him- 
 self, implies the existence of something objective 
 upon which man can stay himself, something 
 upon which in his conscious weakness he can 
 securely lean. The principle of dualism which 
 gives to every appetite appropriate objects of 
 gratification ; to every mental faculty appropriate 
 external objects upon which to exercise itself, 
 gives to the religious feeling its appropriate 
 
 * First Principles, p. 45. 
 
THE HIGHER ENVIRONMENT. %J 
 
 object of satisfaction and support. Objective 
 supply is correlated to subjective want, as food 
 to hunger, or as water to thirst. In his deepest 
 need man is not mocked. As the complement of 
 his creature insufficiency he finds divine all- 
 sufficiency; as the complement of his weakness 
 he finds almighty strength, as the complement 
 of his darkness he finds everlasting light ; and as 
 the complement of his hunger of heart he finds 
 eternal love. 
 
 " God's greatness flows around his incompleteness, 
 And round his restlessness His rest." * 
 
 Belief in a divine environing presence brings 
 with it a sense of infinite and present helpfulness. 
 If the earthly environment of man is at times 
 more of a hindrance than a help in the attain- 
 ment of moral ends, his heavenly environment, 
 which encloses the earthly environment as a 
 large circle encloses a smaller one, counteracts 
 every evil, earth-born tendency ; so that instead 
 of being the creature of circumstances, he may 
 by the help of heaven make the most stubbornly 
 opposing circumstances " ministers of his to do 
 his pleasure." " Heaven lies about us in our 
 infancy," the poet has said. He might with 
 equal truth, have said, Heaven lies about us 
 always. " The Lord is never far from every one 
 
 * Mrs. Browning. 
 
88 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 of us." Although he sometimes " hideth himself 
 on the right hand that we cannot see him," he is 
 in reality near. A realizing sense of his nearness 
 may not be always enjoyed, but the soul that has 
 learned to walk by faith when feeling fails, falling 
 back upon the absolute truth of his abiding pres- 
 ence, can pass through the darkness and danger 
 of the valley of deathshade, exultantly exclaim- 
 ing, " I will fear no evil, for thou art with me" 
 
 " Life," says Browning, " is just our chance of 
 the prize of finding love." In a higher sense it 
 is the chance of the prize of finding God. And 
 whoever finds God finds love also ; for " God is 
 love." Destitute of the power of self-subsistence 
 the heart of man is nourished by a constant 
 efflux from the great primal source of love — the 
 heart of the Infinite. Driven out of himself in 
 search of an objective source of succor, by the 
 painful consciousness that in himself he has no 
 resources, man finds no rest, until his inner ear 
 catches in " the sound of a going in the tops of 
 the mulberry trees," the movements of a higher 
 power that is hastening to his assistance. Then 
 his fears are instantly quelled, his strength is re- 
 vived, and with undaunted heart he stands ready 
 to meet the conflicts of life, sustained by the 
 hope that the mighty power by which he is 
 girded and guided will not fail him in the great- 
 est emergencies. 
 
I HE HIGHER ENVIRONMENT. 89 
 
 Living with God and in God, is the secret of life. 
 There is hope for man only as he keeps in con- 
 nection with God. Cut off from God, the spirit- 
 ual nature of man withers and dies. " As the 
 branch cannot bring forth fruit of itself except it 
 abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye 
 abide in me," says Christ, the manifested God. 
 Again he says, " Aparc from me ye can do noth- 
 ing." Alas, for him who will not go out of him- 
 self to Christ for power to overcome the evils of 
 his earthly environment, but withdraws within 
 himself, refusing in his pride and self-sufficiency 
 to avail himself of the inspiring, purifying, and 
 ennobling influences which have been thrown 
 around him, and made available for his redemp- 
 tion. But happy the man who can say with 
 Jacob Boehme ; " The element of the bird 
 is the air ; the element of the fish is the water, 
 the element of the salamander is the fire, and the 
 heart of God is my element." Man was made 
 for God as the ship is made for the sea, and 
 when he is separated from God — like a stranded 
 ship lying high and dry upon the beach, rotting 
 in the sun — he is out of his native element. 
 Abiding in God he not only lives, but moves ; he 
 makes progress in the highest things, being 
 borne on by the power of God to the glorious 
 destiny for which he was created. 
 
 Eternal life being therefore possible only by 
 
go UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 vital union between man and his divine environ- 
 ment, let good heed be given to the injunction : 
 " Keep yourselves in the love of God — " which 
 means, Keep yourselves in your proper environ- 
 ment. Live in the divine love as an atmos- 
 phere ; bathe in it as an ocean ; root yourselves in 
 it as the soil of your being ; stand under its rays 
 and let it soak into your spiritual nature, until 
 every fibre thrills with the fullness of holy 
 energy ! 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE DIVINE 
 PURPOSE OF REDEMPTION. 
 
" God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf. 
 To Him man's dearer than to himself." 
 
 Ben Jonson. 
 
 " Heaven penetrates to the depths of all hearts as daybreak 
 illumines the darkest room." — Confucius. 
 
 " God's creatures each through some little narrow slit, and in 
 the measure of their capacity, get a straggling beam from him 
 into their being." — A. McLaren. 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE DIVINE PURPOSE 
 OF REDEMPTION. 
 
 In the unity of God the universality of the 
 eternal purpose of grace is necessarily involved. 
 There is one God who holds to all men the same 
 relation, therefore there is one purpose of grace 
 which bears alike upon all. Each one of his 
 earth-born children is to the All-Father equally 
 dear ; for each he has a place in his infinite 
 heart ; to each he has given, in Christ, sufficiency 
 of grace to enable him to meet every moral 
 demand. This is the argument of Paul when he 
 says; — "God willeth that all men should be 
 saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth ; 
 for there is one God, one mediator also between 
 God and men, himself man, Jesus Christ, who gave 
 himself a ransom for all." * One God, one 
 Christ, and therefore one purpose regarding all 
 men, and that one purpose that all should be 
 saved. From the doctrine of the divine unity 
 
94 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 light flashes forth upon some of the darkest por- 
 tions of man's moral pathway, and enables him 
 to walk with certain steps where before his feet 
 had stumbled. However unequally spiritual 
 favors may seem to be distributed, however un- 
 equal the number of talents, or the measure of 
 opportunity and light given to each, through 
 every life there runs the golden thread of a gra- 
 cious purpose. In all the arrangements of life the 
 accomplishment of that purpose is made the 
 primal object. God seeks first, for every man, 
 his kingdom and righteousness, and other things 
 are added or subtracted as the furtherance of the 
 spirit-life may demand. 
 
 Man is not a friendless orphan in a forlorn 
 world. Life is not a game of chance in which 
 one happens to draw a prize, and another a 
 blank ; much less is it a game of the gods in which 
 the iron hand of Fate, with men for pawns, un- 
 erringly works out the end decreed of heaven. 
 Because embraced in the purpose of eternal love, 
 endless possibilities lie enclosed in every life, the 
 development of which no alien power can for- 
 ever prevent. With infinite goodness behind it, 
 the possibility of limitless progress within it, 
 life at its worst is worth having — worth living. 
 In itself of God's gifts the goodliest, of Heaven's 
 boons the best, its value is enhanced by what it 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF DIVINE PURPOSE. 95 
 
 may be made when redeemed and beautified by 
 the grace of Christ. 
 
 By the one mediator, Jesus Christ, the univer- 
 sal purpose of the one God in the creation of man 
 is brought to fulfillment. Hidden from created 
 sight, dwelling not in darkness impenetrable, but 
 in lieht that is inaccessible, God manifests him- 
 self mediately, through Christ ; carries out his 
 purposes through Christ. When he would create 
 or save a world, it is done through Christ. 
 Whatever dealings he has with man, or man with 
 him, are carried on through Christ. Standing in 
 union with God and man, Christ the God-man 
 forms the golden link that binds them together. 
 Nor does his mediatorship express a temporary 
 but an eternal relation. It was not something 
 begun with his incarnation. His incarnation was 
 merely the self-revelation of his abiding presence 
 as the Mediating Word through whom God had 
 been continually manifesting himself to human- 
 ity, through whom he had continually been act- 
 ing upon humanity, and through whom he had 
 unweariedly been seeking to bring humanity into 
 abiding union with himself. 
 
 The mediation of Jesus Christ culminates in 
 redemption, that through redemption the end of 
 creation might be realized. The one mediator " is 
 the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom 
 for all." Because of his essential oneness with 
 
96 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 the race to which he joined himself, his life inter- 
 blends with every other life. From him as the 
 Head of humanity blessing descends to every 
 member. A representative man, he is also the 
 representative of man. He acts in and through 
 the race ; he acts also for the race. What he does 
 in humanity he does for humanity. When he 
 dies a world dies ; when he rises from the dead, a 
 world is made alive. In becoming man he comes 
 under the law in order that he might break its 
 destroying power, and redeem those who were 
 under its curse. Holding his erring brethren in 
 the close embrace of his love, he goes down with 
 them into the depths of death, coming under the 
 utmost malediction of their offense that he might 
 ransom them from the power of iniquity, and 
 bring them up, by the way of repentance, into a 
 life of fellowship with Heaven, upon which can 
 rest no shadow of condemnation. Through the 
 power of suffering, sacrificing love as revealed in 
 his cross, the power of evil which had gotten hold 
 of man is checked, the poison of sin is neutral- 
 ized, spiritual death is arrested, conscious union 
 with God is effected, and man is saved. 
 
 That no man can enjoy an adequate probation 
 apart from Christ is a foregone conclusion. 
 Only by denying the present universality of the 
 operations of Christ's redemption can it be made 
 to appear reasonable and right that probation 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF DIVINE PURPOSE. g? 
 
 should, in any case be continued under more fa- 
 vorable conditions beyond the grave. But the real 
 point at issue is whether all men are not now en- 
 joying an adequate probation under a system of 
 grace ; whether this present life, because of the 
 place which Christ occupies in it, as the light and 
 the life of men, does not, even in its lowest stages 
 of development, afford to every man an adequate 
 moral education, and therefore an adequate 
 moral test ; and whether to any one it ever 
 ceases to be a condition of moral training — pass- 
 ing from trial to doom, from grace to fate, so that 
 now and here there may be a great gulf fixed 
 which no bridge of hope can span. With Christ 
 in it, life is full of glorious possibilities to all ; 
 with Christ left out of it, life would be shorn of 
 everything that could make it a sufficient pro- 
 bation to any. It is the connection of Christ 
 with life that alone renders it spiritually decisive. 
 It is the present gracious relation of Christ to 
 men that forms the ground of his future judicial 
 authority over them. He meets every man as 
 Saviour before meeting him as Judge. 
 
 Nothing could be further from the teaching of 
 Scripture than the assumption that " punishment 
 can be justly inflicted on sinners outside of a 
 Christocentric system of probation." * What kind 
 
 * My Study, A. Phelps, p. 81. 
 
98 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 of a probation save that which is Christccentric 
 can be sufficient unto the needs of fallen man ? 
 There are not two systems of moral trial ; one 
 which has Christ for its center, and one in which 
 Christ has neither part nor lot. To all men Christ 
 sustains the same relations ; to all men the saving 
 influences of his atonement extends. He is the 
 light which lighteth every man coming into the 
 world. The light of nature, the light of reason 
 and of conscience, the light of revelation — are all 
 from him. Coming from the same source they 
 fulfil in different measures the same blessed end. 
 Redeemed by the one atoning sacrifice all men 
 are under one and the same system of grace, 
 and their degrees of responsibility and guilt cor- 
 respond with their degrees of privilege and 
 knowledge. In the sublime fact that in every 
 life abounding sin is met and matched with 
 superabounding grace is found the only true 
 theodicy. 
 
 Happily it has come to pass that in the uni- 
 versality of the purpose of God as expressed in 
 the person and work of Christ, the solution of 
 the great and grave problem of life and des- 
 tiny is being hopefully sought. There is a 
 growing conviction that here if anywhere light 
 is to be found. At the same time there is, even 
 on the part of those who have found out the 
 true starting-point, a strange reluctance to accept 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF DIVINE PURPOSE. 99 
 
 all that is involved in the universal relation of 
 Christ to man, as brother, friend and Saviour. 
 With many, the chief point of difficulty — the 
 point at which the universality of the divine 
 purpose of redemption seems to fall short — the 
 point at which the universality of the atonement 
 seems to evaporate — is not the obvious limitation 
 of the saving benefits, but the still more obvious 
 limitation of the saving knowledge of the atone- 
 ment. It is asked : — What good has the atone- 
 ment of Christ done for those who lived before 
 his coming? What benefit does it confer upon 
 those who occupy the vast outlying circles be- 
 yond the sphere of Scripture illumination? " Can 
 it be considered as universal if a. large portion of 
 the race know nothing of the historical Christ 
 and the redemption that is in him?"* These 
 questions assume that the knowledge of Christ 
 as historically revealed is necessary to salvation ; 
 or in other words, that only one form of knowl- 
 edge is saving. An unwarrantable assumption ! 
 Nowhere do the Scriptures restrict salvation to 
 those who are fortunate enough to possess the 
 biography of Jesus the Christ ; nowhere do they 
 confine the saving power of Christ within certain 
 geographical limits, or within certain boundaries 
 of time ; nowhere do they drive us by their teach- 
 
 * Progressive Orthodoxy, p. 63, 
 
IOO UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 ings, in spite of the protests of the heart, to the 
 inexorable conclusion that the vast majority of 
 the race from no fault of their own have been 
 lost ; and nowhere do they make the least 
 acknowledgment of failure on the part of the 
 present system of grace to reach every man with 
 redeeming power, or acknowledge any necessity 
 for indemnifying the failure of the present by 
 lengthening probation into the future. The aim 
 of the Bible is not to tell to men the seven-sealed 
 secrets of the future, but to make known to them 
 the glorious possibilities of the present. It is 
 with "the life that now is" that the revelation 
 of God in his Word is mainly concerned. 
 Knowledge of the future is largely inferential, 
 knowledge of the present is positive and real. 
 Whatever the future may bring, — and that we 
 can well afford to leave with the all-loving One 
 — the present is a day of grace, a day filled to 
 the brim with redeeming influences, a day in 
 which the attainment of a redeemed manhood 
 is possible in every life. 
 
 It is no wonder, when the present plan of God 
 to save men is made out to be an egregious fail- 
 ure, that short and summary methods are sug- 
 gested by which the deficiencies and failure of 
 the present may be supplemented in the world to 
 come. But, is the present plan a failure? Has 
 Christ died for any man in vain so far as being 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF DIVINE PURPOSE. lOI 
 
 able to save him in this life ? Is redeeming love 
 ever fettered so that it cannot move when strug- 
 gling souls cry aloud for help ? Has life, in mul- 
 titudes of instances to run to its fateful end in 
 an unhindered course of evil, with an impotent 
 Christ looking on? Is this world to which the 
 Son of God descended — this world upon which, 
 and for which he shed his precious blood, the 
 theatre of Redemption's unfinished and unsuc- 
 cessful plot ? Is it the Thermopylae of the uni- 
 verse at which the Heavenly powers of light and 
 love have fought their best, but have fallen de- 
 feated, although crowned with glory and honor? 
 No ! here has been the scene of Heaven's grand- 
 est triumph! Here hell has been vanquished! 
 Here the Cross has been lifted up, the symbol 
 not of defeat, but of victory ! 
 
 True, Heaven's purpose of redemption is not 
 yet completed ; but its final realization is fully 
 assured. By the widening knowledge of the 
 gospel it is being progressively unfolded, increas- 
 ingly realized. At no point, however, does it 
 fail to reach its destined end. The help that 
 man needs is not postponed into the future, but 
 is ministered to him as he needs it. Christ is 
 always a present Saviour ; to-day is always the 
 day of salvation ; the present is always spirit- 
 ually decisive. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE FORTHPUTTING OF REDEMP- 
 TIVE EFFORT A NECESSITY OF THE 
 DIVINE NATURE. 
 
" O Lord, if thou wert needy as I, 
 If thou shouldst come to my door as I to thine, 
 If thou hungered so much as I 
 For that which belongs to the spirit, 
 For that which is fine and good, — 
 I would give it to thee if I had the power." 
 
 From an outline sketch by Sidney Lanier. 
 
 "Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde; 
 Hae mercy on my soul, Lord God, 
 As I wad do, were I Lord God, 
 And ye were Martin Elginbrodde." 
 
 An epitaph by Geo. Macdonald. 
 
 " Though man sits still and takes his ease, 
 God is at work on man, 
 No means, no moment unemployed 
 To bless him if he can." 
 
 Dr. Young. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE FORTHPUTTING OF REDEMPTIVE EFFORT 
 A NECESSITY OF THE DIVINE NATURE. 
 
 It is a cold view of life that represents it as a 
 probation, with God standing over man com- 
 manding him to walk on the sharp edge of moral 
 obligation, looking on to see if he keeps his bal- 
 ance, rewarding him if he succeeds, and punish- 
 ing him if he falls or falters. Probation is merely 
 an incident of life, and not its distinguishing 
 feature. Life is a preliminary term of moral 
 education and discipline. The primary object 
 for which man is put into the school of life is not 
 that he might be tested, but that he might be 
 trained. God himself directs the moral educa- 
 tion of all his children, and watches its result with 
 the deepest parental solicitude. When he sees 
 any one endeavoring to walk in the steep and 
 slippery path of righteousness in spite of numer- 
 ous stumblings, his gentle voice whispers encour- 
 agement, and his tender hand is outstretched to 
 uphold and guide the wavering, tottering feet. 
 " As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over 
 
106 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh 
 them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord 
 doth lead us."* With the repeated experiments 
 and failures of his children the Heavenly Father 
 is very patient. When faint and ready to perish 
 they are upborne on the broad wings of his love 
 and power. Their necessity is their plea for 
 help, and the direr their necessity, the stronger 
 their plea. " Pardon mine iniquity, for it is 
 great" is with God an all prevailing argument. 
 The very helplessness of man is to God sufficient 
 reason why he should stand by him, and render 
 him all possible assistance. 
 
 As a sinner, man is "without strength." He 
 cannot stand upright, and walk in the way of the 
 divine commandments. And when out of his 
 distress he looks up into the divine face, and 
 says, half in doubt and half in faith, " If thou 
 canst do anything for me, have compassion on 
 me and help me," can we think that God would 
 be doing the right thing by him to leave him 
 unaided? The claim that misery has upon sym- 
 pathy, the claim that weakness has upon 
 strength, demands that a helping hand be 
 reached down from heaven to every feeble mor- 
 tal, in his oft-renewed struggles to be freed from 
 sin, and to live a pure and righteous life. 
 
 * Dent, xxxii. n, 12. 
 
REDEMPTIVE EFFORT A DIVINE NECESSITY. ICJ 
 
 From his very nature, God must pity man in 
 his disabled condition, and make every possible 
 effort for his redemption. Necessity is laid upon 
 him to stir up his strength on man's behalf, — not 
 the necessity of fate, but the necessity which a 
 heart of infinite love is under to seek relief in the 
 impartation of benefits ; the necessity of a holy 
 nature to find delight in doing good, — the same 
 necessity which a true mother feels, when, im- 
 pelled by love she rushes into a burning house, and 
 risks her life in order to save the lives of her 
 children. We pay God a poor compliment, when 
 pushing to an unwarrantable extreme the doc- 
 trine of his absolute sovereignty, we claim for 
 him the right to do wrong, by claiming for him 
 the right to pass by some of his hapless children, 
 and to select others as objects of special favor, 
 and of effectual help. Does partiality cease to 
 be sinful only by being attributed to the Heav- 
 enly Father ? 
 
 Against the doctrine of partial love the heart 
 lifts up its protest, and as sentiment ultimately 
 gets the better of logic, a doctrine against which 
 the heart protests has upon it the seal of doom. 
 No theory of bare sovereignty can command for 
 ever the homage of men. The spirit of man will 
 bow before the scepter of sovereign power only 
 when it is seen that the Almighty and the All- 
 Good are one. God is loved because he is seen 
 
108 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 to be lovesome ; he is obeyed because his com- 
 mands are known to be just and right. 
 
 For everything that God does we may be sure 
 that he has a good and sufficient reason to give, 
 although that reason may be often hid from us. 
 " Our God is in the heavens and he hath done 
 whatsoever he hath pleased ; " but it is not pos- 
 sible that he should ever be pleased to do wrong. 
 In all his actions infinite love is directed by 
 infinite reason. In his infinite reason he finds 
 the eternal law of righteousness, which were he 
 to violate, he would cease to be God. 
 
 The meanest creature that breathes has rights 
 which God as the great Head of the universe is 
 bound to respect. Man in virtue of special rela- 
 tionship to God has special claims upon him. If 
 Creatorship has its responsibilities, much more 
 has Fatherhood. As the universal Father of men 
 God is bound to seek a*s the ultimate end of the 
 order of things which he has established in the 
 world, the highest welfare of his entire human 
 family. As the Father of disobedient and rebel- 
 lious children, he must from his very nature do 
 all that is reasonable and right to reconcile them 
 to himself, and thus to restore harmony among 
 themselves. One would think that this ought to 
 be accepted as self-obvious. And yet, in the 
 present year of grace a modern theologian, " as 
 one born out of due time," is found contending 
 
REDEMPTIVE EEEORT A DIVINE NECESSITY. IOQ 
 
 that God owes nothing to his children ; and 
 declaring that " the assertion that God is bound 
 either in this life or in the next, to tender pardon 
 of sin to every man has not only no support in 
 Scripture, but is contrary to reason." * What ! 
 is the obligation of any moral being to be merci- 
 ful contrary to Scripture and to reason ? Is it 
 only the earthly father who finds in the impera- 
 tive demands of his parental nature a law which 
 binds him to keep open door for the penitent 
 prodigal ? Does not the charge of partiality 
 implied in these words put a stain upon the 
 divine perfections, by making the thoughts and 
 ways of God seem lower instead of higher than 
 the thoughts and ways of man ? In view of the 
 fact that " the love of God is broader than the 
 measure of man's mind," it is perhaps only nat- 
 ural that man should generally err by narrowing 
 that which seems to him too great. Man is 
 himself so small that his largest thought may be 
 a belittling of the Infinite. Of one thing, how- 
 ever, we may feel confident : whenever God is 
 made to appear arbitrary and partial his character 
 is travestied ; whenever his ways are represented 
 as unequal, they are misrepresented. Infinitely 
 great and good, the Heavenly Father has but to 
 be known to be revered and loved. His purpose 
 
 * Dogmatic Theology, Dr. Shedd, Vol. I. p. 426. 
 
I IO UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 of grace concerning humanity, evolved in history, 
 revealed in Scripture, and brought to completion 
 in Christ has but to be understood, to fill and 
 thrill the heart with adoring joy, and to satisfy 
 every man that he is not being dealt with un- 
 fairly; but that whatever be the outward condi- 
 tions of his life, the prize of the high calling of 
 God in Christ Jesus has been placed within his 
 reach. 
 
 Shut the door of moral opportunity and possi- 
 bility, and moral responsibility is gone. Can 
 man be held responsible for repentance if he is 
 not called to repentance ? Can he be held 
 responsible for remaining unforgiven if no tender 
 of pardon has been made to him ? Can he be 
 held responsible for a righteous life if grace suffi- 
 cient for the mastery of evil and for the attain- 
 ment of righteousness be withheld ? For God to 
 demand repentance without the offer of pardon ; 
 for him to demand a righteous life without sup- 
 plying the conditions necessary to its production 
 would be to out-Pharaoh Pharaoh. It would be 
 like demanding bricks not only without straw, 
 but without clay. 
 
 Look at men in the mass ! Brought into ex- 
 istence without their own consent ; planted in the 
 midst of untoward conditions which they would 
 never have chosen ; surrounded with seductive 
 temptations ; cursed with inherited evil tenden- 
 
REDEMPTIVE EFFORT A DIVINE NECESSITY. I I I 
 
 cies ; entangled in a network of unfavorable cir- 
 cumstances, the pursuit of moral goodness must 
 always be made under great difficulties. Every 
 attempt to walk in the path of righteousness is 
 like "toiling in immeasurable sand"; and unless 
 there intervene a power sufficient for their deliv- 
 erance, deeper and deeper their feet must sink 
 until they become entombed where they had 
 hoped to find a path of safety. With no divine 
 hand upon the helm, the fairest work of God 
 must drift to helpless wreck upon the ragged 
 rocks of sin. 
 
 But not if God can prevent it will such a catas- 
 trophe ever happen. Man has cost too much 
 already, his intrinsic worth is too great for his 
 Maker to allow him to perish without exhausting 
 every expedient to save him. Nothing that can 
 righteously be done to save him from ruin and to 
 secure his highest weal, has been left undone. 
 Every human right has been respected ; every 
 divine responsibility has been met. God is " a 
 righteous Father," " a faithful Creator." He deals 
 justly by every man ; yea more, he deals gener- 
 ously — mercifully. He is " a just God, and a 
 Saviour" * 
 
 In the matter of salvation, God has satisfied 
 his own sense of justice. He has been true to 
 
 * Isaiah xlv, 21, 
 
112 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 himself. His treatment of man is regarded 
 with supreme self-approval because in every- 
 thing the law of love has been fulfilled. The 
 sacrifice of Christ was not a satisfaction to 
 divine justice ; it was not the reconciliation of 
 warring attributes in the Godhead ; but the rec- 
 onciliation of rebel man to God. Among the 
 divine attributes there was no schism. No per- 
 sonal anger existed on the part of God towards 
 man. Nor did he cause vengeance to fall upon 
 an innocent head, that he might be pacified 
 towards those upon whose heads the stroke 
 ought to have fallen. The atonement originated 
 in God, and was the outward expression of an 
 eternal element in his nature. It was the proof, 
 not the purchase, of his love — a revelation to the 
 universe of his inmost heart. Questions of gov- 
 ernment were involved in man's redemption. 
 God himself required atonement. As the merci- 
 ful Father of men he stood ready to forgive 
 personal offense ; but the honor of the law, and 
 the imperilled interests of others demanded that 
 the brand of his abhorrence be put upon sin, so 
 that he might be acknowledged to be just in 
 forgiving the ungodly. With his beloved Son 
 God was well pleased, because by the sacrifice of 
 himself which he so freely rendered, he paid to 
 the uttermost farthing the debt of divine justice. 
 The sacrifice of Christ instead of being a satis- 
 
REDEMPTIVE EFFORT A DIVINE NECESSITY. 113 
 
 faction to divine justice was a satisfaction of 
 divine justice. But it was more, — infinitely more 
 than that. It goes far beyond all considerations 
 of bare justice ; exhibiting as nothing else can 
 do the length, and breadth, and height, and 
 depth of sovereign mercy. To the mercy which 
 it reveals sinful man can lay no just claim, for 
 mercy always implies the absence of merit. 
 From beginning to end salvation is of grace. 
 Even-handed justice did not demand that God 
 should go as far as he has done. It was enough 
 that man have a free field and no favor, that he 
 be placed upon a footing of law, with all hinder- 
 ances removed, but with no balance in his favor. 
 God has done all that could reasonably have 
 been expected of him ; yea, he has done " exceed- 
 ing abundantly" above all that man in the 
 urgency of his need, or in the boldness of his 
 thought could ask or think. The superabun- 
 dance of the provisions of divine grace for the 
 salvation of man, is the surprise of the universe. 
 Such wealth of favor as has been shown to man 
 cannot be claimed as a debt, but ought to be 
 received as a gift most precious. Calvary's sacri- 
 fice reveals not man's deservings, but the neces- 
 sity of the divine nature to overflow in great and 
 gracious deeds. Love like God's could find 
 fitting expression in nothing less than in the 
 giving up of its dearest treasure. And so the 
 8 
 
1 14 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 poor Indian woman touched the deepest philos- 
 ophy of redemption when she said of God's love- 
 gift to the world — " It was just like him." 
 
 The sacrifice of Christ is also designed to 
 satisfy the sense of justice in all created intelli- 
 gence. It is God's answer to man's demurrings 
 when mercy is shown to the erring. It is God's 
 vindication of himself in giving the penny to the 
 eleventh hour laborer. In the atonement of 
 Christ the Father goes out and reasons with the 
 elder son, who, smarting under a sense of injus- 
 tice, refuses to enter into the Father's joy over 
 the home-coming of the prodigal. That the 
 elder son fails to acquiesce in God's treatment of 
 the sinful ; that he fails to be reasoned out of the 
 narrow idea that mercy is incompatible with 
 justice, is no proof that the divine argument is 
 not satisfactory, but is proof rather of the slow- 
 ness of man to take in the highest lesson of 
 divine wisdom, and so to rest satisfied with that 
 which satisfies God. 
 
 With a love that stoops to conquer, God 
 makes his appeal to the bar of human reason. 
 He asks man to consider whether in all his deal- 
 ings towards him, he has not conformed to the 
 highest principles of right. " Are not my ways 
 equal? saith the Lord." He goes still farther. 
 Appealing to the deepest instincts of parental affec- 
 tion he asks, " What more could I have done?" 
 
REDEMPTIVE EFFORT A DIVINE NECESSITY. 115 
 
 what farther effort could I have put forth? 
 what greater sacrifice could I have made ? There 
 are times when every man is made to feel and 
 acknowledge, " God has done the fair thing, the 
 best thing by me ; in all his dealings with me he 
 has been guided by the golden law of love ; if I 
 am lost the fault will be mine, and not his." 
 Our guarantee that the Judge of all the earth 
 will do right by every one at last, is that he is 
 doing right by every one now. 
 
 Moral probation is thus related not to law, but 
 to grace. The sinful condition of any man does 
 not render his salvation impossible. Theorize as 
 we may about the nature of the atonement, the fact 
 of the atonement remains. The question of sin 
 has been settled, so that the number or the enor- 
 mity of sins forms no obstacle in the way of 
 salvation. The whole race has been placed upon 
 a new footing — a footing of mercy. Men are 
 condemned not because they are sinners, but 
 because they are unrepentant, unbelieving, diso- 
 bedient sinners. Souls perish in the darkness 
 and bondage of sin, not because the prison doors 
 are closed upon them, but because they refuse to 
 pass through the open door into the sunlight 
 and liberty, to which all men are called in Christ 
 Jesus. 
 
X. 
 
 THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR 
 OF MERCY. 
 
" Bad are those men who speak evil of the good." 
 
 — H. T. Riley. 
 
 " Whoever sins against light kisses the lips of a blazing cannon. 
 
 —Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 "Try what repentance can ; what can it not? 
 Yet what can it when one cannot repent ? 
 O wretched state ! O bosom black as death 1 
 O limed soul, that struggling to be free 
 Art more engaged ! " 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 " But once Immanuel's orphan cry the universe hath shaken ; 
 It went up single, echoless, ' My God, I am forsaken ! ' 
 It went up from the Holy's lips, amid his lost creation, 
 That, of the lost, no son should use these words of desolation." 
 
 Mrs. Browning. 
 
X. 
 
 THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR OF MERCY. 
 
 If there exists a universal purpose of grace, it 
 is plain that there exist also obstructions to its 
 development and complete fulfillment. On what 
 side are these obstructions to be found? On the 
 divine side, or on the human side? Assuredly 
 on the latter. The Holy One of Israel is limited 
 by human unbelief, and by the refusal of man to 
 co-operate with his gracious operations. Were 
 the accomplishment of the divine purpose solely 
 a question of almighty power, its solution would 
 be simple and easy. Moral transformation can- 
 not, however, be effected by the touch of God's 
 creative finger. God does not deal with moral 
 beings as he deals with inert matter. Moral per- 
 sonality is in his sight a sacred thing, and it never 
 suffers violence at his hands. All things are gov- 
 erned according to their nature ; moral beings 
 by moral laws, and physical objects by physical 
 laws. When, therefore, scientific terminology is 
 taken to describe spiritual things, correspondence 
 must not be mistaken for identity ; meta- 
 
120 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 phor must not be exalted into argument ; parable 
 must not be translated into literal matter of fact 
 detail. Points of comparison there undoubtedly 
 are between things spiritual and things material, 
 but they belong to different kingdoms, and are 
 under the operation of different laws. Moral 
 beings are not under the law of necessity which 
 holds sway over the world of matter. They can 
 surrender to or resist the working of divine power. 
 Any change wrought in them is not a mechani- 
 cal thing, accomplished by a power " from with- 
 out which seizes upon them and regenerates 
 them." Moral change is always conscious and 
 voluntary ; conscious because man is an intelli- 
 gent being, voluntary because he is a moral being. 
 While then it is true that in the natural world 
 " the door from the inorganic to the organic is 
 shut and no mineral can open it," it is not true that 
 "the door from the natural to the spiritual is 
 shut and no man can open it."* In the tender 
 appeal : " Behold I stand at the door and knock ; 
 if any man will hear my voice and open the door I 
 will come in," salvation is made to hang upon the 
 fateful "IF" of human choice. The entire freedom 
 of the mind in the act of faith is often strangely 
 ignored. Power to accept God's testimony 
 implies power to reject it ; power to obey God 
 
 * Natural Law in the Spiritual World. Drummond, p. 71. 
 
THE SIN THA T SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 2 1 
 
 implies power to disobey him ; power to fulfil 
 his will implies power to thwart it. The reason 
 why God fails in any case to accomplish his 
 purpose of grace is not found in the insuffi- 
 ciency of power at his command, but in the 
 unplastic character of the material with which 
 he has to work. Opposition to God is the es- 
 sence of all sin; persistent opposition to God 
 is the culmination of sin ; it is the sin, the only 
 sin, which shuts upon sinful man the door of 
 mercy. 
 
 There are three distinct aspects in which this 
 death-dealing sin is set forth in the Scriptures. 
 These we shall now proceed to take up in order ; 
 endeavoring, if possible, to cut a pathway 
 through the tangled thicket of human specula- 
 tion, in order to catch a glimpse of the sunlight 
 of divine truth. 
 
 THE UNPARDONED SIN. 
 
 " Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto man ; but 
 the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. And 
 whosoever shall speak a word against the Holy Spirit, it shall 
 not be forgiven him ; neither in this world, nor in that which is 
 to come." — Matt. xii. 31, 32. Compare Mark iii. 28. 29, Luke 
 xii. 10. 
 
 In Luke's gospel, the sin against the Son of 
 Man is sharply distinguished from the sin against 
 the Holy Ghost. " Every one who shall speak 
 
122 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 a word against the Son of Man it shall be for- 
 given him, but unto him that blasphemeth 
 against the Holy Spirit it shall not be forgiven." 
 What is the point of difference between the sin 
 of speaking against the Son of Man, and the sin 
 of speaking against the Holy Spirit? Why is it 
 a worse offense in the sight of Heaven to sin 
 against the vicar or substitute of Christ, than to 
 sin against Christ himself? What is there in the 
 particular sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit 
 that renders it peculiarly aggravating, and 
 unavoidably fatal? The ground of distinction 
 and difference is substantially this : the sin 
 against the Son of Man is a sin against Christ 
 historically revealed, committed in the darkness 
 of ignorance ; the sin against the Holy Ghost is 
 a sin against Christ as immanent in the soul, 
 committed in the daylight of knowledge. As a 
 sin of ignorance the sin against the Son of Man 
 shall be forgiven. The Lord will not lay it to 
 the charge of any soul. The mind uninstructed 
 in the things of the Kingdom of God may be 
 so beclouded by ignorance, the mind falsely 
 instructed may be so darkened by prejudice that 
 when "the true Light that lighteth every man 
 that cometh into the world " makes his approach, 
 he may not be recognized. Christ enters into 
 the soul which he has made, but he is neither 
 known nor welcomed. He comes unto his own 
 
THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. \2$ 
 
 and his own receive him not. But he is patient 
 and pitiful. He knows that there are many 
 princely souls, who if they only knew him as the 
 Lord of glory would cease to crucify him. Their 
 sin of ignorance not being willful he mercifully 
 overlooks. Some of the Jews opposed Jesus, 
 doubtless because they understood him, but 
 many of them opposed him because they mis- 
 understood him. While firmly trusting in " the 
 Hope of Israel," revealed in the Old Testament, 
 and eagerly looking for his coining, they in their 
 blindness rejected the actual Christ, the Messiah 
 of God. The Apostle Peter when charging the 
 Jews with denying " the Holy One and the Just," 
 softens his accusation by saying, " I wot 
 that in ignorance ye did it, as did also your 
 rulers." And Jesus upon the cross prayed for 
 his murderers, " Father, forgive them r for they 
 know not what they do." Had they known the 
 full meaning of their evil deed many of them 
 would have acted differently. Knowledge is the 
 measure of guilt. " To him that knoweth to do 
 good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." " If ye 
 were blind ye would have no sin, but now ye say 
 'we see,' your sin remaineth." Sins of ignorance 
 are sins because violations of law, but they are 
 not treasured up against the soul who diligently 
 follows the light he has. When they become 
 known they bring a sense of guilt, and call for 
 
124 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 pardon ; therefore even under the law provision 
 was made for sins committed in error. * 
 
 From its very nature, the sin against the Holy 
 Ghost, as a sin against the immanent Christ, per- 
 sonally and privately revealed, cannot be a sin of 
 ignorance, but must always be a sin of presump- 
 tion ; hence it implies a state of heart which 
 precludes the possibility of forgiveness. Not to 
 welcome and accept the testimony of the Holy 
 Spirit, as far as it is known, is to put one's self 
 in an unpardonable condition. The Spirit comes 
 to every man bringing the light of life. He 
 comes to dispel the ignorance in man regarding 
 God ; he comes to overcome the opposition of 
 the human heart to the divine ; he comes to tes- 
 tify of Christ as revealed in the word, and as 
 immanent in the heart. To sin against the Holy 
 Spirit by quenching his saving light, is to leave 
 the soul in hopeless darkness ; it is to shut out 
 the soul from the only source of saving light 
 which Christ has given to men ; and thus to 
 reach a state of willful ignorance and unbelief 
 which God cannot overlook. " Thus have they 
 loved to wander, they have not refrained their 
 feet, therefore the Lord doth not accept them."f 
 " A man may be guilty of many offenses against 
 the Son of Man, without the rupture of his cove- 
 
 * See Lev. iv. 13, 14. t Jer- xiv. 10. 
 
THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. 12$ 
 
 nant relation ; but when his sin runs up into blas- 
 phemy against the inward light of the Holy Spirit, 
 he breaks out of the circle of forgiveness and 
 stands upon the sinner's ground, unforgiven, yea, 
 condemned in the sight of heaven." * 
 
 Augustine held that the " unpardonable sin," 
 is persisted-in unbelief, or final impenitence. 
 With this agrees the whole tenor of Scripture. 
 " He that believeth not shall be condemned." 
 A latent condition is implied. He that believ- 
 eth not shall be condemned, if he continue in 
 unbelief. And he that sins against the Holy 
 Spirit shall never be forgiven so long as he 
 continues in an unyielding, unrepentant state. 
 Athanasius remarks, " It deserves to be noted 
 that Christ did not say, to him that blasphemeth 
 and repenteth it shall be forgiven, but to him 
 that blasphemes, that is, who perseveres in blas- 
 phemy," " for there is no sin," he adds, " which 
 God will not pardon to them who sincerely and 
 worthily repent." So then, instead of saying 
 with Dorner that the declaration of Christ that 
 the sin against the Holy Spirit hath no forgive- 
 ness "does not necessarily exclude deliverance 
 through punishment," we would say that it 
 does not necessarily exclude deliverance through 
 repentance. Olshausen suggests that " this pas- 
 
 * A. Brown, in The Evangelical Repository, June, i8;q. 
 
126 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 sage is not overstrained if we infer that all other 
 sins can be forgiven in the world to come, always 
 supposing repentance and faith." But, suppos- 
 ing repentance and faith, why may not this sin 
 also be forgiven in the world to come? 
 
 The stages through which a soul passes into 
 this direful state are easily taken. Indifference is 
 followed by cavilling, cavilling leads to irrever- 
 ence, irreverence changes to scorn, scorn deep- 
 ens to blasphemy. Whether this sin be sharp 
 and sudden, or whether it be the last act in a 
 long process of disobedience, in essence it is 
 always the same ; it is sin committed against 
 light ; it is sin against conviction. An insincere 
 heart will reject the truth ; an honest heart will 
 respond to the truth. " Every one," says Jesus, 
 "who is of the truth heareth my voice." Igno- 
 rant opposition to Christ does not necessarily 
 show a rebellious heart, opposition to the Holy 
 Spirit always does. A controversy, a collision 
 takes place between the Spirit of God and the 
 spirit of man. The divine love is grieved, the 
 divine reason is withstood, the divine light is 
 quenched. The climax of human sin is at length 
 reached, when as Calvin expresses it, " contempt 
 is poured knowingly and willingly upon the 
 Spirit of God." 
 
 We can now see why we are not to pray for 
 this sin. It is "a sin unto death," a damning 
 
THE SW THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. 12/ 
 
 sin, the only damning sin. Would it be becoming 
 to ask God to forgive the impenitent? To pray 
 that the impenitent may be led to repentance 
 would be a proper prayer, but no pious soul asks 
 God to forgive those who persistently refuse to 
 yield to the sweet influences of his Spirit. 
 Prayer is to be restrained in the presence of this 
 sin not because there is a limit to the saving mercy 
 of God ; not because an ultimate moral state has 
 been reached, from which there can be no recov- 
 ery ; not because there is a sin so heinous that 
 the Holy Spirit turns away from the one who 
 commits it, to strive with him no more; but 
 because the impenitent heart is not in a con- 
 dition profitably to receive forgiveness. On the 
 divine side there is no bar to the salvation of any 
 soul. " Him that cometh unto me," says Christ, 
 "I will in no wise cast out." " There is no 
 remedy, however, for the rejection of a remedy, 
 no atonement for the rejection of atonement, no 
 forgiveness for the rejection of forgiveness." 
 Disobedience to the heavenly vision that comes 
 unto every man, ends in darkness and death. 
 
 This sin, instead of being one that is unknown 
 in the present age; instead of being one that is 
 seldom reached, is alarmingly common. When 
 Christ is known and rejected, when the life-and- 
 death message of God's word is understood and 
 disregarded, the sin against the Holy Ghost is 
 
128 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 committed. For the scribes and Pharisees to 
 ascribe the supernatural works of Christ to 
 Satanic agency was to tread perilously near this 
 precipice ; for them malevolently to ascribe those 
 works to Satanic agency knowing better, was to 
 fall over the precipice, for in such a case Christ 
 would be rejected understandingly, and the 
 Spirit of God contemned. 
 
 Consider the circumstances in which Christ 
 spake these words. A notable miracle had been 
 wrought. Seeing how deeply the people were 
 impressed, the scribes and Pharisees became 
 jealous of the growing influence of Jesus. The 
 great crisis to which things had been tending 
 had come. The divine Spirit had taken the 
 things of Christ and shown them unto those 
 " blind leaders of the blind" ; so that now they 
 were brought to the decisive point of either 
 acknowledging the claims of Jesus as a heaven- 
 sent teacher, or of openly denying his claims, 
 and placing themselves in an attitude of uncom- 
 promising hostility to his work. Within their 
 hearts there was a struggle such as comes only 
 once in the history of a human being. Over the 
 mouth of an accusing conscience the unholy 
 hand of restraint was placed, and the fatal choice 
 was made. Instantly the heavens grew black. 
 The soul was brought into condemnation. 
 Whatever remnant of right feeling was left was 
 
THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 29 
 
 changed into gall and wormwood. Madly at- 
 tempting to justify their opposition, and to give 
 if possible, a death blow to the popularity of 
 Jesus, they turned to the multitude and said : 
 " This fellow doth not cast out demons but by 
 Beelzebub, the prince of the demons." What an 
 outpouring of malice and contempt ! To hint 
 that He who is Incarnate Love had any connec- 
 tion with what was demoniac ; to say that He 
 who is Incarnate Purity was in league with " the 
 god of filth," and had himself " an unclean 
 spirit ! " There is no deeper depth of blasphemy 
 possible ! 
 
 The reason why this sin is not pardoned must 
 now appear evident. But here let the distinction 
 be noted between a sin that is unpardoned, and 
 one that is unpardonable. This sin is generally 
 called "the unpardonable sin." Be it remem- 
 bered, however, that the expression, " the 
 unpardonable sin " is not Biblical. It is a theo- 
 logical coinage, which is in some measure 
 responsible for obscuring thought upon the sub- 
 ject, for which it has stood as the accepted title. 
 All that Scripture affirms is that the sin referred 
 to " shall not be forgiven," " hath never forgive- 
 ness." It is not said that it is unpardonable, but 
 that it is unpardoned ; not that it cannot be 
 pardoned, but that it shall not be pardoned. It 
 is The UNPARDONED SIN, because it im- 
 9 
 
130 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 plies a condition of heart which the general 
 mercy of God cannot pass by — a condition of 
 heart that scorns to ask for pardon. Man 
 has shut and bolted the door of his Spiritual 
 habitation against the entrance of God's Spirit. 
 He has committed spiritual suicide. Not that 
 God is unwilling to forgive the vilest sinner, but 
 he is forever unwilling to forgive the impenitent 
 sinner. The one thing which makes it unsafe for 
 God to forgive is the inward condition of the sin- 
 ner. Where there is impenitence of heart, for- 
 giveness would be hurtful to the individual, and 
 to the interests of the moral universe. For 
 continued impenitence there is no forgiveness in 
 any age, or in any world ; BUT, " Let the 
 wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man 
 his thoughts ; and let him return unto the Lord, 
 and he will have mercy upon him, and to our 
 God for he will abundantly pardon." 
 
 THE IRREMEDIABLE CONDITION. 
 
 " As touching those who were once enlightened and tasted of 
 the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 
 and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to 
 come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again 
 unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of 
 God afresh, and put him to an open shame."— Heb. vi. 4-6. 
 
 In the Gospels the sin against the Holy Ghost 
 is represented as shutting the soul out from sal- 
 
THE SIN THA T SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 3 I 
 
 vation ; here it is represented as keeping the 
 backslidden soul from being renewed unto repen- 
 tance. The central, the pivotal question is : What 
 renders repentance impossible in the case here 
 supposed? Is it God's unwillingness to forgive? 
 No ! a thousand times, no ! Repentance is ren- 
 ered impossible solely because of the unwilling- 
 ness of the apostate to come into that condition 
 or attitude in which repentance can have an exist- 
 ence. 
 
 Andrew Fuller grasps part of the truth when 
 he says that " when the Scriptures speak of any 
 sin as unpardonable \ or of the impossibility of 
 those who have committed it being renewed 
 again to repentance, we are not to understand 
 them as expressing any natural limitation to 
 either the power of God or the mercy of God, 
 nor yet of the efficacy of the Saviour's blood, 
 but merely of a limitation dictated by sovereign 
 wisdom and righteousness." The completed 
 truth is that the limitation dictated by sovereign 
 wisdom and righteousness is the limitation 
 which springs from man's perversity, especially 
 his perversity in excluding from his mind the 
 truth that makes for repentance. 
 
 The key to unlock this text hangs on the door. 
 The reason why the renewal of the evangelized 
 Hebrews who should fall away was impossible, 
 is given in the expression, " seeing they crucify, — 
 
I32 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 (that is, seeing they are crucifying, — seeing they 
 continue to crucify — to themselves) the Son of 
 God afresh, and put him to an open shame." 
 The only insuperable bar to repentance is continu- 
 ing to crucify, in the heart, the Son of God afresh. 
 So long as such hostility to Christ remains, 
 repentance cannot come to the birth. Before 
 the truth that softens the heart can enter to do 
 its blessed work, there must be a complete 
 change of spiritual attitude. 
 
 The starting-point in repentance is in the will. 
 By an act of the will the mind is directed to the 
 truth ; from contemplation of the truth comes a 
 change of mind ; a change of mind results in a 
 change of feeling ; a change of feeling issues in a 
 change of purpose and life. Any one may will- 
 fully refuse to see the truth, or seeing it refuse to 
 follow it. The poet asks, 
 
 " What if thine eye refuse to see, 
 
 Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome fail, 
 And thou a willing captive be, 
 Thyself thy own dark jail ? " * 
 
 The guiding light of truth shines in vain for 
 those who turn away to wander recklessly in the 
 darkness of sin ; the message of wisdom, spoken 
 as with the sweet seductive voice of a charmer, 
 falls in vain upon deaf ears ; the prison doors 
 
 * Whittier. 
 
THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 33 
 
 swing open in vain before the eyes of those who 
 are the willing captives of evil. What can 
 Heaven do for the souls that turn with averted 
 face from the Christ of God ? Those that come 
 to Christ come to him freely. Faith is a free 
 act. Even the mighty works of Christ did not 
 necessitate faith ; they could produce no force of 
 conviction without the consent of the will. In 
 the will lies the moral element of faith. Part of 
 Paul's counsel to Timothy was this, " in meek- 
 ness correcting those that oppose themselves, 
 lest God should give them repentance, unto the 
 knowledge of the truth." * Those who are to be 
 tenderly corrected are said to oppose themselves; 
 they oppose their own deepest convictions of 
 truth, and promptings of duty ; they oppose 
 their better selves ; and for what end ? Lest, yield- 
 ing to the divine voice speaking within them, 
 they should be led to repentance. To the same 
 effect are the significant words: " The heart of 
 this people is waxed gross, and their ears are 
 dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed ; 
 lest they should see with their eyes, and hear 
 with their ears, and understand with their hearts, 
 and should be converted, and I should heal 
 them." f 
 
 From the essential nature of man as a self-act- 
 
 * 2 Tim. ii. 24. f Acts xxviii. 27. 
 
134 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 ive being, ability is postulated to cleave to Christ 
 or to turn from him, ability to bow the neck to 
 his scepter or to break loose from his acknowl- 
 edged authority. The planets move in their 
 appointed orbits by necessity; man enters the 
 service of Christ and remains in it freely. He 
 may disown Christ with full knowledge of what 
 he is doing. In common speech it is often said 
 of those who do wrong that they know better 
 than they do. This is true of every deserter 
 from Christ's service. He knows better than he 
 does. Having been illumined with light from 
 Heaven, having come under the influence of the 
 Gospel, his sin of defection is peculiarly sinful. 
 He sins against light ; he sins against the Holy 
 Spirit, he sins against Christ as revealed by the 
 Holy Spirit, knowing and acknowledging that to 
 Him his love and fealty should be given. And 
 what follows ? Turning away from Christ he falls 
 away from righteousness. 
 
 It is a great sorrow to have a hopeful friend- 
 ship turn to ashes ; and the sorrow is deepened 
 when to falseness is added ingratitude, and there 
 is ground for the plaint, " Yea, mine own famil- 
 iar friend, in whom I trusted, who did eat of my 
 bread, hath lifted up his heel against me." The 
 ingratitude and hate of those whose sins he bore, 
 form the nails that pierce the sacred heart of Christ. 
 Those who turn against him crucify him afresh ; 
 
THE SIN THA T SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 3 $ 
 
 they enact over again, in spirit, the crucifixion 
 scene. They open his wounds anew, and give him 
 untold pain. Yea, more, they put him to an open 
 shame; exposing him to the world's scorn. By 
 leaving the circle of his followers and returning 
 to the world, they virtually declare that they have 
 not found in him what they expected. They 
 cruelly insinuate that he has disappointed and 
 deceived them. 
 
 Any one who could continue to subject Christ 
 to such treatment might not be past repentance, 
 but his repentance would itself be an impossibil- 
 ity so long as that spirit of resistance lasted ; for 
 it is a law of mind that repentance, being condi- 
 tioned not only upon an impulse from within 
 but upon a moving motive from without, can be 
 produced only when the objects fitted to awaken 
 holy and tender emotions are contemplated. 
 " Then shall they look upon me whom they 
 have pierced, and mourn for him as one mourn- 
 eth for his only son." Let the connection 
 between looking and mourning be marked ! 
 Looking leads to mourning, and looking away 
 leads to the instant congealing of every feeling 
 of contrition which had already begun to 
 flow. Those who turn away from beholding 
 the Crucified Redeemer — those who hide their 
 faces from His pitiful eyes whose look of tender 
 rebuke would cut the conscience to the quick, 
 
I36 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 must remain unmoved to repentance. Ice can- 
 not give heat, nor can the heart be melted to 
 repentance when bent on vain or sinful things. 
 The Sun of Righteousness cannot impart warmth 
 and light to those who will not leave their dun- 
 geons of evil, and stand with uplifted face under 
 his quickening beams. Christ, who in the case 
 before us is assumed to be rejected, is the only 
 object in the universe that can so affect the 
 heart as to move it to godly repentance. But 
 what are the beauties of Christ to one who closes 
 tightly his spiritual eyes ? What power can Cal- 
 vary's love possess to change for the better any 
 one who persists to live as if Christ were not? 
 " A light tenderer than moon or sun may shine for- 
 ever on," but it cannot reach and melt the heart 
 that keeps itself hooded in unbelief. As it is 
 impossible to pour water into a sealed vessel; as 
 it is impossible to cure disease, if the all potent 
 remedy be refused ; so it is impossible for any 
 one to be renewed again unto repentance who 
 continues to crucify the Son of God afresh, and 
 put him to an open shame. 
 
 NO OTHER SACRIFICE. 
 
 " If we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of 
 the truth, there remain eth no more a sacrifice for sins, but a cer- 
 tain fearful expectation of judgment and fierceness of fire which 
 shall devour the adversaries." — Heb. x. 26. 
 
THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 37 
 
 Continuous sin, like continuous unbelief or 
 impenitence, cuts the soul off from all part or 
 lot in the salvation of Christ. " Sin when it is 
 finished bringeth forth death." " If we sin (that 
 is, if we continue in sin) there remaineth no more 
 sacrifice for sin." Not a single act, nor any defi- 
 nite number of acts of sin is indicated but a state 
 of sin, the determinate choice of evil as a principle 
 of life ; such a fixed condition of moral perversity 
 as is expressed in the words, " Evil, be thou my 
 good ! " Alford gives the sense of the passage 
 when he says that it does not mean, " if we have 
 willfully sinned," but, " if we be found willfully 
 sinning." If at any point in our spiritual history ; 
 if in this world or in that, we be found in a state 
 of wilful disobedience, there remaineth no more 
 sacrifice for sin. It is not said that there remain- 
 eth no sacrifice for sin ; but no more sacrifice, ?io 
 other sacrifice than the divinely appointed and 
 divinely approved sacrifice of Calvary. If there 
 be defection from Christianity, if there be a will- 
 ful and deliberate severing of the soul from Christ 
 and his atoning sacrifice, the only satisfactory 
 ground of hope is renounced. For those who 
 know the one true sacrifice for sin, and casting it 
 from them turn to the beggarly elements of the 
 world, no other source of relief is left. Rejecting 
 Heaven's only antidote they perish in their sins. 
 Abandoning the only life-boat that can come 
 
138 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 to their deliverance there remaineth nothing for 
 them but a certain fearful expectation of a grave 
 in the whelming deep of judgment. Apart from 
 Christ, the source of life, no soul can live. Except 
 the branch abide in the vine it withers and dies. 
 A movement from the tropics of grace to the 
 arctic region of the law cannot be made with- 
 out fatal consequences. For how can the tender 
 flowers of virtue that drooped and withered 
 when blessed with genial sunshine and showers, 
 hope to grow amid snow and ice ? 
 
 Calvary was no experiment. It was the con- 
 summation of God's remedial scheme. Love 
 like water finds its level. At the Cross the love 
 of God reached its highest point. Beyond the 
 gift of his Son, God cannot go. It is vain to ex- 
 pect, in the far away future, some higher manifes- 
 tation of saving power. Let no one think that 
 those who have not been won to moral goodness 
 by the Cross will be recovered in some other way. 
 All such hope is excluded by the declaration 
 that for those who in the exercise of conscious 
 freedom have stepped outside the circle of 
 redeeming grace, " there remaineth no other sacri- 
 fice for sin." Having withdrawn themselves from 
 the sphere in which divine grace most power- 
 fully operates, and having surmounted everything 
 that might have arrested their fatal course, they 
 move with fast diminishing attraction from the 
 
THE SIN THA T SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 39 
 
 great center of life, into outer and utter darkness. 
 Not that the virtue of Christ's sacrifice can be 
 exhausted by the most aggravated sin ; not that 
 the divine store of mercy can ever run out, so 
 that to the hungry, famishing soul there is not a 
 crumb to give. The sacrifice of Christ remaineth 
 in all its glorious sufficiency and efficiency, but 
 its benefits do not reach those who surrender 
 themselves to sin. A state of willful sin dissolves 
 the connection between the soul and Christ. 
 " When the righteous turneth from his righteous- 
 ness and committeth iniquity, he shall even die 
 thereby." Faith continues to grow only so long 
 as it is kept rooted in the soil of a pure life. 
 Christ saves not in y but from sin. An old writer 
 says, " It is not falling into the water that 
 drowns, but lying in it ; so it is not falling 
 into sin that damns, but continuing in it." The 
 blackest apostate may recover himself and renew 
 his confidence in the Redeemer; although 
 sorely wounded he may rally and resume the 
 conflict ; by deeds meet for repentance he may 
 wipe out the disgrace of the past ; in the sacri- 
 fice once slighted he may again find all that he 
 desires and requires ; but the apostate that re- 
 mains in a state of willful alienation from Christ, 
 and attachment to sin, forfeits forever all interest 
 in Christ and his great salvation. 
 
 Very little account is taken in Scripture of 
 
140 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 mere heresy of belief ; heresies of the heart and 
 life being the evils specially condemned. There 
 is, however, one doctrine singled out, the denial 
 of which brings certain judgment. Using a 
 strong adjective the apostle Peter speaks of cer- 
 tain false teachers as "bringing in destructive 
 heresies, even denying the Lord that bought 
 them." * To deny Christ is the heresy of here- 
 sies. It is the very " schism of perdition." But 
 to deny Christ, and to deny human dogmas re- 
 garding him, are two very different things. 
 Many a soul bows reverently before the Master, 
 while honestly rejecting human theories that 
 have been formed concerning his person and 
 work. Many who look upon the Gospels as 
 beautiful legends bow before the peerless life 
 which they portray, giving to it the deepest 
 homage of their hearts, and making it the object 
 of their loving imitation. The Christ whom they 
 deny is some fancied Christ of their own ; the 
 Christ whom they ignorantly worship is " the 
 Lord that bought them." Forsaking the beaten 
 orthodox path they come round to Christ by 
 another way. Conforming their lives to the per- 
 fect pattern shown to them on the Mount, they 
 unconsciously take the Man of Nazareth as their 
 inspiration and model. Happy are those who 
 
 * 2 Peter ii. i. 
 
THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. 141 
 
 thus, in spite of conflicting theories, in spite of de- 
 fective knowledge, and in spite of imperfect faith 
 touching Christ and his atonement, reach the 
 glorious reality which lies at the center of Chris- 
 tian doctrine ! Happy are those who, ascending 
 above the fogs of abstract speculation, soar into 
 the clear light of devout contemplation, worship- 
 ping the real Christ in the Ideal ! Not any 
 theory of the Divinity of Christ, but the Divine 
 Christ himself, the living, loving, personal Re- 
 deemer, is the foundation upon which saving 
 faith rests ; the living Head in which all the faith- 
 ful are united. Separation from him is the 
 deadly schism, bringing ruin, swift and irremedi- 
 able. Separation from the real or ideal Christ, 
 means disconnection from remedial influences — 
 and hence from the hope of spiritual improve- 
 ment. When love of sin grows stronger, and 
 love to Christ grows weaker, the tie that binds to 
 Christ is finally sundered, and the last, the only 
 resort given up. Who can succeed where Christ 
 has failed? Hope goes out in the blackness of 
 despair when his sacrifice is discarded ; for the 
 whole universe affords no other remedy for sin. 
 " Other foundation can no man lay, than that 
 which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." " And in 
 none other is there salvation, for neither is there 
 any other name under heaven, that is given 
 among men, wherein we must be saved." 
 
142 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 Because of the essential relation of Christ to 
 humanity every man has some kind of connection 
 with him. He is set for the falling and rising up 
 of all men. Some are guided by the light of his 
 Cross to pardon, purity and peace ; others wound 
 and damage their moral natures by dashing 
 themselves against the Cross — as seabirds sweep- 
 ing up out of the darkness dash themselves 
 against a friendly lighthouse. Some welcome 
 and accept him, in whatever form he comes, and 
 he becomes to them the rock upon which they 
 build the temple of a holy life ; others reject him 
 in ignorance, and he becomes unto them " a 
 stone of stumbling and a rock of offense " — 
 upon which they carelessly strike in the dark, 
 and are bruised ; others consciously reject him, 
 and to them he becomes " the Head Stone of 
 the corner " which from its elevation at the top 
 of the building falls upon them in crushing, de- 
 stroying judgment ; grinding them to powder. 
 
XI. 
 THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. 
 
" Such is the constitution of things that unwillingness to good- 
 ness may ripen into voluntary opposition to it." — Muller. 
 
 " At last I heard a voice upon the slope 
 Cry to the summit, ' Is there any hope ? ' 
 To which an answer pealed from that high land, 
 But in a tongue no man could understand ; 
 And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn 
 God made himself an awful rose of dawn." 
 
 Tennyson {The Vision of Sin). 
 
 " Forever round the mercy-seat 
 
 The guiding lights of Love shall burn ; 
 But what if, habit-bound, thy feet 
 Shall lack the will to turn ? " 
 
 Whittier. 
 
XI. 
 
 THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. 
 
 UPON the chart of Scripture the maelstrom of 
 " eternal sin" * is laid down as the chief danger- 
 point in the voyage of moral existence. Toward 
 that dread maelstrom every voyager who has 
 deviated from the prescribed course is being 
 steadily carried, to be caught at length in the 
 fateful embrace of its swirling currents. " In 
 danger," not " of an eternal sin," but " of eternal 
 sin," is the exact thought of the portentous 
 words of Christ. It is not a single act of sin, but 
 a state of bondage to sin, that is indicated. 
 Through the inevitable tendency of sin towards 
 permanence, every one who has entered upon the 
 downward path of willful opposition to divine 
 authority is in danger of becoming fixed in a 
 state of eternal opposition to God. Sin has got- 
 ten him in its iron, relentless grip, and he is in 
 danger of being held in its grip forever. " His 
 own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and 
 
 * Mark iii. 29. 
 10 
 
I46 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 he shall be holden with the cords of the sin, — " 
 holden with the cords of his sin as the ship is 
 held by the anchor which lies at the bottom of 
 the sea firmly embedded in the mud. 
 
 The suggestion of the possibility and danger 
 of eternal sin sheds a lurid light upon the 
 problem of the future life. One thing is made 
 clear : — the next world is a continuation of the 
 present, grows out of it, is governed by the same 
 laws, and is embraced in the empire of the same 
 King. Death works no essential change in 
 human nature or in human character. Every 
 man goes on in the next life as he is headed in 
 this; his character continuing to improve or de- 
 generate according to the bent which has here 
 been given to it. Character is reproductive, self- 
 perpetuating. In every sinner there is a ten- 
 dency to sin, in every saint a tendency to 
 goodness. Persistence in any moral course leads 
 to an even increasing momentum. Everywhere 
 in the Spiritual Kingdom, the law of increase 
 obtains : " Unto him that hath shall be given 
 and he shall have abundance." The reproductive 
 power of character is endless. Every life is a 
 tree yielding fruit " whose seed is in itself." 
 " Every action," says Richter, " becomes more 
 certainly an eternal mother than an eternal 
 daughter." So that although freedom can never 
 change to fate, every life pursuing its own free 
 
THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. 1 47 
 
 course along the line of natural development 
 must pass on to the great crisis when the seal of 
 destiny is fixed upon character, and the Lord 
 shall say, " He that is unrighteous, let him do 
 unrighteousness yet more ; and he that is filthy, 
 let him be made filthy yet more ; and he that is 
 righteous, let him do righteousness yet more ; 
 and he that is holy, let him be made holy yet 
 more." 
 
 Moral rewards, whether in the present or in 
 the future life, are not outward and arbitrary. 
 They consist in the perpetuation of character. 
 Men receive the very things done in the body. 
 Whatsoever they sow, that they also reap. The 
 reward of holiness is more holiness; the reward 
 of sin is more sin. The crown of the righteous 
 is a crown of righteousness. Heaven and hell 
 are permanent when that out of which they are 
 made is permanent. So long as a soul grows in 
 holiness the gates of the new Jersualem may 
 stand open day and night, but there will be no 
 desire to go out : so long as a soul by continu- 
 ing to sin adds fresh fuel to the fire, hell can 
 never burn itself out, but must be "the fire that 
 is not quenched." 
 
 But while it is beyond question that character 
 through the accumulation of moral force leads to 
 fixedness, it ought to be carefully noted that 
 fixedness of character is not the obliterating 
 
148 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 from the soul of all power of self-movement, it is 
 not the literal changing of the heart into stone. 
 Contrariwise, it is a voluntary condition, a condi- 
 tion of moral permanence resulting from fixity of 
 choice. Eternal sin is the eternal voluntary op- 
 position of the soul to goodness and to God. A 
 state of eternal sin there could not possibly be if 
 the moral nature of man had given the last flutter 
 of expiring power, and had become unchange- 
 ably fixed not merely in choice, but in powerless- 
 ness to choose. The steadfast holding on to a 
 fixed and settled purpose does not mean the sur- 
 render of liberty of choice. The saint and the 
 sinner do not lose their liberty of choice when 
 they persevere to the end in their respective 
 moral courses ; Satan does not lose his liberty of 
 choice when he says of evil, ' Be thou my good ! ' 
 the Redeemed in heaven do not lose their liberty 
 of choice when they remain forever within the 
 walls of the City whose gates are shut neither by 
 day nor by night. Sin and righteousness must 
 needs be continuously chosen. They are moral 
 states because they are voluntary states. Neither 
 here nor hereafter will they or can they be made 
 compulsory. 
 
 If God by the exercise of omnipotent will 
 could make men good, he could just as easily 
 have kept them from becoming bad. And why 
 did he not do so? Why did he create a being 
 
THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. 1 49 
 
 capable of sinning? Rather ask, Why did he 
 create a moral being at all ? Why did he create 
 a man ? A thing he could create incapable of 
 sinning, a man he could not. In the creation of 
 a free, finite being the capability and hence the 
 possibility of sinning is necessarily involved. 
 Professor Huxley could therefore hardly have 
 counted the cost when he declared, " If I could 
 be turned into a clock and wound up every 
 morning in order to be made to think and do 
 what is right, I would instantly close with the 
 offer." What ! be willing to be made incapable 
 of doing wrong at the price of having all moral 
 power destroyed ? Be willing to be changed 
 from an imperfect man into a perfect machine ? 
 Be willing to be reduced from a man to a thing? 
 To all who express such a preference it is 
 enough to answer, " Ye know not what ye ask." 
 
 Those who imagine that God can deal with 
 souls as he does with stars, are often at a loss to 
 understand why he does not stir up his strength, 
 and by some summary process bring every wan- 
 derer back, and compel him to move in his 
 proper orbit. " Just a little more divine pressure 
 upon the souls of men, which should come as 
 softly as vernal breezes, and the work might 
 soon be done."" Indeed! Is it so easy? If 
 
 * Eternal Atonement. R. A. Hitchcock, p. 305. 
 
150 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 that is all that is required, strange that God 
 should delay ! Would you withhold the pressure 
 that would make virtue a necessity, if it was in 
 your power to give it ? But, has God the power, 
 when moral means prove insufficient, to bear 
 down upon man and compel him to be good ? 
 Can he force him to become a volunteer ; or can 
 he force him to act against his will ? He cannot. 
 Are not all things possible with God ? Yes, all 
 things that do not imply a contradiction, which 
 the very idea of compulsory goodness does. If 
 pressure could take the place of persuasion, there 
 is no reason why God should continue to labor 
 and to wait. If a touch of the finger of Omnipo- 
 tence could make men good, we turn with won- 
 der to the costly sacrifice of Calvary, and ask : 
 " Wherefore all this waste ? " 
 
 Nothing is more certain than that character is 
 always self-chosen. Coerce the free spirit of 
 man God could not if he would, and would not 
 if he could. The same cloud of mystery hangs 
 around the origin of obedience that hangs around 
 the origin of sin. Both originate in the will. 
 Every moral act is performed ; every moral state 
 is entered into, and continued in, by deliberate 
 choice. Character being self-chosen, it neces- 
 sarily follows that it must continue subject to 
 modification and change. At the same time it 
 is possible for character, without losing a single 
 
THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. I $ I 
 
 essential moral quality, to harden into a shape 
 which it is certain to retain. Although change- 
 able it may never change. Who has not seen 
 men come, in a few years, under the power of 
 evil habits which have held complete mastery over 
 them to the end of life ? With ever increasing 
 rapidity bad habits grow ; around their victims 
 they coil in ever tightening embrace ; and while 
 no one dare say they cannot be shaken off, yet 
 knowing the experience of the past, reading in 
 the present a prophecy of the future, we have 
 every reason to fear that they will not. When 
 men have made a willing surrender of themselves 
 to the power of evil, they are held captive by it 
 — prisoners in chains. They have come into a 
 state of moral bondage, which, in spite of contin- 
 ued opportunities of escape, may last forever. 
 
 Not from lack of power but from the absence 
 of will to use the power possessed, does any one 
 remain bound in the fetters of sin. Power is 
 often present when unemployed. There is much 
 latent, unused power, power which may never be 
 brought into exercise, but for the right exercise 
 of which the possessor will nevertheless be held to 
 a strict account. Increased unwillingness to act 
 is part of the penalty which follows the delay of 
 moral action. Indolence breeds apathy. As the 
 call of duty is put off indisposition increases until 
 at length all desire to act fades out of the soul. 
 
152 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 Another count in the penalty of sinful inactiv- 
 ity, and by no means the smallest, is the loss of 
 power which it entails. Power unused decays ; 
 power thrown away never returns. The stiffened 
 joint never regains its wonted suppleness ; the 
 withered limb never regains its wonted strength. 
 Of many it may be said, " By not using their souls 
 they lost them ; " of still more, By abusing their 
 souls they lost them. It is in the degeneration of 
 the moral nature itself that the direct effects of 
 sin are seen. Sin smites the soul with spiritual 
 atrophy and thereby " worketh death." " The 
 development of evil, " says Muller, " ends in a 
 state wherein unwillingness to goodness has 
 ripened into inability, wherein personality per- 
 sisting in alienation from God becomes absolutely 
 petrified into sin." And as spiritual power de- 
 clines it comes to pass that 
 
 " He that wold not when he might, 
 He shall not when he wold-a* " 
 
 As the life-forces of the soul recede more and 
 more into the root, the budding forth of effort to 
 reform grows feebler and feebler, until at last the 
 moral nature that might have been found bend- 
 ing low with clusters of rich, ripe fruit, stands 
 forth in utter nakedness a withered tree, which is 
 
 Percy. 
 
THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. I $3 
 
 henceforth good for nothing but to serve as fuel 
 for the everlasting burning. 
 
 In the doctrine of " eternal sin," the question 
 of future punishment is approached from the 
 moral side ; and this is fortunately the side from 
 which, in the present day, it is being more and 
 more approached and studied. The thought is 
 becoming clearer that the main thing to be 
 dreaded is not eternal punishment, but eternal 
 sin; not the possible interminableness of punitive 
 suffering but the possible interminableness of op- 
 position to the will of God. All the effort of 
 God in redemption is to save from sin, and espe- 
 cially from the dreadful end of fixedness in sin. 
 Christ is the Redeemer from sin. He came to 
 deliver man from the power of sin, to help man 
 to break away from sin, to prevent man from 
 hardening into a state of continued and eternal 
 bondage to sin. Seeking a moral end he de- 
 pends upon moral forces, and appeals to moral 
 motives. The one thing which he emphasizes 
 is character ; destiny being regarded as simply a 
 question of moral tendency. Is evil prevailing 
 over good, or good over evil ? Is the brute gain- 
 ing ascendency over the angel, or the angel over 
 the brute? If the former, a character is being 
 formed prophetic of eternal sin and misery ; if 
 the latter, a character is being formed prophetic 
 of eternal righteousness and joy. Only by keep- 
 
1^4 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 ing hell out of man can man be kept out of hell. 
 Only by cleansing character from sin can salvation 
 from punishment be secured ; for sin and punish- 
 ment are coexistent, coextensive. They are 
 related to each other as substance to shadow ; 
 cause to effect. Punishment is not outward and 
 arbitrary but inward and moral. Every man is 
 punished through the law of his own being. 
 Eternal sin brings eternal punishment, is eternal 
 punishment. As long as man is held fast in the 
 power of sin it is not in the nature of things pos- 
 sible that he can escape from the punishment 
 which it involves. "If you were blind," said 
 Jesus to the Jews, "ye would have no sin; but, 
 now ye say We see, your sin remaineth " — that is, 
 it is not blotted out or taken away. And where 
 sin remains condemnation remains. So long as 
 man continues to sin he will continue to gather 
 into his bosom the penalty of sin. An unholy 
 being will always be a consuming fire unto him- 
 self. "The unquenchable fire" will burn on 
 unhindered in the sinning soul until its work is 
 done. 
 
 Were the punishment of sin something out- 
 wardly imposed, reason and conscience would rise 
 up in open revolt against the idea of its inter- 
 minableness. For sin is not an infinite offense. 
 Such a thing as an infinite evil there cannot be. 
 There is only one infinite and that is the Infinite 
 
THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. 1 5 5 
 
 Good — which is God. Many, fixing their thought 
 upon the finitude of sin, and overlooking the 
 true nature of punishment ask: "If sin be finite 
 may not the penalty of it run out ; may not the 
 sinner pay his debt unto the uttermost far- 
 thing, and be delivered from the prison-house of 
 retribution?" This blessed possibility admitted, 
 another fearful possibility remains — a possibility 
 in which lies the real difficulty in the way of the 
 ultimate restoration of a lost soul, and that is the 
 possibility that he may continue to incur fresh 
 debts; the possibility that he may be held for- 
 ever a willing captive in the dungeon of evil ; 
 the possibility — yea, the danger — that the sin 
 which now holds him in its grasp may hold him 
 in its grasp forever. 
 
 But while it is true that eternal persistence in 
 sin is the only valid ground of eternal punish- 
 ment, there is a modified sense in which the pun- 
 ishment of every sin is eternal. Every sin brings 
 eternal loss. When Jesus, describing the final 
 judgment, said regarding the left-hand division : 
 " These shall go away into the punishment of 
 the ages," he evidently saw in their sinful selfish- 
 ness something that would be to them a con- 
 tinual source of self-inflicted misery. The future 
 world could never be to them what it might have 
 been if they had spent their lives on earth as 
 ministering angels to the poor and the oppressed. 
 
156 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 Because of the non-development of the spirit of 
 benevolence they would suffer age-lasting loss, 
 age-lasting punishment. Their case strikingly 
 illustrates the principle of punishment by loss, 
 which is everywhere in operation. As the child is 
 punished in the home by the curtailment of privi- 
 lege, the civil offender by the deprivation of lib- 
 erty, so the unbenevolent are punished, here and 
 hereafter, by the loss of happiness, the loss of 
 Heaven. In the universe of God things are so or- 
 dered that it never pays to do wrong, or to omit 
 the performance of the smallest righteous act. 
 All sin results in self-injury. " He that sinneth 
 against me," God had said, " wrongeth his own 
 soul." In the punishment of sin there is some- 
 thing which no direct act of Almighty power 
 can lift from off the soul. Even if sin be for- 
 given, the restored child, happy in his Father's 
 love, has to suffer the natural and necessary 
 effect of his wrong-doing. Although his sin is 
 blotted out, so that it no longer disturbs the rela- 
 tion of friendship between him and God, many 
 sad traces of it are left. Where the thorn has 
 been extracted a painful spot remains. The 
 damage wrought by sin is not repaired ; wasted 
 energies are not restored ; the vigor and elastic- 
 ity of youth are not brought back ; the vanished 
 years of a misspent life are not recalled. At the 
 very moment when the prodigal is being pressed 
 
THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. I tf 
 
 in gladness and joy to the Father's bosom, the 
 shame of his sin burns hotly within his heart. 
 The evil effects of his former state he cannot lay 
 aside as he does his rags ; they follow him from 
 the far country into the Father's house and cling 
 to him forever. 
 
 Let the distinction then be noted between the 
 soul that sins eternally, and is eternally lost ; 
 and the soul that having sinned sustains eternal 
 loss. Those who sin, even if they should after- 
 wards repent, suffer loss : those who continue in 
 sin are lost — the curse of sin is with them un- 
 lifted, the suffering of sin unrelieved. To be 
 saved from the punishment of sin they must be 
 saved from sin itself. Here we are confronted 
 with the question : Will all, or any, be saved 
 from sin in the future ? What ground is there to 
 hope that the lost will be found, the dead be 
 made alive? May not punishment for sin be 
 redemptive? May not every case in which 
 suffering is inflicted be a case in which suffering 
 is the only remedy? May not every case in 
 which a soul is cast into the lake of fire, be a 
 case in which the fires of judgment are the only 
 possible purgation ? What light, if any, is 
 thrown upon the problem by the expressions 
 " eternal sin " and " eternal punishment " ? Dean 
 Plumptre contends that the qualifying word 
 aionios, which in the present discussion has been 
 
1^8 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 somewhat freely rendered eternal, expresses 
 " undefined and not infinite duration." Had he 
 contented himself with saying that it expresses 
 undefined duration, his assertion would have been 
 correct. The literal meaning of aionios is " age- 
 long." As to whether sin and punishment are 
 limited in duration or absolutely eternal aionios 
 is entirely non-committal. It tells how long 
 they may last, not how long they will last. But 
 while it expresses undefined duration, it suggests 
 no idea of limitation ; the prospect which it 
 opens up is one which has no visible bound ; the 
 road which it brings into view is one which has 
 no visible terminus. If the claim be allowed that 
 it does not forbid hope ; in the interests of truth 
 it must be added, that it does not give hope. 
 
 From the appalling possibility of continuous 
 sin and suffering, relief has been sought in the 
 literal destruction of the irreclaimably wicked. 
 It has been thought that after the present epoch 
 of redemption has run to a close there will be 
 left a moral rubbish heap, which will be burned 
 up, as the chaff of the Eastern threshing-floor — a 
 rubbish heap containing no undeveloped germs 
 of goodness, but composed entirely of that which 
 is intrinsically bad, and hopelessly irreclaimable. 
 Unfed by the oil of grace, which Christ supplies, 
 the flame of the spirit-life will burn lower and 
 still lower ; until too feeble to live, it will flicker 
 
THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. I 59 
 
 and expire. Under the destroying power of sin 
 the soul will shrink and shrivel, steadily going 
 down in the volume and quality of being, until 
 the moral powers are dwarfed, the moral sensibil- 
 ities blunted and benumbed ; so that not only is 
 there loss of happiness, but also loss of the 
 power of happiness ; and, by parity of reasoning, 
 not only is there a diminishing of suffering, but 
 also a diminishing of capacity for suffering. The 
 man who sins is less of a man than he was 
 before ; the man who continues in sin ultimately 
 loses every vestige of manhood ; sinking down 
 into moral nothingness, perishing in his own cor- 
 ruption. This, it is held, is " the second death ; " 
 not the death of something in man, but the 
 death, the literal dissolution, of man himself. 
 In support of this theory it is triumphantly 
 asked, Do not the destructive processes of 
 nature show degeneration passing on to mortifi- 
 cation, and mortification ending in death ? But 
 it is forgotten that natural processes are merely 
 analogies of spiritual processes. Spiritual death 
 is self-destruction — the voluntary separation of 
 the soul from God. As the life that is in Christ 
 is spiritual, the death that is out of Christ is also 
 spiritual. Eternal sin and eternal death are one. 
 Vain are all attempts to fill up the bottomless 
 pit; to exhaust it of its darkness; or to sink a 
 shaft into it, in the hope of finding light on the 
 
l60 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 other side. The bottomless pit remains, but it 
 remains open. Those who have their place in it, 
 are there in spite of the unwearied efforts of 
 Divine Love to turn them back from such a dole- 
 ful end. Do not those who stay in it, stay in it 
 in spite of all the efforts of Divine Love to lift 
 them out ? Is it asked : How does such a suppo- 
 sition comport with the words addressed by 
 Abraham to the nameless rich man in Hades : 
 " Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, 
 that they which would pass from hence to you 
 may not be able, and none may cross over from 
 thence to us " ? It might be enough to say in 
 reply, that these words do not refer to everlasting 
 condemnation or salvation, but to " an as yet 
 unalterable " state of things in Hades — the abode 
 of disembodied spirits during the interim between 
 death and the resurrection. But, passing that 
 over, the words as used have clearly a restricted 
 application. The rich man had prayed Abraham 
 to send Lazarus to him to alleviate his misery ; to 
 which request Abraham answered that " no inter- 
 course could be held between Paradise and 
 Gehenna, and on this account a vast and impass- 
 able chasm existed between the two." (So 
 Edersheim.) The intervening space is not a 
 mere hand-breadth, as the Jewish Rabbins pic- 
 tured it, but a yawning impassable abyss, " which 
 cannot be overleaped by presumption on the one 
 
THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. l6l 
 
 hand, or sympathy on the other." (So Stier.) 
 No wishing or willing can waft a soul across this 
 dividing gulf. No power divine can bridge it 
 over; for it represents the separation of souls 
 according to essential character. But while 
 there can be no intercommunication, no volun- 
 tary passing to and fro, so long as character 
 remains unchanged ; there is nothing to preclude 
 the idea of possible transition on the ground of 
 change of character ; and the possibility of 
 change of character will at once be conceded by 
 those who accept the axiomatic dictum that no 
 state of conscious being can be considered moral 
 in which only one course of action is possible. 
 But, dreading to push a divine philosophy to the 
 point where it might become " a chartered reck- 
 lessness," a reverent faith pausing here on the 
 edge of the mountain-precipice to which that 
 philosophy has led, plants her standard on this 
 truth : " The mercy of the Lord endureth for- 
 ever." " Beyond the infinite and boundless reach 
 of mercy " none can pass. Infinite love can neither 
 change nor die, but must live through eternity, 
 eternally striving to overcome the perversity of 
 every creature's will. The wings of the Almighty 
 are never folded, but are always invitingly out- 
 spread, that under them may be lovingly gath- 
 ered those (if any such there be) who in the 
 fire of suffering have learned lessons of spirit- 
 ii 
 
1 62 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 ual wisdom, and have sought to return to their 
 rest. 
 
 We thus find the danger-point in moral exist- 
 ence where Christ locates it, — in man himself, and 
 not in God. The outer, utter darkness, into 
 which no blessed light of comfort enters, is the 
 darkness in which a sin-loving soul has enveloped 
 himself. Not because of sin committed in the 
 past which the mercy of Heaven cannot cancel ; 
 not because of any restraint of the moral faculties 
 by which moral change is made impossible ; but 
 because of mercy eternally rejected ; — because 
 of sin freely, continuously and eternally commit- 
 ted — does the dark cloud of condemnation settle 
 down upon any soul, enwrapping him in the 
 impenetrable gloom of an eternal night. 
 
XII. 
 THE FLUIDITY OF CHARACTER. 
 
" A good will is the greatest thing in the universe." — Kant. 
 
 " A character is a completely formed will." — Novalis. 
 
 11 He had thought about it, prayed about it, and half resolved 
 to do it, for a long time. At last one day the resolution leaped 
 forth full grown into a very decided ' I'll do it,' and the ash stick 
 came down with an equally vigorous, ' Amen. 1 " 
 
 — From a Homily by Mister Horn. 
 
 " Man is his own star, and the soul that can 
 Render an honest and a perfect man 
 Commands all light, all influence, all fate. 
 Nothing to him falls early, or too late." 
 
 Fletcher. 
 
 " In the transactions between God and the souls of men, with 
 respect unto their obedience and salvation, there is none of 
 them but hath a. power in sundry things, as to some degrees and 
 measures of them, to comply with his mind and will, which they 
 voluntarily neglect." — John Owen. 
 
XII. 
 
 THE FLUIDITY OF CHARACTER. 
 
 There are two elements which, entering into 
 life, make it probationary down to the last atom : 
 namely, human freedom and divine grace ; the 
 one constituting the ground of man's probation as 
 a moral being, the other constituting the ground 
 of his probation as a sinful moral being. By 
 emptying life of either of these elements it is 
 robbed of the moral significance which has usu- 
 ally been attached to it. Take away the free 
 agency of man, and the very possibility of proba- 
 tion is taken away ; for if man be not free to 
 choose his destiny, his life on earth is in no true 
 sense a state of moral discipline and trial. By 
 making human fate hang upon the Absolute 
 Will and not upon the supreme and ultimate 
 choice of the individual, the foundation of re- 
 sponsibility is undermined, and man is stripped 
 of all the essential qualities of a moral being. 
 On the other hand, eliminate from life the 
 universal operations of divine grace, and the 
 idea of adequate probation is destroyed ; for since 
 
1 66 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 apart from Christ — in whom is treasured up, and 
 through whom is distributed the fullness of divine 
 grace — man as a fallen being cannot attain unto 
 salvation, apart from Christ man cannot have a 
 probation suitable to his present circumstances 
 and needs. And inasmuch as the very condi- 
 tions which render probation possible render sal- 
 vation possible, the redeemability or salvability 
 of man must depend upon the possibility of orig- 
 inating moral change, and the capacity for re- 
 ceiving divine influences and responding to them. 
 
 Possibility of moral change is inseparable from 
 moral character. If from any cause moral change 
 were to become impossible, it would be a sign 
 that moral annihilation had already taken place. 
 As a moral being man possesses power of self- 
 action, power to put forth moral effort, power to 
 bring to pass, within certain limits, results which 
 he has before determined. He can change and 
 modify the future, yea, he can create the future. 
 His future is what he chooses to make it. 
 
 The appeals of Scripture are themselves suffi- 
 cient to prove that in Heaven's estimation at 
 least, no one to whom they are addressed has 
 passed beyond the possibility of altering his 
 moral course. After those who have wandered 
 furthest in the downward path of evil, is the 
 word of tender entreaty sent, "Turn ye, turn ye, 
 why will ye die." Inability to turn to God is 
 
THE FLUIDITY OF CHARACTER. \6j 
 
 purely moral. Those who cannot repent are not 
 those who are unable, but those who are unwill- 
 ing to repent. Those who " cannot cease from 
 sin " are not those who have no power, but 
 those who have no disposition to abandon sin. 
 As sinful habit roots itself deeper and deeper in 
 the soil of the depraved heart, " will not " passes 
 into "cannot." But "cannot "is always trans- 
 latable back again into "will not." For the 
 bondage of sin is always a willing bondage ; and 
 the only insuperable obstacle in the way of a sin- 
 ner's return to God is his own unwillingness. 
 
 With the strong tendency towards individual- 
 ism which came into New England theology as a 
 natural reaction from the over-development of 
 the idea of corporate responsibility by a state 
 church, special emphasis was given to the doc- 
 trine of man's inherent ability as a moral being 
 to repent of his sin, and keep the command- 
 ments of God. Natural inability was stoutly 
 rebutted, and the moral enfranchisement of 
 every man openly declared that the dormant 
 conscience might be aroused, and the conviction 
 of moral responsibility pressed home upon every 
 individual heart. It is largely owing to the in- 
 fluence of New England theology upon Christian 
 thought that there has come to be substantial 
 agreement upon the point that in things moral 
 can is the measure of ought. No longer is it 
 
1 68 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 questioned that ability and responsibility are 
 equal ; that only what a man can do is he under 
 obligation to do, and that what he cannot do, he 
 is in no wise bound to do. If power to repent 
 and obey God be taken away, repentance and 
 righteousness cease to be duties ; and all 
 blameworthiness for their absence is completely 
 cancelled. Unless man should cease to be what 
 he now is — a moral being, some measure of 
 moral power must be continued to him forever, 
 together with some measure of opportunity for 
 the exercise of that power. If in this world, or 
 in any other world, moral power and opportunity 
 be utterly lost, moral identity is lost ; the sense 
 of duty which is always present in a moral 
 nature is destroyed, yea, the moral nature itself 
 is blotted out. So long as a human being re- 
 mains a moral being, he must continue to sow 
 new crops of moral actions, and reap new har- 
 vests of punishment and reward. 
 
 Not unfrequently is the question raised : " Can 
 it be supposed that any one will be consigned to 
 eternal woe who is still capable of redemption ? " * 
 This question assumes that those only who are in- 
 capable of redemption, that is to say, those who 
 are incapable of moral change, will be consigned 
 to eternal woe. But is it possible to conceive 
 of self-conscious punishment inflicted upon moral 
 
 * Ed. Article in Andover Review, May, 1887. 
 
THE FLUIDITY OF CHARACTER. 1 69 
 
 incapables ? Is it not universally conceded that 
 "the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is 
 not quenched " are the remorse of a guilty con- 
 science in which the double sense of moral 
 responsibility and moral ability still lingers ? 
 Were the divine government to visit punishment 
 upon those who are incapable of reformation, 
 would not the same principle of equity be vio- 
 lated as in the case of an earthly government 
 that should visit punishment upon hopeless 
 imbeciles and idiots ? 
 
 From a new quarter the destruction of human 
 freedom and responsibility is being threatened. 
 Birth and education are said to determine human 
 conduct : every volition is said to be a link in an 
 endless chain of causation ; and character the 
 necessary sequence, the natural product, of certain 
 antecedent states and influences. In this there is 
 a measure of truth and a measure of error. Unity 
 and continuity do unquestionably belong to 
 character. No single action stands isolated from 
 past choices and conditions. The present grows 
 out of the past, the future out of the present. 
 When Homer exclaimed, " I am part of all that I 
 have met," he might have added, " and of all that 
 I have been or done." But, behind all the subtle 
 influences of heredity and environment, behind 
 the conflicting motives by which the moral 
 nature is beset and besieged, behind the resultant 
 
170 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 tendencies of previous moral states, there is a 
 potent personality, which is the sole determining 
 power in moral action. By things outside the 
 moral nature character is influenced but not 
 determined, conditioned but not controlled, 
 affected but not caused. Man is himself the 
 cause of his own character. Motives impel but 
 do not compel his inner choice. Never is he 
 forced to act in a way to which he has already 
 been predestined. The limitations which life 
 imposes and the opportunities which life affords 
 he may accept as necessary elements in the 
 scheme of his existence, and within that ap- 
 pointed circle by which his life is bounded he 
 may freely work out his own destiny ; running 
 with patience the race set before him, and finish- 
 ing his course with joy. 
 
 Those who have undertaken to forecast the 
 character and destiny of man from his constitu- 
 tion and environment have too often overlooked 
 the province of the will as a self-determining 
 power. It is as if some one observing the move- 
 ment of the clouds should conclude that the ship 
 could move only in the same direction ; forget- 
 ting that the captain with his hand upon the 
 helm can use the wind so as to steer his ship in a 
 course almost the opposite of that to which the 
 wind is blowing. Without this self-determining 
 power virtue would be an impossibility. To act 
 
THE FL UIDIl^Y OF CHAR A CTER. I J I 
 
 virtuously man has often to cleave his way against 
 the strong current of desire. Closing his ears to 
 the seductive voice of his evil, selfish nature, 
 and opening his ears to the protest of his higher 
 nature, he has to urge his reluctant feet to walk 
 in the path of righteousness and self-denial. 
 " In the united states of thought and feeling the 
 will occupies the position of a President," against 
 whose decisions there exists no power of veto. 
 Within the inner kingdom of self, the will rules 
 with regal power holding in subjection " the 
 fleshly lusts which war against the soul." Spurn- 
 ing the pleasurable because it is also the sinful, 
 the will often chooses the unpleasant because it 
 is also the right. As saith the judicious Hooker: 
 " Appetite is the will's solicitor, and the will is 
 appetite's controller; what we covet according 
 to the one, by the other we often reject." 
 
 To the question : " Up to what point is man 
 capable of redemption ? " there can be only one 
 answer. Man is capable of redemption up to the 
 point of the extinction of his moral nature. So 
 long as a shred of moral power is left there is the 
 possibility of moral recovery. For character is 
 not like a vase or statue which when once shat- 
 tered is forever hopelessly destroyed. Rather is it 
 like a living organism which though maimed and 
 injured may be restored to soundness. Character 
 is vital and changing, not dead and sterotyped. 
 
172 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 It is like liquid metal that can be fashioned into 
 any shape, and not like metal which has been 
 run into a mould, and has become solid and un- 
 alterable. Even when it has become in some 
 degree hardened it may be remelted in the fur- 
 nace of repentance. Character is germinal and 
 structural : while it lives it grows, and while it 
 grows it changes ; and when it changes for the 
 worse there is always the possibility that it 
 may yet change for the better. However pitia- 
 ble the wreck of manhood, there is always left 
 some remnant of self-determining power, some 
 measure of ability to leave the dismal swamp of 
 sinful indulgence for the bracing uplands of 
 virtuous self-restraint. Out of the deepest 
 "slough of despond " the soul may struggle and 
 gain at last the Celestial City. The most abject 
 moral serf may assert his inborn nobility of 
 nature and become " a crowned King of Life." 
 Everything hangs upon the flat of the will. 
 Since in the will lies the reforming power — the 
 power to originate change — reformation can be 
 secured only by rousing it to action. " Wilt 
 thou be made whole?" is the question which the 
 Great Healer puts to every sin-sick soul. And 
 when any one gathers up his wasted energies for 
 a supreme effort— when at the bidding of the 
 Lord he stretches forth his withered hand — life 
 and health return. 
 
THE FL UIDITY OF CHA RA C TER. 1 7 3 
 
 Capacity to receive divine knowledge and influ- 
 ence and to respond to them, is inseparable fro?n 
 moral character. The question of the Lord of 
 Life is not, " Wik thou heal thyself?" but, 
 " Wilt thou be made whole ? Wilt thou submit 
 to my healing touch? Wilt thou give up thy 
 case into my hands, that I may make thee 
 whole ? " 
 
 The redeemability of man lies in his ability to 
 avail himself of the healing power of Christ ; his 
 ability to receive what Christ has come to im- 
 part. Through the corrupting influence of sin, 
 the moral nature of man has undergone deterio- 
 ration until it has lost all recuperative power. 
 As a fallen nature it is " indisposed, disabled and 
 made opposite to all good." But it is painting 
 the picture in darker hues than need be, to say 
 that man is incapable of doing good, and capable 
 only of sinning. It is enough to say that he has 
 sustained a loss of power to do good, and that 
 for the healthy, normal exercise of his spiritual 
 nature he is dependent upon the efficacious grace 
 of God. " A gracious ability has been given him 
 whereby he can co-operate with the Spirit of 
 God " in his own redemption. Within his 
 moral nature there is a vital center of causa- 
 tion which can respond to the quickening and 
 fructifying power of the Spirit. To secure his 
 co-operation with the constant operations of 
 
174 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 divine grace is to secure his salvation. Just as 
 the one end of all the curative agencies which 
 medical science has discovered and adopted is to 
 stir up the latent forces of corporeal life, that the 
 attacks of disease may be repelled; so the one 
 end of all the efforts of the Great Physician is to 
 stir up the latent forces of spiritual life, that sin 
 may be expelled, and the moral nature be made 
 whole, and kept whole. Into the man of recep- 
 tive heart God enters, making Himself the health 
 of his countenance ; filling all the currents of his 
 life with new energy ; stimulating and strength- 
 ening his enfeebled moral nature, leading him 
 " to will and to work, for His good pleasure;" 
 and thus through the power which He him- 
 self imparts enabling him to work out his own 
 salvation with fear and trembling. Holding 
 within himself the possibility of redemption, man 
 has no right to remain under the power of evil. 
 If he cannot heal himself, it is equally true that 
 he cannot be healed apart from his own action in 
 the matter. Human agency must interblend 
 with divine agency. But the uncertain factor is 
 never the divine one. God is always willing, 
 always able, but man is not always ready. The 
 ability to open his nature to the incoming of the 
 energizing, life-giving Spirit is God's special gift 
 of grace to the children of men. The faith by 
 which we are saved is not of ourselves, it is the 
 
THE FLUIDITY OF CHARACTER. 1 75 
 
 gift of God. To every man God " hath dealt out 
 a measure of faith," * that is, a measure of the 
 faith faculty, a measure of the faculty which en- 
 ables him to receive divine truth and grace. 
 Every man is constituted capable of receiving 
 divine help ; for "the manifestation of the Spirit 
 is given to every man to profit withal." To 
 every man has been given power to make the 
 decisive choice between life and death ; power to 
 move forward towards the source of his life, or 
 to turn away from it ; power to bring God into 
 his soul or to shut him out. At the very 
 thought of such an endowment of power well 
 may he tremble. It is the possession of this 
 power that makes him the arbiter of his own 
 destiny. The eternal life which he is helpless to 
 create, he can reject or receive. Rejecting that 
 life, made over to him in Christ, he cuts himself 
 off from the one source of remedial influence, 
 and dies in his sins. Receiving that life he is 
 made a partaker of the divine nature, and is thus 
 constituted one of the spiritual children of God. 
 For unto as many as receive Christ to them 
 gives he power to become the sons of God, even 
 to them that believe on his name. There is thus 
 a volitional, and hence amoral element, in faith. 
 Faith is a free and responsible act. The plaint 
 
 * Rom. xiL 3. 
 
i;6 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 of the Saviour is not that men cannot, but that 
 they will not, come unto him that they might 
 have life. None are so helpless as those that will 
 not come. None are so blind as those that will 
 not see. Lord Nelson could not see the signal 
 for suspending the battle because he had pur- 
 posely placed his glass to his blind eye. And 
 many see not the truth because they have no 
 mind to do so. Is it urged that man being 
 " dead in trespasses and sins," is bereft of all 
 power of moral action, and that he is unable to 
 repent and turn to Christ? To such a conclu- 
 sion Scripture lends no countenance. There the 
 blind are called upon to look, the deaf to hear, 
 the sleeper to awake, the dead to rise up. 
 " Look, ye blind ! Hear, ye deaf ! Awake, thou 
 that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ 
 shall give thee light." 
 
 Trace the faith faculty back to its primal root, 
 and it will be found growing out of the capacity 
 for worship which belongs to man as a religious 
 being. Power to receive the divine, suscepti- 
 bility to divine influence, capacity to receive 
 instruction in divine things, ability to render 
 worshipful obedience to the divine being, mark 
 man off as the possessor of a religious nature. 
 Isolated races of men may have been discovered 
 who were destitute of definite religious ideas, but 
 no race of men has ever been found sunk so low 
 
THE FL UID1 TY OF CHAR A CTER. I J J 
 
 as to be incapable of religious culture. The first 
 Portuguese settlers at Cape Colony maintained 
 that the Hottentots were " a race of apes incapa- 
 ble of christian ization ; and over their church 
 doors they placed the warning sign, " Dogs and 
 Hottentots not admitted." But time has 
 showed that those degraded Hottentots are pos- 
 sessed of a religious nature, that they too are 
 God's children, and that they are capable of res- 
 toration into the divine image. 
 
 When the first missionaries landed at Mada- 
 gascar the French Governor called out, " So you 
 will make the Malagsay, Christians ? Impossible ! 
 they are mere brutes, and have no more sense 
 than irrational creatures ; you might as well try 
 to convert cattle." Touched with the living 
 power of the Gospel of Christ these " irrational 
 brutes " have been transformed into devout 
 worshipers a of the one living and true God, 
 and their island home, once the abode of 
 horrid cruelty, has become a center of light 
 and salvation unto surrounding heathen na- 
 tions. 
 
 When Charles Darwin, the naturalist, first 
 visited the island of Tierra del Fuego he thought 
 that he had discovered a race of men destitute of 
 religious sentiments, if not destitute of a relig- 
 ious nature. He was mistaken. Even in that 
 debased people seeds of religious life lay dor- 
 
1 78 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 mant waiting for the sunshine of the gospel to 
 fructify them. A humble missionary brought to 
 them the word of life, and they became new men 
 in Christ Jesus. And when, after the interval of 
 a number of years Mr. Darwin again visited that 
 island, and found that these brutal savages 
 had developed into Christian disciples, he bore 
 honorable testimony to the moral trans- 
 formation that had been accomplished ; ascrib- 
 ing, with noble frankness, the entire change 
 to the elevating power of the Gospel of 
 Christ. 
 
 The twofold reason why the Gospel finds a 
 responsive echo in the universal human heart is 
 that the Gospel was made for man, and man was 
 made for redemption by the Gospel. Inextin- 
 guishable desires after a higher life are met by 
 divine help to reach the loftiest ideals. Proph- 
 ecies of redemption written in the nature of man 
 find their fulfillment when Christ comes into 
 possession of his own. 
 
 Continuous effort on the part of God to arouse 
 man to struggle for deliverance from the domin- 
 ion of evil, puts to shame the faintest shadow of 
 suspicion that any soul has been foredoomed to 
 certain and inevitable defeat. Would God bestir 
 himself if the case were hopeless? Would he 
 provide sufficiency of means if recovery were im- 
 possible ? Would he awaken aspiration if en- 
 
THE FLUIDITY OF CHARACTER. 1 79 
 
 deavor were vain ? Would he induce any one to 
 lift heavenward the empty vessel of faith, if 
 there were no descending showers of grace by 
 which it might be filled? 
 
XIII. 
 
 JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 
 
11 Till their own dreams at length deceive 'em, 
 And, oft repeating, men believe 'em." 
 
 Prior. 
 
 "It is one of the heaviest penalties of wrong thinking and 
 wrong living that they blur, if they do not obliterate the very 
 perceptions of good and evil." — Mary Clemmer. 
 
 " In the nature of things, every sin against light draws blood 
 on the spiritual retina." — Joseph Cook. 
 
 " When we in our own viciousness grow hard 
 (O, misery on't!) the wise gods seal our eyes; 
 In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us 
 Adore our errors ; laugh at us, while we strut 
 
 To our confusion." 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
XIII. 
 
 JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 The loss of power to discern between the true 
 and the false, the good and the evil, is ascribed 
 in Scripture to a direct divine operation. " God 
 gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they 
 should not see, and ears that they should not 
 hear." * "The Lord hath poured upon you the 
 spirit of deep sleep." f " He hath blinded their 
 eyes, and he hardened their heart, lest they 
 should see with their eyes, and perceive with 
 their heart." % God sets his curse upon an unbe- 
 lieving, impenitent heart. " He gives over a 
 man who perseveres in resisting him, to blind- 
 ness, so that he punishes himself, as it were, with 
 his own hand." Nor is the blighting curse of 
 unbelief confined to the future. It falls upon 
 the soul now and here. Concerning those who 
 pervert the light God has said : " Let their eyes 
 be darkened that they may not see." 
 
 Laws are not self-executing. The power that 
 
 * Rom. xi. 8. t Isa. xxix. 10. J John xii. 40. 
 
1 84 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 gives them execution is the power of whose will 
 they are the expression. To this rule the laws 
 of the moral world form no exception. There- 
 fore, when we say that moral blindness is the 
 natural consequence of resisting the truth, we 
 must not overlook the fact that it is by the 
 agency of God that natural results are produced. 
 What we call " natural law," is simply our dis- 
 covery of the orderly method according to which 
 God works in nature. In accordance with this 
 orderly method, existing in the very constitution 
 of things, God manifests his sore displeasure 
 against sin by carrying it to its proper results, 
 causing those who treat His truth with indiffer- 
 ence or contempt to lose the power of apprehend- 
 ing it. Alike in the physical and moral worlds it 
 is a fixed principle that power rightly used in- 
 creases, while power unused or abused, is lost. 
 The eye that will not see cannot see. The ear 
 that will not hear loses the power to hear. " For 
 whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he 
 shall have abundance, but whosoever hath not, 
 from him shall be taken away even that which 
 he hath." 
 
 Of those upon whom has fallen a spirit of 
 stupor it is said in Matt. xiii. 15, " Their eyes 
 have they closed " ; and in John xii. 40, " He 
 hath blinded their eyes." Looked at from one 
 aspect this moral blindness is their own act ; 
 
JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 1 85 
 
 looked at from another aspect it is the act of 
 God. Between the two views there is no antag- 
 onism. They describe different sides of the 
 same moral condition. Those who wish not to 
 be disturbed, dozingly close their inner eyes and 
 keep them closed against heaven's sweet light 
 which shines around them. They hide as it were 
 their faces from the Anointed of God. Afraid 
 lest they should be persuaded to repent they 
 wilfully shut from their view all heavenly 
 motives to a higher life. From this drowsy, 
 slumbering state it is difficult to awake. Diffi- 
 cult, but, thank God ! not impossible. While 
 accountability lasts the slumberer may awake, 
 ought to awake. " Awake, thou that sleepest, 
 and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give 
 thee light." Even the blind are held responsible 
 for their blindness. " Look, ye blind ! " Tear 
 off every bandage with which your spiritual eyes 
 are blindfolded ! " Anoint your eyes with eye- 
 salve, that you may see." Remain no longer in 
 a state of willing ignorance. 
 
 The posture of the heart has everything to do 
 with the reception of truth. The strength of 
 faith is not in proportion to the clearness of our 
 perceptions of truth, but in proportion to the 
 eagerness with which the truth is embraced. 
 There are those who because of some moral 
 defect which obscures their vision, are " ever 
 
1 86 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 learning but never able to come unto the knowl- 
 edge of the truth." But, " as many as set them- 
 selves in order to eternal life, believe." Faith is 
 a link in a long chain of events. It is the out- 
 growth of the antecedent life, and implies a con- 
 dition of moral fitness for its exercise. Whether 
 the truth will appear credible or incredible 
 depends upon the state of the heart and life. 
 " How can ye believe, which receive glory one of 
 another, and the glory that cometh from the 
 only God ye seek not ? " On the other hand, 
 there are those who are being fitted to know and 
 accept the teaching of Christ as soon as it is pre- 
 sented : " If any man willeth to do his will, he 
 shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God 
 or whether I speak from myself." " He that 
 doeth truth cometh to the light." " It is the 
 great error of thoughtless biographers," says 
 John Ruskin, " to attribute to accident some new 
 phase of character ; whereas that phase of char- 
 acter was practically in existence already, and 
 the accident only served to develop and bring it 
 out." Alluding to his own case he says, " Tur- 
 ner's book might seem to be the point that 
 determined the direction of my life. But the 
 essential point to be accounted for is this, that I 
 could understand Turner's book when I saw it." 
 So in the case of those who come suddenly to " a 
 knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus," the 
 
JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 1 8/ 
 
 thing to be accounted for is that the truth 
 should produce instantaneous conviction. Be- 
 fore the mental sensitive plate could, in an 
 instant, take on an indelible impression, it must 
 have passed through some secret process of 
 preparation. 
 
 The things of the Spirit are spiritually dis- 
 cerned. In an outward fashion the Jews saw 
 "all that the Lord did before their eyes"; and 
 yet Moses said, " The Lord hath not given you 
 an heart to perceive, and eyes to see." They 
 saw and yet they saw not. Events passed 
 before their eyes the inner meaning of which 
 they did not discern. " The works of God," 
 remarks Godet, " are in two aspects, the one ex- 
 ternal, the material fact ; the other internal, the 
 divine thought contained in the fact : and thus it 
 comes about that when the eye of the soul is 
 paralyzed one may see these works without see- 
 ing them." Just as some people are color-blind, 
 others are morally blind. They are incapable of 
 making clear moral distinctions. Wide awake 
 regarding other matters, they are dull or con- 
 fused whenever moral questions are touched. 
 
 Moral blindness is the result of a wrong moral 
 condition. Sin distorts the vision of the soul. 
 Prejudice bandages the eyes. Bad morals lead 
 to false doctrine. A bad heart is a blind heart. 
 Over the eye-balls of the unholy grows a thick, 
 
1 88 UNTO THE UTTERMOST, 
 
 horny scale which shuts God and his spiritual 
 universe from sight. The diseased eye is pained 
 by the light ; and those whose sin is rebuked can- 
 not " endure sound doctrine." There is no proof 
 so clear and cogent that an evil heart cannot 
 repel. When men love not the truth they find 
 no difficulty in rejecting it. " None deny there 
 is a God," says Lord Bacon, " but those for 
 whom it maketh that there were no God." The 
 wish is father to the faith. Never does the 
 beatific vision come unsolicited, but always in 
 answer to the soul's deepest longings. Never 
 does the sinful heart catch a perfect reflection 
 of the truth. " The pure in heart shall see God." 
 When men possess not " the love of the truth," 
 God sends them strong delusion that they should 
 believe a lie. Having shut their eyes to privilege 
 and duty, God says, " Let their eyes be closed to 
 danger, so that they shall say, Peace, peace, when 
 there is no peace." Having put out the lamp in 
 the light-house of conscience, they are allowed 
 to wander from their course, and are wrecked 
 upon the rocks. God blinds the heart that 
 chooses error ; he hardens the heart that chooses 
 evil. In this there is nothing inconsistent with 
 his justice or benevolence. Would it be right 
 that sin and holiness, unbelief and faith, should 
 be treated in the same way? Would it be benev- 
 olent to ordain that sin should prosper ? Could 
 
JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 1 89 
 
 God be vindicated were he to dower a sinful life 
 with the rightful inheritance of virtue ? It is 
 demanded alike by the interests of the universe 
 and the interests of the individual that God carry 
 out every human choice to its proper end. 
 
 Within every heart there is a continuous retri- 
 bution going on, a retribution which turns upon 
 the use which is being made of the light of life 
 which shines upon the pathway of every pilgrim. 
 " At every step of the way there is a faithfulness 
 or unfaithfulness to the present life which God 
 meets in the way of judgment." In the case of 
 those who improve the light, there comes an in- 
 crease of light in an increase of power to compre- 
 hend it ; in the case of those who turn away 
 from the light, the light that is in them becomes 
 darkness, by the fading out of power to compre- 
 hend the light that shines around them. 
 
 Judgment is God's strange work, but it appears 
 strange only because its true meaning is so often 
 concealed. Judgment is sin brought to its final 
 development, — sin with the mark of divine dis- 
 pleasure upon it. Judgment is the warning 
 voice of love, — the flaming sword to keep men 
 out of the way of sin and death. 
 
XIV. 
 
 A COMMON SPIRITUAL DISEASE. 
 
" God himself cannot procure good to the wicked." 
 
 — Anonymous. 
 
 " But who would force the soul tilts with a straw 
 Against a champion cased in adamant." 
 
 Wordsworth, 
 
 " Though God be good and free be Heaven, 
 No force divine can love compel ; 
 And, though the song of sins forgiven 
 May sound through lowest hell, 
 
 The sweet persuasion of His voice 
 
 Respects thy sanctity of will. 
 He giveth day ; thou hast thy choice 
 
 To walk in darkness still." 
 
 Whittier. 
 
 " God never thrusts a man into hell ; he thrusts himself in." 
 
 — SWEDENBORG. 
 
XIV. 
 
 A COMMON SPIRITUAL DISEASE. 
 
 THE disease referred to is ossification or hard- 
 ening of the heart. This has always been a wide- 
 spread spiritual disorder, and prevails quite as 
 extensively in the present day as in days gone by. 
 Scripture holds up to view the case of Pharaoh 
 as an aggravated type of this disease ; but his 
 case, although typical, is by no means exceptional. 
 If, however, a correct diagnosis of so pronounced 
 a case of moral induration can be obtained, data 
 will be furnished for a better understanding of 
 the essential nature of this fearful malady. 
 
 There are two distinct forms of this disease. 
 The first of these is selfishness. What is indiffer- 
 ence to the welfare of others but hard-hearted- 
 ness ? In common language a man who resists all 
 appeals to his sympathy and benevolence is 
 called a hard-hearted man. The upper side of 
 his emotional nature resembles the flinty rock. 
 The other prominent and prevailing form of this 
 disease is moral insensibility. This was the pe- 
 culiar aspect which it assumed in the case of 
 l 3 
 
194 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 Pharaoh. That incorrigible monarch continued 
 unyielding in the midst of the most signal man- 
 ifestations of God's clemency and power. Like 
 many gospel-hearers in the present day upon 
 whom the most solemn truths make hardly any 
 impression, he resisted divine influence as a stone 
 resists a shower of rain. 
 
 A state of moral hardness is not the original 
 or natural condition of the heart. Man has got 
 sadly marred since leaving his maker's hands. 
 God made man upright, man has made himself 
 what he is ; and glorying in his shame he boasts 
 of being self-made. 
 
 In the transitions which have taken place in 
 the formation of the solid crust of the earth, we 
 have an emblem of the change which the soul of 
 man has undergone in passing from its original 
 state of purity into a state of sin. Geologists tell 
 us that the primary rock structure is crystalline ; 
 and that it was once in a state of fusion. The 
 coal fields were once immense forests. The lime- 
 stone, which is composed of shell-fish and other 
 aquatic animals, was once soft and pulpy. And 
 so the most hardened criminal was once a pure- 
 hearted, innocent boy ; the abandoned profligate 
 was once a guileless girl ; the marble-hearted 
 man who laughs at religious feeling as a childish 
 weakness, once wept over his sins ; the icy, obdu- 
 rate heart from which the tender bloom of purity 
 
A COMMON SPIRITUAL DISEASE. 19$ 
 
 has long since gone, was once gentle, chaste and 
 loving, the home of holy thoughts, the fountain 
 of holy, generous deeds. 
 
 Moral insensibility is reached gradually. It is 
 a disease whose beginnings stretch far back into 
 the past. So imperceptibly does it steal on that 
 the victim is seldom apprehensive of danger. 
 The subtle malady may manifest no alarming 
 symptom, while it is working steadily to a fatal 
 crisis. Jesus, on one occasion, when reasoning 
 with the Pharisees, is said to have been " grieved 
 at the hardening of their hearts." He saw the 
 hardening process going on as his word was with- 
 stood ; he knew the fatal result to which such a 
 condition of heart would lead, and he was 
 grieved. With the deepest sorrow he detected in 
 the self-satisfied Pharisees the rapid development 
 of a disease the existence of which within them- 
 selves they little suspected, and would have 
 stoutly denied. 
 
 History affords no more impressive example of 
 the gradual hardening of the heart than that of 
 Nero. That infamous emperor once gave prom- 
 ise of noble things. In the beginning of his 
 reign he showed marks of the greatest affability 
 and humaneness. Nor is there any good reason 
 to suspect that these qualities were simulated. 
 We have the authority of his teacher Seneca for 
 the pleasing incident that when he was under the 
 
I96 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 necessity of signing his name to a list of male- 
 factors who were to be executed, he exclaimed, 
 " Would to Heaven I could not write ! " After- 
 wards, when the good angel was grieved away, 
 no such scruples troubled him. There is the best 
 of evidence for the general belief that he set fire 
 to the city of Rome, in order that he might 
 amuse himself with the wailings and lamenta- 
 tions of a distressed people, and by throwing 
 the blame upon the Christians find an excuse for 
 the fresh gratification of his satanic malignity. 
 He even insulted High Heaven by offering 
 thanksgiving to the gods, after cruelly murdering 
 his wife and mother. This point of hardened 
 wickedness was not reached at a single leap. 
 Between the innocence of youth and the ripe 
 depravity of manhood there lay a long process of 
 moral deterioration. When principle snaps sud- 
 denly, it will generally be found that the work 
 of decay has been going on at the center until 
 nothing but the shell of a formal virtue is left. 
 
 By a like gradual descent did the Pharaoh of 
 the Exodus — the weak and haughty Meneph- 
 thah I. — reach a state of fixed opposition to God. 
 Long had the spirit of rebellion been forming 
 within him ; and the dealing of God by forcing 
 him to decision merely brought that inward con- 
 dition to light. His moral hardness was the final 
 result of a conflict between his will and the will 
 
A COMMON SPIRITUAL DISEASE. 1 97 
 
 of God ; a conflict in which the will of God was 
 consciously and obstinately resisted. Every time 
 Pharaoh disobeyed the mandate of Heaven in 
 refusing to let the Hebrews go, he hardened his 
 heart. Numerous and varied were the means 
 used to overcome his indomitable pride, and 
 bring him to repentance. The sudden death of 
 his first-born was a voice of loudest warning. 
 Then followed his own sickness when he was 
 smitten with the plague of " boils with Mains." 
 As a special mark of mercy the Lord lengthened 
 out the thread of his life ; saying, " For this very 
 purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show 
 in thee my power, and that my name might be 
 published abroad in all the earth." * God did 
 not create him, or call him into being that he 
 might make him " a monument of vengeance " ; 
 inciting him to evil by rousing him to resistance ; 
 then cutting him off from repentance, and hurry- 
 ing him on to an inevitable doom. Longing to 
 win him to repentance, God prolonged his for- 
 feited life, manifesting his power in him, by re- 
 vealing to him his alarming spiritual condition. 
 Several times when divine power wrought inward 
 conviction, Pharaoh exclaimed, " I have sinned 
 this time, and I and my people are wicked." 
 But although convicted he did not yield. The 
 
 * Rom. viii. 17, 18. 
 
198 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 confession of his sinfulness was squeezed out by 
 the force of trial, and did not flow freely from a 
 softened, melted heart. When the pressure was 
 withdrawn, the vow which had been made in the 
 hour of trouble was forgotten. In spite of the 
 clearest evidence of the absolute supremacy of 
 the God of Israel, the will was stiffened against 
 him. Means were employed, fitted and designed 
 to secure the very opposite end to that which 
 was produced. The free-will clay with which the 
 divine Potter was at work upon his wheel, was 
 intended for a vessel of honor, but the vessel was 
 marred in his hand, and nothing could be done 
 with it, but fashion it into a vessel of dishonor. 
 
 God's part in the hardening of the impenitent 
 heart is something more than mere permission. 
 He not only allows something to be done ; he 
 does something. There is an interplay of the 
 human and the divine. Ten times is Pharaoh 
 said to have hardened his own heart, and ten 
 times is God said to have hardened it. In stifling 
 conviction Pharaoh hardened his own heart ; then 
 followed judicial hardening, but not total aban- 
 donment. What else could God do with a stub- 
 born heart than harden it ? The hardening of 
 Pharaoh's heart was no strange event, but was in 
 perfect harmony with the general order of things 
 in the moral world. By the outworking of the 
 spiritual laws in constant operation any heart is 
 
A COMMON SPIRITUAL DISEASE. 1 99 
 
 hardened when God's message is rejected. 
 Upon every heart that continues stout against 
 the Most High, the divine curse alights. Just as 
 every appeal made by a loving mother to an err- 
 ing child has, if resisted, the effect of hardening 
 the heart ; so every appeal made by God to the 
 human conscience when resisted hardens the 
 heart, making it insensible alike to God's mercy 
 and to its own danger. 
 
 Man may thus get evil out of good, as on the 
 other hand he may get good out of evil. From 
 the same soil springs the poisonous and the food- 
 bearing plants ; the sun that hardens clay, melts 
 wax ; the wind that wafts one ship into harbor, 
 dashes another upon the rocks ; the gospel which 
 is salvation to one is condemnation to another — 
 "the savor of life unto life, or the savor of death 
 unto death." 
 
 God hardens whom he will, and he wills to 
 harden the persistently impenitent. The con- 
 trite heart he wills to soften. Along the unde- 
 viating line of spiritual law the divine will is 
 carried out in bringing upon the impenitent a 
 constant and constantly increasing current of 
 penalty ; but alongside of that current of penalty 
 flows the mightier current of divine mercy, in 
 which it is swallowed up and lost whenever true 
 repentance for sin takes place. So that when 
 God, claiming absolute sovereign rights, says, 
 
200 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 " I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy," 
 be it remembered that in the exercise of his sov- 
 ereign rights he wills to have mercy upon the 
 penitent. To the question, Unto whom does 
 God will to show mercy ? this is the answer : " Let 
 the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous 
 man his thoughts ; and let him return unto the 
 Lord and He will have mercy upon him." "As 
 for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not 
 fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his 
 wickedness." Had the haughty Egyptian king 
 bowed in penitence before the scepter of Je- 
 hovah, he would not only have obtained forgive- 
 ness, but the hand that smote him would have 
 been outstretched to bless him ; his example, 
 instead of being held up as a beacon of warning, 
 would have been handed down as an inspiration ; 
 his life, which set in the darkness of dishonor, 
 would have been encircled with a halo of unfad- 
 ing glory; and through him the name of God 
 would have been proclaimed in all the earth — not 
 by overwhelming judgment, but by forgiving 
 mercy. 
 
 " The heart of a king, in the hand of Jehovah, is 
 as rivers of water, he turneth it whithersoever he 
 will," * controlling and utilizing it, as the Eastern 
 husbandman, by means of artificial irrigation, con- 
 
 * Prov. xxi. i. Suggested rendering. 
 
A COMMON SPIRITUAL DISEASE. 201 
 
 trols and utilizes the waters of the river, sending 
 them at will along the furrows of his fields. Any 
 heart which was before a source of misery and 
 ruin becomes when put into God's hand a source 
 of blessing, spreading verdure and beauty over 
 the moral wastes of life through which it flows ; 
 but because of the wide-spread influence of roy- 
 alty, a king's heart, in God's hand, becomes like a 
 majestic river which waters an entire continent. 
 Such a heart that of Pharaoh's might have been, 
 —but alas ! alas ! 
 
XV. 
 "PAST feeling; 
 
" That is a hard heart indeed that trembles not at the name of 
 a hard heart." — St. Bernard. 
 
 " It is one thing to see your way, another to cut it." — George 
 Eliot. 
 
 " God give him grace to groan." 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 " In the lowest depths a lower deep 
 Still threatening to devour me, opens wide." 
 
 Milton. 
 
XV. 
 
 " PAST FEELING." * 
 
 THERE can be no sadder sight under the skies 
 than a soul that is " past feeling," unless it be a 
 soul incapable of feeling; but a soul incapable of 
 feeling would be a soul destitute of the essential 
 qualities of soul — a thing, and not a being. 
 John Stuart Mill defines personality as " the per- 
 manent possibility of feeling." Sensibility is a 
 quality of soul, as weight and size are qualities of 
 matter. To take away the possibility of feeling, 
 the soul — the feeling nature — must be destroyed. 
 When therefore the pathological figure of bodily 
 insensibility to pain or pleasure is taken to de- 
 scribe mental or moral states the comparison 
 must not be carried too far. Strictly speaking 
 the body is incapable of feeling of any kind, and 
 is but the medium through which the soul feels. 
 When the soul departs from the body, the body 
 is not only past feeling, but past the possibility 
 of feeling. So long as soul or personality re- 
 mains, there remains " the permanent possibility 
 
 * Eph. iv. 19. 
 
206 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 of feeling." Even when a man in his downward 
 progress reaches that woeful state of moral in- 
 sensibility described as " past feeling," he does 
 not sink out of himself into a state of moral 
 nonentity. Although past feeling he is not past 
 the possibility of feeling. 
 
 One who is smitten with a great sorrow may 
 never smile again. He may sit in perpetual 
 gloom, morbidly hugging his grief, refusing to be 
 comforted. As a matter of fact and experience 
 he is past joy ; but is he past the possibility of 
 joy? Is he not deemed guilty for holding him- 
 self down to his sorrow, and away from the sun- 
 shine that seeks an entrance into his heart ? 
 
 A human spirit may be past redemption, while 
 not past the possibility of redemption. That 
 any one does not repent is no evidence that he 
 cannot repent ; that he will not reform is no 
 proof that he cannot reform ; that he lacks the 
 will to serve God is no evidence that he lacks the 
 power. 
 
 The expression " past feeling " refers exclu- 
 sively to present moral condition. Capability of 
 feeling is not burned out, or there could be no 
 pain or remorse on account of sin, and hence no 
 punishment for sin. All pure, heavenly feeling, 
 all sensitiveness of moral touch is gone ; all inter- 
 est in spiritual things is gone. Conscience once 
 tender has become seared as with a hot iron ; the 
 
" PAST FEELING." 20y 
 
 heart of flesh has become a heart of stone. But 
 all feeling is by no means extinguished. The 
 lower feelings may be strong and vigorous while 
 the higher feelings are withered and dead, just as 
 a tree may be alive at the root and rotten at the 
 top. The baser feelings may glow as a furnace 
 while the nobler feelings are burned to a cinder. 
 
 Moral obduration even in the case of demons 
 does not render feeling impossible. " The de- 
 mons believe and shudder." Dark thoughts of 
 the One God whose authority they have con- 
 temned throw their guilty hearts into violent 
 commotion as the sea is lashed into fury by the 
 storm. They are not past foreboding and re- 
 morse, although they may be past all desire to 
 return to divine allegiance. An old legend rep- 
 resents, on the one hand, the arrival before the 
 throne of God of the penitent souls whom his 
 pity admits into heaven, and on the other Satan, 
 who says, " These souls have offended against 
 thee a thousand times ; I, only once." " Hast 
 thou ever asked forgiveness ? " replies the Eter- 
 nal. 
 
 An inquisitive little boy asked his mother, rt If 
 the Devil repented would God forgive him ? " 
 The answer of the embarrassed mother is not 
 reported. But why should any one hesitate to 
 say that God would forgive even the supreme 
 rebel of the universe if he repented ? At a meet- 
 
208 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 ing where all sorts and conditions of sinners "were 
 being prayed for an old Scotch woman exclaimed 
 with a sudden outburst of holy pity : " The Deil, 
 the poor Deil ! naebody prays for the Deil ! " 
 Why not pray for him ? Is the cry of sympathy 
 to be stilled in the presence of the greatest need ? 
 We may not pray that God would forgive the 
 Devil as he is, but surely we have every warrant 
 to pray that he become other than he is that 
 God may forgive him ? But, 0, the pity of it ! 
 fallen angels and fallen men may come into a 
 state where all desire for restoration has passed 
 away. And what can prayers of saints or tears 
 of God avail when this state of settled alienation 
 has been reached ? 
 
 Into this sad state in which all feeling of 
 desire for better things has been left behind, and 
 the proper choice of the will has been reversed, 
 how many insensibly glide! Moral paralysis 
 overtakes them with no sharp and sudden stroke. 
 There is a benumbing of the spiritual faculties at 
 the extremities, and steadily and stealthily the 
 disease creeps inward to the vital parts, until all 
 feeling is gone. Of the deadening effect of 
 wrong-doing the Poet Burns says : — 
 
 " I waive the quantum of the sin, 
 
 The hazard of concealing; 
 
 But oh, it hardens all within, 
 
 And petrifies the feeling." 
 
" PAST FEELING." 209 
 
 The degree of ease with which sin is com- 
 mitted indicates the degree of moral obduracy 
 which has been reached. Those who are past 
 feeling " work all uncleanness with greediness." 
 They hunger and thirst after sin. It is their 
 meat and their drink to do evil. No " compunc- 
 tious visitings of nature " trouble them. The 
 protest of conscience grows ever feebler. An 
 easy victory is won over every uprising thought 
 which stands as a good angel between them and 
 the commission of wrong. As sinful habit grows 
 stronger remorse decreases. 
 
 This explains why so many gospel hearers 
 remain unmoved while listening to truths that 
 once made them tremble and weep. They have 
 become conscience-proof. Their moral natures 
 are so thickly padded with indifference that the 
 lustiest blows fall unfelt. They are not " gospel 
 hardened," but hardened against the Gospel. 
 Encased in worldliness, encrusted by formalism, 
 they are impervious to all divine appeals. Be- 
 neath their thick, tough moral epidermis the 
 sharpest argument fails to penetrate. The Gos- 
 pel does not get a chance with them. They 
 ward it off. They " hold the truth in unright- 
 eousness," that is, they detain the truth — keep it 
 at arm's length — keep it outside their thoughts — 
 that they may continue in unrighteousness. 
 Knowing that the truth is a foe to sin, knowing 
 14 
 
210 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 that when the truth enters the heart sin departs, 
 they do not allow it to come within the thresh- 
 hold of their spiritual habitation. They slam in 
 the face of truth the door of their spiritual home, 
 afraid least she enter and disturb with her 
 accusing voice the false security that reigns 
 within. 
 
 Being a wrong moral condition this deadness 
 of feeling is preventable. It ought to be 
 watched against, fought against. " If ye will 
 hear his voice, harden not your hearts." Every- 
 thing that blunts the finer feelings of the heart 
 and dulls the perceptions of good and evil ought 
 to be carefully avoided. And when the discov- 
 ery is made that sin's opiates are lulling the soul 
 into a deadly stupor, the rudest shocks should be 
 applied, if need be, to bring back moral consci- 
 ousness. The case may be desperate, but it is 
 not hopeless. Strenuous effort will bring back 
 feeling when the soul is " past feeling." Within 
 the most torpid nature latent powers are slum- 
 bering ; somewhere in the most callous heart 
 there is a tender spot ; in the strongest suit of 
 spiritual mail there is a vulnerable point. Foun- 
 tains of the deepest feeling lie in the most de- 
 praved hearts, ready to be unsealed by a kind 
 word or deed. Plunged in the laver of regenera- 
 tion the moral leper who was dry and lifeless as 
 parchment comes forth with his flesh restored 
 
"PAST FEELING. " 211 
 
 " like unto the flesh of a little child." The heart 
 that had moved downward " past feeling," re- 
 gains 
 
 " A sensibility to sin 
 A pain to feel it near." 
 
 There is a sense in which " guilt is a spiritual 
 Rubicon." It cuts the soul off from innocence ; 
 but it does not cut it off from mercy, or from the 
 hope of a better life. The goodness of God has 
 power to lead the guiltiest to repentance. As 
 the hardest stone may be pulverized, as flint by 
 chemical agencies may be reduced to pulp, so 
 the mercy of God can change a heart of stone 
 into a heart of flesh. During winter it may 
 seem as if the sun never would be able to pene- 
 trate beneath the surface of the frost-bound 
 earth ; but as he draws closer to the earth in 
 summer the warmth of his rays goes down to 
 the roots of the trees, and thrills them with life. 
 Thus does the Gospel penetrate to the very 
 center of the soul, exciting the most dormant 
 susceptibilities into activity. The very thing 
 which the Gospel as a curative power accom- 
 plishes for man is to pour new life and energy 
 into his diseased and enfeebled moral nature, 
 quickening every faculty; awakening the con- 
 science, arousing into action the limp and nerve- 
 less will, and inspiring the heart with new and 
 powerful motives. 
 
212 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 A ship is cruising in polar seas. Signs are 
 given that winter is approaching. Heroic efforts 
 are made to reach the open waters ; but such is 
 the disabled condition of the ship, and the 
 enfeebled condition of the crew, that before the 
 weather-beaten craft can thread its way through 
 the floating icebergs, the ice surrounds it, and 
 holds it in its relentless grip. To those discom- 
 fited sailors it might seem as if the cruel grasp of 
 the ice would never relax. But summer returns 
 apace, and opens a pathway of hope for that ice- 
 bound ship. The crew gain " heart of grace ; " 
 new life kindles the eye, and stirs the blood ; 
 new purposes are formed, lethargy and despond- 
 ency are shaken off, and vigorous and successful 
 efforts made to escape from the dominion of the 
 Ice King. 
 
 Must we, can we, believe that to those who 
 have sailed away from God and got fixed in the 
 polar sea of sinful habit there comes no summer 
 of hope ? that those who have gone into unholy 
 courses have nothing to look forward to save an 
 unbroken winter of despair? Is the sunshine of 
 divine pity not sufficiently warm to thaw before 
 the habit-bound soul a path to righteousness and 
 peace ? Is the breath of the divine Spirit not 
 sufficiently powerful to stimulate to resolute 
 action the most dormant nature, and lead it to 
 will and to accomplish deliverance from the 
 
" PAST FEELING." 2 1 3 
 
 dominion of evil ? Is there no hope in God for 
 helpless men? There must be ; there is! " The 
 great God casteth away no man ; " the Merciful 
 Father keeps open before every man a door of 
 deliverance, and if there linger within any heart 
 the faintest feeling of homesickness, it is always 
 possible to push out from the self-imposed exile 
 of a sinful life, and by a resolute endeavor reach 
 at length the sun-lit lands of purity that now 
 seem to lie so far away. 
 
XVI. 
 BARTERING THE BIRTHRIGHT. 
 
" Well doth Agathon say, ' Of this alone is even God deprived 
 — the power of making that which is past never to have been.' " 
 
 —Aristotle. 
 
 " Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie 
 Which we ascribe to Heaven." 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 " Late repentance is seldom true, but true repentance is never 
 too late."— Jay. 
 
 " The good he scorned 
 Stalked off reluctant like an ill-used ghost 
 Not to return ; or if it did, in visits 
 Like those of angels, short and far between." 
 
 Blair 
 
 " Could he with reason murmur at his case, 
 Himself sole author of his own disgrace ? " 
 
 Cowper. 
 
XVI. 
 
 BARTERING THE BIRTHRIGHT. 
 
 SALVATION is man's birthright ; a birthright 
 that comes to him not on the ground of merit, 
 but solely on the ground of his connection with 
 Christ. His title to the free, full, rich life, 
 which is designated in Scripture " eternal life," is 
 held in the name of Christ ; for only through 
 Christ is such a life attainable. If this heavenly 
 birthright, purchased at a cost that can never be 
 computed, be lightly esteemed and madly thrown 
 away — what then ? Is the loss irreparable ? Can 
 the lost paradise never be regained? Is the for- 
 saken home forever shut upon the exile ? Does 
 the cry of agony which pierces the heavens bring 
 no response? Does God stand by unmoved by 
 the tears and prayers of his child, having in his 
 heart no place for pity and pardon ? Is repent- 
 ance ever unavailing ? Is it ever too late to 
 mend ? Will the Lord ever scorn to accept the 
 remnants of a wasted life? Not so have we 
 learned God. 
 
 There is one instance where it is thought that 
 
2l8 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 repentance came too late ; an instance which 
 many consider to be held up as a danger-flag, 
 warning of the possibility of reaching a point 
 where repentance proves of no avail ; namely, the 
 instance where it is said concerning Esau, " Ye 
 know that even when he afterward desired to 
 inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found 
 no place of repentance, though he sought it dili- 
 gently with tears." * 
 
 Esau was a rough, willful child of nature ; not 
 lacking in brave and generous qualities, yet dom- 
 inated by lower desires and impulses. Upon 
 the canvas of the Scriptures he stands out under 
 the description of " a fornicator and profane per- 
 son." A sensual man, evidently, prepared to 
 sacrifice to present indulgence the sacred prerog- 
 atives which were his birthright as the eldest 
 born. To him belonged by right of primogen- 
 iture a double portion of the patrimonial inheri- 
 tance ; the position of patriarchal head, priest, and 
 ruler of the family. All this he bartered for the 
 momentary gratification of appetite. "After- 
 ward he desired to inherit the blessing." The 
 recoil of sated desire had come. Conscience 
 was stung with remorse. His dull, sense-bound 
 eyes saw clear for once, and he became con- 
 vinced of his folly and sin ; or perhaps convinced 
 
 * Heb. xii. 17. 
 
BARTERING THE BIRTHRIGHT. 2 1 9 
 
 more of his folly than of his sin. Loss of his 
 inheritance seems to have given him more grief 
 than loss of manhood. He saw what a fool he 
 had been in allowing himself to be duped by his 
 sleek, artful brother. In selling his precious 
 birthright for a miserable mess of pottage he had 
 made a poor bargain. But what was done in a 
 moment of weakness could not afterwards be 
 undone. The birthright had been given to 
 another, and could not be recalled. " He found 
 no place for repentance, although he sought it 
 bitterly with tears." His sorrow over his loss 
 was deep and pungent. We read in Genesis 
 that " he cried with an exceeding great and 
 bitter cry, and said, Bless me, even me also, O 
 my father." He had found a place for repent- 
 ance in himself, but could find no place for 
 repentance in his father. All his tears and en- 
 treaties could not induce his father to change his 
 mind, and transfer the blessing to him, the right- 
 ful heir. Although unrighteously supplanted by 
 his crafty and perfidious brother, the blessing 
 once given could not be revoked ; the dying will 
 and testament could not be broken. The answer 
 which Esau got to his importunate entreaties 
 was one that shut off all hope. " I have blessed 
 him, yea, and he shall be blessed." 
 
 Our sympathies are with Esau. We instinct- 
 ively pity him, even when we blame him. He 
 
220 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 had a human father to deal with, one who had 
 but a single blessing to dispense, one who was 
 immovable, one who acted under mistaken fidel- 
 ity to a vow which would have been honored 
 more in the breach than in the observance. No 
 supplicating child is treated thus by the Heav- 
 enly Father. For every one of his prodigal chil- 
 dren he has a blessing. His is a heart of love, 
 not of iron. No tearful entreaty is needed to 
 wring a reluctant favor from his hand. He is 
 ever ready to give and to forgive ; ever on the 
 giving and forgiving side. To give is his de- 
 light ; to forgive his special delight. Within 
 his loving breast the faintest cry of the penitent 
 finds a responsive echo, and to the sorrowing, 
 suppliant child the bartered birthright is in- 
 stantly restored. 
 
 With some the case of Judas presents still 
 stronger proof than that of Esau in favor of the 
 doctrine that repentance may come too late. 
 Let us see. Disappointed because of the blight- 
 ing of his inherited Messianic hopes, which at 
 the first the prophet of Nazareth seemed to give 
 promise of fulfilling ; growing in antipathy 
 towards the spiritual ideas of Christ's kingdom, 
 Judas nursed within his breast a spirit of hate 
 that urged him on to the darkest deed the world 
 has witnessed. Refusing to accept the noble 
 destiny for which he had been endowed, and to 
 
BAR T BRING THE BIR TUR IGHT. 2 2 I 
 
 which he had been called, the circumstances which 
 would have led him to blessedness hurried him 
 to ruin. His was too deep and earnest a nature 
 to find any sweetness in revenge. When he saw 
 what he had done he " rued " his fiendish act, 
 and stood before the bar of his own conscience, 
 self-judged, and self-condemned. The burning 
 fire of remorse was instantly kindled. Stung to 
 anguish unbearable he rushed into the Temple, 
 and cast down the blood-money at the feet of 
 the men whose tool he had been, exclaiming, " I 
 have sinned, in that I betrayed innocent blood " ; 
 then hastening to make the only atonement to a 
 guilty, awakened conscience that now seemed 
 possible, he went and hanged himself. Unhappy 
 Judas ! Forgive himself he could not. Divine 
 forgiveness he dared not ask. He felt that a sin 
 so foul even divine mercy could not wash away. 
 Perhaps that was the reason why he confessed to 
 those iron-hearted creatures and not to God. If 
 so, grievously did his despair wrong the Heavenly 
 Father, who has said, " Him that cometh unto 
 me I will in no wise cast out." Altogether bad 
 the betrayer was not. One to whom wrong- 
 doing brought such bitter grief must have had in 
 him something good. Many sell the Master for 
 the world's thirty pieces of silver without experi- 
 encing a single pang of agony. And if remorse 
 so deep and pungent touches our human pity, 
 
222 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 who shall dare to say that it failed to touch the 
 pity of the Infinite Heart? 
 
 Repentance secures pardon, restores the sinner 
 to the sunshine of the Father's smile, but it does 
 not wipe out as with a sponge all the natural 
 consequences of evil doing. No regrets can 
 obliterate the effects of sin. Every broken 
 thread in the web of character leaves a flaw. 
 Repentance cannot stop the flames when once 
 the fire has been kindled. The injury inflicted 
 upon others no after sorrow can repair ; the 
 squandered fortune the remaining years of life 
 may be unable to redeem. In a moment the 
 work of a lifetime may be undone. By one act 
 of wickedness an unblemished reputation may 
 suffer a blot which no future consistent living 
 can efface; by one heedless sin all the benefits of 
 past obedience may be cut off. So delicate a 
 thing is character, so easily is it injured that " a 
 good name got by many actions may be lost by 
 one," and once lost it is seldom regained. " The 
 descent of Avernus," says Virgil, " is easy ; the 
 gate of Pluto stands open night and day, but to 
 retrace one's steps, and return to the upper air, — 
 that is the toil, that is the difficulty." In the 
 retrospect of every life there is much that is irre- 
 trievable, much that might have been, that never 
 more may be. 
 
 " Look carefully lest there be any man that 
 
BARTERING THE BIRTHRIGHT. 22$ 
 
 falleth short of the grace of God/' Such is the 
 lesson, such the warning given in view of Esau's 
 fall. Consider how his one act of folly and weak- 
 ness brought vain regret, and take heed lest thou 
 also become the object of thine own scorn "and 
 contempt. Watch diligently for the first out- 
 croppings of the poisonous root of fleshly desire. 
 Beware of the excessive indulgence of appetite, 
 for that way ruin lies. Exercise prudent self- 
 control, rigorous self-denial. Sell not manhood 
 for gold. Sacrifice not the highest interests to 
 the lowest. Make character, not pleasure, the 
 end of life. Grapple boldly with uprising desire, 
 planting the foot of resolute will upon the neck 
 of every rebellious passion, " resisting unto blood, 
 striving against sin." 
 
 " The hardening of the heart that brings 
 
 Irreverence for the dreams of youth, 
 All thoughts of ill, — all evil deeds 
 
 That have their root in thoughts of ill 
 Whatever hinders or impedes 
 
 The action of the nobler will, — 
 All these must first be trampled down 
 
 Beneath our feet, if we would gain 
 In the bright field of fair renown 
 
 The right of eminent domain." 
 
 Before the final triumph of the spirit over the 
 flesh there comes in every life the battle of 
 Armageddon. Not amid the discordant babble- 
 ments of the world, but in the solitudes of the 
 
224 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 soul is the battle fought out. In the supreme 
 struggle between his higher and lower nature 
 every man is driven into the wilderness. There 
 he enters the contest which is to decide whether 
 henceforth he shall be a freeman or a slave. 
 Self-mastery is the price of heroic struggle. The 
 crown of life, life true and eternal, is the reward 
 of him that overcometh. With this crown no 
 coward's head is adorned. It must be won before 
 it can be worn. 
 
 In the conflict of the Spirit with the flesh evil 
 has to be fought not only when it comes as a 
 roaring lion, but also when it approaches stealth- 
 ily like an impalpable miasma, poisoning the 
 soul-blood, and enervating the moral constitu- 
 tion. Sometimes there comes over the soul a 
 moral inertia which is a harder foe to overcome 
 than the most turbulent passion. Decay of will, 
 decay of moral virility — the penalty of indulgence 
 and inaction — brings on a condition of passive 
 despair from which there is no sharp and sudden 
 rebound. Habitual surrendering to evil gradu- 
 ally weakens the strength of will, until that state 
 of extreme impotence is reached when resolu- 
 tions are still-born, and the soul, a discrowned 
 king, sits amid the ruin of his former greatness, 
 issuing empty mandates. 
 
 With constantly increasing indisposition to 
 action, with the certainty that every awakened 
 
BARTERING THE BIRTHRIGHT. 22$ 
 
 impulse if not carried out will leave the soul 
 weaker than before ; that the power of self- 
 action still remaining if not put into exercise 
 will decline yet more and more — how moment- 
 ous is the present choice! And besides the 
 danger arising from the gradual loss and final 
 collapse of spiritual power, there is the additional 
 danger of the closing in of the prison walls of 
 the earth-life, until no place is left for moral 
 reform. A place for repentance, wide and 
 roomy, is afforded now and here, which is not 
 afforded then and yonder. A place for repent- 
 ance is found at the mercy-seat which is not 
 found at the judgment-seat. When the present 
 day of grace has been sinned away, tears of 
 blood will not recover the birthright which has 
 been lost. It will then be forever beyond the 
 grasp of those who have bartered it away for the 
 world's pelf and pleasure. With a painful sense 
 of self-inflicted loss, the soul, unable to pluck out 
 the memory of the past, will be forced " to sit 
 amid deep ashes of the vanished years," haunted 
 by the bitter reflection that all might have been 
 otherwise. No need will there be for any arbi- 
 trary punishment inflicted from without. The 
 worm that dieth not, the undying worm of an 
 accusing conscience, will gnaw at the vitals of 
 the Spirit. The poet sings that " Sorrow's crown 
 of sorrow is in remembering happier things," 
 '5 
 
226 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 but is not the acme of sorrow rather remembering 
 the glorious possibilities that have been swept 
 away into the irrevocable past ? Upon the ear of 
 the spirit there can fall no sound more doleful 
 than the closing of the golden gates of hope that 
 open inward, but do not open outward. There 
 are dead hopes for which there is no resurrection. 
 There is a repentance which flies with weary- 
 wing over wide wastes of water without finding a 
 blessed ark of rest. Like a foot-sore and faint- 
 ing traveler who has been turned away from an 
 inn in which there was no room for him, the 
 Soul that has bartered away the sacred birth- 
 right of a redeemed manhood, may wander on in 
 " the blackness of darkness," finding that doors 
 of opportunity which once stood open wide are 
 now forever closed. " When once the Master of 
 the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, 
 and ye begin to stand without and to knock at 
 the door saying, ' Lord, open to us ; ' he shall 
 answer and say unto you, I know ye not whence 
 ye are.'* 
 
XVII. 
 
 DEATH A LOSS. 
 
" Many things appear and are irretrievable to us, but there is 
 nothing irretrievable with God." — Thos. Erskine. 
 
 " Nothing is too late 
 Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate." 
 
 Longfellow ( Translation). 
 
 " Heaven delights 
 To pardon erring man : sweet mercy seems 
 Its darling attribute, which limits justice." 
 
 Dryden. 
 
 " Courage, my friend Battus ; to-morrow will perhaps be more 
 favorable ; while there is life there is hope j the dead only are 
 without hope." — Theocritus. 
 
 " As long as life its term extends 
 
 Hope's blest dominion never ends : 
 For while the lamp holds on to burn 
 The greatest sinner may return." 
 
 Scotch Paraphrase. 
 
XVII. 
 
 DEATH A LOSS. 
 
 The surprises of saving grace are never sur- 
 prises of divine paucity, but are always surprises 
 of divine plenitude. In every age God has done 
 exceeding abundantly above all that any finite 
 mind has been able to ask or think. Even in the 
 far off days before the flood, the Eternal Spirit^ 
 the Spirit-of-the-Ages, was already brooding over 
 human hearts. Speaking to the antediluvians 
 through Noah, Jehovah said, " My Spirit shall 
 not always strive with man, for that he also is 
 flesh, and his days shall be an hundred and 
 twenty years."* That is, My Spirit, which is 
 now striving, shall not always strive with man. 
 The moral influence of the Spirit's operations is 
 indicated in the word strive, the universal sweep 
 of his operations in the generic term man. As a 
 father strives with an ungodly son, plying him 
 with reasons and motives to induce him to stop 
 his mad career of sin and shame, so does the 
 
 * Gen. vi. 3. 
 
230 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 divine Spirit suasively strive with man. The 
 Spirit is no impersonal force or substance, but a 
 personal agent, with a heart of infinite love, 
 capable of being grieved, and always grieved 
 when his tender pleadings are resisted. Although 
 often moving outside and above the lower laws 
 of which we are cognizant, he always treats man 
 in harmony with his nature, and appeals to him 
 as an intelligent being. His inner contact is the 
 contact of spirit with spirit. His touch is not 
 the touch of irresistible power, but of loving per- 
 suasion. He enters the soul by every avenue, 
 seeking to woo it from sin, and win it to God. 
 Not only through the monitions of conscience, 
 the common teachings of nature, and the min- 
 istries of providence, but through the sacrifice of 
 Abel, through the saintly life of Enoch, who in 
 these evil days walked with God, through the 
 burning words of Noah, " the herald of righteous- 
 ness," through the building of the ark, which was 
 a token of Noah's faith in the coming judgments, 
 divinely threatened, did the Spirit of God strive 
 with the antediluvians. Redeeming influences 
 beset them behind and before. At every point 
 of progress in their downward march to the 
 prison of the Universe, they were interrupted by 
 pitying, pleading love. In every upward struggle 
 the Holy Spirit of God stood ready to help them. 
 It was, however, plainly intimated that a time 
 
DEATH A LOSS. 23 1 
 
 was fast approaching when the holiness-inspiring, 
 sin-destroying influences by which they were en- 
 circled would be withdrawn ; or rather, a time 
 was coming when they would pass beyond the 
 reach of these gracious influences. " My Spirit 
 shall not always strive with man." Awful threat ! 
 the force of which we dare not weaken. Are 
 we then to infer that somewhere this side of 
 the grave there is a point at which the Spirit 
 gives up striving? If so, there must be a time 
 when salvation is impossible, for apart from the 
 Spirit's help no soul can attain unto salvation. 
 This frightful doctrine, which many, in spite of 
 the protests of the heart, have felt themselves 
 driven to accept, has been voiced in the well- 
 known hymn of Dr. J. A. Alexander, which has 
 been well styled " The dirge of a lost soul." 
 
 " There is a line by us unseen, 
 That crosses every path, 
 The hidden boundary between 
 God's patience and his wrath. 
 
 Oh ! where is this mysterious bourne, 
 
 By which our path is crossed ; 
 Beyond which God himself has sworn 
 
 That he who goes is lost ? 
 
 How far may we go on in sin ? 
 
 How long will God forbear ? 
 When does hope end, and where begin 
 
 The confines of despair ? " 
 
232 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 It is assumed that the boundary line between 
 probation and retribution lies on the hither, and 
 not on the thither side of the tomb ; that hope 
 ends before the close of life ; that the soul enters 
 " the confines of despair" before reaching the 
 limit of its earthly existence. Is this doctrine of 
 doom according to truth ? Is it not " another 
 gospel " than the sweet evangel of mercy which 
 forms the burden of the Bible, and which pro- 
 claims that "to him that is joined to all the 
 living there is hope"? Let a man be never so 
 bad, is there not hope while there is life, that he 
 will amend ? Is there not hope that a change 
 may be wrought in him by the Spirit of God ? 
 Extraordinary cases do indeed occur in which 
 life seems to be protracted beyond the period of 
 moral agency ; but these are cases of living death, 
 cases in which reason is unseated, or cases in 
 which the avenues leading to the soul, from the 
 earthward side, are closed up. So long as man 
 can think God reasons with him ; so long as he 
 retains his moral agency, the words, " Now is the 
 day of salvation," can never be of doubtful ap- 
 plication. 
 
 A cloud of difficulty is at once lifted from our 
 subject when it is noted why the Spirit of God 
 would not always strive with man. Jehovah 
 said, " My spirit shall not always strive with man 
 FOR that he also is flesh, and his days shall be 
 
DEATH A LOSS. 233 
 
 an hundred and twenty years." The idea is not 
 that there was to be a time this side eternity 
 when the antediluvians would be given up by the 
 Spirit of God, but that being mortal a time 
 would come when the hand of death would sever 
 their connection with the present source of sav- 
 ing help. For while it is true that the opera- 
 tions of divine grace have a moral rather than a 
 time limit, yet there are certain things limited to 
 time, and among these are the present gracious 
 influences of the divine Spirit. Those who do 
 not yield up their lives to the guiding and 
 moulding influences of God's Spirit enter upon 
 their future state of existence under great disad- 
 vantages : those who have been Spirit-led and 
 governed begin the future life under the most 
 favorable auspices. What death will bring to 
 any one is determined by what life has been. 
 There are no broken links in the chain of exist- 
 ence. " Death is no juggler to transmute quali- 
 ties by a touch." Death is merely an incident, a 
 transition, a change of place, not a change of 
 self-hood. Death makes no gap in any life. It 
 is the birth-pang into a higher or lower state of 
 existence. All the experiences of the present 
 are carried forward into the future ; the harvest 
 of character here ripened is there gathered in, 
 and stored up. Nothing is lost. As life is 
 begun here, it is continued there. " To be con- 
 
234 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 tinued in the next," is written at the close of the 
 last chapter of every human life. When life has 
 been an ascent death will be an ascent ; when 
 life has been a descent death will be a descent ; 
 when it has been gain to live it will be gain to 
 die ; when life has been a loss, death must be a 
 loss. Those who have lived in the spirit, and 
 have by a divine alchemy brought heavenly gain 
 out of earthly loss, suffer no loss by death, but 
 continue to keep " on the gain," advancing from 
 glory to glory ; but those who have lived in the 
 flesh, those whose apparent gains have brought 
 them real loss, those who in Order to gain the 
 world have thrown away manhood, divine com- 
 munion, heavenly hope, holy character — in a 
 word sou/, end the present life and begin the 
 future life in a state of spiritual bankruptcy and 
 ruin. Not the least item in their loss is the loss 
 of spiritual privilege. It is a law of the spiritual 
 kingdom that non-use or abuse of privilege leads 
 to its withdrawal, and that resistance of remedial 
 influence is followed by dispossession. " From 
 him that hath not shall be taken away that which 
 he hath." And while we must admit the con- 
 tinued possibility of moral change so long as the 
 moral nature of man remains intact, yet by the 
 abuse of privilege or power man may put himself 
 in conditions unfavorable to moral change, condi- 
 tions which leave a very slender probability of 
 
DEATH A LOSS. 235 
 
 any upward moral movement ever taking place. 
 At the touch of death opportunities vanish 
 which never return ; and even if new opportuni- 
 ties are afterwards given, they recur in a con- 
 stantly diminishing measure. The Roman king, 
 who refused to purchase the Sibylline leaves after 
 the first and second offers, paid at last for the 
 remaining three the price asked for the original 
 nine ; three of the precious leaves having been 
 destroyed upon each refusal. And so by every 
 refusal of divine mercy something is lost ; by 
 continued refusal all is lost. The slighted favor 
 of to-day is never carried into to-morrow. God 
 still warns those who are repulsing his efforts for 
 their redemption, saying unto them, " My spirit 
 shall not always strive with man." 
 
 The text under consideration has an added 
 value as supplying a side light by which we are 
 helped to an understanding of the obscure text 
 in the first epistle of St. Peter, where Christ is 
 represented as preaching " in the spirit " (i. e. in 
 his own essential, spiritual nature, in which he 
 was quickened from the dead,) " to spirits in 
 prison." * Whether the preaching of Christ took 
 place during his pre-incarnate, or during his post- 
 incarnate state ; whether it was addressed to men 
 on earth who are now spirits in prison, or to spir- 
 
 * 1 Peter iii. 18-21. 
 
2$6 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 its in prison who were once men on earth, the 
 point to be noted in the present connection is, 
 that in the early morning hour of history before 
 the Flood, an efflux of spiritual power was en- 
 joyed. The first droppings of the heavenly rain, 
 which at Pentecost was outpoured in a copious 
 shower, then fell to earth ; the first link of the 
 great chain of divine Spirit-force by which the 
 ages are bound together in one continuous dis- 
 pensation of redemption, then came into view. 
 God was at work on man. With the spirits in 
 prison, when as yet they were men on earth, the 
 Spirit of God strove, through a long period of 
 deferred judgment. A wondrous display of 
 mercy preceded the fearful doom by which they 
 were finally overtaken. 
 
 From the Old Testament narrative some impor- 
 tant facts may be gathered relating to the world- 
 life of the imprisoned spirits to whom Christ 
 preached. The picture given of their moral 
 condition is a dark one. In words at once 
 graphic and suggestive we are told that " God 
 saw that the wickedness of man was great in 
 the earth, and that every imagination of the 
 thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." 
 The disease was both widespread and deep ; the 
 fountain of life was poisoned, the heart was 
 corrupt to the very core, moral degeneration was 
 well nigh universal. Calls to repentance were 
 
DEATH A LOSS. 237 
 
 unheeded, the day of gracious opportunity was 
 sinned away. " While the ark was preparing " 
 the long-suffering of God waited upon that evil 
 generation. The hundred and twenty years of 
 respite which had been granted to see if they 
 would repent and turn to God, at length expired. 
 Under a Messianic ministry they continued diso- 
 bedient, unpersuadable. " They were eating and 
 drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until 
 the day that Noah entered into the ark, and 
 knew not until the flood came and took them 
 all away,"— away from the spiritual privileges 
 which they had so long neglected, — away from 
 the close and tender touch of the loving Spirit 
 whose sweet influences they had so long rejected. 
 Their end was destruction because they minded 
 earthly things, and slighted the things of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 All questions of historic value aside, the 
 Noachic deluge forms a striking object-lesson, 
 the ethical import of which lies upon the surface. 
 " It is," as Oehler has so well put it, " the first 
 judgment in the world executed by the holy God, 
 who will no longer permit his Spirit to be pro- 
 faned by man's sin." The Puritan Howe de- 
 scribes Jehovah as thus addressing the unhappy 
 souls who had so stoutly withstood the strivings 
 of his Spirit : " Because thou hast so great a 
 mind to gain the day, and to deliver thyself from 
 
238 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 under the power of my grace, get that unhappy 
 victory, and perish by it." Nay, Puritan Father! 
 rather would Jehovah say : " Keep yourselves 
 under the power of my grace : and let my Spirit 
 win the victory over your obstinate hearts, that 
 ye perish not." 
 
 Out of the darkness of judgment, divine solici- 
 tude shines forth with ever increasing brightness, 
 along the whole line of that special movement of 
 God manward, of which the Bible is the record. 
 Other religions represent man as seeking God ; 
 the religion of the Bible alone represents God as 
 seeking man. So long as the smallest ember of 
 spiritual power lies smoldering beneath the ashes 
 of a ruined life, there is no abatement of the 
 efforts of God to save the lost. When his efforts 
 fail, he mourns with a sorrow of heart which can- 
 not be measured. The difference it makes to 
 him whether the lost remain lost, or are at last 
 reclaimed, none may ever know. Into his joy, 
 when the end of his long and loving search has 
 been attained, earth may refuse to enter; but as 
 he returns from the wilderness leading the wan- 
 derer home, Heaven's bells peal their loudest, 
 
 " And the angels echo around the throne, 
 Rejoice, for the Lord brings back his own." 
 
XVIII. 
 
 THE FINALLY OF THE PRESENT. 
 
"The curtains of yesterday drop down; the curtains of to- 
 morrow roll up; but yesterday and to-morrow both are." — 
 Carlyle. 
 
 " Oh, but to tarry once more 
 
 At the point where two roads met, 
 And choose as we chose not then, — 
 Made wise by a life's regret ! '* 
 
 Anonymous. 
 
 " Urge them while their souls 
 Are capable of this ambition ; 
 Lest, zeal now melted by the windy breath 
 Of soft petitions, pity and remorse 
 Cool and congeal again to what it was." 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT. 
 
 In cautious, measured words Bishop Butler 
 asserts that " that which makes the question con- 
 cerning the future life of so great importance to 
 us, is our capacity of happiness or misery ; and 
 that which makes the consideration of it to be of 
 so great importance to us is the supposition of 
 our happiness hereafter depending upon our 
 actions here." * The presence in man of the 
 moral instinct or conviction that the present is 
 the seed-time of which eternity is the harvest, 
 that upon the life that now is hinges the life that 
 is to come, none will deny. And unquestionably 
 the general tenor of Scripture teaching produces 
 upon the popular mind the impression that Sal- 
 vation is the paramount affair of this world ; that 
 in some special sense the quality of moral finality 
 attaches to the present state of existence. " The 
 obvious practical lesson and purpose of Scripture 
 upon this question," says Dr. Chalmers, " is to cut 
 
 * Analogy of Religion, Chap. II. 
 16 
 
242 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 off every pretext of postponing the care of eter- 
 nity from this world, and to press home upon 
 every unsophisticated reader of his Bible the 
 dread alternative of Now, or Never." 
 
 In the much-quoted text, " Behold, now is the 
 accepted time ; behold, now is the day of salva- 
 tion " * the doctrine of the finality of the present 
 is indeed taught, but it is taught inferentially, 
 and not, as might at first be supposed, by direct 
 and positive statement. The immediate design 
 of this text is to present a motive to Christian 
 activity. In the preceding verse the Apostle 
 says, " We then, as workers together with Him, 
 beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of 
 God in vain." " We pray you that you frustrate 
 not the purpose for which the forgiving grace of 
 God has been bestowed; but that you constantly 
 strive to take hold of that for which God has 
 taken hold of you." What is the purpose for 
 which divine grace is given ? Is it not this, — 
 that it may be conveyed to others ? All per- 
 sonal experiences of inward delight are means 
 rather than ends. What is taken in should be 
 given out; what has been inpoured should be 
 outpoured. Those that come unto Christ and 
 drink should become fountains of living water ; 
 the inflow of living water into their hearts is to 
 
 * 2 Cor. vi. 2, 
 
THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT 243 
 
 be followed by an outflow into other hearts. 
 Between the ocean fullness of God and the 
 world's emptiness the believing soul forms a con- 
 necting pipe. Salvation comes to the world from 
 God, but it comes from God through his people. 
 It is the divine purpose and plan that " by the 
 church might be made known the manifold wis- 
 dom of God." 
 
 While urging those who had received the 
 grace of God not to shut it up in their own 
 bosom but to let it stream out upon others, the 
 Apostle enforces his exhortation with the argu- 
 ment, " Now is the accepted time ; now is the 
 day of salvation." The present is a favorable 
 time, a time of grace, a time of acceptance. 
 There is no need to "wait in doubt, restraining 
 prayer. God's good time, God's set time, is now. 
 All the motives that could lead him to answer 
 prayer for others to-morrow are equally power- 
 ful to-day. Unto his Anointed he said of old, 
 "At an acceptable time I hearkened unto thee;" 
 to-day he says unto all his praying people, " Be- 
 hold, now is the acceptable time." 
 
 Another link is added to the chain of argu- 
 ment ; Now, this very day, is the day of salvation, 
 the day in which God is putting forth his utter- 
 most of saving power ; therefore let those who 
 have received his grace stir up their strength, and 
 work together with him in the redemption of 
 
244 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 humanity. God is ready to bestow redeeming 
 power upon men, and he seeks to use his people 
 in its distribution. The reason why the water of 
 life often fails to reach thirsty, perishing souls, is 
 because the appointed channels of communica- 
 tion are choked up. The work of God lingers 
 because the instruments upon which he depends 
 are not prepared for use. God is urgent, but his 
 people are supine ; God is in haste, but his peo- 
 ple lag. Every loiterer he rebukes ; every will- 
 ing-footed messenger he sends forth crowned with 
 blessing, upon errands of love ; power for service 
 he abundantly bestows ; work done he accepts 
 and rewards ; divine might he yokes with human 
 weakness ; divine gains he puts to the credit .of 
 the human agent. In this pledged co-operation 
 of the divine with the human, in this open assur- 
 rance of being heard and helped, is found one of 
 the strongest motives to instant and hearty con- 
 secration to the work of saving men. That now 
 is the day of the Lord's power, should constrain 
 his people to be free-will offerings, and render 
 to him willing-handed, willing-hearted service. 
 That " now is the day of salvation " should incite 
 those with whom the Lord is working, to put 
 forth their strongest efforts to push towards ful- 
 fillment the purpose of redemption upon which 
 the heart of God is set. Belief in the present 
 possibility of salvation furnishes the needed ful- 
 
THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT. 24$ 
 
 crum upon which to rest the lever of Christian 
 effort. The age now running swiftly to its close 
 affords possibilities of fruitful Christian service 
 that no preceding age ever offered. It is now 
 " the fullness of the times." The river of salva- 
 tion is at full flood. Never could life be made 
 to tell for the Kingdom of God so much as now. 
 Never was the responsibility of living so great as 
 now. 
 
 As the initial sphere of spiritual development, 
 the present life can hardly be sufficiently mag- 
 nified. Not what it fits us for, but what it is 
 constitutes its highest element of worth. Life 
 does not simply afford a chance of being saved ; 
 it is one continuous opportunity, one perpetual 
 now. In every life, " Now is the favorably 
 accepted time ; Now is the day of Salvation." 
 During the continuance of the present time- 
 period a season of amnesty is enjoyed ; doors of 
 special privilege stand open ; favors are offered 
 which are only for to-day; golden opportunities 
 are available which when gone out of life will 
 never return ; alluring possibilities present them- 
 selves which pass away for ever at the setting of 
 life's sun. Not the dread of the future, but the 
 glorious opportunity of the present is made the 
 chief incentive to spiritual activity. Repent, not 
 because the Kingdom of Hell is at hand, but 
 because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. 
 
246 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 Repent — not that you may escape the doom of 
 perdition, but that you may enter into the king- 
 dom, — the kingdom of righteousness and peace, 
 and joy in the Holy Ghost, — the kingdom of 
 royal, Christlike souls. And let repentance be 
 speedy, because only for a limited time is the 
 present respite granted, only for a limited time 
 are the present immunities given — only until the 
 close of life's brief day are the present opportu- 
 nities held out. The Intercessor of man does 
 not pray that the doom pronounced over the 
 barren tree may not descend, but that it be 
 delayed. " Let it alone this year also, till I shall 
 dig about it and dung it." This final effort of 
 divine long-suffering love to redeem life from 
 spiritual barrenness fills up the decisive period of 
 trial to which the whole future is linked. " If it 
 bear fruit thenceforth, well ; but if not thou shalt 
 cut it down." 
 
 To the question, " Wherefore do the wicked 
 live?" this then is the answer; "They live that 
 they may have time to repent, time to reform, 
 time to ripen." If the mercy now offered is 
 missed, it may never be won tack. Says St. 
 Ambrose, " God hath promised pardon to the 
 penitent, but he has not promised to-morrow to 
 the negligent. While you have time you may 
 repent ; but if you delay, when you would repent 
 you may not have time." " Seek ye the Lord 
 
THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT 247 
 
 while he may be found ; call ye upon him while 
 he is near." " Walk while ye have the light lest 
 darkness come upon you." " If thou hadst 
 known, in this day, even thou, the things which 
 belong unto peace ! But now they are hid from 
 thine eyes." 
 
 Unspeakably precious is the present as the day 
 of salvation — the day of preeminent privilege 
 and possibility. In it — as has been well said by 
 John Pulsford — " an appointed time is given for 
 electing the principles of our life, and for getting 
 them rooted and settled in us, as the foundation 
 on which to build our eternal character." In the 
 choices and actions of each passing hour eternal 
 issues are wrapped up. The soul is now receiv- 
 ing an upward start in the path to eternal life, or 
 a downward start in the path to eternal death. 
 By slow, yet constant accretions a character is 
 being formed which contains for its vital center 
 " a self-hood without God, or a self-hood whose 
 springs are in God." What the future will be, is 
 being determined by the principles and habits 
 which shape and control the present. As to-day 
 is the harvest of all the yesterdays, the future is 
 the harvest of all the present. Deep in every 
 breast is planted the conviction that life is set in 
 eternal relations. " God hath set eternity in the 
 heart of man," * and thoughts of what is beyond 
 
 * Ecc. iii. 11. 
 
248 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 cast their lights and shadows upon every part of 
 the landscape of his life. Man is touched by the 
 future. He lives in the shadow of the judg- 
 ment-seat. Every atom of his conduct here is 
 felt to have a practical bearing upon the here- 
 after. Earnests of the coming inheritance are 
 already in his hand ; within his conscience the 
 fires of retribution are already kindled. Where 
 holiness is there is heaven ; where sin is there is 
 hell. 
 
 Between the present and the future no hard- 
 and-fast line can be drawn. They form distinct 
 but united realms of the one King, — the gentle 
 Lord of love who died upon the cross for man's 
 offences. Death, the finale of life, marks the 
 end of the one realm and the beginning of the 
 other. In what respects the two realms are 
 alike, and in what respects they differ ; whether 
 death is merely the end of the present term of 
 moral education and trial, or whether it is the 
 point at which the moral education and trial of 
 every man cease forever, are questions upon 
 which dogmatism is forbidden by the silence of 
 Scripture. Of this only are we certain : the pro- 
 bation of man will stop when his moral educa- 
 tion stops, and not before. When God ceases to 
 sow he will cease to look for a harvest. And he 
 will cease to sow only when he finds that the 
 soil upon which his seed is thrown has become 
 
THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT. 249 
 
 petrified into unreceptive rock. In every in- 
 stance the ceasing of divine saving effort is deter- 
 mined by the obduracy of the sinner. So that 
 there is an important sense in which the day of 
 salvation is the day of human persuadability, and 
 the day of doom the day of human unpersuada- 
 bility. In the final judgment the present epoch 
 of redemption comes to an end ; but it is a mis- 
 take to make the final judgment the crisis of des- 
 tiny. The real crisis of destiny is reached when 
 a soul has judged himself unworthy of eternal 
 life, and God has confirmed his judgment. 
 
 Is the judgment passed by man upon himself, 
 and confirmed by God, reversible ? Is the final 
 judgment of time, absolutely the final judgment ; 
 or is judgment a continuous process? Does pro- 
 bation end at death for all, or is it continued 
 into the future world for any? Does moral 
 choice go on forever betwixt the darkness and 
 the light ; or, does it take place in every life, 
 once for all ? These questions lead us among the 
 mysteries, the full knowledge of which has not 
 been given to mortal. Where knowledge fails 
 we guess and hope. But, whatever room for un- 
 certainty may be thought to exist as to whether 
 then is the day of salvation, that now is the day 
 of salvation admits of no uncertainty whatsoever. 
 Short of the uttermost of human need the re- 
 demptive resources of the present never fail. 
 
250 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 
 
 While life lasts man may reverse his self-pro- 
 nounced sentence of condemnation, and be saved 
 from his own undoing. Here, at least, faith and 
 reason can firmly plant their feet. For think 
 you that God would keep on the footstool of 
 mercy, a rebel from whom his mercy was denied ? 
 Think you that he would ply with motives to 
 repentance a heart that had lost the power to 
 turn? Think you that he would prune and 
 nourish a tree that was not merely barren but 
 dead? Think you that he would keep under the 
 ripening sun of his goodness a soul for whom 
 nothing but the unquenchable fire was possible ? 
 Perish the thought ! 
 
 Affirmations respecting the present life as a 
 day of salvation leave every question touching 
 the days that are yet to come, entirely open. It 
 is the merest fragment of God's redemptive pur- 
 pose that the Bible has revealed. What we see 
 is only the swelling bud ; the ripe fruit will come 
 later on. Age will follow age, dispensation 
 stretch on beyond dispensation until the harvest 
 of all ages has been reaped, and the purpose of 
 God completed. Then, but not till then can the 
 success of the work of redemption be known. 
 
 Upon the dark background of awe and mystery 
 which covers the future, one star shines brightly 
 out ; we know that God is love, and that nothing 
 that love can do to conquer sin, or to restore the 
 
THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT. 2$ I 
 
 sinner, will be left undone. Surprises may await 
 us in the future world greater than any that have 
 gladdened us on earth. The ocean of Infinite 
 Mercy which from the beginning of time has 
 been emptying itself into this world has not run 
 dry. Christ has not loved his last ; Calvary has 
 not exhausted the saving power of the Divine 
 Redeemer. 
 
 " There is grace enough for thousands 
 Of new worlds as bright as this.' ' 
 
 And while Heaven's granaries are full to 
 bursting will a single soul anywhere be left to 
 starve ? If we know not the future we know 
 God, and in his hands we can well afford to leave 
 all things, content to remain in ignorance con- 
 cerning everything he has been pleased to hide 
 from us ; but confident that the perfect explana- 
 tion which awaits us will put to shame every 
 doubt with respect to his eternal goodness with 
 which our faith on earth was shadowed. 
 
 The Bible itself professes to give only a par- 
 tial unveiling of the future. It conceals much 
 more than it reveals. It often places upon its 
 utterances a wonderful restraint. When man 
 with palpitating heart awaits an answer, the oracle 
 is often dumb. As much as is necessary for 
 practical purposes is given, and no more. The 
 Bible is " a lamp unto the feet, and a light unto 
 
252 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 the path," not a light that dazzles and blinds, 
 but a twinkling foot-lamp that makes plain to the 
 traveler the path of life and duty. Wide spaces 
 are not illumined by it, but there is light suffi- 
 cient to give direction to conduct in this work-a- 
 day world. Those who follow it are made wise 
 unto salvation, and are led at length into the 
 glorious light of a new-born day, in which the 
 dark clouds of earth melt into eternal sunshine ; 
 those who despise its guiding light lose their 
 way, and wander aimlessly on, stumbling upon 
 the dark^mountains. 
 
 Every declaration to the effect that the present 
 is a time of favor implies that in the experience 
 of those who have not improved the opportunities 
 of the present there will be a change for the 
 worse. Delusive is the dream of the greater 
 things which the future will do. No advantage 
 can be offered in the future which is not held out 
 in the present. Never can the Heavenly Father 
 be more willing to save, never can Christ be 
 more able to save than at the present moment. 
 In the outgoing of redemptive effort, high-water- 
 mark has been touched. The Omega of redemp- 
 tion has been uttered ; atonement has been 
 completed; the Holy Spirit has been poured out 
 upon all flesh, in a flood of saving power. Noth- 
 ing has been kept back. Heaven's treasury 
 contains no more precious el than that which 
 
THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT. 253 
 
 has been given as the ransom-price of this lost 
 world of ours. Divine love and power may keep 
 on repeating themselves, but they can go further. 
 A point of spiritual finality has been reached 
 which makes the present " the day of Salvation," 
 in a sense that no other day ever was. The 
 utmost anticipation of the largest hope is that 
 something of the grace of to-day may flow into 
 the future. Nothing better than the Christ or 
 Holy Spirit of the present is ever dreamed of. 
 No resources can be available in the future sur- 
 passing those of the present. No firmer ground 
 upon which to build the house not made with 
 hands — the temple of a holy character — can be 
 furnished by the future than that which the pres- 
 ent affords. Contrariwise, all the surplus of 
 advantage is on the side of the present. Can 
 continued estrangement from God prepare for 
 spiritual change? Can sinful habits be more 
 easily uprooted the deeper they are fixed in the 
 soil of a depraved heart ? Can graduation in 
 the school of Satan prepare for entrance into 
 the school of Christ ? Can the treasures of the 
 present be flung away without incurring eternal 
 loss ? Can duty be delayed without danger ? 
 What is done in the way of moral reform, per- 
 sonal or general, must be done quickly. There is 
 no time to lose. Day is vanishing ; Night is ap- 
 proaching. Character is becoming stereotyped. 
 
254 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 
 
 " There is an infinite voice in the sin and suffer- 
 ing of earth's millions which makes every idle 
 moment guilt, and seems to cry out, — If you do 
 not bestir yourself for love's sake now, it will 
 soon be too late." Before the last sand runs 
 through time's hour-glass; before the candle of 
 hope flickers in its socket and expires; before 
 the last page in life's book is reached, and the lids 
 are closed, the work which the Father has given 
 each one to do, must needs be accomplished. 
 How important then, ere the sun goes down, to 
 "buy up the opportunity ! " What diversities of 
 holy service the future life may bring, we know 
 not ; but it is certain that earth is the sphere, 
 and death the limit of many distinctive forms of 
 labor, which belong exclusively to the present 
 epoch of redemption. Laborers are called into 
 the vineyard up to the eleventh hour, but not 
 after. When the Clock of Time points to the 
 twelfth hour, the present day of gracious oppor- 
 tunity is over, the night has come when no man 
 can work ; and all neglected or unfinished tasks 
 remain undone for ever. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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