The evangelical succession : or, The spiritual lineage of the Christian church and ministry : being the twenty-ninth Fernley lecture, delivered in London, July, 1889

Front matter

£be Evangelical Succession

OR

THE SPIRITUAL LINEAGE

Contents

Introduction .

I. The World's Promise

II. The Righteousness of Faith

Conclusion

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THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION Jntro Suction

It is not intended, in these pages, to attempt a refutation of the doctrine of so-called " Apostolical Succession " by dealing — at any length, or primarily — with the details of its claims ; but rather, by presenting the alternative truth, to allow its own intrinsic reasonableness so to commend itself, and its beauty to become so manifest, that error shall have less power to deceive, and false glamour to attract. Such attempt may have, indeed, small title to originality ; yet it may serve some purpose, if it help in any measure to recall our younger people to an appreciation of the glory of their spiritual heritage.

The real secret of the widespread triumph of " church " principles in our day has been, not the devotion of those who have adopted and inculcated them, though that has been great ; still less the inherently convincing character of what is, after all, a stupendous assumption, even when it seems to be a closely reasoned argument ; but the fact that a great, an imposing, and (granting the ever-present assumption) a consistent ideal has captivated the imagination, and thus conquered the faith, of those who have become its devotees. It is therefore our wisdom to let a greater and truer ideal, if such may be found, by exerting its own proper attraction, more than neutralise the spell of this bewitching but evil dream. For, good as may be the motives of many of the adherents of that theory, and undeniably good as has been much of their work, yet the theory itself is essentially unspiritual, and the vice of unspirituality is apt to taint all its accompaniments, and to derogate from the best results.

Over against every worldly ideal, however religious its guise, the kingdom which is " not of this world " ever utters its decisive protest, and most decisively by asserting its own peerless claims. An attempt is made, in the following chapters, to exhibit the religion of Christ (as prepared for in the former times, and as afterwards fulfilled) under its essentially spiritual aspect, and as therefore free. The great spiritual commonwealth of the people of God claimskfree citizens, and its spiritual lineage, alike of privilege and of responsibility, is open only to the freedom of faith. This, then, is the true succession — evangelical, as distinguished from ecclesiastical, and asking the loyalty of unfeigned faith in Christ, rather than submission to the dictates of men.

Concerning the late Dean Butler, it was said, in review of his Life and Letters, and with seeming endorsement of his views expressed in the words quoted, " He had little sympathy with what he called the ' fierce and dangerous enthusiasm ' of the Salvation Army, or with any form of mere emotional religion, and there is a characteristic passage in one of his letters that exemplifies his mode of thought : See how well our Wantage lads do in London. . . . Why ? Because they have learned the real gospel — not the sham

Introduction thing that people call the gospel, all feelings and rubbish, but the gospel which Christ taught, which commands men to use the means of grace, to accept the ministrations of God's ministers, and to obey the Church. All this is definite and clear, something that one can understand. But ' Come to Christ,' — what does that mean ? or, ' Have you found peace ? ' " {Spectator, Feb. 12, 1898). It would be hardly becoming, on our part, to volunteer a reply to those whose express business it is to make known the call of Christ, and to urge His message of reconciliation ; but, for ourselves, this is, practically, the question that we have now to ask and answer.

Our appeal must be, primarily and supremely, to Scripture, but to Scripture as itself appealing to the mind and heart of man, and as attested alike by the resulting experience of those who receive its testimony, and by the broader effects of its accepted teaching in the history of the world. Due regard, indeed, should be paid to the perspective of Scripture teaching, the Old Testament being confessedly a preparation for the New, and moreover a progressive preparation ; so that we may expect to find methods of divine discipline, intended to be only transitory, adapted to the imperfect spiritual apprehension of the people, or even as rendered necessary by their ill-developed morals. But the way of God's working was onward and upward, and His revelation came to its full-orbed splendour in the gospel of His Son. For the understanding of this gospel there needs no scholar's lore, nor the vantage of official place and power, but only a childlike willingness to learn the truth as it is in Jesus, that we may become wise unto salvation.

Cbapter tbe jffrst

For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off. — Acts ii. 39.

That is, it is not the children of the flesh that are children of God; but the children of the promise. — Rom. ix. 8.

In tracing our spiritual lineage, as children of God and servants of Christ, we must go back to the beginning. We shall thus see the subject in its true perspective ; and, acquainting ourselves with the original charter of our rights and liberties, we shall be the better able afterwards to disentangle the true succession of living faith and holy ministry from those restrictions of later times, which are partly of human devising, and in any case the result of man's own unbelief and sin.

The early twilight of the world's day was still and pure; but ere it was well begun the gathering clouds portended storm, and even as the day was breaking

God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.

Nevertheless, the light of dawn was there, though tempesttost ; there were islets of blue where the clouds were rifting ; and sweet gleams, as of a heavenlier day, stole forth from the lurid east, casting their light like a benediction across the troubled earth. Warning, condemnation, sentence of death — these are the voices that we hear following one another all too swiftly. But the very condemnation is pitiful, as of One who " knoweth our frame " ; and mingling with the sentence of death itself is the first utterance of the promise of life.

Such in brief is the record of that beginning of our history. " The Lord God planted a garden eastward, in Eden ; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant and good ; the tree of life also, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Gen. ii. 8, 9). Here we have a picture of human existence and its possibilities : a central life that is divinely good, and that suffuses with its blessedness all surrounding creature good ; but, as attendant upon this, the mysterious potentiality of evil. " And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat : but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (ii. 16, 17). So are command and promise blended : the command peremptory, against all unlawful indulgence ; the promise free and boundless, of all innocent delight. And beneath the very branches of the tree of life the warning speaks of death. Then the tragedy of the transgression darkens the fair scene ; the heavens hide their light, and the threatened death befalls ; while the transgressor, driven forth from Eden, carries with him the promise of a deliverance that shall undo the work of death — a promise which must mean that wrathful cherubim shall bar the way of the tree of life no longer, but that life forfeited shall be regained.

I

Let us give our attention, in the first place, to the contents of this primeval promise made by God to man. Implicitly, as we have seen, it was a promise of life, even as the threatening had been a threatening of death.

" Thou shalt surely die " : it is not enough to say, in explanation of these words, that from the very day of the transgression man became liable to death, whether the death of the body, or the darker death beyond. This may be part of the truth ; but it does not adequately interpret the unique decisiveness and precision of the statement. " In the day " — not as impending, nor even as beginning, but as actually and " surely " taking place. What was man's best life ? — was it not God's favour, God's likeness ? This it is which manifestly crowns the ascending scale of the various orders of existence as described in the " Hymn of Creation" with which the Bible opens (Gen. i. 26, 27); and this was the life that was so immediately, so utterly lost in the very moment of the transgression. God's favour, God's likeness — both were gone : such was the bitterness of death.

But both should be restored : this is the essential meaning of the promise of life, and from the beginning this is the gift that God has purposed to give to man. For the primal promise has been repeated a thousandfold in the course of the passing ages, becoming clearer with each repetition, and manifesting more and more the fulness of its meaning. And, with whatever variety of presentation, and however rich the development, we find the same central and essential truth in the world's promise from its earliest utterance until the fulfilment in Jesus Christ.

Let us look, by way of illustration, at some of the outstanding instances of the repetition of God's promise to men. To Abraham He said, "I will . . . be a God unto thee " (Gen. xvii. 7) ; to Moses, " I am . . . the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob " (Exod. iii. 6) ; and in like manner Moses urged the people, bidding them " cleave unto Him : for He is thy life " (Deut. xxx. 20). The unique meaning of this expression is made clear by our Lord's argument in conversation with the Sadducees : " Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (Matt. xxii. 31, 32). That is, the relationship between God and His people is so intimate that they- true life is in His love, and therefore the bare possibility of His ever casting them off into nothingness is unthinkable. The Psalms are full of this truth, and sometimes give explicit utterance to what is always the implied assumption, as just indicated, namely, that such life is itself the pledge of its own continuance. " Thou wilt show me the path of life : in Thy presence is fulness of joy " (Ps. xvi. 11); "As for me, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness : I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness" (xvii. 15); "0 God, Thou art my God. . . . Thy lovingkindness is better than life. . . . My soul followeth hard after Thee" (lxiii. 1, 3, 8). To the same effect speaks the apostle : " We all, with unveiled face reflecting the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image" (2 Cor. iii. 18); and similarly it is said of the saints made perfect, " They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads " (Eev. xxii. 4). These, however, are only samples of the consistent teaching of the Scriptures. Patriarchs, prophets, psalmists, apostles — all agree in exhibiting the nature of that life which has been forfeited by the transgression, and restored by the promised redemption, as a life of trustful and loving fellowship with God.

Such life carries with it the pledge of all other life, even as the essential death involves death, sooner or later, in all the relations and aspects of man's existence. Just as by sin man became at war with himself, so by his restoration to the favour and likeness of God should he receive, through all the breadth and depth of his being, the benign and healing influence of reconciliation. For suspicion and strife between man and man, with their disastrous train of woes, there should be ushered in at last the golden age of amity and peace. And, though the law of mortality was to work its way, by disease and weakness, to an eventual dissolution of body and soul, and thereby to man's sunderance from the world in which he had lived and moved, yet the law of life was ultimately to triumph over death, man's bodily nature was to be reconstituted, and, as introduced into living relation to a renovated universe, he was to inherit all things.

II This being the life that was promised from the

beginning, by virtue of the redemption which God purposed

and announced for man, let us consider more closely the

significance of the fact that, even as afterwards salvation io The Evangelical Succession

was proffered as a free gift, so in the earlier times it was presented to men under the form and fashion of a promise. For, if we would guard ourselves from misapprehension respecting the present administration of God's grace, and the conditions of its transmission (if indeed this word be at all allowable) from age to age, it is of no small moment that we consider well the method which God adopted at the first, and the way of His earliest approach to the souls of men.

It is to be noted, then, that in its first utterance the promise was entirely free. After the transgression, God was unsought by man ; nay, He was shunned. " They heard the voice of the Lord God, and hid themselves " (Gen. iii. 8). Nor, when sought out by God, and questioned about their offence, did the offenders plead for terms ; but God, in passing sentence of penalty, of His own free grace spoke w.ords of promise. It is true that the promise was indirect, being interwoven with the sentence on the tempter ; it was also enigmatical, not conveying to them the meaning which it now bears, as lighted up by the fulfilment of a later age. But it was free — free in its utterance, and free in its own character ; imposing no terms, binding itself with no restrictions, and asking no sacrifice, save such as were necessarily involved in the actual acceptance of the promise. Freely it was vouchsafed ; freely it must be received.

One such divine promise of redemption, launched on the stream of the world's history at its very source, is truly wonderful — wonderful in its utter freedom of grace. But the wonder grows when we consider the equally free reiteration of the promise, time by time, as the ages pass away, and when we remark the gracious insistence and assurance with which God presses His promises on the acceptance of His people. Even to Cain He says, " If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted ? " (Gen. iv. 7) ; to Noah, " I do set My bow in the cloud " (ix. 13); to Abraham, " I will bless thee ; and be thou a blessing : and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed " (xii. 2, 3) ; to Moses, " I have seen the affliction of My people ; and I am come down to deliver them " (Exod. iii. 7,8); to the people of Israel, by the word of Moses, " The Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee . . . and He will do thee good ... for the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good " (Deut. xxx. 3, 5, 9) ; and by the word of Joshua, " Ye know that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you ; all are come to pass" (Josh, xxiii. 14). In like manner Samuel declares, " The Lord will not forsake His people for His great name's sake"(l Sam. xii. 22); and Isaiah, " It shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God ; we have waited for Him, and He will save us : this is the Lord ; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation " (Isa. xxv. 9); even as _ God assures His people, "Thou art My servant ; I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away. Fear thou not ; for I am with thee : be not dismayed ; for I am thy God : I will strengthen thee ; yea, I will help thee ; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness" (Isa. xii. 9, 10).

But why need we pursue the quest ? The jewelry of the " precious and exceeding great promises," spoken of old, is not to be sought for painfully, as though it were rare, and hidden out of sight ; for it gleams about us everywhere as we wend our way along the course of time. We must not, however, omit to notice how the promise opens out, and develops its riches of beauty, as the world's era passes onward to its noon — like " the light of dawn, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." From the beginning the promise was personal : the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head — very mistakenly interpreted by Eve, who, when she bore Cain, said, " I have gotten a man, even the Coming One." But how vague, as compared with the psalmist's portrayal of the gracious King, in whom all the world should trust (Ps. lxxii.) ; and with the prophet's picture of the sacrifice of love through which that kingship should be attained (Isa. liii.) ! The image, looming dim through the mists of time, was at last brought to such focus, and shone out so clear, that one would have thought the " Behold " of the prophet (Isa. xlii. 1 ) needed but the responsive " Behold " of the herald (John i. 29), for men to recognise the ideal and the real as one, and thankfully adore.

What we are the most concerned with just now, however, is the freedom of the whole process. With what gracious spontaneity does the morning star of promise glide into the twilight sky ; and how like the growing light of day, in its royal largess of blessing, does the world's promise make manifest its amplitude of meaning ; and how like the light of day is its " going forth . . . unto the ends" of earth and heaven (Ps. xix. 6)! For the universality of the promise is one of the things that cannot be hidden, except from those who have blinded their eyes. Free as the very breath of life is this breath of the better life. " All the families of the earth," " all nations," " the whole earth " (G-en. xii. 3 ; Ps. lxxii. 1 7 ; Isa. liv. 5) — such is the scope of God's promise of redemption. Is it objected that in the earlier years there was a policy of exclusion ? that the scope of the promises was narrowed down to a family, a people, who alone were the elect of God ? Then let it be remembered that only as guardians, not necessarily as inheritors, of the promise were they chosen ; they were but appointed to watch the growth of the new-springing tree of life Indeed, so untrue were they to their calling, that at last, in contemptuous unbelief, they turned away from what grew up before them " as a root out of a dry ground." Nevertheless, that " tender plant," so despised by its own custodians, has blossomed into beauty for those that will behold, and flings its fragrance abroad for the benediction of all who are willing to be blessed. And even as, at last, all those that will be made whole shall " have the right to come to the tree of life," laden with the fruitage of a fulfilled redemption, so, while as yet there was only the promise, " the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."

Who, then, are the true inheritors of the promise of life, but they that believe ? The promise itself must be as freely received as it is freely given. Here may be no mere mechanical assent, still less any compelled acceptance. Nor may the inheritance of the blessing be by " succession," save such as is constituted by those who enter successively into the freedom of faith. Neither " the children of the flesh " in former times, nor the children of " fleshly ordinances " in later days, " are children of God ; but the children of the promise." "As many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name : which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John i. 12, 13).

And as with the promise, so with the promised life. Inferior life may be communicated by mere creative will, as when God made the living creatures of the natural world ; it may be transmitted also from organism to organism, the one knowing not what it does, nor the other what is done for it. But the life which is not of this world, being akin to God's own life, must participate in the same by the willing union of spirit with Spirit. Of this life it is true, as our Lord said to His chosen, " Freely ye have received." Nor can this free inheritance be in any wise restricted, save by the self-exclusion of unbelief ; " for to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off."

Cbapter tbe Second

But now apart from the law a righteousness of God hath been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. — Rom. iii. 21.

Know therefore that they which be of faith, the same are sons of Abraham. — Gal. iii. 7.

We have thus far considered the promised salvation as consisting in a recovery to the life which had been forfeited by sin ; and we have found that such life, by its very nature, must be entirely free, alike in its communication by God and in its reception by man. For it is a spiritual process that is involved on either side, and true spirituality must always mean liberty (see 2 Cor. iii. 17). In considering furthermore the fact that such a salvation is by promise, we have found the same implication of freedom ; for a promise of grace on God's part can be nothing other than spontaneous, and man's acceptance of the promise must be equally free.

Let us now, at the cost of somewhat narrowing our outlook, so adjust the focus of vision as to gain a more precise idea of salvation in one particular aspect, namely, as a righteousness of God through faith. We shall find that both the righteousness itself, as bestowed by God, and the faith through which it is received by man, imply the same true spiritual freedom as was seen to be involved in the process of salvation more broadly considered.

I

The gift of life Ifas been defined above as a restoration both to God's favour and to God's likeness. Each of these aspects of man's recovery from the death of sin is more definitely, because more specifically, represented in the righteousness of faith.

God's character is consistently portrayed in Scripture as intrinsically and essentially moral or righteous ; and God's righteousness is a living energy of righteousness, which will be satisfied with nothing less than perfect righteousness in others. There is the constraint of an infinite " Ought " in the heart of God, which has its response, sometimes partial yet always peremptory, in the heart of man. To this let the " Ten Words " of Horeb testify ; let the visions of the prophets bear their witness ; let the whole history of God's dealings with Israel tell its inward, but obvious, meaning. Startling at first sight as are the resemblances between those fragments of the mythology of kindred Semitic peoples which have been lately brought to light and the earliest biblical records concerning the same events, and though other resemblances of belief and religious custom arrest our attention and excite our wonder ; yet far more striking, when properly considered, is this essential difference between the Hebrew and the non-Hebrew religions of the older world, that the former alone revealed an august and inflexible righteousness on the part of God, and demanded an answering righteousness on the part of man. Man's universal tendency is not so much to be irreligious, as to be more or less immoral in character and conduct, with an enswathement (if we may so call it) of religious beliefs, sentiments, and observances, which is supposed to make him acceptable to God, which satisfies his co-religionists, and which disguises from himself his own true condition. This tendency has had almost full scope everywhere in heathendom, and within the range of revealed religion it maintains incessant warfare with the truth. Not by any means always a conscious hypocrisy, it is nevertheless relentlessly exposed as essentially hypocritical under the searching light of the judgment of the Holy One.

Was it, then, any wonder that, when He came into the world who is Light of Light, very God of very God, and whose mere presence, even without spoken words seemed to say to those that were hardening themselves in their sin, " Woe unto you, hypocrites ! " the instinct of self-defence made such sin bitterly hostile to the Holy One of God ? " He was in the world . . . and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and they that were His own received Him not" (John i. 10, 11). This was the secret of the persistent and growing enmity of the priests, and of the fickle alienation of the people, leading to their so ready acquiescence in the final deed of death.

Pietism without true virtue, religiousness unaccompanied by righteousness, or even allowing and encouraging unrighteousness — this accords only too well with the instinctive impulse of the natural man. Meanwhile, religion and true piety denounce this unblushing caricature of themselves, and evermore insist on a rectitude of conduct, and an integrity of moral character, that shall take their pattern from the righteous God, and aspire to His perfection. "lam the Lord thy God : Thou shalt not ! "■ — that is the measure of the divine forbidding of all unrighteousness (Exod. xx. 2) ; "*Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts : Woe is me ! I am undone " — this is the response of the contrite (Isa. vi. 3, 5) ; " Search me, 0 God, and know my heart ; try me, and know my thoughts ; and see if there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting " (Ps. cxxxix. 23, 24) — such is the pleading cry of those that have felt the awful presence of the all-pervading God. " What doth it profit, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works ? can that faith save him ? Pure religion and undefiled is this ... to keep one's self unspotted from the world" (Jas. ii. 14, i. 27); "Like as He' which called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living " (1 Pet. i. 15); "God is light: if we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in the darkness, we lie " (1 John i. 5, 6) ; " Building up yourselves on your most holy faith, keep yourselves " (Jude 20, 21); "Follow after the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord " (Heb. xii. 14); " Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you, saith the Lord : therefore let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God " (2 Cor. vi. 17-vii. 1): — so do the apostolic teachers of the new covenant set forth the unabating stringency of God's claims upon us, that, believing in Him as righteous, we ourselves shall fulfil all righteousness.

But there is this initial difficulty, this fatal-seeming hindrance to all true aspiration, to say nothing of achievement, on the part of those who should be righteous, " that they are all under sin : there is no distinction, for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God " (Eom. iii. 9, 22, 23). The record of the past being against us, and all our past being present to the righteous God, — who can never " let bygones be bygones " with the facile indulgence with which men so often allow themselves to leave the past behind,— how may we aspire, with this dead weight round the neck ? how strive for the mastery, our hands and feet in chains ? Moreover, even assuming the possibility of newness of life for those that are already under condemnation, how may condemned ones come into the favour of God? how may they find the forfeited status of righteousness ?