God's method with man, or, Sacred scenes along the path to heaven

Front matter

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Contents

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INTRODUCTION, 7

Chapter.

Chapter I. MAN PRIMEVAL

MKW is probably the highest title borne by a creature. A solemn pause in the Creator's work preceded his formation; and the Trinity in council brought him forth, creation's masterpiece, to be its possessor and king. He was at once, upon his creation, formally invested with the prerogatives of empire. In his first utterance to the being he had formed in his own image and after his own Hkeness, and inspired with the breath of his own nature, God said, ''Have dominion." The communication between the Creator and the new creature Avas from the first, not by messages sent and received, but was of the nature of personal intercourse and communion. Man appears to have been called into existence to supply the place of spirits lost and

II fallen through sin. And who were these? Their leader had his original name, Lucifer, ** son of the morning, '' a poetic title bestowed by God, declarative of his love, and suggestive of the dignity, glory, and beneficence of the character of him who was accounted worthy to receive it. Lucifer that was, is Satan now ; that old serpent, the great dragon, the devil, Apollyon, Beelzebub, Prince of the power of the air. Ruler of the darkness of this world. He wrought death and ruin in Job's household. He fought Michael on Nebo. He attacked and wounded the Son of God. He murders nations by the power of sin. He holds a deluded world with an infernal grasp. Such is the greatness of Satan, even in his ruin. It is not probable that God created a being of minor capacity and dignity to fill the place vacated by Satan and his rebellious associates ; nor is it probable that a later creation is of less dignity and power than an earlier: God proceeds from less to greater always.

That God's design in forming this new creature carried him beyond the notion of a simple spirit-life to the expedient of a com-

Man Primeval, 13

pound being having two lives, argues the magnificent proportions of his intent. Wonder and awe struck the universe when God produced a being two in one; a spiritual nature domiciled within a physical, at once its house, its organ, its vehicle, its exponent, and its medium of reproduction.

By divine appointment, angels are servants to men. Bible story is all alive with these thronging messengers and ministers to the heirs of salvation. They are heaven's carrierdoves of more than lightning wing. They obey God. They serve man. They counterwork Satan. They are attendants even upon little children. They bear the spirits of the just to heaven. Either, therefore, the greater serve the less, or the angelic is inferior to the human. But in God's order the greater do not serve the less. Besides, there was once an occasion of greater moment, doubtless, than any other in the history of man. It was when a message was to be conveyed to Jesus, touching his death which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. God sent, on that occasion, not angels, but two human beings, Moses and Elijah.

On the passage, '* Tkou madest him a little lower than the angels,'' Dr. Adam Clarke says: **If this be spoken of man as he came out of the hands of his Maker, it places him at the head of all God's works ; for, literally translated, it is, ^Thou hast made him less than God;' and this is proved by his being made in the image and likeness of God, which is spoken of no other creature either in heaven or earth ; and it is very likely that in his original creation he stood at the head of all the works of God, and the next to his Maker. This sentiment is well expressed in the following lines, part of a paraphrase on the Eighth Psalm, by the Rev. Charles Wesley :

* Him with glorious majesty

Thy grace vouchsafed to crown : Transcript of the One in Three,

He in thine image shone.

Foremost of created things,

Head of all thy works he stood ; Nearest the great King of kings,

And little less than God.' "

All the strange yearnings of the human soul for the boundless and the infinite are but the revelation of the amazing breadth and

Man Primeval. 15

scope of its powers — powers that find no adequate field here, capacities for which the earth is not enough. So great a being did God produce when he made man, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life — of lives.

Man is a creature made in the image of God, intellectually, judicially, and morally — in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. He has lost his holiness, but the other features of the image remain, only as they are damaged incidentally by the loss of holiness, and the inrushing of sin and pollution. Through all the Bible, God habitually confesses that perception, reason, judgment, taste, and the moral sense are in man what they are in himself: in other words, that man is finitely what God is infinitely. The divine and the human natures are homogeneous. It is not possible to conjoin two heterogeneous natures in one personality without producing a being fitly termed monster. The very thought of a being compounded of man and horse is too shocking to be entertained. But Jesus Christ, the God-man, sums in himself all possible measures of excellence and beauty, and is *' chief among ten thousand, altogether lovely." In further illustration of the homogeneousness of the human and the divine natures, it seems proper to note that there is a sense, though certainly a very subordinate sense, in which every instance of personal salvation is an instance of the union of the divine with the human. **I will dwell in them and walk in them." '^Christ in you the hope of glory.'' *'I in them, and they in me.'' ** Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates." ** Partakers of his holiness." ** Partakers of the divine nature."

The union of the divine with the human has always been a characteristic feature of God's method. Had sin never entered, God would undoubtedly, after a suitable probation, have taken every man to himself, without death.

The Scriptures affirm that ^ ^ by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." It has often been asked. If Adam had never sinned, and death had never come, what would have become of the ever-increasing numbers of the human race by this time ? This question may well be regarded as a formidable one, since it is known that notwithstanding

Man Prime val, i 7

the exceeding brevity of human life, more human beings have lived here than could now possibly find standing room on the surface of the globe. It must be obvious, therefore, that some method of removal must have been in the mind of God when he made man upon the earth. It seems to me that in the course of events God has himself sufficiently answered the question. He has taken three persons, body and soul, from earth to heaven : namely, Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus. Who can doubt that in some similar manner God would have taken every man to himself, upon the attainment of a given measure of knowledge and character? This earth is the preparatory school for heaven now. I believe God has always intended it as such. And I do not believe he ever intended it as the permanent abode of man. There is not an intim^ation that he did so intend in the whole Bible ; and every passage that seems to relate to the real goal of the human being implies that it is heaven, and not earth.

We have now, as a race of redeemed sinr ners, in every house occasionally the heartbreaking scenes of death-beds and funerals.

Grace sometimes does much to lighten and fill with hope these sad passages of domestic history; and art and taste do their best to make us forget the shocking loathsomeness of the grave. But, do the best we can, the appalling facts of mortality smite us and haunt us through life. If sin had never come, how had we been spared all this sad train of overwhelming calamities. What beautiful scenes, half heaven half earth, had been of daily occurrence! Think of father and mother, ripe for heaven, calling their children and children's children home, as to a most joyous though solemn entertainment. They have been notified that the chariot will be in waiting on such a day. The great group gathers. Every one is in perfect health. Every one is spotless in character. Every one is filled with love to God, to father and mother, and to every other one.

What a scene is here, as such a household meets and greets, each the others. And as the hour draws nigh, what tender, loving, holy adieus are given to the departing ones ! What messages are sent to them that are gone before ! And what rapture must thrill each

Man Primeval. 19

member of the family group, as father and mother depart in their sight, and are borne away over the everlasting hills !

Now if we consider scenes somewhat analogous to this, multiplied over the earth by the number of families upon it, we shall get an idea of what domestic life, in one of its aspects, would have been had sin never entered the world.

Chapter II. MAN FALLEN

BUT this beautiful portrait of what was and what was to be was soon marred ; and the first chapter of man's story is a recital of most terrible disaster. Lucifer had become Satan before man was made. From the date of his expulsion from heaven, a prisoner somewhat at large, he determined to counterwork the Almighty. To this end he sought, with infernal ingenuity, to compass, if possible, the ruin of God's youngest-born. His plot succeeded, and the ruler of earth and favorite of heaven lost his innocence, his crown, his joy, his rest, his God. His nature became corrupt; he was doomed to death; the earth was cursed on his account, and he Avas driven forth from Eden under the divine condemnation. Corrupt himself, his progeny was corrupt after him. Of this the character of his first-born gave terrible proof in the murder of his brother.

What, then, is the precise condition of man since the fall, with respect to his spiritual state and his relation to God? It is worthy of note that, to express the condition of man as affected by sin, the Scriptures use extreme terms. *' Every imagination of the thought of his heart is only evil continually.'' ''They are all gone out of the way, there is none that doeth good, they are altogether become filthy." Where metaphors are employed, these also are extreme. Is man a traveler? He is ''lost." Is he a patient? "There is no soundness, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores." Is the question of wealth? He is poor to nakedness. Of joy? He is miserable and wretched. Of hope? He has neither a hope nor a God. Of purity? His heart is a very fountain of unclean thoughts and deeds. Or if the question be of life, he is dead — dead to God, dead in sin, dead by the penalty of sin, dead by the virus of sin.

How terrible is this, that such a life is gone out, and that death is come! For when death comes a horror supervenes, measured exactly by the type of the life that is gone out. A dead tree isn't much; it might provoke a sigh if it had been a pet of your yard or garden; but there is no horror; for only the lowest life is gone out. To come upon a dead brute startles and distresses you. To stumble in the dark on a human corpse would freeze you with fright and nervous agony that might unsettle your reason or end your life. But man is dead in sin; his death has come of his conduct. Put this how you will, there is no relief. Say he is dead as the penalty of sin ; then he is a dead criminal. And how great is the horror that gathers about the corpse^ and even the grave, of the man who is known to have been put to death for his crime? Or say man is dead by the virus of sin ; sin has poisoned him to death. What horror there is in the words, *'Dead of the cholera!'* **dead of the small-pox!'' ''dead of the yellow fever!" ''dead of the plague!" *'dead of the Black Death!" — Dead! And in an hour the noble form which stood for so much of strength to provide and shelter and save is changed to a mass of poison! Make haste! Roll it in a tarred sheet! Back up the deadcart ! Have it forth ! Bury it deep ! So terrible is the Bible picture of man dead in sin.

The facts of human history in ancient and modern times alike indorse the accuracy of the Bible view. The vile practices of heathen lands are such that no traveler thinks of portraying them; nor would their publication be allowed in any country really Christian. So utterly lost does human nature every-where proclaim itself to be, except where it meets a counterworking force in the Gospel.

Is there then no view of human nature that should be set over against this dark picture to qualify its terrible implications? Undoubtedly there is. Human beings may be viewed in a light in which they appear to better advantage. There are developed in countries enlightened by the Bible many characters who, though destitute of converting grace, may be pronounced upright and worthy. And there have appeared in heathen lands several persons of real excellence of character. Cicero, Seneca, Phocion, Regulus, Cyrus, Scipio, the two friends, Damon and Pythias, and Aristides, may be named as examples. Great numbers of persons are found in all Christian countries who, though unconverted, deserve and receive the respect of their fellows for their social qualities. They are honest in deal, true to their promises, temperate livers, kind husbands, true, amiable wives, dutiful children, faithful friends, Vv'ise statesmen, good legislators, noble patriots, incorruptible judges. Now, how can such exhibitions of character be accounted for on the theory of the terrible degradation of human nature before insisted on? The whole discussion would fill a volume, perhaps, but there is room here for a few points.

1. In all Christian countries there is developed, in connection with Bible teaching and Christian usage, a force that powerfully counterworks sin in ^he human heart. The workings of the Holy Ghost on the hearts of men, the teachings of the Bible, the pulpit, the family, the Sunday-school, and the religious press, together with the godly lives of many Christians and the standard of morals in community, resulting from all these, constitute a light in the daze of which men blush to look at forms of sin over which they would gloat in the twilight.

2. There is a conservative force in the general feeling of hopefulness that every one has in a Christian land. Men commonly believe, bad as they are, that it is possible they may yet be saved. Convince a man that there is no hope, and the chances are that he will develop at once into a brute, a Stoic, or a fiend.

3. Wherever there is a Christian standard of morals, virtue pays better than vice, and character has a cash value. Far-seeing selfishness will therefore dictate temperance, truthfulness, religious reverence. Sabbath-keeping, chastity, commercial honor, etc., where there is really no wholesome horror of the opposite vices.

4. Man, dead in sin, is peculiarly dead to God; not equally dead to man. The faculties of his soul which involve the domestic and social relations appear not to have been affected by the fall, so that he necessarily exhibits his depravity equally manward and Godward. He is often wholly true to man who is wholly untrue to God. It is probably never true, however, of an unconverted person that he does right, even to man, simply because it is right.

To set this matter clearly before the mind, let us analyze character a little. Take, for instance, this cautious man, this man who is always intent upon safeguards. He attends Church and is as orthodox as the parson. He receives the Scriptures without cavil, and believes in God and the Bible and ministers and Churches and heaven and hell, like the rest of us; but he is unconverted. Take this most cautious man who is afraid of fires, afraid of robbers, afraid of coughs and colds, afraid of new schemes of speculation, afraid of long credits and poor paymasters, afraid of risks of any kind and anywhere ; and go tell him there is a terrible danger hanging over him. He will hear you with interest, and even with great excitement, so long as he thinks you are talking of house or barn or stocks or goods or mortgages or notes or debts. But the moment he comes to see that you talk of his soul and the fathomless deeps of despair forever, he will exhibit a sense of complete relief, and possibly turn away with a smile, saying: *'0h, yes, the parson talks of these things to us every Sunday.'' Whence is this? It is because caution, in its spiritual ofiGces, is dead in the man. He is dead to God, dead to the things of the Spirit, and dead to eternity.

Here is a mother. She has three or four daughters grown and growing up. She and her family are Church-goers. She is orthodox in her opinions, but she is an unsaved woman. She has large love of offspring. She lives for her girls, their health, their education, their dress, their accomplishments, their social position, their settlement in life; these are the topics of her thought and study. One of these girls has been traveling with you and your wife in Europe for two years, and has exhibited a marked seriousness, has become pronounced in her determination to devote her life to Christ. On your return you inform this tender mother of the wonderful prospects that have opened before her daughter during her absence. You talk of high society and noble relationships, and hint of crow^ns and empire. You soon find that your words have moved your auditor exceedingly. She tries to appear calm, but is really half wild with excitement. Presently you drop all figure and come down to sober fact. You tell her of her daughter's growing seriousness during the journey, of her penitence and prayers, and the consecration of her young life to the service of the King of kings, and how she had thus become an heir of God and a joint-heir with Christ to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away. It will be wonderful if this mother do not turn away from you with ill-concealed disgust, soliloquizing, ''Oh, I thought he was going to say something." What is this but that, in the estimate of this woman, earth outweighs heaven, and time is more than eternity? What is it, indeed, but that in regard to things spiritual and eternal she is a dead woman?

A poor man gets into trouble for want of a small amount of ready funds. He has been unfortunate, and must secure this amount or go speedily to financial ruin. He comes to you in his distress for counsel and advice. He approaches you timidly, but you assure him with kind words, invite him to your table, talk with him of his case, head a subscription for him with ten dollars, and send him forth among your neighbors with your blessing, to see what he can raise. He obtains the needed funds. That morning's interview has bound that poor man to you for life; he will cherish it and you among his choicest memories, and when forty years are gone he will rehearse to his grandchildren with moistened eyes his deliverance and your kindness. Such is gratitude of man to man. But what of gratitude of man to God? Innumerable blessings of priceless value have fallen all these forty years on the head and house of that same man from God. Yet all this wealth of kindness has never moved his heart or bent his knee, or moistened his eye, or evoked a single word of thanks from his tongue. Whatever the man is to you, he is dead to God.

The truth is, a man commonly judges another largely by what that other is to him, whatever his life may have been in his intercourse with other parties. ''Speak well of the bridge that carries you safe over." So when Ave form our estimate, of man in general we almost instinctively inquire, What is man to man? But this is not the question conclusive of character. The question of your character as a citizen is, What are you to the government? As a child, What are you to your parent? As a subject, What are you to the king? As a creature, What are you to

God ? This bottom question being answered, it is not possible that facts enough can be accumulated touching other of your relations to turn the scale and reverse the decision. What you are to God that you are. If you are untrue here, it needs but the readjusting of occasions to make you false anywhere else. Again, God is the center, the perfection, and the source of all purity, truth, excellence, and lovableness in the universe. Are you in harmony with such a God? or is your mind enmity against him? Remember, also, this God is he who all your days has been projecting your life from hour to hour, giving you health, family, food, home, friends, '*all things richly to enjoy,*' in fact. If you can remain indifferent or inimical to such a God, if you can receive the benefactions of a life-time with no gratitude, and no desire to know your Benefactor, to be led into his presence and to tell him of your love, then is it true and most evident that your nature is corrupt and vile, out of harmony with God, and, except through renewing grace, incapable of his service in earth or heaven. Nothing remains to you but that God should hold over

Man Fallen.

you with forbearance and long suffering during your allotted time, and then, if you repent not, hurl you from his presence among the offal of the universe — lost angels and lost men.

Chapter III. SIN

BUT it is time to inquire what strange agency, influence, power, this is that has seized upon the fair, innocent, noble creature of God, and so deluded, degraded, perverted, palsied, polluted, and infernalized him. We call it sin; but who can define it so as adequately to set forth its character and its power? Sin is transgression of the law — God's law, holy, just, good. It is voluntary transgression — transgression of a known law. This is rebellion. Every man that engages in it exalts himself above God, sets himself in opposition to him, and shows that he would dethrone him if he could. The sin of omission, or refusal to obey God, expresses the same state of mind and implies equal atrociousness: the only difference being that the transgressor responds to ''thou shalt not,"

by ''I will;" while the other replies to *'thou shalt," hy ''I will not."

But sin is deeper than the act, and before it. It is the infernalized condition of the heart that has a taste for forbidden gratifications, that loves to trample on authority, that believes stolen waters to be sweet, and that is itself the seething caldron whence steam forth evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Avith all abominations in their train.

Sin appears to have originated in a great angelic rebellion. The Word says, ''And there was war in heaven ; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not ; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world ; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." Again, ''The angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." Again, "God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment. '*

The Bible treats the question of the existence of fallen or evil spirits, or devils, as it does the question of the existence of God; that is, it assumes it, never attempting to prove it. The serpent beguiled Eve, and received the sentence, ''He shall bruise thy head.'' Satan conversed with God, and expressed contempt for his commendation of Job's complete integrity; whereupon he Avas allowed by God to proceed to great lengths in testing the integrity of the patriarch by terrible afflictions; but in vain for the ends he sought. Satan attacked the Son of God, as recorded in Matt. 4, and sought by repeated efforts — all in vain — to seduce him from his integrity. Matt. 8, and Mark 5, give the incident of the man among the tombs. He was untamable, and so fierce as to endanger public travel. He was possessed of a legion of devils. These knew Jesus at sight, confessed his character and power, and deprecated the wrath to come: **Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?" The account of the casting forth of a devil, as given in Mark 9, is in point

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equally with the cases named above, as showing the personaUty, the power, and the rage of evil spirits.

Some say they can not believe the doctrine that there are fallen angels ; for they can not believe that a good being in a good place would, or even could, begin to sin. But unless we adopt the old theory that there are two eternal beings, the one good and the other evil, we must admit that sin had a beginning; and that very fact implies that all beings and all places were, previously to that beginning, good. Therefore a being, good up to the moment when he began to sin, and in a good place, became rebelHous, and so fell from his uprightness, his loyalty to God, his innocence, and his heaven. The Bible account, therefore, as quoted above, is not only not incredible, but is so intrinsically probable that it must be assumed to be essentially true, even if it had not been written in the Book.

Touching the number of the angels that were drawn into the rebellion and so fell and became devils, the Scriptures do not speak definitely. Allusions in the twelfth chapter of Revelation seem to make it probable that one-third of all the heavenly host fell away. That their numbers must be great is presumable from the numerous Bible accounts of demoniacal possession — seven in one person, a legion in another, etc. So that the nervous language of Charles Wesley seems quite safely based :

* 'Angels your march oppose,

Who still in strength excel : Your secret, sworn, eternal foes; Countless, invisible ;

From thrones of glory driven,

By flaming vengeance hurled, They throng the air, they darken heaven,

They rule this lower world."

These angels, now corrupted, overthrown, and ruined, are alluded to in Scripture as representing the hierarchy of heaven, the terms used being ''thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers;" and no higher terms are employed when the rank of the unfallen angels is in question. Much of the power of the fallen angels appears to remain, though sin has disrobed them of dignity, and they are wholly vile and unclean, and whelmed in infamy.

So far as we know, no system of recoveryhas ever been provided for fallen angels : perhaps partly because, self-tempted, they went into rebellion amidst the light and glory of heaven itself; and partly because their sin can not entail itself upon others — angels being created, not born.

Sin's Doings. — Sin has cursed the earth with barrenness, tainted the air with death, degraded man from his kinghood to be the slave of his own vile affections, brought the sentence of death upon the human family, blotted out nations and races of men by the curse of God, filled the world in every age with the cry of the helpless and the hopeless, buried the nations it had murdered in eternal infamy, brought fathers and mothers in sorrow to the grave before their time, disrupted households, bereaved children, broken the hearts of wives, multiplied widows without number, and transformed the earth from the Eden it was to the vale of tears it is.

Chapter IV, THE DA WN OF HOPE

THE first promise of a Redeemer was given immediately upon the fall of man ; and it was renewed from time to time Avith increasing clearness and particularity of detail down to the close of the Old Testament revelations. These prophecies sketch a dual character, such as the world had never known : at once highest and lowest, strongest and weakest, richest and poorest, most honored and most despised; at once a guardian shepherd and a sacrificed lamb, a born infant and a reigning king, a bruised culprit and a hero exalted to the right hand of God. So minute also were the prophecies touching the miracle of his human origin, the place of his birth, and many facts of his public history, and of his death and resurrection, that it is forever impossible to find their fulfillment in any except Jesus of Nazareth.