Supreme things, in their practical relations

Front matter

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Preface

What are supreme tilings and what their [practical relations?

In answering this question, the following chapters found themselves wholly on the Scriptures. [This would be a very poor foundation if the Icriptures were largely a patchwork of Semitic Fables, not very cunningly devised by unknown luthors at comparatively recent dates, clumsily ind unscrupulously edited; pretending to a preposterous antiquity, to supernaturalisms that never occurred, to a divine origin and authority which they never had. But, happily for us, the Bible is not such a book. Christ, his church in every age, and the infinite needs of men, give a much better account of it. It is the Word of God. It is the holy Scriptures, which are able to make us wise to salvation. It is what holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost — so spake that one jot or tittle of their speaking shall in no wise pass away as long as the earth and heavens shall stand — so spake that Paul could believe all things written in the law and in the prophets. So the Bible is trust*

6 PREFACE.

worthy in every particular. Its facts are real facts, its doctrines are true doctrines, its methods and proportions and adjustments of truth are the best that infinite wisdom could furnish. Call it infallible. Say that it is final authority on all matters of which it speaks. Say that whatever it asserts, whether on this topic or that, whether in New Testament or Old, is surely true and divinely wise. You have a right to say it-all the Christian ages and instincts being witnesses.

Such a Supreme Book as this is a very tolerable foundation for belief and practice. It is quite safe to build on the foundation of the aposties and prophets with Jesus Christ for the chief j corner-stone. Where shall one find a safer? Beneath our much be-praised natural sciences ? By no means— for they rest for their ultimate facts on fallible human testimony instead of the infallible divine. Beneath the exact sciences, so called ? By no means— for they rest finally on j the seeming intuitions of fallible men instead of ' the real intuitions of the infallible God. Lyme, Conn.

Tte Supreme Book,

THE BIBLE.

/. THE SUPREME BOOK.

The canon of Scripture has closed. The indications of divine revelation and providence are that never a word more of written revelation shall the world have. No more sacred histories, no more inspired poems, no more divine prophecies, no more infallible epistles. However much our curiosity, or, as it may seem to us, our piety, may crave additional information or precept or appeal from God, all plainly committed to writing in words that the Holy Ghost teaches, we shall not be gratified. The Scripture is finished. The topmost stone of the whole great palace has been laid; the last blow on it has been struck, and died away in echoes among its vaulted and costly halls; it has been solemnly dedicated to God's glory and man's salvation; and now nothing more will be done to it save to preserve it and shine upon it and manifest it— no additions, no contractions, no repairs. Let it stand as it is as long as the world shall stand.

It is now almost nineteen hundred years since the close of the canon. It had gradually been forming since the date of Moses; book after book had appeared, sometimes with centuries of interval; and now, at last, the last page was turned and the last sentence written out. It was at Patttios, by the apostle John, some sixty years after the ascension of our I.ord. A very old book is this same Scripture canon-even the newest part of It. There is no empire in existence that dates back nearly as far. The book was done before the English language was begun. America was an unknown waste, Britain a land of sava-es in those distant days. Moons and suns hive marched through many a heavenly cycle; seats ot empire and civilization have wonderfully shifted; customs, literatures, dynasties, states, have risen and declined and passed away since then. How was It possible to end the canon-to wisely i end it-at so early a period ? How could God say to the world all that the world would ever need to have him say to it, in written language, so many thousands of years in advance of many peculiar conditions and peoples? The explanation lies in the fact that the Bible is a book of general principles sufficiently illustrated by particular facts. ^ Men can take these general principles and, with help of care and conscience and prayer the: suprkmk book.

make the application for themselves to all the particular conditions that may arise. It is better for them to be put under the responsibility and discipline of doing this than it would to have it done for them direct out of heaven.

The canon was closed, appropriately closed, tinder the last dispensation, by the last of the apostles, amid the last days of his life, with a general prophetic survey of the history of the church down to the world's last moment. With the ! trump of the resurrection and judgment still pealing in his ear, with the glories of the new j heavens and the new earth still beaming on his ' vision, John of the hoary locks traced the last letter on his parchment; and then faded from his features the awful and mysterious fires of inspiration, never to be rekindled in living man.

The canon that thus came to a close is the noblest, completest, and most useful book that ever passed through human hands. Of all wise men, regarded as writing men, the sacred writers of the Old and New Testaments are the wisest. Solon, Plato, Seneca, and all their successors, in whatever line of thought, have not failed to write on their various themes with large mixture of error and insuflBciency. Their warmest admirers do not venture to claim for them more than a very qualified, fallible, and halting wisdom. But lO THE SUPREME THINGS.

we claim for those holy men of God, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, a wisdom absolutely perfect in all the communications they have made to the world on the subject of religion. They never said a word too much nor a word too little. They always said the right thing in the right place. They never said what was not true, nor what, being true, was of no consequence. They told mankind all that it was best for them to learn in that way, and told it to them in the best manner. The writings by which apostles and prophets, though dead, now speak to us, are the most marvellous specimens of adaptation to human needs that ever grew under human pens — being absolutely faultless in this regard. For God himself guided his messengers; and all their thoughts, and all their words even, were his thoughts and words, shaping themselves into an infallible rule of religious faith and practice.

When I think of the dignity and variety of the truth which the Bible contains; when I think how much of all that the world possesses of good and fair is traceable directly to the Bible; when I think what the race would have been in the odiousness and misery of its reprobation without the restraining and elevating and converting gospel — I say to myself, Where shall I find even a divine work to which man is so much indebted,

THE SUPREME BOOK, II

or by which God is so much glorified ? Of all the means to holiness, short of God himself, the sacred canon is the chief The jewelled firmament, all aglow with suns and planets, says that God is great, and bids us fear and serve him; but not so clearly and strongly and successfully as does the Bible. Millions have been converted by the Book where one has been converted by nature — if, indeed, there ever was a conversion by mere nature. To right minds the white and black pages of the volume have always outshone the blue and gold pages of the sky. When has science lifted and consoled men like the story of Jesus ? When have the stars sung in the souls of men like the Christian promises? Miracles! There are miracles everywhere, on land and sea, below and above, before us and behind us; but where miracles so convincing and transforming as those recorded of Christ and his apostles ? Precepts ! There are precepts everywhere, statutes and common law, in the family, in society, in the state; but w^here precepts so pure, so elevated, so comprehensive, so salutary, so vital, as w^e find in Holy Scripture ? In short, this divine Book stands at the head of all literature.

The antiquary busies himself in dragging out from their hiding-places the ancient books, parchments, inscriptions, of the world. If he can find

12 THE SUPRKMK THINGS.

something venerable with the age of two or three centuries, or which dates back to the Conquest, or to those remoter times when Pompeii and Herculaneum passed under the surface, he exults over his antique treasures and prizes them more than gold. If from the dim storeroom of some decayed feudal mansion, or from the neglected and dusty nooks of some cloister, or from unearthed cities on the Euphrates and Nile, he can gather old documents and inscriptions which illustrate those early ages where history walks with a faint and flickering taper, he grasps them with enthusiasm, guards them with anxious care, and will not exchange for thousands the relics of the hoary past. The Scriptures are the true antique. There is no disputing their claim to be genuine children of the Long Ago. They are colored with the hues of the primal ages. They reek with the odors of the young world. Since Moses wrote, **In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," thousands of years have come and gone, languages have risen and fallen, cities and empires have been born and buried, customs and manners and the physical aspect of the world have undergone almost innumerable transformations. It was many centuries before Herodotus, many centuries before Homer — nay, many centuries before Greece itself deserved the name.

Rome itself was still some seven hundred years in the future. Manetho, Berosus, Sanchoniathon, Confucius, were yet long arcs beneath the horiicon. Hail to the oldest book extant ! Hail to the original records of humanity in which all the streams of history and tradition take their rise!

The best writings of mere men have a very doubtful life. We deplore the loss of books of which only the names and authorship have come down to us, but which once moved and instructed the ages which they adorned. Some Vandal invasion, some Arabian torch, some backward lapse of the race such as Europe suffered in the Middle Ages, some revolution in the taste or the political circumstances of a people, is liable to cast poet and historian and philosopher into oblivion as profound as shelters some of the works of Livy and Tully and Aristotle, or as is now creeping

J over the poetry of Spenser. But there is no uncertainty about the duration of the Bible. It is certain to outlast the world. It has borne a charmed life hitherto through many ambushes and battles; and it will be found proof against all

" the ambushes and battles to come. No weapon formed against it will prosper. Infidels may denounce, apostate churches may suppress, rationalistic critics belittle and betray, persecutors burn

. and bury, legislatures eject from constitutions and schools; but it will all be in vain. The Bible is foreordained to live through everything. The world will always need it, and the world will always have it. When the last day looks out on the ashes of all our human libraries, this divine Book will survive the world it has blessed, and written out, it may be, in heaven's own vernacular, will have its difficulties and mysteries explained to the saint in the light of that throne from which it came.

Yes; the Bible came from God, and it is the only book of which this can be said. And what has this one divine Book done for the world? Am I regenerate? It was the Bible as applied to my heart by the Holy Spirit that has made me so. Am I undergoing a process of sanctification which will finally bring me to a perfect character? I am sanctified through the truth; ''thy Word is truth." Am I on my way to the perfect happiness of heaven? It is the Bible which has pointed out the way and supplied motives to travel it; it is the chart and official guide-book of my whole journey to the city that has foundations. As much must be said of uncounted other Christians, present and past. The Book has always stood for the vital interests of humanity. Its achievements have always been benedictions; its trophies, blessed resurrections and reconstruc-

THE SUPRKME BOOK. 15

i X

:j tions. How many mourners lias it consoled by

i its precious promises ! How many broken hearts

;i has it made whole ! What fortitude it has breathed into the weary, the careworn, the des-

|titute, the stricken! And when the world was about to vanish, how has it served as a ministering angel by the bed of sickness and pain and *'made even the gloomy vale of death a smile of

'glory wear" ! Its sweet, low voice, telling of the after-life and the delightful home above which

' Christ has prepared for his own, is worth more than all human friendships and kingdoms; and

'gratefully the death-shades steal on, the shades that bring heaven into view.

The Bible has done much for the race, but it will do more. It has already dried up many a fount of tears, changed many a desert into a garden, made many a soul noble and saintly, conducted many a tempest-tossed bark to anchorage and rest. And it will go on in this line of blessed 1. achievements. It will continue to regenerate ^ and sanctify and glorify as it has done for thousands of years. Sciences and art and literature will flourish, green and great, in the genial air it breathes around, till their fruit shall shake like Lebanon. Those precious Christian homes that now at too great intervals bestar and make our Christendom will gradually multiply till they

.l6 THE SUPREMK THINGS.

are found clustering sweetly under arctic evergreen and tropic palm and wherever man has gone. And finally, when divine purposes are ripe, the mighty Book which is the wisdom and power of God unto salvation, but which has hitherto seemed to many so dull and plodding in its aspect and movement, will take on a transfigura- ( tion and move forward with such splendid and triumphant pace that nations will be born in a day, and a true golden age, such as holiness and love have sighed for from the beginning, will open on the redeemed earth. God speed that time of times! When it comes it will come as the work of the Book — of the Book read, preached, wielded by the Holy Ghost. What other book can do as much ?

If a friend sincerely desires and endeavors to do me a favor, which through the perverseness of circumstances he is unable to perfectly realise, I am as much bound to love and honor him for his intention and effort as if they had been crowned with the greatest success. The Bible has ever aimed and exerted itself to exclude every form and degree of sin and sorrow from the world. If it has not succeeded it has been owing, not to any fault on its part, but to the perverseness of this human nature of ours, w4iich will not listen, though divine love speaks, nor obey, though divine power commands. But if man would have allowed it to fulfil its mission, long ere this the entire world would have been a Beulah, and the grapes of Eshcol have blushed and glowed on every vine. On man alone lies the responsibility for what the world is, compared with what it ought to be. The Bible has done its part; and though the race still lies in pitiful unhappiness and sinfulness, and ages yet may pass before its complete resurrection, we are to value our friend just as we should if what it proposes to do and struggles to do were already done, and the intention of to-day were merely the shadow cast by the reality of yesterday.

The Book that came from God; that tells us j more of God than do the eloquent heavens and earth; that shows us Christ and his eternal redemption; that is the infallible teacher of old and young, of simple and learned, of humblest faculty and the loftiest; that is the guardian of morals, j the pillar of government and society, the supreme j counsellor, the light of death and best philosophy I of life, the inflexible champion of the true and the right, the way of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, and the wisdom and power of God — such a Book has no peer among the books of the world. All other books put together would not weigh as much as this one. For what it is, for what it has

The Supreme Thinss. 2, done, and for what it aims to do, it is an epical book, the Book of the ages, the Book of humanity.

Is not this supreme character and value of the Scriptures intimated to us by Scripture itself when, in the last verses of the last book, the warning is uttered that if any man shall add to or take from ''the words of the book of this prophecy," God will ''take away his part out of the book of life," and "add to him the plagues ; that are written in this book " ?

It seems that from the first there was danger that the majesty of Scripture and of its closed canon would not be sufficiently respected ; that some w^ould delude themselves, or at least delude others, with the idea that they w^ere inspired persons, and in that capacity proceed to add to or take from the already finished revelation. There was danger of this. Men have always shown themselves prone to spurious revelations. Religious enthusiasts and impostors have abounded in every age. The future would tend strongly to be like the past. Persons would arise ambitious enough to covet, and hardy enough to grasp at, the consideration that belongs to special divine messengers, though conscious of being quite without claim to such a character. Persons would arise who would be enticed by Satan to

THH SUPREME BOOK. I9

sincerely believe themselves commissioned to speak and write God's infallible messages to their fellow-men: led by their sins and the adversary conjointly to the strong delusion of believing such a lie as that they were new Isaiahs, new Pauls, and even new Jesus Christs. Numbers would always be found to encourage such men, to prompt them, to follow them, to lodge indefinite power and honor in their hands. The past, with its Romulus and Numa and Zoroaster and Buddha, threatened to project itself into the future and produce a Mohammed, some twenty-five false Christs, Joseph Smith, and Ann Lee. Here was a danger, as well as the more frequent danger that men would interpret the Scriptures so carelessly and unconscientiously as to make real additions to them and subtractions from them. Were not these among the dangers contemplated when the closing book of the canon lifted up its voice to the four winds to say, "If any man shall add to or take from me, God shall take away his part out of the book of life " ?

But suppose the dangers threatened become the evil experienced. What if men should fail to respect the close of the canon — should add something human to the divine, or cut off from the divine whole a divine part? is there anything so very bad in this ?

There was a spring on a mountain summit — > | pure, copious, full of health and fertility. Andf the waters overflowed. On all sides they trickled, and ran down, and spread out from the peak - among the clouds towards the mighty base; and \ thence on, east, west, north, south, through wide kingdoms to the sea. And wherever the beauti- ; ful waters came there laughed the grass and the flowers, there sang the corn and the vine, there shouted the mighty forest and the welcoming city. The flocks and herds drank of it at noontide and mutely thanked God. Nations of men bent their knees beside it, and grew fair and strong as they quaffed. How the pellucid depths mimicked the heavenly blue! But one day some madman, or some Eblis, chanced on that lofty and blessed and blessing spring, and poured into it a little fluid that looked almost like the water itself The waters leaped and hissed as if a demon had entered them. And so it had. From that moment a subtle mischief went streaming down through all the arteries of irrigation, to the roots of every plant, to the lips of every man; and there was nothing on these mountain slopes or along those champaigns that was not less fair and and healthful in consequence. Whole kingdoms drooped. Not a man, not a brute, not a blade of grass, accustomed to drink of those waters but suffered. Poisoned once, why not again ? Why not worse? w^hy not to death ? Where is the security? And so all the terrors threatened to swoop down on the once blooming and rejoicing continent. And down they would have swooped had not Azrael, the angel of death, lifted his sworded and terrible form by the side of that mountain spring, crying, '' If any man shall add to or take away from the w^ords of the book of this prophecy, God shall add to him the plagues that are written in this book."

It was of so much consequence to protect the purity of Holy Scripture — that cloud-born fountain that waters the mountain of Christ's kingdom and all the world spread out at its foot — that the sword of an awful malediction, doubleedged, was set brandishing over it. What does it mean, that threat to " take away his part out of the book of life"? Something very grave, very terrible, no doubt. Indeed, is it not the chief of terrors ? since elsewhere the same sacred writer declares that '* whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. ' ' See the dreadful safeguard of the fountain ! See what God thinks of the importance and dignity of his Bible! See what he thinks of the sin and damage of mutilating or corrupting it! What other book has he put under such terrible protection ?

God sees nothing inconsistent in a merciful gospel having terrible safeguards about it; nothing inconsistent in these safeguards being established by the gentlest of hands. The Book of good tidings ends with the heaviest of threats. John is the spokesman — John, apparently the gentlest of all the apostles. Did stern Elijah or the stern Baptist ever utter a severer thing? Both in his Word and in his providence God passed from promises to threats, from blessings to curses, from salvations to destructions, with a manner as if it had never occurred to him that men might find it hard to see how such opposites could meet in the same being. Jesus blades,, volcano-like, against the wicked scribes and Pharisees; and yet weeps over sinners, and ends i by dying for them: image as he is of that Father- * God who is both a consuming fire and love itself; who pours out his wrath and takes vengeance, and yet is full of compassion and gracious, very pitiful and of tender mercy.

Is it anything new for a treasure to be put into a safe? anything new for roses to protect them- j selves with thorns ? anything new for lightnings i to accompany fruitful showers, or for pearls to lie at the bottom of stormy and fatal seas ? I went into a fortress where cannon frowned and bayonets gleamed and bristled; and what to see, if not the i recralia of an ancient monarchy ? the yellow cir- I clet that had pressed the brows, and the yellow ] sceptre that had graced the hands, of many geni erations of sovereigns, beaming with the soft and varied light of gems, all beautifnlly nestlmg amid the horrors of protecting steel and granite. It was the love of God lying in the bosom of his justice. It was the invitations and promises and tenderness and salvations of the gospel girded with wrath and menace and destruction. The one could not exist without the other. It is peace supported by war, life preserved by death.

Has the great threat ever been fulfilled ? Has the two-edged sword, swung terribly on high, ever actually fallen on any? Alarmed by the threat of having their names erased from the book of life, have men shrunk from abusing the book of Scripture with their additions and subtractions? See, the steel seems clouded in spots, even seems red, red with fresh stains as well as with old ones! Must it not have fallen again and a-ain on offenders? Before the close of the canon the Jewish elders had added to the law and prophets a body of traditions for which they claimed equal authority, and by which, as Christ charged, they made void the law. Within the Christian church itself sprang up spurious Gospels which attempted to crowd themselves into the li sacred canon. Outside of Christianity, Mo1iam4 nied both added and subtracted his Koran: out-« side of Christianity the Mormon impostor and-^ other impostors undeserving of mention have added and subtracted their pretended revelations. , Yes, it is to be feared that not a few have hadJ their names taken from the book of life. It would seem that the brandished sword has not wanted for victims. And it would also seem that there comes from it a gleam of warning to all interpreters of Scripture not to wrest its teachings, not to handle the Word of God deceitfully, not to explain away its passages, nor to foist into them meanings which they were never designed to have.

II. The kpreme &eei

THE CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALS.

//. THE SUPREME CREED.

An outcry against creeds is by no means an uncommon thing in these days. That creeds are sometimes false and sometimes abused is easily admitted; but that they are, on this account, to be quite thrown aside seems a piece of extravagance that we would hardly expect from thoughtful men. And yet a thoughtful man once put forth an essay w^ith this title, Tricth Superior to Creed. ■ What did he mean by creed? Of course we 1 freely admit that some truth is superior to some creeds (or at least to some articles of some creeds): say the Pagan, the Mohammedan, the Mormon, ' the Infidel. But if it was meant that truth is superior to the Christian creed, to w^hat the great j bulk of intelligent, practical Christians agree in \ considering such, I deny it emphatically. I. The Christian creed is truth. Its articles are true as the freshest history, true as the latest science, true as the very mathematics, true as the very God of truth. This we know as soon as w^e know that they are taught in a book that came from God. All his statements are reliable. We do not need to know specifically what the statements are. Just as one may know that a certain building is the Government Mint and contains great stores of gold coin, without his ever having seen any of the money, so one may know that the Bible is divine and that it contains nothing but truth, though he is. as yet unacquainted with the specific forms which that truth takes. This is the actual condition of some persons. They accept the Bible as the Word of God ; they have at last made up their minds to act accordingly; but, owing to a variety of causes, they are as yet very poorly informed as to what it contains. It is to them largely a new Book. It is a Book seen descending from heaven and shining with the glory of miracles and prophecies and other evidences, but as yet a closed book to them. They reverently take it in hand, prepared to ac- _ cept whatever they may find taught within: but, beyond certain vague notions, just what they will find they know not. But this they know: whatever they find will be true— true as the stars, true as He who made the stars, and in whom is no darkness at all.

Whatever advantages, therefore, belong to 1 truth in general belong to the Christian creed; | for it is truth. i

2. The Christian creed is recognized truth. Here is a point in which the creed common to A all the great Christian denominations and confes- *

Sions has a positive advantage over truth iu general.

Most truth is unknown. It never has been seen, and perhaps never will be seen by man. We know here and there a fact; but what is known is, as to bulk at least, the merest nothing by the side of that of which nothing is known. What are the few pebbles that a Newton picks tip on the shore to the great ocean of truth that lies all undiscovered and undiscoverable before him ? No doubt the most of the world's gold lies |- thousands of feet deep in the unopened mines of, 'perhaps, unexplored countries.