The Christian in the world

Front matter

THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD.

THE FLETCHER PRIZE.

The Will of the late Hon. Richard Fletcher, of Boston, by which Dartmouth College is made his residuary legatee, provides for a Special Fund, to be under the care of the Trustees of the said College, from the avails of which they are to offer biennially a prize of Five Hundred Dollars for the best Essay on the subject indicated in the following extract from the Will : —

Contents

I. THE STATEMENT.

Page

1. Duty Practicable 3

II

TT is the first step towards a higher style of Christian Uving when a man honestly desires to know the full measure of his duty. We refer him directly to God's Word ; we ask his careful attention, if he would be a '' Christian in the world," to those texts of Scripture already quoted (see page 9), and to the multitude of similar directions to be found in every part of the Sacred Volmne.

There is a story of a certain infidel, who, persuaded to read his neglected Bible, opened the book carelessly and half contemptuously. His eye fell first upon the ten commandments as recorded in Exodus xx. He read them ; he was amazed at their comprehensiveness ; there was nothing to be taken away; there was nothing to be added ; they were absolutely perfect ;

there was no possible duty that they did not cover. As the sunshine is the best evidence of the sun's existence, so the flash of this moral brightness proved instantly to him that the book which contained these commands was from God. And yet that which had so smitten him with moral conviction was simply and only the clarity and perfectness of one thing in our religion, — the clarity and perfectness of moral law.

What is moral law ? It is the bond that binds a moral being. What kind of a being is a moral being ? He is a being capable of moral action., — action in view of what is right or wrong. Such a being is man. Moral law is, then, the original bond of duty towards God and his fellow-men. It binds man not as under one dispensation or another dispensation ; not as having certain ritual duties at one time under the teaching of Abraham, at another time under Moses, at another time under Christ ; but it binds man as man. It goes down below all dispensations ; it discloses the duty of moral beings as such.

It is the great original rule of righteousness for man as a being with reason, conscience, affections, and will, — a being who, because possessing these endowments, is a moral and responsible being.

One declaration of moral law was given on Sinai, the mountain aglow with flame and tremulous with thunder. The moral law was of course binding before the nascent nation of the Jews gathered solemnly at its base to wait the return of Moses. Some law had bound Adam in the garden, and Abraham in the land of promise. It must have been moral law. Upon that, as the only possible foundation for any special commandment, there was given to Adam the special duty concerning the fruit of the tree, and to Abraham the special duty of placing his son Isaac on the altar. Moral law binds every moral being whether before or after Sinai. In the Jewish version of it given on Sinai, there is no hint as of any thing new. There is no definition as of things then first commanded. Law was then announced, not then enacted. Surely theft, covetousness, and murder, were not then for the first time made crimes, even for the Jewish nation ! Nor is there a hint of any ceremony in this version at Sinai. Ceremonies belong to separate dispensations, not to moral law. Moral law is universal. The ritual law — the law of the Levitical ceremonies — was given on another occasion, and for a widely different purpose. That was to bind a particular nation for a definite time. But the law of Sinai was moral law. Summaries of moral law are also found in the prophetic and poetic books of the Bible. '' What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? " "Hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man." And in the New Testament our Lord has given us his summary of moral law in the words, '' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself."

Now it is possible that the very completeness of this standard of duty may discourage a really honest and earnest man at the commencement of .his inquiries. He desired to know his full duty. He craved specific directions as to wha't to do in specific circumstances. He desired a book of directions ; and he finds a book of principles. He hoped to be helped in questions of casuistry^ i.e.^ " cases of conscience." He desired a Bible in which these '' cases of conscience" should be taken up one by one, and so decided for him that there could be no mistake. Just now, indeed, this whole matter of casuistry has fallen into disfavor. The so-called '' casuists" of the Roman Church, and especially those of the Jesuit Fathers, who were so mercilessly exposed by Pascal in his " Provincial Letters," have made the very word " casuistry" odious. It has come to signify that trickery of moral reasoning whereby the evil is made to appear to be the good, and the wrong to be the right. But the word in its best sense is to be retained. ''Cases of conscience " will always arise, and they are to be met. The way of duty is not always clear to a man. Let not those who would give counsel to men in their spiritual perplexity be stigmatized as casuists. The old Puritan divines dealt much in these " cases of conscience." Boston, in his '' Fourfold State," and Flavel, in his '' Touchstone," — books largely read half a century ago, — devoted much space to this method of religious teaching. And every parent to-day, who is asked by a conscientious child, '^Is it right to do this or that thing?" is, for the time, a casuist to that child. Every pastor, asked by his young people about questions of amusement, or, by his older brethren, about matters of practical righteousness, is forced to be a casuist. Nay, each man of us is compelled sometimes to be a casuist unto himself, deciding in special cases what he ought to do. And just here men feel their need of help.

Very many think that duty would have been much simplified had the Bible been a book of infallible directions as to practical duties, — a volume of casuistry. And to a certain limited extent it has indeed entered upon the decision of such questions. Our Lord and his Apostles have determined more than one of the cases submitted to them. The instant decision about " the tribute money," the matter of " wearing gold and costly array," of "eating meats offered to idols," of ''remaining covered or uncovered" in the church, — these show clearly that the method of the Bible is in part that of casuistry. But in these cases just named there arises the question as to how far these decisions were made in ^iew of circumstances peculiar to those times ; as to how far, in entirely different circumstances, under a wholly different type of civilization, we are bound by them. They are plainly not moral law. No more do they belong to a particular dispensation. They are simply applications of Christian principles to local cases. They are inferential duties. And here, where men feel their greatest need of direction in practical living, they are wont to think that they have no sufficient guidance. They are not sure that the Scripture instances exactly meet their case. The widely different conditions of a man in society to-day make us reluctant to apply rules which were evidently given to meet a condition of things long since passed away.

Had the biblical method been mainly that of casuistry^ — the citation of cases so that we might compare our own with them, — two things would have followed. First, we should have in this always increasing Bible the most ponderous of volumes. In that case the differing ages and habits and modes of thought, as they bring new duties and furnish new instances, must all have their record. Our Bible would be a sort of law-library of court decisions. In that case, John's words about the world not being able to contain all the books if every thing were written would be no more an allowable figure of speech, but a nearly literal statement. And it would follow, next, that we must spend a lifetime in search of precedents. This ponderous volume might require the search of years before we should discover any thing that looked like our own case. A single circumstance in which the recorded precedent failed to match the instance that we should bring from our own lives might vitiate the precedent, and leave lis as undecided as before. Let us suppose a simple instance. Let it be certain — certain by a divine revelation — that A should give a specific sum of money to a specific charity. He expends thousands in endowing a professorship in some college or seminary. Now does it follow that B^ with the same wealth and income, should do a similar thing ? Some one circumstance in 5'« situation or prospects may change the whole case. The two men may be widelj^ dissimilar in necessary family expenses, in probability of future life, in the dependencies that belong to their position. It is impossible that the certainty of ^'s duty should absolutely bind 5's action. The duty of both is to give. But B'^ duty may be to give more or less than A. It is indeed helpful, in a general way, to see another's duty when we have to decide our own. We may infer what we should do from our knowledge of what another has done. But this is quite another thing from the absolute decision of a casuistry which is its own law. So that had tliis been the scriptural method of teaching iis our duty, nothing would have been gained, but much lost. It is better as it is now, on the score of simplicity. There are just enough of these decisions in God's Word to teach us that religion is a practical affair. But we are not to be so careful as to the precedent as to be careless of the principle.

The Scripture method is also that of biography. It is worthy of our notice that a very large part of our Bible is historical ; and its historical portions are mainly biographical. We are coming back in our methods of historic composition to the model furnished us by the great Hebrew lawgiver and historian. He gives us the story of the life of representative men. We look on an age through the eye of the men who saw it best. Every movement of human thought culminates in some man. To know him is to know it. To see all the events of an age as he saw them is to see it in its own light, and to judge of it as it should be judged. The five books of Moses are a series of personal sketches, of indiyidual biographies ; and with these are incorporated the chief events of each generation. The same method is pursued in all the historic books till we come to the Psalms. And even the Psalms are only another kind of biography. They are the interior history of a human soul looking out upon the moral events of God's world, and then uttering itself in the strains of sacred song. And the book of Ecclesiastes is the biographj^ of a man who was first a worldly man, next a sceptical man, and finally a godly man, and who faithfully describes his experiences, his reasonings, and his conclusions, in each of these positions. Even the prophetic books are not wanting in constant reference to the personal history of their authors. And in the New Testament, the Four Gospels and the Acts are in the form of direct biography ; while Paul and Peter, in their Epistles, are presenting continually to us fragments of their own experience in the religious hfe.

And each saintly soul is eminent in some beautiful virtue. The steady faith of one and the 2* c intense consecration of another, the tender love of this and the rugged earnestness of that man, the patience shown here and the wise zeal that blazes there, — all go towards forming a book of the choicest biographies in which each select grace of character has some bright exemplar. The names of these holy men and women have passed into history. They are famihar to the language of the world. They are the illustrated alphabet of human goodness. And wherever men call to mind any shining virtue, any beauty or grace of character, they link the thought of it with some name in this great and golden roll-call of the men '' of whom the world was not worthy." Nor does it matter very largely that, in saying these men were imperfect, we are only confessing that they were men. The one pattern, '' the man Christ Jesus," stands out bright enough and far enough above them all. So that for higher example we pomt any man to him. Christ is the illustration of Christianity. No other is needed. One sun is enough for our firmament, though there be many stars. No need that on the one hand every star should be sun ; nor, on the other, that we deny to any star its own brightness. 'These men were not so removed from worldly trial that their virtues were the easy goodness of men untested by opposition. They fought in the good fight. Their brows, if smooth and even, were worn down to that evenness by the chafings of actual life. They had no select and secluded station. Found in every rank, they adorned their position by the lustre of their piety. Some dwelt in shepherds' tents and some sat on thrones. Some served in palaces and some suffered in prisons. Some wandered wearilj^ through strange lands, nor knew a home, and some gathered about them wealth and beauty and art. They had no idea that they were doing any thing very great. No thought had they of the world-wide fame they were achieving. So true is it that the names of men who work for earthly fame are " writ in water,'' while those who link themselves with God and his cause sometimes, by their very forgetfulness of self, secure selfrenown. They gain an earthly immortality in the memory of the holy, and they gain always a place on the pages of the Lamb's Book of Life. Their names shall be read out at the judgment amid the acclaim of the assembled universe.

And the wisdom of God in selecting this biographical method of teaching becomes the more clear as we remember how powerfully the story of a human life always affects us. No matter how obscure that life, so it be well told, it takes "US captive. It wakes responsive feeling. It has in it the tender touch that makes the world akin. Not a little of the moral teaching of our time is done by the novelist. The old novel with its impossibilities has gone by. '^ True to life " is the standard to-day. Is there some abuse in court or hovel, is there some delay of the law, some barbarity in social hfe, some excrescence on the fair form of a nation's freedom, some political error working mischief to humanity, the novelist sees in it his opportunity. Sketching that evil in its effect upon some character that is the child of his fertile brain, he holds up the sin to the scorn of the age. It needs not that he be himself so far in advance of others. He may not be personally higher than his fellows. He needs not be himself a philanthropist to sketch the character of a philanthropist any more than he needs to be a villain to sketch a villain's vrork. He may have only the artist's sense of what is fit^ and right. His aesthetic nature may be his only guide when his work serves high moral purposes, and helps to a needed reform.

And so, too, if there be any saintly virtue to be shown to men in a better glory than any which painter ever threw on canvas, the story of some man or woman who stands, not with the traditional white wings and flowing garments in which the old-time painters strove to make piety so unworldly that it was unreal, — not tills, but the story of that life as it works itself out in rough contact with that which is unfriendly, will always touch us into a fresh admiration of the virtue itself. We part from the story, as we close the volume, only to feel a stronger impulse to imitate such a virtue, and a keener sense of the way to do it. Beautiful was the precept, and we approved it. But more beautiful is the instance and example that has charmed our hearts. And we must notice that God's method of teaching through biography has all the charm, all the pathos, all the vigor and impressiveness, with none of the necessary evils^ of the modern modes of instruction. He gives us real lives. He had centuries from which to select these examples. These men are actual men, not figures stuffed with straw. They are seen not as persons of '' impossible goodness," but they have the spots of our humanity on the disk of the very virtue that makes them illustrious. We never have to stop and say that this man is such a paragon of excellence that the virtue is angelic rather than human. We never have to impose on ourselves the mental trickery which we accept when studying the novelist's characters. We need no effort of imagination to make the Bible heroes actual men. We have never to play that fiction is history. These men of the Scriptures are our brethren, — higher, better in degree, but still our brethren in the flesh, even while they are examples to us in every grace of the Spirit.

Nor is this method confined to the good. The Bible-pictures of bold, bad men are among the most striking in the whole volume. The writers never go out of their way to find bad men. But when they meet such men, they do not shrink from showing them up to the gaze of the world. Sometimes they transfix a vile man by a single epithet. How little is said of Judas. But what is said "pinions him as sure as Prometheus to the rock." Sometimes we see a man working out his wickedness, passing on through the steps of his sin. We trace him in all his thought as the desire grows up to the fructifying deed. We look at him in all his fears and hesitations, which, after a useless struggle, do not hinder him from the final and fatal end. AVhere else in lines so sharply drawn is there another Pilate ? An express biography of the man would have been nothing to it. His baseness is baser for the contrasted glory of the being whom he is certain to give over in the end to the mob. The washing of his hands, his mingled weakness and Itypocrisy, — why these gospel writers have gibbeted that man for ever !

And he who would be a " Christian in the world" must be familiar with these biographies, that his hatred for the evil and his love for the pure and the good may be increased. There is so much in this world to confuse moral distinctions, so much special pleading for special forms of wrong, that we have reason to study these records which were made without fear or favor ; biographies of good men that help us to feel that goodness is real ; biographies of evil men that make us know the wrong as a hateful thing.

But when we have studied as carefully as we may these life-histories, there is one thing that troubles a practical man. It is the same fact which we found when studying the Biblical cases of casuistry. Our case is never exactly met. There is always some one important thing in which the precedent does not apply. These old-time heroes lived in other lands, amid other surroundings. Their biographies help us. They rouse us. To a certain degree we feel bound to imitate these noble souls. But it is in the little things of life that we trip most easily. And in them we need the most direction. But just here is where precedent and example serve us least. They do not crowd our consciences to be brave in matching our deeds with those of such men. For it is the tone of a life which is more to us than its acts ; just as the touches that make up the manner of a master are those most difficult to imitate in our copy of his picture.

Nor must we forget that God's method of teaching requires a very peculiar spirit in us ; a certain receptive temper ; a tone of sympathetic feehng. The Bible has something for all. It has a key for every heart. It addresses the sinful. It aims to touch the higher tier of faculties in every man. He may not yet be holy, and there may be in him no holy emotions to which an appeal can be made. But there are certain natural desires. They are his by virtue of liis manhood. There is a natural '^ love of possession." This is addressed by the Bible. It bids him lay up treasure in heaven. There is the natural " desire for happiness." The Bible calls him to seek the narrow way that leadeth unto life. There is in every man a '' dread of sorrow." And this natural feeling is also addressed by God's Word. It bids the man to fear him which " after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell." But the special teachings of Scripture are for those already in sympathy with its holy principles. It asks that one, first a Christian himself, shall go out into the world for which Christ died as in some sense his representative. He is to represent Christ in his words, his conduct. Those words and that conduct are to be permeated with the Christian spirit. For better than any merely mechanical rules is the loving expression of the spirit of vital religion. Not that rules are useless. Not that a man is above them. Not that, apart from express commands, a man is a law unto himself. But piety has an instinctive knowledge of how rules are to be interpreted. It finds in them not bondage but liberty. Nor is its liberty the license that disobeys any command. For this liberty is sympathetic, and so is swift and sure in its obedience. Sometimes we have seen two human hearts that understood each other so perfectly that one would take up the half-finished question of the other and answer it before it had hardly left the other's lips. And sometimes even a glance has been enough without a spoken word. There are in God's household service little uncommanded things that a soul in sympathy mth God has no need of being told about. Enough that they will be likel}^ to please God. The glance directs. ^' I will guide thee with mine eye."

This is the tone of piety needed to-day in practical life. He who wants to be a Christian out in the world, w^ho would be in vital contact with men in his own age, who would be a live man and yet a faithful disciple, must obtain and retain this inner sympathy with God's gracious purpose. This divine instinct will help him more than any thing else ; for it is the effect of God's indwelling and illuminating Spirit. It will guide him as a student of the Scriptures in search of wisdom to order his life. It will help him to give due authority to moral law. It will enable him to see what is peculiar to the Christian dispensation. It will free him from the two widely different dangers, of slavish precedent in one direction, and of carelessness about things commanded in the other. It will help him amid the wonderful richness of Scripture biography to adopt the virtues of holy men, and then to express those virtues wisely and well in the changed circumstances of the present hour. He will study the Bible iov principles as well as precepts. He may not always at once be able to apply those principles when discovered ; may wish that in some cases duty were plainer ; but in the end he may come to see the wisdom of God in his methods of teaching. There is secured in this way the best moral discipline. We learn to exercise a Christian judgment and heart about our duty ; and, perhaps, the discipline to be gained only in this way, only by this careful study, only bj^ this exercise of a Christian judgment in determining under God our duty, is the very thing that he desires us to secure by all this variety of method in his Holy Word.

PEINCIPLES.

1. The Principle of Pleasing Christ.

2. The Historical Christ ; the Living Christ.

3. His Life Studied.

4. His Spirit Keceived.

5. Love Imitates.

III. The Principle Of Pleasing Christ

T^R. ARNOLD, of Rugby, lays down the following rule with reference to the precepts and precedents of the Scriptures: —

'' A command given to one man, or to one generation of men, is, and can be, binding upon other men, and other generations, only so far forth as the circumstances in which they are placed are similar. A commandment of eternal and universal obligation i§ one that relates to points in which all men at all times are alike, and which there is the same reason, therefore, for all obeying equally. Other commandments may be of a transitory nature, and binding only upon particular persons, or at particular times ; but yet, when they proceed from the highest authority, their indirect use may be universal, even although their direct use be limited. That is, from knowing what Avas God's will under such and such circumstances, we may gather, by parity of reasoning, what it will be in all circumstances; namely, the same when the circumstances are the same ; analogous Avhen the circumstances are analogous ; and absolutely contrary, when they also are contrary."

When he speaks of "commandments of eternal obligation binding on all men at all times alike," Dr. Arnold evidently refers to moral law. And when he declares that '' some commands are transitory, binding only at particular times," he must have in mind those which belong to a particular dispensation. But what shall be said of those precepts which Arnold so fitly calls '' of indirect use to us " ? Are we not in broad difficulties at once when we would judge about how far ^' circumstances are the same, are analogous or absolutely contrary " ? But if there is a difficulty here, it is one that "must needs be." Besides, it is a difficulty more seeming than real. A regenerate heart, an honest purpose, and a careful study of the Bible, are indeed required ; and these had, there is need of '' sanctified common-sense " in applying a few simple 'principles to practical life ; and then there can be no danger of any serious mistake. For these principles are very obvious, very easily understood, and can be instantly applied in any given case.

One of these principles, so clear as almost to be self-evident, is the principle of pleasing Christ.

Read the Epistles of the New Testament. Jesus has died; his body came forth from the grave ; men saw him ascend into the heavens ; and yet the writers of these Epistles constantly declare his presence with themselves, and assume the same with the men to whom they wrote. They made no claim of a bodily presence. It was evidently impossible that Christ's human body should be with them in various places at one and the same time. Nor was it the merely human soul of our Lord — that *' which grew in wisdom" — for which these men claimed this omnipresence. But they certainly did believe in an omnipresent Christ ; he was "with them," and '' in them." They said he was only in this thing fulfilling his own promise, '' I will manifest myself unto them." True for the first century of the Christian era, the fact is the same to-day. Our faith is not in a Christ now dead, but in a Christ now living. He said, '' I am with you unto the end of the world." Tliu presence of Christ — a presence none the less real because spiritual — is all the presence we need. The bodily presence added would be no gain ; for the Omniscient Christ only can meet the wants of his widely sundered flock. Him we have. He is the same in every thought and feeling as when he was here in bodily form. And it is not a beautiful fiction by which we happily impose on ourselves, but it is the literal and exact statement of a fact, when we say that Christ — not some influence or effluence, but Christ himself, the very Christ of the New Testament — is now near to Christians. He is pleased or displeased with each disciple's every act ; and hence the simple and obvious principle which we lay down for practical Christian living, that we are to do those tilings and those only that will please Christ,