Following Christ

Preface

This volume is a companion to one entitled Confessing Christ: A Manual for Inquirers in Religion, published several years ago, and, like that, has been prepared mainly in reference to the wants of the author's own congregation. A pastor whose solicitudes for the welfare of his flock have run parallel with a lifetime may naturally extend those solicitudes beyond the period in which his voice is to be heard, and may find in them a sufficient reason for desiring to leave behind him a legacy of affectionate counsel The hope that what was designed to be a help to

4 PREFACE.

a particular community may also serve as a cruide to earnest souls in other communities who are seeking to follow Christ, has led to the offering of this volume to the public.

Natchez Parsonage, May i, 1884.

Chapter I

AS the Scriptures employ the phrase L " confessing Christ" to describe the assuming of a religious character and life, they very naturally employ the corresponding phrase " following Christ" to describe :he exhibition of such a character and the prosecution of such a life. In adopting religion under the direction of the Bible, a man attaches himself to Christ; in practicing religion under the same direction, he follows Christ. We may be thankful that a procedure so critical in its nature, and so momentous in its bearings and issues as this latter one must needs be, has been set before us by God in terms so simple and intelligible. Jesus constructed no formal system of

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doctrine and enacted no formal code of moral law, but he comprehended both in the injunction "Follow me." Light sufficient for the world is concentrated in this single luminous point.

Every honest person, in embracing a religious character and life, will desire above all things to know what is precisely included in the great obligation he has assumed. He will desire this for two reasons: firsts that he may be sure that nothing properly belonging to its contents has been overlooked; and second, that hs may be sure, at the same time, that nothing apart from or beyond those contents has been imposed upon him. The position of one who by proper acknowledgments before the authorities of the church, and by a participation in the covenanting ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper, has just taken the step which attests the faith and avows the purpose of a Christian, must be an unspeakably solemn one to the party concerned; and one which every thoughtful observer will look upon with the profoundest interest and the tenderest

INTRODUCTORY.

solicitude. If it means what it ought to mean, it presents us with that spectacle of a sinner repenting and turning from his evil ways over which the angels of God rejoice in heaven. It is the return to the Father's house of a wandering prodigal to whom every right-minded " elder son " will be ready to extend a loving welcome. It is the enlistment of a new recruit in the army of Christ — an act which surely should appeal with a pathetic power to the heart of every veteran in that army.

Young soldier, you have done a brave deed — a deed which many a man who has courage enough to face death on the battlefield does not dare to do. You have dared to confess that your life heretofore has been all wrong, and to determine that in future it shall by God's help be made right. You have dared to change masters, to change principles, to change habits. You have rescued yourself from the thraldom of sin ; you have broken loose from the appetites with which it had enslaved you and the associations with which it had entangled you. You have renounced all other lords

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which have had dominion over you to bow the knee to Jesus.

The struggle by which you have done all this may have been great ; the severity of it reveals itself in the sobriety of your manner and the seriousness of your countenance. A deeper shade still gathers over your spirit as you think of the struggles to come — as you contemplate the responsibilities which are involved in the steps which yet lie before you. The apprehension of failure or of defection in the work you have undertaken fills you with alarm. Shall the peace, the hope, the joy, of a new life which are now stirring in 'your soul be stifled and lost? Shall the Lord ever have occasion to look upon you as he did upon Peter, and reproach you for your unfaithfulness and treachery ? Shall the friends in Christ to whom you have now joined yourself be constrained in time to come to mourn over your backsliding ? And shall the unbelieving crowd whom you have professedly abandoned have cause to rejoice over your halting? To all such questions you now make the

INTRODUCTORY.

I I almost passionate reply, " God forbid !" The very gravity of your demeanor, the intensity of desire and purpose which kindles the very look of your eye, seem to make a mute appeal to others more advanced in Christian life to instruct your ignorance and brace up your feebleness — to tell you, in a word, what you must be and what you must do in order to realize the character you have assumed and the life you have undertaken to enact.

In the spirit of sympathy with this mute appeal (which in many instances has been addressed to the writer as a spoken one) the following pages have been prepared. In the preparation of them the keynote with which everything will be kept in harmony is the great comprehensive command, the first (Matt. iv. 19) and the last (John xxi. 22) addressed by Christ to his disciples, " Follow me." It is evidently enough for the disciple that he be "as his Master," and for the servant that he be "as his Lord" (Matt. x. 25). The religion of Christianity requires just this likeness to Christ — all this, and nothing more than this.

The exposition of this cardinal law of the Christian life, it is hoped, will furnish a seasonable aid to that favored class of persons who through God's blessing upon faithful parental training have by imperceptible steps been brought into his kingdom. Divine grace, in the nature of it, is without limitation as to the time and manner of its operation. It is the privilege of all who are themselves in covenant with God to believe that their offspring may be included with them in the provisions of the covenant. They often give evidence that they are. In such cases the birth of the Spirit has supervened upon the birth of the flesh at so early a day, and by such insensible processes, that the subject has no consciousness of the regenerating change. But the obligations of the Christian life are the same in the case of those who are thus called from the womb as in that of those who are converted in later life. The import of these obligations will present itself to the intelligence of these persons, as well as of others, when the time arrives for them

INTRODUCTORY.

1 3 to avow their faith in Christ and their consecration to God by a formal union with the Church. To them, as well as to others who have been recalled from the open paths of unbelief and sin, Jesus says, " Follow me," The counsels which befit the latter class may be as diligently studied and as carefully observed by them. The Spirit of Christ in the soul of a believer will manifest its presence by the same phenomena in the case of a Samuel sanctified from his birth as in that of a Saul arrested by sovereign grace in a career of flagrant opposition to Christ.

Chapter II. The True Conception Of Religious Living

THE sincere professor of the religion of Christ will mean something very definite by the profession which he has made. If in all enterprises it is requisite that a man should have a clear idea of what he is doing, it is especially requisite in the practice of religion, confessedly the most important enterprise in which man can engage. No one has ever risen to the grandeur of a Christian life who has not felt the necessity of intelligently and deliberately weighing and measuring the import of such a life.

"Which of you " asks the Saviour (Luke xiv. 28), "intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundau

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tion and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to make war with another king, sitteth not down first and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand ?" With the breadth and the closeness of circumspection indicated by these operations the young Christian ought to scrutinize the nature, the scope and the aim of the movement in which he is embarking-.

Who would start upon a journey without having a destination in view, or without endeavoring to foresee and provide for all the conditions necessary for a sure and safe transit to the desired point, and for the attainment of the objects proposed in the purpose to visit it ?

A recent traveler, in a work describing a tour around the world, tells us that " he had planned his entire excursion several months before setting out, with the times of arrival and departure for each country that he expected to visit; and until reachx 6 FOLLOWING CHRIST.

ing Europe, where his plans were intentionally left uncertain, he was scarcely a day out of time at any stage of the journey." Of course such a journey was wisely and successfully made ; the traveler accomplished just what he intended to do. The traveler upon the Christian life can hope for a satisfactory issue to his undertaking only by exercising the same forethought. Standing within the threshold of the Church, with a future consecrated to Christ before him, the earnest inquiry of his soul ought to be, and will be if he is a true man, " Lord, what wilt thou have

me to do?"

That there are deliberate dissemblers and hypocrites in the Church is undoubtedly true, but such cases are extremely rare. Ordinarily, those who formally make a profession of religion are sincere. It may happen that the act has been performed under an emotional excitement, and that after the transient inspiration has subsided the individual has relapsed into his old form of life, but still he was sincere when the profession was made. He was deceived

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in persuading himself that he was a subject of regenerating grace, but he was honest in entertaining the persuasion. Simon Magus even (Acts viii, 13) gives evidence of being honest when he professed faith and received baptism as a disciple of Jesus, though he afterward showed that his " heart was not right in the sight of God/'

If the genuine principle of spiritual life is in the newly-enlisted church-member, he will be honest not only in the persuasion that he is a Christian, but in the sense of desiring to know and meaning to be and to do all that is implied in the name and character of a Christian. Whither this journey upon which he has entered is to lead him, and what is involved in the prosecution of it, are the anxious and absorbing inquiries which his mind will be constrained to revolve. On these inquiries a few reflections which I shall proceed to offer may throw light.

L

It is evident that the idea of religious living, as given in the phrase " Following

Christ," includes vastly more than a mere external religiousness or the putting on of a religious manner and the practicing of a certain set of religious acts and rites.

A religion of the look, the tone, the dress, the outward ceremonial, has received the distinctive name of " sanctimoniousness "—an opprobrious term by which the world has denounced a religion of form and appearance as a spurious religion. Real religion is a property ot the man himself. It is not made by the draperv he wears, or the dialect he uses, or the'societv to which he attaches himself. The follower of Christ will change his ways because he is a Christian, not in order to become a Christian.

Even under the Old Dispensation, where external signs of membership in the Church were so largely enjoined, the principle was distinctly announced (i Sam. xvi. 7) : "The Lord seeth not as man seeth ; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." No right-minded professor of religion will delude himself with the idea that his vow of dis-

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1 9 cipleship is fulfilled by the putting on of a religious demeanor or the doing merely the things which religious people ordinarily do. He will feel that he meant vastly more than pledging himself to appear in the house of God on the Sabbath, to repeat two or three prayers a day, to come to the communion-table at the stated times, to subscribe for a missionary paper, to drop his contribution into the collectionbox and to vote at a church-meetino- when he pledged himself to follow Christ. He will know that there is no " keeping of the words" of Christ without "loving" Christ (John xiv. 23), and love puts the consecration of the heart at the root of acts of devotion.

Religion, it is true, like every other strong spiritual force introduced into a man, may be expected to impress itself more or less upon his manner and conduct. In some instances it may effect a total transformation of character, as in the case of St. Paul, changing the lion into the lamb. It certainly will make the man who has been neglectful of religious customs and observances attentive to them ; it will manifest its presence in the soul by this outward sicm But a sign is not identical with the thin* it represents; the fruit of a tree is not the tree nor the life of the tree.

There may be the sign of religion where there is no religion. The Jews in Isaiah s time (Isa. L) were scrupulous in keeping their festivals, bringing their oblations and offering up their prayers, and yet in the sight of God there was "no soundness in them" The Pharisees in our Saviours time made themselves conspicuous by their badges of piety, but were likened by him to « whited sepulchres." The mere calling Christ « Lord, Lord," or the acknowledging him by any other symbolical act, does not make a man a member of the kingdom of heaven (Mat, vii. 2i.)

of Christ, in espousing a religious life, will not mistake the wearing of a church uniform or the practicing of a church drill for such a life. It is not the new garb, but the new heart-not the form of godliness, but the spirit of it-which is required for the following of Jesus.

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II

Nor is the act of entering into church-membership to be regarded as a mere induction into a corporation and a subscription to the laws of that corporation.

Men have found it convenient or necessary in the prosecution of a variety of objects to unite themselves under a social compact or constitution ; they thus form a league or confederation for a special purpose. There must be, of course, in every such league or confederation, a set of laws bearing upon the object proposed by it, by which every person entering it is bound. By this his duty as a member of it is limited and defined. A temperance society, for instance, adopts its rules with a view to the promotion of temperance, and he who joins it engages to observe these rules. So long as this is done all is done that is required of him. To put the church in the same category with a temperance society, and to construe the phrase " joining the church'' as signifying the same kind of act as the joining of such a society, is a fundamental mistake. In becoming a church-member a man is,

FOLLO WING CHRIS T.

indeed, entering a social body and placing himself, to a certain extent, under the obligations involved in the constitution of that body. The church is the house of God, and, like every other house, it must have its peculiar economy— that is, its house-law. This house-law, which sets certain objects before the church and prescribes certain rules and methods for the attainment of them, requires organization and concerted effort on the part ol the members. The worship of God, for instance, is to be maintained in the world, and this creates a necessity for a number of practical arrangements involving an exercise of deliberation and an expenditure of money in which every member must share. It is his duty in his measure to do whatever the church as a body is required to do, and a duty which he owes to the body ; so that his fellow-members are wronged whenever he fails to do it.

But no intelligent disciple of Christ would for a moment substitute compliance with this house-law of the church for obe-

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dience to the law of God, or feel that in discharging his duty to the corporation of which he was a member he had acquitted himself of his obligations as a follower of Christ. His social life as a church-member is only one department — and a lower one — of that religious life which he is bound to lead as a Christian ; and if his aim is only to do the will of his brethren, he has failed to recognize the first principle of religious living, which is to do the will of his Father in heaven. To stand well and to have a fair report among those with whom he has associated himself in churchfellowship is an end which every professor of religion ought to keep in view ; but if his purpose contemplates no higher end than this, it will certainly never realize itself in making him a follower of Christ.

. . III.

As mere conformity to church-regulations is not the rule of religious living, neither is union with the church to be made the ground upon which the Christian rests his expectation of spiritual blessings,

The church cannot do the work of Christ; it cannot regenerate nor sanctify nor save. It is not a divinely-instituted insurance-company, pledging itself, in consideration of their compliance with certain terms of membership, to protect its subscribers from all spiritual loss and damage. Under some theories, conspicuously the Romish, this idea is unquestionably the cardinal one. The Church is represented as a mother, assuming the custody and guaranteeing the salvation of all who put themselves under her charge. It is held forth as an asylum within whose sacred enclosure the inmate will be shielded from the pursuit of law and furnished with all the aids of erace. Let the church-member, it is said, implicitly accept the teachings of the Church and regularly comply with its ordinances, and the Church pledges to him an assured interest in all .the privileges of the kingdom of heaven.

This is simply a modification of the old Jewish doctrine which identified religion with relationship to Abraham—a doctrine which John the Baptist denounced when he

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2 5 cried (Matt iii. 9), " Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father, for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham ;" and which the Saviour condemned when he said (Matt. viii. 11), " Many shall come from the east and the west, and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness/' It is the prerogative of Christ personally to forgive sin, to reconcile the soul to God and to bestow eternal life ; and he has never delegated this prerogative to his Church, and no policy or certificate that church authorities can issue is of any worth unless Christ has first pronounced the believer forgiven and justified. The man who puts dependence upon a Church in the place of following Christ is indulging a fatal delusion.

IV

In distinction from these low and super ficial views of a religious life the Bible

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places the foundation and source of it in a new nature. It represents the Christian, not as an old creature rehabilitated and newly shaped and labeled, but as a new creature specifically, one quickened by a new principle and reanimated and energized by a new spirit (2 Cor. v. 17. Rom. viii. 9).

The term " religious living " simply means the religious man living. If the church-member in entering upon a course of religious living has made a change in his mode of living, it is because he has himself undergone a change of nature, or what our Lord calls (John iii. 3) a new birth. The change in the outward and demonstrative is merely the sequel of a chano-e which has occurred within him. By this change the carnal mind by which he was previously governed has given place, through faith in Christ, to a spiritual mind; love to God has been elevated above love to the creature, and all the minor affections are embraced and controlled by this predominant one. The law by which the believer's living is now

TRUE RELIGIOUS LIVING. 2J directed and ordered requires him to be religious and forbids him to be anything else. " How shall we that are dead to sin," asks St. Paul (Rom. vi. 2), " live any longer therein ?" How can the man in whose nature love to God has been implanted as the reigning principle be anything but a religious man in his living? As well might we ask, " How can the star be a star without shining?" or, "How can a fruit tree be a fruit tree without bearing fruit?"

Religious living is expressed not so much by the phrase "I do" as by the phrase " I am ;" consequently, in making a profession of religion the man is making a promise, not to do certain specified things, but to be in all things a certain definite character. He purposes and he pledges himself to be at all times and in all circumstances a Christian man. In private as well as in public, in secular transactions as well as sacred ones, on weekdays as well as on the Sabbath, outside of the church as well as in it, he recognizes the obligation as resting upon him to exhibit the nature of one born of God.

V

A Christian life, conducted under the promptings of this new nature, will express itself actively in a species of working corresponding to this nature.

Every honest professor of religion will feel that he has bound himself by a solemn indenture to be a worker for God. It is only under this form that his living can claim to be a following of Christ, for Christ affirms of himself (John vi. 38), "I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." Put the term "business" here in this passage in the place of the term " will," as we may properly do, and it will teach that in the believer's scheme of life God's business must take precedence of his own.

The privileges of the gospel can never be divorced from the duties of the gospel. The faith that receives Christ as a Saviour will receive him also as a Master. " Freely ye have received," as a statement of gratuitous blessings conferred, must always

2 9 stand conjoined in the policy of the Christian with the injunction " Freely give." We are engrafted into Christ by the divine Husbandman not merely that we may live, but that we may give evidence of our living by our acting or working. " Herein is my Father glorified/' says the Lord (John xv. 8), "that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples."

The " high calling " which every follower of Jesus has received binds him to make the glory of God the chief end of his living. He is the servant entrusted with special talents by his Lord, and the command " Occupy " — trade with these — " till I come " accompanies the trust. "Always abounding in the work of the Lord " is a definition of, as well as a precept to, the Christian. He is to "work out his own salvation," or to prove himself to be in a state of salvation by his working. He is to "minister," as his Master did, to the good of others. He is to show his love to God by his love to his brethren. He is to pray for the coming of the kingdom of God, and to show that his praying is sincere by working

3 o FOLLOWING CHRIST.

for the coming of that kingdom. He is to make his light so positively and conspicuously shine that all in the house may see it. He is to travel with hourly diligence and with lifelong effort to the promised land, not be borne there in his luxurious car without a care or a movement of his own.

The relation of all other avocations to the supreme one of working for Christ is well stated by an eminent living minister in the pithy questions, "Is religion your business, or business your religion ? Does your candle shine upon the bushel, or does the bushel hide your candle ?" When Christ gives the command " Follow me," he imposes an obligation which involves in it the forsaking of all for his sake. Henceforth the business of God outranks and holds in subordination to itself all other exercises of life in the believer.

VI

Religious living, furthermore, is to be conceived of as 'the carrying out of the eno-ao-ements of a covenant between the

soul and God.

Whatever may be the form of the pro-

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3 1 cess, no man becomes a Christian man without making a covenant with God. It may be expressed in literal terms. Dr. Doddridge has inserted such a covenant in his Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul for the use of persons adopting a religious life. If this is not done literally, it is done virtually, by every one who embraces such a life.

The form of this covenant in Old-Testament times is stated by Isaiah (xxiii. 13) : " O Lord our God, other lords beside thee have had dominion over us ; but by thee only will we make mention of thy name." An example of it is given in Josh. xxiv. 22- 26. After drawing from the people a profession of their allegiance to God, Joshua seals, as it were, the covenant into which they had entered by setting up a great stone under an oak that was near the sanctuary of the Lord and saying to the people, " Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us, for it hath heard all the words of the Lord which he spake unto us ; it shall be, therefore, a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God."

In the New Testament this covenant is described or suggested in various forms, as in these passages : " Ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God" (Rom. vii. 4) ; " Ye who were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world, now, in Christ Jesus, are made nigh by the blood of Christ" (Eph. ii. 12, 13) ; and " I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Cor. xi. 2).

Baptism and the Lord's Supper are essentially covenanting transactions. They are modes by which faith in Christ as the Prophet, the Priest and the King of the people of God is professed by the party engaging in them. If they mean anything, they & mean that that party is by these solemn rites binding himself to make Christ in fact his Prophet, his Priest and his Kino-. And these ordinances, being

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direct and positive institutions of God, have in them all the significance of a pledge or a seal on God's part that the blessings secured by the threefold work of Christ shall be conferred upon him.

All covenanting is a serious procedure, but in covenanting with God the procedure reaches a climax in both force and extent. The man's true self and his whole self must be conveyed to God in it; all other interests and obligations must be covered by it. All the countless circles through which life revolves — personal, domestic, political — must be included in and bounded by that supreme one which passes between the soul and God.

VII

As a consequence of this last fact, Christian living is to be conceived of as the carrying out of a vow of consecration to God.