Spiritual life; its nature, urgency and crowning excellence

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Contents

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I. The Life , 1

II. The Work 18

I. The Life

SPIRITUAL life ! what is it ? The expression is very familiar ; we have all heard it from childhood up; is the experience equally common? Is it something gained in the order of natural growth, of intellectual development, of social progress, or moral improvement ? Is it, in some degree, a heritage of every man's earthly existence, cropping out somewhere and at some time as a necessary part of his being? Or is it a distinct element, introduced by other than natural processes, and requiring in every individual that has it free and intelligent acceptance of it at the hands of the great Giver of all life ? Verily, the latter view is correct. Spiritual life is life begotten in the trusting heart by the Spirit of God. The Spirit proceeds from Christ, who is our life. He produces spiritual life in the believer because he is the very breath of the living and glorified Christ. He takes of that which belongs to Jesus (John xvi, 15) and communicates it to us. " Our Lord's holy life on the earth," says Prof. Godet, "is the type which the Holy Spirit is commissioned to reproduce in us, the treasury from which he draws the renewing of our life. Life, in Scripture, denotes a fully satisfied existence, in which all the faculties find their full exercise and their true occupation. Man's spirit, become the abode and organ of the Divine Spirit, realizes this life with a growing perfection to eternal life." In many passages of Scripture Christ is referred to as dwelling in the believer. This can be only a spiritual habitation. It is Christ in the person of the Spirit that joins himself with the spirit and life of man, they twain constituting a spiritual life of the highest order known to created existence. Where the Spirit of Christ is there he is also himself. Christ in us thus becomes our life of joy and our hope of glory. He satisfies us just in proportion as we awake in his likeness. He uses us for good in the ratio of our separation from evil and consecration to his service. " And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." Rom. viii, 10. Spiritual life will

Spiritual Life a New Creation. 9

not prevent the death of the body, but it will energize the life of the soul, making it potent for good, and in the end will quicken the mortal part, and result in life eternal.

Spiritual life, then, is no "spontaneous generation" — an element springing into being of itself. It is not mere development of latent energies or dormant forces ; it is not moral rectitude, nor physical perfection, nor any thing that comes within the range of purely human capabilities. It is a life of God. It is a new creation. It is being born from above, born of the Spirit, made a child of God, and adopted into his family.

And this beginning of spiritual life in man has its striking analogy in nature. It is a wonderful thing, but not more wonderful than the beginning of natural life. Scientists now concede that there is no such thing as life spontaneously generated. Life can only come from pre-existing life. The attempt, such as Bastian hastily made, and supposed successful, to get the living out of the dead has proved a disastrous failure. Huxley is free to grant that the doctrine of life only from life is "' victorious along the whole line at the present day." " The present state of knowledge," he says, "furnishes us with no link between the living and the not living." * Tyndall affirms that "no shred of trustworthy experimental testimony exists to prove that life in our day has ever appeared independently of antecedent life." f Life springs only at the touch of the great Lifegiver. This is nature's law, universal and unchangeable.

And so spiritual life is not the result of merely good resolves, a reformation of character if it was previously bad, a gradually becoming better and better until, from wickedness and degeneracy, that quality of religious nature known as spiritual life is attained. "Spiritual life," says that masterly scholar. Professor Henry Drummond, " is the gift of the Living Spirit. The spiritual man is no mere development of the natural man. He is a new creation born from above. As well expect a hay infusion to become gradually more and more living until, in course of the process, it reached vitality, as expect a man, by becoming better and better, to attain the eternal life." He says again, "The door from the natural to the spiritual is shut, and no man can open it. This world of natural men is staked off from the spiritual world by barriers which have never yet been

The New Birth. 11

crossed from within. No organic change, no modification of environment, no mental energy, no moral effort, no evolution of character, no progress of civilization can endow any single human soul with the attribute of spiritual life. The spiritual world is guarded from the world next in order beneath it by a law of biogenesis, * Except a man be born again, , . . born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God.' The breath of God, blowing where it listeth, touches with its mystery of life the dead souls of men, bears them across the bridgeless gulf between the natural and the spiritual, between the spiritually inorganic and the spiritually organic, endows them with its own high qualities, and develops within them these new and secret faculties, by which those who are born again are said to see the kingdom of God."* This is experience, real, conscious. Christian experience. It is passing " from death unto life." It is the beginning of a new career, a spiritual existence to which the soul was before a stranger. The world calls this change conversiouy and such it is. It is a turning from one state to another, a change, not only of the conduct, but of the heart, a renewing of the mind, a passing away of the * '* Natural Law in the Spiritual World," p. 71.

old in tliouglit and affection and a coming in of the new, an enthronement within of the holy and good. " If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature : old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." 2 Cor. v, 17.

In this new life there is growth. While there could not be a growth into it, any more than from vegetable life into animal life, there is growth in it. The life, once begun, like the life of the body, expands, matures, rises into more and more fullness. The subject of it is earnest, believing, prayerful, self-denying, and a student of the "Word, and his growth goes on. He is planted in Christ. He is rooted and built up in him. He abides in the vine, and in the course of events is expected to bring forth fruit. In short, as one says, "the Christian, like the poet, is born, not made; and the fruits of his character are not manufactured things, but living things, things v/hich have grown from the secret germ, the fruits of the living Spirit. They are not the products of this climate, but exotics from a sunnier land." The conditions of growth and fruitfulness are within the compass of every renewed life. As the branch abides in the vine, so the Christian must abide in Christ: he must allow grace, which is as free as the air, as clear as the

Reality of Spiritual Life. 13

sunshine, and as refreshing as the dew, to playover him, to bathe his spirit, and invigorate his soul.

If he does this he lives on. Christ lives in him. Christ is his, and he is Christ's. The life of Christ is thus manifest in his mortal flesh. The Spirit of Christ fills him, thrills him, and renders his existence a foretaste of the bliss of heaven.

Of the certainty of the spiritual life, its deep and comforting reality, we are not left without a witness. Paul tells us so. In that wonderfully beautiful chapter, the eighth of Romans, the chapter "beginning with no condemnation, and ending with no separation," he declares, " For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry^ Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God : and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ." Here the Spirit is presented as a gracious, loving Guide, a present and powerful Witness, and " the leading " on the one hand, and following on the other, show the fact of sonship in all in whom is the Spirit of

God's dear Son. The word " cry " is emphatic, expressing the spontaneousness and strength of filial recognition. Elsewhere the apostle tells us that the exclamation is drawn from our hearts by the Spirit itself: "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Gal. iv, 6. The cry which proceeds from our own hearts under the vitalizing energy of the Spirit, as the very element of the new life, is responded to by the divine voice setting a distinct seal to ours; and so, " in the mouth of two witnesses," the thing is established. The arms of the believer are stretched out to take hold of God, and at the same time the arms of God are extended to draw to his bosom his child. No sooner does the cry of love. My Father! ascend from the seeking heart, than there comes back the comforting response, 3Iy son ! This means adoption, sonship, home, protection, sustenance, inheritance, and heaven. It implies work, worship, prayer, and " endurance unto the end. It is the conscious commencement of a spiritual existence, which may unfold in the glories of life eternal.

Commentators are agreed in this. Calvin observes on the above passage, that " if the Holy Ghost did not bear testimony of God's parental

Witness of the Sjnrit, 15

love, our tongue would remain silent, for we could not in prayer call him Father, unless we were assured that he really was so." Dr. Whedon understands by the expression, " Spirit itself," the immediate person of the Holy Ghost testifying solely to the fact of our sonship; and by the expression, "beareth witness with ours,'^ that he testifies concurrently with, so that there are two witnesses, the divine and the human, testifying to the one fact that we are the children of God.

Real and true, then, is the work of the Spirit in the soul's salvation. While it is so mysterious and profound that none can comprehend it who have not obtained like precious faith, it nevertheless enters into the consciousness and becomes as much a fact of life as any thing besides. It is an experience which can be clearly perceived and recognized by all who have it. " He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself." This witness he carries with him. It is a permanent, settled, standing witness which no trial or difficulty, other than the sinful, can dislodge. It is an inward testimony or impression on the soul which unites with the believer's own faculties and powers of understanding, forming a sort of double evidence, which cannot be doubted. The soul as intimately and evidently perceives when it loves, delights, and rejoices in God, as when it loves and delights in the companionship of a friend. The process, like the coming of the light and heat, or the shifting of the wind, is mysterious, but the fact itself is plain enough. To " every one that is born of the Spirit " God hath given an understanding by which he knows him that is true. " The blind man of Scripture," says Rev. Dr. J. B. Aylesworth, "had the witness in himself that he was cured, in the plain, simple, undoubted fact that he could see. So he that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself that he is saved. The same as the weeping woman at the Saviour's feet, to whom he said, ' Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace.' The same as the cleansed leper had, and the woman who had been straightened and loosed from an infirmity of eighteen years' standing. The same as Paul had when he found himself a new creature in Christ Jesus; or as Peter had when he lost his moral cowardice and found himself with holy boldness facing the mob and defending and proclaiming the faith. The same as Fletcher who, after a night spent much in prayer, was greatly encouraged next day because his temper was broken. The same as John Bunyan, who was rebuked for his profanity by a very wicked

The Spiritual a Coiiscioiis Life, 17

woman, who told him that he had the name of being 'the most profanest man in the town of Bedford.' He resolved, by the grace of God, never to swear again. And he never did. I also have had similar experience. The habits of youth which I dreaded and feared were my masters, I found easily subdued by the invisible, imperceptible, but none the less mighty and effectual working of the grace of God in answer to prayer,

* He breaks the power of canceled sin, And sets the prisoner free.'

And he in whom the power of sin and sinful habits is broken has the witness in himself that God is working in him and saving him just as plainly as had the blind man or the cleansed leper."

Such an experience is worth having. It is the richest, grandest, and most abiding possible to the soul of man. It is the solid ground of that spiritual life which alone is pleasing to God and proof against the insinuations of the evil one.

" His witness within, by faith we receive, And, ransomed from sin, in righteousness live ; Through Jesus's passion we gladly possess A present salvation, a kingdom of peace."

THE WORK.

MAN is called to be a worker. He has the best of examples. Jesus said, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Paul was a worker, and he exhorted the Churches that with quietness they work. Every true Christian is a laborer. All are not to be active in the same channel, but none are to be idle. With tongue or pen, hands or feet, wealth or influence, every believer in Christ is bound to be active. An idle Christian is the poorest kind of Christian, if, indeed, he be any Christian at all. How can he gain the things which pertain unto life and godliness ? Hear Peter: "Add to your faith virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly-kindness, charity."

In a sacred book of the East it is said that when a man dies they who survive him ask what property he has left behind. The angel who

Christianity is Doing Mitch, 19

bends over the dying man asks what good deeds he has sent before him. In our better book it is pronounced,

" Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. . . . They may rest from their labors; and their v/orks do follow them."

In the aggregate we know that Christianity is doing much, more than skeptics acknowledge, and more than many people dream. It is easy to believe the testimony of the five senses, but not so easy to ground our faith upon the reality of things spiritual. We can see and hear what science and art are doing for mankind, but the kingdom of God is like leaven in the meal, unseen and unheard, yet penetrating and powerful in its operations. Who can measure the extent of the hidden religious influences at work in the minds and hearts of the fifty millions of Americans to-day ? The thought of God, of immortality, of sin and salvation, of the Bible and of Christ ? Who can tell the good accomplished in society through the agencies of the Church — her missionary enterprises, her evangelizing efforts, and public and social means of grace ? Think of more than eighty thousand Protestant ministers constantly engaged in direct religious work? Think of eight or ten millions of members scat-

20 The Wokk.

tered through our communities in country, town, and city, bearing the Christian name and speaking the language of the spiritual Canaan. Think of over three hundred and sixty colleges, chiefly under the management of Christian boards of control, and more than one hundred and thirty theological seminaries, whose specific work it is to train the minds of the rising generation not only to think, but to think rightly ; not only to reason, but to reason in harmony with the higher laws and life which God has implanted in the human breast. Think of over three hundred religious newspapers and periodicals scattering abroad their weekly and monthly issues like the leaves of autumn. Think of the various philanthropic and reformatory agencies which owe their origin and support to the humane spirit of the age, in turn begotten and fostered by the living principles and power of Christianity. Think especially of the tens of thousands of Sunday-schools every-where at work, growing more numerous and mighty every week, and destined to become the grandest agency known to mankind, for the Christian culture and training of those who are to occupy positions of trust and responsibility when the present generation has fallen.

Dr. Daniel Dorchester, in his "Problem of

A General Summary, 21

Religious Progress," makes the following summary:

" 1. That Protestant Christian governments are rapidly and surely obtaining political control of the world.

" 2. That Christianity is increasing in the number of its communicants much more rapidly than the world is growing in population.

" 3. That the recent breaking down of many ancient barriers to Christian progress gives promise to a still greater ratio of increase.

" 4. That Protestantism has not deteriorated in the qualities necessary to an aggressive religious force.

" 5. That Romanism is doomed, though its death may be slow.

" 6. That the United States can never become a Roman Catholic nation.

" 7. That the infidelity of to-day is less potent and successful than that of the last century.

"8. That the so-called 'liberal' Churches of America utterly fail to keep pace with the growth of population.

"9. That the 'orthodox' Churches of the United States have, during this century, increased in a greater ratio than the population, and that this ratio is steadily increasing. In

1800 the evangelical Cliurclies had one communicant in 14.50 of the population; in 1850, one in 6.57; in 1870, one in 5.78; in 1880, one in 5.

" 10. That the faith, morals, and spirituality of the present time will not suffer in comparison with the past.

"11. That the higher education of our American youth is chiefly in the hands of the evangelical Churches.

" 12. That the Protestant Christian missions have been a conspicuous success."

Our high type of morality is the result of practical religion. Had moralists no standard save the lives of those who are worse than they are, how soon would their boasted virtues and good works dwindle into insignificance and oblivion. The exalted precepts of Christ, inwoven in the whole texture of our intellectual natures, ringing in the memory from early childhood, and finding their true element — their responsive life ^ — in the promptings of every educated conscience, are a power for good which man cannot measure by any mechanical rules. Every Church edifice, with spire pointing toward the city of God, is a helpful reminder that here we xnust labor if there we would rest.

But all these results are only the beginning of

Present Condition of Manhind. 23

what is to be done. The agencies noy^ employed are but as a drop that precedes the shower when compared with those that will be necessary ere , God can rain general righteousness upon this wicked world.

Consider for a moment the present awful condition of mankind. Go into any rural district w^here order, quietness, and morality are supposed to abound. See how God's Sabbaths are violated, his name profaned, his commandments broken. See how little there is of true philanthropy, righteous zeal, or systematic beneficence, even among the professedly good. Those who own the broad acres of this American continent are doing next to nothing to arrest the spread of evil and convert the world.

In our great cities there is wickedness enough to appall the strongest and bravest heart. The Bishop of Manchester, on a Sunday afternoon in June, v/as walking back from the East End of London, and in his sermon preached that evening in Westminster Abbey, he told what his eyes beheld:

^' I walked along the Commercial Road, and through the thronged thoroughfares of Whitechapel and Aldgate. I sav^ humanity there in many forms, few of them lovely. There was the street trader driving his profitable trade; there were the hundreds roaming to and fro without an apparent object, who had no Sunday clothes; there was the shameless harlot, and those who made that woman shameless; and there was the deadly spirit vault, with its bar crowded with young and old men and women asking for poison, from end to end. My wife was with me, and she turned to me and said, ' Well, this is sadder than any thing we have seen in Manchester;' and I thought. Can science or philosophy ever heal these things? Nay, my thought was even sadder than that, for I said to myself. We have let this evil grow and gain such dimensions as that. Can even Christianity, such as we know it, and such as we have allowed it to become — can even Christianity heal it ? Could Sodom, could Egypt, could the city in which our Lord was crucified have ever shown sadder, more desperate scenes than these?"

What the Bishop of Manchester saw in London on that bright summer day any minister in our American cities may behold for himself.

So commonplace are the evils of intemperance and harlotry that they are taken for granted, considered rather necessary, and scarcely wished otherwise by many who claim to have the good

Social Evils. 25

of humanity at heart. The same sentiment holds respecting nearly every species of evil. Apart from periodical uprisings against certain forms of vice, the wicked are having their day. Like those of old, they are committing two evils against God : they are forsaking God, the fountain of living water, and hewing out to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. The world may be wiser, and popular morality more wide-spread, than fifty years ago, but the wisdom is not that which the good old Bible commends, nor is the morality of that higher Christian type which gives proof of purity within. There have been social developments within the last decade startling in the extreme. They have not yet ceased or diminished. Society is constantly on the very tiptoe of expectation. What next? is the anxious inquiry of every good heart.

Increasing laxity of opinion in respect to the sanctity of the marriage relation is an alarming fact. The ratio of divorce to marriage in some of the States is already one to ten, and seems to be increasing. To the one ground of divorce which Christ's precepts allow, human legislators have added a dozen — cruelty, drunkenness, contagious or incurable disease, insanity, and even incompatil)ility of temper being among the number. In one of the United States, according to President Theodore D. Woolsey, the judges are left absolutely free to grant divorce when they think that the happiness of the marriage relation requires it. Keep on, and the time is not far distant when the marriage service, to be consistent, must read, " as long as we agree," instead of " until death us do part."

It will not do. Christians must bestir themselves, throwing their voices and influence against any laws granting dissolution of the marriage bond for reasons not justified by the teachings of Christ and of Paul. Society will suffer, and the Church be injured more and more, unless this tide of loose sentiment is turned. Without some religious sense of the nature and ends of marriage the sanctity of the marriage relation, in the face of license and lust, cannot be sustained. For this needed religious feeling the Church and ministry are almost solely responsible. Ministers must preach it, laymen must talk it. In Christ's stead they must plead for the integrity and sacredness of the marriage bond and the purity and welfare of the home. In no other instance did our blessed Lord alter or amend the law of Moses, and his direct and clear command in this single case

The Play-house. 27

ought to be respected by the Christian world until the present dispensation closes, and time shall be no more. In all cases of Church discipline for divorce, and other offenses against marriage, the authorities should seek to realize in law and justice a true conception of the Saviour's legislation. ^ ^* If the Christian legislator," says an able authority, " does not carry out Christ's principles in regard to divorce, it will be not because they are moral rather than jural, but because the hardness of men's hearts prevents the introduction of a perfect rule."

Consider the popularity of the play-house. It is an age of lightness and amusement. The theaters in the City of New York alone receive more money than all the Churches in America are contributing for the support of missions. In all other cities theaters have been sustained in a way most flattering to the proprietors and actors, but uncomplimentary to the influence of ministers and Churches.

None can deny that the patronage of the theater is of questionable propriety. There never was a time when pure Christianity did not revolt from the practical influences of the stage. Ministers in all ages have denounced it, moralists have reasoned against it, and those who have defended it have done so on the score of the intellectual rather than the moral.

Even the more virtuous pagans condemned this amusement as injurious to morals and the interests of nations. Plato, Livy, Xeiiophon, Cicero, Solon, Cato, Seneca, Tacitus, the most venerable men of antiquity, have denounced it as a source of pollution, assuring us that both Greece and Rome had their ruin accelerated by a fatal passion for these corrupting entertainments.

Lord Macaulay affirmed, " The theater is the seminary of vice." Macready, England's star actor, declared, " None of my children, with my consent, under any pretense, shall enter the theater, nor associate with play actors or actresses." An English writer, in the time of Charles I., made a catalogue of authorities against the stage, which contains almost every name of eminence in the heathen and Christian world.

The American Congress, soon after the Declaration of Independence, passed a resolution condemning the stage, and classing it with horseracing, gaming, etc.

M. Dumas, who wrote " Camille," once said, *' You do not take your daughter to see my play. You are right. Let me say, once for all, you must not take your daughter to the theater. It

The Theater Condemned, 29

is not merely the work that is immoral, it is the place. Whenever we paint men, there must be a grossness that cannot be placed before all eyes; and whenever the theater is elevated and loyal, it can live only by using the color of truth. The theater being the picture or satire of the passions and social manners, it must be immoral — the passions and social manners themselves being immoral." Edwin Booth, in a letter to the " Christian Union," says, " I never permit my wife or daughter to witness a play without previously ascertaining its character. . . . While the theater is permitted to be a mere shop for gain, open to every huckster of immoral gimcracks, there is no other way to discriminate between the pure and base than through the experience of others."

The secular press of to-day, while upholding the play-house, often confesses to its demoralizing character. The Chicago " Times " says, "Trash of the most unadulterated description has largely taken possession of the stage." Another Chicago paper says, "Twenty-five years ago, such an exhibition as is nowadays nightly made in this class of amusements (modern comic opera) in the most matter-of-fact way, would have gone nigh to landing the whole party in the police station."

The "Detroit Free Press," of February 19, 1882, spoke of one theatrical combination appearing in Detroit, "where sundry gods did seem to set their seals to give the (local) world assurance that there is occasional escape from the reign of rot."

Mark you, only " occasional escape " from general rottenness.

Mr. J. H. M'Vicker, proprietor of a Chicago theater, grants that there is a bad side to the theater, but, of course, considers it unfair to rank his own high-toned house with what he himself terms "shows that are not fit for a decent man or a pure woman to see." But the trouble is, the vile shows form the bulk of the plays, and they must all be sustained in order to get out of the whole mass a minimum of decency.