Dislike to Ministerial Faithfulness 5
Back to John Angell James
A word of admonition is here needed for two classes of professing Christians. Are there not many who are dissatisfied with everything but words of comfort and statements of privilege? They object to everything of a searching and practical tendency. Their incessant demand is for doctrine and consolation. Everything besides this is said to be legality. This disposition is, though in a modified sense of the text, a demanding of smooth things, and is, in a measure, asking for deceit, and requesting that the Holy One of Israel may depart from his people. Such people value themselves as being believers of greater eminence, children in the family of God of taller stature and greater strength than others; but reasoning from analogy, one should be led to suppose that the oldest and best children would be most anxious to hear their father's command, and do their duty by fulfilling his will; for in the families of men, it is the younger and more ignorant and petulant that quarrel with commands and cry after luscious sweets.
The strongest mark of great grace is to delight more than others in knowing and doing the will of God, and yet to think least of what we do. Many who boast of their high attainments in religion, would have the ministers of God leave out more than half their message; and what is this but to do the work of the Lord deceitfully? Upon their principles, all parts of God's Word but the promises are unnecessary—they are useless to believers, for they are above them by privilege; useless to sinners, for they are below them in respect to obligation.
But there is another class of professors of religion, who are anxious that the preacher should confine himself to consolatory topics, and say little to awaken the conscience, or alarm the mind; I mean those who are but too well convinced of the inconsistency of their conduct, and the irregularity of their walk, to be comfortable under faithful, penetrating, and discriminating sermons. Many such, alas! there are, who, if not altogether hypocrites, approach as nearly as can be to that odious character. They cannot bear the searching discourses of the servant of the Lord. His warnings and appeals; his demands of the surrender of every secret sin, of cutting off of right hands, and the plucking out of right eyes; his declarations that the habitual indulgence of one known and willful corruption, is incompatible with the existence of the Christian character, and will cast the transgressor into perdition; his urgent enforcement of all the branches of evangelical obedience, are as troublesome and annoying to some who call themselves Christians, as vinegar to a fresh wound. They shrink from his descriptions of the distinguishing marks of true and false professors; they tremble at his denunciations of Divine vengeance, and vent their spleen in angry reproaches upon his 'legal preaching'. "We ask for bread," say they, "and he gives us a stone; for an egg, and he gives us a scorpion! We want comfort, and he gives us distress! We want promises, and he denounces threatenings! We want the felicities of heaven, and he describes to us the torments of hell."
Hypocrites! he gives you that which belongs to you. To prophesy smooth things to you would be to corrupt his message—and to comfort those whom God would not have comforted. Consolation to you would be a deadly poison, a fatal opiate. You must forsake your sins, or what have you to do with peace? He must bring you nearer to the Holy One, that you may see more clearly still your vileness. The most appalling denunciations of Divine vengeance are necessary for you. Thunders louder and more dreadful than those that are rolled over the conscience of the men that make no profession, are necessary for you, you unsound professors. You have heard ordinary storms so often, that you can sport with thunderbolts. If you rightly understood your own case, you would deprecate smooth things, dread the language of deceit, and ask for plain dealing and faithful admonition. Your peril is extreme!
It is not uncommon for even consistent Christians, who have only the ordinary imperfections of even the best men, to wish to hear less of the alarming parts of divine truth. "We want comfort," say they; "we are at peace with God; to us he comes not in the earthquake, or the tempest—but in the still small voice." Be it so. But have you no compassion for others, no concern for their salvation? Besides, can you not, while the tempest is abroad, and the storm is passing by, lift up your heart in gratitude to God, that you have found a shelter? And, after all, are there no imperfections yet to be put away from you, no defects yet to be supplied which require the voice of alarm sometimes to be sounded in your ears? Who can tell but this may be necessary for keeping you awake? Cordials, soothings, and dainties may not do for a continuance for your moral constitution—something more pungent and painful may be occasionally necessary. It may be good even for you, sometimes to rejoice with trembling. A blast of the trumpet, at which Moses said, "I exceedingly fear and quake," may prevent the progress of a fearful lethargy which had begun to creep over your soul.
Innumerable Christians have derived unspeakable advantages from the alarms that have sounded from Zion's hill, and have returned to buckle on their armor afresh, and to go forth with renewed strength to the good fight of faith.
Let those who cannot bear to hear the descriptions of future punishment, think with themselves how they shall be able to endure it! There is every reason for believing that they who demand smooth things and deceit from the preacher, are the very people who are going on to suffer the vengeance, to the description of which they cannot be made to listen with patience. Why those alarms and terrors, those painful forebodings, those dreadful apprehensions? Ah, why? Do they not disclose the secrets of a mind aware that if it continues in its present state, it has nothing else to look for but the wrath to come?
"The sinners in Zion are afraid, fearfulness has seized the hypocrites!" But why? Because their awakened and terrified conscience exclaims, "Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings? Who can dwell with devouring fires?" Yes, that unutterable aversion and irreconcileable hatred to the subject of future punishment, which makes them dislike the preaching and the preacher that bring it before them, too plainly indicate the state of their mind. It is like the malefactor not liking to hear the description of the gallows; or the palpitation of the offender, as he passes beneath the gloomy and frowning portals of the prison. Virtuous citizens have nothing to fear from either. Take warning, sinner, from this simple fact. Let your own feelings be your monitor. Ask yourself the simple and natural question—why you tremble at the denunciations of Divine wrath against transgressors—why you should wish the seers to prophesy deceit and lies.
And, then, if the very report of approaching vengeance makes the ear to tingle, what, O! what will be the dreadful reality? All that the most eloquent, the most impassioned preacher can say of the wrath coming upon the wicked is infinitely below the mark. It is only as the description of the most exquisite tortures that were ever inflicted by fire or sharp-edged instruments upon the human frame—compared with the endurance of the horrible agony. Assemble all the threatenings and the curses that the finger of justice has written in the sacred volume; associate all the figures under which the torments of the damned are set forth in the Word of God; array all the terms of indignation and vengeance which can be selected from the page of inspiration; add to these all the passages of that lurid eloquence of man which seems irradiated with the reflection of infernal fires, and vocal with sounds that escape from the bottomless pit—and what is it, after all, compared with the reality of future punishment! It as only the mere pencil representation of the deluge—compared with the real horrors of that most amazing scene of infinite wrath! Oh, no; there is in that one word—Hell—a depth, and length, and breadth of meaning, which nothing short of actually suffering the vengeance of eternal fire can enable us to understand!
These terms are too weak to convey to us adequate ideas on this subject, and therefore figures are employed; figures are too weak, and visions are added to them; words, figures, and visions, are too weak, and therefore does the apostle drop all, and ask, with most alarming emphasis, "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" With that question, I close my discourse. That question crowds the imagination with more terrors, than the most extended and appalling description; and impresses the heart with the conviction that the man who dies without true repentance towards God, and true faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, goes to a state of misery in another world, which is—unavoidable, indescribable, and eternal!
Back to John Angell James