One Thing I Do! 2

II. Let us now consider HOW Whitefield sought his object, and by what MEANS he accomplished it. That he did accomplish it to a wonderful extent, you know, and that he was the instrument of saving myriads. He sought the good of souls. HOW? How should he seek it—but in that only way in which God has determined to effectuate it? Be it recollected, souls are saved by the power and prerogative of God. Man, the greatest of men, Whitefield, Wesley, yes, Peter, Paul and John—are but instruments, and, as instruments, must do the Master's work in the Master's way. It is folly, presumption, wickedness, to attempt to think of supplementing God's means of saving souls by man's.

And what, then, is God's instrument for this work? It is written as with a sunbeam on the page of revelation. "The preaching of the cross is unto those who perish foolishness; but unto us who are saved it is the power of God." Or as the Apostle says in another place. "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ—for it is the power of God unto salvation unto everyone who believes; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek."

This is very definite and very explicit, and since there is no limitation, caution, or reserve—it seems intended to apply to all times, places, and people, and to be set forth as God's method to be used by man, for saving souls, down to the end of time. Whitefield believed and acted upon this. He did not preach a new gospel—but revived the old one. He, Wesley, and the whole Methodistic company, did not pretend to any new doctrine. And how did they wield the old one? Mr. Isaac Taylor has analyzed the Methodism of the past, and reduced it to four elements.

1. Its preachers awoke the dormant religious consciousness of man's relation to God, as his Ruler and Judge.

2. They produced a deep conviction and sense of this relationship individually, and thus awoke a sense of personal sin.

3. To this awakened consciousness they presented for relief the remedial system of the gospel.

4. They did all this in a spirit of evangelical philanthropy.

Now this is all true. No man ever more exactly answered to Mr. Hall's inimitable description of a good preacher, than Whitefield. "Without descending to such a minute specification of circumstances as shall make our addresses too personal, they ought unquestionably to be characteristic, that the conscience of the audience may feel the hand of the preacher searching it, and every individual know where to class himself. The preacher who aims at doing good will endeavor above all things to insulate his hearers, to place each of them apart, and render it impossible for him to escape by losing himself in the crowd.

At the day of judgment, the attention excited by the surrounding scene, the strange aspect of nature, the dissolution of the elements, the last trumpet, will have no other effect than to cause the reflections of the sinner to return with a more overwhelming tide upon his own character, his sentence, his unchanging destiny; and amid the innumerable millions that surround him, he will mourn alone. It is thus the Christian minister should prepare the tribunal of conscience, and turn the eyes of each one of his hearers upon himself."

One would imagine that Mr. Hall, when he penned this striking paragraph, had been studying the character of Whitefield's preaching, of whose extraordinary success, as well as of that of Wesley, this was one of the most powerful causes. It is that general and vague, loose and indiscriminate manner of discussing the subjects of divine truth, and applying the promises and threatenings of the gospel, characteristic of so many preachers, which, as a natural consequence, prevents their success. They are like portrait painters who merge all the peculiarities of the individual in the generalities of the race. No wonder they do not convert souls; the wonder would be if they did.

But we may put Mr. Taylor's truly philosophical analysis of Methodistic preaching in a more popular form, a form that will perhaps be better understood by the multitude, if I say that the staple of this great man's preaching was the law for conviction and repentance, and the gospel for faith and consolation. He awakened and alarmed the conscience by the thunders of Sinai; he comforted and supported the convinced sinner by the still small voice of Calvary. He carried the scales of divine justice into the pulpit to which he brought his hearers, and then pronounced the solemn truth, "You are weighed in the balance and found lacking!" And when despair was creeping over the soul of the astonished, convicted, and trembling penitent—he directed him to the source whence the deficiency was to be supplied.

I am not now justifying all the language and modes of representation which Whitefield and his followers employed to set forth the nature, distinctions, purposes, and eternal obligations of the law and the gospel. I deem it one of the infelicities which they inherited from the Puritans of the sixteenth, and the Nonconformists of the seventeenth century, that they sometimes degraded spiritual truths into the forms of commercial transactions, and disfigured theology with an uncouth phraseology, which I by no means wish to be considered the stereotyped model of modern orthodoxy. Still I have not attained to that theological prudishness or fastidiousness, which, out of compliment to the philosophical tendencies of the age, would abjure the glorious, and venerable, and even sacred terminology of Holy Scripture. I know very well that these terms in the vernacular version are translations, and that if others can more accurately convey the original words, they may be not only innocently—but properly introduced. Be it so.

But do they more accurately convey these original words? What can we find better adapted to express the mind and meaning of the Holy Spirit than the old but magnificent words, justification, sanctification, regeneration, and adoption? I am afraid that many of the attempts of modern criticism are but concealed attacks upon the old theology. Words are the signs of things, and with the words will go the things. By no magic will the old ideas transmigrate into new forms of speech. What we still need, what we must have, if souls are saved, is to have set forth in as elegant language, as chaste composition, as powerful logic, as graceful rhetoric, as sound exegesis, and as varied illustrations as the improvements of modern criticism can give it—the law in all its purity, strictness, and force; and the gospel in all its fullness, richness, and sweetness.

It is never to be forgotten, amidst all the fluctuations of opinion, all the vicissitudes of earthly affairs, and even the advance of civilization, science, and social improvement—that human nature, in its spiritual condition and its relation to God, remains unchanged. The lapse of ages will never improve our natural corruption, nor will the progress of science and advance of civilization eradicate it. Man as he is born into the world, and grows up in it, will still, as ever, need both the redemption and the regeneration of the gospel of Christ. Amidst the light of the nineteenth century, he as much needs this as he did amidst the darkness of the middle ages; it is as needful to the philosopher of Great Britain, as to the savage of the Pacific ocean—and let science carry on its discoveries, and art multiply its inventions, and literature polish the surface of society, as they may, the redemption and regeneration of the gospel will be as much needed by our posterity, amidst the universal triumphs of civilization, and the light and glory of the millennium as they now are.

Infidels may babble as they please, and it is but babble, after all, though it calls itself philosophy, about society outgrowing the need of old Christianity. They may just as rationally talk about human nature outgrowing the need of the old laws of the material universe; doing without the old sun to enlighten us, the old atmosphere to sustain us, the old water to refresh us, and the old grain to nourish us—as without the old gospel to renew, sanctify, and save mankind. For the relation of these to our material nature is not one whit more fixed and unalterable, than is the gospel as a remedial system to our lapsed and diseased moral nature.

All this babble, however, may be expected from men who, as the bats and owls, hate the light of the gospel altogether; but is it not a wonder, a lamentation, and a woe, to find (as they are found also in other sections of the Christian church,) men coming out from our churches, educated in our colleges, occupying our pulpits, and, professedly at least, holding our creed, and yet, under pretext of adaptation to the age—either slurring over the gospel, or covering it with such a philosophical garb—as to make it another gospel. Not like Paul, boasting of not being ashamed of the gospel—but acting as if they were ashamed of it.

Are there no preachers and writers, who answer to Isaac Taylor's description, and say "We find that our Christian argument takes little effect upon the mass of men. Nor ought we much to wonder that it should be so, for this style of reasoning, which had its rise in dark times, stands in no true relationship towards the human mind, in its present advanced condition; it is thoroughly obsolete, nor ought it to be required of the educated men of these enlightened times, to listen to that which is so stale. The gospel has been misunderstood, as everything else came to be misunderstood, during the middle ages. Then the theology that was unadvisedly compacted at the Reformation was a conglomerate of logical, metaphysical, polemical, and political truths and errors, an inextricably tangled mass.

The work, therefore, that is now to be done, and which is to be done by us, the rising ministry, is (with all due reverence for Holy Scripture) to re-consider everything, to pass our creeds through the refining fires of the modern philosophy, to render the substance of theology into the intelligible terms of the modern philosophy. In a word, what we have to do is, to put forth the acceptance of these enlightened times on which we have fallen, a philosophy of salvation. Thus, in substance, have some reasoned with themselves, and are attempting to reason with others, and on such grounds have they addressed themselves to the labor, a labor how vain, of engineering a road upon a precipitous slope, up the steeps of Paradise, froze the levels of disbelief, and so that the table-land of heaven may henceforth be laid open to the feet of all men."

We hear much in our days about this "adaptation of the gospel to the age". There is no word I more hate or love; dread or desire; according to the sense in, or the purpose for which, it is used, than this word 'adaptation' as applied to preaching. Now, if by adaptation be meant more philosophy and less Christianity; more of cold abstract intellectualism and less of popular, simple, earnest, statement of gospel truth; more profound discussion and artificial elaboration addressed to the learned few, and less of warm-hearted appeal to the multitude—may God preserve us from such adaptation, for it is high treason against truth and the salvation of souls! But if by "adaptation" be meant a stronger intelligence, a chaster composition, a sterner logic, a more powerful rhetoric, a more correct criticism, and a more varied illustration—but all employed to set forth the Gospel as comprehending those two great words redemption and regeneration, let us have it, we need it, and come in ever such abundance, it will be a blessing.

Adaptation! The gospel is adaptation from beginning to end, to every age of time, and to all conditions of humanity. It is God's own adaptation. It is he who knows every ward of the lock of man's nature, who has constructed this admirable key; and all the miserable tinkering of a vain and deceitful philosophy can make no better key, nor can all the attempts of a philosophising theology, make this key better fit the wards of the lock.

Adaptation! Was not the gospel in all its purity and simplicity adapted to human nature as it existed in commercial, philosophical, Corinth? And did not Paul think so when he determined to know nothing there but Christ and him crucified? Was it not by this very gospel, which many are beginning to imagine is not suited to an intellectual and philosophic age, that Christianity fought its first battles, and achieved its victories over the armies of darkness?

Against the axe, the stake, the sword of the gladiator, and the lions of the amphitheater; against the ridicule of wits, the reasoning of sages, the interests, influence, and craft of the priesthood; against the prowess of armies, and the brute passions of the mob—Christianity, strong in its weakness, sublime in its simplicity, potent in its isolation, asking and receiving no protection from the scepter of the monarch or the sword of the warrior, went forth to do battle with the wisdom of Greece and the mythology of Rome. Everywhere it prevailed, and gathered its laurels from the snows of Scythia, the sands of Africa, the plains of India, and the green fields of Europe.

With the Gospel alone she overturned the 'altars of impiety' in her march. Power felt his arm wither at her glance. She silenced the lying oracles by the majesty of her voice, and extinguished the deceptive light of philosophy in the schools—until at length she ascended upon the ruins of the temples, the idols, and the altars she had demolished, to the throne of the Caesars, and with the diadem on her brow, and the purple on her shoulders, gave laws to the world from that very tribunal where she had on her first appearance been condemned as a malefactor.

Adaptation! Is not justification by faith the very substance of the Gospel, and was it not by this doctrine, that Luther effected the enfranchisement of the human intellect, from the chains of slavery which had been forged in the Vatican; achieved the liberation of half Europe from the yoke of Rome; and gave an impulse to human thought and vital Christianity which has not yet spent itself, and never will, until it issues in the jubilee of the nations and the glories of the millennium?

Adaptation! Did not Whitefield move this kingdom almost to its center; and equally so our then great American colony to its extremities, fascinating alike the colliers of Kingswood and the citizens of the metropolis; and by this mighty theme enable myriads to burst the chains of sin and Satan, and to walk abroad, disenthralled by the mighty power of redeeming grace?

Adaptation! Is not this gospel now proving in heathen countries its power to raise the savage into the civilized man—the civilized man into the saint—and in this ascending scale of progression the saint into the seraph? And yet with these proofs of the power of the Gospel to adapt itself to every age of the world, and to every condition of humanity—there are those who want something else to effect the regeneration of mankind. "And I if I be lifted up, will draw all men to me."

So said the Savior of men. The cross is for all ages and all countries the great moral magnet to draw men from barbarism to civilization, from sin to holiness, from misery to happiness, and from earth to heaven! And it were as rational to say the magnet had lost its original property of polar attraction, and that the mariner's compass is an old, stale invention, and must now be replaced with some new device better adapted to the modern light of science—as to suppose that the doctrine of the cross had become effete, and must give way to some new phase of theological truth.

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