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THE KING’S BUSINESS
a confirmation of its august claims. The work should always show the workman— and will if he has much skill and has a fair chance. If there were in the Bible no thought above our thoughts, no conceptions above our level, how could that Book em body the conceptions of God? Coleridge long since settled the distinction between apprehension -and comprehension. Reason may approve, when proven, many things that reason could not itself prove. To many a conclusion our logical faculty may cordially assent and consent, which no pro cess of unaided reason could have reached. It is one thing to be able to demonstrate and another to be able to feel the power of a demonstration. 2. Things hard to understood by rea- s'bh may be cordially accepted by faith. Life is an inexplicable mystery—especially the genesis of life. In fact all genesis is in explicable; the genesis of matter, of mind, of consciousness; of volition, of conscience, of the new nature in Christ. These are all wrapped in inscrutable mystery. The Bible treats of supersensuous things, of the un seen and eternal world—of a realm and sphere not to be tested, explored or investi gated by our crude methods of sense. Un seen-things áre always a mystery. What constitutes us "a mystery to ourselves is largely this- that there is an unseen part to. us and an unseen world within us. If wé reject everything that is mysterious and in explicable we must begin by rejecting bur own being and our own selves! Nothing, but a Pyrohonic doubt of all things as realities remains to u s ! There are certain truths which are es pecially liable to such torturing perversion. For example :
claim to his heart and life. So he seeks to relieve himself of all responsibility and ac countability by construing his own helpless ness into absolute incapacity, and his own depravity into a~fatality of doom. He says, “If I am to be saved, I will be.” ' “I can not fight against election.” He overlooks the other Scriptures that assert his personal liability and accountability and free moral agency, and persists in looking only at one. side of a truth that is not complete without its other hemisphere. Our Lord says, “Wilt thou be made whole ?” I cannot make my self whole, but I can will to have Him make me a whole man. And every sinner knows at heart that he has power to choose. It is the old story. As Walter Scott says in ‘Ivanhoe,” “Thou usest Scripture to justify thine own license and profligacy” ; or as Shakespeare says, “Even the Devil can cite Scripture to his purpose.” Again, how often does a professed dis ciple abuse the “ liberty wherewith Christ makes His children free." It becomes an apology for antinomeanism—the aban donment of all law. Liberty is run into license, because we are declared to be “not under the law but under grace.” This is as if a son having grown to years of discre tion, and, finding his father relaxing his household rule and no more attempting to control him by petty rules and regulations, but conceding to him liberty from restraint, should place no restraints upon himself but take advantage of this grace to indulge every vice and trample upon every parental wish. What does a true son? As house hold law relaxes, as outward restraints are removed, he shows himself fit to be en trusted with liberty; and a loyal son will re gard his father’s wishes as sacredly as he ever did the most stringent household law. Love will rule him and keep him in the way of filial obedience. MAN’S PERVERSITY There is a perverse tendency and disposi tion among men to abuse the Gospel of the grace of God, and even take advantage of the grace of God to continue in sin. Be cause grace abounds to the chief of sinners.
1. Justification by faith. 2. Liberty from the law. 3. Grace abounding to sinners. 4. Election to salvation. 5. The doctrine of the Millennium. TWISTING THE TRUTH
The sovereignty of God is one of those truths which men wrest to their own per dition. Man likes to avoid or evade God’s
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