Section 2.

SECTION 2.

Saving truth is the object of saving faith. What truth is, and what great things are spoken of it. Our salvation turns upon it. IT appears by the preceding section that saving TRUTH is the ground and object of saving FAITH; but “what is TRUTH?” This is the awful question that Pilate once asked of Him who was best able to answer it. But alas! Pilate was in such haste through the lying fear of man, that he did not stay for an answer. May I venture to give one. TRUTH is spiritual substance, and a LIE spiritual shadow. TRUTH is spiritual light, and a LIE spiritual darkness. Truth is the root of all virtue, and a lie is the root of all vice. Truth is the celestial tincture that makes spirits good, and a lie the infernal tincture that makes them evil. A lie is as nearly related to the devil, as infection to one that has the plague, or opacity to the earth; and truth is as nearly related to God as fragrancy to burning incense, and light to the unclouded sun. According to this definition of truth and error, may we not give plain and Scriptural answers to some of the deepest questions in the world? What is God? The reverse of “the prince of darkness,” and of the “father of lies:” he is “the Father of lights,” and “the God of truth:” he “is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” What is Christ? He is “the brightness of his Father’s glory; a light — a great light to them that dwell in the shadow of death.” He is “the truth; the true witness; the truth itself; Emmanuel, God with us, full of grace and truth.” What is the Holy Ghost? “The Spirit of truth:” yea, says St. John, “the Spirit is truth,” and “leads into all truth.” What is Satan? “The spirit of error” that “abode not in the truth; in whom there is no truth,” and who “deceives the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth.”

Again: what is the Gospel? “The word of truth, the word of God the word of faith, the word of the kingdom, the word of life, and the word of salvation.” What are Gospel ministers? Men that “bear witness to the truth;” that “rightly divide the word of truth;” that are “fellow helpers to the truth;” that “speak forth the words of truth;” and “are valiant for the truth upon the earth.” What is the preaching of the Gospel? “The manifestation of the truth.” What is it to believe the Gospel? It is to “receive the knowledge of the truth;” to “receive the love of the truth;” and to “obey the truth.” What is it to mistake the Gospel? It is to “err from the truth;” to “turn after fables;” and to “give heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.” What is the Church? “The pillar and ground of truth, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.” What is the first fruit of sincere repentance? “The acknowledging of the truth.” What are believers? Persons that are “chosen to salvation through the [unnecessitated] belief of the truth;” that “are of the truth;” that “know the truth;” that have “the truth in their inward parts;” that have “a good report of the truth; in whom dwells the truth; who have been taught the truth as it is in Jesus; in whom is the truth of Christ; who have purified their souls by obeying the truth;” and “walk in the truth.” What are unstable souls? People “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth,” with whom “the truth of the Gospel does not continue,” and who are wilfully “bewitched, that they should not obey the truth.” What are obstinate unbelievers? “Men of corrupt minds, destitute of the truth; unreasonable men,” that “resist the truth;” that “glory and lie against the truth:” that “walk in darkness, and do not the truth.” What are apostates? Men that “sin wilfully after they have received the knowledge of the truth,” and instead of repenting, “count the blood of the covenant, wherewith they were sanctified, an unholy thing.” What are perfect men in Christ? Men that are “established in the present truth,” i.e. in the truth revealed under the Christian dispensation, and that can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.

If all turns thus upon TRUTH, and if truth is at once spiritual light, and the object of saving faith, it follows:

(1.) That to walk in the truth, to walk in the light, and to walk by faith, are phrases of the same import.

(2.) That to be converted is to be “turned from darkness to light,” that is, from the practical belief of a lie to the practical “belief of the truth;” or, as St. Paul expresses it, “from the power of Satan unto God.” And

(3.) That the chief business of the tempter is to “take the word of truth out of our hearts, lest we should believe and be saved;” or, in other terms, to “blind our minds, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ should shine unto us.”

If Jesus Christ is the truth, the light, the life, and the Word, that “was in the beginning with God, and was God;” the Word “by which all things were made,” and are preserved, if he is “the light that shineth in darkness,” even when the darkness comprehendeth it not:” if “he is the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” while the day of salvation lasts: if he is the archetype, the eternal, living pattern of all saving truth: if he is the essential, almighty Word, from whom revealed truth and the word of our salvation flow as constantly as light and heat from the sun: do we not slight him, and despise eternal life, when we slight the truth, and despise the Word? And may not the great things spoken of the Word confirm what has been said of the truth, and help us to answer the questions already proposed in a manner equally scriptural and conclusive? Not forgetting that there is such a thing as “the word nigh, the word behind” us, the “still small voice,” and “the word of that grace which has appeared unto all men, teaching them to deny worldly lusts, and to live soberly,” &c, I ask, What are evangelists? Men who “bear record of the word of God,” and “bear witness of the light, that all men may believe.” “Sowers, that sow the word of the kingdom: holding forth the word of life.” What are false apostles? Men that “corrupt the word of God,” that “handle the word of God deceitfully,” and “preach another Gospel; whose words eat as does a canker.” — What are believers? People that “hear the word of God and keep it;” that are “begotten of God by the word of truth;” that “are born again by. the word of God;” that “hear the sayings of Christ, and do them; in whose hearts the word of Christ dwells richly; who receive it not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God, which worketh effectually in them that believe” it. They are persons that “receive with meekness the ingrafted word, which is able to save their souls;” that have “tasted the good word of God,” that “desire the sincere milk of the word, that they may grow thereby;” that “gladly receive the word; have God’s word abiding in them;” are made “clean through the word which Christ speaks” by his ministers, his Scriptures, his Spirit, his works, or his rod; and “in whom the seed of that word produces” thirty fold, sixty fold, or a hundred fold, according to their light, faithfulness, and opportunity. Again: what are unbelievers? Antinomian hypocrites “that hear the sayings of Christ, and do them not;” or Pharisaic “despisers that stumble at the word, speak against those things which are spoken by” God’s messengers; “contradicting and blaspheming;” and who, by “putting the word of God from them, judge themselves unworthy of eternal life.” What are martyrs? Witnesses of the truth; “slain for the word of God.” And what are apostates? Persons in whom “the word is choked by the cares of this world, or the deceitfulness of riches;” who “fall away when persecution ariseth because of the word; by reason of whom the way of truth is evil spoken of;” and in whom the seed of the word “becometh unfruitful.” Thus all turns still upon truth and the word of God.