Trait 2.

TRAIT 2.

His Christian piety.

IT has been made sufficiently plain, under the preceding article, that St. Paul was possessed of a good degree of piety from his very infancy. Having been brought up in the fear of God by his father, who is supposed to have been a zealous Pharisee, he was afterward instructed at the feet of Gamaliel, a pious doctor of the law, to whose wisdom and moderation St. Luke has borne an honourable testimony, Acts 5:34. And so greatly had he profited in his youth by these inestimable privileges, that “touching the righteousness which is of the law,” he was blameless. But this piety was not sufficient under the New Testament.

To become a Christian and a true minister of the Gospel, it is necessary to have not only the piety of a sincere Deist, or of a devout Jew, as St. Paul had before his conversion, but also those higher degrees of piety which that apostle possessed, after he had received the two-fold gift of deep repentance toward God and living faith in Jesus Christ. The basis of piety among the Jews was a knowledge of God, as Creator, Protector, and Rewarder: but, in order to have Christian piety, it is necessary, that to this knowledge of God as Creator, &c, should be added that of God the Redeemer, God the destroyer of all evils, God our Saviour; or in other words, the knowledge of Jesus Christ. “This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent,” John 17:3.

But who can truly know, I will not say his Saviour, but merely his need of a Saviour, without first becoming acquainted with his own heart, and receiving there a lively impression both of his sin and his danger? A student in theology, who has not yet submitted himself to the maxim of Solon, “Know thyself;” and who has never mourned under that sense of our natural ignorance and depravity which forced Socrates to confess the want of a Divine instructer:—a candidate, I say, who is wholly unacquainted with himself, instead of eagerly soliciting the imposition of hands, should rather seek after a true understanding of the censure which Christ once passed upon the pastor of the Laodicean Church: “Thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked,” Revelation 3:17. If a young man steals into the ministry without this knowledge, far from being able to preach the Gospel, he will not even comprehend that first evangelical principle, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” Matthew 5:3. And instead of devoutly offering up to God the prayers of an assembled congregation, he will constantly begin the sacred office by an act of hypocrisy, in saying, “Almighty Father we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have offended against thy holy laws. There is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners.” After making these confessions in public, when he is interrogated in private respecting that misery and condemnation, under a sense of which he so lately appeared to groan, he will not scruple immediately to contradict what he has so plainly expressed: thus discovering to every impartial observer, that when he prays in public, he prays either as a child who understands not what he repeats, or as a deceiver, who appears to believe what he really gives no credit to, and that merely, for the sake of enjoying the pension of a minister, and his rank in society.

What is here said of ministers is equally applicable to Christians in general. If any one dares to approach the sacramental table, there to make a profession of being redeemed from eternal death by the death of Christ, before he is deeply humbled under a sense of the condemnation due to his sin: can such a one be said to perform an act of piety? Is he not rather engaged in performing an act of vain ceremony and presumptuous dissimulation in the presence of God? The feigned humiliation of such a communicant would resemble that of a rebel subject, who, without any consciousness that his actions had merited death, should cast himself, from motives of interest, at the feet of his prince, and affect to rejoice under a sense of that undeserved clemency which permitted him to live. All our professions of faith in Christ are tinctured, more or less, with hypocrisy, unless preceded by that painful conviction of past errors, whence alone can cordially flow those humiliating confessions, with which we are accustomed to begin our sacred services.

The true Christian, and, consequently, the true minister, is constrained to cry out, with St. Paul, when he discovered the purity of Jehovah’s law, and the greatness of his own guilt: “The law is spiritual,” and demands an obedience correspondent to its nature; “but I am carnal, sold under sin: for what I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that I do. I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good firing. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Romans 7:14-24. In this manner the true penitent, weary and heavy laden, makes his approaches to the Saviour; and while he continues to implore his grace and favour, an incomprehensible change takes place in his soul. His groans are suddenly turned into songs of deliverance, and he is enabled to adopt the triumphant language of the great apostle: “I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord; for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,” Romans 7:25; 8:1, 2. Every true follower of Christ, therefore, and especially every true minister of the Gospel, has really experienced the evil of sin, the inability of man to free himself from such evil, and the efficacy of that remedy, which endued the first Christians with so extraordinary a degree of purity, power, and joy. And in testimony of the virtue of this sovereign remedy, every such follower has a right to declare with his happy predecessors, “We give thanks unto the Father, who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son; in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins,” Colossians 1:12-14.

When a preacher is possessed of Christian piety; or, in other words, when he has made his peace with God, by that deep repentance which enables us to die unto sin, and by that living faith which unites us to Christ, he naturally invites the world to embrace a Saviour who has wrought for him so wonderful a deliverance: and this invitation he enforces with all the power and warmth which must ever accompany deep sensibility. After having believed with the heart to the obtaining of righteousness, he is prepared to confess with his lips, and to testify of his salvation: crying out, as sincerely as Simeon, but in a sense far more complete, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace; for, according to thy word, mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” “Here,” says Mr. Ostervald, “may be applied what was spoken by our blessed Lord, ‘A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth good things.’ Erasmus speaks the same thing, Nihil potentius ad excitandos bonos affectus, quam piorum affectuum fonten habere in pectore. Si vis me flere, dolendum est, &c: that is, following the idea of the author, you will never win others over to a religious life, unless you yourself are first possessed of piety. This inspires thoughts, dispositions, and words, which nothing else can produce. It is