Chapter 11.

CHAPTER 11.

The same subject continued.

AS many have taken great offence in observing how little effect the doctrines of the Gospel have upon the lives of Christians, so called, it becomes us here to inquire into the causes of this grand evil. The doctrines which distinguish Christianity from Theism have this peculiarity, that no man can possibly receive them unless he has first sincerely embraced the doctrines of Theism. He must believe in God before he can believe in Christ; he must have the sincerity of an honest heathen before he comes to the possession of Christian charity. It is usual with the whole multitude of outward professors to cry out in their public services, “We believe in Jesus Christ; we believe in the Holy Ghost,” &c, though their faith, it may be, is not equal to that of devils, who believe in the existence of a rewarding and avenging God, with sincerity sufficient to make them tremble before him. These hypocrites can no more be said to believe, from the heart, the latter articles of the apostles’ creed, than those children who are yet unacquainted with the alphabet may be said to have perused and digested the most profound authors. The higher doctrines of the Gospel must necessarily appear both useless and absurd to those whose faith in God is not sufficient to penetrate them with a holy fear; for as we cannot arrive at manhood without first passing through the state of infancy, so we cannot cordially receive the latter part of the apostles’ creed, till we have first embraced the former part by a lively and steadfast faith. Why did Caiaphas refuse to believe in Christ? Because he was but a hypocrite with respect to the Jewish faith. On the contrary, why did Cornelius, the centurion, so readily believe? It was, undoubtedly, because the sincerity of his faith in God had prepared his heart for the reception of faith in Christ. “Every man,” saith this Divine Saviour, “that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me,” John 6:45. “Ye who believe in God, believe also in me: and I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, even the Spirit of truth,” John 14:1, 16, 17. These fundamental doctrines compose the ladder of evangelical truth, in which he who takes offence at any single step, runs a double hazard; that of ascending no higher, and even that of falling from the step where he has obstinately determined to take up his rest. “He that doeth truth, cometh to the light,” John 3:21; but he that refuses the first truths, places himself beyond the possibility of receiving those which are of a more sublime nature. If he has not first observed the dawn of the Gospel day, he can never contemplate our Divine Sun, when shining in his meridian brightness. The articles of the Christian faith may be compared to a course of geometrical propositions, the last of which always suppose a perfect knowledge of the first. To require of spiritual infants any high and important acts of faith in Jesus Christ, or in the Holy Spirit, before they are taught to entertain just notions of the Supreme Being, would be equally unreasonable as for a man to pretend that it is possible to make a good geometrician of an ignorant peasant, by instructing him to repeat the terms of Euclid’s last propositions, without ever bringing him to a true understanding of the first. If, then, the generality of Christians are contented with learning merely to repeat our doctrinal terms, we must expect to see them as far from manifesting the virtues of St. Paul as the superficial peasant from possessing the solidity of Euclid.