Selected from: Free Presbyterian Magazine and Monthly Record, Vol. V (January 1901, No. 9), 224–336.
“Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, we will not walk therein.”
—Jeremiah 6:16
Messages from the Lord are always true and seasonable, whether his words are those of rebuke or those of comfort. In each case too, the authority of the message is divine, and should not therefore be challenged. And the tenor of the messenger’s feelings must be according to the words which he speaks in the name of the Lord to his own generation, which was in a sadly degenerate condition. Its spiritual state, and the kind of message which the Lord gave him to deliver, caused his being distinguished as “the weeping prophet.” In times of backsliding, all who speak in the Lord’s name, and according to His mind, must be like him. The view which they have of the times they live in, and the kind of message which the Lord directs them to deliver combine to make them sad. The woeful condition of things around them casts its dark shadow on their face, and causes the gloomy and austere aspect for which they are condemned by those whom the Lord constrains them to rebuke.
“To whom shall I speak and give warning that they may hear?” (Jer. 6:10) Jeremiah was constrained to ask, for he met with none who were disposed to listen to a message from the Lord. “Their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken,” is his account of the people in general. “Behold,” he adds, “the word of the Lord is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in it.” And just in the measure, in which they were treating the word of the Lord with contempt, was the Lord charging his soul with an awful message of condemnation, till at last he describes his feeling in such terms as these: “I am full of the fury of the Lord; I am weary with holding in; I will pour it out” (vs. 11). To his eye, all classes seemed fast ripening for judgment, and he saw them as the Lord showed them—but “from the prophet to the priest, every one,” he declares, “dealeth falsely” (vs. 13). To those all appeared to be in a most prosperous state. They had entered on “new departures,” but these, as they alleged, were on right lines. They were “advancing” beyond the position of their fathers, having cast off the shackles of traditionalism, and adopted a more spritely kind of religion than that of the strict gloomy men of former days, whom that puling prophet, Jeremiah, so rigidly followed, and who, in his presumption, born of his want of enlightenment, ventured to tell them that their progress was only towards further sin and judgment. The cry of those to Israel was “Peace, peace, when there” was “no peace” (vs. 14). These trimmers to the spirit of the age were but skimmers of the sea of Israel’s troubles. Strangers to the affliction of a broken heart because of what “an unction from the Holy One” discovered to it, they “slightly healed the heart of” Judah. But as “the day of vengeance” drew very near, the sinful people cast all shame away—“they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush” (vs. 15)—and their sleep deepened as their shame departed, both effects of the teaching of those who cheated them with lies. When judgment at last came, it found the people asleep on sluggards’ beds, and false teachers singing over them the lullaby of, “Peace, peace.”
But before God’s striving with this “generation of His wrath” shall have come to an end, the prophet is instructed to address to them the counsel of the text. And he must deliver it as from the Lord. “Thus saith the Lord” must preface all he has to say. He, in the Lord’s name, lays an arrest on their “new departures.” “Stand in the ways” is his cry. “Stand” where the ways meet. For standing on the crossing, one can stand in all the ways that meet at that point. But advanced men do not like to stand. They are bent on walking, lest their generation should leave them behind. They think they lead, when they are but pushed forward by the age current, whose direction is the same as that “of the way of their own heart.” But “hear or forbear,” “Stand” is the call that comes from heaven.
But what will it avail to stand if you do not “see.” “Stand in the ways and see” is the call of God to you. You must use your eyes. You have been hitherto using your feet without using your eyes. You have gone on blindly in the way of your heart. And by holding your conceited heads so high, you have been exposing your blindness to all who have eyes to see. Get your eyes opened—get eyes that can see things in their relation to eternity and to the glory of God—eyes that can see things as they appear in the light of God’s word. Down with your high heads, and have done with your light stepping, and move not till you “anoint your eyes with eyesalve that you may see” (Rev. 3:18). Cry for mercy to him who “openeth the eyes of the blind” (Ps. 146:8), for he is near to them who “stand in the ways” and would “see.” And you must “ask” for guidance, for the ways are manifold, and but one is right. You must ask him who guides the simple to direct you. And you must continue to ask for, till you attain to know, “the old paths.” The old paths! “No,” say the loose viewed men, whose craving is for “new departures.” We have done with these, and are ambitious only of leaving them all behind. Ah, but, friends, you are not at all so enlightened as you think. If you were truly wise, the oldness of the paths would be to you a great recommendation of them. The paths for which you are counseled to ask are “old,” because long ago revealed and recommended by God, and because it was in these, during the days of the past, from the very beginning, the fathers walked “who now inherit the promises” (Heb. 6:12). And ask, “Where is the good way?”—the way of grace; the only way for grace from God to you; the only way for you to God. And when you find this way, “walk therein” in faith till you reach “the fountain of living waters” (Jer. 2:13), and in the “old paths” of new obedience, walk on, with the true heart of a servant, and the warm heart of a son. And then and thus, and only then and thus, “ye shall find rest for your souls.” “Thus saith the Lord,” “but they said we will not walk therein.” Do you say so? If you do, sleep not till with your heart you unsay it.
In speaking from this text, I am:
I. To view the counsel it offers, as addressed to an individual sinner, “to guide his feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79). And,
II. To consider it as a message from the Lord to our church.
I. The counsel as addressed to an individual sinner.
Thus the Lord speaks to you, sinner, who have been moving blindly on in “the way of your heart” (Eccles. 11:9), during all that is past of your life, in the direction of everlasting woe. That is the only possibly close of your course, if you continue to walk on to the end. And forget not that your next breathing may be your last, and that, while in the midst of your carnal ease, you may in a moment be cast down into hell.
“Stand” is the first word of the Lord’s call to you. He would have you to bring your walk hellward to a full stop. And he would speak to you. And are you to press on across this arresting call from heaven? Are you to refuse to stand in order to give a hearing ear to the message of the Most High? There are some who can remember when an arresting word from God brought them to a “stand,” and there are others who, like Manasseh, were caught in thorns of affliction, that the arrest of his providence might keep them within hearing of his voice. Have you any memory of his kind? Or have you hitherto managed to suppress every anxious feeling, and every arresting providence, that seemed likely to bring you to a “stand”?
But the Lord calls you to “stand” till you “see” the way in which you have been going, and the way in which you ought to walk. “Stand and see” is his call to you. What will any anxiety avail, though it may bring you to a “stand,” unless you see the evil of your way in the past? And what wisdom can there be in ceasing to stand till you have discovered which is the right way, and how to enter it? And he who calls you to “see” knows that you are blind, and has the “unction” which can enable you to see. Hear his call—“Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my Spirit unto you; I will make known my words unto you” (Prov. 1:23).
And all the light you need for your guidance, the Lord, in the text, calls you to “ask.” And it is to himself your request must be addressed, and you must accept no answer to your cry for direction, except what comes from him by his Word.
You are instructed to “ask for the old paths,” which God of old revealed to the fathers, and by which the fathers, regarding whom you cannot but feel persuaded that they are now in heaven, have reached the rest which they are there enjoying. What men call new paths are paths to suit an old heart’s liking. The new heart walks in the light that began to shine in Eden, and which guided the footsteps of the godly in all the ages of the past. Religious novelties are snares for souls, and they who lay them are slaves of him who was “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44). “The old paths” are new enough to each one who walks in them to make him callous to the attractions presented by all the novelty mongers who amuse the world and infest the church.
And “ask where is the good way?” It has fared well with you, in your standing and seeing, if you are determined against every way but that which, in the reckoning of God, is “good” and which he recommends to you. It must be a “good way” that will suit you as a sinner, and it cannot be a good way, as a way in which grace can flow down to you, unless it be a way in which glory can arise to God. Such a way cannot be found apart from Christ. “I am the way and the truth and the life,” Jesus saith, and he adds, “No man cometh to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). To be in him who is “the way” is what ought to be the object of your absorbing desire. And ere you can be “in him” you must be “quickened together with” him (Eph. 2:5); and when you have passed through that change, then you will choose him as God’s gift to you, and as your way to God, relying on him because of what he is, as the “Word made flesh” (John 1:14), who has a divine commission as Saviour, who hath glorified him who sent him, by finishing the work which he gave him to do, in whom all fulness of saving grace abides, and who is “able, as well as willing and entitled, “to save unto the uttermost” (Heb. 7:25).
And when you have entered “the good way,” “walk therein” in faith. Jeremiah delivers the same counsel as came from the Lord, through Paul, when he wrote: “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him” (Col. 2:6). And having heartily chosen “the old paths” in which all who served God were wont to go, “walk therein,” in the fear of the Lord, sustained by his grace, constrained by his love, guided by his word, and aiming at his glory.
To all who thus “walk,” the Lord gives the promise: “Ye shall find rest for your souls.” Thus, and only thus, can true rest be reached. But walking in “the good way,” never fails to lead the soul to rest from self-righteous toil, on the perfect righteousness of the Surety; from anxiety, as to the future, on the fulness of all grace in Christ; and from the aching of a conscious void caused by the unsatisfied longings of a soul that has never found but fain and fleeting pleasures to meet its crave for what is infinite and eternal, in nearness to Jehovah, the covenant God, as “the fountain of living waters;” and for all the new longings, wherewith the quickened soul is stirred, in the glorious prospect of being “for ever with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17), the Lamb, sinless in the presence, ever active and faultless in the service, for ever filled with the love, and ravished with the shining glory of Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
II. The text is seasonable counsel from the Lord to our church.
It would not be so unless our church were departing from “the old paths” which the Lord prescribed, and in which the godly fathers walked. Unless there were “new departures,” a call to return to the “old paths” would not be “a word in season” (Prov. 15:23). But “new departures” there are, and these are so often paraded that the very designation of them has become a nuisance. I would more than excuse myself for the frequent use of this designation—chosen instead of “backsliding,” which is the Scripture name for aberrations from “the old paths”—if I could extend the loathing with which it is regarded. But our church has backslidden, let her forsaking of “the old paths” be called “new departures,” or “wise adaptations to altered circumstances,” or “a change of the line of battle to meet the altered tactics of the enemy,” or by any other descriptive name, which ingenuity may weave as a veil to hide the true character of the changed spirit and the altered action of our church. She has felt the force of the unsettling tide, that is so fast moving those who profess to be the Lord’s witnesses, in all the churches, from “the old paths,” in which the Lord blessed the souls and services of the fathers. And the spirit now prevailing is almost quite ready to meet all such commendations of “the old paths,” and all such calls to return to them, as come from the Lord, with the resolute refusal of those who, in Ezekiel’s day, said, “We will not walk therein:” and whose reply to the call, “Hearken to the sound of the trumpet,” warning the impenitent of approaching judgment, was, “We will not hearken” (Jeremiah 6:17). For there is, to a considerable extent within our church, an extravagant conceit of being advanced; a lack of the restraint imposed by Scripture upon reverent minds; a hankering after novelties arising from inexperience of the “rest” which is promised in the text; an ambition to compete with unbelievers for the honour of being regarded as untraditional and scientific; and an impatience of control, not repressed by any influence such as a faithful exercise of discipline supplies, and which, therefore, ventures to assume the pronounced form of defiance before the face of the church, and under the eye of the Lord. From the spirit thus indicated, nothing that is excellent can reasonably be expected, and amendment can come only when that spirit is mortified.
There are three “new departures,” indicated in recent action of the Free Church, to which I would direct attention, and from which the Lord calls those, who prompted and those who joined in these, to return to “the old paths.”
1. There is a departure from the position originally taken up by our church, as occupying the place of an unestablished church, while resolved to remain aloof from those churches which regard as unlawful an alliance between church and state. That this was our church’s first position cannot reasonably be denied. In the testimony, appropriate to that position, there was the actual presentation of a claim in behalf of Christ as King of his church and as the Governor among the nations. If he wears the one crown, he as surely wears the other, and a full-orbed witness on his side there cannot be unless the rights connected with each crown are claimed for him—unless liberty and help to serve him be in his name demanded from “the powers that be.” And this testimony was a manifestly unselfish one. Those who raised it and vowed to adhere to it had willingly forsaken all the temporal advantages of the establishment, in order to be free to serve according to the law of Christ. They were under no constraint beyond what a sense of duty brought to bear upon their conscience, and the love of Christ brought to bear upon their heart. They could plead for their church’s right to be established without either enjoying, or expecting to enjoy, the benefit of her being recognised and aided by the State. They could continue, even when deprived of them, and while seeing no prospect of recovering them for themselves, “highly to prize the benefits of establishment,” as giving the church, which did not barter her liberty for endowment, a position of influence and independence, in financial matters, of those to whom she ministered, as well as a guarantee for independence of the civil courts, in spiritual matters, which no other church could possess. And they had patience to wait for the Lord’s time of answering their prayers for this boon to their native land. Their attitude was a noble one. They did not look regretfully to what they had abandoned; they fixed their eye wistfully on the boon which they, in the “Claim of Right,” asked for future generations in Scotland, and declared it to be their resolution to abide in prayer for the benefit till all their supplications on the earth were exchanged for the joyful praises of heaven.
What possible gain can be attained by a “departure” from such a position? It involves the demand that our nation, through its rulers, should cease from all acknowledgment and aid of the church of Christ, though he declared to her “the nation and kingdom that shall not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted” (Isa. 60:12). There might be some semblance of consistency in a Free Church disestablishment movement, if, while asking for the displacement of the body now in union with the State, on grounds that justified such a demand, her “claim of right,” to the position to be thus made vacant, was presented to, and pressed upon, the government. But a demand in this form was by assembly majorities repudiated; and the one crave of those who are responsible for the “new departure,” as before our rulers, is, “Cease any longer to acknowledge the supremacy of Christ, and have done with rendering any countenance and aid to his church.” What was implied in the establishment and endowment of the Church of Scotland was the only national homage to Christ that could be associated with our native land. And the removal of this is the demand of those in our church who are guided by new light away from “the old paths.” And this is not asked because the church, now established, is not in a better adjusted relation to the State than the church of that time was, in the days of the fathers, when the Lord made her such a signal blessing to the country. Nor is it asked because of the declining spiritual condition of the established church, for those who are doing what they can to secure that, our church shall not be outstripped in the course of backsliding, cannot reasonably and without falsehood plead that as a reason for their disestablishment movement. And yet adherence to the establishment principle is professed by those whose hands are busy in endeavouring to make any practical recognition of it impossible. Credit for loyalty to Christ as “Governor among the nations” is claimed by those who are labouring to persuade our nation to withdraw its only acknowledgment of his authority—its one concession of his rights in his relation to his church. Men can do so much to maintain a sense of consistency, even when acting a part utterly opposed to their profession, that however opposite to our view their profession and their practice may appear, we must not hasten to call them dishonest, though after all due deliberation, we must regard them as mistaken. But in considering the bearing of their influence on the important interests concerned, we take only their practice into account. Our church has been led across what was to our fathers a great gulf, but which, by political expediency, their sons have already bridged, and the Free Church is now a raw regiment in the Liberation army, the end of whose campaign is to secure an utter severance of the civil and the religious—of the government of our country from all avowed connection with the name, and all acknowledgment of subjection to the authority of God. Indignation and contempt were wont to be the feelings excited by the declaration that Voluntaryism rested on an atheistic basis. But, in the course of providence, Voluntaries themselves have proved by their action that this was no misrepresentation of their principle. The question recently arose as to whether an affirmation, in which there would be no acknowledgment of God as a substitute for an oath, which implies an appeal to the Most High, should be in future the only condition on which men elected to Parliament might take their seats in our legislature. This attempt to admit, on an atheistic basis, men to a seat in Parliament has meantime failed, but the army of the Liberationists did their utmost to make it successful, though of the recently added regiment, only some of the prominent officers, and some of those most under their influence, joined in the “advance.” The training of the new recruits is not yet quite complete, but if they do not desert, they will, in course of time, become quite ready to go on.
2. There are “new departures” in worship. There are two which I would specially refer to, and they are inseparable, for they are but the developments of the same state of feeling.
1) There is a facile yielding to the world’s encroachments on the time that, in other days, was devoted to the service of the house of God. There is an eager cry for short sermons and short prayers, to join in which has come to be regarded as indispensable to sustain one’s credit for being enlightened and wise. And from whom does it come? From some who occupy the pulpit, and desire to make it more easy to write the requisite number of fine sentences to please a people that have “itching ears” and no aching hearts; from others to whom three hours at the opera, to their consciousness, pass far more quickly than three minutes spent in the reading of the word of God; from those who, in the close atmosphere and hot discussions of an assembly, can spend, with disdain of weariness, a whole day and night, while to have to listen to a sermon for one hour would be regarded as an intolerable infliction; and from those who least attempt to give earnest attention to what they hear, and to whose hearts are left behind them with the world, when they come to the place of worship. But let not these imagine that they are so advanced as their conceit would have it; for it is an old, old complaint as to the service of God—“What a weariness is it!” Many generations harped on that string before you were born. If you are anxious to be new in your song, you must adopt some other strain.
And this weariness of spiritual service appears in another form. I remember well being in a certain church in a city in the south, on the Saturday of a communion season, where there were fewer than seventy hearers present. I happened to sit beside an old Christian lady, who said to me, “I remember the time when, on such a day as this, it would be necessary for us to be early at the church in order to secure a seat, and on our way to it not one shop would be seen open. Today, there are not seventy hearers in church, and only two office-bearers, and every shop which I passed on my way was open.” And this is a fair sample of what remains of meetings for public worship on such a day. In instances not a few, such meetings have declined into extinction.
And why so? Simply because the spirit of the world has succeeded in pressing its demands on the church. Communion tables are allowed to be filled by those who, on the fast day, rush away from the service and join the crowds that seem to act as if they were bent on wringing judgments from the hand of God. And office-bearers in our church join the deserters, and give to amusement a day which ought to be devoted to humiliation and prayer. But their position is safe, for their offence is condoned, and a facile church homologates1homologates — approves the sin and reaps the fruit in spiritual judgment.
“O, but the times are changed, and we must adapt ourselves to them,” say the apologists of this “new departure.” “The slow, humdrum days of the fathers are gone, and you are not to expect us to lie among the fossils of those dark times.” No, friends, I do not desire you to be inactive. It is because you are as mere fossils, in the midst of your surroundings, that I am disposed to blame you. Among the buried dead are many who were once like you. They chose to have the banner of the truth while moving along “the course of this world” instead of waving it as good soldiers of Jesus in the face of the foe and in the thick of the battle. It is not the spirit of the age, it is not the pressure of the world, it is not the state of things in providence, it is the unfaithfulness of the church that has led to this contempt of the ordinances of the house of God. Haste to be rich may account for the pressure from without, but it is the fear of being faithful which accounts for the yielding.
2) There is a “new departure” in the present attempts to make the mode of worship more sensational. This might be expected. The spirit that grudges to God what is claimed by the world demands that to make it at all tolerable, something that is relished outside be imported into the service of the house of the Lord. It is this which originated the crave for instrumental music in the service of praise; but it is woeful work for a church to be gratifying such a desire. And yet the Free Church is being led into this “new departure” from “the old paths.”
In order to make it easier for consciences to yield to this carnal crave for sensuousness in worship, the use of musical instruments and trained choirs, in connection with the so-called revival movements, was introduced, and from the eyes of men of no spiritual discernment, the carnal novelty is hidden under what they regard as a halo of sacredness. The movement which had this association, whatever besides may be its fruits, will leave behind it, when its wave passes by, an added contempt for the ordinary means of grace, for the doctrines of the Confession of Faith, and for the divine ordinance of a stated gospel ministry. To the Lord alone belongs the right to judge the eternal results to individuals who were affected by it; but if brokenness of heart and a humble spirit are essential to accredit their conversion unto God, there is little seen of this to warrant the hope that it shall fare well with them at their latter end.
In connection with the service of praise, what a church should first be careful about is that there be broken hearts, touched by divine love, to give out what would be melody in the ears of the Lord; and as to the mode of expressing praise, that it should be so simple that all might join in the singing, and that all offensiveness should be avoided. But to sanction the use of choirs and musical instruments is to increase indifference as to what is of paramount importance, and to make it impossible for some of those who alone have praising hearts to take any part in the service of song.
3. There are evidences of a “new departure” in doctrine having commenced in the Free Church. To move off the lines of confessional teaching is, according to the avowed conviction of all ordained to the office in the Free Church, to depart in doctrine from the rule of Scripture; for all these have declared that they believe the doctrines of the Confession to be founded on the Word of God. When they cease to think so, they should cease to hold the position which, by their declaration, they have won. But instead of abandoning what they cannot honestly retain, they desire that the church should alter the Confession. To effect this in course of time is not likely to be a very difficult task. Ignoring distinctive confessional teaching is the prevalent habit of preachers; almost any measure of deviation from its doctrines is tolerated; and a very pronounced condemnation of the Confession’s scheme of doctrine has already been uttered by one of the leaders of the neological party in our church, which he may expect to be condoned. This manifesto indicates, with sufficient distinctness in what the vaunted progress in theology is likely to result, notwithstanding an imposed “reserve,” of which the writer declares that he was conscious.
This “new departure” springs from assuming a rationalistic attitude towards the Word of God. The old method of using Scripture texts as satisfactory proofs of a doctrine is to be exploded. Men, in constructing a theological system, must not start with the idea that the Bible is the Word of God—so inspired by him that he is its author—but they must first examine whether it is a book that is worthy of being regarded as divine. Only after this ought they to form any idea of the sense in which it may be regarded as inspired. And only when they have thus sat is judgment on the book, and determined how far it is entitled to respect, ought any doctrines to be deduced by them from it. When they have shaped the Bible according to their liking, and thus made it their own and not God’s; when they cease to think of it as inspired, and as, therefore, not having God for its author; then, with no sense of divine authority to control their thinking, they may construct what system of theology they please, or rather, be quite content without one. In the book thus treated, there are no “mysteries”—no doctrines incomprehensible to human reason. To explode such an idea is one of the tasks of modern theology. In other words, there is not a peculiar people to whom alone “it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God” (Matt. 13:11), though Christ declareth that there were such chosen ones; nor is it true that “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him,” and that “neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).
Such is the preliminary training required, according to the new school, for progress in theology. And the progress begins in retrenchment—in lopping off all that is regarded as superfluous. This process commences in casting aside all Old Testament teaching regarding the character and ways of God; then all points of difference between evangelical Arminians and Calvinists are to be discarded; the doctrine of the fall is to be laid aside, and the story of it to be discredited; the federal relations of Adam to his posterity, and of Christ to the people given to him by the Father, are to be ignored; and when all this retrenchment is effected, what remains of confessional doctrine?
The new theology clams to thoroughly Christianize the idea of God. By this is meant that, in the view of our neologians, there is nothing now appearing in his character but love, such that all men may call him Father. And yet, faith in an historical Christ is not at all essential to acquaintance with this love. How then is the one thing which we ought to associate as a moral attribute with God to be discovered? Faber2Frederick William Faber (1814–1863)—noted English hymn writer, poet, and theologian. Born in a family of Huguenot descent with Calvinist beliefs, he later abandoned Calvinism while at Oxford, and was ordained in the Church of England in 1839. He tried to introduce the Roman Catholic practices of feast days, private confession, and the devotion of the Sacred Heart to his Anglican congregation. He joined the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, and was ordained a priest in 1847. is to be substituted by them for Calvin, as the theologian to answer this question, for the hymns of the former and not the Institutes of the latter, are to form the textbook of the new school of theology. And there is nothing incomprehensible about the new god of this new school. They require no help to know all about him. He is their own creation, and they are not to assume an attitude of reverence and awe before the work of their hands. All sense of authority is away when they are in the presence of their deity. Neither on understanding, nor on conscience, does the control of divine authority make itself felt. All relations to God, except that of children to a Father, are to be ignored. No sense of subjection to the sovereignty of God, or of exposure to his wrath, is to be countenanced. All ideas of the necessity of an atonement for sin must be abandoned. All, in the manifestation of Jehovah’s supremacy, truth, and righteousness, which shines from the face of Christ crucified, is to be ignored, and nothing contemplated in the revelation of God through Messiah but love—a love whose regards are universal, and under whose benign sway all, even as they are, may regard themselves as the children of God. In the atmosphere pervaded by this universal love, all may lie down at their ease, and sleep off all sense of divine authority, all disquieting thoughts of the divine law, and all impressions of divine justice and holiness, till they feel themselves quite independent of the cross, and quite free from having to express any homage to the crown of Messiah—exempt from all acknowledgment of the sovereignty of God, in the grace of salvation, and from all subjection to it in its claims for obedience.
Towards all this, there is a movement within our church. Were all reserve removed, we might have a more outright exhibition of this “new departure” in doctrine than is given in the neologian manifesto to which I referred. Tendencies towards this repudiation of confessional doctrine appeared in the discussions and findings of the Union Committee, and the discussions in the Smith case more prominently developed them. Let there be a departure from the confessional doctrine of atonement, and let men’s faith be shaken in the infallibility of Scripture as a book inspired by God, and of which he therefore is the author, and there is no extreme to which men may not go on a “new departure” thus originated.
But ours is a time when carefulness to adhere to faith in the authority of inspired truth, and zeal for the system of truth which is regarded as scriptural have begun to be decried under the designations of traditionalism and dogmatism. Many have ceased to tolerate the restraint which inspired truth must impose, and the authority with which deductions from Bible teaching meet them when they begin to enter on their “new departures.” Care, to think according to the mind of God, does not seem to be required by those who have removed from their minds the idea of the Bible being an inspired revelation of the will of God. And to deduce a system of truth from Scripture seems to them a labour altogether uncalled for. Creeds are most inconvenient things to those who are ambitious of being allowed to think as they please. Testing propositions are things which they cannot tolerate. And to them, Scripture texts are equally obnoxious. The general bearing of Scripture teaching is what they desire as a substitute for both these, because that lies in the volume, and is not easily handled as a test. In the measure in which the neological section of our church increases in number and influence will our progress to utter rationalism be accelerated.
And there are others who unwittingly aid them. These are they who find it difficult to cooperate and to seem to succeed, in evangelistic work, without laying aside what they were accustomed to regard as important truth, and who, by yielding to the pressure of circumstances, have come to regard all doctrinal teaching as a mistake. Many of these had but little to lay aside in abandoning definite instruction regarding the things of God, and the sacrifice was so very small that there is no drawback to the enjoyment which they now have in their blind earnestness in dealing with immortal souls.
Application
1. From all these “new departures” the Lord calls our church back to “the old paths.” But there seems as yet no prospect of a return. If the reply now to the divine call be what it was in the days of Ezekiel, false prophets may cry “peace, peace” till their throats are hoarse, but divine judgments shall surely overtake the Free Church of Scotland. These will first assume a spiritual form. She will be allowed to decline into utter feebleness before the encroaching power of the world; to lapse into congregationalism in her arrangement of her mode of worship, that she may act the part of a pioneer to “black Prelacy” in Scotland; and to lose all in faith and devoutness that would keep her from utter rationalism in her teaching. When spiritual judgment, wrung by unfaithfulness from the hand of God, shall have brought her down to a pass such as this, her people will have become quite indisposed to bear the burden of her support, and their ability to do so may have been removed; and thus unregretted may the church of our fathers, in the coming darkness, utterly disappear. A consummation such as this is inevitable as the terminus of present tendencies, unless the Lord shall pour upon our Zion “the spirit of grace and supplications” (Zech. 12:10).
2. And let each office-bearer and member of our church remember that there can be no escape from being involved in the guilt of “new departures,” except by walking in “the old paths” and in “the good way.” You are within the church, and you are involved in her action, unless you faithfully protest. Beware lest the Lord have to complain of you as of them of old, to whom he said, “Ye have not gone up to the gaps, neither made up the hedge, for the house of Israel to stand in the battle, in the day of the Lord” (Ezek. 13:5).
3. And let each one, as a sinner, think of how he is involved in his own personal transgressions, and in the awful condemnation to which these expose him. O, “turn from your evil ways;” “Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?” (Ezek. 33:11). “The good way” is still open and near. O, enter into it at the call of God, “and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” To this call of God, what is your response? Is it, “We will not walk therein”? or is it the prayer of Ephraim, “Turn me and I shall be turned” (Jer. 31:18)? The Lord knoweth which.
Footnotes
- 1homologates — approves ↩︎
- 2Frederick William Faber (1814–1863)—noted English hymn writer, poet, and theologian. Born in a family of Huguenot descent with Calvinist beliefs, he later abandoned Calvinism while at Oxford, and was ordained in the Church of England in 1839. He tried to introduce the Roman Catholic practices of feast days, private confession, and the devotion of the Sacred Heart to his Anglican congregation. He joined the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, and was ordained a priest in 1847. ↩︎
