Unspoken Sermons

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Some of the things a man may have to forsake in following Christ, he
has not to forsake because of what they are in themselves. Neither
nature, art, science, nor fit society, is of those things a man will
lose in forsaking himself: they are God's, and have no part in the
world of evil, the false judgments, low wishes, and unrealities
generally, that make up the conscious life of the self which has to be
denied: such will never be restored to the man. But in forsaking
himself to do what God requires of him--his true work in the world,
that is, a man may find he has to leave some of God's things--not to
repudiate them, but for the time to forsake them, because they draw his
mind from the absolute necessities of the true life in himself or in
others. He may have to deny himself in leaving them--not as bad things,
but as things for which there is not room until those of paramount
claim have been so heeded, that these will no longer impede but further
them. Then he who knows God, will find that knowledge open the door of
his understanding to all things else. He will become able to behold
them from within, instead of having to search wearily into them from
without. This gave to king David more understanding than had all his
teachers. Then will the things he has had to leave, be restored to him
a hundred fold. So will it be in the forsaking of friends. To forsake
them for Christ, is not to forsake them as evil. It is not to cease to
love them, 'for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how
can he love God whom he hath not seen?' it is--not to allow their love
to cast even a shadow between us and our Master; to be content to lose
their approval, their intercourse, even their affection, where the
Master says one thing and they another. It is to learn to love them in
a far higher, deeper, tenderer, truer way than before--a way which
keeps all that was genuine in the former way, and loses all that was
false. We shall love _their_ selves, and disregard our own.

I do not forget the word of the Lord about _hating father and mother_:
I have a glimpse of the meaning of it, but dare not attempt explaining
it now. It is all against the self--not against the father and mother.

There is another kind of forsaking that may fall to the lot of some,
and which they may find very difficult: the forsaking of such notions
of God and his Christ as they were taught in their youth--which they
held, nor could help holding, at such time as they began to believe--of
which they have begun to doubt the truth, but to cast which away seems
like parting with every assurance of safety.

There are so-called doctrines long accepted of good people, which how
any man can love God and hold, except indeed by fast closing of the
spiritual eyes, I find it hard to understand. If a man care more for
opinion than for life, it is not worth any other man's while to
persuade him to renounce the opinions he happens to entertain; he would
but put other opinions in the same place of honour--a place which can
_belong_ to no opinion whatever: it matters nothing what such a man may
or may not believe, for he is not a true man. By holding with a school
he supposes to be right, he but bolsters himself up with the worst of
all unbelief--opinion calling itself faith--unbelief calling itself
religion. But for him who is in earnest about the will of God, it is of
endless consequence that he should think rightly of God. He cannot come
close to him, cannot truly know his will, while his notion of him is in
any point that of a false god. The thing shows itself absurd. If such a
man seem to himself to be giving up even his former assurance of
salvation, in yielding such ideas of God as are unworthy of God, he
must none the less, if he will be true, if he would enter into life,
take up that cross also. He will come to see that he must follow _no_
doctrine, be it true as word of man could state it, but the living
Truth, the Master himself.

Good souls many will one day be horrified at the things they now
believe of God. If they have not thought about them, but given
themselves to obedience, they may not have done them much harm as yet;
but they can make little progress in the knowledge of God, while, if
but passively, holding evil things true of him. If, on the other hand,
they do think about them, and find in them no obstruction, they must
indeed be far from anything to be called a true knowledge of God. But
there are those who find them a terrible obstruction, and yet imagine,
or at least fear them true: such must take courage to forsake the false
in _any_ shape, to deny their old selves in the most seemingly sacred
of prejudices, and follow Jesus, not as he is presented in the
tradition of the elders, but as he is presented by himself, his
apostles, and the spirit of truth. There are 'traditions of men' after
Christ as well as before him, and far worse, as 'making of none effect'
higher and better things; and we have to look to it, _how we have
learned Christ_.

THE TRUTH IN JESUS.

'_But ye did not so learn Christ; if so be that ye heard him, and were
taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus: that ye put away, as
concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth
corrupt after the lusts of deceit._' [Footnote: That is, 'which is
still going to ruin through the love of the lie.']--Eph. iv. 20-22.

How have we learned Christ? It ought to be a startling thought, that we
may have learned him wrong. That must he far worse than not to have
learned him at all: his place is occupied by a false Christ, hard to
exorcise! The point is, whether we have learned Christ as he taught
himself, or as men have taught him who thought they understood, but did
not understand him. Do we think we know him--with notions fleshly,
after low, mean human fancies and explanations, or do we indeed know
him--after the spirit, in our measure as God knows him? The Christian
religion, throughout its history, has been open to more corrupt
misrepresentation than ever the Jewish could be, for as it is higher
and wider, so must it yield larger scope to corruption:--have we
learned Christ in false statements and corrupted lessons about him, or
have we learned _himself_? Nay, true or false, is only our brain full
of things concerning him, or does he dwell himself in our hearts, a
learnt, and ever being learnt lesson, the power of our life?

I have been led to what I am about to say, by a certain utterance of
one in the front rank of those who assert that we can know nothing of
the 'Infinite and Eternal energy from which all things proceed;' and
the utterance is this:--

'The visiting on Adam's descendants through hundreds of generations
dreadful penalties for a small transgression which they did not commit;
the damning of all men who do not avail themselves of an alleged mode
of obtaining forgiveness, which most men have never heard of; and the
effecting a reconciliation by sacrificing a son who was perfectly
innocent, to satisfy the assumed necessity for a propitiatory victim;
are modes of action which, ascribed to a human ruler, would call forth
expressions of abhorrence; and the ascription of them to the Ultimate
Cause of things, even not felt to be full of difficulties, must become
impossible.'

I do not quote the passage with the design of opposing either clause of
its statement, for I entirely agree with it: almost it feels an
absurdity to say so. Neither do I propose addressing a word to the
writer of it, or to any who hold with him. The passage bears out what I
have often said--that I never yet heard a word from one of that way of
thinking, which even touched anything I hold. One of my earliest
recollections is of beginning to be at strife with the false system
here assailed. Such paganism I scorn as heartily in the name of Christ,
as I scorn it in the name of righteousness. Rather than believe a
single point involving its spirit, even with the assurance thereby of
such salvation as the system offers, I would join the ranks of those
who 'know nothing,' and set myself with hopeless heart to what I am now
trying with an infinite hope in the help of the pure originating One--
to get rid of my miserable mean self, comforted only by the chance that
death would either leave me without thought more, or reveal something
of the Ultimate Cause which it would not be an insult to him, or a
dishonour to his creature, to hold concerning him. Even such a chance
alone might enable one to live.

I will not now enquire how it comes that the writer of the passage
quoted seems to put forward these so-called beliefs as representing
Christianity, or even the creed of those who call themselves
Christians, seeing so many, and some of them of higher rank in
literature than himself, believing in Christ with true hearts, believe
not one of such things as he has set down, but hold them in at least as
great abhorrence as he: his answer would probably be, that, even had he
been aware of such being the fact, what he had to deal with was the
forming and ruling notions of religious society;--and that such are the
things held by the bulk of both educated and uneducated calling
themselves Christians, however many of them may vainly think by an
explanatory clause here and there to turn away the opprobrium of their
falsehood, while they remain virtually the same--that such are the
things so held, I am, alas! unable to deny. It helps nothing, I repeat,
that many, thinking little on the matter, use _quasi_ mitigated forms
to express their tenets, and imagine that so they indicate a different
class of ideas: it would require but a brief examination to be
convinced that they are not merely analogous--they are ultimately
identical.

But had I to do with the writer, I should ask how it comes that,
refusing these dogmas as abominable, and in themselves plainly false,
yet knowing that they are attributed to men whose teaching has done
more to civilize the world than that of any men besides--how it comes
that, seeing such teaching as this could not have done so, he has not
taken such pains of enquiry as must surely have satisfied a man of his
faculty that such was not their teaching; that it was indeed so
different, and so good, that even the forced companionship of such
horrible lies as those he has recounted, has been unable to destroy its
regenerative power. I suppose he will allow that there was a man named
Jesus, who died for the truth he taught: can he believe he died for
such alleged truth as that? Would it not be well, I would ask him, to
enquire what he did really teach, according to the primary sources of
our knowledge of him? If he answered that the question was
uninteresting to him, I should have no more to say; nor did I now start
to speak of him save with the object of making my position plain to
those to whom I would speak--those, namely, who call themselves
Christians.

If of them I should ask, 'How comes it that such opinions are held
concerning the Holy One, whose ways you take upon you to set forth?' I
should be met by most with the answer, 'Those are the things he tells
us himself in his word; we have learned them from the Scriptures;' by
many with explanations which seem to them so to explain the things that
they are no longer to be reprobated; and by others with the remark that
better ideas, though largely held, had not yet had time to show
themselves as the belief of the thinkers of the nation. Of those whose
presentation of Christian doctrine is represented in the quotation
above, there are two classes--such as are content it should be so, and
such to whom those things are grievous, but who do not see how to get
rid of them. To the latter it may be some little comfort to have one
who has studied the New Testament for many years and loves it beyond
the power of speech to express, declare to them his conviction that
there is not an atom of such teaching in the whole lovely, divine
utterance; that such things are all and altogether the invention of
men--honest invention, in part at least, I grant, but yet not true.
Thank God, we are nowise bound to accept any man's explanation of God's
ways and God's doings, however good the man may be, if it do not
commend itself to our conscience. The man's conscience may be a better
conscience than ours, and his judgment clearer; nothing the more can we
accept while we cannot see good: to do so would be to sin.

But it is by no means my object to set forth what I believe or do not
believe; a time may come for that; my design is now very different
indeed. I desire to address those who call themselves Christians, and
expostulate with them thus:--

Whatever be your _opinions_ on the greatest of all subjects, is it well
that the impression with regard to Christianity made upon your
generation, should be that of your opinions, and not of something
beyond opinion? Is Christianity capable of being represented by
opinion, even the best? If it were, how many of us are such as God
would choose to represent his thoughts and intents by our opinions
concerning them? Who is there of his friends whom any thoughtful man
would depute to represent his thoughts to his fellows? If you answer,
'The opinions I hold and by which I represent Christianity, are those
of the Bible,' I reply, that none can understand, still less represent,
the opinions of another, but such as are of the same mind with him--
certainly none who mistake his whole scope and intent so far as in
supposing _opinion_ to be the object of any writer in the Bible. Is
Christianity a system of articles of belief, let them be correct as
language can give them? Never. So far am I from believing it, that I
would rather have a man holding, as numbers of you do, what seem to me
the most obnoxious untruths, opinions the most irreverent and gross, if
at the same time he _lived_ in the faith of the Son of God, that is,
trusted in God as the Son of God trusted in him, than I would have a
man with every one of whose formulas of belief I utterly coincided, but
who knew nothing of a daily life and walk with God. The one, holding
doctrines of devils, is yet a child of God; the other, holding the
doctrines of Christ and his Apostles, is of the world, yea, of the
devil.

'How! a man hold the doctrine of devils, and yet be of God?'

Yes; for to hold a thing with the intellect, is not to believe it. A
man's real belief is that which he lives by; and that which the man I
mean lives by, is the love of God, and obedience to his law, so far as
he has recognized it. Those hideous doctrines are outside of him; he
_thinks_ they are inside, but no matter; they are not true, and they
cannot really be inside any good man. They are sadly against him; for
he cannot love to dwell upon any of those supposed characteristics of
his God; he acts and lives nevertheless in a measure like the true God.
What a man believes, is the thing he does. This man would shrink with
loathing from actions such as he thinks God justified in doing; like
God, he loves and helps and saves. Will the living God let such a man's
opinions damn him? No more than he will let the correct opinions of
another, who lives for himself, save him. The best salvation even the
latter could give would be but damnation. What I come to and insist
upon is, that, supposing your theories right, and containing all that
is to be believed, yet those theories are not what makes you
Christians, if Christians indeed you are. On the contrary, they are,
with not a few of you, just what keeps you from being Christians. For
when you say that, to be saved, a man must hold this or that, then are
you leaving the living God and his will, and putting trust in some
notion about him or his will. To make my meaning clearer,--some of you
say we must trust in the finished work of Christ; or again, our faith
must be in the merits of Christ--in the atonement he has made--in the
blood he has shed: all these statements are a simple repudiation of the
living Lord, _in whom_ we are told to believe, who, by his presence
with and in us, and our obedience to him, lifts us out of darkness into
light, leads us from the kingdom of Satan into the glorious liberty of
the sons of God. No manner or amount of belief _about him_ is the faith
of the New Testament. With such teaching I have had a lifelong
acquaintance, and declare it most miserably false. But I do not now
mean to dispute against it; except the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus make a man sick of his
opinions, he may hold them to doomsday for me; for no opinion, I
repeat, is Christianity, and no preaching of any plan of salvation is
the preaching of the glorious gospel of the living God. Even if your
plan, your theories, were absolutely true, the holding of them with
sincerity, the trusting in this or that about Christ, or in anything he
did or could do, the trusting in anything but himself, his own living
self, is a delusion. Many will grant this heartily, and yet the moment
you come to talk with them, you find they insist that to believe in
Christ is to believe in the atonement, meaning by that only and
altogether their special theory about the atonement; and when you say
we must believe in the atoning Christ, and cannot possibly believe in
any theory concerning the atonement, they go away and denounce you,
saying, 'He does not believe in the atonement!' If I explain the
atonement otherwise than they explain it, they assert that I deny the
atonement; nor count it of any consequence that I say I believe in the
atoner with my whole heart, and soul, and strength, and mind. This they
call _contending for the truth_! Because I refuse an explanation which
is not in the New Testament, though they believe it is, because they
can think of no other, one which seems to me as false in logic as
detestable in morals, not to say that there is no spirituality in it
whatever, therefore I am not a Christian! What wonder men such as I
have quoted refuse the Christianity they suppose such 'believers' to
represent! I do not say that with this sad folly may not mingle a
potent faith in the Lord himself; but I do say that the importance they
place on theory is even more sadly obstructive to true faith than such
theories themselves: while the mind is occupied in enquiring,

'Do I believe or feel this thing right?'--the true question is
forgotten: 'Have I left all to follow him?' To the man who gives
himself to the living Lord, every belief will necessarily come right;
the Lord himself will see that his disciple believe aright concerning
him. If a man cannot trust him for this, what claim can he make to
faith in him? It is because he has little or no faith, that he is left
clinging to preposterous and dishonouring ideas, the traditions of men
concerning his Father, and neither his teaching nor that of his
apostles. The living Christ is to them but a shadow; the all but
obliterated Christ of their theories no soul can thoroughly believe in:
the disciple of such a Christ rests on his work, or his merits, or his
atonement!

What I insist upon is, that a man's faith shall be in the living,
loving, ruling, helping Christ, devoted to us as much as ever he was,
and with all the powers of the Godhead for the salvation of his
brethren. It is not faith that he did this, that his work wrought
that--it is faith in the man who did and is doing everything for us
that will save him: without this he cannot work to heal spiritually,
any more than he would heal physically, when he was present to the eyes
of men. Do you ask, 'What is faith in him?' I answer, The leaving of
your way, your objects, your self, and the taking of his and him; the
leaving of your trust in men, in money, in opinion, in character, in
atonement itself, _and doing as he tells you_. I can find no words
strong enough to serve for the weight of this necessity--this
obedience. It is the one terrible heresy of the church, that it has
always been presenting something else than obedience as faith in
Christ. The work of Christ is not the Working Christ, any more than the
clothing of Christ is the body of Christ. If the woman who touched the
hem of his garment had trusted in the garment and not in him who wore
it, would she have been healed? And the reason that so many who believe
_about_ Christ rather than in him, get the comfort they do, is that,
touching thus the mere hem of his garment, they cannot help believing a
little in the live man inside the garment. It is not wonderful that
such believers should so often be miserable; they lay themselves down
to sleep with nothing but the skirt of his robe in their hand--a robe
too, I say, that never was his, only by them is supposed his--when they
might sleep in peace with the living Lord in their hearts. Instead of
so knowing Christ that they have him in them saving them, they lie
wasting themselves in soul-sickening self-examination as to whether
they are believers, whether they are really trusting in the atonement,
whether they are truly sorry for their sins--the way to madness of the
brain, and despair of the heart. Some even ponder the imponderable--
whether they are of the elect, whether they have an interest in the
blood shed for sin, whether theirs is a saving faith--when all the time
the man who died for them is waiting to begin to save them from every
evil--and first from this self which is consuming them with trouble
about its salvation; he will set them free, and take them home to the
bosom of the Father--if only they will mind what he says to them--which
is the beginning, middle, and end of faith. If, instead of searching
into the mysteries of corruption in their own charnel-houses, they
would but awake and arise from the dead, and come out into the light
which Christ is waiting to give them, he would begin at once to fill
them with the fulness of God.

'But I do not know how to awake and arise!'

I will tell you:--Get up, and do something the master tells you; so
make yourself his disciple at once. Instead of asking yourself whether
you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one
thing because he said, Do it, or once abstained because he said, Do not
do it. It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe
in him, if you do not anything he tells you. If you can think of
nothing he ever said as having had an atom of influence on your doing
or not doing, you have too good ground to consider yourself no disciple
of his. Do not, I pray you, worse than waste your time in trying to
convince yourself that you are his disciple notwithstanding--that for
this reason or that you still have cause to think you believe in him.
What though you should succeed in persuading yourself to absolute
certainty that you are his disciple, if, after all, he say to you, 'Why
did you not do the things I told you? Depart from me; I do not know
you!' Instead of trying to persuade yourself, if the thing be true you
can make it truer; if it be not true, you can begin at once to make it
true, to _be_ a disciple of the Living One--by obeying him in the first
thing you can think of in which you are not obeying him. We must learn
to obey him in everything, and so must begin somewhere: let it be at
once, and in the very next thing that lies at the door of our
conscience! Oh fools and slow of heart, if you think of nothing but
Christ, and do not set yourselves to do his words! you but build your
houses on the sand. What have such teachers not to answer for who have
turned your regard away from the direct words of the Lord himself,
which are spirit and life, to contemplate plans of salvation tortured
out of the words of his apostles, even were those plans as true as they
are false! There is but one plan of salvation, and that is to believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ; that is, to take him for what he is--our
master, and his words as if he meant them, which assuredly he did. To
do his words is to enter into vital relation with him, to obey him is
the only way to be one with him. The relation between him and us is an
absolute one; it can nohow begin to _live_ but in obedience: it is
obedience. There can be no truth, no reality, in any initiation of
atonement with him, that is not obedience. What! have I the poorest
notion of a God, and dare think of entering into relations with him,
the very first of which is not that what he saith, I will do? The thing
is eternally absurd, and comes of the father of lies. I know what he
whispers to those to whom such teaching as this is distasteful: 'It is
the doctrine of works!' But one word of the Lord humbly heard and
received will suffice to send all the demons of false theology into the
abyss. He says the man that does not do the things he tells him, builds
his house to fall in utter ruin. He instructs his messengers to go and
baptize all nations, 'teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I
have commanded you.' Tell me it is faith he requires: do I not know it?
and is not faith the highest act of which the human mind is capable?
But faith in what? Faith in what he is, in what he says--a faith which
can have no existence except in obedience--a faith which is obedience.
To do what he wishes is to put forth faith in him. For this the
teaching of men has substituted this or that belief _about_ him, faith
in this or that supposed design of his manifestation in the flesh. It
was himself, and God in him that he manifested; but faith in him and
his father thus manifested, they make altogether secondary to
acceptance of the paltry contrivance of a juggling morality, which they
attribute to God and his Christ, imagining it the atonement, and 'the
plan of salvation.' 'Do you put faith in _him_,' I ask, 'or in the
doctrines and commandments of men?' If you say 'In him,'--'Is it then
possible,' I return, 'that you do not see that, above all things and
all thoughts, you are bound to obey him?' Do you not mourn that you
cannot trust in him as you would, that you find it too hard? Too hard
it is for you, and too hard it will remain, while the things he tells
you to do--the things you can do--even those you will not try! How
should you be capable of trusting in the true one while you are nowise
true to him? How are you to believe he will do his part by you, while
you are not such as to do your part by him? How are you to believe
while you are not faithful? How, I say, should you be capable of
trusting in him? The very thing to make you able to trust in him, and
so receive all things from him, you turn your back upon: obedience you
decline, or at least neglect. You say you do not refuse to obey him? I
care not whether you refuse or not, while you do not obey. Remember the
parable: 'I go, sir, and went not.' What have you done this day because
it was the will of Christ? Have you dismissed, once dismissed, an
anxious thought for the morrow? Have you ministered to any needy soul
or body, and kept your right hand from knowing what your left hand did?
Have you begun to leave all and follow him? Did you set yourself to
judge righteous judgment? Are you being ware of covetousness? Have you
forgiven your enemy? Are you seeking the kingdom of God and his
righteousness before all other things? Are you hungering and thirsting
after righteousness? Have you given to some one that asked of you? Tell
me something that you have done, are doing, or are trying to do because
he told you. If you do nothing that he says, it is no wonder that you
cannot trust in him, and are therefore driven to seek refuge in the
atonement, as if something he had done, and not he himself in his doing
were the atonement. _That is not as you understand it?_ What does it
matter how you understand, or what you understand, so long as you are
not of one mind with the Truth, so long as you and God are not _at
one_, do not atone together? How should you understand? Knowing that
you do not heed his word, why should I heed your explanation of it? You
do not his will, and so you cannot understand him; you do not know him,
that is why you cannot trust in him. You think your common sense enough
to let you know what he means? Your common sense ought to be enough to
know itself unequal to the task. It is the heart of the child that
alone can understand the Father. Would you have me think you guilty of
the sin against the Holy Ghost--that you _understand_ Jesus Christ and
yet will not obey him? That were too dreadful. I believe you do not
understand him. No man can do yet what he tells him aright--but are you
trying? Obedience is not perfection, but trying. You count him a hard
master, and will not stir. Do you suppose he ever gave a commandment
knowing it was of no use for it could not be done? He tells us a thing
knowing that we must do it, or be lost; that not his Father himself
could save us but by getting us at length to do everything he commands,
for not otherwise can we know life, can we learn the holy secret of
divine being. He knows that you can try, and that in your trying and
failing he will be able to help you, until at length you shall do the
will of God even as he does it himself. He takes the will in the
imperfect deed, and makes the deed at last perfect. Correctest notions
without obedience are worthless. The doing of the will of God is the
way to oneness with God, which alone is salvation. Sitting at the gate
of heaven, sitting on the footstool of the throne itself, yea, clasping
the knees of the Father, you could not be at peace, except in their
every vital movement, in every their smallest point of consciousness,
your heart, your soul, your mind, your brain, your body, were one with
the living God. If you had one brooding thought that was not a joy in
him, you would not be at peace; if you had one desire you could not
leave absolutely to his will you would not be at peace; you would not
be saved, therefore could not feel saved. God, all and in all, ours to
the fulfilling of our very being, is the religion of the perfect, son-
hearted Lord Christ.

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