thought, feeling, and act; the will embracing the rational and moral convictions, and resolving them into a life of harmony with the will of Him who is Lord of the conscience, and the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. But this far-reaching and all-embracing power of faith indicates its nature as a higher life. We may affirm that it alone unites justice and goodness in true virtue, and that it transmutes moral law into religious principle. Is not this faith the true beginning of a divine life, and the "partaking of the divine nature?" If we look to the scriptural account of its fruits (2 Pet. i. 5-8; James iii. 17, 18) it would seem also the productive power of the soul. Is it not a power received and accepted from on high, that makes the man a new creature? "In the redeemed, there is," says Coleridge, "a regeneration, a birth, a spiritual seed impregnated and evolved, the germinal principle of a higher and enduring life, of a spiritual life; that is, a life the actuality of which is not dependent on the material body, or limited by the circumstances and processes indispensable to its organization and subsistence. Briefly, it is the differential of immortality, of which the assimilative power of faith and love is the integrant, and the life in Christ the integration." Respecting saving faith two questions here arise. 1st, Is it possible to those who have not heard the name of Christ? i. e. Are the heathen salvable? 2d, May those be saved, who, having heard the name of Christ, deny his special character as a Savior? To either of these questions we may reply, faith is more moral than intellectual. "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness." Faith is trust, or confidence in God. Over against the conviction of sin and need, it is the hope that by some goodness and grace of God one may be pardoned. Hence it may be the less one knows of God's methods of grace, the more implicit may be his faith, and the wider its range. As they who believe without having seen are more blessed than the doubting Thomas, so, among those who lived before Christ's day, 1 See Discourses on the Nature of Faith; by W. H. Starr. or whose lot has fallen without the bounds of Christendom, there may be a faith, that "does justly, and loves mercy, and walks humbly before God," that is more blessed because less instructed in the details of the divine plan. Its nature is illustrated by the case of the young man of whom account is given in the ninth chapter of John's Gospel. In the fervor of his gratitude to the unknown benefactor who had opened his eyes, he suffers himself to be cast out of the synagogue for his confidence in him. The Christ whose name he knew not then meets him with the question: "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" He asks: "Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?" and when told that he stands before him, confesses and worships. Now here was no change of heart, produced by this conversation. It gave him nothing but information; his feelings were the same when it ended as when it began. It only gave a new direction and a freer course to a faith already existing. In the strict sense of the word, it informed a faith which it did not create. So the heathen may have an unformed faith, which saves the soul, because it is in substance what God requires, and which will joyfully accept Christ when revealed, as the object after which it has yearned. It still remains true that the heathen stand in deplorable need of the Gospel, to encourage the heart with its glad tidings and to interpret for them the common goodness of God, which in their twilight, they now misconstrue and abuse. In principle, the case of those who have heard the name of Christ, but who reject him in ignorance of his character, does not differ from that of the heathen. Under the names of "Gospel," and "Savior," they may have heard such representations of the divine government and of the redemptive work that their apparent unbelief is the most generous and noble faith. Their rejection of Christ may be but nominal. They may be waiting for the true Christ because the Nazarene has been known to them only as a false Christ. It still remains true that the perversion of the Gospel is as dangerous for those who reject it, as it is criminal in those who heedlessly pervert it. Fancying that we are "evangelical," we may so take away the Lord from the minds of men that they shall utterly fail to find him, and shall despair and perish. When we profess to hold the true Gospel, we should be not high-minded, but fear; for we then in fact signally claim to be-what we ever must be our brothers' keepers; and we have no right to judge or condemn those who reject our gospel, until it has been preached not as a formal doctrine, but as a true and beneficent Christian life. § 9. LOVE. Faith can not subsist without Love, which is the "fulfilling of the law," and the "bond of perfectness." Their inner relation to each other may be obscure. Perhaps they may be compared as the act, and the habit, of the redeemed soul; or as volition and emotion. Act is ever passing into habit, as the musician learns to play without conscious attention or effort, with delightful facility, and as a second nature. This gives new consciousness of power; new courage and effort; new victory and joy. That which began with self-denial, ends in a higher life of selfindulgence. The bondage of sin has yielded to the power of self-command, and this to a higher subjection, the self-will vanishing in its free allegiance to the divine will. The individual redemption is then complete; that which began with the want of power to do right, has ended in the lack of power to do wrong, and the contingency of sin, which pertains to our probation, is passed.1 This is the perfect law of liberty, in which we may continue, and be blessed in our doing. Inward delight in the law of God pervades all the powers of the soul. The fear and torment that pertained to a lingering power of sin, have been cast out by perfect love. And so Virtue, we have granted, brings a reward of its own. does faith; but this is specially true of love. Love, for whatever object, imparts happiness though it be a mere fondness or pity for an unworthy thing. The poet has truly said "Love is the life of living things." 1 Augustine defines the various stages of the will in respect to freedom, as a non posse non peccare, a posse non peccare, and a non posse peccare. For it is their joy. But it is the highest joy when it is elevated and conformed to the supreme law of the world, as “holy, just, and good;" when it begins to embrace the world itself as redeemed for subjection to this law; when it apprehends the universe and eternity as the sphere of its infinitely varied application; and when it learns to rejoice in Him who is infinitely greater than the universe, to receive His smile, and to share His love and joy. As divine Love created the world, and rejoices in it all, even in a divine sorrow for that which turns away from God and dies, so Christian love, in sympathy with the divine, encircles and appropriates all things. It transmutes all things, even those which seem adverse, into spiritual wealth; like the philosopher's stone changing all it touches into gold. Love not only quickens the intellect, but sanctifies it as a spiritual sense, that "discerneth all things." The stores of learning, or the intellectual mastery of things, thus become an emblem of the Christian's wealth, in a nearer and dearer possession. He is heir of all things, because he has the mind of Christ. Because he loves, the entire world, life and death, things present and things to come all are his; as he is Christ's, and Christ is God's. This, which is the divine blessedness, must be indeed the Highest Good of man. Whence Paul, alluding, perhaps, to inquiries with which the Ephesian Christians had been familiar, prays for them, "that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in Love, may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is Breadth, and Length, and Depth, and Height; even to know the Love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." THE END. |