John Knox was born near Haddington, East Lothian, about 1514, the son of a prosperous farmer. The future reformer became a priest in the Roman Church, and a notary, authenticating legal documents and drawing up ecclesiastical papers. As a young man, his anchor of faith was first cast on John 17, where he saw "that the counsel of God is stable and his love immutable towards his elect, received by him in protection and safeguard." Reflecting on Christ's words, "thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me," Knox later wrote: "O that our hearts could without contradiction embrace these words, for then with humility should we prostrate ourselves before our God, and with unfeigned tears give thanks for his mercy! So straight and near is the conjunction and union between Christ Jesus and his members, that they must be one, and never can be separated."

By 1543 Knox was serving as personal tutor to the sons of two Protestant lairds, and the following year was bodyguard to George Wishart, a preacher who was braving the wrath of the church authorities. After Wishart's death, Knox and the scholars under his care took refuge at the castle in St. Andrews, where Knox continued his instruction of them in John's Gospel. These expositions were overheard by John Rough, chaplain of the garrison, who then preached on the election of ministers, and publicly called on Knox to join him in the work of the ministry: "In the name of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ, and in the name of these that presently call you by my mouth, I charge you that ye refuse not this holy vocation, but that as ye tender the glory of God, the increase of Christ's kingdom, the edification of your brethren, and the comfort of me, whom ye understand well enough to be oppressed by the multitude of labours, that ye take upon you the public office and charge of preaching, even as ye look to avoid God's heavy displeasure and desire that he shall multiply his graces with you." Knox burst into tears and left the room, but was persuaded to accept the call.

Attending a debate between Rough and the dean of St. Andrews Cathedral, Knox sought to prove that the Church of Rome was more degenerate than the church which consented to Christ's death. His amazed hearers said, "Others chopped off the branches of the Papistry, but he strikes at the root, to destroy the whole." From the outset, his critique of the Roman Church was based on an assertion that observing ceremonies not commanded in Scripture does not come from faith, but is sin, for which he cited Deuteronomy 4:2. The castle soon fell to the French fleet which was assisting the Roman Catholic regime in Scotland, and Knox was enslaved for nineteen months as an oarsman on a French galley. He remained assured that he would not die until he had opportunity to preach Christ again in St. Andrews.

The English government, which was supporting the Protestant cause in Scotland, secured Knox's release, and sent him to preach to a garrison of soldiers at Berwick, where he met the Englishwoman he would later marry. Finding that the local bishop was reluctant to enforce the Protestant reforms authorized by the Church of England, Knox took advantage of the laxity of oversight to introduce an even more radically Protestant order of worship. Summoned to defend himself before the Council of the North, Knox declaimed, "All worshipping, honouring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God without his own express commandment is idolatry. The mass is invented by the brain of man, without any commandment of God. Therefore it is idolatry."

Knox became one of the six chaplains appointed to preach to the Protestant king, Edward VI. When the king died in 1553 at the age of sixteen, Knox regarded it as a judgment on England for failure to appreciate its opportunity to implement full reform. Knox foresaw the persecution which would follow under the new queen. Before leaving for France, he wrote of the great attachment he had formed to the English: "My daily prayer is for the sore afflicted in those quarters. Sometime I have thought that impossible it had been, so to have removed my affection from the realm of Scotland, that any realm or nation could have been equal dear unto me. But God I take to record in my conscience, that the troubles present (and appearing to be) in the realm of England are double more dolorous unto my heart than ever were the troubles of Scotland." From this period his speech and written words were notably anglicized. From the continent he wrote pastoral letters to those he left behind, exhorting believers not to return to the Roman Church, but to meet in secret for prayer and mutual exhortation. Many of his former associates, such as John Rough, were soon put to death.

Knox now visited several of the Swiss reformers to learn their opinions about resistance to tyrannical authority. Calvin urged him to become the minister of a church of English exiles at Frankfort. Knox accepted the call, but arrived to find the congregation rent by a controversy about liturgy. In short order, Knox was undermined by dissidents, who made allegations against him to the magistrates, resulting in Knox's expulsion from the city. Nevertheless, the liturgical compromise prepared by Knox while in Frankfort was now to be utilized by a congregation of refugees whom Calvin invited to assemble at Geneva, and Knox became one of their pastors. The same order of service would be adopted in Scotland when the Reformation was established there five years later.

Knox made a visit to Scotland in 1555 and 1556, responding to "the fervent thirst of our brethren, night and day sobbing and groaning for the bread of life." Knox was surprised by the progress being made by the gospel in his native land, even in Edinburgh, where "the trumpet blew the old sound three days together, till private houses of indifferent largeness could not contain the voice of it. Rejoice, Mother, the time of our deliverance approacheth. For as Satan rageth, so does the grace of the Holy Spirit abound and daily giveth new testimonies of the everlasting love of our merciful Father." Knox enlisted the support of local lairds in Ayrshire, Lothian, Angus and Montrose, who were also involved in resistance to French political intrusion into Scotland.

A contemporary provided a description of Knox's appearance. "In bodily stature he was rather below the normal height. His countenance, which was grave and stern, though not harsh, bore a natural dignity and air of authority; in anger his very frown became imperious. Under a rather narrow forehead his eyebrows rose in a dense ridge; his cheeks were ruddy and somewhat full, so that it seemed as though his eyes receded into hollows. The eyes themselves were dark-blue, keen and animated. His face was somewhat long, with a long nose, a full mouth, and large lips."

Knox went back to Geneva, where he studied with Calvin and was made a citizen of the city. He urged others to see for themselves what had been achieved in Geneva, "where I neither fear nor am ashamed to say is the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the Apostles. In other places, I confess Christ to be truly preached; but manners and religion so sincerely reformed, I have not yet seen in any other place." The reformation carried out in this Swiss city of ten thousand inhabitants would become the model for what would be erected in Scotland, which numbered upwards of a million.

Knox left in January 1559 to return to Scotland, but was delayed until May at Dieppe, where he acted as pastor to a French Reformed congregation, and then sailed to Leith. Knox had become a leading exponent of the propriety of using political and military leverage to resist an oppressive regime and depose rulers. He acted as the spiritual guide to several Scottish nobles and lairds who earlier had banded together to work for recognition of a reformed church, and who eventually undertook armed revolution against the Roman Catholic regent for the young queen. Throughout the summer of 1559, and into the winter, there were moments of triumph and also of defeatism. Knox was intrepid in admonishing his associates when they trusted in clever stratagems, rather than relying on God as their protector. After rebuking them, Knox would call them to press forward with renewed hope in God. The English ambassador reported of Knox's preaching at such times, "The voice of one man is able in one hour to put more life in us than five hundred trumpets continually blustering in our ears." The struggle consumed Knox, who wrote in December: "I have read the cares and temptations of Moses, and sometimes I supposed myself to be well practiced in such dangerous battles. But alas! I now perceive that all my practice before was but mere speculation; for one day of troubles since my last arrival in Scotland hath more pierced my heart than all the torments of the galleys did the space of nineteen months; for that torment, for the most part, did touch the body, but this pierces the soul and inward affections."

When a parliament gathered in August 1560, it abolished papal authority in Scotland, outlawed the mass, and embraced a confession of faith written by Knox and others. Knox was settled as a minister at St. Giles, Edinburgh. At the close of the year, the young Mary Queen of Scots suffered the death of her husband, the king of France, and returned to Scotland. About the same time, Knox as well lost his spouse, who died at the age of 24, leaving him with two sons. Calvin wrote to console him. "Farewell, excellent sir and brother, worthy of the heart's affection. Your widowhood is to me grief and bitterness, as it ought to be. You found a wife whose like is not found everywhere; but as you have rightly learned whence consolation in sorrow is to be sought, I doubt not that you bear this calamity with patience." Knox remarried four years later.

The next years were a further contest to ensure that the Protestant cause would hold on until it had taken root, and to safeguard what had been gained. Although a Protestant council governed the country, it allowed Mary to maintain the mass in her chapel. This was the cause of tension between the council and the church's ministers. Knox in particular was alarmed. Mary also finagled that the financial resources of the church would be allocated largely to those who had held office in the pre-Reformation church, with the remaining third of the patrimony being divided between the lavish expenses of her court and the support of impoverished Reformed ministers. Knox, who in conversation with the queen withstood her demands, was discouraged by the pragmatic accommodations to her by many of the Protestant nobility. Mary eventually undermined her own credibility, by marriage to a man who was suspected of involvement in the murder of her previous husband, and she was forced to abdicate the throne in 1567.

Knox lived on until November 24, 1572, already an old man at age 58. In his later years he felt deeply the vanity of temporal affairs, and referred to "this my churlish nature, for the most part oppressed with melancholy." James Melville, a student at St. Andrews, often heard the great man's preaching about a year before the close of life. "I had my pen and my little book, and took away such things as I could comprehend. In the opening up of his text he was moderate the space of an half hour; but when he entered to application, he made me so to shudder and tremble, that I could not hold a pen to write." At the end of his days, so feeble was Knox outside the pulpit that he had to be lifted into it by two men, "where he behooved to lean at his first entry; but ere he had done with his sermon, he was so active and vigorous that he was like to ding that pulpit in blads, and fly out of it!" When he was laid in the grave, the Earl of Morton said of him, "Here lieth a man who in his life never feared the face of man: who hath been often threatened with pistol and dagger, but yet hath ended his days in peace and honour. For he had God's providence watching over him in a special manner, when his very life was sought."

From the first American edition (Philadelphia 1828) of Matthew Henry's Exposition of the Old and New Testaments (1708-10)

Commentaries on the Bible may be conveniently divided into two kinds, the critical and practical. The first, by a grammatical analysis of the words and phrases of the original text, endeavor to ascertain the literal meaning of each passage; and to enable others to judge of the correctness of the interpretation, the whole critical process is spread before the reader. Helps of this sort are very important to the learned, for, in all cases, the literal sense must be determined before any proper use can be made of the text, or any other interpretation founded on it. The propriety, force, and meaning of a metaphor, or an allegory, can only be known by first understanding the literal meaning of the words employed; and the same is true in regard to what may be called the mystical, or spiritual, meaning, of any passage of Scripture. But, however necessary this critical analysis may be, it can be useful to none but the learned. Commentaries of another kind, therefore, are required for common readers, who have as deep an interest involved in the truths of the Bible, as the critical scholar; and who are as much bound in duty to search the Scriptures: for as every man must give account of himself, both of his faith and practice, he must have the right to judge for himself. The best helps ought, therefore, to be provided, to enable all classes of men to form correct opinions on the all-important subject of religion. For this reason, many practical expositions, not only of detached passages and single books, but of the whole Bible, have been composed, and have been extensively useful in elucidating the Scriptures; and in teaching how the truths of revelation may be applied to regulate the hearts and direct the lives of men. In this class, Henry's Exposition holds a distinguished place. This work has now been before the Christian community for more than a hundred years, and has, from its first publication, been so well received, and is so generally approved, that all recommendation of the work itself seems to be now superfluous. It has, indeed, become a standard work in theology; not with the people of one denomination only, but with the friends of sound piety and evangelical religion, of every name. Many other valuable commentaries, it is true, have been given to the public since this work was first edited, and have deservedly gained for themselves a high estimation and extensive circulation. But it may be safely said, that Henry's Exposition of the Bible has not been superseded by any of these publications; and in those points in which its peculiar excellence consists, remain unrivaled. For some particular purposes, and in some particular respects, other commentaries may be preferable; but, taking it as a whole, and as adapted to every class of readers, this commentary may be said to combine more excellencies than any work of the kind which was ever written, in any language. And this is not the opinion of one, or a few persons, but thousands of judicious theologians have been of the same mind; and it may be predicted, that as long as the English language shall remain unchanged, Henry's Exposition will be highly appreciated by the lovers of true religion.

Our object in this preface is, to endeavor to point out some of the more distinguishing characteristics of this great work, and to offer some motives to induce Christians of our country to study it. Before I proceed farther, however, I would remark, that the principal excellence of this Exposition does not consist in solving difficulties which may be found in Scripture. On this ground, complaint is sometimes heard from those who consult this commentary, that they may obtain light on obscure and perplexed passages, of being disappointed in their expectations; and that, while plain passages are largely expounded, those which are difficult are briefly touched, or passed over without notice. To this objection it may be answered, that to exhibit the use and application of those parts of Scripture which are not involved in difficulty, is far more important for practical purposes, than the elucidation of obscure passages. It is a general, and surely it is a comfortable fact, that those parts of Scripture which are most obscure are least important. But the same objection might be made, and indeed has been made, to all commentaries, that they leave the difficult texts as obscure as they found them; from which the only legitimate inference is, that, in regard to a large portion of texts of difficult interpretation, the learned and unlearned stand very much on the same level; yet, doubtless, much light has been shed on many things in the Scriptures, by the labors of the learned. And although we do not claim for this commentator the highest place among Biblical critics, yet we have a right to say, that Henry was a sound and ripe scholar; and especially, is said by his biographers to have been an excellent Hebrew scholar. We are not to suppose, because no parade of critical learning is exhibited in these volumes, that the author did not critically examine every text. As the orator is said to practice the art of eloquence most perfectly, when all appearance of art is concealed; so we may say, that he makes the best use of the critical art in the instruction of the people, who furnishes them with the results, without bringing at all into view the learned process by which they were arrived at. One fact is certain from internal evidence, that Mr. Henry wrote his Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, with the learned compilation of Poole, called Criticorum Synopsis, open before him; as, in all difficult passages, he has judiciously selected that opinion from the many presented in this work, which, upon the whole, seems to be most probable.

But, while we contend that our author is a sound and ingenious expositor, as it related to the literal interpretation of Scripture; yet we do not found his claim to pre-eminence on his critical acumen, or profound erudition, but on qualities which shall now be distinctly brought into view.

1. To begin, then, with the style of this work, I would remark, that two qualities, not often united, are here combined, perspicuity and conciseness. That the style is perspicuous needs no other proof than the examination of any page of the Exposition. And when I attribute perspicuity to this composition, I use the word in direct reference to the capacity and apprehension of the unlearned reader. A style chiefly formed of words of a foreign origin, may be as perspicuous to a learned man as any other; but not so to the common reader, who is only familiar with that kind of language which is commonly used in conversation. For the most part, Mr. Henry's style is made up of pure old English words, and therefore it is plain to every class of people; and is also familiar, because the words are the same as those all are accustomed to hear every day.

But it will not be so readily granted that the style is concise. The number and size of the volumes seem to lead to a different conclusion. And, indeed, when we see six folio volumes, written by one hand; the presumption is very natural and strong, that he must be a diffuse writer. This, however, in regard to our expositor, is not the fact. There are few books, in the English language, written in a more concise, sententious style, than Henry's Exposition. On examination, very few expletives will be found. Every word speaks, and every sentence is pregnant with meaning; so that I do not know how the book could be abridged in any other way than by leaving out a part of its contents. And we must distinguish between a long discourse and one which is diffuse: a short work may be very diffuse, while one of great length may not have a superfluous word.

2. Another quality of the style of this commentary is vivacity. This word does not exactly express the idea which I wish to convey, but it comes as near it as any one I can think of at present. I mean that pleasant turn of thought, in which we meet with unexpected associations of ideas, expressed in that concise and pointed form which, on other subjects, would be termed wit. Indeed, if I were permitted to invent a phrase to indicate the quality of which I am now speaking, I would call it spiritual wit. It has, by some, been called a cheerful style; and certainly, the reading of this work has a tendency not only to keep the attention awake, but to diffuse a cheerful emotion through the soul. He must be a very bad man who would become gloomy by the perusal of Henry's Commentary. Now, I need not say how important this quality is in a composition of such extent. Without it, however excellent the matter, weariness would take hold of the reader a thousand times before he had finished the work. This seems to have been the natural turn and complexion of the pious author's thoughts. There is no affectation; no unnatural comparisons, or strained antitheses. It is true, there is an approach to what is called quaintness, and a frequent play on words and phrases of similar sound, but different meaning; but, although these things are not conformable to the standard of modern taste, yet they are very agreeable to the great mass of the people, and give such a zest in the perusal of the work, that we can scarcely allow ourselves to indulge a wish, that the style were in any respect different from what it is.

3. But a characteristic of this Exposition of a more important kind than any that have been mentioned is, the fertility and variety of good sentiment, manifest throughout the work. The mind of the author seems not only to have been imbued with excellent spiritual ideas, but to have teemed with them. It is comparable to a perennial fountain, which continually sends forth streams of living water. In deriving rich instruction and consolation from the sacred oracles, adapted to all the various conditions and characters of men, the author displays a fecundity of thought, and an ingenuity in making the application of divine truth, which strikes us with admiration. The resources of most men would have been exhausted in expounding a few books of the Bible; after which little more could have been expected, than commonplace matter, or the continual recurrence of the same ideas, but the riches of our expositor's mind seem to have been inexhaustible. He comes to every successive portion of the sacred Scriptures with a fullness and freshness of matter, and with a variety in his remarks, which while it instructs, at the same time refreshes us. Even in his exposition of those books which are very similar in their contents, as the gospels for example, we still find a pleasing variety in the notes of the commentator. It is difficult to conceive how one man should have been able to accomplish such a work, without any falling off in the style of execution.

It is true, indeed, that Mr. Henry did not live to put a finishing hand to the exposition. He had made ample preparations for the completion of the work, but while it was in the press, to the regret of all good men, he was called away from the field of labor. But the providence of God, though mysterious, is always wise. It should be matter of lively gratitude, that this eminent servant of God was permitted to remain so long in our world, and to accomplish so much for the edification of the church, not only in his own, but in all future ages. The commentary was completed by the author, as far as to the end of the Acts of the Apostles: the remaining books were expounded by certain of his friends, who were eminent for their theological knowledge and piety; and who, doubtless, availed themselves of the assistance of his papers, in executing the work, which they respectively undertook. Their names are prefixed to the books on which they severally wrote the commentary; and although the reader will be sensible of the want of Mr. Henry's peculiar vivacity and happy turn of thought; yet he will find the continuation of the exposition executed in an able and judicious manner; and as near an approximation to the author's inimitable style, as could be expected from other hands.

4. There is perhaps no one thing which gives a more distinctive character to this performance, than the weighty, pithy, pointed sayings, with which it abounds. Whether these apothegms were, generally, the production of the author's ingenuity, or were collected from the common stock of English proverbs, current in his day, their value is the same to us.

The ancients appear to have understood, better than the moderns, the importance of the method of instruction by proverbs, or aphorisms. It was considered by them the highest effort of wisdom to invent proverbs, parables, or fables, which, in few words, convey much meaning. Several of those, called by way of eminence the Wise Men of Greece, are celebrated for no other productions, but a few sayings which met with general approbation, and which passed into proverbs. The value of a stock of good proverbs to a nation cannot easily be too highly appreciated. These are kept in constant use and circulation, and are learned by all classes of people, without effort; and become, to the vulgar, the maxims by which life is regulated. Nothing is more common, when a man's judgment has been suspended for a while, than to come to a decision, by the recollection of some proverb, or general maxim. Men are actually influenced by the knowledge which is present to their minds, at the moment when their purpose if formed, and this gives an advantage to apothegms over every other form in which useful knowledge is treasured up. While other learning is like treasure hoarded up, which cannot always be put into circulation at a moment's warning, these are comparable to the current coin of a nation, which is always ready, and always in circulation. Perhaps a man might often be as useful to his country by inventing and putting into general circulation, a few pithy, pointed, moral or prudential maxims, as by writing an elaborate work on moral science, or political economy. It is a fact worthy of notice, that the peasantry or common people in some places, carry on their conversation very much by recollecting and repeating appropriate proverbs; and such people will generally be found to be more than usually discerning and prudent. In the instruction of youth, this easy method of furnishing and fortifying their minds, ought not to be neglected. A father who instills into his children a large stock of sound, practical, moral, and prudential aphorisms, really leaves them a richer inheritance, than if he provided for them as many jewels. We have, moreover, the highest authority for this mode of instruction. The Bible is replete with aphorisms of the most important kind; and one whole book, written by the wisest of men, contains nothing else but proverbs. Besides, many of our Lord's instructions were delivered in this form.

One of the most useful and esteemed works of the celebrated Erasmus, is, a collection of aphorisms, from all the writings of the Greek and Roman authors; and he who should judiciously make a collection of useful English apothegms, would confer a favor on the public at large. But it has occurred to the writer, many years since, that an excellent and useful little volume of choice sayings, might be collected from Henry's Commentary alone; and if any reader of this work should take the pains to make such a collection for his own use and that of his children or friends, he would never have occasion to repent of his labor. The exuberance of our author's mind in composing such apothegms; or his diligence in collecting them, gives a peculiar stamp to his work, which distinguishes it from all other expositions; and ever will render it valuable, as the repository of a most useful species of learning, not to be found in such abundance, anywhere else.

5. The next characteristic of the following Exposition, is, the felicity and frequency with which the text, at any time under consideration, is elucidated by parallel passages. If there were no more than a frequent and copious reference to such similar texts, it would not deserve particular notice as forming a distinguishing trait of this performance; for other commentators have exceeded Mr. Henry in this respect; and, indeed, a good concordance, with patient labor, is all that is requisite for the accomplishment of such a work. But in Mr. Henry's references, there is often an ingenuity which borrows light from points where it was not perceived by others to exist. By an unexpected association and comparison of different passages, while he instructs us in that knowledge of the Scriptures which is derived from comparing spiritual things with spiritual, he, at the same time, fills us with an agreeable surprise, at the unlooked-for coincidence of points apparently remote from each other.

No one, I think, can read this commentary without being fully satisfied, that the word of God dwelt richly in the mind of its author, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. Indeed, it would seem that the contents of the Bible were constantly present to his mind, not merely in the way of recollecting them, but by a deep knowledge of their meaning and various bearings; so that he was able to survey each text by the aid of the concentrated light of the whole Bible.

I need not pause to recommend this mode of interpreting Scripture; for it recommends itself to every reflecting mind, and has the authority of apostolic precept. I will only remark, that it affords a double satisfaction to the lover of truth; for while he is thus enabled to understand a particular text more clearly, he, at the same time, discovers the harmony which subsists between all the parts of divine revelation.

The only other thing which I shall mention, as characteristic of this work, is, its evangelical, spiritual, and practical cast. The truths of God are here presented simply, without being complicated with human philosophy, or encumbered with the technical distinctions of scholastic theology, or obscured by the mists of unintelligible metaphysics. Neither is the truth presented in a controversial form, but mostly, as if no controversy existed. No doubt controversy is necessary in its place, but the more it is excluded from the pulpit, and from books intended for the edification of the people at large, the more probability will there be, that the truth will produce its genuine effect.

It has been objected, that the author does not give sufficient prominence to some important truths taught in the word of God; -- but, if he has given a sound exposition of those passages in which these doctrines are contained, he has allowed them the same comparative length and breadth which they occupy in the Bible; and has preserved that proportion between the different parts of divine revelation, which the Holy Ghost has established. Indeed, this course is made necessary to the expositor of the whole Bible, unless he would leave his exposition to discuss particular points of doctrine. Besides, some truths, not more important than many others, occupy a large space in systems of polemic theology, because they have often been opposed or disputed.

No man who has written so much, and expressed so many opinions, as Mr. Henry has done in this commentary, will be likely to have the concurrence of any one thinking man, on every minute point; but it would be extremely difficult to find a book of such extent, which unites so many minds in it approbation. Men, who seem to differ considerably in doctrinal views, read this work respectively, with pleasure and edification. It is no difficult matter, indeed, to ascertain the author's theological opinions which are freely expressed, when the exposition of Scripture requires it; but he is moderate, and cautious of giving offence to those who differ from him; and by his unceasing effort to give a practical turn to every passage, he conciliates the pious reader's mind, even while he delivers opinions which he cannot adopt.

The end at which the author aimed, and of which he never lost sight in expounding a single text, was, to make men wise unto salvation; and the whole tendency of the work is to produce spiritual wisdom, an ardent love of holiness, and a conscientious and diligent regard to all the revealed will of God, in the performance of public and private duties.

It is an excellency, in this commentary, that the truths of Scripture are adapted, with great spiritual skill, to the various afflictions, conflicts, and temptations which are incident to the Christian life. The erring will here find reproof and direction, the sluggish excitement, the timid encouragement, the mourner comfort, and the growing Christian, confirmation, and increase of knowledge and assurance.

It may be more necessary for the unlearned to read such works as this, than for the learned; yet I am persuaded, that there is no man living, however learned, but might derive much practical instruction from Henry's Exposition of the Bible: and if ministers of the gospel would spend much time in perusing this work, it would manifest itself by the richness and spirituality of their sermons and lectures. The celebrated George Whitefield states, when speaking of his preparation for the work of the ministry, that he had read the whole of Henry's Exposition of the Bible, on his knees. One principal reason why young clergymen, who possess this work, derive less benefit from it than they might, is, that they are in the habit, probably, of merely consulting the work, occasionally, when they want some aid in composing a sermon, or preparing an expository lecture for their people. But the full value of this commentary will never be perceived by those who thus use it. It should be carefully read, in course, and with a view to personal improvement. It is a melancholy fact, that our intellect may be vigorously exercised in discovering and arranging truths of the most important and practical kind, without the least personal edification. This is one of the many snares to which preachers of the gospel are liable, and from which it results, that their hearers often derive much more benefit from their studies, than they do themselves. It would be a great point gained, if ministers could learn the art of studying their sermons with the heart as well as the head; and I know of few things which would more effectually tend to bring this about, than a frequent and serious perusal of Henry's Commentary; especially if fervent prayer were combined with the reading.

But after all that I have said, with the view of exhibiting the characteristics of this work, I am sensible that such general description can, at best, afford but inadequate ideas of the spirit and style of an author, so peculiar in his manner. There is in good writing, as in the human countenance, an expression, which mere words cannot depict. There is a penetrating savor, -- a diffusive spirit, which takes hold of the feelings of the reader, and for the time, assimilates his emotions and sentiments to those of the writer. To understand how this effect is produced by the tones of the living voice, accompanied with the animated expression of the countenance of a public speaker, is not so difficult; but to explain how the composition of one, long since dead, should still retain that penetrating, spirit-stirring energy, which we find in the writings of men, whose hearts were warm with holy affections, is not easy. The fact, however, is certain; we experience the salutary effect, when we peruse their works. In reading for edification, therefore, it is much greater utility to apply ourselves to the writings of men, who, while they wrote, felt the sacred flame of divine love glowing in their breasts, than to such as excel in mere intellectual vigor, or in elegance of style.

My principal object in this preface is, to persuade those who may take the trouble to read it, to enter seriously and resolutely on the perusal of the following work. Whatever other books of this kind may be possessed, still Henry's Exposition will prove a treasure to any family, if it be diligently studied; without which no book can be useful.

Hitherto, this commentary has not been in general use in this country, because copies were not abundant; and the price of the work place it beyond the reach of many, who would have been pleased to possess it: but now, when a cheap, handsome American edition is issuing from the press, there is the best reason to hope, that it will be widely circulated and extensively read. It is worthy of notice, also, that the work is now presented to the public, not only in a very clear type, but also in a portable and convenient form. Many persons, who have not much leisure for reading, are intimidated at the sight of folio volumes; and to every one their use is inconvenient. But I am still apprehensive, that the number and bulk of the volumes, will be a formidable obstacle to many. They will be apt to think, that they have neither time nor patience to finish such a task, and therefore will be disposed to decline the undertaking. But such persons ought to reflect, that it will not be necessary to read the whole, to obtain the benefit of a part; a single book perused with care, will not be without its advantage. There is no solid reason, however, for those persons, who sincerely wish to study the Scriptures, to be discouraged by the extent of the work: for, although viewed in mass, it may seem to be an almost endless labor to those who can devote but little time to reading; yet, if any one would form a simple calculation, he would find, that the task can be accomplished with ease, in a very reasonable time. Let us suppose, that only one half hour be appropriated to the perusal of this commentary in each of the days of the week, except the Lord's day, on which two hours might be conveniently spent in this exercise; and at this moderate rate of progress, the whole work would be finished in less than three years.

But although we have spoken of this undertaking as a "labor" and "a task," yet we are confident, that to the reader who thirsts for an increase of divine knowledge, it would be found, on experiment, to be a very precious privilege. Such a person would experience so much pleasure in the contemplation of scriptural truth, as here exhibited, and would find his mind so enriched with spiritual thoughts, that he would contract a lively relish for the exercise, and would be drawn to his work, when the season of performing it occurred, with something of the same strength of appetite, as that which urges him to partake of his daily food; and would feel the privation as sensibly when debarred from it, as when prevented from taking his usual bodily repast. Citizens, who have been long accustomed to spend an hour, in the morning, in reading the news of the day, when, by any circumstance, this gratification is abstracted from them, appear really to feel as much uneasiness, as if prevented from breaking their fast. And why may not a spiritual taste become as lively, as that which is experienced for the contents of a newspaper? Why may we not enjoy the contemplation of divine things with as strong a zest, as knowledge of another kind? Surely nothing is wanting to produce this effect, but a right disposition in ourselves. And the person who thus contracts a taste for the contents of these volumes, will find means for redeeming more time for reading than we have specified; so that the work, for which we have allowed three years, would, by many, be completed in one. And this exposition is not a composition of that kind, which when once read, leaves no desire for a second perusal, but the spiritual reader will be led to mark many passages for a re-perusal; not because they were not understood at first, but because they afforded him so much delight, or communicated such seasonable instruction, that he desires to come again and again to the fountain, that he may be refreshed and strengthened.

But while we wish to raise in the minds of our readers a high estimation of the value of Henry's Commentary, we would not dismiss the subject without observing, that whatever luster the work possesses, it is all borrowed. The light with which it shines is reflected light. The whole value of this or any other similar work, consists merely in holding up clearly and distinctly, the truth which is contained in the sacred records. And whatever of spiritual wisdom, or of the savor of piety, is found in these pages, was all derived from the influence of that Holy Spirit, who inspired the prophets and apostles to write the Scriptures, and who still bestows grace and spiritual endowments on his chosen servants, by which they are qualified, to preach and write, in such a manner, as to promote the edification of his church. In every age, God raises up men for the defense of the gospel, and also for the exposition of his word; and some of these are honored not only with usefulness while they live, but with more abundant and extensive usefulness after their decease; so that being dead they still speak. It is impossible to calculate how much good has been, and will still be effected by the pious labors of such men as Henry and Scott. Their works will be read in regions so remote and obscure, that they never came to the knowledge of the pious writers. They will be read in the distant islands of the Pacific, and in the central regions of Africa, as well as in the most retired recesses of our own country. What an encouragement is this for men, who have the ability, to labor indefatigably in the communication and diffusion of divine truth? Of books we have a superabundance, but of books of the proper kind, we have not half enough. Copies of works of undisputed excellence ought to be multiplied, until all who can read are supplied with the precious treasure.

But let God have the glory of every invention, of every gift, and of every work, by which the progress and diffusion of truth are promoted or facilitated; and let all that is said in praise of men, be so spoken, as to redound to the honor and glory of the Triune God! - Amen.

Harold Camping, 1994? New York: Vantage Press, 1992, xxi, 552 pp., paperback.

The thesis of this book is that God has hidden clues in the Bible, enabling men at the end of time to discover that Christ's second coming will occur in September 1994. Camping teaches that before the return of Christ, the New Testament church will become apostate under the dominion of Satan, and will be rejected by God, judged and destroyed, leaving individual believers to withdraw from the church. He believes that tongue-speaking and false gospels will overrun the visible church, and views divorce under any condition as being an evidence of this increasing apostacy.

Camping arrives at these positions through laying aside the grammatical-historical method of interpretation practiced at the Reformation. He often does not seek to establish the meaning of Bible texts by considering the grammatical constructions in the original language and the historical setting which is being addressed by the biblical writer. Camping instead appeals to correspondences between Bible texts. But the correspondences he draws are not based upon the whole doctrine taught in each passage, but rather on surface resemblances. Thus, for example, he makes out that the account of Paul's shipwreck is an historical parable of the final tribulation, because the Greek word for "tempest" in Acts 27:20 is the word translated "winter" in Matthew 24:20. "By the word 'winter,' God is tying Acts 27 to the final tribulation period." (p. 227) Camping then proceeds to find a special characteristic in the number 276, which is given in Acts 27 as the number of people on board Paul's ship. Camping believes that the number 23 in the Bible is identified with God's judgment on the church, and 276 is 12 multiplied by 23.

Camping explains that these, and other numbers which he says have symbolic meaning in the Bible, share the special property that the sum of all the integers preceding and including certain odd numbers is the same as the odd number multiplied by that odd number plus one, divided by two. The teaching he derives by this means from Acts 27 is: "The ship was destroyed even as the era of the New Testament church will end with the final tribulation period. None of the 276 people on board lost their lives in the shipwreck, and not one true believer in the church will be spiritually lost during the final tribulation period." (p. 227)

The lessons which historic Protestant exegesis has found in the shipwreck account are God's faithful care of his people, and the relationship between God's sovereign purpose and human responsibility. Of course the Christian church has long known that the kind of allegorical and numerical exegesis practiced by Camping is so arbitrary that by it anything can be proven from the Bible. Luther and Calvin chided the medieval Roman Catholic Church for employing just this method of biblical interpretation, by which Rome sought to establish the doctrines of the mass, human merit and the papacy, and with no less cogency than Camping.

The Reformation exercised great caution about the presence of symbols in Scripture, rejecting an allegorical exposition of other words and passages, because it inevitably takes away the authority of the plain words of Scripture. The absurdities of this method give Scripture a nose of wax; it is little wonder that in asserting its speculations not taken from Scripture but read into Scripture, the medieval Roman Church relied upon discovering in Scripture what Camping calls "historical parables" (p. 226). Camping may teach some of the doctrines of the Reformation, but he has surrendered the principles of biblical interpretation by which those doctrines were found in Scripture.

Ultimately, the interpretive principles on which Camping operates are inconsistent with one another; he relies on traditional exegesis for traditional doctrines, but turns to allegories and numbers to overturn doctrines well-established from the unequivocal statements of Scripture. We believe that Paul's warnings in I Timothy 1:4-8 and Titus 3:9 were directed to the same kind of speculative elaborations on biblical texts which Camping utilizes; two hundred and fifty pages of his book are devoted to finding hidden references in genealogies, the ages of saints, and other numbers. In the end his practices in interpretation will undermine confidence that Scripture's meaning can be determined with any certainty, because the speculations that will be foisted on the text in this manner are endless. He often does not expound the text, so much as assert suggestions which are not required by the text. The result is that he finds numerous allusions to the end of the world. He says, "The final tribulation period . . . is so frequently alluded to in the Bible that we wonder why it has not become an important part of Christian theology."

Camping is a prime example of how reliance upon allegorical and numerical interpretation leads one to deny the authority of the plain words of Scripture. In one instance after another, Camping suggests a doctrine by going to passages which have no bearing on the question, and then ignores or explains away the texts which directly address the issue, and which give a different teaching than his. We shall examine several areas in which his teaching contradicts the explicit statements of Christ.

First, Christ teaches that we cannot know the time of his second coming. At Mark 13:32-33 the Savior says: "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is." Camping suggests that the knowledge men are said not to possess is not a knowledge with respect to the date of Christ's second coming, but a personal experience of the judgment day. Camping further declares that though the Savior may rule out the possibility of identifying the day of his return, nothing is said about knowing the month and the year. But the thought of a surprising coming is obvious in such passages, and the plain lesson that Jesus inculcates in these reiterated sayings is that his servants must always be diligent in the faithful discharge of their responsibilities, for they do not know when the Master will come. Thus the practical lesson of these sayings is subverted by Camping's reinterpretation of them.

Similarly, Camping interprets the coming of Christ at Matthew 24:50 and 25:13 as referring to the moment of an individual's death. However, the coming of Christ at the judgment day is the obvious meaning of 25:31-46, and the coordinate sequence of 24:29-31 with 24:36-41, 24:42-43, 25:10-13, 25:19 and 30, and 25:31-32 is obvious; these are all sayings and parables respecting the accounting at the judgment day (and cf. Luke 12:35-40). What is more, Scripture does not speak of our death as Christ coming to us; when we die, we go to him: Philippians 1:21-23. In the same passages where the apostles speak of believers falling asleep in Jesus, and elsewhere, "the coming of the Lord" is an expression denoting the final return of the Savior: I Corinthians 15:23, I Thessalonians 2:19, 3:13, 4:14-17, 5:23, II Peter 3:4 and 12, and I John 2:28.

In Acts 1:7, Christ declares: "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power." Camping must acknowledge that "By this answer Jesus is saying that believers ordinarily are not to know the timing of the return of Christ." (p. 321) But this does not stop Camping from arguing that this rule will not be true at the end of the world, for he says that as the time draws near, God will use clues hidden in Scripture to give his people insight into the date of Christ's return.

Among the sparse materials he appeals to for this contention is Daniel 12:4. Edward J. Young points out that this difficult verse probably has the following force: "many shall run to and fro, that knowledge may be increased." Young comments: "These words state the purpose of the going to and fro. It is for the sake of increasing knowledge. . . . 'Many shall go to and fro in search of knowledge, but they shall not find it.' There is a strain of sadness in these words. The written revelation of God is in the world, but men heed it not. Instead, they look for knowledge where it is not to be found." (A Commentary on Daniel, pp. 257-258) But Camping is not reticent to build one pillar after another of his thesis on difficult passages, or on conjectural suggestions. Camping also appeals to Dan. 2:21-22 and Amos 3:7 as evidence that God will disclose the date of Christ's return to his people before it occurs. However, these passages which speak of God revealing secrets are references to God's infallible revelation to men who possess the gift of inspired prophecy.

For Camping, I Thessalonians 5:1-5 means that believers will know the date of Christ's return, rather than what the church has always understood the passage to mean - namely, that believers are to walk soberly, and thus be prepared for the return of the Savior. Camping says concerning Hebrews 10:25, "This verse clearly implies that the believers will know when the end is coming very near" (p. 315), without considering that the verse would then have had no practical significance as an exhortation to its original readers. The correct interpretation of 10:23-25 is that it means something very much like I John 3:2-3. Christ's disciples are at all times to follow holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14), with a view to being made like Christ when he shall appear. Those who hope for conformity to him when he comes will strive after purity now.

A second area in which Camping's allegorical interpretation violates the unequivocal statements of Christ is with respect to the perpetuity of the church. Camping has the notion that Satan is the man of sin in II Thessalonians 2:1-9, despite the distinction between this figure and Satan in verse 9. He says that "a short time prior to Judgment Day increasingly virtually every congregation and denomination in the world is to become apostate." (p. 69) "Because the church has been used of God throughout the New Testament era to reveal God's salvation plan to the world, it is shocking to the highest degree that it will finally have served its purpose and will come to an end as an instrument of God to evangelize the world." (p. 109) "We, therefore, should be quite accurate in saying that the New Testament era of sending forth the Gospel officially came to an end on May 21, 1988 - the day before Pentecost." (p. 515)

The New Testament warnings against apostacy, Paul's words about the end-time appearance of the man of sin in the temple of God, and the historical narratives of unbelief in Old Testament Israel are taken by Camping as predictive prophecies that the church will ultimately succumb to Satan's rule, and that "God will destroy the external church" (p. 167). About one hundred pages of the book are devoted to these claims concerning the demise of the church. A pervasive theme of the book is the failure of the church, the wretched note on which the ages are wrapped up, and the miserable collapse of the preaching of Christ because his church falls into apostacy. Consequently there is an intense gloom about the book. The biblical teaching that Christ will triumphantly conquer the nations through the gospel (as in Psalms 2, 22, 72, 89, 138, Isaiah 19:18-25, 49, 60, Romans 11:12 and 15, etc.) is completely ignored.

Camping acknowledges that his teaching about the church will make pastors unhappy: "They may profess to love their congregations and are sure that they are Christ's church: If someone warns of God's judgment on the institution of the church, he speaks in their home territory." (p. 151) Camping's explanation of this unhappiness is: "The same thing happened in the nation of Israel when Jeremiah, Ezekiel and others prophesied that Babylon was going to destroy them because of their sin. The false prophets in Israel were unhappy with Jeremiah and the few prophets that dared to predict that judgment was coming." (p. 151)

Camping says that 1988 was the year the final tribulation began. In explaining why the apostacy and tribulation are outwardly quiet to such a large degree, Camping claims that Matthew 24:21 means the final tribulation will be like no other, in the sense that bloodshed will not be characteristic of it. Of course Jesus is not speaking there of a tribulation different in kind, but of a tribulation more severe in degree. But Camping does not notice this, and moves on to John 16:2: "In this verse we find that being put out of the synagogues is equivalent to being killed. Thus when congregations embrace false gospels, or become so apostate that they approximate a false gospel, the true believers within them are killed in the sense that they are driven from these congregations either voluntarily or by force." (p. 198) Jesus is plainly speaking of two quite distinguishable actions, but Camping is happy to make a simple identification of the two parts of the verse, so that he can read the Bible's language about the tribulation as indicating that the true believers will be isolated from the church.

In contrast to Camping's confident assertions that "Satan will become the dominant ruler within the congregations" (p. 170), Jesus speaks in Matthew 16:18-19 of the perpetuity of that church in which he establishes the keys of the kingdom of heaven: "I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Camping's teaching is a most audacious contradiction of the Savior's promise faithfully to preserve and invigorate his church. That Jesus speaks here of the structured church to which he has given ordinances of worship such as preaching and baptism, government, and discipline is apparent from the language of verse 19, compared with 18:15-18. When Christ sends forth his commissioned apostles in Matthew 28:18-20, he tells them that even unto the end of the world he will sustain them in their task of teaching and baptizing. Paul repeatedly tells us in I Corinthians 11:26 that the ordinance of the Lord's Supper is to be observed when the church comes together, in distinction from what is done at home (11:18-34). But this is a church ordinance which is perpetual: by it "ye do shew the Lord's death till he come."

Christ, as a fruit of his ascension triumph, has provided his church with pastors and teachers as the means to bring his people to a maturity of knowledge and holiness (Ephesians 4:7-14). Camping, by teaching that believers will soon leave the church because it is succumbing to Satan, is directly subverting the means Christ has given for preserving his people in the truth. Thus Camping concludes his book by telling his readers, "There is no time left to trust your pastor or your church." (p. 534) Of course it is not a matter of trusting what pastors say, because the Scriptures are quite explicit in contradicting Camping's thesis. But so far from teaching that there will be no faithful visible church when Christ returns, the New Testament admonishes us that consideration of that approaching day should stir us up not to forsake the assembly (Heb. 10:24-25).

A third area in which Camping ignores the unambiguous declarations of Christ is with respect to the present condition of unbelievers who have died. From Hebrews 9:27 ("And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment"), he draws the conclusion: "Thus the next conscious awareness of an individual who dies unsaved is that of standing before the Judgment Throne of God at the end of the world." (p. 326) This kind of arbitrary interpretation is typical of Camping. The verse certainly teaches the sequence of death followed by judgment, but says nothing about whether unbelievers are conscious between the two events. Appeal to Psalm 115:17-18 and to the resurrection of unbelievers at the judgment day does nothing to support his cause. However, the words of Christ could not be clearer. In Luke 16:19-31, we have one of the plainest passages in the Bible about the condition of the lost in hell. There Jesus tells us of the rich man who died, "And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments," crying out for even a momentary relief, "for I am tormented in this flame." This very conscious man carries on a conversation with Abraham. And when is this man in torments? It is while he still has five brothers alive, whom the rich man would have to be warned "lest they also come into this place of torment." Abraham's reply is that they have Moses and the prophets, and if they will not repent by hearing them, "neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." The rich man is in conscious torment in hell during the time that his brothers are still alive on earth, with opportunity to repent, and before the resurrection.

As indicative of the more reliable exegesis found in Reformed literature, we quote John Murray: "The Scripture represents the disembodied state as one of full consciousness. . . . For the wicked it is a state, not of semi-conscious stupor, but of conscious endurance of unmitigated torment (Luke 16:23-28; cf. Jude 7). Those expressions in Scripture which might appear to support the notion of sleep do not reflect upon the psychological condition of the disembodied spirit but upon the phenomenal aspect of death. The person is no longer active in this sphere of life and activity, and therefore with reference to this life has fallen asleep." ("The Last Things," in Collected Writings, vol. 2, pp. 402-403)

When one becomes accustomed to reading exegesis of the meticulous standard set in Murray's writings, it comes as a shock to read Mr. Camping's book. Though Camping has gained a hearing in Presbyterian churches because he teaches God's sovereign grace in salvation, his book shows that he has been affected remarkably little by Reformation principles of biblical interpretation or by Reformed systematic theology. Mr. Camping rejects much of the Reformed system of doctrine.

Fourth, Camping teaches that "If a man finds that his wife has been engaged in fornication, he cannot divorce her." (p. 85) In what is obviously an historical misrepresentation, he writes as if the church allowed no divorce when he was growing up, but in our generation has begun to allow divorce in the case of fornication, and remarriage under certain circumstances. The fact is, this is not some recent development, heralding the last generation on earth, for the Reformation of the sixteenth century asserted this, as has the Puritan tradition of the Westminster Confession for three and a half centuries.

Of course Camping's words stand in contrast to Christ's exception clause in Matthew 5:32, allowing fornication as a cause for the innocent party to sue for divorce. Like the unbiblical idealism that says that Christians must not be soldiers, Camping refuses to accept Christ's just provision for those who are wronged in this evil world.

Churches must have some agreed statement of what the Scriptures teach, if there is to be accountability with respect to the teaching which is given in the church. This is recognized by Mr. Camping also, for the congregation to which he belongs uses a version of the Belgic Confession, albeit substantially rewritten. Elders must exercise vigilance to protect Christ's sheep from error (Acts 20:28-31). When doctrines arise which violate the church's confession of what the Scriptures teach, elders must oppose them. Camping's book is antithetical to the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms in at least the four areas named above.

The Westminster Confession, chapter XXXIII.iii, affirms this summary of Scripture teaching: "As Christ would have us to be certainly persuaded that there shall be a day of judgment, both to deter all men from sin; and for the greater consolation of the godly in their adversity: so will he have that day unknown to men, that they may shake off all carnal security, and be always watchful, because they know not at what hour the Lord will come; and may ever be prepared to say, Come Lord Jesus, come quickly, Amen." The Scripture references given for the first part of this section are II Peter 3:11 and 14, II Corinthians 5:10-11, II Thessalonians 1:5-7, Luke 21:27-28, and Romans 8:23-25; the references for the second part of the section are Matthew 24:36, 42-44, Mark 13:35-37, Luke 12:35-36, and Revelation 22:20.

With respect to the perpetuity of the church, the Westminster Confession, chapter XXV.ii, teaches: "The visible church, which is also catholick or universal under the gospel, (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all these throughout the world that profess the true religion, together with their children; and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation." The Scripture references are I Corinthians 1:2 and 12:12-13, Psalm 2:8, Revelation 7:9, Romans 15:9-12, I Corinthians 7:14, Acts 2:39, Ezekiel 16:20-21, Romans 11:16, Genesis 3:15 and 17:7, Matthew 13:47, Isaiah 9:7, Ephesians 2:19 and 3:15, and Acts 2:47.

Section iii: "Unto this catholick visible church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints in this life, to the end of the world; and doth by his own presence and Spirit, according to his promise, make them effectual thereunto." The Scripture references are I Corinthians 12:28, Ephesians 4:11-13, Matthew 28:19-20 and Isaiah 59:21. Section v: "The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error; and some have so degenerated as to become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan. Nevertheless, there shall be always a church on earth to worship God according to his will." The Scripture references are I Corinthians 13:12, Revelation 2 and 3, Matthew 13:24-30 and 47, Revelation 18:2, Romans 11:18-22, Matthew 16:18, Psalm 72:17 and 102:28, and Matthew 28:19-20. Section vi: "There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof; but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ, and all that is called God." The Scripture references are Colossians 1:18, Ephesians 1:22, Matthew 23:8-10, II Thessalonians 2:3-4 and 8-9, and Revelation 13:6.

On the state of men after death, the Confession, chapter XXXII.i, states: "The bodies of men after death return to dust, and see corruption; but their souls (which neither die nor sleep), having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them....and the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Besides these two places for souls separated from their bodies, the scripture acknowledgeth none." The Scripture references are Genesis 3:19, Acts 13:36, Luke 23:43, Ecclesiastes 12:7, Luke 16:23-24, Acts 1:25, Jude 6-7, and I Peter 3:19. On divorce in the case of fornication, the Confession, chapter XXIV.v, says: "In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce, and, after the divorce, to marry another, as if the offending party were dead." The Scripture references are Matthew 5:31-32 and 19:9, and Romans 7:2-3.

In closing, we would warn of dangers arising in the practical effect of Mr. Camping's teaching. Though he urges men to go about their affairs without interruption, it is inevitable that men will alter the conduct of their lives if they believe that the date of Christ's return can be determined. One cannot hold Camping's doctrine and not be affected in one's outlook concerning longer-term responsibilities for one's family and for a righteous society. A second likely effect of Camping's teaching is that men will withdraw from the church and consider Camping their sole reliable teacher. But the church is the institution of Christ to provide for the edification of his people. A third effect of Camping's teaching will be that as his predicted date draws near, evangelism will be curtailed among those who follow him, for he says that near the predicted end, a time will come when God will no longer save sinners.

A fourth effect of Camping's prediction of a date for Christ's return will be to increase skepticism, and bring God's Word into contempt. Camping is zealous to share what he believes about dating the end of the world, hoping that by warning the world of the month and year of judgment, some might be brought to repentance. But Camping's book, and the unscriptural date-setting which has been incorporated into the Family Radio tract, "Does God Love You?", will have the opposite effect. When the date has passed, men will be strengthened in their derision not only for the date-setting, but also for the precious truth of the gospel; Camping represents them both as revealed by God in the Scriptures. Many men on the street will make no distinction between the one and the other. Camping himself says about his predictions: "God has given the information written in this book." (p. 330)

Fifth, Camping's predictions, because they are a word of man, will leave the sheep unfed. Hours and weeks spent studying his numerical puzzles will not advance the believer in spiritual maturity. In I Corinthians 3:10-15, the apostle Paul charges teachers to take heed as to the materials they use in the Lord's house. The doctrines arising from human speculation are like wood, hay and stubble; these will not build the godly character that endures in eternity. But when a sound exegesis of Scripture brings forth the solid verities of God's own Word, the Lord's people are built up in faith and holiness, and such a work will be sustained in the judgment.

A most helpful treatment of Christ's teaching about his second coming is found in John Murray's two essays, "The Interadventual Period and the Advent: Matthew 24 and 25," and "The Last Things," in his Collected Writings, vol. 2, pp. 387-417. A useful volume setting forth the biblical perspective that Christ's gospel will have glorious triumphs in this present age, and demonstrating that this was the hope which impelled generations of Reformed evangelism and the rise of the modern missionary movement, is Iain H. Murray's The Puritan Hope. These volumes are published by the Banner of Truth Trust. Also of value are two tapes by Pastor William Shishko, analyzing the teaching of Camping's book. They are available from Franklin Square Orthodox Presbyterian Church, P.O. Box 66, Franklin Square, NY 11010-0066. Louis Berkhof's Principles of Biblical Interpretation is a standard Reformed work; a close study of it will pay rich dividends in Bible study. Also valuable are William Cunningham's Theological Lectures, pp. 580-90, in which Cunningham deals with double sense, types, and grammatical and historical sense.

Those who perceive the dangers of a Bible translation by one man, as opposed to a group endeavor, should consider the imprudence of a Bible interpreter who, in setting forth novel doctrines, passes over the consensus of the Reformation confessions and four centuries of Protestant Bible exposition, much of it far more careful and precise than that practiced by Mr. Camping. Neither at the Reformation nor at other times does the Lord teach his church by one man's unique interpretation of the Scriptures, but rather by the combined labors of many pastors and teachers. This brings us to the sad consideration that Mr. Camping is not a minister of the Word, set apart in a biblical way to the teaching office in the church. He has assumed a role in teaching the Scriptures to many, but without the structures for biblical office which are the Lord's way to provide accountability in the church. To take on such a role without seeking the office to which it corresponds is an evasion of the Lord's arrangements for his household.

When the passage of time proves that Camping is wrong in his interpretation of biblical teaching about Christ's second coming, this book itself will constitute, like many others before it, a powerful refutation of the unsound methods it employs. But, sadly, this will not prevent others in the future from resorting to the same practices. What few good things are said in this book can be found stated far better elsewhere. The presence of some biblical truth in Camping's book is not a sufficient reason to commend it; what generally leads believers astray is a mixture of truth and error. There is, in print, a vast amount of theologically and experimentally sound Puritan and Reformed literature, built solidly on biblical foundations. This body of literature, in its faithfulness to the Word of God and its ability to nurture the people of God in a mature faith and holiness, is immeasurably superior to Camping's expositions. Believers should be encouraged to spend their time reading solid Reformed literature rather than listening to or reading Camping.

An aged professor was gratified to see that the American Tract Society had resolved to bring out from their press another of the precious works of dear Mr. Flavel. The volumes of this excellent author already published are a rich treasure in many houses; they are replete with evangelical doctrine and spiritual instruction. But the writer has special reasons for esteeming the work now published.

When a young man, he resided for some time in a part of the country where the gospel was seldom preached, and we were doomed for the most part to silent Sabbaths. Once a month, it is true, there was preaching at the distance of five miles; but the minister, though zealous, was very illiterate, and very little benefit we thought could be derived from his ranting vociferation; therefore we seldom attended. Indeed the family, with one exception, were little sensible of their need of religion. The writer confesses, to his shame, that he was ignorant of the nature of religion, and consequently did not feel its necessity. He thought that religion consisted in becoming good; and this, he was persuaded, he could do whenever he should so determine. And he therefore felt no concern about the matter.

But there was an old, infirm lady who, though she had once lived in affluence, was now, through the profligacy of a bad husband, reduced to poverty and dependence, and occupied the situation of a superintendent of the nursery in the family in which the writer was a teacher. This old lady possessed a large folio, containing all the published works of Flavel, and greatly delighted in reading his writings; but having weak eyes, she was able to read but little at a time, and would often request other members of the family to read to her. Sometimes this favor was asked of the writer, who through courtesy complied, though the subjects were in no wise congenial to his taste.

One of these vacant Sabbaths, when we were at a loss how to dispose of the lingering hours, she brought her book into the parlor, and requested me to read to the family, and pointed out the part which she wished read. It was a part of the discourse on the text, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock," etc. I took the book with reluctance, and read until I came to the word "stand," on which the author expatiates on the long-suffering and patience of Christ in waiting so long on sinners, while they pay no attention to his calls. This discourse impressed my mind in a manner it never had been before; and I was unable to proceed, but making an apology, closed the book and sought a place of retirement, where I wept profusely. And this was the commencement of impressions which were never entirely effaced. From this time secret prayer, before neglected, was frequently engaged in; and although I had no idea that I was converted until months after these first impressions, yet from this time my views in regard to religion were entirely changed. I now found a pleasure in reading out of Flavel to the good old lady, and even borrowed the book to peruse it alone; so that my first practical knowledge of the nature and evidences of true religion were derived from this excellent author. This pious woman, who had a fine understanding, and had received a good education, often spoke to me on the subject, and related her own experience, yet I never disclosed any thing of my feelings to her. But before she died, she had the opportunity of learning that I had made a public profession of religion, in which I understood she greatly rejoiced.

You may well suppose, therefore, Messrs. Editors, that I was gratified in observing that you had published a book from which I received my first religious impressions, which have continued for no less than threescore years. No doubt this attachment to an author, and esteem for his writings, may be accounted for without the supposition of any extraordinary intrinsic excellence; but now, when I impartially judge of Flavel's writings, I cannot help coming to the conclusion that they are among the very best of the many valuable writings of the Puritans.

Half a century past, the writer was accustomed to frequent places of worship where the houses were situated in a grove, or rather in the midst of the trees of a dense forest, and far from any human habitation. Although the meeting-houses, as they were then called, were frequently unfurnished - a mere shell without ceiling - yet there was a solemnity in these places of worship which was better adapted to promote devotion, than all the most splendid achievements of architecture. No somber light let in through painted windows ever affected my mind like the solemn shade and stillness of the natural growth of the forest.

On a certain occasion, when the Lord's supper was about to be solemnized in one of these humble churches, I went early, that I might avoid the conversation and dust of the multitude on the road, and might have an opportunity of solitary meditation under the venerable trees which encompassed the house of prayer. I thought surely that I should be first on the ground; but I was mistaken. I saw an elderly gentleman, who had just secured his horse to a bough of a tree, coming towards the house to meet me; and upon his nearing me, I recognized an old acquaintance, at whose house I had lodged in my journeyings more than once. He had formerly been an elder in a Presbyterian church of some note, but had removed into a neighborhood where there were then scarcely any Presbyterians. Travelling ministers, however, often called upon him and preached in his house, or at some place in his vicinity. As I believed him to be a very pious man, well informed and zealous for the truth, I was pleased to meet with him and hold communion with him.

After some general remarks, we got upon the subject of the efficacy of prayer; and as I was young, and he was aged and experienced, I was glad to throw the burden of the conversation on him, and he was not unwilling to speak on a subject which seemed to lie near his heart. In the course of conversation, he related to me a piece of his own experience. He said that his oldest son, who was a lawyer of some eminence, had as unblemished a moral character as any man in the land; and yet, though respectful to religion, he never had manifested any serious concern about his own salvation. "But," said he, "I have had such nearness to God, and such liberty in prayer for his conversion, that I believe those prayers will be answered in due time, whether I live to see it or not. Indeed," said he, "on one occasion I am persuaded that God gave me an assurance that my prayer in his behalf would be answered."

This, I confess, appeared to me somewhat like enthusiasm, but I made no reply; and soon our conversation was terminated by the gathering of the people. I thought, however, that I would remember this matter, and from time to time make inquiry respecting the person whose conversion was so confidently expected by his father. Soon after this, the old elder was gathered to his fathers, and died in faith and peace. But residing far from his abode, I know not the particular exercises of his mind as he approached the borders of the other world. For some years I forgot the conversation, and made no inquiry; but some person who was acquainted with the family, informed me that after his father's death, this son fell into habits of intemperance; that, in fact, he became a mere sot, remaining at home and stupefying himself with alcoholic drinks every day. Such a case appeared to me nearly hopeless. I had seldom known a man thus brought under the power of strong drink to recover himself. I now thought that the good old father had been deluded by a lively imagination. And for many years every report respecting the son seemed to render the case more hopeless.

But behold the truth and faithfulness of a prayer-hearing God. See an example of the efficacy of fervent and importunate prayer, though the answer was long deferred. This man, after continuing in intemperate habits until the age of seventy or more, has recently been completely reclaimed, and not only delivered from that vice, but soundly converted to God. He not only gives evidence of a change, but appears to be eminent in the practice of piety. If now living, and I have not heard of his decease, he must be about eighty years of age. How wonderful are the ways of God. His faithfulness never faileth; it reacheth unto the clouds. "Thy faithfulness is unto all generations." "O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men." "For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry." Habakkuk 2:3.

Let pious parents learn never to give over praying for their unconverted children, however hopeless the case may seem to be, for God will in faithfulness hear their supplications, and answer them sooner or later in one way or another.

As you may possibly infer from the subject of my letter, that I suppose you capable of deliberately and intentionally violating the truth, I wish to begin what I have to say by utterly disavowing such an idea. I doubt not that the obligation of every one to speak the truth, makes part of your creed as truly as it does of mine. And I am fully persuaded that you do not mean to allow yourself in what you consider an infringement of this great law of God and man that binds society together. But I am obliged to add that I am equally convinced that there are at least two points, in relation to this general subject, at which you are extremely vulnerable. I propose to direct your attention a little, in all frankness, to each of them. The first is an unfortunate habit you have acquired of making exaggerated statements. You have a lively imagination, and to embellish a little never costs you any trouble; and besides, you seem to consider the sober truth as tame and lacking in interest; you want something more exciting -- better fitted to arrest the attention and stir up the feelings. If it is something humorous that you are relating, you seem disposed to create a louder laugh than you would otherwise secure, by throwing every circumstance into the most ludicrous light you can. If it is something of a gloomy and appalling character, you task your imagination for yet darker shades than the fact supplies, in order to work up a picture that shall tell more powerfully upon the sensibilities of those who listen to you. If it is a mere ordinary occurrence, you still show your wish to make it extraordinary, by either magnifying it into quite another thing, or else connecting with it something to which it is at best but remotely related. I tell you candidly, that I have heard you tell stories, by which I could not help being amused, but which were so entirely overcoloured, that I could scarcely recognize the facts of which they purported to be a faithful narrative. Once in particular, I remember your figuring in this way in the presence of a large company; and though you professed to be telling the truth, yet your imagination so perfectly led you captive, that I could not but think that there was about as much difference between your statement and the veritable fact, as there was between that of a man's having vomited three black crows, and that of his having vomited something as black as a crow.

The evils which result from this habit, you may rest assured, are neither few nor small. The fact that you should have formed such a habit, shows a pre-existing state of mind that is far from being in harmony with the divine requirements. It evinces a loose way of thinking and feeling, in regard to the obligation to strict veracity; and the habit itself is really nothing else than a habit of voluntary misrepresentation. You may take the comfort of thinking that you mean no harm, and that those who listen to you will not be likely to be misled, as they will make due allowance for your passion for telling a good story; but even if this be so, it does not prevent your doing a great injury to yourself. If you accustom yourself to relate apocryphal stories as verities, merely for amusement, or to exaggerate the truth till it loses its character as truth, you need not marvel, if that which begins in the want of due reverence for the truth, should issue in an utter disregard to it; and if, from this unfortunate training which you are giving yourself, you should, by and by, find yourself capable of serving a purpose by deliberate and downright falsehood.

Let me say, too, that this habit to which I refer is altogether unprofitable. It does not secure the end at which it aims. Your tendency to exaggeration soon becomes known, and your statements are all received with due allowance; and besides, where you have occasion to relate a really remarkable thing, you do it at a great disadvantage, as your whole vocabulary of superlatives is exhausted upon ordinary matters. So far as your example goes, I need not say that it is evil. The circumstance of your being a professor of religion will give it more authority in the view of some, while it will lead others to make religion itself the object of reproach.

I would advise you, then, as you value either your Christian character or Christian influence, to take heed that your representations on all subjects are in strict conformity to truth. Better fall below, than go beyond the line, in any statements you may have occasion to make. The habit which you have formed will yield to nothing short of the most vigilant care and persevering effort. But to be free from it were worth more than all the care and effort which it would cost you.

The other point to which I wish to refer, is the uncommon facility which you have in making promises, and the equal facility with which you seem to forget or overlook them. Here again, I am far from charging you with an intention to falsify, and yet you cannot wonder that the frequent recurrence of such cases, causes your good to be sometimes evil spoken of. It has seemed to me that you act habitually from a wish to make everybody as happy as you can for the moment; and hence, you readily make promises without thinking that there are any difficulties in the way of their fulfillment; and when those difficulties present themselves, you seem to feel absolved from all obligation to keep your word. The old maxim, that circumstances alter cases, comes up as a salvo to your conscience; but the person to whom you have made the promise admits no such apology, and, in his estimation, you stand charged with a culpable delinquency. If I mistake not, you frequently fail to keep your engagements from mere forgetfulness; indeed, it would seem, sometimes, that your promises were made only to be forgotten, or disregarded.

This must be considered a greater evil than the one to which I previously referred; inasmuch as it not only involves a still worse form of moral delinquency, but it implies a willingness, if not a disposition, to trifle with the interests of others. You cannot habitually or frequently fail to fulfill your promises, even on the ground of mere carelessness, but that your name will become a reproach. They whom you have needlessly disappointed will withdraw from you their confidence, and will manifest it by never putting themselves in the way of being disappointed by you again. And they will relate the history of their experience to others, and before you are aware of it, your reputation for integrity, both in the church and in the world, will be in the dust. I will not undertake to say to what extent this sad result has already been realized, respecting you; but I should be unfaithful to my convictions, not to say that you have gone to a point that has, at least, greatly diminished your Christian influence.

I knew an individual, many years ago, whose history furnished one of the saddest illustrations of trifling with one's own word, that I have ever happened to observe. He was a man of commanding talents, of excellent education, of amiable disposition, and of the most bland and persuasive address. He was, withal, a professor of religion, and an office bearer in the church. At the commencement of his career, no man gave higher promise than he of Christian respectability and usefulness; but, unhappily, he fell into the habit of unscrupulously making promises, which he did not and could not fulfill. His friends early admonished him in relation to it, but they might as well have spoken to the wind. He would promise, indeed, to heed their admonitions; but this like most of his other promises, seemed never to be thought of after it was made. He became, at length, extensively known for his false dealing; and, by common consent, he lost his standing, both as a citizen and a Christian. He had many fine, generous feelings; but between him and the truth there seemed to be no affinity. I never believed that he uttered deliberate and studied falsehoods; and yet those who suffered and writhed under his broken promises held a less indulgent opinion concerning him. It is far from being a new-made grave that he occupies; but there are many, whose associations with it are still painful and revolting. When I think from what and to what he fell, I am the more earnest in entreating you to avoid not only the reality, but even the appearance of this evil.

It is quite likely that it has never occurred to you that you are liable to the charge which the subject of this letter would seem to imply. You do not pretend to deny that you are sometimes not perfectly satisfied with your lot, and you ask me, perhaps, to show you one, if I can, who never finds fault; but that you have more than your ordinary share of this infirmity, you are in no wise prepared to admit. Well, I have no wish to prove that yours is an extreme case; nor do I mean to say that I might not select many other individuals, to whom my remarks would apply with equal pertinence; but still I much insist that yours is a case of the kind that I have designated; and the fact that you share the evil in common with many others, is no reason why you should not have your attention seriously directed to it.

I will tell you candidly some of the ways in which I think your impatient and dissatisfied spirit discovers itself. I do not suppose that you ever allow yourself to think that you arraign Infinite Wisdom, or question the propriety of any of God's dealings with you; but if you will notice particularly your own conduct, and scrutinize your feelings and motives, I think you will find it difficult to resist the conviction that many of your complaints terminate, not upon man, but upon God. I have heard you more than once express your disappointment, in not realizing a favourite plan, in terms that have evinced an almost angry dissatisfaction, when the disappointment had been entirely independent of any voluntary human agency. You expected to set out on a journey on a certain morning; and when the morning came, instead of leaving home, you were so ill as to be obliged to send for a physician. You took the disappointment so much to heart that your countenance looked almost like what we should imagine Cain's to have been, after he slew his brother. Your arrangements for the day rendered it desirable to you that the weather should be fine; but the rain came pouring in torrents; and you showed clearly enough by your actions, that it should not have been so, if the government of the world had been in your hands. I have heard you complain bitterly of your neighbours, so that one might have supposed your lot had been cast in Sodom; when, after all, it seemed to me that any one who lived among human beings would find as much to complain of as yourself. You allow yourself to be unreasonably irritable in your own family, finding fault with whatever is not exactly according to your mind; insomuch that some of your guests have felt uneasy while sojourning under your roof. And I must not forget to say, that when you lost a child not long since, I could not discover, in anything that fell from you, the workings of a spirit of submission; -- on the contrary, when I exhorted you to seek a refuge, in the hour of your calamity, in God's gracious covenant, you answered me by reflecting bitterly upon some individual, who induced you to a course to which you thought you could refer indirectly the child's illness and death. Now, it is upon such grounds as these that I am impelled to the conclusion that you have fallen into a habit of impatience that greatly needs to be corrected.

You cannot but see that the indulgence of this spirit is really nothing better than rebellion against God. For it is God who orders the circumstances of your earthly condition; and, in complaining of them, you virtually express your distrust of his wisdom and goodness. Many of the inconveniences and disappointments with which you find fault, are from the direct ordering of his providence, without the intervention of any other visible agency; and even where there are human instruments concerned, and culpably concerned, still God's hand is to be acknowledged in this, as a part of that great and divinely arranged system, which will ultimately secure the greatest good to them who love him. You disobey, you rebel, as often as you complain. If it be admitted that you are a true Christian, just in proportion as you indulge this spirit, you not only fail to grow in grace, but you counteract God's merciful purposes towards you. He designs that these crosses should act as a salutary discipline upon your spirit; that they should inspire you with fresh confidence in his wisdom, and grace, and faithfulness, and render the prospect of heaven more dear to you, by giving you a foretaste of its joys in the midst of tribulation. If you pervert them to a different purpose, where are you to look for any evidences, on which you can rely, of growth in grace? Rather, what reason have you to believe that the principle of grace has ever been implanted in your heart?

If you have respect to your own personal comfort, you will crucify this unhallowed temper, and cultivate the opposite spirit of contentment and submission. So long as your present state of mind continues, you can never have anything like true inward peace. While you live in this world, you will always be subject to vicissitude and disappointment, and you will be the sport of every adverse wind that blows. Let your earthly condition be what it may, you can never know anything like true independence; whereas, if you cultivate a spirit of quiet submission to the divine will, the consequence will be an all-pervading and habitual, if not an uninterrupted, tranquillity. What has he to fear whose heart is stayed upon God?

Then, again, this impatient spirit prevents you from enjoying the happiness which Providence intended should flow to you through your social relations. If you accustom yourself to find fault with your family, and friends, and neighbours, for everything they may say or do that does not entirely correspond with your wishes, it is impossible that they should take any comfort in your society, and they will very soon cause you to find it out. And this discovery will be a source of annoyance to you; it will beget increased jealousy and mortification on your part, and this again will react to produce, on the part of others, increasing reserve, if not positive alienation. Thus you sacrifice, in a great measure, your social as well as your spiritual enjoyment. You make enemies out of friends. You fail to make friends where it is in your power, and check in many a bosom the warm current of benevolent feeling which would otherwise flow out towards you.

In professing to be a Christian, you virtually acknowledge your obligation to live in the habitual estate of a benevolent spirit, and to do what you can to promote the happiness and well-being of your fellow men. But what becomes of this obligation, so long as you are continually finding fault with both God and man? In order to render those around you happy, there must be at least a degree of sunshine in your countenance; but, alas! it is a rare thing that the cloud of discontent is ever lifted from your brow. If you will make men happy, you must ordinarily come near to them; but who does not wish to have an everlasting fault-finder keep at a distance? Most of the good that men accomplish, is done in their social capacity; but so long as you complain of every thing, I do not know who would not rather do good by himself than to be associated with you. And even if you really try to make yourself, in some respects, useful, it seems to me that you have little right to expect the concurring favour of that Providence which you so often arraign, indirectly at least, on the charge of measuring out to you a hard lot.

Let me entreat you to lay this subject to heart, and endeavour to correct this unhappy trait in your religious and social character. Get your mind deeply imbued with a sense of God's overruling and directing providence, extending even to the numbering of hairs and the falling of sparrows; and accustom yourself to connect the thought of perfect wisdom and goodness with even the most trying events. Dwell upon the example of Him whom you call Master and Lord; and mark the breathings of perfect submission and trust in God, when the great waters came over his soul. Think how much fewer afflictions and crosses you have than you deserve; and how few, too, in comparison with the number of your blessings. And recollect that the sufferings of the present are designed to increase the glory of the future; not merely through the power of contrast, but by forming the mind to a higher type of holiness, and infusing into it more of the spirit of heaven. Recollect, too, that the evils of which you are so prone to complain are of short continuance; and that if you endure them in a spirit of Christian patience, it will be but a little while before you will have the whole wilderness behind you, and will enter exultingly into that world, where not a thought shall miss its object, not a wish shall ever be disappointed.

I am not at all disposed to condemn the exercise of a due degree of caution, in the intercourse which the Christian has with society. Prudence is a virtue which he cannot dispense with, without jeoparding his comfort, his character, his usefulness. For want of this, some men, who general good intentions and right feelings we cannot doubt, have seemed to pass through the world, leaving it a matter of question whether they had accomplished more of good or of evil. But the quality of which I am about to speak, though it may sometimes take the name of prudence, has really no affinity to anything which Christianity recognizes as a virtue. It is identical with worldly cunning. It loves darkness rather than light. It hesitates not to take an undue advantage, even of a Christian brother. It conceals daggers beneath smiles. It sometimes professes great frankness, and even glories in having no purposes which it is ashamed to avow; but in making such a proclamation, it is acting altogether in character -- it is an effort to blind the eyes of men, in order that it may work to better advantage for the accomplishment of its unworthy ends.

Without imputing to you this offensive quality in the highest degree, I am sure that I do you no injustice in saying that you cannot claim an exemption from it; and the result of my recent observations upon your conduct has been to satisfy me, that time is doing nothing to render your character more transparent. You will allow me, therefore, in all friendship, to expostulate with you in regard to this unfortunate propensity.

The evil to which I here refer is two-fold -- it has respect to the end which you seek to accomplish, and to the means which you employ for accomplishing it. You scruple not to endeavour to subserve your own interest by injuring another; and need I say that this is a palpable contradiction to the spirit of the Gospel? It is seeking your own advantage, not only above that of another, but at the expense of another. It involves criminal injustice, as well as gross selfishness; both of which, Christianity, in its precepts and in its spirit, uniformly forbids. The religion which you profess, requires you to love your neighbour as yourself; to do evil to none, and to do good to all, as you have opportunity. If then you have attempted to injure your neighbour's property for the sake of increasing your own, or to wound his good name in the hope of gathering some fresh laurels for yourself, or to further any of your designs at the expense of interfering with the just and praiseworthy designs of others, you may rest assured that Christianity loudly reproves you -- it charges you with being false to the sacred obligations which you have assumed -- if it does not pronounce your religion absolutely spurious, it stamps it at least with great imperfection and gross contradiction. Where this spirit is deliberately and habitually cherished, it furnishes conclusive evidence that you do not possess the spirit of Christ, and, of course, are none of his; and where it exists even as one of the remaining corruptions of the renewed nature, over which grace hath not yet completely triumphed, it is still an offence against the benevolent spirit of the Master you profess to serve, and may well lead you to doubt whether the hope which you are keeping alive in your bosom is not the hope of the hypocrite.

But it is not merely that your efforts contemplate an unworthy end, but they are themselves characterized by a spirit of disingenuousness. You have a purpose, but you do not avow it; or perhaps you have one purpose which occupies your thoughts night and day, while yet you seem to be aiming at another. You have your tools; which, though they breathe and speak, and seem to be operating with all due intelligence, still move entirely at your bidding; and it is only a modified sort of moral agency that you allow to them. Possibly your purpose is gained, while the master mind that has conceived and executed it, has moved so silently, and in such deep darkness, that its agency has not even been suspected. Possibly the whole blame of the transaction is visited upon the poor instruments, though they knew little what they were doing until they were surprised by some strange result of their own efforts.

It not unfrequently happens that this spirit of unworthy management and worldly cunning manifests itself where there is no evil end to be accomplished; nay, it sometimes appears where the end is positively a good one. In some cases it seems to be nothing more than a simple love of management -- a natural aversion to walking in an open, beaten track; and here it would seem to be more closely allied to vanity than anything else. I call to mind, at this moment, a man who was more remarkable than any other I ever knew, for moving in a mysterious way; he was acknowledged to possess great talents, but was never contented to perform even the most common actions in the same way with other people. Where the result to be produced was necessarily an ordinary affair, it was sure to be brought about by some extraordinary instrumentality. He was undoubtedly a person of great natural sagacity; but, unhappily, he had acquired, in the community in which he lived, a great reputation for worldly cunning. And the consequence was that he did everything at a disadvantage. If he had really wished to engage in any enterprise, without anything of management or finesse, the world would not have done justice to his intentions; he would still have had the reputation of working in his accustomed way, and not a few would have kept their eyes upon him to see if he was not aiming at something which he did not avow. Where a man of acknowledged frankness and integrity sets about any good object, there are multitudes who are ready to co-operate with him, and nobody thinks of questioning the sincerity of his aims; but let a man of great reputed cunning avow his intention of bringing something to pass, that may materially benefit the community, and few will be disposed to become his efficient auxiliaries, until they have looked on every side to see whether he may not be enlisting them, professedly for one purpose, but really for another.

Let me urge you to beware of this evil, as one that must essentially vitiate your character, both as a man and a Christian. Be prudent, indeed; but let not prudence, with you, ever degenerate into disingenuous concealment or unfair dealing. You are not always bound to tell the whole truth, but you are never at liberty to practice deliberate deception. And where this disposition appears in a professor of religion, especially in connection with some unworthy selfish purpose, it is not easy to overrate the evil which it brings upon the cause of Christ. How often have I heard worldly men, speaking of such professors, congratulate themselves that, if they were not themselves religious, they were at least honest! Whatever there is amiss on this subject in your character, may God enable you to correct. See to it, that the ends at which you aim, and the means by which you seek to gain them, will both bear the light; and you will, through grace, meet the reward of such a course of conduct, both on earth and in heaven.

Every man who is not recreant to all his social obligations, is entitled, as a member of society, to a certain degree of consideration and influence; but there are some men who are not satisfied with what they can legitimately claim in this respect; their whole life seems to be an unceasing struggle to bring other men's opinions into harmony with their own. Let them be in whatever company they may, it is manifest that they are aiming at superiority. They speak on every subject with a sort of oracular assurance. If one ventures to question the correctness of their opinions, even in respect to matters of which they have had little opportunity to form a judgment, he quickly finds that he must be brow-beaten into silence, or else nerve himself to encounter a protracted, not to say angry opposition. It happens not unfrequently that men of this class are confident in proportion to their ignorance, and that, in endeavouring to carry a point by storm, they really expose themselves to ridicule and contempt.

Now it will, perhaps, surprise you to know that many of your friends think that you are vulnerable, in no inconsiderable degree, at this point; that you expect too much deference from other minds, not at all inferior to your own; in short, that, like Diotrephes of old, you love to have the pre-eminence. They say that you are impatient whenever any of your positions are questioned; that you look coldly upon those who cannot always see with your eyes; and that, in some matters of considerable practical moment, you have refused to act at all, because in certain unimportant details, you were not permitted to have your own way. I have too much reason to believe that the impression that exists concerning you is not exaggerated. You must pardon me for saying that I have myself witnessed that in your conduct which fully justifies it.

The least reflection, I think, must satisfy you that this characteristic does not bespeak any exuberance of modesty or humility. It is virtually saying that you have a quicker discernment, a more mature judgment, a more vigorous or grasping intellect, than those with whom you are associated; for if this were not so, why should their opinion or will bend to yours, rather than you yield to them? If you differ in opinion from others with whom you are called to act, you have a right indeed to say so, and to state the grounds of your dissent, and to do what you can fairly, in vindication of the measures that you prefer; and more than this, you have a right, undoubtedly, in obedience to the honest dictates of your conscience, to refuse your active co-operation; and all this may be done without subjecting yourself to the charge of an overweening vanity; but if you are extremely tenacious upon small matters; if you discover a morbid sensitiveness whenever one ventures to question your judgment; if you show that you would prefer to see an important object sacrificed rather than to have it gained by a departure from the course which you have marked out, then do you give the most decisive evidence that you are not minding that exhortation of the apostle, "Let not a man think more highly of himself than he ought to think." Whatever may be your attainments in respect to other graces, you may rest assured that you are not perfected in the grace of humility.

In yielding to this temper, you offend not only against charity, but against justice. You are not satisfied with the measure of control that really belongs to you -- you eagerly aspire to something more; and herein what better do you show yourself than a usurper? Those with whom you are connected, whether in Christian or civil society, have precisely the same rights, growing out of their relationship to society, that you have; but in your desire to have the pre-eminence, you infringe upon those rights, and forget the golden rule of doing to others as you would that they should do to you. You are abroad in the world as a sort of pirate; you would rob others of their influence, and enrich yourself with the spoils.

It is scarcely necessary to add that this spirit is utterly at war with the genius of social happiness and improvement -- it works evil towards all the great interests of society. If you have a right to dictate imperiously to your associates and equals, they have exactly the same right thus to dictate to you; and if they avail themselves of it, it is easy to see that it must be at the expense of perpetual disquietude and wrangling; of keeping alive and hot the coals of strife. But the truth is, neither you nor they have any such right. As members of society, you are all bound to consider the common weal; to live in habits of mutual condescension; to exert all the good influence you can, fairly and honourably; while you are imperatively forbidden to assume the character of a dictator, or to overlook or undervalue the reasonable claims of others.

It deserves your particular consideration, that this spirit, which I am condemning, is almost sure to defeat its own ends. The man who is not disposed to claim more than fairly belongs to him, and who chooses rather to remain in the background, than to thrust himself forward, is the very man, provided he has the requisite qualifications in other respects, whom the mass of men are most willing to follow; whereas, he who is disposed to take lead, whether it is conceded to him or not -- who can never consent to be anything, unless he can be everything -- will rarely carry the considerate and well judging portion of the community along with him. I can think of several persons, at this moment, who have sunk into deep obscurity from the very effort to rise into too bright a light -- men who might have been respected, and honoured, and even exalted to high places, had it not been that their insatiable love of power, their ambition to be the greatest, would not suffer them to wait for the honest judgment of society, or the slow movements of Providence.

I have adverted to the influence which this spirit exerts on society in general; let me say that it acts most disastrously on the well being of the church. The church is a community which has interests to manage and provide for that are peculiarly its own. It were not to be expected, considering the great variety of intellectual and moral constitution among men, as well as the different circumstances under which their characters are developed -- it were not to be expected that there should be no diversity of opinion among either the officers or the private members of the church, in regard to the measures best adapted to promote its prosperity. In respect to everything fundamental, the Master has indeed spoken explicitly, so that there can be no apology for either disobedience or disagreement. But there are many matters of minor importance, in relation to which the teachings of Scripture are more general, and the wisdom of the church is profitable to direct. And here there is abundant scope for the spirit of mutual forbearance and condescension. But alas! it is just at this point that the opposite spirit has most frequently and most fatally discovered itself. Diotrephes is the representative of a mighty host in the church, whose inordinate desire for preferment has disturbed its peace, marred its purity, retarded its growth, and preyed upon its vital energies. Do what you can, I pray you, to discourage this spirit; and begin your efforts by bidding it depart from your own bosom.

I have noticed in you, for a considerable time, a growing disposition, which I fear is becoming a settled habit, to deal in undue severity with the characters of your fellow men. It is a rare things that I hear you speak well of any body. Whenever an individual is mentioned, and especially when any thing praiseworthy is said of him, it seems as if your mind was immediately on the stretch for something of an opposite character; and if nothing of this kind readily occurs to you as a matter of fact, you do not hesitate to indulge in unworthy and injurious conjectures. If a person has performed a highly meritorious action, your attribute it to some dishonourable and selfish motive; if he has done something of an equivocal character, you seem to delight to put the worst construction upon it; if he has failed, from considerations of prudence, to act in difficult circumstances, you reproach him for a timid or temporizing spirit; if he takes a bold and decisive step in such circumstances, you charge him with rashness and recklessness. In short you are for ever hunting after "dead flies in the apothecary's ointment." You seem not to breathe freely except amidst the errors and foibles of your fellow men.

Now, the most obvious thing to be said of this characteristic is, that it is exceedingly unamiable. You cannot find any body that likes it; nor do you yourself like it in others, much as you may cherish and justify it in yourself. I do not say that it is not possible to possess it, and to possess good qualities along with it; but let the character, in other respects, be what it may -- nobody will ever think it amiable -- it will always carry with it an air of repulsion.

And while this is not an amiable trait, neither is it in accordance with the precepts and genius of Christianity. The leading element of the gospel is love -- its origin is love -- its spirit is love -- its end is love. The blessed Saviour, while he was on earth, though he was a most faithful and earnest reprover of sin in every form, was yet a wonderful example of kindness, and forbearance, and charity. The apostles also evinced the same spirit, as well in their conduct as in their teachings. Indeed, the whole tendency of Christianity, in both its doctrines and precepts, is to lead us to form the most charitable judgments of our fellow men, that truth and reason will justify; and never to proclaim our surmises to the disadvantage of another, when we cannot be certain that they are well founded, and when, even if they are, no good can result from our publishing them. The great rule which Christ has given us for the regulation of our social conduct is, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even the same to them." No one wishes to be the object of perpetual censure and crimination. No one wishes to have his actions misrepresented, or his motives arraigned, by ungracious insinuations. No one wishes, after he has done the best that he is capable of doing, to be looked coldly upon, as if he were at least worthy of suspicion, if not an acknowledged malefactor. In indulging in this conduct towards another, then, you not only violate a principle which your own conscience must recognize as a rule of right, but you come in conflict with the fundamental principle of practical Christianity. You thus far disown the authority of the Master whom you profess to serve.

It is not one of the least of the evils connected with the spirit which I am considering, that it interferes greatly with your general Christian influence. The most striking illustration of this that I remember to have known, was in the case of an individual, long since passed away, who occupied the important position of an elder in a Presbyterian church. It was always a matter of surprise to me that he should ever have been made an elder; but as he had been one from the organization of the church, I suppose it must have been from the paucity of materials out of which to form a session. He had, naturally, a sarcastic turn, and he seemed to have trained himself, from early life, to the indulgence of it. He indulged it continually before he came into the church, and he indulged it afterwards, and he never ceased to indulge it so long as the power of speech remained to him. I scarcely ever heard him render a favourable testimony concerning a human being. If you mentioned an excellence in any character, he had always some blemish at hand with which to offset it; or if you mentioned a defect, he would instantly mention another, and a greater, unless, indeed, he might choose to indulge his ruling passion by taking an attitude of contradiction against yourself. The consequence was that he really enjoyed the friendship of nobody. He grew more and more an Ishmaelite, in both the church and civil society, until at length, though he was still an elder in the church, he was really a man by himself. Nobody asked his counsel in difficulty; nobody looked to him for consolation in sorrow; nobody cared to meet him even on the highway. He was naturally a man of vigorous intellect, and capable of extensive usefulness; but his inveterate habit of sarcasm and crimination made him a sort of terror even to his own friends. If this is an extreme case, as doubtless it is, yet it shows you at least what you are in danger of; it admonishes you to crucify this unhallowed propensity, as you would accomplish the great end of a Christian profession.

It is possible that you may justify yourself, in a censorious habit, on the ground that men's characters are so bad that truth and justice forbid you to speak well of them; and that in your honest, and what may seem to others severe, utterances, you are only evincing a higher degree of Christian fidelity than professors of religion generally exhibit. But herein I am afraid that you greatly deceive yourself. I fear you are actually making a self-righteousness of the indulgence of a naturally bad temper. You may rest assured that fidelity in dealing with the errors and delinquencies of others is one thing -- uncharitableness and censoriousness quite another. Never was there such honesty and faithfulness in any reprover as in the Saviour of the world; and yet never was there such melting tenderness. If you are really actuated by a sense of Christian obligation in this matter, you will administer reproofs, when you are called to administer them, in the spirit of love; you will not needlessly speak of the faults of others when they are not present; and when there exists a necessity for your doing it, you will still show by your manner that you are moved by that charity that thinketh no evil. I am constrained to say that you have seemed to me to be actuated by a different spirit; and sometimes, when an individual whom you have assailed has been successfully vindicated in your presence, I have though it was a source of positive mortification to you.

I must not omit to say that the spirit which I have been reprobating is sure to beget its like. If you allow yourself indiscriminately to censure others, you can calculate on nothing else than that the measure which you mete to them will be returned upon yourself. The peace of a neighborhood, the peace of a church, the peace of a community, is often sacrificed to the unchristian temper, the ungoverned tongue, of a single individual; for though many tongues may be ultimately employed in the same way, yet there was some one, from which the spark flew, out of which has grown this wide moral conflagration.

Let me add, that you will not be likely to reform in this matter, except as the result of great watchfulness, and persevering, vigorous effort. You must obey the inspired direction, to set a watch at the door of your lips. You must resolve never to speak ill of any body, unless upon grounds which you can fully justify to an enlightened Christian judgment and conscience. You must bring yourself under the influence of all these considerations, drawn from a sense of your own manifold imperfections and infirmities, from the precepts and example of Christ, and from your relation to the church and to society, which are fitted to keep in check, or rather to eradicate, this unchristian temper. Above all, you are habitually to ask of God that he will increase your power of resistance to this spiritual foe; and you are never to relax in the conflict, until you can feel that it is finally and for ever dislodged.

It is a subject of deep regret with many of your Christian friends, that you recently returned home from a journey on the Sabbath. It is understood, moreover, that you traveled on the Sabbath repeatedly during your absence; in short, that you have no scruples in spending God's holy day in this way, whenever your convenience may require. You cannot think it unreasonable, sustaining the relation to you that I do, that I should ask you to look at this matter in some of its more practical and solemn bearings.

There are those, I know, who deny that the Christian Sabbath has the sanction of divine authority; and, of course, whatever they may think of its importance as a human institution, they have no idea that any respect is due to it as an ordinance of God. This lax opinion in respect to the Sabbath prevails extensively, as you are doubtless aware, on the continent of Europe; and hence American Christians who travel in those countries are often shocked at the manner in which the Sabbath is treated, even by those whose views of religious truth generally are in accordance with our own. But I have never understood that you had expressed any doubts as to the question whether or not the Christian Sabbath is a divine institution; and I shall take for granted, in this communication, that you do not feel any.

Is it not obvious, then, upon your own principles, that in traveling needlessly on the Sabbath, you offend directly against one of the laws of God -- nay, that you do so deliberately, and with your eyes open? You profess to believe that God requires you to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy; and yet, in the face of that command, you pervert it by needless traveling, to purposes of mere worldly gratification, or worldly profit. And are you, who have professed to be a servant of God, and have pledged yourself to walk in the way of his statutes, prepared thus to assume the attitude of a transgressor? Can you, while you thus deliberately violate one of the commandments, flatter yourself that you have really any regard to the divine authority? Do not your Sabbath day journeys sometime come as a most unwelcome subject of reflection at the communion table? But you propound to me particular cases. You say you have been absent from your family for weeks, and you are impatient to see them; that you know not but that some of them may be sick, and may require your presence and aid; and you ask me whether, in such a case, you are not at liberty to press on, even through the hours of the Sabbath, that you may reach them as early as possible. I answer, that if you have heard that any of them are seriously ill, or if you have any special reason for believing that they are, doubtless you are justified in continuing your journey on the Sabbath, that you may lose no time in being with them. But the mere possibility that this may be the case, because they live in a world in which there is more or less of sickness always, does not constitute even the semblance of a plea for your infringing on holy time. Still less is it to be admitted as a justifying circumstance, that your affection urges you forward to meet them, and that after an absence of many days or weeks, you know not how to submit to a longer separation. The same Being who gave you your natural affections to be indulged within proper limits, has ordained the Sabbath, and required your observance of it; and he does not allow any interference between your duty to your families and your duty to himself. If the Sabbath overtakes you when you are on a journey, you will render far better service to your families by pausing on your way, and commending them to God's blessing, than you will by hastening forward to meet them, in violation of God's commandment. You are safe in acting upon the presumption that the Being whom you profess to serve, "will have mercy, and not sacrifice"; but you are not warranted in listening to the pleas of natural affection, when natural affection would justify what God's word absolutely forbids.

You propose another case. You find yourself distant a hundred and fifty miles from home on Saturday night; and you ask whether you are not justified in spending the night in a steamboat, and reaching home early the next morning, rather than remain where you are, and perhaps spend the Sabbath in a hotel. I am to say, I think not. For, take the best view of the case you can, you certainly pervert several hours of the Sabbath to a worldly purpose; or if you say that you do nothing worse than sleep, the answer is, that the boat in which you travel is not managed by sleepers, and that you patronize a systematic violation of God's holy day. Besides, you are not hid among your fellow passengers; many of them know you, and some, at least, know that you are a professor of religion; and there are still more who will recognize you as such, when you leave the boat in the morning. The consequence is, that your example helps to lower the standard of the observance of the Sabbath. The man of the world, who, nevertheless, has some reverence for holy time, in consequence, perhaps, of a religious education, will now set off on a journey on Sabbath morning, without scruple, and feel that he places himself under the wing of your example. Depend on it, in your walk from your landing place to your dwelling, you are a conspicuous object; and there are things said of you by some of the passers-by, that would make your ears tingle. I advise you, in all ordinary cases, to remain until Monday, wherever you are when Saturday night overtakes you. It will be a poor preparation for profiting by the privileges of the Sabbath, to spend its first hours in breaking God's holy law.

Let me say that, as there is a blessing promised to the faithful observance of the Sabbath, so you have a right to expect a peculiar blessing, when you observe it at what seems to be a manifest worldly sacrifice. One thing, at least, you are sure to accomplish -- you render a testimony in favour of the Sabbath, which is of great importance, especially in this Sabbath-breaking age -- you help to deepen the public sentiment as to its importance, and thus to throw a wall of fire around this divine institution. I knew an individual several years ago, who was traveling for the benefit of his health, in a part of one of the Middle States, in which the Sabbath was not much observed. The stage reached a certain place late on a Saturday afternoon, and his fellow passengers perceived that he was making his arrangements to stop; and as they knew he had not reached the end of his journey, they earnestly inquired the cause. He told them that the Sabbath was just at hand, and he felt under obligation to observe it. They thought it preposterous that he should make such a sacrifice, and to induce him to proceed, they told him that he could not find in that place even decent accommodations for a man in health, much less comfortable ones for an invalid, whereas, by going on with them, he would find himself early the next morning in a large town, where everything would be to his mind, and, withal, he would be there in time to attend church. The appeal, however, did not avail, and he stopped almost in the woods, and settled down to spend the Sabbath. The next day he met a little company of Christians in the neighborhood, and engaged with them in social worship; and the day succeeding proceeded on his journey. In all this, he thought of nothing beyond keeping a conscience void of offence, in yielding to a divine requirement. But after many years had passed away, and he had even forgotten the name of the place at which he stopped, he met a gentleman who resided there at the time, and who asked him if he remembered the circumstances of his having once passed a Sabbath there. On being answered in the affirmative, the gentleman remarked to him, "You have probably never known how much good you accomplished on that day. So uncommon was it for people in that part of the country to let the Sabbath detain them on a journey, that your example in the matter was talked about far and near; and while it came as a rebuke to the multitude, it came no less as an encouragement to the few who sympathized with you in your regard for this divine institution."

There is one effect which this loose way of treating the Sabbath must always have, which is exceedingly adverse to the general influence of the Church -- it produces the impression that Christian principle is not so strong, but that it can easily yield to convenience. Your doctrine is that the Sabbath is to be kept holy; and if any body were to teach a contrary doctrine, you would, perhaps, be shocked at it; nevertheless, if you have any worldly object to accomplish, you can reach home on the Sabbath, or you can leave home on the Sabbath, as if there were no divine prohibition in your way. "What sort of a religion," asks scrutinizing and caviling world, "is that which obeys the divine commands only when it is convenient? What sort of a conscience is that which accepts as an apology for breaking the fourth commandment, the prospect of some worldly advantage? Is it not safe to neglect a religion which sits so easily upon its professors as this?" True, there is nothing in this reasoning but falsehood and absurdity; but who would wish to give occasion for it? -- who would willingly be responsible for the consequences of it?

Published in The British and Foreign Evangelical Review, volume 116 (1881). Martin was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, in the rural charge of Panbride from 1844, and at Free Greyfriars in Edinburgh from 1858 until poor health brought on an early retirement in 1865. He was an associate of James Begg as a chief contributor to The Watchword, and in the resistance to proposals of union with the United Presbyterian Synod, which had departed from the historic Scottish Presbyterian doctrines of particular atonement and a national acknowledgment of religion. In 1877 he published two incisive pamphlets unfavorably appraising the views of the younger Marcus Dods on inspiration and biblical criticism. Among his larger books was The Atonement (1870), in which Martin reviews an assortment of rival theories of the atonement by his English contemporaries; in contrast to their depiction of Jesus' death as that of a victim's passive endurance, Martin writes of the crucifixion as an active death in which Christ with sovereign volition offers himself a sacrifice to God. Another category of Martin's literary output is his eloquent theological interpretations of Bible characters, and of Christ's Gethsemane experience, as in The Shadow of Calvary (1875). The subject of meditation in Christ's Presence in the Gospel History (1865) is the relationship between the divinely inspired biography of Christ and the risen Savior's abiding presence with his people, and the certain knowledge and true experience which result from that conjunction of infallible word and living presence.

Genuine admiration of the cross of Christ - imbuing a man with the evangelical spirituality which is the want of the age, and which alone has been found powerful enough to alienate us from the world at every point - makes him, there can be no reason to doubt, what the psalmist calls himself, "a stranger on the earth" (Ps. 119:19). Living by that faith which does not, and from the nature of things cannot, in this life "receive the promises, but sees them afar off, and is persuaded of them and embraces them," and realizes the splendidly dominating power of them, the man wakens up to the clear consciousness, and sees no reason for withholding the confession: "I am a stranger and a pilgrim in the earth" (Heb. 11:13); "a stranger and a sojourner as all my fathers were" (Ps. 39:12).

It is of some importance to vindicate this aspect of the Christian life from those objections which intelligent and averagely healthy-minded men of the world are not unnaturally apt to raise against it, as abnormal, melancholy, ascetic, adverse to the cultivation of friendship, and to such interest in the affairs of our own age as that religion must be false which would forbid.

There can be no doubt that the protestation, "I am a stranger on the earth," or "I am a stranger and a sojourner as all my fathers were," has a certain air of melancholy about it, a quiet tone of loneliness. The very reference to the "fathers" gives it an air of the antique or the archaic. It has a little in it, one would say, of the ring of a voice grown old before its time. It is the utterance of a man longing for sympathy and finding little; a man occupied with interests and prospects and desires which obtain no favor in the eyes of those around him. He descends into himself, and discovers there matters of trial and sorrow, which the world in its levity is ignorant of; and he looks forth into futurity, and there he apprehends materials of anxiety and hope to which the world is content to close its eyes. He looks upward to the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, and as one who has been awakened to the knowledge of his responsibility to the King, he realizes that he has business in the court of heaven that the world knoweth not of. And looking round upon the very world itself, and appreciating its condition of wretchedness and danger as itself seeth it not, his feelings towards that world are unintelligible and unacceptable to it. Whether he look within or around, whether he look forward or upward, he is sensible of emotions in which the thoughtless and ungodly world cannot sympathize; and quietly and with something no doubt of mournfulness in his heart, realizing that he is separated in spirit from the vast mass of his fellow-men, he gives expression to the fact in the somewhat pathetic protestation: "Well, well, I am a stranger now, and a sojourner as all my fathers were."

It is not that he regrets it. This is not the language of querulousness or of discontent. The fact of his separation and estrangement from the world is not unwelcome to him. It is his deliberate choice that it should be so. Or rather it is the inevitable result of a choice that he has deliberately made already, and which he is not repenting of, but repeating. Be the issue what it may, this at least is certain, "I am a stranger on the earth." I have come forth and am separate: and "I am a stranger on the earth." My chiefest desires and my chiefest distresses alike tell me that I have lost the sympathy of the world. My deepest sorrows arise from sin; from finding that I am myself so unlike to God; from so frequently displeasing God; from having so little heart to seek or to enjoy fellowship with God; from having so little ability to worship and love and serve God; from beholding so little of the light of his countenance, and seeing so seldom his glorious goings in the sanctuary. My deepest desires are for glorious views of the Son of Man, whom the Holy One of Israel hath made strong for himself and for me - strong for the magnifying and manifesting of the glory of God, and for the justifying and renewing of me, a sinner. My peace and joy now are when Messiah, in his infinitely precious righteousness, rises to my view as a shield and hiding-place; my refuge and my deliverer; when in spiritual faith I see the Father reconciling me unto himself, searching all my heart and meeting all my case; telling me that he can be righteous in freely loving me, a lost, rebellious, polluted sinner; and that I can be safe and blessed in fully trusting him, the Just and Holy One. My heart is then opened in its depths, and the light of grace and glory passes through it. And though that light reveals my heart's wickedness, it testifies also its free salvation in the love and righteousness of God my Savior; though it discloses deep springs of evil and depravity, thus humbling me more and more, it yet gives me a relief from the anguish which the shutting in of that depravity upon the soul to fester there, never fails to create. But this is a light which the world knoweth not of: the things which it discloses both in me and in my God; in me, the sinner, unrighteous and depraved; in God, the Just and Holy One of Israel; are things which the world seeth not, and will by no means believe though a man declare it unto them: the distressing exhibitions of sin and bondage and death in me, which the searching light of the Lord affords; and the disclosures of righteousness, liberty, and life in Christ, my living head and treasure, which the same light reveals; of these things the world is ignorant, - they are "foolishness unto them, neither can they know them, for they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14).

But the world's joys and distresses are as much foolishness to me. To mourn, as they mourn, the loss of some perishing portion; to joy, as they joy, in the obtaining of some fleeting idol; I now regard as foolishness indeed. I am crucified to the world, and the world to me. Our judgment and our desire are at variance; and that on no secondary or subordinate themes of interest. On the vital and primary objects of desire, or matters of distinguishing and fundamental interest, we are at variance. The shadow with them is the substance with me; and the shadow with me is the substance with them. They behold me pursuing something which they do not see at all; and little wonder (I excuse them) though that seems to them absurd enough: while I see them following what I know to be a phantom and a dream. Little wonder, then, if a deep and very practical alienation has arisen between us, a separation realized and ratified on both sides. We are fatally and forever strangers; "I am a stranger on the earth."

Let any man read the Psalms of David deliberately, let him look upon them as the honest expression of the writer's actual state of feeling: apart from the credit which he has been taught from his youth to assign to the Scriptures as inspired by the Holy Ghost, so as to form, simply and literally, the Word of God; let him simply contemplate with something like deliberation the state of heart, the character, the principle of conduct, the secret experiences which find vent in these wondrous compositions: and whether he has sympathy with the writer or not, he must come to the conclusion, "Assuredly this man was a stranger on the earth." The very revolt which the worldly mind feels from the sanctity and searching holiness of these spiritual songs is an involuntary confession that the writer of them must have been "a stranger on the earth," and the very reason why the ungodly man revolts and recoils from them, and never by any chance turns voluntarily to their pages with desire to meditate upon them, and be imbued with their spirit, is because, on the one hand, he is not prepared to be "a stranger on the earth," and, on the other hand, cannot but shrewdly know that the actual molding of his heart and character by these Psalms - the admission of their sentiments into any place of vital love in his heart, and of their principles to any place of influential government over his character and conduct in life, would inevitably make him what, from his love and friendship to the world, he is not prepared to be - "a stranger on the earth."

But what the world recoils from, the Christian heart desires. Nor will the believer claim for his personal piety any sincerity and progress, except in so far as his heart has been molded into conformity with the Word of God and the experience of God's people as there recorded. Though it be in every case by a gracious and omnipotent operation of the Divine Spirit that the heart is renewed into the saving faith of Jesus Christ, and brought under the influence of the fear and love of God, the change thus produced is not of such a nature that no account and no explanation can be given of it. Though accomplished by a secret and sovereign energy, it is accommodated to a most express and definite rule. It is achieved by the Spirit, but it is accommodated to the Word. And though the baptism of the Spirit and of fire, under which the heart is melted into self-abasement and kindled into the growing appreciation of the beauty of holiness be beyond our finite comprehension, yet the mold into which the heart thus melted is, so to speak, poured - the impress which it now assumes - is brought most tangibly and fully within the sphere of notice; for it is formed and framed into harmony with that potent Word of God, which he has been pleased to place into our hands, and condescend to entreat us to search: and if a heart, professedly changed by the Spirit of God, whose working we cannot trace, be not in harmony with the Word whose principles we can and may trace, the change professed has not really been undergone.

It follows that if we are true Christians and growing Christians, we will enter with true and growing sympathy into the protestation which the Word of God makes in the name of every Christian of being a stranger and a sojourner on the earth. In proportion as the depth and decision of our personal piety are enhanced, will this sentiment gain ground. As the Word of God dwells in us more richly, as we increase in the study and knowledge of the believing heart, and increase in sympathy with it, in its joys and sorrows, its responsibilities and privileges, its burdens and reliefs, its blessings and hopes, as these are opened up to us in the Scriptures; we will feel more and more alienated from a sinful and unsatisfying, and really very shallow world, and more and more satisfied with our position as "strangers on the earth." We will pronounce no censorious and indiscriminate condemnation on those from whom in spirit the grace of God has separated us. We will even watch against giving them unnecessary offence. We will remember, from our own experience, that true spiritual Christianity is sufficiently obnoxious to the dislike of the carnal mind to render it other than highly criminal in the Christian to present it to the unconverted in any additional and unnecessary offensiveness, or shorn of those features of acceptableness of which, even with all its sin-repelling integrity and purity, it is very far from being destitute. And whatever the world is really right in counting excellent and lovable, we will feel bound to show that living Christianity, instead of repudiating, rather sanctions and embraces, and is indeed alone capable of ripening into full maturity. But still we will never fail to see, if living in habits of reverential and lively fellowship with God, that the whole world of unconverted men is one wide waste of utter ungodliness, to which it is no sad doom but a saving grace to be a "a stranger." The unconverted world seeketh not the glory of God; it acteth not on the principle of fearing and pleasing God; its affairs are conducted with no reference to the will of God; in that world our Father's word, and will, and presence, and claims are habitually, coolly, continually set aside. How then can we ever be other than strangers on the earth?

The secret of maintaining this trying position towards the world in all honor and truth of spirit, to the glory of God, to the promotion of our own spiritual interests, and comfort, and to the benefit even of the world itself - the secret of being truly, and comfortably, and usefully "strangers in the earth" - lies in our being no strangers to God. It is well to give diligent heed to this. It is well to give heed to the process and principle whereby the believer is really enabled to take up and sustain this particular relation to the world. To the worldly man himself it appears exceedingly unnatural and incomprehensible how any human being can have his heart so removed from all that is usually accounted interesting and desirable here below, as to be passing through the world in the real character of a stranger and pilgrim. But if he would attend to the principle on which the Christian acts - if he would but deliberately judge of the process whereby the Christian has become, and still continues to be, a "stranger on the earth," he might come to admit, if he be at all ingenuous, that there is nothing unnatural, nothing certainly irrational, and nothing in the nature of things inaccessible or unattainable, in a man even of an active disposition and a social, and sympathizing, and affectionate heart, aspiring to be as the man after God's own heart was, a "stranger in the earth."

Let us glance at the principle and process as they were seen operating in Abraham, the father of the faithful. A more decided instance of the believer's relation towards the world, in this aspect of it, cannot be found than in Abraham. The very platform and tenor of his outward life were constructed so as visibly to indicate his spiritual separation form the world. He was not more truly the "father of the faithful" than he was obviously the Pattern of Pilgrims - the very model of a stranger on the earth. "By faith Abram, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." And associating with their father all the ancients like-minded with him, the apostle adds, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth."

Now, what could have prevailed with our father Abraham to assume the pilgrim's staff and the stranger's fare and garb? He had a land that he called his own. He had a kindred. He had a father's house. Doubtless he looked for dying in his nest, his destiny little shaken save by those usual events that gradually change if they do not mar the face of all things in all the homes of earth. Why should Abraham not live, as he has hitherto done, at home among the friends of his youth, the associates of his more active days? What could possibly induce him at one decisive stroke - by one fell swoop - to tear himself away from all that he has counted desirable or dear, and be henceforth a "stranger on the earth?"

"The God of glory," says Stephen, "the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, and said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee: and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee." What could make him a stranger on the earth? "The God of glory appeared unto him." That would do it. From that moment he was alienated from the world.

Formerly he had been at home in the world and a stranger to God. Now he is at home with God and a stranger on the earth. Formerly the world had "appeared" to him - and God was not in all his thoughts. Now "the God of glory" has appeared unto him, and the world disappears and fades from view. The "appearance" of God he beholds as real and glorious. The "appearance" which the world put on, while it beguiled and occupied all his heart, he now discovers to have been false and delusive. He is in circumstances now to choose. The world has appeared unto him with its ease and gifts, its indolent sufficiency lulling his highest faculties asleep, or with its trials and hardships fretting his patience and crossing his aims. And in the counter-revelations of the world's offer and his Maker's glory - with which shall he now consent to be at home? to which shall he now resolve to be a stranger? Ah! but he is not left to weigh his scruples and balance probabilities. He not only sees the glory of God, but he also hears his call; and it is indeed in his call, in the revelation of his character as given in his call - that Abram really sees the glory of God. The word of absolute, supreme authority commands obedience. The word of infinite love commends itself to his acceptance. "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house." Never was Abram so dealt with before. It is the voice of the King. It is glory of sovereign majesty. And its effect is immediate and irresistible. Is Abraham dwelling indolently in the world's good - the spell of its contentment withering his energy of purpose? The voice awakens him - he starts to his feet. Is he eagerly running his own errand in the world - the strain of covetousness tasking all his effort? The voice arrests him: he stands still to listen. And clear and commanding, as of one having authority, having infinite sovereign right and power, that voice penetrates a secret ear in his heart, and quickens and kindles there a feeling altogether now - the sharp resistless sense of responsibility - responsibility to One with whom Abram now discovers for the first time that he really has to do. Ah! it is a voice that will brook no disobedience, no gainsaying, no delay. It is the voice of the King - the King Eternal and Invisible. It is the voice of the King at last: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from they father's house." No more is Abram's lot in his own hand. "Get thee out into a land that I will show thee." 'Tis the voice of the Sovereign Disposer. Abram's all is in the hand of "the God of glory," and he knows it.

But it is the voice of sovereign mercy also. "I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee." I will bless thee: I who have the same authoritative right and power to bless that I have to command and to dispose. I will bless thee - I whose blessing maketh rich and addeth no sorrow with it - whose blessing is effectual, all-reaching, all-sufficient, eternal: I will bless thee." Get thee out, therefore, unto where my blessing shall forever follow.

Thus did the God of glory appear unto our father Abram; in sovereign majesty, demanding his unreserved unconditional allegiance; in sovereign mercy, conferring an unlimited and unconditional blessing. And Abram beholds the glory of God: in the new keen sense of adoring loyalty Abraham welcomes and obeys his King: in the new sweet sense of filial confidence and final and eternal security, Abraham welcomes and puts trust in his reconciled Father which is in heaven.

From that moment he is a stranger on the earth. He has believed God, and parted with the world. He has believed God, and it is imputed to him for righteousness, and the Scripture is fulfilled which saith, "He was called the friend of God." But the friend of God is a stranger on the earth, "By faith therefore he goes out, not knowing whether he goes. By faith he sojourns in the land of promise, as in a strange country."

In the usual administration of the grace of his kingdom, the King of Zion is not wont to call for a local transference of our persons from one land to another, or away from the society of our relatives into seclusion or to the companionship of those unknown to us. But as to the spirit of our minds, as to the principles which shall govern our hearts and habits, as to the change of purpose and procedure which the sinner undergoes when he returns unto the Lord, and the Lord hath mercy upon him and doth abundantly pardon, there is a transference, a translation, an exchange from one system of feelings and principles, and desires and hopes and efforts to another, as complete, as sweeping, as decisive, as thoroughly producing a revolution upon his nature and character, as the call to Abraham to get him out from his country, and his kindred, and his father's house. Is it not as a pre-eminent example and model in this respect that Abraham is uniformly set forth to us as "the father of the faithful"? - that we are called upon to walk "in the steps of our father Abraham"? - and that "they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham"? (Gal. 3:9) - and that "if we are Christ's, then are we Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise"? (Gal. 3:29)

To us, therefore, as to him, if indeed we be of the seed of Abraham, God's friend, the God of Glory hath appeared; to us the word of God hath come. We have seen the glory, and heard the call, of God. And his glory hath appeared to us pre-eminently in the power and privileges of the call. It is indeed in our seeing glory in the call, a glory which the carnal mind never sees, that we realize the call as effectual, or rather that the call realizes itself as effectual upon us. The glory of the Sovereign Lord we see in his assertion of his claims over us, his right to command us at his pleasure, his right to dispose of us at his will. "Get thee up, O slumberer, and flee from the wrath to come. Away to the refuge set before thee! Repent, arise, and flee for thy life." The glory also of a Sovereign Father we see in his most merciful and most majestic offer and determination in Christ to bless us - to bless us freely, to justify us fully and gratuitously, to reconcile and adopt us in his own Son's righteousness and titles, freely, finally, and forevermore. No longer do we cling to our olden views of God - our dim and doubtful, hazy and suspicious, and half-slumbering views of the glory of God. No more do we dally - dreamily tampering - with the call of God. His majestic and unreserved command, Get thee up and away from the lake of fire - away from thy wicked companions - away from thy worldly idols that are thy gods, thy all: this unconditional command deals mightily with all that is within thee. And his merciful and unconditional determination, "I will bless thee" - bless thee with a free and full forgiveness, if, being guilty, thou needest that - bless thee with an omnipotent regeneration of thy soul, if being depraved and under Satan's bondage thou needest that; this sovereign, immediate, unconditional, free and all-sufficient grace deals not only mightily, but deals bountifully with thee. The Eternal King, in short, hath come. He demands thy allegiance: "Come forth from among them and be thou separate." But he charges himself with thy lot and thy blessedness for ever: "I will bless thee, and be a Father unto thee." And believing his testimony and acquiescing in his proposal - seeing his glory and hearing his call - by faith you arise obedient to your Lord, justified by faith, and having peace with God; your faith working by love and overcoming the world: you arise, for this is no more your rest: the Lord is your friend; he is your strength and your song; he also is become our salvation. Your treasure, your citizenship, your home is in heaven. And reconciled to God, and obedient to him, and glad to be so, you are a "stranger on the earth."

It cannot, I trust, be warrantably inferred from anything that has now been said, that we could mean to represent the believer as a miserable recluse or a moping solitaire - as uncompanionable - not formed for or aiming at the duties and enjoyments of friendship. Any such inference would be alike unjust and untrue, alike false and calumnious. The man who is scripturally and spiritually "a stranger on the earth" has assumed this relation and disposition towards the world, as we have seen, by becoming a friend of God; and that he should, and should therefore, be indifferent to the sacred claims and the frank and joyous privilege of friendship, is altogether incredible. It is frequently the estimate entertained by the world no doubt concerning the living Christian, that he is of a sullen and morose disposition, looking coldly on the innocent joys of life, and refusing all genial and gladsome association with his fellows. But it is one of many misapprehensions and misrepresentations which the Christian must be content that his character in the eyes of the world should suffer - one of those many proofs that he cannot expect to be sympathized with or even understood by the world - that he is, in short, a stranger to the earth. There are those, however, who will deal out to him another measure, and do him justice. They will understand from their own experience how the case really stands.

For it is a grievous misunderstanding. The believer in reality is the only man who has thoroughly fathomed the nature and claims of true and incorruptible friendship. In his friendship with God he has had the glorious opportunity of learning them. And the lessons, which on that high field he learns, he will be prepared and desirous to bring into exercise in those lower spheres of friendship which he may be privileged to occupy among his fellowmen. Nor will he want opportunity for doing so. In this sense he is indeed no more a stranger and a foreigner, but a fellow-citizen with the saints and of the household of God, admitted to a brotherhood of the widest extent and of the most intimate kind. Can it be forgotten that the David who gave utterance to the sentiment we have so often quoted, "I am a stranger on the earth," was the friend of Jonathan, and that it was precisely when realizing most intensely that he was a stranger on the earth, hunted even as a partridge on its mountains, that he enjoyed most intensely the sweetness and privilege of that most passionate and honorable attachment?

Friendship, indeed, recruits its ranks from the kingdom of grace. The Christian, though separated from the world, is not isolated on a platform by himself, on which he can find none to share or sympathize with him. Unforgiven sin may constitute such a platform - yea, a prison - for the soul. But the fellowship of God is a large and wealthy place, in which all the faithful dwell together in unity. "Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name; the righteous shall compass me about, when thou hast dealt bountifully with me" (Ps. 142:7).

Indeed, no man knows the calm, quiet, and confiding joy of true friendship, but he who is a friend of God and a stranger on the earth. For, when once he finds his deepest anxieties settled, and his deepest longings satisfied, in God, so that he needs no more to depend or draw upon created friends for his chief good; he returns now to find in them what it really is in them to yield - not a primary and supreme, but a secondary and subordinate enjoyment. That he does find them capable of yielding. He finds them capable now of yielding what he now seeks - an accession, namely, a supplement, to a happiness already in the main secure. He found them incapable of yielding what he formerly sought, when he vainly assayed to make them, or any created good, his "all in all," his satisfying portion. Now, therefore, for the first time, he has in the fellowships and friendships of brethren a quietness of enjoyment, a real and full meeting of his expectations, which he never had before. And being now, even if alone in the world and friendless, not friendless and alone, because the Father is with him, he finds, if surrounded by friends, enjoyment in them for the Father's sake.

You are not at liberty merely, it is your imperative duty, to cultivate Christian friendship. Concerning each of his friends alternately, Jesus says to all, "He that receiveth you, receiveth me."

One of the first effects, indeed, of living Christianity is seen in those of its disciples who once were, naturally, morose and isolated. Of such, the world will witness with astonishment, and the Church with delight, the expansion which their affections undergo, the enlarged sympathies and genial sensibilities which they display, when grace has effectually loved on to is own delighted enthronement ("Grace reigns"). And why should not Christian men, and women too (women perhaps we should say, especially), be the very patterns of all that is lovely, and honorable, and frank, and open, and heartfelt, and mutually trustful, and helpful in their friendships with one another? Yea, in point of fact, it is really so. None so joyous and genial as they: and so much the more, as they feel that they are strangers on the earth: and so much the more, as they see the day approaching. Conscious thereby the more truly that all their real treasure is safe; with their relation to the living God settled on his own infinitely holy, infinitely gracious terms, on his own infinitely glorious, and absolutely and eternally sure foundations; with their natures placed under the renewing and disciplinary influence of the Spirit and word and Providence of an Almighty Father; and the continuance and ultimate perfection of that process of renewal secured and guaranteed by an everlasting covenant ordered in all things, and sure: who can afford in an hour of recreation - when soul and body and spirit, after faithful duty, need to be relaxed - who can afford, as they can, to unbend and enjoy a brother's society and fellowship - ay, and with a zest, a cordiality, a quiet, calm, and deep pleasureableness, of which the worldling can form no conception , and compared with which the world's noisy and most excited mirth is unnatural and hollow. "Rejoice in the Lord, and be glad, ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart."

Equally groundless is another objection that has often been brought against a style of piety so decided as to make a man a stranger on the earth, and to beget the evangelical spirituality of character which we have been describing. It is said that he will be thereby unfitted for discharging his duties in the world.

It were useless to enter seriously on the refutation of this objection. It may be sufficient to reply that it cannot possibly be so, inasmuch as it is precisely duty, and not desire, which dictates the entire intercourse which such an one maintains with the world. That the man whose whole desire is set upon the world should thereby be greatly disqualified for his duty, is natural enough. But that the man, who, by his supreme desire being turned away from earthly things, is thereby left free and unprejudiced to move among them at the dictates, not of inordinate desire, but simple duty - that he should be unfitted, and even thereby unfitted, for his duties in the world, is inconceivable. It is really he, and he only, with whom duty is always constraining, and in whom responsibility is really awake.

Be not afraid, O believing reader, to be a stranger in the earth. Be assured your spiritual safety, comfort, and usefulness are all bound up with your really being so. "Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity to God? whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world is an enemy to God." Whosoever is at home in the earth is a stranger to God. But the more you are alienated in spirit from a passing, shallow, heartless, ungodly world, the more will you feel constrained to apply in livelier faith and prayer to your heavenly Father for friendship and fellowship with Him.

It was thus that the Psalmist pleaded his separation from the world as a reason for his obtaining clearer insight into the gracious purposes and holy will of God: "Open mine eyes that I may behold the wonders that are in thy law. I am a stranger in the earth, hide not thy commandments from me (Ps. 119:12). The more, also, will you love the worship, the house, the cause and kingdom of Christ upon the earth; and the more liberally, joyfully, and prayerfully will you give for the support and propagation of his gospel. For thus again spake this same stranger on the earth, Israel's sweet psalmist and king: "For who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee. For we are strangers before thee and sojourners, as were all our fathers; our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding? (I Chron. 29:14-15).

Nor will this be wanting to you in the hour of sorrow and anxiety, to plead with God as a reason for his hearing and answering your cry, when, as a stranger in the earth for his sake, you cast yourself upon his help and faithfulness: "Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears; for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were." The appeal is one of inexpressible power with God. His heart warms towards the stranger. He hath most solemnly assured us that he is the stranger's shield. He hath forbidden us, under pain of his especial displeasure, to vex or oppress the stranger. He hath in the most simple and affecting language commanded us to be kind unto the stranger. He hath allured us to the duty of entertaining strangers by beautifully reminding us that some have thereby entertained angels unawares. His dear Son - in whose name we pray, and in whose sympathy we may continually rejoice and enrich ourselves - was preeminently a stranger on the earth, and knoweth more than any man the heart of a stranger. In his members, and in his cause, he is a stranger still: and so highly does he estimate the entertaining of the stranger that, on the great day of accounts, one of his tenderest and most affecting commendations of his people's faithfulness will be in these terms, "I was a stranger, and ye took me in."

With such affections on the part of the Most High as thus indicated towards the stranger, let me only be able honestly to plead at his throne, that "I am a stranger on the earth," and how can I doubt that in my every need and in my darkest hour he will hear my cry, and not be silent at my tears? Rather, may I not assure myself, when poor and needy, when pursued by evil and by fear, when perplexed with guilt and with Satan, when ready to sink under trial and temptation, I flee to his door, he will give me invariable ground to bear this testimony to his grace and faithfulness: "I was a stranger, and the Lord took me in"?

From Proceedings of the Fourth Calvinistic Congress (Edinburgh 1938).

The family as an institution belongs to the natural order. Its welfare tells on that of the community, and of the State, and of the world. So also what affects it to its hurt has an injurious influence on all the constituencies that reap the benefit of its well-being. There is a bond of nature that binds together husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister. And the bond of kinship alike by way of blood and by way of affinity helps to bind into one the larger units of the local community, the State, and the race. Thus nature itself teaches us to aim at the furthering of the well-being of our flesh and blood who are our kith and kin. What belongs to the order of nature is taken up into the sphere of grace and all that is good in it is guarded and confirmed and intensified. The godly discipline of the Church is meant to defend the home.

When we face the question of how the specific Reformed Faith has told on the ethical good of the family we do not mean to make exclusive or monopoly claims on behalf of either the Faith in general, or the purest exhibition of the Faith in particular, as if in no sense and to no extent the good of the Family were attained outside the range of Christian, or the highest, influences. There is such a thing as common grace which keeps the world from being all that the unchecked wickedness of mankind would make it. Nature itself bids us seek the good of our home. Every Christian society acknowledges this. And however seriously some exhibitions of the Christian Faith may diverge from the final norm of apostolic truth, yet, in so far as the element of Christianity is at work in appropriate practice, it tells in the direction of ennobling and purifying the life of the households of the Church. That form, however, of the Christian Faith which does fullest justice to the claims of God and His Christ is fitted to do the greatest service in giving to the home the place that rightfully belongs to it.

In maintaining the position that the purer the faith and the life of the Church is, the more salutary is the influence that it has on the home, we thus do not set aside nor ignore the measure of justice done to domestic claims in other systems. For it would be unnatural for any parent not to seek what he looked upon as the good of his family. Common consent is at one on this matter. But when we take note of the whole range of opinion and sentiment that has to be taken into account we may easily see how the thing that is deemed to be good may differ greatly in the different circles of human society. This divergence of outlook and estimate is due to the havoc that the entrance of sin has wrought on the good order of primitive and unfallen human nature. Those who hold to an evolutionary or naturalistic origin of man and of society are shut out from such an explanation of how the standard of acknowledged good is such a varied one among men. But Christianity as it accepts the witness of Divine revelation to the fact of the Fall and its results, has an explanation ready to its hand of how there is such a marked difference of judgment between man and man, and between land and land. Those who have learned to say, "All we like sheep have gone astray," see how wide a field the straying flock of mankind may cover as they part company in their devious wanderings.

Common Christianity recognizes the obligation that lies upon the Church to have regard to the will of the Lord as He has made it known. So the type of ethics that is truly Christian confesses the Lordship of the Savior and the obligation that is thus laid upon us to honor his authority in doing His will. All that is valid and truly moral in Ethics as taught in the schools of philosophy is taken up and sublimated in the realm of Christian duty; and the bonds laid upon men by the good order of the original constitution of the race, and of the world, are laid afresh, as it were, on these who are the willing bond-servants of their Redeemer as their Lord. The relations in which men thus stand to one another by reason of their family ties are stamped with the authoritative brand which tells that by coming to be new men in Christ the household of faith have not ceased to be men. All that is incumbent upon them as men in their divers relations to each other is part of the obedience that their Lord who has redeemed them calls upon them to yield to Him as His own right. In the claims that are thus made, those of family life are included, and the household as a unit is held to belong to the Lord who as Creator and King originally gave to it its constitution.

Now the view that is held by the typical and representative thinking in the Reformed Churches as to the Scripture doctrine of what makes up the Church of God is one that lays special stress on the Church in its spiritual reality as it is known to God. The Church in its real being is constituted of those who have been chosen to eternal life, redeemed by the ransom price paid in the Blood of the sacrificial Lamb of God and called by grace to His fellowship. At the same time as this entity in its spiritual being and glory is recognized to be the true Church of God, our Reforming fathers confessed the truth of Scripture as to the visible form that the Church assumes in its embodiment on earth. Thus looked at, it is seen to include all men everywhere who profess the truth of God, who with their children make up its constituents. This definition of the visible Church as inclusive of the children of believers is a feature of historical Reformed teaching on this subject; and to it is due the recognition of the household as an integral unit in the Christian commonwealth. The recognition of the visible Church, in the sense in which the Reformers held it, raises one of the questions on which post-Reformation attempts to improve on their teaching parted company with their thought by taking up narrower ground. Those attempts achieved the disintegration of the Puritanism of England in the seventeenth century.

The idea of the Church which was entertained by the Independent brethren of the age of the Commonwealth in England was one which recognized the existence of a visible Catholic Church. But in the Savoy definition they omitted from it any recognition of the children or households of Believers as though these had no place in it. This we may see when we compare Chapter XXVI of the Savoy Confession in its second paragraph with the corresponding paragraph of Chapter XXV of the Westminster Confession. These paragraphs deal with the Church as visible. The former reads: "The whole body of men throughout the world professing the faith of the Gospel, and obedient unto God by Christ according unto it, not destroying their own profession by any errors everting the foundation, or unholiness of conversation, are and may be called the visible catholic Church of Christ, although as such it is not entrusted with the administration of any ordinances, or hath any officers to rule or govern in or over the whole body." The Westminster statement reads: "The visible Church which is also Catholic or Universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before, under the law) consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children; and is the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation."

The Independents look upon the Church as being at bottom a local autonomous unit which is made up of those that have entered into the Church Covenant and have been accepted and acknowledged by the brotherhood into whose covenant and fellowship they have entered. As a larger unit they regarded it as the aggregate of those who may be at least the potential members of such primitive cells of Church fellowship; and this might be called the visible catholic Church. In keeping with this omission of any mention of the household as a unit in the local ecclesia there followed, with a measure of logical consistency, the action that was taken by one wing of the Independent movement. It was indeed no strange phenomenon that Independents, who, while in other respects they held the common faith of the Reformed Churches, yet stressed the ideal or spiritual individualism which underlay the pure communion which they as Independents sought to secure, should fail to find a place for the household of the believer along with himself in the visible Kingdom of God. And so it came to pass that as the radical wing of Independency they adopted the principles of the Baptists and introduced into the Anabaptist movement the Calvinistic strain of teaching in regard to the doctrines of grace which was by no means a salient feature of the earlier manifestations of a Baptist tendency in the Churches of Britain. They failed to see that with their definition of the local ecclesia it could have any place in its bosom for more than those who were accepted as candidates for Baptism and were on their own profession and immersion recognized as having the standing of members in the Church to which they were joined.

This wing of the Independent movement cut out any definite acknowledgment of the household as a unit in the Church of God. By so doing they did not mean to set aside Apostolic teaching in regard to the natural unit of the household or the obligations that the Epistles lay on parents and children alike. Yet their attitude to the household as such was so far one that was materially different from that which expressed the older Reformed view. It looked on the children and household of a Church member as being outside the range of the discipline and oversight that are proper to the members of the Churches. Such a divergence of view had its necessary outcome in the practical working of their Church system in as far as it differed from the standard type as seen in the historical Reformed Churches whose polity they had given up.

The less radical wing of the Independents, by what one might call a less strict reading of the significance of their departure from the Reformed conception of the constitutive elements of the visible Church, or, as one might express it from the standpoint of those who accept that conception, by a happy inconsistency, still held on to the common practice of Christendom as a whole, which recognized the household of the believer as holy in an outward federal sense and as such entitled to be acknowledged as set apart for God and Christ. They continued the custom of recognizing the unity of the household so far as baptized membership of the Church is concerned. And among the early Independents who took this line there was such a conscience developed in regard to the infants of the Church members as kept pace pretty much with the practice of the Reformed Churches. These Reformed Churches struck no uncertain note in their acknowledgment of the children of believers.

The standing of membership in the visible Church that was thus acknowledged to belong to the children of Christian homes might be treated in two distinct ways in the service of their baptism which was their public recognition as members. One of these ways is taken in the baptismal service of the Anglican Church, a church which in the teaching of its Articles of Religion belongs to the fellowship of the Reformed Churches. This goes on the assumption that the sponsors or sureties for the child pledge in its behalf faith in Christ and obedience to His will. The service says: "The infant must also promise by you his sureties (until he come of age to take it upon himself) that he will renounce the devil and all his works and constantly believe God's holy Word and obediently keep His commandments." In charitable anticipation which, it may well be, goes further than the facts of life warrant, the baptized child is spoken of as regenerate. This service is one that takes for granted that what is professed will be made good and that the child will without fail yield the obedience of faith to the Gospel. On the understanding that this profession is in due course crowned with fulfillment there is a giving of thanks for the regeneration of the infant. It is altogether on the basis of such an assumption that the service is constituted. At the Savoy Conference this was one of the things that Baxter and his fellows who acted for the Puritans sought to have modified. In this endeavor they failed, and since the Act of Uniformity the Church of England has been in the ambiguous situation of seeming in so many words to teach a Baptismal regeneration to which she is not bound by the teaching of her Articles, while those who adhere to the Reformed reading of her formularies have to stand on the defensive against the attacks of the high Sacramentarians, to maintain the validity of their interpretation of the order for Baptism.

The other way of admitting the children of the faithful to a recognized place among the members of the Visible Church is that which the Westminster Directory takes. Here stress is laid upon the fact that the promise given to the father of the faithful that God would be his God and the God of his seed is current still and gives a place to the children of believers among the people of God. It assigns them a place in that holy nation which in respect of calling and privilege God has separated from the world and claims as His own. On them He bestows special advantages and at their hand accordingly He claims that they should yield a return that will respond in love and loyalty to the word of promise and His demands for worship and obedience.

In either of these ways of accounting for the administration of the seal of the Covenant to the children of the Church it is obvious that there is an undertaking given, implied or expressed, that they shall be taught the truth of Law and of Gospel, and that they shall be trained in the ways of the people of God. The fact that in the one case sponsors other than the natural guardians answer on behalf of the child does not free the parents from the burden of responsibility that lies upon them to teach and to train. In the other case the parents are to be expressly exhorted to consider the great mercy of God to themselves and their child; to bring up the child in the knowledge of the grounds of the Christian religion, and in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. They are to be told of the danger of God's wrath to themselves and their child if they are negligent. And the officiating minister is to require their solemn promise for the performance of their duty. In whichever of these ways we deal with the admission of child members, the Church looks upon the Christian home as a school for imparting the knowledge of the Word of God, and for training the rising generation which is the hope of the future, in the faith and obedience of the Gospel of salvation. The acceptance then of the children as members of the Church lays a special load of responsibility on both the Church which admits them to membership to see to their worthy training, and on their parents who have now the charge in their early years of the acknowledged members of the Church of God, to attend to their tuition.

In contrast with the individualism on which such stress was laid in varying degrees in both wings of the Independent Movement, the attitude of the Reformed Churches in treating the household of the professed believer as having a recognized place among the constituent units of the visible Church was one that called upon the Church and its ministry, as well as on the head of the house, to pay special heed to household consecration, worship and oversight. There is a close connection between the Reformed emphasis on the family as a unit in the Church, and the view that our Reformed fathers took of the care with which the Lord's Day as the sacred day of rest ought to be observed. They aimed at teaching the children of the household the habit of waiting regularly on the ordinances of public worship that, having been trained in their youth to do so, they might continue in mature years to practice the assembling of themselves together in the corporate worship of the Church. They aimed at more; they called for private exercises for the household of that worship to which they looked upon the day as wholly set apart. So they gave direction to the household as to its special duty. In this respect the documents of the unbroken Reformed Church of this country, as they set forth its teaching and practice may be taken as authoritative exponents of the view taken by the Reformed Churches as a whole of the household and its place in the Church. To this more comprehensive view of the constituency of the professing Church of God, a view that took men at their uncontradicted profession and devoted the fostering interest and care of the Church to the welfare of the household as a unit, and also of those that are not yet in Christ, Rutherford refers in his letter to his friends at Aberdeen, who set themselves to gather out a Church from the general body of professing Christians. His words on the subject are noteworthy: "We look upon the visible Church, though black and spotted, as the hospital and guest-house of sick, halt, maimed and withered, over which Christ is Lord, Physician and Master: and we would wait upon those that are not yet in Christ, as our Lord waited on us and on you both."

There are but two of the documents of which we have spoken to which we shall refer. The one is the Westminster Directory for the Public Worship of God in 1645; the other is the Scottish Directory for Family Worship of date 1647. The first of these gives guidance for the sanctification of the Lord's Day, and after indicating what is called for in public in that connection, it speaks of what is to be done at home between or after the solemn meetings of the congregation. Here is what it requires: "That what time is vacant . . . be spent in reading, meditation, repetition of sermons; especially by calling their families to an account of what they have heard and catechizing them, etc." Similarly, the Scottish Directory which deals with the Lord's Day says of the head of the household: "And the public worship being finished, after prayer, he should take an account of what they had heard; and thereafter spend the rest of the time which they may spare in catechizing and in spiritual conferences upon the Word of God, etc." This catechizing is also treated as part of the daily routine of home worship in the second of the Directories. In those days there were no Sabbath Schools. With regard to them it is obvious that they are fitted to be a priceless asset for the Church in doing aggressive and compassionate work of teaching and evangelization among the children of those who neither hear nor heed the Word of God. At the same time they should minister confirmation to the parental teaching of children who are taught at home. In this case they second and support the efforts that the parents and guardians put forth to teach their charges the Word of God, and to win their heart to the obedience of faith.

The Reformed Churches by their recognition of the household of the believer as a unit in their fellowship were shut in to what they looked upon as no bondage. Their views on the membership of the Visible Church, as we have seen, found a place in the constituency for the children of those who were saints by profession. These were looked upon as being in virtue of their birth in believing homes entitled to be acknowledged as outwardly sanctified or specially set apart by the Head of the Church to enjoy external privileges in His house, and so laid under a corresponding obligation to take His yoke upon their shoulders. They were regarded as part and parcel of the holy nation of New Testament times; and therefore it was looked upon as a warranted thing that they should have the seal of the covenant and at the least a probationary place in the ranks of the organized Christian Kingdom. Because they were federally holy they were to be recognized as being so in Baptism.

Such a doctrine as this laid the obligation upon the Church to see to the due training of its infant membership. In this connection the task was looked upon as a twofold one. It left room for distinct yet concurrent action on the part of the Church and the Home. There was a duty recognized as lying upon parents to teach and to train their children. They were to look upon them as not only their own children, for whose highest good they were naturally bound to labor and to pray, they were also to regard them, since the Church of the Living God had taken them as her own, as the children of the King's daughter, the daughter of the King of Kings. This being so, it was but right and seemly that the children of such a mother should have an upbringing in keeping with their privileged rank. Their parents then, as their natural guardians, were to bring them up and train them, bearing in mind the need that their children, owned in Baptism as having a place in the Church of God, should be taught and guided and molded by every means within their reach, so that they shall be shut in to Christ as their Savior, and that they may take Him as their own.

The obligation lying upon the Church is the other side of the task that has to be carried out. The parents are not relieved of their natural obligation. They have their children given back to them as their proper guardians in Baptism, and they are to bring them up as the children of the King's daughter. She whose adopted and acknowledged children they are has the task and burden laid upon her of praying, and not only praying but also laboring for them. She is to see to the due training of those that she has accepted as her own. In seeking to carry out the obligation that she thus felt to be laid upon her, the Church of the Reformation in different lands showed great diligence in providing manuals of instruction which took the form of Catechisms. Thus, for example, in the Acts of the Synod of Dort the obligation to teach the young people is recognized. "That the Christian youth from their tender years may be carefully trained in the fundamental truths of true religion and imbued with true piety this threefold method of Catechizing ought to be taken, at home by their parents, at school by their teachers, and in Church life by their pastors, elders and readers or sick-visitors, etc."

Notable among the Reformed Catechisms were Calvin's Geneva Catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Westminster Shorter Catechism. The aim of the Church in the use of these was to teach the truth of God's Word to her rising membership. These handbooks were provided for parents and teachers as well as for their charges. For one of the things that the Reformed Church tried to secure was to have a well-instructed constituency. The Jesuits said that if they had a child for the first seven years of his life they did not fear who should have him afterwards. This was a game at which two could play. And in their palmy days the Reformed Churches were not behindhand in looking after the young of the flock. They aimed at raising up within their borders successors who would range themselves under the banner of the Gospel and who would seek to perpetuate such a goodly order. It was looked upon as part of the ordinary work of the ministry that they should see well to the state of their flocks in respect of godly nurture and instruction. And the outcome of such a program was that - at least in the flourishing times of our Reformed Church in Scotland - in the homes of the people household worship morning and evening, with the acknowledgment of God at every meal, was the recognized practice of the land. Now worship that called for the reading of the Word of God called for and was fitted to produce an educated community which sought out and sought after the Word of God written, and which strove to bring up its children from the dawn of life in the knowledge of that Word and of the Church's Confession and Catechisms.

Such a catechetical method in pedagogy as found favor among our Reforming fathers was one that cut right across the modern practice in this department which throws the reins loose and lets the horse please itself. Go-as-you-please teachers allow the wishes and the whims of their scholars to map out for them their course. It was the fashion of older days that the dog should wag its own tail. The modern inversion that the tail should wag the dog hardly looks a natural or a reasonable kind of thing.

When objection is taken to the catechetic mode of instruction by way of question and answer, a mode which calls for the learning by heart of an answer that has been carefully drawn up to convey a maximum of sound knowledge in a memorable form, it is said that this sort of instruction is too one-sidedly intellectual, that it overloads the memory, that it shoots over the head of the scholar, that it does not reach the end of opening up the truth by reason of the very abstruseness and detachment of its matter and method. Those who take such a line of criticism forget a thing or two that it would be well for them to bear in mind.

For one thing, the use of catechetical manuals supplies the parent and the teacher with material that a competent teacher will put to a wise use. He will open up the real content of the answers that the pupil has committed to memory. The instructor may have himself learned these words in his youth and assimilated them only in part. He may now find out that in the endeavor to teach another the thing opens up to himself better than it ever did before, and he may meet with more success in his work than the teachers, that he himself had, met with in his own case when he was young. Now that he is come to maturity he is better able to grasp the meaning of the words that he learned in his early days. It was good for him to have such words stored up in his memory. It trained and exercised that faculty. And now that he sees their meaning better than he once did, he will seek to bring home to his pupils' understanding what he had himself in his youth failed to grasp.

Then it is a well-known fact that memory is more impressionable and retentive in early years than it is in later life. And while the acquisitive powers of memory are at their best it is possible by exercising them well to strengthen and develop them and furnish the young with what will be a life-time treasure. At the same time the powers of the understanding come to their maturity and strength in later years when the powers of memory have passed their zenith. In the years when memory is at its best the powers of the understanding, though not yet mature, are already at work, so that there should be not only drill in memory work but exposition and explanation to open up the meaning of the lessons taught. One does not need to delay until maturer years to come to an appreciation of truth that is learned by heart.

Then again in so far as the powers of the understanding come later to full functioning, it is well that the millstones of consideration and reflection as they go round should have something to grind. And here comes in a special value that attaches to what has been learned by heart yet has not been quite grasped in younger years. In such a case when the stores of memory give them something to go on with, the millstones do not grind each the other into hard grit. They have choice wheat to work upon. What has been learned at the outset of life is thus fitted to come into its own, and the matured powers of reason and of understanding do not work in vacuo. The adult mind has something provided for it which gives food for thought.

In the light of these things we see that there was wisdom and sound psychology in the method adopted by our fathers. They sought to indoctrinate their children in the knowledge and faith of the Gospel; and, as they did so, they tried to impress upon them the truth that no parrot knowledge of sound words will suffice. It will suffice no more than the parrot repetition of forms of prayer can serve as a substitute for true prayer, for prayer is offered to Him Who is not only its Hearer, but the Searcher of the heart. There is a fault in the method of instruction when it only heaps up in the memory what may be so much dead lumber, or is one-sidedly intellectual. The teacher who seeks to teach indeed will not only store the memory with what is valuable; he will seek to open up the meaning of the truth that he is trying to teach, so as to make it as clear and as simple as possible. And to make it at once memorable and interesting he will use the method of illustration, call in the legitimate resources of feeling and of fancy, and so enlist the sympathies and rouse an interest in what is taught. The method of learning by rote is one that has been justified by its ultimate results. It bred among us generations who were schooled in the knowledge of Christian doctrine, and who had a keen edge on their discernment. They could tell readily when the teaching that they heard went out of the right way, for their understanding of the truth was disciplined.

The emphasis that our Reformers and their loyal successors laid upon the godly upbringing of the young is registered, not only in the watchful discipline of the Church, which guarded purity of life and the sanctity of the home as the nursery of the Church; it came out also in the number of helps that saw the light by way not only of Catechisms, but of Commentaries upon them, and the systematic habit of using them. The survival of the old order is within the memory of men yet alive who saw ministerial catechizing of the households of the flock as part of the regular routine of the life of old school Presbyterian congregations. Indeed, happily, it is not yet a thing altogether of the past. For such diets of catechizing there used to be careful preparation, and when they came they were not shunned but welcomed. Such a devotion to the study of Christian truth could not fail to exercise an influence direct or reflex on the tone of the community. In particular, the homes that were accustomed to the old order of Reformed Scotland, for it is of this country that we speak at present, used to have a fireside Sabbath School, the memory of whose lessons is a bright spot in the record of the years that are gone. When Sabbath Schools were begun it was not meant that they should take the place of home teaching and training. And few would venture to say that the measure in which they have served to oust these and to relieve parents of a sense of duty in regard to the teaching of their households is an index to improved conditions in the life of the Church. The old order produced generations of instructed hearers. And if it might happen that at times there was more knowledge of the letter of Christian truth than there was practical experience and illustration of its power, the blame lay, not with the success of the endeavors to teach, but with the failure of those endeavors. In such instances they did not reach their intended goal. The system did not do everything that it set out to do. But it did much; and its outcome in the life of the Church and of the commonwealth tells of what good came of it. There is like good that is still to be looked for when the blessing of God crowns loyalty to the claims of household godliness. Such godliness shows itself as of old in the instruction of the children, and in striving to bring home to each of them in turn his personal responsibility and his need of a saving knowledge of the Gospel of our salvation, and of Christ as our Savior and Lord.

For the first fruit borne by the application of the Reformed presentation of Christian truth to the domestic institute we may look to the record of those regions and eras when the application was most faithfully made. If, to the eyes of our Scottish Reformed, Geneva was in Calvin's day the most perfect school of Christ that was to be seen anywhere, one has only to turn to the moral and spiritual elevation of the godly homes of Huguenot France, of the confessing Netherlands, of Protestant and Puritan England and New England, and of this Covenanted country to see what a benign and blessed, what an educative and elevating and evangelizing influence this application put forth in the communities that came under its sway. We might take two concrete instances to which we may appeal in illustration, and they are but two out of a countless multitude. Who that has read about the family life of Philip Henry in Puritan England or, as it comes out in Domestic Portraiture of Leigh Richmond, in the hey-day of a reviving Evangel in England over a century ago, can fail to see the beauty of the lives that bore witness to the blessing of God as it crowned the faithful diligence of parents whose resolve was that, as for them and for their house, they would serve the Lord? Let men but see such homes multiplied, with their influence telling on the commonwealth at large, and it would be evident how beneficent the influence was that was wielded by the household godliness which made the home the happiest place on earth. This experiment has been made on a wide scale already. Let it be made on a wider scale still, and the care that is devoted to the godly upbringing of the young will reflect its working and its power in the life of Church and State both. We have said already, and before we conclude we may repeat it, that we do not make any exclusive claim by way of monopoly. We venture merely to indicate what a close and loyal adherence to the Reformed ideal of the visible Church and its concrete application to the home as a unit in that larger fellowship has done. This is an index to its potency. And the diligence that it calls for in teaching the Word of God, and in showing the beauty of a Christian life lived in the unrestrained freedom of home conditions, is an expenditure of energy that will richly repay itself. The sedulous care that our Reforming fathers called for in the oversight of the young shows how their eye with statesman-like prescience was directed to the future. They were not content with the past whose record was closed, nor with the present with its limited measure of success. They looked forward to the days that were yet to be for the full answer to the prayer that the Lord has taught His disciples to offer that the kingdom of God may come. With its coming the face of the world will be changed; and a godless and selfish and unbelieving world needs, if it is to be set right, that it should be turned upside down. The natural institution of the family taken up and blessed in the kingdom of God will be a mighty instrument for achieving this end.

The following is the statement of purpose and principles from the society's constitution. The society established a Christian school at Dornoch about 1975. See John Murray, "Christian Education," in Collected Writings, 1:367-74, and Iain H. Murray's "Life of John Murray," in John Murray, Collected Writings, 3:149. "Faced once with the question, 'How do you account for the spiritual decline in Scotland?' he commenced his answer with the words, 'The surrender of the young by parents to the State. This had not been so in former years.' "

The purpose of the Society is to establish and maintain Christian Schools, both primary and secondary, and to engage in such other educational activities as shall promote and support this project. In defining the purpose it is necessary to set forth the following principles.

1. Day-school education is the responsibility of the parents. This principle is particularly applicable to Christian parents and it is a violation of the responsibility for nurture devolving upon them to commit their children to the tutelage of an organization over which they do not exercise control. Though church-controlled schools may supply and often have supplied the nurture Christian parents should insure for their children, yet day-school education is not the province of the church.

2. The Christian school is one in which all of the instruction is conditioned by and integrated with the world and life view given in the Christian revelation deposited in the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments. As no sphere of neutrality is allowed by the Christian faith, so no department of the day-school curriculum can be neutral in respect of its religious orientation.

3. The Bible as the inerrant Word of God is the supreme norm for all Christian faith and life and therefore for the educational enterprise.

4. Subordinate to the Bible as the Word of God the Society accepts the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms as setting forth the system of truth taught in Holy Scripture and that the educational undertaking must accord with the specifically Reformed position formulated in these documents.

5. The educational goal is to prepare youth for the fulfillment of the calling of God. This goal unifies the educational process and, when consistently applied, insures that the pupils are confronted with the claims of God upon them in every area of life. Since sin has made us incapable of fulfilling the demands of the calling of God, it is the privilege of the Christian School to inculcate the provisions of redemptive, regenerating and sanctifying grace in Christ Jesus and it thus seeks to train young people in that dedication by which every thought is brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. The Society aims to maintain the highest standards of academic competence in the promotion of this goal.

6. As the obligation for day-school education rests upon parents, so the control of the Christian school resides in the hands of Christian parents. Other members of the Christian community, however, may and should unite with them in the promotion and support of the enterprise. Parents and others above the age of eighteen who are in agreement with the purpose and principles stated above are eligible for membership in the Society.

The question of the separated life is a very important one, not only because it is a practical question which must be faced by every thoughtful Christian, but also because of the doctrinal ramifications that it has. Insistence upon the obligation to live what is called "the separated life" is very prevalent in some circles of earnest Christians today. The details of the separation demanded vary greatly; practices which are tolerated by some groups are denounced by others as inconsistent with Christian duty and fellowship, and vice versa. In general, "the separated life," as the term is commonly used, may be understood to be a life which is separated not only from what can be proved by Scripture to be sinful, but also from various other practices which may be indifferent in themselves; and this separation is regarded as binding on the conscience of the Christian, and is sometimes made a term or condition of ecclesiastical or even of Christian fellowship.

This problem is far more important than is at first apparent. It is far more important than the mere question whether Christians ought to participate in or to abstain from certain particular kinds of conduct. Other problems of the greatest importance are involved. If we give a wrong answer to the question, "What is the Bible doctrine of the separated life?" we are certain to fall into serious errors in other doctrines. Using the term "separated life" in the Biblical, not the popular, sense, we may say that the separated life is an ethical implication of the covenant of grace and is related to the doctrine of sanctification as the latter deals with the nature and place of good works in the Christian life. The other doctrines which are involved in the question of the separated life are: (1) Christian liberty in the use of things indifferent; (2) liberty of conscience from the commandments of men; (3) the sufficiency of Scripture as the standard of faith and conduct; (4) the nature and limits of the authority of the Christian church. The purpose of the present paper is to set forth the teaching of Scripture concerning the separated life, and then to show how erroneous teaching about the separated life affects the four doctrines enumerated above.

I. Separation from Sin

Separation from sin is required of the Christian by the covenant of grace. The conditions of the covenant of grace are repentance and faith. The repentance which contemplates continuance in sin is not true repentance but a mere feigned or hypocritical repentance. When a particular course of conduct is demonstrated to be sinful, that is, contrary to the moral law of God, then separation from such conduct is required of the Christian by God himself. The moral law of God binds all of Adam's posterity to personal, entire, exact and perpetual obedience (Westminster Confession of Faith, XIX.i). That God requires separation from sin is the consistent teaching of all Scripture. Rom. 6:1-2 may be cited as an example: "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein?"

That the Christian may continue in sin in order that grace may abound is Antinomianism, which is one of the most harmful of all heresies. We may confidently assert that Scripture requires the separated life, in the sense of separation from sinful conduct, of every Christian -- indeed, of every human being.

II. Separation from Occasions of Temptation to Sin

The Christian is required to separate not merely from sin itself but also from known occasions of temptation to sin. It is not a sin to be tempted; the Lord Jesus Christ was tempted by the devil, yet He was wholly without sin. It is, however, a sin deliberately to place ourselves in the path of temptation to sin. In the Lord's Prayer we use the petition, "Lead us not into temptation." Concerning this the Larger Catechism, no. 195, states: ". . . that we, even after the pardon of our sins, by reason of our corruption, weakness, and want of watchfulness, are not only subject to be tempted, and forward to expose ourselves unto temptations; but also of ourselves unable and unwilling to resist them, to recover out of them, and to improve them . . . ."

Christians are here said to be forward to expose themselves unto temptations, and doubtless this forwardness is itself sinful, inasmuch as it proceeds from our corruption of nature. Christians, therefore, instead of being forward in exposing themselves to temptations to sin, ought to separate themselves from such temptations and those things which are known to be occasions thereto. This is substantially taught in the words of Christ in Matthew 5:29-30: "And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not the whole body be cast into hell. And if thy right hand causeth thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body go into hell."

Of course these words are not to be understood literally; the Lord does not intend us to attempt to avoid sin by actually mutilating our bodies. The real meaning is that the Christian is bound to cut off occasions of temptation to sin. A hand or an eye is not sinful in itself; they are here used metaphorically for occasions of temptation, which may be quite harmless in themselves, but which for various reasons cause the Christian to stumble. The Lord's command is to cut them off, even though they may be harmless in themselves.

It will be noted that the command is conditional: "If thy right eye causeth thee to stumble," etc. Therefore no universal rule can be made in this matter, for what is an overwhelming temptation to one person may be no temptation at all to another person. For a Chinese just converted from heathenism to keep a small brass image of the Buddha in his house, would be to tolerate a serious occasion of temptation to sin. For him the only safe course, even the only right course, is to get rid of the abomination as soon as possible. For a retired missionary living in America to have an image of the Buddha in his house as a curio cannot possibly be an occasion of temptation to him or to anyone else; to dispose of such an object in order to avoid temptation would be absurd. The image itself is "nothing in the world" (I Cor. 8:4); it is simply "a piece of brass" (II Kings 18:4); but to the man just saved from paganism it is a symbol of all the abominations of idolatry and a constant invitation to return to the old ways.

We should always remember that in reality all temptation is so dangerous because of the corruption of man's sinful heart, not because of the inherent nature of any material thing. The truth is elementary, but it is constantly being overlooked or misunderstood, not only by earnest Christians but even by popular religious teachers of the present day. Since the real menace of temptation comes from the corruption of the human heart, not from the material things which surround us or the situations in life with which we are confronted, we see how false the doctrine is which would formulate hard and fast rules about separation from occasions of temptation to sin. Since, in the very nature of the case, that which tempts one man does not affect another, such formulations ought not to be made, and if made, they ought to be rejected by all Christian people who value their freedom of conscience. Beyond question it is a duty to separate from occasions of temptation to sin; but just what constitutes an occasion of temptation to sin, no man can authoritatively say for another so as to bind the other's conscience; much less can any man or church formulate universal regulations binding upon all men in such matters as these.

III. Separation from the World

In addition to the obligation to separate from sin and from occasions of temptation to sin, there is a sense in which Scripture requires of the Christian separation from the world. In the original languages of Scripture, various terms are used which are translated "world" in the English Bible, and these are used with various meanings. In the New Testament the words aioon and kosmos are frequently used, the latter being much more common. The latter term is used in the New Testament with at least two entirely distinct meanings, of which examples may be cited as follows:

1. The World of Men, Regarded as God's Property: -- Matt. 13:38: "And the field is the world . . . ." Rom. 5:12: "Through one man sin entered into the world . . . ." I Cor. 7:31: "Those that use the world, as not using it to the full . . . ."

2. The Sinful World, Regarded as Satan's Kingdom: -- I John 2:15: "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him . . . ." John 14:30: "The prince of this world cometh, and he hath nothing in me . . . ." Eph. 2:2: "According to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air . . . ."

That the Christian is not required to separate from human society or from the world itself is proved by I Cor. 5:9-10, "I wrote unto you in my epistle to have no company with fornicators: not at all meaning with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous and extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world."

Mediaeval monasticism was an attempt to separate from the world itself, an attempt to escape corruption by abstaining from all association with the corrupt. The Apostle Paul, in the text cited above, rejects this as an absurdity. The Christian is not required to separate from all association with unregenerate and sinful men; he is permitted to have civil association, even with fornicators, covetous, extortioners and idolaters; but he is forbidden to regard such as within the pale of Christian or ecclesiastical fellowship.

The Christian is, however, required to separate from all participation in the sins of the world. This is taught by II Cor. 6:17-18 and I Tim. 5:22, "Wherefore come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you, and I will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." "Neither be partaker of other men's sins: keep thyself pure."

In this sense, separation from the world is the same thing as separation from sin. It simply means separation from those things, sinful in themselves, which specially characterize the world regarded as Satan's kingdom.

The Christian is also bound to witness against the world as Satan's kingdom. Jesus Christ was a witness against the world in this sense, as shown by John 7:7, "The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that its works are evil."

The Christian must follow the example of Christ, and testify of the world, that its works are evil. The Christian must maintain a consistent testimony against the world, and this involves separation from all conduct inconsistent with that testimony. This kind of separation from the world is required of Christians in Rev. 18:4, "And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come forth, my people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues . . . ."

Even in the legitimate use of the world considered as God's possession, the Christian must be moderate, as is shown by I Cor. 7:29-31, "But this I say, brethren, the time is shortened, that henceforth those that have wives may be as though they had none; and those that weep, as though they wept not; and those that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and those that buy, as though they possessed not; and those that use the world, as not using it to the full; for the fashion of this world passeth away."

The Christian is a stranger and pilgrim on the earth (Heb. 11:13); his citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20), where he already is in the person of his representative, Christ (Col. 3:1); the present world, even regarded apart from sin, as God's creation and possession, is only temporary, a mere preparation for the eternal order of things (Heb. 13:14); and therefore the Christian must abstain from everything inconsistent with his position as a stranger and pilgrim, that is, from all inordinate use of the world. The expression "not using it to the full" might be paraphrased "not using it too intensely." In this matter, as in the case of occasions of temptation to sin, it is obviously impossible to formulate specific rules; each case must be decided on its own merits by the person concerned, acting in accordance with a conscience enlightened by the Holy Spirit.

IV. The Separated Life and the Use of Things Indifferent

Scripture recognizes a classification of things or actions which are commonly called adiaphora, or "things indifferent." This term must not be misunderstood. It does not mean that a Christian, in performing any particular act, can be regarded as himself morally neutral or indifferent, or that the Christian can at any time take a moral holiday and concern himself wholly with things morally indifferent. Man is a moral agent and is always accountable to God for the state of his heart and for his every thought, word and deed. Everything that the Christian is and does always has moral significance. This is shown by Col. 3:17 and I Cor. 10:31: "And whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God."

No matter what he does, the Christian is always either living for the glory of God or else sinning against the glory of God. "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23). A Christian performing any particular act under any particular set of circumstances, must be either glorifying God or else committing sin; there can be no third possibility. This does not mean that there are no adiaphora or things indifferent in themselves; it simply means that the right use of things indifferent, that is, the careful, temperate, God-fearing and conscientious use of or abstinence from them, is for the glory of God, whereas the wrong use of things indifferent, that is the abuse of them, is contrary to the glory of God and therefore sinful. But while the Christian himself is never morally neutral, still there are certain things and practices which, considered in themselves, are morally indifferent. This cannot be denied for it is clearly taught in Scripture, especially in such passages as Rom. 14:1-23, I Cor. 8:1-13 and I Cor. 10:23-32.

One part of Christian liberty consists in the conscientious free use of or abstinence from things indifferent, that is, things which are not in themselves unlawful. In this category Scripture incudes such practical matters as what we shall eat and drink (Rom. 14:2-3, 6, 14, 17, 21; I Cor. 8:8, 10:25-26), the observance of certain days (Rom. 14:5-6), and such matters as marriage and celibacy (I Cor. 7:28).

What is the duty of the Christian with respect to things indifferent? Should be abstain from all conduct which might offend any Christian? If so, what are the proper grounds for this abstinence? Or should the Christian assert his freedom by the free use of things indifferent before the eyes of men? The teaching of Scripture on these and related questions may be summed up as follows:

1. Things Indifferent Can Never Be Sinful In Themselves. To classify something as indifferent and then regard it as sinful in itself is to become involved in a contradiction in terms, as if one were to speak of an honest thief, or a truthful liar. It is true, of course, that the use of things indifferent may, under certain circumstances, be sinful, but this is very far from implying that things indifferent can be sinful in themselves. When we affirm that a particular thing or act is sinful in itself, we mean that it is inseparable from sin, and therefore cannot possibly, under any circumstances whatever, be done without sin. For example, adultery is sinful in itself; under no possible circumstances can it be committed without sin. Its sinful character is not contingent upon special circumstances, but is inherent in its very nature and inseparable from it. Playing on the piano, on the other hand, is in itself morally indifferent. Just because it is a thing indifferent, it can never be sinful in itself. But there may exist circumstances in which such an act is sinful. If a child has been forbidden by its parents to play on the piano at a particular time, but does so anyway, then under those circumstances playing on the piano is sinful. The sin committed, however, is not the sin of piano playing, but the sin of disobedience to legitimate parental authority. Again, if a person develops such a consuming passion for piano music that he devotes to this pursuit practically all of this time and strength, and makes it the supreme business and chief aim of his life, even above worshipping God and seeking his kingdom and righteousness, then in such a case and when carried to such an intemperate extreme, playing on the piano is sinful. The sin committed, however, is not the sin of piano playing but the sin of idolatry. Thus we see that while certain circumstances may render the use of adiaphora sinful by a particular person at a particular time or under certain circumstances, still this is very different from affirming that the things in question are sinful in themselves. Let us assure ourselves, then, once for all, that Scripture does really teach that certain things or actions are not sinful in themselves, but morally indifferent. If this fact be denied or ignored, only confusion and error can result. If any of our readers are disposed to deny that Scripture teaches the existence of adiaphora, we can only entreat them to make a more careful study of the fourteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. This doctrine is proved by Rom. 14:14 and I Cor. 10:23. "I know, and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean of itself; save that to him who accounteth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean." "All things are lawful; but not all things are expedient. All things are lawful; but not all things edify."

There can be little doubt that certain groups among American Fundamentalists have to a considerable extent revived the ancient Gnostic doctrine that material things can be sinful in themselves. It is not difficult, however, to show how contrary this conception is to the Biblical doctrine of sin. According to Scripture, the seat of sin is the corrupt heart of fallen man, not any material thing or impersonal matter. This is shown by our Lord's words in Mark 7:21-23, "For from within, out of the heart of men, evil thoughts proceed, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetings, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, railing, pride, foolishness: all these evil things proceed from within, and defile the man."

Scripture also teaches that sin has an absolute character; even the slightest sin is a violation of the whole moral law of God and brings on the sinner the sentence of eternal separation from God (James 2:10-11; Gen. 2:17; Rom. 6:23). If the use of any material thing is sinful in itself, then that use partakes of the absolute character of sin and brings upon the user a deserved sentence to eternal punishment. Thus, if the use of any material things is sinful in itself, then such use is sinful regardless of the degree of use. In that case, even the slightest possible use is an offence against the righteousness of God which brings His deserved wrath upon the user (Rom. 1:18).

This may be illustrated as follows: Beyond doubt it is sinful to commit suicide by drinking carbolic acid. This, however, is not because the use of carbolic acid is sinful in itself, but because it is used with suicidal intent. In such a case, the sin committed is the sin of suicide, not the sin of drinking carbolic acid. Carbolic acid being a material thing cannot be sinful in itself. If its use were sinful in itself, that use would be sinful regardless of the quantity used. If one drop of carbolic acid were to be dissolved in a thousand gallons of water, and one drop of the resultant solution drunk, the drinking of that one drop would be a sin deserving the punishment of eternal death, provided the use of carbolic acid is sinful in itself.

Let no one say that this is simply a reductio ad absurdum and therefore not worthy of serious consideration. Scripture does teach that sin has an absolute character, and that any sin, even the least, is a violation of the whole moral law and therefore deserving of the judicial sentence of eternal death. This being the teaching of Scripture, it follows necessarily that if the use of material things can be sinful in itself, then the slightest such use is deserving of the judicial sentence of eternal death. The absurdity is in the notion that sin can be inherent in the use of any material thing, not in the Scripture doctrine that even the least sin has an absolute character. It is extremely important at the present time to defend the proposition that things indifferent cannot be sinful in themselves, for this proposition is widely denied in some Fundamentalist circles today. A return to the teaching of Romans 14 and I Corinthians 8 would be a most salutary thing in the life of many churches today.

2. The Christian Is Free To Use Or Abstain From Things Indifferent. Since things indifferent are not sinful in themselves, the Christian is free to use them except when there is some special reason for abstinence from them. Scripture expressly uses the word "liberty" (I Cor. 8:9; 10:29) in dealing with this matter. The Christian's freedom to use or abstain from things indifferent is also brought out by Rom. 14:5 and 22: "One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind. . . . Happy is he that judgeth not himself in that which he approveth."

Since the Christian is declared to be free to use or not use things indifferent, it follows that any abstinence from things indifferent must in the nature of the case be voluntary and not obligatory. This is brought out by Rom. 14:21, "It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother stumbleth."

The word translated "good" is kalon, which means "pleasant," "comely," or "seemly," but cannot possibly mean "obligatory." The same Greek word is used in Mark 9:5, where Peter, speaking of the Mount of Transfiguration, says to the Lord, "It is good for us to be here." This should be sufficient to show that Rom. 14:21 cannot possibly be interpreted as a divine prohibition of the use of any material thing.

3. It Is Not Of The Essence Of Christian Liberty That It Must Be Exercised In The Sight Of Men. Scripture teaches, rather, that it is to be exercised in the sight of God, and that God holds the Christian accountable for his use or abuse of this freedom. This is proved by Rom. 14:22, 6, 12, "The faith which thou hast, have thou to thyself before God." "He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord: and he that eateth, eateth unto the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, unto the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks." "So then each one of us shall give account of himself to God."

A corollary of this truth that the Christian is responsible to God for his use or abuse of Christian liberty, is the command to refrain from judging others for their conscientious use of things indifferent, as shown by Rom. 14:4, 10, 13, "Who art thou that judgest the servant of another? to his own lord he standeth or falleth . . . ." "But thou, why dost thou judge thy brother? or thou again, why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God." "Let us therefore judge one another any more . . . ."

These texts speak of individual judging of individuals. The judicial function of the church in these matters will be dealt with in a subsequent section of this paper. As to individual judging, can there be any doubt that uncharitable and presumptuous judging of others for their legitimate and conscientious use of things indifferent is exceedingly common at the present day?

4. The Christian Must Take Care Take He Does Not Cause Others To Stumble. The Christian is accountable to God to take care that in his use of things indifferent he does not cause others to stumble or be offended. The Christian is his brother's keeper, and has a responsibility for his brother's welfare. He should therefore deny himself and voluntarily abstain from the use of particular things which are in themselves indifferent, when a brother would be offended or caused to stumble by their use. This is shown by Rom. 14:7, 13, 15, 21, "For none of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself." "Judge ye this rather, that no man put a stumbling block in his brother's way, or an occasion of falling." "For if because of meat thy brother is grieved, thou walkest no longer in love. Destroy not with thy meat him for whom Christ died." "It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother stumbleth."

In this connection, it must be repeated and emphasized that, so far as the Christian's relation to his brethren is concerned, the abstinence spoken of in these texts is voluntary and not obligatory abstinence. It should be carefully noted that Romans 14, I Corinthians 8 and I Cor. 10:23-32 are definitely addressed to the individual Christian and not to church assemblies or judicatories. The singular number is used throughout. These passages, therefore, present principles for the guidance of Christians in regulating their personal conduct, not principles for the guidance of church assemblies in formulating conditions of church membership. A Christian may feel that it is his duty, before God, to abstain from a particular thing which is in itself indifferent, while yet realizing that, so far as men are concerned, it is not mandatory upon him to abstain. In such a case, abstinence is obligatory so far as the relation between the Christian and God is concerned, but voluntary so far as the relation between the Christian and his brethren is concerned. Abstinence can be truly voluntary only when it is a matter between the Christian and his Lord; when it is made mandatory by ecclesiastical enactment it ceases to be voluntary and becomes obligatory. This would seem very clear from the texts above cited, taken in their context, yet it has been repeatedly claimed that Rom. 14:21 contains a divine prohibition of the use of certain material things. If that is the true meaning of Rom. 14:21, then all the rest of the chapter is without point and its teaching is utterly obscure.

5. In Abstinence From Things Indifferent, The Christian's Conscience Is Free. Abstinence from things indifferent, while it may proceed from consideration for the weak conscience of a brother, can never proceed from our own conscience, except in the indirect sense that our conscience requires us to be considerate of the weaknesses of fellow Christians; for if a thing be regarded as indifferent, how could the use of it be sinful in itself, or how could we abstain because of our own conscience? The relation of Christian liberty to the conscience is proved by I Cor. 10:25-29, "Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, eat, asking no question for conscience' sake; for the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof. If one of them that believe not biddeth you to a feast, and ye are disposed to go; whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no question for conscience' sake. But if any man say unto you, This hath been offered in sacrifice, eat not, for his sake that showed it, and for conscience sake: conscience, I say, not thine own, but the other's; for why is my liberty judged by another conscience?"

The closing words of the above citation need to be emphasized today: "Why is my liberty judged by another conscience?" Why should my liberty, in those things in which Christ has left me free, be subject to the judgment of an individual brother's conscience, or to the collective judgment of the conscience of a church assembly or judicatory? Let us ask ourselves in all seriousness, what right has any person or power on earth to bind the conscience of the Christian in matters in which Christ has declared that conscience to be free under God? The very heart of the Scripture teaching concerning the use of things indifferent is that the Christian is free to use or to abstain from using such things, according to his own conscience, and that for his use or abuse of this freedom he is accountable to God. The moment that specific rules are made by men concerning things indifferent, the moment that any man or body of men requires of the Christian abstinence from things indifferent for religious or moral reasons, at that moment liberty has become bondage, and the conscience, left free by God as to things indifferent, has become enslaved to the commandments of men. At that moment abstinence ceases to be voluntary and becomes obligatory, and the entire Scripture teaching on this subject is utterly perverted.

6. A Matter Must Be Regarded As Indifferent In Itself Until Proved Sinful By Scripture. The question may be raised, How are we to decide whether or not a particular matter belongs in the category of things indifferent? In this, as in all other questions of faith and conduct, the Word of God must be our chart and compass. A matter must be regarded as indifferent until proved to be sinful, not vice versa. A man is regarded as innocent until proved guilty. Nothing could be more false and dangerous than the contention of some religious teachers that a matter must be regarded as sinful until proved to be indifferent. When there is any doubt that the matter is sinful in itself, it must be left to the individual conscience. If the teaching of Scripture about a particular matter appears to be doubtful or obscure, or even seems to be contradictory, this is all the more reason for church assemblies not to make authoritative pronouncements or laws about such a matter. What God has clearly revealed, let the church confidently enforce. What God has not clearly revealed, let the church not presume to determine. God grant that we may be preserved from trying to have a clearer standard than the Bible, or a more complete set of moral laws than that contained in the Word of God!

Beyond question a great deal of the present insistence on the obligation to live what is called the separated life proceeds from misunderstanding of the Scripture passages dealing with the use of things indifferent. When groups of earnest Christians demand separation from particular things, in themselves indifferent, as the condition of Christian fellowship, they set up a false and unwarranted standard of fellowship, and become guilty of presumption by judging their brethren in those things in which Christ has left them free under God.

V. The Separated Life and the Sufficiency of Scripture

The principle of the sufficiency of Scripture as the standard of faith and conduct is involved in the problem of the separated life. Separation is sometimes demanded from things which Scripture does not declare or imply to be sinful. Sometimes the attempt is made to show that some of these things or practices are sinful by bringing in a secondary authority, such as experience, physical science, the so-called Christian consciousness. Experience or science may show good reasons for abstaining from certain acts or habits, but experience or science can never of itself be binding on the conscience of man.

Moreover, those who wish to introduce science as an additional authority always speak as if it were a very simple matter to ascertain what science has to say on any particular question. They always speak as if somewhere there were a sort of scientific pope who could utter ex cathedra the final, united, unquestionable voice of science. They seem to presuppose that the voice of science can be heard, speaking with authoritative accents, by simply consulting a few volumes in the public library. The truth is, however, that "science" is an abstraction. There is in the world today no such thing as the voice of science; there are only the voices of a multitude of scientists, and they are anything but agreed among themselves. Now who is to decide which of these many voices is to be accepted as the authoritative voice of science? One scientist, a professor in a great university, states that years of research have failed to demonstrate that a certain practice shortens life. Another scientist, of equal scientific standing, maintains the contrary position. Who is to decide which represents the authoritative voice of "science"? All to often those who wish to place science alongside of Scripture as a standard of faith and conduct wish at the same time to be the judges of what is science; those who hold certain views they regard as scientists; all others they reject as being prejudiced or otherwise untrustworthy. Can any pope or church assembly decide just what kinds of science -- the opinions of just which scientists -- are authoritative and therefore, along with Scripture, binding on the conscience of man? No, in matters of science every person must decide for himself. And even if certain scientific theories are believed to be true, they cannot be binding on the conscience. We must beware of the sin mentioned in the Larger Catechism, no. 105, of "making men the lords of our faith and conscience." All human authority, however expert or learned, is fallible, and therefore cannot bind the conscience. Science may show that certain things are harmful to the body, but science can never show that anything is sinful. Scripture alone can show that anything, for example a particular course of conduct, is sinful. It is true that the light of nature, or the moral law written on the heart of man (Rom 2:14-15), shows that certain acts, such as murder, are wrong; but the light of nature does not tell us anything about morality in addition to what is revealed in Scripture; Scripture is a fuller revelation than natural revelation and includes all of the latter and much besides; therefore when Scripture does not declare or imply that a certain practice is sinful, we cannot turn from Scripture to natural revelation for fuller light on the matter. (In this connection it may be remarked that the modernist notion that all human knowledge and science is a divine revelation in the same sense that Scripture is a divine revelation, is utterly false and destructive. Natural revelation is a provision of God by which the heathen, who do not have the light of Scripture, may know something of His power, divinity and moral law. It is insufficient for salvation, but leaves men without excuse and provides a standard by which those who lived and died without the light of special revelation shall be judged. Rom. 1:18-20; 2:12-16.)

Scripture of course teaches that it is ordinarily the duty of Christians to abstain from what is harmful to the body (this is not always the duty of Christians, for there may be circumstances when loyalty to Christ requires that our own physical welfare be disregarded, or even that, rather than deny the Lord, we suffer martyrdom and allow the body to be entirely destroyed); the sixth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," is stated by the Shorter Catechism to forbid "the taking of our own life, or the life of our neighbor, unjustly, or whatsoever tendeth thereunto" (no. 69). This commandment is binding on every man, and the interpretation of it given in the Catechism is doubtless the correct one. It thus becomes binding on the conscience of the Christian to abstain from that which tends toward the unjust destruction of his own life, or that of his neighbor, that is, from that which is harmful to the body. But we should note that the decision whether a particular act is harmful must be made by the individual concerned. Science is never infallible; it cannot bind the conscience; therefore the individual Christian must judge of the statements of science, and the statements of science must not judge the Christian. To deny this means to make science, instead of God, the Lord of the conscience. No alleged "findings" of science can be formulated into an authoritative list of harmful things or acts. The relation between the sufficiency of Scripture as the standard of faith and conduct and the problem of the separated life must be summarized as follows:

1. The Christian is required by God to separate from what is sinful.

2. Scripture alone can demonstrate that a given course of conduct is sinful.

3. Natural revelation cannot be regarded as a fuller revelation than Scripture, or as coordinate with Scripture in any sense whatever.

4. It is possible that science or experience may show that certain conduct is harmful.

5. Science or experience can never show that anything is sinful.

6. Scripture teaches that what is really harmful is ordinarily sinful.

7. The decision whether science or experience shows that particular conduct is harmful must be made by the individual concerned, not by other persons.

8. Church assemblies may not issue authoritative regulations based in whole or in part on any other standard than Scripture.

To depart from these principles is to deny the sufficiency of Scripture as the standard of faith and conduct and to elevate experience or science to the position of an additional authority coordinate with Scripture. This may be illustrated as follows: Science, let us say, has demonstrated that in certain conditions the eating of large amounts of certain foods is harmful to the body; this does not prove that the use of those foods is sinful in itself; science, moreover, cannot tell precisely where lies the border line between harmless use and harmful use. Scripture requires abstinence from that which is harmful, but teaches that no material thing is sinful in itself (Rom. 14:4). In the very nature of the case the individual concerned must be the judge of the extent of legitimate use in such a case, so far as his conscience is concerned. Some may say that the individual's physician is the proper judge in such a case but, even so, judgment is still left with the individual; he is free to follow or to reject his physician's advice, and also free to change or dismiss his physician. For an ecclesiastical judicatory to assert that science declares the matters in question to be harmful, therefore they are under all circumstances sinful, amounts to denying the sufficiency of Scripture and making human science an additional, coordinate authority.

If a Christian suffering from some bodily pain, takes more aspirin than is good for him, he may by this do something which is harmful to the body; he may even be doing something which, though not sinful in itself, is in that particular instance a sin against God; but the fact that it is possible for a person to commit sin by excessive use of aspirin by no means warrants a church assembly in enacting a rule limiting or prohibiting the use of aspirin by church members; because the use of aspirin is in itself morally indifferent, in the nature of the case the extent of legitimate use is a matter between the person and his Lord. No third party can be admitted to determine the question, so far as the morality of the matter is concerned. A physician may give good advice concerning the care of the body and the proper dosage of medicines, but he has nothing to do with the consciences of his patients. No fellow Christian, no bishop, pope, or ecclesiastical assembly can step in and say: "So-and-so many grains of aspirin constitute a legitimate medicinal dose, provided you have so-and-so many degrees of headache; but at that precise point aspirin ceases to be morally indifferent and its use becomes sinful."

Many persons today are ready to take the real or alleged "findings" of science (or rather of certain scientists) that certain material things or certain habits are harmful to the body, and on this basis alone to affirm confidently that those things or those habits are necessarily sinful in themselves. To do this is not only to fall into Gnostic error, but to repudiate the sufficiency of the Word of God as the standard of morality, and to make fallible, human knowledge an authoritative standard of conduct.

VI. The Separated Life and the Nature and Extent of the Authority of the Christian Church

In the formulation of creedal doctrine, the Christian church is strictly limited by Scripture. The church has the right to require of her officers and members assent to everything that can be shown to be taught or implied in Scripture, but the church does not have the right to add anything to what is contained in Scripture. The authority of the church is ministerial and declarative, not legislative; it is derived from Christ, not original in the church itself; it is no an absolute authority, but one limited and regulated by a definite revelation, the Scriptures. From these considerations it follows that the church has no right to go beyond Scripture and compile lists of specific things or acts, in themselves indifferent, which experience or science purport to show to be deleterious and which are therefore alleged to be wrong for the Christian to use or to do.

There are some Christian denominations which actually single out certain specific acts, in themselves indifferent, and require of church members abstinence from those things as a condition of membership. In some cases this requirement of abstinence is written into the denomination's creedal doctrine, and members are not merely required to abstain from the particular things involved, but are also required to express their assent to the rightfulness of this requirement of abstinence. This tendency, which assumes various forms in various circles, is a very unhealthy one, for it tends to give people the notion that the church can, by its own authority, legislate for the lives of its members, and even go beyond Scripture in requiring of them abstinence from particular things which are in themselves indifferent.

Of course the church may and should require its members to abstain from everything that can be proved by Scripture to be sinful. The breach of such abstinence can be justly censured by ecclesiastical judicatories when the fact is proved. But the church has not authority to require abstinence from things indifferent. The church has no authority to usurp the functions of the individual Christian conscience and decide for her members concerning the use of things indifferent. For the church to censure her members for doing that which cannot be proved from Scripture, without the use of any additional authority, to be sinful, is to exceed the limits of legitimate church authority. At the point where a secondary becomes necessary, the matter automatically passes from the church to the court of the individual conscience, precisely because God alone is Lord of the conscience, and human authority cannot bind the conscience. Let all church courts beware of committing the sin which Spurgeon described as "violating the crown rights of God who alone is Lord of the consciences of men."

Even though a church member may have committed an act which in the opinion of the members of a judicatory would be sinful if committed in like circumstances by themselves, still the judicatory has no right to censure such a person unless it can be proved from Scripture that the act was sinful; just as in criminal law a jury may be of the opinion that a defendant has committed a wrong, but has no right to convict him unless the evidence proves that he has violated the law of the land. A church judicatory may not decide cases by opinion, but must decide according to the law and the evidence.

It will be seen to follow from the foregoing that just as the church has no authority to go beyond Scripture in legislating concerning particular things which are in themselves indifferent, so the church has no authority to censure her members for any use of things indifferent unless that use can be proved to involve the violation of an express or implied command of Scripture. It is not sufficient to show that a command of Scripture may have been violated, or that an act has been committed which might, under some circumstances, involve the violation of a command of Scripture. To be justly liable to ecclesiastical censure, a church member must be charged with a particular act, committed at a particular time and place, and concerning this act two things must be proved: (1) it must be proved that the act was actually committed by the person, and at the time and place specified in the charge; (2) it must be proved that the act, in the circumstances under which it was committed, involved the violation of a command of Scripture, that is, that it was sinful. Church discipline must always deal with real offenses, not with the legitimate and conscientious use of things indifferent. Its function is to remedy actual wrongs already committed, not to prevent the commission of wrongs by enforcing abstinence from things which are in themselves not sinful but indifferent.

VII. The Work of the Holy Spirit vs. the Doctrines and Commandments of Men

Those who wish to add to what God has spoken in Scripture certain man-made regulations concerning things indifferent often take this position because they believe these rules necessary in order to prevent various evils. They assume that unless a rule is made, a particular evil will exist unchecked. So a church in China makes a rule against the use of opium by church members, and a church in Mexico a rule against the use of marihuana. In each case the motive is a laudable one, namely to prevent church members from becoming addicted to certain drugs. Nevertheless, a careful study of the problem leads us to the conclusion that the enactment of such regulations proceeds from false assumptions, is ineffectual for the intended purpose, and is very dishonoring to the Holy Spirit.

For a church judicatory to enact a rule prohibiting the use of opium by church members, for example, shows a presupposition that such a rule is necessary. Clearly the assumption is that, unless such a rule is made, some church members will use opium. And it seems to be assumed that some church members will abstain from the use of opium because of a church rule, who would not abstain if there were no such ecclesiastical regulation. Now those who advocate man-made regulations concerning things indifferent reason as though the Holy Spirit did not dwell in the hearts of the Lord's people, as though there were no such thing as sanctification by the Holy Spirit, and as though Christian people were the same as the children of the world. They fail to take the power of the Holy Spirit into their reckoning. How are the members of the church to be kept from using opium or marihuana? The only way they can think of is to make a rule prohibiting the use of these things by church members. What a confession! What ignorance concerning the nature and power of the Holy Spirit's work. What an admission concerning the spiritual state of the church members for whom the rule is made!

Church members are supposed to be Christian people. If they are not Christian people, they really have no right to be church members at all. This does not mean that church officers can examine people's hearts and admit to membership only those who are truly regenerate, for they cannot. It does mean, however, that in a church where the gospel of Jesus Christ is faithfully proclaimed, where a credible profession of faith is required of those admitted from the world, and where the discipline of the Lord's house is faithfully administered, the hypocrites will be very few. Such a church will be made up of regenerate Christian people. Now the Word of God teaches us that every Christian is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and that if any person does not possess the Holy Spirit, he is not a Christian at all (Rom. 8:9). The Holy Spirit is God, He is omnipotent, and He carries on in each of God's children the work of sanctification until each is made perfect in the likeness of Christ. Therefore, where the gospel is faithfully preached and taught there will be no need to go beyond Scripture and add the doctrines and commandments of men concerning things in themselves indifferent. The Spirit of God will work true holiness in the hearts and lives of the people, their consciences will be enlightened and their walk consistent.

Long ago the Apostle Paul warned the Colossians against all such man-made rules, as we read in Col. 2:20-23, "If ye died with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, do ye subject yourselves to ordinances, Handle not, nor taste, nor touch (all which things are to perish with the using), after the precepts and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and severity to the body; but are not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh."

From this we learn that man-made regulations about things indifferent are ineffectual: they are "not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh." Whatever men may say about such rules and regulations, the Holy Spirit here tells us that they are useless as a means of restraining fleshly appetites. In another place the Holy Spirit has given us through the Apostle Paul the true secret of overcoming the fleshly lusts, as we see in Gal. 5:16, "But I say, Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh."

The whole passage, Gal. 5:16-24, is a radical antidote for the false belief that man-made rules and regulations can curb the sinful tendencies of the Christian's old nature. Many of those who today are so zealous for human ordinances about things indifferent fall into the error of the Galatians, who supposed that the Christian life is begun in the Spirit, but perfected in the flesh (Gal. 3:3), begun by the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, but completed by human efforts, actions and abstinences.

Someone may object that opium and marihuana, for example, are not indifferent, but sinful in themselves. We have already shown that no material thing can be sinful in itself. Now if opium, marihuana or any other particular material substance is to be regarded as an exception to this principle, the problem is raised as to what authority is competent to decide which substances are exceptions to the principle that no material things can be sinful in itself. There is, no doubt, general agreement among Christian people that such substances as opium and marihuana, for example, are so dangerous and harmful that they should not be used at all. This general agreement is, however, no proper ground for church judicatories authoritatively pronouncing such substances sinful in themselves, or declaring their use to be sinful per se. The Word of God, not the so-called Christian consciousness, is our only infallible rule of faith and conduct. What authority is competent to determine the harmfulness and on this basis to infer the inherent sinfulness of the use of a particular material substance, withal making this inference binding on the consciences of the Lord's people? Are church judicatories qualified to issue authoritative pronouncements on such matters? By what right does a synod or assembly composed of ministers and elders decide questions concerning the physiological action and toxic properties of various narcotic drugs? If we grant to ecclesiastical bodies the right to decide concerning opium and marihuana, do we not thereby concede the entire principle that the church may legitimately decide for its members concerning the use of things indifferent? And if so, could we consistently object, for reasons of principle, if a church judicatory were to enact a rule prohibiting the use of tea or coffee? We are far from holding that it is legitimate for Christians to use dangerous drugs. What we are contending for is not license to use poisonous drugs, but freedom under God to decide for ourselves what material substances we ought to leave alone. We would keep the consciences of Christian people free from what Dr. Machen called "the tyranny of the experts." We maintain that the individual Christian, and not the church, must pass judgment on the pronouncements of experts concerning such things, so far as questions of morality are concerned. We are far from holding that it is "all right" to use opium, marihuana or a great many other material substances, but if the question as to the sinfulness of the use of these things is to be decided for us by a synod or pope, then our freedom of conscience is destroyed and our soul reduced to bondage to the commandments of men. If the thing is indifferent in itself, whatever it may be, then the individual Christian, not the church, has the God-given right to decide ethical questions concerning its use. We fully agree with the general opinion of Christian people that such substances as opium and marihuana should not be used at all, except possibly by a physician's orders; but we claim the God-given right to make this decision ourselves, and not to have it made for us by an ecclesiastical judicatory. The conscience of each and every one of the Lord's people is enlightened by the Holy Spirit; to require Christian people to accept ecclesiastical regulations on such matters is akin to the "implicit faith, and absolute and blind obedience" which is required by the Church of Rome.

In a previous section of this discussion we made the statement that "Since things indifferent are not sinful in themselves, the Christian is free to use them except when there is some special reason for abstinence from them." Lest this statement be misunderstood, we would add that the reference is to things indifferent as a class, not to every specific adiaphoron individually. We do not mean that the Christian is free to use every indifferent thing, except when there is some special reason for abstinence, but rather that, of the whole class of things indifferent, the Christian is free to use any specific things except those in the case of which there exists some special reason for abstinence. If a particular material substance is known to be a dangerous, habit-forming narcotic drug, that is certainly a valid special reason for abstinence from that particular substance, but the decision that a consistent Christian walk requires abstinence from that particular thing must be made by the individual Christian, not by the church. If it be alleged that this position fails to safeguard the members of the church against harmful and dangerous habits, we reply that the contrary position dishonors the Holy Spirit and minimizes His work. Regeneration of the heart, sanctification of the life and enlightenment of the mind and conscience of Christian people by the Holy Spirit are realities, and we for our part believe they are far more powerful and effective than any man-made rules and regulations revised to supplement the Word of God.

Having stated and defended the foregoing principles, we wish to add three qualifying statements in order to avoid any possible misunderstanding:

1. Though it is not proper for ecclesiastical bodies to legislate concerning things indifferent, it is sometimes entirely legitimate for the civil government to do so. Civil legislation does not purport to bind the conscience, but only the control the conduct of citizens.

2. While it is not proper for church judicatories to make rules concerning opium or marihuana, for instance, it may be perfectly legitimate for a church session to reject an applicant for membership who uses one of these things, not because the use of these or any other material thing is sinful in itself, but because, in the particular case under consideration, the church session may decide that the degree, manner and circumstances of the use of a particular thing are such as to involve the actual commission of sin of such a nature as to render the applicant's profession incredible.

3. While it is not proper for church bodies to make rules concerning the use of things indifferent, it may be perfectly legitimate for a church judicatory to censure a church member for the use of something which is not sinful in itself, when it is proved that in the particular case in question the use really involved the commission of sin. It is one thing to administer church discipline if and when real scandal occurs, and quite another to attempt to prevent its occurring by binding a universal man-made rule upon the consciences of the Lord's people.

Conclusion: The True vs. the False Doctrine

In conclusion, then, we may say that there exist a true and a false doctrine of the separated life. The Christian life must be a separated life, in the sense in which Scripture uses the term "separate." But this by no means implies that all that is meant by the separated life in common speech today is mandatory upon the Christian so far as his relation to his brethren is concerned. The differences between the true and false conceptions of the separated life may be shown by the following comparative table:

The Biblical Conception:
1. Obligatory separation from conduct which is sinful in itself.

The Popular Conception:
1. Obligatory separation from conduct which is sinful in itself and from certain conduct not sinful in itself.

The Biblical Conception:
2. The seat of sin is the corrupt heart of fallen man; the use of no material thing can be sinful in itself.

The Popular Conception:
2. Sin is inherent in the use of certain material things, as well as in the corrupt heart of fallen man.

The Biblical Conception:
3. Conscientious free use, under God, of things indifferent. The conscience free from the commandments of men.

The Popular Conception:
3. Human prohibition of things indifferent. The conscience enslaved to the traditions and commandments of men.

The Biblical Conception:
4. Scripture the only standard of faith and conduct that can bind the conscience.

The Popular Conception:
4. Sufficiency of Scripture denied; other authorities added and regarded as binding the conscience.

The Biblical Conception:
5. Ecclesiastical legislation concerning things indifferent limited by Scripture.

The Popular Conception:
5. Ecclesiastical legislation concerning things indifferent extends beyond what Scripture warrants.

Departure from what Scripture teaches concerning the separated life is fraught with peril to the Christian church. The notion that sin is inherent in the use of material things is widespread in American fundamentalism today. The doctrine that the church has the right to decide for her members concerning the use of or abstinence from things indifferent appears to be very widespread, and very seldom challenged at the present day. Persons who have the courage to oppose publicly these two false doctrinal tendencies are likely to be attacked as being opposed to holiness and in favor of sinful license. The practice of ecclesiastical assemblies issuing authoritative pronouncements on all sorts of questions which Scripture places in the sphere of the individual Christian conscience, has become a notorious evil. Many in their zeal to have the church "take a stand" on this, that or the other evil, quite forget that in some matters the Christian responsible, not to his brethren, but directly to his Lord, to whom alone the conscience can be subject. It is imperative that the churches rethink this whole problem and return to the solid rock of Scripture, and build solidly thereon. The alternative is a Gnostic doctrine of sin and a tyrannical, totalitarian church which destroys the God-given Christian liberty of her members. Our appeal is to the Word of God. Popular conceptions and ecclesiastical traditions are of no weight whatever in determining what we should believe and how we should live.

Many earnest Christian people are strongly opposed to the doctrines set forth in this article, and persons who proclaim these doctrines are likely to suffer considerable criticism, misunderstanding and reproach, but these are of little importance. Let us lay aside all prejudices and search the Scriptures to see whether these things are so. We may safely take our stand with Matthew Henry who wrote, commenting on Prov. 12:19, "Be it observed, to the honour of truth, that sacred thing, that, if truth be spoken, it will hold good, and whoever may be disobliged by it, and angry at it, yet it will keep its ground; great is the truth, and will prevail; what is true will be always true, we may abide by it, and need not fear being disproved and put to shame." The truth of the Lord endureth forever, and that truth is sure to prevail over error in the end.