Chapter 9 | Table of Contents | Chapter 11

Therefore, what gave eyes to the blind, cleansed the lepers, cast out devils and raised the dead, that alone can and must do all that is to be done in this gospel kingdom of God. For every smallest work or fruit of grace must be as solely done by God as was the greatest miracle in nature, because every work of grace is the same overcoming of nature as when the dead are raised to life. Vain man may be thought to be something and have great power and ability in this kingdom of grace, because he has happened to be made a scholar, has run through all languages and histories, has been long exercised in conjectures and criticisms and has his head as full of all theological notions, as poetical and philosophical as a dictionary full of all sorts of words.

Let this simple question decide the whole matter here: has this great scholar any more power of saying to this mountain, "Be thou removed hence and cast into the sea," than the illiterate Christian has? If not, he is just as weak as powerless and little in the kingdom of God. But if the illiterate man's faith should happen to be nearer to the size of a grain of mustard seed than that of the prodigious scholar, the illiterate Christian stands much above him in the kingdom of God.

Look, now, at the present state of Christendom, glorying in the light of Greek and Roman learning (which an age or two ago broke forth) as a light that has helped the gospel to shine with a luster that it scarce ever had before. Look at this and you will see the fall of the present day church from its first gospel state, much like the fall of the first divine man from the glory of paradisiacal innocence and heavenly purity into an earthly state and bestial life of worldly craft and serpentine subtlety.

In the first gospel church, heathen light had no other name than heathen darkness and the wisdom of words was no more sought after than friendship of the world that is enmity with God. In that new- born church the tree of life, which grew in the midst of paradise, took root and grew up again. In the present church the tree of life is hissed at as the visionary food of deluded fanatics and the tree of death, called the tree of knowledge of good and evil, has the eyes and hearts of priest and people. It is thought to do as much good to Christians as it did evil to the first inhabitants of paradise. This tree, that brought death and corruption into human nature at first, is now called a "tree of light" and is well watered day and night with every corrupt stream, however distant or muddy with earth, that can be drawn to it.

Indeed, the simplicity of both the gospel letter and doctrine has the shine and polish of classic literature laid thick upon it. Cicero is in the pulpit, Aristotle writes Christian ethics and Euclid demonstrates infidelity and absurdity to be the same thing. Greece had but one Longinus and Rome had but one Quintilian, but in our present church they are as common as patriots in the state.

But now what follows from this new risen light? Aristotle's atheism, Cicero's height of pride and depth of dissimulation, and every refined or gross species of Greek and Roman vices are as glaring in this new enlightened Christian church as ever they were in old pagan Greece or Rome. Would you try to find a gospel- Christian in all this midday glory of learning, you may light a candle as the philosopher did in the midday sun to find an honest man.

And indeed, if we consider the nature of our salvation, either with respect to what alone can save us or from what we are to be saved, it will be plain that the wit and elegance of classic literature brought into a Christian church to make the doctrines of the cross have a better salvation-effect upon fallen man, is like calling in balls and masquerades to make the lent-penitence go deeper into the heart and more effectually drive all levity and impurity out of it. How poorly was the gospel at first preached if the wisdom of words, the gifts of natural wit and imagination had been its genuine helps [See 1 Corinthians 2:1-8]? But alas, the wisdom, gifts, wit and imaginations of man and the inspiration and enlightenment of the Holy Spirit stand in the same contrariness to one another as self-gratification and self-denial. To know the truth of gospel salvation is to know that man's natural wisdom is to be equally sacrificed with his natural folly, for they are one and the same thing, only called sometimes by one name and sometimes by the other.

His intellectual faculties are by the fall in a much worse state than his natural animal appetites and are in need of a much greater self- denial. And when one's own will, own understanding and own imagination have their natural strength indulged and gratified and are made seemingly rich and honorable with the treasures acquired from a study of the Belles Lettres, they will help poor fallen man to be like- minded with Christ just as much as the art of cookery, well and daily studied, will help a professor of the gospel to the spirit and practice of Christian abstinence. All these things being true, then only these two things need to be known: (1) that our salvation consists wholly in being saved from ourselves or what we are by nature, and (2) that in the whole nature of things nothing could be this salvation or Savior to us except such an humility of God manifested in human nature that is beyond all expression.

Thus, the first unalterable term of this Savior to fallen man is this "Except a man denies himself, forsakes all that he has and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." And to show that this is but the beginning ground of man's salvation, the Savior adds, "Learn of me for I am meek and lowly of heart." What a Light is here for those that can bear or love the Light! Self is the whole evil of fallen nature. Self-denial is our capacity of being saved and humility is our savior. This is every man's short lesson of life and he that has well learned it is scholar enough and has all the benefit of a most finished education. When old Adam with all his ignorance is cast out of him and Christ's humility is learned, then he has the very mind of Christ and what brings him forth as a son of God.

Who then can wonder at that bulk of libraries that have taken the place of this short lesson of the gospel or at that number of champion disputants who from age to age have been all in arms to support and defend a set of opinions, doctrines and practices that may be most cordially embraced without the least degree of self- denial and most firmly held fast without getting the least degree of humility by it?

What a grossness of ignorance, both of man and his Savior--to run to Greek and Roman schools to learn how to put off Adam and to put on Christ, or to drink at the fountains of pagan poets and orators in order to drink of the cup that Christ drank of? What can come of all this, except what is already too much come of a Ciceronian- gospeller instead of a gospel- penitent? Instead of the depth the truth and spirit of the humble publican seeking to regain paradise, only by a broken heart, crying, "God be merciful to me a sinner," we have the high-bred classic will, alive in daily transports at the enormous sublime of a Milton flying born up on the un-feathered wings of high sounding words (See Milton's Enormous Bliss).

This will be more or less the case with all the salvation- doctrines of Christ while under classical acquisition and administration of scholars. Those divine truths that are no further good and redeeming, except as they are spirit and life in us, that can have no entrance or birth, except in the death of self in a broken and contrite heart, will serve only to help classic painters lavish out their colors on their own paper monuments of lifeless virtues.