Chapter 10 | Table of Contents | Chapter 12

Has wit, intellect and an elegant taste any more good or redeeming virtue in Christians than they had in heathens? Some say that self-will and a bit of pride are good and have a redeeming virtue in a Christian, but are bad and destructive in a heathen. I say, "a redeeming virtue in it," because nothing is or can be a religious good to fallen man, but what has a redeeming virtue in it or is, so far as it goes, a true renewal of the divine life in the soul. Therefore, said our only redeemer, "Without me you can do nothing." Anything that is not His immediate work in us is at best a mere nothing with respect to the good of our redemption. A tower of Babel may to its builders' eyes seem to hide its head in the clouds, but as to its reaching of heaven it is no nearer to that than the earth it stands on. It is thus with all the buildings of man's wisdom and natural abilities in the things of salvation. He may take the logic of Aristotle, add to that the rhetoric of Tully and then ascend as high as he can on the ladder of poetic imagination, but no more is done to the reviving the lost life of God in his soul than by a tower of brick and mortar to reach heaven.

Self is the root, the tree and the branches of all the evils of our fallen state. We are without God because we are in the life of self. Self-love, self-esteem and self-seeking are the very essence and life of pride and the devil, the first father of pride, is never absent from them nor without power in them. To die to these essential properties of self is to make the devil depart from us. But as soon as we have self-abilities or have a share in our good works, the satanic spirit of pride is in union with us and we are working for the maintenance of self-love, self-esteem and self-seeking.

All the vices of fallen angels and men have their birth and power in the pride of self or, I may better say, in the atheism and idolatry of self, for self is both atheist and idolater. It is atheist because it has rejected God. It is an idolater because it is its own idol. On the other hand, all the virtues of the heavenly life are the virtues of humility. There is not a praise, a joy, or a glory in heaven without the presence of humility. It is humility alone that bridges the impassable gulf between heaven and hell. There are no angels without heavenly humility, nor devils in hell without the fire of pride, for it is their whole fire of life.

What is then, or in what lies, the great struggle for eternal life? It all lies in the strife between pride and humility. All other things, be they what they will, are only under workmen to them. Pride and humility are the two master powers and the two kingdoms of strife for the eternal possession of man.

And here it is to be observed that every son of Adam is in the service of pride and self, be he doing what he will, until a humility that comes solely from heaven has been his redeemer. Until then, all that he wills is only done by the right hand, so that the left hand may know it. And he that thinks it possible for the natural man to get a better humility than this from his own right reason (as it is often miscalled), refined by education, shows himself quite ignorant of this one, most plain and capital truth of the gospel, namely that there never was, nor ever will be, but one humility in the whole world and that is the one humility of Christ, which never any man since the fall of Adam had the least degree of, except from Christ. Humility is one in the same sense and truth as Christ is one, the mediator is one and redemption is one. There are not two Lambs of God that take away the sins of the world. But if there was any humility besides that of Christ, there would be something else besides Him that could take away the sins of the world.

"All that came before me," says Christ, "were thieves and robbers." We are used to confining this statement to persons, but the same is as true of every virtue, whether it has the name of humility, charity, piety or anything else. If it comes before Christ, however good it may pretend to be, it is but a cheat, a thief and a robber under the name of godly virtue. Pride and self have the all of man until man has his all from Christ. He therefore only fights the good fight that the self-idolatrous nature which he has from Adam may be brought to death by the supernatural humility of Christ brought to life in him.

The Anti-Christ Spirit

Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out, that it might be plain that they all are not of us. (1 John 2:18-19 RSVA)

The enemies to man's rising out of the fall of Adam through the Spirit and power of Christ are many. But the one great dragon- enemy called anti-Christ is self-exaltation. This is his birth, his pomp, his power and his throne [See Isaiah 14:11-15]. When self-exaltation ceases, the last enemy is destroyed and all that came from the pride and death of Adam is swallowed up in victory.

There has been much sharp looking out to see where and what anti-Christ is or by what marks he may be known. Some say he has been in the Christian world almost ever since the gospel times, that he was even then beginning to appear and show himself. Others say he came in with this or that pope, others that he is not come, but near at hand. Others will have it that he has been here and there but driven from one place to another by several new risen Protestant sects.

But to know with certainty where and what anti-Christ is, who is with him and who against him, you need only read this short description which Christ gives of Himself:

1) "I can do nothing of myself."

2) "I came not to do my own will."

3) "I seek not my own glory."

4) "I am meek and lowly of heart."

Now, if this is Christ, then self- ability or self-exaltation, being the highest and fullest contrariety to all this, must be alone the one great anti-Christ that opposes and withstands the whole nature and Spirit of Christ. What, therefore, has everyone so much to fear to renounce and abhor as every inward sensibility of self-exaltation and every outward work that proceeds from it? But now, what things shall a man look at to see that working of self that raises pride to its strongest life and most of all hinders the birth of the humble Jesus in his soul? Shall he call the pomps and vanities of the world the highest works of self-adoration? Shall he look at the fops and beaux and painted ladies to see the pride that has the most of anti-Christ in it? No, by no means. These are indeed marks, shameful enough of the vain foolish heart of man, but comparatively speaking they are but the skin- deep follies of the pride that the fall of man has begotten and brought forth in him.

If you are to see the deepest root and iron-strength of pride and self-adoration you must enter into the dark chamber of man's fiery soul, where the light of God (which alone gives humility and meek submission to all created spirits) is extinguished by the death that Adam died. Satan, or what is the same thing, self-exaltation, became the strong man that kept possession of the house until a stronger than he should come upon him. In this secret source of an eternal, fiery soul, glorying in the astral light of this world, a swelling kingdom of pomps and vanities is set up in the heart of man of which all outward pomps and vanities are but childish transitory playthings. The inward strong man of pride, the diabolical self, has his higher works within. He dwells in the strength of the heart and has every power and faculty of the soul, offering continual incense to him. His memory, his will, his understanding and his imagination are always at work for him and for no one else. His memory is the faithful repository of all the fine things that self has ever done. And lest anything of them should be lost or forgotten she is continually setting them before his eyes. His will, though it has all the world before it, goes after nothing except as self sends it. His understanding is ever upon the stretch for new projects to enlarge the dominions of self, and if this fails, imagination comes in as the last and truest support of self. She makes him a king and mighty lord of castles in the air.

This is that full-born natural self that must be pulled out of the heart and totally denied or there can be no disciple of Christ. The apostate self-idolatrous nature of the old man must be put off or there can be no new creature in Christ.

Now what is it in the human soul that most of all hinders the death of this old man? What is it that above all other things strengthens and exalts the life of self and makes it the master and governor of all the powers of the heart and soul? It is the fancied riches of having a worldly part, the glitter of genius, the flights of imagination, the glory of learning and the self-conceited strength of natural reason. These are the strongholds of fallen nature-- the master-builders of pride's temple in the heart of man that act as so many priests, keeping up the daily worship of the idol-self. And here, let it be well understood, all these magnified talents of the natural man are started up through his miserable fall from the life of God in his soul. Wit, genius, learning and natural reason would never have had any more of a name among men than blindness, ignorance and sickness, had man continued as at first, a holy image of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Everything that dwelt in him then or came from him would have only spoken of God and nothing of himself and would have manifested nothing to him but the heavenly powers of the triune life of God dwelling in him. He would have no more sense or consciousness of his own wit or natural reason or any power of goodness in all that he was and did, than of his own creating power when beholding the created heavens and earth. It is his dreadful fall from the life of God in his soul that has furnished him with the substantial riches of his bestial appetites and lusts.

And when the lusts of the flesh have spent out their life, when the dark thick body of earthly flesh and blood shall be forced to let the soul go loose, all these bright talents will end with that system of fleshly lusts in which they began and what remains of man will have nothing of its own, nothing that can say I do this or I do that. All that it has or does will be either the glory of God manifested in it or the power of hell in full possession of it. The time of man's playing with parts, wit and abilities and of fancying himself to be something great and considerable in the intellectual world, may be much shorter, but can be no longer, than he can eat and drink with the animals of this world. The time comes when fine buildings, rich settlements, acquired honors and men calling "Rabbi, Rabbi," must take their leave of him. All the stately structures that genius learning and flights of imagination have painted inwardly on his brain and outwardly on paper must bear full witness to Solomon's vanity of vanities.

Let then the high accomplished scholar reflect that he comes by his wit and parts and acute abilities just as the serpent came by his subtlety. Let him reflect that he might as well dream of acquiring angelic purity to his animal nature by multiplying new invented delights for his earthly passions and tempers as of raising his soul into divine knowledge through the well exercised powers of his natural reason and imagination. The finest intellectual power and what has the best help in it towards bringing man again into the region of divine light is that poor despised thing called simplicity. This is what stops the workings of the fallen life of nature and leaves room for God to work again in the soul according to the good pleasure of His holy will. It stands in such a waiting posture before God and in such readiness for the divine birth as the plants of the earth wait for the inflowing riches of the light and air. But the self-assuming workings of man's natural powers shut him up in himself, closely barred up against the inflowing riches of the light and Spirit of God.