Chapter 12 | Table of Contents | Chapter 14

If any awakened souls are found among Christians who think that more must be known of God, of Christ and the powers of the world to come, than every scholar can know by reading the letter of scripture, immediately the cry of "fanaticism," whether they be priests or people, is spoken against them. Their own excess could only be excused if these critics could first prove that the apostle's text should be read, "The spirit kills but the letter gives life."

The true nature and full distinction between literal and divine knowledge is set forth in the highest degree of clearness in these words of our savior, "The kingdom of God is like a treasure in a field." The true use and benefit and utmost power of the letter can tell us of a treasure that we want, a treasure that belongs to us, and how and where it is to be found. But when it is added that a "man goes and sells all that he has and buys that field," then begins the divine knowledge that is nothing else but the treasure possessed and enjoyed. What Jesus said here is similar to, "Except a man denies himself and forsakes all that he has he cannot be my disciple," that is, he cannot partake of my mind, my Spirit and my nature and therefore cannot know me. He is only a hearer of a treasure without entering into the possession and enjoyment of it. Thus it is with all scripture. The letter can only direct to the doing of what it cannot do and give notice of something that it cannot give.

As clear and evident as this distinction is between a mere literal direction to a thing and a real participation with it, which alone is a true perception of it, most Christians seem quite insensible of any other religious perception or knowledge of divine things except such ideas or notions of them as a man can form from scripture words. Good and evil, the only objects of religious knowledge, are an inward state and growth of our life. They are in us and are a part of us in the same manner as seeing and hearing are in us. We can have no real knowledge of them any other way than as we have of our own seeing and hearing. As no man can get or lose his seeing or hearing or have less or more of them by any ideas or notions that he forms about them, just so it is with the power of good and the power of evil in us. Notions and ideas have no effect on it. No other knowledge is thought of, sought after or esteemed of any value but what is notional and the work of the brain.

Thus as soon as a man of speculation can demonstrate what he calls the being and attributes of God, he thinks and others think that he truly knows God. But what excuse can be made for such an imagination, when plain scripture has told him that to know God is eternal life--to know God is to have the power, the life and the Spirit of God manifested in him and therefore eternal life. "No man knows the Father but the Son and he to whom the Son reveals Him." Because the revelation of the Son is the birth of the Son in the soul, this new creature in Christ alone has knowledge of God, what he is, does and works in the creature.

Another person, forming an opinion of faith from the letter of scripture, straightway imagines that he knows what faith is and that he is in that faith. What a sad delusion! To know what faith is, or that we are in the faith, is to know that Christ is in us of a truth. It is to know the power of His life, His sufferings, His death, His resurrection and ascension, having been made good in our souls. To be in the faith is to be done with all notions and opinions about it, because it is found and felt by its living power and fruits within us, which are righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. These three powers are peculiar to Jesus Christ! He alone is our righteousness, our peace, and our joy in the Holy Spirit. Therefore, faith is not in us by reason of this or that opinion, assent or consent, but it is Christ and His divine nature in us, or its operations could not be righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Paul's words, "By faith you are saved," have no other meaning than by Christ you are saved. If faith in its whole nature, in its root and growth was anything else but Christ or a birth of the divine nature within us, it could do us no good and no power could be ascribed to it. It could not be our victory; it could not overcome the world, the flesh and the devil. Every other faith that is not Christ in us is but a dead faith.

Faith Works through Love, not Scholasticism

How trifling, therefore (to say no worse of it), is the learning that sets up a difference between faith and its works, between a justification by faith and justification by its works. Is there any difference between Christ as a redeemer and His redeeming works? Can they be set above one another in their redeeming efficacy? If not, then faith and its works, which are nothing else but Christ in us, can have no separation from or excellency above one another, but are as strictly one as Christ is one. They are no more two things than our Savior and our salvation are two different things in us. Everything that is said of faith from Adam to this day is only said of the power and life of a redeeming Christ working within us. To divide faith from its works is as absurd as to divide a thing from its self, a circle from its roundness.

No salvation would have ever been ascribed to faith, but that it is in the strictest sense Christ Himself, the power of God living and working in us. It never would have been said of faith that every power of the world, the flesh and the devil, must yield to it, except that it is truly Christ within us without whom we can do nothing. But if without Christ we can do nothing and all things are possible to our faith, can there be a fuller demonstration that our faith is nothing else, but Christ born and living within us? Whatever, therefore, there is of power within us that tends to salvation, call it by what name you will, either faith or hope or prayer or hunger after the kingdom of God and His righteousness, it is all but one power and that one power is Christ within us. If, therefore, faith and its good works are but one and the same, Christ living in us, the distinction between a good faith and its good works and all the contentious volumes that have been written about it, are as mere ignorant jargon as a distinction made and contended for between life and its living operations. When the holy church of Christ, the kingdom of God, came among men and was first set up, it was the apostle's boast that all other wisdom or learning was sunk into nothing. "Where," says he, "is the wise, the scribe, the disputer of this world? Has not God made them foolishness?" But now it is the boast of all churches that they are full of the wise, the scribes and the disputers of this world who sit with learned pomp in the apostle's chair and have the mysteries of the kingdom of God committed to them. Thus a religion of heavenly love, built upon the redeeming life and doctrine of a Son of God, dying to save the whole world, is now in division. Bitterness, envy, pride, strife, hatred and persecution; every outrage of war and bloodshed, breathes and breaks forth with more strength in learned Christendom than ever they did from a religion of pagan idolatry set up by Satan.

It may be said by some here, "Must there then be no learning or scholarship, no recondite erudition in the Christian church? Must there be nothing thought of or got by the gospel but mere salvation? Must its ministers know nothing, teach nothing, but the full denial of self, poverty of spirit, meekness, humility and unwearied patience, a never ceasing love, an absolute renunciation of the pomps and vanities of the world, a full dependence upon our heavenly Father, no joy or rejoicing except in the Holy Spirit, no wisdom except what God gives, no walking except as Christ walked, no reward or glory for their labors of love except that of being found in Christ, flesh of His flesh, bone of His bones, spirit of His Spirit and clothed with the wedding- garment when the bridegroom comes, that "when the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first"?

To this the first answer is Happy, thrice happy, are they who through all their ministry seek nothing for themselves or others but to be taught of God, that hunger after nothing but the bread of life that came down from heaven, who own no master but Christ, no teacher but His Holy Spirit. They are as unable to join with the diggers in pagan pits of learning as with those that "labor for the wind and give their money for what is not bread."

Secondly, with regard to the demand of learned knowledge in the Christian church, it may be answered that all that has been said above is only for the increase and promotion of it and that all ignorance and darkness may be driven quite out of it. The church of Christ is the seat or school of all the highest knowledge that the human nature is capable of in this life. Ignorance is everywhere but in the church of Christ. The Law the prophets and the gospel are the only treasures of all that can be called the knowledge, either of God or man; He in whom the Law the prophets and the gospel are fulfilled is the only well-educated man and one of the first-rate scholars in the world. But who is he that has this wisdom from these rich treasures? Who is he in whom all that they teach is known and fulfilled ? The lip of truth has told us that it is he and he alone "who loves God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind, and with all his strength, and his neighbor as himself." This is the man that is all wisdom, all light and in full possession of everything that is meant by all the mysteries contained in the Law, the prophets and the gospel.

Where this divine love is wanting and a diabolical self sits in its place, there may be great wits, shining critics, orators, poets etc., as easily as there may be a profound Machiavel, a learned Hobbs, or an atheistic Virtuoso. But if you were to divinely know the mysteries of nature, the ground and reason of good and evil in this world, the relation and connection between the visible and invisible world, how the things of time proceed from, are influenced by and depend upon the things and powers of eternity, there is only one key of entrance. Nothing can open the vision except seeing with the eyes of the same love that began and carries on all that is and works in visible and invisible nature.

If you were to divinely know the mysteries of grace and salvation and go forth as a faithful witness of gospel truths, then stay until this fire of divine love has had its perfect work in you. For until your heart is an altar on which this heavenly fire never goes out, you are dead in yourself and can only be a speaker of dead words about things that never had any life within you. Without a real birth of this divine love in the essence of your soul, be as learned and polite as you will, your heart is but the dark heart of fallen Adam and your knowledge of the kingdom of God will be only like what murdering Cain had. Everything is murder, but what love does. If love is not the breath of your life, the spirit that forms and governs everything that proceeds from you, everything that has your labor, your allowance and consent, you are broken off from the works of God. You have felt His creation, but you are without God and your name, nature and works can have no other name or nature but pride, wrath, envy, hypocrisy, hatred, revenge and self-exaltation under the power of Satan in his kingdom of darkness. Nothing can possibly save you from being the certain prey of all these evil spirits through the whole course of your life, but a birth of the love that is God Himself, His light and Spirit within you.

There is no knowledge in heaven but what proceeds from this birth of love, nor is there any difference between the highest light of an angel and the horrid darkness of a devil except what love has made. Since divine love can have no beginning except a birth of the divine nature in us. Therefore St. John says, we love Him because he first loved us. This is the same as saying, we desire God because he first desired us--because we could not desire God until he first desired us. We could not turn to God until he first turned to us. And so it is that we could not love God until he first loved us, because by our creation He first brought forth and by our redemption continued and kept up that same birth of His own Spirit of love in us. As His Holy Spirit must first be a gift to us, born in us, then we have what can worship God in spirit. So His love must of all necessity be a gift to us, born in us, and then we have God in us that alone can love Him with His own love. Truth is absolutely asserted in these words, "Love is of God and he that loves is born of God."

Let this be my excuse to the learned world for owning no school of wisdom, but where the one, only lesson is divine love and the one only Teacher-the Spirit of God. Let no one call this wild or extravagant. It is no wilder a step, no more injurious to man, or to truth and goodness than the owning no God but one. To be called from everything except divine love and the Spirit of God is only being called from everything that has the curse of fallen nature in it. And no man can come out from under this curse until he is born again of divine love and the Spirit of God. To be born is as much the one sole happiness, joy and glory of men, both now and forever, as it is the sole joy and glory of angels eternally in the heavens. Believe me then, great scholar, that all that you have attained to of wisdom or learning, day after day in any other school but this, will stand you in as much stead and fill you with as high heavenly comfort at the hour of death, as all the long dreams that you ever had night after night in your sleep. And until a man knows this with as much fullness of conviction as he knows the vanity of a dream, he has full proof that he is not in the light of truth, not taught of God nor is he like-minded with Christ.

One of Christ's followers said, "Lord suffer me first to go and bury my father." The answer was, "Let the dead bury their dead, follow me." Another said to Him, "Let me first go bid them farewell that are at home in my house." Jesus answered, "No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God." Let it be supposed that a third had said, "Lord I have left several deep-learned books at home, written by the greatest masters of grammar, logic and eloquence. Allow me first to go back for them, lest losing the light that I had from them, I might mistake the depth and truth of your heavenly doctrines or be less able to prove and teach them powerfully to others." Does not such a request as this have as much folly and absurdity in it as the two other requests that Christ rejected? What can scholastic, classic and critical divinity say for itself, except the very same thing that was requested here?

The holy Jesus said, "I am the light of the world; he that follows me walks not in darkness." Here spiritual light and darkness are as immutably fixed and separated from one another as the light and darkness of this world were divided on the first day of the creation. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, is the one and only light, both of men and angels. Fallen nature, the selfish will, proud tempers, the highest abilities, the natural sagacity, cunning arts and subtleties that are or can be in fallen men and angels, are nothing but the fullness of spiritual darkness from which nothing but works of darkness can come forth. In a word, darkness is the whole of natural man, whereas, light is the new born man from above. Therefore, says the Christ of God, "I am the light of the world," because he alone is the birth of heaven in the fallen souls of men. But who can more reject this divine light or more plainly choose darkness instead of it, than he who seeks to have his mind enriched and the faculties of his fallen soul cultivated by the literature of poets, orators, philosophers, sophists, skeptics and critics-born and bred up in the worship and praises of idol gods and goddesses? What is this but going to the serpent to be taught about the innocent spirit of the dove, or to the elegant lusts of Anacreon and Ovid to learn purity of heart and kindle the flame of heavenly love in our souls?

Look where you will, this is the wisdom of those who look to pagans for skill to work in Christ's vineyard, who from long labors in restoring the grammar and finding out hidden beauties of some old vicious book, sets up for qualified artists to polish the gospel pearl of great price. Surely this is no better a proof of their savoring the things that are of God than Peter gave when His master said to him, "Get behind me Satan." A grave ecclesiastic, bringing forth skillful meditations on the commentaries of Homer or the astonishing beauties of a modern Dunciad out of his closet, has as much reason to think that he is walking in the light of Christ and is led by the Spirit of God as they have who are eating, drinking and rising up to play.