CHRISTIAN LIBERTY.

125

not a glimpse. Other creatures, perhaps, can move more swiftly than himself within their bounds, but he can move from one end of the earth to the other. The lower creatures have only a will to feed and propagate; his will is free to subdue nature, according to his charter," Replenish the earth and subdue it."

Now this freedom on its moral side had been lost, and the Seed, the Heir, the Son, had been sent to restore it to us, and it is His will to restore it to us, not by naked abstract doctrine, but by a system, a kingdom, a church.

Now when a Gentile put his neck under the yoke of ordinances it was a sure sign that he neither desired nor valued the freedom wherewith the Son makes free. The freedom which the Son gave went far beyond obedience to the letter of the Decalogue, it was freedom to obey the drawings and aspirations of the Spirit of God. As the Apostle says elsewhere, "We are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter" (Rom. vii. 6). And this the Judaizer or his dupe had no real desire for; he loved Mosaism, because he desired the lowest type of righteousness rather than the highest, and so he put away from him the life which was the gift of the Son, which life was the highest conceivable freedom to serve God as the angels do. (See my notes on Rom. x. 3.)

The only true freedom recognized in the New Testament is freedom from sin. Freedom from the yoke of burdensome Jewish or other ordinances is quite subordinate to this, for a man like Zachariah or Simeon, who lived before the coming of Christ, might consider himself bound to every jot or tittle of Jewish ritual, and yet serve God in the spirit of love; and on the contrary, a man may be free as regards his opinion from the yoke of every dogma which makes the least demand upon his faith, and from every particle of Church regulation which stands in the way of doing exactly what he pleases in conducting the service of God, and yet be the servant of corruption (2 Pet. ii. 18).

There is the greatest misconception respecting Christian liberty. How often, for instance, is freedom to use any words which may be suggested at the moment called liberty, whereas it may be, and too often is, the most tyrannical infliction on those present to hear God addressed in such terms. The liberty of the minister (as has been said by one of the greatest of our public men) is the slavery

126

CHRISTIAN LIBERTY.

of the congregation. Again, the very same man, thus allowed any amount of license in the most solemn approaches to God, is, so far as his teaching is concerned, under the tyranny of a clique. His doctrine must be approved by men generally his inferiors in culture, in social position, and in knowledge of Scripture, or he may be deprived of his means of subsistence.

Again, look at Christian liberty as regards the control of the State. Late decisions in our law courts have abundantly proved that if any body of Christians have any property secured to them by title deeds in which are defined the doctrines which they are to hold, the State must ultimately decide whether the preaching be according to these formulas or not.

Again, what bondage can be greater than that of the Calvanistic system?

Again, how inestimable the liberty of not being tied down to a theory of Inspiration. We can hold the Scriptures to be a full revelation of God's will, sufficient for all purposes of faith and practice, and yet can hold that this revelation comes to us through human channels, and therefore on matters of grammar and arithmetic, and dates, and other small circumstances it is liable to error, and yet he who submits to receive it in an obedient and uncritical spirit, will by its means "know the truth," and shall be made free by that truth.

A multitude of such questions may be raised respecting the nature, and limits, and applications of Christian liberty, which may practically be set at rest by the consideration that there is nothing perfect in this state of things. As there is no absolutely perfect faith, or love, or holiness, or knowledge, so there is no perfect liberty. We are born under conditions of all sorts, and from these we cannot be free. We are born inheriting traditions, governed by institutions, having in innumerable cases to submit our individual wills to the will of the majority or of the powerful; and so, for the enjoyment of perfect freedom, we must look beyond this state in which we are made subject to vanity, to the time when we "shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God."

FAITH AND THE FAITH.

127

FAITH AND THE FAITH.

Much misconception respecting the meaning and scope of the Epistle to the Galatians has arisen from the imperfect translation of several passages owing to the entire neglect of the Greek article. In the first one we shall consider the article is duly translated.

I. 23. "They had heard only that he which persecuted us in times past, now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed." Here faith is evidently to be understood, not as the faculty of mind by which unseen things are apprehended, but as the Gospel, the objective facts respecting the Son of God, especially His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection (Rom. i. 1-3; 1 Cor. xv. 1-10), for this only could Paul attempt to destroy. He would not attempt to destroy faith as such, for by it only could men believe in God at all, but he would attempt to obliterate from men's minds the Death and Resurrection of Christ as the Son of God, by persecuting those who held these things as truths of God.

But in iii. 23 the article is neglected. It is rendered "before faith came," whereas it is "before the faith came we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed." Here faith is evidently the same as the faith of i. 23, because it could come only at a certain definite time. Faith as a faculty of the mind can never be said to come, for it is always inherent in the mind, and it existed throughout the ages before the coming of Christ, even all through the period of the law (Hebrews xi.), but the faith which could be preached and accepted, came when the promised Seed, the Heir, the Son of God incarnate came Who was the object of justifying faith. So also in iii. 25, "But after that faith is come," it is Tñs πioTews.

Again, in verse 26, " Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus," should be " through the faith in Christ Jesus."

Also vi. 10.

Now what is this faith? It is evidently the one faith of Ephesians iv. 5, “ One Lord, one faith, one baptism." One Lord, i.e., One Lord Jesus Christ, in Whom is centred the one faith in Him as Incarnate, Crucified, Risen, and Ascended, and this is sealed in the One Baptism wherein is made the confession of faith,

128

FAITH AND THE FAITH.

1 Peter iii. 21, and wherein God seals the confession of that faith by grafting the person making it into the Body of His Son.

If it be asked, "What is the faith?" in what words can it be expressed or embodied? we should say, in the words of the Creed. Thus the Apostle in Rom. i. 1-4, specifies his Gospel, i.e., the faith which he preached, as mainly the Incarnation and Resurrection, "Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the Seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power. by the Resurrection from the dead."

Again, there is one place in which with marked emphasis he re-declares and reiterates to his converts his Gospel, the faith which he preached, and it consists in the Death for our sins, the Burial and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, particularly laying stress upon the Resurrection, because some of his converts were denying the resurrection of the body, which, in the Apostle's view, led directly to the denial of the Resurrection of Christ Himself. (“If there be no Resurrection from the dead, then is Christ not risen." 1 Cor. xv. 1-10.)

Again, he asserts the objective fact of the Resurrection as having the foremost place in his Gospel in 2 Tim. ii. 8: "Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David, was raised from the dead, according to my Gospel," and at the opening of our Epistle, "Paul an Apostle... by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead."

I give a considerable number of places bearing upon this in a note.1

Now we see from this the purpose for which this Epistle was written. It was not written to glorify faith as such, or to declare that per se it was justifying, for any Jew, who, before the coming of Christ, kept or attempted to keep any one commandment with a view to the approval of God, had some degree of faith; but it was written to glorify the justifying power of that faith which laid hold on the Seed, the Heir, even the Son of God, when He was revealed. This is the reason why the Christian dispensation is a dispensation

1 Thus, John iii. 18; vi. 69; viii. 24; xi. 25, 26, 27; xiii. 19; xvi. 27-30; xx. 27, 28, 29. Acts ii. 23, 24, 36; iii. 13, 14, 15; iv. 33; ix. 20; x. 39, 40, 41, 42; xiii. 23, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33; xxiv. 15; xxvi. 8, 9, 22, 23. Rom. iv. 24, 25; viii. 34; x. 9. 1 Cor. xv. 1-17. Col. 23; i. 7. 1 Tim. iii. 9, 16. 1 Peter i. 11, 12, 21; iii. 22. 1 John i. 1-4. Jude 3.

FAITH AND THE FAITH.

129 of faith. It is because that at its outset the true object of religious faith-the Incarnate Son, was revealed. Till then the word was true, "keep the commandment and live," but after that the Son of God, that Eternal Word Who originally gave the commandments, came, then it was turned into "If ye believe not that I am, ye shall die in your sins." They mistake woefully the purport of this Epistle who express themselves as if St. Paul means, "believe in justification by faith," believe that you are justified, and you are justified. Let your principal care be that some process (justification, conversion, &c.), takes place in you after a certain order. It really means, "Believe the faith, the faith in God Incarnate, Crucified, Risen, and Ascended. Believe in this, look to this Jesus thus doing and suffering for you. Believe in the efficacy of all that He has instituted and ordained, and waver not, slack not, be not moved for a moment from this your faith, and you shall be partakers of Him, and continue in Him, and be received by Him to Himself when He comes."

Luther says (would that he had always spoken in such a frame), "Wherefore, whensoever thou art occupied in the matter of thy salvation, setting aside all curious speculations of God's unsearchable majesty, all cogitations of works, of traditions, of philosophy, yea, and of God's law too, run straight to the manger, and embrace this Infant, and the Virgin's little Babe in thine arms, and behold Him as He was born, sucking, growing up, conversant among men, teaching, dying, rising again, ascending up above all the heavens, and having power above all things. By this means shalt thou be able to shake off all terrors and errors, like as the sun driveth away the clouds. And this sight and contemplation will keep thee in the right way, that thou mayest follow whither Christ is gone."

K