'Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light' - Paul.
off his knees, and no man so safe for hell as he. There are fools, and
there are double-dyed fools, and that man is the chief of them. Give
him his fill of sin and misery; let him luxuriate himself in sin and
misery; only, keep him there, and I will not forget thy most excellent
service to me.
Make all their hearts, so Lucifer summed up, as he dismissed his
obsequious devils, make all their several hearts each a warehouse, a
shop, a farm, a pulpit, a library, a nursery, a supper-table, a chamber of
wantonness - let it be to each man just after his own heart. Only, keep -
as you shall answer for it, - keep faith and hope and charity and innocence and patience and especially prayerfulness out of their
hearts. And when this my counsel is fulfilled, and when the pit closes
over thy charge, I shall pay thee thy wages, and promote thee to
honour. And before he was well done they were all at their posts.
Chapter 14 - THE DEVIL'S LAST CARD
'Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light' - Paul.
Wodrow has an anecdote in his delightful Analecta which shall
introduce us into our subject to-night. Mr. John Menzies was a very
pious and devoted pastor; he was a learned man also, and well seen in
the Popish and in the Arminian controversies. And to the end of his
life he was much esteemed of the people of Aberdeen as a foremost
preacher of the gospel. And yet, 'Oh to have one more Sabbath in my
pulpit!' he cried out on his death-bed. 'What would you then do?'
asked some one who sat at his bedside. 'I would preach to my people
on the tremendous difficulty of salvation!' exclaimed the dying man.
Now, the first difficulty that stands in the way of our salvation is
the stupendous mass of guilt that has accumulated upon all of us. Our
guilt is so great that we dare not think of it. It is too horrible to believe
that we shall ever be called to account for one in a thousand of it. It
crushes our minds with a perfect stupor of horror, when for a moment
we try to imagine a day of judgment when we shall be judged for all
the deeds that we have done in the body. Heart-beat after heart-beat,
breath after breath, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, and
all full of sin; all nothing but sin from our mother's womb to our grave.
Sometimes one outstanding act of sin has quite overwhelmed us. But
before long that awful sin fell out of sight and out of mind. Other sins
of the same kind succeeded it. Our sense of sin, our sense of guilt was
soon extinguished by a life of sin, till, at the present moment the
accumulated and tremendous load of our sin and guilt is no more felt
by us than we feel the tremendous load of the atmosphere. But, all the
time, does not our great guilt lie sealed down upon us? Because we
are too seared and too stupefied to feel it, is it therefore not there?
Because we never think of it, does that prove that both God and man
have forgiven and forgotten it? Shall the Judge of all the earth do right
in the matter of all men's guilt but ours? Does the apostle's warning
not hold in our case? - his awful warning that we shall all stand before
the judgment-seat? And is it only a strong figure of speech that the
books shall be opened till we shall cry to the mountains to fall on us
and to the rocks to cover us? Oh no! the truth is, the half has not been
told us of the speechless stupefaction that shall fall on us when the
trumpet shall sound and when Alp upon Alp of aggravated guilt shall
rise up high as heaven between us and our salvation. Difficulty is not the name for guilt like ours. Impossibility is the better name we
should always know it by.
Another difficulty or impossibility to our salvation rises out of the
awful corruption and pollution of our hearts. But is there any use
entering on that subject? Is there one man in a hundred who even
knows the rudiments of the language I must now speak in? Is there
one man in a hundred in whose mind any idea arises, and in whose
heart any emotion or passion is kindled, as I proceed to speak of
corruption of nature and pollution of heart? I do not suppose it. I do
not presume upon it. I do not believe it. That most miserable man who
is let down of God's Holy Spirit into the pit of corruption that is in his
own heart, - to him his corruption, added to his guilt, causes a sadness
that nothing in this world can really relieve; it causes a deep and an
increasing melancholy, such as the ninety and nine who need no
repentance and feel no pollution know nothing of. All living men flee
from the corruption of an unburied corpse. The living at once set
about to bury their dead. 'I am a stranger and a sojourner among you,'
said Abraham to the children of Heth; 'give me a possession of a
burying-place among you that I may bury my dead out of my sight.'
But Paul could find no grave in the whole world in which to bury out
of his sight the body of death to which he was chained fast; that body
of sin and death which always makes the holiest of men the most
wretched of men, - till the loathing and the disgust and the misery that
filled the apostle's heart are to be understood by but one in a
thousand even of the people of God.
And then, as if to make our salvation a very hyperbole of
impossibility, the all but almighty power of indwelling sin comes in.
Have you ever tried to break loose from the old fetter of an evil habit?
Have you ever said on a New Year's Day with Thomas A Kempis that
this year you would root that appetite, - naming it, - out of your body,
and that vice, - naming it, - out of your heart? Have you ever sworn at
the Communion table that you would watch and pray, and set a watch
on your evil heart against that envy, and that revenge, and that ill-will,
and that distaste, dislike, and antipathy? Then your minister will not
need to come back from his death-bed to preach to you on the
difficulty of salvation.
And yet such is the grace of God, such is the work of Christ, and
such is the power and the patience of the Holy Ghost that, if we had
only an adequate ministry in our pulpits, and an assisting literature in
our homes, even this three-fold impossibility would be overcome and
we would be saved. But if the ministry that is set over us is an
ignorant, indolent, incompetent, self-deceived ministry; if our own
chosen, set-up, and maintained minister is himself an uninstructed,
unspiritual, unsanctified man; and if the books we buy and borrow
and read are all secular, unspiritual, superficial, ephemeral, silly,
stupid, impertinent books, then the impossibility of our salvation is
absolute, and we are as good as in hell already with all our guilt and
all our corruption for ever on our heads. Now, that was the exact case
of Mansoul in the allegory of the Holy War at one of the last and
acutest stages of that war. Or, rather, that would have been her exact
case had Diabolus got his own deep, diabolical way with her. For what
did her ancient enemy do but sound a parley till he had played his last
card in these glozing and deceitful words; - 'I myself,' he had the face
to say to Emmanuel, 'if Thou wilt raise Thy siege and leave the town to
me, I will, at my own proper cost and charge, set up and maintain a
sufficient ministry, besides lecturers, in Mansoul, who shall show to
Mansoul that transgression stands in the way of life; the ministers I
shall set up shall also press the necessity of reformation according to
Thy holy law.' And even now, with the two pulpits, God's and the
devil's, and the two preachers, and the two pastors, in our own city, -
how many of you see any difference, or think that the one is any worse
or any better than the other? Or, indeed, that the ministry of the last
card is not the better of the two to your interest and to your taste, to
the state of your mind and to the need of your heart? Let us proceed,
then, to look at Mansoul's two pulpits and her two lectureships as
they stand portrayed on the devil's last card and in Emmanuel's
crowning commission; that is, if our eyes are sharp enough to see any
difference.
The first thing, then, on the devil's last card was this, 'A sufficient
ministry, besides lecturers, in Mansoul.' Now, a sufficient ministry has
never been seen in the true Church of Christ since her ministry began.
And yet she has had great ministers in her time. After Christ Himself,
Paul was the greatest and the best minister the Church of Christ has
ever had. But such was the transcendent greatness of his office, such were its tremendous responsibilities, such were its magnificent
opportunities and its incessant demands, such were its ceaseless calls
to consecration, to cross-bearing, to crucifixion, to more and more
inwardness of holiness, and to higher and higher heights of heavenly-
mindedness, that the apostle was fain to cry out continually,
Who is sufficient for these things! But so well did Paul learn that
gospel which he preached to others that amid all his insufficiency he
was able to hear his Master saying to him every day, My grace is
sufficient for thee, and, My strength is made perfect in thy weakness!
And to come down to the truly Pauline succession of ministers in our
own lands and in our own churches, what preachers and what pastors
Christ gave to Kidderminster, and to Bedford, and to Down and
Connor, and to Sodor and Man, and to Anwoth, and to Ettrick, and to
New England, and to St. Andrews, and places too many to mention.
With all its infirmity and all its inefficiency, what a truly heavenly
power the pulpit is when it is filled by a man of God who gives his
whole mind and heart, his whole time and thought to it, and to the
pastorate that lies around it. His mind may be small, and his heart may
be full of corruption; his time may be full of manifold interruptions,
and his best study may yield but a poor result; but if Heaven ever
helps those who honestly help themselves, then that is certainly the
case in the Christian ministry. Let the choicest of our children, then, be
sought out and consecrated to that service; let our most gifted and
most gracious-minded sons be sent to where they shall be best
prepared for the pulpit and the pastorate, - till by the blessing of her
Head all the congregations and all the parishes, all the pulpits and all
the lectureships in the Church, shall be one garden of the Lord. And
then we shall escape that last curse of a ministry such as John Bunyan
saw all around him in the England of his day, and which, had he been
alive in the England and Scotland of our day, he would have painted
again in colours we have neither the boldness nor the skill to mix nor
to put on the canvas. But let all ministers put it every day to
themselves to what descent and succession they belong. Let those
even who believe that they have within themselves the best seal and
evidence attainable here that they have been ordained of Emmanuel,
let them all the more look well every day and every Sabbath day how
much of another master's doctrine and discipline, motives, and
manners still mixes up with their best ministry. And the surest seal
that, with all our insufficiency, we are still the ministers of Christ will
be set on us by this, that the harder we work and the more in secret
we pray, the more and ever the more shall we discover and confess
our shameful insufficiency, and the more shall we, till the day of our
death, every day still begin our ministry
of labour and of prayer anew. Let us do that, for the devil, with all his
boldness and all his subtilty, never threw a card first or last like that.
After offering a sufficient ministry to Mansoul, and that, too, at his
own proper cost and charge, Diabolus undertook also to see that the
absolute necessity of a reformation should be preached and pressed
from the pulpit he set up. Now, reformation is all good and necessary,
in its own time and place and order, but God sent His Son not to be a
Reformer but to be a Redeemer. John came to preach reformation, but
Jesus came to preach regeneration. Except a man be born again, Jesus
persistently preached to Nicodemus. 'Did it begin with regeneration?'
was Dr. Duncan's reply when a sermon on sanctification was praised
in his hearing. And like so much else that the learned and profound Dr.
John Duncan said on theology and philosophy, that question went at
once to the root of the matter. For sanctification, that is to say,
salvation, is no mere reformation of morals or refinement of manners.
It is a maxim in sound morals that the morality of the man must
precede the morality of his actions. And much more is it the
evangelical law of Jesus Christ. Make the tree good, our Lawgiver
aphoristically said. Reformation and sanctification differ, says Dr.
Hodge, as clean clothes differ from a clean heart. Now, Diabolus was
all for clean clothes when he saw that Mansoul was slipping out of his
hands. He would have all the drunkards to become moderate drinkers,
if not total abstainers; and all the sensualists to become, if need be,
ascetics; and all those who had sowed out their wild oats to settle
down as heads of houses, and members, if not ministers and elders, in
his set-up church. But we are too well taught, surely; we have gone too
long to another church than that which Diabolus ever sets up, to be
satisfied with his superficial doctrine and his skin-deep discipline. We
know, do we not, that we may do all that his last card asks us to do,
and yet be as far, ay, and far farther from salvation than the heathen
are who never heard the name. A hundred Scriptures tell us that; and our hearts know too much of their own plague and corruption ever
now to be satisfied short of a full regeneration and a complete
sanctification. 'Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit
within me. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. And the very God
of peace sanctify you wholly. And I pray God your whole spirit and
soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ.' The last card has many Scriptures cunningly copied upon
it; but not these. Its pulpit orators handle many Scripture texts, but
never these.
Yes, the devil comes in even here with that so late, so subtle, and
so contradicting card of his. Where is it in this world that he does not
come in with some of his cards? And he comes in here as a very angel
of evangelical light. He puts on the gown of Geneva here, and he
ascends Emmanuel's own maintained pulpit here, and from that
pulpit he preaches, and where he so preaches he preaches nothing
else but the very highest articles of the Reformed faith. Carnal-
security was strong on assurance, no other man in Mansoul was so
strong; and the devil will let us preachers be as strong and as often on
election, and justification, and indefectible grace, and the
perseverance of the saints as we and our people like, if we but keep in
season and out of season on these transcendent subjects and keep off
morals and manners, walk and conversation, conduct and character. In
Hooker's and Travers' day, Thomas Fuller tells us, the Temple pulpit
preached pure Canterbury in the morning and pure Geneva in the
afternoon. And you will get the highest Calvinism off the last card in
one pulpit, and the strictest and most urgent morality off the same
card in another; but never, if the devil can help it, never both in one
and the same pulpit; never both in one and the same sermon; and
never both in one and the same minister. You have all heard of the
difficulty the voyager had in steering between Scylla and Charybdis in
the Latin adage. Well, the true preacher's difficulty is just like that.
Indeed, it is beyond the wit of man, and it takes all the wit of God,
aright to unite the doctrine of our utter inability with the companion
doctrine of our strict responsibility; free grace with a full reward; the
cross of Christ once for all, with the saint's continual crucifixion; the
Saviour's blood with the sinner's; and atonement with attainment; in
short, salvation without works with no salvation without works. Deft steersman as the devil is, he never yet took his ship clear through
those Charybdic passages.
One thing there is that I must have preached continually in all my
pulpits and expounded and illustrated and enforced in all my
lectureships, said Emmanuel, and that is, my new example and my
new law of motive. My own motives always made me in all I said and
did to be well-pleasing in My Father's eyes, and at any cost I must have
preachers and lecturers set up in Mansoul who shall assist Me in
making Mansoul as well-pleasing in My Father's sight as I was Myself.
'For I am ware it is the seed of act
God holds appraising in His hollow palm,
Not act grown great thence as the world believes,
Leafage and branchage vulgar eyes admire.'
Motives! gnashed Diabolus. And he tore his last card into a thousand
shreds and cast the shreds under his feet in his rage and exasperation.
Motives! New motives! Truly Thou art the threatened Seed of the
woman! Truly Thou art the threatened Son of God! - Let all our
preachers, then, preach much on motive to their people. The
commonplace crowd of their people will not all like that preaching
any more than Diabolus did; but their best people will all afterwards
rise up in their salvation and bless them for it. On reformation also, let
them every Sabbath preach, but only on the reformation that rises out
of a reformed motive, and that again out of a reformed heart. And if a
reformed motive, a reformed heart, and a reformed life are found both
by preacher and hearer to be impossible; if all that only brings out the
hopelessness of their salvation by reason of the guilt and the pollution
and power of sin; then all that will only be to them that same ever
deeper entering of the law into their hearts which led Paul to an ever
deeper faith and trust in Jesus Christ. With a guilt, and a pollution, and
a slavery to sin like ours, salvation from sin would be absolutely
impossible. Absolutely impossible, that is, but for our Saviour, Jesus
Christ. But with His atoning blood and His Holy Spirit all things are
possible - even our salvation. Let us choose, then, a minister like Mr.