Part 3
And as we go from the place of worship, our lives will be different. True, we shall have only the same guides as before—the same Bible, and in the life of Jesus the same ideal. But the ideal was insufficient before, and powerless. Now it is all-sufficient, and more powerful than all the forces of the adversary. We had the ideal before, but were unable to interpret it; now we have a living Teacher. We had the ideal before, but could not put it into practice; now we have a Helper. The modern theologians are right in looking to Jesus of Nazareth for the inspiration of life and the foundation of society. But not to a Jesus who is dead. Look to the Sermon on the Mount for the supreme guide of your life; it is sufficient for all needs; it is sufficient for the most complex of modern problems. But not as a mere code of law. Hear the Sermon on the Mount, and your life will be founded on the rock. But hear it, not from a dead teacher, but ever anew from the crucified and risen Lord.
Our lives have been different since Jesus entered in. But one dreadful doubt assails us. Jesus has carried us far. But has He carried us all the way? He has helped. But we had other helpers too. We had other
helpers, but they left us dissatisfied. Jesus has done more than they. But has He done all? Jesus of Nazareth seems to belong after all to this earth. And what of the dread thought of infinity?
Reflections on the nothingness of human life are often rather dull; they clothe themselves readily in cant. But if a thing is true, it cannot become false by being hackneyed. Man is imprisoned on one of the smaller of the planets; he is enveloped by infinity on all sides; and he lives but for a day in a pitiless procession. The things in which he is interested, the whole of his world, form but an imperceptible oasis in the desert of immensity. Strange that he can be absorbed in things which from the vantage-ground of infinity must seem smaller that the smallest playthings.
It cannot be denied. Man is a poor finite creature; he is a denizen of the earth. From one point of view, he is very much like the beasts that perish. Like them, he lives in a world of phenomena; he is subject to a succession of experiences, and he does not understand any one of them. Science can observe; it cannot explain. When it tries to explain, it becomes laughable. Man is certainly finite. But that is not the whole truth. He is not only finite, for he knows that he is finite, and that knowledge brings him into connection with infinity. He lives in a finite world. But he knows at least that it is not the totality of things. He lives in a procession of phenomena. But to save his life he cannot help searching for a first cause. In the midst of his trivial life, there rises in his mind one strange and overpowering thought—the thought of God. It may come by reflection, by subtle argument—from effect to cause, from the design to the designer. Or it may come by "a sunset touch." Back of the red, mysterious, terrible, silent depths, beyond the silent meeting-place of sea and sky, there is an inscrutable power. In the presence of it we are helpless as a stick or stone. As helpless, but more unhappy—unhappy
because of fear. With what assurance can we meet the infinite power? Its works in nature are horrible in the infliction of suffering. And what if physical suffering should not be all, what of the sense of guilt? What if the condemnation of conscience should be but the foretaste of judgment? What if contact with the infinite should be contact with a dreadful infinity of holiness? What if the inscrutable cause of all things should turn out to be, after all, a righteous God.
This great beyond of mystery—can Jesus help us there? Make Jesus as great as you will, and still He seems insufficient. Extend the domains of His power far beyond our ken, and still there is a shelving brink with the infinite beyond. And still we are subject to fear. The mysterious power that explains the world, still it will sweep in one day and engulf us and our Saviour alike. We are of all men most miserable.
We had trusted in Jesus. He carried us a little on our way, and then left us helpless as before, on the brink of eternity. There is for us no hope; we stand defenseless at length in the presence of unfathomed mystery, unless—a wild, fantastic thought—unless this Jesus, our Saviour in whom we had trusted, were Himself in mysterious union with the eternal God. The puzzling sentence in Philippians, "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God"; the strange cosmology of Colossians, "who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist"; the majestic prologue of the Fourth Gospel, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"; the mysterious consciousness of Jesus, "All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man
knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him", "I and my Father are one." These things have been despised as idle speculation, as "theology".
In reality, they are the very breath of our lives. They are the battleground of theologians; the church hurled anathemas at those who held that Christ, though great, was less than God. And rightly! That difference was no trifle. There is no such thing as "almost God." The thought is blasphemy. The next thing less than the infinite is infinitely less. If Christ be the greatest of finite creatures, then still our souls are restless, still we are seekers after God. But now is Christ, our Saviour, our Champion, the same who says, "Thy sins are forgiven thee," revealed as very God. And we believe! It is the supreme venture of faith; faith can go no higher.
Such a faith is a constant mystery to us who possess it; it is ridiculed by those who have it not. But, if possessed, it overcomes the world. In Christ, all things are ours. There is now no awful beyond of mystery and fear. We cannot explain the world. But we rejoice now that we cannot explain it. To us it is all unknown. But it contains no mysteries for our Saviour. He is on the throne. He is at the centre. He is ground and explanation of all things. He pervades the remotest bounds. In Him all things consist. The world is full of dread, mysterious powers. They touch us already in a thousand woes. But from all of them we are safe. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Justified By Faith
"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:1).
THE doctrine of justification by faith alone is the very foundation of our Protestant life. It had been obscured in the Middle ages by the Church of Rome. In practice even more than in theory salvation had been made to depend upon obedience to an elaborate set of rules prescribed by the Church. The result was an intolerable bondage. But in God's good time the deliverer was raised up. A monk by the name of Martin Luther began to read the Epistle to the Galatians with his own eyes, and evangelical liberty was born. It is a great mistake to suppose that Luther was merely an emancipator; it is a great mistake to regard him as a spiritual brother of those who have sought liberty for its own sake, or of those who have founded liberty merely upon inherent rights of man. On the contrary Luther founded liberty not upon a right which man possessed as man, but upon a right which was conferred upon him by God. Luther combatted the doctrine of the Church of Rome not by advocating indifference to doctrine but by championing another and an older doctrine; he appealed against the tradition of Rome not to the desires of men's hearts but to what God had revealed; he advocated as over against the authority of the Church, not the absence of all authority but the authority of the Bible as the Word of God. In particular, he set up against the doctrine of submission to the Church the great Protestant doctrine of justification by faith.
There were others at the time of Luther who assumed a very different attitude; there were those who at bottom had an antipathy to the doctrine of Rome not because they were devoted to a contrary doctrine but because they were at heart opposed to all doctrine; there were those who would have been glad to fight false doctrine not by true doctrine but by agnosticism. Such perhaps was in spirit at least the position of the great Erasmus, the foremost scholar of the age. I say "perhaps", because I confess that in judging Erasmus I am just now somewhat under the spell of Froude. Froude was himself a skeptic; it is possible therefore that he was inclined to make his hero too much like himself. But on the whole Froude's Life and Letters of Erasmus is rather a convincing book. It pictures the great scholar of the Reformation period as being at heart, though of course not consciously or explicitly, a precursor of the non-doctrinal Christianity so popular at the present day. And whatever may finally be thought of the picture, it has a certain amount of prima facie evidence in its favor. Erasmus will always be known to history as the man who would not take sides. There was in his day a great spiritual conflict, the greatest that the world had known, for fifteen centuries. Erasmus certainly contributed to the outbreak of it, but he would not accept the final consequences of his own work; he would not fight in the van of the battle, and finally he retired to an inglorious life in the rear.
Erasmus has been blamed for cowardice, and the adjective "Erasmian" derived from his name has a somewhat evil sound. But perhaps the charge does him injustice, or rather the charge of cowardice blames Erasmus for a fault different from the one which was actually his. Certainly the indecision of that great scholar was an inglorious thing; though he did not like the abuses of the Roman system yet he would not side with Luther in his heroic fight. But his indecision was perhaps not due to cowardice; it was rather due to an
absence of conviction. His fault was not that being convinced of the truth of the Reformation doctrine he concealed his conviction from fear of men; but rather that he was not convinced at all. Thus he went with the Reformation in its negative work; he joined with it in attacking the abuses of the Church of Rome. But he differed from the Reformation in having nothing positive to put in the place of that which was destroyed.
The choice between Luther and Erasmus had to be made in the sixteenth century and the same choice has to be made today. There are those who believe that the search for objective truth in religion must be abandoned, that doctrine is merely the necessarily changing form in which religious experience is expressed, and that a humanistic eclecticism is the highest ideal. But there are also those who with Luther combat error not in the interests of negation but in the interests of truth; there are those who like Luther have a message and are willing to stand for it against the world.
What then was the message of Luther which set the world aflame? It was not something that Luther originated but something that he discovered; the Reformation of the sixteenth century was a rediscovery of Paul, and through Paul a rediscovery of Jesus.
At the center of the message was the doctrine of justification by faith. Some men would be horrified by this use of a theological term; they seem to have a notion that modern Christians must be addressed always in words of one syllable, and that in religion the scientific precision of language which is found so useful in other spheres must be abandoned. I am by no means ready to agree. It is perfectly true that the Bible and the people ought to be brought together. But what is not always observed is that there are two ways of achieving that end. One way is to bring the Bible down to the level of the people; the
other way is to let the people be lifted up to the level of the Bible. For my part, I prefer the latter way. I am by no means ready to relinquish the advantages of a precise terminology in summarizing Bible truth. In religion as well as in other spheres a precise terminology is mentally economical in the end; it repays amply the slight effort required for the mastery of it. It should be used even in many cases where it is not found in the Bible itself, but only summarizes what the Bible teaches. But in the case of "justification by faith," the terminology most emphatically is found in the Bible; and when Professor Goodspeed in his translation of the New Testament renders the word which means "justify" by "make upright", he is misrepresenting at its very centre the book which he is purporting to translate. One may well be appalled by the religious retrogression which is involved in that translation; for by it the entire achievement of the Reformation is abandoned, and there is a return to the meritreligion of the Middle Ages. But what is almost equally appalling, perhaps, is the abandonment of the historical method which is involved in this modernizing of the Apostle Paul. It may be that the modern translator is not much interested in justification by faith; but every true historian must surely admit that Paul was interested in it, and a translator, if he be true to his sacred trust, must place the emphasis, not where he could wish it placed, but where it actually was placed by the writer whose thought he is trying to reproduce. From every point of view, therefore, the terminology of Paul should be retained. I am not one bit ashamed to speak of "the doctrine of justification by faith."
But let us not suppose for a moment that that doctrine is an abstruse or intricate thing. On the contrary it is a very simple thing and it is instinct with life.
It is an answer to the greatest personal question ever asked by a human soul—the question, "How shall I be right with God?", "How do I stand in God's sight, with what favor does He look upon me?" There are those, I admit, who never raise that question; there are those who are concerned with the question of their standing before men but never with the question of their standing before God; there are those who are interested in what "people say" but not in the question what God says. Such men, however, are not those who move the world: they are apt to go with the current; they are apt to do as others do; they are not the heroes who change the destinies of the race. The beginning of true nobility comes when a man ceases to be interested in the judgment of men and becomes interested in the judgment of God.
But if we can gain that much insight: if we have become interested in the judgment of God, how shall we stand in that judgment? How shall we become right with God? The most obvious answer is, By obeying God's law, by being what God wants us to be. There is absolutely nothing wrong in theory about the answer; the only trouble is that for us it does not work. If we had obeyed the law of God, if we were what God wants us to be, all would no doubt be well; we could approach the judgment seat of God and trust simply in God's just recognition of the facts. But, alas, we have not obeyed God's law, but transgressed it in thought, word and deed; and far from being what God wants us to be we are stained and soiled with sin. The stain is not merely on the surface; it is not a thing which can be wiped off by a damp cloth; but it permeates the recesses of our souls. And the clearer be our understanding of God's law, the deeper becomes our despair. Some men seek a refuge from condemnation by a low view of the law of God; they limit the law to external commands and by obeying those commands they hope to buy God's favor. But the moment a man gains a view of the law as it is—
especially as it is revealed in the words and example of Jesus—at that moment he knows that he is undone. If our being right with God depends upon anything that is in us, we are without hope.
But another way into God's presence has been opened, and the opening of that way is set forth in the gospel. We deserve eternal death; we deserve exclusion from God's righteous presence; but the Lord Jesus took upon Himself all the guilt of our sins and died instead of us on the cross. Henceforth the law's demands have been satisfied for us by Christ, its terror for us is gone, and clothed no longer in our righteousness but in the righteousness of Christ we stand without fear as Christ would stand without fear before the judgment seat of God. Men say that that is an intricate theory of the atonement; but surely the adjective is misplaced. It is mysterious, but it is not intricate; it is wonderful, but it is so simple that a child can understand.
No doubt the application of this redeeming work of Christ to the individual soul is mysterious enough. It is far beyond the wisdom and power of man. It is not a thing that can be effected by human reasoning or human effort; the beginning of the Christian life is not an achievement but an experience. Those who have passed through that experience are new creatures; they wonder at their former blindness; they wonder how there ever could have been a time when, with the scoffing world, they did not understand. The beginning of the Christian life is not an act of man but a wonderful act of the Spirit of God.
But it is accompanied by a conscious act of man; it is accompanied by the act of faith. Faith is not a meritorious work; the New Testament never says that a man is saved on account of his faith, but always that he is saved through his faith. Faith is the means which the Holy
Spirit uses to apply to the individual soul the benefits of Christ's death.
And faith is a very simple thing; it simply means the receiving of a gift; it simply means that abandoning the vain effort of earning our way into God's presence we accept the gift of salvation which Christ offers so full and free. Such is the doctrine—let us not be afraid of the word—such is the doctrine of justification by faith.
That has been a liberating doctrine; to it is due most of the freedom that we possess today, and if it is abandoned freedom will soon depart. If we are interested in what God thinks of us, we shall not be deterred by what men think; the very desire for justification before God makes us independent of the judgments of men. And if the very desire for justification is liberating, how much more the attainment of it! The man who has been justified by God, the man who has accepted as a free gift this condition of rightness with God, is not a man who hopes that possibly, with due effort, if he does not fail, he may win through to become a child of God. But he is a man who has already become a child of God. If our being children of God depended in slightest measure upon ourselves, we could never be sure that we had attained the high estate. But it does not depend upon ourselves; it depends only upon God. It is not a reward that we have earned but a gift that we received.
A hard battle indeed lies before us. This faith of ours, if we be true Christians, is a faith that works; and it is a faith that fights—against sin. But we begin the battle not with God as our reward, but with God as our ally. There is the high liberty of the Christian man. Let us not throw our liberty away; let us not descend into the bondage of dependence upon ourselves, let us not descend into the hard bondage of agnostic Modernism. But having received the gospel—
this great Magna Charta of Christian liberty—let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free.
The Gospel and Modern Substitutes
"I am not ashamed of the gospel" (Romans 1:16).
PAUL was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, but a good many people nowadays are ashamed of it. At least the Epistle to the Romans, in which more fully than in any other book of the Bible, that gospel is set forth, is not altogether a popular book. And the reason why it is unpopular is perfectly plain—it is unpopular because it is so disturbingly definite. Paul had one thing, and one thing only, to say about the way of salvation. His program of religious work was very simple and very uncompromising. He had no sympathy with what J. S. Phillimore has aptly called, "The courtly polygamies of the soul." For him there was one Lord and Master and one only—namely, Jesus Christ. Paul had no sympathy with the notion that religion is something to be kept in the background of life and that there is such a thing as being "too religious". The Religious Work Program of the Y.M.C.A. may be made too prominent, say some, so as to discourage men who are interested in the welfare of mankind and yet are not willing to commit their all to Jesus Christ, who died for all men. But Paul would not have recognized the Y.M.C.A. as Christian, if it keeps
its "Religious Work Program" as we say in modern phraseology, in the background and does not make it the whole of what it is trying to do. Salvation according to Paul was to be found only in the atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ, applied by the Holy Spirit of God and received through faith.
But if a modern leader of the church had found himself in the place where the Apostle Paul found himself when that letter was written, it would have been a different letter that would have been produced, because at the present time men are inclined to be very apologetic and very concessive about their Christianity. They are perfectly willing to admit that this may be one way in which other people are helped, but if other people are helped in some different way, we are as far as possible, men say today, from trying to make our way theirs. If you had found the leader of a modern church in the place in which Paul found himself when this letter was written, a very different letter would have been produced. Paul was preparing for his coming to the city of Rome, and it was the time to put his best foot forward— a time to win adherents to his cause by a concessive attitude. The modern leader would have said: "Paul, to all those at Rome who are leading the Christ life, whatever may be the name by which they are called and whatever may be their creed, Greeting: I rejoice when I hear of your noble Christian service, and I long to see you, that you and I may talk over together methods of Christian work. Unfortunately, circumstances have prevented, but I hope at least to be able to see you. For I am not ashamed of the gospel that I preach, because I believe that with careful handling, if emphasis be laid upon the points where it is agreed with other faiths and if controversial matters be kept carefully in the background, I believe that the gospel that I preach may safely be proclaimed without creating too much trouble, even in the city of Rome."
This is the beginning of the modern Epistle to the Romans. It is true, our modern Paul would have had a great deal of explaining to do. And the rest of the letter would have had to run something like this: "It is true," our modern Paul would have had to say, "In Galatia unfortunate anathemas were pronounced against those who were proclaiming a different gospel. Now, when we come to Rome, we want to make it perfectly plain that if the Jews can obtain any help from conforming to the Mosaic law as one of the means of salvation, we shall not interfere with them. At Ephesus, the unfortunate impression was produced that our gospel was interfering with the worship of Diana of the Ephesians. Now we want to make it plain when we come to Rome that if one man can obtain contact with the divine through plastic representations commonly called idols, we are as far as possible from wanting to interfere with his faith. At Thessalonica, something unfortunate was said about turning from idols to serve the living God. Now when we come to Rome we want to make it plain that we are not asking any man to turn from anything. We are not giving a man a new creed, but we are merely trying to help him make effective in his life whatever creed he may chance to have."
That is the modern Epistle to the Romans. Sermons are being preached from it in thousands of pulpits today.
But I call your attention to this fact, that if the Epistle to the Romans be re-written in this way,—and as a matter of fact it is not only the Epistle to the Romans that has to be rewritten, but also the teachings of Jesus—if it is to be rewritten in this way, the actual Epistle disappears. In fact the whole Bible disappears. The beginning of the Epistle to the Romans is particularly unfortunate from this modern concessive point of view, because Paul does not begin with mere general principles of religion—after the manner of those modern
men who hold that back of Christianity and all positive faith you have some certain general principles of religion that you can get at and that men can agree on, so that people will say: "We can agree upon certain permanent general principles of religion." Paul thought general principles of religion were the most gloomy and hopeless things in the world. He thought that if we were dependent upon things which always were true, general principles of religion and the nature of man, we should be in despair, because of sin and the righteous judgment of God. It was not merely general principles of religion that he was interested in. It was one thing that had happened,—one thing that God did, that put a new face upon the world. Paul begins the Epistle, therefore, with the things that are "most in dispute." "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, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." There is nothing concessive about that. These were just the things which were mostly in dispute, in those times as today. If you go on through the Epistle to the Romans, you will see that if you re-write it in the modern concessive way, taking your confidence from this one thing that Christ did when he offered himself for the sins of men upon the Cross, you will see that this Epistle to the Romans disappears, and so does the rest of the Bible.
Then we come to the first main section of the Epistle beginning with the eighteenth verse of the first chapter: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men …" Well, of course we will hear nothing of the wrath of God. We have learned in our day, it is said, to "interpret" God altogether in terms of love, and have gotten rid of all juridical notions about Him as though He sat upon some awful judgment seat and condemned men in the white heat of His righteous indignation. So there are
three chapters of the Epistle to the Romans gone at one swoop. And when we are getting rid of those chapters, we must by the way get rid of a large part of the teaching of Jesus; for the teaching of Jesus is full of the wrath of God. If you want terrible presentations of the wrath of God, turn not to Cotton Mather or to Jonathan Edwards or to Calvin or to Augustine or to Paul; but turn rather to Jesus of Nazareth. It was Jesus who spoke of the outer darkness and the everlasting fire, of the sin that shall not be forgiven either in this world or in that which is to come.
Then we come to that passage at the end of the third chapter: "But now apart from the law a righteousness of God hath been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets …" A glance at the long pages of the commentaries, it is said, will show that no one ever has fully understood what those puzzling ten verses mean; and since it is one of the cardinal principles of modern religion that no one shall ever by any chance use his intellect in providing the basis of his religion, it is evident that we shall not have the patience to puzzle those verses out today.
Then of course the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans will have to go, because it is taken up with an appeal to Scripture, and for us the seat of authority in religion is found not in Scripture but in experience.
In the fifth chapter, we may be impressed by the fervor and glow of the language—"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ …"—but after all, it is said, Paul is here operating with theological conceptions of which we can make little.
In the sixth chapter, it is said, we have an interesting phenomenon. At the beginning of the chapter there is presented a supernaturalistic
or magical notion of salvation of which we can make nothing; salvation is presented as an act of God and God alone. It is what Paul calls elsewhere the new creation, and what Jesus in the third chapter of John calls the new birth. We moderns, it is said, can make nothing of that. How often is it heard in pulpits today? But then here is the curious phenomenon—after just saying that Christians are dead to sin, and have an entirely new life in Christ, Paul proceeds to urge them not to sin but rather to yield their members as servants to righteousness. Thus, after all, he does appeal to the human will; and so, it is said, we have here a modern and truly ethical notion of salvation struggling to the surface from beneath the magical and supernaturalistic theory of the new creation or the new birth.
Now any one who has any real knowledge of the Bible realizes that there is really no contradiction here at all. Certainly a man cannot contribute to his new birth; he has no more part in producing it than he had in producing the natural birth by which he came into this world. But when a man is born, he shows that he has been born by proceeding to act. So it is with the new birth. When we were born again, we were born not as full-grown Christian men, but as babes in Christ; and after we have thus been born again we must grow up into Christian manhood. Before we were born again, we could do nothing to please God; we were dead in trespasses and sins. But after we were begotten again by an act of God, after we have thus been made alive by Him, we ought to show that we are alive by being able to act. Thus regeneration or the new birth is followed by the daily battle of the redeemed man against sin. To regeneration or the new birth we could contribute nothing, but in sanctification the man who has been begotten again by God does show that he is spiritually alive by cooperating with God's Spirit. There is a wonderful symmetry and coherence about the teaching of Holy Scripture. But men nowadays have no patience to attend to that coherence, and so the sixth chapter
of the Epistle to the Romans, with its doctrine of the new birth, of course will have to go.
In the seventh chapter, it is admitted, we have an interesting human document, that moving account of the struggle between the good and the evil that is in a man. A man, says Paul, consents to the law of God in his inner man, but there is something within him that drags him down. It must be admitted that there is considerable psychological insight in that chapter. But after all, it is said, Paul's experience was peculiar. There was a sudden break in his life, on the road to Damascus, and so he was inclined to see good and evil in too sharply contrasting colors to suit most of us. That seventh chapter of Romans, interesting though it is, seems to us moderns to be decidedly over-wrought.
When we come to the eighth chapter of Romans, there is no man so modern, I suppose, if he has retained any appreciation for what is fine and noble in literature, as not to feel a certain reverence for those words. Certainly if he is possessed of any human sympathy his reverence for the eighth chapter of Romans will be increased. How often during the past nineteen hundred years when some true saint of God—not some great sinner, but a man who has spent his whole life in pure and unselfish service of his fellow-men—has been asked in the last hour of his life what chapter of the Bible he would like to have read to him, how often such a saint of God, instead of calling for the Sermon on the Mount or any of the ethical parts of the Bible, has said rather: "Read me the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans." I tell you my friends, that chapter is hallowed by tears of joy. "No condemnation". "It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." Ah, my friends, those are the things, rather than any appeal
to the rewards of human goodness, that are turned to by the real saints when in the last hour of their lives they are prepared to meet God. A man must be very cold and heartless not to feel a certain reverence for a chapter like that. But after all, people say, even in the eighth chapter of Romans Paul is operating with theological conceptions that we can make little of, and before we can use that chapter we must at least translate it into the thought-forms of the present day. So we proceed to translate it. But the sad thing is that after we get it nicely translated into the thought-forms of the present day, all the glory and the power of it somehow seem to be gone.
With regard to the ninth to the eleventh chapters of Romans, the chapters that contain Paul's philosophy of history—well, man is written entirely too small and God is written entirely too large to suit men nowadays. Those chapters, with their doctrine of predestination and all that, are perhaps the worst in the Epistle; they will certainly have to go.
We have here indeed at last something that is very modern,— patriotism. "I could wish," Paul says, "That myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." That is certainly patriotism, and if it had come to going bravely over the top for his country, Paul might have been there with the best of them. It is rather interesting that the apostle Paul, who is the great representative of an individualistic notion of salvation, here gives the most stupendous expression to solidarity of racial feeling. Today an individualistic notion of salvation is altogether despised. This old notion of saving souls, men say, is such a selfish thing. The Y.M.C.A. secretary used to sit at his desk, and possibly now and then had the privilege of leading some lost soul to the Saviour, so that at the sight of the Cross, the burden of sin fell into a deep ditch beside the road, and the man went with a new lightness on his way. But now people
say that it is a very selfish thing—this trying to save individual men when hosts of others are supposed to be entering into final perdition. People say, "We would be glad to enter into hell, if anybody is going to enter into hell; we should prefer that to a heaven that is selfish." It is rather an interesting thing to see that Paul says somewhat the same thing. Only, there is one huge difference: When modern men talk about being perfectly willing to enter hell for others they do not believe in hell so its means absolutely nothing; but Paul did believe in it and yet he said the same thing.
With the twelfth chapter of the Epistle you enter into what is called the "practical" part of the letter. People sometimes breathe a sigh of relief when they come to the twelfth chapter of Romans. The troublesome doctrinal part, they say, is at last finished and here at last we have useful hints for daily living. But when you look a little closer, you discover to your consternation, that you have not really escaped from doctrine at all. You discover when you look a little deeper into these practical parts of the New Testament that they are founded upon what people call theology and the new life that comes when a man dies with Christ in order to rise with him. This is not a way of life that is possible for men everywhere, whether Christian or non-Christian. Paul was not foolish enough to think that this type of life is practicable for men who have not been born again. So the "practical" part of the Epistle is founded altogether upon the doctrine that has been set forth in the first eight chapters. And the discontent of the modern man springs up again. The beginning of that practical section of the Epistle is practicularly unfortunate from the modern concessive point of view. Paul says: "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice." The "mercies of God" from the modern point of view will have to go, because the mercies of God, that Paul speaks of are the
redeeming work of Christ set forth in the "doctrinal" part of the letter.
Thus when the Epistle to the Romans is re-written in this modern, concessive, non-controversial, non-doctrinal fashion the actual Epistle to the Romans that we have here in our Bibles disappears from beginning to end. But what is the difference between these two Epistles to the Romans—this modern concessive, non-doctrinal, "tolerant" Epistle on the one hand, and the Epistle that we have in our Bibles on the other. I will tell you in a word what the difference is. The modern, non-controversial Epistle is just the expression of an abysmal skepticism; for if all creeds, despite the fact that they are contradictory to one another, are all equally good, then it follows that they are all equally false or at least all equally uncertain; and if we hold that the doctrine that we now enunciate is merely the setting forth in the thought-forms of this generation of a religious experience that must be set forth in another generation in thoughtforms contradictory to these, then it follows that we do not hold the creed that we now set up to be true even here and now. While a thing that is useful now may cease to be useful in another generation, a thing that is true now will remain true beyond the end of time. What is really meant by this non-doctrinal, non-controversial religion is that we have given up the search for truth altogether; we have given up the grounding of our life upon anything that is permanently and objectively true. Such is the modern Epistle to the Romans. It is the expression of a bottomless skepticism. The actual Epistle to the Romans, on the other hand, the Epistle that we have here in our Bibles, in which a man stakes his all upon the truth of one message— that is the expression of a triumphant faith.
As between these two Epistles to the Romans I for my part think we ought to choose the one that Paul wrote. I think that we have no
reason to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ. We have less excuse for being ashamed of that gospel today than we had fifty or twenty-five years ago; for the emptiness of a world without that gospel is becoming increasingly plain. There was a time twenty-five or fifty years ago when to a superficial observer it might have seemed as though the Christian life could be continued after Christian doctrine had been given up; a mild "Liberalism" might have seemed to be full of promise. But that time has gone by. Today it is becoming increasingly evident that we are living over the abyss. What a drab thing, as well as what an alarming thing, is this modern mechanistic age! Well may we turn from such slavery to the glorious liberty of the gospel of Christ. We have no real reason, my friends, to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ.
XII
The Separateness of the Church
"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men" (Matt. 5:13).
IN these words our Lord established at the very beginning the distinctness and separateness of the Church. If the sharp distinction is ever broken down between the Church and the world, then the
power of the Church is gone. The Church then becomes like salt that has lost it savor, and is fit only to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.
It is a great principle, and there never has been a time in all the centuries of Christian history when it has not had to be taken to heart. The really serious attack upon Christianity has not been the attack carried on by fire and sword, by the threat of bonds or death, but it has been the more subtle attack that has been masked by friendly words; it has been not the attack from without but the attack from within. The enemy has done his deadliest work when he has come with words of love and compromise and peace. And how persistent the attack has been! Never in the centuries of the Church's life has it been altogether relaxed; always there has been the deadly chemical process, by which, if it had been unchecked, the precious salt would have been merged with the insipidity of the world, and would have been thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.
The process began at the very beginning in the days when our Lord still walked the Galilean hills. There were many in those days who heard Him gladly: He enjoyed at first the favor of the people. But in that favor He saw a deadly peril; He would have nothing of a halfdiscipleship that meant the merging of the company of His disciples with the world. How ruthlessly He checked a sentimental enthusiasm! "Let the dead bury their dead," He told the enthusiast who came eagerly to Him but was not willing at once to forsake all. "One thing thou lackest," He said to the rich young ruler, and the young man went sorrowful away. Truly Jesus did not make it easy to be a follower of Him. "He that is not with me," He said, "is against me." "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother,
and wife and children …, he cannot be my disciple." How serious a thing it was in those days to stand for Christ!
And it was a serious thing not only in the sphere of conduct but also in the sphere of thought. There could be no greater mistake than to suppose that a man in those days could think as he liked and still be a follower of Jesus. On the contrary the offence lay just as much in the sphere of doctrine as in the sphere of life. There were "hard sayings," then as now, to be accepted by the disciples of Jesus, as well as hard commands. "I am the bread which came down from heaven," said Jesus. It was indeed a hard saying. No wonder the Jews murmured at Him. "Is not this Jesus," they said, "the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven." "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" Jesus did not make the thing easy for these murmurers. "Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." At that many even of His disciples were offended. "This is a hard saying," they said; "who can hear it?" And so they left Him. "From that time many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him." Many of them went back—but not all. "Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life." Thus was the precious salt preserved.
Then came the gathering clouds, and finally the Cross. In the hour of His agony they all left Him and fled; apparently the movement that He had initiated was hopelessly dead. But such was not the will of God. The disciples were sifted, but there was still something left. Peter was forgiven; the disciples saw the risen Lord; the salt was still preserved.
One hundred and twenty persons were gathered in Jerusalem. It was not a large company; but salt, if it truly have its savor, can permeate the whole lump. The Spirit came in accordance with our Lord's promise, and Peter preached the first sermon in the Christian Church. It was hardly a concessive sermon. "Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." How unkind Peter was! But by that merciful unkindness they were pricked in their hearts, and three thousand souls were saved.
So there stood the first Christian Church in the midst of a hostile world. At first sight it might have seemed to be a mere Jewish sect; the disciples continued to attend the temple services and to lead the life of Jews. But in reality that little company was as separate as if it had been shut off by desert wastes or the wide reaches of the sea; an invisible barrier, to be crossed only by the wonder of the new birth, separated the disciples of Jesus from the surrounding world. "Of the rest," we are told, "durst no man join himself to them." "And fear came upon every soul." So it will always be. When the disciples of Jesus are really faithful to their Lord, they inspire fear; even when Christians are despised and persecuted and harried, they have sometimes made their persecutors secretly afraid. It is not so, indeed, when there is compromise in the Christian camp; it is not so when those who minister in the name of Christ have—as was said in praise some time ago in my hearing of a group of ministers in our day—it is not so when those who minister in the name of Christ "have their ears to the ground." But it will be so whenever Christians have their ears, not to the ground, but open only to the voice of God, and when they say simply, in the face of opposition or flattery, as Peter said, "We must obey God rather than men."
But after those persecutions, there came in the early Church a time of peace—deadly, menacing, deceptive peace, a peace more dangerous by far than the bitterest war. Many of the sect of the Pharisees came into the Church—false brethren privily brought in. They were not true Christians, because they trusted in their own works for salvation, and no man can be a Christian who does that. They were not even true adherents of the Old Covenant; for the Old Covenant, despite the Law, was a preparation for the Saviour's coming, and the Law was a school-master unto Christ. Yet they were Christians in name, and they tried to dominate the councils of the Church. It was a serious menace; for a moment it looked as though even Peter, true apostle though he was at heart, were being deceived. His principles were right, but by his actions his principles, at Antioch, for one fatal moment, were belied. But it was not God's will that the Church should perish; and the man of the hour was there. There was one man who would not consider consequences where a great principle was at stake, who put all personal considerations resolutely aside, and refused to become unfaithful to Christ through any fear of "splitting the Church." "When I saw that they walked not uprightly," said Paul, "according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all …" Thus was the precious salt preserved.
But from another side also the Church was menaced by the blandishments of the world; it was menaced not only by a false Judaism, which really meant opposition of man's self-righteousness to the mysterious grace of God, but also by the all-embracing paganism of that day. When the Pauline churches were planted in the cities of the Graeco-Roman world, the battle was not ended but only begun. Would the little spark of new life be kept alive? Certainly it might have seemed to be unlikely in the extreme. The converts were for the most part not men of independent position, but slaves and humble tradesmen; they were bound by a thousand ties to the
paganism of their day. How could they possibly avoid being drawn away by the current of the time? The danger certainly was great; and when Paul left an infant church like that at Thessalonica his heart was full of dread.
But God was faithful to His promise, and the first word that came from that infant church was good. The wonder had actually been accomplished; the converts were standing firm; they were in the world but not of the world; their distinctness was kept. In the midst of pagan impurity they were living true Christian lives. But why were they living true Christian lives? That is the really important question. And the answer is plain. They were living Christian lives because they were devoted to Christian truth. "Ye turned to God," says Paul, "from idols to serve the living and true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come." That was the secret of their Christian lives; their Christian lives were founded upon Christian doctrine— upon theism ("the living and true God"), upon Christology ("his Son … whom he raised from the dead"), and upon soteriology ("which delivered us from the wrath to come"). They kept the message intact, and hence they lived the life. So it will always be. Lives apparently and superficially Christian can perhaps sometimes be lived by force of habit, without being based upon Christian truth; but that will never do when Christian living, as in pagan Thessalonica, goes against the grain. But in the case of the Thessalonian converts the message was kept intact, and with it the Christian life. Thus again was the precious salt preserved.
The same conflict is observed in more detail in the case of Corinth. What a city Corinth was to be sure, and how unlikely a place for a Christian church! The address of Paul's First Epistle is, as Bengel says, a mighty paradox. "To the Church of God which is at Corinth"—
that was a paradox indeed. And in the First Epistle to the Corinthians we have attested in all its fullness the attempt of paganism, not to combat the Church by a frontal attack, but to conquer it by the far deadlier method of merging it gradually and peacefully with the life of the world. Those Corinthian Christians were connected by many ties with the pagan life of their great city. What should they do about clubs and societies; what should they do about invitations to dinners where meat that had been offered to idols was set before the guests? What should they do about marriage and the like? These were practical questions, but they involved the great principle of the distinctness and exclusiveness of the Church. Certainly the danger was very great; the converts were in great danger, from the human point of view, of sinking back into the corrupt life of the world.
But the conflict was not merely in the sphere of conduct. More fundamentally it was in the sphere of thought. Paganism in Corinth was far too astute to think that Christian life could be attacked when Christian doctrine remained. And so pagan practice was promoted by an appeal to pagan theory; the enemy engaged in an attempt to sublimate or explain away the fundamental things of the Christian faith. Somewhat after the manner of the Auburn "Affirmationists" in our day, paganism in the Corinthian Church sought to substitute the Greek notion of the immortality of the soul for the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. But God had His witness; the apostle Paul was not deceived; and in a great passage—the most important words, historically, perhaps, that have ever been penned—he reviewed the sheer factual basis of the Christian faith. "How that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures." There is the foundation of the Christian edifice. Paganism was gnawing away— not yet directly, but by ultimate implication—at that foundation in Corinth, as it has been doing so in one way or another ever since. But
Paul was there, and many of the five hundred witnesses were still alive. The gospel message was kept distinct, in the Pauline churches, from the wisdom of the world; the precious salt was still preserved.
Then, in the second century, there came another deadly conflict. It was again a conflict not with an enemy without, but with an enemy within. The Gnostics used the name of Christ; they tried to dominate the Church; they appealed to the Epistles of Paul. But despite their use of Christian language they were pagan through and through. Modern scholarship, on this point, has tended to confirm the judgment of the great orthodox writers of that day; Gnosticism was at bottom no mere variety of Christian belief, no mere heresy, but paganism masquerading in Christian dress. Many were deceived; the danger was very great. But it was not God's will that the Church should perish. Irenaeus was there, and Tertullian with his vehement defence. The Church was saved—not by those who cried "Peace, peace, when there is no peace," but by zealous contenders for the faith. Again, out of a great danger, the precious salt was preserved.
Time would fail us to speak of Athanasius and of Augustine and the rest, but they too were God's instruments in the preservation of the precious salt. Certainly the attack in those days was subtle enough almost to deceive the very elect. Grant the Semi-Arians their one letter in homoiousios, the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet, and Christ would have been degraded to the level of a creature, mythology would have been substituted for the living God, and the victory of paganism would have been complete. From the human point of view the life of the Church was hanging by a hair. But God was watching over His own; Athanasius stood against the world; and the precious salt was preserved.
Then came the Middle Ages. How long, and how dark, in some respects, was the time! It is hard to realize that eleven centuries elapsed between Augustine and Luther, yet such was the case. Never in the interval, indeed, was God altogether without His witnesses; the light still shone from the sacred page; but how dim, in that atmosphere, the light seemed to be! The gospel might have seemed to be buried forever. Yet in God's good time it came forth again with new power—the same gospel that Augustine and Paul had proclaimed. What stronger proof could there be that that gospel had come from God? Where in the history of religion is there any parallel for such a revival, after such an interval, and with such a purity of faithfulness to what had formerly been believed? A gospel that survived the Middle Ages will probably, it may well be hoped, never perish from the earth, but will be the word of life unto the end of the world.
Yet in those early years of the sixteenth century how dark was the time! When Luther made his visit to Rome, what did he find—what did he find there in the centre of the Christian world? He found paganism blatant and triumphant and unashamed; he found the glories of ancient Greece come to life in the Italian renaissance, but with those glories the self-sufficiency and the rebellion against God and the moral degradation of the natural man. Apparently paganism had at last won its age-long battle; apparently it had made a clean sweep over the people of God, apparently the Church had at last become quite indistinguishable from the world.
But in the midst of the general wreck one thing at least was preserved. Many things were lost, but one thing was still left—the medieval Church had never lost the Word of God. The Bible had indeed become a book with seven seals; it had been buried under a mass of misinterpretation never equalled perhaps until the
absurdities indulged in by the Modernism of the present day—a mass of misinterpretation which seemed to hide it from the eyes of men. But at last an Augustinian monk penetrated beneath the mass of error, read the Scriptures with his own eyes; and the Reformation was born. Thus again was the precious salt preserved.
Then came Calvin and the great consistent system which he founded upon the Word of God. How glorious were the by-products of that system of revealed truth, a great stream of liberty spread from Geneva throughout Europe and to America across the sea. But if the by-products were glorious, more glorious by far was the truth itself, and the life that it caused men to live. How sweet and beautiful a thing was the life of the Protestant Christian home, where the Bible was the sole guide and stay! Have we really devised a substitute for that life in these latter days? I think not, my friends. There was liberty there, and love, and peace with God.
But the Church after the Reformation was not to have any permanent rest, as indeed it is probably not to have rest at any time in this evil world. Still the conflict of the ages went on, and paganism prepared for an assault greater and more insidious perhaps than any that had gone before. At first there was a frontal attack—Voltaire and Rousseau and the Goddess Reason and the terrors of the French Revolution and all that. As will always be the case, such an attack was bound to fail. But the enemy has now changed his method, and the attack is coming, not from without, but, in far more dangerous fashion, from within. During the past one hundred years the Protestant Churches of the world have gradually been becoming permeated by paganism in its most insidious form.
Sometimes paganism is blatant, as, for example, in a recent sermon the burden of which was, "I Believe in Man." That was the very
quintessence of the pagan spirit—confidence in human resources substituted for the Christian consciousness of sin. But what was there blatant is found in subtler forms in many places throughout the Church. The Bible, with a complete abandonment of all scientific historical method, and of all common sense, is made to say the exact opposite of what it means; no Gnostic, no medieval monk with his fourfold sense of Scripture, ever produced more absurd Biblical interpretation than can be heard every Sunday in the pulpits of New York. Even prayer in many quarters is made a thinly disguised means of propaganda against the truth of the gospel; men pray that there may be peace, where peace means victory for the enemies of Christ. Thus gradually the Church is being permeated by the spirit of the world; it is becoming what the Auburn Affirmationists call an "inclusive" Church; it is becoming salt that has lost its savor and is henceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.
At such a time, what should be done by those who love Christ? I think, my friends, that they should at least face the facts; I do not believe that they should bury their heads like ostriches in the sand; I do not think that they should soothe themselves with the minutes of the General Assembly or the reports of the Boards or the imposing rows of figures which the Church papers contain. Last week it was reported that the churches of America increased their membership by 690,000. Are you encouraged by these figures? I for my part am not encouraged a bit. I have indeed my own grounds for encouragement, especially those which are found in the great and precious promises of God. But these figures have no place among them. How many of these 690,000 names do you think are really written in the Lamb's book of life? A small proportion, I fear. Church membership today often means nothing more, as has well been said, than a vague admiration for the moral character of Jesus; the Church
in countless communities is little more than a Rotary Club. One day, as I was walking through a neighboring city, I saw, not an altar with an inscription to an unknown god, but something that filled me with far more sorrow than that could have done. I saw a church with a large sign on it, which read somewhat like this: "Not a member? Come in and help us make this a better community." Truly we have wandered far from the day when entrance into the Church involved confession of faith in Christ as the Saviour from sin.
The truth is that in these days the ecclesiastical currency has been sadly debased. Church membership, church office, the ministry, no longer mean what they ought to mean. But what shall we do? I think, my friends, that, cost what it may, we ought at least to face the facts. It will be hard; it will seem impious to timid souls; many will be hurt. But in God's name let us get rid of shams and have reality at least. Let us stop soothing ourselves with columns of statistics, and face the spiritual facts; let us recall this paper currency and get back to a standard of gold.
When we do that, and when we come to God in prayer, with the real facts spread before Him, as Hezekiah spread before Him the letter of the enemy, there will be some things to cheer our hearts. God has not left Himself altogether without His witnessess. Humble they may often be, and despised by the wisdom of the world; but they are not perhaps altogether without the favor of God. In China, in Great Britain, and in America there have been some who have raised their voices bravely for their Saviour and Lord.
True, the forces of unbelief have not yet been checked, and none can say whether our own American Presbyterian Church, which we love so dearly, will be preserved. It may be that paganism will finally control, and that Christian men and women may have to withdraw
from a church that has lost its distinctness from the world. Once in the course of history, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, that method of withdrawal was God's method of preserving the precious salt. But it may be also that our Church in its corporate capacity, in its historic grandeur, may yet stand for Christ. God grant that it may be so! The future at any rate is in God's hand, and in some way or other—let us learn that much from history—the salt will be preserved.
What are you going to do, my brothers, in this great time of crisis? What a time it is to be sure! What a time of glorious opportunity! Will you stand with the world, will you shrink from controversy, will you witness for Christ only where witnessing costs nothing, will you pass through these stirring days without coming to any real decision? Or will you learn the lesson of Christian history; will you penetrate, by your study and your meditation, beneath the surface; will you recognize in that which prides itself on being modern an enemy that is as old as the hills; will you hope, and pray, not for a mere continuance of what now is, but for a rediscovery of the gospel that can make all things new; will you have recourse to the charter of Christian liberty in the Word of God? God grant that some of you may do that! God grant that some of you, even though you be not now decided, may come to say, as you go forth into the world: "It is hard in these days to be a Christian; the adversaries are strong; I am weak; but thy Word is true and thy Spirit will be with me; here am I, Lord, send me."
XIII
Prophets False and True
"And Micaiah said, As the Lord liveth, what the Lord saith unto me, that will I speak" (1 Kings 22:14).
THE text is a great text and it is taken from a great chapter. Some chapters of the Bible are certainly greater than others, and it is by no means derogatory to the authority of Scripture to recognize their special greatness. The doctrine of plenary inspiration does not mean, as its opponents often represent it as meaning, that all parts of the Bible are equally valuable—it only means that all parts of the Bible are equally true. Even the least valuable parts of the Bible have, indeed, their place. Lovers of poetry love the level lines of Shakespeare; so we Christians cherish the great level, prose chapters of the Word of God. Even in the level pathways of Scripture we can walk with God and learn of Him. But then when we have passed through such a stretch in our reading of the Bible, where distant scenes are concealed, suddenly we emerge sometimes as we read, as upon the brow of some hill, and discern before us with wondering eyes a wide, free prospect of the world and destiny and human duty. And there, through the great expanse stretched out before, may be seen a narrow path that leads over hill and dale until in the dim distance it loses itself in the mysterious brightness of the city of God.
Such a great chapter of the Bible, such a Pisgah height of vision, is found in the twenty-second chapter of the First Book of Kings. The two kings sat on their thrones at the gate of Samaria; the armies were marshalled before them for the battle. But before they went forth Jehoshaphat said unto the king of Israel: "Enquire, I pray thee, at the
word of the Lord today." And the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and said unto them: "Shall I go against Ramoth-Gilead to battle, or shall I forebear?" And they said: "Go up; for the Lord shall deliver it unto the hand of the king."
But Jehoshaphat was not satisfied. Why he was not satisfied I do not know. Perhaps it was because of conscience. He was doing that which he knew in his heart of hearts to be wrong—what part had he with the wicked Ahab? Perhaps, as men will do when conscience speaks, he sought ever further confirmation of that thing, really wrong, that he desired to do. Four hundred prophets had spoken, but their hubbub had not quite succeeded in drowning the inner voice. So Jehoshaphat said: "Is there not here a prophet of the Lord besides, that we might enquire of him?" And Ahab said: "There is yet one man, Micaiah the son of Imlah, by whom we may enquire of the Lord; but I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil." And Jehoshaphat said. "Let not the king say so."